Friday 7th June 2024
  • Former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch Cleared in US Fraud Trial

    British entrepreneur Mike Lynch has been cleared of fraud charges by a jury in a court in San Francisco on Thursday, avoiding the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence. The once-celebrated cofounder of software company Autonomy was acquitted of all criminal charges, ending a 12-year legal saga accusing him of wire fraud and conspiracy.

    In the course of a meandering, 11-week trial, the US Department of Justice accused Lynch of overseeing an elaborate, multiyear fraud that served to inflate the value of Autonomy before its purchase by Hewlett-Packard in 2011.


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  • The Case for MDMA’s Approval Is Riddled With Problems

    Only two drugs are formally approved for post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and they don’t help everyone. A lack of effective treatment options has led some patients to seek out the psychedelic drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy, to help relieve their symptoms when traditional medications and therapy don’t work.

    In the US, momentum has been growing to legalize MDMA and other psychedelics. Lykos Therapeutics, which has been testing MDMA alongside psychotherapy in clinical trials for years, had a chance this week to prove that the combination is effective at treating PTSD. But at a June 4 meeting, a panel of advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration overwhelmingly voted that there wasn’t enough evidence to recommend its approval. Just two of the 11 committee members were convinced that the treatment was effective, and only one said its benefits outweighed the risks.


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  • US National Security Experts Warn AI Giants Aren't Doing Enough to Protect Their Secrets

    Last year, the White House struck a landmark safety deal with AI developers that saw companies including Google and OpenAI promise to consider what could go wrong when they create software like that behind ChatGPT. Now a former domestic policy adviser to President Biden who helped forge that deal says that AI developers need to step up on another front: protecting their secret formulas from China.

    “Because they are behind, they are going to want to take advantage of what we have,” said Susan Rice regarding China. She left the White House last year and spoke on Wednesday during a panel about AI and geopolitics at an event hosted by Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered AI. “Whether it’s through purchasing and modifying our best open source models, or stealing our best secrets. We really do need to look at this whole spectrum of how do we stay ahead, and I worry that on the security side, we are lagging.”


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  • Oral-B Sold a $230 Alexa Toothbrush—and Then Pulled the Plug

    As we’re currently seeing with AI, when a new technology becomes buzzy, companies will do almost anything to cram that tech into their products. Trends fade, however, and corporate priorities shift—resulting in bricked gadgets and buyer’s remorse.

    That’s what's happening to some who bought Oral-B toothbrushes with Amazon Alexa built in. Oral-B released the Guide for $230 in August 2020 but bricked the ability to set up or reconfigure Alexa on the product this February. As of this writing, the Guide is still available through a third-party Amazon seller.


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  • Microsoft’s Recall Feature Is Even More Hackable Than You Thought

    Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella has hailed the company's new Recall feature, which stores a history of your computer desktop and makes it available to AI for analysis, as “photographic memory” for your PC. Within the cybersecurity community, meanwhile, the notion of a tool that silently takes a screenshot of your desktop every five seconds has been hailed as a hacker's dream come true and the worst product idea in recent memory.

    Now, security researchers have pointed out that even the one remaining security safeguard meant to protect that feature from exploitation can be trivially defeated.


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  • Why We Need Intergenerational Friendships at Work

    Managers today are leading up to five generations at the same time. And that brings with it a new challenge: Poorly managed generational differences between employees can be damaging, resulting in age bias, negative impact on job attitudes, dysfunctional team dynamics, and even lower levels of overall job performance. Well-managed generational diversity has the potential to bring substantial benefits, ranging from knowledge transfer and mentoring to innovation and reduced turnover. It creates opportunities to develop something even more invaluable: intergenerational workplace friendships. Here’s how managers can help nurture these relationships:

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  • A snack's journey from the farm to your mouth

    How does a biscuit make it from the farm to your plate? Sustainable development leader Aruna Rangachar Pohl unpacks the long journey of one of India's most beloved snacks, revealing how the current industrial farming model is eating the planet. Learn about the foundation she started to promote eco-friendly agricultural practices — and hear the success stories of small-scale farmers adopting natural practices to cook up a tasty, healthy and climate-resilient future for everyone.Continued here

  • How to use venture capital for good

    Freada Kapor Klein isn't your typical venture capitalist. She's thrown out the standard investment playbook in order to close the opportunity gap for low-income communities. She explains how her firm is investing in entrepreneurs and startups solving real-world problems — and the measurable difference it's already making.Continued here

  • US agencies to probe AI dominance of Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI

    The US Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission reportedly plan investigations into whether Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI are snuffing out competition in artificial intelligence technology.

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  • We've just had a year in which every month was a record-setter

    June 2023 did not seem like an exceptional month at the time. It was the warmest June in the instrumental temperature record, but monthly records haven't exactly been unusual in a period where the top 10 warmest years on record have all occurred within the last 15 years. And monthly records have often occurred in years that are otherwise unexceptional; at the time, the warmest July on record had occurred in 2019, a year that doesn't stand out much from the rest of the past decade.

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