Iran and South Korea announced last week an agreement was reached to release the crew of a 9,797-ton oil tanker seized last month as it sailed the Strait of Hormuz, but there seem to be lingering issues. The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said last week that the ship’s 19-person crew will be able to...
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MYANMAR PROTESTS SURGE, JUNTA CLAMPS DOWN
Thousands of people in Myanmar took to the streets over the weekend, decrying the military coup that we reported last week when Myanmar’s military detained the country’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and declared a state of emergency. This past weekend, the protests escalated with tens of thousands more participating in protest marches....
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WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM HIGHLIGHTS “TECH FOR GOOD”
The recent World Economic Forum’s “Davos Agenda” virtual summit highlighted several “Tech For Good” innovations that appeared to tout not just the utility, but the superiority of AI and robotics compared to humans. One featured article chronicled what happened when AI and humans met in a strawberry-growing contest (spoiler alert: AI won). The AI and...
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STATES LEADING PUSH-BACK AGAINST BIG TECH
Tech companies would no longer be able to ban political candidates, and they would have to provide opt-outs of content filters for citizens of Florida if new measures by Governor Ron DeSantis are enacted. “The core issue here is this: are consumers going to have the choice to consume the information they choose or are...
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POLAND TAKES A STAND AGAINST TECH CENSORSHIP
Poland is proposing the establishment of a “Freedom of Speech Council” that would guarantee its citizens are not arbitrarily censored or manipulated by Big Tech companies. According to Deputy Minister of Justice Sebastian Kaleta, the Council would determine what Big Tech can and cannot remove from its platforms. Kaleta said the purpose would be to...
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AMERICA DRIFTS TOWARD CHINA’S “TECHNO-AUTOCRACY”
American democracy has been destroyed from the inside, and the nation has become a thoroughly co-opted satellite of China. That’s the provocative analysis of a recent piece by Lee Smith in the magazine Tablet. Smith chronicles the history of how America won the Cold War against Russia’s brand of communism, only to succumb to a...
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ELON MUSK: TECH OUTSIDER?
Along with David Portnoy of Barstool Sports, Elon Musk was one of the few prominent figures who signaled support for the Reddit WallStreetBets traders. Portnoy ended up abandoning his stake in GameStop and posted his capitulation on Twitter. Portnoy, on a segment with Tucker Carlson on FOX News, had earlier called for those who shut...
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“LIVING ROBOTS” MADE FROM FROGS
At the University of Vermont, scientists have tinkered with cells scraped from frogs’ embryos to make something that’s not a traditional robot but a “biological machine” – perhaps even a new life form. The creation has been dubbed a “xenobot” because the cells used to make the living robots were taken from the African clawed...
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EDUCATING THE QUANTUM WORKFORCE
An increasing number of companies looking for technology workers want those new hires to have a basic understanding of quantum information science and are expecting schools to offer relevant basic courses in their curriculums. The discovery that more and more companies now want new employees to be “quantum aware” comes from a study carried out...
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EXPERIMENTAL DRUG “DE-AGES” THE BRAIN
As we age, our immune system tends to go haywire. It can become sluggish in responding to infections, fail to recognize intruders entirely, or, as is common, begin to attack our healthy cells, leading to the low-grade inflammation that has been identified as a cause of ailments from cancer to dementia. A key culprit is...