Technology

Facebook’s Meta is using servers located in America to do most of its data transfer around the world, and that might bring about the end of Facebook and Instagram in Europe due to a European regulation that does not allow European data to be taken and transfered to foreign countries.

Meta threatens a shutdown of Facebook and Instagram in Europe

From mashable.com
2022-02-06 19:13:17

Excerpt:

 

….Buried in Meta’s dense annual report for the Securities and Exchange Commission, filed Thursday, is a surprisingly stark sentence laying out a scenario in which The Company Formerly Known as Facebook might have to entirely stop operating Instagram and Facebook in Europe. Yep, no Instagram, no Facebook, for all Europeans.

To which we as Americans can only say: Luckyyyyyyyyyy!!!!

At issue are European data regulations that prevent Meta from ingesting Europeans’ data on American servers. Basically, Meta says the ability to process user data in between countries is crucial for its business both operationally and for ad targeting. European laws meant to protect user privacy by keeping users’ data within the EU’s jurisdiction have invalidated previous systems. So, because Meta has been unable to reach new data sharing agreements, it’s threatening to walk away from the continent with Facebook and Instagram.

“​If we are unable to transfer data between and among countries and regions in which we operate, or if we are restricted from sharing data among our products and services, it could affect our ability to provide our services, the manner in which we provide our services or our ability to target ads,” the statement reads. Then, Meta clarifies that it thinks it will be able to reach new agreements in 2022, but if it does not, “we will likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe.”

The London financial newspaper CityAM reached out to Meta to see if they were, uh, reading that right. Meta responded with a statement from the company’s illustrious VP of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, who attempted to connect the plight of a billion-dollar international conglomerate Meta with struggles small businesses could face.

“We urge regulators to adopt a proportionate and pragmatic approach to minimise disruption to the many thousands of businesses who, like Facebook, have been…

 

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A robot has successfully completed surgery all by itself, with no human assistants.  The lucky patient was not a human, however, it was a pig.  The robot and the pig survived.

Robot performs first laparoscopic surgery without human help

From sciencedaily.com

Excerpt:

 

A robot has performed laparoscopic surgery on the soft tissue of a pig without the guiding hand of a human — a significant step in robotics toward fully automated surgery on humans. Designed by a team of Johns Hopkins University researchers, the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) is described today in Science Robotics.

“Our findings show that we can automate one of the most intricate and delicate tasks in surgery: the reconnection of two ends of an intestine. The STAR performed the procedure in four animals and it produced significantly better results than humans performing the same procedure,” said senior author Axel Krieger, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins’ Whiting School of Engineering.

The robot excelled at intestinal anastomosis, a procedure that requires a high level of repetitive motion and precision. Connecting two ends of an intestine is arguably the most challenging step in gastrointestinal surgery, requiring a surgeon to suture with high accuracy and consistency. Even the slightest hand tremor or misplaced stitch can result in a leak that could have catastrophic complications for the patient.

 

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Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is looking to expand their AI powers by creating AI capable of multi-tasking.

Meta’s new learning algorithm can teach AI to multi-task

From technologyreview.com

Excerpt:

 

A team at Meta AI (previously Facebook AI Research) wants to change that. The researchers have developed a single algorithm that can be used to train a neural network to recognize images, text, or speech. The algorithm, called Data2vec, not only unifies the learning process but performs at least as well as existing techniques in all three skills. “We hope it will change the way people think about doing this type of work,” says Michael Auli, a researcher at Meta AI.

The research builds on an approach known as self-supervised learning, in which neural networks learn to spot patterns in data sets by themselves, without being guided by labeled examples. This is how large language models like GPT-3 learn from vast bodies of unlabeled text scraped from the internet, and it has driven many of the recent advances in deep learning.

 

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With new Machine Learning tools, researchers at MIT believe they are honing in on ways to push cold and hot fusion development on the fast track, having languished in the face of previously daunting obstacles.

Machine Learning Improves Fusion Modeling

From www.eetasia.com
2022-01-17 00:45:00

Excerpt:

 

Researchers at MIT are employing machine learning techniques to better understand turbulent plasma phenomena in fusion devices. According to MIT News, a new deep learning framework was developed that leverages artificial neural networks to represent a reduced turbulence theory.

The research is described in two papers, published in Physical Review E and Physics of Plasmas.

If researchers hope to control fusion for energy production, they need a better understanding of the turbulent motion of ions and electrons in plasmas moving through fusion reactors. The field lines of toroidal structures known as tokamaks force the plasma particles; the intent is to confine them long enough to produce significant net energy gains, but…

 

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