Daily Archives: January 24, 2024

France fines Amazon $35 million over intrusive employee surveillance

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France’s data privacy watchdog organization, the CNIL, has fined a logistics subsidiary of Amazon €32 million, or $35 million in US dollars, over the company’s use of an “overly intrusive” employee surveillance system. The CNIL says that the system employed by Amazon France Logistique “measured work interruptions with such accuracy, potentially requiring employees to justify every break or interruption.”

Of course, this system was forced on the company’s warehouse workers, as they seem to always get the short end of the Amazon stick. The CNIL says the surveillance software tracked the inactivity of employees via a mandatory barcode scanner that’s used to process orders. The system tracks idle time as interruptions in barcode scans, calling out employees for periods of downtime as low as one minute. The French organization ruled that the accuracy of this system was illegal, using Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as a legal basis for the ruling.

To that end, this isn’t being classified as a labor case, but rather a data processing case regarding excessive monitoring. “As implemented, the processing is considered to be excessively intrusive,” the CNIL wrote, noting that Amazon uses this data to assess employee performance on a weekly basis. The organization also noted that Amazon held onto this data for all employees and temporary workers.

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Source: France fines Amazon $35 million over ‘intrusive’ employee surveillance

Samsung expands self-repair program to include home entertainment devices

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Samsung just announced that its self-repair program will now include certain home entertainment devices. The company has developed a range of step-by-step repair guides for various products in the category, in addition to providing genuine replacement parts and repair tools.

This program covers Samsung 2023 TVs, along with their remotes, and monitors released throughout the past year or so. Additionally, the self-repair program now includes the second-generation Freestyle projector and select soundbars. You can pick up replacement parts directly from the company.

Of course, the program doesn’t cover every repair issue. For TVs and monitors, the program only handles issues related to the picture, power, WiFi connection, sound and remote control. For soundbars, the program covers problems related to HDMI and optical connections, power, sound and wireless communication. According to Samsung, most of these issues can be fixed with common tools like a Phillips-head screwdriver.

The company’s been on something of a self-repair spree in recent months. Back in December, Samsung opened up the program to foldable devices, like the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5. In the first part of 2023, the company added S22 and Galaxy Book devices to the program, joining pre-existing Galaxy products.

To that end, Samsung just announced a broader assortment of self-repair parts for devices already included in the program. This includes speakers, SIM trays, side keys, volume keys, display assemblies, back glass and charging ports for phones and tablets. Galaxy Book owners can also now conduct DIY repairs to fix the speakers and fan. Meanwhile, rival Apple doesn’t exactly have the best track record in the self-repair movement.

Source: Samsung expands self-repair program to include home entertainment devices

It’s good to see a return to being able to repair stuff. Not only does this make repairs cheaper, faster and easier but also it allows you to keep your device running for far longer. Considering the amount of damage being done to the environment by electronic device junk, is absolutely a good thing.

Animals Can See Colors We Can’t. A New camera method gives us a good idea.

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The rainbow looks different to a human than it does to a honeybee or a zebra finch. That’s because these animals can see colors that we humans simply can’t. Now scientists have developed a new video recording and analysis technique to better understand how the world looks through the eyes of other species. The accurate and relatively inexpensive method, described in a study published on January 23 in PLOS Biology, is already offering biologists surprising discoveries about the lives of different species.

Humans have three types of cone cells in their eyes. This trio of photoreceptors typically detects red, green and blue wavelengths of light, which combine into millions of distinct colors in the spectrum from 380 to 700 nanometers in wavelength—what we call “visible light.” Some animals, though, can see light with even higher frequencies, called ultraviolet, or UV, light. Most birds have this ability, along with honeybees, reptiles and certain bony fish.

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To capture animal vision on video, Vasas and her colleagues developed a portable 3-D-printed enclosure containing a beam splitter that separates light into UV and the human-visible spectrum. The two streams are captured by two different cameras. One is a standard camera that detects visible-wavelength light, and the other is a modified camera that is sensitive to UV. On its own, the UV-sensitive camera wouldn’t be able to record detailed information on the rest of the light spectrum in a single shot. But paired together, the two cameras can simultaneously record high-quality video that encompasses a wide range of the light spectrum. Then a set of algorithms aligns the two videos and produces versions of the footage that are representative of different animals’ color views, such as those of birds or bees.

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Capturing video in this way “fills a really important gap in our ability to model animal vision,” says Jolyon Troscianko, a visual ecologist at the University of Exeter in England, who wasn’t involved in the new research. He notes that in nature, “a lot of interesting things move,” such as animals that are engaging in mating dances or rapid defense displays. Until now, researchers studying these dynamic behaviors have been stuck with the human perspective.

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The technique is already revealing unseen phenomena of the natural world, she adds: for example, by recording an iridescent peacock feather rotating under a light, the researchers found shifts in color that are even more vibrant to fellow peafowl than they are to humans. Vasas and her colleagues also captured the brief startle display of a black swallowtail caterpillar and saw for the first time that its hornlike defense appendages are UV-reflective.

A caterpillar’s antipredator display, as seen by a bee.
A caterpillar’s antipredator display, as seen by a bee. Credit: “Recording Animal-View Videos of the Natural World Using a Novel Camera System and Software Package,” by Vera Vasas et al., in PLOS Biology, Vol. 22, No. 1. Published online January 23, 2024 (CC BY 4.0)

“None of these things were hypotheses that we had in advance,” Vasas says. Moving forward, “I think it will reveal a lot of things that I can’t yet imagine.”

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Source: Animals Can See Colors We Can’t–And New Tech Offers Us a Glimpse | Scientific American

Cells’ electric fields keep nanoparticles at bay, scientists confirm

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The humble membranes that enclose our cells have a surprising superpower: They can push away nano-sized molecules that happen to approach them. A team including scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has figured out why, by using artificial membranes that mimic the behavior of natural ones. Their discovery could make a difference in how we design the many drug treatments that target our cells.

The team’s findings, which appear in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, confirm that the powerful electrical fields that cell membranes generate are largely responsible for repelling nanoscale particles from the surface of the cell.

This repulsion notably affects neutral, uncharged nanoparticles, in part because the smaller, charged the attracts crowd the membrane and push away the larger particles. Since many drug treatments are built around proteins and other nanoscale particles that target the membrane, the repulsion could play a role in the treatments’ effectiveness.

The findings provide the first direct evidence that the electric fields are responsible for the repulsion.

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Membranes form boundaries in nearly all kinds of cells. Not only does a cell have an that contains and protects the interior, but often there are other membranes inside, forming parts of organelles such as mitochondria and the Golgi apparatus. Understanding membranes is important to medical science, not least because proteins lodged in the are frequent drug targets. Some membrane proteins are like gates that regulate what gets into and out of the cell.

The region near these membranes can be a busy place. Thousands of types of different molecules crowd each other and the cell membrane—and as anyone who has tried to push through a crowd knows, it can be tough going. Smaller molecules such as salts move with relative ease because they can fit into tighter spots, but larger molecules, such as proteins, are limited in their movements.

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“How does crowding affect the cell and its behavior?” he said. “How, for example, do molecules in this soup get sorted inside the cell, making some of them available for biological functions, but not others? The effect of the membrane could make a difference.”

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scientists have paid scant attention to this effect at the nanoscale because it takes extremely powerful fields to move nanoparticles. But powerful fields are just what an electrically charged membrane generates.

“The electric field right near a membrane in a salty solution like our bodies produce can be astoundingly strong,” Hoogerheide said. “Its strength falls off rapidly with distance, creating large field gradients that we figured might repel nearby particles. So we used to look into it.”

Neutrons can distinguish between different isotopes of hydrogen, and the team designed experiments that explored a membrane’s effect on nearby molecules of PEG, a polymer that forms chargeless nano-sized particles. Hydrogen is a major constituent of PEG, and by immersing the membrane and PEG into a solution of heavy water—which is made with deuterium in place of ordinary water’s —the team could measure how closely the PEG particles approached the membrane. They used a technique known as neutron reflectometry at the NCNR as well as instruments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Together with , the experiments revealed the first-ever evidence that the membranes’ powerful field gradients were the culprit behind the repulsion: The PEG molecules were more strongly repelled from charged surfaces than from neutral surfaces.

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More information: Marcel Aguilella-Arzo et al, Charged Biological Membranes Repel Large Neutral Molecules by Surface Dielectrophoresis and Counterion Pressure, Journal of the American Chemical Society (2024). DOI: 10.1021/jacs.3c12348. pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacs.3c12348

Source: Cells’ electric fields keep nanoparticles at bay, scientists confirm

EU Commission readies establishment of AI Office on 21 feb

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The AI Office will play a pivotal role in the enforcement architecture of the AI Act, the EU’s landmark law to regulate Artificial Intelligence, set to be formally adopted in the coming weeks based on a political agreement nailed down in December.

The idea of an AI Office to centralise the enforcement of the AI rulebook came from the European Parliament. Still, during the negotiations, it was downsized from being a little short of an agency to being integrated into the Commission, albeit with a separate budget line.

However, the question of how much autonomy the Office will be guaranteed remains sensitive inside the Commission, especially since it is unclear whether it will become an entity with its own political objectives or an extension of the unit responsible for the AI Act.

Euractiv understands that the obtained draft decision was amended following an internal consultation to include wording specifying that the Office should not interfere with the competencies of Commission departments.

According to the document, the decision should enter into force as a matter of urgency on 21 February, before the formal adoption of the EU’s AI law. Euractiv understands the decision is due to be adopted on Wednesday (24 January).

Policing powerful AI

The AI Office will have primarily a supporting role for what concerns the enforcement of the rules on AI systems, as the bulk of the competencies will be on national authorities. However, the Office has been assigned to policing General-Purpose AI (GPAI) models and systems, the most potent types of AI so far.

Recent advances in computing power, data harvesting, and algorithm techniques have led to the development of powerful GPAI models like OpenAI’s GPT-4, which powers the GPAI system ChatGPT, the world’s most famous chatbot.

The agreement on the AI Act includes a tiered approach to GPAI models to distinguish those that might entail a systemic risk for society from the rest. The AI Office is to develop the methodologies and benchmarks for evaluating the capabilities of GPAI models.

The Office should be able to set itself apart in monitoring the application of the rules on GPAI models and systems, notably when developed by the same provider, and the emergence of unforeseen risks from these models based on alerts from a scientific panel of independent experts.

The new EU entity is also set to have significant leeway to investigate possible infringements of rules related to GPAI by collecting complaints and alerts, issuing document requests, conducting evaluations and requesting mitigation or other enforcement measures.

The Office will also coordinate the enforcement of the AI Act on AI systems already covered under other EU legislation, like social media’s recommender systems under the Digital Services Act and search engines’ ranking algorithms under the Digital Markets Act.

Support & coordination

The AI Office is to have a supporting role in the preparation of secondary legislation implementing the AI Act, the uniform application of the regulation, the issuance of guidance and supporting tools like standardised protocols, the preparation of standardisation requests, the establishment of regulatory sandboxes, the developments of codes of practice and conduct at the EU level.

The entity will also provide the secretariat for the AI Board and administrative support for the stakeholder-run advisory forum and expert-made scientific panel. The draft decision explicitly references the requirement to consult regularly with scientific and civil society stakeholders.

In particular, the AI Office must “establish a forum for cooperation with the open-source community with a view to identifying and developing best practices for the safe development and use of open-source AI models and systems.”

In addition, the new entity is tasked with promoting innovation ecosystems and working with public and private actors and the start-up community. As revealed by Euractiv, the AI Office will be responsible for monitoring the progress of GenAI4EU, an initiative to promote the uptake of generative AI in strategic sectors.

The Office is also mandated to cooperate with the relevant EU bodies, like the European Data Protection Supervisor. Collaboration is also required with other Commission departments, notably the European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency, to test GPAI models and systems and facilitate the adoption of AI tools in relevant EU policies.

At the international level, the Office will promote the EU approach to AI, contribute to AI governance initiatives, and support the implementation of international agreements.

Financing

The financing aspect of the AI Office has been a sore point since the beginning. The lack of flexibility in the EU budget allocations and lack of appetite from member states to put more resources on the table means new tasks always face strict budgetary constraints.

The Commission’s digital policy department, DG CNECT, will assign human resources. The hiring of temporary staff and operational expenditure will be financed with the redeployment of the budget from the Digital Europe Programme.

Source: EU Commission readies establishment of AI Office – Euractiv