Hasta La Gadget!

H&M has joined a growing list of retail stores that have begun charging customers to return their online purchases by taking the cost out of their total refund. The retailer started testing charging for returned items in September of last year in the U.S. but has now branched out to the UK with other local stores…

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A royals fan gifted the Prince of Wales some very iconic T-shirts.

US Representative Deborah Ross (D-NC) has introduced an updated version of the Protect Musicians Act in an attempt to change the way independent artists bargain with major streaming platforms. Created in collaboration with The American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) and The Artists Rights Alliance (ARA), the updated bill aims to “level the playing field” for artists in the digital age and the world of AI-generated music.

“This legislation will help give small, independent music creators a level playing field, empowering them to stand together for fairer compensation and giving them a voice in important negotiations that will determine the future of the music industry,” Ross said.

As it stands, current laws leave many artists, whether signed to a major label or independently working, unprotected and at the mercy of major streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. And these companies don’t always provide fair compensation to artists when their music is uploaded and streamed on the platforms. Independent artists are often forced to accept whenever rates are being offered without being able to collectively negotiate for better terms. Additionally, there is no real protection for artists against having their voice or music manipulated by AI without consent.

If passed, the Protect Working Musicians Act would allow working artists and independent musicians to come together and negotiate with dominant streaming platforms and artificial intelligence developers. It would also grant working artists and independent musicians the ability to collectively refuse to license their music to online music distribution platforms that refuse to pay fair market value.

It could be argued that many artists have always gotten a raw deal for decades when it comes to the sales and distribution of their music. Back in the day of album downloads and CD purchases, this money was usually split in many ways, leaving only a small amount for the artist. Unfortunately, unfair compensation being offered by streaming platforms is just a modern spin on a longstanding problem. And it’s not just musicians that are being affected. For years, streaming giants like Netflix have been offering low wages to its writers, which has contributed to the strike of members of the Writers Guild of America.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/revised-protect-musicians-act-could-empower-artists-against-streaming-platforms-200058922.html?src=rss

Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels is almost here, and the Marvel Studios film starring Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, and Iman Vellani will soon bring us the cosmic triple threat team-up we’ve been waiting for.

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Elon Musk’s Neuralink company, purveyors of the experimental N1 brain-computer interface (BCI), announced on Tuesday that it has finally opened enrollment for its first in-human study, dubbed Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface (PRIME, not PRIBCI). The announcement comes nearly a year after the company’s most recent “show and tell” event, four months beyond the timeframe Musk had declared the trials would start, and nearly a month after rival Synchron had already beaten them to market.

Per the company’s announcement, the PRIME study “aims to evaluate the safety of our implant (N1) and surgical robot (R1) and assess the initial functionality of our BCI for enabling people with paralysis to control external devices with their thoughts.” As such, this study is looking primarily for “those who have quadriplegia due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS),” despite Musk’s repeated and unfounded claims that the technology will be useful as vehicle for transhumanistic applications like learning Kung Fu from an SD card, uploading your consciousness to the web and controlling various household electronics with your mind.

Actually, that last one is a real goal of both the company and the technology. BCIs operate as a bridge between the human mind and machines, converting the analog electrical signals of our brains into digital signals that machines understand. The N1 system from Nueralink leverages a high-fidelity Utah Array of hair-thin probes that, unlike Synchron’s Stentrode, must be installed via robotic keyhole surgery (performed by Nerualink’s sewing machine-like R1 robot surgeon). This array will be fitted onto the patient’s motor cortex where it will record and wirelessly transmit electrical impulses produced by the region to an associated app which will interpret them into actionable commands for the computer. “The initial goal of our BCI is to grant people the ability to control a computer cursor or keyboard using their thoughts alone,” the release reads.

Neuralink has been working on the N1 system since 2017, one of the first companies in the industry to begin publicly developing a commercial BCI. However, Neuralink’s efforts were waylaid last year after the company was credibly accused of causing the needless suffering and death of dozens of animal test subjects, which led to both a USDA investigation on animal cruelty charges and instigated the FDA to deny the company’s request to fasttrack human trials. The PRIME study is being conducted under the auspices of the investigational device exemption (IDE), which the FDA awarded Neuralink this past May.   

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/neuralink-opens-enrollment-for-its-first-human-bci-implants-215822024.html?src=rss