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☆ Meet the Gen Zer Behind Friend, the Creepy New AI Necklace
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-01 | by ( Zoë Bernard | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Earlier this week, another product contending for the future of AI companionship made its debut: an eavesdropping necklace called Friend. AdvertisementSchiffmann's original vision for an AI hardware device was a pendant that would act as a more standard-fare AI assistant called Tab — he once described it as a "wearable mom." Of the many AI hardware devices that launched in recent months, such as Humane's AI pin, Meta's smart glasses, and Rabbit's AI-powered R1, Friend is the most personal contender. In fact, on the day Friend launched, a competing AI hardware founder named Nik Shevchenko released a diss track — as any self-respecting 23-year-old AI hardware founder would do — insinuating that Schiffmann stole his idea. (It would not be the first time that Shevchenko built an open source competitor that closely resembled another AI hardware device.

Persons: Siri, Friend, Avi Schiffmann, Schiffmann, Elon Musk, Caffeinated Capital's Raymond Tonsing, Aravind Srinivas, Austin Rief, hasn't, Scarlett Johansson, transfixing Joaquin Phoenix's, —, Anthony Fauci, Camus, it's, Nik Shevchenko, Shevchenko, Taylor Organizations: Harvard, Morning Locations: Tokyo, Ukraine

☆ Why 4 new bird flu developments have experts worried about the virus
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-12 | by ( Morgan Mcfall-Johnsen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Read previewBird flu is flying wild, and it has many infectious disease experts more worried now than ever. The H5N1 avian influenza virus has killed tens of millions of birds across the planet and more than 40,000 sea lions and seals. Most people seem to have very little chance, if any, of catching H5N1 avian influenza right now. Jim Vondruska/ReutersBut infectious disease experts are increasingly concerned that the H5N1 virus could make a sustained jump into humans and start spreading among us. This virus is a leading candidate for the next pandemic, and four developments in the past month have experts worried.

Persons: —, Jim Vondruska, That's, Dr, Monica Gandhi, Bird, WHO —, Christopher Dye, Dye, David L, Ryan, Gandhi, Tayfun, Rick Bright, Cynthia Goldsmith, Jackie Katz, Richard Webby, Jude, Talita, Lima Freitas, Amanda Perobelli, Marko Geber, Terry Chea, they've Organizations: Service, CDC, Business, Global Medicine, University of California, Health Organization, WHO, University of Oxford, Boston Globe, Getty, US Department of Agriculture, Anadolu Agency, The Telegraph, Biomedical, Research, Development Authority, AP, Centre, Studies, Reference Laboratory, World Organization for Animal Health, Vaccines, University of Pennsylvania Locations: Luz, Monee , Illinois, San Francisco, Australia, Kolkata, India, New Mexico, New York, St, Michigan, Campinas, Brazil

☆ Bird flu is rampant in animals. Humans ignore it at our own peril
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-11 | by ( Brenda Goodman | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +15 min

Then, three healthy ferrets were placed in the same enclosures with three of the sick animals. These animals could touch, nose and lick the sick animals, and all of them became ill.Next, the CDC tested airborne transmission by putting three healthy ferrets into an enclosure where they could breathe the same air as sick animals but couldn’t touch them. In her lab, ferrets with previous exposures to seasonal flu strains didn’t get as sick when exposed to new flu viruses compared to those with no prior exposure to seasonal strains. How much help we might get from past exposures to flu viruses is difficult to predict, however, which is why vaccination would still be important to tune up our immunity. They never spread the virus to any of the other animals in the facility — including themselves.

Persons: Mark Naniot, Naniot, “, ”, It’s, Jeremy Farrar, Jesse Bloom, Fred Hutch, ” Naniot, Naniot hadn’t, Scott Weese, Weese, there’s, Covid, Rick Bright, Sanjay Gupta, Bright, Erin Sorrell, Zahl, Seema Lakdawala, hasn’t, ” Bright, Dr, Richard Webby, Jude Children’s, “ It’s, Ducks, Michael Osterholm, “ I’ve, he’s Organizations: CNN, Swiss Army, World Health Organization, Fred Hutch Cancer Center, University of Guelph, US Centers for Disease Control, CDC, Research, Development Authority, CNN Chief, Bright Global Health, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Getty, Emory University, STAT, Administration, Strategic Preparedness, USDA, Jude Children’s Research, Infectious Disease, University of Minnesota, CNN Health Locations: Wisconsin’s, United States, Seattle, Canada, Texas, Vadso, Finnmark, Norway, AFP, Finland, St, Wisconsin

☆ The 3rd human case of bird flu in the US has 2 new and troubling symptoms
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-04 | by ( Morgan Mcfall-Johnsen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

The H5N1 virus has become a pandemic among animals, raging through worldwide bird populations and now through US cattle herds. There, the H5N1 virus can continue operating as an avian virus, grabbing avian receptors with no need to adapt to human receptors. Two previous one-off human cases of H5N1 — one in Chile and one in Ecuador — featured respiratory symptoms. Even with its current monitoring, the CDC would probably detect sustained human spread, he said. Correction — June 4, 2024: An earlier version of this story misstated the nature of genomic sequencing of the H5N1 virus.

Persons: —, Jude virologist Richard Webby, Diego Vara, Rick Bright, Amanda Perobelli, John Harper, Nirav Shah, farmworkers, Shah, Bright, Bill Powers, Nathan Howard, Department of Agriculture hadn't Organizations: Service, US Centers for Disease Control, Business, CDC, Reuters, World Health Organization, Studies, New York Times, Stock, Drug Administration, STAT, Webby, Department of Agriculture Locations: Texas, Michigan, Americas, Norte, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Campinas, Townsend , Delaware

☆ One in Five Milk Samples Nationwide Shows Genetic Traces of Bird Flu
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-25 | by ( Emily Anthes | Noah Weiland | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Federal regulators have discovered fragments of bird flu virus in roughly 20 percent of retail milk samples tested in a nationally representative study, the Food and Drug Administration said in an online update on Thursday. Samples from parts of the country that are known to have dairy herds infected with the virus were more likely to test positive, the agency said. Regulators said that there is no evidence that this milk poses a danger to consumers or that live virus is present in the milk on store shelves, an assessment public health experts have agreed with. But finding traces of the virus in such a high share of samples from around the country is the strongest signal yet that the bird flu outbreak in dairy cows is more extensive than the official tally of 33 infected herds across eight states. “It suggests that there is a whole lot of this virus out there,” said Richard Webby, a virologist and influenza expert at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Persons: ”, Richard Webby, Jude Children’s Organizations: Food and Drug Administration, Regulators, St, Jude Children’s Research

☆ WHO chief scientist calls for increased monitoring and preparation for highly pathogenic bird flu
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-19 | by ( Brenda Goodman | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —The bird flu spreading through cattle in the United States is an “enormous concern” the chief scientist of the World Health Organization said Thursday as he called for more tracking and preparation for the virus. So far, there is no evidence that the highly pathogenic H5N1 flu virus can spread from person to person. Though H5N1 doesn’t spread from person to person, humans can catch it when they’re exposed to infected animals. They are only the second documented case of human H5N1 in the United States. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that while the current risk to public health from H5N1 is low, it is monitoring the situation carefully.

Persons: Dr, Jeremy Farrar, “, Richard Webby, ”, hasn’t, Sanjay Gupta Organizations: CNN, World Health Organization, WHO, Research, Get CNN, CNN Health, US Department of Agriculture’s, Plant Health, Services, US Centers for Disease Control, CDC Locations: United States, British, Geneva, Texas, Colorado, St, — Texas, New Mexico , Kansas, South Dakota , Idaho , Michigan , Ohio, North Carolina

☆ Twitter is rebranding to X. Here are 5 more tech companies that controversially changed their names or faced backlash.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-25 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Here are five more tech companies which changed their names — some controversially, and others leading to success. From The Facebook to Facebook, then MetaMark Zuckerberg at Harvard University, three months after The Facebook was created. But the business plan was first written for a company called Cadabra, as in a magician's "Abracadabra." Before Twitter became X, X.com became PayPalPeter Thiel, left, and Elon Musk, right, hold VISA credit cards branded with the X.com company logo on October 20, 2000. Paul Sakuma/APElon Musk cofounded the online payment company X.com in 1999 before it merged with Peter Thiel's Confinity a year later.

Persons: Elon Musk, Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Rick Friedman, Sean Parker, Justin Timberlake, Zuckerberg, that's, Frances Haugen, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Martin Magunia, Brin, Sundar Pichai, Mike Krieger, Kevin Systrom, Stephen Chernin Instagram, Andreessen Horowitz, Krieger, Systrom, Instagram, Jeff Bezos, Evan Agostini, —, Bezos, Mackenzie Scott, X.com, PayPal Peter Thiel, Paul Sakuma, AP Elon Musk, Peter Thiel's Confinity, Jimmy Soni's, Thiel, Walter Isaacson Organizations: Twitter, PayPal, Morning, Facebook, Harvard University, Meta, VR, Reality Labs, Google, Getty, Stanford, Microsoft, REUTERS, Baseline Ventures, Stanford University, Inc, Amazon, AP Elon, eBay Locations: Burbn

[1/2] Co-Founders of VICE Shane Smith (L) and Suroosh Alvi (R) pose as they arrive for the 20th Annual Webby Awards in Manhattan, New York, U.S., May 16, 2016. REUTERS/Mike SegarMay 15 (Reuters) - Vice Media Group, popular for websites such as Vice and Motherboard, filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday to engineer its sale to a group of lenders, capping years of financial difficulties and top-executive departures. Vice listed both assets and liabilities in the range of $500 million to $1 billion. Vice was among a group of fast-rising digital media ventures that once had rich valuations as they courted millennial audiences. It rose to prominence alongside its co-founder Shane Smith, who built his media empire from a single Canadian magazine.

☆ Vice Media preparing to file for bankruptcy - NYT
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

REUTERS/Mike SegarMay 1 (Reuters) - Vice Media Group, the company behind popular media websites such as Vice and Motherboard, is preparing to file for bankruptcy, the New York Times reported on Monday, citing people with knowledge of its operations. "Vice Media Group has been engaged in a comprehensive evaluation of strategic alternatives and planning. Last week, Vice Media said it will cancel popular TV program "Vice News Tonight" as part of a broader restructuring that will result in job cuts across the digital media firm's global news business, capping years of financial difficulties and top-executive departures. Vice Media was among a group of fast-rising digital media ventures that once commanded rich valuations, as they courted millennial audiences. It rose to prominence alongside its provocative co-founder, Shane Smith, who built his media empire from a single Canadian magazine.

NEW YORK, April 25 (Reuters) - Months after his departure from “The Daily Show" in late 2022, comedian Trevor Noah won a Webby Award for comedy in the “America’s Door Problem” segment of the late-night talk show, in which he pushes for gun control and criticizes policymakers’ response to mass shootings. In Noah's segment, he skewers the beliefs of some conservatives that books, critical race theory, video games and rap music lead to gun violence. “Yeah, that’s right, that’s how evil critical race theory is — it's only been around for like a year and it’s already caused three decades of school shootings,” Noah said. Some notable past winners include talk show host Stephen Colbert, comedian Sarah Silverman, television producer Lorne Michaels and French filmmaker Michel Gondry. Reporting by Alicia Powell and Danielle Broadway; Editing by Mary Milliken and Jonathan OatisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Bird flu situation 'worrying'; WHO working with Cambodia
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Jennifer Rigby | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

LONDON, Feb 24 (Reuters) - The World Health Organization is working with Cambodian authorities after two confirmed human cases of H5N1 bird flu were found among one family in the country. The U.N. health agency last assessed the risk to humans from avian flu as low earlier this month. "The global H5N1 situation is worrying given the wide spread of the virus in birds around the world and the increasing reports of cases in mammals including humans," Briand said. WHO-affiliated labs already hold two flu virus strains that are closely related to the circulating H5N1 virus that manufacturers can use to develop new shots if needed. A global meeting of flu experts this week suggested developing another strain that more closely matches H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, Webby said in the briefing.

☆ Analysis: Why public health officials are not panicked about bird flu
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Julie Steenhuysen | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

They say the attributes that have made this virus thrive in wild birds likely make it less infectious to people. Although the exact changes required for a bird flu virus to become easily transmissible in people are not known, a pair of landmark studies done a decade ago offer some clues. Mink have both avian and human-type receptors, but avian receptors are scarce in humans and located deep in the lungs. That change is a must if a bird flu virus is to spread easily in people. None of the experts discounted the possibility that H5N1 or another avian flu virus could mutate and spark a pandemic, and many believe the world has not seen its last flu pandemic.

☆ She says she was fired in retaliation. Hearst Magazines says she was insubordinate. Here's how Delish's hit YouTube show 'Budget Eats' came crashing down.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Steven Perlberg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +21 min

Produced by the Hearst-owned food brand Delish, "Budget Eats" was the kind of digital success story that traditional magazine giants crave. As Xie worked her day job developing recipes, "Budget Eats" was morphing from a pandemic experiment to a bonafide hit. A career recipe developer at work, the "Budget Eats" Xie doesn't even measure out ingredients. "It felt like she was afraid that putting 'Budget Eats' from her kitchen onto this cable network might dilute the honesty," Lennon-Simon said. As for "Budget Eats," Delish recently posted what is presumably the last episode.

☆ Google will soon kill the cookie, and 2023 will be the year to show whether the technology invented to replace it can save the ad industry's revenue
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Ryan Joe | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

The loss of the cookie and other ways to identify people online has caused ad revenue to crater. "Too soon to say, but the platforms don't like it," said David Temkin, a Google executive who focuses on ads privacy. "Clean rooms we think are promising because they can respect user privacy," Temkin said. He notes that clean rooms can be slow and expensive. The prevalence of retail media already jumpstarted the need for clean rooms in 2022, said Scott Howe, CEO of LiveRamp, which provides clean rooms and identifiers.

☆ Just How Bad Is the ‘Tripledemic’?
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Amy Schoenfeld Walker | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +6 min

R.S.V., or respiratory syncytial virus, has made so many young children ill this fall that weekly pediatric hospitalizations for R.S.V. Public health officials have been warning for weeks that a “tripledemic” of Covid-19, flu and R.S.V. Weekly hospitalizations for Covid-19, R.S.V. With flu surging and Covid-19 circulating, respiratory illness has overwhelmed pediatric units across the country, shifting the strain to emergency rooms and children’s hospitals. The predominant type of flu circulating right now, a subtype of influenza A known as H3, also tends to result in higher flu hospitalizations among the elderly, according to the C.D.C.

☆ Două tulpini de virusuri gripale ar fi dispărut. Acestea nu au mai fost semnalate de un an nicăieri în lume
▼ + stars: | 2021-06-08 | by ( Publika.Md - Aici Sunt Știrile | ) www.publika.md time to read: +2 min

În timpul pandemiei COVID-19 a existat o transmisibilitate atât de redusă a gripei, încât unele tipuri de virusuri gripale s-ar putea să fi dispărut. Interesant este că două tipuri de virusuri gripale nu au mai apărut nicăieri în lume de un an, nefiind raportate cazuri de îmbolnăvire din cauza acestora, scrie Live Science. Două familii de virusuri gripale cauzează gripa sezonieră: gripa A și gripa B. Virusurile gripale A sunt împărțite în „subtipuri” bazate pe două proteine de pe suprafața lor cunoscute sub numele de hemagglutinină (H) și neuraminidază (N), potrivit Centrului pentru Controlul Bolilor. Virusurile gripale B, pe de altă parte, nu au subtipuri, dar sunt împărțite în două ramuri cunoscute sub numele de B - Yamagata și B - Victoria. Cât de mult va fi schimbată și cât de mult timp va rămâne așa, acestea sunt întrebările principale.

Persons: Victoria, Trevor Bedford, Florian Krammer, Richard Webby Organizations: Medicină, Organizației Mondiale a Sănătății ( OMS Locations: Yamagata, Seattle, New York

☆ Două tulpini de virusuri gripale ar fi dispărut; Ele nu au mai fost semnalate de un an de zile nicăieri în lume
▼ + stars: | 2021-06-08 | by ( ) www.jurnal.md time to read: +2 min

Sursa foto: Jurnal.mdDouă tulpini de virusuri gripale ar fi dispărut; Ele nu au mai fost semnalate de un an de zile nicăieri în lumeÎn timpul pandemiei COVID-19 a existat o transmisibilitate atât de redusă a gripei, încât unele tipuri de virusuri gripale s-ar putea să fi dispărut. Două tipuri de virusuri gripale nu au mai apărut nicăieri în lume de un an, nefiind raportate cazuri de îmbolnăvire din cauza acestora, scrie Live Science. Două familii de virusuri gripale cauzează gripa sezonieră: gripa A și gripa B. Virusurile gripale A sunt împărțite în „subtipuri” bazate pe două proteine de pe suprafața lor cunoscute sub numele de hemagglutinină (H) și neuraminidază (N), potrivit Centrului pentru Controlul Bolilor. Virusurile gripale B, pe de altă parte, nu au subtipuri, dar sunt împărțite în două ramuri cunoscute sub numele de B - Yamagata și B - Victoria. Cât de mult va fi schimbată și cât de mult timp va rămâne așa, acestea sunt întrebările principale.

Persons: Victoria, Richard Webby Organizations: Organizației Mondiale a Sănătății ( OMS Locations: Yamagata

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