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This reminds me of Benford's law[1]

"Benford's law, also known as the Newcomb–Benford law, the law of anomalous numbers, or the first-digit law, is an observation that in many real-life sets of numerical data, the leading digit is likely to be small."

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law


Aside from all the horrific implications, this enables something very cool: two-way telepathic communication.

Think your message, think "send", hear responses via earbud. With voice cloning, you even get the message in the sender's voice. Totally silent and invisible to outside observers.


> hear responses via earbud

Maybe that's not even necessary.

I'd be very curious to see the results of trying to use the hardware in this system as a set of transducers — i.e. running the ML model here in reverse from a target text, and then pushing the resulting bottom-level electrical signals as trans-cranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) signals back through the EEG pads.

How interesting would it be, if this resulted in a person hearing the text as a verbal thought in their own mental voice?


Invisible except for the 72 EEG probes strapped to your head.


These are also wet electrodes meaning you need to apply gel to every single one. You’ll notice that the person wearing it is also not blinking or using any facial muscles, as that activity would completely throw off the very weak brain signals.


Sounds like they'd benefit from being in a sensory deprivation pool to enhance the quality of the signal!

https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Rtya.png


For now. Modern antennas are amazing. Maybe you could beamform from a lower number of devices.


Twenty years ago I couldn't even imagine that I would find smartphones to be somewhat boring. Twenty years ago, I was finding GameBoy color to be the coolest stuff in the world.

PsOne's Tomb Raider seemed hi-res, Hi-res didn't even exist, I thought we were at the peak of gaming.

Apple Pro One wants to make computers spatial, we find telepathy cool.

I would love to code by the sole action of my mind while running in the forest or scuba diving, 10 seconds here and there.

I would love to receive a drawing made in the mind of someone else, to see it appear in front of me and to be able to share it with others around me : "-Hey, look at what Julia did."

And again, that's exactly what happens already but in a more immediate manner; replace smartphone with mind, screen with environment and you're in that futuristic world.

It feels like this is cool because of novelty, but then wouldn't it be cool to go back to punching code on cards, or writing lines with ed on a terminal ?

A few years ago I went from music production in a DAW to ten synthesizers (70-84 era) with a tape machine : way cooler, never going back.

But do I produce as fast as before ?

Nope

Here is what I think : I want the possibility of writing code with my mind and virtual floating screens only because of _one thing_ (apart from the initial first few days of new=cool).

I want this to work less, or more exactly to be less at work.

But you know how it will be; you will be asked to produce more work. And this will become mandatory to work by the sole power of your mind, with 5 or 6 virtual screens around you.

And that's all, until a new invention seems cool to you.


I would never use this because I cannot 100% control my thoughts (i.e. intrusive thoughts, songs stuck in head, secrets)


Be careful what you wish for. The unintended consequences of this are going to exceed imagination.


If you're having problems accessing the console, the workaround is just to use a different region, eg:

https://ca-central-1.console.aws.amazon.com/console/home

This assumes you don't actually need anything from us-east-1, though :)


Another podcast has already been doing deepfake celebrity interviews with ai-written scripts (but with a humorous tone) for a few months:

https://m.soundcloud.com/jn2022

They're all hosted by a fake Lex Fridman. The Elon Musk ones sound pretty convincing.



I checked unboxingelf’s question for the word “vintage” - negative ; )


Is it? The Pixel 6 has a SAR of 1.4 W/Kg.


Please provide a reference for that 1.4W/kg figure. 4.5kg human head would need 6.3W to see 1.4W/kg. A cell phone such as a pixel 6 is 2W and that power isn't all pointed directly at the head.

I've found a FCC limit of 1.6W/kg. That's a limit, not what is actually experienced.

Ok, so here is a list of mobile device figures: https://emfadvice.com/sar-ratings-radiation-levels-smartphon...

Highest listed is One plus 7t Pro at 1.394W/kg.

That's in the same order of magnitude as these as these NIH results. Perhaps if you need to use a mobile device for most of your waking hours try to keep it away from your head. Otherwise it's probably not a concern.


Reference:

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/10937646?hl=en

SAR is sort of a "maximum power density" measurement. It's not claiming to expose your entire head to that power density, just a small ~10 g measurement portion.


That's in the same order of magnitude as these as these NIH results.

Yes. This is worrisome. The FCC limit is 1.6W/Kg.[1] Neural damage was observed in mice at 4W/Kg. Several high-end smartphones from Apple and Google get above 1W/Kg.

Those are worst-case numbers for smartphones, says the FCC. Average values are lower. Worst case for cumulative transmit energy would probably be sustained heavy upload traffic, such as streaming outgoing HD video. Transmit power is highest when near the range limit for a cell tower, since the handset increases power when more range is needed.

[1] https://www.fcc.gov/general/specific-absorption-rate-sar-cel...


>Transmit power is highest when near the range limit for a cell tower, since the handset increases power when more range is needed.

Yeah, in addition to the inverse square law, devices also have a higher noise floor from adjacent devices broadcasting at higher power.

This is why banning microcells to "stop the dangers of 4G from harming our children" just increases the Tx power and SAR by orders of magnitude. But you can't argue with these people.


check out the works cited of TFA, many of them involve 1.4-1.6W/kg SAR


You can't divide by 4.5kg as the distribution of power into the human head is not homogeneous. It's going to be much much higher adjacent to the ear.

In any case this is burst power during very high bitrate use such as 4k video, loading webpages, or pulling app/os updates. No ones phone is going to push a watt during voice calls. More like a few mW.


Heat from 1.4W/kg for an hour might be significantly easier to dissipate than 4W/kg for 5 continous hours.

At least that's what the back of the envelope calculations seem to suggest.


Why do you assume heat to be the bad guy here?


We know that 835MHz is non-ionizing radiation so there isn’t really anything else than heat that it could do to cells.


are you sure? cited studies by TFA seem to indicate other effects, such as immediate changes in dopamine, GABA, and NMDA https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15571980/


Because chemically 835mhz is non ionizing radiation. It doesn't matter how much you pour in, electron and molecular orbitals will ignore it.


By that logic photoelectricity should be impossible with non-ionising radiation, right?


Citation? How does the phone have an exposure rated per kg?


> In the countries where the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) limit is 1.6 W/kg averaged over one gram of tissue, the highest SAR values for this device type are 1.19 W/kg for Pixel 6 (G9S9B), 1.20 W/kg for Pixel 6 (GB7N6/GR1YH) and 1.11 W/kg for Pixel 6 Pro when used against head with no separation and 1.20 W/kg for Pixel 6 (G9S9B) or 1.20 W/kg for Pixel 6 (GB7N6/GR1YH) and 1.19 W/kg for Pixel 6 Pro when against body with 1.0 cm (0.4 in) separation. In the countries where the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) limit is 2.0 W/kg averaged over ten grams of tissue, the highest SAR values for this device type are 1.00 W/kg for Pixel 6 (GB7N6/GR1YH) and 0.99 W/kg for Pixel 6 Pro when used against head with no separation and 1.38 W/kg for Pixel 6 and 1.40 W/kg for Pixel 6 Pro when against body with 5 mm (0.2 in) separation.

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/10937646?hl=en-...

Phone manufacturers are required to follow regulation in most countries on emissions with limits set in W/kg.


Most of that will be blocked by the skull.


Big assumption that all humans have an intact skull


I feel that this is an edge case that only applies to unencrypted radio transmission in Ukraine. Please get back on topic.


> I've never had COVID but I did get the mRNA vaccines + booster.

> my heart goes into light arrhythmia all too frequently. It used to be maybe once or twice a year I'd notice 1-3 seconds of "off-beat" heart pattern. All of of a sudden it's a few times a week. I'm also getting older (entering mid 30's now)

This is my situation exactly, starting a few weeks after getting my second booster (Moderna). I've read enough anecdotes and news reports to believe there are many people dealing with this:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/myocarditis-ottawa-mrn...

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/she-thought-she-wa...

It gradually improved (enough to stop waking me up), but I still get a lot more "off-beats" than I used to. Got my third booster recently (Pfizer), so far no major regressions.


> Got my third booster recently

Out of curiosity, if you noticed these negative side-effects affecting the health of your heart after the second shot, why did you choose to proceed to get a third shot?


Not the parent poster, but I stopped after first Pfizer dose due to chest pain that lasted for three weeks. My entire family and all my coworkers berated me to get the second dose. Not saying parents friends/family did that to them, but there is a subset of people that don’t believe you should opt out of the vaccine if you have adverse reactions.

Lesson learned in honestly answering “are you fully vaccinated”. I still get told I should do it 8 months later.


It's working if you use a regional endpoint: https://us-west-2.console.aws.amazon.com/console/home


Unless you're trying to get to us-east-1, the largest region.


I think you can switch back to east-1 when you get to the service you are wanting to look at.


That wasn't working 5 minutes ago. us-east-1.console.aws.amazon.com is back online now! I think we're in the clear.


On my laptops (Windows and Mac) I remap right-ctrl/right-alt to home/end. Couldn't live without it, I use them hundreds of times a day to jump around code and the command line. Also very handy when combined with shift to select everything before/after your cursor.


I really like Listudy for drills, it imports from Lichess studies (which you can create from PGNs):

https://listudy.org/

Also Opening Tree for bulk analysis:

https://www.openingtree.com/

They're both free and open source.


Opening Tree is great and I use it a lot but it does not persist my games - I have to download them every time I use it. But I'd love an app with that interface that could persist the data and cross-check it with my repertoire. I guess it would not have to be same tool as the repertoire trainer, it just seems cleaner to have it all in one tool. But you are right Listudy can help with the spaced repetition, it just doesn't know anything about my games :)


I'm currently developing this: https://www.chessmonitor.com/

It stores your games and gives you an explorer for your games similar to what openingtree does.

Here is an example for the current world champion: https://www.chessmonitor.com/u/kcc58R9eeGY09ey5Rmoj/explorer


Wow that is awesome! Great work!


Opening Tree also is opensource, you could modify it to run on local data and then build and run it on your computer:

https://github.com/openingtree/openingtree


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