They're putting chips in people's brains now? šŸŸ

....not that kind of chip lol, I couldn't find the tech chip emoji šŸ˜­

Author

Yemi Davis
February 06, 2024

šŸ“° EXTRA, EXTRA - READ ALL ABOUT IT!

These guys somehow managed to pull off a modern-day museum heistā€¦.more than once

After a lot of arm-twisting, a number of museums have begun repatriating looted pieces. The process is pretty slow and a number of museums have flat-out refused to do this.

So in 2022, Looty co-founders - Chidi Nwaubani and Ahmed Abokor decided to stage their first heist in response!

They full-on put on balaclavas, black tracksuits and white trainers and made their way into the basement of the British Museum the goal was to reclaim some of the Benin Bronzes

These dudes are mad brave cuz canā€™t be meā€¦.

But there's a bit of a catch here, and Iā€™ll explain.

Their collective - Lootyā€™s mission is to reclaim stolen artwork. However, they don't physically steal the pieces. Instead, they scan them in 3-D and make them available as NFTs. They donate 20% of their earnings to young African artists in the form of grants and keep the rest to cover their costs.

They actually made a documentary about the entire process so I wonā€™t ruin the fun for you any further. Enjoy:

Apparently, Adobe might be throwing in the towel on XD

Adobe has confirmed they no longer have plans to support XD - their vector design tool used to design web and mobile apps.

This comes after they tried to buy Figma (a competing design tool) for $20 Billion - a deal which fell through because watchdogs were worried it would give Adobe a monopoly in the industry. To make this even more interesting, Figma reportedly received a $1 billion termination fee for their troubles.

Adobe has a note on its website saying: "We want to remind you that Adobe XD continues to be in maintenance mode. This means that we're not investing in ongoing development or shipping new features within the product. We continue to support existing customers by addressing bugs and updating any security or privacy needs while in maintenance mode."

A well-placed source close to Adobe confirmed to The Register that Adobe had dissolved the XD team and "Adobe disinvested [in XD] years before an agreement was reached on Figma. It is no longer being sold as a single application to new customers, and Adobe has no plans to further invest in the product."

There might now be a way for artists to fight back against AI companies. Sign me up!

Art Relaxing GIF

Gif by DreamImaginations on Giphy

If youā€™ve used any AI generation tool, youā€™ve probably at some point wondered how on earth itā€™s able to do what it does right?

Well, these companies ā€˜trainā€˜ their AI models on a set of data, so they can learn how to answer the obscure prompts we throw at them.

stay with me - *just pretend Iā€™m Sam Smith*

To learn you need something to learn from right? Awesome! now this is where it gets a little dicey. Some of them license these data sets from various content providers. However, some others ā€˜scrapeā€˜ their data from the open internet. which means, If youā€™re a creator, thereā€™s a chance your word might have been used to train an AI model without your consent.

If youā€™re a visual creator, the cool kids at the University of Chicago created Nightshade to help solve this. What it does is corrupt or poison your work.

um.. thatā€™s a bit dark Yemiā€¦ā€¦

Hang on, hang on, Iā€™ll explain.

So what Nightshade does is add invisible changes to pixels in your work - essentially ā€˜poisoningā€˜ it so that when it's fed to a model for training, the model gets confused and will for example interpret a palm tree as a fridge with cold rocks in it. šŸ¤·šŸ¼ā€ā™‚ļø (lool, I couldnā€™t think up a better analogy, but you get my point right?)

The project is now available to the public and you can try it out yourself here and if youā€™re a nerd like me and want to read the actual research paper, you can find that here

Mummy!!! Elonā€™s doing things again šŸ˜­

Last week, everyoneā€™s favourite billionaire announced his company Neuralink completed the first-ever human implant of their Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) chip.

But Yemi, is he even allowed to do that?

Well notā€¦he himself, but yeah last year Neuralink received clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to conduct human trials, meaning they can now legally implant them into actual humans for testing.

If youā€™re wondering how patient zero (thatā€™s what theyā€™re called right?) is doing now, ā€œtheyā€™re recovering wellā€¦.Initial results show promising neuron spike detectionā€, according to Elon.

Just gonna umm leave this riiiiggghhhhttt hereā€¦ā€¦

Theyā€™re calling this trial the PRIME study and itā€™s been set up to evaluate the safety of the implant and surgical robot that performs the implant procedure.

The BMC is expected to enable people with quadriplegia (paralysis of all four limbs), to control devices with their thoughts, so the study will also be evaluating how well it does that.

If this sounds exciting to you and youā€™d love to actually take part in the clinical trials, you can in fact sign up here to join the patient registry.

šŸŽ LOOK WHAT I FOUND

Buz!

This one is a little interesting. Weā€™ve all had that one time where there was some really hot tea but you canā€™t be bothered to type out the whole thing in the group chat. Well, Buz might be able to help with that.

I like to think of it as a digital walkie-talkie - in that it gives you instant access to people in your contacts. You can essentially ā€˜Buzā€˜ someone an audio message and theyā€™ll instantly hear it even when they're not in the app, and theyā€™ll also be able to push a button to send you an instant reply.

I know I know, youā€™re probably already thinking - what if I donā€™t want my mates bugging me with their annoying voices all the time? You can quickly go into Quiet mode and no Buzā€˜s would come through.

Check it out here

Create Awesome Mockups

Ever wanted to show off a cool login page youā€™ve just designed and you go down the rabbit hole of searching for the right mockup to use? Yeah, I know it sucks!

I came across Shots.so and itā€™s a database of free-to-use mockups for your favourite Apple devices!

Check it out here

Sharing Music with Airpods

So I was today years old when I found out you could pair two sets of AirPods to your iPhone.

Now you no longer have to be nasty and let strangers stick your AirPods in their ear (yeah, I went there - I see you) šŸ˜‚

Hereā€™s a guide on how to do it

āœØ OPPORTUNITIES

šŸŽ§ Iā€™M CURRENTLY

Listening to

Tribal Dance

Lionel Loueke Ā· Song Ā· 2012

open.spotify.com/track/1ljFBnV92gQZu7OQwbaxmx?si=3268a32a9c2d4681

Thatā€™s it for today gang. See you in the next one!

- Yemi šŸ’„

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