 |
|
|
|||||
Turns out Elon Musk's FDA prediction was only off by about a month. After reportedly denying the company's overtures in March, the FDA approved Neuralink's application to begin human trials of its prototype Link brain-computer interface (BCI) on Thursday. Founded in 2016, Neuralink aims to commercialize BCIs in wide-ranging medical and therapeutic applications from stroke and spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation, to neural prosthetic controls, to the capacity "to rewind memories or download them into robots," Neuralink CEO Elon Musk promised in 2020. BCIs essentially translate the analog electrical impulses of your brain (monitoring it using hair-thin electrodes delicately threaded into that grey matter) into the digital 1's and 0's that computers understand. Since that BCI needs to be surgically installed in a patient's noggin, the FDA which regulates such technologies requires that companies conduct rigorous safety testing before giving its approval for commercial use. In March, the FDA rejected Neuralink's application to begin human trials reportedly in part due to all the test animals that kept dying after having the prototype BCI implanted. According to internal documents acquired by Reuters in December, more than 1,500 animals had been killed in the development of the Neuralink BCI since 2018. The US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Inspector General has since launched an investigation into those allegations. The FDA's reticence was also born from concerns about the design and function of the interface when implanted in humans. "The agencys major safety concerns involved the devices lithium battery; the potential for the implants tiny wires to migrate to other areas of the brain; and questions over whether and how the device can be removed without damaging brain tissue," current and former Neuralink employees told Reuters in March.While Neuralink has obtained FDA approval to begin its study, the company is not yet seeking volunteers. This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people," Neuralink Tweeted on Thursday. "Recruitment is not yet open for our clinical trial." This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/neuralink-receives-fda-clearance-to-begin-human-trials-of-its-brain-computer-interface-001504243.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
Last February, the Biden administration unveiled its $5 billion plan to expand EV charging infrastructure across the country. Not only with the Department of Transportation help states build half a million EV charging stations by 2030, the White House also convinced Tesla to share a portion of its existing Supercharger network with non-Tesla EVs. On Thursday, Ford became the first automaker to formalize that pact with Tesla, announcing during a Twitter Spaces event that "Ford electric vehicle customers access to more than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers across the U.S. and Canada," starting in Spring 2024, per the company release.Because Teslas uses a proprietary charger port design for its vehicles, Ford owners will initially need to rely on a Tesla-developed adapter connected to the public charging cable in order to replenish their Ford F-150 Lightning, Mustang Mach-E and E-Transit vehicles. Ford also announced that, beginning with the 2025 model year, it will switch from the existing Combined Charging System (CCS) port to Tesla's now open-source NACS charge port. These 12,000 additional chargers will join Ford's 84,000-strong Blue Oval charging station network. Tesla has led the industry in creating a large, reliable and efficient charging system and we are pleased to be able to join forces in a way that benefits customers and overall EV adoption, Marin Gjaja, chief customer officer of Ford Model e, said in the release. The Tesla Supercharger network has excellent reliability and the NACS plug is smaller and lighter. Overall, this provides a superior experience for customers.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ford-ev-drivers-will-get-access-to-12000-north-american-tesla-superchargers-next-spring-221752191.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
Twitters API roller coaster under Elon Musk continues. The company announced a new Pro tier for developers today. At $5,000 per month, it falls between the $100 / month Basic and custom-priced Enterprise plans.The new Twitter API Pro plan offers monthly access to one million retrieved tweets and 300,000 posted tweets at the app level. It also includes rate-limited access to endpoints for real-time filtered streams (live access to tweets based on specified parameters) and a complete archive search of historical tweets. Finally, it adds three app IDs and Login with Twitter access. Calling all start-ups Today we are launching our new access tier, Twitter API Pro!Experiment, build, and scale your business with 1M Tweets per month, including our powerful real-time Filtered/Stream and Full Archive Search endpoints. We look forward to seeing what you Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) May 25, 2023However, the $5,000 / mo. pricing for companies wanting to experiment, build, and scale [their] business leaves an enormous gap between it and the $100 / mo. basic plan, the next tier down. The latter only offers a tiny fraction of the access in the Pro plan, leaving small businesses to choose between a level that may not provide enough for a $100 monthly fee vs. a $5,000 plan that stretches beyond many startups budgets. Some users also voiced their belief that its limits were too tight for that price. Thats cool, but you already killed most Twitter apps by now, Birdy developer Maxime Dupré responded to Twitters announcement. And 5K is still too much for most of us. A 1K plan could make sense... but then again its too late. The pricing also doesnt likely do much for researchers, who the platform has been trying to charge tens of thousands of dollars for access.Twitters recent API changes have created quite a bumpy ride for developers who still want access to the companys data. First, the company effectively killed most third-party clients in January before quietly updating its terms to reflect the change. Then, it announced in February that it was ending free API access, only to delay the move after widespread blowback while promising that a new read-only version of the free tier would remain available for testing purposes. (The old version of the free API was cut off entirely in April, although Twitter reenabled it for emergency services in May.) The platform rolled out the new APIs initial three tiers (free, basic and enterprise) in March before adding todays $5,000 pro tier. However, as the company has already alienated many of the developers that once relied on its platform, it remains to be seen how effective it will be at luring new customers especially smaller operations into the expensive new plan.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twitter-says-startups-can-experiment-with-its-data-for-5000-a-month-200705341.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||