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From the first time I saw Blade Runner and heard Rutger Hauers Roy Batty describe C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate, Ive wondered what it would be like to see beyond the limits of human vision. What would it feel like to have eyes that could see what we can’t normally see? I envied animals who can see light frequencies in the infrared and superheroes with X-ray vision that let them see like a NASA telescope. And today, I envy five regular human beings who, after having their eye cones temporarily rewired with a laser, were able to perceive a new color outside the typical range of the human eye. They called this color oloa name derived from the binary code 010, representing the cones in the eye that are activated during its perception thanks to that rewiring. It defies any comparison to anything humans have seen because, well, nobody has seen it except these five lucky individuals. As described in new research published in the scientific journal Science Advances, the subjects of this wild experiment agreed to describe it as a blue-green of unprecedented saturation. How our eyes work Most humans see the world through three types of light-sensitive cells in the retina, called cones. These detect red, green, and blue light, allowing us to distinguish roughly one million to 10 million colors. Thats enough to spot the difference between a ripe strawberry and a bruised one, or to admire a sunsets gradient. But a rare fewalmost always womenare born with a fourth cone type. These tetrachromats can see up to 100 million colors, spotting nuances invisible to the rest of us. For example, where a trichromat sees a single shade of green grass, a tetrachromat might perceive dozens of subtle variations. Yet even among those with the genetic mutation, true tetrachromacy is rare. The brain must adapt to process this extra input, and most screens cant display these additional hues. The people in the experiment didnt gain the ability to see millions of new colors. Instead, they glimpsed one artificial hue, like a single note added to a familiar song. The effect lasted only as long as the lasers fired, requiring subjects to stare unblinkingly at a fixed point. A twitch or glance away shattered the illusion. Researchers were able to bypass biology limitations using a system called Oza nod to the emerald goggles in The Wizard of Oz. First, they mapped individual cones in participants retinas using high-resolution scans, labeling each as red, green, or blue. Then, they fired precise laser pulses100,000 times per secondat specific green-sensitive cones, while tracking minuscule eye movements 960 times per second to keep the aim steady. Normally, activating green cones also triggers neighboring red or blue ones, muddling the signal. But Ozs precision isolated the green cones, sending the brain a code it had never decoded before. The result was olo. What Olo means for humans The implications stretch far beyond novelty. By selectively activating or disabling cones, researchers could simulate eye diseases, such as macular degeneration, and test therapies in real time. For color-blind individuals, Oz might trick the brain into perceiving missing colors by rerouting signals from surviving cones. James Fong, a UC Berkeley researcher who was one of the first coauthors in the study, told LiveScience that it could even probe whether humans can learn to interpret entirely synthetic colors: It may be possible for someone to adapt to a new dimension of color. Right now, however, Oz remains a lab curiosity. The system relies on million-dollar lasers, supercomputers, and participants willing to sit motionless for hours. The experiments targeted only peripheral visiona speck the size of a fingernail at arms lengthbecause the retinas central zone, where vision is sharpest, has cones too tightly packed for current lasers to hit accurately. Scaling this to full sight would require mapping millions of cells and tracking eye movements with zero lag, which is a target quite far from what our current technology can achieve. Our method depends on specialized lasers and optics that arent coming to smartphones anytime soon, Fong told LiveScience. For now, olo exists only in flashesa fleeting crack in the door to a stranger universe.
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E-Commerce
The fate of Googles vast empire is now in the hands of a federal judge in Washington, D.C., as hearings begin to determine whether the tech giant should be broken up for maintaining an illegal monopoly in search. If the court rules against Google, the outcome could send shockwaves through the tech industry. The company might be forced to divest major assetspotentially including its Chrome browser or even the Android operating system. While the government has taken similar antitrust actions in the past, it’s been more than 25 years since a household name faced a breakup of this scale. So, what happened to the companies that were split upor nearly split upunder government pressure? Lets take a look back. Microsoft In 2000, Microsoft came dangerously close to being forced to separate its Windows operating system from its Office suite after a court found it had illegally stifled competition in the personal computer market. However, the breakup order was overturned by an appeals court the following year. Still, the monopoly ruling left a lasting mark on Microsoft. The company could no longer block PC makers from distributing software from competitors, paving the way for Google and others to grow. As web browsers became increasingly central to the computing experience, that shift proved critical. AT&T The government made multiple attempts to break up AT&T, starting in 1913, but didnt succeed until 1984. The result was the dissolution of Ma Bell into several smaller regional companiesknown as the Baby Bellsincluding US West, Ameritech, Nynex, and BellSouth, which handled local calling. AT&T retained control of its long-distance network but soon faced competition, driving prices down. To put it in perspective: A three-minute coast-to-coast call in 1987 cost $3.08 (about $8.45 today). Now, long-distance calls are typically unlimited and included in your monthly plan. Those Baby Bells grew up and became a strong competitor for AT&T, too: Nynex, GTE, and Bell Atlantic merged to become Verizon, whose market cap is now roughly equal to that of AT&T. Standard Oil The John Rockefeller energy company was broken up in 1911, one of the first dissolutions of a giant monopoly. It was split into 34 different companies, including Exxon Mobile, Chevron, and BP. That breakup changed the oil industry, sparking competition that has continued through today. It also changed the landscape for antitrust, introducing the “rule of reason,” which says businesses are anticompetitive only if they work against the public interest. That’s the rule judges are considering today as they weigh whether to break up Big Tech companies. IBM IBM could have been an early cautionary tale for todays Big Tech giants. In 1969, facing a looming antitrust suit, the company chose to preemptively unbundle its hardware and software businesseseffectively treating them as separate entities. At the time, IBM commanded 70% of the computer market. This voluntary separation helped the company avoid an antitrust judgment, though it still spent years in court and tens of millions of dollars in legal battles. Missteps with subsequent product launches further eroded its market share and leadership. But the rise in competition ultimately lowered costs and helped spark the personal computer revolution. As legal scholar Tim Wu noted in 2018, Apple as we know it might never have existed without the governments prosecution of IBM. “If IBM had been completely unwatched by regulators, by enforcement, doing whatever they wanted, I think IBM would have held on and maybe wed still be using mainframes, or somethinga very different situation,” he said in an interview with Vox. American Tobacco Before Big Tobacco became a catchphrase, there was American Tobaccoa company deemed so dominant that in 1911 it was found in violation of antitrust laws. Unlike other breakups, however, the dissolution of American Tobacco had little real impact on market dynamics. The newly formed companiessuch as R.J. Reynolds and Liggett & Myerscontinued to dominate, forming an oligopoly. With just a few players controlling the industry, prices remained largely unaffected by competition. Instead, increased marketing budgets drove a rise in consumer use.
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E-Commerce
Last week, news broke that the Trump administration intends to propose zeroing out Head Start in the upcoming budget. While many peoples immediate concern is rightfully for the hundreds of thousands of children and families whose lives would be upended, attacks on programs that exclusively serve low-income Americans are a popular tactic because that population votes at low rates. In this case, however, the administration has picked an atrocious target: Even setting the immorality of causing so much harm aside, you benefit from Head Start programs whether or not you or anyone you know has ever stepped foot in one. Head Start (and Early Head Start, its companion program for children younger than 3) has enjoyed bipartisan support for almost 60 years and serves multiple functions: Sites provide important opportunities for child development, offer medical screenings for kids, connect families with local resources, and can serve as community hubs. They are also a critical source of free childcare for more than 700,000 families. Who are the 700,000 Head Start families? Who are Head Start families? They consist of many of the people we called essential just five years ago: grocery store stockers, home healthcare aides, hospital custodians, even staff in the childcare programs that serve middle- and high-income families. They are rural families; in many rural counties, Head Start is literally the only childcare program around. They are military families; there is even an on-base Head Start at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs. They are agricultural workers who pick the produce that appears in your supermarket; in fact, more than 26,000 children of seasonal farm workers attend a Head Start. Imagine for a moment that Congress goes along with the administrations proposal. All of these families lives will be thrown into chaos. As anyone who has a child can tell you, theres no abundance of alternative affordable childcare options out there. Instead, people will do what they need to do, sacrificing their well-being along the way: Theyll cut back hours, work laddered shifts, find care of questionable quality that leaves them anxious and distracted. They may even drop out of the labor force altogether. Crippling system already in crisis Indeed, it may be helpful to reframe the headline here as Trump administration seeks to shutter more than 3,000 childcare programs, and then to consider just how absurd such an action would be. After all, the childcare shortage in the U.S. is already harming the stability of family life and the economy. President Donald Trump himself declared in 2019, In more than 60% of American homes, both parents work. Yet many struggle to afford childcare, which often costs more than $10,000 per year. And it’s devastating to families, frankly. Fewer choices and longer waits Whats more, the 700,000 families who will lose their childcare if Head Start goes away will not simply disappear. Instead, they will be thrust into the failed market for private childcare services, introducing yet more competition for scarce slots and scarce aid dollars. All Head Start families qualify for, but generally do not utilize, childcare subsidies available through a federal block grant program intended to serve both low- and moderate-income families (i.e., those making up to 85% of state median incomearound $82,000 for a state like Michiganor below, though states can and do set their limits lower). That subsidy program is already so underfunded it can reach only one in six eligible households. Take away Head Start, and existing waitlists and enrollment freezes will only get worse. The administrations ostensible logic for squashing Head Start requires entirely eliding the childcare role Head Start plays. The budget document states, This elimination is consistent with the Administrations goal of returning education to the States and increasing parental choice. The Federal government should not be in the business of mandating curriculum, locations, and performance standards for any form of education. Ignoring for a moment the glaring factual inaccuracies (Head Start merely requires sites to adopt some form of reasonable curriculum, not a specific one, and local agencies or groups apply to get funding for locations where they wish to host Head Start classrooms), this is a feint. There is no commensurate increase of early care and education grants to states being proposed to offset Head Start elimination, so parents will simply have fewer choices. In this respect, the educational content of Head Start is immaterial, and getting drawn into a debate over Head Starts effectiveness is a distraction. Hypothetically, the administration could apply this exact same reasoning to shutting down the hundreds of schools and child development centers that are run by the Department of Defense, all of which come with curricula and performance standards. But of course they wont propose that, because while some military families are struggling due to administration policies, such a large-scale cut would leave tens of thousands of service members with no access to care. Head Start is not a perfect program. There is a worthwhile conversation to be had about how Head Start may need to evolve if and when the nation moves toward a more comprehensive family policy that includes universal childcare and early learning alongside structural reforms that break down barriers keeping families in poverty. But this is not, in the end, really about Head Start itself. If America is to be strong and prosperous in an uncertain era, the well-being of American families must be placed front and center. There is no American familyand therefore no American businessthat would be untouched by the ripple effects of abruptly gutting Head Start, and doing so would set the country on course for a future marked by yet more scarcity. The administration must turn back.
Category:
E-Commerce
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