Month: October 2024

Apple continues focusing on blood-sugar tracking and more

CompuScoop Staff October 28, 2024 1

Summary (By Apple Intelligence):

Apple conducted a trial of a blood sugar tracking app for prediabetic employees, aiming to educate them about food’s impact on blood sugar levels. The app may eventually be integrated into Apple’s non-invasive glucose tracker, which has been in development for over a decade.

Apple, aiming to expand its presence in the healthcare sector, conducted a trial this year of a blood sugar tracking application. The app, designed to assist individuals with prediabetes in managing their dietary choices and adopting lifestyle modifications, was piloted on a select group of employees. According to Bloomberg News, citing sources familiar with the matter, Apple’s broader strategy involves integrating blood-sugar features into its future health products.

Although Apple currently has no plans to release the app, there’s a possibility that it may eventually incorporate the technology into its non-invasive glucose tracker, a project that has been in development for over a decade.

During the trial, the participating employees underwent a blood test to confirm their prediabetic status. This means that while they currently don’t have diabetes, they are at risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. As part of the evaluation process, they actively monitored their blood sugar levels using various market-available devices and recorded glucose fluctuations in response to their food intake.

The primary objective of the system is to educate consumers about the impact of specific foods on blood sugar levels, with the aim of inspiring positive changes that could potentially prevent diabetes. For instance, if users recorded consuming pasta for lunch and subsequently experienced a rise in their blood sugar, they could be advised to modify their diet by either avoiding pasta or opting for a protein-rich alternative.

While the research conducted during this trial was not directly related to Apple’s ongoing efforts to develop a non-invasive glucose monitor, it could potentially contribute to the company’s understanding of how to manage this ambitious health initiative. The non-invasive glucose monitor represents a significant advancement in the fight against diabetes, as it aims to analyze a person’s blood without the need for a prick of the skin.

Apple offers $1 million for hackers to test Apple Intelligence’s Private Cloud Compute

CompuScoop Staff October 27, 2024 1

Apple has opened up its Private Cloud Compute (PCC) to researchers, offering up to $1 million to anyone who finds a hole in the secure cloud platform that supports its Apple Intelligence features. The first handful of Apple Intelligence features are about to roll out sometime this week.

[W]ith Apple Intelligence, the iPhone maker processes as much data as possible on the device. For more complex requests, Apple’s Private Cloud Compute runs on the the company’s own silicon servers. Built with custom Apple silicon and a hardened operating system designed for privacy, Apple calls PCC “the most advanced security architecture ever deployed for cloud AI compute at scale.”

“In the weeks after we announced Apple Intelligence and PCC, we provided third-party auditors and select security researchers early access to the resources we created to enable this inspection, including the PCC Virtual Research Environment,” Apple explained in a new blog titled Security research on Private Cloud Compute. At the same time, the iPhone maker is expanding its Apple Security Bounty to include PCC, with “significant rewards” for reports of issues with its security or privacy claims.

Apple’s bug bounty for PCC is pretty generous. For major holes, which it categorizes as allowing “remote attack on request data,” it is offering $1 million for arbitrary code execution flaws. Meanwhile, access to a user’s request data or sensitive information outside the trust boundary offers a still rather generous $250,000 reward.

For attacks requiring a “privileged position” — access to someone’s iPhone — Apple is offering $150,000 for flaws allowing access to a user’s request data or other sensitive information about the user outside the trust boundary.

Via: Forbes

NOAA Fact check: Debunking weather modification claims

CompuScoop Staff October 25, 2024 1

No one creates or steers hurricanes; the technology does not exist

As the southeastern United States reels from the impact of two historic hurricanes, a large amount of disinformation about nonexistent weather manipulation technology is spreading across the internet, particularly on social media platforms.

Below, NOAA identifies some of the inaccurate claims circulating online and provides science-based facts and information in response.

CLAIM: The government is creating, strengthening and/or steering hurricanes into specific communities.
FACT: No technology exists that can create, destroy, modify, strengthen or steer hurricanes in any way, shape or form. All hurricanes, including Heleneand Milton, are natural phenomena that form on their own due to aligning conditions of the ocean and atmosphere.

CLAIM: NOAA modifies the weather.
FACT: NOAA does not modify the weather, nor does it fund, participate in or oversee cloud seeding or any other weather modification activities. NOAA’s objective is to better understand and predict Earth’s systems, from the bottom of the seafloor to the surface of the sun. We are deepening our understanding and deploying new resources to improve forecasting and give communities earlier and more accurate warnings ahead of extreme weather events. NOAA is required by law* to track weather modification activities by others, including cloud seeding, but has no authority to regulate those activities.

*The Weather Modification Reporting Act of 1972 (15 Code of Federal Regulations § 908) requires anyone who intends to engage in weather modification activities within the United States, including cloud seeding, to provide a report to the Administrator of NOAA at least 10 days prior to undertaking the activity. Those reports are filed via email and may be found on the NOAA Central Library website.

CLAIM: The government is engaging in activities like cloud seeding to modify the weather.
FACT: NOAA does not fund or participate in cloud seeding or other weather modification projects. Cloud seeding is the only common weather modification activity currently practiced in the United States — typically by private companies in western mountain basins in winter in order to help generate snow in specific locations, or in the desert southwest to replenish water reservoirs in summer. The method has been used for decades in an effort to increase stored water in snowpack that melts in the spring to maintain adequate water supply.

Decades ago, between 1962 and 1982, NOAA provided support for research into whether hurricane intensity could be modified, known as Project STORMFURY. The research was not successful in modifying hurricanes and STORMFURY was discontinued. NOAA has not attempted to modify hurricane intensity and participate in cloud seeding since. For more information on this project, visit this NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory website.

CLAIM: NEXRAD Doppler radars are being used to steer hurricanes and are targeting specific communities.
FACT: Radars are tools for observation and are not able to direct the motion or intensity of air masses or storms. NEXRAD Doppler radars detect precipitation and the motion of the precipitation particles. The radar can determine an object’s location, shape, intensity and movement relative to the radar, but cannot alter or move those objects in any way. NEXRAD radars have been an essential weather forecasting tool since the 1990s and weather radars in general have been in use in the United States since the 1950s.

CLAIM: Solar geoengineering made hurricanes Helene and Milton worse.
FACT: Solar geoengineering, a theoretical practice which would modify the atmosphere to shade Earth’s surface by reflecting sunlight back into space, is not taking place at scale anywhere in the world. Geoengineering did not impact hurricanes Helene and Milton, let alone make them worse.

The Earth’s warming atmosphere can cause hurricanes to intensify rapidly and carry more moisture, allowing them to dump higher amounts of rain. Record to near-record warm ocean temperatures across the Gulf of Mexico allowed hurricanes Helene and Milton to rapidly intensify. Natural steering currents in the upper atmosphere determine a storm’s path.

CLAIM: NOAA is conducting solar geoengineering.
FACT: NOAA is not conducting solar geoengineering. NOAA studies the stratosphere and marine boundary layer with instruments on balloons and aircraft to help fill important gaps in our knowledge and inform decisions about the potential risks and benefits of solar geoengineering.

CLAIM: NOAA is involved with projects like HAARP and SCOPEX that modify weather.
FACT: NOAA is not associated with these projects, neither of which can modify the weather.

HAARP is a small National Science Foundation-funded facility in Gakona, Alaska, that conducts research on the ionosphere, 30 to 600 miles above the Earth’s surface. HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program) is not capable of influencing local weather at Earth’s surface, let alone tropical cyclones thousands of miles away. The HAARP system is basically a large radio transmitter.

SCOPEX, run out of Harvard University, was a scientific research project to study the behavior of small amounts of aerosols in the stratosphere to advance the understanding of solar geoengineering. The proposed scientific research project ended in March 2024 before field experiments were conducted.

Source: NOAA.gov

Apple scales back on Vision Pro production

Reuters News October 23, 2024 1

Apple has significantly reduced the production of its Vision Pro headset since early summer, and there’s a possibility that the current model may be discontinued by the end of the year, according to The Information. Sales of the mixed reality device have declined after a brief flurry of hype following its February launch.

Via: Reuters