Beth Washington – Page 25

NRO chief: “You can’t hide” from our new swarm of SpaceX-built spy satellites

Commercial space, military space, National Reconnaissance Office, Northrop Grumman, Science, Space, spacex, spy satellite, starlink, starshield / Beth Washington / November 5, 2024

“A satellite is always coming over an area within a given reasonable amount of time.”

This frame from a SpaceX video shows a stack of Starlink Internet satellites attached to the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, moments after jettison of the launcher’s payload fairing. Credit: SpaceX

The director of the National Reconnaissance Office has a message for US adversaries around the world.

“You can’t hide, because we’re constantly looking,” said Chris Scolese, a longtime NASA engineer who took the helm of the US government’s spy satellite agency in 2019.

The NRO is taking advantage of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite assembly line to build a network of at least 100 satellites, and perhaps many more, to monitor adversaries around the world. So far, more than 80 of these SpaceX-made spacecraft, each a little less than a ton in mass, have launched on four Falcon 9 rockets. There are more to come.

A large number of these mass-produced satellites, or what the NRO calls a “proliferated architecture,” will provide regularly updated imagery of foreign military installations and other sites of interest to US intelligence agencies. Scolese said the new swarm of satellites will “get us reasonably high-resolution imagery of the Earth, at a high rate of speed.”

This is a significant change in approach for the NRO, which has historically operated a smaller number of more expensive satellites, some as big as a school bus.

“We expect to quadruple the number of satellites we have to have on-orbit in the next decade,” said Col. Eric Zarybnisky, director of the NRO’s office of space launch, during an October 29 presentation at the Wernher von Braun Space Exploration Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

The NRO is not the only national security agency eyeing a constellation of satellites in low-Earth orbit. The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency plans to kick off a rapid-fire launch cadence next year to begin placing hundreds of small satellites in orbit to detect and track missiles threatening US or allied forces. The Space Force is also interested in buying its own set of SpaceX satellites for broadband connectivity.

The Pentagon started moving in this direction about a decade ago, when leaders raised concerns that the legacy fleets of military and spy satellites were at risk of attack. Now, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and a handful of other companies, many of them startups, specialize in manufacturing and launching small satellites at relatively low cost.

“Why didn’t we do this earlier? Well, launch costs were high, right?” said Troy Meink, the NRO’s principal deputy director, in an October 17 discussion hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “The cost of entry was pretty high, which has come way down. Then, digital electronics has allowed us to build capability in a much smaller package, and a combination of those two is really what’s enabled it.”

A constant vigil

NRO officials still expect to require some large satellites with sharp-eyed optics—think of a Hubble Space Telescope pointed at Earth—to resolve the finest details of things like missile installations, naval fleets, or insurgent encampments. The drawback of this approach is that, at best, a few big optical or radar imaging satellites only fly over places of interest several times per day.

With the proliferated architecture, the NRO will capture views of most places on Earth a lot more often. Two of the most important metrics with a remote-sensing satellite system are imaging resolution and revisit time, or how often a satellite is over a specific location on Earth.

“We need to have persistence or fast revisit,” Scolese said on October 3 in a discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit Washington think tank. “You can proliferate your architecture, put more satellites up there, so that a satellite is always coming over an area within a given reasonable amount of time that’s needed by the users. That’s what we’re doing with the proliferated architecture.

“That’s enabled by a really rich commercial industry that’s building hundreds or thousands of satellites,” Scolese said. “That allowed us to take those satellites, adapt them to our use at low cost, and apply whatever sensor is needed to go off and acquire the information that’s needed at whatever revisit time is required.”

The NRO’s logo for its proliferated satellite constellation, with the slogan “Strength in Numbers.” Credit: National Reconnaissance Office

The NRO has identified other benefits, too. It’s a lot more difficult for a country like Russia or China to take out an entire constellation of satellites than to destroy or disable a single spy platform in orbit. Military officials have often referred to these expensive one-off satellites as “big juicy targets” for potential adversaries.

“It gives us a degree of resilience that we didn’t have before,” Scolese said.

The proliferated constellation also allows the NRO to be more nimble in responding to threats or new technologies. If a new type of sensor becomes available, or an adversary does something new that intelligence analysts want to look at, the NRO and its contractor can quickly swap out payloads on satellites going through the production line.

“That’s a huge change for an organization like the NRO,” Zarybnisky said. “It’s a catalyst. Another catalyst for innovation in the NRO is these smaller, lower price-point systems. Rapid turn time means you can introduce that next technology into the next generation and not wait for many years or even decades to introduce new technologies.”

Three-letter agencies

The NRO provides imaging, signals, and electronic intelligence data from its satellites to the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense. Scolese said the NRO wants to get actionable information into the hands of users across the federal government as quickly as possible, but the volume of data coming down from hundreds of satellites presents a challenge.

“Once you go to a proliferated architecture and you’re going from a few satellites to tens of satellites to now hundreds of satellites, you have to change a lot of things, and we’re in the process of doing that,” Scolese said.

With so many satellites, it “means that it’s no longer possible for an individual sitting at a control center to say, ‘I know what this satellite is doing,'” Scolese said. “So we have to have the machines to go off and help us there. We need artificial intelligence, machine learning, automated processes to help us do that.”

“We will deliver data in seconds, not minutes, and not hours,” Zarybnisky said.

The existence of this constellation was made public in March, when Reuters reported the NRO was working with SpaceX to develop and deploy a network of satellites in low-Earth orbit. SpaceX’s Starshield business unit is building the satellites under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021, according to Reuters. This is remarkably inexpensive by the standards of the NRO, which has spent more money just constructing a satellite processing facility at Cape Canaveral, Florida (thanks to Eric Berger’s reporting in Reentry for this juicy tidbit).

Chris Scolese appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2019 during a confirmation hearing to become director of the National Reconnaissance Office. Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

Reuters reported Northrop Grumman is supplying sensors to mount on at least some of the SpaceX-built satellites, but their design and capabilities remain classified. The NRO, which usually keeps its work secret, officially acknowledged the program in April, a month before the first batch of satellites launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

SpaceX revealed the existence of the Starshield division in 2022, the year after signing the NRO contract, as a vehicle for applying the company’s experience manufacturing Starlink Internet satellites to support US national security missions. SpaceX has built and launched more than 7,200 Starlink satellites since 2019, with more than 6,000 currently operational, 10 times larger than any other existing satellite constellation.

The current generation of Starlink satellites launch in batches of 20 to 23 spacecraft on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. They’re flat-packed one on top of the other inside the Falcon 9’s payload shroud, then released all at once in orbit. The NRO’s new satellites likely use the same basic design, launching in groups of roughly 21 satellites on each mission.

According to Scolese, the NRO owns these SpaceX-built satellites, rather than SpaceX owning them and supplying data to the government through a service contract arrangement. By the end of the year, the NRO’s director anticipates having at least 100 of these satellites in orbit, with additional launches expected through 2028.

“We are going from the demo phase to the operational phase, where we’re really going to be able to start testing all of this stuff out in a more operational way,” Scolese said.

The NRO is buttressing its network of government-owned satellites with data buys from commercial remote-sensing companies, such as Maxar, Planet, and BlackSky. One advantage of commercial imagery is the NRO can share it widely with allies and the public because it isn’t subject to top-secret classification restrictions.

Scolese said it’s important to maintain a diversity of sources and observation methods to overcome efforts from other nations to hide what they’re doing. This means using more satellites, as the NRO is doing with SpaceX and other commercial partners. It also means using electro-optical, radar, thermal infrared, and electronic detection sensors to fully characterize what intelligence analysts are seeing.

The NRO is also studying more exotic methods like quantum remote sensing, using the principles of quantum physics at the atomic level.

“There’s camouflage,” Scolese said. “There are lots of techniques that can be used, which means we have to go off and look at very different phenomenologies, and we’ve developed and are developing capabilities that will allow us to defeat those types of activities. Quantum sensing is one of them. You can’t really hide from fundamental physics.”

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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Kia says its new EV camper concept is the “ideal escape pod”

Cars, electric van, Kia, Kia EV9, SEMA / Beth Washington / November 5, 2024

Whenever we write about electric vans, the comments reveal a growing but pent-up demand for a camper version. Well, it seems that those vibes are being felt at Kia. It has created a pair of concepts for the Specialty Equipment Marketing Association (SEMA) automotive trade show, which got underway in Las Vegas today.

One of the two concepts will look more familiar—the EV9 ADVNTR is based on the popular electric three-row SUV. But the other is the PV5 WKNDR, a rugged off-road camper based on a forthcoming Kia electric van platform.

The EV9 ADVNTR makes good use of the existing EV9’s angular design, with new sections filled in with protective cladding. There’s a suspension lift and all-terrain tires, plus a roof rack, to distinguish it from lesser EV9s, but otherwise it’s relatively stock.

A green electric Kia EV9 concept seen in a forest — The EV9 ADVNTR could be a rival for Rivian, although I’m not sure if there’s any production intent. Credit: Kia

The PV5 WKNDR is the more interesting of the two. Like the SUV, it’s lifted and wears off-road tires and sports the same matte-green-with-yellow-highlights color scheme. Designed to be “the ideal escape pod for extended weekends in nature,” it now features a pop-up camper roof complete with solar panels.

There’s another pop-out section from the side for storing gear while you’re parked and set up (called the gear head), and a reconfigurable interior depending on your mood. A kitchen with an induction stove pops out of the side of the WKNDR, and you can use the gear head as a pantry, Kia says.

The production PV5 is set to go on sale in Korea next year. Kia

Since we’ve only seen renders so far, it’s hard to know how much of the tech on the PV5 WKNDR is real. The press kit says that the solar panels can charge the PV5’s batteries, but so, too, can “unique hydro turbine wheels.” It does not elaborate on what these are, but it sounds like maybe you can stick a wheel in a running stream and it’ll spin the motor, thereby generating electricity? If I were at SEMA, I would be sure to ask.

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Ever heard of “Llady Gaga”? Universal files piracy suit over alleged knockoffs.

Universal Music Group yesterday sued a music firm that allegedly distributes pirated songs on popular streaming services under misspelled versions of popular artists’ names—such as “Kendrik Laamar,” “Arriana Gramde,” “Jutin Biber,” and “Llady Gaga.” The UMG Recordings lawsuit against the French company Believe and its US-based subsidiary, TuneCore, alleges that “Believe is fully aware that its business model is fueled by rampant piracy” and “turned a blind eye to the fact that its music catalog was rife with copyright infringing sound recordings.”

Believe is a publicly traded company with about 2,020 employees in over 50 countries and reported $518 million (474.1 million euros) in revenue in the first half of 2024. Believe says its “mission is to develop independent artists and labels in the digital world.”

UMG alleges that Believe achieved “dramatic growth and profitability in recent years by operating as a hub for the distribution of infringing copies of the world’s most popular copyrighted recordings.” Believe has licensing deals with online platforms “including TikTok, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Instagram and hundreds of others,” the lawsuit said.

UMG alleged that Believe distributes songs on these services “with full knowledge that many of the clients of its distribution services are fraudsters regularly providing infringing copies of copyrighted recordings.” Believe enters into “distribution contracts with anyone willing to sign one of its basic form agreements,” and its “client list is overrun with fraudulent ‘artists’ and pirate record labels who rely on Believe and its distribution network to seed infringing copies of popular sound recordings throughout the digital music ecosystem,” the lawsuit said, continuing:

Believe makes little effort to hide its illegal actions. Indeed, the names of its “artists” and recordings are often minor variants on the names of Plaintiffs’ famous recording artists and the titles of their most successful works. For example, Believe has distributed infringing tracks from infringers who call themselves “Kendrik Laamar” (a reference to Kendrick Lamar); “Arriana Gramde” (a reference to Ariana Grande); “Jutin Biber” (a reference to Justin Bieber); and “Llady Gaga” (a reference to Lady Gaga). Often, Believe distributes overtly infringing versions of original tracks by famous artists with notations that they are “sped up” or “remixed.”

The Rihanna song “S&M” was distributed as a remix by Believe under the name “Rihamna,” the lawsuit said. In other cases, names associated with allegedly infringing tracks were very different from the real artists’ names. The lawsuit said Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” and Billie Eilish’s “TV” were both distributed in sped-up form under the name “INDRAGERSN.”

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New Zemeckis film used AI to de-age Tom Hanks and Robin Wright

AI, AI image generator, Biz & IT, de-aging, Deepfakes, face replacement, films, generative ai, Here film, image synthesis, machine learning, Metaphysic, Robert Zemeckis, Robin Wright, Runway, Special Effects, Tom Hanks, video synthesis / Beth Washington / November 4, 2024

On Friday, TriStar Pictures released Here, a $50 million Robert Zemeckis-directed film that used real time generative AI face transformation techniques to portray actors Tom Hanks and Robin Wright across a 60-year span, marking one of Hollywood’s first full-length features built around AI-powered visual effects.

The film adapts a 2014 graphic novel set primarily in a New Jersey living room across multiple time periods. Rather than cast different actors for various ages, the production used AI to modify Hanks’ and Wright’s appearances throughout.

The de-aging technology comes from Metaphysic, a visual effects company that creates real time face swapping and aging effects. During filming, the crew watched two monitors simultaneously: one showing the actors’ actual appearances and another displaying them at whatever age the scene required.

Here – Official Trailer (HD)

Metaphysic developed the facial modification system by training custom machine-learning models on frames of Hanks’ and Wright’s previous films. This included a large dataset of facial movements, skin textures, and appearances under varied lighting conditions and camera angles. The resulting models can generate instant face transformations without the months of manual post-production work traditional CGI requires.

Unlike previous aging effects that relied on frame-by-frame manipulation, Metaphysic’s approach generates transformations instantly by analyzing facial landmarks and mapping them to trained age variations.

“You couldn’t have made this movie three years ago,” Zemeckis told The New York Times in a detailed feature about the film. Traditional visual effects for this level of face modification would reportedly require hundreds of artists and a substantially larger budget closer to standard Marvel movie costs.

This isn’t the first film that has used AI techniques to de-age actors. ILM’s approach to de-aging Harrison Ford in 2023’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny used a proprietary system called Flux with infrared cameras to capture facial data during filming, then old images of Ford to de-age him in post-production. By contrast, Metaphysic’s AI models process transformations without additional hardware and show results during filming.

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As North Korean troops march toward Ukraine, does a Russian quid pro quo reach space?

ICBM, military space, North Korea, russia, Science, Security, Space, Ukraine / Beth Washington / November 2, 2024

Earlier this week, North Korea apparently completed a successful test of its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile, lofting it nearly 4,800 miles into space before the projectile fell back to Earth.

This solid-fueled, multi-stage missile, named the Hwasong-19, is a new tool in North Korea’s increasingly sophisticated arsenal of weapons. It has enough range—perhaps as much as 9,320 miles (15,000 kilometers), according to Japan’s government—to strike targets anywhere in the United States.

The test flight of the Hwasong-19 on Thursday was North Korea’s first test of a long-range missile in nearly a year, coming as North Korea deploys some 10,000 troops inside Russia just days before the US presidential election. US officials condemned the missile launch as a “provocative and destabilizing” action in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

The budding partnership between Russia and North Korea has evolved for several years. Russian President Vladimir Putin has met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on multiple occasions, most recently in Pyongyang in June. Last September, the North Korean dictator visited Putin at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia’s newest launch base, where the leaders inspected hardware for Russia’s Angara rocket.

In this photo distributed by North Korean state media, a Hwasong-19 missile fires out of a launch tube somewhere in North Korea on October 31, 2024. Credit: KCNA

The visit to Vostochny fueled speculation that Russia might provide missile and space technology to North Korea in exchange for Kim’s assistance in the fight against Ukraine. This week, South Korea’s defense minister said his government has identified several areas where North Korea likely seeks help from Russia.

“In exchange for their deployment, North Korea is very likely to ask for technology transfers in diverse areas, including the technologies relating to tactical nuclear weapons technologies related to their advancement of ICBMs, also those regarding reconnaissance satellites and those regarding SSBNs [ballistic missile submarines] as well,” said Kim Yong-hyun, South Korea’s top military official, on a visit to Washington.

As North Korean troops march toward Ukraine, does a Russian quid pro quo reach space? Read More »

Beware pirates and booby traps in new Skeleton Crew trailer

culture, Disney Plus, Entertainment, LucasFilms, star wars, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, streaming television, Trailers / Beth Washington / November 1, 2024

Jude Law stars as Force-user Jod Na Nawood in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.

It’s no secret that the new spinoff series, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, was inspired by the 1985 film The Goonies. Executive Producer Kathleen Kennedy (who co-produced The Goonies) has publicly confirmed as much. The latest trailer really leans into that influence: The series feels like something not created specifically for kids, but rather telling a story that just happens to be about kids going on an adventure.

As previously reported, the eight-episode standalone series is set in the same timeframe as The Mandalorian and Ahsoka. Per the official premise:

Skeleton Crew follows the journey of four kids who make a mysterious discovery on their seemingly safe home planet, then get lost in a strange and dangerous galaxy, crossing paths with the likes of Jod Na Nawood, the mysterious character played by [Jude] Law. Finding their way home—and meeting unlikely allies and enemies—will be a greater adventure than they ever imagined.

Jude Law leads the cast as the quick-witted and charming (per Law) “Force-user” Jod Na Nawood. Ravi Cabot-Conyers plays Wim, Ryan Kiera Armstrong plays Fern, Kyriana Kratter plays KB, and Robert Timothy Smith plays Neil. Nick Frost will voice a droid named SM 33, the first mate of a spaceship called the Onyx Cylinder. The cast also includes Fred Tatasciore as Brutus, Jaleel White as Gunther, Mike Estes as Pax, Marti Matulis as Vane, and Dale Soules as Chaelt. Tunde Adebimpe and Kerry Condon will appear in as-yet-undisclosed roles.

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A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

dentistry, health, healthcare, implants, syndication / Beth Washington / November 1, 2024

It turns out you may not have needed those implants after all.

Becky Carroll was missing a few teeth, others were stained or crooked. Ashamed, she smiled with lips pressed closed. Her dentist offered to fix most of her teeth with root canals and crowns, Carroll said, but she was wary of traveling a long road of dental work.

Then Carroll saw a TV commercial for another path: ClearChoice Dental Implant Centers. The company advertises that it can give patients “a new smile in as little as one day” by surgically replacing teeth instead of fixing them.

So Carroll saved and borrowed for the surgery, she said. In an interview and a lawsuit, Carroll said that at a ClearChoice clinic in New Jersey in 2021, she agreed to pay $31,000 to replace all her natural upper teeth with pearly white prosthetic ones. What came next, Carroll said, was “like a horror movie.”

Carroll alleged that her anesthesia wore off during implant surgery, so she became conscious as her teeth were removed and titanium screws were twisted into her jawbone. Afterward, Carroll’s prosthetic teeth were so misaligned that she was largely unable to chew for more than two years until she could afford corrective surgery at another clinic, according to a sworn deposition from her lawsuit.

ClearChoice has denied Carroll’s claims of malpractice and negligence in court filings and did not respond to requests for comment on the ongoing case.

“I thought implants would be easier, and all at once, so you didn’t have to keep going back to the dentist,” Carroll, 52, said in an interview. “But I should have asked more questions … like, Can they save these teeth?”

Dental implants have been used for more than half a century to surgically replace missing or damaged teeth with artificial duplicates, often with picture-perfect results. While implant dentistry was once the domain of a small group of highly trained dentists and specialists, tens of thousands of dental providers now offer the surgery and place millions of implants each year in the US.

Amid this booming industry, some implant experts worry that many dentists are losing sight of dentistry’s fundamental goal of preserving natural teeth and have become too willing to remove teeth to make room for expensive implants, according to a months-long investigation by KFF Health News and CBS News. In interviews, 10 experts said they had each given second opinions to multiple patients who had been recommended for mouths full of implants that the experts ultimately determined were not necessary. Separately, lawsuits filed across the country have alleged that implant patients like Carroll have experienced painful complications that have required corrective surgery, while other lawsuits alleged dentists at some implant clinics have persuaded, pressured, or forced patients to remove teeth unnecessarily.

The experts warn that implants, for a single tooth or an entire mouth, expose patients to costs and surgery complications, plus a new risk of future dental problems with fewer treatment options because their natural teeth are forever gone.

“There are many cases where teeth, they’re perfectly fine, and they’re being removed unnecessarily,” said William Giannobile, dean of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. “I really hate to say it, but many of them are doing it because these procedures, from a monetary standpoint, they’re much more beneficial to the practitioner.”

Giannobile and nine other experts say they are combating a false public perception that implants are more durable and longer-lasting than natural teeth, which some believe stems in part from advertising on TV and social media. Implants require upkeep, and although they can’t get cavities, studies have shown that patients can be susceptible to infections in the gums and bone around their implants.

“Just because somebody can afford implants doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re a good candidate,” said George Mandelaris, a Chicago-area periodontist and member of the American Academy of Periodontology Board of Trustees. “When an implant has infection, or when an implant has bone loss, an implant dies a much quicker death than do teeth.”

In its simplest form, implant surgery involves extracting a single tooth and replacing it with a metal post that is screwed into the jaw and then affixed with a prosthetic tooth commonly made of porcelain, also known as a crown. Patients can also use “full-arch” or “All-on-4” implants to replace all their upper or lower teeth—or all their teeth.

For this story, KFF Health News and CBS News sought interviews with large dental chains whose clinics offer implant surgery—ClearChoice, Aspen Dental, Affordable Care, and Dental Care Alliance—each of which declined to be interviewed or did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Association of Dental Support Organizations, which represents these companies and others like them, also declined an interview request.

ClearChoice, which specializes in full-arch implants, did not answer more than two dozen questions submitted in writing. In an emailed statement, the company said full-arch implants “have become a well-accepted standard of care for patients with severe tooth loss and teeth with poor prognosis.”

“The use of full-arch restorations reflects the evolution of modern dentistry, offering patients a solution that restores their ability to eat, speak, and live comfortably—far beyond what traditional dentures can provide,” the company said.

Carroll said she regrets not letting her dentist try to fix her teeth and rushing to ClearChoice for implants.

“Because it was a nightmare,” she said.

“They are not teeth”

Dental implant surgery can be a godsend for patients with unsalvageable teeth. Several experts said implants can be so transformative that their invention should have contended for a Nobel Prize. And yet, these experts still worry that implants are overused, because it is generally better for patients to have their natural teeth.

Paul Rosen, a Pennsylvania periodontist who said he has worked with implants for more than three decades, said many patients believe a “fallacy” that implants are “bulletproof.”

“You can’t just have an implant placed and go off riding into the sunset,” Rosen said. “In many instances, they need more care than teeth because they are not teeth.”

Generally, a single implant costs a few thousand dollars while full-arch implants cost tens of thousands. Neither procedure is well covered by dental insurance, so many clinics partner with credit companies that offer loans for implant surgeries. At ClearChoice, for example, loans can be as large as $65,000 paid off over 10 years, according to the company’s website.

Despite the price, implants are more popular than ever. Sales increased by more than 6 percent on average each year since 2010, culminating in more than 3.7 million implants sold in the US in 2022, according to a 2023 report produced by iData Research, a health care market research firm.

Some worry implant dentistry has gone too far. In 10 interviews, dentists and dental specialists with expertise in implants said they had witnessed the overuse of implants firsthand. Each expert said they’d examined multiple patients in recent years who were recommended for full-arch implants by other dentists despite their teeth being treatable with conventional dentistry.

Giannobile, the Harvard dean, said he had given second opinions to “dozens” of patients who were recommended for implants they did not need.

“I see many of these patients now that are coming in and saying, ‘I’ve been seen, and they are telling me to get my entire dentition—all of my teeth—extracted.’ And then I’ll take a look at them and say that we can preserve most of your teeth,” Giannobile said.

Tim Kosinski, who is a representative of the Academy of General Dentistry and said he has placed more than 19,000 implants, said he examines as many as five patients a month who have been recommended for full-arch implants that he deems unnecessary.

“There is a push in the profession to remove teeth that could be saved,” Kosinski said. “But the public isn’t aware.”

Luiz Gonzaga, a periodontist and prosthodontist at the University of Florida, said he, too, had turned away patients who wanted most or all their teeth extracted. Gonzaga said some had received implant recommendations that he considered “an atrocity.”

“You don’t go to the hospital and tell them ‘I broke my finger a couple of times. This is bothering me. Can you please cut my finger off?’ No one will do that,” Gonzaga said. “Why would I extract your tooth because you need a root canal?”

Jaime Lozada, director of an elite dental implant residency program at Loma Linda University, said he’d not only witnessed an increase in dentists extracting “perfectly healthy teeth” but also treated a rash of patients with mouths full of ill-fitting implants that had to be surgically replaced.

Lozada said in August that he’d treated seven such patients in just three months.

“When individuals just make a decision of extracting teeth to make it simple and make money quick, so to speak, that’s where I have a problem,” Lozada said. “And it happens quite often.”

When full-arch implants fail, patients sometimes don’t have enough jawbone left to anchor another set. These patients have little choice but to get implants that reach into cheekbones, said Sohail Saghezchi, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon at the University of California-San Francisco.

“It’s kind of like a last resort,” Saghezchi said. “If those fail, you don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“It was horrendous dentistry”

Most of the experts interviewed for this article said their rising alarm corresponded with big changes in the availability of dental implants. Implants are now offered by more than 70,000 dental providers nationwide, two-thirds of whom are general dentists, according to the iData Research report.

Dentists are not required to learn how to place implants in dental school, nor are they required to complete implant training before performing the surgery in nearly all states. This year, Oregon started requiring dentists to complete 56 hours of hands-on training before placing any implants. Stephen Prisby, executive director of the Oregon Board of Dentistry, said the requirement—the first and only of its kind in the US—was a response to dozens of investigations in the state into botched surgeries and other implant failures, split evenly between general dentists and specialists.

“I was frankly stunned at how bad some of these dentists were practicing,” Prisby said. “It was horrendous dentistry.”

Many dental clinics that offer implants have consolidated into chains owned by private equity firms that have bought out much of implant dentistry. In health care, private equity investment is sometimes criticized for overtreatment and prioritizing short-term profit over patients.

Private equity firms have spent about $5 billion in recent years to buy large dental chains that offer implants at hundreds of clinics owned by individual dentists and dental specialists. ClearChoice was bought for an estimated $1.1 billion in 2020 by Aspen Dental, which is owned by three private equity firms, according to PitchBook, a research firm focused on the private equity industry. Private equity firms also bought Affordable Care, whose largest clinic brand is Affordable Dentures & Implants, for an estimated $2.7 billion in 2021, according to PitchBook. And the private equity wing of the Abu Dhabi government bought Dental Care Alliance, which offers implants at many of its affiliated clinics, for an estimated $1 billion in 2022, according to PitchBook.

ClearChoice and Aspen Dental each said in email statements that the companies’ private equity owners “do not have influence or control over treatment recommendations.” Both companies said dentists or dental specialists make all clinical decisions.

Private equity deals involving dental practices increased ninefold from 2011 to 2021, according to an American Dental Association study published in August. The study also said investors showed an interest in oral surgery, possibly because of the “high prices” of implants.

“Some argue this is a negative thing,” said Marko Vujicic, vice president of the association’s Health Policy Institute, who co-authored the study. “On the other hand, some would argue that involvement of private equity and outside capital brings economies of scale, it brings efficiency.”

Edwin Zinman, a San Francisco dental malpractice attorney and former periodontist who has filed hundreds of dental lawsuits over four decades, said he believed many of the worst fears about private equity owners had already come true in implant dentistry.

“They’ve sold a lot of [implants], and some of it unnecessarily, and too often done negligently, without having the dentists who are doing it have the necessary training and experience,” Zinman said. “It’s for five simple letters: M-O-N-E-Y.”

Hundreds of implant clinics with no specialists

For this article, journalists from KFF Health News and CBS News analyzed the webpages for more than 1,000 clinics in the nation’s largest private equity-owned dental chains, all of which offer some implants. The analysis found that more than 70 percent of those clinics listed only general dentists on their websites and did not appear to employ the specialists—oral surgeons, periodontists, or prosthodontists—who traditionally have more training with implants.

Affordable Dentures & Implants listed specialists at fewer than 5 percent of its more than 400 clinics, according to the analysis. The rest were staffed by general dentists, most of whom did not list credentialing from implant training organizations, according to the analysis.

ClearChoice, on the other hand, employs at least one oral surgeon or prosthodontist at each of its more than 100 centers, according to the analysis. But its new parent company, Aspen Dental, which offers implants in many of its more than 1,100 clinics, does not list any specialists at many of those locations.

Not everyone is worried about private equity in implant dentistry. In interviews arranged by the American Academy of Implant Dentistry, which trains dentists to use implants, two other implant experts did not express concerns about private equity firms.

Brian Jackson, a former academy president and implant specialist in New York, said he believed dentists are too ethical and patients are too smart to be pressured by private equity owners “who will never see a patient.”

Jumoke Adedoyin, a chief clinical officer for Affordable Care, who has placed implants at an Affordable Dentures & Implants clinic in the Atlanta suburbs for 15 years, said she had never felt pressure from above to sell implants.

“I’ve actually felt more pressure sometimes from patients who have gone around and been told they need to take their teeth out,” she said. “They come in and, honestly, taking a look at them, maybe they don’t need to take all their teeth out.”

Still, lawsuits filed across the country have alleged that dentists at implant clinics have extracted patients’ teeth unnecessarily.

For example, in Texas, a patient alleged in a 2020 lawsuit that an Affordable Care dentist removed “every single tooth from her mouth when such was not necessary,” then stuffed her mouth with gauze and left her waiting in the lobby as he and his staff left for lunch. In Maryland, a patient alleged in a 2021 lawsuit that ClearChoice “convinced” her to extract “eight healthy upper teeth,” by “greatly downplay[ing] the risks.” In Florida, a patient alleged in a 2023 lawsuit that ClearChoice provided her with no other treatment options before extracting all her teeth, “which was totally unnecessary.”

ClearChoice and Affordable Care denied wrongdoing in their respective lawsuits, then privately settled out of court with each patient. ClearChoice and Affordable Care did not respond to requests for comment submitted to the companies or attorneys. Lawyers for all three plaintiffs declined to comment on these lawsuits or did not respond to requests for comment.

Fred Goldberg, a Maryland dental malpractice attorney who said he has represented at least six clients who sued ClearChoice, said each of his clients agreed to get implants after meeting with a salesperson—not a dentist.

“Every client I’ve had who has gone to ClearChoice has started off meeting a salesperson and actually signing up to get their financing through ClearChoice before they ever meet with a dentist,” Goldberg said. “You meet with a salesperson who sells you on what they like to present as the best choice, which is almost always that they’re going to take out all your natural teeth.”

Becky Carroll, the ClearChoice patient from New Jersey, told a similar story.

Carroll said in her lawsuit that she met first with a ClearChoice salesperson referred to as a “patient education consultant.” In an interview, Carroll said the salesperson encouraged her to borrow money from family members for the surgery and it was not until after she agreed to a loan and passed a credit check that a ClearChoice dentist peered into her mouth.

“It seems way backwards,” Carroll said. “They just want to know you’re approved before you get to talk to a dentist.”

CBS News producer Nicole Keller contributed to this report.

This story originally appeared on KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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Russia fines Google an impossible amount in attempt to end YouTube bans

Google, Policy, russia, youtube / Beth Washington / October 31, 2024

Russia has fined Google an amount that no entity on the planet could pay in hopes of getting YouTube to lift bans on Russian channels, including pro-Kremlin and state-run news outlets.

The BBC wrote that a Russian court fined Google two undecillion rubles, which in dollar terms is $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. The amount “is far greater than the world’s total GDP, which is estimated by the International Monetary Fund to be $110 trillion.”

The fine is apparently that large because it was issued several years ago and has been repeatedly doubling. An RBC news report this week provided details on the court case from an anonymous source.

The Moscow Times writes, “According to RBC’s sources, Google began accumulating daily penalties of 100,000 rubles in 2020 after the pro-government media outlets Tsargrad and RIA FAN won lawsuits against the company for blocking their YouTube channels. Those daily penalties have doubled each week, leading to the current overall fine of around 2 undecillion rubles.”

The Moscow Times is an independent news organization that moved its operations to Amsterdam in 2022 in response to a Russian news censorship law. The news outlet said that 17 Russian TV channels filed legal claims against Google, including the state-run Channel One, the military-affiliated Zvezda broadcaster, and a company representing RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan.

Kremlin rep: “I cannot even say this number”

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Google has “blocked more than 1,000 YouTube channels, including state-sponsored news, and over 5.5 million videos,” Reuters wrote.

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AT&T praises itself after getting caught taking too much money from FCC program

AT&T, Policy / Beth Washington / October 30, 2024

AT&T improperly obtained money from a government-run broadband discount program by submitting duplicate requests and by claiming subsidies for thousands of subscribers who weren’t using AT&T’s service. AT&T obtained funding based on false certifications it made under penalty of perjury.

AT&T on Friday agreed to pay $2.3 million in a consent decree with the Federal Communications Commission’s Enforcement Bureau. That includes a civil penalty of $1,921,068 and a repayment of $378,922 to the US Treasury.

The settlement fully resolves the FCC investigation into AT&T’s apparent violations, the consent decree said. “AT&T admits for the purpose of this Consent Decree and for Commission civil enforcement purposes” that the findings described by the FCC “contain a true and accurate description of the facts underlying the Investigation,” the document said.

In addition to the civil penalty and repayment, AT&T agreed to a compliance plan designed to prevent further violations. AT&T last week reported quarterly revenue of $30.2 billion.

AT&T made the excessive reimbursement claims to the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program (EBB), which the US formed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to the EBB’s successor program, the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). The FCC said its rules “are vital to protecting these Programs and their resources from waste, fraud, and abuse.”

AT&T praises itself for using federal program

We contacted AT&T today and asked for an explanation of what caused the violations. Instead, AT&T provided Ars with a statement that praised itself for participating in the federal discount programs.

“When the federal government acted during the COVID-19 pandemic to stand up the Emergency Broadband Benefit program, and then the Affordable Connectivity Program, we quickly implemented both programs to provide more low-cost Internet options for our customers. We take compliance with federal programs like these seriously and appreciate the collaboration with the FCC to reach a solution on this matter,” AT&T said.

The EBB provided monthly subsidies of $50 for eligible households, while the ACP offered $30 a month. Telecoms provided the discounts to subscribers directly and sought reimbursement from the programs. The ACP ended a few months ago after Congress did not provide additional funding.

AT&T praises itself after getting caught taking too much money from FCC program Read More »

GitHub Copilot moves beyond OpenAI models to support Claude 3.5, Gemini

AI, Anthropic, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, coding, developer, Gemini 1.5 Pro, GitHub, GitHub Copilot, Google, GPT o1-mini, GPT o1-preview, GPT-4o, microsoft, openai, Programming, Tech, VS Code / Beth Washington / October 29, 2024

The large language model-based coding assistant GitHub Copilot will switch from using exclusively OpenAI’s GPT models to a multi-model approach over the coming weeks, GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke announced in a post on GitHub’s blog.

First, Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet will roll out to Copilot Chat’s web and VS Code interfaces over the next few weeks. Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro will come a bit later.

Additionally, GitHub will soon add support for a wider range of OpenAI models, including GPT o1-preview and o1-mini, which are intended to be stronger at advanced reasoning than GPT-4, which Copilot has used until now. Developers will be able to switch between the models (even mid-conversation) to tailor the model to fit their needs—and organizations will be able to choose which models will be usable by team members.

The new approach makes sense for users, as certain models are better at certain languages or types of tasks.

“There is no one model to rule every scenario,” wrote Dohmke. “It is clear the next phase of AI code generation will not only be defined by multi-model functionality, but by multi-model choice.”

It starts with the web-based and VS Code Copilot Chat interfaces, but it won’t stop there. “From Copilot Workspace to multi-file editing to code review, security autofix, and the CLI, we will bring multi-model choice across many of GitHub Copilot’s surface areas and functions soon,” Dohmke wrote.

There are a handful of additional changes coming to GitHub Copilot, too, including extensions, the ability to manipulate multiple files at once from a chat with VS Code, and a preview of Xcode support.

GitHub Spark promises natural language app development

In addition to the Copilot changes, GitHub announced Spark, a natural language tool for developing apps. Non-coders will be able to use a series of natural language prompts to create simple apps, while coders will be able to tweak more precisely as they go. In either use case, you’ll be able to take a conversational approach, requesting changes and iterating as you go, and comparing different iterations.

GitHub Copilot moves beyond OpenAI models to support Claude 3.5, Gemini Read More »

Ban on Chinese tech so broad, US-made cars would be blocked, Polestar says

Cars, Chinese EVs, connected cars, Polestar / Beth Washington / October 29, 2024

Polestar has more than a few issues with the proposed rule, according to its public comment. For one, the definition is too broad and “creates crippling uncertainty for businesses.” A better-defined list would be helpful here, it says.

Polestar also says that “if a large portion of manufacturing or software development is occurring outside of the country of a foreign adversary, mere ownership should not be the determinative factor for applying the various prohibitions within the Proposed Rule.” Polestar is a US-organized company and a subsidiary of a UK publicly limited company that is listed on the NASDAQ exchange in New York. Its HQ is in Sweden, and seven out of 10 board members are from Europe or the USA. It builds Polestar 3 SUVs in South Carolina and will build the Polestar 4 in South Korea from next year. In fact, out of 2,800 employees, only 280 are based in China, Polestar says.

With the company’s “key decision-makers” being in Sweden, there is little reason to believe the national security concerns apply here, the company says, saying that the US Commerce Department should consider whether it has gone too far.

Polestar may be the most affected automaker by the new rule, but it is not the only one. Last month, the Commerce Department told Ford and General Motors that imports of the Lincoln Nautilus and Buick Envision—both of which are made in China—would also have to cease under the new rule.

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How can you write data to DNA without changing the base sequence?

biochemistry, Biology, DNA storage, epigenetics, Science, Storage / Beth Washington / October 29, 2024

The developers of the system call each of these potentially modifiable spots on the template an epi-bit, with the modified version corresponding to a 1 in a conventional computer bit and the unmodified version corresponding to a 0. Because no synthesis is required, multiple bits can be written simultaneously. To read the information, the scientists rigged the system so that 1s fluoresce and 0s don’t. The fluorescence, along with the sequences of bases, was read as the DNA was passed through a tiny pore.

Pictures in a meta-genome

Using this system, Zhang et al. created five DNA templates and 175 bricks to record 350 bits at a time. Using a collection of tagged template molecules, the researchers could store and read roughly 275,000 bits, including a color picture of a panda’s face and a rubbing of a tiger from the Han dynasty, which ruled China from 202 BCE to 220 CE.

They then had 60 student volunteers “with diverse academic backgrounds” store texts of their choice in epi-bits using a simple kit in a classroom. Twelve of the 15 stored texts were read successfully.

We’re not quite ready for your cat videos yet, though. There are still errors in the printing and reading steps, and since these modifications don’t survive when DNA is copied, making additional versions of the stored information may get complicated. Plus, the stability of these modifications under different storage conditions remains unknown, although the authors note that their epi-bits stayed stable at temperatures of up to 95o° C.

But once these and a few other problems are solved—and the technology is scaled up, further optimized and automated, and/or tweaked to accommodate other types of epigenetic modifications—it will be a clever and novel way to harness natural data storage methods for our needs.

Nature, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08040-5

How can you write data to DNA without changing the base sequence? Read More »

Author name: Beth Washington