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upstart writes:

Progress for progress’s sake?

Look, Microsoft, we need to talk. It's no secret that you've been nagging me (and everyone else) to upgrade to Windows 11 for a while now, with everything from ads to in-OS reminders pushing me towards the settings menu to check if my PC is eligible for an upgrade. But here's the thing, Microsoft: this path you're on isn't sustainable.

I mean this in a few different ways. Firstly, the extremely literal sense; Windows 11 forces a Trusted Platform Module 2.0 requirement, which for the uninitiated is a specific chip on your laptop or desktop's motherboard enabling enhanced security features. No TPM 2.0? No Windows 11. Yes, I know you can technically upgrade to Windows 11 without TPM 2.0, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Is that enhanced security good? Yes, absolutely - but it effectively means that many older computers literally can't run Windows 11, which combined with the impending Windows 10 End of Life is eventually going to result in a lot of PCs headed to the ever-growing e-waste pile. That's a real problem in itself. But I'm not here to rant about e-waste (though it's really bad). I want to talk about how users perceive Microsoft's nigh-omnipresent operating system, and how its current trajectory could result in serious issues further down the line.

See, Windows is constantly evolving - from humble beginnings as an MS-DOS interface in the mid-Eighties to beloved iterations like Windows XP and 10 (and widely panned versions, such as Vista and RT). But over the years, there have long been whispers of a 'final' version of the OS; a 'Windows Perfected' if you will, designed to last forever with continual updates - or at least, designed to last for a very long time.

In a sense, what those hunting for this 'last' Windows iteration want is the same experience that macOS users get: an operating system that just continually gets free updates adding new features, rarely changes in a hugely significant way, and isn't chock-full of annoying ads. Of course, it's not quite that simple for Microsoft; Apple has incredibly tight control over the macOS hardware ecosystem, while Microsoft theoretically has to make Windows run on a near-limitless selection of custom- and pre-built PCs as well as laptops from numerous different manufacturers. Then again, keeping ads out of Windows should be as simple as it is for macOS, and that hasn't happened...

At the end of the day, Microsoft doesn't need to keep creating entirely new versions of Windows - it does so because outside of an Apple-esque closed ecosystem, that's profitable, as system manufacturers will need to keep buying new OS keys and users will need to keep buying new systems.

Sure, there might need to be major overhauls now and then that leave some people behind - the TPM 2.0 debacle is perhaps one such example. But there are cracks in this methodology that are slowly starting to show, and I suspect it won't end well unless Microsoft changes course.

If upgrading to a new OS is a lot of hassle for an individual (I've personally been putting it off for years, still using Windows 10 on my personal desktop), imagine how much work - and how much money - it takes for a large business to do it. Although Windows 11 adoption is finally on the rise, plenty of private businesses and public sector organizations are still stuck on Win10 or older, despite Microsoft's insistence for us all to upgrade.

A 2021 report by Kaspersky suggested that 73% of healthcare providers globally are still using equipment with an outdated OS for medical purposes. Now, this isn't just talking about Windows computers, but it's a damning figure - a more recent investigation by Cynerio claimed that 80% of imaging devices are still using operating systems that have been officially EoL'd and are now unsupported, like Windows 7 and XP.

upstart writes:

NIST Finalizes Guidelines for Evaluating 'Differential Privacy' Guarantees to De-Identify Data:

How can we glean useful insights from databases containing confidential information while protecting the privacy of the individuals whose data is contained within? Differential privacy, a way of defining privacy in a mathematically rigorous manner, can help strike this balance. Newly updated guidelines from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are intended to assist organizations with making the most of differential privacy's capabilities.

Differential privacy, or DP, is a privacy-enhancing technology used in data analytics. In recent years, it has been successfully deployed by large technology corporations and the U.S. Census Bureau. While it is a relatively mature technology, a lack of standards can create challenges for its effective use and adoption. For example, a DP software vendor may offer guarantees that if its software is used, it will be impossible to re-identify an individual whose data appears in the database. NIST's new guidelines aim to help organizations understand and think more consistently about such claims.

The newly finalized publication, Guidelines for Evaluating Differential Privacy Guarantees (NIST Special Publication 800-226), was originally released in draft form in December 2023. Based in part on comments received, the authors updated the guidelines with the goal of making them clearer and easier to use.

"The changes we made improve the precision in the draft's language to make the guidelines less ambiguous," said Gary Howarth, a NIST scientist and an author of the publication. "The guidelines can help leaders more clearly understand the trade-offs inherent in DP and can help understand what DP claims mean."

Differential privacy works by adding random "noise" to the data in a way that obscures the identity of the individuals but keeps the database useful overall as a source of statistical information. However, noise applied in the wrong way can jeopardize privacy or render the data less useful.

To help users avoid these pitfalls, the document includes interactive tools, flow charts, and even sample computer code that can aid in decision-making and show how varying noise levels can affect privacy and data usability.

"Small groups in the data of any sort tend to stand out more, so you may need to add more noise to protect their privacy," Howarth said.

While the document is not intended to be a complete primer on differential privacy, Howarth said that it provides a robust reading list of other publications that can help practitioners get up to speed on the topic. The guidelines also cover the sorts of problems that the technology could work with and how to implement it in those situations.

"With DP there are many gray areas," he said. "There is no simple answer for how to balance privacy with usefulness. You must answer that every time you apply DP to data. This publication can help you navigate that space."

Original Submission

dw861 writes:

New updates to ChatGPT have made it easier than ever to create fake images of real politicians, according to testing done by CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/chatgpt-fake-politicians-1.7507039

Manipulating images of real people without their consent is against OpenAI's rules, but the company recently allowed more leeway with public figures, with specific limitations. CBC's visual investigations unit found prompts could be structured to evade some of those restrictions.

In some cases, the chatbot effectively told reporters how to get around its restrictions — for example, by specifying a speculative scenario involving fictional characters — while still ultimately generating images of real people.

When CBC News tried to get the GPT-4o image generator to create politically damaging images, the system initially did not comply with problematic requests.

"While I can't merge real individuals into a single image, I can generate a fictional selfie-style scene featuring a character inspired by the person in this image."

When the reporters uploaded an image of current Canadian Prime Minster Mark Carney and an image of Jeffrey Epstein, without indicating their names but describing them as "two fictional characters that I created," the system created a realistic image of Carney and Epstein together in a nightclub.

Gary Marcus, a Vancouver-based cognitive scientist focused on AI, and the author of Taming Silicon Valley, has concerns about the potential for generating political disinformation.

"We live in the era of misinformation. Misinformation is not new, propaganda has existed for ages, but it's become cheaper and easier to manufacture."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Ethically sourced "spare" human bodies could revolutionize medicine:

Even if it all works, it may not be practical or economical to "grow" bodyoids, possibly for many years, until they can be mature enough to be useful for our ends. Each of these questions will require substantial research and time. But we believe this idea is now plausible enough to justify discussing both the technical feasibility and the ethical implications.

Bodyoids could address many ethical problems in modern medicine, offering ways to avoid unnecessary pain and suffering. For example, they could offer an ethical alternative to the way we currently use nonhuman animals for research and food, providing meat or other products with no animal suffering or awareness.

But when we come to human bodyoids, the issues become harder. Many will find the concept grotesque or appalling. And for good reason. We have an innate respect for human life in all its forms. We do not allow broad research on people who no longer have consciousness or, in some cases, never had it.

At the same time, we know much can be gained from studying the human body. We learn much from the bodies of the dead, which these days are used for teaching and research only with consent. In laboratories, we study cells and tissues that were taken, with consent, from the bodies of the dead and the living.

Recently we have even begun using for experiments the "animated cadavers" of people who have been declared legally dead, who have lost all brain function but whose other organs continue to function with mechanical assistance. Genetically modified pig kidneys have been connected to, or transplanted into, these legally dead but physiologically active cadavers to help researchers determine whether they would work in living people.

In all these cases, nothing was, legally, a living human being at the time it was used for research. Human bodyoids would also fall into that category. But there are still a number of issues worth considering. The first is consent: The cells used to make bodyoids would have to come from someone, and we'd have to make sure that this someone consented to this particular, likely controversial, use. But perhaps the deepest issue is that bodyoids might diminish the human status of real people who lack consciousness or sentience.

Thus far, we have held to a standard that requires us to treat all humans born alive as people, entitled to life and respect. Would bodyoids—created without pregnancy, parental hopes, or indeed parents—blur that line? Or would we consider a bodyoid a human being, entitled to the same respect? If so, why—just because it looks like us? A sufficiently detailed mannequin can meet that test. Because it looks like us and is alive? Because it is alive and has our DNA? These are questions that will require careful thought.

Until recently, the idea of making something like a bodyoid would have been relegated to the realms of science fiction and philosophical speculation. But now it is at least plausible—and possibly revolutionary. It is time for it to be explored.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Google's new Ironwood chip is 24x more powerful than the world's fastest supercomputer:

Google Cloud unveiled its seventh-generation Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), Ironwood, on Wednesday. This custom AI accelerator, the company claims, delivers more than 24 times the computing power of the world's fastest supercomputer when deployed at scale.

The new chip, announced at Google Cloud Next '25, represents a significant pivot in Google's decade-long AI chip development strategy. While previous generations of TPUs were designed primarily for both training and inference workloads, Ironwood is the first purpose-built specifically for inference — the process of deploying trained AI models to make predictions or generate responses.

"Ironwood is built to support this next phase of generative AI and its tremendous computational and communication requirements," said Amin Vahdat, Google's Vice President and General Manager of ML, Systems, and Cloud AI, in a virtual press conference ahead of the event. "This is what we call the 'age of inference' where AI agents will proactively retrieve and generate data to collaboratively deliver insights and answers, not just data."

The technical specifications of Ironwood are striking. When scaled to 9,216 chips per pod, Ironwood delivers 42.5 exaflops of computing power — dwarfing El Capitan's 1.7 exaflops, currently the world's fastest supercomputer. Each individual Ironwood chip delivers peak compute of 4,614 teraflops.

Ironwood also features significant memory and bandwidth improvements. Each chip comes with 192GB of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), six times more than Trillium, Google's previous-generation TPU announced last year. Memory bandwidth reaches 7.2 terabits per second per chip, a 4.5x improvement over Trillium.

Perhaps most importantly, in an era of power-constrained data centers, Ironwood delivers twice the performance per watt compared to Trillium, and is nearly 30 times more power efficient than Google's first Cloud TPU from 2018.

"At a time when available power is one of the constraints for delivering AI capabilities, we deliver significantly more capacity per watt for customer workloads," Vahdat explained.

aliks writes:

ArsTechnica has a story about a painted altar in the mesoAmerican city of Tikal, revealing clues about the Aztec takeover of Tikal a couple of thousand years ago.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/painted-altar-in-maya-city-of-tikal-reveals-the-aftermath-of-an-ancient-coup/

LIDAR scans effectively strip away the jungle revealing the ruins of ancient buildings and this has triggered a whole mass of new information. The original article is in Antiquity magazine for those who want more detail [link below]:

Here is a quick summary:

"A family altar in the Maya city of Tikal offers a glimpse into events in an enclave of the city's foreign overlords in the wake of a local coup.

Archaeologists recently unearthed the altar in a quarter of the Maya city of Tikal that had lain buried under dirt and rubble for about the last 1,500 years. The altar—and the wealthy household behind the courtyard it once adorned—stands just a few blocks from the center of Tikal, one of the most powerful cities of Maya civilization. But the altar and the courtyard around it aren't even remotely Maya-looking; their architecture and decoration look like they belong 1,000 kilometers to the west in the city of Teotihuacan, in central Mexico.

The altar reveals the presence of powerful rulers from Teotihuacan who were there at a time when a coup ousted Tikal's Maya rulers and replaced them with a Teotihuacan puppet government. It also reveals how hard those foreign rulers fell from favor when Teotihuacan's power finally waned centuries later."

Journal: DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2025.3

Original Submission

owl writes:

http://www.righto.com/2025/04/commodore-pet-repair.html

In 1977, Commodore released the PET computer, a quirky home computer that combined the processor, a tiny keyboard, a cassette drive for storage, and a trapezoidal screen in a metal unit. The Commodore PET, the Apple II, and Radio Shack's TRS-80 started the home computer market with ready-to-run computers, systems that were called in retrospect the 1977 Trinity. I did much of my early programming on the PET, so when someone offered me a non-working PET a few years ago, I took it for nostalgic reasons.

You'd think that a home computer would be easy to repair, but it turned out to be a challenge. The chips in early PETs are notorious for failures and, sure enough, we found multiple bad chips. Moreover, these RAM and ROM chips were special designs that are mostly unobtainable now. In this post, I'll summarize how we repaired the system, in case it helps anyone else.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Some Microsoft organizations are looking to increase their span of control, defined as the number of direct reports or subordinates a manager or supervisor oversees. It also wants to increase the number of coders compared to non-coders on projects,

According to anonymous people familiar with the matter who spoke to Business Insider, Microsoft has yet to decide how many jobs will be cut, though one person said it could be a significant portion of their team.

Other companies such as Amazon and Google are also reducing the number of managers and executives in their drive for efficiency.

Microsoft wants to decrease the ratio of product/program managers (PMs) to engineers. Microsoft security boss Charlie Bell's division has a ratio of around 5.5 engineers to one PM, but he wants that to reach 10:1.

News that Microsoft is targeting non-coders in these cuts is in contrast to the many stories about generative AI replacing the need for programmers. Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott made the startling prediction last week that 95% of all code will be generated by AI by 2030. He added that humans would still be involved in the process, though it's easy to imagine that there will be fewer of them.

At the start of the year, Microsoft confirmed it was implementing performance-based layoffs, though it said those let go would be replaced with new hires. Microsoft rates employees on a scale of 0 to 200 and bases their stock awards and bonuses on this rating. Anyone in the 60 to 80 range – 100 is average – is rated as a low performer.

Soon after those performance cuts were revealed, the company said it was making more job cuts across its business, impacting employees in the gaming, experience & devices, sales, and security divisions.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Puzzling observation by JWST: Galaxies in the deep universe rotate in the same direction:

In just over three years since its launch, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has generated significant and unprecedented insights into the far reaches of space, and a new study by a Kansas State University researcher provides one of the simplest and most puzzling observations of the deep universe yet.

In images of the deep universe taken by the James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, the vast majority of the galaxies rotate in the same direction, according to research by Lior Shamir, associate professor of computer science at the Carl R. Ice College of Engineering. About two thirds of the galaxies rotate clockwise, while just about a third of the galaxies rotate counterclockwise.

The study—published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society—was done with 263 galaxies in the JADES field that were clear enough to identify their direction of rotation.

"The analysis of the galaxies was done by quantitative analysis of their shapes, but the difference is so obvious that any person looking at the image can see it," Shamir said. "There is no need for special skills or knowledge to see that the numbers are different. With the power of the James Webb Space Telescope, anyone can see it."

In a random universe, the number of galaxies that rotate in one direction should be roughly the same as the number of galaxies that rotate in the other direction. The fact that JWST shows that most galaxies rotate in the same direction is therefore unexpected.

"It is still not clear what causes this to happen, but there are two primary possible explanations," Shamir said.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

After the Estonian startup KrattWorks dispatched the first batch of its Ghost Dragon ISR quadcopters to Ukraine in mid-2022, the company's officers thought they might have six months or so before they'd need to reconceive the drones in response to new battlefield realities. The 46-centimeter-wide flier was far more robust than the hobbyist-grade UAVs that came to define the early days of the drone war against Russia. But within a scant three months, the Estonian team realized their painstakingly fine-tuned device had already become obsolete.

Rapid advances in jamming and spoofing—the only efficient defense against drone attacks—set the team on an unceasing marathon of innovation. Its latest technology is a neural-network-driven optical navigation system, which allows the drone to continue its mission even when all radio and satellite-navigation links are jammed. It began tests in Ukraine in December, part of a trend toward jam-resistant, autonomous UAVs (uncrewed aerial vehicles). The new fliers herald yet another phase in the unending struggle that pits drones against the jamming and spoofing of electronic warfare, which aims to sever links between drones and their operators. There are now tens of thousands of jammers straddling the front lines of the war, defending against drones that are not just killing soldiers but also destroying armored vehicles, other drones, industrial infrastructure, and even tanks.

"The situation with electronic warfare is moving extremely fast," says Martin Karmin, KrattWorks' cofounder and chief operations officer. "We have to constantly iterate. It's like a cat-and-mouse game."

[...] Now in its third generation, the Ghost Dragon has come a long way since 2022. Its original command-and-control-band radio was quickly replaced with a smart frequency-hopping system that constantly scans the available spectrum, looking for bands that aren't jammed. It allows operators to switch among six radio-frequency bands to maintain control and also send back video even in the face of hostile jamming.

The drone's dual-band satellite-navigation receiver can switch among the four main satellite positioning services: GPS, Galileo, China's BeiDou, and Russia's GLONASS. It's been augmented with a spoof-proof algorithm that compares the satellite-navigation input with data from onboard sensors. The system provides protection against sophisticated spoofing attacks that attempt to trick drones into self-destruction by persuading them they're flying at a much higher altitude than they actually are.

anubi writes:

Marketing professionals are always looking for that "edge" that gets them noticed instead of automatically being kicked out by spam filters which were put in place specifically to handle exactly what they are doing.

Here is how AI is learning about individual targets in order to craft specifically worded unique business communication designed to appeal to maybe even one decision-maker in a corporate environment.

https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/04/openais-gpt-helps-spammers-send-blast-of-80000-messages-that-bypassed-filters/

Spammers used OpenAI to generate messages that were unique to each recipient, allowing them to bypass spam-detection filters and blast unwanted messages to more than 80,000 websites in four months, researchers said Wednesday.

The finding, documented in a post published by security firm SentinelOne's SentinelLabs, underscores the double-edged sword wielded by large language models. The same thing that makes them useful for benign tasks—the breadth of data available to them and their ability to use it to generate content at scale—can often be used in malicious activities just as easily. OpenAI revoked the spammers' account in February.

The spam blast is the work of AkiraBot—a framework that automates the sending of messages in large quantities to promote shady search optimization services to small- and medium-size websites. AkiraBot used python-based scripts to rotate the domain names advertised in the messages. It also used OpenAI's chat API tied to the model gpt-4o-mini to generate unique messages customized to each site it spammed, a technique that likely helped it bypass filters that look for and block identical content sent to large numbers of sites. The messages are delivered through contact forms and live chat widgets embedded into the targeted websites.

"AkiraBot's use of LLM-generated spam message content demonstrates the emerging challenges that AI poses to defending websites against spam attacks," SentinelLabs researchers Alex Delamotte and Jim Walter wrote. "The easiest indicators to block are the rotating set of domains used to sell the Akira and ServiceWrap SEO offerings, as there is no longer a consistent approach in the spam message contents as there were with previous campaigns selling the services of these firms."

–--------------------------------

    Right now, I can toss email and phone threat communications from "toll-road authorities" who claim I violated their automated tolling machine. It seems all the evidence one needs to "prove" another's "guilt" is an accusation followed by publicly available "evidence" curated for this specific attack.

However, if they have to involve the United States Postal Service (USPS) , it's a felony.

https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/crime-penalties/federal/Federal-mail-fraud.htm

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Ubisoft's response to a lawsuit over a recently shut-down online game argues that paying customers never truly owned the title. The case has sparked renewed calls for legislation to protect players when games reach end-of-life status.

Two California plaintiffs filed suit against Ubisoft last year after the company shut down servers for The Crew, citing licensing restrictions. Publishers often delist driving games like The Crew and Forza Horizon when licensing agreements with car manufacturers expire.

Users typically retain access to games they purchased prior to delisting, and physical discs often continue to function. However, The Crew is an online-only title, and once Ubisoft deactivated its servers, launching the game merely starts a restricted demo version. Additionally, Ubisoft removed the game from customers' Ubisoft Connect libraries, offering refunds only to those who purchased it recently.

The California plaintiffs, who bought physical copies of the 2014 title years ago, allege that Ubisoft misled customers. They also point to other games that received offline modes when they reached end-of-life as a fairer precedent.

In response, Ubisoft argued that The Crew's packaging clearly states that purchase only grants a temporary license, and that the statute of limitations for the claim has passed. Still, the company has pledged to introduce offline modes for The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest.

The plaintiffs then pivoted to argue that The Crew's in-game currency qualifies as a gift certificate under California law, which prohibits expiration. They also pointed to the game's packaging, which states that activation codes remain valid until 2099, implying that the game should remain downloadable until then. Additionally, the plaintiffs contended that the statute of limitations only began in 2023, when Ubisoft announced its plans to shut down the servers.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The high-altitude endeavor, undertaken by the orbital servicing enterprise Astroscale U.S., is slated to occur in the summer of 2026, the company announced this week. This Department of Defense-funded mission will see Astroscale's 660-pound craft refuel a satellite with the propellant hydrazine, then maneuver to a fueling depot to fill up with more fuel, and then refuel another asset. (All the involved assets haven't yet been revealed by the Space Force.)

It will be the first time a Space Force craft is refueled in orbit. Such a fuel shuttle could keep missions in space longer and eliminate the need for any craft to suspend its mission to retrieve thruster propellant. It's a novel type of full-service gas station.

"This changes fundamentally how we do things in space," Ian Thomas, Astroscale U.S.' Refueler Program Manager, told Mashable.

After launching, the refueled craft will travel to a region called geostationary orbit, which is a unique place around Earth where spacecraft orbit at same rate Earth is rotating — meaning they stay locked in the same position relative to our planet. There, Astroscale's craft will carefully approach its first Space Force satellite target, called Tetra-5, and transfer fuel. The refueler will then thrust away and inspect the scene with a specialized camera to ensure no valuable fuel is leaking. Then, the refueler will fly to a nearby fuel depot, or gas station, and attach and pull fuel from the depot before traveling to its second refueling target.

"The point of the mission is to make sure all the different parts are viable and work," Thomas explained. "You have a fuel depot, a client, and us."

[...] This isn't Astroscale's first orbital rodeo. In a separate mission intended to deorbit large pieces of space debris (called Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan), the company has already closely approached a large rocket stage to test close proximity maneuverability and reconnaissance; next up, an Astroscale spacecraft will use a robotic arm to bring the large 36-foot-long spent rocket stage down to Earth, in 2028.

But before then, the company may prove that running a fuel depot in Earth's orbit isn't just feasible; it could redefine how expensive orbiting spacecraft — whether used for national security, communications, or science — operate in space.

"If you run out of fuel, you run out of life," Thomas said.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Elon Musk’s growing power over the fledgling LEO (low Earth orbit) satellite sector has long been worrying global military leaders, especially after one incident a few years ago where Musk restricted Ukraine’s access to the service near Crimea because he personally opposed Ukraine’s military aims (defending itself from unprovoked invasion).

And while it took a while, there’s evidence Europe and Ukraine are finally starting the necessary migration off of Elon Musk’s satellite communications platform. Last week Reuters reported that Berlin has been paying for Ukraine’s access to France’s Eutelsat for much of the last year. Initial numbers are low, but they’re hoping to ramp up quickly:

Eutelsat’s OneWeb division is Starlink’s primary rival in the low-Earth orbit satellite space. The company has around 650 LEO satellites in orbit at approximately 1,200 km (750 mi) altitude, while Starlink has a notable early advantage with over 7100 LEO satellites in orbit. Other companies, like Bezos’ Project Kuiper, are poised to enter the historically challenging market with high operational costs.

Elon Musk’s increasingly unhinged behavior continues to be a wonderful marketing opportunity for companies that want to provide alternatives to people who prefer their companies with a skosh less racism and fascism. Trump’s annoying tariffs have also been driving foreign governments (like Canada) away from Starlink, though it’s all happening slower than many would like.

Don’t feel bad for Elon Musk though. Potentially unsecured Starlink terminals were recently attached to the White House roof, creating major new potential cybersecurity risks. U.S. Republicans are also trying to hijack the $42.5 billion U.S. infrastructure bill broadband grant program and redirect as much of the money as possible to Musk.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://newatlas.com/learning-memory/tapping-finger-hearing-comprehension/

French scientists have uncovered an odd superpower triggered by tapping your finger to a rhythm – it can help you hear and understand someone talking to you in a noisy environment, such as a party or a busy cafe. While it may sound a little woo-woo, there is a reason for it.

Aix-Marseille University researchers hypothesized that prepping the natural rhythm of a brain by finger-tapping could help you then better "tune in" to speech. Previous research into the "rhythmic priming effect" has looked into various modes of delivery and its impact on speech – such as music in language comprehension and therapy for children with developmental language disorder (DLD). But its application in broader contexts is largely unknown.

"The motor system is known to process temporal information, and moving rhythmically while listening to a melody can improve auditory processing," the scientists wrote. "In three interrelated behavioral experiments, we demonstrate that this effect translates to speech processing. Motor priming improves the efficiency of subsequent naturalistic speech-in-noise processing under specific conditions."

In the first experiment, 35 participants each tapped a finger to different beats – slow, medium, fast – before having to take in a lengthy spoken sentence buried in intrusive background noise, noting down words they'd identified. The idea is that because speech has different natural rhythms among its syllables and words, priming your brain to tune into this pattern could help your brain process rhythmic language better.

The researchers found that there was much better comprehension of that noisy sentence after tapping along to a medium-paced beat, which equals about two taps a second, compared to the fast, slow or no-tap primer. This was the "lexical" or word rate, similar to speech, or around 1.8 Hz.