Friday☕️

Jul 7, 2023 • 4 min read

Trending:

Markets:

French Police Surveillance:

French legislators have approved a law permitting law enforcement to remotely activate the cameras, microphones, and GPS in devices belonging to suspects.
The new law allows the French police to gain access to phones, laptops, and other digital devices of individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism, organized crime, or delinquency. In addition, the police will have the ability to track the location of suspects involved in crimes that carry a potential sentence of five or more years.
However, there are restrictions. The duration of this surveillance is capped at six months, and individuals in certain professions, including doctors, lawyers, and judges, are exempted from this form of surveillance.

OpenAI's GPT-4 API:

OpenAI has released its latest text-generating model, GPT-4, for general use via its API. The model, an upgrade from its predecessor GPT-3.5, accepts both text and image inputs and generates human-level text, including code.
The API version of GPT-4 allows developers to incorporate the model's capabilities into their own applications. On the other hand, ChatGPT Plus, the premium version of GPT-4, offers enhanced conversational capabilities for end users, perfect for activities like drafting emails, writing code, problem solving, creative thinking, learning new topics, or even creating content.
Access to GPT-4 is initially offered to existing OpenAI API developers with a solid payment history. New developers will gain access later in the month, followed by increasing availability limits based on computational resources.
Later in the year, developers will have the ability to fine-tune GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 Turbo, another one of OpenAl's models, with their own data. Simultaneously, OpenAI is facing legal challenges. Some authors are suing the company, claiming that their copyrighted works were used to train the models without their consent.

Leqembi's FDA Approval:

Leqembi, an Alzheimer's drug developed by Eisai and Biogen, has received full FDA approval, making it the first drug that can slow the disease's progression. This has led to an expansion in Medicare coverage, potentially helping up to a million early-stage Alzheimer's patients.
The drug costs $26,500 annually before insurance and was previously underused due to coverage limitations. Designed for early Alzheimer's stages, it slows cognitive and functional decline, though it does have side effects and requires regular monitoring.
Expanded Medicare coverage will lead to some out-of-pocket costs. Moreover, this wider coverage is linked to a data collection process to track the drug's real-world effectiveness. If 10% of elderly Alzheimer's patients use Leqembi, Medicare could see an expenditure increase of $17.8 billion, possibly raising premiums for all Medicare Part B enrollees.

Twitter vs Threads:

Meta's newly launched social media app, Threads, has received a cease-and-desist letter from Twitter.
Twitter claims Meta has misused its trade secrets by hiring former Twitter employees who allegedly retain proprietary information. The Threads app, built off Instagram, has seen immediate success with 30 million sign-ups within 24 hours of its launch.
The conflict arises amidst Twitter's decisions to limit daily tweet viewing to combat data mining. In response to the cease-and-desist allegations, a Meta spokesperson stated that no Threads engineers are ex-Twitter employees.

Statistic: