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Science

Information Teleported Between Two Computer Chips For the First Time (newatlas.com) 185

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Michael Irving, writing for New Atlas: Scientists at the University of Bristol and the Technical University of Denmark have achieved quantum teleportation between two computer chips for the first time. The team managed to send information from one chip to another instantly without them being physically or electronically connected, in a feat that opens the door for quantum computers and quantum internet. This kind of teleportation is made possible by a phenomenon called quantum entanglement, where two particles become so entwined with each other that they can "communicate" over long distances. Changing the properties of one particle will cause the other to instantly change too, no matter how much space separates the two of them. In essence, information is being teleported between them.

Hypothetically, there's no limit to the distance over which quantum teleportation can operate -- and that raises some strange implications that puzzled even Einstein himself. Our current understanding of physics says that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and yet, with quantum teleportation, information appears to break that speed limit. Einstein dubbed it "spooky action at a distance." Harnessing this phenomenon could clearly be beneficial, and the new study helps bring that closer to reality. The team generated pairs of entangled photons on the chips, and then made a quantum measurement of one. This observation changes the state of the photon, and those changes are then instantly applied to the partner photon in the other chip.
AI

New AI-Assisted Coding Tool Called 'Amazing' (theverge.com) 174

Posted by EditorDavid from the a-million-code-monkeys dept.
An anonymous reader quotes The Verge's AI and Robotics reporter: By scanning huge datasets of text, machine learning software can produce convincing samples of everything from short stories to song lyrics. Now, those same techniques are being applied to the world of coding with a new program called Deep TabNine, a "coding autocompleter." Programmers can install it as an add-on in their editor of choice, and when they start writing, it'll suggest how to continue each line, offering small chunks at a time. Think of it as Gmail's Smart Compose feature but for code.

Jacob Jackson, the computer science undergrad at the University of Waterloo who created Deep TabNine, says this sort of software isn't new, but machine learning has hugely improved what it can offer... Earlier this month, he released an updated version that uses a deep learning text-generation algorithm called GPT-2, which was designed by the research lab OpenAI, to improve its abilities. The update has seriously impressed coders, who have called it "amazing," "insane," and "absolutely mind-blowing" on Twitter...

Deep TabNine is trained on 2 million files from coding repository GitHub. It finds patterns in this data and uses them to suggest what's likely to appear next in any given line of code, whether that's a variable name or a function... Most importantly, thanks to the analytical abilities of deep learning, the suggestions Deep TabNine makes are of a high overall quality. And because the software doesn't look at users' own code to make suggestions, it can start helping with projects right from the word go, rather than waiting to get some cues from the code the user writes.
It's not free software. Currently a personal license costs $49 (with a business-use license costing $99), the Verge reports -- but the tool supports the following 22 languages...

Python, JavaScript, Java, C++, C, PHP, Go, C#, Ruby, Objective-C, Rust, Swift, TypeScript, Haskell, OCaml, Scala, Kotlin, Perl, SQL, HTML, CSS, and Bash.
Businesses

DoorDash Flip-Flops On Controversial Pay Policy, Says Tips Will Go To Delivery Workers (engadget.com) 235

Posted by BeauHD from the mission-accomplished dept.
Yesterday, a New York Times reporter reported on how some delivery apps like DoorDash use your tip to make up the worker's base pay -- essentially stealing the money you're trying to give someone to maximize their profits. Following the backlash from that report, as well as others that exposed the controversial pay policy, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu announced his company will change its policy. Engadget reports: Without getting into specifics, which he said will be announced "in the coming days," Xu tweeted that his company misunderstood "that some customers who *did* tip would feel like their tip did not matter." So now, "the new model will ensure that Dashers' earnings will increase by the exact amount a customer tips on every order." Or, the way you probably thought tips worked.
Crime

Siemens Contractor Pleads Guilty To Planting Logic Bomb In Company Spreadsheets (zdnet.com) 165

Posted by BeauHD from the sneaky-bastard dept.
Former Siemens contractor David Tinley faces up to 10 years in prison, a fine of $250,000, or both, for planting logic bombs inside spreadsheets he created for the company. The logic bomb would crash spreadsheets after a certain date, resulting in Siemens hiring the contractor to fix the latest bugs. ZDNet reports: According to court documents, Tinley provided software services for Siemens' Monroeville, PA offices for nearly ten years. Among the work he was asked to perform was the creation of spreadsheets that the company was using to manage equipment orders. The spreadshees included custom scripts that would update the content of the file based on current orders stored in other, remote documents, allowing the company to automate inventory and order management.

But while Tinley's files worked for years, they started malfunctioning around 2014. According to court documents, Tinley planted so-called "logic bombs" that would trigger after a certain date, and crash the files. Every time the scripts would crash, Siemens would call Tinley, who'd fix the files for a fee. The scheme lasted for two years, until May 2016, when Tinley's trickery was unraveled by Siemens employees. According to a report from Law360, the scheme fell apart when Tinley was out of town, and had to hand over an administrative password for the spreadsheets to Siemens' IT staff, so they could fix the buggy scripts and fill in an urgent order. Siemens IT employees found the logic bomb, and it all went downhill from there. Tinley was charged this May, and pled guilty last week, on July 19. The contractor's sentencing hearing is scheduled for November 8.
Programming

Coders' Primal Urge To Kill Inefficiency -- Everywhere (wired.com) 181

Posted by msmash from the why-we-do-what-we-do dept.
For software engineers, lack of friction is an aesthetic joy, an emotional high, the ideal existential state. It's what drives them, and what shapes our world. An excerpt from an upcoming book on coding, via Wired: The thrust of Silicon Valley is always to take human activity and shift it into metabolic overdrive. And maybe you've wondered, why the heck is that? Why do techies insist that things should be sped up, torqued, optimized? There's one obvious reason, of course: They do it because of the dictates of the market. Capitalism handsomely rewards anyone who can improve a process and squeeze some margin out. But with software, there's something else going on too. For coders, efficiency is more than just a tool for business. It's an existential state, an emotional driver.

Coders might have different backgrounds and political opinions, but nearly every one I've ever met found deep, almost soulful pleasure in taking something inefficient -- even just a little bit slow -- and tightening it up a notch. Removing the friction from a system is an aesthetic joy; coders' eyes blaze when they talk about making something run faster or how they eliminated some bothersome human effort from a process. This passion for efficiency isn't unique to software developers. Engineers and inventors have long been motivated by it. During the early years of industrialization, engineers elevated the automation of everyday tasks to a moral good. The engineer was humanity's "redeemer from despairing drudgery and burdensome labor," as Charles Hermany, an engineer himself, wrote in 1904.

[...] Many of today's programmers have their efficiency "aha" moment in their teenage years, when they discover that life is full of blindingly dull repetitive tasks and that computers are really good at doing them. (Math homework, with its dull litany of exercises, was one thing that inspired a number of coders I've talked to.) Larry Wall, who created the Perl programming language, and several coauthors wrote that one of the key virtues of a programmer is "laziness" -- of the variety where your unwillingness to perform rote actions inspires you to do the work to automate them.
Books

Woman Wins $10,000 For Reading Fine Print of Terms and Conditions of Travel Insurance Policy (npr.org) 89

Posted by BeauHD from the it-pays-to-read dept.
Georgia high school teacher Donelan Andrews won a $10,000 reward after she closely read the terms and conditions that came with a travel insurance policy she purchased for a trip to England. Squaremouth, a Florida insurance company, had inserted language promising a reward to the first person who emailed the company. NPR reports: "We understand most customers don't actually read contracts or documentation when buying something, but we know the importance of doing so," the company said. "We created the top-secret Pays to Read campaign in an effort to highlight the importance of reading policy documentation from start to finish." Not every company is so generous. To demonstrate the importance of reading the fine print, many companies don't give; they take. The mischievous clauses tend to pop up from time to time, usually in cheeky England. The report continues to highlight a number of different cases where companies have intentionally inserted unusual clauses into their terms of service, knowing people wouldn't read them. Here's one such case: A few years earlier, several Londoners agreed (presumably inadvertently) to give away their oldest child in exchange for Wi-Fi access. Before they could get on the Internet, users had to check a box agreeing to "assign their first born child to us for the duration of eternity." According to the Guardian, six people signed up, but the company providing the Wi-Fi said the clause likely wouldn't be enforceable in a court of law. "It is contrary to public policy to sell children in return for free services," the company explained.

Comment Just move to a CLR along the lines of .NET (Score 1) 356

...but take lessons from the warts in the runtime.

Moving their macs off of Intel is a terrible idea as people will then only be purchasing the cheapest possible mac as a compiler host for iOS (if they need to do so.)

I have a MacBook Pro right now because I can triple boot it between Linux, macOS, and Windows - they do this and I'd rather just have one of the new minis sitting on the corner of my test for iOS builds...

Unless that ARM chipset will support x64/x86 instructions (which is technically possible but would be weird.)
The Almighty Buck

Amazon Will Pay $0 in Federal Taxes on $11.2 Billion Profits (fortune.com) 468

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Those wondering how many zeros Amazon, which is valued at nearly $800 billion, has to pay in federal taxes might be surprised to learn that its check to the IRS will read exactly $0.00. From a report: According to a report published by the Institute on Taxation and Economic (ITEP) policy Wednesday, the e-tail/retail/tech/entertainment/everything giant won't have to pay a cent in federal taxes for the second year in a row. This tax-free break comes even though Amazon almost doubled its U.S. profits from $5.6 billion to $11.2 billion between 2017 and 2018. To top it off, Amazon actually reported a $129 million 2018 federal income tax rebate -- making its tax rate -1%.

Comment Should be fined into oblivion... (Score 1) 78

...the only way a social media company can maintain a sense of decency is to be a private company. Publicly traded companies are required, by law no less, to seek ever greater and greater revenue. Google has done an AMAZING job of straddling this line (and sometimes going past it) - but it'll get them eventually too.

Comment People in general use Amazon because... (Score 1) 132

by Assmasher (#57841524) Attached to: Amazon's Grocery Push Keeps Stumbling After Whole Foods Purchase

...it's an easy way to get good prices, quick and easy delivery (especially if you are a Prime customer), and an excellent return policy.

I'm not sure that same set of factors applies to Whole Paycheck - oops, I mean Whole Foods. A brand that has quality items, but is infamous for being ridiculously overpriced and having a mindset akin to Gwyneth Paltrow (asparagus water for $6 - seriously?)

I'm sure Bezos will get this sorted - but it may take a while and not be an obvious win for Amazon during that period.

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