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Comment Keeps on happening (Score -1, Flamebait) 54

by neiras (#64431498) Attached to: How Einstein Lost the Battle To Explain Quantum Reality

You see this kind of dogma pushing in so many places where you'd expect scientific objectivity to rule the day.

For example, we all know COVID is airborne. But the WHO put the word out that it wasn't, made up a "droplets" narrative that conveniently avoided triggering workplace safety rules in most countries, and sent forth legions of credentialed people to beat back any uncomfortable questions.

Now, years later, they've been embarrassed into addressing the misinformation they put out. But instead, they've just invented new terms: "infectious respiratory particles" that "spread through the air". They won't say "airborne", again because that would trigger workplace safety laws and public health rules.

On and on it goes, in so many fields.

Comment School has become a sickness merry-go-round (Score 2) 119

by neiras (#64354184) Attached to: Chronic Student Absenteeism Soars Across US

My kids and I have been sick so much this year. We had two more rounds of COVID across our family since September. Other families we know are seeing the same thing. Before the pandemic a few colds and MAYBE a stomach flu type thing were the norm in a school year.

All I can take away from this is that the pandemic isn't over and being sick has made us more vulnerable. Not that anyone cares.

Comment Careful now (Score 1) 68

by neiras (#64308567) Attached to: What's the highest dollar price will Bitcoin reach in 2024?

Retail investors are just exits for people who've been holding for the last couple of years.

Holders need a mania so they have someone to sell their worthless tokens to.

So a few whales make the price climb and get some media coverage going, retail storms in with the FOMO craze, and the smart money happily sells to retail. Demand dries up, the price falls, the dejected retail bagholders wait a few months and sell at a loss, and the game starts again.

Don't be the greater fool. You've missed this round.

Comment The legal side shows what's up (Score 1) 501

Where I am (Canada), COVID-19 is categorized as a Risk Group 3 human biopathogen , along with HIV, Monkeypox, SARS-1, West Nile, Yellow Fever, mad cow, Creutzfeldt-Jakob, rabies, chikungunya.

Legally, the RG3 pathogen is "a category of human pathogens that pose a high risk to the health of individuals and a low risk to public health and includes the human pathogens listed in Schedule 3. They are likely to cause serious disease in a human." Here is the text of the law with that definition.

Notice the legal difference between "public health" and "individual health"? Public health is mostly about managing group behaviors so that society can keep on doing what it does without being wiped out by disease.

What individuals should care about is individual health.

Just because COVID presents as a cold during its acute phase doesn't mean it's not doing heart or lung damage. I personally know three people who will likely never be the same after being infected. I have zero interest in ending up like them.

The pandemic is still raging - 1 in 19 people are estimated to be infected in Canada this week ) - but public health has decided it's under control "enough." If you're happy to be fuel for the economy, go nuts, I guess. If there were outbreaks of West Nile or Yellow Fever (same RG3 classification!) at work or schools, we sure as hell wouldn't be going there. But since really sick people vanish from public view, this is easy to keep a lid on.

We know that aerosolized COVID can float in enclosed spaces for hours, and that you can get infected by walking into a room long after an infected person was present if ventilation/filtration are poor. A decent FFP2 or N95 that fits you properly will significantly reduce your chances of getting sick. It's such a simple and easy thing to do.

Everyone thinks they aren't susceptible to propaganda, but no one is wearing a mask.

Submission + - Intel To Start Shipping a Quantum Processor (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Intel does a lot of things, but it's mostly noted for making and shipping a lot of processors, many of which have been named after bodies of water. So, saying that the company is set to start sending out a processor called Tunnel Falls would seem unsurprising if it weren't for some key details. Among them: The processor's functional units are qubits, and you shouldn't expect to be able to pick one up on New Egg. Ever. Tunnel Falls appears to be named after a waterfall near Intel's Oregon facility, where the company's quantum research team does much of its work. It's a 12-qubit chip, which places it well behind the qubit count of many of Intel's competitors—all of which are making processors available via cloud services. But Jim Clarke, who heads Intel's quantum efforts, said these differences were due to the company's distinct approach to developing quantum computers.

Intel, in contrast, is attempting to build silicon-based qubits that can benefit from the developments that most of the rest of the company is working on. The company hopes to "ride the coattails of what the CMOS industry has been doing for years," Clarke said in a call with the press and analysts. The goal, according to Clarke, is to make sure the answer to "what do we have to change from our silicon chip in order to make it?" is "as little as possible." The qubits are based on quantum dots, structures that are smaller than the wavelength of an electron in the material. Quantum dots can be used to trap individual electrons, and the properties of the electron can then be addressed to store quantum information. Intel uses its fabrication expertise to craft the quantum dot and create all the neighboring features needed to set and read its state and perform manipulations.

However, Clarke said there are different ways of encoding a qubit in a quantum dot (Loss-DiVincenzo, singlet-triplet, and exchange-only, for those curious). This gets at another key difference with Intel's efforts: While most of its competitors are focused solely on fostering a software developer community, Intel is simultaneously trying to develop a community that will help it improve its hardware. (For software developers, the company also released a software developer kit.) To help get this community going, Intel will send Tunnel Falls processors out to a few universities: The Universities of Maryland, Rochester, Wisconsin, and Sandia National Lab will be the first to receive the new chip, and the company is interested in signing up others. The hope is that researchers at these sites will help Intel characterize sources of error and which forms of qubits provide the best performance.

Submission + - First People Sickened By COVID-19 Were Chinese Scientists At Wuhan Institute Of (substack.com) 1

Submitted by Kerry Boehm
Kerry Boehm writes: After years of official pronouncements to the contrary, significant new evidence has emerged that strengthens the case that the SARS-CoV-2 virus accidentally escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

According to multiple U.S. government officials interviewed as part of a lengthy investigation by Public and Racket, the first people infected by the virus, “patients zero,” included Ben Hu, a researcher who led the WIV’s “gain-of-function” research on SARS-like coronaviruses, which increases the infectiousness of viruses.

More than three years after the pandemic’s outbreak, many around the world had given up on learning the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the highly infectious respiratory virus that has killed millions, and the response to which shut down businesses and schools, upended societies, and caused enormous collateral damage.

Submission + - US Judge Orders Lawyers To Sign AI Pledge, Warning Chatbots 'Make Stuff Up' (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A federal judge in Texas is now requiring lawyers in cases before him to certify that they did not use artificial intelligence to draft their filings without a human checking their accuracy. U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr of the Northern District of Texas issued the requirement on Tuesday, in what appears to be a first for the federal courts. In an interview Wednesday, Starr said that he created the requirement to warn lawyers that AI tools can create fake cases and that he may sanction them if they rely on AI-generated information without verifying it themselves. "We're at least putting lawyers on notice, who might not otherwise be on notice, that they can't just trust those databases. They've got to actually verify it themselves through a traditional database," Starr said.

In the notice about the requirement on his Dallas court's website, Starr said generative AI tools like ChatGPT are "incredibly powerful" and can be used in the law in other ways, but they should not be used for legal briefing. "These platforms in their current states are prone to hallucinations and bias. On hallucinations, they make stuff up—even quotes and citations," the statement said. The judge also said that while attorneys swear an oath to uphold the law and represent their clients, the AI platforms do not. "Unbound by any sense of duty, honor, or justice, such programs act according to computer code rather than conviction, based on programming rather than principle," the notice said.

Starr said on Wednesday that he began drafting the mandate while attending a panel on artificial intelligence at a conference hosted by the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, where the panelists demonstrated how the platforms made up bogus cases. The judge said he considered banning the use of AI in his courtroom altogether, but he decided not to do so after conversations with Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the UCLA School of Law, and others. Volokh said Wednesday that lawyers who use other databases for legal research might assume they can also rely on AI platforms. "This is a way of reminding lawyers they can't assume that," Volokh said.

Submission + - US to stop giving Russia some New START nuclear arms data (reuters.com)

Submitted by terrorubic
terrorubic writes: WASHINGTON, June 1 (Reuters) — The United States said it will stop providing Russia some notifications required under the New START arms control treaty from Thursday, including updates on its missile and launcher locations, to retaliate for Moscow's "ongoing violations" of the accord.

Submission + - Meta Testing The Blocking of News Sites in Canada (ctvnews.ca)

Submitted by Peppercopia
Peppercopia writes: CTV news is reporting that Meta will begin testing the blocking of news sites in Canada. If the argument is that the social media giants are unfairly benefitting from content from Canadian news organizations, this move should be moot as the "stealing" would now be stopping. Unfortunately the opposite is likely the case, and the news organizations will find out how important the free traffic and promotion they are getting from social media giants really is. It feels a bit like killing the golden goose to get the eggs.

Submission + - Boeing delays Starliner launch ... again (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by xanthos
xanthos writes:

A Boeing official said Thursday that the company was "standing down" from an attempt to launch the Starliner spacecraft on July 21 to focus on recently discovered issues with the vehicle. Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager for Starliner, said two spacecraft problems were discovered before Memorial Day weekend and that the company spent the holiday investigating them. After internal discussions that included Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun, the company decided to delay the test flight that would carry NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the International Space Station.

TLDR; the parachute cords might not be strong enough and the tape that holds down all the wiring harnesses might go up in flames. Manned flight score: SpaceX 9 — Boeing 0

Submission + - Millions of PC Motherboards Were Sold With a Firmware Backdoor (eclypsium.com) 1

Submitted by rastos1
rastos1 writes: Wired reports: Researchers at firmware-focused cybersecurity company Eclypsium revealed today that they’ve discovered a hidden mechanism in the firmware of motherboards sold by the Taiwanese manufacturer Gigabyte, whose components are commonly used in gaming PCs and other high-performance computers. Whenever a computer with the affected Gigabyte motherboard restarts, Eclypsium found, code within the motherboard’s firmware invisibly initiates an updater program that runs on the computer and in turn downloads and executes another piece of software.

Eclypsium:
- Eclypsium automated heuristics detected firmware on Gigabyte systems that drops an executable Windows binary that is executed during the Windows startup process.
- This executable binary insecurely downloads and executes additional payloads from the Internet.

List of affected motherboards is here: https://eclypsium.com/wp-conte...

Submission + - Motorola Unveils Its 4th-Gen Foldable, the Moto Razr+ (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After endless leaks, Motorola made its fourth-generation lineup of foldables official today. The flagship is the Moto Razr+, which will launch in the US on June 23 for $999. There's also a cheaper phone called only the "Moto Razr" with a smaller outside screen, slower SoC, and no clear US price or release date. Internationally, these phones are called the Moto Razr 40 Ultra and Moto Razr 40.

The Ultra model's SoC is a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1—that's not the best you can get from Qualcomm, which would be the 8 Gen 2—this is a year-old mid-cycle upgrade chip. The phone has 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a 3800 mAh battery with 30 W quick charging. The leaked display specs have been all over the place, but officially, the interior display is a 6.9-inch, 2640×1080 OLED that runs at a smoking 165 Hz. The exterior display is super big on the Ultra model and is a 3.6-inch, 144 Hz OLED at a nearly square 1066×1056. Motorola has the phone's dust and water ingress protection rated at IP52, which typically only protects from "direct sprays of water up to 15 degrees from the vertical" and is far from qualifying the Razr as a water-resistant phone.

The design has been better. The original foldable Moto Razr reboot from 2020 had beautiful throwback looks that screamed "Moto Razr." It looked just like the old-school flip phone from the early 2000s but modernized. This fourth foldable generation tones things down a lot and is more of a generic rectangle. You could easily confuse it for Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip. This fourth generation seems more mature, though. Motorola will now let you run any app you want on the ultra's giant front screen, complete with the option of a super tiny Android navigation bar tucked away in the bottom left corner, to the left of the two front cameras. You can peruse the app drawer, use Google Pay, or play media on the front display. You can even type on the keyboard: Google GBoard has a special full-screen mode that will show a single line of input text.

Submission + - The first livestream of images from Mars (cnn.com)

Submitted by quonset
quonset writes: In what is considered to be a first, the European Space Agency (ESA) will, if everything goes to plan, stream live images of Mars from ESA's Mars Express orbiter on Friday, June 2nd.

The event is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the launch of the agency’s Mars Express — a mission to take three-dimensional images of the planet’s surface to see it in more complete detail.

You can watch the stream on ESA’s YouTube channel for an hour starting at 6 p.m. Central European Time, or noon ET Friday. While it won’t be truly live, there will be a new image about every 50 seconds of that hour, the agency said.

“Normally, we see images from Mars and know that they were taken days before,” said James Godfrey, spacecraft operations manager at ESA’s mission control center in Darmstadt, Germany, in a statement. “I’m excited to see Mars as it is now — as close to a martian ‘now’ as we can possibly get!”

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