Comment A good test (Score 1) 17
If they want to do a really good test on this garment, have someone wear it around New York right now. If the person stays cool, it's a winner.
Comment Nikola Tesla said it (Score 3, Informative) 50
He said if you want to find the secrets to the universe you have to think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibrations. Which, at its most base level, is what String Theory tries to do. Not saying he's right, but the overlap is interesting.
Comment Re:I don't buy the assumptions (Score 1, Interesting) 50
"the probabilities of all possible outcomes of an event add up to 100%
Many Worlds Interpretation.
the laws of physics are consistent for observers moving at different speeds
Why wouldn't they be consistent? Do the orbits of the planet change whether you are on the Vogager probes or standing on Earth? Does a drop of water form a sphere differently on the ISS than in the Vomit Comet? If the laws of physics changed dependent on one's speed, the universe would be truly fucked.
Comment Re:No, this is not a good thing (Score 2) 86
You realize a large part of a journalists job is to investigate, don't you? It's not illegal to track someone down, no matter how long it's been.
Comment Re: Here's how stupid this all is (Score 1) 55
You need the servers to generate the support contracts. Without Nvidia, or AMD, there's no servers.
Comment Here's how stupid this all is (Score 1) 55
Dell's stock rockets 32% because they're selling more AI-related servers than ever before. However, the only reason they are selling more AI-related servers than ever before is because of Nvidia, yet Nvidia's stock has barely inched upward in months. These two situations cannot both be correct
If Dell is selling servers out the wazoo because of Nvidia and its stock soars, then Nvidia must also be sellling GPUs out the wazoo and its stock shoulld likewise soar. Saying we're at peak AI which is why Nvidia can't go higher makes no sense. It has consistently blown past every financial analysts expectations for the past two or three years. Dell's recent server spike is proof of this. If you think we're at peak AI then Dell shouldn't be anywhere near the price it's at now.
Submission + - Researchers identify people through ordinary Wi-Fi with 99 percent-accuracy (tomshardware.com)
Baron_Yam writes: Security researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany have published a paper demonstrating that unencrypted beamforming data broadcast by Wi-Fi devices during normal operation can be used to identify individuals walking through a room with 99.5% accuracy, regardless of whether the individuals are carrying Wi-Fi devices. The tactic leverages the router's beamforming tech to identify individuals with up to 99.5% accuracy, and it works with existing routers, too.
The system, called BFId, requires no specialized hardware, no access to the target Wi-Fi network, and works even if the person being tracked isn't carrying a wireless device. The team tested the attack on 197 participants, the largest dataset ever used in Wi-Fi-based identification works, and plans to present its findings at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) in Taipei.
See GitHub — https://github.com/ruvnet/RuVi... — for your own personal implementation requiring a couple of APs and a couple of ESP32 nodes. You can get full-home per-zone motion and occupancy detection fairly reliably, with the potential for pose detection and in optimal areas even respiration rate. With the right hardware and configuration, you can theoretically get heart rate too.
The system, called BFId, requires no specialized hardware, no access to the target Wi-Fi network, and works even if the person being tracked isn't carrying a wireless device. The team tested the attack on 197 participants, the largest dataset ever used in Wi-Fi-based identification works, and plans to present its findings at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) in Taipei.
See GitHub — https://github.com/ruvnet/RuVi... — for your own personal implementation requiring a couple of APs and a couple of ESP32 nodes. You can get full-home per-zone motion and occupancy detection fairly reliably, with the potential for pose detection and in optimal areas even respiration rate. With the right hardware and configuration, you can theoretically get heart rate too.
Submission + - Teachers' Union Urges Schools to Curb AI Chatbots and Screen Time
theodp writes: The New York Times reports the $22.5 million AI partnership to 'bring AI into the classroom' struck last July between the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, Microsoft, and OpenAI has hit a bump in the road as the AFT urges schools to curb AI chatbots and screen time, recommending 'no screens' at all for those in second grade or younger, and no AI chatbots for students in elementary school.
The union’s effort reflects a backlash among parents and educators against heavy use of school-issued laptops and apps. Some parents and nonprofit children’s groups are also pushing back against campaigns by tech giants like Google and OpenAI to spread their AI products in schools.
This week, AFT president Randi Weingarten said that the union was negotiating safety and privacy standards for AI use in schools with 'our partners in the AI academy,' and that Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic had agreed in principle to those standards. “We’re being transparent,” Weingarten said, adding that "We’re willing to walk away from the funding that we receive here if we don’t get the safety and privacy."
The union’s effort reflects a backlash among parents and educators against heavy use of school-issued laptops and apps. Some parents and nonprofit children’s groups are also pushing back against campaigns by tech giants like Google and OpenAI to spread their AI products in schools.
This week, AFT president Randi Weingarten said that the union was negotiating safety and privacy standards for AI use in schools with 'our partners in the AI academy,' and that Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic had agreed in principle to those standards. “We’re being transparent,” Weingarten said, adding that "We’re willing to walk away from the funding that we receive here if we don’t get the safety and privacy."
Submission + - The oral tradition that built software may not survive AI (fastcompany.com)
smooth wombat writes: Writing software is not just about knowing what to code. Verbally passing on knowledge of why something is done one way or the other, how to diagnose an issue, or what changes took place after implementation because no one documented those changes has been part of programming since day one. However, with the advent of AI, that institutional knowledge may be under threat.
It’s tempting therefore to imagine that generative AI will step into the breach and solve this for us. After all, even if you don’t want to turn a large language model (LLM) loose on a legacy code base—and there are plenty of reasons that you shouldn’t—having it generate documentation on the codebase itself might sound like a solution to the absence of other written information. LLMs can certainly summarize code back to you.
But hold up with that idea. Beyond hallucinations, there’s a deeper problem: Writing documentation is itself part of the thinking process. Whether I’m writing history or software, putting an approach into words helps refine it before I sink hours into implementation. Documentation also captures intent. An LLM may be able to summarize what a codebase does, but it cannot reliably explain why a developer chose one approach over another, or what trade-offs shaped that decision.
Moreover, it’s a chance for somebody else to understand why you did what you did. If they plan to change what I wrote (especially in a few years), they might understand why I needed to write it that way and what might be lost if you take it out. An LLM can read code that I’ve written. It might even scan a large codebase and accurately summarize what it’s doing. But it can’t assess authorial intent.
It’s tempting therefore to imagine that generative AI will step into the breach and solve this for us. After all, even if you don’t want to turn a large language model (LLM) loose on a legacy code base—and there are plenty of reasons that you shouldn’t—having it generate documentation on the codebase itself might sound like a solution to the absence of other written information. LLMs can certainly summarize code back to you.
But hold up with that idea. Beyond hallucinations, there’s a deeper problem: Writing documentation is itself part of the thinking process. Whether I’m writing history or software, putting an approach into words helps refine it before I sink hours into implementation. Documentation also captures intent. An LLM may be able to summarize what a codebase does, but it cannot reliably explain why a developer chose one approach over another, or what trade-offs shaped that decision.
Moreover, it’s a chance for somebody else to understand why you did what you did. If they plan to change what I wrote (especially in a few years), they might understand why I needed to write it that way and what might be lost if you take it out. An LLM can read code that I’ve written. It might even scan a large codebase and accurately summarize what it’s doing. But it can’t assess authorial intent.
Comment As always (Score 2) 171
Comment Punishment by dear leader (Score 5, Insightful) 42
This has absolutely nothing to do with "competition". This is Trump continuing his assault on "woke" (whatever that means) insttituions of higher learning. Most especially ones on both coasts.
But here's another thing. Caltech has been doing this work for decades. It's well-established and works hand-in-glove with JPL to get things done. Each knows what the other is doing. If this goes through, whomever buys the contract will not have that institutional knowledge unless they pull over people from Caltech. Even then, there will be a disruption as the owner is brought up to speed. How many mistakes and bad decisions do you think will be made, costing taxpayers who knows how many billions of dollars as missions fail?
Where I work we're going through a similar situation. We've been using a supplier for who knows how long. That supplier has been in existence for decades and has a well-established quoting sytem, the web site shows what's available so you can do comparisons, and the people know what they're doing. Everything just works.
Fast forward to last year where we were told we had a new supplier. We were to start using them in July of 2025. We didn't start using them until March of this year, and they do not have a web site which was supposed to be running last month. Getting a quote from them is at least a 24-hour wait. Recently (three weeks ago), a message went out to not use the supplier because of the issues they were having such as not delivering the products quoted and paid for. For now, we're back to using our previous supplier until told otherwise.
If we've having this issue buying products when moving to a new supplier, how difficult do you think moving from Caltech to whomever will be when they're involved with spaceflight?
Comment Re: Federal Bribery and Taxpayer Abuse. (Score 5, Informative) 101
It really should matter. If we can just decide the text means whatever we want it to mean, what's the point in writing it down?
As clearly shown by the current hacks on the Supreme Court. "Privacy in the 9th Amendment? Never heard of it." "Limited government? What's that?"
Comment This is why books are better (Score 3, Insightful) 42
You never have to worry about someone turning off access to a book you purchased thirty years ago.
You don't have to find workarounds to get a book. They're available practically everywhere.
Text within a book will never change. Once you have the book, it remains the same forever.
No one can remotely remove access to your books.
The only real benefit to Kindles and the like is you can have multiple books on you at the same time even though you can only read one at a time. Until your power runs out. Which doesn't happen when you have a book.
Comment Musk is so worried about safety (Score 2, Insightful) 26
He ran off to create his own AI as fast as possible. Which is exactly what one does when they're concerned with safety. Do something really fast without any forethought or plan.
Comment Re:Can we have the more paranoid one? (Score 4, Insightful) 68
Musk set up OpenAI as an OPEN SOURCE NON PROFIT because he is paranoid about AI.
Sometime people we don't like can be on the right side of history and grownup people understand that.
Which is why he's created his own AI and is working to integrate it into whatever he touches.
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"I've finally learned what `upward compatible' means. It means we get to keep all our old mistakes." -- Dennie van Tassel
