Comment "option" (Score 1) 16
This is how it starts, an option... right up until they steamroll you by making it mandatory and a dependency. I recall how systemd was "optional" until it suddenly wasn't.
Comment Re: They exist. (Score 1) 72
Those diamond batteries were bullshit.
Sir, I am an expert in chemistry having had multiple minutes of experience in searching for information about it. As such, I defer to you because sure, like I would know.
It's not that I don't like chemistry, it's just that I think the reality needs to refactor it's lower level APIs, starting with mathematics. I'm not saying it's wasteful but too much computational power goes into Pi. They should make it a simple integer value like 3 and make e like... 2.
Submission + - ChatGPT, Gemini Call BS on Microsoft's PERM Program Ban 'Comment'
theodp writes: Asked to comment on the merits of the Microsoft Comment on Recent Immigration Questions, which was posted without attribution on the Microsoft On The Issues blog in response to the U.S. Government's suspension of Microsoft, Adobe, and IT outsourcing giants from the Green Card program (PERM), ChatGPT suggested it was a red herring defense at best: "The central issue is whether Microsoft has complied with the requirements governing permanent labor certification, including whether qualified American workers were genuinely considered for positions being offered to foreign workers. Microsoft instead emphasizes that 80% of its H-1B applications involved existing employees rather than new hires. That framing encourages readers to think the government's concern rests on a basic misunderstanding: that the government is counting existing workers as new foreign hires. But that is not necessarily the government's argument. Existing H-1B employees can subsequently be sponsored for permanent residency, and their employers must still comply with the applicable PERM requirements."
Asked to provide a second AI opinion, Google's Gemini agreed: "Microsoft’s response is a classic piece of defensive corporate communication. It successfully highlights true statistics—such as its high median wages and the fact that most H-1B filings are internal extensions—to counter the narrative that it is a low-wage outsourcing shop. However, its statement completely sidesteps the central accusation: that its ongoing sponsorship of thousands of green cards via the PERM program ran afoul of labor regulations while it was concurrently laying off thousands of domestic American workers. By omitting this tension, Microsoft's response answers questions the administration wasn't actually asking while ignoring the underlying compliance and fraud investigations that triggered the freeze."
Microsoft is hardly the only tech giant whose PERM program hiring practices have attracted U.S. government scrutiny. In August 2026, the U.S Dept. of Justice's Civil Rights Division announced a $3.2 million settlement involving OpenAI OpCo LLC and its analytics provider Statsig that addressed allegations of "discriminating against U.S. workers" during the PERM hiring process. And in 2023, Apple was required by the U.S. Dept. of Justice to pay up to $25 million in backpay and civil penalties to "resolve allegations that Apple illegally discriminated in hiring and recruitment against U.S. citizens and certain non-U.S. citizens." And in 2021, Facebook agreed to pay up to $14.25 million to settle civil claims by the U.S. government that the social media company discriminated against American workers and violated federal recruitment rules.
Asked to provide a second AI opinion, Google's Gemini agreed: "Microsoft’s response is a classic piece of defensive corporate communication. It successfully highlights true statistics—such as its high median wages and the fact that most H-1B filings are internal extensions—to counter the narrative that it is a low-wage outsourcing shop. However, its statement completely sidesteps the central accusation: that its ongoing sponsorship of thousands of green cards via the PERM program ran afoul of labor regulations while it was concurrently laying off thousands of domestic American workers. By omitting this tension, Microsoft's response answers questions the administration wasn't actually asking while ignoring the underlying compliance and fraud investigations that triggered the freeze."
Microsoft is hardly the only tech giant whose PERM program hiring practices have attracted U.S. government scrutiny. In August 2026, the U.S Dept. of Justice's Civil Rights Division announced a $3.2 million settlement involving OpenAI OpCo LLC and its analytics provider Statsig that addressed allegations of "discriminating against U.S. workers" during the PERM hiring process. And in 2023, Apple was required by the U.S. Dept. of Justice to pay up to $25 million in backpay and civil penalties to "resolve allegations that Apple illegally discriminated in hiring and recruitment against U.S. citizens and certain non-U.S. citizens." And in 2021, Facebook agreed to pay up to $14.25 million to settle civil claims by the U.S. government that the social media company discriminated against American workers and violated federal recruitment rules.
Comment They exist. (Score 3, Interesting) 72
Chip-scale atomic clocks are a thing. The problem is that they aren't exactly low enough power to be wrist mounted as they need 115 mW constantly. You absolute can make it into a wristwatch (and people have) but it will need regular charging... unless you are using betavoltaic nuclear batteries. However to reach the power output needed with what is on the market, you would need about 120K of them.
The natural reaction to this is "what's the purpose of building up that kind of arm strength if the batteries are just going to die in 50 years?" and the answer is the diamond battery! This is a newer betavoltaic battery which is in the same power output range but lasts for thousands of years because it's based on Carbon-14.
Start doing those reps today because the watch of your dreams is 2400Kg.
Submission + - "Software is over" Developer uses AI builds Adobe clones after cancellation fees (techspot.com) 1
joshuark writes: Ars Technica reports, developer Brandon Thomas is taking on seven of Adobe's best-known applications through Artcraft. The project extend beyond Adobe's famous photo editing program to video production, vector graphics, page layouts, and PDF tools.
In his Reddit announcement, Thomas says he used Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 to build the replacements in Rust. Photocraft imitates Photoshop, while Vectorcraft and Filmcraft take on Illustrator and Premiere. Lightcraft, Effectcraft, Designcraft, and Printcraft are the alternatives to Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro, respectively.
The apps are open source and free, with no subscription required. Users can download the source code, modify it, and contribute fixes. Thomas describes himself as a software industry veteran with 15 years of experience, including roughly a decade working with Rust. He also insists the project has team support and will not be abandoned after launch.
"We're going to reach 100% parity within a month," he said, which is an ambitious claim.
For now, the software remains at an early stage, and commenters have reported problems with basic functionality. They might look like Adobe's apps, but it doesn't sound like they're able to replace the long-established programs just yet.
Thomas says Adobe's cancelation fees helped motivate the project, which is understandable.
Thomas believes other developers will follow suit, predicting a future where free, near-identical open-source versions of popular paid apps will be widely available.
"Now you can just create 1:1 functional equivalents, clean room, that are highly performant and cross-platform. Nothing is stopping you," Thomas wrote. "We'll replace Google Search, we'll build our own smartphones, we'll build better infra. We'll remove all the ads and de-enshittify the entire tech world."
"Software is over," he declared, somewhat boldly. And hopefully cancellation fees.
In his Reddit announcement, Thomas says he used Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 to build the replacements in Rust. Photocraft imitates Photoshop, while Vectorcraft and Filmcraft take on Illustrator and Premiere. Lightcraft, Effectcraft, Designcraft, and Printcraft are the alternatives to Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro, respectively.
The apps are open source and free, with no subscription required. Users can download the source code, modify it, and contribute fixes. Thomas describes himself as a software industry veteran with 15 years of experience, including roughly a decade working with Rust. He also insists the project has team support and will not be abandoned after launch.
"We're going to reach 100% parity within a month," he said, which is an ambitious claim.
For now, the software remains at an early stage, and commenters have reported problems with basic functionality. They might look like Adobe's apps, but it doesn't sound like they're able to replace the long-established programs just yet.
Thomas says Adobe's cancelation fees helped motivate the project, which is understandable.
Thomas believes other developers will follow suit, predicting a future where free, near-identical open-source versions of popular paid apps will be widely available.
"Now you can just create 1:1 functional equivalents, clean room, that are highly performant and cross-platform. Nothing is stopping you," Thomas wrote. "We'll replace Google Search, we'll build our own smartphones, we'll build better infra. We'll remove all the ads and de-enshittify the entire tech world."
"Software is over," he declared, somewhat boldly. And hopefully cancellation fees.
Comment Legality has nothing to do with it. (Score 1) 2
Adobe will sue not because they are legally correct but because it is an effective tactic. They need only to make the case expensive until they bankrupt the defendant. Legality is not relevant to their case.
Submission + - First Nuclear Clocks Start Ticking in Vienna and Beijing (phys.org)
necro81 writes: Two groups, one in Vienna and one in Beijing, have successfully demonstrated the world's first nuclear clocks. Standard atomic clocks, like the caesium clocks that define the second, operate by observing the transition of electrons between different orbits about the nucleus. The resulting radiation is usually in the microwave range, and can produce clocks accurate to one second in 100 billion years.
Nuclear clocks go a step further, and probe energy transitions within the nucleus itself. Nuclei can arrange their protons and neutrons into different configurations, called isomers. The isomer with the lowest energy is the one usually found; higher-energy ones are only metastable and decay quickly. Usually it takes serious energy — x-rays and gamma rays — to excite a nucleus into a higher-energy arrangement. It so happens that thorium-229 can be excited using UV light with a wavelength of 148 nm — just within the capabilities of some exotic lasers.
It's still been quite a challenge. For one thing, Th-229 is not found in nature; it must be extracted from the decay chain of uranium-235. The Beijing team used just a microgram mixed in a crystal of calcium fluoride.
Although these prototype nuclear clocks are not yet more accurate than existing atomic clocks (one second in millions, rather than billions, of years), they show the way towards what may be possible. Because the energy transition is in the nucleus, rather than the electron cloud, it is less susceptible to outside disturbances like magnetic fields. And the fundamental frequency is much higher (five orders of magnitude), which should yield more precise timing. This development could lead to smaller and more reliable time standards across the world (and solar system).
Nuclear clocks go a step further, and probe energy transitions within the nucleus itself. Nuclei can arrange their protons and neutrons into different configurations, called isomers. The isomer with the lowest energy is the one usually found; higher-energy ones are only metastable and decay quickly. Usually it takes serious energy — x-rays and gamma rays — to excite a nucleus into a higher-energy arrangement. It so happens that thorium-229 can be excited using UV light with a wavelength of 148 nm — just within the capabilities of some exotic lasers.
It's still been quite a challenge. For one thing, Th-229 is not found in nature; it must be extracted from the decay chain of uranium-235. The Beijing team used just a microgram mixed in a crystal of calcium fluoride.
Although these prototype nuclear clocks are not yet more accurate than existing atomic clocks (one second in millions, rather than billions, of years), they show the way towards what may be possible. Because the energy transition is in the nucleus, rather than the electron cloud, it is less susceptible to outside disturbances like magnetic fields. And the fundamental frequency is much higher (five orders of magnitude), which should yield more precise timing. This development could lead to smaller and more reliable time standards across the world (and solar system).
Submission + - UK vegetables 20-50% less nutritious than in the 1960s (telegraph.co.uk)
Bruce66423 writes: 'The nutritional value of fruit and vegetables has fallen by up to 50pc since the Sixties because of declining soil quality, according to a new study.
'The study found that many crops had lost 20pc to 50pc of several key nutrients.
'Will Summers, a senior associate at the firm, said: “For 60 years we’ve measured food security in calories and tonnes per hectare.
'“On those measures we’ve done remarkably well. But we’ve been quietly hollowing out what’s inside our food.”
'The decrease in nutrient and vitamin value is thought to be down to declining soil quality and crops being selectively bred for their ability to grow quickly, rather than there being any focus on their health benefits.'
'The study found that many crops had lost 20pc to 50pc of several key nutrients.
'Will Summers, a senior associate at the firm, said: “For 60 years we’ve measured food security in calories and tonnes per hectare.
'“On those measures we’ve done remarkably well. But we’ve been quietly hollowing out what’s inside our food.”
'The decrease in nutrient and vitamin value is thought to be down to declining soil quality and crops being selectively bred for their ability to grow quickly, rather than there being any focus on their health benefits.'
Comment Feeling conflicted. (Score 1) 34
While the cable lobby is correct and I hope they prevail, I also hope they are forced to pay a huge fine for being a bunch of hypocritical assholes. We don't need to criminalize it, just make hypocrisy financially painful.
Comment Re:There was a mass shooting (Score 1) 90
Yes but obviously getting banned was very upsetting. Just look, she soon went on to kill 8 other people and then herself!
Comment Re:Strange line to draw (Score 1) 46
Seems like a head-mounted camera is fine under this ban, though, as long as it isn't also covert?
FTFY. The issue at hand is that it's a hidden camera.
Comment Re:There was a mass shooting (Score 1) 90
Why is it so easy to ask ChatGPT how best to kill people?
The interface is in natural written language which is the selling point of the whole thing. Additionally, it's not actually intelligent so it is not cognizant of anything much less the harm the information may cause.
Bottom line: it's just a machine.
Comment Re:There was a mass shooting (Score 1) 90
In Canada someone used ChatGPT to plan a mass shooting. It was detected and the account was shut down, but it was decided not to report it to police. She went on to kill 8 people in a school shooting and herself.
We can't actually know if the scenario was a plan or a precautionary measure, you know, safety first.
However, what we know for sure is that she went on a mass shooting after her account was suddenly closed without explanation. This is exactly why they shouldn't shut down someone's account without providing them with a clear a rationale!
Comment Re:Laws of physics (Score 1) 17
you end up with so many adjustable terms that your model could predict many things.
FTFY.
It seems wiser to identify what could be possible before claiming what is impossible.
Comment Re:It's an Electron app. (Score 1) 70
it's slow as hell.
