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Comment Re:So.. drive them somewhere? (Score 3) 103

I agree with your broader point, but I think you are parsing your quoted excerpts from California and FL legal statutes incorrectly.

The CA statute does not state that ambulances can exceed the speed *limit* by 15 MPH when ignoring a stop sign or stop signal; it states very plainly that the ambulance cannot exceed the speed of 15 MPH when doing so. In other words, the ambulance has to slow down (typically) to 15 MPH when passing through such intersections.

Similarly, the FL statute states that the absolute speed limit for ambulances is 40 MPH, except in cases of "extreme emergency". It does not state that ambulances can exceed the normal speed *limit* by 40 MPH.

It varies by jurisdiction, but no, they don't. At least in California, they can legally exceed the speed limit:

(b) Speed Restriction. In no event shall an ambulance driver exceed a speed of 15 miles per hour while disobeying any official traffic control stop sign or stop signal.

So that means that while going through, say, a red light, not only can they legally go through it, but then can, at most, exceed the speed limit by 15 MPH while doing it.

Here is the relevant law for Hollywood, FL:

No ambulance shall exceed the speed of 40 miles per hour except in cases of extreme emergency.

Which means they can exceed the speed limit by 39 MPH for "non-extreme" emergencies.

Comment Re:Pragmatic attitude works well on this. (Score 5, Informative) 91

The e-mail thread in question is about an LLM-based code reviewer (effectively a fancy static analyzer), and not LLM-generated code. I think the copyright concerns are significantly different between those two use cases. I tend to agree that new code contributed by an LLM is likely entangled with copyright concerns depending on the origins of the LLM's training data sets; plus the hallucination and error risks are far less impactful if confined to code reviews and bugfinding. Also, at this point, I imagine an LLM trained exclusively on open source data sets could be quite capable.

Ted Tso, a senior linux contributor and maintainer, appears to agree; he noted on the thread that there are multiple use cases for LLMs and conflating all of them is not helpful.

Submission + - SpaceXAI and Starlink X Accounts Hacked, Abused to Promote scams (spamreports.report)

D,Petkow writes: Another day, another twitter/X scam, but this time involving the official gold-verified accounts of both SPACEX and STARLINK, and another gold-verified account, which is now suspended.

An account called "Sam Catman" somehow obtained an official SpaceXAI-affiliated *gold* badge and posted promotion for a new meme coin on Robinhood Chain.
Shortly afterward, the verified @SpaceXAI and Starlink accounts reposted it, giving the scam instant credibility to millions of followers.
The token pumped hard before the expected rug pull. The original posts have since been deleted.
As of now, there has been zero official acknowledgment or statement from SpaceXAI, Starlink, or Elon Musk about how a high-profile corporate account cluster was compromised so easily — or how the "official affiliate" badge system was abused.

Full story

As a result more than 120 000 USD have been stolen and laundered (so far), how convenient.
Classic reminder that even the biggest names in tech can get owned by a cartoon cat shilling a concurrency "memecoin". The gold badge was apparently worth its weight in rug residue.

The lack of transparency also says plenty, as if never of this ever happened.

Submission + - Jensen Huang: The U.S. Sanctions on China Are the Dumbest Thing (binance.com)

hackingbear writes: nVidia CEO Huang held a closed-door meeting in a top private room at the Grand Hyatt Taipei. There were only 12 invited guests, all heavyweight figures—executives from TSMC, Quanta, Wistron, and Hon Hai, as well as partners from two American venture capital firms. Just after the meeting ended, three participants leaked the content verbatim to a Financial Times reporter who published Huang's words (paywalled) and Reuters and Bloomberg verified it with all 12 attendees present that day, and everyone confirmed the authenticity of the report. The key sentences in the speech are explosive:
  • The opening conclusion: "If you ask me who’s going to win the generative AI race in the next 5-10 years — China is going to win. Period."
  • "They have one million people working on this 24/7. One million. Not 100,000 — one million. You know how many we have in the entire Silicon Valley working full-time on foundation models? Maybe 20,000 on a good day."
  • "And they’re not going to quit. They’re not going to quit. The more you sanction them, the harder they work. You can’t stop them. The more you stop them, the more determined they get."
  • On Huawei: ""Don’t underestimate Huawei. Their Ascend 910C is already within 8-12% of H100 performance in most workloads — and they make 200,000 of them per month now. Two hundred thousand. Per month. While we’re sitting here arguing about CFIUS."
  • "These export controls? They’re the dumbest thing we’ve ever done. You just gave them the best national mobilization mission in 50 years. It’s like a Sputnik moment on steroids."
  • "Washington thinks they’re stopping China. They’re not stopping China — they’re accelerating China. By 2027, China will have more AI compute than the rest of the world combined. Mark my words."
  • The concluding remakr: "So yeah, keep the sanctions if you want. Just understand: you’re handing them the trophy."

Comment Re:We Really Mean It, This Time. (Score 5, Informative) 66

You're a very poor liar, every bit if your nonsense is easily falsifiable.

Even back in 1990, when the models and computations were significantly less mature, the IPCC estimated ~0.3C of warming per decade in the 21st century.

Are you capable of the mental arithmetic to project to 2050 from 1990?

Measured temperatures have demonstrated acceleration beyond those initial projections (I'm surprised the current administration/ignorance cult hasn't deleted the NOAA page).

You're a toddler with oppositional defiance disorder, in a world governed by the hard rules of physics and chemistry. You and your doomsday ignorance cults are irredeemable, but those of us who are real engineers and scientists will try to pick up the pieces.

Comment Re:FUCKING LIARS! (Score 5, Informative) 150

For instance, there is debate over giving Hepatitis B shots to infants. It is largely a sexually transmitted disease and one of the primary reasons for giving it earlier is to avoid associating it with adolescents becoming sexually active. In other words, its based on political concerns not science.

This is entirely incorrect. Infants can acquire Hep B from mothers, and the virus can survive outside the body for a week.

Comment Re:Investments (Score 3, Informative) 158

While right wing folks consume a far broader spectrum of media from all sides,...

1. Political Polarization & Media Habits - 2014 Pew Research Center

The first study above (at least) doesn't seem to support the claim. To quote:

Overall, the study finds that consistent conservatives: Are tightly clustered around a single news source, far more than any other group in the survey, with 47% citing Fox News as their main source for news about government and politics.

...

By contrast, those with consistently liberal views: Are less unified in their media loyalty; they rely on a greater range of news outlets, including some – like NPR and the New York Times– that others use far less.

And this study dates back to 2014. It seems logical that the advent of Trump, OANN and such have only worsened the phenomenon.

I consider myself a fiscal conservative and social liberal.

From that perspective, I recognize that Fox News, Breitbart and friends are generally more divorced from reality than the NYT or WaPo.

The Republicans, with a few exceptions like Massie, only pay lip service to the deficit when convenient. Objectively the economy has generally performed better under Democratic administrations following fiscal crises induced by irresponsible levels of GOP deregulation. The GOP also has a tendency to actively sabotage the government with poison pilled legislation, or the utterly irresponsible ongoing slash and burn of the federal government. Optimizing the government calls for a scalpel, not whatever idiocy Musk and co. are engaging in.

On the other hand, some Democrats believe in fantasies such as Modern Monetary theory and student loan forgiveness without tuition reform; that said, the student loan forgiveness attempt was a better use of funds than (largely fraudulent) PPP loans or a significant fraction of defense spending, carried interest, agricultural subsidies and other loopholes.

Submission + - The naked-eye shy will (briefly) host a new star.

RockDoctor writes: By "star", I do not mean "comet", "meteorite" or "firefly", but genuine photons arriving here after about 3000 years in flight, causing your eyes to see a bright point on the nighttime sky. When it happens, the star will go from needing a telescope ot good binoculars to see, to being the 50th (or even 30th) brightest star in the sky. For a week or so.

Of course, it could just go full-on supernova, and be visible in daylight for a few weeks, and dominate the night sky for months. But that's unlikely.

"T Corona Borealis" (meaning : the 20th variable star studied in the constellation "Corona Borealis") is a variable star in the northern sky — circumpolar (visible all night, all year) for about 60% of the world's population which normally you need binoculars to see. For over 150 years it has been known to vary in brightness, slightly. But in 1866, it suddenly brightened to become about the 35th brightest star in the sky. "Suddenly" meaning it was invisible one hour, and near full brightness an hour later. That made it a dramatic "nova" ("new star"), if not a "supernova", and people watched it like hungry haws as it faded over the next weeks, and months, and years.

And it faded back into it's previous obscurity, just wobbling a little, well below naked-eye visibility.

Until the late 1930s, when it started to change it's ESTABLISHED 280-day cyclic pattern. Then, in 1946 ... someone turned the switch back on, and again in less than an hour it brightened about 240 times, again becoming about the 50th brightest object in the sky. Which made it almost unique — a recurring nova. Today, only 10 of these are known, and they're extremely important for understanding the mechanisms underlying novae.

In 2016, "T CrB" (as it is known) started showing a similar pattern of changes to what were seen in the late 1930s.

In 2023, the pattern continued and the match of details got better.

The star is expected to undergo another "eruption" — becoming one of the brightest few stars in the sky, within the next couple of months. Maybe the next couple of weeks. Maybe the next couple of hours. I'll check the databases before submitting the story, and advise the editors to check too.

Last week, astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst posted on the expected event in her monthly "Night Sky News" video blog. If you prefer your information in text not video, the AAVSO (variable star observers) posted a news alert for it's observers a while ago. They also hosted a seminar on the star, and why it's eruption is expected Real Soon Now, which is also on YouTube. A small selection of recent papers on the subject are posted here, which also includes information on how to get the most up-to-date (unless you're a HST / JWST / Palomar / Hawai`i / Chile telescope operator) brightness readings. Yes, the "big guns" of astronomy have prepared their "TOO — Target Of Opportunity" plans, and will be dropping normal observations really quickly when the news breaks and slewing TOO the target.

You won't need your eclipse glasses for this (Dr Becky's video covers where you can send them for re-use), but you might want to photograph the appropriate part of the sky so you'll notice when the bomb goes off.

Bomb? Did I say that the best model for what is happening is a thermonuclear explosion like a H-bomb the size of the Earth detonating? Well, that's the best analogue. Understandably, taking a "close" (3000 light years — not close enough?) look at one seems like a good idea.

Preview, check for brightening/ detonation (JD 2460428.55208 = 2024 Apr. 28.05208 mag 9.905 0.0052 — not "Gone" yet!), submit.

Comment Re:the stolen data was freely shared to others... (Score 5, Insightful) 95

Don't quite agree. Quoting

The hackers broke into this first set of victims by brute-forcing accounts with passwords that were known to be associated with the targeted customers, a technique known as credential stuffing.

Did 23andme have no safeguards against brute-force attacks at scale? Or identifying logins from multiple accounts across a small set of IPs etc.? Or identifying logins from a location entirely different from the customary geolocation of the user, prompting an e-mail verification?

Gmail etc. all implement similar safeguards.

Yes, password hygiene is important, but blaming an 80 year old grandma for reusing a password is ridiculous, when a giant corporation could easily add safeguards.

Comment Re:2010 - 2016 (Score 1) 194

Not to worry, they'll claim that the polio vaccine given to their great-grandparents manifests epigenetically unto the Nth generation.

(The latest conspiracy theory appears to be that polio elimination was due to DDT elimination, and not due to the vaccine...alas for humanity).

Comment LexisNexis is the worst (Score 5, Informative) 43

They're effectively a (very opaque) credit bureau, but they seem to habitually violate the FCRA, and make it ridiculously difficult to get a copy of your report, opt-out, or correct misleading information.

Setting aside this issue, they've faced multiple class action action lawsuits regarding incorrect data supplied to lenders.

Comment Re:Meanwhile in other countries... (Score 1) 280

Will try to respond in more detail later, but at least the second link purports to list age-adjusted mortality rates, to quote:

The new study, conducted by researchers in Texas, Missouri, Massachusetts and Pakistan, covers the years 2001 through 2019 and examines age-adjusted mortality rates—the number of deaths per 100,000 people each year—from the top 10 leading causes of death, as recorded in 2019. These include heart disease, cancer, lung disease, unintentional injuries and suicide. The researchers then analyzed county-level results in each of the five presidential elections that took place during their study period, identifying counties as Republican or Democratic for the subsequent four years. They found the gap in mortality rates between Republican and Democratic counties increased for nine out of 10 causes of death. (The gap for cerebrovascular disease, which includes stroke and aneurysms, remained but narrowed.) Political environment, the authors suggest in the paper, is a “core determinant of health.”

I agree there's probably some correlation to wealth (both in reducing susceptibility in the first place due to diet/lifestyle opportunities as well as better healthcare once sick), and there are probably many other sensitivity factors.

However, w.r.t. COVID, I notice you don't mention vaccination rates, which are probably the biggest influence--the vaccines are not sterilizing, but they definitely reduce death rates. Anti-vax correlates both with extreme left and right political views, but I think given the rhetoric from the likes of Carlson and various GOP politicians, I believe it is currently a much higher correlation with Trump-republicanism. Here's a study on that, to quote:

A U.S. News analysis shows that as of Jan. 26, counties where former President Donald Trump received the most votes in 2020 had a full vaccination rate of 52%, while counties that went to President Joe Biden had a rate of 66% – a difference of 14 percentage points.

Comment Re:Meanwhile in other countries... (Score 1) 280

I agree that state-level analyses are too coarse-grained.

Here's data showing that Trump/republican-voting counties had higher rates of hospitalization and death relative to blue counties, and it's not just COVID-correlated.

To quote:

Those living in counties that voted 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.26 times the death rate of those that went by the same margin for Biden. Counties with a higher share of Trump votes had even higher mortality rates.

Another report indicates the red/blue county death rate delta predates COVID, although the magnitude increased during COVID.

To quote:

In a study published in June in The BMJ, Warraich and his colleagues showed that over the two decades prior to the pandemic, there was a growing gap in mortality rates for residents of Republican and Democratic counties across the U.S. In 2001, the study’s starting point, the risk of death among red and blue counties (as defined by the results of presidential elections) was similar. Overall, the U.S. mortality rate has decreased in the nearly two decades since then (albeit not as much as in most other high-income countries). But the improvement for those living in Republican counties by 2019 was half that of those in Democratic counties—11 percent lower versus 22 percent lower.

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