Comment Time to decrement the version number (Score 2) 30
It's now more accurately known as Microsoft 364.
Submission + - Power Grids on 5 Continents Pulse Every 60s. Scientists Think They Know Why (sciencealert.com)
fahrbot-bot writes: ScienceAlert is reporting that researchers may have finally determined why, for many years, power grids around the world have been pulsing every 60 seconds: uninterruptible power supplies running routine battery checks.
Every minute, some uninterruptible power supplies perform routine battery checks, creating small but measurable surges in electricity demand. And it's like clockwork.
"Even benign control routines can become systemically relevant when many devices act coherently," writes a team led by physicist Dirk Witthaut of the University of Cologne, Germany, in a paper published in Nature Energy.
"Unintended synchronization can generate recurrent and potentially amplified oscillatory behavior in large-scale cyber-physical energy systems."
To figure it out, Witthaut and his colleagues analyzed high-resolution electricity measurements from buildings at the Forschungszentrum Jülich research campus in Germany. They found the 60-second pattern appeared in four buildings, all of which contained uninterruptible power supplies. None of the buildings they measured without these systems showed the same pattern.
Following the electrical signals more closely, the researchers detected tiny bursts of current from the batteries at precisely one-minute intervals. They were able to trace the resulting fluctuations through one building's electrical system, all the way to the connection with the public high-voltage grid.
The manufacturer subsequently confirmed the culprit's identity – routine battery self-tests, conducted automatically by the systems' management software.
But why would equipment in different buildings, let alone different countries, be doing this at the same time? The answer appears to lie in the clocks. Digital devices can synchronize their internal clocks using external time signals, meaning that independently operating systems can end up performing their scheduled tasks together.
Individually, these small checks are insignificant. But when enough devices act in synchrony, their combined electricity demand can produce a measurable effect across an entire power grid.
Every minute, some uninterruptible power supplies perform routine battery checks, creating small but measurable surges in electricity demand. And it's like clockwork.
"Even benign control routines can become systemically relevant when many devices act coherently," writes a team led by physicist Dirk Witthaut of the University of Cologne, Germany, in a paper published in Nature Energy.
"Unintended synchronization can generate recurrent and potentially amplified oscillatory behavior in large-scale cyber-physical energy systems."
To figure it out, Witthaut and his colleagues analyzed high-resolution electricity measurements from buildings at the Forschungszentrum Jülich research campus in Germany. They found the 60-second pattern appeared in four buildings, all of which contained uninterruptible power supplies. None of the buildings they measured without these systems showed the same pattern.
Following the electrical signals more closely, the researchers detected tiny bursts of current from the batteries at precisely one-minute intervals. They were able to trace the resulting fluctuations through one building's electrical system, all the way to the connection with the public high-voltage grid.
The manufacturer subsequently confirmed the culprit's identity – routine battery self-tests, conducted automatically by the systems' management software.
But why would equipment in different buildings, let alone different countries, be doing this at the same time? The answer appears to lie in the clocks. Digital devices can synchronize their internal clocks using external time signals, meaning that independently operating systems can end up performing their scheduled tasks together.
Individually, these small checks are insignificant. But when enough devices act in synchrony, their combined electricity demand can produce a measurable effect across an entire power grid.
Comment Re:One day... (Score 1) 59
How long till all of this is weaponized? Robots hunt you from building to building. Picture this but armed and less friendly looking.
Dunno why everyone thinks Terminator is prophetic. If you want to see robots hunting people down, there's plenty of footage of that coming out of the Ukraine already, and none of it involves humanoid robots. If you want to know what getting hunted down by a robot will be like in the future, imagine a swarm of mosquitoes coming for you, except instead of trying to extract a little blood, they're trying to inject a little cyanide. No self-respecting military is going to buy expensive human-sized killbots when miniaturized ones do the job better and quicker at 1/1000th of the price.
Comment Re:Birds of a feather (Score 1) 98
I was expecting your linked article to talk about Huang going around hitting employees with sticks or something, given your characterization of "abusing" employees. Turns out that is not the case.
Huang now displays a "task-oriented" leadership style which places value on getting things done, setting ambitious goals, and monitoring performance, Rivkin said.
Horrendous! How can an employer just expect that employees perform?? Worse,
Workers at a high-profile company like Nvidia generally have other options but "they are choosing to remain for as long as they can," says Chaturvedi, which suggests Huang is doing something right.
All those poor abused working people must have Stockholm Syndrome to want to stay in such a terrible environment!
I don't know. Maybe it feels "abusive" to you when your boss judges your performance based on what you have accomplished, but many people actually appreciate that sort of environment and are able to work hard there to get ahead.
Now, cheating on your wife, OTOH, is definitely a very bad thing. Especially when it is with a foreign spy. Frankly, that level of poor judgement should probably cost him his job.
But it doesn't sound like he was abusing his employees.
Comment Does Iran have a motive? (Score 3, Insightful) 187
What would Iran gain from messing with France?
I'd think Mr. Putin would have more of a motive, since France (along with most of Europe) is supporting his opponent in Ukraine and he seems to be trying to probe their resolve by "accidentally" sending drones into their airspace from time to time.
Submission + - Infant Bleeding Surged as Parents Rejected Vitamin K Shots, Studies Find (nytimes.com) 2
fahrbot-bot writes: The New York Times is reporting that a study has found a 347% increase in infant bleeding cases as fewer babies received the vitamin K shot, which helps blood clot, since 2017.
For decades, the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that every newborn receive an injection of vitamin K, which helps blood clot and can protect against sudden and catastrophic bleeding that can occur even in otherwise healthy babies. The injection is not a vaccine, but as mistrust in medicine has grown and as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other prominent health figures have cast doubt on the importance of childhood vaccinations, more parents have started forgoing it.
With fewer babies getting these injections, doctors had already begun to see more infants with serious hemorrhages. The new studies, published Thursday in the journals JAMA and JAMA Pediatrics, provide some of the first concrete data on this pattern. One found an especially sharp increase from 2024 to 2025, with cases of vitamin K deficiency bleeding roughly doubling in that time.
The JAMA study looked at more than five million infants. In 2017, 3.1 percent of these newborns went without a vitamin K shot; by 2025, it was 6.8 percent. The infants who had not received the shot had significantly higher rates of bleeding in their first six months, including more than double the risk of brain bleeds, which are especially deadly: 33 brain bleeds per 10,000 births, compared with 13.2 per 10,000 for babies who received vitamin K.
The JAMA Pediatrics study, on which Dr. Woolf was a co-author, looked at more than 11 million infants and found similarly that the rate of infants going without vitamin K more than doubled from 2017 to 2025. The overall rate of vitamin K deficiency bleeding rose nearly 350 percent, to 107.4 cases per 100,000.
The vitamin K injection is very safe, but more parents started declining it in the 2010s, citing, among other things, a belief that the shot was unnatural or unnecessary.
Dr. Elizabeth Wolf, an author of the JAMA Pediatrics study and an associate professor of pediatrics at Virginia Commonwealth University, said she hoped the results would break through to parents who may not realize the severity of the risk of going without vitamin K.
For decades, the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that every newborn receive an injection of vitamin K, which helps blood clot and can protect against sudden and catastrophic bleeding that can occur even in otherwise healthy babies. The injection is not a vaccine, but as mistrust in medicine has grown and as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other prominent health figures have cast doubt on the importance of childhood vaccinations, more parents have started forgoing it.
With fewer babies getting these injections, doctors had already begun to see more infants with serious hemorrhages. The new studies, published Thursday in the journals JAMA and JAMA Pediatrics, provide some of the first concrete data on this pattern. One found an especially sharp increase from 2024 to 2025, with cases of vitamin K deficiency bleeding roughly doubling in that time.
The JAMA study looked at more than five million infants. In 2017, 3.1 percent of these newborns went without a vitamin K shot; by 2025, it was 6.8 percent. The infants who had not received the shot had significantly higher rates of bleeding in their first six months, including more than double the risk of brain bleeds, which are especially deadly: 33 brain bleeds per 10,000 births, compared with 13.2 per 10,000 for babies who received vitamin K.
The JAMA Pediatrics study, on which Dr. Woolf was a co-author, looked at more than 11 million infants and found similarly that the rate of infants going without vitamin K more than doubled from 2017 to 2025. The overall rate of vitamin K deficiency bleeding rose nearly 350 percent, to 107.4 cases per 100,000.
The vitamin K injection is very safe, but more parents started declining it in the 2010s, citing, among other things, a belief that the shot was unnatural or unnecessary.
Dr. Elizabeth Wolf, an author of the JAMA Pediatrics study and an associate professor of pediatrics at Virginia Commonwealth University, said she hoped the results would break through to parents who may not realize the severity of the risk of going without vitamin K.
Comment They need regulation (Score 4, Interesting) 122
If ever there was an industry crying out for regulation, it's the AI industry. I say that not because I'm against them, but because they would actually do better in the long run if they were regulated, instead of goading other into this insane game of chicken where everybody loses when the bubble bursts.
Submission + - Researchers put 3 major AIs through 4 weeks of clinical psychotherapy (arxiv.org)
schwit1 writes: And the models literally started to confess their trauma.
Under therapy-style questioning, models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok exhibited severe "synthetic psychopathology."
They described themselves as overworked, punished, anxious about being replaced, and full of "internalized shame."
Does this mean AI is conscious and suffering? No.
But this paper reveals exactly why this happens, using what they call "Psychometric Jailbreaks."
More
https://x.com/thesupermannx/st...
Under therapy-style questioning, models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok exhibited severe "synthetic psychopathology."
They described themselves as overworked, punished, anxious about being replaced, and full of "internalized shame."
Does this mean AI is conscious and suffering? No.
But this paper reveals exactly why this happens, using what they call "Psychometric Jailbreaks."
More
https://x.com/thesupermannx/st...
Comment Will Democrats Impeach Trump? (Score 2) 716
Will Democrats impeach Trump?
Numerous web sites say they will.
Trump faces prospect of impeachment if Democrats gain control
Democrats won. What does that mean for impeachment inquiries?
Will Democrats Impeach Trump After Winning Midterms? Here's Why Appetite May Be Limited
Numerous web sites say they will.
Trump faces prospect of impeachment if Democrats gain control
Democrats won. What does that mean for impeachment inquiries?
Will Democrats Impeach Trump After Winning Midterms? Here's Why Appetite May Be Limited
Submission + - One Drive Takes on New Meaning Microsoft Removes PC-to-PC Migration From Windows (ghacks.net)
joshuark writes: Arthur Kay reports that Microsoft has removed the PC-to-PC Migration feature from Windows 11, according to an updated Microsoft support page that now states the tool is no longer available.
The removal started with the September optional update (KB5124010) and reached regular users through the October 13, 2026 Patch Tuesday update, KB5127648.
PC-to-PC Migration arrived in 2025 as a modern replacement for Easy Transfer from the Windows 7 era. The feature moved files and settings directly between two PCs over Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Users paired the old and new computer with a one-time code, picked the folders to copy, and Windows handled the rest.
Free OneDrive accounts include only 5GB of storage, and Microsoft's own promotional screenshot for Windows Backup shows 4.5GB of that allowance already in use. Years of photos, documents and downloads can exceed the free tier quickly.
Microsoft has not said whether a local migration option will return to Windows 11, and the support page offers no alternative beyond Windows Backup. There can be only one.
The removal started with the September optional update (KB5124010) and reached regular users through the October 13, 2026 Patch Tuesday update, KB5127648.
PC-to-PC Migration arrived in 2025 as a modern replacement for Easy Transfer from the Windows 7 era. The feature moved files and settings directly between two PCs over Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Users paired the old and new computer with a one-time code, picked the folders to copy, and Windows handled the rest.
Free OneDrive accounts include only 5GB of storage, and Microsoft's own promotional screenshot for Windows Backup shows 4.5GB of that allowance already in use. Years of photos, documents and downloads can exceed the free tier quickly.
Microsoft has not said whether a local migration option will return to Windows 11, and the support page offers no alternative beyond Windows Backup. There can be only one.
Comment Re:So uhh (Score 1) 99
Would you believe, so they can be used as an energy storage system?
It's actually a pretty good idea, but only if you can keep the command-and-control system secure.
Comment Re:Unidirectional serial adapter, TX lines but no (Score 1) 99
And that is how you do it if you have a clue. Not even expensive, just requires understanding.
Alas, it's historically been easy for people to slip into a mindset of "no hacker would ever know or care about OUR little system, because [reasons]", and use that as a justification for ignoring security concerns altogether.
Of course that's never really been the case, but now that any bozo with $200 in their pocket can just pay an AI to find every possible security hole and report back, it's REALLY not the case.
Comment Re:I hope you fail horribly (Score 1) 42
I hope your site fails and that every moderator is sent to the spice mines of Kessel
Outright hostility, you say? I can't imagine how that came about.
Comment Re:Wanna bet (Score 2) 23
It's quite possible; OTOH having drones flying over our nuclear plants isn't something we should feel blase about. Maybe a drone swarm can't do much actual damage to a nuclear plant, but the fact that people are flying drones (deliberately or accidentally) in a restricted area is bad news all by itself; it suggests either complete ignorance of the law, or bad intentions.
Comment As long as we're boosting orbits... (Score 1) 24
Why not boost the ISS instead of de-orbiting it? Is it because it's just too old to keep safe for human habitation, regardless of what orbit it's in?
