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Comment is this new? (Score 1) 149

by argStyopa (#66241202) Attached to: US Suffered a Major Power Outage Every Month of 2026

First, let's note the referenced article IS A SALES PITCH.
Second, electrical outages are a normal thing in a storm prone country. The "outages" aren't news, it's only meaningful if they're growing more frequent.
The article asks plaintively "is this the new normal" without ever establishing what the old normal was.

When taking into account the higher population and higher electrical demand per person, are large blackouts becoming more common in the US?
Per ai: no.

"The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) tracks Bulk Power System (BPS) performance annually in its State of Reliability (SOR) reports. Key takeaways from the 2025 SOR (covering 2024 data):

The BPS "remains highly reliable and resilient." Core metrics like frequency response, misoperations, and many transmission outage categories are stable or improving.
Severe weather (hurricanes, winter storms) caused the most impactful outages, as in prior years. In 2024, events like Hurricanes Helene and Milton led to millions of (mostly distribution-level) customer outages, but BES restoration was often faster than historical averages for similar storms due to hardening efforts. No major operator-initiated load shed during key winter events.
There were notable events, but the Severity Risk Index (SRI) and other indicators do not show a clear upward trend in frequency or severity of large-scale BPS disruptions when viewed over multiple years. Distribution outages (local, below 100 kV) are more visible to customers and can be widespread, but they are outside NERC's primary jurisdiction."

I fully agree our policies toward the increasingly critical electrical grid infrastructure are incoherent. That's said: quit buying into advertisers insisting the world is ending and here's some snake oil that will fix it.

Submission + - Physicists create first room-temperature quantum material (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: In a study published in Nature, LSU physicists have developed the first room-temperature quantum material capable of distinguishing and transporting different quantum states of light, overcoming one of the biggest challenges in quantum materials research. Led by Associate Professor of Physics Omar S. Magaña-Loaiza, the work establishes a general design principle for engineering an entirely new class of quantum materials, opening new possibilities for quantum computing, secure communications, sensing technologies and advanced energy systems.

Submission + - Records Are Made to Be Broken: Patch Tuesday Raises Triage Stakes (darkreading.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: When Microsoft vice president of engineering Tom Gallagher warned in May that the company's monthly patch releases could soon grow larger because of AI-driven vulnerability discovery, few likely expected the numbers would surpass 600 just two months later.

But with fixes for 622 unique CVEs, Microsoft’s July 2026 Patch Tuesday update is the largest by far in the program's history and offers a preview of the growing prioritization challenges organizations face as AI dramatically increases the volume of flaws requiring attention.

July's update contains fixes for three zero-day vulnerabilities, two of which attackers are already exploiting and one that's publicly known but remains unexploited. The patch update also includes fixes for more than five dozen critical vulnerabilities, many of which Microsoft identified as flaws that attackers are more likely to exploit. The total includes 416 vulnerabilities in Windows, 82 each in Office and Office 2016, 46 in Edge, 27 in Microsoft Developer Tools, and 17 in SharePoint Server.

"If people want a severity hook, July has 26 vulnerabilities with a CVSS base score above 9.0, and 13 of those sit at 9.8," said Josh Taylor, lead cybersecurity analyst at Fortra, in an emailed comment. "That matters, but CVSS is still only one part of the risk story. The real triage problem this month is the mix of exploited issues, a publicly disclosed BitLocker flaw, and a massive concentration of vulnerabilities in Windows and Office," he said. And rather than focusing on volume, patching teams need to prioritize the exploited vulnerabilities and their exposed infrastructure first, Taylor added.

"Today, July 14, 2026, marks a pivotal moment in our industry," researchers from Nightwing said in a statement. "We are officially moving past the traditional 'Patch Tuesday' approach and entering an era of continuous, high-volume security updates" and continuous patching.

Submission + - How Microsoft's "Little Workaround" Created a Major Pentagon Threat (propublica.org)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: ProPublica Reporter Renee Dudley heard Microsoft was running tech support for the U.S. Defense Department through China, the country’s biggest cybersecurity adversary.

The arrangement was called “digital escorting.” She thought it sounded like a conspiracy theory — until she started looking into it. This is the story of what she found and how her investigation changed government policy.

Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel — leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary, a ProPublica investigation has found.

The arrangement, which was critical to Microsoft winning the federal government’s cloud computing business a decade ago, relies on U.S. citizens with security clearances to oversee the work and serve as a barrier against espionage and sabotage.

National security and cybersecurity experts in the Trump administration contacted by ProPublica were also surprised to learn that such an arrangement was in place, especially at a time when the U.S. intelligence community and leading members of Congress and the Trump administration view China’s digital prowess as a top threat to the country.

Microsoft uses the escort system to handle the government’s most sensitive information that falls below “classified.” According to the government, this “high impact level” category includes “data that involves the protection of life and financial ruin.” The “loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability” of this information “could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect” on operations, assets and individuals, the government has said. In the Defense Department, the data is categorized as “Impact Level” 4 and 5 and includes materials that directly support military operations.

“If someone ran a script called ‘fix_servers.sh’ but it actually did something malicious then [escorts] would have no idea,” a former Microsoft engineer who worked on the escort system, told ProPublica in an email. That said, he maintained that the “scope of systems they could disrupt” is limited.

In an emailed statement, the Defense Information Systems Agency said that cloud service providers “are required to establish and maintain controls for vetting and using qualified specialists,” but the agency did not respond to ProPublica’s questions regarding the digital escorts’ qualifications.

It’s unclear whether other cloud providers to the federal government use digital escorts as part of their tech support. Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud declined to comment on the record for this article. Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for the inspector general — whose office is supposed to operate independently in order to investigate potential waste, fraud and abuse — told ProPublica they were not authorized to speak about the issue and directed questions to DISA public affairs.

Comment the juice isn't worth the squeeze (Score 1) 107

by argStyopa (#66236552) Attached to: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting On Social Media

1) there's no feedback of any value, at least not worth the effort. Any post can be immediately swarmed by bots or by humans that are little more than such. It happens here; you might be posting about the functionality of light switches and you'll get 5 anon posts about being a MAGA cuck and how it's Trump's fault; likewise you might post asking legit questions about data centers and have 5 anon posts calling you a communist woke traitor. Why bother connecting your brain to social media if all you're getting back is digital feces?

2) I've just spent much less time online anyway; I've decided to practice what I preach and - unless I'm actually doing something like ordering food, etc - I simply put my phone away when there are other humans present that I might interact with. At all. On a tram, in a waiting room. I am ready to engage other people, and if they don't choose to I've welcomed being alone with my thoughts again instead of being constantly bemused by some bit of celebrity news I couldn't give a shite about.

Comment Re:I have a phd in physics this is not possable (Score 1) 37

Ah, but you may be mistaken about the point.
If you're talking about the simple physical reality it accomplishing the task of detection, well sure, it might be impossible. But if you recognize the point isn't to detect nukes but to gain nearly infinite streams of funding based on ok-perhaps-it's-implausible-but-hear-me-out -nukes-are-scary, well sir that certainly is within our reach.

Comment Re:So basically... (Score 2) 195

by argStyopa (#66219932) Attached to: The Space-Based Data Center Hype Machine Is Already In Orbit

I think satellite data centers are colossally stupid, but I suspect the larger problem is the public's gullibility for big lies.

Now, which things ARE lies and which aren't has been delightfully co-opted by politics; what one puts on that list is *instantly* translated into political affiliation.

I can think of 3 big lies that would immediately get me labeled "stupid maga fuck".
I can think of 3 others that would likewise get me labeled "woke fag".
Amusingly, putting all 6 in a list would be cognitively negatively filtered; each "side" would only see and respond to the ones they DISagree with, in most cases as if the others weren't even present.

I think data centers in space will be inevitable WHEN WE LIVE THERE and some research to address the (large) physics challenges the context poses are a good idea. Anything above research trial scale today is dumb. But that's all noise compared to the bigger problems, this argument is only a symptom.

Comment it's also for stability (Score 1) 96

I have a home full of expensive electronics and live in a rural county in the US Midwest where weather is an issue. I'd much rather have the external feed trickle-charging batteries that steady-supply my home, than be vulnerable to the spiky local power during weather events.

I sort if wonder in a complete amateur sense if this might herald a "ac for distribution, dc microgrid in homes" evolution.

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