The paper claims to have found "alternative state variables" which just means they found a basis set of vectors to describe more complex data. The phys.org article describes the paper incorrectly by saying "alternative physics", as often happens in popular science journalism.

Notably, the phrase "alternative physics" does not exist in the paper, anywhere.

Replying to myself.

LOL, I read the paper and found:

1) The authors do not claim to have found alternative physics. The phys.org article does, and confirms that popular journalism of science often gets it wrong. The paper claims to have found alternative state variables, which just means they are using basis functions to reduce data.

2) What the authors actually did was PCA, as I mentioned above. It is a simple way to find orthogonal basis vectors in complex datasets and has been used for decades. For example, I have used it for data reduction for over 20 years. At the end of the day, I don't find this paper interesting because I would expect that PCA would be able to reduce such a problem. It is not surprising.

Agreed.

Lagrangian mechanics is still classical physics. The difference is that Newtonian mechanics is referenced to a static frame and Lagrangian Mechanics is referenced to something (say a particle or the end of a pendulum) which is generally thought of as moving through a stationary, i.e. static frame system. The mathematics you see on the Wikipedia page for 'Lagrangian Mechanics' are not physics that are different than classical physics. Instead, it is just the way one expresses the frame as being that of something in motion.

I am a bit concerened with all this talk about new physics. This is all (Lagrangian Mechanics, and the AI-based interpretation in the featured article) classical physics, being described by people in slightly different terms that one might encounter in a first-year physics class.

The underlying physics are unchanged and the 'new' physics they describe are merely a mapping through the 2-D transform occurring by taking video for recording the activity. Since the video is only 2-D, the full 3-D physics are only approximated and the 'new variables' they found are combinations of currently understood physics to describe what is observed in two dimensions. This seems like an AI version of multivariate analysis, where a limited set of 'direction vectors' can be found in complex data to describe events based on linear combinations of individual parameters. Everybody that does multivariate analysis knows a basis can be found for complex data, e.g. Principal Components Analysis was originally developed by sociologists seeking to understand complex survey data to understand which variables correlates with others, then use those varibles mapped into a single 'direction vector' to describe the original, more complex, data. I think the reviewers let this one slide when they should not have. No new physics were discovered, just some other basis to describe the 2-D observations. This is not new at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I use Hubitat to switch my TP-Link Kasa switches and the delay is around 200-400 ms.

They stirred up excess radioactive dust which did spread beyond the local region.

Yep, there was a lot of information in the comments, mostly about interesting things you were not an expert in. That exposure to peak slashdot was priceless, and left a large imprint on my career today. Watching online services traverse from gopher and newsgroups to slashdot in its heydey and digg to reddit and eventually facebook really does feel like a capture of some of the most impactful changes in all of history with respect to American culture and future prospects. The more that modern culture develops, the happier I am to have grown up in the 80's. It is too bad we did not know that at the time.

Yep, acetylene is the canonical simple 'conductive polymer' example, and methylacetylene is a resonance structure of the propadiene molecule I wrote out above. I have pretty much stopped reading slashdot over the last 10 years, nice to see some scientific discussion in the comments.

What you are describing is a cumulated allene molecule. Repeating carbon double bonds are actually reactive due to strain of adjacent carbon-carbon double bonds and just imagine all those electrons along the length being available to latch onto something and push electrons down the chain. This touches on conductive polymers and the chain would tend to reduce to polypropylene. Consider the simplest form of your molecule: H2C=C=CH2, which is a gaseous carbonaceous fuel at room temperature. For more info, look up propadiene.

An important caveat is that the implementation is patentable if and only if it is novel and non-obvious to those skilled in the art.

Irrespective of the present issue, please know that the fraction of funding derived from state sources is 11%. [1]
The fraction of government funding has ramped down over the years, and as of now is 89% private, 11% public. It is notable that there is debate within UC whether or not the remaining 11% is worth the associated restrictions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Yep, I have at least 5 Samsung printers around town and routinely recommend them to others. The Samsung devices were reliable and reasonably priced. Like others, I will never buy another HP printer, even if initially the new HP offerings are merely re-branded Samsung devices. It certainly seems HP has fully consumed any good will that informed consumers were willing to extend as they cashed out on their brand. I am very disappointed that they are taking out my favorite printer supplier in their ensuing death spiral.

Given the editorial near the end of the summary:

The focus is redirected sharply from technological discussion to political diatribe near the end of the submission. I'm a chemical engineer with longtime experience in the fuel industry. As such I fully agree with your statement that nerdiness is not constrained to computers. However, I believe the right-wing rhetoric is distraction from technical discussion, as evidenced by the large fraction of non-technical replies to the post which instead address the politics as raised. I think your assertion that I should filter the story is an absolute red herring-- the objections raised are not based on the technical detail but instead on the political editorialization.

News for nerds? Not so much. If I was looking for political commentary in news headlines I would look elsewhere. With stories like this, when looking for technology news it seems I should look elsewhere as well.