Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment So *NOT* vaccines. (Score 1) 52

How does a society treat its citizens, specifically parents and children?

Autism -- is human psychology being maladaptive because of this situation. Parents aren't there for their children to imprint-upon. The psychological distress is real. Depersonalization is a result.

This depersonalization happening during acute childhood development phases, exacerbates the problem of social disengagement.

People should be treated as people, not chattel.

Medicine

Non-Invasive Stimulation of the Brain Ended Opioid Addiction, Cigarette Craving (jpost.com) 37

The Jerusalem Post reports that doctors at Haifa's Rambam Health Care Campus "have successfully treated their first Israeli opioid addiction patient using an experimental noninvasive brain technology, easing him through withdrawal in just 20 minutes..." [T]he team of specialists at the Haifa medical center intervened in the electrical activity of an area of the patient's brain called the nucleus accumbens, the core of the brain system responsible for feelings of satisfaction, pleasure, and reward. The treatment, based on technology from the Israeli company Insightec, is similar to the one used to treat symptoms of essential tremor and Parkinsonian tremor, under MRI control. In this case, the treatment was carried out with the help of a new technology that performs noninvasive neuromodulation, without heating or burning tissue, and allows stimulation in the same area of the brain to increase or suppress activity...

"Tests carried out a week later produced negative results for opioids and other substances," [said Dr. Lior Lev-Tov, director of the functional neurosurgery unit in Rambam's neurosurgery division and the one leading the new study at the medical center.] "The patient himself reported a craving score of zero out of 10 for using the drug, and even another side effect, a drastic drop in the desire for cigarettes, from three packs a day to just a few cigarettes, and with no urge to use alcohol. In other words, in a treatment that lasted about 20 minutes net, our patient was completely freed from an extreme dependence that had accompanied him every day for years. This is nothing less than a medical and therapeutic revolution."

Dr. Lev-Tov added that "This experience opens doors for us to treat a wide range of very serious illnesses such as PTSD, OCD, eating disorders, other addictions, severe depression, severe pain disorders, and I hope we will also be able to reach cognitive areas and treat attention deficit disorders, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and more."

Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.

Comment Re:0.5 mm resolution (Score 1) 25

Also, they claim it is safe due to lack of radiation. But ultrasonic can fuck shit up too. I mean ultrasonic is currently used to break up kidney stones, shear and fragment DNA (for NGS prep).

Good points, but to be fair, ultrasonic is currently used to break up kidney stones because it is safe to use it to do so.

Space

Blue Origin Rocket Exploded Thursday Night During Hot-Fire Test (cbsnews.com) 73

Spaceflight Now shared their video of the explosion, which the Orlando Sentinel describes as showing Blue Origin's rocket "become engulfed in flames. The fireball expands out and covers the entire launch pad as the fuselage of the rocket can be seen crumbling into the flames."

Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said on X.com "It's too early to know the root cause but we're already working to find it. Very rough day, but we'll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It's worth it." (SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted "Sorry to see this, I hope you recover quickly.")

It's unclear how this will impact future launches. "The rocket was destroyed," reports CBS News, "and as the smoke cleared, there was no sign of the erector-gantry used to move the New Glenn from its hangar to the pad and to raise it from horizontal to vertical. Likewise, one of two tall lightning towers was no longer visible." It was the first such on-pad explosion at the Cape since a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blew up on nearby pad 40 on Sept. 1, 2016... Blue Origin only has one New Glenn pad, the one that was damaged in the Thursday test. The New Glenn, which has launched three times, is a heavy lift rocket designed to compete head-to-head with SpaceX Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. During New Glenn's most recent flight in April, an upper stage malfunction prevented a commercial internet satellite from reaching its planned orbit...

The New Glenn destroyed Thursday was to send 48 Leo internet satellites owned by Amazon into space [which were not on board for the hot-fire test]

Blue Origin posted on X.com that "Debris from our recent hotfire anomaly may wash ashore in the coming days/weeks. If you encounter any debris, do not touch or approach it for your safety."

"Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult..." NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman posted on X.com. "âWe will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader symbolset for sharing the news.

Comment Author seems unclear on music technology. (Score 3, Informative) 19

"Despite the limitations of the 1993-era sound card drivers,"

The Gravis Ultrasound ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ), as well as other soundcards which *USED WAVETABLE SYNTHESIS* were available.

Yeah, FM-synthesis sounds like a robot. The SNES SPC-7000 was wavetable. The Sega Genesis used a Z80 for FM synthesis. A GUS card was supperior to the SPC-7000.

If you want to know how good the music is, either run DOOM in DOSBOX with a correct GUS Wavetable patch set (which will let you know how *ACTUALLY GOOD* the music is). Alternatively, the Doom & Doom 2 remaster on Steam has an actual band covering the actual tracks. That also sounds awesome.

Lol; I guess the author wasn't aware of the state of the art in 1993 if that's what they wrote.

Science

Scientists Found a Way To Cool Quantum Computers Using Noise (sciencedaily.com) 7

Slashdot reader alternative_right writes: Quantum computers need extreme cold to work, but the very systems that keep them cold also create noise that can destroy fragile quantum information. Scientists in Sweden have now flipped that problem on its head by building a tiny quantum refrigerator that actually uses noise to drive cooling instead of fighting it. By carefully steering heat at unimaginably small scales, the device can act as a refrigerator, heat engine, or energy amplifier inside quantum circuits.

Comment Re:Question (Score 1) 20

retains access to the AI startup's technology until 2032, including models that achieve AGI

Exactly how do they envision an autocomplete gaining sentience?

It hasn't been "autocomplete" in a long time. Sure, there's a training step based on a corpus of Human language, and the autoregressive process outputs a single token at a time, but reinforcement learning trains specific behaviors beyond merely completing a sentence.

Besides, the best way to write something indistinguishable from what a Human might write is to, well, "think" like a Human.

Comment Will we finally learn our lesson? (Score 1) 32

Are we, as a sapient species facing an uncertain prospect of continuence in a world full of rapidly-advancing bullshit going to learn from this catastrophic and absurdly predictable failure of information security, personal and professional ethics, civilian government, market economics, basic common sense, and consumer psychology?

Eight-Ball-Based-On-Cursory-Reading-Of-Literally-Any-Slice-of-Human-History says "no".

What do you say, and why is it also "no"?

Comment Band-aids for burn victims. (Score 1) 117

So, we could use the renewable/carbon neutral (or negative) path .... OR .... not, but with lots of extra steps and no guarantee of success?

  "And then there's the problem of trying to stop. Because an abrupt end to geoengineering, with all the carbon still in the atmosphere, would cause the temperature to soar suddenly upward with unknown, but likely disastrous, effects... "

Just have an end to fossil-fuel use, you fucking idiots! That's a tractable challenge. That's something we have decades of experience with. Play to your strengths, humanity. Don't listen to fucking morons!!!

Comment Planning to fail. (Score 1) 92

This seems to have been an investment scheme. Who hired an architect who is this insane?

"One recalled warning Tarek Qaddumi, The Line's executive director, of the difficulty of suspending a 30-story building upside down from a bridge hundreds of metres in the air. 'You do realize the earth is spinning? And that tall towers sway?' he said. The chandelier, the architect explained, could 'start to move like a pendulum,' then 'pick up speed,' and eventually 'break off,' crashing into the marina below."

That level of nonsense is usually restricted to a flat-Earth message board. But these folks were hired? They had no intention of delivering this project. If they wanted to deliver it, they wouldn't have hired people from the local psyche-ward.

Comment Re: I wouldn't care if my taxes hadn't paid for it (Score 1) 92

Anyone who voted this up is disgusting.

OP is also disgusting.

Since when do people who read "news for nerds, stuff that matters" advocate for racism? Good, old-fashioned racism? The kind that started in the 16th century, and should have died there?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

That this is a post and was moderated up is disgusting. What the hell is wrong with you?

Comment Re: Trump Mania (Score 1) 297

"1) Canada has already lost its status. Its hard to see how that is Trump's fault."

It is the fault of people who cause other people to hesitate or not vaccinate. We call them anti-vaxxers.

"2) Trump has only been in office for less than a year. Its unlikely the measles outbreak is a result of any of his policies."

Trump appointed an anti-vaxxer to head the CDC. This is his policy. His actions drive this as much as RFK and other anti-vaxxers. No one seems to disagree that the folks who vote for silly policies view his silly policies as legit, and legit policies as silly. That means they are the same problem -- ignorance masquerading as a relevant choice due to people's fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The same things any flim-flam con-artist would brag about.

"3) The outbreak is all along the southwest border with large populations of people who lack access to regular health care."

Yes, it is truly sad to see how terrible healthcare is in the United States. Why do you view that as a reason to not try anything new, and give up what little is being done? We seem to agree that what exists is not satisfactory.

"Blaming anti-vaxxers is attributing way too much power to a fringe group."

Wrong. That's like saying the person who drove the car off the cliff isn't responsible, because the other people in the car could/should have wrestled the wheel away from the driver. The driver is responsible. It is ridiculous to claim otherwise (you sound brainwashed).

"Perhaps we should look at years of neglect of public health in those states instead. With millions of people lacking access to basic health care what did you expect?"

Yeah, normal people have decried the terrible state of public US health policy. The only improvement in the last 2 decades was Obama Care. What's with the Republicans taking that away? How far into the dark ages do they want us to go?

""Trump did it" has become the standard excuse for the widespread failure of our political class. You can just point the finger at Trump and pretend the problems will be solved when he goes away. So his rival politicians will spend the next three years talking about Trump instead of addressing how to make our lives better."

Like you are doing? This "point" seems weirdly self-antithetical. Trump is one part; there's also Justice/SCOTUS, Senate, Congress. All aspects of government are in government, otherwise it's not government. Seems tautological.

"Its not that there isn't a lot to criticize about Trump. Its that most of the criticism is directed at minor sideshows like this one. And I say that as a former community health worker who spent a couple years knocking on parent's doors to increase the level of MMR vaccinations in local schools. I may have run into one parent who opposed vaccination. The rest just lacked the personal resources to get their kids immunized. They had a hard time making sure their kids had breakfast and got to school."

You know, programs that provide food to those in need + vaccine resources were cut by Trump and his cabinet of doom? This "point" also illustrates that this problem is big and has many factors at play, like problems that humans have traditionally banded together to face. That's why most developed countries (just the USA abstaining) use socialized healthcare policies.

Frankly, your confused post just shows why the problem seems intractable to the occupants of the country most victimized by their own medical policies -- the current USA medical policy is rake-stepping! You have people who make more money than god from medical care profits which are in the bleeding-from-your-eyes-numbers of over ,000 markup, because no-one shops around for things like bullet extractions. It's not a service that does well in unregulated capitalism (unless you own the company selling heroin, in which case you're billionaires and don't care).

Trump is also a promoter of that. It's valid to mention the toxic effect his cabinet and policies have had during *BOTH* of his terms, because that is literally what's happening now. These are the issues we agree on, and these are things driving those issues. The learned helplessness and unwillingness to challenge ignorance you seem to suggest isn't helpful, in my opinion.

Comment Re: It's in the effort. (Score 4, Insightful) 89

Hahaha, what?

You say the pilot in control should have intentionally sheered off the wings (FULL OF JET FUEL) off during a dual-engine failure? You obviously have no idea about planes.

There is nothing that could have been done. They were past V1. There was no arrester pit at the end of the runway (which wouldn't have done much). We're talking about a vehicle loaded with 10,000s of lbs of fuel. Sheering the wings off would have spread chaos and destruction.

There is nothing that could have been done.

Slashdot Top Deals

Thus spake the master programmer: "When a program is being tested, it is too late to make design changes." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

Working...