Comment Re:Summary ... (Score 1) 270
As I told you clearly, not changing the clock kills MORE people.
So fuck yourself.
Comment Re:mostly mash-ups of existing techniques (Score 1) 102
The complaining is rote at this point in the stages of grieving: "that's was never considered 'intelligence' anyways!' The thing we now care (and always did) care about is whatever AI is currently NOT doing because we have souls, just not quite all those dummies at Church used to say!!"
Comment Re:I hope they realize people hate slop (Score 1) 78
How do you see the future of gaming? Interacting with AI agents with per-programmed personalities and responses to everything? Pick you dialog from a list of 4 choices still? It's not going to be like that any more.
Comment Amazing: Rapid advances in technology (Score 0) 78
There are many ways AI is guiding rapid advances in technology.
The Rapid Trajectory Of Artificial Intelligence
AI revolutionizing industries worldwide: A comprehensive overview of its diverse applications
The Rapid Trajectory Of Artificial Intelligence
AI revolutionizing industries worldwide: A comprehensive overview of its diverse applications
Submission + - First Nuclear Clocks Start Ticking in Vienna and Beijing (phys.org)
necro81 writes: Two groups, one in Vienna and one in Beijing, have successfully demonstrated the world's first nuclear clocks. Standard atomic clocks, like the caesium clocks that define the second, operate by observing the transition of electrons between different orbits about the nucleus. The resulting radiation is usually in the microwave range, and can produce clocks accurate to one second in 100 billion years.
Nuclear clocks go a step further, and probe energy transitions within the nucleus itself. Nuclei can arrange their protons and neutrons into different configurations, called isomers. The isomer with the lowest energy is the one usually found; higher-energy ones are only metastable and decay quickly. Usually it takes serious energy — x-rays and gamma rays — to excite a nucleus into a higher-energy arrangement. It so happens that thorium-229 can be excited using UV light with a wavelength of 148 nm — just within the capabilities of some exotic lasers.
It's still been quite a challenge. For one thing, Th-229 is not found in nature; it must be extracted from the decay chain of uranium-235. The Beijing team used just a microgram mixed in a crystal of calcium fluoride.
Although these prototype nuclear clocks are not yet more accurate than existing atomic clocks (one second in millions, rather than billions, of years), they show the way towards what may be possible. Because the energy transition is in the nucleus, rather than the electron cloud, it is less susceptible to outside disturbances like magnetic fields. And the fundamental frequency is much higher (five orders of magnitude), which should yield more precise timing. This development could lead to smaller and more reliable time standards across the world (and solar system).
Nuclear clocks go a step further, and probe energy transitions within the nucleus itself. Nuclei can arrange their protons and neutrons into different configurations, called isomers. The isomer with the lowest energy is the one usually found; higher-energy ones are only metastable and decay quickly. Usually it takes serious energy — x-rays and gamma rays — to excite a nucleus into a higher-energy arrangement. It so happens that thorium-229 can be excited using UV light with a wavelength of 148 nm — just within the capabilities of some exotic lasers.
It's still been quite a challenge. For one thing, Th-229 is not found in nature; it must be extracted from the decay chain of uranium-235. The Beijing team used just a microgram mixed in a crystal of calcium fluoride.
Although these prototype nuclear clocks are not yet more accurate than existing atomic clocks (one second in millions, rather than billions, of years), they show the way towards what may be possible. Because the energy transition is in the nucleus, rather than the electron cloud, it is less susceptible to outside disturbances like magnetic fields. And the fundamental frequency is much higher (five orders of magnitude), which should yield more precise timing. This development could lead to smaller and more reliable time standards across the world (and solar system).
Comment Re:Summary ... (Score 1) 270
If you had any critical thinking skills, you'd realize that my original point applies not only to keeling over, but also to feeling unwell.
More feeble people would suffer throughout the year with either permanent DST or standard time than the current one bad night in March. (Which, BTW, could be totally avoided by planning ahead and adjusting your bedtime a few minutes per day in the preceding week.)
Biology matches DST adjustments more than a fixed clock. Most everyone woke up with the sun from the dawn of humanity until the late 19th century, and adjusting the clock for the seasons stays closer to that.
Comment Re:Summary ... (Score 1) 270
Then I suggest you never travel east or west by more than a few miles. You seem feeble.
Comment Re:Summary ... (Score 3, Insightful) 270
Permanent ST is more closely aligned with circadian biology, although earlier dusk may limit some evening activities
You know what's aligned even more with circadian biology?
Keep the current system, get up off your ass, and change your clocks twice per year without whinging like a precious snowflake.
That way you you don't have to deal either with the sun beating down on you while you try to sleep at 4am or with your poor children getting run over in the dark on their way to school.
Sure, a couple of codgers might keel over in march, but they were probably gonna die soon anyway. It's much harder to measure the statistics of all the other people who would die steadily throughout the year due to the aforementioned issues, as well as similar problems caused by a static clock that doesn't adjust at all to when the sun actually rises. However, I would bet good money that it would add up to far more casualties overall.
For some reason, I seem to be in a small minority on this issue, though. It's probably because everybody would rather believe in a solution to the problems of living on a tilted axis that's clear, simple, and wrong.
Submission + - Wisconsin U–Madison Prof Francis Halzen named 2026 Nobel laureate in physi (wisc.edu)
schwit1 writes: Halzen is the principal investigator of the NSF IceCube Neutrino Observatory, the world’s largest — and perhaps strangest — telescope. The U.S. National Science Foundation-funded observatory is operated by an international collaboration of scientists led by the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center based at UW–Madison.
Embedded in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, IceCube uses thousands of light sensors to survey the universe for neutrinos, nearly massless particles that rarely interact with other matter. Neutrinos provide information about the workings of black holes, galaxies and other objects in the cosmos.
“IceCube is like no other telescope in the world,” says UW–Madison interim Chancellor Eric M. Wilcots. “And there is no other scientist quite like Francis Halzen, whose idea to create a neutrino detector under almost a mile of ice has led to a remarkable multinational and multi-institutional scientific collaboration and a fundamental shift in how we think about the universe.”
Embedded in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, IceCube uses thousands of light sensors to survey the universe for neutrinos, nearly massless particles that rarely interact with other matter. Neutrinos provide information about the workings of black holes, galaxies and other objects in the cosmos.
“IceCube is like no other telescope in the world,” says UW–Madison interim Chancellor Eric M. Wilcots. “And there is no other scientist quite like Francis Halzen, whose idea to create a neutrino detector under almost a mile of ice has led to a remarkable multinational and multi-institutional scientific collaboration and a fundamental shift in how we think about the universe.”
Comment AI is helping us improving our lives! (Score 2) 24
Quote: "IBM and Red Hat say their AI-powered Lightwell initiative has identified and helped remediate more than 400 previously unknown vulnerabilities across widely used Java libraries."
AI is helping us improve our lives! Technology is moving forward rapidly.
AI is helping us improve our lives! Technology is moving forward rapidly.
Comment Re: IANAL, but... (Score 1) 90
Right⦠because EVERYBODY fully reads and understands the TOCs of every service they useâ¦
People don't read a lot of things that they agree to, especially if it's 20,000 words in a postage stamp-sized text box on the new toy they just turned on. However, anybody who's not an idiot realizes that most everything in an agreement that they haven't read is against their interests, and plans accordingly. I personally always look for binding arbitration agreements and make sure to opt out of those whenever possible.
Oddly enough, the Anthropic TOS and privacy policy actually aren't all that obtuse and can be skimmed in a few minutes. They make it clear that they'll be looking for problems with what you upload and what kinds of problems those might be. Like I said, you can easily avoid all that by using a paper notebook for your diary.
Comment Re:Tax break = taxpayer paying for water and power (Score 1) 60
Depends entirely on the numbers and whether those resources are scarce in that place. If the datacenter ends up funding the expansions, and then the community make a profit every month forerever on supplying those utilities, it's a win.
Comment Re:IANAL, but... (Score 1, Insightful) 90
There is a clause in the statute: "in any manner in which it may be viewed by another person". I would argue that it's her diary and not meant to be viewed by anyone. I don't disagree that turning her in was the right thing to do but I doubt she'll be convicted.
If you look at Anthropic's terms of service and privacy policy, it clearly states that they can look at your content in order to enforce their usage policy. You have to agree to this when you set up an account or use their service. Given that this is an AI company, you can bet your content will be screened for violations more efficiently than if humans were involved at every step.
If she really didn't mean for anyone else to view it, she would have scribbled it down in a notebook instead of uploading into a cloud owned and policed by strangers and their robots.
Comment Time surveil all Flock staff 24x7 (Score 2) 127
We need cameras and microphones set up outside their homes, livestreaming everything constantly. We need to follow them wherever they go and post audio/video/stills from that too, along with their exact locations. We need to run facial recognition on them and everyone they encounter. We need to do everything possible to ensure that they have absolutely no privacy, ever. This includes the children because, after all, they're doing it to our children -- why should theirs be exempt?
This is what Flock is doing to us; it's only fair to return the favor.
This is what Flock is doing to us; it's only fair to return the favor.
Comment Re:First responder perspective (Score 1) 199
I see: decades of work in the field, a lot of successful rescues and some unsuccessful ones, plus the study and practice required to become a certified instructor, means that I'm..."short-sighted".
I'm fully aware of the multiple ways that people evacuated (or didn't) during Sandy. Not all of them made the best possible choices because they were scared, confused, or uninformed. Not all of them could make the best possible choices because they were old, disabled, or trapped by circumstances. For example, some of them chose to try to evacuate by car in places where that was impossible because streets were flooded. You and I and everyone else can sit in here in our nice dry, warm, comfortable chairs and criticize that; it's easy. It's very different when you're standing in waist-deep water for hours trying to get panicked people to stop before they make their predicament worse.
One of things that we do following every response is a debrief. We analyze it and ask ourselves what we got right and what we got wrong. No rescue is ever perfect, unfortunately; all we can do is try to do the next one better than the previous one. And one of the consistent conclusions from hundreds of these is that communication is both imperfect and essential. We need to use every possible means, with a strong preference for the ones that will keep working as conditions deteriorate over minutes/hours/days. An AM radio in every vehicle is one component of that; obviously it's not the only one, we'd be delighted if everybody had a couple of cheap battery/crank/solar powered emergency radios in their homes. (We'd also be delighted if everyone had plain old POTS, because it's far more robust than cable/fiber/wireless.) But we have work with what we have, not with what we wish we had.
I'm fully aware of the multiple ways that people evacuated (or didn't) during Sandy. Not all of them made the best possible choices because they were scared, confused, or uninformed. Not all of them could make the best possible choices because they were old, disabled, or trapped by circumstances. For example, some of them chose to try to evacuate by car in places where that was impossible because streets were flooded. You and I and everyone else can sit in here in our nice dry, warm, comfortable chairs and criticize that; it's easy. It's very different when you're standing in waist-deep water for hours trying to get panicked people to stop before they make their predicament worse.
One of things that we do following every response is a debrief. We analyze it and ask ourselves what we got right and what we got wrong. No rescue is ever perfect, unfortunately; all we can do is try to do the next one better than the previous one. And one of the consistent conclusions from hundreds of these is that communication is both imperfect and essential. We need to use every possible means, with a strong preference for the ones that will keep working as conditions deteriorate over minutes/hours/days. An AM radio in every vehicle is one component of that; obviously it's not the only one, we'd be delighted if everybody had a couple of cheap battery/crank/solar powered emergency radios in their homes. (We'd also be delighted if everyone had plain old POTS, because it's far more robust than cable/fiber/wireless.) But we have work with what we have, not with what we wish we had.
