Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
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 Still very blurry (Score 1) 18

Some of what I do involves industrial design. I often describe what I want to various AI tools, and it draws me pictures of those things.

But, what I then do, is rebuild those things using CAD software. I take inspiration from the AI, but, what the AI generates is unusable as it is. I need parametric designs. Often, it will somewhat go off the rails, but is well close enough, that I can say, "Cool" and run with it.

The same with my AI generated software. Other than the autocomplete of lines, maybe 10% of my software is AI generated. The rest is created, either on my own, or with the help of AI making suggestions, etc.

I also will do things like ask the AI, "Hey, could this be made, cleaner and are there any issues?" I don't let it wholesale make any changes, but implement them myself.

As for some images, absolutely AI, maybe with my doing a tiny bit of Photoshop cleanup, but AI; as I am not a graphic artist at all. But, at the same time, things like button icons are highly likely to come from some button icon library. The sounds from some sounds library, etc.

One thing I have noticed is that 3D generated assets are still in the category of AI Slop. They are close, but something is wrong. They still suffer from the "fingers are wrong" problem; where something is disturbingly wrong.

The key though, is that I work with AI, I don't have it do all my work.
Privacy

Manufacturer Remotely Bricks Smart Vacuum After Its Owner Blocked It From Collecting Data (tomshardware.com) 123

"An engineer got curious about how his iLife A11 smart vacuum worked and monitored the network traffic coming from the device," writes Tom's Hardware.

"That's when he noticed it was constantly sending logs and telemetry data to the manufacturer — something he hadn't consented to." The user, Harishankar, decided to block the telemetry servers' IP addresses on his network, while keeping the firmware and OTA servers open. While his smart gadget worked for a while, it just refused to turn on soon after... He sent it to the service center multiple times, wherein the technicians would turn it on and see nothing wrong with the vacuum. When they returned it to him, it would work for a few days and then fail to boot again... [H]e decided to disassemble the thing to determine what killed it and to see if he could get it working again...

[He discovered] a GD32F103 microcontroller to manage its plethora of sensors, including Lidar, gyroscopes, and encoders. He created PCB connectors and wrote Python scripts to control them with a computer, presumably to test each piece individually and identify what went wrong. From there, he built a Raspberry Pi joystick to manually drive the vacuum, proving that there was nothing wrong with the hardware. From this, he looked at its software and operating system, and that's where he discovered the dark truth: his smart vacuum was a security nightmare and a black hole for his personal data.

First of all, it's Android Debug Bridge, which gives him full root access to the vacuum, wasn't protected by any kind of password or encryption. The manufacturer added a makeshift security protocol by omitting a crucial file, which caused it to disconnect soon after booting, but Harishankar easily bypassed it. He then discovered that it used Google Cartographer to build a live 3D map of his home. This isn't unusual, by far. After all, it's a smart vacuum, and it needs that data to navigate around his home. However, the concerning thing is that it was sending off all this data to the manufacturer's server. It makes sense for the device to send this data to the manufacturer, as its onboard SoC is nowhere near powerful enough to process all that data. However, it seems that iLife did not clear this with its customers.

Furthermore, the engineer made one disturbing discovery — deep in the logs of his non-functioning smart vacuum, he found a command with a timestamp that matched exactly the time the gadget stopped working. This was clearly a kill command, and after he reversed it and rebooted the appliance, it roared back to life.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader registrations_suck for sharing the article.

Comment Re:Great at finding bugs with a caveat (Score 1) 92

" And AI whipped it up in a few hours of me going back and forth with it."

This is the key. You are no doubt, a capable programmer, and you used this tool to do more work. Which is what most good tools do. Woodworkers don't buy chair making machines, etc. So many are touting that you can just say, "I want an app that does..." and get that app. Or that a junior programmer can suddenly be far better.

I see a weird future where junior programmers are going to be lured into a very bad place, some senior reject the new tech and become comparatively useless, and some seniors become fantastically productive.

Comment Great at finding bugs with a caveat (Score 3, Insightful) 92

I use various AI tools to not only identify bugs I am presently hunting, but to just give my code a code review for performance issues, and bugs in general.

The tools I use are fantastic at this. But, there is a massive caveat. I can look at the bug identified, and I can then proceed to fix it. Great. But, if I use the AI tool to provide me the "fixed" code, it is often very broken. To the point of not compiling, or leaving out major functionality. Along with it may very well introduce major bugs of its own.

One of my favourite examples was where I was using threading very correctly. It then yanked out everything which was there to prevent obvious race conditions and other critical aspects of threading. It was hot garbage. But, the original bug I had been hunting was correctly identified.

AI is a very useful too, but it is not a programmer. I'm sick of seeing people think it is a programmer by "proving" this with apps with about the complexity of a TODO app.
EU

New Large Coral Reef Discovered Off Naples Containing Rare Ancient Corals (independent.co.uk) 13

Off the southwest cost of Italy, a remotely operated submarine made "a significant and rare discovery," reports the Independent — a vast white coral reef that was 80 metres tall (262 feet) and 2 metres wide (6.56 feet) "containing important species and fossil traces." Often dubbed the "rainforests of the sea", coral reefs are of immense scientific interest due to their status as some of the planet's richest marine ecosystems, harbouring millions of species. They play a crucial role in sustaining marine life but are currently under considerable threat...

hese impressive formations are composed of deep-water hard corals, commonly referred to as "white corals" because of their lack of colour, specifically identified as Lophelia pertusa and Madrepora oculata species. The reef also contains black corals, solitary corals, sponges, and other ecologically important species, as well as fossil traces of oysters and ancient corals, the Italian Research Council said. It called them "true geological testimonies of a distant past."

Mission leader Giorgio Castellan said the finding was "exceptional for Italian seas: bioconstructions of this kind, and of such magnitude, had never been observed in the Dohrn Canyon, and are rarely seen elsewhere in our Mediterranean". The discovery will help scientists understand the ecological role of deep coral habitats and their distribution, especially in the context of conservation and restoration efforts, he added.

The undersea research was funded by the EU.

Thanks to davidone (Slashdot reader #12,252) for sharing the article.

Comment PMI and agile are two cancers being removed. (Score 2) 61

PMI and agile are sure signs you have a serious micromanagement problem. With any luck this reversion to flatter hierarchies will also see the death of Jira, the micromanager's preferred nuclear weapon.

I love the bleating sound these micromangers are making now that they are being fired from their "cat herding" BS jobs. If they had the slightest clue, they would have long ago realized you don't manage programmers, you lead them. This means you don't "herd cats" you get a treat, and lead them to where they want to go anyway.

One good leader can "manage" the same number of people as a dozen or more PMI trained micromanagers.

A friend of mine who fired 100% of his managers and replaced them with a few leaders, said, "I could tell who was a manager, and who was a leader, simply because the managers were always complaining about stress and overwork; whereas the leaders were comfortable with how things were going, even when bad outside things impacted their projects. They had no problem with having their teams deal with any problems."

Comment They should be forced to opensource (Score 2) 23

Without a doubt various top executives got "retention bonuses", the liquidation company probably got a bunch of money, with the employees and creditors probably seeing nothing, or very close to nothing.

When a company goes TU like this, and leaves customers in the lurch, they should be forced to go full open-source. With, the patents licensed to all owners where they are immune from patent issues as are any organizations which build things on their behalf. But, every engineering document, every software document, etc should all be wide open.

Comment Fit and finish (Score 2) 92

I was in Canary Wharf the other day showing someone the concept of fit and finish. They have the perfect pairing. A BYD dealership right across from a Range Rover one. I showed how the gap in the various external panels just doesn't change on a BYD. That the plastic fittings line up, etc.

Then we went to the RR dealership and my companion was OMFG, these are trash. Then she pointed out that one of the panels had a clearly sweeping design which was supposed to line up with another panels design, but didn't. It just was made wrong.

So, I'm not sure how RR even noticed their systems were hacked. Did they suddenly start making good vehicles and were forced to investigate?

Comment WTF would you let the power company ruin batteries (Score 0) 104

Batteries, even LiFePo ones have a limited number of charge discharges. Why would anyone let the power company wear that down? This is a classic case of a crap power company not building or maintaining a proper grid, so they fool their customers into building it for them.

Comment I would love the fold out computer. (Score 1) 39

That would be a great form factor fora powerful GPUs and a solid keyboard.

A couple of 15" portable screens would be just fine. I can see a long skinny machine like that with that pair of monitors fitting into my carry-on and not displacing too much other stuff.

I want one.

Comment I always assumed this was the case. (Score 1) 25

While many of the worst terrorist plots are somewhat domestic, I would assume that there are less flashy, but otherwise very hard to solve crimes like assassinating political defectors, (cough, russia, cough russia) and that combined with a a good CCTV system, that this would be pretty much the only chance to identify the culprits before they were able to get out of the country.

This, along with the more routine serious crimes where the window between offence and escape can be hours.
Programming

The Toughest Programming Question for High School Students on This Year's CS Exam: Arrays 65

America's nonprofit College Board lets high school students take college-level classes — including a computer programming course that culminates with a 90-minute test. But students did better on questions about If-Then statements than they did on questions about arrays, according to the head of the program. Long-time Slashdot reader theodp explains: Students exhibited "strong performance on primitive types, Boolean expressions, and If statements; 44% of students earned 7-8 of these 8 points," says program head Trevor Packard. But students were challenged by "questions on Arrays, ArrayLists, and 2D Arrays; 17% of students earned 11-12 of these 12 points."

"The most challenging AP Computer Science A free-response question was #4, the 2D array number puzzle; 19% of students earned 8-9 of the 9 points possible."

You can see that question here. ("You will write the constructor and one method of the SumOrSameGame class... Array elements are initialized with random integers between 1 and 9, inclusive, each with an equal chance of being assigned to each element of puzzle...") Although to be fair, it was the last question on the test — appearing on page 16 — so maybe some students just didn't get to it.

theodp shares a sample Java solution and one in Excel VBA solution (which includes a visual presentation).

There's tests in 38 subjects — but CS and Statistics are the subjects where the highest number of students earned the test's lowest-possible score (1 out of 5). That end of the graph also includes notoriously difficult subjects like Latin, Japanese Language, and Physics.

There's also a table showing scores for the last 23 years, with fewer than 67% of students achieving a passing grade (3+) for the first 11 years. But in 2013 and 2017, more than 67% of students achieved that passsing grade, and the percentage has stayed above that line ever since (except for 2021), vascillating between 67% and 70.4%.

2018: 67.8%
2019: 69.6%
2020: 70.4%
2021: 65.1%
2022: 67.6%
2023: 68.0%
2024: 67.2%
2025: 67.0%

Comment Ah ha moment (Score 1) 111

I've been waiting for a long time for when someone comes up with an "ah ha" moment with physics. I don't say quantum physics, but physics.

I have long read about people stumped as they pursue a GUT, but my feeling is that we have long just asked the wrong questions.

Something like going back in time and, after proving we are a legitimate time traveller. Giving Newton one question. He would ask the same question we are still asking: "What truly causes gravity?"

That suggests to me that something is wrong with the question.

Slashdot Top Deals

So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of money? -- Ayn Rand

Working...