Comment Re:witch hunt (Score 1) 110
Let's fix our unsustainable debt and deficit first.
Comment Re:WM made some dumb decisions... (Score 1, Informative) 24
The Walmart website is harder to navigate and has a worse layout. Generally it has a smaller selection and higher prices. It also seems to try to sell you what they want to sell as opposed to what you want to buy.
Comment Re:IRS (Score 1) 150
The deeply regressive component is easily fixable. It could be determined how much the average person at the poverty line pays monthly in sales taxes. Every month the government sends each US citizen a check for that amount.
Comment Re:IRS (Score 1) 150
This is the heart of the issue. A supercomputer is needed to manage tax collections.
How about first fixing the tax code so there is zero complexity for non-business people? Repeal 21st amendment and move to a consumption tax. You pay taxes at the checkout register. We already do it in 8 states and it works.
No more April 15th, H&R block and taking taxes from you paycheck. And no need for a HAL9000.
Submission + - How 3D-printed parts changed the NASCAR Cup Series (popsci.com)
schwit1 writes: Faster, easier, and cheaper.
In 2021, NASCAR unveiled its Next Gen platform that included a number of rule changes from the previous iteration. Now fully symmetrical and using composite body panels instead of metal, the latest NASCAR vehicles are more like the street versions of the Chevrolet Camaro, the Ford Mustang, and the Toyota TRD Camry.
Race car driving isn’t an inexpensive sport, and one of the goals for the Next Gen platform was to reduce operating costs and create parity across the board. Technique Chassis, the sole chassis manufacturer for the NASCAR Cup Series, builds a modular offering in three parts. As a result, everyone is starting with the same platform, and finding a competitive advantage is in the tiniest details.
One smart way to differentiate from the competition is 3D-printed parts. But this isn’t your hobbyist level 3D printing.
In 2021, NASCAR unveiled its Next Gen platform that included a number of rule changes from the previous iteration. Now fully symmetrical and using composite body panels instead of metal, the latest NASCAR vehicles are more like the street versions of the Chevrolet Camaro, the Ford Mustang, and the Toyota TRD Camry.
Race car driving isn’t an inexpensive sport, and one of the goals for the Next Gen platform was to reduce operating costs and create parity across the board. Technique Chassis, the sole chassis manufacturer for the NASCAR Cup Series, builds a modular offering in three parts. As a result, everyone is starting with the same platform, and finding a competitive advantage is in the tiniest details.
One smart way to differentiate from the competition is 3D-printed parts. But this isn’t your hobbyist level 3D printing.
Comment VP Vance talk @ AI Action Summit Plenary Summit (Score 1) 44
Incredible to see a political leader translate how a new technology can promote human flourishing with such clarity. Exceptional speech.
https://x.com/KTmBoyle/status/...
A note on this kind of speech— it’s not written by a speechwriter, where the speaker has no knowledge of the subject. It’s not full of filler words that carry no meaning. It has a clear argument, and a surprising one for the audience he’s addressing.
One of the problems with AI is that politicians are so intimidated by technology that most couldn’t confidently argue these points — they don’t understand it so how could they argue its benefits?
You can tell this speech is native to him and that it wasn’t written by committee. These are not ideas that he hasn’t wrestled with. That’s why it’s phenomenal, and why it’s so different than all the meaningless slop most politicians deliver.
https://x.com/KTmBoyle/status/...
Comment The waste and fraud being found is massive (Score 1) 3
They've barely scratched the surface and haven't even started on the DOD.
The federal bureaucracy is a necessary evil and not a jobs program. It's also not supposed to be a check on the Executive.
Comment Re:Addressing 50% of a problem is 0% of a solution (Score 1) 509
Maybe he's trying to kick Congress to get rid of it by law.
Comment Re:It's not only AI taking jobs (Score 1) 113
There's a perfect storm against career IT jobs
- The US economy is in a recession
- Musk showed that significant cutting of staffing can work(Twitter)
- AI is perceived as a golden goose to replace staff
- Trump wants to cut the US deficit significantly, which includes a lot of government and contractor jobs. Projects and programs will get cancelled.
Submission + - Boeing warns SLS employees of potential layoffs (spacenews.com)
schwit1 writes: Boeing SLS employees were informed Feb. 7 that the company was making preparations to cut up to 400 jobs from the program because of “revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectations.” The specific positions being considered for elimination were not announced but would account for a significant fraction of the overall SLS workforce at the company.
Comment Cancel it and cancel SLS/Artemis (Score 4, Insightful) 42
Put the money into real science missions
Submission + - We made the SolarWinds supply chain attack look amateur
An anonymous reader writes: 8 Million Requests Later, We Made The SolarWinds Supply Chain Attack Look Amateur
“Surprise surprise, we've done it again. We've demonstrated an ability to compromise significantly sensitive networks, including governments, militaries, space agencies, cyber security companies, supply chains, software development systems and environments, and more.”
“Surprise surprise, we've done it again. We've demonstrated an ability to compromise significantly sensitive networks, including governments, militaries, space agencies, cyber security companies, supply chains, software development systems and environments, and more.”
Submission + - Quantum Teleportation Used To Distribute a Calculation (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In today's issue of Nature, a team at Oxford University describes using quantum teleportation to link two pieces of quantum hardware that were located about 2 meters apart, meaning they could easily have been in different rooms entirely. Once linked, the two pieces of hardware could be treated as a single quantum computer, allowing simple algorithms to be performed that involved operations on both sides of the 2-meter gap. [...] The Oxford team was simply interested in a proof-of-concept, and so used an extremely simplified system. Each end of the 2-meter gap had a single trap holding two ions, one strontium and one calcium. The two atoms could be entangled with each other, getting them to operate as a single unit. The calcium ion served as a local memory and was used in computations, while the strontium ion served as one of the two ends of the quantum network. An optical cable between the two ion traps allowed photons to entangle the two strontium ions, getting the whole system to operate as a single unit. The key thing about the entanglement processes used here is that a failure to entangle left the system in its original state, meaning that the researchers could simply keep trying until the qubits were entangled. The entanglement event would also lead to a photon that could be measured, allowing the team to know when success had been achieved (this sort of entanglement with a success signal is termed "heralded" by those in the field).
The researchers showed that this setup allowed them to teleport with a specific gate operation (controlled-Z), which can serve as the basis for any other two-qubit gate operation—any operation you might want to do can be done by using a specific combination of these gates. After performing multiple rounds of these gates, the team found that the typical fidelity was in the area of 70 percent. But they also found that errors typically had nothing to do with the teleportation process and were the product of local operations at one of the two ends of the network. They suspect that using commercial hardware, which has far lower error rates, would improve things dramatically. Finally, they performed a version of Grover's algorithm, which can, with a single query, identify a single item from an arbitrarily large unordered list. The "arbitrary" aspect is set by the number of available qubits; in this case, having only two qubits, the list maxed out at four items. Still, it worked, again with a fidelity of about 70 percent.
While the work was done with trapped ions, almost every type of qubit in development can be controlled with photons, so the general approach is hardware-agnostic. And, given the sophistication of our optical hardware, it should be possible to link multiple chips at various distances, all using hardware that doesn't require the best vacuum or the lowest temperatures we can generate. That said, the error rate of the teleportation steps may still be a problem, even if it was lower than the basic hardware rate in these experiments. The fidelity there was 97 percent, which is lower than the hardware error rates of most qubits and high enough that we couldn't execute too many of these before the probability of errors gets unacceptably high.
The researchers showed that this setup allowed them to teleport with a specific gate operation (controlled-Z), which can serve as the basis for any other two-qubit gate operation—any operation you might want to do can be done by using a specific combination of these gates. After performing multiple rounds of these gates, the team found that the typical fidelity was in the area of 70 percent. But they also found that errors typically had nothing to do with the teleportation process and were the product of local operations at one of the two ends of the network. They suspect that using commercial hardware, which has far lower error rates, would improve things dramatically. Finally, they performed a version of Grover's algorithm, which can, with a single query, identify a single item from an arbitrarily large unordered list. The "arbitrary" aspect is set by the number of available qubits; in this case, having only two qubits, the list maxed out at four items. Still, it worked, again with a fidelity of about 70 percent.
While the work was done with trapped ions, almost every type of qubit in development can be controlled with photons, so the general approach is hardware-agnostic. And, given the sophistication of our optical hardware, it should be possible to link multiple chips at various distances, all using hardware that doesn't require the best vacuum or the lowest temperatures we can generate. That said, the error rate of the teleportation steps may still be a problem, even if it was lower than the basic hardware rate in these experiments. The fidelity there was 97 percent, which is lower than the hardware error rates of most qubits and high enough that we couldn't execute too many of these before the probability of errors gets unacceptably high.
Submission + - US Health System Notifies 882,000 Patients of August 2023 Breach (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Hospital Sisters Health System notified over 882,000 patients that an August 2023 cyberattack led to a data breach that exposed their personal and health information. Established in 1875, HSHS works with over 2,200 physicians and has around 12,000 employees. It also operates a network of physician practices and 15 local hospitals across Illinois and Wisconsin, including two children's hospitals. The non-profit healthcare system said in data breach notifications sent to those impacted that the incident was discovered on August 27, 2023, after detecting that the attacker had gained access to HSHS' network.
After the security breach, its systems were also impacted by a widespread outage that took down "virtually all operating systems" and phone systems across Illinois and Wisconsin hospitals. HSHS also hired external security experts to investigate the attack, assess its impact, and help its IT team restore affected systems. [...] While the incident and the resulting outage have all the signs of a ransomware attack, no ransomware operation has claimed the breach. Following the forensic investigation, HSHS found that the attackers had accessed files on compromised systems between August 16 and August 27, 2023.
The information accessed by the threat actors while inside HSHS' systems varies for each impacted individual, and it includes a combination of name, address, date of birth, medical record number, limited treatment information, health insurance information, Social Security number, and/or driver's license number. While HSHS added that there is no evidence that the victims' information has been used in fraud or identity theft attempts, it warned affected individuals to monitor their account statements and credit reports for suspicious activity. The health system also offers those affected by the breach one year of free Equifax credit monitoring.
After the security breach, its systems were also impacted by a widespread outage that took down "virtually all operating systems" and phone systems across Illinois and Wisconsin hospitals. HSHS also hired external security experts to investigate the attack, assess its impact, and help its IT team restore affected systems. [...] While the incident and the resulting outage have all the signs of a ransomware attack, no ransomware operation has claimed the breach. Following the forensic investigation, HSHS found that the attackers had accessed files on compromised systems between August 16 and August 27, 2023.
The information accessed by the threat actors while inside HSHS' systems varies for each impacted individual, and it includes a combination of name, address, date of birth, medical record number, limited treatment information, health insurance information, Social Security number, and/or driver's license number. While HSHS added that there is no evidence that the victims' information has been used in fraud or identity theft attempts, it warned affected individuals to monitor their account statements and credit reports for suspicious activity. The health system also offers those affected by the breach one year of free Equifax credit monitoring.
Submission + - Musk says DOGE will upgrade Air Traffic Control soon (thehill.com) 1
SonicSpike writes: Tech billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday said the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will make “rapid safety upgrades” to the air traffic control systems with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
“With the support of President @realDonaldTrump, the @DOGE team will aim to make rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system,” Musk wrote Wednesday on the social platform X, which he owns.
“Just a few days ago, the FAA’s primary aircraft safety notification system failed for several hours!” he added, likely referring to an outage of the FAA’s Notice to Air Mission system over the weekend.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told CNN over the weekend that the system allows pilots to download flight details ahead of a trip and is required for planes to fly.
Shortly before Musk’s post on Wednesday, Duffy posted on X that he spoke with the DOGE team, who will “plug in to help upgrade our aviation system.”
The Department of Transportation (DOT) did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for more details on what these upgrades could look like.
When asked about the upgrades, a White House spokesperson doubled down on DOGE’s mission.
“With the support of President @realDonaldTrump, the @DOGE team will aim to make rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system,” Musk wrote Wednesday on the social platform X, which he owns.
“Just a few days ago, the FAA’s primary aircraft safety notification system failed for several hours!” he added, likely referring to an outage of the FAA’s Notice to Air Mission system over the weekend.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told CNN over the weekend that the system allows pilots to download flight details ahead of a trip and is required for planes to fly.
Shortly before Musk’s post on Wednesday, Duffy posted on X that he spoke with the DOGE team, who will “plug in to help upgrade our aviation system.”
The Department of Transportation (DOT) did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for more details on what these upgrades could look like.
When asked about the upgrades, a White House spokesperson doubled down on DOGE’s mission.
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