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Comment Re:I read methods... this is why. (Score 1) 212

It passed the peer review because it was promoting The Message and nobody wanted to risk career trying to get in the way. I think peer review is why images of AI models was even included in the paper, so in a way it was partial success. If you read the actual words, they don't at all match what they used. No way this was done accidentally.

Comment They exist. (Score 3, Interesting) 69

Chip-scale atomic clocks are a thing. The problem is that they aren't exactly low enough power to be wrist mounted as they need 115 mW constantly. You absolute can make it into a wristwatch (and people have) but it will need regular charging... unless you are using betavoltaic nuclear batteries. However to reach the power output needed with what is on the market, you would need about 120K of them.

The natural reaction to this is "what's the purpose of building up that kind of arm strength if the batteries are just going to die in 50 years?" and the answer is the diamond battery! This is a newer betavoltaic battery which is in the same power output range but lasts for thousands of years because it's based on Carbon-14.

Start doing those reps today because the watch of your dreams is 2400Kg.

Comment Re:It's just for show (Score 1) 189

I don't really oppose H1b, but arrest one CEO who is hiring people illegally, and this will stop.

You don't even have to go that far. Disbar a few corporate lawyers filing immigration paperwork and that will likely solve the problem. Corporate people commit the fraud because they have near certainty of not being held accountable. Change that and immigration fraud at scale goes away.

Comment Re:Excellent Move (Score 2) 189

I think I was supposed to rubberstamp Microsoft immigration fraud, and I accidentally didn't, because I tried to accurately answer the question I was actually asked.

What you have is called integrity. Immigration fraud hurts everyone earning a salary by suppressing wages, this includes new immigrants that get sponsored.

Submission + - "Software is over" Developer uses AI builds Adobe clones after cancellation fees (techspot.com) 1

joshuark writes: Ars Technica reports, developer Brandon Thomas is taking on seven of Adobe's best-known applications through Artcraft. The project extend beyond Adobe's famous photo editing program to video production, vector graphics, page layouts, and PDF tools.

In his Reddit announcement, Thomas says he used Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 to build the replacements in Rust. Photocraft imitates Photoshop, while Vectorcraft and Filmcraft take on Illustrator and Premiere. Lightcraft, Effectcraft, Designcraft, and Printcraft are the alternatives to Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro, respectively.

The apps are open source and free, with no subscription required. Users can download the source code, modify it, and contribute fixes. Thomas describes himself as a software industry veteran with 15 years of experience, including roughly a decade working with Rust. He also insists the project has team support and will not be abandoned after launch.

"We're going to reach 100% parity within a month," he said, which is an ambitious claim.

For now, the software remains at an early stage, and commenters have reported problems with basic functionality. They might look like Adobe's apps, but it doesn't sound like they're able to replace the long-established programs just yet.

Thomas says Adobe's cancelation fees helped motivate the project, which is understandable.

Thomas believes other developers will follow suit, predicting a future where free, near-identical open-source versions of popular paid apps will be widely available.

"Now you can just create 1:1 functional equivalents, clean room, that are highly performant and cross-platform. Nothing is stopping you," Thomas wrote. "We'll replace Google Search, we'll build our own smartphones, we'll build better infra. We'll remove all the ads and de-enshittify the entire tech world."

"Software is over," he declared, somewhat boldly. And hopefully cancellation fees.

Comment Re:Same code, less pay (Score 1) 212

Still, using functionally identical assistants makes this an interesting test.

I looked at avatars they produced and they are not the same quality. Perhaps innocently because of poor hair render, or perhaps intentionally to craft a narrative, the resulting avatars were vastly different in realism and attractiveness. Notably, female avatar had long and poorly rendered hair with a strange hairdo and odd baggy outfit. The male avatar had short hair, T-shirt over sculpted torso, and no facial hair. The equivalent male avatar would be with a long unkempt beard and wearing something like baggy hoodie.

Submission + - The Trump administration has barred Microsoft, Adobe from H-1B (politico.com)

sinij writes:

The Trump administration has barred Microsoft, Adobe and six IT companies from sponsoring H-1B workers for green cards, Vice President JD Vance announced Thursday. Vance made the comments during a press conference on visa fraud, during which he argued Microsoft is discriminating against Americans by prioritizing foreign workers


Comment I read methods... this is why. (Score 4, Informative) 212

Johan and Johanna To ensure high visual fidelity and anatomical realism, appearances were based on standard human models from Reallusion. These models were chosen for their neutral and highly similar appearances, aiming to isolate gender presentation as the primary visual difference between the two assistant representations.

In Figure 3 you can see the resulting bots. Dude looks almost normal, but female-presenting assistant is seriously into uncanny valley. This alone fully explains the observed result.

Comment Re:Looking back - there always been censorship (Score 1) 138

I keep going various historical rabbit holes (e.g., Kennedy, Nixon, etc.) and I think the difference between back then and now is that censorship actually worked. We, the general public, did not find out about most of things being censored. Maybe with exception of Iran Contra.So your impression of only bending things being censored is based on the mistaken premise that you had a comparable viewpoint/exposure. Today, almost everything gets out if you are willing to entertain it. Trump Jr.'s wedding scandal became known the next day. Trump crypto graft is not even a secret. Biden's dementia was widely known early on.

The point I am trying to make is that it always bordered on 1984, only now we know about it.

Comment Looking back - there always been censorship (Score 3, Interesting) 138

I came to realization that what changed in recent years is not the amount of censorship but ability to do it quietly no longer there. Censorship always existed, but it was much easier to isolate and marginalize dissenters. Now, everyone has their own online tribe and it is practically impossible to suppress any information. So yes, Internet did deliver on its promise, but it also created new problems.

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).

Submission + - UK vegetables 20-50% less nutritious than in the 1960s (telegraph.co.uk)

Bruce66423 writes: 'The nutritional value of fruit and vegetables has fallen by up to 50pc since the Sixties because of declining soil quality, according to a new study.

'The study found that many crops had lost 20pc to 50pc of several key nutrients.

'Will Summers, a senior associate at the firm, said: “For 60 years we’ve measured food security in calories and tonnes per hectare.

'“On those measures we’ve done remarkably well. But we’ve been quietly hollowing out what’s inside our food.”

'The decrease in nutrient and vitamin value is thought to be down to declining soil quality and crops being selectively bred for their ability to grow quickly, rather than there being any focus on their health benefits.'

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