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quietus writes:

Our last meeting of the state visit, in the Great Hall of the People, was with Li Keqiang, the premier of the State Council and the titular head of China's government. If anyone in the American group had any doubts about China's view of its relationship with the United States, Li's monologue would have removed them. He began with the observation that China, having already developed its industrial and technological base, no longer needed the United States. He dismissed U.S. concerns over unfair trade and economic practices, indicating that the U.S. role in the future global economy would merely be to provide China with raw materials, agricultural products, and energy to fuel its production of the world's cutting-edge industrial and consumer products.

H.R. McMaster: How China Sees The World. The Atlantic Monthly, May 2020.

China has the world's largest manufacturing sector, accounting for about 31% of total global manufacturing output. The EU's manufacturing sector has a global production share of 20%, while the United States accounts for about 17%.

In the United States, around 12.3 million people work in manufacturing; for the EU this number is 29.7 million. China's manufacturing sector employs over 120 million people.

Some of the hallmarks of the Biden Administration are its Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), and the CHIPS and Science Act. Both IRA and CHIPS act combined aim to inject close to a trillion dollars into specific sections of the manufacturing sector, while the INVEST in America Act (BIL) adds another 1.2 trillion dollar investment into transportation and road projects and electric grid renewal.

On June 12 of this year, the Joint Economic Committee of the US Senate held a hearing, titled "Made in America: The Boom in U.S. Manufacturing Investment". For that hearing, 4 witnesses were called.

For two of the witnesses, the future for US manufacturing looks bright, with the help of the acts mentioned above. If we want to remain a rich country, we need to invest in advanced manufacturing, they claim.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A group of researchers in the UK affiliated with the BSS (British Sleep Society) published a paper this week calling for the permanent abolition of Daylight Saving Time (DST) and adherence to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), in large part because modern evidence suggests having that extra hour of sunlight in the evenings is worse for our health than we thought back in the 1970s when the concept was all the rage in Europe.

Not only does GMT more closely align with the natural day/light cycle in the UK, the boffins assert, but decades of research into sleep and circadian rhythms have been produced since DST was enacted that have yet to be considered.

The human circadian rhythm, the 24-hour cycle our bodies go through, drives a lot about our health beyond sleep. It regulates hormone release, gene expression, metabolism, mood (who isn't grumpier when waking up in January?), and the like. In short, it's important. Messing with that rhythm by forcing ourselves out of bed earlier for several months out of the year can have lasting effects, the researchers said.

According to their review of recent research, having light trigger our circadian rhythms in the mornings to wake us up is far more important than an extra hour of light in the evenings. In fact, contrary to the belief that an extra hour of light in the evenings is beneficial, it might actually cause health problems by, again, mucking about with the human body's understanding of what time it is and how we ought to feel about it.

"Disruption of the daily synchronization of our body clocks causes disturbances in our physiology and behavior … which leads to negative short and long-term physical and mental health outcomes," the authors said. 

That, and we've just plain fooled ourselves into thinking it benefits us in any real way.

[...] And for the love of sleep, the researchers beg, don't spring forward permanently.

"Mornings are the time when our body clocks have the greatest need for light to stay in sync," said Dr Megan Crawford, lead author and senior lecturer in psychology at University of Strathclyde. "At our latitudes there is simply no spare daylight to save during the winter months and given the choice between natural light in the morning and natural light in the afternoon, the scientific evidence favors light in the morning."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has finalized a rule that requires banks, credit card issuers, and most other financial firms to provide consumers with access to their personal financial data - and to help them transfer it, generally at no cost.

When the rule eventually takes effect – anywhere from 2026 to 2030 depending upon financial firm assets and revenue, with the largest institutions having the least time to comply – it aims to make financial services more competitive by allowing consumers to move to different vendors more easily.

Under this "open banking" rule, covered financial firms: "shall make available to a consumer, upon request, information in the control or possession of the covered person concerning the consumer financial product or service that the consumer obtained from such covered person, subject to certain exceptions."

This data has to be made available in an electronic form usable by consumers and authorized third parties.

[...] "Too many Americans are stuck in financial products with lousy rates and service," said CFPB director Rohit Chopra in a statement. "Today's action will give people more power to get better rates and service on bank accounts, credit cards, and more."

The rule also outlines required privacy protections for personal financial data, specifying that third parties can only use data for a requested product or service.

"They cannot secretly collect, use, or retain consumers’ data for their own unrelated business reasons – for example, by offering consumers a loan using consumer data that they also use for targeted advertising," the CFPB said.

The rule prohibits data providers from making consumer data available to third parties through screen scraping and it requires that businesses delete consumer data when a person revokes access.

[...] "Enabling secure transfer or sharing of financial data will incentivize financial companies to compete for customers by providing better interest rates and customer service.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Despite an official ban on Russian government workers using the iPhone, an unreliable report says that sales have risen dramatically.

It was in 2023 that Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) tried banning government staff from using iPhones. Purportedly, it was because the FSB believed the US was using the iPhone for eavesdropping.

Now according to Reuters, local Russian sources are saying the ban rather failed. While the figures have yet to be confirmed by any other source, the Vedomosti business daily claims that purchases of iPhones from January 2024 to September would four times higher year over year.

[...] That rather dispels any idea that Russian officials are rebelling against the ban en masse. But it also points to how the original ban was seemingly far from a blanket one.

Equally, that destroys the idea that the FSB can be serious in its allegations of iPhone wiretapping. It's always been more likely that any ban is a retaliation for how Apple has ceased directly doing business in Russia since the start of the war with Ukraine.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Researchers at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Lab have developed a new type of optical memory that stores data by transferring light from rare-earth element atoms embedded in a solid material to nearby quantum defects. They published their study in Physical Review Research.

The problem that the researchers aim to solve is the diffraction limit of light in standard CDs and DVDs. Current optical storage has a hard cap on data density because each single bit can't be smaller than the wavelength of the reading/writing laser.

The researchers propose bypassing this limit by stuffing the material with rare-earth emitters, such as magnesium oxide (MgO) crystals. The trick, called wavelength multiplexing, involves having each emitter use a slightly different wavelength of light. They theorized that this would allow cramming far more data into the same storage footprint.

The researchers first had to tackle the physics and model all the requirements to build a proof of concept. They simulated a theoretical solid material filled with rare-earth atoms that absorb and re-emit light. The models then showed how the nearby quantum defects could capture and store the returned light.

One of the fundamental discoveries was that when a defect absorbs the narrow wavelength energy from those nearby atoms, it doesn't just get excited – its spin state flips. Once it flips, it is nearly impossible to revert, meaning those defects could legitimately store data for a long time.

While it's a promising first step, some crucial questions still need answers. For example, verifying how long those excited states persist is essential. Details were also light on capacity estimates – the scientists touted "ultra-high-density" but didn't provide any projections against current disc capacities. Yet, despite the remaining hurdles, the researchers are hyped, calling it a "huge first step."

Of course, turning all this into an actual commercial storage product will likely take years of additional research and development.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

"Spreading misinformation suddenly becomes a noble goal," Redditor says:

A trend on Reddit that sees Londoners giving false restaurant recommendations in order to keep their favorites clear of tourists and social media influencers highlights the inherent flaws of Google Search's reliance on Reddit and Google's AI Overview.

In May, Google launched AI Overviews in the US, an experimental feature that populates the top of Google Search results with a summarized answer based on an AI model built into Google's web rankings. When Google first debuted AI Overview, it quickly became apparent that the feature needed work with accuracy and its ability to properly summarize information from online sources. AI Overviews are "built to only show information that is backed up by top web results," Liz Reid, VP and head of Google Search, wrote in a May blog post. But as my colleague Benj Edwards pointed out at the time, that setup could contribute to inaccurate, misleading, or even dangerous results: "The design is based on the false assumption that Google's page-ranking algorithm favors accurate results and not SEO-gamed garbage."

As Edwards alluded to, many have complained about Google Search results' quality declining in recent years, as SEO spam and, more recently, AI slop float to the top of searches. As a result, people often turn to the Reddit hack to make Google results more helpful. By adding "site:reddit.com" to search results, users can hone their search to more easily find answers from real people. Google seems to understand the value of Reddit and signed an AI training deal with the company that's reportedly worth $60 million per year.

But disgruntled foodies in London are reminding us of the inherent dangers of relying on the scraping of user-generated content to provide what's supposed to be factual, helpful information.

Apparently, some London residents are getting fed up with social media influencers whose reviews make long lines of tourists at their favorite restaurants, sometimes just for the likes. Christian Calgie, a reporter for London-based news publication Daily Express, pointed out this trend on X yesterday, noting the boom of Redditors referring people to Angus Steakhouse, a chain restaurant, to combat it.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Not all winged dinosaurs were necessarily capable of full flight, but this anatomical feature may have enabled them to travel further by flapping or gliding

Tiny tracks in South Korea symbolise a moment 120 million years ago when a dinosaur took advantage of its wings to cover ground in large leaps – the oldest track evidence of wing-assisted movement in these extinct animals.

Whether the creature, which was a raptor and not part of the lineage that led to birds, took full flight is uncertain. But the tracks support previous ideas that aerodynamics evolved multiple times across prehistoric lines, says Alexander Dececchi at Dakota State University in South Dakota.

“It’s pretty rare to find these kinds of [pre-flight] tracks, and then to find them in an animal that’s not even a bird – that’s pretty special,” he says.

Velociraptors and other raptors (dromaeosaurids) are the ancestors of modern birds, but their lineage split into avian and non-avian, or “paravian”, lines about 170 million years ago. Despite having feathers and wings, paravian dinosaurs generally seemed to lack the wingspan needed to offset their body weight, says team member Michael Pittman at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

But Pittman, Dececchi and their colleagues suspected that some paravian dinosaurs could fly, or at least glide, before full flight evolved in birds, based on muscles in their upper bodies. That suspicion grew stronger as they investigated more than 2600 rows of dinosaur tracks around the world.

One set of tracks, discovered during the construction of a shopping centre in south-eastern South Korea, showed surprisingly long spacing between steps made by a sparrow-sized raptor called Dromaeosauriformipes rarus.

[...] Further calculations and comparisons with fossil anatomy suggested he was right: the animal could not have made that stride with its legs alone. It was clearly flapping or gliding, possibly while launching or landing, says Pittman.

“I think the vast majority of feathered dinosaurs were probably doing what this guy was doing – using the wings to augment running, jumping, braking and turning,” says Pittman.

Journal reference: Theropod trackways as indirect evidence of pre-avian aerial behavior. DOI: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2413810121

Original Submission

https://www.uniladtech.com/science/space/nasa-astronauts-iss-brace-emergency-evacuation-093405-20241029

Astronauts on the ISS brace for emergency evacuation after NASA finds 50 'areas of concern'

NASA has raised the threat level to the highest rating

NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station are preparing for a possible evacuation as they face a worsening air leak problem.

The US space agency and its Russian counterpart, Roscomos, are tracking 50 'areas of concern' related to a growing leak aboard the station.

In a recent report from NASA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG), the cracks in a Russian service module have reached a 'top safety risk,' marking it a five-out-of-five threat level.

This story is the only one I can find. Can someone please corroborate this?

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Ramanujan brings life to the myth of the self-taught genius. He grew up poor and uneducated and did much of his research while isolated in southern India, barely able to afford food. In 1912, when he was 24, he began to send a series of letters to prominent mathematicians. These were mostly ignored, but one recipient, the English mathematician G.H. Hardy, corresponded with Ramanujan for a year and eventually persuaded him to come to England, smoothing the way with the colonial bureaucracies.

It became apparent to Hardy and his colleagues that Ramanujan could sense mathematical truths — could access entire worlds — that others simply could not. (Hardy, a mathematical giant in his own right, is said to have quipped that his greatest contribution to mathematics was the discovery of Ramanujan.) Before Ramanujan died in 1920 at the age of 32, he came up with thousands of elegant and surprising results, often without proof. He was fond of saying that his equations had been bestowed on him by the gods.

More than 100 years later, mathematicians are still trying to catch up to Ramanujan’s divine genius, as his visions appear again and again in disparate corners of the world of mathematics.

The English mathematician G.H. Hardy, after receiving a letter from Ramanujan and recognizing his brilliance, arranged for him to study and work with him in Cambridge.

Ramanujan is perhaps most famous for coming up with partition identities, equations about the different ways you can break a whole number up into smaller parts (such as 7 = 5 + 1 + 1). In the 1980s, mathematicians began to find deep and surprising connections between these equations and other areas of mathematics: in statistical mechanics and the study of phase transitions, in knot theory and string theory, in number theory and representation theory and the study of symmetries.

Most recently, they’ve appeared in Mourtada’s work on curves and surfaces that are defined by algebraic equations, an area of study called algebraic geometry. Mourtada and his collaborators have spent more than a decade trying to better understand that link, and to exploit it to uncover rafts of brand-new identities that resemble those Ramanujan wrote down.

“It turned out that these kinds of results have basically occurred in almost every branch of mathematics. That’s an amazing thing,” said Ole Warnaar of the University of Queensland in Australia. “It’s not just a happy coincidence. I don’t want to sound religious, but the mathematical god is trying to tell us something.”

owl writes:

https://github.com/RamboRogers/rfhunter

This project is an RF Signal Scanner built using an ESP32, AD8317 RF detector, and various other components. It's designed to detect and measure RF signals in the environment and display the signal strength on an OLED display. It's useful to find hidden cameras, wiretapping devices, and other RF-enabled devices.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/t-mobile-att-oppose-unlocking-rule-claim-locked-phones-are-good-for-users/

T-Mobile and AT&T say US regulators should drop a plan to require unlocking of phones within 60 days of activation, claiming that locking phones to a carrier's network makes it possible to provide cheaper handsets to consumers. "If the Commission mandates a uniform unlocking policy, it is consumers—not providers—who stand to lose the most," T-Mobile alleged in an October 17 filing with the Federal Communications Commission.

[...] T-Mobile claims that with a 60-day unlocking rule, "consumers risk losing access to the benefits of free or heavily subsidized handsets because the proposal would force providers to reduce the line-up of their most compelling handset offers."

[...] T-Mobile and other carriers are responding to a call for public comments that began after the FCC approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in a 5–0 vote. The FCC is proposing "to require all mobile wireless service providers to unlock handsets 60 days after a consumer's handset is activated with the provider, unless within the 60-day period the service provider determines the handset was purchased through fraud."

[...] T-Mobile's policy says the carrier will only unlock mobile devices on prepaid plans if "at least 365 days... have passed since the device was activated on the T-Mobile network."

"You bought your phone, you should be able to take it to any provider you want," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said when the FCC proposed the rule. "Some providers already operate this way. Others do not. In fact, some have recently increased the time their customers must wait until they can unlock their device by as much as 100 percent."

[...] AT&T enables unlocking of paid-off phones after 60 days for postpaid users and after six months for prepaid users. AT&T lodged similar complaints as T-Mobile [...] In an October 2 filing, Verizon said it supports "a uniform approach to handset unlocking that allows all wireless providers to lock wireless handsets for a reasonable period of time to limit fraud and to enable device subsidies, followed by automatic unlocking absent evidence of fraud."

The public interest groups also note that unlocked handsets "facilitate a robust secondary market for used devices, providing consumers with more affordable options," the NPRM said.

[...] The Supreme Court recently overturned the 40-year-old Chevron precedent that gave agencies like the FCC judicial deference when interpreting ambiguous laws. The end of Chevron makes it harder for agencies to issue regulations without explicit authorization from Congress. This is a potential problem for the FCC in its fight to revive net neutrality rules, which are currently blocked by a court order pending the outcome of litigation.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Scientists in China have created a mind-bogglingly powerful resistive magnet that has officially broken the world record by sustaining an incredible 42.02 tesla. That is over 800,000 times stronger than the magnetic field produced by Earth itself, which has a flux density of about 50 microtesla.

The new record was set on September 22 at the Steady High Magnetic Field Facility (SHMFF) in Hefei, narrowly edging out the previous record of 41.4 tesla held by another resistive magnet at the National High Magnetic Field Lab in Florida since 2017.

As for why scientists are so determined to push the limits of magnetism, physicist Joachim Wosnitza from Germany's Dresden lab explained that it opens up all kinds of bizarre new realms of physics to explore. Essentially, the stronger the magnetism, the greater the chances of discovering new states of matter.

Another physicist noted that high magnetism allows scientists to engineer and manipulate entirely new phases of matter that simply don't exist under normal conditions. Each additional tesla achieved also makes instruments exponentially more sensitive for detecting faint phenomena.

The SHMFF's new champion is available for international researchers to test on advanced materials like superconductors.

The only drawback of such resistive magnetic systems is that they are real power hogs. The SHMFF's creation consumed a staggering 32.3 megawatts to achieve that record. However, scientists continue to use them because they can sustain high magnetic fields much longer than their newer superconducting counterparts, which eventually reach their limits. The older magnets can also be ramped up quickly.

Nonetheless, the enormous power requirements are a significant problem. Therefore, teams like those at the SHMFF are also working on hybrid and fully superconducting designs that could achieve extreme strengths while consuming much less energy.

This is not to say that hybrid or superconducting designs are less powerful than resistive magnetic systems. In fact, China debuted a hybrid resistive/superconducting magnet in 2022 that achieved a 45.22 tesla field.

On the other side of the world, the US National Lab's mini superconducting prototype managed a brief 45.5 tesla burst back in 2019. However, making these new low-power systems reliable and affordable – while also keeping them cool – remains a major technical challenge, underscoring the continued need for resistive magnets.

Original Submission

Over the coming days and weeks we will be switching servers from Linode to our own hardware. The first switch will take place tomorrow. This will also require some DNS changes but you just keep using the same URLs that you are using today. Other than that services should look and behave exactly as they do now. There may well be minor disruptions to connections and we ask you to please bear with us if they occur. There will be pauses of a day or more in between each service being switched over, while we continue to monitor that everything is working as expected.

Moving the data from a live server to a new server means that there will be a finite time between making a backup and installing it on the new server. The site will indicate that maintenance is being carried out. That implies that posts made during this interval will be lost. The process will begin around 1600 UTC on Monday 28 October. We will attempt to make the switch over as quickly as possible and there should always be a live server online. If you lose access to the site completely remember that you can still contact us via email ('nickname' [@] soylentnews.org), on IRC, or by shouting VERY loudly.

If your comment is lost please do not believe those in the community who will no doubt claim that comments are being intentionally deleted. They are not (unless you are one of our small number of persistent spammers).

Once each switch is completed I would hope that we can inform you immediately. However, that might not always be possible - everyone has to sleep sometime! Please make any observations regarding problems, or even compliments if the system is responding better than before, in the comments for this Meta. However, our testing so far indicates that the new servers are more responsive than the existing servers but of course they have not yet been placed under quite the same load.

UPDATE: You should all be accessing the new server. Please let us know if you experience any problems. A big thank-you to kolie!.

looorg writes:

https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/digital-art-day-auction-2/a-i-god-portrait-of-alan-turing
https://www.dw.com/en/portrait-by-robot-to-be-sold-at-sothebys-in-world-first/a-70508473

For the first time ever, a well-known auction house is selling an artwork that was painted by a robot. Sotheby's will be auctioning off the portrait of scientist Alan Turing and it could fetch as much as £150,000.

The large-scale artwork is entitled "AI God" and was " first exhibited at the United Nations in May 2024 as part of a five paneled Polyptych," Sotheby's said on its homepage.

He said the work's "muted tones and broken facial planes" seemingly suggested "the struggles Turing warned we will face when it comes to managing AI." Ai-Da's works were "ethereal and haunting" and "continue to question where the power of AI will take us, and the global race to harness its power."

What will the starving Robot AI artist do with the money? Pay the electricity bill? Eat more bits? Or will the human manager take a 100% cut?

The ultra-realistic robot is designed to resemble a human female with a face, large eyes and a brown wig. The robot works by deploying AI algorithms and has cameras in its eyes, as well as bionic hands.

Ultra-realistic? Looks more like someone got lost in the uncanny valley, or got very poor taste in women. It's apparently important to note that it is a (or resembles) human female. Not one of those disgusting manbots artistic AI fueled robots. How does female robots differ from male robots anyway? 0s or 1s ?

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Since it was founded nearly two decades ago, 23andMe has grown into one of the largest biotechnology companies in the world. Millions of people have used its simple genetic testing service, which involves ordering a saliva test, spitting into a tube, and sending it back to the company for a detailed DNA analysis.

But now the company is on the brink of bankruptcy. This has raised concerns about what will happen to the troves of genetic data it has in its possession.

The company's chief executive, Anne Wojcicki, has said she is committed to customer privacy and will "maintain our current privacy policy".

But what can customers of 23andMe themselves do to make sure their highly personal genetic data is protected? And should we be concerned about other companies that also collect our DNA?

[...] 23andMe has had a rapid downfall after the 2021 high of its public listing.

Its value has dropped more than 97%. In 2023, it suffered a major data breach affecting almost seven million users and settled a class action lawsuit for US$30 million.

Last month its seven independent directors resigned amid news the original founder is planning to take the company private once more. The company has never made a profit and is reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy.

What this might mean for its vast stores of genetic data is unclear.

Previously:

• 23andMe Proposes $30 Million Payment for Data Breach
• 23andMe Tells Victims it's Their Fault that Their Data was Breached
• 23andMe: Profiles of 6.9 Million People Hacked
• 23andMe Says Private User Data is Up for Sale After Being Scraped

Original Submission