Skip Navigation
EU attempt to sneak through new encryption-eroding law slammed by Signal, politicians
  • It's nothing to do with stopping pedos. The people pushing this year-in and year-out don't care THAT much about pedos. It's not a cause that's motivating enough for them to be putting in so much effort, trying to sneak in legislation after being repeatedly rebuffed.

  • What is your BG3 unpopular opinion?
  • In terms of pacing and stakes, it would have made much more sense for the PCs to have gone to Baldur's Gate earlier in the game to do all the "adventurers faffing around" stuff, then revisited the city during the endgame. Though it would have clashed with their "each act is one set of maps" setup.

    Instead, in the last act we have Gortash, supposed 5D chess player, centering all his plans on the PCs flipping to his side. Then he sits back and lets them wander all over the city, undermining him. Ultimately, when they don't take up his offer, his backup plan is "whelp, guess I'll die".

    Maybe the excuse is that the Elder Brain was making him stupid...

  • Chinese firm sought to use UK university links to access AI for possible military use
  • Loyalty pledges are kabuki theatre. There's no point talking about them, since the state has plenty of degrees of freedom to force citizens to do what they want, with or without them. And not just the Chinese state; the US just outright decided one day that no US citizen will be allowed to work in the Chinese semiconductor industry, as though citizens are property of the government -- they didn't need no signed loyalty pledges to enforce that.

  • What is your BG3 unpopular opinion?
  • It was too long and had too much content.

    Seriously, though. In the last act, Baldur's Gate was so huge and took so long to explore that it destroyed the momentum of the overall story. (The evil army is invading! Oh wait, they are now hiding underground doing nothing, so that you can take your time exploring the city).

  • Chinese firm sought to use UK university links to access AI for possible military use
  • Yes, you caught me out as a pro-CCP shill. All hail Xi Jinping, thought leader of the world (please ignore my previous comments calling him a dumbass).

    Clearly the university did have stuff China wanted, otherwise China wouldn't have targeted it. You don't have to be educated at IC to figure that out.

    Chinese orgs love signing MOUs. Looking at the underlying story, this looks like bog standard research into computer vision and related topics. If it were the Chinese government wanting to steal stuff, they'd be going after companies. There won't be anything in Imperial College that they won't find already in top Chinese universities, let alone their tech giants.

  • Chinese firm sought to use UK university links to access AI for possible military use
  • Huh? China has much better domestic sources of AI tech than anything out of Imperial College.

    The British always like to think they're on par with the US in all things, so I guess now they're imagining they're the world leaders in AI and the Chinese want to steal their tech...?

  • America’s assassination attempt on Huawei is backfiring
  • I was curious about this too, but digging around on the internet doesn't seem to give a definitive answer to this question. The "breaking Android application compatibility" story is real, see this Technode article.

    What I think seems to be happening is that Huawei is developing HarmonyOS the way GNU/Linux came out of Unix, replacing bits and pieces at a time. They started out using many prominent Android components which led to some commentators dismissing it as just an AOSP fork, but over time they're diverging into a genuine third mobile operating system, including their own ABI and development toolchain.

  • How the far-right gained traction with Europe's youth
  • This is a fairly predictable consequence of economic stagnation. France is still below its pre-Covid level of GDP per capita, while Germany only caught up. Both countries, and most other countries in Europe, seem to be permanently stuck at a GDP per capita level 20-30 percent below the US.

    There are lots of excuses for Europe's lower economic dynamism relative to the US, about how it's a trade-off for improved quality of life (more vacations, etc). But young people benefit disproportionately from dynamism, because they're the ones working their way up. If young people want economic opportunities and the economy doesn't give it to them, you'll see the frustration appearing at the ballot box.

  • India under its longest-ever heatwave, with worse to come
  • Yes, the world was a lot hotter in the distant past, but that's because the carbon in the biosphere was gradually sequestered by natural geologic processes, leading to a gradual cooling over hundreds of millions of years. We're now partially undoing that, by pumping and digging the stuff back up and burning it.

    If fossil fuels hadn't come along, it's possible that the long-term cooling of the Earth would have been a problem, eventually. Nobody wants another Ice Age. But we've gone waaaay past in the opposite direction now. We really, really don't want to see an "age of the dinosaurs" climate, with its pole-to-pole super-hurricanes, continent sized mega droughts, and other forms of extreme weather that human civilization has zero experience coping with.

  • France imposes state of emergency in New Caledonia as unrest continues

    Always weird to me how France is so insistent on clinging to its colonial empire, two decades into the 21st century, despite the headaches that causes.

    4
    China is banning dailies, first time bonuses, and other gacha practices used in Genshin.
    gamerant.com China Implements Strict New Gaming Laws

    China unveils new laws intended to limit certain practices by gaming companies, leading to some big changes in the nation's gaming market.

    China Implements Strict New Gaming Laws
    15
    China is banning dailies, first time bonuses, and other gacha practices found in HSR and Genshin.
    gamerant.com China Implements Strict New Gaming Laws

    China unveils new laws intended to limit certain practices by gaming companies, leading to some big changes in the nation's gaming market.

    China Implements Strict New Gaming Laws
    2
    China announced new laws to limit microtransactions, affecting major corporations like Tencent.
    gamerant.com China Implements Strict New Gaming Laws

    China unveils new laws intended to limit certain practices by gaming companies, leading to some big changes in the nation's gaming market.

    China Implements Strict New Gaming Laws

    These laws will ban rewards for spending money within a game for the first time, ban rewards for buying consecutive microtransactions, and ban rewards for daily log-ins.

    86
    Harvard President Claudine Gay to Submit 3 Additional Corrections, Corporation Says Improper Citations Fall Short of Research Misconduct
    www.thecrimson.com Harvard President Claudine Gay to Submit 3 Additional Corrections, Corporation Says Improper Citations Fall Short of Research Misconduct | News | The Harvard Crimson

    Harvard President Claudine Gay will request three corrections to her 1997 Ph.D. dissertation in the latest series of updates Gay has submitted amid mounting allegations of plagiarism against the University’s embattled leader.

    Harvard President Claudine Gay to Submit 3 Additional Corrections, Corporation Says Improper Citations Fall Short of Research Misconduct | News | The Harvard Crimson
    0
    US thwarted plot to kill Sikh separatist, issued warning to India
    www.aljazeera.com US thwarted plot to kill Sikh separatist, issued warning to India: Report

    Financial Times report comes two months after Canada alleged Indian agents were linked to another separatist’s murder.

    US thwarted plot to kill Sikh separatist, issued warning to India: Report
    12
    Lore-friendly playstyle/itemization for Shadowheart? (Acts 1 & 2)

    The Shar-worshipping crazy goth chick is a great character concept. Trouble is, the game seems to throw a lot of great light-related cleric spells and equipment at us, and all the alternatives seem to be bad. From an RP point of view, Shadowheart obviously shouldn't be wielding a light-emitting mace, wearing radiance armor, and shooting Faerie Fire and Guiding Bolt all over the place. But I can't find a lore-friendly playstyle that isn't substantially worse in fights.

    Some of the Shar-related equipment, and the Trickery domain subclass perks, seem to point to some sort of melee cleric build exploiting darkness. But the overall effect seems subpar; for starters, clerics can't cast Darkness, so another party member would need to supply that, which is clunky.

    Any suggestions?

    5
    Nature retracts controversial superconductivity paper by embattled physicist
    www.nature.com Nature retracts controversial superconductivity paper by embattled physicist

    This is the third high-profile retraction for Ranga Dias. Researchers worry the controversy is damaging the field’s reputation.

    Nature retracts controversial superconductivity paper by embattled physicist
    6
    Nature retracts controversial superconductivity paper by embattled physicist
    www.nature.com Nature retracts controversial superconductivity paper by embattled physicist

    This is the third high-profile retraction for Ranga Dias. Researchers worry the controversy is damaging the field’s reputation.

    Nature retracts controversial superconductivity paper by embattled physicist

    Dias had another Nature paper retracted last year. Nature let him publish this one anyway. Who could possibly have predicted this outcome???

    0
    Did the pope vote in Argentina's election?

    Can he? In general, can/do popes vote in their home countries?

    49
    Why a blockbuster superconductivity claim met a wall of scepticism
    www.nature.com Why a blockbuster superconductivity claim met a wall of scepticism

    Physicist Ranga Dias and his colleagues have twice claimed to make a room-temperature superconductor. But many researchers question the evidence.

    Why a blockbuster superconductivity claim met a wall of scepticism

    Physicist Ranga Dias and his colleagues have twice claimed to make a room-temperature superconductor. But many researchers question the evidence.

    0
    Why a blockbuster superconductivity claim met a wall of scepticism
    www.nature.com Why a blockbuster superconductivity claim met a wall of scepticism

    Physicist Ranga Dias and his colleagues have twice claimed to make a room-temperature superconductor. But many researchers question the evidence.

    Why a blockbuster superconductivity claim met a wall of scepticism

    Physicist Ranga Dias and his colleagues have twice claimed to make a room-temperature superconductor. But many researchers question the evidence.

    5
    **Ferromagnetic** half levitation of LK-99-like samples

    In this preprint, the authors synthesize samples based on the claimed room temperature superconductor LK-99, and observe half-levitation similar to that seen in other recent videos, which has been ascribed to the Meissner Effect (a signature of superconductivity).

    However, they performed a careful magnetization measurement and found that the sample is ferromagnetic. They also did a resistance measurement on a larger sample, and found that the majority of the material is a semiconductor. This points to a simpler explanation for the half-levitation phenomenon: it is a consequence of ferromagnetism (+ mechanical effects due to friction and sample shape), rather than the Meissner Effect.

    Unless someone can demonstrate full levitation or better resistivity data for LK-99, this is arguably fatal for the claims of room temperature superconductivity.

    17
    **Ferromagnetic** half levitation of LK-99-like synthetic samples

    In this preprint, the authors synthesize LK-99-like samples, and observe half-levitation similar to that seen in other recent videos. However, they perform a careful magnetization measurement and conclude that the sample is ferromagnetic. They also did a resistance measurement on a larger sample and found that the majority of the material is a semiconductor. This points to the half-levitation effect, which is mostly what got people excited, being a consequence of ferromagnetism (+ mechanical effects due to friction and sample shape), rather than the Meissner Effect.

    Unless someone can demonstrate full levitation or better resistivity data for LK-99, this appears to be fatal for the claims of room temperature superconductivity.

    0
    arXiv preprint on "growth and room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99"

    This replication by Huazhong University includes PPMS data, showing a strong signal of a diamagnetism transition at around 320K. It does not include a resistance measurement, however.

    0
    Current combat event

    Anyone else getting smoked by the current combat event (at dire difficulty)? My abyss A and B teams (which can get through floor 12) can't clear the last wave before the timer expires, and the event calls for dipping into the C team 😬

    8
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)CY
    cyd @lemmy.world
    Posts 25
    Comments 516