Lifeboat Foundation

Almost a century ago, physicists Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein predicted a theoretical state of matter in which individual particles would, at extremely cold temperatures and low densities, condense into an indistinguishable whole. These so-called Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) would offer a macroscopic view into the microscopic world of quantum mechanics. In 1995, theoretical BECs became an experimental reality, which garnered the physicists who created them a Nobel Prize. Labs around the world— and even in space —have been creating them ever since.

All of the BECs created so far to ask fundamental questions about quantum mechanics have been made from atoms. It has proven much harder to make molecules cold enough to approach a BEC state, which hover fractions of a degree above absolute zero, and to keep the molecules stable long enough to conduct experiments.

“For twenty years, there have been proposals about what you could do with stable ultracold molecules, but it has been tough on the experimental side because the lifetime of molecular samples has been short,” said Columbia physicist Sebastian Will, whose lab specializes in creating ultracold atoms and molecules.

Tesla is still fighting for its North American Charging Standard chargers to become dominant over the Combined Charging System chargers, which are used by most other electric vehicles in the United States. Now, the company is releasing a new product that could help its cause.

The product, called the Tesla Universal Wall Connector, is a new version of the EV company’s home charging Wall Connectors. But unlike the old Tesla Wall Connectors, which are only compatible with NACS (and therefore can only charge Teslas), the Tesla Universal Wall Connector will also be compatible with CCS plugs.

As Electrek pointed out, this is similar to what Tesla has done with its Magic Dock adapters installed at some Supercharger stations, which can charge both Teslas and non-Teslas alike.

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A recent Chinese hack of senior officials at the U.S. State and Commerce departments was apparently a result of the compromise of a Microsoft engineer’s corporate account, and stealing a valuable key, as reported by Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O).

According to Reuters, Microsoft has stated that the engineer’s account had been compromised by the “Storm-0558” hacking group, which allegedly used the key to forge authentication tokens to access email accounts on Microsoft’s cloud servers including top American officials such as Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Daniel Kritenbrink.

This simulation was then compared with real-time data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite, which has revolutionized our understanding of the positions and velocities of stars in open clusters.

“Our simulations can only simultaneously match the mass and size of the Hyades if some black holes are present at the centre of the cluster today (or until recently),” said Dr. Torniamenti.

The most plausible simulations suggest the presence of two to three black holes currently residing in the Hyades star cluster. At the same time, scenarios in which the black holes were ejected less than 150 million years ago (constituting the last quarter of the cluster’s life) cannot be completely ruled out.

In a recent study published in Nature, researchers investigated whether glutamatergic gliotransmission was mediated by specialized astrocytes in the central nervous system.

The role of astrocytes in brain circuitry function, such as swift glutamate release, has been questioned due to inconsistent data and lack of direct evidence. This mechanism, similar to neurons, controls plasticity, excitability, and coordinated activity of synaptic-type networks but also contributes to neuropsychiatric conditions.

No detectors “reliably distinguish between AI-generated and human-generated content.”

In a section of the FAQ titled “Do AI detectors work?”, OpenAI writes, “In short, no. While some (including OpenAI) have released tools that purport to detect AI-generated content, none of these have proven to reliably distinguish between AI-generated and… More.

Last week, OpenAI published tips for educators in a promotional blog post that shows how some teachers are using ChatGPT as an educational aid, along with suggested prompts to get started. In a related FAQ, they also officially admit what we already know: AI writing detectors don’t work, despite frequently being used to punish students with false positives.

Continue reading “OpenAI confirms that AI writing detectors don’t work” »

Bad news for anyone looking to get their hands on Nvidia’s top specced GPUs, such as the A100 or H100: it’s not going to get any easier to source the parts until at least the end of 2024, TSMC has warned. The problem, it seems, isn’t that TSMC – which fabricates not just those GPUs for Nvidia but also components for AMD, Apple, and many others – can’t make enough chips. Rather, a lack of advanced packaging capacity used to stitch the silicon together is holding up production, TSMC chairman Mark Liu told Nikkei Asia.

According to Liu, TSMC is only able to meet about 80 percent of demand for its chip on wafer on substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology. This is used in some of the most advanced… More.

Boss Mark Liu says silicon ready but advanced packaging isn’t.

Schmidt has become an indispensable adviser to government, even as some of his investments have won federal contracts.

Eric Schmidt isn’t shy about his wealth and power: The former Google CEO recently won an auction for a superyacht seized from a Russian oligarch, he owns a big stake in a secretive and successful hedge fund and he spent $15 million for the Manhattan penthouse featured in Oliver Stone’s sequel to Wall Street.

He has also leveraged his $27 billion fortune to build a powerful influence machine in Washington that’s allowed him to shape public policy to reflect his worldview and benefit the industries in which he’s deeply invested — most recently, artificial intelligence. When senators meet next week to hear from tech executives and experts about how AI should be regulated, Schmidt will be at the table.

The long-promised more affordable Tesla electric car might debut alongside an automated robotaxi.

Tesla is reportedly preparing to build a $25,000 electric car built on the company’s next-generation engineering platform. Axios.

The $25,000 car reportedly has a futuristic design like the long-delayed Cybertruck — the angular pickup truck that Tesla first revealed in 2019. The Cybertruck will supposedly begin production this year, with production-at-scale beginning in 2024.

Continue reading “Tesla’s $25,000 ‘next-generation car’ will have a Cybertruck design” »