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4 hours agoI don’t care how based these are or whatever, I ain’t watching them. AI slop just makes me feel depressed no matter what it is.
AernaLingus [any]
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Cake day: May 6th, 2022
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2·4 hours agoLink to the article (archive.is), which is the sole source listed and only a two or three minute read
14·4 hours agoThose delays, it seems, are due to a key bottleneck: electrical components manufactured abroad. Batteries, electrical transformers, and circuit breakers all make up less than 10 percent of the cost to construct one data center, but as Andrew Likens, energy and infrastructure lead at Crusoe’s told Bloomberg, it’s impossible to build new data centers without them.
“If one piece of your supply chain is delayed, then your whole project can’t deliver,” Likens said. “It is a pretty wild puzzle at the moment.”
As demand for those components far outpaces supply in the US, data center firms have had to source those components from manufacturers in Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and China. That leads to longer build times as those complicated parts are sewn together with assemblages of other, smaller parts, before being shipped across the ocean, and eventually trucked to the final construction site.
So no, it seems to be about more mundane components. Power generation is another bottleneck—doesn’t matter if you build the data center if you can’t power it!
24·1 day agoI’d pump the brakes on this tbh—not even the linked source thinks this is real.
https://xcancel.com/IntCyberDigest/status/2039643524132474957
Until someone reputable specializing in data breaches says otherwise, I’m gonna assume this is fake.
Also, I’m guessing this is unintentional, but you used the text from the body of the /r/TrueAnon post without actually linking to it (I got it from the earlier /c/politics post)
4·1 day agoHas Dentman been Xi Jinping this whole time??
The JPEG artifacts bothered me (they’re even present in the original, unfortunately), so I restored it to its deserved 7-color indexed PNG glory (which has the added bonus of reducing the filesize by ~90% from 42602 bytes to 4733 bytes!):
Since the original is pretty small (489x460) for modern high resolution displays, I also made a version that’s might be more conducive to sharing by scaling it up by 2x using nearest-neighbor interpolation—it’s literally just the original but with 2x2 pixels and so the original can be recovered losslessly by reversing the process:
Due to the nature of integer scaling pixel art and PNG compression, even though it’s 4x the pixels the filesize only increases by ~25%.
For the record, I used ImageMagick to scale like so:
magick input.png -interpolate Integer -filter point -resize 200% output.pngAs long as the argument for
-resizeis a multiple of 100, you’ll get a pixel-perfect output. I have a little bash function to handle it:function pixelscale { magick "$1" -interpolate Integer -filter point -resize ${2}00% "${1%.*}_${2}x.${1##*.}" }so as long as that gets loaded by your
.bashrcall you have to do is typepixelscale <infile> <integer scale factor>and it’ll handle the rest (e.g.
pixelscale image.png 3will spit outimage_3x.pngwhich is nearest-neighbor scaled by 3x).edit: missed a few errant pixels…fixed.
6·1 day agoIf passed, the bill is likely to be signed by Gov. Wes Moore, who has signed the Trans Shield Act, the Trans Health Equity Act expanding Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care, and declared Maryland a sanctuary state for transgender people.
Was glad to read this bit, since I was worried this could be a Newsom situation where the governor would just veto the bill even though it’s overwhelmingly supported by their party; that said, I think California is exceptional in that the legislature literally never (and I do mean, literally) overrides the governor’s veto.
I hope it passes, and I hope more states follow suit.
If you go by the original SMB1-J box/cartridge art, she was blonde and blue-eyed with a pink dress from the start:
Yeah, I’m a little skeptical. Even that Twitter account doesn’t seem to believe it’s real:
To be honest, I don’t believe this is real. The marketplace/threat actor is new and doesn’t have a track record.
https://xcancel.com/IntCyberDigest/status/2039643524132474957
Full text
For Zhang Kai, a pioneering scientist who is building an ultra-large-scale cellular structure group data bank with unprecedented precision, returning home to China was the natural choice to fulfil his ambition.
“In the United States, it is almost impossible for a Chinese scholar to take the lead on this project,” Zhang said during a March 26 interview with China Science Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the country’s most prestigious research institution.
On January 12, Zhang resigned from his tenure-track position at Yale University and officially joined the School of Life Sciences and Medicine at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei, Anhui province.
A month later, a paper for which he was the corresponding author was published in the prestigious journal Nature. It reported a breakthrough in his research field: high-resolution electron microscopy imaging and analysis technology.
This research is widely seen as essential for understanding life, developing new diagnostic and therapeutic technologies, and improving health management.
Zhang’s path to prominence began more than 20 years ago, from modest beginnings.
Hailing from a poor rural area in China’s northwestern Shaanxi province, Zhang in 2004 entered the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) in the northeast after taking the national college entrance examination.
In 2008, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree and then gained admission to CAS’ Institute of Biophysics. It was here that he was introduced to cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM).
Cryo-EM is an imaging technique that allows researchers to visualise the structure of biological macromolecules – a passion that has shaped Zhang’s career ever since.
“It is quite different from most traditional biology directions, which mainly rely on experiments,” Zhang explained in a 2020 interview with HIT.
“Research in the field of cryo-EM organically combines the three major research methods: experiments, theory and computation.”
In the interview, he described a sci-fi aspiration that took root at an early age: a wish to directly “see” the atomic structure of the respiratory chain complexes within mitochondria, often called the powerhouse of the cell.
In 2013, after graduating with a PhD in biophysics from CAS, Zhang entered the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, to conduct postdoctoral research.
In 2019, he joined Yale University as an assistant professor.
At both renowned research institutions, Zhang published a number of papers using cryo-EM to study cell structures. These included a cover story in the journal Science and others published in the similarly influential journals Nature and Cell.
In 2024, Zhang collaborated with Zhu Jiapeng of the Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine to publish a paper in Nature that its reviewers described as “pioneering work”.
Traditionally, international research on proteins has mostly involved purifying proteins from mitochondria and then observing and analysing them using cryo-EM.
However, within an organism, proteins are often active and in constant motion, continuously reacting with other proteins and exhibiting different states. Static observation is understood to be insufficient to present their true state.
In the 2024 Nature article, Zhang and Zhu found a way to observe proteins inside the body during exercise, effectively capturing their activity in a natural state.
“It seems that in the past, it was staged photography, but now it is candid photography,” Zhu explained in the article’s introduction.
“Unintentional candid shots help us obtain a more authentic, accurate and reliable form of proteins,” he added. “This holds significant importance for the subsequent scientific analysis and related applications.”
Zhang’s latest paper in Nature, published in February, overturns the “cytoplasmic assembly hypothesis” that has prevailed for more than a decade.
In short, previous studies believed that connector proteins played a central role in protein assembly. However, Zhang’s research found that microtubules contributed about 97 per cent of assembly efficiency, and connector proteins were likely to be “squeezed in” only after formation.
Regarded as a global leader in cryo-EM research, Zhang surprised many by leaving Yale mid-career. He chose not to wait for promotion at the Ivy League university and returned to China earlier this year.
“The USTC is a simple, pure, passionate and idealistic research environment,” Zhang said of his new research home in last week’s China Science Daily interview.
“The USTC leaders are true scientists who are very supportive of young scholars.”
As for achieving his ultimate goal of observing cellular life activities at an atomic level, he said: “I do not know how long this matter will take, but I have enough confidence to accomplish it.”
Full text
A striking phenomenon is emerging from China as the Middle East conflict presses on: technically skilled civilians are volunteering their expertise online to help Iran counter US military might, without seeking payment or official backing.
The trend was vividly illustrated on March 14, when a detailed tutorial on taking down America’s F-35 appeared on Chinese social media and went viral.
Created by the account “Laohu Talks World” and subtitled in Persian, the video meticulously explained how Iran could use its low-cost systems to target and destroy the advanced stealth fighter.
It drew tens of millions of views. Five days after the post, on March 19, Iran claimed it had struck a US F-35.
The effort to help has hardly been isolated since the US-Israel war on Iran began on February 28.
Across Chinese social media, many people with backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) have created and shared content aimed at helping Iran’s war effort. Some appear to possess expert knowledge of military equipment.
Their content has covered a wide spectrum, such as providing precise US military base coordinates in the region, proposing missile strategies against US aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and simulating defence against a possible US landing on Iran’s Kharg Island.
The sheer scale of China’s STEM talent pool is significant. The country produces about five million STEM graduates annually, about 1.3 million of whom are engineers. This vastly outpaces the United States, which graduates about 130,000 engineers each year.
Within this substantial pool, one segment is turning its analytical skills towards open-source military strategy.
And the motivations are mostly personal, not financial or backed by the government.
The creator of the Laohu account at one point studied at Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU), a top Chinese institution focused on defence research and itself a target of US sanctions, according to a source familiar with the creator.
In 2001, Washington designated NPU in Xian as an entity of concern, maintaining the institution worked directly with the People’s Liberation Army to develop sensitive defence technologies, including drones.
“Many of [the creator’s] classmates are working in the military and equipment industries,” said the source, who declined to be identified citing the sensitivity of the matter.
The account provides intricate analysis for Iran, outlining how readily available, low-cost weaponry like infrared missiles, mobile launchers and improvised sensors could challenge sophisticated US systems including those of an aircraft carrier.
The source described Laohu’s work as driven by personal conviction rather than profit.
“He is not short of money now. He makes videos just for fun,” the source explained.
Meanwhile, more than 1,000 civilians in Iran have died as a result of the American-Israeli military operations, according to figures from Tehran and human rights activists, including one strike in the southern city of Minab that killed at least 168 schoolchildren.
Such tragedies have elicited anger and pity among many Chinese people, with some wanting to help Iran resist the US.
According to the source, this sentiment reflects a main driver for these volunteers – a desire to demystify and counter perceived American military dominance.
Some Chinese military analysts see it as part of a broader decentralised trend in which civilian creators leverage open-source intelligence and technical knowledge to produce militarily informed analysis that crosses borders.
The creators reach audiences in active conflict zones, they observed, showing that military knowledge-sharing was no longer confined to state channels.
For now, there is no evidence suggesting these online analyses have directly influenced events in the war.
Iran’s embassy in China did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Somehow I still had some tiny piece of naïvete about the nature of Israeli society that made me consider that the quote might be intentionally ghoulish to show how this is a completely untenable position.
…it was not.
3·4 days agoSeems like the machine translation struggled a bit, and it always screws up pronouns/titles in Japanese (not to mention names, as with the incumbent here), so here’s my modified (still kinda wonky) translation:
In the May 29th Kiyose, Tokyo mayoral election, the independent[1] newcomer and former city council vice-chairwoman Ms. Hiromi Harada (52, endorsed by the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party) defeated independent[1:1] incumbent Mr. Keishi Shibuya (endorsed by the LDP and Komeito) and was elected to the office for the first time. There were 62,650 eligible voters on election day, with a voter turnout of 40.18% (39.41% in the previous election).
Mayor-elect Harada stated, “We were able to win thanks to the power of the people of Kiyose. I thought it was a tall order, but the citizens desperate for change made their voices heard.”
A former hospital worker, she was first elected to the city council in 2003 with the endorsement of the JCP and served for six terms.
During the election campaign, she emphasized her experience in tackling the improvement of medical care and child-rearing environments, and touted the idea of “creating a town that leverages the voices of its citizens.” She appealed for the reopening of the closed municipal library, and criticized the current municipal government, saying, “The closure was a failure.” She also extended support to the establishment of a branch office of the city hall near Kiyose Station and the enactment of a children’s rights ordinance.
Electoral results:
Votes Candidate Age Status ✔ 13,064 Hiromi Harada 50 Independent challenger 11,746 Keishi Shibuya 52 Independent incumbent
Zoltraak is the Shahed drone of the Frieren universe
4·5 days agoHoly fuck, I haven’t thought about MegaTokyo in a hot minute.
40·5 days agoEmphasis mine:
Almost 30 years after the intricate web of nerves inside the penis was plotted out, the same mapping has finally been completed for one of the least-studied organs in the human body – the clitoris.
As well as revealing the extent of the nerves that are crucial to orgasms, the work shows that some of what medics are learning about the anatomy of the clitoris is wrong, and could help prevent women who have pelvic operations from ending up with poorer sexual function.
The clitoris, responsible for sexual pleasure, is one of the least studied organs of the human body. Cultural taboo around female sexuality has held back scientific investigations and the clitoris did not even make it into standard anatomy textbooks until the 20th century. And in the 38th edition of Gray’s Anatomy in 1995 it was introduced as just “a small version of the penis”.
Cool work, though! Here’s the bit from the article that discusses some of the findings:
Lee and her colleagues show that some branches of clitoral nerves reach the mons pubis, the rounded mound of tissue over the pubic bone. Others go to the clitoral hood, which sits over the small, sensitive, external part of the clitoris – the glans clitoris – which is just 10% of the total organ. Other nerves reach the folds of skin of the vulva, the labial structures.
Previous research had indicated that the big dorsal nerve of the clitoris gradually diminished as it approached the glans. However, the new scans appear to show that some of what medics have been learning in anatomy is wrong and the nerve continues strongly all the way to the end.
“I was especially fascinated by the high-resolution images within the glans, the most sensitive part of the clitoris, as these terminal nerve branches are impossible to see during dissection,” said Georga Longhurst, the head of anatomical sciences at St George’s, University of London.
and here’s a link to the preprint:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.18.712572v1
5·5 days agoText version for accessibility:
The Prophet (ﷺ) said, “O Allah! Bestow Your blessings on our Sham! O Allah! Bestow Your blessings on our Yemen.” The People said, “And also on our Najd.” He said, “O Allah! Bestow Your blessings on our Sham (north)! O Allah! Bestow Your blessings on our Yemen.” The people said, “O Allah’s Apostle! And also on our Najd.” I think the third time the Prophet (ﷺ) said, “There (in Najd) is the place of earthquakes and afflictions and from there comes out the side of the head of Satan.”
(Sahih al-Bukhari 7094)
Najd is a historical region of the Arabian Peninsula that includes most of the central region of Saudi Arabia.
Experts on Native American law say the Elk v. Wilkins ruling has no bearing on whether the children of immigrants without permanent legal status can be denied birthright citizenship.
Famously, when you write a Supreme Court opinion, it has to pass compiler checks to ensure the soundness of logical and legal reasoning before it can become official.
I honestly have no idea how the Supreme Court is likely to rule, but the fact that people still report on them as if they are bound by some ancient magic that requires them to make logical decisions is comical. It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that they make a decision according to whatever they (or their benefactors) personally desire and then work backwards from those conclusions using whatever flimsy precedents they can muster as a fig leaf.
I went to check for myself and, yup, that seems to be the case, assuming my machine translations hold water (Teutophones, feel free to weigh-in!). Here are the two bits of the Conscription Act (WPflG) they mention, as well as some other related parts:
Section 2(3)
This is the subsection that was apparently amended, which now says that Section 3 applies even outside times of “tension” (Spannung).
Section 3(2)
This is the subsection that contains the provision about males 17 and up needing a permit from the Bundeswehr to leave the country for three months or more if the provisions of Section 1(2) do not apply. The permits shall be granted while they are not conscription-eligible (which I take to mean “before they turn 18”)—but just as the article says, they must apply for the permit regardless. Subsection 3 specifies the maximum eligible age for conscription (45). It also says that permits must be granted if not doing so would cause “special” (besondere) hardship; in a state of readiness/emergency/defense the standard is “unreasonable” (unzumutbare) hardship and the provisions of Section 12(6) apply (I assume these specific adjectives are legal terms of art). Finally, it says that the Ministry of Defense may grant exemptions to the permit requirement, which I imagine they’ll have to because this seems incredibly onerous (as it says in the article, "[The Ministry of Defense] are currently working on ‘more specific rules for granting exceptions to the permit requirement,’ as well as to ‘avoid unnecessary bureaucracy.’ ")
Section 1(2)
This detail wasn’t in the article, but it basically just says you’re exempt if you’re a permanent resident of another country and it is clear that you intend to continue to reside abroad.
Section 12
Full text
(1) Vom Wehrdienst wird zurückgestellt,
(1a) Vom Wehrdienst wird ferner zurückgestellt, wer auf Grund eines völkerrechtlichen Vertrages für die Dauer einer Tätigkeit in einer internationalen Behörde nicht zum Wehrdienst herangezogen werden kann.
(2) Vom Wehrdienst werden Wehrpflichtige, die sich auf das geistliche Amt (§ 11) vorbereiten, auf Antrag zurückgestellt. Hierzu sind beizubringen:
(3) Hat ein Wehrpflichtiger seiner Aufstellung für die Wahl zum Deutschen Bundestag, zu einem Landtag oder zum Europäischen Parlament zugestimmt, so ist er bis zur Wahl zurückzustellen. Hat er die Wahl angenommen, so kann er für die Dauer des Mandats nur auf seinen Antrag einberufen werden.
(4) Vom Wehrdienst soll ein Wehrpflichtiger auf Antrag zurückgestellt werden, wenn die Heranziehung zum Wehrdienst für ihn wegen persönlicher, insbesondere häuslicher, wirtschaftlicher oder beruflicher Gründe eine besondere Härte bedeuten würde. Eine solche liegt in der Regel vor,
a) die Versorgung seiner Familie, hilfsbedürftiger Angehöriger oder anderer hilfsbedürftiger Personen, für deren Lebensunterhalt er aus rechtlicher oder sittlicher Verpflichtung aufzukommen hat, gefährdet würde oder
b) für Verwandte ersten Grades besondere Notstände zu erwarten sind,
a) eine zu einem schulischen Abschluss führende Ausbildung,
b) ein Hochschulstudium, bei dem zum vorgesehenen Diensteintritt das dritte Semester erreicht ist,
c) einen zum vorgesehenen Diensteintritt begonnenen dualen Bildungsgang (Studium mit studienbegleitender betrieblicher Ausbildung), dessen Regelstudienzeit acht Semester nicht überschreitet und bei dem das Studium spätestens drei Monate nach Beginn der betrieblichen Ausbildung aufgenommen wird,
d) einen zum vorgesehenen Diensteintritt zu einem Drittel absolvierten sonstigen Ausbildungsabschnitt oder
e) eine bereits begonnene Berufsausbildung
unterbrechen oder die Aufnahme einer rechtsverbindlich zugesagten oder vertraglich gesicherten Berufsausbildung verhindern würde.
(5) Vom Wehrdienst kann ein Wehrpflichtiger ferner zurückgestellt werden, wenn gegen ihn ein Strafverfahren anhängig ist, in dem Freiheitsstrafe, Strafarrest, Jugendstrafe oder eine freiheitsentziehende Maßregel der Besserung und Sicherung zu erwarten ist, oder wenn seine Einberufung die militärische Ordnung oder das Ansehen der Bundeswehr ernstlich gefährden würde.
(6) In den Fällen des Absatzes 4, ausgenommen Satz 2 Nummer 1 Buchstabe b, Nummer 3, sowie des Absatzes 7, darf der Wehrpflichtige vom Grundwehrdienst höchstens so lange zurückgestellt werden, dass er noch vor der für ihn nach § 5 Absatz 1 Satz 2 und 3 maßgebenden Altersgrenze einberufen werden kann. In Ausnahmefällen, in denen die Einberufung eine unzumutbare Härte bedeuten würde, kann er auch darüber hinaus zurückgestellt werden.
(7) Vom Wehrdienst soll ein Wehrpflichtiger auf Antrag auch zurückgestellt werden, wenn er für die Erhaltung und Fortführung des elterlichen Betriebes oder des Betriebes seines Arbeitgebers oder für die ordnungsgemäße Aufgabenerfüllung seiner Dienstbehörde unentbehrlich ist. In diesem Fall sind die Eltern, der Arbeitgeber oder die Dienstbehörde des Wehrpflichtigen antragsberechtigt und verpflichtet, den Wegfall der Voraussetzungen für die Unentbehrlichkeit der zuständigen Wehrersatzbehörde anzuzeigen. Die Zurückstellung bedarf der Zustimmung des Wehrpflichtigen. Die Einberufung des Wehrpflichtigen ist bis zur Entscheidung über den Antrag auszusetzen.
I included the entire section, which covers deferral from conscription; valid circumstances include various forms of education, being a small business tyrant, being a caretaker for a family member, and the like. I had trouble parsing Subsection 6 (the one mentioned in § 3(2)) says that for certain provisions a maximum deferral may be granted, provided provisions of Section 5 apply (but I’m not gonna look any more German today). But this is actually the part I’m most interested in—how easy is it to get a deferral/exemption from conscription? I realize that de jure and de facto can be two very different things, but for the time being the statute’s all we’ve got.