Posts by Paul_Canada

Quantum entanglement discovery could enable futuristic comms tech, Nuclear physicists say

Ah! It's not just a potential probability, but how do we know? The double split experiment! In this experiment the particle's wave splits into two waves as it goes through the two slits and interacts with itself to form an interference pattern. The particle exists physically as a wave spread out along the length of the detector (the universe?) and then "picks" a certain single point to be when asked to be a solid particle, according to the wave's peaks - in a way that is probabilistic. Could it have an underlying mechanism? Yes, however we have yet to discover it - and so it appears that all particles really actually do spend a lot of their time existing as unintuitive waves.

So since the double split experiment exists: The particles must really actually be travelling as real particle waves, exactly as light can travel as a wave (after all, photons are particles too).

Kinda mind blowing that the universe works this way.

The problem with the sock analogy is that it implies that the result has been determined a the time particles were created. That the two particles flying away in opposite directions already have a certain state. Which is just wrong.

No ansible

No idea why The Register bought up the ansible. This is still quantum entanglement, once either particle is probed it breaks the entanglement. There is no way to reuse the entangled particles. Thus there is no faster than light communication.

Entanglement deals with particle quantum spin (I.e. magnetic moment). Not really wavelength as far as I know.

The sock analogy is a common explanation of quantum entanglement but technically incorrect. The entangled particles' spins are in a state of quantum superposition UNTIL one of the particles has been observed. This basically means that both particles BOTH have an up and down spin state until you interact with one of the particles by trying to observe it, thus disturbing it and causing the joint wave of the particles to collapse into their own waves and associated particle states upon observation. This is the great spooky action at distance - the outcome had not been predetermined (I.e. like a pair of socks). The result really is determined instantaneously on the spot. Several scientific tests have shown this too.

Twitter employees sue over lack of 60-day layoff notice

Re: handling layoffs

According to news reports, those laid off were given 3 months severance. So I wonder how this will stand up in court.

Elon Musk jettisons Twitter leadership, says takeover was 'to try to help humanity'

Re: The taste of schadenfreude

It's funny how many people down vote your very sensible comment. It shows how far the rot in our culture has spread that the idea of hearing opinions outside of one's own is so intolerable to so many. The reason people like trump got so much support is because the left reacted so badly to him - had they ignored him as the nut bag he is he'd have disappeared into obscurity. Censorship is not the way to fix society.

The crime against humanity that is the modern OS desktop, and how to kill it

Re: System 7 - the horror, the horror.

Unpopular opinion: I like the current macOS 12.x. 90% of my use it keyboard shortcuts. E.g. Spotlight to open apps. I attached a custom shortcut to Launchpad (⌥+space).

Goodbye, humans: Call centers 'could save $80b' switching to AI

Whilst I agree, we can't stop progressing just because people will lose their jobs. People said the same thing about literacy and the industrial revolution.

A better solution

Make sure I don't have to ring in the first place. Provide what I need online, so I can simply log on and change things! I'm either ringing to discontinue my service, or query incorrect/increased pricing.

I don't want to ring and you don't want me to ring. So make it easier that I don't have to.

Googler says she was forced out after opposing $1.2bn cloud contract with Israel

Re: The only issue

I've worked for 2 companies so far who say the same. The best thing, IMO, is to bring one's professional self to work and leave one's personal and political selves at home! My perspective is that I'm there to do a job, and the job alone. Also not to be an ass, and to treat people with respect regardless of their attributes (e.g. gender, race, etc), but not necessarily to actively "celebrate diversity" since this itself is a bit political, and my sole purpose is to do the job.

And if the company does something major that contradicts my ethics in a big way, I will quit. Has yet to happen.

Re: A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

TL;DR:

Re: A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

Aleppo is in syria.

Re: A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

Too late!

Re: A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

Well that's a fun delusion. Since the inception of Israel, arabs have been trying to kill Jews. What makes you think they're suddenly gonna go for peace?

Re: A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

It's simple: Don't fire rockets at Israel and they won't fire rockets back at you.

Re: A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

The key question anti-zionists never seem to be able to answer: Where do 4M+ Jews go once the Israeli state is dissolved? Cos the Palestinian state isn't gonna have them (and if you think they would, imo that's not a realistic conception of the current state of the conflict).

Re: A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

It's funny that you say conflating zionism and Judaism is disgusting and yet call Israel's regime a Jewish supremacist apartheid.

I don't agree with your stance on Israel, but I agree with your solution as one likely viable solution. It should not be called Israel or Palestine though, Isratin is the proposed binational state name. I would propose that it work a bit like the EU - the country is divided into several provinces that govern themselves and are overseen by a federal level shared democratic government. Investment should be put into the Palestinian areas to catch their development up. After a certain period of development (~5 years), freedom of movement should then be instituted. The right to return should be preserved for Jews and allowed for Palestinian descendents.

A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

In this case this employee, Ariel, states on her Medium blog post that she doesn't even think Israel should exist! Well I ask her where do 4M Jews go once the state is dissolved? She claims that the Jewish ERG at Google is being weaponized, but I would say she is the one trying to weaponize against the Jewish ERG by the sounds of it, given she decided to attack a *Jewish* ERG for Google's contract with *Israel*.

Re: Our Immature, Kardouchean Society of Insufficiently Regulated Capitalism

Whatever the situation, I don't think Google did itself any favours by pressuring her out. If they hadn't, the likelihood is her cause would have died off.

Researchers claim quantum device performs 9,000-year calculation in microseconds

Re: Better

This is a good observation!

Photons: I'm not 100% sure, but my understanding is that the spin of a photon particle correlates to the polarization of the wave. Light waves are electromagnetic fields. However the "spin" in charged particles is ±½ and in photons it's ±1. If I understood, correctly: ½ means it interacts via charge, 1 means it does not. How spin works scientifically and mathematically, is beyond me.

Neutrinos: Theoretically neutrinos do have a magnetic moment, the strength which is really really tiny. So tiny it has never been experimentally verified.

Re: Better

P.S. Spin is a scalar measure, it has no vector. It's often visualized like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(physics)#/media/File:Spin_One-Half_(Slow).gif

Re: Better

So! Entanglement is not faster than light in that there is no "travelling" happening between the two particles. Two entangled particles have a shared quantum state, which is broken as soon as one particle interacts with any other particle or field. Until then both particles exist in both/all states simultaneously. Once interacted, the spin of one particle immediately implies the opposite spin in the other - the quantum state is determined instantaneously. The act of measuring the spin also counts as an interaction and would thus break the entanglement. It cannot thus be used for any meaningful superluminal communication. There is no time travel, it's just how quantum physics works, but casualty is always preserved.

As for spin, the atomic particles do not actually spin. At the subatomic level, charged particles (electrons and protons) act like tiny little magnets. Since magnetism appears when a charged particle is moving, it baffled scientists that a charged particle not moving much could have such a strong magnetic field. Back in the old days, they assumed that the particles were solid and spinning, and it was this spin creating the magnetic field. However with the advent of quantum physics, it became clear that the particles were not actually spinning as they're not solid but instead point-like particles (the quarks are, protons are not as they're made up by quarks). The name spin stuck, but really in simple terms, it would be called "intrinsic magnetism". This "spin" exists only in certain states, so unlike a magnet it's, as you'd expect in Quantum physics, "quantized".

Amazon puts 'creepy' AI cameras in UK delivery vans

Ughh. I'm just gonna cancel my prime membership. Enough.

Debugging source is even harder when you can't stop laughing at it

Profanity galore

When I was a new developer, I used to leave rather rude excecutives in the git messages whenever I would get frustrated. I never considered that years later people might dig back into that history! It was pretty embarrassing because the recently new manager at the time didn’t like me, and was always bringing me up on it. Fortunately I quit not too longer after, but it makes me feel warm and fuzzy to know that my sweary messages have been immortalized.

Mozilla creates paid-for subscriptions for web doc library

Apple supposedly values privacy and security, so it would be great if Apple (Safari) would ditch their Webkit nonsense and hop on the Gecko bandwagon. WebKit has fallen behind Blink and Gecko engines, it should be called SafarIE.

Switching to Gecko would:

1. Bring Safari into the 21st century: feature complete + not buggy.

2. Non-Mac devs: ensure websites work in Safari via Firefox.

3. 2 teams: faster development cycle for Gecko.

4. Bring in decent extension support.

5. Ensures that Blink doesn't just take over everything.

US, Canada to figure out rules on cops and Feds accessing people's data across borders

Well screw it!

We may as well just join the US at the rate this nonsense is going!