Author name: Kris Guyer

after-a-fiery-finale,-the-delta-rocket-family-now-belongs-to-history

After a fiery finale, the Delta rocket family now belongs to history

delta iv, delta iv heavy, launch, military space, National Reconnaissance Office, nrol-70, Science, Space, united launch alliance / /

Delta 389 —

“It is bittersweet to see the last one, but there are great things ahead.”

–

In this video frame from ULA's live broadcast, three RS-68A engines power the Delta IV Heavy rocket into the sky over Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Enlarge / In this video frame from ULA’s live broadcast, three RS-68A engines power the Delta IV Heavy rocket into the sky over Cape Canaveral, Florida.

United Launch Alliance

The final flight of United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy rocket took off Tuesday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a classified spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office.

The Delta IV Heavy, one of the world’s most powerful rockets, launched for the 16th and final time Tuesday. It was the 45th and last flight of a Delta IV launcher and the final rocket named Delta to ever launch, ending a string of 389 missions dating back to 1960.

United Launch Alliance (ULA) tried to launch this rocket on March 28 but aborted the countdown about four minutes prior to liftoff due to trouble with nitrogen pumps at an off-site facility at Cape Canaveral. The nitrogen is necessary for purging parts inside the Delta IV rocket before launch, reducing the risk of a fire or explosion during the countdown.

The pumps, operated by Air Liquide, are part of a network that distributes nitrogen to different launch pads at the Florida spaceport. The nitrogen network has caused problems before, most notably during the first launch campaign for NASA’s Space Launch System rocket in 2022. Air Liquide did not respond to questions from Ars.

A flawless liftoff

With a solution in place, ULA gave the go-ahead for another launch attempt Tuesday. After a smooth countdown, the final Delta IV Heavy lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 12: 53 pm EDT (16: 53 UTC).

Three hydrogen-fueled RS-68A engines made by Aerojet Rocketdyne flashed to life in the final seconds before launch and throttled up to produce more than 2 million pounds of thrust. The ignition sequence was accompanied by a dramatic hydrogen fireball, a hallmark of Delta IV Heavy launches, that singed the bottom of the 235-foot-tall (71.6-meter) rocket, turning a patch of its orange insulation black. Then, 12 hold-down bolts fired and freed the Delta IV Heavy for its climb into space with a top-secret payload for the US government’s spy satellite agency.

Heading east from Florida’s Space Coast, the Delta IV Heavy appeared to perform well in the early phases of its mission. After fading from view from ground-based cameras, the rocket’s two liquid-fueled side boosters jettisoned around four minutes into the flight, a moment captured by onboard video cameras. The core stage engine increased power to fire for a couple more minutes. Nearly six minutes after liftoff, the core stage was released, and the Delta IV upper stage took over for a series of burns with its RL10 engine.

At that point, ULA cut the public video and audio feeds from the launch control center, and the mission flew into a news blackout. The final portions of rocket launches carrying National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) satellites are usually performed in secret.

In all likelihood, the Delta IV Heavy’s upper stage was expected to fire its engine at least three times to place the classified NRO satellite into a circular geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. In this orbit, the spacecraft will move in lock-step with the planet’s rotation, giving the NRO’s newest spy satellite constant coverage over a portion of the Earth.

It will take about six hours for the rocket’s upper stage to deploy its payload into this high-altitude orbit and only then will ULA and the NRO declare the launch a success.

Eavesdropping from space

While the payload is classified, experts can glean a few insights from the circumstances of its launch. Only the largest NRO spy satellites require a launch on a Delta IV Heavy, and the payload on this mission is “almost certainly” a type of satellite known publicly as an “Advanced Orion” or “Mentor” spacecraft, according to Marco Langbroek, an expert Dutch satellite tracker.

The Advanced Orion satellites require the combination of the Delta IV Heavy rocket’s lift capability, long-duration upper stage, and huge, 65-foot-long (19.8-meter) trisector payload fairing, the largest payload enclosure of any operational rocket. In 2010, Bruce Carlson, then-director of the NRO, referred to the Advanced Orion platform as the “largest satellite in the world.”

When viewed from Earth, these satellites shine with the brightness of an eighth-magnitude star, making them easily visible with small binoculars despite their distant orbits, according to Ted Molczan, a skywatcher who tracks satellite activity.

“The satellites feature a very large parabolic unfoldable mesh antenna, with estimates of the size of this antenna ranging from 20 to 100 (!) meters,” Langbroek writes on his website, citing information leaked by Edward Snowden.

The purpose of these Advanced Orion satellites, each with mesh antennas that unfurl to a diameter of up to 330 feet (100 meters), is to listen in on communications and radio transmissions from US adversaries, and perhaps allies. Six previous Delta IV Heavy missions also likely launched Advanced Orion or Mentor satellites, giving the NRO a global web of listening posts parked high above the planet.

With the last Delta IV Heavy off the launch pad, ULA has achieved a goal of its corporate strategy sent into motion a decade ago, when the company decided to retire the Delta IV and Atlas V rockets in favor of a new-generation rocket named Vulcan. The first Vulcan rocket successfully launched in January, so the last few months have been a time of transition for ULA, a 50-50 joint venture owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

“This is such an amazing piece of technology: 23 stories tall, half a million gallons of propellant, two and a quarter million pounds of thrust, and the most metal of all rockets, setting itself on fire before it goes to space,” Bruno said of the Delta IV Heavy before its final launch. “Retiring it is (key to) the future, moving to Vulcan, a less expensive, higher-performance rocket. But it’s still sad.”

“Everything that Delta has done … is being done better on Vulcan, so this is a great evolutionary step,” said Bill Cullen, ULA’s launch systems director. “It is bittersweet to see the last one, but there are great things ahead.”

After a fiery finale, the Delta rocket family now belongs to history Read More »

rip-peter-higgs,-who-laid-foundation-for-the-higgs-boson-in-the-1960s

RIP Peter Higgs, who laid foundation for the Higgs boson in the 1960s

CERN, Higgs boson, Large Hadron Collider, Obituaries, particle physics, Peter Higgs, Physics, Science, the standard model / /

A particle physics hero —

Higgs shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics with François Englert.

–

Smiling Peter Higgs, seated in front of microphone with Edinburgh logo in the background

Enlarge / A visibly emotional Peter Higgs was present when CERN announced Higgs boson discovery in July 2012.

University of Edinburgh

Peter Higgs, the shy, somewhat reclusive physicist who won a Nobel Prize for his theoretical work on how the Higgs boson gives elementary particles their mass, has died at the age of 94. According to a statement from the University of Edinburgh, the physicist passed “peacefully at home on Monday 8 April following a short illness.”

“Besides his outstanding contributions to particle physics, Peter was a very special person, a man of rare modesty, a great teacher and someone who explained physics in a very simple and profound way,” Fabiola Gianotti, director general at CERN and former leader of one of the experiments that helped discover the Higgs particle in 2012, told The Guardian. “An important piece of CERN’s history and accomplishments is linked to him. I am very saddened, and I will miss him sorely.”

The Higgs boson is a manifestation of the Higgs field, an invisible entity that pervades the Universe. Interactions between the Higgs field and particles help provide particles with mass, with particles that interact more strongly having larger masses. The Standard Model of Particle Physics describes the fundamental particles that make up all matter, like quarks and electrons, as well as the particles that mediate their interactions through forces like electromagnetism and the weak force. Back in the 1960s, theorists extended the model to incorporate what has become known as the Higgs mechanism, which provides many of the particles with mass. One consequence of the Standard Model’s version of the Higgs boson is that there should be a force-carrying particle, called a boson, associated with the Higgs field.

Despite its central role in the function of the Universe, the road to predicting the existence of the Higgs boson was bumpy, as was the process of discovering it. As previously reported, the idea of the Higgs boson was a consequence of studies on the weak force, which controls the decay of radioactive elements. The weak force only operates at very short distances, which suggests that the particles that mediate it (the W and Z bosons) are likely to be massive. While it was possible to use existing models of physics to explain some of their properties, these predictions had an awkward feature: just like another force-carrying particle, the photon, the resulting W and Z bosons were massless.

Schematic of the Standard Model of particle physics.

Enlarge / Schematic of the Standard Model of particle physics.

Over time, theoreticians managed to craft models that included massive W and Z bosons, but they invariably came with a hitch: a massless partner, which would imply a longer-range force. In 1964, however, a series of papers was published in rapid succession that described a way to get rid of this problematic particle. If a certain symmetry in the models was broken, the massless partner would go away, leaving only a massive one.

The first of these papers, by François Englert and Robert Brout, proposed the new model in terms of quantum field theory; the second, by Higgs (then 35), noted that a single quantum of the field would be detectable as a particle. A third paper, by Gerald Guralnik, Carl Richard Hagen, and Tom Kibble, provided an independent validation of the general approach, as did a completely independent derivation by students in the Soviet Union.

At that time, “There seemed to be excitement and concern about quantum field theory (the underlying structure of particle physics) back then, with some people beginning to abandon it,” David Kaplan, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University, told Ars. “There were new particles being regularly produced at accelerator experiments without any real theoretical structure to explain them. Spin-1 particles could be written down comfortably (the photon is spin-1) as long as they didn’t have a mass, but the massive versions were confusing to people at the time. A bunch of people, including Higgs, found this quantum field theory trick to give spin-1 particles a mass in a consistent way. These little tricks can turn out to be very useful, but also give the landscape of what is possible.”

“It wasn’t clear at the time how it would be applied in particle physics.”

Ironically, Higgs’ seminal paper was rejected by the European journal Physics Letters. He then added a crucial couple of paragraphs noting that his model also predicted the existence of what we now know as the Higgs boson. He submitted the revised paper to Physical Review Letters in the US, where it was accepted. He examined the properties of the boson in more detail in a 1966 follow-up paper.

RIP Peter Higgs, who laid foundation for the Higgs boson in the 1960s Read More »

elon-musk-denies-knowing-who’s-suing-him-to-dodge-defamation-suit

Elon Musk denies knowing who’s suing him to dodge defamation suit

Policy / /
Elon Musk denies knowing who’s suing him to dodge defamation suit

After Elon Musk was accused of defaming Ben Brody—a 22-year-old Jewish man falsely linked to a neo-Nazi brawl in tweets that Musk responded to last year—the owner of X (formerly Twitter) sat for a heated Zoom deposition where he repeatedly denied ever knowing who Brody was.

When Brody’s attorney, Mark Bankston, asked Musk if he thought he ever did anything “wrong” to Brody, Musk replied, “I don’t know Ben Brody.”

“You’re aware that Ben Brody is somebody who’s sued you, right?” Bankston asked.

“I think you’re the one suing,” Musk said, adding that he views “many cases and probably this one too that the real plaintiff is the lawyer seeking money like you.” Continually, Musk emphasized, “what I think” the defamation case is “really about is about you getting a lot of money.”

Musk filed a motion to dismiss Brody’s case in January, accusing Brody of targeting “Musk’s exercise of his freedom of speech for the improper purpose of obtaining a payment ‘exceed[ing] $1,000,000,’ to which Brody is not entitled from Musk.” In the deposition, Musk accused Bankston of attacking his free speech rights, and in the motion to dismiss, Musk argued that “the public’s discussion of the identity of perpetrators of crime would be unduly trampled by the fear of liability for merely negligent speech,” if Brody won his defamation suit.

In that petition, Musk accused Brody of targeting him because he’s a billionaire, repeatedly pointing out that Brody had not sued other X users who had specifically named Brody as an alleged brawler in blogs and on X.

Musk’s tweet, the motion to dismiss argued, only claimed that a picture of one brawler “looks like” a “college student (who wants to join the govt).” Because the photo was not actually of Brody, Musk argued, and because he never names Brody, then Brody cannot claim he was defamed.

“It is not defamatory to say someone looks like someone else—that is not an accusation of a crime,” Musk’s motion to dismiss said.

But Bankston asked Musk in the deposition if “the reason that you’re saying that it looks like one is a college student” was because of other posts that Musk had seen where right-wing influencers had named Brody as involved in the brawl, describing him as a liberal college student studying political science.

“That’s probably why I’m saying this,” Musk confirmed, while arguing that he was obviously “speculating” in the tweet, which is why he tagged Community Notes to “fact-check” his own tweet.

“I can see a picture of my brother and say that looks like my brother, but it might not be my brother,” Musk argued.

Bankston told Musk that his X post garnered more than a million views, asking Musk, “Do you think you owed it to Ben Brody to be accurate as you could?”

Musk told Bankston that he aspires “to be accurate no matter who the person is,” suggesting that while it’s possible to be harmed by people posting false information, he did not think Brody was harmed by his tweet.

“I don’t think he has been meaningfully harmed by this,” Musk said, insisting to Bankston that he could not have defamed Brody because “I have no ill will to Ben Brody. I don’t know Ben Brody.”

Brody’s complaint alleged that Musk boosting a post linking him to the neo-Nazi brawl has caused permanent reputational damage and severe emotional harm. Bankston declined Ars’ request to comment on whether Brody continues to be a target for harassment and death threats.

“People are attacked all the time in the media, online media, social media, but it is rare that that actually has a meaningful negative impact on their life,” Musk said.

Brody has asked Musk to delete his post, but Musk claims he cannot recall ever being asked. In one of the few times when Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney, advised Musk not to respond, Musk gave no answer when Bankston asked, “If you knew right now—knowing right now Ben is really upset that this tweet is still up and that he wanted there to be a retraction, how do you feel about that?”

Bankston also confirmed that Musk’s post never got fact-checked by Community Notes and thus appears to still be boosting the misinformation.

Elon Musk denies knowing who’s suing him to dodge defamation suit Read More »

epa-seeks-to-cut-“cancer-alley”-pollutants

EPA seeks to cut “Cancer Alley” pollutants

carcinogens, clean air act, EPA, Policy, pollution, Science, Sustainability, Toxicology / /

Out of the air —

Chemical plants will have to monitor how much is escaping and stop leaks.

–

Image of a large industrial facility on the side of a river.

Enlarge / An oil refinery in Louisiana. Facilities such as this have led to a proliferation of petrochemical plants in the area.

On Tuesday, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced new rules that are intended to cut emissions of two chemicals that have been linked to elevated incidence of cancer: ethylene oxide and chloroprene. While production and use of these chemicals takes place in a variety of locations, they’re particularly associated with an area of petrochemical production in Louisiana that has become known as “Cancer Alley.”

The new regulations would require chemical manufacturers to monitor the emissions at their facilities and take steps to repair any problems that result in elevated emissions. Despite extensive evidence linking these chemicals to elevated risk of cancer, industry groups are signaling their opposition to these regulations, and the EPA has seen two previous attempts at regulation set aside by courts.

Dangerous stuff

The two chemicals at issue are primarily used as intermediates in the manufacture of common products. Chloroprene, for example, is used for the production of neoprene, a synthetic rubber-like substance that’s probably familiar from products like insulated sleeves and wetsuits. It’s a four-carbon chain with two double-bonds that allow for polymerization and an attached chlorine that alters its chemical properties.

According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), chloroprene “is a mutagen and carcinogen in animals and is reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.” Given that cancers are driven by DNA damage, any mutagen would be “reasonably anticipated” to drive the development of cancer. Beyond that, it appears to be pretty nasty stuff, with the NCI noting that “exposure to this substance causes damage to the skin, lungs, CNS, kidneys, liver and depression of the immune system.”

The NCI’s take on Ethylene Oxide is even more definitive, with the Institute placing it on its list of cancer-causing substances. The chemical is very simple, with two carbons that are linked to each other directly, and also linked via an oxygen atom, which makes the molecule look a bit like a triangle. This configuration allows the molecule to participate in a broad range of reactions that break one of the oxygen bonds, making it useful in the production of a huge range of chemicals. Its reactivity also makes it useful for sterilizing items such as medical equipment.

Its sterilization function works through causing damage to DNA, which again makes it prone to causing cancers.

In addition to these two chemicals, the EPA’s new regulations will target a number of additional airborne pollutants, including benzene, 1,3-butadiene, ethylene dichloride, and vinyl chloride, all of which have similar entries at the NCI.

Despite the extensive record linking these chemicals to cancer, The New York Times quotes the US Chamber of Commerce, a pro-industry group, as saying that “EPA should not move forward with this rule-making based on the current record because there remains significant scientific uncertainty.”

A history of exposure

The petrochemical industry is the main source of these chemicals, so their release is associated with areas where the oil and gas industry has a major presence; the EPA notes that the regulations will target sources in Delaware, New Jersey, and the Ohio River Valley. But the primary focus will be on chemical plants in Texas and Louisiana. These include the area that has picked up the moniker Cancer Alley due to a high incidence of the disease in a stretch along the Mississippi River with a large concentration of chemical plants.

As is the case with many examples of chemical pollution, the residents of Cancer Alley are largely poor and belong to minority groups. As a result, the EPA had initially attempted to regulate the emissions under a civil rights provision of the Clean Air Act, but that has been bogged down due to lawsuits.

The new regulations simply set limits on permissible levels of release at what’s termed the “fencelines” of the facilities where these chemicals are made, used, or handled. If levels exceed an annual limit, the owners and operators “must find the source of the pollution and make repairs.” This gets rid of previous exemptions for equipment startup, shutdown, and malfunctions; those exemptions had been held to violate the Clean Air Act in a separate lawsuit.

The EPA estimates that the sites subject to regulation will see their collective emissions of these chemicals drop by nearly 80 percent, which works out to be 54 tons of ethylene oxide, 14 tons of chloroprene, and over 6,000 tons of the other pollutants. That in turn will reduce the cancer risk from these toxins by 96 percent among those subjected to elevated exposures. Collectively, the chemicals subject to these regulations also contribute to smog, so these reductions will have an additional health impact by reducing its levels as well.

While the EPA says that “these emission reductions will yield significant reductions in lifetime cancer risk attributable to these air pollutants,” it was unable to come up with an estimate of the financial benefits that will result from that reduction. By contrast, it estimates that the cost of compliance will end up being approximately $150 million annually. “Most of the facilities covered by the final rule are owned by large corporations,” the EPA notes. “The cost of implementing the final rule is less than one percent of their annual national sales.”

This sort of cost-benefit analysis is a required step during the formulation of Clean Air Act regulations, so it’s worth taking a step back and considering what’s at stake here: the EPA is basically saying that companies that work with significant amounts of carcinogens need to take stronger steps to make sure that they don’t use the air people breathe as a dumping ground for them.

Unsurprisingly, The New York Times quotes a neoprene manufacturer that the EPA is currently suing over its chloroprene emissions as claiming the new regulations are “draconian.”

EPA seeks to cut “Cancer Alley” pollutants Read More »

“google-vids”-is-google’s-fourth-big-productivity-app-for-workspace

“Google Vids” is Google’s fourth big productivity app for Workspace

Google, Tech / /

Please don’t bore your co-workers —

Google’s “video editor” feels more like a souped-up version of Google Slides.

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  • Is that Google Slides? Nope it’s Google Vids, the new video editor that seems to just make souped-up slideshows.

    Google

  • Google’s demo starts with an existing slideshow and then generates an outline.

    Google

  • Choose a theme, which all look like PowerPoints.

    Google

  • Write a script, preferably with the help of Google Gemini.

    Google

  • You can record a voiceover, or pick from Google’s robot voices.

    Google

  • This is a Google Workspace app, so there’s lots of realtime collaboration features, like these live mouse cursors that were brought over from Slides.

    Google

  • Comments work too.

    Google

  • It’s interesting you get a “stock media” library while apps like Slides would use generative AI images here.

    Google

  • Record a talk from your webcam.

    Google

  • Embed your video in the slideshow.

    Google

If you had asked me before what Google’s video editor app was, I would say “YouTube Studio,” but now Google Workspace has a new productivity app called “Google Vids.” Normally a video editor is considered a secondary application in many productivity suites, but Google apparently imagines Vids as a major pillar of Workspace, saying Vids is an “all-in-one video creation app for work that will sit alongside Docs, Sheets and Slides.” So, that is an editor for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and videos?

Google’s demo of the new video editor pitches the product not for YouTube videos or films but more as a corporate super slideshow for things like training materials or product demos. Really, this “video editor” almost looks like it could completely replace Google Slides since the interface is just Slides but with a video timeline instead of a slideshow timeline.

Google’s example video creates a “sales training video” that starts with a Slides presentation as the basic outline. You start with an outline editor, where each slideshow page gets its own major section. Google then has video “styles” you can pick from, which all seem very Powerpoint-y with a big title, subheading, and a slot for some kind of video. Google then wants you to write a script and either read it yourself or have a text-to-speech voice read the script. A “stock media” library lets you fill in some of those video slots with generic corporate imagery like a video of a sunset, choose background music, and use a few pictures. You can also fire up your webcam and record something, sort of like a pre-canned Zoom meeting. After that it’s a lot of the usual Google productivity app features: real-time editing collaboration with visible mouse cursors from each participant and a stream of comments.

Like all Google products after the rise of OpenAI, Google pitches Vids as an “AI-powered” video editor, even though there didn’t seem to be many generative AI features in the presentation. The videos, images, and music were “stock” media, not AI-generated inventions (Slides can generate images, but that wasn’t in this demo). There’s nothing in here like OpenAI’s “Sora,” which generates new videos out of its training data. There’s probably a Gemini-powered “help me write” feature for the script, and Google describes the initial outline as “generated” from your starting Slides presentation, but that seemed to be it.

Google says Vids is being released to “Workspace Labs” in June, so you’ll be able to opt in to testing it.

Listing image by Google

“Google Vids” is Google’s fourth big productivity app for Workspace Read More »

thousands-of-lg-tvs-are-vulnerable-to-takeover—here’s-how-to-ensure-yours-isn’t-one

Thousands of LG TVs are vulnerable to takeover—here’s how to ensure yours isn’t one

Biz & IT, hacking, Internet of things, lg, Security, TVs / /
Thousands of LG TVs are vulnerable to takeover—here’s how to ensure yours isn’t one

Getty Images

As many as 91,000 LG TVs face the risk of being commandeered unless they receive a just-released security update patching four critical vulnerabilities discovered late last year.

The vulnerabilities are found in four LG TV models that collectively comprise slightly more than 88,000 units around the world, according to results returned by the Shodan search engine for Internet-connected devices. The vast majority of those units are located in South Korea, followed by Hong Kong, the US, Sweden, and Finland. The models are:

  • LG43UM7000PLA running webOS 4.9.7 – 5.30.40
  • OLED55CXPUA running webOS 5.5.0 – 04.50.51
  • OLED48C1PUB running webOS 6.3.3-442 (kisscurl-kinglake) – 03.36.50
  • OLED55A23LA running webOS 7.3.1-43 (mullet-mebin) – 03.33.85

Starting Wednesday, updates are available through these devices’ settings menu.

Got root?

According to Bitdefender—the security firm that discovered the vulnerabilities—malicious hackers can exploit them to gain root access to the devices and inject commands that run at the OS level. The vulnerabilities, which affect internal services that allow users to control their sets using their phones, make it possible for attackers to bypass authentication measures designed to ensure only authorized devices can make use of the capabilities.

“These vulnerabilities let us gain root access on the TV after bypassing the authorization mechanism,” Bitdefender researchers wrote Tuesday. “Although the vulnerable service is intended for LAN access only, Shodan, the search engine for Internet-connected devices, identified over 91,000 devices that expose this service to the Internet.”

The key vulnerability making these threats possible resides in a service that allows TVs to be controlled using LG’s ThinkQ smartphone app when it’s connected to the same local network. The service is designed to require the user to enter a PIN code to prove authorization, but an error allows someone to skip this verification step and become a privileged user. This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2023-6317.

Once attackers have gained this level of control, they can go on to exploit three other vulnerabilities, specifically:

  • CVE-2023-6318, which allows the attackers to elevate their access to root
  • CVE-2023-6319, which allows for the injection of OS commands by manipulating a library for showing music lyrics
  • CVE-2023-6320, which lets an attacker inject authenticated commands by manipulating the com.webos.service.connectionmanager/tv/setVlanStaticAddress application interface.

Thousands of LG TVs are vulnerable to takeover—here’s how to ensure yours isn’t one Read More »

report-details-how-russia-obtains-starlink-terminals-for-war-in-ukraine

Report details how Russia obtains Starlink terminals for war in Ukraine

Policy, russia starlink, spacex starlink, starlink ukraine / /

Starlink black market —

Russians buy from middlemen and “deliver SpaceX hardware to the front line.”

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A Starlink terminal in front of a sign that says,

Enlarge / A Starlink terminal at the Everything Electric London conference on March 28, 2024 in England.

Getty Images | John Keeble

A report published today describes how Russia obtained Starlink terminals for its war in Ukraine despite US sanctions and SpaceX’s insistence that Russia hasn’t bought the terminals either directly or indirectly.

The Wall Street Journal report describes black market sales to Russians and a Sudanese paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently determined that the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias committed war crimes and are responsible for ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

The WSJ said it “tracked Starlink sales on numerous Russian online retail platforms,” “interviewed Russian and Sudanese middlemen and resellers, and followed Russian volunteer groups that deliver SpaceX hardware to the front line.”

The WSJ described Oleg, a salesman at Moscow-based online retailer shopozz.ru, who “supplemented his usual business of peddling vacuum cleaners and dashboard phone mounts by selling dozens of Starlink internet terminals that wound up with Russians on the front lines in Ukraine.”

Starlink terminals reportedly provide a technical upgrade to Russian troops whose radio communications were being jammed or intercepted by Ukraine troops.

“In Russia, middlemen buy the hardware, sometimes on eBay, in the US and elsewhere, including on the black market in Central Asia, Dubai or Southeast Asia, then smuggle it into Russia,” the report said. “Russian volunteers boast openly on social media about supplying the terminals to troops. They are part of an informal effort to boost Russia’s use of Starlink in Ukraine, where Russian forces are advancing.”

These “middlemen have proliferated in recent months to buy the user terminals and ship them to Russian forces,” the report said.

Lawmakers doubt SpaceX compliance with sanctions

Today’s report came about a month after two Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to SpaceX alleging that Russia’s use of Starlink in Ukraine raises questions about SpaceX’s “compliance with US sanctions and export controls.”

“We are concerned that you may not have appropriate guardrails and policies in place to ensure your technology is neither acquired directly or indirectly, nor used illegally by Russia,” said the letter from US Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Robert Garcia (D-Calif.).

In February, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk denied what he called “false news reports [that] claim that SpaceX is selling Starlink terminals to Russia,” saying that, “to the best of our knowledge, no Starlinks have been sold directly or indirectly to Russia.”

We contacted SpaceX today and will update this article if we get a response.

Russia has said it doesn’t allow Starlink use. A spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin said in February that Starlink “is not certified [in Russia], therefore it cannot and is not officially supplied here. It cannot be used in any way.”

The Journal report said that US adversaries have been able to connect to satellites after dealers who sell Starlink terminals “register the hardware in countries where Starlink is allowed.” SpaceX uses geofencing to limit Starlink access, and Musk has said that “Starlink satellites will not close the link in Russia.” But blocking Russian use of Starlink in Ukraine without affecting Ukraine troops’ use of the service would likely be more complicated.

Ukraine, Sudan ask SpaceX for help

Ukraine’s top military-intelligence officer, Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, said in an interview that “Russian invasion forces in his country are using thousands of Starlink satellite Internet terminals, and that the network has been active in occupied parts of Ukraine for ‘quite a long time,'” according to a WSJ report in February.

The Journal’s new report states that “Ukrainian officials said they contacted SpaceX about Russian forces using Starlink terminals in Ukraine and that they are working together on a solution.” The report also quotes US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb as saying that the US is “working with Ukraine and we’re working with Starlink” on how to end Russian use of Starlink in Ukraine.

The RSF reportedly uses Starlink in fighting against government forces. “Sudanese military officials and unauthorized Starlink dealers said in interviews that Abdelrahim Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF’s deputy commander, has overseen the purchase of hundreds of Starlink terminals from dealers in the United Arab Emirates,” the WSJ report said.

The report also said that “Sudanese authorities have contacted SpaceX and requested help in regulating the use of Starlink, including by allowing the military to turn off service areas where it was helping the RSF. Starlink never responded to the request, Sudanese officials said.”

Report details how Russia obtains Starlink terminals for war in Ukraine Read More »

elon-musk:-ai-will-be-smarter-than-any-human-around-the-end-of-next-year

Elon Musk: AI will be smarter than any human around the end of next year

AI, Biz & IT, elon musk, Grady Booch, machine learning, Social Media, superintelligence, Twitter, X / /

smarter than the average bear —

While Musk says superintelligence is coming soon, one critic says prediction is “batsh*t crazy.”

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Elon Musk, owner of Tesla and the X (formerly Twitter) platform, attends a symposium on fighting antisemitism titled 'Never Again : Lip Service or Deep Conversation' in Krakow, Poland on January 22nd, 2024. Musk, who was invited to Poland by the European Jewish Association (EJA) has visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp earlier that day, ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. (Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto)

Enlarge / Elon Musk, owner of Tesla and the X (formerly Twitter) platform on January 22, 2024.

On Monday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted the imminent rise in AI superintelligence during a live interview streamed on the social media platform X. “My guess is we’ll have AI smarter than any one human probably around the end of next year,” Musk said in his conversation with hedge fund manager Nicolai Tangen.

Just prior to that, Tangen had asked Musk, “What’s your take on where we are in the AI race just now?” Musk told Tangen that AI “is the fastest advancing technology I’ve seen of any kind, and I’ve seen a lot of technology.” He described computers dedicated to AI increasing in capability by “a factor of 10 every year, if not every six to nine months.”

Musk made the prediction with an asterisk, saying that shortages of AI chips and high AI power demands could limit AI’s capability until those issues are resolved. “Last year, it was chip-constrained,” Musk told Tangen. “People could not get enough Nvidia chips. This year, it’s transitioning to a voltage transformer supply. In a year or two, it’s just electricity supply.”

But not everyone is convinced that Musk’s crystal ball is free of cracks. Grady Booch, a frequent critic of AI hype on social media who is perhaps best known for his work in software architecture, told Ars in an interview, “Keep in mind that Mr. Musk has a profoundly bad record at predicting anything associated with AI; back in 2016, he promised his cars would ship with FSD safety level 5, and here we are, closing on an a decade later, still waiting.”

Creating artificial intelligence at least as smart as a human (frequently called “AGI” for artificial general intelligence) is often seen as inevitable among AI proponents, but there’s no broad consensus on exactly when that milestone will be reached—or on the exact definition of AGI, for that matter.

“If you define AGI as smarter than the smartest human, I think it’s probably next year, within two years,” Musk added in the interview with Tangen while discussing AGI timelines.

Even with uncertainties about AGI, that hasn’t kept companies from trying. ChatGPT creator OpenAI, which launched with Musk as a co-founder in 2015, lists developing AGI as its main goal. Musk has not been directly associated with OpenAI for years (unless you count a recent lawsuit against the company), but last year, he took aim at the business of large language models by forming a new company called xAI. Its main product, Grok, functions similarly to ChatGPT and is integrated into the X social media platform.

Booch gives credit to Musk’s business successes but casts doubt on his forecasting ability. “Albeit a brilliant if not rapacious businessman, Mr. Musk vastly overestimates both the history as well as the present of AI while simultaneously diminishing the exquisite uniqueness of human intelligence,” says Booch. “So in short, his prediction is—to put it in scientific terms—batshit crazy.”

So when will we get AI that’s smarter than a human? Booch says there’s no real way to know at the moment. “I reject the framing of any question that asks when AI will surpass humans in intelligence because it is a question filled with ambiguous terms and considerable emotional and historic baggage,” he says. “We are a long, long way from understanding the design that would lead us there.”

We also asked Hugging Face AI researcher Dr. Margaret Mitchell to weigh in on Musk’s prediction. “Intelligence … is not a single value where you can make these direct comparisons and have them mean something,” she told us in an interview. “There will likely never be agreement on comparisons between human and machine intelligence.”

But even with that uncertainty, she feels there is one aspect of AI she can more reliably predict: “I do agree that neural network models will reach a point where men in positions of power and influence, particularly ones with investments in AI, will declare that AI is smarter than humans. By end of next year, sure. That doesn’t sound far off base to me.”

Elon Musk: AI will be smarter than any human around the end of next year Read More »

intel-is-investigating-game-crashes-on-top-end-core-i9-desktop-cpus

Intel is investigating game crashes on top-end Core i9 desktop CPUs

Alder Lake, CPU, desktop CPU, gaming, gaming PC, intel, intel core, raptor lake, Tech / /

i’m giving her all she’s got —

Crashes may be related to CPUs running above their specified power limits.

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Intel's high-end Core i9-13900K and 14900K are reportedly having crashing problems in some games.

Enlarge / Intel’s high-end Core i9-13900K and 14900K are reportedly having crashing problems in some games.

Andrew Cunningham

If you own a recent high-end Intel desktop CPU and you’ve been running into weird game crashes lately, you’re not alone.

Scattered reports from Core i9-13900K and i9-14900K users over the last couple of months have pointed to processor power usage as a possible source of crashes even in relatively undemanding games like Fortnite. Games like Hogwarts Legacy, Remnant 2, Alan Wake 2, Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Last of Us Part 1, and Outpost: Infinity Siege have also reportedly been affected; the problem primarily seems to affect titles made with Epic’s Unreal Engine. Intel said in a statement to ZDNet Korea (via The Verge) that it’s looking into the problems, escalating it from an “isolated issue” to something that may be more widespread and could require a more systemic fix.

Related CPUs like the i9-13900KF, i9-14900KF, i9-13900KS, and i9-14900KS may be affected, too, since they’re all the same basic silicon. Some user reports have also indicated that the i7-13700K and i7-14700K series may also be affected.

“Intel is aware of reports regarding Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen unlocked desktop processors experiencing issues with certain workloads,” an Intel spokesperson told Ars. “We’re engaged with our partners and are conducting analysis of the reported issues.”

While Intel hasn’t indicated what it thinks could be causing the issue, support documents from Epic Games and other developers have suggested that the processors’ power settings are to blame, recommending that users change their BIOS settings or manually restrict their processors’ speed with tools like Intel’s Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU). Most enthusiast motherboards will set the power limits on Intel’s processors to be essentially infinite, squeezing out a bit more performance (especially for i7 and i9 chips) at the expense of increased power use and heat.

Epic suggests using a BIOS power setting called “Intel Fail Safe” on Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte motherboards—its name makes it sound like some kind of low-power safe mode, but it’s most likely just setting the processors’ power limits to Intel’s specified defaults. This could result in somewhat reduced performance, particularly when all CPU cores are active at the same time. But we and other reviewers have seen sharply diminishing returns when letting these chips use more power. This can even be a problem with Intel’s stock settings—the recently announced i9-14900KS can use as much as 31 percent more power than the standard i9-14900K while delivering just 1 or 2 percent faster performance.

If power limits are to blame, the good news is that users can adjust these in the short term and that motherboard makers could fix the problem in the long run by tweaking their default settings in future BIOS updates.

Updated April 9, 2024, at 2: 12 pm to add Intel spokesperson statement.

Intel is investigating game crashes on top-end Core i9 desktop CPUs Read More »

2,000-senior-women-win-“biggest-victory-possible”-in-landmark-climate-case

2,000 senior women win “biggest victory possible” in landmark climate case

climate change, climate inaction, European Court of Human Rights, Human rights, Policy, Switzerland / /
Members of Swiss association Senior Women for Climate Protection react after the announcement of decisions after a hearing of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to decide in three separate cases if states are doing enough in the face of global warming in rulings that could force them to do more, in Strasbourg, eastern France, on April 9, 2024.

Enlarge / Members of Swiss association Senior Women for Climate Protection react after the announcement of decisions after a hearing of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to decide in three separate cases if states are doing enough in the face of global warming in rulings that could force them to do more, in Strasbourg, eastern France, on April 9, 2024.

More than 2,000 older Swiss women have won a landmark European case proving that government climate inaction violates human rights.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Tuesday that Switzerland had not acted urgently to achieve climate targets, leading victims, who are mostly in their 70s, to suffer physically and emotionally while potentially placed at risk of dying.

The women, part of a group called KlimaSeniorinnen (Senior Women for Climate Protection), filed the lawsuit nine years ago. They presented medical documents and scientific evidence that older women are more vulnerable to climate impacts, arguing that “their health and daily routines were affected” by Swiss heatwaves connected to climate change.

One woman who had to regularly measure her blood pressure and refrain from activities when temperatures were too high told the court that “the thermometer determined the way she led her life.” Another woman described how isolated she felt when “excessive heat” with “highly probable” links to climate change “exacerbated her asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”

“Evidence showed that the life and health of older women were more severely impacted by periods of heatwaves than the rest of the population,” ECHR’s ruling said, noting that during recent warmest summers on record “nearly 90 percent of heat-related deaths had occurred in older women, almost all of whom were older than 75.”

The ECHR ruled that the Swiss government had violated these women’s rights to respect for private and family life under the European Convention on Human Rights by failing to comply with climate duties or to address “critical gaps” in climate policies. Throughout the proceedings, Swiss authorities acknowledged missing climate targets, including by not properly supervising greenhouse gas emissions in sectors like building and transport, and not regulating emissions in other sectors such as agricultural and financial.

“There was a long history of failed climate action,” ECHR’s ruling said.

“This included a failure to quantify, through a carbon budget or otherwise, national greenhouse gas emissions limitations,” ECHR President Siofra O’Leary said, noting in a Reuters report that Switzerland “had previously failed to meet its past greenhouse gas emission reduction targets by failing to act in good time and in an appropriate and consistent manner.”

As a result of the ECHR ruling, Switzerland may be forced to escalate efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption, CNN reported.

Swiss President Viola Amherd told a news conference attended by Reuters that she would be reviewing the judgment, seemingly defending the country’s current climate actions by saying that “sustainability is very important to Switzerland, biodiversity is very important to Switzerland, the net zero target is very important to Switzerland.”

The court’s judgment is binding, cannot be appealed, and could “influence the law in 46 countries in Europe including the UK,” the BBC reported. Experts told CNN that the case could also influence other international courts, potentially opening the floodgates to more climate litigation globally.

2,000 senior women win “biggest victory possible” in landmark climate case Read More »

medical-roundup-#2

Medical Roundup #2

Medical / /

Previously: #1

It feels so long ago that Covid and health were my beat, and what everyone often thought about all day, rather than AI. Yet the beat goes on. With Scott Alexander at long last giving us what I expect to be effectively the semi-final words on the Rootclaim debate, it seemed time to do this again.

I know no methodical way to find a good, let alone great, therapist.

Cate Hall: One reason it’s so hard to find a good therapist is that all the elite ones market themselves as coaches.

As a commentor points out, therapists who can’t make it also market as coaches or similar, so even if Cate’s claim is true then it is tough.

My actual impression is that the elite therapists largely do not market themselves at all. They instead work on referrals and reputation. So you have to know someone who knows. They used to market, then they filled up and did not have to, so they stopped. Even if they do some marketing, seeing the marketing copy won’t easily differentiate them from other therapists. There are many reasons why our usual internet approach of reviews is mostly useless here. Even with AI, I am guessing we currently lack enough data to give you good recommendations from feedback alone.

American life expectancy rising again, was 77.5 years (+1.1) in 2022.

Bryan Johnson, whose slogan is ‘Don’t Die,’ continues his quest for eternal youth, seen here trying to restore his joints. Mike Solana interviews Bryan Johnson about his efforts here more generally. The plan is to not die via two hours of being studied every day, what he finds is ideal diet, exercise and sleep, and other techniques and therapies including bursts of light and a few supplements.

I wish this man the best of luck. I hope he finds the answers and does not die, and that this helps the rest of us also not die.

Alas, I am not expecting much. His concept of ‘rate of aging’ does not strike me as how any of this is likely to work, nor does addressing joint health seem likely to much extend life or generalize. His techniques do not target any of the terminal aging issues. A lot of it seems clearly aimed at being healthy now, feeling and looking younger now. Which is great, but I do not expect it to buy much in the longer term.

Also one must note that the accusations in the responses to the above-linked thread about his personal actions are not great. But I would not let that sully his efforts to not die or help others not die.

I can’t help but notice the parallel to AI safety. I see Johnson as doing lots of mundane health work, to make himself healthier now. Which is great, although if that’s all it is then the full routine is obviously a bit much. Most people should do more of such things. The problem is that Johnson is expecting this to translate into defeating aging, which I very much do not expect.

Gene therapy cures first case of congenital deafness. Woo-hoo! Imagine what else we could do with gene therapies if we were ‘ethically’ allowed to do so. It is a sign of the times that I expected much reaction to this to be hostile both on the ‘how dare you mess with genetics’ front and also the ‘how dare you make someone not deaf’ front.

A ‘vaccine-like’ version of Wegovy is on the drawing board at Novo Nordisk (Stat+). If you are convinced you need this permanently it would be a lot cheaper and easier in this form, but this is the kind of thing you want to be able to reverse, especially as technology improves. Consider as parallel, an IUD is great technology but would be much worse if you could not later remove it.

The battle can be won, also Tracy Morgan really was playing Tracy Morgan when he played Tracy Morgan.

Page Six: Tracy Morgan says he ‘gained 40 pounds’ on weight-loss drugs: I can ‘out-eat Ozempic’

“It cuts my appetite in half,” the 55-year-old told Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager on the “Today” show in August 2023.

We used to eat a lot more, including more starch and sugar, without becoming obese, including people who did limited physical activity. According to these statistics, quite a lot more. Yes, we eat some new unhealthy things, but when people cut those things out without cutting calories, they do not typically lose dramatic amounts of weight.

All right, why do the studies find ice cream is good for you, again? As a reminder the Atlantic dug into this a year ago, and now Manifold gives us some options, will resolve by subjective weighing of factors.

My money continues to be on substitution effects, with a side of several of the other things. Ice cream lets you buy joy, and buy having had dessert, at very little cost in calories, nutrition or health. No, it’s not great for you, but it’s not in the same category as other desserts like cake or cookies, and it substitutes for them while reducing caloric intake.

I am not about to short a 13% for five years, but I very much expect this result to continue to replicate. And I do think that this is one of the easier ways to improve your diet, to substitute ice cream for other desserts.

The NIH is spending $189 million dollars to do a detailed 10,000 person study to figure out what you should eat.

Andrea Peterson (WSJ): Scientists agree broadly on what constitutes a healthy diet—heavy on veggies, fruit, whole grains and lean protein—but more research is showing that different people respond differently to the same foods, such as bread or bananas. 

I would instead claim we have broad agreement as to what things we socially label as ‘healthy’ versus ‘unhealthy,’ with little if any actual understanding of what is actually healthy or unhealthy, and the broad expectation among the wise that the answers vary greatly between individuals.

Elizabeth and his fellow participants spend two weeks each on three different diets. One is high fat and low carb; another is low on added sugars and heavy on vegetables, along with fruit, fish, poultry, eggs and dairy; a third is high in ultra-processed foods and added sugars. 

This at best lets us compare those three options to each other under highly unnatural conditions, where the scientists apply great pressure to ensure everyone eats exactly the right things, and that have to severely alter people’s physical activity levels. A lot of why some diets succeed and others fail is how people actually act in practice, including impact on exercise. Knowing what set of foods in exactly what quantities and consumption patterns would be good if someone theoretically ate exactly that way is nice, but of not so much practical value.

Also, they are going to put each person on each diet for only two weeks? What is even the point? Yes, they draw blood a lot, measure heart rates, take other measures. Those are highly noisy metrics at best, that tell us little about long term impacts.

This does not seem like $189 million well spent. I cannot imagine a result that would cause me to change my consumption or much update my beliefs, in any direction.

This both is and is not how all of this works:

Keto Carnivore: [losing weight] not hard compared to being fat, in pain, chronically fatigued, or anxious/depressed/psychotic. Those things are extremely motivating. It’s only hard if it doesn’t work, or the body is fighting it (like caloric restriction without satiation, or constant cravings).

exfatloss: Can💯confirm. Do you know how much willpower I need to do a pretty strict ketogenic diet?

0. Because the alternative is not having a career/life and feeling like shit all the time from sleep deprivation.

When it obviously works, motivation is not an issue.

To clarify, I have a very rare and specific circadian rhythm disorder that therapeutic keto fixes. 99.99% of people don’t have this issue and therefore won’t get the same benefits I do.

Motivation is not an issue for me, in the sense that I have no doubt that I will continue to do what it takes to keep the weight off.

That does not mean it is easy. It is not easy. It is hard. Not every day. Not every hour. But often, yes, it is hard, the road is long. But yeah, the alternative is so obviously worse that I know I will do whatever it takes, if it looks like I might slip.

‘‘What we wish we knew entering the aging field.’ I hear optimistic things that we will start to see the first real progress soon, but it is not clear people wouldn’t say those things anyway. It certainly seems plausible we could start making rapid progress soon. Aging is a disease. Cure it.

Ken Griffin donates $400 million to cancer hospital Sloan Kettering. Not the most effective altruism available, but still, what a mensch.

Sulfur dioxide in particular is a huge deal. The estimate here is that a 1 ppb drop in levels, a 10% decline in pollution, would increase life expectancy by a whopping 1.2 years. Huge if even partially true, I have not looked into the science.

Someone should buy 23AndMe purely to safeguard its data. Cost is already down to roughly $20 per person’s data.

Yes, Schizophrenia is mostly genetic.

HIPPA in practice is a really dumb law, a relic of a time when digital communications did not exist. The benefits of being able to email and text doctors vastly exceed the costs, and obviously so. Other places like the UK don’t have it and it’s much better.

The story of PEPFAR, and how it turned out to be dramatically effective to do HIV treatment instead of HIV prevention, against the advice of economists. Back then there were no EAs, but the economists were making remarkably EA-like arguments, while making classic errors like citing studies showing very low cost estimates per life saved for prevention that failed to replicate, including ignoring existing failed replications. And they failed to understand that the moral case for treatment allowed expansion of the budget and also that treatment halted transmission, and thus was also prevention.

In many senses, it is clear that Bush ‘got lucky’ here, with the transmission effect and adherence rates exceeding any reasonable expectations, while prevention via traditional methods seems to have proven even less effective than we might have expected. If I had to take away three key lessons, they would be that you need to do larger scale empiricism to see what works and not count on small studies, and that you should care a lot about making the moral or obvious case for what you are doing, because budgets for good causes are never fixed. People adjust them based on how excited they are to participate. And I do not think this is stupid behavior on anyone’s part, focusing on things where you score clear visible wins guards against a lot of failure modes, even at potential large efficiency costs, while usually still being more than efficient enough to be worth doing on its own merits.

Say it with me, the phrase is catching on, except looks like this was eventually approved anyway?

Henry: TIL there was a company that sold a baby sock with an spo2 monitor that sent a push notification if your baby stopped breathing until the FDA forced them to stop selling them because only doctors should be able to see a blood oxygen number.

> The FDA objection was based on the fact that the wearable had the capacity to relay a live display of a baby’s heart rate and oxygen levels, which is critical data that a doctor should interpret, especially in vulnerable populations.

FDA delenda est.

If I try, yes, I can tell a story where people think ‘oh I do not have to check on my baby anymore because if something goes wrong the sock will tell me’ and this ends up being a bad thing. You can also tell that story about almost anything else.

Some very silly people argue that it is not preventing schizophrenia unless you do so in a particular individual, if you do it via polygenic selection then it is ‘replacement.’ Scott Alexander does his standard way overthinking it via excruciating detail method of showing why this is rather dumb.

90% of junior doctors in South Korea strike to protest against doctors. Specially, against admitting 2,000 more students each year to medical schools. One can say ‘in-group loyalty’ or ‘enlightened self-interest’ if one wants. Or realize this is straight up mafia or cartel behavior, and make it 5,000.

Brian Patrick Moore: Good thing we don’t have some crazy thing like this in the US

Of all the low hanging fruits in health care, ‘lots of capable people want to be doctors and we should train more of them to be doctors’ has to be the lowest hanging of all.

Vaccine mandates for health care workers worsened worker shortages on net, the ‘I don’t want to get vaccinated or told what to do’ effect was bigger than the ‘I am safer now’ effect, claiming a 6% decline in healthcare employment. Marginal Revolution summarized this as the mandate backfiring. We do see that a cost was paid here. It is not obvious the cost is not worthwhile, and also if someone in healthcare would quit rather than be vaccinated one questions whether you wanted them working that job.

Katelyn Jetelina asks Kelley Krohnert why science lost public trust during the pandemic. The default is still ‘a fair amount’ of trust but the decline is clear especially among Republicans.

Here are the core answers given:

Everything sounds like a sales pitch

From Paxlovid to vaccines to masks to ventilation. Public health sounded (and still sounds like) a used car salesman for many different reasons: 

  1. Data seems crafted to feed the pitch rather than the pitch crafted by data. Overly optimistic claims weren’t well-supported by data, risks of Covid were communicated uniformly which meant the risks to young people were exaggerated, and potential vaccine harms were dismissed. Later, when it was time to pitch boosters, public health pivoted on a dime to tell us vaccine protection wanes quickly. How did we get here?

  2. Data mistakes …

  3. Messaging inaccuracies. …

  4. Mixing advocacy with scientific communication … The latest example was a long Covid discussion at a recent congressional hearing, and one of the top long Covid doctors saying, “The burden of disease from long Covid is on par with the burden of cancer and heart disease.”

I would give people more credit. Focusing on what things ‘sound like’ was a lot of what got us into this mess.

The issue wasn’t that everything ‘sounded’ like a sales pitch.

The problem was that everything was a sales pitch.

People are not scientific experts, but they can recognize a sales pitch.

The polite way to describe what happened was ‘scientists and doctors from Fauci on down decided to primarily operate as Simulacra Level 2 operators who said what they thought would cause the behaviors they wanted. They did not care whether their statements matched the truth of the physical world, except insofar as this would cause people to react badly.

As for this last item, I mean, there is a lot of selection bias in who becomes a ‘top long Covid doctor’ so it is no surprise that he was up there testifying (in a mask in 2024) that long Covid is on par with the burden of cancer and heart disease, a comment that makes absolutely zero sense.

Indeed, statements like that are not ‘mixing advocacy with scientific communication.’ My term for them is Obvious Nonsense, and the impolite word would be ‘lying.’

Information that would have been helpful was never provided

Indeed, ‘ethicists’ and other experts worked hard to ensure that we never found out much key information, and that we failed to communicate other highly useful informat we did know or damn well have enough to take a guess about, in ways that ordinary people found infuriating and could not help but notice was intentional.

This has been going on forever in medicine, better to tell you nothing than information ‘experts’ worry you won’t interpret or react to ‘properly,’ and better not to gather information if there is a local ethical concern no matter the cost of ignorance, such as months (or in other cases years) without a vaccine.

A disconnect between what I experienced on the ground and the narrative I was hearing

As in, Covid-19 in most cases wasn’t that scary in practice, and people noticed. I do think this one was difficult to handle. You have something that is 95%-99% to be essentially fine (depending on your threshold for fine) but will sometimes kill you. People’s heuristics are not equipped to handle it.

She concludes that some things are improving. But it is too little, too late. Damage is mostly done, and no one is paying attention anymore, and also they are still pushing more boosters. But this is at least the start of a real reckoning.

As an example of this all continuing: I have been told that The New York Times fact checks its editorials, and when I wrote an editorial I felt fact checked, but clearly it does not insist on those checks in any meaningful sense, since they published an op-ed claiming the Covid vaccine saved 3 million lives in America in its first two years. That makes zero sense. America has only 331.9 million people, and the IFR for Covid-19 on first infection is well under 1% even for the unvaccinated. The vaccines were amazing and saved a lot of lives. Making grandiose false claims does not help convince people of that.

Matt Yglesias has thoughts about Covid four years after.

He is still presenting More Lockdowns as something that would have been wise?

If the Australian right could implement hard lockdowns to control the virus, I believe the American right could have as well. This probably would have saved a ton of lives. Australia and other countries with tougher lockdown policies saw dramatically lower mortality.

Or maybe not?

Even a really successful lockdown regime couldn’t be sustained forever, and there was a price to pay in Australia and Finland and everywhere else once you opened up.

I mean, yes those other countries had lower mortality, but did America have the prerequisites to make such policies sustainable, where they work well enough you can loosen them and they still work and so on? I think very clearly no. Trying to lock down harder here would have been a deeply bad idea, because for better and also for worse we lacked the state and civilizational capacity to pull it off.

Then we have these two points, which seem directly contradictory? I think the second one is right and the first is wrong. The hypocrisy was a really huge deal.

I think the specific hypocrisy of some progressive public health figures endorsing the Floyd protests is somewhat overblown.

…

After Floyd, it became completely inconceivable that any liberal jurisdiction in America would actually enforce any kind of tough Covid rules.

He makes this good note.

Speaking of drift, I think an under-discussed aspect of the Biden administration is they initiated a bunch of rules right when they took office and vaccine distribution was just starting and had no plan to phase them out, seemingly ever. When they got sued over the airplane mask mandate, they fought in court to maintain it.

At minimum this was a missed opportunity to show reasonableness and competence. At worst, this was a true-colors moment for many people, who remember even if they don’t realize they remember.

Matt also points out that there has been no reckoning for our failures. America utterly failed to make tests available in reasonable fashion. Everyone agrees on this, and no one is trying to address the reasons that happened. The whole series of disingenuous mask policies and communications also has had no reckoning. And while Democrats had an advantage on Covid in 2020, their later policies did not make sense, pissed people off and destroyed that advantage.

Scott Alexander posted an extensive transcript and thoughts on the Rootclaim debate over Covid origins. The natural origin side won decisively, and Scott was convinced. That does not mean there are not ongoing attempts to challenge the result, such as these. An hours-long detailed debate is so much better than not having one, but the result is still highly correlated with the skills and knowledge and strategies of the two debaters, so in a sense it is only one data point unless you actually go over the arguments and facts and check everything. Which I am not going to be doing.

(I mean, I could of course be hired to do so, but I advise you strongly not to do that.)

To illustrate how bad an idea that would be, Scott Alexander offers us the highlights from the comments and deals with various additional arguments. It ends with, essentially, Rootclaim saying that Scott Alexander did not invest enough time in the process and does not know how to do probability theory, and oh this would all be sorted out otherwise. Whether or not they are right, that is about as big a ‘there be dragons and also tsuris’ sign as I’ve ever seen.

The one note I will make, but hold weakly, is that it seems like people could do a much better job of accounting for correlated errors, model uncertainty or meta uncertainty in their probability calculations.

As in, rather than pick one odds ratio for the location of the outbreak being at the wet market, one should have a distribution over possible correct odds ratios, and then see how much those correlate with correct odds ratios in other places. Not only am I not sure what to make of this one rather central piece of offered evidence, who is right about the right way to treat that claim would move me a lot on who is right about the right way to treat a lot of other claims, as well. The practical takeaway is that, without any desire to wade into the question of who is right about any particular details or overall, it seems like everyone (even when not trolling) is acting too confident based on what they think about the component arguments, including Scott’s 90% zoonosis.

My actual core thinking is still that either zoonosis or a lab leak could counterfactually have quite easily caused a pandemic that looks like Covid-19, our current ongoing practices at labs like Wuhan put as at substantial risk for lab leaks that cause pandemics that could easily be far worse than Covid-19.

I do not see any good arguments that a lab leak or zoonosis couldn’t both cause similar pandemics, everyone is merely arguing over which caused the Covid-19 pandemic in particular. And I claim that this fact is much more important than whether Covid-19 in particular was a lab leak.

‘I’m 28. And I’m scheduled to die in May.’

Rupa Subramanya (The Free Press): Zoraya ter Beek, 28, expects to be euthanized in early May. 

Her plan, she said, is to be cremated.

“I did not want to burden my partner with having to keep the grave tidy,” ter Beek texted me. “We have not picked an urn yet, but that will be my new house!” 

She added an urn emoji after “house!”

Ter Beek, who lives in a little Dutch town near the German border, once had ambitions to become a psychiatrist, but she was never able to muster the will to finish school or start a career. She said she was hobbled by her depression and autism and borderline personality disorder. Now she was tired of living—despite, she said, being in love with her boyfriend, a 40-year-old IT programmer, and living in a nice house with their two cats. 

She recalled her psychiatrist telling her that they had tried everything, that “there’s nothing more we can do for you. It’s never gonna get any better.” 

At that point, she said, she decided to die. “I was always very clear that if it doesn’t get better, I can’t do this anymore.”

…

“I’m seeing euthanasia as some sort of acceptable option brought to the table by physicians, by psychiatrists, when previously it was the ultimate last resort,” Stef Groenewoud, a healthcare ethicist at Theological University Kampen, in the Netherlands, told me. “I see the phenomenon especially in people with psychiatric diseases, and especially young people with psychiatric disorders, where the healthcare professional seems to give up on them more easily than before.”

Theo Boer, a healthcare ethics professor at Protestant Theological University in Groningen, served for a decade on a euthanasia review board in the Netherlands. “I entered the review committee in 2005, and I was there until 2014,” Boer told me. “In those years, I saw the Dutch euthanasia practice evolve from death being a last resort to death being a default option.” He ultimately resigned. 

Once again, we seem unable to be able to reach a compromise between ‘this is not allowed’ and ‘this is fully fine and often actively encouraged.’

This is especially true when anything in-between would be locally short-term worse for those directly involved, no matter what the longer-term or broader implications.

We have now run the experiment on euthanasia far enough to observe (still preliminary, but also reasonably conclusive) results on what happens when you fully accept option two. I am ready to go ahead and say that, if we have to choose one extreme or the other, I choose ‘this is not allowed.’

Ideally I would not go with the extreme. I would instead choose a relatively light ‘this is not allowed’ where in practice we mostly look the other way. But assisting you would still be taking on real legal risk if others decided you did something wrong, and that risk would increase if you were sufficiently brazen that your actions weakened the norms against suicide or you were seen as in any way applying pressure.

However, I worry that if the norms are insufficiently strong, they fail to be an equilibrium, and we end up with de facto suicide booths and medical professionals suggesting euthanasia to free up their budgets and relatives trying to get you out of the way or who want their inheritance early, a lot of ‘oh then kill yourself’ as if that is a reasonable thing to do, and life being cheap.

New world’s most expensive drug costs $4.25 million dollars. It is a one-off treatment for metachromatic leukodystrophy.

Saloni: Fascinating read about the world’s newest most expensive drug ($4M)

A one-off treatment for metachromatic leukodystrophy, a rare genetic condition where kids develop motor & neurological disease, and most die in childhood.

42% of untreated died before 6 yo versus 0% of treated.

Kelsey Piper: $4M is of course an eye-popping amount of money, but this is apparently 1/40,000 US births. Would you pay $100 to guarantee that, if your baby is one of them, they will likely be healthy and live a normal life instead of dying a slow horrible death over several years? I would!

So it’s worth it at $4M, and also the price will come down, and also lots of other people will benefit from the medical developments that come with it. What a win.

Dave Karsten: This just feels straightforward reasonable give usual costing for regulatory interventions if it’s a “saves 0.58 human lifetimes per dose” price (Yes obvi other hazards await any patient in the future and maybe you should NPV the value also, but you get my point).

The disease is progressive. The 58% of children who live to age 6 are not going to get anything like full quality of life, with declining function over time.

So yes, assuming this is a full cure then this does seem worth it for America, on the principle that a life saved is worth about $10 million. In theory we should be willing to pay at least $5 million for this drug, possibly up to $10 million, before it would cost more than it is worth.

Thus, one could say this is priced roughly correctly. Why shouldn’t a monopolist be charing roughly half of consumer surplus, especially if we want to incentivize creating more such products? Seems like about the right reward.

(Obviously, one could say EA-style things about how that money might be better spent. I am confident telling those people they are thinking on the wrong margin.)

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moments-of-totality:-how-ars-experienced-the-eclipse

Moments of totality: How Ars experienced the eclipse

Science, total eclipse / /

Total eclipse of the Ars —

The 2024 total eclipse is in the books. Here’s how it looked across the US.

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Baily's Beads are visible in this shot taken by Stephen Clark in Athens, Texas.

Enlarge / Baily’s Beads are visible in this shot taken by Stephen Clark in Athens, Texas.

Stephen Clark

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.”

The steady rhythm of the night-day, dark-light progression is a phenomenon acknowledged in ancient sacred texts as a given. When it’s interrupted, people take notice. In the days leading up to the eclipse, excitement within the Ars Orbiting HQ grew, and plans to experience the last total eclipse in the continental United States until 2045 were made. Here’s what we saw across the country.

Kevin Purdy (watched from Buffalo, New York)

  • 3: 19 pm on April 8 in Buffalo overlooking Richmond Ave. near Symphony Circle.

    Kevin Purdy

  • A view of First Presbyterian Church from Richmond Avenue in Buffalo, NY.

    Kevin Purdy

  • The cloudy, strange skies at 3: 12 pm Eastern time in Buffalo on April 8.

    Kevin Purdy

  • A kind of second sunrise at 3: 21 p.m. on April 8 in Buffalo.

    Kevin Purdy

  • A clearer view of the total eclipse from Colden, New York, 30 minutes south of Buffalo on April 8, 2024.

    Sabrina May

Buffalo, New York, is a frequently passed-over city. Super Bowl victories, the shift away from Great Lakes shipping and American-made steel, being the second-largest city in a state that contains New York City: This city doesn’t get many breaks.

So, with Buffalo in the eclipse’s prime path, I, a former resident and booster, wanted to be there. So did maybe a million people, doubling the wider area’s population. With zero hotels, negative Airbnbs, and no flights below trust-fund prices, I arrived early, stayed late, and slept on sofas and air mattresses. I wanted to see if Buffalo’s moment of global attention would go better than last time.

The day started cloudy, as is typical in early April here. With one hour to go, I chatted with Donald Blank. He was filming an eclipse time-lapse as part of a larger documentary on Buffalo: its incredible history, dire poverty, heroes, mistakes, everything. The shot he wanted had the First Presbyterian Church, with its grand spire and Tiffany windows, in the frame. A 200-year-old stone church adds a certain context to a solar event many of us humans will never see again.

The sky darkened. Automatic porch lights flicked on at 3: 15 pm, then street lights, then car lights, for those driving to somehow more important things. People on front lawns cheered, clapped, and quietly couldn’t believe it. When it was over, I heard a neighbor say they forgot their phone inside. Blank walked over and offered to email her some shots he took. It was very normal in Buffalo, even when it was strange.

Benj Edwards (Raleigh, North Carolina)

  • Benj’s low-tech, but creative way of viewing the eclipse.

    Benj Edwards

  • So many crescents.

    Benj Edwards

I’m in Raleigh, North Carolina, and we were lucky to have a clear day today. We reached peak eclipse at around 3: 15 pm (but not total eclipse, sadly), and leading up to that time, the sun slowly began to dim as I looked out my home office window. Around 3 pm, I went outside on the back deck and began crafting makeshift pinhole lenses using cardboard and a steel awl, poking holes so that myself and my kids could see the crescent shape of the eclipse projected indirectly on a dark surface.

My wife had also bought some eclipse glasses from a local toy store, and I very briefly tried them while squinting. I could see the eclipse well, but my eyes were still feeling a little blurry. I didn’t trust them enough to let the kids use them. For the 2017 eclipse, I had purchased very dark welder’s lenses that I have since lost. Even then, I think I got a little bit of eye damage at that time. A floater formed in my left eye that still plagues me to this day. I have the feeling I’ll never learn this lesson, and the next time an eclipse comes around, I’ll just continue to get progressively more blind. But oh what fun to see the sun eclipsed.

Beth Mole (Raleigh, North Carolina)

Another view from Raleigh.

Enlarge / Another view from Raleigh.

Beth Mole

It was a perfect day for eclipse watching in North Carolina—crystal clear blue sky and a high of 75. Our peak was at 3: 15 pm with 78.6 percent sun coverage. The first hints of the moon’s pass came just before 2 pm. The whole family was out in the backyard (alongside a lot of our neighbors!), ready with pin-hole viewers, a couple of the NASA-approved cereal-box viewers, and eclipse glasses. We all watched as the moon progressively slipped in and stole the spotlight. At peak coverage, it was noticeably dimmer and it got remarkably cooler and quieter. It was not nearly as dramatic as being in the path of totality, but still really neat and fun. My 5-year-old had a blast watching the sun go from circle to bitten cookie to banana and back again.

Moments of totality: How Ars experienced the eclipse Read More »