If you follow quantum computing news for long enough, it can start to seem like any quantum system that can alternate between two well-separated energy states can be used as a qubit. Atoms, ions, photons, electrons, and manufactured devices all have their backers. One of the key things that attracts backers is the tech's ability to scale. We'll need a lot of high-quality qubits to start doing any complex computations, and the ability of any technology to get us there is the subject of debate.

So even as some technologies can now support thousands of qubits, some competitors are still working on a small handful of qubits—the companies behind them are convinced that they have the potential to scale more effectively.

One of those technologies involves quantum dots that hold a single electron. Their advantage is that we can manufacture them using the same tech we use to build traditional processors, an approach that has proven to be scalable. This week saw two new papers describing different ways of using quantum dots, one of which was appealing enough that IBM bought the company that developed it. Separately, another company has released a processor showing 100 individual electrons being held in diamond defects, technology that wasn't obvious could scale.

Read full article

Comments

When we last checked in on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft in February, NASA was announcing that it had formally classified the 2024 crewed flight of the Starliner spacecraft as a “Type A” mishap, an acknowledgement that the test flight was a serious failure.

At the time, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the space agency was working with Boeing to "fully understand the risks associated" with the Starliner spacecraft, and to remediate them. Starliner would not fly its next mission, a cargo flight to the International Space Station, until those problems were identified and remediated. He declined to put a date on the test flight.

However, it now appears this work is proceeding apace.

Read full article

Comments

On an afternoon in mid-May, dozens of Microsoft engineers and their managers gathered online and in a conference room at the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters to discuss Project Glasswing.

The tech giant was racing to fix weaknesses in its code that a new AI model known as Mythos was uncovering at an unprecedented clip. The AI behemoth Anthropic, which developed Mythos, had given access to select organizations that make software used by regular people, companies, and governments across the world. The goal was to find and fix the vulnerabilities before hackers and adversarial governments like China began using similar tools to find and exploit them for espionage and sabotage.

As the group settled in, one engineer asked the question that loomed over the meeting: Did Mythos “live up to the hype that Anthropic claimed it would have had?”

Read full article

Comments

As the Steam Deck slowly marches toward its fifth birthday next February, owners are likely eager for a way to extend its life rather than investing in expensive high-end competition . A new patch for AMD's Linux drivers could substantially reduce low-end frame hitches when the Steam Deck or other AMD-based gaming hardware is running in Energy Performance Preference (EPP) mode.

Writing on the Linux kernel mailing list (thanks, Phoronix ), kernel coder David Vernet lays out the basic problem that games often face in EPP mode. When a busy thread frequently goes to sleep for short periods, the current AMD driver can misinterpret that behavior as a signal to lower its average performance target. When those threads wake up, they start at a lower-than-desired frequency, leading to increased frame latency, stale frames, and longer frame generation times at the low end of the distribution.

Shifting the processor to "performance" mode fixes this problem but eliminates the energy savings that EPP mode is supposed to provide. And simply boosting the affected thread's minimum performance target permanently actually makes low-end performance worse, thanks to the complexities of CPU/GPU boost management.

Read full article

Comments

You'd think all the trailers for upcoming major films would have been released during San Diego Comic-Con last weekend. But Sony Pictures decided to wait until today to drop the trailer for Jumanji: Open World , director Jake Kasdan's sequel to his 2019 hit, Jumanji: The Next Level.

(Some spoilers for prior films in the franchise below but no major reveals.)

The original Jumanji film, released in 1995 and starring the late Robin Williams, was based on a 1981 children's book by Chris Van Allsburg. Critics were kinda meh on the movie, but audiences loved it, and it has since become something of a classic. The 2005 film Zathura was a standalone spinoff based on another van Allsburg book. While it didn't do nearly as well at the box office, it has held up well over the last 20 years and has its own small cadre of fans. There was also a forgettable animated TV series.

Read full article

Comments

Every ancient language that has ever been deciphered needed an anchor. Usually that’s a bilingual text, like the Rosetta Stone, or a known relative to compare it to. Linear A, the writing system of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization on the Greek island of Crete, has neither.

Linear A is described as a “language isolate” because it has no confirmed link to any known language, living or dead. As such, it has posed a significant challenge for linguists over the past century.

Etruscan , a language of Italy that was used before the rise of the Roman Empire, has fared only slightly better. A partial vocabulary has been collected from short funerary inscriptions, but its grammar and deeper meaning still elude linguists.

Read full article

Comments

The scale of AI-generated media can be hard to grasp.

Starling Lab, a research collaboration from Stanford University and the University of Southern California, estimates that it took until 1975—149 years after the invention of the camera—for humanity to create 1.5 billion images. It took generative AI just 18 months to do the same. And AI didn't stop there.

This spring, Google announced at I/O that its tools had been used to create more than 100 billion AI images and videos in just a couple of years, and Google is far from the only source of AI content. The company coupled this staggering statistic with a slew of partnerships to expand the use of its SynthID watermarking technology, which can be used to label AI-generated content and potentially help people identify what's real.

Read full article

Comments

Imagine you’re an X user who's actually excited to make the app your primary payments app after X Money finally launched Monday for US Premium and Premium+ subscribers after years of delays.

You transfer funds and set things up so that your paychecks automatically deposit to X, where you expect to receive cashback rewards and a high annual yield of 6 percent on your funds—a rate that’s genuinely competitive with some banks.

But once you’ve put your money in the app, you realize that X Money has a lot of limitations. Most glaringly, you can currently only send peer-to-peer payments to other X users who have access to X Money and are 18 and older.

Read full article

Comments

Audi provided flights from Washington, DC, to Munich, Germany, and accommodation so Ars could see the Q9 and Q7. And we also drove the new RS5. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

MUNICH—It has taken Audi a little longer than its rivals, but with the debut of the 2027 Q9 this evening, the company has joined them in offering a range-topping full-size SUV. No, not the Q7, although a third-generation version of that vehicle broke cover in June . The car was designed first and foremost for Europe, with a third row of seats that's fine for small children or occasional use. But in America, there's a segment one size larger, pioneered by the Cadillac Escalade, and it's here we find the new Audi. With no concrete plans to replace the A8 sedan yet, the Q9 SUV becomes the brand's new flagship.

At 209 inches (5,309 mm) long, 79.2 inches (2,012 mm) wide, and 71.4 inches (1,814 mm) tall, it's definitely not diminutive, although parked next to the aforementioned Caddy, you'll find the American SUV exceeds this one by a few inches here and there. The 123.5-inch wheelbase (3,137 mm) is 5.6 inches (142 mm) longer than the Q7's, much of which translates to more room for the third row.

The Q9 looked big in the studio, but it was less imposing than a Mercedes-Benz GLS or BMW X7. The body panels feature more curves and more subtle creases than the Audis of a few years ago. And there are definite station wagon vibes, but that’s mostly because its big wheels make it look smaller and closer rather than bigger and farther away (aka, the Father Dougal principle.)

Read full article

Comments