Wednesday, September 25th, 2019
, - MIT Technology Review
Stephan: This is a first datapoint in a trend that is going to change human civilization.
The news: According to a report in the Financial Times, a team of researchers from Google led by John Martinis have demonstrated quantum supremacy for the first time. This is the point at which a quantum computer is shown to be capable of performing a task that’s beyond the reach of even the most powerful conventional supercomputer. (emphasis added) The claim appeared in a paper that was posted on a NASA website, but the publication was then taken down. Google did not respond to a request for comment from MIT Technology Review.
Why NASA? Google struck an agreement earlier this year to use supercomputers available to NASA as benchmarks for its supremacy experiments. According to the Financial Times report, the paper said that Google’s quantum processor was able to perform a calculation in three minutes and 20 seconds that would take today’s most advanced supercomputer, known as Summit, around 10,000 years. In the paper, the researchers said that, to their knowledge, the experiment “marks the first computation that can only be performed on a quantum processor.”
Quantum speed up: Quantum machines are so […]
2 Comments
Wednesday, September 25th, 2019
Vandana Shiva, - truthout
Stephan: Industrial chemical monoculture agriculture is killing the earth and, if we are to survive it must change. This article explains the issue.
We can repair the Earth’s ruptured carbon cycle by recarbonizing it with the living carbon of biodiversity.
Credit: Pixabay
The Earth is living, and also creates life. Over 4 billion years the Earth has evolved a rich biodiversity — an abundance of different living organisms and ecosystems — that can meet all our needs and sustain life.
Through biodiversity and the living functions of the biosphere, the Earth regulates temperature and climate, and has created the conditions for our species to evolve. This is what NASA scientist James Lovelock found in working with Lynn Margulis, who was studying the processes by which living organisms produce and remove gases from the atmosphere. The Earth is a self-regulating living organism, and life on Earth creates conditions for life to be maintained and evolve.
The Gaia Hypothesis, born in the 1970s, was a scientific reawakening to the Living Earth. The Earth fossilized some living carbon, and transformed it into dead carbon, storing it underground. That is where we should have left it.
All the coal, petroleum and natural gas […]
1 Comment
Wednesday, September 25th, 2019
Stephan: I consider this report, which is only getting any attention in the financial press, as very good news. It tells us that the banking industry understands the implications of climate change, and is acting on their conclusions. This is confirmation that a major economic change is underway.
Credit: Richard Drew / AP
Banks with more than $47 trillion in assets, or a third of the global industry, adopted new UN-backed “responsible banking” principles to fight climate change on Sunday that would shift their loan books away from fossil fuels.
Deutsche Bank, Citigroup and Barclays were among 130 banks to join the new framework on the eve of a United Nations summit in New York aimed at pushing companies and governments to act quickly to avert catastrophic global warming.
“These principles mean banks have to consider the impact of their loans on society – not just on their portfolio,” Simone Dettling, banking team lead for the Geneva-based United Nations Environment Finance Initiative, said.
Under pressure from investors, regulators and climate activists, some big banks have acknowledged the role lenders will need to play in a rapid transition to a low-carbon economy.
Financing for oil, gas and coal projects has come under particular scrutiny as climate scientists step up calls to change the global economy’s deep reliance on fossil-fuels to avert disastrous warming.
The principles, drawn […]
1 Comment
Wednesday, September 25th, 2019
Sam Biddle, Reporter - The Intercept
Stephan: The NRA upped its propaganda output after mass killings. Are you surprised? I'm not. This is an organization that thrives on death.
Illustration: Nicolas Ortega for The Intercept
THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION nearly doubled its spending on pro-gun Facebook propaganda for three weeks after the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, according to analytics provided to The Intercept.
The social advertising surge began just one day after the El Paso massacre, which left 22 people dead, and on the same day as the Dayton killings, which took 10 lives. At one point in this period, the NRA was spending $29,000 on a day’s worth of Facebook ads, nearly four times as much as before the shootings, according to Pathmatics, a company that monitors online advertising spending.
The ad spending was conducted through the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, which, in the four weeks before the shootings, spent on average just over $9,400 a day on Facebook ads. Then came the El Paso shooting on August 3 and Dayton on August 4. Between August 4 and August 25, the institute spent around $360,000 on Facebook — roughly $16,500 […]
1 Comment
Tuesday, September 24th, 2019
Greta Thunberg, - The Rossland Telegraph
Stephan: The media loves unlikely teenage girls who speak the truth well. And this is the truth.
Greta Thunberg
Credit: Anders Hellberg/ Wikimedia
Greta Thunberg’s speech to the UN was transcribed. Here is the full text. For the full effect, though, listen to her speech at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYqtXR8iPlE
In response to the question, “What’s your message to world leaders today?” Thunberg responded as follows:
Greta Thunberg: “My message is that we’ll be watching you.
“This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school, on the other side of the ocean. Yet, you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, yet I’m one of the lucky ones.
“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is the money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?
“For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you […]
6 Comments
