Daily Tech News 26 July 2023

• Conservatives died more than liberals after the COVID vaccine rollout. (Ars Technica)

  The study is just the latest to find a connection between political party affiliation and deaths during the pandemic. But, it takes the connection a step further, going beyond county-level political leanings and looking at how party affiliation linked to deaths at the individual level. The authors—all researchers at Yale University—focused on Ohio and Florida because those were the only two states with readily available public data on voter registration.
  
  The study involved death data on 538,159 people in Ohio and Florida, age 25 and older, and their linked voter registration files. The researchers did not have complete data—the linked data didn't contain a cause of death or vaccination status. But, they could evaluate excess weekly deaths by age, state, county, and party affiliation. They found that the gap in excess deaths was larger in counties with lower vaccination rates, suggesting that lack of vaccination among Republican voters may partly explain the higher death rates.

  So they didn't have the cause of death or vaccination status, and if you read the study to the end (which they desperately hope you won't) they only had voter registration information for 57% of the people in the study.
  
  And they didn't control for any confounding factors at all, because the consumers of fascist fear porn don't give a shit.
  
  
  
• Indeed, all the studies so far trying to prove such a correlation have been complete garbage. (Marginally Compelling)
  
  A good blog about the mathematics of the pandemic (and other things) and how everyone has a vested interest in lying to you.

• The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor? (Arxiv) (PDF)
  
  Maybe. Good discussion on Hacker News.
  
  The researchers appear to have a good track record publishing less exciting papers in this field, and the superconductor as described would certainly be a breakthrough but not actually useful for industrial applications - it fails under high current loads, which is one of the main things you want superconductors for.
  
  But there's a history of superconducting materials being refined to support higher current loads, so if real, given time, this might change the world.
  
  
  
• The EU is planning to pile $47 billion in one place and set it on fire. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is the European Chips Act. Where Japan is making a very specific hedge against China fucking things up, building a leading-edge chip factory specifically for Japanese customers, Europe is engaging in its usual omnixenophobia and paranostalgia:

  "With the Chips Act, Europe will be a frontrunner in the world semiconductors race," said Héctor Gómez Hernández, Spanish Minister for Industry, Trade and Tourism. "We can already see it in action: new production plants, new investments, new research projects. And in the long run, this will also contribute to the renaissance of our industry and the reduction of our foreign dependencies."

  Wanna bet, Hector?
  
  
  
• Newegg's ChatGPT plugin helps you plan a PC build. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Very, very badly.
  
  
  
• OpenAI has shut down its AI detection tool. (Decrypt)
  
  Because just like its AI, it doesn't work.
  
  
  
• The Gulf Stream could collapse by 2005 according to a new study. (The Guardian)
  
  Wait, 2015. I mean, 2025!
  
  
  
• File under nobody cares: Actors out of work due to Hollywood disappearing into a Hellmouth of its own creation will not be permitted to launch podcasts discussing the prior output of the LA sewer system. (The Verge)
  
  Okay. Sure.
  
  
  
• Just like Twitter in the bad old days Threads will regularly switch back from a chronological feed to its shitty algorithm no matter what you do. (The Verge)
  
  You are not the customer. You are not the product. You are sand in the gears.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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