Technology

https://archive.ph/SY7fy

An AI-generated blog post by a Chinese diaspora AI grifter wherein he compares the layoffs of middle managers (which were not because of AI) to the programme of eradicating sparrows in the Four Pests Campaign.

https://archive.ph/U7MIm

https://archive.is/0warw

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11191434

Thomson Reuters, the media company which is also a data broker, has long provided underlying personal data for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tools, according to documents obtained by 404 Media and sources. There are also indications its data is now part of the Palantir system ICE uses to find which neighborhoods to target.

The findings draw a clearer line between Thomson Reuters’ data business—which can involve selling names, addresses, car registration information, Social Security numbers, and details on someone’s ethnicity under the brand name CLEAR—and the specific tools ICE is ingesting the data into. The news also comes after Thomson Reuters employees sent leadership a signed letter expressing their unease with the company’s ICE and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contracts, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported last month.

“If these allegations are true, they cut directly against Thomson Reuters’ claims that its products and services are limited to fighting serious crime and are not facilitating deportations,” Emma Pullman, head of shareholder engagement and responsible investment for the B.C. General Employees’ Union (BCGEU), told 404 Media. BCGEU is a minority shareholder in Thomson Reuters and has recently engaged the company concerning its work with ICE, BCGEU said.

💡Do you work at Thomson Reuters, Palantir, or DHS? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.

An internal Palantir wiki 404 Media obtained explained Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a part of ICE that used to be focused on criminal investigations but has now shifted to immigration enforcement, used a Palantir-built system called FALCON before moving onto an HSI internal tool. A former Palantir employee has since told 404 Media Thomson Reuters’ CLEAR specifically was used in that FALCON system.

In 2025 Palantir said it became a “more mature partner to ICE” when the company started work on other systems during Trump’s mass deportation effort. That included a tool called Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement, or ELITE, 404 Media revealed in January. ELITE populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address. An ICE official testified about using the tool before officials detained more than 30 people which lawyers have described as a “dragnet.”

Internal ICE material showed ELITE got these addresses from various sources, including government agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The material also said a source of the addresses was “CLEAR.”

Two Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sources believe the material refers to Thomson Reuters’ CLEAR. “I have to think it’s the same CLEAR,” one said. 404 Media granted several sources in this story anonymity as they weren’t permitted to speak to the press about these topics.

‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to RaidInternal ICE material and testimony from an official obtained by 404 Media provides the clearest link yet between the technological infrastructure Palantir is building for ICE and the agency’s activities on the ground.404 MediaJoseph Cox

Thomson Reuters data is also mentioned in documentation about Mobile Companion, an app made by Motorola for querying license plate scans. ICE recently sent a message to all ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) staff, who are focused on deportations specifically, about the tool, 404 Media previously reported. The material sent to ICE said users can further enhance their investigations by combining Motorola’s license plate reader network with Thomson Reuters’ data. “Thomson Reuters CLEAR combines comprehensive public and proprietary data with nationwide license plate data from Motorola Solutions’ secure shared data network to help take vehicle-involved investigations to a more precise level,” the material said.

404 Media made multiple attempts to get Thomson Reuters to comment for this story. Originally, Thomson Reuters said it would provide information “on background” over email, but then noted the background information would be material “you can use to inform your article but not attribute to Thomson Reuters.” 404 Media explained that, like many publications, “on background” to us means we could paraphrase the information and attribute it to the company. Thomson Reuters then said, “We do not agree with your definition of ‘on background’ and therefore are unable to address the misstatements we believe you may make in your story” and ultimately refused to comment.

In procurement documents available online, DHS says “CLEAR is vital to the mission-essential, time sensitive investigative work of several DHS Components as it makes it easier to locate people, assets, businesses, affiliations, and other critical facts.”

“Without this data, DHS would not be able to identify targets associated with criminal enterprise, terrorism, and immigration fraud as rapidly,” the documents add.

Those documents show CLEAR’s data can include a person’s name, address, date of birth, phone records, driver license, motor vehicle registrations, Social Security number, marital status, household information such as their household members, and details on their public social media.

In March the Minnesota Star Tribune reported it had spoken to half a dozen Thomson Reuters employees mostly based in Eagan, home to one of the company’s largest U.S. offices, and where many of the employees’ jobs relate to CLEAR. “People are worried about the role their job has played in what has happened,” one employee reportedly said, referring to Operation Metro Surge, the DHS operation focused on Minnesota in which officials killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti. The outlet reported around 180 workers sent Thomson Reuters leadership a letter expressing their unease and asking about the company’s supervision of its DHS and ICE contracts. The New York Times later reported more than 200 employees had signed the letter.

The Minnesota Star Tribune also quoted an internal Thomson Reuters message from Kevin Appold, the company’s vice president for projects and U.S. public records. “We prohibit customers from using CLEAR to identify or locate undocumented immigrants who have not committed crimes,” it said.

From 404 Media via this RSS feed

https://archive.ph/6Iiag

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11178911

Archive link: https://archive.ph/6Iiag

Chinese researchers have unveiled a new rare earth alloy so cold and efficient it could upend decades of reliance on helium-3 and send shock waves through the global race for quantum computers or ultra-sensitive detectors.

A mini-fridge built with the alloy has achieved temperatures extremely close to absolute zero using no moving parts. And it comes at a time when the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is actively hunting for exactly such a technology.

On January 27, DARPA issued an urgent call for proposals: develop a modular, helium-3-free cooling system for next-generation quantum and defence technologies.

Less than two weeks later, the Chinese scientists answered – with a paper published in Nature.

The alloy “has the potential for mass production. The joint team has recently successfully developed a pure metal refrigeration module based on this alloy material,” the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said on its website on February 13.

“This highly efficient cooling module could offer a stable, portable cooling source for quantum chips and support major space exploration projects with a self-reliant refrigeration system,” CAS added.

“It marks a ‘China solution’ that ends dependence on helium-3.”

In physics, the lowest possible temperature is 0 Kelvin, or minus 273.15 degrees Celsius (minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit), a state known as “absolute zero”.

As materials approach this temperature, they exhibit radically different properties: liquid helium loses friction, mercury becomes superconductive and much cutting-edge quantum research becomes possible.

Currently, achieving such extreme low temperature primarily relies on a technique called dilution refrigeration, which requires helium-3. This stable isotope of helium is an essential resource that China largely imports. Its main sources are linked to nuclear weapons programmes in the United States and Russia, as well as civilian nuclear power plants in Canada.

---

According to a research paper published in the journal Nature on February 11, the team employed an entirely different solid-state cooling technique known as adiabatic demagnetisation refrigeration (ADR).

In simple terms, the process involves a magnetic alloy being first placed in an existing low-temperature environment. Applying a magnetic field forces the countless internal microscopic magnets to align uniformly, releasing heat that is carried away.

When the alloy is then isolated from the environment and the magnetic field is removed, the internal magnets return to a disordered state, a process that absorbs heat and further lowers the material’s own temperature.

A major hurdle in this process has been the poor thermal conductivity of traditional materials. While they could get cold themselves, they struggled to effectively cool the surrounding components.

The collaborative team from the Institute of Theoretical Physics and the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science under CAS, together with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, has discovered a new material, a rare earth compound called EuCo2Al9 (ECA). It possesses thermal conductivity similar to metal, allowing it to efficiently channel the cold outward.

“ADR using ECA has achieved a minimum temperature of 106 millikelvin, setting a new record for metallic materials. Also, at such extreme temperatures, its thermal conductivity is one to two orders of magnitude higher than traditional magnetic refrigeration materials, overcoming the key bottleneck of inefficiently extracting the cooling power,” according to the academy.

The ADR method, which eliminates the need for helium-3, is gaining traction in the academic world.

In 2024, Peking University built two “refrigerators” using this principle for quantum computing research, which have been operating stably for several months.

Lightweight portability is poised to be a key advantage of the ECA refrigeration module. This year’s Chinese government work report mentions the goal of “cultivating and developing the quantum technology industry”.

Currently, superconducting quantum computers require massive dilution refrigerators to cool their chips to sub-kelvin temperatures. In the future, a more portable refrigeration module like this could be instrumental in building smaller, more compact quantum computers.

https://archive.ph/PUJTy