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Rising Israeli cinema star Nadav Lapid launched a blistering attack on alleged censorship in his country with Cannes entry Aheds Knee on Wednesday, telling AFP that his countrymen remain diseased and blinded by politics.

The 46-year-old director won the top prize at the Berlin film festival in 2019 for Synonyms, a loosely autobiographical story about a young man trying to shed his Israeli identity when he moves to Paris.

His latest, in competition for the Palme dOr at Cannes, is also based on a real-life event: a call Lapid received from an Israeli official, inviting him to present a film in a remote desert village, but also asking him to sign a form promising to stick to certain approved subjects.

Speaking at Cannes, Lapid told AFP his biggest concern was how such moves forced artists to censor themselves.

The sad thing in Israel is you dont have to put tanks in front of the Israeli Film Fund, you dont have to arrest a director and throw him in jail like in Russia. Its effective just to say, Enough politics, guys, lets talk about family.

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What bothers me is not the censorship of the state, but when censorship becomes part of your soul, your mind. Censorship from within. It accompanies you like a shadow, he said.

Lapid said he actually welcomed what he claimed was the worsening censorship under recent right-wing governments over issues such as the treatment of Palestinians since it meant artists were finally tasting the same repression as other parts of society.

(From L) Israeli actor Yehonatan Vilozny, Israeli actress Naama Preis, Israeli actor Yonatan Kugler, producer Judith Lou Levy, Israeli actress Nur Fibak, Israeli director Nadav Lapid, Israeli actor Avshalom Pollak and Israeli producer Yoram Honig pose as they arrive for the screening of the film HaBerech (Aheds Knee) at the 74th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on July 7, 2021. (John MACDOUGALL / AFP)

It was a country that was so oppressive to a part of its population but at the same time, filmmakers had total liberty, he said. It became a kind of joke.

Now, he said, the authorities had shown their true colors.

They say: We dominate the country, why dont we also dominate the cinema? Maybe its a good thing. I dont think filmmakers should be protected As a filmmaker theres a limit to how long you can stand on a hill and see the valleys burning. Now, the fire also gets to us Lets burn!

He was dismissive of the idea that anything might change with the end of Benjamin Netanyahus 12-year stint as prime minister last month.

I dont think theres any reason to think that the issues that really matter in Israeli society will change because of this new political constellation, Lapid told AFP. This disease is still there people are still totally blind. The Israeli soul is still living this endless state of victimization.

But Aheds Knee is also a warning that constantly fighting the system can also backfire.

I dont think Im making right or left-wing films. Theyre full of contradictions, he said. At the end of the film, you see how opposing the state is the only possible choice, but on the other hand, in the end, you have exactly the same diseases that you are fighting against.

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Israel entry at Cannes confronts censorship of the soul - The Times of Israel

The secretive, China-funded foreign policy center set up by Joe Biden at the University of Pennsylvania has become a source for personnel and advisors in his presidential administration.

Before his confirmation by the Senate as Secretary of State, National Legal and Policy Center called upon Tony Blinken to explain the anonymous Chinese funding associated with the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement that Biden established at Penn in 2018, where Blinken was Managing Director. He and other Biden aides from the Obama Administration operated as the government-in-waiting, funded by millions of dollars from China. The Senate never forced Blinken to answer questions about the Biden Centers China funding during his confirmation hearings.

But now they will have another chance. Last week Biden nominated Michael Carpenter, who is the current managing director of the Penn Biden Center, to represent the United States to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He has held high-level positions at the Pentagon, in the State Department, and on the National Security Council. The post he is nominated for also requires Senate confirmation.

According to the Capital Research Center, other Biden cronies held positions at the Penn Biden Center, which progressive publication The American Prospect has characterized as Bidens personal think tank. Counselor to the President Steve Ricchetti, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Brian P. McKeon, and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl also formerly held positions at the Penn Biden Center, CRC reported.

In a January article, the Prospect speculated whether those associated with the Penn Biden Center actually did anything:

The center became Bidens main office when he [was] in D.C., and Biden earnednearly a million dollarsfrom the professorship in 2018 and 2019. But he did not teach any classes, and he only appeared on campus for a handful of events and speeches.

The center basically functioned as a foreign-policy think tank for Bidens inner circle. It gave Penn a foothold in Washingtonbut as for day-to-day operations, the university was rather unspecific. Now that Biden is about to re-enter the White House, the centers operations will nominally continue, but its not clear what it will do and how it will adapt to its namesake being the future president

The facility has been a major selling point in providing a landing pad for Biden in the capital and for enhancing the universitys status as a player in the academic foreign-policy landscape.

But it all seemed more symbolic than substantive. Two former interns who worked at the center enjoyed a beautiful office, with a conference rooms floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Capitol. It was a highly custom design featuring custom wood floors, millwork, glass, lighting, according to the contractorRand Construction

Biden had his own office, but he was never there, said one intern

The center, it would turn out, was another holding pen for officials who would land senior positions in the Biden administrationIf anything, the Penn Biden Center offered Bidens confidants a comfortable perch, a salary, and a title while they waited out the Trump administration. Blinken earned a salary of $80,000 from his time at the center, which consisted, according to hisexecutive disclosures, of academic research and program management and overlapped with hiswork for WestExec Advisors.

NLPC filed amajor complaint with the Department of Education earlier this yeardemanding that the University of Pennsylvania and its Penn Biden Center disclose the identity of $22 million in anonymous Chinese donations since 2017, including a single donation of $14.5 million given on May 29, 2018, shortly after the opening of the Biden Center in Washington.

Since NLPCs filing, Penns spokespeople have stonewalled press inquiries into its Chinese funding.

If Joe Biden and Tony Blinken dont explain their cozy relationship with Communist China through the Biden Center, any FBI background investigation and Senate confirmation hearing must get to the bottom of this secret money connection, said NLPC Chairman Peter Flaherty last year.

The University of Pennsylvania has said the Biden Center doesnt accept contributions that donations only go to the school.

The Penn Biden Center has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity, the university said in a statement after an inquiry from several Republican members of Congress. In fact, the University has never solicited any gifts for the Center.

But NLPCs Paul Kamenar told Just the News last year that logic dictates that the unusually large contributions from China had a purpose.

This is foreign money coming into the university. Its not going to their English department, he said. Its just logical that it goes from the university to the universitys international global groups, of which the Biden center is oneRegardless of the true source of the funds in China, the larger question for [Penn] and Biden Center is how beholden the university is to the millions pouring in from China, especially the $14.5 million that came soonafter Biden Centeropened.

Now Senators will get another chance to ask about the contributions when Carpenters confirmation comes up. Will they?

The rest is here:
Senators Will Get Another Chance to Ask About China Donations to Penn Biden Center - National Legal and Policy Center

In Black Lives Matter; Marxist Hate Dressed Up as Racial Justice? by John Perazzo, published by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, the editor of the publication writes: Editors note: In this just-released report on Black Lives Matter, author John Perazzo exposes the BLM movement as a racist, anti-Semitic, anti-family and anti-capitalist attack on the very foundations of American democracy.

Perazzo accurately shares the origins of BLM. It came into existence because of the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman who had been charged with the murder and manslaughter of Black teen Trayvon Martin in 2012. BLM was founded to end the virulent anti-black racism that permeates American society. The movement gained steam with the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 and with each Black death by cop after that.

Perazzo goes on to label the three women who founded BLM. All three were Marxists: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi. Tometi never openly stated that she was a Marxist, but she endorsed Venezuelas Nicholas Maduro and the late Hugo Chavez.

Perazzo then went on to list names of communists, socialists and dictators despised among conservative readers. The list included Fidel Castro, former Black Panther, convicted cop-killer, and longtime fugitive Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Saul Alinsky, Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The list goes on.

This listing of names brought back memories of the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s where anybody who knew a communist or a socialist was guilty by association.

BLM is pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel (which does not make them anti-Semitic), anti-nuclear family, but pro-community, and Democratic. All these are dog whistles for evil in conservative circles.

BLM was blamed for violence and deaths in the race demonstrations that have taken place all over the country. BLM received blame for a dramatic increase in violent crime, especially in NYC: New York City was likewise turned into a cauldron of violence by BLM hatred Perazzo blamed BLM for the police pulling back from enforcing the law, fearful of becoming another Derek Chauvin, recently convicted of murdering George Floyd. Issues of the COVID pandemic were not considered in Perazzos arguments.

Perazzo concludes his pamphlet by stating, It is indeed a tragedy that a movement so evil and so ruinous has been able, with the help of a compliant mainstream news media, to dupe millions of Americans into embracing it as a crusade for racial justice. In reality, BLM is the very embodiment of Marxism, anti-semitism, and racism a trifecta of wickedness capable of destroying any society.

Lets look at some of Perazzos arguments from a more moderate perspective: First, an article in Time, written by Sanya Mansoor on Sept. 5, 2020, shared a survey by ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project) which found, The vast majority of Black Lives Matter protests more than 93% have been peaceful.

Of the 7,750 BLM demonstrations between May 26 and August 22 in 50 states and Washington, D.C., after the death of George Floyd, More than 2,400 locations reported peaceful protests while fewer than 220 reported violent demonstrations. The definition of violent protests varied according to the location from attacks on individuals and property, to fighting back against police, to toppling Confederate statues. ACLED suggests this disparity stems from political orientation and biased media framing such as disproportionate coverage of violent demonstrations.

In some cases, the violent response came from the government, in which authorities use force more often than not when they are present at protests and that disproportionately used force while intervening in demonstrations associated with the BLM movement, relative to other types of demonstrations.

These violent demonstrations occurred at a time when the Trump administration exacerbated tensions caused by racial inequality and police brutality. President Donald Trump and high-ranking members of his administration have frequently generalized protesters as violent anarchists.

Yes, BLM is left leaning and, yes, it favors the end of racial inequality. It is not against the law to be a Marxist, pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel or LGBTQ in this country. Those rights are protected by the First and 14th Amendments. There certainly has been no anti-semitism or talk of overthrowing our democracy in any of BLMs postings. It is ironic that it is those on the right who have demonized BLM have sought to minimize the Jan. 6 insurrection an attack on the very foundations of American democracy.

In October 2015, President Obama publicly articulated his support for BLMs agenda by saying: I think the reason that the organizers (of BLM) used the phrase Black Lives Matter was not because they were suggesting nobody elses lives matter. Rather, what they were suggesting was there is a specific problem thats happening in the African-American community thats not happening in other communities. And that is a legitimate issue that weve got to address.

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Looking at why BLM is considered evil in conservative circles - Enumclaw Courier-Herald

The company's 100-qubit gate-based quantum computer, code-named Hilbert, is launching later this year after final tuning and optimization work.

By cooling atoms down to near absolute zero and then controlling them with lasers, a company has successfully created a 100-qubit quantum processor that compares to the systems developed by leading quantum players to date.

ColdQuanta, a US-based company that specializes in the manipulation of cold atoms, unveiled the new quantum processor unit, which will form the basis of the company's 100-qubit gate-based quantum computer, code-named Hilbert, launching later this year after final tuning and optimization work.

There are various different approaches to quantum computing, and among those that have risen to prominence in the last few years featuresuperconducting systems,trapped ions,photonic quantum computersand evensilicon spin qubits.

SEE: Building the bionic brain (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

Cold atoms, on the other hand, haven't made waves in the quantum ecosystem so far. ColdQuanta's 100-qubit quantum processor, however, could seemingly compete against the industry's highest standards: for example, IBM's current quantum system, Hummingbird, supports 65 qubits.

And in the next three years, ColdQuanta is hoping to create a system surpassing 1,000 qubits. This again aligns with IBM's roadmap for quantum hardware,which should see the company releasing a 1,121-qubit quantum computer in 2023.

"We hear a lot about superconducting and trapped ions and in some respects cold atom is the new kid on the block, but we believe it has great promise in terms of scalability," Paul Lipman, president of quantum computing at ColdQuanta, tells ZDNet.

ColdQuanta's approach consists of treating atoms like qubits, and bringing them down to extremely cold temperatures, where their quantum properties can be manipulated with great precision. This is because, in such an isolated environment, atoms are protected from environmental noise and can retain their quantum properties for much longer.

Cooling down particles to exert better control over them is not new to the quantum world: Google and IBM's superconducting processors also require placing qubits in huge dilution refrigerators, where temperatures are brought down to zero kelvin (-273.15C).

But ColdQuanta's cold atoms approach goes one step further. Atoms are cooled down to the microkelvin level that is, a thousand times colder than in the superconducting method.

Rather than using large refrigerators, however, ColdQuanta traps the atoms with lasers to cool them down, before using a combination of lasers and microwave pulses to arrange them into the gates that make up a quantum circuit.

"Because we cool them down with lasers rather than dilution refrigerators, we don't have the same scaling challenges in terms of building enormous fridges that can hold large numbers of qubits," says Lipman. "We cool them down to microkelvin, but we do that in a device that can fit in your hand at room temperature."

What's more: atoms are ten-thousand times smaller than superconducting qubits, according to Lipman, meaning that many cold atom qubits can be packed closely together on a much smaller space. What would require square-meters worth of space for a superconducting quantum processor can sit on a cold atom system the size of a nail, according to the company.

"Cold atoms have this intrinsic scalability that is very attractive," argues Lipman.

Cold atoms' ability to scale rapidly is one of ColdQuanta's key selling points, but there remain some engineering challenges that, for now, still limit Hilbert's size. The company's scientists are looking at how the use of lasers changes when the qubit count increases by orders of magnitude, for instance, and testbeds are already underway in the lab to determine the best path forward.

The fundamental principles of the approach, however, are tested and proven, says Lipman, and cold atoms already perform similarly to leading-edge quantum processors. Not only on qubit count: the company's data also shows thatthe system is comparable to IBM and Google's quantum computerswhen it comes to connectivity, which refers to the number of qubits that can interact with one another, and coherence, which is the duration of time that quantum properties can be maintained.

On fidelity, however, the processor lags slightly behind the devices developed by competitors, meaning that the accuracy of ColdQuanta's system isn't as high. But part of the optimization work going on now, says Lipman, is dedicated to boosting Hilbert's performance on fidelity.

Lipman is confident that these promising results will set ColdQuanta apart in an ecosystem that is growing at pace. New milestones are announced by quantum companies large and small at a rapid pace, and the number of approaches to quantum computing is multiplying fast, each with their own benefits and challenges making it increasingly difficult to distinguish hype from reality.

"It's too early to tell which modality will win the race," admits Lipman. "If you roll the clock forward two or three years, there might even be modalities that we don't even have publicly available information on today, but may come to the forefront."

"We'll learn more once the computer is released, but our focus now is to work with potential customers to deliver tangible near-term value."

ColdQuanta has not publicly announced any customers yet, but the company is working particularly on optimization problems, which could find applications in logistics, material science and telecommunications.

The firm also has a long-standing partnership with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which awarded ColdQuanta a total $7.4 million to develop a scalable cold-atom-based quantum computer for defense applications such as resource allocation, logistics, and image recognition.

Hilbert is expected to launch later this year and will be available over ColdQuanta's private cloud. The company is also in talks with Amazon, Microsoft and Google to eventually make the quantum computer accessible over AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.

Read more from the original source:
Quantum computing: This new 100-qubit processor is built with atoms cooled down near to absolute zero - ZDNet

Ilana Wisby is the CEO of Oxford Quantum Computing, a spin-out from the University of Oxford in the UK.

A startup in the UK is now offering cloud-based access to its own superconducting quantum computer but with a twist that it hopes could one day help it compete against the processors developed by quantum giants such as IBM and Google.

Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), a startup that spun out of the University of Oxford, is approaching superconducting quantum computing slightly differently. Leading superconducting quantum systems are typically built in a two-dimensional plane, with each qubit acting like a unit cell that requires intricate wiring for controls and measurements. Increasing the number of qubits means increasing the amount of wiring and on a 2D plane, this comes with a higher risk of creating environmental noise that can damage the quality of the system.

Instead, OQC's researchers use a three-dimensional architecture that moves the control and measurement wiring out of plane. With key componentry off-chip, says OQC, the superconducting quantum processor is a more flexible and engineerable system.

SEE: Building the bionic brain (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

Dubbed the "Coaxmon," this new design approach ultimately has the potential to make it is easier to scale up the number of qubits on the processor without losing coherence, the company said.

"The Coaxmon was designed from principle to meet some of the underlying scaling challenges with superconducting technologies," Ilana Wisby, the CEO of OQC, tells ZDNet. "We've taken all of that wiring which is a really big element to reducing the power of what we can do with a processor off the chip, meaning that the Coaxmon is inherently a lot more scalable."

According to Wisby, the 3D architecture means that it is possible to increase the qubit count on the processor without resorting to complex fabrication steps for extra wiring, and without running the risk of reducing the system's coherence.

Despite the promising pitch, the quantum computer that OQC has just brought online, called Sophia, is only four qubits strong. In comparison, IBM's current quantum processor can support 65 qubits, and the company is working towards launching a 127-qubit system by the end of the year.

Even then, IBM's quantum computer won't be bringing any significant business value for users: quantum technologies are not expected to start showing any real-world usefulness until they are capable of supporting at least 1,000 qubits. In that light, OQC's new quantum computer still seems to have some way to go before it can compete against the services offered by some of the largest corporations dominating the quantum ecosystem.

But Wisby explains that this is just the start. As a University of Oxford spinout, she says, OQC has until recently mostly developed in the context of university labs, where cost efficiency was key and minds were focused on proving the fundamentals of the technology.

In the last year, however, OQC built and opened its own quantum lab, a facility fitted with all of the cryogenic equipment, cleanrooms, power and data supplies, ducted fume cupboards and other exotic quantum essentials that are necessary to building up a quantum system.

Sophia's low qubit count is, therefore, a business problem rather than a technology one, argues Wisby. "But setting up our own independent commercial lab has marked a moment of independence for the company," she says.

"It's only really now that we've changed our company goals to proving the business model, which obviously has more focus on scaling the full system."

The long-term goal, she assures, is to build a universal, fault-tolerant quantum computer an objective that aligns with that of the largest tech giants currently developing quantum technologies.

Of course, there remain many obstacles to scaling. While increasing the number of qubits in the processor is a challenge in itself, it is also key to ensure that the overall system's support infrastructure and architecture can grow in parallel. OQC, therefore, has secured partnerships with companies like Oxford Instruments to start thinking about the future iterations of Sophia.

For now, OQC is focusing on attracting customers to its brand-new cloud service, which it has just launched to provide customers with access to Sophia via a private cloud.

OQC has now invited businesses to join the company's beta list, to test how they could experiment with new quantum approaches. With only four qubits, however, the scope of potential applications will remain very limited.

Among those already signed up, fellow UK-based quantum computing company Cambridge Quantum is already planning to test Sophia with its IronBridge platform a cybersecurity service that leverages the unpredictability of quantum computers to generate un-hackable cryptographic keys.

Wisby also points to a long-standing partnership with software company Riverlane, which has already been using OQC's quantum computer to run a chemical simulation algorithm names alpha-VQE.

Riverlane and OQC have also been working together todevelop a quantum operating system, Deltaflow.OS,which would allow the same quantum software to run on different types of quantum computing hardware.

Read more here:
This quantum computer with a 3D chip is heading into the cloud - ZDNet