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Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Arrives With a 'Full Di... 19-11-24 23:02	Slashdot
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Arrives With a 'Full Digital Twin' of Earth An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is out today (Xbox/PC, Steam), and it packs in a whole lot of simulation. It's hard to imagine topping the 2020 version, which contained the entire world, at scale, 3D modeled and able to be flown over. It had real-time weather and rather detailed physics. You could theoretically fly a helicopter back to your high school football field and land on it, like 15-year reunion royalty. What could come next? A lot... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Minecraft Enters Real World With $110 Million Global Th... 19-11-24 22:21	Slashdot
Minecraft Enters Real World With $110 Million Global Theme Park Deal An anonymous reader shares a report: The global gaming phenomenon Minecraft is coming to the real world for the first time in a global deal to open themed rides, attractions, hotel rooms and retail outlets, starting with the UK and US. Minecraft has struck a deal with UK-headquartered Merlin Entertainments -- Europe's largest theme park operator and the second biggest globally after Disney -- which runs more than 135 attractions in 23 countries including Alton Towers, Legoland, Sea Life, Madame ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Microsoft Rolls Out Recovery Tools After CrowdStrike In... 19-11-24 21:42	Slashdot
Microsoft Rolls Out Recovery Tools After CrowdStrike Incident Microsoft has announced sweeping changes to Windows security architecture, including new recovery capabilities designed to prevent system-wide outages following July's CrowdStrike incident that disabled 8.5 million Windows devices. The Windows Resiliency Initiative introduces Quick Machine Recovery, allowing IT administrators to remotely fix unbootable systems through an enhanced Windows Recovery Environment. Microsoft is also mandating stricter testing and deployment practices for security ve... Read the full article on Slashdot »
The US Patent and Trademark Office Banned Staff From Us... 19-11-24 21:01	Slashdot
The US Patent and Trademark Office Banned Staff From Using Generative AI An anonymous reader shares a report: The US Patent and Trademark Office banned the use of generative artificial intelligence for any purpose last year, citing security concerns with the technology as well as the propensity of some tools to exhibit "bias, unpredictability, and malicious behavior," according to an April 2023 internal guidance memo obtained by WIRED through a public records request. Jamie Holcombe, the chief information officer of the USPTO, wrote that the office is "committed to p... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Indian News Agency Sues OpenAI Alleging Copyright Infri... 19-11-24 20:21	Slashdot
Indian News Agency Sues OpenAI Alleging Copyright Infringement One of India's largest news agencies, Asian News International, has sued OpenAI in a case that could set a precedent for how AI companies use copyrighted news content in the world's most populous nation. From a report: Asian News International filed a 287-page lawsuit in the Delhi High Court on Monday, alleging the AI company illegally used its content to train its AI models and generated false information attributed to the news agency. The case marks the first time an Indian media organization ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Pokemon Go Players Have Unwittingly Trained AI To Navig... 19-11-24 19:43	Slashdot
Pokemon Go Players Have Unwittingly Trained AI To Navigate the World Augmented reality gaming company Niantic plans to develop an AI system for navigating physical spaces using data from millions of unsuspecting players of its games "Pokemon Go" and "Ingress," the company announced in a blog post. The "Large Geospatial Model" (LGM), named after language models like GPT, will process geolocated images to predict and understand physical environments. Read the full article on Slashdot »
Embattled Superconductivity Scientist Is Out 19-11-24 19:00	Slashdot
Embattled Superconductivity Scientist Is Out Ranga Dias, a physics professor who made headlines with claims that he had discovered a room-temperature superconductor and then was found to have engaged in research misconduct, is no longer employed by the University of Rochester. WSJ: A spokeswoman for the university confirmed on Monday that Dias is out but declined to comment on the terms of his departure. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Rochester President Sarah Mangelsdorf had called for terminating his position in an Augu... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Court Documents: Spyware Group NSO's Pegasus Targeted U... 19-11-24 18:21	Slashdot
Court Documents: Spyware Group NSO's Pegasus Targeted Up To 'Tens of Thousands' WhatsApp's newly unsealed court documents have exposed the extensive reach of NSO Group's Pegasus spyware operation, which targeted "between hundreds and tens of thousands" of devices, according to testimony from the company's head of research and development. The Israeli surveillance firm charged government customers up to $6.8 million for one-year licenses, generating at least $31 million in revenue in 2019 alone, TechCrunch first reported. The documents detail previously unknown hacking too... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Bhutan, After Prioritizing Happiness, Now Faces an Exis... 19-11-24 17:42	Slashdot
Bhutan, After Prioritizing Happiness, Now Faces an Existential Crisis Bhutan, the tiny kingdom that introduced Gross National Happiness to the world, has a problem: young people are leaving the country in record numbers. CNN: The country boasts free health care, free education, a rising life expectancy and an economy that's grown over the last 30 years -- still, people are leaving. Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay believes it is ironically the success of Gross National Happiness that has made young Bhutanese so sought after abroad. "It is an existential crisis," he ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Spirit Airlines Files For Bankruptcy 19-11-24 17:02	Slashdot
Spirit Airlines Files For Bankruptcy Spirit Airlines has filed for bankruptcy protection and will attempt to reboot as it struggles to recover from the pandemic-caused swoon in travel, stiffer competition from bigger carriers, and a failed attempt to sell the airline to JetBlue. From a report: Spirit, the biggest U.S. budget airline, filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition after working out terms with bondholders. The airline has lost more than $2.5 billion since the start of 2020 and faces looming debt payments totaling more than... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Windows 365 Link is a $349 Mini PC That Streams Windows... 19-11-24 16:22	Slashdot
Windows 365 Link is a $349 Mini PC That Streams Windows From the Cloud Microsoft is planning to launch a new purpose-built miniature PC for its Windows 365 cloud service next year. The Verge: Windows 365 Link is a $349 device that acts like a thin client PC to connect to the cloud and stream a version of Windows 11. The Link device is designed to be a compact, fanless, and easy-to-use cloud PC for your local monitors and peripherals. It's meant to be the ideal companion to Microsoft's Windows 365 service, which lets businesses transition employees over to virtual m... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Coca-Cola Faces Creative Backlash Over AI Christmas Cam... 19-11-24 15:41	Slashdot
Coca-Cola Faces Creative Backlash Over AI Christmas Campaign Coca-Cola's latest AI-generated Christmas advertisement has sparked criticism from creative professionals who say the promotional video lacks authenticity and artistic merit. The video, which depicts Coca-Cola trucks in snowy landscapes and people drinking the beverage, reimagines the company's 1995 "Holidays Are Coming" campaign using AI. Three AI studios - Secret Level, Silverside AI and Wild Card - produced different versions using four generative AI models, according to Forbes. Critics, ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
After 30 Years, We Finally Know Why Windows 95's Instal... 19-11-24 15:05	Slashdot
After 30 Years, We Finally Know Why Windows 95's Installer Juggled Three Operating Systems In a technical blog post, Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen has explained why Windows 95's installation process required users to pass through three different operating systems -- MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95. The design choice stemmed from the need to support upgrades from multiple starting points while maintaining a graphical user interface throughout the process. Rather than creating separate installers for MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95 users, developers opted for a unified approa... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Perplexity's AI Search Engine Can Now Buy Products For You 19-11-24 14:00	Slashdot
Perplexity's AI Search Engine Can Now Buy Products For You An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Perplexity is rolling out a new feature that will let Pro subscribers purchase a product without leaving its AI search engine. When searching for a product using Perplexity, Pro members based in the US can now choose a "Buy with Pro" button that will automatically order the product using saved shipping and billing information. Perplexity says all products purchased through Buy with Pro come with free shipping. For products that don't support Bu... Read the full article on Slashdot »
India Plans To Build a Moon-Orbiting Space Station By 2040 19-11-24 11:00	Slashdot
India Plans To Build a Moon-Orbiting Space Station By 2040 India plans to build a moon-orbiting space station by 2040 that will support crewed missions to the moon and serve as a hub for scientific research. Space Magazine reports: If all goes according to plan, the lunar space station will be completed around the same time the nation's astronauts land on the moon, with construction of a permanent base on the surface before 2050. The lunar space station appears to be the third and final phase of India's moon exploration efforts. [...] The lunar space ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
China Activates World's Most Advanced Hypergravity Faci... 19-11-24 08:00	Slashdot
China Activates World's Most Advanced Hypergravity Facility China has activated the world's most advanced hypergravity machine to advance studies in geological processes, material behavior, and deep-sea energy exploration. Located in Hangzhou, The Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) will be able to produce forces thousands of times stronger than Earth's gravity. Interesting Engineering reports: The facility will house three primary hypergravity centrifuges and 18 onboard units. These centrifuges, machines designed t... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Twenty Is Building an Open Source Alternative To Salesf... 19-11-24 04:30	Slashdot
Twenty Is Building an Open Source Alternative To Salesforce An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: For the past couple of years, the startup has been iterating on a brand-new CRM platform and making everything available on GitHub under a permissive AGPLv3 license. While Twenty doesn't have all the features that you can find in Salesforce [comparison], the company is slowly building a community of CRM and open source enthusiasts around it, with more than 300 contributors in the last year and 20,000 stars on GitHub. [...] Twenty is trying to ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
London Bus Crashes Are the Result of an Unsafe Model 19-11-24 03:00	Slashdot
London Bus Crashes Are the Result of an Unsafe Model An anonymous reader shares a report: Earlier this year I had one of those encounters which, afterwards, I just couldn't stop thinking about. Eight months and some digging later, I have decided to write about it. My meeting was with an American businessman called Tom Kearney, who was on a pavement in central London one Christmas when he was whacked on the head so hard that he fell to the ground, spent weeks in a coma, and only just survived. Had he been mugged? Not quite. He'd been hit by the gia... Read the full article on Slashdot »
'El Capitan' Ranked Most Powerful Supercomputer In the ... 19-11-24 02:25	Slashdot
'El Capitan' Ranked Most Powerful Supercomputer In the World Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's "El Capitan" supercomputer is now ranked as the world's most powerful, exceeding a High-Performance Linpack (HPL) score of 1.742 exaflops on the latest Top500 list. Engadget reports: El Capitan is only the third "exascale" computer, meaning it can perform more than a quintillion calculations in a second. The other two, called Frontier and Aurora, claim the second and third place slots on the TOP500 now. Unsurprisingly, all of these massive machines live w... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Roblox No Longer Allows Users Under 13 To Message Other... 19-11-24 01:45	Slashdot
Roblox No Longer Allows Users Under 13 To Message Others Outside of Games Roblox has introduced stricter safety measures for users under 13, including restricting direct messaging outside of games and experiences, regardless of parental permission. These updates aim to address criticism over child safety and regain trust, following a Bloomberg investigation highlighting predator risks on the platform. TechCrunch reports: During a press briefing, the company explained that users under the age of 13 will still be able to access in-game chats because Roblox believes that... Read the full article on Slashdot »
DOJ Wants Google To Sell Chrome To Break Search Monopoly 19-11-24 01:02	Slashdot
DOJ Wants Google To Sell Chrome To Break Search Monopoly According to Bloomberg, the U.S. Justice Department wants Google to sell off its Chrome browser as part of its ongoing search monopoly case. The recommendations will be made official on Wednesday. 9to5Google reports: At the top of the list is having Google sell Chrome "because it represents a key access point through which many people use its search engine." There are many questions about how that works, including what the impact on the underlying Chromium codebase would be. Would Google still b... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Framework Laptops Get Modular Makeover With RISC-V Main... 19-11-24 00:20	Slashdot
Framework Laptops Get Modular Makeover With RISC-V Main Board An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Framework CEO Nirav Patel had one of the bravest tech demos that we've seen at a conference yet -- modifying a Framework Laptop from x86 to RISC-V live on stage. In the five-minute duration of one of the Ubuntu Summit's Lightning Talks, he opened up a Framework machine, removed its motherboard, installed a RISC-V-powered replacement, reconnected it, and closed the machine up again. All while presenting the talk live, and pretty much without ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
HarperCollins Confirms It Has a Deal to Sell Authors' W... 18-11-24 23:40	Slashdot
HarperCollins Confirms It Has a Deal to Sell Authors' Work to AI Company HarperCollins has partnered with an AI technology company to allow limited use of select nonfiction backlist titles for training AI models, offering authors the choice to opt in for a $2,500 non-negotiable fee. 404 Media reports: On Friday, author Daniel Kibblesmith, who wrote the children's book Santa's Husband and published it with HarperCollins, posted screenshots on Bluesky of an email he received, seemingly from his agent, informing him that the agency was approached by the publisher about ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Google Is Turning Chrome OS Into Android To Compete Wit... 18-11-24 23:02	Slashdot
Google Is Turning Chrome OS Into Android To Compete With the iPad Google is reportedly working on a multi-year project to migrate Chrome OS into Android, aiming to unify its operating systems and better compete with the iPad. This transition involves incorporating Chrome OS features like extensions and Linux app support into Android, with upcoming updates focused on improving desktop functionality and device compatibility. Android Authority reports: To better compete with the iPad as well as manage engineering resources more effectively, Google wants to unify ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Explicit Deepfake Scandal Shuts Down Pennsylvania School 18-11-24 22:25	Slashdot
Explicit Deepfake Scandal Shuts Down Pennsylvania School An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An AI-generated nude photo scandal has shut down a Pennsylvania private school. On Monday, classes were canceled after parents forced leaders to either resign or face a lawsuit potentially seeking criminal penalties and accusing the school of skipping mandatory reporting of the harmful images. The outcry erupted after a single student created sexually explicit AI images of nearly 50 female classmates at Lancaster Country Day School, Lancaste... Read the full article on Slashdot »
India Orders Meta To Curb WhatsApp Data Sharing 18-11-24 20:56	Slashdot
India Orders Meta To Curb WhatsApp Data Sharing India's competition watchdog has ordered WhatsApp to stop sharing user data with other Meta units for advertising purposes for five years and also levied a fine of $25.4 million for antitrust violations related to WhatsApp's controversial 2021 privacy policy. From a report: The Competition Commission of India, which began the investigation in 2021, found that WhatsApp's "take-it-or-leave-it" privacy update constituted an abuse of Meta's dominant position by forcing users to accept expanded data ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Weekends Were a Mistake, Says Infosys Co-founder Naraya... 18-11-24 19:15	Slashdot
Weekends Were a Mistake, Says Infosys Co-founder Narayana Murthy Infosys founder Narayana Murthy has tripled down on his previous statements that 70-hour work weeks are what's needed in India and revealed he also thinks weekends were a mistake. From a report: Speaking on Indian TV channel CNBC-TV18 at the Global Leadership Summit in Mumbai last week Murthy once again declared he did not "believe in work-life balance." "I have not changed my view; I will take this with me to my grave," he asserted . The argument from Murthy, and like-minded colleagues he quo... Read the full article on Slashdot »
China Population Set for 51 Million Drop as Pro-Birth M... 18-11-24 18:30	Slashdot
China Population Set for 51 Million Drop as Pro-Birth Moves Fail An anonymous reader shares a report: China's population is expected to shrink by 51 million -- more than the size of California -- over the next decade as policymakers struggle to reverse the country's falling birth rate, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. By 2035, the population is expected to drop to 1.36 billion, levels not seen since 2012, down from a peak of 1.41 billion in 2021, BI senior industry analyst Ada Li estimates. There could be a temporary spike in births in 2024 as the Year ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Belgian Region Trials Web Founder's Data Privacy System 18-11-24 17:54	Slashdot
Belgian Region Trials Web Founder's Data Privacy System The Belgian region of Flanders is rolling out personal data "pods" to 7 million citizens in a trial of World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee's vision for user-controlled data privacy. Five Belgian hospitals have begun storing patient visit information in the data pods, developed by Berners-Lee's startup Inrupt over the past five years. The system aims to help compliance with European privacy regulations by giving citizens control over their personal information, from medical records to socia... Read the full article on Slashdot »
World of Warcraft Turns 20 18-11-24 17:24	Slashdot
World of Warcraft Turns 20 An anonymous reader shares a report: Blizzard Entertainment first released World of Warcraft in November 2004, so The New York Times celebrated the anniversary by outlining the many ways we can still see the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game's influence's 20 years later. For one thing, while multiplayer games and early social networks such as MySpace already existed, WoW provided a real preview of a future where everyone would connect to friends and strangers online. For another, t... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Apple Appears Set To Discontinue Lightning-to-Headphone... 18-11-24 16:25	Slashdot
Apple Appears Set To Discontinue Lightning-to-Headphone Adapter Apple has stopped selling its Lightning-to-3.5mm headphone jack adapter in the U.S. and most countries, with limited stock remaining only in select European markets. The $9 accessory, introduced with iPhone 7 in 2016 (after the "courageous" move to stop including the headphone jack in iPhones), allowed users to connect traditional headphones to Lightning port iPhones. The discontinuation comes as Apple transitions to USB-C ports across its iPhone lineup. Read the full article on Slashdot »
Trump Picks Carr To Head FCC With Pledge To Fight 'Cens... 18-11-24 15:45	Slashdot
Trump Picks Carr To Head FCC With Pledge To Fight 'Censorship Cartel' Donald Trump has named FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr to chair the U.S. communications regulator when he takes office in January 2025, citing Carr's stance against what Trump called "regulatory lawfare." Carr, a lawyer and longtime Republican who has served at the FCC under both Trump and Biden administrations, has emerged as a vocal critic of major social media companies' content moderation practices. "Humbled and honored" by the appointment, Carr pledged on X to "dismantle the censorship cart... Read the full article on Slashdot »
AI Investments Are Booming, but Venture-Firm Profits Ar... 18-11-24 15:00	Slashdot
AI Investments Are Booming, but Venture-Firm Profits Are at a Historic Low Silicon Valley's venture-capital firms are having an easy time finding promising startups to back. The hard part is cashing out. From a report: Last year, U.S. venture firms returned $26 billion worth of shares back to their investors, the lowest amount since 2011, according to the data provider PitchBook. Startup investors say 2024 has continued the trend, with high levels of investment and few acquisition deals or initial public offerings. "We've raised a lot of money, and we've given very lit... Read the full article on Slashdot »
The Rust Foundation Wants to Improve Rust and C++ Inter... 18-11-24 13:34	Slashdot
The Rust Foundation Wants to Improve Rust and C++ Interoperability The goal? "Make C++ and Rust interoperability easily accessible and approachable to the widest possible audience." And the Rust Foundation's "Interop Initiative" is specifically focused on the goal of interoperability "within the same executable," through either inline embedding that allows "integrated compilation", or foreign function interfaces. To that end, a statement addressing "the challenges and opportunities in C++ and Rust interoperability" was announced this week by the Rust Foundat... Read the full article on Slashdot »
ChatGPT-4 Beat Doctors at Diagnosing Illness, Study Finds 18-11-24 10:04	Slashdot
ChatGPT-4 Beat Doctors at Diagnosing Illness, Study Finds Dr. Adam Rodman, a Boston-based internal medicine expert, helped design a study testing 50 licensed physicians to see whether ChatGPT improved their diagnoses, reports the New York TImes. The results? "Doctors who were given ChatGPT-4 along with conventional resources did only slightly better than doctors who did not have access to the bot. "And, to the researchers' surprise, ChatGPT alone outperformed the doctors." [ChatGPT-4] scored an average of 90 percent when diagnosing a medical conditi... Read the full article on Slashdot »
On 15th Anniversary, Go Programming Languages Rises in ... 18-11-24 07:19	Slashdot
On 15th Anniversary, Go Programming Languages Rises in Popularity The Tiobe index tries to track the popularity of programming languages by counting the number of search results for the language's name followed by the word "programming" (on 25 different search engines). And this month there were some surprises... By TIOBE's reckoning, compared to a year ago PHP has now fallen from #7 to #12, while Delphi/Object Pascal shot up five spots from #16 to #11. In that same year, Fortran jumped from #12 to #8 — while both Visual Basic and SQL dropped down a si... Read the full article on Slashdot »
New Dune Prequel 'Dune: Prophecy' Premieres on HBO and Max 18-11-24 03:47	Slashdot
New Dune Prequel 'Dune: Prophecy' Premieres on HBO and Max A new six-episode Dune series premiers tonight on HBO and Max — a prequel to the Denis Villeneuve-directed Dune movies set 10,000 years before the birth f Paul Atreides. The Hollywood Reporter writes that it "draws on source material from the 2012 novel Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, and Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, the origin of the Dune universe." Cord-cutters can stream Dune: Prophecy online without cable on Max, with subscriptions starting at $9.99 per m... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Linux Kernel 6.12 Has Been Released 18-11-24 02:45	Slashdot
Linux Kernel 6.12 Has Been Released Slashdot unixbhaskar writes: Linus has released a fresh Linux kernel for public consumption. Please give it a try and report any glitches to the maintainers for improvement. Also, please do not forget to express your appreciation to those tireless folks who did all the hard work for you. The blog OMG Ubuntu calls it "one of the most biggest kernel releases for a while," joking that it's a "really real-time kernel." The headline feature in Linux 6.12 is mainline support for PREEMPT_RT. This pa... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Google, Microsoft Are Spending Massively on AI, Quarter... 18-11-24 01:26	Slashdot
Google, Microsoft Are Spending Massively on AI, Quarterly Earnings Show This week Alphabet CEO Sundar Picahi assured investors that their long-term AI focus and investment (and a "commitment to innovation") "are paying off," reports the Associated Press. Alphabet's stock has already soared 20% this year, and it's "still thriving" as the company "navigates through a pivotal shift to AI and battles regulators..." Alphabet earned $26.3 billion, or $2.12 per share during the most recent quarter, a 34% increase from a year ago. Revenue rose 15% from the same time last y... Read the full article on Slashdot »
What Happened When a Washington County Tried a 32-Hour ... 17-11-24 23:52	Slashdot
What Happened When a Washington County Tried a 32-Hour Workweek? On a small network of islands north of Seattle, Washington, San Juan County just completed its first full year of 32-hour workweeks, reports CNN. And Tuesday the county released a report touting "a host of positive outcomes — from recruiting to retention to employee happiness — and a cost savings of more than $975,000 compared to what the county would have paid if it met the union's pay increase demands." The county said the 32-hour workweek has attracted a host of new talent: App... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Privately-Funded EU Company Raises $160M for SpaceX Dra... 17-11-24 22:02	Slashdot
Privately-Funded EU Company Raises $160M for SpaceX Dragon-Like Reusable Space Capsule Nyx is a new reusable space capsule that "safely and affordably carries cargo to and from space stations," according to the web page of its European-based manufacturer, The Exploration Company, "launching from any heavy launcher worldwide." And the company "just closed a large funding round to further its mission of building Europe's first reusable space capsule," reports TechCrunch — pointing out that right now, "Only two companies currently provide cargo delivery to and from the Intern... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Could an Upcoming Apple Smart-Home Tablet Lead to Mobil... 17-11-24 21:02	Slashdot
Could an Upcoming Apple Smart-Home Tablet Lead to Mobile Robots - and Maybe Even a TV Set? "Here's how Apple's next major product will work," writes Bloomberg's Mark Gurman: The company has been developing a smart home command center that will rival products like the Amazon Echo Hub and Google Nest Hub... The product will run many of Apple's core apps, like Safari, Notes and Calendar, but the interface will be centered on a customizable home screen with iOS-like widgets and smart home controls... The device looks like a low-end iPad and will include a built-in battery, speakers and... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Amazon Makes It Harder for Disabled Employees to Work F... 17-11-24 19:39	Slashdot
Amazon Makes It Harder for Disabled Employees to Work From Home "Amazon is making it harder for disabled employees to get permission to work from home," reports Bloomberg, a move they say shows Amazon's "determination" to enforce a five-days-a-week return to the office. The company recently told employees with disabilities that it was implementing a more rigorous vetting process, both for new requests to work from home and applications to extend existing arrangements. Affected workers must submit to a "multilevel leader review" and could be required to retu... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Google AI Gemini Threatens College Student: 'Human... ... 17-11-24 18:34	Slashdot
Google AI Gemini Threatens College Student: 'Human... Please Die' A Michigan college student writing about the elderly received this suggestion from Google's Gemini AI: "This is for you, human. You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die. Please." Vidhay Reddy, the student who received the message, told CBS News that he was deeply sh... Read the full article on Slashdot »
China Unveils 'Haolong' Space Shuttle 17-11-24 17:34	Slashdot
China Unveils 'Haolong' Space Shuttle A reusable uncrewed spaceplane was unveiled this week for delivering and returning cargo from the Chinese Tiangong space station. It was built by the Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute (part of the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China). (See YouTube footage here...) Long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis writes: Like the Sierra Space "Dream Chaser" [still under development], the vehicle is to be launched as a payload on a separate launch vehicle, and land horizon... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Is Remote Working Causing an Exodus to the Exurbs? 17-11-24 16:34	Slashdot
Is Remote Working Causing an Exodus to the Exurbs? Last year 30,000 people moved into central Florida's Polk County — more than to any other county in America. Its largest city has just 112,641 people, living a full 35 miles east of the 3.1 million residents in the metropolitan area around Tampa. But the Associated Press says something similar is happening all over the country: "the rise of the far-flung exurbs." Outlying communities on the outer margins of metro areas — some as far away as 60 miles (97 kilometers) from a city's c... Read the full article on Slashdot »
New Model Calculates Chances of Intelligent Beings In O... 17-11-24 13:34	Slashdot
New Model Calculates Chances of Intelligent Beings In Our Universe and Beyond Chances of intelligent life emerging in our Universe "and in any hypothetical ones beyond it" can be estimated by a new theoretical model, reports the Royal Astronomical Society. Since stars are a precondition for the emergence of life, the new research predicts that a typical observer [i.e., intelligent life] should experience a substantially larger density of dark energy than is seen in our own Universe... The approach presented in the paper involves calculating the fraction of ordinary mat... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Carbon Emissions Continued Increasing Last Year, Especi... 17-11-24 09:34	Slashdot
Carbon Emissions Continued Increasing Last Year, Especially in China and India - But Not the US An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:Even as Earth sets new heat records, humanity this year is pumping 330 million tons (300 million metric tons) more carbon dioxide into the air by burning fossil fuels than it did last year. This year the world is on track to put 41.2 billion tons (37.4 billion metric tons) of the main heat-trapping gas into the atmosphere. It's a 0.8% increase from 2023, according to Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists who track emissio... Read the full article on Slashdot »
What Happened After Google Retrofitted Memory Safety On... 17-11-24 05:34	Slashdot
What Happened After Google Retrofitted Memory Safety Onto Its C++ Codebase? Google's transistion to Safe Coding and memory-safe languages "will take multiple years," according to a post on Google's security blog. So "we're also retrofitting secure-by-design principles to our existing C++ codebase wherever possible," a process which includes "working towards bringing spatial memory safety into as many of our C++ codebases as possible, including Chrome and the monolithic codebase powering our services."We've begun by enabling hardened libc++, which adds bounds checking... Read the full article on Slashdot »
New Pentagon Report on UFOs: Hundreds of New Incidents,... 17-11-24 03:34	Slashdot
New Pentagon Report on UFOs: Hundreds of New Incidents, No Evidence of Aliens "The Pentagon's latest report on UFOs has revealed hundreds of new reports of unidentified and unexplained aerial phenomena," reports the Associated Press, "but no indications suggesting an extraterrestrial origin. "The review includes hundreds of cases of misidentified balloons, birds and satellites as well as some that defy easy explanation, such as a near-miss between a commercial airliner and a mysterious object off the coast of New York." Federal efforts to study and identify UAPs have f... Read the full article on Slashdot »
8 Escaped Monkeys Remain at Large, Now Joined By Two Fu... 17-11-24 00:59	Slashdot
8 Escaped Monkeys Remain at Large, Now Joined By Two Fugitive Emus Remember those 43 monkeys that escaped from a U.S. research lab? They've caught 35 of them — but haven't yet caught the other eight. But even worse... The Independent reports that now another animal escape has led to "reports of two large emus running riot..." The birds' owner, Sam Morace, took to social media to plead with locals for their patience, saying: "For everyone that keeps seeing an emu, yes it is mine. There are 2 of them out." Morace said their two flightless birds broke loo... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Does Google Plan to Create Email Aliases for Apps to Fi... 16-11-24 23:34	Slashdot
Does Google Plan to Create Email Aliases for Apps to Fight Spam? Google appears to be working on an email-forwarding alias system, according to the blog Android Authority, giving users a new way to "shield" their main email address. The site performed a teardown on the newest Google Play Services' APK looking for work-in-progress code , and spotted "a whole boatload of strings referencing and in support of something called 'Shielded Email'."Just from that text, we're able to infer quite a lot about what we're looking at here, and it appears that Shielded... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Partnership Announced bet... 16-11-24 22:16	Slashdot
Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Partnership Announced between America and Ukraine An anonymous reader shared this report from the Kyiv Independent:The United States will partner with Ukraine to transition Ukraine's coal-fired plants to small modular nuclear reactors, and to use them to help decarbonize its steel industry, the countries announced on November 16 at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan... The partnership will build a roadmap and provide technical support to "rebuild, modernize, and decarbonize Ukraine's steel industry with small modular re... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Threads Grew By a Bluesky This Month, Now Has Over 275 ... 16-11-24 21:34	Slashdot
Threads Grew By a Bluesky This Month, Now Has Over 275 Million Users An anonymous reader shared this report from the Verge: Bluesky might be on the rise, but Instagram and Threads boss Adam Mosseri wants you to know that Threads is still much bigger. In a post on Thursday, Mosseri said that Threads has gotten "more than 15 million signups in November alone," seemingly trying to throw some cold water over Bluesky crossing 15 million users total on Wednesday. Mosseri also reiterated that the platform has been getting more than a million signups per day — a... Read the full article on Slashdot »
ISS Astronauts are Safe. But NASA and Russia Disagree ... 16-11-24 20:34	Slashdot
ISS Astronauts are Safe. But NASA and Russia Disagree on How to Fix Leak "NASA has emphasized the ISS crew is in no immediate danger," reports Space.com. "The leaking area in the Russian segment of the orbital complex has been ongoing for five years," and "there was a temporary increase in the leak rate that was patched earlier this year..." Former astronaut Bob Cabana emphasized that troubleshooting is ongoing during a brief livestreamed meeting on Wednesday. But NASA and Roscosmos "don't have a common understanding of what the likely root causes or the severity o... Read the full article on Slashdot »
'Automotive Grade Linux' Will Promote Open Source Progr... 16-11-24 19:34	Slashdot
'Automotive Grade Linux' Will Promote Open Source Program Offices for Automakers Automotive Grade Linux is a collaborative open source project developing "an open platform from the ground up that can serve as the de facto industry standard" for fast development of new features. Automakers have joined with tech companies and suppliers to speed up development (and adoption) of "a fully open software stack for the connected car" — hosted at the Linux Foundation, and "with Linux at its core..." And this week they created a new Open Source Program Office expert group, led ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Does Casio's New Calculator Watch Take You Back To 6th ... 16-11-24 18:34	Slashdot
Does Casio's New Calculator Watch Take You Back To 6th Grade Math Class? Slashdot reader jjslash brings word that Casio "has reintroduced its iconic calculator watch featuring a retro design with green text on a negative LCD and a classic keypad layout." TechSpot reports that the watch was based on the Casio Mini personal calculator first released in the early 1970s — even offering a keypad using the original fonts (with numbers separated by grid lines): Even the mode button, colored red, is a nod to the calculator's power indicator. The watches' calculator f... Read the full article on Slashdot »
AI Lab PleIAs Releases Fully Open Dataset, as AMD, Ai2 ... 16-11-24 17:34	Slashdot
AI Lab PleIAs Releases Fully Open Dataset, as AMD, Ai2 Release Open AI Models French private AI lab PleIAs "is committed to training LLMs in the open," they write in a blog post at Mozilla.org. "This means not only releasing our models but also being open about every aspect, from the training data to the training code. We define 'open' strictly: all data must be both accessible and under permissive licenses." Wednesday PleIAs announced they were releasing the largest open multilingual pretraining dataset, according to their blog post at HuggingFace: Many have claimed... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Five-Year Prison Sentence for Man who Stole 120,000 Bit... 16-11-24 16:34	Slashdot
Five-Year Prison Sentence for Man who Stole 120,000 Bitcoin from Bitfinex in 2016 More than 120,000 bitcoin were stolen in a 2016 breach of Bitfinex. Seven years later the perpetrator pleaded guilty. And Thursday he was sentenced to a five-year prison term, reports the Associated Press: Ilya Lichtenstein masterminded one of the largest-ever thefts from a virtual currency exchange before he and his wife, Heather Rhiannon Morgan, carried out an elaborate scheme to liquidate the stolen funds, according to federal prosecutors... "Over half a decade, the defendant engaged in wh... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Samples Obtained By Chinese Spacecraft Show Moon's Anci... 16-11-24 11:00	Slashdot
Samples Obtained By Chinese Spacecraft Show Moon's Ancient Volcanism China's Chang'e-6 mission made history by retrieving the first surface samples from the moon's far side, revealing evidence of volcanic activity spanning 1.4 billion years. Reuters reports: Researchers said on Friday the soil brought back from the Chang'e-6 landing site contained fragments of volcanic rock - basalt - dating to 4.2 billion years ago and to 2.8 billion years ago. This points to a long period of volcanic activity - at least 1.4 billion years - on the far side during the first half ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Is NASA's Moon Rocket Getting Canceled? 16-11-24 08:00	Slashdot
Is NASA's Moon Rocket Getting Canceled? "NASA has squandered $27 billion on the SLS moon rocket -- $6 billion over budget and 5 years late," writes longtime Slashdot reader schwit1. "The SLS isn't reusable so even if they finished it -- it is already obsolete. It is clear to everyone that the boondoggle has failed but the newest plan is to find a way to blame Trump. There is a big desire for big changes." Futurism reports: According to Ars Technica senior space reporter Eric Berger's insider sources, there's an "at least 50-50" chance... Read the full article on Slashdot »
With First Mechanical Qubit, Quantum Computing Goes Ste... 16-11-24 04:30	Slashdot
With First Mechanical Qubit, Quantum Computing Goes Steampunk An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: Qubits, the strange devices at the heart of a quantum computer that can be set to 0, 1, or both at once, could hardly be more different from the mechanical clockwork used in the earliest computers. Today, most quantum computers rely on qubits made out of tiny circuits of superconducting metal, individual ions, photons, or other things. But now, physicists have made a working qubit from a tiny, moving machine, an advance that echoes back ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
NSO, Not Government Clients, Operates Its Spyware 16-11-24 02:40	Slashdot
NSO, Not Government Clients, Operates Its Spyware jojowombl shares a report from The Guardian: Legal documents released in ongoing US litigation between NSO Group and WhatsApp have revealed for the first time that the Israeli cyberweapons maker -- and not its government customers -- is the party that "installs and extracts" information from mobile phones targeted by the company's hacking software. The new details were contained in sworn depositions from NSO Group employees, portions of which were published for the first time on Thursday. It c... Read the full article on Slashdot »
T-Mobile Hacked In Massive Chinese Breach of Telecom Ne... 16-11-24 02:20	Slashdot
T-Mobile Hacked In Massive Chinese Breach of Telecom Networks Chinese hackers, reportedly linked to a Chinese intelligence agency, breached T-Mobile as part of a broader cyber-espionage campaign targeting telecom companies to spy on high-value intelligence targets. "T-Mobile is closely monitoring this industry-wide attack, and at this time, T-Mobile systems and data have not been impacted in any significant way, and we have no evidence of impacts to customer information," a company spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal. Reuters reports: It was unclear ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Chegg, Down From $12 Billion To $159 Million In Value, ... 16-11-24 02:00	Slashdot
Chegg, Down From $12 Billion To $159 Million In Value, Lays Off Hundreds; CEO Blames Google and AI Chegg, the online education company, is laying off 319 workers as it struggles to compete against modern AI chatbots. SFGATE reports: Chegg announced the new layoff round, which will hit 21% of its workforce, in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday. The company delivered the news alongside another brutal quarterly financial report; Chegg lost more than $212 million from July through September. CEO Nathan Schultz, in prepared remarks accompanying the report, expressed s... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Bluesky Says It Won't Train AI On Your Posts 16-11-24 01:20	Slashdot
Bluesky Says It Won't Train AI On Your Posts Bluesky, the social network surging in popularity, says it has "no intention" of training AI tools on users content. "The social network made the announcement on the same day that X (formerly Twitter) is implementing its new terms of service that allow the platform to use public posts to train AI," notes TechCrunch. From the report: "A number of artists and creators have made their home on Bluesky, and we hear their concerns with other platforms training on their data," Bluesky said in a post on... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Once Worth $7.3 Billion, Grubhub Sells For Just $650 Mi... 16-11-24 00:40	Slashdot
Once Worth $7.3 Billion, Grubhub Sells For Just $650 Million An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Europe's biggest meal delivery firm, Just Eat Takeaway, said on Wednesday it had struck a deal to sell its U.S. unit Grubhub to Wonder for $650 million, sending its shares soaring 20% in early trading. The Amsterdam-listed company had been looking to offload Chicago-based Grubhub since as early as 2022, after acquiring it in 2020 in a $7.3 billion deal amid a pandemic-driven boom in delivery services -- a process that was hampered by slowing growth, ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Biden Administration Finalizes $6.6 Billion In Chips Gr... 16-11-24 00:00	Slashdot
Biden Administration Finalizes $6.6 Billion In Chips Grants For TSMC The White House said it's completed a $6.6 billion grant agreement with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) through the Chips and Science Act. "Today's announcement is among the most critical milestones yet in the implementation of the bipartisan CHIPS & Science Act, and demonstrates how we are ensuring that the progress made to date will continue to unfold in the coming years, benefitting communities all across the country," Biden said in a statement. The Hill reports: The gra... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Ask Slashdot: Have AI Coding Tools Killed the Joy of Pr... 15-11-24 23:20	Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: Have AI Coding Tools Killed the Joy of Programming? Longtime Slashdot reader DaPhil writes: I taught myself to code at 12 years old in the 90s and I've always liked the back-and-forth with the runtime to achieve the right result. I recently got back from other roles to code again, and when starting a new project last year, I decided to give the new "AI assistants" a go. My initial surprise at the quality and the speed you can achieve when using ChatGPT and/or Copilot when coding turned sour over the months, as I realized that all the joy I felt... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Laundry-Sorting Robot Spurs AI Hopes and Fears At Europ... 15-11-24 22:40	Slashdot
Laundry-Sorting Robot Spurs AI Hopes and Fears At Europe's Biggest Tech Event An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: This year's Web Summit, in Lisbon, was all about artificial intelligence -- and a robot sorting laundry. Digit, a humanoid built by the US firm Agility Robotics, demonstrated how far AI has come in a few years by responding to voice commands -- filtered through Google's Gemini AI model -- to sift through a pile of colored T-shirts and place them in a basket. It wasn't a seamless demonstration but the enthusiastic response, nearly two years o... Read the full article on Slashdot »
FTC Reports 50% Drop in Unwanted Call Complaints Since ... 15-11-24 21:04	Slashdot
FTC Reports 50% Drop in Unwanted Call Complaints Since 2021 The Federal Trade Commission reported Friday that the number of consumer complaints about unwanted telemarketing phone calls has dropped over 50% since 2021, continuing a trend that started three years ago. From a report: This year, the FTC has received 1.1 million reports regarding robocalls, down from 1.2 million one year before 2023 and from more than 3.4 million in 2021. According to this year's National Do Not Call Registry Data Book -- which provides the most recent data on robocall compla... Read the full article on Slashdot »
The Rich Country With the Worst Mobile-Phone Service 15-11-24 20:25	Slashdot
The Rich Country With the Worst Mobile-Phone Service Economist: Britain has long been a pioneer in telecoms. In 1837 it built the world's first commercial telegraph; the first transatlantic call was placed from London in 1927; in 1992 a British programmer sent the first text message to a mobile phone. Today it lags rather than leads. According to figures provided to The Economist by Opensignal, a research firm, Britain ranks 46th for download speeds out of the 56 developed and developing countries for which there are data. That gives it the worst ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Cop Summits 'No Longer Fit For Purpose', Say Leading Cl... 15-11-24 19:50	Slashdot
Cop Summits 'No Longer Fit For Purpose', Say Leading Climate Policy Experts An anonymous reader shares a report: Future UN climate summits should be held only in countries that can show clear support for climate action and have stricter rules on fossil fuel lobbying, according to a group of influential climate policy experts. The group includes former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, the former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, the former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and the prominent climate scientist Johan Rockstrom. They have written to the UN demanding ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Internet Archive Now Hosts Classic Unreal Games; Epic G... 15-11-24 19:05	Slashdot
Internet Archive Now Hosts Classic Unreal Games; Epic Games Gives Blessing Classic first-person shooters Unreal (1998) and Unreal Tournament are now available for free on the Internet Archive, with official OK from publisher Epic Games. An Epic spokesperson confirmed to PC Gamer that users are permitted to "independently link to and play these versions." Players can download the games directly from the Internet Archive and apply patches from Github for modern Windows compatibility, or use simplified installers through oldunreal.com. Both titles run on current hardwar... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Sony's Had the Year From Hell 15-11-24 18:34	Slashdot
Sony's Had the Year From Hell Sony faces mounting challenges after a year marked by major setbacks in its gaming and film divisions. The company's $200-400 million gaming project "Concord" sold only 25,000 copies before being discontinued, while PlayStation 5 sales targets were cut from 25 million to 21 million units. Sony Pictures struggled with underperforming Spider-Man spin-offs and high-profile departures, including CEO Tony Vinciquerra. Over 1,200 employees were laid off across divisions, and profits fell 39% to $124... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Is Anyone Crazy Enough To Audit Super Micro Computer? 15-11-24 17:52	Slashdot
Is Anyone Crazy Enough To Audit Super Micro Computer? Server maker Super Micro Computer is facing mounting challenges after EY resigned as its auditor on October 24, citing concerns about management's integrity and ethical values. EY's departure came just months after replacing Deloitte & Touche, which had audited Super Micro for two decades through June 2023. The resignation raises questions about potential issues Deloitte may have missed. Super Micro has appointed a special committee and hired legal and forensic accounting firms to investig... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Cloud Migration Is Back (If You Ignore the Actual Numbers) 15-11-24 17:06	Slashdot
Cloud Migration Is Back (If You Ignore the Actual Numbers) An anonymous reader shares a report: The cloud migration narrative that powered tech valuations during the pandemic is attempting a comeback, but the underlying data suggests a more complex story. UBS's new survey of IT services reveals a striking disconnect between industry expectations and customer reality. While executives proclaim "2025 will be far better than what we've seen in 2024," their enterprise clients report having migrated merely 15% of workloads to the cloud, with the remainder ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Virgin Media O2 Deploys AI Decoy To Waste Scammers' Time 15-11-24 16:31	Slashdot
Virgin Media O2 Deploys AI Decoy To Waste Scammers' Time British telecom Virgin Media O2 has deployed an AI tool to combat phone scammers by wasting their time with fake conversations, the company said. The AI system, named Daisy, uses voice synthesis to mimic an elderly woman and engages fraudsters in lengthy discussions about fictitious family members or provides false bank details, keeping them occupied for up to 40 minutes per call. Virgin Media O2 embedded phone numbers connected to Daisy within scammer call lists targeting vulnerable individua... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Brazil's Online Betting Surge Sparks Debt Crisis as Use... 15-11-24 15:50	Slashdot
Brazil's Online Betting Surge Sparks Debt Crisis as Users Turn To 400% Loans Brazilian officials are scrambling to control a gambling boom that has led some citizens to take out loans with interest rates as high as 438% to fund their betting habits, sparking concerns about household debt levels. The surge in online betting has doubled Brazil's gambling population to 52 million in six months, with the central bank estimating monthly gambling spending between 18-21 billion reais ($3.1-3.6 billion) through August 2024. Central Bank President Roberto Campos Neto said lower... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Republican States' Attorneys General Sue SEC, Gensler O... 15-11-24 15:01	Slashdot
Republican States' Attorneys General Sue SEC, Gensler Over Crypto 'Overreach' Eighteen Republican state attorneys general have sued the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Chair Gary Gensler on Thursday, challenging the agency's authority to regulate cryptocurrency markets. The lawsuit, led by Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman, alleges the SEC has exceeded its statutory powers by attempting to assume broad regulatory control over digital assets without congressional authorization. The complaint argues the agency's actions infringe on states' rights... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Australia To Make Big Tech Liable For Citizens' Online ... 15-11-24 14:00	Slashdot
Australia To Make Big Tech Liable For Citizens' Online Safety An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The Australian government plans to enact laws requiring big tech firms to protect its citizens online, the latest move by the center-left Labor administration to crack down on social media including through age limits and curbs on misinformation. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland announced the government's plan for a legislated Digital Duty of Care in Australia on Wednesday night, saying it aligned with similar laws in the UK and Europea... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Open Source Fights Back: 'We Won't Get Patent-Trolled A... 15-11-24 11:00	Slashdot
Open Source Fights Back: 'We Won't Get Patent-Trolled Again' ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols reports: [...] At KubeCon North America 2024 this week, CNCF executive director Priyanka Sharma said in her keynote, "Patent trolls are not contributors or even adopters in our ecosystem. Instead, they prey on cloud-native adopters by abusing the legal system. We are here to tell the world that these patent trolls don't stand a chance because CNCF is uniting the ecosystem to deter them. Like a herd of musk oxen, we will run them off our pasture." CNCF CTO Chris Ani... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Rocket Lab Signs First Neutron Launch Customer 15-11-24 08:00	Slashdot
Rocket Lab Signs First Neutron Launch Customer Rocket Lab says it has signed the first customer for its Neutron launch vehicle, with a launch planned for mid-2025. SpaceNews reports: The company announced Nov. 12 that it signed a contract with an undisclosed "commercial satellite constellation operator" for two launches of Neutron, one in mid-2026 and the other in 2027, a deal that could lead to additional launches for the same customer. "We see this agreement as an important opportunity that signifies the beginning of a productive collabora... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Half-Life 2 Celebrates 20th Anniversary 15-11-24 04:30	Slashdot
Half-Life 2 Celebrates 20th Anniversary Each day leading up through the 16th (the official day Half-Life 2 was launched), Ars Technica will be publishing a new article looking back at the game and its impact. Here's an excerpt from an article published today by Ars Technica's Kyle Orland: When millions of eager gamers first installed Half-Life 2 20 years ago, many, if not most, of them found they needed to install another piece of software alongside it. Few at the time could imagine that piece of companion software -- with the pithy n... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Meet Evo, the DNA-trained AI That Creates Genomes From ... 15-11-24 03:02	Slashdot
Meet Evo, the DNA-trained AI That Creates Genomes From Scratch sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: What if, rather than scouring the internet, ChatGPT could search all of the DNA on Earth? That future just got a bit closer with Evo, an AI model reported today in Science. The program -- trained on billions of lines of genetic sequences -- can design new proteins and even whole genomes. Previous AIs could only interpret and predict relatively short sections of DNA, and they could only work with groups of nucleotides -- the A, C, G, T alphabet ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Datacenters Line Up For 750MW of Oklo's Nuclear-Waste-P... 15-11-24 02:25	Slashdot
Datacenters Line Up For 750MW of Oklo's Nuclear-Waste-Powered Small Reactors Datacenter operators are increasingly turning to small modular reactors (SMRs) like those developed by Oklo to meet growing energy demands. According to The Register, Oklo has secured commitments from two major datacenter providers for 750 MW of power, pending regulatory approvals. It brings the firm's planned nuclear build-out to 2.1 gigawatts. From the report: Oklo's designs are, from what we understand, inspired by the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II) and utilize liquid-metal cooling.... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Google Loses Yet Another AI Pioneer As Keras Creator Le... 15-11-24 01:45	Slashdot
Google Loses Yet Another AI Pioneer As Keras Creator Leaves Francois Chollet, an AI pioneer and creator of the Keras framework, announced that he's leaving Google to co-found a new company. Neowin reports: In his parting message, Chollet assured that he would still be active with Keras and participate in its development on GitHub. His successor, Jeff Carpenter, will now lead Keras at Google, and Chollet expressed his full confidence in the team's future direction. Keras has come a long way since Chollet released it in 2015, initially as a high-level ne... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Teen Pleads Guilty To Making 375 'Swatting' Calls Acros... 15-11-24 01:02	Slashdot
Teen Pleads Guilty To Making 375 'Swatting' Calls Across US quonset shares a report from CNN: Between August 2022 and January 2024, hundreds of swatting calls were made across the country targeting religious institutions, government offices, schools, and random people. Authorities were finally able to track down the criminal, Alan Fillon, who entered the plea to four counts of making interstate threats to injure the person of another, the US Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida said in a news release. He faces up to five years in prison o... Read the full article on Slashdot »
OpenMP 6.0 Released 15-11-24 00:20	Slashdot
OpenMP 6.0 Released Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports: The OpenMP Architecture Review Board announced from SC24 that OpenMP 6.0 is now available as a major upgrade to the OpenMP specification for multi-process programming within C / C++ / Fortran. A big emphasis on OpenMP 6.0 is making it easier for developers to embrace. OpenMP 6.0 aims to make it easier to support parallel programming in new applications, easier to adapt to new use-cases, and more fine-grained developer control. OpenMP 6.0 simplifies task prog... Read the full article on Slashdot »
ChatGPT For macOS Now Works With Third-Party Apps, Incl... 14-11-24 23:40	Slashdot
ChatGPT For macOS Now Works With Third-Party Apps, Including Apple's Xcode An update to OpenAI's ChatGPT app for macOS adds integration with third-party apps, including developer tools such as VS Code, Terminal, iTerm2 and Apple's Xcode. 9to5Mac reports: In a demo seen by 9to5Mac, ChatGPT was able to understand code from an Xcode project and then provide code suggestions without the user having to manually copy and paste content into the ChatGPT app. It can even read content from more than one app at the same time, which is very useful for working with developer tools.... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Japanese Government To Invest $65 Billion To Support Do... 14-11-24 23:00	Slashdot
Japanese Government To Invest $65 Billion To Support Domestic Chip Sector An anonymous reader quotes a report from Data Center Dynamics: The Japanese government is planning to invest approximately $65 billion to support the country's semiconductor and AI industries. The initiative, which will run until the end of the decade, is expected to generate ~$104 billion in public and private investment during the period. According to a report from Reuters, this new round of funding will specifically target state-backed chip foundry Rapidus and other AI chip suppliers. Rapid... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Academic Papers Yanked After Authors Found To Have Used... 14-11-24 22:22	Slashdot
Academic Papers Yanked After Authors Found To Have Used Unlicensed Software An academic journal has retracted two papers because it determined their authors used unlicensed software. The Register: Elsevier's Ain Shams Engineering Journal withdrew two papers exploring dam failures after complaints from Flow Science, the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based maker of a computational fluid dynamics application called FLOW-3D. "Following an editorial investigation as a result of a complaint from the software distributor, the authors admitted that the use of professional software, FL... Read the full article on Slashdot »
US Regulators Plan To Investigate Microsoft's Cloud Bus... 14-11-24 21:41	Slashdot
US Regulators Plan To Investigate Microsoft's Cloud Business The Federal Trade Commission is preparing to launch an investigation into anti-competitive practices at Microsoft's cloud computing business, Financial Times reported Thursday, as the US regulator continues to pursue Big Tech in the final weeks of Joe Biden's presidency. From the report: The FTC is examining allegations that Microsoft is abusing its market power in productivity software by imposing punitive licensing terms to prevent customers from moving their data from its Azure cloud service ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Microsoft Releases Windows 11 ISOs for Arm64-based PCs 14-11-24 21:01	Slashdot
Microsoft Releases Windows 11 ISOs for Arm64-based PCs An anonymous reader shares a report: After dragging its feet for years, Microsoft has finally released the first official Windows 11 ISOs for PCs with an Arm64 processor. This means users can now clean install Windows 11 using official offline media on an Arm64-based PC, including the latest Snapdragon X Copilot+ PCs. The ISOs contain version 24H2 can be downloaded from the official Microsoft website, and are around 5GB in size depending on the language you select. According to the company, th... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Second Life for Server Components 14-11-24 20:24	Slashdot
Second Life for Server Components Scientists have developed a method to reuse components from decommissioned data center servers, potentially reducing the carbon footprint of cloud computing infrastructure. The research team from Microsoft, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Washington demonstrated that older RAM modules and solid-state drives can be safely repurposed in new server builds without compromising performance, according to papers presented at recent computer architecture conferences. When combined w... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Researchers Are Trying To Reinvent the Wheel 14-11-24 19:42	Slashdot
Researchers Are Trying To Reinvent the Wheel South Korean researchers have developed a "morphing" wheel that can navigate stairs and obstacles up to 1.3 times its radius, potentially revolutionizing mobility devices and robotics. The wheel, created by the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM), features a chain-based outer hoop and sensor-controlled spoke wires that adjust stiffness based on terrain. Inspired by water droplet mechanics, it transitions between solid and fluid states when encountering impediments. Read more... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Google Rolls Out Call Screening AI To Thwart Phone Frau... 14-11-24 19:01	Slashdot
Google Rolls Out Call Screening AI To Thwart Phone Fraudsters Google is rolling out AI-powered scam call detection for Android phones, aiming to protect users from increasingly sophisticated phone fraud schemes. The new feature, available in beta for Pixel 6 and newer devices, analyzes conversation patterns in real-time to identify potential scams. When suspicious patterns emerge, such as urgently requesting fund transfers, the system alerts users through audio, haptic, and visual warnings. The detection system operates entirely on-device using Google's ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Trust in Science Recovers Slightly, But Remains Below P... 14-11-24 18:21	Slashdot
Trust in Science Recovers Slightly, But Remains Below Pre-Pandemic Levels Public trust in scientists is showing signs of recovery, according to a new Pew Research Center survey, though levels remain below pre-pandemic highs. The October 2024 study, which surveyed 9,593 U.S. adults, reveals that 76% of Americans have "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of confidence in scientists' commitment to public interests -- a modest increase from 73% in 2023, but still short of the 87% recorded in early 2020. The survey -- whose results were released Thursday [PDF] -- also highl... Read the full article on Slashdot »
AMD To Lay Off 4% of Workforce, or About 1,000 Employees 14-11-24 17:41	Slashdot
AMD To Lay Off 4% of Workforce, or About 1,000 Employees AMD has announced plans to cut 4% of its global workforce as it repositions to compete in the AI chip market dominated by Nvidia. The layoffs will affect approximately 1,040 employees of its 26,000-strong workforce reported at the end of 2023. CNBC adds: AMD produces powerful AI accelerators for data centers, including the MI300X, which companies such as Meta and Microsoft purchase as an alternative to Nvidia-based systems. But Nvidia dominates the market for powerful AI chips, with over 80% mar... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Apple Launches Final Cut Pro 11, the First Version Chan... 14-11-24 17:01	Slashdot
Apple Launches Final Cut Pro 11, the First Version Change in 13 Years Apple released Final Cut Pro 11 this week, marking the first major version change in over a decade for its professional video editing software. The update introduces several AI-powered features, including a new "Magnetic Mask" function that automatically tracks objects through video clips for targeted color grading and effects. The suite now offers on-device automatic caption generation for dialogue tracks and adds support for spatial video editing compatible with Apple Vision Pro. Users can a... Read the full article on Slashdot »

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