ICT news

• Energy 'Scavenger' Could Turn Waste Heat From Devices Like Refrigerators Into Electricity

  12-09-2020 23:34 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  "Scientists have known for nearly 200 years that certain materials can convert heat to electricity..." reports Science, describing research into an intriguing new approach:Refrigerators, boilers, and even lightbulbs continually dump heat into their surroundings. This "waste heat" could — in theory — be turned into electricity, as it is sometimes done with power plants, automobile engines, and other high-heat sources. The problem: These "low-grade" sources give off too little heat for
  
  Read more

• 'A Robot Wrote This Article. Are You Scared Yet, Human?'

  12-09-2020 22:34 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  This week the Guardian published an essay written by GPT-3, OpenAI's language generator, calling it "a cutting edge language model that uses machine learning to produce human like text. It takes in a prompt, and attempts to complete it." For this esssay, the essay was fed the prompt, "I am not a human. I am Artificial Intelligence. Many people think I am a threat to humanity. Stephen Hawking has warned that AI could 'spell the end of the human race.' I am here to convince you not to worry. Artif
  
  Read more

• Production Problems at Boeing Factory Prompt Regulators to Review Lapses

  12-09-2020 21:34 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader phalse phace writes: The FAA has begun looking into quality-control problems at Boeing for their wide-body jet Dreamliner that go back almost a decade.The Wall Street Journal reports that "the plane maker has told U.S. aviation regulators that it produced certain parts at its South Carolina facilities that failed to meet its own design and manufacturing standards, according to an Aug. 31 internal Federal Aviation Administration memo." (Non-paywalled source here.)The Jou
  
  Read more

• Security Researchers Detail New 'BlindSide' Speculative Execution Attack

  12-09-2020 20:34 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  "Security researchers from Amsterdam have publicly detailed 'BlindSide' as a new speculative execution attack vector for both Intel and AMD processors," reports Phoronix:
  BlindSide is self-described as being able to "mount BROP-style attacks in the speculative execution domain to repeatedly probe and derandomize the kernel address space, craft arbitrary memory read gadgets, and enable reliable exploitation. This works even in face of strong randomization schemes, e.g., the recent FGKASLR or fine
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Microsoft's 'Patch Tuesday' Includes 129 Security Updates, Mostly to Windows

  12-09-2020 19:34 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  This week Krebs on Security reported that Microsoft "released updates to remedy nearly 130 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating system and supported software."None of the flaws are known to be currently under active exploitation, but 23 of them could be exploited by malware or malcontents to seize complete control of Windows computers with little or no help from users. The majority of the most dangerous or "critical" bugs deal with issues in Microsoft's various Windows operating sys
  
  Read more

• New Hubble Observations Suggest Gap in Current Dark Matter Models

  12-09-2020 18:34 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader bsharma shares an announcement from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope site:
  Researchers found that small-scale concentrations of dark matter in clusters produce gravitational lensing effects that are 10 times stronger than expected. This evidence is based on unprecedently detailed observations of several massive galaxy clusters by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile...
  Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale Univers
  
  Read more

• C++ is About To Get a Huge Update

  12-09-2020 17:34 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  ZDNet reports:
  The International Organization for Standardization's (ISO) C++ group, Working Group 21 (WG21), has agreed upon the finalized version of 'C++20', the first major update to the 35 year-old programming language since C++17 from 2017... The 2020 release of C++ is huge by historical standards. Herb Sutter, a Microsoft engineer and long-time chair of WG21 C++ ISO committee, said it "will be C++'s largest release since C++11", meaning it's bigger than any of the past three releases, whic
  
  Read more

• With Wildfires, California Experiences a 'Cascading' of Climate Disasters

  12-09-2020 16:34 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  "Multiple mega fires burning more than three million acres. Millions of residents smothered in toxic air. Rolling blackouts and triple-digit heat waves."Climate change, in the words of one scientist, is smacking California in the face," reports the New York Times. (Alternate URL here.)The crisis in the nation's most populous state is more than just an accumulation of individual catastrophes. It is also an example of something climate experts have long worried about, but which few expected to see
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Elon Musk Says Tesla Will 'One Day' Produce 'Super Efficient Home HVAC' With HEPA Filtering

  12-09-2020 15:00 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Elon Musk has previously touted the "Bioweapon Defense Mode" boasted by Tesla's vehicles, which are designed to provide excellent air quality inside the car even in the face of disastrous conditions without, thanks in part to high-efficiency HEPA air filtration. Now, Musk has said on Twitter that he hopes to one day provide similar air filtration along with home HVAC systems.Tesla, while primarily an automaker, is also already in the business
  
  Read more

• US Company Faces Backlash After Belarus Uses Its Tech To Block Internet

  12-09-2020 12:00 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  Senators Dick Durbin and Marco Rubio are criticizing Sandvine Inc., the U.S. company whose technology helped Belarus block much of the internet during a disputed presidental election last month. Bloomberg reports: The private-equity-backed technology firm demonstrated its equipment to a government security team in Belarus in May, two people with knowledge of the matter said, and its marketing materials boast of the blacklisting capabilities, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg. The Sand
  
  Read more

• CDC Report Links Dining Out To Increased COVID-19 Risk

  12-09-2020 09:00 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  gollum123 shares a report from CNBC: Dining out raises the risk of contracting Covid-19 more than other activities, such as shopping or going to a salon, according to a report published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings come as many states consider the safest ways to reopen businesses, especially restaurants. Those who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, "were approximately twice as likely to have reported dining at a restaurant
  
  Read more

• Wildlife In 'Catastrophic Decline' Due To Human Destruction, Scientists Warn

  12-09-2020 05:30 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Wildlife populations have fallen by more than two-thirds in less than 50 years, according to a major report (PDF) by the conservation group WWF. The report says this "catastrophic decline" shows no sign of slowing. And it warns that nature is being destroyed by humans at a rate never seen before. The report looked at thousands of different wildlife species monitored by conservation scientists in habitats across the world. They recorded an average
  
  Read more

• The Gateway PC Brand Returns With New Laptops

  12-09-2020 04:02 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  On Wednesday, Acer and Walmart announced they were reviving the Gateway brand to sell affordable Windows 10 notebooks and laptop convertibles from $179 and up. PCMag reports: Gateway was once a major PC vendor in the US, especially during the 1990s when it famously sold computers packaged in cow spotted boxes. However, the company's fortunes began to falter in the 2000s, resulting in Taiwanese PC vendor Acer later buying it up. Acer has now decided to bring back Gateway, calling it a "beloved" b
  
  Read more

• The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Confirms a Pattern of Age Discrimination at IBM

  12-09-2020 03:25 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued a sweeping decision concluding that IBM engaged in systematic age discrimination between 2013 and 2018, when it shed thousands of older workers in the United States. ProPublica reports: The EEOC finding, contained in an Aug. 31 letter to a group of ex-employees, comes more than two years after ProPublica reported that the company regularly flouted or outflanked laws intended to protect older workers from bias in hiring and firing. The l
  
  Read more

• Huawei Closing Enterprise Hardware Division In the UK

  12-09-2020 02:45 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  schwit1 shares a report from TechRadar: Huawei has announced a series of layoffs in the UK as the company is forced to alter its corporate strategy in the face of further bans and restrictions. The Chinese giant is set to pull sales all of its Enterprise hardware lines, including all servers, storage and networking switches from the UK. The news means severe job cuts across Huawei's Enterprise hardware divisions in the UK as the company faces yet more challenges, despite pledges to remain in the
  
  Read more

• The Pringles Tube Is Being Redesigned Because It's a 'Recycling Nightmare'

  12-09-2020 02:02 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The distinctive Pringles tube is being re-designed after criticism that it's almost impossible to recycle. The current container for the potato-based snack was condemned as a recycler's nightmare. It's a complex construction with a metal base, plastic cap, metal tear-off lid, and foil-lined cardboard sleeve. The Recycling Association dubbed it the number one recycling villain -- along with the Lucozade Sports bottle. Now Pringles' maker Kellogg's
  
  Read more

• Nikola Motors Accused of Massive Fraud, Ocean of Lies

  12-09-2020 01:20 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  Socguy writes: Hindenburg research has released their report on Nikola motors and have taken a short position as a result of their research. During the course of their investigation, they claim to have spoken to numerous former employees, have amassed a pile of emails, text messages, contracts as well as other documents and videos showing a massive deception. Essentially, Hindenburg alleges that Nikola has no proprietary technology and vastly overstated the capabilities of their prototypes repea
  
  Read more

• MIT Sleep Monitor Can Track People's Sleeping Positions Using Radio Signals

  12-09-2020 00:40 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  A team of MIT researchers has developed a device that can monitor people's sleep postures without having to use cameras or to stick sensors on their body. Engadget reports: It's a wall-mounted monitor the team dubbed BodyCompass, and it works by analyzing radio signals as they bounce off objects in a room. As the researchers explained, a device that can monitor sleep postures has many potential uses. It could be used to track the progression of Parkinson's disease, for instance, since people wit
  
  Read more

• DJI Promises 'Local Data Mode' To Fend Off US Government's Mooted Ban

  12-09-2020 00:02 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Chinese drone maker DJI has commissioned yet another security audit with FTI Consulting that's given it a clean bill of health, as the US government reportedly prepares to ban its remote controlled aircraft from American skies. DJI, whose headquarters are in the Chinese city of Shenzhen (the firm's full name is Shenzhen Da-Jiang Innovations Technology Company) has reacted to claims that US regulators intend shutting it out of their market by
  
  Read more

Follow @newslocke_ict on Twitter!