ICT news

• NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover Detects Intriguing Organic Matter in Rock

  18-09-2022 23:44 via science.slashdot.org
  The Mars rover Perseverance was the subject of a new NASA briefing Thursday. CNET describes it as a celebration of this year's discovery of organic matter — in June NASA for the first time measured the total amount of organic carbon in Martian rocks — and a celebration of rock samples. (Specifically, the two samples collected from mudstone rock on Wildcat Ridge in Jezero Crater.)The rover's Sherloc instrument investigated the rock. (Sherloc stands for Scanning Habitable Environments
  
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• The $300B Google-Meta Advertising Duopoly is Under Attack

  18-09-2022 22:22 via apple.slashdot.org
  The Economist notes this business cycle is hurting ad revenue for Alphabet's Google and Meta's Facebook."Last quarter Meta reported its first-ever year-on-year decline in revenues. Snap, a smaller rival, is laying off a fifth of its workforce." But for both companies, "the cyclical problem may not be the worst of it," since they're finally facing some real competition.
  "They might once have hoped to offset the digital-ad pie's slower growth by grabbing a larger slice of it. No longer."Although t
  
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• XKCD Author Finds Geeky Ways to Promote His New Book

  18-09-2022 19:34 via news.slashdot.org
  Randall Munroe does more than draw the online comic strip XKCD. He's also published a funny new speculative science book (following up on his previous New York Times best-seller), promising "short answers, new lists of weird and worrying questions, and some of my favorite answers from the What If site."
  From his blog:
  In What If 2, I answer new questions I've receieved in the years since What If? was released. People have asked about touching exotic materials, traveling across space and time, ea
  
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• Will Low-Code and No-Code Development Replace Traditional Coding?

  18-09-2022 18:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  While there is a lot of noise about the hottest programming languages and the evolution of Web3, blockchain and the metaverse, none of this will matter if the industry doesn't have highly skilled software developers to build them," argues ZDNet.
  So they spoke to Ori Bendet, VP of product management at CheckMarx, a builder software that tests application security. His prediction? Automatic code generators (ACG) like Github CoPilot, AWS CodeWhisperer and Tab9 will eventually replace "traditional"
  
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• Former Apple Design Boss Jony Ive: Car Buyers Will Demand The Return of Physical Buttons

  18-09-2022 17:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  The Drive reports;Sir Jony Ive — the man designed the original iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad during his 22 years as Apple design chief — has claimed new-car buyers will drive demand for physical buttons to return in automotive entertainment systems.In recent years, car companies such as Tesla and Volkswagen have progressively moved to remove physical switches from their vehicle's interiors, replacing them with 'haptic' touch-sensitive buttons, or moving a majority of the controls into
  
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• Serial Thief Steals Thousands Using Cellphones (and Credit Cards) from Gym Locker Rooms

  18-09-2022 16:34 via news.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader n3hat writes: The BBC reports that a thief has been emptying gym patrons' accounts by stealing their bank card and mobile phone, registering the account to the thief's own mobile, and emptying the victims' bank accounts. The thief works around 2-factor authentication by taking advantage of the victim's phone having been configured to show notifications on the lock screen, so the thief can view the 2FA credential even though they don't have the unlock code. The article g
  
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• Is Professional Chess Becoming More Like Poker?

  18-09-2022 13:14 via games.slashdot.org
  "Chess engines have redefined creativity in chess," argues the Atlantic, "leading to a situation where the game's top players can no longer get away with simply playing the strongest chess they can, but must also engage in subterfuge, misdirection, and other psychological techniques."
  The article's title? "Chess is just poker now." And it starts by noting one inconvenient truth about still-unresolved allegations that Hans Niemann cheated to defeat world chess champion Magnus Carlsen:Whatever rea
  
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• Oil Industry Executives Privately Contradicted Their Public Statements on Climate, Files Show

  18-09-2022 09:14 via news.slashdot.org
  "Documents obtained by congressional investigators show that oil industry executives privately downplayed their companies' own public messages about efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," reports the New York Times, "and weakened industrywide commitments to push for climate policies...."At Royal Dutch Shell, an October 2020 email sent by an employee, discussing talking points for Shell's president for the United States, said that the company's announcement of a pathway to "net zero" emissi
  
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• Copyright Concerns Make a Film Festival Pull 'People's Joker' Movie

  18-09-2022 05:14 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  "There's a new Joker movie coming out," writes the Verge, "but you might not get a chance to see it because copyright is broken."I'm not talking about Joker: Folie à Deux, the officially sanctioned sequel to the Todd Phillips film Joker. I'm talking about The People's Joker, a crowdfunded Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) selection that was pulled at the last minute, thanks to unspecified "rights issues." The People's Joker is (as far as I can tell) an extremely loose retelling o
  
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• Ask Slashdot: What Was Your First Computer?

  18-09-2022 00:57 via slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Today GitHub's official Twitter account asked the ultimate geek-friendly question. "You never forget your first computer. What was yours?"
  And within 10 hours they'd gotten 2,700 responses.
  Commodore 64, TRS-80, Atari 800, Compaq Presario... People posted names you haven't heard in years, like they were sharing memories of old friends. Gateway 2000, Sony VAIO, Vic-20, Packard Bell... One person just remembered they'd had "some sort of PC that had an
  
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