ICT news

• Psychedelic Mushroom Dose Can Treat Stubborn Depression, Trial Suggests

  06-11-2022 22:59 via science.slashdot.org
  The Washington Post reports:Psilocybin, the active hallucinogen found in psychedelic mushrooms — also known as "magic mushrooms" — can effectively alleviate a severe bout of depression when administered in a single dose and combined with talk therapy, a new clinical study found.
  Adults with depression who were administered a single 25-miligram dose of psilocybin were more likely to experience significant improvements in their mental health — both immediately and for up to three
  
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• Free 'Amazon Music' Members Complain Its 100M-Song Catalog Can Only Be Played on Shuffle

  06-11-2022 21:59 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Remember Amazon's announcement Tuesday that Prime members would get free access to ad-free podcasts and a library of 100 million songs?
  It made Slashdot reader ayjaym cancel their Amazon Prime subsciption. Because despite the upgrade to 100 million tracks, "all of these — including the albums that were available on Prime Music previously — can only be played in random order!"You can't skip forward or back while playing a song either. And, if you like to listen to classical music you
  
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• 70 New Text Adventures Written For 28th Annual 'Interactive Fiction Competition'

  06-11-2022 20:44 via games.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: 70 new text adventures are now online and available for playing — as a long-standing tradition continues. The 70 new games are the entries in the 28th annual Interactive Fiction Competition (now administered by the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, a charitable non-profit corporation).
  With wacky titles like "Lazy Wizard's Guide" and "Elvish for Goodbye," each game offers its own original take on the classic choice-based text adventure
  
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• 'The Disturbing Rise of Amateur Predator-Hunting Stings'

  06-11-2022 19:34 via news.slashdot.org
  In 2004 NBC's news show "Dateline" began airing "To Catch a Predator" segments, in which a vigilante group posed online as minors to lure sex predators into in-person meetings — where they were then arrested by police.
  The New Yorker looks at its cultural impact:
  Although there were only twenty episodes of the series, in three years, it's "this touchstone that I grew up with and that millions of people grew up with," Paul Renfro, a professor of history at Florida State University and the a
  
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• Wired Hails Rust as 'the Viral Secure Programming Language That's Taking Over Tech'

  06-11-2022 18:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  A new article from Wired calls Rust "the 'viral' secure programming language that's taking over tech.""Rust makes it impossible to introduce some of the most common security vulnerabilities. And its adoption can't come soon enough...."[A] growing movement to write software in a language called Rust is gaining momentum because the code is goof-proof in an important way. By design, developers can't accidentally create the most common types of exploitable security vulnerabilities when they're codin
  
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• The Equipment Designed to Cut Methane Emissions is Failing

  06-11-2022 17:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Scientists say tht measured over a 20-year period, methane "packs about 80 times the climate-warming power of carbon dioxide," according to the Associated Press. "And according to the International Energy Agency, methane is to blame for roughly 30% of the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."
  And yet...
  Aerial surveys have documented huge amounts of methane wafting from oil and gas fields in the United States and beyond. It's a problem the Biden administration has so
  
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• Stack Overflow CEO Shares Plans for Certification Programs, Opinions on No-Code Programming

  06-11-2022 16:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  "We serve about 100 million monthly visitors worldwide," says the CEO of Stack Overflow, "making us one of the most popular websites in the world. I think we are in the top 50 of all websites in the world by traffic."
  In a new interview, he says the site's been accessed about 50 billion times over the past 14 years — and then shares his thoughts on the notion that programmers could be replaced by no-code, low-code, or AI-driven pair programming:
  A: Over the years, there have many, many too
  
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• Ask Slashdot: What Makes a Good Social Media Site?

  06-11-2022 13:04 via ask.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader shanen has a question: What makes a decent social web site?If you don't like the original form of the subjective question, how about something like "What is the best social site you know of?" or "What criteria would you use to recognize a good social site?" or even "How could a good social media website even survive...?"
  Their original submission lists their own criteria for a good social site:
  Efficient to use (without wasting your time)
  Has educational value, "perhaps
  
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• Why Hasn't the US Ended Daylight Saving Time?

  06-11-2022 08:34 via news.slashdot.org
  In March the U.S. Senate passed a measure making Daylight Saving Time permanent.
  Unfortunately, the U.S. House of Representatives has failed to do the same, reports the Washington Post:Key senators who backed permanent daylight saving time say they're mystified that their effort appears doomed, and frustrated that they will probably have to start over in the next Congress. At least 19 states in recent years have enacted laws or passed resolutions that would allow them to impose year-round daylig
  
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• Domains for Z-Library eBook Site Apparently Seized By US Department of Justice

  06-11-2022 05:04 via news.slashdot.org
  "THIS WEBSITE HAS BEEN SEIZED," declares the home page of three different domains, attributing the seizure to the America's Federal Bureau of Investigation "in accordance with a warrant."
  Bleeping Computer reports the domains were seized early Friday morning — and that the domains belong to the popular Z-Library online eBook repository.Z-Library is ranked in the top 10k most visited websites on the Internet, offering over 11 million books and 84 million articles for free via its website...
  
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• Mastodon Continues to Grow - But Still .27% the Size of Twitter

  06-11-2022 02:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  By Tuesday morning Mastodon had gained 123,562 new users since October 27 (the site told TechCrunch) and had 528,607 active users. But by Saturday the number of new users had nearly doubled, to 230,000, reports CNN — with 655,000 active users.
  In fact, for every 363 active users on Twitter, there's now one on Mastodon, CNN's figures suggest (since Twitter has nearly "238 million daily active monetizable users"). Exploring the recent spike, they note that Mastodon "has a similar look to Twi
  
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