ICT news

• Ask Slashdot: Should Production Networks Avoid Windows 11?

  19-02-2023 23:14 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Slashdot reader John Smith 2294 is an IT consultant and system administrator "who started in the days of DEC VAX/VMS," now maintaining networks for small to medium businesses and non-profits. And they're sharing a concern with Slashdot.
  "I object to Windows 11 insisting on an outlook.com / Microsoft Account OS login."
  Sure there are workarounds, but user action or updates can undo them. So I will not be using Windows 11 for science or business any more.... I will be using Win10 refurbs for as lo
  
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• Discovery of 'Bond Villain' DNA Could Be a 'Gamechanger' for Cancer Treament

  19-02-2023 22:37 via science.slashdot.org
  
  'Bond villain' DNA could transform cancer treatment, scientists sayThe Guardian reports:Scientists have pinpointed pieces of DNA which, they say, act like Bond villains in the way they help cancers spread. These microscopic agents have also been shown to be responsible for helping tumours gain resistance to anti-cancer drugs. The discovery of these bits of genetic material — known as extrachromosomal DNA or ecDNA — could revolutionise the treatments of some of the most aggressive tum
  
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• Activist Group Spreads Misinformation to Stop US Solar Projects

  19-02-2023 21:08 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  An activist group is spreading misinformation to stop solar projects in rural AmericaActivist Group Spreads Misinformation to Stop US Solar ProjectsAn energy company's plans for a solar plant powering 25,000 homes were thwarted after a four-year battle with a nonprofit that teamed with locals to restrict large-scale solar projects, reports NPR. That non-profit's name? "Citizens for Responsible Solar.""Citizens for Responsible Solar" is part of a growing backlash against renewable energy in rural
  
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• IBM Says It's Been Running a Cloud-Native, AI-Optimized Supercomputer Since May

  19-02-2023 19:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "IBM is the latest tech giant to unveil its own "AI supercomputer," this one composed of a bunch of virtual machines running within IBM Cloud," reports the Register:The system known as Vela, which the company claims has been online since May last year, is touted as IBM's first AI-optimized, cloud-native supercomputer, created with the aim of developing and training large-scale AI models. Before anyone rushes off to sign up for access, IBM stated that the platform is currently reserved for use by
  
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• Staring At Screens Could Strain Cervical Spine, Cause 'Tech Neck'

  19-02-2023 18:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  HealthDay reports:
  If you spend hours a day scrolling on your smartphone or tablet, you might get "tech neck."
  "Humans are upright creatures, and our bodies aren't designed to look down for long periods of time, which puts extra pressure on the cervical spine," said Dr. Kavita Trivedi, associate medical director of the Spine Center at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Americans spend about five hours a day on their cellphones and more on laptops and computers, Trivedi noted in a universi
  
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• Astronomers Spot a Rogue Supermassive Black Hole Hurtling Through Space

  19-02-2023 17:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "Astronomers spotted an unexpected trail in the gas surrounding a dwarf galaxy while using the Hubble Space Telescope...." writes Hot Hardware. "The light emitting from the trail traveled more than 7.5 billion years to reach Earth and is thought to be traveling at a breakneck speed of 1,600km/s (3.5 million mph).
  Science Alert says it could be "the smoking gun pointing to a runaway supermassive black hole."
  More from Universe Today:Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) lurk in the center of large gal
  
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• Netherlands Approves Building of New Nuclear Reactor For Medical Isotopes

  19-02-2023 16:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  A long-time Slashdot reader brings news from the EU:This week the Dutch Government approved the construction license for the PALLAS reactor, a new nuclear reactor to create medical isotopes. The PALLAS reactor will replace the 60 year old reactor in Petten which produces about one third of all the medical isotopes used globally. Receiving the building permit is a major milestone as highlighted here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Where More People Will Die -- and Live -- Because of Climate Change

  19-02-2023 13:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares this thought-provoking article by a graphics reporter at The Washington Post who was part of its Pulitzer Prize-winning Explanatory Reporting team:The scientific paper published in the June 2021 issue of the journal Nature Climate Change was alarming. Between 1991 and 2018, the peer-reviewed study reported, more than one-third of deaths from heat exposure were linked to global warming. Hundreds of news outlets covered the findings. The message was clear: climate change
  
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• Internal Review Found 'Falsified Data' in Stanford President's Alzheimer's Research, Colleagues Allege

  19-02-2023 09:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Stanford University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne was formerly executive vice president for research and chief scientific officer at biotech giant Genentech, according to his page on Wikipedia. "In 2022, Stanford University opened an investigation into allegations of Tessier-Lavigne's involvement in fabricating results in articles published between 2001 and 2008."
  But Friday Stanford's student newspaper published even more allegations:
  In 2009, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, then a top executive at the
  
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• Whatever Happened to the Ruby Programming Language?

  19-02-2023 05:44 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Three years after Rails was introduced in 2005, InfoWorld asked whether it might the successor to Java.
  That didn't happen. So this week InfoWorld "spoke to current and former Ruby programmers to try to trace the language's rise and fall." Some responses:"Rails came along at the cusp of a period of transformation and growth for the web," says Matthew Boeh, a Ruby developer since 2006. "It both benefited from and fueled that growth, but it was a foregone conclusion that it wasn't going to be the
  
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• No, a Piece of the Sun Didn't Just 'Break Off'

  19-02-2023 03:44 via science.slashdot.org
  
  The CBC reports:
  You may have seen stories over the past week or so with headlines like, "Part of the sun breaks free and forms a strange vortex, baffling scientists," or "Unbelievable moment a piece of the sun BREAKS OFF baffles scientists" or even "NASA captures piece of sun breaking off, baffles scientists." It all started with a harmless, informative tweet. Tamitha Skov, a space weather forecaster and science communicator, just broke away from the main filament... Implications for understand
  
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• CBS Explores Whether AI Will Eliminate Jobs -- Especially For Coders

  19-02-2023 00:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  "All right, we're going to begin this hour with a question on many people's minds these days, amid all these major developments in the field of artificial intelligence. And that question is this: How long until the machines replace us, take our jobs?"
  That's the beginning of a segment broadcast on CBS's morning-television news show (with the headline, "Will artificial intelligence erase jobs?") Some excerpts:
  "As artificial intelligence gets better.... job security is only supposed to get worse.
  
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