ICT news

• US Military Prepares for Space Warfare As Potential Threats Grow From China

  02-04-2023 23:25 via news.slashdot.org
  
  America's Department of Defense "is gearing up for a future conflict in space," reports the Wall Street Journal, "as China and Russia deploy missiles and lasers that can take out satellites and disrupt military and civilian communications."
  The White House this month proposed a $30 billion annual budget for the U.S. Space Force, almost $4 billion more than last year and a bigger jump than for other services including the Air Force and the Navy.... A key aim of a stand-alone force was to plan, eq
  
  Read more

• Could a Photosynthesis 'Hack' Lead to New Ways of Generating Renewable Energy?

  02-04-2023 22:09 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "Researchers have 'hacked' the earliest stages of photosynthesis," according to a new announcement from the University of Cambridge.
  CNET reports:Scientists have studied photosynthesis in plants for centuries, but an international team believes they've unlocked new secrets in nature's great machine that could revolutionize sustainable fuels and fight climate change. The team says they've determined it's possible to extract an electrical charge at the best possible point in photosynthesis. This m
  
  Read more

• Star64 RISC-V Single-Board PC Launches April 4 for $70 and Up

  02-04-2023 20:34 via build.slashdot.org
  
  PINE64 has an update about their Star64 single-board computer with a quad-core RISC-V processor: it will be available on April 4th in two configurations: 4GB and 8GB LPDDR4 memory for $69.99 and $89.99:Let me just quickly reiterate the Star64 features:- Quad core 64bit RISC-V
  - HDMI video output
  - 4x DSI and 4x CSI lates
  - i2c touch panel connector
  - dual Gigabit Ethernet ports
  - dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth
  - 1x native USB3.0 port, 3x shared USB2.0 ports
  - PCIe x1 open-ended slot and GPIO bus p
  
  Read more

• Chris Carter Announces 'Tweaked' X-Files Series - But No Cartoon

  02-04-2023 19:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  It was exactly 30 years ago that The X-Files began filming in Vancouver. Now X-Files creator Chris Carter tells CBC's On the Coast that the groundbreaking TV series is going to be "remounted" by Black Panther director Ryan Coogler:Carter says he thinks the series would need to be significantly tweaked for current audiences. "We're so steeped in conspiracies now," he said. "The X-Files dealt with a central conspiracy, but now the world is so full of conspiracies that I think that it would be a di
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Americans Begin Returning to Cities After Remote-Work Exodus, Data Shows

  02-04-2023 18:34 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares this report from the Washington Post:The exodus of people fleeing large urban areas during the height of the pandemic appears to be reversing, according to data from the Census Bureau released Thursday. Many workers who could telecommute abandoned crowded cities and counties for suburban or rural areas when covid struck, causing demographers and businesses to wonder whether the movement signified a permanent shift. But the overall patterns of population change are movi
  
  Read more

• US State Governments Try Lavishing Subsidies to Attract Chip and EV Factories

  02-04-2023 17:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  U.S. states are now "doling out more cash than ever to lure multibillion-dollar microchip, electric vehicle and battery factories," reports the Associated Press, "inspiring ever-more competition as they dig deeper into their pockets to attract big employers and capitalize on a wave of huge new projects."Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas have made billion-dollar pledges for a microchip or EV plant, with more state-subsidized plant announcements by profitable auto
  
  Read more

• Truck Thief Gunned Down by Owner After AirTag Gives Away Location

  02-04-2023 16:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  "A Texas truck theft ended in gun fire after the suspected thief was tracked down by thevehicle's owner's AirTag," reports AppleInsider:San Antonio police received a stolen vehicle report at around 1 pm from a Braesview home. However, before police could recover the stolen truck, the owners of the vehicle decided to perform their own investigation, using an AirTag left in the truck to do so. The unnamed owners tracked the truck to a shopping center in Southeast Military Drive, reports KSAT. Howe
  
  Read more

• Driverless Cars Face Hit-and-Run Collisions from Human Drivers

  02-04-2023 13:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Around 4 in the morning one Tuesday night in San Francisco, an autonomously-driven Cruise vehicle stopped at a red light — and was rear-ended by a Honda. But then "the Honda driver reversed backward several feet, stopped and drove forward again, making contact with the Cruise vehicle a second time," reports NBC News. After damaging the car and injuring its two test drivers, according to a collision report the Honda then "left the scene without exchanging information."
  It's just part of "a
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Ask Slashdot: What Was Your Longest-Lived PC?

  02-04-2023 09:34 via ask.slashdot.org
  
  Replacing their main machine, long-time Slashdot reader shanen had a sobering thought. "Considering how many years it's lasted and adding that number to my own age, I wouldn't want to bet on who will outlast which." And this prompted a look back at all the computers used over a lifetime:I've purchased at least 15 personal computers over the decades. Might be more like 20 and couldn't even count how many company computers I've used for various classes and work. Then there were the computer labs f
  
  Read more

• San Francisco Faces 'Doom Loop' from Office Workers Staying Home, Gutting Tax Base

  02-04-2023 05:34 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Today a warning was published from the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle. "Experts say post-pandemic woes stemming from office workers staying home instead of commuting into the city could send San Francisco into a 'doom loop' that would gut its tax base, decimate fare-reliant regional transit systems like BART and trap it in an economic death spiral...."Despite our housing crisis, it was years into the COVID pandemic before our leaders meaningfully questioned the logic of reserving
  
  Read more

• Steve Jobs Has a New 'Memoir', to Be Published More than 11 Years After His Death

  02-04-2023 03:34 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares this report from the Washington Post:Steve Jobs never lived to be an old wise man.
  But running Apple and Pixar, tumbling and thriving, earned him a lot of wisdom in his 56 years. Now, a small group of his family, friends and former colleagues have collected it into "Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words," available free to the public online starting on April 11. Somewhere between a posthumous memoir and a scrapbook album, it is told through notes and dr
  
  Read more

• Can Codon 'Turbocharge Python's Notoriously Slow Compiler'?

  02-04-2023 00:37 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  IEEE Spectrum reports on Codon, a Python compiler specifically developed to, as they put it, "turbocharge Python's Notoriously slow compiler."
  "We do type checking during the compilation process, which lets us avoid all of that expensive type manipulation at runtime," says Ariya Shajii, an MIT CSAIL graduate student and lead author on a recent paper about Codon.
  Without any unnecessary data or type checking during runtime, Codon results in zero overhead, according to Shajii. And when it comes to
  
  Read more

Follow @newslocke_ict on Twitter!