ICT news

• Rust Foundation Solicits Feedback on Updated Policy for Trademarks

  09-04-2023 23:46 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  "Rust" and "Cargo" are registered trademarks held by the Rust Foundation — the independent non-profit supporting Rust's maintainers. In August 1,000 people responded to the foundation's Trademark Policy Review Survey, after which the foundation invited any interested individuals to join their Trademark Policy Working Group (which also included Rust Project leaders). They've now created a draft of an updated policy for feedbacks...
  Crate, RS, "Rustacean," and the logo of Ferris the crab are
  
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• 'Super Mario Bros. Movie' Sets Record for Highest-Grossing Animated Movie Opening Ever

  09-04-2023 22:15 via games.slashdot.org
  
  The Super Mario Bros. Movie "has now earned the largest global animated opening weekend in box office history," reports the Wrap, with a worldwide five-day launch of $377 million, passing the $358 million record set by Disney's Frozen II on Thanksgiving weekend in 2019."
  Domestically, "Mario" was projected when it opened in theaters on Wednesday to earn a five-day opening of at least $125 million from 4,343 theaters, and it has shattered that figure with $204.6 million grossed. Both that and its
  
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• Libreboot Founder's 'Minifree' Sells Free-Software Laptops with Libreboot Preinstalled

  09-04-2023 21:15 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Slashdot reader unixbhaskar writes:
  A company in the U.K. calling itself Minifree has started to ship old Thinkpad (specifically the X series and T series models) with Libreboot firmware. Which is based on coreboot firmware.More specifically, Libreboot is the free-as-in-speech replacement for proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware, the site notes, "offering faster boots speeds, better security and many advanced features compared to most proprietary boot firmware." Those advanced features include the GNU
  
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• Better Electronic Sensors Mean Militaries Need Better Camouflage

  09-04-2023 20:14 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid shares a new report from the Economist:Thanks to innovations such as fractal colouration patterns, which mimic nature by repeating shapes at different scales, the distance from which naked eyes can quickly spot soldiers wearing the best camouflage has shrunk, by one reckoning, by a fifth over the past two decades. That is impressive. On today's battlefields, however, it is no longer enough to merely hide from human eyes.
  People and kit are given away as well by
  
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• Will AI Disrupt the Videogame Industry?

  09-04-2023 18:34 via games.slashdot.org
  
  VC firm Andreessen Horowitz believes the industry most affected by generative AI will be videogames. But they're not the only ones, reports the Economist:
  Games' interactivity requires them to be stuffed with laboriously designed content: consider the 30 square miles of landscape or 60 hours of music in "Red Dead Redemption 2", a recent cowboy adventure. Enlisting ai assistants to churn it out could drastically shrink timescales and budgets....
  Making a game is already easier than it was: nearly
  
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• See Uranus' Rings in Stunning New Image from the Webb Telescope

  09-04-2023 17:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a new stunning image of ice giant Uranus, with almost all its faint dusty rings on display," reports CNN:The image is representative of the telescope's significant sensitivity, NASA said, as the fainter rings have only been captured previously by the Voyager 2 spacecraft and the W.M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea in Hawaii. Uranus has 13 known rings, with 11 of them visible in the new Webb image. Nine rings are classified as the main rings, while the o
  
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• Raspberry Pi Launches Online Code Editor to Help Kids Learn

  09-04-2023 16:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares this report from Tom's Hardware:
  When we think about Raspberry Pi, we normally picture single-board computers, but the Raspberry Pi Foundation was started to help kids learn about computers and it wants to help whether or not you own its hardware. The non-profit arm of Raspberry Pi this week released its new, browser-based code editor that's designed for young people (or any people) who are learning.
  The Raspberry Pi Code Editor, which is considered to be in beta, is a
  
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• How Old Coal Mines Are Now Producing Clean Geothermal Energy

  09-04-2023 13:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Kenneth Stephen (Slashdot reader #1,950) writes:As the world rolls back on using coal to extract energy, it leaves behind empty coal mines. The BBC reports that the UK is actively using these coal mines as a source of geothermal energy.The BBC visits a wine warehouse in the northeast England town Gateshead, where old coal mines "could still have a role to play in heating homes — but this time, without burning fossil fuels."
  A new district heating system in Gateshead is poised to begin warm
  
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• C Rival 'Zig' Cracks Tiobe Index Top 50, Go Remains in Top 10

  09-04-2023 09:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  InfoWorld reports:
  Zig, a general purpose programming language that interacts with C/C++ programs and promises to be a modern alternative to C, has made an appearance in the Tiobe index of programming language popularity. Zig entered the top 50 in the April edition of the Tiobe Programming Community Index, ranking 46th, albeit with a rating of just 0.19%. By contrast, the Google-promoted Carbon language, positioned as an experimental successor to C++, ranked just 168th.
  Tiobe CEO Paul Jansen arg
  
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• The Search for Alien Life Moves to Icy Moons

  09-04-2023 05:47 via science.slashdot.org
  
  The search for life beyond Earth "follows the water," reports the Economist (since water is vital for earth's lifeforms, and the laws of chemistry are universal). "For most of the space age that insight led scientists to Mars." But...More and more, though, planetary scientists are following the water to other places — and in particular to the so-called "icy moons" that orbit Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus, the solar system's quartet of giant gas planets. Many of those moons are either
  
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• ECMAScript 2023 Spec for JavaScript Includes New Methods for Arrays

  09-04-2023 03:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Four new capabilities are planned for the JavaScript specification's next update, reports InfoWorld. Based on a list of finished proposals, InfoWorld expects the following in ECMAScript 2023:
  - Array find from last, a proposal for .findlast() and .findLastIndex() methods on array and typed array...- Permitting symbols as keys in WeakMap keys, a proposal that extends the WeakMap API to allow the use of unique symbols as keys. Currently, WeakMaps are limited to allow only objects as keys.- Change
  
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• A Quandary as EV Makers Hunt for Metals: Unleash the Deep Sea Robots?

  09-04-2023 00:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "As automakers scour the planet for the metals it will take to build tens of millions of electric cars, they are deliberately taking a detour around one of the only places on earth where so much of what they need is laying around and available to be plucked," reports the Washington Post:The deep seabed is teeming with potato-sized rocks packed with the nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese EV manufacturers covet. But efforts by mining companies to harvest the nodules with undersea robots are hitt
  
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