ICT news

• 'Google's Smart Speakers are Finally Smart Enough to Shut Up'

  23-04-2023 22:43 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this scathing rant from the Verge:It's a truth universally acknowledged that smart speakers should just shut up. I don't want to know when Siri / Alexa / Google has locked my front door — I just asked it to do that and I expect it to happen. (We'll put a pin in the fact that it doesn't always do this). So Google's announcement this week that it's taking more steps to stop its Google Assistant from chattering away to you every time you send a command to a Nest sma
  
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• Arm is Developing Its Own Advanced Chip

  23-04-2023 21:43 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  "Arm is developing its own chip," reports the Financial Times, "to showcase the capabilities of its designs, as the SoftBank-owned group seeks to attract new customers and fuel growth following a blockbuster IPO later this year."
  The company will team up with manufacturing partners to develop the new chip, according to people briefed on the move who describe it as the most advanced chipmaking effort the Cambridge-headquartered group has ever embarked upon. The effort comes just as SoftBank seeks
  
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• Nuclear Fusion Won't Be Regulated in the US the Same Way as Nuclear Fission

  23-04-2023 20:43 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Last week there was some good news for startups working on commercial nuclear fusion in the U.S. And it came from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (or NRC), the top governing body for America's nuclear power plants nuclear materials, reports CNBC:The top regulatory agency for nuclear materials safety in the U.S. voted unanimously to regulate the burgeoning fusion industry differently than the nuclear fission industry, and fusion startups are celebrating that as a major win. As a result, some pr
  
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• Is It Time to Stop Saying 'Learn to Code'?

  23-04-2023 19:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: According to Google Trends, peak "Lean to Code" occurred in early 2019 when laid-off Buzzfeed and Huffpost journalists were taunted with the phrase on Twitter...As Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently put it, "We're in a different world." Indeed. Encouraging kids to pursue CS careers in Code.org's viral 2013 launch video, Zuckerberg explained, "Our policy at Facebook is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find."In Learning to C
  
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• KaOS Linux Celebrates 10 Years with New ISO Release Featuring Pre-Release KDE Plasma 6

  23-04-2023 18:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  9to5Linux reports:KDE-focused and Arch Linux-inspired independent distribution KaOS Linux celebrates today 10 years of existence with a new stable ISO release that brings some of the latest GNU/Linux technologies and a preview of the upcoming KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment.
  Yes, you're reading it right, KaOS is one of the very first GNU/Linux distributions to offer you a live ISO image with a pre-release version of the KDE Plasma 6 desktop, which, of course, is compiled against the latest Qt 6
  
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• Bill Gates Predicts Within 18 Months, AI Will Be Teaching Kids to Read

  23-04-2023 17:34 via slashdot.org
  
  Bill Gates believes AI chatbots "are on track to help children learn to read and hone their writing skills in 18 months time," reports CNBC:Historically, teaching writing skills has proven to be an incredibly difficult task for a computer, Gates noted. When teachers give feedback on essays, they look for traits like narrative structure and clarity of prose — a "high-cognitive exercise" that's "tough" for developers to replicate in code, he said. But AI chatbots' ability to recognize and re
  
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• Startups are Using GPUs to Simulate Quantum Computers

  23-04-2023 16:34 via slashdot.org
  
  Lacking quantum computers, some startups "are developing a new breed of software inspired by algorithms used in quantum physics..." reports Reuters.
  "Once too big for conventional computers, these algorithms are finally being put to work thanks to today's powerful artificial intelligence chips, industry executives told Reuters."QC Ware, a software startup that has raised more than $33 million and initially focused only on software that could run on quantum computers, said it needed to change tac
  
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• Intel's I219-LM Gigabit Ethernet Adapter Ran at 60% Maximum Speed on Linux Since 2020

  23-04-2023 13:34 via slashdot.org
  
  Phoronix reports:If you rely on an Intel I219-LM Gigabit Ethernet adapter, you will want to look forward to upgrading your Linux kernel build soon... A fix was committed Thursday after Intel engineers discovered this particular Ethernet chipset had only been running at around 60% of its maximum speed due to a regression introduced back in 2020...
  Since the release of Linux 5.8 in mid-2020, this Ethernet adapter had been running at around 60% of its advertised potential due to an e1000e driver re
  
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• QEMU 8.0 Released with More ARM and RISC-V Emulation

  23-04-2023 10:04 via slashdot.org
  
  There's a major new update of QEMU, the open-source machine emulator, reports 9to5Linux:Coming a year after QEMU 7.0, the QEMU 8.0 release is here to improve support for ARM and RISC-V architectures.- For ARM, it adds emulation support for FEAT_EVT, FEAT_FGT, and AArch32 ARMv8-R, CPU emulation for Cortex-A55 and Cortex-R52, support for a new Olimex STM32 H405 machine type, as well as gdbstub support for M-profile system registers.
  - For the RISC-V architecture, QEMU 8.0 brings updated machine su
  
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• Argentina's 'Generacion Zoe' Promised Financial and Spirtual Development. Was it a Ponzi Scheme?

  23-04-2023 06:59 via news.slashdot.org
  
  It was a mix of spiritualism and financial education, remembers one patron of Generación Zoe, which "pitched itself as an 'educational and resource-creating community for personal, professional, financial and spiritual development,'" reports Rest of World:
  Generación Zoe claimed to make money through trading, and promised a 7.5% monthly return on investment for three years for those who put money into its "trust." In Argentina and other countries, other companies with the Zoe name
  
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• US Department of Homeland Security is Now Studying How to Use of AI

  23-04-2023 03:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  America's Department of Homeland Security "will establish a new task force to examine how the government can use artificial intelligence technology to protect the country," reports CNBC.The task force was announcement by department secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Friday during a speech at a Council on Foreign Relations event:
  "Our department will lead in the responsible use of AI to secure the homeland," Mayorkas said, while also pledging to defend "against the malicious use of this transformationa
  
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• US Department of Homeland Security is Now Studying How to Make Use of AI

  23-04-2023 03:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  America's Department of Homeland Security "will establish a new task force to examine how the government can use artificial intelligence technology to protect the country," reports CNBC.The task force was announcement by department secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Friday during a speech at a Council on Foreign Relations event:
  "Our department will lead in the responsible use of AI to secure the homeland," Mayorkas said, while also pledging to defend "against the malicious use of this transformationa
  
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• Scientists Discover First 'Neutron-Rich' Isotope of Uranium Since 1979

  23-04-2023 02:17 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from LiveScience: Scientists have discovered and synthesized an entirely new isotope of the highly radioactive element uranium. But it might last only 40 minutes before decaying into other elements. The new isotope, uranium-241, has 92 protons (as all uranium isotopes do) and 149 neutrons, making it the first new neutron-rich isotope of uranium discovered since 1979. While atoms of a given element always have the same number of protons, different isotopes,
  
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• New Version of Rust Speeds Compilation With Less Debugging Info By Default

  23-04-2023 01:08 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  The Rust team released a new version Thursday — Rust 1.69.0 — boasting over over 3,000 new commits from over 500 contributors.
  Phoronix highlights two new improvements:In order to speed-up compilation speeds, Rust 1.69 and moving forward debug information is no longer included in build scripts by default. Cargo will avoid emitting debug information in build scripts by default — leading to less informative backtraces in build scripts when problems arise, but faster build speeds
  
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• Opponents to a US Digital Dollar Include Several US Presidential Hopefuls

  23-04-2023 00:08 via news.slashdot.org
  
  In the U.S., at least three early candidates for president from both parties "want to make it clear they would not support any proposals for a central bank-backed digital US dollar," reports Bloomberg — which may be a little premature, because "A central bank digital currency, or CBDC, is far from reality in the U.S."Some officials at the Federal Reserve have expressed doubt over the need for one, especially for use by everyday Americans. The Fed has also said it would want approval from C
  
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