ICT news

• Microsoft Bets That Fusion Power Is Closer Than Many Think

  10-05-2023 23:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Many experts believe fusion power remains decades away. Microsoft thinks it could be just around the corner. From a report: In a deal that is believed to be the first commercial agreement for fusion power, the tech giant has agreed to purchase electricity from startup Helion Energy within about five years. Helion, which is backed by OpenAI founder Sam Altman, committed to start producing electricity through fusion by 2028 and target power generation for Microsoft of at least 50 megawatts after a
  
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• Google Unveils Pixel 7a With Tensor G2, 90Hz Display and 64MP Camera

  10-05-2023 23:00 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  Google has launched the Pixel 7a for $499, featuring a 6.1-inch OLED display at 90Hz, Tensor G2 chip with 8GB RAM, and 64MP main camera. The Pixel 7a nearly matches the flagship Pixel 7 on specs but starts at a lower price. GSMArena.com reports: Yes, the 7a marks several firsts for the Pixel a series. For starters, its 6.1" OLED display now runs at 90Hz, the same refresh rate as the Pixel 7 (though that one has a slightly larger 6.3" display). The resolution is FHD+ and you get Gorilla Glass 3 p
  
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• Google's $1,799 Pixel Fold Arrives in Late-June

  10-05-2023 22:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google today officially launched its first foldable smartphone, the Pixel Fold. From a report: The design affords a lot more screen real estate. The internal display is 7.6 inches, with a 6:5 aspect ratio. The resolution is 2208 x 1840 OLED at 380ppi, with a refresh rate of up to 120Hz. [...] The bar on the rear of the device houses a three-camera system: a 48-megapixel main, 10.8-megapixel ultrawide and a 10.8-megapixel telephoto with 5x optical Zoom and 20x Super Res Zoom. The front-facing cam
  
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• First UK Baby With DNA From Three People Born After New IVF Procedure

  10-05-2023 22:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  The first UK baby created with DNA from three people has been born after doctors performed a groundbreaking IVF procedure that aims to prevent children from inheriting incurable diseases. From a report: The technique, known as mitochondrial donation treatment (MDT), uses tissue from the eggs of healthy female donors to create IVF embryos that are free from harmful mutations their mothers carry and are likely to pass on to their children. Because the embryos combine sperm and egg from the biologi
  
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• YouTube Has Started Blocking Ad Blockers

  10-05-2023 21:21 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: YouTube Premium subscribership grew to a record 80 million users in 2022, and Google responded by announcing it would be investing more into its subscription offerings in 2023. What we didn't realize at the time was how that could mean handicapping its free offerings to get more people to pay for its services. When watching videos yesterday, one Redditor encountered a popup informing them that "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube." The message offered a bu
  
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• Google Announces PaLM 2, Its Next Generation Language Model

  10-05-2023 20:41 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google, in a blog post: PaLM 2 is a state-of-the-art language model with improved multilingual, reasoning and coding capabilities.
  Multilinguality: PaLM 2 [PDF] is more heavily trained on multilingual text, spanning more than 100 languages. This has significantly improved its ability to understand, generate and translate nuanced text -- including idioms, poems and riddles -- across a wide variety of languages, a hard problem to solve. PaLM 2 also passes advanced language proficiency exams at the
  
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• Google Drops Waitlist for AI Chatbot Bard, Expands To Over 180 Countries

  10-05-2023 20:09 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google is adding a smorgasbord of new features to its AI chatbot Bard, including support for new languages (Japanese and Korean), easier ways to export text to Google Docs and Gmail, visual search, and a dark mode. Most significantly, the company is removing the waitlist for Bard and making the system available in English in 180 countries and territories. From a report: It's also promising future features like AI image generation powered by Adobe and integration with third-party web services lik
  
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• Google's New Magic Editor Uses AI To Totally Transform Your Photos

  10-05-2023 19:27 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google's latest Photos trick is a feature it's calling Magic Editor, which uses generative AI to let you make major edits to a photo without professional tools. From a report: Google shared a couple examples of Magic Editor in action that are both pretty cool. In one, a photo of a person in front of a waterfall, Google entirely moves the person further to the side of the photo, erases people in the background, and makes the sky a prettier blue. In another photo, Magic Editor scoots a child on a
  
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• China Reports First Arrest Over Fake News Generated By ChatGPT

  10-05-2023 18:47 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A man in China's Gansu province has been detained for allegedly using ChatGPT to generate a fake story about a train crash, marking China's first arrest in an AI-related probe as Beijing tightens deepfake technology. From a report: The story, which claimed the crash killed nine construction workers in a city in China's northwestern Gansu, gained more than 15,000 clicks after being published on social media on April 25, Pingliang city's local police bureau reported. China's new rules for deepfake
  
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• TurboTax is Sending Checks To 4.4 Million Customers as Part of a $141 Million Settlement

  10-05-2023 18:23 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Roughly 4.4 million people will soon receive checks from TurboTax, following a 50-state settlement with parent company Intuit for allegedly steering millions of low-income Americans away from free tax-filing services. From a report: Customers affected by the settlement will receive an email about the settlement and checks will automatically be mailed throughout this month. Most customers will get about $30, with some customers that used TurboTax for three consecutive years getting up to $85. A w
  
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• Clearview Fined Again in France for Failing To Comply With Privacy Orders

  10-05-2023 17:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Clearview AI, the US startup that's attracted notoriety in recent years for a massive privacy violation after it scraped selfies off the Internet and used people's data to build a facial recognition tool it pitched to law enforcement and others, has been hit with another fine in France over non-cooperation with the data protection regulator. From a report: The overdue penalty payment of $5.7M has been issued by the French regulator, the CNIL -- on top of a $22M sanction it slapped the company wi
  
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• Judge Nixes Block Shareholder Suit Over 'Terrible Business Decision' To Acquire Tidal

  10-05-2023 16:43 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  A Delaware judge has dismissed a shareholder lawsuit against financial technology company Block over its 2021 acquisition of majority ownership in Tidal, the music streaming service partly owned by rapper Jay-Z. From a report: A pension fund shareholder alleged that Block founder and CEO Jack Dorsey and the company's board of directors breached their fiduciary duties in agreeing to pay roughly $300 million to take control of Tidal as it was failing financially and the target of an ongoing crimin
  
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• Google Accused of Breaking European Privacy Law By Hoarding Personal Data of Potential Job Candidates

  10-05-2023 16:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: When Mohamed Maslouh, a London-based contractor, was assigned to enter data into Google's internal gHire recruitment system last September, he noticed something surprising. The database contained the profiles of thousands of people in the EU and U.K. whose names, phone numbers, personal email addresses and resumes dated back as far as 2011. Maslouh knew something was amiss, as he had received data-protection training from Randstad, the European human-resource
  
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• Ford CEO Says It Will Keep Apple CarPlay, Android Auto: 'We Lost That Battle 10 Years Ago'

  10-05-2023 15:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Drive: While General Motors has announced that it plans to phase out CarPlay in its EVs starting in 2024, Ford has just doubled down on long-term CarPlay compatibility. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Ford CEO Jim Farley laid it bare: "In terms of content, we kind of lost that battle 10 years ago," Farley said. "So like get real with it, because you're not going to make a ton of money on content inside the vehicle."Farley's argument is e
  
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• MTV News Shut Down As Paramount Global Cuts 25% of Its Staff

  10-05-2023 13:30 via slashdot.org
  
  Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and Showtime, announced today that it is laying off some 25% of its staff and shutting down MTV News. NPR reports: In addition to reports of a soft ad market, Paramount Global is doing considerable restructuring. Earlier this year, Showtime merged with MTV Entertainment Studios. In an email to staff obtained by NPR, Chris McCarthy, president and CEO of Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks, explain
  
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• Amazon To License Original Content To Other Media Companies

  10-05-2023 12:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Amazon has launched a new unit, Amazon MGM Studios Distribution, that will allow the company to license Amazon Originals and other titles to third-party media companies, including streaming services and cable TV. TechCrunch reports: For the first time, titles such as âoeThe Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm," "Coming 2 America," "Goliath," "Hunters," "The Tender Bar," "The Tomorrow War," "The Voyeurs" and "Without Remorse," among others, will be sold to other media outlet
  
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• 'Sleep Language' Could Enable Communication During Lucid Dreams

  10-05-2023 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Researchers have developed a "language" called Remmyo, which relies on specific facial muscle movements that can occur during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. People who are capable of lucid dreaming can learn this language during their waking hours and potentially communicate while they are asleep. Ars Technica reports: "You can transfer all important information from lucid dreams using no more than three letters in a word," [sleep expert Michael Raduga], who founded Phase Research Center in 200
  
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• UFO Hunters Built an Open-Source AI System To Scan the Skies

  10-05-2023 05:30 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a Motherboard article: Now, frustrated with a lack of transparency and trust around official accounts of UFO phenomena, a team of developers has decided to take matters into their own hands with an open source citizen science project called Sky360, which aims to blanket the earth in affordable monitoring stations to watch the skies 24/7, and even plans to use AI and machine learning to spot anomalous behavior. Unlike earlier 20th century efforts such as
  
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• Major Psychologists' Group Warns of Social Media's Potential Harm To Kids

  10-05-2023 04:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  For the first time, the American Psychological Association (APA) has issued guidelines for teenagers, parents, teachers and policymakers on how to use social media, with the aim of reducing the rate of depression, anxiety and loneliness in adolescents. NPR reports: The 10 recommendations in the report summarize recent scientific findings and advise actions, primarily by parents, such as monitoring teens' feeds and training them in social media literacy, even before they begin using these platfor
  
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• Metaverse Could Contribute Up To 2.4% of US GDP By 2035, Study Shows

  10-05-2023 03:25 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A study commissioned by Meta has found that the metaverse could contribute around 2.4% to U.S. annual GDP by 2035, equating to as much as $760 billion. Reuters reports: The concept of the metaverse includes augmented and virtual reality technologies that allow users to immerse themselves in a virtual world or overlay information digitally on images of the real world, according to the report by consulting firm Deloitte. Economic gains may come from the use of the technologies in the defense, medi
  
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• Goodbye To Roblox On Linux With Their New Anti-Cheat and Wine Blocking

  10-05-2023 02:45 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Roblox's new anti-cheat software puts a stop to in-game exploits, but at what cost? According to Liam Dawe from Gaming On Linux, it's blocking the Wine application, meaning "you won't be able to play it on Linux any more, at all, unless you find some sort of special workaround." He adds: "Previously the roll-out of this update was being tested only with some users. Now though it's here for everyone giving a 64 bit client and introducing their Hyperion anti-cheat software which they are intention
  
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• OpenAI's New Tool Attempts To Explain Language Models' Behaviors

  10-05-2023 02:02 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: In an effort to peel back the layers of LLMs, OpenAI is developing a tool to automatically identify which parts of an LLM are responsible for which of its behaviors. The engineers behind it stress that it's in the early stages, but the code to run it is available in open source on GitHub as of this morning. "We're trying to [develop ways to] anticipate what the problems with an AI system will be," William Saunders, the interpretability team ma
  
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• Chinese Police Arrest Man Who Allegedly Used ChatGPT To Spread Fake News

  10-05-2023 01:20 via slashdot.org
  
  Chinese police have arrested a man for using ChatGPT to create a fake news article about a train crash, under a new law governing "deep synthesis technologies" introduced by China this year. CNBC reports: Police in Gansu province in northwest China detained a man, surnamed Hong, who they said allegedly fabricated a news story regarding a train crash that caused nine deaths. The authorities found that more than 20 accounts had posted this article on a blogging platform owned by Chinese search gia
  
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• SBF Asks Court To Dismiss Most Criminal Charges Against Him

  10-05-2023 00:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is seeking the dismissal of 10 of the 13 charges against him over the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange. Axios reports: Lawyers for Bankman-Fried, who's pleaded not guilty to fraud, conspiracy, campaign finance law violations and money laundering, in a filing argued that several of the charges failed to properly state an offense. The motion that was filed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York is seeking the dismissal of 10 of the 13
  
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• Researchers Craft a Fully Edible Battery

  10-05-2023 00:02 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A team of researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Milan recently created a fully rechargeable battery using nontoxic edible components. This is probably the world's first battery that is safe to ingest and entirely made of food-grade materials. "Given the level of safety of these batteries, they could be used in children's toys, where there is a high risk of ingestion," said Mario Caironi, a senior researcher at IIT. Howe
  
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