ICT news

• Pixel Uses are Reporting Newest Google App Causes Overheating, Battery Drain

  14-05-2023 23:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  One cellphone owner reports their Pixel 6 Pro "has recently been overheating and excessively draining its battery," reports Endgadget.
  "They suspect the culprit is the Google app and an update that began rolling out on May 12th..." And they're not the only ones, judging by comments left in the Reddit and Google support forums."It just started yesterday. Massive battery usage from Google app and to a lesser degree Android System Intelligence...." one Reddit user wrote. Beyond the battery not last
  
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• Pixel Users are Reporting Newest Google App Causes Overheating, Battery Drain

  14-05-2023 23:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  One cellphone owner reports their Pixel 6 Pro "has recently been overheating and excessively draining its battery," reports Endgadget.
  "They suspect the culprit is the Google app and an update that began rolling out on May 12th..." And they're not the only ones, judging by comments left in the Reddit and Google support forums."It just started yesterday. Massive battery usage from Google app and to a lesser degree Android System Intelligence...." one Reddit user wrote. Beyond the battery not last
  
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• Deliveries-By-Drone Continue Expanding. Pizza Deliveries Planned for Seattle

  14-05-2023 22:22 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "Pagliacci Pizza is partnering with drone company Zipline to begin drone delivery to customers in the Seattle area," reports the Seattle Times, citing a statement this week from Zipline."If all goes well, the company expects to deliver pizzas in 2024," reports local news outlet KUOW, noting that Zipline has battery-powered drones that hover above a customer's location "and lowers the delivery on a tethered droid.""Obviously, it seems pretty sci-fi and a lot of customers think this is totally ins
  
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• Are Google's AI Tools Just Embracing the Dream of Clippy?

  14-05-2023 20:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft's virtual assistant Clippy "isn't making a comeback," write the Verge, "but its spirit — now animated by AI — lives on..."The words "it looks like you're writing a letter, would you like some help with that?" didn't appear at any point during Google's recent demo of its AI office suite tools. But as I watched Aparna Pappu, Google's Workspace leader, outline the feature onstage at I/O, I was reminded of a certain animated paperclip that another tech giant once hoped would he
  
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• How Off-Grid Solar Power Transforms Remote Villages

  14-05-2023 19:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  775 million people around the world didn't have electricity last year, according to the International Energy Agency. But the Associated Press points out that's changing in some of the world's most remote places — thanks to off-grid solar systems.
  Here's a typical example from the world's fourth most-populous country...
  Before electricity came to the village a bit less than two years ago, the day ended when the sun went down. Villagers in Laindeha, on the island of Sumba in eastern Indonesi
  
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• Astronomers Report Brightest-Ever, Three-Year Cosmic Explosion

  14-05-2023 18:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "Astronomers have spotted the largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed, and it's 10 times brighter than any known exploding star, or supernova," reports CNN:The brightness of the explosion, called AT2021lwx, has lasted for three years, while most supernovas are only bright for a few months. The event, still being detected by telescopes, occurred nearly 8 billion light-years away from Earth when the universe was about 6 billion years old. The luminosity of the explosion is also three times brighte
  
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• Researchers' AI Predicted Pancreatic Cancer 3 Years Before Doctors

  14-05-2023 17:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  The Register reports:
  AI algorithms can screen for pancreatic cancer and predict whether patients will develop the disease up to three years before a human doctor can make the same diagnosis, according to research published in Nature on Monday.
  Pancreatic cancer is deadly; the five-year survival rate averages 12 percent. Academics working in Denmark and the US believe AI could help clinicians by detecting pancreatic cancer at earlier stages, if the software can reliably predict which patients ar
  
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• KDE Plasma 6 Gets Better Default Settings to Improve Out-of-the-Box Experience

  14-05-2023 16:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  KDE developer/QA manager Nate Graham describes the week-long development sprint for the next major release of Plasma desktop environment. And one big focus was "better default settings" to "improve the UX out of the box."Some highlights from Nate's blog post:- Plasma 6 will default to opening files and folders with a double-click, not a single-click. Even though almost everyone in the room for the discussion actually uses and prefers opening with single-click, we had to admit that it's probably
  
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• 'Virtual Girlfriend' Chatbot Trained on Conversations With Men Starts Talking Mostly About Sex

  14-05-2023 13:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Snapchat, "influencer" Caryn Marjorie created a virtual version of herself "powered by the latest artificial intelligence technology and thousands of hours of recordings of the real Marjorie," reports Fortune.
  It's the work of Forever Voices (which also offers pay-by-the-minute conversations with its voice-mimicking chatbot versions of Steve Jobs, Taylor Swift and Donald Trump). Launched last week in a private, invite-only beta test on Telegram, the $1-a-minute virtual Marjorie has "already gene
  
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• As Wireless Carriers 'Rip and Replace' Chinese-Made Telecom Equipment, Who Pays?

  14-05-2023 09:34 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  "Deep in a pine forest in Wilcox County, Alabama, three workers dangled from the top of a 350-foot cellular tower," reports the New York Times. "They were there to rip out and replace Chinese equipment from the local wireless network..."As the United States and China battle for geopolitical and technological primacy, the fallout has reached rural Alabama and small wireless carriers in dozens of states. They are on the receiving end of the Biden administration's sweeping policies to suppress Chin
  
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• Will AI Just Turn All of Human Knowledge into Proprietary Products?

  14-05-2023 06:34 via slashdot.org
  
  "Tech CEOs want us to believe that generative AI will benefit humanity," argues an column in the Guardian, adding "They are kidding themselves..."
  "There is a world in which generative AI, as a powerful predictive research tool and a performer of tedious tasks, could indeed be marshalled to benefit humanity, other species and our shared home. But for that to happen, these technologies would need to be deployed inside a vastly different economic and social order than our own, one that had as its
  
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• Lithium-Ion Battery Fires on Aircraft are Happening 'Much More Frequently'

  14-05-2023 03:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  As smoke began filling the cabin, an airplane passenger saw sparks and fire bursting from a bag in the seat directly behind her — which turned out to be a "smoky flashing lithium battery, which had begun smoldering in a carry-on bag," according to CBS News.
  The flight crew contained the situation, and "Airport fire trucks met the plane on the runway and everyone evacuated safely." But a CBS News Investigation "has discovered similar incidents have been happening much more frequently in the
  
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• Only Cloud Providers Get Security Right. Can IT Vendors Catch Up?

  14-05-2023 00:34 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Slashdot reader storagedude writes: If cloud service providers are the only ones who can get security right, will everyone eventually move to the cloud? That's one of the questions longtime IT systems architect Henry Newman asks in a new article on eSecurity Planet. "The concept of zero trust has been around since 2010, when Forrester Research analyst John Kindervag created the zero trust security model. Yet two years after the devastating Colonial Pipeline attack and strong advocacy from the U.
  
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