ICT news

• Insects Could Help Turn Beer Waste Into Beef

  01-07-2023 23:59 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "People do not like eating insects. Livestock are less picky," writes the Economist.Of course, the insects need to eat, too. To date, they have mostly been reared on leftover chicken feed. But the supply of that is limited, and if insect-reared meat is to take off, new sources will be needed. In a paper in Applied Entomology, Niels Eriksen, a biochemist at Aalborg University, suggests feeding them on the waste products of the beer industry. The world knocks back around 185bn litres of beer every
  
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• Ecological Doom Loops: Why Ecosystem Collapses May Occur Sooner Than Expected

  01-07-2023 22:59 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: An article in Nature Sustainability suggests that models may have underestimated the impact of warming on ecosystems. Two main reasons for this are the difficulty in accounting for variability and combining climate change with other pressure factors: for instance, pollution, excessive exploitation of species, deforestation due to increased demographics growth and meat consumption, ecosystem fragmentation, also harm wildlife.
  After using software to simulate o
  
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• Microsoft/Activision Blizzard Antitrust Hearings Reveal Internal Emails and Badly-Redacted Documents

  01-07-2023 21:42 via games.slashdot.org
  
  VentureBeat is enjoying "secrets that spilled out" in the Microsoft/Activision Blizzard antitrust hearings. "Whether the Federal Trade Commission wins its antitrust case or not, its attempt to stop Microsoft's $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard has revealed a trove of new data for everyone."The FTC has argued in a federal court that the merger would harm competition in the game industry and be bad for consumers, as Microsoft could pull Activision Blizzard's games like Call of Duty
  
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• SpaceX Launches ESA's 'Euclid' Space Telescope to Study Dark Energy's Effect on the Universe

  01-07-2023 19:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "The European Space Agency's Euclid space telescope launched at 11:12 a.m. ET Saturday," reports CNN, "aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
  CNN is calling it "a mission designed to unravel some of the greatest mysteries of the universe."The 1.2-meter-diameter (4-foot-diameter) telescope has set off on a monthlong journey to its orbital destination of the sun-Earth Lagrange point L2, which is nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away from E
  
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• Tech Stocks Rebound in Best Half-Year Since 1983, Rising 32%

  01-07-2023 18:34 via slashdot.org
  
  CNBC reports:
  On Friday, the Nasdaq wrapped up the first six months of the year with a 1.5% rally, bringing its gains so far for 2023 to 32%. That's the sharpest first-half jump in the tech-heavy index since 1983, when the Nasdaq rose 37%...
  [M]omentum is always a driver when it comes to tech, and investors are notoriously fearful of missing out, even if they simultaneously worry about frothy valuations. Coming off a miserable 2022, in which the Nasdaq lost one-third of its value, the big story
  
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• Former Canonical Developer is Working on a Script that Replaces Snaps with Flatpaks

  01-07-2023 17:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Linux magazine reports that "Former Snap co-developer Alan Pope, who left Canonical in 2021 after 10 years with the company, has developed unsnap, a script that replaces snaps with Flatpaks where available. The script, hosted on GitHub, has been tested by the developers for use on Ubuntu and all derivatives that offer snapd and packages in the Snap format."
  Pope clarifies its status on GitHub:
  Let's say it's "Pre-alpha", as in "It kinda works on my computer". Unless you plan on contributing (see
  
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• US Supreme Court Rejects US Student Loan Relief. President Biden Responds

  01-07-2023 16:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  After a three-year pause, U.S. student loan repayments are set to resume on October 1st — just three months from today. But CNN reports that yesterday America's Supreme Court "struck down President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness program, blocking millions of borrowers from receiving up to $20,000 in federal student debt relief.""The court's 6 to 3 conservative majority held that the secretary of education did not have that authority under existing law," writes the Washington Post. Th
  
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• Reddit Users Are Saying Goodbye To Their Favorite Apps With Tributes and Memes

  01-07-2023 15:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Many popular third-party Reddit apps will be shutting down on Friday because of the platform's forthcoming paid API, and fans of the apps are sending them off with heartfelt posts and memes. The Apollo for Reddit subreddit, for example, is filled with posts celebrating the app. "So long and thanks for everything," said one post for an Apollo-themed version of the "was I a good boy" meme. This morning, someone posted a "Dawn of the Final Day" im
  
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• Joby Aviation's First Production Air Taxi Cleared For Flight Tests

  01-07-2023 12:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Joby Aviation has been cleared by the FAA to start flight tests on its first production prototype air taxi, the company wrote in a press release. Engadget reports: It's a large step in the company's aim to start shipping the eVTOL aircraft (electric vertical takeoff and landing) to customers in 2024 and launch an air taxi service by 2025. The aircraft can take off and land like a helicopter, then tilt its six rotors horizontally and fly like an airplane at up to 200 MPH. It's designed to carry a
  
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• 'You Should Be Worried About What's Going On At Turner Classic Movies'

  01-07-2023 09:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  In an opinion piece for NPR, guest host and TV critic on NPR's Fresh Air, David Bianculli, raises concerns about Discovery CEO David Zaslav's track record and the future of Turner Classic Movies (TCM) under his leadership. Here's an excerpt from his piece: When the dismissal was announced recently of most of the people who have guided Turner Classic Movies brilliantly for years -- the programmers, the producers of special material, even the executives who plan the TCM film festivals and party cr
  
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• Would You Leave Grandma With a Companion Robot?

  01-07-2023 05:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from OPB: Out near the far end of Washington's Long Beach Peninsula, 83-year-old Jan Worrell has a new, worldly sidekick in her living room. "This is ElliQ. I call her my roommate," the grandmother said as she introduced her companion robot almost as if it were human. Artificial intelligence is all the rage, and now it's helping some Pacific Northwest seniors live in their own homes for longer. Worrell joined a pilot project that is trialing how AI-driven comp
  
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• FBI Forms National Database To Track and Prevent 'Swatting'

  01-07-2023 04:02 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  According to NBC News, the FBI created a national online database in May to facilitate information sharing between hundreds of police departments and law enforcement agencies across the country pertaining to swatting incidents. From the report: No central agency has tracked swatting incidents or suspects in the U.S., so official statistics are not available. By 2019, there were an estimated 1,000 swatting incidents domestically each year, according to a report from the Anti-Defamation League, an
  
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• Remote Work Is Making Americans Less Productive, Official Data Shows

  01-07-2023 03:25 via news.slashdot.org
  
  New data (PDF) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that one-third of Americans worked from home in 2022, up from a quarter, or 25%, in 2019. The survey also found that Americans working full time from home worked 2.5 hours less a day than Americans at the office. Barron's reports: Overall, the total civilian population worked for an average of 3.23 hours a day in 2022 down from 3.26 hours a day in 2019. The U.S. is 1% lazier. That number, given by the BLS, is the total population. Don't fo
  
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• Chinese Researchers Used AI To Design RISC-V CPU In Under 5 Hours

  01-07-2023 02:45 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Required Snark shares a report from Tom's Hardware: A group of Chinese scientists has published (PDF) a paper titled "Pushing the Limits of Machine Design: Automated CPU Design with AI." The paper details the researchers' work in designing a new industrial-scale RISC-V CPU in under 5 hours. It is claimed this AI-automated feat was about 1000x faster than a human team could have finished a comparable CPU design. However, some may poke fun at the resulting AI-designed CPU performing approximately
  
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• Niantic Lays Off 230 Employees, Cancels NBA and Marvel Games

  01-07-2023 02:02 via games.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Pokemon GO maker Niantic laid off 230 employees today, just one year after it laid off around 90 employees. During last year's layoffs, Niantic canceled four projects, including a Transformers game. Some Niantic games will meet the same fate this time around. After four months in the App Store, Niantic is shutting down NBA All-World; the company will also cancel production on a game based on the Marvel franchise. "In the wake of the revenue su
  
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• Lawsuit Says OpenAI Violated US Authors' Copyrights To Train AI Chatbot

  01-07-2023 01:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Two U.S. authors have filed a proposed class action lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming that the company infringed their copyrights by using their works without permission to train its generative AI system, ChatGPT. The plaintiffs, Massachusetts-based writers Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad, claim the data used to train ChatGPT included thousands of books, including those from illegal "shadow libraries." Reuters reports: The complaint estimated that OpenAI's training data incorporated over 300,000 book
  
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• VMware, AMD, Samsung and RISC-V Push For Confidential Computing Standards

  01-07-2023 00:40 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  VMware has joined AMD, Samsung, and members of the RISC-V community to work on an open and cross-platform framework for the development and operation of applications using confidential computing hardware. The Register reports: Revealing the effort at the Confidential Computing Summit 2023 in San Francisco, the companies say they aim to bring about an industry transition to practical confidential computing by developing the open source Certifier Framework for Confidential Computing project. Among
  
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• Schools Say US Teachers' Retirement Fund Was Breached By MOVEit Hackers

  01-07-2023 00:02 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Two U.S. schools have confirmed that TIAA, a nonprofit organization that provides financial services for individuals in academic fields, has been caught up in the mass-hacks targeting MOVEit file transfer tools. Middlebury College in Vermont and Trinity College in Connecticut both released security notices confirming they experienced data breaches as a result of a security incident at the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America,
  
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