ICT news

• Real-World 'Jurassic Park' Startup Argues Not De-Extincting Animals Would Be Even Scarier

  09-07-2023 23:19 via science.slashdot.org
  
  George Church was part of the team that pioneered CRISPR gene editing. In 2021 he co-founded a kind of real-world "Jurassic Park" — Colossal Biosciences, a biotech startup working to de-extinct the Woolly Mammoth.
  For the 30th anniversary of the movie Jurassic Park, Rolling Stone brought in Colossal's co-founder and CEO, Ben Lamm, to share how the movie inspired and influenced their plans. Lamm writes that in 1993 he was 11 years old when he'd first seen the movie Jurassic Park. And even t
  
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• Should Public Buses Be Free?

  09-07-2023 21:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  "More major cities in the United States are letting public transit riders hop on board for free," reports CNN:Kansas City; Raleigh; Richmond; Olympia; Tucson; Alexandria, Virginia; and other cities are testing dropping fares on their transit systems. Denver is dropping fares across its system this summer. Boston is piloting three zero-fare public bus routes, and New York City is expected to test free buses on five lines.
  Eliminating fares gives a badly needed boost to ridership, removes cost bur
  
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• As BotDefense Leaves 'Antagonistic' Reddit, Mods Fear Spam Overload

  09-07-2023 20:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "The Reddit community is still reckoning with the consequences of the platform's API price hike..." reports Ars Technica.
  "The latest group to announce its departure is BotDefense."BotDefense, which helps remove rogue submission and comment bots from Reddit and which is maintained by volunteer moderators, is said to help moderate 3,650 subreddits. BotDefense's creator told Ars Technica that the team is now quitting over Reddit's "antagonistic actions" toward moderators and developers, with conce
  
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• Freeciv 3D In the Browser Now Ready!

  09-07-2023 19:34 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader Andreas(R) has an announcement:Freeciv 3D in the browser is now ready to be played by everyone on FCIV.NET! This is a version of the classic strategy game Freeciv.
  The game is open source with an AGPL license, and has been in development since 2016. Freeciv 3D has the same goal as Lichess and other open source web games: creating an accessible platform for Freeciv players of all levels.
  Freeciv 3D for the web has been in development for many years, and now we think the
  
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• Why South Koreans Are Rushing To Stockpile Sea Salt

  09-07-2023 18:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader beforewisdom shared this report from the Independent:South Koreans have begun to hoard excessive amounts of sea salt and other items as Japan prepares to dump treated radioactive water from the Fukushima power plant into the ocean... Tokyo has repeatedly assured that the water is safe and has been filtered to remove most isotopes though it does contain traces of tritium, an isotope of hydrogen hard to separate from water.
  Although Japan has not set a date for the releas
  
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• The Technology Behind the New Las Vegas Sphere

  09-07-2023 17:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  The world's largest spherical structure "squats on the Las Vegas skyline like an enormous spaceship, black and mysterious," reports CNN, "until night falls, when it will glow like the Earth from space."
  The $2 billion arena — called "The Sphere" — was built just east of the Venetian hotel/casino. It's 366 feet tall and 516 feet wide (or 111 meters tall and 157 meters wide) — and it boasts the world's highest-resolution wraparound LED screen:
  Its exterior is fitted with 1.2 mill
  
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• Google Suggests Robots.txt File Updates for 'Emerging AI' Use Cases

  09-07-2023 16:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  For a "vibrant content ecosystem," Google's VP of Trust says web publishers need "choice and control over their content, and opportunities to derive value from participating in the web ecosystem." (Does this mean Google wants to buy the right to scrape your content?)
  In a blog post, Google's VP of trust starts by saying that unfortunately, "existing web publisher controls" like your robots.txt file (a community-developed web standard) came from nearly 30 years ago, "before new AI and research us
  
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• Is the Obsession with EV Range All Wrong?

  09-07-2023 13:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  "The obsession with EV range is all wrong," argues a new article in the Washington Post's Climate section. "This year, one EV on the market — the sleek $140,000 Lucid Air Grand Touring — boasts a whopping 516-mile range. Toyota recently announced that it had achieved a breakthrough with solid-state battery technology, saying it will soon be able to produce electric cars that can go 746 miles on a single charge.
  "But some analysts say that all that range — and all that battery &
  
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• Quantum Supremacy? Google Claims 70-Qubit Quantum Supercomputer

  09-07-2023 09:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google says it would take the world's leading supercomputer more than 47 years to match the calculation speed of its newest quantum computer, reports the Telegraph:
  Four years ago, Google claimed to be the first company to achieve "quantum supremacy" — a milestone point at which quantum computers surpass existing machines. This was challenged at the time by rivals, which argued that Google was exaggerating the difference between its machine and traditional supercomputers. The company's new
  
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• Nine AI-Powered Humanoid Robots Hold Press Conference at UN Summit

  09-07-2023 06:06 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  We've just had the world's first press conference with AI-enabled, humanoid social robots. Click here to jump straight to Slashdot's transcript of all the robots' answers during the press conference, or watch the 40-minute video here.
  It all happened at the United Nations held an "AI for Good" summit in Geneva, where the Guardian reports that the foyer was "humming with robotic voices, the whirring of automated wheels and limbs, and Desdemona, the 'rock star' humanoid, who is chanting 'the singu
  
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• Researchers Discovered a New Linux Kernel 'StackRot' Privilege Escalation Vulnerability Discovered

  09-07-2023 03:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Wednesday Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the release of the 6.4.2 kernel. "All users of the 6.4 kernel series must upgrade."
  The Hacker News reports:
  Details have emerged about a newly identified security flaw in the Linux kernel that could allow a user to gain elevated privileges on a target host. Dubbed StackRot (CVE-2023-3269, CVSS score: 7.8), the flaw impacts Linux versions 6.1 through 6.4. There is no evidence that the shortcoming has been exploited in the wild to date.
  "As StackRot is a Lin
  
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• Researchers Discovered a New Linux Kernel 'StackRot' Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

  09-07-2023 03:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Wednesday Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the release of the 6.4.2 kernel. "All users of the 6.4 kernel series must upgrade."
  The Hacker News reports:
  Details have emerged about a newly identified security flaw in the Linux kernel that could allow a user to gain elevated privileges on a target host. Dubbed StackRot (CVE-2023-3269, CVSS score: 7.8), the flaw impacts Linux versions 6.1 through 6.4. There is no evidence that the shortcoming has been exploited in the wild to date.
  "As StackRot is a Lin
  
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• Scientists Who Turned Humid Air Into Potential Renewable Power Source Say 'It Was an Accident'

  09-07-2023 00:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Remember those researchers who generated electricity from the energy in air humidity?
  "To be frank, it was an accident," the study's lead author, Prof Jun Yao, tells the Guardian:"We were actually interested in making a simple sensor for humidity in the air. But for whatever reason, the student who was working on that forgot to plug in the power." The UMass Amherst team were surprised to find that the device, which comprised an array of microscopic tubes, or nanowires, was producing an electrica
  
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