ICT news

• Many Physicists 'Skeptical' of Spectacular Superconductor Claims

  29-07-2023 23:35 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "This week, social media has been aflutter over a claim for a new superconductor that works not only well above room temperatures, but also at ambient pressure," writes Science magazine.If true, the discovery would be one of the biggest ever in condensed matter physics and could usher in all sorts of technological marvels, such as levitating vehicles and perfectly efficient electrical grids. However, the two related papers, posted to the arXiv preprint server by Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim of Sou
  
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• Building a Better Server? Oxide Computer Ships Its First Rack

  29-07-2023 22:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Oxide Computer Company spent four years working toward "The power of the cloud in your data center... bringing hyperscaler agility to the mainstream enterprise." And on June 30, Oxide finally shipped its very first server rack.
  Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland shares this report:It's the culmination of years of work — to fulfill a long-standing dream. In December of 2019, Oxide co-founder Jess Frazelle had written a blog post remembering conversations over the year with people who'd b
  
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• Seven Major Automakers Plan 30,000 More High-Speed Chargers in North America by 2030

  29-07-2023 21:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  "A new group of automotive super friends is banding together," reports the Verge, "promising to build the next big North American electric vehicle charging network."These worldwide automakers — BMW, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, and Stellantis — announced a planned joint venture Wednesday to erect easy-to-activate DC fast chargers along US and Canadian highways and in urban environments.
  The grand plan for the currently unnamed partnership is to install "at leas
  
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• NASA Funds Moon Projects to Help Astronauts 'Live off the Land'

  29-07-2023 20:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "NASA took a significant step Tuesday toward allowing humans on the moon to 'live off the land,'" reports the Washington Post.NASA awarded several contracts "to build landing pads, roads and habitats on the lunar surface, use nuclear power for energy, and even lay a high-voltage power line over half a mile..."
  Instead of going to the moon and returning home, as was done during the Apollo era of the 1960s and early '70s, NASA intends to build a sustainable presence focusing on the lunar South Pol
  
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• AlmaLinux Discovers Working with Red Hat (and CentOS Stream) Isn't Easy

  29-07-2023 19:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  After Red Hat's decision to only share RHEL source code with subscribers, AlmaLinux asked their bug report submitters to "attempt to test and replicate the problem in CentOS Stream as well, so we can focus our energy on correcting it in the right place."
  Red Hat told Ars Technica they are "eager to collaborate" on their CentOS Stream distro, "even if we ultimately compete in a business sense. Differentiated competition is a sign of a healthy ecosystem."
  But Red Hat still managed to ruffled some
  
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• All Calories are Created Equal? Your Gut Microbes Don't Think So

  29-07-2023 18:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "For years scientists have believed that when it comes to weight gain, all calories are created equal," the Washington Post reported last month.
  "But an intriguing new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, suggests that's not true. The body appears to react differently to calories ingested from high-fiber whole foods vs. ultra-processed junk foods."The reason? Cheap processed foods are more quickly absorbed in your upper gastrointestinal tract, which means more calories for your
  
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• Python's Steering Council Plans to Make Its 'Global Interpreter Lock' Optional

  29-07-2023 17:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Python's Global Interpreter Lock "allows only one thread to hold the control of the Python interpreter," according to the tutorial site Real Python. (They add, "it can be a performance bottleneck in CPU-bound and multi-threaded code.")
  Friday the Python Steering Council "announced its intent to accept PEP 703 (Making the Global Interpreter Lock Optional in CPython), with initial support possibly showing up in the 3.13 release," reports LWN.net.
  From the Steering Council's announcement:It's clear
  
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• Bill Gates Launches New Podcast, Tells Seth Rogen About Smoking Pot

  29-07-2023 16:34 via idle.slashdot.org
  
  Thursday Bill Gates launched a new podcast called "Unconfuse Me." ("What do you do when you can't solve a problem? I like to talk to smart people who can help me understand the subject better...")
  Join me on my learning journey as I talk to brilliant guests about Alzheimer's, artificial intelligence, the future of education, plant-based meat, the evolution of language, marijuana, and more.The first words of the first episode are a clip of Seth Rogen saying "Edibles? I don't mess with that. Snoop
  
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• Italian Pirate IPTV Customers Risk a 5,000 Euro Fine Starting August 8, 2023

  29-07-2023 12:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Italy's brand new anti-piracy law has just received full approval from telecoms regulator AGCOM. In a statement issued Thursday, AGCOM noted its position "at the forefront of the European scene in combating online piracy." The new law comes into force on August 8 and authorizes nationwide ISP blocking of live events and enables the state to issue fines of up to 5,000 euros to users of pirate streams .In a statement published Thursday, AGCOM
  
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• NASA's Voyager 2 Is Experiencing an Unplanned 'Communications Pause'

  29-07-2023 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  A routine sequence of commands has triggered a 2-degree change in Voyager 2's antenna orientation, preventing the iconic spacecraft from receiving commands or transmitting data back to Earth, NASA announced earlier today. Mission controllers transmitted the commands to Voyager 2 on July 21. Gizmodo reports: Voyager 2, one of two twin probes launched in the 1970s to explore planets in the outer solar system, is located some 12.4 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) from Earth and is continuall
  
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• Most of the 100 Million People Who Signed Up For Threads Stopped Using It

  29-07-2023 05:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Meta's new Twitter competitor, Threads, is looking for ways to keep users interested after more than half of the people who signed up for the text-based platform stopped actively using the app, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told employees in a company town hall yesterday. Threads launched on July 5 and signed up over 100 million users in less than five days, buoyed by user frustration with Elon Musk-owned Twitter."Obviously, if you hav
  
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• AI Helps Crack Salt Water's Curious Electrical Properties

  29-07-2023 04:02 via science.slashdot.org
  
  sciencehabit shares a report from Science: Water is a near-universal solvent, able to dissolve substances ranging from limestone to the sugar in your coffee. That chemical superpower originates, oddly enough, in water's electrical properties. It can oppose and almost entirely cancel electric fields -- including attractions among dissolved ions that might otherwise pull them together. Curiously, dissolving salt in water weakens that electrical response. Now, a team of physicists has figured out e
  
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• 'Tor's Shadowy Reputation Will Only End If We All Use It'

  29-07-2023 03:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Katie Malone writes via Engadget: "Tor" evokes an image of the dark web; a place to hire hitmen or buy drugs that, at this point, is overrun by feds trying to catch you in the act. The reality, however, is a lot more boring than that -- but it's also more secure. The Onion Router, now called Tor, is a privacy-focused web browser run by a nonprofit group. You can download it for free and use it to shop online or browse social media, just like you would on Chrome or Firefox or Safari, but with add
  
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• Inside the World's Largest 3D-Printed Neighborhood In Texas

  29-07-2023 02:45 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  The world's largest community of 3D-printed homes, located in Texas, has unveiled its first completed house. CNN reports: With walls "printed" using a concrete-based material, the single-story structure is the first of 100 such homes set to welcome residents starting September. The community is part of a wider development in Georgetown, Texas called Wolf Ranch. It's located about 30 miles north of Austin, the state capital, and is a collaboration between Texas construction firm ICON, homebuildin
  
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• MOVEit Hackers Accessed Health Data of 'At Least' 8 Million Individuals

  29-07-2023 02:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: U.S. government services contracting giant Maximus has confirmed that hackers exploiting a vulnerability in MOVEit Transfer accessed the protected health information of as many as 11 million individuals. Virginia-based Maximus contracts with federal, state and local governments to manage and administer government-sponsored programs, such as Medicaid, Medicare, healthcare reform and welfare-to-work. In an 8-K filing on Wednesday, Maximus confir
  
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• Samsung Sees 95% Drop In Profits For a Second Consecutive Quarter

  29-07-2023 01:20 via slashdot.org
  
  For the second consecutive quarter, Samsung reported a 95% decline in year-over-year profits. "It appears Samsung brought in a profit of 0.67 trillion ($523.5 million) Korean won (KRW), which is a drop in the bucket to the 14.12 trillion KRW ($11.06 billion) it made last year," reports Android Authority. From the report: Samsung attributes this loss in profit to the decline in smartphone shipments due to "high interest rates and inflation." As a report from Counterpoint Research suggests, the US
  
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• ChatGPT For Android Is Now Available

  29-07-2023 00:40 via slashdot.org
  
  OpenAI has released ChatGPT for Android, months after launching the free iOS app for iPhones and iPads. You can download it in the Google Play Store. The Verge reports: According to a company tweet, it's available first in the US, India, Bangladesh, and Brazil, with other countries set to follow later, mimicking the staged rollout we saw for the iOS version. On July 27th, OpenAI announced additional availability, saying the Android ChatGPT app is now available in Argentina, Canada, France, Germa
  
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• Sci-Hub's Alexandra Elbakyan Receives EFF Award For Providing Access To Scientific Knowledge

  29-07-2023 00:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The Electronic Frontier Foundation will award Alexandra Elbakyan, founder of the 'pirate' library Sci-Hub, for her efforts to provide access to scientific knowledge. According to EFF, Elbakyan's site is a vital resource for millions of students and researchers. Some medical professionals have even argued that the site helped to save lives. [...] "When I was working on my research project, I found out that all research papers I needed for wor
  
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