ICT news

• Volume Down, Subtitles On: 51% of Us Read Along With Our Favorite Shows

  11-08-2023 23:20 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  You're either a subtitles person or you're not. But increasingly, people are. From a report: Preply followed up on its subtitle-use survey of Americans from 2022 and found a 5% rise, to 58%, in how many people use captioning more than they used to. Now, just over half (51%) of those surveyed say they use subtitles most of the time. If you're thinking this habit could be the purview of older folks who are having a hard time hearing -- well, 96% of Gen Z survey respondents said they impose words o
  
  Read more

• FTX's Bankman-Fried Headed For Jail After Judge Revokes Bail

  11-08-2023 22:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  A U.S. judge revoked Sam Bankman-Fried's bail due to probable cause that he tampered with witnesses at least twice. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected a defense request to delay SBF's detention pending appeal of the bail revocation. Reuters reports: The decision could complicate Bankman-Fried's efforts to prepare for trial, where the 31-year-old former billionaire faces charges of having stolen billions of dollars in FTX customer funds to plug losses at his Alameda Research hedge fund. Ba
  
  Read more

• Amazon Wants To Deliver Your Order Without a Box

  11-08-2023 22:00 via slashdot.org
  
  Amazon is reducing packaging on millions of deliveries. From a report: Millions of Amazon orders are arriving on doorsteps across the U.S. without any extra packaging. A new television may sit in the manufacturer's box at the door. A blender appears as if it were picked off a store shelf. The same for a box of baby wipes or trash bags. The change represents the next frontier in the tech giant's overhaul of its delivery processes, one Chief Executive Andy Jassy hopes will appeal to customers who
  
  Read more

• US To Fund a $1.2 Billion Effort To Vacuum Greenhouse Gases From the Sky

  11-08-2023 21:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The Biden administration will spend $1.2 billion to help build the nation's first two commercial-scale plants to vacuum carbon dioxide pollution from the atmosphere, a nascent technology that some scientists say could be a breakthrough in the fight against global warming, but that others fear is an extravagant boondoggle. From a report: Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary, announced Friday that her agency would fund two pilot projects that would deploy the disputed technology, known as direc
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Mozilla To Bring Firefox Desktop Extension To Android Browser

  11-08-2023 20:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Scott DeVaney, writing at Mozilla blog: In the coming months Mozilla will launch support for an open ecosystem of extensions on Firefox for Android on addons.mozilla.org (AMO). We'll announce a definite launch date in early September, but it's safe to expect a roll-out before the year's end. Here's everything developers need to know to get their Firefox desktop extensions ready for Android usage and discoverability on AMO.
  For the past few years Firefox for Android officially supported a small s
  
  Read more

• Detroit Police Changing Facial-Recognition Policy After Pregnant Woman Says She Was Wrongly Charged

  11-08-2023 20:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The Detroit police chief said he's setting new policies on the use of facial-recognition technology after a woman who was eight months pregnant said she was wrongly charged with robbery and carjacking in a case that was ultimately dismissed by prosecutors. From a report: The technology, which was used on images taken from gas station video, produced leads in the case but was followed by "very poor" police work, Chief James White said. "We want to ensure that nothing like this happens again," Whi
  
  Read more

• California Allows Robo-Taxis To Expand

  11-08-2023 19:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: A battle has been brewing in San Francisco over driverless cars. Hundreds of the autonomous vehicles have been roaming city streets over the past couple of years. On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, voted 3-1 to let self-driving car companies expand their programs and start charging passengers like taxis. The build-up before the Commission's vote Thursday was tense. Public comment lasted more than six hours. Much of that testimon
  
  Read more

• Consulting Firms Are Paying Undergrads $25,000 To Do Nothing

  11-08-2023 18:40 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: In the weeks leading up to her graduation from Pomona College, Sophia Augustine thought she had it all figured out. She had gotten a job offer at Accenture Plc and had plans to live with two friends in New York starting in August. Then she got a much-dreaded phone call. She, like hundreds of other new graduates this year, had a delayed start date. She would now report to work in April 2024, and for her troubles she'd receive a $25,000 stipend. The sudden chan
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• A New Frontier for Travel Scammers: AI-Generated Guidebooks

  11-08-2023 18:00 via slashdot.org
  
  Shoddy guidebooks, promoted with deceptive reviews, have flooded Amazon in recent months. Their authors claim to be renowned travel writers.
  But do they even exist?
  The New York Times: The books are the result of a swirling mix of modern tools: A.I. apps that can produce text and fake portraits; websites with a seemingly endless array of stock photos and graphics; self-publishing platforms -- like Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing -- with few guardrails against the use of A.I.; and the ability t
  
  Read more

• Airline Passengers Will Be Forced To Pay for $5 Trillion Carbon Cleanup

  11-08-2023 17:20 via slashdot.org
  
  The aviation sector's plans to pass along the cost of decarbonization could add hundreds of dollars to the price of some fights. From a report: Fresh from surviving the Covid-19 pandemic, the aviation industry is about to hand passengers the multi-trillion dollar bill to fight its next existential threat: decarbonization. Cleaning up flying is a mission of improbable scale: Neutralize the carbon emissions of about 25,000 planes in the world's commercial fleet that typically ferry some 4 billion
  
  Read more

• 'The Open Source Licensing War is Over'

  11-08-2023 16:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  It's time for the open source Rambos to stop fighting and agree that developers care more about software's access and ease of use than the purity of its license, reads a piece on InfoWorld. From the report: The open source war is over, however much some want to continue soldiering on. Recently Meta (Facebook) released Llama 2, a powerful large language model (LLM) with more than 70 billion parameters. In the past, Meta had restricted use of its LLMs to research purposes, but with Llama 2, Meta o
  
  Read more

• Russia's Luna 25 Mission Launches To the Moon

  11-08-2023 14:08 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Russia has successfully launched Luna 25, the country's first lunar lander in 47 years. From a report: The uncrewed spacecraft lifted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Amur Oblast, Russia. Hitching a ride aboard a Soyuz-2 Fregat rocket, Luna 25 took flight at 8:10 a.m. local time Friday, or 7:10 p.m. ET Thursday. Residents of a Russian village were temporarily evacuated Friday morning since there is a "one in a million chance" that one of Luna 25's rocket stages could fall there, according to
  
  Read more

• Mars Rover Finds Signs of Seasonal Floods

  11-08-2023 12:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  NASA's Curiosity rover has discovered signs of seasonal floods on Mars at a site called Gale Crater. Ars Technica reports: About 3,000 Martian days into its exploration, the rover was at a site that dates to roughly 3.6 billion years ago, during Mars' relatively wet Hesperian period. And it came across what would be familiar to gamers as a hex grid: hundreds of hexagonal shaped rock deposits in the area of a few centimeters across and at least 10 centimeters deep. These features are small enough
  
  Read more

• Texas Could Get a 205-MPH Bullet Train Zipping Between Houston and Dallas

  11-08-2023 09:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Amtrak and a company called Texas Central announced a partnership on Wednesday to connect Houston and Dallas by train, spanning roughly 240 miles at speeds upwards of 205 mph. Popular Science reports: According to Quartz, the applications have already been submitted to "several federal grant programs" to help finance research and design costs. Amtrak representatives estimate the project could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over 100,000 tons annually and remove an estimated 12,500 cars per da
  
  Read more

• Scientists At Fermilab Close In On Fifth Force of Nature

  11-08-2023 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Scientists near Chicago say they may be getting closer to discovering the existence of a new force of nature. They have found more evidence that sub-atomic particles, called muons, are not behaving in the way predicted by the current theory of sub-atomic physics. Scientists believe that an unknown force could be acting on the muons. More data will be needed to confirm these results, but if they are verified, it could mark the beginning of a revol
  
  Read more

• Anthropic Launches Improved Version of Its Entry-Level LLM

  11-08-2023 04:02 via slashdot.org
  
  Anthropic, the AI startup co-founded by ex-OpenAI execs, has released an updated version of its faster, cheaper, text-generating model available through an API, Claude Instant. TechCrunch reports: The updated Claude Instant, Claude Instant 1.2, incorporates the strengths of Anthropic's recently announced flagship model, Claude 2, showing "significant" gains in areas such as math, coding, reasoning and safety, according to Anthropic. In internal testing, Claude Instant 1.2 scored 58.7% on a codin
  
  Read more

• China's Internet Giants Order $5 Billion of Nvidia Chips To Power AI Ambitions

  11-08-2023 03:25 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  According to the Financial Times, China's internet giants have ordered more than $5 billion worth of high-performance Nvidia chips for building generative AI systems. Reuters reports: Baidu, TikTok-owner ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba have made orders worth $1 billion to acquire about 100,000 A800 processors from the U.S. chipmaker to be delivered this year, the FT reported, citing multiple people familiar with the matter. The Chinese groups had also purchased a further $4 billion worth of graph
  
  Read more

• Supermarket AI Meal Planner App Suggests Recipe That Would Create Chlorine Gas

  11-08-2023 02:45 via slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader newbie_fantod shares a report from The Guardian: A New Zealand supermarket experimenting with using AI to generate meal plans has seen its app produce some unusual dishes -- recommending customers recipes for deadly chlorine gas, "poison bread sandwiches" and mosquito-repellent roast potatoes. The app, created by supermarket chain Pak 'n' Save, was advertised as a way for customers to creatively use up leftovers during the cost of living crisis. It asks users to enter i
  
  Read more

• Homeland Security Report Details How Teen Hackers Exploited Security Weaknesses In Some of the World's Biggest Companies

  11-08-2023 02:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: A group of teenage hackers managed to breach some of the world's biggest tech firms last year by exploiting systemic security weaknesses in US telecom carriers and the business supply chain, a US government review of the incidents has found, in what is a cautionary tale for America's critical infrastructure. The Department of Homeland Security-led review of the hacks, which was shared exclusively with CNN, determined US regulators should penalize tel
  
  Read more

• Google and Universal Music Discuss Making an AI Tool To Replicate Artists' Voices

  11-08-2023 01:20 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  According to the Financial Times, Universal Music Group and Google are considering developing a tool that people can use to create AI-generated music using popular artists' voices and melodies. Gizmodo reports: Under the licensing deal, the relevant copyright owners would be paid for the use of their likeness and would have the option to opt in to give UMG and Google permission to license AI-generated music using their voice, per the FT. Google and UMG are in the early stages of negotiations ove
  
  Read more

• Lichess Will No Longer Cooperate With US Chess Federation, Saint Louis Chess Club

  11-08-2023 01:00 via games.slashdot.org
  
  In a lengthy blog post today, the open-source internet chess server, Lichess, announced they will formally end all cooperation with both the U.S. Chess Federation and Saint Louis University Chess Club (STLCC), citing two high-profile, sexual misconduct cases involving grandmasters Alejandro Ramirez and Timur Gareyev. Here's a brief summary of the issue: In February, chess commentator and author Jennifer Shahade publicly accused grandmaster Alejandro Ramirez of sexual misconduct. Her allegations
  
  Read more

• Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ Go After Red Hat With the Open Enterprise Linux Association

  11-08-2023 00:40 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  In a groundbreaking move, CIQ, Oracle, and SUSE have come together to announce the formation of the Open Enterprise Linux Association (OpenELA). From a report: The goal of this new collaborative trade association is to foster "the development of distributions compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) by providing open and free enterprise Linux source code."
  The inception of OpenELA is a direct response to Red Hat's recent alterations to RHEL source code availability. This new Delaware 501(
  
  Read more

• Skydio Closing Consumer Drone Business

  11-08-2023 00:00 via slashdot.org
  
  Skydio today announced that it will be shutting down its consumer drone business. From a report: Beginning today, the firm will no longer be selling its Skydio 2+ Starter, Sports, Cinema or Pro kits, although it will continue to offer the Skydio 2+ Enterprise Kit to business customers. Skydio also promises to continue supporting those consumers who have already purchased a drone. That includes offering vehicle repairs and other support related to warranties. The company says it will also stock b
  
  Read more

Follow @newslocke_ict on Twitter!