ICT news

• Gannett Halts AI-Written Sports Recaps After Readers Mocked the Stories

  03-09-2023 22:45 via news.slashdot.org
  
  CNN reports that newspaper chain Gannett "has paused the use of an AI tool to write high school sports dispatches after the technology made several major flubs in articles in at least one of its papers."
  In one notable example, preserved by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, the story began: "The Worthington Christian [[WINNING_TEAM_MASCOT]] defeated the Westerville North [[LOSING_TEAM_MASCOT]] 2-1 in an Ohio boys soccer game on Saturday...." The reports were mocked on social media for bein
  
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• China Accused of 'Coordinated Disinformation Campaign' About Fukushima Waste Water in Multiple Countries

  03-09-2023 21:45 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  The BBC has an article about Japan's release into the sea of treated waste water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant. "Scientists largely agree that the impact will be negligible, but China has strongly protested the release. And disinformation has only fuelled fear and suspicion in China."A report by a UK-based data analysis company called Logically, which aims to fight misinformation, claims that since January, the Chinese government and state media have been running a coordinated disinfo
  
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• Silicon Valley Billionaires Reveal First Renderings for Planned City in California

  03-09-2023 20:45 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "Silicon Valley billionaires behind a secretive $800 million land-buying spree in Northern California have finally released some details about their plans for a new green city," reports the Associated Press, "but they still must win over skeptical voters and local leaders."
  After years of ducking scrutiny, Jan Sramek, the former Goldman Sachs trader spearheading the effort, launched a website Thursday about "California Forever." The site billed the project as "a chance for a new community, good
  
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• Cruise Disputes Report Its Robotaxi Blocked an Ambulance Carrying Patient Who Later Died

  03-09-2023 19:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "Two stalled driverless taxis blocked an ambulance carrying a critically injured patient," writes the San Francisco Chronicle, citing a paywalled report from Forbes. The delay "contributed to 'poor patient outcome' — the person died 20 to 30 minutes after reaching the hospital, according to a report by San Francisco firefighters that the taxi company disputes."
  The report was obtained by Forbes, which recently published a story detailing accounts by San Francisco firefighters who say drive
  
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• Mission Accomplished, India Puts Moon Rover to 'Sleep' for 14 Days

  03-09-2023 18:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  To complete one full rotation around its axis it takes the moon 655 hours. So a single "lunar day" is 13.64 earth days.
  But sunset has finally come for India's Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft and its Pragyan rover, writes long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis , and the rover has switched off for the coming 655-hour night:
  With luck from the moon gods, it will wake up with the sunrise in 14 days. But, even if not, mission accomplished! It was designed for fourteen days of operation, the daylight per
  
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• After 28 Years, Microsoft Announces it Will Remove WordPad From Windows

  03-09-2023 17:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "Microsoft has quietly revealed that WordPad, the basic word processor that's been included with Windows since 1995, is being retired," reports Windows blog Paul Thurrott:
  "WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows," the Deprecated features for Windows client page on Microsoft Learn notes in a September 1, 2023 addition. "We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like .txt...."
  [
  
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• Linux's Marketshare on Steam Still Higher Than Apple macOS

  03-09-2023 16:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  The (Arch Linux-powered) Steam Deck was released in February of 2022 — and Phoronix reports that's helping Linux's market share on Steam. "While July was at 1.96% for Linux, the August numbers [from SteamPowered.com] show a 0.14% dip to 1.82%.Interestingly, macOS dipped by 0.27% to 1.57% while Windows rose by 0.4% to 96.61%. For those wondering why the Steam Linux numbers dropped while the Steam Deck continues to be very popular, it's possibly again another month impacted by large swings i
  
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• The Titan Submersible Disaster Was Years In the Making, New Details Reveal

  03-09-2023 13:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Vanity Fair revisits the many warning signs about OceanGate's Titan submersible prior to an implosion on June 18th that killed all five passengers onboard.A professional expedition leader tells their reporter that "This tragedy was predicted. It was avoidable. It was inevitable."As the world now knows, Stockton Rush touted himself as a maverick, a disrupter, a breaker of rules. So far out on the visionary curve that, for him, safety regulations were mere suggestions. "If you're not breaking thin
  
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• Are Scrums a Cancer?

  03-09-2023 09:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Santiago Valdarrama teaches machine learning. He posted this week on Twitter and LinkedIn that "Scrum is a cancer." Some highlights:
  I've been writing software for 25 years, and nothing renders a software team useless like Scrum does... We spent more time talking than doing... We spent more time estimating story points than writing software... Imagine having a manager, a scrum master, a product owner, and a tech lead. You had to answer to all of them and none simultaneously...
  I believe in Agile
  
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• Ignored by Police, Two Women Took Down Their Cyber-Harasser Themselves

  03-09-2023 06:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Here's how the Washington Post tells the story of 34-year-old marketer (and former model) Madison Conradis, who discovered nude behind-the-scenes photos from 10 years earlier had leaked after a series of photographer web sites were breached:
  Now the photos along with her name and contact information were on 4chan, a lawless website that allows users to post anonymously about topics as varied as music and white supremacy... Facebook users registered under fake names such as "Joe Bummer" sent her
  
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• No Exit: Rains Close the Roads In and Out of Burning Man

  03-09-2023 02:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Though it's Saturday at Nevada's desert-based Burning Man event "Dawn brought a growing realization for attendees that they might not be going home as planned, given rain forecast for later Saturday into Sunday..." reports the Reno Gazette-Journal. "More than 73,000 Burning Man attendees remain confined to their camps Saturday and are blocked from leaving the event after a slow-moving rainstorm turned their desert playground into a soupy, muddy morass."
  Burning Man has now closed both its entran
  
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• Ask Slashdot: Do Streamers Waste More Time Deciding What to Watch?

  03-09-2023 00:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  "Are you old enough to remember channel surfing?" asks long-time Slashdog reader MightyMait. "When there were only a handful of broadcast channels, it wasn't a big deal..."But when we got cable/satelite, one could spend inordinate amounts of time flipping through the channels looking for something decent to watch. Now, with the proliferation of streaming services...
  Streaming viewers are now "spending a record 10.5 minutes per session deciding what to watch," according to TV Tech, citing a new s
  
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