ICT news

• To Build Their AI Tech, Microsoft and Google are Using a Lot of Water

  10-09-2023 22:59 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous Slashdot reader shares this report from the Associated Press:The cost of building an artificial intelligence product like ChatGPT can be hard to measure. But one thing Microsoft-backed OpenAI needed for its technology was plenty of water, pulled from the watershed of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers in central Iowa to cool a powerful supercomputer as it helped teach its AI systems how to mimic human writing.
  As they race to capitalize on a craze for generative AI, leading tech deve
  
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• Asteroid Behaving Unexpectedly After NASA's Deliberate DART Crash

  10-09-2023 21:59 via science.slashdot.org
  
  One year ago NASA crashed its DART spacecraft into the asteroid "Dimorphos" (which orbits around a much larger asteroid named "Didymos"). The BBC calls the mission "part of an experiment to change the space rock's direction and test Earth's defences against asteroids in the future.
  "However, a teacher and his class studying the rock have now discovered that since the collision, it has moved in a strange and unexpected way."
  [U]sing their school telescope, a team of children and their teacher Jon
  
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• Whatever Happened to El Salvador's Bitcoin Experiment? Two Years Later...

  10-09-2023 20:59 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Agence France-Presse reports that "Two years ago, El Salvador shrugged off a chorus of warnings and adopted Bitcoin as legal tender in a bid to revitalize its economy and improve access to financial services.
  "It has not worked... Economist Cesar Villalona told AFP that Bitcoin 'does not exist in the local economy' in any significant way, because in El Salvador 'everything' is paid in dollars: wages, services and goods."Bitcoin has lost more than half its value since then and though President Na
  
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• Questions Raised about Quality of Reddit's New Moderators After Protest-Related Purges

  10-09-2023 18:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Reddit's forum about home food canning used to have two moderators with science-related master's degrees. And Reddit's home automation forum used to be moderated by a former IT worker with decades of networking experiencing — and some training from a professional electrician.
  After the great Reddit protests, all three were removed from their positions. But now Ars Technica asks whether Reddit's replacement moderators will be as capable of spotting dangerous advice?
  In response to concerns
  
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• WebAssembly 2023 Survey Finds Enthusiasm - and Some Challenges

  10-09-2023 17:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from InfoWorld:
  The uses of WebAssembly, aka Wasm, have grown far beyond its initial target of web applications, according to The State of WebAssembly 2023 report. But some developers remain skeptical.Released September 6 by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and SlashData, in collaboration with the Linux Foundation, the report finds mostly optimism among software developers about future adoption of Wasm for web and non-web environments... However
  
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• NASA's 'MOXIE' Experiment Successfully Generated 122 Grams of Oxygen on Mars

  10-09-2023 16:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  CNN reports:The first experiment to produce oxygen on another planet has come to an end on Mars after exceeding NASA's initial goals and demonstrating capabilities that could help future astronauts explore the red planet. The microwave-size device called MOXIE, or Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, is on the Perseverance rover.
  The experiment kicked off more than two years ago, a few months after the rover landed on Mars. Since then, MOXIE has generated 122 grams of oxygen, equ
  
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• Small Protest Against Cruise Robotaxis Cites Concerns for Safety - and Displaced Workers

  10-09-2023 12:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Last Monday the U.S. celebrated Labor Day, the federal holiday honoring America's labor movement and the contributions of U.S. workers. On that day a small protest was held outside Cruise's headquarters in San Francisco — featuring taxi drivers and mass transit workers.
  CBS News spoke to Edward Escobar, a Bay Area Uber driver and director of the Alliance for Independent Workers. They report that Escobar orchestrated the protest "to convey their concerns about the potential impact of robota
  
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• Startup Building Zinc-Based Alternatives to Lithium Batteries Granted $400M Loan from the US

  10-09-2023 09:56 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Popular Science reports that America's Department of Energy "is providing a nearly $400 million loan to a startup aimed at scaling the manufacturing and deployment of a zinc-based alternative to rechargeable lithium batteries."
  If realized, Eos Energy's utility- and industrial-scale zinc-bromine battery energy storage system could provide cheaper, vastly more sustainable options for the country's burgeoning renewable power infrastructure... Unlike lithium-ion and lithium iron phosphate batteries
  
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• It's the 50th Anniversary of 'Star Trek: the Animated Series'

  10-09-2023 06:09 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Star Trek: The Animated Series was a half-hour Saturday morning cartoon that premiered exactly one half century ago — yesterday. You can watch its opening credits sequence on YouTube — with its strange 1970s version of the theme song. CBS's YouTube channel also offers clips from various episodes.
  Starting in 1973, it ran for two seasons — a total of just 22 episodes. But the BBC notes it kept Star Trek in people's minds after the original series had been cancelled in 1969:While
  
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• Cleanup Begins at Burning Man Site: a Few Abandoned Cars, Plus a Burned-Out RV

  10-09-2023 03:56 via idle.slashdot.org
  
  Late Friday a Burning Man press release claimed that "zero stuck or abandoned vehicles remain on site or on the exit road, as people have returned with friends and tow trucks to retrieve them."But the Reno Gazette-Journal reports that as of 5 p.m. Friday, "at least a half-dozen vehicles were still scattered across miles of the Black Rock National Conservation Area, public land Burning Man leases from the Bureau of Land Management. Their drivers appeared to have made a run for the exit and got st
  
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• YouTube Under No Obligation To Host Anti-Vaccine Advocate's Videos, Court Says

  10-09-2023 01:25 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "12 people account for the lion's share of anti-vaccination propaganda posted to three of the leading social media outlets," NPR reported in 2021, citing a study from a London-based group opposed to online hate and disinformation."
  But this week Ars Technica reports that one of those 12 "lost a lawsuit attempting to force YouTube to provide access to videos that were removed from the platform after YouTube banned his channels."Joseph Mercola had tried to argue that YouTube owed him more than $75
  
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• US Broadband Buildout Finds Cost to Connect Some Households as High as $53,000

  10-09-2023 00:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Internet services has long been slow for the Winnebago Tribe in the state of Nebraska, reports the Wall Street Journal. Now the U.S. government "plans to fix that by crisscrossing the reservation with fiber-optic cable — at an average cost of $53,000 for each household and workplace connected."While that amount exceeds the assessed value of some of the 658 homes getting hookups — at a cost of $35.2 million — "the tribe is also starting an internet company to run the network, cr
  
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