ICT news

• If the Linux Foundation Was a Software Company, It'd Likely Be the Biggest in the World

  28-09-2023 23:20 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The Cloud Native Computing Foundation has returned to Shanghai for the city's first Kubecon since the pandemic. During a keynote that switched languages several times, demonstrating the challenges faced by both AI and human translators in keeping up, Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, threw out several crowd-pleasing statistics while also highlighting some projects likely to make one or two companies squirm a little. On the statistics fro
  
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• Mark Zuckerberg Can't Quit the Metaverse

  28-09-2023 22:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a story: Almost two years ago, Mark Zuckerberg rebranded his company Facebook to Meta -- and since then, he has been focused on building the "metaverse," a three-dimensional virtual reality. But the metaverse has lost some of its luster since 2021. Companies like Disney have closed down their metaverse divisions and deemphasized using the word, while crypto-based startup metaverses have quietly languished or imploded. In 2022, Meta's Reality Labs division reported an o
  
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• Swiss Glaciers Lose 10% of Their Volume in Two Years

  28-09-2023 22:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Swiss glaciers have lost 10% of their volume in just two years, a report has found. From a report: Scientists have said climate breakdown caused by the burning of fossil fuels is the cause of unusually hot summers and winters with very low snow volume, which have caused the accelerating melts. The volume lost during the hot summers of 2022 and 2023 is the same as that lost between 1960 and 1990. The analysis by the Swiss Academy of Sciences found 4% of Switzerland's total glacier volume vanished
  
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• First Evidence of Spinning Black Hole Detected by Scientists

  28-09-2023 21:20 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Astronomers have captured the first direct evidence of a black hole spinning, providing new insights into the universe's most enigmatic objects. From a report: The observations focus on the supermassive black hole at the centre of the neighbouring Messier 87 galaxy, whose shadow was imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope. Like many supermassive black holes, M87 features powerful jets that are launched from the poles at close to the speed of light into intergalactic space. Scientists have predicte
  
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• Food Delivery Robots Are Feeding Camera Footage to the LAPD, Internal Emails Show

  28-09-2023 20:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  samleecole writes: A food delivery robot company that delivers for Uber Eats in Los Angeles provided video filmed by one of its robots to the Los Angeles Police Department as part of a criminal investigation, 404 Media has learned. The incident highlights the fact that delivery robots that are being deployed to sidewalks all around the country are essentially always filming, and that their footage can and has been used as evidence in criminal trials. Emails obtained by 404 Media also show that t
  
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• AI Language Models Can Exceed PNG and FLAC in Lossless Compression, Says Study

  28-09-2023 20:00 via slashdot.org
  
  In an arXiv research paper titled "Language Modeling Is Compression," researchers detail their discovery that the DeepMind large language model (LLM) called Chinchilla 70B can perform lossless compression on image patches from the ImageNet image database to 43.4 percent of their original size, beating the PNG algorithm, which compressed the same data to 58.5 percent. For audio, Chinchilla compressed samples from the LibriSpeech audio data set to just 16.4 percent of their raw size, outdoing FLAC
  
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• Microsoft Considered Investing Billions in Apple To Compete With Google Search

  28-09-2023 19:02 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft weighed investing multiple billions in a deal with Apple in 2016 to make its Bing search engine the default on the Safari browser and better compete with Alphabet's dominant Google search, a Microsoft vice president testified Thursday in court. From the report: Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella met with Apple CEO Tim Cook as part of the talks, said Jon Tinter, a Microsoft business development vice president who is on the stand during the US Justice Department's antitrust
  
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• OpenAI and Jony Ive In Talks To Raise $1 Billion To Build 'iPhone for AI'

  28-09-2023 18:40 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  OpenAI is in advanced talks with former Apple designer Sir Jony Ive and SoftBank's Masayoshi Son to launch a venture to build the "iPhone of artificial intelligence," FT reported Thursday, fuelled by more than $1bn in funding from the Japanese conglomerate. From the report: Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief, has tapped Ive's company LoveFrom, which the designer founded when he left Apple in 2019, to develop the ChatGPT creator's first consumer device, according to three people familiar with the plan. A
  
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• Apple Asks Supreme Court To Reverse App Store Ruling Won by Epic

  28-09-2023 18:05 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple said it has asked the US Supreme Court to review a judge's ruling from two years ago that could diminish the billions of dollars in revenue its App Store generates by letting app developers direct users to alternative payment methods. From a report: Apple's request to the high court on Thursday is its latest salvo in a drawn-out battle with Epic Games over how the iPhone maker runs its app marketplace. App Store revenue is lucrative for Apple, with developers charged a commission of as muc
  
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• iPhone 15 Pro Owners Complain About Overheating Problems

  28-09-2023 17:20 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  The new iPhone 15 Pro may be too hot for some to handle. Literally. WSJ: Apple's priciest new iPhones are heating up in some scenarios, reaching high temperatures that make them difficult to touch at certain times, according to reviews, tests by The Wall Street Journal and social-media posts from buyers in China, the U.S. and Canada. Some iPhone 14 Pro owners have noticed similar hot temperatures over the past year. The high temperatures in Apple's newest 15 Pro models -- typically when charging
  
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• Raspberry Pi 5 Announced

  28-09-2023 16:40 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  jizmonkey writes: The new version of Raspberry Pi is priced at $60 for the 4GB variant, and $80 for its 8GB sibling, and virtually every aspect of the platform has been upgraded. The new CPU is twice as fast and new features include simultaneous 5.0 Gbps USB 3.0 ports and a PCIe 2.0 x1 interface which can be used for an m.2 storage. Priority will be given to individual buyers through the end of the year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Security Researcher Warns of Chilling Effect After Feds Search Phone At Airport

  28-09-2023 16:00 via it.slashdot.org
  
  SonicSpike shares a report: A U.S. security researcher is warning of a chilling effect after he was detained on arrival at a U.S. airport, his phone was searched, and was ordered to testify to a grand jury, only to have prosecutors reverse course and drop the investigation later. On Wednesday, Sam Curry, a security engineer at blockchain technology company Yuga Labs, said in a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter, that he was taken into secondary inspection by U.S. federal agents on September
  
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• Ask Slashdot: How Do You Deal With Lousy Browser Spell-Checkers?

  28-09-2023 15:00 via ask.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader Tablizer writes: Chrome's spell checker doesn't list the proper option for "devine" or "preditor". Soundex would match them and is relatively simple to implement, but most browsers allegedly use the Hunspell algorithm. However, Hunspell doesn't handle incorrect vowels well.Browsers could offer a "More spelling options" menu item to bring up a wider dialog using alternative algorithms, such as Soundex. Until then, can anyone recommend good spelling plugins?Read more of t
  
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• 'Code.org In Farsi' To Bring Tech-Backed Nonprofit's K-12 CS Curricula To Iran

  28-09-2023 12:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Today, there are over 110 million Farsi speakers worldwide," explained tech-backed nonprofit Code.org in Tuesday's announcement of its new multi-year 'Code.org in Farsi' initiative. "While the majority of native speakers live in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, there are millions living as immigrants, migrants, and refugees around the world. With the Code.org in Farsi initiative, Farsi-speaking students will have the same access to our curricula that is
  
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• Bids For ISS Demolition Rights Are Now Open, NASA Declares

  28-09-2023 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Jude Karabus writes via The Register: NASA has confirmed it will ask American companies to duke it out for the opportunity to deorbit the International Space Station -- quietly releasing a request for proposals last week. The specs, which appeared on U.S. government e-procurement portal SAM.gov, are for a vehicle the agency has dubbed the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle (USDV), which will be focused on the space station's final deorbit activity. According to NASA, it will be a "new spacecraft design or mod
  
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• Antarctic Sea Ice Hits Lowest Winter Maximum On Record

  28-09-2023 05:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: The sea ice around Antarctica likely had a record low surface area when it was at its maximum size this winter, a preliminary US analysis of satellite data showed Monday. As the southern hemisphere transitions into spring, the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said in a statement that Antarctic sea ice had only reached a maximum size of 16.96 million square kilometers (6.55 million square miles) this year, on September 10. The ice pac
  
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• Meta's Smart Glasses Can Take Calls, Play Music, and Livestream From Your Face

  28-09-2023 03:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Meta announced a new pair of Ray-Ban smart glasses, capable of livestreaming to Facebook and Instagram and translating text. The glasses were announced at today's Connect event in Menlo Park alongside Meta's new Quest 3 headset. The Verge reports: The new glasses, which Meta just announced at its Connect launch event and which are up for preorder now and will be on sale October 17th starting at $299, have two primary purposes. The first is to replace your headphones: the smart glasses have a sim
  
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• ChatGPT Can Now Browse the Internet

  28-09-2023 02:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  OpenAI says ChatGPT is "no longer limited to data before September 2021." It can now browse the internet to provide you with up-to-date information, "complete with direct links to sources." From the announcement: Since the original launch of browsing in May, we received useful feedback. Updates include following robots.txt and identifying user agents so sites can control how ChatGPT interacts with them. Browsing is particularly useful for tasks that require up-to-date information, such as helpin
  
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• Backdoored Firmware Lets China State Hackers Control Routers With 'Magic Packets'

  28-09-2023 02:02 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hackers backed by the Chinese government are planting malware into routers that provides long-lasting and undetectable backdoor access to the networks of multinational companies in the US and Japan, governments in both countries said Wednesday. The hacking group, tracked under names including BlackTech, Palmerworm, Temp.Overboard, Circuit Panda, and Radio Panda, has been operating since at least 2010, a joint advisory published by government
  
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• Tech Layoffs Are All But a Thing of the Past

  28-09-2023 01:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Alex Wilhelm writes via TechCrunch: Layoffs in the technology industry have slowed sharply in recent months, bringing the number of jobs lost to tech's efficiency push to a near stop. According to several services that track layoffs in the tech industry, after reaching a local maximum in January, the number of people laid off had declined by more than 90% by September. What's more, some tech companies are hiring again to refill some of the roles that they had eliminated mere months ago.Such a qu
  
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• Indonesia To Ban Purchases On Social Media Like TikTok

  28-09-2023 00:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Indonesia said it will bar social media companies from allowing transactions and doubling as e-commerce platforms -- all to prevent misuse of public data. "This means that users in Indonesia cannot buy or sell products and services on TikTok and Facebook," reports CNBC. From the report: In a media conference Monday, Minister of Trade Zulkifli Hasan said that "the connection [between social media and e-commerce] must be separated so that the algorithm is not all controlled" and this "prevents the
  
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• Volkswagen Hit By IT Outage, Brand Vehicle Production In Germany Halted

  28-09-2023 00:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Volkswagen says it was hit by a major IT outage on Wednesday, halting production at the company's namesake brand in Germany. Reuters reports: Volkswagen said that the whole group, which includes the Porsche AG and Audi brands, was affected. Volkswagen said there had been an unspecified "IT malfunction of network components" at the carmaker's site in Wolfsburg, its global headquarters."The fault has been present since 12:30 p.m. (CET) and is currently being analysed. There are implications for ve
  
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• AI-Generated 'Subliminal Messages' Are Going Viral

  28-09-2023 00:00 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Every week, the social media hype-train seems to find new ways to sensationalize generative AI tools. Most recently, a new technique that allows users to produce optical illusions went viral, with some describing the results as AI-generated images with "subliminal" messages. The technique, called ControlNet, essentially lets users have more control over the generated image by specifying additional inputs -- in this case, letting you create im
  
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