ICT news

• After Nearly a Decade Away, Panasonic TVs Are Back In the US

  04-09-2024 23:32 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: You might have a hard time stretching your memory to the Obama era, but back in 2013, Panasonic's plasma TVs were the critical darlings of the US market. They far outperformed their LED/LCD counterparts at a time when OLED was little more than a pipe dream for most. Then suddenly, under enormous pressure from ever-cheaper LED panels, Panasonic halted all plasma TV production. By 2016, the company had left the US TV space entirely. Now, over 10 year
  
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• Microsoft Rolled Out AI PCs That Can't Play Top Games

  04-09-2024 22:43 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The latest Windows personal computers with AI features have "the best specs" on "all the benchmarks," Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella recently said. There is one problem: The chips inside current models are incompatible with many leading videogames. From a report: Microsoft and its partners this spring rolled out Copilot+ PCs that include functions such as creating AI-generated pictures and video. Under the hood of the new laptops is a hardware change. Instead of the Intel chips that hav
  
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• 'Error' Causes Alexa To Endorse Kamala Harris, Refuse To Discuss Trump

  04-09-2024 22:04 via politics.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: It would be perfectly reasonable to expect Amazon's digital assistant Alexa to decline to state opinions about the 2024 presidential race, but up until recently, that assumption would have been incorrect. When asked to give reasons to vote for former President Donald Trump, Alexa demurred, according to a video from Fox Business. "I cannot provide responses that endorse any political party or its leader," Alexa responded. When asked the same about Vice Preside
  
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• Verizon Nearing Deal for Frontier Communications

  04-09-2024 21:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Verizon is in advanced talks to acquire Frontier Communications in a deal that would bolster the company's fiber network to compete with rivals including AT&T, WSJ reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: An announcement could come this week, granted the talks don't hit any last-minute snags, the people said. A deal would be sizable, given Frontier's market value of over $7 billion. The company, cobbled together by several deals over the years, provides br
  
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• Admins Wonder If the Cloud Was Such a Good Idea After All

  04-09-2024 20:47 via slashdot.org
  
  After an initial euphoric rush to the cloud, admins are questioning the value and promise of the tech giant's services. The Register: According to a report published by UK cloud outfit Civo, more than a third of organizations surveyed reckoned that their move to the cloud had failed to live up to promises of cost-effectiveness. Over half reported a rise in their cloud bill. Although the survey, unsurprisingly, paints Civo in a flattering light, some of its figures may make uncomfortable reading
  
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• In Consumer Hardware, Niche is the New Mainstream

  04-09-2024 20:09 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  A pair of devices launching Wednesday highlight a growing trend in consumer hardware: doing one thing well, Axios writes. From the report: The smartphone rendered many formerly standalone devices obsolete, but now some tech with a single purpose can offer an experience that a digital Swiss Army knife can't. GoPro announced its latest cameras on Wednesday. The $199 GoPro Hero is a smaller, simpler camera that presents fewer controls, while this year's flagship -- the $399 Hero 13 Black -- support
  
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• Internet Archive Digital Lending Isn't Fair Use, 2nd Cir. Says

  04-09-2024 19:28 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Internet Archive's "controlled digital lending" system and removal of controls during the pandemic don't qualify as fair use, the Second Circuit affirmed Wednesday. Bloomberg Law:
  Four major book publishers again thwarted the online repository's defense that its one-to-one lending practices mirrored those of traditional libraries, this time at the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Copying books in their entirety isn't transformative, and lending them for free competes with the publishe
  
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• Snapchat Is Going To Put Ads Next To Messages From Friends

  04-09-2024 18:51 via slashdot.org
  
  Snapchat will soon start "experimenting" with placing sponsored messages next to chat threads from friends, according to CEO Evan Spiegel. From a report: These "Sponsored Snaps" from brands will appear as unread messages in Snapchat's main Chat tab, implying that they'll sit above messages from a person's contacts until they're acted on. This is the first time Snap will show ads in the most used part of its app. In an employee memo also posted on the company's website, Spiegel says that Sponsore
  
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• US Job Openings Decline To Lowest Level Since January 2021

  04-09-2024 18:10 via news.slashdot.org
  
  US job openings fell in July to the lowest since the start of 2021 and layoffs rose, consistent with other signs of slowing demand for workers. From a report: Available positions decreased to 7.67 million from a downwardly revised 7.91 million reading in the prior month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, known as JOLTS, showed Wednesday. The figure was lower than all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The decline in openings coincides with recent
  
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• Are Professional Forecasters Overconfident?

  04-09-2024 17:33 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Research by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, published on Tuesday, indicates that professional economic forecasters tend to overestimate their accuracy in long-term predictions while underestimating their short-term precision.
  The study, which analyzed data from the Survey of Professional Forecasters from 1982 to 2022, revealed that for forecasts two to four quarters ahead, actual errors were two to four times greater than the forecasters' estimated uncertainty ranges for both GDP growth an
  
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• Europe's Farming Lobbies Recognize Need To Eat Less Meat in Shared Vision Report

  04-09-2024 17:25 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Europe's food and farming lobbies have recognized the need to eat less meat after hammering out a shared vision for the future of agriculture with green groups and other stakeholders. From a report: The wide-ranging report calls for "urgent, ambitious and feasible" change in farm and food systems and acknowledges that Europeans eat more animal protein than scientists recommend. It says support is needed to rebalance diets toward plant-based proteins such as better education, stricter marketing a
  
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• Intel's Money Woes Throw Biden Team's Chip Strategy Into Turmoil

  04-09-2024 16:50 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The Biden-Harris administration's big bet on Intel to lead a US chipmaking renaissance is in grave trouble as a result of the company's mounting financial struggles, creating a potentially damaging setback for the country's most ambitious industrial policy in decades. From a report: Five months after the president traveled to Arizona to unveil a potential $20 billion package of incentives alongside Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger, there are growing questions around when -- or if -- Intel w
  
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• VW Could Close Plants In Germany, Warns of 'Serious Situation'

  04-09-2024 16:14 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: The German company says it may close plants in its home country amid what CEO Oliver Blume reportedly called "a very demanding and serious situation" for the European automotive industry. That would mark the first-ever German plant closures in the company's nearly nine-decade history. VW is facing a pair of competition-related challenges -- one outside its control, and the other of its own making. Chinese automakers are wresting market share away f
  
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• Navy Chiefs Conspired To Get Themselves Illegal Warship Wi-Fi

  04-09-2024 15:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  During a 2023 deployment, senior enlisted leaders aboard the Navy ship USS Manchester secretly installed a Starlink Wi-Fi network, allowing them exclusive internet access in violation of Navy regulations. "Unauthorized Wi-Fi systems like the one [then-Command Senior Chief Grisel Marrero] set up are a massive no-no for a deployed Navy ship, and Marrero's crime occurred as the ship was deploying to the West Pacific, where such security concerns become even more paramount among heightened tensions
  
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• Firefox 130 Now Available With WebCodecs API, Third-Party AI Chatbots

  04-09-2024 12:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Firefox 130 introduces several enhancements, including improved local translation handling, better Android page load performance, and the WebCodecs API for low-level audio/video processing on desktop platforms. Notably, it also supports third-party AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Gemini via the new Firefox Labs feature. Phoronix reports: The WebCodecs API is particularly useful for web-based apps like video/audio editors and video conferencing that may want control over individual frames of
  
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• World's First Zinc-Iron Battery Megafactory Opens For Business

  04-09-2024 09:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Sweden's Enerpoly has opened the world's first zinc-ion battery megafactory near Stockholm, aiming for a 100 MWh annual capacity by 2026. "According to Enerpoly, this megafactory will serve Europe's needs for safe energy storage, and also utilize an all-European supply chain to boot," reports New Atlas. From the report: If you're wondering why Enerpoly is bothering with zinc-ion and not lithium-ion batteries, it's because the former is a better choice for storage in several ways:- They use a wat
  
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• World's First Zinc-Ion Battery Megafactory Opens For Business

  04-09-2024 09:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Sweden's Enerpoly has opened the world's first zinc-ion battery megafactory near Stockholm, aiming for a 100 MWh annual capacity by 2026. "According to Enerpoly, this megafactory will serve Europe's needs for safe energy storage, and also utilize an all-European supply chain to boot," reports New Atlas. From the report: If you're wondering why Enerpoly is bothering with zinc-ion and not lithium-ion batteries, it's because the former is a better choice for storage in several ways:- They use a wat
  
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• Northern Lights Imperiled Infrastructure From Power Grids To Satellites

  04-09-2024 05:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a Bloomberg article, written by Jason Leopold: The aurora borealis, or northern lights, is a colorful display in the night sky that comes from geomagnetic storms in space. When charged particles from the sun smash into the Earth's upper atmosphere, they create bright, kaleidoscopic ribbons of light, typically in polar regions. Really big solar action can interfere with GPS systems and power grids. That's exactly what happened on May 10, when there were three "coronal m
  
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• NaNoWriMo Is In Disarray After Organizers Defend AI Writing Tools

  04-09-2024 02:20 via slashdot.org
  
  The Verge's Jess Weatherbed reports: The organization behind National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is being slammed online after it claimed that opposing the use of AI writing tools is "classist and ableist." On Saturday, NaNoWriMo published its stance on the technology, announcing that it doesn't explicitly support or condemn any approach to writing. "We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that que
  
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• Intel's Dow Status Under Threat As Struggling Chipmaker's Shares Plunge

  04-09-2024 01:40 via slashdot.org
  
  Intel's slumping share price could cost it a spot in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Reuters reports: Analysts and investors said Intel was likely to be removed from the Dow, pointing to a near 60% decline in the company's shares this year that has made it the worst performer on the index and left it with the lowest stock price on the price-weighted Dow. The chipmaker's shares slid about 7% on Tuesday amid a broader market selloff, with the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index (.SOX) down nearl
  
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• Bluesky Adds 2 Million New Users After Brazil's X Ban

  04-09-2024 01:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  In the days following Brazil's shutdown of X, the decentralized social networking startup Bluesky added over 2 million new users, up from just half a million as of Friday. "This rapid growth led some users to encounter the occasional error that would state there were 'Not Enough Resources' to handle requests, as Bluesky engineers scrambled to keep the servers stable under the influx of new sign-ups," reports TechCrunch's Sarah Perez. From the report: As new users downloaded the app, Bluesky jump
  
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• Oprah's Upcoming AI Television Special Sparks Outrage Among Tech Critics

  04-09-2024 00:20 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, ABC announced an upcoming TV special titled, "AI and the Future of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special." The one-hour show, set to air on September 12, aims to explore AI's impact on daily life and will feature interviews with figures in the tech industry, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Bill Gates. Soon after the announcement, some AI critics began questioning the guest list and the framing of the show in general. [...] Critics of gene
  
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