ICT news

• Can We Turn Off AI Tools From Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Meta? Sometimes...

  20-10-2024 22:58 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  "Who asked for any of this in the first place?" wonders a New York Times consumer-tech writer. (Alternate URL here.) "Judging from the feedback I get from readers, lots of people outside the tech industry remain uninterested in AI — and are increasingly frustrated with how difficult it has become to ignore."The companies rely on user activity to train and improve their AI systems, so they are testing this tech inside products we use every day. Typing a question such as "Is Jay-Z left-hande
  
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• How WatchTowr Explored the Complexity of Vulnerability in a Secure Firewall Appliance

  20-10-2024 21:58 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Cybersecurity startup Watchtowr "was founded by hacker-turned-entrepreneur Benjamin Harris," according to a recent press release touting their Fortune 500 customers and $29 million investments from venture capital firms. ("If there's a way to compromise your organization, watchTowr will find it," Harris says in the announcement.)
  This week they shared their own research on a Fortinet FortiGate SSLVPN appliance vulnerability (discovered in February by Gwendal Guégniaud of the Fortinet Prod
  
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• How WatchTowr Explored the Complexity of a Vulnerability in a Secure Firewall Appliance

  20-10-2024 21:58 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Cybersecurity startup Watchtowr "was founded by hacker-turned-entrepreneur Benjamin Harris," according to a recent press release touting their Fortune 500 customers and $29 million investments from venture capital firms. ("If there's a way to compromise your organization, watchTowr will find it," Harris says in the announcement.)
  This week they shared their own research on a Fortinet FortiGate SSLVPN appliance vulnerability (discovered in February by Gwendal Guégniaud of the Fortinet Prod
  
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• NASA's Artemis Mission To Moon Unveils New Spacesuit Designed By Prada

  20-10-2024 20:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  For the first time in 50 years, humans will walk on the moon again. Currently planned for as soon as 2026, the Artemis III mission "will be one of the most complex undertakings of engineering and human ingenuity in the history of deep space exploration..." writes NASA. "Two crew members will descend to the surface and spend approximately a week near the South Pole of the Moon conducting new science before returning to lunar orbit..."And they'll be wearing Prada, according to a Space News report
  
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• Internet Archive Users Start Receiving Email From 'Some Random Guy' Criticizing Unpatched Hole

  20-10-2024 19:35 via it.slashdot.org
  
  A post shared Saturday on social media acknowledges those admins and developers at the Internet Archive working "literally round the clock... They have taken no days off this past week. They are taking none this weekend... they are working with all of their energy and considerable talent."
  It describes people "working so incredibly hard... putting their all in," with a top priority of "getting the site back secure and safe".
  But there's new and continuing problems, reports The Verge's weekend ed
  
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• Could Geothermal Power Revolutionize US Energy Consumption?

  20-10-2024 18:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  That
  massive geothermal energy project in Utah gets a closer look from the Washington Post, which calls it "a significant advance for a climate-friendly technology that is gaining momentum in the United States."
  Once fully operational, the project could generate up to 2 gigawatts of electricity — enough to power more than 2 million homes. In addition, the BLM proposed Thursday to speed up the permitting process for geothermal projects on public lands across the country. Earlier this month,
  
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• '100% Free' GNU Boot Discovers They've Been Shipping Non-Free Code - Again

  20-10-2024 17:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Libreboot is a distribution of coreboot "aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS firmware contained by most computers."
  So then what exactly is GNU Boot? Its home page explains...In November 2022, Libreboot began to include non-libre code. We have made repeated efforts to continue collaboration with those developers to help their version of Libreboot remain libre, but that was not successful. Now we've stepped forward to stand up for freedom, ours and that of the wider community, by maintaining
  
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• Neal Stephenson Publishes First Book in New Atomic Age Spy Series 'Bomb Light'

  20-10-2024 16:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Neal Stephenson is a sci-fi writer "of exuberant prose who revels in embracing big ideas," according to the New York Times. "With Polostan he enters the realm of the spy novel..."
  Or, as the Washington Post puts it, Stephenson "drops readers into a bloody, inspiring, conflict-ridden and pivotal period of the early 20th century."With its flair for characterization, precision of language, witty apercus and fecundity of events, the novel delivers what we've come to cherish from the author of such f
  
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• Electric Motors Are About to Get a Major Upgrade - Thanks to Benjamin Franklin

  20-10-2024 13:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  "A technology pioneered by Benjamin Franklin is being revived to build more efficient electric motors," reports the Wall Street Journal, "an effort in its nascent stage that has the potential to be massive."A handful of scientists and engineers — armed with materials and techniques unimaginable in the 1700s — are creating modern versions of Franklin's "electrostatic motor," that are on the cusp of commercialization... Franklin's "electrostatic motor" uses alternating positive and neg
  
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• Bill Gates Applauds Open Source Tools for 'Digital Public Infrastructure'

  20-10-2024 09:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  It connects people, data, and money, Bill Gates wrote this week on his personal blog. But digital public infrastructure is also "revolutionizing the way entire nations serve their people, respond to crises, and grow their economies" — and the Gates Foundation sees it "as an important part of our efforts to help save lives and fight poverty in poor countries."Digital public infrastructure [or "DPI"]: digital ID systems that securely prove who you are, payment systems that move money instant
  
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• What Happens When a California Oil Refinery Shuts Down?

  20-10-2024 05:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  A California oil refinery that produces 8% of the state's gasoline is shutting down late next year — a decision the Los Angeles Times says is "driven by climate change, the transition to electric vehicles and demands for cleaner air."
  "There's no question we are going to lose refineries over time, because demand is going to go down as we transition to electric vehicles, but I did not expect to see any of them exiting this quickly," said Severin Borenstein, faculty director of the Energy In
  
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• Chip Designers Recall the Big AMD-Intel Battle Over x86-64 Support

  20-10-2024 03:34 via slashdot.org
  
  Tom's Hardware reports on some interesting hardware history being shared on X.com:
  AMD engineer Phil Park identified a curious nugget of PC architectural history from, of all places, a year-old Quora answer posted by former Intel engineer [and Pentium Pro architect] Robert Colwell. The nugget indicates that Intel could have beaten AMD to the x86-64 punch if the former wasn't dead-set on the x64-only Itanium line of CPUs.
  Colwell had responded on Quora to the question "Shouldn't Intel with its va
  
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• After Second Power Outage, 10 Million Cubans Endure Saturday Afternoon Blackout

  20-10-2024 00:57 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  The Miami Herald reports:
  Cuba's electrical grid shut down again early Saturday, leaving the island without electricity after authorities tried but failed to restore power following an earlier nationwide blackout on Friday. The island's Electric Union reported a second "total outage" at 6:15 a.m., just hours after officials reported they had restored power in a few "microsystems" all over the island... The country has been going through its worst economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Unio
  
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