ICT news

• FFmpeg Devs Boast of Up To 94x Performance Boost After Implementing Handwritten AVX-512 Assembly Code

  04-11-2024 23:50 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Anton Shilov reports via Tom's Hardware: FFmpeg is an open-source video decoding project developed by volunteers who contribute to its codebase, fix bugs, and add new features. The project is led by a small group of core developers and maintainers who oversee its direction and ensure that contributions meet certain standards. They coordinate the project's development and release cycles, merging contributions from other developers. This group of developers tried to implement a handwritten AVX512
  
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• Perplexity Will Show Live US Election Results Despite AI Accuracy Warnings

  04-11-2024 23:10 via politics.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Friday, Perplexity launched an election information hub that relies on data from The Associated Press and Democracy Works to provide live updates and information about the 2024 US general election, which takes place on Tuesday, November 5. "Starting Tuesday, we'll be offering live updates on elections using data from The Associated Press so you can stay informed on presidential, senate, and house races at both a state and national level,"
  
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• Windows 11 Continues To Creep Up Behind Windows 10

  04-11-2024 22:32 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: With Windows 11 still failing to set the world alight, campaigners are warning that millions of perfectly good PCs could become landfill fodder when support for Windows 10 runs out in eleven and a bit months.
  Figures compiled by StatCounter show that Windows 11 commanded a 35.55 percent share of the desktop Windows market in October. In comparison, the share of Windows 10 dropped to 60.97 percent, continuing a downward trend that began earlier this year -- it
  
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• Singapore To Increase Road Capacity By Tracking All Vehicles With GPS

  04-11-2024 21:55 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Singapore plans to boost road capacity by 20,000 vehicles through a new satellite-based road pricing system, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) announced last week. The city-state will replace its current gantry-based Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system with GPS tracking technology, enabling more precise congestion management without physical toll stations. The Register adds: "ERP 2.0 will provide more comprehensive aggregated traffic information and will be able to operate without physical gan
  
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• Lawsuit Accuses PowerSchool of Selling Student Data To 3rd Parties

  04-11-2024 21:14 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  A former teacher has filed a federal lawsuit against PowerSchool, alleging the education technology giant illegally sells student data to third parties without proper consent. Emily Cherkin, lead plaintiff in the class action suit filed in San Francisco, claims PowerSchool has amassed 345 terabytes of data from 440 school districts, including sensitive information about students' health, behavior, and academic records. The company provides software services to more than 60 million students acros
  
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• Netflix Bullish on Gen AI for Games After Laying Off Human Game Developers

  04-11-2024 20:35 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Netflix's gaming division is shifting focus to generative AI weeks after shuttering its premium game studio and laying off 35 developers, the company's newly appointed VP of GenAI for Games has announced. Mike Verdu, previously Vice President of Games, called the move a "once in a generation inflection point" that will "accelerate development" and create novel gaming experiences. The pivot follows the closure of Blue, Netflix's internal studio that had recruited veterans from major franchises in
  
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• Newest Device To Run Doom: Nintendo's Alarm Clock

  04-11-2024 19:54 via games.slashdot.org
  
  A hardware hacker has successfully modified Nintendo's $100 Alarmo device to run the classic video game Doom, marking another milestone in the gaming community's tradition of porting the 1993 shooter to unconventional devices.
  YouTuber GaryOderNichts demonstrated the 2.8-inch circular alarm clock running Chocolate Doom natively, using the device's wheel for movement and side buttons for weapons. The hack requires no hardware modifications and works on the current 2.0 software version. The hack c
  
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• Inside the Massive Crime Industry That's Hacking Billion-Dollar Companies

  04-11-2024 19:15 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Cybercriminals have breached dozens of major companies including AT&T, Ticketmaster and Hot Topic by exploiting "infostealer" malware that harvests login credentials from infected computers, an investigation has found. The malware, spread through pirated software and social media, has infected 250,000 new devices daily, according to cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. Russian developers create the malware while contractors distribute it globally, deliberately avoiding former Soviet states. H
  
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• Google, Apple Drive 'Black Box' IP Policing with App Store Rules

  04-11-2024 18:34 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  App developers Musi and Sarafan Mobile have sued Apple and Google in California federal court over app removals they claim were unjustified, highlighting tensions over the tech giants' intellectual property enforcement policies. Musi's music-streaming app was removed after YouTube complained about interface infringement, while Sarafan's "Reely" app was taken down following Instagram's claims about logo similarity.
  Both developers say the platforms breached their agreements by removing apps witho
  
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• Apple Approved Another Illegal Streaming App

  04-11-2024 17:50 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Another illegal streaming app has made its way to the App Store -- but it only surfaces pirated films for people in certain regions outside the US, including France, Canada, and the Netherlands. As shown in a post on Threads, the App Store listing for "Univer Note" presents itself as a productivity platform that can "easily help you record every day's events and plan your time." However, if you're a user in certain countries, like France or Canada, opening th
  
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• 'The Law Must Respond When Science Changes'

  04-11-2024 17:08 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The clash between law's need for finality and science's evolving nature is creating serious justice problems, an opinion piece on Scientific American argued on Monday. Two recent cases highlight this: Robert Roberson faces execution based on now-discredited shaken baby syndrome science, while the Menendez brothers' life sentences are being questioned due to improved understanding of childhood trauma's effects on violence.
  Scientific understanding in criminal justice has repeatedly proven wrong.
  
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• Governments Stress Links Between Climate and Nature Collapse

  04-11-2024 16:25 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: As world leaders gathered in Colombia this week, they also watched for news from home, where many of the headlines carried the catastrophic consequences of ecological breakdown. Across the Amazon rainforest and Brazil's enormous wetlands, relentless fires had burned more than 22m hectares (55m acres). In Spain, the death toll in communities devastated by flooding passed 200. In the boreal forests that span Siberia, Scandinavia, Alaska and Canada, countries we
  
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• Apple Delays Cut-price Vision Headset Until 2027, Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo Says

  04-11-2024 15:44 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple has scrapped plans for a budget mixed-reality headset initially slated for 2025, pushing the launch to 2027, according to supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. The company will instead focus on releasing an upgraded Vision Pro next year featuring its M5 chip and enhanced AI capabilities, he said. The canceled lower-cost model would have stripped features like EyeSight and used cheaper components to target mainstream consumers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Meta's Plan For Nuclear-Powered AI Data Centre Thwarted By Rare Bees

  04-11-2024 15:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Plans by Mark Zuckerberg's Meta to build an AI data centre in the US that runs on nuclear power were thwarted in part because a rare species of bee was discovered on land earmarked for the project, according to people familiar with the matter.
  Zuckerberg had planned to strike a deal with an existing nuclear power plant operator to provide emissions-free electricity for a new data centre supporting his artificial intelligence ambitions. However, the potential
  
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• L.A. County Sues Pepsi and Coca-Cola Over Their Role in the Plastic Pollution Crisis

  04-11-2024 13:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the Los Angeles Times:Los Angeles County has filed suit against the world's largest beverage companies — Coca-Cola and Pepsi — claiming the soda and drink makers lied to the public about the effectiveness of plastic recycling and, as a result, left county residents and ecosystems choking in discarded plastic... The Los Angeles County suit alleges — in a vein similar to that of [California attorney general] Bonta's suit against Exxon M
  
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• What Happened After Remote Workers Were Offered $10,000 to Move to Tulsa?

  04-11-2024 09:34 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Five years ago remote workers were offered $10,0000 to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma for at least a year. Since then roughly 3,300 have accepted the offer, according to the New York TImes. [Alternate URL here.] But more importantly, now researchers are looking at the results:Their research, released this month, surveyed 1,248 people — including 411 who had participated in Tulsa Remote and others who were accepted but didn't move or weren't accepted but had applied to the program — and foun
  
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• Python Overtakes JavaScript on GitHub, Annual Survey Finds

  04-11-2024 06:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  GitHub released its annual "State of the Octoverse" report this week. And while "Systems programming languages, like Rust, are also on the rise... Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, and Java remain the most widely used languages on GitHub."
  In fact, "In 2024, Python overtook JavaScript as the most popular language on GitHub." They also report usage of Jupyter Notebooks "skyrocketed" with a 92% jump in usage, which along with Python's rise seems to underscore "the surge in data science and machine l
  
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• Will Charging Cables Ever Have a Single Standardzed Port?

  04-11-2024 03:38 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  The Atlantic complains that our chaos of different plug types "was supposed to end, with USB-C as our savior."But part of the problem is what they call "the second circle of our cable hell: My USB-C may not be the same as yours. And the USB-C you bought two years ago may not be the same as the one you got today. And that means it might not do what you now assume it can."
  A lack of standardization is not the problem here. The industry has designed, named, and rolled out a parade of standards that
  
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• Researchers Develop New Method That Tricks Cancer Cells Into Killing Themselves

  04-11-2024 01:39 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Our bodies divest themselves of 60 billion cells every day through a natural process called "apoptosis". So Stanford medicine researchers are developing a new approach to cancer therapy that could "trick cancer cells into disposing of themselves," according to announcement from Stanford's medical school:
  Their method accomplishes this by artificially bringing together two proteins in such a way that the new compound switches on a set of cell death genes... One of these proteins, BCL6, when mutat
  
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• How a Slice of Cheese Almost Derailed Europe's Most Important Rocket Test

  04-11-2024 00:39 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this report from the blog Interesting Engineering: A team of students made history this month by performing Europe's first rocket hop test. Those who have followed SpaceX's trajectory will know hop tests are a vital stepping stone for a reusable rocket program, as they allow engineers to test their rocket's landing capabilities. Impressively, no private company or space agency in Europe had ever performed a rocket hop test before. Essentially, a group of
  
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