ICT news

• IT Giant Favored Indian H-1B Workers Over US Employees

  09-12-2024 23:00 via it.slashdot.org
  
  chiguy writes: In October, a jury in a federal class-action lawsuit returned a verdict that found Cognizant intentionally discriminated against more than 2,000 non-Indian employees between 2013 and 2022. The verdict, which echoed a previously undisclosed finding from a 2020 US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation, centered on discrimination claims based on race and national origin. Cognizant, based in Teaneck, New Jersey, was found to have preferred workers from India, most of w
  
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• OpenAI Launches Sora Video Generator

  09-12-2024 22:22 via slashdot.org
  
  ChatGPT maker OpenAI released its AI-generated video tool called Sora for general use by its paying customers Monday. From a report: The company then said it would do wide testing with creatives and red-teaming with security experts before its release to the public. "We don't want the world to just be text," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a live-streamed announcement Monday.
  "[Video] is important to our culture," Altman added. The company said in a statement that the latest version of Sora, which
  
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• Scientific Breakthrough Gives New Hope To Building Quantum Computers

  09-12-2024 18:15 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google has achieved a major breakthrough in quantum error correction that could enable practical quantum computers by 2030, the company announced in a paper published Monday in Nature. The research demonstrated significant error reduction when scaling up from 3x3 to 7x7 grids of quantum bits, with errors dropping by half at each step. The advance addresses quantum computing's core challenge of maintaining stable quantum states, which typically last only microseconds.
  Google's new quantum chip, m
  
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• Microsoft AI Chief Says Conversational AI Will Replace Web Browsers

  09-12-2024 17:00 via slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman predicts conversational AI will become the primary way people interact with technology,
  replacing traditional web browsers and search engines within the next few years. In an interview with The Verge, Suleyman, who oversees Microsoft's consumer AI products including Bing and Copilot, called current search interfaces "completely broken" and "a total pain," arguing that voice-based AI interactions will prove "100 times easier" for users. He said: The UI that you e
  
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• AI Boosts Materials Discovery By 44% at Major US Lab

  09-12-2024 16:08 via slashdot.org
  
  AI-powered teams at a major U.S. materials company discovered 44% more new materials and filed 39% more patents compared to teams using standard methods, according to a study by MIT economist Aidan Toner-Rodgers.
  The research, conducted at an unnamed corporate laboratory with over 1,000 scientists, tracked the implementation of a custom machine-learning system combining graph neural networks with reinforcement learning. The AI tool, deployed in 2022, was pre-trained on crystal and molecular stru
  
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• Everybody Loves FRED

  09-12-2024 15:01 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Fans post about him on social media. Swag bearing his name sells out on the regular. College professors dedicate class sessions and textbook sections to him. Foreign government officials have been known to express jealousy over his skills, and one prominent economist refers to him as a "national treasure." Meet FRED, a 33-year-old data tool from St. Louis, Mo., and the economics world's most unlikely celebrity.
  Even if you have not interacted with FRED yourse
  
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• Amazon Offers $25 Plane Tickets for Holiday Travel to 5,000 Students and Young Adults

  09-12-2024 13:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Amazon is offering $25 (one-way) plane tickets to 5,000 students (or young adults between 18 and 24 years old) who have a Prime membership (up to $700 off the ticket's original price). CNET REports:Last year, Amazon offered the $25 flight deals to Prime Student members, but this holiday season, the retail giant is expanding the limited-time offer to those enrolled in its Prime for Young Adults plan... Once again, Amazon is joining with [travel-booking site] StudentUniverse to offer several thous
  
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• Slashdot's Interview with Bruce Perens: How He Hopes to Help 'Post Open' Developers Get Paid

  09-12-2024 09:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Bruce Perens, original co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, has responded to questions from Slashdot readers about a new alternative he's developing that hopefully helps "Post Open" developers get paid.But first, "One of the things that's clear from the Slashdot patter is that people are not aware of what I've been doing, in general," Perens says. "So, let's start by filling that in..."Read on for the rest of his wide-ranging answers....Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• 'Solar Paint' Being Developed By Mercedes-Benz Could Revolutionize EV Charging

  09-12-2024 05:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "Mercedes-Benz is researching a new type of solar modules that could be seamlessly applied to the bodywork of electric vehicles," according to a recent Mercedes-Benz press release.
  They describe the 5-micrometer coating as "similar to a wafer-thin layer of paste... significantly thinner than a human hair" — but creating an active photovoltaic surface with an efficiency of 20%.An area of 118.4 square feet (equivalent to the surface of a mid-size SUV) could produce energy for up to 7,456 mil
  
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• Linux Kernel 6.12 Confirmed As LTS, Will Be Supported For 'Multiple Years'

  09-12-2024 04:20 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Slashdot reader prisoninmate shared this report from the blog 9to5LinuxRenowned Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced Thursday that the Linux 6.12 kernel series has been officially marked as LTS (Long Term Support) on the kernel.org website with a predicted life expectancy of at least two years.
  Linux kernel 6.12 was released on November 17th, 2024, and introduces new features like real-time "PREEMPT_RT" support, a new scheduler called sched_ext, and DRM panic messages as QR codes,
  
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• Google Criticized for 'Misleading' Encryption Claims About Its Text-Messaging App

  09-12-2024 02:06 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google's app store claims that their text-messaging app Google Messages means "conversations are end-to-end encrypted".
  "That is some serious bullshit," argues tech blogger John Gruber:
  It's shamefully misleading regarding Google Messages's support for end-to-end encryption... Google Messages does support end-to-end encryption, but only over RCS and only if all participants in the chat are using a recent version of Google Messages. But the second screenshot in the Play Store listing flatly decla
  
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• Bitcoin Miner Purchases 112-Megawatt Texas Wind Farm, Takes it Off the Grid

  09-12-2024 00:48 via news.slashdot.org
  
  This week a Florida-based Bitcoin-tech company named MARA Holdings announced it had bought a 114-megawatt Texas wind farm, reports Chron.com, "and will subsequently take it off the power grid and use it to energize its mining operations."
  MARA's CEO tells the site they're "leveraging renewable resources that would have otherwise been curtailed" while "reducing our bitcoin production costs through vertical integration, and demonstrating MARA's commitment to environmental stewardship."
  The wind fa
  
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