ICT news

• Donald Bitzer, a Pioneer of Cyberspace and Plasma Screens, Dies At 90

  14-12-2024 23:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  The Washington Post reports:Years before the internet was created and the first smartphones buzzed to life, an educational platform called PLATO offered a glimpse of the digital world to come. Launched in 1960 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [UIUC], it was the first generalized, computer-based instructional system, and grew into a home for early message boards, emails, chatrooms, instant messaging and multiplayer video games.The platform's developer, Donald Bitzer, was a handba
  
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• Raspberry Pi Announces New $90 Computer in a Keyboard, Plus 'Raspberry Pi Monitor'

  14-12-2024 22:34 via build.slashdot.org
  
  "Single-board computer maker Raspberry Pi is updating its cute little computer-meet-keyboard device with better specifications..." reports TechCrunch.
  They call the new $90 Raspberry Pi 500 "not as intimidating" because "when you look at the Raspberry Pi 500, you can't see any chipsets or printed circuit board... The idea with the Raspberry Pi 500 is that you can plug in a mouse and display, and you're ready to hit the ground running."
  When it comes to specifications, the Raspberry Pi 500 featur
  
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• Could an Undersea Hyperloop Train Tunnel Offer One-Hour Trips From London to New York?

  14-12-2024 21:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "Proposals for a tunnel connecting the U.K. to the U.S. underneath the Atlantic Ocean have resurfaced," reports Newsweek, "but with a price tag of almost $20 trillion, the project is a big ask."With the two global cities being over 3,000 miles apart, construction would take several years — the 23.5-mile Channel Tunnel linking England and France took six years to construct — and require significant investment. Estimates over the cost have reached as high as £15.5 trillion, the e
  
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• America Prepares New AI Chip Restrictions to Close China's Backdoor Access

  14-12-2024 20:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  The U.S. wants to limit China's access to advanced AI chips, reports the Wall Street Journal, with new rules to restrict sales in parts of the world.
  "The rules are aimed at China, but they threaten to create conflict between the U.S. and nations that may not want their purchases of chips micromanaged from Washington.
  The latest round of curbs could come this month... Among the restrictions, the administration aims to introduce caps on shipments of AI chips to certain countries for use in large
  
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• America's FCC Opens 6-GHz Band to Unlicensed Very-Low-Power Devices

  14-12-2024 19:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  America's telecom-regulating Federal Communications Commission "has opened up the entire 6 GHz frequency band to very low-power devices," reports the Register, "alongside other unlicensed applications such as Wi-Fi kits."The FCC said it has adopted extra rules to allow very low-power device operation across the entire 1,200 MHz of the 6 GHz band, from 5.925 to 7.125 GHz, within the US. The agency had already opened up 850 MHz of the band to small mobile devices a year ago, and has now decided to
  
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• Chinese Electric Cars are Already Surging in Popularity in Mexico, Europe, Asia, and Africa

  14-12-2024 18:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  "The Chinese government has long subsidized carmakers with the goal of becoming a major auto exporter," notes the New York Times. But this week they reported on dozens of dealerships around Mexico that are now selling China-made electric vehicles, saying it could be "a potentially grave threat to the North American auto industry."
  One employee said their dealership "was selling cars as fast as they arrived from China," including "a small but capable four-door electric compact that costs about $1
  
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• AirPods To Be Made In India For the First Time Next Year

  14-12-2024 17:34 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple will begin making AirPods in India for the first time early next year, reports Bloomberg. Foxconn will make the wireless earphones at a factory near Hyderabad in Telangana state, beginning around Q1 2025. The factory has reportedly been making AirPods on a trial basis, with manufacturing set to ramp up quickly after production begins. It will make AirPods only the second major Apple product to be assembled in India after the iPhone.The de
  
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• NASA Thinks It Knows Why Ingenuity Crashed On Mars

  14-12-2024 16:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  NASA believes Ingenuity's navigation system was responsible for its crash on the surface of Mars. Engineers determined that the helicopter's navigation system struggled to track features over smooth terrain, leading to a hard landing and structural failure. Universe Today reports: Now, almost a year after the incident, a team of engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have been analyzing the data. Their findings will be published in the next few weeks however the team of engineers assert
  
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• Linux Predictions For 2025

  14-12-2024 14:00 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  BrianFagioli shares a report from BetaNews: As we close out 2024, we Linux enthusiasts are once again looking ahead to what the future holds. While Linux has long been the unsung hero of technology, powering servers, supercomputers, and the cloud, it's also a dominant force in the consumer space, even if many don't realize it. With Android leading the way as the most widely used Linux-based operating system, 2025 is shaping up to be another landmark year for the open source world Here are the pr
  
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• Police Report OpenAI Whistleblower Committed Suicide in November

  14-12-2024 11:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the SF Standard:San Francisco police found Open AI whistleblower Suchir Balaji, 26, dead in his Lower Haight apartment November 26, SiliconValley.com reported on Friday. Police said there is "no evidence of foul play. "The manner of death has been determined to be suicide," David Serrano Sewell, director of the office of the city's chief medical examiner, told The Standard by email.
  Balaji, a former researcher for the company, accused OpenAI of using c
  
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• 25 Years Ago Today: Slashdot Parodied by Suck.com

  14-12-2024 08:00 via meta.slashdot.org
  
  25 years ago today, the late, great Suck.com played a prank on Slashdot. Their daily column of pop-culture criticism was replaced by... Suckdot, a parody site satirically filed with Slashdot-style headlines like "Linux Possibly Defamed Somewhere."RabidZelot was one of a bunch to report: "In Richmond, California, this afternoon, this dude said something bad about Linux at the Hilltop Mall near the fountains right after the first showing of Phantom Menace let out. He was last seen heading towards
  
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• Yearlong Supply-Chain Attack Targeting Security Pros Steals 390,000 Credentials

  14-12-2024 04:30 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A sophisticated and ongoing supply-chain attack operating for the past year has been stealing sensitive login credentials from both malicious and benevolent security personnel by infecting them with Trojanized versions of open source software from GitHub and NPM, researchers said. The campaign, first reported three weeks ago by security firm Checkmarx and again on Friday by Datadog Security Labs, uses multiple avenues to infect the devices o
  
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• Meta Asks the US Government To Block OpenAI's Switch To a For-Profit

  14-12-2024 03:38 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Meta is asking California Attorney General Rob Bonta to block OpenAI's planned transition from a non-profit to for-profit entity. From a report: In a letter sent to Bonta's office this week, Meta says that OpenAI "should not be allowed to flout the law by taking and reappropriating assets it built as a charity and using them for potentially enormous private gains."
  The letter goes so far as to say that Meta believes Elon Musk is "qualified and well positioned to represent the interests of Califo
  
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• Google Says Its New Quantum Chip Indicates That Multiple Universes Exist

  14-12-2024 03:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Tucked away in a blog post about Google's quantum computing chip, Willow, Google Quantum AI founder Hartmut Neven wrote that the chip was so "mind-boggling" fast that it seemed to borrow computational power from other universes. According to Neven, the chip's performance suggests the existence of parallel universes, writing, "We live in a multiverse." TechCrunch reports: Here's the passage: "Willow's performance on this benchmark is astonishing: It performed a computation in under five minutes t
  
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• Intel Arc B580 Battlemage Tested: $250 Graphics Cards Are Worthy Once Again

  14-12-2024 02:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  MojoKid writes: Today's release and review launch of the new Intel Arc B580 marks a second-gen effort from the company, with a fully refreshed Intel Xe2 graphics architecture, aka Battlemage, that promises big gains in performance and efficiency. Comparing Arc B580 to its Arc Alchemist ancestors, you can see that it's somewhat of a smaller GPU. It has fewer of nearly everything, and yet its performance specifications don't look too far off. A lot of this comes down to massive architectural impro
  
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• Postal Service's Plan To Electrify Mail Trucks Falling Far Short of Its Goal

  14-12-2024 01:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The United States Postal Service unveiled a plan to buy a fleet of all-electric mail trucks for its mail carriers back in 2022, of which 3,000 were supposed to be delivered by now. Unfortunately, those plans aren't even close to fruition. The Washington Post reported that defense contractor Oshkosh has only delivered 93 vehicles so far. [...]The Washington Post obtained nearly 21,000 government and internal company records and spoke with 20 peop
  
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• Nvidia Revives LAN Party After 13 Years To Celebrate RTX 50-Series GPU Launch

  14-12-2024 01:02 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Nvidia is hosting its first LAN party in over a decade to celebrate the debut of the RTX 50 series. It'll occur at CES 2025 in January and feature a 50-hour gaming marathon with tournaments, prizes, and global remote sessions. Tom's Hardware reports: The LAN party (dubbed GeForce LAN 50) will start on January 4 at 4:30 pm PT and end right before Nvidia CES Jensen Huang gives his opening speech at the CES event in Las Vegas on January 6 at 6:30 pm PT. The main LAN event will occur in Las Vegas, w
  
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• Google's NotebookLM AI Podcast Hosts Can Now Talk To You, Too

  14-12-2024 00:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google's NotebookLM and its podcast-like Audio Overviews are being updated with a new feature that allows listeners to interact with the AI "hosts." Google describes how this feature works in a blog post. The Verge reports: In addition to the interactive Audio Overviews, Google is introducing a new interface for NotebookLM that organizes things into three areas: a "sources" panel for your information, a "chat" panel to talk with an AI chatbot about the sources, and a "studio" panel that lets you
  
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• Tumblr Adds Reddit-Like 'Communities'

  14-12-2024 00:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Tumblr is introducing a new Community feature similar to subreddits: in-app groups organized by topic or interest. "Topics include things like film photography, marine biology, LGBTQ, and video games, and each topic has its own landing page where posts shared with the community populate," reports The Verge. From the report: Many of the features mirror Reddit, like a count of how many members are online, moderators, and community guidelines. Posts shared to communities also get a new comments sec
  
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