ICT news

• 'Human Vs. Autonomous Car' Race Ends Before It Begins

  22-12-2024 22:47 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  A demonstration "race" between a (human) F1 race car driver Daniil Kvyat and an autonomous vehicle was just staged by the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League.
  Describing the league and the "man vs. machine" showdown, Ars Technica writes, "Say goodbye to the human driver and hello to 95 kilograms of computers and a whole suite of sensors."
  But again, racing is hard, and replacing humans doesn't change that. The people who run and participate in A2RL are aware of this, and while many organizations
  
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• Energy Prices Drop Below Zero In UK Thanks To Record Wind-Generated Electricity

  22-12-2024 21:47 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot AmiMoJo quotes this report from EcoWatch:Record wind-generated electricity across Northern Ireland and Scotland Tuesday night pushed Britain's power prices below zero. Wind output peaked at a record high 22.4 gigawatts (GW), breaking the previous high set [last] Sunday evening, the national system operator said, as Bloomberg reported. The record output provided more than 68 percent of the country's power. From 5:30 to 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the half-hourly price fell to 6.57
  
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• Apple Reportedly Plans a Doorbell That Unlocks Your Door With Face ID

  22-12-2024 20:47 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Engadget reports:
  Apple is developing a smart doorbell and lock system that would use Face ID to unlock the door for known residents, Mark Gurman reports in the Power On newsletter. The face-scanning doorbell would connect to a smart deadbolt, which could include existing HomeKit-compatible third-party locks, according to Gurman. Or, Apple may "[team] up with a specific lock maker to offer a complete system on day one."The Power On newsletter also reports that Apple is testing "health" features
  
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• Aging Isn't Linear, Researchers Discover: 'Dramatic Change' in Mid-40s, Early 60s

  22-12-2024 19:47 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from Health magazine:
  "Most people think of aging as occurring gradually, constantly, and linearly," senior study author Michael Snyder, PhD, a professor of genetics and director of the Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford University, told Health. But "we're not just changing gradually over time; there are some really dramatic changes," Snyder said in a news release. "It turns out the mid-40s is a time of dramatic change, as is the earl
  
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• With Drones Over US Military Bases, Agencies Urge Congress to Pass Drone-Defense Legislation

  22-12-2024 18:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A series of drone sightings over U.S. military bases "has renewed concerns that the U.S. doesn't have clear government-wide policy for how to deal with unauthorized incursions that could potentially pose a national security threat," reports CNN:
  "We're one year past Langley drone incursions and almost two years past the PRC spy balloon. Why don't we have a single [point of contact] who is responsible for coordination across all organizations in the government to address this?" the recently retir
  
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• Albania Will Close TikTok for One Year, Saying It Encourages Violence Among Children

  22-12-2024 17:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The Associated Press reports that in Albania (population: 2,402,113), "children comprise the largest group of TikTok users in the country, according to domestic researchers."
  But "Albania's prime minister said Saturday the government will shut down the video service TikTok for one year, blaming it for inciting violence and bullying, especially among children" after "the stabbing death of a teenager in mid-November by another teen after a quarrel that started on TikTok."
  There has been increasing
  
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• The Theory That Volcanoes Killed the Dinosaurs Is Officially Extinct

  22-12-2024 16:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "Sixty-six million years ago, all dinosaurs (except for birds) were wiped from the face of the Earth..." writes Gizmodo. "What's indisputable about this pivotal moment in Earth's history is that a 6.2 to 9.3-mile-wide (10 to 15-kilometer) asteroid struck what is now modern-day Mexico. Around the same time, however, volcanoes in what is now India experienced some of the largest eruptions in Earth's history."
  Those volcanos "have long been proposed as an alternative cause for the demise of the din
  
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• Sea Levels are Already Rising in America's Southeast. A Preview of the Future?

  22-12-2024 13:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The Washington Post visits one of over 100 tide-tracking stations around the U.S. — Georgia's Fort Pulaski tide gauge:
  Since 2010, the sea level at the Fort Pulaski gauge has risen by more than 7 inches, one of the fastest rates in the country, according to a Washington Post analysis of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data for 127 tide gauges. Similar spikes are affecting the entire U.S. Southeast — showing a glimpse of our climate future... [I]n the previous 30 years
  
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• OpenAI's Next Big AI Effort GPT-5 is Behind Schedule and Crazy Expensive

  22-12-2024 09:34 via slashdot.org
  
  "From the moment GPT-4 came out in March 2023, OpenAI has been working on GPT-5..." reports the Wall Street Journal. [Alternate URL here.] But "OpenAI's new artificial-intelligence project is behind schedule and running up huge bills. It isn't clear when — or if — it'll work.""There may not be enough data in the world to make it smart enough."
  OpenAI's closest partner and largest investor, Microsoft, had expected to see the new model around mid-2024, say people with knowledge of the
  
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• Scientists Build a Nuclear-Diamond Battery That Could Power Devices for Thousands of Years

  22-12-2024 05:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  The world's first nuclear-powered battery — a diamond with an embedded radioactive isotope — could power small devices for thousands of years, according to scientists at the UK's University of Bristol.
  Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shared this report from LiveScience:The diamond battery harvests fast-moving electrons excited by radiation, similar to how solar power uses photovoltaic cells to convert photons into electricity, the scientists said.
  Scientists from the same unive
  
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• Months After Its 20th Anniversary, OpenStreetMap Suffers an Extended Outage

  22-12-2024 03:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Monday long-time Slashdot reader denelson83 wrote: The crowdsourced, widely-used map database OpenStreetMap has had a hardware failure at its upstream ISP in Amsterdam and has been put into a protective read-only mode to avoid loss or corruption of data. .
  The outage had started Sunday December 15 at 4:00AM (GMT/UTC), but by Tuesday they'd posted a final update:
  Our new ISP is up and running and we have started migrating our servers across to it. If all goes smoothly we hope to have all services
  
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• Luigi Mangione's Ghost Gun Was Only Partially 3D-Printed

  22-12-2024 01:02 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "More than a decade after the advent of the 3D-printed gun as an icon of libertarianism and a gun control nightmare, police say one of those homemade plastic weapons has now been found in the hands of perhaps the world's most high-profile alleged killer," Wired wrote this month:For the community of DIY gunsmiths who have spent years honing those printable firearm models, in fact, the handgun police claim Luigi Mangione used to fatally shoot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is as recognizable
  
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• US Life Expectancy Rose to 78.4 years in 2023 - Highest Level Since Pandemic

  22-12-2024 00:02 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from NBC News:
  U.S. life expectancy rose last year, hitting its highest level since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
  The report, released Thursday, found that life expectancy at birth was 78.4 years in 2023. That's a significant rise — nearly a full year — from the life expectancy of 77.5 years in 2022. "The increase we had this year — the 0.9 year — that'
  
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