ICT news

• Bill Gates Remembers LSD Trips, Smoking Pot, and How the Smartphone OS Market 'Was Ours for the Taking'

  09-02-2025 23:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Fortune remembers that in 2011 Steve Jobs had told author Walter Isaacson that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates would "be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger."
  But The Indendepent notes that in his new memoir Gates does write about two acid trip experiences. (Gates mis-timed his first experiment with LSD, ending up still tripping during a previously-scheduled appointment for dental surgery...) "Later in the book, Gates recounts another experience
  
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• How To Make Any AMD Zen CPU Always Generate 4 As a Random Number

  09-02-2025 22:34 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Slashdot reader headlessbrick writes: Google security researchers have discovered a way to bypass AMD's security, enabling them to load unofficial microcode into its processors and modify the silicon's behaviour at will. To demonstrate this, they created a microcode patch that forces the chips to always return 4 when asked for a random number. Beyond simply allowing Google and others to customize AMD chips for both beneficial and potentially malicious purposes, this capability also undermines AM
  
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• This Was CS50: Crying Poor, Yale To Stop Offering Harvard's Famed CS50 Course

  09-02-2025 21:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Slashdot has been covering Harvard's legendary introductory programming course "CS50" since it began setting attendance records in 2014.
  But now long-time Slashdot reader theodp brings some news about the course's fate over at Yale. From Yale's student newspaper:
  After a decade of partnership with Harvard, Yale's CS50 course will no longer be offered starting in fall 2025.... One of Yale's largest computer science courses, jointly taught with Harvard University, was canceled during a monthly fac
  
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• America's IT Unemployment Rises To 5.7%. Is AI Hitting Tech Jobs?

  09-02-2025 20:34 via it.slashdot.org
  
  The unemployment rate in America's information technology sector "rose from 3.9% in December to 5.7% in January," reports the Wall Street Journal. (Alternate URL here.) Meanwhile last month's overall jobless rate was just 4%, they point out, calling it "the latest sign of how automation and the increasing use of artificial intelligence are having a negative impact on the tech labor market."
  Companies began implementing their annual spending cuts in January, and there were layoffs at large tech c
  
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• Retrocomputing Enthusiast Explores 28-Year-Old Powerbook G3: 'Apple's Hope For Redemption'

  09-02-2025 19:34 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader Shayde once restored a 1986 DEC PDP-11 minicomputer, and even ran Turbo Pascal on a 40-year-old Apple II clone.
  Now he's exploring a 27-year-old Macintosh PowerBook G3 — with 64 megabytes memory and 4 gigabytes of disk space. "The year is 1997, and Apple is in big trouble." (Apple's market share had dropped from 16% in 1980 to somewhere below 4%...)Turns out this was one of the first machines able to run OS X, and was built during the transition period for Apple a
  
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• What Do Linux Kernel Developers Think of Rust?

  09-02-2025 18:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Keynotes at this year's FOSDEM included free AI models and systemd, reports Heise.de — and also a progress report from Miguel Ojeda, supervisor of the Rust integration in the Linux kernel.Only eight people remain in the core team around Rust for Linux... Miguel Ojeda therefore launched a survey among kernel developers, including those outside the Rust community, and presented some of the more important voices in his FOSDEM talk. The overall mood towards Rust remains favorable, especially a
  
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• Skydiver Hooks Plane in Mid-Air, Gets Towed Up For Another Skydive

  09-02-2025 17:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "Can you skydive continuously without landing...?" asks Red Bull. Imagine jumping out of a helicopter, "only to latch onto a speeding plane in mid-air and soar back up into the sky."
  Harnessing the plane's momentum, [skydiver Max Manow] soared out of the canyon, embarking on what he calls his "endless skydive", a manoeuvre that potentially could be done continuously without him ever needing to land...
  After exiting a helicopter, he manoeuvred his wingsuit to close the gap with a nosediving Cessn
  
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• Did Google Fake Gemini AI's Output For Its Super Bowl Ad?

  09-02-2025 16:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google's Super Bowl ad about a Gouda cheese seller appears to be using fake AI output, writes the Verge:The text portrayed as generated by AI has been available on the business's website since at least August 2020, as shown on this archived webpage. Google didn't launch Gemini until 2023, meaning Gemini couldn't have generated the website description as depicted in the ad.
  The site Futurism calls the situation "beyond bizarre," asking why Google doesn't seem to trust its own technology.
  Either G
  
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• C++ on Steroids: Bjarne Stroustrup Presents Guideline-Enforcing 'Profiles' For Resource and Type Safety

  09-02-2025 13:04 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  "It is now 45+ years since C++ was first conceived," writes 74-year-old C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup in an article this week for Communications of the ACM. But he complains that many developers "use C++ as if it was still the previous millennium," in an article titled 21st Century C++ that promises "the key concepts on which performant, type safe, and flexible C++ software can be built: resource management, life-time management, error-handling, modularity, and generic programming...
  "At the end
  
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• Boeing's 'Starliner' Also Experienced an Issue on Its Return to Earth

  09-02-2025 09:44 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Friday the Orlando Sentinel covered NASA's 2024 mission-safety report from the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (formed in 1968). The report "commended the agency's handling of last year's beleaguered Boeing's Starliner mission [prioritizing astronaut safety], but revealed yet another issue found during the flight and questioned the agency's needs for the spacecraft in the future..."[The report] stated that it was unclear how a decision was made to waive a failure tolerance requirement on some of
  
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• While TikTok Buys Ads on YouTube, YouTube is Buying Ads on TikTok

  09-02-2025 06:44 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  I just saw an ad for TikTok on a YouTube video. But at the same time YouTube is running ads on TikTok, reports Bloomberg, targeting TikTok content creators in "an effort to lure these valuable users to the Google-owned rival and capitalize on TikTok's uncertain future."
  One of YouTube's ads even received over a thousand likes, with Bloomberg calling it that TikTok "is willing to accept ad dollars from one of its fiercest competitors promoting a message aimed at undercutting its business."
  YouTub
  
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• California Tech Founder Admits to Defrauding $4M For His Luxury Lifestyle

  09-02-2025 03:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The tech startup "purported to make smart home and business products," writes America's Justice Department — products that were "meant to stop package theft, prevent weather damage to packages, and make it easier for emergency responders and delivery services to find homes and businesses." Royce Newcomb "developed prototypes of his products and received local and national media attention for them. For example, Time Magazine included his eLiT Address Box & Security System, which used mo
  
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• Does the 'Spirit' of Open Source Mean Much More Than a License?

  09-02-2025 01:47 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "Open source can be something of an illusion," writes TechCrunch. "A lack of real independence can mean a lack of agency for those who would like to properly get involved in a project."Their article makes the case that the "spirit" of open source means more than a license..."Android, in a license sense, is perhaps the most well-documented, perfectly open 'thing' that there is," Luis Villa, co-founder and general counsel at Tidelift, said in a panel discussion at the State of Open Con25 in London
  
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• El Salvador Congress Votes to Revoke Bitcoin's 'Legal Currency' Status

  09-02-2025 00:47 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  After finalizing loan terms with the IMF, El Salvador's Legislative Assembly approved changes to the country's Bitcoin Law last week by a 55-2 vote, "effectively removing bitcoin's status as legal currency," reports Reason.
  Under the new rules, bitcoin is no longer considered "currency," though it remains "legal tender." Another change makes using bitcoin entirely voluntary. (Previously, the law mandated that businesses accept bitcoin for any goods or services they provided.) Additionally, bitco
  
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