ICT news

• New EV Batteries are Making Electric Cars Cheaper and Safer

  22-02-2025 23:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  The Washington Post looks at a new kind of battery that "could make American EVs cheaper and safer, experts say."If you bought an EV with a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery, you could expect lower car payments, less fire risk and more years of use out of your car — but you wouldn't be able to go as far on a single charge as you could with the nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries commonly found in American and European electric cars. That trade-off has made LFP batteries the go-to ch
  
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• Rust Developer Survey Finds Increasing Usage, Especially on Linux

  22-02-2025 22:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  This year's "State of Rust" survey was completed by 7,310 Rust developers. DevClass note some key findings:When asked about their biggest worries for Rust's future, 45.5 percent cited "not enough usage in the tech industry," up from 42.5 percent last year, just ahead of the 45.2 percent who cited complexity as a concern... Only 18.6 percent declared themselves "not worried," though this is a slight improvement on 17.8 percent in 2023...Another question asks whether respondents are using Rust at
  
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• Glitches for Windows 11 Update Include Breaking File Explorer

  22-02-2025 21:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Five days ago on Patch Tuesday, Microsoft released patch KB5051987 for Windows 11 version 24H2, writes the XDA Developers site.
  But "As reported by Windows Latest and various communities like Reddit and Microsoft's help forum, many users have encountered a major issue..."Some have reported that, in addition to File Explorer failing to launch, they're unable to open folders from the desktop, save Office files, or even download files. Clicking on a folder icon may display its subfolders, but the c
  
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• California Sues Data-Harvesting Company NPD, Enforcing Strict Privacy Law

  22-02-2025 20:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  California sued to fine a data-harvesting company, reports the Washington Post, calling it "a rare step to put muscle behind one of the strongest online privacy laws in the United States."Even when states have tried to restrict data brokers, it has been tough to make those laws stick. That has generally been a problem for the 19 states that have passed broad laws to protect personal information, said Matt Schwartz, a policy analyst for Consumer Reports. He said there has been only 15 or so publi
  
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• ArcaOS (OS/2 Warp OEM) 5.1.1 Has Been Released

  22-02-2025 19:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "IBM stopped supporting OS/2 at the end of 2006," write the makers of ArcaOS, an OEM distribution of OS/2's discontinued Warp operating system.
  And now long-time Slashdot reader martiniturbide tells us that ArcaOS 5.1.1 has been released, and that many of it's components have been updated too. From this week's announcement:ArcaOS 5.1.1 continues to support installation on the latest generation of UEFI-based systems, as well as the ability to install to GPT-based disk layouts. This enables ArcaOS
  
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• Encrypted Messages Are Being Targeted, Google Security Group Warns

  22-02-2025 18:34 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Google's Threat Intelligence Group notes "the growing threat to secure messaging applications." While specifically acknowledging "wide ranging efforts to compromise Signal accounts," they add that the threat "also extends to other popular messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram, which are also being actively targeted by Russian-aligned threat groups using similar techniques.
  "In anticipation of a wider adoption of similar tradecraft by other threat actors, we are issuing a public wa
  
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• James Bond's Next Assignment: Amazon Pays $1 Billion for Full Creative Control

  22-02-2025 17:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Deadline reports:
  It's taking around $1 billion to have 007 stewards Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson cede creative oversight of their family's storied James Bond franchise to Amazon MGM Studios, sources tell us. Amazon originally overpaid on its purchase of MGM in a deal orchestrated by then-MGM board chair Kevin Ulrich. Though valued between $3.5 billion-$4 billion, the legendary motion picture studio was absorbed by the streamer for $8.5 billion, the hefty sum propped up by the potentia
  
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• Torvalds: Rust Kernel Code Isn't Forced In Over Maintainers' Objections

  22-02-2025 16:54 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Linus Torvalds responded Thursday to kernel developer Christoph Hellwig, who had claimed Torvalds merged Rust code into the kernel even over his objections as the original C code's maintainer. Highlights from Torvalds' response:The fact is, the pull request you objected to DID NOT TOUCH THE DMA LAYER AT ALL. It was literally just another user of it, in a completely separate subdirectory, that didn't change the code you maintain in _any_ way, shape, or form... Honestly, what you have been doing i
  
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• Game Developers Revolt Against Microsoft's New AI Gaming Tool

  22-02-2025 13:00 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft's newly announced Muse AI model for game development has triggered immediate backlash from industry professionals. "Fuck this shit," responded David Goldfarb, founder of The Outsiders, arguing that such AI tools primarily serve to "reduce capital expenditure" while devaluing developers' collective artistic contributions.
  Multiple developers told Wired that the tool is aimed at shareholders rather than actual developers. "Nobody will want this. They don't CARE that nobody will want this
  
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• NASA Rover Discovers Liquid Water 'Ripples' Carved Into Mars Rock

  22-02-2025 11:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Scientists have discovered evidence of ancient, shallow lakes on Mars that once had liquid water exposed to the atmosphere, challenging previous theories that all Martian water was covered in ice. Live Science reports: The patterns, which were photographed by NASA's Curiosity rover, are known as wave ripples -- minute ridge-like structures that form along the shores of lakebeds. This means that exposed liquid water must have flowed across Mars' surface at some point in its history. The ripples w
  
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• First Look At Secretive X-37B Space Plane In Orbit

  22-02-2025 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  The U.S. Space Force released the first-ever public image of its secretive X-37B space plane in orbit, captured during its ongoing seventh mission that launched on December 28, 2023. Space.com reports: The photo, released on Thursday (Feb. 20), was taken by a camera onboard the X-37B while the secretive space plane orbited high above the African continent. One of the plane's solar panels is visible on the left side of the photo, while what appears to be its open payload bay is visible along the
  
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• Mark Zuckerberg's Makeover Didn't Make People Like Him, Study Shows

  22-02-2025 04:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A study by the Pew Research Center found that Americans' views of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg skew more negative than positive. While Zuckerberg has sparked chatter in Silicon Valley with his sudden interest in high fashion, the Meta CEO is less popular than President Trump's right-hand man, Elon Musk, the report found. While about 54% of U.S. adults say they have an unfavorable view of Musk, 67% feel negatively toward Zuckerberg. [...] But
  
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• Scientists Question Microsoft's Quantum Computing Claims

  22-02-2025 03:33 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft's announcement of a breakthrough in quantum computing faces skepticism from physicists, who say evidence supporting the company's claims remains insufficient.
  The tech giant reported creating Majorana particles - a development it says could revolutionize quantum computing - but the accompanying peer-reviewed paper in Nature does not conclusively demonstrate this achievement, according to multiple quantum physics experts who reviewed the research.
  Microsoft's corporate vice president fo
  
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• Data Is Very Valuable, Just Don't Ask Us To Measure It, Leaders Say

  22-02-2025 02:30 via slashdot.org
  
  The Register's Lindsay Clark reports: Fifteen years of big data hype, and guess what? Less than one in four of those in charge of analytics projects actually measure the value of the activity to the organization they work for. The result from Gartner -- a staggering one considering the attention heaped on big data and its various hype-oriented successors -- found that in a survey of chief data and analytics (D&A) officers, only 22 percent had defined, tracked, and communicated business impac
  
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• Asus Continues Fragrant Device Trend With an Aromatic Mouse

  22-02-2025 01:50 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Asus has introduced the Fragrance Mouse, a hybrid wireless mouse that features a removable container for fragrance oils. Despite not being a gaming mouse, it includes premium features like PTFE pads, low-noise clicks rated for up to 10 million presses, and three fixed DPI settings (1200, 1600, 2400). Tom's Hardware reports: The selling point of the new mouse is its fragrance-producing capabilities. Under the mouse (right behind the AA battery housing) is a small semi-translucent container design
  
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• OpenAI Bans Chinese Accounts Using ChatGPT To Edit Code For Social Media Surveillance

  22-02-2025 01:10 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  OpenAI has banned a group of Chinese accounts using ChatGPT to develop an AI-powered social media surveillance tool. Engadget reports: The campaign, which OpenAI calls Peer Review, saw the group prompt ChatGPT to generate sales pitches for a program those documents suggest was designed to monitor anti-Chinese sentiment on X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms. The operation appears to have been particularly interested in spotting calls for protests against human rights violations i
  
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• The Protesters Who Want To Ban AGI Before It Even Exists

  22-02-2025 00:30 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: On Saturday at the Silverstone Cafe in San Francisco, a smattering of activists gathered to discuss plans to stop the further advancement of artificial intelligence. The name of their non-violent civil resistance group, STOP AI, makes its mission clear. The organization wants to ban something that, by most accounts, doesn't yet exist -- artificial general intelligence, or AGI, defined by OpenAI as "highly autonomous systems that outperform h
  
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