ICT news

• Can Ants Teach Us How to Program Self-Driving Cars?

  09-03-2025 22:48 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  gdm (Slashdot reader #97,336) writes:
  A study published in Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives investigates how ants avoid traffic jams.... Quoting the abstract: "The results show that ants adopt specific traffic strategies (platoon formation, quasi-constant speed and no overtaking maneuvers) that help avoid jam phenomena, even at high density.""Researchers are now studying these insects' cooperative tactics to learn how to program self-driving cars that don't jam up," writes
  
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• 'I Used to Teach Students. Now I Catch ChatGPT Cheats'

  09-03-2025 20:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Philosophy/ethics professor Troy Jollimore looks at the implications of a world where many students are submitting AI-generated essays. ("Sometimes they will provide quotations, giving page numbers that, as often as not, do not seem to correspond to anything in the actual world...") Ideally if the students write the essays themselves, "some of them start to feel it. They begin to grasp that thinking well, and in an informed manner, really is different from thinking poorly and from a position of
  
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• Professor Ends Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest After 43 Years

  09-03-2025 19:34 via idle.slashdot.org
  
  Slashdot covered the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest in 2008 and 2010 — though it's been running since 1983. Entrants competed to write the worst-possible first sentence for a novel, in a contest started by English professor Scott E. Rice at San Jose State University (which sponsored the contest). In its first year it drew over 10,000 entries!
  Over the years the bad first sentences were even collected into actual books (that were edited by Rice). But after 43 years, Rice delivered his own di
  
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• Stem Cell Therapy Trial Reverses 'Irreversible' Damage to Cornea

  09-03-2025 18:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Damaged corneas were repaired at a Harvard teaching hospital in a unique clinical trial, reports New Atlas:Since it's on the frontline of potential hazards from the outside world, the cornea features a population of limbal epithelial stem cells, which repair minor damage to keep the surface smooth and functional... The new study, conducted by scientists at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, investigated a new treatment called cultivated autologous limbal epithelial cells (CALEC). This involves removing
  
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• Mice Give First Aid

  09-03-2025 17:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Slashdot reader databasecowgirl writes: The Times is reporting an interesting study published in Science in which mice demonstrated doing first aid. In the replicated study, an anaesthetised mouse is exposed to another mouse who recognises the distress and clears airway to revive the unconscious mouse.The mice had never seen an unconscious animal before, so the behaviour is thought to be instinctive.
  From the Times:
  Large social mammals have previously been documented lending assistance to each
  
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• Will an 'AI Makeover' Help McDonald's?

  09-03-2025 16:34 via slashdot.org
  
  "McDonald's is giving its 43,000 restaurants a technology makeover," reports the Wall Street Journal, including AI-enabled drive-throughs and AI-powered tools for managers — as well as internet-connected kitchen equipment.
  "Technology solutions will alleviate the stress...." says McDonald's CIO Brian Rice.
  McDonald's tapped Google Cloud in late 2023 to bring more computing power to each of its restaurants — giving them the ability to process and analyze data on-site... a faster, chea
  
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• How Your Gut Influences Your Brain

  09-03-2025 15:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  A blog post from the Stanford University School of Medicine attempts to answer the question: What's the deal with the gut-brain connection?
  It affects your mood, your sleep, even your motivation to exercise. There's convincing evidence that it's the starting point for Parkinson's disease and could be responsible for long COVID's cognitive effects. And it sits about 2 feet below your brain. The gut plays an obvious role in our health by digesting what we eat and extracting nutrients. But there's
  
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• America's Justice Department Still Wants Google to Sell Chrome

  09-03-2025 12:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Last week Google urged the U.S. government not to break up the company — but apparently, it didn't work.
  In a new filing Friday, America's Justice Department "reiterated its November proposal that Google be forced to sell its Chrome web browser," reports the Washington Post, "to address a federal judge finding the company guilty of being an illegal monopoly in August."The government also kept a proposal that Google be banned from paying other companies to give its search engine preferentia
  
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• Is America Closer to Ending Daylight Saving Time?

  09-03-2025 09:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  U.S. president Donald Trump called Daylight Saving Time "very costly to our nation" and "inconvenient" in December. Today the Washington Post remembers he'd vowed his Republican party would use their "best efforts" to eliminate it.
  But it's still proving to be politically difficult...Polls have shown that most Americans oppose the time shifts but disagree on what should replace them... [U.S. political leaders] also say they are grappling with whether the nation should permanently move the clocks
  
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• Ignoring Protests, Christie's Holds AI Art Auction, Makes Big Money

  09-03-2025 06:34 via slashdot.org
  
  As Christie's auction house planned the first-ever auction dedicated to AI-generated art works, over 5,600 people signed an online letter urging them to cancel it. "Many of the artworks you plan to auction were created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a license," the letter complained."These models, and the companies behind them, exploit human artists, using their work without permission or payment to build commercial AI products that compete with them. Yo
  
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• Reddit and Digg Cofounders Plan Relaunch of 'Human-Centered' Digg With AI Innovations

  09-03-2025 02:59 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "The early web was fun," Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian posted Wednesday on X.com. "It was weird. It was community-driven. It's time to rebuild that.
  "Which is why Kevin Rose and I just bought back Digg."
  The amount of that purchase is "undisclosed," reports CNBC:The deal is backed by venture capital firms True Ventures, where Rose is a partner, and Ohanian's Seven Seven Six.... The company said in a release that it aims to differentiate itself in the social media market by "focusing on AI inn
  
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• Free Software Foundation Rides To Defend AGPLv3 Against Neo4j License Add-ons

  09-03-2025 01:39 via news.slashdot.org
  
  This week the Free Software Foundation "backed a lone developer's brave effort to overturn a pivotal court ruling that threatens to undermine the AGPLv3 — the foundation's GNU Affero General Public License, version 3," reports the Register.
  "At stake is the future of not just the AGPLv3, but the FSF's widely used GNU Public License it is largely based on, and the software covered by those agreements."A core tenet of the GPL series is that free software remains free forever, and this is wov
  
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