ICT news

• Microsoft Attempts To Close Local Account Windows 11 Setup Loophole

  30-03-2025 23:17 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Slashdot reader jrnvk writes: The Verge is reporting that Microsoft will soon make it harder to run the well-publicized bypassnro command in Windows 11 setup. This command allows skipping the Microsoft account and online connection requirements on install. While the command will be removed, it can still be enabled by a regedit change — for now.
  "However, there's no guarantee Microsoft will allow this additional workaround for long," writes the Verge. (Though they add "There are other worka
  
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• Bloomberg's AI-Generated News Summaries Had At Least 36 Errors Since January

  30-03-2025 22:11 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The giant financial news site Bloomberg "has been experimenting with using AI to help produce its journalism," reports the New York Times. But "It hasn't always gone smoothly."
  While Bloomberg announced on January 15 that it would add three AI-generated bullet points at the top of articles as a summary, "The news outlet has had to correct at least three dozen A.I.-generated summaries of articles published this year." (This Wednesday they published a "hallucinated" date for the start of U.S. auto
  
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• How Rust Finally Got a Specification - Thanks to a Consultancy's Open-Source Donation

  30-03-2025 21:11 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  As Rust approaches its 10th anniversary, "there is an important piece of documentation missing that many other languages provide," notes the Rust Foundation.While there's documentation and tutorials — there's no official language specification:In December 2022, an RFC was submitted to encourage the Rust Project to begin working on a specification. After much discussion, the RFC was approved in July 2023, and work began.
  Initially, the Rust Project specification team (t-spec) were intereste
  
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• What that Facebook Whistleblower's Memoir Left Out

  30-03-2025 19:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  A former Facebook director of global policy recently published "the book Meta doesn't want you to read," a scathing takedown of top Meta executives titled Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.
  But Wednesday RestofWorld.org published additional thoughts from Meta's former head of public policy for Bangladesh (who is now an executive director at the nonprofit policy lab Tech Global Institute). Though their time at Facebook didn't overlap, they first applaud how the
  
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• Has the Decline of Knowledge Worker Jobs Begun?

  30-03-2025 18:34 via it.slashdot.org
  
  The New York Times notes that white-collar workershave faced higher unemployment than other groups in the U.S. over the past few years — along with slower wager growth.
  Some economists wonder if this trend might be irreversible... and partly attributable to AI:After sitting below 4% for more than two years, the overall unemployment rate has topped that threshold since May... "We're seeing a meaningful transition in the way work is done in the white-collar world," said Carl Tannenbaum, the
  
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• Google Sunsets Two Devices From Its Nest Smart Home Product Line

  30-03-2025 17:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "After a long run, Google is sunsetting two of its signature Nest products," reports PC World:Google has just announced that it's discontinuing the 10-year-old Nest Protect and the 7-year-old Nest x Yale lock. Both of those products will continue to work, and — for now — they remain on sale at the Google Store, complete with discounts until supplies run out. But while Google itself is exiting the smoke alarm and smart lock business, it isn't leaving Google Home users in the lurch. In
  
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• Microsoft Announces 'Hyperlight Wasm': Speedy VM-Based Security at Scale with a WebAssembly Runtime

  30-03-2025 16:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Cloud providers like the security of running things in virtual machines "at scale" — even though VMs "are not known for having fast cold starts or a small footprint..." noted Microsoft's Open Source blog last November. So Microsoft's Azure Core Upstream team built an open source Rust library called Hyperlight "to execute functions as fast as possible while isolating those functions within a VM."
  But that was just the beginning...Then, we showed how to run Rust functions really, really fast
  
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• Nearly 1.5 Million Private Photos from Five Dating Apps Were Exposed Online

  30-03-2025 13:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  "Researchers have discovered nearly 1.5 million pictures from specialist dating apps — many of which are explicit — being stored online without password protection," reports the BBC, "leaving them vulnerable to hackers and extortionists."And the images weren't limited to those from profiles, the BBC learned from the ethical hacker who discovered the issue. "They included pictures which had been sent privately in messages, and even some which had been removed by moderators..."Anyone w
  
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• Samsung Unveils AI-Powered, Screen-Enabled Home Appliances

  30-03-2025 09:34 via slashdot.org
  
  Samsung teased its "AI Vision Inside" refrigerators at January's CES tradeshow. (Its internal sensors can now detect 37 different fresh ingredients and 50 processed foods, generating lists for your cellphone or a screen on your refrigerator's door.)
  But the refrigerators are part of a larger "AI Home" lineup of screen-enabled appliances with advanced AI features, and Engadget got to see them all together this weekend at Samsung's Bespoke AI conference in Seoul, Korea:
  The centerpiece of the Besp
  
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• Aptera Takes First 300-Mile Highway Trip in Solar-Powered EV

  30-03-2025 05:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  "I've been dreaming of this moment for 20 years," says Aptera co-CEO Steve Fambro. Aptera's solar-powered electric car just drove 300 miles on a single charge.
  "We're one step closer to a future where every journey is powered by the sun," Aptera says in their announcement."This go around, Aptera took to the highway for the first time ever..." writes the EV blog Electrek. "At one point, Aptera's video noted that its solar EV was pulling over 545 watts of solar input, even though it was overcast."
  
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• Did Life on Earth Come from 'Microlightning' Between Charged Water Droplets?

  30-03-2025 03:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Some scientists believe life on earth originated in organic matter in earth's bodies of water more than 3.5 billion years ago," reports CNN. "But where did that organic material come from...?"
  Maybe electrical energy sparked the beginnings of life on earth — just like in Frankenstein:Researchers decades ago proposed that lightning caused chemical reactions in ancient Earth's oceans and spontaneously produced the organic molecules. Now, new research published March 14 in the journal Science
  
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• Reddit's 50% Stock-Price Plunge Fails to Entice Buyers as Growth Slows

  30-03-2025 01:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Though it's stock price is still up 200% from its IPO in March of 2024
  — last week Reddit's stock had dropped nearly 50% since February 7th.And then this week, it dropped another 10%, reports Bloomberg, citing both the phenomenon of "volatile technology stocks under pressure" — but also specifically "the gloomy sentiment around Reddit..."The social media platform has struggled to recover since an earnings report in February showed that it is failing to keep up with larger digital adv
  
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