ICT news

• Three Million Child Deaths Linked To Drug Resistance, Study Shows

  13-04-2025 23:02 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "More than three million children around the world are thought to have died in 2022 as a result of infections that are resistant to antibiotics," reports the BBC, citing a study by two leading experts in child health that used data from sources including the World Health Organization and the World Bank:Experts say this new study highlights a more than tenfold increase in AMR-related infections in children in just three years. The number could have been made worse by the impact of the Covid pande
  
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• 33-year-old AmigaOS for Commodore Computers Gets an Unexpected Update

  13-04-2025 21:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "It is somewhat remarkable that work on AmigaOS 3.X continues in 2025," notes Tom's Hardware, "given that Commodore International released AmigaOS 3.0 in 1992..."
  AmigaOS 3.1 came in 1993. And now...Work continues on AmigaOS 3.2 with the stewards of this classic Motorola 680x0 friendly operating system, Hyperion Entertainment, releasing version 3.2.3 a few days ago.
  In a news bulletin on the official site, Hyperion highlighted that the third update for AmigaOS 3.2 includes two years of (more tha
  
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• How a Secretive Gambler Called 'The Joker' Beat the Texas Lottery

  13-04-2025 20:34 via idle.slashdot.org
  
  "Can you help me take down the Texas lottery?"That's what a London banker-turned-bookmaker asked "acquaintances" in 2023, reports the Wall Street Journal. The plan was to buy "nearly every possible number in a coming drawing" — purchasing $1 tickets for 25.8 million possible combinations, since "The jackpot was heading to $95 million. If nobody else also picked the winning numbers, the profit would be nearly $60 million."Marantelli flew to the U.S. with a few trusted lieutenants. They set
  
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• America's Dirtiest Coal Power Plants Given Exemptions from Pollution Rules to Help Power AI

  13-04-2025 19:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Somewhere in Montana sits the only coal-fired power plant in America that hasn't installed modern pollution controls to limit particulate matter, according to the Environmental Protecction Agency. Mining.com notes that it has the highest emission rate of fine particulate matter out of any U.S. coal-burning power plant.
  When inhaled, the finest particles are able to penetrate deep into the lungs and even potentially the bloodstream, exacerbating heart and lung disease, causing asthma attacks and
  
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• 'Linux Mint Debian Edition 7' Gets OEM Support

  13-04-2025 18:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Linux Mint Debian Edition 7 "will come with full support for OEM installations," according to their monthly newsletter, so Linux Mint "can be pre-installed on computers which are sold throughout the World. It's a very important feature and it's one of the very few remaining things which wasn't supported by Linux Mint Debian Edition."
  Slashdot reader BrianFagioli speculates that "this could be a sign of something much bigger."
  OEM installs are typically reserved for operating systems meant to shi
  
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• FreeDOS Celebrates More Than 30 Years of Command Prompts With New Release

  13-04-2025 17:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  When Microsoft announced it would stop developing MS-DOS after 1995, college student Jim Hall "packaged my own extended DOS utilities, as did others," according to the web site for the resulting "FreeDOS" project.
  Jim Hall is also Slashdot reader #2,985, and more than 30 years later he's "keeping the dream of the command prompt alive," writes Ars Technica. In a new article they note that last week the FreeDOS team released version 1.4, the first new stable update since 2022:
  The release has "a f
  
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• New Supercomputing Record Set - Using AMD's Instinct GPUs

  13-04-2025 13:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "AMD processors were instrumental in achieving a new world record," reports Tom's Hardware, "during a recent Ansys Fluent computational fluid dynamics simulation run on the Frontier supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory."
  The article points out that Frontier was the fastest supercomputer in the world until it was beaten by Lawrence Livermore Lab's El Capitan — with both computers powered by AMD GPUs:
  According to a press release by Ansys, it ran a 2.2-billion-cell axial turbin
  
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• Do Cognitive Abilities Predict Performance in Everyday Computer Tasks?

  13-04-2025 09:44 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "Researchers say that a person's intelligence plays a bigger role in their computer proficiency than previously believed," writes SciTechDaily, "so much so that practice alone may not be enough to ensure ease of use."
  A new study has found that general cognitive abilities, such as perception, reasoning, and memory, are more important than previously believed in determining a person's ability to perform everyday tasks on a computer... "It is clear that differences between individuals cannot be el
  
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• Torvalds Celebrates Git's 20th Anniversay. Is It More Famous Than Linux?

  13-04-2025 05:44 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Celebrating Git's 20th anniversary, GitHub hosted a Q&A with Linus Torvalds, writes Its FOSS News.
  Among the other revelations: He says his college-age daughter sent a texting saying he's better known at her CS lab for Git than for Linux, "because they actually use Git for everything there." Which he describes as "ridiculous" because he maintained it for just four months before handing it off to Junio Hamano who's been heading up development for more than 19 years now. "When it did what I ne
  
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• WSJ Says China 'Acknowledged Its Role in U.S. Infrastructure Hacks'

  13-04-2025 03:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Here's an update from the Wall Street Journal about a "widespread series of alarming cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure."
  China was behind it, "Chinese officials acknowledged in a secret December meeting... according to people familiar with the matter..."The Chinese delegation linked years of intrusions into computer networks at U.S. ports, water utilities, airports and other targets, to increasing U.S. policy support for Taiwan, the people, who declined to be named, said... U.S. officials went
  
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• Original 1977 'Star Wars' Cut Will Be Shown at a Theater for First Time in Decades

  13-04-2025 00:41 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger brings news that in June "a rare screening of the original 1977 Star Wars movie — complete with Han shooting first — will be shown at a theater in London..."
  Petapixel reports:
  Subsequent alterations made to the film are well-documented: Han Solo being shot at by the bounty hunter Greedo first, rather than the original in which anti-hero Han killed Greedo without being shot at. Then there is the addition of a CGI Jabba the Hutt who was only mentio
  
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