ICT news

• Genetically Engineered Babies Are Banned in the US. But Tech Titans Are Trying to Make One Anyway

  09-11-2025 22:43 via science.slashdot.org
  "For months, a small company in San Francisco has been pursuing a secretive project: the birth of a genetically engineered baby," reports the Wall Street Journal:Backed by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and his husband, along with Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, the startup — called Preventive — has been quietly preparing what would amount to a biological first. They are working toward creating a child born from an embryo edited to prevent a hereditary disease.... Edi
  
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• Python Foundation Donations Surge After Rejecting Grant - But Sponsorships Still Needed

  09-11-2025 21:43 via developers.slashdot.org
  After the Python Software Foundation rejected a $1.5 million grant because it restricted DEI activity, "a flood of new donations followed," according to a new report. By Friday they'd raised over $157,000, including 295 new Supporting Members paying an annual $99 membership fee, says PSF executive director Deb Nicholson.
  "It doesn't quite bridge the gap of $1.5 million, but it's incredibly impactful for us, both financially and in terms of feeling this strong groundswell of support from the comm
  
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• Blue Origin Postpones Attempt to Launch Unique ''EscaPADE' Orbiters to Mars

  09-11-2025 20:43 via science.slashdot.org
  UPDATE (1:16 PST) Today's launch has been scrubbed due to weather, and Blue Origin is now reviewing opportunities for new launch windows.Sunday Morning Blue Origin livestreamed the planned launch of its New Glenn rocket, which will carry a very unique mission for NASA. "Twin spacecraft are set to take off on an unprecedented, winding journey to Mars," reports CNN, "where they will investigate why the barren red planet began to lose its atmosphere billions of years ago." By observing two Mars loc
  
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• Blue Origin Livestreams Attempt to Launch Unique ''EscaPADE' Mission to Mars

  09-11-2025 20:43 via science.slashdot.org
  Blue Origin is livestreaming the launch of its New Glenn rocket, which would carry a very unique mission for NASA. "Twin spacecraft are set to take off on an unprecedented, winding journey to Mars," reports CNN, "where they will investigate why the barren red planet began to lose its atmosphere billions of years ago." By observing two Mars locations simultaneously, this mission can measure how Mars responds to space weather in real time — and how the Martian magnetosphere changes...Called
  
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• 'AI Slop' in Court Filings: Lawyers Keep Citing Fake AI-Hallucinated Cases

  09-11-2025 20:04 via yro.slashdot.org
  "According to court filings and interviews with lawyers and scholars, the legal profession in recent months has increasingly become a hotbed for AI blunders," reports the New York Times:Earlier this year, a lawyer filed a motion in a Texas bankruptcy court that cited a 1985 case called Brasher v. Stewart. Only the case doesn't exist. Artificial intelligence had concocted that citation, along with 31 others. A judge blasted the lawyer in an opinion, referring him to the state bar's disciplinary c
  
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• Lost Unix v4 Possibly Recovered on a Forgotten Bell Labs Tape From 1973

  09-11-2025 19:04 via tech.slashdot.org
  "A tape-based piece of unique Unix history may have been lying quietly in storage at the University of Utah for 50+ years," reports The Register. And the software librarian at Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum, Al Kossow of Bitsavers, believes the tape "has a pretty good chance of being recoverable."Long-time Slashdot reader bobdevine says the tape will be analyzed at the Computer History Museum. More from The Register:The news was posted to Mastodon by Professor Robert Ricci of the Unive
  
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• Neurodiverse Professionals 25% More Satisfied With AI Tools and Agents

  09-11-2025 18:04 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:Neurodiverse professionals may see unique benefits from artificial intelligence tools and agents, research suggests. With AI agent creation booming in 2025, people with conditions like ADHD, autism, dyslexia and more report a more level playing field in the workplace thanks to generative AI.
  A recent study from the UK's Department for Business and Trade found that neurodiverse workers were 25% more satisfied with AI assistants and were more likely
  
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• Rust Is Coming To Debian's APT Package Manager

  09-11-2025 16:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  A maintainer of Debian's Advanced Package Tool (APT) "has announced plans to introduce hard Rust dependencies into APT starting May 2026," reports the blog It's FOSS.The integration targets critical areas like parsing .deb, .ar, and tar files plus HTTP signature verification using Sequoia. [APT maintainer Julian Andres Klode] said these components "would strongly benefit from memory safe languages and a stronger approach to unit testing."
  He also gave a firm message to maintainers of Debian port
  
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• Hilarious Unused Audio From 2003 Baseball Game Rediscovered by Video Game History Foundation

  09-11-2025 13:34 via games.slashdot.org
  After popular arcade games like Mortal Kombat and Spy Hunter, Midway Games jumped into the home console market, and in 2003 launched their baseball game franchise "MLB Slugfest" for Xbox, PS2, and GameCube. But at times it was almost a parody of baseball, including announcers filling the long hours of airtime with bizarre, rambling conversations. ("I read today that kitchen utensils are gonna hurt more people tonight than lifting heavy objects during the day...")
  Now former Midway Games producer
  
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• Did ChatGPT Conversations Leak... Into Google Search Console Results?

  09-11-2025 09:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  "For months, extremely personal and sensitive ChatGPT conversations have been leaking into an unexpected destination," reports Ars Technica: the search-traffic tool for webmasters , Google Search Console.
  Though it normally shows the short phrases or keywords typed into Google which led someone to their site, "starting this September, odd queries, sometimes more than 300 characters long, could also be found" in Google Search Console. And the chats "appeared to be from unwitting people prompting
  
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• 'Breaking Bad' Creator Hates AI, Promises New Show 'Pluribus' Was 'Made By Humans'

  09-11-2025 05:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  The new series from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, Pluribus, was emphatically made by humans, not AI, reports TechCrunch:
  If you watched all the way to the end of the new Apple TV show "Pluribus," you may have noticed an unusual disclaimer in the credits: "This show was made by humans." That terse message — placed right below a note that "animal wranglers were on set to ensure animal safety" — could potentially provide a model for other filmmakers seeking to highlight that thei
  
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• New Firefox Mascot 'Kit' Unveiled On New Web Page

  09-11-2025 03:34 via news.slashdot.org
  "The Firefox brand is getting a refresh and you get the first look," says a new web page at Firefox.com. "Kit's our new mascot and your new companion through an internet that's private, open and actually yours."Slashdot reader BrianFagioli believes the new mascot "is meant to communicate that message in a warmer, more relatable way."And Firefox is already selling shirts with Kit over the pocket (as well as stickers)...Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Common Crawl Criticized for 'Quietly Funneling Paywalled Articles to AI Developers'

  09-11-2025 00:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  For more than a decade, the nonprofit Common Crawl "has been scraping billions of webpages to build a massive archive of the internet," notes the Atlantic, making it freely available for research.
  "In recent years, however, this archive has been put to a controversial purpose: AI companies including OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Nvidia, Meta, and Amazon have used it to train large language models.
  "In the process, my reporting has found, Common Crawl has opened a back door for AI companies to train
  
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