ICT news

• Apple Will Revamp Siri To Catch Up To Its Chatbot Competitors

  11-05-2024 02:02 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Apple's top software executives decided early last year that Siri, the company's virtual assistant, needed a brain transplant. The decision came after the executives Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea spent weeks testing OpenAI's new chatbot, ChatGPT. The product's use of generative artificial intelligence, which can write poetry, create computer code and answer complex questions, made Siri look antiquated, said two people familiar w
  
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• Salesforce to Hire 1,000 People for Big AI Product Sales Push

  10-11-2024 19:35 via slashdot.org
  
  Salesforce "plans to hire more than 1,000 workers to sell its new generative AI agent product," reports Bloomberg:The hiring surge is aimed at capitalizing on "amazing momentum" for the new artificial intelligence product, Chief Executive Marc Benioff said in a message. "Agentforce became available just two weeks ago and we're already hearing incredible feedback from our customers."
  The top seller of customer relations management software, Salesforce pivoted its AI strategy this year to focus on
  
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• Free Software Foundation Plans Year of Celebrations For Its 40th Anniversary

  10-11-2024 18:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The Free Software Foundation turns forty on October 4, 2025 "and we will end our thirties on a high note!" they announced this week:We wish we were celebrating the achievement of software freedom for all computer users, but we're not there yet. Until our mission becomes reality and we can retire, instead, we are celebrating forty years of activism, and all that we have achieved.
  Since our founding in 1985, we laid out many stepping stones on the road to software freedom, and we're eager to conti
  
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• NASA Investigates Laser-Beam Welding in a Vacuum for In-Space Manufacturing

  10-11-2024 17:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  NASA hopes to stimulate in-space manufacturing through a multi-year "laser beam welding collaboration" with Ohio State University. The project "seeks to understand the physical processes of welding on the lunar surface," according to NASA.gov, "such as investigating the effects of laser beam welding in a combined vacuum and reduced gravity environment."The goal is to increase the capabilities of manufacturing in space to potentially assemble large structures or make repairs on the Moon, which wi
  
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• The Team Behind GitHub's 'Atom' IDE Build a Cross-Platform, AI-Optional 'Zed Editor'

  10-11-2024 16:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Nathan Sobo "joined GitHub in late 2011 to build the Atom text editor," according to an online biography, "and he led the Atom team until 2018." Max Brunsfeld joined the Atom team in 2013, and "While driving Atom towards its 1.0 launch during the day, Max spent nights and weekends building Tree-sitter, a blazing-fast and expressive incremental parsing framework that currently powers all code analysis at GitHub."
  Last year they teamed up with Antonio Scandurra (another Atom alumnus) to launch a n
  
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• Rust Foundation Shares Draft of New, Simpler Trademark Policy

  10-11-2024 13:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  "The Rust trademark policy has been updated and a new draft is available to view," announced the Rust Foundation this week.
  The last proposed trademark policy (in April of 2023) was criticized by open source advocate Bruce Perens in The Register as "far awry of fair use which is legally permitted." The Rust Foundation says this new version has "incorporated a number of suggestions from the Rust community," in a blog post that summarizes the feedback and enumerates specific ways it's been address
  
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• America's First Sodium-Ion Battery Gigafactory Announced. Cost: $1.4 Billion

  10-11-2024 09:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Sodium-ion batteries are cheaper than lithium-ion batteries — and they're also more environmentally friendly. And "In the past few years, sodium-ion battery production has increased in the United States," reports the Washington Post, with a new factory planned to manufacture them "in the same way as lithium-ion batteries, just with different ingredients. Instead of using expensive materials like lithium, nickel and cobalt, these will be made of sodium, iron and manganese..."Last month, sod
  
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• Gig-Working Uber and Lyft Drivers Can Unionize, Say Massachusetts Voters

  10-11-2024 05:35 via it.slashdot.org
  
  On Tuesday Massachusetts voted to become the first state to allow gig-working drivers to join labor unions, reports WBUR:
  Since these gig workers are classified as independent contractors, federal law allowing employees the right to unionize does not apply to them. With the passage of this ballot initiative, Massachusetts is the first state to give ride-hailing drivers the ability to collectively bargain over working conditions.
  Supporters have said the ballot measure "could provide a model for
  
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• Aaron Swartz Day Commemorated With 'Those Carrying on the Work'

  10-11-2024 03:47 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Friday "would have been his 38th birthday," writes the EFF, remembering Aaron Swartz as "a digital rights champion who believed deeply in keeping the internet open..." And they add that today the official web site for Aaron Swartz Day honored his memory with a special podcast "featuring those carrying on the work around issues close to his heart," including an appearance by Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive.The first speaker is Ryan Shapiro, FOIA expert and co-founder of the nation
  
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• Is There New Evidence for a 9th Planet - Planet X?

  10-11-2024 00:57 via science.slashdot.org
  
  This week Discover magazine looks at evidence — both old and new — for a ninth planet in our solar system:"Orbits of the most distant small bodies — comets or asteroids — seem to be clustered on one half or one side of the solar system," says Amir Siraj [an astrophysicist with Princeton University]. "That's very weird and something that can't be explained by our current understanding of the solar system." A 2014 study in Nature first noted these orbits. A 2021 study in Th
  
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• How the Majority of Strokes Could Be Prevented

  09-11-2024 23:57 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "The majority of strokes could be prevented," reports the Associated Press, according to the first new guidelines in 10 years from the American Stroke Association, which are "aimed at helping people and their doctors do just that."Stroke was the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than half a million Americans have a stroke every year. But up to 80% of strokes may be preventable with better nutrition, exercise a
  
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• Behind the Scenes at a Minuteman ICBM Test Launch

  09-11-2024 22:57 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Tuesday at California's Vandenberg Space Force base, the U.S. launched a Minuteman III missile, "in an important test of the weapon's ability to strike its targets with multiple warheads," according to Air and Space Forces magazine:
  The Minuteman III missiles that form a critical leg of the U.S. nuclear triad each carry one nuclear-armed reentry vehicle. But the missile that was tested carried three test warheads... The intercontinental ballastic missile (ICBM) test was controlled by an airborne
  
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• Retrocomputing Enthusiast Repairs Mattel's 48-Year-Old Handheld Videogame

  09-11-2024 21:57 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Back in 1976, Mattel Electronics Auto Race became the very first handheld game to use only solid-state electronics, according to Wikipedia. (Its only mechanical elements were its on/off switch and hand-operated controls...) Nearly half a century goes by — until the ancient and broken gizmo reaches long-time Slashdot reader Shayde, who "dove into disassembling the unit and figuring out the problem."Ironically, at one point his voltimeter stopped working, because...its batteries were dead. B
  
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• ChatGPT's Monthly Usage May Now Rival Google Chrome

  09-11-2024 20:57 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from Digital Trends:
  A number of popular generative AI platforms are seeing consistent growth as users are figuring out how they want to use the tools â" and ChatGPT is at the top of the list with the most visits, at 3.7 billion worldwide. So many people are visiting the AI chatbot, its figures are rivaling browser market share. It can only be compared to Google Chrome figures in terms of monthly users, which is estimated to be around 3.45 billion.
  St
  
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• How Samsung Fell Behind in the AI Boom - and Lost $126 Billion in Market Value

  09-11-2024 19:57 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  After missing a chance to capitalize on the AI boom, "Samsung's profit has plunged," reports CNBC, and "around $126 billion has been wiped off its market value, according to data from S&P Capital IQ."
  It's gotten so bad that "an executive issued a rare public apology about the company's recent financial performance."[A]s AI applications such as OpenAI's ChatGPT rose in popularity, the underlying infrastructure required to train the huge models they rely on became a bigger focus. Nvidia has e
  
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• Intel Sees a 3888.9% Performance Improvement in the Linux Kernel - From One Line of Code

  09-11-2024 18:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from Phoronix:
  Intel's Linux kernel test robot has reported a 3888.9% performance improvement in the mainline Linux kernel as of this past week...
  Intel thankfully has the resources to maintain this automated service for per-kernel commit/patch testing and has been maintaining their public kernel test robot for years now to help catch performance changes both positive and negative to the Linux kernel code. The commit in question causing this massive uplift
  
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• Are Microbes Increasing Levels of Methane in the Atmosphere?

  09-11-2024 17:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Though it breaks down faster than CO2, methane is a greenhouse gas over 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide, reports the Washington Post. It suddenly started increasing in the atmosphere in 2007 — and then in 2020, its growth rate doubled.
  While scientists have suspected it was natural gas, some researchers have a new theory...
  "The changes that we saw in the last couple of years — and even since 2007 — are microbial," said Sylvia Michel, lead author of the paper published las
  
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• 20 Years Ago Today: 'Firefox Browser Takes on Microsoft'

  09-11-2024 16:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A 2002 Slashdot post informed the world that "Recently Blake Ross, a developer of the Phoenix web browser, has made a post on the Mozillazine forums looking for a new name for the project. Apparently the people over at Phoenix Technologies decided that the name interferes with their trademark since they make an 'internet access device..."
  And then, on November 9 of 2004, the BBC reported that "Microsoft's Internet Explorer has a serious rival in the long-awaited Firefox 1.0 web browser, which ha
  
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• Democrats Join 2024's Graveyard of Incumbents

  09-11-2024 14:04 via politics.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a post from Financial Times: The economic and geopolitical conditions of the past year or two have created arguably the most hostile environment in history for incumbent parties and politicians across the developed world. From America's Democrats to Britain's Tories, Emmanuel's Macron's Ensemble coalition to Japan's Liberal Democrats, even to Narendra Modi's erstwhile dominant BJP, governing parties and leaders have undergone an unprecedented series of reversals this y
  
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• Police Freak Out at iPhones Mysteriously Rebooting Themselves, Locking Cops Out

  09-11-2024 11:03 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Law enforcement officers are warning other officials and forensic experts that iPhones which have been stored securely for forensic examination are somehow rebooting themselves, returning the devices to a state that makes them much harder to unlock, 404 Media is reporting, citing a law enforcement document it obtained. From the report: The exact reason for the reboots is unclear, but the document authors, who appear to be law enforcement officials in Detroit, Michigan, hypothesize that Apple may
  
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• Google Rolls Out Its Gemini AI-powered Video Presentation App

  09-11-2024 08:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google is generally rolling out its Gemini AI-powered Vids app that lets you create video presentations using a prompt. From a report: Some of Vids' key features include letting Gemini auto-insert stock footage for you, generating a script, and making AI voiceovers so you don't have to speak. Google advertises that the tool can help turn customer support articles into videos, make training videos, share company announcements, create meeting recaps, and more. Vids will be available by default for
  
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• Forty-Three Monkeys Escape From US Research Lab

  09-11-2024 04:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Police are on the hunt for 43 monkeys who escaped from a research facility in South Carolina, after a keeper left their pen open. The rhesus macaque fugitives broke out of Alpha Genesis, a company that breeds primates for medical testing and research, and are on the loose in a part of the state known as the Lowcountry.
  Authorities have urged residents to keep their doors and windows securely closed and to report any sightings immediately. The esc
  
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• Matter 1.4 Tries To Set the Smart Home Standard Back On Track

  09-11-2024 02:50 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from The Verge: It's been two long years since the launch of Matter -- the one smart home standard designed to rule them all -- and there's been a fair amount of disappointment around a sometimes buggy rollout, slow adoption by companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google, and frustrating setup experiences. However, the launch of the Matter 1.4 specification this week shows some signs that the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA, the organization beh
  
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• Pirating 'The Pirate Bay' TV Series Is Ironically Difficult

  09-11-2024 02:10 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  With the debut of the Pirate Bay TV series in Sweden, international viewers are finding it surprisingly difficult to pirate. TorrentFreak reports: The series premiered at the on-demand platform of the Swedish national broadcaster SVT a few hours ago. International deals haven't been announced, but pirates can generally get access anyway. Soon after the first two episodes of The Pirate Bay series came out, scene release copies started circulating online. As one would expect.The Scene group OLLONB
  
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• Hackers Are Sending Fraudulent Police Data Requests To Tech Giants To Steal People's Private Information

  09-11-2024 01:30 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The FBI is warning that hackers are obtaining private user information — including emails and phone numbers — from U.S.-based tech companies by compromising government and police email addresses to submit "emergency" data requests. The FBI's public notice filed this week is a rare admission from the federal government about the threat from fraudulent emergency data requests, a legal process designed to help police and federal autho
  
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• TSMC Halts Advanced Chip Shipments To Chinese AI Companies

  09-11-2024 00:50 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Starting November 11, TSMC plans to stop supplying 7 nm and smaller chips to Chinese companies working on AI processors and GPUs. "The move is reportedly to ensure it remains compliant with US export restrictions," reports The Register. From the report: This will not affect Chinese customers wanting 7 nm chips from TSMC for other applications such as mobile and communications, according to Nikkei, which said the overall impact on the chipmaker's revenue is likely to be minimal. TrendForce furthe
  
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• New Mac Mini Has Modular Storage, 256GB Model Will Have Faster SSD

  09-11-2024 00:10 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  According to a partial teardown video of Apple's new Mac mini, the new machine features modular storage that can be removed. "As we saw with the Mac Studio, however, replacing the modular storage is complicated," notes MacRumors. The teardown also reveals two 128GB storage chips in the 256GB model, enabling faster SSD speeds comparable to higher-capacity versions. From the report: The criticism surrounding Apple's decision to use a single 256GB chip in some base-model Macs a few years ago primar
  
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• Claude AI To Process Secret Government Data Through New Palantir Deal

  08-11-2024 23:31 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Anthropic has announced a partnership with Palantir and Amazon Web Services to bring its Claude AI models to unspecified US intelligence and defense agencies. Claude, a family of AI language models similar to those that power ChatGPT, will work within Palantir's platform using AWS hosting to process and analyze data. But some critics have called out the deal as contradictory to Anthropic's widely-publicized "AI safety" aims. On X, former Goo
  
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• Scalpers Are Struggling To Resell the PlayStation 5 Pro Because It's in Stock at Most Retailers

  08-11-2024 20:43 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Scalpers attempting to profit from Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro are struggling to sell units above retail price, as widespread availability dampens resale prospects. The $699 console, launched this week with enhanced graphics capabilities, remains in stock at major retailers across the United States and Europe. eBay listings show PS5 Pro units selling below the manufacturer's suggested retail price, with some auctions starting at $640.
  While isolated listings reach $2,300, most hover near retail
  
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• FBI Says Hackers Are Sending Fraudulent Police Data Requests To Tech Giants To Steal People's Private Information

  08-11-2024 18:22 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The FBI is warning that hackers are obtaining private user information -- including emails and phone numbers -- from U.S.-based tech companies by compromising government and police email addresses to submit "emergency" data requests. From a report: The FBI's public notice filed this week is a rare admission from the federal government about the threat from fraudulent emergency data requests, a legal process designed to help police and federal authorities obtain information from companies to resp
  
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