ICT news

• DARPA Is Building a $10 Million, Open Source, Secure Voting System

  14-03-2019 19:02 via rss.slashdot.org
  samleecole writes: For years security professionals and election integrity activists have been pushing voting machine vendors to build more secure and verifiable election systems, so voters and candidates can be assured election outcomes haven't been manipulated. Now they might finally get this thanks to a new $10 million contract the Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched to design and build a secure voting system that it hopes will be impervious to
  
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• America Has One Public Charger for Every 20 Electric Cars

  27-05-2024 05:04 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  This week the Washington Post noted that just last year nearly 1.2 million more electric vehicles were sold in America, "accounting for over 7 percent of total new car sales and a new national record." But "data show that EV sales are far outpacing growth in the U.S. charging network... In 2016, there were seven electric cars for each public charging point; today, there's more than 20 electric cars per charger."
  The article points out that 80% of America's EV's are just charging at home, accordi
  
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• Pew Research Finds 64% of Americans Live Within Two Miles of a Public EV Charger

  27-05-2024 03:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "64% of Americans live within 2 miles of a public charging station," Pew Research reported this week, citing a survey paired with an analysis of U.S. Energy Department data that found over 61,000 publicly accessible charging stations.
  And those who live closest to public chargers "view EVs more positively."The vast majority of EV charging occurs at home, but access to public infrastructure is tightly linked with Americans' opinions of electric vehicles themselves. Our analysis finds that America
  
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• Technical Issues' Stall MLB's Adoption of Robots to Call Balls and Strikes

  27-05-2024 01:32 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Will Major League Baseball games use "automated" umpires next year to watch pitches from home plate and call balls and strikes?"We still have some technical issues," baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday. NBC News reports:"We haven't made as much progress in the minor leagues this year as we sort of hoped at this point. I think it's becoming more and more likely that this will not be a go for '25."
  Major League Baseball has been experimenting with the automated ball-strike system in mi
  
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• Memory Sealing 'mseal' System Call Merged For Linux 6.10

  26-05-2024 23:53 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  "Merged this Friday evening into the Linux 6.10 kernel is the new mseal() system call for memory sealing," reports Phoronix:The mseal system call was led by Jeff Xu of Google's Chrome team. The goal with memory sealing is to also protect the memory mapping itself against modification. The new mseal Linux documentation explains:
  "Modern CPUs support memory permissions such as RW and NX bits. The memory permission feature improves security stance on memory corruption bugs, i.e. the attacker can't
  
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• Mojo, Bend, and the Rise of AI-First Programming Languages

  26-05-2024 22:53 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  "While general-purpose languages like Python, C++, and Java remain popular in AI development," writes VentureBeat, "the resurgence of AI-first languages signifies a recognition that AI's unique demands require specialized languages tailored to the domain's specific needs... designed from the ground up to address the specific needs of AI development."
  Bend, created by Higher Order Company, aims to provide a flexible and intuitive programming model for AI, with features like automatic differentiat
  
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• Could Sea Explosions Finally Locate the 2014 Crash Site of Flight MH370?

  26-05-2024 21:05 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished in 2014 — and efforts continue to find it. In 2018 a UK-based video producer claimed to have discovered the crashed aircraft on Google Maps — but Newsweek pointed out the same wreckage "is visible in imagery dating back to January 1, 2004 — more than a decade before MH370 disappeared."
  Marine robotics company Ocean Infinity also failed to find the aircraft after a five-month search in 2018 — but has returned to the headlines this Marc
  
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• Netflix's Sci-Fi Movie 'Atlas': AI Apocalypse Blockbuster Gets 'Shocking' Reviews

  26-05-2024 19:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Space.com calls it a movie "adding more combustible material to the inferno of AI unease sweeping the globe." Its director tells them James Cameron was a huge inspiration, saying Atlas "has an Aliens-like vibe because of the grounded, grittiness to it." (You can watch the movie's trailer here...)
  But Tom's Guide says "the reviews are just as shocking as the movie's AI." Its "audience score" on Rotten Tomatoes is 55% — but its aggregate score from professional film critics is 16%. The Holly
  
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• Ubuntu 24.04 Now Runs on the Nintendo Switch (Unofficially)

  26-05-2024 18:34 via games.slashdot.org
  
  "The fact it's possible at all is a credit to the ingenuity of the open-source community," writes the blog OMG Ubuntu:
  Switchroot is an open-source project that allows Android and Linux-based distros like Ubuntu to run on the Nintendo Switch — absolutely not something Nintendo approves of much less supports, endorses, or encourages, etc! I covered the loophole that made this possible back in 2018. Back then the NVIDIA Tegra X1-powered Nintendo Switch was still new and Linux support for muc
  
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• Rust Foundation Reports 20% of Rust Crates Use 'Unsafe' Keyword

  26-05-2024 17:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  A Rust Foundation blog post begins by reminding readers that Rust programs "are unable to compile if memory management rules are violated, essentially eliminating the possibility of a memory issue at runtime."
  But then it goes on to explore "Unsafe Rust in the wild" (used for a small set of actions like dereferencing a raw pointer, modifying a mutable static variable, or calling unsafe functions). "At a superficial glance, it might appear that Unsafe Rust undercuts the memory-safety benefits Rus
  
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• How A US Hospital is Using AI to Analyze X-Rays - With Help From Red Hat

  26-05-2024 16:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  This week Red Hat announced one of America's leading pediatric hospitals is using AI to analyze X-rays, "to improve image quality and the speed and accuracy of image interpretation."
  Red Hat's CTO said the move exemplifies "the positive impact AI can have in the healthcare field".Before Boston Children's Hospital began piloting AI in radiology, quantitative measurements had to be done manually, which was a time-consuming task. Other, more complex image analyses were performed completely offline
  
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• VBScript's 'Deprecation' Confirmed by Microsoft - and Eventual Removal from Windows

  26-05-2024 13:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  "Microsoft has confirmed plans to pull the plug on VBScript in the second half of 2024 in a move that signals the end of an era for programmers," writes Tech Radar.
  Though the language was first introduced in 1996, Microsoft's latest announcement says the move was made "considering the decline in VBScript usage":Beginning with the new OS release slated for later this year [Windows 11, version 24H2], VBScript will be available as features on demand. The feature will be completely retired from fut
  
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• A Startup's Faster-Than-E-Ink Android Tablet Challenges Apple's IPad

  26-05-2024 09:34 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  It's "one of the most talked about devices in Silicon Valley," according to tech writer/investor Om Malik.
  The company's web site calls it "the computer, de-invented," promising a tablet with "the world's first full-speed paper-like display." But Its founder has structured the company as a Public Benefit Corporation, with its web site describing the eyestrain-relieving tablet as "designed for deep focus and wellbeing. We refuse to accept a future where our devices are exhausting, addictive, and
  
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• Trump Promises He'd Commute the Life Sentence of 'Silk Road' Founder Ross Ulbricht

  26-05-2024 05:34 via politics.slashdot.org
  
  In 2011 Ross Ulbricht launched an anonymous, Tor-hidden "darknet" marketplace (with transactions conducted in bitcoin). By 2015 he'd been sentenced to life in prison for crimes including money laundering, distributing narcotics, and trafficking in fraudulent identity documents — without the possibility of parole.
  Today a U.S. presidential candidate promised to commute that life sentence — Donald Trump, speaking at the national convention of the Libertarian Party as it prepares to nom
  
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• Proposed Zero-Carbon Cement Solution Called 'Absolute Miracle'

  26-05-2024 03:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "Concrete and steel production are major sources of CO2 emissions," writes New Atlas, "but a new solution from Cambridge could recycle both at the same time."Throwing old concrete into steel-processing furnaces not only purifies iron but produces "reactivated cement" as a byproduct. If done using renewable energy, the process could make for completely carbon-zero cement.
  Concrete is the world's most used building material, and making it is a particularly dirty business — concrete productio
  
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• Elon Musk Says AI Could Eliminate Our Need to Work at Jobs

  26-05-2024 00:34 via slashdot.org
  
  In the future, "Probably none of us will have a job," Elon Musk said Thursday, speaking remotely to the VivaTech 2024 conference in Paris. Instead, jobs will be optional — something we'd do like a hobby — "But otherwise, AI and the robots will provide any goods and services that you want."CNN reports that Musk added this would require "universal high income" — and "There would be no shortage of goods or services."
  In a job-free future, though, Musk questioned whether people wou
  
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• How Internet Pioneers Celebrated 50 Years of the Internet

  25-05-2024 23:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Founded in 1963, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers held a special event Sunday that they said would be "inspiring engineering for the next 50 years."
  The event featured talks on the origins of the internet from 80-year-old "father of the internet" Vint Cerf, along with John Shoch (who helped develop the Ethernet and internetwork protocols at Xerox PARC), Judith Estrin (who worked with Cerf on the TCP project), and Robert Kahn (who with Cerf first proposed the IP and TCP proto
  
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• American Radio Relay League Confirms Cyberattack Disrupted Operations

  25-05-2024 22:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Roughly 160,000 U.S.-based amateur radio enthusiasts belong to the American Radio Relay League, a nonprofit with 100 full-time and part-time staff members.
  Nine days ago it announced "that it suffered a cyberattack that disrupted its network and systems," reports BleepingComputer, "including various online services hosted by the organization."
  "We are in the process of responding to a serious incident involving access to our network and headquarters-based systems. Several services, such as Logbo
  
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• Thursday's Bing API Outage Took Down DuckDuckGo, Copilot, and ChatGPT Search

  25-05-2024 21:34 via slashdot.org
  
  Thursday long-time Slashdot reader mschaffer reported that "Microsoft's search engine isn't working correctly, and many alternative search engines that rely on it are down, too."
  Bing started "having issues" around 1:30 a.m. EST, reports SearchEngineLand (citing Downdector.com, and sharing screenshots of Bing.com searches failing — even on partner sites like DuckDuckGo).
  By Thursday morning search capabilities for ChatGPT, Copilot, DuckDuckGo, and other platforms had stopped working, repor
  
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• Britain Covered Up Tainted Blood Scandal That Killed Thousands, Report Finds

  25-05-2024 20:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  UPI reports that the British government covered up "a multi-decade tainted blood scandal, leading to thousands of related deaths, a report published Monday found."
  Britain's National Health Service allowed blood tainted with HIV and Hepatitis to be used on patients without their knowledge, leading to 3,000 deaths and more than 30,000 infections, according to the 2,527-page final report by Justice Brian Justice Langstaff, a former judge on the High Court of England and Wales. Langstaff oversaw a
  
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• Robotaxis Face 'Heightened Scrutiny' While the Industry Plans Expansion

  25-05-2024 19:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Besides investigations into Cruise and Waymo, America's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also announced it's examining two rear-end collisions between motorbikes and Amazon's steering wheel-free Zoox vehicles being tested in San Francisco, Seattle, and Las Vegas.
  This means all three major self-driving vehicle companies "are facing federal investigations over potential flaws linked to dozens of crashes," notes the Washington Post, calling it "a sign of heightened scrutiny a
  
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• Satya Nadella Says Microsoft's AI-Focused Copilot+ Laptops Will Outperform Apple's MacBooks

  25-05-2024 18:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "Apple's done a fantastic job of really innovating on the Mac," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the Wall Street Journal in a video interview this week. .Then he said "We are gonna outperform them" with the upcoming Copilot+ laptops from Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung that have been completely reengineered for AI — and begin shipping in less than four weeks.Satya Nadella: Qualcomm's got a new [ARM Snapdragon X] processor, which we've optimized Windows for. The battery lab, I've b
  
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• OpenAI Didn't Copy Scarlett Johansson's Voice for ChatGPT, Records Show

  25-05-2024 17:34 via slashdot.org
  
  The Atlantic argued this week that OpenAI "just gave away the entire game... The Johansson scandal is merely a reminder of AI's manifest-destiny philosophy: This is happening, whether you like it or not."But the Washington Post reports that OpenAI "didn't copy Scarlett Johansson's voice for ChatGPT, records show."[W]hile many hear an eerie resemblance between [ChatGPT voice] "Sky" and Johansson's "Her" character, an actress was hired in June to create the Sky voice, months before Altman contacte
  
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• Meta, Activision Sued By Parents of Children Killed in Last Year's School Shooting

  25-05-2024 16:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Exactly one year after the fatal shooting of 19 elementary school students in Texas, their parents filed a lawsuit against the publisher of the videogame Call of Duty, against Meta, and against the manufacturer of the AR-15-style weapon used in the attack, Daniel Defense.
  The Washington Post says the lawsuits "may be the first of their kind to connect aggressive firearms marketing tactics on social media and gaming platforms to the actions of a mass shooter."The complaints contend the three comp
  
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• New Warp Drive Concept Does Twist Space, Doesn't Move Us Very Fast

  25-05-2024 15:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A team of physicists has discovered that it's possible to build a real, actual, physical warp drive and not break any known rules of physics. One caveat: the vessel doing the warping can't exceed the speed of light, so you're not going to get anywhere interesting any time soon. But this research still represents an important advance in our understanding of gravity. [...] In a paper accepted for publication in the journal Classical and Quantu
  
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• China's Blistering Solar Growth Runs Into Grid Blocks

  25-05-2024 12:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  China's rapid solar power expansion is slowing due to grid bottlenecks, market reforms, and diminishing rooftop space, with new solar builds dropping 32% in March year-on-year. Reuters reports: The country's solar power expansion is slowing due to tighter curbs on supplying excess power from rooftop solar into the grid and changes in electricity pricing that are denting the economics of new solar projects. Forecasts show China's solar build this year will be heavily outpaced by growth in its pho
  
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• Eagles Changed Migration Route To Avoid Ukraine War

  25-05-2024 09:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Scientists report that Greater Spotted Eagles altered their migration routes across Ukraine to avoid conflict and habitat destruction caused by the war. The BBC reports: The scientists studied GPS data from tagged birds in the months after the February 2022 invasion, a time of heavy fighting in northern Ukraine as Russia tried to take Kyiv by sending troops south from Belarus. The researchers from the Estonian University of Life Sciences and the British Trust for Ornithology reported their findi
  
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• Best Buy and Geek Squad Were Most Impersonated Orgs By Scammers In 2023

  25-05-2024 05:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has shared data on the most impersonated companies in 2023, which include Best Buy, Amazon, and PayPal in the top three. The federal agency detailed the top ten companies scammers impersonate and how much they make depending on the impersonation. By far the most impersonated corp was Best Buy and its repair business Geek Squad, with a total of 52k reports. Amazon impersonators came in second place with 34k
  
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• Feds Add Nine More Incidents To Waymo Robotaxi Investigation

  25-05-2024 03:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Nine more accidents have been discovered by federal safety regulators during their safety investigation of Waymo's self-driving vehicles in Phoenix and San Francisco. TechCrunch reports: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) opened an investigation earlier this month into Waymo's autonomous vehicle software after receiving 22 reports of robotaxis making unexpected moves that led to crashes and potentially violated traffic safety laws. The invest
  
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• Google Threatens To Pause Google News Initiative Funding In US

  25-05-2024 02:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google has warned nonprofit newsrooms that a new California bill taxing Big Tech for digital ad transactions would jeopardize future investments in the U.S. news industry. "This is the second time this year Google has threatened to pull investment in news in response to a regulatory threat in California -- but this time, hundreds of publishers outside of California would also feel the impact," reports Axios. From the report: Google's new outreach to smaller news outlets is happening in response
  
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