ICT news

• Russia Vetoes U.N. Resolution On Nuclear Weapons In Space

  27-04-2024 23:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  This week Russia vetoed a UN resolution that proposed banning nuclear weapons in space, CNN reports.
  But it all happened "amid U.S. intelligence-backed concerns that Moscow is trying to develop a nuclear device capable of destroying satellites."In February, President Joe Biden confirmed the US has intelligence that Russia is developing a nuclear anti-satellite capability. Three sources familiar with the intelligence subsequently told CNN the weapon could destroy satellites by creating a massive
  
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• The World's Largest Vaccuum to Suck Climate Pollution From the Air Just Began Operating

  12-05-2024 05:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:
  The "world's largest" plant designed to suck planet-heating pollution out of the atmosphere like a giant vacuum began operating in Iceland on Wednesday. "Mammoth" is the second commercial direct air capture plant opened by Swiss company Climeworks in the country, and is 10 times bigger than its predecessor, Orca, which started running in 2021... Climeworks plans to transport the carbon underground where it will be naturally transformed into stone,
  
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• Google Employees Question Execs Over 'Decline in Morale' After Blowout Earnings

  12-05-2024 03:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "Google's business is growing at its fastest rate in two years," reports CNBC, "and a blowout earnings report in April sparked the biggest rally in Alphabet shares since 2015, pushing the company's market cap past $2 trillion.
  "But at an all-hands meeting last week with CEO Sundar Pichai and CFO Ruth Porat, employees were more focused on why that performance isn't translating into higher pay, and how long the company's cost-cutting measures are going to be in place.""We've noticed a significant
  
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• Red Hat (and CIQ) Offer Extend Support for RHEL 7 (and CentOS 7)

  12-05-2024 02:04 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  This week, The Register reported:
  If you are still running RHEL 7, which is now approaching a decade old, there's good news. Red Hat is offering four more years of support for RHEL 7.9, which it terms Extended Life Cycle Support or ELS.If you are running the free version, CentOS Linux 7, that hits its end-of-life on the same date: June 30, 2024. CIQ, which offers CentOS Linux rebuild Rocky Linux, has a life cycle extension for that too, which it calls CIQ Bridge. The company told The Reg:"CIQ Br
  
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• RHEL (and Rocky and Alma Linux) 9.4 Released - Plus AI Offerings

  12-05-2024 00:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4 has been released. But also released is Rocky Linux 9.4, reports 9to5Linux:
  Rocky Linux 9.4 also adds openSUSE's KIWI next-generation appliance builder as a new image build workflow and process for building images that are feature complete with the old images... Under the hood, Rocky Linux 9.4 includes the same updated components from the upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4
  This week also saw the release of Alma Linux 9.4 stable (the "forever-free enterprise Linux
  
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• The People Who Won't Give Up Floppy Disks

  11-05-2024 23:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Slashdot reader quonset writes: The last floppy disk was manufactured in 2011. Despite no new supplies being available for over a decade, there are still people, and organizations, who rely on floppy disks. Each has their own story as to why they rely on what is essentially 1970s technology.From the BBC:
  Tom Persky, a US businessman, has been selling "new", as in, unopened, floppy disks for years and still finds the trade lucrative. He runs Floppydisk.com, which offers disks for about US$1 (&pou
  
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• Could Stem Cells One Day Cure Diabetes?

  11-05-2024 22:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Brian Shelton's type 1 diabetes was treated with an infusion of insulin-producing pancreas cells (grown from stem cells). In 2021, the New York Times reported:Now his body automatically controls its insulin and blood sugar levels. Shelton, now 64, may be the first person cured of the disease with a new treatment that has experts daring to hope that help may be coming for many of the 1.5 million Americans suffering from Type 1 diabetes. "It's a whole new life," Shelton said. Diabetes experts were
  
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• Lightweight Dillo Browser Resurrected: TLS But No JavaScript

  11-05-2024 21:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The Dillo browser dates back to 1999, writes the Register, with its own rendering engine. And now Dillo "has returned with a new release, version 3.1.
  "It's nearly nine years after version 3.05 appeared on the last day of June 2015."
  Version 3.1 incorporates dozens of fixes and improvements, as the official announcement describes.
  Project lead Rodrigo Arias Mallo announced his resurrection attempt on Hacker News early this year. He has taken the last available code from the project's Mercurial r
  
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• NASA's Plan To Build a Levitating Robot Train on the Moon

  11-05-2024 20:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "Does a levitating robot train on the moon sound far-fetched?" asks LiveScience.
  "NASA doesn't seem to think so, as the agency has just greenlit further funding for a study looking into the concept."The project, called "Flexible Levitation on a Track" (FLOAT), has been moved to phase two of NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program (NIAC) , which aims to develop "science fiction-like" projects for future space exploration. The FLOAT project could result in materials being transported across th
  
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• 'Hunt For Gollum' Short on YouTube Survives New Peter Jackson Movie Announcement

  11-05-2024 19:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Thursday CNN reported:The Oscar-winning team behind the nearly $6 billion blockbuster "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" trilogies is reuniting to produce two new films. The first of the new projects from Sir Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens is tentatively titled "Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum," Warner Bros. Discovery announced Thursday. It will be directed by "LOTR" alum Andy Serkis.
  But "amid the news," TMZ reports, "a famous short film about it got yanked ... only to b
  
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• Did OpenAI, Google and Meta 'Cut Corners' to Harvest AI Training Data?

  11-05-2024 18:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  What happened when OpenAI ran out of English-language training data in 2021?
  They just created a speech recognition tool that could transcribe the audio from YouTube videos, reports The New York Times, as part of an investigation arguing that tech companies "including OpenAI, Google and Meta have cut corners, ignored corporate policies and debated bending the law" in their search for AI training data. [Alternate URL here.]Some OpenAI employees discussed how such a move might go against YouTube's
  
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• How Microsoft and Red Hat Are Collaborating on Cloud Migrations

  11-05-2024 17:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  SiliconANGLE looks at how starting in 2021, Microsoft and Red Hat have formed "an unlikely partnership set to reshape the landscape of cloud computing..."First, their collective open-source capabilities will lead to co-developed solutions to simplify the modernization and migration of Red Hat technologies to the cloud, seamlessly integrating them with Microsoft's Azure platform, according to João Couto, EMEA VP and COO of cloud commercial solutions at Microsoft. "We have acquired GitHub,
  
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• The Earth's CO2 Levels Are Increasing Faster Than Ever

  11-05-2024 16:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "Atmospheric levels of planet-warming carbon dioxide aren't just on their way to yet another record high this year," reports the Washington Post.
  "They're rising faster than ever, according to the latest in a 66-year-long series of observations."Carbon dioxide levels were 4.7 parts per million higher in March than they were a year earlier, the largest annual leap ever measured at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration laboratory atop a volcano on Hawaii's Big Island. And from January th
  
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• Bike Brands Start To Adopt C-V2X To Warn Cyclists About Cars

  11-05-2024 15:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: There's a fundamental flaw in current car safety tech: It's limited to line of sight. Or, perhaps, line of "sensing" is more accurate, because the way cameras and lidar work is to inspect the perimeter of a vehicle and use predictive algorithms to understand the motion of an object in relation to the motion of the vehicle itself. Which is good, because as carmakers have added elements such as pedestrian and cyclist detection, they're trying
  
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• Black Basta Ransomware Attack Brought Down Ascension IT Systems, Report Finds

  11-05-2024 12:00 via it.slashdot.org
  
  The Russia-linked ransomware group Black Basta is responsible for Wednesday's cyberattack on St. Louis-based Ascension health system, according to sources reported by CNN. The attack disrupted access to electronic health records, some phone systems and "various systems utilized to order certain tests, procedures and medications," the company said in a statement. From a report: On Friday, the nonprofit group Health-ISAC (Information Sharing and Analysis Center) issued an alert about the group, sa
  
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• 'Tungsten Wall' Leads To Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough

  11-05-2024 09:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  A tokamak in France achieved a new record in fusion plasma by using tungsten to encase its reaction, which enabled the sustainment of hotter and denser plasma for longer periods than previous carbon-based designs. Quartz reports: A tokamak is a torus- (doughnut-) shaped fusion device that confines plasma using magnetic fields, allowing scientists to fiddle with the superheated material and induce fusion reactions. The recent achievement was made in WEST (tungsten (W) Environment in Steady-state
  
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• UK Toddler Has Hearing Restored In World First Gene Therapy Trial

  11-05-2024 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A British toddler has had her hearing restored after becoming the first person in the world to take part in a pioneering gene therapy trial, in a development that doctors say marks a new era in treating deafness. Opal Sandy was born unable to hear anything due to auditory neuropathy, a condition that disrupts nerve impulses traveling from the inner ear to the brain and can be caused by a faulty gene. But after receiving an infusion containin
  
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• Big Three Carriers Pay $10 Million To Settle Claims of False 'Unlimited' Advertising

  11-05-2024 03:25 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Jon Brodkin reports via Ars Technica: T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T will pay a combined $10.2 million in a settlement with US states that alleged the carriers falsely advertised wireless plans as "unlimited" and phones as "free." The deal was announced yesterday by New York Attorney General Letitia James. "A multistate investigation found that the companies made false claims in advertisements in New York and across the nation, including misrepresentations about 'unlimited' data plans that were
  
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• G5 Severe Geomagnetic Storm Watch Issued For First Time Since 2003

  11-05-2024 02:49 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Longtime Slashdot reader davidwr shares a report from Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC): On Thursday, May 9, 2024, the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center issued a Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch. At least five earth-directed coronal mass ejections (CMEs) were observed and expected to arrive as early as midday Friday, May 10, 2024, and persist through Sunday, May 12, 2024. Several strong flares have been observed over the past few days and were associated with a large and magnetically
  
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• 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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• Google Cloud Accidentally Deletes UniSuper's Online Account Due To 'Unprecedented Misconfiguration'

  11-05-2024 01:20 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  A "one-of-a-kind" Google Cloud "misconfiguration" resulted in the deletion of UniSuper's account last week, disrupting the financial services provider's than half a million members. "Services began being restored for UniSuper customers on Thursday, more than a week after the system went offline," reports The Guardian. "Investment account balances would reflect last week's figures and UniSuper said those would be updated as quickly as possible." From the report: The UniSuper CEO, Peter Chun, wrot
  
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• The Automotive Cold War Is Officially Underway

  11-05-2024 00:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Tim Levin reports via InsideEVs: Two things of note in the electric vehicle world happened today around the same time. First, the Geely Group-owned Chinese EV brand Zeekr debuted on the New York Stock Exchange today at a valuation of around $5.2 billion. Then, around 250 miles south in Washington, D.C., news emerged that the Biden Administration is set to quadruple tariffs on Chinese-made electric cars if they hit American roads. The timing may be purely coincidental. But after this week, one th
  
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• Bumble's Dating 'AI Concierge' Will Date Hundreds of Other People's 'Concierges' For You

  11-05-2024 00:00 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Imagine this: you've "dated" 600 people in San Fransisco without having typed a word to any of them. Instead, a busy little bot has completed the mindless 'getting-to-know-you' chatter on your behalf, and has told you which people you should actually get off the couch to meet. That's the future of dating, according to Whitney Wolfe Herd -- and she'd know. Wolfe Herd is the founder and executive chair of Bumble, a meeting and networking platform t
  
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• Tech Exec's Videos Spark Clash Over China's Work Culture

  10-05-2024 23:20 via slashdot.org
  
  Search giant Baidu fires its head of public relations after she outraged Gen Z workers. From a report [non-paywalled link]: The head of public relations at a major Chinese tech firm gained hundreds of thousands of followers seemingly overnight after posting a series of viral videos laying out her unapologetically tyrannical management style. The videos also earned her a pink slip from her employer after they set off an explosion of criticism among Gen Z Chinese fed up with the intense work cultu
  
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• India Unable To Impose Caps on Mobile Payments Market Share, Four Years On

  10-05-2024 22:40 via slashdot.org
  
  Eight years ago, a coalition of retail banks in India built a mobile payments system called the UPI. The system is interoperable, allowing users to make instant peer-to-peer transactions between them -- across all participating banks -- and to merchants at zero cost. Today, it processes more than 12 billion transactions each month -- more than all card payments combined in India -- and has become the most popular way Indians transact online. Many U.S. giants have cited UPI as an example that oth
  
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• Canadian Petition That Games Must Remain Functional At EOL

  10-05-2024 22:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Zitchas writes: The practice of having games require a connection to a publisher's server -- whether it is to check for a license or to access plug-ins and DLC -- is an increasingly common thing in computer software; and many people are concerned that at some point in the future the publisher will shut down their server, and effectively render the person who paid for the game left with something that no longer functions. This has already happened to some games and software
  Concerned citizens in
  
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• Tornadoes Are Coming in Bunches. Scientists Are Trying To Figure Out Why.

  10-05-2024 21:24 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The number of tornadoes so far in the United States this year is just above average. But their distribution is changing. From a report: Tornadoes tend to travel in packs these days, often with a dozen or more forming in the same region on the same day. On the worst days, hundreds can form at once. More than a dozen tornadoes were reported on both Monday and Tuesday this week across the Great Plains and the Midwest, according to the Storm Prediction Center run by the National Oceanic and Atmosphe
  
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• Apple Might Bring AI Transcription To Voice Memos and Notes

  10-05-2024 20:40 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple's plans for AI on the iPhone could bring real-time transcription to its Voice Memos and Notes apps, according to a report from AppleInsider. The Verge: The new feature is expected to arrive with iOS 18 and will reportedly let you see a running transcription of your audio recordings in either app. While Notes currently doesn't let you record audio, a separate rumor from AppleInsider suggests Apple plans on adding this capability in iOS 18 as well. Audio transcription in either app sounds es
  
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• CEO of World's Biggest Ad Firm Targeted By Deepfake Scam

  10-05-2024 20:03 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The head of the world's biggest advertising group was the target of an elaborate deepfake scam that involved an AI voice clone. From a report: The CEO of WPP, Mark Read, detailed the attempted fraud in a recent email to leadership, warning others at the company to look out for calls claiming to be from top executives. Fraudsters created a WhatsApp account with a publicly available image of Read and used it to set up a Microsoft Teams meeting that appeared to be with him and another senior WPP ex
  
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• EA Weighs Putting In-game Ads in AAA Games

  10-05-2024 19:20 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson confirmed the company is considering putting ads in traditional AAA games, which players purchase for around $70 apiece. During EA's latest earnings call, Wilson said, "Advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for us," and that teams are looking at how to thoughtfully implement ads within game experiences.
  In-game advertising is not new, with the first recorded instance dating back to 1978. As the gaming industry is expected to grow to
  
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