Amazon faces a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of false advertising and deceptive practices because Prime Video now serves commercials by default. Variety reports: "For years, people purchased and renewed their Amazon Prime subscriptions believing that they would include ad-free streaming," the lawsuit says. "But last month, Amazon changed the deal. To stream movies and TV shows without ads, Amazon cu ... ⌘ Read more
Amazon faces a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of false advertising and deceptive practices because Prime Video now serves commercials by default. Variety reports: "For years, people purchased and renewed their Amazon Prime subscriptions believing that they would include ad-free streaming," the lawsuit says. "But last month, Amazon changed the deal. To stream movies and TV shows without ads, Amazon cu ... ⌘ Read more
The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) asserts that only humans can be recognized as inventors on patent applications, not artificial intelligence systems, although the use of AI in the invention process is permitted and must be disclosed. The Verge reports: The agency published (PDF) its latest guidance following a series of "listening" tours to gather public feedback. It stat ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that weakening end-to-end encryption disproportionately risks undermining human rights. The international court's decision could potentially disrupt the European Commission's proposed plans to require email and messaging ... ⌘ Read more
Lyft Chief Executive Officer David Risher's response to a clerical error that unintentionally inflated the company's earnings outlook on Tuesday and sent shares soaring: "My bad." From a report: "First of all, it's on me," Risher said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Wednesday, taking the blame for a typo in a company press release Tuesday that erron ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: When California state legislators passed a 2014 law banning single-use plastic bags, the hope was that it would notably reduce the amount of discarded plastic. But fast-forward nearly a decade: Californians are tossing more pounds of plastic bags than before the legislation was passed. That's ac ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: India is facing a quandary in enforcing long-delayed rules to curb the dominance of PhonePe and Google Pay in the country's ubiquitous UPI payments network, which processes over 10 billion transactions monthly. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a special unit o ... ⌘ Read more
The U.S. Navy has ramped up efforts to recruit young gamers and esports fans to meet recruitment goals, allocating up to $4.3 million this year for esports marketing. This includes hosting video game tournaments and having sailors compete as the esports team "Goats & Glory." Critics argue targeting minors for military marketing ... ⌘ Read more
DuckDuckGo keeps adding new features to its browser; and while these features are common in other browsers, DuckDuckGo is giving them a privacy-minded twist. The latest is a private, end-to-end encrypted syncing service. There's no account needed, no sign-in, and the company says it never sees what you're syncing. From a report: Using QR c ... ⌘ Read more
Apple researchers have unveiled a new AI tool called "Keyframer," (PDF) which harnesses the power of large language models (LLMs) to animate static images through natural language prompts. From a report: This novel application, detailed in a new research paper published on arxiv.org, represents a giant leap ... ⌘ Read more
Magyar Telekom is returning to a standard work schedule after a four-day workweek didn't meet expectations in a pilot project. From a report: Regular operations will return at the end of February after a one-and-a-half-year trial period, during which 300 of its almost 5,000 employees worked only four days a week for the same pay, the Hunga ... ⌘ Read more
A new satellite mission to track planet-warming emissions of methane gas is finally set to launch, now aided with AI technology to help build a global map of oil and gas infrastructure and surveil it for leaks [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: The MethaneSAT satellite was announced by the Environmental Def ... ⌘ Read more
Silicon Valley institution Y Combinator has released a new list of 20 types of startups it wants to join its accelerator program -- calling for applications in sectors like AI-powered robotics, space and defense technology. From a report: Y Combinator, YC for short, updates the list periodically, depending on what kinds of startups it sees gaining traction an ... ⌘ Read more
After climbing the charts of Apple's App Store, the trendy Kimi app, with its collection of bootlegged movies, has disappeared. From a report: Pretending to be a spot-the-difference vision-testing game, the widely downloaded app ranked above Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video in Apple's charts this week for free entertainment apps before it was remove ... ⌘ Read more
Microsoft said Wednesday it had detected and disrupted instances of U.S. adversaries -- chiefly Iran and North Korea and to a lesser extent Russia and China -- using or attempting to exploit generative AI developed by the company and its business partner to mount or research offe ... ⌘ Read more
Now that it can be strapped to our faces and worn in strange places, opinions about Apple's Vision Pro are flying left and right. Entering the chat is Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has more at stake than perhaps anyone on earth if Apple does to headsets what the iPhone did to smartphones. From a repor ... ⌘ Read more
Mark Tyson reports via Tom's Hardware: A serial burglar in Edina, Minnesota is suspected of using a Wi-Fi jammer to knock out connected security cameras before stealing and making off with the victim's prized possessions. [...] Edina police suspect that nine burglaries in the last six months have been undertaken with Wi-Fi jammer ... ⌘ Read more
The Chromium team is prototyping Web Monetization to allow websites to automatically receive micro payments from visitors for their content, bypassing traditional ad or subscription models. The Register reports: Earlier this month, Alexander Surkov, a software engineer at open source consultancy Igalia, announced the Chromium team's intent to ... ⌘ Read more
At least six major tech companies, including Adobe, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and TikTok, plan to sign an agreement this week that details how they'll attempt to stop the use of AI-generated election misinformation and deepfakes. ABC News reports: "In a critical year for global elections, technology companies are w ... ⌘ Read more
Michael Larabel writes via Phoronix: While there have been efforts by AMD over the years to make it easier to port codebases targeting NVIDIA's CUDA API to run atop HIP/ROCm, it still requires work on the part of developers. The tooling has improved such as with HIPIFY to help in auto-generating but it isn't any simple, instant, and guaranteed solution -- esp ... ⌘ Read more
Less than a week after naming Laura Chambers as interim CEO, Firefox's maker Mozilla said it is cutting about 60 jobs, or 5% of its workforce. The cuts are primarily in the product development organization. Bloomberg reports: "We're scaling back investment in some product areas in order to focus on areas that we feel have the greatest chance of success ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nintendo's Satellaview, a Japan-only satellite add-on for the Super Famicom, is a rich target for preservationists because it was the home to some of the most ephemeral games ever released. That includes a host of content for Nintendo's own games, including F-Zer ... ⌘ Read more
Speaking at the World Governments Summit in Dubai on Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned that "very subtle societal misalignments" could make artificial intelligence systems wreak havoc. The Associated Press reports:
"There's some things in there that are easy to imagine where things really go wrong. And I'm not that interested in the kill ... ⌘ Read more
Sean O'Kane reports via TechCrunch: Waymo is voluntarily recalling the software that powers its robotaxi fleet after two vehicles crashed into the same towed pickup truck in Phoenix, Arizona, in December. It's the company's first recall. Waymo chief safety officer Mauricio Pena described the crashes as "minor" in a blog post, and said neither ... ⌘ Read more
OpenAI must face a claim that it violated California unfair competition law by using copyrighted books from comedian Sarah Silverman and other authors to train ChatGPT without permission. From a report: But US District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin on Monday also dismissed a number of Silverman and her coplaintiffs' other legal claims, including allegat ... ⌘ Read more
Estate agents are increasingly using AI tools to digitally furnish empty rental flats, a practice known as "virtual staging," to make them look occupied in listings. While virtual staging has existed for years, AI advancements have made the process faster and cheaper. One major UK estate agency already offers AI staging services to customers, Vice reported this week. Industry ... ⌘ Read more
According to the Wall Street Journal, Walmart is in talks to buy TV manufacturer Vizio for more than $2 billion. Shares of Vizio jumped 36% after the report, while Walmart's shares were down about 1%. From the report: Walmart, including its Sam's Club chain, has historically been Vizio's largest customer. Vizio is historically the largest television brand so ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple's iMessage will avoid regulation requiring interoperability with other messaging platforms under the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), following the conclusion of an investigation by the regulator (via Bloomberg). The probe concluded that the iMessage platform and Microsoft's Bing do not hold a dominan ... ⌘ Read more
New York City's public schools chancellor said the city did not pass Tuesday's remote learning "test" due to technical issues. From a report: "As I said, this was a test. I don't think that we passed this test," David Banks said during a news briefing, adding that he felt "disappointed, frustrated and an ... ⌘ Read more
Jensen Huang took an indirect jab at Sam Altman when he said $7 trillion can buy "apparently all the GPUs." From a report: The Nvidia CEO made the quip at the World Governments Summit in Dubai on Monday when asked how many GPU chips that much money could buy. Altman, the OpenAI chief, is reportedly trying to raise trillions t ... ⌘ Read more
When it comes to defeating patent trolls with crowd-sourced prior art, Cloudflare is now two-for-two after winning its latest case against Sable Networks. The Register: Sable Networks, which owns patents originally given to defunct "flow-based router" company Caspian Networks, sued Cloudflare and five other companies in 2021 alle ... ⌘ Read more
Backblaze has published a report on hard drive failures for 2023, finding that rates increased during the year due to aging drives that it plans to upgrade. From a report: Backblaze, which focuses on cloud-based storage services, claims to have more than three exabytes of data storage under its management. As of the end of last year, the compa ... ⌘ Read more
Wunderlist, a beloved to-do app known for its delightful design, was acquired by Microsoft in 2015 and discontinued years later. Now Wunderlist co-founder Christian Reber -- who apparently attempted to buy back Wunderlist to no luck -- has launched Superlist to revive its spirit. The new app focuses on centralized project management by com ... ⌘ Read more
A company called Hands-Free Automation (HFA) has been accused of improperly relisting properties on Airbnb at higher prices after taking listings from hotel and short-term rental sites, according to a lawsuit filed in February. HFA founder Anthony Agyeman allegedly promised investors returns in 3-6 months for $20,000-30,000 investments in ownin ... ⌘ Read more
Indian tech services giant Infosys has been named as the source of a data leak suffered by the Bank of America. From a report: Infosys disclosed the breach in a November 3, 2023, filing that revealed its US subsidiary Infosys McCamish Systems LLC (IMS) "has become aware of a cyber security incident resulting in non-availability of certain application ... ⌘ Read more
Nvidia is releasing an early version of Chat with RTX today, a demo app that lets you run a personal AI chatbot on your PC. From a report: You can feed it YouTube videos and your own documents to create summaries and get relevant answers based on your own data. It all runs locally on a PC, and all you need is an RTX 30- or 40-series GPU with ... ⌘ Read more
Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr is calling on the Federal Communications Commission to investigate Apple's response to Beeper Mini -- the app that briefly brought iMessage to Android. From a report: During the State of the Net Conference on Monday, Carr said the FCC should look into whether Apple's move "complies with the FCC's Pa ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Economist: Russia hasbeen at the forefront ofinternet disinformationtechniques at least since 2014, when it pioneered the use of bot farms to spread fake news about its invasion of Crimea. According to French authorities, the Kremlin is at it again. On February 12th Viginum, the French foreign-disinform ... ⌘ Read more
Amazon Prime Video has cut Dolby Vision and Atmos support from their ad tier subscription. "That's on top of the ads that Amazon injected into the service on January 29th," reports The Verge. "Now, when you pay $2.99 a month to remove those ads, you can get Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos back as well." The Verge reports: That's the word from 4KFilm ... ⌘ Read more
Minesto, a marine energy tech developer based in Sweden, has deployed their new Dragon 12 tidal energy harvester to the Faroe Islands. Operating like an underwater kite, the Dragon 12 "uses lift generated by tidal flows to fly patterns faster than the currents, harvesting renewable energy," reports New Atlas. From the report: Where devices ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: After decades of progress in the U.S. toward cleaner air, climate change-related events will cause a steady deterioration through 2054. New research from the nonprofit First Street Foundation is part of a hyperlocal air quality model showing shifts down to the property level between 2 ... ⌘ Read more
Researchers have made significant progress toward developing a blood test that can predict the risk of dementia up to 15 years before clinical diagnosis. The Guardian reports: Hopes for the test were raised after scientists discovered biological markers for the condition in blood samples collected from m ... ⌘ Read more
In a post on Threads today, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the Twitter rival is rolling out a new test in the U.S. that shows a list of popular topics that other people are discussing. It's a core feature of Twitter (now "X") that should help make it easier to find new posts and users on Threads. The Verge reports: The list will appear on the search page and in the For You ... ⌘ Read more
A class-action lawsuit alleges (PDF) that Amazon manipulates its platform through a biased algorithm to favor the "Buy Box" for items that generate higher fees for Amazon, often leading consumers to overpay for products that could be obtained cheaper and just as quickly from other sellers on the platform. Ars Technica reports: The lawsuit claims tha ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: On a brutal December day, 17% of Spotify employees found out they had been laid off in the company's third round of job cuts last year. Not long after, music fans around the world realized that the cult-favorite website Every Noise at Once (EveryNoise), an encyclopedic goldmine for music discovery, had sto ... ⌘ Read more
A registered sex offender has become the first person in England and Wales to be convicted of cyber-flashing. The BBC reports: Nicholas Hawkes, 39, of Basildon, Essex, sent unsolicited photos of his erect penis to a 15-year-old girl and a woman on Friday. The woman took screenshots of the image on WhatsApp and reported Hawkes to Essex Police the same day.
H ... ⌘ Read more
Starting today, telcos in American will need to disclose system break-ins within seven days. "[T]he same deadline now exists to report any data leaks to the FBI and US Secret Service as well," adds The Register. From the report: After releasing a proposed rule in early January and giving the industry 30 days to respond, the FCC's final rule was p ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The US government has committed $42 million to further the development of the 5G Open RAN (O-RAN) standard that would allow wireless providers to mix and match cellular hardware and software, opening up a bigger market for third-party equipment that's cheaper and interoperable. The National Telecomm ... ⌘ Read more
FT Alphaville: Last year, Norway's $1.5tn sovereign wealth fund revealed that it had lost NKr980mn, roughly $92mn, on an error relating to how it calculated its mandated benchmark. Here's what Norges Bank Investment Management said at the time: "In February this year, a calculation error was discovered in the composition of the index we're measured against. ... ⌘ Read more
Abstract of a paper [PDF] the on pre-print server Arxiv: Citations are widely considered in scientists' evaluation. As such, scientists may be incentivized to inflate their citation counts. While previous literature has examined self-citations and citation cartels, it remains unclear whether scientists can purchase citations. Here, we compile a dataset of about 1.6 million profiles on Google Scholar to examine ... ⌘ Read more
Microsoft appears to be readying its own DLSS-like AI upscaling feature for PC games. From a report: X user PhantomOcean3 discovered the feature inside the latest test versions of Windows 11 over the weekend, with Microsoft describing its automatic super resolution as a way to "use AI to make supported games play more smoothly with enhanced details." That ... ⌘ Read more
Amid increasing speculation about the future of Xbox, its exclusives, and even its status as a hardware manufacturer, Phil Spencer reportedly told employees last week that it has no plans to stop making consoles. From a report: Reporter Shannon Liao said in her weekly Substack industry newsletter that Spencer moved to reassure st ... ⌘ Read more
stikves writes: Today, Broadcom announced immediate end of ESXi availability. ESXi has been an important tool for many "homelab" enthusiasts -- offering simple bare metal virtualization for small setups. Unfortunately they don't offer a replacement, except for paid subscription services.
[](http://twitter.com/home?stat ... ⌘ Read more
Nvidia blog: Every country needs to own the production of their own intelligence, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang told attendees Monday at the World Governments Summit in Dubai. Huang, who spoke as part of a fireside chat with the UAE's Minister of AI, His Excellency Omar Al Olama, described sovereign AI -- which emphasizes a country's ownership over its data and the intel ... ⌘ Read more
Nvidia briefly surpassed Amazon in market capitalization on Monday, as the euphoria around AI catapulted the chipmaker to the fourth most valuable U.S. company. From a report: At a record high of $734.96, Nvidia was worth $1.82 trillion in market value, compared to $1.81 trillion for retail giant Amazon.com and a few billions away from Google-owner Alphabet's $1.87 trillio ... ⌘ Read more
HP is seeking as much as $4 billion from Autonomy's former bosses following a London judge's finding that they fraudulently boosted the value of the company before its sale. From a report: Founder Mike Lynch was found to have inflated Autonomy's revenue alongside his chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain and induced HP to buy the firm for $11 billion, accord ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: The startup that develops the phone app for casino resort giant WinStar has secured an exposed database that was spilling customers' private information to the open web. Oklahoma-based WinStar bills itself as the "world's biggest casino" by square footage. The casino and hotel resort also offers an app, My WinStar, in wh ... ⌘ Read more
Many websites are using AI tools to generate fake obituaries about average people for profit. These articles lack substantiating details but are optimized for SEO, frequently outranking legitimate obituaries, The Verge reports. The fake obituaries, as one can imagine, are causing distress for grieving families and friends. In response, Google told The Verge that it aims to surface high-quality i ... ⌘ Read more
US companies are discussing cost control on earnings calls at a record rate, amid a push to reallocate funds and invest in new technologies, according to an analysis by Morgan Stanley strategists. From a report: Transcript mentions of "operational efficiency" are at the highest ever in the US during this earnings season as companies focus on expen ... ⌘ Read more
Back in 2006 Slashdot reported on a 50-megabyte "micro" distro called Damn Small Linux. (And in 2012 we wrote that it "rose from the dead" with a new release candidate.)
Now Damn Small Linux has been reborn again, according to its developer's web site:
Creating the original DSL, a versatile 50MB distribution, was a lot of fun and one of the things I am most proud of as a personal accomplishment ... ⌘ Read more
A lawsuit involving the now-defunct Google+ social media site "has been settled for $350 million," reports CPO magazine, "after a lengthy appeals process played out..."
"[T]he total pool after attorney and legal fees are deducted is likely to be well over $200 million."
[The lawsuit] dates all the way back to 2018, when Google internally discov ... ⌘ Read more
Technology made its mark on the Super Bowl ads this year. Microsoft purchased a long inspirational ad for Copilot, ending with the tagline "Your everyday AI companion." (Although another message made the opposite point. "With artificial intelligence, the future is in good hands," an announcer says ironically -- while the ad shows the minions from Despicable Me 4.)
Google's ad showed how its Pixel 8 ... ⌘ Read more
At a press conference last week, a California Assemblymember joined the State Superintendent of Public Instruction in announcing a bill that, if passed, would require every public high school to teach computer science. (And establish CS as a high school graduation requirement by the 2030-31 school year.)
Long-time Slashdot read ... ⌘ Read more
Last night in San Francisco's Chinatown, "A person jumped on the hood of a Waymo driverless taxi and smashed its windshield..." reports the Verge, "generating applause before a crowd formed around the car and covered it in spray paint, breaking its windows, and ultimately set it on fire."
The fire department arrived minutes later, according to a report in The Autopia ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:
An abrupt shutdown of Atlantic Ocean currents that could put large parts of Europe in a deep freeze is looking a bit more likely and closer than before as a new complex computer simulation finds a "cliff-like" tipping point loo ... ⌘ Read more
"Mutant wolves roaming the deserted streets of Chernobyl appear to have developed resistance to cancer," reports Sky News, "raising hopes the findings can help scientists fight the disease in humans."
Dr Cara Love, an evolutionary biologist and ecotoxicologist at Princeton University in the U.S., has been studying how the Cherno ... ⌘ Read more
Remember "Servo," Mozilla's "next-generation browser engine," focused on performance and robustness?
"The developers of Servo are starting 2024 by going all in..." reports It's FOSS News, citing a social media post from FOSDEM. "[T]he Servo Project team were there showing off the work done so far."
If you were not familiar, Servo is an experimental browser e ... ⌘ Read more
Thursday a climate technology startup called Twelve "took a major step toward producing sustainable aviation fuel..." reports Bloomberg, "by launching its commercial-scale carbon transformation unit."
Twelve is among the emerging companies working on ways to transform captured CO2 into useful products. In the case of the Berkeley, California-based startup, its nascent ... ⌘ Read more
Martin Hellman "achieved legendary status as co-inventor of the Diffie-Hellman public key exchange algorithm, a breakthrough in software and computer cryptography," notes a new interview in InfoWorld.
Nine years after winning the Turing award, the 78-year-old cryptologist shared his perspective on some other issues:
... ⌘ Read more
"Something revolutionary is on the horizon..." claims the company's web site. "Wearable neurotechnology that augments sleep, attention, and ultimately the human experience."
Or, as Fierce Biotech put it, "A startup emerged from stealth this week with grand plans to pioneer a new form of neurotech ... ⌘ Read more
Shell once announced it would build 48 new Hydrogen fueling stations for light-duty vehicles in California, according to the blog Hydrogen Insights. But then in September, Shell told the site they'd "discontinued" that plan.
And last month the Inside EVs blog noted that in all of 2023, just 2,968 hydrogen cars were sold " ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shared this report from the New York Times
When it's after hours, and the boss is on the line, Australian workers — already among the world's best-rested and most personally fulfilled employees — can soon press "decline" in favor of the seductive call of the beach. In yet another buttress against the scourge of overwork, Australia's Senate o ... ⌘ Read more
America's Federal Aviation Administration "is midway through a review of manufacturing at Boeing," reports the Associated Press, but "already knows that changes must be made in how the government oversees the aircraft manufacturer."
FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker suggested that Boeing — unde ... ⌘ Read more
InfoWorld reports:
Don't look now, but 25% of organizations surveyed in the United Kingdom have already moved half or more of their cloud-based workloads back to on-premises infrastructures. This is according to a recent study by Citrix, a Cloud Software Group business unit. The survey questioned 350 IT leaders on their current approaches to cloud computing. The survey also showed that 93% of respondents ... ⌘ Read more
In 2022 Apple filed a lawsuit against startup Rivos. The lawsuit said that in one year Rivos had hired more than 40 former Apple employees to work on competing system-on-a-chip technology, according to Reuters, "and that at least two former Apple engineers took gigabytes of confidential information with them to R ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shared this report from Reuters:
Nvidia is building a new business unit focused on designing bespoke chips for cloud computing firms and others, including advanced AI processors, nine sources familiar with its plans told Reuters. The dominant global designer and supplier of AI chips aims to capture a portion of an exploding market fo ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:
A California state lawmaker introduced a bill on Thursday aiming to force companies to test the most powerful artificial intelligence models before releasing them — a landmark proposal that could inspire regulation around the country as state legislatures i ... ⌘ Read more
Former FTX customers "have reasons to believe they could actually recoup their money," reports CNBC:
Bankman-Fried, who could spend the rest of his life behind bars, was found guilty in November on seven criminal counts after roughly $10 billion in customer funds from his company went missing. Some of that money went to pay for Bankman-Fried's lavish lifestyle, but much of it went towa ... ⌘ Read more
Earth had its first year-long, 1.5-degree rise in temperature. But does this mean we've already missed our goal of limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees?
No, argues the Washington Post:
There's actually some disagreement about what exactly counts as breaching that threshold — but scientists and policymakers agree that it has to be a multiyear average, not a sing ... ⌘ Read more
Since 2006 Baldrson (Slashdot reader #78,598) has been part of the team verifying "The Hutter Prize for Lossless Compression of Human Knowledge," an ongoing challenge to compress a 100-MB excerpt of Wikipedia (approximately the amount a human can read in a lifetime).
"The intention of this prize is to encourage development of intell ... ⌘ Read more
Long-time Slashdot reader v3rgEz shared this report from MuckRock:
Founded in 2003, Appin has been described as a cybersecurity company and an educational consulting firm. Appin was also, according to Reuters reporting and extensive marketing materials, a prolific "hacking for hire" service, stealing inform ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this report from SiliconANGLE:
The Rust Foundation, which supports the development of the popular open-source Rust programming language... shared that Google LLC had made a $1 million contribution specifically earmarked for a C++/Rust interoperability effort known as the "Interop Initiative." The initiat ... ⌘ Read more
The world's biggest builder of recycling plants has teamed with a startup to install AI-powered systems for sorting recycling, reports the Washington Post. And now over the next few years, "The companies plan to retrofit thousands of recycling facilities around the world with computers that can analyze and identify every item that passes through a waste pl ... ⌘ Read more
Last week Microsoft's Visual Studio Code editor suddenly stopped supporting Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
But now Microsoft "has announced a temporary reprieve for developers who use VS Code to connect to servers, clouds, container, and other devices running on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS," according to the blog OMG Ubuntu:
Microsoft [had] pushed ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the San Francisco Standard: California would ban all plastic shopping bags in 2026 under a new bill announced Thursday in the state Legislature. California already bans thin plastic shopping bags at grocery stores and other shops, but shoppers at checkout can purchase bags made with a thicker pla ... ⌘ Read more
Gen Z is reviving the trend of reading physical books over digital ones, with a notable increase in library visits and book purchases, as evidenced by celebrities like Kaia Gerber and Kendall Jenner promoting literature and book clubs. The Guardian reports: This week the 22-year-old model Kaia Gerber launched her own book club, Library Science. Gerber, who this month appears on the cover ... ⌘ Read more
schwit1 quotes a report from Phys.Org: The Joint European Torus (JET), one of the world's largest and most powerful fusion machines, has demonstrated the ability to reliably generate fusion energy, while simultaneously setting a world record in energy output. These notable accomplishments represent a significant mileston ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Death is coming for the old-school gas furnace -- and its killer is the humble heat pump. They're already outselling gas furnaces in the US, and now a coalition of states has signed an agreement to supercharge the gas-to-electric transition by making it as cheap and easy as possible for ... ⌘ Read more
Clay Risen reports via the New York Times: David Kahn, whose 1967 book, "The Codebreakers," established him as the world's pre-eminent authority on cryptology -- the science of making and breaking secret codes -- died on Jan. 24 in the Bronx. He was 93. His son Michael said the death, at a senior-living facility, was from the long-term effects ... ⌘ Read more
Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: Our goal," Amazon founder Jeff Bezos explained in a Feb. 2021 Instagram post announcing the location of a second tuition-free @BezosAcademy preschool in Tacoma, WA, "is to unlock the potential in kids to become creative leaders, original thinkers, and lifelong learners -- regardless of their zip code."
Three years later, a new ... ⌘ Read more
In a blog post today, Meta announced that it'll stop showing political content across Instagram and Threads unless users explicitly choose to have it recommended to them. The Verge reports: Meta announced that it's expanding an existing Reels policy that limits political content from people you're not following (including posts about social issues) f ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The maker of a popular smart ski and bike helmet has fixed a security flaw that allowed the easy real-time location tracking of anyone wearing its helmets. Livall makes internet-connected helmets that allow groups of skiers or bike riders to talk with each other using the helmet' ... ⌘ Read more
The French offices of Chinese tech giant Huawei were raided by financial prosecutors this week, the company confirmed Friday. CNN reports: A French judicial source told CNN Thursday that the raid had been carried out as part of a preliminary probe launched by the financial prosecutor's office over alleged "breach of probity," a broad term concerning offenses such ... ⌘ Read more
Longtime Slashdot reader Alain Williams shares a report from the BBC: Users of Ring video doorbells have reacted angrily to a huge price hike being introduced in March. After buying the devices, customers can pay a subscription to store footage on the cloud, download clips and get discounted products. That subscription is going up 43%, from $44 to $63 per device, per y ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Reddit is not required to share the IP-address of six users who made piracy-related comments on the website. The company successfully protested the third attempt of a group of filmmakers, which planned to use the requested logs as evidence in their lawsuit against Internet ... ⌘ Read more
Network giant Cisco is planning to restructure its business which will include laying off thousands of employees, as it seeks to focus on high-growth areas, according to three sources familiar with the matter. From the Reuters report: The San Jose, California-based company has a total employee count of 84,900 as of fiscal 2023, accordi ... ⌘ Read more
It appears that the government of Canada is going to ban the Flipper Zero, the tiny, modular hacking device that's become popular with techies for its deviant digital powers. From a report: On Thursday, following a summit that focused on "the growing challenge of auto theft in Canada," the country's Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry posted a stat ... ⌘ Read more
India's Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will send a humanoid robot astronaut into this space this year, then send it back alongside actual humans in 2025 on its long-delayed Gaganyaan orbital mission. From a report: According to the space agency, the robot-crewed Vyommitra Mission is scheduled for the third quarter of this year. The r ... ⌘ Read more
Ubisoft co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot has defended the $70 price tag for Skull and Bones, calling it a "quadruple-A game." From a report: During a Q&A session as part of a conference call discussing Ubisoft's Q3 sales for its fiscal year 2024, one caller pointed out that Skull and Bones now appears to be taking a more live service approach -- the game's Year 1 roadmap was recent ... ⌘ Read more
An Apple executive lobbied against a strong right-to-repair bill in Oregon Thursday, which is the first time the company has had an employee actively outline its stance on right to repair at an open hearing. 404 Media: Apple's position in Oregon shows that despite supporting a weaker right to repair law ... ⌘ Read more
Amazon has been sued in a proposed U.S. class action that accuses the online retailer of violating consumer protection law by steering shoppers to higher-priced items to earn extra fees. Filed this week in the Seattle federal court, the complaint cites the recent FTC antitrust case against Amazon. It alleges Amazon's algorithm for its "Buy Box" often s ... ⌘ Read more