The openVertebrate (oVert) project is now complete, offering free online access to incredibly detailed 3D images of over 13,000 vertebrates. New Atlas reports: More than a research project, oVert was a collaboration between like-minded specialists across 25 institutions whose sole objective was to add value to museum collections by making them more ... ⌘ Read more
The openVertebrate (oVert) project is now complete, offering free online access to incredibly detailed 3D images of over 13,000 vertebrates. New Atlas reports: More than a research project, oVert was a collaboration between like-minded specialists across 25 institutions whose sole objective was to add value to museum collections by making them more ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He's never been responsible for an accident. So Mr. Dahl, 65, was surprised in 2022 when the cost of his car insurance jumped by 21 p ... ⌘ Read more
According to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick is reportedly considering buying TikTok. PCMag reports: Kotick floated the idea at a dinner at an Allen & Co. conference earlier this week with a group of potential partners, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the Journal says. Kotick left Activision in late December after more ... ⌘ Read more
Over 15,000 Roku customers were hacked and used to make fraudulent purchases of hardware and streaming subscriptions. According to BleepingComputer, the threat actors were "selling the stolen accounts for as little as $0.50 per account, allowing purchasers to use stored credit cards to make illegal purchases." From the report: On Friday, ... ⌘ Read more
Surgeons in the United Kingdom have performed the first operation in the country using Apple's Vision Pro headset. TechSpot reports: During a recent operation to repair a patient's spine at the private Cromwell Hospital in London, a scrub nurse working alongside the surgeon used the Vision Pro to help prepare, keep track of the proced ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: YouTube is no longer showing recommended videos to users logged out of a Google account or using Incognito mode, making people concerned they are being bullied into always being signed into the service. This change, which is now rolling out, shows a simple YouTube homepage without any videos or tip ... ⌘ Read more
Jess Weatherbed reports via The Verge: Midjourney says it has banned Stability AI staffers from using its service, accusing employees at the rival generative AI company of causing a systems outage earlier this month during an attempt to scrape Midjourney's data. Midjourney posted an update to its Discord server on March 2nd that acknowled ... ⌘ Read more
According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, AirPods Pro will gain a new "hearing aid mode" with the release of iOS 18 later this year. MacRumors reports: Writing in the subscriber edition of his regular Power On newsletter, Gurman claims that the "big news" for AirPods Pro in the near term will be support for a hearing aid-style function when iOS 18 drops in the fall. To be clear, thi ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A lengthy investigation into the European Union's use of Microsoft 365 has found the Commission breached the bloc's data protection rules through its use of the cloud-based productivity software. Announcing its decision in a press release today, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) said t ... ⌘ Read more
Controversial eyeball scanning startup Worldcoin has failed to get an injunction against a temporary suspension ordered Wednesday by Spain's data protection authority, the AEPD. TechCrunch: The authority used emergency powers contained in the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to make the local order, which can apply ... ⌘ Read more
Automakers, including G.M., Honda, Kia, and Hyundai, have been collecting detailed driving data from millions of Americans through internet-enabled connected-car apps. The data, which includes information on speed, hard braking, and rapid accelerations, is shared with data brokers like LexisNexis. These brokers then provide t ... ⌘ Read more
Dozens of people have been injured by what officials described as a "strong movement" on a Chilean flight from Australia to New Zealand. From a report: In a statement on Monday, Chilean LATAM Airlines blamed the injuries on "a technical event during the flight which caused a strong movement." It is just the latest in a series of safety-rel ... ⌘ Read more
The University of Texas at Austin said Monday that it would again require standardized tests for admissions (non-paywalled source), becoming the latest selective university to reinstate requirements for SAT or ACT scores that were abandoned during the pandemic. From a report: A few years ago, about 2,000 colleges across the country began to mo ... ⌘ Read more
The US could further tighten controls on China's access to sophisticated semiconductor technologies, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said, signaling Washington may intensify its campaign to prevent Beijing catching up in military capabilities. From a report: "We cannot allow China to have access for their military advancement to our most sophisticat ... ⌘ Read more
The U.S. government must move "quickly and decisively" to avert substantial national security risks stemming from artificial intelligence (AI) which could, in the worst case, cause an "extinction-level threat to the human species," says a report commissioned by the U.S. government pu ... ⌘ Read more
Several French government agencies were hit by "intense" cyberattacks beginning Sunday night. From a report: The attacks' impact on most services has been reduced and access to agencies' websites restored, the prime minister's office said in a statement Monday.
[](http://twitter.com/home?status=France+Says+Seve ... ⌘ Read more
Airbnb will no longer allow hosts to use indoor security cameras, regardless of where they're placed or what they're used for. In an update on Monday, Airbnb says the change to "prioritize the privacy" of renters goes into effect on April 30th. From a report: The vacation rental app previously let hosts install security cameras in "common areas" of listings, including hallways, living rooms, ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Linus Torvalds has released version 6.8 of the Linux Kernel. "So it took a bit longer for the commit counts to come down this release than I tend to prefer," Torvalds wrote on the Linx kernel mailing list on Sunday, "but a lot of that seemed to be about various selftest updates (networking in particular) rather than any act ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently took to the stage to claim that Nvidia's GPUs are "so good that even when the competitor's chips are free, it's not cheap enough." Huang further explained that Nvidia GPU pricing isn't really significant in terms of an AI data center's total cost of ow ... ⌘ Read more
Elon Musk's AI startup xAI will open-source Grok, its chatbot rivaling ChatGPT, this week, the entrepreneur said, days after suing OpenAI and complaining that the Microsoft-backed startup had deviated from its open-source roots. From a report: xAI released Grok last year, arming it with features including access to "real-time" information and views undeterred by "politically correct" norms. The service is av ... ⌘ Read more
Streamers narrowly avoided getting shut out at the 2024 Oscars: Netflix came away with just one trophy and Apple left empty-handed, after they garnered a total of 32 nominations. From a report: Netflix collected its one win for Wes Anderson's "The Wonderful Story of Henry ... ⌘ Read more
CNN's national security analyst interviewed a U.S. intelligence officer who worked on the newly-released Defense report debunking UFO sightings — physicist Sean Kirkpatrick. He tells CNN "about two to five percent" of UFO reports are "truly anomalous."
But CNN adds that "he thinks explanations for that small percentage will most likely be found right here on Ear ... ⌘ Read more
A Toronto Sun columnist writes that two Canadian civil liberties groups are "sounding alarms" about the proposed new Online Harms Act (C-63):
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) and the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) say while the proposed legislation contains legitimate measu ... ⌘ Read more
Streamers narrowly avoided getting shut out at the 2024 Oscars: Netflix came away with just one trophy and Apple left empty-handed, after they garnered a total of 32 nominations. From a report: Netflix collected its one win for Wes Anderson's "The Wonderful Story of Henry ... ⌘ Read more
In 1995 Scottish video game designer Chris Sawyer created the business simulator game Transport Tycoon Deluxe — and within four years, Wikipedia notes, work began on the first version of an open source version that's still being actively developed. "According to a study of the 61,154 open-source projects on SourceForge in the period betw ... ⌘ Read more
Researchers at Cado Security Labs received an alert about a honeypot using the Docker Engine API. "A Docker command was received..." they write, "that spawned a new container, based on Alpine Linux, and created a bind mount for the underlying honeypot server's root directory..."
Typically, this is exploite ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shared this story from the New York Times:
Into the depleted field of journalism in America, a handful of websites have appeared in recent weeks with names suggesting a focus on news close to home: D.C. Weekly, the New York News Daily, the Chicago Chronicle and a newer sister publication, the Miami Chronicle. In fact, they are not local news organizations a ... ⌘ Read more
An article in Inc notes a "wild projection" in Reddit's SEC filing that Reddit's global market opportunity by 2027 is $1.4 trillion."
Some of the numbers lead back to a single individual: Sam Altman. The co-founder and chief executive of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI owns an 8.7 percent stake in Reddit, more than its co-founder and CEO, Steve Huffman, who owns 3.3 percent.. ... ⌘ Read more
America's Department of Justice "has launched a criminal investigation into the Boeing jetliner blowout that left a gaping hole on an Alaska Airlines plane," reports the Associated Press, citing a report from the Wall Street Journal.
"As part of the new investigation, the Justice Depart ... ⌘ Read more
Science magazine "has confirmed that a panel of two dozen geologists has voted down a proposal to end the Holocene — our current span of geologic time, which began 11,700 years ago at the end of the last ice age — and inaugurate a new epoch, the Anthropocene.
"Starting in the 1950s, it would have marked a time when humanity's influence on the p ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shared this article from Futurism:
More than two years since MIT claimed its scientists achieved a breakthrough in fusion energy, the university is claiming that new research "confirms" that the magnet-based design used in those tests isn't just impressive in a lab ... ⌘ Read more
One year after Silicon Valley Bank's collapse and seizure, "Regional bank stocks remain volatile compared to other types of financial institutions," reports the Observer, "indicating investors' lingering worries about the sector."
But not everyone suffered:
Benefiting from the crisis were big players, like JPM ... ⌘ Read more
Ubuntu-based Linux Mint includes HexChat software by default "to offer a way for users of the distro to talk to, ask questions, and get support from other users," according to the Linux blog OMG Ubuntu.
But in February HexChat's developer announced its final release...
That got devs thinking. As is, IRC isn ... ⌘ Read more
Long-time Slashdot reader garote writes: It's the year 1991. You're a teenage computer geek. You've just upgraded to an Apple IIgs, your first "16-bit" computer. To relieve the crushing boredom of your High School coursework, you and your friends embark on the computer geek equivalent of forming a heavy metal band: Making your own video game. You mee ... ⌘ Read more
Slashdot reader ArchieBunker shared this article from NBC News:
Exposure to leaded gasoline lowered the IQ of about half the population of the United States, a new study estimates. The peer-reviewed study, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses on people born before 199 ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shared this article from the Washington Post:
A much-debated theory holds that 4 billion years ago, give or take, long before the appearance of dinosaurs or even bacteria, the primordial soup contained only the possibility of life. Then a molecule called RNA took a dramatic step into the future: It made a copy of itself ... ⌘ Read more
Legislation proposed in California "aims to repeal Daylight saving time and put California permanently on Standard time," reports a San Diego news station:
In November 2018, California voters passed Prop 7, a measure that would allow the state legislature to change Daylight saving time by either keeping it year-round or getting rid of it altogeth ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian:
The U.S. is not secretly hiding alien technology or extraterrestrial beings from the public, according to a defense department report.
On Friday, the Pentagon 'published the findings of an investigation conducted by the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), a governme ... ⌘ Read more
"A 20-year-old Trojan resurfaced recently," reports Dark Reading, "with new variants that target Linux and impersonate a trusted hosted domain to evade detection."
Researchers from Palo Alto Networks spotted a new Linux variant of the Bifrost (aka Bifrose) malware that uses a deceptive practice known as typosquatting to mimic a legitimate VM ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this article from Live Science:
Manufacturers will no longer use harmful "forever chemicals" in food packaging products in the U.S., according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
In a statement released February 28, the agency declared that grease-proofing materials that ... ⌘ Read more
"2004 was already an eventful year for Linux," writes ZDNet's Jack Wallen. "As I reported at the time, SCO was trying to drive Linux out of business. Red Hat was abandoning Linux end-user fans for enterprise customers by closing down Red Hat Linux 9 and launching the business-friendly Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Oh, and South African tech millionaire and astronaut Mar ... ⌘ Read more
" A federal agency in charge of cybersecurity discovered it was hacked last month..." reports CNN.
Last month the U.S. Department of Homeland Security experienced a breach at its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, reports the Record, "through vulnerabilities in Ivanti product ... ⌘ Read more
It was an idea first proposed by Archimedes, reports CNN. But now, "Brenden Sener, 13, of London, Ontario, has won two gold medals and a London Public Library award for his minuscule version of the contraption — a supposed war weapon made up of a large array of mirrors designed to focus and aim sunlight on a target, such as a ship, and cause ... ⌘ Read more
Remember Avi Loeb, the Harvard professor who claims fragments of alien technology turned up in a high-speed meteor he retrieved from the waters off of Papua, New Guinea?
"Reanalysis of seismic data now suggests Loeb may have been looking for the meteor remnants in the wrong place," writes the Washington Post:
The analysis, led by sei ... ⌘ Read more
Roughly $138 billion in U.S. student loan debt has now been cancelled, reports CNN. "That's about one-third of the $430 billion that would've been canceled under the president's one-time forgiveness plan, which was struck down by the Supreme Court last year."
It's 9% of all outstanding federal student loan debt ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:
The Earth just observed its warmest February, setting a monthly record for the ninth time in a row, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Wednesday.
The unrelenting and exceptional global warmth — fueled by a combination of human-ca ... ⌘ Read more
"Shares of Rivian Automotive surged 13% on Thursday," reports CNBC, "as the EV maker unveiled three new vehicles and announced more than $2 billion in savings related to pausing construction on a plant in Georgia."
CNBC notes that Rivian's current vehicles "start at roughly $70,000 and can top $100,000," so the new cheaper R2 midsize SUV (startin ... ⌘ Read more
A recent survey found that academic organizations are failing to preserve digital material -- "including science paid for with taxpayer money," reports Ars Technica, highlighting the need for improved archiving standards and responsibilities in the digital age. From the report: The work was done by Martin Eve, a developer at Crossref. That's t ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Police: Seven years ago, Google announced that it would phase out all Chrome apps on Windows, Mac, and Linux by 2018 (it would actually take until 2023). In its place would be what the company called Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), web apps that can be installed on a user's desktop that act as if they are practically natural apps an ... ⌘ Read more
Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from The Guardian: Akira Toriyama, the influential Japanese manga artist who created the Dragon Ball series, has died at the age of 68. He died on March 1 from an acute subdural haematoma. The news was confirmed by Bird Studio, the manga company that Toriyama founded in 1983.
"It's our dee ... ⌘ Read more
Lindsay Clark reports via The Register: Palantir has won a US Army contract worth $178.4 million to house a battlefield intelligence system inside a big truck. In what purports to be the Army's first AI-defined vehicle, Palantir will provide systems for the TITAN "ground station," which is designed to access space, high altitude, aerial, and terrestrial sensors to "provide ac ... ⌘ Read more
Space.com describes it as "a nearly 3-ton leftover tossed overboard from the International Space Station" — which crashed back to earth today. One satellite tracker claims to have filmed it passing over the Netherlands...
"A couple minutes later reentry and it would have reached Fort Meyers" in Florida, posted astronomer Jonathan McDow ... ⌘ Read more
Google's swanky new office building located on the Alphabet's Mountain View, California headquarters has been "plagued for months by inoperable, or, at best, spotty Wi-Fi," reports Reuters citing six people familiar with the matter. "Its recliner-laden collaborative workspaces do not work well for teams carting around laptops, since workers mu ... ⌘ Read more
Michael McWhertor reports via Polygon: Warner Bros. Discovery is telling developers it plans to start "retiring" games published by its Adult Swim Games label, game makers who worked with the publisher tell Polygon. At least three games are under threat of being removed from Steam and other digital stores, wi ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MobileSyrup: Google's new smart assistant, Gemini, is available on multiple devices but Gemini Nano, the multimodal large language model, isn't coming to all Pixel smartphones. Gemini Nano is only available on the Google Pixel 8 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy S24 series; however, we've recently learned that it's not ... ⌘ Read more
As reported by The Information (paywalled), OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will return to the company's board along with three new directors. Reuters reports: The company has also concluded the investigation around Altman's November firing, the Information said, referring to the ouster that briefly threw the world's most prominent artificial intelligence company int ... ⌘ Read more
As reported by 404 Media, the New York Times has issued hundreds of copyright takedown requests against Wordle clones "in which it asserts not just ownership over the Wordle name but over the broad concepts and mechanics of the word game, which includes its '5x6 grid' and 'green tiles to indicate correct guesses.'" From the report: The Times ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AMD announced this week that it has ceased FreeSync certification for monitors or TVs whose maximum refresh rates are under 144 Hz. Previously, FreeSync monitors and TVs could have refresh rates as low as 60 Hz, allowing for screens with lower price tags and ones not targeted at serious gaming to ... ⌘ Read more
Ahead of its IPO, Reddit has announced a set of tools for businesses that want to be more active on the platform -- including the ability to see which subreddits are mentioning a brand. For businesses, Reddit says it's a way to "establish and grow a meaningful organic presence on Reddit."
[](http://twitter.com/home?status=Marketers+Are+About ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Dario Amodei, chief executive of the high-profile A.I. start-up Anthropic, told Congress last year that new A.I. technology could soon help unskilled but malevolent people create large-scale biological attacks, such as the release of viruses or toxic substances that cause widespread disease and death. Senators from ... ⌘ Read more
Astronomers have observed a distant planet that could be entirely covered in a deep water ocean, in findings that advance the search for habitable conditions beyond Earth. From a report: The observations, by Nasa's James Webb space telescope (JWST), revealed water vapour and chemical signatures of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ... ⌘ Read more
Microsoft has abruptly pulled a feature from OneDrive that allows users to upload files to the cloud storage service directly from a URL. From a report: The feature turned up as a preview in 2021 and was intended for scenarios "where the file contents aren't available, or are expensive to transfer," according to Microsoft. It was particularly u ... ⌘ Read more
Epic Games, in a blog post: Apple has told us and committed to the European Commission that they will reinstate our developer account. This sends a strong signal to developers that the European Commission will act swiftly to enforce the Digital Markets Act and hold gatekeepers accountable. We are moving forward as plann ... ⌘ Read more
A United Airlines Holdings aircraft ran off the taxiway into a grassy area after landing at Houston Friday, the third incident this week involving the airline's Boeing planes. From a report: United Flight 2477, with 160 passengers and six crew, had just landed at George Bush Intercontinental Airport about 8 a.m. local time Friday when it veered i ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: In the 1960s, secret test flights of advanced government spy planes generated U.F.O. sightings. More recently, government and commercial drones, new kinds of satellites and errant weather balloons have led to a renaissance in unusual observations. But, according to a new report, none of these sightings were of alien spacecraft. The new ... ⌘ Read more
Astra Space, a California-based rocket company, has announced it will go private at a valuation significantly lower than its $2.1 billion debut in 2021. The company's market value is about $13 million at current levels. The company's co-founders, Chris Kemp and Adam London, will acquire all outstanding shares at $0.50 each, well below the curr ... ⌘ Read more
Microsoft revealed earlier this year that Russian state-sponsored hackers had been spying on the email accounts of some members of its senior leadership team. Now, Microsoft is disclosing that the attack, from the same group behind the SolarWinds attack, has also led to some source code being stolen in what Microsoft d ... ⌘ Read more
President Biden included a nod to a rising issue in the entertainment and tech industries during his State of the Union address Thursday evening, calling for a ban on AI voice impersonations. From a report: "Here at home, I have signed over 400 bipartisan bills. There's more to pass my unity agenda," President Biden said, beginning to list off a series of differ ... ⌘ Read more
China is in the process of raising more than $27 billion for its largest chip fund to date, accelerating the development of cutting-edge technologies to counter a US campaign to thwart its rise. From a report: The National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund is amassing a pool of capital from local governments and state enterprises for its t ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: For the past 10 years it has remained one of the modern era's greatest mysteries. A commercial airliner with a strong safety record carrying 239 people vanishing from the map, spawning a wide variety of competing theories, books and documentaries and leaving the families of those left behind asking themselves every March 8 -- what ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple today released visionOS 1.1, marking the first major update to the visionOS operating system that was launched alongside the Vision Pro in February. visionOS updates can be installed by going to the Settings app on the Vision Pro, sele ... ⌘ Read more
innocent\\_white\\_lamb shares a report from CBC News: In June, a Court of King's Bench judge ordered Swift Current farmer Chris Achter to pay more than $82,000 to a grain buyer with South West Terminal (SWT). The ruling stems from a text message when the buyer, Kent Mickleborough, asked Achter to confirm a flax contract that requested more than 85 tons of flax to be delive ... ⌘ Read more
Mexico is waiting for the United States to provide evidence that shows imported genetically modified corn is safe for human consumption. "In a written submission to a panel of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, Mexico, the top buyer of U.S. corn, argued that science proves GM corn and the herbicide glyphosate are harmful to human ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Doctors have warned of potentially life-threatening effects from plastic pollution after finding a substantially raised risk of stroke, heart attack and earlier death in people whose blood vessels were contaminated with microscopic plastics. Researchers in Naples exa ... ⌘ Read more
John Timmer reports via Ars Technica: A company called Colossal plans to pioneer the de-extinction business, taking species that have died within the past few thousand years and restoring them through the use of DNA editing and stem cells. It's grabbed headlines recently by announcing some compelling targets: the thylacine, an extinct marsupial pred ... ⌘ Read more
An APK teardown performed by Android Authority has revealed that Reddit is now using a Large Language Model (LLM) to detect harassment on the platform. From the report: Reddit also updated its support page a week ago to mention the use of an AI model as part of its harassment filter. "The filter is powered by a Large Language Model (LLM) that's trained on moderator action ... ⌘ Read more
Michael Larabel writes via Phoronix: Fedora Workstation has long defaulted to using GNOME's Wayland session by default, but it has continued to install the GNOME X.Org session for fallback purposes or those opting to use it instead. But for the Fedora Workstation 41 release later in the year, there is a newly-approved plan to no ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Week Magazine: The advancement of new technologies appears to have given rise to a new problem across the United States: a crippling power shortage on the horizon. The advent of these technologies, such as eco-friendly factories and data centers, has renewed concerns that America could run out of electrical power. These worries also come at ... ⌘ Read more
In an updated support page, Apple says it won't let your iPhone update software installed by third-party app stores if you leave the European Union for more than 30 days. The Verge reports: Shortly after the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) went into effect on Wednesday, users noticed an Apple sup ... ⌘ Read more
Researchers have developed a way to circumvent safety measures built into large language models (LLMs) using ASCII Art, a graphic design technique that involves arranging characters like letters, numbers, and punctuation marks to form recognizable patterns or images. Tom's Hardware reports: According to the research paper ArtPrompt: ASCII Art-based Jailbreak Attacks against Align ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has released its 2023 Internet Crime Report (PDF), which recorded a 22% increase in reported losses compared to 2022, amounting to a record of $12.5 billion. The number of relevant complaints submitted to the FBI in 2023 reached 880,000, 10% higher than ... ⌘ Read more
The European Union has confirmed it's looking into Apple's decision to close Epic Games' developer account -- citing three separate regulations that may apply. From a report: Yesterday the Fortnite maker revealed Apple had terminated the account, apparently reversing a decision to approve the developer account last month. Epic had plan ... ⌘ Read more
A directive known as Document 79 ramps up Beijing's effort to replace U.S. tech with homegrown alternatives. From a report: For American tech companies in China, the writing is on the wall. It's also on paper, in Document 79. The 2022 Chinese government directive expands a drive that is muscling U.S. technology out of the country -- an effort some refe ... ⌘ Read more
Samsung's 2024 OLED TV lineup will feature both QD-OLED and WOLED panels, making it harder for consumers to distinguish between the two technologies. The company announced three new series without specifying the panel types, but reports suggest that even within the S90D series, both QD-OLED and WOLED may be used. Samsung's decision to use both ... ⌘ Read more
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) will start providing more hands-on support to open-source software developers as they work to better secure their projects, the agency said. From a report: CISA hosted a two-day, invite-only summit this week with leaders in the open-source software community and other federal officials. During the private ev ... ⌘ Read more
Apple is preparing to allow EU-based iPhone users to uninstall its first-party Safari browser by the end of 2024 and is working on a more "user-friendly" way of transferring data "from an iPhone to a non-Apple phone" by fall 2025. From a report: That's according to a new compliance document published by t ... ⌘ Read more
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday approved a rule that will require some public companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks, after last-minute revisions that weakened the directive in the face of strong pushback from companies. From a report: The rule was one of the most an ... ⌘ Read more
EA CEO Andrew Wilson believes generative AI will "revolutionize" the gaming industry over the next five years. He predicts that the technology will allow for more efficient content creation, reducing development time from months to days. From a report: Greater efficiency coupled with "deeper, more immersive experiences" will lead to significant audience expansion ov ... ⌘ Read more
The 46-year-old probe, which flew by Jupiter and Saturn in its youth and inspired earthlings with images of the planet as a "Pale Blue Dot," hasn't sent usable data from interstellar space in months. From a report: When Voyager 1 launched in 1977, scientists hoped it could do what it was built to do and take up-close images of Jupiter and Saturn ... ⌘ Read more
The hype around AI language models has companies scrambling to hire prompt engineers to improve their AI queries and create new products. But new research hints that the AI may be better at prompt engineering than humans, indicating many of these jobs could be short-lived as the technology evolves and automates the role. IEEE Spectrum: Battle and Gollapudi decided to systematically test [PDF] how different ... ⌘ Read more
Nikon, in a press statement: Nikon hereby announces its entry into an agreement to acquire 100% of the outstanding membership interests of RED.com, LLC (RED) whereby RED will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nikon, pursuant to a Membership Interest Purchase Agreement with Mr. James Jannard, its founder, and Mr. Jarred Land, its current President, subject to the s ... ⌘ Read more
More than one-quarter of scholarly articles are not being properly archived and preserved, a study of more than seven million digital publications suggests. From a report: The findings, published in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication on 24 January, indicate that systems to preserve papers online have failed to k ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A group of US lawmakers has introduced a bill that would require Chinese tech giant ByteDance to sell off the popular video-sharing TikTok app within six months or face a ban. For years American officials have raised concerns that data from the app could fall into the hands of the Chinese government. A bipartisan set ... ⌘ Read more
Schools are widely adopting a new tool called Writable that uses ChatGPT to help grade student writing assignments. Axios reports: Writable, which is billed as a time-saving tool for teachers, was purchased last month by education giant Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, whose materials are used in 90% of K-12 schools. Teachers use it to run students' essays through ChatGPT, then evaluate ... ⌘ Read more
Nikon, in a press statement: Nikon hereby announces its entry into an agreement to acquire 100% of the outstanding membership interests of RED.com, LLC (RED) whereby RED will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nikon, pursuant to a Membership Interest Purchase Agreement with Mr. James Jannard, its founder, and Mr. Jarred Land, its current President, subject to the s ... ⌘ Read more
Clare Watson reports via ScienceAlert: By replacing the hazardous chemical electrolytes used in commercial batteries with water, scientists have developed a recyclable 'water battery' -- and solved key issues with the emerging technology, which could be a safer and greener alternative. 'Water batteries' are formally known as aqueous metal-ion batt ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: VMware is urging customers to patch critical vulnerabilities that make it possible for hackers to break out of sandbox and hypervisor protections in all versions, including out-of-support ones, of VMware ESXi, Workstation, Fusion, and Cloud Founda ... ⌘ Read more
Linwei Ding, a former Google software engineer, has been indicted for stealing trade secrets related to AI to benefit two Chinese companies. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each criminal count. Reuters reports: Ding's indictment was unveiled a little over a year after the Biden administratio ... ⌘ Read more
dcblogs writes: A recent study in the National Bureau of Economic Research has found that companies are quietly adapting to rising temperatures by shifting operations from hotter to cooler locations. The researchers analyzed data from 50,000 companies between 2009 and 2020. "To illustrate the economic impact, the researchers found th ... ⌘ Read more
Huawei is back from the dead after recording a sales jump of 64% in the first six weeks of 2024 compared to a year earlier. Meanwhile, Apple's iPhone sales in China fell by 24% during the same period. The BBC reports: Aside from a resurgence of Huawei sales at the more expensive end of the Chinese phone market, Apple was also "squeezed in the middle on aggressive pricing ... ⌘ Read more