An anonymous reader shares a report: Meta Platforms is exploring developing AI-powered earphones with cameras, which the company hopes could be used to identify objects and translate foreign languages, according to three current employees. Meta's work on a new AI device comes as several tech companies look to develop AI wearables, and after Meta added an AI assistant to its Ray ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Meta Platforms is exploring developing AI-powered earphones with cameras, which the company hopes could be used to identify objects and translate foreign languages, according to three current employees. Meta's work on a new AI device comes as several tech companies look to develop AI wearables, and after Meta added an AI assistant to its Ray ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: The default pasting behavior of Microsoft Word is a nightmare, and has been forever. If you want to add a text or image using the standard option, you can easily mess up the entire formatting in the text if a completely different font suddenly appears. After many years of complaints, Microsoft is finally ... ⌘ Read more
OpenAI unveiled its latest foundation model, GPT-4o, and a ChatGPT desktop app at its Spring Updates event on Monday. GPT-4o, which will be available to all free users, boasts the ability to reason across voice, text, and vision, according to OpenAI's chief technology officer Mira Murati. The model can respond in real-time, detect emotion, and adjust its voice accordingly. Developers will have access to ... ⌘ Read more
mspohr shares a report: The solar storm that brought the aurora borealis to large parts of the United States this weekend also broke critical GPS and precision farming functionality in tractors and agricultural equipment during a critical point of the planting season, 404 Media has learned. These outages caused many f ... ⌘ Read more
The United States is heading to Geneva this week to start a series of diplomatic talks with the Chinese government about artificial intelligence safety and risk standards. From a report: The U.S. and China are in tight competition to dominate the AI market, both in the private sector and within their own governments. However, the two world powers have yet to agree on what it means to safely use t ... ⌘ Read more
Google announced on Monday that it is preparing to bring its experimental Project Starline videoconferencing technology to the market. The company is collaborating with HP to integrate the system, which creates 3D projections of participants, into existing platforms like Google Meet and Zoom. The move aims to make the ... ⌘ Read more
The European Commission is set to issue new antitrust charges [non-paywalled link] against Microsoft over concerns that the tech giant is undermining competitors to its videoconferencing app Teams, according to FT. The move comes after Microsoft offered concessions last month, including a global plan to unbundle Teams from other software such as Offic ... ⌘ Read more
Squarespace said on Monday it has agreed to be taken private by private equity firm Permira in an all-cash deal valued at approximately $6.9 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Squarespace stockholders will receive $44.00 per share in cash, representing a premium of about 29% over the company's 90-day volume weighted average trading price.
Upon completion ... ⌘ Read more
The non-profit environmental site Grist reports on "an internal, employee-led effort to raise ethical concerns about Microsoft's work helping oil and gas producers boost their profits by providing them with cloud computing resources and AI software tools." There's been some disappointments — but also some successes, starting with ... ⌘ Read more
Squarespace said on Monday it has agreed to be taken private by private equity firm Permira in an all-cash deal valued at approximately $6.9 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Squarespace stockholders will receive $44.00 per share in cash, representing a premium of about 29% over the company's 90-day volume weighted average trading price.
Upon completion ... ⌘ Read more
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman gave an hour-long interview to the "All-In" podcast (hosted by Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks and David Friedberg).
And when asked about this summer's launch of the next version of ChatGPT, Altman said they hoped to "be thoughtful about how we do it, like we may releas ... ⌘ Read more
"Researchers are exploring ways to use features in modern cars, such as GPS, to make traffic safer and more efficient," reports the Associated Press.
"Eventually, the upgrades could do away entirely with the red, yellow and green lights of today, ceding control to driverless cars."
Among those reimagining traffic flows is a team at North Carolina State University led by Al ... ⌘ Read more
Slashdot reader sonlas shared this report from the BBC:
Australia has announced it will ramp up its extraction and use of gas until "2050 and beyond", despite global calls to phase out fossil fuels. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's government says the move is needed to shore up domestic energy supply while supporting a tran ... ⌘ Read more
"6.9 is now out," Linus Torvalds posted on the Linux kernel mailing list, "and last week has looked quite stable (and the whole release has felt pretty normal)."
Phoronix writes that Linux 6.9 "has a number of exciting features and improvements for those habitually updating to the newest version." And Slashdot reader prisoninmate shared this report from 9to5Linux:
Highlights of Linux kernel 6.9 incl ... ⌘ Read more
Reddit reported its first results since going public in late March. Yahoo Finance reports:
Daily active users increased 37% year over year to 82.7 million. Weekly active unique users rose 40% from the prior year. Total revenue improved 48% to $243 million, nearly doubling the growth rate from the prior quarter, due to strength in advertisin ... ⌘ Read more
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman gave an hour-long interview to the "All-In" podcast (hosted by Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks and David Friedberg). And speaking on technology's advance, Altman said "Phones are unbelievably good.... I personally think the iPhone is like the greatest piece of techn ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:
A thick atmosphere has been detected around a planet that's twice as big as Earth in a nearby solar system, researchers reported Wednesday.
The so-called super Earth — known as 55 Cancri e — is among the few rocky planets outside our solar system with a significant atmosphere ... ⌘ Read more
Researchers believe they've discovered a new material structure that can improve the energy storage of capacitors.
The structure allows for storage while improving the efficiency of ultrafast charging and discharging.
The new find needs optimization but has the potential to help power electric vehicles.
\\*
An anonymous ... ⌘ Read more*
An anonymous reader shared this report from PetaPixel:
A photographer and content creator has set the world record for the fastest drone flight after his custom-made aircraft achieved a staggering 298.47 miles per hour (480.2 kilometers per hour). Guinness confirmed the record noting that Luke Maximo Bell and his father Mike achieved the "fa ... ⌘ Read more
"One of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics today is that the forces in galaxies do not seem to add up," write two U.K. researchers in the Conversation:
Galaxies rotate much faster than predicted by applying Newton's law of gravity to their visible matter, despite those laws working well everywhere in the Solar System. To prevent galaxies from flying apart, some additional gravity is need ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Register:
The co-author of SQL, the standardized query language for relational databases, has come out in support of the NoSQL database movement that seeks to escape the tabular confines of the RDBMS. Speaking to The Register as SQL marks its 50th birthday, Donald Chamberlin, who first proposed the language with IBM colleague Raymond Boyce in a 1974 paper [PDF ... ⌘ [Read more](https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/05/12/035214/father-of-sql-says-yes-to-nosql?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed)
An anonymous reader shared this report from Phoronix:
For the past several months AMD Linux engineers have been working on AMD Core Performance Boost support for their P-State CPU frequency scaling driver. The ninth iteration of these patches were posted on Monday and besides the global enabling/disabling support for Core Performance Boost, i ... ⌘ Read more
The Royal Institution of Australia is a national non-profit hub for science communication, publishing the science magazine Cosmos four times a year.
This month they argued that small modular nuclear reactors "don't add up as a viable energy source."
Proponents assert that SMRs would cost less to build and thus be more affordable. However, when evaluated on th ... ⌘ Read more
Thursday the BBC reported:
Plane bodies made by Boeing's largest supplier regularly left the factory with serious defects, according to a former quality inspector at the firm. Santiago Paredes who worked for Spirit AeroSystems in Kansas, told the BBC he often found up to 200 defects on parts being ... ⌘ Read more
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 th ... ⌘ Read more
"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 w ... ⌘ Read more
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. CI ... ⌘ Read more
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 ... ⌘ Read more
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 disk ... ⌘ Read more
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 mil ... ⌘ Read more
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 ... ⌘ Read more
"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 t ... ⌘ Read more
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 ... ⌘ Read more
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 a ... ⌘ Read more
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 the ... ⌘ Read more
"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 ... ⌘ Read more
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 ... ⌘ Read more
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 medicat ... ⌘ Read more
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 su ... ⌘ Read more
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 c ... ⌘ Read more
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 mult ... ⌘ Read more
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, ... ⌘ Read more
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 artific ... ⌘ Read more
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 sy ... ⌘ Read more
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 Chine ... ⌘ Read more
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 th ... ⌘ Read more
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 ... ⌘ Read more
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 - ... ⌘ Read more
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 ... ⌘ Read more
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 ... ⌘ Read more
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 ... ⌘ Read more
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 ... ⌘ Read more
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 ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Japan's Ministry of Finance spent nearly $50 billion on April 29 and May 1 trying to prop up the value of the currency by selling US dollars and buying yen. Who was on the other side of this trade? Data from Deutsche Bank's foreign exchange trading platform suggests: literally everyone. "Nearl ... ⌘ Read more
The U.K. economy has emerged from recession as gross domestic product rose 0.6% in the first quarter, official figures showed Friday, beating expectations. From a report: Economists polled by Reuters had forecast growth of 0.4% on the previous three months of the year. The U.K. entered a shallow recession in the second half of 2023, as persistent inflation continued to hurt the economy.
Although there is n ... ⌘ Read more
The U.S. FBI is working towards charging hackers from the aggressive Scattered Spider criminal gang who are largely based in the U.S. and western countries and have breached dozens of American organisations, a senior official said. From a report: The young hackers grabbed headlines last year when they broke into the systems of casino-operators ... ⌘ Read more
Economist: What is the ideal job to outsource to AI? Today's AIs, in particular the Chatgpt-like generative sort, have a leaky memory, cannot handle physical objects and are worse than humans at interacting with humans. Where they excel is in manipulating numbers and symbols, especially within well-defined tasks such as writing bits of computer code. This happens to be the forte of giant existing ou ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Disney Plus, Hulu, and Max are teaming up for a new bundle this summer, Netflix is focused on the WWE and celebrity boxing, Disney Plus is getting ESPN, and Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Max could get a price hike. A familiar refrain emerged around all this news: streaming is becoming cable TV all over again and getting crummier in the process.
And it's true! When stream ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: Imagine exploring the intricate world within a single cubic millimeter of human brain tissue. It might seem insignificant, but within that tiny space lies a universe of complexity -- 57,000 individual cells, 230 millimeters of blood vessels, and a staggering 150 million synapses, the junction ... ⌘ Read more
Last week, NASA announced it is working with a technology development company on a new propulsion system that could transport humans to Mars in only two months -- down from the current nine month journey required to reach the Red Planet. Gizmodo reports: NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program recently selected six promising projects for ... ⌘ Read more
Apple has apologized for its tone-deaf "Crush!" ad that sparked a furious backlash with artists, musicians and other creators. AdAge reports that Apple said the video "missed the mark" and has scrapped plans to run the cutesy-turned-cringey commercial on TV. From a report: It's clear that Apple intended for the ad t ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Tens of millions of Americans each day breathe in carcinogenic chemicals that are woven into the interiors of their cars, a new study has found. While opening a window can help reduce the risk, only reforms can keep people safe, researchers wrote in a study in Environmental Sc ... ⌘ Read more
During a Bloomberg event today, Xbox president Sarah Bond said the company plans to launch a mobile gaming store to rival Apple and Google. "According to Bond, the as-yet-unnamed store will launch in July on web browsers, rather than a designated app, with Microsoft's recently-acquired Candy Crush Saga serving as a day-one tentpole franchise," reports GeekWire. From the report: Microsoft' ... ⌘ Read more
Ancient Slashdot reader jd shares a report from The Guardian: Neuralink's first attempt at implanting its chip in a human being's skull hit an unexpected setback after the device began to detach from the patient's brain, the company revealed on Wednesday. The patient, Noland Arbaugh, underwent surgery in February to attach a Neuralink chip to his br ... ⌘ Read more
Jess Weatherbed reports via The Verge: At least 224 people with diabetes have reported injuries linked to a defective iOS app that caused their insulin pumps to shut down prematurely, according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). On Wednesday, the agency announced that California-based medical device manufacturer Tandem Diabetes ... ⌘ Read more
T-Mobile and Verizon are in talks to buy parts of U.S. Ceullar in separate transactions, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Reuters reports: T-Mobile is closing in on a deal to buy a chunk of U.S. Cellular for more than $2 billion, taking over some operations and wireless spectrum licenses, the report said citing people familiar with the matter. Verizon' ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: In 2022, at the height of the "great resignation," a record 4.5 million workers each month -- about 3% of the U.S. workforce -- were quitting their jobs. While some economists have said this pandemic-era trend is over, new research from Microsoft and LinkedIn forecasts that even more people plan to leave the ... ⌘ Read more
ArchieBunker quotes a report from Bloomberg: Texas electricity prices soared almost 100-fold as a high number of power-plant outages raised concerns of a potential evening shortfall. Spot prices at the North Hub, which includes Dallas, jumped to more than $3,000 a megawatt-hour just before 7 p.m. local time, versus about $32 at the same time Tuesday, ... ⌘ Read more
Citing a memo distributed to Apple Store employees, 9to5Mac reports that the new iPad Pro and iPad Air lineups will not include Apple stickers in the box -- "a key piece of memorabilia" that dates back as far as 1977's Apple II, notes Ars Technica. While the company says that this is part of its environmental goals to completely remove plastic from its packaging, ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Maryland legislature passed two bills over the weekend limiting tech platforms' ability to collect and use consumers' data. Maryland Governor Wes Moore is expected to sign one of those bills, the Maryland Kids Code, on Thursday, MoCo360 reports. If signed into law, the other ... ⌘ Read more
Apple will deliver some of its upcoming AI features this year via data centers equipped with its own in-house processors, part of a sweeping effort to infuse its devices with AI capabilities. From a report: The company is placing high-end chips -- similar to ones it designed for the Mac -- in cloud-computing servers designed to process the most advanced ... ⌘ Read more
The world is on the verge of a climate abyss, the UN has warned, in response to a Guardian survey that found that hundreds of the world's foremost climate experts expect global heating to soar past the international target of 1.5C. From a report: A series of leading climate figures have reacted to the findings, saying the deep despair voiced by the scientists must be a renewed wake-up cal ... ⌘ Read more
The largest ever recorded leap in the amount of carbon dioxide laden in the world's atmosphere has just occurred, according to researchers who monitor the relentless accumulation of the primary gas that is heating the planet. From a report: The global average concentration of carbon dioxide in March this year was 4.7 parts per million (or ppm) higher than ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Sonos has responded to the avalanche of feedback -- some good, plenty bad -- about the company's redesigned mobile app that was released on May 7th. In the days since, customers have complained about missing features like sleep timers, broken local music library management, and no longer having the ability to edit playlists or th ... ⌘ Read more
Technology giant Dell notified customers on Thursday that it experienced a data breach involving customers' names and physical addresses. TechCrunch: In an email seen by TechCrunch and shared by several people on social media, the computer maker wrote that it was investigating "an incident involving a Dell portal, which contains a database with limited typ ... ⌘ Read more
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is exploring whether users should be allowed to create AI-generated pornography and other explicit content with its products. From a report:While the company stressed that its ban on deepfakes would continue to apply to adult material, campaigners suggested the proposal undermined its mission statement to p ... ⌘ Read more
The sudden closure of several video-game studios at Microsoft's Xbox division was the result of a widespread cost-cutting initiative that still isn't finished. From a report: This week, Xbox began offering voluntary severance agreements to producers, quality assurance testers and other staff at ZeniMax, which it purchased in 2020 for $7.5 billion, accord ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The federal government agency responsible for granting patents and trademarks is alerting thousands of filers whose private addresses were exposed following a second data spill in as many years. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) said in an email to affected trad ... ⌘ Read more
The North Yorkshire Council in England announced it will ban apostrophes on street signs as it can affect geographical databases. Resident Anne Keywood told the BBC that she urged the authority to retain apostrophes, saying: "If you start losing things like that then everything goes downhill doesn't it?" ... ⌘ Read more
Carl Zimmer reports via the New York Times: Ever since the discovery of whale songs almost 60 years ago, scientists have been trying to decipher their lyrics. Are the animals producing complex messages akin to human language? Or sharing simpler pieces of information, like dancing bees do? Or are they communicating something else we don't yet understand? In 2020, a team of marine biolo ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Once a week, Sun Kai has a video call with his mother. He opens up about work, the pressures he faces as a middle-aged man, and thoughts that he doesn't even discuss with his wife. His mother will occasionally make a comment, like telling him to take care of himself -- he's her only ... ⌘ Read more
Dell is making sure its employees follow the company's updated return-to-office policy through a series of new tracking techniques. According to The Register, Dell will track employees' badge swipes and VPN connections and include a color-coded attendance grading system that summarizes employee presence.
"In the latest Jeff Clarke return-to-grade-school initiative, ... ⌘ Read more
Google announced on Tuesday that it will be exiting One Market Plaza, a prominent office complex in San Francisco that it had been occupying since 2018. The company's lease for the 300,000-square-foot-office will expire next April. The San Francisco Chronicle reports: Many of Google's employees are already working outside of the giant waterfront ... ⌘ Read more
A new national survey (PDF) from CNBC/Generation Lab of 1,033 people aged 18 to 34 found that an overwhelming 81% of respondents believe a four-day workweek would boost their company's productivity, while 19% said productivity would decline. CNBC reports: Those results from the "Youth & Money in the USA" survey come ami ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Ransomware infections have morphed into "a psychological attack against the victim organization," as criminals use increasingly personal and aggressive tactics to force victims to pay up, according to Google-owned Mandiant. "We saw situations where threat actors essentially SIM ... ⌘ Read more
Librarians are fighting a nationwide battle against high e-book prices, which so far has yielded minimal results. Despite efforts and temporary legislative victories, strict renewal and loan policies imposed by publishers keep e-book costs high, limiting the number of popular titles libraries can offer and leading to frustration among patrons. Axios ... ⌘ Read more
Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: Building off the recent release of Fedora 40, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 is now available for this downstream of Fedora Linux that's optimized to run on Apple Silicon ARM systems. Fedora Asahi Remix continues to be one of the best ways of enjoying a Linux experience atop recent Apple Macs making use of their in-house M ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission clarified its net neutrality rules to prohibit more kinds of fast lanes. While the FCC voted to restore net neutrality rules on April 25, it didn't release the final text of the order until yesterday. The final text (PDF) has some ... ⌘ Read more
Smart home device maker Brilliant has laid off most of its staff and is seeking a buyer after failing to secure funding, CEO Aaron Emigh told The Verge. The company has shut down its support center and halted sales of its smart light switches and controllers, which integrate with va ... ⌘ Read more
Amazon Prime Video subscribers will see new types of advertisements this broadcast year. Amazon announced today that it's adding new ad formats to its video streaming service, hoping to encourage people to interact with the ads and shop on Amazon. From a report: In January, Prime Video streams included commercials unle ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: One Raspberry Pi often leads to another. Soon enough, you're running out of spots in your free RealVNC account for your tiny boards and "real" computers. Even if you go the hardened route of SSH or an X connection, you have to keep track of where they all are. All of this is not the easiest thing to tac ... ⌘ Read more
Several large-scale, human-driven changes to the planet -- including climate change, the loss of biodiversity and the spread of invasive species -- are making infectious diseases more dangerous to people, animals and plants, according to a new study. From a report: Scientists have documented these effects before in ... ⌘ Read more
Researchers should not be using tools like ChatGPT to automatically peer review papers, warned organizers of top AI conferences and academic publishers worried about maintaining intellectual integrity. From a report: With recent advances in large language models, researchers have been increasingly using them to write peer reviews -- a time-ho ... ⌘ Read more
Stack Overflow's new deal giving OpenAI access to its API as a source of data has users who've posted their questions and answers about coding problems in conversations with other humans rankled. From a report: Users say that when they attempt to alter their posts in protest, the site is retaliating by revers ... ⌘ Read more
Researchers have hailed another "leap forward" for AI after Google DeepMind unveiled the latest version of its AlphaFold program, which can predict how proteins behave in the complex symphony of life. From a report: The breakthrough promises to shed fresh light on the biological machinery that underpins living organisms and drive breakth ... ⌘ Read more
Full repairs to three submarine internet cables damaged in the Red Sea in February are being held up by disputes over who controls access to infrastructure in Yemeni waters. From a report: The Yemeni government has granted permits for the repair of two out of three cables, but refused the third because of a dispu ... ⌘ Read more
Less than 24 hours after Apple held a special event to unveil the new, record-thin (0.20 inch, the thinnest Apple device yet) iPad Pro with M4 chip inside, which the company says is optimized for AI, it is facing a loud and fast-spreading public backlash to one of its new marquee video advertisements promoting the device -- a spot called "Crush." VentureBeat: The video features a ... ⌘ Read more
AstraZeneca said on Tuesday it had initiated the worldwide withdrawal of its COVID-19 vaccine due to a "surplus of available updated vaccines" since the pandemic. From a report: The company also said it would proceed to withdraw the vaccine Vaxzevria's marketing authorizations within Europe. "As multiple, variant COVID-19 vaccines have since been de ... ⌘ Read more
The Biden administration is poised to open up a new front in its effort to safeguard U.S. AI from China with preliminary plans to place guardrails around the most advanced AI models, the core software of artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT, Reuters reported Wednesday. From the report: The Commerce Department is considering a ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MSN: The US has revoked licenses allowing Huawei to buy semiconductors from Qualcomm and Intel, according to people familiar with the matter, further tightening export restrictions against the Chinese telecom equipment maker. Withdrawal of the licenses affects US sales of chips for use in Huawei phones and laptops, ac ... ⌘ Read more