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Microsoft Attempts To Close Local Account Windows 11 Setup Loophole
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-31 01:22:01


Slashdot reader jrnvk writes: The Verge is reporting that Microsoft will soon make it harder to run the well-publicized bypassnro command in Windows 11 setup. This command allows skipping the Microsoft account and online connection requirements on install. While the command will be removed, it can still be enabled by a regedit change — for now. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Bloomberg's AI-Generated News Summaries Had At Least 36 Errors Since January
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-31 00:22:01


The giant financial news site Bloomberg "has been experimenting with using AI to help produce its journalism," reports the New York Times. But "It hasn't always gone smoothly."

While Bloomberg announced on January 15 that it would add three AI-generated bullet points at the top of articles as a summary, "The news outlet has had to correct at least three dozen A.I.-generated summaries of articles published this year." (This Wednesday they published a "hallucinated" date for the start of U.S. auto tariffs, and earlier in March claimed president Trump had imposed tariffs on Canada in 2024, while other errors have included incorrect figures and incorrect attribution.)... [ Read it >> ]

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How Rust Finally Got a Specification - Thanks to a Consultancy's Open-Source Donation
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-30 23:22:01


As Rust approaches its 10th anniversary, "there is an important piece of documentation missing that many other languages provide," notes the Rust Foundation.
While there's documentation and tutorials — there's no official language specification:

In December 2022, an RFC was submitted to encourage the Rust Project to begin working on a specification. After much discussion, the RFC was approved in July 2023, and work began. ... [ Read it >> ]

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What that Facebook Whistleblower's Memoir Left Out
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-30 23:22:01


A former Facebook director of global policy recently published "the book Meta doesn't want you to read," a scathing takedown of top Meta executives titled Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.

But Wednesday RestofWorld.org published additional thoughts from Meta's former head of public policy for Bangladesh (who is now an executive director at the nonprofit policy lab Tech Global Institute). Though their time at Facebook didn't overlap, they first applaud how the book "puts a face to the horrific events and dangerous decisions." ... [ Read it >> ]

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Has the Decline of Knowledge Worker Jobs Begun?
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-30 23:22:01


The New York Times notes that white-collar workers
have faced higher unemployment than other groups in the U.S. over the past few years — along with slower wager growth.

Some economists wonder if this trend might be irreversible... and partly attributable to AI:
... [ Read it >> ]

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Google Sunsets Two Devices From Its Nest Smart Home Product Line
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-30 23:22:01


"After a long run, Google is sunsetting two of its signature Nest products," reports PC World:

Google has just announced that it's discontinuing the 10-year-old Nest Protect and the 7-year-old Nest x Yale lock. Both of those products will continue to work, and — for now — they remain on sale at the Google Store, complete with discounts until supplies run out. But while Google itself is exiting the smoke alarm and smart lock business, it isn't leaving Google Home users in the lurch. Instead, it's teeing up third-party replacements for the Nest Protect and Nest X Yale lock, with both new products coming from familiar brands... Capable of being unlocked via app, entry code, or a traditional key, the Yale Smart Lock with Matter is set to arrive this summer, according to Yale. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft Announces 'Hyperlight Wasm': Speedy VM-Based Security at Scale with a WebAssembly Runtime
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-30 23:22:01


Cloud providers like the security of running things in virtual machines "at scale" — even though VMs "are not known for having fast cold starts or a small footprint..." noted Microsoft's Open Source blog last November. So Microsoft's Azure Core Upstream team built an open source Rust library called Hyperlight "to execute functions as fast as possible while isolating those functions within a VM." ... [ Read it >> ]

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Nearly 1.5 Million Private Photos from Five Dating Apps Were Exposed Online
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-30 16:22:01


"Researchers have discovered nearly 1.5 million pictures from specialist dating apps — many of which are explicit — being stored online without password protection," reports the BBC, "leaving them vulnerable to hackers and extortionists."

And the images weren't limited to those from profiles, the BBC learned from the ethical hacker who discovered the issue. "They included pictures which had been sent privately in messages, and even some which had been removed by moderators..."... [ Read it >> ]

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Samsung Unveils AI-Powered, Screen-Enabled Home Appliances
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-30 12:22:01


Samsung teased its "AI Vision Inside" refrigerators at January's CES tradeshow. (Its internal sensors can now detect 37 different fresh ingredients and 50 processed foods, generating lists for your cellphone or a screen on your refrigerator's door.)

But the refrigerators are part of a larger "AI Home" lineup of screen-enabled appliances with advanced AI features, and Engadget got to see them all together this weekend at Samsung's Bespoke AI conference in Seoul, Korea:... [ Read it >> ]

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Aptera Takes First 300-Mile Highway Trip in Solar-Powered EV
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-30 08:22:01


"I've been dreaming of this moment for 20 years," says Aptera co-CEO Steve Fambro. Aptera's solar-powered electric car just drove 300 miles on a single charge.

"We're one step closer to a future where every journey is powered by the sun," Aptera says in their announcement. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Did Life on Earth Come from 'Microlightning' Between Charged Water Droplets?
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-30 06:22:02


Some scientists believe life on earth originated in organic matter in earth's bodies of water more than 3.5 billion years ago," reports CNN. "But where did that organic material come from...?"

Maybe electrical energy sparked the beginnings of life on earth — just like in Frankenstein:... [ Read it >> ]

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Reddit's 50% Stock-Price Plunge Fails to Entice Buyers as Growth Slows
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-30 05:22:01


Though it's stock price is still up 200% from its IPO in March of 2024
— last week Reddit's stock had dropped nearly 50% since February 7th.

And then this week, it dropped another 10%, reports Bloomberg, citing both the phenomenon of "volatile technology stocks under pressure" — but also specifically "the gloomy sentiment around Reddit..."... [ Read it >> ]

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'Why Did the Government Declare War on My Adorable Tiny Truck?'
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-30 03:22:01


Automotive historian Dan Albert loves the "adorable tiny truck" he's driving. It's one of the small Japan-made "kei" pickups and minivans that "make up about a third of car sales in Japan." Americans can legally import older models for less than $10,000, and getting 40 miles per gallon they're "Cheap to buy and run... rugged, practical, no-frills machines — exactly what the American-built pickup truck used to be." ... [ Read it >> ]

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Are Tech-Driven 'Career Meltdowns' Hitting Generation X?
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-30 01:22:02


"I am having conversations every day with people whose careers are sort of over," a 53-year-old film and TV director told the New York Times:

If you entered media or image-making in the '90s — magazine publishing, newspaper journalism, photography, graphic design, advertising, music, film, TV — there's a good chance that you are now doing something else for work. That's because those industries have shrunk or transformed themselves radically, shutting out those whose skills were once in high demand... When digital technology began seeping into their lives, with its AOL email accounts, Myspace pages and Napster downloads, it didn't seem like a threat. But by the time they entered the primes of their careers, much of their expertise had become all but obsolete. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Why a Lost Cellphone Forced an Airplane to Turn Around in Mid-Flight
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-30 00:22:01


Last week an Air France flight to the Caribbean had to turn around and return to Paris, reports the Washington Post, "after a passenger could not locate their cellphone."

Because of fears that an unattended cellphone could overheat — and because the passenger and crew couldn't find the phone — the Boeing 777 turned around off the coast of France "and returned to the airport, according to the flight-tracking service FlightAware. It landed back where it started a little more than two hours after taking off, with 375 passengers, 12 cabin crew and two pilots on board..."... [ Read it >> ]

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'An Open Letter To Meta: Support True Messaging Interoperability With XMPP'
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 23:22:01


In 1999 Slashdot reader Jeremie announced "a new project I recently started to create a complete open-source platform for Instant Messaging with transparent communication to other IM systems (ICQ, AIM, etc)." It was the first release of the eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, and by 2008 Slashdot was asking if XMPP was "the next big thing." Facebook even supported it for third-party chat clients until 2015. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Scientists May Have Discovered How To Extract Power From the Earth's Rotation
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 22:22:02


Long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam writes:

No more burning fossil fuels, playing with fissile material, damming rivers, erecting wind mills, or making solar panels. All of our energy needs could potentially be supplied by the angular kinetic energy of the Earth — and because of the mass of the planet, doing so would slow its rotation down by a mere 7ms per century. [Which is similar to speed changes caused by natural phenomena such as the Moon's pull and changing dynamics inside the planet's core."]... [ Read it >> ]

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Scientists Create New Heavy-Metal Molecule: 'Berkelocene'
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 21:22:01


An anonymous reader shared this report from the Mercury News:

After a year of fastidious planning, a microscopic sample of the ultra-rare radioactive element berkelium arrived at a Berkeley Lab. With just 48 hours to experiment before it would become unusable, a group of nearly 20 researchers focused intently on creating a brand-new molecule. Using a chemical glove box, a polycarbonate glass box with protruding gloves that shields substances from oxygen and moisture, scientists combined the berkelium metal with an organic molecule containing only carbon and hydrogen to create a chemical reaction... [Post-doc researcher Dominic] Russo, researcher Stefan Minasian, and 17 other scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory had created berkelocene, a new molecule that usurps theorists' expectations about how carbon bonds with heavy-metal elements. ... [ Read it >> ]

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As the Arctic's Winter Sea Ice Hits a New Record Low - What Happens Next?
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 20:22:01


The Washington Post reports that after months of polar darkness, the extent of sea ice blanketing the Arctic this winter "fell to the lowest level on record, researchers announced this week... the smallest maximum extent in the 47-year satellite record, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. ... [ Read it >> ]

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New Ubuntu Linux Security Bypasses Require Manual Mitigations
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 20:22:01


An anonymous reader shared this report from BleepingComputer:

Three security bypasses have been discovered in Ubuntu Linux's unprivileged user namespace restrictions, which could be enable a local attacker to exploit vulnerabilities in kernel components. The issues allow local unprivileged users to create user namespaces with full administrative capabilities and impact Ubuntu versions 23.10, where unprivileged user namespaces restrictions are enabled, and 24.04 which has them active by default... ... [ Read it >> ]

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First Trial of Generative AI Therapy Shows It Might Help With Depression
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 17:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: The first clinical trial of a therapy bot that uses generative AI suggests it was as effective as human therapy for participants with depression, anxiety, or risk for developing eating disorders. Even so, it doesn't give a go-ahead to the dozens of companies hyping such technologies while operating in a regulatory gray area. A team led by psychiatric researchers and psychologists at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College built the tool, called Therabot, and the results were published on March 27 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Many tech companies are building AI therapy bots to address the mental health care gap, offering more frequent and affordable access than traditional therapy. However, challenges persist: poorly worded bot responses can cause harm, and forming meaningful therapeutic relationships is hard to replicate in software. While many bots rely on general internet data, researchers at Dartmouth developed "Therabot" using custom, evidence-based datasets. Here's what they found: To test the bot, the researchers ran an eight-week clinical trial with 210 participants who had symptoms of depression or generalized anxiety disorder or were at high risk for eating disorders. About half had access to Therabot, and a control group did not. Participants responded to prompts from the AI and initiated conversations, averaging about 10 messages per day. Participants with depression experienced a 51% reduction in symptoms, the best result in the study. Those with anxiety experienced a 31% reduction, and those at risk for eating disorders saw a 19% reduction in concerns about body image and weight. These measurements are based on self-reporting through surveys, a method that's not perfect but remains one of the best tools researchers have.... [ Read it >> ]

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NASA Adds SpaceX's Starship To Launch Services Program Fleet
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 14:22:01


Despite recent test failures, NASA has added SpaceX's Starship to its Launch Services Program contract, allowing it to compete for future science missions once it achieves a successful orbital flight. Florida Today reports: NASA announced the addition Friday to its current launch provider contract with SpaceX, which covers the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. This opens the possibility of Starship flying future NASA science missions -- that is once Starship reaches a successful orbital flight.... [ Read it >> ]

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Martian Dust May Pose Health Risk To Humans Exploring Red Planet, Study Finds
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 11:22:01


A new study warns that toxic Martian dust contains fine particles and harmful substances like silica and metals that pose serious health risks to astronauts, making missions to Mars more dangerous than previously thought. The Guardian reports: During Apollo missions to the moon, astronauts suffered from exposure to lunar dust. It clung to spacesuits and seeped into the lunar landers, causing coughing, runny eyes and irritated throats. Studies showed that chronic health effects would result from prolonged exposure. Martian dust isn't as sharp and abrasive as lunar dust, but it does have the same tendency to stick to everything, and the fine particles (about 4% the width of a human hair) can penetrate deep into lungs and enter the bloodstream. Toxic substances in the dust include silica, gypsum and various metals.... [ Read it >> ]

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Madison Square Garden Bans Fan After Surveillance System IDs Him as Critic of Its CEO
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 08:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A concert on Monday night at New York's Radio City Music Hall was a special occasion for Frank Miller: his parents' wedding anniversary. He didn't end up seeing the show -- and before he could even get past security, he was informed that he was in fact banned for life from the venue and all other properties owned by Madison Square Garden (MSG). After scanning his ticket and promptly being pulled aside by security, Miller was told by staff that he was barred from the MSG properties for an incident at the Garden in 2021. But Miller says he hasn't been to the venue in nearly two decades.... [ Read it >> ]

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Giant, Fungus-Like Organism May Be Completely Unknown Branch of Life
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 05:22:01


New research suggests that Prototaxites, once believed to be a giant fungus, may actually represent an entirely extinct and previously unknown branch of complex life, distinct from fungi, plants, animals, and protists. Live Science reports: The researchers studied the fossilized remains of one Prototaxites species named Prototaxites taiti, found preserved in the Rhynie chert, a sedimentary deposit of exceptionally well-preserved fossils of early land plants and animals in Scotland. This species was much smaller than many other species of Prototaxites, only growing up to a few inches tall, but it is still the largest Prototaxites specimen found in this region. Upon examining the internal structure of the fossilized Prototaxites, the researchers found that its interior was made up of a series of tubes, similar to those within a fungus. But these tubes branched off and reconnected in ways very unlike those seen in modern fungi. "We report that Prototaxites taiti was the largest organism in the Rhynie ecosystem and its anatomy was fundamentally distinct from all known extant or extinct fungi," the researchers wrote in the paper. "We therefore conclude that Prototaxites was not a fungus, and instead propose it is best assigned to a now entirely extinct terrestrial lineage."... [ Read it >> ]

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FDIC Rescinds Guidance Around Banks and Crypto
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 05:22:01


The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) says banks no longer need prior approval before engaging in crypto-related activities, such as holding digital currency assets or partnering with companies in the industry. Axios reports: After publishing a general caution against banks participating in the industry just two years ago, the FDIC is the latest Trump administration regulator to change its tune entirely amid the president's warm embrace of crypto. "With today's action, the FDIC is turning the page on the flawed approach of the past three years," FDIC acting chairman Travis Hill said in a statement.... [ Read it >> ]

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A New Image File Format Efficiently Stores Invisible Light Data
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 04:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Imagine working with special cameras that capture light your eyes can't even see -- ultraviolet rays that cause sunburn, infrared heat signatures that reveal hidden writing, or specific wavelengths that plants use for photosynthesis. Or perhaps using a special camera designed to distinguish the subtle visible differences that make paint colors appear just right under specific lighting. Scientists and engineers do this every day, and they're drowning in the resulting data. A new compression format called Spectral JPEG XL might finally solve this growing problem in scientific visualization and computer graphics. Researchers Alban Fichet and Christoph Peters of Intel Corporation detailed the format in a recent paper published in the Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques (JCGT). It tackles a serious bottleneck for industries working with these specialized images. These spectral files can contain 30, 100, or more data points per pixel, causing file sizes to balloon into multi-gigabyte territory -- making them unwieldy to store and analyze.... [ Read it >> ]

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DOGE To Rewrite SSA Codebase In 'Months'
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 03:22:01


Longtime Slashdot reader frank_adrian314159 writes: According to an article in Wired, Elon Musk has appointed a team of technologists from DOGE to "rewrite the code that runs the SSA in months." This codebase has over 60 million lines of COBOL and handles record keeping for all American workers and payments for all Social Security recipients. Given that the code has to track the byzantine regulations dealing with Social Security, it's no wonder that the codebase is this large. What is in question though is whether a small team can rewrite this code "in months." After all, what could possibly go wrong? "The project is being organized by Elon Musk lieutenant Steve Davis ... and aims to migrate all SSA systems off COBOL ... and onto a more modern replacement like Java within a scheduled tight timeframe of a few months," notes Wired.... [ Read it >> ]

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Oracle Health Breach Compromises Patient Data At US Hospitals
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 03:22:01


A breach of legacy Cerner servers at Oracle Health exposed patient data from multiple U.S. hospitals and healthcare organizations, with threat actors using compromised customer credentials to steal the data before it had been migrated to Oracle Cloud. Despite confirming the breach privately, Oracle Health has yet to publicly acknowledge the incident. BleepingComputer reports: Oracle Health, formerly known as Cerner, is a healthcare software-as-a-service (SaaS) company offering Electronic Health Records (EHR) and business operations systems to hospitals and healthcare organizations. After being acquired by Oracle in 2022, Cerner was merged into Oracle Health, with its systems migrated to Oracle Cloud. In a notice sent to impacted customers and seen by BleepingComputer, Oracle Health said it became aware of a breach of legacy Cerner data migration servers on February 20, 2025.... [ Read it >> ]

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xAI Acquires X
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 02:22:01


Elon Musk says its xAI company has acquired the social media platform X in an all-stock transaction. "The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45 billion less $12 billion debt)," said Musk. He writes on X: Since its founding two years ago, xAI has rapidly become one of the leading AI labs in the world, building models and data centers at unprecedented speed and scale. X is the digital town square where more than 600M active users go to find the real-time source of ground truth and, in the last two years, has been transformed into one of the most efficient companies in the world, positioning it to deliver scalable future growth.... [ Read it >> ]

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Trump Pardons Founder of Electric Vehicle Start-Up Nikola, Trevor Milton
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 02:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Trevor Milton, the founder of electric vehicle start-up Nikola who was sentenced to prison last year, was pardoned by Donald Trump late on Thursday, the White House confirmed on Friday. The pardon of Milton, who was sentenced to four years in prison for exaggerating the potential of his technology, could wipe out hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution that prosecutors were seeking for defrauded investors. Milton and his wife donated more than $1.8 million to a Trump re-election campaign fund less than a month before the November election, according to the Federal Election Commission.... [ Read it >> ]

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Nearly Half of People in the US Have Toxic PFAS in Their Drinking Water
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 01:22:01


An anonymous reader shares a report: New data recently released by the Environmental Protection Agency indicate that more than 158 million people across the U.S. have drinking water contaminated by toxic "forever chemicals," scientifically known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). ... [ Read it >> ]

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Smart TVs Are Employing Screen Monitoring Tech To Harvest User Data
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 01:22:01


Smart TV platforms are increasingly monitoring what appears on users' screens through Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology, building detailed viewer profiles for targeted advertising.

Roku, which transitioned from a hardware company to an advertising powerhouse, reported $3.5 billion in annual ad revenue for 2024 -- representing 85% of its total income. The company has aggressively acquired ACR-related firms, with Roku-owned technology winning an Emmy in 2023 for advancements in the field. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Scientists Propose 'Bodyoids' To Address Medical Research and Organ Shortage Challenges
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-29 01:22:01


Stanford University researchers have proposed creating "bodyoids" -- ethically sourced human bodies grown from stem cells without neural components for consciousness or pain sensation -- to revolutionize medical research and address organ shortages. In a new opinion piece published in MIT Technology Review, scientists Carsten T. Charlesworth, Henry T. Greely, and Hiromitsu Nakauchi argue that recent advances in biotechnology make this concept increasingly plausible. The approach would combine pluripotent stem cells, artificial uterus technology, and genetic techniques to inhibit brain development. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Again and Again, NSO Group's Customers Keep Getting Their Spyware Operations Caught
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-28 23:22:01


An anonymous reader shares a report: Amnesty International published a new report this week detailing attempted hacks against two Serbian journalists, allegedly carried out with NSO Group's spyware Pegasus. The two journalists, who work for the Serbia-based Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), received suspicious text messages including a link -- basically a phishing attack, according to the nonprofit. In one case, Amnesty said its researchers were able to click on the link in a safe environment and see that it led to a domain that they had previously identified as belonging to NSO Group's infrastructure. ... [ Read it >> ]

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UK Govt Data People Not Technical, Says Ex-Downing St Data Science Head
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-28 23:22:01


An anonymous reader shares a report: A former director of data science at the UK prime minister's office has told MPs that people working with data in government are not typically technical and would be unlikely to get a similar job in the private sector.

In a hearing designed to illuminate the challenges facing the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) as it strives to become the digital centre for government, MPs quizzed Laura Gilbert, head of AI for Government, at the Ellison Institute and former director of data science at 10 Downing Street, the prime ministers' office. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Inside YouTube's Weird World Of Fake Movie Trailers
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-28 22:22:01


Fake movie trailers created with AI are proliferating across YouTube, with some garnering more views than official studio releases -- and Hollywood studios are quietly profiting from the phenomenon rather than shutting it down. Instead of enforcing copyright on these unauthorized videos, Warner Bros. Discovery, Sony Pictures, and Paramount are claiming monetization rights, directing ad revenue from fake trailers for films like "Superman" and "Gladiator II" into studio coffers, according to a Deadline investigation published Friday. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Want To Go To College? Pay the College Board
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-28 21:22:01


The College Board, described as a $2 billion nonprofit, functions as the primary gatekeeper for academic success within American higher education, according to an analysis by Bloomberg. The organization significantly shapes university admissions by controlling not only who gains entry to college but also influencing what students know upon arrival. ... [ Read it >> ]

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FTC Tells Staff To Stop Calling the Agency 'Independent' in Complaints
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-28 20:22:01


An anonymous reader shares a report: Staff at the Federal Trade Commission have been instructed to no longer refer to the agency as "independent" in complaints, according to an email obtained by The Verge.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/28/1557221/ftc-tells-staff-to-stop-calling-the-agency-independent-in-complaints?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.... [ Read it >> ]

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75% of Scientists in Nature Poll Weigh Leaving US
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-28 20:22:01


A Nature survey has found that three-quarters of responding U.S. scientists are considering leaving the nation following disruptions to science under the Trump administration.

Out of 1,608 respondents, 75.3% said they were contemplating leaving the country. Scientists cited concerns over research funding and the general treatment of science as contributing factors for their reasoning. Europe and Canada were mentioned as potential destinations for those looking for opportunities abroad.... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft President Calls For a National Talent Strategy For Electricians
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-28 20:22:01


theodp writes: "As I prepared for a White House meeting last fall on the nation's electricity needs," begins Microsoft President Brad Smith in The Country Needs More Electricity --And More Electricians, a Fox Business op-ed. "I met with the leaders at Microsoft who are building our AI infrastructure across the country. During our discussion, I asked them to identify the single biggest challenge for data center expansion in the U.S. I expected they would mention slow permitting, delays in bringing more power online or supply chain constraints -- all significant challenges. But instead, they highlighted a national shortage of people. Electricians, to be precise." ... [ Read it >> ]

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SoftBank May Pledge More Than $1 Trillion for AI Effort in US, Nikkei Says
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-28 18:22:01


SoftBank Group plans to create industrial parks for AI across the US and is considering an investment of more than $1 trillion, Nikkei reported. From a report: Founder and Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son is expected to visit the US to discuss his ideas for such industrial parks, the newspaper said. The factories would likely use AI-equipped robots that would operate autonomously because of labor shortages in the country, according to the report. ... [ Read it >> ]

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'Apple Needs a Snow Sequoia'
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-28 17:22:02


uninet writes: The same year Apple launched the iPhone, it unveiled a massive upgrade to Mac OS X known as Leopard, sporting "300 New Features." Two years later, it did something almost unheard of: it released Snow Leopard, an upgrade all about how little it added and how much it took away. Apple needs to make it snow again. Current releases of MacOS Sequoia and iOS/iPadOS 18 are riddled with easily reproducible bugs in high-traffic areas, the author argues, suggesting Apple's engineers aren't using their own software. Messages can't reliably copy text, email connections randomly fail, and Safari frequently jams up. Even worse are the baffling design decisions, like burying display arrangement settings and redesigning Photos with needless margins and inconsistent navigation. ... [ Read it >> ]

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IBM US Cuts May Run Deeper Than Feared - and the Jobs Are Heading To India
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-28 14:22:07


The Register: Following our report last week on IBM's ongoing layoffs, current and former employees got in touch to confirm what many suspected: The US cuts run deeper than reported, and the jobs are heading to India. IBM's own careers site numbers back that up. On January 7, 2024, Big Blue listed just 173 open positions in India. On November 23, 2024, there were 2,946 jobs available in the nation. At the time of writing, the IT titan listed 3,866 roles in India. ... [ Read it >> ]

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As NASA Faces Cuts, China Reveals Ambitious Plans For Planetary Exploration
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-28 12:22:01


As NASA faces potential budget cuts, China is unveiling an ambitious series of deep space missions -- including Mars sample returns, outer planet exploration, and a future Mars base. While some of China's plans are aspirational, their track record of successful missions lends credibility to their expanding role in space. Ars Technica reports: China created a new entity called the "Deep Space Exploration Laboratory" three years ago to strengthen the country's approach to exploring the Solar System. Located in eastern China, not far from Shanghai, the new laboratory represented a partnership between China's national space agency and a local public college, the University of Science and Technology of China.... [ Read it >> ]

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Anthropic Maps AI Model 'Thought' Processes
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-28 10:22:01


Anthropic researchers have developed a breakthrough "cross-layer transcoder" (CLT) that functions like an fMRI for large language models, mapping how they process information internally. Testing on Claude 3.5 Haiku, researchers discovered the model performs longer-range planning for specific tasks -- such as selecting rhyming words before constructing poem sentences -- and processes multilingual concepts in a shared neural space before converting outputs to specific languages. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Labor Arbitrage RIP
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-28 09:22:01


An anonymous reader shares a report: For decades, India's economic promise has rested on its demographic dividend -- the competitive edge of a massive, young, and increasingly educated workforce. Economists and policymakers have routinely cited the country's population profile as its ticket to economic superpower status, with projections of reaching $10 trillion in GDP and achieving high-income status by 2047. These forecasts depend heavily on a critical assumption: that roughly 500 million Indians currently aged 5-24 will find productive employment as they enter the workforce over the next two decades. But a sobering new analysis from Bernstein suggests this fundamental premise may be crumbling under the weight of rapid advances in AI. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Virginia Will Punish Fast Drivers With Devices That Limit Their Speed
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-28 08:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Virginia is set to become the first state in the country to require some reckless drivers to put devices on their cars that make it impossible to drive too fast. D.C. passed similar legislation last year. Several other states, including Maryland, are considering joining them. It's an embrace of a technological solution to a human problem: Speeding contributes to more than 10,000 deaths a year. Under the Virginia legislation, a judge can decide to order drivers to install the speed limiters in their vehicles in lieu of taking away their driving privileges or sending them to jail. It takes effect in July 2026.... [ Read it >> ]

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OpenAI Says 'Our GPUs Are Melting' As It Limits ChatGPT Image Generation Requests
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-28 05:22:01


Following OpenAI's viral Studio Ghibli moment, CEO Sam Altman says it has temporarily limited image generation in ChatGPT due to the overwhelming demand on its GPU infrastructure. "It's super fun seeing people love images in ChatGPT, but our GPUs are melting," he posted on X today. The Verge reports: The demand crunch already caused the artificial intelligence company to push back availability of the built-in image generator for users on ChatGPT's free tier. But apparently that measure alone wasn't enough to ease the stress on OpenAI's infrastructure. (Altman said free users will "soon" be able to generate up to three images per day.)... [ Read it >> ]

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US Robotics Companies Push For National Strategy To Compete With China
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-03-28 04:22:01


U.S. robotics companies, including Tesla and Boston Dynamics, are urging lawmakers to establish a national robotics strategy to keep pace with China's aggressive investment in AI-driven robotics. The Associated Press reports: Jeff Cardenas, co-founder and CEO of humanoid startup Apptronik, of Austin, Texas, pointed out to lawmakers that it was American carmaker General Motors that deployed the first industrial robot at a New Jersey assembly plant in 1961. But the U.S. then ceded its early lead to Japan, which remains a powerhouse of industrial robotics, along with Europe. The next robotics race will be powered by artificial intelligence and will be "anybody's to win," Cardenas said in an interview after the closed-door meeting. "I think the U.S. has a great chance of winning. We're leading in AI, and I think we're building some of the best robots in the world. But we need a national strategy if we're going to continue to build and stay ahead."... [ Read it >> ]

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