Microsoft has denied claims that it automatically enables data collection from Word and Excel documents to train its AI models. The controversy emerged after cybersecurity expert nixCraft reported that Microsoft's Connected Experiences feature was collecting user data by default. While Microsoft's services agreement grants the company rights to use customer content, officials stated via Twitter that document data is not used for AI training.... [ Read it >> ]

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The Biden administration is reducing Intel's CHIPS Act award by over $600 million, citing a $3 billion military contract the chipmaker was also awarded. Engadget reports: Initially set to receive $8.5 billion from the domestic silicon production bill, the company will get up to $7.85 billion instead. On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Intel has extended some plant openings beyond 2030 government deadlines. Intel posted its biggest-ever quarterly loss last month after announcing 15,000 layoffs in August. The chip-maker's struggles have reportedly led some government officials to worry about its ability to deliver as a central component of the Biden White House's CHIPS Act.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The founder of an artificial intelligence start-up focused on education was arrested and charged with defrauding her investors, lying about the company's profits and falsely claiming that some of the largest school districts in the country, including New York City's, were her customers. The founder, Joanna Smith-Griffin, started the company, AllHere Education, in 2016, with the goal of using artificial intelligence to increase student and parent engagement and curb absenteeism. In the years that followed, Ms. Smith-Griffin, 33, misrepresented AllHere's revenue and customer base to fraudulently raise almost $10 million in funds, according to the indictment. Once the company's valuation had climbed, she sold some of her stake in it and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a down payment for a new home and on her wedding.... [ Read it >> ]

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Anthropic is adding a new feature to its Claude AI assistant that will give users more control over how the chatbot responds to different writing tasks. From a report: The new custom styles are available to all Claude AI users, enabling anyone to train it to match their own communication style or select from preset options to quickly adjust the tone and level of detail it provides. ... [ Read it >> ]

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American hospitals and healthcare organizations would be required to adopt multi-factor authentication (MFA) and other minimum cybersecurity standards under new legislation proposed by a bipartisan group of US senators. From a report: The Health Care Cybersecurity and Resiliency Act of 2024 [PDF], introduced on Friday by US Senators Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), Mark Warner (D-Virginia), John Cornyn (R-Texas), and Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire), would, among other things, require better coordination between the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) around cybersecurity in the healthcare and public health sector. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Interpol arrested 1,006 suspects in Africa during a massive two-month operation, clamping down on cybercrime that left tens of thousands of victims, including some who were trafficked, and produced millions in financial damages, the global police organization said Tuesday. From a report: Operation Serengeti, a joint operation with Afripol, the African Union's police agency, ran from Sept. 2 to Oct. 31 in 19 African countries and targeted criminals behind ransomware, business email compromise, digital extortion and online scams, the agency said in a statement.... [ Read it >> ]

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Google announced additional modifications to its European search results on Tuesday, following complaints from smaller competitors about traffic losses and amid potential EU antitrust charges under new tech regulations. The changes come as Google attempts to comply with the Digital Markets Act, which prohibits tech giants from favoring their own services and after hotels, airlines, and small retailers reported a 30% decline in direct booking clicks following recent platform adjustments. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Software company Deno Land has filed a petition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to cancel Oracle's JavaScript trademark, citing trademark abandonment and fraud. The November 22 filing claims Oracle has not sold JavaScript products or services since acquiring the trademark through its 2009 Sun Microsystems purchase. The petition alleges Oracle committed fraud during its 2019 trademark renewal by submitting Node.js website screenshots without authorization. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The human eye can't really tell the difference between 4K and 8K resolution. Video game console manufacturers, who have built their businesses selling increasingly powerful machines every few years, are grappling with a future where performance improvements are becoming less dramatic. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Softbank-backed online shopping site Meesho has rolled out what it claims is the first GenAI-powered voice bot among Indian e-commerce firms for customer support, paring down some expenses by 75%. Meesho has more than 160 million customers in India, with 80% of them in smaller cities, towns and villages. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Brazilian antitrust regulator Cade said this week that Apple must lift restrictions on payment methods for in-app purchases, among other things, as the watchdog moved to proceed with an investigation into a complaint filed by Latin America e-commerce giant MercadoLibre. From a report: MercadoLibre's complaint, filed in 2022 in Brazil and Mexico, accused Apple of imposing a series of restrictions on the distribution of digital goods and in-app purchases, including banning apps from distributing third-party digital goods and services such as movies, music, video games, books and written content. ... [ Read it >> ]

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A Stanford study of over 50,000 software engineers across hundreds of companies has found that approximately 9.5% of engineers perform minimal work while drawing full salaries, potentially costing tech companies billions annually.

The research showed the issue is most prevalent in remote work settings, where 14% of engineers were classified as "ghost engineers" compared to 6% of office-based staff. The study evaluated productivity through analysis of private Git repositories and simulated expert assessments of code commits. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Blue Yonder, a Panasonic subsidiary specializing in AI-driven supply chain solutions, experienced a recent ransomware attack that impacted many of its customers. "Among its 3,000 customers are high-profile organizations like DHL, Renault, Bayer, Morrisons, Nestle, 3M, Tesco, Starbucks, Ace Hardware, Procter & Gamble, Sainsbury, and 7-Eleven," reports BleepingComputer. From the report: On Friday, the company warned that it was experiencing disruptions to its managed services hosting environment due to a ransomware incident that occurred the day before, on November 21. "On November 21, 2024, Blue Yonder experienced disruptions to its managed services hosted environment, which was determined to be the result of a ransomware incident," reads the announcement. "Since learning of the incident, the Blue Yonder team has been working diligently together with external cybersecurity firms to make progress in their recovery process. We have implemented several defensive and forensic protocols."... [ Read it >> ]

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The U.S. is preparing to impose new sanctions targeting 200 Chinese chipmakers and potentially restricting the export of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). The move is intended to further hinder China's semiconductor and AI advancements. Tom's Hardware reports: The update sheds light on the Biden administration's recent efforts to impose stricter regulations on chip manufacturers in China. The latest swarm of sanctions reportedly targets roughly 200 Chinese firms. US companies are prohibited from exporting select technologies or products to the targeted firms. The report suggests that the US Department of Commerce aims to push these new regulations before the Thanksgiving break - or November 28. Neither the Department of Commerce nor the Chamber of Commerce responded to Reuters' request for comments.... [ Read it >> ]

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An asteroid named 2024 PT5, recently exhibiting "mini moon" behavior around Earth, may have been a boulder that was blasted off the moon by an impacting, crater-forming asteroid," reports the Associated Press. The 33-foot space rock is expected to pass safely near Earth in January, when it will be closely observed. From the report: While not technically a moon -- NASA stresses it was never captured by Earth's gravity and fully in orbit -- it's "an interesting object" worthy of study. The astrophysicist brothers who identified the asteroid's "mini moon behavior," Raul and Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of Complutense University of Madrid, have collaborated with telescopes in the Canary Islands for hundreds of observations so far.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TheGamer: With thousands of cards available in Pokemon's "Pokemon Trading Card Game," it can be hard to remember what is what. After all, since first debuting in the mid 1990s to coincide with the games of the same name, the popular collectible has been going strong ever since, with new releases constantly filling store shelves. That said, one avid Pokemon fan took it upon themselves to archive the card game's unique artwork. After hundreds of hours of work, over 23,000 cards have been archived, along with an additional 2,000 pieces of artwork. The end result is one of the best fan creations around.... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft is retiring its "Get Licensing Ready" website, a resource for software licensing education. Going forward, content licensing will be located at microsoft.com/licensing. The Register also notes Microsoft's plans to enhance learning with AI tools, though specifics for licensing applications remain unclear. From the report: Software licensing is notoriously labyrinthine, so resources like the site Microsoft will close -- Get Licensing Ready -- can be very handy. Today, the site offers over 50 training modules plus documentation. But Microsoft has decided not to keep it around in its current form. Indeed, visitors to the site currently see a pop-up that explains "Microsoft will be ending support for licensing certifications through this platform and phasing out the Get Licensing Ready resource."... [ Read it >> ]

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A new bill introduced by Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt) aims to make it easier for human creators to find out if their work was used without permission to train artificial intelligence. NBC News reports: The Transparency and Responsibility for Artificial Intelligence Networks (TRAIN) Act would enable copyright holders to subpoena training records of generative AI models, if the holder can declare a "good faith belief" that their work was used to train the model. The developers would only need to reveal the training material that is "sufficient to identify with certainty" whether the copyright holder's works were used. Failing to comply would create a legal assumption -- until proven otherwise -- that the AI developer did indeed use the copyrighted work. [...]... [ Read it >> ]

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9to5Google's Ben Schoon reports: Google has introduced a new feature on iOS that injects links on third-party websites that take users back to Google Search. Recently, Google announced new "Page Annotations" within the Google app on iOS. This feature, as Google explains, "extracts interesting entities from the webpage and highlights them in line." Effectively, it creates links on a website that you've opened through Google's browser that the website's owner did not put there. The links, when clicked, then perform a search on Google for that subject and open the search in a pop-up window on top of the third-party website.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Supreme Court signaled it may take up a case that could determine whether Internet service providers must terminate users who are accused of copyright infringement. In an order (PDF) issued today, the court invited the Department of Justice's solicitor general to file a brief "expressing the views of the United States."... [ Read it >> ]

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A new rule passed in Texas requiring cryptocurrency miners using the grid maintained by the Energy Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to register and report key details about their facilities. CoinTelegraph reports: Under the Public Utilities Commission of Texas (PUCT) rule (PDF), passed on Nov. 21, Bitcoin miners must share the location, ownership information and demand for electricity of their facilities with the state agency. Miners have only one working day after the date their facility connects to the ERCOT grid to register and must renew every calendar year on or before March 1.... [ Read it >> ]

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Indonesia rejected Apple's $100 million investment proposal to build an accessory and component plant, stating it was insufficient to lift the current ban on iPhone 16 sales in the country. Indonesia banned sales of Apple's iPhone 16 last month after it failed to meet requirements that smartphones sold domestically should comprise at least 40% locally-made parts. Reuters reports: "We have done an assessment and this (proposal) has not met principles of fairness," Industry Minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita told a press conference, comparing the proposal to Apple's bigger investments in neighboring Vietnam and Thailand. Apple has no manufacturing facilities in Indonesia, but has since 2018 set up application-developer academies, which Jakarta considers a way for the company to meet local content requirement for the sale of older iPhone models. Agus said Apple had an outstanding investment commitment of $10 million it should have carried out before 2023. He also wanted Apple to commit to new investment until 2026.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet, written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols: At KubeCon North America, SUSE announced a significant rebranding effort, several new product offerings, and the launch of SUSE AI, a secure platform for deploying and running generative AI (gen AI) applications. SUSE has renamed its entire portfolio to make product names more descriptive and customer-friendly. Notable changes include:... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: On Monday, Apple's list of finalists for its coveted "iPhone App of the Year" award once again reveals how the iPhone maker is downplaying the impact of AI technology on the mobile app ecosystem. As it did last year, Apple's 2024 list of top iPhone finalists favors more traditional iOS apps, including those that help iPhone users perform specific tasks like recording professional video (Kino), tailoring their running plans (Runna), or organizing their travels (Tripsy). Other AI apps like ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, Microsoft Copilot, and those that create AI photos or videos were not nominated for iPhone App of the Year. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Lawyers for the United States on Monday said that Google had created a monopoly with its services to place ads online, closing out an antitrust trial over the company's dominance in advertising technology that could add to the Silicon Valley giant's mounting woes. From a report: The legal case concerns a system of software that is used by advertisers to place ads on websites around the internet. Aaron Teitelbaum, a lawyer for the Justice Department, told Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia that the company had linked its products together in a way that made it hard for publishers and advertisers to use alternatives. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Nvidia has introduced Fugatto, an AI music editor that can generate never-head-of audio combinations, including instruments mimicking animal sounds.

The tool processes both text and audio inputs to create music, sound effects, and modified speech. The system can isolate vocals, swap instruments, and alter voice characteristics.... [ Read it >> ]

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A firmware update has left QNAP network-attached storage device owners unable to access their systems, with standard reset procedures failing to resolve the issue.

The problematic update, QTS 5.2.2.2950 build 20241114, was released last week before being partially withdrawn, according to user reports on QNAP's community forums. QNAP, the Taiwan-based storage manufacturer, has not specified which models are affected by the faulty firmware.... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple's upcoming slim iPhone model faces potential sales obstacles in China due to design limitations that prevent fitting a physical SIM card tray, which is mandatory in the Chinese market.

The new device, planned for release next fall, measures 5-6 millimeters thick compared to the iPhone 16's 7.8mm, The Information reported Monday [non-paywalled source]. The company aims to revitalize iPhone sales in China, where revenue has declined for three consecutive years amid competition from Huawei and Vivo. The thin iPhone relies on embedded SIMs (eSIMs), which Chinese regulators haven't yet approved for smartphone use. Engineers are also struggling with battery placement and thermal management in the slim design, the report added.... [ Read it >> ]

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Raspberry Pi has announced the Pico 2 W, a wireless version of its Pico 2 microcontroller board built for hobbyists and industrial applications. From a report: At $7, it's a relatively inexpensive way to control electronic devices like smart home gadgets and robots. With the new version, users will be able to securely link to remote sources to send and receive data, either via Bluetooth 5.2 or Wi-Fi 802.11n. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Swedish battery maker Northvolt has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. and announced CEO Peter Carlsson's departure following a year marked by production delays and workforce reductions.

The company, once viewed as Europe's challenger to Chinese battery dominance, reported $1.2 billion in losses against $128 million revenue for 2023. Despite securing $15 billion in funding and $50 billion in orders by late 2023, with major stakeholders including Volkswagen (21%) and Goldman Sachs (19%), Northvolt faced mounting challenges. BMW canceled a $2 billion contract in June, prompting job cuts and project suspensions.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, according to a sweeping new study. The findings have wide-reaching implications for the nation's health and medical costs as it faces a growing burden of weight-related diseases.
... [ Read it >> ]

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Leading technology companies are dramatically expanding their AI capabilities by building multibillion-dollar "super clusters" packed with unprecedented numbers of Nvidia's AI processors. Elon Musk's xAI recently constructed Colossus, a supercomputer containing 100,000 Nvidia Hopper chips, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims his company operates an even larger system for training advanced AI models. The push toward massive chip clusters has helped drive Nvidia's quarterly revenue from $7 billion to over $35 billion in two years, making it the world's most valuable public company. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Sony is developing a new portable gaming device capable of playing PlayStation 5 games, Bloomberg News reported Monday. The project follows the 2023 release of PlayStation Portal, a streaming-only handheld, and aims to compete with Nintendo's dominant Switch console and potential Microsoft offerings in the portable gaming space.... [ Read it >> ]

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U.S. software developer job listings have plummeted 56% since 2019, according to CompTIA data, as coding bootcamp graduates face mounting challenges from AI tools and widespread tech industry layoffs.

For entry-level positions, postings have dropped even further at 67%. The downturn has forced several bootcamps to adapt or close. Boston's Launch Academy suspended operations in May after job placement rates fell from 90% to below 60%. Meanwhile, AI coding tools like ChatGPT and GitHub's Copilot are transforming the industry, with Google reporting that AI now generates over 25% of its new code. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Palo Alto Networks boasts 70,000 customers in 150 countries, including 85% of the Fortune 500.

But this week "thousands of Palo Alto Networks firewalls were compromised by attackers exploiting two recently patched security bug," reports the Register:

The intruders were able to deploy web-accessible backdoors to remotely control the equipment as well as cryptocurrency miners and other malware. Roughly 2,000 devices had been hijacked as of Wednesday — a day after Palo Alto Networks pushed a patch for the holes — according to Shadowserver and Onyphe. As of Thursday, the number of seemingly compromised devices had dropped to about 800. The vendor, however, continues to talk only of a "limited number" of exploited installations... The Register has asked for clarification, including how many compromised devices Palo Alto Networks is aware of, and will update this story if and when we hear back from the vendor. ... [ Read it >> ]

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"Get your head examined. And get the fuck out of here with this shit." That's how Bcachefs developer Kent Overstreet ended a post on the Linux kernel mailing list.
This was followed by "insufficient action to restore the community's faith in having otherwise productive technical discussions without the fear of personal attacks," according to an official ruling by committee enforcing the kernel community's code of conduct. After formalizing an updated enforcement process for unacceptable behaviors, it then recommended that during the Linux 6.13 kernel development cycle, Overstreet's participation should be restricted (with his pull requests declined). Phoronix covered their ruling, and ItsFOSS and The Register offer some of the backstory. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Craig Newmark "is alarmed about potential cybersecurity risks in the U.S.," according to Yahoo Finance. The 71-year-old Craigslist founder says "our country is under attack now" in a new interview with Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sozzi on his Opening Bid podcast.

But Newmark also revealed what he's doing about it:... [ Read it >> ]

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Some days more than half of California's available solar power goes to waste, according to research from the California Institute for Energy and Environment. "In the last 12 months, California's solar farms have curtailed production of more than 3 million megawatt hours of solar energy," according to a data analysis by the Los Angeles Times — enough to power 518,000 California homes for a year. ... [ Read it >> ]

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"At points there was fear the talks would implode, as groups representing vulnerable small island states and the least-developed countries walked out of negotiations Saturday," according to a new report from CNN.
But after weeks of international climate talks at COP29, "the world agreed to a new climate deal... "with wealthy countries pledging to provide $300 billion annually by 2035 to poorer countries to help them cope with the increasingly catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis."... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft's controversial "Recall" feature (in a public preview of Windows 11) already has some known issues, Microsoft admitted Friday. For example:
- Recall can be enabled or disabled from "Turn Windows features on or off". We are caching the Recall binaries on disk while we test add/remove. In a future update we will completely remove the binaries. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the New York Times:

Between the time [construction worker Florencio] Rendon applied for the coding boot camp and the time he graduated, what Mr. Rendon imagined as a "golden ticket" to a better life had expired. About 135,000 start-up and tech industry workers were laid off from their jobs, according to one count. At the same time, new artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, an online chatbot from OpenAI, which could be used as coding assistants, were quickly becoming mainstream, and the outlook for coding jobs was shifting. Mr. Rendon says he didn't land a single interview. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Reddit's moderators drew some criticism after "locking" a discussion about C++ paper/proposal author Andrew Tomazos. The URL (in the post with the locked discussion) had led to a submission for Slashdot's queue of potential (but unpublished) stories, which nevertheless attracted 178 upvotes on Reddit and another 85 comments. That unpublished Slashdot submission was also submitted to Hacker News, where it drew another 38 upvotes but was also eventually flagged. ... [ Read it >> ]

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On November 24th, 1971 — 53 years ago today — a mysterious man jumped out of an airplane clutching $200,000 in ransom money. (He'd extorted it from the airline by claiming he had a bomb, and it's still "the only unsolved case of air piracy in the history of commercial aviation," according to Wikipedia.) Will modern technology finally let us solve the case — or just turn it into a miniseries on Netflix? And have online researchers finally discovered the definitive clue? ... [ Read it >> ]

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Back in the mid-1980s Mark Roth was in 5th grade when the game ChipWits "helped kindle his interest in coding," according to an online biography. ("By middle school, he wrote his first Commodore 64 assembler and by high school he authored a 3D Graphics library for DOS.")

And 40 years later, Slashdot reader markroth8 writes that the programming puzzle/logic game "inspired many people to become professional coders":... [ Read it >> ]

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The GitHub Secure Open Source Fund launched this week with an initial commitment of $1.25 million, reports TechCrunch, using "capital from contributors including American Express, 1Password, Shopify, Stripe, and GitHub's own parent company Microsoft."

GitHub briefly teased the new initiative at its annual GitHub Universe developer conference last month, but Tuesday it announced full details and formally opened the program for applicants, which will be reviewed "on a rolling basis" through the closing date of January 7, 2025, with programming and funding starting shortly after... ... [ Read it >> ]

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America's Justice Department "has ordered all consensual searches by drug enforcement agents conducted at the nation's airports stopped," reports Georgia's local TV station Atlanta News First — after their series of investigations "uncovered how the agents often search innocent passengers at airport gates, looking for cash."... [ Read it >> ]

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"Scientists have found what seems to be the oldest direct evidence of hot water flowing on Mars during its ancient past," reports Space.com.

"The discovery could further indicate that the Red Planet, despite its arid and desolate appearance today, may have been capable of supporting life long ago."... [ Read it >> ]

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Slashdot reader Bruce66423 shared this report from the Guardian:

Staff have resigned at Starling Bank after its new chief executive demanded thousands of workers attend its offices more frequently, despite lacking enough space to host them.

In his first major policy change since taking over from the UK digital bank's founder, Anne Boden, in March, Raman Bhatia has ordered all hybrid staff — many of whom were in the office only one or two days a week, or on an ad-hoc basis — to travel to work for a minimum of 10 days each month. But the bank, which operates online only, admitted that some of its offices would not be equipped to handle the influx... "We are considering ways in which we can create more space," an email sent by Starling's human resources team and seen by the Guardian said. ... [ Read it >> ]

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NBC News reports that a newly identified chemical byproduct "may be present in drinking water in about a third of U.S. homes, a study found."

"Scientists do not yet know whether the byproduct is dangerous. But some are worried that it could have toxic properties because of similarities to other chemicals of concern."... [ Read it >> ]

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The Rust community has "recognized the unsafety of Rust (if used incorrectly)," according to a blog post by Amazon Web Services.
So now AWS and the Rust Foundation are "crowdsourcing an effort to verify the Rust standard library," according to an article at DevClass.com, "by setting out a series of challenges for devs and offering financial rewards for solutions..."... [ Read it >> ]

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