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Apple Warns Investors Future Products May Never Be as Profitable as iPhone
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-05 21:22:02


Apple has warned investors that future products may never be as profitable as its iPhone business, as it pushes into unproven new markets such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality headsets. From a report: The iPhone maker added the new warning on growth and profit margins to its latest annual report, in the list of "risk factors" facing the tech group's business. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Google's Big Sleep LLM Agent Discovers Exploitable Bug In SQLite
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-05 20:22:01


spatwei writes: Google has used a large language model (LLM) agent called "Big Sleep" to discover a previously unknown, exploitable memory flaw in a widely used software for the first time, the company announced Friday.
The stack buffer underflow vulnerability in a development version of the popular open-source database engine SQLite was found through variant analysis by Big Sleep, which is a collaboration between Google Project Zero and Google DeepMind. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Delhi Wants Artificial Rain To Tackle Worsening Air Pollution
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2024-11-05 20:22:01


India's capital territory of Delhi is keen to use artificial rain to fight air pollution this year, its Environment Minister Gopal Rai said on Tuesday, as deteriorating air quality in the region led to an increase in respiratory illnesses. From a report: Large swathes of north India battle pollution each winter as cold air traps dust, vehicle emissions and smoke from farm fires in the breadbasket states of Punjab and Haryana, shrouding the national capital and its suburbs in a toxic haze. Cloud-seeding - the method of triggering rain by seeding clouds with salts - was considered to curb pollution in 2023 too but the plan did not materialise due to unfavourable weather conditions. ... [ Read it >> ]

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India Issues Notice To Wikipedia Over Concerns of Bias
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2024-11-05 19:23:02


India's government challenged Wikipedia's legal immunity as a tech platform on Tuesday, issuing a notice questioning whether the online encyclopedia should be reclassified as a publisher. The move follows Delhi High Court warnings to suspend Wikipedia's India operations over a defamation case filed by Asian News International. The news agency seeks to unmask contributors who labeled it a "government propaganda tool." Justice Navin Chawla threatened contempt proceedings after Wikipedia cited its lack of physical presence in India to request more time for disclosing user information. The court deemed the site's open editing feature "dangerous."... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple Explores Push Into Smart Glasses With 'Atlas' User Study
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2024-11-05 18:23:02


Apple is exploring a push into smart glasses with an internal study of products currently on the market, setting the stage for the company to follow Meta into an increasingly popular category. From a report: The initiative, code-named Atlas, got underway last week and involves gathering feedback from Apple employees on smart glasses, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Additional focus groups are planned for the near future, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the work is secret. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Meta Permits Its AI Models To Be Used For US Military Purposes
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2024-11-05 17:23:02


An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Meta will allow U.S. government agencies and contractors working on national security to use its artificial intelligence models for military purposes, the company said on Monday, in a shift from its policy that prohibited the use of its technology for such efforts. Meta said that it would make its A.I. models, called Llama, available to federal agencies and that it was working with defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen as well as defense-focused tech companies including Palantir and Anduril. The Llama models are "open source," which means the technology can be freely copied and distributed by other developers, companies and governments.... [ Read it >> ]

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US Regulator Rejects Bid To Boost Nuclear Power To Amazon Data Center
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2024-11-05 14:23:01


The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) blocked Amazon's bid to access more power from the Susquehanna nuclear plant for its Pennsylvania data center, citing grid reliability and consumer cost concerns. The Hill reports: In a 2-1 decision, the FERC found the regional grid operator, PJM Interconnection, failed to prove that the changes to the transmission agreement with Susquehanna power plant were necessary. The regulator's two Republican commissioners, Mark Christie and Lindsay See, outvoted Democratic chair Willie Phillips. The chair's two fellow Democratic commissioners, David Rosner and Judy Chang, sat out the vote. "Co-location arrangements of the type presented here present an array of complicated, nuanced and multifaceted issues, which collectively could have huge ramifications for both grid reliability and consumer costs," Christie wrote in a concurring statement.... [ Read it >> ]

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Researchers Spot Black Hole Eating Stuff At Over 40x the Theoretical Limit
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2024-11-05 11:23:01


Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole in the early Universe devouring matter at over 40 times the Eddington limit. ScienceAlert reports: Led by astronomer Hyewon Suh of Gemini Observatory and NSF's NOIRLab, a team of researchers used JWST to take follow-up observations of a smattering of galaxies identified by the Chandra X-ray Observatory that were bright in X-rays but dim in other wavelengths. When they got to LID-568, they were having trouble identifying its distance across space-time. The galaxy was very faint and very hard to see; but, using the integral field spectrograph on JWST's NIRSpec instrument, the team homed in on the galaxy's exact position. LID-568's far-off location is surprising. Although the object is faint from our position in the Universe, its distance means it must be incredibly intrinsically bright. Detailed observations revealed powerful outflows from the supermassive black hole, a signature of accretion as some of the material is being diverted and blasted into space.... [ Read it >> ]

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Sweden Scraps Plans For 13 Offshore Windfarms Over Russia Security Fears
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2024-11-05 08:23:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Sweden has vetoed plans for 13 offshore windfarms in the Baltic Sea, citing unacceptable security risks. The country's defence minister, Pal Jonson, said on Monday that the government had rejected plans for all but one of 14 windfarms planned along the east coast. The decision comes after the Swedish armed forces concluded last week that the projects would make it more difficult to defend Nato's newest member.... [ Read it >> ]

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visionOS 2.2 Beta Adds Wide and Ultrawide Modes To Mac Virtual Display
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2024-11-05 06:23:01


Apple released the first beta of visionOS 2.2, introducing new "Wide" and "Ultrawide" modes for the Mac Virtual Display feature on the Vision Pro headset. MacRumors reports: Apple has previously said the ultra-wide version of Mac Virtual Display is equivalent to having two physical 4K displays sitting side by side on a desk. Mac Virtual Display is now available in three sizes: Normal, Wide, and Ultrawide. visionOS 2.2 will likely be released to the public in December alongside iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, macOS Sequoia 15.2, watchOS 11.2, tvOS 18.2, and other updates. Further reading: Apple Delays Cut-price Vision Headset Until 2027, Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo Says... [ Read it >> ]

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Netflix Is Removing Nearly All of Its Interactive Titles
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2024-11-05 06:23:01


According to The Verge, Netflix plans to delist almost all of its interactive shows and films as of December 1st. Only four of the 24 interactive titles will remain: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend, Ranveer vs. Wild with Bear Grylls, and You vs. Wild. From the report: The removal of the titles marks a disappointing conclusion to Netflix's earliest efforts into interactive content. The company first launched the interactive titles in 2017 with Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale, and I remember being wowed (and horrified) by paths in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. In addition to specials based on franchises like Carmen Sandiego and Boss Baby, Netflix also tried ideas like a daily trivia series and a trivia game you could play with a friend. But the relatively few titles available suggests the format wasn't much of a hit -- Puss in Book has apparently been gone for a while. "The technology served its purpose, but is now limiting as we focus on technological efforts in other areas," spokesperson Chrissy Kelleher says.... [ Read it >> ]

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Robinhood and Kraken Launch New Global Stablecoin Network With Paxos' USDG
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2024-11-05 05:23:01


Leading fintech and digital asset firms, including Robinhood, Kraken and Galaxy Digital, have introduced a joint stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. Called the Global Dollar Network, it seeks to enhance the stablecoin market by lowering transaction costs, boosting consumer protections, and facilitating cross-border transactions with rewards for institutional participants. Crypto Briefing reports: The network will utilize Paxos's new stablecoin, the Global Dollar (USDG), which complies with the Monetary Authority of Singapore's upcoming stablecoin framework. USDG is designed to return yield on reserve assets to participants who contribute to its adoption, encouraging the development of crypto and financial solutions using the token. The Global Dollar Network aims to address shortcomings in the stablecoin market, such as high transaction costs and limited consumer protections.... [ Read it >> ]

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Perplexity CEO Offers To Replace Striking NYT Staff With AI
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2024-11-05 04:23:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The CEO of AI search company Perplexity, Aravind Srinivas, has offered to cross picket lines and provide services to mitigate the effect of a strike by New York Times tech workers. The NYT Tech Guild announced its strike Monday, after setting November 4 as its deadline months earlier. The workers represented provide software support and data analysis for the Times, on the business side of the outlet. They have been asking for an annual 2.5% wage increase and to cement a current two days per week in-office expectation, among other things. [...] Picketers demonstrated in front of the NYT building in New York as negotiations continued. Meanwhile, on X, formerly known as Twitter, Perplexity's CEO offered to step in for the striking workers.... [ Read it >> ]

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Prime Video Will Let You Summon AI To Recap What You're Watching
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2024-11-05 04:23:01


Amazon's Prime Video has introduced "X-Ray Recaps," a generative AI feature that will recap what you're watching. The new tool can create text summaries of "full seasons of TV shows, single episodes, and even pieces of episodes," the company says in a blog post. The Verge reports: X-Ray Recaps will be accessible from the detail page of a show or in X-Ray while you're watching something. The tool "analyzes various video segments, combined with subtitles or dialogue, to generate detailed descriptions of key events, places, times, and conversations," Amazon says. Amazon has also applied "guardrails" to help the feature avoid sharing spoilers and to keep summaries concise.... [ Read it >> ]

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FFmpeg Devs Boast of Up To 94x Performance Boost After Implementing Handwritten AVX-512 Assembly Code
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2024-11-05 03:23:01


Anton Shilov reports via Tom's Hardware: FFmpeg is an open-source video decoding project developed by volunteers who contribute to its codebase, fix bugs, and add new features. The project is led by a small group of core developers and maintainers who oversee its direction and ensure that contributions meet certain standards. They coordinate the project's development and release cycles, merging contributions from other developers. This group of developers tried to implement a handwritten AVX512 assembly code path, something that has rarely been done before, at least not in the video industry.... [ Read it >> ]

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Perplexity Will Show Live US Election Results Despite AI Accuracy Warnings
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2024-11-05 02:23:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Friday, Perplexity launched an election information hub that relies on data from The Associated Press and Democracy Works to provide live updates and information about the 2024 US general election, which takes place on Tuesday, November 5. "Starting Tuesday, we'll be offering live updates on elections using data from The Associated Press so you can stay informed on presidential, senate, and house races at both a state and national level," Perplexity wrote in a blog post. The site will pull data from special data sources (called APIs) hosted by the two organizations. As of Monday, Perplexity's hub currently provides interactive information on voting requirements, poll times, and summaries about ballot measures, candidates, policy positions, and endorsements. Users can ask questions about the information similar to using a chatbot like ChatGPT.... [ Read it >> ]

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Windows 11 Continues To Creep Up Behind Windows 10
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-05 02:23:01


An anonymous reader shares a report: With Windows 11 still failing to set the world alight, campaigners are warning that millions of perfectly good PCs could become landfill fodder when support for Windows 10 runs out in eleven and a bit months.
Figures compiled by StatCounter show that Windows 11 commanded a 35.55 percent share of the desktop Windows market in October. In comparison, the share of Windows 10 dropped to 60.97 percent, continuing a downward trend that began earlier this year -- it was still at 69.9 percent in April. Unless there is some marked acceleration, Windows 11 is unlikely to dominate the market by the time Microsoft pulls the plug on free updates for most of the Windows 10 world on October 14, 2025.... [ Read it >> ]

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Singapore To Increase Road Capacity By Tracking All Vehicles With GPS
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-05 01:23:02


Singapore plans to boost road capacity by 20,000 vehicles through a new satellite-based road pricing system, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) announced last week. The city-state will replace its current gantry-based Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system with GPS tracking technology, enabling more precise congestion management without physical toll stations. The Register adds: "ERP 2.0 will provide more comprehensive aggregated traffic information and will be able to operate without physical gantries. We will be able to introduce new 'virtual gantries,' which allow for more flexible and responsive congestion management," explained the LTA. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Lawsuit Accuses PowerSchool of Selling Student Data To 3rd Parties
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-05 00:23:01


A former teacher has filed a federal lawsuit against PowerSchool, alleging the education technology giant illegally sells student data to third parties without proper consent. Emily Cherkin, lead plaintiff in the class action suit filed in San Francisco, claims PowerSchool has amassed 345 terabytes of data from 440 school districts, including sensitive information about students' health, behavior, and academic records. The company provides software services to more than 60 million students across 90 of the largest U.S. school districts. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Netflix Bullish on Gen AI for Games After Laying Off Human Game Developers
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-05 00:23:01


Netflix's gaming division is shifting focus to generative AI weeks after shuttering its premium game studio and laying off 35 developers, the company's newly appointed VP of GenAI for Games has announced. Mike Verdu, previously Vice President of Games, called the move a "once in a generation inflection point" that will "accelerate development" and create novel gaming experiences. The pivot follows the closure of Blue, Netflix's internal studio that had recruited veterans from major franchises including Call of Duty and God of War. "Pay no mind to uninformed speculation," Verdu wrote on LinkedIn, describing recent changes as a "planned transition."... [ Read it >> ]

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Newest Device To Run Doom: Nintendo's Alarm Clock
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 23:23:01


A hardware hacker has successfully modified Nintendo's $100 Alarmo device to run the classic video game Doom, marking another milestone in the gaming community's tradition of porting the 1993 shooter to unconventional devices.
YouTuber GaryOderNichts demonstrated the 2.8-inch circular alarm clock running Chocolate Doom natively, using the device's wheel for movement and side buttons for weapons. The hack requires no hardware modifications and works on the current 2.0 software version. The hack came after researchers discovered vulnerabilities in the Alarmo's STM32H7 microcontroller, enabling custom firmware installation through its USB-C port. The trick omits audio due to memory restrictions, GaryOderNichts notes, but it allows for custom animations and displays.... [ Read it >> ]

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Inside the Massive Crime Industry That's Hacking Billion-Dollar Companies
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 22:23:01


Cybercriminals have breached dozens of major companies including AT&T, Ticketmaster and Hot Topic by exploiting "infostealer" malware that harvests login credentials from infected computers, an investigation has found. The malware, spread through pirated software and social media, has infected 250,000 new devices daily, according to cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. Russian developers create the malware while contractors distribute it globally, deliberately avoiding former Soviet states. Hot Topic suffered potentially the largest retail hack ever in October when attackers accessed 350 million customer records using stolen developer credentials. Google and Microsoft are racing to patch vulnerabilities, but malware makers quickly adapt to new security measures.... [ Read it >> ]

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Google, Apple Drive 'Black Box' IP Policing with App Store Rules
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 22:23:01


App developers Musi and Sarafan Mobile have sued Apple and Google in California federal court over app removals they claim were unjustified, highlighting tensions over the tech giants' intellectual property enforcement policies. Musi's music-streaming app was removed after YouTube complained about interface infringement, while Sarafan's "Reely" app was taken down following Instagram's claims about logo similarity. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple Approved Another Illegal Streaming App
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 21:23:02


An anonymous reader shares a report: Another illegal streaming app has made its way to the App Store -- but it only surfaces pirated films for people in certain regions outside the US, including France, Canada, and the Netherlands. As shown in a post on Threads, the App Store listing for "Univer Note" presents itself as a productivity platform that can "easily help you record every day's events and plan your time." However, if you're a user in certain countries, like France or Canada, opening the app shows a collection of pirated movies, such as Venom: The Last Dance, Joker: Folie a Deux, and Terrifier 3.... [ Read it >> ]

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'The Law Must Respond When Science Changes'
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2024-11-04 20:23:01


The clash between law's need for finality and science's evolving nature is creating serious justice problems, an opinion piece on Scientific American argued on Monday. Two recent cases highlight this: Robert Roberson faces execution based on now-discredited shaken baby syndrome science, while the Menendez brothers' life sentences are being questioned due to improved understanding of childhood trauma's effects on violence. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Governments Stress Links Between Climate and Nature Collapse
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 20:23:01


An anonymous reader shares a report: As world leaders gathered in Colombia this week, they also watched for news from home, where many of the headlines carried the catastrophic consequences of ecological breakdown. Across the Amazon rainforest and Brazil's enormous wetlands, relentless fires had burned more than 22m hectares (55m acres). In Spain, the death toll in communities devastated by flooding passed 200. In the boreal forests that span Siberia, Scandinavia, Alaska and Canada, countries were recording alarming signs that their carbon sinks were collapsing under a combined weight of drought, tree death and logging. As Canada's wildfire season crept to a close, scientists calculated it was the second worst in two decades -- behind only last year's burn, which released more carbon than some of the world's largest emitting countries. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple Delays Cut-price Vision Headset Until 2027, Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo Says
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 19:23:01


Apple has scrapped plans for a budget mixed-reality headset initially slated for 2025, pushing the launch to 2027, according to supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. The company will instead focus on releasing an upgraded Vision Pro next year featuring its M5 chip and enhanced AI capabilities, he said. The canceled lower-cost model would have stripped features like EyeSight and used cheaper components to target mainstream consumers.... [ Read it >> ]

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Meta's Plan For Nuclear-Powered AI Data Centre Thwarted By Rare Bees
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 18:23:01


An anonymous reader shares a report: Plans by Mark Zuckerberg's Meta to build an AI data centre in the US that runs on nuclear power were thwarted in part because a rare species of bee was discovered on land earmarked for the project, according to people familiar with the matter. ... [ Read it >> ]

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L.A. County Sues Pepsi and Coca-Cola Over Their Role in the Plastic Pollution Crisis
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 17:23:01


An anonymous reader shared this report from the Los Angeles Times:
Los Angeles County has filed suit against the world's largest beverage companies — Coca-Cola and Pepsi — claiming the soda and drink makers lied to the public about the effectiveness of plastic recycling and, as a result, left county residents and ecosystems choking in discarded plastic... The Los Angeles County suit alleges — in a vein similar to that of [California attorney general] Bonta's suit against Exxon Mobil — that the global beverage companies misrepresented the environmental impact of their plastic bottles, "despite knowing that plastics cannot be readily disposed of without associated environmental impacts." ... [ Read it >> ]

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What Happened After Remote Workers Were Offered $10,000 to Move to Tulsa?
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 13:23:01


Five years ago remote workers were offered $10,0000 to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma for at least a year. Since then roughly 3,300 have accepted the offer, according to the New York TImes. [Alternate URL here.] But more importantly, now researchers are looking at the results:
Their research, released this month, surveyed 1,248 people — including 411 who had participated in Tulsa Remote and others who were accepted but didn't move or weren't accepted but had applied to the program — and found that remote workers who moved to Tulsa saved an average of $25,000 more on annual housing costs than the group that was chosen but didn't move... Nearly three-quarters of participants who have completed the program are still living in Tulsa. The program brings them together for farm-to-table dinners, movie nights and local celebrity lectures to help build community, given that none have offices to commute to. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Python Overtakes JavaScript on GitHub, Annual Survey Finds
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 10:23:01


GitHub released its annual "State of the Octoverse" report this week. And while "Systems programming languages, like Rust, are also on the rise... Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, and Java remain the most widely used languages on GitHub."
In fact, "In 2024, Python overtook JavaScript as the most popular language on GitHub." They also report usage of Jupyter Notebooks "skyrocketed" with a 92% jump in usage, which along with Python's rise seems to underscore "the surge in data science and machine learning on GitHub..."... [ Read it >> ]

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Will Charging Cables Ever Have a Single Standardzed Port?
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 07:23:01


The Atlantic complains that our chaos of different plug types "was supposed to end, with USB-C as our savior."
But part of the problem is what they call "the second circle of our cable hell: My USB-C may not be the same as yours. And the USB-C you bought two years ago may not be the same as the one you got today. And that means it might not do what you now assume it can."... [ Read it >> ]

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Researchers Develop New Method That Tricks Cancer Cells Into Killing Themselves
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 05:23:01


Our bodies divest themselves of 60 billion cells every day through a natural process called "apoptosis". So Stanford medicine researchers are developing a new approach to cancer therapy that could "trick cancer cells into disposing of themselves," according to announcement from Stanford's medical school:... [ Read it >> ]

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How a Slice of Cheese Almost Derailed Europe's Most Important Rocket Test
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 04:23:01


Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this report from the blog Interesting Engineering: A team of students made history this month by performing Europe's first rocket hop test. Those who have followed SpaceX's trajectory will know hop tests are a vital stepping stone for a reusable rocket program, as they allow engineers to test their rocket's landing capabilities. Impressively, no private company or space agency in Europe had ever performed a rocket hop test before. Essentially, a group of students performed one of the most important rocket tests in the history of European rocketry. However, the remarkable nature of this story doesn't end there. Amazingly, the whole thing was almost derailed by a piece of cheese. A slice of Gruyère the team strapped to their rocket's landing legs almost caused the rocket to spin out of control.... [ Read it >> ]

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Leaked Training Shows Doctors In New York's Biggest Hospital System Using AI
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 03:23:01


Slashdot reader samleecole shared this report from 404 Media:
Northwell Health, New York State's largest healthcare provider, recently launched a large language model tool that it is encouraging doctors and clinicians to use for translation, sensitive patient data, and has suggested it can be used for diagnostic purposes, 404 Media has learned. Northwell Health has more than 85,000 employees. An internal presentation and employee chats obtained by 404 Media shows how healthcare professionals are using LLMs and chatbots to edit writing, make hiring decisions, do administrative tasks, and handle patient data. In the presentation given in August, Rebecca Kaul, senior vice president and chief of digital innovation and transformation at Northwell, along with a senior engineer, discussed the launch of the tool, called AI Hub, and gave a demonstration of how clinicians and researchers—or anyone with a Northwell email address—can use it... AI Hub can be used for "clinical or clinical adjacent" tasks, as well as answering questions about hospital policies and billing, writing job descriptions and editing writing, and summarizing electronic medical record excerpts and inputting patients' personally identifying and protected health information. ... [ Read it >> ]

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New Study Suggests Oceans Absorb More CO2 Than Previously Thought
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 03:23:01


Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this story from SciTechDaily:
New research confirms that subtle temperature differences at the ocean surface, known as the "ocean skin," increase carbon dioxide absorption. This discovery, based on precise measurements, suggests global oceans absorb 7% more CO2 than previously thought, aiding climate understanding and carbon assessments...... [ Read it >> ]

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After Silence, NASA's Voyager Finally Phones Home - With a Device Unused Since 1981
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 01:23:01


Somewhere off in interstellar space, 15.4 billion miles away from Earth, NASA's 47-year-old Voyager "recently went quiet," reports Mashable.
The probe "shut off its main radio transmitter for communicating with mission control..."
Voyager's problem began on October 16, when flight controllers sent the robotic explorer a somewhat routine command to turn on a heater. Two days later, when NASA expected to receive a response from the spacecraft, the team learned something tripped Voyager's fault protection system, which turned off its X-band transmitter. By October 19, communication had altogether stopped. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Millions of U.S. Cellphones Could Be Vulnerable to Chinese Government Surveillance
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-04 00:23:01


Millions of U.S. cellphone users could be vulnerable to Chinese government surveillance, warns a Washington Post columnist, "on the networks of at least three major U.S. carriers."
They cite six current or former senior U.S. officials, all of whom were briefed about the attack by the U.S. intelligence community.... [ Read it >> ]

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New 'Open Source AI Definition' Criticized for Not Opening Training Data
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-03 22:23:01


Long-time Slashdot reader samj — also a long-time Debian developer — tells us there's some opposition to the newly-released Open Source AI definition. He calls it a "fork" that undermines the original Open Source definition (which was originally derived from Debian's Free Software Guidelines, written primarily by Bruce Perens), and points us to a new domain with a petition declaring that instead Open Source shall be defined "solely by the Open Source Definition version 1.9. Any amendments or new definitions shall only be recognized with clear community consensus via an open and transparent process." ... [ Read it >> ]

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Invisible, Super Stretchy Nanofibers Discovered In Natural Spider Silk
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-03 21:23:01


Long-time Slashdot reader yet-another-lobbyist writes: Phys.org has an article on the recent discovery of super stretchy nanofibers in natural spider silk! The thinnest natural spider silk nanofibrils ever seen are only a few molecular layers thin, about 5 nm. They are too thin to be seen even with a very powerful optical microscope. Researchers used atomic force microscopy (AFM) not only to visualize them, but also to probe their stretchiness and strength. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Can Heat Pumps Still Save the Planet from Climate Change?
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-03 20:23:01


"One technology critical to fighting climate change is lagging," reports the Washington Post, "thanks to a combination of high interest rates, rising costs, misinformation and the cycle of home construction. Adoption of heat pumps, one of the primary ways to cut emissions from buildings, has slowed in the United States and stalled in Europe, endangering the switch to clean energy. ... [ Read it >> ]

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AI Bug Bounty Program Finds 34 Flaws in Open-Source Tools
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-03 17:23:01


Slashdot reader spatwei shared this report from SC World:

Nearly three dozen flaws in open-source AI and machine learning (ML) tools were disclosed Tuesday as part of [AI-security platform] Protect AI's huntr bug bounty program.
The discoveries include three critical vulnerabilities: two in the Lunary AI developer toolkit [both with a CVSS score of 9.1] and one in a graphical user interface for ChatGPT called Chuanhu Chat. The October vulnerability report also includes 18 high-severity flaws ranging from denial-of-service to remote code execution... Protect AI's report also highlights vulnerabilities in LocalAI, a platform for running AI models locally on consumer-grade hardware, LoLLMs, a web UI for various AI systems, LangChain.js, a framework for developing language model applications, and more. ... [ Read it >> ]

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What's Worse Than Setting Clocks Back an Hour? Permanent Daylight Savings Time
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-03 12:23:02


"It's that time again," writes USA Today, noting that Sunday morning millions of Americans (along with millions more in Canada, Europe, parts of Australia, and Chile) "will set their clocks back an hour, and many will renew their twice-yearly calls to put an end to the practice altogether..."... [ Read it >> ]

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ASWF: the Open Source Foundation Run By the Folks Who Give Out Oscars
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-03 09:23:01


This week's Ubuntu Summit 2024 was attended by Lproven (Slashdot reader #6,030). He's also a FOSS correspondent for the Register, where he's filed this report:
One of the first full-length sessions was presented by David Morin, executive director of the Academy Software Foundation, introducing his organization in a talk about Open Source Software for Motion Pictures. Morin linked to the Visual Effects Society's VFX/Animation Studio Workstation Linux Report, highlighting the market share pie-chart, showing Rocky Linux 9 with at some 58 percent and the RHELatives in general at 90 percent of the market. Ubuntu 22 and 24 — the report's nomenclature, not this vulture's — got just 10.5 percent. We certainly didn't expect to see that at an Ubuntu event, with the latest two versions of Rocky Linux taking 80 percent of the studio workstation market... ... [ Read it >> ]

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The 'Passive Housing' Trend is Booming
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-03 06:23:02


The Washington Post reports that a former Etsy CEO remodeled their home into what's known as a passive house. It's "designed to be as energy efficient as possible, typically with top-notch insulation and a perfect seal that prevents outside air from penetrating the home; air flows in and out through filtration and exhaust systems only." ... [ Read it >> ]

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Don't Look Now, but GM's EV Sales Are on Fire
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-03 03:23:01


GM's president of global markets says their EV portfolio "is growing faster than the market," according to Investopedia, "because we have an all-electric vehicle for just about everybody, no matter what they like to drive."
The headline at Barrons? "Don't Look Now, but GM's EV Sales Are on Fire."... [ Read it >> ]

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Is AI-Driven 0-Day Detection Here?
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-03 02:23:01


"AI-driven 0-day detection is here," argues a new blog post from ZeroPath, makers of a GitHub app that "detects, verifies, and issues pull requests for security vulnerabilities in your code."
They write that AI-assisted security research "has been quietly advancing" since early 2023, when researchers at the DARPA and ARPA-H's Artificial Intelligence Cyber Challenge demonstrated the first practical applications of LLM-powered vulnerability detection — with new advances continuing. "Since July 2024, ZeroPath's tool has uncovered critical zero-day vulnerabilities — including remote code execution, authentication bypasses, and insecure direct object references — in popular AI platforms and open-source projects." And they ultimately identified security flaws in projects owned by Netflix, Salesforce, and Hulu by "taking a novel approach combining deep program analysis with adversarial AI agents for validation. Our methodology has uncovered numerous critical vulnerabilities in production systems, including several that traditional Static Application Security Testing tools were ill-equipped to find..."... [ Read it >> ]

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A Fourth FTX Executive Sentenced: Forfeits $11 Billion, But No Prison Time
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-03 01:23:01


Former FTX executive Nishad Singh was ordered to forfeit $11 billion, reports CNBC — and is subject to three years of supervised release, making him "the fourth ex-employee of the collapsed crypto exchange to be punished."
But while he'd faced a maximum sentence of 75 years, he'll serve no time, according to this report from the Associated Press:... [ Read it >> ]

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US Government Considers Legal Action Over Meta's Use of Financial Data for Ads
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-03 00:23:01


The Washington Post reports that America's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) "is considering legal action against Meta over allegations that it improperly used financial data obtained from third parties in its highly-lucrative advertising business..."
The article says a Meta securities filing Thursday revealed it had received a formal notification about the federal investigation last month.... [ Read it >> ]

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As Data Centers for AI Strain the Power Grid, Bills Rise for Everyday Customers
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2024-11-02 23:23:01


While Amazon, Google, and other companies build new data centers — sometimes for their AI projects — parts of America "are facing higher electric bills," reports the Washington Post:
The facilities' extraordinary demand for electricity to power and cool computers inside can drive up the price local utilities pay for energy and require significant improvements to electric grid transmission systems. As a result, costs have already begun going up for customers — or are about to in the near future, according to utility planning documents and energy industry analysts. Some regulators are concerned that the tech companies aren't paying their fair share, while leaving customers from homeowners to small businesses on the hook.... [ Read it >> ]

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