John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons

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Geekish

Anyone who works as a freelancer these days has to be at least a bit familiar with techie things. But it isn’t just that. When I was a kid and those vaguely SF puppet shows were on the television and all the other kids wanted to be Greg Gogetem or Steve Savetheuniverse, I wanted to be the guy in a white coat and glasses called Doc or Brains. Here are some technology-related feeds I find useful and/or entertaining.

Slashdot » Doom Is Now Playable On a Lawnmower

Monday 26 February 23:40:00 UTC 2024

Landscaping tech company Husqvarna has partnered with Bethesda to bring the original 1993 Doom to its $2,000+ robotic lawnmowers. Kotaku reports: This new way to play Doom arrives in April on all Nera robotic lawnmower models. You don't have to pay for the game, either, just a $2,000+ lawnmower. Instead, just download it and play the shooter via the robo-mower's … [Link]

Slashdot » Open Source Movie Streaming Project 'Movie-Web' Shut Down By Hollywood Complaint

Monday 26 February 23:00:00 UTC 2024

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In recent months, Movie-Web has quickly gained popularity among a particular group of movie aficionados. The open source software, which is still available on GitHub, allows anyone to set up a movie search engine capable of streaming content from third-party sources. These external sources tend to have large libraries of pirated entertainment. … [Link]

Slashdot » OnePlus Watch 2 Launches With Wear OS 4, 100-Hour Battery

Monday 26 February 22:20:00 UTC 2024

Almost 3 years after launching the first OnePlus Watch, the Chinese smartphone company is launching a successor — this time powered by Wear OS 4. Utilizing a "hybrid interface," the OnePlus Watch 2 is able to offer 100 hours of battery life, or just over four full days of use. 9to5Google reports: To achieve that goal, the OnePlus Watch 2 … [Link]

New Scientist – News » Two lunar landers have fallen over – but they’re still doing okay

Monday 26 February 22:19:04 UTC 2024

The SLIM lander and the Odysseus lander both set down on the lunar surface on their sides, but they have each been able to send data back to Earth [Link]

Slashdot » 'Every PC Is Going To Be an AI PC'

Monday 26 February 21:40:00 UTC 2024

During a briefing at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Meghana Patwardhan, VP of Commercial Mobility at Dell Technology, told The Register that while the immediate future would consist of two worlds — one with AI hardware and one without — "every PC is going to be an AI PC in the longer term." From the report: In terms of new … [Link]

New Scientist – News » We finally know why live music makes us so emotional

Monday 26 February 21:30:58 UTC 2024

Hearing live music tugs at our heartstrings more than a recording, probably because it increases activity in an emotion-processing region in our brain [Link]

New Scientist – News » How one of the smallest fish makes a sound as loud as a firecracker

Monday 26 February 21:30:49 UTC 2024

The drumming sound of the 12-millimetre-long fish Danionella cerebrum can hit 140 decibels – now scientists have figured out how they do it [Link]

Slashdot » Sony Claims To Offer Subs 'Appropriate Value' For Deleting Digital Libraries

Monday 26 February 21:00:00 UTC 2024

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Sony is making an effort to appease customers who will lose their entire Funimation digital libraries when the anime streaming service merges into Crunchyroll. Currently, though, the company's plan for giving disappointed customers "an appropriate value" for their erased digital copies isn't very accessible or clear. Earlier this month, Sony-owned Funimation … [Link]

New Scientist – News » Wasabi could help preserve ancient Egyptian papyrus artefacts

Monday 26 February 20:30:40 UTC 2024

Ancient and fragile papyrus samples are at risk of being damaged by fungi, but a wasabi-based treatment can disinfect them without damage [Link]

Slashdot » LockBit Ransomware Gang Resurfaces With New Site

Monday 26 February 18:40:00 UTC 2024

wiredmikey writes: The LockBit ransomware operators launched a new leak site over the weekend, claiming they restored their infrastructure following a law enforcement takedown and invited affiliates to re-join the operation. Over the weekend, an individual involved with the RaaS, who uses the moniker of "LockBitSupp", launched a new leak site that lists hundreds of victim organizations and which contains … [Link]

Slashdot » Google Says Microsoft Offered To Sell Bing To Apple in 2018, But Search-quality Issues Got in the Way

Monday 26 February 18:01:00 UTC 2024

Microsoft offered to sell its Bing search engine to Apple in 2018, Google said in a court filing earlier this month. The document, from Google's antitrust case against the U.S. Justice Department, was unsealed on Friday. From a report: In the filing earlier this month, Google argued that Microsoft pitched Apple in 2009, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2020 about … [Link]

New Scientist – News » Weird white dwarf star has a metal scar after eating a planet

Monday 26 February 17:30:55 UTC 2024

Astronomers have spotted a white dwarf star with a patch of metal near one of its magnetic poles, which probably formed when the star devoured a small planet [Link]

New Scientist – News » Hard-to-digest starch supplements may help people lose weight

Monday 26 February 17:30:35 UTC 2024

A small trial has strengthened the idea that foods containing the special form of starch could lead to weight loss and improve blood glucose control [Link]

Slashdot » Apple's Decision To Drop iPhone Web Apps Comes Under Scrutiny in the EU

Monday 26 February 17:21:00 UTC 2024

Apple could soon face an investigation over its decision to discontinue iPhone web apps in the European Union, according to a report from the Financial Times. The Verge: The European Commission has reportedly sent Apple and app developers requests for more information to assist in its evaluation. "We are indeed looking at the compliance packages of all gatekeepers, including Apple," … [Link]

Slashdot » Supreme Court Hears Landmark Cases That Could Upend What We See on Social Media

Monday 26 February 16:40:00 UTC 2024

The US Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments Monday in two cases that could dramatically reshape social media, weighing whether states such as Texas and Florida should have the power to control what posts platforms can remove from their services. From a report: The high-stakes battle gives the nation's highest court an enormous say in how millions of Americans get … [Link]

Slashdot » Lenovo's Laptop Concept is Fully Transparent, But the Point Isn't Entirely Clear

Monday 26 February 16:01:00 UTC 2024

An anonymous reader shares a report from the ongoing Mobile World Congress trade show: This year's big scrum gatherer was Lenovo's long-rumored transparent laptop. It's real. It functions surprisingly well and — nearest anyone can tell — its existence is a testament to form over function. That's a perfectly fine thing to be when you're a concept device. When it … [Link]

Slashdot » $1 Billion Donation Will Provide Free Tuition at a Bronx Medical School

Monday 26 February 15:22:00 UTC 2024

Dr. Ruth Gottesman, a longtime professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, is making free tuition available to all students going forward. From a report: The 93-year-old widow of a Wall Street financier has donated $1 billion to a Bronx medical school, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, with instructions that the gift be used to cover tuition for … [Link]

New Scientist – News » Understanding sex differences in the brain is vital to mental health

Monday 26 February 14:45:01 UTC 2024

Whether the male and female brains diverge is a matter of great debate, but untangling the answer could be key to treating common mental health conditions. It could also reveal why certain health conditions seem to affect more men than women, such as autism and ADHD [Link]

Slashdot » Microsoft Strikes Deal With Mistral in Push Beyond OpenAI

Monday 26 February 14:31:00 UTC 2024

Microsoft has struck a deal with French AI startup Mistral as it seeks to broaden its involvement in the fast-growing industry beyond OpenAI. From a report: The US tech giant will provide the 10-month-old Paris-based company with help in bringing its AI models to market. Microsoft will also take a minor stake in Mistral, although the financial details have not … [Link]

Slashdot » Nvidia CEO Says Kids Shouldn't Learn To Code

Monday 26 February 14:01:00 UTC 2024

theodp writes: Asked at the recent World Government Summit in Dubai what people should focus on when it comes to education, what should they learn, and how they should educate their kids and their societies, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made a counterintuitive break from tech CEOs advising youngsters to learn how to code. Huang argued that, even at this early … [Link]

Slashdot » Bezos, Nvidia Join OpenAI in Funding Humanoid Robot Startup

Monday 26 February 12:34:00 UTC 2024

OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Jeff Bezos are all part of a pack of investors in a business "developing human-like robots," reports Bloomberg, "according to people with knowledge of the situation…" At the startup — which is named "Figure" — engineers "are working on a robot that looks and moves like a human. The company has said it hopes its machine, … [Link]

New Scientist – News » Mathematicians discover 'soft cell' shapes behind the natural world

Monday 26 February 11:00:15 UTC 2024

The mathematical study of how repeating tiles fit together usually involves pointed shapes like triangles or squares, but these aren't normally found in the natural world [Link]

New Scientist – News » Resurrecting loved ones as AI 'ghosts' could harm your mental health

Monday 26 February 9:00:40 UTC 2024

It may soon be possible to recreate the persona of someone who has died by training an artificial intelligence on their emails and texts – but is it a good idea? [Link]

Slashdot » Would You Use a Laptop with a Transparent Screen?

Monday 26 February 8:34:00 UTC 2024

At CNN's product review site, one electronics reporter wrote they were "dumbfounded", "surprised," and "shocked" by the transparent screen on Lenovo's ThinkBook Transparent Display prototype. "This Micro LED screen is no slouch, either; a Full HD panel with up to 1,000 nits of brightness…" Let's get the big issue out of the way early: Lenovo is merely boasting what it … [Link]

New Scientist – News » Huge set of galaxies is set to form largest cluster in known universe

Monday 26 February 7:00:38 UTC 2024

Astronomers have spotted a gargantuan protocluster – the primordial beginnings of a galaxy cluster – by searching near a quasar in the early universe [Link]

Slashdot » Waymo's Self-Driving Cars Keep Hitting Things: A Cyclist, a Gate, and a Pickup Truck

Monday 26 February 4:34:00 UTC 2024

The Washington Post reports: Google's self-driving car company, Waymo, is hitting resistance in its quest to expand 24/7 robotaxi service to other parts of California, including a series of incidents that have fed public officials' safety concerns about the vehicles coming to their cities. Over eight days in February, for example, a Waymo vehicle smashed into a closing gate while … [Link]

The Joy of Tech » Take stock, Reddit!

Monday 26 February 3:36:23 UTC 2024

JoT thumbYou’ve earned it! [Link]

Slashdot » $500 Drone Calculates Its GPS Coordinates Offline from Downloaded Google Maps and a Camera

Monday 26 February 2:34:00 UTC 2024

From a report: A team of drone enthusiasts have built a sub-$500 drone that uses a camera and Google Maps to provide itself with GPS co-ordinates, removing the need for a GPS satellite signal. And all of this was done in 24 hours during the El Segundo Defense Tech Hackathon. The drone the trio opted for is a custom designed … [Link]

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