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 » Road-Embedded Sensors to Find Street Parking Tested in Taiwanese City

Sunday 3 March 22:47:00 UTC 2024

Taiwan doesn't have parking meters, writes long-time Slashdot reader Badlands, "but rather roving armies of maids on electric scooters that cruise their area with their smartphone and take a pic of your license plate and timestamp it, leaving a receipt under your windshield wipers." But now one city will try "smart parking" services — which will also help drivers find … [Link]

Slashdot » NASA Shutters $2B Satellite Refueling Project, Blames Contractor For Delays.

Sunday 3 March 21:45:00 UTC 2024

"NASA said Friday it is shutting down a $2 billion satellite refueling project," reports UPI, "after criticizing the project's contractor for poor performance." The agency in a statement said it will discontinue the On-orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing 1 project after nearly a decade of work due to "continued technical, cost, and schedule challenges, and a broader community evolution away … [Link]

Slashdot » Researchers Create AI Worms That Can Spread From One System to Another

Sunday 3 March 20:45:00 UTC 2024

Long-time Slashdot reader Greymane shared this article from Wired: [I]n a demonstration of the risks of connected, autonomous AI ecosystems, a group of researchers has created one of what they claim are the first generative AI worms — which can spread from one system to another, potentially stealing data or deploying malware in the process. "It basically means that now … [Link]

Slashdot » How AI is Taking Water From the Desert

Sunday 3 March 19:03:00 UTC 2024

Microsoft built two datacenters west of Phoenix, with plans for seven more (serving, among other companies, OpenAI). "Microsoft has been adding data centers at a stupendous rate, spending more than $10 billion on cloud-computing capacity in every quarter of late," writes the Atlantic. "One semiconductor analyst called this "the largest infrastructure buildout that humanity has ever seen." But is this … [Link]

Slashdot » 'Communications of the ACM' Is Now Open Access

Sunday 3 March 17:34:00 UTC 2024

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: CACM [Communications of the ACM] Is Now Open Access," proclaims the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in its tear-down-this-CACM-paywall announcement. "More than six decades of CACM's renowned research articles, seminal papers, technical reports, commentaries, real-world practice, and news articles are now open to everyone, regardless of whether they are members of ACM or subscribe to … [Link]

Slashdot » Huawei's New CPU Matches Zen 3 In Single-Core Performance

Sunday 3 March 16:34:00 UTC 2024

Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes Tom's Hardware: A Geekbench 6 result features what is likely the first-ever look at the single-core performance of the Taishan V120, developed by Huawei's HiSilicon subsidiary (via @Olrak29_ on X). The single-core score indicates that Taishan V120 cores are roughly on par with AMD's Zen 3 cores from late 2020, which could mean Huawei's technology … [Link]

Slashdot » Linux Foundation Launches Open Source Fraud Prevention Solutions, Supported By Gates Foundation

Sunday 3 March 15:34:00 UTC 2024

This week Linux Foundation Charities launched "a groundbreaking open source software solution for real-time fraud prevention" named Tazama — "with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation." They're calling it "the first-ever open source platform dedicated to enhancing fraud management in digital payments." Until now, the financial industry has grappled with proprietary and often costly solutions that have limited … [Link]

Slashdot » Did Remote Working Doom a San Francisco Macy's?

Sunday 3 March 12:34:00 UTC 2024

"These days in San Francisco, every major business closure triggers a rush to assign blame," argues the San Francisco Standard: When Macy's announced this week that it would shutter its flagship store in Union Square, it unleashed a wave of mourning and recriminations… Mayor London Breed and other local pols like state Sen. Scott Wiener tried to allay fears that … [Link]

Slashdot » Rust Survey Finds Linux and VS Code Users, More WebAssembly Targeting

Sunday 3 March 8:34:00 UTC 2024

Rust's official survey team released results from their 8th annual survey "focused on gathering insights and feedback from Rust users". In terms of operating systems used by Rustaceans, the situation is very similar to the results from 2022, with Linux being the most popular choice of Rust users [69.7%], followed by macOS [33.5%] and Windows [31.9%], which have a very … [Link]

Slashdot » Japan's Moon Lander Survived a 354-Hour Lunar Night. Now It Faces a Second One

Sunday 3 March 5:04:00 UTC 2024

It completed the most precise landing ever on the moon — albeit upside-down. And then it faced a "lunar night" lasting about two weeks where temperatures drop to -270 degrees Fahrenheit, reports the Times of India. But then, "Despite not being designed for the extreme temperatures, SLIM surprised scientists by coming back to life after the two-week-long lunar night." More … [Link]

Slashdot » French Court Issues Damages Award For Violation of GPL

Sunday 3 March 3:04:00 UTC 2024

Some news from "Copyleft Currents", the blog of open-source/IP lawyer Heather Meeker: On February 14, 2024, the Court of Appeal of Paris issued an order stating that Orange, a major French telecom provider, had infringed the copyight of Entr'Ouvert's Lasso software and violated the GPL. They ordered Orange to pay €500,000 in compensatory damages and €150,000 for moral damages. This … [Link]

Slashdot » Boeing Now Also Ordered to Fix Anti-Ice System on 737 Max, 787 Jets

Sunday 3 March 0:20:00 UTC 2024

America's Federal Aviation administration "will require a fix for a new 737 MAX design problem discovered by Boeing that, although it's a remote possibility, could theoretically disable the jet's engine anti-ice system," reports the Seattle Times: A different flaw in the MAX's engine anti-ice system design drew scrutiny in January and forced the company to drop a request for an … [Link]

John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons