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 » Midjourney Bans All Stability AI Employees Over Alleged Data Scraping
Jess Weatherbed reports via The Verge: Midjourney says it has banned Stability AI staffers from using its service, accusing employees at the rival generative AI company of causing a systems outage earlier this month during an attempt to scrape Midjourney's data. Midjourney posted an update to its Discord server on March 2nd that acknowledged an extended server outage was preventing … [Link]
Slashdot » AirPods Pro To Gain 'Hearing Aid Mode' In iOS 18
According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, AirPods Pro will gain a new "hearing aid mode" with the release of iOS 18 later this year. MacRumors reports: Writing in the subscriber edition of his regular Power On newsletter, Gurman claims that the "big news" for AirPods Pro in the near term will be support for a hearing aid-style function when iOS 18 … [Link]
Slashdot » EU's Use of Microsoft 365 Found To Breach Data Protection Rules
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A lengthy investigation into the European Union's use of Microsoft 365 has found the Commission breached the bloc's data protection rules through its use of the cloud-based productivity software. Announcing its decision in a press release today, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) said the Commission infringed "several key data protection rules … [Link]
Slashdot » Worldcoin Fails To Get Injunction Against Spain's Privacy Suspension
Controversial eyeball scanning startup Worldcoin has failed to get an injunction against a temporary suspension ordered Wednesday by Spain's data protection authority, the AEPD. TechCrunch: The authority used emergency powers contained in the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to make the local order, which can apply for up to three months. It said it was taking the precautionary … [Link]
New Scientist – News » The moons of Mars may have been formed in an icy planetary collision
The origins of Mars’s moons Phobos and Deimos have long been an enigma, but they may have been formed when a icy, comet-like object slammed into the Red Planet [Link]
Slashdot » Automakers Are Sharing Consumers' Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies
Automakers, including G.M., Honda, Kia, and Hyundai, have been collecting detailed driving data from millions of Americans through internet-enabled connected-car apps. The data, which includes information on speed, hard braking, and rapid accelerations, is shared with data brokers like LexisNexis. These brokers then provide the information to insurance companies, which use it to personalize coverage and set rates, The New … [Link]
Slashdot » Boeing's Woes Continue as 50 Injured on Australia-New Zealand Flight
Dozens of people have been injured by what officials described as a "strong movement" on a Chilean flight from Australia to New Zealand. From a report: In a statement on Monday, Chilean LATAM Airlines blamed the injuries on "a technical event during the flight which caused a strong movement." It is just the latest in a series of safety-related incidents … [Link]
New Scientist – News » There are growing fears of an alarming shift in Antarctic sea ice
Antarctic sea ice cover remains far below average levels for the third year in a row, but researchers are uncertain whether this is a permanent shift driven by climate change or part of natural fluctuations [Link]
New Scientist – News » The war in Gaza is creating a health crisis that will span decades
Physical injuries, mental health issues and malnutrition are widespread in Gaza – and major health groups have no firm plans to address the impending crisis [Link]
New Scientist – News » Babies with bilingual mothers have distinct brainwaves at 1 day old
Newborns whose mothers speak two languages appear to have distinct brain responses to speech compared with those born to monolingual mothers, supporting the idea that language acquisition begins in the uterus [Link]
Slashdot » U. of Texas at Austin Will Return To Standardized Test Requirement
The University of Texas at Austin said Monday that it would again require standardized tests for admissions (non-paywalled source), becoming the latest selective university to reinstate requirements for SAT or ACT scores that were abandoned during the pandemic. From a report: A few years ago, about 2,000 colleges across the country began to move away from requiring test scores, at … [Link]
Slashdot » US Will 'Do Whatever It Takes' To Curb China Tech, Raimondo Says
The US could further tighten controls on China's access to sophisticated semiconductor technologies, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said, signaling Washington may intensify its campaign to prevent Beijing catching up in military capabilities. From a report: "We cannot allow China to have access for their military advancement to our most sophisticated technology," she told reporters in Manila on Monday. "So yes, … [Link]
Slashdot » US Must Move 'Decisively' To Avert 'Extinction-Level' Threat From AI, Gov't-Commissioned Report Says
The U.S. government must move "quickly and decisively" to avert substantial national security risks stemming from artificial intelligence (AI) which could, in the worst case, cause an "extinction-level threat to the human species," says a report commissioned by the U.S. government published on Monday. Time: "Current frontier AI development poses urgent and growing risks to national security," the report, which … [Link]
Slashdot » France Says Several Agencies Hit by 'Intense' Cyberattacks
Several French government agencies were hit by "intense" cyberattacks beginning Sunday night. From a report: The attacks' impact on most services has been reduced and access to agencies' websites restored, the prime minister's office said in a statement Monday. 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. [Link]
New Scientist – News » Indigenous Australians have managed land with fire for 11,000 years
Lake sediments reveal the ancient history of Aboriginal people’s use of fire to manage the landscape, a tradition that has benefits for biodiversity [Link]
Slashdot » Airbnb is Banning Indoor Security Cameras
Airbnb will no longer allow hosts to use indoor security cameras, regardless of where they're placed or what they're used for. In an update on Monday, Airbnb says the change to "prioritize the privacy" of renters goes into effect on April 30th. From a report: The vacation rental app previously let hosts install security cameras in "common areas" of listings, … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Blind cave fish offers lessons in how to survive starvation
Unlike most other animals, the cave-dwelling Mexican tetra doesn’t get a fatty liver when it is malnourished – and its secrets could lead to medical benefits for other species [Link]
Slashdot » Linux 6.9 Will Be the First To Top 10 Million Git Objects
An anonymous reader shares a report: Linus Torvalds has released version 6.8 of the Linux Kernel. "So it took a bit longer for the commit counts to come down this release than I tend to prefer," Torvalds wrote on the Linx kernel mailing list on Sunday, "but a lot of that seemed to be about various selftest updates (networking in … [Link]
Slashdot » Jensen Huang Says Even Free AI Chips From Competitors Can't Beat Nvidia's GPUs
An anonymous reader shares a report: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently took to the stage to claim that Nvidia's GPUs are "so good that even when the competitor's chips are free, it's not cheap enough." Huang further explained that Nvidia GPU pricing isn't really significant in terms of an AI data center's total cost of ownership (TCO). The impressive scale … [Link]
Slashdot » xAI Will Open-Source Grok This Week
Elon Musk's AI startup xAI will open-source Grok, its chatbot rivaling ChatGPT, this week, the entrepreneur said, days after suing OpenAI and complaining that the Microsoft-backed startup had deviated from its open-source roots. From a report: xAI released Grok last year, arming it with features including access to "real-time" information and views undeterred by "politically correct" norms. The service is … [Link]
New Scientist – News » We should be open about organoid research to avoid a backlash
Research that involves creating "mini-organs" from human cells, including those from fetuses, may leave people uncomfortable – so the best approach is to explain the reasoning behind the work and its potential benefits [Link]
Slashdot » Oscars 2024: Netflix Wins Just One Award and Apple Shut Out After Streamers Combine for 32 Nominations
Streamers narrowly avoided getting shut out at the 2024 Oscars: Netflix came away with just one trophy and Apple left empty-handed, after they garnered a total of 32 nominations. From a report: Netflix collected its one win for Wes Anderson's "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar," an adaptation of a Roald Dahl story, in the live action short film category. … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Flightless terror birds stalked Antarctica after the dinosaurs' demise
Two fossil claws found on Seymour Island reveal that phorusrhacids, or terror birds, lived in Antarctica 50 million years ago and were probably the apex predator [Link]
Slashdot » US Intelligence Officer Explains Roswell, UFO Sightings
CNN's national security analyst interviewed a U.S. intelligence officer who worked on the newly-released Defense report debunking UFO sightings — physicist Sean Kirkpatrick. He tells CNN "about two to five percent" of UFO reports are "truly anomalous." But CNN adds that "he thinks explanations for that small percentage will most likely be found right here on Earth…" This is how … [Link]
Slashdot » Canada's 'Online Harms' Bill Would Be an Assault On Free Speech, Civil Liberties Groups Say
A Toronto Sun columnist writes that two Canadian civil liberties groups are "sounding alarms" about the proposed new Online Harms Act (C-63): The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) and the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) say while the proposed legislation contains legitimate measures to protect children from online sexual abuse, cyber-bulling and self-harm, and to combat the spread of so-called "revenge … [Link]
Slashdot » OpenTTD (Unofficial Remake of 'Transport Tycoon Deluxe' Game) Turns 20
In 1995 Scottish video game designer Chris Sawyer created the business simulator game Transport Tycoon Deluxe — and within four years, Wikipedia notes, work began on the first version of an open source version that's still being actively developed. "According to a study of the 61,154 open-source projects on SourceForge in the period between 1999 and 2005, OpenTTD ranked as … [Link]
The Joy of Tech » Facebook warns TikTok!
The Trump dump is coming! [Link]
Slashdot » Misconfigured Cloud Servers Targeted with Linux Malware for New Cryptojacking Campaign
Researchers at Cado Security Labs received an alert about a honeypot using the Docker Engine API. "A Docker command was received…" they write, "that spawned a new container, based on Alpine Linux, and created a bind mount for the underlying honeypot server's root directory…" Typically, this is exploited to write out a job for the Cron scheduler to execute… In … [Link]
Slashdot » Mock 'News' Sites With Russian Ties Pop Up in U.S.
An anonymous reader shared this story from the New York Times: Into the depleted field of journalism in America, a handful of websites have appeared in recent weeks with names suggesting a focus on news close to home: D.C. Weekly, the New York News Daily, the Chicago Chronicle and a newer sister publication, the Miami Chronicle. In fact, they are … [Link]
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