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 » Did the Plastic Industry Knowingly Push Recycling Myths For Decades?

Sunday 17 March 23:17:57 UTC 2024

A PBS reporter "digs into a new report covering the plastic industry's tactics to push recycling — and avoid regulation," according to a new video from PBS News Weekend: A new report by the Center for Climate Integrity, an environmentalist group, says newly uncovered statements from oil and plastics executives underscore the industry's decades-long secret skepticism about the viability and … [Link]

Slashdot » Mozilla Ends its Privacy-Friendly GPS-Style Location Service

Sunday 17 March 22:56:00 UTC 2024

Mozilla Location Service offered "a free, open way to offer GPS-style location detection features" for developers on devices without GPS hardware, remembers the Linux blog OMG Ubuntu. It used signals like Wi-Fi access points and Bluetooth beacons "without any of the privacy implications most competing geolocation services have." But Friday they reported that Mozilla "has announced it is ending access … [Link]

Slashdot » Dell Workers Can Stay Remote – But They're Not Going to Get Promoted

Sunday 17 March 21:54:00 UTC 2024

"Dell's strict new RTO mandate excludes fully remote workers from promotion," reports Business Insider. The site calls it "one of the most abrupt changes to remote work policies," noting that Dell "has had a hybrid working culture in place for more than a decade — long before the pandemic struck." "Dell cared about the work, not the location," a senior … [Link]

Slashdot » Why Are So Many AI Chatbots 'Dumb as Rocks'?

Sunday 17 March 20:56:00 UTC 2024

Amazon announced a new AI-powered chatbot last month — still under development — "to help you figure out what to buy," writes the Washington Post. Their conclusion? "[T]he chatbot wasn't a disaster. But I also found it mostly useless…" "The experience encapsulated my exasperation with new types of AI sprouting in seemingly every technology you use. If these chatbots are … [Link]

Slashdot » Free/Libre 'GnuCOBOL' Compiler Reaches Maturity, Can Compete with Proprietary Offerings

Sunday 17 March 19:56:00 UTC 2024

An anonymous reader shared this report: After 20 years of development, the open source GnuCOBOL "has reached an industrial maturity and can compete with proprietary offers in all environments," said OCamlPro founder and GnuCOBOL contributor Fabrice Le Fessant, in a FOSDEM talk about the technology. GnuCOBOL turns COBOL source code into executable applications. It is very cross-platform, running Linux, BSD, … [Link]

Slashdot » What's Next for SpaceX's Starship?

Sunday 17 March 18:56:00 UTC 2024

The Street interviewed Chad Anderson, founder/managing partner of the "space economy" investment firm Space Capital, who calls SpaceX's progress "unprecedented," and believes their next launch could carry "operational" payloads like Starlink satellites. Anderson added that Starship reaching orbital velocity and reentering the atmosphere at those speeds (roughly 16,000 miles per hour) was "a really big deal," though it's specifically important … [Link]

Slashdot » EFF Opposes America's Proposed TikTok Ban

Sunday 17 March 17:34:00 UTC 2024

A new EFF web page is urging U.S. readers to "Tell Congress: Stop the TikTok Ban," arguing the bill will "do little for its alleged goal of protecting our private information and the collection of our data by foreign governments." Tell Congress: Instead of giving the President the power to ban entire social media platforms based on their country of … [Link]

Slashdot » Boeing Whistleblower Found Dead in Apparent Suicide

Sunday 17 March 16:34:00 UTC 2024

A Boeing quality manager for more than 30 years "learned of and exposed very serious safety problems with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner," according to his lawyers, "and was retaliated against and subjected to a hostile work environment." After retiring in 2017 he'd filed a whistleblower retaliation case, and "was in the middle of giving deposition testimony… when he died, his … [Link]

Slashdot » US Investigates Fatal Crash of Ford EV With Partially Automated Driving System

Sunday 17 March 15:34:00 UTC 2024

America's National Transportation Safety Board "is investigating a fatal crash in San Antonio, Texas, involving a Ford electric vehicle that may have been using a partially automated driving system," reports the Associated Press: The NTSB said that preliminary information shows a Ford Mustang Mach-E SUV equipped with the company's partially automated driving system collided with the rear of a Honda … [Link]

Slashdot » Tiny Sea Creatures Could Help Unravel Flight MH370's Mysterious Disappearance.

Sunday 17 March 12:34:00 UTC 2024

After the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, barnacles offer "a potential breakthrough" in the search for its wreckage, reports WION: These barnacles were discovered clinging to the initial piece of debris conclusively linked to MH370 — a flaperon bearing the distinctive marking "657 BB," which washed ashore on Reunion Island, situated off the coast of Africa, a year … [Link]

Slashdot » TikTok is Banned in China, Notes X User Community – Along With Most US Social Media

Sunday 17 March 11:22:20 UTC 2024

Newsweek points out that a Chinese government post arguing the bill is "on the wrong side of fair competition" was flagged by users on X. "TikTok is banned in the People's Republic of China," the X community note read. (The BBC reports that "Instead, Chinese users use a similar app, Douyin, which is only available in China and subject to … [Link]

Slashdot » Social Psychologist Urges 'End the Phone-Based Childhood Now'

Sunday 17 March 8:04:00 UTC 2024

"The environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development," argues Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and business school ethics professor, saying that since the early 2010s, "something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents." The Atlantic recently published an excerpt from his book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic … [Link]

Slashdot » Pornhub Disables Website In Texas After Age-Verification Lawsuit

Sunday 17 March 5:04:00 UTC 2024

"Pornhub has disabled its site in Texas," reports the Hill, "to object to a state law that requires the company to verify the age of users to prevent minors from accessing the site." Texas residents who visit the site are met with a message from the company that criticizes the state's elected officials who are requiring them to track the … [Link]

Slashdot » Amazon Violated Rights of Workers Trying to Unionize, Labor Regulators Find

Sunday 17 March 2:42:50 UTC 2024

"Workers at an Amazon air hub in Kentucky celebrated a victory Thursday," reports the Washington Post, "after federal labor regulators found that Amazon violated labor law by trying to prevent workers there from unionizing." The employees have been demanding higher pay, more flexible schedules and safer working conditions since 2022. After a months-long investigation, the National Labor Relations Board issued … [Link]

Slashdot » Pi Calculated to 105 Trillion Digits. (Stored on 1 Petabyte of SSDs)

Sunday 17 March 1:34:00 UTC 2024

Pi was calculated to 100 trillion decimal places in 2022 by a Google team lead by cloud developer advocate Emma Haruka Iwao. But 2024's "pi day" saw a new announcement… After successfully breaking the speed record for calculating pi to 100 trillion digits last year, the team at StorageReview has taken it up a notch, revealing all the numbers of … [Link]

John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons