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 » Intel Prepares For $100 Billion Spending Spree Across Four US States
After securing billions in federal grants and loans, Reuters reports that the company is "planning a $100-billion spending spree across four U.S. states" to build and expand its chip manufacturing factories. From the report: The centerpiece of Intel's five-year spending plan is turning empty fields near Columbus, Ohio, into what CEO Pat Gelsinger described to reporters on Tuesday as "the … [Link]
Slashdot » Google Reshapes Fitbit In Its Image As Users Allege 'Planned Obsolescence'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google closed its Fitbit acquisition in 2021. Since then, the tech behemoth has pushed numerous changes to the wearable brand, including upcoming updates announced this week. While Google reshapes its fitness tracker business, though, some long-time users are regretting their Fitbit purchases and questioning if Google's practices will force them to … [Link]
Slashdot » Researcher Who Oversaw Flock Surveillance Study Now Questions How It Was Done
samleecole writes: Last month, the surveillance company Flock Safety published a study and press release claiming that its automated license plate readers (ALPR) are "instrumental in solving 10 percent of reported crime in the U.S." The study was done by Flock employees, and given legitimacy with the "oversight" of two academic researchers whose names are also on the paper. Now, … [Link]
Slashdot » Airbus CEO Says Boeing's Problems Are Bad For Whole Industry
Airbus takes no pleasure in the technical problems plaguing U.S. rival Boeing as they damage the image of the entire aerospace industry, said the CEO of the European planemaker. From a report: "I am not happy with the problems of my competitor. They are not good for the industry a whole," Guillaume Faury told the "Europe 2024" conference in Berlin, … [Link]
Slashdot » EU's Vestager Warns About Apple, Meta Fees, Disparaging Rival Products
EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager on Tuesday warned Apple and Meta on their new fees for their services, saying that this may hinder users from enjoying the benefits of the Digital Markets Act which aims to give them more choices. From a report: Apple announced a slew of changes in January in a bid to comply with the landmark EU … [Link]
Slashdot » Laid-off Techies Face 'Sense of Impending Doom' With Job Cuts at Highest Since Dot-com Crash
An anonymous reader shares a report: Since the start of the year, more than 50,000 workers have been laid off from over 200 tech companies, according to tracking website Layoffs.fyi. It's a continuation of the predominant theme of 2023, when more than 260,000 workers across nearly 1,200 tech companies lost their jobs. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft have all taken … [Link]
Slashdot » Apex Legends Hacker Said He Hacked Tournament Games 'For Fun'
An anonymous reader shares a report: On Sunday, the world of video games was shaken by a hacking and cheating scandal. During a competitive esports tournament of Apex Legends, a free-to-play shooter video game played by hundreds of thousands of players daily, hackers appeared to insert cheats into the games of two well-known streamers — effectively hacking the players midgame. … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Extinct freshwater dolphin from the Amazon was largest of all time
A dolphin that lived in the Amazon 16 million years ago grew to a length of 3.5 metres – larger than any other freshwater dolphin [Link]
New Scientist – News » Ancient canoes hint at bustling trade in Mediterranean 7000 years ago
Italian canoes capable of transporting people and goods have been dated to the Neolithic period, suggesting there was a bustling trade across the Mediterranean Sea [Link]
Slashdot » Why Do People Let Their Life Insurance Lapse?
The abstract of a new paper published on Journal of Financial Economics: We study aggregate lapsation risk in the life insurance sector. We construct two lapsation risk factors that explain a large fraction of the common variation in lapse rates of the 30 largest life insurance companies. The first is a cyclical factor that is positively correlated with credit spreads … [Link]
Slashdot » Intel Awarded Up To $8.5 Billion in CHIPS Act Grants, With Billions More in Loans Available
The White House said Wednesday Intel has been awarded up to $8.5 billion in CHIPS Act funding, as the Biden administration ramps up its effort to bring semiconductor manufacturing to U.S. soil. From a report: Intel could receive an additional $11 billion in loans from the CHIPS and Science Act, which was passed in 2022. The awards will be announced … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Billions of stars have swallowed up a planet
Twin stars that were born together should have the same composition, and the fact that many don’t suggests they have changed their chemistry by devouring planets [Link]
New Scientist – News » Ancient campsite may show how humans survived volcanic super-eruption
Evidence from an archaeological site in Ethiopia suggests ancient humans adapted their diet during a dry spell after the Toba volcano eruption 74,000 years ago [Link]
Slashdot » Ethereum Foundation Under Investigation by 'State Authority'
CoinDesk: The Ethereum Foundation — the Swiss non-profit organization at the heart of the Ethereum ecosystem — is under investigation by an unnamed "state authority," according to the group's website's GitHub repository. The scope of the investigation and its focus was unknown at press time. According to the GitHub commit dated Feb. 26, 2024, "we have received a voluntary enquiry … [Link]
Slashdot » OpenAI's Chatbot Store is Filling Up With Spam
An anonymous reader shares a report: When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced GPTs, custom chatbots powered by OpenAI's generative AI models, onstage at the company's first-ever developer conference in November, he described them as a way to "accomplish all sorts of tasks" — from programming to learning about esoteric scientific subjects to getting workout pointers. "Because [GPTs] combine instructions, expanded … [Link]
Slashdot » Users Ditch Glassdoor, Stunned By Site Adding Real Names Without Consent
Readers waspleg and SpzToid shared the following report: Glassdoor, where employees go to leave anonymous reviews of employers, has recently begun adding real names to user profiles without users' consent. Glassdoor acquired Fishbowl, a professional networking app that integrated with Glassdoor last July. This acquisition meant that every Glassdoor user was automatically signed up for a Fishbowl account. And because … [Link]
Slashdot » OpenAI To Release 'Materially Better' GPT-5 For Its Chatbot Mid-Year, Report Says
An anonymous reader shares a report: The generative AI company helmed by Sam Altman is on track to put out GPT-5 sometime mid-year, likely during summer, according to two people familiar with the company. Some enterprise customers have recently received demos of the latest model and its related enhancements to the ChatGPT tool, another person familiar with the process said. … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Flying drone can roll on the ground to save energy over long distances
Researchers claim to have combined the benefits of rolling robots with those of flying drones by creating a device that rotates along the ground but hops over obstacles [Link]
Slashdot » 'Disabling Cyberattacks' Are Hitting Critical US Water Systems, White House Warns
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Biden administration on Tuesday warned the nation's governors that drinking water and wastewater utilities in their states are facing "disabling cyberattacks" by hostile foreign nations that are targeting mission-critical plant operations. "Disabling cyberattacks are striking water and wastewater systems throughout the United States," Jake Sullivan, assistant to the President for … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Mathematician wins 2024 Abel prize for making sense of randomness
Michel Talagrand has won the 2024 Abel prize for his work researching probability theory and the extremes of randomness [Link]
Slashdot » Physicist Claims Universe Has No Dark Matter and Is Twice As Old As We Thought
schwit1 shares a report from ScienceAlert: Sound waves fossilized in the maps of galaxies across the Universe could be interpreted as signs of a Big Bang that took place 13 billion years earlier than current models suggest. Last year, theoretical physicist Rajendra Gupta from the University of Ottawa in Canada published a rather extraordinary proposal that the Universe's currently accepted … [Link]
Slashdot » Europe Turns To the Falcon 9 To Launch Its Navigation Satellites
The European Union has agreed to launch four Galileo navigation satellites on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket at a 30 percent premium over the standard launch price. Ars Technica reports: According to Politico, the security agreement permits staff working for the EU and European Space Agency to have access to the launch pad at all times and, should there be a … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Artists who use AI are more productive but less original
An analysis of work posted on a popular art-sharing website finds that users who adopted generative artificial intelligence tools increased their output, but saw a drop in novelty [Link]
Slashdot » Only Seven Countries Meet WHO Air Quality Standard, Research Finds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Only seven countries are meeting an international air quality standard, with deadly air pollution worsening in places due to a rebound in economic activity and the toxic impact of wildfire smoke, a new report has found. Of 134 countries and regions surveyed in the report, only seven — Australia, Estonia, Finland, … [Link]
Slashdot » Nvidia's Jensen Huang Says AGI Is 5 Years Away
Haje Jan Kamps writes via TechCrunch: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) — often referred to as "strong AI," "full AI," "human-level AI" or "general intelligent action" — represents a significant future leap in the field of artificial intelligence. Unlike narrow AI, which is tailored for specific tasks (such as detecting product flaws, summarize the news, or build you a website), AGI … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Human brains have been mysteriously preserved for thousands of years
Intact human brains 12,000 years old or more have been found in unexpected places such as shipwrecks and waterlogged graves, but it is unclear what preserved them [Link]
New Scientist – News » Amazingly preserved Bronze Age village reveals life in ancient England
A settlement in the east of England burned down in a fire 3000 years ago, falling into a muddy waterway that preserved everything inside the houses including tools, fabric, cooking pots and more [Link]
Slashdot » Modern Web Bloat Means Some Pages Load 21MB of Data
Christopher Harper reports via Tom's Hardware: Earlier this month, Danluu.com released an exhaustive 23-page analysis/op-ed/manifesto on the current status of unoptimized web pages and web app performance, finding that just loading a web page can even bog down an entry-level device that can run the popular game PUBG at 40 fps. In fact, the Wix webpage requires loading 21MB of … [Link]
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