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 » Air Industry Trends Safer, But 'Flukish' Second Crash Led Boeing to Mishandled Media Storm, WSJ Argues

Saturday 23 March 22:34:00 UTC 2024

There's actually "a global trend toward increased air safety," notes a Wall Street Journal columnist. And even in the case of the two fatal Boeing crashes five years ago, he stresses that they were "were two different crashes," with the second happening only "after Boeing and the FAA issued emergency directives instructing pilots how to compensate for Boeing's poorly designed … [Link]

Slashdot » ''Tetris Reversed'? Alexey Pajitnov Shows Footage From Rediscovered Prototype for 'Tetris' Sequel

Saturday 23 March 21:34:00 UTC 2024

Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov and others spoke at the Game Developers Conference about Tetris Reversed, reports VentureBeat — and told the story of "a lost prototype of a Tetris game that was never published." But little did Pajitnov know that an engineer in charge of the game, Vedran Klanac, had kept a copy of it. Through the help of intermediaries, … [Link]

Slashdot » A Problem for Sun-Blocking Cloud Geoengineering? Clouds Dissipate

Saturday 23 March 20:34:00 UTC 2024

Slashdot reader christoban writes: In what may be an issue for Sun-obscuring strategies to combat global warming, it turns out that during solar eclipses, low level cumulus clouds rapidly disappear, reducing by a factor of 4, researchers have found. The news comes from the science magazine Eos (published by the nonprofit organization of atmosphere/ocean/space scientists, the American Geophysical Union). Victor … [Link]

Slashdot » New 'Loop DoS' Attack May Impact Up to 300,000 Online Systems

Saturday 23 March 19:33:00 UTC 2024

BleepingComputer reports on "a new denial-of-service attack dubbed 'Loop DoS' targeting application layer protocols." According to their article, the attack "can pair network services into an indefinite communication loop that creates large volumes of traffic." Devised by researchers at the CISPA Helmholtz-Center for Information Security, the attack uses the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and impacts an estimated 300,000 host and … [Link]

Slashdot » Could a Guilty Plea Free Julian Assange From Jail?

Saturday 23 March 18:34:00 UTC 2024

America's Justice Department "is considering whether to allow Julian Assange to plead guilty to a reduced charge of mishandling classified information," reports the Wall Street Journal, citing "people familiar with the matter." Though Assange faces trial for publishing thousands of confidential U.S. documents in 2010, this development opens up "the possibility of a deal that could eventually result in his … [Link]

Slashdot » Netflix's '3 Body Problem' Draws Mixed Reviews, Sparks Anger in China

Saturday 23 March 17:34:00 UTC 2024

"My favorite kind of science fiction involves stories rooted in real science…" writes NPR's reviewer. "[T]here is something special about seeing characters wrestle with concepts closer to our current understanding of how the universe works." The Verge calls it an "impressive" and "leaner" story than the book, arguing "it's a good one — and very occasionally a great one" that … [Link]

Slashdot » Pregnancy May Increase Biological Age 2 Years – But Some End Up 'Younger'

Saturday 23 March 16:34:00 UTC 2024

Slashdot reader sciencehabit shared this report from Science magazine: Nurturing a growing fetus requires a series of profound physical, hormonal, and chemical changes that may rewire every major organ in the body and can cause serious health complications such as hypertension and preeclampsia. But does being pregnant actually take years off your life…? Today in Cell Metabolism, scientists report that … [Link]

Slashdot » Apple Criticized For Changing the macOS version of cURL

Saturday 23 March 15:34:00 UTC 2024

"On December 28 2023, bugreport 12604 was filed in the curl issue tracker," writes cURL lead developer Daniel Stenberg: The title stated of the problem in this case was quite clear: flag -cacert behavior isn't consistent between macOS and Linux , and it was filed by Yuedong Wu. The friendly reporter showed how the curl version bundled with macOS behaves … [Link]

Slashdot » Microsoft Confirms Windows Server Security Update Caused Memory Leak, 'Unscheduled' Reboots

Saturday 23 March 14:34:00 UTC 2024

"Microsoft confirmed that a memory leak introduced with the March 2024 Windows Server security updates is behind a widespread issue causing Windows domain controllers to crash," BleepingComputer reported Thursday. Friday Microsoft wrote that the issue "was resolved in the out-of-band update KB5037422," only available via the Microsoft Update Catalog. (The update "is not available from Windows Update and will not … [Link]

Slashdot » Trump's Truth Social Is Going Public

Saturday 23 March 13:00:00 UTC 2024

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Former president Donald Trump'sTruth Social, a shameless Twitter clone, is set to become a publicly traded company as soon as next week. Shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corp. voted on Friday to merge with Trump Media and Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social. The vote is a culmination of a years-long … [Link]

Slashdot » Truck-To-Truck Worm Could Infect Entire US Fleet

Saturday 23 March 10:00:00 UTC 2024

Jessica Lyons reports via The Register: Vulnerabilities in common Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) required in US commercial trucks could be present in over 14 million medium- and heavy-duty rigs, according to boffins at Colorado State University. In a paper presented at the 2024 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, associate professor Jeremy Daily and systems engineering graduate students Jake Jepson … [Link]

Slashdot » AI Surpasses Doctors In Spotting Early Breast Cancer Signs In NHS Trial

Saturday 23 March 7:00:00 UTC 2024

An AI tool named Mia, tested by the NHS, successfully detected signs of breast cancer in 11 women which had been missed by human doctors. The BBC reports: The tool, called Mia, was piloted alongside NHS clinicians and analyzed the mammograms of over 10,000 women. Most of them were cancer-free, but it successfully flagged all of those with symptoms, as … [Link]

Slashdot » World's First Nuclear Fusion-Powered Electric Propulsion Drive Unveiled

Saturday 23 March 3:30:00 UTC 2024

An anonymous reader quotes a report from InterestingEngineering: A concept that began as a doodle at a conference years ago is now becoming a reality. RocketStar Inc. has showcased (PDF) its advanced nuclear-based propulsion technology called the FireStar Drive. It is said to be the world's first electric device for spacecraft propulsion boosted by nuclear fusion. Recently, the company announced … [Link]

Slashdot » New 'GoFetch' Apple CPU Attack Exposes Crypto Keys

Saturday 23 March 2:02:00 UTC 2024

"There is a new side channel attack against Apple 'M' series CPUs that does not appear to be fixable without a major performance hit," writes Slashdot reader EncryptedSoldier. SecurityWeek reports: A team of researchers representing several universities in the United States has disclosed the details of a new side-channel attack method that can be used to extract secret encryption keys … [Link]

Slashdot » Database For UK Nurse Registration 'Completely Unacceptable'

Saturday 23 March 1:25:00 UTC 2024

Lindsay Clark reports via The Register: The UK Information Commissioner's Office has received a complaint detailing the mismanagement of personal data at the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), the regulator that oversees worker registration. Employment as a nurse or midwife depends on enrollment with the NMC in the UK. According to whistleblower evidence seen by The Register, the databases on … [Link]

Slashdot » Users Shocked To Find Instagram Limits Political Content By Default

Saturday 23 March 0:45:00 UTC 2024

Instagram has been limiting recommended political content by default without notifying users. Ars Technica reports: Instead, Instagram rolled out the change in February, announcing in a blog that the platform doesn't "want to proactively recommend political content from accounts you don't follow." That post confirmed that Meta "won't proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads," … [Link]

Slashdot » General Motors Quits Sharing Driving Behavior With Data Brokers

Saturday 23 March 0:02:00 UTC 2024

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: General Motors said Friday that it had stopped sharing details about how people drove its cars with two data brokers that created risk profiles for the insurance industry. The decision followed a New York Times report this month that G.M. had, for years, been sharing data about drivers' mileage, … [Link]

John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons