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 » McKinsey is Offering Staff Pay, Career Coaching If They Leave Firm
An anonymous reader shares a report: The management-consulting giant McKinsey is dangling career-coaching services and nine months' worth of pay to staffers keen on leaving the firm, the British newspaper The Times reported on Saturday. The Times reported that managers for McKinsey's UK offices could spend up to nine months searching for a job instead of working on client projects. … [Link]
Slashdot » The FTC is Trying To Help Victims of Impersonation Scams Get Their Money Back
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has a new way to combat the impersonation scams that it says cost people $1.1 billion last year alone. Effective today, the agency's rule "prohibits the impersonation of government, businesses, and their officials or agents in interstate commerce." The rule also lets the FTC directly file federal court complaints to force scammers to return money … [Link]
Slashdot » 'Smart Devices Are Turning Out To Be a Poor Investment'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Police, written by Dhruv Bhutani: As someone who is an early adopter of all things smart and has invested a significant amount of money in building a fancy smart home, it saddens me to say that I feel cheated by the thousands of dollars I've spent on smart devices. And it's not … [Link]
Slashdot » Apple AI Researchers Boast Useful On-Device Model That 'Substantially Outperforms' GPT-4
Zac Hall reports via 9to5Mac: In a newly published research paper (PDF), Apple's AI gurus describe a system in which Siri can do much more than try to recognize what's in an image. The best part? It thinks one of its models for doing this benchmarks better than ChatGPT 4.0. In the paper (ReALM: Reference Resolution As Language Modeling), Apple … [Link]
Slashdot » ChatGPT No Longer Requires an Account
OpenAI is making its flagship conversational AI accessible to everyone, even people who haven't bothered making an account. From a report: It won't be quite the same experience, however — and of course all your chats will still go into their training data unless you opt out. Starting today in a few markets and gradually rolling out to the rest … [Link]
Slashdot » The Pirate Bay's Oldest Torrent Is Now 20 Years Old
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Today, more than two decades have passed and most of the files shared on The Pirate Bay in the early years are no longer available. BitTorrent requires at least one person to share a full file copy, which is hard to keep up for decades. Surprisingly, however, several torrents have managed to … [Link]
Slashdot » OpenAI Removes Sam Altman's Ownership of Its Startup Fund
According to a filing with the SEC, OpenAI has removed CEO Sam Altman's ownership and control of the company's venture capital fund that backs AI startups. Reuters reports: The change, documented in the March 29 filing, came after Altman's ownership of the OpenAI Startup Fund raised eyebrows for its unusual structure–while being marketed similar to a corporate venture arm, the … [Link]
Slashdot » Scientist Who Gene-edited Babies Back in Lab and 'Proud' of Past Work Despite Jailing
A Chinese scientist who was imprisoned for his role in creating the world's first genetically edited babies says he has returned to his laboratory to work on the treatment of Alzheimer's and other genetic diseases. From a report: In an interview with a Japanese newspaper, He Jiankui said he had resumed research on human embryo genome editing, despite the controversy … [Link]
Slashdot » Perplexity, an AI Startup Attempting To Challenge Google, Plans To Sell Ads
An anonymous reader shares a report: Generative AI search engine Perplexity, which claims to be a Google competitor and recently snagged a $73.6 million Series B funding from investors like Jeff Bezos, is going to start selling ads, the company told ADWEEK. Perplexity uses AI to answer users' questions, based on web sources. It incorporates videos and images in the … [Link]
Slashdot » Huge AI Funding Leads To Hype and 'Grifting,' Warns DeepMind's Demis Hassabis
The surge of money flooding into AI has resulted in some crypto-like hype that is obscuring the incredible scientific progress in the field, according to Sir Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind. From a report: The chief executive of Google's AI research division told the Financial Times that the billions of dollars being poured into generative AI start-ups and products "brings … [Link]
New Scientist – News » ‘Yell at your robot’ technique teaches robots household chores
AI allows robots to listen to verbal instructions while learning to correctly perform household tasks. That could enable more natural interactions between humans and robots [Link]
New Scientist – News » Why our ageing world could accelerate progress in AI and robotics
We are heading for a demographic crunch later this century, but might a workforce of intelligent machines compensate for a likely lack of human workers? [Link]
Slashdot » Google Pledges To Destroy Browsing Data To Settle 'Incognito' Lawsuit
Google plans to destroy a trove of data that reflects millions of users' web-browsing histories, part of a settlement of a lawsuit that alleged the company tracked millions of users without their knowledge. WSJ: The class action, filed in 2020, accused Google of misleading users about how Chrome tracked the activity of anyone who used the private "Incognito" browsing option. … [Link]
Slashdot » For Data-Guzzling AI Companies, the Internet Is Too Small
Companies racing to develop more powerful artificial intelligence are rapidly nearing a new problem: The internet might be too small for their plans (non-paywalled link). From a report: Ever more powerful systems developed by OpenAI, Google and others require larger oceans of information to learn from. That demand is straining the available pool of quality public data online at the … [Link]
Slashdot » Microsoft To Unbundle Office and Teams Following Years-long Criticism
Microsoft will introduce a new version of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 subscription service that excludes Teams, unbundling a suite following scrutiny from the European Union regulator and complaints from rival Slack. From a report: The move follows Microsoft agreeing to sell Office 365 suite sans Microsoft Teams offering in the EU and Switzerland last year. The company introduced Teams … [Link]
New Scientist – News » How solar eclipses have been revealing cosmic secrets for centuries
Records of total solar eclipses go back thousands of years, and in all that time they have allowed scientists to uncover key information about not just the sun but the whole universe [Link]
Slashdot » 'Yes, We're All Trapped in the Matrix Now'
"As you're reading this, you're more likely than not already inside 'The Matrix'," according to a headline on the front page of CNN.com this weekend. It linked to an opinion piece by Rizwan Virk, founder of MIT's startup incubator/accelerator program. He's now a doctoral researcher at Arizona State University, where his profile identifies him as an "entrepreneur, video game pioneer, … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Why vigorous exercise could inadvertently lead to weight gain
Intense exercise may make the body compensate for energy used during this vigorous activity by reducing other forms of energy use, leading to weight gain, according to a study in mice [Link]
Slashdot » Arizona's Governor Signs Bill Making Pluto the Official State Planet
"Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona…" reads the official text of House Bill #2,477. "PLUTO IS THE OFFICIAL STATE PLANET." An anonymous reader shared this report from Capital Media Services: The governor signed legislation Friday designating Pluto as Arizona's "official state planet." It joins a list of other items the state has declared to be … [Link]
New Scientist – News » AI chatbots beat humans at persuading their opponents in debates
When people were challenged to debate contentious topics with a human or GPT-4, they were more likely to be won over by the artificial intelligence [Link]
The Joy of Tech » Apple's super-app crime.
Who doesn't want some bloat? [Link]
Slashdot » After Outer Space, 93-Year-Old William Shatner Leads Cruise to Antarctica
"Sail to a continent as mysterious as outer-space itself," the new web site urges. "William Shatner saw Earth from the highest view," writes Scripps News Service. "Now he's heading to the bottom of it — and inviting you to join him." The 93-year-old is setting sail for Antarctica on Dec. 19, which will mark just over three years since the … [Link]
Slashdot » YouTube Inspires 'True Crime Junkies' to Buy Sonar-Equipped Boat and Solve Cold-Case Mysteries
Described as a "non profit volunteer search team" on its official site, Sunshine State Sonar "found more than 350 cars in canals, ponds and waterways across Florida" in just the last two years, according to the Tampa Bay Times. It's owned by two half brothers — "weekend fishermen turned amateur underwater detectives." [T]he true-crime junkies dive into cold cases, searching … [Link]
Slashdot » Thorium: The Fastest Open Source Chromium-based Browser?
"After taking a look at Floorp Browser, I was left wondering whether there was a Chromium-based web browser that was as good, or even better than Chrome," writes a "First Look" reviewer at It's Foss News. "That is when I came across Thorium, a web-browser that claims to be the 'the fastest browser on Earth'." [Thorium] is backed by a … [Link]
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