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 » TikTok Starts Testing Its Instagram Competitor 'TikTok Notes'
TikTok has started testing its Instagram competitor, TikTok Notes, in Canada and Australia. TechCrunch reports: The company said on X that it is in the "early stage" of the app's rollout and that the app is "a dedicated space for photo and text content." "We hope that the TikTok community will use TikTok Notes to continue sharing their moments through … [Link]
Slashdot » Boston Dynamics' New Atlas Robot Is a Swiveling, Shape-Shifting Nightmare
Jess Weatherbed reports via The Verge: It's alive! A day after announcing it was retiring Atlas, its hydraulic robot, Boston Dynamics has introduced a new, all-electric version of its humanoid machine. The next-generation Atlas robot is designed to offer a far greater range of movement than its predecessor. Boston Dynamics wanted the new version to show that Atlas can keep … [Link]
Slashdot » Feds Appoint 'AI Doomer' To Run US AI Safety Institute
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US AI Safety Institute — part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)—has finally announced its leadership team after much speculation. Appointed as head of AI safety is Paul Christiano, a former OpenAI researcher who pioneered a foundational AI safety technique called reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), … [Link]
New Scientist – News » What is cloud seeding and did it cause the floods in Dubai?
Cloud seeding almost certainly did not play a significant role in the flooding on the Arabian peninsula this week – but the heavy rains may have been exacerbated by climate change [Link]
Slashdot » AltStore PAL Alternative App Marketplace Launches On iPhone In EU
AltStore PAL has become one of the first alternative app marketplaces to launch in the European Union. Developed by Riley Testut, AltStore PAL is marketed as an open-source project designed to distribute apps from independent developers. MacRumors reports: At launch, it features two apps, including Testut's Delta game emulator and clipboard manager app Clip. Delta is also being simultaneously released … [Link]
Slashdot » Trump Media Shares Down 14% After Company Says Truth Social To Launch TV Streaming
Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., which has been called the "mother of all meme stocks" after it made its stock market debut in late March, announced that its Truth Social platform is moving to launch a live TV streaming platform. Following the news, shares of DJT closed more than 14% lower Tuesday. They ended trading Monday down by more … [Link]
Slashdot » Hackers Voice Cloned the CEO of LastPass For Attack
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Futurism: In a new blog post from LastPass, the password management firm used by countless personal and corporate clients to help protect their login information, the company explains that someone used AI voice-cloning tech to spoof the voice of its CEO in an attempt to trick one of its employees. As the company … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Ancient marine reptile found on UK beach may be the largest ever
The jawbone of an ichthyosaur uncovered in south-west England has been identified as a new species, and researchers estimate that the whole animal was 20 to 25 metres long [Link]
New Scientist – News » Ancient humans lived inside a lava tube in the Arabian desert
Underground tunnels created by lava flows provided humans with shelter for thousands of years beneath the hot desert landscape of Saudi Arabia [Link]
New Scientist – News » Old-fashioned pessimism might actually help us fight climate change
Negative thinking is unpopular but it could drive more realistic efforts to limit harm from global warming [Link]
Slashdot » What Caused the Storm That Brought Dubai To a Standstill?
An anonymous reader shares a report: A storm hit the United Arab Emirates and Oman this week bringing record rainfall that flooded highways, inundated houses, grid-locked traffic and trapped people in their homes. […] In the UAE, a record 254 millimetres (10 inches) of rainfall was recorded in Al Ain, a city bordering Oman. It was the largest ever in … [Link]
Slashdot » AI Computing Is on Pace To Consume More Energy Than India, Arm Says
AI's voracious need for computing power is threatening to overwhelm energy sources, requiring the industry to change its approach to the technology, according to Arm Chief Executive Officer Rene Haas. From a report: By 2030, the world's data centers are on course to use more electricity than India, the world's most populous country, Haas said. Finding ways to head off … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Skin-deep wounds can damage gut health in mice
We know there is some connection between skin and gut health, but many assumed the gut was the one calling the shots. A new study suggests that the influence can go the other way [Link]
Slashdot » Average World Incomes To Drop By Nearly a Fifth By 2050, Study Says
Average incomes will fall by almost a fifth within the next 26 years as a result of the climate crisis, according to a study that predicts the costs of damage will be six times higher than the price of limiting global heating to 2C. From a report: Rising temperatures, heavier rainfall and more frequent and intense extreme weather are projected … [Link]
Slashdot » Escobar Brother Barred by EU Court From Trademarking Family Name
Pablo Escobar, the name of the late Colombian drug kingpin, can't be registered as a trademark in the European Union after judges said that approving his brother's bid would go against "principles of morality." From a report: The public "associate that name with drug trafficking and narco-terrorism and with the crimes and suffering resulting therefrom, rather than with his possible … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Intel reveals world's biggest 'brain-inspired' neuromorphic computer
A computer intended to mimic the way the brain processes and stores data could potentially improve the efficiency and capabilities of artificial intelligence models [Link]
New Scientist – News » Turning plants blue with gene editing could make robot weeding easier
Weeding robots can sometimes struggle to tell weeds from crops, but genetically modifying the plants we want to keep to make them brightly coloured would make the job easier, suggest a group of researchers [Link]
New Scientist – News » A cicada double brood is coming – it's less rare than you think
Up to 17 US states could be peppered with more than a trillion cicadas this spring, and though it has been a while since these two specific broods emerged at once, double broods are not that rare [Link]
Slashdot » Amazon Cloud Unit Kills Snowmobile Data Transfer Truck Service
At Amazon's annual cloud conference in 2016, the company captured the crowd's attention by driving an 18-wheeler onstage. Andy Jassy, now Amazon's CEO, called it the Snowmobile, and said the company would be using the truck to help customers speedily transfer data to Amazon Web Services facilities. Less than eight years later, the semi is out of commission. From a … [Link]
Slashdot » A Spy Site Is Scraping Discord and Selling Users' Messages
404 Media: An online service is scraping Discord servers en masse, archiving and tracking users' messages and activity across servers including what voice channels they join, and then selling access to that data for as little as $5. Called Spy Pet, the service's creator says it scrapes more than ten thousand Discord servers, and besides selling access to anyone with … [Link]
Slashdot » Telegram Founder Accuses Google and Apple of Censorship Threat
Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram messaging app, has accused tech giants Google and Apple of threatening to censor content on smartphones [YouTube link]. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Durov claimed that these companies told Telegram to comply with their guidelines or face removal from their app stores. "Those two platforms, they could basically censor everything you can read, … [Link]
Slashdot » Dropbox CEO Says Employees Appreciate Remote Work More Than Cushy Office Perks
Dropbox cofounder and CEO Drew Houston said he views his employees like customers, and that means giving them what they want — which isn't in-person work. From a report: "We will support however they want to gather," Houston said in a new interview with The Verge. "But we're finding that these retreats and off-sites and things like that are often … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Dusting farms with waste concrete could boost yields and lock up CO2
Ground-up concrete can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a similar way to ground-up rocks, according to a field study in Ireland [Link]
Slashdot » Cloudflare DDoS Threat Report For 2024 Q1
Cloudflare, in a blog post: Key insights from the first quarter of 2024 include: 1. 2024 started with a bang. Cloudflare's defense systems automatically mitigated 4.5 million DDoS attacks during the first quarter — representing a 50% year-over-year (YoY) increase. 2. DNS-based DDoS attacks increased by 80% YoY and remain the most prominent attack vector. 3. DDoS attacks on Sweden … [Link]
Slashdot » Broadcom Throws VMware Customers On Perpetual Licenses a Lifeline
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: In a Monday post, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan restated his belief that VMware's portfolio was too complex, and too poorly integrated, for the virtualization giant to represent true competition for hyperscale clouds. Broadcom's injection of R&D cash, he insisted, will see VMware's flagship Cloud Foundation suite evolve to become more powerful … [Link]
Slashdot » SEC Targets Its Own Staff's Texting, Nixes WhatsApp On Work Phones
The SEC has blocked third-party messaging apps and texts from employees' work phones, "bringing its own practices closer to the standards it's enforcing for the industry," reports Bloomberg. From the report: The SEC's decision to block disappearing-messaging apps will help improve record-keeping and address potential security vulnerabilities at the agency, which saw one of its social-media accounts compromised earlier this … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Colonies of single-celled creatures could explain how embryos evolved
We know little about how embryonic development in animals evolved from single-celled ancestors, but simple organisms with a multicellular life stage offer intriguing clues [Link]
Slashdot » NASA Confirms That Debris From ISS Crashed Into Florida Home
NASA has confirmed that a piece of metal that tore through a Florida home last month was space junk from the International Space Station. NBC News reports: The agency confirmed Monday that the 1.6-pound object was debris from a cargo pallet that had been intentionally released from the space station three years ago. The pallet, packed with aging batteries, was … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Sleeping bumblebees can survive underwater for a week
A serendipitous lab accident revealed that hibernating bumblebee queens can make it through days of flooding, revealing that they are less vulnerable to extreme weather than previously thought [Link]
Slashdot » Google Workers Protest Cloud Contract With Israel's Government
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Dozens of Google employees began occupying company offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California, on Tuesday in protest of the company's $1.2 billion contract providing cloud computing services to the Israeli government. The sit-in, organized by the activist group No Tech for Apartheid, is happening at Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian's … [Link]
Slashdot » State Tax Officials Are Using AI To Go After Wealthy Payers
State tax collectors, particularly in New York, have intensified their audit efforts on high earners, leveraging artificial intelligence to compensate for a reduced number of auditors. CNBC reports: In New York, the tax department reported 771,000 audits in 2022 (the latest year available), up 56% from the previous year, according to the state Department of Taxation and Finance. At the … [Link]
Slashdot » Framework's Software and Firmware Have Been a Mess
Framework, the company known for designing and selling upgradeable, modular laptops, has struggled with providing up-to-date software for its products. Ars Technica's Andrew Cunningham spoke with CEO Nirav Patel to discuss how the company is working on fixing these issues. Longtime Slashdot reader snikulin shares the report: Driver bundles remain un-updated for years after their initial release. BIOS updates go … [Link]
Slashdot » 'Crescendo' Method Can Jailbreak LLMs Using Seemingly Benign Prompts
spatwei shares a report from SC Magazine: Microsoft has discovered a new method to jailbreak large language model (LLM) artificial intelligence (AI) tools and shared its ongoing efforts to improve LLM safety and security in a blog post Thursday. Microsoft first revealed the "Crescendo" LLM jailbreak method in a paper published April 2, which describes how an attacker could send … [Link]
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