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 » Dutch Privacy Watchdog Recommends Government Organizations Stop Using Facebook
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Dutch privacy watchdog AP on Friday said it was recommending that government organizations should stop using Facebook as long as it is unclear what happens with personal data of users of the government's Facebook pages. "People that visit a government's page need to be able to trust that their personal and … [Link]
Slashdot » 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki Considers Taking Company Private
Ashley Capoot reports via CNBC: Anne Wojcicki, the CEO of 23andMe, is considering a proposal to take the genetic testing company private after its stock price tumbled more than 95% from its 2021 highs. A late Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said Wojcicki is working with advisors and plans to speak with possible financing sources and partners. … [Link]
Slashdot » 'Women Who Code' Shuts Down Unexpectedly
Women Who Code (WWC), a U.S.-based organization of 360,000 people supporting women who work in the tech sector, is shutting down due to a lack of funding. "It is with profound sadness that, today, on April 18, 2024, we are announcing the difficult decision to close Women Who Code, following a vote by the Board of Directors to dissolve the … [Link]
Slashdot » A Chess Formula Is Taking Over the World
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Atlantic: In October 2003, Mark Zuckerberg created his first viral site: not Facebook, but FaceMash. Then a college freshman, he hacked into Harvard's online dorm directories, gathered a massive collection of students' headshots, and used them to create a website on which Harvard students could rate classmates by their attractiveness, literally and … [Link]
Slashdot » EPA Will Make Polluters Pay To Clean Up Two 'Forever Chemicals'
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Biden administration is designating two "forever chemicals," man-made compounds that are linked to serious health risks, as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, shifting responsibility for their cleanup to polluters from taxpayers. The new rule announced on Friday empowers the government to force the many companies that manufacture or use perfluorooctanoic acid, also … [Link]
Slashdot » Linus Torvalds on 'Hilarious' AI Hype
Linus Torvalds, discussing the AI hype, in a conversation with Dirk Hohndel, Verizon's Head of the Open Source Program Office: Torvalds snarked, "It's hilarious to watch. Maybe I'll be replaced by an AI model!" As for Hohndel, he thinks most AI today is "autocorrect on steroids." Torvalds summed up his attitude as, "Let's wait 10 years and see where it … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Knot theory could help spacecraft navigate crowded solar systems
It can be difficult to figure out how to move a spacecraft from one orbit to another, but a trick from knot theory can help find spots where shifting orbits becomes easy [Link]
Slashdot » Microsoft's VASA-1 Can Deepfake a Person With One Photo and One Audio Track
Microsoft Research Asia earlier this week unveiled VASA-1, an AI model that can create a synchronized animated video of a person talking or singing from a single photo and an existing audio track. ArsTechnica: In the future, it could power virtual avatars that render locally and don't require video feeds — or allow anyone with similar tools to take a … [Link]
Slashdot » Indian IT Outsourcing Firms Cut 60,000 Jobs in First Layoffs in 20 Years
An anonymous reader shares a report: TCS, Infosys, and Wipro, India's top three IT outsourcing firms, have collectively seen their workforce shrink for the first time in at least 20 years. The trio reported a combined reduction of more than 63,750 employees in the financial year ending March 31, 2024. 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. [Link]
New Scientist – News » Animals may help ecosystems store 3 times more carbon than we thought
Carbon storage calculations don’t always take into account the effects of animals – when they eat, defecate and die, they help store lots of carbon [Link]
New Scientist – News » Songs that birds 'sing' in their dreams translated into sound
By measuring how birds’ vocal muscles move while they are asleep and using a physical model for how those muscles produce sound, researchers have pulled songs from the minds of sleeping birds [Link]
Slashdot » Porn Sites Face Strict EU Rules, Commission Says
Adult content companies Pornhub, Stripchat and XVideos will have to do risk assessment reports and take measures to address systemic risks linked to their services to comply with new EU online content rules, the European Commission said on Friday. From a report: The three companies were designated as very large online platforms last December under the Digital Services Act (DSA) … [Link]
Slashdot » Meta's Not Telling Where It Got Its AI Training Data
An anonymous reader shares a report: Today Meta unleashed its ChatGPT competitor, Meta AI, across its apps and as a standalone. The company boasts that it is running on its latest, greatest AI model, Llama 3, which was trained on "data of the highest quality"! A dataset seven times larger than Llama2! And includes 4 times more code! What is … [Link]
Slashdot » Microsoft Does Not Want You To Use iPerf3 To Measure Network Performance on Windows
An anonymous reader shares a report: iPerf is a fairly popular cross-platform tool that is used by many to measure network performance and diagnose any potential issues in this area. The open-source utility is maintained by an organization called Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and officially supports Linux, Unix, and Windows. However, Microsoft has now published a detailed blog post explaining … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Your genes may influence how much you enjoy listening to music
Identical twins seem to experience more similar levels of pleasure when listening to music than non-identical twins, which suggests it has a genetic element [Link]
Slashdot » Google To Employees: 'We Are a Workplace'
Google, once known for its unconventional approach to business, has taken a decisive step towards becoming a more traditional company by firing 28 employees who participated in protests against a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government. The move comes after sit-in demonstrations on Tuesday at Google offices in Silicon Valley and New York City, where employees opposed the company's … [Link]
Slashdot » Samsung Shifts To Emergency Mode With 6-day Work Week for Executives
Korean newspaper KED Global: Executives at all Samsung Group units will work six days a week from as early as this week in a shift to emergency mode. The move comes as the won's sharp depreciation, rising oil prices and high borrowing costs aggravate business uncertainties after some of the group's mainstay businesses delivered poorer-than-expected results in 2023. The executives … [Link]
Slashdot » Windows 10 Will Start Pushing Users To Use Microsoft Accounts
Microsoft is getting ready to annoy its faithful Windows 10 user base with yet another prompt. From a report: This time, Microsoft wants Windows 10 users to switch from using a local account to their online Microsoft account. As first noticed by the outlet Windows Latest, the most recent Windows 10 update Release Preview includes some information about new notifications … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Wind turbines based on condor wings could capture more energy
Curved wing tips inspired by the world's heaviest flying bird could enhance the efficiency of wind turbines by of 10 per cent, according to simulations [Link]
Slashdot » Apple Removes WhatsApp, Threads and Telegram From China App Store
China ordered Apple to remove some of the world's most popular chat messaging apps from its app store in the country, the latest example of censorship demands on the iPhone seller in the company's second-biggest market. WSJ: Meta's WhatsApp and Threads as well as messaging platforms Signal, Telegram and Line were taken off the Chinese App Store Friday [non-paywalled link]. … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Early humans spread as far north as Siberia 400,000 years ago
A site in Siberia has evidence of human presence 417,000 years ago, raising the possibility that hominins could have reached North America much earlier than we thought [Link]
Slashdot » Chinese Cities Are Sinking Rapidly
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Major cities across China are sinking, putting a substantial portion of the country's rapidly urbanizing population in harm's way in the coming decades, according to a sweeping new analysis by Chinese scientists. Subsidence is the technical term for when land sinks relative to its surroundings, and it's a major threat for cities … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Autonomous e-scooters could ride themselves back to charging points
Teams of staff usually return e-scooters to where they will be needed, but adapted scooters that can balance and stop themselves, and be controlled remotely, are a step towards autonomous ones that can take themselves wherever they have to go [Link]
Slashdot » FBI Says Chinese Hackers Preparing To Attack US Infrastructure
schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: Chinese government-linked hackers have burrowed into U.S. critical infrastructure and are waiting "for just the right moment to deal a devastating blow," FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Thursday. An ongoing Chinese hacking campaign known as Volt Typhoon has successfully gained access to numerous American companies in telecommunications, energy, water and other critical sectors, … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Extreme heat in 2023 linked to drastic slump in growth of marine life
Last year’s marine heatwaves saw an unprecedented decline in the growth of phytoplankton and algae, which many animals in the oceans depend on for food [Link]
Slashdot » Northrop Grumman Working With SpaceX On US Spy Satellite System
Longtime Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares a report from Reuters: Aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman is working with SpaceX […] on a classified spy satellite project already capturing high-resolution imagery of the Earth, according to people familiar with the program. The program, details of which were first reported by Reuters last month, is meant to enhance the U.S. government's ability … [Link]
Slashdot » Reddit Is Taking Over Google
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: If you think you've been seeing an awful lot more Reddit results lately when you search on Google, you're not imagining things. The internet is in upheaval, and for website owners the rules of "winning" Google Search have never been murkier. Google's generative AI search engine is coming from one direction. … [Link]
New Scientist – News » Dietary changes relieve irritable bowel syndrome better than medicine
Both a special diet that excludes “FODMAP” compounds and a low-carb high-fibre diet were effective [Link]
Slashdot » Ubuntu 24.04 Yields a 20% Performance Advantage Over Windows 11 On Ryzen 7 Framework Laptop
Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: With the Framework 16 laptop one of the performance pieces I've been meaning to carry out has been seeing out Linux performs against Microsoft Windows 11 for this AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS powered modular/upgradeable laptop. Recently getting around to it in my benchmarking queue, I also compared the performance of Ubuntu 23.10 to the near … [Link]
Slashdot » Netflix Blows Past Earnings Estimates As Subscribers Jump 16%
Netflix on Thursday reported a 16% rise in memberships in the first quarter, reaching 269.6 million, beating Wall Street expectations. Starting next year, the company will no longer provide quarterly membership numbers or average revenue per user starting next year. CNBC reports: "As we've noted in previous letters, we're focused on revenue and operating margin as our primary financial metrics … [Link]
Slashdot » Frontier Communications Shuts Down Systems After Cyberattack
U.S. telecom provider Frontier Communications shut down its systems after a cybercrime group breached some of its IT systems in a recent cyberattack. BleepingComputer reports: Frontier is a leading U.S. communications provider that provides gigabit Internet speeds over a fiber-optic network to millions of consumers and businesses across 25 states. After discovering the incident, the company was forced to partially … [Link]
Archive
02 May 2024 01 May 2024 30 Apr 2024 29 Apr 2024 28 Apr 2024 27 Apr 2024 26 Apr 2024 25 Apr 2024 24 Apr 2024 23 Apr 2024 22 Apr 2024 21 Apr 2024 20 Apr 2024 19 Apr 2024 18 Apr 2024 17 Apr 2024 16 Apr 2024 15 Apr 2024 14 Apr 2024 13 Apr 2024 12 Apr 2024 11 Apr 2024 10 Apr 2024 09 Apr 2024 08 Apr 2024 07 Apr 2024 06 Apr 2024 05 Apr 2024 04 Apr 2024 03 Apr 2024 02 Apr 2024 01 Apr 2024
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
You must log in to post a comment.