Shameless Plug

What Will Technology Do in 2023? Published on January 01, 2023 at 08:04AM Looking back at 2022's technology, the lead technology writer for the New York Times criticized Meta's $1,500 VR headset and the iPhone's "mostly unnoticeable improvements." But then he also predicted which new tech could affect you in 2023. Some highlights: - It's very likely that next year you could have a chatbot that acts as a research assistant. Imagine that you are writing a research paper and want to add some historical facts about World War II. You could share a 100-page document with the bot and ask it to sum up the highlights related to a certain aspect of the war. The bot will then read the document and generate a summary for you.... That doesn't mean that we'll see a flood of stand-alone A.I. apps in 2023. It may be more the case that many tools we already use for work will begin building automatic language generation into their apps. Rowan Curran, a technology anal

The Shameful Open Secret Behind Southwest's Failure? Software Shortcomings Published on January 01, 2023 at 05:04AM Computer programmer Zeynep Tufekci now writes about the impact of technology on society. In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Tufekci writes on "the shameful open secret" that earlier this week led Southwest airlines to suddenly cancel 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours. "The recent meltdown was avoidable, but it would have cost them." Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes that the piece "takes a crack at explaining 'technical debt' to the masses." Tufekci writes: Computers become increasingly capable and powerful by the year and new hardware is often the most visible cue for technological progress. However, even with the shiniest hardware, the software that plays a critical role inside many systems is too often antiquated, and in some cases decades old. This failing appears to be a key factor in why Southwest Airlines

AI-Powered Software Delivery Company Predicts 'The End of Programming' Published on January 01, 2023 at 04:04AM Matt Welsh is the CEO and co-founder of Fixie.ai, an AI-powered software delivery company founded by a team from Google and Apple. "I believe the conventional idea of 'writing a program' is headed for extinction," he opines in January's Communications of the ACM, "and indeed, for all but very specialized applications, most software, as we know it, will be replaced by AI systems that are trained rather than programmed." His essay is titled "The End of programming," and predicts a future will "Programming will be obsolete." In situations where one needs a "simple" program (after all, not everything should require a model of hundreds of billions of parameters running on a cluster of GPUs), those programs will, themselves, be generated by an AI rather than coded by hand.... with humans relegated to, at best,

'If Aliens Contact Humanity, Who Decides What We Do Next?' Published on January 01, 2023 at 03:04AM If humankind detects a message from an advanced civilisation, "It would be a transformative event for humankind," writes the Guardian, "one the world's nations are surely prepared for. "Or are they?" "Look at the mess we made when Covid hit. We'd be like headless chickens," says Dr John Elliott, a computational linguist at the University of St Andrews. "We cannot afford to be ill-prepared, scientifically, socially, and politically rudderless, for an event that could happen at any time and which we cannot afford to mismanage." This frank assessment of Earth's unreadiness for contact with life elsewhere underpins the creation of the Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) post-detection hub at St Andrews. Over the next month or two, Elliott aims to bring together a core team of international researchers and affiliat

Ancient Cats Migrated With Humans All Over the World Published on January 01, 2023 at 02:04AM Slashdot reader guest reader shares some interesting research from the University of Missouri: Nearly 10,000 years ago, humans settling in the Fertile Crescent, the areas of the Middle East surrounding the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, made the first switch from hunter-gatherers to farmers. They developed close bonds with the rodent-eating cats that conveniently served as ancient pest-control in society's first civilizations. A new study at the University of Missouri found this lifestyle transition for humans was the catalyst that sparked the world's first domestication of cats, and as humans began to travel the world, they brought their new feline friends along with them. Leslie A. Lyons, a feline geneticist and Gilbreath-McLorn endowed professor of comparative medicine in the MU College of Veterinary Medicine, collected and analyzed DNA from cats in and around the Fertile Crescent a

Other Software Projects Are Now Trying to Replicate ChatGPT Published on January 01, 2023 at 01:04AM "The first open source equivalent of OpenAI's ChatGPT has arrived," writes TechCrunch, "but good luck running it on your laptop — or at all." This week, Philip Wang, the developer responsible for reverse-engineering closed-sourced AI systems including Meta's Make-A-Video, released PaLM + RLHF, a text-generating model that behaves similarly to ChatGPT [listed as a work in progress]. The system combines PaLM, a large language model from Google, and a technique called Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback — RLHF, for short — to create a system that can accomplish pretty much any task that ChatGPT can, including drafting emails and suggesting computer code. But PaLM + RLHF isn't pre-trained. That is to say, the system hasn't been trained on the example data from the web necessary for it to actually work. Downloading PaLM + RLHF won't magically

The 240Hz OLED Gaming Displays Are Coming Published on December 31, 2022 at 08:30AM An anonymous reader shares a report: CES 2023 is now just days away, and there's already a standout category that we're particularly excited about: 240Hz OLED gaming monitors. Generally speaking, OLED panels can achieve better picture quality and a faster response time than their LED or IPS equivalents but have historically lacked the ability to match them in providing high-refresh rates. There have been some exceptions -- such as the Alienware AW3423DW, a QD-OLED running at 175Hz -- but now, OLED gaming displays have finally achieved the optimal 240Hz refresh rate prized by gamers who specialize in eSports and FPS titles. There are several 240Hz OLED displays (that we're aware of) being showcased at the CES 2023 conference. One of the more innovative offerings is the Corsair Xeneon Flex, a 45-inch OLED with a customizable curvature and a $1,999 price tag. By squeezing the screen together,

Sage Accused of 'Strong Arm' Tactics Over Move To Software Subscriptions Published on December 31, 2022 at 05:31AM British businesses have complained about the tactics used by Sage, the UK's largest listed tech company, to push them into accepting more expensive subscription services or have access to their existing accounting software packages switched off. From a report: Small companies across the UK rely on the FTSE 100 company's Sage50 software for book-keeping, sending invoices, processing orders and helping with tax payments. But in recent months, Sage has pushed customers who had been sold single-payment, long-term licences to the software on to monthly subscriptions that work out to be more expensive over the long run, by saying they would turn off their licences on security grounds, despite having no specific grounds to do so in their terms and conditions. "It's a pitload of crap," said Kate Barton, owner of model train company Reeves 2000, who

Desktop GPU Sales Hit 20-Year Low Published on December 31, 2022 at 03:30AM Demand for graphics cards significantly increased during the pandemic as some people spent more time at home playing games, whereas others tried to mine Ethereum to get some cash. But it looks like now that the world has re-opened and Ethereum mining on GPUs is dead, demand for desktop discrete GPUs has dropped dramatically. From a report: In fact, shipments of discrete graphics cards hit a ~20-year low in Q3 2022, according to data from Jon Peddie Research. The industry shipped around 6.9 million standalone graphics boards for desktop PCs -- including the best graphics cards for gaming -- and a similar number of discrete GPUs for notebooks in the third quarter. In total, AMD, Intel, and Nvidia shipped around 14 million standalone graphics processors for desktops and laptops, down 42% year-over-year based on data from JPR. Meanwhile, shipments of integrated GPUs totaled around 61.5 million units in Q3 2022. I

FBI Investigating 3Commas Data Breach Published on December 31, 2022 at 02:30AM The FBI is investigating the 3Commas data breach, CoinDesk is reporting. From the report: The investigation comes after weeks of criticism from users of the Estonia-based crypto trading service, who say its CEO repeatedly brushed off warning signs that the platform had leaked user data. This week, 100,000 Binance and KuCoin API keys linked to 3Commas were leaked by an anonymous person. On Thursday, two 3Commas users told CoinDesk that they were contacted by agents from the FBI's Cincinnati Field Office in connection to the leak. Over the last several months, dozens of 3Commas users found that the service had, without their consent, traded away funds on crypto exchanges they'd linked to it. Initially, 3Commas said that these users were most likely phished and insisted that the platform was safe. The API database leaker insinuated that the 3Commas keys had been sold by someone from within the compan

In the Pacific, Outcry Over Japan's Plan To Release Fukushima Wastewater Published on December 31, 2022 at 01:30AM The proposal has angered many of Japan's neighbors, particularly those with the most direct experience of unexpected exposure to dangerous levels of radiation. From a report: Every day at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, officials flush over a hundred tons of water through its corroded reactors to keep them cool after the calamitous meltdown of 2011. Then the highly radioactive water is pumped into hundreds of white and blue storage tanks that form a mazelike array around the plant. For the last decade, that's where the water has stayed. But with more than 1.3 million tons in the tanks, Japan is running out of room. So next year in spring, it plans to begin releasing the water into the Pacific after treatment for most radioactive particles, as has been done elsewhere. The Japanese government, saying there is no feasible alternative, has pledged t

Police in China Can Track Protests By Enabling 'Alarms' on Hikvision Software Published on December 31, 2022 at 12:30AM Chinese police can set up "alarms" for various protest activities using a software platform provided by Hikvision, a major Chinese camera and surveillance manufacturer, the Guardian has learned. From the report: Descriptions of protest activity listed among the "alarms" include "gathering crowds to disrupt order in public places," "unlawful assembly, procession, demonstration" and threats to "petition." These activities are listed alongside offenses such as "gambling" or disruptive events such as "fire hazard" in technical documents available on Hikvision's website and flagged to the Guardian by surveillance research firm IPVM, or Internet Protocol Video Market. The company's website also included alarms for "religion" and "Falun Gong" -- a spiritual movement ba

Fiji's New Pro-Bitcoin Prime Minister Ponders Legal Tender Bill Published on December 30, 2022 at 04:20AM Pro-Bitcoin politician Sitiveni Rabuka recently took office as the new Prime Minister of the Pacific Islands of Fiji. Now, it seems the new PM is actively considering the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender there. Bitcoin Magazine reports: While Rabuka himself hasn't been very public about his opinions on Bitcoin thus far, Lord Fusitu'a, a noble and former member of parliament of neighboring nation Tonga, has reportedly confirmed that the Fijian politician is a bitcoin bull. "The new PM is definitely pro-Bitcoin," Lord Fusitu'a assured Cointelegraph. Lord Fusitu'a also shared the news on Twitter. "A new pro-#Bitcoin friendly Prime Minister in the South Pacific. Fiji's newly elected Prime Minister @slrabuka," Lord Fusitu'a wrote, tagging Rabuka. In the second part of his tweet, Lord Fusitu'a hinted at the legal tender legislation

Suit Accusing YouTube of Tracking Children Is Back On After Appeal Published on December 30, 2022 at 03:40AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An appeals court has revived a lawsuit against that accuses Google, YouTube, DreamWorks, and a handful of toymakers of tracking the activity of children under 13 on YouTube. In an opinion (PDF) released Wednesday, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act does not bar lawsuits based on individual state privacy laws. Passed in 1998 and amended in 2012, COPPA requires websites to obtain parental consent for the collection and dissemination of personally identifiable information of children under the age of 13. COPPA gives the FTC and state attorneys general the ability to investigate and levy fines for violations of the law. Several states across the US have laws similar to COPPA on the books. The revived lawsuit cites laws in California, Colorado, Indiana, and Massachu

HandBrake 1.6.0 Debuts AV1 Transcoding Support for the Masses Published on December 30, 2022 at 03:00AM HandBrake, the popular free and open source video transcoder, has been updated to version 1.6.0. This major point upgrade is notable for facilitating AV1 video encoding for the first time in a general release. Moreover, those with Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV) enabled processors, and those with Intel Arc GPUs will be able to encode AV1 video with hardware acceleration. From a report: HandBrake 1.6.0 can encode AV1 videos on any of its supported systems. In the current release its SVT-AV1 encoder offers the widest support, encoding on your processor through software. However, those with Intel QSV supporting CPUs or discrete Arc graphics can use the QSV-AV1 encoder for hardware accelerated processing. QSV isn't supported if your CPU is an 'F' suffixed model (i.e. it doesn't have an iGPU), or it is older than the Skylake generation. If you are lucky enough to have multi

Britain's Renewable Power Hits New Peak, Fossil Fuel Also Rises Published on December 30, 2022 at 02:10AM Renewable power sources generated 40% of Britain's electricity in 2022, up from 35% in 2021, while the share of fossil fuel in the energy mix also rose, a report by academics from Imperial College London for Drax Electric Insights showed on Thursday. From a report: Overall generation from renewables has more than quadrupled over the last decade. Wind, solar, biomass and hydro are the main sources of renewable power. Fossil fuel still has a larger share, providing 42% of Britain's power in 2022, which was its biggest contribution to the country's fuel mix since 2016. Iain Staffell of Imperial College London, and lead author of the report, said 2022 had been "a year like no other for the energy industry." Although renewables provide "more cheap, green energy than ever before," he said, the public is feeling the pain of gas prices, which surged in

Department of Homeland Security Can't Even Secure Its Buildings Against People It Fired Published on December 30, 2022 at 01:20AM For the fourth time since 2007, an internal audit shows the Department of Homeland Security isn't deactivating access cards in the hands of ex-employees, leaving its secure facilities vulnerable to intruders. From a report: A new report by Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General shows that the department is systemically failing to revoke tens of thousands of "personal identity verification" cards that allow staff to enter sensitive, secure facilities and access internal data networks, despite being warned about the problem for 15 years. The issue is made worse, the report continues, by the fact that Homeland Security's internal record-keeping is so shoddy that it was impossible to determine how many ex-staffers have working access cards they aren't supposed to. Like many modern office workers, Homeland Security hands o

Europe Taps Tech's Power-Hungry Data Centers To Heat Homes Published on December 30, 2022 at 12:30AM With an energy crisis hitting Europe, governments are exploring ways to recycle electricity used on social-media scrolling, conference calls and video streaming to help heat homes and offices. From a report: Electricity-hungry data centers are seeing huge growth in usage, leading to pressure from European officials to funnel the excess heat generated by their computer chips into municipal heating networks. After years of discussions about putting residual heat to work rather than simply venting it outdoors, more such projects are becoming a reality. In the last year, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have started connecting, or announced plans to connect, major data centers to district heating systems in Ireland, Denmark and Finland. Alphabet's Google says it is assessing opportunities to recover heat from its data centers across Europe. Meta Platforms has been recovering excess hea

Alameda Wallets Become Active Days After SBF Bail, Community Mulls Foul Play Published on December 29, 2022 at 04:50AM The crypto wallets associated with now-bankrupt trading firm Alameda Research, the sister company of FTX, were seen transferring out funds just days after the former CEO Sam Bankman Fried was released on a $250 million bond. CoinTelegraph reports: The transfer of funds from Alameda wallets raised community curiosity, but more than that, the way in which these funds were transferred grabbed the community's attention. The Alameda wallet was found to be swapping bits of ERC-20s for Ether/Tether, and then the ETH and USDT were funneled through instant exchangers and mixers. For example, a wallet address that starts with 0x64e9 received over 600 ETH from wallets that belong to Alameda, part of it was swapped to USDT while the other part of the transaction was sent to ChangeNow. On-chain analyst ZachXBT noted that the Alameda wallet was eventually swapping the funds fo

The Rise and Bigger Rise of Mediterranean Sea Levels Published on December 29, 2022 at 03:30AM Over the last 20 years, there has been twice as much sea level rise on Italy's Amalfi coast as on Spain's Costa del Sol, a study shows. From a report: Researchers combined data from tide gauges and satellites with ice melt measurements to model sea level change across the Mediterranean basin since 1960. To their surprise, they found that sea level fell by about 9mm between 1960 and 1989, owing to increased atmospheric pressure over the basin. But since 1989, ocean warming and land ice melting have driven rapid sea level rise, reaching an average rate of 3.6mm a year in the Mediterranean basin over the last two decades. The rise has not been spread evenly, however. Their findings, which are published in JGR Oceans, show that the Adriatic, Aegean and Levantine seas have risen by 8cm over two decades, while the Cretan passage in the eastern Mediterranean has risen by half this amount.

US To Require COVID Tests For Travelers Coming From China Published on December 29, 2022 at 03:00AM The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it will require anyone arriving by air from China to provide a negative Covid test, following a surge of Covid-19 cases across China as Beijing has eased its strict zero-Covid rules. Politico reports: Under the new rules, which will take effect on Jan. 5, anyone two years and older will need to show a negative result from a test taken within two days of their departure from airports in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, administration officials told reporters in a briefing. The move reflects the Biden administration's alarm about the potential spillover of new Covid variants linked to soaring Covid infections in China. The Chinese government ended its draconian Covid-zero policy -- hinged to mass testing, tracing and lockdowns -- on Dec. 7 following mass protests in November fueled by anger about the strategy. According to health

Misleading Ads Fueled Rapid Growth of Online Mental Health Companies Published on December 29, 2022 at 02:34AM In an advertisement on Facebook and Instagram, a middle-aged man holding a dumbbell says testosterone "literally changed my life," restoring his energy and happiness. What the October ad from telehealth startup Hone Health doesn't say is that the unidentified man is an actor who has never used the prescription drug. From a report: It doesn't mention that testosterone is approved by the Food and Drug Administration only for men with specific disorders and that among its risks are heart attacks and stroke. Similar telehealth companies are flooding TikTok, Instagram and other platforms with ads that don't conform to longtime standards governing the marketing of prescription drugs and healthcare treatments. They feature actors posing as customers, tout benefits of drugs with no mention of side effects and promote medications for uses not approved by the FDA

US Charges Fraud in Mango Crypto Manipulation Case Published on December 29, 2022 at 01:40AM U.S. prosecutors have filed criminal charges of commodities fraud and manipulation against a man accused of trying to steal about $110 million in October by rigging the Mango Markets cryptocurrency exchange. From a report: According to a complaint made public on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court, Avraham Eisenberg's trades in futures related to Mango's crypto token MNGO enabled him to withdraw $110 million in cryptocurrencies from other investors' deposits, with no apparent intention to repay the funds. Eisenberg was arrested on Monday night in Puerto Rico, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in Manhattan said in a court filing. It was unclear whether Eisenberg has a lawyer. Mango is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange run by Mango DAO that lets investors lend, borrow, swap, and use leverage to trade cryptocurrency assets. The Dec. 23 complaint signed by FBI Special Agent Brandon R

'Switch Pro' Reportedly Cancelled As Nintendo Shifts Focus To Next-Gen Console Published on December 29, 2022 at 01:00AM An anonymous reader shares a report: Rumours of a Nintendo Switch Pro console have been swirling in the video game industry and the gaming community for years. However, it seems that Nintendo is ready to move on from the portable console. According to Digital Foundry's John Linneman, many developers acknowledged that a "mid-generation Switch update" was initially planned, but Nintendo opted to focus instead on building a new console. Nintendo has yet to officially announce its next video game system, and Linneman said he does not expect it will be released until 2023. "So I think at one point internally from what I can understand from talking to different developers, is that there was some sort of mid-generation Switch update planned at one point and that seems to be no longer happening," said Linneman in the Digital Foundry podcast.

Police, Prosecutors Used Junk Science To Decide 911 Callers Were Liars Published on December 29, 2022 at 12:05AM An anonymous reader shares a report: Tracy Harpster, a deputy police chief from suburban Dayton, Ohio, was hunting for praise. He had a business to promote: a miracle method to determine when 911 callers are actually guilty of the crimes they are reporting. "I know what a guilty father, mother or boyfriend sounds like," he once said. Harpster tells police and prosecutors around the country that they can do the same. Such linguistic detection is possible, he claims, if you know how to analyze callers' speech patterns -- their tone of voice, their pauses, their word choice, even their grammar. Stripped of its context, a misplaced word as innocuous as "hi" or "please" or "somebody" can reveal a murderer on the phone. So far, researchers who have tried to corroborate Harpster's claims have failed. The experts most familiar with h