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 Oracle Aims To Sustain Java's 27-Year Franchise With v20 Rollout
Oracle today announced the availability of Java 20, the latest version of the popular programming language and development platform. From a report: The latest version of the 27-year-old language includes thousands of performance, stability and security improvements and features seven enhancement proposals to the Java Development Kit that are aimed at increasing developer productivity and enhancing performance, stability and security. Oracle has coordinated a disciplined rollout of new Java relea
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With Firefly, Adobe Gets Into the Generative AI Game
Adobe is jumping into the generative AI game with the launch of a new family of AI models called Firefly. From a report: Focused on bringing AI into Adobe's suite of apps and services, specifically AI for generating media content, Firefly will be made up of multiple AI models "working across a variety of different use cases,' Adobe VP of generative AI Alexandru Costin told TechCrunch in an email interview. It's an expansion of the generative AI tools Adobe introduced in Photoshop, Express and Li
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Nvidia DGX Cloud: Train Your Own ChatGPT in a Web Browser For $37K a Month
An anonymous reader writes: Last week, we learned that Microsoft spent hundreds of millions of dollars to buy tens of thousands of Nvidia A100 graphics chips so that partner OpenAI could train the large language models (LLMs) behind Bing's AI chatbot and ChatGPT.
Don't have access to all that capital or space for all that hardware for your own LLM project? Nvidia's DGX Cloud is an attempt to sell remote web access to the very same thing. Announced today at the company's 2023 GPU Technology Con
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Amazon-owned DPReview Shutting Down
Photography and camera gear review site DPReview, writing in a blog post: After nearly 25 years of operation, DPReview will be closing in the near future. This difficult decision is part of the annual operating plan review that our parent company shared earlier this year. The site will remain active until April 10, and the editorial team is still working on reviews and looking forward to delivering some of our best-ever content. Everyone on our staff was a reader and fan of DPReview before worki
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OpenAI and Microsoft Are Partners, Until They Vie for the Same Customers
OpenAI's ChatGPT has enraptured the business world since its November release and OpenAI is signing up customers eager to pay to use its artificial intelligence models in their own products. But the Microsoft-backed startup faces a surprising rival: Microsoft itself. From a report: As part of its multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI, Microsoft has the rights to sell the startup's software through its Azure cloud business, even as OpenAI licenses its own software directly to customers. Micros
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Microsoft Brings OpenAI's DALL-E Image Creator To the New Bing
Microsoft today announced that its new AI-enabled Bing will now allow users to generate images with Bing Chat. From a report: This new feature is powered by DALL-E, OpenAI's generative image generator. The company didn't say which version of DALL-E it is using here, except for saying that it is using the "very latest DALL-E models." Dubbed the "Bing Image Creator," this new capability is now (slowly) rolling out to users in the Bing preview and will only be available through Bing's Creative Mode
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Anxiety Strikes $8 Trillion Mortgage-Debt Market After SVB Collapse
Strains in the banking sector are roiling a roughly $8 trillion bond market considered almost as safe as U.S. government bonds. From a report: So-called agency mortgage bonds are widely held by banks, insurers and bond funds because they are backed by the mortgage loans from government-owned lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The bonds are far less likely to default than most debt and are easy to buy and sell quickly, a crucial reason they were Silicon Valley Bank's biggest investment before it
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Google is Releasing Its Bard AI Chatbot To the Public
Google says it's ready to let the public use its generative AI chatbot,Bard. The company will grant tens of thousands of users access to the bot in a gradual rollout that starting Tuesday. From a report: Google says people will use the chatbot, which will be available online and as a mobile app, for things like generating ideas ("Bard, how do I keep my plants alive?"), researching ideas (in combination with Search), and drafting first drafts of letters, invites, or proposals. Google originally a
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India Won't Tolerate Abusive, Obscene Content on Streaming Services, Minister Warns
India will not tolerate use of abusive language and display of obscene content in movies and TV shows on on-demand video streaming services, a key minister has warned in a move that illustrates how the nation's IT rules have "handed over direct ministerial power for censorship." From the report: Anurag Thakur, Union Minister of Information Broadcasting and Sports and Youth Affairs, said at a press conference that use of abusive language in the name of creativity will not be tolerated and that th
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Belgian Crypto Ads Must Warn of Risks Under New Rules
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinDesk: Crypto ads in Belgium must be accurate and warn investors of the risks under new laws announced by the country's financial regulator Monday. Powers published in Belgium's Official Gazette on Friday mean any mass-media campaign to promote a digital currency would have to be submitted to the Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) 10 days in advance, allowing the regulator to intervene if needed.
"Virtual currencies are all the rage at t
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BBC Advises Staff To Delete TikTok From Work Phones
The BBC has advised staff to delete TikTok from corporate phones because of privacy and security fears. From a report: The BBC seems to be the first UK media organisation to issue the guidance - and only the second in the world after Denmark's public service broadcaster. The BBC said it would continue to use the platform for editorial and marketing purposes for now. [...] The big fear is that data harvested by the platform from corporate phones could be shared with the Chinese government by TikT
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Propellantless System For Satellites Will Get Tested In Space
Longtime Slashdot reader drwho writes: A new type of propulsion system which uses no propellant, but rather only electricity, will be tested in a satellite to be launched from June 10's Falcon 9 launch. The IVO Quantum Drive utilizes an alternative theory of inertia known as "Quantum Inertia' by its originator Prof. Mike McCullough of U. Plymouth, which seeks to reconcile General Relativity (GR) with Quantum Field Theory (QFT). If successful, this would herald in a new era not only in satellite
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HDD Average Life Span Misses 3-Year Mark In Study of 2,007 Defective Drives
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An analysis of 2,007 damaged or defective hard disk drives (HDDs) has led a data recovery firm to conclude that "in general, old drives seem more durable and resilient than new drives." The statement comes from a Los Angeles-headquartered HDD, SSD, and RAID data recovery firm aptly named Secure Data Recovery that has been in business since 2007 and claims to have resolved more than 100,000 cases. It studied the HDDs it received in 2022. "Mos
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PC Maker Acer Is Building a Fancy Electric Bike With Built-In AI
Computer component maker Acer built a lightweight electric bike called the Acer ebii. Electrek reports: This lightweight 35 lb. (16 kg) e-bike features a number of gadgets and gizmos we have yet to spot in the industry, such as built-in AI designed to predictively control the transmission and make use of collision detection sensors for a safer ride. There's also proximity unlocking feature that the company says "automatically locks your bike when you leave and unlocks it again when you're nearby
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Apple Pay Launches In South Korea
After a years-long wait, Apple Pay today launched in South Korea, allowing those living in the country to use Apple's payment system to make contactless payments using the iPhone or Apple Watch. MacRumors reports: Apple has been working to bring Apple Pay to South Korea since 2017, but Apple was unable to be registered as an electronic financial business operator because regulators were investigating whether Apple Pay violated local regulations and laws. Apple was finally approved by financial r
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IKEA Adds Stock-Counting Drones To More of Its Stores
In a blog post shared last week, Ingka, the legal entity responsible for most of Ikea's stores, says it now has a total of 100 autonomous drones counting stock in its warehouses during nonoperational hours. The Verge reports: Ikea first partnered with the drone-making company Verity in 2020 to deploy the drones in Switzerland, but now, the company says they're zipping around 16 locations across Belgium, Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. The Swedish furniture giant says the
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Microsoft Wants Changing Default Apps In Windows To Be Less of a Mess
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: One of the enduring legacies of the '90s browser wars has been an outsize attention to how Microsoft handles default app settings in Windows, especially browser settings. The company plans to make it more straightforward to change your app defaults in future versions of Windows 11, according to a new blog post that outlines a "principled approach to app pinning and app defaults in Windows."
The company's principled approach is a combinatio
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Indian Officials Cut Internet For 27 Million People Amid Search For Fugitive
Indian authorities severed mobile internet access and text messaging for a second day Sunday across Punjab, a state of about 27 million people, as officials sought to capture a Sikh separatist and braced for potential unrest. The Washington Post reports: The statewide ban -- which crippled most smartphone services except for voice calls and some SMS text messages -- marked one of the broadest shutdowns in recent years in India, a country that has increasingly deployed the law enforcement tactic,
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Twitch Says It Will Lay Off 400 Employees
Twitch announced plans to lay off 400 employees at the company. It comes just days after longtime Twitch CEO Emmett Shear said that he would step down from the company to spend time with his family. TechCrunch reports: The layoffs will affect 400 employees at the company and were characterized as an effort to improve Twitch's business outlook in the long term. The reduction is part of Twitch parent company Amazon's plans to let go of 9,000 workers across divisions including its AWS cloud and adv
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Google Pixel Bug Lets You 'Uncrop' the Last Four Years of Screenshots
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Back in 2018, Pixel phones gained a built-in screenshot editor called "Markup" with the release of Android 9.0 Pie. The tool pops up whenever you take a screenshot, and tapping the app's pen icon gives you access to tools like crop and a few colored drawing pens. That's very handy assuming Google's Markup tool actually does what it says, but a new vulnerability points out the edits made by this tool weren't actually destructive! It's possibl
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Meta Manager Was Hacked With Spyware and Wiretapped in Greece
A U.S. and Greek national who worked on Meta's security and trust team while based in Greece was placed under a yearlong wiretap by the Greek national intelligence service and hacked with a powerful cyberespionage tool, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and officials with knowledge of the case. From the report: The disclosure is the first known case of an American citizen being targeted in a European Union country by the advanced snooping technology, the use of which has been
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Netflix Plans To Release 40 More Games This Year, Will Add Monument Valley in 2024
Netflix has announced that it has 40 games slated for launch this year and has 70 in development with its partners. The company also has 16 games currently being developed by its in-house game studios. Netflix launched games in November 2021 and has released 55 titles since then. From a report: The streaming service says it's committed to building out its games portfolio and will be bringing Ustwo's Monument Valley franchise to its platform, starting with Monument Valley 1 and Monument Valley 2,
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Washington Prepares For War With Amazon
The Biden administration is planning to take action soon on at least three of its half-dozen investigations of Amazon -- moves that could lead to a blitz of litigation to rein in the iconic tech-industry giant. From a report: The FTC has been investigating the internet titan on multiple fronts dating at least back to 2019, looking into its abuse of power within its online marketplace, as well as potential consumer-privacy violations connected to its Ring cameras and Alexa digital assistant. The
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Generative AI's Next Frontier Is Video
AI has made remarkable progress with still images. For months, services like Dall-E and Stable Diffusion have been creating beautiful, arresting and sometimes unsettling pictures. Now, a startup called Runway AI is taking the next step: AI-generated video. From a report: On Monday, New York-based Runway announced the availability of its Gen 2 system, which generates short snippets of video from a few words of user prompts. Users can type in a description of what they want to see, for example: "a
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Nations Reach Accord To Protect Marine Life on High Seas
For the first time, United Nations members have agreed on a unified treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas -- representing a turning point for vast stretches of the planet where conservation has previously been hampered by a confusing patchwork of laws. From a report: The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea came into force in 1994, before marine biodiversity was a well-established concept. The treaty agreement concluded two weeks of talks in New York. An updated framework to protect m
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Zippyshare Quits After 17 Years, 45 Million Visits Per Month Makes No Money
After almost 17 years online, file-hosting veteran Zippyshare will shut down at the end of the month. TorrentFreak: Founded in 2006, Zippyshare was known for its free, no-nonsense, no-frills approach to storing files online. Having changed very little over the years, Zippyshare's operators say the platform is now a dinosaur that costs too much to run in a world where ad-blocking is widespread. Zippyshare said, "Since 2006 we have been on the market in an unchanged form, that is, as ad financed/f
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Online-Books Lawsuit Tests Limits of Libraries in Digital Age
A federal judge on Monday will weigh pleas by four major book publishers to stop an online lending library from freely offering digital copies of books, in a case that raises novel questions about digital-library rights and the reach of copyright law that protects the work of writers and publishers. From a report: Nonprofit organization Internet Archive created the digital books, building its collection by scanning physical book copies in its possession. It lends the digital versions to readers
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 Remembering Michael Delzer
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our Chief Analyst, Michael Delzer, who passed away earlier this year. Michael's expertise, wisdom, energy, patience, and good humour inspired all of those who worked with him. He was above all a people person, as one work colleague noted: "While Michael is undoubtedly one […]
The post Remembering Michael Delzer appeared first on GigaOm.
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Credit Suisse, the Risk-Taking Swiss Banking Giant, Succumbs To Crisis
Credit Suisse, the Swiss banking giant that liked to live dangerously, has run out of road. From a report: The bank struck a deal this weekend to be bought by rival UBS Group after an uncontrolled slide in its stock and bonds. The agreement marks the end of 167 years as an independent institution, a humbling comedown for a bank that once went toe-to-toe with U.S. giants on Wall Street and boasted a market value greater than that of Goldman Sachs Group. The bank's downfall has roots in the way it
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Earth is On Track For Catastrophic Warming, UN Warns
The planet is on track for catastrophic warming, but world leaders already have many options to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and protect people, according to a major new climate change report from the United Nations. NPR: The report was drafted by top climate scientists and reviewed by delegates from nearly 200 countries. The authors hope it will provide crucial guidance to politicians around the world ahead of negotiations later this year aimed at reining in climate change. The planet faces
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Microsoft Plans Mobile Games Store To Rival Apple and Google
Microsoft is preparing to launch a new app store for games on iPhones and Android smartphones as soon as next year if its $75bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard is cleared by regulators, according to the head of its Xbox business. From a report: New rules requiring Apple and Google to open up their mobile platforms to app stores owned and operated by other companies are expected to come into force from March 2024 under the EU's Digital Markets Act. "We want to be in a position to offer Xbox an
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Amazon Cutting Another 9,000 Jobs
Amazon is cutting another 9,000 jobs, chief executive Andy Jassy wrote to employees in a memo on Monday. The move, which impacts roles in AWS, PXT, Advertising and Twitch, comes weeks after the e-commerce group said it would eliminate 18,000 jobs. Jassy: As part of our annual planning process, leaders across the company work with their teams to decide what investments they want to make for the future, prioritizing what matters most to customers and the long-term health of our businesses. For sev
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Pentagon Study Reveals Higher Cancer Rates For Military Pilots, Ground Crews
A new study from the Department of Defense revealed that military pilots and ground crews experienced higher rates of certain cancers compared to the general population. Axios: Earlier military studies had not indicated that aviators were at higher risk, though the data has long been sought by those who raised alarm about the rates of cancer they observed among air and ground crew members, according to AP, which first reported the study. The study examined cancer rates among nearly 900,000 air a
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ASUS Unveils the Tinker V As Their First RISC-V Board
An anonymous reader shares this report from Phoronix:
For over a half-decade ASUS has been selling the Tinker Board devices as their line of Raspberry Pi alternatives. To date the ASUS Tinker Board single board computers have all been Arm-based while now they have launched their first RISC-V board, the Tinker V.
The ASUS Tinker V is their first RISC-V single board computer and intended for the industrial IoT (Internet of Things) developer community. The ASUS Tinker V is set to officially run
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What's Different About These Tech Industry Layoffs?
"According to one count, more than 280,000 people were laid off from tech jobs in 2022 and the first two months of 2023," notes a new blog post at Stack Overflow.
But then it asks the question: "What's different about these layoffs?"
[T]he current economy has less in common than you might think with the wreckage of the dot-com bubble or the Great Recession. Overall, it's still a good time to work in tech, and the hiring market remains robust: One survey found that almost 80% of people laid of
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'Irreverent' and 'Scrappy': Reactions to Trailer and Early Screening of Movie 'BlackBerry'
"When we learned that a BlackBerry movie was in the works last year," writes Engadget, "we had no idea it would be something close to a comedy. But judging from the trailer, it's aiming to be a far lighter story than other recent films about tech."
Variety notes that the movie has already screened at both Berlin Film Festival and SXSW Film Festival. "The film has received favorable reviews so far, with Variety's Peter Debruge calling it "frantic, irreverent and endearingly scrappy."
That re
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System76 Meerkat Mini-Linux PC - Now with Up to Intel Core i7-1260P
Liliputing.com has an update about the System76 Meerkat, which they describe as "a compact desktop computer with support for up to 64GB of RAM, up to two storage devices (for as much as 16TB of total storage), and up to an Intel Core i7 mobile processor. It's basically a rebranded Intel NUC." (Escept that System76 offers a choice of Pop!_OS or Ubuntu Linux pre-installed.)
"Previously available with a choice of 10th or 11th-gen Intel Core processor options, the Meerkat now also supports 12th-ge
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The Fed Had Already Spotted Big Problems at SVB Before Its Collapse
And starting in 2021 — long before the run on Silicon Valley Bank — the Federal Reserve had "repeatedly warned the bank that it had problems," reports the New York Times:
In 2021, a Fed review of the growing bank found serious weaknesses in how it was handling key risks. Supervisors at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which oversaw Silicon Valley Bank, issued six citations. Those warnings, known as "matters requiring attention" and "matters requiring immediate attention,"
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Mysterious Streaks of Light Seen in the Sky Friday in California
"Mysterious streaks of light were seen in the sky in the Sacramento area Friday night," reports the Associated Press.
The lights lasted about 40 seconds, remembered one witness who filmed the lights while enjoying a local brewery. The brewery then asked on Instagram if anyone could solve the mystery, the report continues:
Jonathan McDowell says he can. McDowell is an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. McDowell said Saturday in an interview with The Associated Press
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Linux 6.4 AMD Graphics Driver Picking Up New Power Features For The Steam Deck
An anonymous reader shared this report from Phoronix:
A pull request of early AMDGPU kernel graphics driver changes was submitted for DRM-Next on Friday as some of the early feature work accumulating for the Linux 6.4 kernel cycle.
Among the AMDGPU kernel driver changes this round are a number of fixes affecting items such as the UMC RAS, DCN 3.2, FreeSync, SR-IOV, various IP blocks, USB4, and more. On the feature side, mentioned subtly in the change-log are a few power-related additions... T
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How College Students Built a Satellite With AA Batteries and a $20 Microprocessor
With all the space junk cluttering our orbits, Popular Science writes, "Lowering costs while also shortening satellite lifespans is important if space exploration and utilization is to remain safe and viable.
"As luck would have it, a group of students and researchers at Brown University just made promising headway for both issues."
Last year, the team successfully launched their breadloaf-sized cube satellite (or cubesat) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for the comparatively low production c
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Ask Slashdot: When Should You Call Hardware a 'SoC'?
Slashdot reader Prahjister knows what a system on a chip is. But that's part of the problem:
I recently started hearing the term SoC at work when referring to digital signage hardware. This has really triggered me.... It is like when I heard people refer to a PC as a CPU.
I tried to speak to my colleagues and dissuade them from using this term in this manner with no luck. Am I wrong trying to dissuade them for this?
Maybe another question would be: Are there technical malapropisms that drive
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A Trillionth-of-a-Second Shutter Speed Camera Catches Chaos in Action
Long-time Slashdot reader turp182 shares two stories about the new state-of-the-art in very-high-speed imaging. "The techniques don't image captured photons, but instead 'touch' the target to perform imaging/read structures using either lasers or neutrons."
First, Science Daily reports that physicists from the University of Gothenburg (with colleagues from the U.S. and Germany) have developed an ultrafast laser camera that can create videos at 12.5 billion images per second, "which is at least
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