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• NASA Considers Eliminating Its Headquarters in Washington D.C.

  23-03-2025 08:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  NASA is considering "closing its headquarters and scattering responsibilities among the states," reports Politico, citing two people familiar with the plan."The proposal could affect up to 2,500 jobs and redistribute critical functions, including who manages space exploration and organizes major science missions."
  While much of the day-to-day work occurs at NASA's 10 centers, the Washington office plays a strategic role in lobbying for the agency's priorities in Congress, ensuring the White Hous
  
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• Chicago-Sized Iceberg Hid Ancient Ecosystem, Scientists Reveal

  26-03-2025 14:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Scientists scrutinizing the seafloor beneath a calving iceberg found a remarkable array of living creatures, switching up notions of how the giant chunks of ice affect their immediate environs. The scientists investigated a region of seafloor recently exposed by the calving of a gigantic iceberg -- A-84 -- which is as large as Chicago. The team found a surprisingly vibrant community of critters on the seafloor below where A-84 was once attached t
  
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• Google Patches Chrome Sandbox Escape Zero-Day Caught By Kaspersky

  26-03-2025 11:00 via slashdot.org
  
  wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Google late Tuesday rushed out a patch for a sandbox escape vulnerability in its flagship Chrome browser after researchers at Kaspersky caught a professional hacking operation launching drive-by download exploits. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-2783, was chained with a second exploit for remote code execution in what appears to be a nation-state sponsored cyberespionage campaign [dubbed Operation ForumTroll] targeting organizations in Russia.
  
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• Ethically Sourced 'Spare' Human Bodies Could Revolutionize Medicine

  26-03-2025 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  In an op-ed for MIT Technology Review, authors Carsten T. Charlesworth, Henry T. Greely, and Hiromitsu Nakauchi make the case for human "bodyoids" that could reduce animal testing, improve drug development, and alleviate organ shortages: Why do we hear about medical breakthroughs in mice, but rarely see them translate into cures for human disease? Why do so few drugs that enter clinical trials receive regulatory approval? And why is the waiting list for organ transplantation so long? These chall
  
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• Open Source Devs Say AI Crawlers Dominate Traffic, Forcing Blocks On Entire Countries

  26-03-2025 04:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Software developer Xe Iaso reached a breaking point earlier this year when aggressive AI crawler traffic from Amazon overwhelmed their Git repository service, repeatedly causing instability and downtime. Despite configuring standard defensive measures -- adjusting robots.txt, blocking known crawler user-agents, and filtering suspicious traffic -- Iaso found that AI crawlers continued evading all attempts to stop them, spoofing user-agents an
  
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• GameStop To Invest Corporate Cash In Bitcoin, Following In Footsteps of MicroStrategy

  26-03-2025 02:01 via slashdot.org
  
  GameStop announced it will invest part of its corporate cash in bitcoin and stablecoins, following MicroStrategy's lead. The meme stock jumped more than 6% in extended trading Tuesday following the news. CNBC reports: The video game retailer said a portion of its cash or future debt and equity issuances may be invested in bitcoin and U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins. As of Feb. 1, GameStop held nearly $4.8 billion in cash. The firm also said it has not set a ceiling on the amount of bitcoin i
  
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• Microsoft's Many Outlooks Are Confusing Users

  26-03-2025 00:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The Register's Richard Speed reports: Baffled by the plethora of Outlook options out there? You aren't alone. Microsoft veteran Scott Hanselman posted a list of some more variants that could be used to do the same thing. It's a problem common to several Microsoft products. A file needs to be opened, but which app should be used? Should it be Outlook New, or Outlook (New)? With tongue firmly in cheek, Hanselman listed some more options: Outlook (Zero Sugar), Outlook (Caffeine Free), and so on. Ha
  
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• DeepSeek-V3 Now Runs At 20 Tokens Per Second On Mac Studio

  25-03-2025 23:20 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has quietly released a new large language model that's already sending ripples through the artificial intelligence industry -- not just for its capabilities, but for how it's being deployed. The 641-gigabyte model, dubbed DeepSeek-V3-0324, appeared on AI repository Hugging Face today with virtually no announcement (just an empty README file), continuing the company's pattern of low-key but impactful releases. What
  
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• Lisa Su Says Radeon RX 9000 Series Is AMD's Most Successful GPU Launch Ever

  25-03-2025 22:40 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  "In a conversation with Tony Yu from Asus China, AMD CEO Lisa Su shared that the Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards have quickly become a huge hit, breaking records as AMD's top-selling GPUs within just a week of release," writes Slashdot reader jjslash. TechSpot reports: AMD CEO Lisa Su has confirmed that the company's new Radeon RX 9000 graphics cards have been a massive success, selling 10 times more units than their predecessors in just one week on the market. Su also stated that more RDNA
  
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• Trump's Crypto Venture Introduces a Stabelcoin

  25-03-2025 22:20 via slashdot.org
  
  World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture backed by Donald Trump and his family, has launched a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin called USD1. The token is backed by U.S. Treasuries and cash equivalents and will soon go live on the Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain networks. CNBC reports: The development comes as the market cap for dollar-backed stablecoins -- cryptocurrencies that promise a fixed value peg to another asset -- has been climbing to new all-time-highs this year and has grown more than
  
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• Nearly Half of Canadians Have Cut Cable Entirely

  25-03-2025 22:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  According to Convergence Research, an estimated 46% of Canadian households didn't have a TV subscription with a cable, satellite, or telecom-based provider in 2024. MobileSyrup reports: In its latest annual "Couch Potato" report (PDF) on the streaming market, the firm notes that this was a four per cent increase from 2023 and that the number is expected to continue to rise to 54 per cent by 2027. Convergence notes that this marks a greater shift towards subscription video on demand services (SVO
  
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• After DDOS Attacks, Blizzard Rolls Back Hardcore WoW Deaths For the First Time

  25-03-2025 21:20 via games.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: World of Warcraft Classic's Hardcore mode has set itself apart from the average MMO experience simply by making character death permanent across the entire in-game realm. For years, Blizzard has not allowed any appeals or rollbacks for these Hardcore mode character deaths, even when such deaths came as the direct result of a server disconnection or gameplay bug. Now, Blizzard says it's modifying that policy somewhat in response to a series o
  
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• Google Unveils Gemini 2.5 Pro, Its Latest AI Reasoning Model With Significant Benchmark Gains

  25-03-2025 20:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google DeepMind has launched Gemini 2.5, a new family of AI models designed to "think" before responding to queries. The initial release, Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental, tops the LMArena leaderboard by what Google claims is a "significant margin" and demonstrates enhanced reasoning capabilities across technical tasks. The model achieved 18.8% on Humanity's Last Exam without tools, outperforming most competing flagship models. In mathematics, it scored 86.7% on AIME 2025 and 92.0% on AIME 2024 in si
  
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• 'I Won't Connect My Dishwasher To Your Stupid Cloud'

  25-03-2025 19:50 via it.slashdot.org
  
  A software engineer discovered that his newly purchased Bosch 500 series dishwasher locks basic functionality behind cloud connectivity, reigniting concerns about internet-dependent home appliances. Jeff Geerling found that features like rinse cycle, delayed start and eco mode on his $1,000 dishwasher require connecting to WiFi and creating an account with "Home Connect," Bosch's cloud service.
  Geerling criticized the approach as potentially part of planned obsolescence, noting that without a cu
  
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• Boeing Is Pushing To Withdraw Guilty Plea Agreement

  25-03-2025 19:10 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Boeing is seeking to withdraw an earlier agreement to plead guilty in a long-running criminal case that blamed the company for deceiving regulators before two deadly crashes of 737 MAX jets, WSJ is reporting, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The aerospace giant is seeking more lenient treatment from the Justice Department, which under the Trump administration is reviewing numerous pending criminal cases that haven't yet gone to trial or been approved by courts. Boeing nea
  
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• Signal Head Defends Messaging App's Security After US War Plan Leak

  25-03-2025 18:28 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The president of Signal defended the messaging app's security on Wednesday after top Trump administration officials mistakenly included a journalist in an encrypted chatroom they used to discuss looming U.S. military action against Yemen's Houthis. For a report: Signal's Meredith Whittaker did not directly address the blunder, which Democratic lawmakers have said was a breach of U.S. national security. But she described the app as the "gold standard in private comms" in a post on X, which outlin
  
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• Apple Says It'll Use Apple Maps Look Around Photos To Train AI

  25-03-2025 17:54 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Sometime earlier this month, Apple updated a section of its website that discloses how it collects and uses imagery for Apple Maps' Look Around feature, which is similar to Google Maps' Street View, as spotted by 9to5Mac. A newly added paragraph reveals that, beginning in March 2025, Apple will be using imagery and data collected during Look Around surveys to "train models powering Apple products and services, including models related to image recognition, cr
  
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• Ticketmaster May Have Violated Consumer Protection Laws

  25-03-2025 17:01 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The UK's Consumer Markets Authority (CMA) has provided an update into its investigation of Ticketmaster after the sale of Oasis reunion tour tickets resulted in grossly inflated ticket prices and numerous consumer complaints. The CMA said that the results of the investigation warranted, "consulting with the ticketing platform on changes to ensure fans receive the right information, at the right time."
  Of concern to the CMA was Ticketmaster's labeling and info
  
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• Alibaba's Tsai Warns of 'Bubble' in AI Data Center Buildout

  25-03-2025 16:22 via slashdot.org
  
  Alibaba Chairman Joe Tsai has warned of a potential bubble forming in data center construction, arguing that the pace of that buildout may outstrip initial demand for AI services. From a report: A rush by big tech firms, investment funds and other entities to erect server bases from the US to Asia is starting to look indiscriminate, the billionaire executive and financier said. Many of those projects are built without clear customers in mind, Tsai told the HSBC Global Investment Summit in Hong K
  
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• OpenAI CEO Altman Says AI Will Lead To Fewer Software Engineers

  25-03-2025 15:40 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman believes companies will eventually need fewer software engineers as AI continues to transform programming. "Each software engineer will just do much, much more for a while. And then at some point, yeah, maybe we do need less software engineers," Altman told Stratechery.
  AI now handles over 50% of code authorship in many companies, Altman estimated, a significant shift that's happened rapidly as large language models have improved. The real paradigm shift is still coming, he
  
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• Music Pioneer Napster Sells For $207 Million

  25-03-2025 15:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Infinite Reality, a 3D technology company, has acquired Napster for $207 million, the companies announced Tuesday. The deal aims to transform the once-notorious music sharing service into a metaverse platform.
  Napster, launched in 1999 by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, was the first major peer-to-peer file-sharing application before legal battles forced its closure in 2001. Since 2016, it has operated as a subscription streaming service. Infinite Reality plans to create virtual 3D spaces where m
  
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• AlexNet, the AI Model That Started It All, Released In Source Code Form

  25-03-2025 14:00 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: There are many stories of how artificial intelligence came to take over the world, but one of the most important developments is the emergence in 2012 of AlexNet, a neural network that, for the first time, demonstrated a huge jump in a computer's ability to recognize images. Thursday, the Computer History Museum (CHM), in collaboration with Google, released for the first time the AlexNet source code written by University of Toronto graduate student
  
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• Firefly Aerospace Selects Blue Origin Unit To Explore Volcanic Formations On Moon

  25-03-2025 11:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Firefly Aerospace has teamed up with Blue Origin's Honeybee Robotics unit to deploy a rover on its 2028 lunar mission to study the Gruithuisen Domes -- rare volcanic formations that may reveal insights into the moon's geology and potential resources. The announcement follows Firefly's successful Blue Ghost Mission 1, which outlasted all prior commercial lunar landings. Reuters reports: The Gruithuisen Domes, located on the moon's near side, are unusual volcanic formations believed to be rich in
  
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• NASA's Curiosity Rover Detects Largest Organic Molecules Yet Found on Mars

  25-03-2025 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  NASA's Curiosity rover has detected the largest organic molecules ever found on Mars -- decane, undecane, and dodecane -- suggesting that complex prebiotic chemistry may have occurred in the planet's ancient lakebeds. The findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. From a press release: Scientists probed an existing rock sample inside Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) mini-lab and found the molecules decane, undecane, and dodecane. These compounds
  
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• Software Maker SAP Becomes Europe's Largest Company

  25-03-2025 04:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: German software company SAP overtook Danish healthcare company Novo Nordisk as Europe's largest company by market capitalization on Monday. At 0900 GMT, SAP had a market cap of $340 billion, slightly more than Novo Nordisk, according to Reuters calculations using LSEG Workspace data. SAP is Europe's largest software maker, providing business application software used by companies for finance, sales, supply chain and other functions.Its shares hav
  
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• Meta Considers Charging For Ad-Free Facebook and Instagram In the UK

  25-03-2025 02:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Meta is considering a paid subscription in the UK that would remove advertisements from its platform. The BBC reports: Under the plans, people using the social media sites could be asked to pay for an ad-free experience if they do not want their data to be tracked. Meta already provides ad-free subscriptions for Facebook and Instagram users in the EU, starting from euros (5 pounds) a month. A spokesperson for the firm said the company was "exploring the option" of offering a similar service in t
  
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• Samsung CEO Han Jong-hee Passes Away At 63

  25-03-2025 02:20 via slashdot.org
  
  Samsung Electronics vice chairman and co-CEO, Han Jong-hee, passed away from a heart attack on Tuesday at the age of 63. The Korea Herald reports: Since joining Samsung Electronics, Han held several key positions, including head of the LCD TV Lab. In 2021, he was appointed vice chairman and co-CEO, taking charge of the company's Device eXperience or DX division, which oversees its electronics and consumer device businesses. Developing...Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• 2 In 5 Tech Workers Quit Over Inflexible Workspace Policies

  25-03-2025 02:00 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Two in five tech workers quit in the past year due to inflexible workplace policies around hours, location, and workload intensity, with most citing a desire for remote work and greater autonomy. The Register reports: The findings come from a survey of 26,000 plus staff that operate in 35 markets, including 2,548 respondents in tech, and fly in the face of more and more corporations issuing return to office mandates and demanding long working hours. Amsterdam-based recruitment biz Randstad, whic
  
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• Software Engineer Runs Generative AI On 20-Year-Old PowerBook G4

  25-03-2025 01:20 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  A software engineer successfully ran Meta's Llama 2 generative AI model on a 20-year-old PowerBook G4, demonstrating how well-optimized code can push the limits of legacy hardware. MacRumors' Joe Rossignol reports: While hardware requirements for large language models (LLMs) are typically high, this particular PowerBook G4 model from 2005 is equipped with a mere 1.5GHz PowerPC G4 processor and 1GB of RAM. Despite this 20-year-old hardware, my brother was able to achieve inference with Meta's LLM
  
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• Jack Ma-Backed Ant Touts AI Breakthrough Using Chinese Chips

  25-03-2025 00:40 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Jack Ma-backed Ant Group used Chinese-made semiconductors to develop techniques for training AI models that would cut costs by 20%, according to people familiar with the matter. Ant used domestic chips, including from affiliate Alibaba and Huawei, to train models using the so-called Mixture of Experts machine learning approach, the people said. It got results similar to those from Nvidia chips like the H800, they said, asking not to be named as
  
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