The U.S. and China “are racing to build a truly useful humanoid worker,” the Wall Street Journal wrote Saturday, adding that “Whoever wins could gain a huge edge in countless industries.” “The time has come for robots,” Nvidia’s chief executive said at a conference in March, adding “This could very well be the largest industry of all.”China’s government has said it wants the country to be a...
Slashdot reader jrnvk writes: The Verge is reporting that Microsoft will soon make it harder to run the well-publicized bypassnro command in Windows 11 setup. This command allows skipping the Microsoft account and online connection requirements on install. While the command will be removed, it can still be enabled by a regedit change — for now. “However, there’s no guarantee Microsoft will...
The giant financial news site Bloomberg “has been experimenting with using AI to help produce its journalism,” reports the New York Times. But “It hasn’t always gone smoothly.” While Bloomberg announced on January 15 that it would add three AI-generated bullet points at the top of articles as a summary, “The news outlet has had to correct at least three dozen A.I.-generated summaries of...
As Rust approaches its 10th anniversary, “there is an important piece of documentation missing that many other languages provide,” notes the Rust Foundation. While there’s documentation and tutorials — there’s no official language specification:In December 2022, an RFC was submitted to encourage the Rust Project to begin working on a specification. After much discussion, the RFC was approved...
A former Facebook director of global policy recently published “the book Meta doesn’t want you to read,” a scathing takedown of top Meta executives titled Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism. But Wednesday RestofWorld.org published additional thoughts from Meta’s former head of public policy for Bangladesh (who is now an executive director at the nonprofit...
The New York Times notes that white-collar workers have faced higher unemployment than other groups in the U.S. over the past few years — along with slower wager growth. Some economists wonder if this trend might be irreversible… and partly attributable to AI:After sitting below 4% for more than two years, the overall unemployment rate has topped that threshold since May… “We’re seeing a...
The Trump administration’s 25% import tariff will have a major impact on South African carmakers as the US is the country’s third largest export customer.
“After a long run, Google is sunsetting two of its signature Nest products,” reports PC World:Google has just announced that it’s discontinuing the 10-year-old Nest Protect and the 7-year-old Nest x Yale lock. Both of those products will continue to work, and — for now — they remain on sale at the Google Store, complete with discounts until supplies run out. But while Google itself is...
Cloud providers like the security of running things in virtual machines “at scale” — even though VMs “are not known for having fast cold starts or a small footprint…” noted Microsoft’s Open Source blog last November. So Microsoft’s Azure Core Upstream team built an open source Rust library called Hyperlight “to execute functions as fast as possible while isolating those functions within a...
From the stylish Evercade to the old-school Sega Genesis Mini, these machines will have you bleeping, blooping, and blasting back to the good old days.
ANC and South African president Cyril Ramaphosa explained that the card’s purpose would be to reinforce the party’s integrity and significantly reduce opportunities for abuse.
Cyclone Alfred drives wild seas, a seagull eclipses the moon, and our Kylie performs on a trapeze: Guardian Australia looks at some of the month’s best images
A test rocket aimed at kickstarting satellite launches from Europe fell to the ground and exploded less than a minute after takeoff from a Norwegian spaceport
First orbital rocket launched from Europe crashes after takeoff
There are many recipes for the fermented Korean staple—typically made with cabbage, chili powder, and aromatics—but all of them put salt at the center.
For one writer, tragedy led to comedy, the sudden loss of a colleague giving her the nudge she needed
There’s nothing funny about your co-worker being assassinated. But it was the death of my beloved colleague and friend Hisham al-Hashimi that led me into the world of standup comedy. I knew it would trash my hard-won career in international security, but I didn’t care any more.
Uncrewed Spectrum test rocket’s failure seconds after blast-off said to have produced extensive data nonetheless
A test rocket aimed at kickstarting satellite launches from Europe fell to the ground and exploded less than a minute after takeoff from a Norwegian spaceport on Sunday, in what the German startup Isar Aerospace had described as an initial test.
“Researchers have discovered nearly 1.5 million pictures from specialist dating apps — many of which are explicit — being stored online without password protection,” reports the BBC, “leaving them vulnerable to hackers and extortionists.” And the images weren’t limited to those from profiles, the BBC learned from the ethical hacker who discovered the issue. “They included pictures which had...