SUNDAY, 24 MAY 2026, 22:05
Are statistical programmers coalescing around a handful of popular languages? That’s the question asked by the CEO of software assessment site TIOBE, which every month estimates the popularity of programming languages based on their frequency in search results:This month, the programming language R matched its all-time high by reaching position #8 in the TIOBE index once again. This is not a...
It is hardly a surprise that outbreaks can occur and experts say many of the factors involved are not easy to change
It was a voyage that promised such stuff as dreams are made of, yet within weeks the Atlantic expedition of the MV Hondius had become a nightmare, with three passengers dead from hantavirus and more showing symptoms.
Meanwhile, an outbreak of norovirus is under investigation on...
xAI has launched Grok Build, “a coding agent of its own to serve as competitor to its rivals’ products, such as Anthropic’s Claude Code,” reports Engadget:As Bloomberg notes, xAI has been trying to catch up to its rival companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. Elon Musk, the company’s founder and CEO, previously admitted that it has fallen behind its competitors when it comes to coding. A couple of...
Experts say slashed funding and growing misinformation are some of the greatest challenges facing public health
The hantavirus outbreak, while unlikely to spark the next big pandemic, is shining a spotlight on the ways public health has deteriorated in the US: its ability to test for rare diseases, its expertise on outbreak prevention and response, its ability to battle misinformation and...
Computer Weekly reports on “the long-awaited reform of Britain’s outdated Computer Misuse Act of 1990 — which has hamstrung the work of the nation’s cyber security professionals and researchers for years.” The Computer Misuse Act was passed 35 years ago in response to a high-profile hacking incident involving no less than the King’s father, the late Duke of Edinburgh. It defined the offence...
Today Amazon ends support for first- and second-generation versions of Kindles and Kindle Fire tablets, along with the Kindle Touch, the 9.7-inch Kindle DX, and other devices released in 2012 or earlier. Owners can continue reading ebooks that they’ve already downloaded, and they can also still sideload books using a USB cable (from, for example, Project Gutenberg). And PCMag points out that...
An anonymous reader shared this report from Electrek: A Nevada utility just told 49,000 Lake Tahoe residents that it’s redirecting 75% of their electricity supply to data centers, and they have less than a year to find a new power source. It’s one of the starkest examples yet of the AI boom’s impact on everyday Americans… NV Energy needs the capacity for data centers being built by Google,...
“Every link leads to an entry that does not exist yet,” explains the GitHub page for a Wikipedia-like site called Halupedia. “Until you click it, at which point an LLM pretends it has always existed and writes it for you, in the deadpan register of a 19th-century scholarly press…”Every article is invented on demand. The footnotes are also lies… The hardest problem with an infinite, on-demand...
Former Microsoft programmer Keith Curtis “wrote and self-published After the Software Wars to explain the caliber of free and open source software,” according to his entry on Wikipedia, “and why he believes Linux is technically superior to any proprietary OS.” He’s also KeithCu (long-time Slashdot reader #925,649), and has written a blog post on “How I added an LLM-based grammar checking + TeX...
Bloomberg reports that Apple’s two-year-old partnership with OpenAI “has become strained, according to people familiar with the matter.” Bloomberg describes OpenAI as “failing to see the expected benefits from the deal and now preparing possible legal action.”OpenAI lawyers are actively working with an outside legal firm on a range of options that could be formally executed in the near future,...
The person was onboard the MV Hondius, the center of the outbreak that has claimed three lives
Canadian officials said on Saturday that a test for one of the four Canadians currently quarantining in British Columbia after being exposed to the hantavirus while on board the cruise ship where the outbreak occurred indicated a positive result.
Speaking at a news conference, Dr Bonnie Henry, British...
“Most of the plastic waste in California is about to lose the recycling symbol,” writes the Washington Post’s “climate coach.”The “chasing arrows” symbol, created in 1970 by a college student inspired by the burgeoning environmental movement, has been stamped indiscriminately on plastic bottles, clamshell takeout containers, chip bags and more for decades. The majority of the items emblazoned...
“Most of the plastic waste in California is about to lose the recycling symbol,” writes the Washington Post’s “climate coach.”The “chasing arrows” symbol, created in 1970 by a college student inspired by the burgeoning environmental movement, has been stamped indiscriminately on plastic bottles, clamshell takeout containers, chip bags and more for decades. The majority of the items emblazoned...
“The vulnerability is simple in practice,” writes Tom’s Hardware: “run a command as a standard user and gain root (administrator) access to the machine.”And it was Mythos Preview that helped the security researchers at Palo Alto-based Calif bypass a five-year Apple security effort in just five days. The blog 9to5Mac reports:Last year, Apple introduced Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE), a...
Variety reports:Amazon MGM Studios started auditioning actors for the part of 007 in the past few weeks, Variety has learned… The next James Bond film will be directed by Denis Villeneuve, the filmmaker behind the “Dune” franchise, “Arrival” and “Sicario.” Amy Pascal of the “Spider-Man” films and David Heyman of the “Harry Potter” series will produce the picture, which will feature a script...
Instagram’s new feature blasts photos to your mutual followers or close friends, immediately.
The US supreme court dealt a devastating blow to the 1965 Voting Rights Act when it ruled in Louisiana v Callais in April that states cannot consider race in redistricting. Southern states from Tennessee to Alabama have rushed to erase majority-Black districts, sparking chaos for the midterm elections. Kai Wright talks to Stacey Abrams, a voting rights activist and former Georgia house minority...
The acquisition, Weights.gg, was a sort of social network for creating and sharing artificial intelligence algorithms.
In the past, many believed that investing required a large amount of capital. However, in recent years, more and more ordinary users have realized that small amounts of capital can also participate in the market. What truly matters is not how much money you invest initially, but whether you can find a suitable approach and […]
Researchers say daily exposure to cold activates brown fat and could help speed up body’s burning of calories
Wearing an ice vest or taking daily cold showers could help people lose weight, according to researchers.
Despite the growing popularity of cold-water swimming and freezing plunges, to date there is minimal data on the health benefits of cold exposure. But a study of 47 adults with...
Eskom’s power system continues to demonstrate improved resilience as colder temperatures drive higher evening demand. The sustained performance underscores the impact of the Generation Recovery Plan, reinforcing Eskom’s Winter Outlook projection of no loadshedding. Exactly at 24:00 tonight, Eskom will complete a year without the need to implement loadshedding, which was last implemented on a […]