Linux fréttir

Black Escalade motorcade sold separately - of course

Need to turn heads and burn cash while out on the town? A new app lets you hire armed bodyguards to escort you around - chauffeur included - provided you're in Los Angeles or New York City.…

Apple has launched the iPhone 16E, featuring a 6.1-inch OLED display, Face ID, an A18 chipset, USB-C, 48MP camera, and support for Apple Intelligence. Gone but not forgotten: the home button, Touch ID and 64GB of base storage. The Verge reports: The 16E includes the customizable Action Button, but not the new Camera Control you'll find on the 16 series. It does swap its Lightning port for USB-C, now a requirement for the phone to be sold in the EU. On the inside, there's an A18 chipset, the same chip as the iPhone 16. That makes the 16E powerful enough to run Apple Intelligence, the suite of AI tools that includes notification summaries. Even the non-Pro iPhone 15 can't do that, so the 16E is one of the most capable iPhones out there. Apple has previously confirmed that 8GB RAM was the minimum to get Apple Intelligence support in the iPhone 16 series, so it's likely that the 16E also boasts at least that much memory. It's also been bumped to a baseline of 128GB of storage, meaning there's no longer a 64GB iPhone. There's only a single 48-megapixel rear camera; the lack of additional cameras is the biggest downgrade compared to the company's other handsets. With support for wireless charging and a water-resistant IP rating, there's little you have to give up elsewhere. The iPhone 16E is also the first iPhone to include a modem developed by Apple itself. The company has spent years trying to move away from modems developed by Qualcomm, and we're finally seeing the fruits of that labor. The big questions now are how well the new modem performs and whether Apple is ready to roll out its own connectivity components in the iPhone 17 line later this year. It's available for Friday starting at $599 with 128GB of storage.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After two decades of quantum computing research, Microsoft has unveiled its first quantum chip: the Majorana 1. CNBC reports: Microsoft's quantum chip employs eight topological qubits using indium arsenide, which is a semiconductor, and aluminum, which is a superconductor. A new paper in the journal Nature describes the chip in detail. Microsoft won't be allowing clients to use its Majorana 1 chip through the company's Azure public cloud, as it plans to do with its custom artificial intelligence chip, Maia 100. Instead, Majorana 1 is a step toward a goal of a million qubits on a chip, following extensive physics research. Rather than rely on Taiwan Semiconductor or another company for fabrication, Microsoft is manufacturing the components of Majorana 1 itself in the U.S. That's possible because the work is unfolding at a small scale. "We want to get to a few hundred qubits before we start talking about commercial reliability," Jason Zander, a Microsoft executive vice president, told CNBC. In the meantime, the company will engage with national laboratories and universities on research using Majorana 1.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A year on from the big overhaul of Plasma 6, more functionality appears

KDE Plasma 6.3 is here, closely followed by a point release, alongside new versions of the KDE Frameworks and KDE Gear apps collection.…

AI hardware startup Humane -- which has been acquired by HP -- has given its users just ten days notice that their Pins will be disconnected. From a report: In a note to its customers, the company said AI Pins will "continue to function normally" until 12PM PT on February 28. On that date, users will lose access to essentially all of their device's features, including but not limited to calling, messaging, AI queries and cloud access. The FAQ does note that you'll still be able to check on your battery life, though. Humane is encouraging its users to download any stored data before February 28, as it plans on permanently deleting "all remaining customer data" at the same time as switching its servers off.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WHAM, bam, no thank you, ma'am?

Researchers have produced a generative AI tool they say can create a three-dimensional game world to help developers design and tweak gameplay.…

Microsoft has placed its new AI-powered text rewrite feature in Notepad behind a subscription paywall, requiring users to have a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family plan to access the functionality. While the core text editor remains free and accessible without a Microsoft account, the AI feature requires users to sign in and have sufficient "AI credits" included in their subscription.Users can disable the feature and hide its icon if they choose not to subscribe.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has told Britain's competition regulator that some of the remedy options proposed by the watchdog to address concerns in the mobile browser market would impact the iPhone maker's incentive to innovate. From a report: The responses from Apple and Google to the regulator's investigation in the supply of mobile browsers and browser engines and the distribution of cloud gaming services through app stores on mobile devices in the country were published on the government website on Wednesday.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Because 4G notspots aren't much good to anyone

Vodafone and AST SpaceMobile plan to open a research hub this summer to test and validate the integration of orbital services with terrestrial cellphone networks.…

Google has built an AI laboratory assistant to help scientists accelerate biomedical research [non-paywalled source], as companies race to create specialised applications from the cutting-edge technology. From a report: The US tech group's so-called co-scientist tool helps researchers identify gaps in their knowledge and propose new ideas that could speed up scientific discovery. "What we're trying to do with our project is see whether technology like the AI co-scientist can give these researchers superpowers," said Alan Karthikesalingam, a senior staff clinician scientist at Google. [...] Early tests of Google's new tool with experts from Stanford University, Imperial College London and Houston Methodist hospital found it was able to generate scientific hypotheses that showed promising results. The tool was able to reach the same conclusions -- for a novel gene transfer mechanism that helps scientists understand the spread of antimicrobial resistance -- as a new breakthrough from researchers at Imperial. Imperial's results were not in the public domain as they were being peer-reviewed in a top scientific journal. This showed that Google's co-scientist tool was able to reach the same hypothesis using AI reasoning in a matter of just days, compared with the years the university team spent researching the problem.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft suggests a move to the cloud

Microsoft has issued administrators a 60-day warning – driver synchronization using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) will be deprecated.…

Leading AI models can fix broken code, but they're nowhere near ready to replace human software engineers, according to extensive testing [PDF] by OpenAI researchers. The company's latest study put AI models and systems through their paces on real-world programming tasks, with even the most advanced models solving only a quarter of typical engineering challenges. The research team created a test called SWE-Lancer, drawing from 1,488 actual software fixes made to Expensify's codebase, representing $1 million worth of freelance engineering work. When faced with these everyday programming tasks, the best AI model â" Claude 3.5 Sonnet -- managed to complete just 26.2% of hands-on coding tasks and 44.9% of technical management decisions. Though the AI systems proved adept at quickly finding relevant code sections, they stumbled when it came to understanding how different parts of software interact. The models often suggested surface-level fixes without grasping the deeper implications of their changes. The research, to be sure, used a set of complex methodologies to test the AI coding abilities. Instead of relying on simplified programming puzzles, OpenAI's benchmark uses complete software engineering tasks that range from quick $50 bug fixes to complex $32,000 feature implementations. Each solution was verified through rigorous end-to-end testing that simulated real user interactions, the researchers said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's probably fine

As the risk corridor narrows for asteroid 2024 YR4, the possibility of a collision with Earth have increased.…

15GB of sensitive files traced back to former software biz

Typically shoppers can expect to find tie-dye t-shirts, broken lamps and old disco records at flea markets, now it seems storage drives filled with huge volumes of sensitive data can be added to that list.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Niantic, the company behind the 2016 hit Pokemon Go, is in talks to sell its video-game business to Saudi Arabia-owned Scopely, according to several people familiar with the discussions. A deal could be announced in coming weeks. The price being discussed is about $3.5 billion, according to one of the people. Any agreement would involve the Pokemon title as well as other mobile games, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. There's no assurance an agreement will be reached.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NGMN reports what telcos want, but admits most can be delivered by 5G

Mobile operators are pushing for consensus on the key components of next-gen 6G networks, warning that a new radio interface could add complexity – though they acknowledge it would also allow for higher data rates.…

The FOSS world has replicated most of it in Lazarus

Delphi is still very much with us, but the FOSS world also has its own, largely compatible, GUI-based Object Pascal environment – and it's worth a look.…

Also hammers another nail into Cortana's coffin with the end of Location History

Microsoft had a Valentine's Day gift for Windows Insiders, firing another arrow into the heart of Cortana while also attempting to soothe European privacy concerns.…

Microsoft is reminding IT administrators that WSUS driver synchronization will be deprecated on April 18, 2025, urging them to transition to cloud-based update solutions like Windows Autopatch, Azure Update Manager, and Microsoft Intune. "For on-premises contexts, drivers will be available on the Microsoft Update catalog, but you won't be able to import them into WSUS," the company said in a Windows message center update on Tuesday. "You'll need to use any of the available alternative solutions, such as Device Driver Packages, or transition to cloud-based driver services for your organization, such as Microsoft Intune and Windows Autopatch." BleepingComputer reports: This reminder follows two other warnings issued since June 2024, announcing the deprecation of WSUS driver synchronization and encouraging customers to adopt Redmond's newer cloud-based driver services. The company also revealed in September 2024 that WSUS had been deprecated, but Microsoft added that it plans to keep publishing updates through the channel and maintain all existing capabilities. This announcement came after WSUS was listed on August 13 as one of the "features removed or no longer developed starting with Windows Server 2025." "Specifically, this means that we are no longer investing in new capabilities, nor are we accepting new feature requests for WSUS," Microsoft's Nir Froimovici said at the time. "However, we are preserving current functionality and will continue to publish updates through the WSUS channel. We will also support any content already published through the WSUS channel."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Showbiz members' passport scans already plastered online

A London talent agency has reported itself to the UK's data protection watchdog after the Rhysida ransomware crew last week claimed it had attacked the business, which represents luminaries of stage and screen.…