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Submission + - Spanish Power Is Almost Free With Renewables Set for Record (bnnbloomberg.ca)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Electricity prices in Spain have slumped to almost nothing as the nation’s wind and solar parks are churning out more power than ever. Day-ahead prices remained below €10 per megawatt-hour for the last week and output in the Mediterranean nation is on track for a record this month. Daily solar production on Wednesday jumped to the highest since early October and the surge is likely to last into March.

The slump is also impacting power flows in southwest Europe, with Spain currently selling into France, which is one of Europe’s biggest exporters. The commodity flows to the market with cheapest prices on an hourly basis and grid data shows Spain exporting since Feb. 21. Prices for Friday settled at €2.14 in Spain, the lowest since early November, and €67.21 in France.

Submission + - HDMI 2.1 on AMD open source stack? HDMI Forum says No. (phoronix.com)

Submitted by serafean
serafean writes: For three years there has been a bug report around 4K@120Hz being unavailable via HDMI 2.1 on the AMD Linux driver. Similarly, there have been bug reports like 5K @ 240Hz not possible either with the AMD graphics driver on Linux.

As covered back in 2021, the HDMI Forum closing public specification access is hurting open-source support. AMD as well as the X.Org Foundation have been engaged with the HDMI Forum to try to come up with a solution to be able to provide open-source implementations of the now-private HDMI specs.

AMD Linux engineers have spent months working with their legal team and evaluating all HDMI features to determine if/how they can be exposed in their open-source driver. AMD had code working internally and then the past few months were waiting on approval from the HDMI Forum... Sadly, the HDMI Forum has turned down AMD's request for open-source driver support.
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org...

Submission + - Rust-GPU now supports SPIR-V ray-tracing (github.com)

Submitted by guest reader
guest reader writes: New release of Rust-GPU supports SPIR-V ray-tracing.

Rust-GPU project aims at making Rust a first class language and ecosystem for GPU programming.

GPU programming has historically been done with HLSL or GLSL, simple programming languages that have evolved along with rendering APIs over the years. However, as game engines have evolved, these languages have failed to provide mechanisms for dealing with large codebases, and have generally stayed behind the curve compared to other programming languages.

Our hope with this project is that we push the industry forward by bringing Rust, an existing low-level, safe, and high performance language, to the GPU. And with it come some additional great benefits: a package/module system that's one of the industry's best, built in safety against race-conditions or out of bounds memory access, a wide range of libraries and tools to improve programmer workflows, and many others!

Submission + - SPAM: Ex-SpaceX Engineers Are Building a Cheap, Portable Nuclear Reactor

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Radiant founder and CEO Doug Bernauer is a former SpaceX engineer who worked on developing energy sources for a future Mars colony during his time at the private space enterprise. During his research into microreactors for Mars, he saw an opportunity for developing a flexible, affordable power source here on Earth, leading to him founding Radiant with two other SpaceX engineers. In an interview with Power , Bernauer said "a lot of the microreactors being developed are fixed location. Nobody has a [commercial] system yet, so there's kind of a race to be the first."

Radiant announced last year that it had received two provisional patents for its portable nuclear reactor technology. One of these was for a technology that reduces the cost and the time needed to refuel their reactor, while the other improves efficiency in heat transference from the reactor core. The microreactor will use an advanced particle fuel that does not melt down and is capable of withstanding higher temperatures than traditional nuclear fuels. Helium coolant, meanwhile, reduces the corrosion and contamination risks associated with traditional water coolant. Radiant has signed a contract with Battelle Energy Alliance to test its portable microreactor technology at its Idaho National Laboratory (INL).
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: 7-Eleven Breached Customer Privacy By Collecting Facial Imagery Without Consent

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In Australia, the country's information commissioner has found that 7-Eleven breached customers' privacy by collecting their sensitive biometric information without adequate notice or consent. From June 2020 to August 2021, 7-Eleven conducted surveys that required customers to fill out information on tablets with built-in cameras. These tablets, which were installed in 700 stores, captured customers' facial images at two points during the survey-taking process — when the individual first engaged with the tablet, and after they completed the survey. After becoming aware of this activity in July last year, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) commended an investigation into 7-Eleven's survey.

During the investigation [PDF], the OAIC found 7-Eleven stored the facial images on tablets for around 20 seconds before uploading them to a secure server hosted in Australia within the Microsoft Azure infrastructure. The facial images were then retained on the server, as an algorithmic representation, for seven days to allow 7-Eleven to identify and correct any issues, and reprocess survey responses, the convenience store giant claimed. The facial images were uploaded to the server as algorithmic representations, or "faceprints," that were then compared with other faceprints to exclude responses that 7-Eleven believed may not be genuine. 7-Eleven also used the personal information to understand the demographic profile of customers who completed the survey, the OAIC said.

7-Eleven claimed it received consent from customers who participated in the survey as it provided a notice on its website stating that 7-Eleven may collect photographic or biometric information from users. The survey resided on 7-Eleven's website. As at March 2021, approximately 1.6 million survey responses had been completed. In Australia, an organization is prohibited from collecting sensitive information about an individual unless consent is provided. [...] 7-Eleven [has been ordered] to cease collecting facial images and faceprints as part of the customer feedback mechanism. 7-Eleven has also been ordered to destroy all the faceprints it collected.
Link to Original Source

Comment Re:Employees are now training their replacements. (Score 1) 474

The writing has been on the wall for a long time.

I wrote this post back in 2007*. I'd be genuinely interested in hearing the Slashdot community's thoughts on how a union/trade group for IT could get started. How did plumbers & electricians do it? Does it have to be the "right time"? Is this the "right time"?

*apologies for the rant. I was younger and working for a very badly run organization at the time.

Comment My Nephew And I (Score 2) 244

by lordDallan (#48572451) Attached to: Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy: The Science of Misheard Song Lyrics
Last summer I saw my nephew for the first time in a couple of years (he was about twelve years old) and found it eerie when he sang "Judy In Disguise" as "Judy In The Skies".

I'd made the same misinterpretation at his age; watching him sing those same wrong lyrics was like a time warp. First time I felt that weird "oh we've got some of the same 'DNA stuff' floating around in us" feeling. Wouldn't surprise me if it's because our brains are wired up quite similarly in some key places.

Comment Re:Is it still relevant? (Score 1) 147

by lordDallan (#45400911) Attached to: WxWidgets 3.0: First Major Release in Several Years
Xojo (formerly RealStudio) is a visual basic-like language except that it's realy OOP (has nice things like interfaces and delegates for example) that compiles to programs that use native GUI widgets on Windows, Mac, and Linux. No, it's not as powerful as C/C++, but it's a lot easier/quicker.

It's biggest weakness (IMHO) is that it's developed by a small, private firm that seems resource constrained. This leads to some releases having real issues and it taking some time for those issues to be sorted. That can mostly be mitigated by only updating once you know the current version is quirk-free.

Xojo also has a decent plugin architecture/SDK so you can write "heavier things" in C if you need to. It also handles decalres against C libs pretty well.

Xojo's definitely worth taking a look at (again IMHO) if you really need to build cross-platform software (small business applications for example).

Submission + - EU Considers Strict Data Breach Notification Rules (computerworld.com)

Submitted by JohnBert
JohnBert writes: The European Commission is examining whether additional rules are needed on personal data breach notification in the European Union.

Telecoms operators and Internet service providers hold a huge amount of data about their customers, including names, addresses and bank account details. The current ePrivacy Directive requires them to keep this data secure and notify individuals if such sensitive information is lost or stolen. Data breaches must also be reported to the relevant national authority.

"The duty to notify data breaches is an important part of the new E.U. telecoms rules," she said. "But we need consistency across the E.U. so businesses don't have to deal with a complicated range of different national schemes. I want to provide a level playing field, with certainty for consumers and practical solutions for businesses."

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