Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:NO (Score 1) 67

Why not use a hypothetical (gravitic/magnetic/magic) field that could both compress a very small star down to a manageable size (maybe down the level just before it becomes a singularity) but also use the resistance, heat, and radiation to power your alien government boondoggles?

I mean its about as likely as a Dyson Sphere powering a civilization.

Comment Re:Nice (Score 2) 62

OpenBSD has its strengths but screaming fast compared to most Linux distros? This is laughable. I would say openbsd is more secure by default and in general than the average linux desktop is but I'm not even sure of that in the year 2024...

This benchmark is a few years old but this has not changed, except maybe to skew a bit more in linux's favor - https://www.phoronix.com/revie...

Again there are places where OpenBSD has its strengths but I'm not even sure its faster as a firewall at this point.

Comment Re:How did we not hear about this? (Score 2) 15

CPU based on 80186 w/16bit, 9600bps modem, supported LISP, prolog, BASIC, assembler, rs232 serial - https://retrocdn.net/images/b/... - advertisement is on the 2nd to last page, its in japanese but the specs are in enough english to interpret what it had.

not really surprising - Atari had computers and much better computers than game consoles. This was released in 1986? The year after the first Macintosh came out with a 16bit processor. These sorts of computers were all the rage at the time. What's surprising to me is how rare they are, even in Japan. I guess they just didn't sell that many.

Comment Re:After examining it carefully, no thanks (Score 3, Informative) 100

In addition to sandboxing they have their own app store, their own email services and mail apps, their own data services..you're paying for a google services replacement with screened apps with data stored in Switzerland with no 3rd party usage of that data, where extradition of that data is much harder. My hunch is people using this sort of phone aren't actively posting to tiktok or instagram or X and are actively trying to keep prying eyes off their location data while still having a useful data terminal. This isn't for poor people or your average C-level.

Comment Re:cancer? hah! (Score 2) 85

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Also https://www.freon.com/en/produ... - look how safe and cute that kid looks in the cancer chamber.

Perhaps you're thinking of a different chemical? It doesn't sound like this chemical specifically causes lethal toxicity, perhaps maybe other chemicals in its manufacture? It sounds toxic to brew..

Comment Re:What the literal shit??? (Score 1) 35

How do you have a five digit slashdot ID and not remember the nerdcore scene posts (which succeeded the perl poets for idiot quotes tags on forums)? I mean most of the grumpy low-6s-or-less digiters were the "grumble wtf is this not really nerd stuff" commenters. Anyway as evidenced by this post https://slashdot.org/comments.... blues nerds and folk nerds have been around even longer and haven'tt gone anywhere. If nerdcore is gone, its because it wasn't great or as others pointed out, was subsumed by greater hiphop. To be fair to your outrage, this is a slashvertisment written as a CleverPost to oldtimers who know who cmdrtaco is for an old-timer with nostalgia factor.

Comment Re: Rhetorical question (Score 1) 127

AI is a marketing term to explain generative text and predictive text to non-technical people, much like Hacker was re-used and ab-used to describe someone who broke into computer systems in the 80s.

I think you underestimate the power of generative text. It is NOT AI. When its used as a tool to generate text, its amazingly powerful. It can save a ton of time getting a framework and outline in place prior to you putting the meat on the bones.

I also think the proper way to use this tool will be akin to something like, here's a metaphor for sculpture, where you say "I want to carve a horse" and the 'magic AI for sculpture' will grab a stone block of the right properties and whittle away a general horse shape in the way you want. Could you make the details exact with generative help? Possibly but that will be the difference between crap AI work that broaches on copyright violation and actual creations with a human touch.

Business is going to be very very interested in a tool that can detect more accurately things generated ML, and attorneys more so - the very heart of legal contract and copyright is at stake. The hype will not die down, nor will investment. We may see an ML-style dot-com bubble burst but that didn't kill the web - it made it better.

Transformers based generative text can double the productivity or more of a programmer or technical writer but it cannot yet replace them - and no one is currently claiming otherwise.
Math

Submission + - Open Source Mathematical Software

An anonymous reader writes: The American Mathematical society has an opinion piece about open source software vs propietary software used in mathematics. From the article : "Increasingly, proprietary software and the algorithms used are an essential part of mathematical proofs. To quote J. Neubüser, 'with this situation two of the most basic rules of conduct in mathematics are violated: In mathematics information is passed on free of charge and everything is laid open for checking.'"
User Journal

Journal SPAM: Does the iPhone have a built-in spyware module? 2

The underground hacker team "web-Hack" from Russia released a whitepaper with results of iPhone firmware research where they reverse-engineered embedded functions. They claim discovery of a built-in function which sends all data from an iPhone to a specified web-server. Contacts from a phonebook, SMS, recent calls, history of Safari browser - all your personal information - can be stolen. Researchers as

Power

Submission + - BP permitted by Indiana to pollute Lake Michigan (chicagotribune.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Indiana regulators exempted BP from state environmental laws to clear the way for a $3.8 billion expansion that will allow the company to refine heavier Canadian crude oil. They justified the move in part by noting the project will create 80 new jobs. ...
The company will now be allowed to dump an average of 1,584 pounds of ammonia and 4,925 pounds of sludge into Lake Michigan every day.

Slashdot Top Deals

Interchangeable parts won't.

Working...