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Slashdot readers damn_registrars and GFS666 share the news of the passing of Thomas E. Kurtz, co-inventor of the BASIC programming language back in the 1960s. He was 96. Hackaday reports: The origins of BASIC lie in the Dartmouth Timesharing System, like similar timesharing operating systems of the day, designed to allow the resources of a single computer to be shared across many terminals. In this case the computer was at Dartmouth College, and BASIC was designed to be a language with which software could be written by average students who perhaps didn't have a computing background. In the decade that followed it proved ideal for the new microcomputers, and few were the home computers of the era which didn't boot into some form of BASIC interpreter. Kurtz continued his work as a distinguished academic and educator until his retirement in 1993, but throughout he remained as the guiding hand of the language.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from GeekWire: Microsoft and Atom Computing say they've reached a new milestone in their effort to build fault-tolerant quantum computers that can show an advantage over classical computers. Microsoft says it will start delivering the computers' quantum capabilities to customers by the end of 2025, with availability via the Azure cloud service as well as through on-premises hardware. "Together, we are co-designing and building what we believe will be the world's most powerful quantum machine," Jason Zander, executive vice president at Microsoft, said in a LinkedIn posting. Like other players in the field, Microsoft's Azure Quantum team and Atom Computing aim to capitalize on the properties of quantum systems -- where quantum bits, also known as qubits, can process multiple values simultaneously. That's in contrast to classical systems, which typically process ones and zeros to solve algorithms. Microsoft has been working with Colorado-based Atom Computing on hardware that uses the nuclear spin properties of neutral ytterbium atoms to run quantum calculations. One of the big challenges is to create a system that can correct the errors that turn up during the calculations due to quantum noise. The solution typically involves knitting together "physical qubits" to produce an array of "logical qubits" that can correct themselves. In a paper posted to the ArXiv preprint server, members of the research team say they were able to connect 256 noisy neutral-atom qubits using Microsoft's qubit-virtualization system in such a way as to produce a system with 24 logical qubits. "This represents the highest number of entangled logical qubits on record," study co-author Krysta Svore, vice president of advanced quantum development for Microsoft Azure Quantum, said today in a blog posting. "Entanglement of the qubits is evidenced by their error rates being significantly below the 50% threshold for entanglement." Twenty of the system's logical qubits were used to perform successful computations based on the Bernstein-Vazirani algorithm, which is used as a benchmark for quantum calculations. "The logical qubits were able to produce a more accurate solution than the corresponding computation based on physical qubits," Svore said. "The ability to compute while detecting and correcting errors is a critical component to scaling to achieve scientific quantum advantage."

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Sony is bringing cloud streaming to the PlayStation Portal. "When it first launched, the device was only able to stream games from your PS5 over Wi-Fi," notes The Verge's Jay Peters. "But as part of a new system update that's rolling out starting later today, you'll be able to stream select PS5 games from the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog to your PlayStation Portal." From the report: Sony is launching the feature in beta, and you'll need to be a PlayStation Plus Premium subscriber to take advantage of it. Sony says that to stream at 720p, you'll need a minimum 7 Mbps connection, while 1080p quality will require a minimum 13 Mbps connection. Some PlayStation Plus features won't be available to start with cloud streaming to the PlayStation Portal, including Game Trials, party voice chat, game invites for select games, 3D audio, and "in-game commerce." And you won't be able to stream any PS4 games or PS3 games. Child accounts also won't be able to use cloud streaming on the Portal.

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According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple plans to license some of its Apple TV+ content to competing services in an effort to save money and spread its reach. From the report: Apple has hired an executive to license its original productions to other companies, a strategy designed to increase sales from its film business and improve the visibility of its content. [...] Apple is focused on licensing its movies to other companies, such as foreign TV networks and stores, where viewers can rent or buy them, according to a person familiar with the plans. The company isn't planning to license its original TV shows to third parties. (At least not yet.)" Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and services boss Eddy Cue have pushed the team overseeing Apple TV+ to lower costs, improve the financial performance of the service and deliver more hits. The company has spent billions of dollars on original films and TV shows and has received strong reviews and praise from critics. Yet few of its titles have attracted a large audience and its streaming service doesn't make money. Apple has already started selling TV+ via Amazon in a bid to increase the audience for the service. Licensing to third parties will generate additional revenue and introduce Apple movies to people who don't yet pay for TV+. Since Apple TV+ launched in 2019, Apple has spent over $20 billion to build a library of original content. Yet, the streaming service only garnered 0.3 percent of U.S. screen viewing time in June 2024, according to Nielsen. "Apple TV+ generates less viewing in one month than Netflix does in one day," wrote Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw in July. Ars Technica notes that Apple is estimated to have 25 million subscribers, making it "one of the smallest mainstream streaming services."

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SpaceX's Starship rocket successfully completed its sixth launch today. Not only did it carry the first-ever payload but it also briefly re-lit one of its six Raptor engines about 38 minutes into flight, a crucial milestone for future space missions. Space Magazine reports: SpaceX landed Starship's huge first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, back at the launch tower on the vehicle's most recent flight, which occurred on Oct. 13. The company aimed to repeat that feat -- which the tower achieved with its "chopstick" arms -- today, but the flight data didn't support an attempt. "We tripped a commit criteria," SpaceX's Dan Huot said during the company's Flight 6 webcast. So Super Heavy ended up coming down for a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico instead, hitting the waves seven minutes after liftoff. Today's mission aimed to do far more than just bring Super Heavy back to Earth in one piece. SpaceX also wanted to put Starship's upper stage -- a 165-foot-tall (50 m) spacecraft called Starship, or simply "Ship" -- through its paces. The launch sent Ship on the same semi-orbital trajectory that it took on Flight 5, targeting a splashdown in the Indian Ocean off the northwestern coast of Australia about 65 minutes after liftoff. But Ship also achieved some new milestones along the way this time. For example, Flight 6 carried the first-ever Starship payload -- a plush banana onboard Ship, which served as a zero-gravity indicator. (It was not deployed into space.) In addition, Ship briefly re-lit one of its six Raptor engines about 38 minutes into the flight. (Super Heavy also employs Raptors -- a whopping 33 of them.) This burn helped show that Ship can perform the maneuvers needed to come back to Earth safely during orbital missions. Indeed, Ship is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, just like Super Heavy; SpaceX eventually intends to catch it with the chopstick arms as well, and will likely try to do so on a test flight in the near future. Flight 6 also tested modifications to Ship's heat shield, which protects the vehicle during reentry to Earth's atmosphere.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Nature: Google Scholar -- the largest and most comprehensive scholarly search engine -- turns 20 this week. Over its two decades, some researchers say, the tool has become one of the most important in science. But in recent years, competitors that use artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the search experience have emerged, as have others that allow users to download their data. The impact that Google Scholar -- which is owned by web giant Google in Mountain View, California -- has had on science is remarkable, says Jevin West, a computational social scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle who uses the database daily. But "if there was ever a moment when Google Scholar could be overthrown as the main search engine, it might be now, because of some of these new tools and some of the innovation that's happening in other places," West says. Many of Google Scholar's advantages -- free access, breadth of information and sophisticated search options -- "are now being shared by other platforms," says Alberto Martin Martin, a bibliometrics researcher at the University of Granada in Spain. AI-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT and other tools that use large language models have become go-to applications for some scientists when it comes to searching, reviewing and summarizing the literature. And some researchers have swapped Google Scholar for them. "Up until recently, Google Scholar was my default search," says Aaron Tay, an academic librarian at Singapore Management University. It's still top of his list, but "recently, I started using other AI tools." Still, given Google Scholar's size and how deeply entrenched it is in the scientific community, "it would take a lot to dethrone," adds West. Anurag Acharya, co-founder of Google Scholar, at Google, says he welcomes all efforts to make scholarly information easier to find, understand and build on. "The more we can all do, the better it is for the advancement of science." Acharya says Google Scholar uses AI to rank articles, suggest further search queries and recommend related articles. What Google Scholar does not yet provide are AI-generated summaries of search query results. According to Acharya, the company has yet to find "an effective solution" for summarizing conclusions from multiple papers in a brief manner that preserves all the important context.

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Instagram is introducing a feature that allows users to reset their content recommendations, offering a fresh start for the algorithm to relearn their preferences based on new interactions. Instagram says the feature is rolling out globally "soon." TechCrunch reports: The feature is geared toward users who feel like their content recommendations no longer cater to their interests. For instance, you may have liked recipe videos in the past but are no longer interested in them, yet that sort of content may be all you see on your Reels and Explore pages. Once you reset your Instagram recommendations, your content recommendations will start to personalize again over time based on the posts and accounts you interact with. If you choose to reset your recommendations, you will have the option to review your following list to unfollow accounts that share content you're no longer interested in. "I want to be clear, this is a big thing to do," said Instagram head Adam Mosseri. "It's going to make your Instagram much less interesting at first, because we're going to treat you as if we know nothing about your interests and it will take some time to learn those again. So it's not something I recommend doing all the time -- but if you do end up in a place where you really don't feel good about your experience, this gives you an out."

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Bose has acquired the high-end audio brand McIntosh, a move the company says will "significantly" expand its product lineup and open "new opportunities in the automotive sector." The Verge reports: McIntosh has already designed a sound system for some Jeep models, but Bose's audio setups are found within a wider range of cars from automakers like Chevy, Honda, Nissan, Cadillac, and many others. It doesn't look like Bose or McIntosh will make any changes to their existing products. Bose says it will continue to launch its headphones, speakers, soundbars, and in-car audio, while McIntosh and Sonus faber will keep developing premium audio products, including amplifiers, loudspeakers, and turntables. "Over the last six decades we've delivered the best premium audio experiences possible; now, with McIntosh Group in our portfolio, we can unlock even more ways to bring music to life in the home, on-the-go and in the car," Bose CEO Lila Snyder said in a press release. "We look forward to honoring the heritage of these brands, investing in their future and pushing the boundaries of audio innovation to bring customers experiences they've never heard before."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is out today (Xbox/PC, Steam), and it packs in a whole lot of simulation. It's hard to imagine topping the 2020 version, which contained the entire world, at scale, 3D modeled and able to be flown over. It had real-time weather and rather detailed physics. You could theoretically fly a helicopter back to your high school football field and land on it, like 15-year reunion royalty. What could come next? A lot, including a world simulation that Microsoft repeatedly describes as Earth's "full digital twin." There are few, if any, real "reviews" up yet, given the size of the game and seemingly late access for reviewers. As such, I offer up all the notable things packed into this latest release so that those with flight sticks, patience, and a desire to get way up yonder can decide whether to take off. These are the most "notable things" available in this latest release, as highlighted by Ars' Kevin Purdy: - The file size is much smaller than the 2020 version, totaling "around 30GB" - You can expect ~5GB an hour of streaming data (up-close data is streamed on demand; flying high-up in the skies uses pre-loaded data) - AI learning has allowed for "4,000 times more" detail in textures and terrain meshes - Aircraft and airports you customized or purchased are carried over from 2020 into 2024 - There's a new Career Mode, with 26 different paths - Animals have more realistic behavior -- e.g. sheep head inside when it's raining, birds migrate, and elephants will be more aware of your flybys - Flight Simulator 2020 will continue to get support

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The global gaming phenomenon Minecraft is coming to the real world for the first time in a global deal to open themed rides, attractions, hotel rooms and retail outlets, starting with the UK and US. Minecraft has struck a deal with UK-headquartered Merlin Entertainments -- Europe's largest theme park operator and the second biggest globally after Disney -- which runs more than 135 attractions in 23 countries including Alton Towers, Legoland, Sea Life, Madame Tussauds and the London Eye. Under the terms of the deal, Merlin will invest more than $110 million in the first two attractions. They are due to open in the UK and the US in 2026 and 2027, in either an existing theme park or as new city centre attractions. Over the longer term the two companies plan to expand the strategic partnership, which is called "Adventures Made Real," to other countries and territories. Minecraft is the bestselling video game of all time, with 140 million players each month, in territories as disparate as Antarctica and Vatican City, and there are more than 1.3 trillion videos posted by game players on YouTube.

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Microsoft has announced sweeping changes to Windows security architecture, including new recovery capabilities designed to prevent system-wide outages following July's CrowdStrike incident that disabled 8.5 million Windows devices. The Windows Resiliency Initiative introduces Quick Machine Recovery, allowing IT administrators to remotely fix unbootable systems through an enhanced Windows Recovery Environment. Microsoft is also mandating stricter testing and deployment practices for security vendors under its Microsoft Virus Initiative, including gradual rollouts and monitoring procedures. The company is also developing a framework to move antivirus processing outside the Windows kernel, with a preview planned for security partners in July 2025.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The US Patent and Trademark Office banned the use of generative artificial intelligence for any purpose last year, citing security concerns with the technology as well as the propensity of some tools to exhibit "bias, unpredictability, and malicious behavior," according to an April 2023 internal guidance memo obtained by WIRED through a public records request. Jamie Holcombe, the chief information officer of the USPTO, wrote that the office is "committed to pursuing innovation within our agency" but are still "working to bring these capabilities to the office in a responsible way." Paul Fucito, press secretary for the USPTO, clarified to WIRED that employees can use "state-of-the-art generative AI models" at work -- but only inside the agency's internal testing environment. "Innovators from across the USPTO are now using the AI Lab to better understand generative AI's capabilities and limitations and to prototype AI-powered solutions to critical business needs," Fucito wrote in an email.

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One of India's largest news agencies, Asian News International, has sued OpenAI in a case that could set a precedent for how AI companies use copyrighted news content in the world's most populous nation. From a report: Asian News International filed a 287-page lawsuit in the Delhi High Court on Monday, alleging the AI company illegally used its content to train its AI models and generated false information attributed to the news agency. The case marks the first time an Indian media organization has taken legal action against OpenAI over copyright claims.

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Augmented reality gaming company Niantic plans to develop an AI system for navigating physical spaces using data from millions of unsuspecting players of its games "Pokemon Go" and "Ingress," the company announced in a blog post. The "Large Geospatial Model" (LGM), named after language models like GPT, will process geolocated images to predict and understand physical environments.

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Ranga Dias, a physics professor who made headlines with claims that he had discovered a room-temperature superconductor and then was found to have engaged in research misconduct, is no longer employed by the University of Rochester. WSJ: A spokeswoman for the university confirmed on Monday that Dias is out but declined to comment on the terms of his departure. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Rochester President Sarah Mangelsdorf had called for terminating his position in an August letter to the chair and vice chair of the university's Board of Trustees. Dias leaves the university after years of accusations that he had misrepresented data in multiple papers. He is a senior author on at least five papers retracted in just over two years. One of those, which identified a material that functioned as a superconductor at room temperature, was pulled by the journal Nature after several co-authors told the journal that Dias had misrepresented information in the paper. Dias didn't respond to requests for comment. He has previously denied manipulating or misrepresenting data. His departure follows a monthslong university investigation completed in February that was led by three outside experts who reviewed documents and data from Dias's laboratory computers and interviewed Dias and his collaborators. The investigative panel found evidence of misconduct in four papers in which Dias is a senior author and in a grant proposal he submitted to the National Science Foundation. Then-provost David Figlio accepted the conclusions and referred his case to a faculty committee "for potential removal." Dias sued the university in February claiming that the probe into his work was biased and didn't follow university policies.

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China has activated the world's most advanced hypergravity machine to advance studies in geological processes, material behavior, and deep-sea energy exploration. Located in Hangzhou, The Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) will be able to produce forces thousands of times stronger than Earth's gravity. Interesting Engineering reports: The facility will house three primary hypergravity centrifuges and 18 onboard units. These centrifuges, machines designed to spin containers rapidly, force heavier materials to the edges or bottom by creating hypergravity conditions, as reported by the South China Morning Post (SCMP). The first centrifuge's main engine, resembling two massive arms holding experimental baskets, has been installed. According to the Hangzhou government, the fabrication of the remaining two centrifuges and 10 onboard units is underway. [...] CHIEF will surpass the capabilities of the US Army Corps of Engineers' hypergravity facility, which has a capacity of 1,200 g-t (gravity acceleration x ton). Once completed, CHIEF will feature a capacity of 1,900 g-t, making it the most advanced facility of its kind, reports SCMP. The project includes six hypergravity experiment chambers, each dedicated to a specific area, such as slope and dam engineering, seismic geotechnics, deep-sea exploration, deep-earth studies, geological processes, and materials processing.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: For the past couple of years, the startup has been iterating on a brand-new CRM platform and making everything available on GitHub under a permissive AGPLv3 license. While Twenty doesn't have all the features that you can find in Salesforce [comparison], the company is slowly building a community of CRM and open source enthusiasts around it, with more than 300 contributors in the last year and 20,000 stars on GitHub. [...] Twenty is trying to build a flexible platform that can be tweaked to every company's needs and that can serve as a basis for other tools and use cases. Each entry in a CRM is an object. It can be a standard, pre-defined object like a person or a company. But customers can also create their own custom objects. If you're a conference organizer, you can create a conference object. If you're a restaurant chain manager, you can create a restaurant object. As you may have guessed, Twenty also lets you create custom fields for each object. This way, it's easier to capture and compare data across multiple entries. This customer data can be viewed in Twenty directly in list or Kanban views. People can sort and filter entries, add tasks and notes, all the usual CRM stuff. But data in Twenty can also be reused with GraphQL and REST APIs. And that's how you can extend Twenty beyond its CRM roots. Eventually, Twenty hopes there will be an active ecosystem of developers working on extensions and plugins to build a proper alternative to the Salesforce product suite. But we're not there yet. "Building a CRM is a daunting task, especially for us because of the way we've chosen to do it. We're building a platform, and we're not taking any shortcut. In fact, we still need to work on workflows, on automation and more," [said Twenty co-founder and CEO Felix Malfait]. "People often don't understand why Salesforce is so big, so powerful," Malfait said. Salesforce's platform utilizes a flexible data model -- a programming language called Apex to execute code on Salesforce's servers and a front-end customization framework. "So when you have these three bricks you can store data, do logic on the back end, and display the result as you like," Malfait said. "It means that you can do everything. And that's what we want to enable in the long term."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Earlier this year I had one of those encounters which, afterwards, I just couldn't stop thinking about. Eight months and some digging later, I have decided to write about it. My meeting was with an American businessman called Tom Kearney, who was on a pavement in central London one Christmas when he was whacked on the head so hard that he fell to the ground, spent weeks in a coma, and only just survived. Had he been mugged? Not quite. He'd been hit by the giant wing mirror of a London bus. [...] The most recent data show that 86 people died or were badly injured in bus collisions in London between 10 December 2023 and 31 March 2024. Kearney's analysis of TfL data suggests that around three people a day are hospitalised after bus safety incidents. That doesn't feel good, even though it's tiny in comparison to the 1.8bn annual passenger journeys. Compared with other world cities like New York and Paris the capital's buses rank in the top quartile for financial efficiency but the bottom quartile for collisions per kilometre. And the number of collisions in London has increased in the past couple of years, despite buses travelling fewer miles. Could this have anything to do with the way that bus contracts prioritise speed? Last week, hundreds of bus drivers marched to TfL headquarters to demand better working conditions and the right to report safety concerns "without fear of retribution from TfL or employers." Drivers described the pressure of long shifts, few breaks and having to drive in sometimes blistering heat, all while being shouted at over a monitor by controllers who want them to make up the time to the next stop, and keep the right amount of distance between their bus and next. It's not surprising that a third of bus drivers, before the pandemic, reported having had a "close call" from fatigue. With the government about to export the London franchise model to other parts of the country, someone in Whitehall needs to take a look. Michael Liebreich, a former McKinsey consultant who sat on the TfL board for six years, believes that TfL's contracting out model is "institutionally unsafe." Bus drivers are under such pressure, he thinks, that some may break the speed limit and overtake cyclists dangerously.

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Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's "El Capitan" supercomputer is now ranked as the world's most powerful, exceeding a High-Performance Linpack (HPL) score of 1.742 exaflops on the latest Top500 list. Engadget reports: El Capitan is only the third "exascale" computer, meaning it can perform more than a quintillion calculations in a second. The other two, called Frontier and Aurora, claim the second and third place slots on the TOP500 now. Unsurprisingly, all of these massive machines live within government research facilities: El Capitan is housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Frontier is at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Argonne National Laboratory claims Aurora. [Cray Computing] had a hand in all three systems. El Capitan has more than 11 million combined CPU and GPU cores based on AMD 4th-gen EPYC processors. These 24-core processors are rated at 1.8GHz each and have AMD Instinct M1300A APUs. It's also relatively efficient, as such systems go, squeezing out an estimated 58.89 Gigaflops per watt. If you're wondering what El Capitan is built for, the answer is addressing nuclear stockpile safety, but it can also be used for nuclear counterterrorism.

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Roblox has introduced stricter safety measures for users under 13, including restricting direct messaging outside of games and experiences, regardless of parental permission. These updates aim to address criticism over child safety and regain trust, following a Bloomberg investigation highlighting predator risks on the platform. TechCrunch reports: During a press briefing, the company explained that users under the age of 13 will still be able to access in-game chats because Roblox believes that communication is fundamental to gameplay on the platform. Parents can change this setting if they wish. In addition, Roblox is age-gating certain experiences for users under 13. The new restrictions apply to games and experiences that are designed for socializing with people outside of a person's friends list, such as experiences that allow free-form writing or drawing. "The reason that we've made this decision is that we've seen that some of both the content and the conduct in these experiences is more appropriate for older users and teens," said Dina Lamdany, Roblox's product lead for user settings and parental controls, during the press briefing. Although Roblox already offers some parental controls, it previously only allowed them to be managed from a child's account. Now, the company is introducing remote management, which allows parents to adjust controls and see their child's activity from their own devices. To do so, parents can link their Roblox account to their child's account after verifying themselves using an ID or credit card. Parents can now also see their child's average weekly screen time and set daily time limits. They can also see their child's Friends list.

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