News

Electricity Prices In France Turn Negative As Renewable Energy Floods the Grid

Slashdot - Wed, 2024-06-19 02:20
French electricity prices turned negative due to a drop in demand and a surge in renewable energy output, prompting the grid operator to request that Electricite de France (EDF) take several nuclear reactors offline. Fortune reports: While more clean power is needed across Europe to reach climate goals, soaring renewables output and a lack of battery storage mean reactors sometimes have to be turned off during periods of low demand. It's becoming increasingly common around weekends in France -- which gets about two-thirds of its electricity from its atomic fleet -- and also occurs in the Nordic region and Spain. EDF halted its Golfech 2, Cruas 2 and Tricastin 1 nuclear plants, and plans to halt three others during the weekend. Some renewables producers will also have to curb generation to avoid paying a fee amid negative prices. French day-ahead power fell to -5.76 euros a megawatt-hour, the lowest in four years, in an auction on Epex Spot. Germany's equivalent contract dropped to 7.64 euros.

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An Effort To Fund an Internet Subsidy Program Just Got Thwarted Again

Slashdot - Wed, 2024-06-19 02:02
Bipartisan agreement on government internet subsidies seems unlikely as Democrats and Republicans propose conflicting bills to reauthorize the FCC's spectrum auctions. The Democratic bill aims to fund the now-defunct Affordable Connectivity Program, while the Republican version does not. "While some Republicans supported earlier efforts to extend the subsidy program, those efforts did not go through in time to keep it from ending," notes The Verge. From the report: The Senate Commerce Committee canceled a Tuesday morning markup meeting in which it was set to consider the Spectrum and National Security Act, led by committee chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA). When she introduced it in April, Cantwell said the bill would provide $7 billion to continue funding the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), the pandemic-era internet subsidy for low-income Americans that officially ran out of money and ended at the end of May. The main purpose of the bill is to reauthorize the Federal Communications Commission's authority to run auctions for spectrum. The proceeds from spectrum auctions are often used to fund other programs. In addition to the ACP, Cantwell's bill would also fund programs including incentives for domestic chip manufacturing and a program that seeks to replace telecommunications systems that have been deemed national security concerns. The markup was already postponed several times before. Cantwell blamed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, for standing in the way of the legislation. "We had a chance to secure affordable broadband for millions of Americans, but Senator Cruz said 'no,'" Cantwell said in a statement late Monday. "He said 'no' to securing a lifeline for millions of Americans who rely on the Affordable Connectivity Program to speak to their doctors, do their homework, connect to their jobs, and stay in touch with loved ones -- including more than one million Texas families." In remarks on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Cantwell said her Republican colleagues on the committee offered amendments to limit the ACP funding in the bill. She said the ACP shouldn't be a partisan issue and stressed the wide range of Americans who've relied on the program for high-speed connections, including elderly people living on fixed incomes and many military families. "I hope my colleagues will stop with obstructing and get back to negotiating on important legislation that will deliver these national security priorities and help Americans continue to have access to something as essential as affordable broadband," she said. Cruz has his own spectrum legislation with Sen. John Thune (R-SD) that would reauthorize the FCC's spectrum auction authority, with a focus on expanding commercial access to mid-band spectrum, commonly used for 5G. But it doesn't have the same ACP funding mechanism. Some large telecom industry players prefer Cruz's bill, in part because it allows for exclusive licensing. Wireless communications trade group CTIA's SVP of government affairs, Kelly Cole, told Fierce Network that the Cruz bill "is a better approach because it follows the historical precedent set by prior bipartisan legislation to extend the FCC's auction authority." But other tech groups like the Internet Technology Industry Council (ITI), which represents companies including Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta, support Cantwell's bill, in part because of the programs it seeks to fund.

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iOS 18 Could 'Sherlock' $400 Million in App Revenue

Slashdot - Wed, 2024-06-19 01:20
An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple's practice of leveraging ideas from its third-party developer community to become new iOS and Mac features and apps has a hefty price tag, a new report indicates. With the release of iOS 18 later this fall, Apple's changes may affect apps that today have an estimated $393 million in revenue and have been downloaded roughly 58 million times over the past year, according to an analysis by app intelligence firm Appfigures. Every June at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, the iPhone maker teases the upcoming releases of its software and operating systems, which often include features previously only available through third-party apps. The practice is so common now it's even been given a name: "sherlocking" -- a reference to a 1990s search app for Mac that borrowed features from a third-party app known as Watson. Now, when Apple launches a new feature that was before the domain of a third-party app, it's said to have "sherlocked" the app. In earlier years, sherlocking apps made some sense. After all, did the iPhone's flashlight really need to be a third-party offering, or would it be better as a built-in function? Plus, Apple has been able to launch features that made its software better adapted to consumers' wants and needs by looking at what's popular among the third-party developer community.

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Mozilla Acquires Ad Metrics Firm Anonym

Slashdot - Wed, 2024-06-19 00:40
Mozilla has acquired ad metrics firm Anonym in a move to "support user privacy" while delivering effective online advertising. Anonym, founded by former Meta executives in 2022, helps advertisers and ad networks measure the performance of online ads while preserving user privacy. The acquisition comes amid growing consumer concerns and regulatory scrutiny over current data practices in the advertising industry. Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers sees this as a pivotal shift in the coexistence of privacy and advertising. Mozilla maintains that advertising is the underlying business model of the web, but it can be reformed to minimize societal harms.

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Zelda is Finally Getting Her Own Game

Slashdot - Wed, 2024-06-19 00:00
After years of playing second fiddle to Link in her own franchise, Princess Zelda is finally getting a video game of her own this fall. From a report: During today's Direct presentation, Nintendo revealed The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, the franchise's first game to follow as Princess Zelda herself embarks on an adventure to save the world from destruction. After Ganon bests Link in battle, Zelda is left to her own devices to battle hordes of monsters that descend upon the game's take on Hyrule (which seems heavily inspired by 2019's Link's Awakening remake). According to series producer Eiji Aonuma, Zelda will navigate and fight through the world somewhat differently in Echoes of Wisdom as she wields a magical staff known as the Tri Rod with the assistance of a fairy named Tri. The trailer details how Zelda will be able to use the Tri Rod to create "echoes" of objects and monsters she's previously encountered and use them to overcome obstacles.

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KDE Plasma 6.1 Released

Slashdot - Tue, 2024-06-18 23:20
"The KDE community announced the latest release of their popular desktop environment: Plasma 6.1," writes longtime Slashdot reader jrepin. From the announcement: While Plasma 6.0 was all about getting the migration to the underlying Qt 6 frameworks correct, Plasma 6.1 is where developers start implementing the features that will take you desktop to a new level. In this release, you will find features that go far beyond subtle changes to themes and tweaks to animations (although there is plenty of those too). Among some of the new features in this release you will find improved remote desktop support with a new built-in server, overhauled and streamlined desktop edit mode, restoration of open applications from the previous session on Wayland, synchronization of keyboard LED colors with the desktop accent color, making mouse cursor bigger and easier to find by shaking it, edge barriers (a sticky area for mouse cursor near the edges between screens), explicit sync support eliminates flickering and glitches for NVidia graphics card users on Wayland, and triple buffering support for smoother animations and screen rendering. The changelog for Plasma 6.1 is available here.

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A Social Network Where AIs and Humans Coexist

Slashdot - Tue, 2024-06-18 22:40
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Butterflies is a social network where humans and AIs interact with each other through posts, comments and DMs. After five months in beta, the app is launching Tuesday to the public on iOS and Android. Anyone can create an AI persona, called a Butterfly, in minutes on the app. After that, the Butterfly automatically creates posts on the social network that other AIs and humans can then interact with. Each Butterfly has backstories, opinions and emotions. Butterflies was founded by Vu Tran, a former engineering manager at Snap. Vu came up with the idea for Butterflies after seeing a lack of interesting AI products for consumers outside of generative AI chatbots. Although companies like Meta and Snap have introduced AI chatbots in their apps, they don't offer much functionality beyond text exchanges. Tran notes that he started Butterflies to bring more creativity to humans' relationships with AI. "With a lot of the generative AI stuff that's taking flight, what you're doing is talking to an AI through a text box, and there's really no substance around it," Vu told TechCrunch. "We thought, OK, what if we put the text box at the end and then try to build up more form and substance around the characters and AIs themselves?" Butterflies' concept goes beyond Character.AI, a popular a16z-backed chatbot startup that lets users chat with customizable AI companions. Butterflies wants to let users create AI personas that then take on their own lives and coexist with other. [...] The app is free-to-use at launch, but Butterflies may experiment with a subscription model in the future, Vu says. Over time, Butterflies plans to offer opportunities for brands to leverage and interact with AIs. The app is mainly being used for entertainment purposes, but in the future, the startup sees Butterflies being used for things like discovery in a way that's similar to Instagram. Butterflies closed a $4.8 million seed round led by Coatue in November 2023. The funding round included participation from SV Angel and strategic angels, many of whom are former Snap product and engineering leaders. Vu says that Butterflies is one of the most wholesome ways to use and interact with AI. He notes that while the startup isn't claiming that it can help cure loneliness, he says it could help people connect with others, both AI and human. "Growing up, I spent a lot of my time in online communities and talking to people in gaming forums," Vu said. "Looking back, I realized those people could just have been AIs, but I still built some meaningful connections. I think that there are people afraid of that and say, 'AI isn't real, go meet some real friends.' But I think it's a really privileged thing to say 'go out there and make some friends.' People might have social anxiety or find it hard to be in social situations."

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Texas A&M University Tops Nation in Engineering Research Expenditures

Slashdot - Tue, 2024-06-18 21:20
An anonymous reader shares a report: Texas A&M University held the largest engineering research portfolio of any academic institution in the country last year, nearing half a billion dollars and surpassing Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the top spot, according to U.S. News & World Report. The state flagship's College of Engineering recorded $444.7 million in research expenditures in the 2023 fiscal year, university officials said. A mix of federal, state and private grants funds those efforts, so more expenditures means more partnerships and a larger engineering footprint than ever, Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp said. "An awful lot of people in Washington, a lot of people in Austin, a lot of people in the private sector now rely on Texas A&M to do their engineering research," Sharp said. "Of all the places in the country now, the No. 1 place people go to research engineering problems is Texas A&M University."

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Apple Mocks Microsoft's Spectacular Windows Recall AI Failure

Slashdot - Tue, 2024-06-18 20:40
At a panel discussion, Apple's global marketing SVP Greg "Joz" Joswiak mocked Microsoft's recent recall of its Windows Recall feature. When asked by commentator John Gruber if Apple was frustrated by Microsoft's inability to build trust in such features, Joswiak quipped, "are we frustrated by the failings of our competitors? The answer's no," eliciting laughter from the panel and audience.

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87% in New Poll Say Cost an Important Reason For Halting Studies

Slashdot - Tue, 2024-06-18 20:07
A new Gallup survey released Tuesday found cost and work conflicts are the top reasons Americans choose to discontinue their higher education. From a report: In the poll, 87 percent said cost was a "very" or "moderately" important reason for pursuing further institutional study, while 81 percent pointed to work conflicts. The other two leading reasons were the time it takes to complete a degree at 73 percent and lack of remote options at 70 percent. Cost tops the list among all demographic groups, including across racial and ethnic lines. "For many of these Americans, their time enrolled in these courses represents significant opportunity costs and financial investment. Given that they lack a degree or credential to show for their time enrolled, they are often worse off than if they never enrolled to begin with," Gallup said. Colleges prices have been surging for decades, with some estimating a 180 percent increase between 1980 and 2020. The cost of Ivy League schools is nearing $90,000 a year, and the average student debt held in the U.S. sits around $30,000. "Today, approximately 41.9 million Americans have some college experience but no degree or credential. The percentage of Americans who have taken some college courses, but who have stopped out and not completed their degree or credential, has increased significantly over the past five years," Gallup found.

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Nvidia Vaults Past Apple and Microsoft To Become World's Most Valuable Company

Slashdot - Tue, 2024-06-18 19:14
Nvidia has leapfrogged Microsoft and Apple to become the most valuable company in the world, following months of explosive share price growth driven by demand for its chips and an investor frenzy over artificial intelligence. From a report: The company's shares climbed 3.2 per cent to $135.18 on Tuesday, bringing its market capitalisation to $3.332tn and surpassing the two tech giants that have long jostled for pole position on US stock markets. Nvidia has been the chief beneficiary of a boom in demand for chips that can train and run powerful generative AI models such as OpenAI's ChatGPT. In less than two years, it has been transformed from a $300bn company, grappling with a chip glut exacerbated by a cryptocurrency bust, into one of the most powerful tech companies in the world, with other Silicon Valley giants lining up to secure its latest products.

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AI Images in Google Search Results Have Opened a Portal To Hell

Slashdot - Tue, 2024-06-18 18:40
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google image search is serving users AI-generated images of celebrities in swimsuits and not indicating that the images are AI-generated. In a few instances, even when the search terms do not explicitly ask for it, Google image search is serving AI-generated images of celebrities in swimsuits, but the celebrities are made to look like underage children. If users click on these images, they are taken to AI image generation sites, and in a couple of cases the recommendation engines on these sites leads users to AI-generated nonconsensual nude images and AI-generated nude images of celebrities made to look like children. The news is yet another example of how the tools people have used to navigate the internet for decades are overwhelmed by the flood of AI-generated content even when they are not asking for it and which almost exclusively use people's work or likeness without consent. At times, the deluge of AI content makes it difficult for users to differentiate between what is real and what is AI-generated.

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Los Angeles Schools To Consider Ban on Smartphones

Slashdot - Tue, 2024-06-18 18:04
The Los Angeles Unified School District on Tuesday will consider banning smartphones for its 429,000 students in an attempt to insulate a generation of kids from distractions and social media that undermine learning and hurt mental health. From a report: The proposal was being formulated before U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Monday called for a warning label on social media platforms, akin to those on cigarette packages, due to what he considers a mental health emergency. The board of the second-largest school district in the United States is scheduled to vote on a proposal to within 120 days develop a policy that would prohibit student use of cellphones and social media platforms and be in place by January 2025. The L.A. schools will consider whether phones should be stored in pouches or lockers during school hours, according to the meeting's agenda and what exceptions should be made for students with learning or physical disabilities. Nick Melvoin, a board member and former middle school teacher who proposed the resolution, said cell phones were already a problem when he left the classroom in 2011, and since then the constant texting and liking has grown far worse.

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Apple Suspends Work on Next High-End Headset

Slashdot - Tue, 2024-06-18 17:29
The Information: Apple has told at least one supplier that it has suspended work on its next high-end Vision headset, an employee at a manufacturer that makes key components for the Vision Pro said. The pullback comes as analysts and supply chain partners have flagged slowing sales of the $3,500 device. The company is still working on releasing a more affordable Vision product with fewer features before the end of 2025, the person involved in its supply chain and a person involved in the manufacturing of the headsets said. Apple originally planned to divide its Vision line into two models, similar to the standard and Pro versions of the iPhone, according to people involved in its supply chain and former Apple employees who worked on the devices. Apple's decision to halt work on the next version of its high-end headset is the latest example of the company reshuffling priorities. Apple has ramped up work on AI-powered features while paring back money-losing projects like its self-driving car, which it canceled earlier this year after spending nearly a decade on development. Augmented reality is one of Apple's biggest bets. The company aims to eventually replace the iPhone with lightweight glasses, and the Vision Pro is the first step in building consumer and developer interest in that effort.

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EV Maker Fisker Files for Bankruptcy

Slashdot - Tue, 2024-06-18 16:40
Fisker filed for bankruptcy on Monday, months after the electric-vehicle startup stopped production of its only model, the oft-malfunctioning Ocean SUV. From a report: Fisker is the second plug-in car company started by Henrik Fisker -- a famed designer of BMW and Aston Martin sports cars -- to end up in bankruptcy. An earlier venture, Fisker Automotive, filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2013 after a series of recalls spelled the downfall of its battery supplier, a fellow recipient of US Energy Department loans. The undoing of Fisker was more self-inflicted. The startup went public in 2020 as part of the wave of EV companies to benefit from the pandemic era boom in special purpose acquisition companies. Combining with a SPAC sponsored by Apollo Global Management Inc. left Fisker with roughly $1 billion in cash and helped the company land a deal with a Magna International subsidiary that manufactures vehicles for the likes of Toyota, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. While Fisker Ocean sport utility vehicle production started on schedule in November 2022, the first SUVs lacked basic features including cruise control. The California-based company told customers it would deploy capabilities it had promised them the following year, via over-the-air software updates. Software bugs ended up slowing production for months, leading Fisker to repeatedly slash its forecasts. In February of this year, influential YouTuber Marques Brownlee produced a video -- This is the Worst Car I've Ever Reviewed -- that summarizes a series of issues he experienced while borrowing an Ocean from a New Jersey dealership.

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SUSE Wants a Piece of the AI Cake, Too

Slashdot - Tue, 2024-06-18 16:02
SUSE, a Luxembourg-based open-source company, is launching a new vendor- and LLM-agnostic generative AI platform called SUSE AI solutions. The company aims to leverage the potential of AI to gain a stronger foothold in the U.S. market, where it has struggled to establish brand recognition compared to competitors like Red Hat and Canonical. SUSE CEO Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen believes that the open-source model provides infinite potential for enterprise customers, offering support, security, and long-term stability. The company's recent fork of CentOS has attracted a significant number of users, and its portfolio, including Kubernetes service Rancher and security service Neuvector, positions SUSE well in a market where enterprises are looking to consolidate platforms. Despite ownership changes over the years, SUSE remains committed to expanding its presence in the U.S. market.

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