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Aujourd’hui — 1 février 2025Actualités numériques

Android 16's Linux Terminal Runs Doom

Par : BeauHD
1 février 2025 à 01:40
Google is enhancing Android 16's Linux Terminal app to support graphical Linux applications, so Android Authority decided to put it to the test by running Doom. From the report: The Terminal app first appeared in the Android 15 QPR2 beta as a developer option, and it still remains locked behind developer settings. Since its initial public release, Google pushed a few changes that fixed issues with the installation process and added a settings menu to resize the disk, forward ports, and backup the installation. However, the biggest changes the company has been working on, which include adding hardware acceleration support and a full graphical environment, have not been pushed to any public releases. Thankfully, since Google is working on this feature in the open, it's possible to simply compile a build of AOSP with these changes added in. This gives us the opportunity to trial upcoming features of the Android Linux Terminal app before a public release. To demonstrate, we fired up the Linux Terminal on a Pixel 9 Pro, tapped a new button on the top right to enter the Display activity, and then ran the 'weston' command to open up a graphical environment. (Weston is a reference implementation of a Wayland compositor, a modern display server protocol.) We also went ahead and enabled hardware acceleration beforehand as well as installed Chocolate Doom, a source port of Doom, to see if it would run. Doom did run, as you can see below. It ran well, which is no surprise considering Doom can run on literal potatoes. There wasn't any audio because an audio server isn't available yet, but audio support is something that Google is still working on.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"NOVA-Core" Patches Propose Building New NVIDIA Driver Piece-By-Piece In The Linux Kernel

1 février 2025 à 01:30
Red Hat engineers have been working on Nova as an open-source driver successor to the Nouveau driver for upstream NVIDIA GPU support within the Linux kernel that can be used with the Mesa OpenGL/Vulkan drivers. Unlike the prior larger RFC patch series, sent out to the Linux kernel mailing list today were some small patches for introducing "NOVA-Core" that would serve as the initial base for this modern NVIDIA Linux kernel DRM driver. Over time and succeeding kernel releases, the NOVA code would be built up until ultimately becoming a usable state for end-users...

Drone Pilot To Plead Guilty In Collision That Grounded Aircraft Fighting Palisades Fire

Par : BeauHD
1 février 2025 à 01:00
Earlier this month, a civilian drone collided with a Canadian CL-415 firefighting plane combating the Palisades Fire, causing damage that grounded the aircraft and temporarily halted all aerial firefighting operations. Federal and state officials have since identified the operator of that drone as Peter Tripp Akemann of Culver City, who has agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, pay a fine and complete community service. Prosecutors said he could still face up to a year in federal prison. The Los Angeles Times reports: The drone, which authorities say was flying in restricted airspace on Jan. 9, put a fist-sized hole in the left wing of a Super Scooper -- a massive fixed-wing plane that can drop large amounts of water onto a fire. The collision knocked the plane out of commission for about five days and destroyed the drone. "Like a lot of individuals, he was curious about what was happening in that area," acting U.S. Atty. Joseph T. McNally said on Friday. "The problem with that... is with the amount of firefighting planes you have in that area dropping so they can get water in the Pacific Ocean it interferes with those operations. It's not the time to fly drones anytime that we have these emergencies in Southern California." As part of the plea agreement, Akemann agreed to pay full restitution to the government of Quebec, Canada, which supplied the plane, and the company that repaired the plane. It cost at least $65,169 to fix the aircraft, prosecutors said. Akemann also agreed to complete 150 hours of community service in support of wildfire relief efforts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Most Men Would Marry Their AI Girlfriends If It Were Legal

Par : BeauHD
1 février 2025 à 00:20
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VICE News: EVA AI, a platform allowing you to create and connect with your own AI partner, recently surveyed 2,000 men and found that 8 in 10 would consider marrying an AI girlfriend if it were legal. Not only that, but 83% of men also believe they could form a deep emotional bond with an AI girlfriend. What's even scarier is that a whopping 78% of men surveyed said they would consider creating a replica of their ex, and three-quarters would duplicate their current partner to create a "polished" version of them. "AI companionship allows people to be their authentic selves without fear of judgment," said Cale Jones, head of community growth at EVA AI. "It creates a safe space to explore thoughts, emotions, and desires that might feel too vulnerable to share in real life. The benefits extend far beyond the virtual world: one EVA AI user discovered her bisexuality through this platform -- something she previously felt too insecure to explore in real life."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta In Talks To Reincorporate In Texas or Another State, Exit Delaware

Par : BeauHD
31 janvier 2025 à 23:40
According to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), Meta is in talks to move its incorporation from Delaware to Texas or other states. Reuters reports: The social media giant has talked to Texas officials about the potential changes, WSJ said, adding that the discussions predate President Donald Trump's new administration. The paperwork change would not relocate its corporate headquarters. A Meta spokesperson said that it does not plan on shifting its corporate headquarters out of Menlo Park, California, but declined to comment on reincorporation when contacted by Reuters. Texas is perceived by some businesses as having a more favorable legal and regulatory environment, particularly in areas such as taxation and corporate governance, which can be attractive to companies looking to cut costs and streamline operations.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hier — 31 janvier 2025Actualités numériques

Swiss Tax Authority Forced To Buy Bahamas Domain Name After URL Typo

Par : BeauHD
31 janvier 2025 à 23:00
The Swiss canton ("state") of Basel-Stadt fixed a tax flyer typo by buying the incorrect domain and setting up a redirect, avoiding a $100,000 reprint cost. TechCrunch reports: As Swiss news outlet SRF reports, the Basel tax administration printed fliers that were supposed to include a URL to file taxes online. However, the Swiss country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of ".ch" was omitted, leaving just the Basel-Stadt suffix of ".bs" -- which just happens to be the ccTLD of the Bahamas. A spokesperson for Basel-Stadt's department of finance told SRF that it would cost the equivalent of around $100,000 to print and send out a batch of new flyers, so it was a no-brainer to fork out $1,000 to administer the new domain instead.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Pixel 4a's Ruinous 'Battery Performance' Update Is a Bewildering Mess

Par : BeauHD
31 janvier 2025 à 22:21
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: What exactly is wrong with the batteries in some of Google's Pixel 4a phones still out there? Google has not really said. Now that many Pixel 4a owners are experiencing drastically reduced battery life after an uncommon update for an end-of-life phone, they are facing a strange array of options with no path back to the phone they had. Google's "Pixel 4a Battery Performance Program," announced in early January, told owners that an automatic update would, for some "Impacted Devices," reduce their battery's runtime and charging performance. "Impacted" customers could choose, within one year's time, between three "appeasement" options: sending in the phone for a battery replacement, getting $50 or the equivalent in their location, or receiving $100 in credit in the Google Store toward a new Pixel phone. No safety or hazard issue was mentioned in the support document. Google did not explain why only certain devices were affected, but Hector Martin -- of Asahi Linux on Apple silicon, open source Kinect drivers, and other fame -- took apart the update's binary kernel and has some guesses. Martin points out that the updated Pixel 4a kernel has these interesting characteristics: - It seems to have been built by a Google engineer "on their personal machine, not the proper buildsystem." -- There is no source provided, as would normally be required of a Linux kernel build, though it may only need to be provided on request under the GNU General Public License. - The maximum charge voltage of certain battery profiles changes from 4.44 volts to 3.95, which would mean batteries cannot charge to anywhere near their former potential. - There are two main battery profiles, with distinct "ATL" and "LSN" markers; Martin suggests they relate to Amperex Technology Limited and Lishen, manufacturers of battery cells. - LSN-tagged batteries assigned the "debug" profile can see capacity reduced from 3,080 milliamp hours (mAh) to 1,539 mAh. The big question is why Google pushed an automatic update to a phone from 2020. "No news or community reports have surfaced yet of Pixel 4a devices causing fires, or even simply failing to function, after four years," writes Ars' Kevin Purdy. "It's an automatic update with a strong fix, but for what?" Google's support page only states that the update will "improve the stability of their battery's performance."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses

Par : msmash
31 janvier 2025 à 21:22
Apple has canceled a project to build advanced augmented reality glasses that would pair with its devices, Bloomberg reported Friday, marking the latest setback in its effort to create a headset that appeals to typical consumers. From the report: The company shuttered the program this week, according to people with knowledge of the move. The now-canceled product would have looked like normal glasses but include built-in displays and require a connection to a Mac, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the work wasn't public. The project had been seen as a potential way forward after the weak introduction of the Apple Vision Pro, a $3,499 model that was too cumbersome and pricey to catch on with consumers. The hope was to produce something that everyday users could embrace, but finding the right technology -- at the right cost -- has proven to be a challenge.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TLB Flushing Scalability Optimizations Merged For Linux 6.14 To Benefit AMD / Intel CPUs

31 janvier 2025 à 21:57
While we are approaching the end of the Linux 6.14 merge window with Linux 6.14-rc1 expected on Sunday, the fun isn't over quite yet... Among other last minute pull requests today were a set of patches to work on better optimizing the TLB flushing scalability for modern Intel and AMD x86_64 processors...

Dell is Making Everyone Return To Office, Too

Par : msmash
31 janvier 2025 à 20:42
Dell is the latest tech company to announce it's ending its hybrid and remote work policy. From a report: Starting March 3rd, Dell employees will have to show up in person five days a week. In an email obtained by Business Insider, CEO Michael Dell writes that 'all hybrid and remote team members who live near a Dell office will work in the office five days a week. We are retiring the hybrid policy effective that day.' "What we're finding is that for all the technology in the world, nothing is faster than the speed of human interaction. A thirty second conversation can replace an email back-and-forth that goes on for hours or even days," Dell writes. Despite this mandate, Dell also continues to sell remote work solutions, noting that remote work offers "benefits such as flexibility, reduced commute times, and cost savings for employees, while employers can access a broader talent pool, reduce overhead costs, and increase productivity."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cursing Disables Google's AI Overviews

Par : msmash
31 janvier 2025 à 20:05
Google users have discovered that adding curse words to search queries disables the company's AI-powered overview feature. While Google's Gemini AI system typically avoids profanity, inserting expletives into search terms bypasses AI summaries and delivers traditional web results instead. Users can also disable AI overviews by adding "-ai" or other text strings after a minus sign to their queries.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI's o3-mini: Faster, Cheaper AI That Fact-Checks Itself

Par : msmash
31 janvier 2025 à 19:16
OpenAI today launched o3-mini, a specialized AI reasoning model designed for STEM tasks that offers faster processing at lower costs compared to its predecessor o1-mini. The model, priced at $1.10 per million cached input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens, performs fact-checking before delivering results to reduce errors in technical domains like physics and programming, the Microsoft-backed startup said. (A million tokens are roughly 750,000 words) OpenAI claims that its tests showed o3-mini made 39% fewer major mistakes than o1-mini on complex problems while delivering responses 24% faster. The model will be available through ChatGPT with varying access levels -- free users get basic access while premium subscribers receive higher query limits and reasoning capabilities.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

'Magical' Efficient-Market Theory Rebuked in Era of Passive Investing

Par : msmash
31 janvier 2025 à 18:40
An anonymous reader shares a report: At first blush, stock trading this week is hardly a paragon of the market-efficiency theory, an oft-romanticized idea in Economics 101. After all, big equity gauges plunged on Monday, spurred by fears of an AI model released a week earlier, before swiftly rebounding. A fresh academic paper suggests the rise of passive investing may be fueling these kind of fragile market moves. According to a study to be published in the prestigious American Economic Review, evidence is building that active managers are slow to scoop up stocks en masse when prices move away from their intrinsic worth. Thanks to this lethargic trading behavior and the relentless boom in benchmark-tracking index funds, the impact of each trade on prices gets amplified, explaining how sell orders, like on Monday perhaps, can induce broader equity gyrations. As a result, the financial landscape is proving less dynamic and more volatile in the era of Big Passive, according to authors at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, the Stockholm School of Economics and the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel prévient : pas d’arrivage massif de nouveaux Core avant 2026

Durant la présentation de ses résultats financiers, Intel a dévoilé une partie de ses plans pour les prochains mois. En matière de processeurs pour le grand public, il ne faut pas attendre grand-chose de l’année 2025... [Tout lire]

Thousands of Highly Cited Scientists Have At Least One Retraction

Par : msmash
31 janvier 2025 à 18:01
More than 8,000 of the world's most-cited scientists have at least one retraction, according to a database that links retractions to top-cited papers. From a report: An analysis of the database, published in PLOS Biology on 30 January, attempts to map the scale of retractions and understand how they manifest. "Not every retraction is a sign of misconduct," says John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University in California, who led the study. "But it is important to have a bird's eye view, across all scientific fields, [of] people who are most influential in science." Retracted papers had a higher number of self-citations than did non-retracted papers. And papers with higher co-authorship numbers were more likely to be retracted than those with fewer co-authors. [...] In the study, the authors split the most-cited scientists into two groups. The first featured the 217,097 authors who were among the top 2% most-cited in their fields over their careers. The second group comprised the 223,152 scientists who made up the top 2% for citation impact in 2023, the most recent year for which there were data. The authors found that 8,747 (4%) of the most highly cited researchers in 2023 had at least one retraction during their career, as did 7,083 (3.3%) of the researchers who were most-cited over their careers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DeepSeek Outstrips Meta and Mistral To Lead Open-Source AI Race

Par : msmash
31 janvier 2025 à 17:20
DeepSeek has emerged as the leading open-source AI model developer, surpassing Meta's Llama and Mistral, after releasing its latest model V3 with breakthrough cost efficiencies, research and consultancy firm SemiAnalysis reported on Friday. The Chinese startup, backed by hedge fund High-Flyer, reached this milestone through innovations in Multi-head Latent Attention technology, which cut inference costs by 93.3% versus standard methods. Despite offering services below cost to gain market share, its performance matches or exceeds OpenAI's GPT-4.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

☕️ Microsoft renouvelle ses gammes Surface for Business avec… des puces Intel

31 janvier 2025 à 17:05


Microsoft a présenté hier soir les déclinaisons « for Business » de sa Surface Pro 11 et de son Surface Laptop 7. L’entreprise ayant toujours eu une politique de noms exotique, il y a en effet des Surface Pro pour le grand public et des Surface Pro pour les entreprises, mais toutes s’appellent « Pro ».

La Surface Pro 11 for Business reprend très largement les caractéristiques de la Surface Pro 11 présentée en mai dernier, lors du grand lancement des PC Copilot+. Il y a cependant une grosse différence : les puces Snapdragon X laissent leur place à des Core Ultra 200 d’Intel. La configuration de base est ainsi équipée d’un Core Ultra 5 236V (4 cœurs Performance de 2,1 à 4,7 GHz, 4 cœurs efficaces de 2,1 à 3,5 GHz), accompagné de 16 Go de mémoire et d’un SSD de 256 Go.

En option, on peut choisir un Core Ultra 5 238V, un Core Ultra 7 266V ou 268V. Notez que les deux Core Ultra 5 ont un NPU de 40 TFLOPS, contre 48 TFLOPS pour les Core Ultra 7. La puissance est donc suffisante pour toutes les fonctions IA intégrées dans Windows 11 (version pro fournie). La mémoire peut grimper jusqu’à 32 Go, étrange d’ailleurs qu’une version 64 Go n’ait pas été proposée au vu de la clientèle visée. Le stockage, lui, peut aller jusqu’à 1 To.

Pour le reste, tout est identique ou presque, dont une option OLED pour l’écran. On trouve également un lecteur NFC, absent de la version grand public. En revanche, Microsoft fait le choix de réserver l’option 5G à son Laptop 7 for Business. L’autonomie annoncée est de 14 heures en vidéo et 10 heures pour du web. Enfin, côté tarif, le ticket d’entrée est nettement plus élevé que pour la version Snapdragon X : 1 849 euros (TTC).

Le Surface Laptop 7 for Business subit le même traitement : il reprend la base équipée de Snapdragon X et la remplace par des puces Intel. Les configurations proposées sont exactement les mêmes que pour la Surface Pro 11 for Business. On s’étonne d’ailleurs : le Laptop 6 disposait d’une option 64 Go de RAM, qui disparait dans la nouvelle version. Le ticket d’entrée est le même : 1 849 euros (TTC).

Toutes ces configurations sont en précommande, pour une disponibilité à partir du 18 février.

La suppression des données des agences américaines devient réalité

31 janvier 2025 à 16:32

La suppression des données des agences américaines devient réalité

Les craintes sur la suppression des données publiées par les agences américaines se concrétisent. Comme lors de l’investiture de Joe Biden, le nombre de jeux de données recensés par data.gov a baissé une semaine après celle de Donald Trump. Des outils dédiés aux données sur le climat sont maintenant indisponibles et certains sites d’agences de santé ont été figés. L’agence de financement de la recherche américaine a aussi bloqué les financements dont les sujets sont critiqués par le nouveau président états-unien.

Dès les premiers jours du mandat de Donald Trump, les chercheurs et militants écologistes américains ont exprimé leur peur d’une nouvelle suppression de données concernant le climat stockées par les agences publiques américaines. Nous expliquions qu’ils s’étaient organisés pour archiver le plus tôt possible ces données.

Des jeux de données de data.gov supprimés… mais sous Joe Biden aussi

Cette suppression est de fait déjà en train de se produire. En effet, des utilisateurs de Reddit ont constaté que plus de 2 000 jeux de données ont disparu du portail data.gov, comme l’a remarqué 404 Media.

Et effectivement, de 307 967 jeux de données décomptés par le portail le 16 janvier dernier, data.gov n’en compte actuellement plus que 305 578.

Notons qu’on aurait pu faire un constat similaire et même plus prononcé lors de la passation de pouvoir en 2020 entre Donald Trump et Joe Biden, puisque le nombre de jeux de données est passé de 261 547 le 16 janvier 2020 à 230 221 le 31 janvier 2020. À la fin du mandat de Joe Biden, data.gov dénombrait donc 307 967 jeux de données.

Pendant le premier mandat de Donald Trump, ce chiffre a d’abord augmenté de 194 001 le 31 janvier 2017 à 301 343 au 31 janvier 2019 pour descendre ensuite à 261 547 au 16 janvier 2020.

Des outils numériques sur le climat clairement ciblés

Aucune explication officielle n’est venue éclairer la raison de ces fluctuations. On peut en revanche constater, début 2025, que des outils numériques dédiés à l’information au sujet de certains sujets critiqués par Donald Trump ont bel et bien disparu. Par exemple, l’Environmental Quality’s Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) n’est actuellement plus en ligne.

Comme l’explique le média Inside Higher Ed, cet outil était « une carte interactive des secteurs de recensement des États-Unis qui sont « marginalisés par le sous-investissement et accablés par la pollution », selon les termes du gouvernement fédéral d’avant Trump, que les chercheurs et le public pouvaient utiliser pour localiser et zoomer rapidement sur des communautés spécifiques et analyser les problèmes auxquels elles sont confrontées ». L’archivage de ce genre d’outils par Internet Archive n’est pas toujours possible. La page du CEJST archivée ne contient pas la fameuse carte, ce qui rend l’outil inutilisable. Mais, heureusement, le chercheur de l’Université de Harvard, Jonathan Gilmour a pensé à l’archiver sur GitHub.

« L’un des premiers outils de l’administration Trump a été le CEJST. Il serait certainement frustrant pour les objectifs anti-justice économique et anti-climat de l’administration si quelqu’un l’avait… sauvegardé… » écrivait-il sur LinkedIn, ajoutant  « un effort considérable et opportun de la part de notre équipe du Projet de données publiques sur l’environnement 🌎  ».

Ce groupe bénévole a compilé une longue liste de bases de données et d’outils fédéraux et les a classés par ordre de priorité en fonction de leur impact relatif, de sa certitude de pouvoir les archiver et de l’effort relatif qu’il faudrait déployer pour les obtenir et les archiver.

L’information sur la santé figée

Selon plusieurs sources du Washington Post, l’administration Trump a aussi demandé aux agences fédérales de santé d’interrompre toutes les communications externes, « telles que les avis sanitaires, les rapports scientifiques hebdomadaires, les mises à jour des sites web et les posts sur les médias sociaux ».

Nos confrères font remarquer que « les agences de santé sont chargées de prendre des décisions qui touchent à la vie de chaque Américain et sont la source d’informations cruciales pour les prestataires de soins de santé et les organisations dans tout le pays ».

Les financements de la recherche temporairement bloqués

Enfin, la revue scientifique Science a appris que la National Science Foundation, l’agence de financement de la recherche américaine, a bloqué le paiement de bourses de chercheurs financées par son fonds. En effet, elle serait à la recherche de tous les travaux qu’elle finance et qui touchent aux sujets qui déplaisent au nouveau président.

Ce gel des financements fait suite à une série de directives de Donald Trump adoptées depuis le 20 janvier qui interdisent tout financement fédéral sur les sujets que le nouveau président « considère comme une « idéologie du genre », la diversité, l’équité et l’inclusion, l’aide à l’étranger, le Green New Deal et le soutien aux organisations non gouvernementales qui nuisent à l’intérêt national », explique la revue. Ça pourrait donc toucher, dans la politique de la recherche américaine, tous les projets d’équité, mais aussi la collaboration internationale ou la recherche sur l’environnement.

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