Nine astronauts aboard the International Space Station were forced to take shelter late Wednesday when a satellite broke up in low Earth orbit. This "debris-generating event" created "over 100 pieces of trackable [space junk]," according to U.S. space-tracking firm LeoLabs. Space.com reports: The Expedition 71 crew on the International Space Station (ISS) went to their three spacecraft, including Boeing Starliner, shortly after 9 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT), according to a brief NASA update on X, formerly known as Twitter. As the ISS follows a time zone identical to GMT, according to the European Space Agency, the astronauts were likely in their sleep period when the incident occurred. The procedure was a "precautionary measure", NASA officials added, stating that the crew only stayed in their spacecraft for about an hour before they were "cleared to exit their spacecraft, and the station resumed normal operations." NASA did not specify which satellite was associated with the incident, but satellite monitoring and collision detection firm LeoLabs identified a "debris-generating event" that same evening. "Early indications are that a non-operational Russian spacecraft, Resurs-P1 [or] SATNO 39186, released a number of fragments," the company wrote on X. U.S. Space Command also reported the Resurs-P1 event, saying on X that over 100 pieces of trackable debris were generated. The military said it "observed no immediate threats and is continuing to conduct routine conjunction assessments." (A conjunction refers to a close approach of two objects in orbit to one another.)

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En attendant le lancement des Ryzen 9000 le mois prochain, qui pourrait d'ailleurs se faire sans être accompagné des cartes mères de série 800, le travail se poursuit pour adapter le parc existant de cartes mères de série 600 aux nouveaux CPU, tout en corrigeant d'autres trucs au passage. Nous en so...

Alibaba's Qwen models dominated Hugging Face's latest LLM leaderboard, securing three top-ten spots. The new benchmark, launched Thursday, tests open-source models on tougher criteria including long-context reasoning and complex math. Meta's Llama3-70B also ranked highly, but several Chinese models outperformed Western counterparts. (Closed-source AIs like ChatGPT were excluded.) The leaderboard replaces an earlier version deemed too easy to game.

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Scientists have uncovered a new gene-editing tool with potential to rival CRISPR, according to studies published in Nature on Wednesday. The system, based on a bacterial DNA parasite called IS110, uses RNA guides to target specific genomic locations. While showing promise for precise DNA cutting, the method currently lacks the accuracy needed for human applications. At best, it achieved 94% accuracy in lab tests. The team also revealed the molecular structure of IS110's DNA-cutting enzyme, shedding light on its unique four-step editing mechanism. Nature, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07552-4, 10.1038/s41586-024-07570-2.

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The FCC wants to make it significantly easier for consumers to unlock their phones from their carriers, proposing that all devices must be unlockable just 60 days after purchase. From a report: How this will mesh with current plans and phone buying trends, however, is something the agency is hoping to learn before putting such a rule into effect. Mobile phones purchased from a carrier are generally locked to that carrier until either the contract is up or the phone is paid off. But despite improvements to the process over the years (unlocking was flat-out illegal not long ago), it still isn't quite clear to all consumers when and how they can unlock their phone and take it to the carrier (or country) of their choice. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, or NPRM, in a press release today. "When you buy a phone, you should have the freedom to decide when to change service to the carrier you want and not have the device you own stuck by practices that prevent you from making that choice," she wrote. "That is why we are proposing clear, nationwide mobile phone unlocking rules." Specifically, the release says, carriers would simply have to provide unlocking services 60 days after activation. A welcome standard, but it may run afoul of today's phone and wireless markets.

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Last week the GNOME 47 development code saw Wayland DRM lease protocol support for enhancing VR headset handling and separately was also accent color support for GNOME Shell. Adding to the recent slew of changes landing for GNOME 47, the GNOME Shell and Mutter code can now be successfully compiled -- optionally -- without any X11 support or requiring any X11 build dependencies...

AMD today published version 1.4.34 of its Advanced Media Framework (AMF) SDK. This accelerated multimedia framework is used on Linux and Windows for integrating with games/applications leveraging DirectX, OpenGL, and OpenCL with interoperability support for Radeon GPU customers...

Intel has introduced an advanced optical input/output chiplet, marking what it claims to be a significant leap in data center technology. The optical compute interconnect (OCI) chiplet, unveiled at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference 2024, is designed for integration with CPUs and GPUs and boasts 64 PCIe 5.0 channels transmitting 4 Tbps over 100 meters using fiber optics. Tom's Hardware adds: The chiplet uses dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) wavelengths and consumes only five pico-Joules per bit, significantly more energy-efficient than pluggable optical transceiver modules, which consume about 15 pico-Joules per bit, according to Intel. This device is crucial for next-generation data centers and AI/HPC applications. It will enable high-performance connections for CPU and GPU clusters, coherent memory expansion, and resource disaggregation. These features will be handy for operating supercomputers for large-scale AI models and machine learning tasks that require tremendous data bandwidth.

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Si vous faites partie des joueurs qui aiment immortaliser leurs exploits vidéoludiques, une nouvelle option s’offre désormais à vous : le Steam Game Recording, appelé « Enregistrement de parties » en français par Valve. Disponible en version bêta depuis aujourd’hui, il permet, comme son nom l’indique, d’enregistrer vos sessions pour ensuite les revisionner ou les partager... [Tout lire]

Alan annonce faire l’acquisition de Wave.ai, start-up spécialisée dans le coaching professionnel.

Fondée en 2020 par Adri Falcon, Wave.ai a créé une plateforme de coaching « augmentée » par des technologies d’intelligence artificielle.

Le cofondateur d’Alan, Charles Gorintin, présente cette évolution comme une manière, pour le néo-assureur, de renforcer ses travaux relatifs à la santé mentale et au « développement professionnel des salariés », tout autant qu’elle lui permet d’accentuer son usage d’ « IA appliquée à l’entreprise ».

Alan annonce faire l’acquisition de Wave.ai, start-up spécialisée dans le coaching professionnel.

Fondée en 2020 par Adri Falcon, Wave.ai a créé une plateforme de coaching « augmentée » par des technologies d’intelligence artificielle.

Le cofondateur d’Alan, Charles Gorintin, présente cette évolution comme une manière, pour le néo-assureur, de renforcer ses travaux relatifs à la santé mentale et au « développement professionnel des salariés », tout autant qu’elle lui permet d’accentuer son usage d’ « IA appliquée à l’entreprise ».

En 2023, il y a plus d'un an, NVIDIA avait montré ses travaux concernant une nouvelle méthode de compression  des textures dans les jeux, la Neural Texture Compression. Le but, évident, est de diminuer le volume des textures dans les jeux tout en améliorant la qualité visuelle de celles-ci. Certes,...

Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition est le jeu offert par le store d'Epic Games. Vous prenez les commandes d'un train à vapeur, pour une excursion spatiale, tout en ayant l'opportunité de trahir votre reine et de tuer une étoile. Le titre promet une ambiance graphique unique et une narration soignée, l'ajout à votre bibliothèque est possible ici. […]

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The number of climate lawsuits filed against companies around the world is rising swiftly, a report has found, and a majority of cases that have concluded have been successful. From a report: About 230 climate-aligned lawsuits have been filed against corporations and trade associations since 2015, two-thirds of which have been initiated since 2020, according to the analysis published on Thursday by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. One of the most rapidly growing forms of litigation is over "climate-washing" -- when companies are accused of misrepresenting their progress towards environmental targets -- and the analysis found that 47 such cases were filed against companies and governments in 2023. As climate communications are increasingly scrutinised, there has been arise in climate-washing litigation, often with positive outcomes for those bringing the cases. Of the 140 climate-washing cases reviewed between 2016 and 2023, 77 have officially concluded, 54 of which ended with a ruling in favour of the claimant. More than 30 cases in 2023 concerned the "polluter pays" principle, whereby companies are held accountable for climate damage caused by high greenhouse gas emissions. The authors also highlighted six "turning off the taps" cases, which challenge the flow of finance to areas which hinder climate goals.

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Google has unveiled its largest-ever expansion of Translate, adding 110 new languages powered by its PaLM 2 AI model. The update spans major world languages and endangered tongues, covering an additional 614 million speakers globally. Highlights include Cantonese, long-requested by users, and a quarter of the new offerings from Africa. Some additions, like Manx from the Isle of Man, showcase dramatic revival stories. The expansion reflects Google's ambitious "1,000 Languages Initiative" and follows its 2022 addition of 24 languages using zero-shot machine translation. Challenges in implementation included navigating regional varieties and non-standardized forms, the company wrote in a blog post.

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Google déploie actuellement de nouvelles fonctions pour son navigateur mobile. Selon qu’il s’agit d’Android ou d’iOS, il faudra attendre un peu.

Le plus gros apport, ce sont les Chrome Actions. Elles affichent des boutons d’actions à côté de certains résultats de recherche, pour gagner du temps. Dans le cas d’un restaurant, des boutons seront affichés pour appeler, obtenir l’itinéraire ou accéder aux avis laissés par d’autres. Les Chrome Actions sont disponibles depuis hier sur Android, mais il faudra attendre cet automne sur iOS, sans plus de précision.

Viennent ensuite les suggestions de raccourcis. Chrome se sert des habitudes de navigation pour proposer plus vite les adresses déjà visitées. Si vous écrivez régulièrement une certaine recherche pour obtenir, par exemple, les horaires de passage des transports en commun dans votre ville, Chrome suggèrera la page habituellement visitée.

Pour les tablettes – aussi bien Android qu’iPad – la barre d’adresse a été rafraichie. Elle a été passée à la moulinette Material You et s’affiche désormais en surimpression sur le site consulté, sans le masquer. On pourra donc appuyer sur les côtés pour y revenir.

La mouture iOS de Chrome rattrape également son retard sur les versions web et Android. Quand on appuie sur la barre d’adresses, avant que l’on commence à écrire quoi que ce soit, les recherches en tendance s’affichent dans la liste.

Google déploie actuellement de nouvelles fonctions pour son navigateur mobile. Selon qu’il s’agit d’Android ou d’iOS, il faudra attendre un peu.

Le plus gros apport, ce sont les Chrome Actions. Elles affichent des boutons d’actions à côté de certains résultats de recherche, pour gagner du temps. Dans le cas d’un restaurant, des boutons seront affichés pour appeler, obtenir l’itinéraire ou accéder aux avis laissés par d’autres. Les Chrome Actions sont disponibles depuis hier sur Android, mais il faudra attendre cet automne sur iOS, sans plus de précision.

Viennent ensuite les suggestions de raccourcis. Chrome se sert des habitudes de navigation pour proposer plus vite les adresses déjà visitées. Si vous écrivez régulièrement une certaine recherche pour obtenir, par exemple, les horaires de passage des transports en commun dans votre ville, Chrome suggèrera la page habituellement visitée.

Pour les tablettes – aussi bien Android qu’iPad – la barre d’adresse a été rafraichie. Elle a été passée à la moulinette Material You et s’affiche désormais en surimpression sur le site consulté, sans le masquer. On pourra donc appuyer sur les côtés pour y revenir.

La mouture iOS de Chrome rattrape également son retard sur les versions web et Android. Quand on appuie sur la barre d’adresses, avant que l’on commence à écrire quoi que ce soit, les recherches en tendance s’affichent dans la liste.

Plus ou moins dans les tuyaux depuis des mois, Steam a enfin lancé en version bêta sa fonctionnalité d'enregistrement des parties. Le monde actuel aimant immortaliser tous les moments, des plus passionnants aux plus inintéressants, il fallait bien que la plateforme de jeu la plus développée s'y coll...

The Supreme Court decided to press pause on the Environmental Protection Agency's plan to prevent smog-forming pollutants from drifting across state borders. From a report: Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, and various trade organizations including fossil fuel industry groups asked the Supreme Court to issue a stay on the plan while they contest the EPA's actions in lower courts. SCOTUS agreed to put the plan on hold today in its opinion on Ohio v. Environmental Protection Agency. Five justices voted in favor of halting implementation for now, while the remaining justices dissented. "If anything, we see one reason for caution after another," Justice Neil Gorsuch writes in his opinion. While the stay is temporary, the decision signals that the conservative-leaning Supreme Court is likely to rule in favor of states opposing the EPA's plan if the issue makes it to the nation's highest court again for a final decision on the plan's legal merit. That could make it harder to improve air quality across the nation since air pollutants typically don't stay in one place.

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