Lung Cancer Pill Cuts Risk of Death by Half, Study Finds
The Guardian reports:

A pill taken once a day cuts the risk of dying from lung cancer by half, according to “thrilling” and “unprecedented” results from a decade-long global study. Taking the drug osimertinib after surgery dramatically reduced the risk of patients dying by 51%, results presented at the world’s largest cancer conference showed…

Everyone in t … ⌘ Read more

Progressive Web Apps ‘Don’t Spy or Clog Your Phone’. Do You Use Them?
“It’s worth questioning the status quo of technology,” argues the Washington Post’s Tech Friend newsletter, “including apps as we know them.”
Then they tout the benefits of the “non-app app… a hybrid of a website and a conventional app, with features of each” — the unappreciated Progressive Web App (which many still don’t know can be in … ⌘ Read more

Big Tech Isn’t Prepared for AI’s Next Chapter: Open Source
Security guru Bruce Schneier and CS professor Jim Waldo think big tech has underestimated the impact of open source principles on AI research:

In February, Meta released its large language model: LLaMA. Unlike OpenAI and its ChatGPT, Meta didn’t just give the world a chat window to play with. Instead, it released the code into the open-source community, and sho … ⌘ Read more

System76’s Open Firmware ’Re-Disables’ Intel’s Management Engine
Linux computer vendor System76 shared some news in a recent blog post. “We prefer to disable the Intel Management Engine wherever possible to reduce the amount of closed firmware running on System76 hardware. We’ve resolved a coreboot bug that allows the Intel ME (Management Engine) to once again be disabled.”

Phoronix reports that the move will “ … ⌘ Read more

What Stops Millions of Americans From Going Green: Their Landlords
The Washington Post looks at “Americans who want to lower their carbon footprints — but are stymied by their landlords.”

Homes and apartments burn oil and gas, suck up electricity, and account for about one-fifth of the United States’ total greenhouse gas emissions. But current attempts to green America’s homes, including billions of dollars … ⌘ Read more

NYT: It’s the End of Computer Programming As We Know It
Long-time Slashdot theodp writes: Writing for the masses in It’s the End of Computer Programming as We Know It. (And I Feel Fine.), NY Times opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo explains that while A.I. might not spell the end of programming (“the world will still need people with advanced coding skills”), it could mark the beginning of a new kind of programming — … ⌘ Read more

Nigeria’s Central Bank Explains Its 2021 Ban on Cryptocurrency Transactions at Banks
In 2020 Nigeria had the third-most cryptocurrency transactions in the world (behind the U.S. and Russia). But “Nigeria’s history with crypto has been a bittersweet one where the citizens have embraced digital assets with open arms but the government remains vehemently against it,” writes the site Bitcoinist. … ⌘ Read more

ARM Joins Linux Foundation’s ‘Open Programmable Infrastructure’ Project
ARM has joined the Linux Foundation’s Open Programmable Infrastructure project, “a community-driven initiative focused on creating a standards-based open ecosystem for next-generation architectures and frameworks” based on programmable processor technologies like DPUs (Data Processing Units) and IPUs (Infrastructure Processing Unit … ⌘ Read more

CS50, the World’s Most Popular Online Programming Class, Turns to AI for Help
“The world’s most popular online learning course, Harvard University’s CS50, is getting a ChatGPT-era makeover,” reports Bloomberg:

CS50, an introductory course in computer science attended by hundreds of students on-campus and over 40,000 online, plans to use artificial intelligence to grade assignments, teach coding and … ⌘ Read more

Renewable Energy Could Use 50% Less Land, Study Suggests
The Washington Post looks at a new study co-authored by Nels Johnson, senior practice adviser for renewable energy development at the Nature Conservancy nonprofit.
Its underlying point: the current way of building renewables will not work.

“If we take the business-as-usual approach, land conflicts will probably prevent us from getting to these ambitious clean ene … ⌘ Read more

Scientists Zap Sleeping Humans’ Brains with Electricity to Improve Their Memory
“A little brain stimulation at night appears to help people remember what they learned the previous day,” reports NPR — a finding that could one day help people with memory problems, sleeps issues, or depression:

A study of 18 people with severe epilepsy found that they scored higher on a memory test if they got d … ⌘ Read more

Hundreds of Amazon Workers Staged a Walkout Wednesday
“Amazon employees staged a walkout Wednesday,” reports CNBC, “in protest of the company’s recent return-to-office mandate, layoffs and its environmental record.”

Approximately 2,000 employees worldwide walked off the job shortly after 3 p.m. EST, with about 1,000 of those workers gathering outside the Spheres, the massive glass domes that anchor Amazon’s Seattle headqu … ⌘ Read more

Red Hat is Dropping Its Support for LibreOffice
The Red Hat Package Managers for LibreOffice “have recently been orphaned,” according to a post by Red Hat manager Matthias Clasen on the “LibreOffice packages” mailing list, “and I thought it would be good to explain the reasons behind this.”
The Red Hat Display Systems team (the team behind most of Red Hat’s desktop efforts) has maintained the LibreOffice packages in Fedora fo … ⌘ Read more

ChatGPT is Already Taking Jobs
The Washington Post writes that “Some economists predict artificial intelligence technology like ChatGPT could replace hundreds of millions of jobs, in a cataclysmic reorganization of the workforce mirroring the industrial revolution.
“For some workers, this impact is already here.”

Those that write marketing and social media content are in the first wave of people being replaced with tools like chatbots, which are s … ⌘ Read more

Uber Eats to Deploy 2,000 Autonomous Delivery Robots
“If you live in San Jose, Dallas, or Vancouver, you may soon be sharing the sidewalk with an army of delivery robots,” reports PC Magazine (citing a report from TechCrunch. Uber Eats is expanding its partnership with Serve Robotics to deploy up to 2,000 zero-emission bots:

Currently covering Los Angeles and San Francisco, Serve Robotics has been working with more t … ⌘ Read more

Boeing Delays Starliner Launch Again After Discovering Two Serious Problems
“A Boeing official said Thursday that the company was ‘standing down’ from an attempt to launch the Starliner spacecraft on July 21,” reports Ars Technica, “to focus on recently discovered issues with the vehicle.”

Starliner’s program manager said they’d spent last weekend investigating the problems, and “after internal … ⌘ Read more

‘RISE’ Project Building Open Source RISC-V Software Announced by Linux Foundation Europe
Linux Foundation Europe “has announced the RISC-V Software Ecosystem (RISE) Project to help facilitate more performant, commercial-ready software for the RISC-V processor architecture,” reports Phoronix.

“Among the companies joining the RISE Project on their governing board are Andes, Google, Intel, I … ⌘ Read more

Japan Vending Machines To Automatically Offer Free Food If Earthquakes Hit
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Japan has extended its natural disaster preparations to vending machines, which will offer free food and drink in the event of a major earthquake or typhoon. Two machines have been installed in the western coastal city of Ako, located in a region that seismologists say is vulne … ⌘ Read more

Switzerland Is Turning the Gap Between Train Tracks Into a ‘Solar Carpet’
Swiss start-up Sun-Ways has developed a concept to install solar panels between train tracks, using a specially built train to “unroll” the panels during the night when fewer trains are running. Fast Company reports: As wild as it all sound, Sun-Ways actually has two competitors. Greenrail and Bankset Energy, respectively loca … ⌘ Read more

NASA UFO Team Calls For Higher Quality Data In First Public Meeting
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: The truth may be out there about UFOs, or what the government currently calls “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAPs). But finding it will require collecting data that are more rigorous than the anecdotal reports that typically fuel the controversial sightings, according to a panel of … ⌘ Read more

Arizona Limits Construction Around Phoenix as Its Water Supply Dwindles
Longtime Slashdot reader MightyMartian shares a report from the New York Times: Arizona has determined that there is not enough groundwater for all of the housing construction that has already been approved in the Phoenix area, and will stop developers from building some new subdivisions (Source paywalled, alternative source), a sign … ⌘ Read more

MS Paint Gets Its Long-Promised Dark Mode, Along With Other Improvements
Windows Insiders in the Dev and Canary channels now have access to an updated version of MS Paint, featuring dark mode support and more granular zoom settings. The update also introduces a zoom slider in the lower-right corner of the app, a new Settings page, new keyboard shortcuts, and “many accessibility and usability improvement … ⌘ Read more

US To Stop Giving Russia Some New START Nuclear Arms Data
New submitter terrorubic shares a report from Reuters: The United States said it will stop providing Russia some notifications required under the New START arms control treaty from Thursday, including updates on its missile and launcher locations, to retaliate for Moscow’s ‘ongoing violations’ of the accord. In a fact sheet on its website, the State Department … ⌘ Read more

Meta Will Test Blocking News For Some Canadians
New submitter Peppercopia writes: CTV News is reporting that Meta will begin testing the blocking of news sites in Canada. If the argument is that the social media giants are unfairly benefitting from content from Canadian news organizations, this move should be moot as the ‘stealing’ would now be stopping. Unfortunately the opposite is likely the case, and the news organizations … ⌘ Read more

Music Pirates Are Not Terrorists, Record Labels Argue In Court
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A Virginia jury held Cox liable for pirating subscribers because it failed to terminate accounts after repeated accusations, ordering the company to pay $1 billion in damages to the labels. This landmark ruling is currently under appeal. As part of the appeal, Cox informed the court of a supplement … ⌘ Read more