An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: Qubits, the strange devices at the heart of a quantum computer that can be set to 0, 1, or both at once, could hardly be more different from the mechanical clockwork used in the earliest computers. Today, most quantum computers rely on qubits made out of… Read More »
“NASA has squandered $27 billion on the SLS moon rocket — $6 billion over budget and 5 years late,” writes longtime Slashdot reader schwit1. “The SLS isn’t reusable so even if they finished it — it is already obsolete. It is clear to everyone that the boondoggle has failed but the newest plan is to… Read More »
China’s Chang’e-6 mission made history by retrieving the first surface samples from the moon’s far side, revealing evidence of volcanic activity spanning 1.4 billion years. Reuters reports: Researchers said on Friday the soil brought back from the Chang’e-6 landing site contained fragments of volcanic rock – basalt – dating to 4.2 billion years ago and… Read More »
More than 120,000 bitcoin were stolen in a 2016 breach of Bitfinex. Seven years later the perpetrator pleaded guilty. And Thursday he was sentenced to a five-year prison term, reports the Associated Press: Ilya Lichtenstein masterminded one of the largest-ever thefts from a virtual currency exchange before he and his wife, Heather Rhiannon Morgan, carried… Read More »
French private AI lab PleIAs “is committed to training LLMs in the open,” they write in a blog post at Mozilla.org. “This means not only releasing our models but also being open about every aspect, from the training data to the training code. We define ‘open’ strictly: all data must be both accessible and under… Read More »
Slashdot reader jjslash brings word that Casio “has reintroduced its iconic calculator watch featuring a retro design with green text on a negative LCD and a classic keypad layout.” TechSpot reports that the watch was based on the Casio Mini personal calculator first released in the early 1970s — even offering a keypad using the… Read More »
Automotive Grade Linux is a collaborative open source project developing “an open platform from the ground up that can serve as the de facto industry standard” for fast development of new features. Automakers have joined with tech companies and suppliers to speed up development (and adoption) of “a fully open software stack for the connected… Read More »
“NASA has emphasized the ISS crew is in no immediate danger,” reports Space.com. “The leaking area in the Russian segment of the orbital complex has been ongoing for five years,” and “there was a temporary increase in the leak rate that was patched earlier this year…” Former astronaut Bob Cabana emphasized that troubleshooting is ongoing… Read More »
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Verge: Bluesky might be on the rise, but Instagram and Threads boss Adam Mosseri wants you to know that Threads is still much bigger. In a post on Thursday, Mosseri said that Threads has gotten “more than 15 million signups in November alone,” seemingly trying to throw… Read More »
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Kyiv Independent: The United States will partner with Ukraine to transition Ukraine’s coal-fired plants to small modular nuclear reactors, and to use them to help decarbonize its steel industry, the countries announced on November 16 at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan… The partnership will… Read More »