| 52nd Known Mersenne Prime Found Oct 21st 2024, 16:01, by msmash chalsall writes: After more than six years of work since the last discovery, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has found the 52nd known Mersenne Prime number. This is also the largest prime number known to humans. The number is 2^136,279,841-1, which is 41,024,320 decimal digits long. Luke Durant, a researcher from San Jose, CA, found it after contributing a fantastic amount of compute to the GIMPS project. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Egypt Declared Malaria-Free After Century of Work To Defeat Disease Oct 21st 2024, 15:22, by msmash Egypt was declared malaria-free by the World Health Organization, after nearly a century of work to eradicate the disease in the country. From a report: Egypt saw 3 million cases a year in the 1940s, and the Aswan Dam's development in the 1960s created new bodies of standing water for the mosquitoes to breed in, but by 2001 the disease was "firmly under control," according to the WHO. "The disease that plagued pharaohs now belongs to [Egypt's] history," the WHO's chief said. It's the 44th country to be certified, but the wider battle against malaria goes on: The mosquito-borne disease still kills around 600,000 people a year, the large majority of them children in sub-Saharan Africa. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Kurt Vonnegut's Lost Board Game Finally Published Oct 21st 2024, 14:50, by msmash An anonymous reader shares a report: Fans of literature most likely know Kurt Vonnegut for the novel Slaughterhouse-Five. The staunchly anti-war book first resonated with readers during the Vietnam War era, later becoming a staple in high school curricula the world over. When Vonnegut died in 2007 at the age of 84, he was widely recognized as one of the greatest American novelists of all time. But would you believe that he was also an accomplished game designer? In 1956, following the lukewarm reception of his first novel, Player Piano, Vonnegut was one of the 16 million other World War II veterans struggling to put food on the table. His moneymaking solution at the time was a board game called GHQ, which leveraged his understanding of modern combined arms warfare and distilled it into a simple game played on an eight-by-eight grid. Vonnegut pitched the game relentlessly to publishers all year long according to game designer and NYU faculty member Geoff Engelstein, who recently found those letters sitting in the archives at Indiana University. But the real treasure was an original set of typewritten rules, complete with Vonnegut's own notes in the margins. With the permission of the Vonnegut estate, Engelstein tells Polygon that he cleaned the original rules up just a little bit, buffed out the dents in GHQ's endgame, and spun up some decent art and graphic design. Now you can purchase the final product, titled Kurt Vonnegut's GHQ: The Lost Board Game, at your local Barnes & Noble -- nearly 70 years after it was created.   Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Intuit Seeks To Scrub CEO Comments on Tax Lobbying From Tech Podcast Oct 21st 2024, 14:05, by msmash Intuit, the maker of TurboTax software, asked technology news outlet The Verge to delete part of a podcast interview with CEO Sasan Goodarzi, The Verge reported on Monday. The request came after Goodarzi was questioned about Intuit's lobbying efforts against free government tax filing options, a topic that has drawn scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers. The Verge said it declined to remove the segment, instead choosing to highlight the exchange by playing it at the beginning of the episode. In the interview, Goodarzi disputed claims that Intuit lobbies against free tax filing, stating the company spends "a couple of million dollars fighting for simplified taxes." However, The Verge's editor Nilay Patel pressed Goodarzi on reports of Intuit's lobbying against government-provided tax returns. Patel adds: I got a note from Rick Heineman, the chief communications officer at Intuit, who called the line of questioning and my tone "inappropriate," "egregious," and "disappointing" and demanded that we delete that entire section of the recording. I mean, literally -- he wrote a long email that ended with "at the very least the end portion of your interview should be deleted." Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Is the Microsoft-OpenAI 'Bromance' Beginning to Fray? Oct 21st 2024, 11:34, by EditorDavid Though Sam Altman once called OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft "the best bromance in tech," now "ties between the companies have started to fray" reports the New York Times — citing interviews with 19 people "familiar with the relationship". [Alternate URL here.] Among other things, Satya Nadella "has said privately that Altman's firing in November shocked and concerned him, according to five people with knowledge of his comments. Since then, Microsoft has started to hedge its bet on OpenAI," and reconsidered new investments beyond its initial $13 billion — even as OpenAI expects to lose $5 billion this year That tension demonstrates a key challenge for AI startups: They are dependent on the world's tech giants for money and computing power because those big companies control the massive cloud computing systems the small outfits need to develop AI... Over the past year, OpenAI has been trying to renegotiate the deal to help it secure more computing power and reduce crushing expenses while Microsoft executives have grown concerned that their AI work is too dependent on OpenAI... [I]n March, Microsoft paid at least $650 million to hire most of the staff from Inflection, an OpenAI competitor... In June, Microsoft agreed to an exception in [OpenAI's] contract, six people with knowledge of the change said. That allowed OpenAI to sign a roughly $10 billion computing deal with Oracle for additional computing resources, according to two people familiar with the deal. Oracle is providing computers packed with chips suited to building AI, while Microsoft provides the software that drives the hardware... While it was looking for computer power alternatives, OpenAI also raced to broaden its investors, according to two people familiar with the company's plan. Part of the plan was to secure strategic investments from organizations that could bolster OpenAI's prospects in ways beyond throwing around money. Those organizations included Apple, chipmaker Nvidia, and MGX, a tech investment firm controlled by the United Arab Emirates... Earlier this month, OpenAI closed a $6.6 billion funding round led by Thrive Capital, with additional participation from Nvidia, MGX and others. Apple did not invest, but Microsoft also participated in the funding round. OpenAI expected to spend at least $5.4 billion in computing costs through the end of 2024, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. That amount was expected to skyrocket over the next five years as OpenAI expanded, soaring to an estimated $37.5 billion in annual computing costs by 2029, the documents showed... Still, OpenAI employees complain that Microsoft is not providing enough computing power, according to three people familiar with the relationship. And some have complained that if another company beat it to the creation of AI that matches the human brain, Microsoft will be to blame because it hasn't given OpenAI the computing power it needs, according to two people familiar with the complaints. Oddly, that could be the key to getting out from under its contract with Microsoft. The contract contains a clause that says that if OpenAI builds artificial general intelligence, or AGI — roughly speaking, a machine that matches the power of the human brain — Microsoft loses access to OpenAI's technologies. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Europe Automakers Launch Cheaper Electric Cars to Compete With China Oct 21st 2024, 07:38, by EditorDavid "Several of Europe's biggest carmakers unveiled low-cost electric vehicles at the Paris Motor Show this week," reports CNBC. The automakers are "seeking to jump-start a demand slump and recapture some of the market share now held by Chinese brands." "It feels like Europe is fighting back," Julia Poliscanova, senior director for vehicles and e-mobility supply chains at the Transport & Environment campaign group, told CNBC at the Paris Motor Show. "There are so many new models on show, and what is really great is that there are a lot of launches that are more affordable. So, Citroen, Peugeot [and] Renault, they are all showing some smaller affordable models," Poliscanova said. "This is exactly what we need for the mass market, for people to buy those vehicles more, and this is also where the competition from the Chinese is also the hardest," she added... "The storytelling is that people have cooled off on EVs and there is no consumer demand, [but] this is really not true," Transport & Environment's Poliscanova said. "This year in Europe, we did not have affordable models, so people are not buying those overpriced premium vehicles. However, as soon as vehicles come in the right price range next year ... people will flock to buy them." Poliscanova said the launch of several low-cost EVs means electric car sales could account for up to a 24% market share next year, up from 14% this year. Chinese-made EVs typically cost less than half the prices seen in Europe and the U.S. last year, according to figures published by data firm JATO, underscoring the challenge for Western automakers to keep pace with Beijing... Pere Brugal, president and managing director of GM Europe, said that the challenges facing Europe's auto industry should be seen as a transitional phase — and not evidence of a crisis. "The adoption of new technologies and new behaviors is never a linear growth story, but the end is full-electric [vehicles]," Brugal told CNBC at the Paris Motor Show. Meanwhile, GM's CEO "says it will start making money on battery-powered models by the end of the year — becoming the only U.S. automaker aside from Tesla to achieve that feat," reports the New York Times (adding that sales are increasing "and the company just introduced a model that sells for less than $30,000 after a federal tax credit.") And GM "is still committed to doing away with combustion engine cars in the United States by 2035." Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Cuba's Power Grid Collapses Again. And Then a Hurricane Hit Oct 21st 2024, 04:38, by EditorDavid "Millions of Cubans remained without power for a third day in a row Sunday," reports CNN, "after fresh attempts to restore electricity failed overnight and the power grid collapsed for the fourth time — all before the arrival of Hurricane Oscar." A report from Reuters notes it was the fourth power grid failure in 48 hours. "On the forecast track, the center of Oscar is expected to continue moving across eastern Cuba tonight and Monday, then emerge off the northern coast of Cuba late Monday and cross the central Bahamas on Tuesday," the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The Communist-run government canceled school through Wednesday — a near unprecedented move in Cuba — citing the hurricane and the ongoing energy crisis... Cuba had restored power to 160,000 clients in Havana just prior to the grid's Sunday collapse, giving some residents a glimmer of hope... Energy and mines minister Vicente de la O Levy told reporters earlier on Sunday he expected the grid to be fully functional by Monday or Tuesday but warned residents not to expect dramatic improvements. It was not immediately clear how much the latest setback would delay the government's efforts. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | |
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