Tech News Feed

2025 Audi Q6 e-tron Is a Tiny Tech Powerhouse: Electric SUV First Drive - CNET

CNET News - 1 hour 43 min ago
Audi's new electric SUV features two motors, two charging ports and a big battery that splits in two for more efficient fill ups.

Save on Weatherstripping Today and Save on Energy All Year - CNET

CNET News - Mon, 2024-03-18 23:54
Weatherstripping is an easy DIY project that can lower your heating and cooling bills for years. Get some for 40% off during Amazon's spring sale.

EPA Bans Chrysotile Asbestos

SlashDot - Mon, 2024-03-18 23:30
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced a comprehensive ban on asbestos, a carcinogen that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year but is still used in some chlorine bleach, brake pads and other products. The final rule marks a major expansion of EPA regulation under a landmark 2016 law that overhauled regulations governing tens of thousands of toxic chemicals in everyday products, from household cleaners to clothing and furniture. The new rule would ban chrysotile asbestos, the only ongoing use of asbestos in the United States. The substance is found in products such as brake linings and gaskets and is used to manufacture chlorine bleach and sodium hydroxide, also known as caustic soda, including some that is used for water purification. [...] The 2016 law authorized new rules for tens of thousands of toxic chemicals found in everyday products, including substances such as asbestos and trichloroethylene that for decades have been known to cause cancer yet were largely unregulated under federal law. Known as the Frank Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, the law was intended to clear up a hodgepodge of state rules governing chemicals and update the Toxic Substances Control Act, a 1976 law that had remained unchanged for 40 years. The EPA banned asbestos in 1989, but the rule was largely overturned by a 1991 Court of Appeals decision that weakened the EPA's authority under TSCA to address risks to human health from asbestos or other existing chemicals. The 2016 law required the EPA to evaluate chemicals and put in place protections against unreasonable risks. Asbestos, which was once common in home insulation and other products, is banned in more than 50 countries, and its use in the U.S. has been declining for decades. The only form of asbestos known to be currently imported, processed or distributed for use in the U.S. is chrysotile asbestos, which is imported primarily from Brazil and Russia. It is used by the chlor-alkali industry, which produces bleach, caustic soda and other products. Most consumer products that historically contained chrysotile asbestos have been discontinued. While chlorine is a commonly used disinfectant in water treatment, there are only eight chlor-alkali plants in the U.S. that still use asbestos diaphragms to produce chlorine and sodium hydroxide. The plants are mostly located in Louisiana and Texas. The use of asbestos diaphragms has been declining and now accounts for less than one-third of the chlor-alkali production in the U.S., the EPA said. The EPA rule will ban imports of asbestos for chlor-alkali as soon as the rule is published but will phase in prohibitions on chlor-alkali use over five or more years to provide what the agency called "a reasonable transition period." A ban on most other uses of asbestos will effect in two years. A ban on asbestos in oilfield brake blocks, aftermarket automotive brakes and linings and other gaskets will take effect in six months. The EPA rule allows asbestos-containing sheet gaskets to be used until 2037 at the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in South Carolina to ensure that safe disposal of nuclear materials can continue on schedule. Separately, the EPA is also evaluating so-called legacy uses of asbestos in older buildings, including schools and industrial sites, to determine possible public health risks. A final risk evaluation is expected by the end of the year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia Reveals Blackwell B200 GPU, the 'World's Most Powerful Chip' For AI

SlashDot - Mon, 2024-03-18 22:02
Sean Hollister reports via The Verge: Nvidia's must-have H100 AI chip made it a multitrillion-dollar company, one that may be worth more than Alphabet and Amazon, and competitors have been fighting to catch up. But perhaps Nvidia is about to extend its lead -- with the new Blackwell B200 GPU and GB200 "superchip." Nvidia says the new B200 GPU offers up to 20 petaflops of FP4 horsepower from its 208 billion transistors and that a GB200 that combines two of those GPUs with a single Grace CPU can offer 30 times the performance for LLM inference workloads while also potentially being substantially more efficient. It "reduces cost and energy consumption by up to 25x" over an H100, says Nvidia. Training a 1.8 trillion parameter model would have previously taken 8,000 Hopper GPUs and 15 megawatts of power, Nvidia claims. Today, Nvidia's CEO says 2,000 Blackwell GPUs can do it while consuming just four megawatts. On a GPT-3 LLM benchmark with 175 billion parameters, Nvidia says the GB200 has a somewhat more modest seven times the performance of an H100, and Nvidia says it offers 4x the training speed. Nvidia told journalists one of the key improvements is a second-gen transformer engine that doubles the compute, bandwidth, and model size by using four bits for each neuron instead of eight (thus, the 20 petaflops of FP4 I mentioned earlier). A second key difference only comes when you link up huge numbers of these GPUs: a next-gen NVLink switch that lets 576 GPUs talk to each other, with 1.8 terabytes per second of bidirectional bandwidth. That required Nvidia to build an entire new network switch chip, one with 50 billion transistors and some of its own onboard compute: 3.6 teraflops of FP8, says Nvidia. Further reading: Nvidia in Talks To Acquire AI Infrastructure Platform Run:ai

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hertz CEO Resigns After Blowing Big Gamble On EVs

SlashDot - Mon, 2024-03-18 21:25
Press2ToContinue quotes a report from the Gateway Pundit: Stephen Scherr, chief executive officer of Hertz Global Holdings Inc. and a member of its board of directors, will step down on March 31, following the car rental company's largest quarterly loss since 2020 after a risky bet on electric vehicles. According to Fox Business, Scherr is working with Gil West, former chief operating officer of Delta Airlines and General Motors' Cruise unit, to ensure a smooth transition. West will officially start his new role at Hertz on April 1. Scherr, 59, joined Hertz two years ago as the company was emerging from bankruptcy and putting a big focus on EVs during that time. Hertz soon discovered that EVs are more expensive to maintain than they had initially thought. Scherr reportedly told investors that Hertz's profits experienced a $348 million loss, which he blamed EVs for. In January, Hertz announced its plan to offload 20,000 electric vehicles from its U.S. fleet throughout 2024, and switch back to gas cars. In November, the Associated Press reported on a Consumer Reports survey that found EVs from the 2021 to 2023 model years are significantly less reliable than gasoline-powered vehicles. A whopping eighty percent less reliable, according to the AP, particularly with battery and charging systems, as well as fit issues with body panels and interiors. Car dealers and manufacturers are reportedly also struggling to sell EVs despite using deep discounts and promotional tactics. In 2021, Hertz announced plans to order 100,000 Tesla vehicles by the end of 2022. It later said it would buy "up to" 65,000 Polestar EVs for its rental fleet over the next five years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sell Your Old TV: 7 Easy Steps to Maximize Your Profit - CNET

CNET News - Mon, 2024-03-18 21:03
Is it worth selling? Where should you list it? How many photos should you take? Here's everything you need to know.

Indiana Becomes 9th State To Make CS a High School Graduation Requirement

SlashDot - Mon, 2024-03-18 20:45
Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: Last October, tech-backed nonprofit Code.org publicly called out Indiana in its 2023 State of Computer Science Education report, advising the Hoosier state it needed to heed Code.org's new policy recommendation and "adopt a graduation requirement for all high school students in computer science." Having already joined 49 other Governors who signed a Code.org-organized compact calling for increased K-12 CS education in his state after coming under pressure from hundreds of the nation's tech, business, and nonprofit leaders, Indiana Governor Eric J. Holcomb apparently didn't need much convincing. "We must prepare our students for a digitally driven world by requiring Computer Science to graduate from high school," Holcomb proclaimed in his January State of the State Address. Two months later -- following Microsoft-applauded testimony for legislation to make it so by Code.org partners College Board and Nextech (the Indiana Code.org Regional Partner which is also paid by the Indiana Dept. of Education to prepare educators to teach K-12 CS, including Code.org's curriculum) -- Holcomb on Wednesday signed House Bill 1243 into law, making CS a HS graduation requirement. The IndyStar reports students beginning with the Class of 2029 will be required to take a computer science class that must include instruction in algorithms and programming, computing systems, data and analysis, impacts of computing and networks and the internet. The new law is not Holcomb's first foray into K-12 CS education. Back in 2017, Holcomb and Indiana struck a deal giving Infosys (a big Code.org donor) the largest state incentive package ever -- $31M to bring 2,000 tech employees to Central Indiana — that also promised to make Indiana kids more CS savvy through the Infosys Foundation USA, headed at the time by Vandana Sikka, a Code.org Board member and wife of Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka. Following the announcement of the now-stalled deal, Holcomb led a delegation to Silicon Valley where he and Indiana University (IU) President Michael McRobbie joined Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi and Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka on a Thought Leader panel at the Infosys Confluence 2017 conference to discuss Preparing America for Tomorrow. At the accompanying Infosys Crossroads 2017 CS education conference, speakers included Sikka's wife Vandana, McRobbie's wife Laurie Burns McRobbie, Nextech President and co-CEO Karen Jung, Code.org execs, and additional IU educators. Later that year, IU 'First Lady' Laurie Burns McRobbie announced that Indiana would offer the IU Bloomington campus as a venue for Infosys Foundation USA's inaugural Pathfinders Summer Institute, a national event for K-12 teacher education in CS that offered professional development from Code.org and Nextech, as well as an unusual circumvent-your-school's-approval-and-name-your-own-stipend funding arrangement for teachers via an Infosys partnership with the NSF and DonorsChoose that was unveiled at the White House. And that, Schoolhouse Rock Fans, is one more example of how Microsoft's National Talent Strategy is becoming Code.org-celebrated K-12 CS state laws!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BitTorrent Is No Longer the 'King' of Upstream Internet Traffic

SlashDot - Mon, 2024-03-18 20:02
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Back in 2004, in the pre-Web 2.0 era, research indicated that BitTorrent was responsible for an impressive 35% of all Internet traffic. At the time, file-sharing via peer-to-peer networks was the main traffic driver as no other services consumed large amounts of bandwidth. Fast-forward two decades and these statistics are ancient history. With the growth of video streaming, including services such as YouTube, Netflix, and TikTok, file-sharing traffic is nothing more than a drop in today's data pool. [...] This week, Canadian broadband management company Sandvine released its latest Global Internet Phenomena Report which makes it clear that BitTorrent no longer leads any charts. The latest data show that video and social media are the leading drivers of downstream traffic, accounting for more than half of all fixed access and mobile data worldwide. Needless to say, BitTorrent is nowhere to be found in the list of 'top apps'. Looking at upstream traffic, BitTorrent still has some relevance on fixed access networks where it accounts for 4% of the bandwidth. However, it's been surpassed by cloud storage apps, FaceTime, Google, and YouTube. On mobile connections, BitTorrent no longer makes it into the top ten. The average of 46 MB upstream traffic per subscriber shouldn't impress any file-sharer. However, since only a small percentage of all subscribers use BitTorrent, the upstream traffic per user is of course much higher.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PlayStation 5 Pro Leaked: Everything We Know video - CNET

CNET News - Mon, 2024-03-18 19:38
A new leak claims to show the specs for an upgraded version of Sony's console. CNET's gaming expert Sean Booker shares his thoughts.

Cisco Completes $28 Billion Acquisition of Splunk

SlashDot - Mon, 2024-03-18 19:20
Cisco on Monday completed its $28 billion acquisition of Splunk, a powerhouse in data analysis, security and observability tools. The deal was first announced in September 2023. SecurityWeek reports: Cisco plans to leverage Splunk's AI, security and observability capabilities complement Cisco's solution portfolio. Cisco says the transaction is expected to be cash flow positive and non-GAAP gross margin accretive in Cisco's fiscal year 2025, and non-GAAP EPS accretive in fiscal year 2026. "We are thrilled to officially welcome Splunk to Cisco," Chuck Robbins, Chair and CEO of Cisco, said in a statement. "As one of the world's largest software companies, we will revolutionize the way our customers leverage data to connect and protect every aspect of their organization as we help power and protect the AI revolution."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Everything Just Revealed at Nvidia's GTC AI Conference video - CNET

CNET News - Mon, 2024-03-18 19:14
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang kicks off its GTC keynote in San Jose with a slew of AI infused chip announcements. Check out our recap right here.

Best Noise-Canceling Headphones for 2024 - CNET

CNET News - Mon, 2024-03-18 19:00
Looking for the best noise-canceling headphones to drown out background noise? We've rounded up the best ANC headphones to help you focus on the sound you want to hear.

Nvidia Reveals Omniverse Cloud Streams to the Vision Pro video - CNET

CNET News - Mon, 2024-03-18 18:49
Watch Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang show how Nvidia's Omniverse Cloud streams to Apple's Vision Pro XR headset.

Sony Reportedly Pauses PSVR 2 Production Due To Low Sales

SlashDot - Mon, 2024-03-18 18:40
According to Bloomberg, Sony has paused production of its PlayStation VR 2 virtual reality headset, as sales have "slowed progressively" since its February 2023 launch. Road to VR reports: Citing people familiar with the company's plans, Sony has produced "well over 2 million units" since launch, noting that stocks of the $550 headset are building up. The report alleges the surplus is "throughout Sony's supply chain," indicating the issue isn't confined to a single location, but is spread across different stages of Sony's production and distribution network. This follows news that Sony Interactive Entertainment laid off eight percent of the company, which affected a number of its first-party game studios also involved in VR game production. Sony entirely shuttered its London Studio, which created VR action-adventure game Blood & Truth (2019), and reduced headcount at Firesprite, the studio behind PSVR 2 exclusive Horizon Call of the Mountain. Meanwhile, Sony is making PSVR 2 officially compatible with PC VR games, as the company hopes to release some sort of PC support for the headset later this year. How and when Sony will do that is still unknown, although the move underlines just how little confidence the company has in its future lineup of exclusive content just one year after launch of PSVR 2.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia Shows Project GROOT and Disney Bots at GTC Conference video - CNET

CNET News - Mon, 2024-03-18 18:32
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shows new robot technology at its GTC conference in San Jose.

Surge Protector w/ USB - CNET

CNET News - Mon, 2024-03-18 18:07
5 outlets & 4 USB ports.

Save Up to 40% Now on a Bunch of Honeywell Thermostats - CNET

CNET News - Mon, 2024-03-18 18:03
Whether you want a colorful smart thermostat or just a basic box on the wall, you can find one at a discount.

Portable Pet Playpen - CNET

CNET News - Mon, 2024-03-18 18:01
Large, mesh, indoor/outdoor.

5-Year Study Finds No Brain Abnormalities In 'Havana Syndrome' Patients

SlashDot - Mon, 2024-03-18 18:00
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC News: An array of advanced tests found no brain injuries or degeneration among U.S. diplomats and other government employees who suffer mysterious health problems once dubbed "Havana syndrome," researchers reported Monday. The National Institutes of Health's (NIH) nearly five-year study offers no explanation for symptoms including headaches, balance problems and difficulties with thinking and sleep that were first reported in Cuba in 2016 and later by hundreds of American personnel in multiple countries. But it did contradict some earlier findings that raised the spectre of brain injuries in people experiencing what the State Department now calls "anomalous health incidents." "These individuals have real symptoms and are going through a very tough time," said Dr. Leighton Chan, NIH's chief of rehabilitation medicine, who helped lead the research. "They can be quite profound, disabling and difficult to treat." Yet sophisticated MRI scans detected no significant differences in brain volume, structure or white matter -- signs of injury or degeneration -- when Havana syndrome patients were compared to healthy government workers with similar jobs, including some in the same embassy. Nor were there significant differences in cognitive and other tests, according to findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pet Bed w/ Canopy - CNET

CNET News - Mon, 2024-03-18 17:54
Cooling pet cot w removable canopy.

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