aliks writes:ArsTechnica has a story about a painted altar in the mesoAmerican city of Tikal, revealing clues about the Aztec takeover of Tikal a couple of thousand years ago.https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/painted-altar-in-maya-city-of-tikal-reveals-the-aftermath-of-an-ancient-coup/LIDAR scans effectively strip away the jungle revealing the ruins of ancient buildings and this has triggered a whole mass of new information. The original article is in Antiquity magazine for those who want more detail [link below]:Here is a quick summary:
anubi writes:Marketing professionals are always looking for that "edge" that gets them noticed instead of automatically being kicked out by spam filters which were put in place specifically to handle exactly what they are doing.Here is how AI is learning about individual targets in order to craft specifically worded unique business communication designed to appeal to maybe even one decision-maker in a corporate environment.https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/04/openais-gpt-helps-spammers-send-blast-of-80000-messages-that-bypassed-filters/
Some may remember the initial press on the Aptera streamlined solar-assisted BEV...that was 2005. For some reason, looking at the aircraft-like shape again reminded me of the Buffalo Springfield / Neil Young song, "If flying on the ground is wrong..."After one bankruptcy, resurrection and continued development, the company is still going. Here's a recent release including video of a road trip, which claimed about 20 miles of solar charging during the part-cloudy day, https://www.automotivetestingtechnologyinternational.com/news/prototypes/apteras-test-vehicle-completes-solar-supported-road-trip.html
liar writes:Framework Halts Sales of Select Laptops in the US Amid Tariff Changes https://www.techpowerup.com/335198/framework-halts-sales-of-select-laptops-in-the-us-amid-tariff-changes (reported by by AleksandarK)
canopic jug writes:Author and developer Scott Chacon has reflected that twenty years, as of April 7, Linus Torvalds made the first commit to Git, the free and open source distributed version control system which he was building at the time. Linus has long since passed the baton onward. As a developer tool, Git is known for its quirks and idiosyncrasies as much as its ability to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.
JoeMerchant writes:The following are top facial recognition companies packaging technology to simplify identity verification for businesses, consumers and government: Cognitec, Sensory, iProov, HyperVerge, Clarifai, Amazon Rekognition, there are many others. They use one or a combination of traditional algorithms, deep learning, optical and infrared sensors, 3D scans, other technology and of course hybrids of the many approaches.Mother Jones is known for long political stories, this one is based on a successful facial recognition company, Clearview, and how they got their technology widely deployed (and highly remunerated) in a short time, and the underlying political ideology that drove the developers in their mission:
canopic jug writes:The Overpopulation Project has an English translation of Frank Gotmark's short essay which explores the idea that Homo sapiens is an invasive specie. The essay was originally published on March 30 in Svenska Dagbladet and has been very slightly modified.
Earth Had Saturn-Like Rings 466 Million Years Ago, New Study Suggestsupstart writes:The temporary structure likely consisted of debris from a broken-up asteroid:
aliks writes:Slashdot also featured this story, via bleepingcomputer.com summary. The original story is here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2025/03/31/analyzing-open-source-bootloaders-finding-vulnerabilities-faster-with-ai/At first I thought this would be an advert for Microsoft Copilot tacked onto a tale of security hounds doing their stuff with vulnerabilities in GRUB2, but it does seem that AI saved some time for the investigators, and the article is worth a read.Here is my summary:
upstart writes:Dawn Aerospace aims to make transporting things to space - whether supplies to the ISS or pharmaceuticals for testing - cheaper, faster and greener:
canopic jug writes:Bruce Schneier and Davi Ottenheimer have co-authored an essay about the essential nature of data integrity in the future of the WWW. (There is an alternative link to the essay published in the Communications of the ACM hosted at the ACM's digital library.)The ability to verify the origin of data and that it has remained unchanged and unmanipulated is becoming increasingly important. Basically they call for a verifiable chain of trust for data production and usage.
Hyper writes:On May 9 2012 Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe, aka 'The Two Guys from Andromeda', started a kickstarter campaign to make a new Space Adventure in the style of the Sierra Space Quest series. In April 2024 the kickstarter completed with a successful release of the game on Steam and as the promised DRM version to kickstarter backers. This is good news for anyone looking for the nostalgia from old PC point and click gaming. Kudos to the Two Guys team for bringing this project to fruition.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.