ICT news

• Animal Populations Shrunk an Average of 69% Over the Last Half-Century, Report Says

  14-10-2022 23:20 via news.slashdot.org
  Global animal populations are declining, and we've got limited time to try to fix it. From a report: That's the upshot of a new report from the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London, which analyzed years of data on thousands of wildlife populations across the world and found a downward trend in the Earth's biodiversity. According to the Living Planet Index, a metric that's been in existence for five decades, animal populations across the world shrunk by an average of 69% betwe
  
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• SIM Card Swindler 'Baby Al Capone' Agrees To Pay Back $22 Million To Hacked Crypto Investor

  14-10-2022 22:42 via it.slashdot.org
  A young man who was not even old enough to drive back in 2018 managed to yoink nearly $24 million from a major crypto investor's account. Now, over four years later and thousands likely invested in both an investigation and lawyers fees, Michael Terpin can now claim he has reclaimed $22 million from the the original hack, according to a recently filed agreement. From a report: The original complaint filed in New York Southern District Court back in 2020 named the then-18-year-old Ellis Pinsky of
  
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• Nearly Half of Covid Patients Haven't Fully Recovered Months Later, Study Finds

  14-10-2022 22:00 via science.slashdot.org
  A study of tens of thousands of people in Scotland found that one in 20 people who had been sick with Covid reported not recovering at all, and another four in 10 said they had not fully recovered from their infections many months later. From a report: The authors of the study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications, tried to home in on the long-term risks of Covid by comparing the frequency of symptoms in people with and without previous Covid diagnoses. People with previou
  
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• Biden's Internet Promises in Limbo Amid Long Battle Over FCC Nominee

  14-10-2022 21:22 via news.slashdot.org
  The nation's telecommunications regulator has been without a Democratic majority for the entirety of President Biden's 21-month tenure, hamstringing efforts to restore open internet protections and close the digital divide. From a report: Breaking the deadlock at the Federal Communications Commission hinges on confirming Gigi Sohn, a longtime public interest advocate and former Democratic FCC official who was first nominated by the White House nearly a year ago. As the midterm elections approach
  
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• Microsoft Preps DirectStorage 1.1 With GPU Decompression For Faster Game Loads

  14-10-2022 20:40 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: One of the newer Xbox features that Microsoft has been working to bring to Windows is DirectStorage, a collection of features that allows fast PCI Express-based NVMe SSDs to communicate directly with your GPU. For DirectStorage 1.0, the main benefit was faster load times -- up to 40 percent faster, according to Microsoft. This week Microsoft announced that it's readying DirectStorage 1.1 for release later this year, which will allow game assets to be decompre
  
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• White House is Pushing Ahead Research To Cool Earth By Reflecting Back Sunlight

  14-10-2022 20:00 via news.slashdot.org
  The White House is coordinating a five-year research plan to study ways of modifying the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth to temper the effects of global warming, a process sometimes called solar geoengineering or sunlight reflection. From a report: The research plan will assess climate interventions, including spraying aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back into space, and should include goals for research, what's necessary to analyze the atmosphere, and what impact th
  
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• Nvidia Says It's 'Unlaunching' the 12GB RTX 4080 After Backlash

  14-10-2022 19:10 via tech.slashdot.org
  Nvidia is pausing the launch of its upcoming 12GB RTX 4080 graphics card. After originally unveiling the 12GB RTX 4080 last month alongside a much more powerful 16GB model, Nvidia now admits it messed up with the naming. From a report: "The RTX 4080 12GB is a fantastic graphics card, but it's not named right," says Nvidia in a blog post. "Having two GPUs with the 4080 designation is confusing." Nvidia is now pausing the launch of the 12GB RTX 4080 model but will still go ahead and launch the 16G
  
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• Apple Slapped With a $19 Million Fine in Brazil For Not Selling iPhones With a Charger

  14-10-2022 18:41 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple keeps on losing court battles in Brazil over its decision to stop shipping iPhones with a charger. From a report: The Sao Paulo state court has ruled against the tech giant and slapped it with a 100 million real ($19 million) fine in a lawsuit filed by the Brazilian Consumers' Association, a group of borrowers, consumers and taxpayers. In addition, the court has ordered Apple to supply all customers in Brazil who purchased the iPhone 12 or 13 over the past couple of years with a charger, a
  
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• New Turkey Law Mandates Jail Time for Spreading 'Disinformation'

  14-10-2022 18:01 via news.slashdot.org
  Turkey criminalized the spread of what authorities describe as false information on digital platforms, giving the government new powers in the months remaining before elections. From a report: The measure, proposed by the governing AK Party and its nationalist ally MHP, is part of a broader "disinformation" law that was adopted by parliament on Thursday. It mandates a jail term of one to three years for users who share online content that contains "false information on the country's security, pu
  
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• Equifax Fires Employees for Working Two Jobs

  14-10-2022 17:21 via slashdot.org
  Credit-reporting giant Equifax has fired at least two dozen employees for working undisclosed jobs, and used extensive work-history records it holds on more than 100 million Americans to catch them, according to documents and interviews with people familiar with the matter. From a report: In one of the latest signs of corporate America trying to regain control of an increasingly remote workforce, CEO Mark Begor this week informed employees that some of their "teammates" were fired for having "a
  
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• Facebook's Legs Video Was A Lie

  14-10-2022 16:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  The company formerly known as Facebook earlier this week announced -- and demonstrated -- that avatars on its metaverse will soon have legs. Here's an update on that: While the updates bringing full-body avatars aren't expected until 2023, Zuckerberg was clearly seen jumping around in the video, giving everyone an early look at the tech. Or was he?
  Anyone who has ever been around any piece of marketing ever made should know by now that not everything is as it seems when a company is trying to se
  
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• CISA Releases RedEye: Red Team Campaign Visualization and Reporting Tool

  14-10-2022 16:37 via us-cert.cisa.gov
  Original release date: October 14, 2022
  CISA has released RedEye, an interactive open-source analytic tool to visualize and report Red Team command and control activities. RedEye allows an operator to quickly assess complex data, evaluate mitigation strategies, and enable effective decision making.For more information, CISA encourages users to review RedEye on GitHub and watch CISA’s RedEye tool overview video. This product is provided subject to this Notification and this Privacy &am
  
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• Apple's Mixed Reality Headset To Offer Iris Scanning for Payments, Logging In

  14-10-2022 16:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  By the time Apple introduces its much-anticipated mixed reality headset -- planned for sometime next year -- Meta Platforms will have had the advantage of selling products in the category to the public for almost seven years. But Apple's device will also have a few technological tricks up its sleeve that even the latest Meta headset can't boast of. From a report: For example, Apple's device is expected to have the ability to scan the irises of people wearing the headsets so they can quickly log
  
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• 5.3 Billion Cellphones To Become Waste In 2022, Report Finds

  14-10-2022 15:00 via mobile.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: More than five billion of the estimated 16 billion mobile phones possessed worldwide will likely be discarded or stashed away in 2022, experts said Thursday, calling for more recycling of the often hazardous materials they contain. Stacked flat on top of each other, that many disused phones would rise 50,000 kilometers (30,000 miles), more than a hundred times higher than the International Space Station, the WEEE research consortium found. Despi
  
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• Sony Releases Its First Over-the-Counter Hearing Aids

  14-10-2022 12:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Sony has announced the availability of its first OTC hearing aids, the $1,000 CRE-C10 and $1,300 CRE-E10, built in partnership with WS Audiology. Engadget reports: The devices are built for daily use for those with mild to moderate hearing loss. They're controlled via Sony's "Hearing Control" app that guides users through setup and allows them to personalize settings like volume control. It also allows a "self-fit" that adjusts to appropriate pre-defined hearing profiles "based on thousands of a
  
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• Amazon's Set To Launch Its Prototype Internet Satellites Early Next Year

  14-10-2022 09:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  In a press release on Wednesday, Amazon said it will launch two prototype satellites for its Project Kuiper satellite internet constellation in early 2023. They will be riding into orbit on a Vulcan Centaur rocket from the United Launch Alliance (ULA). The Verge reports: The company says the launch will let it perform tests on its satellite network technology with data from space and that the data will "help finalize design, deployment, and operational plans for our commercial satellite system."
  
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• A New Danish Political Party Is Being Led By An AI

  14-10-2022 05:30 via politics.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The Synthetic Party, a new Danish political party with an artificially intelligent representative and policies derived from AI, is eyeing a seat in parliament as it hopes to run in the country's November general election. The party was founded in May by the artist collective Computer Lars and the non-profit art and tech organization MindFuture Foundation. The Synthetic Party's public face and figurehead is the AI chatbot Leader Lars, which is
  
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• DeepMind Breaks 50-Year Math Record Using AI; New Record Falls a Week Later

  14-10-2022 04:02 via science.slashdot.org
  Last week, DeepMind announced it discovered a more efficient way to perform matrix multiplication, conquering a 50-year-old record. This week, two Austrian researchers at Johannes Kepler University Linz claim they have bested that new record by one step. Ars Technica reports: In 1969, a German mathematician named Volker Strassen discovered the previous-best algorithm for multiplying 4x4 matrices, which reduces the number of steps necessary to perform a matrix calculation. For example, multiplyin
  
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• Honda and Sony To Build an EV That Entertains While It Takes the Wheel

  14-10-2022 03:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  "Sony and Honda have officially launched their joint mobility venture that aims to start delivering premium electric vehicles with automated driving capabilities in the United States in the spring of 2026, followed by Japan in the second half of 2026," reports TechCrunch. Details are scarce but the partnership appears to produce what the companies promise to be a wildly smart vehicle that's heavily focused on keeping its passengers entertained. Slashdot reader SouthSeb shares the news with us, w
  
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• Google Starts Real-World Testing Its Giant Video Chat Booths

  14-10-2022 02:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  A year after announcing its "Project Starline" video booth idea, Google says it's expanded enterprise testing with third parties and is working on making Starline "more accessible," reports Ars Technica. From the report: Project Starline basically asks the question, "What if Zoom was a giant, sit-down arcade machine?" While the home console version of video chat just involves a tiny camera above your laptop screen, Starline brings 3D video chat to life in a 7x7-foot sit-down booth, with seemingl
  
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• Prison Inmate Accused of Orchestrating $11 Million Fraud Using Cell Cellphone

  14-10-2022 02:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: On June 8, 2020, an individual claiming to be billionaire film producer and philanthropist Sidney Kimmel contacted brokerage Charles Schwab by phone and stated that he had uploaded a wire disbursement form using the service's secure email service. The only problem was the call apparently came from prison. Still, the caller made reference to a transfer verification inquiry earlier that day by his wife -- a role said to have been played by a f
  
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• Tether, World's Biggest Stablecoin, Cuts Its Commercial Paper Holdings To Zero

  14-10-2022 01:20 via slashdot.org
  Tether, the world's largest stablecoin, has slashed back its commercial paper holdings to zero, replacing them with U.S. Treasury bills instead, according to a blog post. CNBC reports: The popular U.S.-dollar-pegged cryptocurrency said the move is part of tether's "ongoing efforts to increase transparency" and back its tokens with "the most secure reserves in the market" -- in the ultimate hope of ensuring investor protection. There are now about 68.4 billion tether tokens in circulation, accord
  
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• Meta's New Headset Will Track Your Eyes for Targeted Ads

  14-10-2022 00:40 via meta.slashdot.org
  Earlier this week, Meta revealed the Meta Quest Pro, the company's most premium virtual reality headset to date with a new processor and screen, dramatically redesigned body and controllers, and inward-facing cameras for eye and face tracking. "To celebrate the $1,500 headset, Meta made some fun new additions to its privacy policy, including one titled 'Eye Tracking Privacy Notice,'" reports Gizmodo. "The company says it will use eye-tracking data to 'help Meta personalize your experiences and i
  
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• California Legalizes Digital License Plates, With $1,100 Price Tag

  14-10-2022 00:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: California's roads just got a little smarter with the passage of a bill that paves the way for the sale of digital license plates across the state. The technology allows for emergency messaging like marking the car stolen or indicating an Amber Alert, and can be personalized through an app with touts like "Go Warriors" or "Go Lakers" to cheer on the local sports teams. The pesky task of car registration also will become easier with DMV auto-ren
  
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