ICT news

• Facebook Warns It Could Block News in Canada Over Proposed Legislation

  23-10-2022 23:40 via news.slashdot.org
  The Verge says Facebook "might ban news sharing in Canada if the country passes legislation forcing the company to pay news outlets for their content." They cite a post Friday from Facebook's parent company Meta, and a recent report in the Wall Street Journal.If this type of law sounds familiar, it's because Australia introduced a similar one last year, called the News Media Bargaining Code, which also requires Facebook and Google to pay for news included on the platforms. Although Australia eve
  
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• AI-Assisted Guns Deployed By Israel To Track Targets In the West Bank

  23-10-2022 22:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  Israel has deployed a new kind of robotic weapon over a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, reports Euronews. "The twin gun turrets can fire tear gas, stun grenades, and sponge-tipped bullets."
  "Operated by trained soldiers, they track their targets using AI."
  Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: A Euronews video features footage of Sharone Aloni, Research and Development VP of Sharp Shooter, demonstrating one of the company's devices with an automatic Fire Control System. "Inside here, you
  
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• How a Mathematician-Magician Revealed a Casino Loophole

  23-10-2022 21:40 via games.slashdot.org
  It's the tale of a company manufacuring precision card-shuffling machines for casinos — and a gang of hustlers who used a hidden video camera to film the shuffler's insides. "The images, transmitted to an accomplice outside in the casino parking lot, were played back in slow motion to figure out the sequence of cards in the deck," remembers the BBC, "which was then communicated back to the gamblers inside. The casino lost millions of dollars before the gang were finally caught."
  So the com
  
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• Hacktivists Breach Email System of Company Operating Iran's Nuclear Plant

  23-10-2022 20:40 via it.slashdot.org
  Iran has one nuclear power plant. The email system of the company operating it was just breached, according to Iran's civil nuclear arm. The Associated Press reports:An anonymous hacking group claimed responsibility for the attack on Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, demanding Tehran release political prisoners arrested in the recent nationwide protests. The group said it leaked 50 gigabytes of internal emails, contracts and construction plans related to Iran's Russian-backed nuclear power plan
  
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• Report that Indian Official Tampers With Instagram Posts Retracted By 'The Wire'

  23-10-2022 19:41 via tech.slashdot.org
  Engadget writes:
  After nearly three weeks of escalating rhetoric, The Wire is retracting its reporting on Meta.
  On Sunday, the nonprofit publication said it had discovered "certain discrepancies" with the material that had informed its reporting on the social media giant since October 6th. "The Wire believes it is appropriate to retract the stories," the outlet said, pointing to the fact it could not authenticate two emails that were critical to its previous coverage of Meta. One of the emails T
  
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• Are High-Tech Cars Killing Auto Repair Shops?

  23-10-2022 18:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  "Auto industry insiders have waxed poetic about the safety benefits of the 'software-defined vehicle' — which also enables revenue-boosting data collection and subscriptions that make it safer to be an auto executive too," writes Wired.
  "Less talked about are the consequences of computerized cars at the auto shop."Fixing complex vehicles requires increasingly expert and expensive knowledge, and tools that are in limited supply.... [T]he upshot can be that it takes longer to get your car fi
  
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• The Difficulty of Creating a Laundry-folding Robot

  23-10-2022 17:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  "It might be a while before you can buy a 'Roomba for laundry'," jokes Slashdot reader Tony Isaac, pointing out that "while robots have been developed that can fold specific types of laundry, there's still not a good robot that can do the job quickly, or for all types."
  But NPR reports laundry-folding robots are getting closer:As NPR has reported, machines need clear rules in order to function, and it's hard for them to figure out what exactly is going on in those messy piles That's not to say t
  
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• Fast-Charging EV Batteries With Nickel Foil

  23-10-2022 16:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  IEEE Spectrum reports that "Standard electric-vehicle batteries can recharge much of their range in just 10 minutes with the addition of a thin sheet of nickel inside them, a new study finds."This could provide a welcome and economically attractive alternative to expensive EVs that carry massive and massively expensive battery packs. If faster-charging options were available, enabling the EV's sticker price to drop substantially, some researchers suspect consumers' EV phobia and industry dogma a
  
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• Is There a Lack of Market Incentives for Cybersecurity?

  23-10-2022 13:34 via it.slashdot.org
  Computer science professor Moshe Y. Vardi is the Senior Editor of Communications of the ACM.And he's concerned about the state of cybersecurity today:In 2017, I wrote: "So here we are, 70 years into the computer age and after three ACM Turing Awards in the area of cryptography (but none in cybersecurity), and we still do not seem to know how to build secure information systems." What would I write today? Clearly, I would write: "75 years," but I would not change a word in the rest of the sentenc
  
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• Bill Gates' Climate-Oriented Venture Fund Will Now Also Invest in Climate Adaptation

  23-10-2022 10:34 via news.slashdot.org
  Bill Gates's climate-oriented venture fund "is plowing more money into climate adaptation," reports MIT Technology Review:To date, the fund has focused on "climate mitigation," which largely concentrates on driving down climate pollution. Climate adaptation refers to developing ways of bolstering protections against the dangers of climate change, rather than just preventing it.
  The firm's new focus will include ways to help farmers and communities grapple with increasingly common or severe droug
  
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• Nym's Plan to Boost Internet Privacy Through 'Mixnets'

  23-10-2022 07:04 via yro.slashdot.org
  Harry Halpin helped create uniform cryptography standards for the World Wide Web Consortium, reports Quanta magazine — but "he also wanted to protect the lower, foundational level: the network through which the information is transmitted.
  "In 2018, he started Nym Technologies to take on this problem.... Halpin spoke with Quanta from Nym's headquarters in Neuchâtel, Switzerland."Halpin: The trickier problem is this: How do I communicate with you so that no one else knows I'm communica
  
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• Pressuring Apple to Fix Texting, Google's Android Will Force iPhone Users to Read Descriptions of Reaction Emojis

  23-10-2022 04:04 via mobile.slashdot.org
  "Google is giving Apple a taste of its own medicine," reports Business Insider, arguing that the latest update to Android's messaging app "is going to make texting between iPhone and Androids even more annoying than it already is." [Alternate URL]
  The updates are great if you're an Android user. Google Messages' new features include the ability to reply to individual messages, star them, and set reminders on texts. But these features and some other updates to Messages are RCS-enabled, meaning th
  
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• Has Online Disinformation Splintered and Become More Intractable?

  23-10-2022 01:09 via tech.slashdot.org
  Disinformation has "metastasized" since experts began raising alarms about the threat, reports the New York Times.
  "Despite years of efforts by the media, by academics and even by social media companies themselves to address the problem, it is arguably more pervasive and widespread today."Not long ago, the fight against disinformation focused on the major social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter. When pressed, they often removed troubling content, including misinformation and intentiona
  
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