ICT news

• Android Users Alerted Just Before California Earthquake

  25-10-2022 23:22 via slashdot.org
  While many people in California felt a moderate earthquake Tuesday, some smartphone users actually got a heads-up before it happened thanks to technology developed at the University of California, Berkeley. Axios reports: Researchers at Berkeley released an app called MyShake that can offer a brief earthquake warning by detecting the signals of an earthquake just before they are felt. Think of it like how you can see lightning before you hear thunder. The app works on both iPhone and Android, bu
  
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• Singapore Lowers 2030 Emissions Forecast, To Boost Hydrogen

  25-10-2022 22:40 via news.slashdot.org
  Singapore cut its forecast for its carbon dioxide emissions in 2030 and will achieve a peak in emissions earlier than that as the city-state strives to achieve net zero by 2050, Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said on Tuesday. From a report: Singapore plans to reduce its carbon emissions target for 2030 to 60 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), Wong said at the Singapore International Energy Week conference. The country previously aimed for emissions to peak at 65 million tonnes of CO2 e
  
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• 'Deepfakes' of Celebrities Have Begun Appearing in Ads, With or Without Their Permission

  25-10-2022 22:04 via tech.slashdot.org
  Digital simulations of Elon Musk, Tom Cruise, Leo DiCaprio and others have shown up in ads, as the image-melding technology grows more popular and presents the marketing industry with new legal and ethical questions. From a report: Celebrity deepfakes are coming to advertising. Among the recent entries: Last year, Russian telecommunications company MegaFon released a commercial in which a simulacrum of Hollywood legend Bruce Willis helps defuse a bomb. Just last week, Elon Musk seemed to star in
  
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• Fungal Disease Spiked During Covid Pandemic and Pathogens Spreading Due To Climate Crisis, WHO Says

  25-10-2022 21:25 via science.slashdot.org
  Health-threatening fungi are spreading in geographic range due to climate change, while some fungal diseases spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to authors of a newly released World Health Organization report. From a report: On Tuesday the WHO published its first ever list of fungal priority pathogens, cataloguing 19 organisms that experts identified as being of the greatest threat to public health. "Currently, fungal infections receive less than 1.5% of all infectious disease researc
  
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• UK Lawmakers Vote To Recognize Crypto as Regulated Financial Instruments

  25-10-2022 20:45 via news.slashdot.org
  Lawmakers in the U.K. voted in favor of recognizing crypto assets as regulated financial instruments and products in the country on Tuesday. From a report: The House of Commons, the Parliament's lower house, met on Tuesday for a line-by-line reading of the proposed Financial Services and Markets Bill, which broadly covers the U.K.'s post-Brexit economic strategy. The lawmakers considered a list of proposed amendments to the bill, including one put forward by parliamentarian Andrew Griffith to in
  
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• US Public's Trust in Science Shows Growing Partisan Gap

  25-10-2022 20:23 via news.slashdot.org
  The Pew Research Center has released the latest iteration of its surveys of Americans' views of science and scientists. From a report: On the most basic level, they see a drop in the public's opinion of scientists since the height of the pandemic in 2020. But, as always, the situation is more complex when the numbers are examined closely. In general, there was a drop in trust of almost every occupation during that time period, and in the case of scientists, this largely represents a return to pr
  
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• Apple Devices Now Support Nintendo's Classic Game Controllers

  25-10-2022 19:27 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple snuck a nice little surprise in its round of Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV updates yesterday with the addition of support for Nintendo's updated classic game controllers. From a report: As spotted by developer Steve Troughton-Smith and confirmed by MacStories, Nintendo's modern SNES and N64 controllers now work with updated Apple devices with macOS 13, iOS 16, and tvOS 16 and up, whether using a wired or Bluetooth connection. While neither MacStories nor Troughton-Smith was able to test
  
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• India Fines Google $113 Million, Orders To Permit Third-Party Payment Systems in Play Store

  25-10-2022 18:42 via tech.slashdot.org
  India's antitrust watchdog has hit Google with $113 million fine for abusing the dominant position of its Google Play Store and ordered the firm to allow app developers to use third-party payments processing service for in-app purchases or for purchasing apps, the second such penalty on the Android-maker in just as many weeks in its largest market by users. From a report: The Competition Commission of India, which opened the probe into Google in late 2020, said mandating developers to use Google
  
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• Japan Steps Up Push To Get Public Buy-in To Digital IDs

  25-10-2022 18:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  Japan has stepped up its push to catch up on digitization by telling a reluctant public they have to sign up for digital IDs or possibly lose access to their public health insurance. From a report: As the naming implies, the initiative is about assigning numbers to people, similar to Social Security numbers in the U.S. Many Japanese worry the information might be misused or that their personal information might be stolen. Some view the My Number effort as a violation of their right to privacy. S
  
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• CISA Has Added One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog    

  25-10-2022 17:59 via us-cert.cisa.gov
  Original release date: October 25, 2022
  CISA has added one new vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. This type of vulnerability is a frequent attack vector for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risk to the federal enterprise. Note: To view the newly added vulnerabilities in the catalog, click on the arrow in the "Date Added to Catalog" column, which will sort by descending dates.      Bi
  
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• Intel CEO Calls New US Restrictions on Chip Exports To China Inevitable

  25-10-2022 17:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger said that recently imposed U.S. restrictions on semiconductor-industry exports to China were inevitable as America seeks to maintain technological leadership in competition with China. From a report: Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's annual Tech Live conference, Mr. Gelsinger said the restrictions, which require chip companies to obtain a license to export certain advanced artificial-intelligence and supercomputing chips as well as equipment used in advanc
  
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• CISA Upgrades to Version 2.0 of Traffic Light Protocol in One Week – Join Us!

  25-10-2022 16:47 via us-cert.cisa.gov
  Original release date: October 25, 2022
  On Nov. 1, 2022, CISA will upgrade from Traffic Light Protocol (TLP) 1.0 to TLP 2.0 in accordance with the recommendation by the Forum of Incident Response Security Teams (FIRST) that organizations move to 2.0 by the end of 2022. TLP Version 2.0 brings the following key updates:TLP:CLEAR replaces TLP:WHITE for publicly releasable information.TLP:AMBER+STRICT supplements TLP:AMBER, clarifying when information  may be shared with the recipient&rsqu
  
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• Purdue University Races To Expand Semiconductor Education To Fill Yawning Workforce Gap That Threatens Reshoring Effort

  25-10-2022 16:45 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: On a recent afternoon, an unusual group of visitors peered through a window at Purdue University students tinkering in a lab: two dozen executives from the world's biggest semiconductor companies. The tech leaders had traveled to the small-town campus on the Wabash River to fix one of the biggest problems that they -- and the U.S. economy -- face: a desperate shortage of engineers. Leading the visitors on a tour of the high-tech lab, Engineering Professor Zhi
  
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• Shutterstock Will Start Selling AI-Generated Stock Imagery With Help from OpenAI

  25-10-2022 16:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Will AI image generators kill the stock image industry? It's a question asked by many following the rise of text-to-image AI models in recent years. The answer from the industry's incumbents, though, is "no" -- not if we can start selling AI-generated content first. From a report: Today, stock image giant Shutterstock has announced an extended partnership with OpenAI, which will see the AI lab's text-to-image model DALL-E 2 directly integrated into Shutterstock "in the coming months." In additio
  
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• Bumble Open Sourced Its AI That Detects Unsolicited Nudes

  25-10-2022 15:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: As part of its larger commitment to combat "cyberflashing," the dating app Bumble is open sourcing its AI tool that detects unsolicited lewd images. First debuted in 2019, Private Detector (let's take a moment to let that name sink in) blurs out nudes that are sent through the Bumble app, giving the user on the receiving end the choice of whether to open the image. "Even though the number of users sending lewd images on our apps is luckily a n
  
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• Memtest86+ Is Back After 9 Years

  25-10-2022 12:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Memtest86+ just got its first update after 9 years. The program has reportedly been rewritten from scratch and is back in active development. The new version, 6.0, features a plethora of updates to bring the application up to date, and support the latest system hardware from Intel and AMD. Tom's Hardware reports: For the uninitiated, MemTest86 was originally created back in the mid 1990s, and was one of the earliest DDR memory testing applications for personal computers. But development stopped
  
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• NASA Kicks Off Independent UFO Study

  25-10-2022 09:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  NASA's independent study to delve into the mysteries surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena kicked off today. CNN reports: The group will include experts across numerous disciplines -- including astrobiology, data science, oceanography, genetics, policy and planetary science -- as well as retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, a former fighter pilot and test pilot and retired US Navy captain. The space agency, which first announced it was forming the group in June, previously revealed that the t
  
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• Plastic Recycling a 'Failed Concept,' Study Says

  25-10-2022 05:30 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Plastic recycling rates are declining even as production shoots up, according to a Greenpeace USA report out Monday that blasted industry claims of creating an efficient, circular economy as "fiction." Titled "Circular Claims Fall Flat Again," the study found that of 51 million tons of plastic waste generated by U.S. households in 2021, only 2.4 million tons were recycled, or around five percent. After peaking in 2014 at 10 percent, the trend ha
  
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• Stockholm Thinks It Can Have an Electric Bikeshare Program So Cheap It's Practically Free

  25-10-2022 04:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  Aaron Gordon writes via Motherboard: This past June, Stockholm introduced a new shared bicycle service to replace Stockholm City Bikes, which operated from 2006 until 2018. Since that service shut down, the city was one of many around the world swamped by shared e-scooters that littered sidewalks and streets. As a result, the city wanted to reboot a bikeshare program with a more modern approach without succumbing to the trappings of the dockless scooter and bike craze. The new service, Stockholm
  
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• Math Scores Fell In Nearly Every State, Reading Dipped On National Exam

  25-10-2022 03:25 via science.slashdot.org
  U.S. students in most states and across almost all demographic groups have experienced troubling setbacks in both math and reading, according to an authoritative national exam released on Monday, offering the most definitive indictment yet of the pandemic's impact on millions of schoolchildren. The New York Times reports: In math, the results were especially devastating, representing the steepest declines ever recorded on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation's rep
  
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• Comcast's New Higher Upload Speeds Require $25-Per-Month xFi Complete Add-On

  25-10-2022 02:45 via mobile.slashdot.org
  The availability of Comcast's promised internet speed boosts has a catch: users need to purchase a $25-per-month xFi Complete add-on. Ars Technica reports: "As markets launch, Xfinity Internet customers who subscribe to xFi Complete will have their upload speeds increased between 5 and 10 times faster," an announcement last week said. "xFi Complete includes an xFi gateway, advanced cybersecurity protection at home and on the go, tech auto-upgrades for a new gateway after three years, and wall-to
  
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• Google's Eric Schmidt Helped Write AI Laws Without Disclosing Investments In AI Startups

  25-10-2022 02:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: About four years ago, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was appointed to the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. It was a powerful perch. Congress tasked the new group with a broad mandate: to advise the U.S. government on how to advance the development of artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technologies to enhance the national security of the United States. The
  
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• Apple Has New App Store Rules For NFTs, Cryptocurrency

  25-10-2022 01:20 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple has announced updates to the App Store Review Guidelines, offering guidance for apps offering cryptocurrency and NFTs. Apple Insider reports: The text for the rule has been changed to include the following: "Apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality, such as license keys, augmented reality markers, QR codes, cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency wallets, etc." The rule change is no surprise, as Apple only allows alternative payment systems in certain countries.
  
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• Huawei Investigation Was Targeted by Chinese Spies, US Alleges

  25-10-2022 00:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  The US unsealed charges claiming two Chinese intelligence officers tried to obstruct a criminal investigation of Huawei , and alleged others were working on behalf of a "foreign power" to try procure technology and recruit spies. Bloomberg reports: The charges were part of a series of recently unsealed cases the Justice Department announced Monday that officials said had disrupted criminal activity being conducted by the People's Republic of China. Ten of the 13 individuals charged were Chinese
  
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• RNC Sues Google Over Spam Email Filters

  25-10-2022 00:00 via politics.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Republican National Committee (RNC) filed a lawsuit against Alphabet's Google on Friday for allegedly sending its emails to users' spam folders. The U.S. political committee accuses the tech giant of "discriminating" against it by "throttling its email messages because of the RNC's political affiliation and views," according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in California. "Google has relegated millions of RNC emails en masse to poten
  
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