ICT news

• A Space Rock Smashed Into Mars' Equator - and Revealed Chunks of Ice

  29-10-2022 23:34 via science.slashdot.org
  The mission of NASA's robotic lander InSight "is nearing an end as dust obscures its solar panels," reports CNN. "In a matter of weeks, the lander won't be able to send a beep to show it's OK anymore."
  "Before it bids farewell, though, the spacecraft still has some surprises in store."
  When Mars rumbled beneath InSight's feet on December 24, NASA scientists thought it was just another marsquake. The magnitude 4 quake was actually caused by a space rock slamming into the Martian surface a couple
  
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• Vanilla OS: More Than Just Vanilla GNOME With Ubuntu

  29-10-2022 22:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  Slashdot reader Soul_Predator writes: Vanilla OS is Ubuntu on stock GNOME, with on-demand immutability and package selection freedom. It is currently a beta project, with a stable release planned for the next month.
  "The first-time setup process is a breeze to experience," writes It's FOSS News, applauding how it lets uses choose and enable Flatpak/Snap/AppImage.
  Overall, a package manager that installs applications utilizing a container, getting the ability to choose your package managers, on-d
  
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• New 'Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi' Animated Series Begins Streaming on Disney+

  29-10-2022 21:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  The animated series "Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi" premiered this week on Disney+, witih all six 15-minute episodes released on Wednesday.
  CNN calls it a slick and well-produced "kind of super-service for the Star Wars faithful, rekindling old flames, and comfortably submerging them in the past." But they also add that animation "has also become a vehicle for greater experimentation, as witnessed in the Star Wars: Visions anime shorts that premiered last year."It's hardly a surprise that this la
  
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• Why Is My Cat Using Baidu? And Other IoT DNS Oddities

  29-10-2022 20:34 via mobile.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader UnderAttack writes:IoT devices are often stitched together from various odd libraries and features. The SANS Internet Storm Center has a story about a cat feeder that not only appears to reach out to Baidu.com every five minutes but also uses a vulnerable DNS library that uses repeating query ids allowing for simple spoofing not seen since the early dark years of DNS
  The article, by a SANS.edu dean of research, concludes that "Some networking libraries use 'baidu.com' f
  
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• Study Suggests Blood Pressure Meds May Reduce Risk of Dementia

  29-10-2022 19:34 via science.slashdot.org
  CNN reports:
  Knowing you have higher than normal blood pressure — and taking medications daily to treat it — may be one key to avoiding dementia in later life, a new study found.
  Scientists already know that having high blood pressure, particularly between ages 40 and 65, increases the risk of developing dementia in later life, said study coauthor Ruth Peters, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, via email. But she added that research has been les
  
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• Could Data Destruction + Exfiltration Replace Ransomware?

  29-10-2022 18:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  Slashdot reader storagedude writes: Ransomware groups have been busy improving their data exfiltration tools, and with good reason: As ransomware decryption fails to work most of the time, victims are more likely to pay a ransom to keep their stolen data from being publicly leaked.
  But some security researchers think the trend suggests that ransomware groups may change their tactics entirely and abandon ransomware in favor of a combined approach of data destruction and exfiltration, stealing the
  
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• As Governments Miss Climate Goals, Drought is Already Devastating Parts of Africa

  29-10-2022 17:34 via news.slashdot.org
  This week the United Nations chastised "woefully inadequate" plans to cut carbon from world governments, reported the BBC, announcing the UN's findings that current carbon-cutting efforts "would see global emissions fall by less than 1% by 2030, when according to scientists, reductions of 45% are needed" to keep global warming below a key threshhold of 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).The Washington Post notes that our current trajectory would lead to "a dangerous future of extreme weather
  
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• Pranksters Posing as Laid-Off Twitter Employees Trick Media Outlets

  29-10-2022 16:34 via news.slashdot.org
  "A pair of pranksters posing as laid-off Twitter employees tricked multiple media outlets Friday as the public anxiously awaited news on whether Elon Musk had begun axing staffers," reports the New York Post:CNBC's Deirdre Bosa interviewed two people who identified themselves as Twitter employees and were seen near the company's San Francisco headquarters carrying cardboard boxes.
  Skepticism immediately emerged on social media. One of the pranksters said his name was "Rahul Ligma" — a refe
  
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• TSMC Wants To Unleash a Flood of Chiplet Designs With 3DFabric Alliance

  29-10-2022 15:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: AMD turned to advanced packaging to create chiplet designs and become a formidable CPU player again. Apple used the tech to beef up the power of its M1 Ultra chip. And Intel is pinning its future success on 2D and 3D multi-die packaging technologies as part of its ambitious comeback plan. Now TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, wants to make chiplet-based products easier and faster to manufacture using its growing toolbox of advanc
  
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• World's New Largest Wind Farm Could Power 13 Million Homes

  29-10-2022 12:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  China plans to break its own record for the world's largest wind farm by constructing a new one before 2025 that could power more than 13 million homes. Interesting Engineering reports: The 14th five-year plan for Chaozhou, China's Guangdong province, was released last week, outlining the city's ambitious plans for a 43.3 gigawatt (GW) project in the Taiwan Strait. Work on the project will begin "before 2025." It will surpass the largest wind farm in the world once it is finished, according to G
  
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• Amazon May Turn To Its SpaceX Rival For Satellite Launches

  29-10-2022 09:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Amazon is on a tight schedule to launch its internet satellites to orbit, so the company may have to turn to its competitor SpaceX for rides. Gizmodo reports: During a live interview with the Washington Post, Amazon senior vice president Dave Limp expressed the company's openness to use SpaceX's heavy lift rockets to deploy its Project Kuiper internet satellites. "We are open to talking to SpaceX, you'd be crazy not given their track record here," Limp said. However, Amazon is not interested in
  
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• First-Ever Study Shows Bumble Bees 'Play'

  29-10-2022 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Bumble bees play, according to new research led by Queen Mary University of London published in Animal Behavior. It is the first time that object play behavior has been shown in an insect, adding to mounting evidence that bees may experience positive "feelings." The team of researchers set up numerous experiments to test their hypothesis, which showed that bumble bees went out of their way to roll wooden balls repeatedly despite there being no a
  
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• Pebble, the OG Smartwatch That May Never Die, Updated To Work With Pixel 7

  29-10-2022 03:25 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Nearly six years after the Pebble smartwatch was purchased by Fitbit and discontinued, a new Pebble app for Android has been released by the Rebble Alliance, a group that has kept Pebble viable for its users since Fitbit shut down Pebble's servers in mid-2018," writes Ars Technica's Kevin Purdy. "Pebble version 4.4.3 makes the app 64-bit so it can work on the mostly 64-bit Pixel 7 and similar Android phones into the future. It also restores a caller ID function that was hampered on recent Androi
  
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• Teleport Creators Raise $9 Million To Build Decentralized Uber Rival On Solana

  29-10-2022 02:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  The Decentralized Engineering Corporation (DEC) has raised $9 million in seed funding to create a decentralized ridesharing service on Solana -- a concept that's been theorized by Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin and attempted by various startups over the years. Decrypt reports: DEC announced today that it has raised $9 million in seed funding to build out The Rideshare Protocol, or TRIP, which is designed to power ridesharing apps from a variety of future companies. They'll all share the sam
  
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• Hong Kong Plans To Legalize Retail Crypto Trading To Become Hub

  29-10-2022 02:02 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Hong Kong is pivoting toward a friendlier regulatory regime for cryptocurrencies with a plan to legalize retail trading, contrasting with the city's skeptical stance of recent years and the ban in place in mainland China. A planned mandatory licensing program for crypto platforms set to be enforced in March next year will allow retail trading, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the information isn't
  
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• Germany Plans To Approve Chinese Takeover of Elmos' Chip Production

  29-10-2022 00:40 via slashdot.org
  Despite warnings from intelligence agencies, Germany's government is set to approve a Chinese takeover of a German company's microchips production facility. Reuters reports: German outlet Handelsblatt reported Thursday that the deal -- which would see a takeover of the semiconductor production of Dortmund-based Elmos by Sweden's Silex, a wholly owned subsidiary of China's Sai Microelectronics -- was set to get the green light against security advice. The deal is currently being reviewed by the G
  
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• You're Going To Have To Pay To Use Some Fancy Colors In Photoshop Now

  29-10-2022 00:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Kotaku: It's very likely you don't give a great deal of thought to where the digital colors you use originally came from. Nor, probably, have you wondered who might "own" a particular color, when you picked it when creating something in Photoshop. But a lot of people are about to give this a huge amount of their attention, as their collection of PSD files gets filled with unwanted black, due to a licensing change between Adobe and Pantone. As of now, wide
  
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