ICT news

• Former World Chess Champion Anatoly Karpov Hospitalized In Serious Condition

  31-10-2022 23:40 via science.slashdot.org
  According to Russian telegram channels, the former World Chess Champion, Antoly Karpov, was "rushed to the hospital with multiple head injuries in which he was placed in an induced coma," reports ChessBase. "Karpov was put on a ventilator now, and has been diagnosed with cerebral edema, fractures of the right parietal and right temporal bones, multiple head hematomas, and traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage." From the report: On a few things none of the reports still in circulation disagree: the 1
  
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• Microsoft Promises Eternal Support for Call of Duty on PlayStation

  31-10-2022 22:21 via games.slashdot.org
  Microsoft Xbox chief Phil Spencer said he intends to continue to ship Call of Duty games on PlayStation "as long as there's a PlayStation out there to ship to." From a report: The new promise comes weeks after Sony lambasted an "inadequate" offer to extend Call of Duty's cross-platform access for three years past the current agreement and as Microsoft faces continuing scrutiny from international governments over its proposed $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard. "We're not taking Call of
  
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• Discord Bans 68,000 Servers, 55 Million Accounts

  31-10-2022 21:41 via tech.slashdot.org
  The social media platform Discord recently published its quarterly safety report which notes that some 55,573,411 accounts and 68,379 servers were "disabled" between January and June, 2022. From a report: According to the company, the vast majority of these were taken offline for "spam or spam-related offenses." The number of accounts that were disabled for reasons other than spam definitely pales in comparison, amounting to a mere 1,821,721. The bans in this category were mostly handed out for
  
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• New York Could Become First State With a 'Right To Repair' Law for Electronic Devices

  31-10-2022 21:01 via yro.slashdot.org
  After passing with near unanimous support in both houses of the state Legislature, a bill that would allow New Yorkers to repair their electronic devices is all ready to become law as it awaits Gov. Kathy Hochul's signature. From a report: The bill's sponsor in the Assembly, Assemblywoman Pat Fahy of Albany, said the bill would create a system that we use for cars but for the electronic devices we use each day.
  The bill, known as "Right to Repair," would force companies to provide tools and part
  
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• Apple Gears Up To Launch Its Next Crop of Macs Early Next Year

  31-10-2022 20:22 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple's next group of Macs probably won't launch until early next year, Bloomberg News reports, which means it will have fewer new devices to sell in the holiday quarter. From the report: Apple has been gearing up to launch a slew of new Macs, and now we have a clearer idea of when that will occur: early next year. I'm told that Apple is aiming to introduce the upgraded models -- including M2-based versions of the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros -- in the first quarter of calendar 2023 and has
  
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• US Workers Have Gotten Way Less Productive

  31-10-2022 19:44 via news.slashdot.org
  Employers across the country are worried that workers are getting less done -- and there's evidence they're right to be spooked. From a report: In the first half of 2022, productivity -- the measure of how much output in goods and services an employee can produce in an hour -- plunged by the sharpest rate on record going back to 1947, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The productivity plunge is perplexing, because productivity took off to levels not seen in decades when the
  
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• Why Mathematicians Study Knots

  31-10-2022 19:07 via science.slashdot.org
  Far from being an abstract mathematical curiosity, knot theory has driven many findings in math and beyond. Quanta magazine: Knot theory began as an attempt to understand the fundamental makeup of the universe. In 1867, when scientists were eagerly trying to figure out what could possibly account for all the different kinds of matter, the Scottish mathematician and physicist Peter Guthrie Tait showed his friend and compatriot Sir William Thomson his device for generating smoke rings. Thomson --
  
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• TuSimple Fires Its CEO Xiaodi Hou Amid Probe

  31-10-2022 18:20 via news.slashdot.org
  TuSimple, a self-driving trucking company, said Monday it had fired its chief executive and co-founder, Xiaodi Hou. From a report: The San Diego-based company said in a news release and securities filing that its board of directors on Sunday had ousted Mr. Hou, who was also the board chairman and chief technology officer. Mr. Hou was fired in connection with a continuing investigation by members of the board, the release said. That review "led the board to conclude that a change of Chief Executi
  
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• FTC Accuses Ed Tech Firm Chegg of 'Careless' Data Security

  31-10-2022 17:40 via news.slashdot.org
  The Federal Trade Commission on Monday cracked down on Chegg, an education technology firm based in Santa Clara, Calif., saying the company's "careless" approach to cybersecurity had exposed the personal details of tens of millions of users. From a report: In a legal complaint, filed on Monday morning, regulators accused Chegg of numerous data security lapses dating to 2017. Among other problems, the agency said, Chegg had issued root login credentials, essentially an all-access pass to certain
  
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• Exhibit Aims To Present AI Images as Real Art

  31-10-2022 17:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  A new art exhibition in San Francisco showcases some of the unique ways that artists have begun to incorporate Dall-E 2, GPT-3 and other AI systems into their work -- efforts that go well beyond just typing some text and seeing what pops out. From a report: The exhibit, "Artificial Imagination," comes amid a broad debate over the legal and artistic merits of AI-created art, as well as concerns that more powerful computers could take jobs away from humans. "Artificial Imagination" includes a rang
  
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• Hong Kong To Explore Legalization of Retail Crypto Trades in Reversal of Previous Proposal

  31-10-2022 16:25 via slashdot.org
  Hong Kong has proposed allowing retail investors to trade in cryptocurrencies and crypto exchange-traded funds and plans to conduct pilots in NFT issuance and CBDC as it looks to regain its status as a global financial hub. From a report: The city had last year proposed limiting crypto trade to professional investors, a move that saw many crypto entrepreneurs shift base to friendlier jurisdictions such as Dubai and Singapore. Hong Kong will review property rights for tokenized assets and explore
  
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• India Central Bank To Start Pilot of Digital Rupee Tomorrow

  31-10-2022 15:46 via tech.slashdot.org
  The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will launch the pilot for a central-bank-backed digital rupee for the wholesale segment on Nov. 1, it said on Monday, identifying nine banks, including top lender State Bank of India, to participate in the project. From a report: The pilot's use case will be to settle secondary market transactions in government securities, with the e-rupee expected to make the interbank market more efficient, the RBI said in a statement. Settlements in central bank digital currenc
  
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• White House Invites Dozens of Nations for Ransomware Summit

  31-10-2022 15:03 via news.slashdot.org
  The White House is bringing together three dozen nations, the European Union and a slew of private-sector companies for a two-day summit starting Monday that looks at how best to combat ransomware attacks. From a report: The second International Counter Ransomware Summit will focus on priorities such as ensuring systems are more resilient to better withstand attacks and disrupt bad actors planning such assaults. A senior Biden administration official cited recent attacks such as one that targete
  
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• CISA Releases Guidance on Phishing-Resistant and Numbers Matching Multifactor Authentication 

  31-10-2022 14:43 via us-cert.cisa.gov
  Original release date: October 31, 2022
  CISA has released two fact sheets to highlight threats against accounts and systems using certain forms of multifactor authentication (MFA). CISA strongly urges all organizations to implement phishing-resistant MFA to protect against phishing and other known cyber threats. If an organization using mobile push-notification-based MFA is unable to implement phishing-resistant MFA, CISA recommends using number matching to mitigate MFA fatigue. Although number
  
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• Can Technology Help Us Talk to Animals?

  31-10-2022 12:34 via news.slashdot.org
  "Today, tools like drones, digital recorders, and artificial intelligence are helping us listen to the sounds of nature in unprecedented ways," writes Vox, citing Karen Bakker, author of the new book Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants.
  But how far will this lead?
  Automated listening posts have been set up in ecosystems around the planet, from rainforests to the depths of the ocean, and miniaturization has allowed scientists to stick m
  
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• Behavior of Star Clusters Challenges Newton's Laws of Gravity

  31-10-2022 08:34 via science.slashdot.org
  The Jerusalem Post reports that "Certain star clusters do not seem to be following current understandings of Isaac Newton's laws of gravity, according to new research published on Wednesday." (Specifically open star clusters, formed when thousands of stars are born in a gas cloud within a short time period.)
  The researchers examined data on each stars' velocity, direction of motion and age using data from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission that allowed them to count the stars accurately fo
  
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• Python is Getting Faster. How a Team at Microsoft is Helping

  31-10-2022 05:59 via developers.slashdot.org
  It's been one week since Python3.11 was released — and it's "faster than ever!" So says Jay Miller, a developer on Microsoft's six-person "Faster CPython" team (which includes Python creator Guido van Rossum, and offers assistance to other core developers). Miller reports that Python 3.11 "has already seen speedups of 10-60% in some areas of the language," and offers an inside look at team.
  First, how the team came together:In 2020, Core Developer Mark Shannon drafted an Implementation pla
  
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• Apple's $100 Million 'Small Developer Assistance Fund' Surprises Developers With Payouts

  31-10-2022 03:59 via apple.slashdot.org
  Developer Dan Leveille received "a sketchy voicemail from a random number about a class action lawsuit settlement..." he posted on Twitter. "I thought it was a scam and almost ignored it."
  But he didn't — and ended up with $8,064.88 in his Venmo account.Back in 2019 a lawsuit by U.S. developers accused Apple of "profit-killing" App Store commissions, reports TechForge Media. Apple settled that suit by agreeing to create a $100 million Small Developer Assistance Fund (for developers who sol
  
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• 'Science Has a Nasty Photoshopping Problem'

  31-10-2022 01:52 via science.slashdot.org
  Dr. Bik is a microbiologist who has worked at Stanford University and for the Dutch National Institute for Health who is "blessed" with "what I'm told is a better-than-average ability to spot repeating patterns," according to their new Op-Ed in the New York Times.
  In 2014 they'd spotted the same photo "being used in two different papers to represent results from three entirely different experiments...."Although this was eight years ago, I distinctly recall how angry it made me. This was cheating
  
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