ICT news

• The Execs Behind the MoviePass Debacle Are Now Facing Criminal Charges

  04-11-2022 23:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  Mitch Lowe and Ted Farnsworth already settled with the FTC over fraudulent activity affecting MoviePass customers, but now the former heads of MoviePass and its parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY), are facing criminal allegations of securities fraud and wire fraud. The Verge reports: The Department of Justice announced the charges today, saying false statements made by both men defrauded investors in HMNY when the execs pretended like the company's money-losing $9.95 "unlimited"
  
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• AstraZeneca Password Lapse Exposed Patient Data

  04-11-2022 23:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has blamed "user error" for leaving a list of credentials online for more than a year that exposed access to sensitive patient data. Mossab Hussein, chief security officer at cybersecurity startup SpiderSilk, told TechCrunch that a developer left the credentials for an AstraZeneca internal server on code sharing site GitHub in 2021. The credentials allowed access to a test Salesforce cloud environment, often us
  
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• Cherry's New Mechanical Switch Hails From '80s Terminal Keyboards

  04-11-2022 22:21 via it.slashdot.org
  Cherry, the original mechanical switch maker, is continuing to tap the mechanical keyboard community for new product ideas. From a report: Its new mechanical switch, the Cherry MX Black Clear-Top, is a nod to enthusiasts who would love to turn in their modern-day clacker for an old-school terminal keyboard with extra-smooth typing. Before Cherry's Thursday announcement of plans to release the MX Black Clear-Top, the switch was known to hobbyists as the Nixie switch.
  Cherry made the switch in the
  
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• HBO Cancels 'Westworld' In Shock Decision

  04-11-2022 21:43 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  According to the Hollywood Reporter, HBO has "switched off Westworld" after its recent fourth season. From the report: It's an unexpected fate for a series that was once considered one of HBO's biggest tentpoles -- an acclaimed mystery-box drama that racked up 54 Emmy award nominations (including a supporting actress win for Thandiwe Newton). Last month, co-creator Jonathan Nolan said in an interview that he hoped HBO would give the series a fifth season to wrap up the show's ambitious story, wh
  
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• Supreme Court To Consider Overseas Reach of US Trademark Law

  04-11-2022 21:02 via news.slashdot.org
  The US Supreme Court will debate the worldwide reach of federal trademark law, agreeing to consider the extent to which a foreign-based company can be forced to pay damages for infringing sales that take place overseas. From a report: The justices said they will review a $90 million jury award won by a Methode Electronics subsidiary in a lawsuit that accused an Austrian company and three of its units of selling copycat versions of proprietary remote controls used in heavy machinery.
  The Austrian
  
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• Apple Pauses Hiring for Roles Outside Research and Development in Cost-Cutting Move

  04-11-2022 20:21 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple has paused hiring for many jobs outside of research and development, an escalation of an existing plan to reduce budgets heading into next year, Bloomberg News reported this week, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From a report: The company took the step last month, ahead of a quarterly earnings report where it said that growth would slow in the holiday period. The pause generally doesn't apply to teams working on future devices and long-term initiatives, but it affects some corp
  
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• New Mac App Wants To Record Everything You Do - So You Can 'Rewind' It Later

  04-11-2022 19:41 via apple.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Yesterday, a company called Rewind AI announced a self-titled software product for Macs with Apple Silicon that reportedly keeps a highly compressed, searchable record of everything you do locally on your Mac and lets you "rewind" time to see it later. If you forget something you've "seen, said, or heard," Rewind wants to help you find it easily. Rewind AI claims its product stores all recording data locally on your machine and does not require cloud integrat
  
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• US Govt Employees Exposed To Mobile Attacks From Outdated Android, iOS

  04-11-2022 19:01 via news.slashdot.org
  According to a new report, almost half of Android-based mobile phones used by U.S. state and local government employees are running outdated versions of the operating system, exposing them to hundreds of vulnerabilities that can be leveraged for attacks. From a report: These statistics come from a report by cybersecurity firm Lookout, based on an analysis of 200 million devices and 175 million applications from 2021 to H2 2022. The report additionally warns of a rise in all threat metrics, inclu
  
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• Soccer Fans, You're Being Watched

  04-11-2022 18:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  Stadiums around the world, including at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, are subjecting spectators to invasive biometric surveillance tech. From a report: This fall, more than 15,000 cameras will monitor soccer fans across eight stadiums and on the streets of Doha during the 2022 World Cup, an event expected to attract more than 1 million football fans from around the globe. "What you see here is the future of stadium operations," the organizers' chief technology officer, Niyas Abdulrahiman, proudly
  
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• Vietnam To Require 24-hour Take-Down For 'False' Social Media Content

  04-11-2022 17:44 via tech.slashdot.org
  Vietnam's information minister said on Friday authorities had tightened regulations to deal with "false" content on social media platforms so that it must be taken down within 24 hours instead of 48 hours previously. From a report: The new rules will enshrine Vietnam's position as one of the world's most stringently controlled regimes for social media firms and will strengthen the ruling Communist Party's hand as it cracks down on "anti-state" activity. Minister of Information and Communications
  
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• Virgin Galactic Delays Development of Ship Capable of Higher Flight Rate

  04-11-2022 17:06 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Space tourism company Virgin Galactic released its third-quarter financial results on Thursday. As one might imagine of a spaceflight company that has not flown since June 2021, the financials are pretty disastrous. The company reported revenue of less than $1 million against losses of more than $146 million. After a long period of downtime, Virgin Galactic officials said the company is close to completing "modifications" of its VMS Eve carrier aircraft and V
  
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• UK Parliament Group Starts NFT Inquiry as Crypto Scrutiny Grows

  04-11-2022 16:29 via news.slashdot.org
  The UK parliament started an inquiry into nonfungible tokens, the digital collectibles for which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been a champion. From a report: The Digital, Culture, Media & Sport committee in the House of Commons announced the initiative in a statement on Friday, adding that it will also study the wider blockchain technology that underpins NFTs. "MPs are expected to consider whether NFT investors, especially vulnerable speculators, are put at risk by the market," the DCMS co
  
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• Latest US Defense-Intelligence Report on UFOs To Be Made Public Soon

  04-11-2022 15:40 via news.slashdot.org
  A declassified version of the latest U.S. defense-intelligence report on UFOs -- rebranded in official government parlance as "unidentified aerial phenomena" -- is expected to be made public in the coming days. From a report: But UFO enthusiasts hoping for the government to judge any of the hundreds of U.S. military sightings under scrutiny as visits by extraterrestrial spacecraft are likely to be disappointed. The most recent incidents under review are attributed to a mix of foreign surveillanc
  
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• US Authorities Seize Z-Library Domain Names

  04-11-2022 15:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  TorrentFreak reports: Several domains related to popular ebook repository Z-Library became inaccessible a few hours ago. DNS records and other information suggest that the shadow library was targeted by the Postal Inspection Service, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Justice. Confusingly, Z-Library says that the downtime is linked to a hosting issue.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Europe Warming Twice As Fast As Rest of the World, New Report Reveals

  04-11-2022 14:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: The European continent is bearing the brunt of climate change, warming at a rate that is twice as fast as the global average, a new report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) found. The report analyzed 30 years' worth of data from 1991 onwards, revealing a disconcerting trend of speedy warming across Europe that is faster than the warming experienced by any other continent. Average temperatures in Europe were rising at a rate of 0.5
  
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• Study Urges Caution When Comparing Neural Networks To the Brain

  04-11-2022 11:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Anne Trafton writes via MIT News: Neural networks, a type of computing system loosely modeled on the organization of the human brain, form the basis of many artificial intelligence systems for applications such speech recognition, computer vision, and medical image analysis. In the field of neuroscience, researchers often use neural networks to try to model the same kind of tasks that the brain performs, in hopes that the models could suggest new hypotheses regarding how the brain itself perform
  
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• Scientists Discover Huge 'Extragalactic Structure' in Hidden Region of Space

  04-11-2022 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Scientists have discovered a huge "extragalactic structure" hidden behind the Milky Way in a mysterious area of the sky known as the "zone of avoidance" because it is obscured by our own galaxy's opaque bulge, according to a new preprint study. Motherboard reports: The discovery of the structure, which appears to be a large galaxy cluster, helps to fill in this shadowy part of our cosmic map, which may as well be labeled "here be space dragons" because it is so unclear what exists there. The sta
  
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• Red Cross Seeks 'Digital Emblem' To Protect Against Hacking

  04-11-2022 06:15 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday it is seeking support to create a "digital red cross/red crescent emblem" that would make clear to military and other hackers that they have entered the computer systems of medical facilities or Red Cross offices. The Geneva-based humanitarian organization said it was calling on governments, Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, and IT experts to join forces in developing "co
  
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• AMD Unveils RDNA 3-Based Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT Graphics Cards

  04-11-2022 04:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  Slashdot readers MojoKid and williamyf share the news of AMD's two new high-end graphics cards, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT. "Priced at $999 and $899 respectively and available in December this year, the new Radeon cards are expected to go toe-to-toe with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4080 and 4090," writes MojoKid. HotHardware reports: AMD states that its goals for RDNA 3 are to accelerate performance-per-watt leadership and to raise the bar for high resolution and high framerate gaming. AMD has
  
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• New Hampshire Set To Pilot Voting Machines That Use Open-Source Software

  04-11-2022 03:02 via politics.slashdot.org
  According to The Record, New Hampshire will pilot a new kind of voting machine that will use open-source software to tally the votes. The Record reports: The software that runs voting machines is typically distributed in a kind of black box -- like a car with its hood sealed shut. Because the election industry in the U.S. is dominated by three companies -- Dominion, Election Systems & Software and Hart InterCivic -- the software that runs their machines is private. The companies consider it
  
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• Instagram Jumps Into NFTs With Minting and Selling Feature

  04-11-2022 02:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  Meta's Instagram will soon allow artists to create and sell their own NFTs both right on the social media platform and off it. Axios reports: IG's feature will roll out to a small group of select creators in the U.S. to start, according to Meta. The first creators tapped to test the feature include photographer Isaac âoeDriftâ Wright, known as DrifterShoots, and artist Amber Vittoria. Meta won't charge fees for posting or sharing an NFT on IG, though, app store fees still apply. Sepa
  
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• The NYPD Joins Amazon's Ring Neighbors Surveillance Network

  04-11-2022 01:45 via yro.slashdot.org
  The New York Police Department has joined Ring Neighbors, the neighborhood surveillance network built around Amazon's Ring security cameras. The Verge reports: The partnership, announced yesterday, means the NYPD will view people's posts on Neighbors and be able to post directly to it, including requests for public help on "active police matters." Neighbors is a Nextdoor-like extension of Ring's security camera business, allowing residents of a neighborhood to discuss crime and safety as well as
  
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• 'The Babylon Bee' Joins 'The Onion' In Decrying Law That Makes Parody a Felony

  04-11-2022 01:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reason Magazine: The Babylon Bee this week joined The Onion in urging the Supreme Court to defend the First Amendment against an Ohio law that makes parody a felony. The case, which the Institute for Justice is asking the Court to take up, involves Parma resident Anthony Novak, who in 2016 was prosecuted for violating a state law against using a computer to "disrupt, interrupt, or impair the functions of any police, fire, educational, commercial, or gover
  
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• Apple Supplier Foxconn Partners With Saudi Wealth Fund To Build EVs

  04-11-2022 00:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth said on Thursday it will make electric cars in the kingdom under a joint venture with Apple supplier Foxconn as part of a push to build new industries and lessen dependence on oil. Reuters reports: Ceer "is the first Saudi automotive brand to produce electric vehicles in Saudi Arabia, and will design, manufacture and sell a range of vehicles for consumers in Saudi Arabia and the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, including sedans and sports utility vehicl
  
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