ICT news

• Bob Iger Returns As Disney CEO

  21-11-2022 23:40 via slashdot.org
  Disney, in a shocking late Sunday announcement, said it had reappointed Iger as chief executive, effective immediately, after Iger's hand-picked successor as CEO, Bob Chapek, came under fire for his management of the entertainment giant. CNBC reports: "It is with an incredible sense of gratitude and humility -- and, I must admit, a bit of amazement -- that I write to you this evening with the news that I am returning to The Walt Disney Company as Chief Executive Officer," Iger wrote to employees
  
  Read more

• Police Tracked Traffic of All National ISPs To Catch Pirate IPTV Users

  21-11-2022 23:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In May 2022, Italian police claimed that thousands of people had unwittingly subscribed to a pirate IPTV service being monitored by the authorities. When users tried to access illegal streams, a warning message claimed that they had already been tracked. With fines now being received through the mail, police are making some extraordinary claims about how this was made possible. [...] Today's general consensus is that hitting site operators i
  
  Read more

• ID.me Lied About Its Facial Recognition Tech, Congress Says

  21-11-2022 22:21 via yro.slashdot.org
  The controversial facial recognition firm hired by the US government during the height of the pandemic is being slammed by members of Congress, who say the company misrepresented how its technology works and downplayed excessive wait times which stopped Americans from collecting unemployment benefits. From a report: New evidence shows that ID.me "inaccurately overstated its capacity to conduct identity verification services to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and made baseless claims about the
  
  Read more

• Meta Is on the Prowl for 'Suspicious Adults' Messaging Teenagers

  21-11-2022 21:43 via yro.slashdot.org
  Meta says it is taking additional steps to help protect the youth on its platforms. Now, anyone under the age of 16 years old can enroll in new privacy settings that are meant to limit who can see their Facebook profile. Likewise, Meta says it's also testing the removal of the messaging button on teen's Instagram profiles when viewed by an adult. From a report: In a company press release, Meta further detailed its initiative to add safeguards to its Facebook and Instagram products that will hope
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Windows 8.1 Support Ends January 10

  21-11-2022 21:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  Mark Hachman, writing for PCWorld: Windows 8 stunk. It might have helped cost chief executive Steve Ballmer his job. Windows 8.1 was a bit better -- but if you love it, you have only a month or so left to enjoy it. Microsoft will kill off Windows 8.1 support on January 10, 2023. There's no out: Microsoft will not be offering an extended support package for Windows 8.1. At that point, you'll have a choice: buy a new Windows PC, or officially pay to upgrade to either Windows 10 or Windows 11. What
  
  Read more

• AMD Finally Opens Up Its Radeon Raytracing Analyzer 'RRA' Source Code

  21-11-2022 20:20 via news.slashdot.org
  Michael Larabel, reporting for Phoronix: This summer AMD announced the Radeon Raytracing Analyzer "RRA" as part of their developer software suite for helping to profile ray-tracing performance/issues on Windows and Linux with both Direct3D 12 and the Vulkan API. Initially the RRA 1.0 release was binary-only but now AMD has made good on their "GPUOpen" approach and made it open-source.
  As noted back in my original article from July on the Radeon Raytracing Analyzer release:
  "Radeon Raytracing Ana
  
  Read more

• TSMC To Bring Its Most Advanced Chip Manufacturing To Arizona

  21-11-2022 19:41 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company plans to bring its most advanced technology to Arizona, the founder of the chip giant said Monday. From a report: TSMC's plans come as tensions between Washington and Beijing are rising over chips, with President Joe Biden imposing a sweeping set of controls on the sale of advanced chips and chip-making equipment to Chinese firms. Taiwan, a self-governing democracy that the Chinese Communist Party claims as its own territory despite having never control
  
  Read more

• Silence From Digital Currency Group's Genesis Spooks Crypto

  21-11-2022 19:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  Genesis Global Trading has been eerily silent after announcing last week that its crypto lending unit would halt services in light of FTX's collapse. From a report: Five days have passed since its lending unit ceased withdrawals and new loan originations. And the lack of communication has opened the door to speculation about the health of the overall firm, as well as its parent Digital Currency Group and sister unit Grayscale Investments. If Genesis were dealing with insolvency concerns and were
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Amazon Plans To Close Up Shop on Wickr's User-Centric Encrypted Messaging App

  21-11-2022 18:22 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: A little more than a year ago, Amazon, specifically Amazon Web Services, flashed its stacks of cash as it announced it was buying up the end-to-end encrypted messaging app Wickr. AWS users could suddenly use Wickr's services, and some reporters speculated Amazon could have been trying to make a move in the increasingly crowded encrypted messaging space. That's much more unlikely now as Amazon announced Monday it was nixing its secure messaging app Wickr Me.
  T
  
  Read more

• Broadcom's Proposed $61 Billion VMware Acquisition Scrutinized by UK Regulators

  21-11-2022 17:45 via news.slashdot.org
  The U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is initiating an investigation into Broadcom's proposed $61 billion deal to buy virtualization software giant VMware. From a report: The news comes shortly after news emerged that the European Commission (EC) was also proceeding with an investigation into what would be one of the biggest tech acquisitions of all time. In the companies' domestic U.S. market, meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last month progressed its investigation int
  
  Read more

• Nasa's Orion Capsule Reaches Moon on Way To Record-Breaking Lunar Orbit

  21-11-2022 17:18 via science.slashdot.org
  Nasa's Orion capsule reached the moon on Monday, whipping around the back side and passing within 80 miles of the surface on its way to a record-breaking lunar orbit. From a report: The close approach occurred as the crew capsule and its three test dummies were on the far side of the moon. Because of the half-hour communication blackout, flight controllers in Houston did not know if the critical engine firing went well until the capsule emerged from behind the moon, more than 232,000 miles from
  
  Read more

• Aviation Regulators Push for More Automation so Flights Can Be Run by a Single Pilot

  21-11-2022 16:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  Regulators are pushing the UN's International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to examine ways of making single pilot operations the eventual norm in commercial flights. From a report: In a working paper filed with the aviation standards body, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) requested on behalf of member states that the "necessary enablers" be created "for a safe and globally harmonized introduction of commercial air transport (CAT) operations of large aeroplanes with optimise
  
  Read more

• The Red Sea's Coral Reefs Defy the Climate-Change Odds

  21-11-2022 15:40 via science.slashdot.org
  As warming waters devastate coral around the world, the sea's stunningly colorful reefs have been remarkably resilient. But pollution, mass tourism and overfishing put them at risk. From a report: The vast majority of the world's coral reefs are likely to be severely damaged in the coming decades if the planet keeps warming at its current rate. But the wildly colorful coral reefs in the waters outside the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh, where the annual United Nations climate confere
  
  Read more

• Stagnant Scientific Productivity Holding Back Growth

  21-11-2022 15:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Funding for scientific research has become risk-averse, favoring established researchers pursuing incremental discoveries, critics say. From a report: In August President Biden signed into law a massive boost to scientific research: roughly $200 billion, when fully funded, over the next several years. The bipartisan law's premise is straightforward. In the long run economic growth depends on innovation, which in turn flows from how much we spend on research and development. The problem with that
  
  Read more

• US Government Begins Researching 'Climate Intervention' Geoengineering

  21-11-2022 13:34 via news.slashdot.org
  Federal U.S. agencies (including the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy) have been asked to develop a five-year "scientific assessment of solar and other rapid climate interventions." As the Daily Beast sees it, the U.S. government is signalling that it's looking into "one of the most controversial and consequential climate change-fighting tactics yet," suggesting the report will look at a technique "that essentially involves spraying fine aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect
  
  Read more

• Is Quantum Computing Moving from Theoretical to Startups?

  21-11-2022 09:34 via slashdot.org
  The Boston Globe reports that "More money is starting to flow into the nascent field of quantum computing in Boston, turning academic research at MIT and Harvard labs into startups."
  In September, Northeastern University announced it will build a $10 million lab at its Burlington campus to explore applications for quantum technology, and to train students to work with it. And companies based in other countries are setting up outposts here to hire quantum-savvy techies....
  "It's still pretty earl
  
  Read more

• Waymo Will Soon Offer Some (Free) Fully Driverless Rides in San Francisco

  21-11-2022 06:04 via tech.slashdot.org
  "Waymo is one step closer to charging passengers for fully driverless rides in San Francisco," reports Engadget:The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has granted the company a Driverless Pilot permit, which allows it to pick up passengers in a test vehicle without a driver behind the wheel. It's only the second participant in the CPUC's Driverless Permit program, with Cruise being the first.By securing the permit, Waymo now has the authority to offer driverless rides throughout San F
  
  Read more

• FTX Owes Nearly $3.1 Billion to Top 50 of Its 1M Creditors. Celebrity Endorsers Sued

  21-11-2022 03:35 via news.slashdot.org
  ABC News reports:The cryptocurrency exchange FTX owes creditors $3.1 billion, according to court documents filed late Saturday night....
  Creditors' names were not listed on the court filing, but the largest is owed $226,280,579, .
  As part of its bankruptcy proceedings, FTX was required to list to the court its 50 largest creditors — either individuals or corporations — who are owed money. The second largest entity is owed $203,292,504, the court filing shows.
  A video at the top of th
  
  Read more

• Debate at COP27: Nuclear Energy, Climate Friend or Foe?

  21-11-2022 02:04 via news.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader gordm shares an interesting video from the United Nations Climate Change Conference. "At COP27, Tobias Holle (activist with Youth Strike for Climate) debated Mark Nelson (founder of Radiant Energy Fund) as to whether nuclear power can help us tackle climate change."
  The event took place at the International Atomic Energy Agency's "Atoms for Climate" pavillion, where the IAEA's climate advisor presented the debate's topic as "Nuclear Energy: Climate Friend or Foe?" (and
  
  Read more

• Did the Pandemic Change Our Attitudes About Work?

  21-11-2022 00:34 via it.slashdot.org
  Through 2020 America's professional lives "had taken on the overtones of a secular religion," argues a writer in the Washington Post, with jobs forming "a primary way to find meaning in the world and a crucial part of our identity.... Even precarious, low-paying gigs were valorized as 'hustle culture,' representing freedom to perform labor on our terms."
  But then...Fast-forward to fall 2022. The number of people quitting, while down from the peak, remains at the highest level since the 1970s. Wh
  
  Read more

Follow @newslocke_ict on Twitter!