ICT news

• 'Gaslighting' Is Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year For 2022

  28-11-2022 23:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  "Gaslighting" -- behavior that's mind manipulating, grossly misleading, downright deceitful -- is Merriam-Webster's word of the year. The Associated Press reports: Lookups for the word on merriam-webster.com increased 1,740% in 2022 over the year before. But something else happened. There wasn't a single event that drove significant spikes in curiosity, as it usually goes with the chosen word of the year. The gaslighting was pervasive.Merriam-Webster's top definition for gaslighting is the psych
  
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• Mauna Loa Volcano In Hawaii Erupts For the First Time In Nearly 40 Years

  28-11-2022 23:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The world's largest active volcano, Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii, erupted for the first time in 38 years late Sunday night, following a series of spectacular eruptions of the smaller Kilauea volcano, also on the island, over the last five years. At 11:30 p.m. local time, an eruption began at Mauna Loa's summit, inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Lava flowing from the volcano was con
  
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• Microsoft Likely To Offer EU Concessions Soon in Activision Deal

  28-11-2022 22:21 via tech.slashdot.org
  Microsoft is likely to offer remedies to EU antitrust regulators in the coming weeks to stave off formal objections to its $69 billion bid for "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard, Reuters reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The U.S. software giant and Xbox maker announced the deal in January to help it compete better with leaders Tencent and Sony. It has since then faced regulatory headwinds in the European Union, Britain and in the United States, with
  
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• Brands Filing for Trademark Applications for the Metaverse Have Waned

  28-11-2022 21:40 via slashdot.org
  Brands flocked to file trademark applications for the metaverse earlier this year. Now, the number of those applications is falling, causing some to herald the end of the gold-rush era. From a report: Between January and October, approximately 5,000 U.S. trademark applications for metaverse and virtual goods or services were filed, according to public filings, from brands including Nike, Adidas, Tommy Hilfiger, Levi's, and Versace. In the month of March, the number peaked at a total of 773. The
  
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• Can't Hear What Actors Are Saying on TV? It's Not You, Probably

  28-11-2022 21:01 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Some people turn on closed captions because they like how it helps them understand the plotlines of shows and movies, and multitask in front of the tube. Others turn them on because they can't hear what actors are saying. That doesn't always mean they are hard of hearing. From a report: Muddled audio is the top reason why more people are watching video with on-screen text, according to a May survey commissioned by language-teaching app Preply. As more video-production studios embrace advanced au
  
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• Apple Has Threatened To Withhold Twitter From App Store, Elon Musk Says

  28-11-2022 20:04 via apple.slashdot.org
  In a series of tweets Monday, Elon Musk said Apple had mostly stopped advertising on Twitter and had threatened to withhold the Twitter app from the App Store. Musk said the iPhone-maker won't disclose why it is making the threat.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Google Partners With Med Tech Company To Develop AI Breast Cancer Screening Tools

  28-11-2022 19:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google announced today that it has licensed its AI research model for breast cancer screening to medical technology company iCAD. This is the first time Google is licensing the technology, with the hopes that it will eventually lead to more accurate breast cancer detection and risk assessment. From a report: The two companies aim to eventually deploy the technology in real-world clinical settings -- targeting a "2024 release," Google communications manager Nicole Linton told The Verge in an emai
  
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• Singapore Branches Out Onto Internet of Trees

  28-11-2022 19:11 via tech.slashdot.org
  Singapore is obsessed with trees. The island nation, population 5.45 million people, is home to around seven million trees -- and manages many of them with an enormous Internet of Things monitoring scheme. From a report: Which is a very Singaporean thing to do, because another local obsession is tracking everything. The city-state's goal of becoming a Smart Nation includes an increasingly comprehensive masterplan that uses tech to manage, link and track as many aspects of life as possible. Singa
  
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• The Internet Archive's PalmPilot Emulation Project Lets You Relive Tech History

  28-11-2022 18:39 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Fifteen years after the release of the iPhone, it's easy to overlook the role early innovators like Palm played in popularizing the smartphone. By the time HP unceremoniously shut down the company in 2011, Palm had struggled for a few years to carve out a niche for itself among Apple and Google. But ask anyone who had a chance to use a Palm PDA in the late '90s or early 2000s and they'll tell you how fondly they remember the hardware and software that made th
  
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• Epson To End the Sale and Distribution of Laser Printer

  28-11-2022 17:41 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Japanese electronics and printer maker Epson announced this month that it will end the sale and distribution of laser printer hardware by 2026, citing sustainability issues. From a report: According to the company, inkjets have a "greater potential" than laser printers to make "meaningful advances" when it comes to the environment. The company already halted laser printer sales in many markets, but continued in Asia and Europe. Even though new hardware would be unavailable everywhere, Epson said
  
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• Meta Fined $277 Million for Leak of Half a Billion Users

  28-11-2022 17:12 via yro.slashdot.org
  Meta Platforms was slapped with a $277 million fine for failing to prevent the leak of the personal data of more than half a billion users of its Facebook service. From a report: The Irish Data Protection Commission, the main privacy watchdog for Meta in the European Union, levied the fine following a probe that found the social-media company had failed to apply strict safeguards required under the bloc's sweeping General Data Protection Regulation.
  On top of the fine -- the third-biggest under
  
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• Crypto Lender BlockFi Files for Bankruptcy as FTX Fallout Spreads

  28-11-2022 16:41 via tech.slashdot.org
  BlockFi, a cryptocurrency lender and financial services firm, filed for bankruptcy on Monday, becoming the latest company in the crypto industry hobbled by the implosion of the embattled exchange FTX. From a report: BlockFi had been reeling since the spring, when the collapse of several influential crypto firms pushed the market into a panic, sending the value of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin plunging. In June, FTX agreed to provide the company with a $400 million credit line, which BlockFi's ch
  
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• A Hundred UK Companies Sign Up For Four-day Week With No Loss of Pay

  28-11-2022 15:43 via news.slashdot.org
  AmiMoJo writes: A hundred UK companies have signed up for a permanent four-day working week for all their employees with no loss of pay, a milestone in the campaign to fundamentally change Britain's approach to work. The 100 companies employ 2,600 staff -- a tiny fraction of the UK's working population -- but the 4 Day Week Campaign group is hoping they will be the vanguard of a major shift.
  Proponents of the four-day week say that the five-day pattern is a hangover from an earlier economic age.
  
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• Frontier Airlines Gets Rid of Telephone Customer Service

  28-11-2022 15:05 via it.slashdot.org
  Say goodbye to the airline call center -- at least at Frontier Airlines. From a report: The budget carrier has completed its transition to online, mobile and text support, which enables it to ensure that customers get "the information they need as expeditiously and efficiently as possible," spokeswoman Jennifer de la Cruz told CNBC in an e-mailed statement. Passengers who call the customer service number Frontier lists on its website now get the message: "At Frontier, we offer the lowest fares i
  
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• It's Not Your Imagination. Shopping on Amazon Has Gotten Worse

  28-11-2022 13:34 via slashdot.org
  "When you search for a product on Amazon, you may not realize that most of what you see at first is advertising," reports the Washington Post's technology columnist, introducing some eye-opening interactive graphics. (Alternate URL here.)
  The Post's graphics show that Amazon's first six search results — basically everything on their first screen — were all ads.
  Scrolling to the second screen, we finally start to see non-ads. These are the first products that were actually chosen beca
  
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• Cheeky New Book Identifies 26 Lines of Code That Changed the World

  28-11-2022 09:34 via news.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: A new book identifies "26 Lines of Code That Changed the World." But its cheeky title also incorporates a comment from Unix's source code — "You are Not Expected to Understand This". From a new interview with the book's editor:
  With chapter titles like "Wear this code, go to jail" and "the code that launched a million cat videos," each chapter offers appreciations for programmers, gathering up stories about not just their famous lives but their
  
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• Apple Hobbled Protesters' Tool in China Weeks Before Widespread Protests

  28-11-2022 05:37 via apple.slashdot.org
  "China's control of the internet has become so strong that dissidents must cling to any crack in the so-called Great Firewall," writes Qz.
  But as anti-government protests sprung up on campuses and cities in China over the weekend, Qz reminds us that "the country's most widespread show of public dissent in decades will have to manage without a crucial communication tool, because Apple restricted its use in China earlier this month."AirDrop, the file-sharing feature on iPhones and other Apple devi
  
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• US Goverment Investigating Real-Estate Tech Company Accused of Helping Landlords Collude

  28-11-2022 01:31 via news.slashdot.org
  The anti-trust division of America's Department of Justice "has reportedly opened up an investigation into RealPage, the real estate technology company accused of contributing to higher-than-normal rent prices," reports the Verge.
  ProPublica writes that the investigation explores "whether rent-setting software made by a Texas-based real estate tech company is facilitating collusion among landlords, according to a source with knowledge of the matter."
  *The inquiry is being launched as questions h
  
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• Is Everyone Still Getting Remote Work Wrong?

  28-11-2022 00:13 via it.slashdot.org
  ZDNet asks: why is everyone getting remote working wrong?
  Researchers at tech analyst Gartner believe a rigid requirement to return to offices is a mistake. But the researchers also believe so-called "hybrid" schedules often are also flawed:"Most of those work models delivered below-average outcomes," the research found, and the common factor was some kind of rigid on-site requirement. Much more successful was a "hybrid-flexible" set-up offering leaders and employees the opportunity to choose wh
  
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