ICT news

• US Cable TV Companies Quietly Bled Another 785,000 Paying Customers Last Quarter

  30-11-2022 23:40 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: The "cord cutting" phenomenon the cable and broadcast sector long denied or downplayed simply shows no sign of slowing down. According to the latest data by Leichtman Research, the top U.S. pay TV companies lost another 785,000 subscribers last quarter as younger Americans continue to shift to streaming video, over the air antennas, or free services like TikTok and YouTube. While alternative pay TV services (streaming on demand and live streamin
  
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• OnePlus Beats Google With Four Years of Major OS Updates

  30-11-2022 23:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  Android OEMs still don't provide the six years of updates you get with Apple phones, but some manufacturers are trying to close that gap. From a report: OnePlus is adding an extra year to its smartphone update promise and is now offering four years of major OS updates and five years of security updates. Timeline-wise, this plan matches Samsung's, though Samsung offers monthly security updates and OnePlus doesn't. The company is still only promising security updates every other month, so it can't
  
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• UK Internet Watchdog Increasingly Led by Ex-Big Tech Executives

  30-11-2022 22:20 via news.slashdot.org
  UK's Ofcom hired former Google executive Gill Whitehead to head up a team regulating search engines and social media firms, the latest in a string of Silicon Valley appointments as the watchdog prepares to impose sweeping new online safety laws. From a report: Whitehead, formerly Google's senior director of client solutions and analytics, will work alongside Ofcom Chief Technology Officer Sachin Jogia and online safety lead Jessica Zucker. Jogia and Zucker were was previously executives at Amazo
  
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• Telegram Shares Users Data in Copyright Violation Lawsuit

  30-11-2022 21:41 via yro.slashdot.org
  Telegram has disclosed names of administrators, their phone numbers and IP addresses of channels accused of copyright infringement in compliance with a court order in India in a remarkable illustration of the data the instant messaging platform stores on its users and can be made to disclose by authorities. From a report: The app operator was forced by a Delhi High Court order to shared the data after a teacher sued the firm for not doing enough to prevent unauthorised distribution of her course
  
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• Mark Zuckerberg Still 'Long-Term Optimistic' on Metaverse, Says Skepticism Doesn't Bother Him Too Much

  30-11-2022 20:55 via tech.slashdot.org
  Meta founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said he was still optimistic about the metaverse on a longer, "five-to-ten-year horizon" at the New York Times Dealbook Summit in New York City on Wednesday. From a report: "The way we communicate gets richer and more immersive," Zuckerberg said via a virtual interview, doubling down on his company's bet on a virtual and augmented reality-dominated future. The company has come under criticism for generating billions of dollars of losses as it buil
  
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• Autonomous Trucking Software Upstart Embark Has Quietly Gone From $5B+ To Basically Worthless

  30-11-2022 20:20 via slashdot.org
  Out of all the beaten-down public companies in the autonomous driving space, Embark Technology stands out as a conspicuously terrible stock market performer. From a report: The San Francisco-headquartered company, which develops autonomous driving technology for the trucking industry, has presided over a roughly 98% share price decline since going public a year ago. In the process, it's wiped out close to $5 billion in market capitalization.
  Today, Embark and a few others that carried out SPAC m
  
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• Remittances Grow 5% in 2022, Despite Global Headwinds

  30-11-2022 19:40 via news.slashdot.org
  Remittances to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) withstood global headwinds in 2022, growing an estimated 5% to $626 billion. This is sharply lower than the 10.2% increase in 2021, according to the latest World Bank Migration and Development Brief. World Bank: Remittances are a vital source of household income for LMICs. They alleviate poverty, improve nutritional outcomes, and are associated with increased birth weight and higher school enrollment rates for children in disadvantaged hous
  
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• Spotify CEO Renews Attack on Apple

  30-11-2022 19:01 via apple.slashdot.org
  Spotify's CEO Daniel Ek renewed his attack on Apple on Wednesday in a series of tweets alleging the iPhone maker "gives itself every advantage while at the same time stifling innovation and hurting consumers." From a report: Ek tagged a number of sympathetic business leaders in his 21-tweet thread, including Musk, Microsoft president Brad Smith, and Proton founder Andy Yen. On Monday, the world's richest person Elon Musk criticized the fee Apple charges software developers - including his Twitte
  
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• Disney Made a Movie Quality AI Tool That Automatically Makes Actors Look Younger or Older

  30-11-2022 18:21 via tech.slashdot.org
  hondo77 writes: Two years ago, Disney Research Studios developed AI-powered tools that could generate face swap videos with enough quality and resolution to be used for professional filmmaking (instead of as questionably low-res GIFs shared around the internet). This year, the researchers are demonstrating a new tool that leverages AI tricks to make actors look older or younger, minus the weeks of work usually needed to perfect those kinds of shots.
  Using neural networks and machine learning to
  
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• Crypto Exchange Kraken Cuts 1,100 Jobs To 'Weather Crypto Winter'

  30-11-2022 17:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  Crypto exchange Kraken writing in a blog post: Today we're announcing one of the hardest decisions at Kraken to date. We're reducing our global workforce by approximately 1,100 people, or 30 percent, in order to adapt to current market conditions. We are extremely grateful for the contributions of those impacted by today's announcement and we'll do our best to help them transition to their next opportunity. All impacted Krakenites have been notified as of this morning. Over the past few years, h
  
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• San Francisco Supervisors Vote To Allow Police To Use Robots To Kill

  30-11-2022 17:05 via hardware.slashdot.org
  The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 Tuesday night to approve a controversial policy that would allow police to deploy robots capable of using lethal force in extraordinary circumstances, according to multiple reports. From a report: The Washington Post reports the vote came after a heated debate on a policy that would allow officers to use ground-based robots to kill "when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and officers cannot subdue the threat aft
  
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• DoorDash Cuts Staff by 1,250 To Rein in Costs

  30-11-2022 16:20 via slashdot.org
  DoorDash is reducing its corporate staff by about 1,250, or 6% of the company, as the food-delivery platform works to rein in costs after a pandemic-fueled growth spurt, according to an internal memo from Chief Executive Tony Xu. WSJ: DoorDash is the latest among a swath of technology companies to cut staff to pare back costs as rising interest rates and economic uncertainty spur investors to focus more on profitability. DoorDash, like many companies, is also navigating shifting consumer habits
  
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• Microsoft Offers Fix for Windows 11 Gaming Performance Issues

  30-11-2022 15:40 via it.slashdot.org
  Microsoft is offering Windows 11 users a preview of an update that fixes some gaming performance problems. The software maker originally warned of issues with lower than expected performance in some games earlier this month, after some Windows 11 users that had upgraded to the latest 2022 Update (22H2) noticed problems. From a report: "Some games and apps might experience lower than expected performance or stuttering on Windows 11, version 22H2," said Microsoft at the time. "Affected games and a
  
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• Bitcoin 'Rarely' Used for Legal Transactions, on 'Road To Irrelevance', Say ECBank Officials

  30-11-2022 15:00 via slashdot.org
  European Central Bank officials argued on Wednesday that bitcoin is "rarely used for legal transactions," is fuelled by speculation and the recent erosion in its value indicates that it is on the "road to irrelevance," in a series of stringent criticism (bereft of strong data points) of the cryptocurrency industry as they urged regulators to not lend legitimacy to digital tokens in the name of innovation. From a report: The value of bitcoin recently finding stability at around $20,000 was "an ar
  
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• Alzheimer's Drug Lecanemab Hailed As Momentous Breakthrough

  30-11-2022 12:00 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The first drug to slow the destruction of the brain in Alzheimer's has been heralded as momentous and historic. The research breakthrough ends decades of failure and shows a new era of drugs to treat Alzheimer's -- the most common form of dementia -- is possible. Yet the medicine, lecanemab, has only a small effect and its impact on people's daily lives is debated. And the drug works in the early stages of the disease, so most would miss out with
  
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• Jiang Zemin, Leader Who Guided China Into Global Market, Dies at 96

  30-11-2022 10:24 via news.slashdot.org
  Jiang Zemin, the Shanghai Communist kingpin who was handpicked to lead China after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and presided over a decade of meteoric economic growth, died on Wednesday. He was 96. From a report: A Communist Party announcement issued by Chinese state media said he died in Shanghai of leukemia and multiple organ failure. His death and the memorial ceremonies to follow come at a delicate moment in China, where the ruling party is confronting a wave of widespread protests aga
  
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• Two Minerals Never Before Been Seen On Earth Found Inside 17-Ton Meteorite

  30-11-2022 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Two minerals that have never been seen before on Earth have been discovered inside a massive meteorite in Somalia. They could hold important clues to how asteroids form. Live Science reports: The two brand new minerals were found inside a single 2.5 ounce (70 gram) slice taken from the 16.5 ton (15 metric tons) El Ali meteorite, which was found in 2020. Scientists named the minerals elaliite after the meteor and elkinstantonite after Lindy Elkins-Tanton(opens in new tab), the managing director o
  
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• Chinese Astronauts Board Space Station In Historic Mission

  30-11-2022 06:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Three Chinese astronauts arrived on Wednesday at China's space station for the first in-orbit crew rotation in Chinese space history, launching operation of the second inhabited outpost in low-Earth orbit after the NASA-led International Space Station. Reuters reports: The spacecraft Shenzhou-15, or "Divine Vessel", and its three passengers lifted off atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre at 11:08 p.m. (1508 GMT) on Tuesday in sub-freezing temperatures in the Gobi
  
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• Military Sim Developer Tired of Its Game Being Used To Fake War Footage

  30-11-2022 04:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Bohemia Interactive, the Czech Republic based developer of the military simulator game Arma 3, has published a blog and a video it hopes will help it with a unique problem. Footage from the video game known for its realism has gone viral several times since the game's release in 2013 as people have tried to pass off clips of the military simulation as footage of real war. This happens a lot, so often that there are multiple debunking stories
  
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• Apple's iPhone Pro Shipments May Fall 20 Million Units Short of Estimates

  30-11-2022 02:40 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple's iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max model shipments could miss market expectations by up to 20 million units in the holiday quarter due to labor unrest at a major Chinese factory, TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said. Reuters reports: Kuo is the latest to flag a hit to the world's most valuable company from protests over pay and strict COVID-19 curbs at the world's biggest iPhone factory, the Foxconn-operated plant in the central city of Zhengzhou. He trimmed his estimate for quarterly iPhone s
  
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• Torrent Site User Who Transferred 120TB of Pirated Content Avoids Prison

  30-11-2022 02:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  A torrent site user accused of downloading and uploading at least 120TB of movies, TV shows, eBooks, music and software, has avoided an immediate prison term. The 28-year-old was arrested as part of a police operation against DanishBytes. A member of the same site was sentenced earlier this month after he uploaded Netflix content obtained using hacked credentials. TorrentFreak reports: Early November 2021, Denmark's Public Prosecutor for Special Economic and International Crime (SOIK) announced
  
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• Snap Demands Employees Work In Office 80% of the Time Starting Early Next Year

  30-11-2022 01:20 via slashdot.org
  Snapchat's parent company is asking workers to return to the office 80% of the time, or the equivalent of four days a week, beginning early next year, in the latest sign of tech employees receiving less flexibility nearly three years after the pandemic took hold and amid a wave of industry cost cutting. CNN reports: "After working remotely for so long we're excited to get everyone back together next year with our new 80/20 hybrid model," a spokesperson for Snap (SNAP) confirmed to CNN in a state
  
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• 'I Don't Even Know How To Code': FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried Has Long, Candid Talk With Vlogger

  30-11-2022 00:03 via slashdot.org
  Former FTX head Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) selected cryptocurrency vlogger Tiffany Fong for a series of lengthy and candid telephone interviews. In the two interviews that had been released on YouTube at press time, SBF speaks about many of the major questions connected with the collapse of FTX. CoinTelegraph reports: The first interview was conducted Nov. 6 and released Nov. 29 on YouTube. [...] The recording began with SBF saying, "You don't get into the situation we got in if you, like, make all
  
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