ICT news

• Kanye West Is No Longer Buying Parler

  01-12-2022 23:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  Parler announced Thursday it reached a mutual agreement with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, to terminate the sale of the social media app. Axios reports: The deal already was on life support, as Axios previously reported, and it's unclear if a formal merger agreement was ever signed. Parler originally said it had an agreement "in principle," and today referred to it as "intent of sale." A Parler spokesperson previously told Axios that the acquisition was set to close by year-end but declined
  
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• Apple Blocks Coinbase Wallet App From Sending NFTs Because of In-App Purchase Dispute

  01-12-2022 23:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Popular NFT and cryptocurrency app Coinbase Wallet today said that Apple required an NFT-sending feature to be removed from the app due to an in-app purchase dispute. MacRumors reports: Apple's App Store review team apparently told Coinbase that the "gas fees required to send NFTs need to be paid through in-app purchase." Apple wanted a cut of transactions, which Coinbase Wallet said is similar to Apple attempting to take a cut of fees for every email that's sent over the internet. Apple is aski
  
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• Web Browsers Drop Mysterious Company With Ties To US Military Contractor

  01-12-2022 22:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Major web browsers moved Wednesday to stop using a mysterious software company that certified websites were secure, three weeks after The Washington Post reported its connections to a U.S. military contractor. Mozilla's Firefox and Microsoft's Edge said they would stop trusting new certificates from TrustCor Systems that vouched for the legitimacy of sites reached by their users, capping weeks of online arguments among their technolog
  
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• Australia Will Now Fine Firms Up To $33.4 Million for Data Breaches

  01-12-2022 21:41 via yro.slashdot.org
  The Australian parliament has approved a bill to amend the country's privacy legislation, significantly increasing the maximum penalties to AU$50 million for companies and data controllers who suffered large-scale data breaches. From a report: The financial penalty introduced by the new bill is set to whichever is greater: AU$50 million, three times the value of any benefit obtained through the misuse of information, and 30% of a company's adjusted turnover in the relevant period.
  Previously, th
  
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• Messaging App Telegram Moving Into Crypto

  01-12-2022 21:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  As the FTX collapse continues to reverberate through the cryptocurrency sector, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov wants to revive some of the good will toward blockchain technology by developing a range of decentralized tools including digital asset exchanges. From a report: "The blockchain industry was built on the promise of decentralization, but ended up being concentrated in the hands of a few who began to abuse their power," Durov wrote Wednesday on his Telegram page. "As a result, a lot of people l
  
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• Sperm Counts Worldwide Are Plummeting Faster Than We Thought

  01-12-2022 20:21 via science.slashdot.org
  Five years ago, a study describing a precipitous decline in sperm counts sparked extreme concerns that humanity was on the path to extinction. Now a new study shows that sperm counts have fallen further and the rate of decline is speeding up, raising fears of a looming global fertility crisis. From a report: The initial study, published in July 2017, revealed that sperm counts -- the number of sperm in a single ejaculate -- plummeted by more than 50 percent among men in North America, Europe, Au
  
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• Mozilla Acquires Team Behind Pulse, an Automated Status Updater for Slack

  01-12-2022 19:41 via tech.slashdot.org
  Firefox developer Mozilla is making a rare foray into the world of mergers and acquisitions, with news that it has snapped up recently-shuttered California-based productivity startup Pulse. From a report: Terms of the deal haven't been disclosed, but the deal is tantamount to an "acqui-hire," with Mozilla looking to deploy the Pulse team across an array of machine learning (ML) projects. "We're acquiring Pulse for the incredible team they have built," Mozilla chief product officer Steve Teixeira
  
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• Just 22% of Techies in UK Aged 50 or Older, Says Chartered Institute For IT

  01-12-2022 19:01 via news.slashdot.org
  A little more than one in five techies in Britain is aged 50 or older, and enticing more of that demographic to enter the world of information technology could help alleviate a perennial skills gap. From a report: This is according to research by the British Computer Society (BCS), which reckons just 22 percent (413,000) of the 1.9 million IT specialists in the local industry are at or past the half century mark. To fall in line with the average number of 50 year olds or older across all other e
  
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• Irish Companies Report Success With Trial of Four-Day Working Week

  01-12-2022 17:42 via tech.slashdot.org
  AmiMoJo writes: A research project that saw a four-day working week being trialled across 12 businesses has been deemed a success by both the companies and employees involved. The project, backed by the trade union Forsa and carried out in partnership by Four-Day Week Ireland, UCD and Boston College, examined the financial, social, and environmental impact that a four-day working week would have on businesses and employees in Ireland. Nine of the 12 companies that took part in the six-month tria
  
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• Lastpass Says Hackers Accessed Customer Data In New Breach

  01-12-2022 17:08 via it.slashdot.org
  AmiMoJo writes: LastPass says unknown attackers breached its cloud storage using information stolen during a previous security incident from August 2022. The company added that, once in, the threat actors also managed to access customer data stored in the compromised storage service. "We recently detected unusual activity within a third-party cloud storage service, which is currently shared by both LastPass and its affiliate, GoTo," the company said. "We have determined that an unauthorized part
  
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• Rising Tether Loans Add Risk To Stablecoin, Crypto World

  01-12-2022 16:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  The company behind the tether stablecoin has increasingly been lending its own coins to customers rather than selling them for hard currency upfront. The shift adds to risks that the company may not have enough liquid assets to pay redemptions in a crisis. From a report: Tether says it lends only to eligible customers and requires that borrowers post lots of "extremely liquid" collateral, which could be sold for dollars if borrowers default. These loans have appeared for several quarters in the
  
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• #StopRansomware: Cuba Ransomware 

  01-12-2022 15:53 via us-cert.cisa.gov
  Original release date: December 1, 2022
  Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and CISA released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) #StopRansomware: Cuba Ransomware to provide network defenders tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and indicators of compromise (IOCs) associated with Cuba ransomware. FBI investigations identified these TTPs and IOCs as recently as August 2022. This CSA updates the December 2021 FBI Flash: Indicators of Compromise Associated with Cuba Ransomw
  
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• Google Takes Fight To Topple Record Fine Over Android To EU's Top Court

  01-12-2022 15:49 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google will take its appeal of the record $4.5 billion European Union antitrust fine over its dominance in the Android mobile market to the bloc's top court. From a report: The penalty hits at the heart of the US tech giant's power over the Android mobile-phone ecosystem, and in September judges at a lower court mostly sided with the European Commission's arguments but reduced the overall fine to $4.3 billion.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Netflix To Let Tens of Thousands of Subscribers Preview Content

  01-12-2022 15:04 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Streaming giant plans global expansion of program that helped make 'Don't Look Up' less serious. From a report: Before Netflix's 2021 release of "Don't Look Up," a small group of its U.S. subscribers previewed the film and told the streaming giant that the movie came across as too serious, according to people familiar with the matter. The film's creators used that feedback to dial up the comedic element of the film and make it appeal to a broader audience, the people said. While the film receive
  
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• Chrome, Defender and Firefox 0-days Linked To Commercial IT firm in Spain

  01-12-2022 15:00 via it.slashdot.org
  Google researchers say they have linked a Barcelona, Spain-based IT company to the sale of advanced software frameworks that exploit vulnerabilities in Chrome, Firefox, and Windows Defender. From a report: Variston IT bills itself as a provider of tailor-made Information security solutions, including technology for embedded SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) and Internet of Things integrators, custom security patches for proprietary systems, tools for data discovery, security train
  
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• 'The New Wordle Editor Is Ruining Wordle'

  01-12-2022 14:00 via games.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Slate, written by Lizzie O'Leary: When the New York Times announced, on November 7, that Wordle would have an editor, I didn't give it much thought. How much could the mere presence of a person really change it? Oh, how naive I was! Four days later, I got my answer. And that answer was MEDAL. MEDAL? On November 11th? Wait a minute -- was the Times punning with its Wordle on Veterans Day? Hmm. I was willing to chalk it up to a coincidence, until November 2
  
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• More Than 1 Billion People Expected To Be Using 5G By Year's End

  01-12-2022 11:00 via mobile.slashdot.org
  More than 1 billion people will be connected to 5G by the end of 2022, according to the latest mobility report from Ericsson. CNET reports: Between July and September of this year, 5G added 110 million subscribers around the world, upping the total count to 870 million, said the report, released Wednesday. That's almost double the number of 5G subscribers there were by the end of 2021, which the Swedish telecommunications equipment maker estimated to be 580 million. If 5G users hit the 1 billion
  
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• Neuralink Expects Human Trials Within Six Months

  01-12-2022 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Andrew Tarantola writes via Engadget: It's been six years since Tesla, SpaceX (and now Twitter) CEO Elon Musk co-founded brain-control interfaces (BCI) startup, Neuralink. It's been three years since the company first demonstrated its "sewing machine-like" implantation robot, two years since the company stuck its technology into the heads of pigs -- and just over 19 months since they did the same to primates, an effort that allegedly killed 15 out of 23 test subjects. After a month-long delay in
  
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• Scientists Build 'Baby' Wormhole

  01-12-2022 04:30 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Scientists have long pursued a deeper understanding of wormholes and now appear to be making progress. Researchers announced on Wednesday that they forged two miniscule simulated black holes -- those extraordinarily dense celestial objects with gravity so powerful that not even light can escape -- in a quantum computer and transmitted a message between them through what amounted to a tunnel in space-time. It was a "baby wormhole," according to Ca
  
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• Cocaine Synthesized In a Tobacco Plant

  01-12-2022 03:02 via science.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader Amiga Trombone shares a report from Phys.Org: A team of researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, working with a colleague from Syngenta Jealott's Hill International Research Centre in the U.K., has developed a way to synthesize cocaine using a tobacco plant. The group describes how they synthesized the notorious drug and possible uses for their process in their paper published in Journal of the American Chemical Society.In studying the coca plant, the researchers
  
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• EU Unveils Plans To Cut Europe's Plastic and Packaging Waste

  01-12-2022 02:45 via news.slashdot.org
  The EU executive wants to ban mini-shampoo bottles in hotels and the use of throwaway cups in cafes and restaurants, as part of sweeping legal proposals to curb Europe's mountains of waste. The Guardian reports: A draft EU regulation published on Wednesday also proposes mandatory deposit and return schemes for single-use plastic drinks bottles and metal cans, as well as an end to e-commerce firms wrapping small items in huge boxes. The new rules, which will have to be approved by EU member state
  
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• Judge Approves Apple's Massive MacBook Keyboard Lawsuit Payout

  01-12-2022 02:25 via yro.slashdot.org
  A California federal judge has given preliminary approval to Apple's plan to pay $50 million to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit over the faulty MacBook butterfly keyboard. MacTrast reports: Law360 says the payment will include $13.6 million in attorney fees, up to $2 million in litigation costs, and $1.4 million in settlement administration costs, with the rest distributed to class members. The lawsuit covers customers in California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York,
  
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• OpenStack Cloud Sees Explosive Growth

  01-12-2022 01:45 via linux.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: One bit of accepted wisdom in some cloud circles is that OpenStack, the open-source Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud, is declining. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's alive, well, and growing like crazy. According to the 2022 OpenStack User Survey, OpenStack now has over 40 million production cores. Or, in other words, it's seen 60% growth since 2021 and a 166% jump since 2020. Not bad for a so-called also-run, eh? It's not just
  
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• Zuckerberg Says Apple's Policies Not 'Sustainable'

  01-12-2022 01:02 via apple.slashdot.org
  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday added to the growing chorus of concerns about Apple, arguing that it's "problematic that one company controls what happens on the device." Axios reports: "I think the problem is that you get into it with the platform control, is that Apple obviously has their own interests," Zuckerberg said at The New York Times' Dealbook conference. "[T]he fact that companies have to deliver their apps exclusively through platforms that are controlled by competitors -- ther
  
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• Google Stadia Hardware Refunds Will Be Issued Within Two Weeks

  01-12-2022 00:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google will be issuing refunds for Stadia hardware purchased from the Google Store within two weeks, according to an email sent to customers on Wednesday. The Verge reports: That means the refunds should arrive well ahead of the cloud gaming service's impending January 18th shutdown. Purchases of the Stadia controller, the Founder's Edition, the Premiere Edition, and Play and Watch with Google TV packages are all eligible for refunds, according to Google's Stadia shutdown FAQ.At the time of the
  
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