ICT news

• The Worst-Selling Microsoft Software Product of All Time: OS/2 for the Mach 20

  26-12-2022 23:00 via it.slashdot.org
  Raymond Chen, writing for Microsoft DevBlogs: In the mid-1980's, Microsoft produced an expansion card for the IBM PC and PC XT, known as the Mach 10. In addition to occupying an expansion slot, it also replaced your CPU: You unplugged your old and busted 4.77 MHz 8088 CPU and plugged into the now-empty socket a special adapter that led via a ribbon cable back to the Mach 10 card. On the Mach 10 card was the new hotness: A 9.54 MHz 8086 CPU. This gave you a 2x performance upgrade for a lot less m
  
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• Americans Duped Into Losing $10 Billion By Illegal Indian Call Centres in 2022

  26-12-2022 22:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  US citizens lost over $10 billion due to phishing calls by illegal Indian call centres in 2022, as per the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data. From a report: Most of the victims of these fraud calls from Indian phishing gangs were elderly US citizens above the age of 60 years who lost over $3 billion, Times Of India reported citing FBI data. After several incidents were reported in 2022, the FBI has now deputed a permanent representative at the US embassy in New Delhi. The representative
  
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• Ask Slashdot: What Note-Taking App Do You Use?

  26-12-2022 21:00 via ask.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader writes: This column about a writer's struggle to find the perfect note-taking app resonated a lot with me. "A singular productivity tool that works for everyone is a unicorn -- beautiful, perfect, and completely fictional. Still, there has to be some sort of middle ground between an unachievable fantasy and the current landscape. I would happily settle for two, maybe three apps. Honestly, less than 10 is all I'm asking for. Until then, my phone and laptop will be a cluttered
  
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• Big Nonprofit Hospitals Expand in Wealthier Areas, Shun Poorer Ones

  26-12-2022 20:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Many of the nation's largest nonprofit hospital systems, which give aid to poorer communities to earn tax breaks, have been leaving those areas and moving into wealthier ones as they have added and shed hospitals in the last two decades. From a report: As nonprofits, these regional and national giants reap $8.8 billion from tax breaks annually, by one Johns Hopkins University researcher's estimate. Among their obligations, they are expected to provide free medical care to those least able to aff
  
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• Washington State Power-Station Attacks Are Latest Assault on Grid

  26-12-2022 19:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Four power substations in Washington State were attacked on Christmas Day, disrupting service to thousands of residents, just weeks after gunfire at electricity facilities in North Carolina prompted an investigation by the FBI. From a report: Law enforcement agencies are now investigating at least eight attacks on power stations in four states in the past month that have underscored the vulnerability of the nation's power grid. It remains unknown if they were connected. In the most recent incide
  
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• Phone Manufacturers: Please Give Us the Power Button Back

  26-12-2022 17:10 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a column: Every major phone manufacturer is guilty of a serious crime, and I won't be quiet about it any longer: they stole the power button from us. Apple, Google, Samsung: guilty, guilty, guilty. Long-pressing the power button used to bring up an option to turn your phone off, but then these companies decided to get cute and make this a shortcut to summon their digital assistant. This is bad and wrong, and I'm politely demanding that these companies return what they
  
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• FCC Can Finally Hammer Predatory Prison Phone Call Companies

  26-12-2022 16:20 via news.slashdot.org
  A brand-new law (awaiting only the president's signature) will let the Federal Communications Commission directly regulate rates in the notoriously predatory prison calling industry. From a report: Under the threat of having to provide a solid product for a reasonable price, companies may opt to call it a day and open up the market to a more compassionate and forward-thinking generation of providers. Prison calling systems depend on the state and the prison system, and generally have run the gam
  
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• Study Finds AI Assistants Help Developers Produce Code That's More Likely To Be Buggy

  26-12-2022 15:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  Computer scientists from Stanford University have found that programmers who accept help from AI tools like Github Copilot produce less secure code than those who fly solo. From a report: In a paper titled, "Do Users Write More Insecure Code with AI Assistants?", Stanford boffins Neil Perry, Megha Srivastava, Deepak Kumar, and Dan Boneh answer that question in the affirmative. Worse still, they found that AI help tends to delude developers about the quality of their output. "We found that partic
  
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• How a US Funding Bill Targets Online Sites to Help Stop Retail Theft

  26-12-2022 13:34 via slashdot.org
  This week America passed a $1.7 trillion federal spending bill — and it includes a big win for retailrs reporters the Associated Press. It forces online marketplaces like Amazon and Facebook "to verify high-volume sellers on their platforms amid heightened concerns about retail crime...."The bill, called the INFORM ACT, also seeks to combat sales of counterfeit goods and dangerous products by compelling online marketplaces to verify different types of information — including bank acc
  
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• AI Has Changed the Way We Explore Our Solar System

  26-12-2022 09:34 via science.slashdot.org
  "Last week at the 2022 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, planetary scientists and astronomers discussed how new machine-learning techniques are changing the way we learn about our solar system," reports Space.com, "from planning for future mission landings on Jupiter's icy moon Europa to identifying volcanoes on tiny Mercury...."For many tasks in astronomy, it can take humans months, years or even decades of effort to sift through all the necessary data... "You can find up to 10,000
  
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• How Kindle Novelists Are Using ChatGPT's AI

  26-12-2022 06:34 via news.slashdot.org
  The Verge presents what it's calling "an interview with an AI early adopter," who is currently using ChatGPT not just to generate titles, but also the plots for their mysteries. For example, "I need four murder suspects with information about why they're suspected and how they are cleared. And then tell me who the guilty killer is."The author says "It will do just that. It will spit that out."
  Q: You and a few other independent authors were early adopters of these tools. With ChatGPT, it feels l
  
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• Customers React to McDonalds' Almost Fully-Automated Restaurant

  26-12-2022 03:34 via idle.slashdot.org
  "The first mostly non-human-run McDonald's is open for business just outside Fort Worth, Texas," reports the Guardian. CNN calls it "an almost fully-automated restaurant," noting there's just one self-service kiosk (with a credit card reader) for ordering food.
  McDonalds tells CNN there's "some interaction between customers and the restaurant team" when picking up orders or drinks. But at the special "order ahead" drive-through lane, your app-ordered bag of food is instead delivered to a platfor
  
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• Mozilla Just Fixed an 18-Year-Old Firefox Bug

  26-12-2022 00:46 via news.slashdot.org
  Mozilla recently fixed a bug that was first reported 18 years ago in Firebox 1.0, reports How-to Geek:Bug 290125 was first reported on April 12, 2005, only a few days before the release of Firefox 1.0.3, and outlined an issue with how Firefox rendered text with the ::first-letter CSS pseudo-element. The author said, "when floating left a :first-letter (to produce a dropcap), Gecko ignores any declared line-height and inherits the line-height of the parent box. [...] Both Opera 7.5+ and Safari 1.
  
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