ICT news

• 70% of Drugs Advertised On TV Are of 'Low Therapeutic Value,' Study Finds

  18-01-2023 23:40 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: According to a new study, a little over 70 percent of prescription drugs advertised on television were rated as having "low therapeutic value," meaning they offer little benefit compared with drugs already on the market. The study, appearing in JAMA Open Network, aligns with longstanding skepticism that heavily promoted drugs have high therapeutic value. "One explanation might be that drugs with substantial therapeutic value are likely to be
  
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• Crypto Firm Genesis Is Preparing To File for Bankruptcy

  18-01-2023 23:00 via slashdot.org
  
  Genesis Global Capital is laying the groundwork for a bankruptcy filing as soon as this week, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday, citing people with knowledge of the situation. From a report: The cryptocurrency lending unit of Digital Currency Group has been in confidential negotiations with various creditor groups amid a liquidity crunch. It has warned that it may need to file for bankruptcy if it fails to raise cash, Bloomberg previously reported. Financial pressure at Barry Silbert's DCG began
  
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• Mailchimp Says It Was Hacked - Again

  18-01-2023 22:20 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Email marketing and newsletter giant Mailchimp says it was hacked and that dozens of customers' data was exposed. From a report: It's the second time the company was hacked in the past six months. Worse, this breach appears to be almost identical to a previous incident. Mailchimp said in an unattributed blog post that its security team detected an intruder on January 11 accessing one of its internal tools used by Mailchimp customer support and account administration, though the company did not s
  
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• More Than 90% of Rainforest Carbon Offsets By Biggest Provider Are Worthless, Analysis Shows

  18-01-2023 21:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The forest carbon offsets approved by the world's leading provider and used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big corporations are largely worthless and could make global heating worse, according to a new investigation. The Guardian: The research into Verra, the world's leading carbon standard for the rapidly growing $2bn voluntary offsets market, has found that, based on analysis of a significant percentage of the projects, more than 90% of their rainforest offset credits -- among the most comm
  
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• Scientists Are Getting Eerily Good at Using WiFi to 'See' People Through Walls in Detail

  18-01-2023 21:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University developed a method for detecting the three dimensional shape and movements of human bodies in a room, using only WiFi routers. From a report: To do this, they used DensePose, a system for mapping all of the pixels on the surface of a human body in a photo. DensePose was developed by London-based researchers and Facebook's AI researchers. From there, according to their recently-uploaded preprint paper published on arXiv, they developed a deep neural netwo
  
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• Wikipedia Has Spent Years on a Barely Noticeable Redesign

  18-01-2023 20:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The Wikipedia editors are waiting to hear you scream. On Wednesday, Wikipedia is set to make its new skin the default on English Wikipedia -- its first new skin since 2010 -- and the team of designers and volunteer editors are waiting with some mix of excitement and trepidation. From a report: On Sunday, several dozen Wikipedia editors nursed cocktails in midtown Manhattan at the afterparty for Wikipedia Day, the annual celebration of Wikipedia's Jan. 14, 2001, founding. The group -- a nerdy cro
  
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• Amazon Kicks Off Round of Job Cuts Affecting 18,000 People

  18-01-2023 19:40 via slashdot.org
  
  Amazon has started its biggest-ever round of jobs cuts -- a culling that will ultimately affect 18,000 workers around the globe. From a report: Amazon began notifying employees by email early Wednesday, Doug Herrington, the company's worldwide retail chief, said in a memo. He said the company aimed to communicate with all laid-off workers in the US, Canada and Costa Rica by the end of the day. Notifications in China will be sent after the Chinese New Year, and in other regions the company must c
  
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• Little-Known Surveillance Program Captures Money Transfers Between US and More Than 20 Countries

  18-01-2023 19:01 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Hundreds of federal, state and local U.S. law-enforcement agencies have access without court oversight to a database of more than 150 million money transfers between people in the U.S. and in more than 20 countries, according to internal program documents and an investigation by Sen. Ron Wyden. WSJ: The database, housed at a little-known nonprofit called the Transaction Record Analysis Center, or TRAC, was set up by the Arizona state attorney general's office in 2014 as part of a settlement reac
  
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• Founder and Majority Owner of Bitzlato, a Cryptocurrency Exchange, Charged with Unlicensed Money Transmitting

  18-01-2023 18:22 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Department of Justice: A complaint was unsealed this morning in federal court in Brooklyn charging Anatoly Legkodymov, a Russian national and senior executive of Bitzlato Ltd. (Bitzlato), a Hong Kong-registered cryptocurrency exchange, with conducting a money transmitting business that transported and transmitted illicit funds and that failed to meet U.S. regulatory safeguards, including anti-money laundering requirements. Legkodymov was arrested last night in Miami and is scheduled to be arraig
  
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• Spotify Joins Media Firms To Urge EU Action Against Apple's 'Unfair' Practices

  18-01-2023 17:40 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Music streaming service Spotify, along with other media firms such as Deezer, urged the European Commission to take action against Apple for anticompetitive and unfair practices, in a joint industry letter on Wednesday. From a report: The letter, addressed to the European Union antitrust regulator's Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, demanded the Commission to act fast for the welfare of European consumers. Spotify has for years accused Apple of abusing its market position using its Ap
  
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• More Than 4,400 Sophos Firewall Servers Remain Vulnerable To Critical Exploits

  18-01-2023 17:01 via it.slashdot.org
  
  More than 4,400 Internet-exposed servers are running versions of the Sophos Firewall that's vulnerable to a critical exploit that allows hackers to execute malicious code, a researcher has warned. From a report: CVE-2022-3236 is a code-injection vulnerability allowing remote code execution in the User Portal and Webadmin of Sophos Firewalls. It carries a severity rating of 9.8 out of 10. When Sophos disclosed the vulnerability last September, the company warned it had been exploited in the wild
  
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• 2022 Global Smartphone Shipments Were the Lowest in Nearly a Decade

  18-01-2023 16:22 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The smartphone industry capped off another dismal year with a 17% year over year drop for Q4. That number puts the full year's shipping figures 11% below 2021, per new numbers from Canalys, which refer to it as "an extremely challenging year for all vendors." From a report: It's been one thing after another from the industry. Slowing figures pre-dated 2020, while the pandemic and its various knock-on effects have continued tossing up roadblocks. For 2022, the same macroeconomic headwinds that ha
  
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• Microsoft's Nadella Says Tech Needs Efficiency as Job Cuts Loom

  18-01-2023 15:46 via slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said the technology industry must learn to be efficient as demand slows. From a report: "During the pandemic there was rapid acceleration. I think we are going to go through a phase today where there is some amount of normalization in demand," Nadella said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "We will have to do more with less -- we will have to show our own productivity gains with our own technology."Read more of this story at Slashd
  
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• Apple Announces Revamped Full-Size HomePod Two Years After Discontinuing Original

  18-01-2023 15:16 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple has announced a new $299 HomePod smart speaker with a similar form factor to the original HomePod released in 2018. From a report: It will be sold alongside the HomePod Mini, the smaller version of the speaker introduced in 2020, and features support for the new smart home standard Matter, allowing it to control compatible accessories. The new HomePod is available to order starting today, and will begin shipping February 3rd. The original HomePod had an unusually rocky lifespan for an Appl
  
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• Crypto Conglomerate DCG Suspends Dividends Amid Distress At Genesis Unit

  18-01-2023 14:00 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinTelegraph: Venture capital firm Digital Currency Group (DCG) has told shareholders it is halting its quarterly dividend payments until further notice as it attempts to preserve liquidity. According to the letter sent to shareholders on Jan. 17, the firm is focused on "strengthening our balance sheet by reducing operating expenses and preserving liquidity." Its financial issues are derived from the woes of its subsidiary, crypto broker Genesis Global T
  
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• China Lifts Ban On Marvel Movies

  18-01-2023 11:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  China has lifted its unofficial ban on Marvel titles, bestowing release dates for two major superhero tentpoles, "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" and "Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania." Variety reports: "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," which was released everywhere else in the world last November, will open in China on Feb. 7. Shortly after, "Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania" will be released on Feb. 17, the same day the sequel touches down in the U.S. and the U.K. The dates were released via
  
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• Apple Indefinitely Postpones Launch of AR Glasses

  18-01-2023 08:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple has postponed the launch of its lightweight augmented-reality glasses indefinitely due to technical challenges, but is still planning to unveil its first mixed-reality headset this year, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday. Reuters reports: The iPhone maker's mixed-reality headset - which combines both augmented and virtual reality -- is set to launch in this year's spring event, Bloomberg said, adding that the device will cost around $3,000. Apple's mixed-reality device would compete with
  
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• Atmospheric Dust May Have Hidden True Extent of Global Heating

  18-01-2023 04:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Dust that billows up from desert storms and arid landscapes has helped cool the planet for the past several decades, and its presence in the atmosphere may have obscured the true extent of global heating caused by fossil fuel emissions. Atmospheric dust has increased by about 55% since the mid-1800s, an analysis suggests. And that increasing dust may have hidden up to 8% of warming from carbon emissions. The analysis by atmospheric scientist
  
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• Three Arrows Capital Co-Founders Pitch To Raise $25 Million For New 'GTX' Exchange

  18-01-2023 03:02 via slashdot.org
  
  Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, the founders of collapsed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), are hoping to raise $25 million to start a new crypto exchange called GTX, according to two separate pitch decks obtained by The Block. Three Arrows Capital was one of the largest hedge funds in crypto until last year's collapse of the Terra ecosystem left it facing significant losses. The financial advisory firm Teneo has been handling the liquidation of 3AC's assets and the hedge fund has filed for
  
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• Netflix Set For Slowest Revenue Growth As Ad Plan Struggles To Gain Traction

  18-01-2023 02:25 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Netflix is expected to report its slowest quarterly revenue growth on Thursday as its ad-supported plan struggles to attract customers in the saturating U.S. market, which could pressure the company to pull back on content spending this year. Reuters reports: The streaming pioneer has been reeling under strained consumer spending, rising costs of financing production and increased competition from Disney+ and Amazon Prime. It had pinned its hopes on the launch of the ad-supported tier, but analy
  
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• Discord Acquires Gas, the Popular App For Teens To Compliment Each Other

  18-01-2023 02:05 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Discord has acquired the Gas social app, a poll-based app for friends to share compliments with each other. "The app is designed for anonymous compliments and positive affirmations or, as kids say, gassing your friends up," reports The Verge. From the report: Gas has polls that ask users to vote for things like the most beautiful person they've met or the classmate that isn't afraid to get in trouble. It has soared in popularity among high schoolers since launching in August. One of the co-creat
  
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• British Battery Start-Up Files For Bankruptcy

  18-01-2023 01:45 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Britishvolt, a prominent battery start-up that generated enthusiasm from British politicians but never commercially produced a battery, filed for insolvency on Tuesday. The collapse deals a blow to Britain's ambitions to develop low-carbon businesses to replace some of the trade lost under Brexit. It also threatens the future of Britain's auto industry, which requires domestic sources of electric batteries if it is to thrive.Founded in
  
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• Google Reportedly Working On 'Grogu' Tracker To Compete With Apple's AirTags

  18-01-2023 01:02 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  According to new research, Google is working on a new Bluetooth tracker device to compete with Apple's AirTags. 9to5Google reports: Since 2021, Google has included ultra-wideband (UWB) connectivity in its high-end "Pro" phones like the Pixel 6 Pro and Pixel 7 Pro. For now, the hardware has only been used for niche cases like unlocking a luxury car or sending files to a friend, but it's been clear that Google intends for UWB to be used more often. [...] To build up its own "Finder Network," compe
  
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• Game Makers Stage Mass Exodus From Dungeons & Dragons' 'Open' License

  18-01-2023 00:20 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Following controversial changes to Dungeons & Dragons' decades-old Open Gaming License (OGL), "many prominent third-party RPG publishers now say they're abandoning the OGL, regardless of what changes [publisher Wizards of the Coast (WotC)] officially releases in a coming new version," reports Ars Technica. "What's more, many in the community have now lost faith in WotC's stewardship of the licensed rules system that has underpinned so much of the industry's last two decades." From the report
  
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