ICT news

• UK Apple Store Workers Sign First Union Contract

  08-02-2023 23:50 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Months after a successful vote, Apple Store employees in Glasgow have become the company's first retail workers to form a union in the UK. Engadget reports: Apple and the trade union GMB Scotland have signed a collective bargaining agreement that theoretically gives staff at the Buchanan Street store more clout when pushing for improved working conditions. The Glasgow employees voted to unionize in November. They sought better pay, increased wage transparency and improved shift scheduling. Union
  
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• UK Proposes Making the Sale and Possession of Encrypted Phones Illegal

  08-02-2023 23:10 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A section of the UK government has proposed making the sale or possession of bespoke encrypted phones for crime a criminal offense in its own right. The measure is intended to help the country's law enforcement agencies tackle organized crime and those who facilitate it, but civil liberties experts tell Motherboard the proposal is overbroad and poorly defined, meaning it could sweep up other forms of secure communication used by the wider pop
  
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• Netflix's Password-Sharing Crackdown Hits Canada, But Not the US - Yet

  08-02-2023 22:20 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Netflix is expanding its paid password sharing to subscribers in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain starting Wednesday, the company announced in a blog post. From a report: The company had already started testing the change -- in a few different forms -- in some countries in Latin America. Now, Netflix is expanding its efforts ahead of a broader rollout in "the coming months." Last week, Netflix faced pushback after notes about when and how it might block devices used beyond your household
  
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• Android 14 Preview 1 is Out, Will Officially Ban Installation of Old Apps

  08-02-2023 21:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Android 14 is here -- or the first preview is, at least. From a report: Google is kicking off the months-long developer preview process for Android's latest version, which will get a final release in the second half of the year. Even with multiple previews, Google likes to keep the final set of Android features under wraps at least until its I/O conference in May, so we can't look at the features here to determine the scope of Android 14. These are just some of the features Google wants develope
  
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• Microsoft Adds Adobe Acrobat PDF Tech To Its Edge Browser

  08-02-2023 21:00 via it.slashdot.org
  
  BetaNews: Yesterday, Microsoft announced it would be bringing AI to its Edge browser thanks to a partnership with ChatGPT owner OpenAI. Today the software giant adds something that many people will be less keen on -- Acrobat PDF technology. Describing the move as the next step to in their "commitment to transform the future of digital work and life," Microsoft and Adobe say this addition will give uses a unique PDF experience with extra features that will remain free of charge. By powering the b
  
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• Mysterious Leak of Booking Reservation Data is Being Used To Scam Customers

  08-02-2023 20:20 via it.slashdot.org
  
  For almost five years, Booking.com customers have been on the receiving end of a continuous series of scams that clearly demonstrate that criminals have obtained travel plans and other personal information customers provided to the travel site. From a report: One of the more recent shakedowns happened to an Ars Reader who asked not to be identified by his real name. A few months ago, Thomas, as I'll call him, reserved and paid for a two-night stay scheduled for this July in a hotel in Italy. Las
  
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• Microsoft's 'New Bing' Refuses To Write Cover Letter For a Job Saying It Would Be 'Unethical' and 'Unfair To Other Applicants'

  08-02-2023 19:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: In the test, I asked the new Bing -- now available in a trial format -- to write a cover letter for the position of social media content producer at Insider's bureau in Singapore. It flat out refused to do so. "I'm sorry, but I cannot write a cover letter for you. That would be unethical and unfair to other applicants," the new Bing told me. However, it did provide me with a few tips and links to several cover-letter writing resources including Zippia, a care
  
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• CISA and FBI Release ESXiArgs Ransomware Recovery Guidance

  08-02-2023 19:20 via us-cert.cisa.gov
  Original release date: February 8, 2023
  Today, CISA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory, ESXiArgs Ransomware Virtual Machine Recovery Guidance. This advisory describes the ongoing ransomware campaign known as “ESXiArgs.” Malicious cyber actors may be exploiting known vulnerabilities in unpatched and out-of-service or out-of-date versions of VMware ESXi software to gain access to ESXi servers and deploy ESXiArgs ransomware. The ransomw
  
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• Linux 6.1 Officially Promoted To Being An LTS Kernel

  08-02-2023 19:02 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Linux 6.1 was widely anticipated to be a Long-Term Support (LTS) kernel with normally the last major release series for the calendar year normally promoted to LTS status. Greg Kroah-Hartman as the Linux stable maintainer went ahead today and formally recognized Linux 6.1 as the 2022 LTS kernel. From a report: Greg KH was planning on Linux 6.1 being LTS given its December debut. But he was waiting on feedback from kernel stakeholders over their test results with Linux 6.1 and plans around using L
  
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• Google Shows Off New AI Search Features, But a ChatGPT Rival is Still Weeks Away

  08-02-2023 17:41 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google demoed its latest advances in AI search at a live event in Paris on Wednesday -- but the features pale in comparison to Microsoft's announcement yesterday of the "new Bing," which the company has demoed extensively to the press and offered limited public access to. From a report: In perhaps the most interesting demo, Google showed off how it will use generative AI in the future to summarize information from the web. In the demo, the company showed a search for the question "what are the b
  
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• Chinese Influence, Loan-Collection Practices Reasons For India's Crackdown on Lending Firms

  08-02-2023 17:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  India's push to ban over 90 lending apps has sent shockwaves to the fintech industry as many scramble to understand why they have been impacted. The Ministry of Electronics and IT's move is reportedly aimed at protecting the nation's integrity and curb China's influence in the South Asian market, the state-owned broadcaster Prasar Bharti said on Sunday. In meetings with fintech associations on Tuesday, officials from the IT Ministry and influential think tank Niti Aayog offered broader explanati
  
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• 'Inaudible' Watermark Could Identify AI-Generated Voices

  08-02-2023 17:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The growing ease with which anyone can create convincing audio in someone else's voice has a lot of people on edge, and rightly so. Resemble AI's proposal for watermarking generated speech may not fix it in one go, but it's a step in the right direction. From a report: AI-generated speech is being used for all kinds of legitimate purposes, from screen readers to replacing voice actors (with their permission, of course). But as with nearly any technology, speech generation can be turned to malici
  
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• Biden Calls for Antitrust Laws To Rein in Big Tech

  08-02-2023 16:22 via news.slashdot.org
  
  In his first State of the Union address since Republicans took a slim House majority, President Joe Biden called on Congress to take up an issue over which there's growing bipartisan momentum but powerful obstacles that stand in the way: strengthening American antitrust law to crack down on Big Tech's monopoly power. From a report: "Pass the bipartisan legislation to strengthen antitrust enforcement and prevent big online platforms from giving their own products an unfair advantage," Biden told
  
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• Microsoft's $69 Billion Activision Deal Could Harm UK Gamers, Watchdog Finds

  08-02-2023 15:50 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard will harm competition in the UK gaming market, Britain's antitrust watchdog provisionally warned, saying it could force the selloff of the blockbuster Call of Duty franchise. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority said it took an initial view that the deal could result in a substantial lessening in competition, higher prices, fewer choices or less innovation for UK gamers, according to a statement published Wednesday. Micro
  
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• Google AI Chatbot Bard Offers Inaccurate Information in Company Ad

  08-02-2023 15:08 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google published an online advertisement in which its much anticipated AI chatbot Bard delivered an inaccurate answer. From a report: The tech giant posted a short GIF video of Bard in action via Twitter, describing the chatbot as a "launchpad for curiosity" that would help simplify complex topics. In the advertisement, Bard is given the prompt: "What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can I tell my 9-year old about?" Bard responds with a number of answers, including one
  
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• Are Brands Protected In the Metaverse? Hermes and NFT Artist Spar In US Court

  08-02-2023 14:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Pictures of 100 Birkin bags covered in shaggy, multi-colored fur have become the focus of a court dispute that will decide how digital artists can depict commercial activities in their art and cast new light on whether brands are protected in the metaverse. In the case, being heard this week in a New York federal courtroom, the luxury handbag maker Hermes is challenging an artist who sells the futuristic digital works known as NFTs or non-fu
  
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• GitHub Claims Source Code Search Engine Is a Game Changer

  08-02-2023 11:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Thomas Claburn writes via The Register: GitHub has a lot of code to search -- more than 200 million repositories -- and says last November's beta version of a search engine optimized for source code that has caused a "flurry of innovation." GitHub engineer Timothy Clem explained that the company has had problems getting existing technology to work well. "The truth is from Solr to Elasticsearch, we haven't had a lot of luck using general text search products to power code search," he said in a Gi
  
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• EverWind Gets Approval For North America's First Green Hydrogen Facility

  08-02-2023 08:31 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  EverWind Fuels has become the first green hydrogen producer in North America to secure the necessary permits for a commercial-scale facility on Tuesday. Reuters reports: Provincial authorities in Canada granted environmental approval for EverWind to begin converting a former oil storage facility and marine terminal at Point Tupper in Nova Scotia into a green hydrogen and ammonia production hub. [...] EverWind expects the project's first phase, producing and exporting 200,000 tonnes per annum, to
  
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• Few Americans Understand How Online Tracking Works, Finds Report

  08-02-2023 04:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Many people in the United States would like to control the information that companies can learn about them online. Yet when presented with a series of true-or-false questions about how digital devices and services track users, most Americans struggled to answer them, according to a report published (PDF) on Tuesday by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. The report analyzed the results of a data pri
  
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• EV Batteries Getting Second Life On California Power Grid

  08-02-2023 03:02 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Hundreds of used electric vehicle battery packs are enjoying a second life at a California facility connected to the state's power grid, according to a company pioneering technology it says will dramatically lower the cost of storing carbon-free energy. Reuters reports: B2U Storage Solutions, a Los Angeles-based startup, said it has 25 megawatt-hours of storage capacity made up of 1,300 former EV batteries tied to a solar energy facility in Lancaster, California. The project is believed to be th
  
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• Maryland Motor Vehicles Agency Wants To Know About Your Sleep Apnea

  08-02-2023 02:45 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "Man goes to the doctor for a sleep apnea diagnosis, a few months later he gets a letter from the state of Maryland about his sleep apnea -- and they won't tell him how they found out about it," writes Slashdot reader schwit1. NBC4 Washington reports: Dr. David Allick, a dentist in Rockville, was diagnosed with mild sleep apnea in June 2022. Months later, he received a letter from the MVA requesting additional information about his diagnosis in order "to determine your fitness to drive." The Sep
  
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• Wyze Security Cameras Will Go Offline Tonight For Two Hours

  08-02-2023 01:45 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  If you have Wyze cameras or a Wyze home security system, you will need to make other arrangements to monitor your property from 12AM PT to 2AM PT tomorrow morning. The Verge reports: The smart home company sent an email to its customers this week stating that system maintenance on February 8th at 12AM PT will impact every feature of the system that relies on the app or website. That includes being able to alert Noonlight, the professional monitoring company Wyze uses for its Sense security syste
  
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• Saudi Arabia Is Trying To Pivot From Big Oil To Big Tech

  08-02-2023 01:02 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: The country of Saudi Arabia has scrounged up several billion dollars in investments from major tech companies, which are interested in building cloud computing centers in the region. According to Reuters, the Saudi Minister of Communication and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha discussed the investments at LEAP, an international technology conference that began today in Riyadh, the country's capital city. Players like Microsoft and Oracle a
  
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• CISA Releases ESXiArgs Ransomware Recovery Script

  08-02-2023 00:27 via us-cert.cisa.gov
  Original release date: February 7, 2023
  CISA has released a recovery script for organizations that have fallen victim to ESXiArgs ransomware. The ESXiArgs ransomware encrypts configuration files on vulnerable ESXi servers, potentially rendering virtual machines (VMs) unusable.CISA recommends organizations impacted by ESXiArgs evaluate the script and guidance provided in the accompanying README file to determine if it is fit for attempting to recover access to files in their environment.Organizat
  
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• Microsoft Will Wipe Free Teams Business Users' Data If They Don't Upgrade To a Paid Tier

  08-02-2023 00:20 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft is retiring the existing Teams Free version for small business in favor of the similarly-titled Teams (free) on April 12th, and legacy data won't carry over. Engadget reports: Your office will have to pay for at least the Teams Essentials plan ($4 per user per month) to preserve chats, meetings, channels and other key info. As Windows Central explains, the new Teams (free) tier will require a new account. Data in the old app, now rebadged as Teams Free (classic), will be deleted. Anyth
  
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