ICT news

• Nvidia Confirms Latest GeForce Driver Is Causing CPU Spikes

  06-03-2023 23:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An Nvidia GPU driver update has caused some users to see inflated CPU usage after closing 3D games, which persists until a reboot. Nvidia confirmed the problem with driver update 531.18, and will post a hotfix on March 7. PCWorld reports: The company confirmed the problem with the latest driver update, 531.18, which was published on February 28th. An updated list of open issues (including some that didn't make it into the full release notes) was posted to Nvidia's support forum, and spotted by V
  
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• The US Can Stop Twitter From Releasing Details In Spy Report

  06-03-2023 23:04 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The US can stop Twitter from releasing details about the government's demands for user information in national security investigations, a court ruled (PDF), in the same week House Republicans are to grill national security officials over surveillance. Twitter had protested the government's redactions to a 2014 "transparency report" that featured a numerical breakdown of national security-related data requests from the previous year. The US appe
  
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• European Police, FBI Bust International Cybercrime Gang

  06-03-2023 22:25 via it.slashdot.org
  
  German police said Monday they have disrupted a ransomware cybercrime gang tied to Russia that has been blackmailing large companies and institutions for years, raking in millions of euros. From a report: Working with law enforcement partners including Europol, the FBI and authorities in Ukraine, police in Duesseldorf said they were able to identify 11 individuals linked to a group that has operated in various guises since at least 2010. The gang allegedly behind the ransomware, known as DoppelP
  
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• All the Streaming Boxes Suck Now

  06-03-2023 21:42 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Streaming boxes had so much potential. They were going to reinvent the cable box for the internet age and make it easier for users to find and organize and watch everything available in this era of infinite content. They were going to turn our TVs, the hub of our homes, into smart gadgets through which we could do almost anything. They were going to be game consoles. Streaming boxes were the next big thing. Instead, well, streaming boxes suck. From a report: You can't find a single product on th
  
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• Microsoft Will Now Preview the Future of Windows With New Canary Channel

  06-03-2023 21:05 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft is getting ready to publicly test major new Windows features even earlier. While the software giant has been previewing changes to Windows for nearly a decade, a new Canary channel for Windows Insiders will allow anyone to try out "hot off the presses" builds of Windows that include major changes to the kernel, APIs, and other big parts of Windows. From a report: It feels like this new Canary channel is preparation work for Windows 12, which Intel and Microsoft have both been hinting a
  
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• Unkillable UEFI Malware Bypassing Secure Boot Enabled By Unpatchable Windows Flaw

  06-03-2023 20:25 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Researchers have announced a major cybersecurity find -- the world's first-known instance of real-world malware that can hijack a computer's boot process even when Secure Boot and other advanced protections are enabled and running on fully updated versions of Windows. From a report: Dubbed BlackLotus, the malware is what's known as a UEFI bootkit. These sophisticated pieces of malware hijack the UEFI -- short for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface -- the low-level and complex chain of firmwar
  
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• Microsoft Makes Outlook for Mac Free To Use

  06-03-2023 19:45 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft is making Outlook for Mac free to use today. From a report: Outlook is now available free in Apple's App Store, and you no longer need a Microsoft 365 subscription or Office license to use it. It's a surprise move that coincides with Microsoft's push to make its Windows desktop Outlook email client more web-powered. Outlook for Mac includes support for Outlook.com accounts, Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo, and any email provider that has IMAP support. Microsoft redesigned its Mac email client in
  
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• UK Government Urged To Consider Changing Law To Allow Gene Editing of Embryos

  06-03-2023 19:14 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Ministers must consider changing the law to allow scientists to carry out genome editing of human embryos for serious genetic conditions -- as a matter of urgency. That is the key message of a newly published report by a UK citizens' jury made up of individuals affected by genetic conditions. From a report: The report is the first in-depth study of the views of individuals who live with genetic conditions about the editing of human embryos to treat hereditary disorders and will be presented at t
  
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• Amazon's Big Dreams for Alexa Fall Short

  06-03-2023 18:48 via slashdot.org
  
  It has been more than a decade since Jeff Bezos excitedly sketched out his vision for Alexa on a whiteboard at Amazon's headquarters. His voice assistant would help do all manner of tasks, such as shop online, control gadgets, or even read kids a bedtime story. But the Amazon founder's grand vision of a new computing platform controlled by voice has fallen short. From a report: As hype in the tech world turns feverishly to generative AI as the "next big thing," the moment has caused many to ask
  
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• Russian Game Developer Bans and Doxes 6,700 Cheaters

  06-03-2023 17:43 via games.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Cheaters are an annoying part of almost every online video game. And banning them has become an important routine for game developers and publishers to keep their users happy. The publisher of Escape from Tarkov, a game developed by the Russian company Battlestate Games, has added an unusual twist to the routine: naming and shaming the cheaters. In the last week, Battlestate Games said it banned 6,700 cheaters, and it published all their nicknames on publicly
  
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• Microsoft's Latest AI Assistant Is Meant for Marketers, Customer Reps and Work Apps

  06-03-2023 17:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft, having brought artificial intelligence to its battle with Google over search, is now turning to the latest AI technology to catch up with rivals in the corporate applications market such as Oracle, Salesforce and SAP. From a report: The software giant is introducing an AI assistant -- called Dynamics 365 Copilot -- for applications that handle tasks such as sales, marketing and customer service. Based on technology from OpenAI, the software can draft contextual chat and email answers
  
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• Microsoft Edge is Getting a Video Upscaler To Make Blurry Old Videos Look Better

  06-03-2023 16:20 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft has unveiled Video Super Resolution (VSR) -- an "experimental" video upscaling feature for its Edge web browser that uses machine learning to increase the resolution of low-quality video. From a report: Announced on the Edge Insiders blog, Microsoft's VSR technology can "remove blocky compression artifacts" and improve text clarity for videos on platforms such as YouTube. The feature is still in testing and availability is currently restricted to half of the users running the Canary ch
  
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• US Fed Reserve Zoom Conference Canceled After 'Porn-Bombing'

  06-03-2023 15:43 via it.slashdot.org
  
  A Federal Reserve Zoom event with more than 220 people was canceled after a user hijacked proceedings and displayed pornographic content, Reuters reports. From a report: The hijack left Fed Governor Christopher Waller unable to deliver his opening remarks because graphic images from a call participant named "Dan" began to pop up on the screen. In a statement to Reuters, Brent Tjarks, executive director of the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America (MBCA), which hosted the Zoom event, said: "We were
  
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• WhatsApp Agrees To Be More Transparent on Policy Changes, EU Says

  06-03-2023 15:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Meta Platforms' WhatsApp has agreed to be more transparent about changes to its privacy policy introduced in 2021, the European Commission said on Monday, following complaints from consumer bodies across Europe. From a report: The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) and the European Network of consumer authorities told WhatsApp last year that it had not clarified the changes in plain and intelligible language, violating the bloc's laws. EU members' national regulators can sanction companies fo
  
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• The SCO Lawsuit: Looking Back 20 Years Later

  06-03-2023 13:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  "On March 7, 2003, a struggling company called The SCO Group filed a lawsuit against IBM," writes LWN.net, "claiming that the success of Linux was the result of a theft of SCO's technology..."
  Two decades later, "It is hard to overestimate how much the community we find ourselves in now was shaped by a ridiculous lawsuit 20 years ago...."It was the claim of access to Unix code that was the most threatening allegation for the Linux community. SCO made it clear that, in its opinion, Linux was stol
  
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• America's FDA Wants to Update Its Definition of 'Healthy'. The Food Industry Doesn't

  06-03-2023 09:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  America's public health-protecting Food and Drug Administration wants to update its definition of "healthy" for purposes of product labeling.
  But the Washington Post reports dozens of food manufacturers are now "claiming the new standards are draconian and will result in most current food products not making the cut, or in unappealing product reformulations."Under the proposal, manufacturers can label their products "healthy" only if they contain a meaningful amount of food from at least one of
  
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• New $10B High-Speed Rail Line to Las Vegas Planned in California

  06-03-2023 05:58 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "For years, California has championed high-speed rail as its future, even as its marquee project faces headwinds," writes SFGate.
  "While the high-speed rail connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco slowly comes to fruition, a separate rail plan in Southern California has finalized an important labor deal, and construction is set to begin this year... to connect Las Vegas to Los Angeles with a new 218-mile rail system.
  On Feb. 23, Brightline announced it had reached an agreement to work with a co
  
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• Will AMD's 'openSIL' Library Enable Open-Source Silicon Initialization With Coreboot?

  06-03-2023 03:55 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Formerly known as LinuxBIOS, coreboot is defined by Wikipedia as "a software project aimed at replacing proprietary firmware (BIOS or UEFI) found in most computers with a lightweight firmware."
  Phoronix is wondering if there's about to be a big announcement from AMD:AMD dropped a juicy tid-bit of information to be announced next month with "openSIL" [an open-source AMD x86 silicon initialization library], complete with AMD Coreboot support....
  While about a decade ago AMD was big into Coreboot a
  
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• Cosmonaut Stranded on Mir in 1991 Now Heads Rescue Mission to ISS

  06-03-2023 01:33 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous readers this surprising story from Mashable:When a Russian spaceship docked as a lifeboat for three stranded men at the International Space Station in February, one may have wondered if Sergei Krikalev, heading the rescue mission, felt any deja vu.
  If that name doesn't ring a bell, he's also sometimes known as "the last Soviet" for his more than 311 days spent in space as the Soviet Union collapsed 250 miles beneath him in 1991. He was only meant to be at the Mir station for five mo
  
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• Texts from Binance Reveal Plan to Elude US Authorities

  06-03-2023 00:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Reuters writes:
  Binance, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, developed a plan to avoid the threat of prosecution by U.S. authorities as it started an American entity in 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
  The Wall Street Journal reports:
  Any lawsuit from U.S. regulators would be like "nuclear fall out" for Binance's business and its officers, a Binance executive warned colleagues in a 2019 private chat. Worried about the threat of prosecution, Binance set out on a
  
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