ICT news

• US Regulators Bail Out SVB Customers, Who Can Access All Their Money Monday

  12-03-2023 23:48 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "Today we are taking decisive actions to protect the U.S. economy by strengthening public confidence in our banking system," announced U.S. Treasury secretary Yellen.
  Yellen clarifies this "No losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer."We are also announcing a similar systemic risk exception for Signature Bank, New York, New York, which was closed today by its state chartering authority. All depositors of this institution will be made whole. As wi
  
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• Is Samsung Faking the AI-Enhanced 'Space Zoom' Photos on Galaxy Smartphones?

  12-03-2023 22:46 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  Samsung's Galaxy smartphones now offer "Space Zoom," writes Apple Insider, a feature augmenting 3x and 10x telephoto cameras with digital zoom "aided by Samsung's AI Super Resolution technology."
  But the resulting 100X zoom levels "appear to be more a feat of AI trickery than anything else," they conclude, citing an investigation by a Reddit user:That so-called Space Zoom could potentially allow users to photograph the moon, and many do. However, it may be the case that the level of detail in th
  
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• Before Hitting Pause On HQ2, Amazon Sent a "You're Welcome" To Area Residents

  12-03-2023 21:46 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader theodp shares a fresh perspective on how the "pause" announced for building Amazon's HQ2 headquarters could impact the local community:The Falls Church News-Press notes that Amazon's pause announcement came just days after a 12-page glossy mass mailing entitled Capital Region Community Impact Report went out to thousands in the region. Beginning with a statement from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, the report spelled out "Amazon's philanthropic commitments in the Capital Region,
  
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• What Can't You Say on YouTube? Its Content Creators Aren't Sure

  12-03-2023 19:59 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "Recently, on a YouTube channel, I said something terrible," confesses a staff writer for the Atlantic. "But I don't know what it was."Whatever it was, it was enough to get the interview demonetized, meaning no ads could be placed against it, and my host received no revenue from it.
  "It does start to drive you mad," says Andrew Gold, whose channel, On the Edge, was the place where I committed my unknowable offense. Like many full-time YouTubers, he relies on the Google-owned site's AdSense progr
  
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• No Federal Bailout for SVB, Says US. Bank Had Weakened Regulations, Paid Bonuses

  12-03-2023 18:59 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Today U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Silicon Valley Bank would not be bailed out by the federal government. But the government is working on helping depositors, Yellen said on the CBS News show Face the Nation.
  The Associated Press reports that deposits insured by the federal government are supposed to be available by Monday morning...The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures deposits up to $250,000, but many of the companies and wealthy people who used the bank — known
  
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• Head of America's SEC: Crypto Firms Should Comply With US Regulations

  12-03-2023 16:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "Crypto firms should do their work within the bounds of the law, or they shouldn't do it at all," says the head of America's Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates US. investment markets.
  In an editorial published in The Hill, SEC chair Gary Gensler warns that instead cryptocurrency has many "trusted" intermediaries that are in fact non-compliant with U.S. securities law.Today, crypto is dominated by a handful of trading, lending, staking, and other financial intermediaries. The inv
  
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• Teens Are Stealing More Cars. They Learn How on Social Media.

  12-03-2023 15:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Though Kia and Hyundai represent a tenth of U.S. auto sales, the New York Times reports that "Of the nearly 11,000 cars stolen in Memphis last year — about twice as many as in 2021 — roughly a third were late-model Kias and Hyundais, according to the police.""It doesn't take much to rip them off: just a screwdriver, a USB cord and hot-wiring know-how found in videos proliferating on social media."Many of the culprits are teenagers or young adults stealing cars for kicks or to use the
  
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• Go Finally Returns to Top 10 of Programming Language Popularity List

  12-03-2023 12:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  "Google's Go language has re-entered the top 10 of the Tiobe index of programming language popularity, after a nearly six-year absence," reports InfoWorld:Go ranks 10th in the March edition of the index, after placing 11th the previous month. The language last appeared in the top 10 in July 2017.The re-emergence of Go in the March 2023 index is being attributed to its popularity with software engineers and its strength in combining the right features, namely built-in concurrency, garbage collect
  
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• Why Are We Still Observing Daylight Saving Time?

  12-03-2023 09:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  As millions set their clocks forward one hour, there's pockets of resistance, according to this local news report:
  - "According to a March 2022 CBS News poll, 46% of Americans prefer permanent daylight saving time, while 33% prefer permanent standard time. The remaining 21% simply favor the status quo."- "Exceptions to this adopted norm include residents of Hawaii and most of Arizona, where standard time is permanent throughout the year."
  But The Hill notes that America appears to be stuck halfw
  
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• 12 Years After Fukushima, Removal of Melted Nuclear Fuel Hasn't Started

  12-03-2023 05:37 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  "Twelve years after the triple reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japan is preparing to release a massive amount of treated radioactive wastewater into the sea," writes the Associated Press. "Japanese officials say the release is unavoidable and should start soon.
  "Dealing with the wastewater is less of a challenge than the daunting task of decommissioning the plant. That process has barely progressed, and the removal of melted nuclear fuel hasn't even started."Massi
  
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• Tech Layoffs Caused by Vain Over-Hiring for 'Fake Work', Argues Former PayPal Executive

  12-03-2023 03:34 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Fortune reports:
  The thousands of layoffs in Big Tech are thanks to an over-hiring spree to satisfy the "vanity" of bosses at the likes of Meta and Alphabet, according to a member of the so-called PayPal Mafia. Speaking remotely at an event hosted by banking firm Evercore, Silicon Valley VC Keith Rabois said Meta and Google had hired thousands of people to do "fake work" to hit hiring metrics out of "vanity".
  Rabois, who was an executive at PayPal in the early 2000s alongside Tesla CEO Elon Musk
  
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• The Daring Ruse That Exposed China's Campaign To Steal American Secrets

  12-03-2023 01:28 via slashdot.org
  
  The New York Times magazine tells the story of an innocuous-seeming message on LinkedIn in 2017 from Qu Hui, the deputy director of the China-based Provincial Association for International Science and Technology Development.
  Federal agents eventually obtained search warrants for two Gmail addresses the official was using, and "In what would prove to be a lucky break, the investigators found that each email address was the Apple ID used for an iPhone, linked to an iCloud account where data from t
  
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• Meet Zig: the Modern Alternative to the C Programming Language

  12-03-2023 00:28 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Systems-oriented developers already have programming languages like C, C++, Rust, and Go, notes InfoWorld.
  But now, "we also have Zig, a newer language that seeks to absorb what's best about these languages and offer comparable performance with a better, more reliable developer experience."Zig is a very active project. It was started by Andrew Kelley in 2015 and now seems to be reaching critical mass. Zig's ambition is rather momentous in software history: to become the heir to C's longstanding
  
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