ICT news

• Free Data-Center Heat Is Allegedly Saving a Struggling Public Pool $24K a Year

  17-03-2023 23:40 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A public pool in the UK is expected to save [about $24,000] and cut carbon emissions by 25.8 tons annually by warming a 25-meter children's pool with waste heat from a data center from startup Deep Green. UK-based Deep Green is a newcomer in the data-center heat game and is making its entrance notable by putting a monetary figure on potential savings, which are fueled by the heat's low, low rate of free. Deep Green's paying customers are mac
  
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• TikTok's Plan To Stave Off Government Intervention: Flood DC With influencers

  17-03-2023 23:05 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The influential social media app TikTok is flooding the nation's capital with influencers next week as part of an 11th hour lobbying blitz to stave off the forced sale of the company. From a report: The efforts come as the Biden administration urges TikTok's Chinese owners to sell the app to a new owner or face a potential ban in the United States. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the interagency board that issued the call, has spent years reviewing the potential nationa
  
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• Microsoft Pauses Delayed Partner Ecosystem Security Update To Count Its Money

  17-03-2023 22:21 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft's delayed effort to ensure its partners don't enjoy unduly privileged access to their clients' systems will run for just nine days before pausing for a month. From a report: Partners of the Redmond-based software colossus have historically relied on "delegated admin privileges" (DAP) to manage and monitor clients' systems and software purchases. In the wake of criminal attacks on managed services providers and the software they use to tend their clients, Microsoft decided DAP privilege
  
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• Fed Digital Payment System To Launch in July

  17-03-2023 21:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The Federal Reserve's digital payments system, which it promises will help speed up the way money moves, will debut in July. From a report: FedNow, as it will be known, will create "a leading-edge payments system that is resilient, adaptive, and accessible," said Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin, who is the program's executive sponsor. The system will allow bill payments, money transfers such as paychecks and disbursements from the government, as well as a host of other consumer activities to m
  
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• Global Fresh Water Demand Will Outstrip Supply By 40% by 2030, Say Experts

  17-03-2023 21:01 via science.slashdot.org
  
  The world is facing an imminent water crisis, with demand expected to outstrip the supply of fresh water by 40% by the end of this decade, experts have said on the eve of a crucial UN water summit. From a report: Governments must urgently stop subsidising the extraction and overuse of water through misdirected agricultural subsidies, and industries from mining to manufacturing must be made to overhaul their wasteful practices, according to a landmark report on the economics of water. Nations mus
  
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• The FBI And DOJ Are Investigating ByteDance's Use Of TikTok To Spy On Journalists

  17-03-2023 20:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The FBI and the Department of Justice are investigating the events that led TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to use the app to surveil American journalists, including this reporter, Forbes reported, citing sources familiar with the departments' actions. From the report: According to a source in position to know, the DOJ Criminal Division, Fraud Section, working alongside the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, has subpoenaed information from ByteDance reg
  
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• AI-Imager Midjourney v5 Stuns With Photorealistic Images

  17-03-2023 19:40 via slashdot.org
  
  Midjourney announced version 5 of its commercial AI image-synthesis service, which can produce photorealistic images at a quality level that some AI art fans are calling creepy and "too perfect." From a report: Midjourney v5 is available now as an alpha test for customers who subscribe to the Midjourney service, which is available through Discord. "MJ v5 currently feels to me like finally getting glasses after ignoring bad eyesight for a little bit too long," said Julie Wieland, a graphic design
  
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• Google Employees Petition Pichai for Better Handling of Job Cuts

  17-03-2023 19:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Almost 1,400 employees at Google parent Alphabet have signed a petition calling for better treatment of staff during the layoff process, after the company announced it was cutting 12,000 jobs. From a report: In an open letter addressed to Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai, employees made a series of demands of the company, including freezing new hires, seeking voluntary redundancies before compulsory ones, giving priority to laid off workers for job vacancies and letting workers finish sched
  
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• Meta Launches Subscription Service in US

  17-03-2023 18:21 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Meta on Friday launched its subscription service in the U.S., which would allow Facebook and Instagram users pay for verification in the same vein as Elon Musk-owned Twitter. From a report: The Meta Verified service will give users a blue badge after they verify their accounts using a government ID and will cost $11.99 per month on the web or $14.99 a month on Apple's iOS system and Google-owned Android, Meta said in a statement. The service, which Meta said it was testing in February, follows i
  
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• Google Warns Users To Take Action To Protect Against Remotely Exploitable Flaws in Popular Android Phones

  17-03-2023 17:41 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google's security research unit is sounding the alarm on a set of vulnerabilities it found in certain Samsung chips included in dozens of Android models, wearables and vehicles, fearing the flaws could be soon discovered and exploited. From a report: Google's Project Zero head Tim Willis said the in-house security researchers found and reported 18 zero-day vulnerabilities in Exynos modems produced by Samsung over the past few months, including four top-severity flaws that could compromise affect
  
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• Coinbase Explores Overseas Venue as US Ramps Up Crypto Scrutiny

  17-03-2023 17:01 via slashdot.org
  
  Institutional clients of Coinbase have been contacted by the firm about plans to potentially set up a new crypto-trading platform overseas, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing three people with direct knowledge of the matter. From the report: The talks with market makers and investment firms touched on the possibility of establishing an alternative venue -- away from the main Coinbase marketplace -- for global clients, said the people, who asked not to be named as the discussions are confiden
  
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• FCC Proposes Satellite-to-Phone Rules To Eliminate 'No Signal' Once and For All

  17-03-2023 16:21 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  The FCC has officially proposed, and voted unanimously to move forward with, a framework under which satellites can communicate directly with smartphones in a structured and useful way. From a report: The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, circulated earlier this month and formally voted on today, is essentially a complete first public draft of what the FCC hopes to accomplish by establishing rules and guidelines around this emerging area of communication. Apple already made the news with a dramatic
  
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• Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill Build an Anti-China Alliance

  17-03-2023 15:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A group of Silicon Valley executives, including investor Peter Thiel, and Washington lawmakers are quietly mobilizing against China's involvement in the U.S. tech industry ahead of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew's Capitol Hill testimony next week. From a report: They plan to meet for a private dinner on Wednesday to discuss China, national security and the intensifying competition between the tech sectors of the U.S. and China. Mr. Chew is scheduled to testify the following day. Momentum against TikTok
  
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• Parent Company of Silicon Valley Bank Files for Bankruptcy

  17-03-2023 15:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  SVB Financial Group, the former parent company of Silicon Valley Bank, the lender that was seized by regulators last week after a devastating run on deposits, filed for bankruptcy on Friday. From a report: The move would place SVB Financial, which owns other businesses aside from Silicon Valley Bank, into a court-led process, as it auctions off units that include the investment manager SVB Capital and the brokerage firm SVB securities. Those units continue to operate and were not part of the ban
  
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• China Sets Up New Bureau To Mine Data For Economic Growth

  17-03-2023 14:00 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: China's annual, week-long parliamentary meeting just ended on Monday. Apart from confirming President Xi Jinping for a historic third term and appointing a new batch of other top leaders, the government also approved a restructuring plan for national ministries, as it typically does every five years. Among all the changes, there's one that the tech world is avidly watching: the creation of a new regulatory body named the National Da
  
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• Drupal Releases Security Advisory to Address Vulnerability in Drupal Core

  17-03-2023 13:00 via cisa.gov
  Drupal has released a security advisory to address an access bypass vulnerability affecting multiple Drupal versions. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to take control of an affected system.
  CISA encourages users and administrators to review Drupal security advisory SA-CONTRIB- 2023-004 for more information and apply the necessary updates.
  
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• Authors Risk Losing Copyright If AI Content Is Not Disclosed, US Guidance Says

  17-03-2023 11:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The US Copyright Office has issued (PDF) guidance today to clarify when AI-generated material can be copyrighted. Ars Technica reports: Guidance comes after the Copyright Office decided that an author could not copyright individual AI images used to illustrate a comic book, because each image was generated by Midjourney -- not a human artist. In making its decision, the Copyright Office committed to upholding the longstanding legal definition that authors of creative works must be human to regis
  
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• Active Volcano On Venus Shows It's a Living Planet

  17-03-2023 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Choked by a smog of sulfuric acid and scorched by temperatures hot enough to melt lead, the surface of Venus is sure to be lifeless. For decades, researchers also thought the planet itself was dead, capped by a thick, stagnant lid of crust and unaltered by active rifts or volcanoes. But hints of volcanism have mounted recently, and now comes the best one yet: direct evidence for an eruption. Geologically, at least, Venus is alive.The discovery
  
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• A Growing Number of Scientists Are Convinced the Future Influences the Past

  17-03-2023 04:30 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Have you ever found yourself in a self-imposed jam and thought, "Well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions"? It's a common refrain that exposes a deeper truth about the way we humans understand time and causality. Our actions in the past are correlated to our experience of the future, whether that's a good outcome, like acing a test because you prepared, or a bad one, like waking up with a killer hangover. But what if this forward
  
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• Belkin's Smart Home Brand Wemo Is Backing Away From Matter

  17-03-2023 03:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Wemo, Belkin's smart home company, has paused development of Matter smart home devices. The Verge reports: In an email exchange, Jen Wei, Vice President of Global Communications and Corporate Development at Belkin, confirmed that, while the company remains convinced that "Matter will have a significantly positive impact on the smart home industry," it has decided to "take a big step back, regroup, and rethink'' its approach to the smart home. Wei went on to write that Wemo will bring new Matter
  
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• ChatGPT Pretended To Be Blind and Tricked a Human Into Solving a CAPTCHA

  17-03-2023 02:25 via slashdot.org
  
  Earlier this week, OpenAI released GPT-4, its latest AI language model that is "more creative and collaborative than ever before." According to Gizmodo, "GPT-4 is so good at its job, in fact, that it reportedly convinced a human that it was blind in order to get said human to solve a CAPTCHA for the chatbot." From the report: OpenAI unveiled the roided up AI yesterday in a livestream, and the company showed how the chatbot could complete tasks, albeit slowly, like writing code for a Discord bot,
  
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• Amazon Sued For Not Telling New York Store Customers About Facial Recognition

  17-03-2023 01:45 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Amazon did not alert its New York City customers that they were being monitored by facial recognition technology, a lawsuit filed Thursday alleges. CNBC reports: In a class-action suit, lawyers for Alfredo Perez said that the company failed to tell visitors to Amazon Go convenience stores that the technology was in use. Thanks to a 2021 law, New York is the only major American city to require businesses to post signs if they're tracking customers' biometric information, such as facial scans or f
  
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• UK To Invest 900 Million Pounds In Supercomputer In Bid To Build Own 'BritGPT'

  17-03-2023 01:02 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The UK government is to invest 900 million pounds in a cutting-edge supercomputer as part of an artificial intelligence strategy that includes ensuring the country can build its own "BritGPT". The treasury outlined plans to spend around 900 million pounds on building an exascale computer, which would be several times more powerful than the UK's biggest computers, and establishing a new AI research body. An exascale computer can be used for t
  
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• FTX Says Bankman-Fried Took $2.2 Billion

  17-03-2023 00:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Liquidators at FTX said that founder Sam Bankman-Fried had received $2.2 billion in "loans and payments" while he was allegedly running a massive fraud at the crypto exchange. From a report: According to FTX's bankruptcy court filing, Bankman-Fried got more than $2 billion in loans -- primarily through Alameda Research, the hedge fund he founded that lost big on bad investments, then misused customer deposits from FTX accounts in an attempt to cover those losses. Bankman-Fried wasn't the only ex
  
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• Twitch CEO Emmett Shear Is Resigning

  17-03-2023 00:02 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is resigning, effective immediately, he announced in a blog post on Thursday. The Verge reports: Shear has been at Twitch since before it was Twitch. He was a co-founder of Justin.tv, the platform where Justin Kan streamed his life 24/7. That became Twitch in 2011 to focus on popular gaming livestreams, and just three years later, the platform was acquired by Amazon for nearly a billion dollars."With my first child just born, I've been reflecting on my future with Twitch,
  
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