ICT news

• Twitch Says It Will Lay Off 400 Employees

  20-03-2023 23:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Twitch announced plans to lay off 400 employees at the company. It comes just days after longtime Twitch CEO Emmett Shear said that he would step down from the company to spend time with his family. TechCrunch reports: The layoffs will affect 400 employees at the company and were characterized as an effort to improve Twitch's business outlook in the long term. The reduction is part of Twitch parent company Amazon's plans to let go of 9,000 workers across divisions including its AWS cloud and adv
  
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• Google Pixel Bug Lets You 'Uncrop' the Last Four Years of Screenshots

  20-03-2023 23:00 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Back in 2018, Pixel phones gained a built-in screenshot editor called "Markup" with the release of Android 9.0 Pie. The tool pops up whenever you take a screenshot, and tapping the app's pen icon gives you access to tools like crop and a few colored drawing pens. That's very handy assuming Google's Markup tool actually does what it says, but a new vulnerability points out the edits made by this tool weren't actually destructive! It's possibl
  
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• Meta Manager Was Hacked With Spyware and Wiretapped in Greece

  20-03-2023 22:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  A U.S. and Greek national who worked on Meta's security and trust team while based in Greece was placed under a yearlong wiretap by the Greek national intelligence service and hacked with a powerful cyberespionage tool, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and officials with knowledge of the case. From the report: The disclosure is the first known case of an American citizen being targeted in a European Union country by the advanced snooping technology, the use of which has been
  
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• Netflix Plans To Release 40 More Games This Year, Will Add Monument Valley in 2024

  20-03-2023 21:40 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Netflix has announced that it has 40 games slated for launch this year and has 70 in development with its partners. The company also has 16 games currently being developed by its in-house game studios. Netflix launched games in November 2021 and has released 55 titles since then. From a report: The streaming service says it's committed to building out its games portfolio and will be bringing Ustwo's Monument Valley franchise to its platform, starting with Monument Valley 1 and Monument Valley 2,
  
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• Washington Prepares For War With Amazon

  20-03-2023 21:01 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The Biden administration is planning to take action soon on at least three of its half-dozen investigations of Amazon -- moves that could lead to a blitz of litigation to rein in the iconic tech-industry giant. From a report: The FTC has been investigating the internet titan on multiple fronts dating at least back to 2019, looking into its abuse of power within its online marketplace, as well as potential consumer-privacy violations connected to its Ring cameras and Alexa digital assistant. The
  
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• Generative AI's Next Frontier Is Video

  20-03-2023 20:20 via slashdot.org
  
  AI has made remarkable progress with still images. For months, services like Dall-E and Stable Diffusion have been creating beautiful, arresting and sometimes unsettling pictures. Now, a startup called Runway AI is taking the next step: AI-generated video. From a report: On Monday, New York-based Runway announced the availability of its Gen 2 system, which generates short snippets of video from a few words of user prompts. Users can type in a description of what they want to see, for example: "a
  
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• Nations Reach Accord To Protect Marine Life on High Seas

  20-03-2023 19:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  For the first time, United Nations members have agreed on a unified treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas -- representing a turning point for vast stretches of the planet where conservation has previously been hampered by a confusing patchwork of laws. From a report: The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea came into force in 1994, before marine biodiversity was a well-established concept. The treaty agreement concluded two weeks of talks in New York. An updated framework to protect m
  
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• Zippyshare Quits After 17 Years, 45 Million Visits Per Month Makes No Money

  20-03-2023 19:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  After almost 17 years online, file-hosting veteran Zippyshare will shut down at the end of the month. TorrentFreak: Founded in 2006, Zippyshare was known for its free, no-nonsense, no-frills approach to storing files online. Having changed very little over the years, Zippyshare's operators say the platform is now a dinosaur that costs too much to run in a world where ad-blocking is widespread. Zippyshare said, "Since 2006 we have been on the market in an unchanged form, that is, as ad financed/f
  
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• Online-Books Lawsuit Tests Limits of Libraries in Digital Age

  20-03-2023 18:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A federal judge on Monday will weigh pleas by four major book publishers to stop an online lending library from freely offering digital copies of books, in a case that raises novel questions about digital-library rights and the reach of copyright law that protects the work of writers and publishers. From a report: Nonprofit organization Internet Archive created the digital books, building its collection by scanning physical book copies in its possession. It lends the digital versions to readers
  
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• Credit Suisse, the Risk-Taking Swiss Banking Giant, Succumbs To Crisis

  20-03-2023 17:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Credit Suisse, the Swiss banking giant that liked to live dangerously, has run out of road. From a report: The bank struck a deal this weekend to be bought by rival UBS Group after an uncontrolled slide in its stock and bonds. The agreement marks the end of 167 years as an independent institution, a humbling comedown for a bank that once went toe-to-toe with U.S. giants on Wall Street and boasted a market value greater than that of Goldman Sachs Group. The bank's downfall has roots in the way it
  
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• Earth is On Track For Catastrophic Warming, UN Warns

  20-03-2023 17:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The planet is on track for catastrophic warming, but world leaders already have many options to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and protect people, according to a major new climate change report from the United Nations. NPR: The report was drafted by top climate scientists and reviewed by delegates from nearly 200 countries. The authors hope it will provide crucial guidance to politicians around the world ahead of negotiations later this year aimed at reining in climate change. The planet faces
  
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• Microsoft Plans Mobile Games Store To Rival Apple and Google

  20-03-2023 16:20 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft is preparing to launch a new app store for games on iPhones and Android smartphones as soon as next year if its $75bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard is cleared by regulators, according to the head of its Xbox business. From a report: New rules requiring Apple and Google to open up their mobile platforms to app stores owned and operated by other companies are expected to come into force from March 2024 under the EU's Digital Markets Act. "We want to be in a position to offer Xbox an
  
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• Amazon Cutting Another 9,000 Jobs

  20-03-2023 15:40 via slashdot.org
  
  Amazon is cutting another 9,000 jobs, chief executive Andy Jassy wrote to employees in a memo on Monday. The move, which impacts roles in AWS, PXT, Advertising and Twitch, comes weeks after the e-commerce group said it would eliminate 18,000 jobs. Jassy: As part of our annual planning process, leaders across the company work with their teams to decide what investments they want to make for the future, prioritizing what matters most to customers and the long-term health of our businesses. For sev
  
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• Pentagon Study Reveals Higher Cancer Rates For Military Pilots, Ground Crews

  20-03-2023 15:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A new study from the Department of Defense revealed that military pilots and ground crews experienced higher rates of certain cancers compared to the general population. Axios: Earlier military studies had not indicated that aviators were at higher risk, though the data has long been sought by those who raised alarm about the rates of cancer they observed among air and ground crew members, according to AP, which first reported the study. The study examined cancer rates among nearly 900,000 air a
  
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• ASUS Unveils the Tinker V As Their First RISC-V Board

  20-03-2023 12:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares this report from Phoronix:For over a half-decade ASUS has been selling the Tinker Board devices as their line of Raspberry Pi alternatives. To date the ASUS Tinker Board single board computers have all been Arm-based while now they have launched their first RISC-V board, the Tinker V.
  The ASUS Tinker V is their first RISC-V single board computer and intended for the industrial IoT (Internet of Things) developer community. The ASUS Tinker V is set to officially run Debi
  
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• What's Different About These Tech Industry Layoffs?

  20-03-2023 09:04 via it.slashdot.org
  
  "According to one count, more than 280,000 people were laid off from tech jobs in 2022 and the first two months of 2023," notes a new blog post at Stack Overflow.But then it asks the question: "What's different about these layoffs?"
  [T]he current economy has less in common than you might think with the wreckage of the dot-com bubble or the Great Recession. Overall, it's still a good time to work in tech, and the hiring market remains robust: One survey found that almost 80% of people laid off in
  
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• 'Irreverent' and 'Scrappy': Reactions to Trailer and Early Screening of Movie 'BlackBerry'

  20-03-2023 05:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "When we learned that a BlackBerry movie was in the works last year," writes Engadget, "we had no idea it would be something close to a comedy. But judging from the trailer, it's aiming to be a far lighter story than other recent films about tech."
  Variety notes that the movie has already screened at both Berlin Film Festival and SXSW Film Festival. "The film has received favorable reviews so far, with Variety's Peter Debruge calling it "frantic, irreverent and endearingly scrappy."
  That review
  
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• System76 Meerkat Mini-Linux PC - Now with Up to Intel Core i7-1260P

  20-03-2023 02:37 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Liliputing.com has an update about the System76 Meerkat, which they describe as "a compact desktop computer with support for up to 64GB of RAM, up to two storage devices (for as much as 16TB of total storage), and up to an Intel Core i7 mobile processor. It's basically a rebranded Intel NUC." (Escept that System76 offers a choice of Pop!_OS or Ubuntu Linux pre-installed.)
  "Previously available with a choice of 10th or 11th-gen Intel Core processor options, the Meerkat now also supports 12th-gen
  
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