ICT news

• Turkish Presidential Candidate Quits Race After Release of Alleged Deepfake

  11-05-2023 23:20 via politics.slashdot.org
  
  Turkish presidential candidate Muharrem Ince withdrew from the race after an alleged sex tape circulated online. Ince claims it's a deepfake using footage taken from "an Israeli porn site." The Guardian reports: Ince, a two-time presidential candidate who also lost to Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2018, pulled his candidacy just days away from Turkey's most consequential election in a generation saying: "I offered Turkey a third option, a third way. We couldn't succeed with this way."The former school
  
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• Ex-Ubiquiti Engineer Behind 'Breathtaking' Data Theft Gets 6-Year Prison Term

  11-05-2023 22:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An ex-Ubiquiti engineer, Nickolas Sharp, was sentenced to six years in prison yesterday after pleading guilty in a New York court to stealing tens of gigabytes of confidential data, demanding a $1.9 million ransom from his former employer, and then publishing the data publicly when his demands were refused. Sharp had asked for no prison time, telling United States District Judge Katherine Polk Failla that the cyberattack was actually an "uns
  
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• Leak of MSI UEFI Signing Keys Stokes Fears of 'Doomsday' Supply Chain Attack

  11-05-2023 22:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  A ransomware intrusion on hardware manufacturer Micro-Star International, better known as MSI, is stoking concerns of devastating supply chain attacks that could inject malicious updates that have been signed with company signing keys that are trusted by a huge base of end-user devices, a researcher said. From a report: "ââIt's kind of like a doomsday scenario where it's very hard to update the devices simultaneously, and they stay for a while not up to date and will use the old key
  
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• Microsoft Skips Salary Increases for Full-Time Employees this Year

  11-05-2023 21:47 via slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft will hold off on offering salary increases to full-time employees, CEO Satya Nadella told staffers by email Wednesday. From a report: The move aligns with Microsoft's efforts to reduce costs as revenue growth slows and clients reel in spending. In January, the software maker said it would cut 10,000 jobs, or just under 5% of its workforce. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and other tech companies have downsized as well in recent months. Last year, as inflation rippled through the economy, Micros
  
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• UK Restricts Microsoft, Activision From Buying Interest in Each Other

  11-05-2023 21:33 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Britain's competition regulator has published an interim order restricting Microsoft and Activision from acquiring an interest in each other without its consent, weeks after it blocked their $69 billion merger.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Tech Startups Find One of Their Last Funding Sources Is Drying Up

  11-05-2023 20:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A key form of financing that startups rely on is shrinking, hurting new companies that are already starved for capital. From a report: The volume of venture debt, a type of loan that younger companies line up to help pay the bills, plunged to $3.5 billion in the US in the first quarter, according to PitchBook, the lowest level since 2017. Climbing interest rates have made the funding more expensive for companies, and one of the biggest venture lenders, Silicon Valley Bank, faced a run on the ban
  
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• EU Lawmakers Want More Talks To Strengthen Proposed US Data Transfer Pact

  11-05-2023 19:43 via slashdot.org
  
  EU lawmakers on Thursday urged the European Commission to continue talks to reinforce a proposed data transfer pact with the United States, saying there were still shortcomings in the agreement. From a report: The move could further delay an accord which is critical for thousands of companies. The EU executive in a draft decision in December said that U.S. safeguards against American intelligence activities were strong enough to address EU data privacy concerns. Such worries had prompted Europe'
  
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• EU Lawmakers' Committees Agree Tougher Draft AI Rules

  11-05-2023 19:28 via slashdot.org
  
  European lawmakers came a step closer to passing new rules regulating artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, following a crunch vote on Thursday where they agreed tougher draft legislation. From a report: The European Union's highly anticipated AI Act looks set to be the world's first comprehensive legislation governing the technology, with new rules around the use of facial recognition, biometric surveillance, and other AI applications. After two years of negotiations, the bill is now e
  
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• Wind is Main Source of UK Electricity for First Time

  11-05-2023 18:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Wind turbines have generated more electricity than gas for the first time in the UK. From a report: In the first three months of this year a third of the country's electricity came from wind farms, research from Imperial College London have shown. National Grid has also confirmed that April saw a record period of solar energy generation. By 2035 the UK aims for all of its electricity to have net zero emissions. "There are still many hurdles to reaching a completely fossil fuel-free grid, but win
  
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• SoftBank Vision Fund Yearly Loss Widens To $32 Billion on Startups Valuation Cut

  11-05-2023 17:22 via news.slashdot.org
  
  SoftBank Vision Fund lost $32 billion in the financial year ending March as the Japanese investment giant, the most prolific global investor in tech startups, continues to suffer from valuation corrections across its portfolio of private and public tech companies amid a weakening global economy. From a report: The loss surged about 70% from the same period a year prior, when SoftBank had reported $19 billion in losses at the Vision Fund unit. The losses come even as SoftBank has grown very cauti
  
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• 'Stack Overflow is ChatGPT Casualty'

  11-05-2023 16:40 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  SimilarWeb: Developers increasingly get advice from AI chatbots and GitHub CoPilot rather than Stack Overflow message boards. While traffic to OpenAI's ChatGPT has been growing exponentially, Stack Overflow has been experiencing a steady decline -- losing some of its standings as the go-to source developers turn to for answers to coding challenges. Actually, traffic to Stack Overflow's community website has been dropping since the beginning of 2022. That may be in part because of a related devel
  
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• AI Needs Specialized Processors. Crypto Miners Say They Have Them

  11-05-2023 16:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  When the Ethereum blockchain moved away from using a technique for verifying transactions known as proof of work last September, crypto market demand for the specialized processors that performed these calculations disappeared virtually overnight. Companies that used and hosted GPUs, or graphics processing units, saw a key part of their once-booming business vanish against an increasingly difficult backdrop for crypto. But now mining infrastructure companies like Hive Blockchain and Hut 8 Mining
  
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• Google Launches an AI Coding Bot For Android Developers

  11-05-2023 15:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google is launching a new AI-powered coding bot for Android developers. During its I/O event on Wednesday, Google announced that the tool, called Studio Bot, will help developers build apps by generating code, fixing errors, and answering questions about Android. According to Google, the bot is built on Codey, the company's new foundational coding model that stems from its updated PaLM 2 large language model (LLM). Studio Bot supports both the
  
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• CISA and FBI Release Joint Advisory in Response to Active Exploitation of PaperCut Vulnerability

  11-05-2023 14:00 via cisa.gov
  CISA and FBI have released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA), Malicious Actors Exploit CVE-2023-27350 in PaperCut MF and NG. This joint advisory provides details related to an exploitation of PaperCut MF/NG vulnerability (CVE-2023-27350). FBI observed malicious actors exploit CVE-2023-27350 beginning in mid-April 2023 and continuing through the present. In early May 2023, FBI observed a group self-identifying as the Bl00dy Ransomware Gang attempting to exploit vulnerable PaperCut servers
  
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• Robinhood Launching 24-Hour Weekday Stock Trading

  11-05-2023 12:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Robinhood announced Wednesday that it will soon allow users to engage in 24-hour trading of select exchange-traded funds and stocks. As Fortune notes, this "will make it the first U.S. brokerage to provide overnight weekday trading in individual stocks." From the report: The 24-hour trading service will allow round-the-clock trading in 43 securities between 8 p.m. ET Sunday and 8 p.m. ET Friday, with plans to add more securities at a later time, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev told the Wall Street Jour
  
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• Pancreatic Cancer Vaccine Shows Promise In Small Trial

  11-05-2023 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  A personalized cancer vaccine made by BioNTech, the German company that produced the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, has shown promising results against pancreatic cancer. The vaccine, which teaches patients' immune systems to attack their tumors, provoked an immune response in half of the 16 patients treated, and those patients did not experience relapses of their cancer during the study. The New York Times reports: Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, led by Dr.
  
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• New Genome Map Tries To Capture All Human Genetic Variation

  11-05-2023 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from MIT Technology Review: Today, researchers announced yet another version of the human genome map, which they say combines the complete DNA of 47 diverse individuals -- Africans, Native Americans, and Asians, among other groups -- into one giant genetic atlas that they say better captures the surprising genetic diversity of our species. The new map, called a "pangenome," has been a decade in the making, and researchers say it will only get bigger, creatin
  
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• Google's New Pixel Tablet Is a $500 Slate For the Home

  11-05-2023 04:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google has announced the Pixel Tablet after teasing it during last year's Google I/O conference. The Verge reports: The Pixel Tablet is designed from the ground up to be good at what people typically use tablets for: watching video or playing games in the comfort of their own home. It is not, however, making any statements about the future of computing. The looks of the Pixel Tablet are relatively generic. It has an 11-inch, 16:10, 2560 x 1600 pixel LCD display, even bezels all around, and a mat
  
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• Former Coinbase Product Manager Gets Two Years For Insider Trading

  11-05-2023 03:25 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Former Coinbase product manager Ishan Wahi was sentenced to two years in prison for insider trading. Decrypt reports: Ishan Wahi, 32, and his associates -- including his brother, Nikhil -- made over $1.5 million from investing in new digital assets just before they were listed by America's biggest crypto exchange. Wahi was able to use his knowledge of incoming assets to buy them and then quickly sell them, to make huge profits. When the San Francisco-based exchange lists new coins and tokens, th
  
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• Hulu Content Will Be Added To Disney+

  11-05-2023 02:45 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company will add Hulu content to its Disney+ streaming app, adding that it will also raise the price of its ad-free streaming service later this year. CNBC reports: CEO Bob Iger said the company would soon begin offering a "one app experience" in the U.S. that incorporates Hulu content into its flagship streaming service, Disney+. Standalone options for all of Disney's platforms, including ESPN+, will remain. "This is a logical progression of our DTC offerings that w
  
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• Amazon In Talks To Buy Indian Video Giant MX Player

  11-05-2023 02:02 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amazon is engaging with Times Internet to explore the acquisition of MX Player, one of the largest on-demand video streaming services in India, according to four sources familiar with the matter, as the American e-commerce group eyes expanding its entertainment ambitions in the key overseas market. The deliberations are remarkable for MX Player, which was acquired by the Indian conglomerate Times Internet for $140 million in 2018. The video ap
  
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• Google Search Gets AI-Powered 'Snapshots'

  11-05-2023 01:20 via search.slashdot.org
  
  "The AI takeover of Google Search starts now," writes The Verge's David Pierce. At Google I/O today, the company demoed a new opt-in feature called Search Generative Experience (SGE). The new experience generates AI "snapshots" that appear at the top of the search results page consisting of an AI-generated summary about your query, with links to sources of information and shopping. From the report: To demonstrate, Liz Reid, Google's VP of Search, flips open her laptop and starts typing into the
  
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• Wendy's To Begin Replacing Drive-Thru Staff With AI Chatbots

  11-05-2023 00:40 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: It's at least as good as our best customer service representative, and it's probably on average better," said Wendy's CIO Kevin Vasconi to the Wall Street Journal. After successful early tests, the fifth biggest fast food chain in the USA will start using AI chatbots to interact with drive-thru customers next month. The company has been working with Google on a number of machine learning and AI tools behind the scenes, and is now extending that
  
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• Tipping at Self-Checkout Has Customers Crying 'Emotional Blackmail'

  11-05-2023 00:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Zero interaction with employees during a transaction no longer guarantees freedom from the moral quandary of how much to tip. From a report: Prompts to leave 20% at self-checkout machines at airports, stadiums, cookie shops and cafes across the country are rankling consumers already inundated by the proliferation of tip screens. Business owners say the automated cues can significantly increase gratuities and boost staff pay. But the unmanned prompts are leading more customers to question what, e
  
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