ICT news

• Anthropic's Claude AI Can Now Digest an Entire Book like The Great Gatsby in Seconds

  12-05-2023 23:20 via slashdot.org
  
  AI company Anthropic has announced it has given its ChatGPT-like Claude AI language model the ability to analyze an entire book's worth of material in under a minute. This new ability comes from expanding Claude's context window to 100,000 tokens, or about 75,000 words. From a report: Like OpenAI's GPT-4, Claude is a large language model (LLM) that works by predicting the next token in a sequence when given a certain input. Tokens are fragments of words used to simplify AI data processing, and a
  
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• Google Drive Gets a Desperately Needed 'Spam' Folder for Shared Files

  12-05-2023 22:41 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Fifteen years after launching Google Docs and Sheets with file sharing, Google is adding what sounds like adequate safety controls to the feature. From a report: Google Drive (the file repository interface that contains your Docs, Sheets, and Slides files) is finally getting a spam folder and algorithmic spam filters, just like Gmail has. It sounds like the update will provide a way to limit Drive's unbelievably insecure behavior of allowing random people to add files to your Drive account witho
  
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• EU Crypto Tax Plans Include NFTs, Foreign Companies, Draft Text Shows

  12-05-2023 22:00 via slashdot.org
  
  The European Union plans to force crypto companies to give tax authorities details of their clients' holdings, according to a draft bill released to CoinDesk under freedom of information laws. From a report: The data-sharing law, based on a model from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), is set to be agreed by finance ministers next week, and will allow tax authorities to share data within the 27-nation bloc. Commission officials have said the bill received unanimous
  
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• EU Plans Black Sea Internet Cable To Reduce Reliance on Russia

  12-05-2023 21:21 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The EU is planning an undersea internet cable to improve connectivity to Georgia and reduce dependence on lines running through Russia, amid growing concerns about vulnerabilities to infrastructure transmitting global data. From a report: The $49mn cable will link EU member states to the Caucasus via international waters in the Black Sea, stretching a span of 1,100km. The project aims to reduce the region's "dependency on terrestrial fibre-optic connectivity transiting via Russia," the European
  
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• Google Bard Isn't Available in Any European Union Countries and Canada

  12-05-2023 20:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  At I/O 2023 earlier this week, Google announced that it's expanding its AI chatbot Google Bard to 180 countries. However, what Google didn't mention is that Bard still isn't available in the European Union. From a report: On a support page, Google details the full list of 180 countries in which Bard is now available. This includes countries all over the globe, but very noticeably not any countries that are a part of the European Union. It's a big absence from what is otherwise a global expansion
  
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• UK Tech Entrepreneur Lynch Extradited To the US on Fraud Charges

  12-05-2023 20:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Mike Lynch, co-founder of UK software firm Autonomy, has been extradited to the United States to face criminal charges in a near decade-long legal battle and fall from grace for a man once hailed as Britain's answer to Bill Gates. From a report: Lynch faces 17 charges over Hewlett Packard's (HP) $11 billion acquisition of Autonomy, the company he grew into Britain's leading tech company, before it spectacularly unravelled after being bought by HP in 2011. Britain's interior ministry said on Frid
  
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• Fake Scientific Papers Are Alarmingly Common

  12-05-2023 19:22 via science.slashdot.org
  
  From a Science magazine report, shared by schwit1: When neuropsychologist Bernhard Sabel put his new fake-paper detector to work, he was "shocked" by what it found. After screening some 5000 papers, he estimates up to 34% of neuroscience papers published in 2020 were likely made up or plagiarized; in medicine, the figure was 24%. Both numbers, which he and colleagues report in a medRxiv preprint posted on 8 May, are well above levels they calculated for 2010 -- and far larger than the 2% baselin
  
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• Elon Musk Names NBCU Ad Chief Linda Yaccarino as Twitter CEO

  12-05-2023 18:07 via slashdot.org
  
  Elon Musk on Friday named longtime media executive Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter. "I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!" Musk wrote in a tweet. Yaccarino "will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology," Musk said. Earlier in the day, Yaccarino announced that she was leaving her role as chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal. "It has been an absolute honor to be part of Comcast N
  
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• 'EU's Cyber Resilience Act Contains a Poison Pill for Open Source Developers'

  12-05-2023 18:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Veteran open source report Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, writing at The Register: We can all agree that securing our software is a good thing. Thanks to one security fiasco after another â" the SolarWinds software supply chain attack, the perpetual Log4j vulnerability, and the npm maintainer protest code gone wrong -- we know we must secure our code. But the European Union's proposed Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) goes way, way too far in trying to regulate software security. At the top level, it
  
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• US Chamber of Commerce Slams SEC, Backs Coinbase in Legal Fight

  12-05-2023 17:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce called out the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday, slamming the financial watchdog for its regulatory approach toward the digital asset industry. From a report: It filed an amicus brief in support of Coinbase, which took the SEC to court last month. The exchange wants a court to force the SEC to respond to its so-called "petition for rulemaking" filed last July. The petition asks the SEC to propose and adopt rules for digital assets and answer quest
  
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• Netflix Plans To Cut Spending by $300 Million in 2023

  12-05-2023 16:42 via slashdot.org
  
  Netflix plans to reduce its spending by $300 million this year, WSJ reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter, as the streaming giant continues its push to improve profitability in a competitive market. From a report: The company is looking to cut costs, in part, because its plans to crack down on password sharing broadly in the U.S. and elsewhere were pushed back from the first quarter to the second quarter, the people said. That change is expected to generate new revenue. In an i
  
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• Toyota Japan Exposed Data on Millions of Vehicles For a Decade

  12-05-2023 16:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Toyota Japan has apologized after admitting to leaving millions of customers' vehicle details on the public internet for a decade. From a report: The car maker said in a notice that it will notify about 2.15 million customers whose personal and vehicle information were left exposed to the internet after a "cloud misconfiguration" was discovered recently in April. Toyota said that the exposed data includes: registered email addresses; vehicle-unique chassis and navigation terminal numbers; the lo
  
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• Fairphone's User-Repairable Headphones Will Offer Spare Parts Through Its App

  12-05-2023 15:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Today, Fairphone, a company known for making smartphones that are meant to last, revealed its take on a user repair-friendly set of wireless, over-the-ear headphones. Like its smartphones, Fairphone's Fairbuds XL have a modular design with Fairphone promising easy spare parts access. However, Fairphone's currently unsure how long it will have parts for the cans in stock. And Fairphone is pulling back from its typical five-year warranty for p
  
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• YouTuber Who Deliberately Crashed Airplane For Views Admits To Obstructing Federal Investigation

  12-05-2023 12:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Longtime Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: YouTuber Trevor Jacob has pled guilty to felony federal obstruction of an investigation for removing and destroying wreckage of his airplane that he intentionally crashed in November 2021 for online YouTube views. Maximum sentence is 20 years.On November 24, 2021 Jacob was flying solo from Lompoc City Airport to Mammoth Lakes, California. He reported to the FAA that he had engine trouble and had to abandon the plane using a parachute. After the FAA
  
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• SpaceX Says It Will Launch First Commercial Space Station By Mid-2025

  12-05-2023 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  schwit1 shares a report from UPI: SpaceX confirmed Wednesday it signed a contract to launch the world's first commercial space station. The company also will perform manned space flights shortly after launching the station into orbit "no later than August 2025," SpaceX said in a statement. The Haven-1 space station is being built by Vast, a private aerospace company based in Long Beach, Calif. Its "mission is to contribute to a future where billions of people are living and thriving in space --
  
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• EPA Proposes Crackdown On Power Plant Carbon Emissions

  12-05-2023 05:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Biden administration on Thursday unveiled a sweeping plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. power industry, one of the biggest steps so far in its effort to decarbonize the economy to fight climate change. The proposal would limit how much carbon dioxide power plants, which are the source of more than a quarter of U.S. emissions, can chuff into the atmosphere, putting the industry on a years-long course to install billions of do
  
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• Pure Storage: No More Hard Drives Will Be Sold After 2028

  12-05-2023 04:02 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: In the latest blast of the HDD vs SSD culture wars, a Pure Storage exec is predicting that no more hard disk drives will be sold after 2028 because of electricity costs and availability, as well as NAND $/TB declines. Shawn Rosemarin, VP R&D within the Customer Engineering unit at Pure, told B&F: "The ultimate trigger here is power. It's just fundamentally coming down to the cost of electricity." Not the declining cost of SSDs and Pure's DFMs dropping
  
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• Google Brings Dark Web Monitoring To All US Gmail Users

  12-05-2023 03:25 via it.slashdot.org
  
  At Google I/O on Wednesday, Google said that all Gmail users in the U.S. will soon be able to discover if their email address has been found on the dark web. The dark web report security feature will roll out over the coming weeks, and will be expanded to select international markets. BleepingComputer reports: Once enabled, it will allow Gmail users to scan the dark web for their email addresses and take action to protect their data based on guidance provided by Google. For instance, they'll be
  
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• Google Brings Dark Web Monitoring At All US Gmail Users

  12-05-2023 03:25 via it.slashdot.org
  
  At Google I/O on Wednesday, Google said that all Gmail users in the U.S. will soon be able to discover if their email address has been found on the dark web. The dark web report security feature will roll out over the coming weeks, and will be expanded to select international markets. BleepingComputer reports: Once enabled, it will allow Gmail users to scan the dark web for their email addresses and take action to protect their data based on guidance provided by Google. For instance, they'll be
  
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• Will AI Become the New McKinsey?

  12-05-2023 02:42 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Sci-fi writer Ted Chiang, writing for New Yorker: So, I would like to propose another metaphor for the risks of artificial intelligence. I suggest that we think about A.I. as a management-consulting firm, along the lines of McKinsey & Company. Firms like McKinsey are hired for a wide variety of reasons, and A.I. systems are used for many reasons, too. But the similarities between McKinsey -- a consulting firm that works with ninety per cent of the Fortune 100 -- and A.I. are also clear. Soci
  
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• Apple Is Bigger Than Almost Any Stock Market In the World

  12-05-2023 02:02 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  "My friend Ben Carlson pointed out that Apple's current market capitalization of about $2.7 trillion this week exceeds the entire market capitalization of the United Kingdom, the third biggest stock market in the world," writes CNBC's Bob Pisani. From the report: Dimensional's Matrix Book is an annual review of global returns that highlight the power of compound investing. It's a fascinating document: you can look up the compounded growth rate of the S&P 500 for every year going back to 1926
  
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• Android 14 Will Add More Customization To Your Home and Lock Screens

  12-05-2023 01:20 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  At Google I/O on Wednesday, VP of Engineering at Android David Burke new customization features coming to Android 14 later this year. Engadget reports: The tools build on the Material You design system Google introduced in 2021 by allowing users to create a custom wallpaper by picking a few of their favorite emojis. One of the new tools allows you to add up to 14 emojis to a single wallpaper. You can then pick a pattern and a color to bring everything together. Once the wallpaper is on your home
  
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• Inside the Italian Mafia's Encrypted Phone of Choice

  12-05-2023 00:40 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a collaborative investigation between Motherboard, lavialibera, and IrpiMedia: Mafioso Bartolo Bruzzaniti needed everyone to do their job just right. First, the Colombian suppliers would hide a massive amount of cocaine inside bananas at the port city of Turbo, Colombia. That shipping container would then be transported across the ocean to Catania, in Sicily, Italy. A corrupt port worker on the mafia's payroll would wave the shipment through and had adv
  
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• First Rust Code Shows Up in the Windows 11 Kernel

  12-05-2023 00:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  According to Azure CTO Mark Russinovich, the most recent Windows 11 Insider Preview build is the first to include the memory-safe programming language Rust. Thurrott reports: "If you're on the Win11 Insider ring, you're getting the first taste of Rust in the Windows kernel," Russinovich tweeted last night. It's not clear which Insider channel he is referring to, however.Regardless, that that was quick: Microsoft only went public with its plans to replace parts of the Windows kernel with Rust cod
  
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