ICT news

• How Review-Bombing Can Tank a Book Before It's Published

  29-06-2023 23:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The website Goodreads has become an essential avenue for building readership, but the same features that help generate excitement can also backfire. The New York Times: Cecilia Rabess figured her debut novel, "Everything's Fine," would spark criticism: The story centers on a young Black woman working at Goldman Sachs who falls in love with a conservative white co-worker with bigoted views. But she didn't expect a backlash to strike six months before the book was published. In January, after a Go
  
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• Fed Says 57 Firms Set To Use 'FedNow' Instant Payments After Late July Launch

  29-06-2023 22:50 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The U.S. Federal Reserve announced on Thursday that 57 firms have been certified to utilize its "FedNow" instant payments system after it launches in late July. From a report: The Fed did not provide a specific date for the launch, but 41 banks and 15 service providers, including large firms like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon, US Bancorp and Wells Fargo, have completed formal testing and will be ready to provide instant payments after the new service is live.Read more of this story at
  
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• Decades-long Bet on Consciousness Ends

  29-06-2023 22:05 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Christof Koch wagered David Chalmers 25 years ago that researchers would learn how the brain achieves consciousness by now. But the quest continues. From a report: A 25-year science wager has come to an end. In 1998, neuroscientist Christof Koch bet philosopher David Chalmers that the mechanism by which the brain's neurons produce consciousness would be discovered by 2023. Both scientists agreed publicly on 23 June, at the annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousne
  
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• Windows 11's AI-powered Copilot (and its Bing-powered ads) Enters Public Preview

  29-06-2023 21:33 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Last month, Microsoft announced that it would continue its put-ChatGPT-in-everything adventure with a new Windows 11 feature called Copilot. The company added generative AI to Edge and to the Bing-powered taskbar Search field months ago, but Copilot promises to be the most visible and hard-to-ignore version of Microsoft's big AI push in its most visible and hard-to-ignore product. This week's Windows Insider Preview build for Dev channel users, build 23493, w
  
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• People Hire Phone Bots To Torture Telemarketers

  29-06-2023 20:40 via slashdot.org
  
  AI software and voice cloners simulate distracted saps willing to stay on the phone forever -- or until callers finally give up. From a report: Complaints about unwanted telephone calls are "far-and-away the largest category of consumer complaints to the FCC," with the average American receiving 14 unwanted calls a month, according to one industry estimate, a spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission said. Automated dialers at call centers can easily crank out 100 calls a second, const
  
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• High School in Illinois Changes Every Student's Password To 'Ch@ngeme!'

  29-06-2023 20:00 via it.slashdot.org
  
  After a cybersecurity audit mistakenly reset everyone's password, a high school changed every student's password to "Ch@ngeme!" giving every student the chance to hack into any other student's account, according to emails obtained by TechCrunch. From the report: Last week, Oak Park and River Forest (OPRF) High School in Illinois told parents that during a cybersecurity audit, "due to an unexpected vendor error, the system reset every student's password, preventing students from being able to log
  
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• Black Hole at Heart of Our Galaxy Is on Crash Course, Space-Time Ripples Reveal

  29-06-2023 19:20 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Supermassive black holes all over the universe are merging, a fate that will eventually come for the black hole at the center of our galaxy. From a report: These mysterious cosmic structures at the heart of nearly every galaxy consume light and matter and are impossible to glimpse with traditional telescopes. But now, for the first time, astrophysicists have gathered knowledge directly from these titans, in the form of gravitational waves that ripple through space and time. What they learned sug
  
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• Oracle Spending 'Billions' on Nvidia Chips This Year, Ellison Says

  29-06-2023 18:40 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Oracle is spending "billions" of dollars on chips from Nvidia as it expands a cloud computing service targeting a new wave of artificial intelligence companies, Oracle founder and Chairman Larry Ellison said. From a report: Oracle's cloud division is working to gain ground against larger rivals such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft. To get an edge, Oracle has focused on building fast networks that can shuffle around the huge amount of data needed to create AI systems similar to ChatGPT.
  Orac
  
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• Virgin Galactic Launches Crucial First Commercial Spaceflight

  29-06-2023 17:49 via science.slashdot.org
  
  It is showtime for Virgin Galactic. The spaceflight company founded by billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson almost two decades ago launched its long-awaited first commercial spaceflight, called "Galactic 01," on Thursday. From a report: Taking off from Spaceport America in New Mexico, the company's spacecraft is being flown by a pair of pilots and carries four passengers: A Virgin Galactic trainer, to oversee the mission from inside the cabin, and its first trio of paying customers. The thre
  
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• Apple Defies EU Over Antitrust Charges in Spotify Probe

  29-06-2023 17:20 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple is set for a showdown with European Union antitrust regulators, insisting it doesn't need to make any more changes to its App Store after it was hit by formal charges over its treatment of music streaming rivals such as Spotify. From a report: The iPhone maker will argue at a hearing in Brussels on Friday that the EU wrongly accused it of illegal curbs on the likes of Spotify that prevent developers from steering users away from the App Store. Apple will say it's already addressed any poss
  
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• National Geographic Lays Off All Remaining Staff Writers

  29-06-2023 16:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "The Washington Post reports that all remaining editorial staffers have been laid off at National Geographic, as the iconic magazine continues to spiral downward," writes longtime Slashdot reader DesScorp. "The famous yellow-bordered print issues of our youth is also an endangered species, as National Geographic also announced that print issues will no longer be sold on newsstands." From the report: Like one of the endangered species whose impending extinction it has chronicled, National Geograp
  
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• Reddit is Telling Protesting Mods Their Communities 'Will Not' Stay Private

  29-06-2023 15:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Reddit is pressuring moderators who have set their subreddits to private to reopen their communities this week, according to messages seen by The Verge. From the report: The company has given moderators deadlines to lay out their plans for reopening but said that they can't stay closed. The timeframes given generally indicate a deadline of sometime Thursday afternoon. Reddit was vague about the exact repercussions but seemed to suggest this was the final warning stage. "This community remaining
  
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• CISA Releases Nine Industrial Control Systems Advisories

  29-06-2023 14:00 via cisa.gov
  CISA released nine Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories on June 29, 2023. These advisories provide timely information about current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploits surrounding ICS. 
  ICSA-23-180-01 Delta Electronics InfraSuite Device Master
  ICSA-23-180-02 Schneider Electric EcoStruxure
  ICSA-23-180-03 Ovarro TBox RTUs
  ICSA-23-180-04 Mitsubishi Electric MELSEC-F Series
  ICSMA-23-180-01 Medtronic Paceart Optima System
  ICSA-19-120-01 Rockwell Automation CompactLogix 5370 (Up
  
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• 2023 CWE Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses

  29-06-2023 14:00 via cisa.gov
  The Homeland Security Systems Engineering and Development Institute, sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security and operated by MITRE, has released the 2023 Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses. The CWE Top 25 is calculated by analyzing public vulnerability data in the National Vulnerability Data (NVD) for root cause mappings to CWE weaknesses for the previous two calendar years. These weaknesses lead to serious vulnerabilities in software. An attacke
  
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• SEC Notice To SolarWinds CISO and CFO Roils Cybersecurity Industry

  29-06-2023 13:00 via it.slashdot.org
  
  The US Securities and Exchange Commission has roiled the cybersecurity industry by putting executives of SolarWind on notice that it may pursue legal action for violations of federal law in connection with their response to the 2020 attack on the company's infrastructure that affected thousands of customers in government agencies and companies globally. From a report: Current and former employees and officers of the company, including the chief financial officer (CFO) and chief information secur
  
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• NASA Kills Its X-57 Electric Plane Before It Ever Flies

  29-06-2023 11:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  schwit1 shares a report from Popular Science: NASA said in a conference call with reporters that it would not ever be flying its experimental electric aircraft, the X-57, citing safety concerns that are insurmountable with the time and budget they have for the project. The X-57 program will wind down without the aircraft ever going up into the sky. The project had previously seen challenges. For example, transistor modules in the electrical inverters kept failing and "blowing up" in testing, Sea
  
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• Aspartame Sweetener, Used in Products From Coca-Cola Diet Sodas To Mars' Extra Chewing Gum, Set To Be Declared a Possible Carcinogen

  29-06-2023 10:50 via science.slashdot.org
  
  One of the world's most common artificial sweeteners is set to be declared a possible carcinogen next month by a leading global health body, Reuters reported Thursday, citing two sources with knowledge of the process, pitting it against the food industry and regulators. From the report: Aspartame, used in products from Coca-Cola diet sodas to Mars' Extra chewing gum and some Snapple drinks, will be listed in July as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" for the first time by the International Agency
  
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• Sony's Confidential PlayStation Secrets Just Spilled Because of a Sharpie

  29-06-2023 09:00 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Sony highly confidential information about its PlayStation business has just been revealed by mistake. As part of the FTC v. Microsoft hearing, Sony supplied a document from PlayStation chief Jim Ryan that includes redacted details on the margins Sony shares with publishers, its Call of Duty revenues, and even the cost of developing some of its games. From a report: It looks like someone redacted the documents with a black Sharpie -- but when you scan them in, it's easy to see some of the redact
  
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• South Koreans Become Younger Under New Age-Counting Law

  29-06-2023 07:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  South Koreans have become a year or two younger as a new law aligns the nation's two traditional age-counting methods with international standards. The BBC reports: The law scraps one traditional system that deemed South Koreans one year old at birth, counting time in the womb. Another counted everyone as aging by a year every first day of January instead of on their birthdays. The switch to age-counting based on birth date took effect on Wednesday. President Yoon Suk Yeol pushed strongly for th
  
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• First Battery-Powered Trains Arrive In Europe

  29-06-2023 05:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: A 20-strong fleet of Hitachi Masaccio trains is now running in Italy, where they are known as "Blues." It's the first phase of a 1.23 billion euros project which will add 135 battery-powered trains to national operator Trenitalia's network, running in Calabria, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lazio, Tuscany, and the islands of Sicily and Sardinia. In Calabria, the trains are running on the Ionian Coast, while Sicilian routes include Messina to Palermo and Mes
  
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• The ReactOS Project Suddenly Shows Signs of Life

  29-06-2023 02:10 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  jeditobe writes: ReactOS is an open-source operating system that aims to replicate Microsoft Windows, and can already run many Windows applications without modification. ReactOS published a new (infrequent) newsletter to outline recent work. It reveals that progress has slowed down recently, but the project definitely isn't dead. The newsletter also acknowledges the team hasn't put out a new version since the end of 2021, although progress continues. Due to shifting focuses to quality releases,
  
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• Society of Automotive Engineers Is Standardizing Tesla's EV Charging Plug

  29-06-2023 01:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  The Society of Automotive Engineers, a U.S.-based standards organization known as SAE International, announced plans to support Tesla's EV "North American Charging Standard" or NACS port. "SAE's adoption will make it easier for electric vehicle charging station manufacturers and operators to implement the port while also making charging for EV owners more consistent and reliable," reports The Verge. From the report: Tesla's formerly proprietary charging port was opened up last year in a bid to b
  
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• Microsoft's GitHub Under Fire For DDoSing Crucial Open Source Project Website

  29-06-2023 00:50 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The servers used by the GMP project, an open source arithmetic library at the heart of GCC and other programs, slowed to a crawl earlier this month due to a large amount of network traffic originating from Microsoft servers. The Register reports: Torbjorn Granlund, principal author of GMP, raised the alarm in a note to the project's mailing list. "The GMP servers are under attack by several hundred IP addresses owned by Microsoft Corporation," he wrote. "We do not know if this is made with malic
  
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• Australia Urged To Ban Online Gambling Ads To Curb Growing Addiction

  29-06-2023 00:10 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Australia should phase out advertising for online gambling in three years, a parliamentary committee of inquiry recommended on Wednesday as it looked to limit the "havoc" it caused in one of the world's biggest betting market. The committee made 31 recommendations on how online gambling, which it said was changing the culture of sport, should be regulated and how Australians struggling with addiction should be supported. Australians outspend the
  
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