ICT news

• China's Huawei Poised To Overcome US Ban With Return of 5G Phones

  12-07-2023 23:20 via slashdot.org
  
  China's Huawei is plotting a return to the 5G smartphone industry by the end of this year, according to research firms, signalling a comeback after a U.S. ban on equipment sales decimated its consumer electronics business. From a report: Huawei should be able to procure 5G chips domestically using its own advances in semiconductor design tools along with chipmaking from Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co (SMIC), three third-party technology research firms covering China's smartphone se
  
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• US To Decide on GM Request To Deploy Self-Driving Cars

  12-07-2023 22:41 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  U.S. regulators will soon decide on a petition filed by General Motors' Cruise self-driving technology unit seeking permission to deploy up to 2,500 self-driving vehicles annually without human controls, a top auto safety official said on Wednesday. From a report: The petition, filed in February 2022, seeks government approval to deploy vehicles annually without steering wheels, mirrors, turn signals or windshield wipers. National Highway Traffic Safety acting Administrator Ann Carlson said Wedn
  
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• VanMoof Explores Sale Under Court Protection Because It Can't Pay Bills

  12-07-2023 22:02 via slashdot.org
  
  swinferno shares a report: VanMoof -- the Amsterdam-based e-bike maker that once bragged about being the "most funded e-bike company in the world" -- has turned to the Dutch courts for legal protection in order to give the company time to pay its bills. The company is exploring all possible routes out of its debt, including a possible sale, according to a source familiar with the matter. All options are on the table as the company looks for a path to survival. The company is also temporarily clo
  
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• Crypto Miner Hive Drops 'Blockchain' From Name in Pivot To AI

  12-07-2023 21:23 via slashdot.org
  
  The crypto-mining company formerly known as Hive Blockchain Technologies is pivoting to artificial intelligence and web3, and has changed its name accordingly. From a report: The Vancouver-based miner has dropped the "blockchain" marker and said that its new branding as Hive Digital Technologies is intended to reflect "its mission to drive advancements" in AI applications like ChatGPT, and to "support the new web3 ecosystem."
  Hive intends to use its existing fleet of Nvidia graphics processing u
  
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• Google Play Changes Policy on Tokenized Digital Assets, Allowing NFTs in Apps and Games

  12-07-2023 20:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google Play announced a major shift in policy today, allowing developers to incorporate digital assets such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) into their apps and games in the store. From a report: Companies that decide to offer the ability to buy, sell or earn tokenized assets will be required to make it clear in the Play Console that there are blockchain-based elements in the app. In a blog post shared with CoinDesk, Joseph Mills, Google Play's Group Product Manager, wrote that this will allow part
  
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• Elon Musk Announces xAI With Goal To Understand 'True Nature of the Universe'

  12-07-2023 19:31 via slashdot.org
  
  Elon Musk announced the formation of what he's calling xAI, whose goal is to "understand the true nature of the universe." The team at xAI, led by Musk, includes individuals who have previously worked at DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla, and the University of Toronto.
  "Collectively we contributed some of the most widely used methods in the field, in particular the Adam optimizer, Batch Normalization, Layer Normalization, and the discovery of adversarial examples. We f
  
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• Chinese Hackers Raided US Government Email Accounts By Exploiting Microsoft Cloud Bug

  12-07-2023 19:20 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Chinese hackers exploited a flaw in Microsoft's cloud email service to gain access to the email accounts of U.S. government employees, the technology giant has confirmed. From a report: The hacking group, tracked as Storm-0558, compromised approximately 25 email accounts, including government agencies, as well as related consumer accounts linked to individuals associated with these organizations, according to Microsoft. [...]
  Microsoft's investigation determined that Storm-0558, a China-based ha
  
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• Reddit Beats Lawsuit By WallStreetBets Founder

  12-07-2023 18:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  A U.S. judge has dismissed a lawsuit in which the founder of WallStreetBets, which helped ignite investors' fascination with "meme" stocks, accused Reddit of wrongly banning him from moderating the community and usurping his trademark rights. From a report: Jaime Rogozinski, who founded WallStreetBets in 2012, said Reddit ousted him in April 2020 as a pretext to keep him from controlling a "a famous brand that helped Reddit rise to a $10 billion valuation" by late 2021. Rogozinski had applied to
  
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• You Can Say No To a TSA Face Scan. But Even a Senator Had Trouble.

  12-07-2023 18:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: On his way to catch a flight, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) was asked to have his photo taken by a facial recognition machine at airport security. The Transportation Security Administration has been testing use of facial recognition software to verify travelers' identification at some airports. Use of the technology is voluntary, the TSA has told the public and Congress. If you decline, a TSA agent is supposed to verify your identification, as we have done at ai
  
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• Singapore's Temasek Says It's Not Looking To Invest in Crypto Firms

  12-07-2023 17:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Singapore's sovereign wealth fund Temasek is not currently looking to invest in crypto companies amid regulatory uncertainty in the sector, its Chief Investment Officer Rohit Sipahimalani said. From a report: "There's a lot of regulatory uncertainty in this environment. And I do think that be very difficult for us to make another investment and exchange in the middle of all this regulatory uncertainty," Sipahimalani told CNBC in a Tuesday interview. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ch
  
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• Lina Khan Is Taking on the World's Biggest Tech Companies - and Losing

  12-07-2023 16:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan is taking on the world's biggest technology companies -- and losing. From a report: Khan failed Tuesday in her latest effort to block a big-tech deal when a federal judge denied her agency's bid to block Microsoft from closing its purchase of videogame publisher Activision Blizzard. The FTC suffered a similar setback earlier this year when it tried to thwart Meta Platforms' purchase of a virtual-reality gaming company. Khan, who gained prominence as a cri
  
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• Why the Early Success of Threads May Crash Into Reality

  12-07-2023 16:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Mark Zuckerberg has used Meta's might to push Threads to a fast start -- but that may only work up to a point. Mike Isaac, writing at The New York Times: A big tech company with billions of users introduces a new social network. Leveraging the popularity and scale of its existing products, the company intends to make the new social platform a success. In doing so, it also plans to squash a leading competitor's app. If this sounds like Instagram's new Threads app and its push against its rival Tw
  
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• NASA Decides Not To Launch Two Already-Built Asteroid Probes

  12-07-2023 15:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Two small spacecraft should have now been cruising through the Solar System on the way to study unexplored asteroids, but after several years of development and nearly $50 million in expenditures, NASA announced Tuesday the probes will remain locked inside a Lockheed Martin factory in Colorado. That's because the mission, called Janus, was supposed to launch last year as a piggyback payload on the same rocket with NASA's much larger Psyche s
  
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• CISA and FBI Release Cybersecurity Advisory on Enhanced Monitoring to Detect APT Activity Targeting Outlook Online

  12-07-2023 14:00 via cisa.gov
  The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA), Enhanced Monitoring to Detect APT Activity Targeting Outlook Online, to provide guidance to agencies and critical infrastructure organizations on enhancing monitoring in Microsoft Exchange Online environments. 
  In June 2023, a Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agency observed unexpected events in Microsoft 365 (M365) audit logs. Aft
  
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• NASA Expands Developers' Contracts For Its Next-Gen Spacesuits

  12-07-2023 12:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  NASA has expanded its contracts with Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace to design and develop new spacesuits, providing each company with an additional $5 million. Engadget reports: NASA has ordered a spacesuit from Axiom Space meant for use in Low Earth Orbit, specifically for spacewalks outside the International Space Station. The original contract for Axiom was for a spacewalking system that the Artemis III astronauts will wear on the lunar surface when they land on the moon. Axiom unveiled a
  
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• Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Rocket Engine Explodes During Testing

  12-07-2023 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Blue Origin's BE-4 rocket engine exploded during testing, causing significant damage and potential delays to the company's rocket launches, including those for its customer United Launch Alliance (ULA). CNBC reports: During a firing on June 30 at a West Texas facility of Jeff Bezos' space company, a BE-4 engine detonated about 10 seconds into the test, according to several people familiar with the matter. Those people described having seen video of a dramatic explosion that destroyed the engine
  
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• Toronto Zoo Urges Visitors To Stop Showing Cellphone Videos To Gorillas

  12-07-2023 05:30 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Toronto Star: Nassir the gorilla, languid in the heat of a summer afternoon, sits just within reach of a faded sign taped to the glass of his enclosure at the Toronto Zoo, advising visitors not to share images on their cellphones with the swinging bachelor. "We've had a lot of members and guests that actually will put their phones up to the glass and show him videos," says Maria Franke, the zoo's director of wildlife conservation and welfare. "And Nas
  
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• Oracle Takes On Red Hat In Linux Code Fight

  12-07-2023 04:02 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Steven Vaughan-Nichols writes via ZDNet: I'd been waiting for Oracle to throw its hat into the ring for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Linux source-code fight. I knew it was only a matter of time. On July 10, Oracle's Edward Screven, chief corporate architect, and Wim Coekaerts, head of Oracle Linux development, declared: "IBM's actions are not in your best interest. By killing CentOS as a RHEL alternative and attacking AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux, IBM is eliminating one way your customers sa
  
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• SUSE Will Fork Red Hat Enterprise Linux

  12-07-2023 03:45 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  John.Banister writes: SUSE announced that they're spending $10 million on maintaining a fork of RHEL, with the source code of the fork to be freely available to all. I don't know that people who want to copy RHEL source will necessarily see copying the source of a fork as furthering their goals, but it could be that SUSE will build a nice alternative enterprise Linux to complement their current product. And, I reckon, better SUSE than Oracle, since I keep reading comments on people getting screw
  
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• 'Most Funded e-Bike Company In the World' Pauses eBike Sales, Sparking Rumors of Bankruptcy

  12-07-2023 02:45 via slashdot.org
  
  In late 2021, VanMoof claimed to be "the most funded e-bike company in the world" after raising a total of $182 million in the two years prior -- a figure that would later surpass $200 million. Now, according to multiple sources spoken to by TechCrunch, the Dutch e-bike company's strategy and momentum "appear to have steered dangerously off course." From the report: Our sources tell us that VanMoof is working on securing a bridge round that will help it stay afloat. Sources also claim that senio
  
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• TikTok Executive Admits Australian Users' Data Accessed By Employees In China

  12-07-2023 02:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Australian user data is accessible to TikTok employees based in China on a "very strict basis," the company's head of data security, Will Farrell, has said. In their first public appearance before Australian members of parliament since the government joined Canada, the US and the UK in banning TikTok from government-owned devices amid concerns about the company's connections to China, TikTok executives were questioned at length by a parliame
  
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• Linux Hits 3% Desktop Market Share

  12-07-2023 01:20 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  According to Statcounter, the Linux share on the desktop has passed 3% for the first time. GamingOnLinux reports: While it has been close a couple of times, the trend according to their stats is pretty clear that Linux use has been slowly rising over the last few years. This does not include ChromeOS, even though it's based on Linux, as they track that separately so this is just plain desktop Linux.Across this year their stats show for Linux:January - 2.91%
  February - 2.94%
  March - 2.85%
  April -
  
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• Amazon Claims It Isn't a 'Very Large Online Platform' To Evade EU Rules

  12-07-2023 00:40 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amazon doesn't want to comply with Europe's Digital Services Act, and to avoid the rules the company is arguing that it doesn't meet the definition of a Very Large Online Platform under EU law. Amazon filed an appeal at the EU General Court to challenge the European Commission decision that Amazon meets the criteria and must comply with the new regulations. "We agree with the EC's objective and are committed to protecting customers from ille
  
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• Google Hit With Lawsuit Alleging It Stole Data From Millions of Users To Train Its AI Tools

  12-07-2023 00:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  "CNN reports on a wide-ranging class action lawsuit claiming Google scraped and misused data to train its AI systems," writes long-time Slashdot reader david.emery. "This goes to the heart of what can be done with information that is available over the internet." From the report: The complaint alleges that Google "has been secretly stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans" and using this data to train its AI products, such as its chatbot Ba
  
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