ICT news

• 'Meta's Newly Released Large Language Model Llama-2 Is Not Open Source'

  21-07-2023 23:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Earlier this week, Meta announced it has teamed up with Microsoft to launch Llama 2, its "open-source" large language model (LLM) that uses artificial intelligence to generate text, images, and code. In an opinion piece for The Register, long-time ZDNet contributor and technology analyst, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, writes: "Meta is simply open source washing an open but ultimately proprietary LLM." From the report: As Amanda Brock, CEO of OpenUK, said, it's "not an OSI approved license but a sig
  
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• Dolphin Emulator Abandons Steam Release Plans After Nintendo Legal Threat

  21-07-2023 23:02 via games.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A few months ago, the developers behind the Wii/GameCube emulator Dolphin said they were indefinitely postponing a planned Steam release, after Steam-maker Valve received a request from Nintendo to take down the emulator's "coming soon" page. This week, after consulting with a lawyer, the team says it has decided to abandon its Steam distribution plans altogether. "Valve ultimately runs the store and can set any condition they wish for softw
  
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• T-Mobile's Charging an Extra $5 Plus Tax for Paying Your Phone Bill In-Store

  21-07-2023 21:46 via news.slashdot.org
  
  T-Mobile has started charging customers who pay phone bills in-store a new $5 "Payment Support Charge," plus tax. According to The Mobile Report, the new fee went into effect on July 19th, though prepaid customers will be charged the fee later on. From a report: In a flier shared with The Mobile Report announcing the change to its employees, T-Mobile implies the reason behind the fee is to help "enable a digital-enabled future." Yet, as Droid Life points out, employee time spent processing payme
  
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• Dementia Risk Linked To Blood-Protein Imbalance in Middle Age

  21-07-2023 19:20 via science.slashdot.org
  
  A study that followed thousands of people over 25 years has identified proteins linked to the development of dementia if their levels are unbalanced during middle age. From a report: The findings, published in Science Translational Medicine on 19 July, could contribute to the development of new diagnostic tests, or even treatments, for dementia-causing diseases. Most of the proteins have functions unrelated to the brain. "We're seeing so much involvement of the peripheral biology decades before
  
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• Sergey Brin Is Back in the Trenches at Google

  21-07-2023 18:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google co-founder Sergey Brin is back at work. The multibillionaire has been visiting the tech giant's Mountain View, Calif., offices in recent months generally three to four days a week, working alongside researchers as they push to develop the company's next large artificial-intelligence system. WSJ: Brin participated in meetings about AI at Google's offices late last year, but the frequency and intensity of his involvement has picked up, said people familiar with the matter. His new stance is
  
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• NOAA Confirms June Was Earth's Hottest on Record

  21-07-2023 18:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Last month was the planet's warmest June since global temperature record-keeping began in 1850, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in its monthly climate update on Thursday. From a report: The agency also predicts unusually hot temperatures will occur in most of the United States, almost everywhere except the northern Great Plains, during August. The first two weeks of July were also likely the Earth's warmest on human record, for any time of year, according to the European
  
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• Hacking of Government Email Was Traditional Espionage, NSA Official Says

  21-07-2023 17:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The hack of Microsoft's cloud that resulted in the compromise of government emails was an example of a traditional espionage threat, a senior National Security Agency official said. From a report: Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, Rob Joyce, the director of cybersecurity at the N.S.A., said the United States needed to protect its networks from such espionage, but that adversaries would continue to try to secretly extract information from each other. "It is China doing espionage," Mr. Joyce s
  
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• Reddit Takes Over One of the Biggest Protesting Subreddits

  21-07-2023 16:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Reddit is now in charge of r/malefashionadvice, which for a time was the biggest subreddit still closed in protest of the platform's API pricing changes. From a report: The subreddit is now open, meaning Reddit users can browse content in the community once again, though in a restricted mode, meaning only certain users can make new posts. As we reported last week, the moderators of r/malefashionadvice, a subreddit with than 5 million subscribers, had taken the community private and were pushing
  
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• OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon Pledge To Watermark AI Content For Safety, White House Says

  21-07-2023 16:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  op AI companies including OpenAI, Alphabet and Meta Platforms have made voluntary commitments to the White House to implement measures such as watermarking AI-generated content to help make the technology safer, the Biden administration said on Friday. From a report: The companies -- which also include Anthropic, Inflection, Amazon.com and OpenAI partner Microsoft -- pledged to thoroughly test systems before releasing them and share information about how to reduce risks and invest in cybersecuri
  
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• AT&T May Have Nearly 200,000 Miles of Lead-Covered Phone Cables Across US

  21-07-2023 15:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T's legacy telephone network may have nearly 200,000 miles of lead-covered cables, according to an estimate by AT&T submitted in a court filing. "Based on its records, AT&T estimates that lead-clad cables represent less than 10 percent of its copper footprint of roughly two million sheath miles of cable, the overwhelming majority of which remains in active service," AT&T wrote in a court filing yesterday in US District Cou
  
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• Atlassian Releases Security Updates

  21-07-2023 14:00 via cisa.gov
  Atlassian has released its Security Bulletin for July 2023 to address vulnerabilities in Confluence Data Center & Server (CVE-2023-22505 and CVE-2023-22508) and Bamboo Data Center (CVE-2023-22506). An attacker can exploit these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.
  CISA encourages users and administrators to review Atlassian’s July 2023 Security Bulletin and apply the necessary updates.
  
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• 70% of Russian Gamers Are Pirates Following Western Publisher Exodus

  21-07-2023 12:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  According to a new study from online game development platform School XYZ, the exodus of major international video game publishers from Russia led to a sharp rise in the number of video gamers playing pirates games. TorrentFreak reports: Almost seven out of ten video gamers (69%) said they'd played at least one pirated copy in 2022, and more than half (51%) said that they're now pirating more than they did in 2021. As first reported by the Russian news outlet Vedomosti (paywall), the study was c
  
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• Two-Faced Star With Helium and Hydrogen Sides Baffles Astronomers

  21-07-2023 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Astronomers have discovered a two-faced star and are baffled by its bizarre appearance. The Guardian reports: The white dwarf appears to have one side composed almost entirely of hydrogen and the other side made up of helium. It is the first time that astronomers have discovered a lone star that appears to have spontaneously developed two contrasting faces. The object, which is more than 1,000 light years away in the Cygnus constellation, has been nicknamed Janus, after the two-faced Roman god o
  
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• Hearing Aids May Cut Risk of Cognitive Decline By Nearly Half

  21-07-2023 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: A study published Monday in the Lancet found that the use of hearing aids can reduce the risk of cognitive decline by about half -- 48 percent -- for adults with more risk factors for dementia, such as elevated blood pressure, higher rates of diabetes, lower education and income, and those living alone. The study was presented at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Amsterdam. [...] Over a three-year period, the ran
  
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• Ukraine Takes Down Massive Bot Farm, Seizes 150,000 SIM Cards

  21-07-2023 04:02 via it.slashdot.org
  
  The Cyber Police Department of the National Police of Ukraine dismantled another massive bot farm, seizing computer equipment, mobile phones, and roughly 150,000 SIM cards of multiple mobile operators. BleepingComputer reports: The bots were used to push Russian propaganda justifying Russia's war in Ukraine, to disseminate illegal content and personal information, and in various other fraudulent activities. In a joint operation, the cyber police and units of the Ukrainian National Police execute
  
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• Firmware Vulnerabilities In Millions of Computers Could Give Hackers Superuser Status

  21-07-2023 03:25 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Researchers have warned that leaked information from a ransomware attack on hardware-maker Gigabyte two years ago may contain critical zero-day vulnerabilities that pose a significant risk to the computing world. The vulnerabilities were found in firmware made by AMI for BMCs (baseboard management controllers), which are small computers integrated into server motherboards allowing remote management of multiple computers. These vulnerabilities, which can be exploited by local or remote attackers
  
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• NYC Subway Using AI To Track Fare Evasion

  21-07-2023 02:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  According to NBC News, New York City is using surveillance software with artificial intelligence to track people evading fares in its subway stations. From the report: The system was in use in seven subway stations in May, according to a report on fare evasion published online by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which oversees New York City's public transportation. The MTA expects that by the end of the year, the system will expand by "approximately two dozen more stations, with more to follo
  
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• TSMC Delays US Chip Plant Start To 2025 Due To Labor Shortages

  21-07-2023 02:02 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Apple Insider: Apple's processor manufacturer TSMC says that it can't find enough skilled workers to open its Arizona facility on time, and mass chip production will have to wait until 2025. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) began work on a first factory in Arizona in 2021. Since then, the plant has seen safety concerns, complaints from TSMC about US taxation, and a claim that US staff don't work hard enough. Most recently, the company
  
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• Google Messages To Support MLS Protocol For Interoperable E2E Encrypted Messaging

  21-07-2023 01:20 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Google today announced its support for interoperable end-to-end encrypted communication between large messaging platforms, with plans to integrate the MLS protocol into Google Messages and Android. 9to5Google reports: Google says it is "strongly supportive of regulatory efforts that require interoperability for large end-to-end messaging platforms," which is presumably in reference to the European Union's Digital Markets Act. That regulation would require iMessage to be interoperable with other
  
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• Is ChatGPT Getting Worse?

  21-07-2023 00:40 via slashdot.org
  
  A new study (PDF) from Stanford found that ChatGPT performed worse on certain tasks in June than its March version. The paper supports a widely held, though unproven, notion that the AI language model's performance in coding and compositional tasks has deteriorated in recent months. Fortune reports: The study compared the performance of the chatbot, created by OpenAI, over several months at four "diverse" tasks: solving math problems, answering sensitive questions, generating software code, and
  
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• IRS Moves Forward With a New Free-File Tax Return System

  21-07-2023 00:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from PBS: An IRS plan to test drive a new electronic free-file tax return system next year has got supporters and critics of the idea mobilizing to sway the public and Congress over whether the government should set up a permanent program to help people file their taxes without needing to pay somebody else to figure out what they owe. On one side, civil society groups this week launched a coalition to promote the move toward a government-run free-file program.
  
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