ICT news

• Razzlekhan and Husband Guilty of Bitcoin Launder

  04-08-2023 23:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  A husband and wife cyber-crime team have pleaded guilty to trying to launder $4.5bn of Bitcoin that he had stolen in a hack in 2016. From a report: Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein were arrested last year in New York after police traced their riches back to the crypto heist. While evading police, Morgan masqueraded as a rapper and tech entrepreneur. As part of a plea deal, Lichtenstein admitted he was behind the hack. The couple both pleaded guilty to money laundering, but Morgan pleaded gui
  
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• SoftBank Sues Former IRL CEO For Fraud

  04-08-2023 22:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  SoftBank sued former IRL CEO Abraham Shafi and five siblings and cousins for allegedly misleading the investor about the messaging app's growth, prompting the Japanese conglomerate to buy $150 million worth of shares in the company in 2021 at the height of a pandemic-fueled consumer internet boom. The Information: SoftBank said Shafi and his family members defrauded investors by lying about the company's millions of users, which were actually bots. The lawsuit said the defendants deleted data an
  
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• Canadian Government Services To Become 'Digital First'

  04-08-2023 22:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Canadians will soon be able to access and apply for more federal government services online -- from passports to payments, says Canada's first minister of citizens' services. From a report: Terry Beech says he's also open to innovation and using new technologies like artificial intelligence to improve the way the government delivers services to Canadians. "I think, fundamentally, it's my job to wake up every day thinking about how we're improving the customer service experience for Canadians," B
  
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• 'Microsoft is Shutting Down Cortana, and Apple Should Do the Same With Siri'

  04-08-2023 21:20 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Filipe Esposito, writing for Apple-focused news site 9to5Mac: As reported by Windows Latest, the Cortana app has received an update via the Microsoft Store after two years without getting a single new feature. But instead of new features, the update pretty much kills Cortana and now shows a message saying that "Cortana in Windows as a standalone app is deprecated." [...] Earlier this week, during a call with investors, Apple CEO Tim Cook reinforced that Apple has been conducting research with a
  
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• A Ponzi Scheme Targets Desperate Workers Amid Zimbabwe's Employment Crisis

  04-08-2023 20:40 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Dumi, a Zimbabwean, fell for E-Creator's review-writing job, investing $112. When the company's director disappeared with $1M, his account was frozen, leaving him scammed. Rest of World reports: Thousands of Zimbabweans have been lured into a scam in hopes of making a quick buck, at a time when unemployment in the country is high: Estimates vary from 7.9% to 20%, or even 90%, according to the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. Alongside the job crisis, the country has been reeling under an infla
  
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• Nikola CEO Michael Lohscheller, Company's Fourth in As Many Years, Steps Down

  04-08-2023 20:00 via slashdot.org
  
  Nikola Chief Executive Michael Lohscheller, an auto industry veteran, has stepped down due to a family health matter, and Nikola Chairman Steve Girsky has taken over as CEO of the electric-vehicle maker. From a report Girsky is Nikola's fourth CEO in almost as many years after the 2020 departure of Nikola founder Trevor Milton, who was later convicted of defrauding investors. Lohscheller, who took over as CEO of Nikola earlier this year, previously served as chief financial officer and then CEO
  
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• A Cyberattack Has Disrupted Hospitals and Health Care in Several States

  04-08-2023 19:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A cyberattack has disrupted hospital computer systems in several states, forcing some emergency rooms to close and ambulances to be diverted, and many primary care services remained closed on Friday as security experts worked to determine the extent of the problem and resolve it. From a report: The "data security incident" began Thursday at facilities operated by Prospect Medical Holdings, which is based in California and has hospitals and clinics there and in Texas, Connecticut, Rhode Island an
  
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• Google Offers On-Campus Hotel 'Special' To Help Lure Workers Back To the Office

  04-08-2023 18:51 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google is hoping to lure workers back to the office with a new on-site hotel special, but some workers aren't convinced it's a good deal. From a report: The company said full-time employees can book a room at an on-campus hotel in Mountain View for $99 a night in what it's deeming a "Summer Special," according to materials viewed by CNBC. The description states that the special will run through Sept. 30 in hopes it'll "make it easier for Googlers to transition to the hybrid workplace." Since the
  
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• India Delays Laptop Import Restrictions Order

  04-08-2023 18:06 via slashdot.org
  
  India is delaying the implementation of its import limitations on laptops, tablets, and servers, a day after the unexpected regulation left electronic industry giants in a state of disruption and uncertainty. From a report: New Delhi will provide a "transition period" before implementing the amended import policy, India's Deputy IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said Friday. The government will offer at least one month to companies to obtain licenses, a government official told local reporters. I
  
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• Qualcomm Chip Sales Down 25 Percent, Plans Layoffs

  04-08-2023 17:22 via slashdot.org
  
  Smartphone sales are down across the board, and that means component vendors like Qualcomm are also feeling the heat. From a report: The company's Q3 2023 earnings (Qualcomm's fiscal year is October-September) have handset chip sales down 25 percent year over year, with net income down 52 percent year over year. The company also issued lower-than-expected guidance for the next quarter, all causing the stock to drop around 8 percent in the aftermath of the call. Like most other tech companies, Qu
  
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• Apple Hits 1 Billion Paid Subscriptions

  04-08-2023 16:40 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple now has more than 1 billion paid subscriptions across all of its services, including Apple Music, iCloud, Apple News, Apple TV+ and more. From a report: Apple has methodically executed a long-term strategy of offsetting slowing hardware sales growth with revenue from software services -- and that now accounts for more than a quarter of the company's sales. Apple's advertising business is expected to reach $6 billion by 2025, which would make it larger than both Snapchat and Twitter's ad bu
  
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• Threads User Count Falls To New Lows

  04-08-2023 16:03 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Threads, Meta's Twitter rival, is struggling to retain users roughly a month after its highly publicized launch, according to fresh industry estimates showing that app engagement has fallen to new lows. From a report: The data from market research firms Similarweb and Sensor Tower highlight the challenges facing Meta as it seeks to exploit the opening created by the chaos surrounding Twitter's management. Threads' daily active user count is down 82% from launch as of July 31, according to Sensor
  
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• Waymo Says Austin, Texas, Will Be Its Next Robotaxi City

  04-08-2023 15:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Waymo's fourth robotaxi city will be Austin, Texas. It will be a bit of a homecoming for the Alphabet-owned self-driving company. Waymo said that it will kick off the process for a commercial robotaxi service in the city later this year. But that doesn't mean passengers can hail one of the company's driverless vehicles quite yet; Waymo's playbook is to start with manual testing, following by supervised testing, fully autonomous driving, and the
  
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• CISA Releases its Cybersecurity Strategic Plan

  04-08-2023 14:00 via cisa.gov
  Today, CISA released a strategic plan to lay out how we will fulfill our cybersecurity mission over the next three years. The CISA Cybersecurity Strategic Plan aligns the following nine objectives to specific enabling measures and measures of effectiveness to drive accountability:
  Increase visibility into, and ability to disrupt, cybersecurity threats and campaigns
  Coordinate disclosure of, hunt for, and drive mitigation of critical and exploitable vulnerabilities
  Plan for, exercise, and execute
  
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• Many People Feel They Work In Pointless, Meaningless Jobs, Research Confirms

  04-08-2023 12:00 via slashdot.org
  
  A new study found that people working in finance, sales and managerial roles are much more likely than others on average to think their jobs are useless or unhelpful to others. Phys.Org reports: The study, by Simon Walo, of Zurich University, Switzerland, is the first to give quantitative support to a theory put forward by the American anthropologist David Graeber in 2018 that many jobs were "bullshit" -- socially useless and meaningless. Researchers had since suggested that the reason people fe
  
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• Alibaba Challenges Meta With Open-Sourced AI Model Launch

  04-08-2023 09:00 via meta.slashdot.org
  
  Alibaba said Thursday it is opening up its own artificial intelligence model to third-party developers in a move that would pit it against OpenAI and Meta, which has made similar moves. CNBC reports: In April, Alibaba launched its large language model (LLM) called Tongyi Qianwen. A LLM is an artificial intelligence model trained on huge amounts of data. It is also the basis for generative AI applications, such as ChatGPT -- which generate human-like responses to user prompts. Tongyi Qianwen allo
  
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• Hackers Could Have Scored Unlimited Airline Miles By Targeting One Platform

  04-08-2023 05:30 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Travel rewards programslike those offered by airlines and hotels tout the specific perks of joining their club over others. Under the hood, though, the digital infrastructure for many of these programs -- including Delta SkyMiles, United MileagePlus, Hilton Honors, and Marriott Bonvoy -- is built on the same platform. The backend comes from the loyalty commerce company Points and its suite of services, including an expansive application programming
  
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• Uber CEO Stunned By $52 Bill For Reporter's 2.9 Mile NYC Uber Ride

  04-08-2023 04:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  theodp writes: Wired Editor at Large, Steven Levy, was hit with a $52 bill for a 2.9-mile Uber ride in New York City as he headed to interview Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. "Do you know how much it cost me to go 2.9 miles to where we are now in an Uber?," Levy asked Khosrowshahi. "And he said $20, and I said, 'no it was like $52,' and he said, 'oh my God wow.'" [While Khosrowshahi attributed the head-scratching fee to "surge pricing," Levy insisted that made no sense given the trip took place at "
  
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• Biden Puts Final Nail In the Coffin For Incandescent Light Bulbs

  04-08-2023 03:25 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares a report from CNBC: On Tuesday, the Biden administration put the final nail in the coffin for incandescent light bulbs, the result of a decade-plus-long legislative path. The journey began in 2007 when the Energy Independence and Security Act passed. That law required the Department of Energy to evaluate whether efficiency standards for light bulbs needed to be set or amended and required a minimum standard of energy efficiency for light bulbs of 45 lu
  
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• Pornhub Goes Dark In Arkansas After Age Verification Law Kicks In

  04-08-2023 02:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Pornhub operator MindGeek has blocked all users in Arkansas from the site after the state's new age verification law went into effect on Tuesday. The Verge reports: The Arkansas law, SB 66, doesn't ban Pornhub from operating in the state, but it requires porn sites to verify that a user is 18 by confirming their age with identifying documents. On Wednesday, Pornhub blocked all traffic from IP addresses based in Arkansas in protest, arguing that the law, which was intended to protect children, ac
  
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• Microsoft Comes Under Blistering Criticism For 'Grossly Irresponsible' Security

  04-08-2023 02:02 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft has once again come under blistering criticism for the security practices of Azure and its other cloud offerings, with the CEO of security firm Tenable saying Microsoft is "grossly irresponsible" and mired in a "culture of toxic obfuscation." The comments from Amit Yoran, chairman and CEO of Tenable, come six days after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) blasted Microsoft for what he said were "negligent cybersecurity practices" that enabled
  
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• Nokia Keeps the Dream of the '90s Alive With an Update to Its Dumb Phones

  04-08-2023 01:20 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  The Nokia 130 and 150 are two new updated feature phones from Nokia that ship "with the form of an earlier generation of tech but the software of the current time," reports Gizmodo. From the report: The Nokia 150 is arguably the more worthy of the two; it comes in three colors and features a 2.4-inch QVGA display, a 1,450 mAh removable battery with up to a month of standby time, and a headphone jack for listening to music like we're still pirating it from the internet (though you can also tune i
  
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• Brave Cuts Ties With Bing To Offer Its Own Image and Video Search Results

  04-08-2023 00:40 via search.slashdot.org
  
  Brave Software, maker of the Brave web browser, has tuned its search engine to run on a homegrown index of images and videos in an effort to end its dependency on "Big Tech" rivals. The Register reports: On Thursday, the company said that image and video results from Brave Search -- available on the web at search.brave.com and via its browser -- will be served from Brave's own index. Search indexes are made by visiting online resources -- typically web pages, images, videos, or other files -- wi
  
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• The Boring Company Will Dig a 68-Mile Tunnel Network Under Las Vegas

  04-08-2023 00:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Elon Musk's tunneling company has permission to significantly expand its operations under the city of Las Vegas. Last month, the Las Vegas City Council voted unanimously to approve the Boring Company's plan to dig more tunnels under the city, following in the steps of Clark County, which in May gave a similar thumbs-up to the tunneling concern. The company's plan calls for 68 miles of tunnels and 81 stations, served by a fleet of Tesla elect
  
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