ICT news

• Early Humans Wiped Out in Europe By 'Glacial Cooling,' Study Suggests

  10-08-2023 23:30 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Extreme "glacial cooling" that occurred more than a million years ago in southern Europe is likely to have caused an "extinction of early humans" on the continent, according to new research. From a report: The previously unknown ice age pushed the European climate to "beyond what archaic humans could tolerate" and likely wiped out human life on the continent temporarily, concluded an academic paper published in the journal Science. The findings by 11 researchers from institutions including Unive
  
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• Virgin Galactic Successfully Flies Tourists To Space For First Time

  10-08-2023 23:02 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity, the reusable rocket-powered space plane carrying the company's first crew of tourists to space, successfully launched and landed on Thursday. The mission, known as Galactic 02, took off shortly after 11am ET from Spaceport America in New Mexico. Aboard the spacecraft were six individuals total -- the space plane's commander and former Nasa astronaut CJ Sturckow, the pilot Kelly Latimer, as well as Beth Moses, Vir
  
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• SanDisk's Silence Deafens as High-Profile Users Say Extreme SSDs Still Broken

  10-08-2023 22:25 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  SanDisk's silence this week has been deafening. Its portable SSDs are being lambasted as users and tech publications call for them to be pulled. From a report: The recent scrutiny of the drives follows problems from this spring when users, including an Ars Technica staff member, saw Extreme-series portable SSDs wipe data and become unmountable. A firmware update was supposed to fix things, but new complaints dispute its effectiveness. SanDisk has stayed mum on recent complaints and hasn't explai
  
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• Getting Into Y Combinator Is Tougher Than It's Ever Been

  10-08-2023 21:49 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Amid the flood of big tech layoffs, entry to Y Combinator has become the most competitive it's ever been. From a report: Silicon Valley's premier business incubator has received 44,000 applications so far this year, the most ever, and the acceptance rate for its summer batch was less than 1%, the lowest in the organization's history. Garry Tan, the president and chief executive officer of Y Combinator, said he anticipates "little tech" will thrive even in a turbulent economy. Cuts at big tech co
  
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• Russia Hopes For Its First Successful Lunar Landing Mission in Nearly 50 Years

  10-08-2023 19:20 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Russia hopes to launch its first successful lunar landing mission for nearly 50 years, with a long-delayed takeoff from the far east of the country scheduled for early on Friday morning that the Kremlin aims to tout as a new achievement in space exploration. From a report: The Luna-25 mission will seek to land near the south pole of the moon, collecting geological samples from the area, and sending back data for signs of water or its building blocks, which could raise the possibility of a future
  
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• YouTube is Deactivating Links in Shorts Videos To Combat Spam

  10-08-2023 18:44 via news.slashdot.org
  
  YouTube knows that it has a spam problem, particularly when it comes to its two-year-old Shorts feature. In an attempt to do something about it, the streamer has announced it's deactivating links in Shorts descriptions, comments and the vertical live feed. From a report: YouTube is also taking away the ability to click on social media icons on any desktop channel banners. The new changes will start to roll out on August 31st. Though YouTube claims it won't continue its "unclickable" crusade, but
  
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• Colleges Spend Like There's No Tomorrow.

  10-08-2023 18:04 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The nation's best-known public universities have been on an unfettered spending spree. Over the past two decades, they erected new skylines comprising snazzy academic buildings and dorms. They poured money into big-time sports programs and hired layers of administrators. Then they passed the bill along to students. From a report: The University of Kentucky upgraded its campus to the tune of $805,000 a day for more than a decade. Its freshmen, who come from one of America's poorest states, paid a
  
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• UK Defends Plan To Demand Access To Encrypted Messages To Protect Children

  10-08-2023 17:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  British technology minister Michelle Donelan defended plans to require messaging apps to provide access to encrypted private messages when needed to protect children from abuse, which major platforms say would undermine the privacy of their users. From a report: Donelan told the BBC that the government was not against encryption, and the access would only be requested as a last resort, under Britain's Online Safety Bill which is expected to become law later this year. "I, like you, want my priva
  
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• Belarus Hackers Target Foreign Diplomats With Help of Local ISPs, Researchers Say

  10-08-2023 16:49 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Hackers with apparent links to the Belarusian government have been targeting foreign diplomats in the country for nearly 10 years, according to security researchers. From a report: On Thursday, antivirus firm ESET published a report that details the activities of a newly discovered government hacking group that the company has dubbed MoustachedBouncer. The group has likely been hacking or at least targeting diplomats by intercepting their connections at the internet service provider (ISP) level,
  
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• Amazon Cuts Dozens of House Brands as It Battles Costs, Regulators

  10-08-2023 16:00 via slashdot.org
  
  Amazon is jettisoning dozens of its in-house brands as part of a significant reduction of its private-label operation as it works to fend off antitrust scrutiny and shore up profit. From a report: The Seattle-based company in the past year has decided to eliminate 27 of its 30 clothing brands, such as Lark & Ro, Daily Ritual and Goodthreads, according to people familiar with the matter. Some of the brands remain on Amazon's site for now as the company sells off remaining inventory, but when
  
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• Biden Issues an Executive Order Restricting US Investments In Chinese Technology

  10-08-2023 15:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday to block and regulate high-tech U.S.-based investments going toward China -- a move the administration said was targeted but it also reflected an intensifying competition between the world's two biggest powers. The order covers advanced computer chips, micro electronics, quantum information technologies and artificial intelligence. Senior administration officials said that the e
  
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• Bots Are Better Than Humans At Cracking 'Are You a Robot?' Captcha Tests, Study Finds

  10-08-2023 12:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  A recent comprehensive study reveals that automated bots are substantially more efficient than humans at cracking Captcha tests, a widely used security measure on over 100 popular websites. The Independent reports: In the study, scientists assessed 200 of the most popular websites and found 120 still used Captcha. They took the help of 1,000 participants online from diverse backgrounds -- varying in location, age, sex and educational level -- to take 10 captcha tests on these sites and gauge the
  
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• Astronomer Claims 'Direct Evidence' of Gravity Breaking Down

  10-08-2023 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  A scientist has observed a "gravitational anomaly" in certain star systems that could potentially upend a fundamental assumption about the universe, according to a new study. Motherboard reports: Kyu-Hyun Chae, an astronomer at Sejong University, has now put these models to the test by analyzing the accelerations of stars in 26,500 wide binaries located within about 650 light years of Earth using imagery captured by the European Space Agency's Gaia observatory. Scientists have previously searche
  
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• Researchers Watched 100 Hours of Hackers Hacking Honeypot Computers

  10-08-2023 05:30 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Imagine being able to sit behind a hacker and observe them take control of a computer and play around with it. That's pretty much what two security researchers did thanks to a large network of computers set up as a honeypot for hackers. The researchers deployed several Windows servers deliberately exposed on the internet, set up with Remote Desktop Protocol, or RDP, meaning that hackers could remotely control the compromised servers as if they
  
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• Crocodiles Are Alarmingly Attuned To the Cries of Human Infants

  10-08-2023 04:02 via science.slashdot.org
  
  sciencehabit shares a report from Science: Whether they're in mortal peril or just suffering from indigestion, infants across the animal kingdom cry out to tell their parents they need help. Unfortunately for them, the parents aren't the only ones attuned to the cries of their vulnerable young. Nile crocodiles are uniquely sensitive to the wails of distressed primate babies, according to a new study -- and the more anxious the cry, the more interested the crocs become. Indeed, according to the r
  
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• Verizon Is Shutting Down BlueJeans, a Videoconferencing App It Bought For $400 Million

  10-08-2023 03:25 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Verizon's BlueJeans videoconferencing app will be shutting down just over three years after the company bought it for $400 million. 9to5Google reports: In May 2020, Verizon acquired BlueJeans, a business-focused video app that first launched in 2011. At the beginning of 2022, Google and Verizon partnered to preload the BlueJeans app on (since-discontinued) Glass Enterprise Edition 2 smart glasses sold by Verizon. More recently, BlueJeans gained a free tier this year, opening the app to many more
  
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• CNET Deletes Thousands of Old Articles To Game Google Search

  10-08-2023 02:45 via news.slashdot.org
  
  According to Gizmodo, CNET has deleted thousands of old articles over the past few months in a bid to improve its performance in Google Search results. From the report: Archived copies of CNET's author pages show the company deleted small batches of articles prior to the second half of July, but then the pace increased. Thousands of articles disappeared in recent weeks. A CNET representative confirmed that the company was culling stories but declined to share exactly how many it has taken down.
  
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• Popular Open-Source Project Moq Criticized For Quietly Collecting Data

  10-08-2023 02:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Open source project Moq (pronounced "Mock") has drawn sharp criticism for quietly including a controversial dependency in its latest release. Distributed on the NuGet software registry, Moq sees over 100,000 downloads on any given day, and has been downloaded over 476 million times over the course of its lifetime. [...] Last week, one of Moq's owners, Daniel Cazzulino (kzu), who also maintains the SponsorLink project, added SponsorLink t
  
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• Amazon Reverses Course On 'Garbage Books' Written By AI

  10-08-2023 01:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Amazon removed several books believed to be written using AI and listed under a real author's name. Decrypt reports: When professor Jane Friedman complained about books that she didn't write being attributed to her on Monday, ecommerce giant Amazon initially said that it would not remove them. But after she took her case to Twitter, earning the backing of the Authors Guild, Amazon relented early this morning. Friedman -- a non-fiction writer, journalist, and educator -- said Amazon had refused t
  
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• Disney Raises Prices For Streaming Services By As Much As 27%

  10-08-2023 00:40 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Disney is raising prices on almost all of its streaming offerings as it looks to accelerate profitability for the business. CNBC reports: Commercial-free Disney+ will cost $13.99 per month, a 27% increase, beginning Oct. 12. Disney+ with ads will remain $7.99 per month. Disney will also expand its ad-tier offering to select markets in Europe and in Canada beginning Nov. 1. Disney is increasing the price of Hulu without ads to $17.99 per month, a 20% price hike. Hulu with ads will also stay the s
  
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• Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

  10-08-2023 00:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from ExtremeTech: Intel has introduced a telemetry collection service by default in the latest beta driver for its Arc GPUs. You can opt out of it, but we all know most people just click "yes" to everything during a software installation. Intel's release notes for the drivers don't mention this change to how its drivers work, which is a curious omission. News of Intel adding telemetry collection to its drivers is a significant change to how its GPU drivers wor
  
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