ICT news

• Judge Denies HP's Plea To Throw Out All-in-One Printer Lockdown Lawsuit

  15-08-2023 23:21 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  HP all-in-one printer owners, upset that their devices wouldn't scan or fax when low on ink, were handed a partial win in a northern California court late last week after a judge denied HP's motion to dismiss their suit. From a report: The plaintiffs argued in their amended class action complaint that HP withheld vital information by including software in its all-in-one printer/scanner/fax machines that disabled non-printing functions when out of ink and not telling buyers that was the case. "It
  
  Read more

• Congressman Bacon Says His Emails Were Hacked in Campaign Linked To China

  15-08-2023 22:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  US Representative Don Bacon said he is among those whose emails were hacked in an espionage campaign that Microsoft has attributed to China. From a report:Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska and a strong advocate for US military support to Taiwan, posted on social media that the FBI had notified him that the Chinese Communist Party hacked into his personal and campaign emails over the course of a month, from May 15 to June 16. "The CCP hackers utilized a vulnerability in the Microsoft software, an
  
  Read more

• Google Required To Remove Ads That Violate Trademarks, Indian Court Rules

  15-08-2023 22:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The Delhi High Court has ruled that Google's Ads program falls under the purview of the country's Trademarks Act and the company must remove ads that infringe upon trademarks in a major decision that may redefine online advertising's legal landscape. From a report: The decision), delivered by a division bench of Justice Vibhu Bakhru and Justice Amit Mahajan last week, observed that Google was an "active participant" in the use of the trademarks of proprietors. Google's practice of suggesting com
  
  Read more

• US Watchdog To Announce Plans To Regulate 'Surveillance Industry'

  15-08-2023 21:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The top U.S. agency for consumer financial protection will announce plans at the White House on Tuesday to regulate companies that track and sell people's personal data, part of the Biden administration's widening scrutiny of that industry's privacy practices, officials said. From a report: Data brokers' conduct can be "particularly worrisome" because the sensitive data driving the use of artificial intelligence can be collected from military personnel, people experiencing dementia, and others,
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Xbox Introduces New Strike System To Curtail Bad Behavior

  15-08-2023 20:40 via games.slashdot.org
  
  A new strike-based enforcement program is coming to Xbox today. The system is meant to clear up confusion regarding how Xbox enforces its community standards and help players keep track of enforcement actions made on their accounts. The Verge: In an interview with The Verge, Xbox player services corporate vice president Dave McCarthy explained the new enforcement system and its place in Xbox's overall community management strategy. "This is all about player transparency," McCarthy said. "We didn
  
  Read more

• Google Chrome Will Summarize Entire Articles For You With Built-in Generative AI

  15-08-2023 20:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google's AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE) is getting a major new feature: it will be able to summarize articles you're reading on the web, according to a Google blog post. From a report: SGE can already summarize search results for you so that you don't have to scroll forever to find what you're looking for, and this new feature is designed to take that further by helping you out after you've actually clicked a link. You probably won't see this feature, which Google is calling "SGE
  
  Read more

• Shortage of Experts and Low Pay 'Major Barriers To UK's Net Zero Future'

  15-08-2023 19:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Staff shortages, a lack of specialist personnel and low pay are major barriers to achieving net zero, according to workers in the UK environment sector. From a report: The trade union Prospect, many members of which work in the climate and environment sector, received more than 500 responses to a survey on workplace trends. Widespread shortages of expert staff and reductions in specialist personnel in recent years had seriously affected workload levels, the study found. Four in 10 workers said t
  
  Read more

• Saudi Arabia and UAE Race To Buy Nvidia Chips To Power AI Ambitions

  15-08-2023 18:42 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are buying up thousands of the high-performance Nvidia chips crucial for building artificial intelligence software, joining a global AI arms race that is squeezing the supply of Silicon Valley's hottest commodity. From a report: The Gulf powerhouses have publicly stated their goal of becoming leaders in AI as they pursue ambitious plans to turbocharge their economies. But the push has also raised concerns about potential misuse of the technology by the o
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• How Google is Planning To Beat OpenAI

  15-08-2023 18:03 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  In April, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai took an unusual step: merging two large artificial intelligence teams -- with distinct cultures and code -- to catch up to and surpass OpenAI and other rivals. Now the test of that effort is coming, with hundreds of people scrambling to release a group of large machine-learning models -- one of the highest-stakes products the company has ever built -- this fall. The Information: The models, collectively known as Gemini, are expected to give Google the ability
  
  Read more

• How Bonds Ate the Entire Financial System

  15-08-2023 17:32 via slashdot.org
  
  A very short, very wild history of the market that will shape the next financial crisis. Financial Times: Bonds have long been considered the most boring bit of finance. They occasionally crop up in literature, almost always as a signifier of dreariness. The Great Gatsby's narrator Nick Carraway was a bond salesman and Sherman McCoy in Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities traded them. Bonds have never figured in the popular imagination in the same way as stocks, say, or corporate M&A. The
  
  Read more

• Amazon Pharmacy Automates Discounts To Help Insulin Patients Get Pledged Prices

  15-08-2023 16:40 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Amazon said on Tuesday its online pharmacy will automatically apply manufacturer-sponsored coupons to more than 15 insulin and diabetes medicines to help patients access discounts pledged by the drug industry. From a report: With the new program, patients using Amazon Pharmacy will no longer have to search for and manually enter coupons from the three largest insulin makers, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, and Sanofi, to lower the cost of their insulin to as little as $35 for a month's supply, the comp
  
  Read more

• Television Accounts for Less than Half of US Viewing Time for the First Time

  15-08-2023 16:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Powered by shows like "Suits" on Netflix, streaming's share of U.S. viewing time grew to a new high in July, while television viewing fell below 50% for the first time, according to new Nielsen data. From a report: The milestone is the latest sign of the rapid erosion of the cable-TV bundle, which has lost about a quarter of its subscribers over the past decade, as more Americans cut the cord in favor of streaming services like Netflix, Google's YouTube and Disney's Hulu. Cable television accoun
  
  Read more

• 'Flying Aliens' Harassing Village Are Actually Illegal Miners With Jetpacks

  15-08-2023 15:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The mysterious attacks began on July 11. "Strange beings," locals said, visiting an isolated Indigenous community in rural Peru at night, harassing its inhabitants and attempting to kidnap a 15-year-old girl. [...] News of the alleged extraterrestrial attackers quickly spread online as believers, skeptics, and internet sleuths around the world analyzed grainy videos posted by members of the Ikitu community. The reported sightings came on the
  
  Read more

• Discord.io Temporarily Shuts Down After Breach Affecting 760,000 Members

  15-08-2023 12:00 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland shares a report from BleepingComputer: The Discord.io custom invite service has temporarily shut down after suffering a data breach exposing the information of 760,000 members. Discord.io is not an official Discord site but a third-party service allowing server owners to create custom invites to their channels. Most of the community was built around the service's Discord server, with over 14,000 members.Yesterday, a person known as 'Akhirah' began offering t
  
  Read more

• Apple Will Soon Send Payments In $500 Million 'Batterygate' iPhone Throttling Lawsuit

  15-08-2023 09:00 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  The judge overseeing Apple's "batterygate" iPhone throttling lawsuit has cleared the way for payments to be sent out. MacRumors reports: Apple in 2020 agreed to pay $500 million to settle the "batterygate" lawsuit, which accused the company of secretly throttling older iPhone models. The class action lawsuit was open to U.S. customers who had an iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, or 7 Plus running iOS 10.2.1 or iOS 11.2 prior to December 21, 2017. [...] Apple ultimately apologized for its lack of
  
  Read more

• SBF Used $100 Million In Stolen FTX Funds For Political Donations

  15-08-2023 07:00 via politics.slashdot.org
  
  Sam Bankman-Fried used money he stole from customers of his FTX cryptocurrency exchange to make more than $100 million in political campaign contributions before the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, federal prosecutors said on Monday. Reuters reports: An amended indictment accused the 31-year-old former billionaire of directing two FTX executives to evade contribution limits by donating to Democrats and Republicans, and to conceal where the money came from. "He leveraged this influence, in turn, to
  
  Read more

• Iraq Lifts Ban On Telegram After Messaging App Complies With Authorities

  15-08-2023 05:30 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Iraq's telecom ministry lifted the ban on Telegram over the weekend, days after the agency blocked the chat app over security concerns. The ministry said it lifted the ban because of the "response of the company that owns the application to the requirements of the security authorities," which required Telegram to reveal sources leaking data of officials and citizens, according to a translated statement. Telegram has shown commitment to communi
  
  Read more

• Iowa School District Is Using AI To Ban Books

  15-08-2023 04:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  According to the Globe Gazette, the school board of Mason City, Iowa has begun leveraging AI technology to cultivate lists of potentially bannable books from the district's libraries ahead of the 2023/24 school year. Engadget reports: In May, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed, and Governor Kim Reynolds subsequently signed, Senate File 496 (SF 496), which enacted sweeping changes to the state's education curriculum. Specifically it limits what books can be made available in schoo
  
  Read more

• Threads App Usage Plummets

  15-08-2023 03:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Despite a record-breaking start in its first weeks of launch, engagement with Meta's Threads app continues to plummet. According to Similarweb, engagement is down 79% from a high of 2.3 million active users in early July to 576,000 as of August 7th. The Guardian reports: In addition to users jumping ship, large US companies like the fast food chain Wendy's, the clothing store Anthropologie and Rare Beauty, a makeup line, have all decreased the number of posts they publish on Threads, Adweek repo
  
  Read more

• Apple Plans Major 'Watch X' Overhaul for Device's 10-Year Anniversary

  15-08-2023 02:45 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  While Apple's next line of smartwatches is expected to be a minor upgrade, the company is working on a revamped "Watch X" update for the device's 10th anniversary. Bloombeg's Mark Gurman reports: Apple is planning a splashy upgrade for its smartwatch, but you won't see it this year. The 2023 models, due next month, will be a minor refresh -- the kind of incremental update that has characterized the product in recent years. Inside Apple, executives have pondered the idea of switching away from th
  
  Read more

• 80% of Bosses Say They Regret Earlier Return-To-Office Plans

  15-08-2023 02:02 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: A whopping 80% of bosses regret their initial return-to-office decisions and say they would have approached their plans differently if they had a better understanding of what their employees wanted, according to new research from Envoy. "Many companies are realizing they could have been a lot more measured in their approach, rather than making big, bold, very controversial decisions based on executives' opinions rather than employee data," Larry Gad
  
  Read more

• iPhone 14, 14 Pro Owners Complain About Battery Capacity That's Already Falling Off

  15-08-2023 01:20 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Some iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro owners have complaints reminiscent of the bad old days of "batterygate," reporting that with less than a year of service on the clock, their phones are already reporting more battery degradation than expected. From a report: Sam Kohl of AppleTrack tweeted in July that his iPhone 14 Pro had already dropped to a maximum capacity of 90 percent, a much faster dropoff than previous iPhones he'd owned, and the thread shows many other people with the same experience. Ko
  
  Read more

• UK Homes Install 'Record Number' of Solar Panels and Heat Pumps

  15-08-2023 00:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  British households are making more green energy upgrades than ever before after installing a record number of solar panels and heat pumps in the first half of the year, according to the industry's official standards body. From a report: The industry figures show there were more green energy installations in June than in previous years. On average, more than 17,000 households installed solar panels every month this year, while the number of homes installing heat pumps reached 3,000 a month for th
  
  Read more

• Ford Taps Apple Exec To Build High-Margin Digital Services

  15-08-2023 00:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Ford has hired former Apple executive Peter Stern to help build new high-margin digital and subscription services. Reuters reports: Stern, who previously oversaw Apple TV+, iCloud and Apple News+, will report to Ford CEO Jim Farley. In his new role, Stern will focus on integrating hardware, software and services across the company's Ford Blue, Model e and Ford Pro units. Like other U.S. automakers, Ford is looking to expand beyond its traditional wholesale-to-dealer business model and build recu
  
  Read more

Follow @newslocke_ict on Twitter!