ICT news

• Australia's ISPs Will Stop Offering Free Email Addresses, to the Disgust of Older Customers

  19-08-2023 23:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Remember when your email address came from your ISP?
  Now the cost for small companies to offer email service "has gone up in server and administration costs," reports the Guardian, "without the economies of scale." But in Australia, this has created a problem for people like the Canberra-based customer of iiNet who's had the same email address since the 1990s...
  TPG — which owns brands that have historically offered email including iiNet all the way back to OzEmail — informed custome
  
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• Thousands of Crypto Scammers are Enslaved by Human-Trafficking Gangsters, Says Bloomberg Reporter

  19-08-2023 21:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A Bloomberg investigative reporter wrote a new book titled Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. This week Bloomberg published an excerpt that begins when the reporter received a flirtatious text message from a woman named Vicky Ho for a scam that's called "pig butchering".
  "Vicky's random text had found its way to pretty much exactly the wrong target. I'd been investigating the crypto bubble for more than a year..."
  After a day, Vicky revealed her true love language: Bitc
  
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• Rust Users Push Back as Popular 'Serde' Project Ships Precompiled Binaries

  19-08-2023 21:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  "Serde, a popular Rust (de)serialization project, has decided to ship its serde_derive macro as a precompiled binary," reports Bleeping Computer.
  "The move has generated a fair amount of push back among developers who worry about its future legal and technical implications, along with a potential for supply chain attacks, should the maintainer account publishing these binaries be compromised."According to the Rust package registry, crates.io, serde has been downloaded over 196 million times over
  
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• AI-Generated Works Aren't Protected By Copyrights, US Judge Rules

  19-08-2023 20:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  A U.S. federal judge "ruled Friday that U.S. copyright law does not cover creative works created by artificial intelligence," reports Billboard magazine:In a 15-page written opinion, Judge Beryl Howell upheld a decision by the U.S. Copyright Office to deny a copyright registration to computer scientist Stephen Thaler for an image created solely by an AI model. The judge cited decades of legal precedent that such protection is only afforded to works created by humans. "The act of human creation &
  
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• Do US Teens Hate Android Phones?

  19-08-2023 19:34 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  America's teens hate Android phones, according to a new article from the Wall Street Journal:
  Melissa Jones, a former teacher in Lebanon, Ind., observes that, among students, it's considered most important to own a new, up-to-date phone. And judging by the copious TikTok content that pits users of the two operating systems against each other — with Android most frequently the butt of the joke — many teens associate Androids with older technology, and older people, no matter how new t
  
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• Record Companies Sue Internet Archive For Preserving Old 78 Rpm Recordings

  19-08-2023 18:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader bshell shared this announcement from the Internet Archive:Some of the world's largest record labels, including Sony and Universal Music Group, filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive and others for the Great 78 Project, a community effort for the preservation, research and discovery of 78 rpm records that are 70 to 120 years old.
  The project has been in operation since 2006 to bring free public access to a largely forgotten but culturally important medium. Through
  
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• Microsoft Fixes Hotmail Delivery Failures After Misconfigured SPF DNS

  19-08-2023 17:34 via slashdot.org
  
  Friday Microsoft told Bleeping Computer "that they have fixed the issue and Hotmail should no longer fail SPF checks."
  But earlier in the day the site reported that "Hotmail users worldwide have problems sending emails, with messages flagged as spam or not delivered after Microsoft misconfigured the domain's DNS SPF record."The email issues began late Thursday night, with users and admins reporting on Reddit, Twitter, and Microsoft forums that their Hotmail emails were failing due to SPF validat
  
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• After Firetruck Crash, California Tells Cruise to Reduce Robotaxi Fleet by 50% in San Francisco

  19-08-2023 16:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Thursday a Cruise robotaxi drove through a green light in front of an oncoming firetruck "with its forward facing red lights and siren on, the San Francisco Police Department said in a statement to Reuters." The San Francisco Chronicle adds that the Cruise vehicle's passenger "passenger was treated on the scene and shared taken in an ambulance to a hospital, though the company said the injuries were 'non-severe.' The company added in an email to the Chronicle that the passenger was on the scene
  
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• File-Hosting Icon AnonFiles Throws In the Towel, Domain For Sale

  19-08-2023 15:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Founded in 2011, AnonFiles.com became known as a popular hosting service that allowed users to share files up to 20GB without download restrictions. As the name suggests, registering an account wasn't required either; both up and downloading files was totally anonymous. The same also applies to BayFiles.com, an affiliated file-hosting service that was launched by The Pirate Bay. Both sites launched around the same time and shared a similar d
  
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• Why DARPA Hopes To 'Distill' Old Binaries Into Readable Code

  19-08-2023 12:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a prototype pipeline for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that can "distill" binary executables into human-intelligible code so that it can be updated and deployed in "weeks, days, or hours, in some cases." The work is part of a five-year, $10 million project with the agency. The Register reports: After running an executable through the university's "distillation" process, software engineers should be able to examine the generated H
  
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• China's Fertility Rate Drops To Record Low

  19-08-2023 09:00 via slashdot.org
  
  According to the National Business Daily, China's fertility rate in 2022 dropped to a record low of 1.09 from 1.15 in 2021. Reuters reports: The state-backed Daily said the figure from China's Population and Development Research Center put it as having the lowest fertility level among countries with a population of more than 100 million. China's fertility rate is already one of the world's lowest alongside South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. China has said it will focus on education, s
  
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• WHO Aspartame Safety Panel Linked To Alleged Coca-Cola Front Group

  19-08-2023 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: In May, the World Health Organization issued an alarming report that declared widely used non-sugar sweeteners like aspartame are likely ineffective for weight loss, and long term consumption may increase the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and mortality in adults. A few months later, WHO declared aspartame, a key ingredient in Diet Coke, to be a "possible carcinogen," then quickly issued a third report that seemed to contradict it
  
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• Blue-Blocking Glasses Might Not Do Much of Anything, Says New Review

  19-08-2023 03:25 via science.slashdot.org
  
  According to a new study of studies, researchers have concluded that blue light-filtering eyeglasses might not deliver on claims made by advertisers or optometrist offices. NewAtlas reports: To reach their conclusion, researchers at the University of Melbourne with colleagues from Monash University, and City, University of London looked at 17 published studies from six different countries relating to the use of eyeglasses that block blue light. The randomized control studies ranged in size from
  
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• WinRAR Flaw Lets Hackers Run Programs When You Open RAR Archives

  19-08-2023 02:02 via it.slashdot.org
  
  A critical vulnerability (CVE-2023-40477) has been patched in WinRAR, enabling remote attackers to execute arbitrary code by luring victims into opening a specially crafted RAR file. The severity rating is only 7.8 though due to user deception being necessary. BleepingComputer reports: The vulnerability was discovered by researcher "goodbyeselene" of Zero Day Initiative, who reported the flaw to the vendor, RARLAB, on June 8th, 2023. "The specific flaw exists within the processing of recovery vo
  
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• Mozilla Foundation Warns France's Proposed Web Blocking Law 'Could Threaten the Free Internet'

  19-08-2023 01:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The Mozilla Foundation has started a petition to stop the French government from forcing browsers like Mozilla's Firefox to censor websites. "It would set a dangerous precedent, providing a playbook for other governments to also turn browsers like Firefox into censorship tools," says the organization. "The government introduced the bill to parliament shortly before the summer break and is hoping to pass this as quickly and smoothly as possible; the bill has even been put on an accelerated proced
  
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• Canada Demands Meta Lift News Ban To Allow Wildfire Info Sharing

  19-08-2023 00:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Canadian government on Friday demanded that Meta lift a "reckless" ban on domestic news from its platforms to allow people to share information about wildfires in the west of the country. Meta started blocking news on its Facebook and Instagram platforms for all users in Canada this month in response to a new law requiring internet giants to pay for news articles. Some people fleeing wildfires in the remote northern town of Yellowknife have c
  
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• SoftBank Buys Vision Fund's Stake In Arm At Valuation of $64 Billion

  19-08-2023 00:00 via slashdot.org
  
  According to Reuters, SoftBank has acquired the 25% stake in Arm it does not directly own from its Vision Fund unit. The new deal values the chip designer at $64 billion. From the report: Details of the transaction will be unveiled on Monday when Arm makes public the filing for its blockbuster stock market launch, the sources said, requesting anonymity as these discussions are confidential. SoftBank is now expected to sell fewer Arm shares in the initial public offering (IPO) and would likely be
  
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