ICT news

• UK Government Seeks Expanded Use of AI-based Facial Recognition By Police

  31-08-2023 23:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  UK's Home Office is looking to increase its use of controversial facial recognition technologies to track and find criminals within policing and other security agencies. From a report: In a document released on Wednesday, the government outlined its ambitions to potentially deploy new biometric systems nationally over the next 12 to 18 months. The move comes after privacy campaigners and independent academics criticised the technology for being inaccurate and biased, particularly against darker-
  
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• Google Removes 'Pirate' URLs From Users' Privately Saved Links

  31-08-2023 22:40 via it.slashdot.org
  
  To date, Google has processed more than seven billion copyright takedown requests for its search engine. The majority of the reported links are purged from Google's search index, as required by the DMCA. Recently, however, Google appears to gone a step further, using search takedowns to "moderate" users' privately saved links collections. TorrentFreak: A few hours ago, Eddie Roosenmaallen shared an email from Google, notifying him that a link had been removed from his Google Saved collection bec
  
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• US Copyright Office Wants To Hear What People Think About AI and Copyright

  31-08-2023 22:01 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The US Copyright Office is opening a public comment period around AI and copyright issues beginning August 30th as the agency figures out how to approach the subject. From a report: As announced [PDF] in the Federal Register, the agency wants to answer three main questions: how AI models should use copyrighted data in training; whether AI-generated material can be copyrighted even without a human involved; and how copyright liability would work with AI. It also wants comments around AI possibly
  
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• Starfield's 1,000 Planets May Be One Giant Leap for Game Design

  31-08-2023 21:22 via games.slashdot.org
  
  The stakes are high for Bethesda's newest role-playing game. Microsoft needs an Xbox hit, and players are hungry for an expansive and satisfying space adventure. From a report: Starfield almost immediately nudges its players to the edges of the cosmos. In the opening hours of the role-playing video game, it's possible to land your spaceship on Earth's moon or zip 16 light-years to Alpha Centauri. When you open your map and zoom out from a planet, you can behold its surrounding solar system; zoom
  
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• With Version 117, Firefox Finally Speaks Chrome's Translation Language

  31-08-2023 20:44 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The latest version of the flagship FOSS browser is out, and it's picked up one of the main features for which we keep Chrome around. From a report: The Firefox version 117 feature list might not look all that impressive, but it does have a big-ticket feature that may tempt people back: automatic translation. The snag is it's disabled by default in the release version, and you'll have to manually enable it. Although it was enabled in the betas, Mozilla has decided to go for a staged rollout and n
  
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• Google Removes Fake Signal and Telegram Apps Hosted on Play

  31-08-2023 20:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Researchers say they have found fake apps in Google Play that masqueraded as legitimate ones for the Signal and Telegram messaging platforms. The malicious apps could pull messages or other sensitive information from legitimate accounts when users took certain actions. ArsTechnica: An app with the name Signal Plus Messenger was available on Play for nine months and had been downloaded from Play roughly 100 times before Google took it down last April after being tipped off by security firm ESET.
  
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• Scientologists Ask Federal Government To Restrict Right To Repair

  31-08-2023 19:23 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The organization that represents the literary works of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard has filed a petition with the Federal Government, asking it to make it illegal to circumvent software locks for the repair of a highly specific set of electronic devices, according to a letter reviewed by 404 Media. From the report: The letter doesn't refer to any single device, but experts say the petition covers Scientology's "E-Meter," a "religious artifact" and electronic that is core to Scientology. Au
  
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• Dutch E-Bike Brand VanMoof Bought Out of Bankruptcy by Scooter Maker

  31-08-2023 18:40 via slashdot.org
  
  VanMoof, the Dutch e-bike maker that gained a zealous following but declared bankruptcy last month, has been acquired by Lavoie, an upscale electric scooter company, the firms announced on Thursday. From a report: Riders of the expensive and technologically advanced VanMoof bikes were left in limbo by the company's bankruptcy, because the machines are built from proprietary parts that only the company made and many of the bikes' functions are linked to a smartphone app that runs on the company's
  
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• US Says It Has Not Blocked Chip Sales To Middle East

  31-08-2023 18:07 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A U.S. Department of Commerce spokesperson on Thursday said the Biden administration "has not blocked chip sales to the Middle East." From a report: The comments come after artificial intelligence chip firms Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices received notifications from U.S. officials about new export licensing requirements to ship chips to some countries in the Middle East.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• The Tropical Island With the Hot Domain Name

  31-08-2023 17:36 via it.slashdot.org
  
  A tiny island in the Caribbean is now sitting on a digital treasure. From a report: Anguilla, a tropical British territory, is known for its coral reefs and white sand beaches. Since the 1990s, however, it's also been in charge of assigning internet addresses that end in .ai to residents and businesses looking to register websites. It was one of hundreds of country-specific domain names and easy to overlook -- until recently. Stability.ai, Elon Musk's X.ai and Character.ai are just a few of the
  
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• Malwarebytes Lays Off 100 Employees Ahead of Business Split

  31-08-2023 16:40 via slashdot.org
  
  Cybersecurity giant Malwarebytes this week laid off 100 employees as it prepares for a major restructuring that will see the business split into two, TechCrunch reported. From the report: The layoffs come almost exactly a year after Malwarebytes eliminated 14% of its global workforce. A former employee who asked not to be named told TechCrunch that the layoffs come just weeks after the company's chief product officer, chief information officer, and chief technology officer were let go. An archiv
  
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• Microsoft To Unbundle Teams From Office, Seeks To Avert EU Antitrust Fine

  31-08-2023 16:00 via slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft will unbundle its chat and video app Teams from its Office suite and make it easier for rival products to work with its software, the U.S. company said on Thursday in a move aimed at staving off a possible EU antitrust fine. From a report: The proposed changes came a month after the European Commission launched an investigation into Microsoft's tying of Office and Teams following a complaint by Salesforce-owned workspace messaging app Slack in 2020. Microsoft's preliminary concessions
  
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• NASA Officials Sound Alarm Over Future of the Deep Space Network

  31-08-2023 15:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: NASA officials sounded an alarm Tuesday about the agency's Deep Space Network, a collection of antennas in California, Spain, and Australia used to maintain contact with missions scattered across the Solar System. Everything from NASA's Artemis missions to the Moon to the Voyager probes in interstellar space rely on the Deep Space Network (DSN) to receive commands and transmit data back to Earth. Suzanne Dodd, who oversees the DSN in her pos
  
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• CISA Warns of Hurricane-Related Scams

  31-08-2023 14:00 via cisa.gov
  CISA urges users to remain on alert for malicious cyber activity following natural disasters, such as hurricanes, as attackers target disaster victims and concerned citizens by leveraging social engineering tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).
  Social engineering TTPs include phishing, in which threat actors pose as trustworthy persons/organizations—such as disaster-relief charities—to solicit personal information via email or malicious websites. CISA recommends exercising caut
  
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• CISA and International Partners Release Malware Analysis Report on Infamous Chisel Mobile Malware

  31-08-2023 14:00 via cisa.gov
  Today, the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-UK), the United States’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), National Security Agency (NSA), and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), New Zealand’s Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NZ), Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS), and the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) published a joint Malware Analysis Report (MAR), on Infamous Chisel a new mobile malware targeting Android devices with capabi
  
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• Paramount DMCAs 'Star Trek' Fan Project

  31-08-2023 12:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Timothy Geigner writes via Techdirt: Paramount has gone after fan-made works playing off of the franchise for years and years. Even Paramount's release of guidelines by which fans could create fan films served mostly as a giant middle finger to the fandom, so stringent were the rules. This apparently represents the owners of Star Trek's IP being completely deaf to the history of Star Trek and the internet and what the fans have meant to the franchise. And this all continued into the present day.
  
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• Hackers Shut Down 2 of the World's Most Advanced Telescopes

  31-08-2023 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Some of the world's leading astronomical observatories have reported cyberattacks that have resulted in temporary shutdowns. Space.com reports: The National Science Foundation's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, or NOIRLab, reported that a cybersecurity incident that occurred on Aug. 1 has prompted the lab to temporarily halt operations at its Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii and Gemini South Telescope in Chile. Other, smaller telescopes on Cerro Tololo in Chile were also
  
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• China State-Backed Firm Apologizes For 'Home Developed' Software Based On Microsoft Source Code

  31-08-2023 05:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader writes: A Guangdong-based state-backed enterprise in charge of e-government projects in the Southern Chinese province has apologized after admitting that its "home-developed" software was based on open-source code from US tech giant Microsoft. Digital Guangdong, known as DigitalGD, published an apology last week after it was revealed that its CEC-IDE software application, which helps programmers write code, was based on Microsoft's Visual Studio Code (VS Code), with just mino
  
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• Australia Will Not Force Adult Websites To Bring In Age Verification Due To Privacy and Security Concerns

  31-08-2023 04:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The federal government of Australia will not force adult websites to bring in age verification due to concerns around privacy and security of the technology. The Guardian reports: On Wednesday, the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, released the eSafety commissioner's long-awaited roadmap for age verification for online pornographic material, which has been sitting with the government since March 2023. The federal government has decided against forcing sites to bring in age verification
  
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• Terraform By Hashicorp Forked To OpenTF

  31-08-2023 03:25 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "Terraform, arguably the most popular Infrastructure as Code products, has been forked after the parent company HashiCorp changed its license from the Mozilla Public License (MPL) to the Business Source License v1.1 (BSL)," writes long-time Slashdot reader ochinko. "Our view is that we're actually not the fork because we're just changing the name but it's the same project under the same license," Sebastian Stadil, co-founder and CEO of DevOps automation biz Scalr told The Register. "Our position
  
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• Call of Duty Will Use AI To Moderate Voice Chats

  31-08-2023 02:45 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Activision has partnered with a company called Modulate to moderate voice chats using an AI technology called ToxMod. According to The Verge, the tool "will work to identify behaviors like hate speech, discrimination, and harassment in real time." From the report: ToxMod's initial beta rollout in North America begins today. It's active within Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Call of Duty: Warzone. A "full worldwide release" (it does not include Asia, the press release notes) will follow on No
  
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• Saudi Man Receives Death Penalty For Posts Online

  31-08-2023 02:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: A Saudi court has sentenced a man to death over his posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, and his activity on YouTube, the latest in a widening crackdown on dissent in the kingdom that has drawn international criticism. The judgement against Mohammed bin Nasser al-Ghamdi, seen Wednesday by The Associated Press, comes against the backdrop of doctoral student Salma al-Shehab and others facing decades-long prison sentences over their c
  
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• Microsoft Is Discontinuing Visual Studio For Mac After Major Overhaul

  31-08-2023 01:20 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft is discontinuing Visual Studio for Mac, committing to security updates and platform update compatibility for the next 12 months. 9to5Mac reports: "With today's announcement, we're redirecting our resources and focus to enhance Visual Studio and VS Code, optimizing them for cross-platform development," the company said in the announcement.
  "No new framework, runtime, or language support will be added to Visual Studio for Mac." The company added: "We will also continue to provide runtime
  
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• MTA Website 'Feature' Lets You Track Subway Riders' Locations

  31-08-2023 00:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Slash_Account_Dot shares a report from 404 Media, written by cybersecurity journalist Joseph Cox: In the mid-afternoon one Saturday earlier this month, the target got on the New York subway. I knew what station they entered the subway at and at what specific time. They then entered another station a few hours later. If I had kept monitoring this person, I would have figured out the subway station they often start a journey at, which is near where they live. I would also know what specific time t
  
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• EPA Removes Federal Protections For Most of the Country's Wetlands

  31-08-2023 00:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The Environmental Protection Agency removed federal protections for a majority of the country's wetlands on Tuesday to comply with a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The EPA and Department of the Army announced a final rule amending the definition of protected "waters of the United States" in light of the decision in Sackett v. EPA in May, which narrowed the scope of the Clean Water Act and the agency's power to regulate waterways and wetlands. A 20
  
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