ICT news

• Textbook Publishers Sue Shadow Library LibGen For Copyright Infringement

  18-09-2023 23:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  A group of publishers in the U.S. have filed a lawsuit against the "notorious" online database Library Genesis (Libgen), a website known for providing free access to scientific papers and books. The lawsuit accuses Libgen of facilitating the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted academic materials. The Register reports: The suit, filed in a New York federal court [PDF], asks for a legal order "requiring the transfer of the Libgen domain names to plaintiffs or, at plaintiffs' election, canceli
  
  Read more

• Clorox Products In Short Supply After Cyberattack

  18-09-2023 22:40 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: A cyberattack at Clorox is causing wide-scale disruption of the company's operations, hampering its ability to make its cleaning materials, Clorox said Monday. Clorox said some of its products are now in short supply as it has struggled to meet consumer demand during the disruption. Clorox didn't specify which of its products are affected.The company on Monday revealed in a regulatory filing that it detected unauthorized activity in some of its infor
  
  Read more

• Google Domains Halts Registrations as It Waits for the Google Grim Reaper

  18-09-2023 22:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google Domains has registered its last domain. From a report: Google announced in July that the service was getting shut down and that it had struck a deal with Squarespace to sell off the existing customer base. Part of that transition process means winding down the existing Google Domains functionality. 9to5Google was the first site to notice that you can no longer buy a domain through the service while it waits for the Google Grim Reaper to arrive. Google Domain's homepage has a notice explai
  
  Read more

• Paint App For Windows Update Adds Support for Layers and Transparency

  18-09-2023 21:20 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Windows blog: Today we are beginning to roll out an update for the Paint app to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels (version 11.2308.18.0 or higher). With this update, we are introducing support for layers and transparency! You can now add, remove, and manage layers on the canvas to create richer and more complex digital art. With layers, you can stack shapes, text, and other image elements on top of each other. To get started, click on the new Layers button in the toolbar, which wil
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Unity Overhauls Controversial Price Hike After Game Developers Revolt

  18-09-2023 20:40 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Video-game tool maker Unity Software said Monday it's backtracking on major aspects of a controversial new price hike, telling staff in an all-hands meeting that it's now considering changes including a cap on potential fees. From a report: Unity, which operates and licenses a suite of video-game development tools called the Unity Engine, set off a firestorm last week when it announced plans to charge customers for every new installation of their game after a certain threshold. The decision trig
  
  Read more

• Amazon Poised To Hire Departing Microsoft Product Chief

  18-09-2023 20:06 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Amazon is hiring Microsoft's product chief to run the division responsible for Alexa and the Echo smart speakers, Bloomberg News reported Monday, citing people familiar with the situation. From the report: Panos Panay, who led Microsoft's Windows team and was central to the company's hardware push with its Surface computers, said he was leaving Microsoft earlier Monday. Dave Limp, the longtime Amazon hardware chief, said last month that he would retire from the company before the end of the year
  
  Read more

• Apple Releases OS Updates For iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV and HomePod

  18-09-2023 19:27 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple on Monday rolled out iOS 17, iPadOS 17, tvOS 17, HomePod 17 and watchOS 10, the latest operating system versions for all its devices minus the Mac lineup. iOS 17: iOS 17 expands on last year's Lock Screen updates with the addition of interactive widgets and StandBy, a new feature that turns the iPhone into a mini home hub when it is charging. You can now see voicemail transcriptions in real time, and leave video messages in FaceTime. FaceTime also now works on the Apple TV with tvOS 17. Wi
  
  Read more

• 'In Most Industries, Regulation Tends To Prevent Competition'

  18-09-2023 18:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Elad Gil, writing in a blog post: In most industries, regulation prevents competition. This famous chart of prices over time reflects how highly regulated industries (healthcare, education, energy) have their costs driven up over time, while less regulated industries (clothing, software, toys) drop costs dramatically over time. (Please note I do not believe these are inflation adjusted - so 60-70% may be "break even" pricing inflation adjusted.)
  Regulation favors incumbents in two ways. First, i
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Microsoft AI Researchers Accidentally Exposed Terabytes of Internal Sensitive Data

  18-09-2023 18:04 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft AI researchers accidentally exposed tens of terabytes of sensitive data, including private keys and passwords, while publishing a storage bucket of open source training data on GitHub. From a report: In research shared with TechCrunch, cloud security startup Wiz said it discovered a GitHub repository belonging to Microsoft's AI research division as part of its ongoing work into the accidental exposure of cloud-hosted data. Readers of the GitHub repository, which provided open source co
  
  Read more

• Windows and Surface Leader Panos Panay Leaving Microsoft

  18-09-2023 17:20 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Panos Panay, the chief product officer at Microsoft leading Windows development and the company's Surface line, is leaving Microsoft. From a report: In an announcement on Monday, Microsoft told employees: "After nearly 20 years at the company, Panos Panay has decided to leave Microsoft." Panay first joined Microsoft in 2004 as a group program manager. After overseeing the company's Surface line, Panay became the company's chief product officer in 2018, where he led the development of Windows 11.
  
  Read more

• US Asks for Help Finding Missing F-35 Fighter Jet After Crash

  18-09-2023 16:44 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The United States' military is on the hunt for an F-35 fighter jet that has gone missing following an incident that forced the pilot to eject from the advanced stealth aircraft over South Carolina. Bloomberg News: Emergency response teams are trying to find what's left of the F-35B Lightning II jet, which suffered what the military called a "mishap" on Sunday afternoon, according to social media posts by Joint Base Charleston, an air base in South Carolina. The unidentified pilot ejected safely
  
  Read more

• Intel Shows Off Work on Next-Gen Glass Core Substrates, Plans Deployment Later in Decade

  18-09-2023 16:05 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Intel has showed off its initial work on developing a glass core substrate and associated packaging process for its chips. AnandTech: As a result of their progress with research and development on the class cores, Intel is now planning on introducing glass core substrates to its products in the second half of this decade, allowing them to package chips in more complex, and ultimately higher-performing configurations. There's a lot to unpack from Intel's relatively short announcement, but at a hi
  
  Read more

• Was China's 'Spy Balloon' Just Blown Off Course?

  18-09-2023 13:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  China appears to have suspended its global surveillance balloon program after a balloon was spotted drifting over the United States in February.
  But now an anonymous reader shares this report from CBS News:
  Seven months later, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tells "CBS News Sunday Morning" the balloon wasn't spying. "The intelligence community, their assessment — and it's a high-confidence assessment — [is] that there was no intelligence collection by that ba
  
  Read more

• It's the 40th Anniversary of 1983's 'Dungeons & Dragons' Cartoon

  18-09-2023 10:34 via games.slashdot.org
  
  71-year-old Mark Evanier is a legendary comic book/TV writer. Today he posted on his personal blog that "Forty years ago, I spent about six days (cumulative) of my life writing the pilot script and small-b bible for a Saturday morning cartoon series called Dungeons & Dragons...
  "I feel like I have now spent more than six days (cumulative) being interviewed about this series."It went on CBS on September 17, 1983 and lasted three seasons. Do not believe those who claim it was driven from the a
  
  Read more

• JetBrains Previews 'RustRover', a New Dedicated IDE for Rust Developers

  18-09-2023 07:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from InfoWorld:
  JetBrains is previewing a dedicated IDE for the Rust programming language, called RustRover, which combines coding assistance with an integrated Rust toolchain. Available in preview September 13, RustRover is positioned to simplify the Rust coding experience while "unlocking the language's full potential," JetBrains said. Capabilities include real-time feedback, code suggestions, simplified toolchain management, and team collaboration.
  Previ
  
  Read more

• Unity Says 'We Apologize,' Promises Changes to Previously-Announced Pricing

  18-09-2023 03:52 via games.slashdot.org
  
  "We have heard you," Unity posted on Twitter/X on Sunday afternoon. "We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused."
  "We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback."
  Within 90 minutes Unity's tweet had been viewed over 1 million times. Pushback had built over the last five days
  
  Read more

• Maybe ChatGPT Isn't Coming for Your Coding Job

  18-09-2023 02:20 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Today Wired published an opinion piece by software engineer Zeb Larson headlined "ChatGPT Isn't Coming for Your Coding Job."Firing engineers and throwing AI at blocked feature development would probably result in disaster, followed by the rehiring of those engineers in short order.
  More reasonable suggestions show that large language models (LLMs) can replace some of the duller work of engineering. They can offer autocomplete suggestions or methods to sort data, if they're prompted correctly. As
  
  Read more

• 'Uber Was Supposed to Help Traffic. It Didn't. Robotaxis Will Be Even Worse.'

  18-09-2023 01:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Saturday the San Francisco Chronicle published a joint opinion piece from MIT professor Carlo Ratti (who directs an MIT digital lab exploring the collection of digital data about urban life) and John Rossant (founder of the collaborative data-sharing platform CoMotion).Together they penned a warning about a future filled with robotaxis. "Their convenience could seduce us into vastly overusing our cars. The result? An artificial-intelligence-powered nightmare of traffic, technically perfect but a
  
  Read more

Follow @newslocke_ict on Twitter!