ICT news

• Scientists Use CRISPR To Make Chickens More Resistant To Bird Flu

  11-10-2023 23:20 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Scientists have used the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR to create chickens that have some resistance to avian influenza, according to a new study that was published in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday. From a report: The study suggests that genetic engineering could potentially be one tool for reducing the toll of bird flu, a group of viruses that pose grave dangers to both animals and humans. But the study also highlights the limitations and potential risks of the approach,
  
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• State-backed Hackers Are Exploiting New 'Critical' Atlassian Zero-Day Bug

  11-10-2023 22:40 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft says Chinese state-backed hackers are exploiting a "critical"-rated zero-day vulnerability in Atlassian software to break into customer systems. From a report: The technology giant's threat intelligence team said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that it has observed a nation-state threat actor it calls Storm-0062 exploiting a recently disclosed critical flaw in Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Server. Microsoft has previously identified Storm-0062 as a China-based state-sponsored
  
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• Qualcomm Will Try To Have Its Apple Silicon Moment in PCs With 'Snapdragon X'

  11-10-2023 22:00 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Qualcomm's annual "Snapdragon Summit" is coming up later this month, and the company appears ready to share more about its long-planned next-generation Arm processor for PCs. ArsTechnica: The company hasn't shared many specifics yet, but yesterday we finally got a name: "Snapdragon X," which is coming in 2024, and it may finally do for Arm-powered Windows PCs what Apple Silicon chips did for Macs a few years ago (though it's coming a bit later than Qualcomm had initially hoped). Qualcomm has bee
  
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• PlayStation 5 Cloud Streaming Launches This Month

  11-10-2023 21:20 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced plans to launch cloud streaming for PlayStation 5 this month. From a report: The feature, which will be available to PlayStation Plus Premium members, will receive a staggered rollout. Sony is targeting an October 17 launch for Japan, October 23 for Europe and October 30 for North America. "Select PS5 games will be available for streaming, and we're planning to have hundreds of PS5 titles to support this new benefit," said Hideaki Nishino, SIE's senio
  
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• Crunchyroll Will Pay You $30 For Violating Your Data Privacy Rights

  11-10-2023 20:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: You could be entitled to a small chunk of a $16 million class action settlement against anime streaming service Crunchyroll. The Sony-owned company settled a data privacy lawsuit this week that will result in about $30 settlements for individuals impacted, according to firm behind the class action. The complaint, filed in September 2022, claims that Sony shared individual Crunchyroll viewing information with third-party sites without user's permission. That m
  
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• NASA Unveils First Glimpse of Space Rock Collected From Asteroid

  11-10-2023 20:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  The jackpot from a seven-year mission to bring back bits of an asteroid was unveiled on Wednesday. From a report: NASA officials in Houston displayed images of salt-and-pepper chunks of rock and particles of dark space dust that were brought back to Earth from the asteroid, Bennu, and described initial scientific observations about the material. The mission, Osiris-Rex, concluded in September when a capsule full of asteroid was jettisoned through Earth's atmosphere and recovered in the Utah dese
  
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• FTC Lays Out New Rule That Could End Hidden Fees

  11-10-2023 19:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The US Federal Trade Commission is proposing a new rule that it hopes will put an end to hidden junk fees that some businesses often add as a surprise when consumers are checking out. From a report: The agency is currently seeking public comment on the rule, known as the Trade Regulation Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, after having already collected 12,000 comments last year from individuals, businesses, law enforcement groups, and others on how deceptive fees affect them. FTC Chair Lina Khan
  
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• US Space Force Pauses Generative AI Use Based on Security Concerns

  11-10-2023 18:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  US Space Force has temporarily banned the use of web-based generative AI tools and so-called large language models that power them, citing data security and other concerns, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday, citing a memo. From the report: The Sept. 29 memorandum, addressed to the Guardian Workforce, the term for Space Force members, pauses the use of any government data on web-based generative AI tools, which can create text, images or other media from simple prompts. The memo says they "are no
  
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• Utah Sues TikTok, Alleging It Lures Children Into Addictive and Destructive Social Media Habits

  11-10-2023 18:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Utah became the latest state Tuesday to file a lawsuit against TikTok, alleging the company is "baiting" children into addictive and unhealthy social media habits. From a report: TikTok lures children into hours of social media use, misrepresents the app's safety and deceptively portrays itself as independent of its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, Utah claims in the lawsuit. "We will not stand by while these companies fail to take adequate, meaningful action to protect our children. We will p
  
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• Microsoft Gives Unexpected Tutorial on How To Install Linux

  11-10-2023 17:22 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Hell freezes over and pigs fly south to their winter feeding grounds. Microsoft has published guidance on how to download and install Linux. From a report: The Seattle-area proprietary OS vendor has published a helpful guide entitled "How to download and install Linux," inspiring reactions from incredulity to amusement. In the humble opinion of The Reg FOSS Desk, it really isn't bad at all. Microsoft suggests four alternative installation methods: using Windows Subsystem for Linux 2, using a loc
  
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• Even Google Insiders Are Questioning Bard AI Chatbot's Usefulness

  11-10-2023 16:47 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  For months, Alphabet's Google and Discord have run an invitation-only chat for heavy users of Bard, Google's artificial intelligence-powered chatbot. Google product managers, designers and engineers are using the forum to openly debate the AI tool's effectiveness and utility, with some questioning whether the enormous resources going into development are worth it. From a report: "My rule of thumb is not to trust LLM output unless I can independently verify it," Dominik Rabiej, a senior product m
  
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• Adobe Previews AI Upscaling To Make Old, Fuzzy Videos and GIFs Look Fresh

  11-10-2023 16:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Adobe has developed an experimental AI-powered upscaling tool that greatly improves the quality of low-resolution GIFs and video footage. From a report: This isn't a fully-fledged app or feature yet, and it's not yet available for beta testing, but if the demonstrations seen by The Verge are anything to go by then it has some serious potential. Adobe's "Project Res-Up" uses diffusion-based upsampling technology (a class of generative AI that generates new data based on the data it's trained on)
  
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• Federal Judge Throws Out $32.5 Million Win For Sonos Against Google; Google Starts Reintroducing Software Features It had Removed

  11-10-2023 15:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A California judge has thrown out a $32.5 million verdict win for Sonos against Google after two of Sonos' patents were deemed unenforceable and invalid. As a result, Google has started to re-introduce software features it had removed due to Sonos' lawsuit. In a decision dated October 6, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said that Sonos had wrongfully linked its patent applications for multi-room audio technology to a 2006 application in order
  
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• FBI and CISA Release Update on AvosLocker Advisory

  11-10-2023 14:00 via cisa.gov
  Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA), #StopRansomware: AvosLocker Ransomware (Update) to disseminate known indicators of compromise (IOCs), tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), and detection methods associated with the AvosLocker variant identified through FBI investigations as recently as May 2023.
  This release updates the March 17, 2022 joint CSA, Indicators of
  
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• Man Trains Home Cameras To Help Repel Badgers and Foxes

  11-10-2023 12:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Tom Singleton reports via the BBC: A man got so fed up with foxes and badgers fouling in his garden that he adapted cameras to help repel them. James Milward linked the Ring cameras at his Surrey home to a device that emits high frequency sounds. He then trained the system using hundreds of images of the nocturnal nuisances so it learned to trigger the noise when it spotted them. Mr Milward said it "sounds crazy" but the gadget he called the Furbinator 3000 has kept his garden clean.Getting the
  
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• New York's Airbnb Ban Is Bolstering a Rental Black Market

  11-10-2023 09:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Amanda Hoover reports via Wired: As few as 2 percent of New York City's previous 22,000 short-term rentals on Airbnb have been registered with the city since a new law banning most listings came into effect in early September. But many illegal short-term rental listings are now being advertised on social media and lesser known platforms, with some still seemingly being listed on Airbnb itself. The number of short-term listings on Airbnb has fallen by more than 80 percent, from 22,434 in August t
  
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• California Requires Companies To Report Carbon Emissions

  11-10-2023 05:30 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Major corporations like Apple and Disney will be forced to disclose their carbon emissions under a new Californian law approved on Monday. Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill -- passed by the state legislature -- requiring companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue to report greenhouse gas emissions. Similar efforts are moving slowly at the federal level. Mr Newsom praised the law's aims, but questioned how it will be carried out."Th
  
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• Microsoft Says VBScript Will Be Ripped From Windows In a Future Release

  11-10-2023 04:02 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Thomas Claburn reports via The Register: Microsoft has stopped developing VBScript after a 27-year relationship and plans to remove the scripting language entirely in a future Windows release. The Windows biz said on Monday that VBScript, short for Visual Basic Scripting Edition, has been deprecated in an update to its list of "Deprecated features for Windows client." "VBScript is being deprecated," Microsoft said. "In future releases of Windows, VBScript will be available as a feature on demand
  
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• Adobe's Next-Gen Firefly 2 Offers Vector Graphics, More Control and Photorealistic Renders

  11-10-2023 03:25 via slashdot.org
  
  Andrew Tarantola reports vai Engadget: Just seven months after its beta debut, Adobe's Firefly generative AI is set to receive a trio of new models as well as more than 100 new features and capabilities, company executives announced at the Adobe Max 2023 event on Tuesday. The Firefly Image 2 model promises higher fidelity generated images and more granular controls for users and the Vector model will allow graphic designers to rapidly generate vector images, a first for the industry. The Design
  
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• GNOME Merge Requests Opened To Drop X11 Session Support

  11-10-2023 02:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "A set of merge requests were opened to drop X.ORG (X11) from GNOME desktop," writes Slashdot reader motang. Phoronix reports: This merge request would remove the X11 session targets within gnome-session: "This is the first step towards deprecating the x11 session, the systemd targets are removed, but the x11 functionality is still there in so you can restore the x11 session by installing the targets in the appropriate place on your own. X11 has been receiving less and less testing. We have been
  
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• Deta's Space OS Aims To Build the First 'Personal Cloud Computer'

  11-10-2023 02:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Here's how your computer should work, according to Mustafa Abdelhai, the co-founder and CEO of a startup called Deta. Instead of a big empty screen full of icons, your desktop should be an infinite canvas on which you can take notes or watch movies or run full apps just by drawing a rectangle on the screen. Instead of logging in to a bunch of cloud services over which you ultimately have no control, you should be able to download software like
  
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• Samsung Expected To Report 80% Profit Plunge As Losses Mount At Chip Business

  11-10-2023 01:20 via slashdot.org
  
  According to analyst forecasts, Samsung Electronics is expected to report a nearly 80% plunge in earnings in the third quarter. CNBC reports: The South Korean technology giant will issue earnings guidance on Wednesday. Analysts polled by LSEG expect operating profit of 2.3 trillion Korean won ($1.7 billion) for the September quarter, a 78.7% year-on-year decline. Revenue is expected to come in at 67.8 trillion won, a fall of 11.6%, according to LSEG consensus forecasts.Samsung's semiconductor bu
  
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• Waymo's Robotaxi Service Is Now Available To Thousands In San Francisco

  11-10-2023 00:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Waymo is significantly expanding its robotaxi service in San Francisco. According to The Verge, the company's driverless ridehail operations will now be available to tens of thousands of people across 47 square miles of the city. From the report: To be sure, Waymo's service isn't yet available to anyone who downloads the Waymo app and wants to ride. The Alphabet-owned company is in the process of onboarding riders from its waitlist, which it expects to complete in short order. "This territory ex
  
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• Facebook's Sexist, Ageist Ad-Targeting Violates California Law, Court Finds

  11-10-2023 00:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Facebook may have to overhaul its entire ad-targeting system after a California court ruled (PDF) last month that the platform's practice of routinely targeting ads by age, gender, and other protected categories violates a state anti-discrimination law. The decision came after a 48-year-old Facebook user, Samantha Liapes, fought for years to prove that Facebook had discriminated against her as an older woman using the platform's ad-targeting
  
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