ICT news

• Accounting Graduates Drop By Highest Percentage in Years

  12-10-2023 23:20 via slashdot.org
  
  The pool of U.S. students who completed accounting degrees dropped sharply in the latest available academic year as more workers in the profession retire without an adequate pipeline of entrants to fill the gap. From a report: Roughly 47,070 students earned a bachelor's degree in accounting in the 2021 to 2022 academic year, down 7.8% from the prior year, according to an annual report released Thursday by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, a professional organization. About
  
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• Who Runs the Best US Schools? It May Be the Defense Department

  12-10-2023 22:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Schools for children of military members achieve results rarely seen in public education. From a report: Amy Dilmar, a middle-school principal in Georgia, is well aware of the many crises threatening American education. The lost learning that piled up during the coronavirus pandemic. The gaping inequalities by race and family income that have only gotten worse. A widening achievement gap between the highest- and lowest-performing students. But she sees little of that at her school in Fort Moore,
  
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• Cloud Gaming Firm Shadow Says Hackers Stole Customers' Personal Data

  12-10-2023 22:05 via it.slashdot.org
  
  French technology company Shadow has confirmed a data breach involving customers' personal information. TechCrunch: The Paris-headquartered startup, which offers gaming through its cloud-based PC service, said in an email to customers this week that hackers had accessed their personal information after a successful social engineering attack targeted the company. "At the end of September, we were the victim of a social engineering attack targeting one of our employees," Shadow CEO Eric Sele said
  
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• OpenAI Has Quietly Changed Its 'Core Values'

  12-10-2023 21:05 via slashdot.org
  
  ChatGPT creator OpenAI quietly revised all of the "Core values" listed on its website in recent weeks, putting a greater emphasis on the development of AGI -- artificial general intelligence. From a report: CEO Sam Altman has described AGI as "the equivalent of a median human that you could hire as a co-worker." OpenAI's careers page previously listed six core values for its employees, according to a September 25 screenshot from the Internet Archive. They were Audacious, Thoughtful, Unpretentiou
  
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• Xbox Game Studios Could Use Board Games To Revisit Dormant Franchises

  12-10-2023 20:45 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft could use board games to revisit dormant franchises owned by Xbox Game Studios, with Zoo Tycoon: The Board Game potentially being the first of many. From a report: Zoo Tycoon was developed by Elite: Dangerous studio Frontier Developments and published by Microsoft Studios (the previous name for Xbox Game Studios), on November 22, 2013 for Xbox One and Xbox 360. Speaking to Xbox Wire, Xbox Game Studios executive producer Robert Jerauld said this board game adaptation is a "prime illustr
  
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• Google To Defend Generative AI Users From Copyright Claims

  12-10-2023 20:13 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google said on Thursday that it will defend users of generative AI systems in its Google Cloud and Workspace platforms if they are accused of intellectual property violations, joining Microsoft, Adobe and other companies that have made similar pledges. From a report: Major technology companies like Google have been investing heavily in generative AI and racing to incorporate it into their products. Prominent writers, illustrators and other copyright owners have said in several lawsuits that both
  
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• You Can Now Generate AI Images Directly in the Google Search Bar

  12-10-2023 19:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google announced Thursday that users who have opted-in for its Search Generative Experience (SGE) will be able to create AI images directly from the standard Search bar. From a report: SGE is Google's vision for our web searching future. Rather than picking websites from a returned list, the system will synthesize a (reasonably) coherent response to the user's natural language prompt using the same data that the list's links led to. Thursday's updates are a natural expansion of that experience,
  
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• Half a Billion Cheap Electrical Items Go To UK Landfills in a Year, Research Finds

  12-10-2023 18:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Almost half a billion small, cheap electrical everyday items from headphones to handheld fans ended up in landfill in the UK in the past year, according to research. The Guardian: The not-for-profit organisation Material Focus, which conducted the research, said the scale of the issue was huge and they wanted to encourage more recycling. More than half a billion cheaply priced electronic goods were bought in the UK in the past year alone -- 16 per second. Material Focus findings showed that of t
  
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• Microsoft Calls Off OneDrive Photo-pocalypse

  12-10-2023 18:00 via it.slashdot.org
  
  After Microsoft recently imposed storage limits for photos in a user's OneDrive account, Microsoft has now reversed course after receiving a barrage of backlash. From a report: In August, Microsoft announced that photos in a user's OneDrive Gallery and in each of their saved photo albums would count separately toward the company's cloud-based limit of five gigabytes, according to Neowin. The update was expected to roll out on October 16, which would force some users to encounter storage ceilings
  
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• YouTube TV, Which Costs $73 a Month, Agrees To End '$600 Less Than Cable' Ads

  12-10-2023 17:24 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Google has agreed to stop advertising YouTube TV as "$600 less than cable" after losing an appeal of a previous ruling that went against the company. Google said it will "modify or cease the disputed advertising claim." From a report: The case was handled in the advertising industry's self-regulatory system, not in a court of law. The National Advertising Review Board (NARB) announced today that it rejected Google's appeal and recommended that the company discontinue the YouTube TV claim. YouTub
  
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• IRS Says Microsoft Owes an Additional $29 Billion in Back Taxes

  12-10-2023 16:40 via slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft received Notices of Proposed Adjustment from the Internal Revenue Service for an additional tax payment of $28.9 billion, the company said in an 8-K filing Wednesday. From a report: Microsoft said the dispute concerns the company's allocated profits between countries and jurisdictions between 2004 and 2013. It said up to $10 billion in taxes that the company has already paid are not reflected in the proposed adjustments made by the IRS. Microsoft plans to contest the notices through th
  
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• Atlassian To Buy Video Messaging Provider Loom for Nearly $1 Billion

  12-10-2023 16:00 via slashdot.org
  
  Atlassian said on Thursday it had agreed to acquire privately held video messaging platform Loom for about $975 million, beefing up its team collaboration tools to tap into resilient demand fueled by the adoption of hybrid work. From a report: Integration of Loom's technology into Atlassian software such as collaboration tools Jira and Confluence will help users use video in their workflows. The acquisition of Loom, which has more than 25 million users globally, will enable customers communicate
  
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• CISA Releases Nineteen Industrial Control Systems Advisories

  12-10-2023 14:00 via cisa.gov
  CISA released nineteen Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories on October 12, 2023. These advisories provide timely information about current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploits surrounding ICS.
  ICSA-23-285-01 Siemens SIMATIC CP products
  ICSA-23-285-02 Siemens SCALANCE W1750D
  ICSA-23-285-03 Siemens SICAM A8000 Devices
  ICSA-23-285-04 Siemens Xpedition Layout Browser
  ICSA-23-285-05 Siemens Simcenter Amesim
  ICSA-23-285-06 Siemens SICAM PAS/PQS
  ICSA-23-285-07 Siemens RUGGEDCOM APE180
  
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• CISA Releases New Resources Identifying Known Exploited Vulnerabilities and Misconfigurations Linked to Ransomware

  12-10-2023 14:00 via cisa.gov
  Today, as part of the Ransomware Vulnerability Warning Pilot (RVWP), CISA launched two new resources for combating ransomware campaigns:
  A “Known to be Used in Ransomware Campaigns” column in the KEV Catalog that identifies KEVs associated with ransomware campaigns.
  A “Misconfigurations and Weaknesses Known to be Used in Ransomware Campaigns” table on StopRansomware.gov that identifies misconfigurations and weaknesses associated with ransomware campaigns. The ta
  
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• YouTube Passes Netflix As Top Video Source For Teens

  12-10-2023 12:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A new survey from investment bank Piper Sandler found that teens in the U.S. consume more videos on YouTube than Netflix. CNBC reports: Teens polled by the bank said they spent 29.1% of their daily video consumption time on Google-owned YouTube, beating out Netflix for the first time at 28.7%. Time on YouTube rose since the spring, adding nearly a percentage point, while Netflix fell more than two percentage points. The data point shows that the streaming business is getting more competitive, an
  
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• Croatia Wants To Turn Superhot Underground Lake Into a 16MW Geothermal Power Plant

  12-10-2023 09:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  A Croatian energy company has discovered an underwater lake of superheated water that meets all the requirements for the construction of a 16MW geothermal power plant. The Next Web reports: The find was the result of a two-year study by state-run power company Bukotermal that sought to find suitable sites for the exploitation of the energy source, generated by heat from the Earth's core. The research verified the presence of a geothermal water source at Lunjkovec -- Kutnjak field, located in the
  
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• World-First Trial of Gene Therapy To Cure Form of Deafness Begins

  12-10-2023 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: A world-first trial of a gene therapy to cure a form of deafness has begun, potentially heralding a revolution in the treatment of hearing loss. Up to 18 children from the UK, Spain and the US are being recruited to the study, which aims to transform treatment of auditory neuropathy, a condition caused by the disruption of nerve impulses traveling from the inner ear to the brain. Participants will be monitored for five years to gauge
  
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• CBC Stops Broadcasting Official Time Signal

  12-10-2023 04:02 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger shares a report from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC): CBC and Radio-Canada have announced they'll no longer carry the National Research Council (NRC) time signal. Monday marked the last time it was broadcast, ending the longest running segment on CBC Radio. In a statement, spokesperson Emma Iannetta described the signal as a "wonderful partnership," but confirmed it's being dropped. Given the range of CBC platforms from traditional over-the-air ra
  
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• Adobe Creates Symbol To Encourage Tagging AI-Generated Content

  12-10-2023 03:25 via slashdot.org
  
  Emilia David reports via The Verge: Adobe and other companies have established a symbol that can be attached to content alongside metadata, establishing its provenance, including whether it was made with AI tools. The symbol, which Adobe calls an "icon of transparency," can be added via Adobe's photo and video editing platforms like Photoshop or Premiere and eventually Microsoft's Bing Image Generator. It will be added to the metadata of images, videos, and PDFs to announce who owns and created
  
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• FTX Used Python Code To Fake Its Insurance Fund Figure

  12-10-2023 02:45 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Tom Mitchelhill reports via CoinTelegraph: Crypto exchange FTX used hidden Python code to misrepresent the value of its insurance fund -- a pool of funds meant to prevent user losses during huge liquidation events -- according to testimony from FTX co-founder Gary Wang. In a damning testimony on Oct. 6, FTX's former chief technology officer, Gary Wang, said that FTX's so-called $100 million insurance fund in 2021 was fabricated and never contained any of the exchanges' FTX tokens (FTT) as claime
  
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• Adobe's Project Fast Fill Is Generative Fill For Video

  12-10-2023 02:02 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: As part of its MAX conference, Adobe traditionally shows off some of its more forward-looking tech, which may or may not end up in its Creative Cloud apps at some point in the future. The idea here is to show what its engineers are working on; right now, as you can imagine, that's a lot of generative AI. With Firefly now being part of Photoshop and now also Illustrator, the next frontier here is video and unsurprisingly, that's where Adobe's m
  
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• New Starlink Webpage Highlights Upcoming 'Direct To Cell' Service

  12-10-2023 01:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  SpaceX quietly published a new "Starlink Direct to Cell" webpage highlighting the company's forthcoming cell service for mobile phones. MobileSyrup reports: The new 'Starlink Direct to Cell' page boasts "seamless access to text, voice, and data for LTE phones across the globe" and notes that the company is targeting text capabilities in 2024, followed by voice and data capabilities in 2025. Internet of Things (IoT) support may also arrive in 2025. Starlink also advertises that the direct-to-cell
  
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• T-Mobile Forcibly Moving People On Older Plans To More Expensive Ones

  12-10-2023 00:40 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader Shakrai writes: T-Mobile, formerly known as the "Un-carrier", confirmed plans today to force customers on older/cheaper plans onto newer/more expensive ones. Astute observers of the cellular industry will surely recall the former CEO, John Legere, assuring customers that they would always be able to keep their existing plans and prices would never rise without their consent. They will also observe that this comes nearly three years to the day after T-Mobile merged with
  
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• Right-To-Repair Is Now the Law In California

  12-10-2023 00:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed SB 244, or the Right to Repair Act, into law, making it easier for owners to repair devices themselves or to take them to independent repair shops. Because California is one of the world's largest economies, this iFixit-cosponsored bill may make it easier for people all over the US to repair their devices. The law, which joins similar efforts in New York, Colorado, and Minnesota, is tougher than some
  
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