ICT news

• 20 Carriers Face Call-Blocking in the US for Submitting Fake 'Robocall Mitigation Plans'

  22-10-2023 23:34 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  "Twenty phone companies may soon have all their voice calls blocked by US carriers," reports Ars Technica, "because they didn't submit real plans for preventing robocalls on their networks."The 20 carriers include a mix of US-based and foreign voice service providers that submitted required "robocall mitigation" plans to the Federal Communications Commission about two years ago. The problem is that some of the carriers' submissions were blank pages and others were bizarre images or documents tha
  
  Read more

• 'Threads' Downloads Nearly Doubled in September, as New Features Roll Out

  22-10-2023 22:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "Mark Zuckerberg is making good on his promise to accelerate the use of Threads," reports Business Insider:The Meta CEO insisted in July that the app was not in its final form. "I'm highly confident that we're gonna be able to pour enough gasoline on this to help it grow," Zuckerberg said. Since then, Threads has rolled out a host of major new features, including a web version, keyword search, voice posts, and the ability to edit posts, even as it avoids promoting news. Smaller things, too, like
  
  Read more

• As Fukushima Releases Treated Radioactive Water, Inspections Started by Atomic Energy Agency

  22-10-2023 21:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  In August the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant started releasing treated radioactive wastewater into the sea — a process they plan to continue for decades.
  Now the International Atomic Energy Agency has sent a team to sample the water near the plant. And the Associated Press reports that a team member "said Thursday he does not expect any rise in radiation levels in the fish caught in the regional seas."
  The IAEA team watched flounder and other popular kinds of fish being caught off t
  
  Read more

• Nintendo's New 'Super Mario Bros. Wonder' Game Called Psychedelic, Chaos

  22-10-2023 20:34 via games.slashdot.org
  
  The BBC writes:Super Mario Bros: Wonder is a psychedelic take on the traditional 2D platformer that jazzes up Mario's usual Bowser-thwarting adventure with Wonder Effects that, as Polygon's Chris Plante put it, sees "the levels themselves collapse and contort, disobeying the laws established by decades of Mario games".
  It's as if developers unearthed the "stuffed notebook of chaos" of every wacky idea ever rejected from the series and turned it into a single game, Plante said... [T]he game offer
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Linux Foundation's 'Super-Long-Term Stable Kernel Program' Announces 10 Years of Support for Its 6.1 Kernel

  22-10-2023 19:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Last week the Linux Foundation announced its Civil Infrastructure Platform project "has expanded its super-long-term stable kernel program with a 6.1-based series.
  "Just like for the previously started kernel series (4.4-cip, 4.19-cip and 5.10-cip), the project is committed to maintaining the 6.1-cip kernel for a minimum of 10 years after its initial release."The Civil Infrastructure Platform project is establishing an open source base layer of industrial grade Linux to enable the use and implem
  
  Read more

• Newspapers Want Payment for Articles Used to Power ChatGPT

  22-10-2023 18:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:
  For years, tech companies like Open AI have freely used news stories to build data sets that teach their machines how to recognize and respond fluently to human queries about the world. But as the quest to develop cutting-edge AI models has grown increasingly frenzied, newspaper publishers and other data owners are demanding a share of the potentially massive market for generative AI, which is projected to reach to $1.3 trillion by
  
  Read more

• Could a Mud Lake on Mars Be Hiding Signs of Ancient Life?

  22-10-2023 17:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "Planetary scientists want to search for biosignatures in what they believe was once a Martian mud lake," reports Space.com:After scientists carefully studied what they believe are desiccated remnants of an equatorial mud lake on Mars, their study of Hydraotes Chaos suggests a buried trove of water surged onto the surface. If researchers are right, then this flat could become prime ground for future missions seeking traces of life on Mars...
  More generally, scientists suggest surface water on Ma
  
  Read more

• 'Solar for Renters' Offers Americans Netflix-Style Subscriptions to Clean Energy

  22-10-2023 16:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  "No roof, no solar power. That has been the dispiriting equation shutting out roughly half of all Americans from plugging into the sun," writes the Washington Post's "Climate Coach" column."But signing up for solar soon might be as easy as subscribing to Netflix."Scores of new small solar farms that sell clean, local electricity directly to customers are popping up. The setup, dubbed "community solar," is designed to bring solar power to people who don't own their own homes or can't install pane
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Dropbox Returns Over 25% of Its San Francisco HQ to Its Landlord

  22-10-2023 13:34 via it.slashdot.org
  
  "Dropbox said Friday that it's agreed to return over one quarter of its San Francisco headquarters to the landlord," reports CNBC, "as the commercial real estate market continues to soften following the Covid pandemic."
  The article notes that last year Dropbox's accountants declared a $175.2 million "impairment" on the office — a permanent reduction in its value — calling it "a result of adverse changes" in the market. And the year before they announced another $400 million charge "r
  
  Read more

• Online 'Information War' in Africa Rages on Social Media

  22-10-2023 09:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The Washington Post tells the story of a veteran political operative and a former army intelligence officer hired to help keep in power the president of the west African nation Burkina Faso:Their company, Percepto International, was a pioneer in what's known as the disinformation-for-hire business. They were skilled in deceptive tricks of social media, reeling people into an online world comprised of fake journalists, news outlets and everyday citizens whose posts were intended to bolster suppor
  
  Read more

• What's Behind the Cybersecurity Jobs Shortage?

  22-10-2023 05:34 via it.slashdot.org
  
  In 1999 cybersecurity pundit Bruce Schneier answered questions from Slashdot's readers.
  24 years later on his personal blog, Schneier is still offering his insights. Last month Schneier said that warnings about millions of vacant cybersecurity positions around the world never made sense to me" — and then shared this alternate theory. From the blog of cybersecurity professional Ben Rothke:
  [T]here is not a shortage of security generalists, middle managers, and people who claim to be compete
  
  Read more

• Plans Abandoned for First 1,300-Mile Carbon-Capture Pipeline Across the US

  22-10-2023 03:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "A company backed by BlackRock has abandoned plans to build a 1,300-mile pipeline across the US Midwest to collect and store carbon emissions from the corn ethanol industry," reports Ars Technica.
  The move comes "following opposition from landowners and some environmental campaigners."Navigator CO2 on Friday said developing its carbon capture and storage (CCS) project called Heartland Greenway had been "challenging" because of the unpredictable nature of regulatory and government processes in So
  
  Read more

• Inside a $30 Million Cash-for-Bitcoin Laundering Ring In New York

  22-10-2023 00:44 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  404 Media (working with Court Watch) reports on a $30 Million cash-for-Bitcoin laundering ring operating in the heart of New YorkFor years, a gang operating in New York allegedly offered a cash-for-Bitcoin service that generated at least $30 million, with men standing on street corners with plastic shopping bags full of money, drive-by pickups, and hundreds of thousands of dollars laid out on tables, according to court records.The records provide rare insight into an often unseen part of the cri
  
  Read more

Follow @newslocke_ict on Twitter!