ICT news

• Linux Will Be Able To Boot 0.035 Seconds Faster With One Line Kernel Patch

  09-08-2024 23:20 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: Intel Linux engineer Colin Ian King discovered that if aligning the slab in the ACPI code via the "SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN" flag will offer a measurable improvement in memory performance and reducing the kernel boot time.Colin explained with this one line kernel patch: "Enabling SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN for the ACPI object caches improves boot speed in the ACPICA core for object allocation and free'ing especially in the AML parsing and execution phases in boot. Testing
  
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• Nova Launcher, Savior of Cruft-Filled Android Phones, Is On Life Support

  09-08-2024 22:40 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Back in July 2022, when mobile app metrics firm Branch acquired the popular and well-regarded Nova Launcher for Android, the app's site put up one of those self-directed FAQ posts about it. Under the question heading "What does Branch want with Nova?," Nova founder and creator Kevin Barry started his response with, "Not to mess it up, don't worry!" Branch (formerly/sometimes Branch Metrics) is a firm concerned with helping businesses track t
  
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• FCC Proposes New Rules For AI-Generated Robocalls and Robotexts

  09-08-2024 22:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The FCC has proposed new rules governing the use of AI-generated phone calls and texts. Part of the proposal centers on create a clear definition for AI-generated calls, with the rest focuses on consumer protection by making companies disclose when AI is being used in calls or texts. A report adds: "This provides consumers with an opportunity to identify and avoid those calls or texts that contain an enhanced risk of fraud and other scams," the FCC said. The agency is also looking ensure that le
  
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• A Crackdown Is Coming for People Hanging On To Student Discounts

  09-08-2024 21:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Major U.S. companies are tightening eligibility requirements for student discounts, cracking down on graduates who continue to claim benefits years after leaving school. Amazon, Spotify, and other firms are partnering with verification services like SheerID to validate student status, ending an era of lax enforcement that allowed many to exploit discounts long after graduation.
  While companies aim to build brand loyalty among young consumers, they're also guarding against fraud. SheerID claims i
  
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• Agile is Killing Software Innovation, Says Moxie Marlinspike

  09-08-2024 20:40 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  There's a rot at the heart of modern software development that's destroying innovation, and infosec legend Moxie Marlinspike believes he knows exactly what's to blame: Agile development. Marlinspike argued that Agile methodologies, widely adopted over the past two decades, have confined developers to "black box abstraction layers" that limit creativity and understanding of underlying systems.
  "We spent the past 20 years onboarding people into software by putting them into black box abstraction l
  
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• How China Built Tech Prowess: Chemistry Classes and Research Labs

  09-08-2024 20:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Stressing science education, China is outpacing other countries in research fields like battery chemistry, crucial to its lead in electric vehicles. From a report: China's domination of electric cars, which is threatening to start a trade war, was born decades ago in university laboratories in Texas, when researchers discovered how to make batteries with minerals that were abundant and cheap. Companies from China have recently built on those early discoveries, figuring out how to make the batter
  
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• OpenAI Finds That GPT-4o Does Some Truly Bizarre Stuff Sometimes

  09-08-2024 19:21 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  OpenAI's latest AI model, GPT-4o, exhibits unusual behaviors, including voice cloning and random shouting, according to a new "red teaming" report. The model, which powers ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode alpha, is OpenAI's first trained on voice, text, and image data. In high-noise environments, GPT-4o occasionally mimics users' voices, a quirk OpenAI attributes to difficulties processing distorted speech. The company said it has implemented a "system-level mitigation" to address this issue. The r
  
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• Sellafield, World's Largest Store of Plutonium, Apologizes After Guilty Plea Over String of Cybersecurity Failings

  09-08-2024 18:40 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Bruce66423 writes: Sellafield [U.K.'s largest nuclear site] has apologised after pleading guilty to criminal charges relating to a string of cybersecurity failings at Britain's most hazardous nuclear site, which it admitted could have threatened national security.
  Among the failings at the vast nuclear waste dump in Cumbria was the discovery that 75% of its computer servers were vulnerable to cyber-attacks, Westminster magistrates court in London heard. Information that could threaten national s
  
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• Microsoft Researchers Report Iran Hackers Targeting US Officials Before Election

  09-08-2024 18:01 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft researchers said on Friday that Iran government-tied hackers tried breaking into the account of a "high ranking official" on the U.S. presidential campaign in June, weeks after breaching the account of a county-level U.S. official. From a report: The breaches were part of Iranian groups' increasing attempts to influence the U.S. presidential election in November, the researchers said in a report that did not provide any further detail on the "official" in question.
  The report follows r
  
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• US Landfills Are Major Source of Toxic PFAS Pollution, Study Finds

  09-08-2024 17:21 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Toxic PFAS "forever chemicals" that leach from landfills into groundwater are among the major pollution sources in the US, and remain a problem for which officials have yet to find an effective solution. Now new research has identified another route in which PFAS may escape landfills and threaten the environment at even higher levels: the air. From a report: PFAS gas that emits from landfill waste ends up highly concentrated in the facilities' gas treatment systems, but the systems are not desig
  
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• Netflix, Crunchyroll Impacted by Data Leak, With Full Episodes of Anime Titles Released

  09-08-2024 16:40 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader writes: Netflix and Crunchyroll titles leaked on Thursday, with full episodes of shows released on social media including the anticipated "Heartstopper" Season 3 and anime fare like "Arcane" and the Season 3 premiere of "Re:Zero."
  The leak was first reported internationally, as fans spotted clips of unfinished footage on social media, "One of our post-production partners has been compromised and footage from several of our titles has unfortunately leaked online," a Netflix sp
  
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• Signal Developer Explains Why Early Encrypted Messaging Tools Flopped

  09-08-2024 16:00 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Signal developer Moxie Marlinspike criticized early encryption software's user-unfriendly design at Black Hat 2024, admitting he and others initially failed to consider non-technical users' needs. Speaking with Black Hat founder Jeff Moss, Marlinspike said developers of tools like Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) wrongly assumed users would adopt complex practices like running keyservers and signing keys over dinner. "We were just wrong," Marlinspike said, describing this as "software snobbery" that un
  
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• CRISPR Gene-Editing Being Offered To British Blood Disorder Patients

  09-08-2024 15:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  The first therapy that uses gene-editing is to be offered on the NHS in a "revolutionary breakthrough" for patients. From a report: It will be used as a potential cure for the blood disorder beta thalassaemia. Stem cells which make blood will be extracted, reprogrammed to correct the condition and returned to the patient's body. It could spare them needing a blood transfusion, every three to five weeks, for life. People with beta thalassaemia struggle to produce enough haemoglobin, which is the
  
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• DOOM and DOOM 2 Getting New Enhanced Versions

  09-08-2024 12:00 via games.slashdot.org
  
  QuakeCon 2024 kicks off today with the announcement of enhanced remasters of the first two Doom games, which will feature online cross-platform deathmatch, co-op support for up to 16 players, upgraded visuals, and additional content including a new episode for Doom 2. The compilation, titled DOOM + DOOM 2, runs on the KEX Engine and will include new maps, a newly-updated soundtrack, and support for 4K resolution, with a possible free upgrade for existing console owners. IGN reports: While unconf
  
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• USPS Text Scammers Duped His Wife, So He Hacked Their Operation

  09-08-2024 09:00 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Security researcher Grant Smith uncovered a large-scale smishing scam where scammers posing as the USPS tricked victims into providing their credit card details through fake websites. Smith hacked into the scammers' systems, gathered evidence, and collaborated with the USPS and a US bank to protect over 438,000 unique credit cards from fraudulent activity. Wired reports: The flood of text messages started arriving early this year. They carried a similar thrust: The United States Postal Service i
  
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• String of Record Hot Months Came To an End In July

  09-08-2024 05:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The past several years have been absolute scorchers, with 2023 being the warmest year ever recorded. And things did not slow down in 2024. As a result, we entered a stretch where every month set a new record as the warmest iteration of that month that we've ever recorded. Last month, that pattern stretched out for a full 12 months, as June of 2024 once again became the warmest June ever recorded. But, despite some exceptional temperatures in
  
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• FTX Ordered To Pay $12.7 Billion To Customers, US CFTC Says

  09-08-2024 03:25 via slashdot.org
  
  FTX has been ordered to pay $12.7 billion in relief to its customers, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). In a statement, CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam said the crypto exchange drew customers in with "an illusion that it was a safe and secure place to access crypto markets," then misappropriated their customer deposits to make its own risky investments. Reuters reports: The repayment order implements a settlement between the CFTC and the bankrupt crypto exchange, which ha
  
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• Cloud Growth Puts Hyperscalers On Track To 60% of Data Capacity By 2029

  09-08-2024 02:45 via slashdot.org
  
  Dan Robinson writes via The Register: Hyperscalers are forecast to account for more than 60 percent of datacenter space by 2029, a stark reversal on just seven years ago when the majority of capacity was made up of on-premises facilities. This trend is the result of demand for cloud services and consumer-oriented digital services such as social networking, e-commerce and online gaming pushing growth in hyperscale bit barns, those operated by megacorps including Amazon, Microsoft and Meta. The fi
  
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• M4 Mac Mini To Become Apple's Smallest Ever Computer With Complete Redesign

  09-08-2024 02:02 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (paywalled), Apple plans to launch a completely redesigned Mac mini with M4 and M4 Pro chips later this year. MacRumors reports: The new Mac mini will be the first major design change to the machine since 2010, making it Apple's smallest ever desktop computer. The new Mac mini will apparently approach the size of an Apple TV, but it may be slightly taller than the current model, which is 1.4 inches high. It will continue to feature an aluminum shell. Individu
  
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• UK Regulator To Examine $4 Billion Amazon Investment In AI Startup Anthropic

  09-08-2024 01:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Amazon's $4 billion investment into US artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is to be examined in the latest investigation into technology tie-ups by the UK's competition watchdog. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said on Thursday that it was launching a preliminary investigation into the deal, before deciding whether to refer it for an in-depth review. The deal, announced in March, included a $4 billion investment in Anthropi
  
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• Sonos Delays Two New Products As It Races To Fix Buggy App

  09-08-2024 00:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "Sonos is delaying two hardware releases originally planned for later this year as it deploys an all-hands-on-deck approach to fixing the app," writes The Verge's Chris Welch. The company released a redesigned mobile app on May 7th that has been riddled with flaws and missing features. Sonos also entered the crowded headphone market in May with the launch of its Ace headphones, but it was immediately "overshadowed" by problems with the new Sonos app, according to Sonos CEO Patrick Spence. The Ve
  
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• Chess Player Suspended After Allegedly Poisoning Her Rival

  09-08-2024 00:00 via games.slashdot.org
  
  The Russian Chess Federation is suspending a player who is facing jail time for allegedly trying to poison her rival with mercury during a chess tournament. Chess.com reports: Amina Abakarova, a 40-year-old chess coach from Makhachkala in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, is accused of trying to poison her rival, 30-year-old Umayganat Osmanova. The incident unfolded during the Dagestan Chess Championship on August 2, according to a Telegram channel that first reported on the story, and is now ma
  
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