ICT news

• UK Treasury Sparks Row Over Use of AI To Handle Taxpayer Complaints

  12-08-2024 23:21 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Civil servants in the UK are locked in a row with the government over plans to use AI to answer taxpayer complaints. The Telegraph: Letters and emails to the Treasury are already being read by an AI tool which summarises the contents and suggests responses for civil servants. The government is now in talks to use AI across more departments, The Telegraph understands. A government spokesman said: "We make no apology for exploring innovations which improve public services. This tool has already be
  
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• Canceling Subscriptions Should Be As Easy As Signing Up, Newly Proposed federal Rule Says

  12-08-2024 22:41 via news.slashdot.org
  
  In an effort to beef up protections for consumers against corporations, the Biden administration on Monday announced a handful of policies to crack down on "headaches and hassles that waste Americans' time and money." From a report: Through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the administration will ask companies to make it as easy to cancel subscriptions and memberships as it is to sign up for them, and through the Consumer Financial Protection Bu
  
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• US Colleges Slash Majors in Effort To Cut Costs

  12-08-2024 22:01 via news.slashdot.org
  
  St. Cloud State University announced plans to eliminate its music department and cut 42 degree programs and 50 minors, as part of a broader trend of U.S. colleges slashing offerings amid financial pressures. The Minnesota school's decision, driven by a $32 million budget shortfall over two years, reflects challenges facing higher education institutions nationwide. Similar program cuts have been announced at universities across the country, including in North Carolina, Arkansas, and New York. Som
  
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• Apple Approves iDOS 3 Following Emulator Rule Change

  12-08-2024 21:20 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple recently rejected DOS emulator iDOS 3 from the App Store, but following App Store rule changes that look to have cleared the way for PC emulator apps, iDOS 3 is now available for download, developer Chaoji Li announced. In June, Li said that Apple had rejected iDOS 3 because it violated App Store guideline 4.7.
  At the time, that rule was what allowed retro game console emulator apps to appear on the store, but Apple was only allowing retro game console
  
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• The Era of Freeloading is Officially Over

  12-08-2024 20:40 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Once upon a time, you could have yourself a nice little Saturday of stocking up at Costco (using your sister's membership card, naturally), before hitting up a museum (free admission with your 15-year-old expired student ID) or settling into a reality TV binge sesh (streaming on your college roommate's ex-boyfriend's Netflix login). You wouldn't call it stealing, per se. Mooching, perhaps. Exploiting a loophole in a system of commercialized culture you didn't
  
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• Google's Osterloh Looks To Get Jump on Apple With Earlier Launch

  12-08-2024 20:05 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  With its hardware event on Tuesday, Alphabet's Google is trying to outshine Apple's annual iPhone launch -- and is letting longtime executive Rick Osterloh take center stage. Bloomberg: Osterloh, the former president of Motorola who joined Google in 2016, will helm the first major product launch after the company this year unified under his leadership the teams developing hardware and the Android operating system. The reorganization expanded Osterloh's influence in the company and signaled that
  
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• AMD Gains Ground in Data Center, Laptop CPU Markets

  12-08-2024 19:25 via slashdot.org
  
  AMD increased its market share in data center and laptop CPU segments during Q2 2024, according to a new report from Mercury Research. The company captured 24.1% of the data center CPU market, up 0.5% from the previous quarter and 5.6% year-over-year. In laptops, AMD's share rose to 20.3%, a 1% increase quarter-over-quarter and 3.8% year-over-year. The company's revenue share in laptops reached 17.7%, indicating lower average selling prices compared to Intel.
  Intel maintained its overall lead, c
  
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• Is the US Finally Getting 'All Aboard' With Electric Trains?

  12-08-2024 18:50 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  For the first time, two new all-electric passenger trains are operating in the US, which is woefully behind the rest of the world in electrifying its rolling stock. The Verge: The two new trains are operated by Caltrain. California Governor Gavin Newson and House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi were on hand to take the inaugural ride, which took place on Saturday. The trains were put into regular service the following day, running along the route between San Jose and San Francisco.
  It's taken almos
  
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• Apple Threatens To Remove Patreon From App Store Over Billing Dispute

  12-08-2024 18:09 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple has threatened to remove crowdfunding app Patreon from the App Store if creators continue to use unsupported third-party billing options or disable transactions on iOS, instead of using Apple's own in-app purchasing system. From a report: In a blog post and email to Patreon creators about upcoming changes to membership in the iOS app, the company says it's begun a 16-month-long migration process to move all creators to Apple's subscription billing by November 2025. Patreon also informed cr
  
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• Microsoft To Retire Paint 3D

  12-08-2024 17:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft Paint isn't one of Windows' best photo editing apps, but in the recent past, the software giant introduced some exciting features, such as layer support, to make the app more viable for Windows users. While Microsoft was pouring the Paint app with new features, the Paint 3D app was dying a slow death. The app will finally be delisted from the Microsoft Store in November this year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Gas Pipeline Players in Talks To Fuel AI Datacenter Demand

  12-08-2024 16:44 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Proximity to natural gas lines could become just as desirable for datacenter operators as high-speed fiber-optic networks as they scramble to satiate AI's ever growing thirst for power. From a report: Speaking to analysts during their respective earnings call this week, executives at Energy Transfer LP and Williams Companies, both of which operate pipelines across the US, revealed they were in talks with datacenter operators to supply them with large quantities of natural gas. "We are, in four d
  
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• Co-Founder of DDoSecrets Was Dark Web Drug Kingpin

  12-08-2024 16:00 via it.slashdot.org
  
  A co-founder of transparency activism organization Distributed of Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) was a dark web drug kingpin who ran the successor to the infamous Silk Road marketplace and was later convicted of child abuse imagery crimes. From a report: The co-founder was Thomas White, who was prosecuted for administering the Silk Road 2.0 drug marketplace and for possessing images of child sexual abuse material. He decided to reveal his involvement in DDoSecrets to 404 Media after serving a fi
  
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• America's EV Charger Uptimes Were Overestimated in 2023, 'Reliability Report' Finds

  12-08-2024 13:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  A company called ChargerHelp provides certified technicians to service EV charging stations (for a monthly fee). And they've just issued their annual "reliability report," reports CleanTechnica:
  Its analysis of more than 19 million data points collected from public and private sources in 2023 — including real-time assessments of 4,800 chargers from ChargerHelp technicians in the field — finds that â"software consistently overestimates station uptime, point-in-time status, and t
  
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• Robot-Sub 'Boaty McBoatface' Completes 55 Days of Underwater Climate Research

  12-08-2024 09:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "Battling choppy waves and high winds, three engineers pulled ashore a yellow submarine in Scotland this week," reports the BBC. "With sheets of water pouring from its body, the UK's most famous robot — Boaty McBoatface — was winched up after 55 days at sea."Boaty has completed a more-than-2,000km scientific odyssey from Iceland [the longest journey yet for its class of submarine, and major test of its engineering]... "Boaty has absolutely passed. It's a massive relief," says Rob Tem
  
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• Are Banks Doing Enough to Protect Customers from Zelle Scams? US Launches Federal Probe

  12-08-2024 05:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  "Zelle payments can't be reversed once they're sent," notes the Los Angeles Times — which could be why they're popular with scammers. "You can't simply stop the payment (like a check) or dispute it (like a credit card).
  Now, the federal regulator overseeing financial products is probing whether banks that offer Zelle to their account holders are doing enough to protect them against scams. Two major banks — JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — disclosed in their security filings in
  
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• Fire Damages Russian-Occupied Nuclear Plant in Ukraine

  12-08-2024 03:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  The Guardian reportsSunday, Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, highlighted that Russian forces appeared to have started a fire in one of the cooling towers of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that it has occupied since the early days of the war. "Radiation levels are within norm," Zelenskiy said before accusing Russia of using its control of the site, whose six reactors are in shutdown mode, "to blackmail Ukraine, all of Europe, and the world". A Ukrainian official in Nikopol, the nea
  
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• Alcohol Researcher Says Alcohol-Industry Lobbyists are Attacking His Work

  12-08-2024 01:52 via slashdot.org
  
  "Last year, a major meta-analysis that re-examined 107 studies over 40 years came to the conclusion that no amount of alcohol improves health," the New York Times reported this June, citing a study co-authored by Tim Stockwell, an epidemiologist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research. Dr. Stockwell (and other scientists he's collaborated with) "are overhauling decades-worth of scientific evidence — and newspaper headlines — that backed the health benefits of alcohol," w
  
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• Can a Free Business Rent Program Revive San Francisco's Downtown?

  12-08-2024 00:34 via it.slashdot.org
  
  The New York Times visits the downtown of one of America's biggest tech cities to explore San Francisco's "Vacant to Vibrant" initiative, where "city and business leaders provide free rent for up to six months" to "entrepreneurs who want to set up shop in empty spaces, many of which are on the ground floor of office buildings."
  The program also offers funding for business expenses (plus technical and business permit assistance) — and it seems to be working. One cafe went on to sign a five-
  
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