ICT news

• Apple Announces Rare Wave of Job Cuts

  29-08-2024 23:30 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple has laid off about 100 employees in its services group (source may be paywalled; alternative source), primarily affecting roles associated with the Apple Books app and Apple Bookstore. The San Francisco Chronicle reports: The impacted employees at the Cupertino-based tech giant were informed of the cuts on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported (paywalled). The layoffs spanned various teams under Senior Vice President Eddy Cue. The job cuts include roles primarily associated with the Apple Books app
  
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• Midjourney Says It's 'Getting Into Hardware'

  29-08-2024 22:50 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Midjourney, the AI image-generating platform, announced on Wednesday that it's "officially getting into hardware." TechCrunch reports: As for what hardware Midjourney, which has a team of fewer than 100 people, might pursue, there might be a clue in its hiring of Ahmad Abbas in February. Abbas, an ex-Neuralink staffer, helped engineer the Apple Vision Pro, Apple's mixed reality headset. Midjourney CEO David Holz is also no stranger to hardware. He co-founded Leap Motion, which built motion-track
  
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• California Legislature Passes Controversial 'Kill Switch' AI Safety Bill

  29-08-2024 22:07 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A controversial bill aimed at enforcing safety standards for large artificial intelligence models has now passed the California State Assembly by a 45-11 vote. Following a 32-1 state Senate vote in May, SB-1047 now faces just one more procedural state senate vote before heading to Governor Gavin Newsom's desk. As we've previously explored in depth, SB-1047 asks AI model creators to implement a "kill switch" that can be activated if that mode
  
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• Cable Providers Top Telecom Rivals for Internet Reliability

  29-08-2024 21:22 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A new study of broadband reliability finds a top-two finish that you might not expect from recent surveys of ISP customer satisfaction: Charter's Spectrum and Comcast's Xfinity, the two largest cable operators in the US. From a report: Opensignal's report, published Thursday, draws on software telemetry collected from April 1 through June 29 of downtime, consistency of service, and how well a provider meets basic thresholds for speed, latency, and other core performance metrics. Spectrum comes i
  
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• Apple Is in Talks To Invest in OpenAI, WSJ Says

  29-08-2024 20:23 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple is in talks to invest in OpenAI, a move that would cement ties to a partner integral to its efforts to gain ground in the artificial-intelligence race. WSJ: The investment would be part of a new OpenAI fundraising round that would value the ChatGPT maker above $100 billion, people familiar with the situation said. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that venture-capital firm Thrive Capital is leading the round, which will total several billion dollars, and Apple rival Microsoft is a
  
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• Gen Z Students Show Declining School Engagement, Survey Finds

  29-08-2024 20:08 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A new national survey reveals a concerning trend in school engagement among Gen Z students aged 12-18. The joint Gallup and Walton Family Foundation study [PDF] found that middle and high school students find classes less interesting than last year, with only half feeling positively challenged. Student engagement has dropped significantly since 2023, with 10% fewer respondents saying they learned something interesting at school in the past week.
  Non-college-bound students report feeling particul
  
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• EU Investigating Telegram Over User Numbers

  29-08-2024 19:27 via slashdot.org
  
  Brussels is investigating whether Telegram breached EU digital rules by failing to provide accurate user numbers [non-paywalled source], as officials push to bring the controversial messaging app under stricter supervision. Financial Times: EU legal and data experts suspect that the app has understated its presence in the EU to stay under a 45mn user threshold, above which large online platforms are subject to a swath of Brussels regulations designed to check their influence. The EU probe comes
  
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• Verizon Taps Another Satellite Operator To Make Texting From the Middle of Nowhere Easier

  29-08-2024 18:44 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Verizon has teamed up with another satellite operator to offer US customers a commercial direct-to-device messaging service for when a terrestrial cell network is not available, starting this fall. From a report: The telecoms giant says that US customers with compatible smartphones will have access to emergency messaging and location sharing, even when out of range of a cell tower, and from early next year it will offer the ability to text anywhere via a satellite connection, again with compatib
  
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• Appeals Court Questions TikTok's Section 230 Shield for Algorithm

  29-08-2024 18:05 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  A U.S. appeals court has revived a lawsuit against TikTok over a child's death, potentially limiting tech companies' legal shield under Section 230. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law does not protect TikTok from claims that its algorithm recommended a deadly "blackout challenge" to a 10-year-old girl.
  Judge Patty Shwartz wrote that Section 230 only immunizes third-party content, not recommendations made by TikTok's own algorithm. The decision marks a departure from previou
  
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• Russian Government Hackers Found Using Exploits Made By Spyware Companies NSO and Intellexa

  29-08-2024 17:20 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Google says it has evidence that Russian government hackers are using exploits that are "identical or strikingly similar" to those previously made by spyware makers Intellexa and NSO Group. From a report: In a blog post on Thursday, Google said it is not sure how the Russian government acquired the exploits, but said this is an example of how exploits developed by spyware makers can end up in the hands of "dangerous threat actors." In this case, Google says the threat actors are APT29, a group o
  
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• AI Giants Pledge To Share New Models With Feds

  29-08-2024 16:41 via news.slashdot.org
  
  OpenAI and Anthropic will give a U.S. government agency early access to major new model releases under agreements announced on Thursday. From a report: Governments around the world have been pushing for measures -- both legislative and otherwise -- to evaluate the risks of powerful new AI algorithms. Anthropic and OpenAI have each signed a memorandum of understanding to allow formal collaboration with the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute, a part of the Commerce Department's National
  
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• Top Movie Piracy Ring Taken Down, Major Studios' Enforcement Group Claims

  29-08-2024 16:06 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anti-piracy coalition comprised of major studios in the U.S. and across the globe is claiming victory against Fmovies, a significant streaming operation based in Vietnam. From a report: On Thursday the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment revealed that it had worked with Hanoi police to shutter Fmovies and affiliated sites, which together made up "the largest pirate streaming operation in the world," according to the organization. With sites including bflixz, flixtorz, movies7, myflixer,
  
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• ESPN's 'Where To Watch' Tries To Solve Sports' Most Frustrating Problem

  29-08-2024 15:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Too often, new tech product or service launches seem like solutions in search of a problem, but not this one: ESPN is launching software that lets you figure out just where you can watch the specific game you want to see amid an overcomplicated web of streaming services, cable channels, and arcane licensing agreements. Every sports fan is all too familiar with today's convoluted streaming schedules. Launching today on ESPN.com and the variou
  
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• CISA and Partners Release Advisory on RansomHub Ransomware

  29-08-2024 14:00 via cisa.gov
  Today, CISA—in partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory, #StopRansomware: RansomHub Ransomware. This advisory provides network defenders with indicators of compromise (IOCs), tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), and detection methods associated with RansomHub activity identified through FBI investi
  
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• Yelp Sues Google For Antitrust Violations

  29-08-2024 12:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Yelp has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, accusing the search giant of maintaining its local search monopoly by preferencing its own services over competitors, harming competition and reducing quality. "Yelp claims that the way Google directs users toward its own local search vertical from its general search engine results page should be considered illegal tying of separate products to keep rivals from reaching scale," adds The Verge. From the report: Yelp wants the court to order Goog
  
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• Canada Wildfires Last Year Released More Carbon Than Several Countries

  29-08-2024 09:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A study found that Canada's 2023 wildfires released 647 megatons of carbon, surpassing the emissions of seven of the ten largest emitting countries, including Germany, Japan, and Russia. "Only China, India and the United States emitted more carbon emissions during that period, meaning that if Canada's wildfires were ranked alongside countries, they would have been the world's fourth largest emitter," adds Reuters. From the report: Typical emissions from Canadian forest fires over the last decade
  
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• Brain Scientists Finally Discover the Glue That Makes Memories Stick For a Lifetime

  29-08-2024 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American, written by science journalist Simon Makin: The persistence of memory is crucial to our sense of identity, and without it, there would be no learning, for us or any other animal. It's little wonder, then, that some researchers have called how the brain stores memories the most fundamental question in neuroscience. A milestone in the effort to answer this question came in the early 1970s, with the discovery of a phenomenon called long-t
  
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• 'Uncertainty' Drives LinkedIn To Migrate From CentOS To Azure Linux

  29-08-2024 04:02 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  The Register's Liam Proven reports: Microsoft's in-house professional networking site is moving to Microsoft's in-house Linux. This could mean that big changes are coming for the former CBL-Mariner distro. Ievgen Priadka's post on the LinkedIn Engineering blog, titled Navigating the transition: adopting Azure Linux as LinkedIn's operating system, is the visible sign of what we suspect has been a massive internal engineering effort. It describes some of the changes needed to migrate what the post
  
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• Backpage.com Founder Michael Lacey Sentenced To 5 Years In Prison, Fined $3 Million

  29-08-2024 03:25 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Three former Backpage executives, including co-founder Michael Lacey, were sentenced to prison for promoting prostitution and laundering money while disguising their activities as a legitimate classified business. The Associated Press reports: A jury convicted Lacey, 76, of a single count of international concealment money laundering last year, but deadlocked on 84 other prostitution facilitation and money laundering charges. U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa later acquitted Lacey of dozens of
  
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• South Korea Faces Deepfake Porn 'Emergency'

  29-08-2024 02:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: South Korea's president has urged authorities to do more to "eradicate" the country's digital sex crime epidemic, amid a flood of deepfake pornography targeting young women. Authorities, journalists and social media users recently identified a large number of chat groups where members were creating and sharing sexually explicit "deepfake" images -- including some of underage girls. Deepfakes are generated using artificial intelligence, and often
  
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• FAA Grounds SpaceX's Falcon 9 Rocket Following Landing Mishap

  29-08-2024 02:02 via science.slashdot.org
  
  SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has been grounded by the FAA for the second time in less than two months following the failed landing of a first-stage booster, which was destroyed in a fireball after its 23rd flight. Spaceflight Now reports: The booster, serial number B1062 in the SpaceX fleet, suffered a hard landing, at the tail end of its record-setting 23rd flight. It was consumed in a fireball on the deck of the drone ship 'A Shortfall of Gravitas', which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean about
  
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• Cybercrime and Sabotage Cost German Firms $300 Billion In Past Year

  29-08-2024 01:20 via it.slashdot.org
  
  According to a new survey from Bitkom, cybercrime and other acts of sabotage have cost German companies around $298 billion in the past year, up 29% on the year before. Reuters reports: Bitkom surveyed around 1,000 companies from all sectors and found that 90% expect more cyberattacks in the next 12 months, with the remaining 10% expecting the same level of attacks. Some 70% of companies that were targeted attributed the attacks to organised crime, the survey found, adding 81% of companies repor
  
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• Google To Relaunch Tool For Creating AI-Generated Images of People

  29-08-2024 00:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google announced that it will reintroduce AI image generation capabilities through its Gemini tool, with early access to the new Imagen 3 generator available for select users in the coming days. The company pulled the feature shortly after it launched in February when users discovered historical inaccuracies and questionable responses. CNBC reports: "We've worked to make technical improvements to the product, as well as improved evaluation sets, red-teaming exercises and clear product principles
  
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• Threads Deepens Its Ties To the Fediverse

  29-08-2024 00:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Threads is deepening its ties to the fediverse, also known as the open social web, which powers services like X alternative Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard and other apps. On Wednesday, Meta announced that users on Threads will be able to see fediverse replies on other posts besides their own. In addition, posts that originated through the Threads API, like those created via third-party apps and scheduling services, will now be syndica
  
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