ICT news

• Two Major Anime Leakers To Be Exposed Following First-Time US Court Order

  06-09-2024 23:30 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  For the first time, a U.S. court has ordered the exposure of identities behind anime leaker accounts on X following complaints from producers of Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer. The order was revealed by Japanese anti-piracy organization CODA (Content Overseas Distribution Association). CBR reports: The order to disclose their identities was issued on Aug. 20 and served on Aug. 30, meaning that these Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer leakers will be forced to out themselves, lest they face further
  
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• Telegram Disables 'Misused' Features As CEO Faces Criminal Charges

  06-09-2024 22:50 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Following the arrest of its CEO Pavel Durov last month, the encrypted messaging service said it has disabled some "outdated" and "misused" features used by anonymous users. The Verge reports: The first changes to the app following his arrest in France last month affect its built-in blog posts and a "People Nearby" location-based feature. [...] Durov's first post-arrest statement Thursday said, "Telegram's abrupt increase in user count to 950M caused growing pains that made it easier for criminal
  
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• Meta Will Let Third-Party Apps Place Calls To WhatsApp, Messenger Users

  06-09-2024 22:10 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Meta on Friday published an update on how it plans to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the European law that aims to promote competition in digital marketplaces, where the law concerns the company's messaging apps, Messenger and WhatsApp. As Meta notes in a blog post, the DMA requires that it provide an option in WhatsApp and Messenger to connect with interoperable third-party messaging services and apps. Meta says it's building noti
  
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• Heatwave Across US West Breaks Records For Highest Temperatures

  06-09-2024 21:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An intense heatwave across the US west has brought unusually warm temperatures to the region -- some of the highest of the season -- and broken heat records. From a report: Millions of Americans from Phoenix to Los Angeles to Seattle are under heat alerts. Even before this latest bout of extreme weather, which began on Wednesday and is expected to last through the weekend, summer 2024 was already considered the hottest summer on record.
  In California, the desert city of Indio saw its hottest 5 S
  
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• Kaspersky To Transfer US Customers To UltraAV After Ban

  06-09-2024 20:55 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Kaspersky has reached an agreement to transfer its U.S. customers to UltraAV, a Boston-based antivirus provider. The move comes in the wake of a White House ban on Kaspersky products. Under the deal, U.S. users will maintain their existing subscriptions and receive "reliable anti-virus protection" through UltraAV, which will offer additional features such as VPN and identity theft protection. Kaspersky will contact customers in the coming days with instructions for activating their new accounts.
  
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• College Grades Have Become a Charade. It's Time To Abolish Them.

  06-09-2024 20:13 via news.slashdot.org
  
  When most students get As, grading loses all meaning as a way to encourage exceptional work and recognize excellence. From a report: Grade inflation at American universities is out of control. The statistics speak for themselves. In 1950, the average GPA at Harvard was estimated at 2.6 out of 4. By 2003, it had risen to 3.4. Today, it stands at 3.8. The more elite the college, the more lenient the standards. At Yale, for example, 80% of grades awarded in 2023 were As or A minuses. But the proble
  
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• Smartphone Firm Born From Essential's Ashes is Shutting Down

  06-09-2024 19:25 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: It's been a rough week for OSOM Products. The company has been embroiled in legal controversy stemming from a lawsuit filed by a former executive. Now, Android Authority has learned that the company is effectively shutting down later this week. OSOM Products was formed in 2020 following the disbanding of Essential, a smartphone startup led by Andy Rubin, the founder of Android.
  Essential collapsed following the poor sales of its first smartphone, the Essentia
  
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• The Underground World of Black-Market AI Chatbots is Thriving

  06-09-2024 18:48 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: ChatGPT's 200 million weekly active users have helped propel OpenAI, the company behind the chatbot, to a $100 billion valuation. But outside the mainstream there's still plenty of money to be made -- especially if you're catering to the underworld. Illicit large language models (LLMs) can make up to $28,000 in two months from sales on underground markets, according to a study published last month in arXiv, a preprint server owned by Cornell University.Â
  
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• PwC 'Tipping the Balance' of Hybrid Working and Will Start Tracking Its Workers' Locations

  06-09-2024 18:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  PwC has demanded staff spend less time working from home -- and it's going to start tracking their location to ensure they comply. From a report: The accountancy firm informed its 26,000 U.K. employees in a memo that from January they'll be expected to be at their desks -- or with clients -- at least three days a week, or for 60% of their time. Previously staff were expected to spend two to three days working in-person. What's more, to ensure staffers are not secretly working from home (or at a
  
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• America's EV Charging Infrastructure Has Doubled In Less Than Four Years

  06-09-2024 17:25 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  The electric revolution has given way to a gradual transformation, but the groundwork is already being laid for the future. From a report: The Department of Energy recently highlighted this by noting the number of publicly available EV chargers has doubled since President Biden was inaugurated on January 20, 2021. According to the government, there are now more than 192,000 publicly available charging ports in the United States and around 1,000 are being added every week. The Department of Energ
  
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• Gen Z-ers Are Computer Whizzes. Just Don't Ask Them to Type.

  06-09-2024 16:45 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Typing skills among Generation Z have declined sharply, despite their digital nativity, according to recent data. The U.S. Department of Education reports that only 2.5% of high school graduates in 2019 took a keyboarding course, down from 44% in 2000.
  Many educators assume Gen Z already possesses typing skills due to their familiarity with technology. However, access to devices doesn't automatically translate into proficiency, WSJ reports. Some schools are addressing this gap by introducing typ
  
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• OpenAI Japan Exec Teases 'GPT-Next'

  06-09-2024 16:00 via slashdot.org
  
  OpenAI plans to launch a new AI model, GPT-Next, by year-end, promising a 100-fold increase in power over GPT-4 without significantly higher computing demands, according to a leaked presentation by an OpenAI Japan executive. The model, codenamed "Strawberry," incorporates "System 2 thinking," allowing for deliberate reasoning rather than mere token prediction, according to previous reports. GPT-Next will also generate high-quality synthetic training data, addressing a key challenge in AI develop
  
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• Threads is Trading Trust For Growth

  06-09-2024 14:50 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Ben Werdmuller, an entrepreneur who leads tech for ProPublica, writes on the trust crisis brewing in Meta's Threads app. He posted a quick comment about the Internet Archive's legal troubles, only to find it blew up in unexpected ways. Turns out, Threads' algorithm tossed his post to folks way outside his usual crowd, and they weren't happy about the lack of context. He writes: The comments that really surprised me were the ones that accused me of engagement farming. I've never received these be
  
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• Largest Dam Removal In US History Is Complete

  06-09-2024 12:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The largest dam removal project in U.S. history has been completed with the demolition of four dams on the Klamath River, marking a significant victory for tribal nations on the Oregon-California border who have long fought to restore the river to its natural state. However, as CNN's Rachel Ramirez and the BBC's Lucy Sherriff both highlight, the restoration of salmon populations and surrounding ecosystems is "only just beginning." From the report: The removal of the four hydroelectric dams -- Ir
  
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• Part of Brain Network Much Bigger In People With Depression, Scientists Find

  06-09-2024 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Researchers have discovered that people with depression have an expanded brain network, specifically the frontostriatal salience network, which is 73% larger compared to healthy individuals. "It's taking up more real estate on the brain surface than we see is typical in healthy controls," said Dr Charles Lynch, a co-author of the research, from Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. He added that expansion meant the size of other -- often neighboring -- brain networks were smaller. The Guardian rep
  
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• Qualcomm Has Explored Buying Pieces of Intel Chip Design Business

  06-09-2024 07:00 via slashdot.org
  
  Qualcomm has explored the possibility of acquiring portions of Intel's design business to boost the company's product portfolio, Reuters reported Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter. From the report: The mobile chipmaker has examined acquiring different pieces of Intel, which is struggling to generate cash and looking to shed business units and sell off other assets, the people said. Intel's client PC design business is of significant interest to Qualcomm executives, one of the sou
  
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• Engineers Gave a Mushroom a Robot Body and Let It Run Wild

  06-09-2024 05:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: Nobody knows what sleeping mushrooms dream of when their vast mycelial networks flicker and pulse with electrochemical responses akin to those of our own brain cells. But given a chance, what might this web of impulses do if granted a moment of freedom? An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Cornell University in the US and the University of Florence in Italy took steps to find out, putting a culture of the edible mushroom species Ple
  
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• Telegram Allows Private Chat Reports After Founder's Arrest

  06-09-2024 04:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Telegram has quietly updated its policy to allow users to report private chats to its moderators following the arrest of founder Pavel Durov in France over "crimes committed by third parties" on the platform. [...] The Dubai-headquartered company has additionally edited its FAQ page, removing two sentences that previously emphasized its privacy stance on private chats. The earlier version had stated: "All Telegram chats and group chats are private amongst the
  
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• US, UK, EU Sign 'Legally Binding' AI Treaty

  06-09-2024 02:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The United States, United Kingdom and European Union have signed the first "legally binding" international AI treaty on Thursday, the Council of Europe human rights organization said. Called the AI Convention, the treaty promotes responsible innovation and addresses the risks AI may pose. Reuters reports: The AI Convention mainly focuses on the protection of human rights of people affected by AI systems and is separate from the EU AI Act, which entered into force last month. The EU's AI Act enta
  
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• Android Earthquake Alerts Now Available Across All 50 States, 6 US Territories

  06-09-2024 01:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google's Android Earthquake Alerts System, initially launched in 2020, is now available in all 50 U.S. states and 6 territories. Droid Life reports: For users in California, Oregon and Washington, users will continue to have their alerts powered by the ShakeAlert system, utilizing traditional seismometers to detect earthquakes. For all out states and supported territories, "this expansion uses the built-in accelerometers in Android phones to bring another layer of preparedness and potentially li
  
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• AT&T Sues Broadcom For Breaching VMware Support Extension Contract

  06-09-2024 00:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  AT&T has filed a lawsuit against Broadcom, alleging that Broadcom is refusing to honor an extended support agreement for VMware software unless AT&T purchases additional subscriptions it doesn't need. The company warns the consequences could risk massive outages for AT&T's customer support operations and critical federal services, including the U.S. President's office. The Register reports: A complaint [PDF] filed last week in the Supreme Court of New York State explains that AT&
  
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• New AI Model 'Learns' How To Simulate Super Mario Bros. From Video Footage

  06-09-2024 00:00 via games.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last month, Google's GameNGen AI model showed that generalized image diffusion techniques can be used to generate a passable, playable version of Doom. Now, researchers are using some similar techniques with a model called MarioVGG to see if an AI model can generate plausible video of Super Mario Bros. in response to user inputs. The results of the MarioVGG model -- available as a pre-print paper (PDF) published by the crypto-adjacent AI com
  
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