ICT news

• MoneyGram Says Hackers Stole Customers' Personal Information, Transaction Data

  08-10-2024 23:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: U.S. money transfer giant MoneyGram has confirmed that hackers stole its customers' personal information and transaction data during a cyberattack last month. The company said in a statement Monday that an unauthorized third party "accessed and acquired" customer data during the cyberattack on September 20. The cyberattack -- the nature of which remains unknown -- sparked a week-long outage that resulted in the company's website and app fallin
  
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• Red Dead Redemption Finally Comes To PC 14 Years After Its Original Release

  08-10-2024 22:41 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Fourteen years after it debuted on PS3 and Xbox 360, and endless rumors later, Red Dead Redemption is finally coming to PC. From a report: It will hit the Rockstar Store, Steam and the Epic Games Store on October 29 with the Undead Nightmare standalone expansion included. Developer Double Eleven helped Rockstar with the port, which has many of the bells and whistles you'd come to expect from a PC version of a classic. Rockstar says RDR will run at up to 144Hz (no unlocked framerates, sadly) in a
  
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• TikTok is 'Digital Nicotine' Meant To Hook Kids, AGs Fume in New Suits

  08-10-2024 22:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The District of Columbia and 13 states sued social media giant TikTok on Tuesday, accusing the company of knowingly creating an addictive product and getting children hooked with "digital nicotine." From a report: D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb brought Washington's suit in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia, asserting that the app's design -- including its algorithm, "infinite scroll," push notifications, filters and in-app currency -- boost the company's profits at the expense
  
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• Microsoft Veteran Ditches Team Tabs, Blaming Storage Trauma of Yesteryear

  08-10-2024 21:22 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Veteran Microsoft engineer Larry Osterman is the latest to throw his hat into the "tabs versus spaces" ring. From a report: The debate has vexed engineers for decades -- is it best to indent code with tabs or spaces? Osterman, a four-decade veteran of Microsoft, was Team Tabs when storage was tight, but has since become Team Spaces with the advent of terabytes of relatively inexpensive storage. "Here's the thing," he said. "When you've got 512 kilobytes, and you're writing a program in Pascal wi
  
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• Virginia Congressional Candidate Creates AI Chatbot as Debate Stand-in For Incumbent

  08-10-2024 20:41 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A long-shot congressional challenger in Virginia is so determined to debate the Democratic incumbent one more time that he created an AI chatbot to stand in for the candidate in case he's a no-show. From a report: Less than a month from election day, the race for Virginia's 8th congressional district is all but decided. The sitting congressman in this deeply Democratic district, Don Beyer, won handily in 2022 with nearly three-quarters of the vote.
  Bentley Hensel, a software engineer for good go
  
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• Samsung Apologizes For Making Just $6.8 Billion Last Quarter

  08-10-2024 20:01 via slashdot.org
  
  Samsung has issued a rare apology after saying it expected to post just $6.78 billion in operating profit for the most recent quarter, about $900 million short of analyst expectations. From a report: "We have caused concerns about our fundamental technological competitiveness and the future of the company due to our performance falling short of the market's expectations," reads the statement attributed to Samsung Vice Chairman Jun Young-hyun. "Many people are talking about Samsung's crisis. We,
  
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• Nintendo Switch Modder Faces Tech Giant in Court Without Lawyer

  08-10-2024 19:20 via games.slashdot.org
  
  A Nintendo Switch modder has entered a legal battle against Nintendo without legal representation, Torrent Freak reports. Ryan Daly, alleged owner of Modded Hardware, denied all allegations in a lawsuit filed by Nintendo in July. Nintendo claims Modded Hardware offers hardware and firmware for creating and playing pirated games, as well as providing customers with pirated Nintendo titles.
  The company filed suit after Daly allegedly ignored warnings to cease operations in March and May 2024. Daly
  
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• How Long Will Life Exist on Earth?

  08-10-2024 18:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Wikipedia's "Timeline of the Far Future" is one of my favorite webpages from the internet's pre-slop era. A Londoner named Nick Webb created it on the morning of December 22, 2010. "Certain events in the future of the universe can be predicted with a comfortable level of accuracy," he wrote at the top of the page. He then proposed a chronological list of 33 such events, beginning with the joining of Asia and Australia 40 million years from now. He noted that
  
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• Where Have All the Chief Metaverse Officers Gone?

  08-10-2024 18:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Wired: Last spring, At an event in New York City, Robert Triefus, then Gucci's CEO of Vault -- the brand's virtual marketplace -- argued the recent deflation in hype around the metaverse was just a brief hiccup. "I see it more as a correction," he told the crowd. "We're now at a much more sensible place, where you've got individuals [and] companies ... who are very serious about what they're doing." When asked how buying real estate in The Sandbox aligned with Gucci's broader goals as a brand, h
  
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• Britons Urged To Dig Out Unwanted Electricals To Tackle Copper Shortage

  08-10-2024 17:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Scientists have called for people to go "urban mining" after a study revealed that old cables, phone chargers and other unused electrical goods thrown away or stored in cupboards or drawers could stave off a looming shortage of copper. From a report: The research found that in the UK there are approximately 823m unused or broken tech items hiding in "drawers of doom" containing as much as 38,449 tonnes of copper -- including 627m cables -- enough to provide 30% of the copper needed for the UK's
  
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• The Problems With Polls

  08-10-2024 16:40 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Political polling, once hailed as a revolutionary tool for democracy, is facing a crisis of confidence amid high-profile failures and fundamental critiques. Data scientist G. Elliott Morris, Nate Silver's successor at FiveThirtyEight, has defended polling's relevance in a new book, arguing it remains crucial for revealing public opinion despite challenges like plummeting response rates and rising costs.
  But critics, including political scientist Lindsay Rogers and sociologist Leo Bogart, have lo
  
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• Microsoft Releases October 2024 Security Updates

  08-10-2024 14:00 via cisa.gov
  Microsoft released security updates to address vulnerabilities in multiple products. A cyber threat actor could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.
  CISA encourages users and administrators to review the following and apply necessary updates:Microsoft Security Update Guide for October
  
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• CISA and FBI Release Fact Sheet on Protecting Against Iranian Targeting of Accounts Associated with National Political Organizations

  08-10-2024 14:00 via cisa.gov
  Today, CISA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released joint fact sheet, How to Protect Against Iranian Targeting of Accounts Associated with National Political Organizations. This fact sheet provides information about threat actors affiliated with the Iranian Government’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeting and compromising accounts of Americans to stoke discord and undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions.
  IRGC actors have previously gained and cont
  
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• Avoid Scams After Disaster Strikes

  08-10-2024 14:00 via cisa.gov
  As hurricanes and other natural disasters occur, CISA urges individuals to remain on alert for potential malicious cyber activity. Fraudulent emails and social media messages—often containing malicious links or attachments—are common after major natural disasters. Exercise caution in handling emails with hurricane-related subject lines, attachments, or hyperlinks. In addition, be wary of social media pleas, texts, or door-to-door solicitations relating to severe weather events. Befor
  
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• Nobel Prize in Physics Goes To Machine Learning Pioneers Hopfield and Hinton

  08-10-2024 13:38 via science.slashdot.org
  
  John J. Hopfield of Princeton University and Geoffrey E. Hinton of the University of Toronto were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for their groundbreaking work in machine learning. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences recognized the scientists for developing artificial neural networks capable of recognizing patterns in large data sets, laying the foundation for modern AI applications like facial recognition and language translation.
  Hopfield, 91, created an associative memory syst
  
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• Vision Pro's First Scripted Immersive Film Is Coming This Week

  08-10-2024 12:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  The first scripted Immersive Video project for Apple's Vision Pro debuts on October 10. Called Submerged, the film "invites viewers onto a WWII-era submarine and follows its crew as they wrestle to combat a harrowing torpedo attack." 9to5Mac reports: The short film was written and directed by an Academy Award-winning filmmaker. That makes it stand out from other Immersive Video Apple has produced to this point. The filmmaker, Edward Berger, is best known for films like All Quiet on the Western F
  
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• Spacecraft Launches Toward Asteroid Knocked Off Course By NASA

  08-10-2024 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  The Hera spacecraft, launched by the European Space Agency on Monday, is on a mission to study the aftermath of NASA's 2022 test that successfully knocked the Dimorphos asteroid off course by intentionally crashing a probe into it. It's scheduled to arrive in December 2026. The BBC reports: The Hera craft launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 10:52 local time (15:52BST) on Monday. [...] The Hera mission, which is run by the European Space Agency, is a follow-on from Nasa's Double Asteroid R
  
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• Cognizant Discriminated Against Non-Indian Workers, US Jury Says

  08-10-2024 08:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  IT services and consulting company Cognizant engaged in a pattern of discriminatory conduct toward non-Indian workers and should pay punitive damages to compensate employees who suffered harm, a US jury found. From a report: The verdict came after the IT firm failed to persuade a Los Angeles federal judge last month to toss a 2017 job bias class-action lawsuit when a previous trial ended with a deadlocked jury. A Cognizant spokesperson said the company is disappointed with the verdict and plans
  
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• Artist Appeals Copyright Denial For Prize-Winning AI-Generated Work

  08-10-2024 05:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Jason Allen-a synthetic media artist whose Midjourney-generated work "Theatre D'opera Spatial" went viral and incited backlash after winning a state fair art competition-is not giving up his fight with the US Copyright Office. Last fall, the Copyright Office refused to register Allen's work, claiming that almost the entire work was AI-generated and insisting that copyright registration requires more human authorship than simply plugging a pr
  
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• Germans Decry Influence of English As 'Idiot's Apostrophe' Gets Official Approval

  08-10-2024 04:02 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A recent relaxation of rules around apostrophes in German, permitting their use in possessive forms like "Eva's Blumenladen," has sparked criticism from traditionalists and concerns over the influence of English on the German language. The Guardian reports: Establishments that feature their owners' names, with signs like "Rosi's Bar" or "Kati's Kiosk" are a common sight around German towns and cities, but strictly speaking they are wrong: unlike English, German does not traditionally use apostro
  
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• Fintech OpenBB Aims To Be More Than an 'Open Source Bloomberg Terminal'

  08-10-2024 03:25 via news.slashdot.org
  
  TechCrunch's Paul Sawers reports: Fledgling fintech startup OpenBB is revealing the next step in its plans to take on the heavyweights of the investment research world. The company is launching a new, free version of a product that will open its arsenal of data and financial tooling to more users. OpenBB is the handiwork of software engineer Didier Lopes, who launched the Python-based platform back in 2021 as a way for amateur investors and enthusiasts to do investment research using different d
  
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• Global Semiconductor Sales Up 20.6% To Record $53.1 Billion

  08-10-2024 02:45 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Global semiconductor sales recorded a 20.6% year-on-year increase in August to $53.1 billion, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). The Register reports: The Americas led the way, with sales up 43.9 percent to $15.4 billion over last year to notch up what may be the highest on record for August, the SIA said. This comes on the back of swelling demand from sectors such as AI, cloud computing, and automotive. Over in Asia-Pacific sales grew year-on-year by 17.1 percent to $10.
  
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• FCC Lets Starlink Provide Service To Cellphones In Area Hit By Hurricane

  08-10-2024 02:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission gave Starlink and T-Mobile emergency authority to provide satellite-to-phone coverage in areas hit by Hurricane Helene. "SpaceX and T-Mobile have been given emergency special temporary authority by the FCC to enable Starlink satellites with direct-to-cell capability to provide coverage for cell phones in the affected areas of Hurricane Helene," SpaceX said yesterday. "The satellites have already been ena
  
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• Linus Torvalds Asks Kernel Devs To Write Better Git Merge Commit Messages

  08-10-2024 01:20 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports: Yesterday when announcing the Linux 6.12-rc2 kernel, Linus Torvalds asked that the kernel maintainers do a better job moving forward with their commit messages. In particular, Torvalds is hoping that kernel maintainers will do a better job using an active, imperative voice when describing the changes within their pull requests.The Linux creator explained in the 6.12-rc2 announcement: "Anyway, on a completely different note: I try to make my merge commit messag
  
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• The Future of Halo Is Being Built With Unreal Engine 5

  08-10-2024 00:40 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Along with 343 Industries now becoming Halo Studios, future Halo games will be developed using Unreal Engine 5. The Verge's Tom Warren reports: Halo moving to Unreal Engine 5 is being positioned as the first step of a transformation for Halo Studios to change its technology, structure, processes, and even culture. "We're not just going to try improve the efficiency of development, but change the recipe of how we make Halo games," says Pierre Hintze, studio head at Halo Studios. The team building
  
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• Smart TVs Are Like 'a Digital Trojan Horse' in People's Homes

  08-10-2024 00:01 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The companies behind the streaming industry, including smart TV and streaming stick manufacturers and streaming service providers, have developed a "surveillance system" that has "long undermined privacy and consumer protection," according to a report from the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) published today and sent to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Unprecedented tracking techniques aimed at pleasing advertisers have resulted in connected TVs (CTVs) b
  
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