ICT news

• Apple Headset Stalls, Struggles To Attract Killer Apps in First Year

  16-10-2024 23:20 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple's $3,499 Vision Pro is struggling to attract major software-makers to develop apps for the device, a challenge that threatens to slow the progress of the company's biggest new product in a decade. WSJ: New apps released on the Vision Pro every month have slowed since its launch in January. Some of the most successful virtual-reality software developers have so far opted not to build apps for the headset. Without enough killer apps, certain users have found the device less useful and are op
  
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• Credit Cards Don't Require Signatures. So Why Do We Still Sign?

  16-10-2024 22:41 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The big financial moments in life used to be marked with a flourish of a pen. Buying a house. A car. Breakfast. Not anymore. Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express dropped the requirement to sign for charges like restaurant checks in 2018. They don't look at our scribbles to verify identity or stop fraud. Taps, clicks and electronic signatures took over the heavy lifting for many everyday purchases -- and many contracts, loan applications and even So
  
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• TV Ads To Target Households on Individual Streets in UK

  16-10-2024 22:01 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Households on individual streets will be targeted with personalised adverts under plans being rolled out by Channel 4. The channel is to use new technology which will allow brands to tailor who sees their advert by enabling them to select a demographic within a specific location down to street level. For example, someone watching Made in Chelsea on Channel 4's streaming service could be served an ad for a fashion brand in a local outlet to them if a particula
  
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• Smart Gardening Firm's Shutdown a Reminder of Internet of Things' Fickle Nature

  16-10-2024 21:22 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  AeroGarden, which sells Wi-Fi-connected indoor gardening systems, is going out of business on January 1. While Scotts Miracle-Gro has continued selling AeroGarden products after announcing the impending shutdown, the future of the devices' companion app is uncertain.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Man Sues Town for $647 Million Over Trashed Bitcoin Hard Drive

  16-10-2024 20:41 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  smooth wombat writes: In 2013, James Howell's partner inadvertently threw out a hard drive along with other trash. Unknown to this person, this hard drive contained approximately 8,000 bitcoins. For the past decade Howell has been petitioning the town council of Newport to excavate the landfill in the hope of recovering the drive which would now hold approximately $647 million worth of cryptocurrency. Now he is suing the council in an attempt to force them to let him excavate.
  Should the hard dr
  
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• People Think They Already Know Everything They Need To Make Decisions

  16-10-2024 20:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  New research challenges assumptions about decision-making, revealing people tend to believe they have sufficient information regardless of actual data at hand. A study by Gehlbach, Robinson, and Fletcher, published earlier this month, found participants consistently overestimated their knowledge when given partial information on a hypothetical school merger scenario.
  Nearly 90% favored merger when presented pro-merger facts, while only 25% did when given opposing data. However, opinions shifted
  
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• 'A Nobel For the Big Big Questions'

  16-10-2024 19:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  In a rather critical analysis of the 2024 Economics Nobel, commentator Noah Smith has questioned the prize's shift back to "big-think" theories. He argues that Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson's (the winner of the 2024 Economics Nobel) influential work on institutions and development, while intriguing, lacks robust empirical validation. From his blog: The science prizes rely very heavily on external validity to determine who gets the prize -- your theory or your invention has to work, basically.
  
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• Digital River Runs Dry

  16-10-2024 18:40 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Digital River has not paid numerous merchants since midsummer for software and digital products they sold through its MyCommerce platform. The Register: "After over 20 years of partnership with Digital River, Traction Software Ltd has been left feeling as though we've been 'rug pulled,'" Lee Midgley, managing director of Traction Software, told The Register. "For the past three months, we've experienced a complete halt in software sales revenue payments with no support, no direct contact, and on
  
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• FTC Takes on Subscription Traps With 'Click To Cancel' Rule

  16-10-2024 18:01 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission adopted a final rule on Wednesday requiring businesses to make it as easy to cancel subscriptions and memberships as it is to sign up, in the agency's last major rulemaking before the Nov. 5 election. From a report: The "click to cancel" rule requires retailers, gyms and other businesses to get consumers' consent for subscriptions, auto-renewals and free trials that convert to paid memberships. The cancellation method must be "at least as easy to use" as the sig
  
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• Amazon Finally Has a Color Kindle

  16-10-2024 17:21 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Amazon has unveiled its first color e-reader, the Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition, priced at $279.99. The 7-inch device, available for preorder with shipments starting October 30th, utilizes E Ink's Kaleido technology and a new display stack. Kevin Keith, head of Kindle products, claims the Colorsoft maintains Kindle's hallmark features while introducing color without compromising performance.
  The e-reader boasts a 300ppi screen, enhanced LED pixels, and improved light distribution for vivid
  
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• Amazon Joins Push For Nuclear Power To Meet Data Center Demand

  16-10-2024 16:40 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Amazon said on Wednesday it has signed three agreements on developing the nuclear power technology called small modular reactors, becoming the latest big tech company to push for new sources to meet surging electricity demand from data centers. From a report: Amazon said it will fund a feasibility study for an SMR project near a Northwest Energy site in Washington state. The SMR is planned to be developed by X-Energy. Financial details were not disclosed. Under the agreement, Amazon will have th
  
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• Open-sourcing of WinAmp Goes Badly As Owners Delete Entire Repo

  16-10-2024 16:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  New submitter king*jojo writes: The owners of WinAmp have just deleted their entire repo one month after uploading the source code to GitHub. Lots of source code, and quite possibly, not all of it theirs. The deletion happened soon after The Register enquired about the seeming inclusion of Shoutcast DNAS code and some Microsoft and Intel codecs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Discord Disputes DMCA Subpoena, Rejects Role As 'Anti-Piracy' Partner

  16-10-2024 15:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Korean game publisher Nexon is using the U.S. legal system to address online copyright infringement. The company obtained a DMCA subpoena that requires Discord to hand over the personal details of suspected pirates. While Discord has shared information in the past, it doesn't plan to cooperate any longer, refusing to play the role of 'anti-piracy police'. [...] The messaging platform wrote that it is prepared to file a motion to quash the su
  
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• CISA, FBI, NSA, and International Partners Release Advisory on Iranian Cyber Actors Targeting Critical Infrastructure Organizations Using Brute Force

  16-10-2024 14:00 via cisa.gov
  Today, CISA—with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Security Agency (NSA), and international partners—released joint Cybersecurity Advisory Iranian Cyber Actors Brute Force and Credential Access Activity Compromises Critical Infrastructure. This advisory provides known indicators of compromise (IOCs) and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by Iranian actors to impact organizations across multiple critical infrastructure sectors.
  Since October 2023, I
  
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• CISA and FBI Release Joint Guidance on Product Security Bad Practices for Public Comment

  16-10-2024 14:00 via cisa.gov
  Today, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released joint guidance on Product Security Bad Practices, a part of CISA’s Secure by Design initiative. This joint guidance supplies an overview of exceptionally risky product security bad practices for software manufacturers who produce software in support of critical infrastructure or national critical functions. 
  The bad practices presented in this guidance are organize
  
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• Sustainable Building Effort Reaches New Heights With Wooden Skyscrapers

  16-10-2024 12:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The University of Toronto is constructing a 14-story building using mass timber, one of the largest and most recent projects to employ this innovative building technology. "Mass timber is an appealing alternative to energy-intensive concrete and steel, which together account for almost 15 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions," reports Knowable Magazine. "Though experts are still debating mass timber's role in fighting climate change, many are betting it's better for the environment than cu
  
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• First Section of Euclid Space Telescope's Map of the Universe Revealed

  16-10-2024 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  The Euclid mission has revealed the first part of a 3D map of the universe, showcasing 14 million galaxies and tens of millions of stars with unprecedented detail. "The Euclid mission, launched in 2023 and run by the European Space Agency (Esa) with contributions from Nasa, sent its first snapshots in November of that year and in May 2024," reports The Guardian. "The goal of Euclid is to enable the creation of a 3D map in time and space of the universe, in an attempt to elucidate its evolution a
  
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• Petroleum Drilling Technology Is Now Making Carbon-Free Power

  16-10-2024 05:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: There's a valley in rural southwest Utah that's become a hub for renewable energy. Dozens of tall white wind turbines whoosh up in the sky. A sea of solar panels glistens in the distance. But the new kid on the block is mostly hidden underground. From the surface, Fervo Energy's Cape Station looks more or less like an oil derrick, with a thin metal tower rising above the sagebrush steppe. But this $2 billion geothermal project, which broke ground las
  
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• Sysadmins Rage Over Apple's 'Nightmarish' SSL/TLS Cert Lifespan Cuts

  16-10-2024 02:50 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  The Register's Jessica Lyons reports: Apple wants to shorten SSL/TLS security certificates' lifespans, down from 398 days now to just 45 days by 2027, and sysadmins have some very strong feelings about this "nightmarish" plan. As one of the hundreds that took to Reddit to lament the proposal said: "This will suck. My least favorite vendor manages something like 10 websites for us, and we have to provide the certs manually every time. Between live and test this is gonna suck."The Apple proposal,
  
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• Trump's Coin Sale Misses Early Targets As Crypto Project's Website Crashes

  16-10-2024 02:10 via slashdot.org
  
  Donald Trump's new crypto project, World Liberty Financial, had a rocky start today with frequent website outages during its token sale. According to CNBC, only about 4% of registered investors have bought tokens, and the project sold less than 3% of the 20 billion tokens available. From the report: WLF's website suffered regular and lengthy outages for much of the morning and early afternoon, contributing to a limited number of sales. Only about 4,300 unique walled addresses hold the token as o
  
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• Cisco Investigates Breach After Stolen Data For Sale On Hacking Forum

  16-10-2024 01:30 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Longtime Slashdot reader mprindle shares a report from BleepingComputer: Cisco has confirmed to BleepingComputer that it is investigating recent claims that it suffered a breach after a threat actor began selling allegedly stolen data on a hacking forum. [...] This statement comes after a well-known threat actor named "IntelBroker" said that he and two others called "EnergyWeaponUser and "zjj" breached Cisco on October 6, 2024, and stole a large amount of developer data from the company."Comprom
  
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• Global EV Sales Up 30.5% In September

  16-10-2024 00:50 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Global sales of fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles rose by an annual 30.5% in September, as China surpassed its record numbers recorded in August and Europe resumed growth, market research firm Rho Motion said on Tuesday. Gains in the U.S. market have been slow and steady in anticipation of the Nov. 5 election, which makes it difficult to predict future trends in the country, data manager Charles Lester told Reuters. EVs -- whether fully
  
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• Intel and AMD Form an x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group

  16-10-2024 00:10 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports: Intel and AMD have jointly announced the creation of an x86 ecosystem advisory group to bring together the two companies as well as other industry leaders -- both companies and individuals such as Linux creator Linus Torvalds. Intel and AMD are forming this x86 ecosystem advisory group to help foster collaboration and innovations around the x86 (x86_64) ISA. [...] Besides Intel amd AMD, other founding members include Broadcom, Dell, Google, HPE, HP Inc, Lenovo
  
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