ICT news

• Amazon Confirms Employee Data Stolen After Hacker Claims MOVEit Breach

  11-11-2024 23:30 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Amazon has confirmed that employee data was compromised after a "security event" at a third-party vendor. From a report: In a statement given to TechCrunch on Monday, Amazon spokesperson Adam Montgomery confirmed that employee information had been involved in a data breach. "Amazon and AWS systems remain secure, and we have not experienced a security event. We were notified about a security event at one of our property management vendors that impacted several of its customers including Amazon. T
  
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• FTX Sues Crypto Exchange Binance and Its Former CEO Zhao For $1.8 Billion

  11-11-2024 22:50 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The FTX estate has filed a lawsuit against Binance and former CEO Changpeng Zhao, seeking to recover $1.76 billion, alleging a "fraudulent" 2021 share deal that involved funding from FTX's insolvent Alameda Research. The suit also accuses Zhao of misleading social media posts that allegedly spurred customer withdrawals and contributed to FTX's collapse. CNBC reports: In a Sunday filing with a Delaware court, FTX cites a 2021 transaction in which Binance, Zhao and others exited their investment i
  
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• Is 'AI Welfare' the New Frontier In Ethics?

  11-11-2024 22:13 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A few months ago, Anthropic quietly hired its first dedicated "AI welfare" researcher, Kyle Fish, to explore whether future AI models might deserve moral consideration and protection, reports AI newsletter Transformer. While sentience in AI models is an extremely controversial and contentious topic, the hire could signal a shift toward AI companies examining ethical questions about the consciousness and rights of AI systems. Fish joined Anth
  
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• Biden Administration To Support Controversial UN Cyber Treaty

  11-11-2024 19:45 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The Biden administration plans to support a controversial cybercrime treaty at the United Nations this week despite concerns that it could be misused by authoritarian regimes, Bloomberg News reported Monday, citing senior government officials. From the report: The agreement would be the first legally binding UN agreement on cybersecurity and could become a global legal framework for countries to cooperate on preventing and investigating cybercriminals. However, critics fear it could be used by a
  
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• Android 15's Virtual Machine Mandate is Aimed at Improving Security

  11-11-2024 19:10 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Google will require all new mobile chipsets launching with Android 15 to support its Android Virtualization Framework (AVF), a significant shift in the operating system's security architecture. The mandate, reports AndroidAuthority that got a hold of Android's latest Vendor Software Requirements document, affects major chipmakers including Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Samsung's Exynos division. New processors like the Snapdragon 8 Elite and Dimensity 9400 must implement AVF support to receive Android
  
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• Google Research Chief Says Learning To Code 'as Important as Ever'

  11-11-2024 18:35 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Google's head of research Yossi Matias maintains that learning to code remains "as important as ever" despite AI's growing role in software development. While AI tools have reduced coding time for some developers -- and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai noting that AI now generates a quarter of all code, Matias stressed that human engineers still review and approve AI-generated code.
  The Google executive, who also serves as a company VP, acknowledged that junior professionals have faced challenges gain
  
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• Self-Experimenting Virologist Defeats Breast Cancer With Lab-Grown Virus Treatment

  11-11-2024 17:49 via science.slashdot.org
  
  A University of Zagreb virologist treated her own recurring breast cancer by injecting laboratory-grown viruses into her tumor, sparking debate about self-experimentation in medical research. Beata Halassy discovered her stage 3 breast cancer in 2020 at age 49, recurring at the site of a previous mastectomy. Rather than undergo another round of chemotherapy, she developed an experimental treatment using oncolytic virotherapy (OVT).
  Over two months, Halassy administered measles and vesicular stom
  
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• Bitcoin Sets Another Record as Bullish Bets Continue

  11-11-2024 17:01 via slashdot.org
  
  Cryptocurrency backers continue to bid up Bitcoin prices, pushing the digital token to a new high of about $84,000 on Monday. The New York Times: The cryptocurrency has surged since Election Day, on investor hopes that President-elect Donald J. Trump and his appointees would be friendlier to the industry after the Biden administration's aggressive enforcement of securities law that targeted several crypto companies.
  Cryptocurrencies have become a major component of the so-called Trump trade. Bit
  
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• How ChatGPT Brought Down an Online Education Giant

  11-11-2024 16:26 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Most companies are starting to figure out how AI will change the way they do business. Chegg is trying to avoid becoming its first major victim. WSJ: The online education company was for many years the go-to source for students who wanted help with their homework, or a potential tool for plagiarism. The shift to virtual learning during the pandemic sent subscriptions and its stock price to record highs.
  Then came ChatGPT. Suddenly students had a free alternative to the answers Chegg spent years
  
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• 2024 On Track To Be Hottest Year on Record as Warming Temporarily Hits 1.5C

  11-11-2024 15:50 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The year 2024 is on track to be the warmest year on record after an extended streak of exceptionally high monthly global mean temperatures, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has announced.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• OpenAI and Others Seek New Path To Smarter AI as Current Methods Hit Limitations

  11-11-2024 15:03 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  AI companies like OpenAI are seeking to overcome unexpected delays and challenges in the pursuit of ever-large language models by developing training techniques that use more human-like ways for algorithms to "think." From a report: A dozenAI scientists, researchers and investors told Reuters they believe that these techniques, which are behind OpenAI's recently released o1 model, could reshape the AI arms race, and have implications for the types of resources that AI companies have an insatiabl
  
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• Are America's Courts Going After Digital Libraries?

  11-11-2024 13:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A new article at Reason.com argues that U.S. courts "are coming for digital libraries."In September, a federal appeals court dealt a major blow to the Internet Archive — one of the largest online repositories of free books, media, and software — in a copyright case with significant implications for publishers, libraries, and readers. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that found the Internet Archive's huge, digitized lending library of copyright
  
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• Firefox Gets More Investment in New Features, Prioritizing People (and Privacy) Over Profit

  11-11-2024 09:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  On its 20th anniversary, Firefox "is still going strong, and it is a better browser today than it ever was," according to TechCrunch.
  In an interview, Mozilla's interim CEO says one of the first things they did when was to "unlock a bunch of money towards Firefox product development... I've been in enough places where people tend to forget about the core business, and they stop investing in it, because they get distracted by shiny things — and then they regret it.""Firefox is incredibly im
  
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• Can AI-Enabled Thermostats Create a 'Virtual Power Plant' in Texas?

  11-11-2024 06:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Renew Home says they're building a "virtual power plant" in Texas by "enabling homes to easily reduce and shift the timing of energy use." Thursday they announced a 10-year project distributing hundreds of thousands of smart thermostats to customers of Texas-based power utility NRG Energy, starting next spring. (Bloomberg calls them "AI-enabled thermostats that use Alphabet Inc.'s Google Cloud technology.") The ultimate goal? "Create a nearly 1-gigawatt, AI-powered virtual power plant" — e
  
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• Cuba's Power Grid Collapses Again After Second Hurricane. And Then an Earthquake Hit

  11-11-2024 03:48 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Wednesday Cuba was hit by a major hurricane which took down its entire power grid again, this time for about 24 hours, according to CNN:
  Videos of the aftermath showed power infrastructure turned into a mangled mess and power poles down on streets. Hundreds of technicians were mobilized Thursday to reestablish power connections, according to state media... Operations at two electrical plants were partially restored and parts of eastern and central Cuba had electricity back up by Thursday afterno
  
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• How Gophers Restored Plant Life to a Volcano-Ravaged Mountain - in One Day.

  11-11-2024 00:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  When a volcano erupted in 1980 about 70 miles from Portland, "lava incinerated anything living for miles around," remembers an announcement from the University of California at Riverside. But "As an experiment, scientists later dropped gophers onto parts of the scorched mountain for only 24 hours.
  "The benefits from that single day were undeniable — and still visible 40 years later."Once the blistering blast of ash and debris cooled, scientists theorized that, by digging up beneficial bact
  
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• How Gophers Restored Plant Life to a Volcano-Ravage Mountain - in One Day.

  11-11-2024 00:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  When a volcano erupted in 1980 about 70 miles from Portland, "lava incinerated anything living for miles around," remembers an announcement from the University of California at Riverside. But "As an experiment, scientists later dropped gophers onto parts of the scorched mountain for only 24 hours.
  "The benefits from that single day were undeniable — and still visible 40 years later."Once the blistering blast of ash and debris cooled, scientists theorized that, by digging up beneficial bact
  
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