ICT news

• Chrome To Patch Decades-Old 'Browser History Sniffing' Flaw That Let Sites Peek At Your History

  12-04-2025 23:41 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Slashdot reader king*jojo shared this article from The Register:A 23-year-old side-channel attack for spying on people's web browsing histories will get shut down in the forthcoming Chrome 136, released last Thursday to the Chrome beta channel. At least that's the hope.
  The privacy attack, referred to as browser history sniffing, involves reading the color values of web links on a page to see if the linked pages have been visited previously... Web publishers and third parties capable of running
  
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• America's Justice Department Shuts Down Its Cryptocurrency Fraud Unit

  12-04-2025 22:41 via news.slashdot.org
  
  America's Justice Department "has shut down its unit that investigates cryptocurrency fraud," reports USA Today.
  A Monday night memo from U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the shut down was "effective immediately."Blanche directed the closure of the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team and ordered prosecutors to pivot to investigating transnational criminal organizations and terrorist groups that use crypto to engage in illicit transactions... In his four-page memo, Blanche said
  
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• For the First Time Astronomers Watch a Black Hole 'Wake Up' in Real-Time

  12-04-2025 21:41 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Black holes "often exhibit long periods of dormancy," writes Popular Science, adding that astronomers had never witnessed a black hole "wake up" in real time. "Until now..."
  In February of 2024 X-ray bursts were spotted coming out of a black hole named Ansky by Lorena Hernández-García at Chile's Valparaiso University, according to the article. And what astronomers have now seen "challenges prevailing theories about black hole lifecycles."Hernández-García and collabora
  
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• Germany's 'Universal Basic Income' Experiment Proves It Doesn't Encourage Unmployment

  12-04-2025 20:41 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  People "are likely to continue working full-timeeven if they receive no-strings-attached universal basic income payments," reports CNN, citing results from a recent experiment in Germany (discussed on Slashdot in 2020):Mein Grundeinkommen (My Basic Income), the Berlin-based non-profit that ran the German study, followed 122 people for three years. From June 2021 to May 2024, this group received an unconditional sum of €1,200 ($1,365) per month. The study focused on people aged between 21 an
  
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• AI Industry Tells US Congress: 'We Need Energy'

  12-04-2025 19:41 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  The Washington Post reports:The United States urgently needs more energy to fuel an artificial intelligence race with China that the country can't afford to lose, industry leaders told lawmakers at a House hearing on Wednesday. "We need energy in all forms," said Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, who now leads the Special Competitive Studies Project, a think tank focused on technology and security. "Renewable, nonrenewable, whatever. It needs to be there, and it needs to be there quickly." It
  
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• Microsoft is Killing Skype - and Refusing Refunds for Prepaid International Calls

  12-04-2025 18:41 via slashdot.org
  
  Skype is shutting down after two decades on May 5th, notes the Washington Post.But the bigger problem for retired attorney Karen Griffin is that Microsoft won't refund the money they paid into a Skype account for cheap international phone calls:"They're no longer offering this service that I prepaid for, and now they're not giving me my money back," Griffin said. "There's a lot of people out there who are going to lose money...."
  To its credit, Microsoft gave Skype users a couple months' warning
  
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• FSF Urges US Government to Adopt Free-as-in-Freedom Tax Filing Software

  12-04-2025 18:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "A modern free society has an obligation to offer electronic tax filing that respects user freedom," says a Free Software Foundation blog post, "and the United States is not excluded from this responsibility."
  "Governments, and/or the companies that they partner with, are responsible for providing free as in freedom software for necessary operations, and tax filing is no exception."For many years now, a large portion of [U.S.] taxpayers have filed their taxes electronically through proprietary p
  
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• Trump Tariffs Add Exemptions Friday Night for Smartphones and Other Electronics

  12-04-2025 17:41 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Smartphones, computer monitors, semiconductors, and various other electronics will be exempt from U.S. President Trump's tariffs, reports CNN, "according to a US Customs and Border Protection notice posted late Friday."
  And several other products also received an exemption which "applies to products entering the United States or removed from warehouses as early as April 5, according to the notice."
  Roughly 90% of Apple's iPhone production and assembly is based in China, according to Wedbush Secu
  
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• Facebook Whistleblower Alleges Meta's AI Model Llama Was Used to Help DeepSeek

  12-04-2025 16:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  A former Facebook employee/whistleblower alleges Meta's AI model Lllama was used to help DeepSeek.
  The whistleblower — former Facebook director of global policy Sarah Wynn-Williams — testified before U.S. Senators on Wednesday. CBS News found this earlier response from Meta:In a statement last year on Llama, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone wrote, "The alleged role of a single and outdated version of an American open-source model is irrelevant when we know China is already investing over
  
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• Leaving Money on the Table

  12-04-2025 14:05 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Abstract of a paper on NBER: There is much disagreement about the extent to which financial incentives motivate study participants. We elicit preferences for being paid for completing a survey, including a one-in-twenty chance of winning a $100 electronic gift card, a guaranteed electronic gift card with the same expected value, and an option to refuse payment. More than twice as many participants chose the lottery as chose the guaranteed payment. Given that most people are risk averse, this pat
  
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• Facebook Is Just Craigslist Now

  12-04-2025 09:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Facebook Marketplace has emerged as the dominant feature within the social media platform, amassing 1.2 billion monthly active buyers by 2023 and overtaking eBay as a peer-to-peer selling platform. According to recent data, approximately 16 percent of Facebook's monthly active users now access the site exclusively to participate in Marketplace.
  The feature's growth accelerated following the pandemic's supply chain disruptions and subsequent inflation, which increased demand for used goods. Faceb
  
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• Adobe Retreats from Bluesky After Massive User Backlash

  12-04-2025 06:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Adobe has deleted all its posts on Twitter-alternative Bluesky after a disastrous April 8 debut that drew over 1,600 angry comments from digital creators. The software giant's innocuous first post asking "What's fueling your creativity right now?" triggered immediate criticism targeting Adobe's controversial subscription model, continual price increases, and AI implementation.
  "Y'all keep raising your prices for a product that keeps getting worse," wrote one user, while another referenced Adobe'
  
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• European Tourism To US Plunges

  12-04-2025 04:00 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The number of European travellers visiting the US has fallen sharply as political and economic tension and fears of a hostile border under President Donald Trump threaten the world's most lucrative air routes.
  Visitors from western Europe who stayed at least one night in the US fell by 17 per cent in March from a year ago, according to the International Trade Administration. Travel from some countries -- including Ireland, Norway and Germany -- fell by more t
  
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• Ex-OpenAI Staffers File Amicus Brief Opposing the Company's For-Profit Transition

  12-04-2025 03:00 via slashdot.org
  
  A group of ex-OpenAI employees on Friday filed a proposed amicus brief in support of Elon Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI, opposing OpenAI's planned conversion from a nonprofit to a for-profit corporation. From a report: The brief, filed by Harvard law professor and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, names 12 former OpenAI employees: Steven Adler, Rosemary Campbell, Neil Chowdhury, Jacob Hilton, Daniel Kokotajlo, Gretchen Krueger, Todor Markov, Richard Ngo, Girish Sastry, William Saund
  
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• Air Travel Set for Biggest Overhaul in 50 Years With UN-Backed Digital Credentials

  12-04-2025 01:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The International Civil Aviation Organization plans to eliminate boarding passes and check-ins within three years through a new "digital travel credential" system. Passengers will store passport data on their phones and use facial recognition to move through airports, while airlines will automatically detect arrivals via biometric scanning.
  The system will dynamically update "journey passes" for flight changes and delays, potentially streamlining connections. "The last upgrade of great scale was
  
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• Fedora Targets 99% Package Reproducibility by October

  12-04-2025 00:30 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Fedora has proposed a major change for its upcoming version 43 release that aims to achieve 99% package reproducibility, addressing growing concerns about supply-chain security. According to the change proposal announced March 31, Fedora has already reached 90% reproducibility through infrastructure changes including "clamping" file modification times and implementing a Rust-based "add-determinism" tool that standardizes metadata. The remaining 10% will require individual package maintainer invo
  
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