ICT news

• AI Hitting Labour Forces Like a 'Tsunami', IMF Chief Says

  14-05-2024 00:41 via slashdot.org
  
  AI is hitting the global labour market "like a tsunami" International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Monday. AI is likely to impact 60% of jobs in advanced economies and 40% of jobs around the world in the next two years, Georgieva told an event in Zurich. From a report: "We have very little time to get people ready for it, businesses ready for it," she told the event organised by the Swiss Institute of International Studies, associated to the University of Zurich.
  
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• Adam Neumann Drops Bid To Acquire Bankrupt WeWork

  28-05-2024 19:20 via slashdot.org
  
  The WeWork founder Adam Neumann has shelved his bid to acquire the bankrupt shared office space provider. From a report: It emerged earlier this year that Neumann, who was ousted from the business in 2019 following a botched attempt to take it public on the stock market, was seeking to buy the business. His new real estate venture, Flow Global, submitted a bid of more than $500m to take over WeWork and its assets. On Tuesday morning, however, Neumann confirmed that Flow was walking away from his
  
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• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is Coming To Xbox Game Pass On Its Release Day

  28-05-2024 18:48 via games.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Just before Microsoft closed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, it said that it would take some time to bring the publisher's titles to Game Pass. We've only seen one such addition so far in the form of Diablo IV, but the company has announced another, somewhat notable one. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be available on Game Pass on its release day later this year.
  Microsoft is banking on the debut of a new Call of Duty title on its subscription service
  
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• Carbon Offsets, a Much-Criticized Climate Tool, Get Federal Guidelines

  28-05-2024 18:05 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The Biden administration on Tuesday laid out for the first time [PDF] a set of broad government guidelines around the use of carbon offsets in an attempt to shore up confidence in a method for tackling global warming that has faced growing criticism. From a report: Companies and individuals spent $1.7 billion last year voluntarily buying carbon offsets, which are intended to cancel out the climate effects of activities like air travel by funding projects elsewhere, such as the planting of trees,
  
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• Global Sales of Polluting SUVs Hit Record High in 2023, Data Shows

  28-05-2024 17:21 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Sales of SUVs hit a new record in 2023, making up half of all new cars sold globally, data has revealed. Experts warned that the rising sales of the large, heavy vehicles is pushing up the carbon emissions that drive global heating. From a report: The analysis, by the International Energy Agency, found that the rising emissions from SUVs in 2023 made up 20% of the global increase in CO2, making the vehicles a major cause of the intensifying climate crisis. If SUVs were a country, the IEA said, t
  
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• Wall Street Moves To Fastest Settlement of Trades in a Century

  28-05-2024 16:40 via slashdot.org
  
  The US stock market is finally as fast as it was about a hundred years ago. Bloomberg News: That was the last time share trades in New York settled in a single day, as they will from Tuesday under new Securities and Exchange Commission rules. The change, halving the time it takes to complete every transaction, also occurred in jurisdictions including Canada and Mexico on Monday. The switch to the system known as T+1 -- abandoned in the earlier era as volumes became unwieldy -- is ultimately inte
  
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• PayPal Is Planning an Ad Business Using Data on Its Millions of Shoppers

  28-05-2024 16:00 via slashdot.org
  
  PayPal hopes to boost its growth by starting an ad network [non-paywalled link] juiced with something it already owns: data on its millions of users. From a report: The digital payments company plans to build an ad sales business around the reams of data it generates from tracking the purchases as well as the broader spending behaviors of millions of consumers who use its services, which include the more socially-enabled Venmo app. PayPal has hired Mark Grether, who formerly led Uber's advertisi
  
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• T-Mobile To Acquire Most of US Cellular in $4.4 Billion Deal

  28-05-2024 13:58 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  T-Mobile said Tuesday that it plans to acquire most of U.S. Cellular, including stores, some of the wireless operator's spectrum and its customers, in a deal worth $4.4 billion. The deal includes cash and up to $2 billion of debt. From a report: T-Mobile said it will use U.S. Cellular wireless spectrum to improve coverage in rural areas while offering better connectivity to U.S. Cellular customers around the United States. The company said it will allow U.S. Cellular customers to keep their curr
  
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• OpenAI Says It Has Begun Training a New Flagship AI Model

  28-05-2024 13:05 via slashdot.org
  
  OpenAI said on Tuesday that it has begun training a new flagship AI model that would succeed the GPT-4 technology that drives its popular online chatbot, ChatGPT. From a report: The San Francisco start-up, which is one of the world's leading A.I. companies, said in a blog post that it expects the new model to bring "the next level of capabilities" as it strives to build "artificial general intelligence," or A.G.I., a machine that can do anything the human brain can do. The new model would be an
  
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• YouTube Begins Skipping Videos for Ad-Blocker Users

  28-05-2024 10:23 via news.slashdot.org
  
  YouTube's latest move against ad blockers involves skipping videos straight to the end or muting audio for users with ad blockers enabled, according to user reports. This follows previous tests by the Google-owned platform, including blocking playback after three videos and slowing down load times for ad-blocker users.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Ransomware Group Claims Responsibility for Christie's Hack

  28-05-2024 07:18 via it.slashdot.org
  
  A hacker group called RansomHub said it was behind the cyberattack that hit the Christie's website just days before its marquee spring sales began, forcing the auction house to resort to alternatives to online bidding. From a report: In a post on the dark web on Monday, the group claimed that it had gained access to sensitive information about the world's wealthiest art collectors, posting only a few examples of names and birthdays. It was not immediately possible to verify RansomHub's claims, b
  
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• Intel Removes Knights Mill and Knights Landing Xeon Phi Support In LLVM 19

  28-05-2024 04:30 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Similar to the GCC compiler dropping support for the Xeon Phi Knights Mill and Knights Landing accelerators a few days ago, Intel has also gone ahead and seen to the removal of Xeon Phi support for the LLVM/Clang 19 compiler. Since earlier this year in LLVM/Clang 18 the Xeon Phi Knights Mill and Knights Landing support was treated as deprecated. Now for the LLVM 19 release due out around September, the support is removed entirely. This aligns with GCC 14 havi
  
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• Rivers of Lava on Venus Reveal a More Volcanically Active Planet

  28-05-2024 03:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Witnessing the blood-red fires of a volcanic eruption on Earth is memorable. But to see molten rock bleed out of a volcano on a different planet would be extraordinary. That is close to what scientists have spotted on Venus: two vast, sinuous lava flows oozing from two different corners of Earth's planetary neighbor. From a report: "After you see something like this, the first reaction is 'wow,'" said Davide Sulcanese, a doctoral student at the Universita d'Annunzio in Pescara, Italy, and an aut
  
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• Ditch Brightly Colored Plastic, Anti-Waste Researchers Tell Firms

  28-05-2024 01:31 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Retailers are being urged to stop making everyday products such as drinks bottles, outdoor furniture and toys out of brightly coloured plastic after researchers found it degrades into microplastics faster than plainer colours. From a report: Red, blue and green plastic became "very brittle and fragmented," while black, white and silver samples were "largely unaffected" over a three-year period, according to the findings of the University of Leicester-led project. The scale of environmental pollu
  
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• Microsoft's Automatic Super Resolution Arrives To Improve Gaming Performance

  28-05-2024 00:30 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft has announced Auto SR, an AI-powered image upscaling solution for Windows 11 on Arm devices. The feature, exclusive to Qualcomm's Snapdragon X CPUs, aims to enhance gaming performance on ARM-based systems. Auto SR, however, comes with notable restrictions, including compatibility limitations with certain DirectX versions and the inability to work simultaneously with HDR.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Millions in US Face Extreme-Heat Threat

  27-05-2024 23:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Millions of Americans face the threat of dangerous heatwaves in the coming weeks with another summer of record-breaking temperatures forecast to hit the US. From a report: Most of New Mexico and Utah -- alongside parts of Arizona, Texas and Colorado -- have the highest chance (60% to 70%) of seeing hotter-than-average summer temperatures, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). In addition, the entire north-east -- from Maine down to Pennsylvania and New Jersey -
  
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• Harris Announces Plans To Help 80% of Africa Gain Access To the Internet

  27-05-2024 22:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Vice President Kamala Harris has announced the formation of a new partnership to help provide internet access to 80% of Africa by 2030, up from roughly 40% now. From a report: The announcement comes as follow-through on Harris' visit to the continent last year and in conjunction with this week's visit to Washington by Kenyan President William Ruto. Harris and the Kenyan leader had a public chat on Friday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about how public-private partnerships can increase economic
  
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• Bungie Wins Lawsuit Against Cheat Maker Aimjunkies

  27-05-2024 21:31 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Bungie has won a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against cheat maker Phoenix Digital.ÂFrom a report: The case was potentially the first-ever video game cheating jury trial and resulted in Bungie winning $63,210 in damages from Phoenix Digital,Âwhich isÂalso known as Aimjunkies. While cheating in a game is not illegal, Bungie was able to sue the cheat maker under the argument that reverse engineering the game, specifically Destiny 2, to find those cheats violates the company's copyrig
  
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• North Korea Says Its Attempt To Put Another Spy Satellite Into Orbit Has Failed

  27-05-2024 20:01 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A North Korean rocket carrying its second spy satellite exploded midair on Monday, state media reported, after its neighbors strongly rebuked its planned launch. From a report: The North's official Korean Central News Agency said it launched a spy satellite aboard a new rocket at its main northwestern space center. But KCNA said the rocket blew up during a first-stage flight soon after liftoff due to a suspected engine problem. Earlier Monday, North Korea had notified Japan's coast guard about i
  
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• Microsoft: Windows 24H2 Will Remove Cortana and WordPad Apps

  27-05-2024 19:05 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft says the Cortana, Tips, and WordPad applications will be automatically removed on systems upgraded to the upcoming Windows 11 24H2 release. From a report: This was shared in a Thursday blog announcing that Windows 11, version 24H2 (Build 26100.712) is now available for Insiders in the Release Preview Channel. The company removed the Cortana standalone app from Windows 11 in preview build 25967 for Insiders, released in the Canary Channel in early October. It first announced that it wou
  
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• Google's AI Feeds People Answers From The Onion

  27-05-2024 17:09 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: As denizens of the Internet, we have all often seen a news item so ridiculous it caused us to think, "This seems like an Onion headline." But as real human beings, most of us have the ability to discern between reality and satire. Unfortunately, Google's newly launched "AI Overview" lacks that crucial ability. The feature, which launched less than two weeks ago (with no way for users to opt-out), provides answers to certain queries at the top of the page abov
  
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• China Sets Up Third Fund With $47.5 Billion To Boost Semiconductor Sector

  27-05-2024 16:00 via slashdot.org
  
  China has set up its third planned state-backed investment fund to boost its semiconductor industry, with a registered capital of 344 billion yuan ($47.5 billion), according to a filing with a government-run companies registry. Reuters: The hundreds of billions of yuan invested in the sector puts into perspective President Xi Jinping's drive to achieve self-sufficiency for China in semiconductors. That commitment has taken on renewed urgency after the U.S. imposed a series of export control meas
  
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• Company will Convert GM's Electric Vans into Speedy Mobile Superchargers for Fleets

  27-05-2024 13:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Nashville-based Yoshi Mobility launched in 2015 to deliver gasoline to vehicle owners, reports Forbes. But this week the company announced they'll begin converting GM electric delivery vans into "mobile EV superchargers" — fast, battery-powered 240 kw DC chargers — for corporate fleets of electric cars.
  "There's kind of this critical grid problem and so we think that we can accelerate towards an EV future and this is a unique way that we can do it," said [cofounder/CEO Bryan] Frist i
  
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• Food Industry Launches 'Ferocious' Campaign Against Regulations on Ultraprocessed Foods

  27-05-2024 09:36 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Studies show ultraprocessed food "encourages overeating but may leave the eater undernourished," writes Ars Technica.But the food industry's response has been "a ferocious campaign against regulation."In part it has used the same lobbying playbook as its fight against labeling and taxation of "junk food" high in calories: big spending to influence policymakers. FT analysis of US lobbying data from non-profit Open Secrets found that food and soft drinks-related companies spent $106 million on lob
  
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• 1 in 9 American Kids Were Diagnosed With ADHD, New Study Finds

  27-05-2024 06:35 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "About 1 in 9 children in the U.S., between the ages of 3 and 17, have been diagnosed with ADHD," reports NPR:
  That's according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that calls attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder an "expanding public health concern."
  Researchers found that in 2022, 7.1 million kids and adolescents in the U.S. had received an ADHD diagnosis — a million more children than in 2016. That jump in diagnoses was not surprising, given that the da
  
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• America Has One Public Charger for Every 20 Electric Cars

  27-05-2024 05:04 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  This week the Washington Post noted that just last year nearly 1.2 million more electric vehicles were sold in America, "accounting for over 7 percent of total new car sales and a new national record." But "data show that EV sales are far outpacing growth in the U.S. charging network... In 2016, there were seven electric cars for each public charging point; today, there's more than 20 electric cars per charger."
  The article points out that 80% of America's EV's are just charging at home, accordi
  
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• Pew Research Finds 64% of Americans Live Within Two Miles of a Public EV Charger

  27-05-2024 03:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "64% of Americans live within 2 miles of a public charging station," Pew Research reported this week, citing a survey paired with an analysis of U.S. Energy Department data that found over 61,000 publicly accessible charging stations.
  And those who live closest to public chargers "view EVs more positively."The vast majority of EV charging occurs at home, but access to public infrastructure is tightly linked with Americans' opinions of electric vehicles themselves. Our analysis finds that America
  
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• Technical Issues' Stall MLB's Adoption of Robots to Call Balls and Strikes

  27-05-2024 01:32 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Will Major League Baseball games use "automated" umpires next year to watch pitches from home plate and call balls and strikes?"We still have some technical issues," baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday. NBC News reports:"We haven't made as much progress in the minor leagues this year as we sort of hoped at this point. I think it's becoming more and more likely that this will not be a go for '25."
  Major League Baseball has been experimenting with the automated ball-strike system in mi
  
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• Memory Sealing 'mseal' System Call Merged For Linux 6.10

  26-05-2024 23:53 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  "Merged this Friday evening into the Linux 6.10 kernel is the new mseal() system call for memory sealing," reports Phoronix:The mseal system call was led by Jeff Xu of Google's Chrome team. The goal with memory sealing is to also protect the memory mapping itself against modification. The new mseal Linux documentation explains:
  "Modern CPUs support memory permissions such as RW and NX bits. The memory permission feature improves security stance on memory corruption bugs, i.e. the attacker can't
  
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• Mojo, Bend, and the Rise of AI-First Programming Languages

  26-05-2024 22:53 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  "While general-purpose languages like Python, C++, and Java remain popular in AI development," writes VentureBeat, "the resurgence of AI-first languages signifies a recognition that AI's unique demands require specialized languages tailored to the domain's specific needs... designed from the ground up to address the specific needs of AI development."
  Bend, created by Higher Order Company, aims to provide a flexible and intuitive programming model for AI, with features like automatic differentiat
  
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