ICT news

• Dutch Privacy Watchdog Recommends Government Organizations Stop Using Facebook

  20-04-2024 01:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Dutch privacy watchdog AP on Friday said it was recommending that government organizations should stop using Facebook as long as it is unclear what happens with personal data of users of the government's Facebook pages. "People that visit a government's page need to be able to trust that their personal and sensitive data is in safe hands," AP chairman Aleid Wolfsen said in a statement. Junior minister for digitalization Alexandra van Huffelen
  
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• Julian Assange Wins High Court Victory in Case Against Extradition To US

  20-05-2024 13:59 via news.slashdot.org
  Julian Assange has won a victory in his ongoing battle against extradition from the UK after judges at the high court in London granted him leave to appeal. From a report: Two judges deferred a decision in March on whether Assange, who is trying to avoid being prosecuted in the US on espionage charges relating to the publication of thousands of classified and diplomatic documents, could take his case to another appeal hearing. Assange had been granted permission to appeal only if the Biden admin
  
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• Police Found Ways to Use Facial Recognition Tech After Their Cities Banned It

  20-05-2024 13:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:
  As cities and states push to restrict the use of facial recognition technologies, some police departments have quietly found a way to keep using the controversial tools: asking for help from other law enforcement agencies that still have access. Officers in Austin and San Francisco — two of the largest cities where police are banned from using the technology — have repeatedly asked police in neighboring towns to run pho
  
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• Some People Who Rented a Tesla from Hertz Were Still Charged for Gas

  20-05-2024 09:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "Last week, we reported on a customer who was charged $277 for gasoline his rented Tesla couldn't have possibly used," writes the automotive blog The Drive.
  "And now, we've heard from other Hertz customers who say they've been charged even more."Hertz caught attention last week for how it handled a customer whom it had charged a "Skip the Pump" fee, which allows renters to pay a premium for Hertz to refill the tank for them. But of course, this customer's rented Tesla Model 3 didn't use gas &mda
  
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• What Happened After a Reporter Tracked Down The Identity Thief Who Stole $5,000

  20-05-2024 05:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  "$5,000 in cash had been withdrawn from my checking account — but not by me," writes journalist Linda Matchan in the Boston Globe. A police station manager reviewed footage from the bank — which was 200 miles away — and deduced that "someone had actually come into the bank and spoken to a teller, presented a driver's license, and then correctly answered some authentication questions to validate the account..."
  "You're pitting a teller against a national crime syndicate with mas
  
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• Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for NVIDIA Users

  20-05-2024 03:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the blog OMG Ubuntu:
  Ubuntu first switched to using Wayland as its default display server in 2017 before reverting the following year. It tried again in 2021 and has stuck with it since. But while Wayland is what most of us now log into after installing Ubuntu, anyone doing so on a PC or laptop with an NVIDIA graphics card present instead logs into an Xorg/X11 session.
  This is because NVIDIA's proprietary graphics drivers (which many, especially gamers
  
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• Linux Foundation Announces Launch of 'High Performance Software Foundation'

  20-05-2024 01:59 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  This week the nonprofit Linux Foundation announced the launch of the High Performance Software Foundation, which "aims to build, promote, and advance a portable core software stack for high performance computing" (or HPC) by "increasing adoption, lowering barriers to contribution, and supporting development efforts."
  It promises initiatives focused on "continuously built, turnkey software stacks," as well as other initiatives including architecture support and performance regression testing. Its
  
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• FORTRAN and COBOL Re-enter TIOBE's Ranking of Programming Language Popularity

  20-05-2024 00:01 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  "The TIOBE Index sets out to reflect the relative popularity of computer languages," writes i-Programmer, "so it comes as something of a surprise to see two languages dating from the 1950's in this month's Top 20.Having broken into the the Top 20 in April 2021 Fortran has continued to rise and has now risen to it's highest ever position at #10... The headline for this month's report by Paul Jansen on the TIOBE index is:Fortran in the top 10, what is going on?Jansen's explanation points to the fa
  
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• Blue Origin Successfully Launches Six Passengers to the Edge of Space

  19-05-2024 22:39 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "Blue Origin's tourism rocket has launched passengers to the edge of space for the first time in nearly two years," reports CNN, "ending a hiatus prompted by a failed uncrewed test flight."
  The New Shepard rocket and capsule lifted off at 9:36 a.m. CT (10:36 a.m. ET) from Blue Origin's facilities on a private ranch in West Texas.
  NS-25, Blue Origin's seventh crewed flight to date, carried six customers aboard the capsule: venture capitalist Mason Angel; Sylvain Chiron, founder of the French craf
  
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• China Uses Giant Rail Gun to Shoot a Smart Bomb Nine Miles Into the Sky

  19-05-2024 20:46 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "China's navy has apparently tested out a hypersonic rail gun," reports Futurism, describing it as "basically a device that uses a series of electromagnets to accelerate a projectile to incredible speeds."
  But "during a demonstration of its power, things didn't go quite as planned."
  As the South China Morning Post reports, the rail gun test lobbed a precision-guided projectile — or smart bomb — nine miles into the stratosphere. But because it apparently didn't go up as high as it was
  
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• AI 'Godfather' Geoffrey Hinton: If AI Takes Jobs We'll Need Universal Basic Income

  19-05-2024 19:34 via slashdot.org
  
  "The computer scientist regarded as the 'godfather of artificial intelligence' says the government will have to establish a universal basic income to deal with the impact of AI on inequality," reports the BBC:Professor Geoffrey Hinton told BBC Newsnight that a benefits reform giving fixed amounts of cash to every citizen would be needed because he was "very worried about AI taking lots of mundane jobs".
  "I was consulted by people in Downing Street and I advised them that universal basic income w
  
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• US Defense Department 'Concerned' About ULA's Slow Progress on Satellite Launches

  19-05-2024 18:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Earlier this week the Washington Post reported that America's Defense department "is growing concerned that the United Launch Alliance, one of its key partners in launching national security satellites to space, will not be able to meet its needs to counter China and build its arsenal in orbit with a new rocket that ULA has been developing for years."In a letter sent Friday to the heads of Boeing's and Lockheed Martin's space divisions, Air Force Assistant Secretary Frank Calvelli used unusually
  
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• Amazon Defends Its Use of Signal Messages in Court

  19-05-2024 17:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  America's Federal Trade Commission and 17 states filed an antitrust suit against Amazon in September. This week Amazon responded in court about its usage of Signal's "disappearing messages" feature.
  Long-time Slashdot reader theodp shares GeekWire's report:
  At a company known for putting its most important ideas and strategies into comprehensive six-page memos, quick messages between executives aren't the place for meaningful business discussions. That's one of the points made by Amazon in its r
  
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• Deep Fake Scams Growing in Global Frequency and Sophistication, Victim Warns

  19-05-2024 16:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  In an elaborate scam in January, "a finance worker, was duped into attending a video call with people he believed were the chief financial officer and other members of staff," remembers CNN. But Hong Kong police later said that all of them turned out to be deepfake re-creations which duped the employee into transferring $25 million.
  According to police, the worker had initially suspected he had received a phishing email from the company's UK office, as it specified the need for a secret transact
  
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• Are Car Companies Sabotaging the Transition to Electric Vehicles?

  19-05-2024 13:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The thinktank InfluenceMap produces "data-driven analysis on how business and finance are impacting the climate crisis." Their web site says their newest report documents "How automaker lobbying threatens the global transition to electric vehicles."This report analyses the climate policy engagement strategies of fifteen of the largest global automakers in seven key regions (Australia, EU, Japan, India, South Korea, UK, US). It shows how even in countries where major climate legislation has recen
  
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• America Takes Its Biggest Step Yet to End Coal Mining

  19-05-2024 09:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The Washington Post reports that America took "one of its biggest steps yet to keep fossil fuels in the ground," announcing Thursday that it will end new coal leasing in the Powder River Basin, "which produces nearly half the coal in the United States...
  "It could prevent billions of tons of coal from being extracted from more than 13 million acres across Montana and Wyoming, with major implications for U.S. climate goals."
  A significant share of the nation's fossil fuels come from federal lands
  
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• Robot Dogs Armed With AI-aimed Rifles Undergo US Marines Special Ops Evaluation

  19-05-2024 05:59 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike shared this report from Ars Technica:The United States Marine Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) is currently evaluating a new generation of robotic "dogs" developed by Ghost Robotics, with the potential to be equipped with gun systems from defense tech company Onyx Industries, reports The War Zone.While MARSOC is testing Ghost Robotics' quadrupedal unmanned ground vehicles (called "Q-UGVs" for short) for various applications, including reconnaissance
  
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• Why a 'Frozen' Distribution Linux Kernel Isn't the Safest Choice for Security

  19-05-2024 03:04 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Jeremy Allison — Sam (Slashdot reader #8,157) is a Distinguished Engineer at Rocky Linux creator CIQ. This week he published a blog post responding to promises of Linux distros "carefully selecting only the most polished and pristine open source patches from the raw upstream open source Linux kernel in order to create the secure distribution kernel you depend on in your business."
  But do carefully curated software patches (applied to a known "frozen" Linux kernel) really bring greater secu
  
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• Are AI-Generated Search Results Still Protected by Section 230?

  19-05-2024 00:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Starting this week millions will see AI-generated answers in Google's search results by default. But the announcement Tuesday at Google's annual developer conference suggests a future that's "not without its risks, both to users and to Google itself," argues the Washington Post:
  For years, Google has been shielded for liability for linking users to bad, harmful or illegal information by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. But legal experts say that shield probably won't apply when its
  
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• How an 'Unprecedented' Google Cloud Event Wiped Out a Major Customer's Account

  18-05-2024 23:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Ars Technica looks at what happened after Google's answer to Amazon's cloud service "accidentally deleted a giant customer account for no reason..."
  "[A]ccording to UniSuper's incident log, downtime started May 2, and a full restoration of services didn't happen until May 15."UniSuper, an Australian pension fund that manages $135 billion worth of funds and has 647,000 members, had its entire account wiped out at Google Cloud, including all its backups that were stored on the service... UniSuper'
  
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• Eight Automakers Grilled by US Lawmakers Over Sharing of Connected Car Data With Police

  18-05-2024 22:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from Automotive News:Automotive News recently reported that eight automakers sent vehicle location data to police without a court order or warrant. The eight companies told senators that they provide police with data when subpoenaed, getting a rise from several officials.
  BMW, Kia, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Subaru, Toyota, and Volkswagen presented their responses to lawmakers. Senators Ron Wyden from Oregon and Ed Markey from Massachusetts penned a lett
  
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• Study Confirms Einstein Prediction: Black Holes Have a 'Plunging Region'

  18-05-2024 21:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "Albert Einstein was right," reports CNN. "There is an area at the edge of black holes where matter can no longer stay in orbit and instead falls in, as predicted by his theory of gravity."
  The proof came by combining NASA's earth-orbiting NuSTAR telescope with the NICER telescope on the International Space Station to detect X-rays:A team of astronomers has for the first time observed this area — called the "plunging region" — in a black hole about 10,000 light-years from Earth. "We'
  
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• 'Google Domains' Starts Migrating to Squarespace

  18-05-2024 20:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "We're migrating domains in batches..." announced web-hosting company Squarespace earlier this month.
  "Squarespace has entered into an agreement to become the new home for Google Domains customers. When your domain transitions from Google to Squarespace, you'll become a Squarespace customer and manage your domain through an account with us."
  Slashdot reader shortyadamk shares an email sent today to a Google Domains customer:"Today your domain, xyz.com, migrated from Google Domains to Squarespace
  
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• Is America's Defense Department 'Rushing to Expand' Its Space War Capabilities?

  18-05-2024 19:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  America's Defense Department "is rushing to expand its capacity to wage war in space," reports the New York Times, "convinced that rapid advances by China and Russia in space-based operations pose a growing threat to U.S. troops and other military assets on the ground and U.S. satellites in orbit."[T]he Defense Department is looking to acquire a new generation of ground- and space-based tools that will allow it to defend its satellite network from attack and, if necessary, to disrupt or disable
  
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• Cruise Reached an $8M+ Settlement With the Person Dragged Under Its Robotaxi

  18-05-2024 18:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Bloomberg reports that self-driving car company Cruise "reached an $8 million to $12 million settlement with a pedestrian who was dragged by one of its self-driving vehicles in San Francisco, according to a person familiar with the situation."The settlement was struck earlier this year and the woman is out of the hospital, said the person, who declined to be identified discussing a private matter. In the October incident, the pedestrian crossing the road was struck by another vehicle before land
  
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• Bruce Schneier Reminds LLM Engineers About the Risks of Prompt Injection Vulnerabilities

  18-05-2024 17:34 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Security professional Bruce Schneier argues that large language models have the same vulnerability as phones in the 1970s exploited by John Draper.
  "Data and control used the same channel," Schneier writes in Communications of the ACM. "That is, the commands that told the phone switch what to do were sent along the same path as voices."
  Other forms of prompt injection involve the LLM receiving malicious instructions in its training data. Another example hides secret commands in Web pages. Any LL
  
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• Facing Angry Users, Sonos Promises to Fix Flaws and Restore Removed Features

  18-05-2024 16:34 via it.slashdot.org
  
  A blind worker for the National Federation of the Blind said Sonos had a reputation for making products usable for people with disabilities, but that "Overnight they broke that trust," according to the Washington Post.They're not the only angry customers about the latest update to Sonos's wireless speaker system. The newspaper notes that nonprofit worker Charles Knight is "among the Sonos die-hards who are furious at the new app that crippled their options to stream music, listen to an album all
  
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• 'Openwashing'

  18-05-2024 15:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: There's a big debate in the tech world over whether artificial intelligence models should be "open source." Elon Musk, who helped found OpenAI in 2015, sued the startup and its chief executive, Sam Altman, on claims that the company had diverged from its mission of openness. The Biden administration is investigating the risks and benefits of open source models. Proponents of open source A.I. models say they're more equitable and safer
  
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• The Delta Emulator Is Changing Its Logo After Adobe Threatened It

  18-05-2024 09:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  After Adobe threatened legal action, the Delta Emulator said it'll abandon its current logo for a different, yet-to-be-revealed mark. The issue centers around Delta's stylized letter "D", which the digital media giant says is too similar to its stylized letter "A". The Verge reports: On May 7th, Adobe's lawyers reached out to Delta with a firm but kindly written request to go find a different icon, an email that didn't contain an explicit threat or even use the word infringement -- it merely sug
  
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• Proteins In Blood Could Provide Early Cancer Warning 'By More Than Seven Years'

  18-05-2024 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Proteins in the blood could warn people of cancer more than seven years before it is diagnosed, according to research [published in the journal Nature Communications]. Scientists at the University of Oxford studied blood samples from more than 44,000 people in the UK Biobank, including over 4,900 people who subsequently had a cancer diagnosis. They compared the proteins of people who did and did not go on to be diagnosed with cancer and iden
  
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