ICT news

• Netflix To Take On Google and Amazon By Building Its Own Ad Server

  16-05-2024 03:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Lauren Forristal writes via TechCrunch: Netflix announced during its Upfronts presentation on Wednesday that it's launching its own advertising technology platform only a year and a half after entering the ads business. This move pits it against other industry heavyweights with ad servers, like Google, Amazon and Comcast. The announcement signifies a significant shake-up in the streaming giant's advertising approach. The company originally partnered with Microsoft to develop its ad tech, letting
  
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• Android 16 Will Launch Earlier Than Usual

  01-11-2024 00:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google is advancing the release timeline for Android 16, shifting it to the second quarter of 2025 to better align with new device launches and accelerate access to its latest AI and machine learning resources. It should also "enable app creators and phone companies to prepare their products for the new software more quickly," reports CNET. From the report: [I]n a big-picture sense, the change could help facilitate a new wave of apps with more AI integration, considering developers will get acce
  
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• Want To Keep Getting Windows 10 Updates? It'll Cost You $30

  31-10-2024 23:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  With Windows 10 support set to expire on October 14, 2025, Microsoft is offering a one-time, one-year Extended Security Updates plan for consumers. "For $30, you'll receive 'critical' and 'important' security updates -- basically security patches that will continue to protect your Windows 10 PC from any vulnerabilities," reports PCWorld. "That $30 is for one year's worth of updates, and that's the only option at this time." From the report: Microsoft has been warning users for years that Windows
  
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• Ghost Jobs Are Wreaking Havoc On Tech Workers

  31-10-2024 23:00 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGATE: If you've recently been laid off and have started the arduous process of looking for a new job, you've probably seen them on networking platforms like LinkedIn: postings for roles that are 30 days old, maybe more, with suspiciously wide salary ranges. They usually have hundreds, or even thousands, of hopeful applicants vying for the same position, but if you do a quick cross-check and notice that the role isn't posted on the company's actual websi
  
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• Chinese Attackers Accessed Canadian Government Networks For Five Years

  31-10-2024 22:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Canada's Communications Security Establishment (CSE) revealed a sustained cyber campaign by the People's Republic of China, targeting Canadian government and private sector networks over the past five years. The report also flagged India, alongside Russia and Iran, as emerging cyber threats. The Register reports: The biennial National Cyber Threat Assessment described the People's Republic of China's (PRC) cyber operations against Canada as "second to none." Their purpose is to "serve high-level
  
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• Zoox Custom Robotaxis Are Finally Coming To San Francisco, Las Vegas

  31-10-2024 21:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Zoox, an Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle company, is set to roll out dozens of its purpose-built robotaxis in San Francisco and Las Vegas, starting with employee rides in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood and the Las Vegas Strip. "We have achieved that internal safety readiness" required to launch the service, said co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson on the TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 stage. TechCrunch reports: The announcement comes a decade after Zoox was founded and four years since it was acquired
  
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• Over 500 Amazon Workers Decry 'Non-Data-Driven' Logic For 5-Day RTO Policy

  31-10-2024 21:02 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: More than 500 Amazon workers reportedly signed a letter to Amazon Web Services' (AWS) CEO this week, sharing their outrage over Amazon's upcoming return-to-office (RTO) policy that will force workers into offices five days per week. In September, Amazon announced that starting in 2025, workers will no longer be allowed to work remotely twice a week. At the time, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the move would make it easier for workers "to learn,
  
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• Microsoft Delays Recall Again

  31-10-2024 20:20 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft is once again delaying the roll out of its controversial Recall feature for Copilot Plus PCs. From a report: The software giant had planned to start testing Recall, which creates screenshots of mostly everything you see or do on a Copilot Plus PC, with Windows Insiders in October. Now, Microsoft says it needs more time to get the feature ready.
  "We are committed to delivering a secure and trusted experience with Recall. To ensure we deliver on these important updates, we're taking addi
  
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• OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Search, Competing With Google and Microsoft

  31-10-2024 19:42 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  OpenAI on Thursday launched a search feature within ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, that positions the high-powered AI startup to better compete with search engines like Google, Microsoft's Bing and Perplexity. From a report: ChatGPT search offers up-to-the-minute sports scores, stock quotes, news, weather and more, powered by real-time web search and partnerships with news and data providers, according to the company. It began beta-testing the search engine, called SearchGPT, in July.
  The release c
  
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• Amazon is Shutting Down Its Kindle Vella Serialized Story Platform in February 2025

  31-10-2024 19:01 via slashdot.org
  
  Amazon, in what it described as a "difficult decision," is winding down Kindle Vella and shutting it down completely in February 2025. From a report: When the company launched the serialized story platform in 2021, it said Vella was a way for readers to discover new fictional stories and a new way for authors to earn from the Kindle Direct Publishing service. But it hasn't caught on as it had hoped, Amazon explains on its website, and it has decided to throw in the towel three years after Vella'
  
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• Meta's Next Llama AI Models Are Training on a GPU Cluster 'Bigger Than Anything' Else

  31-10-2024 18:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid down the newest marker in generative AI training on Wednesday, saying that the next major release of the company's Llama model is being trained on a cluster of GPUs that's "bigger than anything" else that's been reported. From a report: Llama 4 development is well underway, Zuckerberg told investors and analysts on an earnings call, with an initial launch expected early next year. "We're training the Llama 4 models on a cluster that is bigger than 100,000 H100s, or
  
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• Video Game Veterans Are Abandoning Big Studios For Smaller Teams

  31-10-2024 17:40 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Growing numbers of veteran video game developers are leaving large studios to work on smaller projects, citing bureaucratic burnout and creative constraints at major publishers. Nate Purkeypile, former lead artist on Bethesda's "Starfield," quit in 2021 after facing up to 20 meetings weekly coordinating with a 400-person team across four offices. He has since released "The Axis Unseen," a horror game he developed solo.
  The trend, reported by Bloomberg, coincides with ballooning development costs
  
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• 'I'm Not Just Spouting Shit': iPod Creator, Nest Founder Fadell Slams Sam Altman

  31-10-2024 17:00 via slashdot.org
  
  iPod creator and Nest founder Tony Fadell criticized OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and warned of AI dangers during TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 in San Francisco this week. "I've been doing AI for 15 years, people, I'm not just spouting shit. I'm not Sam Altman, okay?" Fadell said, drawing gasps from the audience.
  Fadell, whose Nest thermostat used AI in 2011, called for more specialized and transparent AI systems instead of general-purpose large language models. He cited a University of Michigan study showin
  
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• Amazon Delays AI-Powered Alexa Upgrade Amid Technical Challenges

  31-10-2024 16:22 via slashdot.org
  
  Amazon has postponed the rollout of its AI-enhanced Alexa voice assistant to 2025, a significant setback in its race to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT, according to Bloomberg. The delay underscores Amazon's challenges in modernizing Alexa's decade-old architecture, which relies on rigid command-response patterns rather than advanced language models.
  Further reading: Alexa, Where's My Star Trek Computer?Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• 300% Price Hikes Push Disgruntled VMware Customers Toward Broadcom Rivals

  31-10-2024 15:40 via it.slashdot.org
  
  After closing a $69 billion deal to buy virtualization technology company VMware a year ago, Broadcom wasted no time ushering in big changes to the ways customers and partners buy and sell VMware offerings -- and many of those clients aren't happy. ArsTechnica: To get a deeper look at the impact that rising costs and overhauls like the end of VMware perpetual license sales have had on VMware users, Ars spoke with several companies in the process of quitting the software due to Broadcom's changes
  
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• Weight-Loss Surgery Down 25% as Anti-Obesity Drug Use Soars

  31-10-2024 15:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  A new study examining a large sample of privately insured patients with obesity found that use of drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy as anti-obesity medications more than doubled from 2022 to 2023. During that same period, there was a 25.6% decrease in patients undergoing metabolic bariatric surgery to treat obesity. From a report: The study, by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital, in collaboration with researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Brown School of Public
  
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• Meta AI Surpasses 500 Million Users

  31-10-2024 14:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Last month at Meta Connect, Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta AI was "on track" to become the most-used generative AI assistant in the world. The company has now passed a significant milestone toward that goal, with Meta AI passing the 500 million user mark, Zuckerberg revealed during the company's latest earnings call. The half billion user mark comes just barely a year after the social network first launched its AI assistant last fall. Zuckerberg
  
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• Foreign Threat Actor Conducting Large-Scale Spear-Phishing Campaign with RDP Attachments

  31-10-2024 13:00 via cisa.gov
  CISA has received multiple reports of a large-scale spear-phishing campaign targeting organizations in several sectors, including government and information technology (IT). The foreign threat actor, often posing as a trusted entity, is sending spear-phishing emails containing malicious remote desktop protocol (RDP) files to targeted organizations to connect to and access files stored on the target’s network. Once access has been gained, the threat actor may pursue additional activity, suc
  
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• Arecibo Collapsed Because of Engineering Failures That Inspectors Failed To Spot

  31-10-2024 11:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Behind the Black: According to a new very detailed engineering analysis into the causes of the collapse of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico in 2020, the failure was caused first by a surprising interaction between the radio electronics of Arecibo and the traditional methods used to anchor the cables, and second by a failure of inspections to spot the problem as it became obvious.The surprising engineering discovery is illustrated [here (PNG)]. T
  
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• Record Levels of Heat-Related Deaths in 2023 Due To Climate Crisis, Report Finds

  31-10-2024 09:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Heat-related deaths, food insecurity and the spread of infectious diseases caused by the climate crisis have reached record levels, according to a landmark report. The Guardian: The Lancet Countdown's ninth report on health and the climate breakdown reveals that people across the world face unprecedented threats to their health from the rapidly changing climate. "This year's stocktake of the imminent health threats of climate inaction reveals the most concerning findings yet," warned Dr Marina R
  
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• Nintendo Made a Music Streaming App For Video Game Soundtracks

  31-10-2024 08:00 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Nintendo has announced a mobile app called Nintendo Music, which lets users listen to classic video game soundtracks from Nintendo games spanning the last few decades, including Splatoon, Animal Crossing, and The Legend of Zelda. According to The Verge, the app is available on iOS and Android but only Switch Online subscribers will be able to stream the tunes. From the report: The app features curated playlists themed around games, moments, moods, or characters, though you can also build your ow
  
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• Boston Dynamics' Atlas Robot Executes Autonomous Automotive Parts Picking

  31-10-2024 04:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  In a new video published today, Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot Atlas is shown moving engine parts between bins without any human assistance. TechCrunch reports: Boston Dynamics is quick to note that the actions are being performed autonomously, without "prescribed or teleoperated movements." [...] Boston Dynamics notes, "The robot is able to detect and react to changes in the environment (e.g., moving fixtures) and action failures (e.g., failure to insert the cover, tripping, environment collis
  
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• Mark Zuckerberg Says a Lot More AI Generated Content is Coming To Fill Up Facebook and Instagram Feeds

  31-10-2024 02:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  First we had friends. Then we had influencers. And if Mark Zuckerberg is correct, the next big thing in our social media feeds will be AI generated content. Lots of it. Fortune: Zuckerberg described our future feeds during Facebook-parent company Meta's third quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday, describing it as a natural evolution. "I think were going to add a whole new category of content which is AI generated or AI summarized content, or existing content pulled together by AI in som
  
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• Siemens To Buy Altair For $10.6 Billion In Digital Portfolio Push

  31-10-2024 01:50 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Siemens will buy Altair Engineering for $10.6 billion, the American engineering software firm said on Wednesday, as the German company seeks to strengthen its presence in the fast-growing industrial software market. The offer price of $113 per share represents a premium of about 18.7% to Altair's closing price on Oct. 21, a day before Reuters first reported that the company was exploring a sale. The deal for Michigan-based Altair is Siemens's big
  
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• Colorado Agency 'Improperly' Posted Passwords for Its Election System Online

  31-10-2024 01:10 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  For months, the Colorado Department of State inadvertently exposed partial passwords for voting machines in a public spreadsheet. "While the incident is embarrassing and already fueling accusations from the state's Republican party, the department said in a statement that it 'does not pose an immediate security threat to Colorado's elections, nor will it impact how ballots are counted,'" reports Gizmodo. From the report: Colorado NBC affiliate station 9NEWS reported that Hope Scheppelman, vice c
  
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• Microsoft Reports Big Profits Amid Massive AI Investments

  31-10-2024 00:34 via slashdot.org
  
  Ars Technica's Samuel Axon reports on Microsoft's quarterly earnings: Some investors have been uneasy about the company's aggressive spending on AI, while others have demanded it. During this quarter, Microsoft reported that it spent $20 billion on capital expenditures, nearly double what it had spent during the same quarter last year. However, the company satisfied both groups of investors, as it revealed it has still been doing well in the short term amid those long-term investments. The fisca
  
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• Steam Games Must Fully Disclose Kernel-Level Anti-Cheat On Store Pages

  30-10-2024 23:40 via games.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gaming On Linux: Valve announced a change for Steam today that will make things a lot clearer for everyone, as developers will now need to clearly list the kernel-level anti-cheat used on Steam store pages. In the Steamworks Developer post Valve said: "We've heard from more and more developers recently that they're looking for the right way to share anti-cheat information about their game with players. At the same time, players have been requesting more t
  
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• Call of Duty's Massive Filesize Drives Peak Internet Usage

  30-10-2024 23:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Comcast says the latest installment of Call of Duty, released on October 25th, resulted in a whopping 19 percent of its overall traffic last week. The ISP says it's the company's "biggest weak in internet history." The Verge reports: It's not really possible to quantify that further, given Comcast didn't provide any specific numbers -- either about how many customers were downloading the game or how big their downloads were. Ranging between 84.4GB for the PlayStation version and 102GB for the PC
  
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• Sketchy Financials Send Supermicro Auditors Running For the Hills

  30-10-2024 22:25 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The Register's Tobias Mann reports: Supermicro shares took a nose dive on Wednesday, sliding more than 30 percent after the accounting firm hired to review its reporting practices resigned after determining they were just a bit too sketchy to warrant the risk. "We are resigning due to information that has recently come to our attention which has led us to no longer be able to rely on management's and audit committee's representations," Ernst & Young wrote in a resignation letter, which also
  
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• US Military Makes First Confirmed OpenAI Purchase For War-Fighting Forces

  30-10-2024 21:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: Less than a year after OpenAI quietly signaled it wanted to do business with the Pentagon, a procurement document obtained by The Intercept shows U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, believes access to OpenAI's technology is "essential" for its mission. The September 30 document lays out AFRICOM's rationale for buying cloud computing services directly from Microsoft as part of its $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract, rather t
  
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