ICT news

• Sony Lays Down the Gauntlet on AI

  17-05-2024 02:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Sony Music Group, one of the world's biggest record labels, warned AI companies and music streaming platforms not to use the company's content without explicit permission. From a report: Sony Music, whose artists include Lil Nas X and Celine Dion, sent letters to more than 700 companies in an effort to protect its intellectual property, which includes album cover art, metadata, musical compositions and lyrics, from being used for training AI models. "Unauthorized use" of Sony Music Group content
  
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• Journalists 'Deeply Troubled' By OpenAI's Content Deals With Vox, The Atlantic

  01-06-2024 12:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Benj Edwards and Ashley Belanger reports via Ars Technica: On Wednesday, Axios broke the news that OpenAI had signed deals with The Atlantic and Vox Media that will allow the ChatGPT maker to license their editorial content to further train its language models. But some of the publications' writers -- and the unions that represent them -- were surprised by the announcements and aren't happy about it. Already, two unions have released statements expressing "alarm" and "concern." "The unionized me
  
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• 'Planetary Parade' Will See Six Planets Line Up In the Morning Sky

  01-06-2024 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  On June 3, a "planet parade" of six planets -- Jupiter, Mercury, Uranus, Mars, Neptune and Saturn -- will form a straight line through the pre-dawn sky. Astronomy.com reports: Some 20 minutes before sunrise, all six planets should be visible, though note that Uranus (magnitude 5.9) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8) will be too faint for naked-eye observing and, although they're present in the lineup, will need binoculars or a telescope to spot. But Jupiter (magnitude -2), Mercury (magnitude -1), Mars
  
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• Scientists Find the Largest Known Genome Inside a Small Plant

  01-06-2024 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Last year, Jaume Pellicer led a team of fellow scientists into a forest on Grande Terre, an island east of Australia. They were in search of a fern called Tmesipteris oblanceolata. Standing just a few inches tall, it was not easy to find on the forest floor. "It doesn't catch the eye," said Dr. Pellicer, who works at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona in Spain. "You would probably step on it and not even realize it." The scientists e
  
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• London's Evening Standard To End Daily Newspaper After Almost 200 Years

  01-06-2024 03:25 via news.slashdot.org
  
  London's famed Evening Standard newspaper has announced plans to end its daily outlet, "bringing an end to almost 200 years of publication in the capital," reports The Guardian. Going forward, the company plans to launch "a brand new weekly newspaper later this year and consider options for retaining ES Magazine with reduced frequency," while also working to increase traffic to its website. "In its 197-year history the Evening Standard has altered its format, price, content and distribution mode
  
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• Windows 11's New Recall Feature Has Been Cracked To Run On Unsupported Hardware

  01-06-2024 02:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Last than two weeks after it was announced, "Windows enthusiasts have managed to crack Microsoft's flagship AI-powered Recall feature to run on unsupported hardware," reports The Verge. From the report: Recall leverages local AI models on new Copilot Plus PCs to run in the background and take snapshots of anything you've done or seen on your PC. You then get a timeline you can scrub through and the ability to search for photos, documents, conversations, or anything else on your PC. Microsoft pos
  
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• Battery-Powered California Faces Lower Blackout Risk This Summer

  01-06-2024 02:02 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: California expects to avoid rolling blackouts this summer as new solar plants and large batteries plug into the state's grid at a rapid clip. The state's electricity system has been strained by years of drought, wildfires that knock out transmission lines and record-setting heat waves. But officials forecast Wednesday new resources added to the grid in the last four years would give California ample supplies for typical summer weather.Since 202
  
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• Wordle In Legal Row With Geography Spinoff, Wordle

  01-06-2024 01:20 via games.slashdot.org
  
  The New York Times, owner of the once-viral, word game Wordle, is suing a geography-based spinoff called Worldle, accusing its similar name of "creating confusion" and attempting to capitalize on "the enormous goodwill" associated with its own brand. Worldle's creator, Kory McDonald, vows to fight back. The BBC reports: "There's a whole industry of [dot]LE games," he told the BBC. "Wordle is about words, Worldle is about the world, Flaggle is about flags," he pointed out. The New York Times disa
  
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• FCC Ends Affordable Internet Program Due To Lack of Funds

  01-06-2024 00:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which provided monthly internet bill credits for low-income Americans, will officially end on June 1 due to a lack of additional funding from Congress. This termination threatens nearly 60 million Americans with increased financial hardship, as the program's lapse leaves them without the subsidies that made internet access affordable. CNN reports: The 2.5-year-old ACP provided eligible low-income Americans with a monthly credit off their internet bills,
  
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• All Santander Staff and 30 Million Customers In Spain, Chile and Uruguay Hacked

  01-06-2024 00:02 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Hackers are attempting to sell what they say is confidential information belonging to millions of Santander staff and customers. They belong to the same gang which this week claimed to have hacked Ticketmaster. The bank -- which employs 200,000 people worldwide, including around 20,000 in the UK -- has confirmed data has been stolen. Santander has apologized for what it says is "the concern this will understandably cause" adding it is "proactivel
  
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• Hackers Steal $305 Million From DMM Bitcoin Crypto Exchange

  31-05-2024 23:25 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Japanese crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin confirmed on Friday that it had been the victim of a hack resulting in the theft of 4,502.9 bitcoin, or about $305 million. From a report: According to crypto security firm Elliptic, this is the eighth largest crypto theft in history. DMM Bitcoin said it detected "an unauthorized leak of Bitcoin (BTC) from our wallet" on Friday and that it was still investigating and had taken measures to stop further thefts. The crypto exchange said it also "implemented rest
  
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• Biomedical Paper Retractions Have Quadrupled in 20 Years

  31-05-2024 22:50 via science.slashdot.org
  
  The retraction rate for European biomedical-science papers increased fourfold between 2000 and 2021, a study of thousands of retractions has found. Nature: Two-thirds of these papers were withdrawn for reasons relating to research misconduct, such as data and image manipulation or authorship fraud. These factors accounted for an increasing proportion of retractions over the roughly 20-year period, the analysis suggests. "Our findings indicate that research misconduct has become more prevalent in
  
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• Fax Machines Permeate Germany's Business Culture. But Parliament is Ditching Them

  31-05-2024 22:10 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The sound of the 1990s still resonates in the German capital. Like techno music, the fax machine remains on trend. According to the latest figures from Germany's digital industry association, four out of five companies in Europe's largest economy continue to use fax machines and a third do so frequently or very frequently. Much as Germany's reputation for efficiency is regularly undermined by slow internet connections and a reliance on paper and rubber stamps
  
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• Vermont Becomes 1st State To Enact Law Requiring Oil Companies Pay For Damage From Climate Change

  31-05-2024 21:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Vermont has become the first state to enact a law requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a share of the damage caused by climate change after the state suffered catastrophic summer flooding and damage from other extreme weather. From a report: Republican Gov. Phil Scott allowed the bill to become law without his signature late Thursday, saying he is very concerned about the costs and outcome of the small state taking on "Big Oil" alone in what will likely be a grueling legal fight. But he acknow
  
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• Japan's Push To Make All Research Open Access is Taking Shape

  31-05-2024 20:50 via science.slashdot.org
  
  The Japanese government is pushing ahead with a plan to make Japan's publicly funded research output free to read. From a report: In June, the science ministry will assign funding to universities to build the infrastructure needed to make research papers free to read on a national scale. The move follows the ministry's announcement in February that researchers who receive government funding will be required to make their papers freely available to read on the institutional repositories from Janu
  
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• 'Why You Should Use Your TV's Filmmaker Mode'

  31-05-2024 20:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a CR report: Based on the name, you'd think Filmmaker Mode is strictly for watching movies. But in our labs, we find that it can get you pretty close to what we consider to be the ideal settings for all types of programming. Filmmaker Mode is the product of a joint effort by the Hollywood film community, TV manufacturers, and the UHD Alliance to help consumers easily set up their TVs and watch shows and films as they were meant to be displayed. The preset has been wide
  
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• Alzheimer's Takes a Financial Toll Long Before Diagnosis, Study Finds

  31-05-2024 19:36 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Long before people develop dementia, they often begin falling behind on mortgage payments, credit card bills and other financial obligations, new research shows. The New York Times: A team of economists and medical experts at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Georgetown University combined Medicare records with data from Equifax, the credit bureau, to study how people's borrowing behavior changed [PDF] in the years before and after a diagnosis of Alzheimer's or a similar disorder. What th
  
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• Google Will Disable Classic Extensions in Chrome in the Coming Months

  31-05-2024 18:55 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Google has published an update on the deprecation timeline of so-called Manifest V2 extensions in the Chrome web browser. Starting this June, Chrome will inform users with classic extensions about the deprecation. From a report: Manifests are rulesets for extensions. They define the capabilities of extensions. When Google published the initial Manifest V3 draft, it was criticized heavily for it. This initial draft had significant impact on content blockers, privacy extensions, and many other ext
  
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• You Can Thank Private Equity for That Enormous Doctor's Bill

  31-05-2024 18:05 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Private-equity investors have poured billions into healthcare but often game the system, hurting both doctors and patients. From a report: Consolidation is as American as apple pie. When a business gets bigger, it forces mom-and-pop players out of the market, but it can boost profits and bring down costs, too. Think about the pros and cons of Walmart and "Every Day Low Prices." In a complex, multitrillion-dollar system like America's healthcare market, though, that principle has turned into a ha
  
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• Vista Equity Writes Off IT Education Platform PluralSight Value, After $3.5 Billion Buyout

  31-05-2024 17:39 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Vista Equity Partners has written off the entire equity value of its investment in tech learning platform Pluralsight, three years after taking it private for $3.5 billion, Axios reported Friday. From the report: One source says that the Utah-based company's financials have improved, with around 26% EBITDA growth in 2023, but not enough to service nearly $1.3 billion of debt that was issued when interest rates were lower. It's also a company whose future could be dimmed by advances in artificial
  
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• Recycling Old Copper Wires Could Be Worth Billions For Telcos

  31-05-2024 16:57 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Increasingly redundant copper wires may be worth over $7 billion to telecommunications firms, should they take the trouble to recycle them. From a report: The estimate comes from British engineering company TXO, which claims there's up to 800,000 metric tons of copper wiring that could be harvested in the next ten years. TXO claims over a dozen telcos are investigating extracting copper wires from old networks to sell on the open market. The need for copper wiring is declining as carriers adopt
  
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• Google is Putting More Restrictions On AI Overviews

  31-05-2024 16:05 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Liz Reid, the Head of Google Search, has admitted that the company's search engine has returned some "odd, inaccurate or unhelpful AI Overviews" after they rolled out to everyone in the US. The executive published an explanation for Google's more peculiar AI-generated responses in a blog post, where it also announced that the company has implemented safeguards that will help the new feature return more accurate and less meme-worthy results. Reid defended Goog
  
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• Best Buy Set For Tenth Straight Quarter of Sales Drop

  31-05-2024 15:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Best Buy is set to post its tenth consecutive quarter of sales decline on Thursday when the U.S. electronics retailer reports quarterly results, as spending on big-ticket electronics remains pressured despite easing inflation. Although results from big-box retailers Walmart and Target indicate that consumers have resumed spending on less-expensive discretionary items such as apparel and accessories, they are still hesitant to go for TVs and washi
  
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• Apple News+ Subscription Growth Blows Away Major Media Sites

  31-05-2024 12:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  David Snow reports via Cult of Mac: A new report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) shows Apple News+ growing its subscription rate about four times as fast as major news sites are. CIRP showed Apple increased its News+ subscriptions in the United States from 15% to 24% between 2020 to 2024, a 9% increase. In that same period, The New York Times and The Washington Post managed a 2% bump apiece and The Wall Street Journal managed a 3% increase. The results come from data measurin
  
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• NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Finds Most Distant Known Galaxy

  31-05-2024 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  With the help of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers discovered a galaxy at a redshift of 14.32, indicating it existed just 290 million years post-Big Bang. In a NASA release today, Stefano Carniani from Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, and Kevin Hainline from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, described how this source was found and what its unique properties tell us about galaxy formation: "The instruments on Webb were designed to f
  
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• Cut In Ship Pollution Sparked Global Heating Spurt

  31-05-2024 05:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The slashing of pollution from shipping in 2020 led to a big "termination shock" that is estimated have pushed the rate of global heating to double the long-term average, according to research. Until 2020, global shipping used dirty, high-sulphur fuels that produced air pollution. The pollution particles blocked sunlight and helped form more clouds, thereby curbing global heating. But new regulations at the start of 2020 slashed the sulphur
  
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• Amazon Prime Now Comes With Free Grubhub Food Delivery

  31-05-2024 03:25 via slashdot.org
  
  Now included in Amazon Prime is free delivery via Grubhub. According to The Verge, "Amazon is now embedding Grubhub into Amazon.com and the Amazon Shopping app, and Amazon Prime customers paying $139 per year for Amazon Prime will now pay $0 for food delivery fees on orders of $12 or more, among other benefits." From the report: Amazon had previously offered Prime customers a free one-year subscription to GrubHub Plus, but that one auto-renewed at $129 per year. Now, it's a permanent part of the
  
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• Cooler Master Hit By Data Breach Exposing Customer Information

  31-05-2024 02:45 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Computer hardware manufacturer Cooler Master has confirmed that it suffered a data breach on May 19 after a threat actor breached the company's website, stealing the Fanzone member information of 500,000 customers. BleepingComputer reports: [A] threat actor known as 'Ghostr' told us they hacked the company's Fanzone website on May 18 and downloaded its linked databases. Cooler Master's Fanzone site is used to register a product's warranty, request an RMA, or open support tickets, requiring custo
  
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• Twitch Terminates All Members of Its Safety Advisory Council

  31-05-2024 02:02 via games.slashdot.org
  
  According to CNBC, Twitch is expected to terminate all members of its Safety Advisory Council on Friday. "The council is a resource of nine industry experts, streamers and moderators who consulted on trust and safety issues related to children on Twitch, nudity, banned users and more," notes the report. From the report: The Amazon-owned game-streaming company formed its Safety Advisory Council in May 2020 to "enhance Twitch's approach to issues of trust and safety" on the platform and guide deci
  
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• TikTok Preparing a US Copy of the App's Core Algorithm

  31-05-2024 01:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: TikTok is working on a clone of its recommendation algorithm for its 170 million U.S. users that may result in a version that operates independently of its Chinese parent and be more palatable to American lawmakers who want to ban it, according to sources with direct knowledge of the efforts. The work on splitting the source code ordered by TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance late last year predated a bill to force a sale of TikTok's U.S. operation
  
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