ICT news

• Study Reveals How Two Strains of One Bacterium Combine To Cause Flesh-Eating Infection

  12-11-2019 11:00 via rss.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A new study by a team of scientists that included researchers from the University of Maryland and the University of Texas Medical Branch used genetic analysis to reveal how two different strains of a single species of flesh-eating bacteria worked in concert to become more dangerous than either one strain alone. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on November 11, 2019. [...] The original infection -- cul
  
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• 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki Considers Taking Company Private

  20-04-2024 00:40 via slashdot.org
  
  Ashley Capoot reports via CNBC: Anne Wojcicki, the CEO of 23andMe, is considering a proposal to take the genetic testing company private after its stock price tumbled more than 95% from its 2021 highs. A late Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said Wojcicki is working with advisors and plans to speak with possible financing sources and partners. She "wishes to maintain control" of the company and will "not be willing to support any alternative transaction," the filing s
  
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• 'Women Who Code' Shuts Down Unexpectedly

  20-04-2024 00:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Women Who Code (WWC), a U.S.-based organization of 360,000 people supporting women who work in the tech sector, is shutting down due to a lack of funding. "It is with profound sadness that, today, on April 18, 2024, we are announcing the difficult decision to close Women Who Code, following a vote by the Board of Directors to dissolve the organization," the organization said in a blog post. "This decision has not been made lightly. It only comes after careful consideration of all options and is
  
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• A Chess Formula Is Taking Over the World

  19-04-2024 23:25 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Atlantic: In October 2003, Mark Zuckerberg created his first viral site: not Facebook, but FaceMash. Then a college freshman, he hacked into Harvard's online dorm directories, gathered a massive collection of students' headshots, and used them to create a website on which Harvard students could rate classmates by their attractiveness, literally and figuratively head-to-head. The site, a mean-spirited prank recounted in the opening scene of The Social
  
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• EPA Will Make Polluters Pay To Clean Up Two 'Forever Chemicals'

  19-04-2024 22:45 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The Biden administration is designating two "forever chemicals," man-made compounds that are linked to serious health risks, as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, shifting responsibility for their cleanup to polluters from taxpayers. The new rule announced on Friday empowers the government to force the many companies that manufacture or use perfluorooctanoic acid, also known as PFOA, and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, known as PFOS, to monitor any r
  
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• Linus Torvalds on 'Hilarious' AI Hype

  19-04-2024 22:05 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Linus Torvalds, discussing the AI hype, in a conversation with Dirk Hohndel, Verizon's Head of the Open Source Program Office: Torvalds snarked, "It's hilarious to watch. Maybe I'll be replaced by an AI model!" As for Hohndel, he thinks most AI today is "autocorrect on steroids." Torvalds summed up his attitude as, "Let's wait 10 years and see where it actually goes before we make all these crazy announcements."
  That's not to say the two men don't think AI will be helpful in the future. Indeed,
  
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• Microsoft's VASA-1 Can Deepfake a Person With One Photo and One Audio Track

  19-04-2024 21:30 via slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft Research Asia earlier this week unveiled VASA-1, an AI model that can create a synchronized animated video of a person talking or singing from a single photo and an existing audio track. ArsTechnica: In the future, it could power virtual avatars that render locally and don't require video feeds -- or allow anyone with similar tools to take a photo of a person found online and make them appear to say whatever they want. "It paves the way for real-time engagements with lifelike avatars t
  
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• Indian IT Outsourcing Firms Cut 60,000 Jobs in First Layoffs in 20 Years

  19-04-2024 20:41 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: TCS, Infosys, and Wipro, India's top three IT outsourcing firms, have collectively seen their workforce shrink for the first time in at least 20 years. The trio reported a combined reduction of more than 63,750 employees in the financial year ending March 31, 2024.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Porn Sites Face Strict EU Rules, Commission Says

  19-04-2024 20:02 via slashdot.org
  
  Adult content companies Pornhub, Stripchat and XVideos will have to do risk assessment reports and take measures to address systemic risks linked to their services to comply with new EU online content rules, the European Commission said on Friday. From a report: The three companies were designated as very large online platforms last December under the Digital Services Act (DSA) which requires them to do more to remove illegal and harmful content on their platforms. Pornhub and Stripchat will hav
  
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• Meta's Not Telling Where It Got Its AI Training Data

  19-04-2024 19:22 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Today Meta unleashed its ChatGPT competitor, Meta AI, across its apps and as a standalone. The company boasts that it is running on its latest, greatest AI model, Llama 3, which was trained on "data of the highest quality"! A dataset seven times larger than Llama2! And includes 4 times more code! What is that training data? There the company is less loquacious.
  Meta said the 15 trillion tokens on which its trained came from "publicly available sources." Which
  
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• Microsoft Does Not Want You To Use iPerf3 To Measure Network Performance on Windows

  19-04-2024 18:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: iPerf is a fairly popular cross-platform tool that is used by many to measure network performance and diagnose any potential issues in this area. The open-source utility is maintained by an organization called Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and officially supports Linux, Unix, and Windows. However, Microsoft has now published a detailed blog post explaining why you should not use the latest version, iPerf3, on Windows installations.
  Microsoft has highlighted
  
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• Google To Employees: 'We Are a Workplace'

  19-04-2024 18:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google, once known for its unconventional approach to business, has taken a decisive step towards becoming a more traditional company by firing 28 employees who participated in protests against a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government. The move comes after sit-in demonstrations on Tuesday at Google offices in Silicon Valley and New York City, where employees opposed the company's support for Project Nimbus, a cloud computing contract they argue harms Palestinians in Gaza. Nine employe
  
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• Samsung Shifts To Emergency Mode With 6-day Work Week for Executives

  19-04-2024 17:21 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Korean newspaper KED Global: Executives at all Samsung Group units will work six days a week from as early as this week in a shift to emergency mode. The move comes as the won's sharp depreciation, rising oil prices and high borrowing costs aggravate business uncertainties after some of the group's mainstay businesses delivered poorer-than-expected results in 2023. The executives of Samsung Electronics Co., including those in the manufacturing and sales divisions, will work either on Saturday or
  
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• Windows 10 Will Start Pushing Users To Use Microsoft Accounts

  19-04-2024 16:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft is getting ready to annoy its faithful Windows 10 user base with yet another prompt. From a report: This time, Microsoft wants Windows 10 users to switch from using a local account to their online Microsoft account. As first noticed by the outlet Windows Latest, the most recent Windows 10 update Release Preview includes some information about new notifications added to the operating system intended to make users switch from their local account to their Microsoft account. "New! This upd
  
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• Apple Removes WhatsApp, Threads and Telegram From China App Store

  19-04-2024 16:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  China ordered Apple to remove some of the world's most popular chat messaging apps from its app store in the country, the latest example of censorship demands on the iPhone seller in the company's second-biggest market. WSJ: Meta's WhatsApp and Threads as well as messaging platforms Signal, Telegram and Line were taken off the Chinese App Store Friday [non-paywalled link]. Apple said it was told to remove certain apps because of national security concerns, without specifying which. "We are oblig
  
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• Chinese Cities Are Sinking Rapidly

  19-04-2024 15:00 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Major cities across China are sinking, putting a substantial portion of the country's rapidly urbanizing population in harm's way in the coming decades, according to a sweeping new analysis by Chinese scientists. Subsidence is the technical term for when land sinks relative to its surroundings, and it's a major threat for cities around the world. It accelerates local sea level rise from climate change, because the land is getting lower as the ocean g
  
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• Cisco Releases Security Advisories for Cisco Integrated Management Controller

  19-04-2024 14:00 via cisa.gov
  Cisco has released security advisories for vulnerabilities in the Cisco integrated management controller. A remote cyber threat actor could exploit one of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system. 
  Users and administrators are encouraged to review the following advisories and apply the necessary updates: Cisco Integrated Management Controller CLI Command Injection Vulnerability
  Cisco Integrated Management Controller Web-Based Management Interface Command Injection V
  
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• FBI Says Chinese Hackers Preparing To Attack US Infrastructure

  19-04-2024 12:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: Chinese government-linked hackers have burrowed into U.S. critical infrastructure and are waiting "for just the right moment to deal a devastating blow," FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Thursday. An ongoing Chinese hacking campaign known as Volt Typhoon has successfully gained access to numerous American companies in telecommunications, energy, water and other critical sectors, with 23 pipeline operators targeted, Wray said in a speech at Vanderbilt Un
  
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• Northrop Grumman Working With SpaceX On US Spy Satellite System

  19-04-2024 09:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Longtime Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares a report from Reuters: Aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman is working with SpaceX [...] on a classified spy satellite project already capturing high-resolution imagery of the Earth, according to people familiar with the program. The program, details of which were first reported by Reuters last month, is meant to enhance the U.S. government's ability to track military and intelligence targets from low-Earth orbits, providing high-resolution im
  
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• Reddit Is Taking Over Google

  19-04-2024 05:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: If you think you've been seeing an awful lot more Reddit results lately when you search on Google, you're not imagining things. The internet is in upheaval, and for website owners the rules of "winning" Google Search have never been murkier. Google's generative AI search engine is coming from one direction. It's creeping closer to mainstream deployment and bringing an existential crisis for SEOs and website makers everywhere. Coming from
  
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• Ubuntu 24.04 Yields a 20% Performance Advantage Over Windows 11 On Ryzen 7 Framework Laptop

  19-04-2024 03:25 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: With the Framework 16 laptop one of the performance pieces I've been meaning to carry out has been seeing out Linux performs against Microsoft Windows 11 for this AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS powered modular/upgradeable laptop. Recently getting around to it in my benchmarking queue, I also compared the performance of Ubuntu 23.10 to the near final Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on this laptop up against a fully-updated Microsoft Windows 11 installation. The Framework 16 review unit
  
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• Netflix Blows Past Earnings Estimates As Subscribers Jump 16%

  19-04-2024 02:45 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Netflix on Thursday reported a 16% rise in memberships in the first quarter, reaching 269.6 million, beating Wall Street expectations. Starting next year, the company will no longer provide quarterly membership numbers or average revenue per user starting next year. CNBC reports: "As we've noted in previous letters, we're focused on revenue and operating margin as our primary financial metrics -- and engagement (i.e. time spent) as our best proxy for customer satisfaction," the company said in i
  
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• Frontier Communications Shuts Down Systems After Cyberattack

  19-04-2024 02:02 via it.slashdot.org
  
  U.S. telecom provider Frontier Communications shut down its systems after a cybercrime group breached some of its IT systems in a recent cyberattack. BleepingComputer reports: Frontier is a leading U.S. communications provider that provides gigabit Internet speeds over a fiber-optic network to millions of consumers and businesses across 25 states. After discovering the incident, the company was forced to partially shut down some systems to prevent the threat actors from laterally moving through
  
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• Cops Can Force Suspect To Unlock Phone With Thumbprint, US Court Rules

  19-04-2024 01:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US Constitution's Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination does not prohibit police officers from forcing a suspect to unlock a phone with a thumbprint scan, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. The ruling does not apply to all cases in which biometrics are used to unlock an electronic device but is a significant decision in an unsettled area of the law. The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had to grapple with the
  
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• Software Glitch Saw Aussie Casino Give Away Millions In Cash

  19-04-2024 00:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A software glitch in the "ticket in, cash out" (TICO) machines at Star Casino in Sydney, Australia, saw it inadvertently give away $2.05 million over several weeks. This glitch allowed gamblers to reuse a receipt for slot machine winnings, leading to unwarranted cash payouts which went undetected due to systematic failures in oversight and audit processes. The Register reports: News of the giveaway emerged on Monday at an independent inquiry into the casino, which has had years of compliance tro
  
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• Meta Is Adding Real-Time AI Image Generation To WhatsApp

  19-04-2024 00:00 via meta.slashdot.org
  
  WhatsApp users in the U.S. will soon see support for real-time AI image generation. The Verge reports: As soon as you start typing a text-to-image prompt in a chat with Meta AI, you'll see how the image changes as you add more detail about what you want to create. In the example shared by Meta, a user types in the prompt, "Imagine a soccer game on mars." The generated image quickly changes from a typical soccer player to showing an entire soccer field on a Martian landscape. If you have access t
  
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• Colorado Bill Aims To Protect Consumer Brain Data

  18-04-2024 23:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Consumers have grown accustomed to the prospect that their personal data, such as email addresses, social contacts, browsing history and genetic ancestry, are being collected and often resold by the apps and the digital services they use. With the advent of consumer neurotechnologies, the data being collected is becoming ever more intimate. One headband serves as a personal meditation coach by monitoring the user's brain activity. Anot
  
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• Feds Hit Coding Boot Camp With Big Fine For Allegedly Conning Students

  18-04-2024 22:42 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has slapped coding boot camp BloomTech -- formerly known as Lambda School -- with several punishments for alleged deceptive business practices. From a report: The business, which claims on its site it will help students land their "dream job" in tech at companies like Amazon, Cisco, and Google, accepted the consent order without admitting or denying any wrongdoing. In an announcement yesterday, the CFPB said it had taken action against BloomTech
  
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• Crypto Trader Eisenberg Convicted of Fraud in $110 Million Mango Markets Scheme

  18-04-2024 22:01 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  A jury found Avraham "Avi" Eisenberg guilty on all three counts of fraud and manipulation in a $110 million crypto trade scheme using the Mango Markets platform. Axios: The case was the first known test for a jury to decide whether existing U.S. laws governing fraud and market manipulation apply to the world of decentralized finance (DeFi). The 28-year-old Eisenberg will be held to account for his actions on Oct. 11, 2022, when a series of trades he made intentionally boosted the price of Mango
  
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• Boeing Aims To Bring Flying Cars To Asia By 2030

  18-04-2024 21:22 via news.slashdot.org
  
  U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing plans to enter the flying car business in Asia by 2030, looking to tap demand for the fast travel the vehicles could provide in the region's traffic-choked cities. Nikkei: Boeing Chief Technology Officer Todd Citron revealed the plans in an interview with Nikkei. The company is developing electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) craft at subsidiary Wisk Aero. The aircraft will adopt autonomous technology, rare among eVTOL craft. The plan is to first obtain
  
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