ICT news

• 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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• Congress Lets Broadband Funding Run Out, Ending $30 Low-Income Discounts

  02-05-2024 02:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission chair today made a final plea to Congress, asking for money to continue a broadband-affordability program that gave out its last round of $30 discounts to people with low incomes in April. The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) has lowered monthly Internet bills for people who qualify for benefits, but Congress allowed funding to run out. People may receive up to $14 in May if their ISP opted into off
  
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• Anthropic Brings Claude AI To the iPhone and iPad

  02-05-2024 01:20 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Anthropic has released its Claude AI chatbot on the App Store, bringing the company's ChatGPT competitor to the masses. Compared to OpenAI's chatbot, Claude is built with a focus on reducing harmful outputs and promoting safety, with a goal of making interactions more reliable and ethically aware. You can give it a try here. 9to5Mac reports: Anthropic highlights three launch features for Claude on iPhone:Seamless syncing with web chats: Pick up where you left off across devices.
  Vision capabilit
  
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• Roblox Players To Start Seeing Video Ads In Its Virtual Realms

  02-05-2024 00:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Roblox announced it'll be rolling out virtual billboards with video advertisements that will be displayed in its virtual worlds. Reuters reports: Users will now see billboards featuring content from brands such as e.l.f beauty, Walmart and Warner Bros Discovery, just as they would in real life. That would give advertisers access to Roblox's nearly 72 million daily active users -- half of whom are Gen-Z customers, a population group prized by marketers and businesses.The company in November began
  
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• Dropbox Says Hackers Breached Digital-Signature Product

  02-05-2024 00:01 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Dropbox said its digital-signature product, Dropbox Sign, was breached by hackers, who accessed user information including emails, user names and phone numbers. The software company said it became aware of the cyberattack on April 24, sought to limit the incident and reported it to law enforcement and regulatory authorities. "We discovered that the threat actor had accessed data related to all users of Dropbox Sign, such as emails and user name
  
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• National Archives Bans Employee Use of ChatGPT

  01-05-2024 23:22 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) told employees Wednesday that it is blocking access to ChatGPT on agency-issued laptops to "protect our data from security threats associated with use of ChatGPT," 404 Media reported Wednesday. From the report: "NARA will block access to commercial ChatGPT on NARANet [an internal network] and on NARA issued laptops, tablets, desktop computers, and mobile phones beginning May 6, 2024," an email sent to all employees, and seen by 404 Media, r
  
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• Microsoft Says April Windows Updates Break VPN Connections

  01-05-2024 22:42 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft has confirmed that the April 2024 Windows security updates break VPN connections across client and server platforms. From a report: The company explains on the Windows health dashboard that "Windows devices might face VPN connection failures after installing the April 2024 security update or the April 2024 non-security preview update."
  "We are investigating user reports, and we will provide more information in the coming days," Redmond added. The list of affected Windows versions inclu
  
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• UnitedHealthCare CEO Says 'Maybe a Third' of US Citizens Were Affected By Recent Hack

  01-05-2024 21:59 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Two months after hackers broke into Change Healthcare systems stealing and then encrypting company data, it's still unclear how many Americans were impacted by the cyberattack. Last month, Andrew Witty, the CEO of Change Healthcare's parent company UnitedHealth Group, said that the stolen files include the personal health information of "a substantial proportion of people in America." On Wednesday, during a House hearing, when Witty was pushed to give a more
  
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• Tens of Millions Secretly Use WhatsApp Despite Bans, Company Says

  01-05-2024 21:22 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "Tens of millions" of people are using technical workarounds to secretly access WhatsApp in countries where it is banned, the messaging platform's boss has said. From a report: "You'd be surprised how many people have figured it out," Will Cathcart told BBC News. Like many Western apps, WhatsApp is banned in Iran and North Korea and, intermittently, in Syria. And last month, China joined the list of those banning users from accessing the secure platform. Other countries, including Qatar, Egypt,
  
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• The BASIC Programming Language Turns 60

  01-05-2024 20:41 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  ArsTechnica: Sixty years ago, on May 1, 1964, at 4 am in the morning, a quiet revolution in computing began at Dartmouth College. That's when mathematicians John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz successfully ran the first program written in their newly developed BASIC (Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) programming language on the college's General Electric GE-225 mainframe.
  Little did they know that their creation would go on to democratize computing and inspire generations of progr
  
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• Google Urges US To Update Immigration Rules To Attract More AI Talent

  01-05-2024 20:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The US could lose out on valuable AI and tech talent if some of its immigration policies are not modernized, Google says in a letter sent to the Department of Labor. From a report: Google says policies like Schedule A, a list of occupations the government "pre-certified" as not having enough American workers, have to be more flexible and move faster to meet demand in technologies like AI and cybersecurity. The company says the government must update Schedule A to include AI and cybersecurity and
  
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• Windows 10 Reaches 70% Market Share as Windows 11 Keeps Declining

  01-05-2024 19:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Windows 11's market share dropped in April 2024, falling below 26% after reaching an all-time high of 28.16% in February. According to Statcounter, Windows 11 lost 0.97 points, while Windows 10 gained 0.96 points, crossing the 70% mark for the first time since September 2023. Neowin adds: Some argue that Windows 11 still offers little to no benefits for upgrading, especially in light of Microsoft killing some of the system's unique features, such as Windows Subsystem for Android. Add to that the
  
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• LastPass Separates From GoTo

  01-05-2024 18:41 via it.slashdot.org
  
  LastPass, the password manager company, has officially separated from its parent company, GoTo, following a series of high-profile hacks in recent years. The company will now operate under a shareholder holding company called LMI Parent.
  LastPass -- owned by private equity firms Francisco Partners and Elliott Management -- has faced criticism for its handling of the breaches, which resulted in the theft of customer data and encryption keys. The company has since enforced a 12-character minimum f
  
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• Microsoft Concern Over Google's Lead Drove OpenAI Investment

  01-05-2024 18:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft's motivation for investing heavily and partnering with OpenAI came from a sense of falling badly behind Google, according to an internal email released Tuesday as part of the Justice Department's antitrust case against the search giant. Bloomberg: The Windows software maker's chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, was "very, very worried" when he looked at the AI model-training capability gap between Alphabet's efforts and Microsoft's, he wrote in a 2019 message to Chief Executive Offi
  
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• Global Debt Hasn't Been This Bad Since the Napoleonic Wars, Says WEF President

  01-05-2024 17:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The massive volumes of debt piling up around the globe forced the president of the World Economic Forum to reach back more than 200 years for a comparable period. Fortune: In an interview Sunday with CNBC at a WEF conference in Saudi Arabia, Borge Brende warned overall debt is approaching the world's total economic output. "We haven't seen this kind of debt since the Napoleonic Wars," he said. "We're getting close to 100% of global GDP in debt."
  According to the International Monetary Fund last
  
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• LinkedIn Now Has Wordle-style Games You Can Play Every Day

  01-05-2024 16:40 via games.slashdot.org
  
  LinkedIn, the professional network known for job listings and unsolicited career advice, is jumping into gaming. From a report: The platform is officially introducing a set of Wordle-style puzzle games, weeks after they were first spotted in the app. The company is starting with three games: Pinpoint, a word game where players must guess the theme that ties a series of words together; Queens, a puzzle game that's a bit like a cross between Sudoku and Minesweeper; and Crossclimb, a trivia game th
  
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• Star Scientist's Claim of 'Reverse Aging' Draws Hail of Criticism

  01-05-2024 16:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Harvard geneticist David Sinclair, who has said his "biological age" is roughly a decade younger than his actual one, has put forward his largely unlined face as a spokesman for the longevity movement. The 54-year-old has built his brand on the idea that aging is a treatable disease. The notion has proven so seductive that legions of acolytes follow his online postings about his research and the cocktails of supplements he consumes to stave off the inevitable
  
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• Mysterious 'gpt2-chatbot' AI Model Appears Suddenly, Confuses Experts

  01-05-2024 15:00 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Sunday, word began to spread on social media about a new mystery chatbot named "gpt2-chatbot" that appeared in the LMSYS Chatbot Arena. Some people speculate that it may be a secret test version of OpenAI's upcoming GPT-4.5 or GPT-5 large language model (LLM). The paid version of ChatGPT is currently powered by GPT-4 Turbo. Currently, the new model is only available for use through the Chatbot Arena website, although in a limited way. In
  
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• CISA and Partners Release Fact Sheet on Defending OT Operations Against Ongoing Pro-Russia Hacktivist Activity

  01-05-2024 14:00 via cisa.gov
  Today, CISA, in collaboration with U.S. and international partners, published a joint fact sheet, Defending OT Operations Against Ongoing Pro-Russia Hacktivist Activity. This fact sheet provides information and mitigations associated with cyber operations conducted by pro-Russia hacktivists who seek to compromise industrial control systems (ICS) and small-scale operational technology (OT) systems in North American and European critical infrastructure sectors, including Water and Wastewater Syste
  
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• CERT/CC Reports R Programming Language Vulnerability

  01-05-2024 14:00 via cisa.gov
  CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) has released information on a vulnerability in R programming language implementations (CVE-2024-27322). A cyber threat actor could exploit this vulnerability to take control of an affected system.
  Users and administrators are encouraged to review the following advisories and apply the necessary updates:CERT/CC VU#23819
  Hidden Layer Blog: R-Bitrary Code Execution--Vulnerability in R’s Deserialization
  Comprehensive R Archive Network
  
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• China Launches World's Largest Electric Container Ship

  01-05-2024 12:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  AmiMoJo shares a report from Tech Times: China has reached a major landmark in green transportation with the launch of the world's largest fully electric container ship. Developed and manufactured by China Ocean Shipping Group (Cosco), the vessel is now operating a regular service route between Shanghai and Nanjing, aiming to reduce emissions significantly along its journey. The Greenwater 01, an all-electric container ship, is positioning itself to be a shipping industry pioneer. Equipped with
  
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• Satellite Operator SES Acquiring Intelsat In $3.1 Billion Deal

  01-05-2024 09:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Satellite operator SES plans to buy fellow satellite operator Intelsat, in a $3.1 billion deal that's expected to close next year. According to Space Magazine, the combined company could help it "compete with SpaceX's huge Starlink broadband network." From the report: SES and Intelsat both operate communications satellites in geostationary orbit, which lies 22,236 miles (35,785 kilometers) above Earth. SES also runs a constellation called O3b in medium Earth orbit, at an altitude of about 5,000
  
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• America's Wind Power Production Drops For the First Time In 25 Years

  01-05-2024 05:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: U.S. wind power slipped last year for the first time in a quarter-century due to weaker-than-normal Midwest breezes, underscoring the challenge of integrating volatile renewable energy sources into the grid. Power produced by turbines slipped 2% in 2023, even after developers added 6.2 gigawatts of new capacity, according to a government report Tuesday. The capacity factor for the country's wind fleet -- how much energy it's actually generating
  
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• Is Self Hosting Going Mainstream?

  01-05-2024 03:48 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares that IPv6rs has debuted a new one-click self hosting system:Everyone seemed like they were talking about self hosting, but we didn't understand why it wasn't more prolific. Thus, we conducted a survey to hear reasons. It turned out the two most common reasons were:
  1. Lack of an external IP address
  2. Too difficult to setup and maintain
  Our service already solves the first issue. We set out with a self-hostathon to figure out what the blockers were in setting up and ru
  
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• 13.4 Million Kaiser Insurance Members Affected by Data Leak to Online Advertisers

  01-05-2024 03:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Kaiser Permanente is the latest healthcare giant to report a data breach. Kaiser said 13.4 million current and former insurance members had their patient data shared with third-party advertisers, thanks to an improperly implemented tracking code the company used to see how its members navigated through its websites. Dark Reading reports: The shared data included names, IP addresses, what pages people visited, whether they were actively signed in, and even the search terms they used when visiting
  
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• Google Removes RISC-V Support From Android Common Kernel, Denies Abandoning Its Efforts

  01-05-2024 02:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Mishaal Rahman reports via Android Authority: Earlier today, a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Google who, according to their LinkedIn, leads the Android Systems Team and works on Android's Linux kernel fork, submitted a series of patches to AOSP that "remove ACK's support for riscv64." The description of these patches states that "support for risc64 GKI kernels is discontinued."ACK stands for Android Common Kernel and refers to the downstream branches of the official kernel.org Linux kernels
  
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• Dave & Buster's To Allow Customers To Bet On Arcade Games

  01-05-2024 01:40 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Arcade giant Dave & Buster's said it will begin allowing customers to bet on arcade games. "Customers can soon make a friendly $5 wager on a Hot Shots basketball game, a bet on a Skee-Ball competition or on another arcade game," reports CNBC. "The betting function, expected to launch in the next few months, will work through the company's app." From the report: Dave & Buster's, started in 1982, now has more than 222 venues in North America, offering everything from bowling to laser tag,
  
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• Systemd Announces 'run0' Sudo Alternative

  01-05-2024 01:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Foss Outpost: Systemd lead developer Lennart Poettering has posted on Mastodon about their upcoming v256 release of Systemd, which is expected to include a sudo replacement called "run0". The developer talks about the weaknesses of sudo, and how it has a large possible attack surface. For example, sudo supports network access, LDAP configurations, other types of plugins, and much more. But most importantly, its SUID binary provides a large attack service
  
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• Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao Sentenced To 4 Months In Prison

  01-05-2024 00:20 via slashdot.org
  
  Binance founder Changpeng Zhao has been sentenced to four months in prison after pleading guilty to charges related to enabling money laundering through his cryptocurrency exchange. CNBC reports: The sentence handed down to Zhao in Seattle federal court was significantly less than the three years that federal prosecutors had been seeking for him. The defense had asked for five months of probation. The sentencing guidelines called for a prison term of 12 to 18 months. In November, Zhao struck a d
  
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• Bruce Perens Emits Draft Post-Open Zero Cost License

  30-04-2024 23:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  After convincing the world to buy open source and give up the Morse Code test for ham radio licenses, Bruce Perens has a new gambit: develop a license that ensures software developers receive compensation from large corporations using their work. The new Post-Open Zero Cost License seeks to address the financial disparities in open source software use and includes provisions against using content to train AI models, aligning its enforcement with non-profit performing rights organizations like AS
  
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