• Twitter CEO Says Bitcoin Will Be the World's 'Single Currency' In 10 Years

    In a recent interview with The Times, Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey said he believes that bitcoin will become the world's single currency within 10 years. "The world ultimately will have a single currency, the internet will have a single currency," said Dorsey. "I personally believe that it will be bitcoin." Dorsey went on to say that the transition would happen "probably over ten years, but it could go faster." The Verge reports: That Dorsey is a fan of bitcoin isn't too surprising, though
  • Top Movie Piracy Ring Taken Down, Major Studios' Enforcement Group Claims

    Top Movie Piracy Ring Taken Down, Major Studios' Enforcement Group Claims
    An anti-piracy coalition comprised of major studios in the U.S. and across the globe is claiming victory against Fmovies, a significant streaming operation based in Vietnam. From a report: On Thursday the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment revealed that it had worked with Hanoi police to shutter Fmovies and affiliated sites, which together made up "the largest pirate streaming operation in the world," according to the organization. With sites including bflixz, flixtorz, movies7, myflixer,
  • ESPN's 'Where To Watch' Tries To Solve Sports' Most Frustrating Problem

    ESPN's 'Where To Watch' Tries To Solve Sports' Most Frustrating Problem
    An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Too often, new tech product or service launches seem like solutions in search of a problem, but not this one: ESPN is launching software that lets you figure out just where you can watch the specific game you want to see amid an overcomplicated web of streaming services, cable channels, and arcane licensing agreements. Every sports fan is all too familiar with today's convoluted streaming schedules. Launching today on ESPN.com and the variou
  • Yelp Sues Google For Antitrust Violations

    Yelp Sues Google For Antitrust Violations
    Yelp has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, accusing the search giant of maintaining its local search monopoly by preferencing its own services over competitors, harming competition and reducing quality. "Yelp claims that the way Google directs users toward its own local search vertical from its general search engine results page should be considered illegal tying of separate products to keep rivals from reaching scale," adds The Verge. From the report: Yelp wants the court to order Goog
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  • Canada Wildfires Last Year Released More Carbon Than Several Countries

    Canada Wildfires Last Year Released More Carbon Than Several Countries
    A study found that Canada's 2023 wildfires released 647 megatons of carbon, surpassing the emissions of seven of the ten largest emitting countries, including Germany, Japan, and Russia. "Only China, India and the United States emitted more carbon emissions during that period, meaning that if Canada's wildfires were ranked alongside countries, they would have been the world's fourth largest emitter," adds Reuters. From the report: Typical emissions from Canadian forest fires over the last decade
  • Brain Scientists Finally Discover the Glue That Makes Memories Stick For a Lifetime

    Brain Scientists Finally Discover the Glue That Makes Memories Stick For a Lifetime
    An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American, written by science journalist Simon Makin: The persistence of memory is crucial to our sense of identity, and without it, there would be no learning, for us or any other animal. It's little wonder, then, that some researchers have called how the brain stores memories the most fundamental question in neuroscience. A milestone in the effort to answer this question came in the early 1970s, with the discovery of a phenomenon called long-t
  • 'Uncertainty' Drives LinkedIn To Migrate From CentOS To Azure Linux

    'Uncertainty' Drives LinkedIn To Migrate From CentOS To Azure Linux
    The Register's Liam Proven reports: Microsoft's in-house professional networking site is moving to Microsoft's in-house Linux. This could mean that big changes are coming for the former CBL-Mariner distro. Ievgen Priadka's post on the LinkedIn Engineering blog, titled Navigating the transition: adopting Azure Linux as LinkedIn's operating system, is the visible sign of what we suspect has been a massive internal engineering effort. It describes some of the changes needed to migrate what the post
  • Backpage.com Founder Michael Lacey Sentenced To 5 Years In Prison, Fined $3 Million

    Backpage.com Founder Michael Lacey Sentenced To 5 Years In Prison, Fined $3 Million
    Three former Backpage executives, including co-founder Michael Lacey, were sentenced to prison for promoting prostitution and laundering money while disguising their activities as a legitimate classified business. The Associated Press reports: A jury convicted Lacey, 76, of a single count of international concealment money laundering last year, but deadlocked on 84 other prostitution facilitation and money laundering charges. U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa later acquitted Lacey of dozens of
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  • South Korea Faces Deepfake Porn 'Emergency'

    South Korea Faces Deepfake Porn 'Emergency'
    An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: South Korea's president has urged authorities to do more to "eradicate" the country's digital sex crime epidemic, amid a flood of deepfake pornography targeting young women. Authorities, journalists and social media users recently identified a large number of chat groups where members were creating and sharing sexually explicit "deepfake" images -- including some of underage girls. Deepfakes are generated using artificial intelligence, and often
  • FAA Grounds SpaceX's Falcon 9 Rocket Following Landing Mishap

    FAA Grounds SpaceX's Falcon 9 Rocket Following Landing Mishap
    SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has been grounded by the FAA for the second time in less than two months following the failed landing of a first-stage booster, which was destroyed in a fireball after its 23rd flight. Spaceflight Now reports: The booster, serial number B1062 in the SpaceX fleet, suffered a hard landing, at the tail end of its record-setting 23rd flight. It was consumed in a fireball on the deck of the drone ship 'A Shortfall of Gravitas', which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean about
  • Cybercrime and Sabotage Cost German Firms $300 Billion In Past Year

    Cybercrime and Sabotage Cost German Firms $300 Billion In Past Year
    According to a new survey from Bitkom, cybercrime and other acts of sabotage have cost German companies around $298 billion in the past year, up 29% on the year before. Reuters reports: Bitkom surveyed around 1,000 companies from all sectors and found that 90% expect more cyberattacks in the next 12 months, with the remaining 10% expecting the same level of attacks. Some 70% of companies that were targeted attributed the attacks to organised crime, the survey found, adding 81% of companies repor
  • Google To Relaunch Tool For Creating AI-Generated Images of People

    Google To Relaunch Tool For Creating AI-Generated Images of People
    Google announced that it will reintroduce AI image generation capabilities through its Gemini tool, with early access to the new Imagen 3 generator available for select users in the coming days. The company pulled the feature shortly after it launched in February when users discovered historical inaccuracies and questionable responses. CNBC reports: "We've worked to make technical improvements to the product, as well as improved evaluation sets, red-teaming exercises and clear product principles
  • Threads Deepens Its Ties To the Fediverse

    Threads Deepens Its Ties To the Fediverse
    An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Threads is deepening its ties to the fediverse, also known as the open social web, which powers services like X alternative Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard and other apps. On Wednesday, Meta announced that users on Threads will be able to see fediverse replies on other posts besides their own. In addition, posts that originated through the Threads API, like those created via third-party apps and scheduling services, will now be syndica
  • The Papers That Most Heavily Cite Retracted Studies

    The Papers That Most Heavily Cite Retracted Studies
    Data from giant project show how withdrawn research propagates through the literature. Nature: In January, a review paper about ways to detect human illnesses by examining the eye appeared in a conference proceedings published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in New York City. But neither its authors nor its editors noticed that 60% of the papers it cited had already been retracted. The case is one of the most extreme spotted by a giant project to find papers whose
  • Office Usage Has Peaked in North America

    Office Usage Has Peaked in North America
    An anonymous reader shares a report: While people in Asia are spending more time in the office, workers in the US and UK are not, according to a new report from XY Sense, a company that uses sensors to track office occupancy in more than 40,000 workspaces. While office space utilization -- the share of used spaces within an office out of all available space -- in the Asia-Pacific region grew 10 percentage points last quarter to 41%, that rate stayed at 28% in North America and declined in the UK
  • Telegram CEO Indicted in Paris Court

    Telegram CEO Indicted in Paris Court
    An anonymous reader shares a report: Following the arrest of Telegram CEO and co-founder Pavel Durov Saturday, the 39-year-old billionaire, Drov has been indicted on multiple charges after appearing in front of a Paris Court on Wednesday. He has been indicted on charges of Complicity in the administration of an online platform to enable an illicit transaction, by an organized gang. This charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment and a fine of $555,000.
    He was also indicted on char
  • OpenAI in Talks for Funding Round Valuing It Above $100 Billion

    OpenAI in Talks for Funding Round Valuing It Above $100 Billion
    OpenAI is in talks to raise several billion dollars in a new funding round that would value the startup behind ChatGPT above $100 billion, WSJ reported Wednesday, citing sources. From the report: Venture-capital firm Thrive Capital is leading the round and will invest about $1 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Microsoft is also expected to put in money. The new funding round would be the biggest infusion of outside capital into OpenAI since Microsoft invested around $10 bill
  • Tumblr To Move Its Half a Billion Blogs To WordPress

    Tumblr To Move Its Half a Billion Blogs To WordPress
    Tumblr is making the move to WordPress. After its 2019 acquisition by WordPress.com parent company Automattic in a $3 million fire sale, the new owner has focused on improving Tumblr's platform and growing its revenue. Now Automattic will shift Tumblr's back end over to WordPress, Automattic said in a blog post published on Wednesday. From a report: The company clarified that it will not change Tumblr into WordPress; it will just run on WordPress. "We acquired Tumblr to benefit from its differen
  • A Long, Weird FOSS Circle Ends as Microsoft Donates Mono To Wine Project

    A Long, Weird FOSS Circle Ends as Microsoft Donates Mono To Wine Project
    An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has donated the Mono Project, an open-source framework that brought its .NET platform to non-Windows systems, to the Wine community. WineHQ will be the steward of the Mono Project upstream code, while Microsoft will encourage Mono-based apps to migrate to its open source .NET framework. As Microsoft notes on the Mono Project homepage, the last major release of Mono was in July 2019. Mono was "a trailblazer for the .NET platform across many operating
  • The World's Call Center Capital Is Gripped by AI Fever - and Fear

    The World's Call Center Capital Is Gripped by AI Fever - and Fear
    The Philippines' $38 billion outsourcing industry faces a seismic shift as AI tools threaten to displace hundreds of thousands of jobs. Major players are rapidly deploying AI "copilots" to handle tasks like summarizing customer interactions and providing real-time assistance to human agents, Bloomberg reports. Industry experts estimate up to 300,000 business process outsourcing (BPO) jobs could be lost to AI in the next five years, according to outsourcing advisory firm Avasant.
    However, the fir
  • Telegram CEO Released By Police, Transferred To Court For Possible Indictment

    Telegram CEO Released By Police, Transferred To Court For Possible Indictment
    Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is heading to court for a possible indictment after being released from police custody, authorities in France said on Wednesday. From a report: "An investigating judge has ended Pavel Durov's police custody and will have him brought to court for a first appearance and a possible indictment," according to a statement from the Paris prosecutor's office that was quoted in an Associated Press article. Durov was arrested in Paris on Saturday and questioned by police for sever
  • Microsoft Partners Beware: Action Pack To Be Retired in 2025

    Microsoft Partners Beware: Action Pack To Be Retired in 2025
    Microsoft is to discontinue the Microsoft Action Pack and Microsoft Learning Pack on January 21, 2025, sending partners off to potentially pricier and cloudier options. From a report: The Action Pack and Learning Pack, alongside Silver or Gold Membership, gave Microsoft partners access to many on-premises licenses for the company's software. The company's recommended replacements, Partner Success Core Benefits and Partner Success Expanded, abandon those benefits in favor of cloud services. Accor
  • Appliance and Tractor Companies Lobby Against Giving the Military the Right to Repair

    Device manufacturers across multiple industries are lobbying against proposed legislation that would require military contractors to provide the U.S. military with easier access to repair materials and information, according to a document obtained by 404 Media.
    The legislation, Section 828 of the Defense Reauthorization Act, aims to address the military's current inability to repair equipment ranging from fighter jets to Navy battleships without relying on contractors. Sen. Elizabeth Warren high
  • SEC Threatens Legal Action Against NFT Marketplace OpenSea

    SEC Threatens Legal Action Against NFT Marketplace OpenSea
    U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued a Wells notice to OpenSea, the leading non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, threatening legal action over alleged securities violations. The SEC contends that NFTs traded on OpenSea's platform may constitute securities, a move that could have far-reaching implications for the digital art and collectibles industry. OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer denounced the SEC's action as an overreach that could stifle innovation and harm creators. The compan
  • 'Exploitative' IT Firm Has Been Delaying 2,000 Recruits' Onboarding For Years

    'Exploitative' IT Firm Has Been Delaying 2,000 Recruits' Onboarding For Years
    An anonymous reader shares a report: Indian IT firm Infosys has been accused of being "exploitative" after allegedly sending job offers to thousands of engineering graduates but still not onboarding any of them after as long as two years. The recent graduates have reportedly been told they must do repeated unpaid training in order to remain eligible to work at Infosys. Last week, the Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES), an Indian advocacy group for IT workers, sent a letter,
  • Publicly Available EV Charger Network Doubles Under Biden-Harris Administration

    Publicly Available EV Charger Network Doubles Under Biden-Harris Administration
    An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Over 192,000 publicly available charging ports are now online, and approximately 1,000 new chargers are being added each week. To build on this momentum, the federal government has awarded $521 million in grants to further expand the national network, with new chargers being deployed across 29 states, two Federally Recognized Tribes, and the District of Columbia.The $521 million investment is divided into two key areas: 41 community projects ($3
  • CISA and Partners Release Advisory on Iran-based Cyber Actors Enabling Ransomware Attacks on US Organizations

    Today, CISA—in partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3)—released Iran-based Cyber Actors Enabling Ransomware Attacks on U.S. Organizations. This joint advisory warns of cyber actors, known in the private sector as Pioneer Kitten, UNC757, Parisite, Rubidium, and Lemon Sandstorm, targeting and exploiting U.S. and foreign organizations across multiple sectors in the U.S. 
    FBI investigations conducted as recen
  • FDA Expands Probe of Ecstasy-Based Drug Studies

    FDA Expands Probe of Ecstasy-Based Drug Studies
    ole_timer shares a report from Ars Technica, written by Beth Mole There's more bad news for the company behind an experimental MDMA therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, which the Food and Drug Administration roundly rejected earlier this month. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the FDA is now expanding an investigation into clinical trials behind the experimental psychedelic therapy -- even though the agency has already rejected it. Agency investigators reportedly interv
  • Bug Bounty Programs Take Root In Russia

    Bug Bounty Programs Take Root In Russia
    snydeq writes: CSO Online's Sarah Wiedemar reports on a rising trend in the Russia cybersecurity community: bug bounty programs, which the researcher says could have far-reaching implications as the bounty ecosystem matures. From the report: "Given the current uncertainty that Russian bug bounty hunters and vulnerability researchers are facing when dealing with Western bug bounty programs, Russian IT companies have begun to fill that vacuum. [...] Russian bug bounty platforms have a high probabi
  • US Grid Adds Batteries At 10x the Rate of Natural Gas In First Half of 2024

    US Grid Adds Batteries At 10x the Rate of Natural Gas In First Half of 2024
    Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Ars Technica, written by John Timmer: While solar power is growing at an extremely rapid clip, in absolute terms, the use of natural gas for electricity production has continued to outpace renewables. But that looks set to change in 2024, as the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) has run the numbers on the first half of the year and found that wind, solar, and batteries were each installed at a pace that dwarfs new natural gas generators. And

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