Starting today, telcos in American will need to disclose system break-ins within seven days. "[T]he same deadline now exists to report any data leaks to the FBI and US Secret Service as well," adds The Register. From the report: After releasing a proposed rule in early January and giving the industry 30 days to respond, the FCC's final rule was published today. It solidifies what the agency proposed a little more than a month ago, and what was teased in early 2022 when FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel drafted initial changes to the commission's 16-year old security "breach" reporting duties. Along with requiring that attacks are reported to the FCC within seven days of a telco discovering them, the same deadline now exists to report any data leaks to the FBI and US Secret Service as well. As the FCC planned, the new rule also eliminates the mandatory seven-day waiting period for reporting break-ins to consumers. The FCC now "requires carriers to notify customers of breaches of covered data without unreasonable delay ... and in no case more than 30 days following reasonable determination of a breach." "Reasonable determination" of a data blurt is further defined as "when the carrier has information indicating that it is more likely than not that there was a breach" and "does not mean reaching a conclusion regarding every fact surrounding a data security incident that may constitute a breach." In other words, if customers are affected then they had better be notified post-haste. The FCC has additionally extended the scope of data exposure types that telecom customers must be notified of. Prior to the passage of the new rule customers only had to be told if Customer proprietary network information (CPNI) was exposed to the world.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The US government has committed $42 million to further the development of the 5G Open RAN (O-RAN) standard that would allow wireless providers to mix and match cellular hardware and software, opening up a bigger market for third-party equipment that's cheaper and interoperable. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) grant would establish a Dallas O-RAN testing center to prove the standard's viability as a way to head off Huawei's steady cruise toward a global cellular network hardware monopoly. Verizon global network and technology president Joe Russo promoted the funding as a way to achieve "faster innovation in an open environment." To achieve the standard's goals, AT&T vice president of RAN technology Robert Soni says that AT&T and Verizon have formed the Acceleration of Compatibility and Commercialization for Open RAN Deployments Consortium (ACCoRD), which includes a grab bag of wireless technology companies like Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, Dell, Intel, Broadcom, and Rakuten. Japanese wireless carrier Rakuten formed as the first O-RAN network in 2020. The company's then CEO, Tareq Amin, told The Verge's Nilay Patel in 2022 that Open RAN would enable low-cost network build-outs using smaller equipment rather than massive towers -- which has long been part of the promise of 5G. But O-RAN is about more than that; establishing interoperability means companies like Verizon and AT&T wouldn't be forced to buy all of their hardware from a single company to create a functional network. For the rest of us, that means faster build-outs and "more agile networks," according to Rakuten. In the US, Dish has been working on its own O-RAN network, under the name Project Genesis. The 5G network was creaky and unreliable when former Verge staffer Mitchell Clarke tried it out in Las Vegas in 2022, but the company said in June last year that it had made its goal of covering 70 percent of the US population. Dish has struggled to become the next big cell provider in the US, though -- leading satellite communications company EchoStar, which spun off from Dish in 2008, to purchase the company in January. The Washington Post writes that O-RAN "is Washington's anointed champion to try to unseat the Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies" as the world's biggest supplier of cellular infrastructure gear. According to the Post, Biden has emphasized the importance of O-RAN in conversations with international leaders over the past few years. Additionally, it notes that Congress along with the NTIA have dedicated approximately $2 billion to support the development of this standard.

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FT Alphaville: Last year, Norway's $1.5tn sovereign wealth fund revealed that it had lost NKr980mn, roughly $92mn, on an error relating to how it calculated its mandated benchmark. Here's what Norges Bank Investment Management said at the time: "In February this year, a calculation error was discovered in the composition of the index we're measured against. This error led to a marginal overweight in US fixed income relative to global fixed income. When this was discovered, we immediately set about correcting it, but because the fund is so large, the return was 0.7 basis points. Due to this our previously reported positive relative return of NOK 118 billion was adjusted down to NOK 117 billion." It is a good example of how even tiny operational mistakes can have mammoth-sized consequences in nominal terms when you manage one of the world's biggest pools of capital. Sometimes a mistake can even lead to a windfall -- such as in 2021, when NBIM apparently made NKr582mn by accidentally accumulating an outsized position in a rising stock. But the 2023 index snafu is by far the biggest the fund has registered, almost twice as large as the cumulative operational-accidental losses it suffered from 2010-20. Alphaville was intrigued. What exactly went wrong? Well, in a recently-released anthropological report commissioned to investigate its own culture, NBIM seems to have inadvertently revealed just how minuscule the mistake was. Here's an NBIM employee called "Simon" recounting the debacle to the report's author, Tone Danielsen. Alphaville's emphasis below: "Last year (spring 2022) we had an off-site. One of our workshops was on 'Mistakes and how to deal with them.' We wrote post-it notes, classifying them into different categories from harmless to no-goes. One of my post-it notes, I remember it vividly, read: Miscalculation of the Ministry of Finance benchmark. I placed it in the category unforgivable. When I wrote that note, I honestly couldn't even dare to think about the consequences. And less than a year later, I did exactly that. My worst nightmare. It was a manual mistake. My mistake. I used the wrong date, December 1st instead of November 1st which is clearly stated in our mandate. The mistake was not revealed until months later, by the Ministry of Finance. They reported back that the numbers did not add up. I did all the numbers once more, and the cause of the mistake was identified. I immediately reported to Patrick [Global Head] and Dag [Chief]. I openly express that this was my mistake, and mine alone. I felt miserable and was ready to take the consequences -- whatever they might be."

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Abstract of a paper [PDF] the on pre-print server Arxiv: Citations are widely considered in scientists' evaluation. As such, scientists may be incentivized to inflate their citation counts. While previous literature has examined self-citations and citation cartels, it remains unclear whether scientists can purchase citations. Here, we compile a dataset of about 1.6 million profiles on Google Scholar to examine instances of citation fraud on the platform. We survey faculty at highly-ranked universities, and confirm that Google Scholar is widely used when evaluating scientists. Intrigued by a citationboosting service that we unravelled during our investigation, we contacted the service while undercover as a fictional author, and managed to purchase 50 citations. These findings provide conclusive evidence that citations can be bought in bulk, and highlight the need to look beyond citation counts.

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Microsoft appears to be readying its own DLSS-like AI upscaling feature for PC games. From a report: X user PhantomOcean3 discovered the feature inside the latest test versions of Windows 11 over the weekend, with Microsoft describing its automatic super resolution as a way to "use AI to make supported games play more smoothly with enhanced details." That sounds a lot like Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology, which uses AI to upscale games and improve frame rates and image quality. AMD and Intel also offer their own variants, with FSR and XeSS both growing in popularity in recent PC game releases.

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Amid increasing speculation about the future of Xbox, its exclusives, and even its status as a hardware manufacturer, Phil Spencer reportedly told employees last week that it has no plans to stop making consoles. From a report: Reporter Shannon Liao said in her weekly Substack industry newsletter that Spencer moved to reassure staff during an all-hands meeting on Tuesday. "The company held an internal Tuesday townhall where Spencer told employees that there were no plans to stop making consoles, and that Xboxes would continue to be part of a strategy that involves multiple kinds of devices," Liao reported.

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stikves writes: Today, Broadcom announced immediate end of ESXi availability. ESXi has been an important tool for many "homelab" enthusiasts -- offering simple bare metal virtualization for small setups. Unfortunately they don't offer a replacement, except for paid subscription services.

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Nvidia blog: Every country needs to own the production of their own intelligence, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang told attendees Monday at the World Governments Summit in Dubai. Huang, who spoke as part of a fireside chat with the UAE's Minister of AI, His Excellency Omar Al Olama, described sovereign AI -- which emphasizes a country's ownership over its data and the intelligence it produces -- as an enormous opportunity for the world's leaders. "It codifies your culture, your society's intelligence, your common sense, your history -- you own your own data," Huang told Al Olama during their conversation, a highlight of an event attended by more than 4,000 delegates from 150 countries. "We completely subscribe to that vision," Al Olama said. "That's why the UAE is moving aggressively on creating large language models and mobilizing compute." Huang's appearance in the UAE comes as the Gulf State is moving rapidly to transform itself from an energy powerhouse into a global information technology hub. Dubai is the latest stop for Huang in a global tour that has included meetings with leaders in Canada, France, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam over the past six months. The Middle East is poised to reap significant benefits from AI, with PwC projecting a $320 billion boost to the region's economy by 2030.

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Nvidia briefly surpassed Amazon in market capitalization on Monday, as the euphoria around AI catapulted the chipmaker to the fourth most valuable U.S. company. From a report: At a record high of $734.96, Nvidia was worth $1.82 trillion in market value, compared to $1.81 trillion for retail giant Amazon.com and a few billions away from Google-owner Alphabet's $1.87 trillion, according to LSEG data. The last time Nvidia was more valuable than Amazon was in 2002, when they were each worth under $6 billion.

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HP is seeking as much as $4 billion from Autonomy's former bosses following a London judge's finding that they fraudulently boosted the value of the company before its sale. From a report: Founder Mike Lynch was found to have inflated Autonomy's revenue alongside his chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain and induced HP to buy the firm for $11 billion, according to a London civil judgment in 2022. The British tech tycoon is currently waiting to face a criminal trial in the US over the sale after being extradited last year. He was previously investigated by the UK's Serious Fraud Office but the agency dropped its case. Hussain was convicted in the US for his role in the saga. Lawyers for HP calculated the total losses that Lynch and Hussain must pay back as over $4 billion, according to court documents prepared for a hearing Monday. This was revised from a previous calculation of $5 billion at trial due to further evidence.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The startup that develops the phone app for casino resort giant WinStar has secured an exposed database that was spilling customers' private information to the open web. Oklahoma-based WinStar bills itself as the "world's biggest casino" by square footage. The casino and hotel resort also offers an app, My WinStar, in which guests can access self-service options during their hotel stay, their rewards points and loyalty benefits, and casino winnings. The app is developed by a Nevada software startup called Dexiga. The startup left one of its logging databases on the internet without a password, allowing anyone with knowledge of its public IP address to access the WinStar customer data stored within using only their web browser. Dexiga took the database offline after TechCrunch alerted the company to the security lapse. Anurag Sen, a good-faith security researcher who has a knack for discovering inadvertently exposed sensitive data on the internet, found the database containing personal information, but it was initially unclear who the database belonged to. Sen said the personal data included full names, phone numbers, email addresses and home addresses. Sen shared details of the exposed database with TechCrunch to help identify its owner and disclose the security lapse.

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Many websites are using AI tools to generate fake obituaries about average people for profit. These articles lack substantiating details but are optimized for SEO, frequently outranking legitimate obituaries, The Verge reports. The fake obituaries, as one can imagine, are causing distress for grieving families and friends. In response, Google told The Verge that it aims to surface high-quality information but struggles with "data voids." The company terminated some YouTube channels sharing fake notices but declined to say if the flagged websites violate policies.

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US companies are discussing cost control on earnings calls at a record rate, amid a push to reallocate funds and invest in new technologies, according to an analysis by Morgan Stanley strategists. From a report: Transcript mentions of "operational efficiency" are at the highest ever in the US during this earnings season as companies focus on expense discipline, but also invest in technologies "that can drive future productivity like AI," a team led by Michael Wilson wrote in a note. There is a notable overlap among the industries discussing operational efficiency most prevalently and those that are discussing AI, the strategists said. These groups include software, professional services, health care services, and financial services. Pfizer, BlackRock, and Lam Research were among S&P 500 companies touting operational efficiency in their earnings calls this season, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The rising focus on cost control comes as firms position to protect margins amid hopes for a soft economic landing. Investors have looked for signs of cooling in the jobs market to gauge when the Federal Reserve will lower borrowing costs, although recent hot data has signaled the Fed won't be easing anytime soon.

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Back in 2006 Slashdot reported on a 50-megabyte "micro" distro called Damn Small Linux. (And in 2012 we wrote that it "rose from the dead" with a new release candidate.) Now Damn Small Linux has been reborn again, according to its developer's web site: Creating the original DSL, a versatile 50MB distribution, was a lot of fun and one of the things I am most proud of as a personal accomplishment. However, as a concept, it was in the right place at the right time, and the computer industry has changed a lot since then. While it would be possible to make a bootable Xwindows 50MB distribution today, it would be missing many drivers and have only a handful of very rudimentary applications. People would find such a distribution a fun toy or something to build upon, but it would not be usable for the average computer user out of the gate.... The new goal of DSL is to pack as much usable desktop distribution into an image small enough to fit on a single CD, or a hard limit of 700MB. This project is meant to service older computers and have them continue to be useful far into the future. Such a notion sits well with my values. I think of this project as my way of keeping otherwise usable hardware out of landfills. As with most things in the GNU/Linux community, this project continues to stand on the shoulders of giants. I am just one guy without a CS degree, so for now, this project is based on antiX 23 i386... a fantastic distribution that I think shares much of the same spirit as the original DSL project. AntiX shares pedigree with MEPIS and also leans heavily on the geniuses at Debian. The blog It's FOSS News describes it as "a unique experience in a sea of Debian-based and Fedora-based distros." It is offered with two window managers, Fluxbox and JWM, with apt being fully enabled by default for easy package installations... At the time of writing, only the Alpha ISOs were made available on the official downloads page. It is only a matter of time before we get a stable release.

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A lawsuit involving the now-defunct Google+ social media site "has been settled for $350 million," reports CPO magazine, "after a lengthy appeals process played out..." "[T]he total pool after attorney and legal fees are deducted is likely to be well over $200 million." [The lawsuit] dates all the way back to 2018, when Google internally discovered that the Google+ API was being abused to access the private data of about half a million of the social media service's users. Google opted not to publicly declare the breach, as they were not legally compelled to. News of it came via the Wall Street Journal in late 2018. Google shareholders contend that the company kept the issue under wraps due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal that Facebook was experiencing at the time, believing that they would suffer a similar negative PR blow. This was supported by an internal company memo that became public. As the news of the exploitable software glitch gradually came out, Google shareholders took a hit as the company collectively lost tens of billions of dollars in market value. The lead plaintiff in the case is Rhode Island Treasurer James Diossa, who was responsible for overseeing a state pension fund that held stock in Google parent company Alphabet. Google+ was shuttered in 2019 after an eight-year run due in part to repeated technical issues with unauthorized API access (as well as low user engagement). "If the settlement is approved by the 9th Circuit judge, the proceeds will be available to Google shareholders who held stock at any time from April 23, 2018, to April 30, 2019... "A separate class-action privacy lawsuit involving users who had private data exposed during the incident was settled in 2018 for $7.5 million, leading to very low payments for each of the claimants."

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Technology made its mark on the Super Bowl ads this year. Microsoft purchased a long inspirational ad for Copilot, ending with the tagline "Your everyday AI companion." (Although another message made the opposite point. "With artificial intelligence, the future is in good hands," an announcer says ironically -- while the ad shows the minions from Despicable Me 4.) Google's ad showed how its Pixel 8 smartphone helps people with vision problems take photos. T-Mobile touted its internet service. And for some reason CrowdStrike's ad about its endpoint security software took place in the Old West... VW ended an ad looking at its history with a shot of its new electric vehicle, the ID.Buzz minivan, while Kia had its own heart-tugging ad touting their electric EV9. And Pfizer ran a minute-long ad showing the history of medical progress, culminating with a pointer to their new domain, LetsOutdoCancer.com. Even NASA got into the action, releasing a video showing an astronaut catching a pass in zero gravity. ("Including its solar panels, the Space Station is the same size as a regulation football field.") And some people even tried watching the Super Bowl on their new Apple Vision Pro...

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At a press conference last week, a California Assemblymember joined the State Superintendent of Public Instruction in announcing a bill that, if passed, would require every public high school to teach computer science. (And establish CS as a high school graduation requirement by the 2030-31 school year.) Long-time Slashdot reader theodp says he noticed posters with CS-education advocacy charts and stats "copied verbatim" from the tech giant-backed nonprofit Code.org. (And "a California Dept. of Education news release also echoed Code.org K-12 CS advocacy factoids.") The announcement came less than two weeks after Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi — whose goal is to make CS a HS graduation requirement in all 50 states by 2030 — was a keynote speaker at the Association of California School Administrators Superintendents' Symposium. Even back in an October 20 Facebook post, [California state assemblyman] Berman noted he'd partnered with Code.org on legislation in the past and hinted that something big was in the works on the K-12 CS education front for California. "I had the chance to attend Code.org's 10th anniversary celebration and chat with their founder, Hadi Partovi, as well as CS advocate Aloe Blacc. They've done amazing work expanding access to computer science education... and I've been proud to partner with them on legislation to do that in CA. More to come!"

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Last night in San Francisco's Chinatown, "A person jumped on the hood of a Waymo driverless taxi and smashed its windshield..." reports the Verge, "generating applause before a crowd formed around the car and covered it in spray paint, breaking its windows, and ultimately set it on fire." The fire department arrived minutes later, according to a report in The Autopian, but by then flames had already fully engulfed the car.... Waymo representative Sandy Karp told The Verge via email that the fully autonomous car "was not transporting any riders" when it was attacked and fireworks were tossed inside the car, sparking the flames... The fire takes place against the backdrop of simmering tension between San Francisco residents and automated vehicle operators... Just last week, a Waymo car struck a cyclist who had reportedly been following behind a truck turning across its path. The "burnt-out husk of the electric Waymo Jaguar" appears in a video posted on YouTube, according to the article. "Another set of videos posted by software developer Michael Vendi gives a view into the scene as it played out and the fire grew." San Francisco's 49ers play in the Super Bowl this afteroon, so last night's celebrations for Chinese New Year could be followed by additional celebrations tonight. Police Chief Bill Scott is already urging residents to behave responsibly. "Please don't light anything on fire."

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press: An abrupt shutdown of Atlantic Ocean currents that could put large parts of Europe in a deep freeze is looking a bit more likely and closer than before as a new complex computer simulation finds a "cliff-like" tipping point looming in the future. A long-worried nightmare scenario, triggered by Greenland's ice sheet melting from global warming, still is at least decades away if not longer, but maybe not the centuries that it once seemed, a new study in Friday's Science Advances finds. The study, the first to use complex simulations and include multiple factors, uses a key measurement to track the strength of vital overall ocean circulation, which is slowing. A collapse of the current — called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or AMOC — would change weather worldwide because it means a shutdown of one of key the climate and ocean forces of the planet. It would plunge northwestern European temperatures by 9 to 27 degrees (5 to 15 degrees Celsius) over the decades, extend Arctic ice much farther south, turn up the heat even more in the Southern Hemisphere, change global rainfall patterns and disrupt the Amazon, the study said. Other scientists said it would be a catastrophe that could cause worldwide food and water shortages. "We are moving closer (to the collapse), but we we're not sure how much closer," said study lead author Rene van Westen, a climate scientist and oceanographer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "We are heading towards a tipping point." When this global weather calamity — grossly fictionalized in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" — may happen is "the million-dollar question, which we unfortunately can't answer at the moment," van Westen said. He said it's likely a century away but still could happen in his lifetime. He just turned 30. "It also depends on the rate of climate change we are inducing as humanity," van Westen said.

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"Mutant wolves roaming the deserted streets of Chernobyl appear to have developed resistance to cancer," reports Sky News, "raising hopes the findings can help scientists fight the disease in humans." Dr Cara Love, an evolutionary biologist and ecotoxicologist at Princeton University in the U.S., has been studying how the Chernobyl wolves survive despite generations of exposure to radioactive particles... The researchers discovered that Chernobyl wolves are exposed to upwards of 11.28 millirem of radiation every day for their entire lives — which is more than six times the legal safety limit for a human. Dr Love found the wolves have altered immune systems similar to cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment, but more significantly she also identified specific parts of the animals' genetic information that seemed resilient to increased cancer risk. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.

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