❌

Vue normale

Il y a de nouveaux articles disponibles, cliquez pour rafraîchir la page.
Aujourd’hui — 2 mai 2024Actualités numériques

Spotify Hides Song Lyrics Behind Paywall

✇Slashdot
Par : BeauHD
2 mai 2024 à 22:40
Several users on Reddit have noticed that Spotify has started hiding song lyrics behind a paywall. "This means you won't be able to sing along unless you know the lyrics already, or are willing to look them up in another app," reports Android Police. From the report: Still, you lose the convenience of real-time sync with the track and automatic scrolling. Like skips per hour, it appears Spotify will implement a limit system and accessing lyrics will count against the user's limit, which should ideally reset after a stipulated time. Spotify usually requests lyrics from songwriters, publishers, and independent artists. However, in most other cases, the company has a working relationship with MusixMatch to provide lyrics, and perhaps Spotify isn't willing to absorb the costs of this partnership. That would explain why lyrics are now paywalled, but as a free-tier user, such changes are chipping away at the service's appeal.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nurses Say Hospital Adoption of Half-Cooked 'AI' Is Reckless

✇Slashdot
Par : BeauHD
2 mai 2024 à 22:00
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: Last week, hundreds of nurses protested the implementation of sloppy AI into hospital systems in front of Kaiser Permanente. Their primary concern: that systems incapable of empathy are being integrated into an already dysfunctional sector without much thought toward patient care: "No computer, no AI can replace a human touch," said Amy Grewal, a registered nurse. "It cannot hold your loved one's hand. You cannot teach a computer how to have empathy." There are certainly roles automation can play in easing strain on a sector full of burnout after COVID, particularly when it comes to administrative tasks. The concern, as with other industries dominated by executives with poor judgement, is that this is being used as a justification by for-profit hospital systems to cut corners further. From a National Nurses United blog post (spotted by 404 Media): "Nurses are not against scientific or technological advancement, but we will not accept algorithms replacing the expertise, experience, holistic, and hands-on approach we bring to patient care," they added. Kaiser Permanente, for its part, insists it's simply leveraging "state-of-the-art tools and technologies that support our mission of providing high-quality, affordable health care to best meet our members' and patients' needs." The company claims its "Advance Alert" AI monitoring system -- which algorithmically analyzes patient data every hour -- has the potential to save upwards of 500 lives a year. The problem is that healthcare giants' primary obligation no longer appears to reside with patients, but with their financial results. And, that's even true in non-profit healthcare providers. That is seen in the form of cut corners, worse service, and an assault on already over-taxed labor via lower pay and higher workload (curiously, it never seems to impact outsized high-level executive compensation).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony, Apollo Offers To Buy Paramount For $26 Billion

✇Slashdot
Par : BeauHD
2 mai 2024 à 21:20
Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo Global Management have made a bid to acquire Paramount for $26 billion and take it private. Variety reports: Sony and private-equity giant Apollo submitted a letter with the non-binding offer Wednesday to Paramount Global, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The bid, which would include the assumption of debt and could be negotiated, would be a premium over the company's current $22 billion enterprise value. Shares of Paramount Global jumped 13% on news of the offer from Apollo and Sony Entertainment, closing at $13.86 per share Thursday. It's not clear how Paramount's board will proceed on the Sony-Apollo proposal, having rejected previous overtures from the private-equity firm. The company has an exclusive negotiating window with Skydance that ends Friday (May 3), but discussions among the parties could extend beyond that. If it happens, the combination of Sony Pictures with Paramount Pictures would likely result in mass layoffs -- and knock the number of major Hollywood studios from five to four, after Disney took over 20th Century. Sony Corp., which acquired Columbia Pictures in 1990 for $3.5 billion, is the largest studio operator in the industry that does not have a broad-scale direct-to-consumer streaming play. Under the proposed bid with Apollo, Sony would be the majority owner of the combined company. Sony Corp. would merge Sony Pictures Entertainment into a joint venture with Paramount Global. Sony and Apollo would both contribute cash to finance the deal. What's unclear is what would happen to the 28 local TV stations CBS owns; FCC rules bar foreign entities (i.e. Tokyo-based Sony) from having majority ownership control of broadcast TV stations, so Sony would need to carve out a separate U.S. ownership structure for the station group. In the Skydance scenario, Redstone would sell her stake in National Amusements, which holds 77% of the voting shares in Paramount Global, to Skydance, whereupon Skydance would merge with Paramount Global in an all-stock deal that would value Skydance at roughly $5 billion. Paramount Global would remain a publicly traded company. Redstone would receive up to $2 billion from the Skydance-NAI transaction; in addition, Skydance would pay a premium for Paramount Global shares and pay $3 billion to the company to help pay down debt. Ellison would serve as CEO of the merged Paramount-Skydance, while Jeff Shell, the former NBCUniversal CEO who is chairman of sports and media at RedBird and works under founder and managing partner Gerry Cardinale, would take on a key management role.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Maximum-Severity GitLab Flaw Allowing Account Hijacking Under Active Exploitation

✇Slashdot
Par : BeauHD
2 mai 2024 à 20:40
Dan Goodin reports via Ars Technica: A maximum severity vulnerability that allows hackers to hijack GitLab accounts with no user interaction required is now under active exploitation, federal government officials warned as data showed that thousands of users had yet to install a patch released in January. A change GitLab implemented in May 2023 made it possible for users to initiate password changes through links sent to secondary email addresses. The move was designed to permit resets when users didn't have access to the email address used to establish the account. In January, GitLab disclosed that the feature allowed attackers to send reset emails to accounts they controlled and from there click on the embedded link and take over the account. While exploits required no user interaction, hijackings worked only against accounts that weren't configured to use multi-factor authentication. Even with MFA, accounts remained vulnerable to password resets. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-7028, carries a severity rating of 10 out of a possible 10. The vulnerability, classified as an improper access control flaw, could pose a grave threat. GitLab software typically has access to multiple development environments belonging to users. With the ability to access them and surreptitiously introduce changes, attackers could sabotage projects or plant backdoors that could infect anyone using software built in the compromised environment. An example of a similar supply chain attack is the one that hit SolarWinds in 2021, infecting more than 18,000 of its customers. Other recent examples of supply chain attacks are here, here, and here. These sorts of attacks are powerful. By hacking a single, carefully selected target, attackers gain the means to infect thousands of downstream users, often without requiring them to take any action at all. According to Internet scans performed by security organization Shadowserver, more than 2,100 IP addresses showed they were hosting one or more vulnerable GitLab instances. In order to protect your system, you should enable MFA and install the latest patch. "GitLab users should also remember that patching does nothing to secure systems that have already been breached through exploits," notes Goodin.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft Bans US Police Departments From Using Enterprise AI Tool

✇Slashdot
Par : BeauHD
2 mai 2024 à 20:02
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Microsoft has changed its policy to ban U.S. police departments from using generative AI through the Azure OpenAI Service, the company's fully managed, enterprise-focused wrapper around OpenAI technologies. Language added Wednesday to the terms of service for Azure OpenAI Service prohibits integrations with Azure OpenAI Service from being used "by or for" police departments in the U.S., including integrations with OpenAI's text- and speech-analyzing models. A separate new bullet point covers "any law enforcement globally," and explicitly bars the use of "real-time facial recognition technology" on mobile cameras, like body cameras and dashcams, to attempt to identify a person in "uncontrolled, in-the-wild" environments. [...] The new terms leave wiggle room for Microsoft. The complete ban on Azure OpenAI Service usage pertains only to U.S., not international, police. And it doesn't cover facial recognition performed with stationary cameras in controlled environments, like a back office (although the terms prohibit any use of facial recognition by U.S. police). That tracks with Microsoft's and close partner OpenAI's recent approach to AI-related law enforcement and defense contracts. Last week, taser company Axon announced a new tool that uses AI built on OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo model to transcribe audio from body cameras and automatically turn it into a police report. It's unclear if Microsoft's updated policy is in response to Axon's product launch.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Original Smart Thermostat, Unveiled 16 Years Ago, is About To Get Dumb

✇Slashdot
Par : msmash
2 mai 2024 à 19:22
Ecobee, the company that pioneered smart thermostats with its Ecobee Smart in 2008, has announced it will end online support for the device and its commercial counterpart, the Ecobee Energy Management System, on July 31, 2024. The move will disable internet-dependent features such as web portal control, smart integrations, and weather-related functionality, while basic HVAC control and scheduling will remain operational.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Last Thing the iPad Needs Is a Spec Bump

✇Slashdot
Par : msmash
2 mai 2024 à 18:42
An anonymous reader shares a column: When Apple CEO Tim Cook and a bunch of his deputies take the virtual stage next week to announce new iPads, they're going to spend a lot of time talking about specs. If the rumors are true, we're going to get new iPad Pros with OLED screens and thinner bodies, new Airs with faster chips and a correctly placed front camera, and a couple of new accessories. Before they even launch, I feel confident telling you these are the best iPads ever. But after all these years, I still don't know how to tell you whether you should want an iPad. Or what you'd want to do with it. This has been true forever, of course. The iPad is the jack-of-all-trades in Apple's lineup, a terrific device in many ways that still feels increasingly redundant now that so many people have big phones and long-lasting laptops. Apple seems to have spent the last decade-plus enamored with the idea of the iPad as a shapeshifter -- a device that can be exactly what you need at any given time. The company loves that the iPad's use case is hard to pin down, that it means different things to different people. It's a fun, good, ambitious idea: The One Gadget To Rule Them All. The way to make that happen, though, is not to upgrade the chips or move the buttons or redesign the rounded corners. It's to focus less on the iPad itself and more on the things you attach to it. [...] The iPad is a screen and a processor, and everything else should be an add-on for whenever you need it. Give the gamers a controller and an external GPU. Give the music lovers a speaker dock, and give the smart home fanatics a bunch of buttons that connect to various devices. The photographers need lenses; the spreadsheeters need a keyboard with function keys. The Pencil and the Magic Keyboard are a start, but Apple needs to do much more. The company needs to spend less time worrying about the iPad itself -- a device famous for how long it lasts and that hardly anyone is using to its full potential -- and more time on how to make it more than just a tablet. (Plus, bonus for Apple: it's going to be a lot easier to get people to buy accessories than to convince them to upgrade their iPad when they don't need to.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Warrantless FBI Searches of American Communications Drop 50 Percent

✇Slashdot
Par : msmash
2 mai 2024 à 18:05
The FBI cut its warrantless searches of American data in half in 2023, according to a government report released on Tuesday. From a report: According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's annual transparency report, the FBI conducted 57,094 searches of "US person" data under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act last year -- a 52 percent decrease from 2022. In a press briefing, a senior FBI official said that the drop was due to reforms the agency implemented in 2021 and 2022, The Record reports. Despite the drop in overall searches of Americans' data, the report also notes that the number of foreign targets whose data could be searched in the Section 702 database rose to 268,590, a 9 percent increase from the previous year. The number of "probable cause" targets also increased significantly, from 417 in 2022 to 759 in 2023. Of those, 57 percent are estimated to be "US persons," which includes US citizens and permanent residents.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Defends 'Better' Search Product as Antitrust Trial Concludes

✇Slashdot
Par : msmash
2 mai 2024 à 17:34
Google is making its last attempt to fight back against a historic effort by the US Department of Justice to break the tech giant's grip on online search, as the most significant antitrust trial in 25 years comes to a close in Washington. From a report: A federal court in Washington began hearing closing arguments on Thursday after a 10-week trial in which the DoJ accused Alphabet, the parent company of Google, of suppressing search rivals by paying tens of billions annually for anti-competitive agreements with wireless carriers, browser developers and device manufacturers. During the hearing on Thursday, John Schmidtlein, a lawyer from Williams & Connolly representing Google, sought to push back on claims that it had hindered rivals' efforts to gain a foothold in online search, and argued that users had plenty of alternatives. Unsealed court documents revealed this week that Alphabet paid Apple $20bn in 2022 alone to be the default search engine for its iPhone and Safari browser on its other devices. "Google winning agreements because it has a better product is not a harm to the competitive process, even if it gives it scale to improve its product," Schmidtlein told the court. A lawyer for the government, Kenneth Dintzer, told the court that Google's "anti-competitive conduct harms competition and is self perpetuating." Defaults "are a powerful way to drive searches, otherwise Google wouldn't pay billions of dollars for them," he added. Amit Mehta, the judge hearing the case, noted that search "today looks a lot different than it didâ 10 to 15 years ago. He pushed back on the DoJ's contention that the quality of search had suffered due to the lack of competition, although he also noted that only two "substantial competitors" had entered the search market in the past decade. "Doesn't that tell us all we need to know in terms of barriers of entry," he asked.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

La prochaine rustine pour Starfield est la preuve que le jeu est sorti trop vite !

✇Hardware & Co - Actualités
Par : contact@hardwareand.co (Thibaut G.)
2 mai 2024 à 16:13

Quand Starfield est sorti, on peut dire qu'il a soufflé le chaud et le froid. Piégé par un partenariat avec AMD, le jeu développé par Bethesda n'a pas profité d'une aura maximale, loin s'en faut, ce qui est très dommage pour une nouvelle licence par un des acteurs majeurs du secteur. Mais comme Cybe...

Bon Plan : Orcs Must Die! 3 offert par Epic Games

✇CowcotLand news
2 mai 2024 à 15:30

Le très bon jeu Orcs Must Die! 3 est offert par le store d'Epic Games, vous avez une semaine pour l'ajouter à votre bibliothèque virtuelle, ça se passe ici. Orcs Must Die! 3 amène le chaos des orques à une échelle inimaginable. En solo ou avec un ami à vos côtés, équipez-vous d'un énorme arsenal de pièges et d'armes. Tranchez, brûlez, balancez et tuez des hordes d'orques répugnants dans ce nouvel épisode tant attendu de la série primée. Dans le dernier opus de la série, War Scenarios, les joueurs affrontent la plus grande armée d'orques jamais assemblée. Des machines de guerre modifiables fourniront la puissance nécessaire pour projeter, transpercer carboniser et désarticuler les abominables envahisseurs. Plus de tout : Orcs Must Die 3 donnera plus de tout ce que les fans adorent des deux premiers jeux et bien plus encore. Plus d'orques, plus de pièges, plus d'armes, plus d'améliorations et un look encore plus beau. Tout est à un cran supérieur. Nouvelle histoire : jouer une toute nouvelle histoire se déroulant plus de vingt ans après Orcs Must Die! 2, une période où le mage de guerres et la sorcière ont reconstruit l'ordre et formé de nouveaux apprentis. War Scenarios : tous les nouveaux scénarios de guerre tiennent la promesse d'un jeu à grande échelle telle qu'elle a été présentée pour la première fois dans Orcs Must Die! Affrontez des armées d'orques insurmontables sur les champs de batailles entourant les châteaux. Décimez les vagues d'orques, fortes de centaines de soldats, avant qu'elles ne percent vos remparts et n'écrasent votre faille. […]

Lire la suite

Apple Adds More Carve-outs To Its EU Core Tech Fee After Criticism From Devs

✇Slashdot
Par : msmash
2 mai 2024 à 16:42
Apple is tweaking how it applies a new fee that can apply to iOS developers in the European Union as it continues to configure its approach to the bloc's Digital Markets Act (DMA): Developers of free apps will be able to avoid the fee entirely under changes it announced Thursday, which apply from today, while other developers earning under a certain revenue threshold will get longer before they have to pay Apple the fee. From a report: The so-called "core technology fee" remains opt in for iOS developers in the region, as Apple continues to offer its standard business terms, but those wanting to take up new entitlements the DMA has required Apple to offer -- such as allowing sideloading of apps, third party app stores, and support for alternative payment tech than Apple's own -- must agree to the set of business terms that include the CTF (as Apple calls it). The fee remains under scrutiny in the region where the Commission, which enforces the DMA on Apple and other gatekeepers -- and opened its first investigations including on Apple in March -- is actively exploring whether the mechanism is enabling the iPhone maker to avoid its obligations to open up the App Store to competition, such as from third party app stores. But so far the EU hasn't prevented Apple from charging a fee.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Un ex-employé de la NSA de 32 ans condamné à 22 ans de prison pour espionnage

✇Next.ink
Par : Jean-Marc Manach
2 mai 2024 à 15:22
NSAïe
Hat worn by Colorado Rangers

L’ancien militaire, lourdement endetté, avait profité de son bref (trois semaines) passage à la NSA pour y imprimer des documents classifiés, qu’il a cherché à revendre à quelqu’un qu’il pensait être un agent russe. Il avait pourtant été formé à la criminalistique numérique.

La Justice états-unienne vient de condamner un ancien militaire de 32 ans à 262 mois de prison pour tentative d’espionnage. Jareh Sebastian Dalke, qui a plaidé coupable, avait transmis des informations classifiées à ce qu’il croyait être un agent de la Fédération de Russie, mais qui était en fait un agent infiltré du FBI (Online Covert Employee, OCE).

Dalke, qui avait fait partie de l’US Army de 2015 à 2018 en tant que soldat de première classe dans une unité spécialisée dans les soins de santé, avait obtenu une habilitation de sécurité de niveau « secret » en 2016.

Recruté par la NSA en tant que concepteur de la sécurité des systèmes d’information le 6 juin 2022, il en démissionnait le 28 juin, « en raison d’une maladie familiale » et du fait que « l’agence n’était pas en mesure de prendre en charge la durée de [son] absence (9 mois) ».

Dalke, qui n’y était donc resté que trois semaines et deux jours seulement, en avait profité pour imprimer trois documents classifiés. Une enquête de la NSA a depuis démontré que si d’autres employés de la NSA avaient, eux aussi, consulté au moins l’un des trois, Dalke était le seul à avoir consulté les trois, mais aussi le seul à les avoir imprimés tous les trois, les 17, 22 et 23 juin.

« La vie privée est extrêmement importante »


Vous devez être abonné•e pour lire la suite de cet article.
Déjà abonné•e ? Générez une clé RSS dans votre profil.

Fallout s'invite chez Cowcotland, avec noblechairs et sans abonnement Prime Video

✇CowcotLand news
2 mai 2024 à 15:28

On vous propose, dans cette petite news du soir, espoir, de découvrir le dossier du noblechairs HERO Fallout Edition. Autant dire que c'est un peu d'actualité en ce moment vu que Amazon Prime a lancé sa série Fallout, que j'ai adoré au demeurant, tout comme ce siège Gaming. Clairement, les couleurs et les broderies sont totalement dingues... Je suis In Love d'amour pour cette édition de ce siège. Mais avant de continuer, nous vous proposons de passer en mode bavage... […]

Lire la suite

Bon Plan : Cat Quest II offert par Epic Games

✇CowcotLand news
2 mai 2024 à 15:25

Le jeu Cat Quest II offert par Epic Games, la page du store se trouve ici, préparez-vous à une aventure incroyable basée sur des chiens et des chats valeureux. Sous la menace d'une guerre sans fin entre les chats de Felingard et les chiens envahissants de l'Empire de Lupus, Cat Quest II raconte l'histoire de deux rois, réunis contre leur gré dans un parcours de découvertes chatbuleuses à la reconquête de leur trône. Jouez sous les traits d'un chat et d'un chien en explorant leurs royaumes tout seul ou avec un ami ! Menez des quêtes dans un monde regorgeant de magie et de monstres étranges et embarquez pour une chatventure comme vous n'en avez jamais vécue ! Suite au succès du célèbre Cat Quest, les développeurs The Gentlebros retrouvent l'univers de Felingard avec encore plus de sorts explosifs, d'options pour les armes, de nouveaux personnages fabuleux, un tout nouveau mécanisme d'échange de caractères et une fonctionnalité coop locale ! […]

Lire la suite

Microsoft Launches Passkey Support For All Consumer Accounts

✇Slashdot
Par : msmash
2 mai 2024 à 16:01
Microsoft is fully rolling out passkey support for all consumer accounts today. From a report: After enabling them in Windows 11 last year, Microsoft account owners can also now generate passkeys across Windows, Android, and iOS. This makes it effortless to sign in to a Microsoft account without having to type a password in every time.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google's Payments To Apple Reached $20 Billion in 2022, Antitrust Court Documents Show

✇Slashdot
Par : msmash
2 mai 2024 à 15:20
Alphabet paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 for Google to be the default search engine in the Safari browser, according to newly unsealed court documents in the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit against Google. From a report: The deal between the two tech giants is at the heart of the landmark case, in which antitrust enforcers allege Google has illegally monopolized the market for online search and related advertising. The Justice Department and Google will offer closing arguments in the case Thursday and Friday, with a decision expected later this year. Google and Apple had hoped to shield the payment amount from public disclosure. At the trial last fall, Apple executives testified that Google paid "billions," without specifying a number. A Google witness later accidentally disclosed that Google pays 36% of the revenue it earns from search ads to Apple. Court documents filed late Tuesday ahead of the closing arguments mark the first public confirmation of the figures by Apple's senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue. Such numbers aren't disclosed by either company in their securities filings. The documents also revealed the importance of the payments to Apple's bottom line. For instance, in 2020, Google's payments to Apple constituted 17.5% of the iPhone maker's operating income.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

❌
❌