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Damaged Internet Subsea Cables Repaired in Red Sea Amid Militant Attacks on Ships

Slashdot - 18 July, 2024 - 00:46
Repairs have finally commenced on three subsea telecommunications cables that were damaged in the Red Sea in February, even as Houthi militants escalate their attacks on ships in the area. From a report: The AAE-1 cable, a 25,000-kilometer (15,500 miles) fiber optic link between Asia and Europe, was repaired by a ship owned by E-Marine, a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi-based Emirates Telecommunications Group. The cable came online this week, a Yemeni government official said. The same ship, Niwa, remains in Yemeni waters to repair the remaining two cables, Seacom and EIG. The cables, among more than a dozen that run through the Red Sea, were severed by the anchor of a cargo ship sunk by Iran-backed Houthi militants in late February. Repairs to the cables have depended on gaining access to infrastructure in Yemen's waters, a task complicated by the country's split government and the fact the Red Sea is a conflict zone. It has taken months of negotiations involving the cable operators and the two factions that control Yemen -- the internationally-recognized government in the south and the Houthi-backed government in Sanaa -- to arrange for the repair mission.

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Senators Press AT&T, Snowflake For Answers on Wide-ranging Data Breach

Slashdot - 18 July, 2024 - 00:00
A bipartisan pair of U.S. senators pressed the leaders of AT&T and data storage company Snowflake on Tuesday for more information about the scope of a recent breach that allowed cybercriminals to steal records on "nearly all" of the phone giant's customers. From a report: "There is no reason to believe that AT&T's sensitive data will not also be auctioned and fall into the hands of criminals and foreign intelligence agencies," Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Josh Hawley (R-MO), the leaders of the Judiciary Committee's privacy subpanel, wrote Tuesday in a letter to AT&T Chief Executive Officer John Stankey. The duo also sent a missive to Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy that said the theft of AT&T subscriber information "appears to be connected with an ongoing series of breaches" of the company's clients, including Ticketmaster, Advance Auto Parts, and Santander Bank. "Disturbingly, the Ticketmaster and AT&T breaches appears [sic] to have been easily preventable," they wrote to Ramaswamy. Blumenthal and Hawley have asked the corporate leaders to answer a series of questions about the lapses by July 29.

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Startups Are Building Balloons To Hoist Tourists Into the Stratosphere

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 23:00
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: CNBC spoke to three startups -- France-based Zephalto, Florida-based Space Perspective and Arizona-based World View -- that aim to hoist tourists to the stratosphere using pressurized capsules and massive gas-filled balloons. "The capsule itself is designed to to carry eight customers and two crew into the stratosphere," said Ryan Hartman, CEO of World View. "There will be a center bar where people can gather, and then, of course, there will be a bathroom aboard the capsule." The balloon rides will last around 6 hours, but will not take passengers all the way to space. Most will reach heights of 15 to 19 miles above the earth's surface, flying in an area known as the stratosphere. The start of space is generally accepted by the U.S. government to be around 80 kilometers, or about 50 miles, above the earth's surface. Jane Poynter, founder and co-CEO of Space Perspective, has a differing view. "There is no universal definition of space," Poynter said. "We are regulated as a spaceship. If we go over 98,000 feet, we are a spaceship. Outside the capsule, it's essentially a vacuum. We're above 99% of Earth's atmosphere, which is why the sky is so deep black." Compared to rocket-powered space tourism, the physical sensation that passengers will experience on a stratospheric balloon ride is more comparable to being on an airplane. Passengers will not experience weightlessness. "We don't need any physical requirements to board the balloon," said Vincent Farret d'Asties, the founder and chief pilot at Zephalto. "If you can board a standard plane, you can board the balloon." All three companies told CNBC that they were pleased with consumer interest. World Views says it sold 1,250 tickets so far while Space Perspective has sold 1,800. Zephalto did not tell CNBC how many tickets it sold, but said its initial flights were fully booked. Ticket prices range from $50,000 per seat with World View to around $184,000 with Zephalto. Space Perspective sells tickets to its experience for $125,000 per seat. That's all assuming commercial service gets off the ground. Only Zephalto has performed crewed tests so far, though not at the company's target altitude of about 15 miles above the earth's surface.

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'Amazing' New Technology Set To Transform the Search For Alien Life

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 20:00
Robin McKie writes via The Guardian: Scientists with Breakthrough Listen, the world's largest scientific research program dedicated to finding alien civilizations, say a host of technological developments are about to transform the search for intelligent life in the cosmos. These innovations will be outlined at the group's annual conference, which is to be held in the UK for the first time, in Oxford, this week. Several hundred scientists, from astronomers to zoologists, are expected to attend. "There are amazing technologies that are under development, such as the construction of huge new telescopes in Chile, Africa and Australia, as well as developments in AI," said astronomer Steve Croft, a project scientist with Breakthrough Listen. "They are going to transform how we look for alien civilizations." Among these new instruments are the Square Kilometer Array, made up of hundreds of radio telescopes now being built in South Africa and Australia, and the Vera Rubin Observatory that is being constructed in Chile. The former will become the world's most powerful radio astronomy facility while the latter, the world's largest camera, will be able to image the entire visible sky every three or four nights, and is expected to help discover millions of new galaxies and stars. Both facilities are set to start observations in the next few years and both will provide data for Breakthrough Listen. Using AI to analyze these vast streams of information for subtle patterns that would reveal evidence of intelligent life will give added power to the search for alien civilizations, added Croft. "Until now, we have been restricted to looking for signals deliberately sent out by aliens to advertise their existence. The new techniques are going to be so sensitive that, for the first time, we will be able to detect unintentional transmissions as opposed to deliberate ones and will be able to spot alien airport radar, or powerful TV transmitters -- things like that." [...] Croft remains optimistic that we will soon succeed in making contact. "We know that the conditions for life are everywhere, we know that the ingredients for life are everywhere. I think it would be deeply weird if it turned out we were the only inhabited planet in the galaxy or in the universe. But you know, it's possible."

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Startup Makes Butter Using CO2 and Water

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 17:00
A Californian startup funded by Bill Gates is making rich, fatty "butter" using just carbon dioxide and hydrogen, with other dairy-free alternatives in the works. New Atlas reports: The San Jose company, Savor, uses a thermochemical process to create its animal-like fat, which is free of the environmental footprint of both the dairy industry and plant-based alternatives. "They started with the fact that all fats are made of varying chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms," Gates wrote in a blog post. "Then they set out to make those same carbon and hydrogen chains -- without involving animals or plants. They ultimately developed a process that involves taking carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water, heating them up, and oxidizing them to trigger the separation of fatty acids and then the formulation of fat." "The idea of switching to lab-made fats and oils may seem strange at first," Gates wrote. "But their potential to significantly reduce our carbon footprint is immense. By harnessing proven technologies and processes, we get one step closer to achieving our climate goals." Savor's 'butter' is easily produced and scalable, but convincing people to swap out butter and other dairy products for 'experimental' foods will remain a challenge for the foreseeable future. Gates is hoping, however, that his support will do more than start a conversation. "The process doesn't release any greenhouse gases, and it uses no farmland and less than a thousandth of the water that traditional agriculture does," he added. "And most important, it tastes really good -- like the real thing, because chemically it is." The research has been published in the journal Nature Sustainability.

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Puerto Rico Files $1 Billion Suit Against Fossil Fuel Companies

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 13:30
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Puerto Rico filed suit against fossil fuel companies this week, alleging that the oil and gas giants have misled the public about climate change and delayed a transition to clean energy. The suit seeks $1 billion in damages to help Puerto Rico defend itself against climate disasters. In a complaint (PDF) filed in San Juan yesterday, Puerto Rico's Department of Justice says that the companies violated trade law by promoting fossil fuels without adequately warning about the dangers. The defendants include ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and other energy companies. In the complaint, Puerto Rico says it expects to pay billions of dollars in the future to cope with catastrophes made worse by climate change -- including storms like Hurricane Maria, which killed thousands of people in 2017 and triggered monthslong power outages. The suit asks defendants to contribute to a fund that would be used to mitigate the consequences of climate change and pay for measures to strengthen Puerto Rico's infrastructure against future climate-related calamities. After Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017, thirty-seven municipalities in Puerto Rico and the capital city of San Juan filed suit against fossil fuel companies, "seeking to hold them accountable for the devastation," notes The Verge. Last week, Portland's Multnomah County filed a lawsuit against several fossil fuel companies, blaming their emissions for the 2021 heat dome that resulted in the deaths of 69 people.

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UK Nears 1 Million EV Chargers

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 11:25
According to lobby group ChargeUK, there were 930,000 electric car chargers in the UK at the end of June, with the majority residing in homes and at businesses. Only about 65,000 public chargers are available. The Guardian reports: The ChargeUK analysis showed that a new public charger was installed every 25 minutes in the spring quarter as companies raced to keep up with demand. Companies installed 5,100 public chargers during the second quarter of 2024, according to the data company Zapmap. [...] There are 1.1 million electric vehicles on UK roads, including 167,000 cars sold in the first half of this year, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders lobby group. That is a 9% increase compared with the previous year, although the share of electric sales only increased marginally to 16.6%, as relatively higher upfront prices and rising interest rates deterred some buyers. ChargeUK's analysis, which was carried out by the thinktank New AutoMotive, suggested that the private sector was confident it could meet a target set by the previous Conservative government of 300,000 public charge points by 2030. "In little more than a decade, the UK's charging sector has grown to become a major player in the green economy, providing the infrastructure that more than a million EV drivers rely on today and scaling fast to deliver the charging needed through to 2030 and beyond," said Vicky Read, the chief executive of ChargeUK.

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Rite Aid Says Breach Exposes Sensitive Details of 2.2 Million Customers

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 10:45
Rite Aid, the third-largest U.S. drug store chain, reported it a ransomware attack that compromised the personal data of 2.2 million customers. The data exposed includes names, addresses, dates of birth, and driver's license numbers or other forms of government-issued ID from transactions between June 2017 and July 2018. "On June 6, 2024, an unknown third party impersonated a company employee to compromise their business credentials and gain access to certain business systems," the company said in a filing. "We detected the incident within 12 hours and immediately launched an internal investigation to terminate the unauthorized access, remediate affected systems and ascertain if any customer data was impacted." Ars Technica's Dan Goodin reports: RansomHub, the name of a relatively new ransomware group, has taken credit for the attack, which it said yielded more than 10GB of customer data. RansomHub emerged earlier this year as a rebranded version of a group known as Knight. According to security firm Check Point, RansomHub became the most prevalent ransomware group following an international operation by law enforcement in May that took down much of the infrastructure used by rival ransomware group Lockbit. On its dark web site, RansomHub said it was in advanced stages of negotiation with Rite Aid officials when the company suddenly cut off communications. A Rite Aid official didn't respond to questions sent by email. Rite Aid has also declined to say if the employee account compromised in the breach was protected by multifactor authentication.

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Cloudflare Reports Almost 7% of Internet Traffic Is Malicious

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 10:02
In its latest State of Application Security Report, Cloudflare says 6.8% of traffic on the internet is malicious, "up a percentage point from last year's study," writes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols. "Cloudflare, the content delivery network and security services company, thinks the rise is due to wars and elections. For example, many attacks against Western-interest websites are coming from pro-Russian hacktivist groups such as REvil, KillNet, and Anonymous Sudan." From the report: [...] Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks continue to be cybercriminals' weapon of choice, making up over 37% of all mitigated traffic. The scale of these attacks is staggering. In the first quarter of 2024 alone, Cloudflare blocked 4.5 million unique DDoS attacks. That total is nearly a third of all the DDoS attacks they mitigated the previous year. But it's not just about the sheer volume of DDoS attacks. The sophistication of these attacks is increasing, too. Last August, Cloudflare mitigated a massive HTTP/2 Rapid Reset DDoS attack that peaked at 201 million requests per second (RPS). That number is three times bigger than any previously observed attack. The report also highlights the increased importance of application programming interface (API) security. With 60% of dynamic web traffic now API-related, these interfaces are a prime target for attackers. API traffic is growing twice as fast as traditional web traffic. What's worrying is that many organizations appear not to be even aware of a quarter of their API endpoints. Organizations that don't have a tight grip on their internet services or website APIs can't possibly protect themselves from attackers. Evidence suggests the average enterprise application now uses 47 third-party scripts and connects to nearly 50 third-party destinations. Do you know and trust these scripts and connections? You should -- each script of connection is a potential security risk. For instance, the recent Polyfill.io JavaScript incident affected over 380,000 sites. Finally, about 38% of all HTTP requests processed by Cloudflare are classified as automated bot traffic. Some bots are good and perform a needed service, such as customer service chatbots, or are authorized search engine crawlers. However, as many as 93% of bots are potentially bad.

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Cutting-Edge Technology Could Massively Reduce the Amount of Energy Used For Air Conditioning

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 09:20
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired, written by Chris Baraniuk: The buses struggling in China's muggy weather gave [Matt Jore, CEO of Montana Technologies] and his colleagues an idea. If they could make dehumidification more efficient somehow, then they could make air conditioning as a whole much more efficient, too. They headed back to the US wondering how to make this happen. [...] "I have here 50-gallon barrels of this stuff. It comes in a special powder," says Jore, referring to the moisture-loving material that coats components inside his firm's novel dehumidifier system, AirJoule. This is the result of years of research and development that followed his team's trip to China. The coating is a type of highly porous material called a metal-organic framework, and the pores are sized so that they fit around water molecules extremely well. It makes for a powerful desiccant, or drying device. "Just one kilogram can take up half or more than half -- in our case 55 percent -- of its own weight in water vapor," says Jore. The AirJoule system consists of two chambers, each one containing surfaces coated with this special material. They take turns at dehumidifying a flow of air. One chamber is always drying air that is pushed through the system while the other gradually releases the moisture it previously collected. A little heat from the drying chamber gets applied to the moisture-saturated coating in the other, since that helps to encourage the water to drip away for removal. These two cavities swap roles every 10 minutes or so, says Jore. This process doesn't cool the air, but it does make it possible to feed dry air to a more traditional air conditioning device, drastically cutting how much energy that secondary device will use. And Jore claims that AirJoule consumes less than 100 watt-hours per liter of water vapor removed -- potentially cutting the energy required for dehumidification by as much as 90 percent compared to a traditional dehumidifier. Montana Technologies wants to sell the components for its AirJoule system to established HVAC firms rather than attempt to build its own consumer products and compete with those firms directly -- it calls the approach AirJoule Inside. The firm is also working on a system for the US military, based on the same technology, that can harvest drinkable water from the air. Handy for troops stationed in the desert, one imagines. However, AirJoule is still at the prototype and testing stages. "We're building several of these pilot preproduction units for potential customers and partners," says Jore. "Think rooftops on big-box retailers." Montana Technologies isn't the only firm using cutting-edge technology to make air conditioning units more efficient. Rival firm Blue Frontier has developed a desiccant-based dehumidifying system using a liquid salt solution, with installations in various U.S. locations, that links to a secondary air-conditioning process and regenerates desiccant during off-peak hours to reduce peak electricity demand. Then there's Nostromo Energy's IceBrick system, installed in California hotels, which freezes water capsules during off-peak hours and uses the stored coolth during peak times. This system can reduce cooling costs by up to 30 percent and emissions by up to 80 percent, according to Wired.

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Google's $500 Million Effort To Wreck Microsoft EU Cloud Deal Failed, Report Says

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 08:40
Ashley Belanger reports via Ars Technica: Google tried to derail a Microsoft antitrust settlement over anticompetitive software licensing in the European Union by offering a $500 million alternative deal to the group of cloud providers behind the EU complaint, Bloomberg reported. According to Bloomberg, Google's offer to the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE) required that the group maintain its EU antitrust complaint. It came "just days" before CISPE settled with Microsoft, and it was apparently not compelling enough to stop CISPE from inking a deal with the software giant that TechCrunch noted forced CISPE to accept several compromises. Bloomberg uncovered Google's attempted counteroffer after reviewing confidential documents and speaking to "people familiar with the matter." Apparently, Google sought to sway CISPE with a package worth nearly $500 million for more than five years of software licenses and about $15 million in cash. But CISPE did not take the bait, announcing last week that an agreement was reached with Microsoft, seemingly frustrating Google. CISPE initially raised its complaint in 2022, alleging that Microsoft was "irreparably damaging the European cloud ecosystem and depriving European customers of choice in their cloud deployments" by spiking costs to run Microsoft's software on rival cloud services. In February, CISPE said that "any remedies and resolution must apply across the sector and to be accessible to all cloud customers in Europe." They also promised that "any agreements will be made public." But the settlement reached last week excluded major rivals, including Amazon, which is a CISPE member, and Google, which is not. And despite CISPE's promise, the terms of the deal were not published, apart from a CISPE blog roughly outlining central features that it claimed resolved the group's concerns over Microsoft's allegedly anticompetitive behaviors. What is clear is that CISPE agreed to drop their complaint by taking the deal, but no one knows exactly how much Microsoft paid in a "lump sum" to cover CISPE legal fees for three years, TechCrunch noted. However, "two people with direct knowledge of the matter" told Reuters that Microsoft offered about $22 million.

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Former Tesla, OpenAI Exec Andrej Karpathy Founds 'AI Native' Education Startup

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 08:02
In a post on X today, Andrej Karpathy announced that he is "starting an AI+Education company called Eureka Labs." Karpathy taught deep learning for computer vision at Stanford University, left to co-found OpenAI in 2015 and then moved on to direct artificial intelligence for Tesla Autopilot until 2022. He then migrated back to OpenAI to lead a small team related to ChatGPT. CoinTelegraph reports: Eureka is creating virtual teaching assistants powered by generative AI to bring top courses to vastly more students without sacrificing the personalized interactions typical of in-person learning. The startup's ultimate goal is to bring elite educators and coursework to students throughout the world, regardless of barriers such as geography and language. [...] Eureka's first product will be an undergraduate AI course called LLM101n. The course will guide students through the process of training an AI similar to the AI Teaching Assistant. Materials will be available online but will also include digital and physical cohorts, allowing students to progress through the course in small groups. "The teacher still designs the course materials, but they are supported, leveraged and scaled with an AI Teaching Assistant who is optimized to help guide the students through them," Karpathy explained. "If we are successful, it will be easy for anyone to learn anything, expanding education in both reach (a large number of people learning something) and extent (any one person learning a large amount of subjects, beyond what may be possible today unassisted)."

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iOS 18 Could 'Sherlock' $400 Million In App Revenue

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 07:25
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Apple's practice of leveraging ideas from its third-party developer community to become new iOS and Mac features and apps has a hefty price tag, a new report indicates. Ahead of its fall release, you can download the public beta for iOS 18 right now to get a firsthand look at Apple's changes, which may affect apps that today have an estimated $393 million in revenue and have been downloaded roughly 58 million times over the past year, according to an analysis by app intelligence firm Appfigures. Every June at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, the iPhone maker teases the upcoming releases of its software and operating systems, which often include features previously only available through third-party apps. The practice is so common now it's even been given a name: "sherlocking" -- a reference to a 1990s search app for Mac that borrowed features from a third-party app known as Watson. Now when Apple launches a new feature that was before the domain of a third-party app, it's said to have "sherlocked" the app. [...] In an analysis of third-party apps that generated more than 1,000 downloads per year, Appfigures discovered several genres that had found themselves in Apple's crosshairs in 2024. In terms of worldwide gross revenue, these categories have generated significant income over the past 12 months, with the trail app category making the most at $307 million per year, led by market leader and 2023 Apple "App of the Year" AllTrails. Grammar helper apps, like Grammarly and others, also generated $35.7 million, while math helpers and password managers earned $23.4 million and $20.3 million, respectively. Apps for making custom emoji generated $7 million, too. Of these, trail apps accounted for the vast majority of "potentially sherlocked" revenue, or 78%, noted Appfigures, as well as 40% of downloads of sherlocked apps. In May 2024, they accounted for an estimated $28.8 million in gross consumer spending and 2.5 million downloads, to give you an idea of scale. Many of these app categories were growing quickly, with math solvers having seen revenue growth of 43% year-over-year followed by grammar helpers (+40%), password managers (+38%) and trail apps (+28%). Emoji-making apps, however, were seeing declines at -17% year-over-year. By downloads, grammar helpers had seen 9.4 million installs over the past 12 months, followed by emoji makers (10.6 million), math-solving apps (9.5 million) and password managers (457,000 installs). "Although these apps certainly have dedicated user bases that may not immediately choose to switch to a first-party offering, Apple's ability to offer similar functionality built-in could be detrimental to their potential growth," concludes TechCrunch's Sarah Perez. "Casual users may be satisfied by Apple's 'good enough' solutions and won't seek out alternatives."

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Google Search Ending 'Notes' Experiment

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 06:45
Google is discontinuing its experimental Notes feature in Search Labs, the company confirmed on Wednesday. The feature, launched in November, allowed users to add comments and tips to search results and Discover content. It aimed to create a community-driven platform within Google's ecosystem, similar to social media forums.

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Delta Air Lines CEO Questions Financial Strategy of Low-Cost Carriers

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 06:01
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian had stark words for competing airlines that depend on selling low-priced tickets to stay alive. From a report: "You cannot, if you are on the lower end of the industry's food chain, continue to post losses, particularly given the health of the demand set we've seen over these last couple of years," Bastian said as Delta reported disappointing second-quarter financials and warned things could get even worse. Airlines that can't break even "will not be given the opportunity to continue to run business models they have," he added. Bastian's comments came in response to a question about the potential for structural changes within the industry as many airlines struggle to remain profitable. [...] A big contributor to the lower profits was lower airfares and extra capacity, especially in economy class,

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Google Now Defaults To Not Indexing Your Content

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 05:24
An anonymous reader a report:Google is no longer trying to index the entire web. In fact, it's become extremely selective, refusing to index most content. This isn't about content creators failing to meet some arbitrary standard of quality. Rather, it's a fundamental change in how Google approaches its role as a search engine. From my experience, Google now seems to operate on a "default to not index" basis. It only includes content in its index when it perceives a genuine need. This decision appears to be based on various factors: Extreme content uniqueness: It's not enough to write about something that isn't extensively covered. Google seems to require content to be genuinely novel or fill a significant gap in its index. Perceived authority: Sites that Google considers highly authoritative in their niche may have more content indexed, but even then, it's not guaranteed. Brand recognition: Well-known brands often see most of their content indexed, while small or unknown bloggers face much stricter selectivity. Temporary indexing and de-indexing: In practice, Google often indexes new content quite quickly, likely to avoid missing out on breaking news or important updates. Soon after, Google may de-index the content, and it remains de-indexed thereafter. So getting initially indexed isn't necessarily a sign that Google considers your content valuable.

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Hackers Claim To Have Leaked 1.1 TB of Disney Slack Messages

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 04:50
A group calling itself "NullBulge" published a 1.1-TB trove of data late last week that it claims is a dump of Disney's internal Slack archive. From a report: The data allegedly includes every message and file from nearly 10,000 channels, including unreleased projects, code, images, login credentials, and links to internal websites and APIs. The hackers claim they got access to the data from a Disney insider and named the alleged collaborator. Whether the hackers actually had inside help remains unconfirmed; they could also have plausibly used info-stealing malware to compromise an employee's account. Disney did not confirm the breach or return multiple requests for comment about the legitimacy of the stolen data. A Disney spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that the company "is investigating this matter." The data, which appears to have been first published on Thursday, was posted on BreachForums and later taken down, but it is still live on mirror sites. The hacker said they breached Disney in protest against AI-generated artwork.

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Amazon Enforces New Office Hours Rule

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 04:16
Amazon is now monitoring the hours corporate employees spend in the office. From a report: This move is intended to crack down on people who are trying to skirt the company's return-to-office policy, Business Insider has learned. Several teams across Amazon, including the retail and cloud-computing units, were told in recent months that a minimum of two hours per visit is required to count as office attendance, according to multiple screenshots of internal Slack messages obtained by BI and people familiar with the matter. Some teams have been told to stay at least six hours per visit. Amazon's goal is to ramp up scrutiny of "coffee badging," some of the Slack messages said. Coffee badging refers to employees who badge in, get coffee, and leave the office shortly to satisfy their return-to-office mandate. Amazon started requiring office attendance for most corporate staffers three times a week last year, but it didn't have a minimum-hour obligation for each visit.

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Bitcoin is Legit, BlackRock's Larry Fink Says

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 03:25
Speaking of crypto, BlackRock's co-founder and CEO Larry Fink is now embracing crypto more than ever. From a report: In an interview with CNBC on Monday, he mentioned that he had abandoned his initial skepticism of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. He now firmly believes that there is a place for crypto in the average investor's portfolio. "I believe Bitcoin is legitimate. I'm not saying there aren't misuses like everything else, but it is a legitimate financial instrument that allows you to have uncorrelated returns," Fink told CNBC host Jim Cramer. When asked whether the U.S. budget deficit makes a case for investing in crypto, Fink responded, "absolutely." He added that crypto can help buyers hedge against countries that are devaluing their currencies.

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Craig Wright Faces Perjury Investigation Over Claims He Created Bitcoin

Slashdot - 17 July, 2024 - 02:49
A judge in the UK High Court has directed prosecutors to consider bringing criminal charges against computer scientist Craig Wright, after ruling that he lied "extensively and repeatedly" and committed forgery "on a grand scale" in service of his quest to prove he is Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of bitcoin. From a report: In a judgment published Tuesday, Justice James Mellor outlined various injunctions to be imposed upon Wright, after finding in May that he had "engaged in the deliberate production of false documents to support false claims [to be Satoshi] and use the Courts as a vehicle for fraud." By order of the judge, Wright will be prevented from claiming publicly that he is Satoshi and from bringing or threatening legal action in any jurisdiction on that basis. He will be required to pin a notice to the front page of his personal website and X feed detailing the findings against him. The matter, Mellor writes, will also be referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the body responsible for prosecuting criminal cases in the UK, "for consideration of whether a prosecution should be commenced against Dr Wright." It will be up to the CPS to decide whether the available evidence is sufficient to bring charges against Wright "for his wholescale perjury and forgery of documents" and "whether a warrant for his arrest should be issued."

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