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Change Healthcare Hackers Broke In Using Stolen Credentials, No MFA
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The ransomware gang that hacked into U.S. health tech giant Change Healthcare used a set of stolen credentials to remotely access the company’s systems that weren’t protected by multifactor authentication (MFA), according to the chief executive of its parent company, UnitedHealth Group (UHG) … ⌘ Read more
Extreme Heat Continues To Scorch Large Parts of Asia
Large swathes of Asia are sweltering through a heatwave that has topped temperature records from Myanmar to the Philippines and forced millions of children to stay home from school. From a report: In India, record temperatures have triggered a deadly heatwave and concerns about voter turnout in the nation’s marathon election. Extreme heat has also forced Bangladesh to c … ⌘ Read more
Supreme Court Declines To Block Texas Porn Restriction
The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to block on free speech grounds a provision of Texas law aimed at preventing minors from accessing pornographic content online. From a report: The justices turned away a request made by the Free Speech Coalition, a pornography industry trade group, as well as several companies. The challengers said the 2023 law violates the Consti … ⌘ Read more
How an Empty S3 Bucket Can Make Your AWS Bill Explode
Maciej Pocwierz, a senior software engineer Semantive, writing on Medium: A few weeks ago, I began working on the PoC of a document indexing system for my client. I created a single S3 bucket in the eu-west-1 region and uploaded some files there for testing. Two days later, I checked my AWS billing page, primarily to make sure that what I was doing was well within the free- … ⌘ Read more
Biden Administration Moves To Speed Up Permits for Clean Energy
The Biden administration on Tuesday released rules designed to speed up permits for clean energy while requiring federal agencies to more heavily weigh damaging effects on the climate and on low-income communities before approving projects like highways and oil wells. From a report: As part of a deal to raise the country’s debt limit last year, Con … ⌘ Read more
Even Walmart Thinks American Healthcare Is Too Expensive
Walmart isn’t making enough money off its new health centers, so it decided to close up shop. From a report: The retail giant announced today that it’ll shutter all 51 health centers it opened up across five states since 2019. Walmart is also getting rid of its virtual care program after acquiring telehealth provider MeMD in 2021. “We determined there is not … ⌘ Read more
Cyber Criminal Jailed For Blackmailing Therapy Patients
One of Europe’s most wanted cyber criminals has been jailed for attempting to blackmail 33,000 people whose confidential therapy notes he stole. From a report: Julius Kivimaki obtained them after breaking into the databases of Finland’s largest psychotherapy company, Vastaamo. After his attempt to extort the company failed, he emailed patients directly, threatening … ⌘ Read more
Bill Gates Is Still Pulling the Strings At Microsoft
theodp writes: Reports of the death of Bill Gates’ influence at Microsoft have been greatly exaggerated: “Publicly, [Bill] Gates has been almost entirely out of the picture at Microsoft since 2021, following allegations that he had behaved inappropriately toward female employees. In fact, Business Insider has learned, Gates has been quietly orchestrating much of Microsoft’s … ⌘ Read more
Major US Newspapers Sue OpenAI, Microsoft For Copyright Infringement
Eight prominent U.S. newspapers owned by investment giant Alden Global Capital are suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, in a complaint filed Tuesday in the Southern District of New York. From a report: Until now, the Times was the only major newspaper to take legal action against AI firms for copyright infringement. Many o … ⌘ Read more
Apple Confirms iPhone Alarm Failure Reports
Apple has confirmed reports [video link] of a software glitch causing some iPhone alarms to fail to play a sound.
[ away. The payload is riding aboard the Psyche probe, which is headed for an asteroid of the same name. On December 11, when the spacecraft was 19 million miles (30 million kilometers) … ⌘ Read more
Russia Clones Wikipedia, Censors It, Bans Original
Jules Roscoe reports via 404 Media: Russia has replaced Wikipedia with a state-sponsored encyclopedia that is a clone of the original Russian Wikipedia but which conveniently has been edited to omit things that could cast the Russian government in poor light. Real Russian Wikipedia editors used to refer to the real Wikipedia as Ruwiki; the new one is called Ruviki, has “ruwik … ⌘ Read more
G7 Reaches Deal To Exit From Coal By 2035
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Energy ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) major democracies reached a deal to shut down their coal-fired power plants in the first half of the 2030s, in a significant step towards the transition away from fossil fuels. “There is a technical agreement, we will seal the final political deal on Tuesday,” said Italian energy minister Gilberto … ⌘ Read more
Tether Buys $200 Million Majority Stake In Brain-Computer Interface Company
Crypto company Tether announced Monday that it has invested $200 million to acquire a majority stake in brain-computer interface company Blackrock Neurotech via its venture capital division Tether Evo. [The firm is not related to the asset management giant BlackRock.] CoinDesk reports: Blackrock Neurotech develops medical … ⌘ Read more
T2 Linux 24.5 Released
ReneR writes: A major T2 Linux milestone has been released, shipping with full support for 25 CPU architectures and several C libraries, as well as restored support for Intel IA-64 Itanium. Additionally, many vintage X.org DDX drivers were fixed and tested to work again, as well as complete support for the latest KDE 6 and GNOME 46.
T2 is known for its sophisticated cross compile support and support for nearly all existing CPU a … ⌘ Read more
The EU Will Force Apple To Open Up iPadOS
As reported by Bloomberg (paywalled), Apple’s iPadOS will need to abide by EU’s DMA rules, as it is now designated as a gatekeeper alongside the Safari web browser, iOS operating system and the App Store. “Apple now has six months to ensure full compliance of iPadOS with the DMA obligations,” reads the EU’s blog post about the change. Engadget reports: What does Apple have to do to ensure iP … ⌘ Read more
WeWork Rejects Adam Neumann’s Acquisition Bid, Unveils Restructuring
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: WeWork has a new plan to get out of bankruptcy – and it doesn’t involve Adam Neumann, who wants to acquire the flexible office provider he created. WeWork announced Monday that it has raised $450 million in equity funding, which it could use to emerge from Chapter 11. The company a … ⌘ Read more
Russia Issues Arrest Warrant For Ex-Chess Champion Garry Kasparov
Longtime Slashdot reader ArchieBunker shares a report from The Mirror: The city court in Syktyvkar, the largest city in Russia’s northwestern Komi region, announced it had arrested [former world chess champion Garry Kasparov] in absentia alongside former Russian parliament member Gennady Gudkov, Ivan Tyutrin co-founder of the Free Russia Forum - … ⌘ Read more
Google Lays Off Staff From Flutter, Dart and Python Teams
Ahead of its annual I/O developer conference in May, Google has decided to lay off staff across key teams like Flutter, Dart, Python and others. “As we’ve said, we’re responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” said a Google spokesperson. “To best position us for these opportunities, throughout the s … ⌘ Read more
Roku Wants To Use Home Screen For New Types of Ads
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Streamable: Roku wants to take the term “ad-supported” to another level. The company held its quarterly earnings conference call on Thursday, and revealed that 81.6 million households used a Roku device or smart TV to stream video in the first three months of the year. As part of the report, company CEO Anthony Wood laid … ⌘ Read more
In Race To Build AI, Tech Plans a Big Plumbing Upgrade
If 2023 was the tech industry’s year of the A.I. chatbot, 2024 is turning out to be the year of A.I. plumbing. From a report: It may not sound as exciting, but tens of billions of dollars are quickly being spent on behind-the-scenes technology for the industry’s A.I. boom. Companies from Amazon to Meta are revamping their data centers to support artificial intelligen … ⌘ Read more
Canceling Your Credit Card May Not Stop Netflix’s Recurring Charges
Millions of Americans pay for Netflix, doling out anywhere from $6.99 to $22.99 a month. It’s a common belief that you can get out of recurring charges like this by canceling your credit card. Netflix won’t be able to find you, and your account will just go away, right? You wouldn’t be crazy for believing it, but it’s a myth that canceling a cred … ⌘ Read more
FCC Fines Wireless Carriers $200 Million For Sharing Customer Data
The Federal Communications Commission has fined the nation’s largest wireless carriers for illegally sharing access to customers’ location information without consent and without taking reasonable measures to protect that information against unauthorized disclosure. From a report: Sprint and T-Mobile – which have merged since the investigatio … ⌘ Read more