Category: iTechnology

Category: iTechnology

Microsoft Says Early June Disruptions to Outlook, Cloud Platform, Were Cyberattacks 
06/18/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

In early June, sporadic but serious service disruptions plagued Microsoft’s flagship office suite — including the Outlook email and OneDrive file-sharing apps — and cloud computing platform. A shadowy hacktivist group claimed responsibility, saying it flooded the sites with junk traffic in distributed denial-of-service attacks. Initially reticent to name the cause, Microsoft has now disclosed

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Australia Activates First Renewable Power Station on Decommissioned Coal Plant Site
06/16/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

The first large-scale battery to be built at an Australian coal site has been switched on in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, east of Melbourne. The 150-megawatt battery is at the site of the former Hazelwood power station in the southern Australian state of Victoria. The station was built in the 1960s and closed in 2017. The

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US Energy Dept., Other Agencies Hacked
06/16/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

U.S. security officials say the U.S. Energy Department and several other federal agencies have been hacked by a Russian cyber-extortion gang. Homeland Security officials said Thursday the agencies were caught up in the hacking of MOVEit  Transfer, a file-transfer program that is popular with governments and corporations. The Energy Department said two of its entities

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Experts Divided as YouTube Reverses Policy on Election Misinformation
06/15/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

An announcement by YouTube that it will no longer remove content containing misinformation on the U.S. 2020 presidential election has some experts divided. In a June blog post, YouTube said it was ending its policy — enforced since December 2020 — that removed tens of thousands of videos that falsely claimed the 2020 election was

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Security Firm: Suspected Chinese Hackers Breached Hundreds of Networks Globally
06/15/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

Suspected state-backed Chinese hackers used a security hole in a popular email security appliance to break into the networks of hundreds of public and private sector organizations globally, nearly a third of them government agencies including foreign ministries, the U.S. cybersecurity firm Mandiant said Thursday. “This is the broadest cyber espionage campaign known to be

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Chinese EV Makers Make Progress in Bid to Dominate British Market
06/15/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

Chinese manufacturers of electric vehicles are stepping up their push to dominate the European market. As Amy Guttman reports from London, they are making progress in Britain, where car shoppers are eager to buy the lower-cost electric cars that Chinese automakers are offering. …

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Cambodian Facial Recognition Effort Raises Fears of Misuse
06/15/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

Experts are raising concerns that a recent Cambodian government order allocating around $1 million to a local company for a facial recognition technology project could pave the way for the technology to be used against citizens and human rights defenders. The order, signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen and released in March in a recent

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Bill Gates Visits China for Health, Development Talks
06/15/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

Microsoft Founder Bill Gates was in China on Thursday for what he said were meetings with global health and development partners who have worked with his charitable foundation. “Solving problems like climate change, health inequity and food insecurity requires innovation,” Gates tweeted. “From developing malaria drugs to investing in climate adaptation, China has a lot

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As Deepfake Fraud Permeates China, Authorities Target Political Challenges Posed by AI
06/14/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

Chinese authorities are cracking down on political and fraud cases driven by deepfakes, created with face- and voice-changing software that tricks targets into believing they are video chatting with a loved one or another trusted person. How good are the deepfakes? Good enough to trick an executive at a Fuzhou tech company in Fujian province

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EU Lawmakers Vote for Tougher AI Rules as Draft Moves to Final Stage
06/14/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

EU lawmakers on Wednesday voted for tougher landmark draft artificial intelligence rules that include a ban on the use of the technology in biometric surveillance and for generative AI systems like ChatGPT to disclose AI-generated content. The lawmakers agreed to the amendments to the draft legislation proposed by the European Commission which is seeking to

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Bill Gates in China to Meet President Xi on Friday – Sources 
06/14/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp’s co-founder, is set to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday during his visit to China, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The meeting will mark Xi’s first meeting with a foreign private entrepreneur in recent years. The people said the encounter may be a one-on-one meeting. A third

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EU Regulators Order Google To Break up Digital Ad Business Over Competition Concerns
06/14/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

European Union antitrust regulators took aim at Google’s lucrative digital advertising business in an unprecedented decision ordering the tech giant to sell off some of its ad business to address competition concerns. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch and top antitrust enforcer, said that its preliminary view after an investigation is that “only the

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Big Amazon Cloud Services Recovering After Outage Hits Thousands of Users
06/14/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

Amazon.com said cloud services offered by its unit Amazon Web Services were recovering after a big disruption on Tuesday affected websites of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority and The Boston Globe, among others. Several hours after Downdetector.com started showing reports of outages, Amazon said many AWS services were fully recovered and marked resolved. “We

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India Denies Dorsey’s Claims It Threatened to Shut Down Twitter
06/13/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

India threatened to shut Twitter down unless it complied with orders to restrict accounts critical of the government’s handling of farmer protests, co-founder Jack Dorsey said, an accusation Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government called an “outright lie.” Dorsey, who quit as Twitter CEO in 2021, said on Monday that India also threatened the company with

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McCartney: ‘Final Beatles Record’ Out This Year Aided by AI
06/13/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

A “final Beatles record”, created with the help of artificial intelligence, will be released later this year, Paul McCartney told the BBC in an interview broadcast on Tuesday. “It was a demo that John (Lennon) had, and that we worked on, and we just finished it up,” said McCartney, who turns 81 next week. The

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Startup Firm Leads Kenya into World of High-Tech Manufacturing
06/12/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

A three-year-old startup company is leading Kenya into the world of high-tech manufacturing, building a sophisticated workforce capable of making the semiconductors and nanotechnology products that operate modern devices from mobile phones to refrigerators. VOA’s Africa correspondent Mariama Diallo visited the plant and has this story. …

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UN Chief Considering Watchdog Agency for AI   
06/12/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday that he will appoint a scientific advisory body in the coming days that will include outside experts on artificial intelligence, and said he is open to the idea of creating a new U.N. agency that would focus on AI. “I would be favorable to the idea that we could

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AI Chatbots Offer Comfort to the Bereaved
06/11/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

Staying in touch with a loved one after their death is the promise of several start-ups using the powers of artificial intelligence, though not without raising ethical questions. Ryu Sun-yun sits in front of a microphone and a giant screen, where her husband, who died a few months earlier, appears. “Sweetheart, it’s me,” the man

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Apple, Defying the Times, Stays Quiet on AI
06/08/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

Resisting the hype, Apple defied most predictions this week and made no mention of artificial intelligence when it unveiled its latest slate of new products, including its Vision Pro mixed reality headset. Generative AI has become the tech world’s biggest buzzword since Microsoft-backed OpenAI released ChatGPT late last year, revealing the capabilities of the emerging

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Financial Institutions in US, East Asia Spoofed by Suspected North Korean Hackers
06/06/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

There are renewed concerns North Korea’s army of hackers is targeting financial institutions to prop up the regime in Pyongyang and possibly fund its weapons programs. A report published Tuesday by the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future finds North Korean aligned actors have been spoofing well-known financial firms in Japan, Vietnam and the United States, sending

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Could Artificial Intelligence Help Stop Trade in Goods Made From Child, Forced Labor?
06/06/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is looking at how artificial intelligence can be used to help identify goods made with child or forced labor and prevent those goods from entering the country. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. VOA footage by Adam Greenbaum. …

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Japan, Australia, US to Fund Undersea Cable Connection in Micronesia to Counter China’s Influence
06/06/2023 iNews,iTechnology iMaster

Japan announced Tuesday that it joined the United States and Australia in signing a $95 million undersea cable project that will connect East Micronesia island nations to improve networks in the Indo-Pacific region where China is increasingly expanding its influence. The approximately 2,250-kilometer (1,400-mile) undersea cable will connect the state of Kosrae in the Federated

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