AT&T Will Put a Fake 5G Logo On Its 4G LTE Phones Slashdotby BeauHD on att at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 21, 2018, 11:34 pm)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: AT&T customers will start to see a 5G logo appear in the corner of their smartphone next year -- not because they're using a 5G phone connected to a 5G network, but because AT&T is going to start pretending its most advanced 4G LTE tech is 5G. According to FierceWireless, AT&T will display an icon reading "5G E" on newer phones that are connected to LTE in markets where the carrier has deployed a handful of speed boosting -- but still definitively 4G -- technologies. The "E," displayed smaller than the rest of the logo, refers to "5G Evolution," the carrier's term for networks that aren't quite 5G but are still faster than traditional LTE. AT&T pulled the same stunt during the transition to LTE. "The company rolled out a speed-boosting 3G tech called HSPA+, then got all of its phone partners -- even Apple -- to show a '4G' logo when on that kind of connection," reports The Verge.

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Guatemala family mourns girl who died searching 'for better life' AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 21, 2018, 11:30 pm)

Family of 7-year-old Jakelin Caal, who died in Border Patrol custody, calls on Trump to allow father to stay in US.
Mars Express Beams Back Images of Ice-Filled Korolev Crater Slashdotby msmash on mars at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 21, 2018, 11:05 pm)

An anonymous reader shares a report: The stunning Korolev crater in the northern lowlands of Mars is filled with ice all year round owing to a trapped layer of cold Martian air that keeps the water frozen. The 50-mile-wide crater contains 530 cubic miles of water ice, as much as Great Bear Lake in northern Canada, and in the centre of the crater the ice is more than a mile thick. Images beamed back from the red planet show that the lip around the impact crater rises high above the surrounding plain. When thin Martian air then passes over the crater, it becomes trapped and cools to form an insulating layer that prevents the ice from melting. The latest picture is a composite of five strip-like images taken from the European Space Agency's Mars Express probe, which swung into orbit around the planet on Christmas Day 2003. On the same day, the orbiter released the Beagle 2 lander, a British probe built on a shoestring budget, which touched down but failed to fully open on the surface. Mars Express photographed the Korolev crater with its high-resolution stereo camera, an instrument that can pick out features 10 metres wide, or as small as 2 metres when used in super-resolution mode.

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ACLU To Feds: Your 'Hacking Presents a Unique Threat To Individual Privacy' Slashdotby msmash on privacy at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 21, 2018, 10:35 pm)

The American Civil Liberties Union, along with Privacy International, a similar organization based in the United Kingdom, have now sued 11 federal agencies, demanding records about how those agencies engage in what is often called "lawful hacking." From a report: The activist groups filed Freedom of Information Act requests to the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and nine others. None responded in a substantive way. "Law enforcement use of hacking presents a unique threat to individual privacy," the ACLU argues in its lawsuit, which was filed Friday in federal court in New York state. "Hacking can be used to obtain volumes of personal information about individuals that would never previously have been available to law enforcement."

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UN approves team to monitor ceasefire in Yemen's port city AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 21, 2018, 10:30 pm)

Resolution also endorses UN-brokered peace talks in Sweden which saw a truce take effect in Hodeidah on Tuesday.
Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and UK Accuse China of APT10 Hacking Spree Slashdotby msmash on australia at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 21, 2018, 9:35 pm)

A day after the US Department of Justice charged two Chinese nationals for being members of a state-sponsored hacking group and accused the Chinese government of orchestrating a string of hacks around the world, five other governments have stepped in with similar accusations. From a report: Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the UK have published official statements today formally blaming China of hacking their government agencies and local companies. All statements are in regards to the supposed involvement of the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) in supporting the activity of a hacking group known as APT10. In a DOJ indictment yesterday, the US says this group hacked companies in 12 countries, and later breached cloud service providers, wormed through their infrastructure, and hacked even more companies. US officials said the primary purpose of these hacks was to steal trade secrets and intellectual property that the Chinese government later passed to local Chinese companies, helping create an unfair advantage for local firms on the global market.

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Can the US be a dependable ally? AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 21, 2018, 9:30 pm)

US Secretary of Defense James Mattis quits his post over differences with President Donald Trump.
Annual Smart Speaker IQ Test Slashdotby msmash on ai at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 21, 2018, 9:04 pm)

Research firm Loop Ventures published its annual Smart Speaker IQ Test this week. Like earlier iterations of the test, it put the top smart assistants and speakers head-to-head, grading them on a wide range of queries and commands. From the report: We asked each smart speaker the same 800 questions, and they were graded on two metrics: 1. Did it understand what was said? 2. Did it deliver a correct response? The question set, which is designed to comprehensively test a smart speaker's ability and utility, is broken into 5 categories: Local -- Where is the nearest coffee shop? Commerce -- Can you order me more paper towels? Navigation -- How do I get to uptown on the bus? Information -- Who do the Twins play tonight? Command -- Remind me to call Steve at 2 pm today. It is important to note that we continue to modify our question set in order to reflect the changing abilities of AI assistants. As voice computing becomes more versatile and assistants become more capable, we will continue to alter our test so that it remains exhaustive. Results: Google Home continued its outperformance, answering 86% correctly and understanding all 800 questions. The HomePod correctly answered 75% and only misunderstood 3, the Echo correctly answered 73% and misunderstood 8 questions, and Cortana correctly answered 63% and misunderstood just 5 questions.

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At least 21 killed as bus crashes in Nepal's mountainous area AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 21, 2018, 9:00 pm)

Police said the bus carrying college students and teachers drove off a highway in a mountainous area.
India: Eight get life sentence for lynching Muslim cattle traders AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 21, 2018, 9:00 pm)

Families of the two victims, one a 12-year-old boy, say they won't give up on justice as those convicted plan appeal.
Can You Really Sue Fortnite For 'Stealing' Your Dance Moves? Slashdotby msmash on business at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 21, 2018, 8:35 pm)

The creator of the year's biggest game is facing a slew of lawsuits over its alleged use of famous dance moves. But will courts tap to the same tune? From a report: Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star Alfonso Ribeiro alleges that Fornite used his Carlton Dance, devised for a memorable episode of the hit US sitcom, without permission or credit. And earlier this week, Russell Horning, AKA the Backpack Kid, launched his own lawsuit claiming Epic breached copyright laws for including his signature dance move "The Floss." So while the copyright disco fills up and solicitors perform their (wallet) stretching exercises, the big question is: can you realistically copyright a dance move? The answer is yes. Kind of. It's complicated. "A dance can be protected under copyright law in England under the protection afforded to literary, dramatic or musical works (section 3 (2) of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act)," says Alex Tutty of specialist entertainment law firm Sheridans. "But copyright can subsist in it only when it is recorded in writing or otherwise. It doesn't just exist because you did the dance; it needs to be written down or filmed" This is handy for the Fortnite complainants, because there is video evidence of all of them performing their respective moves. However, it's not quite that easy. "There are all kinds of complexities in practice," says entertainment and tech industry lawyer, Jas Purewal of Purewal & Partners. "For example, who owns the dance -- the original creator, the dancers or the choreographer? How can they prove they actually created something new? How can they show that someone else actually infringed their dance and didn't independently come up with it? The law is pretty archaic, too. It's just not been an area that has had a lot of attention."

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Google Has a New Review Process For Handling Controversial Projects After Backlash O Slashdotby msmash on google at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 21, 2018, 7:35 pm)

In the wake of reports that Google didn't follow normal procedure in the development of a censored search product for China -- with execs said to have circumvented standard company procedures and shut out important legal and security staffers from deliberations -- the search giant has announced a revamping of its internal review processes. From a report: This week, Google announced that it has established a formal process to review new AI-based initiatives that involve sensitive policy questions. The review structure was announced as a part of the company's six-month update to its AI Principles that CEO Sundar Pichai released in June. According to the report, one hundred reviews have been conducted so far, including a review of its facial recognition technologies for developers -- which the company decided to sideline. "In a small number of product use-cases -- like a general-purpose facial recognition API -- we've decided to hold off on offering functionality before working through important technology and policy questions," Google wrote. A Google spokesperson told Business Insider that Project Dragonfly was not one of 100 projects referenced in the report and did not face the scrutiny of the newly announced review process.

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How Do Universities Prepare Graduates For Jobs That Don't Yet Exist? Slashdotby msmash on education at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 21, 2018, 7:05 pm)

Technological changes such as automation and artificial intelligence are expected to transform the employment landscape. The question is: will our education system keep up? From a report: The answer matters because an estimated 65% of children entering primary schools today will work in jobs and functions that don't currently exist, according to a recent Universities UK report. The research, which explores the "rapid pace of change and increasing complexity of work", also warns that the UK isn't even creating the workers that will be needed for the jobs that can be anticipated. By 2030, it will have a talent deficit of between 600,000 and 1.2 million workers in the financial and business sector, and technology, media and telecommunications sector. University leaders would be "foolish" not to pay attention, says Lancaster University vice-chancellor Mark E Smith. "We look at the trends in the job market and the skills employers are looking for, and we listen to what employers are saying. We don't want to be talking about yesterday's problem." This is one of the reasons the university is a partner in the National Institute of Coding. The programme, led by the University of Bath, is bringing 25 universities together with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and global companies including IBM, Cisco, BT and Microsoft to create "the next generation of digital specialists". Jordan Morrow, chair of the Data Literacy Project advisory board and global head of data literacy at US-based analytics firm Qlik, thinks that in a climate of uncertainty, universities should focus on developing the thing they have specialised in for centuries: critical thinking. "We need people who can give insight, not just observations," he says. Likewise, he says, the "softer" skills of communication and storytelling are vital. "The reality is that data scientists are trained to do very complex and complicated things with data, but their training is not necessarily in people skills or leadership. It becomes an issue when you have, say, a very intelligent data scientist who has put together an analysis, but doesn't know how to communicate it."

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Israeli forces kill Palestinian teen in Gaza protests: officials AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 21, 2018, 6:30 pm)

Mohammed al-Jahjouh, a 16-year-old demonstrator, was killed after being struck in the neck by Israeli army gunfire.
Lubuntu, a Popular Ubuntu Flavor, To Stop Providing 32-Bit Releases Slashdotby msmash on os at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 21, 2018, 6:05 pm)

Lubuntu, a popular Ubuntu flavor which announced earlier this year that it would stop supporting old hardware, is now dropping support for 32-bit x86 releases. BetaNews adds: "Lubuntu has been and continues to be the go-to Ubuntu flavor for people who want the most from their computers, especially older hardware that cannot handle today's workloads. However, the project and computing as a whole has drastically changed in many ways since its origin ten years ago. Computers have become faster, more secure, and most notably, have moved off of the traditional 32-bit i686 (generalized as i386 in Debian and Ubuntu) architecture," says Simon Quigley, Lubuntu. Quigley further says , "As an increasing number of Linux distributions have focused their attention on the 64-bit x86 architecture (amd64) and not on i386, we have found that it is harder to support than it once was. With i386-only machines becoming an artifact of the past, it has become increasingly clear to the Lubuntu Team that we need to evaluate its removal from the architectures we support. After careful consideration, we regret to inform our users that Lubuntu 19.04 and future versions will not see a release for the i386 architecture. Please do note that we will continue to support Lubuntu 18.04 LTS i386 users as a first-class citizen until its End of Life date in April of 2021."

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