Uncategorized Archives - Page 72 of 286

TikTok Says US Ban Inevitable Without a Court Order Blocking Law

TikTok and Chinese parent ByteDance on Thursday urged a U.S. court to strike down a law they say will ban the popular short app in the United States on Jan. 19, saying the U.S. government refused to engage in any serious settlement talks after 2022. From a report: Legislation signed in April by President Joe Biden gives ByteDance until Jan. 19 of next year to divest TikTok’s U.S. assets or face a ban on the app used by 170 million Americans. ByteDance says a divestiture is “not possible technologically, commercially, or legally.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hold oral arguments on lawsuits filed by TikTok and ByteDance along with TikTok users on Sept. 16. TikTok’s future in the United States may rest on the outcome of the case which could impact how the U.S. government uses its new authority to clamp down on foreign-owned apps. “This law is a radical departure from this country’s tradition of championing an open Internet, and sets a dangerous precedent allowing the political branches to target a disfavored speech platform and force it to sell or be shut down,” ByteDance and TikTok argue in asking the court to strike down the law.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

21 Jun

Car Dealerships Hit With Massive Computer System Outage

An anonymous reader shares a report: CDK Global, the company that provides management software for nearly 15,000 car dealerships in North America, is down for a second day following a cyberattack, according to a report from Automotive News. The outage has left car dealerships across North America unable to access the internal systems used to track car sales, view customer information, schedule maintenance, and more.

On Wednesday, CDK Global told dealerships that it’s “investigating a cyber incident” and “proactively shut all systems down” while addressing the issue. However, as reported by Automotive News, CDK Global restored its systems shortly after, only to shut them down hours later due to “an additional cyber incident.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

20 Jun

Greener Is Getting Going

We’ve reached a tipping point where we’ve got a cleaner alternative for most transport. Now we have to commit.

20 Jun

17 Management and City-Building Games for Armchair Tycoons

These building- and resource-based simulations are perfect for single-player fun and relaxation.

20 Jun

Adobe Says It Won’t Train AI Using Artists’ Work. Creatives Aren’t Convinced

Adobe has issued new wording to explain how users’ content will be treated, after a backlash earlier this month from artists who believed their work will be used to train AI.

20 Jun

Plan for New Accounting Rules on Software Costs Moves Forward

U.S. companies may need to report cash amounts tied to their software expenditures, more of which would be moved off corporate balance sheets under a forthcoming proposal to update decades-old accounting rules. From a report: The Financial Accounting Standards Board voted Tuesday, 7-0, to propose requiring companies to report cash amounts tied to their software costs and help them determine when to expense or capitalize costs. The proposal is a scaled-back version of rule-making around these expenses. The standard setter wants to require U.S. public and private companies to provide a line item in their cash-flow statement to account for cash spending on software. Rules around software costs have gone largely unchanged since the 1980s and 1990s.

The proposal would cover use of software ranging from enterprise resource planning systems to hosting services and mobile banking applications, meaning it applies to almost every company. It would exclude development of software licensed to customers. Under the plan, companies would no longer have to evaluate the stage of their software project to determine whether to expense the costs on the income statement or to capitalize, or delay fully recognizing them, on the balance sheet. Companies are now required to expense their software costs as incurred on the income statement during the initial planning and post-implementation stages. When building the programs or applications, companies have to capitalize eligible costs. These current requirements involve significant judgment for companies, creating higher compliance costs. Instead, companies would only have to determine when to begin capitalizing software costs based on executives’ signoff for a project and the likelihood that the project will be completed and the software will carry out its intended use.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

20 Jun

FedEx’s Secretive Police Force Is Helping Cops Build An AI Car Surveillance Network

Twenty years ago, FedEx established its own police force. Now it’s working with local police to build out an AI car surveillance network. From a report: Forbes has learned the shipping and business services company is using AI tools made by Flock Safety, a $4 billion car surveillance startup, to monitor its distribution and cargo facilities across the United States. As part of the deal, FedEx is providing its Flock video surveillance feeds to law enforcement, an arrangement that Flock has with at least five multi-billion dollar private companies. But publicly available documents reveal that some local police departments are also sharing their Flock feeds with FedEx — a rare instance of a private company availing itself of a police surveillance apparatus.

To civil rights activists, such close collaboration has the potential to dramatically expand Flock’s car surveillance network, which already spans 4,000 cities across over 40 states and some 40,000 cameras that track vehicles by license plate, make, model, color and other identifying characteristics, like dents or bumper stickers. Lisa Femia, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said because private entities aren’t subject to the same transparency laws as police, this sort of arrangement could “[leave] the public in the dark, while at the same time expanding a sort of mass surveillance network.”