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Americans Hate ISPs Almost As Much As They Hate Gas Stations, Survey Finds Published on June 27, 2023 at 04:30AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from ExtremeTech: Americans hate their internet service providers (ISPs) more than any other segment of the consumer economy -- except gas stations. A fresh set of rankings from the American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) reveals that few consumers are happy with the way their ISPs conduct business, preferring them only over trips to the pump in a list of 43 major industries. The rankings come courtesy of the ACSI's most recent telecommunications study, which the organization publishes annually. The study covers subscription TV services, video streaming services, and ISPs of both the fiber and non-fiber variety. Using interviews with 22,061 American consumers conducted between April 2022 and March 2023, this year's telecommunications study investigates just how happy people are with their ISPs, then pits that data against tha...

Meta Launches VR Subscription Service Published on June 27, 2023 at 03:50AM Meta has introduced a new VR subscription service called Meta Quest+ that costs $7.99 a month. Subscribers will get access to two new games each month, which they can play as long as the subscription is active. CNBC reports: Meta Quest+ costs $7.99 a month and is compatible with the Quest 2, the Quest Pro and the upcoming Quest 3. The subscription service marks Meta's latest effort to generate recurring revenue from its Reality Labs unit, which is developing virtual reality and augmented reality technologies. New games will launch for Meta Quest+ subscribers on the first of each month. The games can be played as long as the subscription is active. In July, subscribers will get the games "Pixel Ripped 1995" and "Pistol Whip." Users will then receive "Walkabout Mini Golf" from Mighty Coconut and "Mothergunship: Forge" from Terrible Posture Games in August. Meta Quest+...

Congress Sets Limits On Staff ChatGPT Use Published on June 27, 2023 at 03:10AM In a memo to House staffers this morning, the chamber's Chief Administrative Officer Catherine L. Szpindor said it is placing new guardrails around use of ChatGPT by congressional offices. Axios reports: Szpindor wrote that offices are "only authorized" to use the paid ChatGPT Plus. Unlike the free service, she said, the $20-per-month subscription version "incorporates important privacy features that are necessary to protect House data." She said in addition to other versions of ChatGPT, no other large language models are authorized for use. Szpindor also laid out an array of regulations on how to use the tool. Offices are allowed to use the tool for "research and evaluation only" and can experiment on how it can improve their operations, but are "not authorized to incorporate it into regular workflow." Offices should only input "non-sensitive" data, s...

Twitter Hacker Who Turned Celebrity Accounts Into Crypto Shills Gets Prison Sentence Published on June 27, 2023 at 02:30AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: One of the cybercriminals behind 2020's major Twitter hack was sentenced to five years in U.S. federal prison on Friday. Joseph O'Connor (AKA "PlugwalkJoe"), a 24-year-old British citizen, previously pleaded guilty to seven charges associated with the digital attack. He was arrested in Spain in 2021 and extradited to the U.S. in April of this year. In addition to the five years of jail time, O'Connor was also sentenced to three additional years under supervised release and ordered to pay back more than $790,000 in illicitly obtained funds, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York. Previously, Graham Ivan Clark, another one of the hackers involved who was 17 at the time of the attack, pleaded guilty to related charges and was sentence...

'Last Minute' Law Change Bid in Ireland To 'Muzzle' Critics of Data Protection Commission Published on June 27, 2023 at 01:48AM A "last-minute" government amendment to a bill is an effort to "muzzle" critics of the Data Protection Commission (DPC) and will make the commission's decision-making "even more opaque," a civil liberties group has claimed. From a report: The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has urged all parties in the Dail to challenge the proposed amendment to the Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2022 when it comes up for final debate on Wednesday. The amendment provides that the Commission may direct information deemed by it to be confidential not be disclosed. Failure to comply with a non-disclosure notice issued by the commission will be an offence liable on summary conviction to a $5,450 fine. Dr Johnny Ryan of the ICCL said the amendment "will gag people from speaking about how the DPC handle...

Amazon Launches Local Business Delivery Network Published on June 27, 2023 at 12:42AM Amazon plans to tap thousands of U.S. small businesses, from bodegas to florists, to deliver its packages by the end of the year. From a report: Amazon on Monday will start actively recruiting existing small businesses in 23 states including Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, South Dakota, and Washington. At least 20 dense cities across the country, including Boston, New York, Los Angeles and Seattle, will be targeted by the program. The company is interested in working with a wide range of businesses such as florists, coffee shops, clothing stores, among others. Amazon notes they don't need delivery experience to make the partnership work. Dubbed Amazon Hub Delivery, this is the tech and logistics giant's latest attempt to expand its "last mile" network -- the ...

Linux Foundation Celebrates Zephyr Project's Small Real-Time Operating System Published on June 26, 2023 at 08:07AM This week the Linux Foundation shared an update on the Zephyr Project, a small real-time operating system for connected, resource-constrained and embedded devices: The project recently achieved several milestones including surpassing 80,000 commits since it was released in open source in 2015. This is an average of almost 2 commits per hour, which was made recently by 490 individuals, including 166 first-timers, who contributed to the 3.4 release. Zephyr RTOS supports over 450 boards running embedded microcontrollers from Arm and RISC-V to Tensilica, NIOS, ARC and x86 as single and multicore systems... Zephyr RTOS has a growing set of software libraries that can be used across various applications and industry sectors such as Industrial IoT, wearables, machine learning and more. It is built with an emphasis on broad chipset support, security, dependability, long-ter...