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The Securities and Exchange Commission is suing former MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe and Ted Farnsworth, the former CEO of MoviePass' parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY), alleging they mislead investors that the company could make a profit at its $10-a-month plan. From a report: A complaint filed late Monday, reviewed by Insider, said the duo made "false or misleading statements" in financial filings and in the press. "Faced with debilitating negative cash flows -- rather than tell the public the truth -- Farnsworth and Lowe devised fraudulent tactics to prevent MoviePass's heavy users from using the service, and falsely and misleadingly informed the public that usage had declined naturally or due to measures the company had employed to combat subscribers' purported violations of MoviePass's terms and conditions of service," the complaint said. The lawsuit also named former MoviePass Vice President Khalid Itum as a defendant. The complaint accused Itum of submitting false invoices and receiving more than $310,000 from both MoviePass and HMNY.

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Not only did the company fail to protect their data, the suit alleges, it also forced users to register

A class action lawsuit has accused Samsung of failing to address a data breach in early 2022, leading to the theft of US customers' personally identifiable information (PII) in a second attack earlier this month.…

Intel has announced an intriguing new app called Unison, which aims to "seamlessly" connect Intel-powered computers to smartphones -- not just Android phones but iOS devices as well. From a report: Following what Intel says is a "simple pairing process," the Unison app will allow PCs to replicate four key features of the connected phone. They can answer and make calls; they can share photos and files (pictures taken with the phone will show up in a specific Unison gallery on the PC); they can send and receive texts; and they can receive (and, in some cases, respond to) notifications that the phone receives -- though if Unison is closed, they'll go to the Windows notification center. "The advantage we can bring to a PC user that's got a well-designed Windows PC is not having to choose their device based on the PC they have. They have an iPhone, they have an Android phone, any device they want to use will be able to connect with this capability," Josh Newman, Intel's VP of mobile innovation, told The Verge. "When you're ... on your laptop, and you get notifications or texts on your phone, you can keep it in your bag and get right back into the flow of your work."

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Amazon's already said no to country-by-country breakdown

Cisco has urged its shareholders to vote against a proposal asking for the company to publish a tax transparency report that breaks down where it pays its taxes on a country-by-country basis.…

Codenamed Raptor Lake, Intel says it has made some improvements to the CPU architecture and the Intel 7 manufacturing process, but the strategy for improving their performance is both time-tested and easy to understand: add more cores, and make them run at higher clock speeds. From a report: Intel is announcing three new CPUs today, each with and without integrated graphics (per usual, the models with no GPUs have an "F" at the end): the Core i9-13900K, Core i7-13700K, and Core i5-13600K will launch on October 20 alongside new Z790 chipsets and motherboards. They will also work in all current-generation 600-series motherboards as long as your motherboard maker has provided a BIOS update, and will continue to support both DDR4 and DDR5 memory. Raptor Lake uses the hybrid architecture that Intel introduced in its 12th-generation Alder Lake chips last year -- a combination of large performance cores (P-cores) that keep games and other performance-sensitive applications running quickly, plus clusters of smaller efficiency cores (E-cores) that use less power -- though in our testing across laptops and desktops, it's clear that "efficiency" is more about the number of cores can be fit into a given area on a CPU die, and less about lower overall system power consumption. There have been a handful of other additions as well. The amount of L2 cache per core has been nearly doubled, going from 1.25MB to 2MB per P-core and from 2MB to 4MB per E-core cluster (E-cores always come in clusters of four). The CPUs will officially support DDR5-5600 RAM, up from a current maximum of DDR5-4800, though that DDR5-4800 maximum can easily be surpassed with XMP memory kits in 12th-generation motherboards. The maximum officially supported DDR4 RAM speed remains DDR4-3200, though the caveat about XMP applies there as well. As far as core counts and frequencies go, the Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs each pick up one extra E-core cluster, going from four E-cores to eight. The Core i9 gets two new E-core clusters, boosting the core count from eight all the way up to 16. All E-cores have maximum boost clocks that are 400MHz higher than they were before.

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India, Tukey and UAE subsidaries set up slush funds to bribe 'foreign officials', says Commission

Oracle has paid $23 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission over corruption charges that subsidiaries in Turkey, United Arab Emirates and India used “slush funds” to bribe foreign officials to win business.…

A group of more than a dozen companies launched an organization to advocate for less-restrictive software licensing rules, targeting cloud providers like Microsoft, whose contract policies have been under fire from rivals, customers and lawmakers. From a report: The Coalition for Fair Software Licensing argues that software agreements need to be more flexible and predictable for customers, including allowing the use of cloud services and programs from different providers. "Cloud customers around the world have long been subjected to repeated financial harm as a result of legacy providers' restrictive software licensing practices," said Ryan Triplette, executive director of the new association, which was announced on Tuesday. The group's member companies, coming from industries including health care, financial services and technology, are remaining anonymous for now due to fear of retaliation, she said in an interview. Microsoft, Oracle and other software giants have been criticized by competitors and clients for limiting the interoperability of products and services, sometimes making it more expensive to use them with rival offerings or prohibiting it entirely.

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X86 giant's 24-core i9 doubles as a space heater

Intel doubled down on "more power is better" with the launch of its 13th-gen Core processors at its Innovation event this week. With a 253W thermal design power (TDP) for its latest i9 and i7 desktop processors, water cooling might as well be a requirement.…

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission should investigate how data brokers including Equifax and Experian have amassed payroll records about most Americans, a small rival urged in a letter to the agency on Monday that was seen by Reuters. From the report: For decades, companies such as Equifax have acquired employee work histories and compensation data from employers to help lenders, landlords, hiring managers and other customers perform background checks of individuals. But these big databases are vulnerable to theft and error, and workers are sometimes surprised their records are included, according to privacy activists. Equifax said it follows all laws and welcomes additional voices in the industry. In the letter to the FTC, San Mateo, California-based startup Certree said that Equifax and Experian are providing financial incentives like a slice of their revenue to employers to gain exclusive access to payroll data. Equifax also has deals with payroll software vendors that help employers process paychecks. The letter describes the agreements as anticompetitive and potentially unlawful.

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TrendForce: Hope for cheaper consumer SSDs intensifies

Most manufacturers of NAND flash can expect to see their products cross into loss territory before the end of this year, according to researchers at TrendForce.…

Alex Mashinsky -- chief executive and cofounder of bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network -- is stepping down. From a report: Mr. Mashinsky submitted his letter of resignation to the Special Committee of the Board of Directors on Tuesday, according to Mr. Mashinsky's law firm "I regret that my continued role as CEO has become an increasing distraction, and I am very sorry about the difficult financial circumstances members of our community are facing," Mr. Mashinsky said in his resignation letter. Mr. Mashinsky launched Celsius in 2017 with two partners, often pitching it as a safer and better alternative than traditional banks. Celsius had the same basic model as a consumer bank -- such as taking deposits and making loans -- though it paid far more on deposits than a federally regulated bank. In less than five years, Celsius grew into one of the biggest crypto lenders, with more than $20 billion in assets at its peak, the company said last year. That all changed when cryptocurrency started plunging this year. In June, Celsius paused all withdrawals and filed for bankruptcy in July, saying that it owed customers nearly $4.7 billion in crypto.

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Russian cybercriminals were also caught targeting Europe with anti-Ukraine messages

Meta says it has disrupted a misinformation network targeting US politics ahead of the 2022 midterm elections and one that sought to influence public opinion in Europe about the conflict in Ukraine.…

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell ramped up his criticism of decentralized finance on Tuesday, saying the monetary policy normalization worldwide has "revealed significant structural issues in the DeFi ecosystem" and exposed "conflict of interest," as he called for more appropriate regulation. From a report: "Within the DeFi ecosystem, there are these very significant transparency, lack of transparency [issues]," he said at a conference hosted by the Banque of France. From the financial stability standpoint, Powell said, "the interaction between the DeFi ecosystem and traditional banking system and traditional financial system is not that large at this point. So we were able to witness the DeFi winter that did not have significant impacts on the banking system and broader financial stability. That's a good thing. I think it demonstrates the weaknesses in, and the work that needs to do be done around regulation carefully and thoughtfully. It gives us a little bit of time, but that situation will not persist indefinitely. Ultimately that's not a stable equilibrium and we need to be very careful about how crypto activities are taken within regulatory parameter. In any case, wherever they take place, there is a real need for more appropriate regulation so that as DeFi expands and starts to touch more retail customers, more appropriate regulation is in place."

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Performance-killing workaround rediscovered after 20 years

An ancient fix for power management issues on AMD systems has been reducing Linux's performance since 2002. Now it's gone.…

Security tool warns admins and users when a password is used on an untrusted site or stored locally

In the latest version of Windows 11, Microsoft is introducing a feature in its Microsoft Defender SmartScreen tool designed to keep passwords safer.…

My friends say I should act my wage. What's my wage again?

Young professionals are railing against drops in living standards and stagnant wages by becoming "quiet quitters" unless a pay rise or promotion is possible.…

The Beast of the Middle East: up to 20 times faster than predecessor, that's 884,736 CPU cores across the system

HPE has won a project to build a supercomputer in Saudi Arabia that is expected to be the most powerful in the Middle East, used for advancing research in fields such as food, water, energy and the environment.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Ukrainian government on Monday warned that the Kremlin is planning to carry out "massive cyberattacks" targeting power grids and other critical infrastructure in Ukraine and in the territories of its allies. "By the cyberattacks, the enemy will try to increase the effect of missile strikes on electricity supply facilities, primarily in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine," an advisory warned. "The occupying command is convinced that this will slow down the offensive operations of the Ukrainian Defence Forces." Monday's advisory alluded to two cyberattacks the Russian government carried out -- first in 2015 and then almost exactly one year later -- that deliberately left Ukrainians without power during one of the coldest months of the year. The attacks were seen as a proof-of-concept and test ground of sorts for disrupting Ukraine's power supply. "The experience of cyberattacks on Ukraine's energy systems in 2015 and 2016 will be used when conducting operations," the Ukrainian government said on Monday. It's hard to assess the chances of a successful hacking campaign against Ukraine's power grids. Earlier this year, Ukraine's CERT-UA said it successfully detected a new strain of Industroyer inside the network of a regional Ukrainian energy firm. Industroyer2 reportedly was able to temporarily switch off power to nine electrical substations but was stopped before a major blackout could be triggered. [...] But researchers from Mandiant and elsewhere also note that Sandworm, the name for the Kremlin-backed group behind the power grid hacks, is among the most elite hacking groups in the world. They are known for stealth, persistence, and remaining hidden inside targeted organizations for months or even years before surfacing. Besides an attack on electrical grids, Monday's advisory also warned of other forms of disruptions the country expected Russia to ramp up. "The Kremlin also intends to increase the intensity of DDoS attacks on the critical infrastructure of Ukraine's closest allies, primarily Poland and the Baltic states," the advisory stated. "We don't have any direct knowledge or data to make an assessment on Ukraine's capability to defend its grid, but we do know that CERT-UA stopped the deployment of INDUSTROYER.V2 malware that targeted Ukraine's electric substations earlier this year," Chris Sistrunk, technical manager of Mandiant Industrial Control Systems Consulting, wrote in an email. "Based on that, and what we know about the Ukrainian people's overall resolve, it's increasingly clear that one of the reasons cyberattacks in Ukraine have been dampened is because its defenders are very aggressive and very good at confronting Russian actors."

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Adds new heads to boardroom too but still not word on destination of flotation

Chip designer Arm has made a flurry of boardroom appointments ahead of its IPO later this year, including hiring a new Chief Financial Officer with experience taking companies public.…

But you'll need to buy lots of new hardware to get the benefit

Analysis As it rolled out the laundry list of new features in Windows 11, version 22H2 this week, Microsoft also unveiled the configuration baseline that systems will have to meet to take advantage of the latest security capabilities.…