Computers & Linux News

Today's Best Savings Rates: Dec. 13, 2023 -- APYs for High-Yield Savings Accounts Top 5.35%   - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 10:00
Now’s a great time to open a high-yield savings account, while rates remain high.

Snag Apple's M1 iPad Pro With Over 30% Off at Woot - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 09:53
This 2021 Apple tablet has a 12.9-inch display, an M1 processor, cellular connectivity and you can pick it up for $810 right now.

Should I Save Money or Pay Off Debt First?  - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 09:51
Paying down debt while saving money is possible. But you need to understand the ins and outs of your finances first.

Today's Best CD Rates: Dec. 13, 2023 -- Earn 5.5% APY or More With These Top Accounts - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 09:30
CD rates can vary drastically. Here are some of the best ones you can get today.

UK Proposes Capping Some Visa, Mastercard Fees

SlashDot - Wed, 2023-12-13 09:00
Regulators in the UK are weighing a cap on some of the fees that Visa and Mastercard charge local merchants for each card transaction, seeking to rein in charges that have risen fivefold since Brexit. From a report: After a monthslong review, the UK's Payment Systems Regulator said it's concerned that the payment giants have no effective competition, especially when it comes to the interchange fees they charge UK merchants when a consumer carrying a card issued by a bank in the European Economic Area makes an online purchase. For now, the PSR is proposing to restore those fees to the pre-Brexit levels of 0.3% of a purchase price for credit cards and 0.2% for debit cards. For credit cards, those fees have risen in recent years to as high as 1.5% and the PSR estimated that the increases cost UK businesses as much as $250 million last year. The two companies have been under fire from a bevy of regulators and lawmakers around the world for the fees they charge. While it usually amounts to just pennies per purchase, the fees do add up: US merchants spent a record $160.7 billion on swipe fees last year, up 16.7% from 2021, according to the Nilson Report, an industry publication.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bose Speakers Are Discounted Up to 30% at Amazon Right Now - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 08:44
Big savings on Bose speakers is music to our ears. Snag some of our favorite Bose speakers for less with these holiday deals.

Best Streaming Services for Reality TV - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 08:15
Here's a breakdown of the best platforms for streaming your favorite reality hits on demand.

Grammarly Review: Not Your Mother's Spell Checker - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 08:05
Grammarly has many cool features, but you might need to invest in a paid plan to get the most value.

How to Leave Any Group Chat on an iPhone or Android Phone - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 08:00
Whether you're using iMessage, RCS or plain-old MMS, you can leave, or at least silence and hide, any kind of text conversation from your phone. Here's how.

Samsung Galaxy AI on the Galaxy S24: Everything We Know So Far - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 08:00
Samsung's new premium smartphones may get an AI boost.

Best Men's Hiking and Adventure Boots for 2024 - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 08:00
From stylish leather boots for urban exploration to waterproof fabric boots for hill walks, we've got great hiking footwear options to consider.

iOS 17.2: How to Stop Inline Predictive Text When You're Typing - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 08:00
Inline predictive text can be helpful, but some might find it annoying.

The Best Laptops and Tablets to Gift this Holiday video - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 08:00
Here are our top picks for work, school, gaming and personal devices.

Best Internet Providers in Virginia - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 08:00
What broadband providers are available in Old Dominion? CNET helps you explore cheap, fast and rural internet options.

Best Internet Providers in Minneapolis - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 08:00
Are you searching for internet service in the City of Lakes? CNET helps you compare your options, from speed to affordability to the best value.

AI Helps Chipmakers Design the Very Processors That Speed Up AI - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 08:00
Artificial intelligence helps Intel squeeze the most out of the design and manufacturing of its new Meteor Lake processor that arrives Thursday.

Study Shows 38% of Java Apps Still Affected By Log4Shell

SlashDot - Wed, 2023-12-13 08:00
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Two years after the Log4Shell vulnerability in the open source Java-based Log4j logging utility was disclosed, circa one in four applications are dependent on outdated libraries, leaving them open to exploitation. Research from security shop Veracode revealed that the vast majority of vulnerable apps may never have updated the Log4j library after it was implemented by developers as 32 percent were running pre-2015 EOL versions. Prior investigations from Veracode also showed that 79 percent of all developers never update third-party libraries after first introducing them into projects, and given that Log4j2 -- the specific version of Log4j affected by the vulnerability -- dates back to 2014, this could explain the large proportion of unpatched apps. A far smaller minority are running versions that were vulnerable at the time of the Log4j vulnerability's disclosure in December 2021. Only 2.8 percent are still using versions 2.0-beta9 through 2.15.0 -- post-EOL versions that remain exposed to Log4Shell, the industry-coined moniker of the vulnerability's exploit. Some 3.8 percent are still running version 2.17, a post-patch version of the Java logger that's not exposed to Log4Shell attacks, but is vulnerable to a separate remote code execution (RCE) bug (CVE-2021-44832). The researchers believe this illustrates a minority of developers that acted quickly when the vulnerability was first disclosed, as was the advice at the time, had returned to older habits of leaving libraries untouched. Altogether, just shy of 35 percent remain vulnerable to Log4Shell, and nearly 40 percent are vulnerable to RCE flaws. The EOL versions of Log4j are also vulnerable to three additional critical bugs announced by Apache, bringing the total to seven high and critical-rated issues. "At a surface level, the numbers above show that the massive effort to remediate the Log4Shell vulnerability was effective in mitigating risk of exploitation of the zero-day vulnerability. That should not be surprising," said Chris Eng, chief research officer at Veracode. "The bigger story at the two-year anniversary, however, is that there is still room for improvement when it comes to open source software security. If Log4Shell was another example in a long series of wake-up calls to adopt more stringent open source security practices, the fact that more than one in three applications currently run vulnerable versions of Log4j shows there is more work to do. "The major takeaway here is that organizations may not be aware of how much open source security risk they are exposed to and how to mitigate it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Refinance Rates for Dec. 13, 2023: Rates Retreat - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 06:46
Several key refinance rates trended down this week. Higher mortgage rates have affected the refinance market.

Mortgage Rates for Dec. 13, 2023: Rates Retreat - CNET

CNET News - Wed, 2023-12-13 06:46
This week, some notable mortgage rates ticked downward. While interest rates remain elevated, it's more expensive to buy a house.

OpenAI's Nonprofit Arm Showed Revenue of $45,000 Last Year

SlashDot - Wed, 2023-12-13 05:00
Despite being valued at $86 billion by private investors, OpenAI reported $44,485 in revenue in 2022, almost entirely from investment income. CNBC reports: That's from the nonprofit parent's 990 filing with the Internal Revenue Service, a form that has to be filled out by organizations wishing to maintain their tax-exempt status. Federal standards don't require audited financial statements from nonprofits. In its home state of California, OpenAI was able to avoid submitting audited financials for 2022 because the foundation's stated revenue was below the $2 million reporting threshold. The last time OpenAI filed with the state was 2017, when revenue was $33.2 million, or more than 700 times what the foundation reported for 2022. For all its talk of openness, OpenAI's financials remain a black box. Created as a nonprofit in 2015, OpenAI launched a so-called capped-profit entity in 2019, enabling it to raise billions of dollars in outside funding and attain attributes of a tech startup, such as the ability to hand out equity to employees. The for-profit side of the house went on to develop ChatGPT, the chatbot that took the world by storm late last year and kicked off the generative AI boom. [...] Thad Calabrese, a professor of public and nonprofit financial management at New York University, said OpenAI's current status is confusing, and is unlike anything he has seen in the nonprofit world. He said OpenAI could give up its nonprofit status, and he cited the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, which in 1994 allowed associated nonprofit medical insurance plans to switch into for-profit entities. "There's no real need to have the nonprofit," Calabrese said. "If you want to be a startup, be a startup." Regarding OpenAI's reporting with the IRS, he said "fundamentally you can't really get a holistic sense of these organizations when you don't have consolidated financial statements."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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