ICT news

• AT&T Announces $1 Billion Fiber Deal With Corning

  28-10-2024 23:50 via slashdot.org
  
  AT&T has signed a $1 billion multi-year deal with Corning to acquire fiber and connectivity solutions. Reuters reports: With the U.S. wireless market facing a slowdown, telecom companies such as AT&T and rival Verizon have doubled down on their high-speed internet businesses, an area that has long been dominated by broadband companies such as Comcast. Demand has also been growing for AT&T's plans that allow customers to combine its high-speed fiber data with its wireless phone servic
  
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• Apple Intelligence Is Out Today

  28-10-2024 23:10 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Apple's AI features are finally starting to appear. Apple Intelligence is launching today on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, offering features like generative AI-powered writing tools, notification summaries, and a cleanup tool to take distractions out of photos. It's Apple's first official step into the AI era, but it'll be far from its last. Apple Intelligence has been available in developer and public beta builds of Apple's operating systems for
  
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• A Million People Play This Video Wargame. So Does the Pentagon.

  28-10-2024 22:30 via games.slashdot.org
  
  A commercial military simulation software, originally inspired by Tom Clancy novels, has become an unexpected tool for military training across NATO forces and defense analysts worldwide. Command: Professional Edition, developed by Britain's Slitherine Software, has secured contracts with the U.S. Air Force and British Strategic Command, while Taiwanese analysts use it to war-game potential conflicts with China.
  The software's success stems from its vast database of military equipment and capabi
  
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• Britain To Axe Up To 1.5 Million Lampposts

  28-10-2024 21:50 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report:Around 1.5 million of Britain's 7.2 million lampposts could be removed to save money and reduce carbon emissions and replaced with lighting that will make it safer for pedestrians.
  Under existing rules, there is no requirement to light pavements for pedestrians. They are only lit because light spills over from lampposts, which were principally installed to make it safer for motorists. But today's cars have such effective headlights that lampposts, which are ge
  
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• Microsoft Calls Out Google For Running 'Shadow Campaigns' in Europe To Influence Regulators

  28-10-2024 21:05 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft took the unusual step on Monday of publicly criticizing longtime rival Google for running "shadow campaigns" in Europe designed to discredit the software giant with regulators. CNBC: Microsoft lawyer Rima Alaily wrote in a blog post that Google hired a firm to recruit European cloud companies to represent the search company's case. "This week an astroturf group organized by Google is launching," Microsoft lawyer Rima Alaily wrote in a blog post. "It is designed to discredit Microsoft w
  
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• Apple's New Mouse Retains Flawed Charging Design

  28-10-2024 20:30 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple has maintained the controversial bottom-charging design in its new $79-$99 USB-C Magic Mouse, released alongside the new iMac Tuesday, despite years of customer criticism. The port location, unchanged since 2015, renders the mouse unusable while charging.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Private Equity Hipsters Are Coming for Your Favorite Apps

  28-10-2024 19:50 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Italian technology firm Bending Spoons has emerged as an unconventional private equity player, acquiring struggling tech companies and dramatically restructuring them for profitability, most notably with its purchase of note-taking app Evernote.
  The Milan-based company, valued at $2.6 billion, has acquired six companies since 2022, including WeTransfer and Meetup's assets. CEO Luca Ferrari has told investors the company could deploy up to $2 billion for future acquisitions. Bending Spoons typica
  
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• We Finally Have an 'Official' Definition For Open Source AI

  28-10-2024 19:10 via news.slashdot.org
  
  There's finally an "official" definition of open source AI. The Open Source Initiative (OSI), a long-running institution aiming to define and "steward" all things open source, today released version 1.0 of its Open Source AI Definition (OSAID). TechCrunch: The product of several years of collaboration with academia and industry, the OSAID is intended to offer a standard by which anyone can determine whether AI is open source -- or not. You might be wondering why consensus matters for a definitio
  
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• Birth Rate in England and Wales Plunges To Lowest Level Since 1938

  28-10-2024 18:22 via news.slashdot.org
  
  England and Wales have recorded their lowest birth rate since records began in 1938, with women having an average of 1.44 children in 2023, official data showed on Monday. The figure falls well below the 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain a stable population without migration in developed nations, the Office for National Statistics reported.
  The rate has declined steadily since 2010. The steepest drops occurred among women under 30, with new mothers in 2023 averaging almost a year older t
  
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• Meta Develops AI Search Engine To Lessen Reliance on Google, Microsoft

  28-10-2024 17:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: As Meta tries to keep up with OpenAI in developing AI, the Facebook owner is working on a search engine [non-paywalled link] that crawls the web to provide conversational answers about current events to people using its Meta AI chatbot.
  In doing so, Meta hopes to lower its reliance on Google Search and Microsoft's Bing, which currently provide information about news, sports and stocks to people using Meta AI, according to a person who has spoken with the sear
  
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• Apple Updates the iMac With M4 Chip

  28-10-2024 17:08 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple has updated the iMac lineup with an M4 chip. The new iMac, announced this morning, includes an M4 chip with an 8-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU. The entry-level model costs $1,299 with two Thunderbolt USB-C 4 ports, while the higher-end models start at $1,499 and have four ports. The Verge: It's also bundled with accessories that now use USB-C charging ports instead of Lightning. Like the prior model, the new iMac has a 24-inch, 4.5K display. However, Apple is offering a new "nano-textur
  
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• Researchers Say AI Tool Used in Hospitals Invents Things No One Ever Said

  28-10-2024 16:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  AmiMoJo shares a report: Tech behemoth OpenAI has touted its artificial intelligence-powered transcription tool Whisper as having near "human level robustness and accuracy." But Whisper has a major flaw: It is prone to making up chunks of text or even entire sentences, according to interviews with more than a dozen software engineers, developers and academic researchers.
  Those experts said some of the invented text -- known in the industry as hallucinations -- can include racial commentary, viol
  
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• Banks and Regulators Warn of Rise in 'Quishing' QR Code Scams

  28-10-2024 15:50 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Banks and regulators are warning that QR code phishing scams -- also known as "quishing" -- are slipping through corporate cyber defences and increasingly tricking customers into giving up their financial details. From a report: Lenders including Santander, HSBC, and TSB have joined the UK National Cyber Security Centre and US Federal Trade Commission among others to raise concerns about a rise in fraudulent QR codes being deployed for sophisticated fraud campaigns.
  The new type of email scam of
  
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• Apple Banned From Selling iPhone 16 in Indonesia

  28-10-2024 15:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Indonesia has banned sales of Apple's iPhone 16, citing the tech giant's failure to meet local investment requirements, the country's Ministry of Industry said. The ministry said Apple's local unit has not fulfilled the mandatory 40% local content threshold for smartphones, making imported iPhone 16 units illegal for sale in Southeast Asia's largest economy.
  About 9,000 iPhone 16 devices have entered Indonesia through passenger luggage since last month's launch. "These phones entered legally, bu
  
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• Raspberry Pi Launches Its Own Branded SD Cards and SSDs - Plus SSD Kits

  28-10-2024 12:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the blog OMG Ubuntu:Having recently announced is own range of Raspberry Pi-branded SD cards (with support for command queuing on the Pi 5 and reliable read/write speeds) the company is now offering its own range of branded Raspberry Pi SSDs... And for those who don't have an M.2 expansion board? Well, that's where the new Raspberry Pi SSD Kit comes in. It bundles the official M.2 HAT+ with an SSD for an all-in-one, ready-to-roll solution.
  Eben Upton ex
  
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• SpaceX's Competitors Scramble to Try to Build Reusable Rockets

  28-10-2024 08:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  When SpaceX developed reusable boosters for its Falcon rockets, it helped cut costs of launches.Now the Wall Street Journal reports that last week's first-time catch of "its huge Starship booster" could "extend SpaceX's cost advantages, especially in launches to low-Earth orbit, where SpaceX and others operate satellites."
  A fully and rapidly reusable Starship would push down SpaceX's costs by limiting the need to crank out new hardware and cutting downtime between flights, space industry execut
  
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• Instagram (and Meta) Throttle Video Quality as Views Go Down

  28-10-2024 05:44 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the Verge:Ever wondered why some of your Instagram videos tend to look blurry, while others are crisp and sharp? It's because, on Instagram, the quality of your video apparently depends on how many views it's getting.
  Here's part of Mosseri's explanation, from the video, which was reposted by a Threads user today. "In general, we want to show the highest-quality video we can ... But if something isn't watched for a long time — because the vast ma
  
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• The Search for Room-Temperature Superconductivity is Continuing

  28-10-2024 03:15 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Communications of the ACM checks in on the quest for room-temperature superconductivity. "Time and time again, physicists have announced breakthroughs that were later found to be irreproducible, in error, or even fraudulent."
  But "The issue is once again simmering..."
  In January 2024, a group of researchers from Europe and South America announced they had achieved a milestone in room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductivity. Using Scotch-taped cleaved pyrolytic graphite with surface wrinkl
  
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• Can the EU Hold Software Makers Liable For Negligence?

  28-10-2024 01:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  When it comes to introducing liability for software products, "the EU and U.S. are taking very different approaches," according to Lawfare's cybersecurity newsletter. "While the U.S. kicks the can down the road, the EU is rolling a hand grenade down it to see what happens."Under the status quo, the software industry is extensively protected from liability for defects or issues, and this results in systemic underinvestment in product security. Authorities believe that by making software companies
  
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• There's a Big Problem with Return-to-Office Mandates: Enforcing Them

  28-10-2024 00:22 via it.slashdot.org
  
  "Friction between bosses and their employees over the terms of their return shows no signs of abating," reports the Los Angeles Times.But there's one big loophole...
  About 80% of organizations have put in place return-to-office policies, but in a sign that many managers are reluctant to clamp down on the flexibility employees have become accustomed to, only 17% of those organizations actively enforce their policies, according to recent research by real estate brokerage CBRE. "Some organizations
  
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