ICT news

• Russia Admits Its Homegrown Consoles Can't Match the PS5 or Xbox Series

  31-12-2024 23:25 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Earlier this year, Russia President Vladimir Putin called on the government to develop its own domestically produced gaming consoles with proprietary operating systems and cloud-based platforms. "With Russia heavily sanctioned and looking to promote its own products, one of its in-development consoles is powered by the Elbrus processor," notes TechSpot. However, the processor is "designed primarily for domestic applications in critical infrastructure, defense, and other sensitive areas" and "can
  
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• MicroStrategy's Big Bet On Bitcoin Went Stratospheric

  31-12-2024 22:45 via slashdot.org
  
  MicroStrategy has transformed into a "bitcoin treasury company," investing billions in bitcoin through debt and equity issuance, driving its stock price up nearly 400% in 2024 despite declining software revenues and heightened financial risks. The Guardian reports: In the summer of 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic upended economies around the world, an obscure U.S. software firm decided to diversify. MicroStrategy, whose head office is situated next to a shopping mall and metro station in Tysons C
  
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• US Army Soldier Arrested In AT&T, Verizon Extortions

  31-12-2024 22:05 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Federal authorities have arrested and indicted a 20-year-old U.S. Army soldier on suspicion of being Kiberphant0m, a cybercriminal who has been selling and leaking sensitive customer call records stolen earlier this year from AT&T and Verizon. As first reported by KrebsOnSecurity last month, the accused is a communications specialist who was recently stationed in South Korea. Cameron John Wagenius was arrested near the Army base in Fo
  
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• Is 2025 the Year of the Linux Desktop?

  31-12-2024 21:20 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  The long-anticipated "year of the Linux desktop" could see renewed interest in 2025 as Microsoft's planned end of support for Windows 10 approaches, potentially driving users to explore alternatives.
  With Windows 10 reaching end of support in October 2025, many users will face decisions about upgrading hardware for Windows 11 or considering different operating systems entirely. Linux distributions have evolved to offer increasingly polished desktop experiences, with improving hardware compatibil
  
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• Legacy Airlines Are Now Coming For Your Carry-on Bag

  31-12-2024 20:45 via slashdot.org
  
  Traditional airlines worldwide are rapidly eliminating long-standing perks from their basic fares, blurring the line between full-service and budget carriers, according to industry analysis of 90 major airlines.
  Air Canada's decision to ban standard carry-on luggage for its lowest-fare passengers from January 3 marks the latest rollback, joining United Airlines, Finnair, and others. Most legacy carriers, including British Airways, Air France, and Lufthansa, have already stripped checked baggage
  
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• The 'Godfather' of AI is Backing Musk's Lawsuit Against OpenAI

  31-12-2024 19:08 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton has backed Elon Musk's legal challenge against OpenAI, criticizing the AI startup's shift from its nonprofit origins toward a for-profit model. "OpenAI was founded as an explicitly safety-focused non-profit and made various safety related promises in its charter," Hinton said in a statement through AI advocacy group Encode. "Allowing it to tear all of that up when it becomes inconvenient sends a very bad message to other actors in the ecosystem."
  Musk, who co-found
  
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• Over 3.1 Million Fake 'Stars' on GitHub Projects Used To Boost Rankings

  31-12-2024 18:27 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Researchers have uncovered widespread manipulation of GitHub's star-rating system, with over 3.1 million fraudulent stars identified across 15,835 repositories, according to a new study by Socket, Carnegie Mellon University, and North Carolina State University.
  The research team analyzed 20TB of data from GHArchive, spanning 6 billion GitHub events from 2019 to 2024, using their "StarScout" detection tool. The tool identified 278,000 accounts engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior to artif
  
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• Intel Suffers Worst Year Since 1971 IPO

  31-12-2024 17:44 via slashdot.org
  
  Intel's market value plunged 61% in 2024, marking its worst performance since going public in 1971, while rival chipmaker Broadcom saw shares surge 111% on AI advances. Broadcom, now valued at $1.1 trillion, leverages its custom XPU chips and networking gear for major cloud providers including Google, helping companies build AI infrastructure at lower costs than Nvidia's GPUs.
  Further reading: Intel Weighed $20 Billion Nvidia Takeover in 2005.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• 10 Million Trees To Be Planted in US To Replace Ones Destroyed By Hurricanes

  31-12-2024 17:09 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The Arbor Day Foundation will plant 10 million trees across six U.S. states over four years to replace those destroyed during the devastating 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, the non-profit organization announced.
  The restoration program, targeting Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, marks the group's largest undertaking in its 50-year history. The initiative will involve state and local governments, corporate sponsors and community volunteers. The 2024 hurri
  
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• US Files Complaint Against Fintech App Dave And Its CEO

  31-12-2024 16:22 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The U.S. Justice Department has filed a complaint and announced a civil enforcement action against financial technology company Dave and its CEO Jason Wilk for alleged violations of federal law. From a report: The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission alleged the company lured users to its personal finance app by advertising cash advances of up to $500 that many never receive.
  The complaint, filed by the Justice Department, seeks unspecified amounts of consumer redress and monetary
  
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• PlayStation To Continue Focusing on Live Service Games

  31-12-2024 15:44 via games.slashdot.org
  
  PlayStation isn't giving up on live service games any time soon. From a report: In a recent interview with Japanese outlet Famitsu, PlayStation Co-CEO Herman Hulst said that the company still believes in the model despite recent hiccups like Concord. "The game business is constantly changing due to various factors, including technological advances, new genres and ways of playing," Hulst said via auto translation.
  "However, one thing that remains constant is people's desire for great entertainmen
  
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• What Has Biden Wrought?

  31-12-2024 14:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Politico: Joe Biden spent the first half of his presidency enacting plans to steer at least $1.6 trillion to transform the economy and spur a clean-energy revolution -- only to watch those programs become afterthoughts in the 2024 election. Now the core of his domestic legacy stands unfinished, with hundreds of billions of dollars left to deploy, and imperiled as Donald Trump prepares to take office.
  A wide-ranging examination of the Biden administration's spending and tax policies reveals signs
  
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• China To Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor In 2025

  31-12-2024 11:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  In 2025, China plans to start building a demonstration thorium-based molten-salt reactor in the Gobi Desert. IEEE Spectrum reports: The 10-megawatt reactor project, managed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP), is scheduled to be operational by 2030, according to an environmental-impact report released by the Academy in October. The project follows a 2-MW experimental version completed in 2021 and operated since then. China's efforts put it at the for
  
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• The Collapse of Mid-Range Smartphones

  31-12-2024 09:15 via mobile.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The global smartphone market is splitting into two distinct segments, with the mid-range segment seeing its market share plummet from 35% in 2021 to a projected 23% by 2027, according to an analysis of data compiled by Goldman Sachs.
  The collapse of the mid-range segment -- $200-600 -- marks a stark reversal from 2021-22, when it held a steady 35% market share.
  "While mid-end segment used to provide balance between outstanding specifications and high performa
  
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• Astronomers Discover an Ultra-Massive Grand-Design Spiral Galaxy

  31-12-2024 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered Zhulong, the most distant grand-design spiral galaxy identified so far, located at a redshift of approximately 5.2. Phys.Org reports: The galaxy was named Zhulong, after a giant red solar dragon and god in Chinese mythology. [...] Its mass was found to be comparable to that of the Milky Way, which is relatively high for a galaxy that formed within one billion years after the Big Bang, as the redshift indicates. The study found that
  
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• Evolution Journal Editors Resign En Masse

  31-12-2024 04:30 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Jennifer Ouellette: Over the holiday weekend, all but one member of the editorial board of Elsevier's Journal of Human Evolution (JHE) resigned "with heartfelt sadness and great regret," according to Retraction Watch, which helpfully provided an online PDF of the editors' full statement. It's the 20th mass resignation from a science journal since 2023 over various points of contention, per Retraction Watch, many in response to con
  
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• Researchers Develop VR Goggles For Mice

  31-12-2024 01:45 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Researchers at Cornell University have developed a set of low-cost VR goggles for lab mice. Called MouseGoggles, the VR headsets will allows scientists to provide immersive virtual environments for the mice while capturing fluorescent images of the rodents' brain activity. Phys.Org reports: The goggles -- which dwarf the tiny mice in size -- were built using low-cost, off-the-shelf components like smartwatch displays and tiny lenses, researchers said. [...] About a decade ago, researchers began
  
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• Trump Urges Supreme Court To Delay TikTok Ban

  31-12-2024 01:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  President-elect Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to delay the upcoming TikTok ban while he works on a "political resolution." In a legal brief (PDF) on Friday, his lawyer said Trump "opposes banning TikTok" and "seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office." The BBC reports: Trump had met with TikTok's CEO, Shou Zi Chew, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last week. In his court filing on Friday, Trump said the case represents "an unpreced
  
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• QR-Style Codes Could Replace Barcodes 'Within Two Years'

  31-12-2024 00:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Traditional barcodes are set to be replaced by next-generation QR-style codes by 2027, offering enhanced functionality such as embedding sell-by dates, allergens, and recycling information. The Guardian reports: Tesco has started using them on some products, and other trials have suggested that waste of perishable food such as poultry can be cut by embedding sell-by dates in the new QR-style codes, allowing for more dynamic discounting. QR (quick response) codes will allow customers to instantly
  
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