ICT news

• IBM and GlobalFoundries Settle Multibillion-Dollar Trade Secret and Contract Lawsuits

  03-01-2025 23:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The Register's Jude Karabus reports: IBM and semiconductor maker GlobalFoundries have settled all of their litigation against each other, including breach of contract, patent, and trade secret suits, the pair say. The details of the settlement are confidential. All that both companies were prepared to say in yesterday's statements was that the deal they'd agreed would resolve "all litigation matters, inclusive of breach of contract, trade secrets, and intellectual property claims between the two
  
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• Apple Intelligence Now Requires Nearly Double the iPhone Storage

  03-01-2025 22:40 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple Intelligence now requires 7GB of free storage per device, nearly doubling the original 4GB requirement from iOS 18.1. This is a result of new AI features like Genmoji, ChatGPT in Siri, and Image Playground. With further updates expected, storage demands could rise to 10GB per device. 9to5Mac reports: Per Apple's website, Apple Intelligence now requires 7GB of free storage. The same 7GB number applies whether you're using an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. But it also, since each product does its own
  
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• Online Gift Card Store Exposed Hundreds of Thousands of People's Identity Documents

  03-01-2025 22:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A U.S. online gift card store has secured an online storage server that was publicly exposing hundreds of thousands of customer government-issued identity documents to the internet. A security researcher, who goes by the online handle JayeLTee, found the publicly exposed storage server late last year containing driving licenses, passports, and other identity documents belonging to MyGiftCardSupply, a company that sells digital gift cards for c
  
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• Microsoft Expects To Spend $80 Billion on AI-Enabled Data Centers in Fiscal 2025

  03-01-2025 21:21 via slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft plans to spend $80 billion in fiscal 2025 on the construction of data centers that can handle AI workloads, the company said in a Friday blog post. From a report: Over half of the expected AI infrastructure spending will take place in the U.S., Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith wrote. Microsoft's 2025 fiscal year ends in June.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Marvel Game Developer Reverses Century-Long Bans on Linux, Mac Users

  03-01-2025 20:40 via games.slashdot.org
  
  NetEase has reversed 100-year bans imposed on "Marvel Rivals" players using Linux and Mac compatibility tools in December 2024, following intervention from CodeWeavers' CEO and player complaints.
  The game's anti-cheat system had banned players until 2124 for using Proton and CrossOver software on Steam Deck and Apple devices. The company stated on Discord it "will not ban players who are playing fairly and without cheating" but has made no broader commitments regarding compatibility tools.Read m
  
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• Moviegoers Dealt Originality a Setback in 2024

  03-01-2025 20:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Box office returns have started to stabilize. But nine of the top 10 box office hits this year were sequels [non-paywalled link]. And the 10th was "Wicked." From a report: A year ago, Hollywood's creative community was celebrating the apparent decline of corporate, paint-by-numbers sequels and remakes. Blockbuster ticket sales for movies like "Oppenheimer," "Sound of Freedom" and "Barbie" had shown -- or so it seemed -- that audiences were finally hungry for fresh stories.
  You could almost hear
  
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• Meta's AI Profiles Are Indistinguishable From Terrible Spam That Took Over Facebook

  03-01-2025 19:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Meta's AI-generated social media profiles, which sparked controversy this week following comments by executive Connor Hayes about plans to expand AI characters across Facebook and Instagram, have largely failed to gain user engagement since their 2023 launch, 404 Media reported Friday.
  The profiles, introduced at Meta's Connect event in September 2023, stopped posting content in April 2024 after widespread user disinterest, with 15 of the original 28 accounts already deleted, Meta spokesperson L
  
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• Judge Will Not Dismiss Lawsuit Claiming Poland Spring Water is Not From a Spring

  03-01-2025 18:21 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  A federal judge in Connecticut refused to dismiss a long-running lawsuit accusing the former Nestle Waters North America of defrauding consumers by labeling its Poland Spring bottled water as "spring water." From a report: While rejecting some claims in the proposed class action, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Alker Meyer in New Haven called it an open question whether Poland Spring qualified as spring water under the laws of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, P
  
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• Surgeon General Calls For Cancer Risk Warning on Alcoholic Beverages

  03-01-2025 17:44 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The U.S. surgeon general has issued an advisory calling for a warning about the risk of cancer to be included on alcoholic beverages. From a report: "Given the conclusive evidence on the cancer risk from alcohol consumption and the Office of the Surgeon General's responsibility to inform the American public of the best available scientific evidence, the Surgeon General recommends an update to the Surgeon General's warning label for alcohol-containing beverages to include a cancer risk warning,"
  
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• Boeing Adds More Surprise Quality Checks in Its Factories

  03-01-2025 17:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Boeing is conducting more surprise inspections at its factories as part of a broader plan to prevent manufacturing snafus like the one that led to a jet-panel blowout on an Alaska Air flight a year ago. From a report: The jet maker outlined on Friday more than a dozen steps it has taken in recent months to tackle a manufacturing quality crisis that has forced Boeing to slow production and has put it under the microscope of federal regulators. Some of the steps have been previously reported.
  Boei
  
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• New System Auto-Converts C To Memory-Safe Rust, But There's a Catch

  03-01-2025 16:22 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Researchers from Inria and Microsoft have developed a system to automatically convert specific types of C programming code into memory-safe Rust code, addressing growing cybersecurity concerns about memory vulnerabilities in software systems.
  The technique, detailed in a new paper, requires programmers to use a restricted version of C called "Mini-C" that excludes features like pointer arithmetic. The researchers successfully tested their conversion system on two major code libraries, including
  
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• China To Subsidize Smartphone Purchases in Bid To Lift Spending

  03-01-2025 15:40 via slashdot.org
  
  China will expand consumption subsidies to cover smartphones and other electronics, in a step to promote domestic spending as external headwinds pick up. From a report: A national trade-in program that currently applies to home appliances and cars will broaden this year to include personal devices like phones, tablets and smartwatches, officials from the nation's top economic planning agency said in a briefing Friday.
  Chinese consumers in the post-Covid era have begun holding onto their smartpho
  
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• China Slashes SO2 Emissions Two-Thirds in 15 Years

  03-01-2025 14:17 via news.slashdot.org
  
  China's sulfur dioxide emissions have fallen by more than two-thirds over the past 15 years through strict coal plant regulations and desulfurization technology, according to Community Emissions Data System data. Emissions peaked in mid-2000s after steep rises in the 1980s-90s, with the reduction significantly improving air quality in major cities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Music Publishers Reach Deal With AI Giant Anthropic Over Copyrighted Song Lyrics

  03-01-2025 14:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Hollywood Reporter: A trio of major music publishers suing Anthropic over the use of lyrics to train its AI system have reached a deal with the Amazon-backed company to resolve some parts of a pending preliminary injunction. U.S. District Judge Eumi Lee on Thursday signed off on an agreement between the two sides mandating Anthropic to maintain existing guardrails that prevent its Claude AI chatbot from providing lyrics to songs owned by the publisher
  
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• Cloudflare's VPN App Among Half-Dozen Pulled From Indian App Stores

  03-01-2025 12:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  More than half-a-dozen VPN apps, including Cloudflare's widely-used 1.1.1.1, have been pulled from India's Apple App Store and Google Play Store following intervention from government authorities, TechCrunch reported Friday. From the report: The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs issued removal orders for the apps, according to a document reviewed by TechCrunch and a disclosure made by Google to Lumen, Harvard University's database that tracks government takedown requests globally.Read more of this
  
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• Drastically Reduced Xiaomi Bootloader Unlock Policy Raises Questions Over Device Ownership

  03-01-2025 11:00 via slashdot.org
  
  Xiaomi has further restricted bootloader unlocking to just one device per user per year, significantly hindering custom ROM development and reinforcing user dependence on its proprietary HyperOS ecosystem. Android Police reports: Roughly a year ago, Xiaomi introduced a policy limiting users to three unlocked devices per account, providing only a limited time window for unlocking, and demanding waiting periods before doing so. It's now gone even further, limiting users to unlocking the bootloader
  
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• New 'All-Optical' Nanoscale Sensors of Force Access Previously Unreachable Environments

  03-01-2025 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  ZipNada shares a report from Phys.org: In a paper published today in Nature, a team led by Columbia Engineering researchers and collaborators report that they have invented new nanoscale sensors of force. They are luminescent nanocrystals that can change intensity and/or color when you push or pull on them. These "all-optical" nanosensors are probed with light only and therefore allow for fully remote read-outs -- no wires or connections are needed. They have 100 times better force sensitivity t
  
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• Constellation Inks $1 Billion Deal To Supply US Government With Nuclear Power

  03-01-2025 04:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Constellation Energy has been awarded a record $1 billion in contracts to supply nuclear power to the U.S. government over the next decade, the company said on Thursday. Constellation, the country's largest operator of nuclear power plants, will deliver electricity to more than 13 federal agencies as part of the agreements with the U.S. General Services Administration. The deal is the biggest energy purchase in the history of the GSA, which const
  
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• With 10 Months of Support Remaining, Windows 10 Still Dominates

  03-01-2025 03:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Despite Microsoft's push for Windows 11, Windows 10 continues to dominate the desktop OS market, rising to 62.7% market share in December 2024. The Register reports: Figures for December 2024 from Statcounter -- used because Microsoft rarely shares usage data unless it has something to boast about -- confirm Windows 10's market share has inched up to 62.7 percent compared to the previous month while Windows 11's share fell back to 34.12 percent (from 34.94 percent in November 2024). Even though
  
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• Samsung Is the Next Company To Try To Popularize 3D Displays (Again)

  03-01-2025 02:40 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Samsung is set to debut its new Odyssey 3D monitor at CES 2025, reviving the glasses-free 3D experience that manufacturers pushed on consumers over a decade ago. While details remain limited, the monitor reportedly utilizes a lenticular lens, stereo cameras, and AI to convert 2D content into lifelike 3D visuals, with a focus on appealing to gamers for broader adoption. Ars Technica reports: According to the South Korean company's announcement, the monitor's use of a lenticular lens that is "atta
  
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• Hackers Target Dozens of VPN, AI Extensions For Google Chrome To Compromise Data

  03-01-2025 02:00 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered dozens of attacks that involve malicious updates for Chrome browser extensions, one week after a security firm was compromised in a similar incident. As of Wednesday, a total of 36 Chrome extensions injected with data-stealing code have been detected, mostly related to artificial intelligence (AI) tools and virtual private networks (VPNs), according to a report by ExtensionTotal, a platform that analyze
  
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• UK's Electricity Was Cleanest Ever in 2024

  03-01-2025 01:22 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Britain recorded its cleanest electricity generation in 2024, with carbon dioxide emissions falling to 124g per kilowatt hour, down from 419g in 2014, according to analysis by Carbon Brief released Thursday.
  Renewables, including wind, solar and biomass, provided 45% of the country's power, while total low-carbon sources reached 58%. Gas remained the largest single source at 28% of generation, slightly ahead of wind at 26%.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Ex-Microsoft Designer Reveals Windows 11's Dynamic Wallpapers That May Have Been Shelved

  03-01-2025 00:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Former Microsoft designer Sergey Kisselev has shared previously unseen concepts for Windows 11 dynamic wallpapers, intended for educational devices. The animated backgrounds were designed to complement Windows 11's centered interface but never shipped with the operating system's 23H2 update as initially planned.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Nick Clegg Is Leaving Meta After 7 Years Overseeing Its Policy Decisions

  03-01-2025 00:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Nick Clegg, former British Deputy Prime Minister and Meta's President of Global Affairs, is stepping down after seven years, with longtime policy executive Joel Kaplan set to replace him. Engadget reports: Clegg will be replaced by Joel Kaplan, a longtime policy executive and former White House aide to George W. Bush known for his deep ties to Republican circles in Washington. As Chief Global Affairs Officer, Kaplan -- as Semafor notes -- will be well-positioned to run interference for Meta as D
  
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