ICT news

• Why the FSF is Structured the Way It Is

  11-01-2025 23:47 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation as a nonprofit in 1985 with four other directors (including MIT computer science professor Gerald Jay Sussman). Sussman remains on the Board of directors, along with EFF co-founder John Gilmore and five others.
  Friday the eight directors published a new article explaining how their goal and principles are protected by the nonprofit's governance structure:An obvious option, used by many organizations, was to let supporters sign up as members a
  
  Read more

• WordPress.org Accounts Deactivated for Contributors Said to Be Planning a Fork - by Automattic CEO

  11-01-2025 22:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  WordPress co-creator (and Automattic CEO) Matt Mullenweg "has deactivated the accounts of several WordPress.org community members," reports TechCrunch, "some of whom have been spearheading a push to create a new fork of the open source WordPress project."Joost de Valk — creator of WordPress-focused SEO tool Yoast (and former marketing and communications' lead for the WordPress Foundation) — last month published his "vision for a new WordPress era," alluding to a potential fork in the
  
  Read more

• Should In-Game Currency Receive Federal Government Banking Protections?

  11-01-2025 21:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Friday America's consumer watchdog agency "proposed a rule to give virtual video game currencies protections similar to those of real-world bank accounts..." reports the Washington Post, "so players can receive refunds or compensation for unauthorized transactions, similar to how banks are required to respond to claims of fraudulent activity."
  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is seeking public input on a rule interpretation to clarify which rights are protected and available to video gam
  
  Read more

• California's Wildfires: Livestreams from Burning Homes and Dire Text Messages - Sometimes Erroneous

  11-01-2025 20:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  As the ecological disaster continues, CNN reports the Palisades Fire near Malibu, California has burned at least 22,660 acres, left 100,000 peope under evacuation orders, left at least 11 people dead and "destroyed thousands of homes and other structures." From the last reports it was only 11% contained, and "flames are now spreading east in the Mandeville Canyon area, approaching Interstate 405, one of LA's busiest freeways."
  But the Atlantic's assistant editor wrote Friday that "I have receive
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• CES 'Worst In Show' Devices Mocked In IFixit Video - While YouTube Inserts Ads For Them

  11-01-2025 19:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  While CES wraps up this week, "Not all innovation is good innovation," warns Elizabeth Chamberlain, iFixit's Director of Sustainability (heading their Right to Repair advocacy team). So this year the group held its fourth annual "anti-awards ceremony" to call out CES's "least repairable, least private, and least sustainable products..." (iFixit co-founder Kyle Wiens mocked a $2,200 "smart ring" with a battery that only lasts for 500 charges. "Wanna open it up and change the battery? Well you can
  
  Read more

• 'Havana Syndrome' Debate Rises Again in US Government

  11-01-2025 18:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:
  New intelligence has led two US intelligence agencies to conclude that it's possible a small number of mysterious health ailments colloquially termed as Havana Syndrome impacting spies, soldiers and diplomats around the world may have been caused by a "novel weapon" wielded by a foreign actor, according to intelligence officials and a new unclassified summary report released on Friday. However, the two agencies are in the minority and the broader
  
  Read more

• Foreign Cybercriminals Bypassed Microsoft's AI Guardrails, Lawsuit Alleges

  11-01-2025 17:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  "Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit is taking legal action to ensure the safety and integrity of our AI services," according to a Friday blog post by the unit's assistant general counsel. Microsoft blames "a foreign-based threat-actor group" for "tools specifically designed to bypass the safety guardrails of generative AI services, including Microsoft's, to create offensive and harmful content.
  Microsoft "is accusing three individuals of running a 'hacking-as-a-service' scheme," reports Ars Technic
  
  Read more

• 'What If They Ban TikTok and People Keep Using It Anyway?'

  11-01-2025 16:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "What if they ban TikTok and people keep using it anyway?" asks the New York Times, saying a pending ban in America "is vague on how it would be enforced"Some experts say that even if TikTok is actually banned this month or soon, there may be so many legal and technical loopholes that millions of Americans could find ways to keep TikTok'ing. The law is "Swiss cheese with lots of holes in it," said Glenn Gerstell, a former top lawyer at the National Security Agency and a senior adviser at the Cen
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• OpenAI's Bot Crushes Seven-Person Company's Website 'Like a DDoS Attack'

  11-01-2025 14:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: On Saturday, Triplegangers CEO Oleksandr Tomchuk was alerted that his company's e-commerce site was down. It looked to be some kind of distributed denial-of-service attack. He soon discovered the culprit was a bot from OpenAI that was relentlessly attempting to scrape his entire, enormous site. "We have over 65,000 products, each product has a page," Tomchuk told TechCrunch. "Each page has at least three photos." OpenAI was sending "tens of th
  
  Read more

• Wikipedia Searches Reveal Differing Styles of Curiosity

  11-01-2025 11:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Wikipedia's massive dataset helped researchers identify three styles of curiosity -- "busybody," "hunter," and "dancer" -- based on how users navigate its pages (see: wiki rabbit hole). These curiosity styles reflect broader social trends and highlight curiosity's role in connecting information rather than merely acquiring it. Scientific American reports: In this lexicon, a busybody traces a zigzagging route through many often distantly related topics. A hunter, in contrast, searches with sustai
  
  Read more

• Spacecraft Buzzes Mercury's North Pole and Beams Back Stunning Photos

  11-01-2025 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  SysEngineer shares a report from the Associated Press: A spacecraft has beamed back some of the best close-up photos yet of Mercury's north pole. The European and Japanese robotic explorer swooped as close as 183 miles (295 kilometers) above Mercury's night side before passing directly over the planet's north pole. The European Space Agency released the stunning snapshots Thursday, showing the permanently shadowed craters at the top of of our solar system's smallest, innermost planet. Cameras al
  
  Read more

• Zuckerberg On Rogan: Facebook's Censorship Was 'Something Out of 1984'

  11-01-2025 04:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, in an appearance on the "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, criticized the Biden administration for pushing for censorship around COVID-19 vaccines, the media for hounding Facebook to clamp down on misinformation after the 2016 election, and his own company for complying. Zuckerberg's three-hour interview with Rogan gives a clear window into his thinking during a remarkable week in which Meta loosened its content moderation poli
  
  Read more

• Zuckerberg: Apple 'Hasn't Invented Anything Great in a While'

  11-01-2025 02:25 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg criticized Apple's innovation record and business practices in a Joe Rogan podcast interview on January 10, claiming the iPhone maker has not "invented anything great in a while" and is "just sitting" on its flagship product 20 years after Steve Jobs created it.
  Zuckerberg accused Apple of using arbitrary App Store rules and 30% developer fees to offset declining iPhone sales. He also said Apple blocks competitors from accessing iPhone protocols, citing Meta's failed att
  
  Read more

• Amazon To Halt Some of Its DEI Programs

  11-01-2025 01:40 via slashdot.org
  
  Amazon said it is halting some of its diversity and inclusion initiatives, joining a growing list of major corporations that have made similar moves in the face of increasing public and legal scrutiny. From a report: In a Dec. 16 internal note to staffers that was obtained by CNBC, Candi Castleberry, Amazon's VP of inclusive experiences and technology, said the company was in the process of "winding down outdated programs and materials" as part of a broader review of hundreds of initiatives."Rat
  
  Read more

• VCs Say AI Companies Need Proprietary Data To Stand Out

  11-01-2025 01:02 via slashdot.org
  
  TechCrunch's Rebecca Szkutak reports: TechCrunch recently surveyed 20 VCs who back startups building for enterprises about what gives an AI startup a moat, or what makes it different compared to its peers. More than half of the respondents said that the thing that will give AI startups an edge is the quality or rarity of their proprietary data. Paul Drews, a managing partner at Salesforce Ventures, told TechCrunch that it's really hard for AI startups to have a moat because the landscape is chan
  
  Read more

• Amazon To Shut Down 'Try Before You Buy' Rival To Stitch Fix

  11-01-2025 00:20 via slashdot.org
  
  Amazon is shutting down its "Prime Try Before You Buy" service on January 31, according to a notice on its website. The offering operated similarly to apparel subscription services like Stitch Fix and Rent the Runway, allowing Prime members to try out apparel-related products and only pay for items they wanted to keep. CNBC reports: An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the move, which was first reported by The Information. "Given the combination of Try Before You Buy only scaling to a limited number
  
  Read more

Follow @newslocke_ict on Twitter!