ICT news

• David Lynch, Director of Twin Peaks and Dune, Dies At 78

  16-01-2025 23:30 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  David Lynch, a four-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker known for the 1984 sci-fi epic Dune and the Showtime drama Twin Peaks, has died. "In January 2025, Lynch evacuated his Los Angeles home due to the Southern California wildfires," writes longtime Slashdot reader Z00L00K. "According to Deadline, these events preceded a terminal decline in his health, and on January 16, 2025, Lynch's family announced that he had died at the age of 78." Deadline reports: Lynch had been diagnosed with emphysema. Sour
  
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• Blue Origins' New Glenn Rocket Reaches Orbit

  16-01-2025 22:50 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Longtime Slashdot reader timeOday shares a report from the New York Times: At 2:03 a.m. Eastern time, seven powerful engines ignited at the base of a 320-foot-tall rocket named New Glenn. The flames illuminated night into day at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The rocket, barely moving at first, nudged upward and then accelerated in an arc over the Atlantic Ocean, lit up in blue, the color of combustion of the rocket's methane fuel. Thirteen minutes later, the second stage of New
  
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• AI Slashes Google's Code Migration Time By Half

  16-01-2025 19:51 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google has cut code migration time in half by deploying AI tools to assist with large-scale software updates, according to a new research paper from the company's engineers. The tech giant used large language models to help convert 32-bit IDs to 64-bit across its 500-million-line codebase, upgrade testing libraries, and replace time-handling frameworks. While 80% of code changes were AI-generated, human engineers still needed to verify and sometimes correct the AI's output. In one project, the s
  
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• Microsoft Patches Windows To Eliminate Secure Boot Bypass Threat

  16-01-2025 19:10 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft has patched a Windows vulnerability that allowed attackers to bypass Secure Boot, a critical defense against firmware infections, the company said. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-7344, affected Windows devices for at least seven months. Security researcher Martin Smolar discovered the vulnerability in a signed UEFI application within system recovery software from seven vendors, including Howyar.
  The application, reloader.efi, circumvented standard security checks through a custom PE loa
  
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• Nvidia Reveals AI Supercomputer Used Non-Stop For Six Years To Perfect Gaming Graphics

  16-01-2025 18:43 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Nvidia has dedicated a supercomputer running thousands of its latest GPUs exclusively to improving its DLSS upscaling technology for the past six years, a company executive revealed at CES 2025. Speaking at the RTX Blackwell Editor's Day in Las Vegas, Brian Catanzaro, Nvidia's VP of applied deep learning research, said the system operates continuously to analyze failures and retrain models across hundreds of games.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• A New Jam-Packed Biden Executive Order Tackles Cybersecurity, AI, and More

  16-01-2025 17:54 via news.slashdot.org
  
  U.S. President Joe Biden has issued a comprehensive cybersecurity executive order, four days before leaving office, mandating improvements to government network monitoring, software procurement, AI usage, and foreign hacker penalties.
  The 40-page directive aims to leverage AI's security benefits, implement digital identities for citizens, and address vulnerabilities that have allowed Chinese and Russian intrusions into U.S. government systems. It requires software vendors to prove secure develop
  
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• Nintendo Admits Emulators Are Legal Despite Crackdown

  16-01-2025 17:03 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Nintendo's top intellectual property lawyer has acknowledged that video game emulators are technically legal, even as the company continues to shut down popular emulation projects worldwide. Speaking at the Tokyo eSports Festa, Koji Nishiura, deputy general manager of Nintendo's intellectual property department, said emulators violate the law only when they bypass encryption, copy copyrighted console programs, or direct users to pirated material. The statement comes after Nintendo forced the clo
  
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• Drinking Water Sources in England Polluted With Forever Chemicals

  16-01-2025 16:25 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Raw drinking water sources across England are polluted with toxic forever chemicals, new analysis has revealed, prompting the water sector to demand that ministers ban the substances and polluters pay for the astronomical cleanup costs. The Guardian: The areas covered by Affinity Water and Anglian Water were found to be particularly badly affected, and experts have said they fear "we are drastically underestimating the size of the problem." There are more than 10,000 PFAS in use, known as foreve
  
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• Replit CEO on AI Breakthroughs: 'We Don't Care About Professional Coders Anymore'

  16-01-2025 15:42 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Replit, an AI coding startup platform, has made a dramatic pivot away from professional programmers in a fundamental shift in how software may be created in the future. "We don't care about professional coders anymore," CEO Amjad Masad told Semafor, as the company refocuses on helping non-developers build software using AI.
  The strategic shift follows the September launch of Replit's "Agent" tool, which can create working applications from simple text commands. The tool, powered by Anthropic's C
  
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• Nintendo To Unveil Next-Generation Switch 2 in April

  16-01-2025 15:02 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Nintendo announced on Thursday it will unveil its next-generation Switch 2 gaming console at a digital event on April 2, marking the end of its nearly eight-year-old flagship model. The Japanese gaming giant revealed in a two-minute video that the new device maintains a similar hybrid design to the original Switch but is larger, with redesigned controllers that attach magnetically.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Governments Call For Spyware Regulations In UN Security Council Meeting

  16-01-2025 14:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: On Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council held a meeting to discuss the dangers of commercial spyware, which marks the first time this type of software -- also known as government or mercenary spyware -- has been discussed at the Security Council. The goal of the meeting, according to the U.S. Mission to the UN, was to "address the implications of the proliferation and misuse of commercial spyware for the maintenance of international pea
  
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• CISA and Partners Release Call to Action to Close the National Software Understanding Gap

  16-01-2025 13:00 via cisa.gov
  Today, CISA—in partnership with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD R&E), and the National Security Agency (NSA)—published Closing the Software Understanding Gap. This report urgently implores the U.S. government to take decisive and coordinated action.
   Software understanding refers to assessing software-controlled systems across all conditions. Mission owners and operato
  
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• Pastor Who Saw Crypto Project In His 'Dream' Indicted For Fraud

  16-01-2025 11:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  A pastor in Pasco, Washington, has been indicted on 26 counts of fraud for orchestrating a cryptocurrency scam that defrauded over 1,500 investors of nearly $5.9 million between 2021 and 2023. Many of the investors were members of his congregation. BleepingComputer reports: The US Department of Justice says the pastor, Francier Obando Pinillo, 51, used his position to recruit investors into a fraudulent cryptocurrency venture called "Solano Fi," which he told them "came to him in a dream" and wa
  
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• Sweden Starts Building 100,000 Year Storage Site For Spent Nuclear Fuel

  16-01-2025 08:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Sweden has begun constructing a long-term storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Forsmark, making it only the second country after Finland to build such a site. It is not expected to be completed until the 2080s, but once finished, it will securely house radioactive waste for up to 100,000 years. Reuters reports: The Forsmark final repository, about 150 kilometers north of Stockholm on Sweden's east coast, will consist of 60 km of tunnels buried 500 meters down in 1.9 billion year old bedroc
  
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• Startup Raises $200 Million To 'De-Extinct' the Woolly Mammoth, Thylacine and Dodo

  16-01-2025 04:30 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Colossal BioSciences has raised $200 million in a new round of funding to bring back extinct species like the woolly mammoth. Dallas- and Boston-based Colossal is making strides in the scientific breakthroughs toward "de-extinction," or bringing back extinct species like the woolly mammoth, thylacine and the dodo. [...] Since launching in September 2021, Colossal has raised $435 million in total funding. This latest round of capital places th
  
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• FTC Says Refunds For Razer's False N95 Face Masks Are Going Out Now

  16-01-2025 02:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The FTC is issuing refunds for 6,764 customers who purchased Razer's Zephyr face mask, which falsely advertised as meeting N95 standards. GameSpot reports: In May 2024, the FTC announced that a settlement was reached with Razer for more than $1 million. The fine occurred because Razer claimed its face mask met N95 requirements, even though it was never submitted for certification to test whether it removed 95% of airborne particles, per the FTC.In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Razer revea
  
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• Russia's Largest Platform For State Procurement Hit By Cyberattack

  16-01-2025 01:50 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Roseltorg, Russia's main electronic trading platform for government and corporate procurement, confirmed it was targeted by a cyberattack claimed by the pro-Ukraine hacker group Yellow Drift. The group allegedly deleted 550 terabytes of data, causing significant operational delays and client concerns. The Record reports: The company initially confirmed last Thursday that its services had been temporarily suspended, without providing further details. In a recent Telegram statement, Roseltorg disc
  
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• Comics Distributor Diamond Is Filing For Bankruptcy

  16-01-2025 01:13 via slashdot.org
  
  Diamond Comic Distributors, the world's biggest English language comic book distributor, is filing for bankruptcy and scaling its business back in order to survive. The Verge reports: In a letter sent to comics retailers and publishers today, Diamond president Chuck Parker announced that the company has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and plans to sell off its Alliance Game Distributors arm to Universal in order to "protect the most vital aspects of our business."Founded in 1982 by Stephen A. Ge
  
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• Dead Google Apps Domains Can Be Compromised By New Owners

  16-01-2025 00:20 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Lots of startups use Google's productivity suite, known as Workspace, to handle email, documents, and other back-office matters. Relatedly, lots of business-minded webapps use Google's OAuth, i.e. "Sign in with Google." It's a low-friction feedback loop -- up until the startup fails, the domain goes up for sale, and somebody forgot to close down all the Google stuff. Dylan Ayrey, of Truffle Security Co., suggests in a report that this proble
  
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