ICT news

• Slashdot Asks: Does Britain's 'Know Your Place' Culture Stifle Innovation?

  06-02-2025 23:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Tom Blomfield, founder of Monzo, challenges the notion that Americans work harder than Europeans, attributing the U.S.'s economic edge to a culture of "positivity, optimism, and ambition" rather than sheer work ethic. He argues that the "know your place, don't get too big for your boots" mindset stifles innovation, whereas the U.S.' "American Dream" fosters a more dynamic start-up culture, making it easier for entrepreneurs to bounce back from failure. Fortune reports: Blomfield said the America
  
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• ESA Wants To Replace E3 With a Bunch of Buzzwords

  06-02-2025 22:50 via games.slashdot.org
  
  The Entertainment Software Association is launching a new gaming event to replace E3, which was permanently canceled in 2023. According to Engadget, the new event is called iicon (short for "interactive innovation conference") and will feature many of the same major gaming companies that once participated in E3. "Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Disney, EA, Epic Games, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Take Two Interactive, Amazon Games and Warner Bros. Games are all named as participants." From the report: [T]he
  
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• Hugging Face Clones OpenAI's Deep Research In 24 Hours

  06-02-2025 22:08 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Tuesday, Hugging Face researchers released an open source AI research agent called "Open Deep Research," created by an in-house team as a challenge 24 hours after the launch of OpenAI's Deep Research feature, which can autonomously browse the web and create research reports. The project seeks to match Deep Research's performance while making the technology freely available to developers. "While powerful LLMs are now freely available in op
  
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• Mixing Rust and C in Linux Likened To Cancer By Kernel Maintainer

  06-02-2025 20:22 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  A heated dispute has erupted in the Linux kernel community over the integration of Rust code, with kernel maintainer Christoph Hellwig likening multiple programming languages to "cancer" for the project's maintainability. The conflict centers on a proposed patch enabling Rust-written device drivers to access the kernel's DMA API, which Hellwig strongly opposed. While the dispute isn't about Rust itself, Hellwig argues that maintaining cross-language codebases severely compromises Linux's integra
  
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• Air Pollution Reduces People's Ability To Focus on Everyday Tasks, Study Finds

  06-02-2025 19:41 via news.slashdot.org
  
  A person's ability to focus on everyday tasks is affected by short-term exposure to air pollution, a study has found. The Guardian: Researchers analysed data from cognitive tests completed by 26 participants before and after they were exposed either to high levels of particulate matter (PM) using smoke from a candle, or clean air for an hour. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that even brief exposure to high concentrations of PM affected participants' selective att
  
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• Warner Bros. Releases Dozens of Old Films for Free on YouTube, Bypassing Paid Streaming

  06-02-2025 19:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Warner Bros. Discovery has quietly begun releasing dozens of its older films for free on YouTube, marking an unexpected shift in how the major studio handles its back catalog. Over the past month, the company has uploaded more than 30 full-length movies across five YouTube channels, without digital rights management or regional restrictions.
  The collection includes both critically acclaimed films like "Waiting for Guffman" and "Michael Collins," as well as commercial disappointments like the 200
  
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• Qwertykeys Halts Keyboard Shipments To US Over Tariff Costs and Confusion

  06-02-2025 18:22 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The keyboard company Qwertykeys has temporarily halted all shipments to the United States in response to President Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods going into effect. The company says it's working on ways to mitigate shipping costs and that the tariffs have made it so that "all keyboards from China to the U.S. are now subject to 45% tariffs at full value."
  "We are closely watching the progress of the situation and really hope that there is something else we c
  
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• Humanlike 'Teeth' Have Been Grown in Mini Pigs

  06-02-2025 17:40 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Scientists have grown tooth-like structures using a combination of pig and human cells, marking a step toward potential alternatives to dental implants, researchers at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine reported.
  The team, led by Pamela Yelick and Weibo Zhang, cultivated the structures by seeding cells into pig tooth scaffolds and implanting them in mini pigs' jaws. After two months, the bioengineered teeth developed hard tissue layers similar to natural teeth, including dentin and cemen
  
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• DeepSeek's AI App Will 'Highly Likely' Get Banned in the US, Jefferies Says

  06-02-2025 17:00 via slashdot.org
  
  DeepSeek's AI app will highly likely face a US consumer ban after topping download charts on Apple's App Store and Google Play, according to analysts at US investment bank Jefferies. The US federal government, Navy and Texas have already banned the app, and analysts expect broader restrictions using legislation similar to that targeting TikTok.
  While consumer access may be blocked, US developers could still be allowed to self-host DeepSeek's model to eliminate security risks, the analysts added.
  
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• AMD is Making Another Run at Nvidia With New 4K-Ready GPUs as Sales Collapse

  06-02-2025 16:21 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  AMD will launch its new Radeon RX 9070-series graphics cards in March 2025, promising "high-quality gaming to mainstream players" amid struggling sales. The company's gaming division reported $563 million in Q4 2024 revenue, down 59% year-over-year. The new cards will target the same market segment as Nvidia's RTX 4070 Ti ($799) and 4070 Super ($599), featuring a 4nm TSMC manufacturing process, ML-enhanced FSR 4 upscaling, and next-generation ray-tracing accelerators.
  Steam Hardware Survey shows
  
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• Researchers Created an Open Rival To OpenAI's o1 'Reasoning' Model for Under $50

  06-02-2025 15:45 via slashdot.org
  
  AI researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington were able to train an AI "reasoning" model for under $50 in cloud compute credits, according to a research paper. From a report: The model, known as s1, performs similarly to cutting-edge reasoning models, such as OpenAI's o1 and DeepSeek's R1, on tests measuring math and coding abilities. The s1 model is available on GitHub, along with the data and code used to train it.
  The team behind s1 said they started with an off-the-shelf base m
  
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• Believing in Aliens Derailed This Internet Pioneer's Career. Now He's Facing Prison

  06-02-2025 15:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Joseph Firmage, a former Silicon Valley prodigy who built a $2.5 billion web services company in the 1990s, is now being sued by investors who claim he defrauded them through an alleged antigravity machine scheme. In 1998, at the height of his success as CEO of USWeb, Firmage claimed an alien appeared in his bedroom, derailing his corporate career. He then spent decades pursuing UFO research and attempting to develop antigravity propulsion technology, raising millions from investors.
  Court docum
  
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• The Enshittification Hall of Shame

  06-02-2025 14:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  In 2022, writer and activist Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification" to describe the gradual deterioration of a service or product. The term's prevalence has increased to the point that it was the National Dictionary of Australia's word of the year last year. The editors at Ars Technica, having "covered a lot of things that have been enshittified," decided to highlight some of the worst examples the've come across. Here's a summary of each thing mentioned in their report: Smart TVs: Evo
  
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• An Anonymous Investor Is Spending Millions To Make Underwater Homes

  06-02-2025 11:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Down an easy-to-miss turnoff on the A48 just outside Chepstow on the Welsh border, the gentle rumble of trucks, cranes and people at work mixes with birdsong in what is an otherwise peaceful rural setting. It is a crisp and sunny winter morning when I visit and, at first glance, the site appears to be little more than prefab containers and a car park. Yet, behind the scenes a group of men and women with expertise in diving, marine biology, t
  
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• Grand Canyon-Sized Valleys On the Moon Formed Within 10 Minutes

  06-02-2025 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  A new study reveals that two Grand Canyon-sized valleys were formed in less than 10 minutes by "floods of rocks traveling as fast as bullets," reports Space.com. From the report: Scientists analyzed the lunar canyons, named Vallis Schrodinger and Vallis Planck, to find that these huge valleys measure 167 miles long (270 kilometers) and nearly 1.7 miles (2.7 km) deep, and 174 miles long (280 km) and nearly 2.2 miles deep (3.5 km), respectively. In comparison, the Grand Canyon is 277 miles long (4
  
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• Let's Encrypt Is Ending Expiration Notice Emails

  06-02-2025 04:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Let's Encrypt will stop sending expiration notice emails for its free HTTPS certificates starting June 4, 2025. From the report: Let's Encrypt is ending automated emails for four stated reasons, and all of them are pretty sensible. For one thing, lots of customers have been able to automate their certificate renewal. For another, providing the expiration notices costs "tens of thousands of dollars per year" and adds complexity to the nonprofit's infrastructure as they are looking to add new and
  
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• Disney+ Lost 700,000 Subscribers From October-December 2024

  06-02-2025 03:10 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Disney+ lost 700,000 subscribers in the last quarter of 2024, largely due to price hikes and expiring promotions. Despite the decline, Disney's overall streaming business remained profitable, boosted by strong box office results from Moana 2 and Hulu's 1.6 million added subscribers. IndieWire reports: Not counting Disney+ Hotstar, the cheap Disney+ service in India, Disney+ now has 124.6 million subs. ESPN+ also lost 700,000 subs in the period. Hulu was the streaming highlight, adding 1.6 millio
  
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• Oracle Starts Laying Mines In JavaScript Trademark Battle

  06-02-2025 02:30 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  The Register's Thomas Claburn reports: Oracle this week asked the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to partially dismiss a challenge to its JavaScript trademark. The move has been criticized as an attempt to either stall or water down legal action against the database goliath over the programming language's name. Deno Land, the outfit behind the Deno JavaScript runtime, filed a petition with the USPTO back in November in an effort to make the trademarked term available to the JavaScript com
  
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• AMD Outsells Intel In the Datacenter For the First Time

  06-02-2025 01:50 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  During the fourth quarter of 2024, AMD surpassed Intel in datacenter sales for the first time in history -- despite weaker-than-expected sales of its datacenter GPUs. Tom's Hardware reports: AMD's revenue in Q4 2024 totaled $7.658 billion, up 24% year-over-year. The company's gross margin hit 51%, whereas net income was $482 million. On the year basis, 2024 was AMD's best year ever as the company's revenue reached $25.8 billion, up 14% year-over-year. The company earned net income of $1.641 bill
  
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• Researchers Link DeepSeek To Chinese Telecom Banned In US

  06-02-2025 01:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The website of the Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek, whose chatbot became the most downloaded app in the United States, has computer code that could send some user login information to a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company that has been barred from operating in the United States, security researchers say. The web login page of DeepSeek's chatbot contains heavily obfuscated computer script that when decipher
  
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• Google Says Commercial Quantum Computing Applications Arriving Within 5 Years

  06-02-2025 00:37 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google aims to release commercial quantum computing applications within five years, challenging Nvidia's prediction of a 20-year timeline. "We're optimistic that within five years we'll see real-world applications that are possible only on quantum computers," founder and lead of Google Quantum AI Hartmut Neven said in a statement. Reuters reports: Real-world applications Google has discussed are related to materials science - applications such as building superior batteries for electric cars - c
  
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• iOS App Store Apps With Screenshot-Reading Malware Found For the First Time

  06-02-2025 00:20 via it.slashdot.org
  Kaspersky has discovered the "SparkCat" malware in multiple iOS and Android apps, marking the first known case of malicious screenshot-reading code making it into Apple's App Store. The malware was found in the AI chat apps WeTink and AnyGPT, as well as the food delivery app ComeCome. The Verge reports: On iOS and in some Android instances, the malware works by triggering a request to access users' photo galleries when they attempt to use chat support within the infected app. Once permission is
  
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