ICT news

• FTC Removes Posts Critical of Amazon, Microsoft, and AI Companies

  18-03-2025 23:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The Federal Trade Commission has removed over 300 business guidance blogs published during former President Biden's term, including consumer protection information on AI and privacy lawsuits against Amazon and Microsoft, WIRED reported Tuesday, citing current and former FTC employees.
  Deleted posts included guidance about Amazon's alleged use of Ring camera data to train algorithms, Microsoft's $20 million settlement over Xbox children's data collection, and compliance standards for AI chatbots.
  
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• VW's Cheapest EV Is First To Use Rivian Software

  18-03-2025 23:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Volkswagen's ultra-cheap EV called the ID EVERY1 -- a small four-door hatchback revealed Wednesday -- will be the first to roll out with software and architecture from Rivian, according to a source familiar with the new model. The EV is expected to go into production in 2027 with a starting price of 20,000 euros ($21,500). A second EV called the ID.2all, which will be priced in the 25,000 euro price category, will be available in 2026. Both ve
  
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• Dutch Parliament Calls For End To Dependence On US Software Companies

  18-03-2025 22:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The Dutch parliament approved motions urging the government to reduce reliance on U.S. software companies by developing a sovereign cloud platform and reconsidering contracts with American firms. Reuters reports: While such initiatives have foundered in the past due to a lack of viable European alternatives, lawmakers said changing relations with the United States under the presidency of Donald Trump have given the issue fresh urgency. "The question we as Europeans must ask ourselves is: do we f
  
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• GM Taps Nvidia To Boost Its Self-Driving Projects

  18-03-2025 21:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  General Motors is partnering with Nvidia to enhance its self-driving and manufacturing capabilities by leveraging Nvidia's AI chips, software, and simulation tools. "GM says it will apply several of Nvidia's products to its business, such as the Omniverse 3D graphics platform which will run simulations on virtual assembly lines with an eye on reducing downtime and improving efficiency," reports The Verge. "The automaker also plans to equip its next-generation vehicles with Nvidia's 'AI brain' fo
  
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• Nvidia Reveals Next-Gen AI Chips, Roadmap Through 2028

  18-03-2025 21:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Nvidia unveiled its next wave of AI processors at GTC on Tuesday, announcing Blackwell Ultra chips that will ship in the second half of 2025, followed by the Vera Rubin architecture in 2026. CEO Jensen Huang also revealed that its 2028 chips will be named after physicist Richard Feynman.
  The Blackwell Ultra maintains the same 20 petaflops of AI performance as standard Blackwell chips but increases memory from 192GB to 288GB of HBM3e. Nvidia claims these chips can process 1,000 tokens per second
  
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• US Appeals Court Rejects Copyrights For AI-Generated Art

  18-03-2025 20:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday affirmed that a work of art generated by artificial intelligence without human input cannot be copyrighted under U.S. law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with the U.S. Copyright Office that an image created by Stephen Thaler's AI system "DABUS" was not entitled to copyright protection, and that only works with human authors can be copyrighted.Tuesday's
  
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• Vance Slams Globalization For Hampering American Innovation

  18-03-2025 19:10 via news.slashdot.org
  
  U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance text for hampering American innovation in a speech to entrepreneurs and venture capitalists on Tuesday, arguing that offshoring has eroded U.S. technological leadership. "Our workers have been failed by the government of the last 40 years," Vance told the American Dynamism Summit, criticizing two "conceits" of globalization: that nations manufacturing products wouldn't eventually design them too, and that cheap foreign labor benefits innovation.
  "As they got better
  
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• The First New Pebble Smartwatches Are Coming Later This Year

  18-03-2025 18:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Eric Migicovsky, founder of Pebble, will release two new smartwatches running the newly open-sourced Pebble operating system through his company Core Devices. The Core 2 Duo, priced at $149 and shipping in July, utilizes unused Pebble 2 frames with the same black-and-white E Ink display.
  The device features a 30-day battery life -- quadruple its predecessor's -- and incorporates a speaker for AI assistant interaction. Approximately 10,000 units will be available. The Core Time 2, arriving in Dec
  
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• Why Are the Most Expensive Netflix Movies Also the Worst?

  18-03-2025 17:40 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Despite spending hundreds of millions on blockbuster films, Netflix continues to churn out critically panned big-budget fare with its latest $300 million flop, "The Electric State," starring Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown. While the streaming giant has produced acclaimed films by giving talented directors creative freedom -- resulting in successes like "The Irishman," "Marriage Story" and "The Power of the Dog" -- it has repeatedly failed to create genuinely compelling blockbusters despite a
  
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• Meta's Llama AI Models Hit 1 Billion Downloads, Zuckerberg Says

  18-03-2025 17:05 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Meta's open AI model family Llama has reached 1 billion downloads, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday, marking a 53% increase from the 650 million reported in early December. Llama, which powers Meta's AI assistant across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, operates under a proprietary license that some developers consider commercially restrictive despite its free availability. Major corporations including Spotify, AT&T and DoorDash currently deploy Llama models in production environment
  
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• Apple Loses German Antitrust Appeal, Opening Door for Greater Controls

  18-03-2025 16:28 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple lost an appeal on Tuesday against a regulatory assessment that opens the iPhone maker up to stricter controls in Germany, the Federal Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday, following years of debate over the company's market position. Federal judges backed the German cartel office's 2023 designation of Apple as a "company of paramount cross-market significance for competition".Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• 'Vibe Coding' is Letting 10 Engineers Do the Work of a Team of 50 To 100, Says YC CEO

  18-03-2025 15:40 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan said startups are reaching $1-10 million annual revenue with fewer than 10 employees due to "vibe coding," a term coined by OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy in February.
  "You can just talk to the large language models and they will code entire apps," Tan told CNBC (video). "You don't have to hire someone to do it, you just talk directly to the large language model that wrote it and it'll fix it for you." What would've once taken "50 or 100" engineers to build, he belie
  
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• Google Parent Alphabet Acquires Wiz For $32 Billion

  18-03-2025 15:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The rumors were right: Google parent Alphabet has agreed to buy cyber security start-up Wiz for $32 billion, the biggest acquisition in the search group's history. From the report: Alphabet held talks over a $23 billion acquisition of Wiz last year, although the negotiations collapsed after some of the cyber security company's directors and investors became worried about antitrust hurdles.
  The deal, which will rank as the biggest deal of the year so far, was announced on Tuesday morning. It will
  
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• Supply Chain Compromise of Third-Party tj-actions/changed-files (CVE-2025-30066) and reviewdog/action-setup@v1 (CVE-2025-30154)

  18-03-2025 13:00 via cisa.gov
  A popular third-party GitHub Action, tj-actions/changed-files (tracked as CVE-2025-30066), was compromised. tj-actions/changed-files is designed to detect which files have changed in a pull request or commit. The supply chain compromise allows for information disclosure of secrets including, but not limited to, valid access keys, GitHub Personal Access Tokens (PATs), npm tokens, and private RSA keys. This has been patched in v46.0.1. 
  (Updated March 19, 2025) The compromise of tj-actions/ch
  
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• Supply Chain Compromise of Third-Party GitHub Action, CVE-2025-30066

  18-03-2025 13:00 via cisa.gov
  A popular third-party GitHub Action, tj-actions/changed-files (tracked as CVE-2025-30066), was compromised. This GitHub Action is designed to detect which files have changed in a pull request or commit. The supply chain compromise allows for information disclosure of secrets including, but not limited to, valid access keys, GitHub Personal Access Tokens (PATs), npm tokens, and private RSA keys. This has been patched in v46.0.1. 
  CISA added CVE-2025-30066 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabiliti
  
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• Google Parent Alphabet Agrees To Buy Cyber Security Group Wiz For $32 Billion

  18-03-2025 12:17 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google parent Alphabet has agreed to buy cyber security start-up Wiz for $32 billion, the biggest acquisition in the search group's history, according to Financial Times, which cites sources. From the report: Alphabet held talks over a $23 billion acquisition of Wiz last year, although the negotiations collapsed after some of the cyber security company's directors and investors became worried about antitrust hurdles.
  The deal, which will rank as the biggest deal of the year so far, will be annou
  
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• Software Startup Rippling Sues Competitor Deel, Claiming a Spy Carried Out 'Corporate Espionage'

  18-03-2025 11:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  HR software startup Rippling has sued competitor Deel, alleging that Deel orchestrated corporate espionage by recruiting an employee within Rippling to steal trade secrets, including customer data, sales strategies, and internal records. The lawsuit (PDF) claims the spy shared confidential information with Deel executives and a reporter, leading to legal action under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Deel denies wrongdoing and plans to counter the claims. CNBC report
  
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• New Form of Parkinson's Treatment Uses Real-Time Deep-Brain Stimulation

  18-03-2025 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  A newly FDA-approved form of adaptive deep-brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson's disease adjusts electrical stimulation in real time based on an individual's brain signals, improving symptom control and reducing medication dependence. Scientific American: For decades, Keith Krehbiel took high doses of medications with a debilitating side effect -- severe nausea -- following his diagnosis with early-onset Parkinson's disease at age 42 in 1997. When each dose wore off, he experienced dyskinesia
  
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• Hollywood Urges Trump To Not Let AI Companies 'Exploit' Copyrighted Works

  18-03-2025 04:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: More than 400 Hollywood creative leaders signed an open letter to the Trump White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, urging the administration to not roll back copyright protections at the behest of AI companies. The filmmakers, writers, actors, musicians and others -- which included Ben Stiller, Mark Ruffalo, Cynthia Erivo, Cate Blanchett, Cord Jefferson, Paul McCartney, Ron Howard and Taika Waititi -- were submitting comments for
  
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• BYD Unveils New Super-Charging EV Tech With Peak Speeds of 1,000 kW

  18-03-2025 02:25 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  fahrbot-bot shares a report from Reuters: BYD on Monday unveiled a new platform for electric vehicles (EVs) that it said could charge EVs as quickly as it takes to pump gas and announced for the first time that it would build a charging network across China. The so-called "super e-platform" will be capable of peak charging speeds of 1,000 kilowatts (kW), enabling cars that use it to travel 400 km (249 miles) on a 5-minute charge, founder Wang Chuanfu said at an event livestreamed from the compan
  
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• Google Is Switching Legacy G Suite Users To Pooled Workspace Storage

  18-03-2025 01:45 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  According to The Verge, legacy G Suite accounts will soon lose their individual storage allotment perks and be transitioned to pooled storage, which will be "shared across all users within your organization." The changes will come into effect starting May 1st. From the report: G Suite was rebranded as Workspace in 2020. G Suite legacy free edition, which Google stopped offering in 2012, provides each user with 15GB of free allocated storage and was offered for personal use -- making it ideal for
  
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• Roku Tests Autoplaying Ads Loading Before the Home Screen

  18-03-2025 01:02 via slashdot.org
  
  Roku is testing autoplaying video ads that play before users can access the home screen. While Roku claims this is just an experiment, users are threatening to abandon the platform if the change becomes permanent. Ars Technica reports: Reports of Roku customers seeing video ads automatically play before they could view the OS' home screen started appearing online this week. A Reddit user, for example, posted yesterday: "I just turned on my Roku and got an unskippable ad for a movie, before I got
  
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• Top Broadband Official Exits Commerce Department With Warning About Starlink

  18-03-2025 00:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: A top Commerce Department official sent a blistering email to his former colleagues on his way out the door Sunday warning that the Trump administration is poised to unduly enrich Elon Musk's satellite internet company with money for rural broadband. The technology offered by Starlink ... is inferior, wrote Evan Feinman, who had directed the $42.5 billion broadband program for the past three years. "Stranding all or part of rural America with wo
  
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