ICT news

• Google Launches Sec-Gemini v1 AI Model To Improve Cybersecurity Defense

  04-04-2025 23:40 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Google has introduced Sec-Gemini v1, an experimental AI model built on its Gemini platform and tailored for cybersecurity. BetaNews reports: Sec-Gemini v1 is built on top of Gemini, but it's not just some repackaged chatbot. Actually, it has been tailored with security in mind, pulling in fresh data from sources like Google Threat Intelligence, the OSV vulnerability database, and Mandiant's threat reports. This gives it the ability to help with root cause analysis, threat identification, and vul
  
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• Trump Extends TikTok Deadline For the Second Time

  04-04-2025 23:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  For the second time, President Trump has extended the deadline for ByteDance to divest TikTok's U.S. operations by 75 days. The TikTok deal "requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed," said Trump in a post on his Truth Social platform. The extension will "keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days.""We hope to continue working in Good Faith with China, who I understand are not very happy about our Reciprocal Tariffs (Necessary for Fair and Balanced Trade between C
  
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• AI Avatar Tries To Argue Case Before a New York Court

  04-04-2025 22:25 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: It took only seconds for the judges on a New York appeals court to realize that the man addressing them from a video screen -- a person about to present an argument in a lawsuit -- not only had no law degree, but didn't exist at all. The latest bizarre chapter in the awkward arrival of artificial intelligence in the legal world unfolded March 26 under the stained-glass dome of New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division's First J
  
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• Microsoft Employee Disrupts 50th Anniversary and Calls AI Boss 'War Profiteer'

  04-04-2025 20:41 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: A Microsoft employee disrupted the company's 50th anniversary event to protest its use of AI. "Shame on you," said Microsoft employee Ibtihal Aboussad, speaking directly to Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. "You are a war profiteer. Stop using AI for genocide. Stop using AI for genocide in our region. You have blood on your hands. All of Microsoft has blood on its hands. How dare you all celebrate when Microsoft is killing children. Shame on you all."Read mo
  
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• Hackers Strike Australia's Largest Pension Funds in Coordinated Attacks

  04-04-2025 19:03 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Hackers targeting Australia's major pension funds in a series of coordinated attacks have stolen savings from some members at the biggest fund, Reuters is reporting, citing a source, and compromised more than 20,000 accounts. From the report: National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a statement she was aware of "cyber criminals" targeting accounts in the country's A$4.2 trillion ($2.63 trillion) retirement savings sector and was organising a response across the government,
  
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• Windows 11 Poised To Beat 10, Mostly Because It Has To

  04-04-2025 18:06 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The gap between Windows 10 and Windows 11 continues to narrow, and Microsoft's flagship operating system is on track to finally surpass its predecessor by summer. The latest figures from Statcounter show the increase in Windows 11's market share accelerating, while Windows 10 declines.
  Before Champagne corks start popping in Redmond, it is worth noting that Windows 10 still accounts for over half the market -- 54.2 percent -- and Windows 11 now accounts for 4
  
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• AI Could Affect 40% of Jobs and Widen Inequality Between Nations, UN Warns

  04-04-2025 17:20 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: AI is projected to reach $4.8 trillion in market value by 2033, but the technology's benefits remain highly concentrated, according to the U.N. Trade and Development agency. In a report released on Thursday, UNCTAD said the AI market cap would roughly equate to the size of Germany's economy, with the technology offering productivity gains and driving digital transformation. However, the agency also raised concerns about automation and job displacement, warnin
  
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• Camera Makers Defend Proprietary RAW Formats Despite Open Standard Alternative

  04-04-2025 16:42 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Camera manufacturers continue to use different proprietary RAW file formats despite the 20-year existence of Adobe's open-source DNG (Digital Negative) format, creating ongoing compatibility challenges for photographers and software developers.
  Major manufacturers including Sony, Canon, and Panasonic defended their proprietary formats as necessary for maintaining control over image processing. Sony's product team told The Verge their ARW format allows them "to maximize performance based on devic
  
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• China Imposes 34% Reciprocal Tariffs on Imports of US Goods

  04-04-2025 15:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  China said Friday that it will impose reciprocal 34% tariffs on all imports from the United States from April 10, making good on a promise to strike back after US President Donald Trump escalated a global trade war. CNN: On Wednesday, Trump unveiled an additional 34% tariff on all Chinese goods imported into the US, in a move poised to cause a major reset of relations and worsen trade tensions between the world's two largest economies.
  "This practice of the US is not in line with international t
  
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• Visa Bids $100 Million To Replace Mastercard As Apple's New Credit Card Partner

  04-04-2025 15:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Visa has offered Apple roughly $100 million to take over the tech giant's credit card partnership from Mastercard, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the matter. Visa has made a bold push to secure the Apple Card, offering an upfront payment typically reserved for the largest card programs, WSJ reported. American Express is also trying to unseat Mastercard to win the Apple card. Amex is looking to become the
  
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• Ivanti Releases Security Updates for Connect Secure, Policy Secure & ZTA Gateways Vulnerability (CVE-2025-22457)

  04-04-2025 14:00 via cisa.gov
  Ivanti released security updates to address vulnerabilities (CVE-2025-22457) in Ivanti Connect Secure, Policy Secure & ZTA Gateways. A cyber threat actor could exploit CVE-2025-22457 to take control of an affected system.
  CISA has added CVE-2025-22457 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog.
  See the following resources for more guidance:April Security Update | Ivanti
  April Security Advisory Ivanti Connect Secure, Policy Secure & ZTA Gateways (CVE-2025-22457)
  Suspected Ch
  
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• Coreboot 25.03 Released With Support For 22 More Motherboards

  04-04-2025 12:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Coreboot 25.03 has been released with support for 22 new motherboards and several other significant updates, including enhanced display handling, USB debugging, RISC-V support, and RAM initialization for older Intel platforms. Phoronix reports: Coreboot 25.03 delivers display handling improvements, a better USB debugging experience, CPU topology updates, various improvements to the open-source RAM initialization for aging Intel Haswell platforms, improved USB Type-C and Thunderbolt handling, var
  
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• The Retro Subway Map That Design Nerds Love Makes a Comeback

  04-04-2025 09:12 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The M.T.A. has unveiled on Wednesday a revamped New York City subway map -- the first major redesign in nearly 50 years. As reported by the New York Times, the map draws inspiration from the modernist but controversial 1972 Unimark version, prioritizing clarity over geographic precision. It's also a part of a broader effort to refresh the system's image amid calls for infrastructure upgrades and political tensions over transit funding and congestion pricing. From the report: The updated version
  
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• Wealthy Americans Have Death Rates On Par With Poor Europeans

  04-04-2025 05:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: [...] The study, led by researchers at Brown University, found that the wealthiest Americans lived shorter lives than the wealthiest Europeans. In fact, wealthy Northern and Western Europeans had death rates 35 percent lower than the wealthiest Americans, whose lifespans were more like the poorest in Northern and Western Europe -- which includes countries such as France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. "The findings are a stark reminder th
  
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• Windows 11 Tests Taskbar Icons That Scale Up and Down Like On a Mac

  04-04-2025 04:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft is testing a new Windows 11 feature that resizes taskbar icons dynamically like on macOS, with options to shrink icons when the taskbar is full or keep them small at all times. The Verge reports: If you're on the beta, under Taskbar settings - Taskbar behaviors, you can now select options under Show smaller taskbar buttons: Always, Never, or When taskbar is full. The third option will scale down icons so that they all can fit and not get hidden away in a second menu. The behavior appea
  
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• Google's NotebookLM AI Can Now 'Discover Sources' For You

  04-04-2025 03:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Google's NotebookLM has added a new "Discover sources" feature that allows users to describe a topic and have the AI find and curate relevant sources from the web -- eliminating the need to upload documents manually. "When you tap the Discover button in NotebookLM, you can describe the topic you're interested in, and NotebookLM will bring back a curated collection of relevant sources from the web," says Google software engineer Adam Bignell. Click to add those sources to your notebook; "it's a f
  
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• Massive Expansion of Italy's Piracy Shield Underway

  04-04-2025 03:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: Walled Culture has been following closely Italy's poorly designed Piracy Shield system. Back in December we reported how copyright companies used their access to the Piracy Shield system to order Italian Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to all of Google Drive for the entire country, and how malicious actors could similarly use that unchecked power to shut down critical national infrastructure. Since then, the Computer & Comm
  
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• Louvre Museum In Paris to Discontinue Nintendo 3DS Audio Guides

  04-04-2025 02:20 via games.slashdot.org
  
  The Louvre Museum will discontinue its use of Nintendo 3DS XL consoles as audio guides by September 2025, replacing them with a new system. NintendoSoup reports: For several years the Louvre has been using specially dedicated New Nintendo 3DS XL consoles to give visitors an audio guided tour of the famous museum. According to the museum's official website however, it seems that the program will be discontinued in September 2025, to be replaced by a new system.Presumably, this is due to Nintendo
  
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• DeepMind Details All the Ways AGI Could Wreck the World

  04-04-2025 01:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Ryan Whitwam: Researchers at DeepMind have ... released a new technical paper (PDF) that explains how to develop AGI safely, which you can download at your convenience. It contains a huge amount of detail, clocking in at 108 pages before references. While some in the AI field believe AGI is a pipe dream, the authors of the DeepMind paper project that it could happen by 2030. With that in mind, they aimed to understand the risks of
  
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• Air Conditioning, Not Data Centers, Driving Global Energy Demand Growth

  04-04-2025 01:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Air conditioning will contribute more to rising global energy demand than data centers through 2030, according to an International Energy Agency. While attention has focused on computing power consumption, the IEA projects data centers will account for less than 10% of increased energy demand by 2030, significantly less than space cooling requirements. Global cooling degree days, a measure of air conditioning need, were 6% higher in 2024 than 2023 and 20% above the long-term average for the firs
  
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• US Stock Markets See Worst Day Since Covid Pandemic

  04-04-2025 00:42 via news.slashdot.org
  
  U.S. stock markets suffered their worst day since the Covid pandemic after Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs, triggering a global selloff and wiping out $470 billion in value from tech giants Apple and Nvidia. From a report: The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 6%, while the S&P 500 and the Dow dropped 4.8% and 3.9%, respectively. [...] Meanwhile, the US dollar hit a six-month low, going down at least 2.2% on Thursday morning compared with other major currencies and oil prices sank on fears
  
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• Intel, TSMC Tentatively Agree To Form Chipmaking Joint Venture

  04-04-2025 00:20 via slashdot.org
  
  Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. have reached a preliminary agreement to form a joint venture operating Intel's chipmaking facilities, with TSMC taking a 20% stake, The Information reports [non-paywalled source]. Intel and other U.S. semiconductor companies would hold the majority of shares in the proposed venture. Instead of capital investment, TSMC has discussed sharing chipmaking methods and training Intel personnel.
  The talks face internal opposition from some Intel executive
  
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