ICT news

• 'Minecraft Movie' Scores Biggest Videogame Movie Opening Ever, Faces Early Leaks Online

  06-04-2025 23:40 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  It was already the best-selling videogame of all time, notes the Hollywood Reporter. And A Minecraft Movie just had the biggest opening ever for a video game movie adaptation. WIth a production budget of $150 million, it earned in $157 million in just its first weekend in the U.S., with a worldwide total of $301 million.A Warner Bros. executive called the movie "lightning in a bottle," while the head of co-producer Legendary Pictures acknowledged the game is a global phenomon, according to the a
  
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• NFL Adopts Sony's 'Virtual Measurements' for Football's First Downs

  06-04-2025 21:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  theodp writes: America's National Football League announced that beginning with the 2025 season, Sony's Hawk-Eye virtual measurement technology will assess and identify first downs after a ball spot. Sony's Hawk-Eye virtual measurement technology, which consists of six 8K cameras for optical tracking of the position of the ball, is operated from the NFL's "Art McNally GameDay Central Officiating Center" in New York and is integrated with the League's existing replay system. It will serve as an e
  
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• In 'Milestone' for Open Source, Meta Releases New Benchmark-Beating Llama 4 Models

  06-04-2025 20:05 via news.slashdot.org
  
  It's "a milestone for Meta AI and for open source," Mark Zuckerberg said this weekend. "For the first time, the best small, mid-size, and potentially soon frontier [large-language] models will be open source."
  Zuckerberg anounced four new Llama LLMs in a video posted on Instagram and Facebook — two dropping this weekend, with another two on the way. "Our goal is to build the world's leading AI, open source it, and make it universally accessible so that everyone in the world benefits."
  Zuck
  
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• Forget 'Snow Sequoia'. Now I'm Cheering for Better Linux Hardware

  06-04-2025 18:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  It was long-time Slashdot reader uninet who argued "Apple Needs a Snow Sequoia." (That is, Apple needs an upgrade to MacOS Sequoia that's like it's earlier "Snow Leopard" upgrade to "Leopard" OS — an upgrade that's "all about how little it added and how much it took away".)"My recent column on Apple's declining software quality hit a nerve..." he writes in a follow-up. "So why do any of us put up with software that grows increasingly buggy?"
  "One word: hardware. And that's where I'd love t
  
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• After 48 Years, Voyager Scientist Confronts the Missions Final Years

  06-04-2025 17:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  "I started working on Voyager in 1977," the Voyager mission's project scientist told Gizmodo Saturday in a new interview. "It was my first job out of college."
  35 years later, a Voyager probe became the first spacecraft to cross into interstellar space in 2012, with Voyager 2 following in 2018. But while each Voyager spacecraft carries 10 scientific instruments, all but three have now been turned off to conserve power, Gizmodo writes. "The two spacecraft now have enough power to operate for anot
  
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• New Tinder Game 'Lets You Flirt With AI Characters. Three of Them Dumped Me'

  06-04-2025 16:34 via slashdot.org
  
  Tinder "is experimenting with a chatbot that claims to help users improve their flirting skills," notes Washington Post internet-culture reporter Tatum Hunter. The chatbot is available only to users in the United States on iPhones for a limited time, and powered by OpenAI's GPT-4o each character "kicks off an improvised conversation, and the user responds out loud with something flirty..."
  "Three of them dumped me."You can win points for banter the app deems "charming" or "playful." You lose poi
  
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• 'Tron' Sequel Trailer Released by Disney

  06-04-2025 13:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  This October will see the release of a film that's nearly 43 years in the making, reports Ars Technica:It's difficult to underestimate the massive influence that Disney's 1982 cult science fiction film, TRON, had on both the film industry — thanks to combining live action with what were then groundbreaking visual effects rife with computer-generated imagery — and on nerd culture at large. Over the ensuing decades there has been one sequel, an animated TV series, a comic book miniseri
  
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• Were Still More UK Postmasters Also Wrongly Prosecuted Over Accounting Bug?

  06-04-2025 09:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  U.K. postmasters were mistakenly sent to prison due to a bug in their "Horizon" accounting software — as first reported by Computer Weekly back in 2009. Nearly 16 years later, the same site reports that now the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission "is attempting to contact any former subpostmasters that could have been prosecuted for unexplained losses on the Post Office's pre-Horizon Capture software.
  "There are former subpostmasters that, like Horizon users, could have been convicte
  
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• Starliner's Space Station Flight Was 'Wilder' Than We Thought

  06-04-2025 06:34 via science.slashdot.org
  
  The Starliner spacecraft lost four thrusters while approaching the International Space Station last summer. NASA astronaut, Butch Wilmore took manual control, remembers Ars Technica, "But as Starliner's thrusters failed, Wilmore lost the ability to move the spacecraft in the direction he wanted to go..."Starliner had flown to within a stone's throw of the space station, a safe harbor, if only they could reach it. But already, the failure of so many thrusters violated the mission's flight rules.
  
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• Microsoft's New AI-Generated Version of 'Quake 2' Now Playable Online

  06-04-2025 03:34 via games.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft has created a real-time AI-generated rendition of Quake II gameplay (playable on the web).
  Friday Xbox's general manager of gaming AI posted the startling link to "an AI-generated gaming experience" at Copilot.Microsoft.com "Move, shoot, explore — and every frame is created on the fly by an AI world model, responding to player inputs in real-time. Try it here."They started with their "Muse" videogame world models, adding "a real-time playable extension" that players can interact
  
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• Makers of Rent-Setting Software Sue California City Over Ban

  06-04-2025 00:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Berkeley, California is "the latest city to try to block landlords from using algorithms when deciding rents," reports the Associated Press (noting that officials in many cities claim the practice is driving up the price of housing).But then real estate software company RealPage filed a federal lawsuit against Berkeley on Wednesday:
  Texas-based RealPage said Berkeley's ordinance, which goes into effect this month violates the company's free speech rights and is the result of an "intentional camp
  
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