ICT news

• Cursor AI's Own Support Bot Hallucinated Its Usage Policy

  21-04-2025 23:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Cursor AI users recently encountered an ironic AI failure when the platform's support bot falsely claimed a non-existent login restriction policy. Co-founder Michael Truell apologized for the issue, clarified that no such policy exists, and attributed the mishap to AI hallucination and a session management bug. The Register reports: Users of the Cursor editor, designed to generate and fix source code in response to user prompts, have sometimes been booted from the software when trying to use the
  
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• Wine 10.6 Released

  21-04-2025 22:57 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Wine 10.6 has been released, featuring a new lexer within its Command Processor (CMD), support for the PBKDF2 algorithm to its Bcrypt implementation, and improved metadata handling in WindowsCodecs. According to Phoronix, the update also includes 27 known bug fixes that address issues with Unity games, Alan Wake, GDI+, and various other games and applications.You can see all the changes and download the relesae via WineHQ.org GitLab.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Teen Coder Shuts Down Open Source Mac App Whisky, Citing Harm To Paid Apps

  21-04-2025 22:15 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Whisky, a gaming-focused front-end for Wine's Windows compatibility tools on macOS, is no longer receiving updates. As one of the most useful and well-regarded tools in a Mac gamer's toolkit, it could be seen as a great loss, but its developer hopes you'll move on with what he considers a better option: supporting CodeWeavers' CrossOver product.Also, Whisky's creator is an 18-year-old college student, and he could use a break. "I am 18, yes,
  
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• EU Says It Will Enforce Digital Rules Irrespective of CEO and Location

  21-04-2025 21:10 via slashdot.org
  
  The European Union is determined to enforce its full digital rule book no matter who is in charge of companies such as X, Meta, Apple and Tiktok or where they are based, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told Politico. From a report: "That's why we've opened cases against TikTok, X, Apple, Meta just to name a few. We apply the rules fairly, proportionally, and without bias. We don't care where a company's from and who's running it. We care about protecting people," Politico quoted von de
  
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• FTC Sues Uber Over Deceptive Subscription Billing Practices

  21-04-2025 20:15 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The Federal Trade Commission filed suit against Uber on Monday, alleging the transportation giant violated federal consumer protection laws through deceptive billing and cancellation practices for its Uber One subscription service. According to the complaint, Uber violated both the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act by misleading consumers about subscription terms, charging users without consent, and implementing deliberately complicated cancellation processes.
  "Americans ar
  
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• Google Faces Off With US Government in Attempt To Break Up Company in Search Monopoly Case

  21-04-2025 19:36 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google is confronting an existential threat as the U.S. government tries to break up the company as punishment for turning its revolutionary search engine into an illegal monopoly. From a report: The drama began to unfold Monday in a Washington courtroom as three weeks of hearings kicked off to determine how the company should be penalized for operating a monopoly in search. In its opening arguments, federal antitrust enforcers also urged the court to impose forward-looking remedies to prevent G
  
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• Verizon Consumer CEO Says Net Neutrality 'Went Literally Nowhere'

  21-04-2025 18:50 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Verizon Consumer CEO Sowmyanarayan Sampath has declared that net neutrality regulations "went literally nowhere." Sampath claimed he couldn't identify what problem net neutrality was attempting to solve, despite Verizon's history of aggressive lobbying against such rules. "I don't know what net neutrality does," Sampath told The Verge. "I still don't know what problem we are trying to solve with net neutrality."
  When pressed about potential anti-competitive behaviors like zero-rating services, S
  
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• Invasion of the 'Journal Snatchers': the Firms That Buy Science Publications and Turn Them Rogue

  21-04-2025 18:05 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Major scholarly databases have removed dozens of academic journals after researchers discovered they had been purchased by questionable companies and transformed into predatory publications. A January 2025 study identified 36 legitimate journals acquired by recently formed firms with no publishing experience, who then dramatically increased publication fees and output while lowering quality standards.
  According to information scientist Alberto Martin-Martin from the University of Granada, publis
  
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• The FBI Can't Find 'Missing' Records of Its Hacking Tools

  21-04-2025 17:28 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The FBI says it is unable to find records related to its purchase of a series of hacking tools, despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on them and those purchases initially being included in a public U.S. government procurement database before being quietly scrubbed from the internet. From a report: The news highlights the secrecy the FBI maintains around its use of hacking tools. The agency has previously used classified technology in ordinary criminal investigations, pushed back aga
  
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• Over 100 Public Software Companies Getting 'Squeezed' by AI, Study Finds

  21-04-2025 16:43 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Over 100 mid-market software companies are caught in a dangerous "squeeze" between AI-native startups and tech giants, according to a new AlixPartners study released Monday. The consulting firm warns many face "threats to their survival over the next 24 months" as generative AI fundamentally reshapes enterprise software.
  The squeeze reflects a dramatic shift: AI agents are evolving from mere assistants to becoming applications themselves, potentially rendering traditional SaaS architecture obsol
  
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• We May Have Already Hit Peak Booze

  21-04-2025 16:00 via slashdot.org
  
  Global alcohol consumption has entered what appears to be a permanent decline, with total volume peaking at 25.4 billion liters in 2016 and falling approximately 13% since then, according to data from market research firm IWSR.
  Per-capita consumption has dropped dramatically from 5 liters of pure alcohol per adult annually in 2013 to 3.9 liters in 2023. Wine production, which reached its maximum of 37.5 million metric tons in 1979, has already decreased by 27%. Beer production peaked more recent
  
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• Should the Government Have Regulated the Early Internet - or Our Future AI?

  21-04-2025 13:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  In February tech journalist Nicholas Carr published Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart.
  A University of Virginia academic journal says the book "appraises the past and present" of information technology while issuing "a warning about its future." And specifically Carr argues that the government ignored historic precedents by not regulating the early internet sometime in the 1990s.
  But as he goes on to remind us, the early 1990s were also when the triumphalism of America's C
  
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• Space Investor Sees Opportunities in Defense-Related Startups and AI-Driven Systems

  21-04-2025 10:22 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Chad Anderson is the founder/managing partner of the early-stage VC Space Capital (and an investor in SpaceX, along with dozens of other space companies). Space Capital produces quarterly reports on the space economy, and he says today, unlike 2021, "the froth is gone. But so is the hype. What's left is a more grounded — and investable — space economy."
  On Yahoo Finance he shares several of the report's insights — including the emergence of "investable opportunities across defe
  
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• Pope Francis Has Died

  21-04-2025 10:02 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Pope Francis has died at the age of 88, the Vatican said Monday. The pontiff, who was Bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church, became pope in 2013 after his predecessor Benedict XVI resigned. On February 14, the Pope was admitted to hospital for bronchitis treatment. From a report: Born in 1936, Francis was the first pope from South America. His papacy was marked by his championing of those escaping war and hunger, as well as those in poverty, earning him the moniker the "People's Pope."
  
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• Return-to-Office Policies Are Impacting Neurodivergent Workers

  21-04-2025 07:15 via it.slashdot.org
  
  With more companies requiring workers to return to an office five days a week, "Anxiety is rising for some of the millions of people who identify as neurodivergent," writes the Washington Post.
  They raise the possibility that "strict office mandates have the potential to deter neurodivergent people who may approach problems differently," the article notes — affecting peoiple "whose brains function differently, such as with ADHD, autism or dyslexia."While many neurodivergent people excel in
  
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• Should College Application Essays Be Banned?

  21-04-2025 04:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  While college applicants are often required to write a personal essay for their applications, political scientist/author/academic Yascha Mounk argues that's "a deeply unfair way to select students for top colleges, one that is much more biased against the poor than standardized tests."
  The college essay wrongly encourages students to cast themselves as victims, to exaggerate the adversity they've faced, and to turn genuinely upsetting experiences into the focal point of their self-understanding.
  
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• Can You Run the Llama 2 LLM on DOS?

  21-04-2025 02:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Slashdot reader yeokm1 is the Singapore-based embedded security researcher whose side projects include installing Linux on a 1993 PC and building a ChatGPT client for MS-DOS.
  He's now sharing his latest project — installing Llama 2 on DOS:
  Conventional wisdom states that running LLMs locally will require computers with high performance specifications especially GPUs with lots of VRAM. But is this actually true?Thanks to an open-source llama2.c project [original created by Andrej Karpathy],
  
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• Airbus Promised a 'Green' Hydrogen Aircraft. That Bet Is Now Unraveling

  21-04-2025 01:16 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the Wall Street Journal:Five years ago, Airbus made a bold bet: The plane maker would launch a zero-emissions, hydrogen-powered aircraft within 15 years that, if successful, would mark the biggest revolution in aviation technology since the jet engine. Now, Airbus is pulling the brakes. The company has cut the project's budget by a quarter, reallocated staff and sent remaining engineers back to the drawing board, delaying its plans by as much as a deca
  
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