ICT news

• Milwaukee Police Consider Trading Millions of Mugshots For Free Facial Recognition Access

  28-04-2025 23:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee police are mulling a trade: 2.5 million mugshots for free use of facial recognition technology. Officials from the Milwaukee Police Department say swapping the photos with the software firm Biometrica will lead to quicker arrests and solving of crimes. But that benefit is unpersuasive for those who say the trade is startling, due to the concerns of the surveillance of city residents and possible federal agency access.
  
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• Monero Likely Pumped 50% Due To Suspected $330 Million Bitcoin Theft

  28-04-2025 23:00 via slashdot.org
  Onchain investigator ZachXBT flagged a suspicious $330.7 million Bitcoin transfer that was quickly laundered into Monero, causing XMR's price to spike by 50%. CoinTelegraph reports: The transaction, reported on April 28, saw funds moved from a potential victim's wallet to the address bc1qcry...vz55g. Following the transfer, the stolen stash was quickly laundered through over six instant exchanges and swapped into privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero. The large-scale conversion led to a 50% spik
  
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• Neurotech Companies Are Selling Brain Data, Senators Warn

  28-04-2025 22:20 via slashdot.org
  Three Democratic senators are sounding the alarm over brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies' ability to collect -- and potentially sell -- our neural data. From a report: In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Maria Cantwell (D-IN), and Ed Markey (D-MA) called for an investigation into neurotechnology companies' handling of user data, and for tighter regulations on their data-sharing policies. "Unlike other personal data, neural data -- captured dire
  
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• 23andMe Requiring Potential Bidders To Affirm They Will Uphold Data Privacy

  28-04-2025 21:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  The sale of bankrupt DNA data bank 23andMe is delayed as the company struggles to secure a lead bidder who can meet regulatory and privacy requirements, pushing the initial auction deadline from Friday to Monday. Seeking Alpha reports: 23andMe Holdings (OTC:MEHCQ), currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, is requiring that any potential bidders for the company's assets "guaranty that they will comply with the Company's privacy policies and applicable law." The genetics company said this i
  
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• Kickstarter Introduces 'Tariff Manager Tool' To Add Charges To Already Fully Funded Projects

  28-04-2025 21:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Here's an easy to understand example of how Donald Trump's tariffs on imported products have completely screwed small U.S. businesses and entrepreneurs: the crowdfunding site Kickstarter is introducing a "Tariff Manager tool" that will allow creators to add extra charges to projects that were already fully funded in order to deal with the higher and unexpected costs of the president's global trade war. "Over the past few weeks, we've been hard
  
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• China's Huawei Develops New AI Chip, Seeking To Match Nvidia

  28-04-2025 19:27 via slashdot.org
  Huawei is gearing up to test its newest and most powerful AI processor, which the company hopes could replace some higher-end products of U.S. chip giant Nvidia. From a WSJ report: Huawei has approached some Chinese tech companies about testing the technical feasibility of the new chip, called the Ascend 910D, people familiar with the matter said. The company is slated to receive the first batch of samples of the processor as soon as late May, some of the people said.
  The development is still at
  
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• Unauthorized AI Bot Experiment Infiltrated Reddit To Test Persuasion Capabilities

  28-04-2025 18:43 via slashdot.org
  Researchers claiming affiliation with the University of Zurich secretly deployed AI-powered bots in a popular Reddit forum to test whether AI could change users' minds on contentious topics. The unauthorized experiment, which targeted the r/changemyview subreddit, involved bots making over 1,700 comments across several months while adopting fabricated identities including a sexual assault survivor, a Black man opposing Black Lives Matter, and a domestic violence shelter worker.
  The researchers "
  
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• Dyson Founder Says He Has Lived a 'Life of Failure'

  28-04-2025 18:04 via slashdot.org
  Inventor James Dyson described his career as "a life of failure" in a recent Wall Street Journal interview, citing setbacks as drivers of innovation. The 77-year-old creator of the bagless vacuum cleaner, who built a $16.8 billion fortune according to Bloomberg's Billionaire Index, created 5,127 prototypes over five years before successfully launching his signature product in 1993. "If something works, it's less challenging, it's less interesting," Dyson said. "If something's gone wrong, you wan
  
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• IBM Pledges $150 Billion US Investment

  28-04-2025 17:23 via news.slashdot.org
  IBM announced plans to invest $150 billion in the United States over the next five years, with more than $30 billion earmarked specifically for research and development of mainframes and quantum computing technology. The investment follows similar commitments from tech giants including Apple and Nvidia -- each pledging approximately $500 billion -- in the wake of President Trump's election and tariff threats.
  "We have been focused on American jobs and manufacturing since our founding 114 years a
  
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• 'Don't Make Google Sell Chrome'

  28-04-2025 16:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  Ruby on Rails creator and Basecamp CTO David Heinemeier Hansson, makes a case for why Google shouldn't be forced to sell Chrome: First, Chrome won the browser war fair and square by building a better surfboard for the internet. This wasn't some opportune acquisition. This was the result of grand investments, great technical prowess, and markets doing what they're supposed to do: rewarding the best. Besides, we have a million alternatives. Firefox still exists, so does Safari, so does the billion
  
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• Widespread Power Outage Is Reported in Spain, France and Portugal

  28-04-2025 14:45 via slashdot.org
  Widespread power outages were reported Monday in parts of Spain, Portugal and France, affecting critical infrastructure like airports and causing transportation disruptions. From a report: "The interruption was due to a problem in the European electricity grid," E-Redes, the national energy supplier of Portugal, said in a statement. In addition to Portugal, it said, "The blackout also affected regions of Spain and France, due to faults in very high voltage lines."
  E-Redes said that the outage wa
  
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• America's Electric Vehicle Sales Have Jumped 10.6% Compared to 2024

  28-04-2025 13:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  Sales of electric vehicles in America jumped 10.6% in the first three months of 2025 (compared to the same period in 2024), reports Bloomberg.And research provider BloombergNEF expects all of 2025 will see a 31.5% sales increase from 2024's sales in the U:S. — slightly above the global increase rate of 30%. (That's 22 million battery-powered vehicles around the world.)
  "EV adoption is cruising along in the U.S.," Bloomberg writes, with interest "spreading from early-adopters to mainstream
  
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• AI Helps Unravel a Cause of Alzheimer's Disease and Identify a Therapeutic Candidate

  28-04-2025 09:40 via science.slashdot.org
  "A new study found that a gene recently recognized as a biomarker for Alzheimer's disease is actually a cause of it," announced the University of California, San Diego, "due to its previously unknown secondary function."
  "Researchers at the University of California San Diego used artificial intelligence to help both unravel this mystery of Alzheimer's disease and discover a potential treatment that obstructs the gene's moonlighting role."
  A team led by Sheng Zhong, a professor in the university'
  
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• Could a 'Math Genius' AI Co-author Proofs Within Three Years?

  28-04-2025 04:59 via science.slashdot.org
  A new DARPA project called expMath "aims to jumpstart math innovation with the help of AI," writes The Register. America's "Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency" believes mathematics isn't advancing fast enough, according to their article...So to accelerate — or "exponentiate" — the rate of mathematical research, DARPA this week held a Proposers Day event to engage with the technical community in the hope that attendees will prepare proposals to submit once the actual Broad Agen
  
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• Nuclear Fusion Pioneer Abandons Plan for Prototype Reactor, Will License Reaction-Boosting Nuclear Fuel Capsule

  28-04-2025 03:05 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Remember First Light Fusion? Founded in 2011, it was a pioneering British startup that in 2022 "successfully combined atomic nuclei, which U.K. regulators called a milestone in the decades-long push for fusion energy.
  It's now "pulled the plug on plans to build its first reactor," reports the Telegraph, abandoning its push for a prototype power plant based on its "projectile fusion" technology due to a lack of funding.
  The technology involves a 5p-sized projectile being fired at a fuel cell at e
  
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• To 'Reclaim Future-Making', Amazon Workers Published a Collection of Science Fiction Stories

  28-04-2025 01:38 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Its goal was to "support workers to reclaim the power of future-making". A 2022 pilot project saw over 25 Amazon workers meeting online "to discuss how science fiction shed light on their working conditions and futures." 13 of them then continued meeting regularly in 2023 with the "Worker as Futurist" project (funded by Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, according to an article by the project's leaders in the socialist magazine Jacobin). "Our team of scholars, teachers, wr
  
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