ICT news

• Google Updating Its 'G' Icon For the First Time In 10 Years

  12-05-2025 23:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google is updating its iconic 'G' logo for the first time in 10 years, replacing the four solid color sections with a smooth gradient transition from red to yellow to green to blue. "This modernization feels inline with the Gemini gradient, while AI Mode in Search uses something similar for a shortcut," notes 9to5Google. The update has already rolled out to the Google Search app on iOS and is in beta for Android. From the report: It's a subtle change that you might not immediately notice, especi
  
  Read more

• Ticketmaster Now Shows Full Price of Tickets Up Front

  12-05-2025 22:40 via news.slashdot.org
  Ticketmaster will now show full ticket prices upfront -- fees included. "The company announced the 'All In Prices' initiative on Monday as part of its efforts to comply with the Federal Trade Commission's ban on junk fees, which goes into effect on May 12th," notes The Verge. From the report: Now, when you're shopping for tickets, Ticketmaster will display a ticket's full price, alongside a dropdown menu that you can select to see how much you're paying for the "Face Value" of a ticket and the s
  
  Read more

• New Pope Chose His Name Based On AI's Threats To 'Human Dignity'

  12-05-2025 22:02 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last Thursday, white smoke emerged from a chimney at the Sistine Chapel, signaling that cardinals had elected a new pope. That's a rare event in itself, but one of the many unprecedented aspects of the election of Chicago-born Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV is one of the main reasons he chose his papal name: artificial intelligence. On Saturday, the new pope gave his first address to the College of Cardinals, explaining his name choice as a
  
  Read more

• Apple To Lean on AI Tool To Help iPhone Battery Lifespan for Devices in iOS 19

  12-05-2025 21:15 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple is planning to use AI technology to address a frequent source of customer frustration: the iPhone's battery life. From a report: The company is planning an AI-powered battery management mode for iOS 19, an iPhone software update due in September, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The enhancement will analyze how a person uses their device and make adjustments to conserve energy, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the service hasn't been announced.
  To cr
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Nvidia Reportedly Raises GPU Prices by 10-15%

  12-05-2025 19:33 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: A new report claims that Nvidia has recently raised the official prices of nearly all of its products to combat the impact of tariffs and surging manufacturing costs on its business, with gaming graphics cards receiving a 5 to 10% hike while AI GPUs see up to a 15% increase.
  As reported by Digitimes Taiwan, Nvidia is facing "multiple crises," including a $5.5 billion hit to its quarterly earnings over export restrictions on AI chips, including a ban on sales
  
  Read more

• Chegg To Lay Off 22% of Workforce as AI Tools Shake Up Edtech Industry

  12-05-2025 18:49 via slashdot.org
  Chegg said on Monday it would lay off about 22% of its workforce, or 248 employees, to cut costs and streamline its operations as students increasingly turn to AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT over traditional edtech platforms. From a report: The company, an online education firm that offers textbook rentals, homework help and tutoring, has been grappling with a decline in web traffic for months and warned that the trend would likely worsen before improving.
  Google's expansion of AI Overviews is
  
  Read more

• Climate Crisis Threatens the Banana, the World's Most Popular Fruit

  12-05-2025 18:00 via news.slashdot.org
  The climate crisis is threatening the future of the world's most popular fruit, as almost two-thirds of banana-growing areas in Latin America and the Caribbean may no longer be suitable for growing the fruit by 2080, new research has found. From a report: Rising temperatures, extreme weather and climate-related pests are pummeling banana-growing countries such as Guatemala, Costa Rica and Colombia, reducing yields and devastating rural communities across the region, according to Christian Aid's
  
  Read more

• Western Digital Invests in Ceramic Storage Firm That Claims 5,000-Year Data Retention

  12-05-2025 17:20 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Western Digital has made a strategic investment in German startup Cerabyte, a company developing nearly indestructible ceramic-based data storage technology. The partnership aims to accelerate commercialization of Cerabyte's ceramic-on-glass material, which the company claims can preserve data for 5,000 years.
  Cerabyte recently demonstrated its technology's resilience by boiling storage devices in salt water and subjecting them to oven-level heat. The company states its ceramic storage withstand
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Apple Considering Raising iPhone Prices

  12-05-2025 16:40 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple is weighing price increases for its fall iPhone lineup, a step it is seeking to couple with new features and design changes, according to WSJ, which cited people familiar with the matter. From the report: The company is determined to avoid any scenario in which it appears to attribute price increases to U.S. tariffs on goods from China, where most Apple devices are assembled, the people said. The U.S. and China agreed Monday to suspend most of the tariffs they had imposed on each other in
  
  Read more

• Update to How CISA Shares Cyber-Related Alerts and Notifications

  12-05-2025 14:00 via cisa.gov
  Starting May 12, CISA is changing how we announce cybersecurity updates and the release of new guidance. These announcements will only be shared through CISA social media platforms and email and will no longer be listed on our Cybersecurity Alerts & Advisories webpage.  
  The focus of our Cybersecurity Alerts & Advisories webpage will now be on urgent information tied to emerging threats or major cyber activity. CISA wants this critical information to get the attention it deser
  
  Read more

• Is There Water on Mars?

  12-05-2025 13:34 via science.slashdot.org
  Evidence is mounting for "a vast reservoir of liquid water" on Mars, according to a new article by Australian National University professor Hrvoje TkalÄiÄ and geophysics associate professor Weijia Sun from the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, announcing their recently published paper."Using seismic data from NASA's InSight mission, we uncovered evidence that the seismic waves slow down in a layer between 5.4 and 8 kilometres below the surface, which could be because of the prese
  
  Read more

• US and China Agree To Temporarily Slash Tariffs

  12-05-2025 10:26 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The United States and China said Monday they reached an agreement to temporarily reduce the tariffs [non-paywalled source] they have imposed on each other in an attempt to defuse the trade war threatening the world's two largest economies. From a report: In a joint statement, the countries said they would suspend their respective tariffs for 90 days while they negotiate. Under the agreement, the United States would reduce the tariff on Chinese imports to 30 percent from its current 145 percent,
  
  Read more

• US Copyright Office to AI Companies: Fair Use Isn't 'Commercial Use of Vast Troves of Copyrighted Works'

  12-05-2025 09:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Business Insider tells the story in three bullet points:- Big Tech companies depend on content made by others to train their AI models.- Some of those creators say using their work to train AI is copyright infringement.- The U.S. Copyright Office just published a report that indicates it may agree.
  The office released on Friday its latest in a series of reports exploring copyright laws and artificial intelligence. The report addresses whether the copyrighted content AI companies use to train the
  
  Read more

• Videogame's Players Launch Boycott Over Bugs, Story Changes, Monetization

  12-05-2025 06:34 via games.slashdot.org
  It's been a mobile-only game for decades. Then a little more than a week ago Infinity Nikkireleased its 1.5 update (which introduced multiplayer and customization options) and launched the game on Steam.
  But it "didn't go over as planned," writes the worker-owned gaming site Aftermath, citing some very negative reactions on Reddit. (Some players say that in response the game's publisher is now even censoring the word "boycott" on its official forums and community spaces...)
  Infinity Nikki player
  
  Read more

• Apple's iPhone Plans for 2027: Foldable, or Glass and Curved. (Plus Smart Glasses, Tabletop Robot)

  12-05-2025 03:46 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the Verge:This morning, while summarizing an Apple "product blitz" he expects for 2027, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman writes in his Power On newsletter that Apple is planning a "mostly glass, curved iPhone" with no display cutouts for that year, which happens to be the iPhone's 20th anniversary... [T]he closest hints are probably in Apple patents revealed over the years, like one from 2019 that describes a phone encased in glass that "forms a continuous loop
  
  Read more

• Researchers Just Solved a Big, 70-Year-Old Problem for Fusion Energy

  12-05-2025 01:26 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Fusion energy "took one step closer to reality," announced the University of Texas at Austin, as their researchers joined with a team from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Type One Energy Group and "solved a longstanding problem in the field" — how to contain high-energy particles inside fusion reactors.When high-energy alpha particles leak from a reactor, that prevents the plasma from getting hot and dense enough to sustain the fusion reaction. To prevent them from leaking, engineers de
  
  Read more

• Over 3,200 Cursor Users Infected by Malicious Credential-Stealing npm Packages

  12-05-2025 00:26 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Cybersecurity researchers have flagged three malicious npm packages that target the macOS version of AI-powered code-editing tool Cursor, reports The Hacker News:
  "Disguised as developer tools offering 'the cheapest Cursor API,' these packages steal user credentials, fetch an encrypted payload from threat actor-controlled infrastructure, overwrite Cursor's main.js file, and disable auto-updates to maintain persistence," Socket researcher Kirill Boychenko said. All three packages continue to be a
  
  Read more

Follow @newslocke_ict on Twitter!