ICT news

• AI Therapy Bots Are Conducting 'Illegal Behavior', Digital Rights Organizations Say

  13-06-2025 23:30 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Almost two dozen digital rights and consumer protection organizations sent a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission on Thursday urging regulators to investigate Character.AI and Meta's "unlicensed practice of medicine facilitated by their product," through therapy-themed bots that claim to have credentials and confidentiality "with inadequate controls and disclosures." The complaint and request for investigation is led by the Consumer Federa
  
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• 23andMe's Founder Anne Wojcicki Wins Bid For DNA Testing Firm

  13-06-2025 22:50 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of 23andMe, has regained control of the bankrupt DNA-testing company after a nonprofit she controls outbid Regeneron Pharmaceuticals with a $305 million offer. The company filed for bankruptcy in March due to declining demand and fallout from a major 2023 data breach."The agreement with non-profit TTAM Research Institute is the result of a final round of bidding that occurred earlier today between TTAM and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals," the company said in a statement.Read
  
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• GameStop CEO Says The Company's Future Isn't In Games

  13-06-2025 22:10 via games.slashdot.org
  
  GameStop is leaning heavily to trading cards as part of its future strategy, according to CEO Ryan Cohen. The news comes as a part of larger strategy shift to buy and hold a lot of bitcoin. From a report: Cohen has said that continuing to focus on trading cards, including the incredibly popular recent Pokemon card sets, is a "natural extension" of GameStop's business. He added that the collectibles could have potential for high profit margins.
  Pokemon cards have a seen a gigantic resurgence rece
  
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• The Vaporware That Apple Insists Isn't Vaporware

  13-06-2025 21:30 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  At WWDC 2024, Apple showed off a dramatically improved Siri that could handle complex contextual queries like "when is my mom's flight landing?" The demo was heavily edited due to latency issues and couldn't be shown in a single take. Multiple Apple engineers reportedly learned about the feature by watching the keynote alongside everyone else. Those features never shipped.
  Now, nearly a year later, Apple executives Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak are conducting press interviews claiming the 202
  
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• Walmart and Amazon Are Exploring Issuing Their Own Stablecoins

  13-06-2025 20:50 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Walmart and Amazon are exploring the possibility of issuing their own stablecoins in the United States, WSJ reported Friday, potentially shifting billions of dollars in transaction volume away from traditional banks and card networks. The retail giants, along with Expedia Group and several airlines, have recently discussed launching corporate stablecoins that would allow them to circumvent the existing payments infrastructure dominated by Visa and Mastercard.
  The companies' final decisions hinge
  
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• Google's Test Turns Search Results Into an AI-Generated Podcast

  13-06-2025 20:15 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google is rolling out a test that puts its AI-powered Audio Overviews on the first page of search results on mobile. From a report: The experiment, which you can enable in Labs, will let you generate an AI podcast-style discussion for certain queries. If you search for something like, "How do noise cancellation headphones work?", Google will display a button beneath the "People also ask" module that says, "Generate Audio Overview." Once you click the button, it will take up to 40 seconds to gene
  
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• The Audacious Reboot of America's Nuclear Energy Program

  13-06-2025 19:25 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  The United States is mounting an ambitious effort to reclaim nuclear energy leadership after falling dangerously behind China, which now has 31 reactors under construction and plans 40 more within a decade. America produces less nuclear power than it did a decade ago and abandoned uranium mining and enrichment capabilities, leaving Russia controlling roughly half the world's enriched uranium market.
  This strategic vulnerability has triggered an unprecedented response: venture capitalists investe
  
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• Google's Gemini AI Will Summarize PDFs For You When You Open Them

  13-06-2025 18:46 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google is rolling out new Gemini AI features for Workspace users that make it easier to find information in PDFs and form responses. From a report: The Gemini-powered file summarization capabilities in Google Drive have now expanded to PDFs and Google Forms, allowing key details and insights to be condensed into a more convenient format that saves users from manually digging through the files.
  Gemini will proactively create summary cards when users open a PDF in their drive and present clickable
  
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• 'We're Done With Teams': German State Hits Uninstall on Microsoft

  13-06-2025 18:00 via it.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: In less than three months' time, almost no civil servant, police officer or judge in Schleswig-Holstein will be using any of Microsoft's ubiquitous programs at work. Instead, the northern state will turn to open-source software to "take back control" over data storage and ensure "digital sovereignty," its digitalisation minister, Dirk Schroedter, told AFP. "We're done with Teams!" he said, referring to Microsoft's messaging and collaboration tool and speaking
  
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• Tiny Human Hearts Grown in Pig Embryos For the First Time

  13-06-2025 17:22 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Scientists have successfully grown beating human hearts inside pig embryos for the first time, marking a significant advance in developing human-animal chimeras for potential organ transplantation. The hybrid embryos survived for 21 days, during which the fingertip-sized hearts began beating, according to findings presented at the International Society for Stem Cell Research meeting in Hong Kong.
  Researchers -- led by Lai Liangxue at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health -- reprogra
  
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• Salesforce Blocks AI Rivals From Using Slack Data

  13-06-2025 16:43 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Slack, an instant-messaging service popular with businesses, recently blocked other software firms from searching or storing Slack messages even if their customers permit them to do so, according to a public disclosure from Slack's owner, Salesforce.
  The move, which hasn't previously been reported, could hamper fast-growing artificial intelligence startups that have used such access to power their services, such as Glean. Since the Salesforce change, Glean an
  
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• Google is Killing Android Instant Apps

  13-06-2025 16:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google will discontinue its Android Instant Apps feature in December 2025, ending a nearly decade-long experiment that allowed users to try portions of mobile apps without installing them. The feature, rolled out in early 2017, enabled developers to create lightweight app versions under 15 megabytes that could run temporarily on users' devices when they tapped specific links.
  The feature struggled with low developer uptake due to the technical complexity of creating these stripped-down app versi
  
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• US Navy Backs Right To Repair After $13 Billion Carrier Crew Left Half-Fed By Contractor-Locked Ovens

  13-06-2025 15:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: US Navy Secretary John Phelan has told the Senate the service needs the right to repair its own gear, and will rethink how it writes contracts to keep control of intellectual property and ensure sailors can fix hardware, especially in a fight. Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Phelan cited the case of the USS Gerald R. Ford, America's largest and most expensive nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which carried a price
  
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• Meta Inks a New Geothermal Energy Deal To Support AI

  13-06-2025 12:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Meta has struck a new deal with geothermal startup XGS Energy to supply 150 megawatts of carbon-free electricity for its New Mexico data center. "Advances in AI require continued energy to support infrastructure development," Urvi Parekh, global head of energy at Meta, said in a press release. "With next-generation geothermal technologies like XGS ready for scale, geothermal can be a major player in supporting the advancement of technologies like AI as well as domestic data center development."
  
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• Mel Brooks is Making 'Spaceballs 2' After 38 Years

  13-06-2025 09:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  "Spaceballs 2" is officially in development nearly 40 years after the original parody hit theaters. The sequel, produced by Amazon MGM Studios and set for a 2027 release, will see Rick Moranis returning as Dark Helmet, Mel Brooks reprising his role as Yogurt, and Bill Pullman returning as Lone Starr. You can watch the teaser trailer on YouTube. IGN reports: A trailer for the sequel to the classic '80s sci-fi Star Wars parody arrived today. Although it mostly comes with a special message from Bro
  
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• The Meta AI App Is a Privacy Disaster

  13-06-2025 08:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Meta's standalone AI app is broadcasting users' supposedly private conversations with the chatbot to the public, creating what could amount to a widespread privacy breach. Users appear largely unaware that hitting the app's share button publishes their text exchanges, audio recordings, and images for anyone to see.
  The exposed conversations reveal sensitive information: people asking for help with tax evasion, whether family members might face arrest for proximity to white-collar crimes, and req
  
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• Researchers Confirm Two Journalists Were Hacked With Paragon Spyware

  13-06-2025 05:30 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Two European journalists were hacked using government spyware made by Israeli surveillance tech provider Paragon, new research has confirmed. On Thursday, digital rights group The Citizen Lab published a new report detailing the results of a new forensic investigation into the iPhones of Italian journalist Ciro Pellegrino and an unnamed "prominent" European journalist. The researchers said both journalists were hacked by the same Paragon custo
  
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• Meta Invests $14.3 Billion in Scale AI

  13-06-2025 04:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Meta has invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI while recruiting the startup's CEO to join its AI team, marking an aggressive move by the social media giant to accelerate its AI development efforts. The unusual deal gives Meta a 49% non-voting stake in Scale, valuing the company at more than $29 billion. Scale co-founder Alexandr Wang will join Meta's "superintelligence" unit, which focuses on building AI systems that perform as well as humans -- a theoretical milestone known as artificial general i
  
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• Japan Urged To Use Gloomier Population Forecasts After Plunge in Births

  13-06-2025 03:37 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Japan must stop being overly optimistic about how quickly its population is going to shrink, economists have warned, as births plunge at a pace far ahead of core estimates. From a report: Japan this month said there were a total of 686,000 Japanese births in 2024, falling below 700,000 for the first time since records began in the 19th century and defying years of policy efforts to halt population decline. The total represented the ninth straight year of decline and pushed the country's total fe
  
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• Apple Previews New Import/Export Feature To Make Passkeys More Interoperable

  13-06-2025 02:10 via it.slashdot.org
  
  During this week's Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple unveiled a secure import/export feature for passkeys that addresses one of their biggest limitations: lack of interoperability across platforms and credential managers. The feature, built in collaboration with the FIDO Alliance, enables encrypted, user-initiated passkey transfers between apps and systems. Ars Technica's Dan Goodin says it "provides the strongest indication yet that passkey developers are making meaningful progress in impr
  
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• Shopify Partners With Coinbase and Stripe In Landmark Stablecoin Deal

  13-06-2025 01:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Shopify is launching stablecoin payments for its merchants later this year, starting with USDC in collaboration with Coinbase and Stripe. Fortune reports: The publicly traded tech company lets merchants -- including vintage clothes sellers, cosmetics businesses, and electronics companies -- set up their own online marketplaces. By late June, Shopify will let a select group of users accept payments in USDC, a stablecoin issued by the crypto company Circle, which recently had one of the year's hot
  
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• Amazon Doubles Prime Video Ads to 6 Minutes Per Hour

  13-06-2025 00:50 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  Amazon has quietly doubled the ad load on Prime Video to 4-6 minutes per hour, up from the 2-3.5 minutes initially discussed when ads launched in 2024. AdWeek reports: According to six ad buyers and documents reviewed by ADWEEK, the current ad load on Prime Video now ranges from four to six minutes per hour. And while that could bring down CPMs, buyers will be watching whether this impacts user experience. "Prime Video ad load has gradually increased to four to six minutes per hour," an Amazon r
  
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• CISA Loses Another Senior Exec

  13-06-2025 00:10 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has lost another senior leader: executive director Bridget Bean departed on Wednesday. Bean, who served as the de facto agency boss for five months between former CISA director Jen Easterly's departure in January and Madhu Gottumukkala's appointment to the deputy director post last month, said she was "officially retiring from Federal service once again" in a LinkedIn post. "My time at
  
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