ICT news

• Saudi Makes Big Bet On AI Films As Hollywood Moves From Studios To Datacenters

  19-11-2025 23:45 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  pbahra writes: Saudi Arabia is betting that the future of Hollywood won't be built in physical stages but in datacenters. In a push to anchor itself in next-generation film production, Riyadh-based Humain has led Luma AI's latest Series C round, backing the shift towards cloud-based, AI-generated video rather than traditional studio infrastructure.. Humain's announcement says the new investment will accelerate Luma's development of world models capable of learning from video, audio and language
  
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• Nvidia Beats Earnings Expectations, Even As Bubble Concerns Mount

  19-11-2025 23:24 via slashdot.org
  Nvidia blew past earnings expectations with soaring revenue and profit, easing fears of an AI bubble and reinforcing its position as the engine of the global AI boom. From a report: Nvidia's sales grew 62% year-over-year to $57 billion in the October quarter, ahead of the $54.9 billion Wall Street had projected, signaling that demand for AI chips remains strong even as more questions emerge about whether returns from the technology will keep up with the pace of AI infrastructure investments. It
  
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• Dutch Hand Back Control of Chinese-Owned Chipmaker Nexperia

  19-11-2025 23:07 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The Dutch government suspended its powers over chipmaker Nexperia, restoring control to its Chinese owner (paywalled; alternative source) and defusing a standoff with Beijing that had begun to hamper automotive production around the world. The order that gave the Netherlands powers to block or revise decisions at Nexperia was dropped as "a show of goodwill," Economic Affairs Minister Vincent Karremans said Wednesday in a post on social media si
  
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• Can Chinese-Made Buses Be Hacked? Norway Drove One Down a Mine To Find Out

  19-11-2025 22:22 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: This summer, Oslo's public-transport authority drove a Chinese electric bus deep into a decommissioned mine inside a nearby mountain to answer a question: Could it be hacked? Isolated by rock from digital interference, cybersecurity experts came back with a qualified yes: The bus could in theory be remotely disabled using the control system for the battery.
  The revelation, presented at a recent public-transport conference, has spurred officials in Denmark and
  
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• New Antibiotic Could Be a Breakthrough in Treatment for Killer TB, Trial Suggests

  19-11-2025 21:42 via science.slashdot.org
  A new treatment for tuberculosis could boost cure rates and shorten the time needed to treat the disease by months, trial results suggest. The Guardian: Globally, an estimated 10.7 million people fell ill with TB last year and 1.23 million died from it. In its annual report on tuberculosis, launched last week, the World Health Organization said it remained a "major global public-health problem" and the leading infectious cause of death. [...] Sorfequiline, a new antibiotic, showed stronger actio
  
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• Ultra-Processed Food is Global Health Threat, Researchers Warn

  19-11-2025 21:01 via science.slashdot.org
  Action is needed now to reduce ultra-processed food (UPF) in diets worldwide because of their threat to health, say international experts in a global review of research. From a report: They say the way we eat is changing - with a move away from fresh, whole foods to cheap, highly-processed meals - which is increasing our risk of a range of chronic diseases, including obesity and depression. Writing in The Lancet, the researchers say governments need "to step up" and introduce warnings and higher
  
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• Europe's Cookie Nightmare is Crumbling

  19-11-2025 20:25 via it.slashdot.org
  The EU's cookie consent policies have been an annoying and unavoidable part of browsing the web in Europe since their introduction in 2018. But the cookie nightmare is about to crumble thanks to some big proposed changes announced by the European Commission today. From a report: Instead of having to click accept or reject on a cookie pop-up for every website you visit in Europe, the EU is preparing to enforce rules that will allow users to set their preferences for cookies at the browser level.
  
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• Linus Torvalds Says Vibe Coding is Fine For Getting Started, 'Horrible Idea' For Maintenance

  19-11-2025 19:40 via developers.slashdot.org
  Linus Torvalds is "fairly positive" about vibe coding as a way for people to get computers to do things they otherwise could not. The Linux kernel maintainer made the comments during an interview at the Linux Foundation Open Source Summit in Seoul earlier this month. But he cautioned that vibe coding would be a "horrible, horrible idea from a maintenance standpoint" for production code.
  Torvalds told Dirk Hohndel, head of open source at Verizon, that computers have become more complicated than w
  
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• UK To Ban the Resale of Tickets For Profit To Protect Fans

  19-11-2025 19:03 via news.slashdot.org
  Britain said on Wednesday it would ban the resale of tickets to concerts, sport and other live events for profit, disrupting ticket touts and the platforms that benefit from their activities. From a report: Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said touts were ripping off fans by using bots to snap up batches of tickets for coveted shows and reselling them at sky-high prices. "Our new proposals will shut down the touts' racket and make world-class music, comedy, theatre and sport affordable for everyone,
  
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• The Growing Problem With China's Unreliable Numbers

  19-11-2025 18:20 via slashdot.org
  Chinese economist Gao Shanwen told a Washington panel in December that China's real GDP growth might be around 2% rather than the official figure near 5%. By January, Gao was no longer chief economist at SDIC Securities and went silent for almost a year.
  As FT points out in a long piece, China does not publish quarterly GDP breakdowns showing consumption, investment and net exports. Every other major economy produces these figures.
  The IMF in 2024 gave China a C grade for national accounts. The
  
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• More Than 60 US and Canadian Police Units Now Use Boston Dynamics' Robot Dog

  19-11-2025 17:44 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Boston Dynamics' Spot robot is now deployed by more than 60 bomb squads and SWAT teams across the US and Canada. The 75-pound four-legged machine starts at around $100,000 and has been used in armed standoffs, hostage rescues and hazardous materials incidents since its commercial debut five years ago. The Massachusetts State Police operates two Spot units purchased in 2020 and 2022. Each cost about $250,000 including add-ons funded through state grants. Last year one of the robots helped corner
  
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• CDC Data Confirms US is 2 Months Away From Losing Measles Elimination Status

  19-11-2025 17:05 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Federal health officials have linked two massive US measles outbreaks, confirming that the country is about two months away from losing its measles elimination status, according to a report by The New York Times. The Times obtained a recording of a call during which officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed to state health departments that the ongoing measles outbreak at the border of Arizona and Utah is a continuation of the exp
  
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• Chinese University Collected More AI Patents Than MIT, Stanford, Princeton and Harvard Combined

  19-11-2025 16:25 via yro.slashdot.org
  Tsinghua University collected 4,986 AI and machine learning patents between 2005 and the end of 2024. The Beijing institution has received more than 900 patents last year alone. The total exceeds the combined patent count from MIT, Stanford, Princeton and Harvard during the same period. China now accounts for more than half of all active patent families globally in AI and machine learning fields, according to data analytics service LexisNexis.
  The university also has more AI research papers amon
  
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• Cloudflare Explains Its Worst Outage Since 2019

  19-11-2025 15:47 via tech.slashdot.org
  Cloudflare suffered its worst network outage in six years on Tuesday, beginning at 11:20 UTC. The disruption prevented the content delivery network from routing traffic for roughly three hours. The failure, writes Cloudflare in a blog post, originated from a database permissions change deployed at 11:05 UTC. The modification altered how a database query returned information about bot detection features. The query began returning duplicate entries. A configuration file used to identify automated
  
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• Netgear Accused by Rival of China Smear To Fan Security Fear

  19-11-2025 14:49 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: California-based TP-Link says it may take a sales hit of more than $1 billion because of erroneous reports that the networking company's technology has been "infiltrated" by Beijing. In a lawsuit, TP-Link claims its competitor, Netgear, orchestrated a smear by planting false claims with journalists and internet influencers with the goal of scaring off customers.
  Closely held TP-Link, which makes wireless routers, alleges in a complaint filed Monday that Netge
  
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• CISA Releases Guide to Mitigate Risks from Bulletproof Hosting Providers

  19-11-2025 13:00 via cisa.gov
  Today, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), in collaboration with the U.S. National Security Agency, U.S. Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, and international partners, released the guide Bulletproof Defense: Mitigating Risks from Bulletproof Hosting Providers to help Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and network defenders mitigate cybercriminal activity enabled by Bulletproof Hosting (BPH) providers.
  A BPH provider is an internet
  
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• Man Who Cryogenically Froze Late Wife Sparks Debate By Dating New Partner

  19-11-2025 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  A Chinese man who cryogenically preserved his wife after her death has sparked a heated online debate after it emerged he began dating a new partner in 2020. Some argue it's natural for him to move on, while others say he's being selfish or disrespectful to both his late wife and his current partner. The BBC reports: As a sign of his devotion, Gui Junmin decided to freeze his wife Zhan Wenlian's body after she died from lung cancer in 2017, aged 49, making her China's first cryogenically preserv
  
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• US Backs Three Mile Island Nuclear Restart With $1 Billion Loan To Constellation

  19-11-2025 04:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The Trump administration will provide Constellation Energy with a $1 billion loan to restart the Crane Clean Energy Center nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, Department of Energy officials said Tuesday. Previously known as Three Mile Island Unit 1, the plant is expected to start generating power again in 2027. Constellation unveiled plans to rename and restart the reactor in Sept. 2024 through a power purchase agreement with Microsoft to support the tec
  
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• Chinese Spies Are Trying To Reach UK Lawmakers Via LinkedIn, MI5 Warns

  19-11-2025 03:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  MI5 has warned U.K. lawmakers that Chinese intelligence operatives are using LinkedIn and recruitment fronts to target them for information gathering and long-term cultivation. PBS reports: Writing to lawmakers, House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle said a new MI5 "espionage alert" warned that Chinese nationals were "using LinkedIn profiles to conduct outreach at scale" on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security. "Their aim is to collect information and lay the groundwork for long-term
  
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• Mexico Partially Lifts Longstanding Website Ban On Tor Network

  19-11-2025 02:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  Mexico has finally lifted its long-running Tor ban for the main government portal, allowing privacy-focused users, journalists, and activists to access gob.mx again after more than a decade of blocking. That said, the open data portal and the former Tor-compatible whistleblower system remain inaccessible. CyberInsider reports: The development follows a long period of digital censorship that spanned two full six-year presidential terms, those of Enrique Pena Nieto and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador,
  
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• Gen Z Officially Worse At Passwords Than 80-Year-Olds

  19-11-2025 02:00 via it.slashdot.org
  A NordPass analysis found that Gen Z is actually worse at password security than older generations, with "12345" topping their list while "123456" dominates among everyone else. The Register reports: And while there were a few more "skibidis" among the Zoomer dataset compared to those who came before them, the trends were largely similar. Variants on the "123456" were among the most common for all age groups, with that exact string proving to be the most common among all users -- the sixth time
  
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• Cloud-Native Computing Is Poised To Explode

  19-11-2025 01:20 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: At KubeCon North America 2025 in Atlanta, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)'s leaders predicted an enormous surge in cloud-native computing, driven by the explosive growth of AI inference workloads. How much growth? They're predicting hundreds of billions of dollars in spending over the next 18 months. [...] Where cloud-native computing and AI inference come together is when AI is no longer a separate track from cloud-native computing. I
  
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• Red Hat Losing Another Prominent Linux Kernel Engineer

  19-11-2025 00:40 via linux.slashdot.org
  Another highly influential Linux kernel engineer, David Hildenbrand, is leaving Red Hat after a decade of major contributions to memory management, virtualization, and VirtIO. His recent kernel patch updates his maintainer info to a kernel.org address, signaling his departure. He hasn't yet said where he's headed next. Phoronix reports: David Hildenbrand serves as a reviewer for the HugeTLB code, s390 KVM code, and memory management reclaim code. He also serves as an upstream maintainer for the
  
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• Blender 5.0 Released

  19-11-2025 00:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Blender 5.0 has been released with major upgrades including HDR and wide-gamut color support on Linux via Wayland/Vulkan, significant theme and UI improvements, new color-space tools, revamped curve and geometry features, and expanded hardware requirements. 9to5Linux reports: Blender 5.0 also introduces a working color space for Blend files, a new AgX HDR view, a new Convert to Display compositor node, new Rec.2100-PQ and Rec.2100-HLG displays that can be used for color grading for HDR video exp
  
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