ICT news

• Pebble Goes Fully Open Source

  24-11-2025 23:40 via news.slashdot.org
  Core Devices has fully open-sourced the entire Pebble software stack and confirmed the first Pebble Time 2 shipments will start in January. "This is the clearest sign yet that the platform is shifting from a company-led product to a community-backed project that can survive independently," reports Gadgets & Wearables. From the report: The announcement follows weeks of tension between Core Devices and parts of the Pebble community. By moving from 95 to 100 percent open source, the company has
  
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• Arduino's New Terms of Service Worries Hobbyists Ahead of Qualcomm Acquisition

  24-11-2025 23:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Some members of the maker community are distraught about Arduino's new terms of service (ToS), saying that the added rules put the company's open source DNA at risk. Arduino updated its ToS and privacy policy this month, which is about a month after Qualcomm announced that it's acquiring the open source hardware and software company. Among the most controversial changes is this addition: "User shall not: translate, decompile or reverse-engin
  
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• Americans Are Holding Onto Devices Longer Than Ever

  24-11-2025 22:21 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The average American now holds onto their smartphone for 29 months, according to a recent survey by Reviews.org, and that cycle is getting longer. The average was around 22 months in 2016.
  [...] Research released by the Federal Reserve last month concludes that each additional year companies delay upgrading equipment results in a productivity decline of about one-third of a percent, with investment patterns accounting for approximately 55% of productivity gap
  
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• Udio Users Can't Download Their AI Music Creations Anymore

  24-11-2025 21:43 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: As part of the settlement with Universal, Udio has amended its terms of service, and users can no longer download their outputs. This has AI music makers furious, and with good reason. Unfortunately, they have little recourse, as the contract they sign when creating a Udio account includes a waiver of the right to bring a class action.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Obesity Jab Drug Fails To Slow Alzheimer's

  24-11-2025 21:01 via science.slashdot.org
  Drug maker Novo Nordisk says semaglutide, the active ingredient for the weight loss jab Wegovy, does not slow Alzheimer's -- despite initial hopes that it might help against dementia. From a report: Researchers began two large trials involving more than 3,800 people after reports the medicine was having an impact in the real world. But the studies showed the GLP-1 drug, which is already used to manage type 2 diabetes and obesity, made no difference compared to a dummy drug. The disappointing res
  
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• Google's 'Aluminium OS' Will Eventually Replace ChromeOS With Android

  24-11-2025 20:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google's long-rumored plan to merge ChromeOS and Android into a single desktop operating system now has a name: Aluminium OS, AndroidAuthority reports, citing a job listing.
  The job listing explicitly tasks applicants with "working on a new Aluminium, Android-based, operating system." The job listing confirms Google intends to eventually replace ChromeOS entirely, though the two platforms will coexist during a transition period. Aluminium OS won't be limited to budget hardware -- the listing ref
  
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• Science-Centric Streaming Service Curiosity Stream is an AI-licensing Firm Now

  24-11-2025 19:41 via tech.slashdot.org
  Curiosity Stream, the decade-old science documentary streaming service founded by Discovery Channel's John Hendricks, expects its AI licensing business to generate more revenue than its 23 million subscribers by 2027 -- possibly earlier. The company's Q3 2025 earnings revealed a 41% year-over-year revenue increase, driven largely by deals licensing its content to train large language models. Year-to-date AI licensing brought in $23.4 million through September, already exceeding half of what the
  
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• Google Denies 'Misleading' Reports of Gmail Using Your Emails To Train AI

  24-11-2025 19:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Google is pushing back on viral social media posts and articles like this one by Malwarebytes, claiming Google has changed its policy to use your Gmail messages and attachments to train AI models, and the only way to opt out is by disabling "smart features" like spell checking.
  But Google spokesperson Jenny Thomson tells The Verge that "these reports are misleading -- we have not changed anyone's settings, Gmail Smart Features have existed for many years, and
  
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• NATO Taps Google For Air-Gapped Sovereign Cloud

  24-11-2025 18:21 via tech.slashdot.org
  NATO has hired Google to provide "air-gapped" sovereign cloud services and AI in "completely disconnected, highly secure environments." From a report: The Chocolate Factory will support the military alliance's Joint Analysis, Training, and Education Centre (JATEC) in a move designed to improve its digital infrastructure and strengthen its data governance. NATO was formed in 1949 after Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United King
  
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• The Slow Transformation of Notepad Into Something Else Entirely Continues

  24-11-2025 17:41 via it.slashdot.org
  Microsoft is rolling out yet another update to Notepad for Windows 11 Insiders that adds table support and faster AI-generated responses, continuing a transformation of the once-minimal text editor that has drawn sustained criticism from users who preferred its original simplicity. The update, version 11.2510.6.0, lets users insert tables via a formatting toolbar or Markdown syntax and enables streaming responses for the app's Write, Rewrite, and Summarize AI features.Read more of this story at
  
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• Lenovo Stockpiling PC Memory Due To 'Unprecedented' AI Squeeze

  24-11-2025 17:01 via it.slashdot.org
  Lenovo is stockpiling memory and other critical components to navigate a supply crunch brought on by the boom in AI. From a report: The world's biggest PC maker is holding on to component inventories that are roughly 50% higher than usual, [non-paywalled source] Chief Financial Officer Winston Cheng told Bloomberg TV on Monday. The frenzy to build and fill AI data centers with advanced hardware is raising prices for producers of consumer electronics, but Lenovo also sees opportunity in this to c
  
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• Apple iOS 27 to Be No-Frills 'Snow Leopard' Update, Other Than New AI

  24-11-2025 16:21 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple's next major iPhone software update will prioritize stability and performance over flashy new features, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who reports that iOS 27 is being developed as a "Snow Leopard-style" release [non-paywalled source] focused on fixing bugs, removing bloat and improving underlying code after this year's sweeping Liquid Glass design overhaul in iOS 26.
  Engineering teams are currently combing through Apple's operating systems to eliminate unnecessary code and address
  
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• Ubisoft Shows Off New AI-Powered FPS And Hopes You've Forgotten About Its Failed NFTs

  24-11-2025 15:40 via games.slashdot.org
  Ubisoft has revealed Teammates, a first-person shooter built around AI-powered squadmates that the company is calling its "first playable generative AI research project" -- not long after the publisher went all-in on NFTs and the metaverse only to largely move on from both. Built in the Snowdrop Engine that powers The Division 2 and Star Wars Outlaws, the game features an AI assistant named Jaspar and two AI squadmates called Pablo and Sofia. Players can issue natural voice commands to direct th
  
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• How Google Finally Leapfrogged Rivals With New Gemini Rollout

  24-11-2025 15:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: With the release of its third version last week, Google's Gemini large language model surged past ChatGPT and other competitors to become the most capable AI chatbot, as determined by consensus industry-benchmark tests. [...] Aaron Levie, chief executive of the cloud content management company Box, got early access to Gemini 3 several days ahead of the launch. The company ran its own evaluations of the model over the weekend to see how well it could analyze l
  
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• New Mars Orbiter Manuever Challenges Theory: That May Not Be an Underground Lake on Mars

  24-11-2025 13:34 via science.slashdot.org
  In 2018 researchers claimed evidence of a lake beneath the surface of Mars, detected by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument (or Marsis for short).
  But new Mars observations "are not consistent with the presence of liquid water in this location and an alternative explanation, such as very smooth basal materials, is needed." Phys.org explainsAboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Shallow Radar (SHARAD) uses higher frequencies than MARSIS. Until recently,
  
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• ​​Spyware Allows Cyber Threat Actors to Target Users of Messaging Applications​

  24-11-2025 13:00 via cisa.gov
  CISA is aware of multiple cyber threat actors actively leveraging commercial spyware to target users of mobile messaging applications (apps).1 These cyber actors use sophisticated targeting and social engineering techniques to deliver spyware and gain unauthorized access to a victim’s messaging app, facilitating the deployment of additional malicious payloads that can further compromise the victim’s mobile device.  
  These cyber actors use tactics such as:Phishing and malicious d
  
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• How An MIT Student Awed Top Economists With His AI Study - Until It All Fell Apart

  24-11-2025 10:34 via news.slashdot.org
  In May MIT announced "no confidence" in a preprint paper on how AI increased scientific discovery, asking arXiv to withdraw it. The paper, authored by 27-year-old grad student Aidan Toner-Rodgers, had claimed an AI-driven materials discovery tool helped 1,018 scientists at a U.S. R&D lab.
  But within weeks his academic mentors "were asking an unthinkable question," reports the Wall Street Journal. Had Toner-Rodgers made it all up?
  Toner-Rodgers's illusory success seems in part thanks to the d
  
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• 'We Could've Asked ChatGPT': UK Students Fight Back Over Course Taught By AI

  24-11-2025 06:35 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian:James and Owen were among 41 students who took a coding module at the University of Staffordshire last year, hoping to change careers through a government-funded apprenticeship programme designed to help them become cybersecurity experts or software engineers. But after a term of AI-generated slides being read, at times, by an AI voiceover, James said he had lost faith in the programme and the people running it, worrying he had "used up tw
  
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• Napster Said It Raised $3 Billion From a Mystery Investor. But Now the 'Investor' and 'Money' Are Gone

  24-11-2025 03:35 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from Forbes:
  On November 20, at approximately 4 p.m. Eastern time, Napster held an online meeting for its shareholders; an estimated 700 of roughly 1,500 including employees, former employees and individual investors tuned in. That's when its CEO John Acunto told everyone he believed that the never-identified big investor — who the company had insisted put in $3.36 billion at a $12 billion valuation in January, which would have made it one of the year
  
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• New Research Finds America's Top Social Media Sites: YouTube (84%) Facebook (71%), Instagram (50%)

  24-11-2025 01:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  Pew Research surveyed 5,022 Americans this year (between February 5 and June 18), asking them
  "do you ever use" YouTube, Facebook, and nine of the other top social media platforms. The results?YouTube 84%
  Facebook 71%
  Instagram 50%
  TikTok 37%
  WhatsApp 32%
  Reddit 26%
  Snapchat 25%
  X.com (formerly Twitter) 21%
  Threads 8%
  Bluesky 4%
  Truth Social 3%
  An announcement from Pew Research adds some trends and demographics:
  The Center has long tracked use of many of these platforms. Over the past few years,
  
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• Was the Moon-Forming Protoplanet 'Theia' a Neighbor of Earth?

  24-11-2025 00:30 via science.slashdot.org
  Theia crashed into earth and formed the moon, the theory goes. But then where did Theia come from? The lead author on a new study says "The most convincing scenario is that most of the building blocks of Earth and Theia originated in the inner Solar System. Earth and Theia are likely to have been neighbors."
  Though Theia was completely destroyed in the collision, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research led a team that was able to measure the ratio of tell-tale isotopes
  
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