ICT news

• 'No Happy Ending for Movie Theatres', Argues WSJ - No Matter Who Wins Warner Bros.

  28-12-2025 23:40 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Regardless of who ends up owning Warners Bros., "the outlook for theatrical movies is dimming," writes a Wall Street Journal tech columnist, noting that this year's U.S. box office of $8.3 billion (as of December 25) "is a bit below last year's and well below prepandemic levels of around $11 billion."Warner has historically been one of Hollywood's largest producers of theatrical films, averaging about 22 releases annually in the pre-Covid years of 2015 to 2019, according to data from Comscore. I
  
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• Did Tim Cook Post AI Slop in His Christmas Message Promoting 'Pluribus'?

  28-12-2025 22:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  Artist Keith Thomson is a modern (and whimsical) Edward Hopper. And Apple TV says he created the "festive artwork" shared on X by Apple CEO Tim Cook on Christmas Eve, "made on MacBook Pro."
  Its intentionally-off picture of milk and cookies was meant to tease the season finale of Pluribus. ("Merry Christmas Eve, Carol..." Cook had posted.)
  But others were convinced that the weird image was AI-generated.
  Tech blogger John Gruber was blunt. "Tim Cook posts AI Slop in Christmas message on Twitter/X,
  
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• Texas Father Rescues Kidnapped 15-Year-Old Daughter After Tracking Her Phone's Location

  28-12-2025 21:00 via mobile.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from The Guardian:A Texas father used the parental controls on his teenage daughter's cell phone to find and help rescue her after she was kidnapped at knifepoint while walking her dog on Christmas, authorities allege... Her father subsequently located her phone through the device's parental controls, the agency's statement said. The phone was about 2 miles (3.2km) away from him in a secluded, partly wooded area in neighboring Harris county... She then mana
  
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• Up Next for Arduino After Qualcomm Acquisition: High-Performance Computing

  28-12-2025 19:58 via news.slashdot.org
  Even after its acquisition by Qualcomm, the EFF believes Arduino "isn't imposing any new bans on tinkering with or reverse engineering Arduino boards," (according to Mitch Stoltz, EFF director for competition and IP litigation). While Adafruit's managing editor Phillip Torrone had claimed to 36,000+ followers on LinkedIn that Arduino users were now "explicitly forbidden from reverse engineering," Arduino corrected him in a blog post, noting that clause in their Terms & Conditions was only fo
  
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• Google's 'AI Overview' Wrongly Accused a Musician of Being a Sex Offender

  28-12-2025 18:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the CBC:
  Cape Breton fiddler Ashley MacIsaac says he may have been defamed by Google after it recently produced an AI-generated summary falsely identifying him as a sex offender. The Juno Award-winning musician said he learned of the online misinformation last week after a First Nation north of Halifax confronted him with the summary and cancelled a concert planned for Dec. 19. "You are being put into a less secure situation because of a media company
  
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• How Will Rising RAM Prices Affect Laptop Companies?

  28-12-2025 17:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Laptop makers are facing record-setting memory prices next year. The site Notebookcheck catalogs how different companies are responding:
  Sources told [Korean business newspaper] Chosun Biz that some manufacturers have signed preliminary contracts with Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix. Even so, it won't prevent DDR5 RAM prices from soaring 45% higher by the end of 2026.... Before the memory shortage, PC sales had been on the upswing in part because of forced Windows 11 upgrades. That trend will like
  
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• Challenges Face European Governments Pursuing 'Digital Sovereignty'

  28-12-2025 16:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  The Register reports on challenges facing Europe's pursuit of "digital sovereignty":The US CLOUD Act of 2018 allows American authorities to compel US-based technology companies to provide requested data, regardless of where that data is stored globally. This places European organizations in a precarious position, as it directly clashes with Europe's own stringent privacy regulation, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)... Furthermore, these warrants often come with a gag order, legally
  
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• Is Dark Energy Weakening?

  28-12-2025 13:34 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the BBC:There is growing controversy over recent evidence suggesting that a mysterious force known as dark energy might be changing in a way that challenges our current understanding of time and space. An analysis by a South Korean team has hinted that, rather than the Universe continuing to expand, galaxies could be pulled back together by gravity, ending in what astronomers call a "Big Crunch".
  The scientists involved believe that they may be on the
  
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• Sal Khan: Companies Should Give 1% of Profits To Retrain Workers Displaced By AI

  28-12-2025 09:37 via it.slashdot.org
  "I believe artificial intelligence will displace workers at a scale many people don't yet realize," says Sal Kahn (founder/CEO of the nonprofit Khan Academy). But in an op-ed in the New York Times he also proposes a solution that "could change the trajectory of the lives of millions who will be displaced...""I believe that every company benefiting from automation — which is most American companies — should... dedicate 1 percent of its profits to help retrain the people who are being
  
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• Military Planners Dread the Arctic, 'Where Drones Drop Dead and GPS Goes Haywire'

  28-12-2025 05:44 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the Wall Street Journal:Sending drones and robots into battle, rather than humans, has become a tenet of modern warfare. Nowhere does that make more sense than in the frozen expanses of the Arctic. But the closer you get to the North Pole, the less useful cutting-edge technology becomes. Magnetic storms distort satellite signals; frigid temperatures drain batteries or freeze equipment in minutes; navigation systems lack reference points on snowfields.D
  
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• OpenAI is Hiring a New 'Head of Preparedness' to Predict/Mitigate AI's Harms

  28-12-2025 02:34 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from Engadget:
  OpenAI is looking for a new Head of Preparedness who can help it anticipate the potential harms of its models and how they can be abused, in order to guide the company's safety strategy.
  It comes at the end of a year that's seen OpenAI hit with numerous accusations about ChatGPT's impacts on users' mental health, including a few wrongful death lawsuits. In a post on X about the position, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledgedthat the "potential i
  
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• Researchers Show Some Robots Can Be Hijacked Just Through Spoken Commands

  28-12-2025 00:44 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this story from Interesting Engineering:Cybersecurity specialists from the research group DARKNAVY have demonstrated how modern humanoid robots can be compromised and weaponised through weaknesses in their AI-driven control systems.In a controlled test, the team demonstrated that a commercially available humanoid robot could be hijacked with nothing more than spoken commands, exposing how voice-based interaction can serve as an attack vector rather than a safe
  
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