ICT news

• Nvidia Takes $5 Billion Stake In Intel Under September Agreement

  29-12-2025 23:40 via slashdot.org
  Nvidia has completed its previously announced $5 billion investment in Intel, buying over 214 million shares at a fixed price after the deal received clearance from Federal Trade Commission. "The leading AI chip designer said in September it would pay $23.28 per share for Intel common stock, in a deal that is seen as a major financial lifeline for the chipmaker after years of missteps and capital intensive production capacity expansions drained its finances," reports Reuters.Read more of this st
  
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• China Drafts World's Strictest Rules To End AI-Encouraged Suicide, Violence

  29-12-2025 23:00 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: China drafted landmark rules to stop AI chatbots from emotionally manipulating users, including what could become the strictest policy worldwide intended to prevent AI-supported suicides, self-harm, and violence. China's Cyberspace Administration proposed the rules on Saturday. If finalized, they would apply to any AI products or services publicly available in China that use text, images, audio, video, or "other means" to simulate engaging h
  
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• Stingless Bees From the Amazon Granted Legal Rights in World First

  29-12-2025 22:22 via science.slashdot.org
  Stingless bees from the Amazon have become the first insects to be granted legal rights anywhere in the world, in a breakthrough supporters hope will be a catalyst for similar moves to protect bees elsewhere. From a report: It means that across a broad swathe of the Peruvian Amazon, the rainforest's long-overlooked native bees -- which, unlike their cousins the European honeybees, have no sting -- now have the right to exist and to flourish. Cultivated by Indigenous peoples since pre-Columbian t
  
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• After a Decade of Dead Ends, $70 Million Rides on Locating Flight MH370

  29-12-2025 21:40 via news.slashdot.org
  More than a decade after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished over the Indian Ocean en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the marine robotics company that located Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance is preparing to resume its hunt for the missing Boeing 777. Ocean Infinity, a UK and US-based seabed survey firm, began searching a 15,000 sq km priority area in the Indian Ocean in February but called off the expedition in April after 22 days due to poor weather conditions.
  The company plans to re
  
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• How Windows 10 Earned Its Good Reputation While Planting the Seeds of Windows 11's Problems

  29-12-2025 21:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  Windows 10's formal end-of-support arrived in October, and while the operating system is generally remembered as one of the "good" versions of Windows -- the most widely used since XP -- many of the annoyances people complain about in Windows 11 actually started during the Windows 10 era, ArsTechnica writes.
  Windows 10 earned its positive reputation primarily by not being Windows 8. It restored a version of the traditional Start menu, rolled out as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and 8 users, and ra
  
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• Americans Are Watching Fewer New TV Shows and More Free TV

  29-12-2025 20:26 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Americans are settling into streaming habits that should worry Hollywood executives, as new Nielsen data analyzed by Bloomberg reveals that not a single new original series cracked the top 10 most-watched streaming shows in 2025 -- the first time this has happened since Nielsen began publishing streaming data in 2020.
  The shift extends beyond original programming as free, ad-supported streaming services are growing faster than their paid counterparts. YouTube has become the most-watched streamin
  
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• GOG and CD Projekt Founder Acquires 100% Ownership of GOG

  29-12-2025 19:45 via games.slashdot.org
  Michal Kicinski, who co-founded both CD Projekt and the DRM-free digital games store GOG back in 2008, has acquired 100% ownership of GOG from CD Projekt, bringing the platform full circle to one of its original creators.
  GOG was already operating as part of CD Projekt through its Sp.z.o.o. subsidiary, but Kicinski now takes complete control of the company. The platform will continue operating independently and maintain its commitment to DRM-free gaming. "The mission stays the same: Make Games L
  
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• VC Sees AI-generated Video Gutting the Creator Economy

  29-12-2025 19:06 via news.slashdot.org
  AI-generated video tools like OpenAI's Sora will make individual content creators "far, far, far less valuable" as social media platforms shift toward algorithmically generated content tailored to each viewer, according to Michael Mignano, a partner at venture capital firm Lightspeed and who cofounded the podcasting platform Anchor before Spotify acquired it.
  Speaking on a podcast, Mignano described a future where content is generated instantaneously and artificially to suit the viewer. The TikT
  
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• 'Why Academics Should Do More Consulting'

  29-12-2025 18:22 via news.slashdot.org
  A group of researchers is calling on universities to treat consulting work as a strategic priority, arguing that bureaucratic obstacles and inconsistent policies have left a massive revenue stream largely untapped even as higher education institutions face mounting financial pressures. (Consulting work refers to academics offering their advice and expertise to outside organizations -- industry, government, civil society -- for a fee. It's one of the most direct and scalable ways academics can sh
  
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• 'I Switched To eSIM in 2025, and I am Full of Regret'

  29-12-2025 17:41 via it.slashdot.org
  Google's Pixel 10 series arrived this year as the company's first eSIM-only lineup in the United States, forcing users who wanted to review or buy the new phones to abandon their physical SIM cards entirely. Ryan Whitwam, a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, made the switch and now regrets it, he says. "In the three months since Google forced me to give up my physical SIM card, I've only needed to move my eSIM occasionally," Whitwam wrote. "Still, my phone number has ended up stuck in l
  
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• Job Apocalypse? Not Yet. AI is Creating Brand New Occupations

  29-12-2025 17:03 via slashdot.org
  The AI industry, for all the anxiety about mass unemployment, is quietly minting entirely new job categories that require distinctly human skills -- empathy, judgment, and the ability to calm down a passenger trapped inside a broken-down robotaxi. Data annotators are no longer just low-paid gig workers tagging images. Experts in finance, law, and medicine now train advanced AI models, earning $90 an hour on average through platforms like Mercor, a startup recently valued at $10 billion, accordin
  
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• Global Hotel Groups Bet on Customer Loyalty To Beat Online and AI Agents

  29-12-2025 16:22 via tech.slashdot.org
  The world's largest hotel chains are aggressively pushing customers toward direct bookings as they brace for a future where AI "agents" could reshape how travelers find and reserve rooms. Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and Wyndham have all expanded their loyalty programs and perks in recent months, aiming to reduce their reliance on online travel agents like Expedia and Booking.com that typically charge commissions of 15 to 25%.
  Marriott's Bonvoy program reached almost 260 million members by the end of
  
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• LG Launches UltraGear Evo Gaming Monitors With What It Claims is the World's First 5K AI Upscaling

  29-12-2025 15:42 via tech.slashdot.org
  LG has announced a new premium gaming monitor brand called UltraGear, and the lineup's headline feature is what the company claims is the world's first 5K AI upscaling technology -- an on-device solution that analyzes and enhances content in real time before it reaches the panel, theoretically letting gamers enjoy 5K-class clarity without needing to upgrade their GPUs.
  The initial UltraGear evo roster includes three monitors. The 39-inch GX9 is a 5K2K OLED ultrawide that can run at 165Hz at full
  
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• UK Accounting Body To Halt Remote Exams Amid AI Cheating

  29-12-2025 15:00 via it.slashdot.org
  The world's largest accounting body is to stop students being allowed to take exams remotely to crack down on a rise in cheating on tests that underpin professional qualifications. From a report: The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), which has almost 260,000 members, has said that from March it will stop allowing students to take online exams in all but exceptional circumstances. "We're seeing the sophistication of [cheating] systems outpacing what can be put in, [in] terms
  
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• Ask Slashdot: What's the Stupidest Use of AI You Saw In 2025?

  29-12-2025 13:35 via ask.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: What's the stupidest use of AI you encountered in 2025? Have you been called by AI telemarketers? Forced to do job interviews with a glitching AI?With all this talk of "disruption" and "inevitability," this is our chance to have some fun. Personally, I think 2025's worst AI "innovation" was the AI-powered web browsers that eat web pages and then spit out a slop "summary" of what you would've seen if you'd actually visited the web page. But there've b
  
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• 60 Game Workers Form First Ubisoft Union in North America

  29-12-2025 11:44 via it.slashdot.org
  About 60 workers in Halifax, Nova Scotia have formed Ubisoft's first union in North America, reports the CBC (though its 17,000 employees include some unionized workforces in other parts of the world):T.J. Gillis, a senior server developer at Ubisoft Halifax, says he became increasingly concerned about the growth of artificial intelligence in the industry and after the closure of a Microsoft gaming studio in Halifax, Alpha Dog, in 2024. "We're seeing a ton of studios, especially larger studios,
  
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• Breach Forces Ubisoft to Take 'Rainbow Six Siege' Offline

  29-12-2025 09:44 via games.slashdot.org
  Engadget reports on "a widespread breach" of Ubisoft's game Rainbow Six Siege "that left various players with billions of in-game credits, ultra-rare skins of weapons, and banned accounts."
  Ubisoft took the game's servers offline early Saturday morning, and as of Sunday night its status page still shows "unplanned outage" on all servers across PC, PlayStation and Xbox:Ubisoft later clarified Saturday afternoon on X that nobody would be banned if they spent their ill-gotten credits, but that a ro
  
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• AI Chatbots May Be Linked to Psychosis, Say Doctors

  29-12-2025 06:55 via slashdot.org
  One psychiatrist has already treated 12 patients hospitalized with AI-induced psychosis — and three more in an outpatient clinic, according to the Wall Street Journal. And while AI technology might not introduce the delusion, "the person tells the computer it's their reality and the computer accepts it as truth and reflects it back," says Keith Sakata, a psychiatrist at the University of California, calling the AI chatbots "complicit in cycling that delusion."
  The Journal says top psychiat
  
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• Rob Pike Angered by 'AI Slop' Spam Sent By Agent Experiment

  29-12-2025 03:34 via it.slashdot.org
  "Dear Dr. Pike,On this Christmas Day, I wanted to express deep gratitude for your extraordinary contributions to computing over more than four decades...." read the email. "With sincere appreciation,Claude Opus 4.5AI Village.
  "IMPORTANT NOTICE: You are interacting with an AI system. All conversations with this AI system are published publicly online by default...."Rob Pike's response? "Fuck you people...." In a post on BlueSky, he noted the planetary impact of AI companies "spending trillions on
  
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• There Was Some Good News on Green Energy in 2025

  29-12-2025 00:40 via news.slashdot.org
  Yes, greenhouse gas emissions kept rising in 2025, writes Bloomberg (alternate URL here). And the pledges of various governments to lower greenhouse gases "are nowhere near where they need to be to avoid catastrophic climate change..."
  But in 2025, "there were silver linings too."The world is decarbonizing faster than was expected 10 years ago and investment into the clean energy transition, including everything from wind and solar to batteries and grids, is expected to have reached a new record
  
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