ICT news

• Trump Administration Removes Three Spyware-Linked Execs From Sanctions List

  31-12-2025 23:30 via yro.slashdot.org
  Reuters reports that the United States Department of the Treasury under the Donald Trump administration has lifted sanctions on three executives linked to the spyware firm Intellexa. Reuters reports: The move partially reverses the imposition of sanctions last year by then-President Joe Biden's administration on seven people tied to Intellexa. The Treasury Department at the time described the consortium, opens new tab, launched by former Israeli intelligence official Tal Dilian, as "a complex in
  
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• France Targets Australia-Style Social Media Ban For Children Next Year

  31-12-2025 22:50 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: France intends to follow Australia and ban social media platforms for children from the start of the 2026 academic year. A draft bill preventing under-15s from using social media will be submitted for legal checks and is expected to be debated in parliament early in the new year. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has made it clear in recent weeks that he wants France to swiftly follow Australia's world-first ban on social media platform
  
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• NJ's Answer To Flooding: It Has Bought Out and Demolished 1,200 Properties

  31-12-2025 22:15 via news.slashdot.org
  New Jersey has found its answer to the relentless flooding that has plagued the state's coastal and inland communities for decades: buy the homes, demolish them and turn the land back into open space permanently. The state's Blue Acres program has acquired some 1,200 properties since 1995, spending more than $234 million in federal and state funds to pay fair market value to homeowners exhausted by repeated floods from tropical storms, nor'easters, and heavy rain.
  A Georgetown Climate Center rep
  
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• NASA Craft To Face Heat-Shield Test on Its First Astronaut Flight Next Year

  31-12-2025 21:30 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Getting to space is hard. In many ways, getting back is even harder. NASA soon aims to pull off the kind of re-entry it last conducted more than 50 years ago: safely returning astronauts to Earth after they fly to the moon and back. The mission is a big moment for NASA, which will put a crew on its Orion ship for the first time. The flight will test the spacecraft's heat shield, designed to protect the astronauts on board.
  Re-entries of vehicles from orbit re
  
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• JPMorgan Says Javice Firms Billed Millions Just for 'Attendance'

  31-12-2025 20:51 via slashdot.org
  JPMorgan Chase is now fighting to avoid paying $10.2 million in disputed legal charges racked up by Charlie Javice, the convicted founder of student-finance startup Frank, after court filings revealed her defense team billed more than $5 million simply for attending her fraud trial -- including on days when court wasn't even in session.
  A previously sealed Delaware court filing [PDF] released Monday showed that Javice's total legal tab has reached $74 million, far exceeding the $30 million Eliza
  
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• Net Neutrality Was Back, Until It Wasn't

  31-12-2025 20:10 via tech.slashdot.org
  The fight over net neutrality saw another turbulent year in 2025, as federal protections that seemed poised for a comeback in 2024 were first struck down by a court and then preemptively removed by the Trump administration's FCC without a chance for public comment.
  The removal, The Verge summarizes in a report, was part of Chairman Brendan Carr's "Delete, Delete, Delete" initiative targeting what the agency deems unnecessary regulations. Federal net neutrality rules have now been on and off for
  
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• Poor Sleep Quality Accelerates Brain Aging

  31-12-2025 19:30 via science.slashdot.org
  A large-scale study tracking more than 27,500 middle-aged and elderly people over roughly nine years has found that poor sleep quality is associated with accelerated brain aging, and chronic inflammation appears to be one of the key mechanisms driving this effect.
  Researchers at Sweden's Karolinska Institute assessed participants' sleep across five dimensions -- chronotype, duration, insomnia, snoring and daytime sleepiness -- and later scanned their brains using MRI to estimate biological brain
  
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• Slashdot Asks: Your Favorite 2025 Movies, TV Shows and Books?

  31-12-2025 18:00 via ask.slashdot.org
  Another year wraps up, and with it comes the annual ritual of taking stock. What were the movies, TV shows and books from this year that stood out to you? Not necessarily the ones that dominated conversation or topped charts, but the ones you found yourself recommending to friends, or returning to for a second watch or read.
  Share your picks and, if you're inclined, a line or two on what made them stick.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Can Colossal's Genetically Engineered Animals Ever Be the Real Thing?

  31-12-2025 17:40 via science.slashdot.org
  Colossal Biosciences, the Texas-based startup now valued at more than $10 billion that has attracted investments from Paris Hilton, Peter Jackson and Tom Brady, claimed earlier this year to have resurrected the dire wolf -- an animal that disappeared at the end of the last ice age -- but a group of leading canid experts concluded the company had done no such thing.
  The scientists found that Colossal had made 20 edits to the DNA of grey wolves and the resulting animals did not substantially diffe
  
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• California To Require All School Districts To Restrict Student Smartphone Use by 2026

  31-12-2025 17:01 via news.slashdot.org
  Starting in July 2026, every public school district in California will be required to have policies on the books that restrict or prohibit students from using smartphones during the school day, thanks to Assembly Bill 3216 that Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law back in 2024.
  The legislation also mandates that districts update these policies every five years. Newsom had previously signed related legislation in 2019, though that earlier law merely affirmed that school districts have the author
  
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• Finland Seizes Ship Suspected of Severing Undersea Cable To Estonia

  31-12-2025 16:21 via tech.slashdot.org
  Finnish authorities on Wednesday seized a vessel suspected of severing an undersea telecommunications cable that connects Helsinki to Tallinn by dragging its anchor across the Gulf of Finland, the latest in a string of infrastructure incidents that have put Baltic Sea nations on edge since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
  Police are investigating the case as aggravated criminal damage and have not disclosed the ship's name, nationality or details about its crew. The cable belongs to Finnish te
  
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• China Demands Netherlands 'Correct Mistakes' Over Seized Chipmaker as Auto Supply Crunch Deepens

  31-12-2025 15:40 via slashdot.org
  China's Commerce Ministry on Wednesday demanded that the Netherlands "immediately correct its mistakes" over chipmaker Nexperia, escalating a standoff that has disrupted global semiconductor supply chains and triggered warnings from automakers about component shortages. The Dutch government in September invoked a Cold War-era law to effectively seize control of the Chinese-owned chipmaker, reportedly after the United States raised security concerns. China responded by blocking Nexperia products
  
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• US Measles Cases Surpass 2,000, Highest in 30 Years: CDC

  31-12-2025 15:00 via news.slashdot.org
  The U.S. has surpassed 2,000 measles cases for the first time in more than 30 years, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From a report: As of Dec. 23, a total of 2,012 cases have been reported in the U.S. Of those cases, 24 were reported among international visitors to the U.S.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• NYC Inauguration Bans Raspberry Pi, Flipper Zero Devices

  31-12-2025 14:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader ptorrone writes: The January 1, 2026, NYC mayoral inauguration prohibits attendees from bringing specific brand-name devices, explicitly banning Raspberry Pi single-board computers and the Flipper Zero, listed alongside weapons, explosives, and drones. Rather than restricting behaviors or capabilities like signal interference or unauthorized transmitters, the policy names two widely used educational and testing tools while allowing smartphones and laptops that are far mo
  
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• Denmark's Main Postal Carrier Ends Letter Delivery

  31-12-2025 11:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  PostNord is ending letter delivery in Denmark after a 90%+ collapse in mail volume. It marks the first known case of a national postal carrier abandoning letters entirely -- a symbolic milestone of a fully digitized society that's sparking nostalgia even among people who stopped sending mail years ago. The New York Times reports: Denmark has had a postal service for more than 400 years. But a steep decline in its use has led the Nordic country's longtime postal carrier to stop letter deliveries
  
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• Israel Deploys World's First Drone Defense Laser

  31-12-2025 08:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Israel has operationally deployed Iron Beam, a 100,000-watt laser air-defense system capable of shooting down drones, rockets, and mortars at negligible per-shot cost. According to Tom's Hardware, it marks the first real-world deployment of a high-energy laser as part of a modern, multi-layered missile defense network. From the report: The Iron Beam is a short-range line-of-sight laser interceptor that is extremely cheap to run and, therefore, perfectly suited for intercepting low-cost, high-vol
  
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• Cheap Solar Is Transforming Lives and Economies Across Africa

  31-12-2025 04:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: South Africans ... have found a remedy for power cuts that have plagued people in the developing world for years. Thanks to swiftly falling prices of Chinese made solar panels and batteries, they now draw their power from the sun. These aren't the tiny, old-school solar lanterns that once powered a lightbulb or TV in rural communities. Today, solar and battery systems are deployed across a variety of businesses -- auto factories and wi
  
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• 'Foreign Tech Workers Are Avoiding Travel To the US'

  31-12-2025 03:02 via news.slashdot.org
  In an opinion piece for Computerworld, columnist Steven Vaughan-Nichols argues that restrictive visa policies and a hostile border climate under the Trump administration are driving foreign tech workers, researchers, and conference speakers away from the U.S. The result, he says, is a gradual shift of talent, events, and long-term innovation toward more welcoming regions such as Europe, Canada, and Asia. From the report: I go to a lot of tech conferences -- 13 in 2025 -- and many of those I atte
  
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• First Gaming Handheld With a Folding Screen

  31-12-2025 02:25 via mobile.slashdot.org
  One-Netbook has unveiled the OneXSugar Wallet, the first gaming handheld with a folding OLED display. The Verge reports: The OneXSugar Wallet was announced on China's Weibo yesterday, but with few details about its features and capabilities. That folding OLED screen has a resolution of 2480 x 1860 pixels, and the handheld will be powered by an unspecified "Qualcomm gaming platform flagship processor," but its performance and emulation capabilities are unknown.Based on photos and a video released
  
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• '2025 Was the Year of Creative Bankruptcy'

  31-12-2025 01:45 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  PC Gamer argues that 2025 was a year full of high-profile AI embarrassments across games and entertainment, with Disney and Lucasfilm serving as the "opening salvo." From the report: At a TED talk back in April, Lucasfilm senior vice president of creative innovation Rob Bredow presented a demonstration of what he called "a new era of technology." Across 50 years of legendary innovation in miniature design, practical effects, and computer animation, Lucasfilm and its miracle workers at Industrial
  
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• India Overtakes Japan As 4th-Largest Economy

  31-12-2025 01:02 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from DW: India has surpassed Japan to become the world's fourth-largest economy, according to calculations in the Indian government's end-of-year economic review. On current trends, India is expected to overtake Germany to become the world's third-largest economy within the next three years, the review said.The review said India's gross domestic product has already reached about $4.18 trillion, and is projected to reach $7.3 trillion by 2030. On current trends
  
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• Groq Investor Sounds Alarm On Data Centers

  31-12-2025 00:20 via slashdot.org
  Axios reports that venture capitalist Alex Davis is warning that a speculative rush to build data centers without committed tenants could trigger a financing crunch by 2027-2028."This critique is coming from inside the AI optimist camp," notes Axios, as Davis' firm, Disruptive, "recently led a large investment in AI chipmaker Groq, which then signed a $20 billion licensing deal with Nvidia. It's also backed such unicorn startups as Reflection AI, Shield AI and Gecko Robotics."Here's what Davis h
  
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