ICT news

• Some of Your Cells Are Not Genetically Yours

  01-01-2026 23:30 via science.slashdot.org
  Every human body contains a small population of cells that are not genetically its own -- cells that crossed the placenta during pregnancy and that persist for decades after birth. These "microchimeric" cells, named after the lion-goat-serpent hybrid of Greek mythology, have been found in every organ studied so far, though they are exceedingly rare: one such cell exists for every 10,000 to 1 million of a person's own cells.
  The cells were first noticed in the late 1800s when pathologist Georg Sc
  
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• 'The Cult of Costco'

  01-01-2026 22:10 via slashdot.org
  Costco's consistency -- from its $1.50 hot dog and drink combo to its functional shopping carts and satisfied employees -- has produced what The Atlantic calls a "cultlike loyalty" among members at more than 600 locations across the U.S.
  Its annual membership costs $65. The model traces back to Fedco, a nonprofit wholesale collective for federal employees founded in Los Angeles in the 1940s. Costco's private label Kirkland Signature has become one of the world's largest consumer packaged goods b
  
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• Iran Offers To Sell Advanced Weapons Systems For Crypto

  01-01-2026 21:11 via news.slashdot.org
  Iran is offering to sell advanced weapons systems including ballistic missiles, drones and warships to foreign governments for cryptocurrency, in a bid to use digital assets to bypass western financial controls. From a report: Iran's Ministry of Defence Export Center, known as Mindex, says it is prepared to negotiate military contracts that allow payment in digital currencies, as well as through barter arrangements and Iranian rials, according to promotional documents and payment terms analysed
  
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• 'IPv6 Just Turned 30 and Still Hasn't Taken Over the World, But Don't Call It a Failure'

  01-01-2026 19:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  Three decades after RFC 1883 promised to future-proof the internet by expanding the available pool of IP addresses from around 4.3 billion to over 340 undecillion, IPv6 has yet to achieve the dominance its creators envisioned. Data from Google, APNIC and Cloudflare analyzed by The Register shows less than half of all internet users rely on IPv6 today.
  "IPv6 was an extremely conservative protocol that changed as little as possible," APNIC chief scientist Geoff Huston told The Register. "It was a
  
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• DHS Says REAL ID, Which DHS Certifies, Is Too Unreliable To Confirm US Citizenship

  01-01-2026 19:11 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Only the government could spend 20 years creating a national ID that no one wanted and that apparently doesn't even work as a national ID. But that's what the federal government has accomplished with the REAL ID, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) now considers unreliable, even though getting one requires providing proof of citizenship or lawful status in the country.
  In a December 11 court filing [PDF], Philip Lavoie, the acting assistant specia
  
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• Public Domain Day 2026 Brings Betty Boop, Nancy Drew and 'I Got Rhythm' Into the Commons

  01-01-2026 18:12 via news.slashdot.org
  As the calendar flips to January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 are entering the US public domain alongside sound recordings from 1925, making them free to copy, share, remix and build upon without permission or licensing fees. The literary haul includes William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Dashiell Hammett's full novel The Maltese Falcon, Agatha Christie's first Miss Marple mystery The Murder at the Vicarage, and the first four Nancy Drew books. The popular illustrated version
  
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• European Space Agency Acknowledges Another Breach as Criminals Claim 200 GB Data Haul

  01-01-2026 17:01 via it.slashdot.org
  The European Space Agency has acknowledged yet another security incident after a cybercriminal posted an offer on BreachForums the day after Christmas claiming to have stolen over 20GB of data including source code, confidential documents, API tokens and credentials.
  The attacker claims they gained access to ESA-linked external servers on December 18 and remained connected for about a week, during which they allegedly exfiltrated private Bitbucket repositories, CI/CD pipelines, Terraform files a
  
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• The Man Taking Over the Large Hadron Collider

  01-01-2026 16:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Mark Thomson, a professor of experimental particle physics at the University of Cambridge, takes over as CERN's director general this week, and one of his first major decisions during his five-year tenure will be shutting down the Large Hadron Collider for an extended upgrade. The shutdown starts in June to make way for the high-luminosity LHC -- a major overhaul involving powerful new superconducting magnets that will squeeze the collider's proton beams and increase their brightness. The upgrad
  
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• You Can't Trust Your Eyes To Tell You What's Real Anymore, Says Instagram Head

  01-01-2026 15:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Instagram head Adam Mosseri closed out 2025 by acknowledging what many have long suspected: the era of trusting photographs as accurate records of reality is over, and the platform he runs will need to fundamentally adapt to an age of "infinite synthetic content."
  In a slideshow posted to Instagram, Mosseri wrote that for most of his life he could safely assume photographs or videos were largely accurate captures of moments that happened, adding that this is clearly no longer the case. He predic
  
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• Waymos Are Now Coming For Your Coveted San Francisco Parking Spots

  01-01-2026 14:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the San Francisco Chronicle: A long stretch of curb in San Francisco's Mission District might contain a whole menagerie of parked vehicles: hatchbacks, SUVs, dusty pick-ups, chic Teslas. And recently, Waymo robotaxis. That's what Kyle Grochmal saw walking through the northeast Mission District on Monday afternoon. Cutting down York Street, he glimpsed a tell-tale white electric Jaguar in one of the coveted one-hour spots, its sensors spinning. The Waymo s
  
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• UK Company Sends Factory With 1,000C Furnace Into Space

  01-01-2026 11:00 via news.slashdot.org
  A UK-based company has successfully powered up a microwave-sized space factory in orbit, proving it can run a 1,000C furnace to manufacture ultra-pure semiconductor materials in microgravity. "The work that we're doing now is allowing us to create semiconductors up to 4,000 times purer in space than we can currently make here today," says Josh Western, CEO of Space Forge. "This sort of semiconductor would go on to be in the 5G tower in which you get your mobile phone signal, it's going to be in
  
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• NASA's Largest Library Is Closing Amid Staff and Lab Cuts

  01-01-2026 08:00 via news.slashdot.org
  NASA is closing its largest research library at the Goddard Space Flight Center amid budget cuts and campus consolidation, putting tens of thousands of largely non-digitized historical and scientific documents at risk of being warehoused or discarded. The New York Times reports: Jacob Richmond, a NASA spokesman, said the agency would review the library holdings over the next 60 days and some material would be stored in a government warehouse while the rest would be tossed away. "This process is
  
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• Heart Association Revives Theory That Light Drinking May Be Good For You

  01-01-2026 04:30 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: For a while, it seemed the notion that light drinking was good for the heart had gone by the wayside, debunked by new studies and overshadowed by warnings that alcohol causes cancer. Now the American Heart Association has revived the idea in a scientific review that is drawing intense criticism, setting off a new round of debate about alcohol consumption. The paper, which sought to summarize the latest research and was aimed at practic
  
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• Warren Buffett Retires As Berkshire Hathaway CEO After 55 Years

  01-01-2026 02:10 via news.slashdot.org
  Warren Buffett is retiring as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at age 95, ending a 55-year run that reshaped how generations of Americans think about investing. "The 95-year-old, often referred to as the 'Oracle of Omaha' and the 'billionaire next door,' will relinquish the title after a career that saw him turn a failing textile firm into one of the most successful asset managers in the world," reports NBC News. From the report: Greg Abel, the 63-year-old lesser-known CEO of Berkshire's energy busines
  
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• Stewart Cheifet, Computer Chronicles Host, Dies At 87

  01-01-2026 01:50 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Pibroch(CiH) writes: According to the obituary linked, Stewart Cheifet of Computer Chronicles fame has died. The obituary states he passed Dec 28, 2025. Cheifet and Digital Research founder Gary Kildall hosted the public television show The Computer Chronicles starting in 1984, and Stewart continued to host the show well into the 1990s. He was well-known for his affable presence and adeptness at interviewing guests and finding out the straight dope about their products. He had recently undergone
  
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• Tech Startups Are Handing Out Free Nicotine Pouches to Boost Productivity

  01-01-2026 01:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  The Wall Street Journal reports that a growing number of tech startups are stocking offices with free nicotine pouches as founders and employees chase sharper focus and stamina in hyper-competitive AI-era work environments. The Wall Street Journal reports: Earlier this year, two nicotine startups -- Lucy Nicotine and Sesh -- made branded vending machines filled with flavored products for analytics company Palantir Technologies. Both machines are in the company's Washington, D.C., offices. The po
  
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• DarkSpectre Hackers Spread Malware To 8.8 Million Chrome, Edge, and Firefox Users

  01-01-2026 00:50 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cyber Press: A newly uncovered Chinese threat group, DarkSpectre, has been linked to one of the most widespread browser-extension malware operations to date, compromising more than 8.8 million users of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera over the past seven years. According to research by Koi.ai, the group operates three interconnected campaigns: ShadyPanda, GhostPoster, and a newly identified one named The Zoom Stealer, forming a single, strategically organ
  
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• OpenAI Is Paying Employees More Than Any Major Tech Startup in History

  01-01-2026 00:10 via slashdot.org
  OpenAI is paying employees more than any major tech startup in history, with average stock-based compensation hitting roughly $1.5 million per worker in 2025. "That is more than seven times higher than the stock-based pay Google disclosed in 2003, before it filed for an initial public offering in 2004," reports the Wall Street Journal. "The $1.5 million is about 34 times the average employee compensation of 18 other large tech companies in the year before they went public." From the report: To k
  
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