ICT news

• White House Eyes Data Center Agreements Amid Energy Price Spikes

  10-02-2026 23:45 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The Trump administration wants some of the world's largest technology companies to publicly commit to a new compact governing the rapid expansion of AI data centers, according to two administration officials granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.
  A draft of the compact obtained by POLITICO lays out commitments designed to ensure energy-hungry data centers do not raise household electricity prices, strain water supplies or undermine grid reliabili
  
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• Lost Soviet Moon Lander May Have Been Found

  10-02-2026 22:00 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: In 1966, a beach-ball-size robot bounced across the moon. Once it rolled to a stop, its four petal-like covers opened, exposing a camera that sent back the first picture taken on the surface of another world. This was Luna 9, the Soviet lander that was the earliest spacecraft to safely touchdown on the moon. While it paved the way toward interplanetary exploration, Luna 9's precise whereabouts have remained a mystery ever since.
  That may soon change. Two rese
  
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• Google's Personal Data Removal Tool Now Covers Government IDs

  10-02-2026 21:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google on Tuesday expanded its "Results about you" tool to let users request the removal of Search results containing government-issued ID numbers -- including driver's licenses, passports and Social Security numbers -- adding to the tool's existing ability to flag results that surface phone numbers, email addresses, and home addresses.
  The update, announced on Safer Internet Day, is rolling out in the U.S. over the coming days. Google also streamlined its process for reporting non-consensual ex
  
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• The US Is Flirting With Its First-Ever Population Decline

  10-02-2026 20:01 via news.slashdot.org
  The U.S., whose population the Census Bureau did not expect to start shrinking until 2081, may record its first-ever decline as early as this year because of the Trump administration's accelerating immigration crackdown. Census data released in late January showed US population growth slowed to just 0.5% in the year prior to July 2025 -- the lowest rate since the pandemic -- as net migration fell to 1.3 million from a peak of 2.7 million the year before.
  Census experts now expect net migration t
  
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• Microsoft Begins the First-Ever Secure Boot Certificate Swap Across Windows Ecosystem

  10-02-2026 19:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Microsoft has begun automatically replacing the original Secure Boot security certificates on Windows devices through regular monthly updates, a necessary move given that the 15-year-old certificates first issued in 2011 are set to expire between late June and October 2026.
  Secure Boot, which verifies that only trusted and digitally signed software runs before Windows loads, became a hardware requirement for Windows 11. A new batch of certificates was issued in 2023 and already ships on most PCs
  
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• A Bitcoin Blunder for the Ages: $40 Billion Accidentally Given Away

  10-02-2026 18:00 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The hundreds of prize payouts were mostly just a few bucks each, part of a promotional campaign by a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange. The total reward pot: 620,000 Korean won, or about $425. Then came a colossal mistake. A staffer for Bithumb, South Korea's No. 2 crypto exchange, didn't distribute 620,000 Korean won. Rather, the prizes, due to an input error, emerged in a different currency: 620,000 bitcoins, valued at more than $40 billion.
  That meant a
  
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• Apple and Google Agree To Change App Stores After 'Effective Duopoly' Claim

  10-02-2026 17:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple and Google have agreed to a set of commitments to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority that will prevent them from giving preferential treatment to their own apps and require greater transparency around how third-party apps are approved for sale.
  The CMA announced the measures on Tuesday, seven months after it declared that the two companies held an "effective duopoly" over the UK's mobile app ecosystem. Both companies also committed to not using data gathered from third-party develo
  
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• The Big Money in Today's Economy Is Going To Capital, Not Labor

  10-02-2026 16:00 via slashdot.org
  The American economy's most valuable companies are now worth trillions of dollars more than their predecessors were a generation ago, yet they employ a fraction of the workers -- and a new analysis by the Wall Street Journal argues that this widening gap between capital and labor is the defining economic story of our time.
  Labor received 58% of gross domestic income in 1980; by the third quarter of 2025, that figure had fallen to 51.4%. Corporate profits' share rose from 7% to 11.7% over the sam
  
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• NYC Private School Tuition Breaks $70,000 Milestone for Fall

  10-02-2026 15:00 via news.slashdot.org
  The top private schools in New York City plan to charge more than $70,000 this year for tuition, an amount exceeding that of many elite colleges, as they pass on the costs of soaring expenses including teacher salaries. From a report: Spence School, Dalton School and Nightingale-Bamford School on Manhattan's Upper East Side are among at least seven schools where the fees now exceed that threshold, according to school disclosures and Bloomberg reporting
  Fees among 15 private schools across the ci
  
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• Software Poses 'All-Time' Risk To Speculative Credit, Deutsche Bank Warns

  10-02-2026 13:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  The software and technology sectors pose one of the all-time great concentration risks to the speculative-grade credit market, according to Deutsche Bank AG analysts. Bloomberg: They comprise $597 billion and $681 billion of the speculative-grade credit universe, or about 14% and 16% respectively, analysts led by Steve Caprio wrote in a Monday note. Speculative debt spans high-yield debt, leveraged loans and US private credit.
  That's "a meaningful chunk of debt outstanding that risks souring bro
  
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• 2 To 3 Cups of Coffee a Day May Reduce Dementia Risk. But Not if It's Decaf.

  10-02-2026 10:01 via science.slashdot.org
  If you think your daily doses of espresso or Earl Grey sharpen your mind, you just might be right, new science suggests. The New York Times: A large new study provides evidence of cognitive benefits from coffee and tea -- if it's caffeinated and consumed in moderation: two to three cups of coffee or one to two cups of tea daily.
  People who drank that amount for decades had lower chances of developing dementia than people who drank little or no caffeine, the researchers reported. They followed 13
  
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• Deepfake Fraud Taking Place On an Industrial Scale, Study Finds

  10-02-2026 07:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  Deepfake fraud has gone "industrial," an analysis published by AI experts has said. From a report: Tools to create tailored, even personalised, scams -- leveraging, for example, deepfake videos of Swedish journalists or the president of Cyprus -- are no longer niche, but inexpensive and easy to deploy at scale, said the analysis from the AI Incident Database.
  It catalogued more than a dozen recent examples of "impersonation for profit," including a deepfake video of Western Australia's premier,
  
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• Electric Cars Are Making It Easier To Breathe, Study Finds

  10-02-2026 04:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: It turns out that when fewer cars spew exhaust as they drive along, air quality improves. That's the conclusion of a new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health that looked at the effect of increased numbers of both EVs and plug-in hybrids on air pollution in California. The Golden State has by far the largest number of plug-in vehicles in the United States, and they've now reached significant numbers to have a positive impact on air quality.
  Between 2
  
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• Kalshi Prediction Markets Match or Beat Traditional Forecasting Tools For Macro Indicators, NBER Study Finds

  10-02-2026 02:45 via slashdot.org
  A new NBER working paper from researchers at the Federal Reserve, Northwestern's Kellogg School and Johns Hopkins finds that Kalshi -- the largest federally regulated prediction market in the U.S., overseen by the CFTC -- produces macroeconomic forecasts that match or beat those of professional forecasters and traditional financial instruments like fed funds futures.
  The study compared Kalshi-implied forecasts for the federal funds rate, CPI inflation and unemployment against the New York Fed's
  
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