ICT news

• Valve Will Finally Let You Build Your Own Steam Machine With SteamOS For Desktop

  22-06-2026 23:00 via games.slashdot.org
  With the price of the new Steam Machine starting at $1,049, you might want to consider making your own Steam Machine instead. An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Valve says that "starting with the SteamOS 3.8 release, you can put together your own Steam Machine using whatever PC parts you want." SteamOS 3.8.10 launched last week with a slew of updates, including "improved compatibility with recent Intel and AMD platforms." Alongside that improved compatibility, Valve is giving ga
  
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• Google Invests $75 Million In A24 To Develop AI-Powered Filmmaking Tools

  22-06-2026 22:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Google is investing roughly $75 million in A24 as part of a research partnership with DeepMind to develop AI-powered filmmaking tools and workflows. "The deal represents the latest marriage between a Hollywood studio and AI in an era where companies have oscillated between partnerships and lawsuits," reports Variety. From the report: A24 partner Scott Belsky, who leads the studio's technology division A24 Labs, told the Journal the studio's Google partnership differed from other deals because AI
  
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• Some Electricians Think Building Data Centers Is For Sellouts

  22-06-2026 21:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: As Big Tech dumps billions of dollars into America's data center buildout, a slew of opportunities have opened up to the electricians wiring these massive facilities. In some cases, the scale of the projects and the demanding construction timelines are fueling talent wars for the industry's best and brightest. The US-based International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) has argued that its workers are "powering the AI Revolution," and a set
  
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• Valve Prices the Steam Machine At $1,049

  22-06-2026 20:00 via games.slashdot.org
  Valve's new Steam Machine will launch June 29 starting at $1,049 and go up from there depending on the configuration. Although it costs considerably more than the PS5 ($599.99) and Xbox Series X ($649.99), "the value proposition for the Steam Machine is that it can play your library of Steam games you may have accumulated over years (or even decades), rather than just PlayStation games, and it's also a full Linux PC that you can customize to your heart's content," reports The Verge. "Valve also
  
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• AI Law Firm Wins UK Court Case For First Time

  22-06-2026 19:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Garfield AI, the UK's first regulator-approved AI law firm, has won its first court case after helping a freelancer recover 7,000 pounds in unpaid fees. "I was owed money for work I had done, but it felt like the process of recovering it could be too stressful, expensive and time-consuming," said Tamires Camal Taquidir, a freelancer who had provided HR-related services to a hospitality business. "Garfield made it possible for me to pursue the claim and keep going. When the counterclaim was broug
  
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• 2,000 Retired Google Pixel Phones Get a Second Life As a Private Cloud

  22-06-2026 18:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  UC San Diego researchers are working with Google to build a private cloud from 2,000 retired Pixel Fold motherboards, demonstrating how discarded smartphones could provide useful, low-cost computing capacity. "The full smartphone cluster is expected to launch this fall," reports The Register. "Depending on how well the initial phase goes, we're told the cluster could grow even larger." From the report Once the phone's motherboards have been extracted from their shells, the researchers say that t
  
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• Ubisoft Co-Founder Claude Guillemot Dies In Plane Crash

  22-06-2026 17:00 via games.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Claude Guillemot, co-founder of French video game company Ubisoft, died Friday at the age of 69. According to French media (via Bloomberg), Guillemot died in a plane crash in the French resort town of La Baule. He was one of two people aboard the plane, both of whom died.Guillemot founded Ubisoft with his four brothers in 1986. Since then, the company has published the Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Prince of Persia, and Tom Clancy video game fran
  
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• Several US States Bet That AI Can Solve Their Prison Recidivism Crisis

  22-06-2026 13:34 via news.slashdot.org
  America's state prison systems need ways "to keep people from returning to prison," reports the Wall Street Journal, "when an estimated 40% end up back behind bars within three years."Part of the problem comes in the form of filing cabinets, manila folders and legacy digital databases. In other words, records for a single prisoner might be kept in a dozen places... Now a group of 19 prison systems are tackling the problem with digital tools and artificial intelligence in some cases. They are con
  
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• 'Tutor' Who Took Online Tests for 124 Students Jailed for Three Years

  22-06-2026 09:34 via news.slashdot.org
  A private tutor who charged money to take dozens of exams for students and submit coursework for them "has been jailed for three years," reports the BBC, "after his scam earned him £300,000."Shahid Adnan completed assignments and online tests for more than 120 students at Liverpool John Moore's University, the Crown Prosecution Service said. The 43-year-old, of Lysander Close, Liverpool, was caught in February 2023 after a student handed in a USB drive containing suspicious coursework to D
  
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• TikTok Shows 3x More AI Slop Than YouTube, Report Finds

  22-06-2026 05:48 via tech.slashdot.org
  "About 59% of TikTok videos served to a new account's For You feed are AI slop," writes Search Engine Journal, "according to a report from Kapwing, the video creation tool company. That's roughly three times the rate Kapwing found on YouTube."The company manually reviewed over 10,000 TikTok videos across 20 categories and ran a separate fresh-account test, counting AI-generated content in the first 500 For You videos. Kapwing ran the same fresh-account test on YouTube and found that 104 of the f
  
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• Someone Forked systemd Over Its New Birth Date Field

  22-06-2026 03:48 via linux.slashdot.org
  The blog Linuxiac reports:
  A new systemd fork has appeared with a specific purpose: removing systemd's recently added support for storing a user's birth date in JSON user records.
  The fork, called Liberated systemd, published its first tagged release as v261 shortly after the official systemd 261 release. In other words, the fork follows upstream systemd while reverting the change that added the new optional birthDate field.
  Importantly, this is not a new init system, a wider redesign of systemd
  
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• The Secret Revolution in Battery Technology: 3-D Printing

  22-06-2026 01:27 via hardware.slashdot.org
  "There's a revolution in battery technology hiding in plain sight," reports The Wall Street Journal. "The 3-D printing of batteries has the potential to put energy storage inside any device.
  "This will enable lightweight and long-lasting consumer gadgets, long-range military drones and even nanoscale robots."
  Almost all the innovations we regularly hear about — from cheaper, tougher electric-vehicle batteries to "Holy Grail" solid-state batteries — are about changing the chemistry of
  
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