ICT news

• New DNA Tech Identifies Soldier Killed in America's Revolution in 1780

  04-07-2026 23:34 via news.slashdot.org
  South Carolina's pine forests "have spent centuries hiding a secret as old as America itself," reports CBS News:In August 1780, British and American soldiers clashed there, leading to a terrible defeat for the Continental army [fighting for the 13 colonies rebelling against England]. Battlefield archaeologists Jim Legg and Steve Smith have been studying the site for decades, but recently, they made a shocking discovery: The sandy soil was home to several sets of remains buried in shallow graves.
  
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• 842,000 American Households Lost Power Today During a Heatwave

  04-07-2026 22:34 via news.slashdot.org
  As America began celebrating its 250th birthday Saturday, 842,000 homes reported power outages, notes ABC News. Figures from tracking site PowerOutage showed states in America's Northeast and Midwest were impacted by severe weather and extreme heat.That number, which will fluctuate throughout the day as crews work to restore power, is for households, meaning that the number of people impacted by these outages is likely to be much larger... Millions of Americans, however, will be contending with
  
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• Did Microsoft Shift Its Profits to Low-Tax Countries?

  04-07-2026 21:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  Microsoft is apparently shifting its profits to countries with low taxes — and out of countries where they have many more employees and significant sales. Back in 2005 Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer even said that a low corporate tax rate "is part of the overall advantage of doing business in Ireland," remembers long-time Slashdot reader theodp. (Ballmer added "It would be disingenuous to say otherwise.")But in 2026 the EU now requires a country-by-country compliance report, and the Ne
  
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• FSF Shares Update on 'LibrePhone' and New Automated Site Monitoring Tool

  04-07-2026 20:34 via news.slashdot.org
  At the end of 2025, the FSF launched LibrePhone project, which is working to "better understand and reverse-engineer the nonfree blobs used by a great majority of (if not all) system on a chip designs available today." The FSF's summer newsletter shares this update:
  We started with researching the proprietary files in Android phones supported by the Lineage project, an Android-based volunteer-led mobile phone operating system with much free software already in it. Our current, primary focus is o
  
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• AOL's Owner Bending Spoons Hits Wall Street with $1.7 billion IPO

  04-07-2026 19:34 via slashdot.org
  "The owner of AOL and other tech businesses hit Wall Street with a $1.7 billion initial public offering Wednesday," reports the Associated Press:
  The company is getting $1 billion in proceeds, while the rest is going to shareholders. The stock surged 39.7% in its first day of trading under the symbol "BSP" on the Nasdaq, giving it a market value of $25.2 billion.Among the company's well-known holdings are the event creation and ticketing company Eventbrite, and the video hosting service Vimeo...
  
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• EchoStar's US Satellite Pay-TV Provider Dish DBS Files for Bankruptcy

  04-07-2026 18:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  EchoStar's satellite pay-TV unit Dish DBS has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
  protection, reports Reuters. The move also applies to its wireless subsidiaries, according to the article, and "facilitates the wind-down of Dish Wireless's 5G network operations following an unexpected delay in a spectrum license sale to AT&T... under which EchoStar agreed to sell about 50 megahertz of its nationwide spectrum for $23 billion."Some context from Deadline.com:Charlie Ergen, who co-founded EchoStar an
  
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• Decades-Old Bash Tricks Expose AI Coding Agents To Supply Chain Attacks

  04-07-2026 17:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  Slashdot reader wiredmikey writes: AI security researchers have uncovered a structural security flaw dubbed GuardFall that allows decades-old Bash shell tricks to bypass safeguards in most open source AI coding agents. By exploiting shell behaviors such as quote removal and variable expansion, attackers can hide malicious commands in repositories, README files, Makefiles, or other content consumed by AI agents. If executed — particularly in auto-approve or CI environments—the command
  
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• What Is a Quantum Computer Good For? Absolutely Nothing - Yet

  04-07-2026 16:34 via science.slashdot.org
  The Verge argues that researchers "have made genuine progress in quantum computing — it's just been largely incremental and too esoteric to immediately capture the public's imagination."
  And there are predictions that quantum computers will finally do something useful as soon as 2028:
  The drama can overshadow the real progress in quantum computing...
  Researchers have improved the qubits themselves, so they hold onto information longer. When they hold onto information longer, you can fit in
  
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• Startup Targets Datacenters With 3D-Printed Nuclear Reactor Module

  04-07-2026 13:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Startup Ampera has unveiled what it calls the first 3D-printed nuclear reactor module, built around a silicon-carbide core and pressure vessel designed for a thorium-based microreactor. The company says future systems could deliver 15 or 30 megawatts for up to 30 years without refueling. When The Register asked about availability, their spokesperson said: "We expect the power generation portion of the system to be available as early as 2027, with the nuclear module being available to customers a
  
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• Video Game History Foundation Says Piracy Remains the Only Viable Preservation Method

  04-07-2026 09:00 via games.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechSpot: Video Game History Foundation founder Frank Cifaldi recently supported claims that piracy is the only effective way to preserve video games. The comments lay the blame squarely on game companies' refusal to keep legacy content available or allow archivists to build legal repositories. Sony's announcement that all PlayStation games will be digital-only from 2028 onward has sparked concern that titles will become harder to preserve and more easily
  
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• Alibaba To Ban Claude Code In Workplace Over Alleged Backdoor Risks

  04-07-2026 04:00 via slashdot.org
  Alibaba has reportedly banned employees from using Anthropic's Claude Code and directed them to its own Qoder platform amid a growing dispute over features that can help identify China-linked users. Reuters reports: The ban is part of a deepening spat between the two companies after Anthropic accused Alibaba of illicitly extracting its Claude AI model capabilities -- a dispute that highlights the frantic race between the U.S. and China to take the lead in artificial intelligence. [...] Anthropic
  
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