ICT news

• American Who Wiped His Phone With 'Duress' Password During Border Search Gets Felony Charges

  21-08-2026 23:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Federal prosecutors have charged activist Samuel Tunick with obstruction after he gave Customs and Border Protection officers a duress passcode that wiped his GrapheneOS-powered Pixel during a border search. "His prosecution is one of the earliest known instances of the federal authorities charging a person with destroying evidence using a program designed to wipe a device clean after a specific code is entered," reports The New York Times. From the report: "Obstructing federal law enforcement i
  
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• AI Boosted Homework Scores, Then Exam Scores Dropped

  21-08-2026 22:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Economist: Students and school children are increasingly using artificial intelligence. A survey last year by Chegg, an ed-tech firm, found that 80% of rich-world undergraduates used it in their studies. More recent polls put the figure at 94% in Britain and 93% in Germany. Such widespread adoption has fueled concerns about the impact the technology might be having on learning. Teachers report marking identikit essays that they suspect are churned out
  
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• Man Dressed As Darth Vader Defends Flock Cameras to San Diego City Council

  21-08-2026 21:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  A man dressed as Darth Vader used a Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods Committee meeting in San Diego to mock the city's use of Flock surveillance cameras, sarcastically arguing that the technology would help the "emperor" track "rebel scum" and find Luke Skywalker. "This is what the emperor needs. This technology will help us find the rebel scum and the hidden base on Hoth," he said. The Hill reports: He urged that the cameras be used to surveil any "rebel scum as they move from playground
  
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• Micron Unveils $10 Billion AI Memory Research Lab In Boise

  21-08-2026 20:25 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Micron says it will spend $10 billion over the next decade on a new research lab in Boise focused on advanced memory technologies, computing systems, and future chip manufacturing. Here are some details, as reported by Reuters:- Micron Research Labs will bring together customers, academia, government and the broader semiconductor ecosystem to pursue breakthroughs, the company said.- The latest investment builds on the more than $250 billion that Micron had separately committed to manufacturing a
  
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• Linus Torvalds Endures A Debug Session From Hell, 'Enormously Helped' By AI

  21-08-2026 19:45 via it.slashdot.org
  Linus Torvalds says AI "enormously helped" him track down a stubborn Intel Xe graphics driver bug that took 24 debugging patches and 18 kernel boots to isolate. "I'd like to call it my tireless helper, but the AI several times stated flat out that this was impossible and unsolvable and that we should just write a report about it," wrote Torvalds on the commit. "I suspect those things have been trained by people who may not be quite as stubborn as I am..." Phoronix reports: The patch by Linus Tor
  
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• Walmart To Finally Start Accepting Apple Pay and Google Pay

  21-08-2026 18:00 via news.slashdot.org
  After years of refusing to adopt tap-to-pay technology in its stores, retail giant Walmart announced today that it is finally accepting payments via both Apple Pay and Google Pay. The rollout begins August 24 at select Walmart and Sam's Club locations and is expected to reach all stores by year-end. It will then expand to fuel stations by mid-2027. TechCrunch reports: The news is a surprise, as Walmart has long refused to adopt the ubiquitous payment technology to instead promote its own in-hous
  
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• Google Gives Publishers a 'Preferred Sources' Button to Fight AI-Driven Traffic Losses

  21-08-2026 17:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Google is giving publishers a new way to fight declining referral traffic from AI-powered search by letting them embed a "Preferred Sources" button that readers can use to favor their sites across Search, Discover, and Google News. "The idea is to make it easier for readers to find links from the sites they know and trust when they're searching for content or interacting with Google's AI to learn about a topic or read the latest news," reports TechCrunch. "As of May's launch, the company said th
  
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• Microsoft Gives Task Manager Another Task: Watching AI Workloads

  21-08-2026 13:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Microsoft is expanding Windows Task Manager to show per-process NPU and GPU neural-engine usage, giving users more visibility into which apps are consuming hardware for AI workloads. The Register reports: The Processes tab can show NPU use alongside CPU and GPU activity, while the Performance tab displays overall utilization. [...] Microsoft was keen to point out the metrics that can be monitored. "As AI workloads become more common on Windows devices, visibility into NPU and GPU neural engine u
  
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• China Is About to Launch Its Most Ambitious Moon Mission Yet

  21-08-2026 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  China's Chang'e 7 mission is set to launch for the moon's south pole, where it will attempt the first-ever landing directly at the pole and search the region's dark craters for water ice. "It's an amazing mission," says Norbert Schorghofer, a Hawaii-based senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. "There has never been a landed mission to find water [on the moon]." If successful, China "will be the leader in lunar science," Schorghofer adds. Scientific American reports: Chang'e 7, Chin
  
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• Are You Sure You Want a Car With a Giant Touch Screen?

  21-08-2026 05:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  RAMageddon could soon push car prices higher as modern vehicles rely on ever more RAM and powerful centralized computers to run everything from infotainment to driver-assistance systems. Analysts cited by The Atlantic estimate the shortage could add a few percentage points to vehicle prices, which might not sound like much, but could potentially translate to around $2,000 on a $50,000 vehicle. The broader shift toward software-heavy vehicles could also make used cars even less affordable. An ano
  
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• China's YouTube Rival Bilibili Is Going Global

  21-08-2026 01:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Bilibili, often described as China's answer to YouTube, is relaunching its international app and preparing an English-language site as part of a broader push into the U.S., Europe, Japan, and other markets. The company is courting Western creators like MrBest, hiring community and moderation staff globally, and building tools for brand partnerships. Semafor reports: The revamped international app no longer requires identity verification -- meaning users can sign up without having to provide a pa
  
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• Watching TikTok Videos and Instagram Reels Deactivates the Brain's Cognitive Control Network

  21-08-2026 00:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from RathBiotaClan: Millions of people finish short video after short video every day; a new brain-scan study shows that the very act of finishing a clip they like temporarily quiets the brain regions that normally help them stay focused and weigh longer-term goals. When people watch a short video they enjoy enough to finish, two brain regions involved in cognitive control show significant deactivation. That is the central finding of a new study from Zhejiang
  
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