ICT news

• Amazon Faces FAA Probe After Delivery Drone Snaps Internet Cable In Texas

  27-11-2025 03:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  Amazon's drone-delivery program is under federal scrutiny after an MK30 aircraft clipped an internet cable in Texas. CNBC reports: The incident occurred on Nov. 18 around 12:45 p.m. Central in Waco, Texas. After dropping off a package, one of Amazon's MK30 drones was ascending out of a customer's yard when one of its six propellers got tangled in a nearby internet cable, according to a video of the incident viewed and verified by CNBC. The video shows the Amazon drone shearing the wire line. The
  
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• 'Apple Tax is Dead in the USA'

  12-12-2025 18:25 via news.slashdot.org
  The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has almost entirely upheld a scathing April ruling that found Apple in willful violation of a 2021 injunction meant to open up iOS App Store payments in its long-running legal battle against Epic Games. A three-judge panel affirmed that Apple's 27% fee for developers using outside payment options had a "prohibitive effect" and that the company's design restrictions on external payment links were overly broad.
  The appeals court also agreed that Apple acted in "b
  
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• China Leads Research in 90% of Crucial Technologies - a Dramatic Shift this Century

  12-12-2025 17:44 via slashdot.org
  China is leading research in nearly 90% of the crucial technologies that "significantly enhance, or pose risks to, a country's national interests," according to a technology tracker run by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) -- an independent think-tank. Nature: The ASPI's Critical Technology Tracker evaluated research on 74 current and emerging technologies this year, up from the 64 technologies it analyzed last year. China is ranked number one for research on 66 of the technologie
  
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• The Immediate Post-College Transition and its Role in Socioeconomic Earnings Gaps

  12-12-2025 17:05 via news.slashdot.org
  A new study of roughly 80,000 bachelor's degree recipients from a large urban public college system finds that characteristics of a graduate's first job can explain nearly two-thirds of the otherwise-unexplained earnings gap between students from low-income and high-income families five years after graduation.
  The research [PDF], published as an NBER working paper by economists at Columbia University, tracked graduates from 2010 to 2017 using administrative education data linked to state unemplo
  
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• Washington Post's AI-Generated Podcasts Rife With Errors, Fictional Quotes

  12-12-2025 16:26 via news.slashdot.org
  The Washington Post's top standards editor Thursday decried "frustrating" errors in its new AI-generated personalized podcasts, whose launch has been met with distress by its journalists. From a report: Earlier this week, the Post announced that it was rolling out personalized AI-generated podcasts for users of the paper's mobile app. In a release, the paper said users will be able to choose preferred topics and AI hosts, and could "shape their own briefing, select their topics, set their length
  
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• Hollywood Director Found Guilty of Blowing $11 Million Netflix Budget on Crypto and Ferraris

  12-12-2025 15:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  Carl Rinsch, the director behind the 2013 Keanu Reeves film "47 Ronin," has been found guilty of defrauding Netflix out of $11 million that was meant to fund a science fiction series called "Conquest," which the streaming company ultimately cancelled in 2021 after Rinsch failed to meet any production milestones. A jury in the Southern District of New York convicted the 48-year-old on seven charges: one count each of wire fraud and money laundering, and five counts of transacting in illicitly obt
  
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• Major Automakers Say China Poses 'Clear and Present Threat' To US Auto Industry

  12-12-2025 15:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  Major automakers have urged Washington to prevent Chinese government-backed automakers and battery manufacturers from opening U.S. manufacturing plants, warning the industry's future is at stake. From a report: The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents General Motors, Ford, Toyota Motor, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Stellantis and other major automakers, sounded the alarm and said Congress and the Trump administration needed to act.
  "China poses a clear and present threat to the auto indu
  
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• Reddit Launches High Court Challenge To Australia's Under-16s Social Media Ban

  12-12-2025 14:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Reddit has filed a challenge against Australia's under-16s social media ban in the high court, lodging its case two days after implementing age restrictions on its website. The company said in a Reddit post on Friday that while it agreed with protecting people under 16, the law "has the unfortunate effect of forcing intrusive and potentially insecure verification processes on adults as well as minors, isolating teens from the ability to enga
  
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• SEC Gives DTCC OK to Tokenize Stocks In Move To Blockchain

  12-12-2025 11:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  The SEC has granted the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., or DTCC, a no-action letter allowing it to custody and recognize tokenized stocks, ETFs, and Treasuries on approved blockchains for three years. "Although this program is a pilot subject to various operational limitations, it marks a significant incremental step in moving markets onchain," SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said in a statement. Bloomberg reports: With the permission, DTCC will also extend their record-keeping to the bloc
  
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• Cadmium Zinc Telluride: The Wonder Material Powering a Medical 'Revolution'

  12-12-2025 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Cadmium zinc telluride (CZT), a hard-to-manufacture semiconductor produced by only a handful of companies, is enabling a quiet revolution in medical imaging, science, and security by delivering faster scans, lower radiation doses, and far more precise X-ray and gamma-ray detection. "You get beautiful pictures from this scanner," says Dr Kshama Wechalekar, head of nuclear medicine and PET. "It's an amazing feat of engineering and physics." The BBC reports: Kromek is one of just a few firms in the
  
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• TerraUSD Creator Do Kwon Sentenced To 15 Years Over $40 Billion Crypto Collapse

  12-12-2025 04:30 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Do Kwon, the South Korean cryptocurrency entrepreneur behind two digital currencies that lost an estimated $40 billion in 2022, was sentenced in New York federal court on Thursday to 15 years in prison for fraud and conspiracy. Kwon, 34, who co-founded Singapore-based Terraform Labs and developed the TerraUSD and Luna currencies, previously pleaded guilty and admitted to misleading investors about a coin that was supposed to maintain a steady pri
  
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• 97% of Buildings On Earth 3D-Mapped

  12-12-2025 03:02 via news.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader Gilmoure shares a report from Nature: Scientists have produced the most detailed 3D map of almost all buildings in the world. The map, called GlobalBuildingAtlas, combines satellite imagery and machine learning to generate 3D models for 97% of buildings on Earth. The dataset, published in the open-access journal Earth System Science Data on December 1, covers 2.75 billion buildings, each mapped with footprints and heights at a spatial resolution of 3 meters by 3 meters.
  
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• Over 10,000 Docker Hub Images Found Leaking Credentials, Auth Keys

  12-12-2025 02:25 via yro.slashdot.org
  joshuark shares a report from BleepingComputer: More than 10,000 Docker Hub container images expose data that should be protected, including live credentials to production systems, CI/CD databases, or LLM model keys. After scanning container images uploaded to Docker Hub in November, security researchers at threat intelligence company Flare found that 10,456 of them exposed one or more keys. The most frequent secrets were access tokens for various AI models (OpenAI, HuggingFace, Anthropic, Gemin
  
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• VMware Kills vSphere Foundation In Parts of EMEA

  12-12-2025 01:45 via slashdot.org
  Broadcom has quietly pulled VMware vSphere Foundation from parts of EMEA, pushing smaller customers toward far more expensive bundles and prompting some to consider jumping to Hyper-V or Nutanix. The Register reports: VVF is a bundle that offers compute, storage, and networking virtualization, and a platform to run containers. It's most useful in hyperconverged infrastructure and hybrid clouds, but is less capable than the Cloud Foundation (VCF) private cloud suite. Virtzilla said EMEA customers
  
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• Trump Signs Executive Order For Single National AI Regulation Framework, Limiting Power of States

  12-12-2025 01:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  President Trump signed an executive order establishing a single federal AI regulatory framework that preempts state-level rules, aiming to centralize oversight of the rapidly growing AI industry. "The Trump administration, with the aid of AI and crypto czar David Sacks, has been pursuing a path that would allow federal rules to preempt state regulations on AI, a move meant to keep big Democratic-led states like California and New York from exerting their control over the growing industry," notes
  
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• UC Berkeley Professor Uses Secret Camera To Catch PhD Candidate Sabotaging Rival

  12-12-2025 00:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  A UC Berkeley professor, suspecting years of targeted computer damage against one Ph.D. student, secretly installed a hidden camera that allegedly caught another doctoral candidate sabotaging the student's laptop. The student now faces felony vandalism charges and is due for his first court appearance on Dec. 15. The Mercury News reports: A UC Berkeley professor smelled a rat -- over the years there had been $46,855 in damage from computers that failed, and nearly all of it seemed to affect one
  
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• Rivian Goes Big On Autonomy, With Custom Silicon, Lidar, and a Hint At Robotaxis

  11-12-2025 23:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  During the company's first "Autonomy & AI Day" event today, Rivian unveiled a major autonomy push featuring custom silicon, lidar, and a "large driving model." It also hinted at a potential entry into the self-driving ride-hail market, according to CEO RJ Scaringe. TechCrunch reports: Rivian said it will expand the hands-free version of its driver-assistance software to "over 3.5 million miles of roads across the USA and Canada" and will eventually expand beyond highways to surface streets (
  
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• Disney Says Google AI Infringes Copyright 'On a Massive Scale'

  11-12-2025 23:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Wild West of copyrighted characters in AI may be coming to an end. There has been legal wrangling over the role of copyright in the AI era, but the mother of all legal teams may now be gearing up for a fight. Disney has sent a cease and desist to Google, alleging the company's AI tools are infringing Disney's copyrights "on a massive scale." According to the letter, Google is violating the entertainment conglomerate's intellectual proper
  
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• Google is Building an Experimental New Browser and a New Kind of Web App

  11-12-2025 22:22 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google's Chrome team has built an experimental browser called Disco that takes a query or prompt, opens a cluster of related tabs, and then generates a custom application tailored to whatever task the user is trying to accomplish. The browser launched Thursday as an experiment in Google's Search Labs.
  GenTabs, the core feature powering Disco, are information-rich pages created by Google's Gemini AI models -- ask for travel tips and the system builds a planner app; ask for study help and it creat
  
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• Cisco Stock Hits New All-Time High, 25 Years After the Dotcom Bubble Burst

  11-12-2025 21:45 via slashdot.org
  Cisco's stock price touched $80.25 on Wednesday, finally eclipsing its dotcom-era peak of $80.06 set on March 27, 2000 -- when the networking giant briefly surpassed Microsoft to become the world's most valuable company. The journey back took 25 years, eight months and 13 days. The company's fundamentals improved dramatically over that period, of course. Revenues have nearly quintupled since 1999, profits have quadrupled, earnings per share have grown eightfold, and margins have remained healthy
  
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• New York Becomes First State To Require Disclosure of AI Performers in Ads

  11-12-2025 21:05 via news.slashdot.org
  New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Thursday signed two bills aimed at regulating the use of AI in entertainment, requiring disclosure when ads feature AI-generated performers and mandating consent from heirs before a deceased person's likeness can be used commercially. Hochul described both measures as "first in the nation" policies during a signing ceremony at SAG-AFTRA's New York City offices.
  The first bill compels ad producers to disclose the use of synthetic performers, and the second requir
  
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• Uber Pulls Back From Electric Cars, Slashing Incentives for Drivers

  11-12-2025 20:24 via tech.slashdot.org
  Uber has discontinued its monthly electric vehicle bonuses for drivers in the United States and Canada, marking the latest in a series of rollbacks from a company that once pledged to pour $800 million into helping its drivers transition away from gasoline-powered cars. The ride-hailing giant had previously eliminated its $1-per-ride EV perk last year, replacing it with monthly bonuses that required drivers to complete 200 rides. Those monthly payments are now gone too.
  The company is far behind
  
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• GPT-5.2 Arrives as OpenAI Scrambles To Respond To Gemini 3's Gains

  11-12-2025 19:45 via slashdot.org
  OpenAI on Thursday released GPT-5.2, its latest and what the company calls its "best model yet for everyday professional use," just days after CEO Sam Altman declared a "code red" internally to marshal resources toward improving ChatGPT amid intensifying competition from Google's well-received Gemini 3 model. The GPT-5.2 series ships in three tiers: Instant, designed for faster responses and information retrieval; Thinking, optimized for coding, math, and planning; and Pro, the most powerful tie
  
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• College Campuses Have Become a Front Line in America's Sports-Betting Boom

  11-12-2025 19:10 via news.slashdot.org
  Since the Supreme Court struck down the federal prohibition on sports betting in 2018, 39 states have legalized the activity, and college campuses have emerged as ground zero for what appears to be a generational gambling problem among young men. A 2023 NCAA survey found that 60% of college students have gambled on sports, and 16% of 18-to-22-year-olds engage in what the organization classifies as problematic gambling. A Siena University poll from January found that 28% of men aged 18-to-34 who
  
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• The Game Awards Are Losing Their Luster

  11-12-2025 18:36 via games.slashdot.org
  The Game Awards, which broadcasts tonight on Twitch, YouTube, and Prime Video, has become the biggest night on the video game calendar since launching in 2014, but the show's treatment of developers has drawn increasing criticism. At the 2023 ceremony, acceptance speeches were often cut off after roughly 30 seconds while Hideo Kojima received five minutes to discuss his upcoming game OD -- enough time for 13 acceptance speeches, Aftermath calculated. That year's show also ignored the industry's
  
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• Why Switzerland Is Weighing a 10 Million Population Limit

  11-12-2025 17:44 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Growing support for far-right parties is pressuring European governments to introduce stricter controls on immigration. Switzerland is set to vote on a proposal that would take the idea to the next level -- imposing a cap on its population [non-paywalled link]. The initiative could lead eventually to a blanket ban on new arrivals if the number of residents rises from around 9 million currently to above 10 million, with little distinction made between refugees
  
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• AI Hackers Are Coming Dangerously Close to Beating Humans

  11-12-2025 17:13 via it.slashdot.org
  Stanford researchers spent much of the past year building an AI bot called Artemis that scans networks for software vulnerabilities, and when they pitted it against ten professional penetration testers on the university's own engineering network, the bot outperformed nine of them. The experiment offers a window into how rapidly AI hacking tools have improved after years of underwhelming performance.
  "We thought it would probably be below average," said Justin Lin, a Stanford cybersecurity resear
  
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• Disney Puts $1 Billion Into OpenAI, Licenses 200+ Characters for AI-Generated Videos and Images

  11-12-2025 16:22 via slashdot.org
  Disney is investing $1 billion in OpenAI and has entered into a three-year licensing deal that will let users generate AI-powered short videos and images featuring more than 200 characters from its Disney, Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar franchises.
  The new features are expected to launch in 2026 through Sora, OpenAI's short-form video platform, and ChatGPT. A selection of user-generated short videos will also be available to stream on Disney+. The licensing agreement excludes any talent likenesses
  
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• Opera Wants You To Pay $20 a Month For Its AI Browser

  11-12-2025 15:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  Opera has opened its AI-powered browser Neon to the public after a couple of months of testing, and anyone interested in trying it will need to pay $19.90 per month. The Norway-based company first unveiled Neon in May and launched it in early access to select users in October. Like Perplexity's Comet, OpenAI's Atlas, and The Browser Company's Dia, Neon bakes an AI chatbot into its interface that can answer questions about pages, create mini apps and videos, and perform tasks. The browser uses yo
  
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• US Could Ask Foreign Tourists For Five-Year Social Media History Before Entry

  11-12-2025 15:05 via news.slashdot.org
  Tourists from dozens of countries including the UK could be asked to provide a five-year social media history as a condition of entry to the United States, under a new proposal unveiled by American officials. From a report: The new condition would affect people from dozens of countries who are eligible to visit the US for 90 days without a visa, as long as they have filled out an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) form. Since returning to the White House in January, President Dona
  
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