ICT news

• Amazon To Pay $30 Million For Alexa, Ring Privacy Violations

  01-06-2023 00:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Amazon and its subsidiary, Ring, have agreed to separate multi-million dollar settlements with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over privacy violations involving children's use of Alexa and homeowners' use of Ring doorbell cameras. Amazon will pay $25 million for failing to delete Alexa recordings as requested by parents and for keeping them longer than necessary, while Ring will pay $5.8 million for mishandling customers' videos. Reuters reports: "While we disagree with the FTC's claims
  
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• Comcast Is Turning Millions of Its Routers Into Motion Detectors

  19-08-2026 00:00 via mobile.slashdot.org
  Comcast is activating Wi-Fi motion sensing on millions of compatible Xfinity gateways, allowing the routers to detect movement by measuring disruptions in signals between the gateway and connected devices. The free feature, part of Xfinity Shield, can send activity alerts through the Xfinity app and offers Home, Away, and nighttime monitoring modes without requiring separate motion sensors. The Verge reports: Wi-Fi motion sensing is a technology that has been around for a while, but it's only re
  
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• Disney, ABC Sue FCC Over Threats to Broadcast Licenses

  18-08-2026 23:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Disney and ABC are suing the FCC to block an early review of eight station licenses, arguing the Trump administration is using the agency's regulatory power to punish the network over programming and editorial decisions it dislikes. Reuters reports: In a lawsuit (PDF) filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, Disney said the FCC was seeking to coerce and retaliate against "a network that refuses to bow to the administration's demands," calling the agency's actions an "extraordinary assault on
  
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• Memory Prices Climb 500% In 12 Months

  18-08-2026 22:03 via hardware.slashdot.org
  RAM prices have exploded over the past year, with some DDR5 kits approaching 500% year-over-year increases and a 128GB kit now selling for $3,399, which is more than 10 times its previous low. Tom's Hardware reports: Things improve as you step down the memory capacities and speed tiers, but not as much as we'd like. You're still looking at $392 for a memory kit that was just $72 last year. To reinforce the point, I pulled the latest average price data from PCPartPicker, comparing where we are to
  
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• You Can Finally Buy a Fairphone In the US

  18-08-2026 21:00 via mobile.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Your iPhone, SamsungGalaxy, andGoogle Pixel have a 1-year warranty. Unless you cough up extra dough for an extended service plan, you'll pay a hefty fee if you damage the screen and need a replacement (around $329 for aniPhone 17done directly fromApple). But it doesn't have to be this way. What if you could order the part from the manufacturer and do the repair yourself? That dream is finally being realized for American consumers, thanks to Fairpho
  
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• Google Buys All of Spirit Airlines' Data to Feed Its AI Models

  18-08-2026 20:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google has agreed to pay $10 million for a massive trove of anonymized Spirit Airlines data following the carrier's shutdown, including internal communications, spreadsheets, booking and frequent-flyer records, transactions, and employee information. CNN reports: Did you ever fly on Spirit Airlines? Or work there? Or send an email to someone who worked there? Then your information will soon be feeding Google's artificial intelligence model. The discount airline halted all operations in May, and
  
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• Apple Lowers App Store Fees In Europe to Settle Dispute With EU

  18-08-2026 19:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple is overhauling its EU App Store fees to settle its Digital Markets Act dispute, simplifying the fee structure and "[resolving] Apple's disagreements with the Commission over business terms and alternative distribution." MacRumors reports: The initial acquisition fee and store services fee are being removed for apps distributed outside of the App Store, and Apple will now charge a 5% Core Technology Commission on digital purchases that replaces the prior per-install Core Technology Fee. Com
  
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• Microsoft MVP Creates Site to Remind You of All the Brands Redmond Replaced

  18-08-2026 18:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Microsoft MVP Loryan Strant has created the Microsoft Rebrand Registry, cataloging 72 Microsoft products and the 158 names they've had over the years. His analysis finds that Microsoft product names survive an average of two years and eleven months. The site even predicts which products are most likely to get renamed next, "by considering the amount of time the current name has applied, prior names, and the frequency with which Microsoft changes names of products in the same family," reports The
  
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• India Paves the Way For Charging Merchants a Fee On UPI Transactions

  18-08-2026 17:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: For most Indians, paying by Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has become almost absurdly routine. Scan a QR code, tap a few buttons and the money moves instantly. There is no card machine, no cash, and -- most importantly -- for the user, no visible fee. That may be about to change. India has paved the way for banks and payment companies to charge merchants a fee on UPI transactions, potentially ending a decade-long experiment in free digital paym
  
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• Sainsbury's Store Pauses Facial Recognition After False Shoplifting Claim

  18-08-2026 13:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Bruce66423 shares a report from The Guardian: Sainsbury's has paused the use of AI face scanning in one of its stores after a customer was wrongly identified as a shoplifter and ejected from the shop. "I was embarrassed, mortified even, and felt quite humiliated and powerless," Matt Arnold, 46, said of his ordeal. The comedy promoter was buying supplies in the store in East Dulwich, in south-east London, for a standup event at Dulwich Hamlet football club when, after scanning his items and a Nec
  
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• Solar Power and Batteries Have Been Keeping Europe's Grid Stable

  18-08-2026 09:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  AleRunner writes: Solar has been doing the "heavy lifting" to help Europe meet its energy needs amid a string of blistering heatwaves." Euronews tells us as Europe's energy demands in the meantime, heat and Jellyfish have been causing shutdowns and reduced power output at multiple reactors at French nuclear plants as we already discussed From the report: A new analysis from energy think-tank Ember found that solar output in European countries rose by up to 17 percent on heatwave days in June and
  
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• 'Buy Now, Pay Later' Lenders Pitch Loans For Needs Like Electricity and Rent

  18-08-2026 05:30 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Buy now, pay later" loans took off during the pandemic as a way for online shoppers to go on retail splurges without using a credit card. Now, lenders are offering the loans as a means for people to finance basic households needs. The lending apps Flex and Zip allow customers to take out loans to pay for their broadband, electricity, health insurance, mobile phone service, mortgage and water bills. Affirm, one of the most popular pay-l
  
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• Supreme Court Rejects Verizon Bid For $47 Million Refund of FCC Fine

  18-08-2026 01:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Supreme Court today rejected Verizon's attempt to get a $47 million refund from the Federal Communications Commission. In a list of orders (PDF) issued by the court, Verizon's petition was denied without explanation. The denial apparently ends any possibility of Verizon asking a lower court to review the fine and order the FCC to issue a refund. However, AT&T and T-Mobile are continuing to challenge similar fines on grounds that sell
  
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• Apple Wallet Driver's License Feature to Launch in Four More US States

  18-08-2026 00:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple Wallet's driver's license and state ID feature is set to expand to North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, and Virginia, bringing the total to 18 states plus Puerto Rico. The digital IDs can be used at participating TSA checkpoints and businesses without handing over or unlocking an iPhone, though users are still generally advised to carry a physical ID because acceptance remains limited. MacRumors reports: A few days ago, North Carolina's DMV announced that it plans to launch a mobile ID program
  
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• Judge Sets Framework For Nine PBS to Retrieve 70 Years of Archival TV Data

  17-08-2026 23:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  District Court Judge Eric Elliff has ordered Iron Mountain to cooperate with Nine PBS in recovering roughly 50TB of archival material stored through now-defunct vendor OSS. "He found that the station is the rightful owner of the materials and entitled to recover them from OSS' storage systems," reports Current.org. Nine PBS must identify a third party to help retrieve the files, pay outstanding storage fees, and ensure that data belonging to other OSS customers isn't disturbed or accidentally re
  
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• Meta Faces $1.4 Trillion Reckoning In Latest Trial Over Social Media Addiction

  17-08-2026 22:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Meta is heading to trial in a case brought by dozens of states accusing it of deliberately designing addictive features, misleading users about safety, and illegally collecting data from children under 13. Meta says the states are seeking penalties as high as $1.4 trillion, though the judge has already called that figure "unreasonable." The case could, however, influence thousands of similar lawsuits against the company. Engadget reports: The trial kicks off Tuesday in federal court in Oakland,
  
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• US Grid Operator PJM Proposes Forcing Data Center Off Grid During Emergencies

  17-08-2026 21:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: PJM Interconnection, the biggest U.S. grid operator, proposed on Thursday a new framework that would force data centers to use back-up generators when electricity supply on the grid approaches dangerously low levels. The grid operator's proposal dovetails with President Donald Trump's Ratepayer Protection Pledge, a non-binding initiative to protect residential customers from getting saddled with costs related to data center power consumption, PJM
  
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• OpenAI Announces Massive Data Center In Ohio With $105 Billion Nvidia Guarantee

  17-08-2026 20:33 via news.slashdot.org
  OpenAI has signed a 10-year lease for an enormous Ohio data center that will eventually provide 8 gigawatts of computing capacity and require at least 10 gigawatts of new power generation. According to OpenAI, Nvidia will be supplying the chips and guaranteeing up to $105 billion in lease and power obligations. From the report: The facility -- which will be built and owned by SoftBank's SB Energy -- illustrates the immensity of the computing and power needed to fuel the growth of the AI economy.
  
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• Tracking Rare Books Leads to an Amazon AI Training Facility

  17-08-2026 19:00 via news.slashdot.org
  alternative_right shares a report from 404 Media: Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying them in the process. A 404 Media investigation was able to reveal Amazon's book buying operation, which hasn't been previously reported, by placing a tracking device in a rare book we suspected would be acquired by an AI company for training data, and following it around the country to its final destination. That final destination was an Amazon wareho
  
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• Anthropic CEO Says AI Backlash Is 'Fundamentally a Crisis of Trust'

  17-08-2026 18:00 via slashdot.org
  Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the growing backlash against AI is less about executives sounding alarms and more about a broader "crisis of trust" in companies, governments, and the tech industry. TechCrunch reports: Amodei's comments came in response to investor Gavin Baker, who argued -- both on the All-In podcast and on X -- that Amodei's warnings about the dangers of AI have helped to fuel a backlash in the United States, particularly against data centers.Claiming that Amodei has "lost the
  
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• OpenAI Ditches Recall-Style Screenshot Surveillance For Friendly Keylogging

  17-08-2026 17:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: If you want to record whatever you do on a computer, send those records to OpenAI, use more ChatGPT tokens, and increase your vulnerability to prompt injection, then OpenAI has something for you. It's called Computer History, an opt-in way to record your computer interactions across apps and websites as memories organized on a timeline.Why would you want to do so? Maybe you found Chronicle, the predecessor of Computer History which compiled
  
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• CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog 

  17-08-2026 14:00 via cisa.gov
  CISA has added one new vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation.  CVE-2025-62593 Ray-Project Ray Code Injection VulnerabilityThis type of vulnerability is a frequent attack vector for malicious cyber actors and poses significant risks to the federal enterprise.
  Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 26-04: Prioritizing Security Updates Based on Risk establishes vulnerability management requirements for Federal Civilian Executi
  
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• EFF's Position on Flock Camera Database Searches: 'Get a Warrant First' - and Police Use Should Be Restricted By Law

  17-08-2026 13:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  Some take their criticism even further. Reacting to Flock's changes, an EFF statement calls it "Too little, too late," while calling it Flock's admission that their technology needs reforms. But...To be clear, our position has long been that police, at a minimum, need to get a warrant, signed by a judge, in order to search for historic ALPR data regarding specific vehicles. For us, it's common sense: if police want to dip into historic ALPR data like they were going back in time to retroactively
  
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• Amazon's New User Agreement Seeks To Curb Class-action Suits

  17-08-2026 10:24 via yro.slashdot.org
  Amazon has "reintroduced a clause in its user agreement that seeks to prevent shoppers from filing class-action lawsuits against the online retailer," reports Bloomberg, "inserting a legal buffer between itself and plaintiffs attorneys that it removed five years ago."
  In an email sent to customers on Friday, the company said a new "arbitration agreement and class-action waiver" will require shoppers to resolve disputes outside the courts but said they could still file small claims, cases that ty
  
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• A Rosier Future for Linux Gamers? Epic Games Announces Linux Version of Its Storefront

  17-08-2026 07:44 via linux.slashdot.org
  "Epic Games has confirmed that it is working on a Linux version of its storefront, potentially removing the need for third-party launchers on platforms such as Steam Deck," reports PC Guide:The confirmation came during an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on the Epic Games Store's community Discord server. When a user asked whether Epic had any plans for a Linux version of its launcher, an Epic staff member confirmed that it is coming "soon(TM)" in emoji form. Of course, that is far from confirming any kind
  
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• Bipartisan 'Uprising' Against Flock Cameras: a Larger Fight Against Big Tech and Surveillance?

  17-08-2026 05:04 via yro.slashdot.org
  Politico notes that over 20 local jurisdictions in America "either stopped using Flock cameras or began the process of doing so in July, according to a tracker maintained by DeFlock, an activist group that has been mapping the company. It's the highest amount in a single month since they began tracking in 2021."
  Some local officials said the public safety promises weren't worth the cost. The cameras "didn't help us with anything. From a utility aspect, they were just kind of not useful," said Er
  
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• Anthropic Criticized For Adding Watermarks to Text that Claude Generates - or Processes

  17-08-2026 04:04 via slashdot.org
  This week Anthropic announced its Claude chatbot will watermark the text it generates, reports the blog Futurism. "It works by making subtle changes in the AI's word choices across the text it generates, which are supposed to be imperceptible to a human but, in aggregate, form a pattern that is detectable with the tool."Anthropic said it was implementing the watermark system in response to the European Union's landmark AI Act passed in 2024, which requires that AI companies mark content that's b
  
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• Linux Kernel 7.2 Has Been Officially Released with Many New Features

  17-08-2026 02:03 via linux.slashdot.org
  Linux Kernel 7.2 has just been officially released with a slew of new features, reports the blog 9to5Linux.Highlights of Linux 7.2 "include cache-aware load-balancing support, initial HDMI 2.1 FRL support to the AMDGPU driver, support for devres-based management of ACPI notify handlers, initial CRI platform support for the Intel Xe driver, and Rust support for the IBM System/390 (S/390) architecture."Linux kernel 7.2 also introduces a "Fair(er)" GPU scheduler, support for the 'zerocopy' library
  
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• China's Moon-landing Plans And Why the US Is So Worried

  17-08-2026 01:03 via science.slashdot.org
  "We are in a 21st century space race," U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has said. And this week CNN noted a competition that for decades loomed in the background of geopolitics "is now roaring to the forefront," with China "demonstrating rapid advances in space technology" while the U.S. is "ratcheting up rhetoric about a looming battle for control of the cosmos."It's the fact that China plans to build a permanent settlement on the moon by 2040 that has prompted an urgent response from [U.S.] lawmakers...
  
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• Flock's 'Creepy Cameras' Remain Major Threat to Privacy Despite Small Recent Changes, Warns ACLU

  16-08-2026 22:38 via news.slashdot.org
  While Flock announced changes for its AI-powered traffic cameras, "Several of the proposed changes Flock is touting are merely retreads of previous ," complains the American Civil Liberties Union. "Flock's latest announcement still appears more focused on addressing a perceived PR problem than the significant harms its products create... [T]his is hardly the step forward Flock wants us to think it is "
  The ACLU continues to urge that default retention periods be shortened to 48 hours — not
  
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