ICT news

• An Alternative to Rewriting Memory-Unsafe Code in Rust: the 'Safe C++ Extensions' Proposal

  21-10-2024 02:03 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  "After two years of being beaten with the memory-safety stick, the C++ community has published a proposal to help developers write less vulnerable code," reports the Register.
  "The Safe C++ Extensions proposal aims to address the vulnerable programming language's Achilles' heel, the challenge of ensuring that code is free of memory safety bugs..."Acknowledging the now deafening chorus of calls to adopt memory safe programming languages, developers Sean Baxter, creator of the Circle compiler, and
  
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• Linus Torvalds: Someone 'More Competent Who Isn't Afraid of Numbers Past the Teens' Will Take Over Linux One Day

  23-02-2026 20:36 via linux.slashdot.org
  Linus Torvalds has pondered his professional mortality in a self-deprecating post to mark the release of the first release candidate for version 7.0 of the Linux kernel. From a report: "You all know the drill by now: two weeks have passed, and the kernel merge window is closed," he wrote in the post announcing Linux 7.0 rc1. "We have a new major number purely because I'm easily confused and not good with big numbers." Torvalds pointed out that the numbers he applies to new kernel releases are es
  
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• 'How Many AIs Does It Take To Read a PDF?'

  23-02-2026 19:50 via it.slashdot.org
  Despite AI's progress in building complex software, the ubiquitous PDF remains something of a grand challenge -- a format Adobe developed in the early 1990s to preserve the precise visual appearance of documents. PDFs consist of character codes, coordinates, and rendering instructions rather than logically ordered text, and even state-of-the-art models asked to extract information from them will summarize instead, confuse footnotes with body text, or outright hallucinate contents, The Verge writ
  
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• Anthropic Accuses Chinese Companies of Siphoning Data From Claude

  23-02-2026 19:10 via slashdot.org
  U.S. artificial-intelligence startup Anthropic said three Chinese AI companies set up more than 24,000 fraudulent accounts with its Claude AI model to help their own systems catch up. From a report: The three companies -- DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and MiniMax -- prompted Claude more than 16 million times, siphoning information from Anthropic's system to train and improve their own products, Anthropic said in a blog post Monday.
  Earlier this month, an Anthropic rival, OpenAI, sent a memo to House law
  
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• Say Goodbye to the Undersea Cable That Made the Global Internet Possible

  23-02-2026 18:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  The first fiber-optic cable ever laid across an ocean -- TAT-8, a nearly 6,000-kilometer line between the United States, United Kingdom, and France that carried its first traffic on December 14, 1988 -- is now being pulled off the Atlantic seabed after more than two decades of sitting dormant, bound for recycling in South Africa.
  Subsea Environmental Services, one of only three companies in the world whose entire business is cable recovery and recycling, began the operation last year using its n
  
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• PayPal Attracts Takeover Interest After Stock Slump

  23-02-2026 17:48 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: PayPal, the digital payments pioneer, is attracting takeover interest from potential buyers after a stock slide wiped out almost half of its value, according to people familiar with the matter.
  The San Jose, California-based company has fielded meetings with banks amid unsolicited interest from suitors, the people said. At least one large rival is looking at the whole company, while some other suitors are only interested in certain PayPal assets, the people s
  
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• Climate Physicists Face the Ghosts in Their Machines: Clouds

  23-02-2026 17:02 via news.slashdot.org
  Climate scientists trying to predict how much hotter the planet will get have long grappled with a surprisingly stubborn problem -- clouds, which both reflect sunlight and trap heat, account for more than half the variation between climate predictions and are the main reason warming projections for the next 50 years range from 2 to 6 degrees Celsius.
  Two research groups are now racing to close that gap using AI, though they disagree sharply on method. Tapio Schneider at Caltech built CLIMA, a mo
  
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• Stressful People in Your Life Could Be Adding Months To Your Biological Age

  23-02-2026 16:22 via science.slashdot.org
  A study published last week in PNAS found that people who regularly cause problems or make life difficult -- whom the researchers call "hasslers" -- are associated with measurably faster biological aging in those around them, at a rate of roughly 1.5% per additional hassler and about nine months of additional biological age relative to same-age peers.
  The research drew on DNA methylation-based epigenetic clocks and ego-centric network data from a state-representative probability sample of 2,345
  
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• Sam Altman Would Like To Remind You That Humans Use a Lot of Energy, Too

  23-02-2026 15:40 via slashdot.org
  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is pushing back on growing concerns about AI's environmental footprint, dismissing claims about ChatGPT's water consumption as "totally fake" and arguing that the fairer way to measure AI's energy use is to compare it against humans.
  In an interview with Indian Express, Altman acknowledged that evaporative cooling in data centers once made water usage a real concern but said that is no longer the case, calling internet claims of 17 gallons of water per query "completely unt
  
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• Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley Calculate AI's Contribution To U.S. Growth May Be Basically Zero

  23-02-2026 15:00 via news.slashdot.org
  The narrative that AI spending has been singlehandedly propping up the U.S. economy -- a claim that captivated Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington over the past year -- is facing serious pushback from economists [non-paywalled source] at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, all of whom now calculate that the AI buildup's direct contribution to growth was dramatically overstated and possibly close to zero.
  The debate hinges on how GDP accounts for imported components: roughly
  
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• Is AI Impacting Which Programming Language Projects Use?

  23-02-2026 13:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  "In August 2025, TypeScript surpassed both Python and JavaScript to become the most-used language on GitHub for the first time ever..." writes GitHub's senior developer advocate.
  They point to this as proof that "AI isn't just speeding up coding. It's reshaping which languages, frameworks, and tools developers choose in the first place."Eighty percent of new developers on GitHub use Copilot within their first week. Those early exposures reset the baseline for what "easy" means. When AI handles b
  
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• Rule-Breaking Black Hole Growing At 13x the Cosmic 'Speed Limit' Challenges Theories

  23-02-2026 09:34 via science.slashdot.org
  "A surprisingly ravenous black hole from the dawn of the universe is breaking two big rules," reports Live Science. "It's not only exceeding the 'speed limit' of black hole growth but also generating extreme X-ray and radio wave emissions — two features that are not predicted to coexist..."
  "How is this rule-breaking behavior even possible? In a paper published Jan. 21 in The Astrophysical Journal, an international team of researchers observed ID830 in multiple wavelengths to find an answe
  
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• Should Job-Seekers Stop Using AI to Write Their Resumes?

  23-02-2026 06:35 via it.slashdot.org
  When one company asked job applicants to submit a video where they answer a question, most of the 300 responses were "eerily similar," reports the Washington Post (with a company executive saying it was "abundantly clear" they'd used AI.)Job seekers are turning to AI to help them land jobs more quickly in a tough labor market.... Employers say that's having an unintended consequence: Many applications are looking and sounding the same...It's easy to spot when candidates over-rely on AI, some emp
  
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• Raspberry Pi Stock Rises Over Its Possible Use With OpenClaw's AI Agents

  23-02-2026 03:34 via build.slashdot.org
  This week Raspberry Pi saw its stock price surge more than 60% above its early-February low (before giving up some gains at the end of the week). Reuters notes the rise started when CEO Eben Upton bought 13,224 pounds worth of shares — but there could be another reason. "The rally in the roughly $800 million company has materialised alongside social-media buzz that demand for its single-board computers could pick up as people buy them to run AI agents such as OpenClaw."The Register explain
  
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• Telegram Disputes Russia's Claim Its Encryption Was Compromised

  23-02-2026 00:45 via it.slashdot.org
  Russia's domestic intelligence agency claimed Saturday that Ukraine can obtain sensitive information from troops using the Telegram app on the front line, reports Bloomberg. The fact that the claims were made through Russia's state-operated news outlet RIA Novosti signals "tightening scrutiny over a platform used by millions of Russians," Bloomberg notes, as the Kremlin continues efforts to "push people to use a new state-backed alternative."Russia's communications watchdog limited access to Tel
  
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• EVs Are Already Making Your Air Cleaner, Research Shows

  22-02-2026 23:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  Fossil fuels produce NO2, which is linked to asthma attacks, bronchitis, and higher risks of heart disease and stroke, according the EV news site Electrek. But the nonprofit news site Grist.org notes a new analysis showing that those emissions decreased by 1.1% for every increase of 200 electric vehicles — across nearly 1,700 ZIP codes.
  "A pretty small addition of cars at the ZIP code level led to a decline in air pollution," said Sandrah Eckel, a public health professor at the University
  
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• Long Before Tech CEOs Turned To Layoffs To Cover AI Expenses, There Was WorldCom

  22-02-2026 22:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes:Jeopardy time. A. This company spurred CEOs to make huge speculative capital expenditures based on wild unverified claims of future demand, resulting in the layoffs of tens of thousands of workers to reduce the resulting expenses, harming their core businesses. Q. What is OpenAI? Sorry, the correct response is, "What is WorldCom?" In 2002, WorldCom, the second largest long-distance company in the U.S., entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy after disclosing account
  
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• 'Open Source Registries Don't Have Enough Money To Implement Basic Security'

  22-02-2026 21:34 via news.slashdot.org
  Google and Microsoft contributed $5 million to launch Alpha-Omega in 2022 — a Linux Foundation project to help secure the open source supply chain. But its co-founder Michael Winser warns that open source registries are in financial peril, reports The Register, since they're still relying on non-continuous funding from grants and donations.And it's not just because bandwidth is expensive, he said at this year's FOSDEM. "The problem is they don't have enough money to spend on the very secur
  
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• Researchers Develop Detachable Crawling Robotic Hand

  22-02-2026 20:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot writes: Researchers have developed a robotic hand that can not only skitter about on its fingertips, it can also bend its fingers backward, connect and disconnect from a robotic arm, and pick up and carry one or more objects at a time.
  This article in Science News includes footage of the robotic arm reattaching itself to the skittering robot hand, which can also hold objects against both sides of its palm simultaneously, and "can even unscrew the cap off a m
  
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• AI Now Helps Manage 16% of America's Apartments

  22-02-2026 19:34 via slashdot.org
  Imagine a 280-unit apartment complex offering no on-site leasing office with a human agent for questions. "Instead, the entire process has been outsourced to AI..." reports SFGate, "from touring to signing the lease to completing management tasks once you actually move in."
  Now imagine it's far more than just one apartment complex...At two other Jack London Square apartment buildings, my initial interactions were also with a robot. At the Allegro, my fiance and I entered the leasing office for o
  
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• Amazon Disputes Report an AWS Service Was Taken Down By Its AI Coding Bot

  22-02-2026 18:34 via slashdot.org
  Friday Amazon published a blog post "to address the inaccuracies" in a Financial Times report that the company's own AI tool Kiro caused two outages in an AWS service in December.
  Amazon writes that the "brief" and "extremely limited" service interruption "was the result of user error — specifically misconfigured access controls — not AI as the story claims."And "The Financial Times' claim that a second event impacted AWS is entirely false."
  The disruption was an extremely limited ev
  
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• Man Accidentally Gains Control of 7,000 Robot Vacuums

  22-02-2026 17:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  A software engineer tried steering his robot vacuum with a videogame controller, reports Popular Science — but ended up with "a sneak peak into thousands of people's homes."
  While building his own remote-control app, Sammy Azdoufal reportedly used an AI coding assistant to help reverse-engineer how the robot communicated with DJI's remote cloud servers. But he soon discovered that the same credentials that allowed him to see and control his own device also provided access to live camera fe
  
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• F-35 Software Could Be Jailbreaked Like an IPhone: Dutch Defense Minister

  22-02-2026 16:34 via news.slashdot.org
  Lockheed Martin's F-35 combat aircraft is a supersonic stealth "strike fighter." But this week the military news site TWZ reports that the fighter's "computer brain," including "its cloud-based components, could be cracked to accept third-party software updates, just like 'jailbreaking' a cellphone, according to the Dutch State Secretary for Defense."
  TWZ notes that the Dutch defense secretary made the remarks during an episode of BNR Nieuwsradio's "Boekestijn en de Wijk" podcast, according to a
  
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• Has the AI Disruption Arrived - and Will It Just Make Software Cheaper and More Accessible?

  22-02-2026 12:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  Programmer/entrepreneur Paul Ford is the co-founder of AI-driven business software platform Aboard. This week he wrote a guest essay for the New York Times titled "The AI Disruption Has Arrived, and It Sure Is Fun," arguing that Anthropic's Claude Code "was always a helpful coding assistant, but in November it suddenly got much better, and ever since I've been knocking off side projects that had sat in folders for a decade or longer... [W]hen the stars align and my prompts work out, I can do hun
  
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• After 16 Years, 'Interim' CTO Finally Eradicating Fujitsu and Horizon From the UK's Post Office

  22-02-2026 09:34 via news.slashdot.org
  Besides running tech operations at the UK's Post Office, their interim CTO is also removing and replacing Fujitsu's Horizon system, which Computer Weekly describes as "the error-ridden software that a public inquiry linked to 13 people taking their own lives."
  After over 16 years of covering the scandal they'd first discovered back in 2009, Computer Weekly now talks to CTO Paul Anastassi about his plans to finally remove every trace of the Horizon system that's been in use at Post Office branche
  
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• Ask Slashdot: What's Your Boot Time?

  22-02-2026 06:34 via ask.slashdot.org
  How much time does it take to even begin booting, asks long-time Slashdot reader BrendaEM. Say you want separate Windows and Linux boot processes, and "You have Windows on one SSD/NVMe, and Linux on another. How long do you have to wait for a chance to choose a boot drive?"
  And more importantly, why is it all taking so long?
  In a world of 4-5 GHz CPU's that are thousands of times faster than they were, has hardware become thousands of times more complicated, to warrant the longer start time? Is
  
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• DNA Technology Convicts a 64-Year-Old for Murdering a Teenager in 1982

  22-02-2026 03:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  "More than four decades after a teenager was murdered in California, DNA found on a discarded cigarette has helped authorities catch her killer," reports CNN:Sarah Geer, 13, was last seen leaving her friend's houseï in Cloverdale, California, on the evening of May 23, 1982. The next morning, a firefighter walking home from work found her body, the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office said in a news release... Her death was ruled a homicide, but due to the "limited forensic science of th
  
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• Pro-Gamer Consumer Movement 'Stop Killing Games' Will Launch NGOs in America and the US

  22-02-2026 00:43 via yro.slashdot.org
  The consumer movement Stop Killing Games "has come a long way in the two years since
  YouTuber Ross Scott got mad about Ubisoft's
  destruction of The Crew in 2024," writes the gaming news site PC Gamer. "The short version is, he won: 1.3 million people signed the group's petition, mandating its consideration by the European Union, and while Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot reminded us all that nothing is forever, his company promised to never do something like that again." (And Ubisoft has since updated
  
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• Pro-Gamer Consumer Movement 'Stop Killing Games' Will Launch NGOs in America and the EU

  22-02-2026 00:43 via yro.slashdot.org
  The consumer movement Stop Killing Games "has come a long way in the two years since
  YouTuber Ross Scott got mad about Ubisoft's
  destruction of The Crew in 2024," writes the gaming news site PC Gamer. "The short version is, he won: 1.3 million people signed the group's petition, mandating its consideration by the European Union, and while Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot reminded us all that nothing is forever, his company promised to never do something like that again." (And Ubisoft has since updated
  
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• Hit Piece-Writing AI Deleted. But Is This a Warning About AI-Generated Harassment?

  21-02-2026 23:43 via developers.slashdot.org
  Last week an AI agent wrote a blog post attacking the maintainer who'd rejected the code it wrote. But that AI agent's human operator has now come forward, revealing their agent was an OpenClaw instance with its own accounts, switching between multiple models from multiple providers. (So "No one company had the full picture of what this AI was doing," the attacked maintainer points out in a new blog post.)But that AI agent will now "cease all activity indefinitely," according to its GitHub profi
  
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