ICT news

• 'An Example of a Very Sad Google Account Recovery Failure and Its Effects'

  21-05-2023 20:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Time magazine once described Lauren Weinstein as an internet-policy expert and privacy advocate. Also a long-time Slashdot reader, he now brings this cautionary blog post "to share with you an example of what Google account recovery failure means to the people involved..."
  In this case it's a 90-year-old woman who "For at least the last decade... was just using the stored password to login and check her email," according to an email Weinstein received:When her ancient iPad finally died, she trie
  
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• Moderna-Merck Vaccine Cuts Recurrence And Spread of Melanoma, Raises New Treatment Hope

  22-08-2026 20:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Reuters reports "a major success in a new field of cancer treatment this week, as Moderna and Merck announced a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine "reduced the risk of recurrence and spread of melanoma in a late-stage trial". The vaccine was tested with Merck's widely used immunotherapy drug Keytruda:Thousands of patients who have undergone surgery to remove high-risk melanoma tumors could benefit as soon as next year if regulators approve the vaccine, Moderna President Stephen Hoge said in an int
  
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• Is AI Really to Blame for High Unemployment Among Recent Graduates? What Economists Say

  22-08-2026 19:00 via it.slashdot.org
  47% of recent graduates say AI has already impacted hiring in their field, according to an April survey from ZipRecruiter.
  "But is AI really the problem, or is it more complicated?" asks NPR. "Here's what economists have to say."According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate for recent graduates — which it defines as 22-to-27-year-olds with a new bachelor's degree or higher — was 5.7% as of June, more than the rate for all workers, which stands at 4.1%... St
  
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• Firefox Announces Free VPN and 'Startpage' Search Engine Rolling Out to Android, iOS - Plus GeForce NOW Support

  22-08-2026 18:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Firefox 154 "brings a number of usability improvements," writes PC World:
  The free built-in VPN, introduced with Firefox 149, continues to offer a selection of virtual locations — temporarily extended to 28 countries until the end of August... The free VPN is currently available to Firefox users in the US, Canada, the UK, France, and Germany. In addition, the free VPN can now also be used in Firefox for Android (rolling out gradually) with iOS to follow soon.Firefox 154 also begins adding
  
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• New York Dethrones San Francisco Bay Area As Largest Tech Talent Market

  22-08-2026 17:00 via news.slashdot.org
  fjo3 shares a report from SFGATE: The San Francisco Bay Area, epicenter of the artificial intelligence boom, is home to a massive amount of tech workers employed by some of the world's most valuable companies, from Apple to Nvidia. But for the first time, New York has eclipsed the Bay Area as the home of the largest "tech talent workforce," a report by real estate and investment firm CBRE shows. The firm has published the annual report for 13 years. Last year, the New York Metro Area's tech tale
  
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• Over 1 Million People Have Clicked LinkedIn's AI Slop Button

  22-08-2026 13:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  According to a post from chief product officer Hari Srinivasan, "over a million people" have clicked on LinkedIn's new "Seems like AI slop" button, which launched after one analysis found 41% of the platform's longform posts were fully AI-generated. The Verge reports: In Thursday's post, Srinivasan said that users are overall "now experiencing 40% less views on what we classify as AI slop from just a few weeks ago." LinkedIn is also adding a new message that will tell users who make a post if "S
  
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• 'Off the Charts' El Nino Is Already the Strongest Since Records Began

  22-08-2026 09:00 via news.slashdot.org
  A rapidly developing El Nino is already reaching record-setting levels for this time of year and is expected to intensify further over the coming months. "The El Nino has blossomed. It is off the charts. Usual measures of El Nino have blown past prior record levels in the period with good data, even though maximum effects are still several months in the future," writes renowned climate scientist James Hansen at Columbia University in New York in a newsletter sent today. Climate scientists disagr
  
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• China Joins Europe In Scrapping Windows For Linux

  22-08-2026 05:30 via linux.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: According to a Bloomberg report, attributed to China's Ministry of State Security, the country has ordered some government agencies to drop Windows 10 China Government Edition for Chinese-made Linux distributions. Why not Windows 11? Because China, like many other non-US governments, no longer trusts American companies with their software and services. This approach is all about digital sovereignty. In addition, even before the recent trend of gove
  
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• Township Fights Nuclear Weapons Data Center By Passing a Moratorium on Electrical Infrastructure

  22-08-2026 01:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, has imposed a six-month moratorium on "major electric utility infrastructure" in its latest attempt to delay a proposed $1.2 billion University of Michigan-Los Alamos data center that would support nuclear-weapons research. Township leaders, who have already paused water service for data centers, say the project has moved forward without adequate consultation and want more time to study noise, grid impacts, and other effects on residents. 404 Media reports: Last yea
  
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• Apple Cuts Jobs In Siri, Vision Pro Immersive Video and Gaming Teams

  22-08-2026 00:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple is cutting more than 200 jobs as it shifts resources toward a rebuilt, AI-powered Siri and other future products. Roughly 100 positions are being eliminated from the Vision Pro organization, including much of its gaming team and some immersive-video staff. Another 100 cuts are hitting the Siri and software teams. Bloomberg reports: In a statement, Apple acknowledged that it was realigning some teams "to evolve our business to deliver the best experiences for our users." "While we will crea
  
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• 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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• Ukrainian Publishers Call For Support After Russian Attacks Destroy 10 Million Books

  20-08-2026 23:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Russian attacks on Ukrainian publishing infrastructure in July and August destroyed roughly 10 million books, which equates to about 30% of Ukraine's annual book output. The Ukrainian Book Institute is warning of a potential "collapse of the entire book ecosystem" and is calling for international financial and industry support to help publishers, printers, and distributors recover. The Guardian reports: A major attack on August 1 hit warehouses belonging to the RNK-Ranok publishing group in Khar
  
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• Voters Aren't Waiting For November to Try Ousting Officials Over Data Centers

  20-08-2026 22:00 via politics.slashdot.org
  A growing backlash against AI data centers is spilling into local politics, with residents in more than a dozen communities pushing recall elections against officials who approved projects. "People are standing up and saying, 'Sorry, we don't want these data centers in our communities for a number of reasons,'" Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, said in an interview. "'If you can't have the guts to stand up to some large corporation, you should not continue serving in office.'" The
  
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• Does Using AI to Edit an Op-Ed on Students' Math Skills Undermine the Argument?

  20-08-2026 21:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A math professor at the University of California, Berkeley, criticizing a "severe" math deficiency among students in an op-ed for the San Francisco Standard, admitted to using artificial intelligence to help edit the piece. The Standard published a 2,000-word piece by Zvezdelina Stankova last week, in which the professor said some of her math students were "five to eight years" behind and lacked a "middle school" education on fractions and b
  
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• YouTube Offers Creators Millions of Dollars to Stay Off Netflix

  20-08-2026 20:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Bloomberg reports that YouTube is offering major creators millions of dollars to keep some content exclusive to its platform as Netflix increasingly signs YouTube-native talent to non-exclusive deals. YouTube has also warned that creators who simultaneously publish on Netflix could lose marketing support, event opportunities, and access to revenue from certain brand campaigns. Quartz reports: Bloomberg described two categories of payment: funding directed at specific programs, and a portion of t
  
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• Reverse-Lookup Service Exposed Millions of Photos of People's Faces

  20-08-2026 19:05 via yro.slashdot.org
  Security researcher Jeremiah Fowler found that people-search service ClarityCheck left more than 9 million image files accessible in an unsecured Amazon S3 bucket, despite advertising its reverse-image search as "private and secure." A separate misconfiguration also exposed email addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information. Wired reports: Overall, according to findings from independent security researcher Jeremiah Fowler, the exposed ClarityCheck database contained roughly 450 GB of
  
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• FCC Abolishes Gigabit Speed Goal, Suggesting It Is Unfair To Slower Technologies

  20-08-2026 18:00 via mobile.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission last week eliminated the gigabit speed goal established during the Biden administration and declared that current levels of broadband deployment in the US are acceptable. Though fiber networks have routinely offered such speeds for years, the FCC said the gigabit speed goal is not "technologically neutral," suggesting that it isn't fair to other, slower technologies.In 2024, the FCC raised its broadband
  
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• Japan to Require AI Firms to Disclose Training Data

  20-08-2026 17:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Japan is preparing a nonbinding "comply or explain" code that would urge generative AI companies, including foreign firms operating in Japan, to disclose what models they use, what training data they rely on, and how that data was collected. The proposal would also let rights holders ask whether specific webpages were included in training datasets. The Japan Times reports: The draft code comprises three principles. The first principle requires businesses to disclose the generative AI models they
  
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• New Study Challenges Common Assumptions About Screen Time For Kids

  20-08-2026 13:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  bryanandaimee shares a report from ScienceDaily: A Finnish study has found an unexpected association between screen use and cognitive performance. Children who accumulated more screen time as they grew up tended to show better cognitive processing during adolescence. One of the researchers cautions against viewing screen time as entirely harmful and says the goal should be to balance physical activity with screen use that encourages active thinking. [...] "The findings suggest that screen time c
  
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