ICT news

• Apple Buys AR Headset Startup Mira

  06-06-2023 21:20 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple has acquired Mira, a Los Angeles-based AR startup that makes headsets for other companies and the US military, according to a post from the CEO's private Instagram account yesterday seen by The Verge and a person familiar with the matter. Apple confirmed the acquisition. From a report: The news comes just one day after Apple unveiled the Vision Pro, a $3,499 mixed reality headset that the company has billed as a new spatial computing platform. It's unclear how much Apple paid for Mira, whi
  
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• Microsoft Responds to Outcry After Quietly Installing Beta 'Photos' App on Enterprise Machines

  10-08-2026 06:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  Microsoft's cloud storage app OneDrive got a new Photos app in the worst possible way, reports the blog Neowin . "The app is reportedly showing up even on Windows 11 Enterprise machines, despite apparently being a beta application aimed at consumer functionality."One admin questioned why a beta app was appearing on an Enterprise SKU in the first place, while another described the situation as yet another consumer-oriented feature being forced onto corporate PCs. Things get even more frustrating
  
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• Privacy Backlash Explodes Against Meta's Smart Glasses

  10-08-2026 03:59 via yro.slashdot.org
  With nearly 70% of the market, "Meta wants its smart glasses to be a big hit," writes the Los Angeles Times. But after some users found ways to disable the light that warns people they're being filmed, "the high-tech specs have also turned into a liability, as some are calling the gadget 'pervert glasses...'"Some people are using the glasses — which look like a pair of regular spectacles — to record people without their knowledge and publish the videos on social media. The users secr
  
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• AI Reviews Bring 'New Normal' to Linux Release Candidates: Lots of Bug Fixes

  10-08-2026 02:59 via linux.slashdot.org
  Linux Torvalds expects Linux 7.2 should be released next weekend "unless something really bad
  pops up," Torvalds said while announcing today's release candidate.
  But there's something interesting about Linux 7.2-rc7, writes Phoronix. "By the time the Linux kernel typically hits a -rc7 release things have usually settled quite well. But in today's world of AI/LLM coding/review agents, the kernel activity continues at an all-time high."Tons of bug fixes continued to trickle in across the kernel sp
  
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• Flock Accused of Reactivating Its Cameras Without Notifying a Town

  10-08-2026 01:15 via yro.slashdot.org
  A Massachusetts newspaper reports that officials from the town of Littleton (population: 10,141) "claim that five of Littletonâ(TM)s Flock Safety cameras were switched back on by the company without informing the town..."Littleton had temporarily disabled the cameras earlier this year, according to the article, but upon discovering the cameras were still active, city officials say they directed the Town Counsel "to initiate cancellation of the contract with Flock Safety and directed the To
  
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• California City Declares State of Emergency After Cyberattack

  10-08-2026 00:15 via yro.slashdot.org
  NBC Bay Area brings news from the small idyllic California town of Suisun City (population: 29,518). The city council "declared a state of emergency Saturday after a cyberattack that shut down computer systems including 911 public safety operations.""Malicious software infected and compromised" the East Bay community's information technology systems beginning about 5:45 a.m. Friday, the city said on social media. "The cybersecurity incident hit critical public safety operations, including 911 ro
  
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• AI-Powered Browser Just Generates Every Website From Scratch

  09-08-2026 23:15 via idle.slashdot.org
  XDA Developers reports:
  On July 22, a Google DeepMind engineer, Vidy Thatte, shared a snippet of a browser he built that "treats every URL as a prompt and generates a site from scratch" on his X account. Just a few days later, he shared a TestFlight link to let iPhone users try it for themselves. The browser he launched is called Gem, and it's a browser that doesn't really...browse.
  Instead of fetching a webpage from a server the way Chrome or Safari would, Gem hands whatever URL you type over t
  
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• Ask Slashdot: What are the Costs of Switching Between Windows, MacOS, and Chrome?

  09-08-2026 22:15 via ask.slashdot.org
  UI changes, lost productivity, untransferrable knowledge... Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes the folly of switching to an unfamiliar new environment to be "more productive"...
  Champions of the switch often insist workers will be able to hit the ground running and get the same or even more work done from the get-go in the new unfamiliar environment because it's 'more productive', a conclusion often shaped by conventional wisdom or their 'gut' feeling. Decision makers may also mistake their
  
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• Slashdot Reader Builds 'Spaced Linux', a New Devuan-Based, User-Friendly Desktop Distro

  09-08-2026 19:41 via linux.slashdot.org
  "I've been a Linux IT administrator for 30 years now," says crhylove (Slashdot reader #205,956), in a new video on his YouTube channel. "I used to be a data center architect, at one point I was the IT director for 13 school districts... I just haven't been happy overall with all the other operating systems out there... "I've been working really diligently for the last few weeks on a new distro called Spaced Linux that is exactly what I want to use. It's heavily focused on the [zoom-friendly 3D]
  
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• OpenAI Announces It's Enhancing Security Controls, Pausing Some Work for New AI Model Astra

  09-08-2026 18:41 via it.slashdot.org
  OpenAI announced Friday it's pausing work on its Astra AI model because of security concerns. The Guardian reports:
  The company had evaluated the agent, Astra, and found "significant advancements in agentic coding and cybersecurity", which had moved to a "critical" threshold... OpenAI stated that the model was not involved in an incident in which one of its AI agents went rogue during a test, accessed the open web and hacked a startup, Hugging Face... The reports have increased concerns about ad
  
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• Brain Activity Reveals the Melodies That People Imagine

  09-08-2026 17:34 via science.slashdot.org
  Researchers believe they've found evidence that brain signals reveal the pitches of notes in imagined musical melodies, reports Medical Express:
  Study participants were 10 epilepsy patients with electrodes on the surfaces of their brains for clinical monitoring. Participants quietly listened to the first bars of children's tunes, then imagined the melodies of subsequent bars before humming their imagined melodies. Brain activity from the patients carried information about relative pitches within
  
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• GNOME Receiving Additional Design Help From Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency Fellowship

  09-08-2026 16:34 via news.slashdot.org
  The new GNOME Boxes app for accessing virtual systems has reached beta, announced This Week in GNOME. There's also been more work on the Sushi file previewer for Nautilus, and Papers 51 Beta can now add visual signatures to PDF documents.
  But Phoronix noted one more announcement. "Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency announced earlier this year a new fellowship program and now as part of that, for the next two years GNOME has a fellow dedicated to working on design and community management... paid to
  
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• Flock Camera Vandalism Continues Around America, While 100 Communities Reject ALPRs

  09-08-2026 13:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  Dozens of Flock cameras have been vandalized around Dallas Texas in the last six months, reports a local news station. In Utah, ABC News reports, a county sheriff's office even said Wednesday a Flock camera was even vandalized within days of its being installed. And in the Minnesota city of Winona, "Every Flock license plate reader camera operated by the Winona Police Department has been sawed off and stolen in what investigators believe was a coordinated theft," according to local media:
  All ei
  
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• Quake Celebrates 30th Anniversary: New Official Episode With New Maps and Mechanics

  09-08-2026 11:52 via games.slashdot.org
  To celebrate Quake's 30th anniversary, Bethesda released "a brutal new episode" — a new campaign chapter titled Dawn of the Machine "delivering ferocious combat, labyrinthine level design, and nightmarish realms that twist reality beyond recognition..."
  Face deadly new twists on familiar foes, including the Rocket Ogre, Demo Dog, Blood Shambler, and more. Each variant introduces lethal new behaviours — from overwhelming firepower to explosive death traps — forcing you to rethin
  
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• RAMageddon? 2027 Memory Capacity Reportedly Sold Out

  09-08-2026 09:52 via hardware.slashdot.org
  IGN reports:
  [A] new report suggests that all three memory manufacturers — Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — have collectively sold through their 2027 memory manufacturing capacity to, you guessed it, AI companies.
  According to a report from Digitimes and spotted by TweakTown, all DRAM and HBM capacity has been sold through for 2027, with no further supply planned. (The companies themselves have not yet confirmed this to be the case.) Of course, that only means that retail prices are g
  
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• Google Should Still Be Forced To Shed Chrome, Advocacy Group Argues

  09-08-2026 05:52 via tech.slashdot.org
  "Google should be required to divest the Chrome browser, and prohibited from paying Apple to distribute Google's search engine, the nonprofit advocacy group Public Knowledge argues in a new court filing," MediaPost reports, citing a friend-of-the-court brief filed Tuesday in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals:
  The group adds that "independent ownership" of Chrome "would open the distribution channel Google controls and allow Chrome to serve browser users when it makes privacy decisions and determ
  
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• Slashdot Reader Builds a Photo-Verification App for iPhones

  09-08-2026 01:57 via apple.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader BrianFagioli is announcing that he's released a new iPhone app that creates a cryptographic witness for photos without uploading the original image.
  The app hashes the file, signs the hash using a dedicated identity stored in Apple Keychain, and publishes the witness to Nostr relays while keeping the photo inside the app unless the user chooses to export it.
  Rather than trying to determine whether a scene was genuine, the app — named Veridenz — answers a nar
  
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• Slashdot Reader Builds a Free Photo-Verification App for iPhones

  09-08-2026 01:57 via apple.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader BrianFagioli is announcing that he's released a new iPhone app that creates a cryptographic witness for photos without uploading the original image.
  The app hashes the file, signs the hash using a dedicated identity stored in Apple Keychain, and publishes the witness to Nostr relays while keeping the photo inside the app unless the user chooses to export it.
  Rather than trying to determine whether a scene was genuine, the app — named Veridenz — answers a nar
  
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• New Orleans Will Use AI To Answer 911 Calls Instead of a Human

  08-08-2026 23:57 via slashdot.org
  "If you call 911 in New Orleans, you may hear the sound of an artificial intelligence (AI) agent answering your call instead of a human voice," reports the Shreveport Times:The Orleans Parish Communication District (OPCD) is currently testing out the new tool designed to reduce the volume of calls human dispatchers must handle, which is over a thousand emergency calls a day.New Orleans implemented AI in April to answer 311 calls for non-emergencies. The AI was trained and programmed to provide i
  
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• More Police Officers Fired, Investigated, or Arrested for Misusing Flock Camera Systems

  08-08-2026 22:43 via yro.slashdot.org
  In Georgia the Savannah Police Department "terminated four sworn officers and two civilian employees following an internal investigation into misuse of the department's Flock Safety License Plate Reader system," according to a local news report:All six cases are also under independent criminal investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation... Investigators found that employees were running searches on personal acquaintances and family members. One officer was found to have given someone fr
  
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• America's First Grid-Scale Sodium-Ion Battery Plant Gets Its First Big Test

  08-08-2026 21:43 via hardware.slashdot.org
  "In a milestone for energy storage technology, Peak Energy has selected Sacramento, California, as the home of America's first manufacturing facility dedicated to grid-scale sodium-ion battery systems," according to the sustainability news site Intelligent Living.
  The move "represents the first large-scale test of whether sodium-ion technology can deliver on its promise of cheaper, safer, and more sustainable grid storage at a scale that actually moves the needle for the U.S. electricity system.
  
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• Paper Goods Company Is Investigating an Alternative to Trees

  08-08-2026 20:34 via news.slashdot.org
  The Dallas Business Journal reported Monday that the U.S. multinational paper goods company Kimberly-Clark announced "that its researchers identified and advanced patented technology transforming fibers from hesperaloe, a low-water-use plant with pointy leaves that thrives in the southwest region of the country, into material for paper towels." Discovering an alternative to conventional wood fiber "could reshape how the company, and the industry at large, manufactures products," according to art
  
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• Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and Oracle Expect a Negative Cash Flow of $125 Billion Next Year

  08-08-2026 19:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  The Washington Post shared surprising news this week about five top AI companies.
  Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and Oracle "are spending so much on developing AI and delivering it to customers that they're expected to bleed cash in the coming year, according to a Washington Post analysis of data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence."
  Free cash flow, which measures the cash left over after paying expenses and AI infrastructure costs, is now expected to shrink to almost nothing for the
  
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• Prime Minister Leaves Door Open For Reviewing Policy of No Nuclear Weapons in Japan

  08-08-2026 18:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  At a Hiroshima memorial ceremony, Japan's prime minister said the country "maintains" its three long-standing non-nuclear principles, reports UPI.
  But the prime minister "stopped short of promising that the policy would remain unchanged, fueling speculation that her government could review a longstanding ban on allowing nuclear weapons into the country."[Prime Minister Sanae] Takaichi made the remarks Thursday at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony marking the 81st anniversary of the U.S. atom
  
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• Before and After Views of SpaceX Rocket's Moon Crash

  08-08-2026 17:34 via science.slashdot.org
  A South Korean lunar orbiter has captured the first before-and-after images of the Moon's crash scene caused by a stray SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The Associated Press reports: The Korea Aerospace Research Institute's Danuri spacecraft flew over the impact site soon after the Falcon 9 upper stage inadvertently plowed into the moon on Wednesday. Danuri made multiple passes, snapping photos from lunar orbit that were released by the space agency Thursday. The terrain is noticeably darker where the ro
  
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• NASA Figured Out How To Keep Its 48-Year-Old Voyager 2 Probe Running For Yet Another Year

  08-08-2026 13:00 via science.slashdot.org
  NASA has squeezed at least another year of science out of Voyager 2 by cutting power to nonessential systems and switching to lower-power alternatives. Voyager 1 is expected to receive the same power-saving changes in the coming months. Space.com reports: Voyager 2 and its twin launched in 1977, called Voyager 1, rely on a form of nuclear battery known as a radioisotope thermoelectric generator that uses the heat produced by the decay of plutonium. But the supply of plutonium on each probe drops
  
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• Woman Pulled From Car at Gunpoint By Police After Mistaken Flock Alert - Twice

  08-08-2026 09:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  The police surrounded her car Thursday, "drew their guns, and told her to come out with her hands up," reports a local news station. The police thought they were pulling over a murder suspect, but "It turns out it was a mistake by another department with the Flock license plate reader technology." The black woman says she'd wanted to call her mother, "but I'm like, if I make a sudden move, it's going to be over. It's going to end my life."
  And amazingly, the same thing happened Monday, according
  
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• Trump Administration To Pay German Firm $1.2 Billion To Halt US Wind Projects

  08-08-2026 05:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: German energy company RWE has said it will abandon its offshore wind projects in the U.S. after reaching a $1.2 billion payout deal with President Donald Trump's Department of the Interior (DoI). RWE said that it will now reinvest the sum into conventional gas projects, including $900 million in a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal project in Louisiana. "After careful consideration, it was determined there is no path forward to permit th
  
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• Virginia Governor To Intervene In Dominion-NextEra Merger

  08-08-2026 01:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares an opinion piece from the Washington Post, written by Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger: NextEra Energy, a Florida-based utility company, has filed paperwork to buy Dominion Energy for about $67 billion, creating the largest regulated electric utility in the world. Virginia's State Corporation Commission is the regulatory body tasked with reviewing the application, and the SCC's commissioners will ultimately decide whether to approve, deny or impose new
  
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• Water Utilities Group Partners With DEF CON Offshoot For Water Watch Center

  08-08-2026 00:00 via it.slashdot.org
  The National Rural Water Association has partnered with DEF CON Franklin to launch the Water Watch Center, which will provide threat intelligence and cybersecurity services to smaller U.S. water utilities serving fewer than 10,000 people. The initiative comes amid a growing wave of cyberattacks on water systems across multiple states. The Record reports: The program will see five managed detection and response providers work with DEF CON Franklin and the NRWA to offer cyber services for water ut
  
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