ICT news

• Apple Tags EU Apps Using Alternative Payments With Warning Symbols

  15-05-2025 18:42 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple has implemented conspicuous warning labels featuring red exclamation marks on EU App Store listings that use external payment systems. The company's new tactic targets apps like Instacar, a popular Hungarian vehicle valuation tool with thousands of positive reviews, displaying ominous warnings that the app "does not support the App Store's private and secure payment system."
  The associated support page cautions users that external payments require providing personal information directly to
  
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• Reporter Suggests Half-Life 3 Will Be a Steam Machine Launch Title

  16-12-2025 23:10 via games.slashdot.org
  A veteran games journalist claims Half-Life 3 is real and still planned as a Spring 2026 launch title tied to Valve's next Steam Machine push. Ars Technica reports: On the contrary, veteran journalist Mike Straw insisted on a recent Insider Gaming podcast that "everybody I've talked to are still adamant [Half-Life 3] is a game that will be a launch title with the Steam Machine."Straw -- who has a long history of reporting gaming rumors from anonymous sources -- said this Half-Life 3 information
  
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• Volkswagen To End Production At German Plant, a First In Company History

  16-12-2025 22:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The last vehicle will roll off the assembly line at Volkswagen's plant in Dresden, Germany, on Tuesday, marking the first time in the automaker's 88-year history that it has closed a plant in its home country. Volkswagen warned of potential production cuts last year, as it faced shaky demand in Europe and China, its biggest market, as well as higher tariffs that have crimped sales in the United States.After 24 years of vehicle producti
  
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• Utah Leaders Hinder Efforts To Develop Solar Energy Supply

  16-12-2025 21:50 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed two bills this year that ended solar development tax credits and imposed a new tax on solar generation despite solar power accounting for two-thirds of the new projects waiting to connect to the state's power grid. The legislation passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature has already had an impact.
  Since May, when the laws took effect, 51 planned solar projects withdrew their applications to connect to the grid. That represents more than a quarter of all projec
  
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• MI6 Chief: We'll Be as Fluent in Python As We Are in Russian

  16-12-2025 21:10 via developers.slashdot.org
  The new chief of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service told officers this week that they must become as fluent in programming languages like Python as they are in foreign languages like Russian as the spy agency adapts to what she described as a space between peace and war. Blaise Metreweli, MI6's first female chief and previously the service's director general of technology and innovation, said in her first public speech that mastery of technology is now required across the organization.
  She wa
  
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• Racks of AI Chips Are Too Damn Heavy

  16-12-2025 20:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  The weight of AI server racks has reached a point where legacy data centers cannot accommodate them even with significant retrofitting efforts, The Verge reports. Chris Brown, chief technical officer at Uptime Institute, said most retrofitting attempts would require "bulldozing the building and starting over from scratch."
  AI racks are projected to reach 5,000 pounds compared to the 400 to 600 pounds that racks weighed three decades ago. The dramatic increase stems from hundreds to 1,000 GPUs pa
  
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• US Threatens Penalties Against European Tech Firms Amid Regulatory Fight

  16-12-2025 19:50 via news.slashdot.org
  U.S. officials excoriated the European Union for discriminating against American technology companies and threatened to penalize European tech companies in return, in a social media post on Tuesday. From a report: The pronouncement appeared to signal a rockier period for U.S.-E.U. trade relations, as the two governments work to finalize a trade framework they announced this year. The United States has been pushing Europe to open up its tech sector to American firms. But U.S. officials have compl
  
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• Texas Sues TV Makers For Taking Screenshots of What People Watch

  16-12-2025 19:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  mprindle writes: The Texas Attorney General sued five major television manufacturers, accusing them of illegally collecting their users' data by secretly recording what they watch using Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology.
  The lawsuits target Sony, Samsung, LG, and China-based companies Hisense and TCL Technology Group Corporation. Attorney General Ken Paxton's office also highlighted "serious concerns" about the two Chinese companies being required to follow China's National Security
  
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• McKinsey Plots Thousands of Job Cuts in Slowdown for Consulting Industry

  16-12-2025 18:27 via slashdot.org
  McKinsey, the consulting giant that has spent a century advising companies on how to cut costs and restructure operations, is now turning that advice inward as it plans to eliminate thousands of jobs across its non-client-facing departments over the next 18 to 24 months.
  The firm's leadership has discussed a roughly 10% headcount reduction in support functions, according to Bloomberg. McKinsey's revenue has hovered around $15 billion to $16 billion for the past five years after a decade of rapid
  
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• High-Speed Traders Are Feuding Over a Way To Save 3.2 Billionths of a Second

  16-12-2025 17:40 via it.slashdot.org
  A millisecond used to be a big deal for the world's quickest traders. A dispute over huge trading profits at one of the world's largest futures exchanges shows they now think a million times faster [non-paywalled source]. From a report: The controversy is about an arcane technical maneuver in which high-speed traders bombard Frankfurt-based Eurex with useless data. The idea is to keep their connections to the exchange warm so they can react fractionally faster to market-moving information. The b
  
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• Tech Giants Can't Agree On What To Call Their AI-Powered Glasses

  16-12-2025 17:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  The glasses-shaped face computers that tech companies have been building for years now face an identity crisis, and their makers can't agree on what to call them. Meta has asked a journalist to refer to its Ray-Ban glasses as "AI glasses" to distinguish them from Google Glass. Google, whose Project Aura is a collaboration with Xreal, calls the product "wired XR glasses" because the company views it as more aligned with headsets in a glasses form factor.
  Xreal's CEO Chi Xu laughed when asked abou
  
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• The Entry-Level Hiring Process Is Breaking Down

  16-12-2025 16:22 via news.slashdot.org
  The traditional signals that employers used to evaluate entry-level job candidates -- college GPAs, cover letters, and interview performance -- have lost much of their value as grade inflation and widespread AI use render these metrics nearly meaningless, writes The Atlantic.
  The recent-graduate unemployment rate now sits slightly higher than the overall workforce's, a reversal from historical norms where new college graduates were more likely to be employed than the average worker. Job postings
  
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• Mozilla's New CEO Bets Firefox's Future on AI

  16-12-2025 15:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  Mozilla has named Anthony Enzor-DeMeo as its new chief executive, promoting the executive who has spent the past year leading the Firefox browser team and who now plans to make AI central to the company's future.
  Enzor-DeMeo announced on Tuesday that an "AI Mode" is coming to Firefox next year. The feature will let users choose from multiple AI models rather than being locked into a single provider. Some options will be open-source models, others will be private "Mozilla-hosted cloud options," a
  
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• Google's Real Estate Listings 'Experiment' Sends Zillow Shares Down More Than 8%

  16-12-2025 15:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google's data partner HouseCanary has begun displaying home listings directly in search results in select markets, sending Zillow's shares tumbling more than 8% yesterday as investors weighed whether the search giant might eventually cut into the portal business that Zillow dominates.
  The experiment places property details, prices, images and a "Request a tour" button at the top of mobile search results. HouseCanary, a full-service brokerage licensed in all 50 states and Washington D.C., said it
  
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• SoundCloud Confirms Breach After Member Data Stolen, VPN Access Disrupted

  16-12-2025 14:00 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Audio streaming platform SoundCloud has confirmed that outages and VPN connection issues over the past few days were caused by a security breach in which threat actors stole a database containing user information. The disclosure follows widespread reports over the past four days from users who were unable to access SoundCloud when connecting via VPN, with attempts resulting in the site displaying 403 "forbidden" errors.In a statement sha
  
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• PayPal Applies To Become a Bank As US Loosens Regulatory Reins

  16-12-2025 11:00 via news.slashdot.org
  PayPal has applied to become a US bank by forming a Utah-chartered industrial loan company, signaling a push to deepen its financial services "as companies rush to capitalize on a friendly regulatory environment under the Trump administration," reports Reuters. From the report: If approved, the move will help PayPal to strengthen its lending offerings to small businesses in the U.S. as well as reduce its reliance on third parties. "Securing capital remains a significant hurdle for small business
  
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• Glaciers To Reach Peak Rate of Extinction In the Alps In Eight Years

  16-12-2025 08:00 via news.slashdot.org
  A new study warns that glaciers in the European Alps will hit their peak extinction rate within eight years, with global glacier loss accelerating toward thousands per year unless emissions are rapidly cut. "Glaciers in the western US and Canada are forecast to reach their peak year of loss less than a decade later, with more than 800 disappearing each year by then," adds the Guardian. From the report: About 200,000 glaciers remain worldwide, with about 750 disappearing each year. However, the r
  
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• Microsoft Will Finally Kill Obsolete Cipher That Has Wrecked Decades of Havoc

  16-12-2025 04:30 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft is killing off an obsolete and vulnerable encryption cipher that Windows has supported by default for 26 years following more than a decade of devastating hacks that exploited it and recently faced blistering criticism from a prominent US senator. When the software maker rolled out Active Directory in 2000, it made RC4 a sole means of securing the Windows component, which administrators use to configure and provision fellow adminis
  
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• Microsoft Will Finally Kill Obsolete Cipher That Has Wreaked Decades of Havoc

  16-12-2025 04:30 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft is killing off an obsolete and vulnerable encryption cipher that Windows has supported by default for 26 years following more than a decade of devastating hacks that exploited it and recently faced blistering criticism from a prominent US senator. When the software maker rolled out Active Directory in 2000, it made RC4 a sole means of securing the Windows component, which administrators use to configure and provision fellow adminis
  
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• Lidar-Maker Luminar Files For Bankruptcy

  16-12-2025 02:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  Once a star of the self-driving hype cycle, lidar maker Luminar has filed for bankruptcy amid legal turmoil, layoffs, and a cooling autonomous-vehicle market. It plans to sell off its assets before shutting down entirely. The Verge reports: As part of its bankruptcy, Luminar is seeking permission to sell both its lidar and semiconductor businesses, the latter of which it has already agreed to sell to Quantum Computing for $110 million. The company plans to continue to operate during the bankrupt
  
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• Google Search Homepage Adds a 'Plus' Menu

  16-12-2025 01:45 via search.slashdot.org
  After introducing an AI Mode shortcut earlier this year, Google has now added a new "plus" menu to its Search homepage, highlighting options for image and file uploads. 9to5Google reports: On google.com, the Search bar now has a plus icon at the far left that replaces the magnifying glass. Clicking lets you "Upload image" or "Upload file." It very much matches the AI Mode experience. Those two capabilities aren't new, but this plus menu does help emphasize that you can use Google to accomplish t
  
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• China, Iran Are Having a Field Day With React2Shell, Google Warns

  16-12-2025 01:02 via it.slashdot.org
  A critical React vulnerability (CVE-2025-55182) is being actively exploited at scale by Chinese, Iranian, North Korean, and criminal groups to gain remote code execution, deploy backdoors, and mine crypto. The Register reports: React maintainers disclosed the critical bug on December 3, and exploitation began almost immediately. According to Amazon's threat intel team, Chinese government crews, including Earth Lamia and Jackpot Panda, started battering the security hole within hours of its discl
  
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• JPMorgan Steps Further Into Crypto With Tokenized Money Fund

  16-12-2025 00:20 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: JPMorgan Chase is joining the list of traditional financial firms seeking to bring blockchain technology to an investing staple: the money-market fund. The banking giant's $4 trillion asset-management arm is rolling out its first tokenized money-market fund on the Ethereum blockchain. JPMorgan will seed the fund with $100 million of its own capital, and then open it to outside investors on Tuesday. Called My OnChain Net Yield Fund
  
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• Merriam-Webster's 2025 Word of the Year Is 'Slop'

  15-12-2025 23:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  Merriam-Webster crowned "slop" its 2025 Word of the Year, reflecting growing public awareness and and fatigue around low-quality, AI-generated content flooding the internet. "It's such an illustrative word," said Greg Barlow, Merriam-Webster's president. "It's part of a transformative technology, AI, and it's something that people have found fascinating, annoying and a little bit ridiculous." The Associated Press reports: "Slop" was first used in the 1700s to mean soft mud, but it evolved more g
  
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• Ford Ends F-150 Lightning Production, Starts Battery Storage Business

  15-12-2025 23:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Ford has effectively pulled the plug on the all-electric F-150 Lightning, pivoting away from full-size BEV pickups toward hybrids, range-extended EVs (EREVs), and even data-center battery storage. Ars Technica reports: Ford's announcements today can't be said to have come out of the blue. Rumors of the F-150's demise have been circulating for more than a month, and last week SK On ended its joint venture with Ford that was building a pair of EV battery plants in Kentucky and Tennessee. We learne
  
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• Russian Ban On Roblox Gaming Platform Sparks Rare Protest

  15-12-2025 22:23 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Several dozen people protested on Sunday in the Siberian city of Tomsk against Russia's ban on U.S. children's gaming platform Roblox, a rare show of public dissent as popular irritation over the ban gains some momentum. In wartime Russia, censorship is extensive: Moscow blocks or restricts social media platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and YouTube while distributing its own narrative through a network of social media and
  
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• Verizon Refused To Unlock Man's iPhone, So He Sued the Carrier and Won

  15-12-2025 21:05 via tech.slashdot.org
  A Kansas man who sued Verizon in small claims court after the carrier refused to unlock his iPhone has won his case, scoring a small but meaningful victory against a company that retroactively applied a policy change to deny his unlock request.
  Patrick Roach bought a discounted iPhone 16e from Verizon's Straight Talk brand in February 2025, intending to pay for one month of service before switching the device to US Mobile. Under FCC rules dating back to a 2019 waiver, Verizon must unlock phones
  
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• Why Floods Threaten One of the Driest Places in the World

  15-12-2025 20:24 via news.slashdot.org
  One of the most water-scarce regions on Earth is now experiencing a dramatic atmospheric shift that's pushing moisture onto Oman's northern coast at rates more than 1.5 times the global average, according to a Washington Post investigation of global atmospheric data [non-paywalled source]. The change has turned extreme rainfall into a recurrent source of catastrophe across the Arabian Peninsula. In the 126 years between 1881 and 2007, just six hurricane-strength storms hit Oman or came within 60
  
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• Cloudflare Reveals How Bots and Governments Reshaped the Internet in 2025

  15-12-2025 19:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  Cloudflare's sixth annual Year in Review report describes an internet increasingly shaped by two forces: automated traffic and government intervention, as global connectivity grew 19% year over year in 2025.
  Google's web crawler now dominates automated traffic, dwarfing other AI and indexing bots to become the single largest source of bot activity on the web. Nearly half of all major internet disruptions globally were linked to government actions, and civil society and non-profit organizations b
  
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• Google To Retire 'Dark Web Report' Tool That Scanned for Leaked User Data

  15-12-2025 19:06 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google has decided to retire its free dark web monitoring tool, saying it wasn't as helpful as the company hoped. From a report: In a support page, Google announced the discontinuation of the "dark web report" tool, two years after offering it as a free perk to Gmail users before expanding it more broadly. The feature worked by scanning for your email addresses to determine whether they had appeared in data breaches, which often circulate on Dark Web marketplaces. The tool could then alert you a
  
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