ICT news

• Bomb Threat Causes Mass Evacuation at DEF CON Hacking Convention

  14-08-2023 22:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  A bomb threat against Caesars Forum, the main venue for this week's DEF CON hacking convention, led to the halls being cleared on Saturday evening and the building searched by fire crews and police officers. The Register reports: The timing was very bad, coming in the evening of the main party night for the event. The conference Goons, the red-shirted volunteers who serve as guides and organizers, were praised by attendees for managing the evacuation with aplomb, but when it became clear that th
  
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• US-Iran Peace Agreement Prompts Stock Rally, Leaves Some Investors Skeptical and Questions on Speed of Resuming Oil Production

  15-06-2026 04:31 via news.slashdot.org
  "Asian stocks rallied Monday while oil prices tumbled," reports CNBC, "after the U.S. and Iran agreed to a peace deal aimed at ending nearly four months of conflict..."
  The strongest reaction was seen in energy markets. U.S. crude oil futures for July delivery were down 4.77% to $80.83 per barrel by 8:27 p.m. ET. Brent futures, the international benchmark, for August delivery traded about 4% lower to $83.77 per barrel. Asian equities surged. South Korea's Kospi jumped 5.1%, Japan's Nikkei 225 cl
  
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• Workers Spend As Much Time 'Botsitting' AI As Producing Useful Work, Survey Finds

  15-06-2026 03:19 via it.slashdot.org
  "As the use of artificial intelligence spreads across companies worldwide, it is relieving workers of tedious old chores but creating new ones," reports the Los Angeles Times.
  "Most people don't realize the amount of time that they're spending working on the tools to get the time savings that they're professing," said Paul Leonardi, Duca Family professor of technology management at UC Santa Barbara."Leonardi is one of the co-authors of the new study published by the Work AI Institute, whose cont
  
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• Microsoft Updates Six Windows Apps. 'Photos' Gets Watermarks for Copilot Images (Off by Default)

  15-06-2026 01:15 via tech.slashdot.org
  Microsoft dropped "massive" updates for six stock Windows apps, reports the "Microsoft enthusiast" site Neowin.
  Here's some of their more interesting highlights for Clock, Media Player, Calculator, Voice Recorder, Photos, and Paint:
  The Photos app (version 2026.11060.2004.0):AI watermarking — "AI-generated or edited images can now carry a visible Copilot watermark. You choose Never, Always, or Ask Every Time in Settings, with a confirmation when saving. The watermarking is off by default i
  
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• Microsoft Updates Six Windows' Apps. 'Photos' Gets Watermarks for Copilot Images (Off by Default)

  15-06-2026 01:15 via tech.slashdot.org
  Microsoft dropped "massive" updates for six stock Windows apps, reports the "Microsoft enthusiast" site Neowin.
  Here's some of their more interesting highlights for Clock, Media Player, Calculator, Voice Recorder, Photos, and Paint:
  The Photos app (version 2026.11060.2004.0):AI watermarking — "AI-generated or edited images can now carry a visible Copilot watermark. You choose Never, Always, or Ask Every Time in Settings, with a confirmation when saving. The watermarking is off by default i
  
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• UK Scientists See Little Evidence for Claims Smartphones Are Rewiring Kids' Brains

  14-06-2026 23:35 via mobile.slashdot.org
  UK's Members of Parliament (MP) were "looking for proof that smartphones and social media are rotting children's brains," writes The Register — but they got "a less satisfying answer from neuroscientists on Wednesday: nobody can really prove it."Appearing before the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee this week, three researchers spent much of the session explaining that concern and evidence are not quite the same thing. Asked what evidence exists on the impact of digital devices
  
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• As 'Disclosure Day' Premieres, Steven Spielberg Says He Believes Aliens Really Have Visited Earth

  14-06-2026 22:11 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Steven Spielberg grants that his 1977 UFO film Close Encounters was "speculative," writes the Associated Press, but "Disclosure Day, he insists, is the real deal.""It's my first film that will be considered science fiction that I do not consider to be science fiction," Spielberg said in a recent interview. "It's much more reflective of the world as it is evolving and discoveries that are being made as we speak." Spielberg, at 79, is trying to revive and reconsider the alien wonder that's long li
  
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• Will Meta's $14 Billion Bet on AI Ever Pay Off?

  14-06-2026 20:43 via tech.slashdot.org
  "A year after spending over $14 billion to bring in Alexandr Wang and a group of his top Scale AI engineers to revamp its artificial intelligence efforts, Meta is at least back on the map in AI," reports CNBC, "though it's still far behind OpenAI, Anthropic and Google in the market."Wang's big accomplishment was the delivery of the Muse Spark AI model in April, marking Meta's first jump into proprietary foundation models and away from a strict adherence to open source, or open weight as it's mor
  
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• Vintage AMD R600 Graphics Driver Sees Code Cleanups Thanks To GitHub Copilot

  14-06-2026 18:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  Phoronix reports:
  The AMD R600 Gallium3D driver saw 59 commits [last] Sunday to Mesa 26.2. Making this code restructuring and code cleaning all the more notable is that the improvements to this old AMD Radeon graphics driver was done in part by GitHub Copilot.Gert Wollny has been among the few open-source developers left working on the AMD R600g driver that covers from the Radeon HD 2000 series through Radeon HD 6000 series graphics cards... [T]he old open-source GPU driver support is being assi
  
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• How America's Energy Department is Building a National Platform for Doing Science with AI

  14-06-2026 17:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  America's Energy Department "wants to build a single national platform for doing science with AI," reports Communications of the ACM:
  It is called the Genesis Mission, and the idea is to connect the country's 17 national laboratories, their supercomputers, scientific datasets, and a growing layer of AI models and agents into one system researchers can access. The DOE has taken to calling it 'a national operating system for science.' That means treating compute, data, and AI models the way the co
  
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• Blizzard Sues To Take Down Another Private World of Warcraft Server, Project Ascension

  14-06-2026 16:34 via games.slashdot.org
  "Blizzard Entertainment is continuing its crusade against private World of Warcraft servers," reports the gaming news site Aftermath:The company filed a new lawsuit on Friday in a California court against the makers of Project Ascension, alleging copyright infringement, Digital Millennium Copyright Act violations, and other claims. Blizzard Entertainment claims that Project Ascension is a "lucrative way to exploit and profit from the popularity of the WoW game experience," according to the compl
  
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• Bitcoin Has Lost Nearly Half Its Value in 11 Months

  14-06-2026 13:34 via slashdot.org
  The price of bitcoin dropped 13% down to $64,394 just in June — but there's more bad news, reports CNBC." "Bitcoin has lost nearly half its value since reaching a record high above $123,000 in July 2025."
  While previous bitcoin selloffs were often followed by large rebounds in price, the latest decline may prompt some investors to revisit why they own bitcoin in the first place, [says Daniel Sotiroff, associate director of ETF and Passive Strategies Research at Morningstar]. Here's what he
  
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• Four LTS Java Versions Get End-of-Support in a Three-Year Window (2029-2032)

  14-06-2026 09:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  Simon Ritter joined Sun Microsystems in 1996 and spent time working in both Java development and consultancy. He's now written an opinion piece for InfoWorld warning that "Between 2029 and 2032, every currently supported long-term support (LTS) version of Java will reach end-of-support within a single three-year window."
  That's Java 17 in 2029, Java 8 in 2030, Java 21 in 2031, and Java 11 in 2032...On paper, this looks like a manageable upgrade cycle. In practice, it creates a collision of timel
  
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• UK Police Officer Accused of Using AI to Fake Evidence

  14-06-2026 06:34 via news.slashdot.org
  The Sunday Times reports:
  A criminal investigation has begun after a police officer allegedly used AI to create evidential material in a "number of cases". Derbyshire Constabulary said an officer was being investigated over an allegation of suspected perverting the course of justice. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) confirmed it was engaging with defence lawyers and the courts over potentially affected cases...
  It is the first known allegation of AI misuse by police in a criminal case in the
  
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• How Author Dave Eggers Avoids Smartphones, Internet Access, and Flock Cameras

  14-06-2026 03:47 via news.slashdot.org
  A few weeks ago on a bike ride "inspiration struck" for Dave Eggers, reports SFGate...Without a pen and paper handy, he was stuck texting the idea to himself. The problem? Eggers doesn't own a smartphone. "It takes 20 minutes to write a sentence," Eggers said... It's a funny predicament for Eggers, given that he's arguably the city's biggest proponent of the written word... Now age 56, Eggers' latest book is called "Contrapposto"...On writing days, Eggers bikes to his sailboat docked near the Go
  
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• Amazon CEO's Talks with U.S. Officials Triggered Crackdown on Anthropic Models

  14-06-2026 00:34 via news.slashdot.org
  The Wall Street Journal reports:The Trump administration's decision to halt all foreign use of Anthropic's most capable AI models was prompted by conversations between Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy and U.S. officials including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, people familiar with the matter said.
  Researchers at Amazon had used a series of prompts to get Anthropic's Fable 5 model to provide them with information that could be used to aid cyberattacks and was supposed to be off limits, Jassy
  
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• Shutterstock 'Evolves' Into 'Human-Led, AI-Powered Creative Platform'

  13-06-2026 23:34 via slashdot.org
  Slashdot reader BrianFagioli writes:
  Shutterstock has unveiled what it calls a "human-led, AI-powered" creative platform that combines its massive library of [human] contributor-created content with AI image and video generation, AI editing, conversational search, prompt enhancement, and automated model selection tools. The company says the goal is to help creators move from idea to finished work faster [in a single application] while maintaining commercial licensing protections and contributor
  
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• GM Updates 250,000 EVs with Vehicle-to-Grid Firmware, Announces Grid-Scale Sodium-Ion Batteries

  13-06-2026 22:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  "Battery breakthroughs will lessen AI's demand on the electricity grid," argues The Washington Post's editoral board, arguing that GM's latest moves "offer a fresh reminder that resource constraints can be solved by innovation."
  Or As Fortune put it, "America's electric grid is buckling under extreme weather, aging infrastructure, and an AI build-out that is quietly rewriting U.S. power demand — and General Motors wants to turn that crisis into a business." They describe GM's plan as offer
  
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• Vim Classic 8.3 Launched as an AI-Free Vim Fork

  13-06-2026 21:34 via news.slashdot.org
  This month saw the release of Vim Classic 8.3, the first stable version of a new long-term support fork of Vim maintained without generative AI tools. Linuxiac reports:The release is based on Vim 8.2.0148 and includes selected bug fixes and patches backported from later upstream Vim releases. Vim Classic was first announced by [SourceHut's CEO/founder] Drew DeVault in March 2026 after he objected to LLM-assisted development in Vim and Neovim. In his announcement, DeVault said he no longer wanted
  
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• Arch Linux Malware Incident: Malicious Commits Found in 1,579 Packages

  13-06-2026 20:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  More than 1,500 user-contributed packages in the Arch Linux User Repository "AUR" were infected with malware, reports Phoronix:The last message in the thread over this security incident is noting that Arch Linux developers have deleted all the malicious commits they are aware of. Cited was this list that puts the number of malware-affected packages at 1,579...Even at 1,579 packages listed, that final updated noted, it's a "list containing many (but not all) of the affected packages".
  Thanks to l
  
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• OpenAI Investigated By Coalition of America's State Attorneys General

  13-06-2026 19:34 via news.slashdot.org
  "A coalition of state attorneys general has opened an investigation into OpenAI," reports the Wall Street Journal, citing "people familiar with the matter."OpenAI was served Friday with a subpoena seeking documents related to a broad range of its activities and impact on users, including advertising, user engagement and retention, handling of consumer data and health data, activities related to minors and seniors, deep learning models, model sycophancy and company policies, some of the people sa
  
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• New UK Referendum Would Flip 'Brexit' Result of a Decade Ago, Poll Finds

  13-06-2026 18:34 via news.slashdot.org
  It's the 10-year anniversary of Britain's "Brexit" vote withdrawing from the European Union.
  But a new UK poll "shows that a new Brexit referendum would reverse the vote that led to Britain's departure," reports Bloomberg:
  Fifty-two percent of Britons think the UK should rejoin the EU, according to an Ipsos survey of 1,137 British adults conducted between May 14 and May 20. That's the inverse of the mood in June 2016 when a comparable share of the electorate backed Brexit...
  Younger voters overw
  
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• US Congress Lets 'Warrantless Wiretap' Law FISA Lapse

  13-06-2026 17:34 via news.slashdot.org
  It's the U.S. law that allows wiretaps without a warrant for surveilling foreign targets. And the U.S. Congress just let it lapse. Sort of. NPR reports:
  Each year, the provision is used by American intelligence agencies to collect the electronic communications of hundreds of thousands of foreigners located outside of the United States. The government says that more than 60% of the president's daily intelligence briefing relies on information collected under the authority. The tool officially lap
  
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• Mystery Orb Videos, Other UFO Records Released By White House

  13-06-2026 16:03 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  The Trump administration released another large batch of government UAP records, including videos of glowing orb-like objects appearing to split and rejoin, witness accounts, illustrations, and decades-old investigative documents. Axios reports: The documents indicate that government agents have spent years monitoring, investigating and documenting suspected UAP incidents. At lease some of the sightings took place near sensitive government facilities, according to the reports. Videos showing red
  
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• World's First Crewed Solid-State Flight Electrifies Aviation's Future

  13-06-2026 13:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  The Helios Horizon has completed what its developers call the first crewed, fixed-wing flight powered by solid-state batteries. New Atlas reports: On June 5, test pilot Miguel Iturmendi lifted off from Zephyrhills Municipal Airport in Florida at the controls of the Helios Horizon -- the first crewed, fixed-wing aircraft ever to fly on solid-state batteries. The flight was neither spectacular in distance nor in duration -- it was a series of short tests to validate the aircraft's weight and balan
  
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• Anthropic 'Suspends' All Mythos and Fable Access After US Order Limiting Foreign Access

  13-06-2026 09:00 via news.slashdot.org
  "Anthropic said on Friday it will 'abruptly disable' its most advanced AI models for all users,"
  reports Reuters, "after the U.S. government ordered it to suspend access to the models for foreign nationals, citing national security concerns. The company received the export control directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all foreign nationals, without being given specific details of its national security concern, Anthropic said in a statement."Anthropic's blog post writes that the
  
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• Data Center Opponents Have Blocked Or Delayed Projects Worth Nearly $130 Billion In 2026

  13-06-2026 05:30 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The first quarter of 2026 produced the most blocked and delayed data center projects on record, according to a new study shared with NBC News. The study -- conducted by Data Center Watch, a project of the AI intelligence firm 10a Labs that tracks local data center activity -- found that data center opponents blocked or delayed at least 75 projects nationwide worth about $130 billion from January through March, the most in a three-month period si
  
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• Jeff Bezos' AI Startup Aims To Build an 'Artificial General Engineer'

  13-06-2026 01:00 via slashdot.org
  Jeff Bezos says his new AI startup, Prometheus, is working toward an "artificial general engineer" capable of helping design complex physical products such as robots, drugs, manufacturing systems, and rocket engines. The Verge reports: The NYT first reported on Prometheus last November, but now Bezos is sharing more information about the startup after a $12 billion funding round, putting the company at a $41 billion valuation. Bezos serves as co-CEO of Prometheus alongside Vik Bajaj, who co-foun
  
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• Justice Department Approves Paramount's $111 Billion Acquisition of Warner Bros.

  13-06-2026 00:00 via slashdot.org
  The Justice Department has approved Paramount Skydance's $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery without requiring divestitures or other concessions. The deal still faces scrutiny from state attorneys general. Politico reports: The decision, expected to be announced Friday, paves the way for Paramount to combine with the entertainment and media company behind a vast film and television studio, CNN, and the HBO Max streaming service, which would be combined with Paramount+ to create a
  
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• ShinyHunters Hacked 100+ Organizations By Exploiting an Oracle PeopleSoft 0-Day

  12-06-2026 23:20 via developers.slashdot.org
  ShinyHunters claims it exploited a critical Oracle PeopleSoft zero-day to compromise more than 100 organizations, including the University of Nottingham, where it says it stole 40GB of student and billing data. "ShinyHunters posted the UK university on its data leak site on Tuesday before publishing the stolen files later that same day, presumably because the school refused to pay the extortion demand," reports The Register. From the report: "University of Nottingham on our leak site is one of t
  
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