ICT news

• Can Google Make Stoplights Smarter?

  16-08-2024 21:21 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Traffic along some of Seattle's stop-and-go streets is running a little smoother after Google tested out a new machine-learning system to optimize stoplight timing at five intersections. The company launched this test as part of its Green Light pilot program in 2023 in Seattle and a dozen other cities, including some notoriously congested places such as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Kolkata, India. Across these test sites, local traffic engineers use Green Ligh
  
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• China Is Helping Drive Cuba's Solar Boom

  20-03-2026 08:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  AleRunner writes: "China is helping Cuba race to capture renewable solar energy as the United States imposes an effective oil blockade on the Caribbean island, creating its worst energy crisis in decades," reports The Washington Post. Later in the article, it states that "China's decades-long push into clean energy technology is now helping to protect it from the soaring oil and gas crisis spurred by Trump's war against Iran," and that "Chinese exports of solar equipment to Cuba skyrocketed from
  
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• EU Cloud Lobby Asks Regulator To Block VMware From Terminating Partner Program

  20-03-2026 04:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: A lobbying trade body for smaller cloud providers is asking the European Commission to impose interim measures blocking Broadcom from terminating the VMware Cloud Service Provider program, calling the decision a death sentence for some tech suppliers and an illegal squeeze on customer choice. As The Reg revealed in January, Broadcom shuttered the scheme, a move sources claimed affects hundreds of CSPs across Europe and curtails options for e
  
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• Online Bot Traffic Will Exceed Human Traffic By 2027, Cloudflare CEO Says

  20-03-2026 00:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Cloudflare's CEO predicts AI-driven bot traffic will surpass human internet traffic by 2027, as AI agents generate vastly more web requests than people. "If a human were doing a task -- let's say you were shopping for a digital camera -- and you might go to five websites. Your agent or the bot that's doing that will often go to 1,000 times the number of sites that an actual human would visit," Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said in an interview at SXSW this week. "So it might go to 5,000 sites. A
  
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• 4Chan Mocks $700K Fine For UK Online Safety Breaches

  19-03-2026 23:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  The UK regulator Ofcom fined 4chan nearly $700,000 (520,000 pounds) for failing to implement age checks and address illegal content risks under the Online Safety Act, but the platform mocked the penalty and signaled it won't pay. A lawyer representing the company responded with an AI-generated cartoon image of a hamster, writing in a follow-up post on X: "In the only country in which 4chan operates, the United States, it is breaking no law and indeed its conduct is expressly protected by the Fir
  
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• Rogue AI Triggers Serious Security Incident At Meta

  19-03-2026 22:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  For the second time in the past month, an AI agent went rogue at Meta -- this time giving an engineer incorrect advice that briefly exposed sensitive data. The Verge reports: A Meta engineer was using an internal AI agent, which Clayton described as "similar in nature to OpenClaw within a secure development environment," to analyze a technical question another employee posted on an internal company forum. But the agent also independently publicly replied to the question after analyzing it, witho
  
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• Rapper Afroman Wins Defamation Lawsuit Over Use of Police Raid Footage In His Music Videos

  19-03-2026 21:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: Rapper Afroman, born Joseph Edgar Foreman, famous for his 2000 hit "Because I Got High", has won a defamation lawsuit that seven Ohio police offers filed against him. A jury found he did not defame the officers in music videos he made about a 2022 police raid of his home. In August 2022, Adams County Sheriff's Department raided Afroman's home on suspicion of drug trafficking and kidnapping. Neither drugs nor kidnapping victims were found, and charge
  
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• Google Details New 24-Hour Process To Sideload Unverified Android Apps

  19-03-2026 20:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google is planning big changes for Android in 2026 aimed at combating malware across the entire device ecosystem. Starting in September, Google will begin restricting application sideloading with its developer verification program, but not everyone is on board. Android Ecosystem President Sameer Samat tells Ars that the company has been listening to feedback, and the result is the newly unveiled advanced flow, which will allow power users to
  
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• Meta Backtracks, Will Keep Horizon Worlds VR Support 'For Existing Games'

  19-03-2026 19:00 via games.slashdot.org
  Meta is partially reversing its decision to drop VR support for Horizon Worlds, keeping VR access for existing Unity-based games while shifting future development to a new flatscreen-focused Horizon Engine. UploadVR reports: If you somehow missed it, on Tuesday Meta officially announced that its Horizon Worlds "metaverse" platform would drop VR support in June, meaning it would only be available as a flatscreen experience for the web and smartphones. But now, in an "ask me anything" session on h
  
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• OpenAI Acquires Developer Tooling Startup Astral

  19-03-2026 18:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  OpenAI announced it's acquiring developer tooling startup Astral to strengthen its Codex AI coding assistant, which has over 2 million weekly users and has seen a three-fold increase in user growth since the start of the year. CNBC reports: "Through it all, though, our goal remains the same: to make programming more productive. To build tools that radically change what it feels like to build software," Astral's founder and CEO Charlie Marsh wrote in a blog post. The company's acquisition of Astr
  
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• Walmart Wins Patents To Give Algorithms More Sway Over Prices

  19-03-2026 17:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Walmart has secured patents for systems that use machine learning to forecast demand and automate pricing decisions, "pushing the U.S. retail behemoth into a debate over the use of algorithms to adjust product costs," reports the Financial Times. From the report: In January Walmart obtained a U.S. patent for a "system and method for dynamically and automatically updating item prices" to carry out markdowns in its ecommerce unit, a rapidly growing division that generated more than $150 billion in
  
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• Microsoft Considers Legal Action Over $50 Billion Amazon-OpenAI Cloud Deal

  19-03-2026 16:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Microsoft is considering legal action against its partner OpenAI and Amazon over a $50 billion deal that could violate its exclusive cloud agreement with the ChatGPT maker, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. Last month, Amazon and OpenAI signed several agreements, including one that makes Amazon Web Services the exclusive third-party cloud provider for Frontier, OpenAI's enterprise platform for building and running AI agents. The dispute
  
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• iPhone Exploit DarkSword Steals Data In Minutes With No Trace

  19-03-2026 12:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  BrianFagioli writes: A new iOS exploit chain called DarkSword shows how attackers can break into certain iPhones, grab sensitive data like messages, credentials, and even crypto wallets, and then disappear without leaving obvious traces. It targets older iOS 18 builds using Safari and WebGPU flaws to escape Apple's sandbox, which is pretty wild on its own, but what really stands out is how fast it works and how financially motivated these attacks have become. The takeaway is simple but important
  
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• Pardoned Nikola Fraudster Is Raising Funds For AI-Powered Planes He Claims Will Reshape Aviation

  19-03-2026 08:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Trevor Milton, the pardoned founder of Nikola, is seeking $1 billion for AI-powered autonomous planes through a new venture called SyberJet. The Tech Buzz reports: "Autonomous planes will be 10 times harder than Nikola ever was," Milton told the Wall Street Journal in a rare interview. It's a remarkable admission from someone whose last venture collapsed under the weight of securities fraud charges after he overstated the capabilities of Nikola's electric and hydrogen-powered trucks. Milton was
  
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• FBI Is Buying Location Data To Track US Citizens, Director Confirms

  19-03-2026 04:30 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The FBI has resumed purchasing reams of Americans' data and location histories to aid federal investigations, the agency's director, Kash Patel, testified to lawmakers on Wednesday. This is the first time since 2023 that the FBI has confirmed it was buying access to people's data collected from data brokers, who source much of their information -- including location data -- from ordinary consumer phone apps and games, per Politico. At the time
  
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• Cloudflare Appeals Piracy Shield Fine, Hopes To Kill Italy's Site-Blocking Law

  19-03-2026 00:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Cloudflare is appealing a 14.2 million-euro fine from Italy for refusing to comply with its "Piracy Shield" law, which requires blocking access to websites on its 1.1.1.1 DNS service within 30 minutes. The company argues the system lacks oversight, risks widespread overblocking, and could undermine core Internet infrastructure. Ars Technica's Jon Brodkin reports: Piracy Shield is "a misguided Italian regulatory scheme designed to protect large rightsholder interests at the expense of the broader
  
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• Google Is Trying To Make 'Vibe Design' Happen

  18-03-2026 23:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  With today's latest Stitch updates, Google is trying to make "vibe design" happen, reports The Verge's Jay Peters. The AI-native design platform encourages users to describe goals, feelings, or inspiration in "natural language," rather than starting with traditional blueprints.In a blog post, Google Labs Product Manager Rustin Banks says that Stitch can turn those inputs into interactive prototypes, automatically map user flows, and support real-time iteration. It introduces voice capabilities t
  
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• New Windows 11 Bug Breaks Samsung PCs, Blocking Access To C: Drive

  18-03-2026 22:00 via it.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: Users of Samsung PCs are reporting the inability to access the C: drive after the Windows 11 February update. The bug seems to be in connection with the Samsung Galaxy Connect app, which allows Samsung phones and tablets to connect to Windows machines. [A previous stable version of the app has been re-released to prevent this problem from spreading.] This parody explains the situation with humor. The issue stems from update KB5077181 and is impactin
  
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• UK Plans To Require Labels On AI-Generated Content

  18-03-2026 21:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Britain plans to consider requiring labels on AI-generated content to protect consumers from disinformation and deepfakes, the government said on Wednesday, as it outlined other areas of focus to tackle the evolving global challenge. Technology minister Liz Kendall stressed the need to strike the right balance between protecting the creative industries and allowing the AI sector to innovate, saying in a statement that the government would take ti
  
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• Meta Is Shutting Down VR Social Platform Horizon Worlds

  18-03-2026 20:00 via meta.slashdot.org
  Meta is shutting down its VR social platform Horizon Worlds, which was once a key piece of the pivot to the metaverse. The company said the app will be taken off the Quest store at the end of March, and fully removed from Quest headsets by June 15. After that date, it will shift to a standalone "mobile-only experience." CNBC reports: The shift for Horizon Worlds, which was once a central part of the company's push into virtual reality, comes weeks after Meta cut over 1,000 employees from Reality
  
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• SaaS Apocalypse Could Be OpenSource's Greatest Opportunity

  18-03-2026 19:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader internet-redstar writes: Nearly a trillion dollars has been wiped from software stocks in 2026, with hedge funds making billions shorting Salesforce, HubSpot, and Atlassian. At FOSDEM 2026, cURL maintainer Daniel Stenberg shut down his bug bounty program after AI-generated slop overwhelmed his team. A new article on HackerNoon argues that most commercial SaaS could inevitably become OpenSource, not out of ideology but economics. The author points to Proxmox replacing VMw
  
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• 2026 Turing Award Goes To Inventors of Quantum Cryptography

  18-03-2026 18:00 via slashdot.org
  Dave Knott shares a report from the New York Times: On Wednesday, the Association for Computing Machinery, the world's largest society of computing professionals, said Drs. Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard had won this year's Turing Award for their work on quantum cryptography and related technologies. The Turing Award, which was introduced in 1966, is often called the Nobel Prize of computing, and it includes a $1 million prize, which the two scientists will share.[...] The two met in 1979 w
  
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• Federal Cyber Experts Called Microsoft's Cloud 'a Pile of Shit', Yet Approved It Anyway

  18-03-2026 17:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  ProPublica reports that federal cybersecurity reviewers had serious, yearslong concerns about Microsoft's GCC High cloud offering, yet they approved it anyway because the product was already deeply embedded across government. As one member of the team put it: "The package is a pile of shit." From the report: In late 2024, the federal government's cybersecurity evaluators rendered a troubling verdict on one of Microsoft's biggest cloud computing offerings. The tech giant's "lack of proper detaile
  
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• Apple Can Delist Apps 'With Or Without Cause,' Judge Says In Loss For Musi App

  18-03-2026 16:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Musi, a free music streaming app that had tens of millions of iPhone downloads and garnered plenty of controversy over its method of acquiring music, has lost an attempt to get back on Apple's App Store. A federal judge dismissed Musi's lawsuit against Apple with prejudice and sanctioned Musi's lawyers for "mak[ing] up facts to fill the perceived gaps in Musi's case."Musi built a streaming service without striking its own deals with copyrigh
  
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• CISA Urges Endpoint Management System Hardening After Cyberattack Against US Organization

  18-03-2026 13:00 via cisa.gov
  CISA is aware of malicious cyber activity targeting endpoint management systems of U.S. organizations based on the March 11, 2026 cyberattack against U.S.-based medical technology firm Stryker Corporation, which affected their Microsoft environment.1 To defend against similar malicious cyber activity, CISA urges organizations to harden endpoint management system configurations using the recommendations and resources provided in this alert. CISA is conducting enhanced coordination with federal pa
  
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• Experiments Show Potatoes Can Survive In Lunar Solar (With Lots of Help)

  18-03-2026 12:00 via science.slashdot.org
  sciencehabit shares a report from Science.org: In The Martian, fictional astronaut Mark Watney survives the wasteland of Mars by growing potatoes in lunar soil -- with a bit of help from human poop. The idea may not be so far-fetched. In a preprint posted this month on bioRxiv, researchers show potatoes can indeed grow in the equivalent of Moon dust, though they need a lot of help from compost found on Earth. To make the discovery, scientists first had to re-create lunar regolith -- the loose, p
  
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• Nvidia Announces Vera Rubin Space-1 Chip System For Orbital AI Data Centers

  18-03-2026 08:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Nvidia unveiled its Vera Rubin Space-1 system for powering AI workloads in orbital data centers. "Space computing, the final frontier, has arrived," said CEO Jensen Huang. "As we deploy satellite constellations and explore deeper into space, intelligence must live wherever data is generated." CNBC reports: In a press release, the company said that its Vera Rubin Space-1 Module, which includes the IGX Thor and Jetson Orin, will be used on space missions led by multiple companies. The chips are sp
  
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• AI Job Loss Research Ignores How AI Is Utterly Destroying the Internet

  18-03-2026 04:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media, written by Jason Koebler: Over the last few months, various academics and AI companies have attempted to predict how artificial intelligence is going to impact the labor market. These studies, including a high-profile paper published by Anthropic earlier this month, largely try to take the things AI is good at, or could be good at, and match them to existing job categories and job tasks. But the papers ignore some of the most impactful and most
  
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• Arizona Charges Kalshi With Illegal Gambling Operation

  18-03-2026 00:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Arizona has filed criminal charges against Kalshi, accusing it of operating an illegal gambling business. "Kalshi may brand itself as a 'prediction market,' but what it's actually doing is running an illegal gambling operation and taking bets on Arizona elections, both of which violate Arizona law," Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement. The case could ultimately head to the Supreme Court to decide whether federal oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission overrides
  
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• Rural Ohioans Seek To Ban Data Centers Through Constitutional Amendment

  17-03-2026 23:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Residents in rural Ohio are pushing a constitutional amendment to ban large data centers over 25 megawatts, citing concerns about energy use, water consumption, and lack of transparency around proposed projects. "My biggest concern is because I love Adams County," Nikki Gerber told Cleveland.com. "What it feels like they are doing is just taking advantage of the unzoned rural areas of Ohio, where they can go ahead and put in whatever they want." From the report: Gerber and a handful of residents
  
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