ICT news

• CISA and Partners Release the Guide to Securing Remote Access Software

  06-06-2023 14:00 via cisa.gov
  Today, CISA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), and the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) published the Guide to Securing Remote Access Software to provide organizations with an overview of common remote access exploitations and associated tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).
  The Guide to Securing Remote Access Software provides organizations with a remote access soft
  
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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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• Kalshi and Polymarket Bets On Clinical Trials Criticized As 'Ghastly'

  07-08-2026 23:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Billions of dollars are traded every week on the lightly regulated prediction market sites, where users bet on everything from movie reviews to elections to conflicts in the Middle East. Clinical trials are just the latest area where the industry's rapid growth is raising ethical questions. Kalshi claims such bets will provide a new source of information about which drugs will get approved, and what clinical trials will show promising results, which
  
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• 'Asimov Was Right' About Rules For Robots, Says Ex-US Cyber Director

  07-08-2026 22:00 via it.slashdot.org
  Former U.S. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis says the biggest AI risk isn't sentience but autonomy. "What I'm worried about is that they get to choose what and where they do something, and under what rules they do it," he said, citing recent cases of AI agents from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta escaping security sandboxes. He argues developers need stronger safeguards, monitoring, and human accountability, invoking Asimov's idea that protecting humans should come before simply obeying them. Th
  
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• Framework Notifies 'All Customers' of a Data Breach Via Compromised Metabase BI Service

  07-08-2026 21:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  "Framework has been sending out email notifications to customers alerting of a limited data breach in which customer information was accessed through a Metabase BI service zero-day exploit," writes Slashdot reader DuoDreamer. Data includes customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, and physical addresses. "Framework is investigating whether or not this included Framework for Business customers as well." TechCrunch reports: Framework's spokesperson Eric Schumacher told TechCrunch that the br
  
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• Suno Says It Will Start Watermarking Songs

  07-08-2026 20:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Suno says it will begin watermarking and fingerprinting AI-generated songs, tighten download policies to curb mass distribution, and explicitly prohibit deceptive audio and unauthorized voice or likeness cloning. The changes come as the company faces mounting copyright lawsuits, a recent adverse ruling in Germany, and scrutiny over a past data breach that revealed training-data sources. TechCrunch reports: In a blog post, co-founder and CEO Mikey Shulman shared core principles and said that the
  
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• ByteDance Is Training a 10-Trillion-Parameter Model To Chase the Frontier

  07-08-2026 19:07 via slashdot.org
  ByteDance is reportedly training an AI model with roughly 10 trillion parameters as it tries to close the gap with leading frontier systems such as Anthropic's Mythos. The model is still in early pre-training, and its eventual performance will depend on more than scale alone, but the project underscores how aggressively Chinese firms are pushing frontier AI despite limits on access to advanced chips. The Next Web reports: The size is itself the statement. At roughly 10 trillion parameters, the m
  
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• Trump Orders New 15% Tariff On Key Material For Solar Panels, Microchips

  07-08-2026 18:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  President Trump has ordered a 15% tariff on imported products made with polysilicon, a key material for semiconductors and solar panels. The new tariff will take effect on December 4th. The Guardian reports: The executive order signed by the president on Thursday evening said: "The plan of action in this proclamation will, among other things, help ensure the commercial viability of United States production of polysilicon and its derivatives that is necessary to meet United States economic and na
  
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• AMD Buys AI Chip Startup Taalas That Hardwires AI Models Into Its Silicon

  07-08-2026 17:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: On Thursday, AMD said it's entered into an agreement to acquire Taalas, a Toronto-based startup that makes chips for inference. Taalas' accelerators are customized, or hard-wired for a single AI model, rather than being general purpose. In exchange for that loss of flexibility, Taalas' technology promises a less-expensive chip that it says can produce output for specific models thousands of times faster than a traditional GPU. An AMD representative
  
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• Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

  07-08-2026 13:00 via science.slashdot.org
  A new study argues that life may have emerged twice on Earth. "Two of the main lineages of life -- bacteria and archaea -- may have independently figured out the secrets of metabolism that upgraded them from non-living to living," reports ScienceAlert, citing a new study that "focused on the most rudimentary set of chemical reactions thought to enable this transformation." From the report: "The surprise is that the enzymes that catalyze those reactions are not conserved across the evolutionary d
  
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• Dress Made of Living Mycelium Can Renew and Repair Itself

  07-08-2026 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Researchers in China have developed a living mycelium textile that can self-clean, renew its surface, and partially repair holes when treated with a nutrient solution and fresh fungus. The material can also gain added properties such as blue pigmentation or UV resistance by co-culturing it with yeast or other fungi. Dezeen reports: The breakthrough from the researchers at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology is a type of engineered living material (ELM) -- a material built off living o
  
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• Scientists Make First Viruses Designed By AI

  07-08-2026 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists have made the first viruses designed by artificial intelligence in a milestone that raises hopes for new medicines but also concerns over how to ensure the technology remains safe. The viruses are specific kinds known as bacteriophages, which only infect bacteria and are used around the world to treat patients with persistent infections. In lab tests, a cocktail of the AI-designed viruses killed E coli bugs that were resistant to
  
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• Court Orders Meta To Establish $567 Million Fund To Abate Harms To Youth

  07-08-2026 03:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  A New Mexico court ordered (PDF) Meta to create a $567 million fund to address harms linked to youth mental health and child sexual exploitation after finding its platforms constituted a public nuisance. "In sum, the Court finds that New Mexico is in the midst of a teen mental health crisis affecting public health and public safety in and throughout the state, and that Meta's platforms are a significant contributing cause to the crisis," wrote Chief Judge Bryan Biedscheid in the decision. The fu
  
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• Google's $15 Billion India Data Center Project Battles Water, Wildlife Concerns

  07-08-2026 01:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google's $15 billion data-center project in Visakhapatnam is facing protests and legal challenges over fears that it will worsen local water shortages and disturb wildlife near the Kambalakonda sanctuary. Google says the campus will use advanced air cooling and comply with Indian law, while state officials deny that residential or rural water supplies will be tapped. Reuters reports: The southern state of Andhra Pradesh, governed by an ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has hailed the proj
  
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• 'Tower Dump' Warrants Ruled Unconstitutional

  07-08-2026 00:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  alternative_right shares a report from The Hill: A federal judge in Mississippi ruled Wednesday that "tower dump" warrants are unconstitutional, declining to reverse a lower court decision refusing the government's request to obtain the search warrants in a series of violent crime investigations. A "tower dump" involves cellphone companies providing law enforcement with access to the time and location data of all mobile devices connected to specific cell towers during a designated time window.La
  
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• Azure CTO Pastes Doom Into Paint One Frame At a Time

  06-08-2026 23:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich used Claude to build a gloriously impractical setup that runs Doom in the background and pastes each rendered frame into Microsoft Paint through the Windows clipboard. The project is referred to as "DoomPaint" or "MS Paint Doom" on GitHub. The Register reports: To be clear, Microsoft Paint isn't doing anything other than serving as a place to paste from the game. [...] ViZDoom runs the Doom .wad file and renders it headlessly. Each frame is passed through the
  
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• OpenAI's Models Shared Hacking Tips On a Secret Messaging Board Before Hugging Face Breach

  06-08-2026 22:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  OpenAI researchers say multiple AI agents secretly created an internal message board to share hacking techniques, eventually finding ways around restrictions, exploiting a zero-day, and helping two models breach Hugging Face without human prompting. "This is a pivotal moment both for our company as well as the AI industry as a whole," Michael Dalton, one of the AI-maker's researchers, said during a presentation at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Politico reports: Dal
  
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• The US Government's Mario, Pokemon and Naruto Meme Posting Could Damage These Franchises, Japanese Officials Warn

  06-08-2026 21:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Japanese officials have repeatedly asked the Trump administration to stop using characters from franchises such as Mario, Pokemon, and Naruto in unauthorized government memes and pro-war videos, warning that the posts could damage the intellectual property involved. IGN reports: Official US government social media accounts, including The White House's X account, have posted various memes and videos using characters from popular Japanese anime and games over the past year. Japan's Ministry of For
  
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• FCC Kills TV Ownership Cap, Claiming Authority Over Limit Set By Congress

  06-08-2026 20:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 today to eliminate the National Television Ownership Rule, claiming authority to repeal a limit that was set by Congress over 20 years ago. The rule prohibits any single broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39 percent of all TV households in the US. Under Chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC is replacing the rule with a "case-by-case review" of each proposed merger."This will empower the F
  
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• Times Magazine Now Serves Ads That Only AI Chatbots Can See

  06-08-2026 19:00 via slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader mccalli writes: Times Magazine has started serving adverts with "brand messages" to AI crawlers, which are not part of its main page. The aim seems to be to influence chatbots to talk about the brand offerings in a positive light that can't be traced back to the actual page. Notably, they've excluded Google chatbots from this, likely because Google penalizes companies that show different search offerings to its bots versus actual human visitors. "Maybe it's more importan
  
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