ICT news

• Class Action Accuses Toyota of Illegally Sharing Drivers' Data

  05-05-2025 09:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  "A federal class action lawsuit filed this week in Texas accused Toyota and an affiliated telematics aggregator of unlawfully collecting drivers' information and then selling that data to Progressive," reports Insurance Journal:
  The lawsuit alleges that Toyota and Connected Analytic Services (CAS) collected vast amounts of vehicle data, including location, speed, direction, braking and swerving/cornering events, and then shared that information with Progressive's Snapshot data sharing program. T
  
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• 'Godfather of SaaS' Says He Replaced Most of His Sales Team With AI Agents

  06-01-2026 02:25 via slashdot.org
  joshuark shares a report from Business Insider: Jason Lemkin, known to some as the Godfather of SaaS, says the time has come to push the limits of AI in the workplace. Lemkin, the founder of SaaStr, the world's largest community of business-to-business founders. In a recent podcast Lemkin said that this means he will stop hiring humans in his sales department. SaaStr is going all in for AI agents, which are commonly defined as virtual assistants that can complete tasks autonomously. They break d
  
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• Anna's Archive Loses .Org Domain After Surprise Suspension

  06-01-2026 01:45 via yro.slashdot.org
  Anna's Archive lost control of its primary .org domain after it was placed on registry-level serverHold -- "an action that's typically taken by the domain name registry," reports TorrentFreak. Despite mounting legal pressure and speculation tied to its Spotify backup, the site remains accessible via multiple alternative domains, underscoring the resilience of shadow libraries. From the report: A few hours ago, the site's original domain name suddenly became unreachable globally. The annas-archiv
  
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• Corporation for Public Broadcasting To Shut Down After 58 Years

  06-01-2026 01:22 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  After Congress approved President Donald Trump's rescission package eliminating federal funding, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting voted to dissolve after 58 years, rather than continue to exist and potentially be "vulnerable to future political manipulation or misuse." The shutdown leaves hundreds of local public TV and radio stations facing an uncertain future. Variety reports: The CPB was created by Congress by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 to support the federal government's inve
  
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• Lego's Smart Brick Gives the Iconic Analog Toy a New Digital Brain

  06-01-2026 01:02 via games.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: At CES in Las Vegas today, Lego has unveiled its new Smart Play platform, aimed at taking its distinctly analog plastic blocks and figures into a new world of tech-powered interactive play -- but crucially one without any reliance on screens. Smart Play revolves around Lego's patented sensor- and tech-packed brick. It's the same size as a standard 2 x 4 Lego brick, but it is capable of connecting to compatible Smart Minifigures and Smart Tags and i
  
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• GNOME and Firefox Consider Disabling Middle Click Paste By Default

  06-01-2026 00:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  Both GNOME and Firefox are considering disabling middle-click paste by default, arguing it's a confusing, accident-prone X11 relic that dumps clipboard contents without warning. Phoronix reports: A merge request for GNOME's gsettings-desktop-schemas was opened this weekend to disable the primary-paste functionality by default that allows using the middle mouse button for pasting. Jordan Petridis argued in that GNOME pull request that middle-click paste is an "X11'ism" and that the setting could
  
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• Viral Reddit Post About Food Delivery Apps Was an AI Scam

  05-01-2026 23:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  A viral Reddit "whistleblower" post accusing a major food delivery app of systemic exploitation is "most likely AI-generated," reports the Verge. From the report: The original post by user Trowaway_whistleblow alleged that an unnamed food delivery company regularly delays customer orders, calls couriers "human assets," and exploits their "desperation" for cash, among other indefensible actions. Nearly 90,000 upvotes and four days later, it's become increasingly clear that the post's text is prob
  
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• Amazon's AI Assistant Comes To the Web With Alexa.com

  05-01-2026 23:02 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amazon's AI-powered overhaul of its digital assistant, now known as Alexa+, is coming to the web. On Monday, at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company announced the official launch of a new website, Alexa.com, which is now rolling out to all Alexa+ Early Access customers. The site will allow customers to use Alexa+ online, much as you can do today with other AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Google's Gemini.[...] Rel
  
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• SanDisk Says Goodbye To WD Blue and Black SSDs, Hello To New 'Optimus' Drives

  05-01-2026 22:26 via hardware.slashdot.org
  SanDisk is retiring the WD Blue and WD Black SSD brands and replacing them with a new "Optimus" line that carries the same model numbers as its predecessors. The move follows Western Digital's late-2023 decision to split into two companies -- one retaining the WD name for hard drives sold to NAS and data center customers, the other reviving SanDisk for solid-state storage. That separation effectively unwound WD's $19 billion acquisition of SanDisk a decade earlier.
  Under the new structure, the e
  
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• VSCode IDE Forks Expose Users To 'Recommended Extension' Attacks

  05-01-2026 21:48 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Popular AI-powered integrated development environment solutions, such as Cursor, Windsurf, Google Antigravity, and Trae, recommend extensions that are non-existent in the OpenVSX registry, allowing threat actors to claim the namespace and upload malicious extensions.
  These AI-assisted IDEs are forked from Microsoft VSCode, but cannot use the extensions in the official store due to licensing restrictions. Instead, they are supported by OpenVSX, an open-source
  
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• UK Government's New Pension Portal Operator Tells Users To Wait for AI Before Complaining

  05-01-2026 21:09 via it.slashdot.org
  Capita, the UK outsourcer that won a $323 million contract to administer the nation's Civil Service Pension Scheme for 1.7 million members, has responded to a disastrous portal launch by asking users to hold off on complaints until its new AI chatbots go live.
  The service launched on December 1 and immediately ran into problems including unrecognized passwords, broken links and placeholder text scattered across unfinished pages. In a December 17 email to members, The Register reports today, mana
  
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• Google To Kill Gmail's POP3 Mail Fetching

  05-01-2026 20:30 via it.slashdot.org
  Google is quietly killing Gmail's ability to fetch mail from third-party email accounts using POP3, a long-standing feature that has allowed users to consolidate multiple inboxes into a single Gmail interface. The change takes effect this month and also ends Gmailify, the companion feature that applied Gmail's spam filtering and inbox organization to linked third-party accounts.
  Google buried the decision in a support note rather than making any formal announcement. The company's suggested worka
  
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• Microsoft is Slowly Turning Edge Into Another Copilot App

  05-01-2026 19:50 via slashdot.org
  Microsoft has started testing a "significant" visual overhaul for Edge in its Canary and Dev Channel preview builds, and the redesigned interface borrows heavily from the design language that first appeared in the company's standalone Copilot app rather than the Fluent Design system used across Windows 11, Xbox, and Office.
  The updated look touches context menus, the new tab page and settings areas, introducing rounder corners and the same color palette and typography found in Copilot. The new i
  
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• Flu Is Relentless. Crispr Might Be Able to Shut It Down

  05-01-2026 19:10 via science.slashdot.org
  Scientists at Melbourne's Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity are working on a Crispr-based treatment -- delivered as a nasal spray or injection -- that could stop influenza infections by targeting the virus's RNA and disrupting its ability to replicate inside human cells.
  The approach uses the Cas13 enzyme, a lesser-known cousin of the DNA-cutting Cas9, which can be engineered to seek out conserved regions of influenza's genetic code that are found in virtually all flu strains an
  
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• 'The College Backlash is a Mirage'

  05-01-2026 18:30 via news.slashdot.org
  Public opinion surveys paint a picture of Americans souring dramatically on higher education, as Pew found that the share of adults calling college "very important" dropped from 70% in 2013 to just 35% today, and NBC polling shows that 63% now believe a degree is "not worth the cost," up from 40% over the same period. Yet enrollment data tells a different story.
  Four-year institutions awarded 2 million bachelor's degrees in 2023, up from 1.6 million in 2010, and the fraction of 25-year-olds hold
  
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• Influencers and OnlyFans Models Dominate US 'Extraordinary' Artist Visas

  05-01-2026 17:41 via tech.slashdot.org
  The O-1B visa, a work permit reserved for individuals deemed to possess "extraordinary ability" in the arts, has become the pathway of choice for social media influencers and OnlyFans models seeking to build careers in the United States. Immigration attorneys told the Financial Times that influencers now make up more than half their clientele for O-1B applications, a shift that has accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic as lawyers and talent managers have adapted the visa's criteria -- original
  
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• Samsung's CES Concepts Disguise AI Speakers as Turntables and Cassette Players

  05-01-2026 17:01 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Samsung is bringing a pair of retro-styled speaker concepts to CES 2026 that combine old-school aesthetics with OLED screens and AI-powered music recommendations, and the company is positioning them as alternatives to conventional Bluetooth speakers that typically depend on a paired smartphone or tablet for content selection. The "AI OLED Cassette" features a 1.5-inch round OLED display, while the larger "AI OLED Turntable" uses a 13.4-inch round panel, and both allow users to receive music sugg
  
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• People of Dubious Character Are More Likely To Enter Public Service

  05-01-2026 16:21 via slashdot.org
  A new working paper from researchers at the University of Hong Kong has found that Chinese graduate students who plagiarized more heavily in their master's theses were significantly more likely to pursue careers in the civil service and to climb the ranks faster once inside.
  John Liu and co-authors analyzed 6 million dissertations from CNKI, a Chinese academic repository, and cross-referenced them against public records of civil-service exam-takers to identify 120,000 civil servants and their ac
  
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• Stack Overflow Went From 200,000 Monthly Questions To Nearly Zero

  05-01-2026 15:40 via developers.slashdot.org
  Stack Overflow's monthly question volume has collapsed about 300 -- levels not seen since the site launched in 2009, according to data from the Stack Overflow Data Explorer that tracks the platform's activity over its sixteen-year history.
  Questions peaked around 2014 at roughly 200,000 per month, then began a gradual decline that accelerated dramatically after ChatGPT's November 2022 launch. By May 2025, monthly questions had fallen to early-2009 levels, and the latest data through early 2026 s
  
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• Samsung Co-CEO Says Soaring Memory Chip Prices Will 'Inevitably' Impact Smartphone Costs

  05-01-2026 15:04 via mobile.slashdot.org
  Samsung's co-CEO TM Roh has warned that product price increases are "inevitable" as an unprecedented global memory chip shortage squeezes margins across the company's consumer electronics lineup -- from smartphones to televisions and home appliances.
  The South Korean giant, one of the top two largest smartphone manufacturers, plans to double the number of mobile devices running its Galaxy AI features to 800 million units this year, up from 400 million at the end of 2025. Galaxy AI is powered by
  
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• As US Communities Start Fighting Back, Many Datacenters are Blocked

  05-01-2026 13:34 via news.slashdot.org
  America's tech companies and data center developers "are increasingly losing fights in communities where people don't want to live next to them, or even near them," reports the Associated Press:
  Communities across the United States are reading about — and learning from — each other's battles against data center proposals that are fast multiplying in number and size to meet steep demand as developers branch out in search of faster connections to power sources... [A]s more people hear
  
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• 2025 Ends With Release of J. R. R. Tolkein's Unpublished Story

  05-01-2026 09:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  2025'S final months finally saw the publication of J.R.R. Tolkein's The Bovadium Fragments, writes the Los Angeles Review of Books:
  Anyone who has read Tolkien's letters will know that he is at his funniest when filled with rage, and The Bovadium Fragments is a work brimming with Tolkien's fury — specifically, ire over mankind's obsession with motor vehicles. Tolkien's anger is expressed through a playful satire told from the perspective of a group of future archaeologists who are studying
  
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• Workstation Owner Sadly Marks the End-of-Life for HP-UX

  05-01-2026 06:35 via tech.slashdot.org
  Wednesday marked the end of support for the last and final version of HP-UX, writes OSNews.
  They call it "the end of another vestige of the heyday of the commercial UNIX variants, a reign ended by cheap x86 hardware and the increasing popularisation of Linux."
  I have two HP-UX 11i v1 PA-RISC workstations, one of them being my pride and joy: an HP c8000, the last and fastest PA-RISC workstation HP ever made, back in 2005. It's a behemoth of a machine with two dual-core PA-8900 processors running
  
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• 39 Million Californians Can Now Legally Demand Data Brokers Delete Their Personal Data

  05-01-2026 03:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  While California's residents have had the right to demand companies stop collecting/selling their data since 2020, doing so used to require a laborious opting out with each individual company," reports TechCrunch.
  But now Californians can make "a single request that more than 500 registered data brokers delete their information" — using the Delete Requests and Opt-Out Platform (or DROP):Once DROP users verify that they are California residents, they can submit a deletion request that will
  
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• North Dakota Law Included Fake Critical Minerals Using Lawyers' Last Names

  05-01-2026 01:49 via yro.slashdot.org
  North Dakota passed a law last May to promote development of rare earth minerals in the state. But the law's language apparently also includes two fake mineral names, according to the Bismarck Tribune, "that appear to be inspired by coal company lawyers who worked on the bill."
  The inclusion of fictional substances is being called an embarrassment by one state official, a possible practical joke by coal industry leaders and mystifying by the lawmakers who worked on the bill, the North Dakota Mon
  
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• Are Hybrid Cars Helping America Transition to Electric Vehicles?

  05-01-2026 00:49 via hardware.slashdot.org
  America's electric car subsidies expired at the end of September, notes Bloomberg. Yet in those last three months, "while fully electric cars and trucks made up 10% of all auto sales in the US... another 15% of transactions were for hybrid vehicles."The EV market is slowing in the U.S., but analysts expect hybrid sales to continue accelerating. CarGurus Inc., a digital listings platform that covers most of the US auto market, predicts nearly one in six new cars next year will be a hybrid, as aut
  
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• Fleischer Studios Criticized for Claiming Betty Boop is Not Public Domain

  04-01-2026 23:36 via slashdot.org
  Here it is — Betty Boop's first appearance, which became public domain on Thursday. It's a 60-second song halfway through a longer cartoon about a restaurant titled Dizzy Dishes. (The first scene makes it clear this is a restaurant of anthropomorphized animals — which explains why the as-yet-unnamed character has floppy dog ears...)So Fleischer Studios has now warned that claiming Betty Boop is public domain"is actually not true."Very often, different versions of a character that hav
  
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• 'Fish Mouth' Filter Removes 99% of Microplastics From Laundry Waste

  04-01-2026 21:34 via news.slashdot.org
  "The ancient evolution of fish mouths could help solve a modern source of plastic pollution," writes ScienceAlert."Inspired by these natural filtration systems, scientists in Germany have invented a way to remove 99 percent of plastic particles from water. It's based on how some fish filter-feed to eat microscopic prey."The research team has already filed a patent in Germany, and in the future, they hope their creation will help curb a ubiquitous form of plastic pollution that many are unaware o
  
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• A Drug-Resistant 'Superbug' Fungus Infected 7,000 Americans in 2025

  04-01-2026 20:34 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the Independent:Candida auris, a type of invasive yeast that can cause deadly infections in people with weakened immune systems, has infected at least 7,000 people [in 2025] across 27 U.S. states, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The fungus, which can spread easily in healthcare settings such as hospitals and nursing homes, is gaining virulence and spreading at an "alarming" rate, the CDC says. Some strains of the
  
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• Microsoft's Risky Bet That Windows Can Become The Platform for AI Agents

  04-01-2026 19:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  "Microsoft is hoping that Windows can once again serve as the platform where it all takes off," reports GeekWire:A new framework called Agent Launchers, introduced in December as a preview in the latest Windows Insider build, lets developers register agents directly with the operating system. They can describe an agent through what's known as a manifest, which then lets the agent show up in the Windows taskbar, inside Microsoft Copilot, and across other apps... "We are now entering a phase where
  
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