ICT news

• Congress Quietly Strips Right-To-Repair Provisions From US Military Spending Bill

  10-12-2025 00:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  Congress quietly removed provisions that would have let the U.S. military fix its own equipment without relying on contractors, despite bipartisan and Pentagon support. The Register reports: The House and Senate versions of the NDAA passed earlier both included provisions that would have extended common right-to-repair rules to US military branches, requiring defense contractors to provide access to technical data, information, and components that enabled military customers to quickly repair ess
  
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• Why Switzerland Is Weighing a 10 Million Population Limit

  11-12-2025 17:44 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Growing support for far-right parties is pressuring European governments to introduce stricter controls on immigration. Switzerland is set to vote on a proposal that would take the idea to the next level -- imposing a cap on its population [non-paywalled link]. The initiative could lead eventually to a blanket ban on new arrivals if the number of residents rises from around 9 million currently to above 10 million, with little distinction made between refugees
  
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• AI Hackers Are Coming Dangerously Close to Beating Humans

  11-12-2025 17:13 via it.slashdot.org
  Stanford researchers spent much of the past year building an AI bot called Artemis that scans networks for software vulnerabilities, and when they pitted it against ten professional penetration testers on the university's own engineering network, the bot outperformed nine of them. The experiment offers a window into how rapidly AI hacking tools have improved after years of underwhelming performance.
  "We thought it would probably be below average," said Justin Lin, a Stanford cybersecurity resear
  
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• Disney Puts $1 Billion Into OpenAI, Licenses 200+ Characters for AI-Generated Videos and Images

  11-12-2025 16:22 via slashdot.org
  Disney is investing $1 billion in OpenAI and has entered into a three-year licensing deal that will let users generate AI-powered short videos and images featuring more than 200 characters from its Disney, Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar franchises.
  The new features are expected to launch in 2026 through Sora, OpenAI's short-form video platform, and ChatGPT. A selection of user-generated short videos will also be available to stream on Disney+. The licensing agreement excludes any talent likenesses
  
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• Opera Wants You To Pay $20 a Month For Its AI Browser

  11-12-2025 15:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  Opera has opened its AI-powered browser Neon to the public after a couple of months of testing, and anyone interested in trying it will need to pay $19.90 per month. The Norway-based company first unveiled Neon in May and launched it in early access to select users in October. Like Perplexity's Comet, OpenAI's Atlas, and The Browser Company's Dia, Neon bakes an AI chatbot into its interface that can answer questions about pages, create mini apps and videos, and perform tasks. The browser uses yo
  
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• US Could Ask Foreign Tourists For Five-Year Social Media History Before Entry

  11-12-2025 15:05 via news.slashdot.org
  Tourists from dozens of countries including the UK could be asked to provide a five-year social media history as a condition of entry to the United States, under a new proposal unveiled by American officials. From a report: The new condition would affect people from dozens of countries who are eligible to visit the US for 90 days without a visa, as long as they have filled out an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) form. Since returning to the White House in January, President Dona
  
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• New OpenAI Models Likely Pose 'High' Cybersecurity Risk, Company Says

  11-12-2025 14:00 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: OpenAI says the cyber capabilities of its frontier AI models are accelerating and warns Wednesday that upcoming models are likely to pose a "high" risk, according to a report shared first with Axios. The models' growing capabilities could significantly expand the number of people able to carry out cyberattacks. OpenAI said it has already seen a significant increase in capabilities in recent releases, particularly as models are able to operate longe
  
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• Sperm Donor With Cancer-Causing Gene Fathered Nearly 200 Children Across Europe

  11-12-2025 11:00 via science.slashdot.org
  schwit1 shares a report from CBS News: perm from a donor who unknowingly carried a cancer-causing gene has been used to conceive nearly 200 babies across Europe, an investigation by 14 European public service broadcasters, including CBS News' partner network BBC News, has revealed. Some children conceived using the sperm have already died from cancer, and the vast majority of those who inherited the gene will develop cancer in their lifetimes, geneticists said. The man carrying the gene passed s
  
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• NASA Loses Contact With MAVEN Mars Orbiter

  11-12-2025 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  NASA has lost contact with its MAVEN Mars orbiter after it passed behind Mars. When it remerged from behind the planet, the spacecraft never resumed communications. SpaceNews reports: MAVEN launched in November 2013 and entered orbit around Mars in September 2014. The spacecraft's primary science mission is to study the planet's upper atmosphere and interactions with the solar wind, including how the atmosphere escapes into space. That is intended to help scientists understand how the planet cha
  
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• ChatGPT Is Apple's Most Downloaded App of 2025

  11-12-2025 04:30 via apple.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Apple on Wednesday released its annual list of the most downloaded apps and games for the year. For the U.S. market, OpenAI's ChatGPT topped the ranks of free iPhone apps (not including games) with the most installs in 2025. The AI app was followed by Threads, Google, TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, Google Maps, Gmail, and Google's Gemini. ChatGPT made it to No. 4 last year, but the top spot was taken by Chinese shopping app Temu. In 202
  
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• Operation Bluebird Wants To Relaunch 'Twitter' For a New Social Network

  11-12-2025 01:50 via tech.slashdot.org
  A startup called Operation Bluebird is petitioning the US Patent and Trademark Office to strip X Corp of the "Twitter" and "tweet" trademarks, hoping to relaunch a new Twitter with the old brand, bird logo, and "town square" vibe. "The TWITTER and TWEET brands have been eradicated from X Corp.'s products, services, and marketing, effectively abandoning the storied brand, with no intention to resume use of the mark," the petition states. "The TWITTER bird was grounded." Ars Technica reports: If s
  
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• Google Faces Fines Over Google Play If It Doesn't Make More Concessions

  11-12-2025 01:10 via news.slashdot.org
  EU regulators say Google's Play Store changes still don't meet fairness rules and are preparing a potentially hefty 2026 fine unless Google makes deeper concessions. Reuters reports: Google Play has been in the European Commission's crosshairs since March, with regulators singling out technical restrictions preventing app developers from steering users to other channels for cheaper offers. Another issue is the service fee charged by Google for facilitating an app developer's initial acquisition
  
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• India Proposes Charging OpenAI, Google For Training AI On Copyrighted Content

  11-12-2025 00:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: On Tuesday, India's Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade released a proposed framework that would give AI companies access to all copyrighted works for training in exchange for paying royalties to a new collecting body composed of rights-holding organizations, with payments then distributed to creators. The proposal argues that this "mandatory blanket license" would lower compliance costs for AI firms while ensuring that wri
  
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• Qualcomm Acquires RISC-V Chip Designer Ventana Micro Systems

  10-12-2025 23:50 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Qualcomm has acquired RISC-V startup Ventana to strengthen its CPU ambitions beyond mobile, "reinforcing its commitment and leadership in the development of the RISC-V standard and ecosystem," the company said in a press release. CRN Magazine reports: The San Diego-based company said Ventana's expertise in RISC-V, a free and open alternative to the Arm and x86 instruction set architectures, will enhance its CPU engineering capabilities and complement "existing efforts to develop custom Oryon CPU
  
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• Ubuntu Will Have Native AMD ROCm AI/ML and HPC Libraries In Next LTS Release

  10-12-2025 23:20 via news.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader MadCow42 writes: Canonical just announced that they're packaging AMD's ROCm libraries (for AIML and HPC with both data-center GPUs as well as desktop/laptop GPUs), directly into the Ubuntu Universe archive. You can run ROCm on Ubuntu today but you have to install it via a script from AMD and manually remove and reinstall for any upgrades or bug fixes. Having it in Ubuntu as a normal Debian package will make it much easier to install and also to maintain in the long run v
  
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• Adobe Integrates With ChatGPT

  10-12-2025 22:50 via slashdot.org
  Adobe is integrating Photoshop, Express, and Acrobat directly into ChatGPT so users can edit photos, design graphics, and tweak PDFs through the chatbot. The Verge reports: The Adobe apps are free to use, and can be activated by typing the name of the app alongside an uploaded file and conversational instruction, such as "Adobe Photoshop, help me blur the background of this image." ChatGPT users won't have to specify the name of the app again during the same conversation to make additional chang
  
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• Cable Channel Subscribers Grew For the First Time In 8 Years Last Quarter

  10-12-2025 22:13 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, research analyst MoffettNathanson released its "Cord-Cutting Monitor Q3 2025: Signs of Life?" report. It found that the pay TV operators, including cable companies, satellite companies, and virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs) like YouTube TV and Fubo, added 303,000 net subscribers in Q3 2025. According to the report, "There are more linear video subscribers now than there were three months ago. That's the
  
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• Wells Fargo CEO Says More Job Cuts Coming at the Bank as AI Prompts 'Efficiency'

  10-12-2025 19:45 via slashdot.org
  Wells Fargo expects more job cuts and higher severance costs in this quarter that ends in three weeks, bank CEO and President Charlie Scharf said Tuesday at an investors conference in New York. He's also betting on AI to drive efficiency and, eventually, further workforce reduction.From a report: "As we've gone through the budgeting process, and even pre AI, we do expect to have less people as we go into next year," Scharf said at the Goldman Sachs Financial Services Conference in New York City.
  
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• Democrats Warn Their Party May Try To Unravel Any Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery Deal

  10-12-2025 19:09 via politics.slashdot.org
  As the battle over Warner Bros. Discovery grows, two Democratic lawmakers are warning that their party may try to block or unravel any
  acquisition by Paramount when it returns to power. Semafor: In a letter to the WBD board and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent first shared with Semafor, Reps. Sam Liccardo (D-Calif.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said they were concerned about the national security risk of letting foreign entities control a large portion of the US entertainment and media industry
  
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• Amazon Changes How Copyright Protection is Applied To Kindle Direct's Self-Published Ebooks

  10-12-2025 18:33 via news.slashdot.org
  Amazon says it will allow authors to offer their DRM-free ebooks in the EPUB and PDF formats through its self-publishing platform, Kindle Direct Publishing. Starting on January 20, 2026, authors who set their titles as DRM-free will see their books made available in these more open formats. From a report: The decision to use Digital Rights Management (DRM), a copyright protection mechanism, is set by the authors when they publish their ebooks on Amazon's platform. The company notes these changes
  
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• HDMI Forum Continues To Block HDMI 2.1 For Linux, Valve Says

  10-12-2025 17:51 via linux.slashdot.org
  New submitter emangwiro shares a report: The HDMI Forum, responsible for the HDMI specification, continues to stonewall open source. Valve's Steam Machine theoretically supports HDMI 2.1, but the mini-PC is software-limited to HDMI 2.0. As a result, more than 60 frames per second at 4K resolution are only possible with limitations. In a statement to Ars Technica, a Valve spokesperson confirmed that HDMI 2.1 support is "still a work-in-progress on the software side." "We've been working on trying
  
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• Meta's New AI Superstars Are Chafing Against the Rest of the Company

  10-12-2025 17:05 via tech.slashdot.org
  Meta's newly recruited AI "superstars" have developed an us-versus-them mentality against the company's longtime executive leadership, creating internal friction over whether the team should focus on catching up to rivals like OpenAI and Google or improving Meta's core advertising and social media businesses. Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg hired in June to be chief AI officer, leads a team called TBD Lab from a siloed space next to Zuckerberg's office. In meetings th
  
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• Same Product, Same Store, but on Instacart, Prices Might Differ

  10-12-2025 16:25 via slashdot.org
  A study this week has found that shoppers using Instacart are often charged different prices for identical products at the same store at the same time, even when selecting in-store pickup rather than delivery. The Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive policy group, and Consumer Reports organized nearly 200 volunteers across four cities to simultaneously check prices on 20 grocery items. Price differences appeared on nearly three-quarters of the items tested. In one test, more than 40 participa
  
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• Nvidia Builds Location Verification Tech That Could Track Where Its AI Chips End Up

  10-12-2025 15:48 via tech.slashdot.org
  Nvidia has developed location verification technology that could determine which country its AI chips are operating in, Reuters reports, citing a source, a capability that may help address ongoing concerns about the smuggling of advanced semiconductors to restricted markets like China. The feature, which Nvidia has demonstrated privately in recent months but has not released, would be an optional software tool that customers install. It taps into the confidential computing capabilities of Nvidia
  
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• AI Slop Ad Backfires For McDonald's

  10-12-2025 15:00 via slashdot.org
  McDonald's has pulled an AI-generated Christmas commercial from YouTube after viewers pushed back on what they called a distasteful, "AI slop"-filled take on the holidays. The 45-second ad, titled "It's the most terrible time of the year," was a satirical look at holiday chaos -- people tripping while carrying overloaded gift bags, getting tangled in lights, burning homemade cookies, starting kitchen fires -- and ended with a suggestion to ditch the madness and hide out at McDonald's until Janua
  
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• Rubio Orders Diplomats To Return To Using Times New Roman Font

  10-12-2025 14:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday ordered diplomats to return to using Times New Roman font in official communications, calling his predecessor Antony Blinken's decision to adopt Calibri a "wasteful" diversity move, according to an internal department cable seen by Reuters. The department under Blinken in early January 2023 had switched to Calibri, a modern sans-serif font, saying this was a more accessible font for people with disab
  
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• RoboCrop: Teaching Robots How To Pick Tomatoes

  10-12-2025 11:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  alternative_right quotes a report from Phys.org: To teach robots how to become tomato pickers, Osaka Metropolitan University Assistant Professor Takuya Fujinaga, Graduate School of Engineering, programmed them to evaluate the ease of harvesting for each tomato before attempting to pick it. Fujinaga's new model uses image recognition paired with statistical analysis to evaluate the optimal approach direction for each fruit. The system involves image processing/vision of the fruit, its stems, and
  
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• In a Major New Report, Scientists Build Rationale For Sending Astronauts To Mars

  10-12-2025 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  A major scientific report published Tuesday argues that sending astronauts to Mars is justified by the quest to find life and conduct research that robots alone can't achieve. "We're searching for life on Mars," said Dava Newman, a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-chair of the committee that wrote the report. "The answer to the question 'are we alone' is always going to be 'maybe,' unless it becomes yes." Ars Technica rep
  
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• 'Food and Fossil Fuel Production Causing $5 Billion of Environmental Damage an Hour'

  10-12-2025 04:30 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The unsustainable production of food and fossil fuels causes $5 billion of environmental damage per hour, according to a major UN report. Ending this harm was a key part of the global transformation of governance, economics and finance required "before collapse becomes inevitable," the experts said. The Global Environment Outlook (GEO) report, which is produced by 200 researchers for the UN Environment Program, said the climate crisis, destr
  
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• OpenAI Joins the Linux Foundation's New Agentic AI Foundation

  10-12-2025 03:02 via news.slashdot.org
  OpenAI, alongside Anthropic and Block, have launched the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation, describing it as a neutral home for standards as agentic systems move into real production. It may sound well-meaning, but Slashdot reader and NERDS.xyz founder BrianFagioli isn't buying the narrative. In a report for NERDS.xyz, Fagioli writes: Instead of opening models, training data, or anything that would meaningfully shift power toward the community, the companies involved are donating
  
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