ICT news

• Cops Keep Getting Arrested for Using Flock's Cameras to Stalk People

  21-06-2026 21:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  404 Media remembers how a Florida police office looked up his ex-girlfriend's license plate in the Flock automated license plate reader system at least 69 times in 2024 — even searching for her mom's license plate at least 24 times. The police office was charged with stalking and hacking-related offenses, serving one day in prison with five years of probation — but his case "was not a one-off." [Alternate link via Bruce Schneier]Local news reports from around the country repeatedly d
  
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• UK Official Promises Statements 'Around VPNs' and Further Teen Restrictions on Chatbots and Social Media

  21-06-2026 22:54 via news.slashdot.org
  PC Gamer reports:The UK government is considering an Australia-style ban on social media for under-16s, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying that the ban could take effect as soon as spring next year. As for the much nearer future, Science and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall told BBC Breakfast earlier this week, "We will make further statements in July about VPNs and further restrictions."
  To be clear, no specific restrictions have yet been announced and Kendall sounded somewhat cautious abo
  
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• After Six Years Of Work and Over 360 Patches, Linux 7.2 Finally Removes Bug-Prone strncpy

  21-06-2026 20:12 via linux.slashdot.org
  Tech Times reports:Linux 7.2's merge window closed out a cleanup campaign on Friday that most kernel developers had stopped expecting to see end: the complete removal of strncpy(), a C string-copy function that the kernel's own documentation labels "actively dangerous," from every subsystem, driver, and architecture-specific file in the kernel source tree.
  The merge landed June 20, 2026. After around 362 commits spread across six years of incremental work, no call site using the function remaine
  
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• US Bill Would Mandate AI Chip Location Tracking to Thwart China and Other Adversaries

  21-06-2026 18:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  NBC News reports:
  A group of companies that specialize in tracking international shipments of sensitive technologies is backing a Capitol Hill bill that would require America's most powerful AI chips to incorporate stronger security mechanisms aimed at preventing the chips from reaching China and other adversaries. The letter, signed by six companies, says the Chip Security Act (CSA) would increase American chip companies' competitiveness and close key loopholes in the U.S. export control regime
  
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• The Rust Ecosystem Gets an AI Security Engineer in Residence

  21-06-2026 17:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  While the Rust Foundation has a Security Initiative to protect its ecosystem, "the threats have expanded," they announced this week, "and so has the kind of help maintainers need."Much of this comes back to a single shift: Automated tooling (much of it now built on large language models) has gotten good enough to surface real vulnerabilities in open source code quickly and at scale. That is useful, and several large Rust projects have already received and fixed credible issues found this way. Th
  
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• Canonical's Upcoming AI Tool: Talk to Ubuntu Instead of Typing

  21-06-2026 16:34 via news.slashdot.org
  This week the Ubuntu desktop's director of engineering announced they're bringing speech-to-text dictation to Ubuntu Desktop, aiming for an experience "that feels like a natural part of the desktop while respecting user privacy and running entirely on local hardware."
  "Speech recognition has become a common feature on modern platforms, and we think it should be a first-class experience on Ubuntu Desktop as well."
  More details from the blog It's FOSS:
  For Ubuntu 26.10, the initial version of Myna
  
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• New Super PAC Aims to Rally Tech Workers to Help Limit AI: 'the Guardrails Alliance'

  21-06-2026 13:34 via politics.slashdot.org
  "A grassroots movement is forming among everyday tech workers who are demanding their companies develop and deploy AI responsibly," reports TechCrunch.
  Hoping to leverage that discontent is a new super PAC called the Guardrails Alliance. The New York Times reports that it launched Thursday with backers that included tech employees and labor unions:Guardrails positions itself as a populist political movement that runs on small donations from people in the trenches of the AI boom. The PAC has abou
  
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• Facial Recognition on Public Buses? Kansas City Says Yes

  21-06-2026 09:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:
  Officials in Kansas City, Missouri, are preparing to equip cameras on some public buses with facial recognition software capable of identifying passengers who appear on a list of banned riders or missing persons. Supporters and opponents alike view the effort as a major litmus test for tapping the AI-powered software on a U.S. public transportation system, positioning Kansas City as the latest epicenter of a fierce debate over whe
  
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• Polymarket Paid Dozens to Post Videos of Themselves 'Winning' With Fake Bets

  21-06-2026 06:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  In January a college student posted a video showing him winning $100,000 on Polymarket — one of 145 that appeared to show bets adding up to almost $410,000, reports the Wall Street Journal. "But none of those bets were real."
  Instead its creator was "one of dozens of mostly college-age creators Polymarket paid to film themselves making fake trades and sometimes scoring fake wins," the Journal reports, citing interviews with the creators an an analysis of more than 1,100 of their videos:Pol
  
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• Gamers Sue PlayStation: It's Not Clear They're Selling Licenses Rather Than Ownership of Games

  21-06-2026 03:34 via games.slashdot.org
  The gaming news site Aftermath reports:Four gamers are suing Sony Interactive Entertainment for allegedly breaking a California law that requires digital storefronts selling games to make it clear people are buying licenses, not actually owning the games.
  Sony Interactive Entertainment's PlayStation store uses language like "Buy Now" and "Confirm Purchase," lawyers wrote in a complaint filed on Thursday... "In reality, consumers who 'purchase' digital games through PlayStation do not obtain owne
  
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• How Millions of Digital Home Devices Are Secretly Powering Cyberattacks

  21-06-2026 01:23 via it.slashdot.org
  The Wall Street Journal reports on internet-connected devices — and how every year millions of them "can contain a secret digital backdoor that opens up access to your home internet, so that anyone... can surf the web as if they were you." (And this is especially true for "knockoffs that you buy online"...)
  In a video report this week they tested two digital picture frames from Amazon and three streaming devices from Walmart "because we heard that they often ship with backdoor software use
  
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• OpenAI Announces Benchmarks for AI Life Sciences Research. Its Best Model Failed 63.9% of the Test

  20-06-2026 23:34 via science.slashdot.org
  This week OpenAI announced a 750-task test to to measure "whether AI systems can support realistic life science research tasks, not just answer biology questions."
  But while OpenAI's top-performing GPT-Rosalind model led the rankings, Slashdot reader BrianFagioli notes that "it achieved a pass rate of just 36.1 percent, failing nearly two-thirds of benchmark tasks." Nerds.xyz points out that means "the best-performing model failed nearly two-thirds of the benchmark's tasks."
  The benchmark also r
  
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• Remembering When Alan Turing Developed a Portable Voice Encryption Device

  20-06-2026 22:34 via it.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat writes: Alan Turing, one of the more famous people who worked at Bletchley Park to decipher the German Enigma coding machine, was also working on a separate project. His private papers, known as the Bayley papers for his assistant Donald Bayley who held onto the papers until his death in 2020, reveal Turning had produced a working model of a portable voice encryption device. He even demonstrated it by using a Winston Churchill speech recording. "Weighing j
  
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• Tech Pundit Cringely Co-Founds Startup '2Brains Inc' to Solve LLM Hallucinations

  20-06-2026 21:34 via slashdot.org
  Long-time tech pundit Robert Cringely started his career at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab back in 1978. Last month 73-year-old Cringely explained why his site went on a two-year hiatus — and it's not just because of a heart attack and a stroke last July:
  Just like everyone else, I've been busy all this time on Artificial Intelligence, founding with two partners a company called 2Brains... The work we were doing together is unfinished, but it's not stopped. The patents are filed,
  
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• Waymo Recalls About 3,900 Robotaxis After Some Drove Into 'Freeway Construction Zones'

  20-06-2026 20:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  CNBC reports:Waymo is recalling almost 3,900 robotaxis in the U.S. to fix software issues after some cars drove into freeway construction zones, according to notices filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The voluntary recall, the Alphabet-owned company's second in just over a month, followed 13 known incidents where Waymo robotaxis drove into construction zones on freeways in Phoenix, or entered freeway lanes with active construction in the San Francisco area, the filing
  
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• Cellphone Alert System Breached in Brazil, Message Sent in Leetspeak

  20-06-2026 19:34 via mobile.slashdot.org
  CNN reports:
  An unauthorized alert bearing a mysterious message that was sent to cell phones in several states across Brazil on Saturday morning is suspected to be the work of hackers, the Brazilian government said. Devices lit up with the word "misantropi4," an alphanumeric spelling of the Portuguese word "misantropia," which in English translates to "misanthropy". The final letter "a" was substituted with a number '4' — a practice often used by hackers and termed "leetspeak.". The alert
  
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• SMPTE Opens Entire Standards Catalog for Free, Removing Century-Old Paywall

  20-06-2026 18:34 via news.slashdot.org
  The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers has published over 800 technical standards over the years (as a professional association for the media and entertainment industry).
  But this week SMPTE "announced that its complete Standards catalog, the technical backbone behind everything from SDI and timecode to IP-based broadcast workflows, is now freely available to anyone in the global media technology community," reports the filmmaking news site CineD, arguing it's "one of the more me
  
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• Microsoft Discovers Cryptocurrency Stealer That Spreads Through USB Drives and Uses Tor

  20-06-2026 17:34 via it.slashdot.org
  Ars Technica's senior security editor reports:Microsoft says it has detected new self-propagating malware that spreads through USB drives in search of cryptocurrency credentials, which it then sends to attacker-controlled servers.
  The company named the worm Crypto Clipper because it monitors the contents of device clipboards for patterns consistent with wallet addresses or seed phrases. When found, the malware also takes five screenshots over a 10-second period... "The execution of this clipper
  
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• FSF Patches Two-Year-Old Vulnerability Found by AI Researchers in GNU Savannah Repository

  20-06-2026 16:34 via news.slashdot.org
  The Free Software Foundation's GNU Savannah hosts thousands of free software projects — both GNU and non-GNU projects, including Drupal.
  But in early May, security researchers from Hacktron.AI reported vulnerabilities and demonstrated an exploit, according to a new statement Friday from the FSF:We have been working with these researchers since their initial report, and have also addressed additional security issues they submitted. All reported issues have been patched thanks to the hard wo
  
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• Student Loan Borrowers Will Get Interest Rate Cut If They Sign Up For Auto Pay

  20-06-2026 13:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Student loan borrowers who enroll in automatic payments will get a much bigger discount on interest starting July 1, the U.S. Department of Education says. Auto pay has long offered a modest discount off borrowers' interest rate -- .25 percentage points -- but after millions of borrowers opted out during the long COVID repayment pause, with some making no payments for years, the nation's student debt portfolio swelled to $1.7 trillion. On Thursday, t
  
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• Amazon Retaliated Against Workers Who Supported Regulating Data Centers, Complaint Says

  20-06-2026 09:00 via slashdot.org
  Three Amazon employees have filed a civil-rights complaint alleging the company retaliated against them for publicly supporting Seattle regulations on data centers. "The complaint was filed on the workers' behalf by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an independent group of corporate employees at Amazon that since 2018 has organized around climate issues," reports The New York Times. "It said the company started investigations and told the employees that they could face discipline, in one cas
  
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• Using Sound Waves To Make Espresso Could Cut Coffee-Brewing Energy Use By 75%

  20-06-2026 05:30 via developers.slashdot.org
  Researchers developed an ultrasonic espresso process that uses high-frequency sound waves instead of hot water to produce espresso-strength coffee at room temperature. And, not only did coffee drinkers find it comparable to traditional espresso, but the brewing process cut energy use by up to 75%. An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Conversation: We have developed what we call an ultrasonic espresso: a room-temperature brewing process that uses high-frequency sound waves to extract the
  
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• Amazon Drops Sam Altman Movie After Announcing OpenAI Partnership

  20-06-2026 01:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Amazon MGM has dropped Luca Guadagnino's nearly completed Sam Altman biopic Artificial and is seeking another distributor for the film. The move comes months after Amazon expanded its multibillion-dollar partnership with OpenAI, fueling speculation about a potential conflict given the movie's reportedly unflattering portrayal of Altman. The Independent reports: Artificial would have marked the Oscar-nominated Call Me By Your Name director's third Amazon film, following the critically acclaimed Z
  
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• Norway Imposes Near Ban On AI In Elementary School

  20-06-2026 00:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Norway will largely prohibit generative AI use for elementary kids ages 6 to 13 beginning with the new school year, while allowing limited, teacher-supervised use for older students. The government says the restrictions are intended to prevent children from skipping foundational reading, writing, and mathematics skills amid declining test scores. Reuters reports: Facing a broad decline in education test scores, the government in 2024 banned smartphones from schools and has given teachers back mo
  
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• Doom Composer Bobby Prince Has Died

  19-06-2026 23:00 via games.slashdot.org
  Video game composer and sound designer Bobby Prince has died at age 81 following an illness. Developer id software shared the news. Engadget reports: Prince was perhaps best known for his pioneering work on the Doom series. The Library of Congress inducted his soundtrack for the original game into the National Recording Registry just last month. "Despite the limitations of the 1993-era sound card drivers, Prince composed the perfect riff-shredding accompaniment for the game's demon-slaying journ
  
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• Hyundai Takes Full Control of Boston Dynamics As SoftBank Exits For $325 Million

  19-06-2026 22:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Hyundai Motor Group is acquiring SoftBank's remaining 9.65% stake in Boston Dynamics for $325 million, "closing out SoftBank's last piece of Boston Dynamics and turning the Waltham, Massachusetts robotics company into a wholly owned Hyundai business," reports Startup Fortune. From the report: The price is $325 million for the remaining stake, according to the deal terms, and it follows the put option SoftBank retained when Hyundai bought control of Boston Dynamics in 2021. You should read that a
  
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• Canada Missed Chances To Inspect OceanGate's Titan Before Fatal Implosion

  19-06-2026 21:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A report from Canada's Transportation Safety Board has highlighted regulatory failures that allowed OceanGate's unregistered, unflagged, and uncertified Titan submersible to operate out St. John's, Newfoundland, for years before it imploded on a tourist trip to the wreck of the Titanic in 2023. "When it came to the Titan, critical information existed across multiple federal government organizations, but no one was responsible for connecting the dot
  
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• New Unpatchable Exploit Targets Apple Devices With A12 and A13 Chips

  19-06-2026 20:00 via it.slashdot.org
  Researchers have disclosed a new unpatchable BootROM exploit affecting Apple devices with A12, A13, S4, and S5 chips. The attack requires physical USB access and DFU mode, but can let an attacker run code before iOS loads, bypass signature checks, and boot modified software. 9to5Mac reports the details: In a highly detailed technical post published today, the Paradigm Shift Team details usbliter8, a new exploit that "leverages both a hardware bug in the USB controller and a specific configuratio
  
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• EU To Soon Classify AWS and Azure As Gatekeepers Under DSA

  19-06-2026 19:00 via slashdot.org
  The European Commission is reportedly preparing to provisionally classify Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as "gatekeepers" under the Digital Markets Act, bringing cloud infrastructure under the law's stricter competition rules for the first time. The designation could require greater interoperability and data portability, making it easier for customers to switch providers, with a final decision expected by the end of 2026. Heise reports: This investigation began in November 2025, when th
  
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• The Korean Telecom Giant At the Center of Anthropic's Mythos Controversy

  19-06-2026 18:00 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: The Trump administration's move to impose export controls on Anthropic's most powerful AI technology followed a spat over the company granting South Korean telecom giant SK Telecom access to its Claude Mythos model, according to people familiar with the matter. US officials were concerned about what they alleged were SK Telecom's ties to China, those people said. Those concerns appear to have compounded when Amazon later flagged vulnerabilities to
  
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