ICT news

• Could Marine Energy Be the Final Frontier for Renewable Power?

  15-05-2023 09:40 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  CNET explores the potential of "marine energy," starting with "an ambitious endeavor nearing completion off the coast of Oregon, where 7 miles of conduit were laid under the floor of the Pacific Ocean using pioneering horizontal drilling techniques."Soon, thick cables will be run through that conduit to connect the mainland to PacWave, an offshore experimental testbed built to develop and demonstrate new technology that converts the power of waves into onshore electricity. Once fully operational
  
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• Tesla Launches Steering-Wheel-Free Cybercab Robotaxi In Austin

  04-09-2026 09:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Tesla has begun offering public rides in Austin in its purpose-built Cybercab, a two-seat robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals. "You can go outside, take rides," said Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla's VP of AI. "Anyone can take rides. It's open to the entire public." Previously, the fleet consisted only of Model Ys.Texas records show Tesla had registered 45 Cybercabs as of Thursday, though the company has not disclosed how many are currently carrying passengers. Tesla also says it eventually wants c
  
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• Bernie Sanders Proposes Artificial Superintelligence Ban Amid Rogue AI Hackings

  04-09-2026 05:30 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) are calling for a permanent ban on the development and deployment of artificial superintelligence, citing a series of recent hackings involving "rogue" models. The bicameral duo announced Thursday they will introduce the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which would institute the permanent ban, along with temporarily pausing "advanced AI development" until federal regulators establish
  
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• Four Major AI Models Suffer Rare Overlapping Downtime

  04-09-2026 01:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini all suffered significant service disruptions within roughly the same few-hour window Thursday morning. OpenAI and Anthropic reported elevated errors and later restored service, while Grok remained impaired and third-party monitoring indicated a likely Gemini outage despite no public acknowledgment from Google. Ars Technica reports: Other major Internet services, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Cloudflare, have not reported any major issues as
  
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• Apple Sued For $2.7 Billion Over App Tracking Transparency Rules

  04-09-2026 00:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  A former UK competition official has filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against Apple on behalf of app developers, alleging its App Tracking Transparency rules unfairly disadvantaged third-party apps while favoring Apple's own advertising ecosystem. Engadget reports: ATT debuted in 2021, ostensibly to give users more control over how much of their activity app developers can track across other apps and websites. The company told Reuters it was "bound by the exact same requirements as all developers."H
  
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• Xbox Cloud Gaming Switches to Monthly Hour Limits

  03-09-2026 23:00 via games.slashdot.org
  Microsoft is imposing monthly limits on Xbox Cloud Gaming starting in November, with Game Pass Ultimate, Premium, and Essential subscribers getting 15, 10, and 5 hours respectively before they have to buy additional playtime. "Currently, Game Pass subscribers can stream without these monthly hour limits," notes IGN. From the report: The change means those who use cloud gaming most via Game Pass will end up having to pay more, although Microsoft said this impacts 4% of Game Pass subscribers. Also
  
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• 'Welcome to the AGI Era,' OpenAI Says As GPT-6 Astra Debuts

  03-09-2026 22:00 via slashdot.org
  OpenAI has released GPT-6 Astra, a new model that president Greg Brockman called a "generational leap" and suggested may represent the arrival of AGI. "I think it might be about this model," Brockman said in a briefing with reporters. He ended the briefing by saying: "Welcome to the AGI era." Axios reports: Astra pushes AI agents closer to doing complex professional work on their own -- while also raising questions about how safely they can be deployed. OpenAI said that Astra was built on its la
  
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• Nvidia Launches Free Tool That Links Idle Computers Into a Personal AI Data Center

  03-09-2026 21:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Nvidia has launched PAIR, a free open-source tool that links compatible computers on a home network so they can pool idle processing power for local AI inference and agentic workloads. "While the compatible devices are mostly Nvidia GeForce GPUs (PAIR works with RTX 20-series cards and newer, as well as RTX Pro GPUs and DGX Spark systems), Apple's M4 chips or newer will also work," reports The Verge. From the report: The key thing here is that PAIR uses your in-home systems when they're idle to
  
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• OpenAI's New Reasoning Technique Alarms AI Safety Experts

  03-09-2026 20:00 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: OpenAI's new Astra model will use a reasoning technique called "recurrent depth" that allows it to operate outside of the sequential thinking that characterizes most reasoning models, The Information reported on Tuesday. This technique, also called "opaque recurrence," will likely make the model's chain of thought more difficult to monitor -- and that has AI safety experts rattled. While Astra's use of the technique is reportedly limited, its
  
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• Audacity 4 Rebuilds the Open Source Audio Editor But Leaves Some Features Behind

  03-09-2026 19:00 via news.slashdot.org
  BrianFagioli writes: Audacity 4.0 has been released with a rebuilt Qt interface, a new clip-editing model, customizable workspaces, native high-DPI rendering, and a new AUP4 project format. The open source audio editor also adds ASIO playback and recording support to official Windows builds, while bringing major changes to recording, playback, plugins, and project handling. The overhaul comes with some tradeoffs. Audacity 4.0 currently lacks several features found in Audacity 3, including Time T
  
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• Google Releases Gemini 3.8 Flash, Its Third Flash Model In Six Weeks

  03-09-2026 18:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google released Gemini 3.8 Flash, its third Flash model in six weeks, claiming it's their best reasoning and coding model yet (topping the DeepSWE leaderboard). Ars Technica reports: Gemini 3.8 Flash comes in two variations. There's the standard Flash, which Google describes as a "workhorse" model that's good for anything from agentic tasks to software development. Then we have Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, which runs on the same foundations but has been tuned for vulnerability detection and mitigatio
  
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• Google Engineer Accused of Polymarket Insider Trading Says He Was Just Gambling

  03-09-2026 17:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Michele Spagnuolo, the Google engineer arrested in May by U.S. authorities for alleged insider trading on Polymarket, is making a new bold bet. On Wednesday, his legal team filed a motion to dismiss the charges against him. Spagnuolo isn't outright denying that he made money using internal information from Google. Instead, his legal team says that the wagers were not financial instruments subject to regulation by the United States' Commodities Exch
  
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• Perplexity Will Open Source Its Faster Lily AI Engine For Apple Silicon

  03-09-2026 13:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  BrianFagioli writes: Perplexity has built a local artificial intelligence engine designed specifically for Apple silicon and the Qwen3.6-35B-A3B model. Called Lily, the engine uses a Rust runtime and custom Metal kernels, with neither PyTorch nor MLX in its execution path. Perplexity says Lily averaged 23 percent faster prompt processing and 35 percent faster token generation than MLX-LM on an M5 Max MacBook Pro with 128GB of unified memory. Lily is more specialized than MLX-LM, which supports a
  
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• Instrument Clusters Are Now Paid Extras In Two Hyundai Models

  03-09-2026 09:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  "Enshittification of car controls [is] rapidly accelerating," writes longtime Slashdot reader sinij, pointing to a new report from Car and Driver. From the report: Remember when iPhones used to come with free headphones and a phone charger (including the wall plug)? It didn't feel so much like Apple giving you free goodies as it did that the company was providing you with the relevant hardware to use the device. Apple stopped including headphones and charging blocks in 2020. Now, Hyundai is pull
  
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• Global Heating Will Hit At Least 1.8C, UN Warns, and There Are 'No Good Outcomes'

  03-09-2026 05:30 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Global heating will reach at least 1.8C under even the most optimistic future, well beyond the Paris agreement goal of 1.5C, according to a UN report that warns every fraction of temperature rise intensifies destructive extreme weather, glacier melt, ecosystem loss, and island and coastal city submersion. The report by the Nairobi-based UN Environment Program confirmed overshooting the 1.5C goal inscribed in the landmark Paris agreement of 2
  
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• FCC Plans Robocall Scorecard to Grade Phone Companies On Spam Call Blocking

  03-09-2026 01:00 via mobile.slashdot.org
  The FCC is proposing (PDF) a public "robocall mitigation scorecard" that would grade phone companies on how well they block illegal spam calls while avoiding false positives on the legitimate ones. "The Scorecard will empower consumers and encourage providers to continue to combat illegal robocalls by providing the public with an assessment of the effectiveness of voice service providers' efforts to protect consumers from illegal robocalls," the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau said
  
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• 1Password Wades Into a Right-Wing Mess After Funding a Linux Project

  03-09-2026 00:00 via news.slashdot.org
  1Password is facing customer and internal employee backlash after pledging $300,000 to support a Linux distro created by David Heinemeier Hansson, who has regularly published racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric. "The popular password manager is now a 'distinguished corporate patron' of Omacom, the nonprofit foundation that oversees a popular Linux distribution known as Omarchy," reports The Verge. From the report: One viral blog post declared that 1Password "Supports the Ethnic Cleansing of Europ
  
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• CERN Transitioning From RHEL To Debian

  02-09-2026 23:00 via linux.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader Microsplat: CERN plans to have all 2,200+ industrial computers and embedded systems in its accelerator-control infrastructure running Debian 13 by the end of 2026. These are systems used for accelerator control, laboratory equipment and other operational functions ... They also generate and interact with a hefty amount of data, although this Linux.com article refers more broadly to CERN's computing infrastructure. It's unclear whether the Debian migration covers all serv
  
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• OpenAI's Altman Says the Use of AI is 'Non-Negotiable'

  02-09-2026 22:00 via slashdot.org
  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said AI adoption is "non-negotiable" for countries, comparing rejecting it to refusing electricity a century ago and predicting it will unleash an unprecedented boom in entrepreneurship. "The economic growth and benefit to people that can come from this, the value to a country, is too high to ignore," he said. His comments were made during a fireside chat with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. CNBC repor
  
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• NYC Public Schools Ban AI Use Through Middle School

  02-09-2026 21:00 via news.slashdot.org
  New York City Public Schools is banning generative AI for students from pre-K through eighth grade for the 2026-27 school year, affecting more than half a million students in the nation's largest school district. ABC News reports: In a statement to ABC News, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that the city is implementing a moratorium on generative AI for students in pre-school or 2-K through eighth grade and will spend the next year "studying the impacts of this technology." Mamdani wrote
  
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• Google Defeats US Bid to Force Ad Tech Sale

  02-09-2026 20:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Alphabet's Google escaped a breakup of its advertising technology business on Wednesday, when a judge in Virginia rejected U.S. antitrust enforcers' bid to force a sale of Google's online advertising exchange. While the ad exchange is a small part of Google's business, the ruling is the second powerful symbolic victory against the U.S. Department of Justice in its efforts to force Google to sell assets to address illegal monopolies. U.S. Judge Le
  
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• Uber Is Laying Off 10% of Its Workforce

  02-09-2026 19:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Uber is laying off about 3,300 employees, or roughly 10% of its workforce, as part of a restructuring aimed at cutting management layers and redirecting investment toward ridesharing, delivery, and robotaxis. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced the changes in an internal email that was also published online.TechCrunch reports: According to the email, the layoffs are part of a restructuring exercise that would shrink the number of managers by 20%, and some personnel in these roles would work as indiv
  
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• FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

  02-09-2026 18:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  A dark-web identity theft service called Nexus claims to be selling scans of more than 153 million U.S. and Canadian driver's licenses, along with millions of other identity documents. "Based on interviews with individuals whose licenses are available for purchase through the service, it appears to be siphoning images collected by a widely used Louisiana-based identity verification company," reports KrebsOnSecurity. The outlet also reports that the FBI's New Orleans field office has launched an
  
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• Dell Stock Surges On Record Orders For AI Servers

  02-09-2026 17:00 via slashdot.org
  Dell reported record fiscal Q2 results as AI server demand surged, booking $60.9 billion in AI server orders and ending the quarter with a $95 billion backlog. From a report: The company posted record revenue of $47 billion, up 58% year over year. Earnings per share came in at $6.34, up 273% from a year ago. Adjusted earnings rose 203% to $7.04 per share."With AI momentum accelerating and our opportunity expanding across the portfolio, we're raising our full-year FY27 revenue outlook by $25 bill
  
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• Sonos Has New Devices, a New OS, and Yes, a New App

  02-09-2026 13:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Sonos has a new app. Stop me if you've heard this one before. The smart speaker company, long a darling of the audio industry, undid much of the goodwill it earned with its multiroom speakers through a bevy of software updates that broke its app in 2024. Almost all app users hated it, citing the loss of features like volume control and accessibility tools meant to help blind people use the wireless speaker system. Sonos eventually owned up to the m
  
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• NASA Selects Blue Origin As Mars Telecommunications Network Provider

  02-09-2026 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  NASA has awarded Blue Origin a contract worth up to $700 million to build and operate a dedicated Mars telecommunications network for current and future missions to the Red Planet. Blue Origin is expected to deliver the spacecraft by the end of 2028, with the network targeted to become operational by 2030. From a press release: Blue Origin will design, develop, integrate, launch, and operate the network as a part of the agency's broader space communications and navigation infrastructure. The arc
  
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• LZ Experiment Sees Surprising Result In Search For Dark Matter

  02-09-2026 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  New submitter greytree shares a report from Brown University: LUX-ZEPLIN, an experiment co-led by Brown University faculty and students, observed a particle interaction that could be interpreted as a signal from WIMPs, a dark matter candidate -- but researchers need more data to confirm. [...] The result does not yet meet the statistical threshold required to claim a discovery, but it is the most compelling hint of dark matter reported by the experiment to date. "We're very intrigued to see this
  
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• GoPro Says It's Moving Into Data Centers As Part of a $285 Million Merger

  02-09-2026 01:00 via slashdot.org
  GoPro plans to expand into AI infrastructure through a $285 million merger with optical-photonics company Starman Optical, whose transceivers will give the action-camera maker a foothold in the fast-growing data center market. GoPro also plans to push into defense, robotics, aerospace, and government markets while continuing its existing camera business. Engadget reports: Starman's optical transceivers are expected to fall under its umbrella, "extending the Company's reach into the large and rap
  
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• Who Is John Ternus, the New Apple CEO?

  02-09-2026 00:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  John Ternus has officially taken over as Apple CEO after 15 years under Tim Cook, stepping up from his role as senior vice president of hardware engineering. A 25-year Apple veteran who helped oversee products including AirPods, Apple Watch, Vision Pro, Apple silicon, and the new MacBook Neo, Ternus now inherits the challenge of pushing Apple forward in AI while Cook stays on as executive chairman. TechCrunch reports: Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life -- now 51 years old, he
  
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• Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1 Arrive With a 75% Cost Reduction For Fable Cache Reads

  01-09-2026 23:00 via it.slashdot.org
  Anthropic has released Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1, two versions of the same underlying model aimed at longer-running agentic work. "For enterprise buyers, however, the release is about more than another round of benchmark gains," reports VentureBeat. "Anthropic is simultaneously changing the economics of running persistent agents, reducing the cost of cached context by 75%, and introducing a new security architecture called Enterprise Frontier Safeguards, or EFS, designed to let organizatio
  
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