ICT news

• Fines Doubled As Teens Outsmart Australia's Social Media Ban

  06-07-2026 17:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Australia plans to double fines for social media platforms that fail to keep under-16s off restricted services, after regulators found 70% of children with accounts remained active three months after the ban took effect. The government says the changes will also give the eSafety Commissioner more power to demand information from platforms and age-assurance providers as teens continue finding ways around the law. Euronews reports: The government said Sunday it would introduce draft legislation th
  
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• Nintendo Switch 2 Is Getting a Replaceable Battery in Europe

  06-07-2026 19:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Nintendo will stop selling the original Switch in Europe in mid-February 2027, nearly 10 years after the console's launch. In its place, the company will release updated versions of the Switch 2 and several controllers with user-replaceable batteries to comply with new EU regulations. The Verge reports: The news comes as Nintendo is making a bunch of changes to the rest of its lineup due to EU regulations requiring user-replaceable batteries. Starting this summer, the company says it will start
  
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• Americans of All Ages Are Spending Less Time Socializing

  06-07-2026 18:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Americans now spend an average of 35 minutes a day socializing, down from 45 minutes two decades ago, according to American Time Use Survey data. The decline spans all age groups but is sharpest among 15- to 24-year-olds, whose daily socializing has fallen from about an hour to 35 minutes. Axios reports: Sociologists and psychologists point to several trends driving this phenomenon, which Substack writer Derek Thompson dubbed "The Anti-Social Century" in the Atlantic last year. We're all on our
  
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• Google Ordered to Pay $2 Billion For Anti-Competitive Practices By Swedish Court

  06-07-2026 13:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google was ordered to pay almost $2 billion this week to Pricerunner, reports Bloomberg:The Patent and Market Court in Stockholm, which issued the judgment on Wednesday, dismissed most parts of the claim in which Pricerunner sought 80 billion Swedish kronor, or roughly $8.2 billion, in the wake of a European Union antitrust crackdown... The Swedish price-comparison website argued that Google has been abusing its dominant position as a search engine by favoring its own comparison shopping service
  
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• Is Big Tech Now Backpedaling on the AI Jobs Wipeout Scenario?

  06-07-2026 09:34 via it.slashdot.org
  "A year ago, the message from many business leaders was that AI was going to wipe out jobs," remembers the Wall Street Journal.But "For the past month or so, tech CEOs have been striking a more optimistic tone."
  In late May, OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman — who has long predicted that AI will lead to seismic shifts in the workforce — said during a conference, "We've been roughly right on technological predictions and pretty wrong on the social and economic implications." Soon afte
  
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• How Tech Scammers Conned Four People Out of $673,000 in Three Days

  06-07-2026 06:49 via yro.slashdot.org
  USA Today reports on a Facebook post from a Washington state sheriff's office:Four residents of Clallam County, a coastal region west of Seattle along northern Washington's peninsula, lost more than $673,000 in just three days, according to the Clallam County Sheriff's Office... The smallest amount lost was $3,500, which someone purchased in Apple gift cards for a scammer posing as an employee with Microsoft technical support, the sheriff's office wrote. Another person lost $50,000 after they cl
  
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• Hundreds Support Legal Defense for Engineer Charged with Destroying Flock Surveillance Cameras

  06-07-2026 03:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  "Hundreds of freedom lovers are rallying behind a US Air Force engineer" who's been accused of damaging over a dozen AI-integrated surveillance cameras last year and even knocking down their poles.
  Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares
  this article from Futurism:According to local channel WAVY, Virginia-based Air Force engineer and mechanic Jeffrey Sovern is facing 13 counts of destruction of property, as well as six counts of both petit larceny and possession of burglary tools related to the
  
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• Go-based TypeScript 7.0 Finally Reaches Release Candidate Stage

  06-07-2026 02:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  It was more than two years ago that TypeScript's creator Anders Hejlsberg announced plans to rewrite its compiler in Go. This week Microsoft announced its first Go-based release candidate for TypeScript 7.0, reports InfoWorld:TypeScript 7.0 is often about 10 times faster than TypeScript 6.0, Microsoft said, thanks to native code speed and shared memory parallelism... Unlike TypeScript 6.0, TypeScript 7.0 performs many steps in parallel, including parsing, type checking, and emitting, Microsoft s
  
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• Meta is Quietly Launching Pocket, an App for Vibe-coding and Scrolling Small 'Gizmos'

  06-07-2026 01:08 via games.slashdot.org
  "Mozilla shut down the well-loved read-it-later Pocket app last year, and now Meta is launching an app called Pocket with an entirely different, AI-focused pitch," writes The Verge.
  While it's not available for downloads in most locations, Meta's Pocket will allow people "to generate small, interactive apps and games using AI prompts," writes TechCrunch. They're called "gizmos", and Pocket "also offers a scrollable feed where you can play with gizmos others have made."
  Some context from The Verg
  
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• Big Companies That Invest Heavily in AI Also Hire More People, Report Suggests

  05-07-2026 23:55 via it.slashdot.org
  "Companies spending heavily on AI are growing headcount faster, even in the entry-level roles that many fear are doomed," writes TechCrunch. That's the conclusion of new report tracking AI spending from Ramp's corporate card/bill pay data as well as Revelio Labs' workforce records from 21,599 U.S. firms:
  According to the report, "high-intensity adopters" — firms that spend on average $30 per employee per month on AI in the first three months — saw headcount increase 10.2%. Headcount
  
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• Microsoft and Amazon Commit Billions to New AI Implementation Units for Businesses

  05-07-2026 22:54 via slashdot.org
  Microsoft is investing $2.5 billion in a new group "assisting clients with AI implementations," reports CNBC:[Microsoft] said Thursday that 6,000 employees will be embedded with clients, in a practice that's become known as forward deployed engineering [or FDE]... The announcement comes two days after cloud rival Amazon said it was putting $1 billion behind an FDE initiative to support fast-paced AI engagements. Leading AI labs Anthropic and OpenAI both established FDE groups in May, partnering
  
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• Ask Slashdot: Which Apps Aren't Available on Linux?

  05-07-2026 21:54 via linux.slashdot.org
  Have you ever needed a Linux application which only exists in the Windows world? Long-time Slashdot reader BrendaEM writes:Windows does have a lot of useful app (but smaller than "power apps"). Some of these are closed source, some are open, but they're not all available in Linux yet.
  My list would have to contain Gimp Tookit versions of: IrfanView image manager, which I think is unequaled in Linux (though it does work to some extent under Wine). I also miss the full version of 7-Zip, because of
  
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• Windows 11 Identifier Code Used to Arrest 19-Year-Old Over Alleged Ransomware Spree

  05-07-2026 19:54 via yro.slashdot.org
  America's Justice Department and FBI teamed joined Finland's National Bureau of Investigation to arrest a teenager they say is part of one of the world's biggest cybercrime syndicates, reports Tom's Hardware. The "Scattered Spider" syndicate has extorted over $100 million in ransom payments, according to Department of Justice figures:
  19-year-old Peter Stokes is a dual U.S.-Estonian citizen who was trying to board a flight to Japan from Helsinki, when law enforcement caught up with him. [T]he ma
  
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• Short Story Accused of Being AI-written Goes on to Win Contest's First Prize

  05-07-2026 18:34 via slashdot.org
  "A story widely accused on social media of being written using AI has gone on to win the overall Commonwealth short story prize," reports the Guardian.
  In mid-May the story had been selected as a regional winner, but with critics on X and Bluesky "claiming it showed 'obvious markers' of AI use."In the wake of the controversy, the Commonwealth Foundation conducted a review of the regional winners, which it said involved looking at drafts, time-stamped documents and notes. "We are satisfied with t
  
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• GoDaddy Warns India's Crackdown on Fake Site Registrars Could Upend Internet Privacy Everywhere

  05-07-2026 17:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  "The internet is filled with fakes," writes Gizmodo. "A court in India is setting out to address the problem by requiring more transparency from domain registrars to make it easier to crack down on fraud. And while the intentions might be good, Reuters is reporting that major American domain registrar GoDaddy is sounding the warning bells that the court's decision could fundamentally reshape the internet well beyond India's borders."GoDaddy argues the move would even make the internet less safe,
  
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• EV Batteries Defy Expectations, Last Hundreds of Thousands of Miles

  05-07-2026 14:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  247,000 miles on an EV battery? So says the owner of a U.K.-based used-car sales company that specializes in Evs, who tells the Wall Street Journal EV batteries keep performing well even after several hundred thousand miles. "They are proving themselves to be exceptionally reliable."After five years on the road, the average EV will still be able to drive up to 95% of its original range, according to Recurrent, a data-science company that provides a battery-monitoring tool for EVs — better
  
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• Hobbit-like Humans May Have Scavenged Komodo Dragons' Leftovers to Survive

  05-07-2026 10:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  CNN reports:
  Prehistoric human relatives, nicknamed "hobbits" due to their short stature, may have been scavengers, rather than skilled hunters capable of taking down big game or building cooking fires, according to new research. The study adds to growing evidence that Homo floresiensis, which had a brain only slightly bigger than that of a chimpanzee, wasn't as advanced as scientists previously believed....
  The researchers believe that much like how Komodo dragons hunt water buffaloes today, th
  
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• New Google Ad Imagines America's 'Declaration of Independence' Written With AI Help

  05-07-2026 06:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch:Two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a new commercial from Google asks: What if the Founding Fathers had access to Google Workspace?With the tagline "Group project, but make it 1776," the ad depicts a largely unseen Thomas Jefferson mid-draft when he gets a nagging text from Ben Franklin, leading to a very Google-centric collaboration process. Edits are suggested in Google Docs, a meeting gets sch
  
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• Are Wars Blurring Lines Between Corporate and National Security?

  05-07-2026 03:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  Subsea cables. Ukrainian power stations. Russian oil refineries. Even airports, water-desalination plants and Amazon data centers.
  They've all become targets in wartime, notes the Wall Street Journal, and around the world now arguments "are already brewing between companies and governments over new regulations and potential costs."In Germany, powerful associations representing private companies and municipal utilities have pushed back against new standards for physical protection, warning they c
  
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• New DNA Tech Identifies Soldier Killed in America's Revolution in 1780

  04-07-2026 23:34 via news.slashdot.org
  South Carolina's pine forests "have spent centuries hiding a secret as old as America itself," reports CBS News:In August 1780, British and American soldiers clashed there, leading to a terrible defeat for the Continental army [fighting for the 13 colonies rebelling against England]. Battlefield archaeologists Jim Legg and Steve Smith have been studying the site for decades, but recently, they made a shocking discovery: The sandy soil was home to several sets of remains buried in shallow graves.
  
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• 842,000 American Households Lost Power Today During a Heatwave

  04-07-2026 22:34 via news.slashdot.org
  As America began celebrating its 250th birthday Saturday, 842,000 homes reported power outages, notes ABC News. Figures from tracking site PowerOutage showed states in America's Northeast and Midwest were impacted by severe weather and extreme heat.That number, which will fluctuate throughout the day as crews work to restore power, is for households, meaning that the number of people impacted by these outages is likely to be much larger... Millions of Americans, however, will be contending with
  
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• Did Microsoft Shift Its Profits to Low-Tax Countries?

  04-07-2026 21:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  Microsoft is apparently shifting its profits to countries with low taxes — and out of countries where they have many more employees and significant sales. Back in 2005 Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer even said that a low corporate tax rate "is part of the overall advantage of doing business in Ireland," remembers long-time Slashdot reader theodp. (Ballmer added "It would be disingenuous to say otherwise.")But in 2026 the EU now requires a country-by-country compliance report, and the Ne
  
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• FSF Shares Update on 'LibrePhone' and New Automated Site Monitoring Tool

  04-07-2026 20:34 via news.slashdot.org
  At the end of 2025, the FSF launched LibrePhone project, which is working to "better understand and reverse-engineer the nonfree blobs used by a great majority of (if not all) system on a chip designs available today." The FSF's summer newsletter shares this update:
  We started with researching the proprietary files in Android phones supported by the Lineage project, an Android-based volunteer-led mobile phone operating system with much free software already in it. Our current, primary focus is o
  
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• AOL's Owner Bending Spoons Hits Wall Street with $1.7 billion IPO

  04-07-2026 19:34 via slashdot.org
  "The owner of AOL and other tech businesses hit Wall Street with a $1.7 billion initial public offering Wednesday," reports the Associated Press:
  The company is getting $1 billion in proceeds, while the rest is going to shareholders. The stock surged 39.7% in its first day of trading under the symbol "BSP" on the Nasdaq, giving it a market value of $25.2 billion.Among the company's well-known holdings are the event creation and ticketing company Eventbrite, and the video hosting service Vimeo...
  
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• EchoStar's US Satellite Pay-TV Provider Dish DBS Files for Bankruptcy

  04-07-2026 18:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  EchoStar's satellite pay-TV unit Dish DBS has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
  protection, reports Reuters. The move also applies to its wireless subsidiaries, according to the article, and "facilitates the wind-down of Dish Wireless's 5G network operations following an unexpected delay in a spectrum license sale to AT&T... under which EchoStar agreed to sell about 50 megahertz of its nationwide spectrum for $23 billion."Some context from Deadline.com:Charlie Ergen, who co-founded EchoStar an
  
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• Decades-Old Bash Tricks Expose AI Coding Agents To Supply Chain Attacks

  04-07-2026 17:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  Slashdot reader wiredmikey writes: AI security researchers have uncovered a structural security flaw dubbed GuardFall that allows decades-old Bash shell tricks to bypass safeguards in most open source AI coding agents. By exploiting shell behaviors such as quote removal and variable expansion, attackers can hide malicious commands in repositories, README files, Makefiles, or other content consumed by AI agents. If executed — particularly in auto-approve or CI environments—the command
  
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• What Is a Quantum Computer Good For? Absolutely Nothing - Yet

  04-07-2026 16:34 via science.slashdot.org
  The Verge argues that researchers "have made genuine progress in quantum computing — it's just been largely incremental and too esoteric to immediately capture the public's imagination."
  And there are predictions that quantum computers will finally do something useful as soon as 2028:
  The drama can overshadow the real progress in quantum computing...
  Researchers have improved the qubits themselves, so they hold onto information longer. When they hold onto information longer, you can fit in
  
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• Startup Targets Datacenters With 3D-Printed Nuclear Reactor Module

  04-07-2026 13:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Startup Ampera has unveiled what it calls the first 3D-printed nuclear reactor module, built around a silicon-carbide core and pressure vessel designed for a thorium-based microreactor. The company says future systems could deliver 15 or 30 megawatts for up to 30 years without refueling. When The Register asked about availability, their spokesperson said: "We expect the power generation portion of the system to be available as early as 2027, with the nuclear module being available to customers a
  
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• Video Game History Foundation Says Piracy Remains the Only Viable Preservation Method

  04-07-2026 09:00 via games.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechSpot: Video Game History Foundation founder Frank Cifaldi recently supported claims that piracy is the only effective way to preserve video games. The comments lay the blame squarely on game companies' refusal to keep legacy content available or allow archivists to build legal repositories. Sony's announcement that all PlayStation games will be digital-only from 2028 onward has sparked concern that titles will become harder to preserve and more easily
  
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• Alibaba To Ban Claude Code In Workplace Over Alleged Backdoor Risks

  04-07-2026 04:00 via slashdot.org
  Alibaba has reportedly banned employees from using Anthropic's Claude Code and directed them to its own Qoder platform amid a growing dispute over features that can help identify China-linked users. Reuters reports: The ban is part of a deepening spat between the two companies after Anthropic accused Alibaba of illicitly extracting its Claude AI model capabilities -- a dispute that highlights the frantic race between the U.S. and China to take the lead in artificial intelligence. [...] Anthropic
  
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