ICT news

• Free Software Foundation Speaks Up Against Red Hat Source Code Announcement

  18-02-2025 13:30 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  PAjamian writes: Two years ago Red Hat announced an end to its public source code availability. This caused a great deal of outcry from the Enterprise Linux community at large. Since then many have waited for a statement from the Free Software Foundation concerning their stance on the matter. Now, nearly two years later the FSF has finally responded to questions regarding their stance on the issue with the following statement: Generally, we don't agree with what Red Hat is doing. Whether it cons
  
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• The UK Paid $5.65 Million For a Bookmarks Site

  30-01-2026 17:01 via news.slashdot.org
  The UK government paid consulting firm PwC $5.65 million to build its new AI Skills Hub, a site meant to help 10 million workers gain AI skills by 2030 that functions largely as a bookmarking service, directing users to external training courses that already existed before the contract was awarded.
  The hub links to platforms like Salesforce's free Trailhead learning system rather than offering original educational content. PwC has acknowledged the site does not fully meet accessibility standards
  
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• Amazon in Talks To Invest Up To $50 Billion in OpenAI

  30-01-2026 16:20 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon is in talks to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be a giant bet on the hot AI startup. The ChatGPT maker is seeking up to $100 billion in new capital from investors, a round that could value it at as much as $830 billion, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.
  Andy Jassy, Amazon's chief executive, is leading the negotiations with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, according to some of the people.
  
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• Microsoft is Experimenting With a Top Menu Bar for Windows 11

  30-01-2026 15:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft's PowerToys team is contemplating building a top menu bar for Windows 11, much like Linux, macOS, or older versions of Windows. The menu bar, or Command Palette Dock as Microsoft calls it, would be a new optional UI that provides quick access to tools, monitoring of system resources, and much more.
  Microsoft has provided concept images of what it's looking to build, and is soliciting feedback on whether Windows users would use a PowerToy like this.
  
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• Backseat Software

  30-01-2026 15:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Mike Swanson: What if your car worked like so many apps? You're driving somewhere important...maybe running a little bit late. A few minutes into the drive, your car pulls over to the side of the road and asks:
  "How are you enjoying your drive so far?"
  Annoyed by the interruption, and even more behind schedule, you dismiss the prompt and merge back into traffic.
  A minute later it does it again.
  "Did you know I have a new feature? Tap here to learn more."
  It blocks your speedometer with an overla
  
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• Unable To Stop AI, SAG-AFTRA Mulls a Studio Tax On Digital Performers

  30-01-2026 14:00 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: In the future, studios that use synthetic actors in place of humans might have to pay a royalty into a union fund. That's one of the ideas kicking around as SAG-AFTRA prepares to sit down with the studios on Feb. 9. Artificial intelligence was central to the 2023 actors strike, and it's only gotten more urgent since. Social media is awash in slop, while user-made videos of Leia and Elsa are soon to debut on Disney+. And then there's Tilly Norwood
  
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• Former Google Engineer Found Guilty of Stealing AI Secrets For Chinese Firms

  30-01-2026 11:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from CBS News: A former Google engineer has been found guilty on multiple federal charges for stealing the tech giant's trade secrets on artificial intelligence to benefit Chinese companies he secretly worked for, federal prosecutors said. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, a jury on Thursday convicted Linwei Ding on seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets, followi
  
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• Radiologists Catch More Aggressive Breast Cancers By Using AI To Help Read Mammograms, Study Finds

  30-01-2026 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  A large Swedish study of 100,000 women found that using AI to assist radiologists reading mammograms reduced the rate of aggressive "interval" breast cancers by 12%. CBC News reports: For the study -- published in Thursday's issue of the medical journal The Lancet -- more than 100,000 women had mammography screenings. Half were supported by AI and the rest had their mammograms reviewed by two different radiologists, a standard practice in much of Europe known as double reading. It is not typical
  
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• Universal Basic Income Could Be Used To Soften Hit From AI Job Losses In UK, Minister Says

  30-01-2026 04:30 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The UK could introduce a universal basic income (UBI) to protect workers in industries that are being disrupted by AI, the investment minister Jason Stockwood has said. "Bumpy" changes to society caused by the introduction of the technology would mean there would have to be "some sort of concessionary arrangement with jobs that go immediately", Lord Stockwood said. The Labour peer told the Financial Times: "Undoubtedly we're going to have to
  
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• Comcast Keeps Losing Customers Despite Price Guarantee, Unlimited Data

  30-01-2026 03:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  Comcast's attempt to slow broadband customer losses still isn't stopping the bleeding as fiber and fixed wireless competition intensifies. In Q4 2025 alone, Comcast lost 181,000 broadband subscribers, even as it leans harder into wireless bundling and other business lines like Peacock and theme parks. Ars Technica reports: The Q4 net loss is more than the 176,000 loss predicted by analysts, although not as bad as the 199,000-customer loss that spurred [Comcast President Mike Cavanagh's] comment
  
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• Cory Doctorow On Tariffs and the DMCA In Canada

  30-01-2026 02:25 via news.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader devnulljapan writes: In 2012, Canada passed anti-circumvention law Bill C-11, cut-and-pasted from the U.S. DMCA, in return for access to U.S. markets without tariffs. Trump has tariffed Canada anyway, so Cory Doctorow suggests it sounds like like a good idea to ditch Bill C-11 and turn Canada into a "Disenshittification Nation" and go into the business of "disenshittify[ing] America's defective tech exports." Some of the specific ways Canada could respond include legaliz
  
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• Linux Gaming Developers Join Forces To Form the Open Gaming Collective

  30-01-2026 01:45 via games.slashdot.org
  A group of Linux gaming-focused distros and developers have formed the Open Gaming Collective to pool work on shared components like kernels, input systems, and Valve tooling. The Verge reports: Universal Blue, developer of the gaming-focused Linux distribution Bazzite, announced on Wednesday that its helping to form the OGC with several other groups, which will collaborate on improvements to the Linux gaming ecosystem and âoecentralize efforts around critical components like kernel patche
  
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• An AI Toy Exposed 50K Logs of Its Chats With Kids To Anyone With a Gmail Account

  30-01-2026 01:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Earlier this month, Joseph Thacker's neighbor mentioned to him that she'd preordered a couple of stuffed dinosaur toys for her children. She'd chosen the toys, called Bondus, because they offered an AI chat feature that lets children talk to the toy like a kind of machine-learning-enabled imaginary friend. But she knew Thacker, a security researcher, had done work on AI risks for kids, and she was curious about his thoughts.So Thacker looked into i
  
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• Google's Project Genie Lets You Generate Your Own Interactive Worlds

  30-01-2026 00:20 via games.slashdot.org
  Google is letting outsiders experiment with DeepMind's Genie 3 "world model" via Project Genie, a tool for generating short, interactive AI worlds. The caveat: it requires a $250/month AI Ultra subscription, is U.S.-only, and has tight limits that make it more of a tech demo than a game engine. Engadget reports: At launch, Project Genie offers three different modes of interaction: World Sketching, exploration and remixing. The first sees Google's Nano Banana Pro model generating the source image
  
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• Nvidia GeForce NOW Is Now Available Natively On Linux

  29-01-2026 23:40 via games.slashdot.org
  NVIDIA has officially launched a native GeForce NOW client for Linux as a Flatpak, giving Linux gamers access to cloud-rendered RTX gaming. Phoronix reports: While confined to a Flatpak, for now NVIDIA is just "officially" supporting it on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and later. Granted, thanks to Flatpak it should run on other non-Ubuntu distributions too but in terms of the official support and where they are qualifying their builds they are limiting it just to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and later. [...] At launch
  
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• County Pays $600,000 To Pentesters It Arrested For Assessing Courthouse Security

  29-01-2026 23:02 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Dan Goodin: Two security professionals who were arrested in 2019 after performing an authorized security assessment of a county courthouse in Iowa will receive $600,000 to settle a lawsuit they brought alleging wrongful arrest and defamation. The case was brought by Gary DeMercurio and Justin Wynn, two penetration testers who at the time were employed by Colorado-based security firm Coalfire Labs. The men had written authorization
  
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• ArXiv Will Require English Submissions - and Says AI Translators Are Fair Game

  29-01-2026 22:22 via science.slashdot.org
  The preprint repository arXiv will require all submissions to be written in English or accompanied by a full English translation starting February 11, a policy change that explicitly permits the use of AI translators even as research suggests large language models remain inconsistent at the task.
  Until now, authors only needed to submit an abstract in English. ArXiv hosts nearly 3 million preprints and receives more than 20,000 submissions monthly, though just 1% are in languages other than Engl
  
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• US Leads Record Global Surge in Gas-Fired Power Driven by AI Demands

  29-01-2026 21:50 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The US is leading a huge global surge in new gas-fired power generation that will cause a major leap in planet-heating emissions, with this record boom driven by the expansion of energy-hungry datacenters to service AI, according to a new forecast.
  This year is set to shatter the annual record for new gas power additions around the world, with projects in development expected to grow existing global gas capacity by nearly 50%, a report by Global Energy Monito
  
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• US Life Expectancy Jumps To a Record 79 Years

  29-01-2026 21:10 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: U.S. life expectancy rose to a record high of 79 years in 2024, an increase of six months from the previous year, reflecting a sharp decline in deaths from COVID-19 and drug overdoses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.
  According to a report from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, life expectancy improved for both men and women across races and among Hispanics, surpassing the previous peak set in 2014.Read more of t
  
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• Microsoft Admits Windows 11 Has a Trust Problem, Promises To Focus on Fixes in 2026

  29-01-2026 20:22 via it.slashdot.org
  Microsoft wants you to know that it knows that Windows 11, now used by a billion users, has been testing your patience and announced that its engineers are being redirected to urgently address the operating system's performance and reliability problems through an internal process the company calls "swarming."
  "The feedback we're receiving from our community of passionate customers and Windows Insiders has been clear. We need to improve Windows in ways that are meaningful for people," Pavan Davul
  
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• Why Private Equity Is Suddenly Awash With Zombie Firms

  29-01-2026 19:50 via news.slashdot.org
  The private equity industry is experiencing a quiet reckoning as hundreds of midsize firms find themselves trapped between investors who have lost patience and portfolios of companies they cannot sell at acceptable prices.
  "There is existential risk for a number [of funds] because of the fundraising environment," said Sunaina Sinha Haldea, global head of private capital advisory at Raymond James. "If existing investors don't come and support them, new investors are highly unlikely to."
  According
  
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• Apple's Second-Biggest Acquisition Ever Is a Startup That Interprets Silent Speech

  29-01-2026 19:10 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple has acquired Q.AI, a secretive Israeli startup whose technology can analyze facial skin micro-movements to interpret "silent speech," in a deal valued at close to $2 billion that marks the iPhone maker's second-largest acquisition ever, according to backer GV (formerly Google Ventures).
  The four-year-old company was founded in Tel Aviv in 2022 by Aviad Maizels, Yonatan Wexler and Avi Barliya. Patents filed by Q.AI show its technology being deployed in headphones or smart glasses to enable
  
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• Massive AI Chat App Leaked Millions of Users Private Conversations

  29-01-2026 18:45 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Chat & Ask AI, one of the most popular AI apps on the Google Play and Apple App stores that claims more than 50 million users, left hundreds of millions of those users' private messages with the app's chatbot exposed, according to an independent security researcher and emails viewed by 404 Media. The exposed chats showed users asked the app "How do I painlessly kill myself," to write suicide notes, "how to make meth," and how to hack various apps.
  The exp
  
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• Xbox Hardware Revenue Craters 32%

  29-01-2026 17:47 via games.slashdot.org
  Microsoft's Xbox hardware revenue fell 32% in the final quarter of 2025 and overall gaming revenue declined 9% year-over-year, according to the company's latest quarterly earnings, released as part of results showing Microsoft's total revenue exceeded $80 billion.
  Xbox content and services revenue, which includes Game Pass, dropped 5%.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Windows 11 Has Reached 1 Billion Users Faster Than Windows 10

  29-01-2026 17:12 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Windows 11 now has one billion users. Microsoft hit the milestone during the recent holiday quarter, meaning Windows 11 has managed to reach one billion users faster than Windows 10 did nearly six years ago.
  "Windows reached a big milestone, 1 billion Windows 11 users," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the company's fiscal Q2, 2026 earnings call. "Up over 45 percent year-over-year." The growth of Windows 11 over the past quarter will be related to Microsof
  
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• Waymo Robotaxi Hits a Child Near an Elementary School in Santa Monica

  29-01-2026 16:22 via tech.slashdot.org
  A Waymo robotaxi struck a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica on January 23, according to the company. Waymo told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that the child -- whose age and identity are not currently public -- sustained minor injuries. TechCrunch: The NHTSA has opened an investigation into the accident, and Waymo said in a blog post that it "will cooperate fully with them throughout the process."
  Waymo said its robotaxi struck the child at 6 miles per
  
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• Seven of the World's Ten Best-Selling Smartphones in 2025 Were iPhones

  29-01-2026 15:40 via mobile.slashdot.org
  Apple sold seven of the ten best-selling smartphones globally in 2025, a lopsided dominance that underscores how thoroughly the company controls the premium end of the mobile market.
  The iPhone 16 was the single best-selling phone worldwide, and Apple's presence extended all the way down to the tenth spot where the iPhone 16e -- its newest budget-friendly option -- found consistent demand in Japan and the U.S., according to Counterpoint.
  Samsung accounted for the remaining three positions, led b
  
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• Nothing CEO Says Company Won't Launch New Flagship Smartphone Every Year 'For the Sake of It'

  29-01-2026 15:00 via mobile.slashdot.org
  Android smartphone maker Nothing won't release a Phone 4 this year, the company's founder and chief executive said, and that the 2025 Phone 3 will remain the brand's flagship device throughout 2026.
  "We're not just going to churn out a new flagship every year for the sake of it, we want every upgrade to feel significant," Carl Pei said in a video. "Just because the rest of the industry does things a certain way it doesn't mean we will do the same."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• 'Hundreds' of Gatik Robot Delivery Trucks Headed For US Roads

  29-01-2026 14:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: Gatik, a Silicon Valley startup developing self-driving delivery trucks, says its commercial operations are about to scale up dramatically, from fewer than a dozen driverless units running in multiple U.S. states now to hundreds of box trucks by the end of the year. CEO Gautam Narang said it's also booked contracts with retailers worth at least $600 million for its automated fleet. "We have 10 fully driverless, revenue-generating trucks on public
  
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• FBI Seizes RAMP Cybercrime Forum Used By Ransomware Gangs

  29-01-2026 11:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  joshuark shares a report from BleepingComputer: The FBI has seized the notorious RAMP cybercrime forum, a platform used to advertise a wide range of malware and hacking services, and one of the few remaining forums that openly allowed the promotion of ransomware operations. Both the forum's Tor site and its clearnet domain, ramp4u[.]io, now display a seizure notice stating, "The Federal Bureau of Investigation has seized RAMP."While there has been no official announcement by law enforcement rega
  
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