ICT news

• Google Research Chief Says Learning To Code 'as Important as Ever'

  11-11-2024 18:35 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Google's head of research Yossi Matias maintains that learning to code remains "as important as ever" despite AI's growing role in software development. While AI tools have reduced coding time for some developers -- and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai noting that AI now generates a quarter of all code, Matias stressed that human engineers still review and approve AI-generated code.
  The Google executive, who also serves as a company VP, acknowledged that junior professionals have faced challenges gain
  
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• Prediction Market 'Kalshi' Sued for Not Paying $54 Million for Bets on Khamenei's Death

  07-03-2026 16:34 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the Independent:
  A popular predictions market app will not pay out the $54 million some of its users believed they were owed after correctly forecasting the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a report.
  Kalshi, which allows players to gamble on real-world events, offered customers favorable odds on Khamenei, 86, being "out as Supreme Leader" in response to the announcement of joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Tehran in the early hours of Satur
  
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• Indonesia To Ban Social Media For Children Under 16

  07-03-2026 14:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Indonesia will ban children under 16 from having accounts on major social media platforms as part of a government push to protect minors from harmful content, addiction, and online threats. The rule will roll out starting March 28 and makes Indonesia the first country in Southeast Asia to impose such a restriction. The Guardian reports: Meutya Hafid said in a statement to media said that she signed a government regulation that will mean children under the age of 16 can no longer have accounts on
  
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• China Releases First Homegrown Quantum Computing OS

  07-03-2026 11:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  The Global Times reports: China's first domestically developed quantum computer operating system, Origin Pilot, has been made available for online download, the Global Times learned from the Anhui Quantum Computing Engineering Research Center on Wednesday. A Chinese scientist said while several quantum computing operating system efforts are underway worldwide, this is the first developed in China where it is seen as part of China's broad effort to achieve technology independence and to achieve t
  
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• Asteroid 2024 YR4 Will Not Impact the Moon

  07-03-2026 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Ancient Slashdot reader alanw shares a report from the European Space Agency (ESA): Last year, an approximately 60 meter near-Earth object captured global attention. For a brief period, asteroid 2024 YR4 became the most dangerous asteroid discovered in the last 20 years. While an Earth impact was soon ruled out, the asteroid faded from view with a lingering 4% chance of striking the Moon on 22 December 2032. Now, that risk has been eliminated. Astronomers have confirmed that 2024 YR4 will not im
  
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• Humanity Heating Planet Faster Than Ever Before, Study Finds

  07-03-2026 04:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader The Guardian: Humanity is heating the planet faster than ever before, a study has found. Climate breakdown is occurring more rapidly with the heating rate almost doubling, according to research that excludes the effect of natural factors behind the latest scorching temperatures. It found global heating accelerated from a steady rate of less than 0.2C per decade between 1970 and 2015 to about 0.35C per decade over the past 10 years. The rate is higher than scientists have seen
  
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• Trump Administration Says It Can't Process Tariff Refunds Because of Computer Problems

  07-03-2026 02:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a filing on Friday that it currently cannot process billions in tariff refunds because its import-processing system is "not well suited to a task of this scale." The Verge reports: The CBP's admission comes after the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs imposed by Trump under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) last month. This week, the International Trade Court ruled that importers impacted by the tariffs are entitled to ref
  
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• Oura Buys Gesture-Navigation Startup DoublePoint

  07-03-2026 00:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Smart ring maker Oura has acquired Doublepoint, a Finnish startup specializing in gesture recognition technology for wearables. Engadget reports: The Finnish startup uses smartwatches and wristbands as examples of products that benefit from its technology, but Oura will clearly be looking to incorporate it into its rings, in theory allowing you to control your connected devices with hand movements.Oura said in a press release that the deal sees it inherit an "exceptional team of AI architects an
  
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• Apple Blocks US Users From Downloading ByteDance's Chinese Apps

  06-03-2026 23:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: While TikTok operates in the United States under new ownership, Apple has deployed technical restrictions to block iOS users in the United States from downloading other apps made by the video platform's Chinese parent organization ByteDance. ByteDance owns a vast array of different apps spanning social media, entertainment, artificial intelligence, and other sectors. The leading one is Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, which has over 1 billion
  
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• System76 Comments On Recent Age Verification Laws

  06-03-2026 22:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  In a blog post on Thursday, System76 CEO Carl Richell criticized new state laws in California, Colorado, and New York that would require operating systems to verify users' ages and expose that information to apps, arguing the rules are easy for kids to bypass and ultimately undermine privacy and freedom more than they protect minors."System76's position is interesting given that they sell Linux-loaded desktops, workstations and laptops plus being an operating system vendor with their in-house Po
  
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• Mozilla Is Working On a Big Firefox Redesign

  06-03-2026 21:00 via news.slashdot.org
  darwinmac writes: Mozilla is working on a huge redesign for its Firefox browser, codenamed "Nova," which will bring pastel gradients, a refreshed new tab page, floating "island" UI elements, and more. "From the mockups, it appears Mozilla took some inspiration from Googles Material You (or at least, the dynamic color extraction part of it) because the browser color accent appears influenced by the wallpaper setting," reports Neowin. "Choosing a mint-green desktop background automatically shifts
  
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• Iran War Provides a Large-Scale Test For AI-Assisted Warfare

  06-03-2026 20:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg, written by Katrina Manson: The U.S. strikes on Iran ordered by President Donald Trump mark the arrival on a large scale of a new era of warfare assisted by artificial intelligence. Captain Timothy Hawkins, a Central Command spokesperson, told me last night that the AI tools the U.S. military is using in Iran operations don't make targeting decisions and don't replace humans. But they do help "make smarter decisions faster." That's been the driv
  
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• Python 'Chardet' Package Replaced With LLM-Generated Clone, Re-Licensed

  06-03-2026 19:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  Ancient Slashdot reader ewhac writes: The maintainers of the Python package `chardet`, which attempts to automatically detect the character encoding of a string, announced the release of version 7 this week, claiming a speedup factor of 43x over version 6. In the release notes, the maintainers claim that version 7 is, "a ground-up, MIT-licensed rewrite of chardet." Problem: The putative "ground-up rewrite" is actually the result of running the existing copyrighted codebase and test suite through
  
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• Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous 'Stop Cop City' Protester

  06-03-2026 18:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from 404 Media: Privacy-focused email provider Proton Mail provided Swiss authorities with payment data that the FBI then used to determine who was allegedly behind an anonymous account affiliated with the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, according to a court record reviewed by 404 Media. The records provide insight into the sort of data that Proton Mail, which prides itself both on its end-to-end encryption and that it is only governed by Swiss
  
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• AI Startup Sues Ex-CEO Saying He Took 41GB of Email, Lied On Resume

  06-03-2026 17:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hayden AI, a San Francisco startup that makes spatial analytics tools for cities worldwide, has sued its co-founder and former CEO, alleging that he stole a large quantity of proprietary information in the days leading up to his ouster from the company in September 2024. In a lawsuit filed late last month in San Francisco Superior Court but only made public this week, Hayden AI claims that former CEO Chris Carson undertook what it called "nu
  
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• The National Videogame Museum Acquires the Mythical Nintendo Playstation

  06-03-2026 16:00 via games.slashdot.org
  The National Videogame Museum has acquired an extremely rare MSF-1 development kit, believed to be the oldest surviving prototype of the canceled Nintendo PlayStation. Engadget reports: Nicknamed the Nintendo PlayStation, the idea was that a new CD-ROM format backed by Sony would be added to the cartridge-based Super NES, resulting in a hybrid console that could play both. The partnership didn't last long, though, with Nintendo backing out before it ever really got off the ground, announcing tha
  
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• Florida Woman Gets Prison Time For Illegally Selling Microsoft Product Keys

  06-03-2026 15:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  A Florida woman was sentenced to 22 months in federal prison and fined $50,000 for illegally trafficking thousands of Microsoft certificate-of-authenticity labels used to activate Windows and Office. Prosecutors said she bought genuine labels cheaply from suppliers and resold them without the accompanying licensed software, wiring over $5 million during the scheme. TechRadar reports: The indictment details how [52-year-old Heidi Richards] purchased tens of thousands of genuine COA labels from a
  
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• AI Translations Are Adding 'Hallucinations' To Wikipedia Articles

  06-03-2026 14:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Wikipedia editors have implemented new policies and restricted a number of contributors who were paid to use AI to translate existing Wikipedia articles into other languages after they discovered these AI translations added AI "hallucinations," or errors, to the resulting article. The new restrictions show how Wikipedia editors continue to fight the flood of generative AI across the internet from diminishing the reliability of the world's large
  
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• IBM Scientists Unveil First-Ever 'Half-Mobius' Molecule

  06-03-2026 11:00 via science.slashdot.org
  BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: An international team of scientists has done something chemistry has never seen before. IBM, working alongside researchers from the University of Manchester, Oxford University, ETH Zurich, EPFL, and the University of Regensburg, has created and characterized a molecule whose electrons travel through its structure in a corkscrew-like pattern, fundamentally altering its chemical behavior. The findings were published today in Science. The molecule, known
  
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• Congress Extends ISS, Tells NASA To Get Moving On Private Space Stations

  06-03-2026 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  A recently-revised Senate authorization bill (PDF), co-sponsored by Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz, would extend the International Space Station's lifespan from 2030 to 2032 while pushing NASA to accelerate plans for commercial space stations to replace it. Ars Technica's Eric Berger reports: Regarding NASA's support for the development of commercial space stations, the bill mandates the following, within specified periods, of passage of the law:- Within 60 days, publicly release the r
  
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• Microsoft Confirms 'Project Helix,' a Next-Gen Xbox That Can Run PC Games

  06-03-2026 04:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from 80 Level: Microsoft has officially confirmed development of its next-generation Xbox console, currently known internally as Project Helix. While concrete details remain limited, early information suggests the company is positioning the device as a hybrid between a traditional console and a gaming PC, capable of running both Xbox titles and PC games. The codename was revealed recently by new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who reaffirmed Microsoft's continued commit
  
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• Pentagon Formally Designates Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk

  06-03-2026 02:00 via slashdot.org
  The Pentagon has formally designated Anthropic as a "supply chain risk," ordering federal agencies and defense contractors to stop using its AI tools after the company sought limits on the military's use of its models. In a written statement, the department said it has "officially informed Anthropic leadership the company and its products are deemed a supply chain risk, effective immediately." Politico reports: The designation, historically reserved for foreign firms with ties to U.S. adversarie
  
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• Mac Studio 512GB RAM Option Disappears Amid Global DRAM Shortage

  06-03-2026 00:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Apple has removed the 512GB RAM configuration for the Mac Studio, leaving 256GB as the new maximum. The remaining 256GB upgrade has also increased in price and now faces longer shipping delays as demand grows "due to consumers seeking machines suitable for running local AI agents," reports MacRumors. From the report: The Mac Studio starts with 36GB RAM, but there were upgrades ranging from 48GB to 512GB, with the higher tier upgrades limited to the M3 Ultra chip. Now there are options ranging fr
  
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• United Airlines Can Now Boot Passengers Who Refuse To Use Headphones

  05-03-2026 23:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  United Airlines has updated its contract of carriage to require passengers to use headphones when playing audio or video on personal devices during flights. Travelers who refuse could be removed from the plane or even permanently banned from flying with the airline, reports CBS News.United notes that it will offer customers who forget theirs a free pair of wired earbuds. "Don't worry if you forget your headphones for your flight," the airline states on its website. "If they're available, you can
  
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• Trump's TikTok Deal Benefited Firms That 'Personally Enriched' Him, Lawsuit Says

  05-03-2026 22:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anti-corruption group has filed a lawsuit (PDF) against Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi over the deal that transferred TikTok's U.S. operations to a group of investors tied to the administration. The suit claims the arrangement violates a 2024 law requiring ByteDance to divest and alleges the deal financially benefited Trump allies while leaving the platform's algorithm under Chinese ownership. NBC News reports: The suit, filed by the Public Integrity Project, a law firm that seek
  
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• AMD Will Bring Its 'Ryzen AI' Processors To Standard Desktop PCs For First Time

  05-03-2026 21:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AMD has been selling "Ryzen AI"-branded laptop processors for around a year and a half at this point. In addition to including modern CPU and GPU architectures, these are attempting to capitalize on the generative AI craze by offering chips with neural processing units (NPUs) suitable for running language and image-generation models locally, rather than on some company's server. But so far, AMD's desktop chips have lacked both these higher-p
  
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• OpenAI Releases New ChatGPT Model For Working In Excel and Google Sheets

  05-03-2026 20:00 via slashdot.org
  OpenAI today released GPT-5.4, an upgraded ChatGPT model designed to be faster, cheaper, and more accurate for workplace tasks. The update also introduces tools that let ChatGPT work directly inside Excel and Google Sheets. Axios reports: GPT-5.4 is designed to be less error-prone, more efficient and better at workplace tasks like drafting documents, OpenAI said. The new model can create files in fewer tries with less back-and-forth than prior models, the company said. GPT-5.4 outperformed offic
  
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• Tim Sweeney Signed Away His Right To Criticize Google Until 2032

  05-03-2026 19:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  As part of Epic's settlement with Google over the Play Store, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney agreed to stop criticizing Google's app store practices until 2032 and even publicly support the revised policies. The deal also prohibits Epic from pushing for further changes to Google's platform rules. The Verge reports: On March 3rd, he not only signed away Epic's rights to sue and disparage the company, he signed away his right to advocate for any further changes to Google's app store polices. He can't critic
  
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• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei Calls OpenAI's Messaging Around Military Deal 'Straight Up Lies'

  05-03-2026 18:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei is not happy -- perhaps predictably so -- with OpenAI chief Sam Altman. In a memo to staff, reported by The Information, Amodei referred to OpenAI's dealings with the Department of Defense as "safety theater." "The main reason [OpenAI] accepted [the DoD's deal] and we did not is that they cared about placating employees, and we actually cared about preventing abuses," Amodei wrote.Last week, Anthropic
  
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• Amazon's Bahrain Data Center Targeted By Iran For US Military Support

  05-03-2026 17:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Iranian state media said on Wednesday that it targeted Amazon's data center in Bahrain due to the company's support of the U.S. military. The drone strike that occurred on Sunday disrupted core cloud services and caused "prolonged" outages. Two data centers in the UAE were also damaged by drone strikes. CNBC reports: All of the facilities remain offline, according to the Amazon Web Services health dashboard. The attack in Bahrain was launched "to identify the role of these centers in supporting
  
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