ICT news

• Google Restores File Permissions For Nexcloud

  15-05-2025 22:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Longtime Slashdot reader mprindle writes: Nextcloud has been in an ongoing battle with Google over the tech giant revoking the All Files permission from the Nextcloud Android App, which prevents users from managing their files on their server. After a blog post and several tech sites reported on the issue, "Google reached out to us [Nexcloud] and offered to restore the permission, which will give users back the functionality that was lost." Nextcloud is working on an app update and hopes to have
  
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• France Pushes Back Plastic Cup Ban By Four Years

  30-12-2025 20:21 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The French government on Dec 30 postponed a ban on plastic throwaway cups by four years to 2030 because of difficulties finding alternatives. The ban was meant to start on Jan 1. But the Ministry for Ecological Transition said the "technical feasibility of eliminating plastic from cups" following a review in 2025 justified pushing back the deadline.
  It said in an official decree that a new review would be carried out in 2028 of "progress made in replacing sin
  
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• New York's MetroCard Era Ends After 31 Years

  30-12-2025 19:41 via news.slashdot.org
  After more than three decades of service, New York City's iconic MetroCard is about to retire, as December 31, 2025 marks the final day commuters can purchase or refill the gold-hued plastic cards that replaced subway tokens back in 1994. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has been transitioning to OMNY, a contactless payment system introduced in 2019 that lets riders tap a credit card, phone or smart device at turnstiles.
  More than 90% of subway and bus trips are now paid using the tap-a
  
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• The Problem With Letting AI Do the Grunt Work

  30-12-2025 19:02 via slashdot.org
  The consulting firm CVL Economics estimated last year that AI would disrupt more than 200,000 entertainment-industry jobs in the United States by 2026, but writer Nick Geisler argues in The Atlantic that the most consequential casualties may be the humble entry-level positions where aspiring artists have traditionally paid dues and learned their craft. Geisler, a screenwriter and WGA member who started out writing copy for a how-to website in the mid-2010s, notes that ChatGPT can now handle the
  
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• Malaria Shows No Sign of Stopping

  30-12-2025 18:21 via science.slashdot.org
  The World Health Organization's latest annual malaria report paints a grim picture that's about to get grimmer, as the United States -- which has supplied 37% of global malaria funding since 2010 -- pulls back its international health commitments under President Donald Trump. Malaria cases have been climbing since 2015, when progress against the mosquito-borne disease stalled due to insecticide resistance and chronic underfunding.
  In 2024, the world recorded 282 million cases and 610,000 deaths,
  
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• Nepal To Scrap 'Failed' Mount Everest Waste Deposit Scheme

  30-12-2025 17:41 via news.slashdot.org
  A scheme to encourage climbers to bring their waste down from Mount Everest is being scrapped -- with Nepalese authorities telling the BBC it has been a failure. From the report: Climbers had been required to pay a deposit of $4,000, which they would only get back if they brought at least 8kg (18lbs) of waste back down with them. It was hoped it would begin to tackle the rubbish problem on the world's highest peak, which is estimated to be covered in some 50 tonnes of waste. But after 11 years -
  
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• Camera Makers Went Weird in 2025 - and That's Exactly What the Shrinking Industry Needed

  30-12-2025 17:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  The camera industry shipped 6.5 million interchangeable lens cameras last year -- a 50% decline from 2010's peak -- yet 2025 may have been the most creatively ambitious year in nearly two decades of digital photography. DPReview's Richard Butler argues that this year's releases displayed "invention, experimentation and niche-tickling lunacy" not seen since digital's earliest days.
  Interchangeable lens shipments rose 11% in the first ten months of 2025 compared to last year, and fixed lens camera
  
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• Some Audiobooks Are Outselling Hardcovers

  30-12-2025 16:20 via news.slashdot.org
  In a year when print book sales have slipped 1% to 679 million copies through early December, according to Circana BookScan, audiobooks continue to carve out territory that once belonged exclusively to hardcovers, and in several notable cases this year, the audio versions have outright outsold their physical counterparts.
  S.A. Cosby's southern crime novel "King of Ashes" moved more copies as an audiobook than as a hardcover, according to publisher Macmillan Audio. The same is true for celebrity
  
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• Life in a Shrinking Japan

  30-12-2025 15:40 via news.slashdot.org
  Japan's demographic transformation is no longer a distant forecast but an accelerating reality, and the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research now estimates the country's population will fall to roughly 100 million by 2050 -- more than 20 million fewer people than today.
  The share of residents aged 65 and over stood at 29.4% as of September and is expected to reach 37.1% by midcentury. The dependency ratio -- children and older adults supported by every 100 working-age peo
  
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• 'One of America's Most Successful Experiments Is Coming to a Shuddering Halt'

  30-12-2025 15:00 via news.slashdot.org
  The six-decade flow of highly skilled Indian immigrants to the United States -- a migration pattern that produced some of the country's highest-earning households, several Nobel laureates, and the CEOs of Google, Microsoft, and Pepsi -- appears to be grinding to a halt amid rising anti-Indian rhetoric from Republican officials and chaos in the visa system, according to New York Times.
  Indian student arrivals at American universities fell 44% this year, even as Indians had just become the largest
  
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• 22 Million Affected By Aflac Data Breach

  30-12-2025 14:00 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek: Insurance giant Aflac is notifying roughly 22.65 million people that their personal information was stolen from its systems in June 2025. The company disclosed the intrusion on June 20, saying it had identified suspicious activity on its network in the US on June 12 and blaming it on a sophisticated cybercrime group. The company said it immediately contained the attack and engaged with third-party cybersecurity experts to help with incident
  
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• Meta Just Bought Manus, an AI Startup Everyone Has Been Talking About

  30-12-2025 11:00 via meta.slashdot.org
  Meta has agreed to acquire viral AI agent startup Manus, "a Singapore-based AI startup that's become the talk of Silicon Valley since it materialized this spring with a demo video so slick it went instantly viral," reports TechCrunch. "The clip showed an AI agent that could do things like screen job candidates, plan vacations, and analyze stock portfolios. Manus claimed at the time that it outperformed OpenAI's Deep Research." From the report: By April, just weeks after launch, the early-stage f
  
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• PhDs Can't Find Work as Boston's Biotech Engine Sputters

  30-12-2025 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  The Wall Street Journal reports that Boston's once-booming biotech sector has hit a sharp downturn, leaving newly minted Ph.D.s struggling to find work as venture funding dries up, lab space sits empty, and companies downsize or relocate amid rising costs and policy uncertainty. The Wall Street Journal reports: Boston's biotech sector, long a vital economic engine for one of America's wealthiest metro areas, is sputtering. A double whammy of cutbacks in venture capital and government funding hav
  
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• Researchers Make 'Neuromorphic' Artificial Skin For Robots

  30-12-2025 04:33 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The nervous system does an astonishing job of tracking sensory information, and does so using signals that would drive many computer scientists insane: a noisy stream of activity spikes that may be transmitted to hundreds of additional neurons, where they are integrated with similar spike trains coming from still other neurons. Now, researchers have used spiking circuitry to build an artificial robotic skin, adopting some of the principles o
  
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• Russian Enthusiasts Planning DIY DDR5 Memory Amidst Worldwide Shortage

  30-12-2025 03:02 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Amid a global DDR5 shortage and soaring prices, Russian hardware enthusiasts are experimenting with do-it-yourself DDR5 RAM by sourcing empty PCBs and soldering memory chips by hand. Tom's Hardware reports: The idea comes from Russian YouTuber PRO Hi-Tech's Telegram channel, where a local enthusiast known as "Vik-on" already performs VRAM upgrades for GPUs, so this is a relatively safe operation for him. According to Vik-on, empty RAM PCBs can be sourced from China for as little as $6.40 per DIM
  
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• Fedora Continued At The Forefront Of Upstream Linux Innovations In 2025

  30-12-2025 02:25 via linux.slashdot.org
  Phoronix's Michael Larabel is "reliving some of the best moments for Fedora Linux in 2025" by highlighting the year's most popular news around the distro. Throughout 2025, Fedora continued to lead upstream Linux innovation with bold changes like Wayland-only GNOME, newer kernels, architecture cleanups, and experimental features -- while openly grappling with controversial shifts such as dropping 32-bit support and modernizing long-standing subsystems."Fedora Linux this year continued in punctual
  
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• 'Pull Over and Show Me Your Apple Wallet'

  30-12-2025 01:45 via mobile.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: MacRumors reports that Apple plans to expand iPhone and Apple Watch driver's licenses to 7 U.S. states (CT, KY, MS, OK, UT, AR, VA). A recent convert is the State of Illinois, whose website videos demo how you can use your Apple Wallet license to display proof of identity or age the next time you get carded by a cop, bartender, or TSA agent. The new states will join 13 others who already offer driver's licenses in the Wallet app (AZ, MD, CO, GA, OH, HI, CA
  
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• Tough Job Market Has People Using Dating Apps To Get Interviews

  30-12-2025 01:02 via interviews.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Most people use dating apps to find love. Tiffany Chau used one to hunt for a summer internship. This fall, the 20-year-old junior at California College of the Arts tailored her Hinge profile to connect with people who could offer job referrals or interviews. One match brought her to a Halloween party, where she networked in hopes of landing a product-design internship for the summer. While there, she got some tips from someone who had recently
  
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• Sam Altman Offers $555K Salary To Fill Most Daunting Role In AI

  30-12-2025 00:20 via news.slashdot.org
  OpenAI is offering a $555,000 salary (plus equity) to recruit a new "head of preparedness," a high-pressure role tasked with anticipating and mitigating extreme AI risks. "This will be a stressful job, and you'll jump into the deep end pretty much immediately," said Sam Altman as he launched the hunt to fill "a critical role" to "help the world." The Guardian reports: In what may be close to the impossible job, the "head of preparedness" at OpenAI will be directly responsible for defending again
  
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• Nvidia Takes $5 Billion Stake In Intel Under September Agreement

  29-12-2025 23:40 via slashdot.org
  Nvidia has completed its previously announced $5 billion investment in Intel, buying over 214 million shares at a fixed price after the deal received clearance from Federal Trade Commission. "The leading AI chip designer said in September it would pay $23.28 per share for Intel common stock, in a deal that is seen as a major financial lifeline for the chipmaker after years of missteps and capital intensive production capacity expansions drained its finances," reports Reuters.Read more of this st
  
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• China Drafts World's Strictest Rules To End AI-Encouraged Suicide, Violence

  29-12-2025 23:00 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: China drafted landmark rules to stop AI chatbots from emotionally manipulating users, including what could become the strictest policy worldwide intended to prevent AI-supported suicides, self-harm, and violence. China's Cyberspace Administration proposed the rules on Saturday. If finalized, they would apply to any AI products or services publicly available in China that use text, images, audio, video, or "other means" to simulate engaging h
  
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• Stingless Bees From the Amazon Granted Legal Rights in World First

  29-12-2025 22:22 via science.slashdot.org
  Stingless bees from the Amazon have become the first insects to be granted legal rights anywhere in the world, in a breakthrough supporters hope will be a catalyst for similar moves to protect bees elsewhere. From a report: It means that across a broad swathe of the Peruvian Amazon, the rainforest's long-overlooked native bees -- which, unlike their cousins the European honeybees, have no sting -- now have the right to exist and to flourish. Cultivated by Indigenous peoples since pre-Columbian t
  
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• After a Decade of Dead Ends, $70 Million Rides on Locating Flight MH370

  29-12-2025 21:40 via news.slashdot.org
  More than a decade after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished over the Indian Ocean en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the marine robotics company that located Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance is preparing to resume its hunt for the missing Boeing 777. Ocean Infinity, a UK and US-based seabed survey firm, began searching a 15,000 sq km priority area in the Indian Ocean in February but called off the expedition in April after 22 days due to poor weather conditions.
  The company plans to re
  
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• How Windows 10 Earned Its Good Reputation While Planting the Seeds of Windows 11's Problems

  29-12-2025 21:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  Windows 10's formal end-of-support arrived in October, and while the operating system is generally remembered as one of the "good" versions of Windows -- the most widely used since XP -- many of the annoyances people complain about in Windows 11 actually started during the Windows 10 era, ArsTechnica writes.
  Windows 10 earned its positive reputation primarily by not being Windows 8. It restored a version of the traditional Start menu, rolled out as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and 8 users, and ra
  
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• Americans Are Watching Fewer New TV Shows and More Free TV

  29-12-2025 20:26 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Americans are settling into streaming habits that should worry Hollywood executives, as new Nielsen data analyzed by Bloomberg reveals that not a single new original series cracked the top 10 most-watched streaming shows in 2025 -- the first time this has happened since Nielsen began publishing streaming data in 2020.
  The shift extends beyond original programming as free, ad-supported streaming services are growing faster than their paid counterparts. YouTube has become the most-watched streamin
  
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• GOG and CD Projekt Founder Acquires 100% Ownership of GOG

  29-12-2025 19:45 via games.slashdot.org
  Michal Kicinski, who co-founded both CD Projekt and the DRM-free digital games store GOG back in 2008, has acquired 100% ownership of GOG from CD Projekt, bringing the platform full circle to one of its original creators.
  GOG was already operating as part of CD Projekt through its Sp.z.o.o. subsidiary, but Kicinski now takes complete control of the company. The platform will continue operating independently and maintain its commitment to DRM-free gaming. "The mission stays the same: Make Games L
  
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• VC Sees AI-generated Video Gutting the Creator Economy

  29-12-2025 19:06 via news.slashdot.org
  AI-generated video tools like OpenAI's Sora will make individual content creators "far, far, far less valuable" as social media platforms shift toward algorithmically generated content tailored to each viewer, according to Michael Mignano, a partner at venture capital firm Lightspeed and who cofounded the podcasting platform Anchor before Spotify acquired it.
  Speaking on a podcast, Mignano described a future where content is generated instantaneously and artificially to suit the viewer. The TikT
  
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• 'Why Academics Should Do More Consulting'

  29-12-2025 18:22 via news.slashdot.org
  A group of researchers is calling on universities to treat consulting work as a strategic priority, arguing that bureaucratic obstacles and inconsistent policies have left a massive revenue stream largely untapped even as higher education institutions face mounting financial pressures. (Consulting work refers to academics offering their advice and expertise to outside organizations -- industry, government, civil society -- for a fee. It's one of the most direct and scalable ways academics can sh
  
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• 'I Switched To eSIM in 2025, and I am Full of Regret'

  29-12-2025 17:41 via it.slashdot.org
  Google's Pixel 10 series arrived this year as the company's first eSIM-only lineup in the United States, forcing users who wanted to review or buy the new phones to abandon their physical SIM cards entirely. Ryan Whitwam, a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, made the switch and now regrets it, he says. "In the three months since Google forced me to give up my physical SIM card, I've only needed to move my eSIM occasionally," Whitwam wrote. "Still, my phone number has ended up stuck in l
  
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• Job Apocalypse? Not Yet. AI is Creating Brand New Occupations

  29-12-2025 17:03 via slashdot.org
  The AI industry, for all the anxiety about mass unemployment, is quietly minting entirely new job categories that require distinctly human skills -- empathy, judgment, and the ability to calm down a passenger trapped inside a broken-down robotaxi. Data annotators are no longer just low-paid gig workers tagging images. Experts in finance, law, and medicine now train advanced AI models, earning $90 an hour on average through platforms like Mercor, a startup recently valued at $10 billion, accordin
  
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