ICT news

• Google Will Develop the Android OS Fully In Private

  26-03-2025 21:50 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Authority: No matter the manufacturer, every Android phone has one thing in common: its software base. Manufacturers can heavily customize the look and feel of the Android OS they ship on their Android devices, but under the hood, the core system functionality is derived from the same open-source foundation: the Android Open Source Project. After over 16 years, Google is making big changes to how it develops the open source version of Android in a
  
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• Toilet Maker Toto's Shares Get Unlikely Boost From AI Rush

  23-01-2026 22:25 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Shares of Japanese toilet maker Toto gained the most in five years after booming memory demand excited expectations of growth in its little-known chipmaking materials operations. The stock surged as much as 11%, its steepest rise since February 2021, after Goldman Sachs analysts said Toto's electrostatic chucks used in NAND chipmaking will likely benefit from an AI infrastructure buildout that's tightening supplies of both high-end and commodity memory.
  [...]
  
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• The Great Graduate Job Drought

  23-01-2026 21:41 via slashdot.org
  Global hiring remains 20% below pre-pandemic levels and job switching has hit a 10-year low, according to a LinkedIn report, and new university graduates are bearing the brunt of a labor market that increasingly favors experienced candidates over fresh talent.
  In the UK, the Institute of Student Employers found that graduate hiring fell 8% in the last academic year and employers now receive 140 applications for each vacancy, up from 86 per vacancy in 2022-23. US data from the New York Federal Re
  
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• Wall Street Pushes Solo 401(k)s as More Americans Work for Themselves

  23-01-2026 21:01 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: A niche retirement plan favored by freelancers is quickly becoming a hot Wall Street sales pitch, as more and more Americans look for ways to shelter a bigger chunk of their paychecks from taxes. Known as solo 401(k)s, they allow the self-employed to contribute $72,000 a year into tax-advantaged retirement accounts. That's nearly three times the maximum for typical salaried workers in the US.
  While they've existed for decades serving a workforce that often st
  
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• China Makes Too Many Cars, and the World Is Increasingly OK With It

  23-01-2026 20:22 via tech.slashdot.org
  After years of Western governments raising alarms about Chinese automotive overcapacity and erecting tariff barriers, an unexpected pivot is now underway as major economies cautiously open their markets to Chinese electric vehicles, Bloomberg writes. Beijing itself has started acknowledging the problem at home. Chinese regulators last week warned of "severe penalties" for automakers defying efforts to rationalize pricing in the country's car market, and earlier this month a government ministry u
  
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• Solar and Wind Overtake Fossil Fuels in the EU

  23-01-2026 19:44 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Wind and solar power overtook fossil fuels last year as a source of electricity in the EU for the first time, a new report found. Semafor adds: The milestone was hit largely thanks to a rise in solar power, which generated a record 13% of electricity in the EU, according to Ember. Together, wind and solar hit 30% of EU electricity generation, edging out fossil fuels at 29%.
  The shift is especially important with the bloc's alternative to Russian LNG -- Washington -- becoming increasingly unrelia
  
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• Toronto Man Posed as Pilot To Rack Up Hundreds of Free Flights, Prosecutors Say

  23-01-2026 19:00 via news.slashdot.org
  A Toronto man posed as a pilot for years in order to fool airlines into giving him hundreds of free flights, prosecutors have alleged, in a case that has prompted comparisons to the Hollywood thriller Catch Me If You Can. From a report: Authorities in Hawaii announced this week that Dallas Pokornik, 33, had been charged with wire fraud after he allegedly fooled three major US carriers into giving him free tickets over a span of four years.
  Airlines typically offer standby tickets to their own st
  
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• Apple's Secret Product Plans Stolen in Luxshare Cyberattack

  23-01-2026 18:20 via apple.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The Apple supplier subject to a major cyberattack last month was China's Luxshare, it has now emerged. More than 1TB of confidential Apple information was reportedly stolen.
  It was reported in December that one of Apple's assemblers suffered a significant cyberattack that may have compromised sensitive production-line information and manufacturing data linked to Apple. The specific company targeted, the scope of the breach, and its operational impact were unc
  
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• When Two Years of Academic Work Vanished With a Single Click

  23-01-2026 17:40 via science.slashdot.org
  Marcel Bucher, a professor of plant sciences at the University of Cologne in Germany, lost two years of carefully structured academic work in an instant when he temporarily disabled ChatGPT's "data consent" option in August to test whether the AI tool's functions would still work without providing OpenAI his data. All his chats were permanently deleted and his project folders emptied without any warning or undo option, he wrote in a post on Nature.
  Bucher, a ChatGPT Plus subscriber paying $20 pe
  
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• Anthropic's AI Keeps Passing Its Own Company's Job Interview

  23-01-2026 17:01 via slashdot.org
  Anthropic has a problem that most companies would envy: its AI model keeps getting so good, the company wrote in a blog post, that it passes the company's own hiring test for performance engineers. The test, designed in late 2023 by optimization lead Tristan Hume, asks candidates to speed up code running on a simulated computer chip. Over 1,000 people have taken it, and dozens now work at Anthropic. But Claude Opus 4 outperformed most human applicants.
  Hume redesigned the test, making it harder.
  
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• Apple Accuses European Commission of 'Political Delay Tactics' To Justify Fines

  23-01-2026 16:21 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple has accused the European Commission of using "political delay tactics" to postpone new app marketplace policies and create grounds for investigating and fining the iPhone maker, a preemptive response to reports that the commission plans to blame Apple for the announced closure of third-party app store Setapp.
  MacPaw, the developer behind Setapp, said it would shut down the marketplace next month because of "still-evolving and complex business terms that don't fit Setapp's current business
  
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• 'Almost Everyone' Laid Off at Vimeo Following Bending Spoons Buyout

  23-01-2026 15:40 via slashdot.org
  Vimeo is laying off employees around the world just months after Italian software company Bending Spoons completed its $1.38 billion acquisition of the video hosting platform. Dave Brown, Vimeo's former brand VP, described the cuts on LinkedIn as affecting "a large portion of the company." One video engineer claimed "almost everyone" was laid off, "including the entire video team," and another software engineer said he lost his job alongside "a gigantic amount of the company."
  This marks Vimeo's
  
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• US Formally Withdraws From WHO

  23-01-2026 15:00 via science.slashdot.org
  The United States formally withdrew from the World Health Organization on Thursday, making good on an executive order that President Trump issued on his first day in office pledging to leave the international organization that coordinates global responses to public health threats. The New York Times: While the United States is walking away from the organization, a senior official with the Department of Health and Human Services told reporters on Thursday that the Trump administration was conside
  
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• TikTok Finalizes Deal To Form New American Entity

  23-01-2026 14:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: TikTok has finalized a deal to create a new American entity, avoiding the looming threat of a ban in the United States that has been in discussion for years. The social video platform company signed agreements with major investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX to form the new TikTok U.S. joint venture. The new version will operate under "defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm securi
  
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• 'Active' Sitting Is Better For Brain Health

  23-01-2026 11:00 via science.slashdot.org
  alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: A systematic review of 85 studies has now found good reason to differentiate between 'active' sitting, like playing cards or reading, and 'passive' sitting, like watching TV. [...] "Total sitting time has been shown to be related to brain health; however, sitting is often treated as a single entity, without considering the specific type of activity," explains public health researcher Paul Gardiner from the University of Queensland in Australia
  
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• AI Boosts Research Careers But Flattens Scientific Discovery

  23-01-2026 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Ancient Slashdot reader erice shares the findings from a recent study showing that while AI helped researchers publish more often and boosted their careers, the resulting papers were, on average, less useful. "You have this conflict between individual incentives and science as a whole," says James Evans, a sociologist at the University of Chicago who led the study. From a recent IEEE Spectrum article: To quantify the effect, Evans and collaborators from the Beijing National Research Center for I
  
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• South Korea Launches Landmark Laws To Regulate AI

  23-01-2026 04:30 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Korea Herald: South Korea will begin enforcing its Artificial Intelligence Act on Thursday, becoming the first country to formally establish safety requirements for high-performance, or so-called frontier, AI systems -- a move that sets the country apart in the global regulatory landscape. According to the Ministry of Science and ICT, the new law is designed primarily to foster growth in the domestic AI sector, while also introducing baseline safeguar
  
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• Intel Struggles To Meet AI Data Center Demand

  23-01-2026 03:02 via slashdot.org
  Intel says it struggled to satisfy demand for its AI data-center CPUs while new PC chips squeeze margins. CEO Lip-Bu Tan framed the turnaround as supply-constrained, not demand-constrained, with manufacturing yields (18A) improving but still below targets. Reuters reports: The forecast underscores the difficulties faced by Intel in predicting global chip markets, where the company's current products are the result of decisions made years ago. The company, whose shares have risen 40% in the past
  
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• Epic and Google Have a Secret $800 Million Unreal Engine and Services Deal

  23-01-2026 02:25 via yro.slashdot.org
  A federal judge revealed a previously undisclosed ~$800 million, six-year partnership between Epic Games and Google tied to Unreal Engine services and joint marketing. It raises questions about whether the deal influenced Epic's willingness to settle its antitrust case over Android. The Verge reports: [California District Judge James Donato] allowed Epic and Google to keep most of the details of the plan under wraps. But during the hearing, he quizzed witnesses, including Epic CEO Tim Sweeney an
  
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• EU Parliament Calls For Detachment From US Tech Giants

  23-01-2026 01:45 via slashdot.org
  The European Parliament is calling on the European Commission to reduce dependence on U.S. tech giants by prioritizing EU-based cloud, AI, and open-source infrastructure. The report frames "European Tech First," public procurement reform, and Public Money, Public Code as necessary self-defense against growing U.S. control over critical digital infrastructure. Heise reports: In terms of content, the report focuses on a strategic reorientation of public procurement and infrastructure. The compromi
  
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• New Jersey Law Requires E-Bike Drivers To Have License, Insurance

  23-01-2026 01:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: As one of his final acts in office, former New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law new requirements for e-bikes in his state. The new legislation signed Monday requires that owners and operators of e-bikes have licenses, registration and insurance. Owners and operators of e-bikes must be at least 17 years old and have a valid driver's license or be at least 15 years old with a motorized bicycle license under the law, which covers all types o
  
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• The Microsoft-OpenAI Files

  23-01-2026 00:20 via slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: GeekWire takes a look at AI's defining alliance in The Microsoft-OpenAI Files, an epic story drawn from 200+ documents, many made public Friday in Elon Musk's ongoing suit accusing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman of abandoning the nonprofit mission (Microsoft is also a defendant). Musk, who was an OpenAI co-founder, is seeking up to $134 billion in damages. "Previously undisclosed emails, messages, slide decks, reports, and deposition transcripts reveal how
  
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• Waymo Launches Robotaxi Service In Miami, Extending US Lead

  22-01-2026 23:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  Waymo has launched its paid robotaxi service in Miami, marking its sixth U.S. market and the company's first expansion of 2026. CNBC reports: As U.S. competition has lagged, Waymo's planned 2026 expansions could lock in rider demand and loyalty in the U.S. To start, Waymo will offer its services within a 60-square-mile area that includes Miami's Design District, Wynwood, Brickell and Coral Gables neighborhoods, the Google sister company said.The company began testing its vehicles in the Florida
  
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• Google Begins Offering Free SAT Practice Tests Powered By Gemini

  22-01-2026 23:02 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It's no secret that students worldwide use AI chatbots to do their homework and avoid learning things. On the flip side, students can also use AI as a tool to beef up their knowledge and plan for the future with flashcards or study guides. Google hopes its latest Gemini feature will help with the latter. The company has announced that Gemini can now create free SAT practice tests and coach students to help them get higher scores. As a standa
  
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• NASA Eyes Popular PC Hardware Performance Tool for Its Flight Simulators

  22-01-2026 22:22 via science.slashdot.org
  NASA Langley has initiated the U.S. government software approval process to install CapFrameX, a benchmarking tool popular among PC gaming enthusiasts, on its cockpit simulators used to train test pilots. The space agency reached out to CapFrameX, not the other way around, according to an X post from the company.
  NASA builds custom flight simulators from scratch for experimental aircraft like the X-59, a supersonic jet designed to produce a quiet thump rather than the traditional sonic boom. The
  
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• Half the World's 100 Largest Cities Are in High Water Stress Areas, Analysis Finds

  22-01-2026 21:44 via news.slashdot.org
  Half the world's 100 largest cities are experiencing high levels of water stress, with 38 of these sitting in regions of "extremely high water stress," new analysis and mapping has shown. The Guardian: Water stress means that water withdrawals for public water supply and industry are close to exceeding available supplies, often caused by poor management of water resources exacerbated by climate breakdown. Watershed Investigations and the Guardian mapped cities on to stressed catchments revealing
  
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• Moderna Curbing Investments in Vaccine Trials Due To US Backlash, CEO Says

  22-01-2026 21:01 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Moderna does not plan to invest in new late-stage vaccine trials because of growing opposition to immunizations from U.S. officials, CEO Stephane Bancel said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday. "You cannot make a return on investment if you don't have access to the U.S. market," Bancel told Bloomberg TV on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Bancel said regulatory delays and little support from the authorities make the market size "
  
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• eBay Bans Illicit Automated Shopping Amid Rapid Rise of AI Agents

  22-01-2026 20:22 via slashdot.org
  EBay has updated its User Agreement to explicitly ban third-party "buy for me" agents and AI chatbots from interacting with its platform without permission. From a report: On its face, a one-line terms of service update doesn't seem like major news, but what it implies is more significant: The change reflects the rapid emergence of what some are calling "agentic commerce," a new category of AI tools designed to browse, compare, and purchase products on behalf of users.
  eBay's updated terms, whic
  
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• Workday CEO Calls Narrative That AI is Killing Software 'Overblown'

  22-01-2026 19:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach on Thursday tried to ease worries that AI is destroying software business models. From a report: "It's an overblown narrative, and it's not true," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box" from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, calling AI a tailwind and "absolutely not a headwind" for the company.
  Software stocks have sold off in recent months on concerns that new AI tools will upend the sector and displace longstanding and recurring businesses that once fueled big pr
  
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• Schools, Airports, High-Rise Towers: Architects Urged To Get 'Bamboo-Ready'

  22-01-2026 19:05 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: An airport made of bamboo? A tower reaching 20 metres high? For many years, bamboo has been mostly known as the favourite food of giant pandas, but a group of engineers say it's time we took it seriously as a building material, too.
  This week the Institution of Structural Engineers called for architects to be "bamboo-ready" as they published a manual for designing permanent buildings made of the material, in an effort to encourage low-carbon construction and
  
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