ICT news

• India Lauds Chinese AI Lab DeepSeek, Plans To Host Its Models on Local Servers

  30-01-2025 15:00 via slashdot.org
  
  India's IT minister on Thursday praised DeepSeek's progress and said the country will host the Chinese AI lab's large language models on domestic servers, in a rare opening for Chinese technology in India. From a report: "You have seen what DeepSeek has done -- $5.5 million and a very very powerful model," IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday, responding to criticism New Delhi has received for its own investment in AI, which has been much less than many other countries.
  Since 2020, Indi
  
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• Hacker Wipes Romania's Entire Land Registry Database

  20-07-2026 19:05 via it.slashdot.org
  A hacker reportedly wiped Romania's entire land registry database after a failed extortion attempt, halting property transactions across the country and preventing notaries from issuing land extracts, authenticating sales, or registering mortgages. "On the dark web, the hacker also boasted to have begun backup copies of stolen data in an attempt to prevent it from being restored," reports Cybernews. "However, Romanian officials have managed to at least restore the ANCPI's website and post a mess
  
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• LSU Physicists Create First Room-Temperature Quantum Material

  20-07-2026 18:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Researchers at Louisiana State University have created a room-temperature quantum material made from a thin gold film on glass, patterned with microscopic slits that act like artificial atoms. "We call this robust transport. These quantum states carry information," says physicist Omar Magana-Loaiza. "Our crystal can distinguish them and move them from one point to another in a robust way without requiring cryogenic cooling. That's what opens the door to practical quantum technologies." ScienceAl
  
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• LibreOffice Once Again Slams Microsoft For Using 'Lock-In' With Office Files

  20-07-2026 17:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from XDA Developers: One of the founding members of The Document Foundation and handler of LibreOffice's PR and media relations, Italo Vignoli, took to the LibreOffice blog to call out Microsoft's practices with its Office application. The last time we saw Vignoli take to the stage, we saw him accusing Euro-Office of being just as bad as Microsoft with its practices. Vignoli's new post focuses entirely on Microsoft's strategy. He says that "the dominant format
  
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• Hollywood Sci-fi Studio Lot Now Pitched As Site To Make Real Space-age Weapons

  20-07-2026 13:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  James Cameron filmed his Avatar sequels there. Marvel filmed Thor, Iron Man 2, and The Avengers. Manhattan Beach Studios in Los Angeles even handled Star Wars' series like Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Mandalorian, which Bloomberg points out is about "a heavily armed bounty hunter in a galaxy far, far away."
  "Now lenders who are selling the property's $240 million mortgage are promoting the site to potential buyers as a hub for making real space-age weapons.""The project is strategically positioned wit
  
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• New Free Speech Concern: When AI Chatbots Won't Criticize Leaders from Repressive Regimes

  20-07-2026 09:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  Ask Claude to make a pamphlet critical of China's leader, Thailand's king, or Saudi Arabia's crown prince — and it will decline, reports the Associated Press.
  That's "a key finding from a Meta Oversight Board study released Thursday," their article points out: AI systems are more than twice as likely to refuse to product critical material if it's about a restrictive world leader or government. And it raises concerns that the LLMs powering chatbots "could be regurgitating and spreading gove
  
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• Rust Will Help Linux Succeed and Makes Coding Fun, Says Greg Kroah-Hartman

  20-07-2026 06:20 via developers.slashdot.org
  ZDNet reports on June's Open Source Summit India 2026 in Mumbai, where Linux stable kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman gave a talk titled "Rust and Linux: How the Rust Language is Going to Help Linux Succeed."
  Kroah-Hartman said in his keynote that "the [Linux] kernel is moving toward Rust. Git is moving toward Rust. Lots of projects are starting to move toward Rust."
  He didn't always feel that way. Kroah-Hartman added, "A number of years ago, when a friend of mine said, 'Ah, you got to try th
  
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• As AI Transforms Silicon Valley, Some Tech Workers Face Evaporating Financial Security

  20-07-2026 04:15 via it.slashdot.org
  The Washington Post describes a mid-tier executive at Meta as one of Silicon Valley's "winners" whose financial security suddenly "evaporated" as their workforce "pushed headlong into AI and heavy job cuts," creating a transformed job market. "Her ex-husband, a designer at Meta who was laid off in 2020, eventually gave up looking for jobs in his profession. He now lifts boxes at a warehouse."
  Layoffs.fyi, which tracks announced job cuts, counts more than 800,000 tech workers laid off since 2022,
  
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• Zilog Z80 8-Bit CPU Turns 50, Open-source Replacement Heads To Drop-in DIP40 Silicon

  20-07-2026 02:50 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from Tom's Hardware:
  The Zilog Z80 has just turned 50 years old. This iconic 8-bit processor first went on sale in July 1976 and stayed in production for 48 years until Zilog, now a Littelfuse subsidiary, stopped accepting orders in June 2024. However, there's an open-source replacement closer than ever to shipping in the chip's original 40-pin DIP package thanks to community-funded fabrication...
  The chip powered the ZX Spectrum, TRS-80, MSX machines, Nint
  
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• Dozens of Robotaxi Riders Are Falling Asleep, Sparking Frantic Calls For Emergency Services

  20-07-2026 01:09 via tech.slashdot.org
  "If tired or wasted passengers fall asleep in a traditional taxi or rideshare, the driver can shout or shake them awake," reports Bloomberg. "Not so in a robotaxi..."Ditto Kasendar remembers soft music drifting from the robotaxi's speakers as he rode home late at night from a friend's birthday party in 2025. The next moment, Los Angeles firefighters were opening the door and asking if he was OK. His six-minute trip had ended nearly an hour before. A remote Waymo assistant, dialling in through th
  
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• California's 'Truth in Recycling' Law Blocked by Judge

  19-07-2026 23:04 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the Los Angeles Times:A federal judge has halted California's groundbreaking "Truth in Recycling" law, which aims to reduce consumer confusion about which packaging can be recycled. [Originally planned to take effect October 4th], California's recyclable packaging law prohibits manufacturers from using a "chasing arrows" recycling symbol on products or materials unless they are actually being recycled in a meaningful way, which the law quantifies...
  A
  
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• James Webb Space Telescope Discovers How Black Holes Feed Themselves

  19-07-2026 21:05 via science.slashdot.org
  "Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have been given a glimpse of the mechanisms that supermassive black holes use to feed themselves," reports Space.com:The powerful cosmic titans get really puzzling when astronomers using the JWST spot them before the universe was even 1 billion years old. That's because the mechanisms by which black holes devour matter to grow and then merge to create even more massive black holes should take at least 1 billion years to achieve supermassive
  
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• Robot 'Decapitated' in World's First-Ever Humanoid UFC Fight

  19-07-2026 19:49 via hardware.slashdot.org
  "A humanoid robot lost its head," reports Newsweek, "during the world's first free-combat tournament for full-sized humanoid robots."
  The Ultimate Robot Knock-out Legend competition began Thursday in Shenzhen, China, according to the article, with local robotics company EngineAI providing $40,000 of their "T800" robots (yes, named after The Terminator) to 32 participating teams from around the world:A video shared of the combat on YouTube by local news outlet Shenzhen Story, showed that even aft
  
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• Windows 10 Still Being Used, Often Unpatched and Insecure

  19-07-2026 18:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  Windows 10 still runs on 16.9% of the Windows devices monitored by asset-tracking service Lansweeper. That's more than one in six, The Register points out.
  A year ago, the operating system accounted for about half of the machines in its dataset, falling to the low-to-mid 40% range by the time Microsoft ended standard support. The decline continued after that, reaching 18.6% in June, but Lansweeper says migration has now slowed to a crawl... Small and medium-sized businesses are particularly expo
  
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• Aptera Announces US-Wide Repair Network for Its Upcoming Solar Electric Car

  19-07-2026 17:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  Solar car maker Aptera has "officially announced a repair network partnership which will give owners of its upcoming solar electric car access to thousands of repair shops nationwide," reports Electrek:We recently got a chance to drive the Aptera solar EV and tour the company's factory, and came away both impressed at the progress that has been made, but cognizant of the long road ahead for the company. One question that often gets raised in reference to EV startups is how owners get service on
  
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• Aptera Announces Nationwide Repair Network For Its Upcoming Solar Electric Car

  19-07-2026 17:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  Solar car maker Aptera has "officially announced a repair network partnership which will give owners of its upcoming solar electric car access to thousands of repair shops nationwide," reports Electrek:We recently got a chance to drive the Aptera solar EV and tour the company's factory, and came away both impressed at the progress that has been made, but cognizant of the long road ahead for the company. One question that often gets raised in reference to EV startups is how owners get service on
  
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• Former Richard Stallman Colleague Now Argues for Open AI Models Too

  19-07-2026 16:34 via news.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes:
  Recalling his initial resistance to free and open software, billionaire computer scientist David Siegel argues vigorously in FORTUNE that the stakes are too high to let AI become increasingly closed. "In the 1980s, I had the chance to spend several years arguing about free and open software, what we now call open source, with the founder of the movement, Richard Stallman. My office at the MIT AI Lab was next door to his. Stallman's position was that the s
  
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• Are There Cybersecurity Risks in Over-the-Air Tech Used in Autos?

  19-07-2026 13:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  CNBC reports:
  The automotive industry's increasing use of over-the-air technology to update vehicle systems makes it more susceptible to cyberattacks, analysts say, urging more intervention in the sector... Its use represents "a unique national security concern," Gabriel Lim, senior analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told CNBC. "Aside from data privacy concerns, the potential of a foreign actor sabotaging the controls of a moving vehicle is a possibility t
  
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• New Study Links Teen Boys' ADHD Symptoms To Addictive Social Media Use

  19-07-2026 09:34 via science.slashdot.org
  A new study by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco "adds to growing research linking increased social media use to detrimental effects on attention, memory and cognition," reports the Washington Post:The study followed more than 11,000 U.S. adolescents over a period of five years, with participants first asked about their own social media use at the average age of 12, and surveyed annually through the average age of 16. Researchers found that increases in addictive socia
  
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• 'Grok Build' Coding Tool Open Sourced This Week, Promises to Respect Zero Data Retention

  19-07-2026 05:34 via news.slashdot.org
  Elon Musk confirmed SpaceX has open sourced the Grok Build CLI this week, reports The Register, "just days after researchers caught the AI tool scooping up users' entire repositories and uploading them to company-controlled cloud storage."
  That discovery had "gathered so much negative attention that Elon Musk felt compelled to issue a public statement alongside SpaceX, and its technical staff, promising to delete all data that Grok Build has ever stored and give users more choice over how their
  
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• OpenAI Acknowledges GPT-5.6 May Accidentally Delete Files, Calls It 'Honest Mistake'

  19-07-2026 03:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  "OpenAI has finally confirmed reports that its latest family of large language models can accidentally delete files," reports InfoWorld, "while stressing that such incidents are rare and should be viewed as 'honest mistakes.'"Reports of the flagship LLMs deleting files emerged shortly after the company launched them earlier this month, with investor Matt Shumer taking to X to report that GPT-5.6-Sol had "just accidentally deleted almost all" of his Mac's files. Just days later, software engineer
  
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• France Orders ISPs to Block Access to Polymarket

  19-07-2026 02:17 via yro.slashdot.org
  France's regulatory authority for licensed gambling/betting games "announced this week that it ordered ISPs to block access to Polymarket," reports Engadget. Anyone caught advertising an unauthorized betting site "could be fined up to 100,000 euros, or around $114,000." (The article notes this follows a previous regulatory action from November placing a geoblock on financial transactions from French residents on Polymarket's site.)In May Spain blocked access to Polymarket and Kalshi while it lau
  
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• How Microsoft's 'Little Workaround' Created a Major Threat to America's Defense Department

  19-07-2026 01:17 via yro.slashdot.org
  This week Slashdot reader joshuark found the story of exactly how in 2025 ProPublica reporter Renee Dudley confirmed Microsoft was running tech support for the U.S. Defense Department through China, America's biggest cybersecurity adversary — and how that investigation ultimately changed U.S. government policy.
  The reporter first found an ad offering $18 to $28 to hire Americans as "digital escorts" for China-based tech support, then just searched LinkedIn for people who apparently had ans
  
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• Next UK Prime Minister Drops Digital ID Scheme

  19-07-2026 00:17 via news.slashdot.org
  Reuters reports:
  Incoming British prime minister Andy Burnham will scrap the government's troubled plans for a digital ID scheme when he enters office on Monday, a spokesperson for the new Labour Party leader said. Resources devoted to the scheme, deemed a "fiasco" by a cross-party committee of lawmakers, will be redirected to Burnham's priorities, the spokesperson said...
  "All the time and resource that was going to be spent on a national ID scheme will go instead to where it's most needed, suc
  
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• Gen Z and Millennials are Buying CDs - Though Half Don't Have CD Players

  18-07-2026 21:50 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  "Approximately half of Gen Z and millennials who have purchased a CD do not own a CD player," according to midyear sales statistics from entertainment data company Luminate. It's driven in part by "collection building", according to their report [PDF]:The CD has been recontextualized from a functional audio format into an
  affordable collectible. This behavior underscores that for younger generations, the act of buying
  physical music is as much about aesthetic ownership and direct financial suppo
  
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• NextBSD Returns to Port Apple Source Onto FreeBSD

  18-07-2026 20:46 via bsd.slashdot.org
  "One of the most interesting BSD variants of the 2010s, NextBSD, has come back to life under new management," reports The Register:
  Aside from the homepage, there's a GitHub repository — but beware, this is separate from the old one, whose repo is still there although the most recent changes were seven years ago. The new project also has a project history giving credit where it's due. The main man behind the revival is Joe Maloney, known on GitHub as pkgdemon. In case his name rings a bell
  
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• CNBC's Jim Cramer Says He Needs 'Cold Hard' Proof AI Is Paying Off

  18-07-2026 19:34 via slashdot.org
  In a sign of our times, CNBC's Jim Cramer "said Wednesday that it's time for companies to prove artificial intelligence is paying off," reports CNBC:
  "I need cold hard return facts," the "Mad Money" host said. "Or, I, too, will grow more skeptical than I am now...." While Cramer said he remains optimistic about the long-term opportunity, he argued the market needs more evidence that those investments are translating into measurable financial returns for customers. Cramer said one of his biggest
  
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• Long After Pluto Fly-By, NASA's New Horizon's Probe Wakes Up Again, Starts Doing New Science

  18-07-2026 18:34 via science.slashdot.org
  Launched in 2006, NASA's New Horizons probe flew by the planet Pluto in 2015. But this week it "awakened from its longest sleep ever," reports CNN.It's now 5.9 billion miles (9.5 billion kilometers) from Earth...
  NASA's New Horizons spacecraft went into a planned hibernation mode on August 7, 2025, and woke up on June 23 using commands stored on its main computer. The mission's flight controllers at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, confirmed that New
  
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• Union Fights Microsoft Over Layoffs at Game Studios

  18-07-2026 17:34 via games.slashdot.org
  Thursday the union that helped organize thousands of workers across numerous Microsoft-owned video game studios filed unfair labor complaints against Microsoft over the layoffs of 1,600 employees. The gaming news site Aftermath says the complaints allege unlawful action:
  "Xbox management is required to bargain with the union over the decision of layoffs prior to implementing them during the status quo period, and we are pursuing every available avenue to protect our members," a Communications Wo
  
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• The 'Death of the Stick Shift' is Almost Here for Americans

  18-07-2026 16:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  Last year just 0.6% of new vehicles made for U.S. customers were stick shifts, reports the Washington Post, citing preliminary government data.
  "That's a precipitous drop from the 34.6 percent of vehicles with manual transmissions produced in 1980."
  [T]he stick shift's popularity hit multiple new lows in recent years, with no signs of a turnaround, thanks to new technologies and a rapidly changing marketplace. Buyers and automakers increasingly have turned to the sophisticated automatic drivetra
  
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