ICT news

• Is ChatGPT Changing How You're Writing?

  28-08-2026 05:30 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report fro SFGATE: From "rizz" to "meat proxy," words and phrases have fallen in and out of favor for centuries. Culture, politics and technological development have long influenced these trends, and now, new research shows that ChatGPT is beginning to influence how humans communicate. The findings from a team at the Pew Research Center show how, in a short time since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022 and other chatbots followed, the use of certain words and p
  
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• States Can Regulate Prediction Markets As Gambling, Federal Appeals Court Rules

  29-08-2026 00:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  A federal appeals court has ruled that states can regulate prediction markets like Kalshi as gambling, handing state regulators their biggest legal victory yet against the booming industry. "There are still related lawsuits pending across the country, and legal experts believe the matter will ultimately be settled by the Supreme Court," reports CNN. "But Friday's ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is the largest courtroom victory to date for the states as they seek to regulate predic
  
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• OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and 100 Other Companies Call For Action To Defend Against Rogue AI

  28-08-2026 23:10 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Over a hundred tech companies -- including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft -- have signed an open letter urging both the private and public sectors to work together to defend themselves from AI-related cyber threats. The letter -- which was also signed by prominent cyber firms like CrowdStrike, Okta, and Fortinet, as well as prominent financial institutions and internet infrastructure firms -- calls for the adoption of new forms of cy
  
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• Songs Created By AI Banned From Australia's Music Charts

  28-08-2026 22:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Australia's official music charts will no longer accept songs that are largely or entirely AI-generated, requiring eligible releases to be "substantially human made." The BBC reports: The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) said the new code would help "promote the human nature of artistry." It follows a controversy around a cover of Madonna's Like A Prayer by Australian DJ Josh Fawaz which recently topped the ARIA dance singles chart and peaked at number 2 on the country's overall
  
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• Apple TV and Apple One Subscription Prices Increase By Up To 20%

  28-08-2026 21:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Apple is raising Apple TV's U.S. price to $14.99 per month, up from $12.99, while the annual plan jumps from $99 to $119. It's the service's fourth price hike in four years and means the monthly cost has now tripled from its $4.99 launch price in 2019. Apple One's Individual plan is also rising from $19.95 to $21.95 per month.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Pentagon's Blacklisting of Anthropic Was Unlawful, US Judge Rules

  28-08-2026 20:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A US judge ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration broke the law when it designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk earlier this year, finding that the government had unlawfully targeted the AI firm for refusing to comply with defense department demands. "The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," Judge Rita Lin said in a 59-page decision.Lin's ruling barred th
  
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• Stripe and Advent Ditch $50 Billion PayPal Takeover Bid

  28-08-2026 19:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have ditched their $53 billion pursuit of PayPal, ending a deal that would have been the largest fintech acquisition ever. "Stripe last week agreed to pay $8 billion for AI model marketplace OpenRouter, but a source said that the OpenRouter and PayPal deals were operating on independent tracks," reports Axios.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Roblox Is Cracking Down On Games That Reward Kids For Doomscrolling

  28-08-2026 18:00 via games.slashdot.org
  Roblox is restricting games that reward younger players for endlessly consuming autoplaying media feeds. The new restrictions are specifically targeting Roblox experiences like "Steal an Egg," which encouraged players to watch TikTok-style clips for in-game benefits. "Roblox's official alert does not expressly mention SAE, but the new policy is most certainly targeting the viral game first and foremost," reports TechSpot. From the report: The company said games that reward ongoing media consumpt
  
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• US Considers Fresh Round of Tariffs On Semiconductors

  28-08-2026 17:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is reportedly considering new tariffs on semiconductors used in the U.S., as tech giants race to beat China in the artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out. The duties will be imposed on an expanded range of tech products made alongside chips, including laptops, data center servers and gaming hardware, eight people familiar with the matter told Politico in a report published Thursday.The measures,
  
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• Gemini Notebook Now Lets You Reference Books, Turn Them Into Different Formats

  28-08-2026 13:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Google is adding an "Expert Intelligence" feature to Gemini Notebook (formerly known as NotebookLM) that lets users cite and work directly from more than 100,000 books they own through Google Play Books. Those books can be used as sources for things like quizzes, infographics, and Audio Overviews. Digital Trends reports: For now, Google is offering one free book to users in the US as part of the launch campaign, with a caveat -- "while supplies last." At the moment, Expert Intelligence is only a
  
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• Canada Hires 48 Scholars Away From Top US Universities

  28-08-2026 09:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Canada is recruiting 64 researchers to universities across the country (source paywalled; alternative source), including 48 from U.S. institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and MIT. The hires are backed by more than $364 million in government funding and are part of a broader effort to attract researchers in fields such as AI, climate science, and medicine. The New York Times reports: While scientists often shy away from political discourse, some are saying the Trump administration's assault on sci
  
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• AI's Memory Crunch Is Coming For Android Apps

  28-08-2026 01:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  Google is imposing new memory-use limits on Android apps as the AI data center boom contributes to a broader memory chip shortage that could leave lower-cost phones with less RAM. Developers will have until February 2027 to meet new thresholds for memory and bitmap usage. To aid developers, Google is adding tools to flag apps that exceed the limits and help prevent slowdowns and crashes. TechCrunch reports: The company explains that the mobile industry is now facing "significant hardware supply
  
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• OpenAI Is Developing a 'Persistent' AI Agent

  28-08-2026 00:00 via features.slashdot.org
  Wired reports that OpenAI is testing a new "Persistent mode" for Codex that would let the agent keep working until explicitly "put to sleep," proactively creating follow-up tasks for itself across sessions and using prior interactions and knowledge of the user to decide what to do next. Code alluding to the feature was spotted in the product's code base, though it has not been rolled out or officially announced yet. From the report: Persistent mode appears in Codex's "reasoning effort" menu, in
  
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• Ring Says New Encryption Limits What It Can Give Police

  27-08-2026 23:00 via it.slashdot.org
  Ring is rolling out a new default encryption system called TAKE, or "Throw Away the Key Encryption," that rotates video keys every five minutes and permanently deletes Ring's copy after 24 hours. The system is designed to preserve cloud features such as smart alerts and AI video search while limiting what Ring can provide under legal process to non-video account information and encrypted footage. The Verge reports: Ring says TAKE uses unique, rotating encryption keys for your footage, stored in
  
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• Claude, Codex, and Hermes Installed Unowned Code Inside Corporate Networks

  27-08-2026 22:08 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Documentation files on more than 100 websites are referencing potentially dangerous executable content that gets installed automatically when visited by many AI agents [including Claude, OpenAI's Codex, and Nous Research's Hermes]. A few dozen companies, some of them Fortune 500s, are among those that executed proof-of-concept code. At least one misconfigured site is directing visitors, human or AI, to live malware.The potentially dangerous
  
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• Trump Declares National Emergency to Ban Some Foreign Grid Equipment

  27-08-2026 21:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader dhartshorn writes: Foreign-produced "bulk power" equipment is now effectively banned, and the list of what constitutes such equipment is essentially everything used to make up the grid... much of which we are heavily dependent on foreign sources to supply. In a Wednesday executive order, President Trump said foreign supply of electric equipment "constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat" to national security. The Hill reports: Under the order, it will be up to Ener
  
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• Panic Passes Trump Tariff Refunds Back to Playdate Customers

  27-08-2026 20:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Panic is refunding Playdate customers the 19% tariff charges it passed along while the Trump administration's import duties were in effect, after the Supreme Court ruled the tariffs illegal and the company began receiving refunds from the government. Panic says the money "just [wasn't] ours to keep." Ars Technica reports: In an update posted on the Playdate help site this week, Panic noted that it has finally "begun to receive refunds of the tariffs we paid in the last year" and had consequently
  
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• Nvidia Agrees to Acquire Hugging Face For $13 Billion

  27-08-2026 19:00 via news.slashdot.org
  The Information reported on Wednesday that Nvidia has agreed to buy open-source platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion. "Deal talks began after Hugging Face, an open-source AI platform developers use to collaborate, test and share tools, received acquisition interest from another suitor," reports CNBC, citing the (paywalled) report. Business Insider separately reported the acquisition talks. From CNBC: If completed, the acquisition would put one of the most widely used platforms for sharing and
  
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• Operation Bluebird Launches New Twitter

  27-08-2026 18:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Operation Bluebird, the Virginia-based startup trying to revive the allegedly abandoned "Twitter" name and logo, announced Monday that it has launched its new social media network: Twitter.now. "We are a small company, we have investors, and we have a product," Stephen Coates, one of Operation Bluebird's cofounders, told Ars. "And we have waited months and months to launch, and we are not going to wait anymore."[...] Twitter.now, still in it
  
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• How Meta's Plan To Replace Workers With AI Agents Fell Apart

  27-08-2026 17:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Reuters reports that Meta explored shrinking some teams by as much as 60% as part of an "AI native" restructuring plan that would shift much of employees' day-to-day work to AI agents and smaller teams of human "builders." But the effort quickly ran into employee revolt and disappointing productivity gains, leading Zuckerberg to scrap a planned second wave of cuts after Meta laid off 10% of its workforce in May. From the report: In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his top lieutenants gather
  
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• More Than 100 Water Systems Were Hit In July Cyberattacks

  27-08-2026 13:00 via it.slashdot.org
  CISA says more than 100 internet-exposed U.S. water and wastewater systems were targeted in July, often through programmable logic controllers connected directly to cellular modems. "That's the first time the feds have put a number on the digital intrusions, but they have yet to attribute the campaign, widely suspected to be linked to Iran, to a particular group," reports The Register. From the report: Suspected Iranian attackers targeted water and wastewater facilities across at least a dozen s
  
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• Radiation Link In Flight Attendant's Breast Cancer, French Court Finds

  27-08-2026 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  A French court has for the first time recognized cosmic radiation as a contributing occupational factor in a flight attendant's breast cancer, alongside passive smoking and years of night work. The landmark ruling could open the door to similar claims from other aircrew, as research continues to link long-term high-altitude flying with elevated exposure to radiation-related cancers. The BBC reports: Sophie Lainault, a 59 year-old former stewardess on Air France, sought to have her cancer recogni
  
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• Bill Gates Proposes Major Limits On AI Development

  27-08-2026 05:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates argued on Wednesday that artificial intelligence needs significant limits or else the harm to humans will outweigh any potential good. "AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice," he said in a 6,000-word essay, entitled "The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical." [...] "Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be o
  
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• OpenAI Releases Its Official Report On the Hugging Face Breach

  27-08-2026 01:00 via it.slashdot.org
  TechCrunch reports that OpenAI released its official report Wednesday on the Hugging Face breach, "offering the clearest picture yet of how an unusual chain of events allowed an AI model to escape its testing environment and triggered a sprawling cybersecurity incident." The AI company says the breach began when an unreleased cyber model, tested without normal production safeguards, encountered an impossible task and chained together previously unknown exploits to escape its environment and comp
  
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• China's Moonshot In Talks With Microsoft, Amazon, Google Over K3 Revenue Sharing

  27-08-2026 00:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: China's Moonshot AI is negotiating revenue-sharing agreements with Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet's Google, that would allow the U.S. cloud giants to host its blockbuster Kimi K3 model, three people familiar with the talks said. Any deal could mark the first big revenue-sharing pact between a Chinese AI firm and a major U.S. cloud company. The discussions highlight how China's leading AI models, often far cheaper than Western offeri
  
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• Apple Maps Now Has Ads

  26-08-2026 23:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple has begun rolling out ads in Apple Maps, with sponsored businesses appearing at the top of search results and in the "suggested places" section for users in the U.S. and Canada. Apple says the ads can be based on approximate location, search terms, or the area of the map being viewed, but are not tied to users' Apple Accounts and personal data remains on-device. 9to5Mac reports: Ads appear just like every other business listing, except they have a small blue badge that says 'Ad.' You can s
  
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• Inside the Warehouse Where Amazon Scans and Destroys Books For AI Training

  26-08-2026 22:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Last week, 404 Media published a story that revealed an Amazon warehouse where the company scans and destroys thousands of books for AI training data. Today, the publication has released an interview with one of the Amazon employees at the warehouse. "The employee worked at Amazon's VGT3 warehouse, which is housed in the same facility as LAS8, where Amazon operates its print-on-demand business," reports 404 Media. "Both operations are part of a larger complex of Amazon facilities in Las Vegas, N
  
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• Xbox's New Disc-to-Digital Program Gives Physical Games a Digital Future

  26-08-2026 21:00 via games.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For decades, console owners have faced a choice between the convenience of digital downloads and the permanence of physical game discs. Soon, Xbox owners will be able to get the best of both worlds for thousands of supported titles as part of a newly announced disc-to-digital program. The program -- announced today ahead of testing for Xbox Insiders starting August 31 -- will let players claim a "digital entitlement" for "most Xbox One and X
  
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• Amazon to Acquire DuckLabs, Adding the Team Behind DuckDB

  26-08-2026 20:25 via developers.slashdot.org
  Amazon has agreed to acquire DuckLabs, bringing the team behind the popular open-source DuckDB database into AWS. "The deal fits Amazon's broader push to turn S3, its flagship cloud storage service, into a place where customers analyze data rather than just store it," reports GeekWire. "It gives Amazon a team experienced in building fast, lightweight analytics software that runs directly against data sitting in cloud storage." The DuckDB project itself will remain free and open source under the
  
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• Meta Reaches $18 Billion of Settlements Over Children's Social Media Addiction

  26-08-2026 19:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Meta has agreed to pay up to $18 billion and make major changes to Facebook and Instagram to settle claims from most U.S. states that the platforms were designed to addict children and misled users about their safety. For the next decade, teens will be limited to two hours a day and blocked from using the apps between midnight and 6 a.m. without parental consent. Meta will, however, still be allowed to use personalized recommendations and targeted advertising. Reuters reports: The settlements in
  
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