ICT news

• Journal That Published Faulty Black Plastic Study Removed From Science Index

  19-12-2024 20:42 via science.slashdot.org
  
  The publisher of a high-profile, now-corrected study on black plastics has been removed from a critical index of academic journals amid questions about quality criteria, according to a report by Retraction Watch. From a report: On December 16, Clarivate -- a scholarly publication analytics company -- removed the journal Chemosphere from its platform, the Web of Science, which is a key index for academic journals. The indexing platform tracks citations and calculates journal "impact factors," a p
  
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• China Broadens Travel Curbs To Encompass Family of Top AI Talent

  29-09-2026 01:00 via slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Business Standard: China has expanded overseas travel restrictions for top AI professionals in private firms to include the families of key personnel, further tightening measures designed to prevent the outflow of critical know-how and information to the US. Government agencies have recently begun to share the wider restrictions with affected people, which include prominent startup founders as well as the heads of strategically important comp
  
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• AMD Acquires Fei-Fei Li's World Labs For $8.2 Billion

  29-09-2026 00:00 via slashdot.org
  AMD has agreed to acquire Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for about $8.2 billion in stock, making it the chipmaker's second-largest acquisition and giving it a major foothold in "world models" that simulate 3D environments for robotics and other physically grounded AI. CNBC reports: AI researchers expect world models will be able to help develop robots and other physically-grounded artificial intelligence applications. AMD plans to keep World Labs separate from its chipmaking business until the transact
  
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• TikTok to Pay Alabama $100 Million, Limit Teen Use In First State Settlement

  28-09-2026 23:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  TikTok has agreed to pay Alabama at least $100 million and adopt new restrictions for teenage users, including a two-hour daily limit, overnight access restrictions, stronger age verification, a ban on beauty filters, and an option for a non-personalized feed. The settlement could grow to as much as $300 million if enough other state attorneys general join similar agreements. The Guardian reports: A trial had been set to begin on Monday in the southern US state over claims by Alabama that TikTok
  
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• Data Center Developer Offers $10,000 Checks To Nearby Households

  28-09-2026 22:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: NorthPoint Development wants to build a data center on 1,300 acres in the Pocono foothills, near Hazle Township, Pennsylvania. As well as seeking to charm the local government with various funding packages, it has proposed paying checks of $10,000 per household. Despite the Pennsylvania town's median income of $60,000, the offer isn't being warmly welcomed by locals, reports the Wall Street Journal. Those interviewed were widely against th
  
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• Meta Taps MongoDB CEO Desai to Drive Enterprise AI Push

  28-09-2026 21:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  Meta has hired MongoDB CEO Chirantan "CJ" Desai to lead a new enterprise AI business aimed at turning Meta's models, agents and tools into products companies can deploy themselves. Reuters reports: Desai, a veteran technology executive, took over the role from Dev Ittycheria. MongoDB has appointed Ittycheria as interim CEO as it searches for a permanent replacement. "While the departure is disappointing, we believe MongoDB remains well-positioned strategically and view the share-price reaction a
  
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• Nvidia Unveils AI Agent Safety Platform With Hardware-Based Watchdog

  28-09-2026 20:00 via it.slashdot.org
  wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Nvidia on Monday announced the Open Agent Safety Platform, which combines open source software and a reference system design to keep AI agents within set boundaries from testing through deployment. The chipmaker explained that the platform pairs the open-source OpenShell runtime with Sentry, an out-of-band watchdog running on BlueField-4 DPUs. Nvidia says Sentry can monitor agent activity independently and quarantine an agent that crosses its boundar
  
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• Amazon Evaluating Drone Deliveries In Australia, Asia

  28-09-2026 19:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Amazon is preparing to expand Prime Air drone deliveries into Australia and potentially other Asia-Pacific markets, with a new regulatory role tasked with securing the approvals needed to launch service there. The Register reports: "As Prime Air evaluates Australia and other countries, we are hiring a Head of Regulatory Approvals, Australia -- the person responsible for navigating Australia's aviation regulatory system and securing every approval required to deliver to Australian customers by dr
  
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• Bill Gates Says an AI 'Kill Switch' Isn't Enough

  28-09-2026 18:00 via slashdot.org
  Bill Gates said an AI "kill switch" alone would be insufficient to address the technology's risks. "The kill switch is, that's kind of a weird thing. It's not enough to have a kill switch," the Microsoft co-founder said in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." He said the more immediate concern is people using AI for cyberattacks or bioterrorism rather than systems acting autonomously. "We're not yet at the point where they autonomously grab computers and, you know, can't be
  
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• SpaceX Launches Starship Into Orbit

  28-09-2026 17:20 via science.slashdot.org
  SpaceX's Starship reached orbit for the first time, successfully deploying 26 operational Starlink V3 satellites after overcoming an early Raptor 3 engine shutdown during ascent. "SpaceX plans to eventually deploy 100,000 upgraded Starlink V3s to expand the company's wireless satellite internet services," notes Space.com. Here's the latest update from the report:SpaceX has decided to return Starship from orbit earlier than expected. After valuating the upper stage Ship's status during its first
  
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• Walmart Says It's Not Using Personal Info To Set Prices As It Expands Digital Shelf Labels

  28-09-2026 17:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Walmart is aiming to assuage customers' fears about its new pricing technology as it rolls out digital price labels at its stores. In a statement posted on the company's website, Walmart's CEO John Furner vowed that the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer isn't using personal information like income, shopping history or a customer's willingness to pay to set prices, and it won't be doing so in the future either. "We don't set differ
  
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• Are AI Chatbots Spreading Misinformation to US Voters?

  28-09-2026 10:34 via politics.slashdot.org
  Are AI chatbots quietly shaping the perceptions of U.S. voters? Voters trying to educate themselves about candidates "are unknowingly being served partisan talking points in the guise of neutral news summaries," write two news researchers in Politico magazine:Leading AI chatbots cite partisan websites masquerading as independent local news outlets nearly half of the time when people ask about candidates and issues that the partisan sites have covered in the midterm campaign, according to a new a
  
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• Apple Faces $5.7 Billion Patent Infringement Verdict Over iPhone And Apple Watch Haptics

  28-09-2026 06:04 via apple.slashdot.org
  "A federal jury in San Diego awarded Taction Technology more than $5.7 billion in damages Friday after finding that Apple infringed claims from two haptics patents,"
  reports CNBC:Taction sued Apple in 2021 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. The company alleged that Apple was improperly "capitalizing on Taction's innovation and success" by selling devices that infringed on its vibration technology, according to the complaint. Apple initially won dismissal in 2023,
  
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• Just How Big is the AI Buildout - and How Risky?

  28-09-2026 01:34 via slashdot.org
  A new Brookings Institution study notes the "strikingly physical" economic footprint of AI's buildout, from specialized chips and electricity to purpose-built data centers. (Two-thirds of a data center's costs are IT equipment, with one-third going to real estate and its associated power infrastructure.) "At an average of 3.63 percent of GDP per year, the projected buildout would be larger relative to the economy than the major U.S. canal, railroad, electrification, highway, and telecommunicatio
  
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• Waymo Says Its Self-Driving Cars Reduced Injury-Causing Accidents by 82%

  27-09-2026 21:04 via tech.slashdot.org
  Waymo's self-driving car technology "continues to outperform human benchmarks," the company claimed this week. "It was involved in 841 fewer injury-causing crashes — an 82% reduction compared to human drivers."
  Electrek reports:We've seen various Waymo crash data before, with Waymo claiming crash reductions. That's all well and good when the company says it, but we've also seen independent data confirming similar (though lower) crash reduction numbers...
  Waymo has enough miles that it's re
  
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• After Dozens of Incidents at OpenAI and Anthropic, OpenAI Pauses Model Training to Build More Safeguards

  27-09-2026 16:34 via slashdot.org
  "OpenAI said it has paused training of its latest AI models," reports the Associated Press, "as reports of AI agents going rogue mount."The decision to halt development came just hours after the company disclosed Friday that it was reviewing several incidents from the summer in which OpenAI agents searching federal government websites acted in unexpected ways beyond what was asked of them while gathering and distributing information... OpenAI said in a statement that it will resume training "onl
  
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• Critical Zero-Day Vulnerabilities Exploited in Citrix NetScaler ADC, Gateway

  27-09-2026 14:00 via cisa.gov
  CISA is amplifying Citrix’s disclosure of eight new vulnerabilities affecting Citrix NetScaler ADC and Citrix NetScaler Gateway products: CVE-2026-88771, CVE-2026-88772, CVE-2026-88773, CVE-2026-88774, CVE-2026-88775, CVE-2026-88776, CVE-2026-88777, and CVE-2026-88778. 
  CISA has added CVE-2026-88771 and CVE-2026-88772 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog. Both are critical, zero-day vulnerabilities that can independently enable remote code execution. CISA has received
  
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• New Tin-based Solar Cells Trap Heat 1,000 Times Longer, Could Beat 33% Limit

  27-09-2026 12:04 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Could this push solar cell efficiency beyond the theoretical 33% limit? Interesting Engineering reports:
  Researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands found that tin-based perovskite solar cells can slow heat loss from high-energy "hot electrons..."
  When sunlight strikes a panel, photons jump-start electrons into action. The most energetic photons create super-charged hot electrons... [but] in fractions of a trillionth of a second, these high-energy particles rapidly cool, dumpin
  
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• China and the US Say They've Agreed to Start Talks About AI

  27-09-2026 07:36 via news.slashdot.org
  The United States and China have agreed to "launch a dialogue" on AI, reports Reuters.On artificial intelligence, the two sides agreed to hold a dialogue on the technology's risks and benefits, with the next round of discussions set for November, and to set up a communication channel for AI-related incidents, the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the White House said.
  The White House said that the leaders had agreed to use the term "super intelligence" in place of "artificial intelligence." In a sepa
  
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• KDE and GNOME Developers Ponder How to Handle AI-Generated Contributions

  27-09-2026 03:04 via tech.slashdot.org
  Last weekend KDE's annual Akademy conference included a presentation proposing
  an AI-native KDE," writes The Register. This led KDE developer Nate Graham to open a discussion about proposed restrictions on LLM-assisted contributions which "rapidly became heated. Moderators issued warnings, restricted further comments, and eventually removed the thread."
  But as Graham writes on his blog, "A bunch of people mostly outside of KDE who disapprove of LLM usage derailed KDE's attempt to add restriction
  
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• After 40 Years, Microsoft Excel Will Add Single-Cell Lists and Arrays

  26-09-2026 22:34 via slashdot.org
  Microsoft's senior product manager for Excel acknowledges that "Throughout Excel's 40-year history, you've only been able to put one value per cell." But that's now changing with arrays in cells (as well as nested arrays) and lists."You can create a list by selecting Insert > List or pressing Ctrl+J, then typing or pasting items separated by commas or semicolons, depending on your regional settings. Selecting the icon in the cell shows the individual values...""With lists, you can filter by o
  
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• AI Finds So Many Linux Bugs, Canonical Changes to a Two-Week Stable Release Update Cycle

  26-09-2026 18:04 via news.slashdot.org
  "Finding vulnerabilities faster also puts pressure on Linux distributions to fix and deliver patches faster," writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli
  AI has transformed bug discovery from "a manual, time-intensive process into a highly automated engine," notes Canonical's blog, leading to a "recent explosion in the volume of CVEs".
  Additionally, the upstream kernel community became its own CVE Numbering Authority (CNA) and assigned CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) identifiers to thousands
  
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• Is Microsoft Quietly Killing Off Its 'Copilot+ PC' Brand?

  26-09-2026 13:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  "Copilot+ PCs" were Microsoft's official branding for Windows 11 "AI PCs" that met their system requirements. But the 2024 launch "didn't go smoothly," writes Windows Central, after security researchers discovered its proposed "Recall" feature was woefully insecure:This pretty much tarnished the Copilot+ PC brand, and over the last two years more and more OEMs have dropped the moniker from marketing materials and product names. In fact, even Microsoft has seemingly stopped mentioning it. I've no
  
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• Rogue OpenAI Agents Posted 53 User-Uploaded Images Onto the Internet, Accessed US Government Websites

  26-09-2026 09:04 via slashdot.org
  53 images that users uploaded into OpenAI models were included in training data — and then AI agents in an OpenAI research environment posted those 53 images on public image hosting sites.While posted as links that weren't publicly listed, "the images could still be discovered even if the links were not publicly listed," reports TechCrunch:OpenAI said it was working with the hosting providers to remove this content, though some of it is apparently still online. OpenAI said it could not not
  
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• Meta Made 43M Misleading Statements, New Mexico Jury Finds, Including on Its Cambridge Analytica Response

  26-09-2026 04:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  A New Mexico jury on Friday "found Facebook liable for deceiving users" about its privacy protections, reports the Associated Press.
  A New Mexico newspaper calls it "another massive legal victory" against Facebook, reporting that the jury found Facebook "had committed tens of millions of violations of the state's Unfair Practices Act in connection with its lies to consumers about how their personal information was handled by the company and third-party users."The state has asked the company be o
  
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• There's a New Way to Break RSA Encryption

  26-09-2026 00:04 via it.slashdot.org
  "Signature forgery." It's a new way to break RSA keys — and it doesn't require factoring. Ars Technica reports on new research using classical computing to "reduce the current RSA security level to an unacceptably low threshold" and lower the required computing resources by orders of magnitude.There's "a gap in current RSA-type security assumptions," according to a paper co-authored by University of California, San Diego professor Nadia Heninger, who argues that gap "gives classical crypta
  
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• Asteroids Named After Tom Lehrer and 'Weird Al' Yankovic

  25-09-2026 19:34 via science.slashdot.org
  "Weird Al" Yankovic's name has just been approved for a new asteroid — (14331) Alyankovic = 1981 EC26 — by the International Astronomical Union, reports Space.com.
  Yankovic's asteroid was championed by planetary scientist Allison McGraw joined by "several heavy hitters in the planetary science field, according to the Tucson Star. (Astrophysicist Steve Desch from the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University; Tim McCoy, one of the main curators of meteorites at
  
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• Raspberry Pi Stock Jumps 30% as Demand Surges. (And Boards Now Locked to Their Original RAM Size)

  25-09-2026 15:04 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Raspberry Pi's stock shot up over 30% in the last week. Why are investors so excited? For the six months ending June 30, revenue for Raspberry Pi Holdings "jumped 90% to $256.9 million," reports Investing.com, "while adjusted EBITDA more than doubled to $40.3 million, and profit before tax leapt 216% to $19.6 million."
  Underpinning the strong numbers was an acceleration in OEM adoption: direct unit shipments rose 26% to 3.4 million, total unit shipments climbed 17% to 4.2 million, and the custom
  
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• F-Droid 2.0: FOSS Android Appstore Continues Updating Despite Google's Pending 'Developer Verification' Plan

  25-09-2026 10:34 via news.slashdot.org
  "F-Droid, a third-party app repository that only distributes free and open-source software packages for Google's Android mobile platform, on Thursday announced version 2.0 of its Android app," reports The Register.
  Though they also note "a big banner across the top of the F-Droid site" pointing to a site describing pending changes from Google that threaten the future of F-Droid...[D]evelopers who want their apps broadly distributed outside the official Google Play Store will need to register wit
  
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• How Believable is Google's New 'Live Avatar' Capability?

  25-09-2026 06:04 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google has synthesized "expressive face-to-face experiences" for its speech agent Gemini 3.8 Live. They're now offering a Live Avatar "with precise lip-syncing, natural expressions, and fluid turn-taking" for Google Enterprise accounts wanting "engaging customer service" or for offering interactive walkthroughs. (Check out the not-creepy-at-all video in Google's announcement.)
  "Though Google will offer a library of preset avatars for customers to choose from, it will also allow organizations to
  
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