ICT news

• KDE Plasma 6.6 Released

  17-02-2026 23:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader jrepin writes: KDE Plasma is a popular desktop (and mobile too) environment for GNU/Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems. Among other things, it also powers the desktop mode of the Steam Deck gaming handheld. The KDE community today announced the latest release: Plasma 6.6.In this new major release, Spectacle can recognize texts from screenshots, a new on-screen keyboard and new login manager are available for testing, and a first-time wizard Plasma Setup was adde
  
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• Uber Putting $100 Million into EV Charging for Robotaxis

  19-02-2026 02:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  Uber plans to invest $100 million in EV charging infrastructure to support current and future robotaxi fleets in cities like Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and Dallas, "eventually partner[ing] with multiple robotaxi companies on actual robotaxi deployment -- WeRide, Waabi, Lucid, Nuro, May Mobility, Momenta, and Waymo of course," reports CleanTechnica. From the report: "Cities can only unlock the full promise of autonomy and electrification if the right charging infrastructure is built for scale. Th
  
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• Google's Pixel 10a Is the Same Damn Phone As the Pixel 9a

  19-02-2026 01:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google's Pixel 10a is essentially a flatter version of last year's Pixel 9a, keeping the same Tensor G4 chip, camera hardware, RAM, storage, and $500 price while dropping features like Pixelsnap Qi2 charging and advanced Gemini AI capabilities found in higher-end models. Gizmodo reports: We use words like "candy bar" or "slab" to describe our full-screen smartphones, but Google has designed what is likely the slabbiest phone of the modern era. During an hour-long hands-on with Google's all-new G
  
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• Meta Begins $65 Million Election Push To Advance AI Agenda

  19-02-2026 01:02 via politics.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Meta is preparing to spend $65 million this year to boost state politicians who are friendly to the artificial intelligence industry, beginning this week in Texas and Illinois, according to company representatives. The sum is the biggest election investment by Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The company was previously cautious about campaign engagements, making small donations out of a corporate political action comm
  
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• Mark Zuckerberg Testifies During Landmark Trial On Social Media Addiction

  19-02-2026 00:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  Mark Zuckerberg is testifying in a landmark Los Angeles trial examining whether Meta and other social media firms can be held liable for designing platforms that allegedly addict and harm children. NBC News reports: It's the first of a consolidated group of cases -- from more than 1,600 plaintiffs, including over 350 families and over 250 school districts -- scheduled to be argued before a jury in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Plaintiffs accuse the owners of Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and S
  
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• Google's AI Music Maker Is Coming To the Gemini App

  18-02-2026 23:40 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Google is bringing its Lyria 3 AI music model into the Gemini app, allowing users to generate 30-second songs from text, images, or video prompts directly within the chatbot. The Verge reports: Lyria 3's text-to-music capabilities allow Gemini app users to make songs by describing specific genres, moods, or memories, such as asking for an "Afrobeat track for my mother about the great times we had growing up." The music generator can make instrumental audio and songs with lyrics composed automati
  
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• GameHub Will Give Mac Owners Another Imperfect Way To Play Windows Games

  18-02-2026 23:00 via games.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For a while now, Mac owners have been able to use tools like CrossOver and Game Porting Toolkit to get many Windows games running on their operating system of choice. Now, GameSir plans to add its own potential solution to the mix, announcing that a version of its existing Windows emulation tool for Android will be coming to macOS. Hong Kong-based GameSir has primarily made a name for itself as a manufacturer of gaming peripherals -- the com
  
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• Texas Sues TP-Link Over China Links and Security Vulnerabilities

  18-02-2026 22:25 via news.slashdot.org
  TP-Link is facing legal action from the state of Texas for allegedly misleading consumers with "Made in Vietnam" claims despite China-dominated manufacturing and supply chains, and for marketing its devices as secure despite reported firmware vulnerabilities exploited by Chinese state-sponsored actors. The Register: The Lone Star State's Attorney General, Ken Paxton, is filing the lawsuit against California-based TP-Link Systems Inc., which was originally founded in China, accusing it of decepti
  
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• Study of 12,000 EU Firms Finds AI's Productivity Gains Are Real

  18-02-2026 21:43 via it.slashdot.org
  A study of more than 12,000 European firms found that AI adoption causally increases labour productivity by 4% on average across the EU, and that it does so without reducing employment in the short run.
  Researchers from the Bank for International Settlements and the European Investment Bank used an instrumental variable strategy that matched EU firms to comparable US firms by sector, size, investment intensity and other characteristics, then used the AI adoption rates of those US counterparts as
  
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• Ohio Newspaper Removes Writing From Reporters' Jobs, Hands It To an 'AI Rewrite Specialist'

  18-02-2026 21:05 via news.slashdot.org
  Cleveland.com, the digital arm of Ohio's Plain Dealer newspaper, has removed writing from the workloads of certain reporters and handed that job to what editor Chris Quinn calls an "AI rewrite specialist" who turns reporter-gathered material into article drafts.
  The reporters on these beats -- covering Lorain, Lake, Geauga, and most recently Medina County -- are assigned entirely to reporting, spending their time on in-person interviews and meeting sources for coffee. Editors review the AI-produ
  
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• Andrew Yang Warns AI Will Displace Millions of White-Collar Workers Within 18 Months

  18-02-2026 20:25 via news.slashdot.org
  Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate and longtime Universal Basic Income advocate, published a blog post this week warning that AI is about to displace millions of white-collar workers in the U.S. over the next 12 to 18 months, a wave he has taken to calling "the Fuckening."
  Yang cited a conversation with the CEO of a publicly traded tech company who said the firm is cutting 15% of its workforce now and plans another 20% cut in two years, followed by yet another 20% two years after tha
  
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• Linus Torvalds on How Linux Went From One-Man Show To Group Effort

  18-02-2026 19:45 via linux.slashdot.org
  Linus Torvalds has told The Register how Linux went from a solo hobby project on a single 386 PC in Helsinki to a genuinely collaborative effort, and the path involved crowdsourced checks, an FTP mirror at MIT, and a licensing decision that opened the floodgates.
  Torvalds released the first public snapshot, Linux 0.02, on October 5, 1991, on a Finnish FTP server -- about 10,000 lines of code that he had cross-compiled under Minix. He originally wanted to call it "Freax," but his friend Ari Lemmk
  
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• Vermont EV Buses Prove Unreliable For Transportation This Winter

  18-02-2026 19:05 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader writes: Electric buses are proving unreliable this winter for Vermont's Green Mountain Transit, as it needs to be over 41 degrees for the buses to charge, but due to a battery recall the buses are a fire hazard and can't be charged in a garage.
  Spokesman for energy workers advocacy group Power the Future Larry Behrens told the Center Square: "Taxpayers were sold an $8 million 'solution' that can't operate in cold weather when the home for these buses is in New England."
  "We'r
  
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• Microsoft Says Bug Causes Copilot To Summarize Confidential Emails

  18-02-2026 18:28 via it.slashdot.org
  Microsoft says a Microsoft 365 Copilot bug has been causing the AI assistant to summarize confidential emails since late January, bypassing data loss prevention (DLP) policies that organizations rely on to protect sensitive information. From a report: According to a service alert seen by BleepingComputer, this bug (tracked under CW1226324 and first detected on January 21) affects the Copilot "work tab" chat feature, which incorrectly reads and summarizes emails stored in users' Sent Items and Dr
  
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• Leaked Email Suggests Ring Plans To Expand 'Search Party' Surveillance Beyond Dogs

  18-02-2026 17:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  Ring's AI-powered "Search Party" feature, which links neighborhood cameras into a networked surveillance system to find lost dogs, was never intended to stop at pets, according to an internal email from founder Jamie Siminoff obtained by 404 Media.
  Siminoff told employees in early October, shortly after the feature launched, that Search Party was introduced "first for finding dogs" and that the technology would eventually help "zero out crime in neighborhoods." The on-by-default feature faced in
  
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• WordPress Gets AI Assistant That Can Edit Text, Generate Images and Tweak Your Site

  18-02-2026 17:00 via slashdot.org
  WordPress has started rolling out an AI assistant built into its site editor and media library that can edit and translate text, generate and edit images through Google's Nano Banana model, and make structural changes to sites like creating new pages or swapping fonts.
  Users can also invoke the assistant by tagging "@ai" in block notes, a commenting feature added to the site editor in December's WordPress 6.9 update. The tool is opt-in -- users need to toggle on "AI tools" in their site settings
  
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• Lab-Grown Meat Exists (But Nobody Wants To Eat It)

  18-02-2026 16:20 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: In 2013, scientists unveiled the first lab-grown burger at a cost of $330,000. By 2023, the FDA approved cultivated chicken for sale. The price had dropped to around $10-$30 per pound, and over $3 billion in investor money had poured into more than 175 companies developing meat grown from animal cells instead of slaughtered animals.
  The promise is straightforward: real meat, no slaughter required. You could eat beef without killing cattle, chicken without ind
  
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• FDA Reverses Decision and Agrees To Review Moderna's Flu Vaccine

  18-02-2026 15:40 via science.slashdot.org
  The Food and Drug Administration has reversed its decision on Moderna's flu vaccine and has agreed to review it for possible approval, Moderna announced on Wednesday. From a report: Last week, the agency rejected Moderna's application for review of a new flu vaccine, saying the company's research design was flawed. But in subsequent discussions the company said that the agency had relented and agreed to begin a review.
  Moderna said it split its application for the flu vaccine based on age, seeki
  
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• India Tells University To Leave AI Summit After Presenting Chinese Robot as Its Own

  18-02-2026 15:00 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: An Indian university has been asked to vacate its stall at the country's flagship AI summit after a staff member was caught presenting a commercially available robotic dog made in China as its own creation, two government sources said.
  "You need to meet Orion. This has been developed by the Centre of Excellence at Galgotias University," Neha Singh, a professor of communications, told state-run broadcaster DD News this week in remarks that have since gone vira
  
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• Thousands of CEOs Just Admitted AI Had No Impact On Employment Or Productivity

  18-02-2026 14:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: In 1987, economist and Nobel laureate Robert Solow made a stark observation about the stalling evolution of the Information Age: Following the advent of transistors, microprocessors, integrated circuits, and memory chips of the 1960s, economists and companies expected these new technologies to disrupt workplaces and result in a surge of productivity. Instead, productivity growth slowed, dropping from 2.9% from 1948 to 1973, to 1.1% after 1973. Ne
  
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• Single Dose of DMT Rapidly Reduces Symptoms of Major Depression

  18-02-2026 11:00 via science.slashdot.org
  In a small double-blind clinical trial, a single intravenous dose of DMT produced rapid and clinically meaningful reductions in symptoms of major depressive disorder within a week, with effects lasting up to three months in some patients. "Unlike psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide ( LSD), whose effects can last for hours, intravenous DMT has a half-life of around five minutes," notes ScienceAlert. "Its psychedelic effects are correspondingly brief, potentially making it more practical to
  
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• Air Pollution Emerges As a Direct Risk Factor For Alzheimer's Disease

  18-02-2026 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader walterbyrd shares a report from ABC News: In a study of nearly 28 million older Americans, long-term exposure to fine particle air pollution raised the risk of Alzheimer's disease. That link held even after researchers accounted for common conditions like high blood pressure, stroke and depression. Fine particle air pollution, known as PM2.5, consists of tiny particles in the air that come from car exhaust, power plants, wildfires, and burning fuels, according to the Ame
  
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• Bayer Agrees To $7.25 Billion Proposed Settlement Over Thousands of Roundup Cancer Lawsuits

  18-02-2026 04:30 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Agrochemical maker Bayer and attorneys for cancer patients announced a proposed $7.25 billion settlement Tuesday to resolve thousands of U.S. lawsuits alleging the company failed to warn people that its popular weedkiller Roundup could cause cancer. The proposed settlement comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to hear arguments in April on Bayer's assertion that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's approval of Roundup wi
  
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• Claude Sonnet 4.6 Model Brings 'Much-Improved Coding Skills', Upgraded Free Tier

  18-02-2026 03:02 via developers.slashdot.org
  Anthropic has released Claude Sonnet 4.6, the first upgrade to its mid-tier AI model since version 4.5 arrived in September 2025. The new model features a "1M token context window" and delivers a "full upgrade of the model's skills across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, knowledge work, and design." From Anthropic: Sonnet 4.6 brings much-improved coding skills to more of our users. Improvements in consistency, instruction following, and more have made developers with
  
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• Apple Is Reportedly Planning To Launch AI-Powered Glasses, a Pendant, and AirPods

  18-02-2026 02:25 via hardware.slashdot.org
  According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (paywalled), Apple is reportedly developing AI-powered smart glasses, a wearable pendant, and camera-equipped AirPods that connect to the iPhone and use "visual context" to let Siri perform real-world actions. The Verge reports: Apple is reportedly aiming to start production of its smart glasses in December, ahead of a 2027 launch. The new device will compete directly with Meta's lineup of smart glasses and is rumored to feature speakers, microphones, and a h
  
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• Discord Rival Maxes Out Hosting Capacity As Players Flee Age-Verification Crackdown

  18-02-2026 01:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  Following backlash over Discord's global rollout of strict age-verification checks, users are flocking to rival platform TeamSpeak and overwhelming its servers. According to PC Gamer, the Discord alternative said its hosting capacity has been maxed out in a number of regions including the U.S. From the report: [A]s I saw for myself while testing out free Discord alternatives, it's hard to deny the appeal of TeamSpeak. It's quick and easy to make an account, join or start a group chat, or join a
  
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• NPR's Radio Host David Greene Says Google's NotebookLM Tool Stole His Voice

  18-02-2026 01:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: David Greene had never heard of NotebookLM, Google's buzzy artificial intelligence tool that spins up podcasts on demand, until a former colleague emailed him to ask if he'd lent it his voice. "So... I'm probably the 148th person to ask this, but did you license your voice to Google?" the former co-worker asked in a fall 2024 email. "It sounds very much like you!"Greene, a public radio veteran who has hosted NPR's "Morning Edition" an
  
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• Idea Raised For Nicer DRM Panic Screen Integration On Fedora Linux

  18-02-2026 00:20 via linux.slashdot.org
  A proposal within the Fedora Linux community suggests improving the kernel's DRM Panic screen to a more user-friendly, BSOD-style experience. Phoronix reports: Open-source developer Jose Exposito proposed today a nicer experience for DRM Panic integration on Fedora. Rather than using DRM Panic with just the kernel log contents being encoded in the QR code displayed when a kernel panic occurs, the proposal is to have a customized Fedora web-page with the encoded QR contents to be shown on that we
  
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• Most VMware Users Still 'Actively Reducing Their VMware Footprint,' Survey Finds

  17-02-2026 23:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: More than two years after Broadcom took over VMware, the virtualization company's customers are still grappling with higher prices, uncertainty, and the challenges of reducing vendor lock-in. Today, CloudBolt Software released a report, "The Mass Exodus That Never Was: The Squeeze Is Just Beginning," that provides insight into those struggles. CloudBolt is a hybrid cloud management platform provider that aims to identify VMware customers' pa
  
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• US Lawyers Fire Up Privacy Class Action Accusing Lenovo of Bulk Data Transfers To China

  17-02-2026 22:26 via yro.slashdot.org
  A US law firm has accused Lenovo of violating Justice Department strictures about the bulk transfer of data to foreign adversaries, namely China. From a report: The case filed by Almeida Law Group on behalf of San Francisco-based "Spencer Christy, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated" centers on the Data Security Program regulations implemented by the DOJ last year. According to the suit, these were "implemented to prevent adversarial countries from acquiring large quantit
  
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