ICT news

• Microsoft Is Finally Killing Cortana On Windows

  03-06-2023 00:40 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  In a support document today, Microsoft announced its ending support for Cortana on Windows in late 2023. "Cortana continues to live on in Outlook mobile, Teams mobile, Teams display, and Teams rooms," notes XDA Developers. From the report: In the support document announcing the end of the Cortana era, Microsoft notes that you'll still be able to access AI experiences in Windows 11, and calls out Windows Copilot by name. Alongside that, there's the new Bing, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and voice acces
  
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• What Happened When Alaska's Court System Tried Answering Questions with an AI Chatbot?

  04-01-2026 03:34 via science.slashdot.org
  An AI chatbot to answer probate questions from Alaska residents "was supposed to be a three-month project," said Aubrie Souza, a consultant with the National Center for State Courts told NBC News. "We are now at well over a year and three months, but that's all because of the due diligence that was required to get it right.""With a project like this, we need to be 100% accurate, and that's really difficult with this technology," said Stacey Marz, the administrative director of the Alaska Court S
  
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• Google's $250M Deal with California to Fund Newsrooms May Be Stalled

  04-01-2026 00:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  Remember how California's government negotiated a 2024 deal where Google contributed millions to California's local newsrooms to offset advertisers moving to the search engine?
  "A year after it was cemented — and billed as a model that could succeed where entire countries and continents had fallen short — the agreement is tangled in budget cuts, bureaucratic infighting and unresolved questions about who controls the money," reports Politico, "leaving journalists empty-handed and cast
  
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• Has Microsoft Discontinued Offline Activation of Windows?

  03-01-2026 23:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared
  this report from Neowin:Offline Windows activation has been possible to do using the phone. However, it looks like Microsoft has quietly killed off that method as users online have found that they are no longer able to activate the OS using it... [As documented by Windows user Ben Kleinberg on his YouTube channel], Now when trying to activate the OS by attempting to call the phone number for Microsoft Product Activation, an automated voice response says the following:
  
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• The US Invaded Venezuela and Captured Nicolás Maduro - But ChatGPT and Perplexity Disagree

  03-01-2026 22:45 via slashdot.org
  Why did the U.S. invade Venezuela and capture its leader Nicolás Maduro? "If you asked ChatGPT about it this morning, it told you that youâ(TM)re making it up," Wired reported Saturday:
  WIRED asked leading chatbots ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini the same question a little before 9 am ET. In all cases, we used the free, default version of the service, since that's what the majority of users experience. We also asked AI search platform Perplexity, which advertises "accurate, trusted, and
  
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• SpaceX Lowering Orbits of 4,400 Starlink Satellites for Safety's Sake

  03-01-2026 21:45 via science.slashdot.org
  "Starlink is beginning a significant reconfiguration of its satellite constellation focused on increasing space safety," announced Michael Nicolls, Starlink's vice president of engineering:"We are lowering all Starlink satellites orbiting at ~550 km to ~480 km (~4400 satellites) over the course of 2026. The shell lowering is being tightly coordinated with other operators, regulators, and USSPACECOM. Lowering the satellites results in condensing Starlink orbits, and will increase space safety in
  
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• Could AI Bring Us Four-Day Workweeks?

  03-01-2026 20:45 via it.slashdot.org
  "While a growing number of U.S. employers are mandating workers return to the office five days a week," reports the Washington Post, "some companies say AI is saving them enough time to launch or sustain a four-day workweek.
  "More companies may move toward a shortened workweek, several executives and researchers predict, as workers, especially those in younger generations, continue to push for better work-life balance." And "several companies — especially those with a largely remote workfo
  
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• Airlines Cancel Hundreds of Flights After U.S. Attack on Venezuela

  03-01-2026 18:45 via news.slashdot.org
  CNBC reports that U.S. airlines have "canceled hundreds of flights to airports in Puerto Rico and Aruba, according to flight tallies from FlightAware and carriers' sites."
  JetBlue, Southwest, and American Airlines were among the multiple airlines showing cancelled flights, which "included close to 300 flights to and from San Juan, Puerto Rico's Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport, more than 40% of the day's schedule, according to FlightAware."
  Airlines canceled flights throughou
  
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• Interference With America's GPS System 'Has Grown Dramatically'

  03-01-2026 17:34 via news.slashdot.org
  86 aircraft were affected by an incident in Denver ,and 256 more in Dallas-Fort Worth, America's Federal Aviation Admistrationtold the Washington Post:The pilots flying into Denver International Airport could tell something was wrong. In urgent calls to air traffic controllers, they reported that the Global Positioning System was going haywire, forcing them to rely on backup navigation systems for more than a day. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a warning to air traffic in the area. E
  
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• Jobs Vulnerable to AI Replacement Actually 'Thriving, Not Dying Out', Report Suggests

  03-01-2026 16:34 via it.slashdot.org
  AI startups now outnumber all publicly traded U.S. companies, according to a year-end note to investors from economists at Vanguard.
  And yet that report also suggest the jobs most susceptible to replacement by AI "are actually thriving, not dying out," writes Forbes:
  "The approximately 100 occupations most exposed to AI automation are actually outperforming the rest of the labor market in terms of job growth and real wage increases," the Vanguard report revealed. "This suggests that current AI s
  
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• After Half a Decade, the Russian Space Station Segment Stopped Leaking

  03-01-2026 13:01 via science.slashdot.org
  A small section of the International Space Station that has experienced persistent leaks for years appears to have stopped venting atmosphere into space. ArsTechnica: The leaks were caused by microscopic structural cracks inside the small PrK module on the Russian segment of the space station, which lies between a Progress spacecraft airlock and the Zvezda module. The problem has been a long-running worry for Russian and US operators of the station, especially after the rate of leakage doubled i
  
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• NYC Phone Ban Reveals Some Students Can't Read Clocks

  03-01-2026 10:30 via news.slashdot.org
  New York City's statewide smartphone ban that went into effect this fall has been largely successful at getting students to focus in class and socialize at lunch, but teachers across the city have discovered an unexpected side effect: many teenagers cannot read analog clocks. "The constant refrain is 'Miss, what time is it?'" said Madi Mornhinweg, a high school English teacher in Manhattan, who eventually started responding by asking students to identify the big hand and little hand themselves.
  
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• Economic Inequality Does Not Equate To Poor Well-Being or Mental Health, Massive Meta-Analysis Finds

  03-01-2026 07:01 via science.slashdot.org
  A new sweeping meta-analysis has found no reliable link between economic inequality and well-being or mental health, challenging a long-held assumption that has shaped public health policy discussions for decades. The study, led by Nicolas Sommet at the University of Lausanne and Annahita Ehsan at the University of British Columbia, synthesized 168 studies involving more than 11 million participants across most world regions. The researchers screened thousands of scientific papers and contacted
  
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• Dell's XPS Brand May Return Just a Year After Being Retired, Report Claims

  03-01-2026 04:30 via it.slashdot.org
  Dell is planning to bring back its XPS laptop branding, according to a news report, just one year after the company retired the storied name in favor of a simplified naming scheme that organized its consumer and professional lineup into Dell, Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max tiers. VideoCardz reported this week that Dell has presented an updated XPS lineup during prebriefings ahead of CES 2026, though the company has not officially confirmed the badge's return.
  The reported reversal would come after De
  
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• Microsoft CEO: Time To Move 'Beyond the Arguments of Slop vs Sophistication'

  03-01-2026 02:30 via slashdot.org
  The tech industry needs to move "beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication" and develop a new "theory of the mind" that accounts for humans now equipped with "cognitive amplifier tools," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in a year-end reflection blog. The post frames 2026 as yet another "pivotal year for AI" -- but one that "feels different in a few notable ways." Nadella claims the industry has moved past the initial discovery phase and is now "beginning to distinguish between 'spectacle'
  
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• MTV's Music-Only Channels Go Off the Air

  03-01-2026 00:31 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: MTV shut down many of its last dedicated 24-hour music channels Dec. 31. The move, announced back in October, affected channels around the world, with the U.K. seeing five different MTV stations going dark. These include MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live. As Consequence notes, MTV Music -- which launched in 2011 -- notably ended its run by airing the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star," the first visual to air when MTV launched in the Uni
  
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• Google AI Overviews Put People at Risk of Harm With Misleading Health Advice

  02-01-2026 22:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  A Guardian investigation published Friday found that Google's AI Overviews -- the generative AI summaries that appear at the top of search results -- are serving up inaccurate health information that experts say puts people at risk of harm. The investigation, which came after health groups, charities and professionals raised concerns, uncovered several cases of misleading medical advice despite Google's claims that the feature is "helpful" and "reliable."
  In one case described by experts as "rea
  
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• Trump Signs Defense Bill Prohibiting China-Based Engineers in Pentagon IT Work

  02-01-2026 21:01 via news.slashdot.org
  President Donald Trump signed into law this month a measure that prohibits anyone based in China and other adversarial countries from accessing the Pentagon's cloud computing systems. From a report: The ban, which is tucked inside the $900 billion defense policy law, was enacted in response to a ProPublica investigation this year that exposed how Microsoft used China-based engineers to service the Defense Department's computer systems for nearly a decade -- a practice that left some of the count
  
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• AMD Closes in on Intel in Latest Steam Hardware Survey

  02-01-2026 20:01 via slashdot.org
  AMD's share of processors among Steam users climbed to 47.27% in December 2025, a 4.66% jump in a single month that continues the company's steady encroachment on Intel's once-dominant position in the gaming CPU market. Intel held roughly 77% of the Steam Hardware Survey five years ago, and that lead has eroded considerably as AMD broke the 40% threshold in the third quarter of 2025 and kept climbing.
  The gains came despite an ongoing memory shortage that has pushed DDR5 prices to record highs -
  
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• Reading is a Vice

  02-01-2026 19:01 via news.slashdot.org
  The International Publishers Association spent the past year promoting the slogan "Democracy depends on reading," but Atlantic senior editor Adam Kirsch argues that this utilitarian pitch fundamentally misunderstands why people become readers in the first place.
  The most recent Survey of Public Participation in the Arts found that less than half of Americans read a single book in 2022, and only 38% read a novel or short story. A University of Florida and University College London study found dai
  
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• A Decade of BBC Question Time Data Reveals Imbalance in Journalist Guests

  02-01-2026 18:01 via news.slashdot.org
  A new study [PDF] from Cardiff University analyzing a decade of the popular topical debate programme BBC Question Time found that the broadcaster's flagship political debate show relies disproportionately on journalists and pundits from right-wing media outlets, particularly those connected to The Spectator magazine.
  Researcher Matt Walsh examined 391 editions and 1,885 panellist appearances between 2014 and 2024. Journalists from right-leaning publications accounted for 59.59% of media guest sl
  
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• 'Results Were Fudged': Departing Meta AI Chief Confirms Llama 4 Benchmark Manipulation

  02-01-2026 17:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Yann LeCun, Meta's outgoing chief AI scientist and one of the pioneers credited with laying the groundwork for modern AI, has acknowledged that the company's Llama 4 language model had its benchmark results manipulated before its April 2025 release. In an interview with the Financial Times, LeCun said the "results were fudged a little bit" and that the team "used different models for different benchmarks to give better results."
  Llama 4 was widely criticized as a flop at launch, and the company
  
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• Ghana Tries To Regulate Online Prophecies

  02-01-2026 16:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  Ghana has decided to deal with the viral spread of prophetic content on social media by setting up an official reporting mechanism for sensitive predictions, a move triggered by the August 2025 helicopter crash that killed the country's defence and environment ministers along with six others.
  After the accident, TikTok clips circulated showing pastors who claimed to have foreseen the disaster before it happened. Elvis Ankrah, the presidential envoy for inter-faith and ecumenical relations, now a
  
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• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Prints Final Newspaper, Shifts To All-Digital Format

  02-01-2026 15:00 via news.slashdot.org
  CBS News: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has printed its final newspaper, marking the end of a 157-year chapter in Georgia history and officially transitioning the longtime publication into a fully digital news outlet.
  The front-page story of the final print edition asks a fitting question: "What is the future of local media in Atlanta?" The historic last issue is also being sold for $8, a significant increase from the typical $2.00 price.
  Wednesday, Dec. 31, marks the last day The AJC will be
  
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• How Nokia Went From iPhone Victim To $1 Billion Nvidia Deal

  02-01-2026 13:00 via slashdot.org
  Nokia, the Finnish company whose iconic ringtone was played an estimated 1.8 billion times daily at the height of its mobile phone dominance and whose 3310 "brick" sold 126 million units, has reinvented itself again -- this time as a key piece of AI infrastructure. In October, Nvidia announced a $1 billion investment in Nokia and a strategic partnership to incorporate AI into telecommunications networks.
  The company that was once worth $335 billion and controlled more than a quarter of the globa
  
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• ASUS Announces Price Hikes Starting January 5

  02-01-2026 09:30 via it.slashdot.org
  ASUS has informed its partners that prices on certain products will increase starting January 5, just days before the company is expected to unveil new hardware at CES. In a letter dated December 30 and obtained by Digitimes, the Taiwanese manufacturer pointed to rising costs for memory and storage components as the primary driver behind the adjustment.
  The company specifically called out DRAM, NAND, and SSD pricing pressure stemming from what it described as "structural volatility" in the globa
  
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• Australia's Biggest Pension Fund To Cut Global Stocks Allocation on AI Concerns

  02-01-2026 06:31 via slashdot.org
  Australia's largest pension fund is planning to reduce its allocation to global equities this year, amid signs that the AI boom in the US stock market could be running out of steam. Financial Times: John Normand, head of investment strategy at the A$400bn (US$264bn) AustralianSuper, told the Financial Times that not only did valuations of big US tech companies look high relative to history, but the leverage being used to fund AI investment was increasing "very rapidly," as was the pace of fundra
  
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• No Standard iPhone 18 Launch This Year, Reports Suggest

  02-01-2026 03:30 via mobile.slashdot.org
  MacRumors: Apple is not expected to release a standard iPhone 18 model this year, according to a growing number of reports that suggest the company is planning a significant change to its long-standing annual iPhone launch cycle.
  Despite the immense success of the iPhone 17 in 2025, the iPhone 18 is not expected to arrive until the spring of 2027, leaving the iPhone 17 in the lineup as the latest standard model for over 18 months. This would mark the first time Apple skips an entire calendar yea
  
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• IDC Estimates Apple Shipped Just 45,000 Vision Pros Last Quarter

  02-01-2026 01:02 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple's Chinese manufacturing partner Luxshare halted production of the Vision Pro headset at the start of 2025, according to market research firm IDC, after the device shipped 390,000 units during its 2024 launch year. The $3,499 headset has also seen its digital advertising budget cut by more than 95% year to date in the US and UK, according to market intelligence group Sensor Tower.
  IDC expects Apple to ship just 45,000 new units in the fourth quarter of 2025. Apple launched an upgraded M5 ve
  
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• Some of Your Cells Are Not Genetically Yours

  01-01-2026 23:30 via science.slashdot.org
  Every human body contains a small population of cells that are not genetically its own -- cells that crossed the placenta during pregnancy and that persist for decades after birth. These "microchimeric" cells, named after the lion-goat-serpent hybrid of Greek mythology, have been found in every organ studied so far, though they are exceedingly rare: one such cell exists for every 10,000 to 1 million of a person's own cells.
  The cells were first noticed in the late 1800s when pathologist Georg Sc
  
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