ICT news

• Microsoft Makes Fedora an Official Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) Distribution

  06-05-2025 19:25 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  BrianFagioli writes: Fedora Linux is now officially available as a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) distribution! That's right, folks, following prior testing, you can now run Fedora 42 natively inside Windows using WSL. As someone who considers Fedora to be my favorite Linux distribution, this is a pretty exciting development.
  Installing it is simple enough. Just open up a terminal and type wsl --install FedoraLinux-42 to get started. After that, launch it with wsl -d FedoraLinux-42 and set yo
  
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• Dumbphone Owners Have Lost Their Minds

  19-01-2026 17:31 via tech.slashdot.org
  The growing enthusiasm among Gen Z for ditching smartphones in favor of basic "dumbphones" may be overlooking a significant cognitive reality, according to a WIRED essay that draws on the 1998 "extended mind hypothesis" by philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers. The hypothesis argues that external tools can extend the biological brain in an all but physical way, meaning your phone isn't just a device -- it's part of a single cognitive system composed of both the tool and your brain.
  "Interfe
  
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• NYSE Eyes 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading With Weekend Access and Same-Day Settlement

  19-01-2026 16:43 via news.slashdot.org
  BrianFagioli writes: The New York Stock Exchange, owned by Intercontinental Exchange, is developing a platform for trading tokenized versions of U.S. listed stocks and ETFs around the clock, pending regulatory approval. The system would combine the NYSE's existing matching engine with blockchain-based settlement, enabling 24x7 trading, instant settlement, and fractional share purchases priced in dollar amounts. Shares would remain fully regulated securities, with dividends and voting rights inta
  
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• IMF Warns Global Economic Resilience at Risk if AI Falters

  19-01-2026 15:40 via slashdot.org
  The "surprisingly resilient" global economy is at risk of being disrupted by a sharp reversal in the AI boom, the IMF warned on Monday, as world leaders prepared for talks in the Swiss resort of Davos. From a report: Risks to global economic expansion were "tilted to the downside," the fund said in an update to its World Economic Outlook, arguing that growth was reliant on a narrow range of drivers, notably the US technology sector and the associated equity boom.
  Nonetheless, it predicted US gro
  
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• China Birth Rate Falls To Lowest Since 1949

  19-01-2026 15:04 via news.slashdot.org
  China's birth rate fell to 5.6 per 1,000 people in 2025, the lowest figure since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, and the country's total population contracted by 3.39 million, the sharpest decline since the Mao Zedong era. The drop marks the fourth straight year of population decline and comes despite government efforts to encourage childbearing, including subsidies of about $500 annually per child born on or after January 1, 2025.
  Beijing has also imposed a 13% value-added tax on
  
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• China Consumed 10.4 Trillion Kilowatt-Hours of Electricity In 2025 - Double the US

  19-01-2026 13:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Slashdot reader hackingbear summarizes this report from Bloomberg: China consumed totally 10.4 trillion kilowatt hours (10.4 petaWh) in 2025 according to data from the National Energy Administration. That's the highest annual electricity use ever recorded by a single country, and doubled the amount used by the US and surpassed the combined annual total of the EU, Russia, India and Japan.
  The surge in demand for power are results of growth in data centers for artificial intelligence (+17% over 20
  
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• More US States are Putting Bitcoin on Public Balance Sheets

  19-01-2026 10:02 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:
  Led by Texas and New Hampshire, U.S. states across the national map, both red and blue in political stripes, are developing bitcoin strategic reserves and bringing cryptocurrencies onto their books through additional state finance and budgeting measures. Texas recently became the first state to purchase bitcoin after a legislative effort that began in 2024, but numerous states have joined the "Reserve Race" to pass legislation that will allow the
  
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• Is the Possibility of Conscious AI a Dangerous Myth?

  19-01-2026 06:45 via slashdot.org
  This week Noema magazine published a 7,000-word exploration of our modern "Mythology Of Conscious AI" written by a neuroscience professor who directs the University of Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science:
  The very idea of conscious AI rests on the assumption that consciousness is a matter of computation. More specifically, that implementing the right kind of computation, or information processing, is sufficient for consciousness to arise. This assumption, which philosophers call computationa
  
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• EHT Astronomers Will Film Swirling of a Supermassive Black Hole for the First Time

  19-01-2026 04:05 via science.slashdot.org
  "Astronomers are preparing to capture a movie of a supermassive black hole in action for the first time," reports the Guardian:The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) will track the colossal black hole at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy throughout March and April with the aim of capturing footage of the swirling disc that traces out the edge of the event horizon, the point beyond which no light or matter can escape... The EHT is a global network of 12 radio telescopes spanning locations from Antarc
  
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• Porsche Sold More Electrified Cars in Europe Last Year than Pure Gas-Powered Models

  19-01-2026 02:04 via tech.slashdot.org
  Porsche made an announcement Friday. In Europe they sold more electrified Porsches last year than pure combustion-engined models, reports Electrek:in Europe, a majority (57.9%) of Porsche's deliveries were plug-ins, with 1/3 of its European sales being fully electric. For models that have no fully electric version but do have a PHEV (Cayenne and Panamera), the plug-in hybrid version dominated sales.
  Of particular note, the Macan sold better with an electric powertrain than it did with a gas one,
  
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• Young US College Graduates Suddenly Aren't Finding Jobs Faster Than Non-College Graduates

  19-01-2026 01:04 via it.slashdot.org
  U.S. college graduates "have historically found jobs more quickly than people with only a high school degree," writes Bloomberg.
  "But that advantage is becoming a thing of the past, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland."
  "Recently, the job-finding rate for young college-educated workers has declined to be roughly in line with the rate for young high-school-educated workers, indicating that a long period of relatively easier job-finding prospects for college grads
  
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• SpaceX Launches New NASA Telescope to Help JWST Study Exoplanets

  18-01-2026 23:29 via science.slashdot.org
  Last week a University of Arizona astronomy professor "watched anxiously...as an awe-inspiring SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried NASA's new exoplanet telescope, Pandora, into orbit."
  In 2018 NASA had approached Daniel Apai to help build the telescope, which he says will "shatter a barrier — to understand and remove a source of noise in the data — that limits our ability to study small exoplanets in detail and search for life on them."Astronomers have a trick to study exoplanet atmospher
  
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• Hundreds Answer Europe's 'Public Call for Evidence' on an Open Digital Ecosystem Strategy

  18-01-2026 21:57 via news.slashdot.org
  The European Commission "has opened a public call for evidence on European open digital ecosystems," writes Help Net Security, part of preparations for an upcoming Communication "that will examine the role of open source in EU's digital infrastructure."The consultation runs from January 6 to February 3, 2026. Submissions will be used to shape a Commission Communication addressed to the European Parliament, the Council, and other EU bodies, which is scheduled for publication in the first quarter
  
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• Microsoft Forced to Issue Emergency Out-of-Band Windows Update

  18-01-2026 20:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  The senior editor at the blog Windows Central decries two serious Windows issues "that were not spotted by Microsoft during testing, and are so severe that the company has now issued an emergency fix to address the problems."
  Microsoft's first update for Windows 11 in 2026 has already caused two major issues that saw users unable to fully shutdown their PCs or sign-in into a device when using Remote Desktop... Being unable to shut down your PC due to a recent OS update is a huge oversight on Mic
  
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• Astronomers Finally Explain How Molecules From Earth's Atmosphere Keep Winding Up On the Moon

  18-01-2026 18:34 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:
  Particles from Earth's atmosphere have been carried into space by solar wind and have been landing on the moon for billions of years, mixing into the lunar soil, according to a new study [published in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment last month]. The research sheds new light on a puzzle that has endured for over half a century since the Apollo missions brought back lunar samples with traces of substances such as water, car
  
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• Acer Sues Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, Alleging Infringment on Acer's Cellular Networking Patents

  18-01-2026 17:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  Slashdot reader BrianFagioli writes: Acer has filed three separate patent infringement lawsuits against AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, taking the unusual step of hauling the nation's largest wireless carriers into federal court. The suits, filed in the Eastern District of Texas, claim the companies are using Acer-developed cellular networking technology without paying for the privilege. Acer says it tried to negotiate licenses for years but reached a dead end, arguing it was left with no optio
  
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• China Builds 'Hypergravity' Machine 2,000X Stronger Than Earth

  18-01-2026 16:34 via science.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this report from Futurism:China has unveiled an extremely powerful "hypergravity machine" that can generate forces almost two thousand times stronger than Earth's regular gravity.The futuristic-looking machine, called CHIEF1900, was constructed at China's Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) at Zheijang University in Eastern China, and allows researchers to study how extreme forces affect various materials, plants, ce
  
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• Could We Provide Better Cellphone Service With Fewer, Bigger Satellites?

  18-01-2026 13:34 via science.slashdot.org
  European satellite operator Eutelsat "plans to launch 440 Airbus-built LEO satellites in the coming years to replenish and expand its constellation," Reuters reported Friday. And last week America's Federal Communications Commission approved SpaceX's request to deploy another 7,500 Starlink satellites, while Starlink "projects it will eventually have a constellation of 34,000 satellites," writes Fast Company, and Amazon's Project Leo "plans to launch more than 3,200 satellites."
  Meanwhile "Beiji
  
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• Retailers Rush to Implement AI-Assisted Shopping and Orders

  18-01-2026 09:54 via slashdot.org
  This week Google "unveiled a set of tools for retailers that helps them roll out AI agents," reports the Wall Street Journal,
  The new retail AI agents, which help shoppers find their desired items, provide customer support and let people order food at restaurants, are part of what Alphabet-owned Google calls Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience. Major retailers, including home improvement giant Lowe's, the grocer Kroger and pizza chain Papa Johns say they are already using Google's tools to
  
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• 53% of Crypto Tokens Launched Since 2021 Have Failed, Most in 2025

  18-01-2026 06:59 via news.slashdot.org
  =["More than half of all cryptocurrencies ever launched are now defunct," reports CoinDesk, citing a new analysis by cryptocurrency data aggregator CoinGecko.
  And most of those failures occurred in 2025:The study looked at token listings on GeckoTerminal between mid-2021 and the end of 2025. Of the nearly 20.2 million tokens that entered the market during that period, 53.2% are no longer actively traded. A staggering 11.6 million of those failures happened in 2025 alone — accounting for 86
  
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• How Much Do AI Models Resemble a Brain?

  18-01-2026 03:34 via slashdot.org
  At the AI safety site Foom, science journalist Mordechai Rorvig explores a paper presented at November's Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing conference:[R]esearchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Georgia Tech revisited earlier findings that showed that language models, the engines of commercial AI chatbots, show strong signal correlations with the human language network, the region of the brain responsible f
  
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• 2026's Breakthrough Technologies? MIT Technology Review Chooses Sodium-ion Batteries, Commercial Space Stations

  18-01-2026 00:41 via science.slashdot.org
  As 2026 begins, MIT Technology Review publishes "educated guesses" on emerging technologies that will define the future, advances "we think will drive progress or incite the most change — for better or worse — in the years ahead."
  This year's list includes next-gen nuclear, gene-editing drugs (as well as the "resurrection" of ancient genes from extinct creatures), and three AI-related developments: AI companions, AI coding tools, and "mechanistic interpretability" for revealing LLM d
  
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• Predator Spyware Turns Failed Attacks Into Intelligence For Future Exploits

  17-01-2026 23:41 via it.slashdot.org
  In December 2024 the Google Threat Intelligence Group published research on the code of the commercial spyware "Predator". But there's now been new research by Jamf (the company behind a mobile device management solution) showing Predator is more dangerous and sophisticated than we realized, according to SecurityWeek.Long-time Slashdot reader wiredmikey writes:
  The new research reveals an error taxonomy that reports exactly why deployments fail, turning black boxes into diagnostic events for thr
  
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• To Pressure Security Professionals, Mandiant Releases Database That Cracks Weak NTLM Passwords in 12 Hours

  17-01-2026 22:41 via it.slashdot.org
  Ars Technica reports:
  Security firm Mandiant [part of Google Cloud] has released a database that allows any administrative password protected by Microsoft's NTLM.v1 hash algorithm to be hacked in an attempt to nudge users who continue using the deprecated function despite known weaknesses.... a precomputed table of hash values linked to their corresponding plaintext. These generic tables, which work against multiple hashing schemes, allow hackers to take over accounts by quickly mapping a stolen
  
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• Two More Offshore Wind Projects in the US Allowed to Continue Construction

  17-01-2026 21:41 via news.slashdot.org
  Friday a federal judge "cleared U.S. power company Dominion Energy to resume work on its Virginia offshore wind project." But a U.S. federal judge also ruled Thursday that another major offshore wind farm is allowed to resume construction, reports the Hill. "The project, which would supply power to New York, was one of five that were halted by the Trump administration in December...."
  In fact, there were three different court rulings this week each allowing construction to continue on a U.S. win
  
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• Dozens of US Colleges Close as Falling Birth Rate Pushes Them Off Enrollment Cliff

  17-01-2026 20:34 via news.slashdot.org
  A new article from Bloomberg says dozens of America's colleges "succumbed to a fundamental problem killing colleges across the US: not enough students. The schools will award their final degrees this spring, stranding students not yet ready to graduate and forcing faculty and staff to hunt for new jobs."
  The country's tumbling birth rate is pushing schools toward a "demographic cliff," where a steadily dropping population of people in their late teens and early 20s will leave desks and classroom
  
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• NASA Livestreams the Rocket That Will Carry Four Astronauts Around the Moon

  17-01-2026 19:34 via science.slashdot.org
  "A mega rocket set to take astronauts around the Moon for the first time in decades is being taken to its launch pad," the BBC reported this morning.
  NASA is livestreaming their move of the 11-million-pound "stack" — which includes the Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft secured to it, all standing on its Mobile Launch Platform. Travelling at less than 1 mile per hour, the move is expected to take 12 hours.The mission — which could blast off as soon a
  
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• What Happened After Security Researchers Found 60 Flock Cameras Livestreaming to the Internet

  17-01-2026 18:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  A couple months ago, YouTuber Benn Jordan "found vulnerabilities in some of Flock's license plate reader cameras," reports 404 Media's Jason Koebler. "He reached out to me to tell me he had learned that some of Flock's Condor cameras were left live-streaming to the open internet."
  This led to a remarkable article where Koebler confirmed the breach by visiting a Flock surveillance camera mounted on a California traffic signal. ("On my phone, I am watching myself in real time as the camera records
  
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• T2/Linux Brings a Flagship KDE Plasma Linux Desktop to RISC-V and ARM64

  17-01-2026 17:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  After "a decade of deep focus on embedded and server systems," T2 SDE Linux "is back to the Desktop," according to its web site, calling the new "T2 Desktop" flavour "ready for everyday home and office use!"Built on the latest KDE Plasma, systemd, and Wayland, the new T2 Desktop flavour delivers a modern, clean, and performant experience while retaining the project's trademark portability and reproducible cross-compilation across architectures.T2 Desktop targets x86_64, arm64, and riscv64, deliv
  
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• As US Officials Showed Off a Self-Driving Robo-Bus - It Got Hit By a Tesla Driver

  17-01-2026 16:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:The U.S. Department of Transportation brought an automated bus to D.C. this week to showcase its work on self-driving vehicles, taking officials from around the country on a ride between agency headquarters at Navy Yard and Union Station. One of those trips was interrupted Sunday when the bus got rear-ended.
  The bus, produced by the company Beep, was following its fixed route when it was struck by a Tesla with Maryland plates whose
  
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