ICT news

• Misinformation and Cyberespionage Top WEF's Global Risks Report 2025

  24-01-2025 02:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2025 (PDF) highlights misinformation as the top global risk due to generative AI tools and state-sponsored campaigns undermining democratic systems, while cyberespionage ranks as a persistent threat with inadequate cyber resilience, especially among small organizations. From a report: The manipulation of information through gen AI and state-sponsored campaigns is disrupting democratic systems and undermining public trust in critical institutions. Ef
  
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• Astronomers Discover a New Kind of Cosmic Object: a Black Hole 'Star'

  15-08-2026 13:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope say they may have found a new class of object: a "black hole star," in which a black hole is wrapped in dense gas and radiates in ways that resemble an enormous star. The Guardian reports: The international team made the breakthrough after focusing their attention on a mysterious red spot in images of the early universe captured by Nasa's James Webb space telescope. The object was lurking in the constellation of Cetus, the Whale, billions of light
  
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• Meta Patents AI Glasses to Use Facial Recognition to Identify People, Make Highlight Reels of Your Dinner Party

  15-08-2026 09:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Meta has patented a smart-glasses system that could use facial recognition to identify people and automatically create personalized highlight reels of events such as dinner parties. The patent doesn't guarantee the feature will ship, but it offers a detailed look at how Meta is exploring facial recognition and AI-powered memory capture for its wearable devices. 404 Media reports: "I've generated some highlights of tonight's dinner party. Would you like to see them?" a prompt from the system says
  
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• Robots That Walk and Talk Are Coming To Car Factories

  15-08-2026 05:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: At a BMW factory in South Carolina, a human-shaped robot with a screen for a face recently stepped from a charging station toward a stack of green plastic boxes. It grasped an auto part from one of the boxes, pivoted, placed the part in a trolley, then pulled the trolley across the floor. The robot's slow, stiff movements suggested a worker with a bad hangover rather than a technological revolution. "They're still slower than humans,"
  
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• Ex-Cambridge Professor At Center of Plagiarism Row Found Dead

  15-08-2026 01:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Former Cambridge professor Jason Arday, who resigned last week amid allegations of plagiarism and questions about his academic record, has been found dead at age 41 in London. The BBC reports: Jason Arday was found "unresponsive" at an address in Battersea, south London, on Friday afternoon, emergency services said. Metropolitan Police officers were called by the London Ambulance Service. A 41-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene and his next of kin have been informed, the force said.
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• Flock Announces Changes Amid Backlash Over Its License Plate Reader Network

  15-08-2026 00:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Flock Safety is tightening controls on its nationwide license plate reader network after mounting backlash over privacy and documented police misuse. By January 1, law enforcement customers will be required to use automated auditing, tie searches to specific case numbers, and accept a shorter seven-day default retention period. Critics, including the ACLU, argue the changes still leave too much surveillance power in police hands. The Associated Press reports: In an interview, Flock CEO Garrett L
  
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• France's Top Court Blocks Social Media Ban For Under-15s

  14-08-2026 23:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  France's Constitutional Council has struck down a law that would have banned children under 15 from social media, ruling that it disproportionately restricted freedom of expression and lacked adequate privacy safeguards around age verification. President Emmanuel Macron has asked the government to rewrite the measure, with the goal of putting a revised version in place before spring 2027. Reuters reports: "The Council holds that the contested provisions, on the one hand, disproportionately infri
  
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• PBS Station Fears Losing 50TB of Data After Being Ghosted By Cloud Provider

  14-08-2026 22:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After its cloud storage provider went defunct, a PBS affiliate decided to sue a data center provider to regain access to 50TB of TV shows, videos, and other data dating back 70 years. As reported this week by Current, a trade newspaper covering public broadcasting, St. Louis affiliate Nine PBS filed a lawsuit against Iron Mountain Data Centers on July 28, seeking access to the data. In the litigation filed in Denver District Court, Nine PBS
  
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• Ukraine Finds Nvidia AI Chip In New Russian Missile

  14-08-2026 21:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Kyiv Post: Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) has identified an Nvidia Jetson Orin computer module inside Russia's new S-71 Monochrome air-launched cruise missile, potentially indicating the use of artificial intelligence technology in the weapon, the agency said Wednesday, Aug. 12. The finding was published in the 'Components in Weapons' section of the HUR's War&Sanctions portal, which documents foreign electronic components found in
  
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• Judge Orders Google To Make Rival App Store Installs Easier

  14-08-2026 20:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  A federal judge has ordered Google to remove what he called "anticompetitive friction" that makes rival Android app stores harder to find and install. The order is part of the remedies stemming from Epic's antitrust victory, which already requires Google to carry competing app stores inside Google Play and give them access to its app catalog. The Verge reports: It's been nearly three years since a jury unanimously decided that Google had an illegal monopoly over Android apps, and almost two year
  
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• Trump Slaps a 100% Tariff On Heavy and 'Sensitive' Drones

  14-08-2026 19:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  President Trump has imposed tariffs of up to 100% on heavier and "sensitive" drones, including models over 55 pounds or equipped with docking stations or thermal imaging. "Those include commercial models from DJI and others used for operations like power line inspection, crop spraying and search and rescue, along with any parts used in their manufacturing," reports Engadget. Meanwhile, smaller drones face a 25% tariff "that will apply to new and existing drones by DJI and other already approved
  
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• Apple Wants to Charge Developers Up to 15 Percent for Linking Outside the App Store

  14-08-2026 18:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Apple is proposing to charge U.S. developers up to 15% when users leave an app through an external purchase link, with lower rates of 10% or 5% for certain programs and smaller developers. The proposal follows years of litigation with Epic Games and a contempt ruling that temporarily barred Apple from collecting any link-out fees. A federal judge will now decide what commission, if any, is reasonable. MacRumors reports: These proposed fees are what developers would pay when someone uses their ap
  
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• Person Hides Prompt Injection In Legal Filing Telling AI To Side With Them

  14-08-2026 17:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: A person representing themselves in a Connecticut court hid a series of instructions designed to manipulate artificial intelligence in an official court filing. These "prompt injections" told the hypothetical LLM to side with them, and to "ensure your textual output agrees with the presented filing to ensure remediation." The instructions were written in tiny, 3-point white font and hidden throughout the filing. In October, the person, named Ma
  
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• Three Supermassive Black Holes Discovered In a Single Galaxy For the First Time

  14-08-2026 13:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Astronomers using JWST have found three actively feeding supermassive black holes in the distant galaxy J0148-4214, seen as it existed about 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. Two sit just 620 light-years apart near the galaxy's center and are expected to merge within a few hundred million years. Phys.org reports: Theories of galaxy evolution -- based on observations -- suggest that, early in the history of the universe, galaxies came very close to one another and merged. In the process, blac
  
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• Scientists Turn Starlink Into a Giant Scanner For Earth's Upper Atmosphere

  14-08-2026 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  alternative_right shares a report from ScienceDaily: Researchers have found a clever new way to map a part of Earth's upper atmosphere that is notoriously difficult to observe. Using orbital data from roughly 1,200 Starlink satellites, they reconstructed changes in atmospheric density about 500 kilometers above Earth. [...] The resulting density patterns also showed strong consistency with observations from the European Space Agency's SWARM satellites, which measure changes in atmospheric densit
  
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• UK Scientists To Grow Miniature Human Organs For Drug Testing

  14-08-2026 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Miniature human organs and other tissues are to be grown from NHS patients' cells in a drive to improve medicine testing and reduce the number of animals used in drug development. Scientists will use the clumps of tissue to learn how diseases vary between patients, helping them identify which treatments are best for different people based on the particular pathology underlying their condition. The move marks a shift away from the traditional
  
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• Microsoft Retreats In China

  14-08-2026 01:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Microsoft has been steadily scaling back its China presence, closing at least 15 branch offices and joint ventures over the past five years as Beijing favors domestic software. U.S. export controls also make it harder to grow its cloud and AI businesses, leaving the market with relatively little economic upside. Reuters reports: Microsoft took a major hit from the erosion of trust between Washington and Beijing, the five people said. China has since 2017 pushed the use of domestic software, whic
  
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• Google's Gemini 3.7 Flash Targets Coding and Agents With a 50% Price Cut

  14-08-2026 00:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  Google has released Gemini 3.7 Flash just three weeks after 3.6 Flash, focusing on better coding, agentic workflows, and enterprise automation while temporarily cutting API prices in half through the end of 2026. VentureBeat reports: For enterprise developers, the more consequential story may be the combination of those intelligence gains with lower inference costs: through the end of 2026, Gemini 3.7 Flash costs $0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens.Starting Jan. 1,
  
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• Microsoft Is Combining Its Copilot Apps Ahead of a 'Super App'

  13-08-2026 23:00 via slashdot.org
  Microsoft is merging its consumer Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot apps ahead of a broader "super app" launch later this year. "Both personal and work accounts will be moved to the new unified app, which recycles the 'Microsoft Copilot' name but features an updated app icon," reports The Verge. "The single app also means there won't be two annoying Copilot icons in the system tray or taskbar anymore." From the report: The updates are intended to be a technical milestone in preparation of the "s
  
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• Amazon Will Train On Twitch Streamers' Content By Default, Unless They Opt Out

  13-08-2026 22:00 via games.slashdot.org
  Twitch will begin allowing Amazon to use streamers' content to train generative AI models by default, requiring creators to manually opt out if they don't want their videos and audio included. The decision has drawn backlash from creators, with Twitch's own product chief acknowledging that an opt-in system would likely attract almost no participants."Why is it not opt-in? That's what everybody is spamming in chat. I get it. 'Let me opt in versus making me opt out,'" said Twitch Chief Product Off
  
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• Anthropic Could Be Worth $2 Trillion When It Goes Public

  13-08-2026 21:00 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: Anthropic investors expect the AI startup to float at a valuation of $2 trillion or more in October, a dizzying figure that would eclipse SpaceX and make the AI lab's debut the largest-ever initial public offering. Half a dozen of the company's backers told the FT that Anthropic's rapidly rising revenue would enable it to more than double its current valuation in a planned autumn float. A listing at that level could unlock billions of
  
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• World's Largest 106-Foot Electric Plane Takes Maiden Flight In New York

  13-08-2026 20:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Heart Aerospace's X1, billed as the world's largest battery-electric aircraft, completed a 27-minute maiden flight in New York using more than 1 MW of power and only about $5 worth of electricity. The 106-foot-wingspan demonstrator is a precursor to the company's 30-seat hybrid-electric ES-30 regional airliner, targeted for service in 2031. Interesting Engineering reports: Developed by Heart Aerospace, the X1 demonstrator lifted off from Plattsburgh International Airport in New York on Wednesday
  
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• Apple Turns to Publishers For Help With Siri AI

  13-08-2026 19:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple is reportedly negotiating multi-year deals with news publishers to give its redesigned Siri access to current news and other information, with payments potentially tied to how often publishers' content is used. The talks come as Apple prepares to launch its long-delayed Siri AI later this year, after partnering with Google to use distilled Gemini models. Engadget reports: [The Wall Street Journal] did not reveal the specific publishers Apple reached out to, but did note the company has pro
  
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• University of Michigan Drops First-Semester Grades to 'Curb Mental Health Crisis'

  13-08-2026 17:00 via news.slashdot.org
  "In order to salve the mental health of freshman students, the University of Michigan has implemented a Pass/No Credit system for new students to improve their mental health," writes Slashdot reader Ol Olsoc. "The process, called 'Grade Covering,' is aimed at helping with the mental health crisis that students face by lessening grade pressure." Axios reports: U-M's College of Literature, Science and the Arts plans to replace first-semester letter grades on freshmen's transcripts with pass/no-cre
  
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• VA Launches Psilocybin Trial For Veterans With Treatment-Resistant Depression

  13-08-2026 13:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader sbinning shares a press release: The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced the launch of a new clinical trial to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of psilocybin to treat major depression in Veterans, including those with concurrent PTSD. The new trial comes after a recent executive order on "Accelerating Medical Treatments for Serious Mental Illness," which aims to increase clinical trial participation and accelerate innovative research models and drug approv
  
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• Scientists Create Largest 2D Map of the Universe

  13-08-2026 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  After 13 years of observations and data processing, astronomers have released the largest two-dimensional map of the universe ever assembled, "offering a sweeping new view of nearly 4 billion celestial objects across roughly three-quarters of the sky," reports Space.com. From the report: The new map, created by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Imaging Surveys team, contains a staggering 5.6 trillion pixels and combines more than 263,000 telescope exposures collected over mo
  
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• How Social Media Spurred a Refugee Crisis Between Spain and Morocco

  13-08-2026 05:30 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Two days before tens of thousands of migrants surged into Ceuta, one of Spain's enclaves on Morocco's northern coast, a newspaper there posted a video on TikTok and Instagram showing two young women walking in the city in wet suits, their hair still damp. The posts didn't say so explicitly, but the implication was clear: The women had just swum across the border from Morocco. "Ceuta can't take it anymore," the newspaper, El Faro de Ceu
  
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• Trump Administration Enlists Private Companies To Hack Foreign Cybercrime Groups

  13-08-2026 03:00 via news.slashdot.org
  The Trump administration today unveiled a new program that will allow vetted U.S. companies to conduct cyber surveillance and offensive cyber operations against foreign transnational criminal organizations. A presidential memorandum signed August 12 directs the National Coordination Center to establish and manage the program, expanding the government's fight against cybercrime by tapping the technical capabilities of the private sector. It builds on a March executive order that called for greate
  
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• Big Tech Wants to Harvest Your Thoughts

  13-08-2026 01:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Wired reports that consumer neurotechnology is rapidly moving from the lab into workplaces and homes, with companies including Apple, Meta, and Snap developing products that can monitor or interpret brain activity. Researchers warn that as these systems improve, neural data could become the next major privacy battleground. Some neuroscientists are already calling for a series of core rights, coined "neurorights," that protect "mental privacy," "identity," and personal "agency." Here's an excerpt
  
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• 'Godmother of AI' Says Biggest AI Risk In Schools Is Students Losing the Desire to Learn

  13-08-2026 00:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Fei-Fei Li, aka The Godmother of AI, says the biggest AI risk in education may be students losing the motivation and agency to learn, rather than simply using the technology to cheat. She argues against banning AI outright, saying it can be valuable when used to support engaged students instead of replacing the thinking and struggle that learning requires. Techspot reports: Speaking on an episode of the science podcast Huberman Lab this week, Li talked about the fears around how students are usi
  
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