ICT news

• 'My Printer Is Extorting Me', Complains Subscriber to HP's 'Instant Ink' Program

  06-02-2023 02:45 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  A writer for the Atlantic complains that their HP printer is shaking them down like a loan shark.
  I discovered an error message on my computer indicating that my HP OfficeJet Pro had been remotely disabled by the company. When I logged on to HP's website, I learned why: The credit card I had used to sign up for HP's Instant Ink cartridge-refill program had expired, and the company had effectively bricked my device in response....
  Instant Ink is a monthly subscription program that purports to mon
  
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• With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet

  12-02-2026 02:45 via yro.slashdot.org
  Ring's Super Bowl ad on Sunday promoted "Search Party," a feature that lets a user post a photo of a missing dog in the Ring app and triggers outdoor Ring cameras across the neighborhood to use AI to scan for a match. 404 Media argues the cheerful premise obscures what the Amazon-owned company has become: a massive, consumer-deployed surveillance network.
  Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, who left in 2023 and returned last year, has since moved to re-establish police partnerships and push more AI int
  
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• Is Linux Mint Burning Out? Developers Consider Longer Release Cycle

  11-02-2026 23:45 via linux.slashdot.org
  BrianFagioli writes: The Linux Mint developers say they are considering adopting a longer development cycle, arguing that the project's current six month cadence plus LMDE releases leaves too little room for deeper work. In a recent update, the team reflected on its incremental philosophy, independence from upstream decisions like Snap, and heavy investment in Cinnamon and XApp. While the release process "works very well" and delivers steady improvements, they admit it consumes significant time
  
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• A Hellish 'Hothouse Earth' Getting Closer, Scientists Say

  11-02-2026 22:00 via news.slashdot.org
  The world is closer than thought to a "point of no return" after which runaway global heating cannot be stopped, scientists have said. From a report: Continued global heating could trigger climate tipping points, leading to a cascade of further tipping points and feedback loops, they said. This would lock the world into a new and hellish "hothouse Earth" climate far worse than the 2-3C temperature rise the world is on track to reach.
  The climate would also be very different to the benign conditi
  
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• US Had Almost No Job Growth in 2025

  11-02-2026 21:01 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The U.S. economy experienced almost zero job growth in 2025, according to revised federal data. On a more encouraging note: hiring has picked up in 2026. Preliminary data had indicated that the U.S. economy added 584,000 jobs last year. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised that number after it received additional state data, and found that the labor market had added 181,000 jobs in all of 2025. This is far fewer than the 1.46 million jobs that were adde
  
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• EVs Could Be Cheaper To Own Than Gas Cars in Africa by 2040

  11-02-2026 20:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Electric vehicles accounted for just 1% of new car sales across Africa in 2025, but a study published in Nature Energy by researchers at ETH Zurich finds that EVs paired with solar off-grid charging systems -- solar panels, batteries and an inverter -- could become cheaper to own than gas-powered equivalents across most of the continent by 2040.
  The analysis considered total cost of ownership including sticker price, financing and fuel or charging costs, but excluded policy-related factors like
  
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• UK Orders Deletion of Country's Largest Court Reporting Archive

  11-02-2026 19:01 via news.slashdot.org
  The UK's Ministry of Justice has ordered the deletion of the country's largest court reporting archive [non-paywalled source], a database built by data analysis company Courtsdesk that more than 1,500 journalists across 39 media organizations have used since the lord chancellor approved the project in 2021.
  Courtsdesk's research found that journalists received no advance notice of 1.6 million criminal hearings, that court case listings were accurate on just 4.2% of sitting days, and that half a
  
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• Are CDs Making a Comeback? A Statistical Analysis

  11-02-2026 18:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Reports of the compact disc's death may have been slightly premature, according to a new analysis from Stat Significant that finds CD sales as a share of U.S. music industry revenue have quietly stabilized after years of steep decline. RIAA data shows CD revenue share fell from 7.15% in 2018 to 3.04% in 2022 but has since flatlined at roughly 3%, coming in at 3.14% in 2023 and 3.06% in 2024.
  Google search traffic for "CD Player" has ticked upward over the past 16 months after two decades of near
  
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• HP Now Rents Gaming Laptops

  11-02-2026 17:00 via slashdot.org
  HP has quietly launched a gaming laptop subscription service called the OMEN Gaming Subscription that lets customers pay a monthly fee to use one of several gaming laptops but never actually own the hardware, even after paying well past the machine's retail price.
  The service ranges from $50 a month for an HP Victus 15-inch laptop with an RTX 4050 to $130 a month for an Omen Max 16 with an RTX 5080. At current sale prices, subscribers would exceed the cost of buying the laptop outright within 16
  
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• Sony Will Ship Its Final Blu-ray Recorders This Month

  11-02-2026 16:00 via slashdot.org
  Sony will ship its last batch of Blu-ray recorders this month, according to Kyodo News, ending the company's decades-long run in a product category it helped create. The recorders targeted exclusively the Japanese domestic market, where households used them to record broadcast television. Sony had already stopped manufacturing the devices and recordable discs about a year ago, and the final shipments are clearing out remaining inventory.
  Kyodo attributes the segment's death to the rise of stream
  
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• T-Mobile Will Live Translate Regular Phone Calls Without an App

  11-02-2026 15:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  T-Mobile is opening registration today for a beta test of Live Translation, an AI-powered feature that will translate live phone calls into more than 50 languages when it launches this spring.
  The feature operates at the network level, so it doesn't require any specific app or device -- beta participants simply dial 87 to activate it on a call. T-Mobile President of Technology and CTO John Saw told The Verge that Live Translation works over VoLTE, VoNR and VoWiFi, meaning it isn't limited to 5G.
  
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• Moderna Says FDA Refuses To Review Its Application for Experimental Flu Shot

  11-02-2026 13:20 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The Food and Drug Administration has refused to start a review of Moderna's application for its experimental flu shot, the company announced Tuesday, in another sign of the Trump administration's influence on tightening vaccine regulations in the U.S. Moderna said the move is inconsistent with previous feedback from the agency from before it submitted the application and started phase three trials on the shot, called mRNA-1010. The drugmaker said it has reque
  
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• Discord Tries To Walk Back Age Verification Panic, Says Most Users Won't Need Face Scans

  11-02-2026 10:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Discord has moved to calm a user backlash over its upcoming age verification mandate by clarifying that the "vast majority" of people will never be asked to confirm their age through a face scan or government ID.
  The platform said it will instead rely on an internal "age prediction" model that draws on account information, device and activity data, and behavioral patterns across its communities to estimate whether someone is an adult. Users whose age the model cannot confidently determine will s
  
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• The First Signs of Burnout Are Coming From the People Who Embrace AI the Most

  11-02-2026 07:00 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The most seductive narrative in American work culture right now isn't that AI will take your job. It's that AI will save you from it. That's the version the industry has spent the last three years selling to millions of nervous people who are eager to buy it. Yes, some white-collar jobs will disappear. But for most other roles, the argument goes, AI is a force multiplier. You become a more capable, more indispensable lawyer, consultant, writer, coder, financi
  
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• Iceland is Planning For the Possibility That Its Climate Could Become Uninhabitable

  11-02-2026 04:45 via news.slashdot.org
  Iceland in October classified the potential collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation -- the ocean current system that ferries warm water northward from the tropics and essentially functions as the country's central heating -- as a national security risk, a designation that amounts to a formal reckoning with the possibility that climate change could render the island nation uninhabitable.
  Several recent studies have found the AMOC far more vulnerable to breakdown than scientist
  
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• ByteDance Suspends Seedance 2 Feature That Turns Facial Photos Into Personal Voices Over Potential Risks

  11-02-2026 02:45 via yro.slashdot.org
  hackingbear writes: China's Bytedance has released Seedance 2.0, an AI video generator which handles up to four types of input at once: images, videos, audio, and text. Users can combine up to nine images, three videos, and three audio files, up to a total of twelve files. Generated videos run between 4 and 15 [or 60] seconds long and automatically come with sound effects or music.
  Its performance is unfortunately so good that it has forced the firm to block its facial-to-voice feature after the
  
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• White House Eyes Data Center Agreements Amid Energy Price Spikes

  10-02-2026 23:45 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The Trump administration wants some of the world's largest technology companies to publicly commit to a new compact governing the rapid expansion of AI data centers, according to two administration officials granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.
  A draft of the compact obtained by POLITICO lays out commitments designed to ensure energy-hungry data centers do not raise household electricity prices, strain water supplies or undermine grid reliabili
  
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• Lost Soviet Moon Lander May Have Been Found

  10-02-2026 22:00 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: In 1966, a beach-ball-size robot bounced across the moon. Once it rolled to a stop, its four petal-like covers opened, exposing a camera that sent back the first picture taken on the surface of another world. This was Luna 9, the Soviet lander that was the earliest spacecraft to safely touchdown on the moon. While it paved the way toward interplanetary exploration, Luna 9's precise whereabouts have remained a mystery ever since.
  That may soon change. Two rese
  
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• Google's Personal Data Removal Tool Now Covers Government IDs

  10-02-2026 21:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google on Tuesday expanded its "Results about you" tool to let users request the removal of Search results containing government-issued ID numbers -- including driver's licenses, passports and Social Security numbers -- adding to the tool's existing ability to flag results that surface phone numbers, email addresses, and home addresses.
  The update, announced on Safer Internet Day, is rolling out in the U.S. over the coming days. Google also streamlined its process for reporting non-consensual ex
  
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• The US Is Flirting With Its First-Ever Population Decline

  10-02-2026 20:01 via news.slashdot.org
  The U.S., whose population the Census Bureau did not expect to start shrinking until 2081, may record its first-ever decline as early as this year because of the Trump administration's accelerating immigration crackdown. Census data released in late January showed US population growth slowed to just 0.5% in the year prior to July 2025 -- the lowest rate since the pandemic -- as net migration fell to 1.3 million from a peak of 2.7 million the year before.
  Census experts now expect net migration t
  
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• Microsoft Begins the First-Ever Secure Boot Certificate Swap Across Windows Ecosystem

  10-02-2026 19:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Microsoft has begun automatically replacing the original Secure Boot security certificates on Windows devices through regular monthly updates, a necessary move given that the 15-year-old certificates first issued in 2011 are set to expire between late June and October 2026.
  Secure Boot, which verifies that only trusted and digitally signed software runs before Windows loads, became a hardware requirement for Windows 11. A new batch of certificates was issued in 2023 and already ships on most PCs
  
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• A Bitcoin Blunder for the Ages: $40 Billion Accidentally Given Away

  10-02-2026 18:00 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The hundreds of prize payouts were mostly just a few bucks each, part of a promotional campaign by a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange. The total reward pot: 620,000 Korean won, or about $425. Then came a colossal mistake. A staffer for Bithumb, South Korea's No. 2 crypto exchange, didn't distribute 620,000 Korean won. Rather, the prizes, due to an input error, emerged in a different currency: 620,000 bitcoins, valued at more than $40 billion.
  That meant a
  
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• Apple and Google Agree To Change App Stores After 'Effective Duopoly' Claim

  10-02-2026 17:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple and Google have agreed to a set of commitments to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority that will prevent them from giving preferential treatment to their own apps and require greater transparency around how third-party apps are approved for sale.
  The CMA announced the measures on Tuesday, seven months after it declared that the two companies held an "effective duopoly" over the UK's mobile app ecosystem. Both companies also committed to not using data gathered from third-party develo
  
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• The Big Money in Today's Economy Is Going To Capital, Not Labor

  10-02-2026 16:00 via slashdot.org
  The American economy's most valuable companies are now worth trillions of dollars more than their predecessors were a generation ago, yet they employ a fraction of the workers -- and a new analysis by the Wall Street Journal argues that this widening gap between capital and labor is the defining economic story of our time.
  Labor received 58% of gross domestic income in 1980; by the third quarter of 2025, that figure had fallen to 51.4%. Corporate profits' share rose from 7% to 11.7% over the sam
  
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• NYC Private School Tuition Breaks $70,000 Milestone for Fall

  10-02-2026 15:00 via news.slashdot.org
  The top private schools in New York City plan to charge more than $70,000 this year for tuition, an amount exceeding that of many elite colleges, as they pass on the costs of soaring expenses including teacher salaries. From a report: Spence School, Dalton School and Nightingale-Bamford School on Manhattan's Upper East Side are among at least seven schools where the fees now exceed that threshold, according to school disclosures and Bloomberg reporting
  Fees among 15 private schools across the ci
  
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• Software Poses 'All-Time' Risk To Speculative Credit, Deutsche Bank Warns

  10-02-2026 13:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  The software and technology sectors pose one of the all-time great concentration risks to the speculative-grade credit market, according to Deutsche Bank AG analysts. Bloomberg: They comprise $597 billion and $681 billion of the speculative-grade credit universe, or about 14% and 16% respectively, analysts led by Steve Caprio wrote in a Monday note. Speculative debt spans high-yield debt, leveraged loans and US private credit.
  That's "a meaningful chunk of debt outstanding that risks souring bro
  
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• Poland Energy Sector Cyber Incident Highlights OT and ICS Security Gaps

  10-02-2026 13:00 via cisa.gov
  The purpose of this Alert is to amplify Poland’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT Polska’s) Energy Sector Incident Report published on Jan. 30, 2026, and highlight key mitigations for Energy Sector stakeholders. 
  In December 2025, a malicious cyber actor(s) targeted and compromised operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) in Poland’s Energy Sector—specifically renewable energy plants, a combined heat and power plant, and a manufacturing
  
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• 2 To 3 Cups of Coffee a Day May Reduce Dementia Risk. But Not if It's Decaf.

  10-02-2026 10:01 via science.slashdot.org
  If you think your daily doses of espresso or Earl Grey sharpen your mind, you just might be right, new science suggests. The New York Times: A large new study provides evidence of cognitive benefits from coffee and tea -- if it's caffeinated and consumed in moderation: two to three cups of coffee or one to two cups of tea daily.
  People who drank that amount for decades had lower chances of developing dementia than people who drank little or no caffeine, the researchers reported. They followed 13
  
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• Deepfake Fraud Taking Place On an Industrial Scale, Study Finds

  10-02-2026 07:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  Deepfake fraud has gone "industrial," an analysis published by AI experts has said. From a report: Tools to create tailored, even personalised, scams -- leveraging, for example, deepfake videos of Swedish journalists or the president of Cyprus -- are no longer niche, but inexpensive and easy to deploy at scale, said the analysis from the AI Incident Database.
  It catalogued more than a dozen recent examples of "impersonation for profit," including a deepfake video of Western Australia's premier,
  
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• Electric Cars Are Making It Easier To Breathe, Study Finds

  10-02-2026 04:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: It turns out that when fewer cars spew exhaust as they drive along, air quality improves. That's the conclusion of a new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health that looked at the effect of increased numbers of both EVs and plug-in hybrids on air pollution in California. The Golden State has by far the largest number of plug-in vehicles in the United States, and they've now reached significant numbers to have a positive impact on air quality.
  Between 2
  
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