ICT news

• New GitHub, PyPI Policies Hope to Boost Supply Chain Security

  01-08-2026 19:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  "GitHub and the Python Package Index (PyPI) have introduced new policies meant to boost supply chain security," reports SecurityWeek, "by preventing the fast propagation of poisoned package versions and the poisoning of old and long-stable releases."
  To prevent the fast delivery of malicious code through the immediate fetching of brand-new releases, GitHub has introduced a Dependabot cooldown, where the automation tool waits for at least three days after a release has been published before openi
  
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• Meta Debuts First AI Coding Agent To Take On Anthropic and OpenAI

  05-08-2026 23:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  Meta has launched Muse Code, its first AI coding agent that's positioned as a lower-cost rival to Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's Codex. It offers pay-as-you-go pricing and an optional zero-data-retention feature for enterprise users. CNBC reports: Muse Code is the latest major release from AI chief Alexandr Wang, who leads Meta Superintelligence Labs and oversees foundation model development. Wang joined in June of last year as the centerpiece of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's effort to revamp his compa
  
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• Apple's 'Private Relay' Is Exposing Users' Real IP Addresses

  05-08-2026 22:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Security researchers found that Apple's iCloud Private Relay can expose users' real IP addresses because some passkey-related requests bypass Safari and its proxy protections at the operating-system level. "In short: any website that supports, or pretends to support, passkeys can see the user's real IP address despite having iCloud Private Relay on," security researcher Tommy Mysk, who discovered the issue along with Talal Haj Bakry, told 404 Media. The flaws also affect OnionBrowser, an iOS app
  
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• Lawmaker Who Wants Data Center Pause Wins Kansas Democratic Primary

  05-08-2026 21:00 via politics.slashdot.org
  Kansas Democrats nominated State Senator Cindy Holscher for governor after she defeated party-backed rival Ethan Corson. "The race became a test of what sort of candidate Democratic voters prefer in what is expected to be a challenging general election race: a more moderate candidate like Mr. Corson with endorsements from party leaders or an outspoken populist like Ms. Holscher, who spoke out against data centers and the political establishment," reports The New York Times. From the repot: Even
  
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• Google Overhauls AI Leadership As DeepMind CEO Steps Aside

  05-08-2026 20:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google is reshuffling its AI leadership as Demis Hassabis steps away from day-to-day management of DeepMind to become chairman and Alphabet's chief scientist, while CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu takes operational control. Meanwhile, longtime chief scientist Jeff Dean and several prominent researchers are leaving to launch their own company. Axios reports: Hassabis will add the title of chief scientist for Google parent company Alphabet and also continue to lead Isomorphic Labs, the company's AI drug dis
  
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• Cloudflare Announces Open-Source Cloudflare OS As AI 'Operating System'

  05-08-2026 19:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Cloudflare has open-sourced Cloudflare OS, an Apache 2.0-licensed platform that lets organizations build AI agents, apps, and workflows using curated company data and tools within isolated, governed environments. Despite the name, it is not a traditional operating system but a framework for securely managing organizational AI workloads. Phoronix reports: Cloudflare OS is already used internally at Cloudflare and is described in today's announcement as:
  "Cloudflare OS starts with a conversation i
  
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• The Days of Walking Into a T-Mobile Store May Be Numbered

  05-08-2026 18:00 via mobile.slashdot.org
  A leaked roadmap suggests T-Mobile plans to make its T-Life app the primary way customers manage their accounts by the end of 2026, "gradually moving one feature at a time into the app" and away from physical stores, reports Android Authority. That includes upgrades, new-line activations, and eventually new-account sign-ups. From the report: According to an image shared by a Reddit user, the carrier has mapped out the next phase of its app-first strategy. This clearly shows that the T-Life app i
  
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• Senators Demand Crackdown On Wildfire 'Prediction Markets'

  05-08-2026 17:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Several US senators have written a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), inquiring about the agency's "plans to crack down on prediction markets" that offer "contracts for individuals to bet on wildfires." "Offering bets on destructive wildfires threatens to minimize communities' suffering, all so the rich and powerful can profit," wrote (PDF) the group of senators, who represent Oregon, California, Nevada, Minnesota, an
  
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• NVMe Polishes Its Specs, Brings Virtualization to Locally Attached SSDs

  05-08-2026 13:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  The latest NVMe specifications add SSD-level virtualization that can simplify live VM migration by preserving storage identities across servers. The updates also introduce support for post-quantum cryptography, controller-based rate limiting, voltage monitoring, and factory-reset capabilities. The Register reports: Announced by the NVM Express consortium, all 11 of the suite of NVMe specs have been updated with new features and engineering change notices. These represent the next step in the evo
  
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• Watch a SpaceX Rocket Crash Into the Moon

  05-08-2026 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  A four-ton SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage left drifting after a 2025 lunar mission is expected to crash into the Moon at about 5,400 mph, likely striking Einstein Crater. The impact should occur at approximately 2:35 a.m. ET (0635GMT). Reuters reports: Such stages typically fall back into Earth's atmosphere and burn up or plunge into the ocean after boosting the rocket's payload to a precise spot in orbit. But because the January lunar lander mission required more thrust than missions closer to Ear
  
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• Texas Halts Data Center Connections To Power Grid Amid Overwhelming Demand

  05-08-2026 05:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nowhere is the US data center boom bigger than in Texas. But less than a year after declaring Texas the "epicenter of AI development," Governor Greg Abbott has declared a moratorium on all new power grid connections for data centers -- at least until developers provide more information about their projects' potential impacts on the grid and communities. The Republican governor directed regulators in an August 3 announcement at the Public Uti
  
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• EA Is Now Officially Privately Owned

  05-08-2026 01:00 via games.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader neoRUR shares a report from Game Developer: EA Sports FC and Battlefield publisher EA has been taken private by an investor consortium led by Saudi Arabia's sovereign Public Investment Fund (PIF). The move means the U.S. juggernaut is no longer a publicly-traded entity and is now majority owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through its PIF investment arm. Other investors include Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, the latter of which was established by U.S. president Don
  
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• Apple Limits Bug Bounty Submissions After Flood of AI Slop

  05-08-2026 00:00 via it.slashdot.org
  Apple has capped the number of open bug-bounty reports researchers can submit after being flooded with low-quality and sometimes entirely fabricated vulnerabilities generated by AI. MacRumors reports: The Financial Times learned of the limit after cybersecurity startup Bynario used ChatGPT to locate more than 50 macOS bugs in three weeks. Bynario found a privilege escalation exploit that could let an attacker get unrestricted access to a Mac, but was unable to report it because Apple limited the
  
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• Bending Spoons to Buy Airtable For $1.28 Billion

  04-08-2026 23:00 via slashdot.org
  Bending Spoons has made its first acquisition since going public last month at an $18 billion valuation, agreeing to buy spreadsheet and database startup Airtable for $1.28 billion in cash. Airtable joins a growing portfolio of notable brands owned by the Italian app developer, including Evernote, WeTransfer, EventBrite, and Vimeo. TechCrunch reports: Founded in 2013, Airtable has so far raised more than $1.4 billion over multiple funding rounds. At its peak, during the boom days of 2021, it was
  
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• Microsoft Tells Engineers 'Tokenmaxxing Is Not What We Are Optimizing For'

  04-08-2026 22:00 via slashdot.org
  Microsoft is introducing AI token budgets for employees, making the cheaper GPT-5.6 its default internal model and telling engineers to focus on business results rather than maximizing AI usage. 404 Media reports: "As we accelerate our use of GitHub Copilot to deliver on our goals, we all need to be aware of how we consume tokens," Jay Parikh, an executive vice president at Microsoft said in an email to Microsoft employees. GitHub is owned by Microsoft, and GitHub Copilot is an AI coding tool. "
  
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• Trump Begins Selling $100,000 Monthly Subscription Service to Wall Street

  04-08-2026 21:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Trump Media has officially launched its $100,000-per-month data feed giving trading firms machine-readable access to Truth Social posts milliseconds before the public. According to Fortune, five Wall Street firms have already signed up for the service, which "would generate about $500,000 in monthly revenue, or $6 million annually."Critics argue the service could let President Trump, who owns about 41% of the company, profit from early access to market-moving presidential communications. "I'll b
  
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• Trump Administration Drafting Ban On Chinese Data Center Devices

  04-08-2026 20:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: The Federal Communications Commission, which oversees the U.S. telecom industry, is working on the measure to bar imports of new Chinese optical transceivers, which allow data to travel over fiber-optic cables at the speed of light within data centers. Officials hope to publish it this year, when it would take effect. The move, not previously reported, aims to prevent Chinese firms from stealing data, installing malware or disrupting
  
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• Apple Says More Ex-Employees May Have Taken Confidential Data to OpenAI

  04-08-2026 19:20 via yro.slashdot.org
  Apple is now seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent OpenAI and Jony Ive's io startup from developing AI hardware allegedly based on stolen Apple trade secrets. "The iPhone maker also claims that more of its former employees may be involved with the trade secrets theft," reports TechCrunch. From the report: In a new filing, Apple is requesting expedited discovery from the accused OpenAI employees, senior systems engineer Chang Liu and Chief Hardware Officer Tang Yew Tan; OpenAI, and its foun
  
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• Apple Launches Legal Challenge Against UK Demand To Access Encrypted User Data

  04-08-2026 18:00 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Apple has launched a new legal challenge against a UK government demand to access its customers' highly encrypted data, a year after the Home Office agreed to abandon its previous request. The US tech company launched the legal complaint last month at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), an independent court that has the power to investigate claims that the UK intelligence services have acted unlawfully. The UK government had made a seco
  
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• Sandisk and SK Hynix Publish First Open High Bandwidth Flash Standard

  04-08-2026 17:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  BrianFagioli writes: Sandisk and SK hynix have published the first open technical specification for High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) through the Open Compute Project. HBF is designed to create a new memory tier between High Bandwidth Memory and traditional SSD storage, giving AI inference systems more near compute capacity without relying entirely on expensive HBM. The specification supports capacities up to 512GB using 8-high and 16-high NAND stacks, with bandwidth tiers ranging from about 0.4TB per
  
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• Russia-Linked 'Midnight Blizzard' Group Hijacks Hotel Wi-Fi With CaptiveCrunch

  04-08-2026 13:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  A Russia-linked group tracked as Midnight Blizzard has compromised hotel and conference Wi-Fi portals worldwide, redirecting guests to phishing pages and fake software updates that steal credentials, session tokens, and other sensitive data. Microsoft says the campaign, dubbed CaptiveCrunch, "targets traveling employees generally rather than a particular sector," reports iTNews. From the report: Midnight Blizzard, tracked internally by Microsoft under its earlier codename NOBELIUM, is attributed
  
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• Spain Offers $1.14 Billion To Get Thirty Meter Telescope Moved To Canary Islands

  04-08-2026 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Behind the Black: In a new bid to get the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) to move from Hawaii, which has blocked its construction for more than a decade, the Spanish government has put together a $1.14 billion package that would not only pay for construction on the Canary Islands, but would finance an additional half century of operations. Tech Times provides some additional details: The package is conditional on the TMT International Observator
  
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• OpenAI's Astra Solved Decades-Old Math Problems For $2,000

  04-08-2026 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: The cost of producing new results on ten longstanding mathematical problems just fell to $2,000, according to OpenAI, which says its Astra model generated machine-checkable proofs for questions that had resisted human progress for decades. OpenAI published the work on August 1 and used it to give its next major model family a name: Astra. The results run across group theory, high-dimensional geometry, coding theory, quantum complexity, lattice cry
  
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• An AI-Supervised Remote Exam Went So Badly That 58,000 Students Must Retake It

  04-08-2026 01:05 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Earlier this summer, nearly 160,000 applicants took the entrance exam for UNAM, Mexico's largest university. For the first time, they did it completely remotely, using a "lockdown" browser and AI-powered webcam proctoring software, over several weeks from late May through early June. It was a disaster. When exam results came in, they bore little resemblance to past results, especially at the top. Between 2021 and 2025, 3.5 percent of test ta
  
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• Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks For MacBooks By the Thousands

  04-08-2026 00:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple says its lower-cost MacBook Neo is beginning to displace Windows laptops and Chromebooks in K-12 schools, with several districts purchasing thousands of units. According to the company's latest earnings call, nearly half of the large MacBook Neo purchases made by U.S. educational institutions last quarter reportedly replaced competing platforms. 9to5Mac reports: Apple's commentary highlighted some large district deployments moving to Neo Pinellas County Schools, one of the largest district
  
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• Microsoft Is Bringing Xbox 360 Games to PC

  03-08-2026 23:00 via games.slashdot.org
  Microsoft reportedly plans to let developers bring Xbox 360 games to PC and next-generation Xbox devices, with a gradual rollout expected between 2027 and 2028. A separate disc-to-digital program would also give players transferable digital licenses tied to their physical Xbox discs, preserving the ability to resell or trade them. The Verge reports: With 360 games, developers can opt into making them backward compatible, and they will have control over things like a game's price and if it's avai
  
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• Microsoft CEO Touts His Own DIY AI Project To Wall Street and His 20 Million Followers

  03-08-2026 22:00 via slashdot.org
  theodp writes: During Microsoft's 2026Q4 earnings call, CEO Microsoft Satya Nadella took time to tout a dashboard he personally created using AI from a Morgan Stanley analyst's PDF research report, which suggested a rosy payback for the so-called MAG7's ('Magnificent 7' companies) massive capital expenditures on AI (to which Nadella later added a "not financial advice" disclaimer). "It would be fun for you, Adam. I think one of your colleagues put out an ROIC [Return on Invested Capital] documen
  
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• Apple's iCloud File Sharing Left Ex-Employees With Access to Secret Documents

  03-08-2026 21:08 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple's practice of mixing employees' work files with personal iCloud accounts reportedly left some former staff with continued access to confidential documents, messages, and even new updates after leaving the company. "The former employees said many Apple files they had been shared on over their careers at the company -- including planning documents for product launch events -- continued to sync to their personal devices through the iCloud storage service after they left Apple," reports The In
  
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• Samsung Bans Smart TV Apps That Share Users' Internet Connections

  03-08-2026 20:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Several popular Samsung smart TV apps contain code that share the owner's internet connection with strangers, potentially putting millions of Samsung smart TVs at risk of hijacking, according to new security research published on Monday. Some of these apps claim to have been installed on hundreds of millions of smart TVs in people's homes, per the app developers. At least one of the smart TV apps was a simple Pac-Man game that Samsung had endo
  
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• As Reddit Stock Falls, CEO Questions Value of Google's AI Overviews

  03-08-2026 19:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Reddit CEO Steve Huffman criticized Google's AI Overviews for summarizing publishers' content without delivering the traffic benefits of traditional search, arguing that users increasingly value Reddit's human perspectives and firsthand experiences. Ars Technica reports: First, there was a letter to investors (PDF), wherein Huffman spun his narrative about Reddit's value proposition and general strategic direction amid the proliferation of AI tools. He wrote: "As the internet becomes flooded wit
  
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