ICT news

• Nuclear Developer Proposes Using Navy Reactors For Data Centers

  25-12-2025 04:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Post: A Texas power developer is proposing to repurpose nuclear reactors from Navy warships to power the United States grid as the Trump administration pushes to secure massive amounts of energy for the artificial intelligence boom. HGP Intelligent Energy LLC filed an application to the Energy Department to redirect two retired reactors to a data center project proposed at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, according to a letter submitted to the agency's
  
  Read more

• Gmail Users May Soon Be Able To Change Their Email Address and Keep the Old One

  26-12-2025 02:55 via it.slashdot.org
  Google appears to be testing a feature that would let users change their @gmail.com address for the first time, according to an official support document. The support page exists only in Hindi, suggesting an India-first rollout, and Google notes that users will "gradually begin to see this option."
  The feature would let users switch to a new @gmail address while retaining full access to their old one, effectively giving a single account two working email addresses. Emails sent to either address
  
  Read more

• Apple Settles Brazilian Antitrust Case, Must Allow Third-Party App Stores and External Payment Links

  26-12-2025 01:39 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple has agreed to a settlement with Brazil's antitrust regulator that will require the company to allow third-party app stores on iPhones and permit developers to direct users to external payment options, marking another country where Apple's tightly controlled App Store model is being pried open by government action.
  Brazil's Administrative Council of Economic Defense approved the settlement this week, resolving an investigation that began in 2022 into whether Apple's restrictions on app dist
  
  Read more

• Fake MAS Windows Activation Domain Used To Spread PowerShell Malware

  25-12-2025 22:00 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: A typosquatted domain impersonating the Microsoft Activation Scripts (MAS) tool was used to distribute malicious PowerShell scripts that infect Windows systems with the 'Cosmali Loader'. BleepingComputer has found that multiple MAS users began reporting on Reddit yesterday that they received pop-up warnings on their systems about a Cosmali Loader infection.
  Based on the reports, attackers have set up a look-alike domain, "get[dot]activate[dot]win," which clos
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Wall Street Has Stopped Rewarding 'Strategic' Layoffs

  25-12-2025 20:01 via slashdot.org
  Goldman Sachs analysts have identified a notable shift in how investors respond to corporate layoff announcements, finding that even job cuts attributed to automation and AI-driven restructuring are now causing stock prices to fall rather than rise. The investment bank linked recent layoff announcements to public companies' earnings reports and stock market data, concluding that stocks dropped by an average of 2% following such announcements, and companies citing restructurings faced even harshe
  
  Read more

• Chinese Social Media Users Criticize Authorities in Rare Sign of Dissent

  25-12-2025 19:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese social media users criticized two key government policies, rare signs of public dissent in the country where the internet is heavily censored. The death of the former head of China's one-child policy agency -- which for decades forced women to carry out abortions and sterilizations -- sparked criticism of the demographic effort, with one netizen lamenting the "children who were lost."
  Others, meanwhile, criticized Beijing's leadership over its ongoing
  
  Read more

• Framework Raises Memory Prices Again, Suggests Customers Bring Their Own RAM

  25-12-2025 18:01 via it.slashdot.org
  Framework has announced yet another price increase for memory modules, the second in roughly a month, and the company is now actively encouraging customers to source their own RAM elsewhere if they can find better deals. The laptop maker cited "extreme memory shortages and price volatility" as the reason for the hike, noting that 32GB modules and smaller currently cost around $10 per gigabyte while 48GB modules run approximately $13 per gigabyte.
  Framework said it expects to raise prices again b
  
  Read more

• Waymo Pays Workers $22 To Close Doors on Stranded Robotaxis

  25-12-2025 17:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  Waymo's fleet of autonomous robotaxis can navigate city streets and compete with human taxi drivers, but they become stranded when a passenger leaves a door ajar -- prompting the company to pay tow truck operators around $20 to $24 through an app called Honk just to push a door shut. The owner of a towing company in Inglewood, California, completes up to three such jobs a week for Waymo, sometimes freeing vehicles by removing seat belts caught in doors. Another Los Angeles tow operator said loca
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Nvidia Buying Groq's Assets For $20 Billion in Its Largest Deal on Record

  25-12-2025 16:01 via slashdot.org
  Nvidia has agreed to buy assets from Groq, a designer of high-performance artificial intelligence accelerator chips, for $20 billion in cash, according to Alex Davis, CEO of Disruptive, which led the startup's latest financing round in September. From a report: Davis, whose firm has invested more than half a billion dollars in Groq since the company was founded in 2016, said the deal came together quickly.
  Groq raised $750 million at a valuation of about $6.9 billion three months ago. Investors
  
  Read more

• Trump Administration To Overhaul Lottery System For H-1B Visas

  25-12-2025 15:00 via news.slashdot.org
  The Trump administration has announced it would replace the lottery programme used to grant H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers with a system that prioritises higher-paid individuals. From a report: The Department of Homeland Security said it would begin to implement a "weighted" selection process to give an advantage to higher-skilled and higher-paid applicants from February, according to a statement posted on its website. Matthew Tragesser, Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson,
  
  Read more

• Bitcoin Miners' Pivot To AI Has Lifted Bitcoin-Mining ETF By About 90% This Year

  25-12-2025 14:00 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: It's harder than ever to mine bitcoin. And less profitable, too. But mining-company stocks are still flying, even with cryptocurrency prices in retreat. That's because these firms have something in common with the hottest investment theme on the planet: the massive, electricity-hungry data centers expected to power the artificial-intelligence boom. Some companies are figuring out how to remake themselves as vital suppliers to Alph
  
  Read more

• Fake Video Claiming 'Coup In France' Goes Viral

  25-12-2025 11:00 via slashdot.org
  alternative_right shares a report from Euronews: France's President Emmanuel Macron discovered news of his own supposed overthrow, after he received a message of concern, along with a link to a Facebook video. "On Sunday (14 December) one of my African counterparts got in touch, writing 'Dear president, what's happening to you? I'm very worried,'" Macron told readers of French local newspaper La Provence on December 16.Alongside the message, a compelling video showcasing a swirling helicopter, m
  
  Read more

• NASA Will Soon Find Out If the Perseverance Rover Can Really Persevere On Mars

  25-12-2025 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  With NASA's Mars Sample Return mission delayed into the 2030s, engineers are certifying the Perseverance rover to keep operating for many more years while it continues collecting and safeguarding Martian rock samples. Ars Technica reports: The good news is that the robot, about the size of a small SUV, is in excellent health, according to Steve Lee, Perseverance's deputy project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). "Perseverance is approaching five years of exploration on Mars," Le
  
  Read more

• 'Why I Quit Streaming And Got Back Into Cassettes'

  25-12-2025 02:25 via news.slashdot.org
  "In the age of Spotify and AI slop, tapes remind us what we're missing when we stop taking risks," writes author Janus Rose in an article for 404 Media. Here's an excerpt: There are lots of advantages to the cassette lifestyle. Unlike vinyl records, tapes are compact and super-portable, and unlike streaming, you never have to worry about a giant company suddenly taking them away from you. They can be easily duplicated, shared, and made into mixtapes using equipment you find in a junk shop. When
  
  Read more

• Apple To Allow Alternative App Stores For iOS Users In Brazil

  25-12-2025 01:45 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple will allow alternative iOS app stores and external payment systems in Brazil after settling an antitrust case with the country's competition authority, following a lawsuit brought by MercadoLibre back in 2022. Thurrott reports: Yesterday, Brazil's Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Economica (CADE) explained in its press release that it has approved a Term of Commitment to Cease (TCC) submitted by Apple. To settle the lawsuit, the iPhone maker has agreed to allow third-party iOS app stores
  
  Read more

• Apple's App Course Runs $20,000 a Student. Is It Really Worth It?

  25-12-2025 01:02 via developers.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Two years ago, Lizmary Fernandez took a detour from studying to be an immigration attorney to join a free Apple course for making iPhone apps. The Apple Developer Academy in Detroit launched as part of the company's $200 million response to the Black Lives Matter protests and aims to expand opportunities for people of color in the country's poorest big city. But Fernandez found the program's cost-of-living stipend lacking -- "A lot of us got on foo
  
  Read more

• The Phone-Based Retirement Is Here

  25-12-2025 00:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  Adult children across the United States are increasingly reporting that their aging parents have developed what looks remarkably like the smartphone addiction [non-paywalled source] typically associated with teenagers, a phenomenon The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel has dubbed "phone-based retirement." A 2019 Pew Research Center study found people 60 and older spend more than half their daily leisure time -- four hours and 16 minutes -- in front of screens. Nielsen reported this year that adults 65 a
  
  Read more

• Spotify Disables Accounts After Open-Source Group Scrapes 86 Million Songs From Platform

  24-12-2025 23:40 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  After Anna's Archive published a massive scrape containing 86 million songs and metadata from Spotify, the streaming giant responded by disabling the nefarious accounts responsible. A spokesperson for Spotify told Recorded Future News that it "has identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping.""We've implemented new safeguards for these types of anti-copyright attacks and are actively monitoring for suspicious behavior," the spokesperson said. "Since day o
  
  Read more

• Microsoft Says It's Not Planning To Use AI To Rewrite Windows From C To Rust

  24-12-2025 23:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  Microsoft has denied any plans to rewrite Windows 11 using AI and Rust after a LinkedIn post from one of its top-level engineers sparked a wave of online backlash by claiming the company's goal was to "eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030."
  Galen Hunt, a principal software engineer responsible for several large-scale research projects at Microsoft, made the claim in what was originally a hiring post for his team. His original wording described a "North Star" of "1 engineer, 1
  
  Read more

• Italy Tells Meta To Suspend Its Policy That Bans Rival AI Chatbots From WhatsApp

  24-12-2025 22:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  Italy's antitrust regulator Italian Competition Authority ordered Meta to suspend a policy that blocks rival AI chatbots from using WhatsApp's business APIs, citing potential abuse of market dominance. "Meta's conduct appears to constitute an abuse, since it may limit production, market access, or technical developments in the AI Chatbot services market, to the detriment of consumers," the Authority wrote. "Moreover, while the investigation is ongoing, Meta's conduct may cause serious and irrepa
  
  Read more

• Amazon Faces 'Leader's Dilemma' - Fight AI Shopping Bots or Join Them

  24-12-2025 22:21 via slashdot.org
  Amazon finds itself caught between two competing impulses as AI shopping agents from OpenAI, Google, Perplexity and Microsoft mushroom across the e-commerce space -- block them to protect its dominant position, or partner with them to avoid being left behind. The company has largely played defense so far. Amazon recently updated its website code to block external AI agents from crawling it, and as of this week had blocked 47 bots including those from all major AI companies. In November, Amazon s
  
  Read more

• China Is Worried AI Threatens Party Rule

  24-12-2025 21:40 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Concerned that artificial intelligence could threaten Communist Party rule, Beijing is taking extraordinary steps to keep it under control. Although China's government sees AI as crucial to the country's economic and military future, regulations and recent purges of online content show it also fears AI could destabilize society. Chatbots pose a particular problem: Their ability to think for themselves could generate responses that
  
  Read more

• An Amateur Codebreaker May Have Just Solved the Black Dahlia and Zodiac Killings

  24-12-2025 21:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Los Angeles Times (non-paywalled source): When police questioned Marvin Margolis following the murder of Elizabeth Short -- who became known as the Black Dahlia -- he lied about how well he had known her. The 22-year-old Short had been found mutilated in a weedy lot in South Los Angeles, severed neatly in half with what detectives thought was surgical skill. Margolis was on the list of suspects. He was a sullen 21-year-old premed student at USC, a shell-shocked World War II veteran who had expre
  
  Read more

• European Leaders Condemn US Visa Bans as Row Over 'Censorship' Escalates

  24-12-2025 20:30 via news.slashdot.org
  European leaders including Emmanuel Macron have accused Washington of "coercion and intimidation," after the US imposed a visa ban on five prominent European figures who have been at heart of the campaign to introduce laws regulating American tech companies. From a report: The visa bans were imposed on Tuesday on Thierry Breton, the former EU commissioner and one of the architects of the bloc's Digital Services Act (DSA), and four anti-disinformation campaigners, including two in Germany and two
  
  Read more

• Russia Plans a Nuclear Power Plant on the Moon Within a Decade

  24-12-2025 20:01 via science.slashdot.org
  Russia plans to put a nuclear power plant on the moon in the next decade to supply its lunar space programme and a joint Russian-Chinese research station, as major powers rush to explore the earth's only natural satellite. Reuters: Ever since Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into space in 1961, Russia has prided itself as a leading power in space exploration, but in recent decades it has fallen behind the United States and, increasingly, China. Russia's ambitions suffer
  
  Read more

• Some of DOJ's Careful Redactions Can Be Defeated With Copy-Paste

  24-12-2025 19:01 via news.slashdot.org
  The Justice Department justified its delayed release of sensitive files by citing the need to carefully redact information that could identify victims, but at least some of those redactions have proven to be technically ineffective and can be bypassed by simply copying and pasting the blacked-out text into a new document.
  A 2022 complaint filed by the US Virgin Islands seeking damages from Jeffrey Epstein's estate appeared on the DOJ's "Epstein Library" website with black boxes throughout. Techd
  
  Read more

• What Rules Govern Hallmark Christmas Movies?

  24-12-2025 18:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Hallmark has released more than 300 Christmas-themed TV movies since 2000, and a detailed internal rulebook obtained by film data analyst Stephen Follows explains how the company manages to produce nearly one new holiday film per week during the final quarter of each year without the whole operation collapsing into creative chaos.
  The document, referred to as Hallmark's "bible" by writers and producers who have worked on these films, specifies everything from script length (105-110 pages across
  
  Read more

• 25.2% of Energy EU Used in 2024 Came From Renewables

  24-12-2025 17:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: In 2024, 25.2% of gross final energy consumption in the EU came from renewable sources, up by 0.7 percentage points compared with 2023. This share is 17.3 pp short of meeting the 2030 target (42.5%), which would require an annual average increase of 2.9 pp from 2025 to 2030.
  Among the EU countries, Sweden recorded the highest share of its gross final energy consumption coming from renewable sources (62.8%). Sweden primarily relied on solid biomass, hydro and
  
  Read more

• YouTube Has a Firm Grip on Daytime TV

  24-12-2025 16:01 via news.slashdot.org
  YouTube has been winning the streaming wars for years, but its real competitive advantage comes not from prime-time viewing but from its stranglehold on daytime hours when Americans are meditating, exercising, cooking, or simply looking for background noise. At 11 a.m. in October, YouTube commanded an average audience of 6.3 million viewers compared to Netflix's 2.8 million, according to Nielsen data. Amazon drew about a million viewers at that hour, and HBO Max, Paramount+ and Peacock each pull
  
  Read more

• Why Are There No Large Market Cap Companies Globally in Edtech?

  24-12-2025 15:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Goldman Sachs, in a note this week, via India Dispatch: There are various reasons that explains this: (i) A large part of the global education spend goes towards formal education (schools, colleges and universities), which are typically either run by governments or are not-for-profit institutions;
  (ii) It is difficult to replicate education quality at scale in our view, since most teachers would have a different pedagogy, and thus standardization is harder to achieve vs that in other internet ca
  
  Read more

Follow @newslocke_ict on Twitter!