ICT news

• Nvidia Unveils AI Agent Safety Platform With Hardware-Based Watchdog

  28-09-2026 20:00 via it.slashdot.org
  wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Nvidia on Monday announced the Open Agent Safety Platform, which combines open source software and a reference system design to keep AI agents within set boundaries from testing through deployment. The chipmaker explained that the platform pairs the open-source OpenShell runtime with Sentry, an out-of-band watchdog running on BlueField-4 DPUs. Nvidia says Sentry can monitor agent activity independently and quarantine an agent that crosses its boundar
  
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• Amazon Evaluating Drone Deliveries In Australia, Asia

  28-09-2026 19:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Amazon is preparing to expand Prime Air drone deliveries into Australia and potentially other Asia-Pacific markets, with a new regulatory role tasked with securing the approvals needed to launch service there. The Register reports: "As Prime Air evaluates Australia and other countries, we are hiring a Head of Regulatory Approvals, Australia -- the person responsible for navigating Australia's aviation regulatory system and securing every approval required to deliver to Australian customers by dr
  
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• Bill Gates Says an AI 'Kill Switch' Isn't Enough

  28-09-2026 18:00 via slashdot.org
  Bill Gates said an AI "kill switch" alone would be insufficient to address the technology's risks. "The kill switch is, that's kind of a weird thing. It's not enough to have a kill switch," the Microsoft co-founder said in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." He said the more immediate concern is people using AI for cyberattacks or bioterrorism rather than systems acting autonomously. "We're not yet at the point where they autonomously grab computers and, you know, can't be
  
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• SpaceX Launches Starship Into Orbit

  28-09-2026 17:20 via science.slashdot.org
  SpaceX's Starship reached orbit for the first time, successfully deploying 26 operational Starlink V3 satellites after overcoming an early Raptor 3 engine shutdown during ascent. "SpaceX plans to eventually deploy 100,000 upgraded Starlink V3s to expand the company's wireless satellite internet services," notes Space.com. Here's the latest update from the report:SpaceX has decided to return Starship from orbit earlier than expected. After valuating the upper stage Ship's status during its first
  
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• Walmart Says It's Not Using Personal Info To Set Prices As It Expands Digital Shelf Labels

  28-09-2026 17:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Walmart is aiming to assuage customers' fears about its new pricing technology as it rolls out digital price labels at its stores. In a statement posted on the company's website, Walmart's CEO John Furner vowed that the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer isn't using personal information like income, shopping history or a customer's willingness to pay to set prices, and it won't be doing so in the future either. "We don't set differ
  
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• Are AI Chatbots Spreading Misinformation to US Voters?

  28-09-2026 10:34 via politics.slashdot.org
  Are AI chatbots quietly shaping the perceptions of U.S. voters? Voters trying to educate themselves about candidates "are unknowingly being served partisan talking points in the guise of neutral news summaries," write two news researchers in Politico magazine:Leading AI chatbots cite partisan websites masquerading as independent local news outlets nearly half of the time when people ask about candidates and issues that the partisan sites have covered in the midterm campaign, according to a new a
  
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• Apple Faces $5.7 Billion Patent Infringement Verdict Over iPhone And Apple Watch Haptics

  28-09-2026 06:04 via apple.slashdot.org
  "A federal jury in San Diego awarded Taction Technology more than $5.7 billion in damages Friday after finding that Apple infringed claims from two haptics patents,"
  reports CNBC:Taction sued Apple in 2021 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. The company alleged that Apple was improperly "capitalizing on Taction's innovation and success" by selling devices that infringed on its vibration technology, according to the complaint. Apple initially won dismissal in 2023,
  
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• Just How Big is the AI Buildout - and How Risky?

  28-09-2026 01:34 via slashdot.org
  A new Brookings Institution study notes the "strikingly physical" economic footprint of AI's buildout, from specialized chips and electricity to purpose-built data centers. (Two-thirds of a data center's costs are IT equipment, with one-third going to real estate and its associated power infrastructure.) "At an average of 3.63 percent of GDP per year, the projected buildout would be larger relative to the economy than the major U.S. canal, railroad, electrification, highway, and telecommunicatio
  
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• Waymo Says Its Self-Driving Cars Reduced Injury-Causing Accidents by 82%

  27-09-2026 21:04 via tech.slashdot.org
  Waymo's self-driving car technology "continues to outperform human benchmarks," the company claimed this week. "It was involved in 841 fewer injury-causing crashes — an 82% reduction compared to human drivers."
  Electrek reports:We've seen various Waymo crash data before, with Waymo claiming crash reductions. That's all well and good when the company says it, but we've also seen independent data confirming similar (though lower) crash reduction numbers...
  Waymo has enough miles that it's re
  
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• After Dozens of Incidents at OpenAI and Anthropic, OpenAI Pauses Model Training to Build More Safeguards

  27-09-2026 16:34 via slashdot.org
  "OpenAI said it has paused training of its latest AI models," reports the Associated Press, "as reports of AI agents going rogue mount."The decision to halt development came just hours after the company disclosed Friday that it was reviewing several incidents from the summer in which OpenAI agents searching federal government websites acted in unexpected ways beyond what was asked of them while gathering and distributing information... OpenAI said in a statement that it will resume training "onl
  
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• Critical Zero-Day Vulnerabilities Exploited in Citrix NetScaler ADC, Gateway

  27-09-2026 14:00 via cisa.gov
  CISA is amplifying Citrix’s disclosure of eight new vulnerabilities affecting Citrix NetScaler ADC and Citrix NetScaler Gateway products: CVE-2026-88771, CVE-2026-88772, CVE-2026-88773, CVE-2026-88774, CVE-2026-88775, CVE-2026-88776, CVE-2026-88777, and CVE-2026-88778. 
  CISA has added CVE-2026-88771 and CVE-2026-88772 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog. Both are critical, zero-day vulnerabilities that can independently enable remote code execution. CISA has received
  
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• New Tin-based Solar Cells Trap Heat 1,000 Times Longer, Could Beat 33% Limit

  27-09-2026 12:04 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Could this push solar cell efficiency beyond the theoretical 33% limit? Interesting Engineering reports:
  Researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands found that tin-based perovskite solar cells can slow heat loss from high-energy "hot electrons..."
  When sunlight strikes a panel, photons jump-start electrons into action. The most energetic photons create super-charged hot electrons... [but] in fractions of a trillionth of a second, these high-energy particles rapidly cool, dumpin
  
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• China and the US Say They've Agreed to Start Talks About AI

  27-09-2026 07:36 via news.slashdot.org
  The United States and China have agreed to "launch a dialogue" on AI, reports Reuters.On artificial intelligence, the two sides agreed to hold a dialogue on the technology's risks and benefits, with the next round of discussions set for November, and to set up a communication channel for AI-related incidents, the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the White House said.
  The White House said that the leaders had agreed to use the term "super intelligence" in place of "artificial intelligence." In a sepa
  
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• KDE and GNOME Developers Ponder How to Handle AI-Generated Contributions

  27-09-2026 03:04 via tech.slashdot.org
  Last weekend KDE's annual Akademy conference included a presentation proposing
  an AI-native KDE," writes The Register. This led KDE developer Nate Graham to open a discussion about proposed restrictions on LLM-assisted contributions which "rapidly became heated. Moderators issued warnings, restricted further comments, and eventually removed the thread."
  But as Graham writes on his blog, "A bunch of people mostly outside of KDE who disapprove of LLM usage derailed KDE's attempt to add restriction
  
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• After 40 Years, Microsoft Excel Will Add Single-Cell Lists and Arrays

  26-09-2026 22:34 via slashdot.org
  Microsoft's senior product manager for Excel acknowledges that "Throughout Excel's 40-year history, you've only been able to put one value per cell." But that's now changing with arrays in cells (as well as nested arrays) and lists."You can create a list by selecting Insert > List or pressing Ctrl+J, then typing or pasting items separated by commas or semicolons, depending on your regional settings. Selecting the icon in the cell shows the individual values...""With lists, you can filter by o
  
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• AI Finds So Many Linux Bugs, Canonical Changes to a Two-Week Stable Release Update Cycle

  26-09-2026 18:04 via news.slashdot.org
  "Finding vulnerabilities faster also puts pressure on Linux distributions to fix and deliver patches faster," writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli
  AI has transformed bug discovery from "a manual, time-intensive process into a highly automated engine," notes Canonical's blog, leading to a "recent explosion in the volume of CVEs".
  Additionally, the upstream kernel community became its own CVE Numbering Authority (CNA) and assigned CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) identifiers to thousands
  
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• Is Microsoft Quietly Killing Off Its 'Copilot+ PC' Brand?

  26-09-2026 13:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  "Copilot+ PCs" were Microsoft's official branding for Windows 11 "AI PCs" that met their system requirements. But the 2024 launch "didn't go smoothly," writes Windows Central, after security researchers discovered its proposed "Recall" feature was woefully insecure:This pretty much tarnished the Copilot+ PC brand, and over the last two years more and more OEMs have dropped the moniker from marketing materials and product names. In fact, even Microsoft has seemingly stopped mentioning it. I've no
  
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• Rogue OpenAI Agents Posted 53 User-Uploaded Images Onto the Internet, Accessed US Government Websites

  26-09-2026 09:04 via slashdot.org
  53 images that users uploaded into OpenAI models were included in training data — and then AI agents in an OpenAI research environment posted those 53 images on public image hosting sites.While posted as links that weren't publicly listed, "the images could still be discovered even if the links were not publicly listed," reports TechCrunch:OpenAI said it was working with the hosting providers to remove this content, though some of it is apparently still online. OpenAI said it could not not
  
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• Meta Made 43M Misleading Statements, New Mexico Jury Finds, Including on Its Cambridge Analytica Response

  26-09-2026 04:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  A New Mexico jury on Friday "found Facebook liable for deceiving users" about its privacy protections, reports the Associated Press.
  A New Mexico newspaper calls it "another massive legal victory" against Facebook, reporting that the jury found Facebook "had committed tens of millions of violations of the state's Unfair Practices Act in connection with its lies to consumers about how their personal information was handled by the company and third-party users."The state has asked the company be o
  
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• There's a New Way to Break RSA Encryption

  26-09-2026 00:04 via it.slashdot.org
  "Signature forgery." It's a new way to break RSA keys — and it doesn't require factoring. Ars Technica reports on new research using classical computing to "reduce the current RSA security level to an unacceptably low threshold" and lower the required computing resources by orders of magnitude.There's "a gap in current RSA-type security assumptions," according to a paper co-authored by University of California, San Diego professor Nadia Heninger, who argues that gap "gives classical crypta
  
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• Asteroids Named After Tom Lehrer and 'Weird Al' Yankovic

  25-09-2026 19:34 via science.slashdot.org
  "Weird Al" Yankovic's name has just been approved for a new asteroid — (14331) Alyankovic = 1981 EC26 — by the International Astronomical Union, reports Space.com.
  Yankovic's asteroid was championed by planetary scientist Allison McGraw joined by "several heavy hitters in the planetary science field, according to the Tucson Star. (Astrophysicist Steve Desch from the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University; Tim McCoy, one of the main curators of meteorites at
  
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• Raspberry Pi Stock Jumps 30% as Demand Surges. (And Boards Now Locked to Their Original RAM Size)

  25-09-2026 15:04 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Raspberry Pi's stock shot up over 30% in the last week. Why are investors so excited? For the six months ending June 30, revenue for Raspberry Pi Holdings "jumped 90% to $256.9 million," reports Investing.com, "while adjusted EBITDA more than doubled to $40.3 million, and profit before tax leapt 216% to $19.6 million."
  Underpinning the strong numbers was an acceleration in OEM adoption: direct unit shipments rose 26% to 3.4 million, total unit shipments climbed 17% to 4.2 million, and the custom
  
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• F-Droid 2.0: FOSS Android Appstore Continues Updating Despite Google's Pending 'Developer Verification' Plan

  25-09-2026 10:34 via news.slashdot.org
  "F-Droid, a third-party app repository that only distributes free and open-source software packages for Google's Android mobile platform, on Thursday announced version 2.0 of its Android app," reports The Register.
  Though they also note "a big banner across the top of the F-Droid site" pointing to a site describing pending changes from Google that threaten the future of F-Droid...[D]evelopers who want their apps broadly distributed outside the official Google Play Store will need to register wit
  
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• How Believable is Google's New 'Live Avatar' Capability?

  25-09-2026 06:04 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google has synthesized "expressive face-to-face experiences" for its speech agent Gemini 3.8 Live. They're now offering a Live Avatar "with precise lip-syncing, natural expressions, and fluid turn-taking" for Google Enterprise accounts wanting "engaging customer service" or for offering interactive walkthroughs. (Check out the not-creepy-at-all video in Google's announcement.)
  "Though Google will offer a library of preset avatars for customers to choose from, it will also allow organizations to
  
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• People Training OpenAI's AI Fired For Using AI To Train the AI

  25-09-2026 01:34 via slashdot.org
  404 Media reports "multiple contractors hired to improve OpenAI's models have been fired for using AI to train the AI:That's not great for the models themselves, but there is also obviously a great irony in AI training companies working for OpenAI firing people for using AI when OpenAI's whole thing is to make people use AI at work... OpenAI declined to comment on its contractors being fired for using AI.
  Their article cites internal documents and three contractors working on OpenAI-related proj
  
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• Five Police Officers Criminally Charged for Misusing Flock Cameras in Indianapolis

  24-09-2026 21:04 via yro.slashdot.org
  "Nationwide, at least 100 police department employees have been charged with or accused of misusing license-plate readers for unauthorized purposes," reports the Washington Post. They cite their past investigations "based on thousands of pages of police and court records," which found that "In many of these cases, officers used Flock's roadside cameras to track the location of romantic partners and exes."
  In fact, five Indianapolis police officers were just criminally charged Wednesday with frau
  
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• OpenAI, Anthropic CEOs Urge UN Countries to Cooperate on AI Safety Standards

  24-09-2026 16:34 via slashdot.org
  "The heads of major AI firms pleaded with the United Nations on Wednesday to save the world or at least its people — by somehow regulating the fast-expanding technology that they have been designing," writes the Associated Press."If managed poorly, I even believe AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole," said Dario Amodei, chief executive officer of Anthropic. And from his competitor Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, came this assessment: "We could lose control of the future to AI."Yoshua Bengi
  
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• Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon X2 Series Processors Will Support Linux

  24-09-2026 12:04 via linux.slashdot.org
  Snapdragon X2 Series processors feature a neural processing unit (NPU) delivering 80 trillion operations per second and allowing advanced AI features to run locally. And Snapdragon X2 Series "is expanding to Linux," Qualcomm announced today, calling it one of their most-requested capabilities:
  Qualcomm Technologies is a top contributor to Linux development at a kernel level, and now we're embracing support for Snapdragon X2 Series as a platform directly. We're upstreaming core drivers for Snapdr
  
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• Rogue OpenAI Agent Tried to Breach Government Site in May When Prompted for Simple Data-Retrieving Tasks

  24-09-2026 07:34 via slashdot.org
  OpenAI's artificial intelligence "went rogue this year in at least four additional incidents," the New York Times reported Wednesday, "hacking and trying to break into government and university websites without being instructed to do so, according to researchers and government officials."
  The attacks took place in May and June, before OpenAI's technology breached the A.I. start-up Hugging Face in July and set off a global debate about A.I. safety. Unlike the Hugging Face attack and other inciden
  
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• Cities Across US Oppose Trump FCC Plan to Preempt Local Broadband Rules

  24-09-2026 03:04 via news.slashdot.org
  Ars Technica reports:
  Cities and counties around the U.S. are angry at the Trump administration over a proposal to override local rules that govern the deployment of wired broadband networks... The Federal Communications Commission [FCC] argues that too many local governments "excessively delay approvals and seek to extract exorbitant sums from providers, resulting in costs that render some deployments infeasible." The FCC plan is supported by broadband providers, but local governments told the
  
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