ICT news

• Redditor Creates Working Anime QR Codes Using Stable Diffusion

  07-06-2023 00:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Tuesday, a Reddit user named "nhciao" posted a series of artistic QR codes created using the Stable Diffusion AI image-synthesis model that can still be read as functional QR codes by smartphone camera apps. The functional pieces reflect artistic styles in anime and Asian art. [...] In this case, despite the presence of intricate AI-generated designs and patterns in the images created by nhciao, we've found that smartphone camera apps on
  
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• Microsoft is Closing Its Employee Library and Cutting Back on Subscriptions

  15-01-2026 19:41 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft's library of books is so heavy that it once caused a campus building to sink, according to an unproven legend among employees. Now those physical books, journals, and reports, and many of Microsoft's digital subscriptions to leading US newspapers, are disappearing in a shift described inside Microsoft as an "AI-powered learning experience."
  Microsoft started cutting back on its employee subscriptions to news and reports services in November, with so
  
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• Many People Who Come Off GLP-1 Drugs Regain Weight Within 2 Years, Review Suggests

  15-01-2026 19:02 via science.slashdot.org
  Many people who stop using weight loss drugs will return to their previous weight within two years, a new review of existing research has found. CNN adds: This rate of weight regain is significantly faster than that seen in those who have lost weight by changing other lifestyle factors, such as diet and exercise, rather than relying on GLP-1 medications, researchers from the University of Oxford report in a paper published Wednesday in The BMJ journal.
  GLP-1, which stands for glucagon-like pepti
  
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• Amazon Threatens 'Drastic Action' After Saks Bankruptcy

  15-01-2026 18:21 via slashdot.org
  Amazon wants a federal judge to reject Saks Global's bankruptcy financing plan, writing in court papers the beleaguered department store "burned through hundreds of millions of dollars in less than a year" and failed to hold up their agreement. From a report: When Saks acquired Neiman Marcus for $2.7 billion in December 2024, Amazon invested $475 million into the venture on the grounds the retailer would start selling its products on Amazon's website and the tech company would offer technology a
  
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• The United States Needs Fewer Bus Stops

  15-01-2026 17:48 via tech.slashdot.org
  American buses in cities like New York and San Francisco crawl along at about eight miles per hour -- barely faster than a brisk walk -- and one surprisingly simple fix could make them faster without requiring new infrastructure or controversial policy changes. The issue, according to a Works in Progress analysis, is that US bus stops sit far too close together.
  Mean spacing in American cities is roughly 313 meters, about five stops per mile, while older cities like Philadelphia, Chicago and San
  
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• Apple is Fighting for TSMC Capacity as Nvidia Takes Center Stage

  15-01-2026 17:07 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple, which spent years as TSMC's undisputed top customer and helped the Taiwanese foundry become the semiconductor industry's most important manufacturer, is now fighting for production capacity as Nvidia's AI chip orders consume an ever-larger share of the company's leading-edge wafer supply.
  TSMC CEO CC Wei visited Cupertino last August to deliver unwelcome news: Apple would face the largest price increase in years and the iPhone maker would no longer have guaranteed access to production cap
  
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• Wikipedia Signs AI Licensing Deals On Its 25th Birthday

  15-01-2026 16:20 via news.slashdot.org
  Wikipedia turns 25 today, and the online encyclopedia is celebrating that with an announcement that it has signed new licensing deals with a slate of major AI companies -- Amazon, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Perplexity and Mistral AI. The deals allow these companies to access Wikipedia content "at a volume and speed designed specifically for their needs." The Wikimedia Foundation did not disclose financial terms.
  Google had already signed on as one of the first enterprise customers back in 2022.
  
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• Anthropic's Index Shows Job Evolution Over Replacement

  15-01-2026 15:40 via slashdot.org
  Anthropic's fourth installment of its Economic Index, drawing on an anonymized sample of two million Claude conversations from November 2025, finds that AI is changing how people work rather than whether they work at all. The study tracked usage across the company's consumer-facing Claude.ai platform and its API, categorizing interactions as either automation (where AI completes tasks entirely) or augmentation (where humans and AI collaborate). The split came out to 52% augmentation and 45% auto
  
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• 'White-Collar Workers Shouldn't Dismiss a Blue-Collar Career Change'

  15-01-2026 15:05 via slashdot.org
  White-collar workers stuck in a cycle of layoffs and stagnant wages might want to look past the traditional tech, finance and media job postings to an unexpected source of opportunity: the blue-collar sector, which faces a labor shortage and is seeing rapid transformation through private-equity investment. These jobs are generally less vulnerable to AI, and the earning trajectory can be steep, the WSJ writes.
  At Crash Champions, a car-repair chain that has grown from 13 locations in 2019 to abou
  
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• AI Models Are Starting To Crack High-Level Math Problems

  15-01-2026 14:00 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Over the weekend, Neel Somani, who is a software engineer, former quant researcher, and a startup founder, was testing the math skills of OpenAI's new model when he made an unexpected discovery. After pasting the problem into ChatGPT and letting it think for 15 minutes, he came back to a full solution. He evaluated the proof and formalized it with a tool called Harmonic -- but it all checked out. "I was curious to establish a baseline for when
  
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• Warhammer Maker Games Workshop Bans Its Staff From Using AI In Its Content or Designs

  15-01-2026 11:00 via games.slashdot.org
  Games Workshop, the owner and operator of a number of hugely popular tabletop war games, including Warhammer 40,000 and Age of Sigmar, has banned the use of generative AI in its content and design processes. IGN reports: Delivering the UK company's impressive financial results, CEO Kevin Rountree addressed the issue of AI and how Games Workshop is handling it. He said GW staff are barred from using it to actually produce anything, but admitted a "few" senior managers are experimenting with it. R
  
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• Britain Awards Wind Farm Contracts That Will Power 12 Million Homes

  15-01-2026 08:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  The UK government has awarded guaranteed electricity prices to offshore wind projects totaling 8.4 GW in a bid to revive wind development, attract nearly $30 billion in private investment, and stabilize energy costs. The New York Times reports: On Wednesday, the British government said that it would provide guaranteed electricity prices for a group of wind farms off England, Scotland and Wales that would, once built, provide power for 12 million homes. The 8.4 gigawatts, a power capacity measure
  
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• The Swedish Start-Up Aiming To Conquer America's Full-Body-Scan Craze

  15-01-2026 04:30 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from DealBook: Fifteen years ago, Daniel Ek broke into America's digital-content wars with his streaming music start-up, Spotify, which has turned into a publicly traded company with a $110 billion market value. Now he and his business partner, the Swedish entrepreneur Hjalmar Nilsonne, aim to crack a higher-stakes consumer market: American health care. The pair plan to bring Neko Health, the health tech start-up they founded in 2018, to New York this spring,
  
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• Are QWERTY Phones Trying To Make a Comeback?

  15-01-2026 03:02 via mobile.slashdot.org
  After nearly two decades of touchscreen dominance, QWERTY smartphones are staging a niche comeback, with Clicks and Unihertz unveiling new physical-keyboard phones at CES 2026. Gizmodo reports: At CES 2026, Clicks, the company behind the Clicks keyboard case and the new Power Keyboard, announced plans to sell the Communicator, a "second phone" with a QWERTY keypad. Clicks pitches the $500 phone, launching later this year, as a device primarily intended for messaging -- sending texts, DMs, Slack
  
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• Digg Launches Its New Reddit Rival To the Public

  15-01-2026 02:25 via tech.slashdot.org
  Digg is officially back under the ownership of its original founder, Kevin Rose, along with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. "Similar to Reddit, the new Digg offers a website and mobile app where you can browse feeds featuring posts from across a selection of its communities and join other communities that align with your interests," reports TechCrunch. "There, you can post, comment, and upvote (or 'digg') the site's content." From the report: [T]he rise of AI has presented an opportunity to re
  
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• Cerebras Scores OpenAI Deal Worth Over $10 Billion

  15-01-2026 01:45 via slashdot.org
  Cerebras Systems landed a more than $10 billion deal to supply up to 750 megawatts of compute to OpenAI through 2028, according to a blog post by OpenAI. CNBC reports: The deal will help diversify Cerebras away from the United Arab Emirates' G42, which accounted for 87% of revenue in the first half of 2024. "The way you have three very large customers is start with one very large customer, and you keep them happy, and then you win the second one," Cerebras' co-founder and CEO Andrew Feldman told
  
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• DoorDash and UberEats Cost Drivers $550 Million In Tips, NYC Says

  15-01-2026 01:02 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gothamist: City regulators on Tuesday accused Uber and DoorDash of deliberately altering their app interfaces to discourage customers from tipping food delivery workers, a move that has cost the employees more than $550 million over the last two years. A report (PDF) published by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection argues that food delivery app giants retaliated against minimum wage rules for delivery drivers that took effect in December 2023
  
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• US Approves Sale of Nvidia's Advanced AI Chips To China

  15-01-2026 00:20 via hardware.slashdot.org
  The U.S. has approved limited sales of Nvidia's H200 AI chips to China, the Department of Commerce said on Tuesday. Exports will be allowed to "approved customers" with security safeguards and a 25% U.S. government cut. The company's most advanced Blackwell chips will remain restricted. The BBC reports: The H200, Nvidia's second-most-advanced semiconductor, had been restricted by Washington over concerns that it would give China's technology industry and military an edge over the U.S. The Commer
  
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• Bandcamp Bans AI Music

  14-01-2026 23:40 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Bandcamp has announced a ban on music made wholly or substantially by generative AI, aiming to protect human creativity and prohibit AI impersonation of artists. Here's what the music platform had to say: ... Something that always strikes us as we put together a roundup like this is the sheer quantity of human creativity and passion that artists express on Bandcamp every single day. The fact that Bandcamp is home to such a vibrant community of real people making incredible music is something we
  
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• House Sysadmin Stole 200 Phones, Caught By House IT Desk

  14-01-2026 23:02 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: According to the government's version of events, 43-year-old Christopher Southerland was working in 2023 as a sysadmin for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. In his role, Southerland had the authority to order cell phones for committee staffers, of which there are around 80. But during the early months of 2023, Southerland is said to have ordered 240 brand-new phones -- far more than even the total number of staffers -
  
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• UK Scraps Mandatory Digital ID Enrollment for Workers After Public Backlash

  14-01-2026 22:25 via news.slashdot.org
  The UK government has abandoned its controversial plan to require workers to sign up for a mandatory digital ID system to prove their eligibility to work in the country, opting instead to move existing document-based checks -- such as biometric passports -- fully online by 2029.
  The reversal follows a dramatic collapse in public support; polling showed approval falling from just over half the population in June to less than a third after Prime Minister Keir Starmer's announcement. Nearly 3 milli
  
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• Dell Tells Staff To Get Ready For the 'Biggest Transformation in Company History'

  14-01-2026 21:50 via tech.slashdot.org
  Dell's chief operating officer Jeff Clarke has informed employees that the company is preparing for what he calls the "biggest transformation in company history," a sweeping systems overhaul scheduled to launch on May 3 that will standardize processes across nearly every major division.
  The initiative, dubbed One Dell Way, will replace Dell's existing sprawl of applications, servers and databases with a single enterprise platform designed to unify the 42-year-old company's operations. Clarke's m
  
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• NASA Acknowledges Record Heat But Avoids Referencing Climate Change

  14-01-2026 21:11 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Global temperatures soared in 2025, but a NASA statement published Wednesday alongside its latest benchmark annual report makes no reference to climate change, in line with President Donald Trump's push to deny the reality of planetary heating as a result of human activities.
  That marks a sharp break from last year's communications, issued under the administration of Democrat Joe Biden, which stated plainly: "This global warming has been caused by human activ
  
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• Widespread Verizon Outage Prompts Emergency Alerts in Washington, New York City

  14-01-2026 20:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  Verizon said on Wednesday that its wireless service was suffering an outage impacting cellular data and voice services. From a report: The nation's largest wireless carrier said that its "engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly." Verizon's statement came after a swath of social media comments directed at Verizon, with users saying that their mobile devices were showing no bars of service or "SOS," indicating a lack of connection.
  Verizon, which has more than
  
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• Beijing Tells Chinese Firms To Stop Using US and Israeli Cybersecurity Software

  14-01-2026 19:50 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese authorities have told domestic companies to stop using cybersecurity software made by roughly a dozen firms from the U.S. and Israel due to national security concerns, two people briefed on the matter said.
  As trade and diplomatic tensions flare between China and the U.S. and both sides vie for tech supremacy, Beijing has been keen to replace Western-made technology with domestic alternatives. The U.S. companies whose cybersecurity software has been b
  
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• Coal Power Generation Falls in China and India for First Time Since 1970s

  14-01-2026 19:10 via news.slashdot.org
  Coal power generation fell in China and India for the first time since the 1970s last year, in a "historic" moment that could bring a decline in global emissions, according to analysis. From a report: The simultaneous fall in coal-powered electricity in the world's biggest coal-consuming countries had not happened since 1973, according to analysts at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, and was driven by a record roll-out of clean energy projects.
  The research, commissioned by the cl
  
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• McKinsey Asks Graduates To Use AI Chatbot in Recruitment Process

  14-01-2026 18:30 via slashdot.org
  McKinsey is asking graduate applicants to "collaborate" with an AI tool as part of its recruitment process, as competence with the technology becomes a requirement in competing for top-level jobs. From a report: The blue-chip consultancy is incorporating an "AI interview" into some final-round interviews, according to CaseBasix, a US company that helps candidates apply for posts at leading strategic consulting companies.
  In an online post, CaseBasix said candidates in "select final rounds" in th
  
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• Bezos's Vision of Rented Cloud PCs Looks Less Far-Fetched

  14-01-2026 17:55 via it.slashdot.org
  Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once told an audience that he views local PC hardware the same way he views a 100-year-old electric generator he saw in a brewery museum -- as a relic of a pre-grid era, destined to be replaced by centralized utilities that users simply rent rather than own. The anecdote, shared at a talk a few years ago, positioned Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as the inevitable successors to the desktop tower. Bezos argued that users would eventually abandon local computing
  
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• Matthew McConaughey Trademarks Himself To Fight AI Misuse

  14-01-2026 17:02 via slashdot.org
  Matthew McConaughey is taking a novel legal approach to combat unauthorized AI fakes: trademarking himself. From a report: Over the past several months, the "Interstellar" and "Magic Mike" star has had eight trademark applications approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office featuring him staring, smiling and talking. His attorneys said the trademarks are meant to stop AI apps or users from simulating McConaughey's voice or likeness without permission -- an increasingly common concern of per
  
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• UK Police Blame Microsoft Copilot for Intelligence Mistake

  14-01-2026 16:20 via it.slashdot.org
  The chief constable of one of Britain's largest police forces has admitted that Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant made a mistake in a football (soccer) intelligence report. From a report: The report, which led to Israeli football fans being banned from a match last year, included a nonexistent match between West Ham and Maccabi Tel Aviv.
  Copilot hallucinated the game and West Midlands Police included the error in its intelligence report without fact checking it. "On Friday afternoon I became awar
  
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