ICT news

• Report Finds Few Open Source Projects are Actively Maintained

  15-10-2023 18:34 via news.slashdot.org
  
  "A recent analysis accounting for nearly 1.2 million open source software projects primarily across four major ecosystems found that only about 11% of projects were actively maintained," reports InfoWorld:In its 9th Annual State of the Software Supply Chain report, published October 3, software supply chain management company Sonatype assessed 1,176,407 projects and reported an 18% decline this year in actively maintained projects. Just 11% of projects — 118,028 — were receiving acti
  
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• Doom Composer Bobby Prince Has Died

  19-06-2026 23:00 via games.slashdot.org
  Video game composer and sound designer Bobby Prince has died at age 81 following an illness. Developer id software shared the news. Engadget reports: Prince was perhaps best known for his pioneering work on the Doom series. The Library of Congress inducted his soundtrack for the original game into the National Recording Registry just last month. "Despite the limitations of the 1993-era sound card drivers, Prince composed the perfect riff-shredding accompaniment for the game's demon-slaying journ
  
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• Hyundai Takes Full Control of Boston Dynamics As SoftBank Exits For $325 Million

  19-06-2026 22:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Hyundai Motor Group is acquiring SoftBank's remaining 9.65% stake in Boston Dynamics for $325 million, "closing out SoftBank's last piece of Boston Dynamics and turning the Waltham, Massachusetts robotics company into a wholly owned Hyundai business," reports Startup Fortune. From the report: The price is $325 million for the remaining stake, according to the deal terms, and it follows the put option SoftBank retained when Hyundai bought control of Boston Dynamics in 2021. You should read that a
  
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• Canada Missed Chances To Inspect OceanGate's Titan Before Fatal Implosion

  19-06-2026 21:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A report from Canada's Transportation Safety Board has highlighted regulatory failures that allowed OceanGate's unregistered, unflagged, and uncertified Titan submersible to operate out St. John's, Newfoundland, for years before it imploded on a tourist trip to the wreck of the Titanic in 2023. "When it came to the Titan, critical information existed across multiple federal government organizations, but no one was responsible for connecting the dot
  
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• New Unpatchable Exploit Targets Apple Devices With A12 and A13 Chips

  19-06-2026 20:00 via it.slashdot.org
  Researchers have disclosed a new unpatchable BootROM exploit affecting Apple devices with A12, A13, S4, and S5 chips. The attack requires physical USB access and DFU mode, but can let an attacker run code before iOS loads, bypass signature checks, and boot modified software. 9to5Mac reports the details: In a highly detailed technical post published today, the Paradigm Shift Team details usbliter8, a new exploit that "leverages both a hardware bug in the USB controller and a specific configuratio
  
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• EU To Soon Classify AWS and Azure As Gatekeepers Under DSA

  19-06-2026 19:00 via slashdot.org
  The European Commission is reportedly preparing to provisionally classify Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as "gatekeepers" under the Digital Markets Act, bringing cloud infrastructure under the law's stricter competition rules for the first time. The designation could require greater interoperability and data portability, making it easier for customers to switch providers, with a final decision expected by the end of 2026. Heise reports: This investigation began in November 2025, when th
  
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• The Korean Telecom Giant At the Center of Anthropic's Mythos Controversy

  19-06-2026 18:00 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: The Trump administration's move to impose export controls on Anthropic's most powerful AI technology followed a spat over the company granting South Korean telecom giant SK Telecom access to its Claude Mythos model, according to people familiar with the matter. US officials were concerned about what they alleged were SK Telecom's ties to China, those people said. Those concerns appear to have compounded when Amazon later flagged vulnerabilities to
  
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• Meta Lobbies Congress For Protection From Child-Harm Lawsuits

  19-06-2026 17:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: Meta has lobbied the U.S. Congress for legal immunity from child-harm claims tied to social media products such as Instagram, as it faces thousands of lawsuits from young users and their families, according to a source familiar with the matter and proposed legislative language reviewed by Reuters. If adopted by lawmakers and passed into law as part of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) under consideration in the U.S. Senate, such a pr
  
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• NASA Picks Eric Schmidt's Rocket Company For Mars Mission

  19-06-2026 13:00 via science.slashdot.org
  NASA has selected Relativity Space to build and launch Aeolus, a 2028 Mars orbiter that would provide daily global measurements of dust, winds, and atmospheric temperatures to support future robotic and human missions. TechCrunch reports: The structure of the contract is akin to the deals that NASA made with SpaceX to fly cargo to the International Space Station, or Firefly Aerospace to put a lander on the Moon. The government agency handles the science, while the private company provides low-co
  
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• Rolls-Royce Secures Deal To Build Small Nuclear Reactors For Sweden

  19-06-2026 09:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Rolls-Royce SMR has secured a multibillion-pound agreement to build three small modular reactors on Sweden's west coast, "marking a major step in the British engineering group's ambition to become a leading supplier of the technology in Europe," reports Euronews. From the report: Following a rigorous selection process that started in 2022, UK engineering giant Rolls-Royce's nuclear division, Rolls-Royce SMR, won the contract to build nuclear reactors for Sweden. As part of the deal, the group, s
  
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• Trump Admin Backs Off Plans To Kill Ocean Monitoring

  19-06-2026 05:30 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: In May, the federal government announced without warning that it would take apart a network of ocean monitoring systems that it had spent over $350 million to build. No reason was given for the decision to shut down the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), but suspicion immediately focused on the network's role in tracking climate change. But the OOI also provides data that's useful for weather forecasting and fisheries management, leading
  
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• Adobe Adds Its AI Assistant To Premiere, Illustrator and InDesign

  19-06-2026 01:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Adobe is expanding its Firefly AI assistant into Premiere, Illustrator, InDesign, and Frame.io, where it can automate all sorts of tasks such as organizing clips, renaming assets, adding interview markers, rearranging layers, and finding missing fonts. It's available starting today as part of a public beta. TechCrunch reports: Adobe is slowly transforming Firefly to increasingly resemble Canva, at least when it comes to AI features, loading up the app with AI tools that can generate images, vide
  
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• California 'Billionaire Tax' Makes Ballot Despite Opposition From Tech Moguls

  19-06-2026 00:00 via news.slashdot.org
  California's proposed "billionaire tax" has gathered enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, setting up a major fight between labor unions and some of Silicon Valley's richest figures. From the report: The California Billionaire Tax Act, colloquially known as the billionaire tax, would levy a one-time 5% tax on any California resident worth more than $1bn. The proposal is backed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West as a means of funding Califo
  
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• Midjourney Pivots From AI Image Generation To Body Scanning Medical Spa

  18-06-2026 23:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Midjourney is expanding beyond AI image generation with plans for a medical-imaging business built around a water-based, full-body ultrasound scanner that uses hundreds of thousands of sensors and AI to reconstruct MRI-like images. "As you descend into the water, hundreds of thousands of tiny elements take turns, sending out waves, listening together, compressing and then streaming data to a massive cluster where thousands of computers split the task," Midjourney explained in the announcement. "
  
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• Bernie Sanders Unveils $7 Trillion Plan To Give Americans Control of AI Industry

  18-06-2026 22:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: As artificial intelligence companies reshape the economy and race toward trillion-dollar valuations, Sen. Bernie Sanders is proposing a sweeping transfer of wealth and power from the industry to the American public. The legislation, shown first to The Associated Press, would create a sovereign wealth fund overseen by an independent commission and financed through a one-time 50% tax on the stock of the largest AI companies. Sanders es
  
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• Apple Announces Major App Store Changes on iOS in Brazil

  18-06-2026 21:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple is allowing iPhone developers in Brazil to distribute apps through authorized alternative marketplaces and use third-party payment systems following action by the country's competition regulator. "In other words, developers in Brazil will be able to circumvent the App Store and Apple's in-app purchase system, but there are still fees," reports MacRumors. Apple will collect commissions ranging from 5% on externally distributed apps to as much as 26% for some App Store transactions using its
  
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• Android 17 Drops For Pixel Phones and Watch

  18-06-2026 20:00 via mobile.slashdot.org
  Google has begun rolling out Android 17, the June Pixel Feature Drop, and Wear OS 7 simultaneously across supported Pixel phones and watches. Highlights include floating app bubbles, improved foldable multitasking and gaming, tighter location and contact permissions, stronger lost-device protections, new Pixel AI tools, and up to 10% better Pixel Watch battery life. PhoneArena reports: Pixel owners are the clear winners, since everything here reaches Pixel first and a lot of it goes back to the
  
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• Google Told Researcher 'Nice Catch!' Then Denied Bug Bounty For Flaw It Still Hasn't Fixed

  18-06-2026 19:00 via it.slashdot.org
  Security researcher Justin O'Leary says Google initially accepted his Config Connector privilege-escalation report as a high-priority, high-severity bug, then denied a bounty by declaring the behavior "working as intended." According to The Register, a Google rep initially praised O'Leary's report with a "Nice catch!" before the cloud giant reversed course, declaring that no vulnerability existed and therefore no fix or reward was warranted. "The bug report, however, is still marked high-priorit
  
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• Tim Cook Says Apple Price Increases Are 'Unavoidable' Due To Memory Costs

  18-06-2026 18:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple is raising its prices to offset the high cost of memory and storage, CEO Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal. Apple is no longer able to absorb the increased prices and will need to pass some of the cost on to consumers. "Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable," said Cook. "We're doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we've been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the si
  
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• You Can No Longer Fly Or Purchase a Drone In Beijing

  18-06-2026 17:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from PetaPixel: China dominates the consumer drone market, so it is perhaps surprising that it is no longer possible to fly or even purchase a drone in Beijing. The new law that passed last month makes it illegal to buy, rent, or fly a drone without prior approval from the authorities. Users must also complete an online training session and pass a test on drone regulations. Under the new rules, drone users are also not allowed to repair or replace
  
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• CISA Urges Hardening Fortinet Devices After Reports of Credential Exposure

  18-06-2026 14:00 via cisa.gov
  CISA is aware of global reports that malicious cyber actors have targeted internet-accessible Fortinet devices across government and private sector organizations using compromised credentials. This activity, referred to as FortiBleed, involves the exposure of leaked credentials associated with approximately 74,000 Fortinet devices, including firewalls and virtual private network (VPN) gateways.  
  To defend against this malicious cyber activity, CISA urges impacted Fortinet customers with Fo
  
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• Brian Johnson, Special Effects Artist Behind 'Space: 1999,' Dies At 86

  18-06-2026 13:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Special-effects designer Brian Johnson, known for his groundbreaking work on Space: 1999, The Empire Strikes Back, Alien, and Aliens, has died at the age of 86. Johnson began his career creating models and explosions for Gerry and Sylvia Anderson productions, later designed the iconic Eagle Transporter, and became one of science fiction cinema's most influential behind-the-scenes artists. Longtime Slashdot reader sandbagger remembers the SFX legend, writing: "The Space: 1999 Eagle is one of the
  
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• China's EV Price War Was Built On Cars Sold At a Loss

  18-06-2026 09:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Autoblog: For years, the Chinese auto industry has employed a hostile price war to kneecap global competitors. Armed with massive state subsidies, cheap raw materials, and an aggressive "scale-first" business model, Chinese automakers flooded the market with electric vehicles priced so low that legacy manufacturers stood no chance to compete. How did they do it? Simple, they couldn't. They did it anyway. Reports from CarNewsChina show that Ch
  
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• Tesco Moving 40,000 Server Workloads Off VMware Amid Broadcom's 'Abusive Conduct'

  18-06-2026 05:30 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Tesco, a retail conglomerate headquartered in the United Kingdom, is moving 40,000 server workloads off of VMware amid "abusive conduct" from Broadcom, recent legal filings claim. Tesco filed a lawsuit in the UK's High Court against Broadcom alleging breach of contract last year. According to a September report from The Register, the lawsuit claimed that in January 2021, Tesco bought perpetual licenses for VMware's vSphere Foundation and Clo
  
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• Microsoft Working To Patch 'RoguePlanet' Zero-Day

  18-06-2026 01:00 via it.slashdot.org
  wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Microsoft on Wednesday published an advisory acknowledging the public disclosure of a vulnerability in Defender that could lead to privilege escalation. The security defect, tracked as CVE-2026-50656 (CVSS score of 7.8), was dropped last week by security researcher Nightmare Eclipse (also known as Chaotic Eclipse). "We are working to provide a high-quality security update that addresses this vulnerability. We will provide information in this CVE when
  
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• Smartphone Market To Shrink 15% This Year Due To Memory Crisis

  18-06-2026 00:00 via mobile.slashdot.org
  CCS Insight expects global smartphone shipments to fall 15% this year as AI-driven demand pushes memory manufacturers toward higher-margin server chips. "[S]ome entry-level devices have already seen their sticker prices go up by more than 50 percent since last year," reports The Register. From the report: The firm found that the primary smartphone market (meaning new devices) contracted 4.4 percent in the first quarter of this year, despite sales channels front-loading (meaning stockpiling) prod
  
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• Carvana Is Turning Dealerships Into 'Playgrounds,' Test-Drive Centers With Sales All Online

  17-06-2026 23:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Carvana is testing a radically different new-car dealership model in Dallas, turning the location into a test-drive center and themed "playground" while requiring every purchase to be completed through its online platform. "Every single car that we sell, whether it's used or new, is online," said Tom Taira, Carvana president of special projects who's leading the new vehicle operations. "That's a very inherent difference. Even coming into the store, you're buying it online, and that's a big diffe
  
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• Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI Back Linux Foundation's Appia AI Standards Initiative

  17-06-2026 22:03 via linux.slashdot.org
  BrianFagioli writes: Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Arm, Mastercard, Siemens, and other companies have joined the newly launched Appia Foundation under the Linux Foundation. The project aims to create common specifications and assessment frameworks that organizations can use to demonstrate AI systems meet emerging safety, trust, and compliance requirements. According to the Linux Foundation, the framework is designed to allow conformity evidence to be reused across the AI supply chain, potentially r
  
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• Anthropic Employees Accuse Trump Administration of Targeting Them

  17-06-2026 21:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Anthropic employees say they remain confused and increasingly convinced that the Trump administration is singling out the company after officials gave it less than 90 minutes to disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 over alleged national security concerns. Cybersecurity experts, however, argue that the cited behavior of helping to identify vulnerabilities in software is also available in rival models and is more valuable to defenders than attackers. The New York Times reports: Inside the company, employe
  
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• AI Will Lead To Labor Shortages, Bezos Says In Optimistic Talk

  17-06-2026 20:00 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Artificial Intelligence will lead to labour shortages, not the replacement of humans, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos predicted in a highly optimistic appearance at the VivaTech technology conference in Paris on Wednesday. Bezos put forward a rosy vision of how technology will help humanity, speaking about projects including his space venture Blue Origin and his new AI startup Prometheus, which is aimed at speeding up physical manufacturing. "I know th
  
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