ICT news

• Researchers Discovered a New Linux Kernel 'StackRot' Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

  09-07-2023 03:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  Wednesday Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the release of the 6.4.2 kernel. "All users of the 6.4 kernel series must upgrade."
  The Hacker News reports:
  Details have emerged about a newly identified security flaw in the Linux kernel that could allow a user to gain elevated privileges on a target host. Dubbed StackRot (CVE-2023-3269, CVSS score: 7.8), the flaw impacts Linux versions 6.1 through 6.4. There is no evidence that the shortcoming has been exploited in the wild to date.
  "As StackRot is a Lin
  
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• Japan Restarts World's Largest Nuclear Plant as Fukushima Memories Loom Large

  21-01-2026 17:05 via slashdot.org
  New submitter BeaverCleaver shares a report: Japan has restarted operations at the world's largest nuclear power plant for the first time since the 2011 Fukushima disaster forced the country to shut all of its reactors. The decision to restart reactor number 6 at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa north-west of Tokyo was taken despite local residents' safety concerns. It was delayed by a day because of an alarm malfunction and is due to begin operating commercially next month.
  Japan, which had always heavily re
  
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• Comic-Con Bans AI Art After Artist Pushback

  21-01-2026 16:27 via slashdot.org
  San Diego Comic-Con changed an AI art friendly policy following an artist-led backlash last week. From a report: It was a small victory for working artists in an industry where jobs are slipping away as movie and video game studios adopt generative AI tools to save time and money. Every year, tens of thousands of people descend on San Diego for Comic-Con, the world's premier comic book convention that over the years has also become a major pan-media event where every major media company announce
  
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• YouTube CEO Acknowledges 'AI Slop' Problem, Says Platform Will Curb Low-Quality AI Content

  21-01-2026 15:40 via news.slashdot.org
  YouTube CEO Neal Mohan used his annual letter to creators, published Wednesday, to outline an ambitious 2026 vision that embraces AI-powered creative tools while simultaneously pledging to crack down on the low-quality AI content that has come to be known as "slop."
  Mohan identified four AI-related areas that YouTube "must get right in 2026." The platform is working on tools that will let creators use AI to generate Shorts featuring their own likenesses and to experiment with music. "Just as the
  
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• CEOs Say AI is Making Work More Efficient. Employees Tell a Different Story.

  21-01-2026 15:01 via slashdot.org
  Companies are spending vast sums on AI expecting the technology to boost efficiency, but a new survey from AI consulting firm Section found that two-thirds of non-management workers among 5,000 white-collar respondents say they save less than two hours a week or no time at all, while more than 40% of executives report the technology saves them upward of eight hours weekly.
  Workers were far more likely to describe themselves as anxious or overwhelmed about AI than excited -- the opposite of C-sui
  
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• Verizon Wastes No Time Switching Device Unlock Policy To 365 Days

  21-01-2026 14:00 via mobile.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from DroidLife: When the FCC cleared Verizon of its 60-day device unlock policy a week ago, we talked about how the government agency, which is as anti-consumer as it has ever been at the moment, was giving Verizon the power to basically create whatever unlock policy it wanted. We also expected Verizon to make a change to its policies in a hurry and they did not disappoint. Again, the FCC provided them a waiver 7 days ago and they are already starting to updat
  
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• Snap Settles Social media Addiction Lawsuit Ahead of Landmark Trial

  21-01-2026 11:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Snap has settled a social media addiction lawsuit just days before trial, while Meta, TikTok, and Alphabet remain defendants and are headed to court. "Terms of the deal were not announced as it was revealed by lawyers at a California Superior Court hearing, after which Snap told the BBC the parties were 'pleased to have been able to resolve this matter in an amicable manner.'" From the report: The plaintiff, a 19-year old woman identified by the initials K.G.M., alleged that the algorithmic desi
  
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• Aurora Watch In Effect As Severe Solar Storm Slams Into Earth

  21-01-2026 08:00 via news.slashdot.org
  alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: Thanks to a giant eruption on the Sun and a large opening in its atmosphere, we're currently experiencing G4 conditions -- a severe geomagnetic storm strong enough to disrupt power grids as energy from space weather disturbances drives electric currents through Earth's magnetic field and the ground. Experts say the storm could even reach G5 levels, the extreme category responsible for the spectacular auroral activity seen in May 2024. In fact,
  
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• Era of 'Global Water Bankruptcy' Is Here, UN Report Says

  21-01-2026 04:30 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The world has entered an era of "global water bankruptcy" that is harming billions of people, a UN report has declared. The overuse and pollution of water must be tackled urgently, the report's lead author said, because no one knew when the whole system could collapse, with implications for peace and social cohesion. All life depends on water but the report found many societies had long been using water faster than it could be replenished an
  
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• cURL Removes Bug Bounties

  21-01-2026 03:02 via it.slashdot.org
  Ancient Slashdot reader jantangring shares a report from Swedish electronics industry news site Elektroniktidningen (translated to English), writing: "Open source code library cURL is removing the possibility to earn money by reporting bugs, hoping that this will reduce the volume of AI slop reports," reports etn.se. "Joshua Rogers -- AI wielding bug hunter of fame -- thinks it's a great idea." cURL maintainer Daniel Stenberg famously reported on the flood AI-generated bad bug reports last year
  
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• OpenAI and ServiceNow Strike Deal to Put AI Agents in Business Software

  21-01-2026 02:25 via slashdot.org
  According to the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI and ServiceNow signed a three-year deal to embed AI agents directly into ServiceNow's enterprise workflows. CNBC reports: As part of the deal, ServiceNow will integrate GPT-5.2 into its enterprise workflow platform and create AI voice technology harnessing these models. "Bringing together our engineering teams and our respective technologies will drive faster value for customers and more intuitive ways of working with AI," said Amit Zavery, president,
  
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• Developer Rescues Stadia Bluetooth Tool That Google Killed

  21-01-2026 01:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  This week, Google finally shut down the official Stadia Bluetooth conversion tool... but there's no need to panic! Developer Christopher Klay preserved a copy on his personal GitHub and is hosting a fully working version of the tool on a dedicated website to make it even easier to find. The Verge's Sean Hollister reports: I haven't tried Klay's mirror, as both of my gamepads are already converted, but here's my video on how easy the process is. It's worth doing now that the pads work relatively
  
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• HHS Announces New Study of Cellphone Radiation and Health

  21-01-2026 01:02 via mobile.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from U.S. News & World Report: U.S. health officials plan a new study investigating whether radiation from cellphones may affect human health. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said the research will examine electromagnetic radiation and possible gaps in current science. The initiative stems from numerous concerns raised by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has linked cellphone use to neurological damage an
  
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• UK Mulls Australia-Like Social Media Ban For Users Under 16

  21-01-2026 00:20 via news.slashdot.org
  The UK government has launched a public consultation on whether to ban social media use for children under 16, drawing inspiration from Australia's recently enacted age-based restrictions. "It would also explore how to enforce that limit, how to limit tech companies from being able to access children's data and how to limit 'infinite scrolling,' as well as access to addictive online tools," reports Engadget. "In addition to seeking feedback from parents and young people themselves, the country's
  
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• Majority of CEOs Report Zero Payoff From AI Splurge

  20-01-2026 23:40 via slashdot.org
  A PwC survey of more than 4,500 CEOs found that over half report no revenue growth or cost savings from their AI investments so far, despite massive spending. Of the 4,454 business leaders surveyed, only 12% saw both lower costs and higher revenue, while 56% saw neither benefit. "26% saw reduced costs, but nearly as many experienced cost increases," adds The Register. From the report: AI adoption remains limited. Even in top use cases like demand generation (22 percent), support services (20 per
  
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• Meta's Oversight Board Takes Up Permanent Bans In Landmark Case

  20-01-2026 23:02 via meta.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Meta's Oversight Board is tackling a case focused on Meta's ability to permanently disable user accounts. Permanent bans are a drastic action, locking people out of their profiles, memories, friend connections, and, in the case of creators and businesses, their ability to market and communicate with fans and customers. This is the first time in the organization's five-year history as an oversight body that permanent account bans have been a su
  
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• 56% of Companies Have Seen Zero Financial Return From AI Investments, PwC Survey Says

  20-01-2026 22:22 via slashdot.org
  More than half of companies haven't seen any financial benefit from their AI investments, according to PwC's latest Global CEO Survey [PDF], and yet the spending shows no signs of slowing down. Some 56% of the 4,454 chief executives surveyed across 95 countries said their companies have realized neither higher revenues nor lower costs from AI over the past year.
  Only 12% reported getting both benefits -- and those rare winners tend to be the ones who built proper enterprise-wide foundations rath
  
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• Setapp Mobile To Close in February as Alternative iOS App Store Economics Prove Untenable

  20-01-2026 21:45 via apple.slashdot.org
  MacPaw, the Ukraine-based developer, has announced that Setapp Mobile -- its alternative iOS app store for European Union users that launched in open beta in September 2024 -- will shut down on February 16, 2026, citing "still-evolving and complex business terms" for alternative marketplaces that don't fit its current business model.
  Alternative iOS stores became possible under the Digital Markets Act but face challenges including Apple's controversial Core Technology Fee, which Epic Games CEO T
  
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• Anthropic CEO Says Government Should Help Ensure AI's Economic Upside Is Shared

  20-01-2026 21:02 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei predicted a future in which AI will spur significant economic growth -- but could lead to widespread unemployment and inequality. Amodei is both "excited and worried" about the impact of AI, he said in an interview at Davos Tuesday. "I don't think there's an awareness at all of what is coming here and the magnitude of it."
  Anthropic is the developer of the popular chatbot Claude. Amodei said the government will need to p
  
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• AI Agents 'Perilous' for Secure Apps Such as Signal, Whittaker Says

  20-01-2026 20:22 via it.slashdot.org
  Signal Foundation president Meredith Whittaker warned that AI agents that autonomously carry out tasks pose a threat to encrypted messaging apps [non-paywalled source] because they require broad access to data stored across a device and can be hijacked if given root permissions.
  Speaking at Davos on Tuesday, Whittaker said the deeper integration of AI agents into devices is "pretty perilous" for services like Signal. For an AI agent to act effectively on behalf of a user, it would need unilatera
  
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• Palantir CEO Says AI To Make Large-Scale Immigration Obsolete

  20-01-2026 19:35 via slashdot.org
  AI will displace so many jobs that it will eliminate the need for mass immigration, according to Palantir CEO Alex Karp. Bloomberg: "There will be more than enough jobs for the citizens of your nation, especially those with vocational training," said Karp, speaking at a World Economic Forum panel in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday. "I do think these trends really do make it hard to imagine why we should have large-scale immigration unless you have a very specialized skill."
  Karp, who holds a PhD i
  
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• Crypto News Outlet Cointelegraph Loses 80% of Traffic After Google Penalty For Parasitic Blackhat SEO Deal

  20-01-2026 19:02 via news.slashdot.org
  Cointelegraph, once one of the most-visited cryptocurrency news sites, has seen its monthly traffic plummet from roughly 8 million visits to 1.4 million -- an 80% drop in three months -- after Google issued a manual penalty in October 2025 for the outlet's partnership with a blackhat SEO firm that used Cointelegraph's domain authority to promote affiliate links to offshore casinos and betting platforms.
  The CEO, who had no prior media experience, proceeded despite warnings from Google earlier in
  
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• He Went To Prison for Gene-Editing Babies. Now He's Planning To Do It Again

  20-01-2026 18:21 via science.slashdot.org
  He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who served three years in prison after creating the world's first gene-edited babies in 2018, is now preparing for another attempt at germline editing -- this time to prevent Alzheimer's disease. In an interview, He said he has established an independent lab in south Beijing and raised $7 million from private donors to fund research into introducing a protective genetic mutation found in Icelandic populations.
  The three girls born from his original experiment ar
  
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• Europe Must Invest in Open Source AI or Cede To China, Schmidt Says

  20-01-2026 17:44 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Europe must invest in its own open source artificial intelligence labs and address soaring energy prices, or it will quickly find itself dependent on Chinese models, former Google chief executive and tech investor Eric Schmidt said.
  "In the US, the companies are largely moving to closed source, which means they'll be purchased and licensed and so forth. And it is also the case that China is largely open weight, open source in its approach," Schmidt said at th
  
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• Ukraine To Share Wartime Combat Data With Allies To Help Train AI

  20-01-2026 17:05 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Ukraine will establish a system allowing its allies to train their AI models on Kyiv's valuable combat data collected throughout the nearly four-year war with Russia, newly appointed Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has said. Fedorov -- a former digitalisation minister who last week took up the post to drive reforms across Ukraine's vast defence ministry and armed forces -- has described Kyiv's wartime data trove as one of its "cards" in negotiations with ot
  
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• Energy Costs Will Decide Which Countries Win the AI Race, Microsoft's Nadella Says

  20-01-2026 16:29 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Energy costs will be key to deciding which country wins the AI race, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said. CNBC: As countries race to build AI infrastructure to capitalize on the technology's promise of huge efficiency gains, Nadella told the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Tuesday that "GDP growth in any place will be directly correlated" to the cost of energy in using AI.
  He pointed to a new global commodity in "tokens" -- basic units of processing that are bought by users of AI models, allowing
  
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• Amazon CEO Jassy Says Tariffs Have Started To 'Creep' Into Prices

  20-01-2026 15:40 via news.slashdot.org
  Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs are starting to be reflected in the price of some items, as sellers weigh how to absorb the shock of the added costs. From a report: Amazon and many of its third-party merchants pre-purchased inventory to try to get ahead of the tariffs and keep prices low for customers, but most of that supply ran out last fall, Jassy said in a Tuesday interview with CNBC's Becky Quick at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
  "So you
  
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• Sony Is Ceding Control of TV Hardware Business To China's TCL

  20-01-2026 15:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Sony plans to spin off its TV hardware business to a new joint venture controlled by Chinese electronics giant TCL, the two said Tuesday, a significant retreat for the Japanese giant whose Bravia line has long occupied the premium end of the television market. TCL would hold a 51% stake in the venture and Sony would retain 49% under a nonbinding agreement the two companies signed. They aim to finalize binding terms by the end of March and begin operations in April 2027, pending regulatory approv
  
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• 'Just Because Linus Torvalds Vibe Codes Doesn't Mean It's a Good Idea'

  20-01-2026 14:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  In an opinion piece for The Register, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols argues that while "vibe coding" can be fun and occasionally useful for small, throwaway projects, it produces brittle, low-quality code that doesn't scale and ultimately burdens real developers with cleanup and maintenance. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt: Vibe coding got a big boost when everyone's favorite open source programmer, Linux's Linus Torvalds, said he'd been using Google's Antigravity LLM on his toy program AudioNo
  
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• Ocean Damage Nearly Doubles the Cost of Climate Change

  20-01-2026 11:00 via news.slashdot.org
  A new study from Scripps Institution of Oceanography finds that factoring ocean damage into climate economics nearly doubles the estimated global cost of climate change, adding close to $2 trillion per year from losses to fisheries, coral reefs, and coastal infrastructure. "It is the first time a social cost of carbon (SCC) assessment -- a key measure of economic harm caused by climate change -- has included damages to the ocean," reports Inside Climate News. From the report: "For decades, we've
  
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