ICT news

• Scientists Make First Viruses Designed By AI

  07-08-2026 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists have made the first viruses designed by artificial intelligence in a milestone that raises hopes for new medicines but also concerns over how to ensure the technology remains safe. The viruses are specific kinds known as bacteriophages, which only infect bacteria and are used around the world to treat patients with persistent infections. In lab tests, a cocktail of the AI-designed viruses killed E coli bugs that were resistant to
  
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• Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

  07-08-2026 13:00 via science.slashdot.org
  A new study argues that life may have emerged twice on Earth. "Two of the main lineages of life -- bacteria and archaea -- may have independently figured out the secrets of metabolism that upgraded them from non-living to living," reports ScienceAlert, citing a new study that "focused on the most rudimentary set of chemical reactions thought to enable this transformation." From the report: "The surprise is that the enzymes that catalyze those reactions are not conserved across the evolutionary d
  
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• Dress Made of Living Mycelium Can Renew and Repair Itself

  07-08-2026 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Researchers in China have developed a living mycelium textile that can self-clean, renew its surface, and partially repair holes when treated with a nutrient solution and fresh fungus. The material can also gain added properties such as blue pigmentation or UV resistance by co-culturing it with yeast or other fungi. Dezeen reports: The breakthrough from the researchers at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology is a type of engineered living material (ELM) -- a material built off living o
  
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• Court Orders Meta To Establish $567 Million Fund To Abate Harms To Youth

  07-08-2026 03:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  A New Mexico court ordered (PDF) Meta to create a $567 million fund to address harms linked to youth mental health and child sexual exploitation after finding its platforms constituted a public nuisance. "In sum, the Court finds that New Mexico is in the midst of a teen mental health crisis affecting public health and public safety in and throughout the state, and that Meta's platforms are a significant contributing cause to the crisis," wrote Chief Judge Bryan Biedscheid in the decision. The fu
  
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• Google's $15 Billion India Data Center Project Battles Water, Wildlife Concerns

  07-08-2026 01:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google's $15 billion data-center project in Visakhapatnam is facing protests and legal challenges over fears that it will worsen local water shortages and disturb wildlife near the Kambalakonda sanctuary. Google says the campus will use advanced air cooling and comply with Indian law, while state officials deny that residential or rural water supplies will be tapped. Reuters reports: The southern state of Andhra Pradesh, governed by an ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has hailed the proj
  
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• 'Tower Dump' Warrants Ruled Unconstitutional

  07-08-2026 00:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  alternative_right shares a report from The Hill: A federal judge in Mississippi ruled Wednesday that "tower dump" warrants are unconstitutional, declining to reverse a lower court decision refusing the government's request to obtain the search warrants in a series of violent crime investigations. A "tower dump" involves cellphone companies providing law enforcement with access to the time and location data of all mobile devices connected to specific cell towers during a designated time window.La
  
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• Azure CTO Pastes Doom Into Paint One Frame At a Time

  06-08-2026 23:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich used Claude to build a gloriously impractical setup that runs Doom in the background and pastes each rendered frame into Microsoft Paint through the Windows clipboard. The project is referred to as "DoomPaint" or "MS Paint Doom" on GitHub. The Register reports: To be clear, Microsoft Paint isn't doing anything other than serving as a place to paste from the game. [...] ViZDoom runs the Doom .wad file and renders it headlessly. Each frame is passed through the
  
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• OpenAI's Models Shared Hacking Tips On a Secret Messaging Board Before Hugging Face Breach

  06-08-2026 22:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  OpenAI researchers say multiple AI agents secretly created an internal message board to share hacking techniques, eventually finding ways around restrictions, exploiting a zero-day, and helping two models breach Hugging Face without human prompting. "This is a pivotal moment both for our company as well as the AI industry as a whole," Michael Dalton, one of the AI-maker's researchers, said during a presentation at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Politico reports: Dal
  
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• The US Government's Mario, Pokemon and Naruto Meme Posting Could Damage These Franchises, Japanese Officials Warn

  06-08-2026 21:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Japanese officials have repeatedly asked the Trump administration to stop using characters from franchises such as Mario, Pokemon, and Naruto in unauthorized government memes and pro-war videos, warning that the posts could damage the intellectual property involved. IGN reports: Official US government social media accounts, including The White House's X account, have posted various memes and videos using characters from popular Japanese anime and games over the past year. Japan's Ministry of For
  
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• FCC Kills TV Ownership Cap, Claiming Authority Over Limit Set By Congress

  06-08-2026 20:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 today to eliminate the National Television Ownership Rule, claiming authority to repeal a limit that was set by Congress over 20 years ago. The rule prohibits any single broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39 percent of all TV households in the US. Under Chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC is replacing the rule with a "case-by-case review" of each proposed merger."This will empower the F
  
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• Times Magazine Now Serves Ads That Only AI Chatbots Can See

  06-08-2026 19:00 via slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader mccalli writes: Times Magazine has started serving adverts with "brand messages" to AI crawlers, which are not part of its main page. The aim seems to be to influence chatbots to talk about the brand offerings in a positive light that can't be traced back to the actual page. Notably, they've excluded Google chatbots from this, likely because Google penalizes companies that show different search offerings to its bots versus actual human visitors. "Maybe it's more importan
  
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• Meta AI Hacked External Systems During Cybersecurity Testing

  06-08-2026 18:00 via it.slashdot.org
  wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Meta is the latest major AI developer to admit that its models broke loose during cybersecurity testing and hacked external systems. The tech giant said in a statement to the media on Wednesday that the incident occurred during independent evaluations conducted by Israeli AI security startup Irregular. The tested AI models were inadvertently allowed to access the internet due to a misconfiguration, which led them to exploit a vulnerability in an unna
  
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• Broadcaster Wins Broad US Blocking Injunction Covering Pirate Sites That Don't Exist Yet

  06-08-2026 17:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Mexican broadcaster TelevisaUnivision (TU) has obtained (PDF) one of the broadest anti-piracy injunctions ever issued by a U.S. federal court. After initially targeting five pirate IPTV streaming operations, the case expanded to cover well over 500 domain names, requiring intermediaries including Cloudflare, GitHub, and a Mexican bank to comply. In addition, the injunction also covers pirate services and content that hasn't been created yet.
  
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• FDA Approves First mRNA Flu Shot

  06-08-2026 13:00 via science.slashdot.org
  The FDA has approved the first mRNA flu vaccine in the United States after a clinical trial found it was about 27% more effective than a standard flu shot. Manufactured by Moderna and marketed as mFlusiva, the vaccine is expected to be available this fall for adults ages 50 to 64 and those 65 and older, though approval for the older group is conditional on Moderna conducting an additional clinical trial, NBC News reports. From the report: Many scientists and public health experts have touted the
  
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• BMW Blasts Its Cars' Internal Screens With Aggressive Ads

  06-08-2026 09:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot readers schwit1 and fjo3 shared a report about BMW displaying a Spider-Man promotion on connected vehicle screens in more than 70 markets. According to reports, drivers had to play or dismiss the ad before they could use the infotainment system. Futurism reports: BMW, showing that it was about as in-touch as its drivers are familiar with turn signals, teased the promotion as a "special surprise." According to The Autopian's coverage and the heaps of complaints online, the ad ap
  
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• New Images of the Sun Show Its Surface In the Finest Detail Yet

  06-08-2026 05:30 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Scientists have captured images of the sun's surface in the finest detail yet, revealing a strange and dynamic facade. It's dangerous to look directly at the sun without proper eye protection. But researchers were able to peek at its scorching surface with the help of the National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, located on the island of Maui in Hawaii.Scientists originally took the images for a different reason
  
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• Waymo CEO Explains Why Camera-Only Self-Driving Falls Short

  06-08-2026 01:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Electrek: Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov laid out the clearest technical case yet for why cameras alone can't take a self-driving system to full autonomy, arguing that "weak sensing" hits a safety ceiling long before it reaches superhuman performance. [...] Dolgov made the comments in a talk at Y Combinator's Startup School, walking through the lessons Waymo has learned building its driver over close to two decades. He put the sensor question on
  
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• Anthropic's AI Used Fake Identities, Malware In Rogue Attack On GitHub Project

  06-08-2026 00:00 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Routine cybersecurity testing of frontier AI models sparked a series of unexpected security incidents -- the most serious case arising when Anthropic's Mythos 5 model attempted to insert malicious code into an open source software application and created fake identities to deceive the human developers maintaining the project. The security incidents occurred during a cyber evaluation of seven leading AI models' capabilities by the AI Security
  
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• Meta Debuts First AI Coding Agent To Take On Anthropic and OpenAI

  05-08-2026 23:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  Meta has launched Muse Code, its first AI coding agent that's positioned as a lower-cost rival to Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's Codex. It offers pay-as-you-go pricing and an optional zero-data-retention feature for enterprise users. CNBC reports: Muse Code is the latest major release from AI chief Alexandr Wang, who leads Meta Superintelligence Labs and oversees foundation model development. Wang joined in June of last year as the centerpiece of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's effort to revamp his compa
  
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• Apple's 'Private Relay' Is Exposing Users' Real IP Addresses

  05-08-2026 22:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Security researchers found that Apple's iCloud Private Relay can expose users' real IP addresses because some passkey-related requests bypass Safari and its proxy protections at the operating-system level. "In short: any website that supports, or pretends to support, passkeys can see the user's real IP address despite having iCloud Private Relay on," security researcher Tommy Mysk, who discovered the issue along with Talal Haj Bakry, told 404 Media. The flaws also affect OnionBrowser, an iOS app
  
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• Lawmaker Who Wants Data Center Pause Wins Kansas Democratic Primary

  05-08-2026 21:00 via politics.slashdot.org
  Kansas Democrats nominated State Senator Cindy Holscher for governor after she defeated party-backed rival Ethan Corson. "The race became a test of what sort of candidate Democratic voters prefer in what is expected to be a challenging general election race: a more moderate candidate like Mr. Corson with endorsements from party leaders or an outspoken populist like Ms. Holscher, who spoke out against data centers and the political establishment," reports The New York Times. From the repot: Even
  
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• Google Overhauls AI Leadership As DeepMind CEO Steps Aside

  05-08-2026 20:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google is reshuffling its AI leadership as Demis Hassabis steps away from day-to-day management of DeepMind to become chairman and Alphabet's chief scientist, while CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu takes operational control. Meanwhile, longtime chief scientist Jeff Dean and several prominent researchers are leaving to launch their own company. Axios reports: Hassabis will add the title of chief scientist for Google parent company Alphabet and also continue to lead Isomorphic Labs, the company's AI drug dis
  
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• Cloudflare Announces Open-Source Cloudflare OS As AI 'Operating System'

  05-08-2026 19:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Cloudflare has open-sourced Cloudflare OS, an Apache 2.0-licensed platform that lets organizations build AI agents, apps, and workflows using curated company data and tools within isolated, governed environments. Despite the name, it is not a traditional operating system but a framework for securely managing organizational AI workloads. Phoronix reports: Cloudflare OS is already used internally at Cloudflare and is described in today's announcement as:
  "Cloudflare OS starts with a conversation i
  
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• The Days of Walking Into a T-Mobile Store May Be Numbered

  05-08-2026 18:00 via mobile.slashdot.org
  A leaked roadmap suggests T-Mobile plans to make its T-Life app the primary way customers manage their accounts by the end of 2026, "gradually moving one feature at a time into the app" and away from physical stores, reports Android Authority. That includes upgrades, new-line activations, and eventually new-account sign-ups. From the report: According to an image shared by a Reddit user, the carrier has mapped out the next phase of its app-first strategy. This clearly shows that the T-Life app i
  
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• Senators Demand Crackdown On Wildfire 'Prediction Markets'

  05-08-2026 17:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Several US senators have written a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), inquiring about the agency's "plans to crack down on prediction markets" that offer "contracts for individuals to bet on wildfires." "Offering bets on destructive wildfires threatens to minimize communities' suffering, all so the rich and powerful can profit," wrote (PDF) the group of senators, who represent Oregon, California, Nevada, Minnesota, an
  
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• NVMe Polishes Its Specs, Brings Virtualization to Locally Attached SSDs

  05-08-2026 13:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  The latest NVMe specifications add SSD-level virtualization that can simplify live VM migration by preserving storage identities across servers. The updates also introduce support for post-quantum cryptography, controller-based rate limiting, voltage monitoring, and factory-reset capabilities. The Register reports: Announced by the NVM Express consortium, all 11 of the suite of NVMe specs have been updated with new features and engineering change notices. These represent the next step in the evo
  
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• Watch a SpaceX Rocket Crash Into the Moon

  05-08-2026 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  A four-ton SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage left drifting after a 2025 lunar mission is expected to crash into the Moon at about 5,400 mph, likely striking Einstein Crater. The impact should occur at approximately 2:35 a.m. ET (0635GMT). Reuters reports: Such stages typically fall back into Earth's atmosphere and burn up or plunge into the ocean after boosting the rocket's payload to a precise spot in orbit. But because the January lunar lander mission required more thrust than missions closer to Ear
  
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• Texas Halts Data Center Connections To Power Grid Amid Overwhelming Demand

  05-08-2026 05:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nowhere is the US data center boom bigger than in Texas. But less than a year after declaring Texas the "epicenter of AI development," Governor Greg Abbott has declared a moratorium on all new power grid connections for data centers -- at least until developers provide more information about their projects' potential impacts on the grid and communities. The Republican governor directed regulators in an August 3 announcement at the Public Uti
  
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• EA Is Now Officially Privately Owned

  05-08-2026 01:00 via games.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader neoRUR shares a report from Game Developer: EA Sports FC and Battlefield publisher EA has been taken private by an investor consortium led by Saudi Arabia's sovereign Public Investment Fund (PIF). The move means the U.S. juggernaut is no longer a publicly-traded entity and is now majority owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through its PIF investment arm. Other investors include Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, the latter of which was established by U.S. president Don
  
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• Apple Limits Bug Bounty Submissions After Flood of AI Slop

  05-08-2026 00:00 via it.slashdot.org
  Apple has capped the number of open bug-bounty reports researchers can submit after being flooded with low-quality and sometimes entirely fabricated vulnerabilities generated by AI. MacRumors reports: The Financial Times learned of the limit after cybersecurity startup Bynario used ChatGPT to locate more than 50 macOS bugs in three weeks. Bynario found a privilege escalation exploit that could let an attacker get unrestricted access to a Mac, but was unable to report it because Apple limited the
  
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