ICT news

• Technicolor Begins To Shut Down Operations

  28-02-2025 00:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Technicolor Group has filed for a court recovery procedure in France after failing to secure new investors, putting its VFX brands, including MPC, The Mill, Mikros Animation, and Technicolor Games, at risk of closure. Variety reports: A total shutdown of MPC and Technicolor's operations would affect thousands of visual effects workers in countries include the U.S., UK, Canada and India. The turn in business has raised the alarm and sparked sadness within the VFX community. Parot's memo explains,
  
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• Google Warns EU Risks Undermining Own Competitiveness With Tech Sovereignty Push

  13-02-2026 21:31 via tech.slashdot.org
  Europe risks undermining its own competitiveness drive by restricting access to foreign technology, Google's president of global affairs and chief legal officer Kent Walker told the Financial Times, as Brussels accelerates efforts to reduce reliance on U.S. tech giants. Walker said the EU faces a "competitive paradox" as it seeks to spur growth while restricting the technologies needed to achieve that goal.
  He warned against erecting walls that make it harder to use some of the best technology i
  
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• Spotify Says Its Best Developers Haven't Written a Line of Code Since December, Thanks To AI

  13-02-2026 20:30 via developers.slashdot.org
  Spotify's best developers have stopped writing code manually since December and now rely on an internal AI system called Honk that enables remote, real-time code deployment through Claude Code, the company's co-CEO Gustav Soderstrom said during a fourth-quarter earnings call this week.
  Engineers can fix bugs or add features to the iOS app from Slack on their phones during their morning commute and receive a new version of the app pushed to Slack before arriving at the office. The system has help
  
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• FTC Ratchets Up Microsoft Probe, Queries Rivals on Cloud, AI

  13-02-2026 19:31 via slashdot.org
  The US Federal Trade Commission is accelerating scrutiny of Microsoft as part of an ongoing probe into whether the company illegally monopolizes large swaths of the enterprise computing market with its cloud software and AI offerings, including Copilot. From a report: The agency has issued civil investigative demands in recent weeks to companies that compete with Microsoft in the business software and cloud computing markets, according to people familiar with the matter. The demands feature an a
  
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• EPA Reverses Long-Standing Climate Change Finding, Stripping Its Own Ability To Regulate Emissions

  13-02-2026 18:30 via news.slashdot.org
  President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency is rescinding the legal finding that it has relied on for nearly two decades to limit the heat-trapping pollution that spews from vehicle tailpipes, oil refineries and factories. From a report: The repeal of that landmark determination, known as the endangerment finding, will upend most U.S. policies aimed at curbing climate change. The finding -- which the EPA issued in 2009 -- said the global warming caused by g
  
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• OpenAI Claims DeepSeek Distilled US Models To Gain an Edge

  13-02-2026 17:30 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US AI models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, according to a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News.
  In the memo, sent Thursday to the House Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of "ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabil
  
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• Waymo is Asking DoorDash Drivers To Shut the Doors of Its Self-Driving Cars

  13-02-2026 16:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  Waymo's autonomous vehicles can transport passengers across six cities without a human driver, but the Alphabet-owned company has discovered that its cars become completely inert if a passenger accidentally leaves a door open. The company confirmed that it is now paying DoorDash drivers in Atlanta to close these doors as part of a pilot program.
  A Reddit post from a DoorDash driver showed an offer of $6.25 to drive less than one mile to a Waymo vehicle and close its door, plus an additional $5 a
  
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• Bill Introduced To Replace West Virginia's New CS Course Graduation Requirement With Computer Literacy Proficiency

  13-02-2026 15:30 via news.slashdot.org
  theodp writes: West Virginia lawmakers on Tuesday introduced House Bill 5387 (PDF), which would repeal the state's recently enacted mandatory stand-alone computer science graduation requirement and replace it with a new computer literacy proficiency requirement. Not too surprisingly, the Bill is being opposed by tech-backed nonprofit Code.org, which lobbied for the WV CS graduation requirement (PDF) just last year. Code.org recently pivoted its mission to emphasize the importance of teaching AI
  
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• Meta Plans To Let Smart Glasses Identify People Through AI-Powered Facial Recognition

  13-02-2026 14:36 via tech.slashdot.org
  Meta plans to add facial recognition technology to its Ray-Ban smart glasses as soon as this year, New York Times reported Friday, five years after the social giant shut down facial recognition on Facebook and promised to find "the right balance" for the controversial technology.
  The feature, internally called "Name Tag," would let wearers identify people and retrieve information about them through Meta's AI assistant, the report added. An internal memo from May acknowledged the feature carries
  
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• Ring Cancels Its Partnership With Flock Safety After Surveillance Backlash

  13-02-2026 10:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Following intense backlash to its partnership with Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company that works with law enforcement agencies, Ring has announced it is canceling the integration. From a report: In a statement published on Ring's blog and provided to The Verge ahead of publication, the company said: "Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated. We therefore made the joint de
  
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• Russia Fully Blocks WhatsApp

  13-02-2026 07:10 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: U.S. messenger app WhatsApp, owned by Meta Platforms, has been completely blocked in Russia for failing to comply with local law, the Kremlin said on Thursday, suggesting Russians turn to a state-backed "national messenger" instead. "Due to Meta's unwillingness to comply with Russian law, such a decision was indeed taken and implemented," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, proposing that Russians switch to MAX, Russia's state-owned messenger.Read
  
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• Windows 11 Notepad Flaw Let Files Execute Silently via Markdown Links

  13-02-2026 04:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  Microsoft has patched a high-severity vulnerability in Windows 11's Notepad that allowed attackers to silently execute local or remote programs when a user clicked a specially crafted Markdown link, all without triggering any Windows security warning.
  The flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-20841 and fixed in the February 2026 Patch Tuesday update, stemmed from Notepad's relatively new Markdown support -- a feature Microsoft added after discontinuing WordPad and rewriting Notepad to serve as both a plain
  
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• CIA Makes New Push To Recruit Chinese Military Officers as Informants

  13-02-2026 02:30 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Just weeks after a dramatic purge of China's top general, the CIA is moving to capitalize on any resulting discord with a new public video targeting potential informants in the Chinese military. The U.S. spy agency on Thursday rolled out the video depicting a disillusioned mid-level Chinese military officer, in the latest U.S. step in a campaign to ramp up human intelligence gathering on Washington's strategic rival.
  It follows a similar effort last May that
  
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• IBM Plans To Triple Entry-Level Hiring in the US

  12-02-2026 23:30 via slashdot.org
  IBM said it will triple entry-level hiring in the US in 2026, even as AI appears to be weighing on broader demand for early-career workers. From a report: While the company declined to disclose specific hiring figures, it said the expansion will be "across the board," affecting a wide range of departments. "And yes, it's for all these jobs that we're being told AI can do," said Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM's chief human resources officer, speaking at a conference this week in New York.
  LaMoreaux said s
  
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• WP Engine Says Automattic Planned To Shake Down 10 Hosting Companies For WordPress Royalties

  12-02-2026 22:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  WP Engine's third amended complaint against Automattic and WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg alleges that Mullenweg had plans to impose royalty fees on 10 hosting companies beyond WP Engine for their use of the WordPress trademark.
  The amended filing, based on previously sealed information uncovered during discovery, also claims Mullenweg emailed a Stripe executive to pressure the payment processor into canceling WP Engine's contract after WP Engine sued Automattic in October 2024. Newfold, th
  
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• Anthropic Raises $30 Billion at $380 Billion Valuation, Eyes IPO This Year

  12-02-2026 21:00 via slashdot.org
  Anthropic has raised $30 billion in a Series G funding round that values the Claude maker at $380 billion as the company prepares for an initial public offering that could come as early as this year. Investors in the new round include Singapore sovereign fund GIC, Coatue, D.E. Shaw Ventures, ICONIQ, MGX, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, Greenoaks and Temasek. Anthropic raised its funding target by $10 billion during the process after the round was several times subscribed.
  The San Francisco-based
  
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• Palo Alto Chose Not To Tie China To Hacking Campaign For Fear of Retaliation From Beijing

  12-02-2026 20:10 via it.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Palo Alto Networks opted not to tie China to a global cyberespionage campaign the firm exposed last week over concerns that the cybersecurity company or its clients could face retaliation from Beijing, according to two people familiar with the matter. The sources said that Palo Alto's findings that China was tied to the sprawling hacking spree were dialed back following last month's news, first reported by Reuters, that Palo Alto was one of about 15 U.S. and
  
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• Microsoft Plans Smartphone-Style Permission Prompts for Windows 11 Apps

  12-02-2026 19:10 via it.slashdot.org
  Microsoft is planning to bring smartphone-style app permission prompts to Windows 11, requiring apps to get explicit user consent before they can access sensitive resources like the file system, camera and microphone. The company's Windows Platform engineer Logan Iyer said the move was prompted by applications increasingly overriding user settings, installing unwanted software, and modifying core Windows experiences without permission.
  A separate initiative called Windows Baseline Security Mode
  
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• Border Officials Are Said To Have Caused El Paso Closure by Firing Anti-Drone Laser

  12-02-2026 18:12 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The abrupt closure of El Paso's airspace late Tuesday was precipitated when Customs and Border Protection officials deployed an anti-drone laser on loan from the Department of Defense without giving aviation officials enough time to assess the risks to commercial aircraft, according to multiple people briefed on the situation.
  The episode led the Federal Aviation Administration to abruptly declare that the nearby airspace would be shut down for 10 days, an ex
  
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• Amazon Engineers Want Claude Code, but the Company Keeps Pushing Its Own Tool

  12-02-2026 17:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  Amazon engineers have been pushing back against internal policies that steer them toward Kiro, the company's in-house AI coding assistant, and away from Anthropic's Claude Code for production work, according to a Business Insider report based on internal messages. About 1,500 employees endorsed the formal adoption of Claude Code in one internal forum thread, and some pointed out the awkwardness of being asked to sell the tool through AWS's Bedrock platform while not being permitted to use it the
  
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• The "Are You Sure?" Problem: Why Your AI Keeps Changing Its Mind

  12-02-2026 16:03 via slashdot.org
  The large language models that millions of people rely on for advice -- ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini -- will change their answers nearly 60% of the time when a user simply pushes back by asking "are you sure?," according to a study by Fanous et al. that tested GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet, and Gemini 1.5 Pro across math and medical domains.
  The behavior, known in the research community as sycophancy, stems from how these models are trained: reinforcement learning from human feedback, or RLHF, rewards respon
  
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• Anthropic To Cover Costs of Electricity Price Increases From Its Data Centers

  12-02-2026 15:00 via slashdot.org
  AI startup Anthropic says it will ensure consumer electricity costs remain steady as it expands its data center footprint. From a report: Anthropic said it would work with utility companies to "estimate and cover" consumer electricity price increases in places where it is not able to sufficiently generate new power and pay for 100% of the infrastructure upgrades required to connect its data centers to the electrical grid.
  In a statement to NBC News, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said: "building AI
  
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• Meta Auditor EY Raised Red Flag on Data-Center Accounting

  12-02-2026 13:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Meta Platforms' latest annual report contained an unusual, cautionary note for investors. From a report: The tech giant's auditor, Ernst & Young, raised a red flag over the financial engineering Meta used to keep a $27 billion data-center project off its balance sheet. While EY ultimately blessed Meta's accounting treatment, the firm flagged it as a "critical audit matter." This means it was one of the hardest, riskiest judgments the auditor had to make.
  Such a warning label is rare for a sp
  
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• US Hacking Tool Boss Stole and Sold Exploits To Russian Broker That Could Target Millions of Devices, DOJ Says

  12-02-2026 10:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Federal prosecutors have revealed that Peter Williams, the former general manager of U.S. defense contractor L3Harris's hacking tools division Trenchant, sold eight stolen software exploits to a Russian broker whose customers -- including the Russian government -- could have used them to access "millions of computers and devices around the world."
  Williams, a 39-year-old Australian national, pleaded guilty in October and admitted to earning more than $1.3 million in cryptocurrency from the sales
  
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• Siri's AI Overhaul Delayed Again

  12-02-2026 07:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple's long-promised overhaul of Siri has hit fresh problems during internal testing, forcing the company to push several key features out of the iOS 26.4 update that was slated for March and spread them across later releases, Bloomberg is reporting.
  The new Siri -- first announced at WWDC in June 2024 and originally due by early 2025 -- struggles to reliably process queries, takes too long to respond and sometimes falls back on OpenAI's ChatGPT instead of Apple's own technology, the report sai
  
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• Anthropic Safety Researcher Quits, Warning 'World is in Peril'

  12-02-2026 04:44 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: An Anthropic safety researcher quit, saying the "world is in peril" in part over AI advances. Mrinank Sharma said the safety team "constantly [faces] pressures to set aside what matters most," citing concerns about bioterrorism and other risks.
  Anthropic was founded with the explicit goal of creating safe AI; its CEO Dario Amodei said at Davos that AI progress is going too fast and called for regulation to force industry leaders to slow down. Other AI safety
  
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• With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet

  12-02-2026 02:45 via yro.slashdot.org
  Ring's Super Bowl ad on Sunday promoted "Search Party," a feature that lets a user post a photo of a missing dog in the Ring app and triggers outdoor Ring cameras across the neighborhood to use AI to scan for a match. 404 Media argues the cheerful premise obscures what the Amazon-owned company has become: a massive, consumer-deployed surveillance network.
  Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, who left in 2023 and returned last year, has since moved to re-establish police partnerships and push more AI int
  
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• Is Linux Mint Burning Out? Developers Consider Longer Release Cycle

  11-02-2026 23:45 via linux.slashdot.org
  BrianFagioli writes: The Linux Mint developers say they are considering adopting a longer development cycle, arguing that the project's current six month cadence plus LMDE releases leaves too little room for deeper work. In a recent update, the team reflected on its incremental philosophy, independence from upstream decisions like Snap, and heavy investment in Cinnamon and XApp. While the release process "works very well" and delivers steady improvements, they admit it consumes significant time
  
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• A Hellish 'Hothouse Earth' Getting Closer, Scientists Say

  11-02-2026 22:00 via news.slashdot.org
  The world is closer than thought to a "point of no return" after which runaway global heating cannot be stopped, scientists have said. From a report: Continued global heating could trigger climate tipping points, leading to a cascade of further tipping points and feedback loops, they said. This would lock the world into a new and hellish "hothouse Earth" climate far worse than the 2-3C temperature rise the world is on track to reach.
  The climate would also be very different to the benign conditi
  
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• US Had Almost No Job Growth in 2025

  11-02-2026 21:01 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The U.S. economy experienced almost zero job growth in 2025, according to revised federal data. On a more encouraging note: hiring has picked up in 2026. Preliminary data had indicated that the U.S. economy added 584,000 jobs last year. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised that number after it received additional state data, and found that the labor market had added 181,000 jobs in all of 2025. This is far fewer than the 1.46 million jobs that were adde
  
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