ICT news

• UK Urged To Unplug From US Tech Giants as Digital Sovereignty Fears Grow

  06-01-2026 18:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The Open Rights Group is warning politicians that the UK is leaning far too heavily on US tech companies to run critical systems, and wants the Cybersecurity and Resilience Bill to force a rethink.
  The digital rights outfit says the bill, which is due to receive its second reading in the House of Commons today, represents a rare opportunity to force the government to confront what it sees as a strategic blind spot: the UK's reliance on companies such as Amazo
  
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• EU Plots To Abandon US Tech

  04-06-2026 00:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Ancient Slashdot reader whitroth shares a report from Politico, with the caption: "shutting down Microsoft Office for the International Criminal Court (ICC) was clearly a wake-up call." From the report: The EU is moving to counter American dominance in technology by reaching for one of the oldest tools in its arsenal: industrial strategy. As the European Commission unveiled a plan Wednesday to reduce Europe's reliance on the foreign technology providers that underpin the modern economy, it was c
  
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• MacBook Neo is So Popular That Apple Reportedly Doubled Production

  03-06-2026 23:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  According to supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple has reportedly doubled 2026 MacBook Neo production from 5 million to 10 million units after stronger-than-expected demand for its $599 budget laptop. MacRumors reports: On an earnings call in late April, Apple's CEO Tim Cook said that customer response to the MacBook Neo was "off the charts," and the popularity of the laptop has reportedly led the company to significantly boost production. [...] Apple was very optimistic about the MacBook Neo
  
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• Google Launches 'Gemma 4 12B' AI Model That Can Run On Your Laptop

  03-06-2026 22:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Google has launched Gemma 4 12B, a 12-billion-parameter open AI model designed to run locally on your laptop without depending entirely on cloud infrastructure. WION reports: According to Google, the new model delivers performance close to much larger AI systems while requiring significantly less memory. The company says Gemma 4 12B can run locally on devices equipped with just 16GB of VRAM, making advanced AI more accessible to developers, researchers and businesses. The launch highlights a gro
  
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• Google Shares Fitbit Air Blueprints So Anyone Can 3D-Print Accessories

  03-06-2026 21:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Google has released (PDF) technical specs and 2D CAD drawings for the Fitbit Air to encourage users to make their own accessories. "These CAD drawings include crucial mating dimensions, tolerances, and mating force specifications -- including attach and detach force -- to help you build a high-quality accessory band," Google says on a store page listing. 9to5Google reports: Noting how the "community has already come up with innovative and creative new ideas to make the Fitbit Air [their] own" si
  
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• Microsoft Plans Linux Tools, RTX Spark Desktop For Windows Devs

  03-06-2026 20:00 via linux.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft's Build developer conference kicked off today, and as with almost everything the company has done in the last few years, Microsoft's opening keynote focused overwhelmingly on AI and other closely related technologies. [...] On the hardware front, we didn't get any updates for existing Surface devices (not counting yesterday's Surface Laptop Ultra announcement), but we did get something new: the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is "a compa
  
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• Meta Workers Can Opt Out of Workplace Tracking for Up to 30 Minutes

  03-06-2026 19:15 via yro.slashdot.org
  Meta is scaling back parts of its employee tracking initiative after staff objected to software that collected mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and other actions for AI training data. According to Reuters, the company will now let workers pause collection for up to 30 minutes and request exemptions. Reuters reports: [Stephane Kasriel, a vice president in Meta's AI model-building Superintelligence Labs unit] said the team behind the software had also introduced "several optimizations" to redu
  
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• Microsoft Claims New Quantum Chip 1,000 Times Better Than Before

  03-06-2026 18:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Microsoft says its new Majorana 2 quantum chip is 1,000 times more reliable than its predecessor, with qubits lasting about 20 seconds instead of milliseconds, and claims it could have a commercially useful quantum machine by 2029. The BBC reports: "We will have a quantum machine in 2029 that can solve commercially viable, reasonable problems," said Zulfi Alam, corporate vice president of Microsoft Quantum. That would still require huge further advances as such a device would require millions of
  
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• Android Gets Fake Call Detection That Uses RCS

  03-06-2026 17:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Phone by Google wants to combat the "growing threat of impersonation scams" and protect Android users against "sophisticated, AI-powered deepfake attacks" with fake call detection. [...] Fake call detection requires that both parties are on Android and use the Phone by Google app, while Google Messages and Google Contacts also have to be installed. When a contact calls, their phone "sends a silent confirmation signal in real time to your devic
  
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• Thanks To Robots, Ukraine Is Now Talking About Winning, Not Just Surviving

  03-06-2026 13:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  fjo3 shares a report from Defense One: A small but growing number of European officials and analysts are saying what four years ago was unthinkable: Ukraine isn't just surviving its grueling war with Russia, it is in some ways thriving and may even be on a path to victory. This isn't yet captured in headlines -- for example, about last weekend's barrage of Russian drones and missiles around Ukraine -- but in the details, like how some 90 percent were intercepted. Several long-term trends have sh
  
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• Trump Administration to Dismantle Ocean Monitoring System

  03-06-2026 09:00 via news.slashdot.org
  The Trump administration is moving to dismantle the National Science Foundation's $368 million Ocean Observatories Initiative, a network of more than 900 deep-sea instruments used to monitor ocean currents, marine ecosystems, carbon absorption, heat waves, fisheries, coastal flooding, and climate change. The NSF said it would send ships in June to begin the removal of the instruments anchored off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina, and an area between Greenland and Iceland known as the I
  
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• Microsoft's Project Solara Is an OS For Devices That Run AI Agents Instead of Apps

  03-06-2026 05:30 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from GeekWire: A team inside Microsoft has been quietly building a platform for devices that run AI agents instead of apps, based on Android instead of Windows, with two working hardware designs so far, and an initial set of big-name companies lined up to run pilots. The platform, dubbed "Project Solara," is Microsoft's bet that AI will open up entirely new scenarios for computing -- using agents to avoid the constraints of traditional software, and off-the-sh
  
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• Mathematicians Warn of AI Threats to Profession As Industry Encroaches

  03-06-2026 01:00 via science.slashdot.org
  A new Leiden Declaration, endorsed by the International Mathematical Union and published on June 2, 2026, warns that AI could undermine mathematics by flooding the field with plausible but flawed proofs, weakening attribution, shifting incentives, and giving tech companies too much influence over research priorities. "Mathematicians should find it quite striking that tech companies are suddenly interested in their work," said Kevin Buzzard, a mathematician at Imperial College London, in a statem
  
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• European Parliament Ditches Google For French Search Firm

  03-06-2026 00:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  The European Parliament is replacing Google with French search engine Qwant as the default on in-house computers, citing digital sovereignty and privacy concerns. Politico reports: As of Thursday June 4, "Qwant will replace Google as default search engine on European Parliament computers," officials told lawmakers in an email seen by POLITICO. The change is being made "in line with the Parliament's commitment to digital sovereignty and the protection of users' personal data." The search-engine s
  
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• Russian Spy Agency Says Foreign Spies Turned Officials' Smartphones Into Surveillance Devices

  02-06-2026 23:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Russia's FSB claims foreign intelligence services compromised smartphones belonging to senior Russian officials, allegedly turning them into surveillance devices capable of stealing data, recording conversations, and activating microphones or cameras. "This software is used to steal existing data, eavesdrop on ongoing conversations, and conduct covert acoustic and video monitoring of the environment near electronic devices, all aimed at obtaining sensitive information," the FSB said. The Registe
  
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• Microsoft Deliberately Bricking All Office For Mac 2019/2021 Installations

  02-06-2026 22:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac will reportedly drop into "reduced functionality mode" on July 13, 2026, when a license-validation certificate expires, leaving perpetually licensed apps able to open files but not edit or save them. Slashdot reader joshuark shares a report from OSnews: "Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion (2026) is a scheduled remote degradation of perpetually-licensed Microsoft Office software for macOS and iOS, set for July 13, 2026 when a license
  
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• Microsoft Unveils Scout, an Autonomous AI Agent Built On OpenClaw

  02-06-2026 21:00 via build.slashdot.org
  Microsoft has unveiled Scout, an experimental always-on AI "autopilot" agent for Microsoft 365 that can operate across Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint, calendars, contacts, browsers, and external apps via MCP. "Autopilots stay active in the background, understand how work gets done across your apps and systems, and take action without needing to be prompted each time," said Omar Shahine, a Microsoft veteran who recently announced he is leading a new team to bring OpenClaw-based personal ass
  
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• Trump Signs AI Executive Order Asking Companies To Give Government Early Access To Models

  02-06-2026 20:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order asking artificial intelligence companies to provide models to the federal government to assess their capabilities ahead of a full release. The order asks companies, on a voluntary basis, to participate in a benchmarking process to assess a model's "advanced cyber capabilities" and determine whether it should be considered a "covered frontier model." It then asks for access to those models u
  
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• Adafruit Pauses Blog After Demand Letter From Flux.ai's Lawyers

  02-06-2026 19:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader Matt_Bennett shares a blog post from Adafruit: Adafruit received at 10:38 p.m. ET on May 22, 2026 a letter from former FBI chief of staff, Jonathan F. Lenzner, and partner at Fenwick & West LLP, counsel for Flux, demanding, among other things, that Adafruit refrain from publishing an article addressing what the letter characterizes as false and potentially defamatory claims about Flux, including statements about Flux's intellectual property, commercial traction and u
  
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• User-Replaceable Batteries Are Coming Back In a Big Way

  02-06-2026 18:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  New EU battery rules taking effect early next year are pushing tech makers toward user-replaceable batteries in products like headphones, e-readers, handheld consoles, laptops, and possibly earbuds. But carve-outs for smartphones and tablets may mean replaceable batteries won't necessarily return to phones in the way many users remember. The Verge's Dominic Preston reports: Since the upcoming law doesn't actually come into force until February 18th, 2027, companies still have plenty of time to g
  
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• GitHub Copilot Users React To New Usage-Based Pricing System

  02-06-2026 17:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In April, GitHub announced that it was moving subscribers from request-based billing to a usage-based model for its AI-powered Copilot service. As that new pricing model goes into effect today, many GitHub Copilot users are reporting some extreme sticker shock as they realize just how quickly their previous "normal" usage is burning through their newly limited monthly allotment of AI credits. Across social media and forums, many Copilot user
  
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• Google Requests Permission to Release 32 Million Mosquitoes In California and Florida

  02-06-2026 13:00 via news.slashdot.org
  Google has asked the EPA for permission to release up to 32 million sterile male mosquitoes in California and Florida over two years. The effort is part of the company's Debug program, which uses Wolbachia-infected males to reduce populations of disease-spreading Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Google cites a similar approach in Singapore that helped suppress mosquito populations and reduce dengue cases. The Guardian reports: As part of its successful "Debug" program, Google is tapping into its tech e
  
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• Texas Adds Another Huge Solar Farm As ERCOT Grid Demand Soars

  02-06-2026 09:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Texas is adding another large solar project as ERCOT electricity demand rises. According to Electrek, Vesper Energy has secured $236 million in financing for its 201 MW Nazareth Solar farm in Swisher County, which will be capable of generating enough electricity for about 53,000 homes. The project is expected to begin construction in June 2026 and come online in fall 2027. From the report: Nazareth Solar will sit on more than 2,400 acres of private land and generate enough electricity to power a
  
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• Remote Work, Not AI, Has Sidelined Recent College Graduates, Research Finds

  02-06-2026 05:30 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The buzz on college campuses is that AI is disrupting the job market for young college graduates. But new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York finds that the culprit may be something else: remote work. An analysis of federal employment data, paired with a deep dive into the flexible work arrangements at one unnamed Fortune 500 tech company, reveals that companies are less likely to hire recent college grads into occupations that can be
  
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• The Pirate Bay Remains Resilient, 20 Years After The Raid

  02-06-2026 01:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Twenty years after Swedish police raided The Pirate Bay's Stockholm data center and seized its servers, the site remains online. In fact, the 2006 crackdown arguably made it more famous, helping turn it into "one of the most resilient and iconic websites on the internet," reports TorrentFreak. From the report: On May 31, 2006, less than three years after The Pirate Bay was founded, 65 Swedish police officers entered a datacenter in Stockholm. They had instructions to take the site's servers offl
  
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• Supply Chain Compromises Impact Nx Console and GitHub Repositories

  28-05-2026 14:00 via cisa.gov
  CISA is prioritizing the response to multiple emerging software supply chain intrusion campaigns targeting developer ecosystems Continuous Integration/Continuous Development (CI/CD) pipelines. These recent incidents, including the GitHub compromise via a malicious Nx Console Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extension and the “Megalodon” supply chain intrusion campaign, demonstrate how cyber threat actors are abusing tools and processes that support enterprise, cloud, and DevOps environme
  
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• Linus Torvalds on How AI is Impacting the Hunt for Linux Kernel Bugs

  24-05-2026 03:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  Linus Torvalds spoke this week at the Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit North America, reports ZDNet — and described how AI is impacting Linux kernel development:"In the last six months, we've seen a lot more commits," Torvalds noted, estimating that "the last two releases, it's been about 20% more commits than we had in the previous releases over many years.... The real change that happened in the last six months was that the AI tools actually got good enough for a lot of people... we
  
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• AMD (Xilinx) is Excluding Linux From the Free Tier For Its FPGA Dev Tool

  23-05-2026 23:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader Sun writes:AMD has announced a change to the way they are licensing Vivado, their FPGA development tool... Hidden between the lines of the announcement [of a new model starting with the 2026.1 release] is the change to the free of charge tier. AMD is adding more devices to be supported in this tier, which is supposedly the carrot. The stick, however, is the removal of certain debug features.The thing that's likely to hit the hobbist community the worst, however, is that
  
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• US Layoffs Haven't Increased, and New Tech Industry Hiring Balances Firings

  23-05-2026 22:34 via it.slashdot.org
  "The numbers show that layoffs in the U.S. are roughly at or below levels from before the pandemic," reports the Washington Post, "although they are higher than in 2022 when businesses snapped up workers as the economy roared back to life...
  "A different measure that accounts for the growing U.S. workforce shows that layoffs affected about 1.2% of employed people in March, a number that has been steady for years outside of the pandemic..."In the technology industry, where Meta and other companie
  
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• Air France, Airbus Guilty of Corporate Manslaughter In 2009 Air France 447 Crash

  23-05-2026 21:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader UnknowingFool shares this report from the BBC:Air France and Airbus have been found guilty of manslaughter over a 2009 plane crash which killed 228 people. The Paris Appeals Court found the airline and aircraft manufacturer "solely and entirely responsible" for the incident, in which flight AF447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. The passenger jet stalled during a storm and plunged into the water, killing all on board. A court had previously
  
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