ICT news

• Up Next for Arduino After Qualcomm Acquisition: High-Performance Computing

  28-12-2025 19:58 via news.slashdot.org
  Even after its acquisition by Qualcomm, the EFF believes Arduino "isn't imposing any new bans on tinkering with or reverse engineering Arduino boards," (according to Mitch Stoltz, EFF director for competition and IP litigation). While Adafruit's managing editor Phillip Torrone had claimed to 36,000+ followers on LinkedIn that Arduino users were now "explicitly forbidden from reverse engineering," Arduino corrected him in a blog post, noting that clause in their Terms & Conditions was only fo
  
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• Fusion Physicists Found a Way Around a Long-Standing Density Limit

  09-01-2026 11:00 via science.slashdot.org
  alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: At the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), physicists successfully exceeded what is known as the Greenwald limit, a practical density boundary beyond which plasmas tend to violently destabilize, often damaging reactor components. For a long time, the Greenwald limit was accepted as a given and incorporated into fusion reactor engineering. The new work shows that precise control over how the plasma is created and interacts wit
  
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• Ultimate Camouflage Tech Mimics Octopus In Scientific First

  09-01-2026 08:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Researchers at Stanford University have created a programmable synthetic "skin" that can independently change color and texture, "a feat previously only available within the animal kingdom," reports the Register. From the report: The technique employs electron beams to write patterns and add optical layers that create color effects. When exposed to water, the film swells to reveal texture and colors independently, depending on which side of the material is exposed, according to a paper published
  
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• Some Super-Smart Dogs Can Learn New Words Just By Eavesdropping

  09-01-2026 04:30 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: [I]t turns out that some genius dogs can learn a brand new word, like the name of an unfamiliar toy, by just overhearing brief interactions between two people. What's more, these "gifted" dogs can learn the name of a new toy even if they first hear this word when the toy is out of sight -- as long as their favorite human is looking at the spot where the toy is hidden. That's according to a new study in the journal Science. "What we found in this stud
  
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• YouTube Will Now Let You Filter Shorts Out of Search Results

  09-01-2026 03:10 via news.slashdot.org
  YouTube is updating search filters so users can explicitly choose between Shorts and long-form videos. The change also replaces view-count sorting with a new "Popularity" filter and removes underperforming options like "Sort by Rating." The Verge reports: Right now, a filter-less search shows a mix of longform and short form videos, which can be annoying if you just want to see videos in one format or the other. But in the new search filters, among other options, you can pick to see "Videos," wh
  
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• Lawsuit Over OpenAI For-Profit Conversion Can Head To Trial, US Judge Says

  09-01-2026 02:30 via yro.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk persuaded a judge on Wednesday to allow a jury trial on his allegations that ChatGPT maker OpenAI violated its founding mission in its high-profile restructuring to a for-profit entity. Musk was a cofounder of OpenAI in 2015 but left in 2018 and now runs an AI company that competes with it.U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, said at a hearing that there was "plenty of
  
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• Illinois Health Department Exposed Over 700,000 Residents' Personal Data For Years

  09-01-2026 01:50 via yro.slashdot.org
  Illinois Department of Human Services disclosed that a misconfigured internal mapping website exposed sensitive personal data for more than 700,000 Illinois residents for over four years, from April 2021 to September 2025. Officials say they can't confirm whether the publicly accessible data was ever viewed. TechCrunch reports: Officials said the exposed data included personal information on 672,616 individuals who are Medicaid and Medicare Savings Program recipients. The data included their add
  
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• Google Is Adding an 'AI Inbox' To Gmail That Summarizes Emails

  09-01-2026 01:10 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Google is putting even more generative AI tools into Gmail as part of its goal to further personalize user inboxes and streamline searches. On Thursday, the company announced a new "AI Inbox" tab, currently in a beta testing phase, that reads every message in a user's Gmail and suggests a list of to-dos and key topics, based on what it summarizes. In Google's example of what this AI Inbox could look like in Gmail, the new tab takes context from a u
  
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• French Court Orders Google DNS to Block Pirate Sites, Dismisses 'Cloudflare-First' Defense

  09-01-2026 00:30 via yro.slashdot.org
  Paris Judicial Court ordered Google to block additional pirate sports-streaming domains at the DNS level, rejecting Google's argument that enforcement should target upstream providers like Cloudflare first. "The blockade was requested by Canal+ and aims to stop pirate streams of Champions League games," notes TorrentFreak. From the report: Most recently, Google was compelled to take action following a complaint from French broadcaster Canal+ and its subsidiaries regarding Champions League piracy
  
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• Microsoft Turns Copilot Chats Into a Checkout Lane

  08-01-2026 23:50 via slashdot.org
  Microsoft is embedding full e-commerce checkout directly into Copilot chats, letting users buy products without ever visiting a retailer's website. "If checkout happens inside AI conversations, retailers risk losing direct customer relationships -- while platforms like Microsoft gain leverage," reports Axios. From the report: Microsoft unveiled new agentic AI tools for retailers at the NRF 2026 retail conference, including Copilot Checkout, which lets shoppers complete purchases inside Copilot w
  
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• Wi-Fi Advocates Get Win From FCC With Vote To Allow Higher-Power Devices

  08-01-2026 23:10 via mobile.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission plans to authorize a new category of wireless devices in the 6 GHz Wi-Fi band that will be permitted to operate at higher power levels than currently allowed. The FCC will also consider authorizing higher power levels for certain wireless devices that are only allowed to operate indoors. The FCC said it scheduled a vote for its January 29 meeting on an order "to create a new category of unlicensed device
  
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• The Gap Between Premium and Budget TV Brands is Quickly Closing

  08-01-2026 22:30 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  The long-standing hierarchy in the TV market -- Sony, Samsung and LG at the top, TCL and Hisense fighting it out in the midrange -- is eroding as the budget brands close the performance gap and increasingly lead on technology innovation, The Verge writes. Hisense debuted the first RGB LED TV last year, and TCL's X11L announced at CES 2026 is the first TV to use reformulated quantum dots and a new color filter. TCL's QM9K release last year was "a pretty clear statement that they're ready to fight
  
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• Iran in 'Digital Blackout' as Tehran Throttles Mobile Internet Access

  08-01-2026 21:44 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Internet access available through mobile devices in Iran appears to be limited, according to several social media accounts that routinely track such developments. Cloudflare Radar, which monitors internet traffic on behalf of the internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare, said on Thursday that IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), a standard widely used for mobile infrastructure, was affected.
  "IPv6 address space in Iran dropped by 98.5 per cent, concurrent with
  
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• 'The Downside To Using AI for All Those Boring Tasks at Work'

  08-01-2026 21:01 via slashdot.org
  The promise of AI-powered workplace tools that sort emails, take meeting notes, and file expense reports is finally delivering meaningful productivity gains -- one software startup reported a 20% boost around mid-2025 -- but companies are discovering an unexpected tradeoff: employees are burning out from the relentless pace of high-level cognitive work.
  Roger Kirkness, CEO of 14-person software startup Convictional, noticed that after AI took the scut work off his team's plates, their days becam
  
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• TV Makers Are Taking AI Too Far

  08-01-2026 20:24 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  TV manufacturers at CES 2026 in Las Vegas this week unveiled a wave of AI features that frequently consume significant screen space and take considerable time to deliver results -- all while global TV shipments declined 0.6% year over year in Q3, according to Omdia. Google demonstrated Veo generating video from a photo on a television, a process that took about two minutes to produce eight seconds of footage, The Verge writes in a column. Samsung presented a future where viewers ask their sets f
  
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• Former Google CEO Plans To Singlehandedly Fund a Hubble Telescope Replacement

  08-01-2026 19:45 via science.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Prior to World War II the vast majority of telescopes built around the world were funded by wealthy people with an interest in the heavens above.
  However, after the war, two significant developments in the mid-20th century caused the burden of funding large astronomical instruments to largely shift to the government and academic institutions. First, as mirrors became larger and larger to see deeper into the universe, their costs grew exponentially. And then,
  
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• Tailwind CSS Lets Go 75% Of Engineers After 40% Traffic Drop From Google

  08-01-2026 19:05 via it.slashdot.org
  Adam Wathan, the creator of the popular CSS framework Tailwind CSS, has let go of 75% of his engineering team -- reducing it from four people to one -- because AI-generated search answers have decimated traffic to the project's documentation pages.
  Traffic to Tailwind's documentation has fallen roughly 40% since early 2023 despite the framework being more popular than ever, Wathan wrote in a post. The documentation is the primary channel through which developers discover Tailwind's commercial pr
  
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• Samsung Hit with Restraining Order Over Smart TV Surveillance Tech in Texas

  08-01-2026 18:30 via yro.slashdot.org
  Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has secured a temporary restraining order against Samsung, blocking the company from continuing to collect data through its smart TVs' Automated Content Recognition technology.
  The ACR system captured screenshots of what users were watching every 500 milliseconds, according to the state's lawsuit, and did so without consumer knowledge or consent. The District Court found good cause to believe Samsung's actions violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Th
  
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• Germany's Dying Forests Are Losing Their Ability To Absorb CO2

  08-01-2026 17:45 via news.slashdot.org
  Germany's Harz mountains, once known for their verdant spruce forests, have become a graveyard of skeletal trunks after a bark beetle outbreak ravaged the region starting in 2018 -- an infestation made possible by successive droughts and heatwaves that fatally weakened the trees. Between 2018 and 2021, Germany lost half a million hectares of forest, nearly 5% of the country's total.
  Since 2010, EU land carbon absorption has declined by a third, and Germany is now almost certain to miss its carbo
  
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• China Hacked Email Systems of US Congressional Committee Staff

  08-01-2026 17:02 via news.slashdot.org
  China has hacked the emails used by congressional staff on powerful committees in the US House of Representatives, as part of a massive cyber espionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon. An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese intelligence accessed email systems used by some staffers [non-paywalled source] on the House China committee in addition to aides on the foreign affairs committee, intelligence committee and armed services committee, according to people familiar with the attack. The int
  
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• How Did TVs Get So Cheap?

  08-01-2026 16:25 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  A 50-inch TV that would have set you back $1,100 at Best Buy during Black Friday 2001 now costs less than $200, and the price per area-pixel -- a metric accounting for both screen size and resolution -- has dropped by more than 90% over the past 25 years. The story behind this decline is largely one of liquid crystal display technology maturing from a niche product to a mass-manufactured commodity.
  LCDs represented just 5% of the TV market in 2004; by 2018, they commanded more than 95%. The larg
  
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• Disney+ To Add Vertical Videos In Push To Boost Daily Engagement

  08-01-2026 15:44 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Disney+, which is looking to catch up with some streaming and digital rivals in terms of daily engagement, is adding vertical videos to the service. From a report: The arrival of the new format later this year was one of several advertising-oriented announcements the company made Wednesday at its Tech + Data Showcase at CES in Las Vegas. Other new offerings include a new "brand impact" metric and a new video generation tool that helps advertisers create high-quality connected-TV-ready commercial
  
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• LEGO Says Smart Brick Won't Replace Traditional Play After CES Backlash

  08-01-2026 15:05 via slashdot.org
  LEGO has responded to concerns that its newly announced Smart Brick technology represents a departure from the company's foundation in physical, non-digital play, a day after the official reveal at CES drew criticism from child development advocates. Federico Begher, SVP of Product, New Business, told IGN the sensor-packed bricks are "an addition, a complementary evolution" and emphasized that the company would "still very much nurture and innovate and keep doing our core experience."
  A BBC News
  
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• SteamOS Continues Its Slow Spread Across the PC Gaming Landscape

  08-01-2026 14:00 via games.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: SteamOS's slow march across the Windows-dominated PC gaming landscape is continuing to creep along. At CES this week, Lenovo announced it will launch a version of last year's high-priced, high-powered Legion Go 2 handheld with Valve's gaming-focused, Linux-based OS pre-installed starting in June. And there are some intriguing signs from Valve that SteamOS could come to non-AMD devices in the not-too-distant future as well. [...] Valve has al
  
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• Rubin Observatory Spots an Asteroid That Spins Fast Enough To Set a Record

  08-01-2026 11:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Astronomers using the Vera C. Rubin Observatory have discovered a record-setting asteroid, known as 2025 MN45, nearly half a mile wide and spinning once every 1.88 minutes -- the fastest known rotation for an object of its size. "This is now the fastest-spinning asteroid that we know of, larger than 500 meters," said Sarah Greenstreet, University of Washington astronomer and lead author of the study. The findings have been published in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters. GeekWire reports: 202
  
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• How Bright Headlights Escaped Regulation

  08-01-2026 08:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Autoblog: ... the problem is that the federal brightness standards for automotive headlights have not changed for decades. The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 108 hasn't had significant updates since 1986, with an addition allowing Adaptive Driving Beam (ADB) headlights coming only in 2022. The NHTSA last investigated (PDF) the issue of headlamp glare in 2003. The current standards include huge loopholes for auto manufacturers to em
  
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• Japan's Nuclear Watchdog Halts Plant's Reactor Safety Screening Over Falsified Data

  08-01-2026 04:30 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Japan's nuclear watchdog said Wednesday it is scrapping the safety screening for two reactors at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in central Japan, after its operator was found to have fabricated data about earthquake risks. It was a setback to Japan's attempts to accelerate nuclear reactor restarts. Less than a quarter of commercial nuclear reactors are operational in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns, but rising energ
  
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• AI Chip Frenzy To Wallop DRAM Prices With 70% Hike

  08-01-2026 02:25 via news.slashdot.org
  Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are projected to raise server memory prices by up to 70% in early 2026, according to Korea Economic Daily. "Combined with 50 percent increases in 2025, this could nearly double prices by mid-2026," reports the Register. From the report: The two Korean giants, alongside US-based Micron, dominate global memory production. All three are reallocating advanced manufacturing capacity to high-margin server DRAM and HBM chips for AI infrastructure, squeezing supply for P
  
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• Google and Character.AI Agree To Settle Lawsuits Over Teen Suicides

  08-01-2026 01:45 via yro.slashdot.org
  Google and Character.AI have agreed to settle multiple lawsuits from families alleging the chatbot encouraged self-harm and suicide among teens. "The settlements would mark the first resolutions in the wave of lawsuits against tech companies whose AI chatbots encouraged teens to hurt or kill themselves," notes Axios. From the report: Families allege that Character.AI's chatbot encouraged their children to cut their arms, suggested murdering their parents, wrote sexually explicit messages and did
  
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• OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Health, Encouraging Users To Connect Their Medical Records

  08-01-2026 01:02 via science.slashdot.org
  OpenAI has unveiled ChatGPT Health, a sandboxed health-focused mode that lets users connect medical records and wellness apps for more personalized guidance. The company makes sure to note that ChatGPT Health is "not intended for diagnosis or treatment." The Verge reports: The company is encouraging users to connect their personal medical records and wellness apps, such as Apple Health, Peloton, MyFitnessPal,Weight Watchers, and Function, "to get more personalized, grounded responses to their qu
  
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