ICT news

• US Supreme Court Rules Geofence Warrants Require Constitutional Privacy Protections

  30-06-2026 17:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 (PDF) in Chatrie v United States (No. 25-112) that geofence warrants sweeping up smartphone location data constitute searches under the Fourth Amendment. The Court found that individuals have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in such data, even when the tracking covers only a brief period or records movements in public. "An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone's location, and police intrude on that constitutionall
  
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• Google Pulls the Plug On Tenor API, Killing GIF Pickers Around the Web

  01-07-2026 00:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Google has shut down the Tenor API, breaking GIF pickers in services that still relied on it and forcing platforms such as X to migrate elsewhere. 9to5Google notes that the library itself remains available at Tenor.com and "integrations within Google products are also still active, including Gboard, Google Messages, and more." From the report: The Tenor API has been rejecting new API sign-ups in January of this year, but existing integrations remained in place. This week, though, they're shuttin
  
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• California Bill To Preserve Online Games Fails Committee Vote

  30-06-2026 23:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  California's Protect Our Games Act, which would require publishers to warn players before shutting down paid online games and offer refunds or continued access, failed to advance after a state Senate committee vote. Four state senators voted in favor, three voted against, and four abstained. Engadget reports: The committee unanimously voted in favor of granting the bill reconsideration, meaning it could come back before this group of state senators. Assemblymember Chris Ward introduced the bill
  
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• Apple iPhone 18 Details Leaked In Tata Data Breach

  30-06-2026 22:00 via it.slashdot.org
  "Another breach at Tata has leaked details about Apple's iPhone 18, along with documents belonging to several other Tata clients," writes Longtime Slashdot reader Ritz_Just_Ritz. "It's becoming a recurring theme for the company." Reuters reports: Reuters has previously reported the Tata Electronics leak of more than 200,000 files on the dark web by World Leaks had files with purported component design papers of older iPhones and some parts of Tesla -- both Tata clients. They also included docume
  
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• Claude Science is Here, Antibiotics Designed by Text Prompt Among Applications

  30-06-2026 21:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Anthropic has launched Claude Science, an AI workbench that connects more than 60 scientific databases and tools through a single interface. Through the platform, Basecamp Research is making its EDEN models available for tasks such as designing antibiotic peptides and predicting vaccine targets from simple text prompts, though the results still require laboratory testing before clinical use. Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News reports: In a Claude Science demo, Oliver Vince, PhD, co-found
  
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• Microsoft Previews Linux Containers That Run In Windows

  30-06-2026 20:00 via linux.slashdot.org
  Microsoft has released a public preview of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) containers, adding a built-in command-line tool and API for running Linux containers directly inside Windows applications without third-party software. The update also introduces faster file access, improved networking and memory management, plus integration with Defender, Intune, and VS Code. The Register reports: WSL has always been a handy way to run Linux workloads from Windows, and is particularly convenient for Li
  
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• County With 37 Data Centers Asks Schools To 'Conserve Electricity'

  30-06-2026 19:02 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: On June 26, the County Manager of Henrico County, Virginia, John Vithoulkas, sent an email to thousands of county employees asking them to help the local government conserve electricity. "Beginning July 1st, the rate we pay for electricity used in all Henrico County government and school facilities will increase dramatically -- by 25%, increasing costs by an estimated $5 million next fiscal year. We anticipate more rate increases for electricit
  
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• South Korea To Spend $1 Trillion On More Memory Chip Production, Humanoid Robots

  30-06-2026 18:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: South Korea's government and top tech companies are committing $1 trillion to several flagship megaprojects that could bolster global memory chip supply, build new AI data centers and spur commercial deployment of humanoid robots by 2028. [...] "We must secure the core elements of AI faster than any other country," said South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in a televised speech on June 29, as reported by BBC News and other media outlets. "Se
  
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• Remembering How Microsoft's Fake Windows Error Ended In a $280 Million Secret Settlement

  30-06-2026 12:34 via slashdot.org
  Slashdot reader joshuark summarizes this walk down memory lane from the tech site MakeUseOf:
  Facing real competition from Digital Research's DR DOS, Microsoft secretly embedded a sabotaging mechanism known as "AARD code" into beta versions of Windows 3.1 to prevent it from running on Digital Research's competing DR DOS operating system.This code triggered fake, alarming error messages to convince developers that DR DOS was unstable... Although Microsoft disabled the feature in the final retail r
  
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• Ford Rehires 'Gray Beard' Engineers After AI Falls Short

  30-06-2026 07:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  Ford executives said they've hired 350 veteran engineers — some of them former employees — after AI and automated systems failed to deliver the desired quality, reports TechCrunch:Bloomberg reports the company's chief operating officer Kumar Galhotra told journalists that Ford had been "relying more and more on automated quality systems" with disappointing results. So the company "brought back technical specialists," and those specialists "hunt for failure points before a part ever r
  
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• South Korea Plans To Train Entire Military As 'Drone Warriors'

  30-06-2026 02:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  "South Korea plans to train every single member of its nearly half-million-strong military to operate drones as easily as they handle personal firearms," reports Ars Technica:
  The goal is to make drones a "universal combat tool" for all troops by training them to use drones like a "second personal weapon," said Ahn Gyu-back, South Korea's Minister of National Defense, in a June 26 briefing reported by Reuters and other media outlets. The announcement coincides with broader plans to equip individ
  
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• Ex-Governors, Big Tech Launch Coalition To Help Workers 'Navigate the AI Economy'

  29-06-2026 21:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  "Amid growing public anger over A.I. and a debate over how to regulate it, a group of employers, state governors and foundations has raised $500 million to try to answer some of those questions themselves," reports the New York Times."Just how many jobs will AI upend?" asks the Wall Street Journal, reporting that the new coalition says it's time to ready the U.S. workforce for a "major" disruption — no matter how large it turns out to be. The coalition "has so far raised more than $500 mil
  
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• IBM Says It Can Fit Nearly 100 Billion Transistors On a Chip

  29-06-2026 16:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  IBM has unveiled "what it says is the world's first sub-1-nanometer chip technology," reports ZDNet, "designed to pack nearly 100 billion transistors on a fingernail-size die, roughly doubling the density of IBM's earlier 2-nm test chip, first shown in 2021... Today, the smallest, most powerful chips top out at about 80 billion transistors."
  At the heart of the announcement is NanoStack. This is a three-dimensional, nanosheet-based transistor design that scales vertically, or along the z-axis, b
  
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• Scientists Think Neptune and Uranus May Not Be the Ice Giants We Imagined

  29-06-2026 11:34 via science.slashdot.org
  The planets Neptune and Uranus may be better described as "magma-ocean giants" rather than "ice giants," according to a team of researchers from the University of California. Gizmodo reports:While the Voyager flyby confirmed the planets' classification as ice giants... [a]s the least explored planets in the solar system, the two planets have never been thoroughly investigated. Therefore, scientists aren't sure where the planets originally formed in the early solar system or the reason for their
  
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• Trump-Shuttered Climate Change Site Now Back Online In Nonprofit Hands

  29-06-2026 06:34 via news.slashdot.org
  Donald Trump shuttered the web site Climate.gov in 2025, cutting off public access to climate information from America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).But "former members of the site's team have brought much of it back at a new domain," reports The Register:"Trusted climate information should not disappear when politics change," Climate.us managing director Rebecca Lindsey said of the new platform in a press release. Lindsey, who previously served as the Climate.gov prog
  
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• Microsoft Slammed for Building Copyright-Infringing Supercomputer for OpenAI in New Court Filing

  29-06-2026 01:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  The New York Times alleges Microsoft actively encouraged OpenAI to steal its copyrighted work, reports Ars Technica, citing a new (and heavily redacted) court filing Thursday:NYT's motion comes after the [U.S.] Supreme Court sided with Cox Communications in a case where Sony tried and failed to claim that Cox was contributing to music piracy as an Internet service provider, which set a new standard for contributory infringement. Moving forward, plaintiffs will have to prove that parties intentio
  
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• Spain-Backed Fund Joins FOSSA's Sovereign Satellite Communications Push

  29-06-2026 00:05 via science.slashdot.org
  Spanish startup FOSSA Systems "has raised about $10.5 million to expand its connectivity constellation," reports Space News, noting some funding is backed by Spain's government:The support from the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT) comes a year after the fund injected 14 million euros into Spain's Sateliot , which is also developing a satellite connectivity network with security and defense applications. Spanish private investment firm Kibo Ventures led FOSSA's funding roun
  
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• China's AI Matches Anthropic in Cybersecurity, Causing Worry Over US Restrictions

  28-06-2026 23:04 via slashdot.org
  Chinese AI systems "have matched the performance of Anthropic's powerful model Mythos in some cybersecurity scenarios," reports the Wall Street Journal.They call it "a development poised to reset the global tech race and pressure the White House in its overhaul of U.S. AI policy."
  Security researchers said that a new AI model, released this month by China's Zhipu AI, also known as Z.ai, can match the latest U.S. models when it comes to finding security bugs, although it still lags behind Anthrop
  
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• Are Checks Sent Through the Mail Vulnerable to Theft?

  28-06-2026 21:34 via news.slashdot.org
  The New York Times tells the story of a 63-year-old retiree who wrote a check for several thousand dollaras to pay her taxes. But she discovered much later that her taxes were never paid because that check had been intercepted and then altered to be payable to someone else:
  In some cases, thieves may pilfer one or more checks from local mailboxes. Adam Rust, director of financial services for the Consumer Federation of America, said thieves sometimes "fish" for checks at free-standing drop boxes
  
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• US Agency Cancels Contract For Warrantless Tracking of Mobile Devices

  28-06-2026 19:34 via news.slashdot.org
  America's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has "canceled its contract for a surveillance tool that enables warrantless tracking of mobile devices," reports the Associated Press.
  They note the move comes "after lawmakers, a prosecutor and a judge raised concerns about the legality of the tool in criminal investigations."ATF, the federal agency responsible for enforcing the nation's gun laws, told The Associated Press that it discontinued what it called a "pilot" program using a
  
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• Students Around the World are Using AI-Powered Smart Glasses to Cheat on Tests

  28-06-2026 18:34 via news.slashdot.org
  Students are using AI-powered smart glasses to cheat on tests, reports CNN. "And in East Asia's test-obsessed societies, where a single exam could impact the trajectory of a student's future career and social status, educators are scrambling to get ahead of the problem."
  Already, countries are stepping up inspections for test-takers. For China's grueling annual college entrance exam earlier this month — which more than 10 million hopefuls take each year — authorities required screeni
  
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• 'Supergirl' Movie Criticized for Script, Poor Visual Effects

  28-06-2026 17:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  The Onion joked the new movie Supergirl is about a hero who must single-handedly save the world "after the catastrophic collapse of interest in the genre."Unfortunately, The Hollywood Reporter says the film's reviews "range from negative to tepid praise (averaging a 58 percent Rotten Tomatoes score)."
  Many point fingers at the film's script, with Variety's line — "a comic-book movie with the worst script I can remember" — going viral... Not to pile on, but there's another recurring g
  
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• Developer AI Token Costs Could Exceed Their Salaries in Two Years

  28-06-2026 13:34 via it.slashdot.org
  "Enterprises may soon be paying as much for their developers' AI token usage as they do for their salaries," writes InfoWorld:
  According to Gartner, these costs will meet, or even exceed, the typical software engineer's monthly salary within the next two years. This is not only because developers are increasingly adopting generative AI and agentic tools, it reflects a trend toward consumption-based licensing models as vendors balance infrastructure investments with profitability...Gartner senior
  
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• An Amazon Seller Says They Were Offered a Way to Bribe an Amazon Employee

  28-06-2026 09:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  Jack Nekhala had a business selling on Amazon — and in December he received an unusual offer, reports Bloomberg. A woman said she could bribe an Amazon employee "to help him retrieve $90,000 in funds that the e-commerce giant had frozen after suspending him over an alleged violation of review policy."
  Hoping to ingratiate himself with the company and restart his business, Nekhala offered to provide evidence, including recorded conversations and screen shots, that he said proved Amazon pers
  
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• IBM is Getting Ready to Scale Quantum Computing

  28-06-2026 06:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  IBM spent a decade "building, testing and improving" quantum computing, reports the Wall Street Journal.
  "This year, the company is laying the groundwork to turn that technology into a fully-fledged, scalable business from an expensive science project."IBM said last month it plans to form a new independent subsidiary called Anderon, a foundry to produce the silicon wafers needed to make quantum-computing processors. The venture is seeded by a $1 billion investment from the Trump administration a
  
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• Renewable Energy Just Hit 30% of America's Electricity Generation

  28-06-2026 03:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  America generated 10.06% more energy with renewables in the first four months of 2026 than it did in the same period the year before. That's according to new figures from America's Energy Information Administration, cited in this report from Electrek:The growth was led by utility-scale solar (+21.3%), hydropower (+15.7%), small-scale solar
  In April alone, wind and solar each produced more electricity than US coal plants, while the combination of solar and wind produced 57.0% more electricity tha
  
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• How a Seemingly Harmless Image Can Jailbreak Vision-Language AI Models

  28-06-2026 00:52 via slashdot.org
  Slashdot reader BrianFagioli writes: Florida International University researchers have developed a technique called JaiLIP (Jailbreaking with Loss-guided Image Perturbation) that uses subtle image modifications to bypass AI safety guardrails. Unlike traditional jailbreaks that rely on carefully crafted prompts, the attack works through images that appear normal to human viewers. The researchers tested the technique against BLIP-2, a multimodal AI model, and found that manipulated images signific
  
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• France's Heat This Week Was Worse Than a Dire Scenario Imagined For 2050

  27-06-2026 23:48 via news.slashdot.org
  There's a deadly, record-breaking heat wave spreading east across Europe, reports the Washington Post — and it's even worse than a dire earlier forecast:The forecast was recorded in 2014 as part of a campaign coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that invited about 60 presenters worldwide to imagine a weather report from the year 2050. In one clip, Ãvelyne Dhéliat from French television network TF1 presented a hypothetical scenario of high temperatures 36
  
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• Max Planck Slapped With Two Paper Retractions By Suspected Rogue Algorithm

  27-06-2026 22:43 via science.slashdot.org
  Max Planck won 1918's Nobel Prize for physics. Yet two of his papers were retracted — a move now being criticized by Yves Gingras, a historian of physics at the University of Quebec and Mahdi Khelfaoui, a fellow historian of science at UQ Trois-Rivières. Science reports:The papers, both quietly retracted in 2011, originally appeared in the early 1940s in Naturwissenschaften, a German journal now owned by publishing giant Springer Nature. After some sleuthing, Khelfaoui determined on
  
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• Scroll Burned in 79 AD Volcanic Eruption Finally Deciphered Using AI

  27-06-2026 21:34 via science.slashdot.org
  When Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., it buried hundreds of papyrus
  scrolls. They were rediscovered in the mid-1700s, remembers Smithsonian magazine, "the only
  surviving collection of its kind from the Greco-Roman
  world..."
  "But when scholars tried to unroll them, the carbonized manuscripts
  crumbled to dust."
  Every generation that followed faced the same dilemma: They could wait for
  technology to advance, abandoning hope of reading the ancient texts
  in their own lifetime. Or they could try to op
  
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