ICT news

• Using Sound Waves To Make Espresso Could Cut Coffee-Brewing Energy Use By 75%

  20-06-2026 05:30 via developers.slashdot.org
  Researchers developed an ultrasonic espresso process that uses high-frequency sound waves instead of hot water to produce espresso-strength coffee at room temperature. And, not only did coffee drinkers find it comparable to traditional espresso, but the brewing process cut energy use by up to 75%. An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Conversation: We have developed what we call an ultrasonic espresso: a room-temperature brewing process that uses high-frequency sound waves to extract the
  
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• OpenAI Announces Benchmarks for AI Life Sciences Research. Its Best Model Failed 63.9% of the Test

  20-06-2026 23:34 via science.slashdot.org
  This week OpenAI announced a 750-task test to to measure "whether AI systems can support realistic life science research tasks, not just answer biology questions."
  But while OpenAI's top-performing GPT-Rosalind model led the rankings, Slashdot reader BrianFagioli notes that "it achieved a pass rate of just 36.1 percent, failing nearly two-thirds of benchmark tasks." Nerds.xyz points out that means "the best-performing model failed nearly two-thirds of the benchmark's tasks."
  The benchmark also r
  
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• Remembering When Alan Turing Developed a Portable Voice Encryption Device

  20-06-2026 22:34 via it.slashdot.org
  Long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat writes: Alan Turing, one of the more famous people who worked at Bletchley Park to decipher the German Enigma coding machine, was also working on a separate project. His private papers, known as the Bayley papers for his assistant Donald Bayley who held onto the papers until his death in 2020, reveal Turning had produced a working model of a portable voice encryption device. He even demonstrated it by using a Winston Churchill speech recording. "Weighing j
  
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• Tech Pundit Cringely Co-Founds Startup '2Brains Inc' to Solve LLM Hallucinations

  20-06-2026 21:34 via slashdot.org
  Long-time tech pundit Robert Cringely started his career at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab back in 1978. Last month 73-year-old Cringely explained why his site went on a two-year hiatus — and it's not just because of a heart attack and a stroke last July:
  Just like everyone else, I've been busy all this time on Artificial Intelligence, founding with two partners a company called 2Brains... The work we were doing together is unfinished, but it's not stopped. The patents are filed,
  
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• Waymo Recalls About 3,900 Robotaxis After Some Drove Into 'Freeway Construction Zones'

  20-06-2026 20:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  CNBC reports:Waymo is recalling almost 3,900 robotaxis in the U.S. to fix software issues after some cars drove into freeway construction zones, according to notices filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The voluntary recall, the Alphabet-owned company's second in just over a month, followed 13 known incidents where Waymo robotaxis drove into construction zones on freeways in Phoenix, or entered freeway lanes with active construction in the San Francisco area, the filing
  
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• Cellphone Alert System Breached in Brazil, Message Sent in Leetspeak

  20-06-2026 19:34 via mobile.slashdot.org
  CNN reports:
  An unauthorized alert bearing a mysterious message that was sent to cell phones in several states across Brazil on Saturday morning is suspected to be the work of hackers, the Brazilian government said. Devices lit up with the word "misantropi4," an alphanumeric spelling of the Portuguese word "misantropia," which in English translates to "misanthropy". The final letter "a" was substituted with a number '4' — a practice often used by hackers and termed "leetspeak.". The alert
  
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• SMPTE Opens Entire Standards Catalog for Free, Removing Century-Old Paywall

  20-06-2026 18:34 via news.slashdot.org
  The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers has published over 800 technical standards over the years (as a professional association for the media and entertainment industry).
  But this week SMPTE "announced that its complete Standards catalog, the technical backbone behind everything from SDI and timecode to IP-based broadcast workflows, is now freely available to anyone in the global media technology community," reports the filmmaking news site CineD, arguing it's "one of the more me
  
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• Microsoft Discovers Cryptocurrency Stealer That Spreads Through USB Drives and Uses Tor

  20-06-2026 17:34 via it.slashdot.org
  Ars Technica's senior security editor reports:Microsoft says it has detected new self-propagating malware that spreads through USB drives in search of cryptocurrency credentials, which it then sends to attacker-controlled servers.
  The company named the worm Crypto Clipper because it monitors the contents of device clipboards for patterns consistent with wallet addresses or seed phrases. When found, the malware also takes five screenshots over a 10-second period... "The execution of this clipper
  
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• FSF Patches Two-Year-Old Vulnerability Found by AI Researchers in GNU Savannah Repository

  20-06-2026 16:34 via news.slashdot.org
  The Free Software Foundation's GNU Savannah hosts thousands of free software projects — both GNU and non-GNU projects, including Drupal.
  But in early May, security researchers from Hacktron.AI reported vulnerabilities and demonstrated an exploit, according to a new statement Friday from the FSF:We have been working with these researchers since their initial report, and have also addressed additional security issues they submitted. All reported issues have been patched thanks to the hard wo
  
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• Student Loan Borrowers Will Get Interest Rate Cut If They Sign Up For Auto Pay

  20-06-2026 13:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Student loan borrowers who enroll in automatic payments will get a much bigger discount on interest starting July 1, the U.S. Department of Education says. Auto pay has long offered a modest discount off borrowers' interest rate -- .25 percentage points -- but after millions of borrowers opted out during the long COVID repayment pause, with some making no payments for years, the nation's student debt portfolio swelled to $1.7 trillion. On Thursday, t
  
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• Amazon Retaliated Against Workers Who Supported Regulating Data Centers, Complaint Says

  20-06-2026 09:00 via slashdot.org
  Three Amazon employees have filed a civil-rights complaint alleging the company retaliated against them for publicly supporting Seattle regulations on data centers. "The complaint was filed on the workers' behalf by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an independent group of corporate employees at Amazon that since 2018 has organized around climate issues," reports The New York Times. "It said the company started investigations and told the employees that they could face discipline, in one cas
  
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• Amazon Drops Sam Altman Movie After Announcing OpenAI Partnership

  20-06-2026 01:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Amazon MGM has dropped Luca Guadagnino's nearly completed Sam Altman biopic Artificial and is seeking another distributor for the film. The move comes months after Amazon expanded its multibillion-dollar partnership with OpenAI, fueling speculation about a potential conflict given the movie's reportedly unflattering portrayal of Altman. The Independent reports: Artificial would have marked the Oscar-nominated Call Me By Your Name director's third Amazon film, following the critically acclaimed Z
  
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• Norway Imposes Near Ban On AI In Elementary School

  20-06-2026 00:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  Norway will largely prohibit generative AI use for elementary kids ages 6 to 13 beginning with the new school year, while allowing limited, teacher-supervised use for older students. The government says the restrictions are intended to prevent children from skipping foundational reading, writing, and mathematics skills amid declining test scores. Reuters reports: Facing a broad decline in education test scores, the government in 2024 banned smartphones from schools and has given teachers back mo
  
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• Doom Composer Bobby Prince Has Died

  19-06-2026 23:00 via games.slashdot.org
  Video game composer and sound designer Bobby Prince has died at age 81 following an illness. Developer id software shared the news. Engadget reports: Prince was perhaps best known for his pioneering work on the Doom series. The Library of Congress inducted his soundtrack for the original game into the National Recording Registry just last month. "Despite the limitations of the 1993-era sound card drivers, Prince composed the perfect riff-shredding accompaniment for the game's demon-slaying journ
  
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• Hyundai Takes Full Control of Boston Dynamics As SoftBank Exits For $325 Million

  19-06-2026 22:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Hyundai Motor Group is acquiring SoftBank's remaining 9.65% stake in Boston Dynamics for $325 million, "closing out SoftBank's last piece of Boston Dynamics and turning the Waltham, Massachusetts robotics company into a wholly owned Hyundai business," reports Startup Fortune. From the report: The price is $325 million for the remaining stake, according to the deal terms, and it follows the put option SoftBank retained when Hyundai bought control of Boston Dynamics in 2021. You should read that a
  
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• Canada Missed Chances To Inspect OceanGate's Titan Before Fatal Implosion

  19-06-2026 21:00 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A report from Canada's Transportation Safety Board has highlighted regulatory failures that allowed OceanGate's unregistered, unflagged, and uncertified Titan submersible to operate out St. John's, Newfoundland, for years before it imploded on a tourist trip to the wreck of the Titanic in 2023. "When it came to the Titan, critical information existed across multiple federal government organizations, but no one was responsible for connecting the dot
  
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• New Unpatchable Exploit Targets Apple Devices With A12 and A13 Chips

  19-06-2026 20:00 via it.slashdot.org
  Researchers have disclosed a new unpatchable BootROM exploit affecting Apple devices with A12, A13, S4, and S5 chips. The attack requires physical USB access and DFU mode, but can let an attacker run code before iOS loads, bypass signature checks, and boot modified software. 9to5Mac reports the details: In a highly detailed technical post published today, the Paradigm Shift Team details usbliter8, a new exploit that "leverages both a hardware bug in the USB controller and a specific configuratio
  
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• EU To Soon Classify AWS and Azure As Gatekeepers Under DSA

  19-06-2026 19:00 via slashdot.org
  The European Commission is reportedly preparing to provisionally classify Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as "gatekeepers" under the Digital Markets Act, bringing cloud infrastructure under the law's stricter competition rules for the first time. The designation could require greater interoperability and data portability, making it easier for customers to switch providers, with a final decision expected by the end of 2026. Heise reports: This investigation began in November 2025, when th
  
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• The Korean Telecom Giant At the Center of Anthropic's Mythos Controversy

  19-06-2026 18:00 via slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: The Trump administration's move to impose export controls on Anthropic's most powerful AI technology followed a spat over the company granting South Korean telecom giant SK Telecom access to its Claude Mythos model, according to people familiar with the matter. US officials were concerned about what they alleged were SK Telecom's ties to China, those people said. Those concerns appear to have compounded when Amazon later flagged vulnerabilities to
  
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• Meta Lobbies Congress For Protection From Child-Harm Lawsuits

  19-06-2026 17:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: Meta has lobbied the U.S. Congress for legal immunity from child-harm claims tied to social media products such as Instagram, as it faces thousands of lawsuits from young users and their families, according to a source familiar with the matter and proposed legislative language reviewed by Reuters. If adopted by lawmakers and passed into law as part of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) under consideration in the U.S. Senate, such a pr
  
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• NASA Picks Eric Schmidt's Rocket Company For Mars Mission

  19-06-2026 13:00 via science.slashdot.org
  NASA has selected Relativity Space to build and launch Aeolus, a 2028 Mars orbiter that would provide daily global measurements of dust, winds, and atmospheric temperatures to support future robotic and human missions. TechCrunch reports: The structure of the contract is akin to the deals that NASA made with SpaceX to fly cargo to the International Space Station, or Firefly Aerospace to put a lander on the Moon. The government agency handles the science, while the private company provides low-co
  
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• Rolls-Royce Secures Deal To Build Small Nuclear Reactors For Sweden

  19-06-2026 09:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Rolls-Royce SMR has secured a multibillion-pound agreement to build three small modular reactors on Sweden's west coast, "marking a major step in the British engineering group's ambition to become a leading supplier of the technology in Europe," reports Euronews. From the report: Following a rigorous selection process that started in 2022, UK engineering giant Rolls-Royce's nuclear division, Rolls-Royce SMR, won the contract to build nuclear reactors for Sweden. As part of the deal, the group, s
  
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• Trump Admin Backs Off Plans To Kill Ocean Monitoring

  19-06-2026 05:30 via news.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: In May, the federal government announced without warning that it would take apart a network of ocean monitoring systems that it had spent over $350 million to build. No reason was given for the decision to shut down the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), but suspicion immediately focused on the network's role in tracking climate change. But the OOI also provides data that's useful for weather forecasting and fisheries management, leading
  
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• Adobe Adds Its AI Assistant To Premiere, Illustrator and InDesign

  19-06-2026 01:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Adobe is expanding its Firefly AI assistant into Premiere, Illustrator, InDesign, and Frame.io, where it can automate all sorts of tasks such as organizing clips, renaming assets, adding interview markers, rearranging layers, and finding missing fonts. It's available starting today as part of a public beta. TechCrunch reports: Adobe is slowly transforming Firefly to increasingly resemble Canva, at least when it comes to AI features, loading up the app with AI tools that can generate images, vide
  
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• California 'Billionaire Tax' Makes Ballot Despite Opposition From Tech Moguls

  19-06-2026 00:00 via news.slashdot.org
  California's proposed "billionaire tax" has gathered enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, setting up a major fight between labor unions and some of Silicon Valley's richest figures. From the report: The California Billionaire Tax Act, colloquially known as the billionaire tax, would levy a one-time 5% tax on any California resident worth more than $1bn. The proposal is backed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West as a means of funding Califo
  
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• Midjourney Pivots From AI Image Generation To Body Scanning Medical Spa

  18-06-2026 23:00 via science.slashdot.org
  Midjourney is expanding beyond AI image generation with plans for a medical-imaging business built around a water-based, full-body ultrasound scanner that uses hundreds of thousands of sensors and AI to reconstruct MRI-like images. "As you descend into the water, hundreds of thousands of tiny elements take turns, sending out waves, listening together, compressing and then streaming data to a massive cluster where thousands of computers split the task," Midjourney explained in the announcement. "
  
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• Bernie Sanders Unveils $7 Trillion Plan To Give Americans Control of AI Industry

  18-06-2026 22:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: As artificial intelligence companies reshape the economy and race toward trillion-dollar valuations, Sen. Bernie Sanders is proposing a sweeping transfer of wealth and power from the industry to the American public. The legislation, shown first to The Associated Press, would create a sovereign wealth fund overseen by an independent commission and financed through a one-time 50% tax on the stock of the largest AI companies. Sanders es
  
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• Apple Announces Major App Store Changes on iOS in Brazil

  18-06-2026 21:00 via apple.slashdot.org
  Apple is allowing iPhone developers in Brazil to distribute apps through authorized alternative marketplaces and use third-party payment systems following action by the country's competition regulator. "In other words, developers in Brazil will be able to circumvent the App Store and Apple's in-app purchase system, but there are still fees," reports MacRumors. Apple will collect commissions ranging from 5% on externally distributed apps to as much as 26% for some App Store transactions using its
  
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• Android 17 Drops For Pixel Phones and Watch

  18-06-2026 20:00 via mobile.slashdot.org
  Google has begun rolling out Android 17, the June Pixel Feature Drop, and Wear OS 7 simultaneously across supported Pixel phones and watches. Highlights include floating app bubbles, improved foldable multitasking and gaming, tighter location and contact permissions, stronger lost-device protections, new Pixel AI tools, and up to 10% better Pixel Watch battery life. PhoneArena reports: Pixel owners are the clear winners, since everything here reaches Pixel first and a lot of it goes back to the
  
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• Google Told Researcher 'Nice Catch!' Then Denied Bug Bounty For Flaw It Still Hasn't Fixed

  18-06-2026 19:00 via it.slashdot.org
  Security researcher Justin O'Leary says Google initially accepted his Config Connector privilege-escalation report as a high-priority, high-severity bug, then denied a bounty by declaring the behavior "working as intended." According to The Register, a Google rep initially praised O'Leary's report with a "Nice catch!" before the cloud giant reversed course, declaring that no vulnerability existed and therefore no fix or reward was warranted. "The bug report, however, is still marked high-priorit
  
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