ICT news

• Video Game Console Makers Confront Performance Ceiling

  26-11-2024 17:02 via games.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The human eye can't really tell the difference between 4K and 8K resolution. Video game console manufacturers, who have built their businesses selling increasingly powerful machines every few years, are grappling with a future where performance improvements are becoming less dramatic.
  Sony Group launched its PlayStation 5 Pro console in mid-November. The $700 upgraded version of Sony's 2020 gaming machine uses AI to improve games' frame rate while maintaining
  
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• Anthropic's CEO Says AI and Software Engineers Are in 'Centaur Phase' - But It Won't Last Long

  16-02-2026 22:00 via developers.slashdot.org
  Human software engineers and AI are currently in a "centaur phase" -- a reference to the mythical half-human, half-horse creature, where the combination outperforms either working alone -- but the window may be "very brief," Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said on a podcast. He drew on chess as precedent: 15 to 20 years ago, a human checking AI's moves could beat a standalone AI or human, but machines have since surpassed that arrangement entirely.
  Amodei said the same transition would play out in so
  
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• India's Toxic Air Crisis Is Reaching a Breaking Point

  16-02-2026 21:00 via news.slashdot.org
  New Delhi's air quality index averaged 349 in December and 307 in January -- levels the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies as hazardous -- and the months-long smog season that forces more than 30 million residents to endure respiratory illness has this year sparked something new: public protest. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered at India Gate on November 9 to demand government action; police detained more than a dozen people, and a follow-up protest later that month turned violent.
  
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• Instagram Boss Says 16 Hours of Daily Use Is Not Addiction

  16-02-2026 20:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  Instagram head Adam Mosseri told a Los Angeles courtroom last week that a teenager's 16-hour single-day session on the platform was "problematic use" but not an addiction, a distinction he drew repeatedly during testimony in a landmark trial over social media's harm to minors.
  Mosseri, who has led Instagram for eight years, is the first high-profile tech executive to take the stand. He agreed the platform should do everything in its power to protect young users but said how much use was too much
  
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• KPMG Partner Fined Over Using AI To Pass AI Test

  16-02-2026 19:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  A partner at KPMG Australia has been fined $7,000 by the Big Four firm after using AI tools to cheat on an internal training course about using AI. From a report: The unnamed partner was forced to redo the test after uploading training materials into an AI platform to help answer questions on the use of the fast-evolving technology.
  More than two dozen staff have been caught over this financial year using AI tools for internal exams, according to KPMG. The incident is the latest example of a pro
  
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• Ireland Launches World's First Permanent Basic Income Scheme For Artists, Paying $385 a Week

  16-02-2026 18:00 via slashdot.org
  Ireland has announced what it says is the world's first permanent basic income program for artists, a scheme that will pay 2,000 selected artists $385 per week for three years, funded by an $21.66 million allocation from Budget 2026. The program follows a 2022 pilot -- the Irish government's first large-scale randomized control trial -- that found participants had greater professional autonomy, less anxiety, and higher life satisfaction.
  An external cost-benefit analysis of the pilot calculated
  
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• New EU Rules To Stop the Destruction of Unsold Clothes and Shoes

  16-02-2026 17:06 via news.slashdot.org
  The European Commission has adopted new measures under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) to prevent the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear. From a report: The rules will help cut waste, reduce environmental damage and create a level playing field for companies embracing sustainable business models, allowing them to reap the benefits of a more circular economy. Every year in Europe, an estimated 4-9% of unsold textiles are destroyed before eve
  
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• Pentagon Threatens Anthropic Punishment

  16-02-2026 16:01 via tech.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is "close" to cutting business ties with Anthropic and designating the AI company a "supply chain risk" -- meaning anyone who wants to do business with the U.S. military has to cut ties with the company, a senior Pentagon official told Axios.
  The senior official said: "It will be an enormous pain in the ass to disentangle, and we are going to make sure they pay a price for forcing our hand like this."
  That kind of penalty is usu
  
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• Sony May Push Next PlayStation To 2028 or 2029 as AI-fueled Memory Chip Shortage Upends Plans

  16-02-2026 15:06 via games.slashdot.org
  Sony is considering delaying the debut of its next PlayStation console to 2028 or even 2029 as a global shortage of memory chips -- driven by the AI industry's rapidly growing appetite for the same DRAM that goes into gaming hardware, smartphones, and laptops -- squeezes supply and sends prices surging, Bloomberg News reported Monday.
  A delay of that magnitude would upend Sony's carefully orchestrated strategy to sustain user engagement between hardware generations. The shortage traces back to S
  
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• Where's The Evidence That AI Increases Productivity?

  16-02-2026 13:34 via it.slashdot.org
  IT productivity researcher Erik Brynjolfsson writes in the Financial Times that he's finally found evidence AI is impacting America's economy. This week America's Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a 403,000 drop in 2025's payroll growth — while real GDP "remained robust, including a 3.7% growth rate in the fourth quarter."
  This decoupling — maintaining high output with significantly lower labour input — is the hallmark of productivity growth. My own updated analysis suggests a
  
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• 'I Tried Running Linux On an Apple Silicon Mac and Regretted It'

  16-02-2026 09:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  Installing Linux on a MacBook Air "turned out to be a very underwhelming experience," according to the tech news site MakeUseOf:
  The thing about Apple silicon Macs is that it's not as simple as downloading an AArch64 ISO of your favorite distro and installing it. Yes, the M-series chips are ARM-based, but that doesn't automatically make the whole system compatible in the same way most traditional x86 PCs are. Pretty much everything in modern MacBooks is custom. The boot process isn't standard UE
  
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• Will Tech Giants Just Use AI Interactions to Create More Effective Ads?

  16-02-2026 06:34 via slashdot.org
  Google never asked its users before adding AI Overviews to its search results and AI-generated email summaries to Gmail, notes the New York Times. And Meta didn't ask before making "Meta AI" an unremovable part of its tool in Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.
  "The insistence on AI everywhere — with little or no option to turn it off — raises an important question about what's in it for the internet companies..."
  Behind the scenes, the companies are laying the groundwork for a digita
  
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• Ars Technica's AI Reporter Apologizes For Mistakenly Publishing Fake AI-Generated Quotes

  16-02-2026 02:41 via news.slashdot.org
  Last week Scott Shambaugh learned an AI agent published a "hit piece" about him after he'd rejected the AI agent's pull request. (And that incident was covered by Ars Technica's senior AI reporter.)
  But then Shambaugh realized their article attributed quotes to him he hadn't said — that were presumably AI-generated.Sunday Ars Technica's founder/editor-in-chief apologized, admitting their article had indeed contained "fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool" that were then "attributed
  
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• Rivian's Stock Spikes 27% After Reporting $144 Million Profit in 2025

  16-02-2026 00:35 via tech.slashdot.org
  Rivian's stock skyrocketed 27% Friday after the electric car maker "shocked the market with strong earnings results," reports the Los Angeles Times, "proving itself an outlier in the EV market, which has been struggling with the end of government subsidies and cooling consumer excitement."
  They add that Rivian's strong earnings results suggest that "after years of struggling with losses, it may have at last found a path to profitability."
  On Thursday, Rivian reported gross profits for 2025 of $1
  
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• India's New Social Media Rules: Remove Unlawful Content in Three Hours, Detect Illegal AI Content Automatically

  15-02-2026 23:35 via tech.slashdot.org
  Bloomberg reports:India tightened rules governing social media content and platforms, particularly targeting artificially generated and manipulated material, in a bid to crack down on the rapid spread of misinformation and deepfakes. The government on Tuesday (Feb 10) notified new rules under an existing law requiring social media firms to comply with takedown requests from Indian authorities within three hours and prominently label AI-generated content. The rules also require platforms to put i
  
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• Sam Bankman-Fried Requests New Trial in FTX Crypto Fraud Case

  15-02-2026 22:35 via yro.slashdot.org
  While serving his 25-year prison sentence, "convicted former cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried on Tuesday requested a new federal trial," reports Courthouse News, "based on what he says is newly discovered evidence concerning his company's solvency and its ability to repay all FTX customers for what prosecutors portrayed as the looting of $8 billion of his customers' money..."Bankman-Fried says evidence disclosed since his trial disproves prosecutors' case about Bankman-Fried's hedge fund r
  
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• 'Babylon 5' Episodes Start Appearing (Free) on YouTube

  15-02-2026 20:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Cord Cutters News reports:
  In a move that has delighted fans of classic science fiction, Warner Bros. Discovery has begun uploading full episodes of the iconic series Babylon 5 to YouTube, providing free access to the show just as it departs from the ad-supported streaming platform Tubi... Viewers noticed notifications on Tubi indicating that all five seasons would no longer be available after February 10, 2026, effectively removing one of the most accessible free streaming options for the space
  
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• DNA Mutations Discovered In the Children of Chernobyl Workers

  15-02-2026 19:34 via science.slashdot.org
  Researchers performed genome sequencing scans on 130 people whose fathers were Chernobyl cleanup workers. Comparing the scans to control groups, they found evidence for the first time for "a transgenerational effect" from the father's prolonged exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation.
  ScienceAlert reports:Rather than picking out new DNA mutations in the next generation, they looked for what are known as clustered de novo mutations (cDNMs): two or more mutations in close proximity, found in the c
  
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• Oldest Active Linux Distro Slackware Finally Releases Version 15.0

  15-02-2026 18:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  Created in 1993, Slackware is considered the oldest Linux distro that's still actively maintained. And more than three decades later... there's a new release! (And there's also a Slackware Live Edition that can run from a DVD or USB stick...)
  .
  Slackware's latest version was released way back in 2016, notes the blog It's FOSS:
  The major highlight of Slackware 15 is the addition of the latest Linux Kernel 5.15 LTS. This is a big jump from Linux Kernel 5.10 LTS that we noticed in the beta release.
  
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• Fake Job Recruiters Hid Malware In Developer Coding Challenges

  15-02-2026 17:34 via it.slashdot.org
  "A new variation of the fake recruiter campaign from North Korean threat actors is targeting JavaScript and Python developers with cryptocurrency-related tasks," reports the Register.
  Researchers at software supply-chain security company ReversingLabs say that the threat actor creates fake companies in the blockchain and crypto-trading sectors and publishes job offerings on various platforms, like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Reddit. Developers applying for the job are required to show their skills b
  
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• Analysis of JWST Data Finds - Old Galaxies in a Young Universe?

  15-02-2026 16:34 via science.slashdot.org
  Two astrophysicists at Spain's Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias analyzed data from the James Webb Space Telescope — the most powerful telescope available — on 31 galaxies with an average redshift of 7.3 (when the universe was 700 million years old, according to the standard model). "We found that they are on average ~600 million years old old, according to the comparison with theoretical models based on previous knowledge of nearby galaxies..."
  "If this result is correct,
  
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• Vim 9.2 Released

  15-02-2026 13:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  "More than two years after the last major 9.1 release, the Vim project has announced Vim 9.2," reports the blog Linuxiac:A big part of this update focuses on improving Vim9 Script as Vim 9.2 adds support for enums, generic functions, and tuple types.
  On top of that, you can now use built-in functions as methods, and class handling includes features like protected constructors with _new(). The :defcompile command has also been improved to fully compile methods, which boosts performance and consis
  
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• Apple Patches Decade-Old IOS Zero-Day, Possibly Exploited By Commercial Spyware

  15-02-2026 09:34 via apple.slashdot.org
  This week Apple patched iOS and macOS against what it called "an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals."
  Security Week reports that the bugs "could be exploited for information exposure, denial-of-service (DoS), arbitrary file write, privilege escalation, network traffic interception, sandbox escape, and code execution."
  Tracked as CVE-2026-20700, the zero-day flaw is described as a memory corruption issue that could be exploited for arbitrary code execution... The
  
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• Additional Benefits For Brain, Heart, and Lungs Found for Drugs Like Viagra and Cialis

  15-02-2026 05:34 via science.slashdot.org
  "Research published in the World Journal of Men's Health found evidence that drugs such as Viagra and Cialis may also help with heart disease, stroke risk and diabetes," reports the Telegraph, "as well as enlarged prostate and urinary problems."
  Researchers found evidence that the same mechanism may benefit other organs, including the heart, brain, lungs and urinary system. The paper reviewed a wide range of published studies [and] identified links between PDE5 inhibitor use and improvements in
  
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• Your Friends Could Be Sharing Your Phone Number with ChatGPT

  15-02-2026 03:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  "ChatGPT is getting more social," reports PC Magazine, "with a new feature that allows you to sync your contacts to see if any of your friends are using the chatbot or any other OpenAI product..."
  It's "completely optional," [OpenAI] says. However, even if you don't opt in, anyone with your number who syncs their contacts are giving OpenAI your digits. "OpenAI may process your phone number if someone you know has your phone number saved in their device's address book and chooses to upload their
  
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• Small Crowd Pays to Watch a Boxing Match Between 80-Pound Chinese Robots

  15-02-2026 00:52 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Recently a small crowd paid to watch robots boxing, reports Rest of World. (Almost 3,000 people have now watched the match's 83-minute webcast.)
  The match was organized by Rek, a San Francisco-based company, and drew hundreds of spectators who had paid about $60-$80 for a ticket to watch modified G1 robots go at each other. Made by Unitree, the dominant Chinese robot maker, they weighed in at around 80 pounds and stood 4.5 feet tall, with human-like hands and dozens of joint motors for flexibili
  
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• US Government Will Stop Pollution-Reduction Credits for Cars With 'Start-Stop' Systems

  14-02-2026 23:52 via tech.slashdot.org
  Starting in 2009, the U.S. government have given car manufacturers towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions if they included "start-stop" systems in cars with internal combustion engines. (These systems automatically shut off idling engines to reduce pollution and fuel consumption.)But this week the new head of America's Environmental Protection Agency eliminated the credits, reports Car and Driver:
  [America's] Environmental Protection Agency previously supported the system's effectiveness, not
  
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• Dates with AI Companions Plagued by Lag, Miscommunications - and General Creepiness

  14-02-2026 22:52 via slashdot.org
  To celebrate Valentine's Day, EVA AI created a temporary "pop-up" restaurant at a wine bar in Manhattan's "Hell's Kitchen" district where patrons can date AI personas.
  The Verge notes that looking around the restaurant, "Of the 30-some-odd people in attendance, only two or three are organic users. The rest are EVA AI reps, influencers, and reporters hoping to make some capital-C Content..."But their reporter actually tried a date with "John Yoon", an AI companion pretending to be a psychology pr
  
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• Social Networks Agree to Be Rated On Their Teen Safety Efforts

  14-02-2026 21:52 via tech.slashdot.org
  Meta, TikTok, Snap and other social neteworks agreed this week to be rated on their teen safety efforts, reports the Los Angeles Times, "amid rising concern about whether the world's largest social media platforms are doing enough to protect the mental health of young people."The Mental Health Coalition, a collective of organizations focused on destigmatizing mental health issues, said Tuesday that it is launching standards and a new rating system for online platforms. For the Safe Online Standa
  
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• ByteDance's Seedance 2 Criticized Over AI-Generated Video of Tom Cruise Fighting Brad Pitt

  14-02-2026 20:34 via slashdot.org
  1.5 million people have now viewed a slick 15-second video imagining Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt that was generated by ByteDance's new AI video generation tool Seedance 2.0.But while ByteDance gushes their tool "delivers cinematic output aligned with industry standards," the cinema industry isn't happy, reports the Los Angeles Times reports:Charles Rivkin, chief executive of the Motion Picture Assn., wrote in a statement that the company "should immediately cease its infringing activity."
  "In
  
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