ICT news

• When Linux Spooked Microsoft: Remembering 1998's Leaked 'Halloween Documents'

  05-11-2023 12:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  It happened a quarter of a century ago. The New York Times wrote that "An internal memorandum reflecting the views of some of Microsoft's top executives and software development managers reveals deep concern about the threat of free software and proposes a number of strategies for competing against free programs that have recently been gaining in popularity."The memo warns that the quality of free software can meet or exceed that of commercial programs and describes it as a potentially serious t
  
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• Mazda Finally Admits Its Infotainment System Is the Worst

  17-02-2026 16:27 via tech.slashdot.org
  Mazda, the automaker that for years defended its scroll-wheel infotainment system as a safer alternative to touchscreens, is abandoning the approach entirely in the 2026 CX-5 in favor of a 15.6-inch touchscreen and zero physical buttons.
  The current lineup -- the CX-50 Hybrid, CX-70 and CX-90 -- still relies on a console-mounted scroll wheel and dedicated action buttons to navigate a tablet-like screen perched atop the dashboard. Upper-trim CX-70 and CX-90 models do have 12.3-inch touchscreens,
  
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• 'Software Isn't Dead, But Its Cosy Business Model Might Be'

  17-02-2026 15:45 via tech.slashdot.org
  The software industry's decades-old habit of charging companies a flat fee for every employee who uses a product is running into a fundamental problem: AI agents don't sit in chairs, and they don't need licences.
  As autonomous agents take on tasks that human workers once handled, the per-seat pricing model that made SaaS revenue so predictable is giving way to consumption-based and hybrid alternatives. Snowflake and Databricks (valued at $134 billion) already charge based on usage. Salesforce in
  
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• Valve's Steam Deck OLED Will Be 'Intermittently' Out of Stock Because of the RAM Crisis

  17-02-2026 15:00 via it.slashdot.org
  Valve has updated the Steam Deck website to say that the Steam Deck OLED may be out of stock "intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages." From a report: The PC gaming handheld has been out of stock in the US and other parts of the world for a few days, and thanks to this update, we now know why. The update comes shortly after Valve delayed the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller from a planned shipping window of early 2026 because of the memory and storage c
  
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• Sony Tech Can Identify Original Music in AI-Generated Songs

  17-02-2026 13:30 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  Sony Group has developed a technology that can identify the underlying music used in tunes generated by AI, making it possible for songwriters to seek compensation from AI developers if their music was used. From a report: Sony Group's technology analyzes which musicians' songs were used in learning and generating music. It can quantify the contribution of each original work, such as "30% of the music used by the Beatles and 10% by Queen," for example.
  If the AI developer agrees to cooperate for
  
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• EU Parliament Blocks AI Features Over Cyber, Privacy Fears

  17-02-2026 10:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader shares a report: The European Parliament has disabled AI features on the work devices of lawmakers and their staff over cybersecurity and data protection concerns, according to an internal email seen by POLITICO. The chamber emailed its members on Monday to say it had disabled "built-in artificial intelligence features" on corporate tablets after its IT department assessed it couldn't guarantee the security of the tools' data.
  "Some of these features use cloud services to car
  
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• Secondhand Laptop Market Goes 'Mainstream' Amid Memory Crunch

  17-02-2026 07:01 via it.slashdot.org
  Sales of refurbished PCs are on the up amid shortages of key components, including memory chips, that are making brand new devices more expensive. From a report: Stats compiled by market watcher Context show sales of refurbished PCs via distribution climbed 7 percent in calendar Q4 across five of the biggest European markets -- Italy, the UK, Germany, Spain, and France.
  Affordability is the primary driver in the secondhand segment, the analyst says, with around 40 percent of sales driven by budg
  
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• The Music Industry Enters Its Less-Is-More Era

  17-02-2026 04:00 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  The music industry's long romance with an ever-expanding catalog of songs appears to be souring, as streaming platforms and rights holders confront a daily deluge that now includes 60,000 wholly AI-generated tracks uploaded to Deezer alone -- roughly 39% of the French service's daily intake, a statistic the company shared during Grammys week last month.
  Streaming services now host 253 million songs, according to Luminate's most recent annual report, after adding 51 million tracks over the course
  
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• Samsung Ad Confirms Rumors of a Useful S26 'Privacy Display'

  17-02-2026 01:01 via yro.slashdot.org
  Samsung has all but confirmed that its upcoming Galaxy S26 will feature a built-in privacy display, releasing an ad that demonstrates a "Zero-peeking privacy" toggle capable of blacking out on-screen content for anyone peering over the user's shoulder.
  The underlying technology is reportedly Samsung Display's Flex Magic Pixel OLED panel, first shown at MWC 2024, which adjusts viewing angles on a pixel-by-pixel basis -- and leaker Ice Universe has shared a video of the feature selectively hiding
  
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• Western Digital is Sold Out of Hard Drives for 2026

  16-02-2026 23:01 via hardware.slashdot.org
  Western Digital's entire hard drive manufacturing capacity for calendar year 2026 is now fully spoken for, CEO Irving Tan disclosed during the company's second-quarter earnings call, a stark sign of how aggressively hyperscalers are locking down storage supply to feed their AI infrastructure buildouts.
  The company has firm purchase orders from its top seven customers and has signed long-term agreements stretching into 2027 and 2028 that cover both exabyte volumes and pricing. Cloud revenue now a
  
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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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