Latest News

Last updated 10 Feb, 05:00 PM

BBC News

I will never walk away, says PM after facing pressure to quit - The prime minister sought to strike a defiant tone after a day of political jeopardy.

Six key questions about Keir Starmer's future - There is no doubting the peril the prime minister was in, but while Labour MPs have decided to stick with him, his future is far from certain.

UK braces for more rain as weather warnings in place - With more rain in the forecast, BBC Weather presenter Simon King looks at what's been causing the very wet year so far.

Hunt on for teen after two boys stabbed at school - Two boys, 12 and 13, are in hospital while "urgent inquiries" are ongoing to locate a teenage suspect.

Afghan asylum seeker guilty of raping girl, 12 - The 12-year-old suffered "extremely horrific sexual offences" in the Nuneaton attack, police say.

The Register

AFRINIC says it's back on track and will soon deliver the plan that proves it - As the governance policy designed to protect regional internet registries nears completion APRICOT 2026 After years of strife, the African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC) is weeks away from signing off on a budget and action plan, activity that one of the organization’s newly appointed executives believes demonstrates it is back on track.…

Trump to hyperscalers: your datacenters, your power bill - As communities push back on utility costs, White House tells Big Tech to fund their own AI expansion The Trump administration continues its AI push, working to defuse public opposition to datacenter energy and water consumption - while dangling a promise to exempt hyperscalers from chip tariffs to help them stock their facilities with GPUs and accelerators.…

Microsoft dials up the nagging in Windows, calls it security - More prompts when apps and agents roam around a user's system Microsoft is introducing a raft of Windows security features that users and administrators alike might assume are already part of the operating system.…

Oracle Java licensing worries are percolating through the userbase - Survey finds nine in ten customers concerned as pricing changes push many toward open source alternatives Concerns over changes to Oracle's Java licensing strategy are hitting more than nine out of ten users as businesses struggle to adapt to the regime, according to research.…

Singapore spent 11 months booting China-linked snoops out of telco networks - Operation Cyber Guardian involved 100-plus staff across government and industry Singapore spent almost a year flushing a suspected China-linked espionage crew out of its telecom networks in what officials describe as the country's largest cyber defense operation to date.…

New Scientist - Home

Old EV batteries could meet most of China's energy storage needs - Electric vehicle batteries are typically retired once they reach about 80 per cent of their original capacity, but they could be repurposed in electricity grids to balance out slumps in renewable generation

Why 1.5°C failed and setting a new limit would make things worse - Setting a limit for global warming didn't succeed in galvanising climate action quickly enough – now we should focus on making the annual average temperature rise clear for all to see, says Bill McGuire

How clinical research is still failing underrepresented communities - As a doctor working in genomic research, I know that we lack vital data for Black people and many other groups. Here's how we can change that, says Drews Adade

Specific cognitive training has 'astonishing' effect on dementia risk - A type of cognitive training that tests people's quick recall seems to reduce the risk of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease

Is this carved rock an ancient Roman board game? - The lines worn into an engraved limestone object from the Netherlands are consistent with the idea that it was a Roman game board, according to an AI analysis

Hacker News

Parse, Don't Validate (2019) - Comments

Simplifying Vulkan One Subsystem at a Time - Comments

Mathematicians disagree on the essential structure of the complex numbers - Comments

Clean-room implementation of Half-Life 2 on the Quake 1 engine - Comments

I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed - Comments

Slashdot

Apple and Google Agree To Change App Stores After 'Effective Duopoly' Claim - Apple and Google have agreed to a set of commitments to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority that will prevent them from giving preferential treatment to their own apps and require greater transparency around how third-party apps are approved for sale. The CMA announced the measures on Tuesday, seven months after it declared that the two companies held an "effective duopoly" over the UK's mobile app ecosystem. Both companies also committed to not using data gathered from third-party developers in ways the regulator deems unfair. The CMA granted both app stores "strategic market status" in October 2025, a designation that gave it the authority to demand changes. CMA head Sarah Cardell called the commitments "important first steps" and said the regulator would "closely monitor" implementation. Technology analyst Paolo Pescatore described the announcement as a "pragmatic first step" but noted some may see it as "addressing the low-hanging fruit." The UK's app economy is the largest in Europe by revenue and number of developers, generating an estimated 1.5% of the country's GDP. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Big Money in Today's Economy Is Going To Capital, Not Labor - The American economy's most valuable companies are now worth trillions of dollars more than their predecessors were a generation ago, yet they employ a fraction of the workers -- and a new analysis by the Wall Street Journal argues that this widening gap between capital and labor is the defining economic story of our time. Labor received 58% of gross domestic income in 1980; by the third quarter of 2025, that figure had fallen to 51.4%. Corporate profits' share rose from 7% to 11.7% over the same period. Nvidia, the most valuable US company in 2026, is nearly 20 times as valuable as IBM was in 1985 in inflation-adjusted terms and employs roughly a tenth as many people. Since the end of 2019, real average hourly wages have risen 3% while corporate profits have climbed 43%. Household stock wealth now equals almost 300% of annual disposable income, up from 200% in 2019. Yale economist Pascual Restrepo predicted that AI integration will shrink labor's share of revenue further, just as factory automation did for blue-collar workers in decades past. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NYC Private School Tuition Breaks $70,000 Milestone for Fall - The top private schools in New York City plan to charge more than $70,000 this year for tuition, an amount exceeding that of many elite colleges, as they pass on the costs of soaring expenses including teacher salaries. From a report: Spence School, Dalton School and Nightingale-Bamford School on Manhattan's Upper East Side are among at least seven schools where the fees now exceed that threshold, according to school disclosures and Bloomberg reporting Fees among 15 private schools across the city rose a median of 4.7%, outpacing inflation. Sending a kid to New York private school has always been expensive, but the cost now is so high that even those with well-above-average salaries are feeling squeezed. Prices have risen dramatically in the past decade, up from a median of $39,900 in 2014. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Software Poses 'All-Time' Risk To Speculative Credit, Deutsche Bank Warns - The software and technology sectors pose one of the all-time great concentration risks to the speculative-grade credit market, according to Deutsche Bank AG analysts. Bloomberg: They comprise $597 billion and $681 billion of the speculative-grade credit universe, or about 14% and 16% respectively, analysts led by Steve Caprio wrote in a Monday note. Speculative debt spans high-yield debt, leveraged loans and US private credit. That's "a meaningful chunk of debt outstanding that risks souring broader sentiment, if software defaults increase," the analysts wrote, with "a potential impact that would rival that of the Energy sector in 2016." Unlike in 2016, pressures would likely first emerge in private credit, business development companies and leveraged loans, with the high-yield market weakening later, the analysts added. The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence tools risks further weighing down multiples and revenues for software-as-a-service firms, while the US Federal Reserve's hawkish stance since 2022 has pressured cash flows, the analysts wrote. For instance, software payment-in-kind loan usage has risen to 11.3% in BDC portfolios, over 2.5 percentage points higher than the already elevated index average of 8.7%, according to Deutsche. PIK deals typically allow borrowers to pay interest in more debt rather than cash. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

2 To 3 Cups of Coffee a Day May Reduce Dementia Risk. But Not if It's Decaf. - If you think your daily doses of espresso or Earl Grey sharpen your mind, you just might be right, new science suggests. The New York Times: A large new study provides evidence of cognitive benefits from coffee and tea -- if it's caffeinated and consumed in moderation: two to three cups of coffee or one to two cups of tea daily. People who drank that amount for decades had lower chances of developing dementia than people who drank little or no caffeine, the researchers reported. They followed 131,821 participants for up to 43 years. "This is a very large, rigorous study conducted long term among men and women that shows that drinking two or three cups of coffee per day is associated with reduced risk of dementia," said Aladdin Shadyab, an associate professor of public health and medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who wasn't involved in the study. The findings, published Monday in JAMA, don't prove caffeine causes these beneficial effects, and it's possible other attributes protected caffeine drinkers' brain health. But independent experts said the study adjusted for many other factors, including health conditions, medication, diet, education, socioeconomic status, family history of dementia, body mass index, smoking and mental illness. Read more of this story at Slashdot.