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Last updated 25 Apr, 07:22 AM

BBC News

Falklands veteran hopes King can persuade Trump to 'back down' - Simon Weston says reports the US is reviewing the UK's claim to the territory makes his sacrifice feel "irrelevant".

Katya Adler: Europe's Nato allies push back at reported US threat to Spain - On Friday morning, souring relations between Europe and the United States reared its Medusa-like head again, writes the BBC's Europe editor.

I'm A Celebrity 'legend' crowned in heated live final - Adam Thomas, Craig Charles, Mo Farah and Harry Redknapp were in the final of I'm A Celebrity... South Africa.

'Killing in prison is not difficult' - the rise in cold-blooded attacks behind bars - Is a culture of prisoners intimidating inmates into inflicting pain on others too normalised to change?

Thousands at risk after multi-million dollar Everest flood warning system left to rust - The flood warning system at Imja glacial lake has not been maintained since 2016, fearful locals tell BBC.

The Register

DeepSeek's new models are so efficient they'll run on a toaster ... by which we mean Huawei's NPUs - Now available in preview, DeepSeek V4 cuts inference costs to a fraction of R1 Chinese AI darling DeepSeek is back with a new open weights large language model that promises performance to rival the best proprietary American LLMs. Perhaps more importantly, it claims to dramatically reduce inference costs and it extends support for Huawei's Ascend family of AI accelerators.…

Ubuntu Resolute Raccoon spits out Xorg, but still lets you run X11 apps - New LTS is here, with more tooling for GPGPU and AI workloads Ubuntu 26.04 "Resolute Raccoon," the latest LTS release from Canonical, arrives with GNOME 50, Linux kernel 7.0, and drops the Xorg option from Ubuntu Desktop while still running X11 applications through Xwayland.…

Pentagon wants to water down drone program with autonomous subs - What, you didn't expect autonomous military craft to stay in the sky forever? Drones: they're not just for the sky anymore. DARPA is seeking compact deep-ocean autonomous craft developed faster, smaller, and cheaper than today's full-ocean-depth AUV systems.…

US clarifies mobile hotspots part of foreign router ban despite rarity of American made consumer kit - Silicon often from US, but the kit from APAC and elsewhere America's telco regulator has clarified its ban on foreign-made routers also includes mobile hotspots and domestic routers that use a 5G cellular connection to the internet.…

ShinyHunters claim they have cruise giant Carnival's booty as 7.5M emails surface - Leak-site bragging meets breach hunters as Have I Been Pwned flags millions of records Carnival Corporation, the world's largest cruise company, is dealing with choppy waters after Have I Been Pwned flagged what it claimed were 7.5 million unique email addresses all allegedly tied to one of its subsidiaries. …

New Scientist - Home

Gravity's strength measured more reliably than ever before - Measuring the strength of gravity is extraordinarily difficult, and different experiments have always disagreed – but a new test is paving the way to finally understanding nature’s most enigmatic force

Symptoms of early dementia reversed by bespoke treatment plans - People with cognitive decline or early-stage dementia saw their symptoms improve when given bespoke treatment plans that targeted their personal nutritional deficiencies, ongoing infections and environmental exposures

QBox theory may offer glimpse of reality deeper than quantum realm - Physicists have long suspected that there is a layer of physical reality beneath quantum theory and a new mathematical model unveils just how strange it might be

New Scientist recommends Jeff Beal’s New York Études, Vol. II - The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

Largest-ever octopus was great white shark of invertebrate predators - During the Cretaceous, 19-metre-long predatory octopuses swam the seas, and evidence from their fossilised remains suggest they may have been highly intelligent hunters

Hacker News

Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic - Comments

New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper - Comments

A 3D Body from Eight Questions – No Photo, No GPU - Comments

Paraloid B-72 - Comments

Humpback whales are forming super-groups - Comments

Slashdot

FDA Gives Green Light To the First Gene Therapy For Deafness - An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The Food and Drug Administration approved the first gene therapy to restore hearing for people who were born deaf. The decision, while only immediately affecting people born with a very rare form of genetic deafness, is being hailed as a milestone in the quest to treat hearing loss. "It's the first time in history there's a new drug for hearing loss," says Zheng-Yi Chen, an associate scientist at Mass Eye and Ear in Boston who was not involved in the development of the therapy approved by the FDA Thursday. But his research team reported very promising results with a similar approach Wednesday. "I think it's an historical event, a landmark, a great development for the whole field," he says of the approval. [...] The FDA's decision was based on the results from the treatment of 20 patients born with a defective version of a gene known as OTOF, which is necessary to transmit sound from the ears to the brain. Doctors infused billions of adeno-associated viruses into the patients' ears by making a small incision behind the ear to open a small hole in the skull. The viruses carried a healthy version of the OTOF gene that had been split in half to fit inside the virus. The gene provides instructions to make the otoferlin protein, which is necessary for hair cells in the inner ear to transmit sound to the brain. Most of the patients began to hear for the first time within weeks, with the quality of their hearing improving over the following months, according to [Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, which developed the gene therapy and plans to offer it for free in the U.S. It should be available within weeks.]. The amount of hearing patients gained varied, but 80% achieved at least some significant hearing restoration and 42% ended up with normal hearing, which included the ability to hear whispers, Regeneron says. The hearing ability has lasted at least two years so far. The treatment can only help patients with the very rare form of deafness that Smith was born with, which only affects about 50 children each year in the U.S. But similar gene therapies are showing promise for other forms of genetic deafness. And researchers hope someday gene therapy may help with common types of hearing loss, like from aging and loud noise. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Maine Governor Vetoes Data Center Moratorium Bill - Maine Gov. Janet Mills vetoed a bill that would have imposed the nation's first statewide moratorium on new data centers, saying she supported the idea in principle but would not block a major redevelopment project tied to jobs and local investment. Instead, she said she will create a council to study data centers' effects while also signing a separate measure to deny them certain state tax incentives. Politico reports: "After prior redevelopment efforts failed, the Town of Jay worked for two years on a $550 million data center redevelopment project to finally bring jobs and investment back to the mill site," Mills wrote, adding that she would issue an executive order establishing a council to examine the impact of data centers in Maine. The legislation would have made Maine the first state to block the construction of new data centers, as both political parties grapple with how voters view them ahead of the midterm elections. In a statement accompanying the letter, the governor said she had signed a separate bill that would prohibit data center projects from receiving Maine's business development tax incentive programs Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BMW Is One Step Closer To Selling You a Color-Changing Car - BMW's latest concept car moves the color-changing tech it debuted back at CES 2022 closer to reality by embedding an E Ink panel directly into the hood. The Verge reports: BMW's previous concepts wrapped the entire vehicle in a patchwork of E Ink panels that were all custom-sized and shaped to match its contours. It was an approach that wasn't practical for mass production, and one that wasn't very durable. The new BMW iX3 Flow Edition is potentially the most exciting of all of BMW's concepts as it embeds the E Ink Prism technology directly into the structure of the vehicle's hood panel, instead of just slapping it on top. The new approach has "undergone BMW's stringent quality testing" so that it meets the "requirements of automotive engineering and everyday use," according to a release from E Ink. The BMW iX3 Flow Edition's color-changing capabilities are limited to its hood with eight different animations (which appear restricted to a grayscale palette) that can be changed by the driver at the push of a button. It's not exactly the color-changing car that BMW has been teasing for years and you still can't buy one, but by focusing on making this technology more practical and functional these vehicles are one step closer to moving past the concept phase. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung Could Lose Money On Smartphones For the First Time - A report says Samsung's mobile division could post its first-ever annual loss in 2026, as rising memory costs, tougher competition, and pressure across products like foldables and smartwatches weigh on the business. SammyGuru reports: Samsung boss TM Roh reportedly told company leaders that the mobile (MX) business could lose money this year. That warning has clearly rattled management. The MX unit has long been a key pillar for Samsung. That's why the idea of it slipping into the red is a serious concern for the company's overall performance. If this prediction holds, it would mark the first time the MX business reports a yearly loss since its inception. That's a sharp turn from its track record so far. It also raises bigger questions about future growth, rising competition, and how Samsung plans to steady the ship in its mobile division. And it's not like the challenges are easing up. Samsung's foldable market share in the US, where it currently enjoys a dominant position, doesn't look as solid as before, and Apple could shake things up if it enters the segment. On top of that, market reports suggest Samsung's overall smartwatch share could dip in 2026. The Galaxy S26 series seems to be selling well for now, but whether that's enough to move the needle is still up in the air. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bitwarden CLI Is the Next Compromise In Checkmarx Supply Chain Campaign - Longtime Slashdot reader Himmy32 writes: Socket Security published an article on the compromise of the Bitwarden CLI client, which was pushed from Bitwarden's client repository. This breach was the next in a chain of supply-chain attacks that have affected Checkmarx KICS and Aqua Security's Trivy scanners. The breach was quickly detected and reported by JFrog on the GitHub repository; JFrog also provided a technical write-up. The Bitwarden team has released statements on a blog post indicating that the compromise did not affect vault or customer data. Only 334 downloads of the affected CLI client were downloaded before removal and remediation. Read more of this story at Slashdot.