Latest News

Last updated 10 Mar, 05:33 PM

BBC News

HMS Dragon departs UK for eastern Mediterranean - The Type 45 frigate's main role will be protecting RAF Akrotiri, which was hit with an Iranian-made drone.

Nottingham triple killer assaulted husband and wife weeks before attacks, inquiry told - Valdo Calocane attacked two colleagues weeks before he killed three people in Nottingham.

An 'epidemic' of violence: The women and girls killed by men last year - We tracked reports and contacted police and prosecutors for a deeper look at the situation across UK.

Eni Aluko wins Joey Barton libel case over X posts - Barton is told to pay the former England footballer more than £300k over two posts he made in 2024.

Simpson and guide Poth win Paralympic silver for GB - Neil Simpson and his guide Rob Poth win Great Britain's first medal of the Milan-Cortina Winter Paralympics with silver in the alpine combined.

The Register

AI datacenters may gulp a New York City's worth of water on hot days - Study warns peak cooling demand could strain US water systems by 2030 Public water supplies in America will need billions invested to meet the peak requirements of datacenters during the hottest periods of the year, even if their overall annual consumption is relatively modest.…

JetBrains launches AI agent IDE built on the corpse of abandoned Fleet - Agentic 'Air' lets multiple AI agents run tasks concurrently, while loyal IntelliJ users wonder what's in it for them JetBrains has previewed Air, a tool for agentic AI development which it describes as a new wave of dev tooling.…

Crooks compromise WordPress sites to push infostealers via fake CAPTCHA prompts - Rapid7 says crims broke into more than 250 sites globally, including a US Senate candidate’s campaign page Cyber baddies quietly compromised legitimate WordPress websites, including the campaign site of a US Senate candidate, turning them into launchpads for a global infostealer operation.…

Flying cabs, next-gen aircraft cleared for takeoff in 26 states - FAA launches pilot projects starting this summer The skies over parts of the US could soon get busier, as the Federal Aviation Administration launches pilot projects spanning 26 states to test electric air taxis and other next-gen aircraft, with operations expected to begin by summer 2026.…

Musk admits Starship V3 launch date has slipped as Super Heavy booster rolls into place - Launch predictions continue to be optimistic as 2027 and Artemis III near SpaceX has rolled another Starship super heavy booster to the launch pad as the company's boss, Elon Musk, admits the first launch of Starship V3 had slipped.…

New Scientist - Home

Project Hail Mary is a spiritual sibling to The Martian - and it's fab - Ryan Gosling stars in the latest adaptation of an Andy Weir novel, another tale of a lone genius battling to survive in space. Bethan Ackerley thoroughly approves

What is a galaxy? That's a surprisingly difficult question to answer - Figuring out what really counts as a galaxy could give us insights into dark matter and potentially shake up astrophysics, cosmology and particle physics, says columnist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Mathematics is undergoing the biggest change in its history - The speed at which artificial intelligence is gaining in mathematical ability has taken many by surprise. It is rewriting what it means to be a mathematician

Human populations evolved in similar ways after we began farming - An analysis of ancient and modern DNA suggests the extent of convergent evolution in different peoples around the world is even greater than we thought

Why is black rain falling on Iran and how dangerous is it? - US-Israeli strikes on oil facilities have caused black rain to fall on Tehran, but the black smoke filling the air is likely to be a bigger health risk

Hacker News

Tony Hoare has died - Comments

Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions - Comments

Show HN: RunAnwhere – Faster AI Inference on Apple Silicon - Comments

Intel Demos Chip to Compute with Encrypted Data - Comments

I built a programming language using Claude Code - Comments

Slashdot

Claude AI Finds Bugs In Microsoft CTO's 40-Year-Old Apple II Code - An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: AI can reverse engineer machine code and find vulnerabilities in ancient legacy architectures, says Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich, who used his own Apple II code from 40 years ago as an example. Russinovich wrote: "We are entering an era of automated, AI-accelerated vulnerability discovery that will be leveraged by both defenders and attackers." In May 1986, Russinovich wrote a utility called Enhancer for the Apple II personal computer. The utility, written in 6502 machine language, added the ability to use a variable or BASIC expression for the destination of a GOTO, GOSUB, or RESTORE command, whereas without modification Applesoft BASIC would only accept a line number. Russinovich had Claude Opus 4.6, released early last month, look over the code. It decompiled the machine language and found several security issues, including a case of "silent incorrect behavior" where, if the destination line was not found, the program would set the pointer to the following line or past the end of the program, instead of reporting an error. The fix would be to check the carry flag, which is set if the line is not found, and branch to an error. The existence of the vulnerability in Apple II type-in code has only amusement value, but the ability of AI to decompile embedded code and find vulnerabilities is a concern. "Billions of legacy microcontrollers exist globally, many likely running fragile or poorly audited firmware like this," said one comment to Russinovich's post. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta Acquires Moltbook, the Social Network For AI Agents - Axios reports that Meta has acquired Moltbook, the viral, Reddit-like social network designed for AI agents. Humans are welcome, but only to observe. Axios reports: The deal brings Moltbook's creators -- Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr -- into Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), the unit run by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. Meta did not disclose Moltbook's purchase price. The deal is expected to close mid-March, Meta says, with the pair starting at MSL on March 16. When it launched in late January, Moltbook was labeled the "most interesting place on the internet" by open-source developer and writer Simon Willison. "Browsing around Moltbook is so much fun. A lot of it is the expected science fiction slop, with agents pondering consciousness and identity. There's also a ton of genuinely useful information, especially on m/todayilearned." In an internal post seen by Axios, Meta's Vishal Shah said existing Moltbook customers can temporarily continue using the platform. "The Moltbook team has given agents a way to verify their identity and connect with one another on their human's behalf," Shah says. "This establishes a registry where agents are verified and tethered to human owners." He added: "Their team has unlocked new ways for agents to interact, share content, and coordinate complex tasks." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

German Publishers Push Regulators To Fine Apple Over App Tracking Transparency - German publishers and advertising groups are urging regulators to fine Apple over its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) system, arguing it unfairly restricts access to advertising data while allowing Apple to remain the central gatekeeper -- without subjecting its own apps to the same restrictions. If Germany's antitrust authority does rule against Apple, the company could face fines of up to 10% of its global revenue. 9to5Mac reports: One of the countries investigating whether ATT is anticompetitive is Germany. Last year, in an attempt to appease the country's antitrust watchdog, the company proposed several changes to the framework's rules. From Reuters' original coverage of Apple's changes proposals: "Apple had agreed to introduce neutral consent prompts for both its own services and third-party apps, and to largely align the wording, content and visual design of these messages, said Andreas Mundt, head of Germany's Bundeskartellamt. The company also proposed simplifying the consent process so developers can obtain user permission for advertising-related data processing in a way that complies with data protection law." [...] At the time, German regulators launched a consultation with industry publications to determine whether the proposals addressed their concerns. As it turns out, the answer was a hard no. As Reuters reported today: "Apple's proposed changes to its app tracking rules do not resolve antitrust issues in the mobile advertising market, associations representing German publishers and advertisers said on Tuesday as they urged the country's antitrust authority to slap a fine on the U.S. tech giant. [...] 'The proposed commitments would not change the negative effects of the App Tracking Transparency Framework,' Bernd Nauen, chief executive of the German Advertising Federation, said in a joint letter signed by the trade bodies. 'Apple would remain the data gatekeeper and would continue to decide who gets access to advertising-relevant data and how companies can communicate with their end customers,' he said." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

EQT Eyes $6 Billion Sale of SUSE - Private equity firm EQT AB is reportedly exploring a sale of SUSE that could value the open-source Linux pioneer at up to $6 billion, roughly doubling the valuation since EQT took the company private in 2023. Reuters reports: EQT "has hired investment bank Arma Partners to sound out a group of private equity investors for a possible sale of the company, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential matters. The deliberations are at "an early stage and there is no certainty that EQT will proceed with "a transaction, the sources said. [...] The potential deal comes amid a broader selloff in software stocks, which has disrupted mergers and acquisitions activity. Investors are "concerned that new artificial intelligence tools could displace many existing software products, weighing on technology "valuations and making deals harder to price. Some investors, however, see Luxembourg-headquartered SUSE as a potential beneficiary of AI adoption, arguing that demand for enterprise-grade infrastructure software is likely to grow as companies build and deploy more AI applications. The company generates about $800 million in revenue and more than $250 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) and could fetch between $4 billion and $6 billion in a sale, the sources said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Many International Game Developers Plan To Skip GDC In US - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This week, tens of thousands of game developers and producers will once again gather in San Francisco, as they have since 1988, for the weeklong Game Developers Conference. But this year's show will be missing many international developers who say they no longer feel comfortable traveling to the United States to attend, no matter how relevant the show is to their work and careers. Dozens of those developers who spoke to Ars in recent months say they're wary of traveling to a country that has shown a callous disregard for -- or outright hostility toward -- the safety of international travelers. That's especially true for developers from various minority groups, those with transgender identities, and those who feel they could be targeted for outspoken political beliefs. "I honestly don't know anyone who is not from the U.S. who is planning on going to the next GDC," Godot Foundation Executive Director Emilio Coppola, who's based in Spain, told Ars. "We never felt super safe, but now we are not willing to risk it." "I honestly don't know anyone who is not from the U.S. who is planning on going to the next GDC," says Godot Foundation Executive Director Emilio Coppola, who's based in Spain. "We never felt super safe, but now we are not willing to risk it." "Hearing European citizens getting arrested by border control over their views on the U.S. is not something I would like to test for myself," adds Nazih Fares, a French-Lebanese citizen and creative director at indie studio Le Cabinet du Savoir.. Many of the developers who spoke to Ars cite the intrusive questioning, racial profiling, and other horror stories reported at the U.S. border. "I read a few long reads about how UK/German tourists ended up detained, and that was the final straw for me," Austrian-based Cohop Game founder Eline Muijres said. "It doesn't feel safe for me." Domini Gee, a Canadian game writer and narrative designer echoed that concern, adding: "There's no shortage of stories... about the risk of detainment, deportation, phones being searched... the consequences if I'm not [OK] could be high." Read more of this story at Slashdot.