Latest News
Last updated 16 Jan, 07:30 AM
BBC News
Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize winner presents her medal to Trump - Trump thanked Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, calling it "a wonderful gesture of mutual respect".
'We'd been on high alert' - How Jenrick's dramatic sacking and defection unfolded - The secret discussions, bombshell leak and sacking which led to Robert Jenrick defecting to the Reform party.
Iran authorities demanding large sums for return of protesters' bodies, BBC told - Multiple sources have told BBC Persian that security forces will not release bodies unless relatives hand over money.
The landscape beneath Antarctica's icy surface revealed in unprecedented detail - Scientists believe the map could shed light on how Antarctica's vast ice sheet will respond to climate change.
Cuba counts cost of alliance after 32 troops killed in Venezuela - The recent events in Venezuela have exposed the strategic risks of Cuba’s foreign entanglements.
The Register
Wikimedia’s 25th birthday gift: Letting more AIs scour pages volunteers created - Microsoft promises to be a responsible copilot The Wikimedia Foundation, the org behind Wikipedia and other open knowledge platforms, has revealed it’s signed six more AI companies as ‘enterprise partners’, status that gives them preferential access to the content it tends.…
TSMC sees no signs of the AI boom slowing for at least two or three years - 2nm process will go large this year, and bring inevitable price rises Taiwanese chipmaking giant TSMC has posted huge growth, says more is on the way as the AI boom is not abating, but also pointed to the inevitability of price rises for its output.…
OpenAI invests in brain-interface biz co-founded by CEO Sam Altman - Merge Labs envisions controlling devices using your brain - without implanting hardware in your body OpenAI, having invested heavily in artificial intelligence, is placing a side bet on organic intelligence.…
Cisco finally fixes max-severity bug under active attack for weeks - This is a threat to security - and to the weekend for some unlucky netadmins Cisco finally delivered a fix for a maximum-severity bug in AsyncOS that has been under attack for at least a month.…
Open ISA champ SiFive leaps aboard Nvidia's proprietary interconnect bandwagon - You might call it a RISC-V/NVLink Fusion ... or a bad day for UALink RISC-V champion SiFive has joined a growing number of chip companies by throwing its weight behind Nvidia's proprietary NVLink Fusion interconnect tech, a move that casts doubt on the viability of rival interconnect tech UALink.…
New Scientist - Home
Lithium-ion batteries could last longer with chemical tweak - It's difficult to form a protective coating that prolongs battery life at the battery's cathode, but there may be a low-cost chemical solution
Body fat supports your health in surprisingly complex ways - Evidence is mounting that our body fat supports everything from our bone health to our mood, and now, research suggests it also regulates blood pressure and immunity
Distant 'little red dot' galaxies may contain baby black holes - Since launching in 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope has found hundreds of distant and apparently bright galaxies dubbed "little red dots", and now it seems they may each carry a baby black hole
Fossil may solve mystery of what one of the weirdest-ever animals ate - Hallucigenia was such an odd animal that palaeontologists reconstructed it upside-down when they first analysed its fossils - and now we may know what it ate
6 ways to help your children have a healthy relationship with food - Getting kids to eat well can be a minefield and a source of tension. Nancy Bostock, a consultant paediatrician, says these are the six things she recommends when dealing with fussy eaters and the way we talk about food with kids.
Hacker News
OpenBSD-current now runs as guest under Apple Hypervisor - Comments
List of individual trees - Comments
Apple is fighting for TSMC capacity as Nvidia takes center stage - Comments
Building a better Bugbot - Comments
Pocket TTS: A high quality TTS that gives your CPU a voice - Comments
Slashdot
US Carbon Pollution Rose In 2025, a Reversal From Prior Years - In a reversal from previous years, U.S. carbon emissions rose 2.4% in 2025 compared with the year before. NBC News reports: The increase in greenhouse gas emissions is attributable to a combination of a cool winter, the explosive growth of data centers and cryptocurrency mining and higher natural gas prices, according to the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm. Environmental policy rollbacks by President Donald Trump's administration were not significant factors in the increase because they were only put in place this year, the study authors said. Heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas are the major cause of worsening global warming, scientists say. American emissions of carbon dioxide and methane had dropped 20% from 2005 to 2024, with a few one- or two-year increases in the overall downward trend. Traditionally, carbon pollution has risen alongside economic growth, but efforts to boost cleaner energy in recent years decoupled the two, so emissions would drop as gross domestic product rose. But that changed last year with pollution actually growing faster than economic activity, said study co-author Ben King, a director in Rhodium's energy group. He estimated the U.S. put 5.9 billion tons (5.35 billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide equivalent in the air in 2025, which is 139 million tons (126 million metric tons) more than in 2024. The cold 2025 winter meant more heating of buildings, which often comes from natural gas and fuel oil that are big greenhouse gas emitters, King said. A significant and noticeable jump in electricity demand from data centers and cryptocurrency mining meant more power plants producing energy. That included plants using coal, which creates more carbon pollution than other fuel sources. A rise in natural gas prices helped create an 13% increase in coal power, which had shrunk by nearly two-thirds since its peak in 2007, King said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Study Finds Weak Evidence Linking Social Media Use to Teen Mental Health Problems - An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Screen time spent gaming or on social media does not cause mental health problems in teenagers, according to a large-scale study. [...] Researchers at the University of Manchester followed 25,000 11- to 14-year-olds over three school years, tracking their self-reported social media habits, gaming frequency and emotional difficulties to find out whether technology use genuinely predicted later mental health difficulties. Participants were asked how much time on a normal weekday in term time they spent on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and other social media, or gaming. They were also asked questions about their feelings, mood and wider mental health. The study found no evidence for boys or girls that heavier social media use or more frequent gaming increased teenagers' symptoms of anxiety or depression over the following year. Increases in girls' and boys' social media use from year 8 to year 9 and from year 9 to year 10 had zero detrimental impact on their mental health the following year, the authors found. More time spent gaming also had a zero negative effect on pupils' mental health. "We know families are worried, but our results do not support the idea that simply spending time on social media or gaming leads to mental health problems -- the story is far more complex than that," said the lead author Dr Qiqi Cheng. The research, published in the Journal of Public Health, also examined whether how pupils use social media makes a difference, with participants asked how much time spent chatting with others, posting stories, pictures and videos, browsing feeds, profiles or scrolling through photos and stories. The scientists found that actively chatting on social media or passive scrolling feeds did not appear to drive mental health difficulties. The authors stressed that the findings did not mean online experiences were harmless. Hurtful messages, online pressures and extreme content could have detrimental effects on wellbeing, but focusing on screen time alone was not helpful, they said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amazon Is Making a Fallout Shelter Competition Reality TV Show - Amazon is expanding the Fallout universe with Fallout Shelter, a ten-episode reality competition show where contestants face survival-style challenges and moral dilemmas for a cash prize. Engadget reports: Prime Video has greenlit a unscripted reality show titled Fallout Shelter. It will be a ten-episode run with Studio Lambert, the team behind reality projects including Squid Game: The Challenge and The Traitors, as its primary producer. Bethesda Game Studios' head honcho Todd Howard is attached as an executive producer. Amazon's description of Fallout Shelter is: "Across a series of escalating challenges, strategic dilemmas and moral crossroads, contestants must prove their ingenuity, teamwork and resilience as they compete for safety, power and ultimately a huge cash prize." [...] The name echos the free-to-play mobile game Bethesda released in 2015. Fallout Shelter lets people build and improve their out Vault-Tec residence, managing the resources for a growing cadre of underground survivors. It seems pretty likely that there will be some type of tie-in between the game and the show, but any details about that might pop up closer to when the program is ready to air. It's currently casting, and no release timeline has been shared. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
New York Introduces Legislation To Crack Down On 3D Printers That Make Ghost Guns - New York Governor Kathy Hochul is proposing first-of-its-kind legislation that would require 3D printers sold in the state to include built-in software designed to block the printing of gun parts used to make "ghost guns." The plan would also add criminal penalties for making 3D-printed firearms and hold printer owners or manufacturers liable if safety controls aren't in place. 3D Printing Industry reports: "From the iron pipeline to the plastic pipeline, these proposals will keep illegal ghost guns off of New York streets, and enhance measures to track and block the production of dangerous and illegal firearms in our state," Hochul said. In addition to mandating printer-level safeguards and restricting access to CAD files, the proposed legislation would require law enforcement agencies to report any recovered 3D printed firearms to a statewide database. The measure also includes a provision requiring commercial gun manufacturers to redesign pistols so they cannot be easily converted for automatic fire. "These illegal firearms are being manufactured in homes and used in crimes right now, which is why I have been working with my colleagues in Albany and the private sector over the past several years to stop their proliferation. Passing these measures will reduce crime and strengthen public safety for all New Yorkers," said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Iran's Internet Shutdown Is Now One of the Longest Ever - Iran has imposed one of the longest nationwide internet shutdowns in its history, cutting more than 92 million people off from connectivity for over a week as mass anti-government protests continue. TechCrunch reports: As of this writing, Iranians have not been able to access the internet for more than 170 hours. The previous longest shutdowns in the country lasted around 163 hours in 2019, and 160 hours in 2025, according to Isik Mater, the director of research at NetBlocks, a web monitoring company that tracks internet disruptions. Mater said that the current shutdown in Iran is the third longest on record, after the internet shutdown in Sudan in mid-2021 that lasted around 35 days, followed by the outage in Mauritania in July 2024, which lasted 22 days. "Iran's shutdowns remain among the most comprehensive and tightly enforced nationwide blackouts we've observed, particularly in terms of population affected," Mater told TechCrunch. The exact ranking depends on how each organization measures a shutdown. Zach Rosson, a researcher who studies internet disruptions at the digital rights nonprofit Access Now, told TechCrunch that according to its data, the ongoing shutdown in Iran is on a path to crack the top 10 longest shutdowns in history. Further reading: Iran Shuts Down Musk's Starlink For First Time Read more of this story at Slashdot.