Latest News
Last updated 17 Apr, 06:14 PM
BBC News
'Staggering' I was not told Mandelson failed vetting, says PM - The PM is facing calls to resign over the revelation that Lord Mandelson did not pass security checks.
Key questions facing government over Mandelson checks - It's emerged that Lord Mandelson did not pass inital security vetting checks ahead of taking up the role of ambassador to the United States.
Man guilty of 2003 rape that saw innocent Andrew Malkinson jailed for 17 years - Paul Quinn, 52, is found guilty of the rape for which Andrew Malkinson was jailed for 17 years.
Former Radio 1 DJ and Live Aid presenter Andy Kershaw dies aged 66 - The broadcaster was known for his eclectic taste and for helping champion world music on BBC Radio 1.
Nursery worker jailed over death of toddler restrained during nap time - Noah Sibanda died "alone, scared and in pain", his mother says.
The Register
CISA tells feds to patch 13-year-old Apache ActiveMQ bug under active attack - Bug hiding in plain sight for over a decade lands on KEV list CISA is sounding the alarm on a newly-exploited Apache ActiveMQ bug, ordering federal agencies to patch within two weeks as attackers circle a flaw that's been quietly lurking for more than a decade.…
Opsec oopsie: Dutch navy frigate location outed by mailing it a Bluetooth tracker - Or, how public information and a €5 tracker exposed an avoidable opsec lapse Militaries around the world spend countless hours training, developing policies, and implementing best operational security practices, so imagine the size of the egg on the face of the Dutch navy when journalists managed to track one of its warships for less than the cost of some hagelslag and a coffee.…
Users complain that UK Azure is having capacity problems - We hear Sweden is lovely place for workloads to visit Microsoft Azure capacity woes are back, and worse than ever, judging by the complaints of UK users.…
Microsoft closes book on rogue Windows Server 2025 upgrades - Starts new one on boot loops More than a year after giving administrators an unwelcome surprise with a security update that turned out to be a Windows Server 2025 upgrade, Microsoft has marked the incident as "resolved."…
NASA gets the ball rolling on its part in Europe's jinxed Mars rover mission - Rosalind Franklin moving again, though another budget cut looms NASA is moving ahead with its contribution to the European Space Agency's (ESA) long-delayed Rosalind Franklin Mars rover despite another attempt by the Trump administration to cut funding for the effort.…
New Scientist - Home
New Scientist recommends Jamie Bartlett's insightful How to Talk to AI - The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week
Why is it so hard to change your mind? - Changing your opinion can be difficult, and it’s sometimes even seen as a flaw. But research shows being open-minded has a host of benefits. Columnist David Robson finds there are a few simple ways to encourage yourself to withstand the discomfort that gets in the way of mental flexibility
The rise, the fall and the rebound of cyclic cosmology - Cyclic cosmology, or the big bounce, is the idea that the universe will eventually crunch back together and then go through another big bang. Columnist Leah Crane finds that, appropriately, it’s coming back
Startling images show how fake news isn't just a 21st century issue - From huge geese to flying cars, these photographs from a new exhibition at the Rijksmuseum reveal how we have been manipulating images for over a century
Our dreams become more emotive and symbolic as we approach death - People who are terminally ill are commonly reunited with lost loved ones in their dreams and have visions of doors, stairways and light, which are said to help them accept the dying process
Hacker News
Claude Design - Comments
Claude Opus 4.7 costs 20–30% more per session - Comments
Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956) - Comments
Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin - Comments
NIST gives up enriching most CVEs - Comments
Slashdot
OpenAI Starts Offering a Biology-Tuned LLM - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, OpenAI announced it had developed a large language model specifically trained on common biology workflows. Called GPT-Rosalind after Rosalind Franklin, the model appears to differ from most science-focused models from major tech companies, which have generally taken a more generic approach that works for various fields. In a press briefing, Yunyun Wang, OpenAI's Life Sciences Product Lead, said the system was designed to tackle two major roadblocks faced by current biology researchers. One is the massive datasets created by decades of genome sequencing and protein biochemistry, which can be too much for any one researcher to take in. The second is that biology has many highly specialized subfields, each with its own techniques and jargon. So, for example, a geneticist who finds themselves working on a gene that's active in brain cells might struggle to understand the immense neurobiological literature. Wang said the company had taken an LLM and trained it on 50 of the most common biological workflows, as well as on how to access the major public databases of biological information. Further training has resulted in a system that can suggest likely biological pathways and prioritize potential drug targets. "We're connecting genotype to phenotype through known pathways and regulatory mechanisms, infer likely structural or functional properties of proteins, and really leveraging this mechanistic understanding," Wang said. To address LLMs' tendencies toward sycophancy and overenthusiasm, OpenAI says it has tuned the model to be more skeptical, so it's more likely to tell you when something is a bad drug target. There was a lot of talk about GPT-Rosalind's "reasoning" and "expert-level" abilities. We were told that the former was defined as being able to work through complex, multi-step processes, while the latter was derived from the model's performance on a handful of benchmarks. Access to GPT-Rosalind is currently limited "due to concerns about the model's potential for harmful outputs if asked to do something like optimize a virus's infectivity," notes Ars. Only U.S.-based organizations can request access at the moment. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft Increases the FAT32 Limit From 32GB To 2TB - Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo writes: Windows has limited FAT32 partitions to a maximum of 32GB for decades now. When memory cards and USB drives exceeded 32GB in size, the only options were exFAT or NTFS. Neither option was well supported on other platforms at first, although exFAT support is fairly widespread now. In their latest blog post, Microsoft announced that the limit for FAT32 partitions is being increased to 2TB. Of course, that doesn't mean that every device that supports FAT32 will work flawlessly with a 2TB partition size, but at least there is a decent chance that older devices with don't support exFAT will now be usable with memory cards over 32GB. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Newly Unsealed Records Reveal Amazon's Price-Fixing Tactics - Newly unsealed records in California's antitrust case against Amazon allegedly show the company pressured third-party sellers to raise prices on rival sites like Walmart, Target, and Wayfair so Amazon could maintain the appearance of offering the lowest price. California says Amazon used tools like Buy Box suppression to punish cheaper listings elsewhere. The Guardian reports: [...] In one previously redacted deposition, marked "highly confidential," Mayer Handler, owner of a clothing company called Leveret, testified that he received an email in October 2022 from Amazon notifying him that one of his products was "no longer eligible to be a featured offer" through Amazon's Buy Box. The tech giant, he testified, had suppressed the item, a tiger-themed, toddler's pajama set, because his company was selling it for $19.99 on Amazon, a single cent higher than what his company was offering it for on Walmart. Afterwards, Handler testified, his company "changed pricing on Walmart to match or exceed Amazon's price" or changed the item's product code to try to throw off Amazon's price tracking system. In response to a question from the Guardian, Handler criticized Amazon for tracking prices across the internet and "shadow" blocking his company's products -- tactics which he said were depriving consumers of "lower prices." "Maybe that's capitalism," he wrote. "Or that's a monopoly causing price hikes on the consumer." In another unsealed deposition, Terry Esbenshade, a Pennsylvania garden store supplier, testified in October 2024 that whenever his products lost Amazon's Buy Box because of lower prices elsewhere on the internet, his sales on Amazon would plummet by about 80%. This financial reality forced him to try to raise his products' prices with other retailers elsewhere, he said. In one instance, Esbenshade testified, he discovered that one of his company's better-selling patio tables had "become suppressed" on Amazon. Esbenshade wasn't sure why, he recalled, until someone at Amazon suggested he look at Wayfair, another online retailer that happened to be selling his patio table below Amazon's price. The businessman went online and set up a new minimum advertised price for the table on Wayfair to ensure it was higher than Amazon's. "So that raised the price up, and, voila, my product came back" on Amazon, he said, thanks to the reinstatement of the Buy Box. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
US To Create High-Tech Manufacturing Zone In Philippines - An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: An agreement with the Philippines to establish a high-tech industrial hub is the Trump administration's latest effort to lessen China's dominance over global supply chains. The deal to build up American manufacturing across a stretch of the island of Luzon, signed Thursday, will offer U.S. companies access to essential inputs such as critical minerals that bypass Beijing's control. The artificial-intelligence-powered manufacturing hub is planned for a 4,000-acre site given to the U.S. by Manila, said undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg. The U.S. will occupy the site rent-free and administer it as a special economic zone. The hub will have diplomatic immunity, such as the protections afforded to an American embassy, and operate under U.S. common law -- the first arrangement of its kind anywhere in the world. The two-year lease is renewable for 99 years. [...] "You can't build anything in Ohio if the minerals and the process materials are controlled by an adversary who can cut you off tomorrow," Helberg said in an interview. [...] The planned manufacturing hub is largely conceptual at this stage, and details, including which American companies will participate and just what they will build in the Philippines, are yet to be determined. [...] The administration will ask companies to put forward proposals to compete for a spot in building out the hub, giving priority to bids that will help move critical minerals processing and manufacturing off Chinese suppliers. Investment will have to come from private-sector companies -- not the U.S. government. Factories approved for operation in the hub will be highly automated, Helberg said, using autonomous systems to operate around the clock. The Philippines has a history of robust manufacturing, particularly in semiconductors, but that has stagnated in recent decades because of high energy and logistics costs. Companies will have to address in their proposals how they will contend with energy costs and workforce needs; they can send American workers overseas or hire locally, Helberg said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Reed Hastings Is Leaving Netflix After 29 Years - Reed Hastings is stepping down from Netflix's board in June, ending a 29-year run at the company he co-founded and helped transform from a DVD-by-mail business into a global streaming giant. Hastings said in a shareholder (PDF) letter that he's stepping down to focus on "his philanthropy and other pursuits." Engadget reports: Hastings has served as chairman of Netflix's board since 2023, a role he assumed after stepping down as co-CEO and promoting Greg Peters in his place. "Netflix changed my life in so many ways, and my all-time favorite memory was January 2016, when we enabled nearly the entire planet to enjoy our service," Hastings said in a statement. "My real contribution at Netflix wasn't a single decision; it was a focus on member joy, building a culture that others could inherit and improve, and building a company that could be both beloved by members and wildly successful for generations to come. A special thanks to Greg and Ted, whose commitment to Netflix's greatness is so strong that I can now focus on new things." Read more of this story at Slashdot.