Latest News

Last updated 12 Apr, 03:08 AM

BBC News

Iran chose 'not to accept our terms', Vance says after negotiations - The US vice-president made the announcement after 21 hours of negotiations in Islamabad, Pakistan.

More than 500 arrests at Palestine Action protest - Event organisers said it would show the "resistance" to the ban on the group was "stronger than ever".

Faisal Islam: Why the government is relaxed about Chinese car imports - The UK government believes the rise of China's car industry could be good for UK consumers and industry.

'It's a special thing to be on Planet Earth': Artemis crew welcomed home in Houston - The four astronauts flew around the Moon in a nine-day voyage that took them further from Earth than any humans in history.

We spoke to the man making viral Lego-style AI videos for Iran. Experts say it's powerful propaganda - "Slopaganda" is too weak a term to capture how powerful this "highly sophisticated" content is, one expert says.

The Register

How Salesforce and ServiceNow are squaring off in the battle for the helpdesk - Benioff banks on user engagement while McDermott wants to govern AI agents FEATURE Salesforce CEO and chief “SaaSquatch” Mark Benioff boasted about the wins his company's ITSM product had last quarter in the terms a proud dad uses to talk about the art work his kids taped to the refrigerator.…

Two different attackers poisoned popular open source tools - and showed us the future of supply chain compromise - Time to start dropping SBOMs FEATURE Two supply chain attacks in March infected open source tools with malware and used this access to steal secrets from tens of thousands – if not more – organizations. We won't know the full blast radius for months.…

Hungarian government creds left in the safe hands of 'FrankLampard' - Nearly 800 state logins surfaced in breach data, including defense and NATO-linked accounts Hungary's government has discovered the hard way that the biggest threat to national security might just be its own password choices.…

Snowflake manager explains the 'Spider-Man' theory of AI agent data access - With access to great data comes great responsibility Snowflake is betting that the biggest bottleneck to building more and better AI agents isn't the models themselves but whether the data those agents depend on is clean, accessible, and governed, Snowflake’s director of product management James Rowland-Jones told The Register.…

Here's how to watch the Artemis II splashdown - Crew went farther from Earth than any humans we know about, now they’re coming back! In a world wracked by wars, beset by difficult economic conditions, and struggling with exploding RAM costs, there's one piece of good news. NASA's Artemis II mission has been an unqualified success, having carried four astronauts farther from Earth than any humans before them.…

New Scientist - Home

We're solving the fundamental mystery of how reality is glued together - For decades, scientists have tried and failed to explain how the force that binds the heart of atoms together really works. But new mathematical tools are finally prising the problem open

The invisibility cloak inventor now has better tricks up his sleeve - John Pendry is known for creating an invisibility cloak. Twenty years on, he has used the same principles to fashion an even more powerful kind of metamaterial that can teach us about the wild frontiers of physics

Two excellent new sci-fi novels tackle robots in very different ways - Luminous by Silvia Park and Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer are both thoughtful and well-written science fiction novels, featuring robots in richly realised worlds. But there the similarities end, says Emily H. Wilson

I don’t see images in my head. Can training give me a mind’s eye? - Training programmes for people with aphantasia – the inability to create mental images – are challenging neuroscientists' understanding of how we create thoughts

NASA’s Artemis II mission was a historic success - The astronauts of the Artemis II mission around the moon have made it home safely to Earth, marking the end of a triumphant mission and the beginning of a longer road to stay on the moon

Hacker News

Small models also found the vulnerabilities that Mythos found - Comments

The End of Eleventy - Comments

How We Broke Top AI Agent Benchmarks: And What Comes Next - Comments

Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit (2023) - Comments

We spoke to the man making viral Lego-style AI videos for Iran - Comments

Slashdot

Judge Pauses Arizona's Prosecution of Kalshi, Bars Arizona from Regulating Prediction Markets - Arizona state prosecutors allege Kalshi is running an illegal gambling operation, charging the prediction market with 20 "wagering" misdemeanors. But Friday a federal judge "temporarily barred Arizona from enforcing its gambling laws against predictive market operators," reports the Associated Press, "and put the brakes on a criminal wagering case that the state has filed against Kalshi. "U.S. District Judge Michael Liburdi's ruling means a Monday arraignment hearing for Kalshi has been called off." The order was issued in a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration. The judge's order said the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission had sufficiently shown that "event contracts" fall within the Commodity Exchange Act's definition of "swaps," and that it had demonstrated a reasonable chance of success in showing that the act preempts Arizona law... The commission had sued Arizona in response to cease-and-desist letters sent to Kalshi from state gambling regulators and the criminal charges filed against the prediction market operator. The commission argued Arizona is intruding on its exclusive federal power to regulate national swaps markets... Earlier this month, the federal government filed lawsuits against Connecticut, Arizona and Illinois challenging their efforts to regulate prediction market operators. The Trump administration has so far backed the platforms. President Donald Trump's eldest son is an adviser for both Kalshi and Polymarket and an investor in the latter. Trump's social media platform Truth Social is also launching its own cryptocurrency-based prediction market called Truth Predict. Federal and state judges in Nevada and Massachusetts have now issued early rulings in favor of states looking to ban Kalshi and its competitor Polymarket from offering sports being in their states, according to the article, "while federal judges in New Jersey and Tennessee have ruled in favor of Kalshi." And Arizona's attorney general's office said it disagrees with the court's ruling and "will evaluate our next steps." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Oxygen Made From Moon Dust For First Time - "Breathable oxygen has been created from Moon dust," reports the Telegraph, "in a world first that paves the way for a lunar base." Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin ""announced this week that it had developed a reactor that could successfully release oxygen from lunar soil by using an electric current." Almost half of Moon dust — the thin layer of rock that blankets the lunar surface — is oxygen, but it is bound to metals such as iron and titanium... Previous work to isolate oxygen has been lab-based, and the unwieldy equipment needed has been too difficult to send to the Moon. In contrast, Blue Origin said its small-scale reactor, named Air Pioneer, could be made flight-ready to "provide the first breath of life for a sustainable Moon base"... As well as breathable air, Blue Origin said the reactor produces other critical elements for planetary infrastructure, such as iron, aluminium and silicon for construction and electronics, as well as glass for windows and solar panel covers. The company has previously said it wants to turn the Moon, and eventually Mars, into "self-sustaining worlds where robots and humans can go beyond visiting and truly explore, grow, live, and thrive".... Blue Origin said it would need to generate around one megawatt of power to drive the reactors — about the energy it would require to power around 400 to 1,000 homes simultaneously. It envisages that each lunar settlement would have an array of nearby solar panels, generating the power needed for one reactor. Besides breathable air for astronauts, the oxygen could also be used in propellant for refuelling landers and fuel cells, Blue Origin points out — and "produced right where they're needed, and at much lower cost than being brought from Earth." Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon Luna Ends Its Support for Purchased Games and Third-Party Subscriptions - Amazon's Luna cloud gaming service is making some changes, reports Engadget: It's no longer possible to buy Ubisoft+ and Jackbox Games subscriptions or standalone games through Luna. Amazon will automatically cancel any active subscriptions bought through Luna at the end of customers' next billing cycle. If you have a Ubisoft+ subscription that you bought directly from Ubisoft instead, you'll still be able to access games on that service through Luna until June 10. The Bring Your Own Library option — which allows users to play games they own on the likes of EA, GOG and Ubisoft on Luna — is going away too. You won't be able to access games from those storefronts via Amazon's streaming service after June 3. If you bought any games outright on Luna, you'll still be able to play them there until June 10. Unlike Google did when it shut down Stadia, Amazon isn't offering refunds for those purchases. However, you'll still have access to them through the respective third-party platform that's linked to your account, be it the EA App, GOG Galaxy or Ubisoft Connect. That doesn't exactly help folks who don't have powerful-enough systems to play more demanding games and were relying on Luna. For those users, Kotaku complains, "you'll essentially lose access to your purchased games in June unless you buy some hardware to play games like Star Wars Outlaws or set up a different streaming option..." They describe Luna as Amazon's "barely talked about, struggling game streaming service"... On April 10, Amazon announced that it is "always looking for ways to better serve our players" and that "feedback" has made it "clear" that gamers who use Luna want "easy access to great games." And because more of that content is now offered via Amazon Prime, the company has decided that the best way to "serve" you and other users is to rip out most of Luna's gaming options and remove access to paid games you bought in the past. Do you feel better served...? Launched in 2020, Amazon Luna has never been much of a big hit for the company, which has struggled to even figure out what to do with it. Initially, it was offered up as a Stadia competitor, providing access to big and small third-party games. This apparently didn't work out for Amazon. So in 2025, Amazon officially announced plans to pivot Luna to a service focused on Jackbox-like casual games. This latest shake-up for Luna further focuses the service on these kinds of games and will put everything available on the service behind different sub tiers, similar to Game Pass. Their conclusion? "This is all just a great reminder to never, ever, ever, ever buy a video game through a streaming service. At least you can download digital games offline and make backups for later." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers Build a Talking Robot Guide Dog to Help Visually Impaired People Navigate - "Only about 2% of visually impaired people in the United States use guide dogs," notes StudyFinds.com, "partly because breeding and training takes years and fewer than half the dogs in training actually graduate." But someday there could be another option: What if you could ask your guide dog where the nearest water fountain is and hear it answer back, complete with directions and an estimated walk time? Researchers at the State University of New York at Binghamton have built a robotic guide dog that can do something close to that, holding simple back-and-forth conversations about navigation with its handler, describing the surrounding environment, and talking through route options as it leads the way... Their work, presented at the 40th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pairs a large language model, a system that understands and generates language, with a navigation planner. Together, the two let the robot understand open-ended requests, suggest destinations, and adjust plans on the fly. Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Omissions, Deceptions, Lying. The New Yorker Asks: Can Sam Altman Be Trusted? - A 17,000-word expose in the New Yorker reveals "several executives connected to OpenAI have expressed ongoing reservations about Altman's leadership." Reporters Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz spoke to "a hundred people with firsthand knowledge of how Altman conducts business," including current and former OpenAI employees and board members. Among other revelations, internal messages from a few years ago show that OpenAI executives and board members "had come to believe that Altman's omissions and deceptions might have ramifications for the safety of OpenAI's products..." At the behest of his fellow board members, [OpenAI cofounder] Sutskever worked with like-minded colleagues to compile some seventy pages of Slack messages and H.R. documents, accompanied by explanatory text... The memos, which we reviewed, have not previously been disclosed in full. They allege that Altman misrepresented facts to executives and board members, and deceived them about internal safety protocols. One of the memos, about Altman, begins with a list headed "Sam exhibits a consistent pattern of . . ." The first item is "Lying".... In a tense call after Altman's firing, the board pressed him to acknowledge a pattern of deception. "This is just so fucked up," he said repeatedly, according to people on the call. "I can't change my personality." Altman says that he doesn't recall the exchange.... He attributed the criticism to a tendency, especially early in his career, "to be too much of a conflict avoider." But a board member offered a different interpretation of his statement: "What it meant was 'I have this trait where I lie to people, and I'm not going to stop.' " Were the colleagues who fired Altman motivated by alarmism and personal animus, or were they right that he couldn't be trusted? Friday Altman responded in part to the article. ("I am not proud of being conflict-averse, which has caused great pain for me and OpenAI," he wrote in a blog post. "I am not proud of handling myself badly in a conflict with our previous board that led to a huge mess for the company.") But the article also assembled similar stories from throughout Altman's career: - At Altman's earlier startup Loopt, "groups of senior employees, concerned with Altman's leadership and lack of transparency, asked Loopt's board on two occasions to fire him as C.E.O.," according to Keach Hagey, author of the Altman biography The Optimist. - During Altman's time as president of Y Combinator, "several Silicon Valley investors came to believe that his loyalties were divided. An investor told us that Altman was known to 'make personal investments, selectively, into the best companies, blocking outside investors.'" The article adds that in private, Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham "has been unambiguous that Altman was removed because of Y.C. partners' mistrust... On one occasion, Graham told Y.C. colleagues that, prior to his removal, 'Sam had been lying to us all the time.'" - "In a meeting with U.S. intelligence officials in the summer of 2017, he claimed that China had launched an 'A.G.I. Manhattan Project,'" the article points out, "and that OpenAI needed billions of dollars of government funding to keep pace...." But one intelligence official "after looking into the China project, concluded that there was no evidence that it existed: 'It was just being used as a sales pitch.'" - As California lawmakers considered safety testing for AI model, one legislative aide complained of "increasingly cunning, deceptive behavior from OpenAI". OpenAI later subpoenaed some of the bill's top supporters (and OpenAI critics), in some cases asking for their private communications to investigate whether Elon Musk was funding them. [The article notes an ongoing animosity between Altman and Musk. "When Altman complained on X about a Tesla he'd ordered, Musk replied, 'You stole a non-profit.'"] And "Multiple prominent investors who have worked with Altman told us that he has a reputation for freezing out investors if they back OpenAI's competitors." [M]ost of the people we spoke to shared the judgment of Sutskever and Amodei: Altman has a relentless will to power that, even among industrialists who put their names on spaceships, sets him apart. "He's unconstrained by truth," the board member told us. "He has two traits that are almost never seen in the same person. The first is a strong desire to please people, to be liked in any given interaction. The second is almost a sociopathic lack of concern for the consequences that may come from deceiving someone." The board member was not the only person who, unprompted, used the word "sociopathic." One of Altman's batch mates in the first Y Combinator cohort was Aaron Swartz, a brilliant but troubled coder who died by suicide in 2013 and is now remembered in many tech circles as something of a sage. Not long before his death, Swartz expressed concerns about Altman to several friends. "You need to understand that Sam can never be trusted," he told one. "He is a sociopath. He would do anything." Multiple senior executives at Microsoft said that, despite [CEO Satya] Nadella's long-standing loyalty, the company's relationship with Altman has become fraught. "He has misrepresented, distorted, renegotiated, reneged on agreements," one said... The senior executive at Microsoft said, of Altman, "I think there's a small but real chance he's eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff- or Sam Bankman-Fried-level scammer." Read more of this story at Slashdot.