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Last updated 26 Jan, 12:43 AM

BBC News

Analysing the Minneapolis shooting frame by frame - BBC Verify has analysed footage of the shooting from multiple angles, piecing together a detailed picture of what happened.

Andy Burnham 'disappointed' after bid to become MP blocked - The Greater Manchester mayor is seen as a potential leadership challenger to Sir Keir Starmer.

Chris Mason: Burnham saga unlikely to be last act in drama of Starmer's leadership - In a show of brute power, No 10 has scuppered Burnham’s attempted run from Manchester to Westminster.

Murder and MI5: How an extraordinary battle erupted over what the state keeps secret - Can the state, especially when it is implicated in killing, be trusted as the arbiter of what should remain confidential?

Russia using Interpol's wanted list to target critics abroad, leak reveals - A leak exposes for the first time the extent of Russia’s misuse of Interpol to request the arrest of critics.

The Register

Pwn2Own Automotive 2026 uncovers 76 zero-days, pays out more than $1M - Also, cybercriminals get breached, Gemini spills the calendar beans, and more infosec in brief T'was a dark few days for automotive software systems last week, as the third annual Pwn2Own Automotive competition uncovered 76 unique zero-day vulnerabilities in targets ranging from Tesla infotainment to EV chargers.…

No one talking about a datacenter could be a sign one is coming - Balancing the need to know with the need to get shovels in the ground is causing friction in communities across the country feature Applied Digital CEO Wes Cummins said when his company decides on a location for a datacenter, he asks town officials to sign non-disclosure agreements to stop politicians from leaking insider information.…

Emmabuntüs DE 6: A newbie-friendly Linux to help those in need - A distro aimed at helping people, reducing e-waste – and helping a charity, too Emmabuntüs is just another Linux distro, but it's one guided by ethics more than tech. With exceptional help, documentation, beginner-friendly tooling and accessibility, there's a lot to like.…

Future of UK's multibillion Ajax armored vehicle program looks shaky - Noise and vibration keeps sending soldiers to the medics The future of the British Army's troublesome Ajax armored vehicle program has again been called into question after the official in charge was removed and use of Ajax halted over its effects on personnel.…

How an experienced developer teamed up with Claude to create Elo programming language - Bernard Lambeau, the human half of a pair programming team, explains how he's using AI feature Bernard Lambeau, a Belgium-based software developer and founder of several technology companies, created a programming language called Elo with the help of Anthropic's Claude Code.…

New Scientist - Home

How to spot the lunar X and V - Time it right each month, and you can spot two fleeting tricks of light on the lunar surface. Abigail Beall is planning ahead

We can rewrite our genetic code: Best ideas of the century - Our genomes are filled with errors that were once impossible to correct. But in CRISPR, we finally found an extraordinarily powerful tool for treating genetic disease – and perhaps making better versions of ourselves

Realising the importance of our microbiome: Best ideas of the century - Humans have been inadvertently using microbes to influence our health for thousands of years. But only recently has the microbiome rocketed to the forefront of healthcare

Embracing quantum spookiness: Best ideas of the century - The strange principle of quantum entanglement baffled Albert Einstein. Yet finally putting quantum weirdness to the ultimate test, and embracing the results, turned out to be a revolutionary idea

Let's nitpick about the physics of Stranger Things, not its ending - Feedback has seen all the fuss about the finale of Stranger Things, but would like to point out that if we're going to dissect the plot, we have bigger things to worry about

Hacker News

First, make me care - Comments

A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch - Comments

Show HN: A small programming language where everything is a value - Comments

Case study: Creative math – How AI fakes proofs - Comments

Oneplus phone update introduces hardware anti-rollback - Comments

Slashdot

Google Discover Replaces News Headlines With Sometimes Inaccurate AI-Generated Alternatives - An anonymous reader shared this report from The Verge: In early December, I brought you the news that Google has begun replacing Verge headlines, and those of our competitors, with AI clickbait nonsense in its content feed [which appears on the leftmost homescreen page of many Android phones and the Google app's homepage]. Google appeared to be backing away from the experiment, but now tells The Verge that its AI headlines in Google Discover are a feature, one that "performs well for user satisfaction." I once again see lots of misleading claims every time I check my phone... For example, Google's AI claimed last week that "US reverses foreign drone ban," citing and linking to this PCMag story for the news. That's not just false — PCMag took pains to explain that it's false in the story that Google links to...! What does the author of that PCMag story think? "It makes me feel icky," Jim Fisher tells me over the phone. "I'd encourage people to click on stories and read them, and not trust what Google is spoon-feeding them." He says Google should be using the headline that humans wrote, and if Google needs a summary, it can use the ones that publications already submit to help search engines parse our work. Google claims it's not rewriting headlines. It characterizes these new offerings as "trending topics," even though each "trending topic" presents itself as one of our stories, links to our stories, and uses our images, all without competent fact-checking to ensure the AI is getting them right... The AI is also no longer restricted to roughly four words per headline, so I no longer see nonsense headlines like "Microsoft developers using AI" or "AI tag debate heats." (Instead, I occasionally see tripe like "Fares: Need AAA & AA Games" or "Dispatch sold millions; few avoided romance.") But Google's AI has no clue what parts of these stories are new, relevant, significant, or true, and it can easily confuse one story for another. On December 26th, Google told me that "Steam Machine price & HDMI details emerge." They hadn't. On January 11th, Google proclaimed that "ASUS ROG Ally X arrives." (It arrived in 2024; the new Xbox Ally arrived months ago.) On January 20th, it wrote that "Glasses-free 3D tech wows," introducing readers to "New 3D tech called Immensity from Leia" — but linking to this TechRadar story about an entirely different company called Visual Semiconductor... Google declined our request for an interview to more fully explain the idea. The site Android Police spotted more inaccurate headlines in December: A story from 9to5Google, which was actually titled 'Don't buy a Qi2 25W wireless charger hoping for faster speeds — just get the 'slower' one instead' was retitled as 'Qi2 slows older Pixels.' Similarly, Ars Technica's 'Valve's Steam Machine looks like a console, but don't expect it to be priced like one' was changed to 'Steam Machine price revealed.' At the time, we believed that the inaccuracies were due to the feature being unstable and in early testing.... Now, Google has stopped calling Discover replacing human-written headlines as an "experiment." "Google buries a 'Generated with AI, which can make mistakes' message under the 'See more' button in the summary," reports 9to5Google, "making it look like this is the publisher's intended headline." While it is obvious that Google has refined this feature over the past couple of months, it doesn't take long to still find plenty of misleading headlines throughout Discover... Another article from NotebookCheck about an Anker power bank with a retractable cable was given a headline that's about another product entirely. A pair of headlines from Tom's Hardware and PCMag, meanwhile, show the two sides of using AI for this purpose. The Tom's Hardware headline, "Free GPU & Amazon Scams," isn't representative of the actual article, which is about someone who bought a GPU from Amazon, canceled their order, and the retailer shipped it anyway. There's nothing about "Amazon Scams" in the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gasoline Out of Thin Air? It's a Reality! - Can Aircela's machine "create gasoline using little more than electricity and the air that we breathe"? Jalopnik reports... The Aircela machine works through a three-step process. It captures carbon dioxide directly from the air... The machine also traps water vapor, and uses electrolysis to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen... The oxygen is released, leaving hydrogen and carbon dioxide, the building blocks of hydrocarbons. This mixture then undergoes a process known as direct hydrogenation of carbon dioxide to methanol, as documented in scientific papers. Methanol is a useful, though dangerous, racing fuel, but the engine under your hood won't run on it, so it must be converted to gasoline. ExxonMobil has been studying the process of doing exactly that since at least the 1970s. It's another well-established process, and the final step the Aircela machine performs before dispensing it through a built-in ordinary gas pump. So while creating gasoline out of thin air sounds like something only a wizard alchemist in Dungeons & Dragons can do, each step of this process is grounded in science, and combining the steps in this manner means it can, and does, really work. Aircela does not, however, promise free gasoline for all. There are some limitations to this process. A machine the size of Aircela's produces just one gallon of gas per day... The machine can store up to 17 gallons, according to Popular Science, so if you don't drive very much, you can fill up your tank, eventually... While the Aircela website does not list a price for the machine, The Autopian reports it's targeting a price between $15,000 and $20,000, with hopes of dropping the price once mass production begins. While certainly less expensive than a traditional gas station, it's still a bit of an investment to begin producing your own fuel. If you live or work out in the middle of nowhere, however, it could be close to or less than the cost of bringing gas to you, or driving all your vehicles into a distant town to fill up. You're also not limited to buying just one machine, as the system is designed to scale up to produce as much fuel as you need. The main reason why this process isn't "something for nothing" is that it takes twice as much electrical energy to produce energy in the form of gasoline. As Aircela told The Autopian " Aircela is targeting >50% end to end power efficiency. Since there is about 37kWh of energy in a gallon of gasoline we will require about 75kWh to make it. When we power our machines with standalone, off-grid, photovoltaic panels this will correspond to less than $1.50/gallon in energy cost." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Quasar1999 for sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Richard Stallman Critiques AI, Connected Cars, Smartphones, and DRM - Richard Stallman spoke Friday at Atlanta's Georgia Institute of Technology, continuing his activism for free software while also addressing today's new technologies. Speaking about AI, Stallman warned that "nowadays, people often use the term artificial intelligence for things that aren't intelligent at all..." He makes a point of calling large language models "generators" because "They generate text and they don't understand really what that text means." (And they also make mistakes "without batting a virtual eyelash. So you can't trust anything that they generate.") Stallman says "Every time you call them AI, you are endorsing the claim that they are intelligent and they're not. So let's let's refuse to do that." "So I've come up with the term Pretend Intelligence. We could call it PI. And if we start saying this more often, we might help overcome this marketing hype campaign that wants people to trust those systems, and trust their lives and all their activities to the control of those systems and the big companies that develop and control them." "By the way, as far as I can tell, none of them is free software." When it comes to today's cars, Stallman says they contain "malicious functionalities... Cars should not be connected. They should not upload anything." (He adds that "I am hoping to find a skilled mechanic to work with me in a project to make disconnected cars.") And later Stallman calls the smartphone "an Orwellian tracking and surveillance device," saying he refuses to own one. (An advantage of free software is that it allows the removal of malicious functionalities.) Stallman spoke for about 53 minutes — but then answered questions for nearly 90 minutes longer. Here's some of the highlights... Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US Congress Fails to Repeal 'Kill Switch' for Cars Mandate - Newsweek reports on how the U.S. Congress is debating "kill switch" technology for vehicles, "which would be able to monitor diver behavior, detect impairment such as intoxication and intervene..." "While the technology is not yet a legal requirement in cars, Congress passed a law with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021 that requires the Department of Transportation to create the mandate." Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced an amendment to a federal spending bill that would reverse the mandating of the technology. On Thursday, 160 Republicans voted in favor, but the legislation failed 164-268, according to the House Clerk's official roll call — with 57 Republicans joining 211 Democrats in voting against it... The House vote signals substantial Republican support for curbing any move toward mandated impaired-driving prevention systems, but not enough to pass such legislation. Critics of the kill switch technology see it as government overreach, while those in favor argue that it could prove to be lifesaving. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike for sharing the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Android 'NexPhone': Linux on Demand, Dual-Boots Into Windows 11 - and Transforms Into a Workstation - The "NexDock" (from Nex Computer) already turns your phone into a laptop workstation. Purism chose it as the docking station for their Librem 5 phones. But now Nex is offering its own smartphone "that runs Android 16, launches Debian, and dual-boots into Windows 11," according to the blog It's FOSS: Fourteen years after the first concept video was teased, the NexPhone is here, powered by a Qualcomm QCM6490, which, the keen-eyed among you will remember from the now-discontinued Fairphone 5. By 2026 standards, it's dated hardware, but Nex Computer doesn't seem to be overselling it, as they expect the NexPhone to be a secondary or backup phone, not a flagship contender. The phone includes an Adreno 643 GPU, 12GB of RAM, and 256GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 512GB via a microSD card. In terms of software, the NexPhone boots into NexOS, a bloatware-free and minimal Android 16 system, with Debian running as an app with GPU acceleration, and Windows 11 being the dual-boot option that requires a restart to access. ["And because the default Windows interface isn't designed for a handheld screen, we built our own Mobile UI from the ground up to make Windows far easier to navigate on a phone," notes a blog post from Nex founder/CEO Emre Kosmaz]. And, before I forget, you can plug the NexPhone into a USB-C or HDMI display, add a keyboard and mouse to transform it into a desktop workstation. There's a camera plus "a comprehensive suite of sensors," according to the article, "that includes a fingerprint scanner, accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, ambient light sensor, and proximity sensor.... "NexPhone is slated for a Q3 2026 release (July-September)..." Back in 2012, explains Nex founder/CEO Emre Kosmaz, "most investors weren't excited about funding new hardware. One VC even told us, 'I don't understand why anyone buys anything other than Apple'..." Over the last decade, we kept building and shipping — six generations of NexDock — helping customers turn phones into laptop-like setups (display + keyboard + trackpad). And now the industry is catching up faster than ever. With Android 16, desktop-style experiences are becoming more native and more mainstream. That momentum is exactly why NexPhone makes sense today... Thank you for being part of this journey. With your support, I hope NexPhone can help move us toward a world where phones truly replace laptops and PCs — more often, more naturally, and for more people. Read more of this story at Slashdot.