Latest News
Last updated 28 Feb, 09:21 PM
BBC News
What we know so far: Supreme Leader's compound hit and Iran's retaliatory strikes - Iran has retaliated with a missile barrage towards Israel, while explosions have been heard in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE.
Luxury Dubai hotel hit as Iran launches retaliatory strikes across region - Smoke and flames rose from Dubai's Fairmont The Palm hotel as civilian targets came under fire along with the US military bases across the middle east.
US and Israeli strikes on Iran in maps - Israel and the US have launched strikes across Iran, with Iran retaliating with strikes across the region.
Iran retaliation raises questions about US air defences - Iran's strike on US Navy base in Bahrain will worry Washington and its allies in the region.
Bowen: A dangerous moment, but US and Israel see opportunity not to be missed - Israel and the US believe Iran's regime is vulnerable, dealing with an economic crisis and the aftermath of protests.
The Register
Denizens of DEF CON are 'fed up with government' - Jake Braun thinks hackers need to create a 'Digital arsenal of democracy' to defend us all Interview Hackers – especially Jake Braun – are "fed up with government."…
Open source devs consider making hogs pay for every Git pull - Careless big-time users are treating FOSS repos like content delivery networks Opinion I'm at the Linux Foundation Members Summit, and Sonatype's CTO Brian Fox introduced me to a new open source problem. I wouldn't have thought that was possible, but here I am.…
Double whammy: Steaelite RAT bundles data theft, ransomware in one evil tool - Credential and cryptocurrency theft, live surveillance, ransomware - an attacker's Swiss Army knife A new remote access trojan (RAT) being sold on cybercrime networks enables double extortion attacks on Windows machines by bundling ransomware and data theft, along with credential and cryptocurrency stealers, live surveillance, and a whole host of other illicit capabilities, all controllable from a centralized dashboard.…
Trump orders purge of 'woke' Anthropic from government - Without a single 'You're Fired' joke updated President Trump has escalated Anthropic's dispute with the Defense Department with a social media post ordering the entire federal government purge the company's software from its systems. …
PCs and phones to get more boring and expensive in 2026 thanks to memory drought - 'This is perhaps the biggest challenge the industry has faced since its inception' The next wave of smartphones and PCs will have less memory and fewer capabilities, yet are likely to cost consumers 14 percent more as AI ambitions eat all available memory supplies, according to researchers at IDC.…
New Scientist - Home
How Ukraine became a drone factory and invented the future of war - Ukraine has responded to a war it didn’t start by creating an industry it doesn’t want, but could the nation's drone expertise help it rebuild? To learn more, New Scientist gained exclusive access to the research labs, factories and military training schools behind Ukraine’s drones
Return of Fallout, Paradise and Silo fuels passion for bunker sci-fi - Post-apocalyptic bunker sci-fi is huge this year as TV front-runners Fallout, Paradise and Silo return. Bethan Ackerley asks whether this is a signal we’ve given up on our real world, or if there is hidden hope
The Human Flatus Atlas plans to measure the explosivity of farts - Feedback is excited to learn that University of Maryland researchers are measuring farts in a bid to build a Human Flatus Atlas, a project that seems destined for an Ig Nobel
It’s your perception of sleep that’s making you feel tired all day - How we feel about a night’s sleep can have a bigger impact on mood and grogginess than actual hours of rest. Here’s how to change your mindset to feel more energised
NASA’s Artemis moon exploration programme is getting a major makeover - As it faces yet another set of delays, NASA’s Artemis programme is being shaken up, delaying an actual moon landing in favour of smaller, faster steps forward
Hacker News
Obsidian Sync now has a headless client - Comments
The happiest I've ever been - Comments
Our Agreement with the Department of War - Comments
Verified Spec-Driven Development (VSDD) - Comments
Addressing Antigravity Bans and Reinstating Access - Comments
Slashdot
US Threatens Anthropic with 'Supply-Chain Risk' Designation. OpenAI Signs New War Department Deal - It started Friday when all U.S. federal agencies were ordered to "immediately cease" using Anthropic's AI technology after contract negotiations stalled when Anthropic requested prohibitions against mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. But later Friday there were even more repercussions... In a post to his 1.1 million followers on X.com, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth criticized Anthropic for what he called "a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon." Our position has never wavered and will never waver: the Department of War must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic's models for every LAWFUL purpose in defense of the Republic... Cloaked in the sanctimonious rhetoric of "effective altruism," [Anthropic and CEO Dario Amodei] have attempted to strong-arm the United States military into submission — a cowardly act of corporate virtue-signaling that places Silicon Valley ideology above American lives. The Terms of Service of Anthropic's defective altruism will never outweigh the safety, the readiness, or the lives of American troops on the battlefield. Their true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military. That is unacceptable... In conjunction with the President's directive for the Federal Government to cease all use of Anthropic's technology, I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security. Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic... America's warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech. This decision is final. Meanwhile, Anthrophic said on Friday that "no amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position." (And "We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court.") Designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk would be an unprecedented action — one historically reserved for US adversaries, never before publicly applied to an American company. We are deeply saddened by these developments. As the first frontier AI company to deploy models in the US government's classified networks, Anthropic has supported American warfighters since June 2024 and has every intention of continuing to do so. We believe this designation would both be legally unsound and set a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government... Secretary Hegseth has implied this designation would restrict anyone who does business with the military from doing business with Anthropic. The Secretary does not have the statutory authority to back up this statement. Anthropic also defended the two exceptions they'd requested that had stalled contract negotiations. "[W]e do not believe that today's frontier AI models are reliable enough to be used in fully autonomous weapons. Allowing current models to be used in this way would endanger America's warfighters and civilians. Second, we believe that mass domestic surveillance of Americans constitutes a violation of fundamental rights." Also Friday, OpenAI announced that "we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network." OpenAI CEO Sam Altman emphasized that the agreement retains and confirms OpenAI's own prohibitions against using their products for domestic mass surveillance — and requires "human responsibility" for the use of force including for autonomous weapon systems. "The Department of War agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement. We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should, which the Department of War also wanted. " We are asking the Department of War to offer these same terms to all AI companies, which in our opinion we think everyone should be willing to accept. We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements. We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can. The world is a complicated, messy, and sometimes dangerous place. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Antarctica's Massive Neutrino Observatory Gets an Upgrade - There's already 5,000 sensors embedded in Antarctica's ice to look for evidence of neutrinos, reports the Washington Post. But in November scientists drilled six new holes at least a mile and a half deep and installed cables with hundreds more light detectors — an upgrade to the massive 15-year-old IceCube Neutrino Observatory to detect the charged particles produced by lower-energy neutrinos interacting with matter: When they do, the neutrinos produce charged particles that travel through the ice at nearly the speed of light, creating a blue glow called Cherenkov radiation... "Within the first couple years, we should be making much better measurements," [said Erin O'Sullivan, an associate professor of physics at Uppsala University in Sweden and a spokesperson for the project.] "There's hope to expand the detector, by an order of magnitude in volume, so the important thing there is we're not just seeing a few neutrino point sources, but we're starting to be a true telescope. ... That's really the dream." The scientists spent seven years planning the upgrade, according to the article. "To drill holes a mile and a half deep takes about 30 hours, and 18 more hours to return to the surface," the article points out. "Then, the race begins because almost immediately, the hole starts to shrink as the water refreezes." ("If it takes too much time, the principal investigator says, "the instruments don't fit in anymore!") Read more of this story at Slashdot.
'World's Largest Battery' Soon At Google Data Center: 100-Hour Iron-Air Storage - Interesting Engineering reports: US tech giant Google announced on Tuesday that it will build a new data center in Pine Island, Minnesota. The new facility will be powered by 1.9 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy from wind and solar, coupled with a 300-megawatt battery, claimed to be the 'world's largest', with a 30-gigawatt-hour (GWh) capacity and 100-hour duration... The planned battery would dwarf a 19 GW lithium-ion project in the UAE... Form Energy's batteries work very differently from most large batteries today. Instead of using lithium like the batteries in electric cars, they store electricity by making iron rust and then reversing the rusting process to release the energy when needed... Form's iron-air batteries are heavier and less efficient than their counterparts; they can only return about 50% to 70% of the energy used to charge them, while lithium-ion batteries return more than 90%. However, Form's batteries have one distinct advantage. They are cheaper than lithium-ion batteries, costing about $20 per kilowatt-hour of storage, which is almost three times as cheap... It will store 150 MWh of electricity and can supply to the grid for up to 100 hours, delivering about 1.5 MW at peak output. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
After US-Israel Attacks, 90 Million Iranians Lose Internet Connectivity - CNN reports that images from Iran's capital "have shown cars jammed along Tehran's street, with heavy traffic on major roads after today's wave of attacks by the US and Israel." And though Iran has a population of 93 million, the attacks suddenly plunged Iran into "a near-total internet blackout with national connectivity at 4% of ordinary levels," according to internet monitoring experts at NetBlocks. CNN reports: Since Iran's brutal crackdown earlier this year, the regime has made progress to allow only a subset of people with security clearance to access the international web, experts said. After previous internet shutdowns, some platforms never returned. The Iranian government blocked Instagram after the internet shutdown and protests in 2022, and the popular messaging app Telegram following protests in 2018. The International Atomic Energy Agency announced an hour ago that they're "closely monitoring developments" — keeping in contact with countries in the region and so far seeing "no evidence of any radiological impact." They're also urging "restraint to avoid any nuclear safety risks to people in the region." UPDATE (1 PM PST): Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait "are shifting to remote learning starting Sunday until further notice following Iranâ(TM)s retaliatory strikes on Saturday," reports CNN. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
America's Teenagers Say AI Cheating Has Become a Regular Feature of Student Life - Tuesday Pew Research announced their newest findings: that 54% of America's teens use AI help with schoolwork: One-in-five teens living in households making less than $30,000 a year say they do all or most of their schoolwork with AI chatbots' help. A similar share of those in households making $30,000 to just under $75,000 annually say this. Fewer teens living in higher-earning households (7%) say the same." "The survey did not ask students whether they had used chatbots to write essays or generate other assignments..." notes the New York Times. "But nearly 60% of teenagers told Pew that students at their school used chatbots to cheat 'very often' or 'somewhat often.'" Agreeing with that are the Pew Researchers themselves. "Our survey shows that many teens think cheating with AI has become a regular feature of student life." One worried teenager still told the researchers that AI "makes people lazy and takes away jobs." But another teenager told the researchers that "Everyone's going to have to know how to use AI or they'll be left behind." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.