Latest News
Last updated 13 Jan, 08:27 PM
BBC News
Bowen: Authoritarian regimes die gradually then suddenly, but Iran is not there yet - The regime's opponents will hope for more pressure to accelerate the process, writes the BBC's international editor.
Income tax changes and mansion tax on £1m homes in Scottish Budget - Finance Secretary Shona Robison unveils the government's tax and spending plans for the coming financial year.
Starmer considers joining Trump's Gaza peace board - The new body is part of the White House's 20-point plan to end the war between Israel and Hamas.
Three men guilty of harassing BBC journalist over A Very British Cult documentary - All three are members of Lighthouse, a group investigated for a BBC documentary and podcast in 2023
Oil tanker seized by US spotted in Scotland's Moray Firth - The UK government said the Marinera was being supplied with food and water before continuing its journey.
The Register
SK Hynix's $13B packaging facility promises more HBM for the AI bubble - Great news for AMD and Nvidia, less so for cash-strapped consumers Memory makers just can't churn out their DRAM fast enough. On the heels of an AI-driven shortage, SK Hynix on Tuesday announced a new 19 trillion Korean won (about $13 billion) advanced packaging and test facility in South Korea that could offer some relief - just not for consumer products like laptops and phones.…
Cloud to be an American: Congress votes to kick China off remote GPU services - US House backs bill to regulate remote access to export-controlled chips Chinese companies may be unable to import the best US GPUs, but they have found a workaround: renting access to that hardware via cloud services. Now, the US House of Representatives is moving to bring that loophole under the export-control law.…
AI and automation could erase 10.4 million US roles by 2030 - Forrester models slow, structural shift rather than sudden employment collapse AI-pocalypse AI and automation could wipe out 6.1 percent of jobs in the US by 2030 – equating to 10.4 million fewer positions that are held by humans today.…
Trump says Americans shouldn't 'pick up the tab' for AI datacenter grid upgrades - Big Tech warned expansion must come without higher household bills as Microsoft signals support President Trump says tech giants must pay their way when it comes to delivering increased power needed for datacenters, rather than the burden falling on US citizens, and it seems Microsoft is on board with that.…
Linus Torvalds tries vibe coding, world still intact somehow - The Emperor Penguin has a go… just for fun Perhaps the most famous low-level systems programmer has tried "vibe coding" for himself – and he seems to be enjoying it.…
New Scientist - Home
The Pacific Islanders fighting to save their homes from catastrophe - Some of climate change's sharpest realities are being felt on small island nations, where extreme weather is claiming homes and triggering displacement. Those able to stay are spearheading inventive adaptation techniques in a bid to secure their future
Greenland sharks survive for centuries with diseased hearts - A study of the hearts of Greenland sharks has found that the long-lived deep-sea predator has massive accumulations of ageing markers, such as severe scarring, but this doesn't appear to affect their health or longevity
We're about to simulate a human brain on a supercomputer - The world’s most powerful supercomputers can now run simulations of billions of neurons, and researchers hope such models will offer unprecedented insights into how our brains work
Pompeii’s public baths were unhygienic until the Romans took over - Before the Romans captured Pompeii, the famous town was run by the Samnite people – and a dip in their public baths might have been an unpleasant experience
Quantum computers could help sharpen images of exoplanets - Combining two kinds of quantum computing devices could be just the trick for taking better images of faint, faraway exoplanets
Hacker News
Signal leaders warn agentic AI is an insecure, unreliable surveillance risk - Comments
The Tulip Creative Computer - Comments
AI Generated Music Barred from Bandcamp - Comments
Confer – End to end encrypted AI chat - Comments
Instagram AI Influencers Are Defaming Celebrities with Sex Scandals - Comments
Slashdot
Apple: You (Still) Don't Understand the Vision Pro - Analyst Ben Thompson, sharing the experience of watching an NBA game on the Vision Pro: When I started the broadcast [on Apple Vision Pro's immersive view of the Bucks vs. Lakers NBA game] I had, surprise surprise, a studio show, specially tailored for the Apple Vision Pro. In other words, there was a dedicated camera, a dedicated presenter, a dedicated graphics team, etc. There was even a dedicated announcing team! This all sounds expensive and special, and I think it was a total waste. Here's the thing that you don't seem to get, Apple: the entire reason why the Vision Pro is compelling is because it is not a 2D screen in my living room; it's an immersive experience I wear on my head. That means that all of the lessons of TV sports production are immaterial. In fact, it's worse than that: insisting on all of the trappings of a traditional sports broadcast has two big problems: first, because it is costly, it means that less content is available than might be otherwise. And second, it makes the experience significantly worse. [...] I have, as I noted, had the good fortune of sitting courtside at an NBA game, and this very much captured the experience. The biggest sensation you get by being close to the players is just how tall and fast and powerful they are, and you got that sensation with the Vision Pro; it was amazing. The problem, however, is that you would be sitting there watching Giannis or LeBron or Luka glide down the court, and suddenly you would be ripped out of the experience because the entirely unnecessary producer decided you should be looking through one of these baseline cameras under the hoop [...] Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Mercedes Temporarily Scraps Its Level 3 'Eyes-off' Driving Feature - Mercedes-Benz is pausing the roll-out of Drive Pilot, an "eyes off" conditionally automated driving feature that was available in Europe and the US. From a report: As first reported by German publication Handelsblatt, the revised S-Class will not have the Level 3 system when it arrives at the end of this month. Mercedes was one of the first automakers to offer a Level 3 driving system to its customers when it launched Drive Pilot with the electric EQS sedan and the gas-powered S-Class in the fall of 2023. At up to 40mph in traffic jam situations on highways, Drive Pilot provided hands-free, eyes-off driving that allows the driver to look away from the road at something else, like a game or a movie. It was big leap up from hands-free Level 2 systems -- Tesla's Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) included -- which still require the driver to be in full control, looking ahead and paying attention while the system is active. But now Mercedes says it is temporarily scrapping the feature, citing middling demand and the high production costs of developing the technology. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Verizon To Stop Automatic Unlocking of Phones as FCC Ends 60-Day Unlock Rule - The Federal Communications Commission is letting Verizon lock phones to its network for longer periods, eliminating a requirement to unlock handsets 60 days after they are activated on its network. From a report: The change will make it harder for people to switch from Verizon to other carriers. The FCC today granted Verizon's petition for a waiver of the 60-day unlocking requirement. While the waiver is in effect, Verizon only has to comply with the CTIA trade group's voluntary unlocking policy. The CTIA policy calls for unlocking prepaid mobile devices one year after activation, while devices on postpaid plans can be unlocked after a contract, device financing plan, or early termination fee is paid. Unlocking a phone allows it to be used on another carrier's network. While Verizon was previously required to unlock phones automatically after 60 days, the CTIA code says carriers only have to unlock phones "upon request" from consumers. The FCC said the Verizon waiver will remain in effect until the agency "decides on an appropriate industry-wide approach for the unlocking of handsets." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
America's Biggest Power Grid Operator Has an AI Problem - Too Many Data Centers - America's largest power-grid operator, PJM, which delivers electricity to 67 million people across a 13-state region from New Jersey to Kentucky, is approaching a supply crisis as AI data centers in Northern Virginia's "Data Center Alley" consume electricity at an unprecedented rate. The nonprofit expects demand to grow by 4.8% annually over the next decade. Mark Christie, former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said the reliability risk that was once "on the horizon" is now "across the street." Dominion Energy, the utility serving parts of Virginia, has received requests from data-center developers requiring more than 40 gigawatts of electricity -- roughly twice its Virginia network capacity at the end of 2024. Older power plants are going out of service faster than new ones can be built, and the grid could max out during periods of high demand, forcing rolling blackouts during heat waves or deep freezes. In November, efforts to establish new rules for data centers stalled when PJM, tech companies, power suppliers and utilities couldn't agree on a plan. Monitoring Analytics, the firm that oversees the market, warned that unless data centers bring their own power supply, "PJM will be in the position of allocating blackouts rather than ensuring reliability." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Anthropic Invests $1.5 Million in the Python Software Foundation and Open Source Security - Python Software Foundation: We are thrilled to announce that Anthropic has entered into a two-year partnership with the Python Software Foundation (PSF) to contribute a landmark total of $1.5 million to support the foundation's work, with an emphasis on Python ecosystem security. This investment will enable the PSF to make crucial security advances to CPython and the Python Package Index (PyPI) benefiting all users, and it will also sustain the foundation's core work supporting the Python language, ecosystem, and global community. Anthropic's funds will enable the PSF to make progress on our security roadmap, including work designed to protect millions of PyPI users from attempted supply-chain attacks. Planned projects include creating new tools for automated proactive review of all packages uploaded to PyPI, improving on the current process of reactive-only review. We intend to create a new dataset of known malware that will allow us to design these novel tools, relying on capability analysis. One of the advantages of this project is that we expect the outputs we develop to be transferable to all open source package repositories. As a result, this work has the potential to ultimately improve security across multiple open source ecosystems, starting with the Python ecosystem. Read more of this story at Slashdot.