Latest News

Last updated 24 Apr, 07:21 AM

BBC News

Epstein housed victims in London flats after Met chose not to investigate him, BBC reveals - The revelations intensify concerns about repeated police decisions not to investigate 2015 trafficking claims.

Steve Rosenberg: Kremlin's tightening grip on internet fuels Russian discontent - Throughout Russia, internet usage has become seriously restricted. Citizens are drawing comparison to Soviet censorship and today's digital blackouts.

Stock markets are too high and set to fall, says Bank of England deputy - It is unusual for a senior figure at the Bank to be so forthright on market movements.

Ringo Starr: 'I made all my mistakes on stage' - Beatles star reveals all about his new country album, being a Sir and coming up with the phrase A Hard Day's Night.

Staff at UK's largest Pride event allege bullying and misconduct under sacked CEO - Christopher Joell-Deshields was fired from Pride in London following an investigation into his conduct.

The Register

To fix this Wi-Fi network, we'll need a crane - Won't somebody think of the children not being hit by a load of building materials? On Call Delivering excellent tech support can sometimes require heavy lifting, a feat The Register celebrates each Friday with a new instalment of On Call – the reader-contributed column that shares your stories of hoisting glitchy tech back to full function.…

Researchers find cyber-sabotage malware that may predate Stuxnet by five years - FAST16 could be the first cyberweapon, and its effects could be with us today Black Hat Asia Infosec outfit SentinelOne found malware that tries to induce errors in engineering and physics simulation software and therefore represents an attempt at sabotage, and suggests it was created years before the Stuxnet worm that aimed to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges.…

Weak security means attackers could disable all of a city's public EV chargers - Demonstrated in China, probably applicable elsewhere Black Hat Asia Developers of rented internet of things infrastructure – stuff like public EV chargers and shared e-bikes – are prioritizing user convenience over security, and leaving themselves exposed to wide-scale denial of service attacks on their services.…

Anthropic admits it dumbed down Claude when trying to make it smarter - System changes and bugs overlapped to create the impression of general decline Claude users who complained about the AI service producing lower-quality responses over the past month weren’t imagining it.…

Dev targeted by sophisticated job scam: 'I let my guard down, and ran the freaking code' - Legit-looking website, camera-on interviews, jokes about backdoors ... it worked EXCLUSIVE It all started with a LinkedIn message, as so many employment scams do these days.…

New Scientist - Home

Largest-ever octopus was great white shark of invertebrate predators - During the Cretaceous, 19-metre-long predatory octopuses swam the seas, and evidence from their fossilised remains suggest they may have been highly intelligent hunters

Do you need to worry about Mythos, Anthropic's computer-hacking AI? - A powerful AI kept from public access because of its ability to hack computers with impunity is making headlines around the world. But what is Mythos, does it really represent a risk and might it even be used to improve cybersecurity?

Exercise advice for long covid may be doing more harm than good - Exercise has been touted as a tool for managing and treating long covid, but much of the evidence has neglected one of its most debilitating symptoms: post-exertional malaise

Catching a cold can delay cancer from spreading to the lungs - Infecting mice with RSV, a common virus that causes cold-like symptoms, prevented breast cancer cells from reaching their lungs. This was due to the release of proteins that stop viruses from replicating in the lungs also making it harder for cancer cells to seed new tumours

Huge study reveals how Epstein-Barr virus may cause multiple sclerosis - The Epstein-Barr virus seems to affect gene expression and cell signalling in a way that causes the autoimmune condition multiple sclerosis

Hacker News

DeepSeek v4 - Comments

Why I Write (1946) - Comments

An update on recent Claude Code quality reports - Comments

GPT-5.5 - Comments

Bitwarden CLI compromised in ongoing Checkmarx supply chain campaign - Comments

Slashdot

FCC's Foreign-Made Router Ban Expands To Portable Wi-Fi Hotspot Devices - The FCC has expanded its foreign-made router ban to also cover consumer Wi-Fi hotspots and LTE/5G home-internet devices, though existing products and phones with hotspot features are not affected. PCMag reports: On Wednesday, the FCC updated its FAQ on the ban, clarifying which consumer-grade routers are subject to the restrictions. Portable Wi-Fi hotspots are usually considered a separate category from Wi-Fi home routers. Both offer internet access, but portable Wi-Fi hotspots use a SIM card to connect to a cellular network rather than an Ethernet cable inside a residence. However, the FCC's FAQ now specifies that "consumer-grade portable or mobile MiFi Wi-Fi or hotspot devices for residential use" are covered under the ban. The ban also affects "LTE/5G CPE devices for residential use," which are installed for fixed wireless access and use a carrier's cellular network to deliver home internet. The FCC didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about the changes. In the meantime, the FAQ reiterates that the foreign-made router ban only applies to consumer-grade devices, not enterprise products. The document also notes that mobile phones with hotspot features remain outside the restrictions. In addition, the ban only affects new router models that vendors plan to sell, not existing models, as T-Mobile emphasized to PCMag. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Gas-Powered Data Centers Could Emit More Greenhouse Gases Than Entire Nations - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: New gas projects linked to just 11 data center campuses around the US have the potential to create more greenhouse gases than the country of Morocco emitted in 2024. Emissions estimates from air permit documents examined by WIRED show that these natural gas projects -- which are being built to power data centers to serve some of the US's most powerful AI companies, including OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and xAI -- have the potential to emit more than 129 million tons of greenhouse gases per year. As tech companies race to secure massive power deals to build out hundreds of data centers across the country, these projects represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential climate cost of the AI boom. The infrastructure on this list of large natural gas projects reviewed by WIRED is being developed to largely bypass the grid and provide power solely for data centers, a trend known as behind-the-meter power. As data center developers face long waits for connections to traditional utilities, and amid mounting public resistance to the possibility of higher energy bills, making their own power is becoming an increasingly popular option. These projects have either been announced or are under construction, with companies already submitting air permit application materials with state agencies. [...] The emissions projections for the xAI and Microsoft projects, and all the others on WIRED's list, were pulled directly from publicly-available air permit documents in state databases as well as public air permit materials collected by both Cleanview and Oil and Gas Watch, a database maintained by the Environmental Integrity Project, an environmental enforcement nonprofit. Actual greenhouse gas emissions from power plants are usually lower than what's on their air permits. Air permit modeling is based on the scenario of a power plant constantly running at full capacity. That's rarely the reality for grid-connected power plants, as turbines go offline for maintenance or adjust to the ebbs and flows of customer demand. "Permitted emission numbers represent a theoretical, conservative scenario, not the actual projected emissions," Alex Schott, the director of communications at Williams Companies, an oil and gas company that is building out three behind-the-meter power plants in Ohio for Meta, told WIRED in an email. Internal modeling done by the company, Schott added, shows that actual emissions could be "potentially two-thirds less than what's on paper." The projections involved, however, are still substantial. Even if the actual emissions from these power plants end up being half of the emissions numbers on the permits, they still could create more greenhouse gas emissions than the country of Norway emitted in 2024. This number is, according to the EPA, equivalent to the emissions from more than 153 average-sized natural gas plants. (WIRED's analysis does not include emissions from backup generators and turbines on the data center campuses themselves, which create smaller amounts of emissions.) Energy researcher Jon Koomey says the data center boom has created a shortage of the most efficient gas turbines, pushing some developers toward less efficient models that would need to run longer and produce more emissions. "[Data center operators'] belief is that the value being delivered by the servers is much, much more than the cost of running these inefficient power plants all the time," he said. Michael Thomas, the founder of clean energy research firm Cleanview, has been tracking gas permits for data centers across the country. He calls behind-the-meter power "a crazy acceleration of emissions." He added: "It's almost like we thought we were on the downside of the Industrial Revolution, retiring coal and gas, and now we have a new hump where we're going to rise. That terrifies me in a lot of ways." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple Stops Weirdly Storing Data That Let Cops Spy On Signal Chats - Apple has fixed a bug that could cause parts of Signal notifications to remain stored on iPhones even after messages disappeared and the app was deleted. "Affected users concerned about push notifications can update their devices to stop what Apple characterized as 'notifications marked for deletion' that 'could be unexpectedly retained on the device,'" reports Ars Technica. "According to Apple, the push notifications should never have been stored, but a 'logging issue' failed to redact data." From the report: Vulnerable users hoping to evade law enforcement surveillance often use encrypted apps like Signal to communicate sensitive information. That's why users felt blindsided when 404 Media reported that Apple was unexpectedly storing push notifications displaying parts of encrypted messages for up to a month. This occurred even after the message was set to disappear and the app itself was deleted from the device. 404 Media flagged the issue after speaking to multiple people who attended a hearing where the FBI testified that it "was able to forensically extract copies of incoming Signal messages from a defendant's iPhone, even after the app was deleted, because copies of the content were saved in the device's push notification database." The shocking revelation came in a case that 404 Media noted was "the first time authorities charged people for alleged 'Antifa' activities after President Trump designated the umbrella term a terrorist organization." "We're grateful to Apple for the quick action here, and for understanding and acting on the stakes of this kind of issue," Signal's post said. "It takes an ecosystem to preserve the fundamental human right to private communication." In their post, Signal confirmed that after users update their devices, "no action is needed for this fix to protect Signal users on iOS. Once you install the patch, all inadvertently-preserved notifications will be deleted and no forthcoming notifications will be preserved for deleted applications." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Warner Bros Shareholders Approve Paramount's $81 Billion Takeover - Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders have approved Paramount Skydance's takeover bid, moving the massive Hollywood merger a step closer to completion. It's not a done deal quite yet, though, as it still faces regulatory scrutiny and fierce opposition from critics who warn it will further concentrate media power. The Associated Press reports: Per a preliminary vote count Thursday, Warner Bros. Discovery said the overwhelming majority of its stakeholders voted in support of selling the entire business to Skydance-owned Paramount for $31 a share. Including debt, the deal is valued at nearly $111 billion based on Warner's current outstanding shares. That means Warner-owned HBO Max, cult-favorite titles like "Harry Potter" and even CNN could soon find themselves under the same roof with Paramount's CBS, "Top Gun" and the Paramount+ streaming service. David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, said in a statement that stockholder approval marks "another key milestone toward completing this historic transaction." Paramount added that it looks forward to closing in the coming months, and "realizing the creation of a next-generation media and entertainment company." [...] Meanwhile, Warner shareholders rejected a separate measure Thursday outlining post-merger payments for company executives. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI Says Its New GPT-5.5 Model Is More Efficient and Better At Coding - OpenAI released its new GPT-5.5 model today, which the company calls its "smartest and most intuitive to use model yet, and the next step toward a new way of getting work done on a computer." The Verge reports: OpenAI just released GPT-5.4 last month, but says that the new GPT-5.5 "excels" at tasks like writing and debugging code, doing research online, making spreadsheets and documents, and doing that work across different tools. "Instead of carefully managing every step, you can give GPT-5.5 a messy, multi-part task and trust it to plan, use tools, check its work, navigate through ambiguity, and keep going," according to OpenAI. The company also notes that GPT-5.5 will have its "strongest set of safeguards to date" and can use "significantly fewer" tokens to complete tasks in Codex. GPT-5.5 is rolling out on Thursday for Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise ChatGPT tiers and Codex, with GPT-5.5 Pro coming to Pro, Business, and Enterprise users. Read more of this story at Slashdot.