Latest News
Last updated 13 Jan, 07:26 AM
BBC News
US weighs next move on Iran - and faces a complex calculation - As Iran's deadly crackdown on anti-government protests continue, the US president is considering how best to respond.
X could 'lose right to self regulate', says Starmer - It is currently illegal to share deepfakes, but the law against creating them has not yet come into force.
Mandelson makes personal apology for continuing Epstein friendship - The former ambassador apologises "unequivocally" for maintaining links with Epstein after 2008 conviction
BBC will aim to have Trump's $5bn defamation lawsuit thrown out - Court papers filed on Monday show the broadcaster will argue the Florida court lacks "personal jurisdiction" over the BBC.
'We were tricked': How one woman lures foreign men to fight on Russia's front line - Recruits tell the BBC an ex-teacher who operates on Telegram misled them, saying they could avoid combat.
The Register
Developer writes script to throw AI out of Windows - Satya Nadella's call to accept and embrace desktop brainboxes faces skepticism Software developers have created a PowerShell script to remove AI features from Windows.…
Lenovo has a hunch you’re about to try quitting VMware - Tweaks its hardware to run multiple private cloud stacks, and shift between them Lenovo has a hunch that some of you are about to shift to a different hypervisor and has created hardware to make the move easier.…
India demands crypto outfits geolocate customers, get a selfie to prove they’re real - Government is fed up with bad actors using digi-cash to fund dodgy deeds India’s government has updated the regulations it imposes on cryptocurrency services providers, as part of its efforts to combat fraud, money laundering, and terrorism.…
No fire sale for firewalls as memory shortages could push prices higher - In SEC filings, Fortinet and Palo Alto show shrinking product margins taking hold. PCs and datacenters aren't the only devices that need DRAM. The global memory shortage is roiling the cybersecurity market, with the cost of firewalls expected to balloon and hit both customers and vendors in the pocketbook in 2026, according to research analysts Wedbush.…
'Violence-as-a-service' suspect arrested in Iraq, extradition underway - Gang members 'systematically exploited children and young people,' cops say A 21-year-old Swedish man accused of being a key organizer of violence-as-a-service linked to the Foxtrot criminal network, which police say has recruited and exploited minors, has been arrested in Iraq.…
New Scientist - Home
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
Our elegant universe: rethinking nature’s deepest principle - For centuries, the principle of symmetry has guided physicists towards more fundamental truths, but now a slew of shocking findings suggest a far stranger idea from quantum theory could be a deeper driving force
Is there an evolutionary reason for same-sex sexual behaviour? - Sexual behaviour among same-sex pairs is common in apes and monkeys, and a wide-ranging analysis suggests it does boost survival
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
Hacker News
Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work - Comments
Text-Based Web Browsers - Comments
TimeCapsuleLLM: LLM trained only on data from 1800-1875 - Comments
The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf] - Comments
Postal Arbitrage - Comments
Slashdot
You Can Now Reserve a Hotel Room On the Moon For $250,000 - A newly founded startup called GRU Space is taking deposits of up to $1 million to eventually build inflatable hotels on the Moon. The bet is that space needs destinations, not just rockets, even if the first customers are essentially early adopters of sci-fi optimism. Ars Technica reports: It sounds crazy, doesn't it? After all, GRU Space had, as of late December when I spoke to founder Skyler Chan, a single full-time employee aside from himself. And Chan, in fact, only recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. [...] The GRU in the company's name, by the way, stands for Galactic Resource Utilization. The long-term vision is to derive resources from the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and beyond to fuel human expansion into space. If all that sounds audacious and unrealistic, well, it kind of is. But it is not without foundation. GRU Space has already received seed funding from Y Combinator, and it will go through the organization's three-month program early this year. This will help Chan refine his company's product and give him more options to raise money. Regarding his vision, you can read GRU Space's white paper here. Presently, the company plans to fly its initial "mission" in 2029 as a 10-kg payload on a commercial lunar lander, demonstrating an inflatable structure capability and converting lunar regolith into Moon bricks using geopolymers. With its second mission, the company plans to launch a larger inflatable structure into a "lunar pit" to test a scaled-up version of its resource development capabilities. The first hotel, an inflatable structure, would be launched in 2032 and would be capable of supporting up to four guests at a time. The next iteration beyond this would be the fancier structure, built from Moon bricks, in the style of the Palace of the Fine Arts. "SpaceX is building the FedEx to get us there, right?" Chan said. "But there has to be a destination worthy to stay in. Obviously, there is all kinds of debate around this, and what the future is going to be like. But our conviction is that the fundamental problem we have to solve, to advance humans toward the Moon and Mars, is off-world habitation. We can't keep everyone living on that first ship that sailed to North America, right? We have to build the roads and structures and offices that we live in today." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
EPA To Stop Considering Lives Saved By Limiting Air Pollution - An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency has calculated the health benefits of reducing air pollution, using the cost estimates of avoided asthma attacks and premature deaths to justify clean-air rules. Not anymore. Under President Trump, the E.P.A. plans to stop tallying gains from the health benefits caused by curbing two of the most widespread deadly air pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone, when regulating industry, according to internal agency emails and documents reviewed by The New York Times. It's a seismic shift that runs counter to the E.P.A.'s mission statement, which says the agency's core responsibility is to protect human health and the environment, environmental law experts said. The change could make it easier to repeal limits on these pollutants from coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and other industrial facilities across the country, the emails and documents show. That would most likely lower costs for companies while resulting in dirtier air. "The idea that E.P.A. would not consider the public health benefits of its regulations is anathema to the very mission of E.P.A.," said Richard Revesz, the faculty director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. "If you're only considering the costs to industry and you're ignoring the benefits, then you can't justify any regulations that protect public health, which is the very reason that E.P.A. was set up." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
European Firms Hit Hiring Brakes Over AI and Slowing Growth - European hiring momentum is cooling as slower growth and accelerating AI adoption make both employers and workers more cautious. DW.com reports: [Angelika Reich, leadership adviser at the executive recruitment firm Spencer Stuart] noted how Europe's labor market has "cooled down" and how "fewer job vacancies and a tougher economic climate naturally make employees more cautious about switching jobs." Despite remaining resilient, the 21-member eurozone's labor market is projected to grow more slowly this year, at 0.6% compared with 0.7% in 2025, according to the European Central Bank (ECB). Although that drop seems tiny, each 0.1 percentage point difference amounts to about 163,000 fewer new jobs being created. Just three years ago, the eurozone created some 2.76 million new jobs while growing at a robust rate of 1.7%. Migration has also played a major role in shaping Europe's labor supply, helping to ease acute worker shortages and support job growth in many countries. However, net migration is now stabilizing or falling. In Germany, more than one in three companies plans to cut jobs this year, according to the Cologne-based IW economic think tank. The Bank of France expects French unemployment to climb to 7.8%, while in the UK, two-thirds of economists questioned by The Times newspaper think unemployment could rise to as high as 5.5% from the current 5.1%. Unemployment in Poland, the European Union's growing economic powerhouse, is edging higher, reaching 5.6% in November compared to 5% a year earlier. Romania and the Czech Republic are also seeing similar upticks in joblessness. The softening of the labor market has prompted new terms like the Great Hesitation, where companies think twice about hiring and workers are cautious about quitting stressful jobs, and Career Cushioning, quietly preparing a backup plan in case of layoffs. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Viral Chinese App 'Are You Dead?' Checks On Those Who Live Alone - The viral Chinese app Are You Dead? (known as Sileme in Chinese) targets people who live alone by requiring regular check-ins and alerting an emergency contact if the user doesn't respond. It launched in May and is now the most downloaded paid app in China. Cybernews reports: Users need to check in with the app every two days by clicking a large button to confirm that they are alive. Otherwise, the app will inform the user's appointed emergency contact that they may be in trouble, Chinese state-run outlet Global Times reports. The app is marketed as a "safety companion" for those who live far from home or choose a solitary lifestyle. Initially launched as a free app, "eAre You Dead?" now costs 8 yuan, equivalent to $1.15. Despite its growing popularity, the app has sparked criticism in China, where some said they were repulsed by the negative connotation of death. Some suggested the app should be renamed to "Are You Alive?" The app's creators told Chinese media that they will focus on improving the product, such as adding SMS notification features or a messaging function. Moreover, they will consider the criticism over the app's name. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Even Linus Torvalds Is Vibe Coding Now - Linus Torvalds has started experimenting with vibe coding, using Google's Antigravity AI to generate parts of a small hobby project called AudioNoise. "In doing so, he has become the highest-profile programmer yet to adopt this rapidly spreading, and often mocked, AI-driven programming," writes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols. Fro the report: [I]t's a trivial program called AudioNoise -- a recent side project focused on digital audio effects and signal processing. He started it after building physical guitar pedals, GuitarPedal, to learn about audio circuits. He now gives them as gifts to kernel developers and, recently, to Bill Gates. While Torvalds hand-coded the C components, he turned to Antigravity for a Python-based audio sample visualizer. He openly acknowledges that he leans on online snippets when working in languages he knows less well. Who doesn't? [...] In the project's README file, Torvalds wrote that "the Python visualizer tool has been basically written by vibe-coding," describing how he "cut out the middle-man -- me -- and just used Google Antigravity to do the audio sample visualiser." The remark underlines that the AI-generated code met his expectations well enough that he did not feel the need to manually re-implement it. Further reading: Linus Torvalds Says Vibe Coding is Fine For Getting Started, 'Horrible Idea' For Maintenance Read more of this story at Slashdot.