Latest News
Last updated 31 Jan, 07:49 AM
BBC News
Takeaways from the millions of newly released Epstein files - Three million new documents include hundreds of mentions of Trump and emails between Epstein and a person called "The Duke".
Epstein invited 'The Duke' to meet Russian woman - The exchange emerges in the latest, wider batch of documents released by the US justice department.
US government partially shuts down despite last minute funding deal - The soonest the US House of Representatives can vote on the funding deal and end the shutdown is Monday.
I mocked the Saudi leader on YouTube - then my phone was hacked and I was beaten up in London - Satirist Ghanem al-Masarir has been awarded £3m in damages, but it's unclear if Saudi Arabia will pay.
'I spoke to ChatGPT 8 times a day' - Gen Z's loneliness 'crisis' - AI chatbots are being used as 'surrogate friends' by young people who have lost the ability to socialise.
The Register
January blues return as Ivanti coughs up exploited EPMM zero-days - Consider yourselves compromised, experts warn Ivanti has patched two critical zero-day vulnerabilities in its Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) product that are already being exploited, continuing a grim run of January security incidents for enterprise IT vendors.…
'Hey! I’m chatting here!’ Fugazi answers doom NYC’s AI bot - Lying means dying Lying means dying, at least for one falsehood-peddling government AI. A Microsoft-powered chatbot that New York City rolled out to help business owners answer frequently asked questions – but was often wrong – has been silenced as the city grapples with a $12 billion budget shortfall.…
Ex-Googler nailed for stealing AI secrets for Chinese startups - Network access from China and side hustle as AI upstart CEO aroused suspicion A former Google software engineer has been convicted of stealing AI hardware secrets from the company for the benefit of two China-based firms, one of which he founded. The second startup intended to use these secrets to market its technology to PRC-controlled organizations.…
Thousands more Oregon residents learn their health data was stolen in TriZetto breach - Parent company Cognizant hit with multiple lawsuits Thousands more Oregonians will soon receive data breach letters in the continued fallout from the TriZetto data breach, in which someone hacked the insurance verification provider and gained access to its healthcare provider customers across multiple US states.…
Feeling taxed by layoffs, IRS turns to AI helpers - Fewer humans, more bots - just in time for filing season Tax season 2026 could be an interesting one as the IRS seeks to replace the staff it sent to the unemployment line with AI. Bots could handle tasks ranging from reviewing an org's request for tax-exempt status to processing amended individual filings.…
New Scientist - Home
The daring idea that time is an illusion and how we could prove it - The way time ticks forward in our universe has long stumped physicists. Now, a new set of tools from entangled atoms to black holes promises to reveal time’s true nature
Can we genetically improve humans using George Church’s famous list? - Columnist Michael Le Page delves into a catalogue of hundreds of potentially beneficial gene mutations and variants that is popular with transhumanists
Why people can have Alzheimer's-related brain damage but no symptoms - Some people don’t develop dementia despite showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease in their brain, and we're starting to understand why
Elon Musk is making a big bet on his future vision – will it work? - Reports suggest that Elon Musk is eyeing up a merger involving SpaceX, Tesla and xAI, but what does he hope to achieve by consolidating his business empire?
Yawning has an unexpected influence on the fluid inside your brain - Yawning and deep breathing each have different effects on the movement of fluids in the brain, and each of us may have a distinct yawning "signature"
Hacker News
Antirender: remove the glossy shine on architectural renderings - Comments
Show HN: I trained a 9M speech model to fix my Mandarin tones - Comments
Show HN: Phage Explorer - Comments
Ashcan Comic - Comments
A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived - Comments
Slashdot
'Reverse Solar Panel' Generates Electricity at Night - Researchers at the University of New South Wales are developing a "reverse solar panel" that generates small amounts of electricity at night by harvesting infrared heat radiated from Earth. "In the past, scientists have demonstrated that a 'thermoradiative diode' can convert infrared radiation directly into electricity; when used to convert heat from Earth, they exploit the temperature difference between Earth and the night sky, generating a current directly from heat," notes ExtremeTech. "This approach completely eliminates the need for heat to generate steam, though the resulting capacity is fairly low." From the report: The researchers estimate they could generate only about a watt per square meter, which isn't much. One reason for the low output is that the Earth's atmosphere lessens the heat differential that drives the generative process; in space, though, that's not an issue. Now, researchers believe that the ability to generate power in the moments between direct sunlight could help power satellites. That could be especially true in deep space, where periods without sunlight can be longer, and sunlight is often weaker; in these situations, losing electricity to heat loss is unacceptable. Many satellites already use heat to generate electricity, though with a much more rarified "thermoelectric generator" that uses rare, expensive materials like plutonium to create heat. With thermoradiative diodes, the heat source can be the Sun-warmed body of the satellite itself. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
UK's First Rapid-Charging Battery Train Ready For Boarding - An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The UK's first superfast-charging train running only on battery power will come into passenger service this weekend -- operating a five-mile return route in west London. Great Western Railway (GWR) will send the converted London Underground train out from 5.30am to cover the full Saturday timetable on the West Ealing to Greenford branch line, four stops and 12 minutes each way, and now carrying up to 273 passengers, should its celebrity stoke up the demand. The battery will recharge in just three and a half minutes back at West Ealing station between trips, using a 2,000kW charger connected to a few meters of rail that only becomes live when the train stops directly overhead. There are hopes within government and industry that this technology could one day replace diesel trains on routes that have proved difficult or expensive to electrify with overhead wires, as the decarbonization of rail continues. The train has proved itself capable of going more than 200 miles on a single charge -- last year setting a world record for the farthest travelled by a battery-electric train, smashing a German record set in 2021. The GWR train and the fast-charge technology has been trialled on the 2.5-mile line since early 2024, but has not yet carried paying passengers. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple Reports Best-Ever Quarter For iPhone Sales - Apple posted its biggest quarter ever, with iPhone revenue hitting a record ~$85.3 billion and Services climbing 14% to ~$30 billion. Total revenue reached nearly $143.76 billion. "The demand for iPhone was simply staggering," CEO Tim Cook said on a conference call discussing the results. "This is the strongest iPhone lineup we've ever had and by far the most popular." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Belkin's Wemo Smart Devices Will Go Offline On Saturday - Belkin is shutting down cloud support for most Wemo smart home devices on January 31, leaving only Thread-based models and devices already set up in Apple HomeKit functional. Everything else will lose remote access, voice assistant integrations, and future app updates. The Verge reports: The shut down was first announced in July and impacts most Wemo devices, ranging from smart plugs to a coffee maker, with the exception of a handful of Thread-based devices: the 3-way smart light switch (WLS0503), stage smart scene controller (WSC010), smart plug with Thread (WSP100), and smart video doorbell camera (WDC010). Wemo devices configured through Apple's HomeKit will also continue to work, but you have to set them up in HomeKit before January 31st if you want to use that option. Other affected devices will only work manually after Saturday. If your Wemo device is still under warranty, you may be able to get a partial refund for it after cloud services shut down. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
GNU gettext Reaches Version 1.0 After 30 Years - After more than 30 years of development, GNU gettext finally "crossed the symbolic 'v1.0' milestone," according to Phoronix's Michael Larabel. "GNU gettext 1.0 brings PO file handling improvements, a new 'po-fetch' program to fetch translated PO files from a translation project's site on the Internet, new 'msgpre' and 'spit' pre-translation programs, and Ocaml and Rust programming language improvements." From the report: With this v1.0 release in 2026, the "msgpre" and "spit" programs do involve.... Large Language Models (LLMs) in the era of AI: "Two new programs, 'msgpre' and 'spit', are provided, that implement machine translation through a locally installed Large Language Model (LLM). 'msgpre' applies to an entire PO file, 'spit' to a single message." And when dealing with LLMs, added documentation warns users to look out for the licensing of the LLM in the spirit of free software. More details on the GNU gettext 1.0 changes via the NEWS file. GNU gettext 1.0 can be downloaded from GNU.org. Read more of this story at Slashdot.