Latest News
Last updated 23 Apr, 01:20 PM
BBC News
Health data of 500,000 people offered for sale online in China after UK Biobank breach - The government said medical data was affected but no personally identifiable information had been made available.
High Street mini-marts selling cocaine, cannabis and prescription drugs, BBC secret filming reveals - Across the UK, shopfronts are being exploited by criminal gangs pushing illegal drugs, experts say.
Lyse Doucet: In Tehran, money is short and a return to war looms over daily life - The BBC's Lyse Doucet reports from Iran, where the buzz of busy shopping streets masks deep uncertainty over the country's future.
Riot police to deploy on French beaches under new deal to stop illegal Channel migrant crossings - The three-year agreement will see at least 50 riot-trained police officers drafted in to tackle violence and “hostile crowds”.
Senior manager who worked at Lucy Letby's hospital arrested - The arrest was made as part of a wider investigation into leadership at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
The Register
AI now gobbling up power and management chips for servers - Bad news for multiple general server components as vendors switch to more lucrative gear The chip shortage is spreading to power and management controller silicon, threatening server shipments as vendors prioritize capacity for higher-margin AI server products.…
Medical data of 500k Biobank volunteers listed for sale on Alibaba, UK minister reveals - World's largest biomedical dataset lifted and shifted on Chinese mega marketplace Breaking Details of volunteers of UK-based Biobank, which describes itself as the custodian of the world's most comprehensive biomedical dataset, are for sale on Chinese ecommerce site Alibaba.…
Hybrid clouds have two attack surfaces and you’re not paying enough attention to either - Windows Admin Center flaws mean on-prem can attack cloud, and vice-versa Black Hat Asia Israeli researchers found a series of flaws in Microsoft's Windows Admin Center (WAC) and suggest this shows hybrid cloud management tools are a two-way attack surface that users don't spend enough time worrying about.…
Musk bets Tesla's AI future on Intel node that isn't finished yet - EV maker leaning on still-in-development 14A process for Terafab, says it needs to build own silicon Elon Musk used Tesla's latest earnings call to reveal plans to build AI chips on Intel's not-yet-finished 14A process – a bet on silicon that doesn't exist.…
AI bats away ping-pong challenge as rise of the machines continues - Sony project claims a significant breakthrough with applications in task requiring speed and accuracy Rise of the Machines The ancient games of chess and Go are now mere staging posts in the journey toward robots demonstrating their superior performance to humans - the machines can now beat us fleshbags at ping-pong.…
New Scientist - Home
How many dachshunds would it take to get to the moon? - Feedback, always on the hunt for absurd units of measurement, is delighted by recent attempts to convey the 406,771 kilometres that the Artemis II crew travelled from Earth
Can you slow ageing with your diet? A new book gives it a go - Discovering he is getting old before his time, David Cox tries to lower his biological age by changing his diet in a helpful new book, The Age Code, says Graham Lawton
98 per cent of meat and dairy sustainability pledges are greenwashing - The food industry has made big promises to reduce emissions and become more sustainable, but a review concludes that many of the pledges are not backed up by evidence
We need more radioactive drugs. Can we make them from nuclear waste? - The rise of a new generation of radiotherapies means we will soon need much greater quantities of radioactive atoms. That's why companies are scrambling to refine them from all manner of radioactive waste
Table tennis-playing robot on track to becoming world champion - A robot built by Sony AI is rapidly learning how to beat the world's very best table tennis players
Hacker News
Surveillance vendors caught abusing access to telcos to track people's locations - Comments
Show HN: Honker – Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN Semantics for SQLite - Comments
I am building a cloud - Comments
Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts - Comments
Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price - Comments
Slashdot
53 Nations Gather To Plan a Fossil Fuel Phaseout - Ancient Slashdot reader hwstar shares a report from The Conversation: For the first time ever, more than 50 nations will gather next week in Colombia to hash out how to wind down and end their dependence on coal, oil and gas. The history-making conference was planned before the Iran war. But this year's energy crisis has greatly raised the stakes. [...] Around 80% of the trapped oil was destined for the Asia-Pacific. Faced with dwindling supply, the region's governments are implementing emergency measures such as sending workers home, banning government travel, rationing fuel and cutting school hours. The problem is especially bad in the Pacific. Many island nations use diesel for power generation. In response, leaders declared a regional emergency. [...] But the real difference from half a century ago is that fossil fuel alternatives are ready for prime time. Since the 1970s, the price of solar panels has fallen 99.9%, while the cost of wind has fallen 91% since 1984. Battery prices have fallen 99% since 1991. [...] This year's oil shock shows signs of creating an unplanned social tipping point -- a threshold for self-propelling change beyond which systems shift from one state to another. Climate scientists warn of climate tipping points which amplify feedback and accelerate warming. But social scientists also point to positive tipping points -- collective action that rapidly accelerates climate action. [...] The routine burning of coal, oil and gas is the primary driver of the climate crisis. The world's highest court last year made clear nations have obligations to stop burning fossil fuels. But fossil fuels have barely been mentioned in 30 years of global climate negotiations, due in part to blocking efforts by big fossil fuel exporters and lobbyists. Frustrated by slow progress, a coalition of nations has bypassed global climate talks to discuss how to actually phase out fossil fuels. The first of these summits will take place next week. More than 50 nations will gather in Santa Marta, Colombia, to discuss a potential standalone treaty to manage fossil-fuel phaseout while protecting workers and financial systems. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Your Phone's Next Speed Boost May Come From Magnetic Chips - alternative_right writes: A new technology has been proposed that could fundamentally solve the issue of smartphones overheating during high-spec gaming or extended video streaming. Researchers at KAIST have discovered the principle of processing signals using the minute vibrations of magnets (spin waves) instead of electrons. This method significantly reduces heat generation and power consumption while enabling instantaneous frequency switching within the several GHz range. This breakthrough is expected to pave the way for smart devices with less heat and longer battery life, as well as ultra-low-power, high-speed computing. Professor Kab-Jin Kim from the Department of Physics said: "This study is a case that proves we can implement and control the nonlinear dynamics of magnons -- the principle of information processing using magnetic vibrations -- in actual nano-devices, which had previously only been proposed in theory. It will serve as an important foundation for the development of a new information processing paradigm using spin waves instead of electrons." The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Nearly Half of US Children Are Breathing Dangerous Levels of Air Pollution - An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Nearly half of children in the United States are breathing dangerous levels of air pollution, according to a new report, as experts warned Donald Trump's expansive rollback of protections will make the situation worse. The 27th annual air quality report from the American Lung Association (ALA) released on Wednesday evaluates pollution across the country by grading levels of ground-level ozone -- also known as smog -- as well as year-round and short-term spikes in particle pollution, commonly referred to as soot. The report analyzed quality-assured data collected between 2022 and 2024. It found that 33.5 million children in the US -- 46% of those under 18 -- live in areas that received a failing grade for at least one measure of air pollution. The report also found that 7 million children, or 10% of all children in the US, live in communities that failed all three measures. The report further found that communities of color are disproportionately exposed to unhealthy air. As a result, they are more likely to live with one or more chronic health conditions that make them more vulnerable to pollution, including asthma, diabetes, and heart disease. Although people of color make up 42.1% of the US population, they represent 54.2% of those living in counties with at least one failing grade, the report noted. It also found that a person of color is 2.42 times more likely than a white person to live in a community that fails all three pollution measures. Smog remains the most widespread pollutant affecting Americans' health. Between 2022 and 2024, 38% of the US population -- approximately 129.1 million people -- were exposed to ozone levels that put their health at risk. This marks the highest number recorded in the ALA's report in six years, and a 3.9 million increase from the previous year. Several factors contributed to these unhealthy pollution levels, including extreme heat, drought and wildfires which have exposed a growing share of the population to harmful ozone, the report said. The regions most affected by high ozone levels include south-western states from California to Texas, as well as much of the midwest. This is mainly driven by smoke from Canada's 2023 wildfires crossing into the US, along with high temperatures and weather patterns that favored ozone formation in 2023 and 2024 -- particularly in southern states. More broadly, the report found that climate change is intensifying ozone pollution by boosting precursor emissions and creating atmospheric conditions such as higher temperatures and lower wind speeds that allow pollutants to build up and ozone to form. Another growing source of pollution: datacenters. The report notes how they rely on regional electricity grids where fossil fuels like methane gas and coal still account for a large portion of generation. Many datacenters also use dozens of large diesel-powered backup generators, which emit carcinogenic particulate matter. "Children's lungs are still developing," said Will Barrett, assistant vice-president of the ALA's Nationwide Clean Air Policy. "For their body size, they're breathing more air. And also, kids play outdoors, they're more active, they're breathing in more outdoor air [...]. So, air pollution exposure in children can contribute to long-term developmental harm to their lungs, new cases of asthma, increased risks of respiratory illness and other health considerations later in life." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Billionaire Backer Sues Trump Family's Crypto Firm Over Alleged Extortion - Ancient Slashdot reader Alain Williams shares a report from the BBC: The Trump family's World Liberty crypto venture is being sued by one of its billionaire backers over allegations of extortion. Justin Sun has accused World Liberty of an "illegal scheme" to seize his WLFI tokens, a cryptocurrency issued by the company. Sun alleges the firm, co-founded by U.S. President Donald Trump and his son Eric Trump, has "frozen" all of his tokens and stripped him of his right to vote on governance issues. [...] Sun alleged that those running World Liberty, including another co-founder, Chase Herro, are using it as a "golden opportunity to leverage the Trump brand to profit through fraud." In his complaint, filed on Tuesday in a San Francisco federal court, Sun argues that initial promises to give token-holders the option to trade the currency in future "were false and misleading." While the tokens at large became tradeable, Sun said World Liberty has blocked him from being able to sell a single one, and is now threatening to "burn" his - deleting them entirely. WLFI said in a post on X: "Does anyone still believe @justinsuntron? Justin's favorite move is playing the victim while making baseless allegations to cover up his own misconduct. Same playbook, different target. WLFI isn't the first. We have the contracts. We have the evidence. We have the truth. See you in court pal." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Ping-Pong Robot Makes History By Beating Top-Level Human Players - Sony AI's autonomous table-tennis robot Ace has become the first robot to compete against top-level human players. Reuters reports: Ace, created by the Japanese company Sony's AI research division, is the first robot to attain expert-level performance in a competitive physical sport, one that requires rapid decisions and precision execution, the project's leader said. Ace did so by employing high-speed perception, AI-based control and a state-of-the-art robotic system. There have been various ping-pong-playing robots since 1983, but until now they were unable to rival highly skilled human competitors. Ace changed that with its performances against human elite-level and professional players in matches following the rules of the International Table Tennis Federation, the sport's governing body, and officiated by licensed umpires. The project's goal was not only to compete at table tennis but to develop insights into how robots can perceive, plan and act with human-like speed and precision in dynamic environments. In matches detailed in the study, Ace in April 2025 won three out of five versus elite players and lost two matches against professional players, the top skill level in the sport. Sony AI said that since then Ace beat professional players in December 2025 and last month. "The success of Ace, with its perception system and learning-based control algorithm, suggests that similar techniques could be applied to other areas requiring fast, real-time control and human interaction -- such as manufacturing and service robotics, as well as applications across sports, entertainment and safety-critical physical domains," said Peter Durr, director of Sony AI Zurich and leader for Sony AI's project Ace. The findings have been published in the journal Nature. Read more of this story at Slashdot.