Latest News
Last updated 10 May, 01:41 AM
BBC News
Challenge Starmer by Monday or I will, Labour MP tells cabinet - Catherine West tells the BBC if a leadership hopeful does not put themselves forward she will try to trigger a contest.
Is Starmer's leadership under serious threat? - Downing Street is trying to ignore the challenge from a former minister, but it has raised eyebrows around Westminster.
How Reform won votes from Swansea to Sunderland - Many voters have turned to Reform UK with devastating consequences for the main two parties, Labour and the Conservatives.
Britons on virus-hit cruise ship to isolate at hospital after being flown to UK - The MV Hondius is expected to dock in the Canary Islands this weekend.
Steve Rosenberg: This year's Victory Day parade in Moscow felt very different - The BBC's Russia editor reports from a Red Square with none of the military hardware which the Kremlin normally showcases to project power internationally.
www.theregister.com - Articles
Google tweaks Chrome AI privacy wording, insists processing stays on-device - Deletion of a longstanding privacy assurance sparks concerns
macOS 27 threatens to bury Time Capsule, FOSS brings a shovel - Apple's old backup boxes only speak AFP and SMB1, but NetBSD under the hood gives them one last shot
London’s BT Tower to get rooftop swimming pool - Imagine taking a dip 177m above the streets of London’s West End
UK wants fresh fingerprints on £300M biometrics platform - Home Office probes supplier interest as core police and immigration system heads for support shake-up
Akamai surges on big LLM deal as Cloudflare dims - Good times, bad times
New Scientist - Home
The 50-year quest to create a quantum spin liquid may finally be over - Creating quantum entanglement inside a solid material is tricky in the lab – but crystals buried in the earth could be growing it naturally. Now one scientist says he has proof he’s found them
There has been a sudden increase in the rate of sea level rise - Satellite measurements show that in the early 2010s sea level rise suddenly accelerated to a rate of 4.1 millimetres per year, possibly in response to an increase in the rate of global warming
A vast dam across the Bering Strait could stop the AMOC collapsing - If a key ocean current collapses it could plunge northern Europe into a big freeze. Now researchers are weighing up a drastic intervention – building a 130-kilometre-wide dam between the US and Russia
A lost ancient script reveals how writing as we know it really began - A long-overlooked writing system from 5000 years ago is still largely undeciphered, but could mark the moment humans first represented their speech with written words
Neanderthal 'kneeprint' found next to mysterious stalagmite circle - An impression made in clay around 175,000 years ago could be a kneeprint left by one of the builders of a strange stalagmite circle found deep inside Bruniquel cave in south-west France
Hacker News
Bun's experimental Rust rewrite hits 99.8% test compatibility on Linux x64 glibc - Comments
Rust but Lisp - Comments
Internet Archive Switzerland - Comments
The Serial TTL connector we deserve - Comments
I’ve banned query strings - Comments
Slashdot
Open Source Registries Join Linux Foundation Working Group to Address Machine-Generated Traffic - Under the nonprofit Linux Foundation, "a new Sustaining Package Registries Working Group will seek to identify concrete funding, governance, and security practices," reports ZDNet, "to keep code flowing as download counts grow.... Because software builds, continuous integration pipelines, and AI systems hammer registries at machine speed rather than human speed, the sites can't keep up. "That growth has brought a surge in bot traffic, automated publishing, security reports, and outright abuse, exposing what the working group bluntly calls a 'sustainability gap'." Sonatype CTO Brian Fox, who oversees the Maven Central Java registry, estimates open-source registries saw 10 trillion downloads in 2025. And "The same pattern is appearing across ecosystems. More machine traffic. More automation. More scanning. More expectations around uptime, integrity, provenance, and policy enforcement. More cost. More support burden. More dependency on infrastructure that the industry still talks about as though it runs on goodwill and spare time." ZDNet reports that "To tackle that, Sonatype has teamed up with the Linux Foundation and other package registry leaders, including Alpha-Omega, Eclipse Foundation (OpenVSX), OpenJS Foundation, OpenSSF, Packagist, Python Software Foundation, Ruby Central (RubyGems), and the Rust Foundation (Crates)." The idea is to give operators a neutral forum to discuss money, governance, and shared operational burdens openly. Once that's dealt with, they'll coordinate how to explain those realities back to companies and organizations that have long assumed registries are "free." No, they're not. They never were. As the Linux Foundation pointed out, "Registries today run primarily on two things: (1) infrastructure donations and credits; and (2) heroic efforts from small paid teams (themselves funded by donations and grants) and unpaid volunteers that operate and maintain registry services. The bulk of donations and grants comes from a small set of donors and doesn't scale with demands on the registry." The working group is explicitly positioned as a venue where registry leaders and ecosystem stakeholders can align on "practical, community-minded" ways to sustain that infrastructure, rather than each operator improvising its own survival plan in isolation. ZDNet says the group will also coordinate security practices and information, and craft frameworks "that make it politically and legally possible to introduce sustainable funding models without fracturing communities." And they will also "align messaging and educational content so developers, companies, and policymakers finally understand what it costs to run these services." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Will Maryland's Utility Bills Increase $1.6B to Support Other States' Datacenters? - To upgrade its grid for data centers, PJM Interconnection (which serves 13 states) plans to spend $22 billion — and charge nearly $2 billion of that to customers in Maryland, argues Maryland's Office of People's Counsel. The money "will be recovered in rates for decades" and "drive up Maryland customer bills by $1.6 billion over the next ten years alone," they said Friday, announcing an official complaint filed with America's Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Extra demand is expected from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois "where demands driven by data centers are projected to grow substantially by 2036," they explain. But that means that Maryland customers "are subsidizing data center-driven transmission buildout by virtue of geographic proximity..." Tom's Hardware explains: That means an extra $823 million for residential (approx. $345 per customer), $146 million for commercial (approx. $673 per customer), and $629 million for industrial customers (approx. $15,074 per customer)... "Maryland customers have neither caused the need for these billions in new transmission projects nor will they meaningfully benefit from them," [according to Maryland People's Counsel David S. Lapp].... This is one of the biggest reasons why many AI hyperscalers are facing pushback from the communities where they intend to place their data centers. At the moment, around 69 jurisdictions have passed some sort of moratorium on projects like these, and a survey has shown that nearly half of Americans do not want a data center in their neighborhood. Debates around these projects are passionate, with a few cases turning violent and even resulting in shootings (thankfully, without any casualties), especially as many feel that the construction of these power-hungry assets is threatening their lifestyles and quality of life. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader noshellswill for sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Rush Rescue Mission for NASA's $500M Space Telescope Passes Key Milestone - NASA's $500 million Neil Gehrels Swift space observatory was launched in 2004. But it's now "at risk of falling back through the atmosphere and burning up without intervention," reports Spaceflight Now. Fortunately, a mission to prevent that "just passed a notable prelaunch testing milestone." On Friday, NASA announced that the Link spacecraft, manufactured by Katalyst Space Technologies to intervene before Swift's fate is sealed, completed its slate of environmental testing at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland... "Swift will likely re-enter the atmosphere sometime later this year if we don't attempt to lift it to a higher altitude, [said John Van Eepoel, Swift's mission director at NASA Goddard, in a NASA press release]. "Katalyst has gotten to this point in just eight months, and we're glad they were able to use NASA's facilities to test Link and draw on our expertise to help tackle questions that popped up along the way...." "Given how quickly Swift's orbit is decaying, we are in a race against the clock, but by leveraging commercial technologies that are already in development, we are meeting this challenge head-on," said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director, Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters, at the time... Attempting an orbit boost is both more affordable than replacing Swift's capabilities with a new mission, and beneficial to the nation — expanding the use of satellite servicing to a new and broader class of spacecraft...." Swift is in an orbit inclined 20.6 degrees from the equator, which is why Katalyst selected Northrop Grumman's Pegasus XL air-launched rocket in November to fly the mission. "The versatility offered by Pegasus' unique air-launch capability provides customers with a space launch solution that can be rapidly deployed anywhere on Earth to reach any orbit," said Kurt Eberly, Director of Space Launch for Northrop Grumman. The mission is set to launch in June. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Trump Phone Either Is Or Isn't Closer To Delivery - September 2025? January 2026? Delivery dates keep slipping for the Trump Organization's "Trump Phone" — a gold-coloured Android smartphone priced at $499 (£370). But in March the Verge spotted signs the phone was moving forward: FCC listings for a smartphone with the trade name "T1" show that it was tested late last year, and granted certification by the FCC in January... [T]he phone was submitted for testing by another company entirely: Smart Gadgets Global, LLC... Smart Gadgets Global's website promises "Top Quality Electronics created for 'YOUR' customer!" But in April the Trump phone revised its "Terms and Conditions" for preorders. The new language? A preorder deposit provides only a conditional opportunity if Trump Mobile later elects, in its sole discretion, to offer the Device for sale. A deposit is not a purchase, does not constitute acceptance of an order, does not create a contract for sale, does not transfer ownership or title interest, does not allocate or reserve specific inventory, and does not guarantee that a Device will be produced or made available for purchase.... Estimated ship dates, launch timelines, or anticipated production schedule are non-binding estimates only. Trump Mobile does not guarantee that: the Device will be commercially released... Trump Mobile will not be responsible for delay, modification, or failure to release a Device due to causes beyond its reasonable control, including but not limited to regulatory review, carrier certification delays, component shortages, labor disruptions, governmental orders, acts of God, transportation interruptions, or third-party supplier failures... If Trump Mobile cancels or discontinues the Device offering prior to sale, Trump Mobile will issue a full refund of the deposit amount paid... If Trump Mobile cancels, delays, or does not release the Device, your sole and exclusive remedy is a full refund of the deposit amount actually paid, and you waive any claim for equitable, injunctive, or specific performance relief relating to preorder priority or Device allocation. There was an unconfirmed report on social media that the updated Terms were also emailed to customers (cited by the International Business Times). And the new language also hedges that for the gold T1 phone, "Images, prototypes, beta demonstrations, and marketing renderings are illustrative only and may not reflect final production units...." But then eight days ago The Verge reported that phone "has just passed another milestone on its slow road to release," described as "a requirement for any phone launching in the US..." "The phone has received the little-known PTCRB certification, a first step toward being certified to work on major networks and be issued with IMEI numbers." [A]t least, I think it's been certified. What's actually been certified by the PTCRB is the SGG-06, a smartphone from Smart Gadgets Global, LLC, with support for 5G, 4G, 3G, and 2G networks. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Plant Seeds Do Something Incredible When the Sound of Rain Strikes - "Plant seeds can sense the vibrations generated by falling raindrops," reports ScienceAlert, "and respond by waking from their state of dormancy to welcome the water, new research shows.... to germinate in 'anticipation' of the coming deluge." The finding, discovered by MIT mechanical engineers Nicholas Makris and Cadine Navarro, offers the first direct evidence that seeds and seedlings can sense and respond to sounds in nature... "The energy of the rain sound is enough to accelerate a seed's growth," [explains Markis]. Plants don't have the same aural equipment we do to actually hear sounds, of course. But the study suggests that seeds respond to the same vibrations that can produce a sound experience in our human ears. Across a series of experiments, the researchers submerged nearly 8,000 rice seeds in shallow tubs of water, at a depth of around 3 centimeters (1 inch), and exposed some of them to falling water drops over periods of six days... A hydrophone recorded the acoustic vibrations produced by the drops, confirming that the experiment mimicked the vibrations produced by actual raindrops falling in nature — such as the driving downpours that can sometimes pelt Massachusetts' puddles, ponds, and wetlands... In their study, the researchers observed that seeds exposed to the falling drops germinated up to around 37% faster, compared with seeds that did not receive the simulated rainstorm treatment but were housed in otherwise identical conditions. More information in Scientific American and Scientific Reports. Read more of this story at Slashdot.