Latest News
Last updated 01 May, 07:30 PM
BBC News
Polanski apologises for sharing post criticising officers who arrested Golders Green suspect - The Green leader was facing a growing backlash for appearing to back criticism of arresting officers.
Trump repeats that he is 'not happy' with Iran as deadline to seek approval for war looms - President Trump said on Friday that said a deal has been hard to reach in part because Iranian leadership was "very confused".
Golders Green stabbing suspect in court on three charges of attempted murder - Essa Suleiman, 45, is also accused of attempting to murder a third man on the same day in south London.
Woman charged over fatal Wimbledon school crash - Nuria Sajjad and Selena Lau died after a car crashed into the Study Preparatory School in July 2023.
Elon Musk's latest Tesla pay valued at $158bn - but he can't pocket it - Musk must meet a range of ambitious milestones at Tesla to justify the monster pay packet - so far he has not.
The Register
Mythos complicates the breakup, says Pentagon CTO, but Anthropic is still barred - Emil Michael says agencies are evaluating the cybersecurity model, not deploying it Pentagon CTO Emil Michael pushed back on reports of a thaw in the department’s relationship with Anthropic: The two are not getting back together, even as Mythos draws interest from government agencies.…
Artemis III aims for 'late 2027' for Earth orbit demonstration - SpaceX and Blue Origin will absolutely be ready in time. Definitely Amid the sensational NASA budget cut proposals taking place in the US at the moment, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has refined the Artemis III launch date to "late 2027."…
Where to buy a non-Apple, non-Google smartphone - Both Cupertino and Google are imposing ever stricter limits on their phones – but you have alternatives As both Apple and Google introduce unwelcome changes in their phone OSes, here's a quick reminder that you do have alternatives to the Gruesome Twosome.…
CIOs ready for another role-change as AI becomes agent of chaos - If software writes software the risk is “systematic failure at scale”. Someone needs to take charge, argues Forrester Forrester predicts that by decade's end, the rush toward agentic AI will grow so chaotic that CIOs will be forced into a new role as enforcer of order.…
That old phone in the kitchen drawer could save an industry - Users have less cash to burn and less patience for AI in new models... now where to get the used stock Secondhand phones sales are booming - relatively speaking - and the industry has rising inflation, AI bloat, and consumers' growing apathy toward overpriced new handsets to thank for it.…
New Scientist - Home
Why the keto diet could be a revolutionary way to treat mental illness - You may think of the high-fat, low-carb eating plan as a faddish way to lose weight. But the keto diet is now being used to tackle conditions from severe depression to bipolar disorder and anorexia, with transformative results
NHS England rushes to hide software over AI hacking fears - National Health Service rules state that all software created with public money should be publicly available, but fears of computer-hacking AI models like Mythos have prompted a change in policy
The 4 biggest myths about hydration, according to an expert - Should you really be drinking eight glasses of water a day? What about reaching for a sports drink after exercise? Physiologist Tamara Hew-Butler is here to bust these hydration myths and more.
Oak trees use delaying tactics to thwart hungry caterpillars - An infestation of caterpillars can make an oak tree postpone when it opens its leaves next year by three days, wrong-footing the insects when they attack again
Why I explore our inevitable love for robots in my novel Luminous - Silvia Park, author of the May read for the New Scientist Book Club, reveals how a book that was originally intended to be for children took a darker route following a death in the family
Hacker News
AI uses less water than the public thinks - Comments
Spotify adds 'Verified' badges to distinguish human artists from AI - Comments
Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2026) - Comments
New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming - Comments
whohas – Command-line utility for cross-distro, cross-repository package search - Comments
Slashdot
The Case Against an Imminent Software Developer Apocalypse - ZipNada shares a report from ZDNet: Given the dour headlines as of late concerning the diminishing amounts of entry-level software development jobs, coupled with predictions of applications entirely AI-generated, one could be forgiven for assuming that software developers may soon be an endangered species. However, the data tells a different story. James Bessen, professor at Boston University, has been pushing back for some time against the talk of AI and automation displacing jobs on a mass scale, and lately has been arguing that the roles of software developers are nowhere near extinction. AI is certainly not killing the software developer, Bessen said in a recent analysis (PDF). AI is taking over software development tasks and boosting productivity and output, but that is not translating into lost jobs, he argued. Instead, the types of software skills sought by companies are changing. "Surprisingly, however, after three years of AI use, software developer jobs have continued to grow robustly, reaching record levels of employment -- 2.5 million in February," Bessen said in the report, citing data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of software developers in the US has grown by over 400,000, or 19%, since ChatGPT was introduced in 2022. At that time, the employed software developer population was just under 2.1 million. [...] The productivity uptick developers are seeing may ultimately be a boost to their professional opportunities, however. "An important and possibly disruptive change is happening, but the common view misunderstands what is going on," Bessen pointed out in his report. "Careful case studies find that AI improves the productivity of software developers -- that is, the software produced per developer -- by 30%, 50%, or more. And the rate of productivity improvement in software development is improving." Tellingly, since 2022, when ChatGPT was introduced, developer productivity has increased noticeably, Bessen continued. "From 2003 to 2022, developer productivity grew at 3.9% per year; but from 2022 through 2025, it grew at 6% per year." [...] A coming flood of new software products, now more likely to be enhanced by AI, will continue to create jobs for developers, Bessen predicted. "Thus, mass unemployment of software developers seems unlikely to happen soon." This doesn't mean the job descriptions of developers or other computer occupations will remain static. AI is shifting and re-inventing these roles, Bessen added. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
GPT-5.5 Matches Heavily Hyped Mythos Preview In New Cybersecurity Tests - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last month, Anthropic made a big deal about the supposedly outsize cybersecurity threat represented by its Mythos Preview model, leading the company to restrict the initial release to "critical industry partners." But new research from the UK's AI Security Institute (AISI) suggests that OpenAI's GPT-5.5, which launched publicly last week, reached "a similar level of performance on our cyber evaluations" as Mythos Preview, which the group evaluated last month. Since 2023, the AISI has run a variety of frontier AI models through 95 different Capture the Flag challenges designed to test capabilities on cybersecurity tasks, such as reverse engineering, web exploitation, and cryptography. On the highest-level "Expert" tasks, GPT-5.5 passed an average of 71.4 percent, slightly higher than the 68.6 percent achieved by Mythos Preview (though within the margin of error). In one particularly difficult task that involved building a disassembler to decode a Rust binary, AISI notes that "GPT-5.5 solved the challenge in 10 minutes and 22 seconds with no human assistance at a cost of $1.73" in API calls. GPT-5.5 also matched Mythos Preview in its progress on "The Last Ones" (TLO), an AISI test range set up to simulate a 32-step data extraction attack on a corporate network. GPT-5.5 succeeded in 3 of 10 attempts on TLO, compared to 2 of 10 for Mythos Preview -- no previous model had ever succeeded at the test even once. But GPT-5.5 still fails at AISI's more difficult "Cooling Tower" simulation of an attempted disruption of the control software for a power plant, as every previously tested AI model also has. The new results for GPT-5.5 suggest that, when it comes to cybersecurity risk, Mythos Preview was likely not "a breakthrough specific to one model" but rather "a byproduct of more general improvements in long-horizon autonomy, reasoning, and coding," AISI writes. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Spotify Adds 'Verified' Badges To Distinguish Human Artists From AI - Spotify is adding "Verified by Spotify" badges to distinguish human artists from AI-generated personas, using signals like linked social accounts, consistent listener activity, merchandise, and concert dates. The BBC reports: The world's most-used music streaming service said the 'Verified by Spotify' text and green checkmark icon would appear next to artist names when they meet "defined standards demonstrating authenticity." This could include having linked social accounts on their artist profile, consistent listener activity or other "signals of a real artist behind the profile," the company said, such as merchandise or concert dates. In its blog post, Spotify said "more than 99%" of the artists listeners actively search for will be verified, representing "hundreds of thousands of artists." It said the process would prioritize acts with "important contributions to music culture and history", rather than "content farms," with the platform rolling out verification and badges over the coming weeks. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Hackers Are Actively Exploiting a Bug In cPanel, Used By Millions of Websites - Hackers are actively exploiting a critical cPanel and WHM vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-41940, that allows remote attackers to bypass the login screen and gain full administrative access to affected web servers. Major hosts including Namecheap, HostGator, and KnownHost have taken mitigation steps or patched systems, but cPanel is urging all customers and web hosts to update immediately because the software is widely used across millions of websites. TechCrunch reports: cPanel and WHM are two software suites used for managing web servers that host websites, manage emails, and handle important configurations and databases needed to maintain an internet domain. The two suites have deep-access to the servers that they manage, allowing a malicious hacker potentially unrestricted access to data managed by the affected software. Given the ubiquity of the cPanel and WHM software across the web hosting industry, hackers could compromise potentially large numbers of websites that haven't patched the bug. Canada's national cybersecurity agency said in an advisory that the bug could be exploited to compromise websites on shared hosting servers, such as large web hosting companies. The agency said that "exploitation is highly probable" and that immediate action from cPanel customers, or their web hosts, is necessary to prevent malicious access. [...] One web hosting company says it found evidence that hackers have been abusing the vulnerability for months before the attempts were discovered. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The California Government Is Coming For Your E-Bikes - An anonymous reader quotes a report from the San Francisco Standard: If state lawmakers have their way, you'll have to get a license plate for your e-bike, and if you're planning to buy one next year, it'll be slower. Amid growing concerns about e-bike safety, particularly among children in Bay Area suburbs, two bills introduced this year aim to make it easier to ticket riders and reduce the top speed of some models. AB 1942 would require certain e-bikes to be registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles and display license plates, and AB 1557 would slow e-bikes that children are allowed to operate. Both bills are still being reviewed in committee. If either bill passes this year, it will take effect Jan. 1. Read more of this story at Slashdot.