Latest News
Last updated 01 Apr, 01:57 PM
BBC News
BBC knew about Scott Mills sexual offences investigation in 2017 - The corporation also says it is "doing more work to understand the detail of what was known by the BBC".
Weather looks favourable for Artemis launch despite cloud - Artemis II is close to launch - Simon King explains the critical importance of the weather to its success.
UK will seek closer ties with EU in light of Iran war, Starmer says - It comes as UK-US relations have been strained by the PM's refusal to be dragged further into the Iran war.
Estate agents accuse Rightmove of charging excessive fees - The online listing portal is now being pursued in a class action, launched on behalf of potentially hundreds of estate agents.
Multiple driverless cars come to a halt in Wuhan in 'system malfunction' - Baidu has not responded to a request for comment about the outage, which affected at least 100 cars.
The Register
France buys nuclear supercomputing spinoff Bull from Atos for €404M - Paris makes sovereignty play as it becomes sole shareholder The French government has finally closed a deal to purchase the Advanced Computing assets of tech giant Atos, leading to the re-emergence of an old industry name: Bull.…
Virgin Galactic reopens ticket sales with out-of-this-world price hikes - Flights to resume in 2026 before space tourism biz runs out of cash Virgin Galactic has reopened suborbital ticket sales with a price rise and a promise for commercial spaceflight operations in Q4 2026.…
One in seven Americans are ready for an AI boss, but they might not trust it - Poll finds 15% happy to take orders from a bot even as most question its output and fear job losses Around 15 percent of Americans would be willing to work for an AI boss, according to a new poll that suggests while robots are not exactly welcome in the corner office, the idea no longer seems quite so far-fetched.…
AI server farms heat up the neighborhood for miles around, paper finds - Researchers say localized warming can extend well past site edges, raising concerns about community impact Datacenters create heat islands that raise surrounding temperatures by several degrees at distances up to 10 km (over 6 miles), which could have an impact on surrounding communities.…
We know what day it is but these Raspberry Pi price hikes are no joke - Hot DRAM! Who is going to drop nearly $400 on an underpowered Linux computer? Raspberry Pi has introduced a 3 GB variant of the Pi 4 as soaring memory costs are passed on to customers.…
New Scientist - Home
The best new science-fiction books of April 2026 - A collection of stories set in George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards universe and a novel from The Expanse author James S. A. Corey are among the science-fiction books we’re looking forward to this month
A once-fantastical collider could answer physics’ biggest mysteries - The muon collider was once dismissed as impossible, but is now gaining steam as the successor to the Large Hadron Collider. If built, it could offer a new window to reality
New fibre optic record allows 50,000,000 movies to be streamed at once - Improved hardware can send ten times as much data through existing fibre optic cables, potentially providing a way to massively upgrade the internet's infrastructure without the cost and inconvenience of laying any new cables
Astronauts are ready to return to the moon on Artemis II mission - NASA’s Artemis II mission will be the first time humans have been around the moon in half a century, and its next launch window opens on 1 April
The Shroud of Turin bears DNA from many people, plants and animals - Researchers have identified genetic material from a vast range of organisms contaminating the shroud, said to have wrapped Jesus's body, further complicating the question of the cloth's true origin
Hacker News
Is BGP Safe Yet? No. Test Your ISP - Comments
Claude Code Unpacked : A visual guide - Comments
Show HN: Sycamore – next gen Rust web UI library using fine-grained reactivity - Comments
CERN levels up with new superconducting karts - Comments
Intuiting Pratt Parsing - Comments
Slashdot
Startup Pitches 'Brainless Clones' To Serve the Role of Backup Human Bodies - MIT Technology Review discovered that startup R3 Bio has pitched an ethically and scientifically explosive long-term vision beyond its public work on non-sentient monkey "organ sacks": creating human "brainless clones" or replacement bodies for organs as part of an extreme life-extension agenda. From the report: Imagine it like this: a baby version of yourself with only enough of a brain structure to be alive in case you ever need a new kidney or liver. Or, alternatively, he has speculated, you might one day get your brain placed into a younger clone. That could be a way to gain a second lifespan through a still hypothetical procedure known as a body transplant. The fuller context of R3's proposals, as well as activities of another stealth startup with related goals, have not previously been reported. They've been kept secret by a circle of extreme life-extension proponents who fear that their plans for immortality could be derailed by clickbait headlines and public backlash. And that's because the idea can sound like something straight from a creepy science fiction film. One person who heard R3's clone presentation, and spoke on the condition of anonymity, was left reeling by its implications and shaken by [R3 founder John Schloendorn's] enthusiastic delivery. The briefing, this person said, was like a "close encounter of the third kind" with "Dr. Strangelove." [...] MIT Technology Review found no evidence that R3 has cloned anyone, or even any animal bigger than a rodent. What we did find were documents, additional meeting agendas, and other sources outlining a technical road map for what R3 called "body replacement cloning" in a 2023 letter to supporters. That road map involved improvements to the cloning process and genetic wiring diagrams for how to create animals without complete brains. A main purpose of the fundraising, investors say, was to support efforts to try these techniques in monkeys from a base in the Caribbean. That offered a path to a nearer-term business plan for more ethical medical experiments and toxicology testing -- if the company could develop what it now calls monkey "organ sacks." However, this work would clearly inform any possible human version. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
SpaceX Starlink Satellite Suffers Mysterious 'Anomaly' In Orbit - A Starlink satellite broke apart in orbit after suffering an unexplained "anomaly," apparently due to an "internal energetic source" rather than a collision. "The incident appears to have created some debris, with fragments likely to fall to Earth over the next few weeks," reports Scientific American. From the report: The satellite lost communication at about 560 kilometers above Earth, Starlink said. While the statement from Starlink, which is a subsidiary of Musk's rocket company SpaceX, merely noted that investigations are ongoing, LeoLabs said its radar observations of the event indicated an "internal energetic source" as the likely cause rather than a collision. The incident underscores the potential hazards of the increasingly large numbers of satellites and other spacecraft in low-Earth orbit -- some 10,000 Starlinks are currently in orbit and counting. Starlink's statement said that "the event poses no new risk" to the International Space Station or to the upcoming launch of NASA's Artemis II mission, targeted for April 1. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Russia Goes After VPNs As 'Great Crackdown' Gathers Pace - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Russia is going to further clamp down Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), which are used by millions of Russians to get around internet controls and censorship, Russia's digital minister said. In what has been cast by diplomats as Russia's "great crackdown," the authorities have repeatedly blocked mobile internet and jammed major messenger services while giving sweeping powers to cut off mass communications. "The task is reduce VPN usage," Digital Minister Maksut Shadayev said on state-backed messenger MAX late on Monday, adding that his ministry was trying to impose the limits with minimal impact on users. He said decisions had been taken to restrict access to a number of unidentified foreign platforms without giving details. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Volvo Shifts Polestar 3 Production Entirely To the US - Polestar and Volvo are ending Polestar 3 production in Chengdu, China, and consolidating all output of the electric SUV at Volvo's plant in South Carolina. "The move to consolidate global Polestar 3 production in Charleston help[s] generate efficiencies for both companies, whilst also underscoring our confidence in the plant and the role it plays in our manufacturing footprint," said Hakan Samuelsson, chief executive of Volvo Cars. "The U.S. is a very important market for Volvo Cars, both to support our growth ambitions as well as a strategic production site to meet regional and export demands." Ars Technica reports: Volvo had a challenging 2025, with sales falling by 7 percent. Meanwhile, Polestar, which was spun out from the Swedish OEM's performance arm into a standalone startup in 2017, had a rather good 2025, seeing a 34 percent increase in sales. So increasing the proportion of Polestar 3s to come out of South Carolina seems sensible. And as we learned last September, the midsize electric Volvo EX60 will also go into production at the South Carolina site later this year, and then we'll see a still-unnamed hybrid Volvo in 2030. The two companies also announced today that Volvo agreed to extend part of a shareholder loan it made to Polestar and will convert the rest into Polestar shares. Polestar will still owe Volvo $661 million, due at the end of 2031, and another $274 million will become Polestar stock now, with a further $65 million in the second quarter of the year. Since December, Polestar has also raised $1 billion through three equity financing investments. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Oracle Cuts Thousands of Jobs Across Sales, Engineering, Security - bobthesungeek76036 shares a report from the Register: Oracle laid off thousands of employees on Tuesday as it ramps spending on AI infrastructure projects internally and with major technology partners. The layoffs were carried out via email, according to copies of the message viewed by Business Insider. The email told affected workers they would be terminated immediately and to provide a personal email for follow-up. The cuts echo a TD Cowen forecast earlier this year, when the investment bank questioned how Oracle would finance its expanding AI datacenter buildout and suggested headcount reductions could reach 20,000 to 30,000. It is not clear how many employees were notified on Tuesday, but one screenshot that purports to show the number of internal Slack users showed a drop of 10,000 overnight. [...] Oracle employs about 162,000 people, with 58,000 of those in the US and approximately 104,000 internationally. If the rumored cuts of 30,000 are correct, it would amount to 18 percent of the company's workforce. According to posts from Oracle workers on LinkedIn, the cuts were spread through multiple departments around the country, with employees in Kansas, Tennessee, and Texas taking to social media to say they were among those chopped. "This news didn't seem to affect stock price," adds bobthesungeek76036. "ORCL is up 6% for the day." Read more of this story at Slashdot.