Latest News

Last updated 18 Feb, 11:10 PM

BBC News

Do not give away Diego Garcia, Trump tells UK in fresh attack on Chagos deal - The president's comments come just a day after the US gave its official backing to the UK's Chagos deal.

Teenage girls lured into forced sex by gangs in London, BBC finds - Our investigation reveals gangs from a range of ethnic backgrounds are operating widely in the capital, exploiting girls and young women.

Eight skiers found dead after California avalanche - Fifteen skiers went missing on Tuesday following a massive avalanche in California's Lake Tahoe region. One person remains missing but is presumed dead.

GB curlers emerge from epic day with medal hopes revived - Team GB's Winter Olympics curling medal hopes in both the men's and women's events are somehow still alive after a day of epic drama in Cortina.

Vinicius: Eight years at Real Madrid, 20 cases of alleged racist abuse - Spanish football expert Guillem Balague details how Vincius Jr has become a global symbol of resistance against discrimination.

The Register

As memory shortage persists, vendor price quotes are not long remembered - HPE and Cisco are adjusting terms and conditions If you like the price of that server, PC, or storage array, you'd better act fast.…

Google presses play on 30-second Gemini musical slop generator - Who needs to express themselves through music when a bot will do it for you with nothing but a prompt? If you've ever wanted to make music but have neither the talent nor the inspiration, Google has the AI tool for you. Gemini will now generate a 30-second song for you directly from a text prompt, photo, or video. …

ShinyHunters allegedly drove off with 1.7M CarGurus records - Latest in a rash of grab-and-leak data incidents CarGurus allegedly suffered a data breach with 1.7 million corporate records stolen, according to a notorious cybercrime crew that posted the online vehicle marketplace on its leak site on Wednesday.…

Google digs deep to power AI expansion with 150 MW geothermal deal - Plants expected to begin operations as early as 2028 pending approval by state government Datacenter power consumption has surged amid the AI boom, forcing builders to get creative in order to prevent their capex-heavy bit barns from running out of steam. But at least in some parts of the world, the answer to abundant clean energy may be hiding just a few thousand feet below the surface of the earth.…

Copilot spills the beans, summarizing emails it's not supposed to read - Data Loss Prevention? Yeah, about that... The bot couldn't keep its prying eyes away. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat has been summarizing emails labeled “confidential” even when data loss prevention policies were configured to prevent it.…

New Scientist - Home

More dog breeds found to have high risk of breathing condition - An assessment of nearly 900 dogs has identified 12 breeds prone to brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome, which can affect dogs' ability to sleep and exercise

Paediatricians’ blood used to make new treatments for RSV and colds - Antibodies harvested from the blood of paediatricians are up to 25 times better at protecting against the common respiratory infection RSV than existing antibody therapies, and are now being developed as preventative treatments

Why some people cannot move on from the death of a loved one - Prolonged grief disorder affects around 1 in 20 people, and we're starting to understand the neuroscience behind it

Data centres could store information in glass for thousands of years - Microsoft researchers have developed a technology that writes data into glass with lasers, raising the prospect of robotic libraries full of glass tablets packed with data

Postpartum depression in dads is common – we can now spot and treat it - Fathers may get postpartum depression at a similar rate to mothers, but it’s often overlooked. At last, the way we diagnose and treat it is improving, for the good of the whole family

Hacker News

Sizing chaos - Comments

Cosmologically Unique IDs - Comments

27-year-old Apple iBooks can connect to Wi-Fi and download official updates - Comments

Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available - Comments

Zero-day CSS: CVE-2026-2441 exists in the wild - Comments

Slashdot

Google's AI Music Maker Is Coming To the Gemini App - Google is bringing its Lyria 3 AI music model into the Gemini app, allowing users to generate 30-second songs from text, images, or video prompts directly within the chatbot. The Verge reports: Lyria 3's text-to-music capabilities allow Gemini app users to make songs by describing specific genres, moods, or memories, such as asking for an "Afrobeat track for my mother about the great times we had growing up." The music generator can make instrumental audio and songs with lyrics composed automatically based on user prompts. Users can also upload photographs and video references, which Gemini then uses to generate a track with lyrics that fit the vibe. "The goal of these tracks isn't to create a musical masterpiece, but rather to give you a fun, unique way to express yourself," Google said in its announcement blog. Gemini will add custom cover art generated by Nano Banana to songs created on the app, which aims to make them easier to share and download. Google is also bringing Lyria 3 to YouTube's Dream Track tool, which allows creators to make custom AI soundtracks for Shorts. Dream Track and Lyria were initially demonstrated with the ability to mimic the style and voice of famous performers. Google says it's been "very mindful" of copyright in the development of Lyria 3 and that the tool "is designed for original expression, not for mimicking existing artists." When prompted for a specific artist, Gemini will make a track that "shares a similar style or mood" and uses filters to check outputs against existing content. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

GameHub Will Give Mac Owners Another Imperfect Way To Play Windows Games - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For a while now, Mac owners have been able to use tools like CrossOver and Game Porting Toolkit to get many Windows games running on their operating system of choice. Now, GameSir plans to add its own potential solution to the mix, announcing that a version of its existing Windows emulation tool for Android will be coming to macOS. Hong Kong-based GameSir has primarily made a name for itself as a manufacturer of gaming peripherals -- the company's social media profile includes a self-description as "the Anti-Stick Drift Experts." Early last year, though, GameSir rolled out the Android GameHub app, which includes a GameFusion emulator that the company claims "provides complete support for Windows games to run on Android through high-precision compatibility design." In practice, GameHub and GameFusion for Android haven't quite lived up to that promise. Testers on Reddit and sites like EmuReady report hit-or-miss compatibility for popular Steam titles on various Android-based handhelds. At least one Reddit user suggests that "any Unity, Godot, or Game Maker game tends to just work" through the app, while another reports "terrible compatibility" across a wide range of games. With Sunday's announcement, GameSir promises a similar opportunity to "unlock your entire Steam library" and "run Win games/Steam natively" on Mac will be "coming soon." GameSir is also promising "proprietary AI frame interpolation" for the Mac, following the recent rollout of a "native rendering mode" that improved frame rates on the Android version. There are some "reasons to worry" though, based on the company's uneven track record. The Android version faced controversy for including invasive tracking components, which were later removed after criticism. There were also questions about the use of open-source code, as GameSir acknowledged referencing and using UI components from Winlator, even while maintaining that its core compatibility layer was developed in-house. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Texas Sues TP-Link Over China Links and Security Vulnerabilities - TP-Link is facing legal action from the state of Texas for allegedly misleading consumers with "Made in Vietnam" claims despite China-dominated manufacturing and supply chains, and for marketing its devices as secure despite reported firmware vulnerabilities exploited by Chinese state-sponsored actors. The Register: The Lone Star State's Attorney General, Ken Paxton, is filing the lawsuit against California-based TP-Link Systems Inc., which was originally founded in China, accusing it of deceptively marketing its networking devices and alleging that its security practices and China-based affiliations allowed Chinese state-sponsored actors to access devices in the homes of American consumers. It is understood that this is just the first of several lawsuits that the Office of the Attorney General intends to file this week against "China-aligned companies," as part of a coordinated effort to hold China accountable under Texas law. The lawsuit claims that TP-Link is the dominant player in the US networking and smart home market, controlling 65 percent of the American market for network devices. It also alleges that TP-Link represents to American consumers that the devices it markets and sells within the US are manufactured in Vietnam, and that consistent with this, the devices it sells in the American market carry a "Made in Vietnam" sticker. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Study of 12,000 EU Firms Finds AI's Productivity Gains Are Real - A study of more than 12,000 European firms found that AI adoption causally increases labour productivity by 4% on average across the EU, and that it does so without reducing employment in the short run. Researchers from the Bank for International Settlements and the European Investment Bank used an instrumental variable strategy that matched EU firms to comparable US firms by sector, size, investment intensity and other characteristics, then used the AI adoption rates of those US counterparts as a proxy for exogenous AI exposure among European firms. The productivity gains, however, skewed heavily toward medium and large companies. Among large firms, 45% had deployed AI, compared to just 24% of small firms. The study also found that complementary investments mattered enormously: an extra percentage point of spending on workforce training amplified AI's productivity effect by 5.9%, and an extra point on software and data infrastructure added 2.4%. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ohio Newspaper Removes Writing From Reporters' Jobs, Hands It To an 'AI Rewrite Specialist' - Cleveland.com, the digital arm of Ohio's Plain Dealer newspaper, has removed writing from the workloads of certain reporters and handed that job to what editor Chris Quinn calls an "AI rewrite specialist" who turns reporter-gathered material into article drafts. The reporters on these beats -- covering Lorain, Lake, Geauga, and most recently Medina County -- are assigned entirely to reporting, spending their time on in-person interviews and meeting sources for coffee. Editors review the AI-produced drafts and reporters get the final say before publication. Quinn says the arrangement has effectively freed up an extra workday per week for each reporter. The newsroom adopted this model last year to expand local coverage into counties it could no longer staff with full teams, and Quinn described the setup in a February 14 letter after a college journalism student withdrew from a reporting role over the newsroom's use of AI. Quinn blamed journalism schools for the student's reaction, saying professors have repeatedly told students that AI is bad. Read more of this story at Slashdot.