Latest News

Last updated 02 Apr, 04:58 PM

BBC News

'I haven't slept for days': Iranians describe mounting desperation after a month of war - Ordinary people from various parts of Iran describe expanding strikes, economic pain and fear of repression.

Funeral director who kept bodies for months admits 30 counts of preventing lawful burial - Robert Bush pleads guilty to charges relating to Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull.

We thought we'd buried my grandma, but her body was still at the funeral home - Families of the dead tell of the agony caused by "horror show" funeral director Robert Bush.

Prince William praises £20m milestone for Bowelbabe fund - The Bowelbabe fund, set up by Dame Deborah James in 2022, helps to support Cancer Research UK.

Storm Dave set to batter UK with gales and blizzards over Easter weekend - Damage and travel disruption are likely in the north of the UK with a Met Office named storm expected to sweep through on Saturday.

The Register

IBM wants Arm software on its mainframes to better support AI - Tie-up aims to widen Big Blue’s access to power-efficient compute IBM and Arm are working together on getting software developed for Arm chips to run on Big Blue's enterprise systems, with an eye on future AI and data-intensive workloads.…

Forking frenzy ensues after Euro-Office launch sparks OnlyOffice backlash - Meanwhile, Collabora splits from LibreOffice Online amid claims TDF ejected 'all Collabora staff and partners' European outfits Ionos and Nextcloud have launched Euro-Office, a fork of the OnlyOffice cloud-based productivity suite aimed at orgs with qualms around sovereignty, provoking an angry response from the original developer.…

Artemis II astronaut: 'I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working' - In space no one can you scream, at Microsoft Many a frustrated user has sworn they'll launch Microsoft Outlook into space, but NASA has actually done it – on a journey around the Moon, where it's now causing problems for astronauts.…

Salesforce is looking to Slackbot to help it solve the SaaSpocalypse puzzle - The chatbot will be a doorway to the company's other services Salesforce has begun to position Slack, its business collaboration platform, as the interface through which users can access and act on data in enterprise applications from rival vendors.…

Cloudflare previews 'EmDash' – an AI-driven rebuild of WordPress in TypeScript - Name is a joke but the project is real, said main engineer The world's most popular CMS has been remade with the help of AI. Cloudflare has released EmDash version 0.1, described as a rebuild of the WordPress CMS (content management system) but using TypeScript rather than PHP. …

New Scientist - Home

Unprecedented insight into memory champion's brain reveals his tricks - Nelson Dellis credits techniques like the method of loci for his extraordinary memory. Now, brain scans have revealed the parts of his brain that this approach taps into, and how we can use it to improve our own recall

We may have just glimpsed the universe's first stars - A galaxy spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope, known as Hebe, that existed just 400 million years after the big bang appears to contain extremely pure and young stars

I have been bitten by more than 200 snakes – on purpose - If you are unlucky enough to have been bitten by a snake, you are unlikely to want to repeat the experience. Not so for Tim Friede, who intentionally exposes himself to deadly bites in the hope of developing a treatment for the 5 million people who are bitten each year

What to read this week: Lixing Sun's ambitious On the Origin of Sex - Ducks with corkscrew penises, fish changing sex – what do we really know about sex and reproduction on Earth? Less than we think, reveals a mind-boggling new book. Elle Hunt explores

How many academics does it take to tell a joke? Time for a study... - Feedback is delighted to discover a study analysing the use of humour at scientific conferences – but disappointed to find a distinct lack of it

Hacker News

Google releases Gemma 4 open models - Comments

LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer - Comments

Delve allegedly forked an open-source tool and sold it as its own - Comments

Qwen3.6-Plus: Towards Real World Agents - Comments

Lemonade by AMD: a fast and open source local LLM server using GPU and NPU - Comments

Slashdot

Nvidia Rolls Out Its Fix For PC Gaming's 'Compiling Shaders' Wait Times - Nvidia has begun rolling out a beta feature that automatically compiles game shaders while a PC is idle. It won't eliminate shader compilation the first time a game runs, but Ars Technica reports it could help reduce those repeated wait times. From the report: Nvidia's new Auto Shader Compilation system promises to "reduc[e] the frequency of game runtime compilation after driver updates" for users running Nvidia's GeForce Game Ready Driver 595.97 WHQL or later. When the feature is active and your machine is idle, the app will automatically start rebuilding DirectX drivers for your games so they're all set to roll the next time they launch. While the feature defaults to being turned off when the Nvidia App is first downloaded, users can activate it by going to the Graphics Tab > Global Settings > Shader Cache. There, they can set aside disk space for precompiled shaders and decide how many system resources the compilation process should use. App users can also manually force shader recompilation through the app rather than waiting for the machine to go idle. Unfortunately, Nvidia warns that users will still have to generate shaders in-game after downloading a title for the first time. The Auto Shader Compiler system only generates the new shaders needed after subsequent driver updates following that first run of a new title. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% In March - Valve's March 2026 Steam Survey shows Linux gaming usage jumping to a record 5.33% share -- more than double macOS's 2.35%. Phoronix reports: Steam on Linux was never above 5% and easily an all-time high for the Linux gaming marketshare, especially in absolute numbers. It was a massive 3.1% spike in March while macOS also jumped surprisingly by 1.19% to 2.35%. The Steam Survey numbers show Windows losing 4.28%, down to 92.33%. Part of the jump at least appears to be explained by Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers. Month over month they report a 31.85% drop to the Simplified Chinese language use and English use increasing by 16.82% to 39.09%. Other languages also showed gains amid the massive decline in Simplified Chinese use. The latest numbers for March show around a quarter of the Linux gamers are running Steam OS. Due in part to the Steam Deck APU being a custom AMD product and the popularity of AMD hardware on Linux for its open-source nature, AMD CPU use by Steam on Linux gamers remains just under 70%. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Group Pushing Age Verification Requirements For AI Sneakily Backed By OpenAI - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: OpenAI hasn't been shy about spending money lobbying for favorable laws and regulations. But when it comes to its involvement with child safety advocacy groups, the company has apparently decided it's best to stay in the shadows -- even if it means hiding from the people actually pushing for policy changes. According to a report from the San Francisco Standard, a number of people involved in the California-based Parents and Kids Safe AI Coalition were blindsided to learn their efforts were secretly being funded by OpenAI. Per the Standard, the Parents and Kids Safe AI Coalition was a group formed to push the Parents and Kids Safe AI Act, a piece of California legislation proposed earlier this year that would require AI firms to implement age verification and additional safeguards for users under the age of 18. That bill was backed by OpenAI in partnership with Common Sense Media, which proposed the legislation as a compromise after the two groups had pushed dueling ballot initiatives last year. But when the coalition started to reach out to child safety groups and other advocacy organizations to try to get them to lend support to the bill, OpenAI was apparently conveniently left off the messaging. The AI giant was also left out of the marketing on the coalition's website, according to the Standard. That reportedly led to a number of groups and individuals lending their support to the Parents and Kids Safe AI Coalition without realizing that they were aligning themselves with OpenAI. As it turns out, OpenAI isn't just one of the members of the coalition; it is the group's biggest funder. In fact, the Standard characterized the Parents and Kids Safe AI Coalition as being "entirely funded" by OpenAI. While it's not clear exactly how much the company has funneled to this particular group, a Wall Street Journal report from January said OpenAI pledged $10 million to push the Parents and Kids Safe AI Act. Gizmodo notes that OpenAI's backing of the Parents and Kids Safe AI Act "could be self-serving for CEO Sam Altman," who just so happens to head a company called World that provides age verification services. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rapid Snow Melt-Off In American West Stuns Scientists - Scientists say extreme March heat caused an unusually rapid collapse of snowpack across the American West that's leaving major basins at record or near-record lows. "This year is on a whole other level," said Dr Russ Schumacher, a Colorado State University climatologist. "Seeing this year so far below any of the other years we have data for is very concerning." The Guardian reports: [...] The issue is extremely widespread. Data from a branch of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which logs averages based on levels between 1991 and 2020, shows states across the south-west and intermountain west with eye-popping lows. The Great Basin had only 16% of average on Monday and the lower Colorado region, which includes most of Arizona and parts of Nevada, was at 10%. The Rio Grande, which covers parts of New Mexico, Texas and Colorado, was at 8%. "This year has the potential of being way worse than any of the years we have analogues for in the past," Schumacher said. Even with near-normal precipitation across most of the west, every major river basin across the region was grappling with snow drought when March began, according to federal analysts. Roughly 91% of stations reported below-median snow water equivalent, according to the last federal snow drought update compiled on March 8. Water managers and climate experts had been hopeful for a March miracle -- a strong cold storm that could set the region on the right track. Instead, a blistering heatwave unlike any recorded for this time of year baked the region and spurred a rapid melt-off. "March is often a big month for snowstorms," Schumacher said. "Instead of getting snow we would normally expect we got this unprecedented, way-off-the-scale warmth." More than 1,500 monthly high temperature records were broken in March and hundreds more tied. The event was "likely among the most statistically anomalous extreme heat events ever observed in the American south-west," climate scientist Daniel Swain said in an analysis posted this week. "Beyond the conspicuous 'weirdness' of it all," Swain added, "the most consequential impact of our record-shattering March heat will likely be the decimation of the water year 2025-26 snowpack across nearly all of the American west." Calling the toll left by the heat "nothing short of shocking," Swain noted that California was tied for its worst mountain snowpack value on record. While the highest elevations are still coated in white, "lower slopes are now completely bare nearly statewide." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SpaceX Files To Go Public - Reuters reports that SpaceX has confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO, reportedly targeting a valuation above $1.75 trillion. Reuters reports: SpaceX puts more rockets in space than any other company and promises a chance to invest in humanity's return to the moon and attempt to colonize Mars. The company aspires to put artificial intelligence data centers in space, while running a lucrative satellite communications system that opens up much of the earth to the internet and is increasingly used in war. [...] A public listing at a potential valuation of more than $1.75 trillion comes after SpaceX merged with Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI in a deal that valued the rocket company at $1 trillion and the developer of the Grok chatbot at $250 billion. SpaceX is hosting an analyst day on April 21, encouraging research analysts to attend in person, [...]. The company is also offering analysts an optional visit to xAI's "Macrohard" data center site in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 23, and plans to hold a virtual session on May 4 to discuss financial models with banks' research analysts, the source said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.