Latest News

Last updated 17 Jan, 08:32 PM

BBC News

Protests in Greenland and Denmark against US plans - Demonstrators took to the streets in Danish cities as well as in Greenland's capital, Nuuk.

Molly Russell's dad says under-16 social media ban would be wrong - The online safety campaigner says it is better to enforce current laws than use "sledgehammer" techniques.

Iran supreme leader acknowledges thousands killed during recent protests - Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says some deaths were “inhuman” and “savage” but blames the US.

Ant and Dec sorry after 'insensitive' podcast promo prompts backlash - A social media video publicising their new podcast drew criticism for evoking "suicide imagery".

Jenrick's move is massive - but could it cause a bigger fight on the right? - He's a big political character adapting to a new political tribe, but his move could be overshadowed by a poisonous row.

The Register

Fast Pair, loose security: Bluetooth accessories open to silent hijack - Sloppy implementation of Google spec leaves 'hundreds of millions' of devices vulnerable Hundreds of millions of wireless earbuds, headphones, and speakers are vulnerable to silent hijacking due to a flaw in Google's Fast Pair system that allows attackers to seize control without the owner ever touching the pairing button.…

S Twatter: When text-to-speech goes down the drain - Rinse of the machines: A cautionary tale about relying on robots Bork!Bork!Bork! UK water company Severn Trent learned an unfortunate lesson about text-to-speech systems when a robocall to customers went hilariously wrong.…

Coming soon: We interrupt this ChatGPT session with a very special message from our sponsors - Gotta pay for those datacenter buildouts somehow OpenAI's budget ChatGPT Go subscription tier has migrated to the US, soon to be accompanied by advertising. The company's free tier will be similarly afflicted.…

Trump wants big tech to pay for big beautiful power plants - It just needs PJM Interconnection, one of the US's biggest grid operators, to green light the auction The Trump administration says it wants big tech companies to take more accountability for the power their datacenters consume in an effort to shield voters from higher power bills at home.…

Experiment suggests AI chatbot would save insurance agents a whopping 3 minutes a day - Does that kind of time saving actually pay for itself? Researchers at Dakota State University, in partnership with regional insurance carrier Safety Insurance, devised an experimental chatbot called "Axlerod" to assist independent insurance agents. Whether that assistance was substantial is up for some debate.…

New Scientist - Home

Three ways to become calmer this New Year that you haven't tried (yet) - Easing stress is one of the healthiest pursuits you can embark on this January. Here are some evidence-backed ways to ground yourself in 2026

The Pacific Islanders fighting to save their homes from catastrophe - Some of climate change's sharpest realities are being felt on small island nations, where extreme weather is claiming homes and triggering displacement. Those able to stay are spearheading inventive adaptation techniques in a bid to secure their future

A new book provides a toolkit to tackle anxiety. Can it really help? - How do we deal with anxiety generated by ever-accelerating change? Sam Conniff and Katherine Templar-Lewis's The Uncertainty Toolkit sets out to empower us, but it's a flawed read

First treaty to protect the high seas comes into force - A United Nations agreement for the “conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity” in the open oceans has now taken effect

Our elegant universe: rethinking nature’s deepest principle - For centuries, the principle of symmetry has guided physicists towards more fundamental truths, but now a slew of shocking findings suggest a far stranger idea from quantum theory could be a deeper driving force

Hacker News

ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering - Comments

We put Claude Code in Rollercoaster Tycoon - Comments

An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm - Comments

Show HN: Minikv – Distributed key-value and object store in Rust (Raft, S3 API) - Comments

The recurring dream of replacing developers - Comments

Slashdot

Dozens of US Colleges Close as Falling Birth Rate Pushes Them Off Enrollment Cliff - A new article from Bloomberg says dozens of America's colleges "succumbed to a fundamental problem killing colleges across the US: not enough students. The schools will award their final degrees this spring, stranding students not yet ready to graduate and forcing faculty and staff to hunt for new jobs." The country's tumbling birth rate is pushing schools toward a "demographic cliff," where a steadily dropping population of people in their late teens and early 20s will leave desks and classrooms empty. Many smaller, lesser-known schools like Cazenovia have already hit the precipice. They're firing professors, paring back liberal arts courses in favor of STEM — or closing altogether. Others will likely reach the cliff in the next few years... [T]the US birth rate ticked upward slightly before the 2008 financial crisis, and that brief demographic boost has kept enrollment at larger schools afloat. But the nationwide pool of college-aged Americans is expected to shrink after 2025. Schools face the risk that each incoming class could be smaller than the last. The financial pressure will be relentless... Since 2020, more than 40 schools have announced plans to close, displacing students and faculty and leaving host towns without a key economic engine... Close to 400 schools could vanish in the coming decade, according to Huron Consulting Group. The projected closures and mergers will impact around 600,000 students and redistribute about $18 billion in endowment funds, Huron estimates... Pennsylvania State University, citing falling enrollment at many of its regional branches, plans to shutter seven of its 20 branch campuses after the spring 2027 semester... [C]ampuses in far-flung places, without brand recognition, are falling out of favor with students already questioning the value of a college degree. For example, while Penn State's flagship University Park campus saw enrollment grow 5% from 2014 to 2024, 12 other Penn State campuses recorded a 35% drop, according to a report tasked with determining whether closures were necessary. The article notes that "Less than half of students whose schools shut down before they graduate re-enroll in another college or university, according to a 2022 study." But even at colleges that remain, "The shrinking supply of students has already sparked a frenzied competition for high school seniors..." Some public institutions are letting seniors bypass traditional requirements like essays and letters of recommendation to gain entry automatically... Direct-admission programs, which allow students to skip traditional applications, are one potential response. Some 15 states have them, according to Taylor Odle, assistant professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He found in a 2022 paper that direct admissions increased first-year undergrad enrollment by 4% to 8%... And they don't require nearly as many paid staff to run, since there are no essays or letters of recommendation to read. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA Livestreams the Rocket That Will Carry Four Astronauts Around the Moon - "A mega rocket set to take astronauts around the Moon for the first time in decades is being taken to its launch pad," the BBC reported this morning. NASA is livestreaming their move of the 11-million-pound "stack" — which includes the Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft secured to it, all standing on its Mobile Launch Platform. Travelling at less than 1 mile per hour, the move is expected to take 12 hours. The mission — which could blast off as soon as 6 February — is expected to take 10 days. It is part of a wider plan aimed at returning astronauts to the lunar surface. As well as the rocket being ready, the Moon has to be in the right place too, so successive launch windows are selected accordingly. In practice, this means one week at the beginning of each month during which the rocket is pointed in the right direction followed by three weeks where there are no launch opportunities. The potential launch dates are: — 6, 7, 8, 10 and 11 February BR> — 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11 March BR> — 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 April "The crew of four will travel beyond the far side of the moon, which could set a new record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth, currently held by Apollo 13," reports CNN: But why won't Artemis II land on the lunar surface? "The short answer is because it doesn't have the capability. This is not a lunar lander," said Patty Casas Horn, deputy lead for Mission Analysis and Integrated Assessments at NASA. "Throughout the history of NASA, everything that we do is a bit risky, and so we want to make sure that that risk makes sense, and only accept the risk that we have to accept, within reason. So we build out a capability, then we test it out, then we build out a capability, then we test it out. And we will get to landing on the moon, but Artemis II is really about the crew..." The upcoming flight is the first time that people will be on board the Artemis spacecraft: The Orion capsule will carry the astronauts around the moon, and the SLS rocket will launch Orion into Earth orbit before the crew continues deeper into space... The mission will begin with two revolutions around Earth, before starting the translunar injection — the maneuver that will take the spacecraft out of Earth orbit and on toward the moon — about 26 hours into the flight, Horn said. "That's when we set up for the big burn — it's about six minutes in duration. And once we do this, you're on your way back to Earth. There's nothing else that you need to do. You're going to go by the moon, and the moon's gravity is going to pull you around and swing you back towards the Earth...." Avoiding entering lunar orbit keeps the mission profile simpler, allowing the crew to focus on other tasks as there is no need to pilot the spacecraft in any way. "The Artemis program's first planned lunar lander is called the Starship HLS, or Human Landing System, and is currently under development by SpaceX..." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What Happened After Security Researchers Found 60 Flock Cameras Livestreaming to the Internet - A couple months ago, YouTuber Benn Jordan "found vulnerabilities in some of Flock's license plate reader cameras," reports 404 Media's Jason Koebler. "He reached out to me to tell me he had learned that some of Flock's Condor cameras were left live-streaming to the open internet." This led to a remarkable article where Koebler confirmed the breach by visiting a Flock surveillance camera mounted on a California traffic signal. ("On my phone, I am watching myself in real time as the camera records and livestreams me — without any password or login — to the open internet... Hundreds of miles away, my colleagues are remotely watching me too through the exposed feed.") Flock left livestreams and administrator control panels for at least 60 of its AI-enabled Condor cameras around the country exposed to the open internet, where anyone could watch them, download 30 days worth of video archive, and change settings, see log files, and run diagnostics. Unlike many of Flock's cameras, which are designed to capture license plates as people drive by, Flock's Condor cameras are pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras designed to record and track people, not vehicles. Condor cameras can be set to automatically zoom in on people's faces... The exposure was initially discovered by YouTuber and technologist Benn Jordan and was shared with security researcher Jon "GainSec" Gaines, who recently found numerous vulnerabilities in several other models of Flock's automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras. Jordan appeared this week as a guest on Koebler's own YouTube channel, while Jordan released a video of his own about the experience. titled "We Hacked Flock Safety Cameras in under 30 Seconds." (Thanks to Slashdot reader beadon for sharing the link.) But together Jordan and 404 Media also created another video three weeks ago titled "The Flock Camera Leak is Like Netflix for Stalkers" which includes footage he says was "completely accessible at the time Flock Safety was telling cities that the devices are secure after they're deployed." The video decries cities "too lazy to conduct their own security audit or research the efficacy versus risk," but also calls weak security "an industry-wide problem." Jordan explains in the video how he "very easily found the administration interfaces for dozens of Flock safety cameras..." — but also what happened next: None of the data or video footage was encrypted. There was no username or password required. These were all completely public-facing, for the world to see.... Making any modification to the cameras is illegal, so I didn't do this. But I had the ability to delete any of the video footage or evidence by simply pressing a button. I could see the paths where all of the evidence files were located on the file system... During and after the process of conducting that research and making that video, I was visited by the police and had what I believed to be private investigators outside my home photographing me and my property and bothering my neighbors. John Gaines or GainSec, the brains behind most of this research, lost employment within 48 hours of the video being released. And the sad reality is that I don't view these things as consequences or punishment for researching security vulnerabilities. I view these as consequences and punishment for doing it ethically and transparently. I've been contacted by people on or communicating with civic councils who found my videos concerning, and they shared Flock Safety's response with me. The company claimed that the devices in my video did not reflect the security standards of the ones being publicly deployed. The CEO even posted on LinkedIn and boasted about Flock Safety's security policies. So, I formally and publicly offered to personally fund security research into Flock Safety's deployed ecosystem. But the law prevents me from touching their live devices. So, all I needed was their permission so I wouldn't get arrested. And I was even willing to let them supervise this research. I got no response. So instead, he read Flock's official response to a security/surveillance industry research group — while standing in front of one of their security cameras, streaming his reading to the public internet. "Might as well. It's my tax dollars that paid for it." " 'Flock is committed to continuously improving security...'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

T2/Linux Brings a Flagship KDE Plasma Linux Desktop to RISC-V and ARM64 - T2 SDE "is not just a regular Linux distribution," explains its repository on GitHub. "It is a flexible Open Source System Development Environment or Distribution Build Kit. Others might even name it Meta Distribution. T2 allows the creation of custom distributions with state of the art technology, up-to-date packages and integrated support for cross compilation." And now after "a decade of deep focus on embedded and server systems," T2 SDE Linux "is back to the Desktop," according to its web site, calling the new "T2 Desktop" flavour "ready for everyday home and office use!" Built on the latest KDE Plasma, systemd, and Wayland, the new T2 Desktop flavour delivers a modern, clean, and performant experience while retaining the project's trademark portability and reproducible cross-compilation across architectures. T2 Desktop targets x86_64, arm64, and riscv64, delivering "a fully polished, streamlined out-of-the-box experience," according to project lead René Rebe (also long-time Slashdot reader ReneR): I>[T2 Desktop] delivered a full KDE Plasma desktop on RISC-V, reproducibly cross-compiled from source using T2 SDE Linux. The desktop spans more than 600 packages — from toolchain to Qt and KDE and targets a next-generation RVA23 RISC-V flagship desktop, including full multimedia support and AMD RDNA GPU acceleration under Wayland. As a parallel milestone, the same fully reproducible desktop stack is now also landing on Qualcomm X1 ARM64 platforms, highlighting T2 SDE's architecture-independent approach and positioning both RISC-V and ARM64 as serious, first-class Linux desktop contenders. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As US Officials Showed Off a Self-Driving Robo-Bus - It Got Hit By a Tesla Driver - An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: The U.S. Department of Transportation brought an automated bus to D.C. this week to showcase its work on self-driving vehicles, taking officials from around the country on a ride between agency headquarters at Navy Yard and Union Station. One of those trips was interrupted Sunday when the bus got rear-ended. The bus, produced by the company Beep, was following its fixed route when it was struck by a Tesla with Maryland plates whose driver was trying to change lanes, officials said. The bus had a human driver behind the wheel for backup as required by the city. The Tesla driver stayed on the scene on H Street for about 10 minutes. No police were called. "The service was temporarily paused after another vehicle made an illegal lane change and contacted the rear of the autonomous bus, which resulted in minor cosmetic damage to both vehicles," a spokesman for Beep said in a statement. "The autonomous bus operated appropriately in the moment and, after review, it was determined the autonomous bus was safe to resume service." Beep is working with the [U.S.] Transportation Department and Carnegie Mellon University on a pilot program of automated public buses. The vehicle was brought to D.C. for an annual conference that brings together transportation researchers and policymakers... Read more of this story at Slashdot.