Latest News

Last updated 03 Feb, 01:52 AM

BBC News

Police review misconduct claims after files suggest Mandelson sent government information to Epstein - The peer is accused of passing sensitive information to the convicted sex offender while he was business secretary.

Sarah Ferguson's charity to close days after new Epstein revelations - Sarah's Trust announced it was shutting "for the foreseeable future" after "some months" of discussion.

Serial killer Steve Wright admits murder of teenager Victoria Hall in 1999 - Steve Wright is already serving a whole life jail sentence for the murders of five women in 2006.

The 17 most memorable moments from the Grammy Awards - The best and worst moments of the 68th Grammy Awards, which were held in Los Angeles.

Crown Princess's son arrested for alleged assault before rape trial in Norway - Marius Borg Høiby, who goes on trial on Tuesday, has been remanded in custody for four weeks after new allegations.

The Register

Elon Musk merges xAI into SpaceX to spread universal consciousness via a sentient sun - Burning Man woo woo values rocket factory at $250 billion Elon Musk on Monday revealed his space company SpaceX has acquired his AI outfit xAI, and that the two will work together to escape the surly bonds of Earthly powers by tapping the sun's enduring glow.…

Notepad++ hijacking blamed on Chinese Lotus Blossom crew behind Chrysalis backdoor - The group targets telecoms, critical infrastructure - all the usual high-value orgs Security researchers have attributed the Notepad++ update hijacking to a Chinese government-linked espionage crew called Lotus Blossom (aka Lotus Panda, Billbug), which abused weaknesses in the update infrastructure to gain a foothold in high-value targets by delivering a newly identified backdoor dubbed Chrysalis.…

Let them eat Pi: RAM shortage bumps Raspberry prices as much as $60 - Second price increase in just two months That slice of Pi is getting much more expensive. Everyone’s favorite single-board computer, the Raspberry Pi, is jumping up in price again, with increases ranging from $10 to $60, depending on how much memory your board has.…

Intel welcomes memory apocalypse with Xeon workstation refresh - Chipzilla touts 4 TB of DDR5 and 128 lanes of PCIe 5 for less than the House of Zen just in time for memory winter Intel's workstation lineup is getting a much-needed refresh with the launch of its Xeon 600-series processors, boasting up to 86 cores and clocks topping 4.9 GHz. Chipzilla's timing couldn't be worse.…

There's nothing micro about this super-sized Arduino Uno - It's 7x the size of the regular board Arduino boards power everything from robots to RGB lights, but they're a little on the small side. YouTuber UncleStem has his own solution: build a gigantic, yet fully functional one.…

New Scientist - Home

Ants attack their nest-mates because pollution changes their smell - Ants rely on scent to recognise their comrades, and when they are exposed to common air pollutants, other members of their colony react as if they are enemies

A huge cloud of dark matter may be lurking near our solar system - For the first time, researchers have found what seems to be a cloud of dark matter about 60 million times the mass of the sun in our galactic neighbourhood

Treating cancer before 3pm could help patients live longer - The most robust evidence to date shows that people with a type of lung cancer lived longer if they received immunotherapy before 3pm

The secret signals our organs send to repair tissues and slow ageing - Your organs are constantly talking to each other in ways we’re only beginning to understand. Tapping into these communication networks is opening up radical new ways to boost health

Neanderthals and early humans may have interbred over a vast area - We are getting a clearer sense of where and how often Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred, and it turns out the behaviour was much more common than we first thought

Hacker News

How does misalignment scale with model intelligence and task complexity? - Comments

The Codex App - Comments

Anki ownership transferred to AnkiHub - Comments

GitHub experience various partial-outages/degradations - Comments

xAI joins SpaceX - Comments

Slashdot

Leica Camera's Owners Weigh $1.2 Billion Sale of Controlling Stake - The owners of Leica Camera AG -- Austrian billionaire Andreas Kaufmann and private equity giant Blackstone -- are considering a sale of a controlling stake in the German camera maker in a deal that could value the company at about $1.2 billion, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. HSG, formerly known as Sequoia Capital China, and Altor Equity Partners are among a handful of bidders. The Kaufmann family could re-invest following a transaction. Leica traces its roots roughly 150 years to Ernst Leitz's microscope company and was publicly traded on the Frankfurt stock exchange until the Kaufmann family took it private in 2012. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Feds Skipping Infosec Industry's Biggest Conference This Year - An anonymous reader shares a report: The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency won't attend the annual RSA Conference in March, an agency spokesperson confirmed to The Register. Sessions involving speakers from the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) have also disappeared from the agenda. "Since the beginning of this administration, CISA has made significant progress in returning to our statutory, core mission and focusing on President Trump's policies for maximum security for all Americans," CISA spokesperson Marci McCarthy told us. "CISA has reviewed and determined that we will not participate in the RSA Conference since we regularly review all stakeholder engagements, to ensure maximum impact and good stewardship of taxpayer dollars." McCarthy declined to comment on whether the decision had anything to do with former CISA director Jen Easterly being named chief executive of RSAC last week. Easterly, who was appointed to lead America's top cyber-defense agency under the Biden administration, joined her predecessor and CISA's first-ever director Chris Krebs in President Trump's line of fire back in July. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Finland To Introduce 'Green Wave' Automated System For Emergency Vehicles - alternative_right writes: Fintraffic's national traffic priority system, which is set to be introduced this summer, will recognize the location of an emergency vehicle and automatically change the lights to green to facilitate its passage. (Why isn't everyone doing this already?) Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft Weighs Retreat From Windows 11 AI Push, Reviews Copilot Integrations and Recall - Microsoft is reevaluating its AI strategy on Windows 11 and plans to scale back or remove Copilot integrations across built-in apps after months of sustained user backlash, according to a Windows Central report citing people familiar with the company's plans. Copilot features in apps like Notepad and Paint are under review and could be pulled entirely or stripped of their Copilot branding in favor of a more streamlined experience. The company has paused work on adding new Copilot buttons to any other in-box apps. Windows Recall, the screenshot-based search feature delayed by an entire year in 2024 over security and privacy concerns, is separately under review -- Microsoft internally considers the current implementation a failure and is exploring ways to rework or rename the feature rather than scrap it entirely, the report said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The AI Boom Is Coming for Apple's Profit Margins - Apple's long-standing dominance over its electronics supply chain is eroding as AI companies outbid the iPhone maker for critical components like chips, memory and specialized glass fiber, giving suppliers the leverage to demand that Apple pay more. CEO Tim Cook acknowledged the pressure during a Thursday earnings call, noting constraints in chip supplies and significant increases in memory prices. Nvidia has overtaken Apple as TSMC's largest customer, CEO Jensen Huang said on a podcast; Apple had held that position by a wide margin for years. DRAM prices are set to quadruple from 2023 levels by year-end and NAND prices will more than triple, according to TechInsights. The firm estimates Apple could pay $57 more for memory in the base iPhone 18 due this fall compared to the base iPhone 17 currently on sale -- a significant hit on a device that retails for $799. Read more of this story at Slashdot.