Latest News
Last updated 04 May, 04:33 AM
BBC News
Trump says US to 'guide' stranded ships through Strait of Hormuz - More than 100 aircraft and 15,000 personnel will be part of the operation due to start on Monday, the US military says.
The threat to summer holidays looming from jet fuel shortages - What impact might shortages have on our summer holidays - and what could be done about it?
Some Iranians fear the regime is now more entrenched - and ready for revenge - Ordinary Iranians tell of worry about increased repression by authorities after the war is over.
Chris Mason: Elections this week a smorgasbord of competitiveness - The scale of these elections looks set to vividly expose the breadth of Labour's vulnerabilities, Chris Mason writes.
Rudy Giuliani in critical condition in hospital - The long-time champion of Trump and former New York mayor is in hospital, according to his spokesman.
The Register
Five Eyes spook shops warn agentic is too wonky for rapid rollout - Prioritize resilience over productivity, say CISA, NCSC and their friends from Oz, NZ, Canada Information security agencies from the nations of the Five Eyes security alliance have co-authored guidance on the use of agentic AI that warns the technology will likely misbehave and amplifies organizations’ existing frailties, and therefore recommend slow and careful adoption of the tech.…
Just in time for Labour Day, China makes it illegal to fire humans if AI takes their jobs - PLUS: Samsung cashes in on RAM prices; Booze from space fetches huge price; China's hyperscalers surge A Chinese court has ruled that it’s illegal to replace human workers with AI.…
Microsoft's turned Windows into a cesspool, but it wants to do better - Windows is a mess, GitHub keeps wobbling, Copilot draws flak - what’s wrong at Redmond? kettle When it comes to making decisions that piss off your user base, no one knows how to do it like Microsoft. …
Inference is giving AI chip startups a second chance to make their mark - In a disaggregated AI world, Nvidia can be both a friend and an enemy AI adoption is reaching an inflection point as the focus shifts from training new models to serving them. For the AI startups vying for a slice of Nvidia's pie, it's now or never.…
Royal Navy chief backs drones, autonomous weapons in ‘Hybrid Navy’ - Plan mixes crewed ships, robot escorts, and long-range strike to bolster a stretched fleet The leader of Britain’s Royal Navy has outlined a “Hybrid Navy” built on a mix of crewed, uncrewed, and autonomous platforms to ensure it can continue to defend the nation and operate overseas.…
New Scientist - Home
Why dinosaurs lived much more complex lives than we thought - A wave of dinosaur discoveries over the past decade has completely reshaped our understanding of these long-extinct animals. Palaeontologist Dave Hone spills the secrets of how dinosaurs lived, from how social they were to how much they really fought
Is consciousness more fundamental to reality than quantum physics? - The idea that everything that exists can be built from the bottom up has long held sway among physicists. Now, a new kind of science is under construction that centres conscious experience – and might unravel the universe’s biggest mysteries
Our verdict on Red Mars: Mostly great, with a few quibbles - The New Scientist Book Club read Kim Stanley Robinson's acclaimed science fiction story about the first settlers on Mars in April – and had a lot to say about it
Ann Leckie continues to shine with new sci-fi novel Radiant Star - Set on a planet whose population lives underground, Radiant Star is Ann Leckie's latest Radch-universe novel. Its rich characterisation and meticulous world-building shine through, says our science-fiction columnist Emily H. Wilson
2026 will be the hottest year on record, leading scientist predicts - The second half of this year will almost certainly see the start of an El Niño phase that could lead to extreme heat across much of the globe, and James Hansen expects that to make this year surpass 2024 as the hottest on record
Hacker News
BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth - Comments
Using "underdrawings" for accurate text and numbers - Comments
DeepClaude – Claude Code agent loop with DeepSeek V4 Pro, 17x cheaper - Comments
Discovering Hard Disk Physical Geometry Through Microbenchmarking (2019) - Comments
The 'Hidden' Costs of Great Abstractions - Comments
Slashdot
NetHack 5.0 Released - "So yesterday the Devteam (it is always the Devteam) released version 5.0 of legendary and venerable rogueike compuer game NetHack," writes the Rogue-like games column @Play. "It is 39 years old..." MilenCent (Slashdot reader #219,397) writes: In addition to play changes it's left for players to discover, this version updates the code to compile with C99, makes it much easier to cross compile the code for other systems than the one running, and now uses Lua for its dungeon generation. Happy hacking! For new players, "Nethack 5.0 now has an optional tutorial in the early phases of the game that might help you," notes the Rogue-like games column @Play: Three systems binaries are provided: Windows, MS-DOS and Amiga. Yes, Nethack still supports MS-DOS, and yes, it still supports classic Amiga: it explicitly supports AmigaDOS 3.0, meaning it can still run on 68000 machines... That these are the only systems they provide binaries for shouldn't be seen as an indication that these are the "most important" platforms for Nethack, it's more that, since it's entirely open source, building it yourself is entirely possible, and more expected than with most software. Nethack can be built for Linux, Windows 8-11, AmigaDOS, MacOS (I'm not sure if this includes classic Mac too but it might), Windows CE (wow), OS/2 (additional wow), BeOS, VMS and multiple Unixes... Another option is to play through public Nethack servers. The most popular of these are probably alt.org and Hardfought. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
OpenAI Introduces AI-Generated Pets for Its Codex App - "Vibe coding just got a whole lot more adorable," writes Engadget: OpenAI introduced AI-generated pets to the Codex app, its agentic tool that helps with coding. These "optional animated companions" don't do any coding themselves, but serve as a floating overlay that can tell you what Codex is working on, notify you when Codex completes a task or whether it needs your input on something. The new feature lets developers see Codex's active thread, without having to switch away from your current open app. "The feature ships with eight built-in variations — including a cat and dog," reports Mashable. "But the more interesting play is the custom pet creator." Users can prompt Codex directly to generate their own companion, then share it online. A quick scroll through the homepage reveals the community has already gotten to work. Current creations include Goku, Patrick Star, Microsoft's long-retired Clippy, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and — naturally — a goblin. There's also Grogu, Dobby, a tiny Bob Rossi, and a "Doge-style Shiba Inu dog"... Read more of this story at Slashdot.
AI Cameras are Being Deployed Across the Western US for Early Detection of Wildfires - The Associated Press reports: On a March afternoon, artificial intelligence detected something resembling smoke on a camera feed from Arizona's Coconino National Forest. Human analysts verified it wasn't a cloud or dust, then alerted the state's forest service and largest electric utility. One of dozens of AI cameras installed for the utility Arizona Public Service had spotted early signs of what came to be known as the Diamond Fire. Firefighters raced to the scene and contained the blaze before it grew past 7 acres (2.8 hectares). As record-breaking heat and an abysmal snowpack raise concerns about severe wildfires, states across the fire-prone West are adding AI to their wildfire detection toolbox, banking on the technology to help save lives and property. Arizona Public Service has nearly 40 active AI smoke-detection cameras and plans to have 71 by summer's end, and the state's fire agency has deployed seven of its own. Another utility, Xcel Energy in Colorado, has installed 126 and aims to have cameras in seven of the eight states it serves by year's end... ALERTCalifornia is a network of some 1,240 AI-enabled cameras across the Golden State that work similar to the system in Arizona.... Pano AI, whose technology combines high-definition camera feeds, satellite data and AI monitoring, has seen a growing interest in its cameras since launching in 2020. They've been deployed in Australia, Canada and 17 U.S. states, including Oregon, Washington and Texas... Last year, its technology detected 725 wildfires in the U.S., the company said... Cindy Kobold, an Arizona Public Service meteorologist, said the technology notifies them about 45 minutes faster on average than the first 911 call. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Carbon Pollution Is Making Food Less Nutritious, Risking the Health of Billions - A new meta-analysis found nutrients in food decreased over the last 40 years, reports the Washington Post. "Many of humanity's most important crops — including wheat, potatoes, beans — contain fewer vitamins and minerals than they did a generation ago." "The invisible culprit behind this damaging phenomenon? Carbon dioxide pollution." Surging concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere, caused largely by burning fossil fuels, have produced potent changes in the way plants grow — from increasing their sugar content to depleting essential nutrients like zinc... "The diets we eat today have less nutritional density than what our grandparents ate, even if we eat exactly the same thing," said Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington's Center for Health and the Global Environment. People in wealthy countries with strong health care systems will have many tools to cope with the change, experts said. But for the world's poorest and most vulnerable, the consequences could be devastating. One study concluded that by the middle of the century the phenomenon could put more than a billion additional women and children at risk of iron-deficiency anemia — a condition that can cause pregnancy complications, developmental problems and even death. Meanwhile, some 2 billion people across the globe who already suffer from some form of nutrient shortage could see their health problems grow even worse. "The scale of the problem is huge," Ebi said. Plants depend on carbon dioxide to perform photosynthesis — but that doesn't mean they grow better when there's more carbon in the air, scientists say. A sweeping survey of changes among 32 compounds in 43 crops found that nearly every plant that humans eat is harmed by rising CO2 levels... On average, they found, nutrients have already decreased by an average 3.2 percent across all plants since the late 1980s, when the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 350 parts per million. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader GameboyRMH for sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Robots Are Building Clay Homes In Texas Using Dirt From the Ground - A startup south of Austin is using robots to build homes out of clay pulled directly from the ground, reports a local news station: The materials are gathered on site, mixed, and placed on a build plate. From there, a robot lowers from above, picks up the clay with a claw, carries it to the wall and drops it into place. Later, the same robot switches tools, using a hammer attachment to pound the material into shape. "It's kind of trying to replicate how a human might build an adobe house," said software engineer Anastasia Nikoulina... Using machine learning, the system constantly evaluates the wall, adjusting how it builds to create a flat, solid surface... The project is underway at Proto-Town, a ranch between Lockhart and Luling where startups test new technologies, from anti-drone systems to nuclear reactors. The company plans to build their next home on the property, with hopes to do more than 20 homes over the next year. Read more of this story at Slashdot.