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Last updated 15 Nov, 05:54 PM
BBC News
Trump says he will take legal action against BBC after apology - The US president confirmed he intends to sue the broadcaster for at least $1bn over the Panorama edit of a 2021 speech.
BBC now faces tough legal battle with world's most powerful man. What happens next? - Anyone who thought an apology to Donald Trump was going to stop his threat of a lawsuit was deluded, writes Culture and Media Editor Katie Razzall.
Major incident declared as Storm Claudia causes flooding and disruption - Met Office yellow rain warning was in place early on Saturday with 83 flood warnings issued for England and 12 flood warnings across Wales.
'Head in hands': Ministers fume at No 10's self-inflicted chaos - Misshaps of their own making overshadow important things the government has to do, writes Laura Kuenssberg.
British woman, 85, killed after storm at Portuguese campsite - Two others were seriously injured as extreme winds hit the campsite in the Algarve.
The Register
Power: The answer to and source of all your AI datacenter problems - Digital Realty CTO Chris Sharp weights impact of densification on the datacenter and the rise of the AI factory Interview In the datacenter biz, power is the product. You either have it or you don't, Chris Sharp tells El Reg.…
Apple’s new 15% mini-app deal finally gets Tencent to cut Cupertino in - When is an app not an app? When it’s a mini app inside another app Apple has cut its take to 15 percent on purchases inside mini apps running within other iOS apps, and reached a parallel agreement with Tencent that brings WeChat's vast mini-program ecosystem into its revenue net.…
Memory boom-bust cycle booms again as Samsung reportedly jacks memory prices 60% - Leaving buyers to cry, AI AI AI If you haven't noticed, DRAM memory has gotten a lot more expensive in recent weeks. …
Researchers find hole in AI guardrails by using strings like =coffee - Who guards the guardrails? Often the same shoddy security as the rest of the AI stack Large language models frequently ship with "guardrails" designed to catch malicious input and harmful output. But if you use the right word or phrase in your prompt, you can defeat these restrictions.…
Fortinet finally cops to critical make-me-admin bug under active exploitation - More than a month after PoC made public Fortinet finally published a security advisory on Friday for a critical FortiWeb path traversal vulnerability under active exploitation – but it appears digital intruders got a month's head start.…
New Scientist - Home
Is a deadly asteroid about to hit Earth? Meet the man who can tell you - When an asteroid threatens Earth, astronomers use a rating called the Torino scale to communicate the risk. Richard Binzel, who invented the scale, tells New Scientist about his 50-year career in planetary defence
Breaking Bad showrunner uses sci-fi for smart dive into happiness - Vince Gilligan, the showrunner behind Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, is back, this time using sci-fi to explore a deceptively rich premise about the pursuit of happiness and the notion of utopia, finds Bethan Ackerley
Why giving up on goals is good for you, and how to know which to ditch - We admire grit and perseverance, but surprising research suggests that giving up on ambitions in the right way can actually improve our physical and mental health
Rapid melt from Antarctica could help preserve crucial ocean current - Greenland’s melt is expected to slow the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, but research suggests a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet could in some cases prevent it from shutting down
Cuts and scrapes may be slower to heal in redheads - Mice with the same genetic variant that contributes towards red hair in people were slower to recover from wounds than their black-haired counterparts
Hacker News
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Slashdot
Woman Pleads Guilty to Lying About Astronaut Accessing Bank Account From International Space Station - It was the first allegation of a crime committed in space — back in 2019. But by 2020 it had led to charges of lying to federal authorities. And now a former Air Force intelligence officer "has pleaded guilty to lying to a federal agent," reports CNBC, "by falsely claiming that her estranged astronaut wife illegally accessed her bank account while aboard the International Space Station for six months, prosecutors in Houston, Texas, said Friday." The guilty plea by Summer Worden, 50, on Thursday comes more than five years after she was indicted in the space case for lying about actions by her wife, Anne McClain, a U.S. Army colonel, West Point graduate and Iraq war combat veteran, while they were in the midst of a divorce. The claim came at a time when Worden said that the couple was engaged in a custody battle over what Worden's then-6-year-old son, who had been conceived through in vitro fertilizationand carried by a surrogate... McClain was aboard the Space Station from December 2018 through June 2019. She recently commanded the SpaceX Crew-10 crew mission to the Space Station from March this year until August. Worden, who remains free on bond, is scheduled to be sentenced on February 12. She faces a maximum possible sentence of up to five years in prison. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A 'Peak Oil' Prediction Surprise From the International Energy Agency - "The International Energy Agency's latest outlook signals that oil demand could keep growing through to the middle of the century," reports CNBC, "reflecting a sharp tonal shift from the world's energy watchdog and raising further questions about the future of fossil fuels." In its flagship World Energy Outlook, the Paris-based agency on Wednesday laid out a scenario in which demand for oil climbs to 113 million barrels per day by 2050, up 13% from 2024 levels. The IEA had previously estimated a peak in global fossil fuel demand before the end of this decade and said that, in order to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, there should be no new investments in coal, oil and gas projects... The IEA's end-of-decade peak oil forecast kick-started a long-running war of words with OPEC, an influential group of oil exporting countries, which accused the IEA of fearmongering and risking the destabilization of the global economy. The IEA's latest forecast of increasing oil demand was outlined in its "Current Policies Scenario" — one of a number of scenarios outlined by the IEA. This one assumes no new policies or regulations beyond those already in place. The CPS was dropped five years ago amid energy market turmoil during the coronavirus pandemic, and its reintroduction follows pressure from the Trump administration... Gregory Brew, an analyst at Eurasia Group's Energy, Climate and Resources team, said the IEA's retreat on peak oil demand signified "a major shift" from the group's position over the last five years. "The justifications offered for the shift include policy changes in the U.S., where slow EV penetration indicates robust oil [consumption], but is also tied to expected increases in petrochemical and aviation fuel in East and Southeast Asia," Brew told CNBC by email. "It's unlikely the agency is adjusting based on political pressure — though there has been some of that, with the Trump administration criticizing the group's supposed bias in favor of renewable energy — and the shift reflects a broader skepticism that oil demand is set to peak any time soon," he added... Alongside its CPS, the IEA also laid out projections under its so-called "Stated Policies Scenario" (STEPS), which reflects the prevailing direction of travel for the global energy system. In this assumption, the IEA said it expects oil demand to peak at 102 million barrels per day around 2030, before gradually declining. Global electric car sales are much stronger under this scenario compared to the CPS. The IEA said its multiple scenarios explore a range of consequences from various policy choices and should not be considered forecasts. Thanks to Slashdot reader magzteel for sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
GM Wants Parts Makers To Pull Supply Chains From China - schwit1 shares a report from the Business Times: General Motors (GM) has directed several thousand of its suppliers to scrub their supply chains of parts from China, four people familiar with the matter said, reflecting automakers' growing frustration over geopolitical disruptions to their operations. GM executives have been telling suppliers they should find alternatives to China for their raw materials and parts, with the goal of eventually moving their supply chains out of the country entirely, the people said. The automaker has set a 2027 deadline for some suppliers to dissolve their China sourcing ties, some of the sources said. GM approached some suppliers with the directive in late 2024, but the effort took on fresh urgency this past spring, during the early days of an escalating US-China trade battle, the sources said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Scientists Confirmed What Is Inside Our Moon - alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: A thorough investigation published in May 2023 found that the inner core of the Moon is, in fact, a solid ball with a density similar to that of iron. To figure it out once and for all, [astronomer Arthur Briaud of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in France] and his colleagues collected data from space missions and lunar laser-ranging experiments to compile a profile of various lunar characteristics. These include the degree of its deformation by its gravitational interaction with Earth, the variation in its distance from Earth, and its density. ... they found that the lunar core is very similar to that of Earth â" with an outer fluid layer and a solid inner core. According to their modeling, the outer core has a radius of about 362 kilometers (225 miles), and the inner core has a radius of about 258 kilometers (160 miles). That's about 15 percent of the entire radius of the Moon. The inner core, the team found, also has a density of about 7,822 kilograms per cubic meter. That's very close to the density of iron. [...] The research has been published in Nature. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
She Used ChatGPT To Win the Virginia Lottery, Then Donated Every Dollar - An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Winning the lottery isn't what brought Carrie Edwards her 15 minutes of fame. It was giving it all away. Standing alone in her kitchen one day in September, the Virginia woman was thunderstruck to discover she had won $150,000 in a Powerball drawing. As she was absorbing her windfall, she said, "I just heard as loud as you can hear God or whoever you believe in the universe just say, this is -- it's not your money." Then came a decision: She would donate it all to her three most cherished charities (source paywalled; alternative source). [...] Her journey to the lucky prize started when she walked into a 7-Eleven with a friend who wanted to buy two Powerball tickets. The jackpot for the Sept. 6 drawing was topping $1.7 billion, the second-largest amount ever. Edwards, 68, hardly ever played the lottery, but her friend was an active player who gave her two pieces of advice: Always buy a paper ticket, rather than getting them online. And the Powerball multiplier is a scam, don't do it. She ignored him on both accounts. She created a Virginia Lottery account on her phone. Then, instead of the typical strategies of using family birthdays and lucky numbers, she went to ChatGPT -- which she had only recently started using for research -- and asked, "Do you have any winning numbers for me?" "Luck is luck," replied the chatbot. Then it gave numbers that she plugged in -- paying the extra dollar for the Power Play to multiply anything she might win. She initially thought luck wasn't on her side when she didn't win the massive jackpot. But what she didn't realize is that she'd picked the "draw two" option, meaning her numbers were reentered for the next drawing. When she got a notification on her phone that she had won, she said, she thought it was a scam, or maybe she'd won something small, like $10. Just to satisfy her curiosity, she logged into her account and saw that she had matched four of the five numbers plus the Powerball in that second drawing. It would have been a $50,000 payout, but the multiplier tripled her winnings. Read more of this story at Slashdot.