Latest News

Last updated 18 Feb, 07:10 AM

BBC News

Firm assessing Covid vaccine harm replaced after costs spiral to £48m - The figure paid to Crawford & Company Adjusters is eight times the original estimate for the work.

'Just push us into the sea': The frustration of an area failed by politics - In Horden, County Durham, Westminster slogans have long been left unmet as the population has plummeted.

Under pressure from Trump, Venezuela's new president has aces up her sleeve - Delcy Rodriguez knows its in America's interests for her to be a success

Climber on trial for leaving girlfriend to die on Austria's highest mountain - Kerstin G's boyfriend is accused of leaving her unprotected and exhausted close to the summit during a blizzard.

Police assessing Stansted Airport private flights over Epstein ties - Essex Police says it is assessing information in relation to private flights into and out of the airport.

The Register

Qualcomm set to triumph in UK smartphone ‘patent tax’ case - Consumer group Which? brought the case and now plans to bail after court indicated it would lose The UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal has indicated that it will find Qualcomm did not abuse its market power, leading consumer advocacy group Which? to withdraw a case it hoped would see Brits compensated for increased smartphone prices.…

Palo Alto CEO says AI isn’t great for business, yet - Sees little enterprise AI adoption other than coding assistants, buys Koi for what comes next If enterprises are implementing AI, they’re not showing it to Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, who on Tuesday said business adoption of the tech lags consumer take-up by at least a couple of years – except for coding assistants.…

Indian conglomerate Adani plans very slow $100 billion AI datacenter build - PM Modi tells citizens AI will lift them up, not take their jobs Giant Indian industrial conglomerate Adani has said it will spend up to $100 billion on AI datacenters to equip the nation with sovereign infrastructure, but will do so at slower pace than Big Tech tech companies plan to bring their own bit barns to Bharat.…

Anthropic's latest Sonnet gets better at using computers, amid bouts of existential angst - Version 4.6 can also be 'warm, honest, prosocial, and at times funny' Anthropic has updated its Sonnet model to version 4.6 and claims the upgrade is better at coding and using computers, and also possesses improved reasoning and planning capabilities.…

China-linked snoops have been exploiting Dell 0-day since mid-2024, using 'ghost NICs' to avoid detection - Full scale of infections remains 'unknown' China-linked attackers exploited a maximum-severity hardcoded-credential bug in Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines as a zero-day since at least mid-2024. It's all part of a long-running effort to backdoor infected machines for long-term access, according to Google's Mandiant incident response team.…

New Scientist - Home

Did a cloud-seeding start-up really increase snowfall in part of Utah? - A technology that uses a coiled wire to electrify aerosols has boosted snowfall amid a drought in the western US, according to the company developing it, but the results haven't convinced other scientists

Scientists want to put a super laser on the moon - An ultrastable laser could enable extremely precise timing and navigation on the moon, and the cold, dark craters near the lunar poles would be the ideal location for it

The untold story of our remarkable hands and how they made us human - The evolution of human hands is one of the most important – and overlooked – stories of our origin. Now, new fossil evidence is revealing their pivotal role

Giant viruses may be more alive than we thought - A giant virus encodes part of the protein-making toolkit of cells that gives it greater control over its amoeba host, raising questions about how it evolved and how such beings relate to living organisms

Dream hacking helps people solve complex problems in their sleep - Hearing a sound while working on a complex puzzle, and then hearing it again during sleep, helped lucid dreamers better tackle the problem the next day

Hacker News

15 years later, Microsoft morged my diagram - Comments

Halt and Catch Fire: TV's Best Drama You've Probably Never Heard Of (2021) - Comments

Claude Sonnet 4.6 - Comments

Terminals should generate the 256-color palette - Comments

Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives - Comments

Slashdot

Air Pollution Emerges As a Direct Risk Factor For Alzheimer's Disease - Longtime Slashdot reader walterbyrd shares a report from ABC News: In a study of nearly 28 million older Americans, long-term exposure to fine particle air pollution raised the risk of Alzheimer's disease. That link held even after researchers accounted for common conditions like high blood pressure, stroke and depression. Fine particle air pollution, known as PM2.5, consists of tiny particles in the air that come from car exhaust, power plants, wildfires, and burning fuels, according to the American Lung Association. They are small enough to travel deep into the lungs and even reach the bloodstream. The research, conducted at Emory University and published in PLOS Medicine, tracked health data over nearly two decades to explore whether air pollution harms the brain indirectly by causing high blood pressure or heart disease, which, in turn, leads to dementia. However, these "middleman" conditions accounted for less than 5% of the connection between pollution and Alzheimer's, the research found. The researchers say this suggests that over 95% of the Alzheimer's risk comes from the direct impact of breathing in dirty air, likely through inflammation or damage to brain cells. "The relationship between PM2.5 and AD [Alzheimer's disease] has been shown to be pretty much linear," said Kyle Steenland, a professor in the departments of environmental health and epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, and senior author of the study. "The reason this is particularly important is that PM2.5 is known to be associated with high blood pressure, stroke and depression -- all of which are associated with AD. So, from a prevention standpoint, simply treating these diseases will not get rid of the problem. We have to address exposure to PM2.5." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bayer Agrees To $7.25 Billion Proposed Settlement Over Thousands of Roundup Cancer Lawsuits - An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Agrochemical maker Bayer and attorneys for cancer patients announced a proposed $7.25 billion settlement Tuesday to resolve thousands of U.S. lawsuits alleging the company failed to warn people that its popular weedkiller Roundup could cause cancer. The proposed settlement comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to hear arguments in April on Bayer's assertion that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's approval of Roundup without a cancer warning should invalidate claims filed in state courts. That case would not be affected by the proposed settlement. But the settlement would eliminate some of the risk from an eventual Supreme Court ruling. Patients would be assured of receiving settlement money even if the Supreme Court rules in Bayer's favor. And Bayer would be protected from potentially larger costs if the high court rules against it. Germany-based Bayer, which acquired Roundup maker Monsanto in 2018, disputes the assertion that Roundup's key ingredient, glyphosate, can cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma. But the company has warned that mounting legal costs are threatening its ability to continue selling the product in U.S. agricultural markets. "Litigation uncertainly has plagued the company for years, and this settlement gives the company a road to closure," Bayer CEO Bill Anderson said Tuesday. The proposed settlement could total up to $7.25 billion over 21 years and resolve most of the remaining U.S. lawsuits surrounding the cancer-related harms of Roundup. The report notes that more than 125,000 claims have been filed since 2015, and while many have already been settled, this deal aims to cover most outstanding and future claims tied to past exposure. Individual payouts would vary widely based on exposure type, age at diagnosis, and cancer severity. Bayer can also cancel the deal if too many plaintiffs opt out. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Model Brings 'Much-Improved Coding Skills', Upgraded Free Tier - Anthropic has released Claude Sonnet 4.6, the first upgrade to its mid-tier AI model since version 4.5 arrived in September 2025. The new model features a "1M token context window" and delivers a "full upgrade of the model's skills across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, knowledge work, and design." From Anthropic: Sonnet 4.6 brings much-improved coding skills to more of our users. Improvements in consistency, instruction following, and more have made developers with early access prefer Sonnet 4.6 to its predecessor by a wide margin. They often even prefer it to our smartest model from November 2025, Claude Opus 4.5. Performance that would have previously required reaching for an Opus-class model -- including on real-world, economically valuable office tasks -- is now available with Sonnet 4.6. The model also shows a major improvement in computer use skills compared to prior Sonnet models. The free tier now uses Sonnet 4.6 by default and with "file creation, connectors, skills, and compaction" included. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple Is Reportedly Planning To Launch AI-Powered Glasses, a Pendant, and AirPods - According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (paywalled), Apple is reportedly developing AI-powered smart glasses, a wearable pendant, and camera-equipped AirPods that connect to the iPhone and use "visual context" to let Siri perform real-world actions. The Verge reports: Apple is reportedly aiming to start production of its smart glasses in December, ahead of a 2027 launch. The new device will compete directly with Meta's lineup of smart glasses and is rumored to feature speakers, microphones, and a high-resolution camera for taking photos and videos, in addition to another lens designed to enable AI-powered features. The glasses won't have a built-in display, but they will allow users to make phone calls, interact with Siri, play music, and "take actions based on surroundings," such as asking about the ingredients in a meal, according to Bloomberg. Apple's smart glasses could also help users identify what they're seeing, reference landmarks when offering directions, and remind wearers to complete a task in specific situations, Bloomberg reports. The company is reportedly planning to develop the frames for the smart glasses in-house, instead of partnering with a third-party company like Meta does with Ray-Ban and Oakley. Prototypes of the glasses use a cable to connect to a battery pack and an iPhone, but Bloomberg reports that "newer versions have the components embedded in the frame." Apple reportedly wants to make its smart glasses stand out by offering a high-quality build and advanced camera technology. The company is still working on AI-powered smart glasses with a display, though their launch "remains many years away," Bloomberg says. Apple's plans for AI hardware don't end there, as the company is expected to build upon its Google Gemini-powered Siri upgrade with an AirTag-sized AI pendant that people can either wear as a necklace or a pin. This device would "essentially serve as an always-on camera" for the iPhone and has a microphone for prompting Siri, Bloomberg reports. The pendant, which The Information first reported on last month, is rumored to come with a built-in chip, but will mainly rely on the iPhone's processing power. The device could arrive as early as next year, according to Bloomberg. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Discord Rival Maxes Out Hosting Capacity As Players Flee Age-Verification Crackdown - Following backlash over Discord's global rollout of strict age-verification checks, users are flocking to rival platform TeamSpeak and overwhelming its servers. According to PC Gamer, the Discord alternative said its hosting capacity has been maxed out in a number of regions including the U.S. From the report: [A]s I saw for myself while testing out free Discord alternatives, it's hard to deny the appeal of TeamSpeak. It's quick and easy to make an account, join or start a group chat, or join a massive, game-based community voice server, and at no point does TeamSpeak cheekily ask if it can scan your wizened visage. During my testing, I was able to dive into 18+ group chats without tripping over an age gate. However, there's no guarantee TeamSpeak won't have to deploy its own age verification mechanism in the future. In the UK at least, the Online Safety Act makes those sorts of checks a legal obligation, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently stating "No social media platform should get a free pass when it comes to protecting our kids." Besides all of that, if you'd rather not chat to randoms who also happen to have an unhealthy obsession with Arc Raiders, you'll likely need to pay an admittedly small subscription fee to rent your own ten-person community voice server. By that point, you're handing over card details and essentially fulfilling an age assurance check anyway. If you'd rather limit how much info your chat platform of choice has about you, there are arguably better options out there. Read more of this story at Slashdot.