Latest News
Last updated 04 Apr, 01:34 AM
BBC News
Trump tariffs trigger steepest US stocks drop since 2020 as China, EU vow to hit back - Nike and Apple were among brands worst hit, but Trump maintained the US economy would ultimately "boom".
Why Trump's tariffs aren't really reciprocal - BBC Verify's Ben Chu takes a look at the wide range of different tariffs being imposed on countries.
'I could live 30 years - but want to die': Has assisted dying in Canada gone too far? - BBC News reports on assisted dying in Canada, where some say it's now easier to choose to die than get support to live
Israeli strike on Gaza City school kills 27, health ministry says - Palestinian authorities say children were among the dead, while Israel says it hit a Hamas command-and-control centre.
Luton airport expansion approved by government - Annual passenger numbers are due to almost double to 32 million, despite environmental concerns.
The Register
Signalgate: Pentagon watchdog probes Defense Sec Hegseth - Classification compliance? Records retention requirements? How quaint A US Department of Defense watchdog has opened an investigation into its own Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, over his use of instant-messaging app Signal to discuss government business.…
Flux off: CISA, annexable allies warn of hot DNS threat - Shape shifting technique described as menace to national security The US govt's Cybersecurity Infrastructure Agency, aka CISA, on Thursday urged organizations, internet service providers, and security firms to strengthen defenses against so-called fast flux attacks.…
Windows intros 365 Link, a black box that does nothing but connect to Microsoft's cloud - And it can be yours for a rather steep $349 Microsoft's Windows 365 Link has reached general availability, although some may question its value.…
Suspected Chinese spies right now hijacking buggy Ivanti gear – for third time in 3 years - Simple denial-of-service blunder turned out to be remote unauth code exec disaster Suspected Chinese government spies have been exploiting a newly disclosed critical bug in Ivanti VPN appliances since mid-March. This is now at least the third time in three years these snoops have been pwning these products.…
Amazon's Project Kuiper satellites now boarding the rocket to relevance - Jeff Bezos' other space business finally shows signs of life with launch scheduled for next week The first batch of Amazon's Project Kuiper satellites is due to be lofted into orbit next week.…
New Scientist - Home
Bonobos use a kind of syntax once thought to be unique to humans - The way bonobos combine vocal sounds to create new meanings suggests the evolutionary building blocks of human language are shared with our closest relatives
Mammoth tusk flakes may be the oldest ivory objects made by humans - Ancient humans living in what is now Ukraine 400,000 years ago may have practised or taught tool-making techniques using mammoth tusks, a softer material than bone
Common artificial sweetener makes you three times hungrier than sugar - The artificial sweetener sucralose increases brain activity in regions involved in appetite, suggesting it makes people hungrier
We could make solar panels on the moon by melting lunar dust - Researchers used a synthetic version of moon dust to build working solar panels, which could eventually be created within – and used to power – a moon base of the future
A revolutionary new understanding of autism in girls - By studying the brains of autistic girls, we now know the condition presents differently in them than in boys, suggesting that huge numbers of women have gone undiagnosed
Hacker News
An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip - Comments
Celebrate 50 years of Microsoft with the company's original source code - Comments
Build an 8-bit computer from scratch - Comments
Curl-impersonate: Special build of curl that can impersonate the major browsers - Comments
The Slow Collapse of Critical Thinking in OSINT Due to AI - Comments
Slashdot
Massive Expansion of Italy's Piracy Shield Underway - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: Walled Culture has been following closely Italy's poorly designed Piracy Shield system. Back in December we reported how copyright companies used their access to the Piracy Shield system to order Italian Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to all of Google Drive for the entire country, and how malicious actors could similarly use that unchecked power to shut down critical national infrastructure. Since then, the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), an international, not-for-profit association representing computer, communications, and Internet industry firms, has added its voice to the chorus of disapproval. In a letter (PDF) to the European Commission, it warned about the dangers of the Piracy Shield system to the EU economy [...]. It also raised an important new issue: the fact that Italy brought in this extreme legislation without notifying the European Commission under the so-called "TRIS" procedure, which allows others to comment on possible problems [...]. As well as Italy's failure to notify the Commission about its new legislation in advance, the CCIA believes that: this anti-piracy mechanism is in breach of several other EU laws. That includes the Open Internet Regulation which prohibits ISPs to block or slow internet traffic unless required by a legal order. The block subsequent to the Piracy Shield also contradicts the Digital Services Act (DSA) in several aspects, notably Article 9 requiring certain elements to be included in the orders to act against illegal content. More broadly, the Piracy Shield is not aligned with the Charter of Fundamental Rights nor the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU -- as it hinders freedom of expression, freedom to provide internet services, the principle of proportionality, and the right to an effective remedy and a fair trial. Far from taking these criticisms to heart, or acknowledging that Piracy Shield has failed to convert people to paying subscribers, the Italian government has decided to double down, and to make Piracy Shield even worse. Massimiliano Capitanio, Commissioner at AGCOM, the Italian Authority for Communications Guarantees, explained on LinkedIn how Piracy Shield was being extended in far-reaching ways (translation by Google Translate, original in Italian). [...] That is, Piracy Shield will apply to live content far beyond sports events, its original justification, and to streaming services. Even DNS and VPN providers will be required to block sites, a serious technical interference in the way the Internet operates, and a threat to people's privacy. Search engines, too, will be forced to de-index material. The only minor concession to ISPs is to unblock domain names and IP addresses that are no longer allegedly being used to disseminate unauthorized material. There are, of course, no concessions to ordinary Internet users affected by Piracy Shield blunders. In the future, Italy's Piracy Shield will add: - 30-minute blackout orders not only for pirate sports events, but also for other live content; - the extension of blackout orders to VPNs and public DNS providers; - the obligation for search engines to de-index pirate sites; - the procedures for unblocking domain names and IP addresses obscured by Piracy Shield that are no longer used to spread pirate content; - the new procedure to combat piracy on the #linear and "on demand" television, for example to protect the #film and #serietv. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Louvre Museum In Paris to Discontinue Nintendo 3DS Audio Guides - The Louvre Museum will discontinue its use of Nintendo 3DS XL consoles as audio guides by September 2025, replacing them with a new system. NintendoSoup reports: For several years the Louvre has been using specially dedicated New Nintendo 3DS XL consoles to give visitors an audio guided tour of the famous museum. According to the museum's official website however, it seems that the program will be discontinued in September 2025, to be replaced by a new system. Presumably, this is due to Nintendo slowly phasing out the Nintendo 3DS line in general, having stopped supporting repairs for the console in a few countries. The consoles used by the Louvre would have broken down sooner or later, necessitating a change if they could no longer be sent in for repairs. At the time of this writing, it is not known what will become of the unique special edition consoles that were being used for this purpose. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
DeepMind Details All the Ways AGI Could Wreck the World - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Ryan Whitwam: Researchers at DeepMind have ... released a new technical paper (PDF) that explains how to develop AGI safely, which you can download at your convenience. It contains a huge amount of detail, clocking in at 108 pages before references. While some in the AI field believe AGI is a pipe dream, the authors of the DeepMind paper project that it could happen by 2030. With that in mind, they aimed to understand the risks of a human-like synthetic intelligence, which they acknowledge could lead to "severe harm." This work has identified four possible types of AGI risk, along with suggestions on how we might ameliorate said risks. The DeepMind team, led by company co-founder Shane Legg, categorized the negative AGI outcomes as misuse, misalignment, mistakes, and structural risks. The first possible issue, misuse, is fundamentally similar to current AI risks. However, because AGI will be more powerful by definition, the damage it could do is much greater. A ne'er-do-well with access to AGI could misuse the system to do harm, for example, by asking the system to identify and exploit zero-day vulnerabilities or create a designer virus that could be used as a bioweapon. DeepMind says companies developing AGI will have to conduct extensive testing and create robust post-training safety protocols. Essentially, AI guardrails on steroids. They also suggest devising a method to suppress dangerous capabilities entirely, sometimes called "unlearning," but it's unclear if this is possible without substantially limiting models. Misalignment is largely not something we have to worry about with generative AI as it currently exists. This type of AGI harm is envisioned as a rogue machine that has shaken off the limits imposed by its designers. Terminators, anyone? More specifically, the AI takes actions it knows the developer did not intend. DeepMind says its standard for misalignment here is more advanced than simple deception or scheming as seen in the current literature. To avoid that, DeepMind suggests developers use techniques like amplified oversight, in which two copies of an AI check each other's output, to create robust systems that aren't likely to go rogue. If that fails, DeepMind suggests intensive stress testing and monitoring to watch for any hint that an AI might be turning against us. Keeping AGIs in virtual sandboxes with strict security and direct human oversight could help mitigate issues arising from misalignment. Basically, make sure there's an "off" switch. If, on the other hand, an AI didn't know that its output would be harmful and the human operator didn't intend for it to be, that's a mistake. We get plenty of those with current AI systems -- remember when Google said to put glue on pizza? The "glue" for AGI could be much stickier, though. DeepMind notes that militaries may deploy AGI due to "competitive pressure," but such systems could make serious mistakes as they will be tasked with much more elaborate functions than today's AI. The paper doesn't have a great solution for mitigating mistakes. It boils down to not letting AGI get too powerful in the first place. DeepMind calls for deploying slowly and limiting AGI authority. The study also suggests passing AGI commands through a "shield" system that ensures they are safe before implementation. Lastly, there are structural risks, which DeepMind defines as the unintended but real consequences of multi-agent systems contributing to our already complex human existence. For example, AGI could create false information that is so believable that we no longer know who or what to trust. The paper also raises the possibility that AGI could accumulate more and more control over economic and political systems, perhaps by devising heavy-handed tariff schemes. Then one day, we look up and realize the machines are in charge instead of us. This category of risk is also the hardest to guard against because it would depend on how people, infrastructure, and institutions operate in the future. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Air Conditioning, Not Data Centers, Driving Global Energy Demand Growth - Air conditioning will contribute more to rising global energy demand than data centers through 2030, according to an International Energy Agency. While attention has focused on computing power consumption, the IEA projects data centers will account for less than 10% of increased energy demand by 2030, significantly less than space cooling requirements. Global cooling degree days, a measure of air conditioning need, were 6% higher in 2024 than 2023 and 20% above the long-term average for the first two decades of the century. China, India and the United States saw particularly sharp increases. Air conditioning represented 7% of global electricity consumption in 2022, with some U.S. regions reporting that cooling can comprise over 70% of residential energy use during peak periods. The number of air conditioning units worldwide could nearly triple from fewer than 2 billion in 2016 to approximately 6 billion by 2050, creating a growing challenge for power grids. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
US Stock Markets See Worst Day Since Covid Pandemic - U.S. stock markets suffered their worst day since the Covid pandemic after Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs, triggering a global selloff and wiping out $470 billion in value from tech giants Apple and Nvidia. From a report: The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 6%, while the S&P 500 and the Dow dropped 4.8% and 3.9%, respectively. [...] Meanwhile, the US dollar hit a six-month low, going down at least 2.2% on Thursday morning compared with other major currencies and oil prices sank on fears of a global slowdown. Though the US stock market has been used to tumultuous mornings over the last few weeks, US stock futures -- an indication of the market's likely direction -- had plummeted after the announcement. Hours later, Japan's Nikkei index slumped to an eight-month low and was followed by falls in stock markets in London and across Europe. Multiple major American business groups have spoken out against the tariffs, including the Business Roundtable, a consortium of leaders of major US companies including JP Morgan, Apple and IBM, which called on the White House to "swiftly reach agreements" and remove the tariffs. "Universal tariffs ranging from 10-50% run the risk of causing major harm to American manufacturers, workers, families and exporters," the Business Roundtable said in a statement. "Damage to the US economy will increase the longer the tariffs are in place and may be exacerbated by retaliatory measures." Read more of this story at Slashdot.