Latest News

Last updated 26 Apr, 05:16 AM

BBC News

Pope Francis's funeral: A visual guide - The procession, the ancient rituals and the symbolic changes - how Pope Francis will make his final journey.

Virginia Giuffre, Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein accuser, dies by suicide - Giuffre alleged she was trafficked to the Duke of York when she was 17, which he has strenuously denied.

Russia and Ukraine 'very close to a deal', says Trump - The US president's envoy meets Vladimir Putin in Moscow, while Ukraine calls for more pressure on Russia.

Steve Rosenberg: All smiles in the Kremlin as Putin sits down with Trump's deal-maker - As Russia and the US seek to repair ties, could they secure a peace deal acceptable to Ukraine, asks the BBC's Russia editor.

Border officers saw a couple behaving oddly with a baby - and uncovered a mystery - The identity of a Nigerian baby brought to the UK remains unknown after an "extraordinary" court case.

The Register

Signalgate lessons learned: If creating a culture of security is the goal, America is screwed - Infosec is a team sport … unless you're in the White House Opinion Just when it seems they couldn't be that careless, US officials tasked with defending the nation go and do something else that puts American critical infrastructure, national security, and troops' lives in danger.…

Amid CVE funding fumble, 'we were mushrooms, kept in the dark,' says board member - What next for US-bankrolled vulnerability tracker? It's edging closer to a more independent, global future Kent Landfield, a founding member of the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program and member of the board, learned through social media that the system he helped create was just hours away from losing funding.…

More Ivanti attacks may be on horizon, say experts who are seeing 9x surge in endpoint scans - GreyNoise says it is the kind of activity that typically precedes new vulnerability disclosures Ivanti VPN users should stay alert as IP scanning for the vendor's Connect Secure and Pulse Secure systems surged by 800 percent last week, according to threat intel biz GreyNoise.…

Oh, cool. Microsoft melts bug that froze Server 2025 Remote Desktop sessions - Where have we heard this before? Feb security update needs its own fix More than one month after complaints starting flying, Microsoft has fixed a Windows bug that caused some Remote Desktop sessions to freeze.…

Hydrotreated vegetable oil is not an emission-free swap for diesel in datacenters - Biofuel lowers pollutants, but won't eliminate 'em, and could mean DCs compete for supplies Datacenter operators are being encouraged to adopt hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) as a replacement for diesel in generators, however, analysts say the sustainable stand-in is not emission-free and has its own drawbacks.…

New Scientist - Home

US government defunds research on misinformation - The US National Science Foundation cancelled funding for research on misinformation, disinformation and AI-generated deepfakes, even as misleading information runs rampant on social media

Chatbots can hide secret messages in seemingly normal conversations - Text-generating AIs such as ChatGPT can be used to hide encrypted messages inside fake conversations, which could help people living under oppressive regimes communicate secretly

Ancient supervolcano eruption had surprisingly mild impact on climate - Rather than a volcanic winter, the Toba eruption 74,000 years ago resulted in several years of warm and dry weather, geochemical evidence from India suggests

Hackers could 'vandalise' quantum computers without people noticing - Hackers may be able to garble the output of programs running on quantum computers, leaving other people with unknowingly incorrect results - but thankfully, there is a fix

First ever 'black hole bomb' created in the lab - A black hole bomb – an idea first proposed in 1969 – has now been realised in the lab as a toy model made from a rotating cylinder and magnetic coils. Studying the bomb could help us better understand real black holes.

Hacker News

I wrote a book called "Crap Towns". It seemed funny at the time - Comments

Berkeley Humanoid Lite – Open-source robot - Comments

Lossless LLM compression for efficient GPU inference via dynamic-length float - Comments

Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney - Comments

Parallel ./configure - Comments

Slashdot

Netflix Introduces a New Kind of Subtitles For the Non-Hearing Impaired - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Multiple studies and investigations have found that about half of American households watch TV and movies with subtitles on, but only a relatively small portion of those include someone with a hearing disability. That's because of the trouble many people have understanding dialogue in modern viewing situations, and Netflix has now introduced a subtitles option to help. The closed captioning we've all been using for years includes not only the words the people on-screen are saying, but additional information needed by the hard of hearing, including character names, music cues ("dramatic music intensifies") and sound effects ("loud explosion"). For those who just wanted to make sure they didn't miss a word here and there, the frequent descriptions of sound effects and music could be distracting. This new format omits those extras, just including the spoken words and nothing else -- even in the same language as the spoken dialogue. The feature will be available in new Netflix original programming, starting with the new season of You in multiple languages. Netflix says it's looking at bringing the option to older titles in the library (including those not produced by Netflix) in the future. Traditional closed captions are still available, of course. Those are labeled "English CC" whereas this new option is simply labeled "English" (or whatever your preferred language is). Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple TV+ Is 'Worst Marketer In the Universe,' Says Producer - TV producer Alex Berger criticized Apple TV+ as "the worst marketer in the universe" for failing to promote his French-language show La Maison, despite its success in Europe. Berger said he initially partnered with Apple out of hope, but ultimately felt they undermined their own content by not supporting it properly. 9to5Mac reports: Rafa Sales Ross at Variety recently interviewed TV producer Alex Berger, who made La Maison for Apple TV+. That partnership is apparently not one he intends to repeat: "Marketing makes a show," he emphasized. "Apple, for example, is probably the worst marketer in the universe -- the best for iPhones, the worst for television. They don't do marketing, and it was an issue for us with 'La Maison.' We did a great show that had an amazing success in France and other places in Europe, but they never promoted it. It drove me crazy." Asked why, while believing Apple TV+ to lack in marketing efforts, did he decide to take "La Maison" to the streamer, Berger said simply: "Hope. We had hope." "Apple TV+ had never done a show in France and never really done a show in Europe," adds the producer. "'Slow Horses' started [things] in the U.K., but it was with the U.S.. I was hoping I would change them. We got very frustrated and just thought at one point that they were shooting themselves in the foot, and why? "La Maison faced the additional challenge of being a French-language series, at the time one of the only non-English shows on the streamer," notes 9to5Mac's Ryan Christoffel. "So it had an uphill battle already, making Apple's marketing struggles even more of a problem." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

World's Biggest Zipper Maker Is Developing a Self-Propelled Zipper - YKK, the world's largest zipper maker, has unveiled a prototype self-propelled zipper that uses a motorized worm gear to zip itself closed at the push of a button. It currently relies on a wired remote and external power, and can zip spans up to 16 feet in under a minute. The Verge reports: Although some recent zipper innovations, such as Under Armour's one-handed MagZip upgrade, are designed to improve accessibility and make zippers easier to use for those with limited mobility, YKK envisions more industrial use cases for its prototype. As demonstrated in a video recently shared on the company's YouTube channel, the self-propelled zipper is seen connecting a pair of 16-foot-tall membranes in about 40 seconds. Zipping them together manually would require the use of a ladder or other machinery. In another video, the prototype is used to quickly connect a pair of 13-foot-wide temporary shelters standing over eight feet tall, taking about 50 seconds to progress from one side to the other. [...] In addition to miniaturizing the tech and adding a battery, YKK would also need to develop some safety mechanisms before its self-propelled zipper could ever reach consumers' clothing, ensuring there's nothing that might get stuck. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Devs Sound Alarm After Microsoft Subtracts C/C++ Extension From VS Code Forks - Some developers are "crying foul" after Microsoft's C/C++ extension for Visual Studio Code stopped working with VS Code derivatives like VS Codium and Cursor, reports The Register. The move has prompted Cursor to transition to open-source alternatives, while some developers are calling for a regulatory investigation into Microsoft's alleged anti-competitive behavior. From the report: In early April, programmers using VS Codium, an open-source fork of Microsoft's MIT-licensed VS Code, and Cursor, a commercial AI code assistant built from the VS Code codebase, noticed that the C/C++ extension stopped working. The extension adds C/C++ language support, such as Intellisense code completion and debugging, to VS Code. The removal of these capabilities from competing tools breaks developer workflows, hobbles the editor, and arguably hinders competition. The breaking change appears to have occurred with the release of v1.24.5 on April 3, 2025. Following the April update, attempts to install the C/C++ extension outside of VS Code generate this error message: "The C/C++ extension may be used only with Microsoft Visual Studio, Visual Studio for Mac, Visual Studio Code, Azure DevOps, Team Foundation Server, and successor Microsoft products and services to develop and test your applications." Microsoft has forbidden the use of its extensions outside of its own software products since at least September 2020, when the current licensing terms were published. But it hasn't enforced those terms in its C/C++ extension with an environment check in its binaries until now. [...] Developers discussing the issue in Cursor's GitHub repo have noted that Microsoft recently rolled out a competing AI software agent capability, dubbed Agent Mode, within its Copilot software. One such developer who contacted us anonymously told The Register they sent a letter about the situation to the US Federal Trade Commission, asking them to probe Microsoft for unfair competition -- alleging self-preferencing, bundling Copilot without a removal option, and blocking rivals like Cursor to lock users into its AI ecosystem. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Comcast President Bemoans Broadband Customer Losses: 'We Are Not Winning' - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast executives apparently realized something that customers have known and complained about for years: The Internet provider's prices aren't transparent enough and rise too frequently. This might not have mattered much to cable executives as long as the total number of subscribers met their targets. But after reporting a net loss of 183,000 residential broadband customers in Q1 2025, Comcast President Mike Cavanagh said the company isn't "winning in the marketplace" during an earnings call today. The Q1 2025 customer loss was over three times larger than the net loss in Q1 2024. While customers often have few viable options for broadband and the availability of alternatives varies widely by location, Comcast faces competition from fiber and fixed wireless ISPs. "In this intensely competitive environment, we are not winning in the marketplace in a way that is commensurate with the strength of the network and connectivity products that I just described," Cavanagh said. "[Cable division CEO] Dave [Watson] and his team have worked hard to understand the reasons for this disconnect and have identified two primary causes. One is price transparency and predictability and the other is the level of ease of doing business with us. The good news is that both are fixable and we are already underway with execution plans to address these challenges." [...] Cavanagh said that Comcast plans to make changes in marketing and operations "with the highest urgency." This means that "we are simplifying our pricing construct to make our price-to-value proposition clearer to consumers across all broadband segments," he said. Comcast last week announced a five-year price guarantee for broadband customers who sign up for a new package. Comcast said customers will get a "simple monthly price starting as low as $55 per month," without having to enter a contract, giving them "freedom and flexibility to cancel at any time without penalty." The five-year guarantee also comes with one year of Xfinity Mobile at no charge, Comcast said. [...] Additional offers are in the works, Cavanagh said. "We are not done. Providing more value to our customers with less complexity and friction is a top priority and you will see our go-to-market approach continue to evolve over the coming months," he said. Comcast investors shouldn't expect an immediate turnaround, though. "We anticipate that it will take several quarters for our new approach to gain traction and impact the business in a meaningful way," Cavanagh said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.