Latest News
Last updated 26 Mar, 02:50 PM
BBC News
UK forecast to see biggest hit to growth from Iran war out of major economies - The OECD downgrades forecasts for many of the world's biggest economies due to the US-Israel war with Iran.
Olympic women's sport limited to biological females - The women's category of Olympic sports will be limited to biological females from 2028, says the International Olympic Committee.
'A game-changing moment for social media' - what next for big tech after landmark addiction verdict? - The ruling could be the beginning of the end of social media as we know it, writes the BBC's technology editor Zoe Kleinman.
I re-visited one of England's most spectacular hikes after a £5.5m upgrade - The long-distance Coast to Coast route which stretches across the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors is now an official National Trail.
UK now 'ready' to seize Russian shadow fleet ships, Healey says - Forces can now board sanctioned vessels if required, after ministers identified a legal basis in January.
The Register
Linear moves sideways to agentic AI as CEO declares issue tracking dead - Agent will capture issues and eventually debug code The Linear cloudy issue tracker and project manager has introduced an AI agent and plans to add AI coding assistance, with CEO and co-founder Karri Saarinen declaring that "issue tracking is dead."…
AI bug reports went from junk to legit overnight, says Linux kernel czar - Greg Kroah-Hartman can't explain the inflection point, but it's not slowing down or going away Interview I was at a press luncheon at KubeCon Europe this week when, to my surprise, who should sit down next to me but long-term Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman. Greg, who lives in the Netherlands these days, was there to briefly comment on AI, Linux, and security. We spoke about how, over the last month, AI-driven activity around Linux security and code review has "really jumped" in a way no one in the open source world saw coming.…
Three more charged over alleged Nvidia GPU smuggling scheme to China - Prosecutors say trio used Thai front companies to reroute high-end AI servers The US has collared three more people for allegedly attempting to smuggle Nvidia GPUs to China, days after a Supermicro co-founder faced similar accusations.…
Brit lawmaker targeted by AI deepfake fails to get answers from US Big Tech - Appearing before Parliament, Meta, Google and X struggle to explain how fake political video circulated for so long A member of the UK Parliament's lower house who was the victim of a deepfake AI campaign this week had a rare chance to confront the Big Tech executives who helped spread it. Their answers disappointed.…
Digital euro goes full sovereignty mode, US cloud giants not on guest list - Central bank turns to homegrown providers to underpin virtual cash push Europe is taking a small step toward breaking its reliance on US Big Tech by hiring only cloud operators headquartered in the EU to work on the backbone of the digital euro project.…
New Scientist - Home
A variety of jungle animals all use one type of tree as a latrine - In the cloud forest of Costa Rica, many canopy-dwelling animals do their business in strangler fig trees, perhaps as a way of leaving messages
The Selfish Gene: Still one of the most thrilling evolution books ever - Fifty years ago, Richard Dawkins shared an irresistible scientific metaphor with the world that modernised and democratised evolutionary biology. Half a century on, The Selfish Gene remains powerfully insightful, finds Rowan Hooper
Temperature gets a new definition using a quantum device - A device that relies on quantum effects and oversized atoms may be a more reliable way to measure temperature that doesn't require calibration
How big is a 'shedload'? Let's ask the nuclear physicists - Feedback is prompted by readers to investigate the size of the shed in the term 'shedload', and gets down and dirty with particle physics in the quest
What to read this week: the persuasive How Flowers Made Our World - We shouldn't dismiss flowers as merely ornamental – these blooms are world-changers, argues a vivid new book by David George Haskell. Michael Marshall is mostly convinced
Hacker News
Moving from GitHub to Codeberg, for lazy people - Comments
European Parliament decided that Chat Control 1.0 must stop - Comments
Personal Encyclopedias - Comments
From zero to a RAG system: successes and failures - Comments
Swift 6.3 - Comments
Slashdot
Reddit Takes On Bots With 'Human Verification' Requirements - Reddit is rolling out human-verification checks for accounts that show signs of bot-like behavior, while also labeling approved automated accounts that provide useful services. The social media company stressed that these checks will only happen if something appears "fishy," and that it is "not conducting sitewide human verification." TechCrunch reports: To identify potential bots, Reddit is using specialized tooling that looks at account-level signals and other factors -- like how quickly the account is attempting to write or post content. Using AI to write posts or comments, however, is not against its policies (though community moderators may set their own rules). To verify an account is human, Reddit will leverage third-party tools like passkeys from Apple, Google, YubiKey, and other third-party biometric services, like Face ID or even Sam Altman's World ID -- or, in some countries, the use of government IDs. Reddit notes this last category may be required in some countries like the U.K. and Australia and some U.S. states, because of local regulations on age verification, but it's not the company's preferred method. "If we need to verify an account is human, we'll do it in a privacy-first way," Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman wrote in the announcement Wednesday. "Our aim is to confirm there is a person behind the account, not who that person is. The goal is to increase transparency of what is what on Reddit while preserving the anonymity that makes Reddit unique. You shouldn't have to sacrifice one for the other." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Melania Trump Welcomes Humanoid Robot At White House Summit - Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: In Melania and the Robot, the New York Times reports on First Lady Melania Trump's inaugural Fostering the Future Together Coalition Summit, which brought together international leaders, First Spouses from around the world, tech leaders, educators, and nonprofits to collaborate on practical solutions that expand access to educational tools while strengthening protections for children in digital environments (Day 2 WH summary). The Times begins: "On Wednesday, Mrs. Trump appeared at the White House alongside Figure 3, a humanoid, A.I.-powered robot whose uses, according to the company that makes it, include fetching towels, carrying groceries and serving champagne. But Mrs. Trump joins tech executives and some researchers in envisioning a world beyond robot butlery. She is interested in how these robots could cut it as educators. Both clad in shades of white, the first lady and the visiting robot walked into a gathering of first spouses from around the world, a group that included Sara Netanyahu of Israel, Olena Zelenska of Ukraine, and Brigitte Macron of France. The dulcet tones from a (presumably human) military orchestra played as the first lady and her guest entered the event. Both lady and robot extolled the virtues of further integrating robots into the educational and social lives of children. In the history of modern first-lady initiatives, which have included building a national book festival (Laura Bush), reshuffling the food pyramid (Michelle Obama) and advocating for free community college (Jill Biden), Mrs. Trump's involvement of a humanoid robot in education policy was a first." "Figure 3 delivered brief remarks and delivered salutations in several languages. With its sleek black-and-white appearance, Figure 3 would fit right in with the first lady's branding aesthetic, which includes a self-titled coffee table book and movie, not least because the name "MELANIA" was emblazoned on the side of its glossy plastic head. After Figure 3 teetered gingerly away, Mrs. Trump looked around the room and told them that the future looked a lot like what they had just witnessed. 'The future of A.I. is personified,' she told her audience. 'It will be formed in the shape of humans. Very soon artificial intelligence will move from our mobile phones to humanoids that deliver utility.' She invited her guests to envision a future in which a robot philosopher educated children." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Brazil's UFO Capital Marks 30 Years Since 'Alien Encounter' - Thirty years after the alleged 1996 "ET of Varginha" encounter, debate continues to rage over the events that happened in Brazil's self-styled UFO capital. An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from the Guardian: The skies over this far-flung coffee-growing hub went charcoal black, the heavens opened and one of Brazil's greatest mysteries was born. "It really was something unique," recalls Marco Antonio Reis, a zoo director, who was at his ranch outside Varginha one stormy day in January 1996 when, he says, an otherworldly creature came to town. Reis and other locals claim the unusually ferocious downpour heralded a series of disturbing and seemingly paranormal events. At least six of the zoo's animals, including a spider monkey, a tapir and a raccoon, died mysteriously after a horned interloper with bulging red eyes was spotted in the vicinity by a woman who had gone out for a smoke. When a vet examined their corpses, "they were all black inside," Reis claims. On a nearby wasteland, three young women spotted a peculiar and malodorous being with a heart-shaped face and three lumps on its head cowering beside a wall. "I've seen the devil," one of those witnesses would later tell her mum. Soon afterwards, an unexplained infection was rumored to have killed a strapping police intelligence officer who was said to have grappled with the oleaginous unidentified being. Three decades later, Reis says he is convinced Varginha received a non-human visit. His only doubt was from where it came. "We don't know if it was extraterrestrial or intraterrestrial," the 71-year-old says as he climbs a staircase to the veranda where the smoker claims to have seen what, in reference to Steven Spielberg's 1982 film, became known as the "ET of Varginha". A 2ft statue of a two-toed alien now marks the spot. "It's possible it was an intraterrestrial, from inside the Earth They don't just come from space," Reis says. "It might have come from the depths of the Earth, too. We don't even know what it's like at the bottom of the sea, do we?" Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Postal Service to Impose Its First-Ever Fuel Surcharge on Packages - The U.S. Postal Service plans to impose its first-ever fuel surcharge on packages (source paywalled; alternative source), adding an 8% fee starting in April as it struggles with rising fuel costs and ongoing financial pressure. The surcharge will not apply to letter mail and is currently expected to remain in place until January 2027. The Wall Street Journal reports: Other parcel carriers, including FedEx and United Parcel Service, have imposed fuel surcharges, as well as a basket of other surcharges and fees, for years. Both FedEx and UPS have dramatically raised their fuel surcharges in recent weeks as the price of oil has increased amid the turmoil in the Middle East. [...] The post office has been trying to increase the volume of packages it delivers. It previously differentiated itself from commercial carriers by saying that it doesn't apply residential, Saturday delivery or fuel or remote-delivery surcharges. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Canada's Immigration Rejected Applicant Based On AI-Invented Job Duties - New submitter haroldbasset writes: Canada's Immigration Department rejected an applicant because the duties of her current job did not match the Canadian work experience she had claimed, but the Department's AI assistant had invented that work experience. She has been working in Canada as a health scientist -- she has a Ph.D. in the immunology of aging -- but the AI genius instead described her as "wiring and assembling control circuits, building control and robot panels, programming and troubleshooting." "It's believed to be the first time that the department explicitly referred to the use of generative AI to support application processing in immigration refusals," reports the Toronto Star. "The disclaimer also noted that all generated content was verified by an officer and that generative AI was not used to make or recommend a decision." The applicant's lawyer was shocked "how any human being could make this decision." "Somehow, it hallucinated my client's job description," he said. "I would love to see what the officer saw. Something seriously went wrong here." The applicant's refusal came just as Canada's Immigration Department released its first AI strategy, which frames artificial intelligence as a way to improve efficiency, service delivery, and program integrity. The department says it has long used digital tools like analytics and automation to flag fraud risks and triage applications, and is now also experimenting with generative AI for tasks such as research, summarizing, and analysis. In this case, however, the department insisted the decision was made by a human officer and that generative AI was not involved in the final decision. Read more of this story at Slashdot.