Latest News

Last updated 11 Mar, 09:34 PM

BBC News

Starmer was warned of 'reputational risk' over Mandelson's links with Epstein, files show - Documents also suggest the peer explored the possibility of a £500,000 severance payment after being sacked as US ambassador.

A 'weirdly rushed' appointment - and other key takeaways from Mandelson files - A batch of documents has revealed new details about the appointment of Lord Mandelson as ambassador.

'Even under missiles we carry on living' - how young Iranians are coping with war - Iranians say they are sheltering at home and rarely venturing out on near-empty streets as the US-Israeli bombing campaign continues.

Prison inmate charged with Huntley murder appears in court - Ian Huntley had been serving a life sentence with a minimum term of 40 years for the murders of 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

Alternative to HRT for menopausal hot flushes now on NHS - The non-hormonal daily pill could benefit 500,000 women for whom HRT is not suitable.

The Register

Iran-linked cyber crew says they hit US med-tech firm - Meanwhile, Verifone says 'no evidence' to support the digital intruders' claims A hacking crew with ties to Iran's intelligence agency claimed to be behind a global network outage at med-tech firm Stryker on Wednesday, and said the cyberattack was in response to the US-Israel airstrikes.…

Most chatbots will help plan school shootings and other violence, study shows - I see you're trying to kill children. Would you like some help with that? You might expect a bot to have guardrails that prevent it from helping you plan a crime, but your expectations might be too high. According to a study, eight of ten major commercial chatbots will help you prepare to conduct a school shooting.…

Meta, international cops use handcuffs and AI to stop scammers - 150k accounts nuked, 21 suspects arrested Not every scam starts with malware or a compromised account. Sometimes all it takes is a friend request or a link shared via chat.…

NASA watchdog report pokes holes in Artemis lunar lander plans - Inspector general flags Starship risks and gaps in testing The NASA Office of Inspector General has published a report on the agency's management of the lunar Human Landing System (HLS) contracts, highlighting the risks and arguments behind the scenes.…

DR-DOS rises again – rebuilt from scratch, not open source - Project claims legal clarity and zero legacy code, but offers binaries only DR-DOS is back, and there is already a test version you can download. But as of yet, it's not finished, not FOSS – and not based on the original code.…

New Scientist - Home

A miniature magnet rivals behemoths in strength for the first time - Strong magnets tend to be large and power-hungry, but a new design has produced a powerful magnet that fits in the palm of your hand, making it more practical and affordable

King penguins are thriving in a warmer climate, but it may not last - Longer summers are allowing more king penguin chicks to bulk up and survive the winter, but the penguins' main fishing area is shifting further away as temperatures rise

Why a Peruvian mountain is becoming an 'impossible' particle detector - Deep canyons in the Andes are the perfect location to catch the most energetic particles in the universe. Carlos Argüelles-Delgado reveals how these intergalactic envoys could help prove the quantum nature of gravity

Why the world's militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink - The reliable internet connections provided by Starlink offer a huge advantage on the battlefield. But as access is dependent on the whims of controversial billionaire Elon Musk, militaries are looking to build their own version

Parkinson's disease may reduce enjoyment of pleasant smells - The "world smells different" for people with Parkinson's disease, a discovery that could help doctors spot the condition sooner

Hacker News

Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans. - Comments

The dead Internet is not a theory anymore - Comments

Temporal: A nine-year journey to fix time in JavaScript - Comments

I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now - Comments

Making WebAssembly a first-class language on the Web - Comments

Slashdot

Grammarly Disables Tool Offering Generative-AI Feedback Credited To Real Writers - Grammarly has disabled its Expert Review feature after backlash from writers whose names were used to present AI-generated feedback without their permission. Superhuman (formerly Grammarly) CEO Shishir Mehrotra wrote in a LinkedIn post that the company will disable Expert Review while they "reimagine" the feature: Back in August, we launched a Grammarly agent called Expert Review. The agent draws on publicly available information from third-party LLMs to surface writing suggestions inspired by the published work of influential voices. Over the past week, we received valid critical feedback from experts who are concerned that the agent misrepresented their voices. This kind of scrutiny improves our products, and we take it seriously. As context, the agent was designed to help users discover influential perspectives and scholarship relevant to their work, while also providing meaningful ways for experts to build deeper relationships with their fans. We hear the feedback and recognize we fell short on this. I want to apologize and acknowledge that we'll rethink our approach going forward. After careful consideration, we have decided to disable Expert Review while we reimagine the feature to make it more useful for users, while giving experts real control over how they want to be represented -- or not represented at all. We deeply believe in our mission to solve the "last mile of AI" by bringing AI directly to where people work, and we see this as a significant opportunity for experts. For millions of users, Grammarly is a trusted writing sidekick -- ever-present in every application, ready to help. We're opening up this platform so anyone can build agents that work like Grammarly -- expanding from one sidekick to a whole team. Imagine your professor sharpening your essay, your sales leader reshaping a customer pitch, a thoughtful critic challenging your arguments, or a leading expert elevating your proposal. For experts, this is a chance to build that same ubiquitous bond with users, much like Grammarly has. But in this world, experts choose to participate, shape how their knowledge is represented, and control their business model. That future excites me, and I hope to build it with experts who want to develop it alongside us. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Swiss E-Voting Pilot Can't Count 2,048 Ballots After USB Keys Fail To Decrypt Them - A Swiss e-voting pilot was suspended after officials couldn't decrypt 2,048 ballots because the USB keys needed to unlock them failed. "Three USB sticks were used, all with the correct code, but none of them worked," spokesperson Marco Greiner told the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation's Swissinfo service. The canton government says it "deeply regrets" the incident and has launched an investigation with authorities. The Register reports: Basel-Stadt announced the problem with its e-voting pilot, open to about 10,300 locals living abroad and 30 people with disabilities, last Friday afternoon. It encouraged participants to deliver a paper vote to the town hall or use a polling station but admitted this would not be possible for many. By the close of polling on Sunday, its e-voting system had collected 2,048 votes, but Basel-Stadt officials were not able to decrypt them with the hardware provided, despite the involvement of IT experts. [...] The votes made up less than 4 percent of those cast in Basel-Stadt and would not have changed any results, but the canton is delaying confirmation of voting figures until March 21 and suspending its e-voting pilot until the end of December, while its public prosecutor's office has started criminal proceedings. The country's Federal Chancellery said e-voting in three other cantons -- Thurgau, Graubunden, and St Gallen -- along with the nationally used Swiss Post e-voting system, had not been affected. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Binance Sues WSJ, Panicked By Gov't Probes Into Sanctioned Crypto Transfers - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Binance is hoping that suing (PDF) The Wall Street Journal for defamation might help shake off a fresh round of government probes into how the cryptocurrency exchange failed to detect $1.7 billion in transfers to a network that was funding Iran-backed terror groups. The lawsuit comes after a Wall Street Journal investigation, based on conversations with insiders and reviews of internal documents, reported that Binance had quietly dismantled its own investigation into the unlawful transfers and then fired compliance staff who initially flagged them. Alleging that the report falsely accused Binance of retaliation -- among 10 other allegedly false claims -- Binance accused the Journal of conducting a "sham" investigation that intentionally disregarded the company's statements. That included supposedly failing to note that Binance had not closed its investigation into the unlawful transfers. Binance's role in the large-scale violation of US sanctions laws is currently being investigated by the Justice and Treasury Departments. Congress members also took notice, including Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), who launched an additional inquiry. In a letter to Binance CEO Richard Teng, Blumenthal cited the Journal's report, as well as reporting from The New York Times and Fortune, while demanding that Binance explain how it managed to overlook the money-laundering for so long and why compliance staff members were fired. In its complaint Wednesday, Binance claimed that these probes may "be just the tip of the iceberg" if the record is not corrected. The reputational harm is particularly damaging, the exchange noted, since Binance has allegedly worked hard to strengthen its compliance after reaching a settlement with the US government in 2023. In taking that plea deal, Binance admitted to violating anti-money laundering and sanctions laws and paid a $4.3 billion fine, and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, eventually pled guilty to a related charge. Since that scandal, Binance claimed that the WSJ has "made a business of maligning both the cryptocurrency industry generally and Binance specifically." That's why the Journal allegedly rushed to publish its story following a similar New York Times investigation. Alleging that the WSJ was financially motivated to publish a negative story that would get more clicks, Binance claimed the Journal provided little time to respond and then failed to make necessary corrections before and after publication. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia Is Planning to Launch Its Own Open-Source OpenClaw Competitor - Nvidia is preparing to launch an open-source AI agent platform called NemoClaw, designed to compete with the likes of OpenClaw. According to Wired, the platform will allow enterprise software companies to dispatch AI agents to perform tasks for their own workforces. "Companies will be able to access the platform regardless of whether their products run on Nvidia's chips," the report adds. From the report: The move comes as Nvidia prepares for its annual developer conference in San Jose next week. Ahead of the conference, Nvidia has reached out to companies including Salesforce, Cisco, Google, Adobe, and CrowdStrike to forge partnerships for the agent platform. It's unclear whether these conversations have resulted in official partnerships. Since the platform is open source, it's likely that partners would get free, early access in exchange for contributing to the project, sources say. Nvidia plans to offer security and privacy tools as part of this new open-source agent platform. [...] For Nvidia, NemoClaw appears to be part of an effort to court enterprise software companies by offering additional layers of security for AI agents. It's also another step in the company's embrace of open-source AI models, part of a broader strategy to maintain its dominance in AI infrastructure at a time when leading AI labs are building their own custom chips. Nvidia's software strategy until now has been heavily reliant on its CUDA platform, a famously proprietary system that locks developers into building software for Nvidia's GPUs and has created a crucial "moat" for the company. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

YouTube Expands AI Deepfake Detection To Politicians, Government Officials, and Journalists - YouTube is expanding its AI deepfake detection tools to a pilot group of politicians, government officials, and journalists, allowing them to identify and request removal of unauthorized AI-generated videos impersonating them. TechCrunch reports: The technology itself launched last year to roughly 4 million YouTube creators in the YouTube Partner Program, following earlier tests. Similar to YouTube's existing Content ID system, which detects copyright-protected material in users' uploaded videos, the likeness detection feature looks for simulated faces made with AI tools. These tools are sometimes used to try to spread misinformation and manipulate people's perception of reality, as they leverage the deepfaked personas of notable figures -- like politicians or other government officials -- to say and do things in these AI videos that they didn't in real life. With the new pilot program, YouTube aims to balance users' free expression with the risks associated with AI technology that can generate a convincing likeness of a public figure. [...] [Leslie Miller, YouTube's vice president of Government Affairs and Public Policy] explained that not all of the detected matches would be removed when requested. Instead, YouTube would evaluate each request under its existing privacy policy guidelines to determine whether the content is parody or political critique, which are protected forms of free expression. The company noted it's advocating for these protections at a federal level, too, with its support for the NO FAKES Act in D.C., which would regulate the use of AI to create unauthorized recreations of an individual's voice and visual likeness. To use the new tool, eligible pilot testers must first prove their identity by uploading a selfie and a government ID. They can then create a profile, view the matches that show up, and optionally request their removal. YouTube says it plans to eventually give people the ability to prevent uploads of violating content before they go live or, possibly, allow them to monetize those videos, similar to how its Content ID system works. The company would not confirm which politicians or officials would be among its initial testers, but said the goal is to make the technology broadly available over time. Read more of this story at Slashdot.