Latest News
Last updated 12 Mar, 09:34 AM
BBC News
Hundreds of GPs tell BBC they have never refused a fit note over mental health concerns - The number of fit notes issued has been rising, with more than 11.2m approved in England last year.
Epstein used modelling agent to recruit girls, Brazilian women tell BBC - Modelling agent used businesses to recruit girls and arrange US visas to visit Jeffrey Epstein, Brazilian women tell BBC.
Minister defends PM's handling of Mandelson appointment - Documents show Sir Keir Starmer was warned the peer's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein posed a "reputational risk".
'It was the stuff of dreams' - Liza Tarbuck leaves Radio 2 Saturday show - Shaun Keaveny, host of The Rock Show, will stand in for her until the end of the end of the month.
My phone contents were shared with the police colleague I accused of rape - Police Scotland has been fined £66,000 by a watchdog after it failed to protect sensitive personal information.
The Register
Whitehall seeks lone C++ coder to keep airport passenger model flying - Government offers £100K to support software forecasting how travelers choose departure hubs The UK's Department for Transport is offering up to £100,000 over three years for access to a C++ programmer who can keep a module of its airport usage model up in the air.…
Microsoft adding Xbox mode to Windows 11 - Out of the Copilot and into the fire Please let there be ‘Xbork’ as this appears in all the wrong places Organizations that rely on consumer-grade PCs or allow staff to bring their own devices to work, have something new to worry about: a virtual Xbox lurking inside Windows 11.…
Meta reveals four Broadcom-built custom AI chips, claims some outperform commercial silicon - Deploying them by the gigawatt but still can’t flag obvious AI slop Social networking giant Meta has revealed details of four previously unknown custom chips powering its AI services.…
China’s CERT warns OpenClaw can inflict nasty wounds - Like deleting data, exposing keys, and loading malicious content - which may be why Beijing has reportedly banned it China’s National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team has warned locals that the OpenClaw agentic AI tool poses significant security risks.…
Atlassian to shed ten percent of staff, because AI - Company is ‘reshaping our skill mix’ amid long share price slide and SaaSpocalypse whispers Australian collaborationware company Atlassian has announced it will shed ten percent of staff – around 1,600 people.…
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
3D-Knitting: The Ultimate Guide - Comments
SBCL: A Sanely-Bootstrappable Common Lisp (2008) [pdf] - Comments
Show HN: s@: decentralized social networking over static sites - Comments
Printf-Tac-Toe - Comments
Temporal: The 9-year journey to fix time in JavaScript - Comments
Slashdot
GFiber and Astound Broadband To Join Forces - GFiber (a.k.a. Google Fiber) and Astound Broadband announced that they plan to merge into a deal backed by infrastructure investor Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners. The resulting company will be majority owned by Stonepeak, with Alphabet becoming a "significant minority shareholder." Light Reading reports: Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners teamed with Patriot Media to acquire Astound in November 2020 for $8.1 billion. Stonepeak is Astound's largest investor. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026. The combined business will be led by the existing GFiber executive team. GFiber is currently led by CEO Dinni Jain. Jain, a former Time Warner Cable and Insight Communications exec, took the helm of what was then called Google Fiber in 2018. "This agreement advances GFiber's mission of redefining internet connectivity and represents a major step toward its goal of operational and financial independence," the companies said. "GFiber will have the external capital and strategic focus needed to accelerate its next phase of growth, expanding its customer-first approach and pioneering fiber technology across the country." GFiber's combination with Astound represents "a strategic opportunity to scale our customer-focused approach to connect more households to a truly different type of internet service," Jain said in a statement. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Why Falling Cats Always Seem To Land On Their Feet - An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: In a paper, published last month in the journal The Anatomical Record, researchers offered a novel take on falling felines. Their evidence suggests new insights into the so-called falling cat problem, particularly that cats have a very flexible segment of their spines that allows them to correct their orientation midair. [...] People have been curious about falling cats perhaps as long as the animals have been living with humans, but the method to their acrobatic abilities remains enigmatic. Part of the difficulty is that the anatomy of the cat has not been studied in detail, explains Yasuo Higurashi, a physiologist at Yamaguchi University in Japan and lead author of the study. [...] Modern research has split the falling cat problem into two competing models. The first, "legs in, legs out," suggests that cats correct their falling trajectory by first extending their hind limbs before retracting them, using a sequential twist of their upper and then lower trunk to gain the proper posture while in free fall. The second model, "tuck and turn," suggests that cats turn their upper and lower bodies in simultaneous juxtaposed movements. [...] The researchers found that the feline spine was extremely flexible in the upper thoracic vertebrae, but stiffer and heavier in the lower lumbar vertebrae. The discovery matches video evidence showing the cats first turn their front legs, and then their lower legs. The results suggest the cat quickly spins its flexible upper torso to face the ground, allowing it to see so that it can correctly twist the rest of its body to match. "The thoracic spine of the cat can rotate like our neck," Dr. Higurashi said. Experiments on the spine show the upper vertebrae can twist an astounding 360 degrees, he says, which helps cats make these correcting movements with ease. The results are consistent with the "legs in, legs out" model, but definitively determining which model is correct will take more work, Dr. Higurashi says. The results also yielded another discovery: Cats, like many animals, appear to have a right-side bias. One of the dropped cats corrected itself by turning to the right eight out of eight times, while the other turned right six out of eight times. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Researchers Discover 14,000 Routers Wrangled Into Never-Before-Seen Botnet - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers say they have uncovered a takedown-resistant botnet of 14,000 routers and other network devices -- primarily made by Asus -- that have been conscripted into a proxy network that anonymously carries traffic used for cybercrime. The malware -- dubbed KadNap -- takes hold by exploiting vulnerabilities that have gone unpatched by their owners, Chris Formosa, a researcher at security firm Lumen's Black Lotus Labs, told Ars. The high concentration of Asus routers is likely due to botnet operators acquiring a reliable exploit for vulnerabilities affecting those models. He said it's unlikely that the attackers are using any zero-days in the operation. The number of infected routers averages about 14,000 per day, up from 10,000 last August, when Black Lotus discovered the botnet. Compromised devices are overwhelmingly located in the US, with smaller populations in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Russia. One of the most salient features of KadNap is a sophisticated peer-to-peer design based on Kademlia (PDF), a network structure that uses distributed hash tables to conceal the IP addresses of command-and-control servers. The design makes the botnet resistant to detection and takedowns through traditional methods. [...] Despite the resistance to normal takedown methods, Black Lotus says it has devised a means to block all network traffic to or from the control infrastructure." The lab is also distributing the indicators of compromise to public feeds to help other parties block access. [...] People who are concerned their devices are infected can check this page for IP addresses and a file hash found in device logs. To disinfect devices, they must be factory reset. Because KadNap stores a shell script that runs when an infected router reboots, simply restarting the device will result in it being compromised all over again. Device owners should also ensure all available firmware updates have been installed, that administrative passwords are strong, and that remote access has been disabled unless needed. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft's 'Xbox Mode' Is Coming To Every Windows 11 PC - In April, Microsoft will be rolling out a full-screen "Xbox mode" to all Windows 11 PCs, including laptops, desktops, and tablets. The move follows last week's confirmation of its next-generation Xbox console, known internally as Project Helix, which will be capable of running both Xbox titles and PC games. The Verge reports: Technically, you've been able to try the Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) in preview since November 2025, if you were part of both the Windows Insider and Xbox Insider Programs. But it needed work, as well as a better name. When Microsoft originally shipped it on the Asus-designed Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X handhelds, we were clear: it didn't meaningfully turn a PC experience into an easy-to-use Xbox one. But if Microsoft is putting its full weight behind PC as the future of Xbox gaming, perhaps that will change change. Read more of this story at 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.