Latest News

Last updated 31 Mar, 08:56 AM

BBC News

Scott Mills questioned by police in 2018 over sexual offence allegations against teenage boy - The case was dropped in 2019 after the CPS deemed there was insufficient evidence to bring charges, police say.

Starmer gives doctors 48 hours to cancel strike or lose new jobs package - The prime minister says the NHS could lose 1,000 extra training places if resident doctors go ahead with a six-day strike next week.

Hundreds of my abusers are still out there, says victim as grooming inquiry launched - There needs to be accountability for the failings that led to this mass exploitation of children in UK, says survivor.

New bin rules begin in England but not all councils are ready - Weekly food waste collections are required for all English homes as new legislation takes effect.

'Something wasn't right': Wrong sperm given to UK families by IVF clinics in northern Cyprus - Families of seven children believe the wrong sperm or egg donors were used in their IVF treatment.

The Register

Contracts are in C++26 despite disagreement over their value - Inventor Bjarne Stroustrup argues feature is neither minimal nor viable The ISO C++ committee (WG21) has approved the C++26 standard, described by committee member Herb Sutter as the most compelling release since C++11, and including Contracts, despite opposition to the feature from C++ inventor Bjarne Stroustrup, among others.…

Memory-makers' shares are down. Some RAM prices have eased. Blaming Google is not a good idea - Chocolate Factory boffins have found a way to reduce AI’s memory use, but don’t assume that means less demand for DRAM The high cost of memory has sideswiped the technology industry, causing server vendors to admit their quotes are guesstimates and depressing sales of PCs and smartphones. Nobody is immune: Microsoft used the RAM panic as cover for fixing Windows 11’s memory gluttony, and Sony suspended orders for compact flash and SD cards because it can’t buy the chips to build them.…

Surprise! Big Tech has been a bit rubbish at enforcing Australia’s kids social media ban - Regulator ‘moving into an enforcement stance’ and investigating Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat as millions continue to doomscroll Australia’s eSafety Commission is “moving into an enforcement stance” after finding that Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat haven’t done enough to comply with the nation’s social media minimum age (SMMA) obligation, which bans social media outfits from providing their services to children under 16 years of age.…

GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash - Letting Copilot alter others' PRs was the wrong judgment call, says product manager Updated Microsoft has done a 180. Following backlash from developers, GitHub has removed Copilot's ability to stick ads - what it calls "tips" - into any pull request that invokes its name. …

OpenAI patches ChatGPT flaw that smuggled data over DNS - Check Point says outbound controls blocked web traffic but overlooked DNS OpenAI talks up data security for its AI services, yet Check Point says that ChatGPT allowed data to leak through a DNS side channel before the flaw was fixed.…

New Scientist - Home

The profound effect the heart-brain connection has on your health - Cognitive decline, mental health and heart disease are all shaped by the deep links between heart and brain – with major implications for diagnoses and treatment

Food shock is inevitable due to the Iran war – and it could get bad - Even if the conflict in the Middle East ends today, higher fuel, fertiliser and pesticide prices will lead to a food shock in the coming months. There is no easy way out, but accelerating the net-zero transition will help prevent future shocks

AI data centres can warm surrounding areas by up to 9.1°C - Hundreds of millions of people live close enough to data centres used to power AI to feel warmer average temperatures in their local area

The Shroud of Turin bears DNA from many people, plants and animals - Researchers have identified genetic material from a vast range of organisms contaminating the shroud, said to have wrapped Jesus's body, further complicating the question of the cloth's true origin

The weird physics of plant-based milks is only just coming to light - Experiments on different kinds of milk have revealed that many plant-based milks are non-Newtonian fluids

Hacker News

Axios compromised on NPM – Malicious versions drop remote access trojan - Comments

Ollama is now powered by MLX on Apple Silicon in preview - Comments

Artemis II is not safe to fly - Comments

Universal Claude.md – cut Claude output tokens - Comments

Google's 200M-parameter time-series foundation model with 16k context - Comments

Slashdot

Scientists Shocked To Find Lab Gloves May Be Skewing Microplastics Data - Researchers found that common nitrile and latex lab gloves can shed stearate particles that closely resemble microplastics, potentially "increasing the risk of false positives when studying microplastic pollution," reports ScienceDaily. "We may be overestimating microplastics, but there should be none," said Anne McNeil, senior author of the study and U-M professor of chemistry, macromolecular science and engineering. "There's still a lot out there, and that's the problem." From the report: Researchers found that these gloves can unintentionally transfer particles onto lab tools used to analyze air, water, and other environmental samples. The contamination comes from stearates, which are not plastics but can closely resemble them during testing. Because of this, scientists may be detecting particles that are not true microplastics. To reduce this issue, U-M researchers Madeline Clough and Anne McNeil recommend using cleanroom gloves, which release far fewer particles. Stearates are salt-based, soap-like substances added to disposable gloves to help them separate easily from molds during manufacturing. However, their chemical similarity to certain plastics makes them difficult to distinguish in lab analyses, increasing the risk of false positives when studying microplastic pollution. "For microplastics researchers who have these impacted datasets, there's still hope to recover them and find a true quantity of microplastics," said researcher and recent doctoral graduate Madeline Clough. "This field is very challenging to work in because there's plastic everywhere," McNeil said. "But that's why we need chemists and people who understand chemical structure to be working in this field." The findings have been published in the journal Analytical Methods. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI Data Centers Can Warm Surrounding Areas By Up To 9.1C - An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: Andrea Marinoni at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues saw that the amount of energy needed to run a data centre had been steadily increasing of late and was likely to "explode" in the coming years, so wanted to quantify the impact. The researchers took satellite measurements of land surface temperatures over the past 20 years and cross-referenced them against the geographical coordinates of more than 8400 AI data centers. Recognizing that surface temperature could be affected by other factors, the researchers chose to focus their investigation on data centers located away from densely populated areas. They discovered that land surface temperatures increased by an average of 2C (3.6F) in the months after an AI data center started operations. In the most extreme cases, the increase in temperature was 9.1C (16.4F). The effect wasn't limited to the immediate surroundings of the data centers: the team found increased temperatures up to 10 kilometers away. Seven kilometers away, there was only a 30 percent reduction in the intensity. "The results we had were quite surprising," says Marinoni. "This could become a huge problem." Using population data, the researchers estimate that more than 340 million people live within 10 kilometers of data centers, so live in a place that is warmer than it would be if the data centre hadn't been built there. Marinoni says that areas including the Bajio region in Mexico and the Aragon province in Spain saw a 2C (3.6F) temperature increase in the 20 years between 2004 and 2024 that couldn't otherwise be explained. University of Bristol researcher Chris Preist said the findings may be more complicated than they look. "It would be worth doing follow-up research to understand to what extent it's the heat generated from computation versus the heat generated from the building itself," he says. For example, the building being heated by sunlight may be part of the effect. The findings of the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, can be found on arXiv. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft Plans To Build 100% Native Apps For Windows 11 - Microsoft is reportedly shifting Windows 11 app development back toward fully native apps. Rudy Huyn, a Partner Architect at Microsoft working on the Store and File Explorer, said in a post on X that he is building a new team to work on Windows apps. "You don't need prior experience with the platform.. what matters most is strong product thinking and a deep focus on the customer," he wrote. "If you've built great apps on any platform and care about crafting meaningful user experiences, I'd love to hear from you." Huyn later said in a reply on X that the new Windows 11 apps will be "100% native." TechSpot reports: The description stands out at a time when many of Microsoft's built-in tools, including Clipchamp and Copilot, rely on web technologies and Progressive Web App architectures. The company's commitment to native performance suggests that some long-standing frustrations around responsiveness, memory use, and interface consistency could finally be addressed. For Windows developers, Huyn's comments hint at a change in direction. Microsoft's recent development priorities have leaned heavily on web-based approaches, with Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) replacing or supplementing many native programs. [...] Exactly which applications will be rebuilt, or how strictly "100% native" will be enforced, remains unclear. Some current Microsoft apps classified as native still depend on WebView for specific features. But the renewed emphasis already has developers paying attention. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After 16 Years and $8 Billion, the Military's New GPS Software Still Doesn't Work - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last year, just before the Fourth of July holiday, the US Space Force officially took ownership of a new operating system for the GPS navigation network, raising hopes that one of the military's most troubled space programs might finally bear fruit. The GPS Next-Generation Operational Control System, or OCX, is designed for command and control of the military's constellation of more than 30 GPS satellites. It consists of software to handle new signals and jam-resistant capabilities of the latest generation of GPS satellites, GPS III, which started launching in 2018. The ground segment also includes two master control stations and upgrades to ground monitoring stations around the world, among other hardware elements. RTX Corporation, formerly known as Raytheon, won a Pentagon contract in 2010 to develop and deliver the control system. The program was supposed to be complete in 2016 at a cost of $3.7 billion. Today, the official cost for the ground system for the GPS III satellites stands at $7.6 billion. RTX is developing an OCX augmentation projected to cost more than $400 million to support a new series of GPS IIIF satellites set to begin launching next year, bringing the total effort to $8 billion. Although RTX delivered OCX to the Space Force last July, the ground segment remains nonoperational. Nine months later, the Pentagon may soon call it quits on the program. Thomas Ainsworth, assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, told Congress last week that OCX is still struggling. The GAO found the OCX program was undermined by "poor acquisition decisions and a slow recognition of development problems." By 2016, it had blown past cost and schedule targets badly enough to trigger a Pentagon review for possible cancellation. Officials also pointed to cybersecurity software issues, a "persistently high software development defect rate," the government's lack of software expertise, and Raytheon's "poor systems engineering" practices. Even after the military restructured the program, it kept running into delays and overruns, with Ainsworth telling lawmakers, "It's a very stressing program" and adding, "We are still considering how to ensure we move forward." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung Is Bringing AirDrop-Style Sharing to Older Galaxy Devices - Samsung is reportedly planning to roll out AirDrop-style file sharing for older Galaxy phones via a Quick Share update. Early reports suggest the feature is appearing on devices from the Galaxy S22 through the S25, though it is not actually working yet. Android Central reports: As spotted by Reddit users (via Tarun Vats on X), a Quick Share app update is rolling out via the Galaxy Store on older Samsung devices that appears to add support for AirDrop file sharing with Apple devices. Users report seeing the same new "Share with Apple devices" section we first saw on Galaxy S26 devices in the Settings app after updating Quick Share. The update is reportedly showing up on Galaxy models ranging from the Galaxy S22 to last year's Galaxy S25 series. The catch, however, is that the feature doesn't seem to be working yet. It's appearing on devices running One UI 8 as well as the One UI 8.5 beta, but enabling the toggle doesn't activate the functionality for now. Users say that turning on the feature doesn't make their device visible to Apple devices, and no Apple devices show up in Quick Share either. It's possible Samsung or Google still needs to enable it server-side, but it does confirm that broader rollout to older Galaxy devices is coming. The feature could arrive fully with the One UI 8.5 update. Read more of this story at Slashdot.