Latest News

Last updated 28 Jan, 07:45 AM

BBC News

Trump says government will 'de-escalate' in Minnesota following Pretti shooting - The killing of Alex Pretti over the weekend led Minnesota officials and locals to renew calls for Trump to end his immigration operation there.

Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar attacked with unknown liquid during town hall - Omar was uninjured and continued to speak at the event following the incident.

More than 100 flood warnings as Storm Chandra disruption continues - A major incident has been declared in Somerset, with weather warnings for ice across much of the country.

EasyJet warned over 'misleading' £5.99 cabin bag fee - The airline said the fact there were no bags available for less than £5.99 meant the claim was not misleading.

Five prisoners serving indefinite sentences to be referred to Court of Appeal - New IPP sentences were scrapped in 2012, but remain in place for around 2,800 people.

The Register

Paranoid WhatsApp users rejoice: Encrypted app gets one-click privacy toggle - Meta also replaces a legacy C++ media-handling security library with Rust Users of Meta's WhatsApp messenger looking to simplify the process of protecting themselves are in luck, as the company is rolling out a new feature that combines multiple security settings under a single, toggleable option. …

ICE knocks on ad tech’s data door to see what it knows about you - Agency looks to understand the extent of identifying information available to its masked agents It's not enough to have its agents in streets and schools; ICE now wants to see what data online ads already collect about you. The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week issued a Request for Information (RFI) asking data and ad tech brokers how they could help in its mission.…

Nudify app proliferation shows naked ambition of Apple and Google - Researchers with the Tech Transparency Project found all sorts of apps that let users create fake non-consensual nudes of real people The mobile app emperors have no clothes. Apple and Google have made millions of dollars from AI apps that let users undress people even as both companies claim to ban such software from their stores, according to a new study.…

Let them eat sourdough: ShinyHunters claims Panera Bread as stolen credentials victim - Plus, the gang says it got in via Microsoft Entra SSO ShinyHunters says it stole several slices of data from Panera Bread, but that's just the yeast of everyone's problems. The extortionist gang also claims to have stolen data from CarMax and Edmunds, in addition to three other organizations it posted to its blog last week.…

Penguin in your pocket: Nexphone dual boots into Linux, Windows 11 - An expandable tablet, and a phone that reboots into desktop Windows For most mobile devices, the OS is either Android or iOS, but a pair of new systems promises a host of additional OS options you can dual boot into. The Android phone can run Linux and boot into Windows 11 where it functions as a PC while the tablet runs a smorgasbord of Google-free OSes.…

New Scientist - Home

Amazon is getting drier as deforestation shuts down atmospheric rivers - The amount of rainfall in the southern Amazon basin has declined by 8 to 11 per cent since 1980, largely due to the impact of deforestation

To halt measles' resurgence we must fight the plague of misinformation - The measles vaccine has prevented 60 million deaths since 2000. So why are so many children around the world missing out on it?

Our brains play a surprising role in recovering from a heart attack - A newly discovered collection of neurons suggests the brain and heart communicate to trigger a neuroimmune response after a heart attack, which may pave the way for new therapies

Nobel prizewinner Omar Yaghi says his invention will change the world - Chemist Omar Yaghi invented materials called MOFs, a few grams of which have the surface area of a football field. He explains why he thinks these super-sponges will define the next century

We have a new way to explain why we agree on the nature of reality - An evolution-inspired framework for how quantum fuzziness gives rise to our classical world shows that even imperfect observers can eventually agree on an objective reality

Hacker News

There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him - Comments

Prism - Comments

Peaceful – An AI-generated clone of ICE List - Comments

A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks - Comments

Golden Ratio using an equilateral triangle inscribed in a circle - Comments

Slashdot

Ancient Martian Beach Discovered, Providing New Clues To Planet's Habitability - alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: New findings from NASA's Perseverance rover have revealed evidence of wave-formed beaches and rocks altered by subsurface water in a Martian crater that once held a vast lake -- considerably expanding the timeline for potential habitability at this ancient site. In an international study led by Imperial College London, researchers uncovered that the so-called 'Margin unit' in Mars's Jezero crater preserves evidence of extensive underground interactions between rock and water, as well as the first definitive traces of an ancient shoreline. These are compelling indicators that habitable, surface water conditions persisted in the crater (home to a large lake around 3.5 billion years ago) further back in time than previously thought. "Shorelines are habitable environments on Earth, and the carbonate minerals that form here can naturally seal in and preserve information about the ancient environment," said lead author Alex Jones, a Ph.D. researcher in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering (ESE) at Imperial. The findings have been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon Inadvertently Announces Cloud Unit Layoffs In Email To Employees - Amazon appears to have prematurely acknowledged layoffs inside AWS after an internal email referencing "organizational changes" and "impacted colleagues" was mistakenly sent to cloud employees. CNBC reports: "Changes like this are hard on everyone," Colleen Aubrey, senior vice president of applied AI solutions at Amazon Web Services, wrote in an email viewed by CNBC. "These decisions are difficult and are made thoughtfully as we position our organization and AWS for future success." The note also references a post from Amazon's HR boss Beth Galetti and said the company notified "impacted colleagues in our organization." The subject of the email mentions "Project Dawn," and the email says it was "canceled," possibly indicating it was recalled by the sender after the fact. It's unclear what Project Dawn refers to. The job cuts come after Amazon announced in October that it would lay off 14,000 corporate employees. At the time, the company indicated the cuts would continue in 2026 as it found "additional places we can remove layers." Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the layoffs were meant to reduce management layers and bureaucracy inside the company. He also predicted last June that efficiency gains from AI would shrink Amazon's corporate staff in the coming years. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US Government Lost More Than 10,000 STEM PhDs Last Year - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science.org: Some 10,109 doctoral-trained experts in science and related fields left their jobs last year as President Donald Trump dramatically shrank the overall federal workforce. That exodus was only 3% of the 335,192 federal workers who exited last year but represents 14% of the total number of Ph.D.s in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) or health fields employed at the end of 2024 as then-President Joe Biden prepared to leave office. The numbers come from employment data posted earlier this month by the White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM). At 14 research agencies Science examined in detail, departures outnumbered new hires last year by a ratio of 11 to one, resulting in a net loss of 4224 STEM Ph.D.s. The graphs that follow show the impact is particularly striking at such scientist-rich agencies as the National Science Foundation (NSF). But across the government, these departing Ph.D.s took with them a wealth of subject matter expertise and knowledge about how the agencies operate. [...] Science's analysis found that reductions in force, or RIFs, accounted for relatively few departures in 2025. Only at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where 16% of the 519 STEM Ph.D.s who left last year got pink RIF slips, did the percentage exceed 6%, and some agencies reported no STEM Ph.D. RIFs in 2025. At most agencies, the most common reasons for departures were retirements and quitting. Although OPM classifies many of these as voluntary, outside forces including the fear of being fired, the lure of buyout offers, or a profound disagreement with Trump policies, likely influenced many decisions to leave. Many Ph.D.s departed because their position was terminated. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple Updates iOS 12 For the First Time Since 2023 - Apple quietly released its first update to iOS 12 since 2023 to keep iMessage, FaceTime, and device activation working on older hardware through January 2027. The update applies to legacy devices like the iPhone 5S, iPhone 6/6 Plus, and 2013-era iPads. Macworld reports: The update appears to be related to a specific issue. According to Apple's "About iOS 12 Updates" page, iOS 12.5.78 "extends the certificate required by features such as iMessage, FaceTime, and device activation to continue working after January 2027." Meanwhile, the iOS 16 update says it "provides important bug fixes and is recommended for all users." When iOS 13 arrived, it dropped compatibility for the iPhone 5S, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus, as well as the 2013 iPad Air and iPad Mini 3, so users of those phones should specifically take note. To update to the latest version, head over to the Settings app, then General and Software Update, and follow the instructions. Further reading: Apple Launches AirTag 2 With Improved Range, Louder Speaker Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists Launch AI DinoTracker App That Identifies Dinosaur Footprints - Scientists have released DinoTracker, a free AI-powered app that identifies dinosaur footprints by analyzing shape patterns rather than relying on potentially flawed historical labels. "When we find a dinosaur footprint, we try to do the Cinderella thing and find the foot that matches the slipper," said Prof Steve Brusatte, a co-author of the work. "But it's not so simple, because the shape of a dinosaur footprint depends not only on the shape of the dinosaur's foot but also the type of sand or mud it was walking through, and the motion of its foot." The Guardian reports: [...] Brusatte, [Dr Gregor Hartmann, the first author of the new research from Helmholtz-Zentrum in Germany] and colleagues fed their AI system with 2,000 unlabelled footprint silhouettes. The system then determined how similar or different the imprints were from each other by analysing a range of features it identified as meaningful. The researchers discovered these eight features reflected variations in the imprints' shapes, such as the spread of the toes, amount of ground contact and heel position. The team have turned the system into a free app called DinoTracker that allows users to upload the silhouette of a footprint, explore the seven other footprints most similar to it and manipulate the footprint to see how varying the eight features can affect which other footprints are deemed most similar. Hartmann said that at present experts had to double check if factors such as the material the footprints were made in, and their age, matched the scientific hypothesis, but the system clustered prints with those expected from classifications made by human experts about 90% of the time. The findings have been published in the journal PNAS. Read more of this story at Slashdot.