Latest News
Last updated 11 Sep, 03:50 PM
BBC News
Who won the Harris-Trump presidential debate? - Trump couldn't resist Harris's personal digs at the debate which threw him off message, writes Anthony Zurcher.
Undecided Americans impressed by Harris - but will debate shift their votes? - We spoke to seven voters who see the debate as crucial in determining who they will support in November.
'I can start my life an innocent man' after conviction for 1990 murder overturned - Judges quashed the "unsafe" conviction of Oliver Campbell, who has learning difficulties, after more than three decades.
Rioter's mum who missed sentencing for Ibiza trip to pay compensation - The boy's sentencing had been postponed because his mother went on holiday to Ibiza.
'It's unusual to grieve this way,' says widow of aid worker Simon Boas - Aurelie Boas tells the BBC what it has been like overseeing the posthumous publication of her husband's book about death.
The Register
HPE wants investors to buy shares to help finance $14B Juniper Networks acquisition - 27 million Series C Preferred Stock due out on Friday 13 Hewlett Packard Enterprise is turning to investors to help raise upward of $1 billion to fund its expensive purchase of networking rival Juniper.…
SpaceX blasts being stuck in bureaucratic orbit as Starship approval slips - Toys launched from pram as Musk's rocketeers stamp feet over paperwork Faced with months of waiting for approval for the next Starship launch, SpaceX has gone on the offensive regarding the red tape surrounding the process and the ongoing environmental assessment.…
So you paid a ransom demand … and now the decryptor doesn't work - A really big oh sh*t moment, for sure For C-suite execs and security leaders, discovering your organization has been breached, your critical systems locked up and your data stolen, then receiving a ransom demand, is probably the worst day of your professional life.…
Research suggests more than half of VMware customers are looking to move - Price rises, uncertainty after Broadcom takeover forcing users to look elsewhere for virtualization needs Research published by Civo indicates that more than half of VMware customers are considering leaving the platform under Broadcom's ownership.…
Windows 11 users still living in the past face forced update, like it or not - 22H2 and 21H2 holdouts about to be dragged to 23H2 Microsoft has warned that a forced update is on the way for Windows 11 21H2 and 22H2 users still clinging to the past.…
New Scientist - News
Huge new volcano has burst through the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io - In between two spacecraft visiting Jupiter’s moon Io, a volcano spreading material over hundreds of kilometres has appeared
Fish size themselves up in a mirror to decide if they can win a fight - Cleaner wrasse use their reflection to build a mental image of their body size, which they use to compare themselves to rivals before picking a fight
When did humans leave the trees for the savannah – or did they at all? - Ancient humans are said to have evolved to leave the trees, where our primate ancestors lived, in favour of open grassy savannahs – but we may have this idea wrong
Cloud atlas of Mars reveals an atmosphere unlike our own - Using images captured by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, researchers have created a cloud atlas of Mars, to better understand the climate of the Red Planet
Ants change the way they build nests to stop diseases spreading - When worker ants are exposed to a pathogenic fungus, they build nests that are more compartmentalised to reduce the risk of an epidemic
Hacker News
We spent $20 to achieve RCE and accidentally became the admins of .mobi - Comments
AppleWatchAmmeter - Comments
Building a browser using Servo as a web engine - Comments
Max Headroom and the World of Pseudo-CGI (2013) - Comments
The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World - Comments
Slashdot
TV News Overtaken By Digital Rivals For First Time in UK - Television has ceased to be the main source of news in the UK for the first time since the 1960s as Britons turn increasingly to online news and social media apps, according to research by the media regulator. From a report: Ofcom said on Tuesday that viewing of TV news had continued to fall steeply, with online platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and TikTok and digital versions of broadcasters now slightly more widely used as a source of news.ÂIn its annual study of audience habits, the watchdog said 71 per cent of adults obtained news online, compared with 70 per cent via TV -- a finding it described as "marking a generational shift in the balance of news media." The reach of TV news has fallen from 75 per cent last year. More than four-fifths of people between the ages of 16 and 24 obtained their news from social media, Ofcom found. The report underlines the pressure on more traditional linear broadcasters such as the BBC, Sky and Channel 4 to accelerate moves to digital platforms, which include their own streaming sites as well as social media apps such as TikTok. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Ford Seeks Patent For Tech That Listens To Driver Conversations To Serve Ads - Ford is seeking a patent for technology that would allow it to tailor in-car advertising by listening to conversations among vehicle occupants, as well as by analyzing a car's historical location and other data, according to a patent application published late last month. The Record: "In one example, the controller may monitor user dialogue to detect when individuals are in a conversation," the patent application says. "The conversations can be parsed for keywords or phrases that may indicate where the occupants are traveling to." The tech -- labeled as "in-vehicle advertisement presentation" -- will determine where a car is located, how fast it is traveling, what type of road it is driving on and whether it is in traffic. It also will predict routes, speeds and destinations to customize ads to drivers, the application said. The system could pull data from "audio signals within the vehicle and/or historical user data, selecting a number of the advertisements to present to the user during the trip," the patent application said. By monitoring dialogue between vehicle occupants the ad controller system can determine when to deliver audio versus visual ads, providing ads to drivers as they travel "through a human-machine interface (HMI) of the vehicle," the application said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Samsung Electronics Plans Global Job Cuts of Up To 30% in Some Divisions - Samsung Electronics, the world's top maker of smartphones, TVs and memory chips, is cutting up to 30% of its overseas staff at some divisions, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing sources with direct knowledge of the matter. From the report: South Korea-based Samsung has instructed subsidiaries worldwide to reduce sales and marketing staff by about 15% and the administrative staff by up to 30%, two of the sources said. The plan will be implemented by the end of this year and would impact jobs across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, one person said. [...] It is not clear how many people would be let go and which countries and business units would be most affected. In a statement, Samsung said workforce adjustments conducted at some overseas operations were routine, and aimed at improving efficiency. Samsung employed a total of 267,800 people as of the end of 2023, and more than half, or 147,000 employees, are based overseas, according to its latest sustainability report. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Senate Leaders Ask FTC To Investigate AI Content Summaries As Anti-Competitive - An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A group of Democratic senators is urging the FTC and Justice Department to investigate whether AI tools that summarize and regurgitate online content like news and recipes may amount to anticompetitive practices. In a letter to the agencies, the senators, led by Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), explained their position that the latest AI features are hitting creators and publishers while they're down. As journalistic outlets experience unprecedented consolidation and layoffs, "dominant online platforms, such as Google and Meta, generate billions of dollars per year in advertising revenue from news and other original content created by others. New generative AI features threaten to exacerbate these problems." The letter continues: "While a traditional search result or news feed links may lead users to the publisher's website, an AI-generated summary keeps the users on the original search platform, where that platform alone can profit from the user's attention through advertising and data collection. [] Moreover, some generative AI features misappropriate third-party content and pass it off as novel content generated by the platform's AI. Publishers who wish to avoid having their content summarized in the form of AI-generated search results can only do so if they opt out of being indexed for search completely, which would result in a materially significant drop in referral traffic. In short, these tools may pit content creators against themselves without any recourse to profit from AI-generated content that was composed using their original content. This raises significant competitive concerns in the online marketplace for content and advertising revenues." Essentially, the senators are saying that a handful of major companies control the market for monetizing original content via advertising, and that those companies are rigging that market in their favor. Either you consent to having your articles, recipes, stories, and podcast transcripts indexed and used as raw material for an AI, or you're cut out of the loop. The letter goes on to ask the FTC and DOJ to investigate whether these new methods are "a form of exclusionary conduct or an unfair method of competition in violation of the antitrust laws." [...] The letter was co-signed by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Tina Smith (D-MN). Read more of this story at Slashdot.
First Neutrinos Detected At Fermilab Short-Baseline Detector - Scientists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have observed the first neutrino interactions in the Short-Baseline Near Detector (SBND), marking a significant milestone in their efforts to explore neutrino oscillations and search for a potential fourth neutrino flavor that could challenge the Standard Model of particle physics. Phys.org reports: SBND is the final element that completes Fermilab's Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) Program and will play a critical role in solving a decades-old mystery in particle physics. Getting SBND to this point has been an international effort. The detector was built by an international collaboration of 250 physicists and engineers from Brazil, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. [...] The Short Baseline Neutrino Program at Fermilab will perform searches for neutrino oscillation and look for evidence that could point to this fourth neutrino. SBND is the near detector for the Short Baseline Neutrino Program while ICARUS, which started collecting data in 2021, is the far detector. A third detector called MicroBooNE finished recording particle collisions with the same neutrino beamline that same year. The Short Baseline Neutrino Program at Fermilab differs from previous short-baseline measurements with accelerator-made neutrinos because it features both a near detector and far detector. SBND will measure the neutrinos as they were produced in the Fermilab beam and ICARUS will measure the neutrinos after they've potentially oscillated. So, where previous experiments had to make assumptions about the original composition of the neutrino beam, the SBN Program will definitively know. "Understanding the anomalies seen by previous experiments has been a major goal in the field for the last 25 years," said Schmitz. "Together SBND and ICARUS will have outstanding ability to test the existence of these new neutrinos." Read more of this story at Slashdot.