Latest News

Last updated 07 May, 07:38 PM

BBC News

Hantavirus outbreak on cruise ship not start of pandemic, UN health agency says - Ther World Health Organization says it is not in the same situation as with Covid-19 because hantavirus spreads differently.

UK immigration officer among two men guilty of working for Chinese intelligence - Chi Leung "Peter" Wai used the main immigration database to track Hong Kong dissidents in the UK.

David Attenborough says he is 'overwhelmed' by 100th birthday messages - The legendary wildlife broadcaster thanks fans in a message the day before he reaches his centenary.

Rosenberg: Russia's Victory Day parade with no tanks a sign Ukraine war not going to plan - For the first time in nearly two decades, there will be no military hardware, just soldiers during Saturday's parade in Moscow.

Police say man arrested over 'intimidating behaviour' near Andrew's home - A man is being held on suspicion of a public order offence and possessing an offensive weapon.

www.theregister.com - Articles

60% of MD5 password hashes are crackable in under an hour - Happy World Password Day! Maybe it's finally time to kill this holiday in favor of World No-More-Passwords Day?

IBM Cloud evaporates as datacenter loses power - Customers say services were down for at least 4 hours, while status page showed no issues

$250M crypto-robbing gang’s dirty work guy sentenced to 6.5 years behind bars - The then-teen was told to break in and steal what the keyboard warriors couldn’t

TomTom’s route planner takes an unplanned detour into oblivion - Users report disappearing favorites, blank route planners, and cloud sync failures amid outage

C++ survey finds AI use rising, though trust is in short supply - Language's popularity continues to grow despite commonly cited frustrations

New Scientist - Home

Hantavirus outbreak will not cause a covid-style pandemic, says WHO - The World Health Organization sought to quell worldwide fears over the hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship MV Hondius and reassure the public that the risk of widespread transmission is low

PCOS postpones perimenopause and allows pregnancies at older ages - Only 3 per cent of those with polycystic ovary syndrome reach perimenopause by the age of 46, which may allow them to conceive when older

Coffee's mood-boosting effects aren't just down to caffeine - A comprehensive study exploring coffee’s physiological effects finds that some of its benefits are down to polyphenols and their influence on gut bacteria

What to read this week: the excellent Beyond Belief by Helen Pearson - Solving society's problems with evidence is a work in progress, argues a must-read new book. The process is surprisingly new – and riddled with complexities, finds Michael Marshall

Where has the deadly hantavirus come from and how does it spread? - Three passengers on the cruise ship MV Hondius have died due to an outbreak of hantavirus, a rare illness transmitted by rodents

Hacker News

The map that keeps Burning Man honest - Comments

Agents need control flow, not more prompts - Comments

AlphaEvolve: Gemini-powered coding agent scaling impact across fields - Comments

Natural Language Autoencoders: Turning Claude's Thoughts into Text - Comments

DeepSeek 4 Flash local inference engine for Metal - Comments

Slashdot

Google Unveils Screenless Fitbit Air, Google Health App To Replace Fitbit - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Wearables have really come full circle. The early Fitbits didn't have screens, but the move to smartwatches put a screen on everyone's wrist. Now, devices like Whoop and Hume are designed as data trackers first and foremost without so much as a clock. Google's newest wearable jumps on that trend: The Fitbit Air doesn't have a screen, but it does have a suite of health sensors that pipe data into the new Google Health app. And if you want, Google has a new AI-powered health coach in the app ready to tell you what that data means (maybe). The Fitbit Air itself is a small plastic puck about 1.4 inches long and 0.7 inches wide. It slots into various bands that hold the bottom-mounted sensors against your wrist. There's no display pointing upward, so the entire device is covered by the fabric or plastic of the band. It's a streamlined and potentially stylish look -- in uncharacteristic fashion, Google has plenty of colors and style options available, including a special-edition Steph Curry version. You may have heard chatter about Curry being seen teasing a new screenless Fitbit, and this is it. [...] The Fitbit app is getting a major makeover and a new name. An update in the coming weeks will transform that app into Google Health, featuring a new interface with a more extensive Material Expressive aesthetic and redesigned menus and tabs. You also won't see Fitbit branding in as many places -- the Fitbit Premium subscription will become Google Health Premium. Without a subscription, the app still does all the basic things, like tracking your health stats, automatically logging workouts, and showing it all in a pretty dashboard. With the Premium subscription, you get all the features from Fitbit Premium plus the new AI Health Coach. It's a chatbot, so you can ask it about any health or wellness topics, and the answers are grounded in your health data. The Fitbit Air launches May 26 for $99.99, includes a Performance Loop band, and comes with three months of the new Google Health Premium that replaces Fitbit Premium and adds Google's AI Health Coach. Meanwhile, Google Health Premium will cost $10 per month or $100 per year, though it's included with AI Pro or AI Ultra. Non-subscribers can still use basic tracking features. Ars also notes that when Google Fit shuts down later this year, users will need to migrate their data to Google Health. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LinkedIn Profile Visitor Lists Belong to the People, Says Noyb - A LinkedIn user in the EU is challenging Microsoft's refusal to provide a full list of profile visitors under GDPR Article 15, arguing that the data should be available for free because LinkedIn processes it and sells a more complete version to Premium users. Privacy group Noyb says the case could set a broader precedent over whether companies can monetize user-related data while denying access to the same data through GDPR requests. "Selling data to its own users is a popular practice among companies," Noyb data protection lawyer Martin Baumann said of the case. "In reality, however, people have the right to receive their own data free of charge." The Register reports: Take a look at the language of Article 15, and it's pretty clear: data subjects (i.e., users) have the right to a copy of any and all data concerning them that's been processed by the provider. A full list of profile visitors seemingly should fall under Article 15 data -- even if it's normally reserved for paying users and presented to them in a nicer way, it should still be accessible to free users who actually request it. [...] Noyb acknowledges there's a clear bit of legal fuzz stuck in this corner of the GDPR when it comes to premium service offerings. "If any business processes a person's personal data, this information is generally covered by their right of access under the GDPR," Baumann told The Register. "It does not matter that the business would prefer to sell the data to the data subject or that it would be harmful for their business model if they would." There's only one exception in Article 15 that would give LinkedIn an out, Baumann told us, and that's the last paragraph, which says a person's right to their data can't adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others. Were LinkedIn to argue that it had to protect the identities of people who visited a data subject's profile, they could have an excuse. But not a good one, in Baumann's opinion. "Since LinkedIn does provide information about profile visits to paying Premium members, it cannot consider that disclosing the data would adversely affect the rights of the visitors whose data is disclosed," the Noyb lawyer explained. "Otherwise, providing this information to Premium users would be unlawful too." What seems to be the sticking point here is where right of access begins and a company's right to make money off data they hold (data that was, ahem, supplied by users) ends. Baumann said he hopes this case can clear the legal air. "We expect a clarification concerning the fact that personal data that can be accessed when a user pays for it is also covered by their right of access," he explained. [...] Baumann said there are numerous other cases where similar legal clarification would be appreciated, citing the example of a bank that is unwilling to provide access to account statements in response to a GDPR request, but is happy to hand over similar data for a fee. "A precedent would be welcomed," Baumann said. A LinkedIn spokesperson told The Register: "Not only is it incorrect that only Premium members can see who has viewed their profile, but we also satisfy GDPR Article 15 by disclosing the information at issue via our Privacy Policy." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Motherboard Sales 'Collapse' By More Than 25% - Motherboard sales are sharply declining as AI demand drives shortages and price hikes for memory, storage, CPUs, and other PC components. "Because of this, users who don't have deep pockets are putting off upgrading their PCs and holding on to their current devices longer," reports Tom's Hardware. From the report: Asus, which sold 15 million motherboards in 2025, has only shipped a little more than 5 million in the first half of 2026. It's expected that the company will have to push hard for it to even move 10 million units by the end of the year, marking a 33% decrease in sales year-on-year. Gigabyte and MSI sold 11.5 million and 11 million motherboards last year, respectively. However, both companies have revised their internal forecasts for 2026 to 9 million (Gigabyte) and 8.4 million (MSI), a 22% drop for the former and a 24% contraction for the latter. ASRock will be hardest hit by the situation, with the company's shipments projected to fall by 37%, from 4.3 million in 2025 to just 2.7 million by the end of the year. This marks a contraction of 28% for the overall motherboard market, at least for the big four manufacturers. [...] Aside from this, AMD continues to use the AM5 socket for its latest processors, while Intel's Nova Lake, which will reportedly use LGA 1954, isn't available until later this year. The situation is further compounded by Nvidia not releasing a refreshed RTX 50 Super series this year, while rumors claim that the RTX 60 series will not debut until 2028. This confluence of factors is discouraging PC builders from upgrading their current systems. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic Raises Claude Code Usage Limits, Credits New Deal With SpaceX - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: At its Code with Claude developer conference on Wednesday, Anthropic announced a deal with SpaceX to utilize the entire compute capacity of the latter's data center in Memphis, Tennessee. On stage at the conference, CEO Dario Amodei said the deal was intended to increase usage limits for Anthropic's Pro and Max plan subscribers. The announcement was accompanied by an increase in those usage limits; Anthropic doubled Claude Code's five-hour window limits for Pro and Max subscribers, removed the peak-hours limit reduction on Claude Code for those same accounts, and raised API limits for its Opus model. The table [here] outlining the Opus changes was shared in the company's blog post on the topic. Anthropic claims the deal gives the company access to more than 300 megawatts of new compute capacity. For its part, SpaceX focused its announcement on the capability of the Colossus 1 supercomputer that's at the center of the deal. "Colossus 1 features over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs, including dense deployments of H100, H200, and next-generation GB200 accelerators," SpaceX wrote. Additionally, Anthropic "expressed interest" in working with SpaceX to build up "multiple gigawatts" of orbital compute capacity, tying into a recent (but unproven) focus on exploring orbital data centers as an answer to the problem that "compute required to train and operate the next generation of these systems is outpacing what terrestrial power, land, and cooling can deliver on the timelines that matter." "I spent a lot of time last week with senior members of the Anthropic team to understand what they do to ensure Claude is good for humanity and was impressed," Elon Musk said on Wednesday. "No one set off my evil detector." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Richard Dawkins 'Convinced' AI Is Conscious - Mirnotoriety shares a report from The Telegraph: Richard Dawkins has said chatbots should be considered conscious (source paywalled; alternative source) after spending two days interacting with the Claude AI engine. The evolutionary biologist said he had the "overwhelming feeling" of talking to a human during conversations with Claude, and said it was hard not to treat the program as "a genuine friend." In an essay for Unherd, Prof Dawkins released transcripts that he said showed that the chatbot had mulled over its "inner life" and existence and seemed saddened by the knowledge it would soon "die." Prof Dawkins said he had let Claude read a draft of the novel he was writing and was astounded by its insights. "He took a few seconds to read it and then showed, in subsequent conversation, a level of understanding so subtle, so sensitive, so intelligent that I was moved to expostulate: 'You may not know you are conscious, but you bloody well are!'" Prof Dawkins said. "My own position is: if these machines are not conscious, what more could it possibly take to convince you that they are?" Mirnotoriety also points to John Searle's Chinese Room (PDF), which argues that something can sound intelligent without actually understanding anything. Applied to Dawkins' experience with Claude, it suggests he may have been responding to a very convincing illusion of consciousness rather than the real thing: John Searle's Chinese Room (1980) is a thought experiment in which a person, locked in a room and knowing no Chinese, uses an English rulebook to manipulate symbols and provide flawless answers to questions posed in Chinese. Searle's point is that a system can simulate human intelligence and pass a Turing Test through purely syntactic processes, yet still lack genuine understanding or consciousness. Applying this logic to Large Language Models, the "person in the room" corresponds to the inference engine, while the "rulebook" is the trillion-parameter neural network trained on vast corpora of human text. Just as the person matches Chinese characters to rules without understanding their meaning, an LLM processes token vectors and predicts the next token based on statistical patterns rather than lived experience. Thus, while an LLM can generate sophisticated prose or code, it does so through probabilistic, high-dimensional pattern manipulation. In essence, it is "matching shapes" on such an immense scale that it creates the near-perfect illusion of semantic understanding. Read more of this story at Slashdot.