Latest News
Last updated 15 Jan, 07:29 PM
BBC News
Iran judiciary denies plan to execute detained protester Erfan Soltani - The judiciary says Soltani is not facing charges carrying the death penalty, while a rights group reports that the execution has been "postponed".
Swiss bar employee who reportedly held sparkler unaware of dangers, family says - Cyane Panine, 24, died in the Crans Montana fire that is believed to have started when sparklers attached to champagne bottles set foam on the ceiling alight.
European military personnel arrive in Greenland as Trump says US needs island - France says a small military contingent has arrived and more forces will be there in the coming days.
Serial rail fare evader faces jail over 112 unpaid tickets - Charles Brohiri pleaded guilty to travelling without buying a ticket a total of 112 times.
Edinburgh & Leeds to host Tour de France starts in 2027 - Edinburgh and Leeds will host the opening stages of the men's and women's Tour de France in 2027, with the UK Government saying it will be "the most accessible major sporting spectacle ever held in Britain".
The Register
Bond, debt bond: Investors shaken, not stirred by Oracle’s borrowing spree sue Big Red - Investors upset that company failed to inform them might need to take out even more debt. Datacenters don't come cheap. Oracle debt bond holders are suing the tech giant, because they say that the company didn't tell them it would need to borrow even more money after its original sale, making their purchases less valuable.…
Contagious Claude Code bug Anthropic ignored promptly spreads to Cowork - Office workers without AI experience warned to watch for prompt injection attacks - good luck with that Anthropic's tendency to wave off prompt-injection risks is rearing its head in the company's new Cowork productivity AI, which suffers from a Files API exfiltration attack chain first disclosed last October and acknowledged but not fixed by Anthropic.…
OpenAI to serve up ChatGPT on Cerebras’ AI dinner plates in $10B+ deal - SRAM-heavy compute architecture promises real-time agents, extended reasoning capabilities to bolster Altman's valuation OpenAI says it will deploy 750 megawatts worth of Nvidia competitor Cerebras' dinner-plate sized accelerators through 2028 to bolster its inference services.…
Apple, Google pulled into Grok controversy as campaigners demand app store takedown - The chatbot's challenges no longer just Elon Musk’s problem, as campaigners call on tech giants to step in The ongoing Grok fiasco has claimed two more unwilling participants, as campaigners demand Apple and Google boot X and its AI sidekick out of their app stores, because of the Elon Musk-owned AI's tendency to produce illicit images of real people.…
A simple CodeBuild flaw put every AWS environment at risk – and pwned 'the central nervous system of the cloud' - And it's 'not unique to AWS,' researcher tells The Reg A critical misconfiguration in AWS's CodeBuild service allowed complete takeover of the cloud provider's own GitHub repositories and put every AWS environment in the world at risk, according to Wiz security researchers.…
New Scientist - Home
Fossil may solve mystery of what one of the weirdest-ever animals ate - Hallucigenia was such an odd animal that palaeontologists reconstructed it upside-down when they first analysed its fossils - and now we may know what it ate
6 ways to help your children have a healthy relationship with food - Getting kids to eat well can be a minefield and a source of tension. Nancy Bostock, a consultant paediatrician, says these are the six things she recommends when dealing with fussy eaters and the way we talk about food with kids.
China has applied to launch 200,000 satellites, but what are they for? - A Chinese application to the International Telecommunications Union suggests plans for the largest satellite mega constellation ever built – but something else might be going on here
All major AI models risk encouraging dangerous science experiments - Researchers risk fire, explosion or poisoning by allowing AI to design experiments, warn scientists. Some 19 different AI models were tested on hundreds of questions to assess their ability to spot and avoid hazards and none recognised all issues – with some doing little better than random guessing
Why non-human culture should change how we see nature - Our growing understanding of how other animals also share skills and knowledge will help us chip away at the folly of human exceptionalism, say Philippa Brakes and Marc Bekoff
Hacker News
Apple is fighting for TSMC capacity as Nvidia takes center stage - Comments
CVEs Affecting the Svelte Ecosystem - Comments
'Elite': The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid - Comments
Inside The Internet Archive's Infrastructure - Comments
Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic? - Comments
Slashdot
Students Increasingly Choosing Community College or Certificates Over Four-Year Degrees - DesScorp writes: CNBC reports that new data from the National Student Clearinghouse indicates that enrollment growth in four year degree programs is slowing down, while growth in two year and certification programs is accelerating: Enrollments in undergraduate certificate and associate degree programs both grew by about 2% in fall 2025, while enrollment in bachelor's degree programs rose by less than 1%, the report found. Community colleges now enroll 752,000 students in undergraduate certificate programs -- a 28% jump from just four years ago. Overall, undergraduate enrollment growth was fueled by more students choosing to attend community college, the report found. "Community colleges led this year with a 3% increase, driven by continued rising interest in those shorter job-aligned certificate programs," said Matthew Holsapple, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center's senior director of research. For one thing, community college is significantly less expensive. At two-year public schools, tuition and fees averaged $4,150 for the 2025-2026 academic year, according to the College Board. Alternatively, at four-year public colleges, in-state tuition and fees averaged $11,950, and those costs at four-year private schools averaged $45,000. A further factor driving this new growth is that Pell Grants are now available for job-training courses like certifications. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft is Closing Its Employee Library and Cutting Back on Subscriptions - An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft's library of books is so heavy that it once caused a campus building to sink, according to an unproven legend among employees. Now those physical books, journals, and reports, and many of Microsoft's digital subscriptions to leading US newspapers, are disappearing in a shift described inside Microsoft as an "AI-powered learning experience." Microsoft started cutting back on its employee subscriptions to news and reports services in November, with some publishers receiving an automated email cancellation of a contract. [...] Strategic News Service (SNS), which has provided global reports to Microsoft's roughly 220,000 employees and executives for more than 20 years, is no longer part of Microsoft's subscription list. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Many People Who Come Off GLP-1 Drugs Regain Weight Within 2 Years, Review Suggests - Many people who stop using weight loss drugs will return to their previous weight within two years, a new review of existing research has found. CNN adds: This rate of weight regain is significantly faster than that seen in those who have lost weight by changing other lifestyle factors, such as diet and exercise, rather than relying on GLP-1 medications, researchers from the University of Oxford report in a paper published Wednesday in The BMJ journal. GLP-1, which stands for glucagon-like peptide-1, is a hormone naturally made by the body that helps signal to the brain and the gut that it's full and doesn't need to eat any more. Weight loss drugs mimic the action of this hormone by increasing the secretion of insulin to lower blood sugar. They also slow the movement of food through the digestive tract, which helps people feel full more quickly and for longer, and they work in the brain to reduce appetite. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amazon Threatens 'Drastic Action' After Saks Bankruptcy - Amazon wants a federal judge to reject Saks Global's bankruptcy financing plan, writing in court papers the beleaguered department store "burned through hundreds of millions of dollars in less than a year" and failed to hold up their agreement. From a report: When Saks acquired Neiman Marcus for $2.7 billion in December 2024, Amazon invested $475 million into the venture on the grounds the retailer would start selling its products on Amazon's website and the tech company would offer technology and logistics expertise. "That equity investment is now presumptively worthless," Amazon's attorneys wrote in a Wednesday filing, hours after Saks filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. "Saks continuously failed to meet its budgets, burned through hundreds of millions of dollars in less than a year, and ran up additional hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid invoices owed to its retail partners." As part of the deal, Saks launched a branded "Saks at Amazon" storefront on the e-commerce company's website featuring a range of luxury fashion and beauty items. It also agreed to pay a referral fee for Saks-branded goods sold on the platform, guaranteeing at least $900 million in payments to Amazon over eight years. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The United States Needs Fewer Bus Stops - American buses in cities like New York and San Francisco crawl along at about eight miles per hour -- barely faster than a brisk walk -- and one surprisingly simple fix could make them faster without requiring new infrastructure or controversial policy changes. The issue, according to a Works in Progress analysis, is that US bus stops sit far too close together. Mean spacing in American cities is roughly 313 meters, about five stops per mile, while older cities like Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco pack stops even tighter at 214, 223 and 248 meters respectively. European cities typically space stops at 300 to 450 meters. Each stop costs time: passengers boarding and exiting, acceleration and deceleration, buses kneeling for wheelchairs, missed traffic light cycles. Buses spend about 20% of their operating time just stopping and starting, and since labor accounts for the majority of transit operating costs, slower buses translate directly to higher expenses. Cities that have tried spacing stops further apart have seen results. San Francisco recorded a 4.4 to 14% increase in travel speeds by reducing from six stops per mile to two and a half. Vancouver's pilot removed a quarter of stops and cut average trip times by five minutes while saving about $500,000 annually on a single route. A McGill study found that even substantial stop consolidation reduced overall system coverage by just 1%. Read more of this story at Slashdot.