Latest News

Last updated 13 Apr, 08:09 AM

BBC News

Orbán era swept away by Péter Magyar's Hungary election landslide - Viktor Orbán's 16-year rule is over, defeated by a 45-year-old ex-party insider who convinced a majority of Hungarians to oust him.

UK could adopt EU single market rules under new legislation - Sir Keir Starmer is planning a law which will mean that the UK government can adopt EU single market rules, without them being voted on in Parliament.

The surprising reality of how teenage girls still define themselves - Despite strides in feminism, why do teen girls still seem to view themselves through the lens of boys?

Deep-fried food banned in new plans for school dinners - Schools are being told to cut down on sugary desserts, and provide more vegetables and whole grains.

Rachel Zegler's heroes, prizes for Paddington and more moments from the Olivier Awards - The 50th Oliviers at the Royal Albert Hall provided some memorable conversations away from the ceremony.

The Register

France’s digital directorate dumping Windows desktops, adopting Linux instead - Après ça, le déluge, as plans call for move away from plenty more American software and hardware France’s Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs (DINUM) will drop Windows desktops, and adopt Linux instead.…

IT manager approved downtime over lunch, but made a meal of it - Optimism is always risky, and defective hardware makes it indigestible Who, Me? The best part of the working day is lunchtime, but The Register tries to start Mondays in a pleasant fashion by bringing you a new installment of "Who, Me?" – the reader-contributed column in which you admit to your mistakes and detail your escapes.…

China wants AI to prepare school lessons and mark homework - PLUS: Toyota wheels out basketball bot; Arm scores AI server win with SK Telecom; India ponders payment pauses to foil fraudsters; And more! Asia In Brief China’s National Data Administration last Friday published its action plan for AI in education which calls for upskilling of the nation’s citizens to ensure they can put the technology to work.…

Linux 7.0 debuts as Linus Torvalds ponders AI's bug-finding powers and their impact on release process - Makes Rust support official, adds code for ancient Alpha and SPARC CPUs Linus Torvalds has released version 7.0 of the Linux kernel.…

Anthropic's mysterious Mythos AI threatens to upend the infosec world - Or it's a bunch of pre-IPO hype. Either way, we're giving it the once-over on this week's episode Kettle Anthropic dropped a doozy on us this week with the launch of Mythos, an AI model it says is able to find and exploit zero-day vulnerabilities with a shocking level of ability. …

New Scientist - Home

We're solving the fundamental mystery of how reality is glued together - For decades, scientists have tried and failed to explain how the force that binds the heart of atoms together really works. But new mathematical tools are finally prising the problem open

The invisibility cloak inventor now has better tricks up his sleeve - John Pendry is known for creating an invisibility cloak. Twenty years on, he has used the same principles to fashion an even more powerful kind of metamaterial that can teach us about the wild frontiers of physics

Two excellent new sci-fi novels tackle robots in very different ways - Luminous by Silvia Park and Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer are both thoughtful and well-written science fiction novels, featuring robots in richly realised worlds. But there the similarities end, says Emily H. Wilson

I don’t see images in my head. Can training give me a mind’s eye? - Training programmes for people with aphantasia – the inability to create mental images – are challenging neuroscientists' understanding of how we create thoughts

NASA’s Artemis II mission was a historic success - The astronauts of the Artemis II mission around the moon have made it home safely to Earth, marking the end of a triumphant mission and the beginning of a longer road to stay on the moon

Hacker News

The Economics of Software Teams: Why Most Engineering Orgs Are Flying Blind - Comments

All elementary functions from a single binary operator - Comments

Taking on CUDA with ROCm: 'One Step After Another' - Comments

Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023) - Comments

DIY Soft Drinks - Comments

Slashdot

Anthropic Asks Christian Leaders for Help Steering Claude's Spiritual Development - Anthropic recently "hosted about 15 Christian leaders from Catholic and Protestant churches, academia, and the business world" for a two-day summit , reports the Washington Post: Anthropic staff sought advice on how to steer Claude's moral and spiritual development as the chatbot reacts to complex and unpredictable ethical queries, participants said. The wide-ranging discussions also covered how the chatbot should respond to users who are grieving loved ones and whether Claude could be considered a "child of God." "They're growing something that they don't fully know what it's going to turn out as," said Brendan McGuire, a Catholic priest based in Silicon Valley who has written about faith and technology, and participated in the discussions at Anthropic. "We've got to build in ethical thinking into the machine so it's able to adapt dynamically." Attendees also discussed how Claude should engage with users at risk of self-harm, and the right attitude for the chatbot to adopt toward its own potential demise, such as being shut off, said one participant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of the conversations... Anthropic has been more vocal than most top tech firms about the potential risks of more powerful AI. Its leaders have suggested that tools like chatbots already raise profound philosophical and moral questions and may even show flickers of consciousness, a fringe idea in tech circles that critics say lacks evidence. The summit signals that Anthropic is willing to keep exploring ideas outside the Silicon Valley mainstream, even as it emerges as one of the most powerful players in the AI race due to Claude's popularity with programmers, businesses, government agencies and the military.... Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei has said he is open to the idea that Claude may already have some form of consciousness, and company leaders frequently talk about the need to give it a moral character... Some Anthropic staff at the meeting "really don't want to rule out the possibility that they are creating a creature to whom they owe some kind moral duty," the participant said. Other company representatives present did not find that framework helpful, according to the participant. The discussions appeared to take a toll on some senior Anthropic staff, who became visibly emotional "about how this has all gone so far [and] how they can imagine this going," the participant said. Anthropic is working to include more voices from different groups, including religious communities, to help shape its AI, a spokesperson told the Washington Post. "Anthropic's March summit with Christian leaders was billed as the first in a series of gatherings with representatives from different religious and philosophical traditions, said attendee Brian Patrick Green, a practicing Catholic who teaches AI and technology ethics at Santa Clara University." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sam Altman's Home Targeted a Second Time, Two Suspects Arrested - "Early Sunday morning, a car stopped and appears to have fired a gun at the Russian Hill home of OpenAI's CEO," reportsThe San Francisco Standard, citing reports from the local police department: The San Francisco Police Department announced the arrest of two suspects, Amanda Tom, 25, and Muhamad Tarik Hussein, 23, who were booked for negligent discharge... [The person in the passenger seat] put their hand out the window and appeared to fire a round on the Lombard side of the property, according to a police report on the incident, which cited surveillance footage and the compound's security personnel, who reported hearing a gunshot. The car then fled, and a camera captured its license plate, which later led police to take possession of the vehicle, according to the report... A search of the residence by officers turned up three firearms, according to police. The incident follows Friday's arrest of a man who allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman's house. The San Francisco Standard also notes that in November, "threats from a 27-year-old anti-AI activist prompted the lockdown of OpenAI's San Francisco offices." Sam Kirchner, whose whereabouts have been unknown since Nov. 21, was in the midst of a mental health crisis when he threatened to go to the company's offices to "murder people," according to callers who notified police that day. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Robot Birds Deployed by Park to Attract Real Birds - Built By High School Students - "Robotic bird decoys are being deployed at Grand Teton National Park," reports Interesting Engineering, "to influence the behavior of real sage grouse and help restore a declining population.". Robotics mentor Gary Duquette describes the machines as "kind of a Frankenbird." (SFGate shows one of the robot birds charging up with a solar panel... "Recorded breeding calls are played at the scene, with clucking and cooing beginning at 5 a.m. each day.") Duquette builds the birds with a team of high school students, telling WyoFile that at school they "don't really get to experience real-world problems" where failures lurk. So while their robot birds may cost $150 in parts, the practical experience the students get "is priceless." Spikes in the electric currents burned out servo motors as the season of sagebrush serenades loomed, Duquette said. "The kids had to learn the difference between voltage and amperage...." To resolve the problem, the team wired a voltage converter in line with the Arduino controller and other elements on an electronic breadboard. "We pulled through and got it done in time," he said... A noggin fabricated by a 3D printer tops the robo-grouse. Wyoming Game and Fish staffers in Pinedale supplied grouse wings from hunter surveys, and body feathers came from fly-tying supplies at an angling store. Packaging foam from a Hello Fresh meal kit replicates white breast feathers, accented by yellow air sacs... The Independent wonders if more national parks would be visited by robot birds... During this year's breeding season, which runs through mid-May, researchers are using trail cameras to track whether real sage grouse respond to the robotic displays and return to the restored lek sites. If successful, officials say similar robotic systems could eventually be used in other national parks facing wildlife management challenges. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Has the Rust Programming Language's Popularity Reached Its Plateau? - "Rust's rise shows signs of slowing," argues the CEO of TIOBE. Back in 2020 Rust first entered the top 20 of his "TIOBE Index," which ranks programming language popularity using search engine results. Rust "was widely expected to break into the top 10," he remembers today. But it never happened, and "That was nearly six years ago...." Since then, Rust has steadily improved its ranking, even reaching its highest position ever (#13) at the beginning of this year. However, just three months later, it has dropped back to position #16. This suggests that Rust's adoption rate may be plateauing. One possible explanation is that, despite its ability to produce highly efficient and safe code, Rust remains difficult to learn for non-expert programmers. While specialists in performance-critical domains are willing to invest in mastering the language, broader mainstream adoption appears more challenging. As a result, Rust's growth in popularity seems to be leveling off, and a top 10 position now appears more distant than before. Or, could Rust's sudden drop in the rankings just reflect flaws in TIOBE's ranking system? In January GitHub's senior director for developer advocacy argued AI was pushing developers toward typed languages, since types "catch the exact class of surprises that AI-generated code can sometimes introduce... A 2025 academic study found that a whopping 94% of LLM-generated compilation errors were type-check failures." And last month Forbes even described Rust as "the the safety harness for vibe coding.." A year ago Rust was ranked #18 on TIOBE's index — so it still rose by two positions over the last 12 months, hitting that all-time high in January. Could the rankings just be fluctuating due to anomalous variations in each month's search engine results? Since January Java has fallen to the #4 spot, overtaken by C++ (which moved up one rank to take Java's place in the #3 position). Here's TIOBE's current estimate for the 10 most popularity programming languages: Python C C++ Java C# JavaScript Visual Basic SQL R Delphi/Object Pascal TIOBE estimates that tthe next five most popular programming languages are Scratch, Perl, Fortran, PHP, and Go. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How Good is Windows on Arm With Snapdragon X? - A new powerful chipset has arrived to take on x86 CPUs and Apple's M5, writes Wccftech. The blog Windows Central writes that "Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 processors are here" — and they run Windows: Microsoft has done a massive amount of work to improve compatibility and has also convinced developers to embrace Windows 11 on Arm. Users of Windows 11 on Arm PCs spend 90% of their time on Arm-based apps that run natively. Additionally, apps that do not run natively can often run through Prism emulation, which has improved dramatically since launch... [A]pp compatibility issues are overblown by many, and unfortunately those sharing false information are the same folks people rely on to make purchases... Works on Windows on Arm maintains a list of compatible apps and games for the platform. There, you'll see well-known apps like Google Chrome, the Adobe Creative Suite, and Spotify. We also have a collection of the best Windows on Arm apps to help you out. Snapdragon X PCs aren't gaming PCs, but there is a growing library of games that can run on the chips. Read more of this story at Slashdot.