Latest News
Last updated 12 May, 07:45 PM
BBC News
The potential challengers to Keir Starmer - Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are all potential candidates for the top job.
Read all the ministers' resignation letters in full - Ministers including Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips have resigned over Sir Keir Starmer's leadership.
All the Labour MPs who have come out against Starmer, and the ones who want him to stay - A growing number of Labour MPs are coming out against the prime minister.
Watch: Reporters shout questions at ministers leaving No 10 - Several ministers were met with a barrage of questions about the PM's future after leaving a cabinet meeting.
'Crisis in Great Britain!' How global media is reporting Starmer's fight for survival - Sir Keir Starmer's fight for survival after a dismal set of elections last week is receiving coverage across the globe.
www.theregister.com - Articles
US Army goes green-ish, wants soldiers munching on plant proteins - Powders, gels, and fermented nutrients could someday join the battlefield menu
FCC walks back router update ban before it bricks America's network security - Quietly extends waivers to 2029 after realizing it was about to leave millions of devices unpatched
Congress investigates Canvas breach as company pays ransom - Instructure CEO Steve Daly's got some explaining to do
AirBit crypto Ponzi victims can now claim slice of $400M asset haul - After guilty pleas, prison terms, and seizures, the DOJ has opened the compensation process
US bank reports itself after slinging customer data at 'unauthorized AI app' - Volume and sensitivity of the data cited as chief concerns
New Scientist - Home
Why do particle physicists like spending time in fields? - The concept of a field plays a key role in particle physics, but what exactly is it? From its origins in the study of magnetism to the quantum fields of today, columnist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein goes exploring
Can cloud seeding save us from water bankruptcy? - We’ve long tried to control the weather by engineering rainfall. Now such cloud-seeding efforts are escalating, creating conflict between countries and stoking conspiracy theories. But do they work?
Carbon credits are flawed, but they can still help save forests - Carbon credits bought by companies to offset their emissions really have reduced deforestation, but not by as much as credit developers claim, according to a rigorous analysis
PCOS has been officially renamed PMOS, and it’s a momentous move - PCOS will now be known as PMOS (polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome), and for Alice Klein, who has the conditon, it's been a long time coming
A new tectonic plate boundary could be forming in southern Africa - Gases collected from boiling mineral springs in Zambia contain the chemical signature of having come directly from the Earth’s mantle, a sign of a rupture in the tectonic plates and the possible beginning of a new continental boundary
Hacker News
Googlebook - Comments
CERT is releasing six CVEs for serious security vulnerabilities in dnsmasq - Comments
Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise - Comments
The Future of Obsidian Plugins - Comments
Rendering the Sky, Sunsets, and Planets - Comments
Slashdot
Microsoft's $1 Billion AI Data Center Will 'Switch Off Half of Kenya' - Microsoft and G42's planned $1 billion AI data center in Kenya has stalled amid disagreements over power commitments, with President William Ruto saying the country would need to "switch off half the country" to support the project at full scale. Tom's Hardware reports: The project, announced in May 2024 during Ruto's visit to Washington, was supposed to bring a geothermal-powered data center to the Olkaria region in Kenya's Rift Valley. G42 was to lead construction, with the facility running Microsoft Azure in a new East Africa cloud region. The first phase targeted 100 megawatts of capacity and was expected to be operational by this year, with a long-term goal of scaling to 1 gigawatt. President Ruto isn't exaggerating about shutting off half the country's power. Kenya's total installed electricity capacity sits between 3,000 and 3,200 megawatts, and peak demand reached a record 2,444 megawatts in January, according to data from KenGen, the country's government-owned electricity producer. The full 1 gigawatt build would therefore have consumed roughly a third of the country's total capacity, and even the first 100 megawatts would have required a significant share of the Olkaria geothermal complex's output, which currently generates around 950MW across all its plants. John Tanui, principal secretary at Kenya's Ministry of Information, told Bloomberg that the project hasn't been withdrawn and that talks are continuing, adding that the "scale of the data center they [Microsoft] wanted to do still requires some structuring." A separate 60-megawatt project with local developer EcoCloud is also still under discussion. [...] Microsoft is spending $190 billion on capex in 2026, and the company adds approximately 1 gigawatt of data center capacity every three months globally. But power constraints are proving to be a universal bottleneck: nearly half of planned U.S. data center builds this year have been delayed or canceled due to shortages of electrical infrastructure. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
EU To Crack Down On TikTok, Instagram's 'Addictive Design' - The EU plans to target "addictive design" features on TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms, including endless scrolling, autoplay, push notifications, and recommendation loops that can steer children toward harmful content. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said new regulation could arrive later this year, alongside an EU age-verification app meant to make child-safety rules easier to enforce. CNBC reports: "We are taking action against TikTok and its addictive design -- endless scrolling, autoplay, and push notifications. The same applies to Meta, because we believe Instagram and Facebook are failing to enforce their own minimum age of 13," Von der Leyen said. "We are investigating platforms that allow children to go down 'rabbit holes' of harmful content -- such as videos that promote eating disorders or self-harm," she added. The EU's executive arm has also developed its own age verification app, which has the "highest privacy standards in the world," according to Von der Leyen. Member states will soon be able to integrate it into their digital wallets, and it can easily be enforced by online platforms. "No more excuses -- the technology for age-verification is available," the EU chief said. The EU Commission could have a legal proposal prepared as soon as the summer, as it awaits the advice and findings of its 'Special Panel of experts on Child Safety Online.' Read more of this story at Slashdot.
eBay Rejects GameStop's $56 Billion Takeover As 'Neither Credible Nor Attractive' - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: EBay on Tuesday rejected a $56 billion takeover bid from the much smaller GameStop over financing doubts, calling the proposal "neither credible nor attractive." EBay, which has roughly four times GameStop's market value, also underscored that its turnaround efforts under CEO Jamie Iannone have boosted growth, with its stock returning 201% since Iannone took the position six years ago. "We have concluded that your proposal is neither credible nor attractive," eBay Chairman Paul Pressler said in a statement. "eBay's Board is confident the company, under its current management team, is well-positioned to continue to drive sustainable growth." He also pointed to concerns with GameStop's bid, including its financing, its impact on eBay's long-term growth and the leadership structure of a potentially combined company. Last week, GameStop's CEO Ryan Cohen delivered one of the most memorable CNBC interviews in recent memory... initially disinterested, then increasingly hostile, with little eye contact, few real answers to basic questions, and repeated robotic deflections to "check the website." It's worth a watch if you have a few extra minutes. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
FCC Says Foreign-Made Routers Can Get Updates Until 2029 - The FCC has softened its ban on foreign-made consumer routers, allowing vendors to keep issuing broader software and firmware updates for devices already in use in the U.S. through at least January 2029. Dark Reading reports: Under the original FCC ruling, foreign manufacturers were permitted to provide only limited maintenance and security patches to US customers through March 2027. In a public note (PDF) on May 8, the FCC extended that deadline to at least January 2029 and also expanded the scope of permissible updates. The FCC will now allow foreign manufacturers to provide not just minor security fixes and changes, but also more major software and firmware updates that could affect router functionality, which previously required additional FCC review. The agency described the revisions as intended to ensure the continued safety of already deployed foreign-made consumer routers in the US. "The FCC likely issued this revision in response to the operational realities of network security and the slow pace of equipment replacement," says Jason Soroko, senior fellow at Sectigo. "Replacing millions of embedded devices across national infrastructure requires immense time and capital, and abandoning existing systems to a completely unpatched state would create an immediate vulnerability." "This waiver significantly alleviates the most pressing fears tied to the initial ban by preventing a sudden and dangerous security vacuum," added Soroko. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
First Real-Time Brain-Controlled Hearing Device - Researchers at Columbia demonstrated the first real-time brain-controlled hearing system that can identify which speaker a listener is focusing on in a noisy environment and automatically amplify that voice while suppressing others. "This breakthrough addresses the 'cocktail party effect,' a major limitation of conventional hearing aids, which often struggle to distinguish between overlapping conversations in noisy settings," reports Neuroscience News. From the report: In the new study, Columbia researchers teamed up with surgeons and their epilepsy patients who were undergoing brain surgery to better pinpoint the sources of their seizures. The hospital patients, who volunteered to be part of this study, already had electrodes implanted in their brains. [senior author Nima Mesgarani's] system used the electrodes to measure the brain activity of the patients as they focused on one of two overlapping conversations played simultaneously. The system then automatically detected which conversation a patient was paying attention to and adjusted the volume in real time, turning up that conversation while quieting the other. For one volunteer, the experience of controlling the system with her brain was literally unbelievable. She accused the researchers of secretly adjusting the volumes. Others told stories about friends and family with hearing impairments who could benefit from such a technology. One person said: "It seems like science fiction." [...] The scientists developed real-time machine-learning algorithms that could examine the brainwaves and identify which conversation the patients were paying attention to. Once deployed, their system could rapidly deduce which conversation each listener was paying attention to and make it easier for them to hear it. This happened both when the researchers guided the subjects toward a particular conversation, and when the subjects chose freely, as would be necessary in a real-world conversation. "For this to work in real time, the system has to be very fast, accurate and stable for the experience to feel pleasant for the listener," Dr. Mesgarani said. The scientists found their new system correctly identified which conversation the volunteers paid attention to. This dramatically improved the intelligibility of the speech the volunteers focused on, reduced listening effort, and was consistently preferred by the volunteers when compared to conversations the system did not provide assistance with. One volunteer recalled her uncle, who had hearing problems. "Can you imagine if this technology existed in a world [where] ... he could access it? He might actually live a much more peaceful... life." The research has been published in Nature Neuroscience. Read more of this story at Slashdot.