Latest News

Last updated 18 Feb, 11:41 AM

BBC News

Starmer says US 'backstop' needed for Ukraine deal - Speaking after meeting European leaders in Paris, the prime minister says "a US security guarantee is the only way to effectively deter Russia from attacking Ukraine again".

All passengers survive crash landing as plane flips at Toronto airport - Eighteen of the 80 people on board were injured after the Delta plane overturned on landing.

Passenger films his escape from upside down crashed plane - Video shows people clamber over belongings and seats from inside the plane that crashed on the Canadian runway.

Thames Water secures £3bn lifeline after court ruling - The UK's largest water and waste company was set to run out of money by the end of March.

Early release of hundreds of prisoners to begin in Scotland - The first of up to 390 prisoners are being freed early in an attempt to ease overcrowding in jails.

The Register

Kelsey Hightower on dodging AI and the need for a glossary of IT terms - The science of the appliance and opening the lid of the black box to find... it's just software Interview The tech industry has a habit of reinventing itself every few years. Kelsey Hightower would like someone to come up with a glossary because software is software, no matter what it gets called.…

UK electrical utility seeks partner for £81M SAP overhaul as support deadline closes in - Integrations with third-party software await chosen provider A UK electrical infrastructure biz is seeking a systems integrator to help it migrate from a 25-year-old SAP ERP system to the latest S/4HANA platform in a contract set to be worth almost a quarter of its annual turnover.…

Lloyds Bank reviews tech and engineering personnel in reorg - Admits it will be saying 'goodbye to talented people' in UK amid fears of jobs being offshored to India Lloyds Banking Group this month launched a review of the technology and engineering professionals working in the UK operation with headcount reductions inevitable and some roles being offshored to Lloyds Technology Center in India.…

Avaya hangs up on users with fewer than 200 SaaSy contact center seats - Customers told to pay up, quit, or wait for promised alternative ‘innovation’ coming real soon now Avaya has advised customers and resellers of a planned “evolution” of its products that starts with a requirement to license at least 200 seats worth of its SaaS-y contact center wares by June 30, 2025.…

Indian authorities seize loot from collapsed BitConnect crypto scam - Devices containing crypto wallets tracked online, then in the real world Indian authorities seize loot from BitConnect crypto-Ponzi scheme Devices containing crypto wallets tracked online, then in the real world India’s Directorate of Enforcement has found and seized over $200 million of loot it says are the proceeds of the BitConnect crypto-fraud scheme.…

New Scientist - News

Earth’s oceans may have been green for billions of years - Some cyanobacteria have pigments that specialise in harvesting green light to power their photosynthesis, which may be an evolutionary adaptation to a time when the oceans were iron-rich and green-tinged

Pompeii’s streets show how the city adapted to Roman rule - Pompeii only came under Roman control around 160 years before its destruction – and its traffic-worn streets show how the locals adjusted their business operations

AI-generated optical illusions can sort humans from bots - Artificial intelligences fail to identify optical illusions in images created by other AIs – so these images could form the basis of a new kind of CAPTCHA test

CAR T-cells enable record-breaking 18-year nerve cancer remission - A person with neuroblastoma, which occurs when developing nerve cells in children turn cancerous, has remained tumour-free for over 18 years thanks to CAR T-cell therapy

Eight habits that could keep your heart healthy - From staying active to getting plenty of sleep, there are many ways to keep your heart healthy

Hacker News

Show HN: Live-updating version of the 'What a week, huh?' meme - Comments

My washing machine refreshed my thinking on software estimation - Comments

The Joy of Nand2Tetris - Comments

Plane crashes, overturns during landing at Toronto airport - Comments

I helped fix sleep-wake hangs on Linux with AMD GPUs - Comments

Slashdot

PlayStation Veteran Blames Gaming Industry Slump on Pandemic Overexpansion - Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida has attributed the current wave of video game industry layoffs and slowdown to companies overextending during the COVID-19 pandemic. "I think it's an overreaction to the COVID situation. Companies invested too much, including ourselves. Then we had to face reality and make adjustments," Yoshida told VentureBeat in an interview. Yoshida, who left Sony in January after 31 years at PlayStation, suggested the industry's growth would have been more stable without the pandemic-driven surge. "If you take out the COVID years you'd have smoother growth over the years," he said. Yoshida's comments come amid widespread job cuts across the gaming sector, including at Sony, Microsoft, Epic Games, and other major publishers following a post-pandemic decline in gaming engagement. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

xAI Releases Its Latest Flagship Model, Grok 3 - xAI has launched Grok 3, the latest iteration of its large language model, alongside new capabilities for its iOS and web applications. The model has been trained on approximately 200,000 GPUs in a Memphis data center, representing what CEO Elon Musk claims is a tenfold increase in computing power compared to its predecessor. The new release introduces two specialized variants: Grok 3 Reasoning and Grok 3 mini Reasoning, designed to methodically analyze problems similar to OpenAI's o3-mini and DeepSeek's R1 models. According to xAI's benchmarks, Grok 3 outperforms GPT-4o on several technical evaluations, including AIME for mathematical reasoning and GPQA for PhD-level science problems. A notable addition is the DeepSearch feature, which combs through web content and X posts to generate research summaries. The platform will be available through X's Premium+ subscription and a new SuperGrok tier ($30/month or $300/year), with the latter offering enhanced reasoning capabilities and unlimited image generation. To prevent knowledge extraction through model distillation -- a technique recently attributed to DeepSeek's alleged copying of OpenAI's models -- xAI has implemented measures to obscure the reasoning models' thought processes in the Grok app. The company plans to release the Grok 2 model as open source once Grok 3 achieves stability. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sandisk Puts Petabyte SSDs On the Roadmap - SanDisk aims to produce petabyte-scale SSDs through its new UltraQLC platform, though the company has not specified a release timeline. The technology, it said, combines SanDisk's BICS 8 QLC 3D NAND with a proprietary 64-channel controller featuring hardware accelerators that offload storage functions from firmware to reduce latency and improve reliability. The initial UltraQLC drives will use 2Tb NAND chips to reach 128TB capacities, with future iterations targeting 256TB, 512TB, and eventually 1PB as higher-density NAND becomes available. The controller dynamically adjusts power based on workload and employs an advanced bus multiplexer to handle increased data loads from high-density QLC stacks, the company said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NAND Flash Prices Plunge Amid Supply Glut, Factory Output Cut - NAND flash prices are expected to slide due to oversupply, forcing memory chipmakers to cut production to match lower-than-expected orders from PC and smartphone manufacturers. From a report: The superabundance of stock is putting a financial strain on suppliers of NAND flash, according to TrendForce, which says growth rate forecasts are being revised down from 30 percent to 10-15 percent for 2025. "NAND flash manufacturers have adopted more decisive production cuts, scaling back full-year output to curb bit supply growth. These measures are designed to swiftly alleviate market imbalances and lay the groundwork for a price recovery," TrendForce stated. Shrish Pant, Gartner director analyst and technology product leader, expects NAND flash pricing to remain weak for the first half of 2025, though he projects higher bit shipments for SSDs in the second half due to continuing AI server demand. "Vendors are currently working tirelessly to discipline supply, which will lead to prices recovering in the second half of 2025. Long term, AI demand will continue to drive the demand for higher-capacity/better-performance SSDs," Pant said. Commenting on the seasonal nature of the memory market, Pant told The Register: "Buying patterns will mean that NAND flash prices will remain cyclical depending on hyperscalers' buying behavior." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mexico Threatens To Sue Google Over Gulf Renaming - Mexico has threatened legal action against Google after the tech company refused to fully restore the name Gulf of Mexico on its mapping service, escalating a dispute sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump's move to rename the body of water. Google Maps currently displays the water body as Gulf of America within U.S. territory, Gulf of Mexico within Mexican borders, and Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America) elsewhere, according to a letter from Google vice president Cris Turner to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. Mexico argues the policy violates its sovereignty since the U.S. controls only 46% of the gulf, while Mexico and Cuba control 49% and 5% respectively. The historic name Gulf of Mexico, dating to 1607, is recognized by the United Nations. The dispute has strained U.S.-Mexico relations, with the White House barring Associated Press reporters from events over the news agency's naming policy. Read more of this story at Slashdot.