Latest News

Last updated 21 Feb, 12:13 PM

BBC News

Trump brings in new 10% tariff as Supreme Court rejects his global import taxes - The Supreme Court decision striking down some of Trump's most sweeping tariffs injects new uncertainty into global trade.

Government considers removing Andrew from royal line of succession - The former Duke of York is eighth in line to the throne meaning he remains eligible to be King.

Palestinian Authority in dire straits as Israel's hold on West Bank deepens - More than 30 years after its creation, there are increasing warnings that the PA is close to collapse.

Why fake AI videos of UK urban decline are taking over social media - Deepfakes showing grim taxpayer-funded waterparks have gone viral and drawn some racist responses.

'It's ruined my life': Hundreds tell BBC how medication triggered gambling and other addictions - More than 250 people contacted us describing impulsive behaviour side effects from prescription drugs.

The Register

Government upgrades drones, deploys joystick tweakers to catch illegal dumpers - Electronic eyes are watching from above, ready to catch dumpers of smashed up couches in the act The UK government is pulling together an elite squad of drone operators to crack down on the scourge of fly tippers and unauthorized dumpers across this ever less green and pleasant land.…

Ofcom's grumble-o-meter lights up for EE, TalkTalk, Vodafone - Q3 figures show the trio drawing the most broadband complaints per 100,000 customers The UK's telecoms regulator has named and shamed the companies it receives the most customer complaints about, with certain brands cropping up more than others.…

SerpApi says Google is the pot calling the kettle black when it comes to scraping - 'The DMCA was not designed to create walled gardens for tech giants' SerpApi, a Texas-based web scraping company, has asked a California court to dismiss Google's claim that that it bypassed digital locks to gather copyrighted content in Google Search results.…

The idea of using a Raspberry Pi to run OpenClaw makes no sense - The micro-computer maker’s shares surged this week after an X post tied the AI agent to Pi demand opinion Beloved British single-board computer maker Raspberry Pi has achieved meme stock stardom, as its share price surged 90 percent over the course of a couple of days earlier this week. It's settled since, but it’s still up more than 30 percent on the week.…

PayPal app code error leaked personal info and a 'few' unauthorized transactions - About 100 customers affected PayPal has notified about 100 customers that their personal information was exposed online during a code change gone awry, and in a few of these cases, people saw unauthorized transactions on their accounts.…

New Scientist - Home

What to read this week: The Laws of Thought by Tom Griffiths - In the ChatGPT era, a war over the nature of intelligence is playing out. Chris Stokel-Walker explores a Princeton professor's engaging take

Fish-based pet food may expose cats and dogs to forever chemicals - A survey of 100 commercial foods for dogs and cats revealed that PFAS chemicals appear in numerous brands and types, with fish-based products among those with the highest levels

Your BMI can't tell you much about your health – here's what can - People classed as “overweight” according to BMI can be perfectly healthy. But there are better measures of fat, and physicians are finally using them

Nobel prizewinner Omar Yaghi says his invention will change the world - Chemist Omar Yaghi invented materials called MOFs, a few grams of which have the surface area of a football field. He explains why he thinks these super-sponges will define the next century

Humans are the only primates with a chin – now we finally know why - Biologists have debated the reason why Homo sapiens evolved a prominent lower jaw, but this unique feature may actually be a by-product of other traits shaped by natural selection

Hacker News

Keep Android Open - Comments

I Verified My LinkedIn Identity. Here's What I Handed Over - Comments

Andrej Karpathy talks about "Claws" - Comments

Turn Dependabot off - Comments

I found a Vulnerability. They found a Lawyer - Comments

Slashdot

OpenAI's First ChatGPT Gadget Could Be a Smart Speaker With a Camera - OpenAI is reportedly developing its first consumer hardware product: a $200-$300 smart speaker with a built-in camera capable of recognizing "items on a nearby table or conversations people are having in the vicinity." It's also said to feature Face ID-style authentication for purchases. The Verge reports: In addition to the smart speaker, OpenAI is "possibly" working on smart glasses and a smart lamp, The Information reports. (Apple may also be working on a smart lamp.) But OpenAI's glasses might not hit mass production until 2028, and while OpenAI has made prototypes of gadgets like the smart lamp, The Information says it's "unclear" if they'll be released and that OpenAI's devices plans are in early stages. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US Particle Accelerators Turn Nuclear Waste Into Electricity, Cut Radioactive Life By 99.7% - Researchers at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility are advancing Accelerator-Driven Systems (ADS) that use high-energy proton beams to transmute long-lived nuclear waste into shorter-lived isotopes. "The process also generates significant heat, which can be harnessed to produce additional electricity for the grid," reports Interesting Engineering. The projects are supported by $8.17 million in grants from the Department of Energy's NEWTON (Nuclear Energy Waste Transmutation Optimized Now) program. From the report: The researchers are developing ADS technology. This system uses a particle accelerator to fire high-energy protons at a target (such as liquid mercury), triggering a process called "spallation." This releases a flood of neutrons that interact with unwanted, long-lived isotopes in nuclear waste. The technology can effectively "burn" the most hazardous components of the waste by transmuting these elements. While unprocessed fuel remains dangerous for approximately 100,000 years, partitioning and recycling via ADS can reduce that window to just 300 years. [...] To make ADS economically viability, Jefferson Lab is tackling two primary technical hurdles: efficiency and power. Traditional particle accelerators require massive, expensive cryogenic cooling systems to reach superconducting temperatures. Jefferson Lab is pioneering a more cost-effective approach by coating the interior of pure niobium cavities with tin. These niobium-tin cavities can operate at higher temperatures, allowing for the use of standard commercial cooling units rather than custom, large-scale cryogenic plants. The team is also developing spoke cavities, which is a complex design intended to drive even higher efficiency in neutron spallation. The second project focuses on the power source behind the beam. Researchers are adapting the magnetron -- the same component that powers microwave ovens -- to provide the 10 megawatts of power required for ADS. The primary challenge is that the energy frequency must match the accelerator cavity precisely at 805 Megahertz. In collaboration with Stellant Systems, researchers are prototyping advanced magnetrons that can be combined to reach the necessary high-power thresholds with maximum efficiency. The NEWTON program aims to enable the recycling of the entire US commercial nuclear fuel stockpile within the next 30 years. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA Eyes March 6 To Launch 4 Astronauts To the Moon On Artemis II Mission - An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: NASA could launch four astronauts on a mission to fly around the moon as soon as March 6th. That's the launch date (PDF) that the space agency is now working towards following a successful test fueling of its big, 322-foot-tall moon rocket, which is standing on a launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "This is really getting real," says Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator of NASA's exploration systems development mission directorate. "It's time to get serious and start getting excited." But she cautioned that there's still some pending work that remains to be done out at the launch pad, and officials will have to conduct a multi-day flight readiness review late next week to make sure that every aspect of the mission is truly ready to go. "We need to successfully navigate all of those, but assuming that happens, it puts us in a very good position to target March 6th," she says, noting that the flight readiness review will be "extensive and detailed." [...] When NASA workers first tested out fueling the rocket earlier this month, they encountered problems like a liquid hydrogen leak. Swapping out some seals and other work seems to have fixed these issues, according to officials who say that the latest countdown dress rehearsal went smoothly, despite glitches such as a loss of ground communications in the Launch Control Center that forced workers to temporarily use backups. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fury Over Discord's Age Checks Explodes After Shady Persona Test In UK - Backlash intensified against Discord's age verification rollout after it briefly disclosed a UK age-verification test involving vendor Persona, contradicting earlier claims about minimal ID storage and transparency. Ars Technica explains: One of the major complaints was that Discord planned to collect more government IDs as part of its global age verification process. It shocked many that Discord would be so bold so soon after a third-party breach of a former age check partner's services recently exposed 70,000 Discord users' government IDs. Attempting to reassure users, Discord claimed that most users wouldn't have to show ID, instead relying on video selfies using AI to estimate ages, which raised separate privacy concerns. In the future, perhaps behavioral signals would override the need for age checks for most users, Discord suggested, seemingly downplaying the risk that sensitive data would be improperly stored. Discord didn't hide that it planned to continue requesting IDs for any user appealing an incorrect age assessment, and users weren't happy, since that is exactly how the prior breach happened. Responding to critics, Discord claimed that the majority of ID data was promptly deleted. Specifically, Savannah Badalich, Discord's global head of product policy, told The Verge that IDs shared during appeals "are deleted quickly -- in most cases, immediately after age confirmation." It's unsurprising then that backlash exploded after Discord posted, and then weirdly deleted, a disclaimer on an FAQ about Discord's age assurance policies that contradicted Discord's hyped short timeline for storing IDs. An archived version of the page shows the note shared this warning: "Important: If you're located in the UK, you may be part of an experiment where your information will be processed by an age-assurance vendor, Persona. The information you submit will be temporarily stored for up to 7 days, then deleted. For ID document verification, all details are blurred except your photo and date of birth, so only what's truly needed for age verification is used." Critics felt that Discord was obscuring not just how long IDs may be stored, but also the entities collecting information. Discord did not provide details on what the experiment was testing or how many users were affected, and Persona was not listed as a partner on its platform. Asked for comment, Discord told Ars that only a small number of users was included in the experiment, which ran for less than one month. That test has since concluded, Discord confirmed, and Persona is no longer an active vendor partnering with Discord. Moving forward, Discord promised to "keep our users informed as vendors are added or updated." While Discord seeks to distance itself from Persona, Rick Song, Persona's CEO [...] told Ars that all the data of verified individuals involved in Discord's test has been deleted. Ars also notes that hackers "quickly exposed a 'workaround' to avoid Persona's age checks on Discord" and "found a Persona frontend exposed to the open internet on a U.S. government authorized server." The Rage, an independent publication that covers financial surveillance, reported: "In 2,456 publicly accessible files, the code revealed the extensive surveillance Persona software performs on its users, bundled in an interface that pairs facial recognition with financial reporting -- and a parallel implementation that appears designed to serve federal agencies." While Persona does not have any government contracts, the exposed service "appears to be powered by an OpenAI chatbot," The Rage noted. Hackers warned "that OpenAI may have created an internal database for Persona identity checks that spans all OpenAI users via its internal watchlistdb," seemingly exploiting the "opportunity to go from comparing users against a single federal watchlist, to creating the watchlist of all users themselves." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pinterest Is Drowning in a Sea of AI Slop and Auto-Moderation - Users say Pinterest has become flooded with AI-generated images and heavy-handed automated moderation, with artists reporting wrongful takedowns and their hand-drawn work mislabeled as "AI modified." As the company doubles down on AI features and layoffs, longtime users argue the platform's creative ecosystem is being undermined. 404 Media reports: "I feel like, increasingly, it's impossible to talk to a single human [at Pinterest]," artist and Pinterest user Tiana Oreglia told 404 Media. "Along with being filled with AI images that have been completely ruining the platform, Pinterest has implemented terrible AI moderation that the community is up in arms about. It's banning people randomly and I keep getting takedown notices for pins." [...] r/Pinterest is awash in users complaining about AI-related issues on the site. "Pinterest keeps automatically adding the 'AI modified' tag to my Pins... every time I appeal, Pinterest reviews it and removes the AI label. But then... the same thing happens again on new Pins and new artwork. So I'm stuck in this endless loop of appealing, label removed, new Pin gets tagged again," read a post on r/Pinterest. The redditor told 404 Media that this has happened three times so far and it takes between 24 to 48 hours to sort out. "I actively promote my work as 100% hand-drawn and 'no AI,'" they said. "On Etsy, I clearly position my brand around original illustration. So when a Pinterest Pin is labeled 'Hand Drawn' but simultaneously marked as 'AI modified,' it creates confusion and undermines that positioning." Artist Min Zakuga told 404 Media that they've seen a lot of their art on Pinterest get labeled as "AI modified" despite being older than image generation tech. "There is no way to take their auto-labeling off, other than going through a horribly long process where you have to prove it was not AI, which still may get rejected," she said. "Even artwork from 10-13 years ago will still be labeled by Pinterest as AI, with them knowing full well something from 10 years ago could not possibly be AI." Other users are tired of seeing a constant flood of AI-generated art in their feeds. "I can't even scroll through 100 pins without 95 out of them being some AI slop or theft, let alone very talented artists tend to be sucked down and are being unrecognized by the sheer amount of it," said another post. "I don't want to triple check my sources every single time I look at a pin, but I refuse to use any of that soulless garbage. However, Pinterest has been infested. Made obsolete." Read more of this story at Slashdot.