Latest News
Last updated 04 Apr, 11:00 AM
BBC News
Three charged over Jewish charity ambulance fires - Four Hatzola ambulances were set alight in the car park of a synagogue in Golders Green in the early hours of 23 March.
Artemis II crew now halfway to Moon as they take 'spectacular' image of Earth - The snap was taken aboard the Orion capsule by its commander, Reid Wiseman, as the crew head towards the Moon.
After 16 years in power, could Viktor Orban finally be unseated? - Hungary is going to the polls in nine days - after 16 years in power, can Viktor Orban be unseated?
State pension age starts rising to 67 - here's how much you get and when - The age at which people can start receiving the state pension is going up in stages over the next two years.
Five Met Police officers taken off duty after bag of weapons is left in the street - A member of the public found the bag containing guns and a Taser on a south London street.
The Register
Ex-Microsoft engineer believes Azure problems stem from talent exodus - The cloud service's woes reflect a crisis made worse by AI – under-investment in people In 2024, federal cybersecurity evaluators reportedly dismissed Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud High (GCC High) as garbage, although they used a more colorful term. To understand why, it helps to consider the history of the underlying Azure infrastructure.…
PrismML debuts energy-sipping 1-bit LLM in bid to free AI from the cloud - Bonasi 8B model is competitive with other 8B models but 14x smaller and 5x more energy efficient PrismML, an AI venture out of Caltech, has released a 1-bit large language model that outperforms weightier models, with the expectation that it will improve AI efficiency and viability on mobile devices, among other applications.…
Trump wants to take a battle axe to CISA again and slash $707M from budget - Ex-CISA official tells The Reg: 'this would weaken the system for managing cyber risk' The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's budget will see yet another deep cut if Congress approves President Trump's proposal to slash CISA's spending by $707 million in fiscal year 2027.…
Netflix - yes Netflix - jumps on the AI bandwagon with video editor - Video-language model revises how objects interact when things get removed from a scene A new Netflix model promises to rewrite the way we make movies. Just imagine this. As the director of the multi-million dollar epic Car Crash III: Suddenest Impact, you've just finished filming the finale where your star, Cruz Control, drives straight into an onrushing semi.…
NHS staff resist using Palantir software - Staff reportedly cite ethics concerns, privacy worries, and doubt the platform adds much Palantir's software was brought in to help NHS England improve care and cut delays, but new reports suggest some staff are resisting using it over ethical, privacy, and trust concerns.…
New Scientist - Home
We may have seen a 'dirty fireball' star explosion for the first time - An incredibly powerful flash of X-rays spotted by the Einstein Probe telescope appears to be a kind of explosion first theorised more than 30 years ago
The profound effect the heart-brain connection has on your health - Cognitive decline, mental health and heart disease are all shaped by the deep links between heart and brain – with major implications for diagnoses and treatment
How worried should you be about an AI apocalypse? - Fears that artificial intelligence could rise up to wipe out humanity are understandable given our steady diet of sci-fi stories depicting just that, but what is the real risk? Matthew Sparkes looks at what the experts say
New Scientist recommends the engaging Native Nations by Kathleen DuVal - The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week
Multipurpose anti-viral pill may treat colds, norovirus, flu and covid - AI predicted that a forgotten breast cancer drug could be repurposed to treat many respiratory and gastrointestinal viruses, and subsequent animal tests suggests it may be right
Hacker News
Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw - Comments
Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth - Comments
GitHub has DMCA'd nearly all forks of the official Claude-code repo - Comments
Some Unusual Trees - Comments
iNaturalist - Comments
Slashdot
Artemis II Astronauts Pass 100,000 Miles From Earth On Voyage To the Moon - The Artemis II crew has passed 100,000 miles from Earth and is now on a "free-return" path around the moon after a successful "translunar" injection burn. "Ladies and gentlemen, I am so, so excited to be able to tell you that for the first time since 1972 during Apollo 17, human beings have left Earth orbit," NASA's Dr Lori Glaze told a news conference. The Guardian reports: The astronauts -- the Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and a Canadian, Jeremy Hansen -- spent their first day in space performing checks on the spacecraft, which had never carried humans before. Later they had time to speak to US TV networks. "I've got to tell you, there is nothing normal about this," Wiseman told ABC News from the cramped interior of the capsule. "Sending four humans 250,000 miles away is a herculean effort, and we are now just realising the gravity of that." Orion will travel about 4,000 miles (6,400km) beyond the moon before turning back, providing unprecedented and illuminated views of the lunar far side. If all proceeds smoothly, the astronauts will set a record by venturing farther from Earth than any human before -- more than 250,000 miles. The mission is part of a longer-term plan to repeatedly return to the moon, with the aim of establishing a permanent base that will offer a platform for further exploration. After the final engine burn, NASA said Wiseman took two "spectacular" images of Earth. The first photo, called Hello, World, "shows the vast expanse of blue that is the Atlantic Ocean, framed by a thin glow of the atmosphere as the Earth eclipses the Sun and green auroras at either pole," reports the BBC. Another photo shows the view of Earth from inside the Orion spacecraft. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
'AI' Is Coming For Your Online Gaming Servers Next - "Consumer PC parts aren't the only things being gobbled up by the 'AI' industry," writes PCWorld's Michael Crider. "A Starcraft-inspired strategy game is shutting down its multiplayer servers because the hosting company got bought out for 'AI.'" The game will still be playable offline for now, but the shutdown highlights the ripple effects of the AI boom on the gaming industry. Amid the ongoing hardware shortages, AI companies are basically gobbling up as much infrastructure as they can to repurpose it for AI workloads. From the report: The game in question is Stormgate, a crowdfunded revival of the real-time strategy genre that has languished in the last decade or so. The developer Frost Giant Studios told its players on Discord (spotted by PC Gamer) that it would be unable to continue multiplayer access past the end of this month. The "game server orchestration partner" was bought by an AI company -- the developer's words, not mine -- which means that the multiplayer aspects of the game will have a "planned outage." The devs say the game will be patched for offline play, presumably including its single-player campaign mode and co-op modes, but "online modes will not be available at that point." They're hoping to bring back online play in a later update, but that'll depend on "finding a partner to support ongoing operations." That sounds like old-fashioned player-hosted games with lobbies aren't in the cards, at least not yet. Frost Giant's server provider is Hathora, which was bought by a company called Fireworks AI last month. Fireworks describes its offerings as "open-source AI models at blazing speed, optimized for your use case, scaled globally with the Fireworks Inference Cloud." So, yeah, Hathora's infrastructure will likely be used for yet more generative "AI." And according to GamesBeat, it's planning to shut down the game service aspect of its company completely. That means Stormgate probably isn't going to be the last game affected. Hathora also provides online services for Splitgate 2, among others. I'm contacting Hathora for comment and will update this story if I receive a response. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Iran Strikes Leave Amazon Availability Zones 'Hard Down' In Bahrain and Dubai - Iranian strikes have reportedly knocked out key AWS availability zones in Bahrain and Dubai, leaving parts of both regions effectively offline for an extended period and forcing Amazon to urge teams and customers to shift workloads elsewhere. "These two regions continue to be impaired, and services should not expect to be operating with normal levels of redundancy and resiliency," an internal Amazon communication memo reads. "We are actively working to free and reserve as much capacity as possible in the region for customers, and services should be scaled to the minimal footprint required to support customer migration." Big Technology reports: With the war now nearing its sixth week, Iran has made Amazon infrastructure in the Gulf an economic target and is now eyeing its peers. Amazon's Bahrain facilities have been hit multiple times, including a Wednesday strike that caused a fire. And its facilities in the UAE also sustained multiple hits. The IRGC is threatening multiple other U.S. tech giants, including Microsoft, Google, and Apple. Amazons infrastructure in Bahrain and Dubai each have three 'availability zones' or clusters of compute. Both Bahrain and Dubai have a zones that are "hard down" and and "impaired but functioning," per the internal communication. "We do not have a timeline for when DXB and BAH will return to normal operations," the internal post said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft To Invest $10 Billion In Japan For AI, Cyber Defense Expansion - Microsoft plans to invest $10 billion in Japan from 2026 to 2029 to expand AI infrastructure, boost local cloud capacity, train 1 million engineers and developers, and deepen cybersecurity cooperation with the Japanese government. Reuters reports: The investment includes the training of 1 million engineers and developers by 2030, Microsoft said, which was unveiled during a visit to Tokyo by Vice Chair and President Brad Smith. In a statement, the company said the plan aligns with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's goal to boost growth through advanced, strategic technologies while safeguarding national security. Microsoft will work with domestic firms including SoftBank and Sakura Internet to expand Japan-based AI computing capacity, allowing Ecompanies and government agencies to keep sensitive data within the country while accessing Microsoft Azure services, it said. It will also deepen cooperation with Japanese authorities on sharing intelligence related to cyber threats and crime prevention. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Netflix Must Refund Customers For Years of Price Hikes, Italian Court Rules - A Rome court ruled that several Netflix price hikes in Italy were unlawful because the company's contracts didn't adequately explain or justify future pricing changes. As a result, Netflix has been ordered to issue refunds that could total roughly 500 euros for some long-term subscribers. Ars Technica reports: The lawsuit was brought by Italian consumer advocacy group Movimento Consumatori, which alleged that the price hikes violate the Consumer Code, Italian legislation that aims to protect consumer rights. The Consumer Code says it's unlawful for a "professional to unilaterally modify the clauses of the contract, or the characteristics of the product or service to be provided, without a justified reason indicated in the contract itself," according to a Google-provided translation. The court's April 1 ruling determined that Netflix's contracts were required to explain in advance why prices or other terms might change in the future. Because the price hikes were found to be imposed without providing customers with valid justifications, the court ruled that the new prices are invalid and ordered Netflix to refund affected subscribers. This comes despite Netflix reportedly providing a 30-day advance notice of the higher fees and allowing customers to cancel their subscriptions to avoid price hikes. The court gave Netflix 90 days to inform millions of current and former customers via email, mail, its website, and Italian newspapers of their right to refunds or else face a penalty of 700 euros per day, Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore reported today. Per Italian law, price increases that Netflix has issued or will issue beyond April 2025 are legal. At that time, Netflix adjusted its terms to state that contract terms could one day change due to technological, security, or regulatory needs, to clarify clauses, or to provide changes to the service, Il Sole 24 Ore reported. Read more of this story at Slashdot.