Latest News
Last updated 19 Mar, 01:43 PM
BBC News
King opens world's longest coastal path around England - The King Charles coastal path will allow walkers right of access to the entire coast for the first time.
US messageboard 4Chan mocks £520,000 fine for UK online safety breaches - The fine includes £450,000 for lack of age checks to prevent children from seeing pornography.
Former counter-terrorism head investigated by FBI over alleged leaks - The former counter-terrorism head resigned on Tuesday over the war with Iran, saying the country posed "no imminent threat" to the US.
'Designer' dog owners report more problem behaviours, vets warn - The Royal Veterinary College says popular "doodle" dogs do not always behave as expected.
Parents jailed after letting 'skeletal' five-stone daughter die - Steffie Davies was found dead and in an "almost skeletal" state by paramedics who were called to her home.
The Register
UK blinks on AI copyright carve-out after star-studded revolt - Creative pressure forces rethink as officials step back from default data use The UK government has backed off plans to allow AI companies to access copyrighted material for free for training purposes by default.…
Google says it will let UK publishers opt out of AI overviews - One search engine switch to rule them all in Google's response to UK competition watchdog The UK's competition watchdog has published responses to its consultation over Google's strategic market status (SMS) covering search and search advertising services - and the tech biz is offering some concessions.…
Fixing Claude with Claude: Anthropic reports on AI site reliability engineering - It's still a job for humans, even though bots can search logs at the speed of I/O QCon London A member of Anthropic's AI reliability engineering team spoke at QCon London on why Claude excels at finding issues but still makes a poor substitute for a site reliability engineer (SRE), constantly mistaking correlation with causation.…
Hide and sleek: Latest Vivaldi release can tuck its UI away until summoned - New toggle strips away browser chrome if you want Browser maker Vivaldi has opened up a new front in the browser wars by making itself disappear.…
Competition watchdog cracks knuckles, probes legality of Adobe cancellation fee - Annual billed sub scrubbed after 14 days? Expect to pay 50% of yearly price Britain’s competition watchdog is opening an investigation into Adobe’s early cancellation fees on membership plans to ascertain if it breaks competition law.…
New Scientist - Home
Mathematician wins 2026 Abel prize for solving 60-year-old mystery - Gerd Faltings shocked mathematicians around the world for his 1983 proof of the Mordell conjecture, which brought together seemingly disparate mathematical fields
Physicists create formula for how many times you can fold a crêpe - When you fold a flexible material such as a pancake or a tortilla, its behaviour depends on a competition between gravity and elasticity
Fluorescent ruby-like gems have been found on Mars for the first time - The Perseverance rover has found tiny crystals that seem to be rubies or sapphires inside pebbles on Mars, where they have never been seen before
How worried should you be about ultra-processed foods? - We are constantly told to watch out for the health risks of eating ultra-processed food, but should you be worried every time you sit down for a meal? Sam Wong takes a look at the evidence
It's time to monetise the moon! Definitely! Maybe? - Feedback discovers an accounting firm has unveiled its latest "lunar market assessment", which predicts huge profits to be had. Suit up, lunar entrepreneurs!
Hacker News
Astral to Join OpenAI - Comments
Juggalo Makeup Blocks Facial Recognition Technology - Comments
Afroman found not liable in defamation case brought by Ohio cops who raided home - Comments
Afroman Wins Civil Trial over Use of Police Raid Footage in His Music Videos - Comments
OpenAI to Acquire Astral - Comments
Slashdot
iPhone Exploit DarkSword Steals Data In Minutes With No Trace - BrianFagioli writes: A new iOS exploit chain called DarkSword shows how attackers can break into certain iPhones, grab sensitive data like messages, credentials, and even crypto wallets, and then disappear without leaving obvious traces. It targets older iOS 18 builds using Safari and WebGPU flaws to escape Apple's sandbox, which is pretty wild on its own, but what really stands out is how fast it works and how financially motivated these attacks have become. The takeaway is simple but important, update your iPhone ASAP and don't assume mobile devices are somehow safer than desktops anymore. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Pardoned Nikola Fraudster Is Raising Funds For AI-Powered Planes He Claims Will Reshape Aviation - Trevor Milton, the pardoned founder of Nikola, is seeking $1 billion for AI-powered autonomous planes through a new venture called SyberJet. The Tech Buzz reports: "Autonomous planes will be 10 times harder than Nikola ever was," Milton told the Wall Street Journal in a rare interview. It's a remarkable admission from someone whose last venture collapsed under the weight of securities fraud charges after he overstated the capabilities of Nikola's electric and hydrogen-powered trucks. Milton was convicted in 2022 on three counts of fraud for misleading investors about Nikola's technology, including staging a video that made it appear a truck prototype was driving under its own power when it was actually rolling downhill. The conviction sent him to prison and turned Nikola into a cautionary tale about startup hype culture. His pardon, which came earlier this year, sparked immediate controversy in venture capital and legal circles. Now he's betting that AI and autonomous aviation represent a clean slate. SyberJet appears focused on developing artificial intelligence systems capable of piloting aircraft without human intervention - a technical challenge that's stumped even well-funded players like Boeing and Airbus. [...] Milton hasn't detailed SyberJet's technical approach or revealed who's backing the venture. The company's website remains sparse, and aviation industry sources say they haven't seen concrete demonstrations of the technology. That opacity echoes the early days of Nikola, when Milton made sweeping claims about revolutionary trucks that existed mostly in renderings and promotional videos. If you need a quick refresher on the Nikola saga, here's a timeline of key events: June, 2016: Nikola Motor Receives Over 7,000 Preorders Worth Over $2.3 Billion For Its Electric Truck December, 2016: Nikola Motor Company Reveals Hydrogen Fuel Cell Truck With Range of 1,200 Miles February, 2020: Nikola Motors Unveils Hybrid Fuel-Cell Concept Truck With 600-Mile Range June, 2020: Nikola Founder Exaggerated the Capability of His Debut Truck September, 2020: Nikola Motors Accused of Massive Fraud, Ocean of Lies September, 2020: Nikola Admits Prototype Was Rolling Downhill In Promo Video September, 2020: Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Steps Down as Chairman in Battle With Short Seller October, 2020: Nikola Stock Falls 14 Percent After CEO Downplays Badger Truck Plans November, 2020: Nikola Stock Plunges As Company Cancels Badger Pickup Truck July, 2021: Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Indicted on Three Counts of Fraud December, 2021: EV Startup Nikola Agrees To $125 Million Settlement September, 2022: Nikola Founder Lied To Investors About Tech, Prosecutor Says in Fraud Trial Read more of this story at Slashdot.
FBI Is Buying Location Data To Track US Citizens, Director Confirms - An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The FBI has resumed purchasing reams of Americans' data and location histories to aid federal investigations, the agency's director, Kash Patel, testified to lawmakers on Wednesday. This is the first time since 2023 that the FBI has confirmed it was buying access to people's data collected from data brokers, who source much of their information -- including location data -- from ordinary consumer phone apps and games, per Politico. At the time, then-FBI director Christopher Wray told senators that the agency had bought access to people's location data in the past but that it was not actively purchasing it. When asked by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, if the FBI would commit to not buying Americans' location data, Patel said that the agency "uses all tools ... to do our mission." "We do purchase commercially available information that is consistent with the Constitution and the laws under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act -- and it has led to some valuable intelligence for us," Patel testified Wednesday. Wyden said buying information on Americans without obtaining a warrant was an "outrageous end-run around the Fourth Amendment," referring to the constitutional law that protects people in America from device searches and data seizures. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Cloudflare Appeals Piracy Shield Fine, Hopes To Kill Italy's Site-Blocking Law - Cloudflare is appealing a 14.2 million-euro fine from Italy for refusing to comply with its "Piracy Shield" law, which requires blocking access to websites on its 1.1.1.1 DNS service within 30 minutes. The company argues the system lacks oversight, risks widespread overblocking, and could undermine core Internet infrastructure. Ars Technica's Jon Brodkin reports: Piracy Shield is "a misguided Italian regulatory scheme designed to protect large rightsholder interests at the expense of the broader Internet," Cloudflare said in a blog post this week. "After Cloudflare resisted registering for Piracy Shield and challenged it in court, the Italian communications regulator, AGCOM, fined Cloudflare... We appealed that fine on March 8, and we continue to challenge the legality of Piracy Shield itself." Cloudflare called the fine of 14.2 million euros ($16.4 million) "staggering." AGCOM issued the penalty in January 2026, saying Cloudflare flouted requirements to disable DNS resolution of domain names and routing of traffic to IP addresses reported by copyright holders. Cloudflare had previously resisted a blocking order it received in February 2025, arguing that it would require installing a filter on DNS requests that would raise latency and negatively affect DNS resolution for sites that aren't subject to the dispute over piracy. Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince said that censoring the 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver would force the firm "not just to censor the content in Italy but globally." Piracy Shield was designed to combat pirated streams of live sports events, requiring network operators to block domain names and IP addresses within 30 minutes of receiving a copyright notification. Cloudflare said the fine should have been capped at 140,000 euros ($161,000), or 2 percent of its Italian earnings, but that "AGCOM calculated the fine based on our global revenue, resulting in a penalty nearly 100 times higher than the legal limit." Despite its complaints about the size of the fine, Cloudflare said the principles at stake "are even larger" than the financial penalty. "Piracy Shield is an unsupervised electronic portal through which an unidentified set of Italian media companies can submit websites and IP addresses that online service providers registered with Piracy Shield are then required to block within 30 minutes," Cloudflare said. Cloudflare is pushing for the law to be struck down, arguing that it is "incompatible with EU law, most notably the Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires that any content restriction be proportionate and subject to strict procedural safeguards." In addition to appealing the fine, Cloudflare says it will continue to challenge Piracy Shield in Italian courts, engage with EU officials, and seek full access to AGCOM's Piracy Shield records. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google Is Trying To Make 'Vibe Design' Happen - With today's latest Stitch updates, Google is trying to make "vibe design" happen, reports The Verge's Jay Peters. The AI-native design platform encourages users to describe goals, feelings, or inspiration in "natural language," rather than starting with traditional blueprints. In a blog post, Google Labs Product Manager Rustin Banks says that Stitch can turn those inputs into interactive prototypes, automatically map user flows, and support real-time iteration. It introduces voice capabilities that allow users to "speak directly to [the] canvas" for feedback or changes. Tools like DESIGN.md also help users create reusable design systems across various projects. Read more of this story at Slashdot.