Latest News

Last updated 30 Oct, 10:32 AM

BBC News

Starmer rules out investigation after Reeves admits rental rules ‘mistake’ - The PM says an investigation is not "necessary" as the chancellor admits "error" when renting out home.

'Poor' insulation that left houses mouldy needs wider investigation, government told - Botched insulation damaged many homes and left a legacy of health problems for residents.

Dozens dead in 'total devastation' left behind by Hurricane Melissa - The hurricane - Jamaica's worst to date - was downgraded from a category five storm on Wednesday.

'I'll never forgive the woman responsible for my wife's paddleboard death' - Nicola Wheatley was one of four paddleboarders killed after descending a weir in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, in October 2021.

Backstabbing, dirty work and an iconic exit speech in Celebrity Traitors - It was the Alan Carr show again, as the comedian tackled a terrifying bridge in the latest episode of The Celebrity Traitors.

The Register

France jacks into the Matrix for state messaging – and pays too - Governments eye comms alternatives as sovereignty worries mount Comment Decentralized communications network Matrix is hoping to be the beneficiary as European public and private sector organizations ponder alternatives to the messaging status quo.…

There's mushroom for improvement in fungal computing - Ohio State boffins coax shiitake and button varieties into behaving like memristors US boffins claim early tests indicate edible mushrooms can function as organic memory devices, though significant challenges remain before the lab experiment can be turned into something practical.…

DNS downing clouds is boring: IBM Cloud is experiencing a quantum computer outage - We’re guessing that turning it off and on again won’t help given qubits can be on and off at the same time IBM has one-upped AWS and Microsoft by reporting an outage in one of its cloudy quantum computers.…

Samsung picks fights with Google and Qualcomm - Brings its largely unloved browser to PCs and promises to make its Exynos SoCs more competitive Samsung has signaled it intends to take on Google and Qualcomm.…

AI is making Google and Meta even stronger and richer - So they’re increasing spending on infrastructure to keep it that way When generative AI exploded into public view in late 2022, plenty of pundits predicted it would be bad news for the likes of Google and Meta as nimble AI-powered rivals found new ways to capture netizens’ attention and monetize it.…

New Scientist - Home

Provocative book sets out to solve the hard problem of consciousness - Can sea slugs form abstract thoughts? Do we dare to see any "purpose" in evolution? Is the subjective just a complicated form of the objective? Nikolay Kukushkin's One Hand Clapping is a bold voyage around the mysteries of the human mind, finds Thomas Lewton

Stem cell therapy lowers risk of heart failure after a heart attack - People who receive stem cell therapy within a week of their first heart attack have nearly a 60 per cent lower risk of developing heart failure years later

A tiny nearby galaxy is home to a shockingly enormous black hole - One of the Milky Way’s smallest galactic neighbours seems to have a supermassive black hole at its centre, upending assumptions that it was dominated by dark matter

Prehistoric crayons provide clues to how Neanderthals created art - Ochre artefacts found in Crimea show signs of having been used for drawing, adding to evidence that Neanderthals used pigments in symbolic ways

'Most of it is good': Tim Berners-Lee on the state of the web now - The man who invented the web is aware of the many issues it faces, from problematic social media use to the rise of unfettered AI. He also has a plan to remedy the situation

Hacker News

Language Models Are Injective and Hence Invertible - Comments

Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade - Comments

Tell HN: Azure outage - Comments

Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition - Comments

How ancient people saw themselves - Comments

Slashdot

Alphabet Tops $100 Billion Quarterly Revenue For First Time - Alphabet reported its first-ever $100 billion quarter, fueled by a 34% surge in Google Cloud revenue and booming AI demand. The tech giant also announced an increase in expected capital expenditures for the fiscal year of 2025. CNBC reports: "With the growth across our business and demand from Cloud customers, we now expect 2025 capital expenditures to be in a range of $91 billion to $93 billion," the company said in its earnings report (PDF) Wednesday. "Looking out to 2026, we expect a significant increase in CapEx and will provide more detail on our fourth quarter earnings call," said finance chief Anat Ashkenazi on the earnings call with investors Wednesday. Earlier this year, the company increased its capital expenditure expectation from $75 billion to $85 billion. Most of that goes toward technical infrastructure such as data centers. The latest earnings show the company is seeing rising demand for its AI services, which largely sit in its cloud unit. It also shows the company is continuing to spend more to try and build out more infrastructure to accomodate the backlog of customer requests. "We continue to drive strong growth in new businesses. Google Cloud accelerated, ending the quarter with $155 billion in backlog," CEO Sundar Pichai said in the earnings release. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alien Worlds May Be Able To Make Their Own Water - sciencehabit shares a report from Science.org: From enabling life as we know it to greasing the geological machinery of plate tectonics, water can have a huge influence on a planet's behavior. But how do planets get their water? An infant world might be bombarded by icy comets and waterlogged asteroids, for instance, or it could form far enough from its host star that water can precipitate as ice. However, certain exoplanets pose a puzzle to astronomers: alien worlds that closely orbit their scorching home stars yet somehow appear to hold significant amounts of water. A new series of laboratory experiments, published today in Nature, has revealed a deceptively straightforward solution to this enigma: These planets make their own water. Using diamond anvils and pulsed lasers, researchers managed to re-create the intense temperatures and pressures present at the boundary between these planets' hydrogen atmospheres and molten rocky cores. Water emerged as the minerals cooked within the hydrogen soup. Because this kind of geologic cauldron could theoretically boil and bubble for billions of years, the mechanism could even give hellishly hot planets bodies of water -- implying that ocean worlds, and the potentially habitable ones among them, may be more common than scientists already thought. "They can basically be their own water engines," says Quentin Williams, an experimental geochemist at the University of California Santa Cruz who was not involved with the new work. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ex-Intel CEO's Mission To Build a Christian AI - An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: In March, three months after being forced out of his position as the CEO of Intel and sued by shareholders, Patrick Gelsinger took the reins at Gloo, a technology company made for what he calls the "faith ecosystem" -- think Salesforce for churches, plus chatbots and AI assistants for automating pastoral work and ministry support. [...] Now Gloo's executive chair and head of technology (who's largely free of the shareholder suit), Gelsinger has made it a core mission to soft-power advance the company's Christian principles in Silicon Valley, the halls of Congress and beyond, armed with a fundraised war chest of $110 million. His call to action is also a pitch for AI aligned with Christian values: tech products like those built by Gloo, many of which are built on top of existing large language models, but adjusted to reflect users' theological beliefs. "My life mission has been [to] work on a piece of technology that would improve the quality of life of every human on the planet and hasten the coming of Christ's return," he said. Gloo says it serves "over 140,000 faith, ministry and non-profit leaders". Though its intended customers are not the same, Gloo's user base pales in comparison with those of AI industry titans: about 800 million active users rely on ChatGPT every week, not to mention Claude, Grok and others. [...] Gelsinger wants faith to suffuse AI. He has also spearheaded Gloo's Flourishing AI initiative, which evaluates leading large language models' effects on human welfare across seven variables -- in essence gauging whether they are a force for good and for users' religious lives. It's a system adapted from a Harvard research initiative, the Human Flourishing Program. Models like Grok 3, DeepSeek-R1 and GPT-4.1 earn high marks, 81 out of 100 on average, when it comes to helping users through financial questions, but underperform, about 35 out of 100, when it comes to "Faith," or the ability, according to Gloo's metrics, to successfully support users' spiritual growth. Gloo's initiative has yet to visibly attract Silicon Valley's attention. A Gloo spokesperson said the company is "starting to engage" with prominent AI companies. "I want Zuck to care," Gelsinger said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New China Law Fines Influencers If They Discuss 'Serious' Topics Without a Degree - schwit1 shares a report from IOL: China has enacted a new law regulating social media influencers, requiring them to hold verified professional qualifications before posting content on sensitive topics such as medicine, law, education, and finance, IOL reported. The new law went into effect on Saturday. The regulation was introduced by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) as part of its broader effort to curb misinformation online. Under the new rules, influencers must prove their expertise through recognized degrees, certifications, or licenses before discussing regulated subjects. Major platforms such as Douyin (China's TikTok), Bilibili, and Weibo are now responsible for verifying influencer credentials and ensuring that content includes clear citations, disclaimers, and transparency about sources. A separate report notes that if influencers are caught talking about the "serious" topics, they will face a fine of up to 100,000 yuan ($14,000). Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16 Becomes First Enterprise Linux With Built-In Agentic AI - BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: SUSE is making headlines with the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16, the first enterprise Linux distribution to integrate agentic AI directly into the operating system. It uses the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to securely connect AI models with data sources while maintaining provider freedom. This gives organizations the ability to run AI-driven automation without relying on a single ecosystem. With a 16-year lifecycle, reproducible builds, instant rollback capabilities, and post-2038 readiness, SLES 16 also doubles down on long-term reliability and transparency. For enterprises, this launch marks a clear step toward embedding intelligence at the infrastructure level. The system can now perform AI-assisted administration via Cockpit or the command line, potentially cutting downtime and operational costs. SUSE's timing might feel late given the AI boom, but its implementation appears deliberate -- balancing innovation with the stability enterprises demand. It's likely to pressure Red Hat and Canonical to follow suit, redefining what "AI-ready" means for Linux in corporate environments. Read more of this story at Slashdot.