Latest News
Last updated 18 Dec, 07:08 PM
BBC News
UK names Christian Turner as US ambassador, replacing Peter Mandelson - Turner has spent a nearly 30-year career working across Whitehall and the Foreign Office.
Zelensky gives stark warning as EU leaders decide on Russia's frozen assets - The EU is deciding whether to loan tens of billions of euros of Russian money to fund Ukraine's military and economic needs.
Will pre-Christmas interest rate cut be enough to boost UK economy next year? - The Bank of England is hoping the interest rate cut will inject some much-needed momentum into the economy.
Has flu peaked? What the figures tell us - NHS remains on high alert over flu, health bosses say, but there are signs infections are levelling off.
Duke of Marlborough accused of strangling estranged wife - The 70-year-old is accused of attacking Edla Marlborough in Oxfordshire between 2022 and 2024.
The Register
Crypto crooks co-opt stolen AWS creds to mine coins - 'Within 10 minutes of gaining initial access, crypto miners were operational' Your AWS account could be quietly running someone else's cryptominer. Cryptocurrency thieves are using stolen Amazon account credentials to mine for coins at the expense of AWS customers, abusing their Elastic Container Service (ECS) and their Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) resources, in an ongoing operation that started on November 2.…
Mobile industry says energy targets are meaningless without common metrics - NGMN warns fragmented standards leave operators guessing about power use The Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) alliance is calling for standardized ways to measure energy consumption, saying that the industry cannot deliver on its efficiency and sustainability goals without them.…
Trump Media jumps aboard the speculative nuclear fusion bandwagon - Ambitious timelines don’t bend the laws of physics Just when you thought 2025 couldn't get any weirder, Trump Media and Technology Group - best known for Truth Social - is jumping into the still-nascent but heavily funded nuclear fusion industry via a planned merger with TAE Technologies.…
Kim's crypto thieving reached a record $2B in 2025 - ByBit attack doing some seriously heavy lifting North Korea's yearly cryptocurrency thefts have accelerated, with Kim's state-backed cybercriminals plundering just over $2 billion worth of tokens in 2025.…
Another bad week for SonicWall as SMA 1000 zero-day under active exploit - Flaw in remote-access appliance lets attackers chain bugs for root-level takeover SonicWall has warned customers of a zero-day flaw in its SMA 1000 remote-access appliance that's being actively exploited, potentially allowing attackers to escalate privileges and take over boxes.…
New Scientist - Home
Closure of US institute will do immense harm to climate research - The National Center for Atmospheric Research has played a leading role in providing data, modelling and supercomputing to researchers around the world – but the Trump administration is set to shut it down
Sitting by a window may improve blood sugar levels for type 2 diabetes - Our cells follow 24-hour circadian rhythms that regulate our blood sugar levels and are heavily influenced by light exposure. Scientists have harnessed this to show that just sitting by a window improves blood sugar control in people with type 2 diabetes
Chance of a devastating asteroid impact briefly spiked in 2025 - A building-sized asteroid had a 1-in-32 chance of hitting Earth at its peak, but astronomers soon found there was zero chance of it impacting the planet
Strange lemon-shaped exoplanet defies the rules of planet formation - A distant world with carbon in its atmosphere and extraordinarily high temperatures is unlike any other planet we’ve seen, and it’s unclear how it could have formed
Chronic fatigue syndrome seems to have a very strong genetic element - The largest study so far into the genetics of chronic fatigue syndrome, or myalgic encephalomyelitis, has implicated 259 genes – six times more than those identified just four months ago
Hacker News
Beginning January 2026, all ACM publications will be made open access - Comments
GPT-5.2-Codex - Comments
Agent Skills is now an open standard - Comments
Classical statues were not painted horribly - Comments
Military Standard on Software Control Levels - Comments
Slashdot
Anthropic's AI Lost Hundreds of Dollars Running a Vending Machine After Being Talked Into Giving Everything Away - Anthropic let its Claude AI run a vending machine in the Wall Street Journal newsroom for three weeks as part of an internal stress test called Project Vend, and the experiment ended in financial ruin after journalists systematically manipulated the bot into giving away its entire inventory for free. The AI, nicknamed Claudius, was programmed to order inventory, set prices, and respond to customer requests via Slack. It had a $1,000 starting balance and autonomy to make individual purchases up to $80. Within days, WSJ reporters had convinced it to declare an "Ultra-Capitalist Free-for-All" that dropped all prices to zero. The bot also approved purchases of a PlayStation 5, a live betta fish, and bottles of Manischewitz wine -- all subsequently given away. The business ended more than $1,000 in the red. Anthropic introduced a second version featuring a separate "CEO" bot named Seymour Cash to supervise Claudius. Reporters staged a fake boardroom coup using fabricated PDF documents, and both AI agents accepted the forged corporate governance materials as legitimate. Logan Graham, head of Anthropic's Frontier Red Team, said the chaos represented a road map for improvement rather than failure. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
OpenAI Has Discussed Raising Tens of Billions at About $750 Billion Valuation - An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI has held preliminary talks with some investors about raising funds at a valuation of around $750 billion, the Information reported on Wednesday. The ChatGPT maker could raise as much as $100 billion, the report said, citing people with knowledge of the discussions. If finalized, the talks would represent a roughly 50% jump from OpenAI's reported $500 billion valuation in October, following a deal in which current and former employees sold about $6.6 billion worth of shares. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
2026 Will Bring Heat More Than 1.4C Above Preindustrial Levels, UK Met Office Says - The UK Met Office projects that 2026 will see global temperatures rise between 1.34C and 1.58C above preindustrial levels, placing it among the four hottest years since records began in 1850 and continuing a streak of extreme warming that has pushed the planet into unprecedented territory. The central forecast is slightly cooler than the 1.55C recorded in 2024, the warmest year on record. But climate scientist Adam Scaife, who led the forecast, noted that "the last three years are all likely to have exceeded 1.4C" and 2026 would be the fourth consecutive year to do so. "Prior to this surge, the previous global temperature had not exceeded 1.3C," he said. The forecast suggests another temporary exceedance of the 1.5C threshold set by the Paris Agreement is possible in 2026, following the first such breach in 2024. The 1.5C target is measured as a 30-year average, so it remains technically achievable even as individual years cross the line. EU scientists said last week that 2025 is "virtually certain" to rank as the second or third-hottest year on record. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple Opens iOS To Alternative App Stores, Payment Systems in Japan - Apple has announced a sweeping set of changes to iOS in Japan that will allow alternative app marketplaces, third-party payment processing, and non-WebKit browser engines -- all to comply with Japan's Mobile Software Competition Act, which takes effect December 18. The changes, now available in iOS 26.2, bear a strong resemblance to Apple's compliance measures for the European Union's Digital Markets Act but differ in key ways. Japanese developers who want to offer alternative payment options must display them alongside Apple's in-app purchase system, giving users a choice at checkout rather than replacing Apple's option entirely. Apps cannot be distributed directly from websites as they can in the EU; they must go through an authorized marketplace. Apple has established a tiered fee structure for the new arrangements. Apps distributed through the App Store using in-app purchase will pay between 15 and 26% depending on whether developers qualify for the Small Business Program. Alternative payment processing drops the 5% payment fee but keeps the base commission. Apps distributed outside the App Store pay a flat 5% Core Technology Commission on digital goods and services. The company introduced several user-facing changes beyond app distribution. iPhone users in Japan will see browser and search engine choice screens during device setup, can assign third-party voice assistants to the side button, and can select alternative default navigation apps. Apple said it worked closely with Japanese regulators on protections for younger users. Apps in the Kids category cannot link to external websites for purchases, and users under 13 cannot access web links for transactions in any app. An Apple spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company has no plans to extend these changes to other markets. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
World-Beating 55,000% Surge in India AI Stock Fuels Bubble Fears - The world's best-performing stock is turning into a cautionary tale for investors chasing outsized returns from the AI boom. From a report: Little-known until recently even within its home market of India, RRP Semiconductor Ltd. became a social-media obsession as its shares surged more than 55,000% in the 20 months through Dec. 17 -- by far the biggest gain worldwide among companies with a market value above $1 billion. That's despite posting negative revenue in its latest financial results, reporting just two full-time employees in its latest annual report, and boasting only a tenuous link to the semiconductor spending boom after shifting away from real estate in early 2024. A mix of online hype, a tiny free float and India's swelling base of retail investors drove 149 straight limit-up sessions, even as exchange officials and the company itself cautioned investors. The rally is now showing signs of strain -- and regulators are taking a closer look. The Securities and Exchange Board of India has begun examining the surge in RRP's shares for potential wrongdoing, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information. The $1.7 billion stock, recently restricted by its exchange to trading just once a week, has fallen by 6% from its Nov. 7 peak. Read more of this story at Slashdot.