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Last updated 31 Jan, 11:49 AM

BBC News

Photos released in Epstein files appear to show Andrew on all fours over female - The photos put further pressure on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after years of scrutiny over his relationship with Epstein. He has always denied any wrongdoing.

Takeaways from the millions of newly released Epstein files - Three million new documents include hundreds of mentions of Trump and emails between Epstein and a person called "The Duke".

I mocked the Saudi leader on YouTube - then my phone was hacked and I was beaten up in London - Satirist Ghanem al-Masarir has been awarded £3m in damages, but it's unclear if Saudi Arabia will pay.

Pedro Pascal and Meryl Streep lead tributes to Catherine O'Hara - The Canadian comedic actress died in Los Angeles on Friday at the age of 71 following a brief illness.

'A vaccine against murder'? Israel split over return of death penalty - In a highly controversial move, some Israeli MPs are trying to introduce the death penalty for Palestinian attackers.

The Register

Broadcom 'bulldozes' VMware cloud partners as March deadline looms - Many European CSPs are being cut loose, sources say, forcing customer transitions exclusive Broadcom this week brought the hammer down on the Advantage Partner Program for VMware Cloud Service Providers (VCSPs) – and the clock is now ticking for any third parties working to close sales.…

January blues return as Ivanti coughs up exploited EPMM zero-days - Consider yourselves compromised, experts warn Ivanti has patched two critical zero-day vulnerabilities in its Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) product that are already being exploited, continuing a grim run of January security incidents for enterprise IT vendors.…

'Hey! I’m chatting here!’ Fugazi answers doom NYC’s AI bot - Lying means dying Lying means dying, at least for one falsehood-peddling government AI. A Microsoft-powered chatbot that New York City rolled out to help business owners answer frequently asked questions – but was often wrong – has been silenced as the city grapples with a $12 billion budget shortfall.…

Ex-Googler nailed for stealing AI secrets for Chinese startups - Network access from China and side hustle as AI upstart CEO aroused suspicion A former Google software engineer has been convicted of stealing AI hardware secrets from the company for the benefit of two China-based firms, one of which he founded. The second startup intended to use these secrets to market its technology to PRC-controlled organizations.…

Thousands more Oregon residents learn their health data was stolen in TriZetto breach - Parent company Cognizant hit with multiple lawsuits Thousands more Oregonians will soon receive data breach letters in the continued fallout from the TriZetto data breach, in which someone hacked the insurance verification provider and gained access to its healthcare provider customers across multiple US states.…

New Scientist - Home

A remarkable book on quantum mechanics reveals a really big idea - Where is physics headed? No one knows for sure, but Beyond the Quantum by Antony Valentini is a striking new book that reminds us what a big idea really looks like, finds Jon Cartwright

The daring idea that time is an illusion and how we could prove it - The way time ticks forward in our universe has long stumped physicists. Now, a new set of tools from entangled atoms to black holes promises to reveal time’s true nature

Can we genetically improve humans using George Church’s famous list? - Columnist Michael Le Page delves into a catalogue of hundreds of potentially beneficial gene mutations and variants that is popular with transhumanists

Why people can have Alzheimer's-related brain damage but no symptoms - Some people don’t develop dementia despite showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease in their brain, and we're starting to understand why

Elon Musk is making a big bet on his future vision – will it work? - Reports suggest that Elon Musk is eyeing up a merger involving SpaceX, Tesla and xAI, but what does he hope to achieve by consolidating his business empire?

Hacker News

Automatic Programming - Comments

Antirender: remove the glossy shine on architectural renderings - Comments

Sumerian Star Map Recorded the Impact of an Asteroid (2024) - Comments

Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native - Comments

Show HN: I trained a 9M speech model to fix my Mandarin tones - Comments

Slashdot

Author of Systemd Quits Microsoft To Prove Linux Can Be Trusted - Lennart Poettering has left Microsoft to co-found Amutable, a new Berlin-based company aiming to bring cryptographically verifiable integrity and deterministic trust guarantees to Linux systems. He said in a post on Mastodon that his "role in upstream maintenance for the Linux kernel will continue as it always has." Poettering will also continue to remain deeply involved in the systemd ecosystem. The Register reports: Linux celeb Lennart Poettering has left Microsoft and co-founded a new company, Amutable, with Chris Kuhl and Christian Brauner. Poettering is best known for systemd. After a lengthy stint at Red Hat, he joined Microsoft in 2022. Kuhl was a Microsoft employee until last year, and Brauner, who also joined Microsoft in 2022, left this month. [...] It is unclear why Poettering decided to leave Microsoft. We asked the company to comment but have not received a response. Other than the announcement of systemd 259 in December, Poettering's blog has been silent on the matter, aside from the announcement of Amutable this week. In its first post, the Amutable team wrote: "Over the coming months, we'll be pouring foundations for verification and building robust capabilities on top." It will be interesting to see what form this takes. In addition to Poettering, the lead developer of systemd, Amutable's team includes contributors and maintainers for projects such as Linux, Kubernetes, and containerd. Its members are also very familiar with the likes of Debian, Fedora, SUSE, and Ubuntu. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

'Reverse Solar Panel' Generates Electricity at Night - Researchers at the University of New South Wales are developing a "reverse solar panel" that generates small amounts of electricity at night by harvesting infrared heat radiated from Earth. "In the past, scientists have demonstrated that a 'thermoradiative diode' can convert infrared radiation directly into electricity; when used to convert heat from Earth, they exploit the temperature difference between Earth and the night sky, generating a current directly from heat," notes ExtremeTech. "This approach completely eliminates the need for heat to generate steam, though the resulting capacity is fairly low." From the report: The researchers estimate they could generate only about a watt per square meter, which isn't much. One reason for the low output is that the Earth's atmosphere lessens the heat differential that drives the generative process; in space, though, that's not an issue. Now, researchers believe that the ability to generate power in the moments between direct sunlight could help power satellites. That could be especially true in deep space, where periods without sunlight can be longer, and sunlight is often weaker; in these situations, losing electricity to heat loss is unacceptable. Many satellites already use heat to generate electricity, though with a much more rarified "thermoelectric generator" that uses rare, expensive materials like plutonium to create heat. With thermoradiative diodes, the heat source can be the Sun-warmed body of the satellite itself. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UK's First Rapid-Charging Battery Train Ready For Boarding - An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The UK's first superfast-charging train running only on battery power will come into passenger service this weekend -- operating a five-mile return route in west London. Great Western Railway (GWR) will send the converted London Underground train out from 5.30am to cover the full Saturday timetable on the West Ealing to Greenford branch line, four stops and 12 minutes each way, and now carrying up to 273 passengers, should its celebrity stoke up the demand. The battery will recharge in just three and a half minutes back at West Ealing station between trips, using a 2,000kW charger connected to a few meters of rail that only becomes live when the train stops directly overhead. There are hopes within government and industry that this technology could one day replace diesel trains on routes that have proved difficult or expensive to electrify with overhead wires, as the decarbonization of rail continues. The train has proved itself capable of going more than 200 miles on a single charge -- last year setting a world record for the farthest travelled by a battery-electric train, smashing a German record set in 2021. The GWR train and the fast-charge technology has been trialled on the 2.5-mile line since early 2024, but has not yet carried paying passengers. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple Reports Best-Ever Quarter For iPhone Sales - Apple posted its biggest quarter ever, with iPhone revenue hitting a record ~$85.3 billion and Services climbing 14% to ~$30 billion. Total revenue reached nearly $143.76 billion. "The demand for iPhone was simply staggering," CEO Tim Cook said on a conference call discussing the results. "This is the strongest iPhone lineup we've ever had and by far the most popular." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Belkin's Wemo Smart Devices Will Go Offline On Saturday - Belkin is shutting down cloud support for most Wemo smart home devices on January 31, leaving only Thread-based models and devices already set up in Apple HomeKit functional. Everything else will lose remote access, voice assistant integrations, and future app updates. The Verge reports: The shut down was first announced in July and impacts most Wemo devices, ranging from smart plugs to a coffee maker, with the exception of a handful of Thread-based devices: the 3-way smart light switch (WLS0503), stage smart scene controller (WSC010), smart plug with Thread (WSP100), and smart video doorbell camera (WDC010). Wemo devices configured through Apple's HomeKit will also continue to work, but you have to set them up in HomeKit before January 31st if you want to use that option. Other affected devices will only work manually after Saturday. If your Wemo device is still under warranty, you may be able to get a partial refund for it after cloud services shut down. Read more of this story at Slashdot.