Latest News

Last updated 16 Jan, 03:30 AM

BBC News

Jenrick defects to Reform UK after being sacked by Tories - The former minister says the Conservatives "broke Britain", as Nigel Farage welcomes him to his party.

'We'd been on high alert' - How Jenrick's dramatic defection unfolded - The secret discussions, bombshell leak and sacking which led to Robert Jenrick defecting to the Reform party.

Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize winner presents her medal to Trump - Trump thanked Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, calling it "a wonderful gesture of mutual respect".

Iran authorities demanding large sums for return of protesters' bodies, BBC told - Multiple sources have told BBC Persian that security forces will not release bodies unless relatives hand over money.

The landscape beneath Antarctica's icy surface revealed in unprecedented detail - Scientists believe the map could shed light on how Antarctica's vast ice sheet will respond to climate change.

The Register

OpenAI invests in brain-interface biz co-founded by CEO Sam Altman - Merge Labs envisions controlling devices using your brain - without implanting hardware in your body OpenAI, having invested heavily in artificial intelligence, is placing a side bet on organic intelligence.…

Cisco finally fixes max-severity bug under active attack for weeks - This is a threat to security - and to the weekend for some unlucky netadmins Cisco finally delivered a fix for a maximum-severity bug in AsyncOS that has been under attack for at least a month.…

Open ISA champ SiFive leaps aboard Nvidia's proprietary interconnect bandwagon - You might call it a RISC-V/NVLink Fusion ... or a bad day for UALink RISC-V champion SiFive has joined a growing number of chip companies by throwing its weight behind Nvidia's proprietary NVLink Fusion interconnect tech, a move that casts doubt on the viability of rival interconnect tech UALink.…

Over half of AI projects are shelved due to complex infrastructure - The answer seems to be educating the enterprise workforce, and creating smarter use cases More than half of AI projects have been delayed or canceled within the last two years citing complexities with AI infrastructure, according to a research report commissioned by DDN, a data optimization company in partnership with Google Cloud and Cognizant.…

Chinese spies used Maduro's capture as a lure to phish US govt agencies - What's next for Venezuela? Click on the file and see What policy wonk wouldn't want to click on an attachment promising to unveil US plans for Venezuela? Chinese cyberspies used just such a lure to target US government agencies and policy-related organizations in a phishing campaign that began just days after an American military operation captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.…

New Scientist - Home

Lithium-ion batteries could last longer with chemical tweak - It's difficult to form a protective coating that prolongs battery life at the battery's cathode, but there may be a low-cost chemical solution

Body fat supports your health in surprisingly complex ways - Evidence is mounting that our body fat supports everything from our bone health to our mood, and now, research suggests it also regulates blood pressure and immunity

Distant 'little red dot' galaxies may contain baby black holes - Since launching in 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope has found hundreds of distant and apparently bright galaxies dubbed "little red dots", and now it seems they may each carry a baby black hole

Fossil may solve mystery of what one of the weirdest-ever animals ate - Hallucigenia was such an odd animal that palaeontologists reconstructed it upside-down when they first analysed its fossils - and now we may know what it ate

6 ways to help your children have a healthy relationship with food - Getting kids to eat well can be a minefield and a source of tension. Nancy Bostock, a consultant paediatrician, says these are the six things she recommends when dealing with fussy eaters and the way we talk about food with kids.

Hacker News

OpenBSD-current now runs as guest under Apple Hypervisor - Comments

Apple is fighting for TSMC capacity as Nvidia takes center stage - Comments

Pocket TTS: A high quality TTS that gives your CPU a voice - Comments

Inside The Internet Archive's Infrastructure - Comments

Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark - Comments

Slashdot

Amazon Is Making a Fallout Shelter Competition Reality TV Show - Amazon is expanding the Fallout universe with Fallout Shelter, a ten-episode reality competition show where contestants face survival-style challenges and moral dilemmas for a cash prize. Engadget reports: Prime Video has greenlit a unscripted reality show titled Fallout Shelter. It will be a ten-episode run with Studio Lambert, the team behind reality projects including Squid Game: The Challenge and The Traitors, as its primary producer. Bethesda Game Studios' head honcho Todd Howard is attached as an executive producer. Amazon's description of Fallout Shelter is: "Across a series of escalating challenges, strategic dilemmas and moral crossroads, contestants must prove their ingenuity, teamwork and resilience as they compete for safety, power and ultimately a huge cash prize." [...] The name echos the free-to-play mobile game Bethesda released in 2015. Fallout Shelter lets people build and improve their out Vault-Tec residence, managing the resources for a growing cadre of underground survivors. It seems pretty likely that there will be some type of tie-in between the game and the show, but any details about that might pop up closer to when the program is ready to air. It's currently casting, and no release timeline has been shared. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New York Introduces Legislation To Crack Down On 3D Printers That Make Ghost Guns - New York Governor Kathy Hochul is proposing first-of-its-kind legislation that would require 3D printers sold in the state to include built-in software designed to block the printing of gun parts used to make "ghost guns." The plan would also add criminal penalties for making 3D-printed firearms and hold printer owners or manufacturers liable if safety controls aren't in place. 3D Printing Industry reports: "From the iron pipeline to the plastic pipeline, these proposals will keep illegal ghost guns off of New York streets, and enhance measures to track and block the production of dangerous and illegal firearms in our state," Hochul said. In addition to mandating printer-level safeguards and restricting access to CAD files, the proposed legislation would require law enforcement agencies to report any recovered 3D printed firearms to a statewide database. The measure also includes a provision requiring commercial gun manufacturers to redesign pistols so they cannot be easily converted for automatic fire. "These illegal firearms are being manufactured in homes and used in crimes right now, which is why I have been working with my colleagues in Albany and the private sector over the past several years to stop their proliferation. Passing these measures will reduce crime and strengthen public safety for all New Yorkers," said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Iran's Internet Shutdown Is Now One of the Longest Ever - Iran has imposed one of the longest nationwide internet shutdowns in its history, cutting more than 92 million people off from connectivity for over a week as mass anti-government protests continue. TechCrunch reports: As of this writing, Iranians have not been able to access the internet for more than 170 hours. The previous longest shutdowns in the country lasted around 163 hours in 2019, and 160 hours in 2025, according to Isik Mater, the director of research at NetBlocks, a web monitoring company that tracks internet disruptions. Mater said that the current shutdown in Iran is the third longest on record, after the internet shutdown in Sudan in mid-2021 that lasted around 35 days, followed by the outage in Mauritania in July 2024, which lasted 22 days. "Iran's shutdowns remain among the most comprehensive and tightly enforced nationwide blackouts we've observed, particularly in terms of population affected," Mater told TechCrunch. The exact ranking depends on how each organization measures a shutdown. Zach Rosson, a researcher who studies internet disruptions at the digital rights nonprofit Access Now, told TechCrunch that according to its data, the ongoing shutdown in Iran is on a path to crack the top 10 longest shutdowns in history. Further reading: Iran Shuts Down Musk's Starlink For First Time Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Astronauts Splash Down To Earth After Medical Evacuation From ISS - An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Four astronauts evacuated from the International Space Station (ISS) have landed back on Earth after their stay in space was cut short by a month due to a "serious" medical issue. The crew's captain, Nasa astronaut Mike Fincke, exited the spacecraft first, smiling and wobbling slightly on his feet before lying down on a gurney, following normal procedures. Nasa's Zena Cardman, Japan's Kimiya Yui and cosmonaut Oleg Platonov followed, waving and beaming at cameras. "It's so good to be home!", said Cardman. It is the first time astronauts have been evacuated due to a health issue since the station was put into Earth's orbit in 1998. The team, known as Crew-11, will now receive medical checks before being flown back to land after the splash down off the coast of California. In a news conference after splash-down, Nasa administrator Jared Isaacman said the sick astronaut is "fine right now" and in "good spirits." Judging by past Nasa communications about astronauts' health, it is unlikely that the identity of the crew member or details of the health issue will be released to the public. Control of the ISS has been handed over to Russian cosmonaut Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and two other crew members. The astronauts arrived on the ISS on August 1 expecting to complete a standard six and a half month stay. They were due to come home in mid-February. But last week, a scheduled spacewalk by Fincke and Cardman was called off at the last minute. Hours later, Nasa revealed a crew member had become ill. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ASUS Stops Producing Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB - Reports suggest ASUS has effectively ended production of NVIDIA's RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB GPUs due to a severe memory crunch driven by AI infrastructure demand, even as NVIDIA insists it's still shipping all GeForce SKUs. YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed broke the news in its most recent video where it states ASUS "explicitly" told them the RTX 5070 Ti is "currently facing a supply shortage" and has "placed the model into end of life status." The shift leaves PC gamers facing fewer high-VRAM options just as modern games increasingly demand more than 8GB. Engadget reports: Hardware Unboxed also spoke to retailers in Australia, who told the channel the 5070 Ti is "no longer available to purchase from partners and distributors," adding they expect that to be the case throughout at least the first quarter of the year. The 5060 Ti 16GB "is almost done as well," with ASUS stating it no longer plans to produce that model going forward either. Both GPUs are 16GB models, making them more expensive to produce in the current economic climate. And while there might be some hope of the 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB returning later this year, the channel suggests both are unlikely to make a comeback. NVIDIA will reportedly focus on 8GB models like the RTX 5050, 5060, and 5060 Ti 8GB, with the 12GB 5070 set to stick around for now. The 5080 and 5090 are seemingly safe as well, as more expensive, higher margin models, they offer more space for manufacturers to absorb component price increases. "Demand for GeForce RTX GPUs is strong, and memory supply is constrained. We continue to ship all GeForce SKUs and are working closely with our suppliers to maximize memory availability," a NVIDIA spokesperson told Engadget. The company did not say 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB are going out of production. However, it also didn't confirm they're sticking around either. ASUS did not immediately respond to Engadget's comment request. Read more of this story at Slashdot.