Latest News
Last updated 06 Mar, 01:27 AM
BBC News
PM stands by decision not to join strikes on Iran and sends more jets to Qatar - The PM said the best way forward was a "negotiated settlement with Iran where they give up their nuclear ambitions".
'This is war': BBC speaks to Iranians at border - Iranians fleeing their country have told the BBC what life under bombardment has been like.
Iran's high-risk war strategy seems to centre on endurance and deterrence - Tehran's approach appears to rest on a belief it can absorb strikes longer than its adversaries sustain pain and costs, writes BBC Persian's Amir Azimi.
'We have been preparing': Why the boots on the ground in Iran could be Kurdish - Iranian Kurdish opposition groups in exile in northern Iraq tell the BBC they have plans to cross the border but deny already doing so.
Labour MP 'voluntarily suspends herself' after husband arrested in China spy probe - Joani Reid said she had temporarily stood down from the party after her husband was arrested on suspicion of spying for China.
The Register
China’s rubber-stamp parliament rubber stamps tech independence plan - Call to do better with chips and put AI everywhere is more than rhetoric because China’s scientists are sprinting ahead China’s government has again made reducing reliance on imported digital technology a major goal.…
Chardlet dispute shows how AI will kill software licensing, argues Bruce Perens - Alarm bells are ringing in the open source community, but commercial licensing is also at risk Earlier this week, Dan Blanchard, maintainer of a Python character encoding detection library called chardet, released a new version of the library under a new software license.…
Google says spyware makers and China-linked groups dominated zero-day attacks last year - Of the 90 zero-days GTIG tracked in 2025, 43 hit enterprise tech Zero-day exploitation targeting enterprise tech products reached an all-time high last year, with China-linked cyber-espionage groups remaining the most prolific state-backed users, according to Google.…
Okta CEO ‘paranoid’ as vibe coders stir SaaS-pocalypse fears - It’s ok, Todd. You’re only paranoid if you’re wrong. Okta chairman and CEO Todd McKinnon said he believes it would be difficult for an LLM alone to replicate the quality of SaaS applications his company provides, but that doesn’t stop him from worrying about competition from bots.…
TerraPower gets permission to build, not operate, sodium-cooled nuclear reactor - Don't flip the switch until the NRC says you can, okay? Bill Gates-backed nuclear outfit TerraPower finally has approval to build its Natrium reactor. However, it may still face issues finding a steady fuel supply. And, oh yeah, it hasn't built any reactors like this before.…
New Scientist - Home
Möbius strip-like molecule has an entirely new and bizarre shape - A ring of 13 carbon atoms and two chlorine atoms has a remarkable molecular structure that means you would have to go around the loop four times to return to your starting position
How worried should you be about microplastics? - Microplastics have been found accumulating everywhere from our water to our body tissues, but many of the claims have come under fresh scrutiny. Chelsea Whyte cuts through the research to tell you whether you really need to worry
Just one dose of psilocybin relieves symptoms of OCD for months - Taking psilocybin – the psychedelic component of magic mushrooms – eased symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder among people who did not respond to conventional treatments, and the effects lasted at least several months
Two marsupials believed extinct for 6000 years found alive - Indigenous people in Papua, Indonesia, have helped scientists track down two animals that were thought to have gone extinct thousands of years ago: a relative of Australia’s greater glider and a palm-sized possum with a bizarre, elongated finger
Alzheimer’s may start with inflammation in the skin, lungs or gut - The Alzheimer’s field is being turned on its head as mounting evidence points to the disease beginning outside the brain many years before symptoms start. This may mean we have to totally rethink how we approach preventing and treating the condition
Hacker News
CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements - Comments
Where things stand with the Department of War - Comments
GPT-5.4 - Comments
The next generations of Bubble Tea, Lip Gloss, and Bubbles are available now - Comments
A standard protocol to handle and discard low-effort, AI-Generated pull requests - Comments
Slashdot
Pentagon Formally Designates Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk - The Pentagon has formally designated Anthropic as a "supply chain risk," ordering federal agencies and defense contractors to stop using its AI tools after the company sought limits on the military's use of its models. In a written statement, the department said it has "officially informed Anthropic leadership the company and its products are deemed a supply chain risk, effective immediately." Politico reports: The designation, historically reserved for foreign firms with ties to U.S. adversaries, will likely require companies that do business with the U.S. military -- or even the federal government in general -- to cut ties with Anthropic. "From the very beginning, this has been about one fundamental principle: the military being able to use technology for all lawful purposes," the Pentagon said in the statement. "The military will not allow a vendor to insert itself into the chain of command by restricting the lawful use of a critical capability and put our warfighters at risk." A spokesperson for Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the company said last week it would fight a supply-chain risk label in court. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Mac Studio 512GB RAM Option Disappears Amid Global DRAM Shortage - Apple has removed the 512GB RAM configuration for the Mac Studio, leaving 256GB as the new maximum. The remaining 256GB upgrade has also increased in price and now faces longer shipping delays as demand grows "due to consumers seeking machines suitable for running local AI agents," reports MacRumors. From the report: The Mac Studio starts with 36GB RAM, but there were upgrades ranging from 48GB to 512GB, with the higher tier upgrades limited to the M3 Ultra chip. Now there are options ranging from 48GB to 256GB, with wait times into May for the 256GB upgrade. Apple has also raised the price for the 256GB RAM upgrade option. It used to cost $1,600 to go from 96GB to 256GB on the high-end M3 Ultra machine, but now it costs $2,000. 512GB was $4,000 when it was available. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
United Airlines Can Now Boot Passengers Who Refuse To Use Headphones - United Airlines has updated its contract of carriage to require passengers to use headphones when playing audio or video on personal devices during flights. Travelers who refuse could be removed from the plane or even permanently banned from flying with the airline, reports CBS News. United notes that it will offer customers who forget theirs a free pair of wired earbuds. "Don't worry if you forget your headphones for your flight," the airline states on its website. "If they're available, you can request free earbuds." You'd better hope your device still has a headphone jack... Further reading: Flying Was Already the Worst. Then America Stopped Using Headphones. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Trump's TikTok Deal Benefited Firms That 'Personally Enriched' Him, Lawsuit Says - An anti-corruption group has filed a lawsuit (PDF) against Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi over the deal that transferred TikTok's U.S. operations to a group of investors tied to the administration. The suit claims the arrangement violates a 2024 law requiring ByteDance to divest and alleges the deal financially benefited Trump allies while leaving the platform's algorithm under Chinese ownership. NBC News reports: The suit, filed by the Public Integrity Project, a law firm that seeks to raise the "reputational cost of corruption in America," argues the deal violates a law intended to prevent the spread of Chinese government propaganda and has enriched Trump's allies. That law, signed by then-President Joe Biden in 2024, said that TikTok couldn't be distributed in the United States unless the Chinese company ByteDance found an American-based corporate home by the day before Donald Trump returned to office. The law was upheld by the Supreme Court. "The law was clear, but it was never enforced," says the lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. "Shortly after the deadline to divest passed, President Trump issued an executive order purportedly granting an extension for TikTok to find a domestic owner and directed his Attorney General not to enforce the law." The plaintiffs in the suit are two software engineers from California: One is a shareholder in Alphabet Inc., YouTube's parent company; the other is a shareholder in Meta Platforms, Inc., which is Instagram's parent company. Both say they suffered financially due to the non-enforcement of the law. "The original motivation for this law was to prevent the Chinese government from pushing propaganda onto American audiences," said Brendan Ballou, CEO of the Public Integrity Project and a former Justice Department prosecutor. "The deal that the president approved is the absolute worst of all possible worlds, because right now ByteDance continues to own the algorithm, which means that it can censor the content that it doesn't like, but at the same time Oracle controls the data and it can censor the information that it doesn't like. Really it's a situation that's going to be terrible for users, and terrible for free speech on the platform." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
AMD Will Bring Its 'Ryzen AI' Processors To Standard Desktop PCs For First Time - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AMD has been selling "Ryzen AI"-branded laptop processors for around a year and a half at this point. In addition to including modern CPU and GPU architectures, these are attempting to capitalize on the generative AI craze by offering chips with neural processing units (NPUs) suitable for running language and image-generation models locally, rather than on some company's server. But so far, AMD's desktop chips have lacked both these higher-performance NPUs and the Ryzen AI label. That changes today, at least a little: AMD is announcing its first three Ryzen AI chips for desktops using its AM5 CPU socket. These Ryzen AI 400-series CPUs are direct replacements for the Ryzen 8000G processors, rather than the Ryzen 9000-series, and they combine Zen 5-based CPU cores, RDNA 3.5 GPU cores, and an NPU capable of 50 trillion operations per second (TOPS). This makes them AMD's first desktop chips to qualify for Microsoft's Copilot+ PC label, which enables a handful of unique Windows 11 features like Recall and Click to Do. The six chips AMD is announcing today -- the 65 W Ryzen AI 7 Pro 450G, Ryzen AI 5 Pro 440G, and Ryzen AI 5 Pro 435G, along with low-power 35 W "GE" variants -- all bear AMD's "Ryzen Pro" branding as well, which means they support a handful of device management capabilities that are important for business PCs managed by IT departments. At this point, it doesn't seem as though AMD will be offering boxed versions to regular consumers; the Ryzen AI desktop chips will appear mainly in business PCs that don't need a dedicated graphics card but still benefit from more robust graphics than AMD offers in regular Ryzen desktop CPUs. Like past G-series Ryzen chips, these are essentially laptop silicon repackaged for desktop systems. They share most of their specs in common with Ryzen AI 300 laptop processors, despite their Ryzen AI 400-series branding. The two chip generations are extremely similar overall, but the Ryzen AI 400-series laptop CPUs include slightly faster 55 TOPS NPUs. Read more of this story at Slashdot.