Latest News
Last updated 15 Apr, 05:12 PM
BBC News
Mahmood promises action against 'sham lawyers' abusing asylum system after BBC investigation - An undercover investigation revealed how law firms and advisers are helping migrants pretend to be gay to stay in the UK
Legal advisers help migrants pose as gay to get asylum, BBC finds - The BBC exposes a shadow industry charging migrants thousands of pounds to help them cheat the asylum system.
Starmer says he is 'not going to yield' to pressure from Trump on Iran war - It follows a warning from the US president that America's trade deal with the UK "can always be changed".
Two officers charged after pregnant woman killed in crash with police car - The woman and her unborn child died in a crash with a police car in Kidbrooke, south-east London.
British doubles legend Jamie Murray retires from tennis - Jamie Murray, who became the first British doubles player to rise to world number one, has announced his retirement from tennis.
The Register
Decades-old Linux UI bug fixed by dev younger than the window manager - Kamila Szewczyk prefers old software, as back then people understood something could actually be finished No one can tell software developer Kamila Szewczyk that newer is better: She just fixed a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16, the old-school Linux window manager she favors partly because, she tells us, it is actually finished software.…
Bad teacher bots can leave hidden marks on model students - Study finds LLMs will smuggle biases into others even if they're scrubbed from training data New research warns about the dangers of teaching LLMs on the output of other models, showing that undesirable traits can be transmitted "subliminally" from teacher to student, even when they are scrubbed from training data.…
Automotive data biz Autovista blames ransomware for service disruption - Some customer orgs tell staff to block inbound email from the provider Autovista confirms that it called in outside support to help clean up a ransomware infection currently affecting systems in Europe and Australia.…
Not all networks can handle AI traffic – and experts are sounding alarms - Y'all been focusing on compute and forgot about how the data moves around AI is reshaping the demands on network infrastructure, and many organizations are not prepared – including some of the so-called neocloud providers offering AI services.…
Windows takes a crash dump after one McDonald's order too many - We've all been there Bork!Bork!Bork! Windows is doing what it does best in California, with a Blue Screen of Death on the wall of a fast food restaurant where order progress is supposed to be.…
New Scientist - Home
Largest ever map of universe captures 47 million galaxies and quasars - The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has finished the most detailed survey of the universe to date, and the resulting map will help researchers understand an apparent weakening of dark energy
Neanderthal infants were enormous compared with modern humans - A detailed analysis of the best-preserved Neanderthal infant skeleton ever found suggests that our ancient relatives grew much faster as young children
Quantum computers could usher in a crisis worse than Y2K - The day when a quantum computer manages to break common encryption, or Q-Day, is fast approaching, and the world is not close to being ready
Is a super El Niño imminent, and what could the impacts be? - A planet-warming El Niño climate phase is now developing, and some models predict it could turn out to be the strongest on record
Beef is making a comeback – does it fit into a healthy diet? - The protein craze is in full swing and beef consumption is on the rise, particularly in the US, where health agencies are promoting red meat as part of an optimum diet. So, how much beef should we really be eating, and how does it impact our well-being?
Hacker News
Open Source Isn't Dead. Cal.com Just Learned the Wrong Lesson - Comments
God Sleeps in the Minerals - Comments
Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers (2008) - Comments
Good Sleep, Good Learning (2012) - Comments
How do Wake-On-LAN works - Comments
Slashdot
Struggling Shoe Retailer Allbirds Pivots To AI, Stock Explodes More Than 700% - Allbirds made a surprise announcement this morning: it's pivoting from sustainable shoes to AI compute infrastructure, rebranding as NewBird AI after selling its brand assets and closing its U.S. full-price stores. The move sent shares soaring more than 700%. CNBC reports: The move boosted shares of the miniscule market cap company -- it was valued at about $21 million at Tuesday's close -- by more than 700%. The shares, which were under $3 a day ago, jumped to above $17. [...] The new company, which expects to be called NewBird AI, announced a deal to raise up to $50 million in funding, expected to close in the second quarter of 2026. Allbirds announced a deal with American Exchange Group to sell its intellectual property and other assets for $39 million last month. "The Company will initially seek to acquire high-performance, low-latency AI compute hardware and provide access under long-term lease arrangements, meeting customer demand that spot markets and hyperscalers are unable to reliably service," the company said in the announcement. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Rivian's Illinois Factory Will Run On Recycled EV Batteries - An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Rivian is joining with Redwood Materials to reuse EV batteries for energy storage -- the largest repurposed-battery energy storage system for an automotive manufacturer in the U.S., executives told The Wall Street Journal. Redwood Materials is a battery-recycling firm started by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel. Once completed later this year, Rivian's plant in Normal, Ill., will draw electricity from more than 100 Rivian EV batteries in an area the size of a small parking lot. It will reduce Rivian's dependence on the power grid during peak demand hours. "It saves Rivian money on what it takes to run the plant. It reduces the demand on the grid, which is great," Rivian Chief Executive Officer RJ Scaringe said in an interview. In the Rivian project, the batteries will come from either its test vehicles or from vehicles that have viable batteries but can no longer drive. Those batteries get sent off to Redwood, which integrates them into power storage units. Both companies declined to specify the cost of this project. The setup is expected to initially provide 10 megawatt-hours of energy, equivalent to about 1,000 home-energy battery storage units linked together, Redwood's Straubel said. "These batteries are already built," he said. "We need to integrate them and connect them together, but that can happen quite fast. They don't have to get imported from some other place." [...] Scaringe said that while branching into battery energy storage systems is "not a focus for us as a business right now," Rivian hopes to do more at its sites with Redwood. "There's hopefully a lot more, and there's going to be a lot of batteries we'll have access to," he said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Norway Man Cured of HIV With Brother's Stem Cells - A 63-year-old man in Norway appears to be cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant from his brother, who turned out to have a rare mutation that makes immune cells resistant to HIV. "Four years after the transplant, and two years after the man stopped antiretroviral therapy, he still appears to be free of the infection," reports Gizmodo. From the report: According to the report, the man was first diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome, a type of cancer that weakens blood cell production from bone marrow, in 2018. Though he seemed to initially respond to treatment, the cancer returned after two years, and doctors decided to perform a stem cell transplant. Because the man also had HIV (diagnosed in 2006), the doctors were hoping to treat both conditions at once, though they knew their chances were low. Most of these cases have involved the use of stem cells taken from people with two copies of a particular mutation in their CCR5 gene, which regulates the CC5R receptor on white blood cells. This mutation, named CCR5-delta 32, makes immune cells naturally resistant to infection from strains of HIV-1 (the most common type of the virus). However, only about 1% of the population carries two copies of the mutation. After initial screening failed to find someone who both possessed the mutation and had compatible bone marrow, the doctors decided to move ahead with the man's brother, who was already known to have compatible bone marrow. But to everyone's surprise, testing on the day of the transplant showed that the brother also had the mutation. Though the man did experience some complications from the procedure, his body successfully started to produce new blood cells with the mutation. The doctors decided to take him off antiretroviral medication two years after the transplant. And in the two years since then, regular follow-up tests have failed to show any signs of the virus in his system. [...] According to AFP, there have only been roughly 10 cases worldwide involving an HIV cure through stem cell transplantation. This is the first to involve a family donor. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Sony Boss Urges Theaters To Stop 30 Minutes of Trailers and Ads Before Movies - Sony Pictures chief Tom Rothman urged theater owners to cut down the roughly 30 minutes of trailers and ads before movies. "Get off the ad crack," Rothman told the audience at CinemaCon this week. "Get rid of the endless advertising and substantially shorten the long pre-shows." Variety reports: He noted that frequent moviegoers now show up a half hour late to avoid all the spots (something that reserved seating has made easier than ever before). Rothman said that means many people "don't even see the trailers," which results in "enticements gone to waste." Rothman predicted that the 2026 box office, which has already benefitted from hits like "Super Mario Galaxy Movie" and "Project Hail Mary," will rebound in a big way. But he acknowledged that attendance still trails pre-pandemic levels. Rothman has been a vociferous defender of the big screen, pushing studios to embrace longer windows so that movies will stay in cinemas longer. That was a theme that Rothman returned to at CinemaCon, pressing exhibitors to hold strong and agree not to show movies that quickly appear on streaming services or on-demand platforms. "Enforce longer windows," Rothman said. "Yes, even if that means you cannot play every film." In addition to stumping for exhibition, Rothman has practically begged Hollywood to invest in new stories along with all the franchise fare. In a recent New York Times op-ed, for instance, Rothman, the longest-serving studio chief, wrote, "For all the success of films driven by existing intellectual property, originality is essential to movies. Neither movie theaters nor the art form itself can survive without at least some originality. After all, you can't make a sequel to nothing." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amazon Buys Globalstar For $10.8 Billion, Moving To Expand Its Satellite Internet Service - Amazon is buying satellite communications company Globalstar for $10.8 billion to expand its Leo satellite-internet network and compete more directly with SpaceX's Starlink. The deal also includes a partnership with Apple to support satellite connectivity for iPhones and Apple Watches, with Amazon planning voice, data, and messaging services starting in 2028. The New York Times reports: Leo was Amazon's move to enter the market for beaming high-speed internet to the ground from orbit. That is an arena dominated by Elon Musk's SpaceX, which operates the Starlink satellite-internet service. Starlink, which has thousands of satellites in orbit, already serves several million customers around the world. This month, SpaceX filed to go public in what is shaping up to be one of the largest-ever initial public offerings. Mr. Musk has valued SpaceX -- which has landed contracts with federal agencies such as NASA and the Department of Defense -- at more than $1 trillion. Other companies are racing to catch up to what Mr. Musk has built for space. Globalstar, founded in 1991, is a Louisiana-based global telecommunications company. It operates networks of low-Earth orbiting satellites to provide internet connectivity to customers. Paul Jacobs, Globalstar's chief executive, said in a statement that together, the two companies "will advance innovations in digital connectivity." Read more of this story at Slashdot.