Latest News
Last updated 26 Dec, 09:07 AM
BBC News
US launches deadly strikes against Islamic State in Nigeria, says Trump - The US president accuses the group of killing Christians, as Nigeria’s foreign minister tells the BBC the strikes were a "joint operation" and "nothing to do" with religion.
I'm watching brain surgery to see if Alzheimer's can ever be cured - BBC health and science correspondent James Gallagher finds out if it is scientifically possible to ever cure Alzheimer's.
Two men still missing after Christmas swim as coastguard calls off search - After "extensive" searches, the coastguard says its part of the search has been stood down.
Australia lead England by 46 after 20 wickets fall on chaotic opening day of Fourth Test - England's Ashes tour teeters on another crisis as they are bowled out for 110 on an almost farcical first day of the fourth Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Why Britain has a deer problem - leaving damage that costs millions - Deer numbers have rocketed over the last 40 years and particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Register
IT team forced to camp in the office for days after Y2K bug found in boss's side project - The lack of trust that leads to outsourcing can be expensive On Call Y2K December 26th is a holiday across much of the Reg-reading world, but it's also a Friday – the day on which we present a fresh instalment of On Call, the reader-contributed column that recounts your tales of tech support encounters and exasperation.…
Humanoid robots are still novelty acts, but investment is surging to make them real tomorrow - Investment and interest have outpaced technology and society By the time the humanoid robots arrived at the Humanoids Summit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, on December 11, the registration line had already extended downstairs to the lobby.…
AMD Strix Halo vs Nvidia DGX Spark: Which AI workstation comes out on top? - Two tiny boxes, 128 GB apiece – but very different strengths Hands On Most GenAI models are trained and run in massive datacenter clusters, but the ability to build, test, and prototype AI systems locally is no less relevant today.…
You don't need Linux to run free and open source software - Alternative apps to empower older versions of macOS or Windows Part 2 There's a wealth of highly usable free software for the big proprietary desktop OSes. You can escape paying subscriptions and switch to free software without changing your OS.…
Salesforce’s ChatGPT integration is really about stopping customers from leaking their own data - Execs say DIY OpenAI connections risked pushing CRM data past the ‘trust boundary’ Salesforce users running Agentforce with ChatGPT Enterprise or Edu can now update CRM data directly from the bot, a move aimed at curbing home-built integrations that risk spilling data outside the company's controls.…
New Scientist - Home
A ghostly glow was seen emanating from living things in 2025 - The detection of mercurial particles of light emanating from mice led to a flurry of interest in biophotons, a mysterious phenomenon that could have applications in agriculture
6 incredible new dinosaurs we discovered in 2025 - Palaeontologists reported some remarkable dinosaur fossils this year, including a Velociraptor relative, a dome-headed pachycephalosaur and one of the most heavily armoured creatures that ever lived
How not to misread science fiction - Focusing on the futuristic tech that appears in sci-fi without paying attention to the actual point of the story is a big mistake, says Annalee Newitz
The world’s first fully 3D-printed microscope blew up in 2025 - A microscope that cost less than £50 and took under 3 hours to build using a common 3D printer could be transformative for students and researchers with limited funding
Why it is important to make space for solitude over the festive season - The festive season is a period of social connection for many of us, but alone time can be equally enriching, says Thuy-vy Nguyen, principal investigator of the Solitude Lab
Hacker News
Maybe the default settings are too high - Comments
Building an AI agent inside a 7-year-old Rails monolith - Comments
MiniMax M2.1: Built for Real-World Complex Tasks, Multi-Language Programming - Comments
TurboDiffusion: 100–200× Acceleration for Video Diffusion Models - Comments
Show HN: GeneGuessr – a daily biology web puzzle - Comments
Slashdot
Cursor CEO Warns Vibe Coding Builds 'Shaky Foundations' That Eventually Crumble - Michael Truell, the 25-year-old CEO and cofounder of Cursor, is drawing a sharp distinction between careful AI-assisted development and the more hands-off approach commonly known as "vibe coding." Speaking at a conference, Truell described vibe coding as a method where users "close your eyes and you don't look at the code at all and you just ask the AI to go build the thing for you." He compared it to constructing a house by putting up four walls and a roof without understanding the underlying wiring or floorboards. The approach might work for quickly mocking up a game or website, but more advanced projects face real risks. "If you close your eyes and you don't look at the code and you have AIs build things with shaky foundations as you add another floor, and another floor, and another floor, and another floor, things start to kind of crumble," Truell said. Truell and three fellow MIT graduates created Cursor in 2022. The tool embeds AI directly into the integrated development environment and uses the context of existing code to predict the next line, generate functions, and debug errors. The difference, as Truell frames it, is that programmers stay engaged with what's happening under the hood rather than flying blind. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple's App Course Runs $20,000 a Student. Is It Really Worth It? - Apple's Developer Academy in Detroit has spent roughly $30 million over four years training hundreds of people to build iPhone apps, but not everyone lands coding jobs right away, according to a WIRED story published this week. The program launched in 2021 as part of Apple's $200 million response to the Black Lives Matter protests and costs an estimated $20,000 per student -- nearly twice what state and local governments budget for community colleges. About 600 students have completed the 10-month course at Michigan State University. Academy officials say 71% of graduates from the past two years found full-time jobs across various industries. The program provides iPhones, MacBooks and stipends ranging from $800 to $1,500 per month, though one former student said many participants relied on food stamps. Apple contributed $11.6 million to the academy. Michigan taxpayers and the university's regular students covered about $8.6 million -- nearly 30% of total funding. Two graduates said their lack of proficiency in Android hurt their job prospects. Apple's own US tech workforce went from 6% Black before the academy opened to about 3% this year. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Gmail Users May Soon Be Able To Change Their Email Address and Keep the Old One - Google appears to be testing a feature that would let users change their @gmail.com address for the first time, according to an official support document. The support page exists only in Hindi, suggesting an India-first rollout, and Google notes that users will "gradually begin to see this option." The feature would let users switch to a new @gmail address while retaining full access to their old one, effectively giving a single account two working email addresses. Emails sent to either address would arrive in the same inbox, and existing data in Drive and Photos would remain unaffected. Users who switch cannot register another new address for 12 months. Google has not officially announced the feature. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple Settles Brazilian Antitrust Case, Must Allow Third-Party App Stores and External Payment Links - Apple has agreed to a settlement with Brazil's antitrust regulator that will require the company to allow third-party app stores on iPhones and permit developers to direct users to external payment options, marking another country where Apple's tightly controlled App Store model is being pried open by government action. Brazil's Administrative Council of Economic Defense approved the settlement this week, resolving an investigation that began in 2022 into whether Apple's restrictions on app distribution and payments limited competition. Under the new rules, developers can offer third-party payment methods within their apps alongside Apple's own system. The fee structure varies: purchases through Apple's system remain subject to a 10% or 25% commission plus a 5% transaction fee. Apps that include a clickable link to external payment will face a 15% fee, while static text directing users elsewhere incurs no charge. Third-party app stores will pay a 5% Core Technology Commission. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Fake MAS Windows Activation Domain Used To Spread PowerShell Malware - An anonymous reader shares a report: A typosquatted domain impersonating the Microsoft Activation Scripts (MAS) tool was used to distribute malicious PowerShell scripts that infect Windows systems with the 'Cosmali Loader'. BleepingComputer has found that multiple MAS users began reporting on Reddit yesterday that they received pop-up warnings on their systems about a Cosmali Loader infection. Based on the reports, attackers have set up a look-alike domain, "get[dot]activate[dot]win," which closely resembles the legitimate one listed in the official MAS activation instructions, "get[dot]activated[dot]win." Given that the difference between the two is a single character ("d"), the attackers bet on users mistyping the domain. Read more of this story at Slashdot.