Latest News

Last updated 03 Feb, 02:52 PM

BBC News

Sarah Ferguson's charity to close days after new Epstein revelations - Sarah's Trust announced it was shutting "for the foreseeable future" after "some months" of discussion.

'I was thinking about mum': Boy, 13, swims for hours to save family swept out to sea - Austin Applebee recounts his 'superhuman' swim which saved the lives of his mother and siblings in Australia.

X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok - Elon Musk's X and Grok platforms are facing increased scrutiny from authorities on both sides of the channel.

Son of Norway's crown princess hears details of rape charges in tense trial for royal family - Marius Borg Høiby is accused of 38 charges including four counts of rape in one of the biggest cases in Norway for years.

UK launches plan to tackle 'forever chemicals' amid growing concerns - Increasing testing for PFAS is part of the UK's first ever national plan for tackling the substances.

The Register

HP CEO prints final page after six years, moves to PayPal - Multimillion-dollar tenure could have bought a couple of crates of toner Longtime HP CEO Enrique Lores is decamping for a top job at PayPal, handing the reins to an interim chief while the business hunts for a permanent successor.…

X marks the raid: French cops swoop on Musk's Paris ops - Algorithmic bias probe continues, CEO and former boss summoned to defend the platform's corner French police raided Elon Musk's X offices in Paris this morning as part of a criminal investigation into alleged algorithmic manipulation by foreign powers.…

Microsoft finally sends TLS 1.0 and 1.1 to the cloud retirement home - Azure Storage now requires version 1.2 or newer for encrypted connections Today is the day Azure Storage stops supporting versions 1.0 and 1.1 of Transport Layer Security (TLS). TLS 1.2 is the new minimum.…

Polish cops bail 20-year-old bedroom botnet operator - DDoSer of 'strategically important' websites admitted to most charges Polish authorities have cuffed a 20-year-old man on suspicion of carrying out DDoS attacks.…

UK names Barnsley as first Tech Town to see whether AI can fix... well, anything - South Yorkshire becomes ground zero for nationwide experiment with £500K seed funding AI-pocalypse Barnsley, a town in South Yorkshire, England, best known for coal mining and glassmaking, is being thrust into the limelight as the country's first "Tech Town" – shoehorning AI into everything from local businesses to public services.…

New Scientist - Home

Neanderthals and early humans may have interbred over a vast area - We are getting a clearer sense of where and how often Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred, and it turns out the behaviour was much more common than we first thought

How to live a meaningful life, according to science - The meaning of life has puzzled philosophers for millennia, but new research suggests it could be as simple as lending a helping hand

Ants attack their nest-mates because pollution changes their smell - Ants rely on scent to recognise their comrades, and when they are exposed to common air pollutants, other members of their colony react as if they are enemies

Melatonin gummies as sleep aids for children: What are the risks? - To eliminate bedtime struggles, a growing number of parents have turned to melatonin gummies, but these hormone supplements are largely unregulated. Columnist Alice Klein digs into the evidence on the risks of regularly using melatonin as a sleep aid for children

A huge cloud of dark matter may be lurking near our solar system - For the first time, researchers have found what seems to be a cloud of dark matter about 60 million times the mass of the sun in our galactic neighbourhood

Hacker News

Agent Skills - Comments

What's up with all those equals signs anyway? - Comments

Decentralizing my smartphone with single purpose devices - Comments

Floppinux – An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy, 2025 Edition - Comments

Ask HN: Is there anyone here who still uses slide rules? - Comments

Slashdot

Fintech CEO and Forbes 30 Under 30 Alum Charged for Alleged Fraud - An anonymous reader shares a report: By now, the Forbes 30 Under 30 list has become more than a little notorious for the amount of entrants who go on to be charged with fraud.[...] Gokce Guven, a 26-year-old Turkish national and the founder and CEO of fintech startup Kalder, was charged last week with alleged securities fraud, wire fraud, visa fraud, and aggravated identity theft. The New York-based fintech startup -- which uses the "Turn Your Rewards into [a] Revenue Engine" tagline -- says it can help companies create and monetize individual rewards programs. The company was founded in 2022, and offers participating firms the opportunity to earn ongoing revenue streams via partner affiliate sales, Axios previously reported. Guven was featured in last year's Forbes 30 Under 30 list. The magazine notes in the writeup that Guven's clients included major chocolatier Godiva and the International Air Transport Association, the trade organization that represents a majority of the world's airlines. Kalder also claims to have enjoyed the backing of a number of prominent VC firms. The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that, during Kalder's seed round in April of 2024, Guven managed to raise $7 million from more than a dozen investors after presenting a pitch deck that was rife with false information. According to the government, Kalder's pitch deck claimed that there were 26 brands "using Kalder" and another 53 brands in "live freemium." However, officials say that, in reality, Kalder had, in many cases, only been offering heavily discounted pilot programs to many of those companies. Other brands "had no agreement with Kalder whatsoever -- not even for free services," officials said in a press release announcing the indictment. The pitch deck also "falsely reported that Kalder's recurring revenue had steadily grown month over month since February 2023 and that by March 2024, Kalder had reached $1.2 million in annual recurring revenue." The government also accuses Guven of having kept two separate sets of financial books. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Switch is Now Nintendo's Best-Selling Console of All Time - The original Switch is officially Nintendo's best-selling console of all time after surpassing the DS handheld in lifetime sales. From a report: In its latest earnings release, Nintendo reports that the Nintendo Switch has, as of December 31, 2025, sold 155.37 million units since its launch in 2017, compared to 154.02 million units for the 2004 Nintendo DS. In November, Nintendo reported that the Switch and DS were neck and neck. We expected the holiday sales period would see the Switch surpass the DS, even with Nintendo announcing that primary development would focus on the Switch 2. Nintendo previously said that it would continue to sell the original Switch "while taking consumer demand and the business environment into consideration." Nintendo has to keep selling the Switch if it wants to dethrone Sony's PlayStation 2 as the best-selling video game console of all time. The PlayStation 2, discontinued in January 2013, sold more than 160 million units over its 13-year lifespan. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hidden Car Door Handles Are Officially Being Banned In China - sinij writes: Automakers have increasingly implemented door handles that retract into the bodywork for aerodynamic reasons, but they are now off limits in China. My issue is with electronic-only door latch mechanism. It should be possible to open the door from both inside and outside the car in case of complete power loss. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SpaceX Acquires xAI in $1.25 Trillion All-Stock Deal - Elon Musk's SpaceX has acquired his AI startup xAI in an all-stock deal that values the combined entity at $1.25 trillion, ahead of what would be the largest initial public offering in history. SpaceX pegged its own valuation at $1 trillion -- a markup from the $800 billion it commanded in a December secondary stock sale -- and priced xAI at $250 billion based on a recent $20 billion funding round that valued the two-year-old AI company at $230 billion. SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen told investors on a call Monday that shares in the combined company would be priced at $527 and that xAI shares would convert into SpaceX stock at a roughly seven-to-one exchange rate. The company is still targeting a June IPO expected to raise as much as $50 billion, surpassing Saudi Aramco's $29 billion listing in 2019. Musk said the least expensive way to do AI computation within two to three years will be in space. "Global electricity demand for AI simply cannot be met with terrestrial solutions, even in the near term, without imposing hardship on communities and the environment," he wrote. SpaceX filed last Friday for permission to launch up to a million satellites into Earth's orbit. xAI merged with Musk's social media platform X last March in a $113 billion deal, and Tesla announced a $2 billion investment in xAI last week. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Century of Hair Samples Proves Leaded Gas Ban Worked - Scientists at the University of Utah have analyzed nearly a century's worth of human hair samples and found that lead concentrations dropped 100-fold after the EPA began cracking down on leaded gasoline and other lead-based products in the 1970s. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, drew on hair collected from Utah residents -- some preserved in family scrapbooks going back generations. Lead levels peaked between 1916 and 1969 at around 100 parts per million, fell to 10 ppm by 1990, and dropped below 1 ppm by 2024. The decline largely tracks the phase-out of leaded gasoline after President Nixon established the EPA in 1970; before the agency acted, most gasolines contained about 2 grams of lead per gallon, releasing nearly 2 pounds of lead per person into the environment each year. The study arrives amid the Trump administration's broader push to scale back the EPA. Lead regulations have not yet been targeted, but the authors note concerns about loosened enforcement of the 2024 Lead and Copper rule on replacing old lead pipes. Read more of this story at Slashdot.