Latest News
Last updated 31 Mar, 04:56 PM
BBC News
More UK troops to be sent to Middle East, defence secretary announces - The UK government announces further air defence systems will be sent to countries in the region along with troops to operate them.
Teenage boy at centre of Scott Mills sexual offences investigation was under 16, police say - The case was dropped in 2019 after the CPS deemed there was insufficient evidence to bring charges, police say.
Amateur rapper whose XL bully killed his mother-in-law jailed for 10 years - Ashley Warren, who was the first person charged under new XL bully legislation, is sentenced.
Labour suspends outspoken backbench MP Karl Turner - The Hull East MP says he was suspended because of his "robust" criticism of the government's policy on jury trials.
'Something wasn't right': Wrong sperm given to UK families by IVF clinics in northern Cyprus - Families of seven children believe the wrong sperm or egg donors were used in their IVF treatment.
The Register
Leaked memo suggests Red Hat's chugging the AI Kool-Aid - Sounds like an excellent time to start honing your Debian skills Exclusive An internal memo dispatched by senior execs at Red Hat suggests the software biz is starting to push AI tooling within its Global Engineering department. RHEL may be about to get some Windows 11-style "improvements."…
UK watchdog targets Microsoft licensing in cloud competition probe - CMA to assess whether the company's terms unfairly favor Azure over rival platforms The UK's competition watchdog will investigate Microsoft's business software ecosystem over concerns that its licensing policies reduce competition in the cloud market.…
Starlink sprays debris into orbit following another satellite 'anomaly' - No risk to ISS or Artemis, but not ideal for operator peace of mind Starlink satellite 34343 has suffered an "anomaly on-orbit," spraying debris at an altitude of approximately 560 km above Earth.…
Mars coughs up another maybe-life clue in the form of nickel compounds - Perseverance found the minerals in an ancient river channel, but researchers say geology may still beat biology A team of scientists in the US have discovered nickel compounds in Martian rocks, in an arrangement similar to organic carbon compounds understood to be formed by living organisms on Earth.…
ServiceNow allegedly says salesman 'overachieved' and is not entitled to comp - The 13-year sales vet closed two deals worth $27 million, but ServiceNow has “nullified” his compensation saying he “overachieved” his quota. ServiceNow is refusing to pay a salesman commissions on more than $27 million in sales, telling the 13-year veteran of the company that he "overperformed" his quota and insisting that instead he sign paperwork that retroactively reduces the commission amount, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the salesperson. ServiceNow has denied all his claims.…
New Scientist - Home
Astronauts are ready to return to the moon on Artemis II mission - NASA’s Artemis II mission will be the first time humans have been around the moon in half a century, and its next launch window opens on 1 April
The Shroud of Turin bears DNA from many people, plants and animals - Researchers have identified genetic material from a vast range of organisms contaminating the shroud, said to have wrapped Jesus's body, further complicating the question of the cloth's true origin
The profound effect the heart-brain connection has on your health - Cognitive decline, mental health and heart disease are all shaped by the deep links between heart and brain – with major implications for diagnoses and treatment
Food shock is inevitable due to the Iran war – and it could get bad - Even if the conflict in the Middle East ends today, higher fuel, fertiliser and pesticide prices will lead to a food shock in the coming months. There is no easy way out, but accelerating the net-zero transition will help prevent future shocks
AI data centres can warm surrounding areas by up to 9.1°C - Hundreds of millions of people live close enough to data centres used to power AI to feel warmer average temperatures in their local area
Hacker News
Axios compromised on NPM – Malicious versions drop remote access trojan - Comments
Open source CAD in the browser (Solvespace) - Comments
GitHub Monaspace Case Study - Comments
Cohere Transcribe: Speech Recognition - Comments
Oracle slashes 30k jobs - Comments
Slashdot
Euro-Office Wants To Replace Google Docs and Microsoft Office - Euro-Office is a new open-source project supported by several European companies that aims to offer a "truly open, transparent and sovereign solution for collaborate document editing," using OnlyOffice as a starting point. The project is positioned around European digital independence and familiar Office-style editing, though it has already drawn pushback from OnlyOffice over alleged licensing violations. "The company behind OnlyOffice is also based in Russia, and Russia is still heavily sanctioned by most European nations due to the country's ongoing invasion of Ukraine," adds How-To Geek. From the report: Euro-Office is a new open-source project supported by Nextcloud, EuroStack, Wiki, Proton, Soverin, Abilian, and other companies based in Europe. The goal is to build an online office suite that can open and edit standard Microsoft Office documents (DOCX, PPTX, XLSX) and the OpenDocument format (ODS, ODT, ODP) used by LibreOffice and OpenOffice. The current design is remarkably close to Microsoft Office and its tabbed toolbars, so there shouldn't be much of a learning curve for anyone used to Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. Importantly, Euro-Office is only the document editing component. It's designed to be added to cloud storage services, online wikis, project management tools, and other software. For example, you could have some Word documents in your Nextcloud file storage, and clicking them in a browser could open the Euro-Office editor. That way, Nextcloud (or Proton, or anyone else) doesn't have to build its own document editor from scratch. Euro-Office is based on OnlyOffice, which is open-source under the AGPL license. The project explained that "Contributing is impossible or greatly discouraged" with OnlyOffice's developers, with outside code changes rarely accepted, so a hard fork was required. The company behind OnlyOffice is also based in Russia, and Russia is still heavily sanctioned by most European nations due to the country's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. The project's home page explains, "A lot of users and customers require software that is not potentially influenced or controlled by the Russian government." As for why OnlyOffice was chosen over LibreOffice, the project simply said: "We believe open source is about collaboration, and we look for opportunities to integrate and collaborate with the LibreOffice community and companies like Collabora." UPDATE: Slashdot reader Elektroschock shares a statement from OnlyOffice CEO Lev Bannov, expressing his concerns about the Euro-Office inclusion of its software with trademarks removed: "We liked the AGPL v3 license because its 7th clause allows us to ensure that our code retains its original attributes, so that users are able to clearly identify the developers and the brand behind the program..." Bannov continued: "The core issue here isn't just about what the AGPL license states, but about the additional provisions we, as the authors, have included. This is a critical distinction, even if some may argue otherwise. We firmly assert that the Euro-Office project is currently infringing on our copyright in a deliberate and unacceptable manner." "As the creators of ONLYOFFICE, we want to make our position unequivocally clear: we do not grant anyone the right to remove our branding or alter our open-source code without proper attribution. This principle is non-negotiable and will never change. We demand that the Euro-Office project either restore our branding and attributions or roll back all forks of our project, refraining from using our code without proper acknowledgment of ONLYOFFICE." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
US Paves Way For Private Assets To Be Included In 401(k) Retirement Plans - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Trump administration on Monday issued a long-awaited proposed rule to open up retirement plans to alternative assets, paving the way for private equity and cryptocurrencies to be added to 401(k) accounts. The measure, announced by the U.S. Department of Labor, is intended to ease longstanding barriers to incorporating these less liquid and less transparent assets into American retirement plans. It follows an executive order from President Donald Trump last summer and could clear the way for alternative asset management firms to tap a large new source of capital. Industry groups have argued private market investments can enhance long-term returns and diversification for retirement savers, while skeptics warn higher fees, complexity and limited liquidity could limit those gains and pose risks for retail investors. Some private market funds that are already available to wealthier individual investors have shown signs of strain in recent months. Private credit funds known as business development companies have seen a wave of withdrawals. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the proposed rule was "an initial step" and aimed to be "mindful of the importance of protecting retirement assets." The guidance lays out how plan trustees, who have a legal fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of members, can incorporate these assets. They would have to "objectively, thoroughly, and analytically consider, and make determinations on factors including performance, fees, liquidity, valuation, performance benchmarks, and complexity," the DOL said. Trustees who abide by them will be granted safe harbor that protects them from lawsuits, it added. The Supreme Court agreed earlier this year to hear one such case filed in 2019 by a former Intel employee claiming trustees made "imprudent" decisions by investing in hedge funds and private equity funds. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Quadratic Gravity Theory Reshapes Quantum View of Big Bang - Researchers at the University of Waterloo say a new "quadratic quantum gravity" framework could explain the universe's rapid early expansion without adding extra ingredients to Einstein's theory by hand. The idea is especially notable because it makes testable predictions, including a minimum level of primordial gravitational waves that future experiments may be able to detect. "Even though this model deals with incredibly high energies, it leads to clear predictions that today's experiments can actually look for," said Dr. Niayesh Afshordi, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo and Perimeter Institute (PI). "That direct link between quantum gravity and real data is rare and exciting." Phys.org reports: The research team found that the Big Bang's rapid early expansion can emerge naturally from this simple, consistent theory of quantum gravity, without adding any extra ingredients. This early burst of expansion, often called inflation, is a central idea in modern cosmology because it explains why the universe looks the way it does today. Their model also predicts a minimum amount of primordial gravitational waves, which are tiny ripples in spacetime geometry created in the first moments after the Big Bang. These signals may be detectable in upcoming experiments, offering a rare chance to test ideas about the universe's quantum origins. [...] The team plans to refine their predictions for upcoming experiments to explore how their framework connects to particle physics and other puzzles about the early universe. Their long-term goal is to strengthen the bridge between quantum gravity and observational cosmology. The research has been published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Scientists Shocked To Find Lab Gloves May Be Skewing Microplastics Data - Researchers found that common nitrile and latex lab gloves can shed stearate particles that closely resemble microplastics, potentially "increasing the risk of false positives when studying microplastic pollution," reports ScienceDaily. "We may be overestimating microplastics, but there should be none," said Anne McNeil, senior author of the study and U-M professor of chemistry, macromolecular science and engineering. "There's still a lot out there, and that's the problem." From the report: Researchers found that these gloves can unintentionally transfer particles onto lab tools used to analyze air, water, and other environmental samples. The contamination comes from stearates, which are not plastics but can closely resemble them during testing. Because of this, scientists may be detecting particles that are not true microplastics. To reduce this issue, U-M researchers Madeline Clough and Anne McNeil recommend using cleanroom gloves, which release far fewer particles. Stearates are salt-based, soap-like substances added to disposable gloves to help them separate easily from molds during manufacturing. However, their chemical similarity to certain plastics makes them difficult to distinguish in lab analyses, increasing the risk of false positives when studying microplastic pollution. "For microplastics researchers who have these impacted datasets, there's still hope to recover them and find a true quantity of microplastics," said researcher and recent doctoral graduate Madeline Clough. "This field is very challenging to work in because there's plastic everywhere," McNeil said. "But that's why we need chemists and people who understand chemical structure to be working in this field." The findings have been published in the journal Analytical Methods. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
AI Data Centers Can Warm Surrounding Areas By Up To 9.1C - An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: Andrea Marinoni at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues saw that the amount of energy needed to run a data centre had been steadily increasing of late and was likely to "explode" in the coming years, so wanted to quantify the impact. The researchers took satellite measurements of land surface temperatures over the past 20 years and cross-referenced them against the geographical coordinates of more than 8400 AI data centers. Recognizing that surface temperature could be affected by other factors, the researchers chose to focus their investigation on data centers located away from densely populated areas. They discovered that land surface temperatures increased by an average of 2C (3.6F) in the months after an AI data center started operations. In the most extreme cases, the increase in temperature was 9.1C (16.4F). The effect wasn't limited to the immediate surroundings of the data centers: the team found increased temperatures up to 10 kilometers away. Seven kilometers away, there was only a 30 percent reduction in the intensity. "The results we had were quite surprising," says Marinoni. "This could become a huge problem." Using population data, the researchers estimate that more than 340 million people live within 10 kilometers of data centers, so live in a place that is warmer than it would be if the data centre hadn't been built there. Marinoni says that areas including the Bajio region in Mexico and the Aragon province in Spain saw a 2C (3.6F) temperature increase in the 20 years between 2004 and 2024 that couldn't otherwise be explained. University of Bristol researcher Chris Preist said the findings may be more complicated than they look. "It would be worth doing follow-up research to understand to what extent it's the heat generated from computation versus the heat generated from the building itself," he says. For example, the building being heated by sunlight may be part of the effect. The findings of the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, can be found on arXiv. Read more of this story at Slashdot.