Latest News
Last updated 26 Apr, 01:21 PM
BBC News
Two UK men charged with helping Russian intelligence - It comes after a Ukraine-linked business in London was targeted in a suspected arson attack.
Angela van den Bogerd shown letter blaming Post Office for sub-postmaster's death - The former executive is being grilled about the Post Office's response to Martin Griffiths taking his own life in 2013.
Peter Kay 'can't believe' new arena's fresh delay - The comedian's appearances at Manchester's troubled Co-op Live venue are postponed for a second time.
Teacher admits murdering partner and burying body - Fiona Beal sent messages to Nicholas Billingham's friends using his mobile phone, a trial hears.
MeToo founder defiant after Weinstein wins rape appeal - Tarana Burke says the overturning of Harvey Weinstein's 2020 conviction in New York is not a blow to MeToo.
The Register
TikTok ban could escalate US-China trade war, ex-White House CIO tells The Reg - Doing business in Beijing? 'You need to do a what-if scenario' interview It didn't seem America's divest-or-ban bill for TikTok was going to make it into law when we last spoke with former White House chief information officer Theresa Payton – but law it now is. …
UK's Investigatory Powers Bill to become law despite tech world opposition - Only minor changes from original proposals that kicked up privacy storm The UK's contentious Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill (IPB) 2024 has officially received the King's nod of approval and will become law.…
45 Drives adds Linux-powered mini PCs, workstations to growing compute lineup - Plus the system builder says an Arm-based system is already in the works Exclusive Canadian systems builder 45 Drives is perhaps best known for the dense multi-drive storage systems employed by the likes of Backblaze and others, but over the last year the biz has expanded its line-up to virtualization kit, and now low-power clients and workstations aimed at enterprises and home enthusiasts alike.…
IBM and LzLabs to clash in UK court over Software Defined Mainframe - Already facing off against each other in Texas over separate reverse engineering claims IBM and LzLabs are to lock horns in a London court next week over Big Blue's claim of breach of contract relating to mainframes and the development of software to allow mainframe applications run on x86 server clusters.…
UK agriculture department slammed for paper pushing despite tech splurges - Defra is counting contractors like sheep The UK agriculture department is "working towards" getting consultant and contractor numbers down to less than a quarter of its tech and digital transformation teams and reducing contingent labor to 12 percent of headcount by the end of the financial year.…
New Scientist - News
Global warming could make tides higher as well as raising sea levels - In addition to the overall rise in sea level, the heights of tides are also changing as the oceans warm and separate into more distinct layers
Deepfake politicians may have a big influence on India’s elections - Political campaigns are deploying AI-generated deepfake versions of politicians to reach hundreds of millions of eligible voters in India’s 2024 election – the world’s largest ever
Two medicines for opioid addiction also help with compulsive gambling - The medicines nalmefene and naltrexone helped compulsive gamblers reduce their betting activities, trials have shown
Swarm of nanorobots can remove tiny plastic fragments from water - In just 2 hours, small metal robots can capture most nanoscopic plastic particles from a sample of water
Wasps use face-recognition brain cells to identify each other - The neurons in wasp brains that help them recognise hive mates are similar to those in the brains of primates, including humans
Hacker News
Qwen1.5-110B - Comments
What We Train Our Brains For - Comments
Cult of the Dead Cow – Veilid - Comments
I'm creating PBR Textures and 3D models since 2018 and sharing them for free - Comments
The Universe as a Computer - Comments
Slashdot
OpenAI's Sam Altman and Other Tech Leaders To Serve on AI Safety Board - Sam Altman of OpenAI and the chief executives of Nvidia, Microsoft and Alphabet are among technology-industry leaders joining a new federal advisory board focused on the secure use of AI within U.S. critical infrastructure, in the Biden administration's latest effort to fill a regulatory vacuum over the rapidly proliferating technology. From a report: The Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board is part of a government push to protect the economy, public health and vital industries from being harmed by AI-powered threats, U.S. officials said. Working with the Department of Homeland Security, it will develop recommendations for power-grid operators, transportation-service providers and manufacturing plants, among others, on how to use AI while bulletproofing their systems against potential disruptions that could be caused by advances in the technology. In addition to Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai and other leaders in AI and technology, the panel of nearly two dozen consists of academics, civil-rights leaders and top executives at companies that work within a federally recognized critical-infrastructure sector, including Kathy Warden, chief executive of Northrop Grumman, and Delta Air Lines Chief Executive Ed Bastian. Other members are public officials, such as Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, both Democrats. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Honda To Spend $11 Billion On Four EV Factories In North America - Jonathan M. Gitlin reports Ars Technica: Honda announced today that it will spend $11 billion to expand its electric vehicle manufacturing presence in North America. The Japanese automaker already has a number of factories in the US, Mexico, and Canada, and it's this last one that will benefit from the expansion, with four EV-related plants planned for Ontario. Honda says it has begun evaluating requirements for what it's calling an "innovative and environmentally responsible" EV factory and a standalone EV battery plant in Alliston, Ontario, which is already home to Honda's two existing Canadian manufacturing facilities. Additionally, the automaker wants to set up another two sites as joint ventures. One will be a plant that processes cathode active materials and their precursors -- the various elements like nickel and manganese that are combined with lithium in lithium-ion batteries -- set up in a partnership with POSCO Future M, a South Korean battery material and chemical company. (POSCO is already working with General Motors on another joint venture battery precursor material facility in Betancour, Quebec, that is supposed to become operational in 2026.) A second joint venture will be a partnership with Asahi Kasei, which will manufacture battery separators, the material that keeps the anode and cathode apart. The locations of these two joint ventures have not yet been announced. Honda thinks it will be able to start making EVs in Ontario in 2028 and says the assembly plant will have the capacity to build 240,000 EVs per year. Meanwhile, the battery plant is planned to have an annual output of 36 GWh. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
TSMC Unveils 1.6nm Process Technology With Backside Power Delivery - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: TSMC announced its leading-edge 1.6nm-class process technology today, a new A16 manufacturing process that will be the company's first Angstrom-class production node and promises to outperform its predecessor, N2P, by a significant margin. The technology's most important innovation will be its backside power delivery network (BSPDN). Just like TSMC's 2nm-class nodes (N2, N2P, and N2X), the company's 1.6nm-class fabrication process will rely on gate-all-around (GAA) nanosheet transistors, but unlike the current and next-generation nodes, this one uses backside power delivery dubbed Super Power Rail. Transistor and BSPDN innovations enable tangible performance and efficiency improvements compared to TSMC's N2P: the new node promises an up to 10% higher clock rate at the same voltage and a 15%-20% lower power consumption at the same frequency and complexity. In addition, the new technology could enable 7%-10% higher transistor density, depending on the actual design. The most important innovation of TSMC's A16 process, which was unveiled at the company's North American Technology Symposium 2024, is the introduction of the Super Power Rail (SPR), a sophisticated backside power delivery network (BSPDN). This technology is tailored specifically for AI and HPC processors that tend to have both complex signal wiring and dense power delivery networks. Backside power delivery will be implemented into many upcoming process technologies as it allows for an increase in transistor density and improved power delivery, which affects performance. Meanwhile, there are several ways to implement a BSPDN. TSMC's Super Power Rail plugs the backside power delivery network to each transistor's source and drain using a special contact that also reduces resistance to get the maximum performance and power efficiency possible. From a production perspective, this is one of the most complex BSPDN implementations and is more complex than Intel's Power Via. Volume production of A16 is slated for the second half of 2026. "Therefore, actual A16-made products will likely debut in 2027," notes the report. "This timeline positions A16 to potentially compete with Intel's 14A node, which will be Intel's most advanced node at the time." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Alphabet Shares Jump 14% On Earnings Beat, First-Ever Dividend - Alphabet has reported first quarter results that topped analysts' estimates with soaring profits in its cloud division. It also announced its first-ever dividend. CNBC shares the results: Earnings per share: $1.89 vs. $1.51 per share expected by LSEG Revenue: $80.54 billion vs. $78.59 billion expected by LSEG Wall Street is also watching several other numbers in the report: YouTube advertising revenue: $8.09 billion vs. $7.72 billion expected, according to StreetAccount. Google Cloud revenue: $9.57 billion vs. $9.35 billion expected, according to StreetAccount. Traffic acquisition costs (TAC): $12.95 billion $12.74 billion expected, according to StreetAccount. Alphabet's revenue increased 15% from $69.79 billion a year earlier, the fastest rate of growth since early 2022. Alphabet said its board approved a cash dividend of 20 cents per share to be paid on June 17, to stockholders of record as of June 10. The company said it "intends to pay quarterly cash dividends in the future." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Seagate Joins the HDD Price Hike Party, Blames AI for Spike in Demand - Seagate has joined Western Digital in increasing the prices of hard drives, with rising demand due to the huge data requirements of AI taking the blame. AI is also behind a rapid growth in orders for Enterprise solid state drives. From a report: One of the big three makers of traditional rotating hard disk drives, Seagate informed customers that it is increasing prices effective immediately for new orders, but also for any changes to orders that are "over and above" previously committed volumes. This was disclosed in a letter from the company seen by analyst Trendforce, and comes just a couple of weeks after rival manufacturer Western Digital sent out a similar letter to customers informing them of price hikes. According to Trendforce, the cause of the issue is two-fold: rising demand for high-capacity HDD products driven by the current craze for all things AI, and reduced production by hard drive manufacturers that means they are unable to meet the demand, leading to soaring prices. The rising demand comes from AI training requiring huge volumes of data: OpenAI's GPT-3 model is said to have been trained using 45TB of data, which may have been surpassed for newer models. And while flash-based SSDs boast high-speed and low-latency, storing everything in flash would still be costly. Seagate launched a 30TB hard drive line last year. Hard drive production was cut by as much as 20 percent over the last two years or so because of falling orders during the pandemic, and now manufacturers are unprepared for a sudden uptick in demand. Read more of this story at Slashdot.