Latest News
Last updated 24 Mar, 05:48 PM
BBC News
Reeves plans energy bill help for those 'who need it most' - The US-Israel war with Iran is having an impact on costs domestically, with oil and gas prices soaring.
Oil traders bet millions minutes before Trump's Iran talks post - Market data shows the amount of oil trade rose before the US President said he would postpone attacks on Iran's power plants.
Russia launches 948 drones at Ukraine in largest attack over 24-hour period - Cities across the west of Ukraine were hit, with residential buildings damaged and many injured.
Transgender girls told to leave Girlguiding groups by September - It follows an announcement in December that transgender members would be banned from joining.
Married at First Sight star Mel Schilling dies at 54 - The TV dating coach's husband says she "passed away peacefully today, surrounded by love".
The Register
Age checks creep into Linux as systemd gets a DOB field - Flatpak may be next, and the lobbying behind it is raising eyebrows After weeks of debate, code to record user age was finally merged into the Linux world's favorite system management daemon.…
Arm rolls its own 136-core AGI CPU to chase AI hype train - Turns out artificial general intelligence was a CPU this whole time Arm unveiled its first homegrown silicon — yes, an actual chip, not another shake-n-bake blueprint — during an event in San Francisco on Tuesday, and said that flagship customer Meta is set to deploy the 136-core CPU at scale later this year.…
Goodbye, Lunar Gateway: NASA ditches Moon station for Moon base - NASA boss Jared Isaacman has no intention of letting this setback delay the Artemis program, apparently NASA's ambitious plans to build a space station in orbit of the Moon are officially on hold, administrator Jared Isaacman said Tuesday, with the space agency instead skipping the orbital habitat in favor of building a permanent base on the Lunar surface. …
Datadog bets DIY AI will mean it dodges the SaaSpocalypse - The theory is that its domain-specific model will beat generalist LLMs on results and economics Datadog is close to releasing an updated AI model that it thinks will help it avoid the so-called SaaSpocalypse – customers using AI to build their own tools.…
HackerOne slams supplier for delayed breach notice after staff data exposed - Nearly 300 employees caught up in intrusion at benefits provider Navia Almost 300 HackerOne employees are caught up in a data breach, with the bug bounty biz slamming a third-party benefits provider for a weeks-long delay in notification.…
New Scientist - Home
Antimatter has been transported by road for the first time - CERN is working on building an antimatter delivery service. The project passed a big test by successfully transporting 92 antiprotons around a 4-kilometre loop of road
How AI shook the world's largest meeting of physicists - Physicists are grappling with how the increasing presence of AI will change the nature of their profession
Adrian Tchaikovsky: 'I try and do interesting aliens' - As the science fiction author publishes the latest novel in his Children of Time series, Children of Strife, he talks to Alison Flood about mantis shrimp, the pleasures of sci-fi and why empathy is so important in his writing
Are humans degenerating genetically and getting dumber as a result? - Are we evolving to be more stupid? Humans have a relatively high genetic mutation rate, which has been thought to be driving down our physical and mental fitness – but columnist Michael Le Page finds these mutations aren’t the health risk some make them out to be
Genetic clues tell the story of Neanderthals' decline - The Neanderthal population shrank during a cold spell around 75,000 years ago, and the loss of genetic diversity may have contributed to their eventual extinction
Hacker News
LiteLLM Python package compromised by supply-chain attack - Comments
Run a 1T parameter model on a 32gb Mac by streaming tensors from NVMe - Comments
Hypothesis, Antithesis, Synthesis - Comments
No Terms. No Conditions - Comments
Show HN: Gemini can now natively embed video, so I built sub-second video search - Comments
Slashdot
Epic Games To Cut More Than 1,000 Jobs As Fortnite Usage Falls - Epic Games is cutting more than 1,000 jobs as usage of its flagship title, Fortnite, falls. "The layoffs aren't related to AI," CEO Tim Sweeney noted. Reuters reports: The cuts, along with more than $500 million in savings from lower contracting and marketing spending and unfilled roles would put the company in "a more stable place," Sweeney said in a note to employees. [...] "We've had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic," Sweeney said, adding "market conditions today are the most extreme" since the early days of the company founded in 1991. The move marks Epic's second major round of layoffs in three years. In September 2023, the company cut about 830 jobs, or roughly 16% of its workforce. It was not immediately clear what percentage of staff would be impacted by Tuesday's announcement. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
FCC Bans Imports of New Foreign-Made Routers, Citing Security Concerns - New submitter the_skywise shares a report from Reuters: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said on Monday it was banning the import of all new foreign-made consumer routers, the latest crackdown on Chinese-made electronic gear over security concerns. China is estimated to control at least 60% of the U.S. market for home routers, boxes that connect computers, phones, and smart devices to the internet. The FCC order does not impact the import or use of existing models, but will ban new ones. The agency said a White House-convened review deemed imported routers pose "a severe cybersecurity risk that could be leveraged to immediately and severely disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure." It said malicious actors had exploited security gaps in foreign-made routers "to attack households, disrupt networks, enable espionage, and facilitate intellectual property theft," citing their role in major hacks like Volt and Salt Typhoon. The determination includes an exemption for routers the Pentagon deems do not pose unacceptable risks. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Intuit Beats FTC In Court, Ending Restrictions On 'Free' TurboTax Ads - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An appeals court invalidated the Biden-era Federal Trade Commission's attempt to punish Intuit for allegedly deceptive ads that pitched TurboTax as free. Under then-Chair Lina Khan, the FTC determined in 2024 that the TurboTax maker violated US law with deceptive advertising and ordered it to stop telling consumers, without more obvious disclaimers, that TurboTax or other products are free. The FTC's chief administrative law judge had previously found that Intuit's ads violated prohibitions on deceptive advertising because the firm "advertised to consumers that they could file their taxes online for free using TurboTax, when in truth, for approximately two-thirds of taxpayers, the advertised claim was false." Intuit appealed in the conservative-leaning US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and got a resounding victory on Friday in a 3-0 ruling issued (PDF) by a panel of judges. "Following the Supreme Court's decision in SEC v. Jarkesy, we hold that adjudication of a deceptive advertising claim before an administrative law judge violated the constitutional separation of powers," the 5th Circuit panel said. The Supreme Court's June 2024 ruling (PDF) in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy held that the SEC system for issuing fines violated the right to a jury trial. The 5th Circuit panel said the Jarkesy decision confirms that the FTC must pursue deceptive advertising claims in courts rather than its own administrative process. [...] The 5th Circuit ruling acknowledged that most people can't use TurboTax for free. "TurboTax 'Free Edition' has been part of the TurboTax range for more than a decade, available to taxpayers for what Intuit refers to as 'simple tax returns,'" the ruling said. "Most American taxpayers do not have 'simple tax returns.' The TurboTax website is designed so that any individual taxpayer can begin preparing a tax return in TurboTax Free Edition, but those who enter disqualifying information are prompted before filing to upgrade to a paid product." Although the court noted that Intuit stopped the specific ads challenged by the FTC, the ruling said the cease-and-desist order issued by the agency could have far-reaching effects on Intuit marketing. "The cease-and-desist order is remarkably broad: it prohibits Intuit for the next twenty years from advertising 'any goods or services' as free unless specific, extensive, and arguably unworkable requirements are satisfied. The order is not confined to tax-preparation solutions and extends to all products sold by Intuit," the ruling said. The 5th Circuit said the FTC's deceptive advertising claims are "traditional actions at law and equity and thus involve private rights that demand adjudication in an Article III court." The court rejected the FTC's argument that the claims involve public rights that may be adjudicated by administrative agencies. "In sum, there is overwhelming evidence that Section 5 of the FTC Act did not create a new duty for merchants to refrain from deceptive advertising," the 5th Circuit said. "That duty long predated the FTC Act and could be enforced by private parties in actions at common law or equity for fraud, deceit, or unfair competition." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Canonical Joins Rust Foundation - BrianFagioli writes: Canonical has joined the Rust Foundation as a Gold Member, signaling a deeper investment in the Rust programming language and its role in modern infrastructure. The company already maintains an up-to-date Rust toolchain for Ubuntu and has begun integrating Rust into parts of its stack, citing memory safety and reliability as key drivers. By joining at a higher tier, Canonical is not just adopting Rust but also stepping closer to its governance and long-term direction. The move also highlights ongoing tensions in Rust's ecosystem. While Rust can reduce entire classes of bugs, it often depends heavily on external crates, which can introduce complexity and auditing challenges, especially in enterprise environments. Canonical appears aware of that tradeoff and is positioning itself to influence how the ecosystem evolves, as Rust continues to gain traction across Linux and beyond. "As the publisher of Ubuntu, we understand the critical role systems software plays in modern infrastructure, and we see Rust as one of the most important tools for building it securely and reliably. Joining the Rust Foundation at the Gold level allows us to engage more directly in language and ecosystem governance, while continuing to improve the developer experience for Rust on Ubuntu," said Jon Seager, VP Engineering at Canonical. "Of particular interest to Canonical is the security story behind the Rust package registry, crates.io, and minimizing the number of potentially unknown dependencies required to implement core concerns such as async support, HTTP handling, and cryptography -- especially in regulated environments." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Cyberattack on a Car Breathalyzer Firm Leaves Drivers Stuck - Last week, hackers launched a cyberattack on an Iowa company called Intoxalock that left some drivers unable to start their court-mandated breathalyzer-equipped cars. Wired reports: Intoxalock, an automotive breathalyzer maker that says it's used daily by 150,000 drivers across the U.S., last week reported that it had been the target of a cyberattack, resulting in its "systems currently experiencing downtime," according to an announcement posted to its website. Meanwhile, drivers that use the breathalyzers have reported being stranded due to the devices' inability to connect to the company's services. "Our vehicles are giant paperweights right now through no fault of ours," one wrote on Reddit. "I'm being held accountable at work and feel completely helpless." The lockouts appear to be the result of Intoxalock's breathalyzers needing periodic calibrations that require a connection to the company's servers. Drivers who are due for a calibration and can't perform one due to the company's downtime have been stuck, though the company now states on its website that it's offering 10-day extensions on those calibrations due to its cybersecurity disruption, as well as towing services in some cases. In the meantime, Intoxalock hasn't explained what sort of cyberattack it's facing or whether hackers have obtained any of the company's user data. Read more of this story at Slashdot.