Latest News

Last updated 09 Mar, 09:32 PM

BBC News

US missile hit military base near Iran school, video analysis shows - A US Tomahawk missile hit a military base near a primary school in southern Iran where Iranian authorities said 168 people were killed, expert video analysis shows.

Iran's new leader has never been tested. He now faces an existential battle - Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, enters power as the Islamic republic faces its most serious crisis.

Five Iranian footballers 'in Australian safe house' after Asian Cup protest - Concern has grown for team after one critic called them 'wartime traitors' for failing to salute during the Iranian anthem.

How the Iran war may affect your bills and finances - The conflict in the Middle East could raise the cost of petrol, household energy bills and even food.

RAF jets have taken out two more drones, says Healey - The defence secretary also told MPs that the warship HMS Dragon would set sail for the Mediterranean in the next couple of days.

The Register

Moody humans should let AI handle bad public feedback first, study finds - Enjoy meltdowns from businesses on Yelp over negative reviews? AI is threatening to take that away Angry company responses to customer complaints are a favorite topic of internet amusement and outrage, but they're also embarrassing for the employees who post them. Having AI process customer reviews could be a better way. …

Microsoft taps Claude to make Copilot Cowork a better agent - Copilot gets tuned to handle long-running knowledge work tasks Microsoft on Monday celebrated freedom of choice by giving customers in the company's Frontier program the option to use Anthropic and OpenAI models via Copilot Chat.…

ShinyHunters claims more high-profile victims in latest Salesforce customers data heist - And they abused a Mandiant-developed open source tool in the attacks ShinyHunters told The Register that it has stolen data from about 100 high-profile companies in its latest Salesforce customer data heist, including Salesforce itself.…

Amazon tells FCC to bin SpaceX's million-satellite datacenter dream - Calls Musk’s orbital plans “speculative” despite Bezos touting orbiting compute Amazon wants US regulators to reject a SpaceX application for permission to launch a fleet of orbital datacenter satellites, criticizing it as incomplete, speculative, and unrealistic.…

China browses lunar landing spots in race to land on Moon - Not a US flag in sight Researchers from China are narrowing down the landing sites for the nation’s first crewed mission to the Moon, set to take place before 2030.…

New Scientist - Home

We’ve only just confirmed that Homo habilis really existed - Their species name is well known, but until recently we’ve understood very little for certain about Homo habilis. Columnist Michael Marshall reveals what new fossils are telling us about the hominins that have been considered the first humans

Frailty sets in far earlier than you’d expect, but you can reverse it - We’re learning that frailty can quietly arrive decades before old age, with some people in their 30s or 40s unknowingly in a pre-frail state. There are surprising ways to stay strong – and it’s not all about weight training

A daily multivitamin may slightly slow rates of ageing - Taking a multivitamin every day might slightly slow the rate of ageing, but the extent to which this is relevant to our health is unclear

'Singing' dogs may show the evolutionary roots of musicality - Some Samoyeds adjust the pitch of their howls depending on the music being played, showing a form of vocal ability they might have inherited from their wolf ancestors

How an intern helped build the AI that shook the world - Chris Maddison was just an intern when he started working on the Go-playing AI that would eventually become AlphaGo. A decade later, he talks about that match against Lee Sedol and what came next

Hacker News

Building a Procedural Hex Map with Wave Function Collapse - Comments

JSLinux Now Supports x86_64 - Comments

Thomas Selfridge: The First Airplane Fatality - Comments

Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft - Comments

Show HN: The Mog Programming Language - Comments

Slashdot

How AI Assistants Are Moving the Security Goalposts - An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: AI-based assistants or "agents" -- autonomous programs that have access to the user's computer, files, online services and can automate virtually any task -- are growing in popularity with developers and IT workers. But as so many eyebrow-raising headlines over the past few weeks have shown, these powerful and assertive new tools are rapidly shifting the security priorities for organizations, while blurring the lines between data and code, trusted co-worker and insider threat, ninja hacker and novice code jockey. The new hotness in AI-based assistants -- OpenClaw (formerly known as ClawdBot and Moltbot) -- has seen rapid adoption since its release in November 2025. OpenClaw is an open-source autonomous AI agent designed to run locally on your computer and proactively take actions on your behalf without needing to be prompted. If that sounds like a risky proposition or a dare, consider that OpenClaw is most useful when it has complete access to your entire digital life, where it can then manage your inbox and calendar, execute programs and tools, browse the Internet for information, and integrate with chat apps like Discord, Signal, Teams or WhatsApp. Other more established AI assistants like Anthropic's Claude and Microsoft's Copilot also can do these things, but OpenClaw isn't just a passive digital butler waiting for commands. Rather, it's designed to take the initiative on your behalf based on what it knows about your life and its understanding of what you want done. "The testimonials are remarkable," the AI security firm Snyk observed. "Developers building websites from their phones while putting babies to sleep; users running entire companies through a lobster-themed AI; engineers who've set up autonomous code loops that fix tests, capture errors through webhooks, and open pull requests, all while they're away from their desks." You can probably already see how this experimental technology could go sideways in a hurry. [...] Last month, Meta AI safety director Summer Yue said OpenClaw unexpectedly started mass-deleting messages in her email inbox, despite instructions to confirm those actions first. She wrote: "Nothing humbles you like telling your OpenClaw 'confirm before acting' and watching it speedrun deleting your inbox. I couldn't stop it from my phone. I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb." Krebs also noted the many misconfigured OpenClaw installations users had set up, leaving their administrative dashboards publicly accessible online. According to pentester Jamieson O'Reilly, "a cursory search revealed hundreds of such servers exposed online." When those exposed interfaces are accessed, attackers can retrieve the agent's configuration and sensitive credentials. O'Reilly warned attackers could access "every credential the agent uses -- from API keys and bot tokens to OAuth secrets and signing keys." "You can pull the full conversation history across every integrated platform, meaning months of private messages and file attachments, everything the agent has seen," O'Reilly added. And because you control the agent's perception layer, you can manipulate what the human sees. Filter out certain messages. Modify responses before they're displayed." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber Is Stepping Down - Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down after overseeing the platform's growth from a Twitter research project into a 40-million-user alternative to X. "As Bluesky matures, the company needs a seasoned operator focused on scaling and execution, while I return to what I do best: building new things," Graber wrote in a statement. She will be transitioning to a new Chief Innovation Officer role while Venture capitalist Toni Schneider will serve as interim CEO until the board searches for a permanent replacement. Wired reports: Graber joined Bluesky in 2019, when it was a research project within Twitter focused on developing a decentralized framework for the social web. She became the company's first chief executive officer in 2021, when it spun out into an independent entity. She oversaw the platform's remarkable rise and the growing pains it experienced as it transformed from a quirky Twitter offshoot to a full-fledged alternative to X. Schneider tells WIRED that he intends to help Bluesky "become not just the best open social app, but the foundation for a whole new generation of user-owned networks." Schneider, who will continue working as a partner at the venture capital firm True Ventures while at Bluesky, was previously CEO of the Wordpress parent company, Automattic, from 2006 to 2014. He also served as its CEO again in 2024 while top executive Matt Mullenweg went on a sabbatical. During that time, Schneider met Graber and became an adviser to Bluesky's leadership. In a blog post announcing his new role, Schneider said he plans to emphasize scaling, describing his job as "to help set up Bluesky's next phase of growth." This isn't the end for Graber and Bluesky. She will transition to become the company's chief innovation officer, a role focused on Bluesky's technology stack rather than its business operations. The position was created for her. Graber, who began her career as a software engineer, has always sounded the most enthusiastic when discussing Bluesky's technology rather than its revenue streams. Bluesky's board of directors will appoint the next permanent CEO. The members include Jabber founder Jeremie Miller, crypto-focused VC Kinjal Shah, TechDirt founder Mike Masnick, and Graber. (Twitter founder Jack Dorsey was originally part of the board but quit in 2024.) This means Graber will have input on her successor. The talent search is still in early stages. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Qualcomm's New Arduino Ventuno Q Is an AI-Focused Computer Designed For Robotics - Qualcomm and Arduino have unveiled the Arduino Ventuno Q, a new AI-focused single-board computer built for robotics and edge systems. Engadget reports: Called the Arduino Ventuno Q, it uses Qualcomm's Dragonwing IQ8 processor along with a dedicated STM32H5 low-latency microcontroller (MCU). "Ventuno Q is engineered specifically for systems that move, manipulate and respond to the physical world with precision and reliability," the company wrote on the product page. The Ventuno Q is more sophisticated (and expensive) than Arduinio's usual AIO boards, thanks to the Dragonwing IQ8 processor that includes an 8-core ARM Cortex CPU, Adreno Arm Cortex A623 GPU and Hexagon Tensor NPU that can hit up ot 40 TOPs. It also comes with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, along with 64GB of eMMC storage and an M.2 NVME Gen.4 slot to expand that. Other features include Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, 2.5Gbps ethernet and USB camera support. The Ventuno Q includes Arudino App Lab, with pre-trained AI models including LLMs, VLMs, ASR, gesture recognition, pose estimation and object tracking, all running offline. It's designed for AI systems that run entirely offline like smart kiosks, healthcare assistants and traffic flow analysis, along with Edge AI vision and sensing systems. It also supports a full robotics stack including vision processing combined with deterministic motor control for precise vision and manipulation. It's also ideal for education and research in areas like computer vision, generative AI and prototyping at the edge, according to Arduino. Further reading: Up Next for Arduino After Qualcomm Acquisition: High-Performance Computing Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic Sues the Pentagon After Being Labeled a Threat To National Security - Anthropic is suing the Department of Defense after the Trump administration labeled the company a "supply chain risk" and canceled its government contracts when Anthropic refused to allow its AI model Claude to be used for domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons. Fortune reports: The lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, calls the administration's actions "unprecedented and unlawful" and claims they threaten to harm "Anthropic irreparably." The complaint claims that government contracts are already being canceled and that private contracts are also in doubt, putting "hundreds of millions of dollars" at near-term risk. An Anthropic spokesperson told Fortune: "Seeking judicial review does not change our longstanding commitment to harnessing AI to protect our national security, but this is a necessary step to protect our business, our customers, and our partners." "We will continue to pursue every path toward resolution, including dialogue with the government," they added. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

'If Lockheed Martin Made a Game Boy, Would You Buy One?' - "If Lockheed Martin made a Game Boy, would you buy one?" That was the [rhetorical] question The Verge's Sean Hollister asked when he reviewed ModRetro's Game Boy-style handheld device back in 2024. He said it "might be the best version of the Game Boy ever made," though the connection to Palmer Luckey and his defense tech startup Anduril left him conflicted. "I don't remember my childhood nostalgia coming with a side of possible guilt and fear about putting money into the pocket of a weapons contractor," he wrote. "Feels weird!" Those conflicted feelings have lingered ever since. TechCrunch recently cited Hollister's review while reporting that ModRetro is now seeking funding at a $1 billion valuation. The company is said to have additional retro-inspired hardware in development, including one designed to replicate the Nintendo 64. As for Anduril? It's reportedly in talks to raise a new funding round that would value the company at around $60 billion. Read more of this story at Slashdot.