Latest News
Last updated 22 Mar, 05:46 PM
BBC News
No assessment Iran could strike London, UK minister says - Steve Reed says there is "no specific assessment" Iran is capable of hitting the UK, after Israel claimed it now could.
Energy bills rise 'inescapable' if oil prices stay high, says British Gas boss - The boss of Centrica says it is "too early" to speculate but if oil costs continue to rise, homes will be hit.
'Club vibes without the hangover': The twenty-somethings going out - in the gym - Young people are driving a gym boom as more fitness spaces are transformed into vibrant hangouts.
'We cannot be in peace', say Guthrie family as they renew appeal over missing mother - A seven-week nationwide search for 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, the mother of TV anchor Savannah Guthrie has not identified any suspects.
What did critics think of Saturday Night Live UK's debut? - The long-running US sketch show now has a British equivalent, which received a broadly positive reaction on its debut.
The Register
CERN eggheads burn AI into silicon to stem data deluge - The operating system of the universe isn’t going to debug itself feature CERN is nothing like today's agentic AI jockeys, who mostly rely on pre-set weights and generic TPUs and GPUs to generate their slop. CERN burns custom nanosecond-speed AI into the silicon itself just to eliminate excess data.…
Turns out your coffee addiction may be doing your brain a favor - Decades of data suggest people who stick to a couple of brews fare better in terms of gray matter A decades-long study suggests that your daily caffeine fix might be doing more than jolting you through morning meetings – it could also be quietly helping your brain hold it together.…
Payment biz pulls plug on open source charity after KYC spat - Free Software Foundation Europe says it was asked for supporters' passwords; Nexi insists it only wanted test credentials to check cancellation flows The Free Software Foundation Europe says its electronic-payments provider Nexi Group unexpectedly "cancelled" its account – cutting the charity off from around 450 donors.…
Cryptographers engage in war of words over RustSec bug reports and subsequent ban - Rust security maintainers contend Nadim Kobeissi's vulnerability claims are too much Since February, cryptographer Nadim Kobeissi has been trying to get code fixes applied to Rust cryptography libraries to address what he says are critical bugs. For his efforts, he's been dismissed, ignored, and banned from Rust security channels.…
Sorry, Amazon, you couldn't pick a worse time to bring a phone to market: IDC analyst - The market is contracting Right product, wrong time? Amazon is reported to be developing a new smartphone, its first since 2014, and, according to industry tracker IDC, it will face entrenched competition with better products and a market that is expected to contract by double digits.…
New Scientist - Home
A very serious guide to buying your own humanoid robot butler - You can now buy a humanoid robot housekeeper for less than the price of a second-hand car. But before splashing out, there’s something you need to know
You can now buy a DIY quantum computer - Qilimanjaro is selling a relatively cheap kit with everything you need for a quantum computer – you just need to be able to put it together
What to read this week: Katrina Manson's terrifying Project Maven - It is scarily fascinating to read about the US military's journey into AI warfare in this deeply-researched book. But what happens next, asks Matthew Sparkes
Inside the world’s first antimatter delivery service - On Tuesday, CERN will transport antiprotons on a truck for the first time, testing the plan to deliver antimatter by road to research labs across Europe
Forget the multiverse. In the pluriverse, we create reality together - A radical idea that resolves many quantum paradoxes suggests there is no objective view of reality. How can the cosmos be stitched together from interlocking perspectives?
Hacker News
The Future of Version Control - Comments
Why I love NixOS - Comments
Reports of code's death are greatly exaggerated - Comments
Flash-MoE: Running a 397B Parameter Model on a Laptop - Comments
Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline - Comments
Slashdot
A CNN Producer Explores the 'Magic AI' Workout Mirror - CNN looks at "the Magic AI fitness mirror," a new product "watching you, and giving you feedback automatically," while sometimes playing footage of a recorded personal trainer. Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland describes CNN's video report: CNN says the device "tracks form, counts reps, and corrects technique in real-time — and it doesn't go easy on you." (Although the company's CEO/cofounder, Varun Bhanot, says "we're not trying to completely replace personal trainers. What we are providing is a more accessible alternative.") CNN call the company "more a computer-vision firm than a fitness company, building the tech for this mirror from the ground up." CEO Bhanot tells CNN he'd hired a personal trainer in his 20s to get fit, but "Going through that journey, I realized how old-fashioned personal training was. Dumbbells were still dumb. There was no data or augmentation for the whole process!" "The AI fitness and wellness market is already huge — and it's growing," CNN adds. "In 2025 the global market was worth $11 billion, according to [market research firm] Insightace Analytic. By 2035, this market is expected to reach just shy of $58 billion. And Magic AI is far from alone. Form, Total, Speediance, and Echelon, to name a few, are all brands vying for a slice of this market. Even the most purely physical of activities — exercising your body — now gets "enhanced" with AI accessories... Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google Search Is Now Sometimes Using AI To Replace Headlines - "Google is beginning to replace news headlines in its search results with ones that are AI-generated," reports the Verge: After doing something similar in its Google Discover news feed, it's starting to mess with headlines in the traditional "10 blue links," too. We've found multiple examples where Google replaced headlines we wrote with ones we did not, sometimes changing their meaning in the process. For example, Google reduced our headline "I used the 'cheat on everything' AI tool and it didn't help me cheat on anything" to just five words: "'Cheat on everything' AI tool." It almost sounds like we're endorsing a product we do not recommend at all. What we are seeing is a "small" and "narrow" experiment, one that's not yet approved for a fuller launch, Google spokespeople Jennifer Kutz, Mallory De Leon, and Ned Adriance tell The Verge. They would not say how "small" that experiment actually is. Over the past few months, multiple Verge staffers have seen examples of headlines that we never wrote appear in Google Search results — headlines that do not follow our editorial style, and without any indication that Google replaced the words we chose. And Google says it's tweaking how other websites show up in search, too, not just news. The good news, for now, is that these changed headlines seem to be few and far between, and they're not yet the kind of tripe we've seen in Google Discover. (For example, Google Discover told me this week that the PlayStation Portal was getting a 1080p streaming mode, when it actually got a higher bitrate mode instead.) Compared to that and other lying Google Discover headlines like "US reverses foreign drone ban" — on a story reporting the opposite — the nonsense headlines we're seeing in Google Search are downright tame. The article points out that Google "originally told us its AI headlines in Google Discover were an experiment too. A month later, it told us those AI headlines are now a feature..." "Google confirmed that the test uses generative AI, but claimed that 'if we were to actually launch something based on this experiment, it would not be using a generative model and we would not be creating headlines with gen AI'..." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amazon Plans to Test Four-Legged Robots on Wheels for Deliveries - CNBC reports: Amazon has acquired Rivr, a Swiss robotics company developing machines for "doorstep delivery," the company confirmed Thursday... It announced the deal in a notice sent to third-party delivery contractors... "We believe this technology, when working alongside your [delivery associates], has the potential to further improve safety outcomes and the overall customer experience, particularly in the last steps of the delivery process...." In its notice to delivery service partner owners, Amazon said Rivr's technology, which includes a four-legged robot on wheels, will allow it to research and test how the devices can be integrated into delivery operations, including "helping [delivery associates] carry packages from delivery vehicles to customer doorsteps." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
US Cable TV Industry Faces 'Dramatic Collapse' as Local Operators Shut Down - or Become ISPs - America's cable TV industry "is undergoing its most dramatic collapse in history," reports Cord Cutters News, "with operators large and small waving the white flag on traditional TV service and pointing their customers toward streaming platforms instead." Just in 2025 Comcast lost 1.25 million pay-TV subscribers (ending the year with just 11.3 million), while Charter Spectrum also lost hundreds of thousands of customers each quarter. But "for smaller regional operators, who lack the scale and diversified revenue streams of giants like Comcast, those kinds of losses are simply unsurvivable," they write. And "the companies that once delivered hundreds of channels through coaxial cables are now either shutting down entirely or reinventing themselves as internet providers." Pay-TV subscriptions have plummeted from nearly 90% of U.S. households in the mid-2010s to roughly half by the end of 2025, resulting in billions in lost revenue and forcing many smaller operators to conclude that continuing linear TV services is no longer viable... [This year over U.S. 50 cable TV companies — primarily smaller and midsize providers — are "expected to cease operations entirely or shut down their television services," Cord Cutters News reported earlier.] YouTube TV's pricing is so competitive that the platform is projected to have close to 12.6 million subscribers by the end of 2026, positioning it to become the largest paid TV distributor in the United States. Exclusive content deals, such as YouTube TV's acquisition of NFL Sunday Ticket rights, have further eroded the value proposition of traditional cable at every level of the market... As older cable subscribers age out of the market, there is no new generation of customers waiting to replace them... [Cable TV] operators like WOW! are betting that their physical infrastructure — now increasingly upgraded to fiber — is more valuable as an internet delivery system than as a cable TV platform. [WOW! serves customers across Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Alabama — but is "phasing out its proprietary streaming live TV service and directing all customers toward YouTube TV," the article notes.] Industry observers see this as part of a broader trend: operators shedding unprofitable video segments to focus on broadband, where returns and network investments are prioritized. By the end of 2026, non-pay-TV households are expected to surge to 80.7 million, outnumbering traditional pay-TV subscribers at 54.3 million — a milestone that would have seemed unthinkable just a decade ago. For the cable companies still standing, the math is now inescapable: the era of the cable bundle is ending, and the only real question left is how gracefully each operator manages its exit. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Meteor Rumbles Over Houston, as Six-Pound Fragment Crashes Into a Texas Home - "It is the talk of the town today — the loud boom, the flash of light in the sky experienced by a lot of folks across the Houston area this afternoon," says a local Texas newscaster. "And then there was this — a home in northwest Harris county hit by something that crashed through their roof." Travelling at very high speed, the six-pound meteorite crashed through their roof and through their attic, crashing again through the ceiling of the floor below. It then bounced off the floor, hit the ceiling again — and then fell onto the bed. CBS News reports: NASA said in a social media post that the meteor became visible at 49 miles above Stagecoach, northwest of Houston, at 4:40 p.m. local time. The meteor moved southeast at 35,000 miles per hour, breaking apart 29 miles above Bammel, just west of Cypress Station, NASA said. "The fragmentation of the meteor — which weighed about a ton with a diameter of 3 feet — created a pressure wave that caused booms heard by some in the area," NASA said in the post. Across the Houston area, residents described hearing a low, rumbling sound that many compared to thunder, even though the skies were clear, according to CBS affiliate KHOU. Earlier this week, an asteroid weighing about 7 tons and traveling at 45,000 mph traveled over multiple states. And last June, a bright meteor was seen across the southeastern U.S. and exploded over Georgia, creating similar booms heard by residents in the area. Read more of this story at Slashdot.