Latest News
Last updated 07 Apr, 06:03 PM
BBC News
Wireless Festival cancelled after Kanye West blocked from coming to UK - West was due to headline the festival in July but drew criticism over past antisemitic comments.
One gunman killed and two injured in shooting at Israeli consulate in Istanbul - No Israeli diplomats are currently in Turkey and the Istanbul consulate has been empty for the past two-and-a-half years.
Has Artemis II shown we can land on the Moon again? - The Artemis II mission has been near flawless to date, but has the test flight shown Nasa is ready to send humans to the lunar surface?
Plan 2 student loan interest rates capped at 6% in England - The cap on Plan 2 and postgraduate loan interest rates comes amid a risk of rising inflation.
Strictly star will not face rape charges, police say - Detectives determined there was "insufficient evidence" to bring criminal charges against the unnamed man.
The Register
US cybercrime losses pass $20B for first time as AI boosts online fraud - Bots are now firmly in the toolbox, helping crooks scale old scams Crims are taking advantage of AI to sharpen old scams. The FBI reported Monday that cybercrime losses hit a record $20.87 billion in 2025, with help from bots.…
Russia's Fancy Bear still attacking routers to boost fake sites, NCSC warns - 200 orgs and 5,000 devices compromised so far in Vlad's latest intelligence grab, Microsoft reckons The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has issued a fresh warning about Russia's ongoing targeting of routers to steal passwords and other secrets.…
Stack Overflow abandons redesign after loyalists criticize it - Fabled Q&A site for devs struggles with its future as AI takes over its original purpose Stack Overflow, the once-popular dev community, has abandoned a planned redesign that was meant to refocus the site more on discussions than the question-and-answer format that built its reputation.…
Artemis II snaps eclipse, Earthset shots on first crewed lunar flyby since Apollo - Turns out deep space still looks better without AI helping The Artemis II mission has produced some stunning imagery as the spacecraft loops around the Moon on its journey from Earth and back.…
Break, no fix: Apple and Samsung make repairs hard - Motorola and Google top PIRG's latest scorecard Samsung and Apple phones are more difficult to repair than those from other makers, according to a report ranking devices by how easy to fix they are.…
New Scientist - Home
Migraines could be treated by ramping up the brain's cleaning system - Amplifying the brain's waste disposal system seems to clear a substance that drives migraines, relieving some of the pain associated with the condition
Are manure digesters a real solution to dairy farm emissions? - Anaerobic digesters converting manure to biogas reduce methane emissions from livestock, but incentives for them have encouraged factory farms to get bigger
The Artemis II astronauts have flown around the moon - Four NASA astronauts have now travelled further from Earth than any humans before them, as they flew around the moon during the Artemis II mission on 6 April
Iodised salt has become uncool but many of us need to eat more iodine - Iodine deficiency is on the rise among people in the UK, the US and Australia. A century ago this led to drops in IQ, height and thyroid health – and the modern fancy salt fad may be leading to a resurgence, says columnist Alice Klein
We're solving the fundamental mystery of how reality is glued together - For decades, scientists have tried and failed to explain how the force that binds the heart of atoms together really works. But new mathematical tools are finally prising the problem open
Hacker News
GLM-5.1: Towards Long-Horizon Tasks - Comments
Show HN: Brutalist Concrete Laptop Stand (2024) - Comments
Cambodia unveils a statue of famous landmine-sniffing rat Magawa - Comments
Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security - Comments
Google open-sources experimental agent orchestration testbed Scion - Comments
Slashdot
Cloudflare Fast-Tracks Post-Quantum Rollout To 2029 - Cloudflare is accelerating its post-quantum security plans and now aims to make its entire platform fully post-quantum secure by 2029. "The updated timeline follows new developments in quantum computing research that suggest current cryptographic standards could be broken sooner than previously expected," reports SiliconANGLE. From the report: The decision by Cloudflare to move its post-quantum security roadmap forward comes after Google LLC and research from Oratomic demonstrated significant advances in algorithms and hardware capable of breaking widely used encryption methods such as RSA-2048 and elliptic curve cryptography. [...] The company said progress across three key areas -- quantum hardware, error correction and quantum algorithms -- is advancing in parallel and compounding overall capability. Improvements in areas such as neutral atom architectures and more efficient error correction are reducing the resources required to break encryption, while algorithmic advances are lowering computational complexity. [...] Cloudflare has already deployed post-quantum encryption across a large portion of its network and reports that more than half of human traffic it processes now uses post-quantum key agreement. The company plans to expand support for post-quantum authentication in 2026, followed by broader deployment across its network and products through 2028. By 2029, Cloudflare said, it expects all of its services to be fully post-quantum secure, with those services being available by default across its platform, without requiring customer action or additional cost as part of the company's commitment to security upgrades. Google said it plans to accelerate its post-quantum encryption migration target to 2029. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
New Revelations Reignite Crypto Scandal Involving Argentina's President Milei - An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: President Javier Milei of Argentina promoted a cryptocurrency last year that quickly skyrocketed in value then cratered just as fast, costing investors millions of dollars and setting off a scandal and an investigation. Mr. Milei said he was simply highlighting a private venture and had no connection to the digital coin called $Libra. New evidence is now raising questions about his assertion. Phone logs from a federal investigation by Argentine prosecutors into the coin's collapse show seven phone calls between Mr. Milei and one of the entrepreneurs behind the cryptocurrency on the night in 2025 when Mr. Milei posted about $Libra on X. The contents of the calls, which took place before and after Mr. Milei's post, are not known. But the phone logs -- which were obtained by The New York Times and first reported by a local cable news channel, C5N -- suggest a greater degree of communication between Mr. Milei and the entrepreneurs who launched the token than what the president has publicly acknowledged. Newly uncovered messages also suggest Mr. Milei received regular payments from one of the entrepreneurs while he was a congressman. Mr. Milei has not publicly commented on the call logs and other documents, and he did not respond to a request for comment. He is named as a person of interest in the federal prosecutor's continuing investigation into the digital coin, according to court documents reviewed by The Times, but has not been formally charged with any crime. The latest revelations have revived a scandal that threatens the very foundation of a president who rose to power and was elected president in 2023 by attacking a political class he called corrupt. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Stanford Daily Ponders Fate of Bill Gates Namesake Building On April Fools' Day - theodp writes: "Gates Computer Science Building renamed Peter Thiel Center for Panoptic Computing" reads the headline of an April Fools' Day story that ran in the Humor section of The Stanford Daily (with the further disclaimer that "This article is purely satirical and fictitious"). The story begins: "Following revelations that the billionaire founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, had a longstanding relationship with convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, Stanford has announced it will strip Gates' name from the William H. Gates Computer Science Building and instead honor alumnus Peter Thiel B.A. '89, JD '92. Gates, who is not a Stanford alumnus, gave an initial gift of $6 million toward the building's construction in 1992." While fictional, the story does make one wonder what may become of the academic and institutional buildings worldwide named after Bill Gates in the blowback over his past ties to Epstein, which have already played a factor in the breakdown of his marriage to Melinda French Gates and friendship with Warren Buffet. In addition to The Gates Computer Science Building at Stanford, this includes the Bill and Melinda Gates Computer Science Complex at the University of Texas at Austin, Bill and Melinda Gates Hall at Cornell, The Bill & Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, and The William H. Gates Building at MIT's Stata Center. Buildings named after Gates' parents include Mary Gates Hall and William H. Gates Hall at the University of Washington, and The William Gates Building at the University of Cambridge (UK). Aside from the Thiel angle, The Stanford Daily's April Fools' Day story may not be as far-fetched as it may seem -- many universities' naming policies include provisions allowing donors' names to be removed from buildings, programs, or other facilities under extraordinary circumstances. For example, the University of Washington's Regent Policy No. 50 states, "The University reserves the right to revoke and terminate any naming on reasonable grounds not limited to the revelation of corporate or individual acts detracting from the University's mission, integrity, or reputation." Then again, UW notes that Bill's parents and siblings served as UW Regents for decades, so one expects Bill will be granted some leeway here for what he has characterized as 'foolish' choices on his part. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
LinkedIn Faces Spying Allegations Over Browser Extension Scanning - LinkedIn is facing allegations that it quietly scans users' browsers for installed Chrome extensions. The German group Fairlinked e.V. goes so far as to claim that the site is "running one of the largest corporate espionage operations in modern history." "The program runs silently, without any visible indicator to the user," the group says. "It does not ask for consent. It does not disclose what it is doing. It reports the results to LinkedIn's servers. This is not a one-time check. The scan runs on every page load, for every visitor." PCMag reports: This browser extension "fingerprinting" technique has been spotted before, but it was previously found to probe only 2,000 to 3,000 extensions. Fairlinked alleges that LinkedIn is now scanning for 6,222 extensions that could indicate a user's political opinions or religious views. For example, the extensions LinkedIn will look for include one that flags companies as too "woke," one that can add an "anti-Zionist" tag to LinkedIn profiles, and two others that can block content forbidden under Islamic teachings. It would also be a cakewalk to tie the collected extension data to specific users, since LinkedIn operates as a vast professional social network that covers people's work history. Fairlinked's concern is that Microsoft and LinkedIn can allegedly use the data to identify which companies use competing products. "LinkedIn has already sent enforcement threats to users of third-party tools, using data obtained through this covert scanning to identify its targets," the group claims. However, LinkedIn claims that Fairlinked mischaracterizes a LinkedIn safeguard designed to prevent web scraping by browser extensions. "We do not use this data to infer sensitive information about members," the company says. "To protect the privacy of our members, their data, and to ensure site stability, we do look for extensions that scrape data without members' consent or otherwise violate LinkedIn's Terms of Service," LinkedIn adds. [...] The statement goes on to allege that Fairlinked is from a developer whose account was previously suspended for web scraping. One of the group's board members is listed as "S.Morell," which appears to be Steven Morell, the founder of Teamfluence, a tool that helps businesses monitor LinkedIn activity. [...] Still, the Microsoft-owned site is facing some blowback for not clearly disclosing the browser extension scanning in LinkedIn's privacy policy. Fairlinked is soliciting donations for a legal fund to take on Microsoft and is urging the public to encourage local regulators to intervene. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
China Flies World's First Megawatt-Class Hydrogen Turboprop Engine - Longtime Slashdot reader walterbyrd shares a report from Fuel Cells Works: China says the AEP100, a megawatt-class hydrogen-fueled turboprop engine developed by the Aero Engine Corporation of China, has completed its maiden flight on a 7.5-ton unmanned cargo aircraft in Zhuzhou, Hunan. The 16-minute test covered 36km at 220km/h and 300 meters altitude, with the aircraft returning safely after completing its planned maneuvers. State media described it as the world's first test flight of a megawatt-class hydrogen-fueled turboprop engine. [...] The Aero Engine Corporation of China (AECC) says the result shows China now has a full technical chain for hydrogen aviation engines, from core parts to system integration, which is the kind of capability needed before any industrial rollout can begin. You can watch a video of the test flight here. Read more of this story at Slashdot.