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Last updated 30 Mar, 05:55 PM

BBC News

Scott Mills sacked from BBC Radio 2 after allegations over 'historic relationship' - He has not hosted his show since Tuesday and the BBC said he is "no longer contracted to work" there.

Mills' abrupt sacking creates another headache for the BBC - Radio 2 DJ Scott Mills was sacked from the BBC on Monday following allegations over his conduct.

What was the 1970s oil crisis, and are we heading for something worse? - While both crises involve oil, experts say there are some important differences between what happened in the 1970s and today.

Travelodge investigating more reports of strangers accessing rooms, says CEO - Jo Boydell says the hotel is carrying out a review after guests reported people entering their rooms.

Easter bank holiday weekend set to be busiest on roads in four years - The bank holiday weekend is set to see the busiest roads since Easter 2022, despite rising fuel cost fears.

The Register

US PC shipments to fall 13% as memory and storage crunch hits budget systems - Omdia says education, consumer, commercial, and public sector demand will weaken through 2026 US PC shipments are set to fall by 13 percent this year thanks to the ongoing memory and storage crisis, and things are not expected to get better until next year at the earliest, with budget PCs hardest hit.…

Telnyx joins LiteLLM in latest PyPI package poisoning tied to Trivy breach - Also, EU probes Snapchat, RedLine suspect extradited, AstraZeneca leak claim surfaces, and more infosec in brief The cybercrime crew linked to the Trivy supply-chain attack has struck again, this time pushing malicious Telnyx package versions to PyPI in an effort to plant credential-stealing malware on developers’ systems.…

FCC says it's making it easier for US telcos to ditch legacy lines - But critics say stopping some engineering tests is not the sort of corner you want to cut America's telecoms regulator has unveiled new measures to speed the transition to modern high-speed networks, but critics argue the move could leave behind those in rural areas or with special needs.…

Artemis II countdown begins as NASA prepares for crewed Moon flyby - Orion's four astronauts edge toward liftoff for humanity's first lunar voyage in more than 50 years NASA is preparing to send astronauts around the Moon, with the Artemis II mission countdown set to begin tonight.…

UK fines Irish Apple outpost over sanctions-busting payments to Russian dev - Regulator says payments totaling £635K reached entity owned and controlled by a designated person The UK government has fined an Apple subsidiary £390,000 for breaching sanctions on Russia after it sent more than £600,000 to a developer linked to a designated entity.…

New Scientist - Home

AI data centres can warm surrounding areas by up to 9.1°C - Hundreds of millions of people live close enough to data centres used to power AI to feel warmer average temperatures in their local area

The Turin Shroud bears DNA from many people, plants and animals - Researchers have identified genetic material from a vast range of organisms contaminating the shroud, said to have wrapped Jesus's body, further complicating the question of the cloth's true origin

Want to live forever? There are major questions to confront, first - A start-up has worked out how to preserve the brain after death – paving the way for immortality in a distant future. But beginning to reckon with this reality yields serious practical and philosophical questions

The weird physics of plant-based milks is only just coming to light - Experiments on different kinds of milk have revealed that many plant-based milks are non-Newtonian fluids

Why the lack of water on Mars is so mysterious - An accounting of all the water that should have been and gone on Mars’s surface has come up with a discrepancy that shows just how little we understand the Red Planet’s hydrological history

Hacker News

How to turn anything into a router - Comments

Bird brains (2023) - Comments

Take better notes, by hand - Comments

Cherri – programming language that compiles to an Apple Shortuct - Comments

OCR for construction documents does not work, we fixed it - Comments

Slashdot

Microsoft Copilot Is Now Injecting Ads Into Pull Requests On GitHub - Microsoft Copilot is reportedly injecting promotional "tips" into GitHub pull requests, with Neowin claiming more than 1.5 million PRs have been affected by messages advertising integrations like Raycast, Slack, Teams, and various IDEs. From the report: According to Melbourne-based software developer Zach Manson, a team member used the AI to fix a simple typo in a pull request. Copilot did the job, but it also took the liberty of editing the PR's description to include this message: "Quickly spin up Copilot coding agent tasks from anywhere on your macOS or Windows machine with Raycast." A quick search of that phrase on GitHub shows that the same promotional text appears in over 11,000 pull requests across thousands of repositories. Even merge requests on GitLab aren't safe from the injection. So what's happening? Well, Raycast has a Copilot extension that can do things like create pull requests from a natural language command. The ad directly names Raycast, so you might think that Raycast is injecting the promo into the PRs to market its own app. But it is more likely that Microsoft is the one doing the injecting. If you look at the raw markdown of the affected pull requests, there is a hidden HTML comment, "START COPILOT CODING AGENT TIPS" placed right just before the ad tip. This suggests Microsoft is using the comment to insert a "tip" that points back to its own developer ecosystem or partner integrations. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony Shuts Down Nearly Its Entire Memory Card Business Due To SSD Shortage - For the "foreseeable future," Sony says it has stopped accepting new orders for most of its CFexpress and SD memory card lines due to the an ongoing memory supply shortage. "Due to the global shortage of semiconductors (memory) and other factors, it is anticipated that supply will not be able to meet demand for CFexpress memory cards and SD memory cards for the foreseeable future," the company said in a notice. "Therefore, we have decided to temporarily suspend the acceptance of orders from our authorized dealers and from customers at the Sony Store from March 27, 2026 onwards. PetaPixel reports: The suspension includes all of Sony's memory card lines, including CFexpress Type A, CFexpress Type B, and SD cards. The 240GB, 480GB, 960GB, and 1920GB capacity Type A cards have been suspended, as have the 480GB and 240GB Type B cards. The full gamut of Sony's high-end SD cards has also been suspended, including the 256GB, 128GB, and 64GB TOUGH-branded cards and the lower-end 512GB, 256GB, 128GB, and 256GB plainly-branded Sony cards, which cap out at V60 speeds. Even Sony's lower-end, V30 128GB and 64GB SD cards have been suspended, showcasing that the SSD shortage affects all types of solid state, not just the high-end ones. It appears that only the 960GB CFexpress Type B card and the lowest-end SF-UZ series SD cards remain in production. However, those UHS-I SD cards are discontinued in the United States outside of a scant few retailers and resellers. "We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause our customers," Sony concludes. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tech CEOs Suddenly Love Blaming AI For Mass Job Cuts - An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Sweeping job cuts at Big Tech companies have become an annual tradition. How executives explain those decisions, however, has changed. Out are buzzwords like efficiency, over-hiring, and too many management layers. Today, all explanations stem from artificial intelligence (AI). In recent weeks, giants including Google, Amazon, Meta, as well as smaller firms such as Pinterest and Atlassian, have all announced or warned of plans to shrink their workforce, pointing to developments in AI that they say are allowing their firms to do more with fewer people. [...] But explaining cuts by pointing to advances in AI sounds better than citing cost pressures or a desire to please shareholders, says tech investor Terrence Rohan, who has had a seat on many company boards. "Pointing to AI makes a better blog post," Rohan says. "Or it at least doesn't make you seem as much the bad guy who just wants to cut people for cost-effectiveness." That does not mean there is no substance behind the words, Rohan added. Some of the companies he's backing are using code that is 25% to 75% AI-generated. That is a sign of the real threat that AI tools for writing code represent to jobs such as software developer, computer engineer and programmer, posts once considered a near-guarantee of highly paid, stable careers. "Some of it is that the narrative is changing, some of it is that we really are starting to see step changes in productivity," Anne Hoecker, a partner at Bain who leads the consultancy's technology practice, says of the recent job cuts. "Leaders more recently are seeing these tools are good enough that you really can do the same amount of work with fundamentally less people." There is another way that AI is driving job cuts -- and it has nothing to do with the technical abilities of coding tools and chatbots. Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft are collectively planning to pour $650 billion into AI in the coming year. As executives hunt for ways to try to ease investor shock at those costs, many are landing on payroll, typically tech firms' single biggest expense. [...] Although the expense of, for example, 30,000 corporate Amazon employees is dwarfed by that company's AI spending plans, firms of this size will now take any opportunity to cut costs, Rohan says. "They're playing a game of inches," Rohan says of cuts at Big Tech firms. "If you can even slightly tune the machine, that is helpful." Hoecker says cutting jobs also signals to stock market investors worried about the "real and huge" cost of AI development that executives are not blithely writing blank cheques. "It shows some discipline," says Hoecker. "Maybe laying off people isn't going to make much of a dent in that bill, but by creating a little bit of cashflow, it helps." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Company Hopes to Build Age-Verification Tech into Vape Cartridges - Their goal is to use biometric data and blockchain to build age-verification measures directly into disposable vape cartridges. Wired reports on a partnership between vape/cartridge manufacturer Ispire Technology and regulatory consulting company Chemular (which specializes in the nicotine market) — which they've named "Ike Tech": [Using blockchain-based security, the e-cig cartridge] would use a camera to scan some form of ID and then also take a video of the user's face. Once it verifies your identity and determines you're old enough to vape, it translates that information into anonymized tokens. That info goes to an identity service like ID.me or Clear. If approved, it bounces back to the app, which then uses a Bluetooth signal to give the vape the OK to turn on. "Everything is tokenized," [says Ispire CEO Michael Wang]. "As a result of this process, we don't communicate consumer personal private information." He says the process takes about a minute and a half... After that onetime check, the Bluetooth connection on the phone will recognize when the vape cartridge is nearby and keep it unlocked. Move the vape too far away from the phone, and it shuts off again. Based on testing, the companies behind Ike Tech claim this process has a 100 percent success rate in age verification, more or less calling the tech infallible. "The FDA told us it's the holy grail technology they were looking for," Wang says. "That's word-for-word what they said when we met with them...." Wang says the goal is to implement additional features in the verification process, like geo-fencing, which would force the vape to shut off while near a school or on an airplane. In the future, the plan is to license this biometric verification tech to other e-cig companies. The tech may also grow to include fingerprint readers and expand to other product categories; Wang suggests guns, which have a long history of age-verification features not quite working. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple's Early Days: Massive Oral History Shares Stories About Young Wozniak and Jobs - Apple's 50th anniversary is this week — and Fast Company's Harry McCracken just published an 11,000-word oral history with some fun stories from Apple's earliest days and the long and winding road to its very first home computers: Steve Wozniak, cofounder, Apple: I told my dad when I was in high school, "I'm going to own a computer someday." My dad said, "It costs as much as a house." And I sat there at the table — I remember right where we were sitting — and I said, "I'll live in an apartment." I was going to have a computer if it was ever possible. I didn't need a house. Woz even remembers trying to build a home computer early on with a teenaged Steve Jobs and Bill Fernandez from rejected parts procured from local electronics companies. Woz designed it — "not from anybody else's design or from a manual. And Fernandez was one of those kids that could use a soldering iron." Bill Fernandez: The computer was very basic. It was working, and we were starting to talk about how we could hook a teletype up to it. Mrs. Wozniak called a reporter from the San Jose Mercury, and he came over with a photographer. We set up the computer on the floor of Steve Wozniak's bedroom. Well, the core integrated circuit that ran the power supply that I built was an old reject part. We turned on the computer, and the power supply smoked and burnt out the circuitry. So we didn't get our photos in the paper with an article about the boy geniuses. But within a few years Jobs and Wozniak both wound up with jobs at local tech companies. Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell remembers that Steve Jobs "wasn't a good engineer, but he was a great technician. He was pristine in his ability to solder, which was actually important in those days." Meanwhile Allen Baum had shared Wozniak's high school interest in computers, and later got Woz a job working at Hewlett-Packard — where employees were allowed to use stockroom parts for private projects. ("When he needed some parts, even if we didn't have them, I could order them.") Baum helped with the Apple I and II, and joined Apple a decade later. Wozniak remembers being inspired to build that first Apple I by the local Homebrew Computing Club, people "talking about great things that would happen to society, that we would be able to communicate like we never did [before] and educate in new ways. And being a geek would be important and have value." And once he'd built his first computer, "I wanted these people to help create the revolution. And so I passed out my designs with no copyright notices — public domain, open source, everything. A couple of other people in the club did build it." But Woz and Jobs had even tried pitching the computer as a Hewlett-Packard product, Woz remembers: Steve Wozniak: I showed them what it would cost and how it would work and what it could do with my little demos. They had all the engineering people and the marketing people, and they turned me down. That was the first of five turndowns from Hewlett-Packard. Steve Jobs and I had to go into business on our own. In the end, Randy Wigginton, Apple employee No. 6 remembers witnessing Jobs, Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne the signing of Apple's founding contract, "which is pretty funny, because I was 15 at the time." And it was Allen Baum's father who gave Wozniak and Jobs the bridge loan to buy the parts they'd need for their first 500 computers. After all the memories, the article concludes that "Trying to connect every dot between Apple, the tiny, dirt-poor 1970s startup, and Apple, the $3.7 trillion 21st-century global colossus, is impossible." But this much is clear: The company has always been at its best when its original quirky humanity and willingness to be an outlier shine through. Mark Johnson, Apple employee No. 13: I was in Cupertino just yesterday. It's totally different. They own Cupertino now. Jonathan Rotenberg, who cofounded the Boston Computer Society in 1977 at age 13: People want to hate Apple, because it is big and powerful. But Apple has an underlying moral purpose that is immensely deep and expansive... Mike Markkula, the early retiree from Intel whose guidance and money turned the garage startup into a company: The culture mattered. People were there for the right reasons — to build something transformative — not just to make money. That alignment produced extraordinary results... Steve Wozniak: Everything you do in life should have some element of joy in it. Even your work should have an element of joy... When you're about to die, you have certain memories. And for me, it's not going to be Apple going public or Apple being huge and all that. It's really going to be stories from the period when humble people spotted something that was interesting and followed it I'll be thinking of that when I die, along with a lot of pranks I played. The important things. Read more of this story at Slashdot.