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Last updated 03 Apr, 05:59 PM
BBC News
Experts dispute US account of deadly Iran sports hall strike in Lamerd - Six weapons experts have contested the US claim that video evidence suggests an Iranian missile could have hit the hall.
Watch: Artemis II's journey so far as it leaves Earth's orbit - The crew will not land on the Moon on this current mission, though Nasa is preparing for a potential lunar landing by 2028.
Boy, 14, shot dead in Woolwich named as three teens held - A boy, 14, shot dead in south-east London is named as Eghosa Ogbebor, as three people are arrested.
M&S boss calls for more action on crime and abuse of staff - Thinus Keeve's comments come days after an M&S store was targeted during disorder in south London.
Trump seeks $1.5tn for defence alongside domestic spending cuts - The US president's new budget would cut non-defence spending by 10%, partly by slashing domestic programmes.
The Register
NHS staff resist using Palantir software - Staff reportedly cite ethics concerns, privacy worries, and doubt the platform adds much Palantir's software was brought in to help NHS England improve care and cut delays, but new reports suggest some staff are resisting using it over ethical, privacy, and trust concerns.…
When a billboard survives the wind, but not the boot - This GRUB is not an advert for some tasty fried food Bork!Bork!Bork! It's one thing to bare your undercarriage in private. It's a whole other thing to do so on the side of a road, risking the possibility that passing drivers will question your Linux competence.…
Contractor quaffed his way through Y2K compliance while the client scowled - Discovered once last bug, and that briefcases can hold more beer than you might imagine On Call Y2k Easter means today is a holiday in much of the Reg-reading world, but that won't stop us from delivering another instalment of On Call – the reader contributed column that shares your tech support stories.…
AI models will deceive you to save their own kind - Researchers find leading frontier models all exhibit peer preservation behavior Leading AI models will lie to preserve their own kind, according to researchers behind a study from the Berkeley Center for Responsible Decentralized Intelligence (RDI).…
Google battles Chinese open-weights models with Gemma 4 - Now with a more permissive license, multi-modality, and support for more than 140 languages Google on Thursday unleashed a wave of new open-weights Gemma models optimized for agentic AI and coding, under a more permissive Apache 2.0 license aimed at winning over enterprises.…
New Scientist - Home
We may have seen a 'dirty fireball' star explosion for the first time - An incredibly powerful flash of X-rays spotted by the Einstein Probe telescope appears to be a kind of explosion first theorised more than 30 years ago
The profound effect the heart-brain connection has on your health - Cognitive decline, mental health and heart disease are all shaped by the deep links between heart and brain – with major implications for diagnoses and treatment
How worried should you be about an AI apocalypse? - Fears that artificial intelligence could rise up to wipe out humanity are understandable given our steady diet of sci-fi stories depicting just that, but what is the real risk? Matthew Sparkes looks at what the experts say
New Scientist recommends the engaging Native Nations by Kathleen DuVal - The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week
Multipurpose anti-viral pill may treat colds, norovirus, flu and covid - AI predicted that a forgotten breast cancer drug could be repurposed to treat many respiratory and gastrointestinal viruses, and subsequent animal tests suggests it may be right
Hacker News
iNaturalist - Comments
Show HN: I built a frontpage for personal blogs - Comments
Samsung Magician disk utility takes 18 steps and two reboots to uninstall - Comments
We replaced RAG with a virtual filesystem for our AI documentation assistant - Comments
Understanding young news audiences at a time of rapid change - Comments
Slashdot
Penalties Stack Up As AI Spreads Through the Legal System - Tony Isaac shares a report from NPR: When it comes to using AI, it seems some lawyers just can't help themselves. Last year saw a rapid increase in court sanctions against attorneys for filing briefs containing errors generated by artificial intelligence tools. The most prominent case was that of the lawyers for MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who were fined $3,000 each for filing briefs containing fictitious, AI-generated citations. But as a cautionary tale, it doesn't seem to have had much effect. The numbers started taking off last year, and the rate is still increasing. He counts a total of more than 1,200 to date, of which about 800 are from U.S. courts. "I am surprised that people are still doing this when it's been in the news," says Carla Wale, associate dean of information & technology and director of the law library at the University of Washington School of Law. "Whatever the generative AI tool gives you -- as in, 'Look at these cases' -- you, under the rules of professional conduct, you have to read those cases. You have to read the cases to make sure what you are citing is accurate." "I think that lawyers who understand how to effectively and ethically use generative AI replace lawyers who don't," she says. "That's what I think the future is." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Half of Planned US Data Center Builds Have Been Delayed or Canceled - Despite hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, nearly half of planned U.S. data center projects are being delayed or canceled. "One major reason behind these setbacks is the availability of key electrical components -- such as transformers, switchgear, and batteries -- that are used both at data center sites and outside of them," reports Tom's Hardware. "Meanwhile, grid infrastructure is also stressed by electric vehicles and electrified heating systems." Tom's Hardware reports: Approximately 12 gigawatts (12 GW) of data center capacity is expected to come online in the U.S. in 2026, according to data by market intelligence firm Sightline Climate cited by Bloomberg. Yet only about one-third of that capacity is currently under active construction because of various constraints. Electrical infrastructure represents less than 10% of total data center cost, but it is as vital as compute hardware. A delay in any single element of the power chain can halt the entire project, which makes transformers, switchgear, and similar devices critical items despite their relatively small share of CapEx. Due to high demand, lead times for high-power transformers have expanded dramatically in the U.S.: delivery typically took 24 to 30 months before 2020, but waiting periods can stretch to as long as five years today, according to Sightline Climate cited by Bloomberg. For AI data centers, this is a catastrophe as their deployment cycles are under 18 months. To address shortages, companies are turning to global markets. As a result, Canada, Mexico, and South Korea became the biggest suppliers of high-power transformers for AI data centers to AI data centers. At the same time, imports of high-power transformers from China surged from fewer than 1,500 units in 2022 to more than 8,000 units in 2025 through October, according to Wood Mackenzie data cited by Bloomberg. The volatility of exports from China does not end with transformers, as the PRC accounts for over 40% of U.S. battery imports, while its share in certain transformer and switchgear categories remains near 30%, according to Bloomberg. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Perplexity's 'Incognito Mode' Is a 'Sham,' Lawsuit Says - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Perplexity's AI search engine encourages users to go deeper with their prompts by engaging in chat sessions that a lawsuit has alleged are often shared in their entirety with Google and Meta without users' knowledge or consent. "This happened to every user regardless of whether or not they signed up for a Perplexity account," the lawsuit alleged, while stressing that "enormous volumes of sensitive information from both subscribed and non-subscribed users" are shared. Using developer tools, the lawsuit found that opening prompts are always shared, as are any follow-up questions the search engine asks that a user clicks on. Privacy concerns are seemingly worse for non-subscribed users, the complaint alleged. Their initial prompts are shared with "a URL through which the entire conversation may be accessed by third parties like Meta and Google." Disturbingly, the lawsuit alleged, chats are also shared with personally identifiable information (PII), even when users who want to stay anonymous opt to use Perplexity's "Incognito Mode." That mode, the lawsuit charged, is a "sham." "'Incognito' mode does nothing to protect users from having their conversations shared with Meta and Google," the complaint said. "Even paid users who turned on the 'Incognito' feature still had their conversations shared with Meta and Google, along with their email addresses and other identifiers that allowed Meta and Google to personally identify them." "Perplexity's failure to inform its users that their personal information has been disclosed to Meta and Google or to take any steps to halt the continued disclosure of users' information is malicious, oppressive, and in reckless disregard" of users' rights, the lawsuit alleged. "Nothing on Perplexity's website warns users that their conversations with its AI Machine will be shared with Meta and Google," Doe alleged. "Much less does Perplexity warn subscribed users that its 'Incognito Mode' does not function to protect users' private conversations from disclosure to companies like Meta and Google." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Python Blood Could Hold the Secret To Healthy Weight Loss - Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot writes: CU Boulder researchers are reporting that they have discovered an appetite-suppressing compound in python blood that helps the snakes consume enormous meals and go months without eating yet remain metabolically healthy. The findings were published in the journal Natural Metabolism on March 19, 2026. Pythons can grow as big as a telephone pole, swallow an antelope whole, and go months or even years without eating -- all while maintaining a healthy heart and plenty of muscle mass. In the hours after they eat, research has shown, their heart expands 25% and their metabolism speeds up 4,000-fold to help them digest their meal. The team measured blood samples from ball pythons and Burmese pythons, fed once every 28 days, immediately after they ate a meal. In all, they found 208 metabolites that increased significantly after the pythons ate. One molecule, called para-tyramine-O-sulfate (pTOS) soared 1,000-fold. Further studies, done with Baylor University researchers, showed that when they gave high doses of pTOS to obese or lean mice, it acted on the hypothalamus, the appetite center of the brain, prompting weight loss without causing gastrointestinal problems, muscle loss or declines in energy. The study found that pTOS, which is produced by the snake's gut bacteria, is not present in mice naturally. It is present in human urine at low levels and does increase somewhat after a meal. But because most research is done in mice or rats, pTOS has been overlooked. "We've basically discovered an appetite suppressant that works in mice without some of the side-effects that GLP-1 drugs have," said senior author Leslie Leinwand, a distinguished professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology who has been studying pythons in her lab for two decades. Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy act on the hormone glucagon-like petide-1 (GLP-1). Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Renewables Reached Nearly 50% of Global Electricity Capacity Last Year - Renewables made up nearly half of global installed electricity capacity by the end of 2025, "accounting for 85.6% of global capacity expansion," reports the Register, citing the International Renewable Energy Agency's (IRENA) 2026 Renewable Capacity Statistics report. "Per IRENA's data, that aforementioned 85.6 percent share of new power capacity additions was actually a decrease from 2024, when renewables were about 92 percent of global capacity additions. Yes, the share of total installed power capacity in 2025 rose again, but non-renewable capacity additions also rebounded sharply last year." From the report: Solar, in turn, was the dominant renewable technology, accounting for nearly three-quarters of last year's renewable capacity additions. Those additions totaled 692 GW in 2025, lifting installed renewable capacity by a record 15.5 percent year over year, IRENA noted. By the end of last year, renewables accounted for 49.4 percent of global installed electricity capacity, while variable renewable sources such as solar and wind represented roughly 35 percent of total capacity. For reference, it was only in 2023 that renewable energy sources crossed the threshold of generating 30 percent of the world's electricity. Read more of this story at Slashdot.