THURSDAY, 03 APRIL 2025, 03:20
NaNoWriMo, the nonprofit behind the annual novel-writing challenge, is shutting down after 20 years but will keep its websites online temporarily so users can retrieve their content. The Guardian reports: A 27-minute YouTube video posted the same day by the organization’s interim executive director Kilby Blades explained that it had to close due to ongoing financial problems, which were...
I’ve become addicted to the show. But as a scientist I wonder: how many couples actually stay together?
It has finally happened. After a decade of avoiding the show, my wife and I decided that we would try out the new season of Married at First Sight. We consume quite a bit of reality TV, so it’s not that we avoided it precisely, but something about the idea of watching people struggle to build...
A joint investigation found that at least five popular VPN apps on the App Store and Google Play have ties to Qihoo 360, a Chinese company with military links. Apple has since removed two of the apps but has not confirmed the status of the remaining three, which 9to5Mac notes have “racked up more than a million downloads.” The five apps in question are Turbo VPN, VPN Proxy Master, Thunder VPN,...
President Donald Trump says taxing imports will strengthen domestic manufacturing. Hours before announcing new tariffs, his administration cut support for centers that help US firms do just that.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Anthropic announced on Wednesday that it’s launching a new Claude for Education tier, an answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Edu plan. The new tier is aimed at higher education, and gives students, faculty, and other staff access to Anthropic’s AI chatbot, Claude, with a few additional capabilities. One piece of Claude for Education is “Learning...
The Heard and McDonald Islands are among the dozens of targets of President Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs. But they have no exports, because no one lives there.
Survey finds vast majority of doctors are concerned at impact of health inequalities on their patients
Doctors have reported a rise in the number of patients with Victorian diseases such as scabies, as the Royal College of Physicians urged the government to do more to fight poverty.
The survey of 882 doctors found 89% were concerned about the impact of health inequalities on their patients,...
According to Bloomberg, India is set for a surge in tech startup IPOs valued at around $100 billion by 2027, with major players like Flipkart, PhonePe, and Oyo preparing to go public. From a report: A report from Indian investment bank The Rainmaker Group suggests that the new wave of IPO hopefuls is in a stronger financial position than their predecessors. Many of the startups that were listed...
To mark Microsoft’s 50th anniversary, Bill Gates has released the original Altair BASIC source code he co-wrote with Paul Allen, calling it the “coolest code” he’s ever written and a symbol of the company’s humble beginnings. Thurrott reports: “Before there was Office or Windows 95 or Xbox or AI, there was Altair BASIC,” Bill Gates writes on his Gates Notes website. “In 1975, Paul Allen and I...
Billionaire Tim Stokely partnered with a crypto company to bid for TikTok as the social media company faces a deadline to either sell or be banned in the US. Amazon also placed a last minute bid.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Europol has shut down one of the largest dark web pedophile networks in the world, prompting dozens of arrests worldwide and threatening that more are to follow. Launched in 2021, KidFlix allowed users to join for free to preview low-quality videos depicting child sex abuse materials (CSAM). To see higher-resolution videos, users had to...
The Meta chief, who was at the White House on Wednesday, has discussed the case with the president and his aides. A trial is set to start in less than two weeks.
The iPhone maker spent years trying to move production of some products out of China to avoid tariffs. But now that may not matter.
Service sectors make up the vast bulk of the American economy, which gives trading partners some clout in trade negotiations.
Online scam operations across Southeast Asia are rapidly adapting to recent crackdowns, adopting AI and expanding globally despite the release of 7,000 trafficking victims from compounds along the Myanmar-Thailand border, experts say. These releases represent just a fraction of an estimated 100,000 people trapped in facilities run by criminal syndicates that rake in billions through investment...
The European Commission has announced its intention to join the ongoing debate about lawful access to data and end-to-end encryption while unveiling a new internal security strategy aimed to address ongoing threats. From a report: ProtectEU, as the strategy has been named, describes the general areas that the bloc’s executive would like to address in the coming years although as a strategy it...
Agency canceled about $17bn in grants for projects that go beyond Trump’s orders targeting diversity, suit alleges
US politics live – latest updates
A group of public health experts and major labor organizations are suing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) over what they call an “ongoing ideological purge” of scientific research.
In a legal complaint filed on Wednesday, the American Public...
Microsoft is pushing businesses to shift away from perpetual Office licenses to Microsoft 365 subscriptions, citing collaboration limitations and rising IT costs associated with standalone software. “You may have started noticing limitations,” Microsoft says in a post. “Your apps are stuck on your desktop, limiting productivity anytime you’re away from your office. You can’t easily access your...
The FBI searched two homes of Indiana University Bloomington data privacy professor Xiaofeng Wang last week, following months of university inquiries into whether he received unreported research funding from China, WIRED reported Wednesday. Wang, who leads the Center for Distributed Confidential Computing established with a $3 million National Science Foundation grant, was terminated on March...
An AI system has for the first time figured out how to collect diamonds in the hugely popular video game Minecraft — a difficult task requiring multiple steps — without being shown how to play. Its creators say the system, called Dreamer, is a step towards machines that can generalize knowledge learned in one domain to new situations, a major goal of AI. From a report: “Dreamer marks a...
Jacobite leader was unknowingly ‘following the footprints’ of megalosaurs after escaping to the Isle of Skye in 1746
When Bonnie Prince Charlie fled the Scottish Highlands after defeat at the Battle of Culloden, his route may have crossed the fossilised footsteps of massive meat-eating dinosaurs, researchers say.
Newly discovered impressions at Prince Charles’s Point on the Isle of Skye,...