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Workaround sent to the big OOBE in the sky with latest Insider builds

Microsoft is closing a popular loophole that allowed users to install Windows 11 without a Microsoft account.…

Space sensors and UAVs at sea top MoD's list in new wave of cutting-edge projects

The UK is pressing ahead with cutting-edge defense projects, the latest including research to protect satellites from laser attack and a technology demonstrator for a jet-powered drone to operate from Royal Navy carriers.…

Department eyes new app to tap national ANPR data for live alerts, searches, and integrations

The UK's Home Office is inviting tech suppliers to take part in a £60 million "market engagement" for an application that uses data from automated number plate recognition (ANPR) systems.…

CodeMender has been generating fixes for vulnerabilities in open source projects

Google says its AI-powered security repair tool CodeMender has been helping secure open source projects through automated patch creation, subject to human approval.…

alternative_right shares a report from ScienceDaily: Scientists may have finally uncovered the mystery behind ultra-high-energy cosmic rays -- the most powerful particles known in the universe. A team from NTNU suggests that colossal winds from supermassive black holes could be accelerating these particles to unimaginable speeds. These winds, moving at half the speed of light, might not only shape entire galaxies but also fling atomic nuclei across the cosmos with incredible energy. [...] But what on earth does that mean? The Milky Way is the neighborhood in the universe where you and I live. Our Sun and solar system are part of this galaxy, along with at least 100 billion other stars. "There is a black hole called Sagittarius-A* located right in the centre of the Milky Way. This black hole is currently in a quiet phase where it isn't consuming any stars, as there is not enough matter in the vicinity," [said postdoctoral fellow Enrico Peretti from the Universite Paris Cite]. This contrasts with growing, supermassive, active black holes that consume up to several times the mass of our own Sun each year. "A tiny portion of the material can be pushed away by the force of the black hole before it is pulled in. As a result, around half of these supermassive black holes create winds that move through the universe at up to half the speed of light," Peretti said. We have known about these gigantic winds for approximately ten years. The winds from these black holes can affect galaxies. By blowing away gases, they can prevent new stars from forming, for example. This is dramatic enough in itself, but Oikonomou and her colleagues looked at something else, much smaller, that these winds could be the cause of." It is possible that these powerful winds accelerate the particles that create the ultra-high-energy radiation," said [lead author Domenik Ehlert]. The findings have been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The heads of UK physics departments say their subject is facing a national crisis as one in four warns that their university departments are in danger of closing because of funding pressures. In an anonymous survey of department heads by the Institute of Physics (IoP), 26% said they faced potential closure of their department within the next two years, while 60% said they expected courses to be reduced. Four out of five departments said they were making staff cuts, and many were considering mergers or consolidation in what senior physicists described as a severe threat to the UK's future success. [...] To avoid "irreversible damage", the IoP is asking for immediate government action including funding to support existing labs and research facilities, as well as setting up an "early warning system" to monitor departments at risk of closure, and reduce pressures affecting international student recruitment. In the longer term it is calling for radical reforms in higher education funding to allow universities to meet the full costs of teaching nationally important subjects such as physics. Sir Keith Burnett, the IoP's president and a former chair of physics at Oxford University, said: "While we understand the pressures on public finances, it would be negligent not to sound the alarm for a national capability fundamental to our wellbeing, competitiveness and the defense of the realm. "We are walking towards a cliff edge but there is still time to avert a crisis which would lead not just to lost potential but to many physics departments shutting down altogether. Physics researchers and talented physics students are our future but if action isn't taken now to stabilize, strengthen and sustain one of our greatest national assets, we risk leaving them high and dry." Thomas said the erosion in value of domestic tuition fees and falling numbers of international students were behind the financial pressures, with smaller physics departments the most at risk. "What that means is we will get more and more concentration of where physics is being taught and lose geographical distribution. That goes against aims of widening participation and means some disadvantaged groups will miss out on opportunities to study physics, and it's important that we recognize that," Thomas said.

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Paramount has acquired The Free Press, Bari Weiss's Substack-born media outlet, for $150 million and appointed Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News. The move effectively places a conservative-leaning Substack writer at the helm of a legacy news network, following the FCC's approval of the Skydance-Paramount merger, which required CBS to feature a broader "diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum." The Verge reports: Before starting The Free Press, Weiss worked as an op-ed and book review editor at The Wall Street Journal from 2013 to 2017 and later became an op-ed editor and writer at The New York Times to expand the publication's stable of conservative columnists during Donald Trump's first term. She resigned from the NYT in 2020, citing an "illiberal environment." Weiss started a Substack newsletter in 2021, called Common Sense, which later evolved into The Free Press, touting itself as a media company "built on the ideals that were once the bedrock of great American journalism." As noted in the press release, The Free Press has grown its revenue 82 percent over the past year, while subscribers increased 86 percent to 1.5 million, 170,000 of which are paid subscriptions.

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AstraZeneca has licensed Algen Biotechnologies' AI-powered gene-editing platform, AlgenBrain, to develop immune-related therapies in a deal worth up to $555 million. Reuters reports: AstraZeneca will get exclusive rights to develop and sell approved therapies, if any, that target immune system-related disorders in exchange for upfront and milestone payments to Algen. AstraZeneca has been advancing its cell and gene therapy capabilities through acquisitions and partnerships as it works towards its target of $80 billion in sales by 2030. Globally too, drugmakers are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence for drug development. Monday's deal, however, does not include AstraZeneca buying a stake in the company, Algen CEO and co-founder Chun-Hao Huang told Reuters in an interview. "Together with AstraZeneca's deep expertise in translational science and clinical development, we aim to uncover new biological insights to accelerate the development of novel therapies," Huang said. Algen was spun out from the UC Berkeley lab where biochemist Jennifer Doudna pioneered the CRISPR technology that won her the Nobel Prize. The biotech firm's AI platform, AlgenBrain, can map genes to disease outcomes, helping the companies decide their development focus for targeted therapies.

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California biotech entrepreneur and former magician Serhat Gumrukcu has been found guilty of orchestrating the 2018 murder of his business rival Gregory Davis, who had threatened to expose Gumrukcu's fraudulent dealings. He faces sentencing in November. SFGATE reports: Seven years ago, Turkish national Serhat Gumrukcu, 42, of Los Angeles, was negotiating a multimillion-dollar biotech merger built off his work on a supposed HIV cure. The deal was put in jeopardy by a former business partner named Gregory Davis, 49, who had threatened to bring legal action against Gumrukcu for fraudulent activities relating to a previous failed oil commodities deal, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a news release last week. Gumrukcu, a magician-turned-scientist who admitted to buying his medical degree from a Russian university, lived in a Hollywood mansion and partied with Oscar winners and movie producers, according to VTDigger. He stood to make millions from the merger of his biotech company Enochian BioSciences. [...] In 2017, upon learning that Davis, a father of six from Danville, Vermont, could potentially spoil his fortune-making deal, Gumrukcu set in motion a hit on the former business partner. The murder-for-hire plot involved four men in total, prosecutors said. Gumrukcu had a close friend from Las Vegas, Berk Eratay, approach a third man, Aron Ethridge to find a hit man to kill Davis. The shooter, 37-year-old Montana man Jerry Banks, arrived at Davis' home on Jan. 6, 2018, in a vehicle fitted with flashing red and blue lights and posed as a deputy U.S. marshal. After abducting Davis, Banks shot him dead in the vehicle and left the body partially buried in a snowbank nearby. Investigators soon narrowed in on Gumrukcu after discovering emails between him and Davis revealing tensions over the failed oil deal. Gumrukcu was interviewed twice by the FBI and made false statements on both occasions, federal prosecutors said. Further inspection of cellphone data, bank information and messages identified the four men involved in the kidnapping and killing of Davis.

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