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Scientists have recreated in a laboratory the sensory pathway that transmits feelings of pain to the human brain, in a breakthrough that could lead to better treatments. Financial Times: A team at Stanford University in California is the first to combine different neurons grown from human stem cells into a functioning brain circuit in a lab dish. Their experiments, published in Nature on Wednesday, illustrate scientists' rapid progress in replicating living tissues and organs through synthetic biology. When the Stanford scientists exposed the brain circuit they had created to sensory stimulants, they observed waves of electrical activity travelling along it. The molecule that makes chilli peppers hot, capsaicin, immediately induced a strong response. [...] The synthetic brain circuits could be used to screen for better-targeted therapies for pain that tone down excessive waves of neurotransmission, without affecting the brain's reward circuitry as opioids do, project leader [Sergiu] Pasca said. The assembloids themselves cannot be said to "feel pain," he emphasised: "They transmit nervous signals that are processed by a second pathway going deeper into the brain and giving us the aversive, emotional component of pain."

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New research suggests that given the right kind of training, AI bots can deliver mental health therapy with as much efficacy as -- or more than -- human clinicians. From a report: The recent study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, shows results from the first randomized clinical trial for AI therapy. Researchers from Dartmouth College built the bot as a way of taking a new approach to a longstanding problem: The U.S. continues to grapple with an acute shortage of mental health providers. "I think one of the things that doesn't scale well is humans," says Nick Jacobson, a clinical psychologist who was part of this research team. For every 340 people in the U.S., there is just one mental health clinician, according to some estimates. While many AI bots already on the market claim to offer mental health care, some have dubious results or have even led people to self-harm. More than five years ago, Jacobson and his colleagues began training their AI bot in clinical best practices. The project, says Jacobson, involved much trial and error before it led to quality outcomes. "The effects that we see strongly mirror what you would see in the best evidence-based trials of psychotherapy," says Jacobson. He says these results were comparable to "studies with folks given a gold standard dose of the best treatment we have available."

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Committed $80B capex for DCs as recently as January. We wonder what changed?

World War Fee Microsoft has called a halt to the construction of three datacenter campuses in central Ohio, in a sign the tech giant is having to reappraise its infrastructure requirements amid uncertain economic circumstances and concerns over AI demand.…

And coming up next, Trump's World War Fee

The hint of optimism to be found in February's tech jobs numbers? Yeah, it's pretty much gone, according to multiple analyses of the latest data out from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics for March. …

Samsung Electronics and Google Cloud are jointly entering the consumer robotics market with Ballie, a yellow, soccer-ball-shaped robot equipped with a video projector and powered by Google's Gemini AI models. First previewed in 2020, the long-delayed device will finally launch this summer in the US and South Korea. The mobile companion uses small wheels to navigate homes autonomously and integrates with Samsung's SmartThings platform to control smart home devices. Running on Samsung's Tizen operating system, Ballie can manage calendars, answer questions, handle phone calls, and project video content from services including YouTube and Netflix. Samsung EVP Jay Kim described it as a "completely new Ballie" compared to the 2020 version, with Google Cloud integration being the most significant change. The robot leverages Gemini for understanding commands, searching the web, and processing visual data for navigation, while using Samsung's AI models for accessing personal information.

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Even though policing department spent 2 years on study predicting which criminals will become killers

The UK's justice department has confirmed it is working on developing algorithms to predict which criminals will later become murderers.…

Chocolate Factory doubles down on enterprise security at Cloud Next

Google will today reveal a new unified security platform that analysts think can help it battle Microsoft for a bigger chunk of the enterprise infosec market.…

The 1990s called – they're impressed

The FreeDOS Project has released version 1.4 of its fully open source DOS-compatible OS – but you'll need a BIOS for bare metal.…

China retaliated against the US after new tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, announcing it would raise the tariff on US goods to 84%, escalating the trade conflict between the world's two largest economies. From a report: The Chinese countermeasures are effective April 10, according to a government statement Wednesday. China's move came after Trump's latest tariffs went into force at midday Wednesday in Beijing, taking the cumulative rate announced this year to 104%. A day earlier, China vowed to "fight to the end" if the US insists on new tariffs. Where US-China Decoupling Is Hardest: After decades of trade integration, Chinese companies have become increasingly essential suppliers of goods and materials that range from niche to ones many Americans can barely do without. At $41 billion last year, smartphones -- largely consisting of Apple's iPhones -- were the single largest US import from China. More than 70% of all smartphone imports are from China, according to Bloomberg analysis of 2024 trade data from the US International Trade Commission. Farther afield, China supplies the entirety of hair from badgers and other animals imported into the US for brush-making. It also delivers almost 90% of the gaming consoles US consumers buy from overseas. Over 99% of the electric toasters, heated blankets, calcium, and alarm clocks the US imports are from China. Ditto for more than 90% of folding umbrellas, vacuum flasks, artificial flowers, LED lamps, and wooden coat-hangers.

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SenseShield the latest company to fall foul of 24H2

Microsoft has thrown up a Windows 11 24H2 compatibility hold for devices running SenseShield Technology's sprotect.sys driver.…

Updated programs suggest ARIA will keep singing for another year

The UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) has appointed a second tranche of program leaders and announced new program areas, suggesting confidence in its long-term funding.…

Established software companies hoping to ride the AI wave are facing a stiff headwind: many of their potential customers are building AI tools themselves. This do-it-yourself approach is channeling billions in spending towards cloud computing providers but leaving traditional software vendors struggling to capitalize, complicating their AI growth plans. Cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services are pulling in an estimated $22 billion from AI services, with Azure alone capturing $11.3 billion. Yet, software application vendors have collectively garnered only about $2 billion from selling AI products. Stripping out Microsoft's popular Copilot tools, that figure drops to a mere $450 million across all other vendors combined. Why are companies choosing the harder path of building? Feedback gathered by UBS points to several key factors driving this "persistent DIY trend." Many business uses for AI are highly specific or narrow, making generic software unsuitable. Off-the-shelf AI products are often considered too expensive, and crucially, the essential ingredients -- powerful AI models, cloud computing access, and the company's own data -- are increasingly available directly, lessening the need for traditional software packages.

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Strangely no eighth tip to use something else

Microsoft has published seven tips for getting the most out of Windows 11, and the pitches for the operating system – which has failed to win hearts and minds of users – are not very compelling.…

Public-private partnership zaps photons at hotspots, hopes to ship by 2027

A startup backed by Sandia National Laboratories thinks it's found a cool new way to keep the world's supercomputers and datacenters cool enough to run efficiently: Zap ‘em with lasers.…

Recently formed AI Preferences Working Group has August deadline to develop ideas on how to tell crawlers to go away, or come for a feast

The Internet Engineering Task Force has chartered a group it hopes will create a standard that lets content creators tell AI developers whether it’s OK to use their work.…

The world used clean power sources to meet more than 40% of its electricity demand last year for the first time since the 1940s, figures show. The Guardian: A report by the energy thinktank Ember said the milestone was powered by a boom in solar power capacity, which has doubled in the last three years. The report found that solar farms had been the world's fastest-growing source of energy for the last 20 consecutive years. Phil MacDonald, Ember's managing director, said: "Solar power has become the engine of the global energy transition. Paired with battery storage, solar is set to be an unstoppable force. As the fastest-growing and largest source of new electricity, it is critical in meeting the world's ever-increasing demand for electricity." Overall, solar power remains a relatively small part of the global energy system. It made up almost 7% of the world's electricity last year, according to Ember, while wind power made up just over 8% of the global power system. The fast-growing technologies remain dwarfed by hydro power, which has remained relatively steady in recent years, and made up 14% of the worldâ(TM)s electricity in 2024.

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Fake job seekers using AI tools to impersonate candidates are increasingly targeting U.S. companies with remote positions, creating a growing security threat across industries. By 2028, one in four global job applicants will be fake, according to Gartner. These imposters use AI to fabricate photo IDs, generate employment histories, and provide interview answers, often targeting cybersecurity and cryptocurrency firms, CNBC reports. Once hired, fraudulent employees can install malware to demand ransoms, steal customer data, or simply collect salaries they wouldn't otherwise obtain, according to Vijay Balasubramaniyan, CEO of Pindrop Security. The problem extends beyond tech companies. Last year, the Justice Department alleged more than 300 U.S. firms inadvertently hired impostors with ties to North Korea, including major corporations across various sectors.

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Feds claim creaky COBOL, user spike is real reason key portal now flaky

The United States Social Security Administration's internet portal has frequently gone offline in recent weeks, and presented inaccurate or incomplete information to users, perhaps because of changes steered by Elon Musk's cost-trimming DOGE unit.…

Lawsuit claims sick cyber-voyeurism went undetected for years, using hundreds of PCs, due to lax infosec

A now-former pharmacist at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) has been accused of compromising the US healthcare organization's IT systems to ogle female clinicians using webcams at their workplace and at their homes.…

Hackers intercepted about 103 bank regulators' emails for more than a year, gaining access to highly sensitive financial information, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday, citing two people familiar with the matter and a draft letter to Congress. From the report: The attackers were able to monitor employee emails at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency after breaking into an administrator's account, said the people, asking not to be identified because the information isn't public. OCC on Feb. 12 confirmed that there had been unauthorized activity on its systems after a Microsoft security team the day before had notified OCC about unusual network behavior, according to the draft letter. The OCC is an independent bureau of the Treasury Department that regulates and supervises all national banks, federal savings associations and the federal branches and agencies of foreign banks -- together holding trillions of dollars in assets. OCC on Tuesday notified Congress about the compromise, describing it as a "major information security incident." "The analysis concluded that the highly sensitive bank information contained in the emails and attachments is likely to result in demonstrable harm to public confidence," OCC Chief Information Officer Kristen Baldwin wrote in the draft letter to Congress that was seen by Bloomberg News. While US government agencies and officials have long been the targets of state-sponsored espionage campaigns, multiple high-profile breaches have surfaced over the past year.

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