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SQL Server and Cosmos DB added to data lake platform as lure for building AI features into transactional systems

Microsoft is throwing more transactional database systems into its Fabric analytics and data lake environment in expectation the proximity will help users that are adding AI to their systems.…

Rice plants can inherit tolerance to cold without changes to their genomes, according to a decade-long study carried out by researchers in China. From a report: The work, published in Cell this week, strengthens the evidence for a form of evolution in which environmental pressures induce heritable changes that do not alter an organism's DNA. The study conducted experiments that demonstrate, for the first time, the mechanism for these changes -- 'epigenetic' tweaks to chemical markers on the plant's DNA that don't actually tinker with the sequences themselves. "What they're showing is extremely convincing; I would say that it's a landmark in the field," says Leandro Quadrana, a plant geneticist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris-Saclay. Michael Skinner, who studies epigenetic inheritance at Washington State University in Pullman, says the study adds to the growing body of evidence challenging the prevailing view of evolution that the only way that adaptations emerge is through gradual natural selection of randomly arising DNA mutations. This study shows that the environment isn't just a passive actor in evolution, but a selective force inducing a targeted change.

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Bank accounts, personal details all hoovered up in the attack

Nova Scotia Power on Friday confirmed it had been hit by a ransomware attack that began earlier this spring and disrupted certain IT systems, and admitted the crooks leaked data belonging to an unspecified number of its roughly 500,000 customers online. The stolen info may have included billing details and, for those on autopay, bank account numbers.…

Harvard University's Galileo Project is using AI to automate the search for unidentified anomalous phenomena, marking a significant shift in how academics approach what was once considered fringe research. The project operates a Massachusetts observatory equipped with infrared cameras, acoustic sensors, and radio-frequency analyzers that continuously scan the sky for unusual objects. Researchers Laura Domine and Richard Cloete are training machine learning algorithms to recognize all normal aerial phenomena -- planes, birds, drones, weather balloons -- so the system can flag genuine anomalies for human analysis. The team uses computer vision software called YOLO (You Only Look Once) and has generated hundreds of thousands of synthetic images to train their models, though the software currently identifies only 36% of aircraft captured by infrared cameras. The Pentagon is pursuing parallel efforts through its All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which has examined over 1,800 UAP reports and identified 50 to 60 cases as "true anomalies" that government scientists cannot explain. AARO has developed its own sensor suite called Gremlin, using similar technology to Harvard's observatory. Both programs represent the growing legitimization of UAP research following 2017 Defense Department disclosures about military encounters with unexplained aerial phenomena.

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Fastly acquisition asks that redirects be set up before December 31

Three years after confirming its acquisition by Fastly, Glitch is pulling the plug on its app hosting platform.…

Cyberbaddies are coming for your M365 creds, US infosec agency warns

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning that SaaS companies are under fire from criminals on the prowl for cloud apps with weak security.…

Glitch, the coding platform where developers can share and remix projects, will soon no longer offer its core feature: hosting apps on the web. From a report: In an update on Thursday, Glitch CEO Anil Dash said it will stop hosting projects and close user profiles on July 8th, 2025 -- but stopped short of saying that it's shutting down completely. Users will be able to access their dashboard and download code for their projects through the end of 2025, and Glitch is working on a new feature that allows users to redirect their project subdomains. The platform has also stopped taking new Pro subscriptions, but it will continue to honor existing subscriptions until July 8th.

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A simple text editor that dates back to Windows 1.0 is getting smartified

Microsoft has continued to shovel AI into its built-in Windows inbox apps, and now it's rolling out a Notepad update that will use Copilot to write text for you.…

Cornell University researchers have solved a kitchen mystery by demonstrating that sharp knives produce fewer and slower-moving droplets when cutting onions compared to dull blades. The findings used high-speed cameras and particle tracking to analyze droplet formation during onion cutting at speeds up to 20,000 frames per second. The team discovered that onion droplets form through a two-stage process: an initial violent ejection driven by internal pressure, followed by slower fragmentation of liquid streams in air. Blunter blades create up to 40 times more droplets because the onion's tough outer skin acts as a barrier, allowing the softer interior tissue to compress significantly before rupturing and releasing pressurized liquid. The research reveals that droplets are ejected at speeds between 1 and 40 meters per second, with the fastest ones posing the greatest risk of reaching a cook's eyes. Beyond tear reduction, the study suggests sharp knives may also limit the spread of foodborne pathogens, since atomized droplets can carry bacteria like Salmonella from contaminated cutting boards.

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The coffee shows no signs of cooling

Feature It was 30 years ago when the first public release of the Java programming language introduced the world to Write Once, Run Anywhere – and showed devs something cuddlier than C and C++.…

An interesting piece on Construction Physics that examines how Japan transformed discarded American wartime shipbuilding techniques into a revolutionary manufacturing system that captured nearly half the global market by 1970. The story reveals the essential ingredients for industrial dominance: government backing, organizational alignment, relentless will to improve, and the systematic coordination needed to turn existing technologies into something entirely new. A few excerpts: During WWII, the US constructed an unprecedented shipbuilding machine. By assembling ships from welded, prefabricated blocks, the US built a huge number of cargo ships incredibly quickly, overwhelming Germany's u-boats and helping to win the war. But when the war was over, this shipbuilding machine was dismantled. Industrialists like Henry Kaiser and Stephen Bechtel, who operated some of the US's most efficient wartime shipyards, left the shipbuilding business. Prior to the war, the US had been an uncompetitive commercial shipbuilder producing a small fraction of commercial oceangoing ships, and that's what it became again. At the height of the war the US was producing nearly 90% of the world's ships. By the 1950s, it produced just over 2%. But the lessons from the US's shipbuilding machine weren't forgotten. After the war, practitioners brought them to Japan, where they would continue to evolve, eventually allowing Japan to build ships faster and cheaper than almost anyone else in the world. [...] The third strategy that formed the core of modern shipbuilding methods was statistical process control. The basic idea behind process control is that it's impossible to make an industrial process perfectly reliable. There will always be some variation in what it produces: differences in part dimensions, material strength, chemical composition, and so on. But while some variation is inherent to the process (and must be accepted), much of the variation is from specific causes that can be hunted down and eliminated. By analyzing the variation in a process, undesirable sources of variation can be removed. This makes a process work more reliably and predictably, reducing waste and rework from parts that are outside acceptable tolerances.

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From bit barn to algae farm?

Euro datacenter operator Data4 is trialling a project to reuse heat from its servers and captured carbon dioxide to grow algae that can then be used in the agri-food or pharmacology sectors.…

An anonymous reader shares a report: Vietnam's technology ministry has instructed telecommunication service providers to block the messaging app Telegram for not cooperating in combating alleged crimes committed by its users, according to a government document reviewed by Reuters. The document, dated May 21 and signed by the deputy head of the telecom department at the technology ministry, ordered telecommunication companies to take measures to block Telegram and report on them to the ministry by June 2.

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Aircraft Hazard Area now stretches 1,600 nautical miles

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has given SpaceX the go-ahead to launch Starship Flight 9, but has nearly doubled the size of the vehicle's Aircraft Hazard Area (AHA).…

AI-optimized CPUs promise 4.6GHz clocks, at least for one in eight cores

Computex When Nvidia first teased its Arm-based Grace CPU back in 2021, many saw it as a threat to Intel and AMD. Four years later, the Arm-based silicon is at the heart of the GPU giant's most powerful AI systems, but it has not yet replaced x86 entirely.…

President Donald Trump on Friday threatened Apple with a 25% tariff unless the company manufactures iPhones sold in America domestically rather than in India or other overseas locations. Trump posted on Truth Social that he had "long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple" about his expectation for US-based iPhone production, warning that failure to comply would trigger the substantial tariff penalty. The ultimatum follows Trump's expressed displeasure with Cook during his recent Middle East trip over Apple's plans to build iPhones at newly constructed Indian facilities. Apple has historically maintained that domestic iPhone manufacturing remains unfeasible due to insufficient skilled engineering talent and substantially higher production costs compared to Asian facilities.

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Worries about uncertainty, even as AI pushes revenue and profit higher

Chinese hardware giant Lenovo thought it had prepared for a trade war, but its plan proved insufficient once the US started to rapidly change its tax policies in imported goods.…

Europe has created just 14 companies worth more than $10 billion over the past 50 years compared to 241 in the United States, underscoring the continent's struggle to compete in the global technology race despite having a larger population and similar education levels. The productivity gap has widened dramatically since the digital revolution began. European workers produced 95% of what their American counterparts made per hour in the late 1990s, but that figure has dropped to less than 80% today. Only four of the world's top 50 technology companies are European, and none of the top 10 quantum computing investors operate from Europe. Several high-profile European entrepreneurs have relocated to Silicon Valley, including Thomas Odenwald, who quit German AI startup Aleph Alpha after two months, citing slow decision-making and lack of stock options for employees. "If I look at how quickly things change in Silicon Valley...it's happening so fast that I don't think Europe can keep up with that speed," Odenwald said. The challenges extend beyond individual companies. European businesses spend 40% of their IT budgets on regulatory compliance, according to Amazon surveys, while complex labor laws create three-month notice periods and lengthy noncompete clauses.

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It's not radical, but it is slim and pretty – usually a winning combination

AnduinOS, a one-man project from a Chinese Microsoft engineer, is quite a new Ubuntu remix that reshapes GNOME in the image of Windows 11.…

Care board defers decision to adopt national system

Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board (ICB) has decided not to adopt a national data platform – prescribed by the UK government and run by Palantir – until it has more evidence of the benefits and risks.…