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Nice number, but also not much more than a nice advance

France’s Commissariat à L'énergie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives on Tuesday claimed it’s topped China’s recently-established for record maintaining fusion plasma in a tokamak, and therefore taken another step towards building a fusion reactor capable of producing cheap energy.…

At the age of 18, Daniel was at the lowest point of his life. While he had dreams of being a physio, his health was so poor that he stayed home all day eating junk food and playing computer games.

Four people have appeared in court after admitting a series of burglaries in the Braintree area.

Essex RSPCA centres and Danaher Animal Home have plenty of pets that are looking to find new owners

Essex RSPCA centres and Danaher Animal Home have plenty of pets that are looking to find new owners

It could mean the village will expand by more than a third

Microsoft will strip several features from Windows 11's File Explorer for European users to comply with privacy regulations, the company says. The changes, affecting Entra ID accounts in the European Economic Area, remove Recent, Favorites, Details Pane, and Recommended content sections that previously tracked user activity. These features relied on collecting user data to display recently accessed files and personalized recommendations. The privacy-focused update, part of Windows 11 preview build 26120.3281, results in a streamlined File Explorer interface.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Justin Bieber supported wife Hailey Bieber at the launch of her pop-up Rhode store in Los Angeles on Tuesday night. They posed together and she stuck her tongue out.

Among the new claims from the 37-year-old actress Lively included that two other It Ends With Us actresses are about to come forward and provide evidence in support of her allegations.

The abandoned van was one of the first clues internet sleuths stumbled upon when Petito disappeared in the summer of 2021 while on a cross-country road trip with Brian Laundrie, her fiancé.

A change to laws around the sale and purchase of knives has been unveiled by the government as an Essex campaigner says she fears the changes don't go far enough

A change to laws around the sale and purchase of knives has been unveiled by the government as an Essex campaigner says she fears the changes don't go far enough

"[O]ur intrepid China reporter, Caiwei Chen, has identified a new trend unfolding within China's tech scene: Companies that were dominant in electric vehicles are betting big on translating that success into developing humanoid robots," writes MIT Technology Review's James O'Donnell. "I spoke with her about what she found out and what it might mean for Trump's policies and the rest of the globe..." An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from the report: Your story looks at electric-vehicle makers in China that are starting to work on humanoid robots, but I want to ask about a crazy stat. In China, 53% of vehicles sold are either electric or hybrid, compared with 8% in the US. What explains that? Price is a huge factor -- there are countless EV brands competing at different price points, making them both affordable and high-quality. Government incentives also play a big role. In Beijing, for example, trading in an old car for an EV gets you 10,000 RMB (about $1,500), and that subsidy was recently doubled. Plus, finding public charging and battery-swapping infrastructure is much less of a hassle than in the US. You open your story noting that China's recent New Year Gala, watched by billions of people, featured a cast of humanoid robots, dancing and twirling handkerchiefs. We've covered how sometimes humanoid videos can be misleading. What did you think? I would say I was relatively impressed -- the robots showed good agility and synchronization with the music, though their movements were simpler than human dancers'. The one trick that is supposed to impress the most is the part where they twirl the handkerchief with one finger, toss it into the air, and then catch it perfectly. This is the signature of the Yangko dance, and having performed it once as a child, I can attest to how difficult the trick is even for a human! There was some skepticism on the Chinese internet about how this was achieved and whether they used additional reinforcement like a magnet or a string to secure the handkerchief, and after watching the clip too many times, I tend to agree. President Trump has already imposed tariffs on China and is planning even more. What could the implications be for China's humanoid sector? Unitree's H1 and G1 models are already available for purchase and were showcased at CES this year. Large-scale US deployment isn't happening yet, but China's lower production costs make these robots highly competitive. Given that 65% of the humanoid supply chain is in China, I wouldn't be surprised if robotics becomes the next target in the US-China tech war. In the US, humanoid robots are getting lots of investment, but there are plenty of skeptics who say they're too clunky, finicky, and expensive to serve much use in factory settings. Are attitudes different in China? Skepticism exists in China too, but I think there's more confidence in deployment, especially in factories. With an aging population and a labor shortage on the horizon, there's also growing interest in medical and caregiving applications for humanoid robots. DeepSeek revived the conversation about chips and the way the US seeks to control where the best chips end up. How do the chip wars affect humanoid-robot development in China? Training humanoid robots currently doesn't demand as much computing power as training large language models, since there isn't enough physical movement data to feed into models at scale. But as robots improve, they'll need high-performance chips, and US sanctions will be a limiting factor. Chinese chipmakers are trying to catch up, but it's a challenge.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ALISON BOSHOFF: The surprise though, is that these two might be one and the same person: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

Police have launched an extensive search for British businessman Campbell Scott (pictured) who disappeared from his luxury hotel in Nairobi. 

That's the way the cookie melts

A US Army soldier suspected of hacking AT&T and Verizon has admitted leaking online people's private call records.…

Seven members of a South American crime gang have been charged for a string of burglaries that affected a slew of sports stars like Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes.

They are great for adding a little whimsy to your bedtime routine

Cabinet minister Jonathan Reynolds has been taken to task by a legal watchdog for wrongly claiming to be a solicitor.

Blake Lively referred to Justin Baldoni as a 'creep' as she confided about his 'shocking' behavior on set of their movie, It Ends With Us, in a text to a mutual friend.