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Andy Burnham's allegation of 'clear' Russian interference in the Brexit vote was a slur on the legitimacy of that historic referendum.

It's 2026 and Virtzilla reckons it's OK to pay for MFA

Researchers have created a strengthened "BioPykrete" by combining ice with cellulose nanocrystals and a custom protein that binds the plant-based crystals to the ice structure. In small-scale tests, the material was about 10 times stronger than regular ice and absorbed 70 times more energy before breaking. ScienceAlert reports: Instead of wood pulp's larger, disordered fibers, the researchers used cellulose nanocrystals here. Cellulose is the main structural material in plants, and in nanocrystal form, it can act as a microscopic strengthening agent for other materials, including ice -- essentially stopping cracks from spreading easily. The protein used here was called CBM3a-AFPIII, a combination of an antifreeze protein (AFP) and a carbohydrate-binding module (CBM). Its job was to act like glue, keeping the cellulose nanocrystals and ice bonded together. It's a clever approach, and the researchers think that by tweaking their ingredients and methods, they might be able to improve their 'super ice' even further. "Optimizing solidification kinetics and freezing protocols, alongside developing diverse AFP-CBM variants, could yield even higher-strength composites," write the researchers. Besides further tests of the durability of the material, the researchers are also keen to take a closer look at how cracks propagate through BioPykrete, to confirm that the underlying strengthening mechanisms are what they think they are. Further down the line, this approach could open up a whole new landscape for materials used in packaging, construction, and more: Using a custom protein to bring two unlikely compounds (ice and cellulose) together. "By bridging the gap between recombinant protein design and structural engineering, we have developed a high-performance material specifically engineered for the rigors of the world's most extreme environments," write the researchers. The findings have been published in the journal Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Sunday, Andy Burnham ripped open Britain's Brexit wounds by claiming Russia had interfered in 2016's referendum.

Ever get some special letter, card, or picture from a friend or loved one that you held onto, maybe even taped to your cube or office wall? Is it something you still look at fondly, something that lifts your spirits whenever you're down? Certainly, a thoughtful card or letter is much nicer than a thoughtful email.

Now imagine your special keepsake being scanned, censored, and converted into a digital file that you can only view from a tablet — assuming you can afford the fee to access the tablet. The original has been destroyed; it's gone forever. You'll never get to see or feel it in your hands.

It sounds almost too cruel, like something you'd find in a Fallout game. Unfortunately, it's reality for more and more people incarcerated in US prisons.

I've been writing to an incarcerated person for a while now myself. I find the process incredibly rewarding; I think about my friend all the time and wish them well. Unfortunately, the scanning and processing takes absolutely forever, so in a given year we only exchange 3 letters per side. The digitized files that I receive have names censored out of them; I have no idea what's removed from my letters before my friend receives them. For me, this is all too reminiscent of exchanging letters with my grandmother in Iran before she died. Agents there would straight-up open the envelope, confiscate any valuables inside, marker over anything they didn't like, then re-seal the envelope and send it back on its merry way.

Over 30 US states now digitize the mail passing in and out of prisons, relying on AI to judge what's kosher and what isn't. If you thought AI was great with resumes, just wait until you task it with threat detection! It's been working so well that one nonprofit organization had to change its name: the word fight, used in any context whatsoever, gets flagged.

Once mail is scanned, it's only accessible by tablets that have to be paid for. Incarcerated people are already nickled and dimed for a ridiculous number of things and surely don't need more fees.

It doesn't stop at mail, either. The latest tech is also being used to eliminate physical visitation. Because if there's anything the pandemic taught us, it's that nothing beats seeing your loved ones exclusively on a screen for years at a stretch.

The states justify these egregious measures by playing the drug card. They're necessary to stop drugs from entering the prisons. But these states stop short of providing evidence to show that these tech-facilitated practices are actually having the intended effect. Even if they magically solved drug trafficking forever, could any result truly justify the vast harm being inflicted upon incarcerated people, their families, and their friends? Physical mail and visitation are necessary lifelines and psychological boosts for those who might otherwise have nothing and no one to hold onto during an unimaginably difficult time of their lives.

Do I really have to explain the benefit of parents and children exchanging homework, letters, and pictures?

I'm angry about this on so many levels. If you are, too, here's some stuff we can do to fight work against this together:

• Support prison abolition with your time, money, and/or IT superpowers. Forced prison labor is slavery. The entire punitive model is cruel, biased, and far less effective than approaches like restorative and community-based justice. Moving on is long overdue and the best way to make all of this stop.
• Avoid working for companies that facilitate these practices. Tell your friends not to work for them, either. If you're stuck working for them for survival's sake, look for ways to enact positive change from the inside.
• Spread the word of what's happening. Most people have no idea. Use your knowledge to educate technical and non-technical folks. They might want to do something about this, too.
• Write to incarcerated people yourself. Like Bob Ross said, "Everybody needs a friend." Knowing there's someone in your corner who cares about you makes all the difference in the world. Sites like WriteAPrisoner.com will match you up with a pen pal.

A drop of water seems harmless, but get enough of those together and you carve out the Grand Canyon. If we all do something to help, however big or small, our massed effort becomes something powerful. As tech professionals, we are especially empowered to push back on these cruel and abusive practices. We must act now, before they move out of prisons and into mainstream society.

Do you want your post office to start doing this?

Sources:

• Abandon All Connection, Ye Who Enter Here: Digitized Prison Mail as Repression and Surveillance
• WEBINAR: Fighting for families: How advocates are resisting attacks on visitation and physical mail
• Involuntary Servitude: How Prison Labor is Modern Day Slavery
• Why Justice Systems Don't Always Deliver

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Although I am still some years away from the traditional retirement age, my concern stems from my health.

They overcame childhood tragedy to achieve academic and professional success, forging outwardly accomplished lives following the death of their mother.

Up to a third of bowel cancers are related to diet and, therefore, may have been prevented. 'What we eat is critical in shaping your risk of bowel cancer,' says Dr Ravindi Murphy.

The President hit back at critics and declared 'America first' following his controversial agreement with Putin last week.

Steve Webb has published his 500th pension column for This is Money. The chances are all readers will have found one to be of help or interest at some point.

Some of the site has already been developed to provide space for two schools

There has been 12 fatal crashes on the road since 2021

Nigel Farage has announced plans to suspend the UK’s asylum system for five years if Reform UK wins the next general election.

Nigel Farage has announced plans to suspend the UK’s asylum system for five years if Reform UK wins the next general election.

Woodend Bridge in Witham faces further delays, with National Highways repairs now expected to start next year after 11 years of temporary traffic lights.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Many open-source developers still dislike AI. The latest example is System76 banning AI-generated content from its COSMIC desktop. At Open Source Summit Europe, Linux creator Linus Torvalds offered a different take: "I actually really like using AI," Torvald told Dirk Hohndel, his good friend and head of Ericsson Software Technology, in their latest discussion. [...] Torvalds said, "I think that you need to be very careful using AI when you're doing something real and important." Torvalds explained he hadn't always felt that way about AI programming. "I used to think it was just not very good -- but now I'm at the point where I actually really like using AI." "To be fair," he continued, "I don't do a lot of kernel programming. I'm a maintainer. The Linux kernel is a project where other people do the real work, and I act as the collection point. But I still enjoy programming immensely. I think AI is a wonderful tool if you use it correctly and treat it as a tool, and I find it makes programming much more enjoyable." Torvalds recalled, "I started programming in 1981 or so, and back then computers were much simpler, and you could understand what they were doing, and also the programs you compared your own programs to were much simpler." "It's a different story today," Torvalds said. "The bar in software engineering has grown so high that it's hard to see your own small efforts as worth anything, because you're used to all these polished, professional programs. [...] A lot of people make fun of vibe coding, but I think it's a wonderful way to find joy in programming. It makes you feel like you're doing something relevant. It allows you, as a new programmer, to do things that you would otherwise have a really hard time with." He continued: "I love the concept of AI as a gateway drug because I was working on my own toy project, the guitar pedal, and I knew what I was doing. I had a user interface that I had written myself in C that was running on a microcontroller that was running on this small screen, and I was like, "This is just stupid. It looks like something from the '80s; I wanted it to look like something from this century. But I don't do Java. I do kernels." "So, I use AI to do the things that I'm bad at," Torvalds went on, "I'd seen all the same YouTube videos you have. Give AI a prompt, and it will do it. So I gave it a prompt, and it did it, and it was horrendous. Then I said, 'Hey, look! I already did this in C. I did it the right way. It's just ugly." Torvalds acknowledged that AI tools are helping identify security vulnerabilities and improve the Linux kernel, but at the cost of overwhelming maintainers with questionable bug reports and superficial fixes. He called some submissions "mindless band-aid kind of patches." That said, despite AI's growing influence, Torvalds believes Linux's success comes from steady, incremental development rather than sweeping changes. "I'm a big believer in the whole incremental small changes that, over time, turn into big features," he said. The development goal remains "incremental improvement and steady progress all the time."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The global financial system must be on the alert for an AI driven cyberattack that could bring it to a screeching halt, the IMF has warned.

Kanishka Narayan, the AI minister, said it was likely the UK would fall prey to an attack as he announced plans to increase safeguards.

The likes of Kim Kardashian, Romeo Beckham and his girlfriend Kim Turnbull, alongside a plethora of F1 WAGs flocked to the famous sporting fixture.

Labour has been warned not to splash out on cost of living measures that the country cannot afford as Britain's economic outlook was downgraded by the International Monetary Fund.