mattsparkes

AI models are making it easier and easier to generate code to build new features, fix bugs or create entire new projects at the click of a button. But that code is often difficult to integrate into existing projects, confusing or simply garbage. While code submissions get ever easier, human contributors responsible for checking, fixing and approving them are getting swamped.

The shattered remains of Chernobyl’s reactor 4 are one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. Not only are the ruins physically dangerous, but they are highly irradiated, pitch black and shrouded by a crumbling, concrete sarcophagus, which is, in turn, covered by the New Safe Confinement structure.

But it is vital that scientists understand what is going on inside. And that task falls to Anatoly Doroshenko, a young scientist at the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP). He has what could be considered to be the most dangerous job on the planet: crawling deep within the ruins of the reactor to take readings and samples, getting within 8 metres of the core, sometimes as often as once a month.

Ukraine has responded to a war it didn’t start by creating an industry it doesn’t want, but could the nation's drone expertise help it rebuild? To learn more, New Scientist gained exclusive access to the research labs, factories and military training schools behind Ukraine’s drones

Very curious to hear more about this. How is it done, and what's the legal status of doing it?

All four of Ukraine’s operational nuclear power plants have suffered occupation or attack by Russian forces since the start of the invasion in 2022. Now, as Ukrainian troops on the counteroffensive push deeper into Russian territory, roles could be reversed if Ukraine decides to take control of a Russian plant.

A self-replicating form of artificial life has arisen from a digital “primordial soup” of random data, despite a lack of explicit rules or goals to encourage such behaviour. Researchers believe it is possible that more sophisticated versions of the experiment could yield more advanced digital organisms, and if they did, the findings could shed light on the mechanisms behind the emergence of biological life on Earth.

The UK government has set limits on the capabilities of quantum computers that can be exported — starting with those above 34 qubits, and rising as long as error rates are also higher — and has declined to explain these limits on the grounds of national security. Experts say this make no sense and that it could harm the nascent UK quantum computer industry. Clearly 34 qubits is seen as an important milestone for some military or intelligence reason, but the rationale behind that belief is being kept behind closed doors.