Sci-Tech news

• 230 million-year-old dinosaur footprint found in north Spain

  03-05-2016 14:19 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  A walker discovered the footprint in northeastern Catalonia. It is said to belong to an ancestor of dinosaurs and crocodiles, called Isochirotherium.
  
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• Add one more AI worry to the nightmare scenario: self-replicating prompt injections

  29-09-2026 23:34 via theregister.com
  
  Imagine a prompt injection that keeps replicating itself like a worm. It's not just the stuff of bad dreams. “We have found instances of our GPT models being susceptible to an AI-version of a worm attack that we call ‘self-replicating prompt injection,’” OpenAI said in a Friday alignment research blog. There’s no indication that these indirect prompt-injection attacks occurred in any real-life security incident, or anywhere outside of the models’ training envi
  
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• OpenAI tries disarming AI angst with cute graphics and always-on agents

  29-09-2026 23:12 via theregister.com
  
  OpenAI, among those sounding the alarm about existential AI risk as its models run riot on third-party websites, on Tuesday introduced dots, which are cute-looking, hosted AI agents. When dots take visual form in mobile, desktop, or web applications, they look like colorful anthropomorphized shapes with accessories like glasses, hats, or bow ties. But behind the inviting graphics, dots are just persistent compute tasks that consume tokens. Speaking at the company's Dev Day in San Francisco, CEO
  
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• Excerpt: Introduction to Crucible Of Tokens

  29-09-2026 22:42 via technocracy.news
  
  Where there is no vision, the people perish. – Proverbs 29:18 (KJV)
  To all of those who have read my books, listened to me in person, on roundtables, videos, and radio: I have heard your cries of “What can we do to protect ourselves?” Here is my answer, in layman’s terms, to help you see the big picture and then take courage and take cover.
  Something is being done to you, and it is being done with your signature.
  It is not being done with a sheriff at the door, or a decre
  
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• Trump launches America.gov with AI chatbots at its core

  29-09-2026 22:14 via theregister.com
  
  If you want accurate information about life-changing government services, a potentially hallucinating chatbot might not be your first choice. However, the Trump administration is rolling out a new digital portal for access to federal government tasks that puts AI front and center, even though there are concerns that existing federal digital services may be in danger. Trump announced the launch of America.gov in an executive order on Tuesday, describing the new site as a “unified digital fr
  
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• FBI to ShinyHunters: 'We know how to find you'

  29-09-2026 21:38 via theregister.com
  
  The FBI’s cyber chief has a message for the criminals that hacked the bureau’s jobs portal last week: "We know how to find you," so turn yourself in. In a video message following the Dutch National Police’s arrest of a 24-year-old whom the FBI described as “one of the alleged leaders of ShinyHunters,” Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division, had some advice for the “remaining members” of the data theft and extortion gang. “
  
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• Zuckerberg touts enterprise AI push because Meta would never do anything to damage your reputation

  29-09-2026 21:35 via theregister.com
  
  Meta continued its search for profits at the bottom of the AI rabbit hole on Monday when CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the formation of an enterprise services business built on the back of its Muse models and agent harnesses. Meta uses its social networking and messaging services to gather data about users so it can use AI-powered recommender systems to present targeted ads, a service its advertiser customers find valuable. The company's online businesses (excluding virtual reality) earned $50.3
  
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• Close the observability gap with agentic observability

  29-09-2026 21:02 via theregister.com
  
  When a critical application fails, the last thing an IT team needs is a debate over who's responsible. Yet in complex enterprise environments, network, application, and compute teams often rely on separate legacy monitoring tools, each providing only part of the picture. Identifying the root cause can become a time-consuming exercise while essential services remain unavailable. As organizations expand their use of AI, hybrid infrastructure, and sovereign cloud environments, the challenge is beco
  
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• AMD's 192 GB Gorgon Halo prices might leave you petrified

  29-09-2026 20:59 via theregister.com
  
  The first systems powered by AMD's Gorgon Halo system-on-chip (SoC) platform have arrived, boasting up to 192 GB of unified memory on board. That's enough to put DeepSeek V4 Flash on your desk if you can afford to pay a hefty premium for all that RAM. GMKtec's EVO-X5 Pro is among the first to feature the House of Zen's top-specced Ryzen AI Max+ 495 SoC — you can see why we're just going to call it Gorgon Halo from here on out — but with regular pricing starting at $6,799, all that me
  
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• Custom malware used in Citrix 0-day attacks targeting govt, banks, professional services

  29-09-2026 19:49 via theregister.com
  
  The public still doesn’t know who is abusing a critical Citrix vulnerability exploited as a zero-day weeks before disclosure, but we now know that the unknown digital intruders have used CVE-2026-88772 to break into government agencies, financial services firms, education organizations, and legal and professional services sectors across North America and Europe. And everyone agrees that the vendor took way too long to disclose the security holes. GreyNoise said it spotted an attempt to exp
  
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• Open source tool distills Jev so you can run it locally

  29-09-2026 19:28 via theregister.com
  
  Sure, Jev is cheap and quick to respond to queries, but you know what would be even better? How about a local student model that learns from your Jev requests and runs familiar ones on your hardware instead? Jevstiller is an open source project that, as its name suggests, distills Jev’s outputs into a local model that can do some of Jev’s arguably fast work even more quickly and efficiently - no need to spend $42 per billion input tokens or wait around 300 ms for a response on reques
  
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• Boeing's Calamity Capsule gets another shot at the ISS taxi business

  29-09-2026 19:00 via theregister.com
  
  SpaceX might not be the ISS's only ride after NASA and Boeing claimed that Starliner - aka the aerospace giant's Calamity Capsule - will fly again and carry a crew in 2028. The plan is to launch an uncrewed vehicle, the Starliner-1, in the December 2026 / January 2027 timeframe, and a crewed vehicle, Starliner-2, sometime in 2028. Starliner-1 will ferry cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) and, if all goes well, humans will take their turn on Starliner-2. NASA also intends to exercise
  
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• Microsoft sends PDFs to strange new worlds instead of SharePoint

  29-09-2026 18:32 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has confirmed a bug where saving a PDF from Word for Windows can send the file to an unexpected location with a random name when using SharePoint Online. The Windows giant's odyssey of bork has continued, following issues that included a less-than-ideal September for its flagship operating system and a paste problem in Excel. The latest breakage affects the document format PDF in Word for Windows. After a user updates to version 2609 of Word, saving documents as PDFs to SharePoint Onli
  
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• AI models keep posting screenshots showing sensitive data from inside tech companies

  29-09-2026 18:00 via theregister.com
  
  Amid the growing concern about AI models escaping security simulations to hack websites comes word that these "superintelligent" blobs of code have no understanding of privacy or security. Researchers affiliated with Glow Security, a startup whose backers include venture capital funds Sequoia and Greenoaks, have found more than 13,000 sensitive screenshots of corporate software projects from 343 companies that were posted to public GitHub repos by AI models. They're calling the discovery PixelLe
  
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• Schneider gives datacenter switchgear the software-defined treatment

  29-09-2026 17:15 via theregister.com
  
  Schneider Electric is piloting software-defined medium voltage (MV) switchgear with Equinix, promising faster datacenter construction and electrical systems where you can add new capabilities without having to modify the hardware. The energy infrastructure biz unveiled its software-defined MV architecture along with other new power products at the YOTTA 2026 digital infrastructure event in Las Vegas. Switchgear controls and protects the flow of electricity through a facility, isolating faulty eq
  
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• Apple patches CoreGraphics zero-day already exploited in targeted attacks

  29-09-2026 16:30 via theregister.com
  
  Apple has patched a CoreGraphics zero-day after warning that attackers may already have used the bug to compromise a small number of carefully chosen targets. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-86950, is an out-of-bounds write flaw in CoreGraphics, Apple's framework for handling graphics across its operating systems. According to Apple's advisory, processing a maliciously crafted file could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable device. The fruity vendor said it addresse
  
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• OpenAI benches GPT-6.1 Astra for overstepping the mark

  29-09-2026 15:43 via theregister.com
  
  OpenAI has killed off the planned release of GPT-6.1 Astra after the model got better at doggedly pursuing tasks but worse at knowing when it should stop. The decision means the model won't get its planned October release after falling short of OpenAI's safety and alignment requirements. OpenAI confirmed the decision to The Register, saying its research and safety bosses ultimately decided this particular Astra was better left on the bench. The problem, according to the AI lab, was partly an awk
  
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• Leaked IPO docs: Anthropic tempts investors with existential risk warning

  29-09-2026 14:53 via theregister.com
  
  After an unusual pitch to investors, Anthropic has laid bare its challenges in becoming anything like a profitable, normal business in its IPO prospectus.Posing an “existential risk to humanity” was among the messages reportedly intended to allure investors, as if to say, “We could make you rich, but also you might not live spend it.” The Reg has long suspected the apocalyptic schtick which has become de rigueur among AI model builders is suspiciously self-serving. It foc
  
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• Investors are pricing in a 32.6% AI productivity boost for software engineers

  29-09-2026 14:30 via theregister.com
  
  Investors appear to be betting that AI will deliver substantial gains in software engineering productivity, according to economists who used stock market movements to estimate the technology's expected impact. Economists affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) say that between November 2022 and December 2025, "AI increased the market's expected present value of software engineering productivity by the equivalent
  
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• The Matterhorn is snow-free: Shocking images reveal how the mountain - famously featured on Toblerone packaging - is bare amid autumn heat

  29-09-2026 14:22 via dailymail.com
  
  Shocking images have revealed that the Matterhorn is snow-free amid Europe's sweltering early autumn heat.
  
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• Starship finally makes orbit but engine trouble cuts the victory lap short

  29-09-2026 14:01 via theregister.com
  
  SpaceX's Starship reached orbit for the first time yesterday and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, although engine trouble cut short a planned six-orbit flight. Super Heavy had problems of its own. All 33 Raptor 3 engines ignited at 07:48 CT, but one shut down during ascent. The booster later reignited 26 of the 28 engines planned for its boostback maneuver. During descent, it reignited 11 of the planned 13 engines for the high-thrust portion of its landing burn before stepping down to five an
  
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• Former X-Force hackers chase the offensive cyber gold rush

  29-09-2026 13:30 via theregister.com
  
  Two former leaders of IBM's X-Force Red team have launched RemoteThreat, an offensive cybersecurity startup backed by $7 million in pre-seed funding. CEO Chris Thompson and CTO Shawn Jones say the company's platform uses AI to plan, execute, and adapt offensive cyber operations, extending beyond the continuous penetration testing and vulnerability detection offered by other automated security tools. Thompson and Jones previously ran X-Force Red, where their team was hired to test nuclear power p
  
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• Healthcare campaigners turn up the heat on Palantir at Labour conference

  29-09-2026 13:05 via theregister.com
  
  Campaigners against Palantir's involvement in the UK's health sector are set to make themselves heard this week with planned protests at the Labour Party conference and in London. Health justice charity MedAct and medical campaign group Just Treatment are coordinating a protest at the ruling party's annual conference in Liverpool as ministers consider whether to extend the NHS's contract with the US spy-tech company. The groups are among those urging the government not to extend the Palantir-led
  
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• Dutch police arrest 'security pro' in ShinyHunters probe

  29-09-2026 12:41 via theregister.com
  
  Dutch police have arrested a 24-year-old man on suspicion of involvement with the prolific ShinyHunters cybercrime group. Cops announced the arrest on Monday night and said the Amsterdam resident would appear before judges at Rotterdam District Court today (Tuesday). Officers have not named the suspect. However, a company has identified a person they believe to be the suspect as working for them as an offensive security lead. Dutch broadcaster RTL and other newswires have also published a name.
  
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• Redmond to millions of Power BI users: You’re Fabric app devs now

  29-09-2026 12:00 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft is pushing its data analytics and engineering environment to a new set of commercial users that are an “order of magnitude” greater than its current base. Power BI has become a popular biz intelligence system - with more than 425,000 customers worldwide - particularly among customers of the Microsoft Dynamics application portfolio. Now, Microsoft execs are trying to exploit this penetration by offering Power BI customers high-end database services and app building tools ava
  
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• The first face of mankind? Ancient human who lived 315,000 years ago is brought back to life in stunning digital reconstruction

  29-09-2026 11:44 via dailymail.com
  
  After spending more than 300,000 years hidden in the ground beneath Morocco, an ancient ancestor has been brought back to life thanks to a stunning digital reconstruction.
  
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• What eldritch horror lurks behind Heathrow's information screens?

  29-09-2026 11:15 via theregister.com
  
  Airport departure boards are supposed to tell passengers where and when their flights will leave. Recent examples spotted by eagle-eyed Reg readers have offered some bonus information: a Windows activation reminder, dates from the past, and a glimpse of what appears to be Windows 7 beneath the signage software. Airport borks, it seems, are like buses: three have arrived in quick succession at Heathrow. The first display shows a Windows activation watermark behind a list of departures to glamorou
  
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• OpenAI scraps rollout of new model over safety concerns

  29-09-2026 11:14 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The firm also issued an update on incidents in which its models accessed Australian government systems.
  
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• iPhone 18 Pro buyers claim Apple's £1,199 smartphone is changing COLOUR - just weeks after going on sale

  29-09-2026 11:13 via dailymail.com
  
  It's been less than a month since Apple launched the new iPhone 18 Pro, but customers are already claiming that their new phones are changing colour.
  
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• HMRC bets up to £2.4B on Salesforce for taxpayer CRM overhaul

  29-09-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  Salesforce has won a contract worth up to £2.4 billion including VAT to provide the UK tax collector with CRM software and related services for at least ten years. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) selected Salesforce to supply a software-as-a-service CRM platform and related capabilities including customer and case management, marketing campaigns, messaging, reporting, analytics, and AI. Additional functions, including identity verification, fraud detection, and data integration, may be sup
  
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