Sci-Tech news

• Call of Duty sued by rebel's family

  03-02-2016 19:19 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Three of the children of late Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi take the makers of Call of Duty to court over his depiction in the video game.
  
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• Mysterious NASA Mars photo fuels wild claim of a lost civilization on the Red Planet

  07-10-2026 22:18 via dailymail.com
  
  An image of Mars taken by NASA has sparked theories that the agency captured ruins of a lost civilization on the Red Planet.
  
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• Browser-in-browser attacks use fake Meta Muse Ad lure to steal credentials

  07-10-2026 21:33 via theregister.com
  
  A phishing campaign targeting advertising managers by impersonating Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Manus to steal credentials and multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes has added a fake Muse Ads product to its lure lineup – just eight days after Meta launched its personal AI agent. Meta announced Muse on September 8, and by September 17, a very convincing website – museads.ai – for a product called Muse Ads that promised to help advertisers reach buyers and run spons
  
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• Russian lab worker's plague-linked death raises questions as Soviet files detail bioweapons cover-up

  07-10-2026 20:48 via dailymail.com
  
  Hidden files have exposed how the Soviet Union spent decades covering up its building building and stockpiling of biological weapons, as experts raise concerns after Russia lab plague death.
  
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• AWS launches open-source AI agent sandbox to prevent YOLO mode disasters

  07-10-2026 19:42 via theregister.com
  
  AWS has offered multiple open-source strategies for holding AI agents accountable, and now it’s adding a full-on sandbox to this stack. Dubbed Strands Box, the new solution uses OS-level isolation and some of AWS’ other recent open-source AI control tools to, ostensibly, retain greater control over autonomous AI agents’ behavior. “Agents increasingly run in ‘YOLO mode,’ approving every action without human review,” the AWS team explained in its announcem
  
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• US states sue popular kitmaker TP-Link over China risks

  07-10-2026 19:30 via theregister.com
  
  The attorneys general of Florida, Iowa, Montana, and Nebraska have sued ubiquitous networking and smart home tech maker TP-Link, alleging its security claims were misleading and it hadn't properly disclosed ties to China. The company has a large presence in US retail and the tech channel, especially in consumer routers, with stats from Circana asserting it had around 36.6 percent US market share by units and 31 percent by dollars in 2024. The complaint [PDF] accuses California-based TP-Link Syst
  
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• Millions told to 'act now' as hurricane warnings are issued along US coast ahead of storm Isaias's Category 2 landfall

  07-10-2026 18:51 via dailymail.com
  
  Hurricane warnings have now been issued for several US states. Storm Isaias is expected to make landfall as a Category 2 hurricane in just a few days.
  
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• Starlink's plan to avoid orbital near-misses: Ephemeris sharing

  07-10-2026 18:29 via theregister.com
  
  SpaceX has acknowledged the need for satellite operators to collaborate to avoid collisions and has taken the unusual step of sharing imagery showing how close spacecraft are coming to each other. The company has called on other operators to share their satellites' ephemeris (a set of parameters describing the position and velocity of a spacecraft over time) to facilitate timely avoidance maneuvers. "In 2026," the company wrote, "Starlink encountered conjunctions with about 650 unique maneuverin
  
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• Poetry is the new AI security threat as PoeLLM malware infects 3K+ servers

  07-10-2026 18:01 via theregister.com
  
  A suspected Italian attacker armed with a malware-controlling poem has infected more than 3,000 servers since April, breaking into enterprise AI infrastructure to mine cryptocurrency and add compromised systems to its growing botnet. This is the first case of “adversarial poetry” - an AI jailbreak technique that turns harmful prompts into poems to trick LLMs into bypassing safety guardrails - that Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs, which has been tracking the PoeLLM malware, has seen in
  
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• When one datacenter is no longer enough

  07-10-2026 17:00 via theregister.com
  
  Training the largest AI models is no longer simply a question of adding more GPUs. As clusters grow, power availability is becoming a hard physical constraint, forcing infrastructure teams to consider how a single training workload can operate across multiple data centres. That creates a very different networking problem. Traditional datacenter interconnect was designed to move traffic between sites. AI training demands something more exacting: huge, synchronous flows, minimal packet loss and ti
  
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• Europe's mobile operators sell fewer phones but gain share as budget market shrivels

  07-10-2026 15:34 via theregister.com
  
  European mobile operators are gaining a slightly larger share of smartphone sales, not because they are selling more devices, but because other sales channels are shrinking faster. This is according to market watcher Counterpoint Research, which says that sales of new smartphones through European operators were down by 4 percent during the second quarter of this year, compared with the same period a year ago. But device sales through the open market fared much worse, declining by 11 percent. Thi
  
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• Scholars hail 2,000-year-old burial chest as first 'direct connection' to Jesus: Extraordinary etching clues after owner acquitted of forgery... as DNA tests begin on ancient bones

  07-10-2026 15:16 via dailymail.com
  
  Bone fragments recovered from a first-century limestone burial chest have been hailed as the first connection to the family of Jesus.
  
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• Nine in 10 VMware customers eye the exit as licensing bills bite

  07-10-2026 14:24 via theregister.com
  
  Nine out of ten respondents to a survey of VMware customers say higher licensing costs were prompting them to consider alternatives. Unisphere Research surveyed 269 executives, managers, and professionals at VMware user organizations between December 2025 and February 2026. The study, commissioned by third-party support provider Rimini Street, also found that 54 percent cited the end of perpetual license support as a reason to evaluate other options. The study showed cost remains the leading dri
  
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• Dutch tax office ditches Microsoft 365 cloud for on-premises alternative

  07-10-2026 13:30 via theregister.com
  
  The Netherlands Tax and Customs Administration has abandoned its planned Microsoft 365 cloud migration in favor of services hosted on infrastructure it controls, alongside European open source alternatives. Email and calendars will move on-premises in 2027, followed by storage and collaboration services later that year and in 2028. The letter to parliament from Eelco Eerenberg, State Secretary for Finance, follows an earlier decision to pause the Microsoft 365 rollout. The tax authority selected
  
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• FortiBleed still a bleeding nuisance as FBI confirms ongoing attacks

  07-10-2026 12:52 via theregister.com
  
  The FBI and US Secret Service (USSS) say criminals using credentials linked to the FortiBleed campaign are locking organizations out of their Fortinet firewalls. The agencies published a joint advisory on Tuesday, citing SOCRadar's verification of more than 86,644 compromised devices across 194 countries. "Based on initial responses, some victims may get locked out of their Fortinet devices if the threat actor either deletes or changes the password for original accounts on the system," their adv
  
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• The Sphinx's secret: Egyptian monument was built from rocks filled with the hidden fossils of ancient crocodiles, scientists discover

  07-10-2026 12:43 via dailymail.com
  
  The Sphinx is one of ancient Egypt's most enigmatic monuments, and now scientists have found that it could be hiding a very unusual secret.
  
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• Rails originator roasted over Rust boosterism

  07-10-2026 10:45 via theregister.com
  
  Last month at Rails World 2026, Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson gave a relentlessly optimistic keynote in which he suggested AI has all but eliminated the need for developers to manually write code. But perhaps DHH, as he is known online, shouldn’t delete his code editor quite yet. On Sunday, DHH posted about a test in which he had frontier agents implement and optimize his company’s Campfire group chat app in three languages: Elixir, Go, and Rust. He then compared the
  
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• COSMIC shuts the door on AI code as GNOME debates letting bug reports in

  07-10-2026 10:09 via theregister.com
  
  System76 is banning AI-generated content from contributions to the COSMIC desktop. Some GNOME sub-projects also restrict AI-generated contributions, but one developer is urging them to make an exception for vulnerability reports. The COSMIC desktop project has changed its contributors' guidelines. The latest version now has a clear no-AI rule, insisting that contributors declare: "I have not included any LLM (also known as AI) generated content in this PR, including code, comments, and descripti
  
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• From reactive to proactive: How endpoint monitoring is fixing broken meeting rooms

  07-10-2026 10:00 via theregister.com
  
  The role of meeting rooms is changing. Traditionally, they were formal spaces built around a large central table and inflexible physical setup, reserved primarily for board meetings, client presentations, or official status updates. The rise of hybrid work and advances in collaboration technology have made that approach increasingly obsolete. Employees now come into the office to connect, collaborate, and brainstorm with colleagues rather than to undertake the solo, focused work they can do bett
  
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• South Korean president calls for creation of tools that stop all cyber-attacks

  07-10-2026 05:56 via theregister.com
  
  South Korean president Lee Jae Myung has told the nation’s cabinet that it’s time to develop AI-powered defensive tools to combat AI-wielding attackers. “Recently, a series of personal information leak incidents have been occurring at financial and public institutions,” he said yesterday – likely referring to incidents like the breach at e-tailer Coupang and last week’s raid on local banks that exposed customer data. “Circumstances indicate that artifici
  
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• Microsoft defines its Azure instance lifecycle, without any info about timing

  07-10-2026 04:22 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has updated the lifecycle of an Azure instance, without offering any information on how long it takes for an instance type to expire. Redmond’s “enhanced lifecycle” landed in late September in a post that explains the four phases in the life of a cloudy VM:Current – VMs are recommended for new deployments, are available in many regions, and receive standard maintenance and support;Extended – Still supported, but may be subject to usage quotas and unspecifi
  
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• Got H2O? Technocracy’s Control Over Water

  07-10-2026 02:43 via technocracy.news
  
  “Air and water have traditionally been regarded as ‘free’ goods, but the enormous costs to society of past and present pollution show that they are not free… The policy question is how and by whom they will be paid, not whether.” — Our Common Future (Brundtland Report), 1987¹
  “Where ground-water use exceeds the recharge capacity of local aquifers, regulatory or fiscal controls become essential.” — Our Common Future, 19872
  “Guarant
  
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• Anthropic reconfigures its cool kids security program

  07-10-2026 01:29 via theregister.com
  
  Only a week after warning about the perils of competitor Z.ai's GLM-5.3 model and its advanced cybersecurity capabilities, Anthropic has expanded its Cyber Verification Program (CVP) – or rather, reconfigured it. "For the past six months, we’ve enabled trusted access through two programs: Project Glasswing and the CVP," the AI biz said. "Now, we’re integrating these programs into one expanded offering, designed to give more security organizations access to the capabilities they
  
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• Google teams with nuclear power giant to give reactors a tune-up

  07-10-2026 01:08 via theregister.com
  
  Google on Tuesday struck a deal with Constellation Energy for 3,590 megawatts of future energy supply, including nearly a gigawatt of new nuclear capacity, as the search and advertising giant tries to find enough energy to power its datacenter ambitions. The 20-year power purchase agreement will see Constellation, the largest purveyor of atomic energy in the US, bring an additional 890 megawatts of nuclear capacity online by making "targeted investments at multiple nuclear plants." We understand
  
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• Anthropic Claude subscription plan provides more value than OpenAI's, study says

  06-10-2026 23:11 via theregister.com
  
  The rivalry between Anthropic and OpenAI, the two leading US AI model makers, is no contest when it comes to assessing which one gives you more value for your subscription money, according to industry research firm SemiAnalysis. Following changes to OpenAI's $200 per month subscription plan that effectively halved its value, SemiAnalysis looked at the various subscription plans offered by AI companies, because that's still the main way that individuals and small businesses buy AI services. AI su
  
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• Permanent daylight saving time could be a public health time bomb

  06-10-2026 22:32 via theregister.com
  
  President Trump is pushing hard for the US Senate to make daylight saving time permanent so, among other things, golfers can stay on the course longer, but it may not be such a bright idea. New research out of Canada suggests that, even if Americans would get an extra hour of daylight in the evening, the ill health effects of permanent daylight saving time could outweigh the benefits. A paper published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on Monday reviewed evidence on the health effects
  
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• Millions across 9 US states told to brace for 'coldest air of the season' as Canadian cold blast hits TODAY

  06-10-2026 21:37 via dailymail.com
  
  Meteorologists are warning millions of Americans to brace for the 'coldest air of the season' starting Tuesday evening.
  
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• UFO ties of missing scientist who vanished days after Trump's alien files order fuel new allegations

  06-10-2026 20:39 via dailymail.com
  
  A UFO whistleblower has made new claims about the missing Air Force general who vanished in February and his ties to UFOs.
  
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• Travel delays as computer outages disrupt Delta and United flights across US

  06-10-2026 20:17 via dailymail.com
  
  A major travel disruption has been reported as two airline giants experienced system outages that led to flights unable to board passengers.
  
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• European AI flag bearer Mistral's new open weights model is 'Le Chonk'

  06-10-2026 20:03 via theregister.com
  
  Another week brings yet another open weights model and this one is huge — or at least it is for Europe's AI flag bearer Mistral, which has taken to calling the 1 trillion-parameter large language model (LLM) Le Chonk. Its product name is Mistral Large 4, which is a lot less fun than the cat-meme-inspired "very official" moniker Le Chonk. Nonetheless, the LLM is the French model-dev's biggest open weights release ever. At a trillion parameters, Le Chonk is squarely in frontier territory, an
  
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