Sci-Tech news

• 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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• 'Noah's Ark's final resting place' confirmed to be a 'man-made object' in groundbreaking announcement

  30-09-2026 23:07 via dailymail.com
  
  A research project has made a groundbreaking announcement that the site believed to be the exact location of Noah's Ark may actually contain a wooden ship.
  
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• YouTube lunatic designed and 3D printed a working mechanical calculator

  30-09-2026 22:39 via theregister.com
  
  Mechanical calculators are precise, fascinating gadgets that you wouldn’t think would take well to being 3D printed, but a YouTuber has proved that a pocket-sized unit can be made purely from plastic filament. YouTuber 3D all Workshop detailed his working, but limited, build in a recent video. If you’re familiar with the holy grail of palm-sized mechanical calculators, the Curta, also known as the “pepper mill,” you already have a working understanding of how this 3D-prin
  
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• Huawei boss claims homegrown AI chip sales top Nvidia in China

  30-09-2026 22:16 via theregister.com
  
  The Trump administration's export control policies governing the sale of AI accelerators to China haven't stopped homegrown Huawei from filling the void. In a Q&A-style release this week, the company's rotating chairman Eric Xu claimed that its Ascend line of neural processing units (NPUs) had exceeded Nvidia in Chinese market share. "It's pretty hard to collect data about the market share of Nvidia in China, but based on the data we have collected, Ascend has surpassed Nvidia," he said. "Ch
  
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• Peter Norvig says all aboard for AI coding

  30-09-2026 21:05 via theregister.com
  
  What comes next after a moment when companies sell existential risk but pursue public funding and DIY regulation, even as software developers question their life choices? Peter Norvig, distinguished education fellow at Stanford HAI and former Google research director, used his opening keynote at The AI Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday to speculate on the answer. Almost certainly, it's another AI conference – on Thursday in fact – given the two or three dozen of them that have
  
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• 16-year-old researcher found a Microsoft bug, got admin access to databases with 17.3 trillion rows

  30-09-2026 20:29 via theregister.com
  
  A 16-year-old security researcher named Faav found an authentication flaw in Microsoft’s Titan analytics service that allowed him to gain administrator access, submit unauthorized SQL queries with no valid credentials, and potentially reach analytics databases containing an estimated 17.3 trillion stored rows. Titan is an internal analytics platform, and Redmond restricts access via its web interface to Microsoft employees. Faav, with an assist from an AI hackbot he built called Antares, f
  
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• Canonical begins pushing Resolute Raccoon

  30-09-2026 19:33 via theregister.com
  
  Resolute Raccoon is ready to roll out to existing Ubuntu users. Canonical has flipped the switch, and users on 24.04 will start to get offered 26.04.1. Canonical has marked the occasion with an official announcement that it's time to upgrade your desktop. Normally, a given LTS release of Ubuntu starts nagging offering the upgrade to the new release when the following LTS version gets its first point-release. This time around, there has been a substantial delay: Ubuntu 26.04.1 appeared over a mon
  
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• Trump decrees era of 'Super Intelligence' upon us

  30-09-2026 19:01 via theregister.com
  
  According to the US President, the term Artificial Intelligence (AI) is tired while "Super Intelligence" is wired. Trump has issued an executive order to compel the Federal Government to use the new name instead. The term Artificial Intelligence was introduced by American computer and cognitive scientist John McCarthy in 1956, although the concept derives at least in part from work by British mathematician Alan Turing published in 1950. Regardless of its origin, the technology has outgrown the t
  
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• Mystery erupts as US spy satellite explodes… and Space Force won't rule out an attack

  30-09-2026 18:43 via dailymail.com
  
  A US spy satellite has mysteriously exploded in Earth orbit and no one knows why, sparking concerns over what satellites might be next.
  
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• So that's why parents are always so exhausted! Three-year-olds take as many as 30,000 steps a day, study finds

  30-09-2026 18:23 via dailymail.com
  
  They're only small, but it turns out toddlers are putting a lot of steps in. A new study has found that children as young as three take up to 30,000 steps a day.
  
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• Show colleagues how much you care by sending an AI avatar to your Google Meet call

  30-09-2026 18:03 via theregister.com
  
  If you've always wanted to say you have "people" to attend your meetings, there's an app in development for that, as long as you're comfortable with the idea of eventually sending an AI bot in your place and potentially offending your human colleagues. MeetTwins, from Indian developer Aditya Shinde, is an AI assistant currently recruiting users for its beta. It's designed for a single purpose: to attend Google Meet calls on behalf of its operator and relay approved information to colleagues with
  
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• AI market needs to make $6 trillion a year by 2031 to fund its infrastructure habit

  30-09-2026 17:51 via theregister.com
  
  The AI industry must generate $6 trillion in annual revenue by 2031 to keep funding the infrastructure needed to meet anticipated demand, and this will require imaginative new uses beyond simply enhancing employee productivity. That $6 trillion figure comes from the 2026 annual Global Technology Report from management consultants Bain & Company, which put its thinking cap on to figure out how the AI sector can possibly meet this challenge. It says the massive demand for AI compute infrastruc
  
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• Ex-NCA officer who worked on Silk Road operation ordered to repay £1.8M for stealing seized Bitcoin

  30-09-2026 17:11 via theregister.com
  
  A former National Crime Agency (NCA) officer who stole Bitcoin seized during an investigation into Silk Road 2.0 has been ordered to hand over more than £1.8 million ($2.4 million). Paul Chowles, 44, stole 50 of the 97 Bitcoin recovered from convicted Silk Road 2.0 administrator Thomas White. Police later recovered 30 of the stolen coins. US and European authorities shut down Silk Road 2.0 in November 2014 as part of an international operation targeting dark web marketplaces. The 50 Bitcoi
  
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• Where does your AI data actually live?

  30-09-2026 17:00 via theregister.com
  
  EVENT: There are two boundaries around any AI system in a regulated industry, and they have different owners. One is the jurisdiction: what data can leave the country, and under whose rules. The other is the building: what can leave your own estate at all, and who signs for it when it does. Most AI programs do not stall on the model. They stall here, on where the data lives, who can reach it, and what an auditor will accept as evidence twelve months from now. The proprietary data that makes an A
  
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• OpenAI apes AWS Marketplace while Anthropic remains stubbornly Microsoftian

  30-09-2026 16:53 via theregister.com
  
  OpenAI’s DevDay keynote was this week, and it featured a cameo mention of everyone’s favorite underpants merchant who also sells databases, AWS. I saw Simon Willison’s liveblog comment and felt very seen: “My eyes glazed over a bit at the AWS partnership section, but it only lasted a few seconds.” With today's more interesting but also largely unheralded announcement, you can now retire your OpenAI spend commitments via a list of (at launch) 32 partners, just like t
  
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• Scientist uncovers a hidden pattern in Taylor Swift's songs - and it hints at what she could release next

  30-09-2026 16:10 via dailymail.com
  
  A scientist who analysed more than 100,000 words from the superstar's song catalogue has uncovered a hidden pattern running through Taylor Swift's lyrics.
  
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• Firefox 157: Could bold new look be just what Mozilla needs?*

  30-09-2026 15:44 via theregister.com
  
  Firefox 157 is here, but this time, Mozilla is making an unusual amount of noise about this release and its new look. This release has a new theme called “Nova,” which in the release notes Mozilla calls “Firefox’s biggest visual refresh in years.” The new theme is the flagship here, and aside from that, the new features in this version are fairly modest. They’re all welcome enough, though. Video calls which use WebRTC – Web Real Time Compression –
  
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• 7 in 10 enterprises expected to abandon vendor-built agentic AI by 2028

  30-09-2026 14:58 via theregister.com
  
  Gartner predicts that by 2028, 70 percent of enterprises will abandon agentic AI systems built with vendor assistance as costs climb and customers struggle to modify the technology without outside help. What the consultancy calls forward-deployed engineering (FDE) embeds a vendor's engineers with a customer to build and deploy software for its particular requirements. Gartner argues that the model can deliver rapid early progress but leave customers dependent on expensive external expertise. Acc
  
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• Apple makes the AirPods 5 slightly less hostile to repair

  30-09-2026 14:13 via theregister.com
  
  Apple's latest AirPods make a small concession to repairability. And by "small," we mean they scored two out of ten rather than zero. Every previous generation of AirPods tested by iFixit has received a repairability score of zero out of ten. "We've bled for AirPods. We've sliced them, melted them, cursed at them," the team stated. Apple's earbuds resisted every attempt to repair them without destructive surgery. The AirPods 5 have finally broken that streak – barely. The AirPods 5 arrived
  
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• Drunk Van Halen fan called Microsoft support and demanded to speak to Gates

  30-09-2026 13:29 via theregister.com
  
  Some support calls become memorable because of the technical problem. Others stick in the mind because the caller has apparently consumed an adult beverage or three before demanding to speak to the boss. Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen has shared one from the latter category. His tale comes from a now-retired colleague who once staffed Microsoft's FrontPage support line. The caller was building a Van Halen fan site using FrontPage, and it wasn't going well. A Java applet was supposed to play musi
  
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• America is planning more AI datacenters than its chip supply can fill

  30-09-2026 12:45 via theregister.com
  
  Satellite imagery suggests US datacenter deployment is accelerating, but not fast enough to meet some of the more exuberant forecasts for 2028. Meanwhile, advanced chip packaging is emerging as another constraint on how quickly new AI capacity can come online. A report from investment bank Jefferies says server farm construction is proceeding apace across America, but permitting, access to power, and supplies of packaged AI accelerators continue to hold projects back. The report, shared with The
  
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• Earth's vital signs are flashing red: Seven of nine key systems have been breached - as scientists warn 'we're rapidly running out of time'

  30-09-2026 12:15 via dailymail.com
  
  Earth's life support systems are failing, scientists have warned - as seven out of nine planetary boundaries have now been breached.
  
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• More than half of UK businesses lack confidence in basic cyber skills

  30-09-2026 12:04 via theregister.com
  
  More than half of UK businesses lack confidence in their ability to perform at least one basic cybersecurity task, according to the government's latest skills survey. The annual research found 57 percent of businesses reported a basic technical skills gap, up from 49 percent last year despite tighter national standards and repeated government warnings about cyber resilience. That equates to approximately 808,000 businesses whose cybersecurity leads were not confident in carrying out at least one
  
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• KDE turns 30 with Plasma 6.8, but the X11 session isn't invited

  30-09-2026 11:15 via theregister.com
  
  KDE Plasma 6.8 is nearly here, bringing the revived Oxygen theme and dropping its X11 session. For those who prefer an older look, a new project called Klassik recreates the KDE 3 experience using modern Plasma technology. KDE has released the second and final beta of Plasma 6.8, while developers have already begun landing changes for Plasma 6.9, according to the latest This Week in Plasma update. Barring delays, the release is scheduled for October 14, KDE's 30th anniversary, as we mentioned ah
  
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• Now that's what you call a toddle! Three-year-olds take as many as 30,000 steps a day, study finds

  30-09-2026 11:04 via dailymail.com
  
  They're only small, but it turns out toddlers are putting a lot of steps in. A new study has found that children as young as three take up to 30,000 steps a day.
  
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• UK rail cops' £320K face-scanning spree nets zero matches

  30-09-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  British Transport Police (BTP) spent more than £320,000 putting half a million commuters through live facial recognition cameras, only for the system to identify precisely nobody it was looking for. Figures obtained by civil liberties group Liberty through Freedom of Information requests, and reported by The Guardian, show BTP's six-month trial scanned more than 500,000 faces at London railway stations and generated just one alert. That turned out to be a false positive, meaning the techno
  
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• Spectre bug is back, this time to haunt JIT engines

  30-09-2026 09:01 via theregister.com
  
  The Spectre microarchitecture vulnerability has returned yet again, this time to vex just-in-time (JIT) engines that generate machine code for browsers, runtimes, and kernels. The vulnerability is found in many CPUs that use speculative execution, the process of executing code before it is called to boost performance. Researchers found speculative execution opens the door to side channel attacks through which secrets can be exposed or inferred. When news of that risk became known, chipmakers and
  
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• Airbus gets a new freighter – and its giant door – into the air for the first time

  30-09-2026 08:22 via theregister.com
  
  Airbus has successfully flown a new freighter based on its A350 passenger jet. The first A350F yesterday rolled down the runway at Airbus HQ in Toulouse, France, bringing the aerospace giant closer to delivering a high-capacity freighter. Airbus already makes two freighters, based on its A330 and A321 planes. In the past, it also made custom freighters that featured a bulbous enclosure atop a fuselage adapted from an A330 or A300. Airbus named the planes “Beluga” because they looked
  
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• OpenClaw slips on a suit to evade widespread business bans

  30-09-2026 07:04 via theregister.com
  
  The OpenClaw project has started work on an enterprise edition in the hope that businesses lose their fear of the agentic AI project. OpenClaw was one of the first “AI harnesses” – tools that use a large language model to create a digital assistant that automates tasks. If users allow OpenClaw to access their email account, it can analyze messages and fire off AI-generated replies, even responding to meeting invitations and reserving time in a calendar app. The tool is the crea
  
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• Trump Christens AI As “Super AI” In The Presence Of Arch-Technocrats

  30-09-2026 06:42 via technocracy.news
  
  Never in my career have I seen any President showcase the leadership of a single industry over and over, in this case, Artificial Intelligence. Trump has emerged as Technocrat-in-Chief, promoting the Arch-Technocrats’ agenda to spread AI throughout society, including in government and to blanket the nation with humongous data centers. None of this adds up today, but in due time we will see the end of the matter. In short, they are racing for the finish line to capture all humanity. ⁃
  
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