Sci-Tech news

• Facebook Live victim 'afraid to go home'

  22-03-2017 21:26
  
  Police say the 15-year-old girl was assaulted in a Facebook live video viewed by at least 40 people.
  
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• More than 250,000 flee wildfires in France and Spain

  25-07-2026 18:43 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Spain's PM warns of "complex hours" ahead as authorities in France say they are far from bringing blazes burning near Bordeaux under control.
  
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• How AI drove Shopify back to clean code

  25-07-2026 15:06 via theregister.com
  
  E-commerce platform Shopify wants to make reading source code a thing again. And it has an unlikely ally for its back-to-the-roots approach: AI agents. The company is launching a new storefront theme for its customers, aka “merchants,” that it claims is completely understandable by anyone with even a smidgen of HTML knowledge. It is designed to be simpler for both people and machines to digest and hack against. Shopify hasn’t named this new theme yet, but is unveiling it in dev
  
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• NASA helped me uncover proof that God exists... here's the simple formula that shows the Bible was right all along

  25-07-2026 15:04 via dailymail.com
  
  A scientist claims to have solved one of humanity's oldest mysteries with an equation he says provides mathematical proof that God is real.
  
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• Urgent warning to brace for cyber apocalypse as expert reveals how rogue AI could devastate America in a single DAY

  25-07-2026 14:37 via dailymail.com
  
  Daily Mail spoke with a cyber warfare expert who warned that the shocking security breach carried out by a rogue AI could be the first in a new generation of hacking nightmares unleashed on the world.
  
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• Anti-AI open source has an enemy in common, but almost nothing else

  25-07-2026 12:17 via theregister.com
  
  OPINION Linux now being officially not anti-AI might be good news for projects that are explicitly anti-AI, but we foresee problems with conflict over where the money and development effort come from. A couple of weeks ago, reluctant geek superstar Linus Torvalds declared that Linux is not an anti-AI project. The pro-AI folks are jubilant, and they are especially loud on the internet. (They're probably using bots to write their posts.) However, Torvalds inadvertently issued a rallying cry for th
  
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• North-east of England receives fewest Green Flag awards

  25-07-2026 12:05 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The North East received just 57 awards, much lower than most regions of England, which had over 100.
  
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• Modern life may be pushing human minds beyond their limits, study warns

  25-07-2026 09:55 via dailymail.com
  
  If it ever feels like the stresses of daily life are getting too much to bear, you're not imagining it. Researchers claim modern life is pushing human minds and bodies beyond their evolutionary limits.
  
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• Scientists develop a 'ghost font' that only humans can read - and it leaves even the most advanced AI bots baffled

  25-07-2026 09:41 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists have developed a new anti-AI font. Dubbed the 'Ghost Font', the font writes messages using motion.
  
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• BOFH: This printer engineer knows every trick in the book

  25-07-2026 09:16 via theregister.com
  
  EPISODE 14 The morning coffee in Mission Control is interrupted by a hesitant tapping at the door. Our current office temp has an issue. "It's the printer," she says, apologetically. "It makes a noise." "When it's printing, or all the time?" the PFY asks. "Sort of both. It starts making the noise before it starts printing, then keeps making the noise for about 20 seconds after." The PFY and I pop out and take a look, and the printer is indeed making a tiny squeaking noise, from the time it wakes
  
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• Everything you need to know about the hosepipe ban

  25-07-2026 08:58 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The hosepipe ban is in place due to high demand for water during heatwaves and dry weather.
  
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• It's the cocktail taking young drinkers by storm - but the packaging is 'unrecyclable'

  25-07-2026 08:14 via bbc.co.uk
  
  BuzzBallz cannot be recycled because the metal lid and plastic body are attached, say experts.
  
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• More than 220,000 evacuated in France and Spain due to wildfires

  25-07-2026 04:29 via bbc.co.uk
  
  French firefighters battle a blaze heading towards Bordeaux while officials in Madrid say they face the "worst fire in the history of the region".
  
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• Watch: SpaceX's successful test flight and splashdown for Starship

  25-07-2026 02:41 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The megarocket pulls off a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean an hour after launch.
  
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• Anthropic debuts Opus 5 at half the price of its Fable sibling

  25-07-2026 01:03 via theregister.com
  
  Anthropic released its Opus 5 AI model on Friday, claiming that it "comes close to the frontier intelligence of Claude Fable 5 at half the price." That's welcome news for enterprises beset by rising token costs. Fable 5 prices tokens at $10 / MTok input and $50 / MTok output, while Opus 5 prices tokens at $5 / MTok and $25 / MTok. OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol sells for $5 / MTok input and $30 / MTok output. However, the tokens required to complete a task can vary from model to model, so it's also useful
  
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• Pope's official prayer app commits cardinal sin, leaks 700K+ users' info

  25-07-2026 00:19 via theregister.com
  
  Click To Pray, a prayer app endorsed by the Pope with hundreds of thousands of users worldwide, has leaked people’s names and email addresses for months - or longer - according to an ethical hacker who said she found and reported the security vulnerability six months ago to no avail. This app needs to take a vow of silence when it comes to your personal information. The app, available in seven languages and on iOS, Android, and clicktopray.org, is the official app of the Pope's Worldwide P
  
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• Are BuzzBallz actually recyclable?

  25-07-2026 00:03 via bbc.co.uk
  
  BuzzBallz cannot be recycled as the metal lid and plastic body are attached, say experts.
  
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• AMD vibe codes its way past the CUDA moat with ROCm.AI

  24-07-2026 23:55 via theregister.com
  
  Even as AMD’s GPUs have grown more competitive, the House of Zen has struggled to shake the perception that its chips are less capable because they don’t run CUDA. At its Advancing AI event in San Francisco this week, AMD unveiled ROCm.AI, which promises to let users vibe code their way to faster inference performance. In reality, the so-called CUDA moat has become considerably shallower over the past few years as frameworks like PyTorch and JAX have made it possible for developers t
  
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• Fears as ancient skin disease surges across Florida... and scientists zero in on 'southern delicacy' as unlikely culprit

  24-07-2026 23:14 via dailymail.com
  
  An ancient disease that causes severe skin disfigurement has become endemic in Florida, and experts warn cases will continue to rise.
  
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• Europol flags 4,340 'horrific' URLs linked to The Com

  24-07-2026 22:20 via theregister.com
  
  Europol and its partners' investigators flagged 4,340 “horrific” URLs for removal over several weeks in June and July as part of an ongoing crackdown on The Com (short for community), a loosely knit network of online groups whose young members participate in a range of illicit activities. These range from hacking, swatting, and digital extortion to real-life shootings, stabbings, and other physical violence. Europol’s recent Referral Action Days, aimed at disrupting The Com&rsq
  
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• Tech leaders issue letter to train Uncle Sam about value of open weight AI

  24-07-2026 21:45 via theregister.com
  
  With the US government scrutinizing AI as much as ever, 25 technology companies, industry organizations, and venture capital firms published an open letter on Friday urging policymakers to support open weight AI models. The missive [PDF] of nearly a thousand words can be summarized as "Please don't give Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI control of the US AI market." Coincidentally, those three companies are not among the signatories, a group that includes Dell, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral, Mozilla
  
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• Monster heat dome to roast US with dangerous temperatures hotter than the Sahara

  24-07-2026 21:38 via dailymail.com
  
  Millions of Americans are set for a monster heat dome that will send temperatures soaring until next week. Some parts of the US will also be hotter than the Sahara Desert.
  
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• Cloud outage blamed for short disruption of major websites

  24-07-2026 20:17 via dailymail.com
  
  A widespread outage impacted dozens of websites on Friday morning, including Apple Pay, Reddit and Hulu.
  
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• Dev accidentally commits Copilot binary to FreeBSD ports repo

  24-07-2026 19:03 via theregister.com
  
  The FreeBSD project froze its ports repository on Wednesday. The reason turns out to be a slightly embarrassing Git-related oopsie where a version of Copilot got uploaded somewhere it should not have been. The announcement of the 2026 Ports Repository Freeze went out on July 21 and remained in effect the following day, as explained in a message on the freebsd-announce mailing list. The mail delicately skirted around exactly what happened: « The commit in question severed our ports tree mir
  
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• 'Buck Moon' set to light up sky

  24-07-2026 18:48 via bbc.co.uk
  
  July's full Moon is set to be a special one - Sophia Herod explains why.
  
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• ChatGPT wants access to your health records so it can be a better not-doctor

  24-07-2026 18:21 via theregister.com
  
  OpenAI is expanding its healthcare footprint by encouraging users to connect Apple Health data and supported medical records to ChatGPT - one day after a user sued the company, alleging the chatbot's medical advice nearly killed him. Health in ChatGPT, as the new feature is called, allows eligible users to connect ChatGPT to Apple's Health app in iOS, giving the chatbot access to health information users choose to share, including medical records, sleep, activity, and other data stored in the ap
  
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• Cloud outage blamed for 'breaking the internet' after major websites went down

  24-07-2026 18:14 via dailymail.com
  
  A widespread outage impacted dozens of websites on Friday morning, including Apple Pay, Reddit and Hulu.
  
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• Rain returns for some parts of the UK

  24-07-2026 18:12 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Rain is returning for some of us this weekend – but is it enough for places that have seen little or now rain for weeks?
  
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• Hate needles? World's first PAINLESS tattoo delivers permanent ink with zero discomfort

  24-07-2026 18:07 via dailymail.com
  
  If you would love to get a tattoo but can't stand the thought of needles, a UK-based startup has just invented the perfect solution.
  
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• Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet met with ZTE to deepen cooperation in digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence (AI)

  24-07-2026 17:01 via theregister.com
  
  ZTE announced that Samdech Moha Borvor Thipadei Hun Manet, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Cambodia, held a cordial meeting with Mr. Xiao Ming, ZTE's President of Overseas, Mr. James Zhang, Senior Vice President of ZTE, and other ZTE representatives during the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC). The meeting focused on exploring and deepening bilateral cooperation in digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence, marking a significant step forward in the longstanding partn
  
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