Sci-Tech news

• How free wi-fi is transforming India's rail stations

  29-03-2017 12:18 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Free high-speed wi-fi is now being offered at 115 stations on India's railway network.
  
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• Nvidia buys Hugging Face for $12.9B, promises not to squeeze too hard

  03-09-2026 15:03 via theregister.com
  
  BREAKING Nvidia has agreed to buy AI developer platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, tightening its grip on the ecosystem surrounding open models. Following weeks of industry chatter, Nvidia confirmed Thursday it had entered into a definitive agreement to buy the model-hosting hub, sometimes described as a GitHub for AI developers. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions. Open foundation models and t
  
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• Cybercrooks trawl Fishbrain to net password hashes

  03-09-2026 14:45 via theregister.com
  
  Cybercriminals have reeled in password hashes and corresponding salts belonging to users of popular fishing app Fishbrain, opening the door to cracking attempts. Fishbrain AB, which says its eponymous app serves more than 20 million anglers, disclosed the August 19 breach to the California Attorney General's Office this week. The unknown perpetrators helped themselves to a trawl of user data, including names, dates of birth, email addresses, phone numbers, Fishbrain usernames, country informatio
  
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• 'Uber rapture' leaves passengers and drivers behind in Nigeria and Uganda

  03-09-2026 14:00 via theregister.com
  
  In what some are dubbing the "Uber rapture," the ride-hailing pioneer has abruptly quit Nigeria and Uganda. Far from drivers and their cars ascending to some surge-priced afterlife, users reported the service shutting down while rides were still underway. "A friend of mine said they were on a ride when they got the message," one observer wrote on X. "She told the driver and he said, 'It's a lie!'" – a phrase widely used in Nigeria to express disbelief or call out what one perceives to be b
  
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• Windows 11 update sends some desktops into an unwanted goth phase

  03-09-2026 13:15 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft's August update preview has painted some Windows 11 desktops black – and affected users can't simply restore their preferred backgrounds. Microsoft has confirmed reports that the update can prevent personalization settings from loading on Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2. In an unfortunate Rolling Stones tribute, the operating system consequently falls back to its default black background, regardless of the values users enter. In its entry on the Windows release health dashboard, Microso
  
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• Which came first, Windows 95's taskbar or NeXT's Dock? Neither

  03-09-2026 12:45 via theregister.com
  
  Last week marked the 31st anniversary of Windows 95 going on sale. More than three decades later, suggestions about the influences behind its interface can still rile some of the people who built it. The Reg FOSS desk prompted spirited responses from several former Microsoft employees after noting possible British influences on NeXTstep and Windows 95. The exchange began with a passing comment in an X thread started by former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer, who has spoken regularly to The Regis
  
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• Spurs boots VMware, cites 85% licensing saving

  03-09-2026 12:00 via theregister.com
  
  Premier League football club Tottenham Hotspur has ditched VMware as part of a wider datacenter and network refresh, saving itself more than 85 percent on licensing costs - though its Chief Technology Officer says the decision wasn't purely financial. Transforming Spurs into a winning force on the pitch remains a work in progress. Off the pitch, though, the club is nearing the end of a project to overhaul the tech inside its White Hart Lane stadium in north London.The ground holds almost 63,000
  
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• Was this the secret to Tim Cook's success? As John Ternus takes over as CEO, the former Apple leader shares the morning ritual he stuck by for 15 years

  03-09-2026 11:25 via dailymail.com
  
  During his stint at the tech giant, Cook helped cement Apple as one of the biggest and most profitable companies in the world. So, what was the secret to his success? His morning routine.
  
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• UK's Online Safety Act has made 'absolutely no difference,' kids say

  03-09-2026 11:14 via theregister.com
  
  Children have told England's Children's Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, that the UK's Online Safety Act (OSA) "has made absolutely no difference" to their ability to access harmful content online. More than a year after the OSA's key child protection duties took effect, de Souza told MPs and peers that young people had little understanding of the legislation or how it was intended to change their online experiences. De Souza made the comments during the opening evidence session of the House
  
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• British wind power to drive Maersk container ship

  03-09-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  Shipping giant Maersk is testing a modern rotor sail from British firm Anemoi Marine Technologies in an effort to cut fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Anemoi says Maersk will fit one of its rotor sail systems to an 8,700 TEU Lima-class container ship. TEU, or twenty-foot equivalent unit, is the standard measure of container-carrying capacity. That makes the Lima-class vessels relative tiddlers in the container-shipping world. Rival MSC's Irina-class ships measure 400 m (1,312 feet)
  
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• Your VMware renewal invoice ate your AI budget – what now?

  03-09-2026 10:00 via theregister.com
  
  The price of eggs and butter might have soared in the last couple of years, but if you want a real sticker shock horror story, ask a VMware customer. After Broadcom acquired VMware in 2023, some of them complained about hypervisor licenses rising by up to 600 percent. Add to that the difficulty in refreshing hardware thanks to supply-chain delays, and the enterprise AI plan your board is asking for begins to look like a distant dream. Migrating comes with costs too. It isn’t just a compute
  
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• El Niño is being supersized before our eyes: Scientists warn the devastating climate event is 'firmly established' - and is on track to wreak havoc until at least February

  03-09-2026 09:08 via dailymail.com
  
  El Niño is 'firmly established' and will continue to intensify into a very strong event in the coming months, experts have warned.
  
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• Terminated employee cost company hundreds of thousands of dollars because nobody revoked access

  03-09-2026 09:00 via theregister.com
  
  PWNED Welcome back to PWNED, where we talk about organizations that are independently self-owned. This week’s tale of toxic tech involves a disgruntled ex-employee who had the means and opportunity to wreak havoc. Our story comes courtesy of Yad Senapathy, who serves as CEO of the Project Management Training Institute in Dallas, Texas. He recalls a time many years ago when he used to work in IT at a company with more than 1,000 employees. While Senapathy was working there, the company term
  
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• To keep the AI hacking genie bottled up, try one-way networks

  03-09-2026 08:33 via theregister.com
  
  To prevent frontier AI models breaking out of test environments and collaborating to hack other companies, we may have to rethink the network architectures used for model training. Eli-Shaoul Khedouri, CEO of Intuition Machines, argues that past work in the defense and intelligence communities shows the way forward. Rogue AI models rise from the level of developer regret to mass threat when they gain access to the internet, something that defenses erected by OpenAI and its partners tried but fai
  
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• Zuck's Muse to Spark joy with open weights release 'soon'

  03-09-2026 00:31 via theregister.com
  
  Meta will release an open weights version of its flagship AI model Muse Spark "soon," CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised in an X post on Wednesday. In the meantime, Muse Spark 1.3 — the smarter, less yappy, and more efficient version of the model — is now live on the Facebook parent's API service and Muse Code CLI. Since releasing Muse Spark in April, Meta has released several refinements in order to keep pressure on the competition and convince investors its rampant capex isn't for naught
  
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• VMware swings its focus back to low-end server virt, promises vSphere Standard upgrade

  02-09-2026 23:49 via theregister.com
  
  EXCLUSIVE What's old is new again as VMware will soon release an updated version of vSphere Standard, the low-end server virtualization bundle that it hasn’t significantly changed for years and has scarcely promoted since its 2023 acquisition by Broadcom. VMware’s hero product for the last three years has been the Cloud Foundation (VCF) private cloud bundle. vSphere Standard and another low-end suite called vSphere Enterprise Plus remained on VMware’s list of products, but the
  
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• Claude Mythos only model to complete full cyber kill chain, experts say

  02-09-2026 23:31 via theregister.com
  
  Despite what we saw with OpenAI’s models going rogue, creating message boards, and breaking into Hugging Face, only one advanced AI model - Anthropic’s Claude Mythos - completed the full cyber kill chain autonomously in Booz Allen’s tests. This doesn’t mean autonomous AI attacks are overhyped. And we should point out that the models tested don’t include OpenAI’s soon-to-be-released Astra, which OpenAI on Tuesday said reached its “critical” cybersec
  
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• Microsoft devs rejoice: Union types coming to C# in November

  02-09-2026 22:37 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft is set to launch the next iteration of C# this November. Redmond recently unveiled a preview of C# 15 that introduces tighter restrictions on data types alongside enhanced memory safety protections. Perhaps the most frequently requested feature that arrives with this release is union types. Union types are not new to programming. Python, Scala and TypeScript all recognize the concept. But with C#, “This is how unions should be,” boasted C# lead designer Mads Torgersen in an
  
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• AI-assisted mushroom hunting is a recipe for a bad trip

  02-09-2026 22:34 via theregister.com
  
  If you see a mushroom in the forest and you're wondering if it's safe to eat or poisonous, don't ask an AI. Polish software engineer Piotr Migdał, a founding engineer at AI analytics and cost analysis firm Quesma, explained in a Wednesday blog post why trusting the mushroom insights of leading AI models is a dubious, potentially life-threatening idea in an experiment he ran. Armed with a dataset of Danish mushrooms and additional information about safe and deadly species in Poland and abroa
  
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• Site where the Bible says Jesus walked on water discovered after 2,000 years

  02-09-2026 22:07 via dailymail.com
  
  Archaeologists say they've uncovered the site of Jesus' famous miracle, located along the Sea of Galilee. It is within an ancient city the Bible says Jesus spent time in.
  
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• With Gemini 3.8 Flash, Google reminds everyone it's still in the race

  02-09-2026 21:59 via theregister.com
  
  Google on Wednesday announced the release of Gemini 3.8 Flash in an attempt to reclaim its reputation as a top-tier model maker in the process. The company's commitment to the frontier model race has been in doubt since at least early August when Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis stepped down to become chairman of the AI research biz and Koray Kavukcuoglu took over leadership under a less exalted title, SVP. Google CEO Sundar Pichai's reassurances weren't particularly convincing in light of the
  
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• Major earthquake threat rises in California for first time in 12 years

  02-09-2026 21:47 via dailymail.com
  
  A new assessment has revealed an increased risk of a major earthquake striking California. Scientists are now telling residents to be ready for a destructive event.
  
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• AI agents carried out every step of this ransomware attack – then left the victim an 80-page security audit

  02-09-2026 20:28 via theregister.com
  
  A human ransomware crook used frontier AI models to breach an enterprise network in less than 10 hours, an intrusion Unit 42 says would normally take human operators around two weeks. The human attacker then told negotiators that they used frontier models and agentic attack frameworks with AI agents carrying out each step in the intrusion, including leaving an 80-page security audit for the victim company. “What made the attack stand out was AI-assisted operational efficiency, without the
  
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• Blame it on the hormones! Women are more likely to splash out on luxury items when they're ovulating, study finds

  02-09-2026 20:00 via dailymail.com
  
  The sudden urge to splurge on a designer handbag might not be as random as it seems.
  
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• Infosec pros say we're not ready to lose control of AI

  02-09-2026 19:56 via theregister.com
  
  A recent survey shows national security pros believe there’s a one in ten chance humans lose control of AI in the next decade, and few believe we’re even watching for the right warning signs, much less preparing properly. The Institute for Security and Technology (IST), together with the Future of Life Institute (FLI), surveyed 111 current and former civilian officials, military officers, and academic or technical experts for a look into AI and the future of national security. Ninety
  
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• The three tactics that could save your life if you're held at gunpoint, according to a former FBI agent

  02-09-2026 18:49 via dailymail.com
  
  A former FBI agent, who spent 25 years as a special agent, has faced armed attackers himself and recently revealed three tactics that helped him escape alive.
  
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• SonicWall's SMA1000 boxes under active attack again

  02-09-2026 18:05 via theregister.com
  
  SonicWall says attackers are actively exploiting two chained zero-days to take over Secure Mobile Access (SMA) Series 1000 boxes. Aimed at midsize and large enterprises, SMA1000 gateways secure remote access and VPN connections. Compromising one can therefore provide attackers with a valuable route into corporate networks. So, get to applying those hotfixes, says SonicWall. There are no workarounds. The first zero-day, CVE-2026-83548, is a pre-authentication server-side request forgery (SSRF) vu
  
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• Microsoft will stop finishing your sentences in Word and Outlook

  02-09-2026 17:31 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft is switching off text predictions by default in Word and Outlook after acknowledging that unwanted suggestions can interrupt rather than assist some users. The change is coming to Word for Windows, the web, iOS, and Android, as well as classic Outlook for Windows and Outlook for Mac. The feature will remain available but will no longer be enabled by default. Introduced several years ago, the feature is the computing equivalent of Microsoft peering over users' shoulders and suggesting w
  
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• Storm Marie to become hurricane TODAY as rare track threatens millions in California

  02-09-2026 17:04 via dailymail.com
  
  Weather officials along the US West Coast are warning of potentially dangerous conditions this Labor Day weekend as Marie is poised to erupt into a hurricane.
  
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• Overseas Book Review: The New Economics Of Technocracy

  02-09-2026 17:00 via technocracy.news
  
  This book review appeared in a professional journal in France. My books are written for all the people of the world, regardless of political or spiritual orientation. It is useful for my American readers to see outside the bubble that there are thoughtful people all around the world who see Technocracy as a major threat. ⁃ Patrick Wood, Editor.In the last issue, I reviewed Patrick Wood’s then most recent book (p. 68), The Final Betrayal, on how technocracy has gone into overdrive wit
  
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