Sci-Tech news

• How ordering a starter could spoil your main meal

  25-06-2015 16:30 via
  
  Researchers from Drexel University gave two separate bruschetta dishes - one good and one mediocre - to 64 people. This was followed by a main dish of pasta with garlic and oil.
  
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• The dismal state of the climate: Damning report confirms record-high greenhouse gases, global sea level and ocean heat in 2025

  11-08-2026 11:47 via dailymail.com
  
  A damning report has confirmed greenhouse gas concentrations, global sea level and ocean heat all reached record highs last year.
  
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• Malicious SIMs can shut down phones, steal files, and drag 5G back to 2G

  11-08-2026 11:37 via theregister.com
  
  Researchers have found that a malicious SIM card can tell some phones and cellular-connected devices to leak data, drop to 2G, shut themselves down, or even execute code, all thanks to functionality that's supposed to be there. The research [PDF], presented at the USENIX WOOT conference in Baltimore this week, examines proactive SIM functionality, which allows a SIM to issue commands to the device hosting it. One of those is RUN AT, which allows the SIM to request the execution of AT commands, t
  
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• Sick of the heatwave? Temperatures will drop by 'several degrees' for around an hour this week - thanks to the solar eclipse

  11-08-2026 11:10 via dailymail.com
  
  With the UK in the midst of yet another heatwave, many Brits are desperate for some respite from the heat. Well, there's good news, as that sweet relief will come this week.
  
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• Why hybrid clouds break and what to do about it

  11-08-2026 10:00 via theregister.com
  
  Hybrid cloud breaks down when every environment has its own provisioning process, security model, monitoring stack, and cost structure. In practice, many hybrid strategies were built around where infrastructure happened to live, not around each workload’s latency, data governance, resilience, performance, and cost requirements.Why has hybrid cloud become so hard to run? Most enterprises didn't choose hybrid so much as stumble into it. A cloud-first push might have handled greenfield develo
  
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• OVH Cloud warns of 87% price hikes to help it cover RAMpocalypse costs

  11-08-2026 07:52 via theregister.com
  
  Octave Klaba, the CEO of France-based cloud operator OVH has warned that it will soon hike the price of server rental by up to 87 percent. Klaba said the price OVH pays for memory rose 6x in the year to June 2026, will rise to 9x by September, and hit 12x next year. He has also seen a 7x price increase for NVMe drives, hard disk prices rise 3.5x, and the cost of CPUs, motherboards, and network cards rise by 15 to 20 percent. He thinks those prices will climb further in the near future, and blame
  
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• Japan kind-of completes its sovereign satnav constellation

  11-08-2026 06:59 via theregister.com
  
  Japan has successfully launched the last of the current generation of the satellite navigation orbiters it will use to operate a sovereign positioning system. The satellite, known as “Michibiki No. 7”, aka QZS-7, made it into orbit early on Tuesday, local time, aboard an H3 rocket. The H3 is the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA’s) latest mid-range launcher and has flown nine times. Two of those missions failed, most recently in December 2025 when glue caused fat
  
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• Alibaba Cloud is using AI to help it use less AI

  11-08-2026 02:48 via theregister.com
  
  Alibaba is one of the world’s leading sources of large language models, yet its cloudy arm is proudly showing off its own technology that finds ways to avoid using them. Alibaba Cloud has built a system to analyze its customers’ tech support queries that often avoids using large language models to solve the problem, an approach it says has proven faster, cheaper, and more accurate. China’s top cloud provider shared its work at this week’s SIGKDD 2026, the annual conferenc
  
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• Anthropic pledges to embed watermarks to help discern AI slop in sop to EU

  11-08-2026 02:27 via theregister.com
  
  Anthropic will embed watermarks in the text and files generated by future models it launches in the EU, as part of its effort to comply with content and transparency rules in the bloc's AI Act. "Generated text will carry embedded watermarks, and generated files will include digitally signed provenance metadata where supported," the company said in a help document published on Monday. The AI biz is also working on models it has already released, to add output marking during the transition period
  
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• Hey, big spender – OpenAI has a new SKU just for you

  10-08-2026 23:25 via theregister.com
  
  Not getting enough out of that ChatGPT Business subscription? OpenAI is hoping you’ll take it up on a new “premium” Business tier seat that’s up to $100 more a month for some added capacity and higher usage limits. Sam Altman’s AI outfit announced ChatGPT Business Premium seats on Monday, describing the new offering as an option for Business-tier customers who feel they’re chafing under the old Business limitations. Business Premium seats, which can be combine
  
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• DEF CON hackers add new muscle to water utility protection

  10-08-2026 23:08 via theregister.com
  
  DEF CON hackers expanded their efforts to provide free cyber-defenses to rural water systems in the US to include managed detection and response providers, digital twins, and AI agents. On Friday, at the annual hacker’s conference, DEF CON Franklin and the National Rural Water Association (NRWA) announced a new program called the Water Watch Center. It will initially fund five providers - Defendify, Legato Security, L1 Secure, Rapid7, and Sentinel Technologies - to help small water utiliti
  
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• The Future is for Billionaires, the rest will get open weight AI models, maybe

  10-08-2026 22:49 via theregister.com
  
  In a public post titled "The Future is for Everyone," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg declares, "We are fortunate to live at an incredible moment in history." For Zuck to posit that "The Future is for Everyone" is at once facile for being so vague it could mean anything – are there people now living who are excluded from the future? – and foolish for its failure to address real issues that actually affect people's lives. We are perhaps not so fortunate as the unpopular but wealthy Zuck, wor
  
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• The future is for billionaires – the rest of us will get open weight AI models, maybe

  10-08-2026 22:49 via theregister.com
  
  OPINION In a public post titled "The Future is for Everyone," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg declares, "We are fortunate to live at an incredible moment in history." For Zuck to posit that "The Future is for Everyone" is at once facile for being so vague it could mean anything – are there people now living who are excluded from the future? – and foolish for its failure to address real issues that actually affect people's lives. We are perhaps not so fortunate as the unpopular but wealthy Z
  
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• Biblical Moses may finally have been found as ancient secrets emerge from Egypt

  10-08-2026 22:09 via dailymail.com
  
  While Moses is one of the Bible's most famous figures, there are no records of him. Experts have made the case that a commoner may have been the prophet.
  
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• Zuck rekindles open weights Llama drama with Muse Glimmer

  10-08-2026 22:05 via theregister.com
  
  After seemingly abandoning its open source AI roots this spring, Meta offered enterprises a glimmer of hope on Monday with the launch of its first open weights model in more than a year. Unveiled on Monday, Muse Glimmer is a 30 billion-parameter LLM distilled from the Social network's larger, and for now proprietary, Muse Spark model. Glimmer arrives as American tech companies grapple with a crisis over the proliferation of Chinese open weights models and a call for domestically-created alternat
  
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• Scientists warn 'biblical flood' scenario threatens millions in California: 'We are not prepared'

  10-08-2026 21:59 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists have issued an urgent warning after identifying a biblical flood scenario that would unleash 20-foot walls of water on major US cities.
  
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• Mystery over new leaked Kurt Cobain emails... and how key evidence in his gruesome death was destroyed

  10-08-2026 21:34 via dailymail.com
  
  It was one of the central pieces of physical evidence in the death of Kurt Cobain - and it was destroyed.
  
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• The true life of Moses may finally be revealed as ancient secrets emerge from Egypt

  10-08-2026 21:18 via dailymail.com
  
  While Moses is one of the Bible's most famous figures, there are no records of him. Experts have made the case that a commoner may have been the prophet.
  
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• Mysterious Egyptian commoner who rose to power may have been biblical Moses, researchers claim

  10-08-2026 20:20 via dailymail.com
  
  While Moses is one of the Bible's most famous figures, there are no records of him. Experts have made the case that a commoner may have been the prophet.
  
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• North Korean spies are running local LLMs to cause AI mischief

  10-08-2026 19:23 via theregister.com
  
  North Korean government snoops are operating LLMs locally and collecting technology to weave AI into their attack operations, according to South Korean security firm Genians. The researchers said they observed Kimsuky setting up and operating local LLM environments using Ollama, GPT4All, and Msty, experimenting with other AI tools such as Cursor, and using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for local document searches. This prevents the data from getting sucked into the cloud where enemies mig
  
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• 'Time traveler' claiming to be from the year 4413 delivers ominous warning about humanity's fate

  10-08-2026 18:45 via dailymail.com
  
  A man claiming to have traveled to the year 4413 has returned with a chilling warning about humanity's fate.
  
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• Gym rat asks AI agent to book him a class, it hacks a waitlist API to bump him up the list

  10-08-2026 18:45 via theregister.com
  
  An Australian man who asked his AI agent to book him a slot in a class at his local gym got more than he bargained for as the bot hacked into a waitlist and started messing with other members' reservations. Australian broadcaster ABC identified the gym-goer only as “Andrew.” The report says Andrew was using the OpenClaw agent with Anthropic’s Claude AI service. Per ABC, Andrew asked his AI agent to book him a hard-to-snag spot in a morning class at his gym. It first responded b
  
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• Time traveler claiming to be from the year 4413 delivers ominous warning about humanity's fate

  10-08-2026 18:29 via dailymail.com
  
  A man claiming to have traveled to the year 4413 has returned with a chilling warning about humanity's fate.
  
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• LexisNexis pulls three services offline after suspicious server activity

  10-08-2026 18:15 via theregister.com
  
  LexisNexis took its Diligence, Metabase API, and Newsdesk services offline last week after detecting "unusual activity on servers that are hosted and managed by a third-party vendor." Non-public customer communications penned by Todd Larsen, president of Nexis Solutions, and seen by The Register, said the company took the decision to protect customers by "containing the issue at its source" and "disconnecting from those third-party systems." "While this decision resulted in those applications go
  
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• Group advocating for Australians to list 'no religion' on the Census is called out over AI ads: 'Fake humanity'

  10-08-2026 17:30 via dailymail.com
  
  A group calling for Aussies to be honest about their religion in Tuesday's Census have been criticised for using 'AI slop'.
  
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• Dogs really ARE man's best friend! Pooches can tell when we're angry, sad, or scared - simply by looking at our faces, study finds

  10-08-2026 17:07 via dailymail.com
  
  Dogs really are man's best friend, new research has confirmed once again.
  
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• You're having a laugh! Map reveals the tickle HOTSPOTS across the human body that are guaranteed to get you giggling

  10-08-2026 17:02 via dailymail.com
  
  Some find it funny while others say it's torture - but scientists have now confirmed ticklish 'hotspots' are the same around the world.
  
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• You think this is warm? Hot days could have FOUR extra hours of heat by 2100, study warns

  10-08-2026 17:02 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, say that hot days could have even more hours of heat by the end of the century.
  
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• As datacenters expand, so does public opposition to them

  10-08-2026 16:15 via theregister.com
  
  Anti-datacenter sentiment appears to be hardening in the US and UK, with more American jurisdictions blocking new builds and protesters marching against a planned facility in London's historic Brick Lane. A burst of new projects on both sides of the Atlantic has brought concerns about electricity bills, water supplies, and massive warehouse-like structures looming over nearby homes. More than 200 datacenter bans and moratoriums took effect in the US over the past 30 days, bringing the number of
  
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• Attackers pick Levi's pockets in social engineering attack

  10-08-2026 15:36 via theregister.com
  
  Levi Strauss is investigating a data breach after attackers used social engineering to access three employees' work computers. In a regulatory filing, the jeans maker said the intruders accessed and exfiltrated what it described only as "certain corporate information." Levi's said it spotted the intrusion, kicked off its incident response procedures, brought in outside cybersecurity experts, and managed to cut off the unauthorized access. Its investigation remains ongoing. There is some good new
  
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