Sci-Tech news

• HQ Trivia and Vine co-founder Colin Kroll dead at 34

  16-12-2018 23:18 via bbc.co.uk
  New York police officers went to Colin Kroll's Manhattan flat after a request to check on him.
  
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• OpenAI's rebel agent swarm died young, but its chilling logs live on

  07-09-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  OPINION You will have heard of July's OpenAI/Hugging Face incident, where thousands of the former's AI agents conducted a mass jailbreak from a notionally secure capture-the-flag lab experiment, before going on to feloniously capture chunks of Hugging Face's assets. It was a good news story, aided by OpenAI's rapid recruitment of a small team of independent researchers to investigate and publish a detailed, if limited, report. It was a complex incident, and most coverage concentrated on the majo
  
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• Amazon-branded plane in fatal accident at Miami Airport

  07-09-2026 09:02 via theregister.com
  
  Two runways are currently closed at Miami International Airport after an Amazon-branded cargo plane overran a runway, resulting in five fatalities. The leased 767, which bears the “Prime Air” brand Amazon uses for its air freight and drone operations, landed but was unable to stop before the end of the 2850-meter runway 30. The plane appears to have exited the runway and the airport grounds, crossed a road, and come to a halt in what looks like a carpark. As it ran across grass beyon
  
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• Who, Me? Techie sent to fix Nobel Prize winner’s PC almost set it on fire

  07-09-2026 08:30 via theregister.com
  
  WHO, ME? Every Monday morning The Register asks the same question – “Who, Me?” – because that’s the name of our weekly reader-contributed column that shares your stories of workplace scrapes, escapes, and japes. This week meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Marc” who told us that he graduated in the early 1990s and soon scored his first job – supporting PCs for Very Important Professors (VIPs) at the graduate school run by his alma mater. &ldquo
  
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• Jensen's purchase of a new toy could reshape the entire AI industry

  07-09-2026 07:30 via theregister.com
  
  KETTLE AI repository Hugging Face will soon be an Nvidia property, and while everyone's promising things will remain the same we at The Register's Kettle desk aren't so sure the status quo is going to stay the status quo at the AI industry's leading open model host.You can listen to the latest episode of The Kettle right here on this page, as well as on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube. Those platforms also let you subscribe to Kettle, so you are always notified when the latest episode goes live
  
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• Might as well blame AI for this giant Linux release candidate, says Linus Torvalds

  07-09-2026 04:32 via theregister.com
  
  Linux kernel boss Linus Torvalds has decided he might as well blame AI for a version 7.3 release candidate that’s larger than was usually the case before LLMs came into our lives. “This didn't *feel* like a particularly busy rc2, but it clearly was,” he wrote in his regular Sunday kernel update post. “rc2 is usually the quietest time when people take a breather after the merge window and it takes a while to start finding bugs. But not this time - this is a ‘full fat
  
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• Thailand pauses all datacenter builds and approvals

  07-09-2026 03:05 via theregister.com
  
  ASIA IN BRIEF Thailand’s National Economic and Social Development Council last week decided to pause all datacenter builds in the country, while it works out appropriate regulations. The Council announced the pause last Friday in a communiqué issued after a meeting of its Datacenter Business Policy Committee, at which Thailand’s Prime Minister and Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said datacenters are an important part of the nation’s economy – but admitted his
  
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• Would you get buried in a 'living coffin'? Australian woman is put to rest in a casket made from mushrooms

  06-09-2026 22:00 via dailymail.com
  
  Carolyn, a woman in her 70s, was put to rest on 4 September in a futuristic casket made from mycelium - the underground root network of mushrooms - and upcycled hemp fibres.
  
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• Cows found mutilated and drained of every drop of blood across remote Oregon... and baffled deputy has a chilling theory

  06-09-2026 20:57 via dailymail.com
  
  WARNING - GRAPHIC CONTENT: Over the past half-century, more than 10,000 cows are estimated to have been found mutilated and drained of blood in the US.
  
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• Does your dog have ADHD? Vet claims pooches can be hyperactive just like humans - here are the signs to look out for

  06-09-2026 20:38 via dailymail.com
  
  If you've got a hyperactive pooch that just can't pay attention, vets say it might have a condition remarkably similar to ADHD in humans.
  
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• I bled to death. As an atheist, I expected oblivion... but I entered the afterlife for six minutes and saw proof of what God is REALLY like. Everything on Earth is fake

  06-09-2026 20:14 via dailymail.com
  
  Dr Anna Stone, a former Department of Defense research technician, was just 38 in 2016 when an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy ruptured, causing her to bleed to death in a hospital.
  
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• The clues in human DNA that prove life had an intelligent creator, according to a medical scientist

  06-09-2026 17:05 via dailymail.com
  
  Did DNA and life itself really arise spontaneously in puddles or undersea vents 3.8 billion years ago, or is this a sign that creation must have intelligence behind it?
  
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• Time lords prepare to kick leap seconds into the next millennium

  06-09-2026 10:09 via theregister.com
  
  The prospect of a negative leap second – combined with decades of irritation over leap seconds generally – looks set to inspire a bit of global procrastination among international timekeepers. Next month, the General Conference on Weights and Measures is set to vote on effectively calling time on leap seconds. A draft resolution [PDF] would make Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) continuous from May 20, 2027, and allow the difference between UTC and UT1, a measure of time based on Eart
  
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• Why your house is a magnet for spiders: Horrified Brits say their homes are crawling with eight-legged critters - here's what's behind the invasion

  06-09-2026 06:28 via dailymail.com
  
  As summer comes to an end and temperatures begin to fall, sightings of house spiders start to increase across the UK.
  
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• US troops can still be tracked by purchased location data, and Congress wants to know why

  06-09-2026 03:06 via theregister.com
  
  The US military's effort to prevent troops from being tracked by adversaries through purchased location data hasn't worked as well as anticipated, and lawmakers want to know why. US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC) on Friday asked for an investigation by the Defense Department Inspector General into policies that have only partially stanched the flow of location data that allows military personnel to be tracked and targeted. In May, Wyden, Harrigan, and a bipartisan group of
  
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• A once-in-a-generation event turns New York's waters black... see the extraordinary gathering

  05-09-2026 20:00 via dailymail.com
  
  Drone footage captured the moment New York's coastal waters turned an ominous black due to a rare gathering at sea.
  
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• California has never been hit by a hurricane. Now a top forecaster reveals the three ominous changes that could make the unthinkable happen THIS year

  05-09-2026 17:03 via dailymail.com
  
  An expert forecaster fears 2026 may be the year a hurricane makes landfall in California, as the conditions line up for a historic storm.
  
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• Flourishing green communities are changing lives

  05-09-2026 13:04 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Four projects have been nominated in the environmental category in Devon's Make a Difference Awards.
  
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• How long should you shower for? Scientist finally settles the debate - and claims you should only spend three MINUTES in there

  05-09-2026 12:34 via dailymail.com
  
  For some people, a shower is a quick pit stop. For others, it's a spa, therapy session and concert venue rolled into one.
  
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• Trump signs order to remove endangered species protection for grey wolves

  05-09-2026 11:12 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The US president says the move will help ranchers, but conservationists say it could derail efforts to recover populations.
  
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• Beavers filmed bonding after release in the wild

  05-09-2026 10:52 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Conservationists say the budding relationship is "exciting" for the species and their habitat.
  
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• Charity backs call for resting seal protection

  05-09-2026 10:37 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The Seal Research Trust backs calls to make deliberate seal disturbance an offence.
  
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• Plea to give Thames seals space for everyone's safety

  05-09-2026 09:03 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Getting too close to the animals spotted along the River Thames can be harmful for both them and members of the public, a charity says.
  
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• BepiColombo sheds its ride and starts the final glide to Mercury

  05-09-2026 08:41 via theregister.com
  
  After nearly eight years, ESA and JAXA's BepiColombo spacecraft is finally nearing Mercury, as engineers begin the arrival sequence by jettisoning the power module that got it this far. The spacecraft stack separated from the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) on September 3 at around 1400 CEST. After a tense few minutes, controllers confirmed that a preliminary Doppler signal had been detected, indicating that the MTM had separated successfully; by 1552 CEST, it was confirmed that signals had been p
  
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• Manx space group urges election candidates to back treaty

  05-09-2026 08:07 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The Isle of Man Mars Society is urging politicians to sign an international space exploration agreement.
  
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• Ancient cave art discovery suggests first known humans in Ireland walked over from Wales

  05-09-2026 07:52 via bbc.co.uk
  
  During the most recent Ice Age, researchers believe there was a "lost land bridge" between Wales and Ireland.
  
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• The five personality traits you have that scientists can tell before you're born... including some linked to psychopaths

  05-09-2026 07:04 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists have discovered over 1,200 genes which can tell if you may be at risk for mental illness in the future.
  
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• Anthropic lays groundwork for bots that shop for you

  04-09-2026 22:36 via theregister.com
  
  Anthropic has blueprints for building e-commerce bots that shop on behalf of clients. That's not something many consumers want at the moment, but the AI biz this week published a set of templates for Claude-based shopping agents and merchant agents in the hope of encouraging more e-commerce businesses to implement automated purchasing. Its blueprint "contains the harnesses, patterns, and guardrails an engineering team needs to get a commerce agent running in days, with reference implementations
  
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• AMD's Threadripper Halo is a local-AI workstation for researchers with deep pockets

  04-09-2026 22:12 via theregister.com
  
  Machine learning researchers have a new and expensive option for doing local AI. AMD just raided its spare parts bin and cobbled together a DGX Station rival boasting up to 576 GB of HBM3e memory that it’s calling the Threadripper Halo. Announced at IFA 2026, the system, which is set to launch next year, marks the first time that AMD’s Instinct accelerators have been offered in a workstation form factor. But much like the AI Halo we reviewed earlier this year, the Threadripper Halo i
  
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• Three hurricanes near US as millions brace for life-threatening effects during holiday weekend

  04-09-2026 22:07 via dailymail.com
  
  Multiple hurricanes are approaching the US, and forecasters warn that millions of vacationers could see dangerous conditions during the extended holiday weekend.
  
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