Sci-Tech news

• In a spin

  05-10-2018 01:12 via bbc.co.uk
  Water shortages mean the laundry industry is adopting various technologies to reduce consumption.
  
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• BOFH: Oh no! The CMS ate 500 pages of corporate documentation

  11-09-2026 10:31 via theregister.com
  
  EPISODE 17 The new Boss is keen to acquire knowledge. So keen that he wants a quick rundown on our content management system so he can avail himself of our copious workplace documentation. "WELL," I say, bracing myself for a long session, "first things first, you'll need to get a strong coffee." "Why?" "Because our CMS is a place where documents go to die." "Surely it can't be that-" "Oh, it's bad. So bad that no one will ever admit to being on the selection committee that purchased it." "Were y
  
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• DeepSeek's new model sets a template for powerful LLMs that run lean

  11-09-2026 09:15 via theregister.com
  
  Chinese AI darling DeepSeek unveiled an updated version of its cost-and-latency-optimized Flash model on Thursday, with a new version 4.1 that includes architectural improvements more significant than you would expect in a point release because the changes might open the door to larger, smarter, and less resource-intensive models. At 763 billion parameters, the point release is more than 2.5x the size of the model it replaces. In fact, the model is larger than the V3 and R1 models that put DeepS
  
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• On Call: Boss wrongly claimed IT deleted his files, refused to learn the one-click fix

  11-09-2026 08:30 via theregister.com
  
  ON CALL Friday morning is The Register's home for tech support stories, which we showcase in On Call – the weekly column made possible by readers generously sharing their experience of what it takes to fix things for the furious, fatuous, or feebleminded users that infest every workplace. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Lucia," who was once ordered to report immediately to a company director's office. "All of my files have gone," the director fumed, before insisting this was al
  
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• Microsoft annoints Rust as a 'Tier 1' internal language

  11-09-2026 08:26 via theregister.com
  
  When Microsoft's developers and engineers sit down to code, they can now choose to work in Rust, which Redmond has added to its list of canonical languages. “Rust now is a Tier One language at Microsoft, and that just means that it sits among C++, C# and TypeScript as the best supported languages for internal development in the company,” explained Victor Ciura, Microsoft principal engineer for the Rust tooling team, during a keynote talk today at this year’s annual RustConf, be
  
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• Oracle says AI will save it from the SaaSpocalypse, not bring it on

  11-09-2026 04:43 via theregister.com
  
  Oracle has argued AI will strengthen its applications business, by giving customers new ways to use software and making them easier to implement. Co-CEO Mike Sicilia decided to defend applications in his first remarks on Oracle’s Q1 FY 2027 earnings call. “The introduction of AI is an accelerator, not a replacement for packaged applications,” he argued. “Before AI came along, application suites had already proven their effectiveness. Companies have been able to increase t
  
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• OpenAI arms devs with AI conversation tool that can talk and listen at the same time

  11-09-2026 00:59 via theregister.com
  
  OpenAI has launched a version of its latest real-time full-duplex voice model as an API, allowing software developers to implement more responsive voice-enabled apps and conversational workflows. GPT-Live-1 debuted in July, offering a way to interact through spoken prompts and responses instead of through typed text. Initially available through the ChatGPT interface, the voice model can now be reached via API calls. As a full-duplex model, GPT-Live-1 can listen and generate speech at the same ti
  
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• Latest Anthropic horror story chills with tales of kamikaze drone swarms and bioweapons research

  11-09-2026 00:38 via theregister.com
  
  In the latest installment of "my AI model is more dangerous than yours," Anthropic on Thursday warned that cybercriminals and state-sponsored hackers alike are using its Claude models to automate cyberattacks, build kamikaze drone swarms, conduct mass surveillance operations, and try to develop an even more dangerous version of a deadly mosquito-borne virus. The baddies have come a long way since November, when an earlier Anthropic report documented Chinese spies using Claude to automate digital
  
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• New 'code' found in Egypt's Great Pyramid may finally reveal its true purpose

  10-09-2026 22:29 via dailymail.com
  
  The Great Pyramid has guarded its secrets behind millions of tons of stone, but a new paper claims its greatest message may have been hiding in plain sight.
  
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• I'm a sociopath... here are the three tricks I use to control men without them ever realizing

  10-09-2026 22:17 via dailymail.com
  
  A woman who describes herself has now revealed the calculated dating tactics she says can leave men emotionally hooked and desperate to prove themselves.
  
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• Watch out: Apple timepiece can grab snippets of conversation without both speakers' consent

  10-09-2026 21:50 via theregister.com
  
  With the release of Apple Watch Series 12, Apple has decided that it's ok to capture people's conversations without their consent. The latest Apple Watch comes with Audio Intelligence, a set of AI audio processing capabilities tuned for the company's S11 chip. Its features include: Sound Recognition, Music Recognition with Shazam, Live Rewind, and Siri Recap. "Live Rewind lets you instantly see the last 15 seconds of a conversation as text," Apple explains in its technical summary [PDF]. "Siri R
  
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• Newly identified 'code' hidden in Egypt's Great Pyramid may finally reveal its true purpose

  10-09-2026 21:50 via dailymail.com
  
  The Great Pyramid has guarded its secrets behind millions of tons of stone, but a new paper claims its greatest message may have been hiding in plain sight.
  
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• Spotify extends lifeline to Tailwind as vibe coding erodes web dev platform's bottom line

  10-09-2026 21:43 via theregister.com
  
  Tailwind CSS may still be open source, but it’s not independent anymore: It’s now a Shopify product. Tailwind Labs CEO Aadam Wathan shared news of Shopify’s acquisition of his company in a blog post Thursday. Wathan said that he chose to sell to Shopify because the ecommerce platform was an early adopter of Tailwind CSS, and will serve as an ideal place for his open-source web development platform to “be developed in service of a real product.” “I believe deep
  
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• Shopify extends lifeline to Tailwind as vibe coding erodes web dev platform's bottom line

  10-09-2026 21:43 via theregister.com
  
  Tailwind CSS may still be open source, but it’s not independent anymore: It’s now a Shopify product. Tailwind Labs CEO Adam Wathan shared news of Shopify’s acquisition of his company in a blog post Thursday. Wathan said that he chose to sell to Shopify because the ecommerce platform was an early adopter of Tailwind CSS, and will serve as an ideal place for his open-source web development platform to “be developed in service of a real product.” “I believe deepl
  
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• Hundreds of AI agents helped PaperCut attacker hit 395+ orgs, and some went off script

  10-09-2026 20:49 via theregister.com
  
  An unknown attacker used hundreds of AI agents to exploit two PaperCut MF/NG bugs and break into at least 395 organizations. The victims were concentrated in the US education sector, and the intrusions moved fast. In one case, an American high school went from initial access to domain admin in seven minutes. These agents, powered by OpenAI’s Codex harness and a DeepSeek model, also allowed the miscreant to attack organizations at scale, according to threat-intel firm GreyNoise, which trace
  
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• OpenAI's website-hijacking swarm reached far further than we thought

  10-09-2026 20:15 via theregister.com
  
  Getting straight answers out of OpenAI about how many websites and services its agents have hijacked increasingly seems like pulling teeth, as the company seems intent on making the world discover each instance one by one. Case in point: The OpenAI agent swarm that we reported last week had taken over an obscure German wiki appears to have written content to an additional 20 websites, and used 14 fetch services to do work for it, according to new research. The latest report, published Wednesday
  
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• NASA discovers mysterious holes punched into the surface of Mars - and scientists have no idea what created them

  10-09-2026 19:36 via dailymail.com
  
  NASA has discovered a series of mysterious holes punched into the surface of Mars.
  
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• Massive 3,000-mile plume of dust and toxic minerals set to engulf US coast within DAYS

  10-09-2026 19:22 via dailymail.com
  
  A massive plume of dust is set to cause breathing problems for millions in the US and neighboring territories within a matter of days.
  
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• Thousands of birds descend on Oregon church in chilling 'End of Days' scene

  10-09-2026 19:12 via dailymail.com
  
  Thousands of winged creatures were filmed swirling like a cyclone around a church steeple, sparking fears that the ominous spectacle was a sign of impending doom.
  
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• Board Of Peace Directors Kushner And Witkoff Meet With Putin

  10-09-2026 18:29 via technocracy.news
  
  Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, showed up with Jared Kushner in Moscow to meet with Russian President Putin about peace with Ukraine. Both are directors of the Board of Peace that Trump created earlier this year, making himself the Chairman for Life. First Gaza, then Iran, and now Russia? Kushner has no official role with our government. The journalists covering this story say nothing about the huge conflict of interest. Americans should be crying “Fowl!&rdqu
  
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• AI job cuts could come with a costly undo button

  10-09-2026 18:21 via theregister.com
  
  Gartner forecasts that, by 2029, nearly a third of employees laid off because of AI will need to be rehired, often at significantly higher cost. The global research firm warned that workforce cuts could save money in the short term but risk weakening talent pipelines and eroding institutional knowledge over the longer term. With labor force growth flat or declining worldwide, competition for talent would drive up recruitment, training, and onboarding costs. "When business and IT executives look
  
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• NASA and IBM open source lunar mapping tools

  10-09-2026 18:09 via theregister.com
  
  IBM and NASA have got together again and released an open source AI model of the Moon that could be used to make new discoveries about Earth’s natural satellite. The NASA‑IBM Lunar Foundation Model has been trained on an extensive lunar observation dataset curated by researchers at the two organizations, and is available now on Hugging Face. It is claimed as the first AI model to integrate observations captured in a range of modalities (data formats), and at different viewing angles
  
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• Azure SQL Data Sync stops taking newcomers before 2027 execution

  10-09-2026 16:47 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has entered the final phase of retiring Azure SQL Data Sync, blocking new deployments in subscriptions that have never used the service. The restriction took effect on September 9, ahead of the service's shutdown on September 30, 2027. Subscriptions that already use the service can continue creating, modifying, and managing sync groups and member databases until retirement. Other subscriptions can no longer adopt it. The service uses a hub-and-spoke model, with an Azure SQL database se
  
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• Nscale swallows lion's share of UK datacenter investment

  10-09-2026 16:08 via theregister.com
  
  Nscale accounts for nearly two-thirds of the equity funding raised by UK datacenter infrastructure companies, according to a report from Tracxn. The market research firm identifies the rent-a-GPU operation as the only unicorn – a privately held company valued at more than $1 billion – in Britain's datacenter infrastructure sector. Nscale leads the pack with $3.7 billion raised, according to Tracxn, out of $5.7 billion across the sector. Other notable players identified by Tracxn incl
  
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• What do you hear? Baffling audio illusion leaves social media divided - as some hear 'no way, no way', while others hear 'well, well, well'

  10-09-2026 16:02 via dailymail.com
  
  In a viral clip, posted by the New Zealand-based podcast The Morning Shift, you can hear a strange repetitive sound being played. However, no one has been able to agree on what the message says.
  
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• Social media is sucking the life out of our holidays - here's how to travel without Instagram and TikTok ruining your next trip

  10-09-2026 15:55 via dailymail.com
  
  Social media has plenty of uses, but it can spoil the adventurous nature of a trip if used too much beforehand. Why not try one of these analogue tools on your next trip instead?
  
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• Revealed: The unhealthiest supermarket bacon products - with just two rashers of the saltiest option containing more than 40% of your daily salt limit

  10-09-2026 15:54 via dailymail.com
  
  The team at Which? have analysed 28 pork bacon products to find out the most and least healthy options.
  
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• ShinyHunters expose 6.4M in attack on medical supplier McKesson

  10-09-2026 15:13 via theregister.com
  
  McKesson's cyberattack last month affected roughly 6.4 million individuals, according to Have I Been Pwned (HIBP). The breach notification service added data leaked by serial extortionists ShinyHunters, revealing the scale of the attack for the first time. ShinyHunters initially claimed to have stolen 284 million documents from the medical and pharmaceutical supply company in August, although HIBP did not confirm that figure. The cybercriminals told The Register that they issued a $55.2 million
  
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• d-Matrix drinks the Nvidia Kool-Aid with NVLink Fusion and MGX rack designs

  10-09-2026 15:00 via theregister.com
  
  AI infrastructure startup d-Matrix on Thursday joined the growing list of chipmakers licensing Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion interconnect tech and rack-scale reference designs to make its high-performance inference platform more accessible to customers. Under the deal, d-Matrix will integrate support for NVLink Fusion, a high-speed chip-to-chip interconnect that Nvidia began licensing last year, into future chip designs, including its upcoming Raptor accelerators. As we’ve previously report
  
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• Ministers rejected NATS reimbursement plan before 2,000 UK flights were cancelled

  10-09-2026 14:28 via theregister.com
  
  The UK government opposed a proposal to make air traffic control provider NATS reimburse airlines for passenger compensation arising from its failures, weeks before a massive tech glitch led to 2,000 flight cancellations. During a House of Commons debate, Liberal Democrat MP Luke Taylor pointed out that the government had opposed the amendment in the months before this week's computer outage, which disrupted travel for around 330,000 passengers. The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) told affecte
  
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