Sci-Tech news

• Interactive map reveals pollutant levels across Europe

  16-11-2017 16:18 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  The was created by the Copenhagen-based European Environment Agency. The map is marked with coloured dots, each indicating that the level of at least one pollutant is 'very bad'.
  
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• Mysterious object spotted in NASA moon photo sparks theories of extraterrestrial life: '100% proof'

  28-08-2026 19:52 via dailymail.com
  
  A NASA image of the moon has sparked theories of aliens after a mysterious object was spotted hovering above the lunar surface.
  
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• NASA astronaut reveals shocking new details about near-fatal malfunction that left him stranded in space for nine months

  28-08-2026 18:37 via dailymail.com
  
  One of the NASA astronauts who was stranded in space for nine mand his crewmate believed they might not make it home after the craft malfunctioned.
  
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• LibreOffice 26.8 is out – local first, and with no AI

  28-08-2026 17:45 via theregister.com
  
  The latest semi-annual release of LibreOffice, the cross-platform FOSS office suite, is out – and it’s gleefully throwing some shade. The Document Foundation released LibreOffice 26.8 – and sent The Register a press pack before it did so. We’re not going to go through it in great depth: it’s a mature suite, and most Linux distros bundle it by default, even some of the slightly strange ones. We do like some of the sly notes in the launch materials, though, starting w
  
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• NASA astronaut stranded in space for nine months reveals terrifying moment he thought he and crewmate were going to DIE

  28-08-2026 17:40 via dailymail.com
  
  One of the NASA astronauts who was stranded in space for nine mand his crewmate believed they might not make it home after the craft malfunctioned.
  
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• Green Party wants to slam the brakes on UK datacenter construction until water and energy use are sorted

  28-08-2026 17:29 via theregister.com
  
  The Green Party of England and Wales wants the government to end the blanket designation of new bit barns as “critical infrastructure” and change planning rules to stop such facilities taking precedence over households for water and energy. The current UK government designated datacenters as critical national infrastructure (CNI) back in 2024, putting them on the same footing as essential services such as water and power. This made them eligible for special protection, but may also m
  
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• US government snitch-finder pleads guilty to leaking state secrets to foreign spies

  28-08-2026 17:00 via theregister.com
  
  The former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) IT specialist previously accused of trying to pass secret and top-secret information to foreign spies has pleaded guilty following a successful FBI sting. Nathan Vilas Laatsch, then 28, and now 29, was arrested in May 2025 after an undercover FBI agent caught him for the second time transmitting intelligence packages in a public park that he believed would be collected by a foreign government’s spy. The man, who had been employed at the DIA as a
  
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• Tropical Storm Karina could become monster Category 3 hurricane as TWO major models suddenly show ominous path to California

  28-08-2026 16:15 via dailymail.com
  
  Tropical Storm Karina may reach major hurricane status in just days as more prediction models see a California landfall as a possibility.
  
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• Keepers of Noble Numbats to be offered a Resolute Racoon: Ubuntu 26.04.1 is coming

  28-08-2026 16:15 via theregister.com
  
  It looks like the Racoon has bedded in and settled down, as Canonical releases the first point release of this year’s Ubuntu LTS version, offering an upgrade to users on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat). Ubuntu 26.04.1 is the first point release of April’s long-term support version, which will be supported until 2031. Assuming that it follows the pattern of previous Ubuntu LTS releases, 26.04.1 will be followed by four further point releases – usually, the final release comes a
  
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• Word 97's ghost in the machine: The crash that vanished the moment anyone looked at it

  28-08-2026 15:34 via theregister.com
  
  Veteran Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen shared another fireside tale – one to strike fear into the hearts of engineers everywhere: the bug that can't be replicated in the debugger. The story begins near the end of the Word 97 release cycle, when a defect surfaced in the test labs but vanished the moment engineers reached for a debugger. It was maddening. A script could trigger the crash fairly reliably, yet the instant anyone tried to hunt it down, the bug ducked out of sight. Chen recalle
  
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• Shock gathering of 2,000 ocean predators off US coast reveals hidden extinction threat

  28-08-2026 15:07 via dailymail.com
  
  A miraculous scene was captured in the Atlantic as thousands of marine creatures gathered in the same place for an aquatic buffet.
  
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• Datacenters face direct hit from China rare earth curbs, as clock runs out on escalated licensing chokeoff

  28-08-2026 15:01 via theregister.com
  
  The IEEE is warning that China’s export controls on rare earth minerals could start to impact datacenters, as shipments of some key materials are down 75 percent and Beijing is due to review its policies this November. The techie org's official publication, IEEE Spectrum, focuses on two rare earths in particular, erbium and yttrium, which are used in components for IT equipment. Exports of yttrium are down by about 75 percent this year in comparison with 2025. Yttrium was one of seven medi
  
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• Watch: Stargazers around the world glimpse 'Blood Moon' lunar eclipse

  28-08-2026 14:49 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Some parts of the globe had a chance to see the rare event when the Sun, Earth and Moon line up in the night sky.
  
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• Pentagon blacklisted Anthropic over Claude powers it didn't have

  28-08-2026 14:31 via theregister.com
  
  The Pentagon illegally blacklisted Anthropic as a national security threat based partly on things Claude couldn't actually do, a US federal judge has ruled. US District Judge Rita Lin found that the government illegally retaliated against Anthropic for speaking out, denied the company due process, and unlawfully branded it a supply-chain risk.In a 59-page ruling, she repeatedly picked apart the Pentagon's national security case and found some of its central claims about Claude "entirely unfounde
  
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• The rollercoaster that can give you brain damage: Six Flags is forced to close its X2 ride following a string of injuries - including life-altering disabilities, comas and deaths

  28-08-2026 14:07 via dailymail.com
  
  Six Flags Magic Mountain has been forced to shutter its immensely popular 'X2' rollercoaster after a report linked the ride to more than a dozen severe injuries.
  
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• Microsoft preps this year's Windows 11 feature tweaks: 26H2 hits Release Preview

  28-08-2026 14:03 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has dropped Windows 11 26H2 into the Windows Insider Release Preview Channel and released August's preview update. Windows 11 26H2 shares the same servicing branch as Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2, and many of the tweaks and updates that users are looking forward to have already appeared in the monthly Windows updates. The latest, the August Preview Update, includes such modifications as the long-awaited movable taskbar, more Start Menu customization, and the ability to drop web and Microso
  
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• CISA: Most exploited vulnerabilities should have been eradicated decades ago

  28-08-2026 13:29 via theregister.com
  
  CISA is still crying out for software vendors to adopt Secure by Design (SBD) development practices, and says in its latest review that longstanding vulnerability classes are still the most exploited. The agency examined soft spots across 2024 and 2025, finding that the majority of those that receive CVEs and make it to the Known Exploited Vulnerability (KEV) catalog belong to decades-old flaws that should have been addressed by now. Injection-related vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scriptin
  
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• Industry that built the problem offers to sell you the solution

  28-08-2026 13:01 via theregister.com
  
  OpenAI has gathered more than 100 of the world's biggest tech and infosec companies to warn that cyber defense is in trouble - a reassuring development given quite a few of them helped build the technology involved. The open letter has more than 100 names attached to it, including many of the companies with the most to gain – or lose – from what happens next. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Microsoft are among the AI builders warning about increasingly capable AI attacks, while securit
  
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• Britain goes crazy for miso! Demand for the trendy Japanese paste has surged - as health-conscious shoppers flock to stock up

  28-08-2026 12:52 via dailymail.com
  
  New figures released by Waitrose have revealed how demand for the trendy Japanese paste has soared over the last year.
  
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• GPS collars making shepherds' lives 'much easier'

  28-08-2026 12:30 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Brothers Josh and Ben Voak are using a GPS technology featured on the TV show Clarkson's Farm.
  
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• Microsoft's virtual intern Teams Facilitator will be late for the meeting

  28-08-2026 12:29 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has pushed back detection and question answering by the Teams Facilitator to November, after initially scheduling General Availability for June. Teams Facilitator is an AI assistant that joins meetings. It tracks agendas and can take notes, if enabled. The next stage in its development is to have it pop up and answer questions if it detects a knowledge gap. For example, somebody might ask "What is this Teams Facilitator thing?" and, if nobody answers, Facilitator will show a prompt off
  
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• Nepal's flood could just be the beginning: Maps reveal the glaciers around the world at risk of a similar disaster - with 15 million people in the danger zone

  28-08-2026 12:11 via dailymail.com
  
  Researchers estimate that a whopping 15 million people worldwide are living in danger zones.
  
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• Unsafe at any speed: AI optimists are turning cautious as safety concerns mount

  28-08-2026 12:00 via theregister.com
  
  OPINION It wasn't that long ago, like earlier this year, that AI leaders were doing their usual pie-in-the-sky proclamations of how everything would be so wonderful with AI. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei tweeted that AI "will actually be possible to cure most human diseases in ~5-10 years." While on a podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman proclaimed that AI would create "the greatest boom in people starting smaller businesses that we have ever seen." So, what's not to love? Well, you see those same AI CEO
  
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• Bank holiday weekend to see more thunderstorms and rain

  28-08-2026 11:42 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The weather will remain unsettled across the next few days with showers, longer spells of rain and thunderstorms all likely at times across the weekend.
  
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• Big Tech market power will cause UK to lose AI race, think tank warns

  28-08-2026 11:15 via theregister.com
  
  UK businesses say the market power of Big Tech is stifling competition, and will hinder the UK’s ability to reap the benefits from AI, a key part of the government’s plans for economic recovery. A report [PDF] from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) points out that a handful of companies hold almost total control over the digital infrastructure relied on in Blighty, and warns that we risk letting AI become monopolized in the same way unless more pro-competitive measures
  
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• Grand Theft Auto 6 extended look is released - but unimpressed viewers claim it 'looks like an unfinished snooze fest'

  28-08-2026 10:35 via dailymail.com
  
  The footage confirms that the game will feature several risqué scenes, including a shootout in a drug lab, fist fights in the street, and even a man watching porn using a VR headset.
  
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• BOFH: Schrödinger's petty cash puts us in a very awkward superposition

  28-08-2026 10:29 via theregister.com
  
  EPISODE 16: "So it looks like we have ourselves a Schrödinger's cash situation," I say. "We have a what now?" asks the very junior beancounter - the sort that will be first up against the wall when the AI revolution comes (in a couple of weeks). "A Schrödinger's cash situation. You have a petty cashbox with a variable amount of money in it, which depletes at an unknown rate. Depletion being what it is, at some point the cashbox will have no cash in it. If I ask you to open your cashbox
  
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• On Call: Exec couldn’t identify a photocopier, which made for a fax-inating tech support call

  28-08-2026 08:37 via theregister.com
  
  ON CALL By the end of the working week it can be tempting to phone it in, but The Register instead works to bring you extra amusement in the form of a new edition of On Call – the reader-contributed column that shares your tech support stories. This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Orson” who told us they very much enjoyed the recent On Call about the lawyer who didn’t understand italics. “It reminded me of an incident many years ago when I was a Facilit
  
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• Exec couldn’t identify a photocopier, which made for a fax-inating tech support call

  28-08-2026 08:37 via theregister.com
  
  ON CALL By the end of the working week it can be tempting to phone it in, but The Register instead works to bring you extra amusement in the form of a new edition of On Call – the reader-contributed column that shares your tech support stories. This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Orson” who told us they very much enjoyed the recent On Call about the lawyer who didn’t understand italics. “It reminded me of an incident many years ago when I was a Facilit
  
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• Print management outfit PaperCut is under 0-day attack, and it’s drawing customers’ blood

  28-08-2026 07:29 via theregister.com
  
  Nothing smarts like a paper cut, but being attacked after leaving an application’s web interface exposed to the internet might be just as painful. Such attacks are the risk to which users of PaperCut print management software find themselves exposed today, after the company revealed a university’s security teams alerted it to an attack. The company analyzed info provided by the university and found a vulnerability in its PaperCut NG and PaperCut MF products, which manage access to pr
  
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