Sci-Tech news

• Lasers uncover a long-lost Bronze Age site on Ramsey Island

  02-04-2018 14:46 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  The beauty spot - about a mile off the coast of St David’s Head in Pembrokeshire - will now be studied by experts to understand how humans once used the island.
  
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• DoJ: Uncle Sam bought forensics software from same Russian operation supplying FSB

  24-09-2026 15:43 via theregister.com
  
  US defense and homeland security agencies bought digital forensics software developed by the same Russian operation that also sold its wares to the FSB, according to US prosecutors. The Department of Justice says Oxygen Forensics CEO Lee Reiber and Russian national Oleg Sergeyevich Davydov have been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud over an alleged scheme to hide the company's Russian ownership and where its software was actually being built. Oxygen Forensics, based in Vi
  
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• Google to critical infra orgs: Our AI scanners won't be evil, promise

  24-09-2026 15:00 via theregister.com
  
  Google has jumped on the AI-defense-for-critical-systems train with its Scan for Good initiative, and says that its threat-hunting models have already autonomously uncovered critical security issues at hospitals, a municipality, a public rail operator, and major technology providers. So don't fear these bots. The initiative, announced on Thursday, uses Google’s Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, a version of the model tuned for software bug hunting and remediation, and Wiz’s Red Agent - this is
  
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• City council may be waking from its Oracle nightmare but the accounting hangover continues

  24-09-2026 14:43 via theregister.com
  
  Europe's largest local authority will go at least one more financial year without auditors being able to vouch for its accounts despite finally reimplementing Oracle Fusion. Grant Thornton expects Birmingham City Council to receive "disclaimer opinions" for 2025/26, 2026/27, and 2027/28 due to problems with historic data. A disclaimer opinion means the auditor cannot obtain enough evidence to express an opinion on the financial statements. It does not mean the council failed to produce accounts,
  
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• Meta ads steered Polish Android users into a premium-rate billing trap

  24-09-2026 13:26 via theregister.com
  
  Poland's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT Polska) has disrupted an Android toll fraud campaign that used paid Meta ads to steer Polish users toward malicious apps on Google Play. Its investigation documented 1,235 Meta ads, 852 of which promoted 17 apps tied to the operation. Six contained confirmed toll fraud components or direct links to them; the other 11 shared malicious loaders, although researchers could not recover their final payloads. Toll fraud uses malware to enroll mobile subsc
  
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• Sorry, wine snobs! Eco-friendly hybrid grapes score just as well as classic reds - despite long-standing doubts over their appearance

  24-09-2026 13:02 via dailymail.com
  
  A new study suggests one of the biggest assumptions in the wine world could be completely wrong.
  
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• When and how to see the Harvest Moon in 2026

  24-09-2026 12:46 via bbc.co.uk
  
  September's full Moon will rise across on Saturday 26 September. The best viewing conditions currently look to be across southern and eastern parts of the UK.
  
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• HSBC decides Samsung Secure Folder and Android's Private Space are no place for a banking app

  24-09-2026 12:45 via theregister.com
  
  HSBC has blocked its Android app from running inside Samsung Secure Folder and Android Private Space without warning, leaving some customers unable to access online banking. The Register asked HSBC to explain the change. It said the block was "a proportionate security control designed to mitigate a foreseeable security risk. It does not prevent customers from accessing the HSBC UK Mobile Banking app – customers simply need to access our app outside of the virtual space environment." When w
  
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• Meta launches an 'evil Tamagotchi': Muse Charm gadget lets you use AI without your phone or computer

  24-09-2026 12:12 via dailymail.com
  
  The futuristic device, called Muse Charm, was announced by Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, at the end of the Meta Connect event last night.
  
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• For MariaDB, LLMs are the new search engines to win over

  24-09-2026 12:00 via theregister.com
  
  MariaDB has built vector search into its database. Its problem is persuading AI coding tools to tell anyone about it, says the executive chairman of the MariaDB Foundation. "We're so frustrated that the world doesn't understand that MariaDB has vectors," Kaj Arnö tells us. Arnö is speaking to The Register at Percona Live, where rival database vendors seem to be in an unusually collegiate mood. Not that Arnö is above throwing a little shade here and there: "I think we are in a peri
  
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• Experts question whether Salesforce demo breaches SAP API policy

  24-09-2026 11:15 via theregister.com
  
  SAP experts are questioning whether a recent Salesforce public demo of its AI technology would breach the German vendor’s controversial API policy - launched in April - in production environments. Salesforce has denied it would break any of SAP’s access rules. During the keynote presentation at the CRM vendor’s flagship Dreamforce conference in San Francisco last week, Katie O'Neil, Salesforce product marketing director, showed how a Salesforce AI agent was able to perform supp
  
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• Your brain 'changes gear' TWICE in your life - once at age 24, and again at 60, study finds

  24-09-2026 11:11 via dailymail.com
  
  Your brain 'changes gear' twice in your lifetime, according to the results of a massive new study.
  
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• Electric car charging just got even faster: Chinese carmaker's EV battery charges in under five minutes - smashing the previous record by 30 seconds

  24-09-2026 10:57 via dailymail.com
  
  Geely Auto Group, the Chinese owner of Volvo, has used AI to boost the charging performance of its batteries.
  
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• Scientists create an atomic clock so precise it could REDEFINE the second

  24-09-2026 10:53 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists have built the world's most accurate atomic clock - and it's so precise it could redefine the second.
  
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• Government contractor exposed path to immigration records

  24-09-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  Welcome back to PWNED, the column where we look at all the ways your security can become self-owned. Today’s scary story involves government contractors who just had to make their lives easier at the expense of locking down sensitive information. Have a story about someone leaving a gaping hole in their network? Share it with us at [email protected]. Anonymity is available upon request. Our tale of bureaucratic hell comes courtesy of security researcher Joe Brinkley, who previously worked f
  
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• 'Jeans and a nice top' are BACK! Gen Z goes crazy for the iconic Y2K going-out look - as demand for vintage denim and retro staples surges

  24-09-2026 09:26 via dailymail.com
  
  Data from Fleek, a global AI-powered resale marketplace, has revealed how demand for vintage denim and tops has soared.
  
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• Blood tests find high level of cancer-causing forever chemical in residents near factory

  24-09-2026 09:10 via bbc.co.uk
  
  People living near a major chemical factory in Lancashire are told they could be at risk of serious health conditions.
  
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• Europe’s internet registry wants governance ‘correction’ because its ‘Executive Board’ is not the executive

  24-09-2026 07:31 via theregister.com
  
  RIPE NCC, the regional internet registry for Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Central Asia, has proposed a governance overhaul. The registry (RIR) manages and distributes IP addresses and autonomous system numbers for 75 nations across an area that stretches from Greenland to Russia’s eastern extremities. The organization boasts over 20,000 members. Chief Legal Officer Athina Fragkouli made the case for change this week in a post that says the purpose of the proposed change is “
  
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• Waste sector crisis could see rubbish piling up on streets, experts warn

  24-09-2026 07:13 via bbc.co.uk
  
  There are warnings over a combination of significantly reduced landfill space and a breakdown of Glasgow's main incinerator.
  
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• India’s outsourced software industry grows 9.5 percent to reach $239 billion

  24-09-2026 05:34 via theregister.com
  
  Indian IT services companies increased their sales by 8.2 percent in FY 25/26, but less of that money went towards development of software products. Those numbers come from the annual Survey on Computer Software and Information Technology Enabled Services published [PDF] by the Reserve Bank of India. The Bank asked over 7,500 tech services firms for data and received replies from 2,363. It then extrapolated the results to suggest that Indian companies billed for $221 billion worth of services la
  
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• OpenAI's Astra model went for a drive and no one died

  24-09-2026 02:54 via theregister.com
  
  If you've ever wondered whether a generative AI model can drive a car, wonder no more: It can be done, at great expense and very slowly, so long as it can maintain an internet connection. A trio of computer scientists has been putting various commercial AI models through road tests, to see how well they can drive a Toyota Corolla around a set of cones in a parking lot. Their attempts to date, part of a project called DrivingBench, recorded sorry performances from GPT-5.6 Sol, Grok 4.6, and Claud
  
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• Mysterious orb caught soaring over Los Angeles during live TV report

  24-09-2026 02:45 via dailymail.com
  
  A mysterious object was spotted over a busy California highway, sparking fresh debate over the existence of UFOs.
  
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• OpenAI agents ‘infiltrated Australian government website’

  24-09-2026 02:03 via theregister.com
  
  Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed an OpenAI agent “infiltrated an Australian government website.” Albanese said the incident occurred in June and involved an agent gaining unauthorized access to a portal that stores statistics related to Medicare, Australia’s national health insurance scheme. “The AI agent accessed both public and non-public files,” the PM said, before describing the portal as holding “non-sensitive Medicare inform
  
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• State of emergency declared for major storm erupting off US coast expected to become a hurricane in HOURS

  23-09-2026 23:19 via dailymail.com
  
  A major storm has erupted just miles off the US coast, bringing life-threatening conditions to over a million Americans.
  
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• Mop the slop from your LinkedIn feed with a new open-source Chrome extension

  23-09-2026 22:23 via theregister.com
  
  Decision-making AI model Jev has found another job: helping a Chrome extension identify and flag low-value writing on LinkedIn. AI enthusiast, author, and business consultant Tom Frazier released Slop Mop as a Chrome extension on Tuesday, as well as publishing its code on GitHub for those who want to tinker with it on their own. Frazier said it’s completely free, doesn’t require any signup, and doesn’t just filter out AI slop, either - it catches garbage written by humans too,
  
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• Europe's fastest supercomputer is finally getting its domestic silicon infusion

  23-09-2026 20:32 via theregister.com
  
  Talk about digital sovereignty! Europe's most powerful supercomputer, Jupiter, is finally getting the domestic silicon infusion it's been waiting for. On Tuesday, French chip designer SiPearl began delivery of its long-anticipated Rhea1 CPUs to Bull for integration into the system. Jupiter, which came online last year, became the European Union's first exascale supercomputer. It currently holds the designation of being the fifth most powerful system on the Top500 ranking of publicly known superc
  
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• Someone's attacking a critical 0-day RCE in F5 BIG-IP APM

  23-09-2026 20:09 via theregister.com
  
  F5 has fixed a critical zero-day bug in its BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) that unknown miscreants are exploiting to remotely execute malicious code. BIG-IP APM is a centralized access management and security proxy that allows users to connect to enterprise networks, applications, APIs, and cloud services via a single login. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-94127, is a heap-based buffer overflow that affects BIG-IP APM systems configured as an OAuth Authorization Server, with an access policy a
  
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• Did El Niño turn Hurricane Polo into the most powerful storm of the season?

  23-09-2026 19:33 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The BBC's Courtney Sargent explains how El Niño could have rapidly turned Hurricane Polo into one of the Pacific season's most powerful storms.
  
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• Discordians now subject to whims of new age verification technology

  23-09-2026 18:59 via theregister.com
  
  After more than six months of kicking the age verification can down the road due to community blowback, Discord is finally deploying its new system, albeit with several tweaks it hopes will assuage user frustration. Discord cofounder and CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy took to the company blog Tuesday to reveal the final shape of Discord’s age verification plans. The essence of the scheme, as initially revealed in February, is the same: The platform will now use algorithms to identify whether ac
  
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• Trump reveals millions of dollars' worth of share deals in big tech and AI

  23-09-2026 18:42 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Stock in major firms such as Microsoft, Nvidia and SpaceX was bought and sold on behalf of the US president.
  
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