Sci-Tech news

• Light pollution from street lamps linked to insect loss

  26-08-2021 02:33 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Scientists say light pollution is a factor driving "worrying" declines in local insect populations.
  
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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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• 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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• Australian cops cuff alleged TeamPCP masterminds

  28-08-2026 05:33 via theregister.com
  
  The Australian city of Perth is by some measures the world’s most isolated major metropolis, but is still sufficiently connected to US law enforcement authorities that the FBI was able to help Australia’s Federal Police (AFP) to find two men they believe were the masterminds of TeamPCP, a cybercrime crew that conducted prominent supply chain attacks. According to the AFP, two men aged 21 and 23 arrested on Wednesday “were principal participants in the activities of the cybercri
  
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• Anthropic proposes plumbing spec to link AI agents to lab kit and robots

  28-08-2026 01:22 via theregister.com
  
  Anthropic on Thursday teased a protocol for allowing AI agents "to safely operate physical devices," a somewhat optimistic ambition given it cannot reliably anticipate how its models behave. The as-yet-unpublished protocol, dubbed the Model Hardware Standard (MHS), is similar in concept to the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a way for AI models to connect to data sources. Anthropic intends for MHS to allow Claude or other models to drive the hardware used in laboratories, factories, and robots. Su
  
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• Scientists reveal mapped danger zones for Nepal-style disaster INSIDE America: Terrifying message for states left exposed to giant waves and deadly walls of mud

  28-08-2026 00:58 via dailymail.com
  
  A disaster similar to the one that devastated Nepal could strike parts of the US, where collapsing mountainsides can unleash giant waves.
  
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• Nvidia and Cerebras are selling performance their customers will (probably) never see

  28-08-2026 00:57 via theregister.com
  
  Shots were fired at the Hot Chips conference in California this week as Nvidia announced its new Groq-3-based LPX racks had entered production, with early tests showing the systems churning an eye-watering 3,400 tokens a second in Gemma 4 31B. That's four times faster than rival Cerebras. A day later, Cerebras fired back, touting nearly equivalent performance from its next-gen CS-4 accelerators revealed last week. These top-line performance figures make inference feel instantaneous relative to t
  
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• CRPx0 hacking service for dummies claims victim count more than quintupled

  27-08-2026 23:24 via theregister.com
  
  CRPx0, a cybercrime crew that has rapidly evolved from a scam service to a ClickFix-delivered ransomware and crypto-theft business over the summer, claims its victim count jumped from fewer than 10 in June to 48 organizations on its clear-web leak site at the time of publication. Keep in mind: criminals aren’t always the most trustworthy bunch, so take their claims with a healthy dose of salt. Still, the ransomware biz’s expanding operations, unique payload, and white-label hacking s
  
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• Tropical Storm Karina projected to impact millions as rare cyclone targets California

  27-08-2026 23:02 via dailymail.com
  
  A new tropical storm has erupted in the Pacific, and prediction models fear it could become the first named storm to hit California in 30 years.
  
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• Cyborg cockroaches may soon deliver life-saving drugs to disaster victims

  27-08-2026 23:00 via theregister.com
  
  Picture this: You’ve just undergone one of the most harrowing experiences of your life, and you’re trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building. You’re injured, air is running out, and human rescuers can’t reach you. But crawling through the rubble to administer life-saving drugs and reassure you comes the last thing you’d expect: a swarm of cyborg cockroaches bearing tiny syringes. Unfortunately for those who’d rather find solace in the arms of a fluffy, dro
  
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• Lost city of Atlantis clues revealed in new scans of secret ocean site, ex-Navy admiral claims

  27-08-2026 22:58 via dailymail.com
  
  A former Navy admiral has made a shocking claim that he and a team of experts have likely uncovered the site where the ancient city of Atlantis once thrived.
  
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• Police investigating possible forgery at AFRINIC election

  27-08-2026 22:38 via theregister.com
  
  Police in Mauritius are conducting a criminal investigation into possible forgery related to the annulled June 2025 board election staged by the African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC). AFRINIC is the regional internet registry (RIR) for 54 countries in Africa and the Indian Ocean region. In recent years it has experienced governance and operational problems and been embroiled in a complex set of interlocking legal disputes with one of its members, Cloud Innovation, regarding AFRINIC’
  
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• Navy boss says lost city of Atlantis likely found after scans reveal secret site

  27-08-2026 21:45 via dailymail.com
  
  A former Navy admiral has made a shocking claim that he and a team of experts have likely uncovered the site where the ancient city of Atlantis once thrived.
  
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• AI girlfriend review site's secrets were exposed to the world for three weeks

  27-08-2026 21:10 via theregister.com
  
  PWNED Welcome back to PWNED, the weekly column where we explore the frightening and amusing world of foolish infosec errors. This week, it's all about a test site that exposed real 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 story comes courtesy of Mia Morin, Editor & AI Quality Analyst at Intimeros, a site that rates, reviews, and evaluates AI companions – yes, that means
  
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• Google forces Android apps to use memory more wisely as RAMpocalypse rages

  27-08-2026 21:07 via theregister.com
  
  Google has declared that Android apps distributed through Google Play will have to meet new memory performance thresholds, starting in early 2027. Google is cracking down on poorly optimized code that might otherwise squander what's now a precious commodity, as RAM prices skyrocket and consumers choose phones with leaner specs. "An ecosystem-wide memory crisis is imminent due to rising RAM costs," the Chocolate Factory explains in its technical documentation. "Inefficient memory use, such as a s
  
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• El Niños have become 40% stronger in the last 40 years than the previous 1,000 - and this year's event is on track to be the biggest ever

  27-08-2026 20:00 via dailymail.com
  
  As the 'Superest of all Super El Niños' takes shape, a new study has found that El Niño events have been ramping up for decades.
  
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• Omarchy distro gains serious backing

  27-08-2026 19:07 via theregister.com
  
  The controversial Omarchy distro is attracting both criticism and fans – and financial support, too. Omarchy is an opinionated respin of Arch Linux and a pet project of Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson, better known as DHH. Although the first release was as recent as June last year, this week sees the release of Omarchy 4.0.1 – a security fix for the mid-August Omarchy 4 “Quattro”. Although it started out just over a year ago, Omarchy now has a sibling proje
  
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• Hugging Face offers $399 robot duck to help you quack the AI code

  27-08-2026 18:25 via theregister.com
  
  If it walks like a robot duck and quacks like a robot duck, it’s probably a Microduck robot from Hugging Face subsidiary Pollen Robotics. And it's ready to work with AI. Bordeaux, France-based Pollen announced the Microduck on Thursday, describing it as a robot designed for immediate action, as well as being ready for training via reinforcement learning in an open-source physics simulator to teach it new tasks. Microduck is tiny, mind you: It’s a mere 25 cm tall (a little under 10 in
  
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• ATF responds to 'major' cybersecurity incident after ransomware gang's claims

  27-08-2026 17:25 via theregister.com
  
  The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) said it’s responding to a “major” cybersecurity incident shortly after the Qilin ransomware gang posted the US federal law enforcement agency on its leak site. According to ATF's statement, the intrusion affected a standalone system that operated separately from its enterprise network. “There is no indication that the incident has affected the ATF enterprise network, the ATF eForms system, or any other ATF syst
  
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• Tropical Storm Dolly erupts in Atlantic as spaghetti models warn of direct impact on US

  27-08-2026 17:18 via dailymail.com
  
  Tropical Storm Dolly has emerged in the Atlantic Ocean and early storm models suggest its impact may be felt along the US East Coast.
  
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• The shirt that hides you from AI cameras: 'Digital Camouflage' top confuses surveillance systems - but it's not exactly subtle

  27-08-2026 17:18 via dailymail.com
  
  As AI-powered cameras become an increasingly common sight on streets, in shops and at transport hubs, some fear the days of true anonymity are numbered.
  
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• Schrödinger's backup: not actually recovered until you try to restore IT

  27-08-2026 17:00 via theregister.com
  
  Schrödinger's Cat, the famous 1935 thought experiment, imagines a cat that, for reasons rooted in quantum physics we need not dwell on here, is simultaneously alive and dead. In a landscape of relentless cyberattacks and mounting infrastructural complexity, a routine backup task can appear finished, with every box ticked and every check made. The job is not actually done, however, until it has been verified as fully ready for recovery in the event of cyber disaster. A task that looks sorted
  
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• Flock Safety: From Neighborhood Cameras To Calling Citizens Terrorists

  27-08-2026 16:57 via technocracy.news
  
  https://www.technocracy.news/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Flock-on-the-Pole-1.mp3
  Songs of the Resistance: Flock on the Pole
  This is a history lesson to set the record straight on the total disruption of the surveillance industry, and other disruptors who will follow the same pattern in the future. I have been careful to provide footnotes and references so you can do your own research and draw your own conclusions.
  On August 21, 2017, Flock Safety pitched their company at Y Combinator’s Summ
  
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• Nitter might be no more, but Twitter is back (sort of)

  27-08-2026 16:37 via theregister.com
  
  There'll be no rest for X Corps' lawyers this weekend after startup Operation Bluebird rolled out the twitter.now social media network this week. The launch came the same week as Nitter was served a cease-and-desist letter, and it's the latest in the saga of Twitter branding that X boss Elon Musk dispensed with when renaming his $44 billion purchase as 'X'. Unlike Nitter, which lets users view X content without an account, twitter.info is a new social media platform and "not affiliated with X Co
  
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• Salesforce boasts: 50% of bookings were from 'customers refilling the tank... they consume Flex Credits, they want more'

  27-08-2026 15:56 via theregister.com
  
  Announcing upbeat financials and a new offering with AI posterchild Anthropic, Salesforce has begun to drip-feed plans for how it might get customers to spend more as they deploy AI. The CRM giant has been among the victims of the so-called SaaSpocalypse, which sees widespread business application software replaced or diminished by AI models which interact directly with business data. Flawed or not, the notion has tanked Salesforce’s share price by more than 20 percent this year, but its Q
  
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• Cybercrooks jet off with Manchester Airports Group customer data

  27-08-2026 14:52 via theregister.com
  
  The company behind three of the UK’s busiest airports says “a quantity” of data was stolen during a recent “cybersecurity incident". Manchester Airports Group (MAG) operates Manchester Airport in the North West of England, Cambridgeshire’s Stansted Airport, and East Midlands Airport in Derbyshire. The affected data includes information collected as part of its car parking, lounge, and fast track bookings, as well as information collected as part of MAG's public Wi-F
  
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• HP has a solution to expensive AI tokens: Buy a more expensive PC

  27-08-2026 14:23 via theregister.com
  
  HP reckons enterprises fretting about the spiraling cost of AI tokens have an obvious alternative: run the models locally and spend the money on a more expensive PC instead. The pitch emerged during HP's third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, where executives repeatedly pointed to cloud AI costs as one reason customers are buying higher-spec machines that can do more AI work locally. AI PCs are becoming harder to avoid as HP pushes more of its lineup upmarket, but the company insists customer
  
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• How to see the lunar eclipse tonight: Best time to watch the moon turn red from the UK during rare alignment

  27-08-2026 13:46 via dailymail.com
  
  Just two weeks after millions of Britons marvelled at the biggest solar eclipse in a generation, another celestial spectacle is set to take place.
  
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