Sci-Tech news

• Microsoft bringing Defender to Linux desktops. Repeat: Microsoft bringing Defender to Linux desktops

  16-10-2026 12:43 via theregister.com
  
  It might not be the Year of the Linux Desktop yet, but it could be the Year of Corporate Compliance on the Linux Desktop as Microsoft releases Defender for Linux Workstations. The product is an extension of Microsoft's existing Defender for Endpoint. According to the Windows behemoth, it brings "enterprise-grade protection, detection, vulnerability management and response capabilities to Linux workstations." Linux desktop users will get services including Defender's anti-virus functionality. The
  
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• Grocery giant Ahold Delhaize confirms cyberattack forced US and European systems offline

  19-10-2026 22:26 via theregister.com
  
  Dutch grocery giant Ahold Delhaize, which operates US supermarket chains Food Lion, Giant Food, and Stop & Shop, said it proactively took IT systems offline following a cyberattack, affecting most of its US and European brands. The multinational chain originally disclosed the incident on October 12. “Ahold Delhaize is experiencing a security issue within its network,” it said at the time, adding that security teams, working to mitigate the issues, took “some” IT syste
  
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• Amazon makes vague commitment to unproven nuclear tech to power Indiana datacenters

  19-10-2026 22:22 via theregister.com
  
  To feed its Indiana datacenters with plenty of juice, Amazon is funding the development of a new nuclear facility that will provide nearly 1 gigawatt of power. However, we'll have to see if this happens anytime soon, given the immature technology it's using. Amazon said on Monday that it was funding the project with an undisclosed amount of cash as part of an expansion of its existing deal with X-energy, a next-generation nuclear power startup focusing on building small modular reactors (SMRs) p
  
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• Maxwell gives sub-optimal code a runtime glow-up

  19-10-2026 21:57 via theregister.com
  
  It may not be enough to just use LLMs to write your code when you can also use them to adjust it while your program runs. DoubleAI, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup founded in 2023, on Monday introduced Maxwell, a code execution model (CEM) that evaluates, optimizes, and rewrites binary code during execution. Named for Maxwell's Demon, a creature imagined by physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell in 1867 as part of a thought experiment on entropy, the Maxwell CEM preprocesses algorithms
  
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• I worked with NASA. UFO disclosure will finally happen... but it's not coming from the White House

  19-10-2026 21:11 via dailymail.com
  
  The White House made a promise to release every file connected to UFOs and extraterrestrials, leading many to believe they would finally know if aliens are real or just science fiction.
  
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• Giant Pacific 'wave' heads for US coast as scientists warn of 'quintuple whammy' flooding threat

  19-10-2026 20:59 via dailymail.com
  
  Thousands may be forced to evacuate as a string of events are about to collide to cause massive waves and sea level rise along the West Coast.
  
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• Security patches need patches now that attackers have AI

  19-10-2026 20:23 via theregister.com
  
  Updating your software only gets you so far. A scary scenario - security fixes themselves being bypassed - is becoming more common, according to AI penetration-testing startup Terra Security, which found a sharp rise in reported patch failures in 2026 after years of relatively low numbers. And no, it’s not a coincidence that AI vulnerability discovery and patching also exploded this year. For example, Russian government cyberspies exploited a zero-day Windows Shell security bypass bug, CVE
  
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• Write bot-resistant code with KillSwitch, a programming language designed to confuse LLMs

  19-10-2026 19:10 via theregister.com
  
  If you want to keep bots from making sense of the code you worked so hard on and using it to write programs of their own, there's a new programming language out there designed to confuse LLMs. What began as software engineer Dominik Picheta experimenting with whether LLMs understand the code they write has turned into something else entirely: An open-source, albeit esoteric, programming language he’s dubbed KillSwitch. There are no brackets, no formatting standards to remember, and seeming
  
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• Mission to Mars! Japanese spacecraft to begin epic five-year quest to bring Martian moon samples back to Earth for the first time

  19-10-2026 18:39 via dailymail.com
  
  A Japanese rocket is set to blast off on an ambitious £262 million mission to swipe soil samples from one of Mars's mysterious moons.
  
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• Europe’s cloud sovereignty rules could do more harm than good

  19-10-2026 18:35 via theregister.com
  
  Europe’s drive for cloud sovereignty is leading to member states favoring providers from their own nation instead of building a Europe-wide cloud services market, according to a report critical of the EU’s proposed Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA). A study by the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) looked at public cloud contracts in nine EU member states and found that every one that invoked the new vocabulary around “sovereignty” went to a dom
  
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• Red Hat helps teach about tech writing

  19-10-2026 18:11 via theregister.com
  
  In Brno in Czechia, Red Hat’s large local office has been helping the city’s Masaryk University to teach future technical writers. Whenever someone tries to teach, though, they learn as well. At the Open Source Summit in Prague, a senior member of Red Hat’s documentation team in Brno presented a talk called Diagrams & Dragons: Teaching Technical Writing to University Students the Open Source Way. Red Hat has a large site in Brno, which is the second-largest Czech city and i
  
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• Millions brace for impact as nor'easter threatens East Coast today with up to 14-foot waves

  19-10-2026 18:07 via dailymail.com
  
  A major nor'easter is forming right off the US East Coast, leading to a week-long alert for dangerous winds and flooding.
  
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• 3D-Printed Fake Meat and Fish Finally Hitting American Grocery Shelves

  19-10-2026 17:27 via technocracy.news
  
  This is Technocrat’s dream: to make food for the masses in a sterile factory without any animal protein. It has been years in the making (research and development), but it’s finally arrived – 3D-printed meat, fish, and chicken. Of course, the label doesn’t say that, because who in their right mind would eat it? Can you picture your child saying, “Oh look, Mommy, can we have 3D-printed steak for dinner?” Well, at least it’s not “soylent green,&rdquo
  
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• Agents race to Minnesota crash site as 'foreign' object from space is found in crops

  19-10-2026 17:03 via dailymail.com
  
  Black vehicles raced to a cornfield in Minnesota after farmers reported a mysterious object on their land. The 11-foot object appeared scorched along its underside.
  
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• Uber dodges £340M cabbie lawsuit after drivers miss legal deadline

  19-10-2026 16:47 via theregister.com
  
  Uber has dodged a £340 million lawsuit brought by thousands of London black cab drivers after a High Court judge ruled that they'd left it too late to sue. Monday's ruling kills off two claims involving around 13,000 cabbies and former private hire companies Kabbee and Iride, which accused Uber of misleading Transport for London (TfL) to secure its operating license. The cabbies wanted nearly £200 million in compensation for lost earnings, while Kabbee and Iride sought another £
  
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• SAP's Signavio hit with function injunction in Germany

  19-10-2026 15:46 via theregister.com
  
  A German court has issued an injunction banning SAP from providing certain features of its Signavio product, following a legal challenge from process mining biz Celonis. The ruling only applies to implementations in Germany, but is part of a broader legal tussle between the two companies over intellectual property. This case focuses on software which helps companies understand their own complex business processes in order to improve them and help prepare for an application migration. The Munich
  
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• Admin: 'I spent all weekend on my servers' after Microsoft breaks Exchange Server with October updates

  19-10-2026 15:00 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has acknowledged that the October 2026 Windows Server updates may be destabilizing Exchange Server. The problems are related to this list of Windows Server updates (see here) and Microsoft makes it clear they are not related to the October 2026 security updates for Exchange Server. The software giant says the bug can hit Exchange Servers running Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022, and 2025. The glitch might not be immediate and could impact Exchange Server OWA, which can throw up connecti
  
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• Super El Nino is changing the colour of the OCEAN: NASA says waters have become bluer as record-breaking temperatures wipe out marine life

  19-10-2026 14:47 via dailymail.com
  
  Super El Niño is changing the colour of the world's oceans, new NASA satellite images have revealed.
  
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• Microsoft abandons UK AI supercomputer as grid struggles to keep up

  19-10-2026 14:15 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has reportedly pulled out of plans for Britain's largest AI supercomputer, because the government-backed project is facing the rather inconvenient problem of having no electricity to run it. The tech giant has terminated its agreement with British AI infrastructure startup Nscale for a planned datacenter in Loughton, Essex, according to The Telegraph, which first reported the withdrawal on Sunday. The decision follows reports that the site, which was supposed to begin operating in 2027
  
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• The workplace intelligence double standard: Why clever women are branded 'hostile' - while smart men are treated better

  19-10-2026 14:00 via dailymail.com
  
  It pays to be clever at work - unless you're female, according to a new study.
  
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• Scientists uncover a simple breathing exercise that can induce an altered state of consciousness

  19-10-2026 13:50 via dailymail.com
  
  According to a new study, a specialised method called 'high ventilation breathwork' (HVB) is capable of producing altered states of consciousness.
  
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• Broadcom Wi-Fi bug turns sweet 16, still lets strangers hijack your router

  19-10-2026 13:28 via theregister.com
  
  A 16-year-old security flaw in Broadcom's Wi-Fi software could let attackers hijack millions of routers without knowing the network password, even though the chipmaker reportedly knew about the problem since 2018. Security researcher Quentin Kaiser disclosed the vulnerability, dubbed "WPSplinter," revealing two bugs in Broadcom's proprietary Wi-Fi implementation that date back to at least 2010. An attempted fix arrived eight years later, but Kaiser claims it didn't fully resolve the problem. The
  
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• Original Voyager team member talks to us about the astonishing scientific info the 50-year-old probe gathered

  19-10-2026 13:03 via theregister.com
  
  It's been nearly half a century since the Voyager probes launched from Earth on a mission to explore the outer solar system, and they're still running. You can listen to the latest episode of The Kettle on this page, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. You can also subscribe on those platforms to be notified when a new episode goes live. You're probably familiar with some of Voyager's iconic images, like the Pale Blue Dot and and its portraits of the outer planets. Those photos and observations
  
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• In space, 'We've gone from exploration to exploitation,' says original Voyager team member

  19-10-2026 13:03 via theregister.com
  
  It's been nearly half a century since the Voyager probes launched from Earth on a mission to explore the outer solar system, and they're still running. You can listen to the latest episode of The Kettle on this page, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. You can also subscribe on those platforms to be notified when a new episode goes live. You're probably familiar with some of Voyager's iconic images, like the Pale Blue Dot and and its portraits of the outer planets. Those photos and observations
  
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• Dr Garry Hunt talks to us about the astonishing Voyager probes

  19-10-2026 13:03 via theregister.com
  
  It's been nearly half a century since the Voyager probes launched from Earth on a mission to explore the outer solar system, and they're still running. You can listen to the latest episode of The Kettle on this page, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. You can also subscribe on those platforms to be notified when a new episode goes live. You're probably familiar with some of Voyager's iconic images, like the Pale Blue Dot and and its portraits of the outer planets. Those photos and observations
  
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• Britain's most dangerous spider strikes again: Blackpool man hospitalised after bite made his leg swell to 'the size of a watermelon'

  19-10-2026 12:44 via dailymail.com
  
  Glenn Priestley, 73, was hospitalised for a fortnight after a noble false widow spider attacked him last month.
  
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• Museum exhibit reveals the intricate workings of a knackered Dell

  19-10-2026 12:15 via theregister.com
  
  Today's entry in the catalog of bork comes from Coventry's Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, where an information terminal is showing more about the hardware behind the scenes than the objects on display. Register reader Jeffrey Borinsky spotted the panel, which should have demonstrated a Jacquard loom in action but was instead displaying a warning about its host PC's failing battery. The Jacquard loom was a clever device dating back to the dawn of the 19th century. It used punched cards to cont
  
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• Microsoft’s second-hand licensing appeal gets the brush-off

  19-10-2026 11:15 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has failed to win permission to appeal to the UK Supreme Court in the long-running legal spat with ValueLicensing after the Court of Appeal refused its application. The US megacorp was challenging a November 2025 ruling in ValueLicensing's favor that VL may resell pre-owned software licenses. That judgment was unambiguous, but Microsoft told The Register at the time that it would seek permission to appeal. That request was rejected last week in blunt terms. No reasons were given for th
  
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• Meet your dinner! Woke scientists say giving pigs and chickens names could put children off eating meat

  19-10-2026 10:57 via dailymail.com
  
  Forget chicken nuggets - the next time your child asks what's for dinner, you should tell them they're eating Chico.
  
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• AI’s epic cash call is matched only by its ability to strangle revenue streams

  19-10-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  As it was written, so it has come to pass. A while back, we suggested that given how good AI was at code analysis, it would become possible to clone large applications. And then where would we be? Here, that’s where. An industrious individual has released source code and binaries for Claude-copied Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite programs, disappointingly not calling elements of the latter Fauxtoshop. They’re in pre-alpha states of incomplete bugginess, but with substantial
  
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