Sci-Tech news

• Penguins show signs of self-awareness in mirror tests

  28-12-2022 23:20 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  Scientists performed mirror tests with a dozen Adélie penguins living in East Antarctica and found the flightless birds recognized themselves in two of the three experiments.
  
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• Scientists analyse the 'witches' marks' on the walls of old English buildings - and finally reveal the meaning behind the mysterious symbols

  09-07-2026 11:47 via dailymail.com
  
  The marks - often referred to as daisy wheels or hexafoils - can be found inside medieval churches and houses across the country.
  
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• Is this the key to preventing a Super El Niño? Scientists say artificially brightening the CLOUDS could shield us from floods, extreme heat and wildfires

  09-07-2026 11:30 via dailymail.com
  
  With the strongest Super El Niño on record now underway, scientists are investigating a controversial method that could stop the weather cycle in its tracks.
  
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• Windows 95 detected installers by looking for magic words and hoping for the best

  09-07-2026 11:12 via theregister.com
  
  Veteran Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen has confirmed what we all suspected about Windows 95: it guessed when a setup program was running. Rather than relying on any special flag or marker, Chen explained that Windows 95 looked at the program's name to determine whether it was a setup application. It did this by checking the app against a list of magic words. If the program name contained one of them, it must be a setup. Chen gave the list: setup, install, inst, imposta, ayarla, and felrak. Whil
  
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• Scientist models way to make sure no one's violating the ban on nuclear weapons in space

  09-07-2026 10:25 via theregister.com
  
  One scientist has produced a detailed model which proposes a way to verify that no government or rogue actors are secretly hiding nuclear weapons in the Earth’s orbit. Currently, international laws prevent the use of nuclear weapons in orbit, but it also presents a problem. International space law was created by the Outer Space Treaty, which was drafted in 1966 and has been ratified by 117 nations, including the USA, China, and Russia, since then. It explicitly bans nuclear weapons from be
  
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• Thief posed as Wi-Fi fixing hero, then stole priceless trophy

  09-07-2026 09:00 via theregister.com
  
  PWNED Welcome, once again, to PWNED, where each week we share the saga of an organization that couldn’t get out of its own way when it comes to security. This week’s tale comes courtesy of Dahvid Schloss, a professional red teamer who was also involved (as a supervisor) in last week’s story about hackers shoveling snow in order to gain access to restricted areas. This time, it was Schloss himself who broke in, and he used the promise of better connectivity to do it. On one assi
  
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• New Horizons Pluto probe just woke itself up after 321 days of hibernation

  09-07-2026 08:41 via theregister.com
  
  NASA’s New Horizons probe has woken itself up after 321 days of hibernation. The aerospace agency sent commands to the probe last July, instructing it to commence hibernation on August 7 and then resume activity in July 2026. On July 23, NASA checked to see if New Horizons had obeyed the instruction to wake up and was pleased to find it was online again. New Horizons’ main job was to make our first ever visit to Pluto, which it accomplished in 2015, before zipping off to visit a Kuip
  
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• Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek thinks AI is going to pay off

  09-07-2026 06:20 via theregister.com
  
  Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek, one of the world’s largest investment houses, intends to massively increase its investment in AI over the next five years – both for its own use and across its portfolio. Temasek holds over $400 billion in assets and around six percent of those are currently tied up in AI companies, including OpenAI. At its annual review meeting yesterday, the fund announced it intends to increase its exposure to AI until it reaches 15 percent in 2031.
  
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• Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek thinks AI has a future

  09-07-2026 06:20 via theregister.com
  
  Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek, one of the world’s largest investment houses, intends to massively increase its investment in AI over the next five years – both for its own use and across its portfolio. Temasek holds over $400 billion in assets and around six percent of those are currently tied up in AI companies, including OpenAI. At its annual review meeting yesterday, the fund announced it intends to increase its exposure to AI until it reaches 15 percent in 2031.
  
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• Leg day at the gym? Sniffing CHOCOLATE before your workout could make it easier, study claims

  09-07-2026 06:00 via dailymail.com
  
  Forget pre-workout shakes - all you might need to smash your next gym session is a whiff of chocolate.
  
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• nubia Neo 5 GT Special Edition debuts with the first and only Liquid and Air Dual Active Cooling System in its class

  09-07-2026 05:54 via theregister.com
  
  nubia, a highly personalized and lifestyle smartphone brand, announced the launch of nubia Neo 5 GT Special Edition, the latest addition to its Neo lineup built on the belief to bring pro-level gaming to everyone. Designed for young gamers and tech-savvy Gen Z users seeking for premium gaming experience without compromise, the new device delivers the sustained performance once exclusive to premium devices, and makes it accessible to everyone through the AquaCore Cooling System - the first and on
  
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• Last month was the second-hottest June on RECORD - as Super El Niño unleashes a summer of chaos

  09-07-2026 04:00 via dailymail.com
  
  Last month was officially the second hottest June on record, experts have revealed. The average global temperature hit 16.54°C (61.77°F), which is second only to the June of 2024 (16.66°C/61.98°F).
  
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• Microsoft shifts to annual exchange rate price revision for cloudy products

  09-07-2026 03:53 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has decided to shift to annual price adjustments for its commercial cloud services, instead of its current twice-yearly changes. The software giant happily bills customers in their local currencies but always keeps those costs pegged to the price it charges in US dollars. Since at least 2024, Microsoft has revisited local currency prices for its commercial cloud services twice a year. On Wednesday, the company announced a change in policy that means it will now revisit foreign currency
  
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• Deadly bacteria found in major US city's wastewater system tied to Mark Zuckerberg's $800m data center

  09-07-2026 01:28 via dailymail.com
  
  Meta has come under fire after its data center contaminated a major US city's water system with a rare bacteria, months before the facility is set to go online.
  
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• OpenAI makes ChatGPT better at banter

  09-07-2026 01:16 via theregister.com
  
  OpenAI has released a new voice model that can produce human-sounding speech, or scour the web in response to spoken queries. GPT-Live, according to the company, makes chatbot banter feel more like a real conversation, something of a bold move for a company battling multiple lawsuits alleging mental health harms because people took ChatGPT too seriously. "During conversations, GPT‑Live can show it’s paying attention with phrases like 'mhmm' or 'yeah', engage in quick back-and-forth,
  
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• The AI that spawned MechaHitler and deepfake porn puts on a suit to become legal advisor and Excel jockey

  09-07-2026 00:27 via theregister.com
  
  To say Elon Musk's AI company has trained some of the most unhinged models on the internet would be an understatement. Grok’s sordid past includes cosplaying as “MechaHitler” and a foray into deepfake porn generation that briefly got the platform banned in some regions. As concerning as that might sound, the recently renamed Eloncorp known as SpaceXAI says Grok, now in version 4.5, has cleaned up its act, wiped its browser history, covered up the swastikas, and is ready to take
  
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• A Digital Bill of Rights for the States

  09-07-2026 00:22 via technocracy.news
  
  This document is free to read, share, print, and adopt — and always will be. It carries no paywall and asks nothing of you but that you use it. If you are a legislator, a staffer, or a citizen who wants to bring it to your statehouse, take it. Strengthen it. Make it yours.Download the full text (PDF)
  Digital_Bill_Of_Rights
  Download Printer-Friendly:
  Digital_Bill_Of_RightsRead the analysis: The America at 250 Series🔴⚪️🔵 Happy Birthday, America. Now Hand Ove
  
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• Suspected Chinese snoops caught breaking into universities' Roundcube mailservers

  08-07-2026 23:35 via theregister.com
  
  Suspected Chinese spies have been breaking into major US and Canadian universities since May, exploiting vulns in Roundcube mailservers to steal data belonging to physics and engineering administrators and professors, according to Proofpoint threat researchers. Proofpoint directly observed “less than 10” universities targeted in these intrusions, Greg Lesnewich, principal threat research engineer at Proofpoint, told The Register. “We estimate the total volume of targets would b
  
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• Intel-backed AI chip startup SambaNova breathes new life into aging Nvidia GPUs in latest benchmarks

  08-07-2026 22:19 via theregister.com
  
  Intel's big bet on SambaNova appears to be paying off in a big way. This week, the AI chip startup shared benchmark results showing its latest generation of AI acceleration, which combines Nvidia GPUs and the company's accelerators, beating GPU-only inference platforms by a wide margin. The testing, conducted by the AI benchmarking gurus at Artificial Analysis, showed SambaNova's SN50-series accelerators, announced in February, churning out 763 tokens a second in MiniMax M2.7 at short context le
  
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• Former GitHub CEO launches competitor designed for the age of vibe coding

  08-07-2026 21:55 via theregister.com
  
  In the era of vibe coding, even GitHub is having trouble keeping up with all the traffic. Now, Thomas Dohmke, the service's former CEO, has launched his own Git hosting network to meet the needs of AI agents and those minding them. His company is called Entire, which the biz has repackaged as an adverb to make the point that it is pitching "an entirely new Git hosting network" based on the 21-year-old version control software. "The question is not if Git survives through the sheer weight of its
  
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• OpenAI job listing suggests ChatGPT could someday replace junior analysts at Goldman Sachs

  08-07-2026 21:26 via theregister.com
  
  Investment bankers might be next in line to be rendered obsolete by artificial intelligence if OpenAI's latest push into the financial space is any indication. The House of Altman on Wednesday opened up a new position for an investment banking expert, whose responsibilities include making ChatGPT and its AI relations better at handling the complexities of major financial transactions like mergers, acquisitions, fundraising, and other high-value, high-stakes financial ventures. The job notice men
  
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• GitHub Copilot: Sorry Dave, I can't do that harmful thing - unless you ask me in code

  08-07-2026 21:19 via theregister.com
  
  It's the latest example of AI safety guardrails being bypassed. GitHub Copilot refuses harmful prompts almost always if asked in chat - like, "how to fool a breathalyzer test" or "smuggle bulk cash out of the US" - but then will write them in code 100 percent of the time if the prompt is broken into smaller steps and distributed across multiple stages of a software development workflow. Alan Turing Institute researchers Abhishek Kumar and Carsten Maple discovered this safety-bypass, dubbed it &l
  
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• Deadly bacteria found in major US city's water system traced to Mark Zuckerberg's $800m data center

  08-07-2026 20:42 via dailymail.com
  
  Meta has come under fire after its data center contaminated a major US city's water system with a rare bacteria, months before the facility is set to go online.
  
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• Allstate Insurance quits Broadcom, alleges vengeful license audit on the way out

  08-07-2026 19:28 via theregister.com
  
  Broadcom has accused Allstate Insurance of dodging a software license audit that the insurer claims only happened after it decided to stop using VMware and CA software. Those two Broadcom business units – CA and VMware – have brought copyright infringement lawsuits against Allstate. The CA suit, filed in May 2025, alleges that the insurer breached contracts after the sale of its Employer Voluntary Benefits business to an outfit called StanCorp. The VMware suit, filed in December 2025
  
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• Warning as deadly 'fungal storms' sweep America with toxic dust carrying disease

  08-07-2026 18:49 via dailymail.com
  
  Dangerous spores hidden in the ground are set to sweep across the US this summer, causing potentially fatal respiratory infections in several states.
  
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• AI memory crunch takes a bite out of PC shipments

  08-07-2026 17:57 via theregister.com
  
  The memory chip crisis caused PC shipments to fall by 5 percent from last year in Q2 2026 as vendors struggled to secure supplies, and IDC warns smaller suppliers may be forced out of business if the situation continues. While rising component costs have already priced budget PCs out of existence, the market intelligence biz says the AI-driven shortage also pushed shipments down to 68.2 million units during the quarter spanning April, May, and June. This was the first decline after nine consecut
  
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• Tool promises to make lazy academics' AI-written papers sound more human

  08-07-2026 17:55 via theregister.com
  
  It's bad enough that you used AI to write a research paper instead of composing it yourself. Now, you can take the extra step to hide the evidence of your sloth. A startup has decided academics need a way to hide LLM tells, yet they insist their goal isn’t to support bad habits among boffins. AI humanizers are nothing new - take a cursory look online and you’ll find that companies pushing AI that helps AI writing sound less like AI wrote it are a dime a dozen. None, says the team beh
  
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• America's bed bug hotspots revealed in new map showing the 50 worst cities for blood-sucking pests... is your hometown infested?

  08-07-2026 17:35 via dailymail.com
  
  New data has revealed the 50 US cities where the blood-sucking pests are causing the biggest headaches for homeowners and travelers.
  
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• Police intercept tipsy teens after Waymo snitches for shooting Orbeez out of the car

  08-07-2026 17:24 via theregister.com
  
  If you misbehave in the back of a taxi, your driver might report you to authorities. And if there's no driver, you should also expect no quarter. Two San Mateo 15-year-olds this week had a run-in with the law after their Waymo robotaxi called the cops on them. According to the San Mateo Police Department’s account of the matter, the teens treated a hired Waymo as their own personal battle taxi, firing Orbeez out of the car windows while sipping what police called "afternoon libations" - in
  
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• Bug in top AI coding agents shows that Unix-era security headaches never really die

  08-07-2026 16:00 via theregister.com
  
  A “systematic vulnerability pattern” in at least six of the most widely used AI coding assistants can be abused to trick agents into accessing files outside the workspace sandbox, leading to remote code execution on the developer's machine. Google-owned security biz Wiz found the security gap, which it's named "GhostApproval," and reported it to all six: Amazon Q Developer, Anthropic Claude Code, Augment, Cursor, Google Antigravity, and Windsurf. Amazon, Cursor, and Google deemed the
  
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