Sci-Tech news

• Russian spies turn public Wi-Fi into malware delivery systems

  03-08-2026 17:39 via theregister.com
  
  Conference-goers may want to think twice about connecting to public Wi-Fi after Microsoft disclosed that Russian foreign intelligence operatives (SVR) are compromising captive portal networks to deliver infostealers, keyloggers, and other malware. With the help of ReliaQuest's earlier work, Redmond fingered Storm-2945, a subdivision of the SVR's Midnight Blizzard (aka Nobellium), in an attack campaign targeting users of public Wi-Fi networks at places like hotels, conference centers, and other s
  
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• Mysterious Egyptian commoner who rose to power may have been biblical Moses, researchers claim

  10-08-2026 20:20 via dailymail.com
  
  While Moses is one of the Bible's most famous figures, there are no records of him. Experts have made the case that a commoner may have been the prophet.
  
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• North Korean spies are running local LLMs to cause AI mischief

  10-08-2026 19:23 via theregister.com
  
  North Korean government snoops are operating LLMs locally and collecting technology to weave AI into their attack operations, according to South Korean security firm Genians. The researchers said they observed Kimsuky setting up and operating local LLM environments using Ollama, GPT4All, and Msty, experimenting with other AI tools such as Cursor, and using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for local document searches. This prevents the data from getting sucked into the cloud where enemies mig
  
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• 'Time traveler' claiming to be from the year 4413 delivers ominous warning about humanity's fate

  10-08-2026 18:45 via dailymail.com
  
  A man claiming to have traveled to the year 4413 has returned with a chilling warning about humanity's fate.
  
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• Gym rat asks AI agent to book him a class, it hacks a waitlist API to bump him up the list

  10-08-2026 18:45 via theregister.com
  
  An Australian man who asked his AI agent to book him a slot in a class at his local gym got more than he bargained for as the bot hacked into a waitlist and started messing with other members' reservations. Australian broadcaster ABC identified the gym-goer only as “Andrew.” The report says Andrew was using the OpenClaw agent with Anthropic’s Claude AI service. Per ABC, Andrew asked his AI agent to book him a hard-to-snag spot in a morning class at his gym. It first responded b
  
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• Time traveler claiming to be from the year 4413 delivers ominous warning about humanity's fate

  10-08-2026 18:29 via dailymail.com
  
  A man claiming to have traveled to the year 4413 has returned with a chilling warning about humanity's fate.
  
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• LexisNexis pulls three services offline after suspicious server activity

  10-08-2026 18:15 via theregister.com
  
  LexisNexis took its Diligence, Metabase API, and Newsdesk services offline last week after detecting "unusual activity on servers that are hosted and managed by a third-party vendor." Non-public customer communications penned by Todd Larsen, president of Nexis Solutions, and seen by The Register, said the company took the decision to protect customers by "containing the issue at its source" and "disconnecting from those third-party systems." "While this decision resulted in those applications go
  
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• Group advocating for Australians to list 'no religion' on the Census is called out over AI ads: 'Fake humanity'

  10-08-2026 17:30 via dailymail.com
  
  A group calling for Aussies to be honest about their religion in Tuesday's Census have been criticised for using 'AI slop'.
  
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• Dogs really ARE man's best friend! Pooches can tell when we're angry, sad, or scared - simply by looking at our faces, study finds

  10-08-2026 17:07 via dailymail.com
  
  Dogs really are man's best friend, new research has confirmed once again.
  
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• You're having a laugh! Map reveals the tickle HOTSPOTS across the human body that are guaranteed to get you giggling

  10-08-2026 17:02 via dailymail.com
  
  Some find it funny while others say it's torture - but scientists have now confirmed ticklish 'hotspots' are the same around the world.
  
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• You think this is warm? Hot days could have FOUR extra hours of heat by 2100, study warns

  10-08-2026 17:02 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, say that hot days could have even more hours of heat by the end of the century.
  
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• As datacenters expand, so does public opposition to them

  10-08-2026 16:15 via theregister.com
  
  Anti-datacenter sentiment appears to be hardening in the US and UK, with more American jurisdictions blocking new builds and protesters marching against a planned facility in London's historic Brick Lane. A burst of new projects on both sides of the Atlantic has brought concerns about electricity bills, water supplies, and massive warehouse-like structures looming over nearby homes. More than 200 datacenter bans and moratoriums took effect in the US over the past 30 days, bringing the number of
  
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• Attackers pick Levi's pockets in social engineering attack

  10-08-2026 15:36 via theregister.com
  
  Levi Strauss is investigating a data breach after attackers used social engineering to access three employees' work computers. In a regulatory filing, the jeans maker said the intruders accessed and exfiltrated what it described only as "certain corporate information." Levi's said it spotted the intrusion, kicked off its incident response procedures, brought in outside cybersecurity experts, and managed to cut off the unauthorized access. Its investigation remains ongoing. There is some good new
  
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• Wetherspoons bars smart glasses from filming customers

  10-08-2026 15:20 via theregister.com
  
  Wetherspoons has stopped short of banning Meta-style smart glasses from its pubs, but told The Register that customers should switch off their cameras and refrain from filming. "Like many hospitality companies, Wetherspoon has CCTV cameras for security reasons, but their use is strictly controlled by data legislation," a spokesperson said. "Apart from that, the general code that applies in our pubs, and most pubs, is that you can't film customers or employees without their permission. "Meta glas
  
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• Cyber vulnerability sweep picks up Royal Navy drones sending data to China

  10-08-2026 14:25 via theregister.com
  
  Cameras aboard Royal Navy drone boats were found phoning home to an IP address in China during a routine cyber vulnerability assessment. The UK Ministry of Defence confirmed the discovery, describing it as "an issue affecting a Kraken Unmanned Surface Vessel sub-system used by the Royal Navy." The Register understands that the data consisted of a "heartbeat" signalling that the camera was online and functioning normally. Even so, an unexpected transmission from military equipment to an IP addres
  
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• Some fin isn't quite right... Panicked swimmers race to escape 'shark' at Marbella beach - but it's a tuna

  10-08-2026 13:56 via dailymail.com
  
  Panicked swimmers were seen racing to escape a shark - only to realise that they were running away from a tuna. 
  
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• PDA is good for you! Couples who kiss in public have happier relationships, study finds

  10-08-2026 13:44 via dailymail.com
  
  Does the idea of snogging your other half in public make you cringe? If the answer is yes, there's bad news - as a new study has revealed that public displays of affection (PDA) are actually good for you.
  
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• What will happen if Earth's glaciers melt? Terrifying study reveals how their demise could spark 12 INCHES of global sea-level rise - plunging entire communities underwater

  10-08-2026 13:43 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists have revealed just how much water is locked away in the world's glaciers - and the consequences if it were all released into the oceans.
  
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• Framework loses customer data in Metabase zero-day attack

  10-08-2026 13:21 via theregister.com
  
  Modular laptop maker Framework has warned customers that an attacker exploited a zero-day at analytics provider Metabase to access names, email addresses, phone numbers, physical addresses, and login IP addresses, according to an email shared on Reddit. For business customers, the exposed information may also include company names, phone numbers, VAT or Employer Identification Numbers (EINs), and billing email addresses. Framework said order and payment details were not affected. "We are deeply
  
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• Expert warns men of intimate problem caused by exercising - it can alter the appearance of genitals

  10-08-2026 13:19 via dailymail.com
  
  An expert has warned that intense exercise - such as running and heavy weightlifting - may trigger a little-known genital problem.
  
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• Watching the solar eclipse this week? DON'T use your glasses from 1999! Experts warn viewers from the last eclipse may have degraded - putting your eyes at risk of permanent damage

  10-08-2026 12:47 via dailymail.com
  
  If you've still got a pair of eclipse glasses hanging around in the back of a drawer from the last eclipse, you might be tempted to use them. However, experts have cautioned against this.
  
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• Claude Code puts auto mode in the driver's seat

  10-08-2026 12:38 via theregister.com
  
  Anthropic is making auto mode the default in Claude Code from August 14, claiming its classifier is "as safe or safer than an average user clicking through prompts." Users with a different default already set might receive a one-time prompt asking whether they want to switch. It applies to new sessions on Pro, Max, and Team plans. It will remain opt-in for now on Claude Enterprise, the Claude API, Claude Platform on AWS, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud's Agent Platform, and Microsoft Foundry. Anthr
  
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• Barbie and Ken get a reality check! Study reveals how dolls are finally starting to look like real people - with 'Curvy Barbie' closely matched to today's average woman

  10-08-2026 11:35 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists from Adelaide University analysed four recent Barbie dolls, as well as the latest Ken doll. The results revealed that the dolls' proportions are finally starting to resemble those of real people.
  
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• London still dominates Britain's datacenter map, but the regions are powering up

  10-08-2026 11:15 via theregister.com
  
  A snapshot of Britain's datacenter estate puts nearly 40 percent of its facilities in London, along with about two-thirds of its estimated colocation capacity, although development is spreading beyond the capital. The analysis counts 555 UK server farms, matching Statista's latest figure. It puts their combined IT capacity at about 1.6 GW. By facility count, that would put Blighty second only to the US, although there is a considerable gap between the two. The study data was compiled by Karas Pl
  
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• Ashes from Pompeii reveal what the ancient city SMELLED like before it was destroyed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius 2,000 years ago

  10-08-2026 11:11 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists have discovered what the doomed city of Pompeii smelled like before it was buried by the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago.
  
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• Smart glasses are only smart if we train them to be good. Then they'll be fantastic

  10-08-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  The most sobering observation in tech is not how much AI is taking on the appearance of the human mind. It's how much the human mind increasingly resembles Windows – not in functionality, although we all know that person, but in the way it crufts up and loses compatibility after years without an upgrade or reboot. We start shiny and new, with everything around us equally exciting, yet end up cursing all these damn changes and godawful broccoli-haired vibe coders. AI has turned many of the
  
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• Demoralized developer's desperate hack came back to haunt him on LinkedIn

  10-08-2026 08:30 via theregister.com
  
  WHO, ME? The past may be a foreign country, but it's one The Register likes to explore each Friday in "Who, Me?" – our reader-contributed column that shares your tales of workplace mistakes and great escapes. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Walter," who once worked for one half of a duopoly competing in the intertwined markets for bad poetry celebrating memorable life moments and questionable television dramatizing the sentiments in those poems. The duopoly didn't make for a st
  
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• Linus Torvalds says AI has made 'huge' Linux kernel updates the new normal

  10-08-2026 07:56 via theregister.com
  
  Linux kernel boss Linus Torvalds thinks the project has reached a new normal of supersized updates, thanks to AI. Torvalds posts a weekly state of the kernel update, and last week’s message opened with his observation that “This rc is huge.” “Even by the ‘new normal’ standards this is a big rc, and I think it's the biggest rc6 we've had in years at least by commit count,” he wrote on August 2. Fast forward a week and the size of the release candidate rem
  
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• Advertisers are trying to influence AI bots with secret ads

  10-08-2026 05:00 via theregister.com
  
  KETTLE OpenAI's invasion of Hugging Face keeps getting worse somehow, Chinese open-weight models are nigh on to reaching parity with their closed-off American cousins, and AI crawlers are getting their own LLM-poisoning ads. Were there anything world-shaking events in AI land we missed this week? You can listen to the latest episode of The Kettle right here on this page, as well as on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube, where you can subscribe to get notified about the latest episode. Join Kettle
  
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• The ominous sign Super El Niño is strengthening: Global ocean temperatures have hit a record high - soaring to 20.96°C, data reveals

  10-08-2026 04:00 via dailymail.com
  
  Global ocean temperatures have hit a record high in a worrying sign that the Super El Niño is strengthening, new data reveals.
  
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