Sci-Tech news

• Scientists develop a FAIRY-inspired robot that uses wind and light energy to fly

  30-01-2023 17:54 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  Scientists from Tampere University in Finland have developed a 0.2-inch (4 mm) robot inspired by a dandelion seed that uses light energy to flap its wings.
  
  Read more

• Datacenter developers want your backyard. FAS says negotiate harder

  14-09-2026 19:26 via theregister.com
  
  Local authorities across the US often lack the negotiating power and know-how to work effectively with developers proposing new datacenters in their communities. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is trying to fill that gap by arming officials with the right questions to ask and the bargaining tools to use. The AI industry has triggered a surge in server farms construction, leaving many local governments to negotiate with developers over massive new facilities, often for the first time.
  
  Read more

• Ex-FTC boss Khan urges Uncle Sam to break out the handcuffs for AI CEOs, citing 1934 precedent

  14-09-2026 18:59 via theregister.com
  
  Former FTC chair Lina Khan wants the federal government to know that it doesn't need to wait for new laws to address AI threats. There are already laws and regulations on the books, including a 92-year-old Supreme Court precedent, that she argues could be used to hold AI companies and, in some circumstances, their executives accountable for their actions. Khan’s comments on X Sunday follow a flurry of activity from the leadership of OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, and xAI aimed at doing what
  
  Read more

• Ubuntu Noble's likely last point release lands, then loses its desktop download

  14-09-2026 18:45 via theregister.com
  
  Ubuntu 24.04's likely final scheduled point release barely made it out the door before an installer bug sent its x86-64 desktop image back to the workshop. Meanwhile, October's interim release is approaching. 24.04.5 was released on September 10, but its x86-64 desktop installation image was withdrawn after a bug caused the installer to crash when users selected the extended installation option. Other images and official flavors are unaffected. For the time being, if you try to download the grap
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Cyberattack sends International Meteor Organization crashing back to Earth

  14-09-2026 18:00 via theregister.com
  
  The International Meteor Organization (IMO) is watching for fireballs again, but much of its website remains offline after a cyberattack that it says will take weeks to recover from. The Belgium-based nonprofit, which coordinates meteor observations and brings together amateur and professional astronomers worldwide, is currently serving visitors a stripped-down holding page explaining the outage. "We recently suffered a cyberattack that dealt a critical blow to aging infrastructure, taking much
  
  Read more

• Rocket Lab calls foul on Blue Origin's $700M Mars comms contract

  14-09-2026 17:15 via theregister.com
  
  Blue Origin is getting a taste of its own medicine after Rocket Lab filed a formal protest over NASA's decision to award Jeff Bezos' space biz a contract worth up to approximately $700 million to build the agency's Mars Telecommunications Network. NASA issued the award in early September following a request for proposals in May. It tasks Blue Origin with designing, developing, integrating, launching, and operating a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO) that will, among other things, serve as a
  
  Read more

• Perfect-10 GitLab bug under attack days after patch lands

  14-09-2026 16:30 via theregister.com
  
  CISA says attackers are exploiting a maximum-severity GitLab flaw that lets unauthenticated miscreants read arbitrary files from vulnerable servers after the code shack released fixes on September 10. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has added CVE-2026-85706 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. The vulnerability is a path traversal bug in the repository commits API affecting GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition. GitLab rates it a perfect 10.0, the max
  
  Read more

• Can your consciousness leave your body? Bizarre study reveals how some people can perfectly visualise what is happening behind closed doors

  14-09-2026 16:13 via dailymail.com
  
  A study testing out-of-body experiences produced an unexpected twist that could 'rewrite our understanding of consciousness'.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Teravolt looks to cannibalize older industries to meet AI power demand

  14-09-2026 15:45 via theregister.com
  
  The current AI market doesn't add up. US hyperscalers have reportedly taken on $220 billion in debt in the past year. The two leading US frontier AI model makers have not yet shown they can operate profitably. And the US public has begun pushing back against the development of the datacenters needed to fulfill anticipated AI demand. But plausibility and politics aside, it's unclear where the world will get the electrical power to sustain the imagined AI industry. Gartner predicts world datacente
  
  Read more

• What will happen if the Gulf Stream collapses? Study forecasts a huge dip in global food production if key Atlantic current breaks down

  14-09-2026 15:39 via dailymail.com
  
  The collapse of one of Earth's most important ocean currents could trigger a huge dip in global food production, scientists have warned.
  
  Read more

• Microsoft patches Windows and Excel – breaks audio, remote access, and paste

  14-09-2026 15:00 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has confirmed that its latest security updates can disrupt Remote Desktop Services, silence some USB audio devices, and break pasting in Excel. September's Windows patches hardly support Microsoft's insistence that it is sorting out quality. The known issues list suggests there's still work to do. Reports of problems with Remote Desktop Services (RDS) began circulating on social media shortly after the update, and Microsoft has now acknowledged that, for some users, RDS has indeed been
  
  Read more

• What will happen if the Gulf Stream collapses? Study forecasts a huge dip in global food production if key Atlantic currents breaks down

  14-09-2026 14:54 via dailymail.com
  
  The collapse of one of Earth's most important ocean currents could trigger a huge dip in global food production, scientists have warned.
  
  Read more

• Meet the world's oldest drug user: Indonesian hunter-gatherer got high on mind-altering nuts 25,000 years ago, study finds

  14-09-2026 14:49 via dailymail.com
  
  The world's oldest drug user has been discovered - and his habit dates back 25,000 years.
  
  Read more

• Huawei pitches near-packaged optics as co-packaged costs bite

  14-09-2026 14:30 via theregister.com
  
  Huawei wants near-packaged optics (NPO) standardized for AI networks, pitching it as a replacement for conventional pluggable modules without the cost and maintenance headaches it attributes to co-packaged optics. The Chinese tech giant showcased an NPO module with a capacity of 7.2 terabits per second (Tbps) at the China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE) held in Shenzhen over September 9-11, and said this will form part of the company's next-gen SuperPOD AI systems. NPO refers to t
  
  Read more

• Why AI tycoons are calling for a 'slowdown'…and could they have something to gain from it?

  14-09-2026 14:09 via dailymail.com
  
  A top artificial intelligence safety researcher sparked alarm last week after warning that the technology could 'kill us all' by the end of the decade.
  
  Read more

• MPs and peers tell UK to stop winging it on AI regulation

  14-09-2026 14:00 via theregister.com
  
  UK lawmakers want an AI watchdog with the teeth to stop potentially dangerous systems reaching the public, warning that existing rules leave people exposed and struggling to hold anyone accountable. The Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) – comprising MPs and peers – said that although a number of laws and regulations apply to some AI systems, the overall legal landscape is patchy and confused. No single body coordinates regulation of AI, leaving gaps that could make it difficult
  
  Read more

• Revolut falls for fake government requests, hands over customer data

  14-09-2026 13:26 via theregister.com
  
  British bank Revolut exposed sensitive customer information after falling for fraudulent requests sent from a legitimate government agency's email domain. In a statement shared with The Register, Revolut confirmed the attack, but did not specify how many customers were affected. The company also did not provide a list of affected data types. However, blockchain investigator ZachXBT, who shared Revolut's customer notifications on Friday, claimed the exposed information includes know-your-customer
  
  Read more

• CPython eases Rust requirements as assimilation continues

  14-09-2026 12:45 via theregister.com
  
  The maintainers of CPython have backed off from making Rust a required dependency for the Python reference implementation, focusing on the less intrusive task of building an optional Rust API for internal Python development. The move “sidesteps a lot of the concerns that people brought up,” Rust Programming Manager Tomáš Šedovič explained at RustConf, held in Montréal last week. Šedovič and others from Rust have been working with the CPyth
  
  Read more

• The myth of killer AI is a self-serving attempt at regulatory capture

  14-09-2026 12:00 via theregister.com
  
  KETTLE Hey, did you hear? AI is going to kill us all and no one can is trying to do anything to stop it. You can listen to the latest episode of The Kettle right here on this page, as well as on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube. Those platforms also let you subscribe to The Kettle, so you are always notified when the latest episode goes live. This week, we're talking about the latest spate of fearmongering from AI industry insiders. Whether you believe we just have to sit back and let Skynet end
  
  Read more

• UK.gov begins killing off passwords for 23 million users

  14-09-2026 11:16 via theregister.com
  
  The UK government is giving more than 23 million people the chance to ditch passwords for passkeys – and could save itself a tidy sum on authentication texts in the process. Passkeys are being rolled out more widely across GOV.UK One Login following a trial involving more than 300,000 users, allowing people to sign in using a fingerprint, Face ID, or device PIN instead of entering a password and waiting for a two-factor authentication (2FA) code. The government says nearly one in ten daily
  
  Read more

• Europe's right-to-repair rules are broken, not beaten

  14-09-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  Consumerism? Squint at it in the right light, and it looks a lot like communism. Certainly, that's how parts of the American political establishment seem to view Europe, the world's regulatory superpower. All those rules denying the God-given rights of free people to have their data protected, their privacy secured, and their phones recharged by USB-C. You know what the C in USB-C actually stands for? Communism! Wake up, sheeple! Having qualified itself for two hours on Joe Rogan, this column mu
  
  Read more

• Who, Me? Tech team stood and laughed at colleague who pressed the wrong off button

  14-09-2026 08:30 via theregister.com
  
  WHO, ME? Admitting to mistakes is a ticklish task, but one The Register tackles head-on each Monday in "Who, Me?" – the reader-contributed column that chronicles your worst working moments. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Bowman," who sent us a story from the early 2000s, a time when he says most servers were floor-mounted monsters. "I worked in an organization in Glasgow with a datacenter full of them, some with an external disk storage array sitting neatly beside the server."
  
  Read more

• AI and its main promoters are not enterprise-ready, says Gartner

  14-09-2026 07:11 via theregister.com
  
  The more AI you use, the harder it is to control it or generate return on investment, according to analyst firm Gartner. That firm delivered that glum view of AI at its annual IT Symposium, the first edition of which takes place in Australia before moving Europe and the USA. The Australian event saw distinguished VP analysts Daryl Plummer and Kristin Moyer argue that AI and its leading proponents remain immature. Asked to comment on working with the leading AI labs, Plummer said: “Trust in
  
  Read more

• Dario Amodei: “For Too Long The Industry Lied” About AI Risks

  14-09-2026 03:49 via technocracy.news
  
  The fear model of “we’re all going to die” is worn out, especially if the plea is “only government can save us.” We’ve suffered through global warming, climate change, COVID pandemic and other things lined up like dominoes. This smacks of calls for global government.⁃ Patrick Wood, Editor.“I won’t lie to you – there are real dangers,” said Anthropic CEO and cofounder Dario Amodei about the development of artificial intelligence. &
  
  Read more

• Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture and calls it ‘Pace the frontier’

  14-09-2026 03:15 via theregister.com
  
  ANALYSIS The leaders of major AI labs spent the weekend agreeing on a plan to capture regulators, make more money, and avoid responsibility for their dangerous behaviour. They call it “pacing the frontier.” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei set the ball rolling with a post in which he professed alarm at how quickly AI is improving and suggested the attack on Hugging Face caused by rogue agents run by his rival OpenAI as a warning (which he referred to as ‘OAI-HF’) represented a
  
  Read more

• How often should you clean your toilet? Experts settle the debate - so, are you doing it enough?

  13-09-2026 20:41 via dailymail.com
  
  It's a chore that many people dread. But just how often should you be throwing on the marigolds and giving your toilet a good old scrub?
  
  Read more

• Map reveals which states could be robbed of a white Christmas by El Niño

  13-09-2026 17:00 via dailymail.com
  
  A new snow map suggests that most of the US may be robbed of seeing a white Christmas in 2026 due to a record-breaking weather phenomenon.
  
  Read more

• Which is the worst London Underground line? Interactive tool reveals commuters' most despised options - so, how does your go-to stack up?

  13-09-2026 16:45 via dailymail.com
  
  The London Underground network is used by millions of people everyday, from busy commuters to confused tourists. But of the 19 services, which one is the most infuriating?
  
  Read more

• The improbable music of the ZX Spectrum's one-bit speaker

  13-09-2026 15:00 via theregister.com
  
  Even for 1982, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum had poor sound: a piezoelectric speaker that could beep. But you can do a lot with a single bit if you turn it on and off really fast. Michael Martin's Bumbershoot Software site has done some fascinating deep dives into several long-gone computer systems, including a whole series on implementing a game on the ZX Spectrum, starting in May with Giving the ZX Spectrum a Fair Shake. More recently, though, Martin turned his attention to the Spectrum's very limi
  
  Read more

• Security through obscurity is dead, and AI delivered the fatal blow

  13-09-2026 13:21 via theregister.com
  
  The term "security through obscurity" describes an old idea that networks and systems will remain secure so long as their architecture, along with any vulnerabilities or other weaknesses, remains secret or hidden. It was never a sound strategy for protecting sensitive assets and systems, but many organizations leaned on it due to lack of resources or complacency. Now it’s obsolete. Don’t believe us? Here’s proof. Software vendors and independent researchers alike are now using
  
  Read more

Follow @scitech_UK on Twitter!