Sci-Tech news

• Sexting cases have doubled in the last two years

  06-11-2017 11:59 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  The trend for sharing explicit images among youngsters in Britain has emerged as a challenging issue for authorities amid fears that children and teenagers could be routinely criminalised.
  
  Read more

• Has Noah's Ark finally been found? Researchers claim mysterious underground structure is man-made after dramatic new scans

  01-10-2026 19:47 via dailymail.com
  
  A research project has made a groundbreaking announcement that the site believed to be the exact location of Noah's Ark may actually contain a wooden ship.
  
  Read more

• Suspected Chinese spies spoofed an Anthropic exec, ex-White House official in AI phishing

  01-10-2026 18:43 via theregister.com
  
  A suspected Chinese espionage group impersonated AI policy figures, including a senior Anthropic employee and a former White House official, in phishing campaigns targeting AI policy experts at US universities, think tanks, and law firms, security researchers say. The bulk of these campaigns occurred in July, according to Proofpoint, which discovered the espionage attempts and attributed them to a China-aligned group it tracks as TA419. Proofpoint’s security alert comes a day after OpenAI
  
  Read more

• AWS offers local, open source leash for agent harnesses

  01-10-2026 18:11 via theregister.com
  
  If you don't want your AI agents running out of control and changing files or transferring data outside your rules, AWS has published an open source software library that it claims can add a new layer of policy control. Just as a dog’s harness is useless without a leash to keep it under control, the Dogwood Local Engine promises to put AI agent tool calls on a leash, blocking actions that don’t meet user-defined temporal conditions. The DLE comes in the form of a Rust library that ca
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• King Of AI Behind Donald Trump: UAEs Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan?

  01-10-2026 17:34 via technocracy.news
  
  Zayed Al Nahyan is at least an influencer over Trump, if not the puppeteer. This is the “silent partner” in Trump’s World Liberty Financial with a 49% interest, which was hidden from the American public for almost a year. He figured prominently in my book, The Economics of Technocracy, as the Sheik who wants to dominate AI and Fintech globally. His wealth, power, and global influence make Trump look like a wannabe. He is the nexus between Islamic finance and the privatized asse
  
  Read more

• Microsoft makes Windows settings backup the default in 26H2

  01-10-2026 17:31 via theregister.com
  
  Windows 11 26H2 is out, and Microsoft has enabled Windows settings backup by default, a move that could send administrators scrambling to opt out where they once had to opt in. The latest release hasn't made a lot of shockwaves in the community featurewise. Users with up-to-date versions of 25H2 will unlikely notice much difference – 26H2 has the same code base, delivered via an enablement package. It even has the same set of known issues, although all are now "mitigated" in one way or ano
  
  Read more

• Build the right AI factory for your needs: partner for success

  01-10-2026 17:00 via theregister.com
  
  AI ambition is easy to describe - using data and models to improve decisions, automate work, accelerate discovery, or create new services. Delivering those outcomes is harder and takes a significant amount of experience to be successful. Training a frontier model, fine-tuning an industry model, running high-volume inference and supporting agentic AI place different demands on infrastructure, processes and people. Implementing AI may include a single-purpose turnkey configuration that will accomm
  
  Read more

• Microsoft catches hackers exploiting Zimbra bug before disclosure

  01-10-2026 16:44 via theregister.com
  
  Attackers were poking at a critical Zimbra mail server bug weeks before it was publicly disclosed, and then moved on to steal credentials, raid mailboxes, and take deeper control of compromised systems. Microsoft Threat Intelligence said it tracked exploitation of CVE-2026-73570, an unauthenticated command injection vulnerability in Zimbra Collaboration Suite that gives attackers a potentially easy route into exposed mail servers. No stolen password or unfortunate employee clicking a dodgy link
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Trump to name AI czar within days: ‘We will have somebody extraordinary’

  01-10-2026 16:29 via technocracy.news
  
  Every candidate on the short list is mentioned prominently in The Final Betrayal: How Technocracy Destroyed America. What is Trump thinking about establishing the AI Force?  Will this fall under the Department of Defense to be weaponized against Americans? Technocracy is turning ugly and has set its sights on capturing the whole enchilada: the Government, the financial system, the rationing of resources, and control over all citizens. Just like 1930s Technocrats, look for calls to dismiss C
  
  Read more

• MI5 warns UK academics their research may have helped Chinese spies

  01-10-2026 16:04 via theregister.com
  
  MI5 has warned that more than 100 UK-linked academics contributed to research projects allegedly funded to improve China's spying capabilities. The Security Service issued an unusually public espionage alert this week naming the China General Technology Research Institute (CGTRI), also translated as the China Academy of General Technology (CAGT). MI5 says the organization has "very strong ties" to China's Ministry of State Security (MSS), the country's civilian intelligence agency. According to
  
  Read more

• CISO thought he had a 'r3@lg00dp@$$w0rd' but forgot to patch

  01-10-2026 15:32 via theregister.com
  
  Welcome back to PWNED, the weekly column where we warn you about weak security practices. This week’s terrifying tale involves a lack of important patching and a humorously bad password belonging to the person in charge of tech security at a law firm. 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 Joe Brinkley, who also is known as “The Blind Hacker” and ha
  
  Read more

• Exchange Web Services enters the final stretch before Microsoft pulls access

  01-10-2026 14:59 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft begins disabling Exchange Web Services (EWS) in Exchange Online today, ahead of the API's permanent retirement on April 1, 2027. Introduced with Exchange Server 2007, EWS allows applications to access mailbox data including email, calendars, and contacts. Microsoft says the service "no longer aligns with today's security, scale, or reliability requirements" and recommends moving integrations to Microsoft Graph, although some capability gaps remain. Beginning October 1, Microsoft will s
  
  Read more

• Palantir's Tom Watson lectures MP on accuracy, citing selective data

  01-10-2026 14:41 via theregister.com
  
  Palantir's newly appointed UK senior vice president Tom Watson has accused Labour MP Clive Lewis of making "incorrect claims" about the company – while repeating NHS performance figures that the statistics regulator has said require careful caveats. Watson, the former deputy leader of the Labour Party, advised Palantir from 2024 before joining it full-time last month. He now works alongside Louis Mosley, the company's executive vice president for the UK and Europe. His letter to Lewis was
  
  Read more

• England's schools are getting better at mopping up cyber incidents

  01-10-2026 13:40 via theregister.com
  
  England's secondary schools are reporting slightly fewer cybersecurity incidents and faster recovery when disaster strikes, according to a survey by exams regulator Ofqual. Twenty-seven percent of schools reported an incident during the 2025/26 academic year, down from 29 percent a year earlier and 34 percent in 2023/24. Ofqual surveyed 3,775 secondary teachers in England in July. For questions concerning whole schools, it counted one response from the most senior participating teacher at each i
  
  Read more

• Going up! Dubai skyscraper will feature a 2,000ft continuous elevator journey - with double-decker cars to transport more people

  01-10-2026 12:50 via dailymail.com
  
  If you think the lift to the top of The Shard is a long ride, spare a thought for future visitors to Dubai's Burj Azizi. 
  
  Read more

• UK privacy watchdog starts over with new board and Manchester HQ

  01-10-2026 12:42 via theregister.com
  
  Britain's data protection watchdog has acquired a new legal identity and governance structure, although the familiar ICO initials are staying put. On September 30, the Information Commission replaced the Information Commissioner as the statutory regulator. The organization itself will be known as the Information Commission's Office and will continue using the ICO name. The change is more than a bureaucratic rebrand. The former regulator was a "corporation sole," meaning its statutory powers and
  
  Read more

• Is AI secretly conscious? Scientist demands urgent tests - and warns switching it off could be unethical if it is

  01-10-2026 12:25 via dailymail.com
  
  What if the world's smartest chatbot really did wake up one day? While it may sound like science fiction, a consciousness scientist says we urgently need to start thinking about the possibility.
  
  Read more

• Sopra Steria widens legal challenge to Capita's Whitehall outsourcing deal

  01-10-2026 12:00 via theregister.com
  
  Sopra Steria has expanded its legal challenge to a major UK government contract award after obtaining an unredacted copy of the agreement between Capita and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The company alleges that previously undisclosed terms gave Capita preferential treatment, reduced the outsourcer's exposure to risk, and left the DWP carrying more of it. One clause could allow the department to fund technology needed to compensate for deficiencies in Capita's tender, Sopra Steria
  
  Read more

• Fewer women than ever in UK's 'old boys' club' cyber industry

  01-10-2026 11:15 via theregister.com
  
  The proportion of workers in the UK cybersecurity industry identifying as women has dropped to 16 percent, the lowest level since 2021. Gender diversity has long been an issue pervading the STEM fields, although in cybersecurity this is especially pronounced, both at senior leadership and education levels. This is despite evidence that girls regularly outperform boys in STEM subjects at UK schools when they do participate.Not only are there still fewer women students in cybersecurity courses tha
  
  Read more

• Erase social media tomorrow? Brits say yes

  01-10-2026 10:29 via theregister.com
  
  Just 7 percent of Brits think social media is a force for good and around one in three suspect that life would get better if all these sites were erased from the internet tomorrow.Or so claims Opinium Research, which describes itself as a “strategic insight agency.” It polled 2,000 adults and 1,100 parents in May and The Register’s major surprise is that more people of Britland didn’t want to see social media rubbed out.Some 42 percent surveyed said these networks are add
  
  Read more

• The tech industry is hot for shopping bots, but they're years away

  01-10-2026 09:30 via theregister.com
  
  The thought of automated software making purchases on behalf of consumers from online merchants thrills much of the tech and financial industry. The chatter started in early 2025 and has surged since then, giving rise to the term "agentic commerce." A few reality checks have called the idea into question. For example, Amazon recently blocked Meta's Muse bot, citing terms of use restrictions. This was after the e-commerce giant had previously blocked Perplexity's AI bot, and even won a preliminar
  
  Read more

• Singapore’s government creates a dating app

  01-10-2026 07:34 via theregister.com
  
  Singapore’s digital transformation agency, GovTech, is piloting a dating app. GovTech says the app came about after discussions among its staff, who apparently “shared an interest in exploring some of the challenges people can face when meeting someone new.” “They wondered whether a different approach that places greater emphasis on compatibility through values and preferences, and offers fewer matches at a time, could give users more space to consider each introduction a
  
  Read more

• RAM supply set to worsen, says Micron, as CEO celebrates ‘much higher’ prices

  01-10-2026 04:37 via theregister.com
  
  Memory-maker Micron has warned that RAM shortages will persist into 2028, and perhaps beyond. Speaking on the company’s FY 2026 earnings call, CEO and company chair Sanjay Mehrotra reminded investors that Micron has already sold most of the memory it will make next year and said customers will pay “much higher prices” than they shelled out this year. “In calendar 2027 as well as 2028, we see demand exceeding supply,” he added. “In fact, we see greater tightnes
  
  Read more

• Terrifying scientific study warns once-in-250-year 'Blackout Arc' event could now plunge 5 million Americans into total darkness: See map of states at risk

  01-10-2026 03:07 via dailymail.com
  
  A new study has revealed how millions of Americans could be impacted by an historic event.
  
  Read more

• Beware the giant googly eyes! Scientists deploy 'floating scarecrows' off the coast of Cornwall to deter seagulls

  01-10-2026 02:42 via dailymail.com
  
  The floating scarecrow, also known as the Looming Eye Buoy (LEB), is designed to save seabirds from getting caught in fishing nets.
  
  Read more

• Azure maintenance mess disrupts hybrid clouds, VPNs, cloudy VMware services

  01-10-2026 01:54 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has advised users of its ExpressRoute Gateway, VPN Gateway, and Azure VMware service that they may experience degraded or interrupted network connectivity, and struggle to perform some network management operations. This looks like a self-inflicted wound because Microsoft’s status page says it has “paused the infrastructure servicing activity associated with the onset of this event.” The event started at 20:30 UTC on 30 September 2026. ExpressRoute Gateway is a servic
  
  Read more

• Azure maintenance mess disrupted hybrid clouds, VPNs, cloudy VMware services

  01-10-2026 01:54 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has advised users of its ExpressRoute Gateway, VPN Gateway, and Azure VMware service that they may experience degraded or interrupted network connectivity, and struggle to perform some network management operations. This looks like a self-inflicted wound because Microsoft’s status page says it has “paused the infrastructure servicing activity associated with the onset of this event.” The event started at 20:30 UTC on 30 September 2026. ExpressRoute Gateway is a servic
  
  Read more

• 2026 has been a 'devastating year' for Switzerland's glaciers - with several lost forever, study warns

  01-10-2026 01:02 via dailymail.com
  
  This year has been 'devastating' for Switzerland's glaciers, scientists from ETH Zurich have warned.
  
  Read more

• Irony alert: OpenAI whines that Chinese model stole its special IP that it stole from everybody else

  30-09-2026 23:36 via theregister.com
  
  OpenAI, which hoovered up vast amounts of internet content amid copyright fights, has accused individuals associated with China’s Moonshot AI of being involved in a "distillation attack" that began July 1. The house of Altman warns that extracting its models’ reasoning at scale could help rivals train capable models without preserving the same guardrails. Model distillation is a machine learning technique that can involve using one model’s outputs to train another – in ad
  
  Read more

• 'Noah's Ark's final resting place' confirmed to be a 'man-made object' in groundbreaking announcement

  30-09-2026 23:07 via dailymail.com
  
  A research project has made a groundbreaking announcement that the site believed to be the exact location of Noah's Ark may actually contain a wooden ship.
  
  Read more

Follow @scitech_UK on Twitter!