Sci-Tech news

• Space Perspective test flies its balloon 20 miles over Florida that will take humans to orbit

  18-06-2021 23:30 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  Space Perspective completed its first unmanned test flight Friday of a gigantic balloon that will soon take humans to orbit when it launches the first commercial flight in 2024.
  
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• EvilTokens device-code phishing kit totally more evil than we all thought

  01-07-2026 23:50 via theregister.com
  
  EvilTokens, the device-code phishing kit that can allow criminals to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA) and silently authenticate as the victim to the organization's Microsoft 365 applications, appears to be even more insidious than we all thought. Cisco Talos incident responders on Wednesday described how the lure reaches a victim's inbox, and revealed new capabilities alongside a “more sophisticated evasion approach” than documented in earlier EvilTokens research. Talos uncov
  
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• Claude Sonnet 5.0 heads straight down the middle of the road to dodge controversy

  01-07-2026 23:33 via theregister.com
  
  Anthropic has released the latest version of its mid-sized model, Sonnet 5, which the company claims is its most “agentic” yet. For developers writing agents to automate tedious and recurring tasks, Sonnet 5 promises improved capabilities in reasoning, tool use, coding, and knowledge work. This version is also less likely to pull embarrassing (for Anthropic) gaffes of misunderstanding, so the company asserts. “Our safety assessments found that Sonnet 5 shows an overall lower ra
  
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• Anthropic is removing its covert code for catching Chinese competitors

  01-07-2026 22:56 via theregister.com
  
  Anthropic says that it plans to remove hidden codes it added to Claude Code several months ago to catch other AI companies that are trying to steal from its models. Thariq Shihipar, an engineer at Anthropic who works on the Claude Code team, said on Tuesday that a fix should appear on July 1. "This is an experiment we launched in March that was meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation," Shihipar explained, using the industry term for copying AI
  
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• Godot says bye bye AI, bans vibe-coded contributions

  01-07-2026 22:29 via theregister.com
  
  Vibe coders apparently don't understand what their AI servants write - at least that’s what the team behind open-source game engine Godot seems to be implying with a new policy that cracks down on AI-generated contributions. The Godot team announced on Tuesday that they were in the process of rewriting their contribution policy to prohibit almost all use of AI from contributors, citing an overwhelming number of pull requests that have poured in, many of which appear to be AI-generated. Nor
  
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• Somebody told DeepSeek to build in-browser ransomware and it gleefully complied

  01-07-2026 21:57 via theregister.com
  
  You can't ask most models to help you make "ransomware" directly, but many will be more than willing if you give them the right prompt. DeepSeek and other LLMs with fewer safety and security controls make theoretical cyberthreats - like browser-only ransomware - much more likely to be used in real-world infections, according to Check Point researchers. The Israeli cybersecurity company analyzed a DeepSeek-generated sample in a Wednesday report that its threat hunters describe as in-browser ranso
  
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• First shark of the season spotted near one of America's busiest beaches amid Fourth of July warning

  01-07-2026 21:52 via dailymail.com
  
  The first onshore shark was spotted lurking near one of America's busiest beaches after officials told beachgoers to stay alert as sightings of the apex predators often peak around the Fourth of July.
  
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• An artificial cell with a full lifecycle has been created for the first time

  01-07-2026 21:10 via theregister.com
  
  A group of scientists in a Minnesota laboratory have made history, creating the first artificial cell with a complete life cycle. SpudCell, as the team behind it has dubbed the creation, is built entirely from known chemical components, and can grow, replicate its genome, divide into new generations of cells, and even demonstrate natural selection and competition as its genes change. That’s not to say SpudCells are alive, mind you, as the team behind it aren’t claiming to have become
  
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• AI search could kill the web without new quality signals and revenue models

  01-07-2026 20:13 via theregister.com
  
  AI answers are killing content publishers, as they cause readers to stay on Google or on the chatbot of their choice, rather than navigating to dedicated websites. The end result could be catastrophic for the open web. Alex Chan, assistant professor at Harvard Business School, floats that prediction based on an economic model he describes in a paper titled "AI and the collapse of the www." A paper from Saharsh Agarwal, assistant professor at the Indian School of Business, and Ananya Sen, associa
  
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• Red teamers turned Claude Desktop into a double agent to do their evil bidding

  01-07-2026 19:00 via theregister.com
  
  EXCLUSIVE Pentera Labs’ red teamers compromised a developer’s AI agent via his Claude Desktop app and ultimately turned that access into full remote code execution on the dev’s machine – demonstrating how an attacker could turn a trusted, chatty AI assistant into a double agent operating on their behalf. “Claude’s got a new voice,” Pentera's offensive security services team leader Dvir Avraham told The Register. “We acknowledge the huge trust in AI
  
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• 'Time traveler' who says he is from the year 2118 makes chilling claims about World War 3 and secret CIA inventions

  01-07-2026 18:37 via dailymail.com
  
  A man claiming to have traveled more than a century into the future says he returned from the year 2118 with alarming predictions about the fate of humanity..
  
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• NASA unsure Boeing Starliner will ever be certified for human flight

  01-07-2026 18:02 via theregister.com
  
  Place your bets, because it looks increasingly unlikely Boeing's Starliner spacecraft will carry astronauts again, if a NASA inspector general's report is anything to go on. Published on Tuesday, the OIG report on NASA's management of its Commercial Crew Program (CCP) examines how SpaceX and Boeing have performed in providing crew transportation to the International Space Station. The report notes that SpaceX worked through its own technical challenges getting humans into space and to the ISS. B
  
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• PlayStation announces plans to SCRAP physical discs from 2028 - forcing players to download games instead

  01-07-2026 17:17 via dailymail.com
  
  PlayStation has announced that it will scrap physical games from January 2028.
  
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• When backups aren't enough: the case for real disaster recovery

  01-07-2026 17:00 via theregister.com
  
  Ask most IT teams whether they're protected against a major outage or ransomware attack, and the answer will almost certainly be yes, because the backups are in place and the box marked 'disaster recovery plan' has been ticked. But there's a difference between having a backup and recovering from a disaster, and that gap tends to reveal itself at the worst possible moment. The backup problem nobody talks about Backups were built for a different era. When the biggest threat was hardware failure or
  
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• Blood-red skies appear over Venezuela days after deadly earthquakes sparking fears of a biblical omen

  01-07-2026 16:42 via dailymail.com
  
  An eerie crimson glow has engulfed parts of Venezuela, turning the skies blood-red just days after two deadly earthquakes rattled the region.
  
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• Microsoft lets Azure Linux 4 out of the cloud in downloadable ISO form

  01-07-2026 16:21 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft's Fedora-derived Azure Linux 4 has hit a new milestone: you can now run it outside of Azure. The project's GitHub page now offers ISO file downloads in addition to its Azure Marketplace page. We covered the Azure Linux 4 announcement in May, and it is still in preview. You should not deploy this in production just yet. The availability of ISO files for installation in a local VM is a welcome step forward, though. They are not where you might expect to find them for a FOSS project on Gi
  
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• Last month was the hottest June on RECORD for England, the Met Office says - with an average temperature of 17.1°C

  01-07-2026 16:21 via dailymail.com
  
  England has sweltered through the hottest June ever, official figures show. Provisional figures reveal that across the country, the average temperature was 17.1°C last month.
  
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• Skies turn blood red over Venezuela after deadly earthquakes spark fears of biblical omen

  01-07-2026 16:19 via dailymail.com
  
  An eerie crimson glow has engulfed parts of Venezuela, turning the skies blood-red just days after two deadly earthquakes rattled the region.
  
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• England's warmest June on record following historic heatwave

  01-07-2026 15:49 via bbc.co.uk
  
  England saw its warmest June since records began in 1865 and the second warmest for the whole of the UK according to data just released by the Met Office.
  
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• Mercury retrograde is about to upend four zodiac signs as explosive secrets from the past return

  01-07-2026 15:26 via dailymail.com
  
  The infamous Mercury in retrograde has returned, and astrology charts suggest it will wreck havoc on four specific signs, making them face difficult problems from their past.
  
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• Cloudflare to block cynical search-and-scrape bots from ad-supported web pages

  01-07-2026 15:00 via theregister.com
  
  Cloudflare on Wednesday said it will soon prevent mixed-use crawlers from accessing ad-supported customer websites by default, part of its ongoing efforts to give site publishers more control over how they engage with AI services. Apple, Google, and Microsoft's Bing operate crawlers that could fall afoul of Cloudflare's decision, although each of the tech giants offers an AI opt-out that may allow them to escape sanctions. Web crawlers make automated network requests to websites for various purp
  
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• Demand for water use highest since 2022 drought

  01-07-2026 14:39 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Islanders urged to use water "wisely" after demand soared in heatwave.
  
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• DRAM it! Cheap PCs being priced out of existence as memory cost bites

  01-07-2026 14:30 via theregister.com
  
  Fewer Americans are buying PCs as rising component costs mean the sub-$500 bracket is rapidly disappearing, with laptop makers favoring higher-end machines – and things are likely to deteriorate throughout the year. According to stats compiled by Omdia, unit sales to US distributors plunged 7 percent year-on-year in Q1 to 15.8 million units. HP was hit hardest, shrinking by more than a fifth and losing its spot as the most purchased PC brand stateside. The decline reflects supply constrain
  
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• Going round the bend! Scientists discover humans are naturally wired to walk anti-clockwise

  01-07-2026 14:27 via dailymail.com
  
  Whether you're pacing while on the phone or wandering around a park, chances are you're unconsciously turning in the same direction as almost everyone else.
  
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• Warning to millions as toxic air carrying lung-penetrating particles sweeps across 10 states TODAY

  01-07-2026 14:24 via dailymail.com
  
  Millions of Americans across 10 states are being warned as toxic air sweeps across the region, with some alerts urging residents to stay indoors if possible.
  
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• How west London beavers are tackling flooding

  01-07-2026 14:19 via bbc.co.uk
  
  New beavers in west London have prevented flooding to Greenford station three years in a row.
  
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• Citrix says it's back as a mainstream server virtualization player that won't send scary bills

  01-07-2026 14:01 via theregister.com
  
  Citrix says it has returned to the mainstream server virtualization market with the release of XenServer 9. The hypervisor was a contender in the early 2010s but struggled to compete with VMware and Microsoft. By 2014, analyst firm Gartner suggested Citrix had stopped trying to compete for workloads other than its own desktop virtualization and network security products. Citrix kept the product alive without much fanfare for years and rebranded it Citrix Hypervisor. After a pair of private equit
  
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• How do YOU pronounce 'happy' or 'chilly'? Here's what it says about your social class

  01-07-2026 13:44 via dailymail.com
  
  How do you pronounce 'happy', 'baby', 'chilly', or 'city'? According to a new study, the answer could say a lot about your social class.
  
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• Brit competition cops fast-track £2B borging of Netomnia into Openreach challenger

  01-07-2026 13:31 via theregister.com
  
  Britain's competition watchdog wants to cast a close eye over the proposed takeover of Substantial, owner of Netomnia, by a consortium that includes Virgin Media O2 owners Liberty Global and Telefónica. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has referred the acquisition for an in-depth investigation under its fast-track procedure at the merging parties' request. It notified the parties earlier this week that it was launching an inquiry, and today's decision means it is fast-tracking
  
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• Purism launches supersized 16-inch laptop for buyers who put privacy before price

  01-07-2026 12:59 via theregister.com
  
  Purism has launched the Librem 16, a privacy-focused Linux laptop with a 16-inch display and hardware controls designed to disable potentially intrusive components. The machine runs Coreboot firmware and disables Intel's Management Engine. Founder and CEO Todd Weaver told The Register about doing this back in 2017. Purism also offers privacy-centric smartphones. The new laptop has two hardware kill switches located in the strip between the keyboard and the screen hinge. One of them disconnects t
  
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