Sci-Tech news

• The 10 scariest diseases revealed including worms burrowing into eyes

  06-06-2016 18:50 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  WARNING, VERY GRAPHIC CONTENT. A gruesome film the YouTube channel They Will Kill You shows worms that burrow into people's eyes and ulcers that eat away at the face.
  
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• EU competition decision hands SAP customers more leverage in contract talks

  15-07-2026 12:00 via theregister.com
  
  Enterprise customers should use SAP's commitments to the European Commission to reconsider complex ERP migration timelines and gain leverage in negotiations with the German software giant, according to Gartner. Last week, the European Commission ended an investigation into possible anticompetitive practices after SAP agreed to abolish reinstatement fees and reduce back-maintenance fees, among other concessions. The case stems from September last year, when the executive branch of the EU launched
  
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• Sick of the UK heatwave? Scientists say PRAYING for rain really does work - but only in some places

  15-07-2026 11:57 via dailymail.com
  
  Following weeks of relentless heatwaves, many Brits will be praying for a bit of rain to cool everything down. Now, a study has revealed this really can work - but only in some places.
  
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• Mediterranean holidays face 50°C nightmare: Experts warn blistering temperatures are 'perfectly possible' this summer

  15-07-2026 11:29 via dailymail.com
  
  Experts have warned that 50°C (122°F) is 'perfectly possible' in southern Europe in the coming weeks.
  
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• Software bloat? This elevator needs an 8GB Core i5

  15-07-2026 11:15 via theregister.com
  
  BORK!BORK!BORK! Paris might sometimes be called "The City of Light" or perhaps "The City of Love" by the romantically inclined. Judging by this hotel's elevators, "The City of Bork" is more appropriate. Spotted by eagle-eyed Register reader Nathaniel in a Paris hotel, what we assume to be digital signage is instead stalled on the all too familiar American Megatrends BIOS configuration screen. The computer behind the scenes also seems a bit overpowered to serve information for hotel services. Ins
  
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• OpenMandriva's accused repo wrecker says it wasn't sabotage – it was a message

  15-07-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  The contributor accused by OpenMandriva of sabotaging its Linux distribution says he deliberately deleted repositories and obsoleted packages, but insists the project has badly misrepresented both his motives and his role. Last week, OpenMandriva accused Davide Beatrici of abusing administrative privileges to delete parts of the project's GitHub repositories and publish an empty package in its Cooker development branch that obsoleted GNOME and COSMIC packages. The distro described the incident a
  
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• The Star Wars cantina scene shows we need a new hope for the agentic web

  15-07-2026 09:29 via theregister.com
  
  OPINION Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince recently reported that bots now generate more internet traffic than humans, yet few websites have undergone a redesign to accommodate both human and agentic visitors. Clever agents find a way in regardless. I learned this after asking Anthropic's Fable to perform some web research, a task it delegated to a squad of subagents to save me a bit of cash. I watched those subagents work – aka "botsitting" – and approved their requests to access various
  
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• Botticelli's Venus may have died after rape caused brain rupture, scientists discover

  15-07-2026 09:26 via dailymail.com
  
  A Renaissance-era beauty who inspired Botticelli's Venus may have died of a rape-related brain rupture, scientists believe. 
  
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• At last, a good reason to buy an AI PC: Reining in runaway token bills

  15-07-2026 08:26 via theregister.com
  
  Corporate PC buyers haven’t rushed to buy AI PCs but analyst firm Gartner thinks the machines can now do an important new job: Running AI workloads on the desktop to provide a hedge against tearaway token bills. The firm on Monday published a Strategic Roadmap for Agentic AI PCs in which Research Vice President Steve Kleynhans argues that enterprise AI tools that run on the desktop “have been slow to materialize.” “On -device AI has yet to achieve mainstream adoption and
  
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• South Korea to launch universal basic AI chatbot

  15-07-2026 06:54 via theregister.com
  
  South Korea’s government has posted a tender seeking suppliers to build a universal basic AI chatbot, and an AI agent for government services. The “AI for everyone” plan calls for private entities to create and operate the AI systems under contracts that expire in the year 2031. Bid documents reveal that Seoul will provide up to 256 Nvidia B200 GPUs to successful bidders. Winners must match government funding. The aim of the policy is to ensure that every resident of South Kore
  
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• Australia demands AI companies must produce more energy than they consume, stop ‘theft’ of content

  15-07-2026 05:40 via theregister.com
  
  Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has delivered a landmark speech outlining the nation’s AI policy, which will require datacenter builders to contribute more energy than they consume and mean AI companies must reach agreements with local artists and media before using their content. “Let me make this crystal clear – not everything produced in Australia is up for grabs,” Albanese said, a reference to both content and the nation’s energy and water resources.
  
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• Google Cloud's VMware service loses resilience due to a dud update

  15-07-2026 02:16 via theregister.com
  
  Google Cloud has admitted it made a configuration change that means some customers of its VMware Engine (GCVE) can’t use stretched cluster. A G-Cloud incident report time-stamped 13:24 PDT on July 14 (21:24 UTC) reports some customers “are experiencing zonal outages impacting network connectivity across multiple regions” and that the trouble started at 10:00 PDT. Google first attributed the problem to “an underlying network connectivity issue affecting the infrastructure
  
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• Does your dog need to go to rehab? Study reveals how pooches can become ADDICTED to their toys - as vets reveal the key signs their obsession is becoming unhealthy

  15-07-2026 01:01 via dailymail.com
  
  Is your dog obsessed with their tennis ball or tug rope? If so, your pet could have an unhealthy 'addiction' to their favourite toys, experts warn.
  
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• Britain's climate is on the MOVE: Warming is shifting north and uphill, scientists warn Northerners - with extreme heatwaves the 'new normal'

  15-07-2026 01:01 via dailymail.com
  
  Britain's climate is on the move, a new report by the Met Office has revealed.
  
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• OpenAI hides Codex agent instructions behind encryption, leaving developers in the dark

  15-07-2026 01:00 via theregister.com
  
  OpenAI has never been as open as its name suggests and is becoming even less so. The free-spending AI giant recently revised the multi-agent orchestration in its Codex command line interface to encrypt messages passed to subagents. OpenAI's Codex supports multi-agent orchestration, a way to have a parent agent spawn child agents or delegate tasks to other agents that may call out to different models. Codex/GPT-5.6 introduced a protocol called multi-agent v2 that appears to be geared toward letti
  
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• UK social media ban plans revealed: 16 and 17-year-olds will face CURFEWS from midnight to 6am, government reveals

  14-07-2026 23:30 via dailymail.com
  
  While under-16s will be blocked from accessing social media platforms entirely, the government has now confirmed that 16 and 17-year-olds will face curfews.
  
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• Patchpocalypse Now: Microsoft tops last month's record with 622 Patch Tuesday CVEs

  14-07-2026 22:49 via theregister.com
  
  Remember last month when we were awed by Microsoft’s record-setting Patch Tuesday that addressed 206 CVEs? That was a quaint era compared to this month: Redmond just rolled out patches for 622 CVEs specific to its products, slightly more than tripling last month’s all-time high. Redmond’s Patch Tuesday release is once again one for the record books, with everything under the sun getting some security fixes – including 428 non-Microsoft Chromium CVEs affecting Edge that ar
  
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• If you want Claude to speak nicely to you, try Hindi or Arabic

  14-07-2026 21:39 via theregister.com
  
  Aware that AI models exhibit different values in different languages, Anthropic researchers have taken steps to map out how Claude expresses itself in different languages. The results identify four key axes that capture 15 percent of the variation in the values Anthropic says Claude expresses across different languages: Deference vs. Caution; Warmth vs. Rigor; Depth vs. Brevity; and Candor vs. Execution. Anthropic's researchers state, "how Claude responds inevitably reflects certain values." But
  
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• New York becomes first state to halt datacenter buildouts

  14-07-2026 20:30 via theregister.com
  
  New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Tuesday paused incomplete state environmental permit applications for large datacenters while officials work out new rules, a process expected to take up to a year. The order makes New York the first state to enact such a moratorium amid growing concerns over AI datacenters' impact on utility rates and public health. “New York has always been at the forefront of innovation and change but we’ve also always guaranteed that New Yorkers benefit. As data
  
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• Giant toxic jellyfish with 120-foot tentacles invade New England beaches as officials issue chilling warning

  14-07-2026 19:56 via dailymail.com
  
  Beachgoers have been warned as giant jellyfish with toxin-filled tentacles stretching up to 120 feet invade the coastline.
  
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• Full list of 31 buildings testing positive for bacteria driving outbreak of deadly lung disease... including a renowned museum and a Whole Foods

  14-07-2026 19:36 via dailymail.com
  
  Nearly three dozen buildings have been identified as potential sources of a life-threatening lung disease as dozens of people contract the illness.
  
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• Giant toxic jellyfish with 120-foot tentacles invades New England beaches as officials issue chilling warning

  14-07-2026 18:44 via dailymail.com
  
  Beachgoers have been warned as giant jellyfish with toxin-filled tentacles stretching up to 120 feet invade the coastline.
  
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• DeepMind bigbrain calls for America to set AI standards before it's too late

  14-07-2026 18:44 via theregister.com
  
  Google DeepMind boss Demis Hassabis is calling for the US to establish a robust frontier AI model review process because, according to him, artificial general intelligence (AGI) “is probably only a few short years away" and we've got to figure it out before it's too late. That “probably” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in Hassabis’ lengthy, early-morning Tuesday post on X. Like commercially viable fusion power and practical fault-tolerant quantum computing, AGI seems perp
  
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• Welsh Doxbin admin jailed for egging on swatters from behind a screen

  14-07-2026 18:09 via theregister.com
  
  A Welshman was sentenced to prison on Tuesday for his role in numerous swattings in the UK, US, and Canada. Callum Dare, 26, was an administrator of Doxbin, a dark web platform frequented by individuals that expose the personally identifiable information (PII) of people, usually to encourage harassment or to target them through swatting attacks. The Talbot Green man never actually carried out a swatting call himself, although investigators said "he was an active participant" in Doxbin's "#deadne
  
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• America's favorite strawberries accused of hiding cancer-linked 'forever chemicals'

  14-07-2026 17:46 via dailymail.com
  
  America's best-selling berry brand has been sued over allegations that its strawberries contained cancer-linked 'forever chemicals' that shoppers were never told about.
  
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• Extreme warning issued to millions as 'steam cooker' heatwave turns 25 states into a sauna

  14-07-2026 17:43 via dailymail.com
  
  A massive 'steam cooker' heat wave is bringing potentially deadly humidity to half the US and sending temperatures in unlikely areas into the triple digits.
  
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• Scientists' fury as 67-million-year-old T. rex skeleton fetches record-breaking £37m - and disappears into private hands

  14-07-2026 17:42 via dailymail.com
  
  A fearsome T.rex that once ruled the Earth has found itself at the centre of a very modern battle - between scientists and the super-rich.
  
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• Microsoft rolls out Windows Search updates and they're... quite good

  14-07-2026 17:38 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has made good on a promise to make Windows Search less of a chore to use, making tweaks to remove "promotional content" from web results and options to focus on local results. The changes are currently limited to Windows Insiders in the Experimental channel. March Rogers, partner director for product design for Windows at Microsoft, stated that they were on their way when Microsoft announced the Windows 11 26H2 update, and the scope of the changes will delight Windows Search users who
  
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• America's favorite strawberries hit with 'highly toxic' allegations and claims of cancer-linked chemicals

  14-07-2026 17:09 via dailymail.com
  
  America's best-selling berry brand has been sued over allegations that its strawberries contained cancer-linked 'forever chemicals' that shoppers were never told about.
  
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• The futuristic pod that could help your family survive the apocalypse: £35,000 mobile Lifepod can fend off everything from bullets to bombings

  14-07-2026 17:07 via dailymail.com
  
  Momentum Technologies, a tech company based in France , has unveiled a mobile pod that can fend off everything from bullets to bombings.
  
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