Sci-Tech news

• Tragic image shows the skeleton of a turtle with the plastic net still wrapped around its shell

  17-08-2018 13:31 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  The image was taken by a film crew making an ocean documentary while shooting on location at the Cape York Peninsular, Australia.
  
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• Ex-NCA officer who worked on Silk Road operation ordered to repay £1.8M for stealing seized Bitcoin

  30-09-2026 17:11 via theregister.com
  
  A former National Crime Agency (NCA) officer who stole Bitcoin seized during an investigation into Silk Road 2.0 has been ordered to hand over more than £1.8 million ($2.4 million). Paul Chowles, 44, stole 50 of the 97 Bitcoin recovered from convicted Silk Road 2.0 administrator Thomas White. Police later recovered 30 of the stolen coins. US and European authorities shut down Silk Road 2.0 in November 2014 as part of an international operation targeting dark web marketplaces. The 50 Bitcoi
  
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• Where does your AI data actually live?

  30-09-2026 17:00 via theregister.com
  
  EVENT: There are two boundaries around any AI system in a regulated industry, and they have different owners. One is the jurisdiction: what data can leave the country, and under whose rules. The other is the building: what can leave your own estate at all, and who signs for it when it does. Most AI programs do not stall on the model. They stall here, on where the data lives, who can reach it, and what an auditor will accept as evidence twelve months from now. The proprietary data that makes an A
  
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• OpenAI apes AWS Marketplace while Anthropic remains stubbornly Microsoftian

  30-09-2026 16:53 via theregister.com
  
  OpenAI’s DevDay keynote was this week, and it featured a cameo mention of everyone’s favorite underpants merchant who also sells databases, AWS. I saw Simon Willison’s liveblog comment and felt very seen: “My eyes glazed over a bit at the AWS partnership section, but it only lasted a few seconds.” With today's more interesting but also largely unheralded announcement, you can now retire your OpenAI spend commitments via a list of (at launch) 32 partners, just like t
  
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• Firefox 157: Could bold new look be just what Mozilla needs?*

  30-09-2026 15:44 via theregister.com
  
  Firefox 157 is here, but this time, Mozilla is making an unusual amount of noise about this release and its new look. This release has a new theme called “Nova,” which in the release notes Mozilla calls “Firefox’s biggest visual refresh in years.” The new theme is the flagship here, and aside from that, the new features in this version are fairly modest. They’re all welcome enough, though. Video calls which use WebRTC – Web Real Time Compression –
  
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• 7 in 10 enterprises expected to abandon vendor-built agentic AI by 2028

  30-09-2026 14:58 via theregister.com
  
  Gartner predicts that by 2028, 70 percent of enterprises will abandon agentic AI systems built with vendor assistance as costs climb and customers struggle to modify the technology without outside help. What the consultancy calls forward-deployed engineering (FDE) embeds a vendor's engineers with a customer to build and deploy software for its particular requirements. Gartner argues that the model can deliver rapid early progress but leave customers dependent on expensive external expertise. Acc
  
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• Apple makes the AirPods 5 slightly less hostile to repair

  30-09-2026 14:13 via theregister.com
  
  Apple's latest AirPods make a small concession to repairability. And by "small," we mean they scored two out of ten rather than zero. Every previous generation of AirPods tested by iFixit has received a repairability score of zero out of ten. "We've bled for AirPods. We've sliced them, melted them, cursed at them," the team stated. Apple's earbuds resisted every attempt to repair them without destructive surgery. The AirPods 5 have finally broken that streak – barely. The AirPods 5 arrived
  
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• Drunk Van Halen fan called Microsoft support and demanded to speak to Gates

  30-09-2026 13:29 via theregister.com
  
  Some support calls become memorable because of the technical problem. Others stick in the mind because the caller has apparently consumed an adult beverage or three before demanding to speak to the boss. Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen has shared one from the latter category. His tale comes from a now-retired colleague who once staffed Microsoft's FrontPage support line. The caller was building a Van Halen fan site using FrontPage, and it wasn't going well. A Java applet was supposed to play musi
  
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• America is planning more AI datacenters than its chip supply can fill

  30-09-2026 12:45 via theregister.com
  
  Satellite imagery suggests US datacenter deployment is accelerating, but not fast enough to meet some of the more exuberant forecasts for 2028. Meanwhile, advanced chip packaging is emerging as another constraint on how quickly new AI capacity can come online. A report from investment bank Jefferies says server farm construction is proceeding apace across America, but permitting, access to power, and supplies of packaged AI accelerators continue to hold projects back. The report, shared with The
  
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• Earth's vital signs are flashing red: Seven of nine key systems have been breached - as scientists warn 'we're rapidly running out of time'

  30-09-2026 12:15 via dailymail.com
  
  Earth's life support systems are failing, scientists have warned - as seven out of nine planetary boundaries have now been breached.
  
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• More than half of UK businesses lack confidence in basic cyber skills

  30-09-2026 12:04 via theregister.com
  
  More than half of UK businesses lack confidence in their ability to perform at least one basic cybersecurity task, according to the government's latest skills survey. The annual research found 57 percent of businesses reported a basic technical skills gap, up from 49 percent last year despite tighter national standards and repeated government warnings about cyber resilience. That equates to approximately 808,000 businesses whose cybersecurity leads were not confident in carrying out at least one
  
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• KDE turns 30 with Plasma 6.8, but the X11 session isn't invited

  30-09-2026 11:15 via theregister.com
  
  KDE Plasma 6.8 is nearly here, bringing the revived Oxygen theme and dropping its X11 session. For those who prefer an older look, a new project called Klassik recreates the KDE 3 experience using modern Plasma technology. KDE has released the second and final beta of Plasma 6.8, while developers have already begun landing changes for Plasma 6.9, according to the latest This Week in Plasma update. Barring delays, the release is scheduled for October 14, KDE's 30th anniversary, as we mentioned ah
  
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• Now that's what you call a toddle! Three-year-olds take as many as 30,000 steps a day, study finds

  30-09-2026 11:04 via dailymail.com
  
  They're only small, but it turns out toddlers are putting a lot of steps in. A new study has found that children as young as three take up to 30,000 steps a day.
  
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• UK rail cops' £320K face-scanning spree nets zero matches

  30-09-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  British Transport Police (BTP) spent more than £320,000 putting half a million commuters through live facial recognition cameras, only for the system to identify precisely nobody it was looking for. Figures obtained by civil liberties group Liberty through Freedom of Information requests, and reported by The Guardian, show BTP's six-month trial scanned more than 500,000 faces at London railway stations and generated just one alert. That turned out to be a false positive, meaning the techno
  
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• Spectre bug is back, this time to haunt JIT engines

  30-09-2026 09:01 via theregister.com
  
  The Spectre microarchitecture vulnerability has returned yet again, this time to vex just-in-time (JIT) engines that generate machine code for browsers, runtimes, and kernels. The vulnerability is found in many CPUs that use speculative execution, the process of executing code before it is called to boost performance. Researchers found speculative execution opens the door to side channel attacks through which secrets can be exposed or inferred. When news of that risk became known, chipmakers and
  
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• Airbus gets a new freighter – and its giant door – into the air for the first time

  30-09-2026 08:22 via theregister.com
  
  Airbus has successfully flown a new freighter based on its A350 passenger jet. The first A350F yesterday rolled down the runway at Airbus HQ in Toulouse, France, bringing the aerospace giant closer to delivering a high-capacity freighter. Airbus already makes two freighters, based on its A330 and A321 planes. In the past, it also made custom freighters that featured a bulbous enclosure atop a fuselage adapted from an A330 or A300. Airbus named the planes “Beluga” because they looked
  
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• OpenClaw slips on a suit to evade widespread business bans

  30-09-2026 07:04 via theregister.com
  
  The OpenClaw project has started work on an enterprise edition in the hope that businesses lose their fear of the agentic AI project. OpenClaw was one of the first “AI harnesses” – tools that use a large language model to create a digital assistant that automates tasks. If users allow OpenClaw to access their email account, it can analyze messages and fire off AI-generated replies, even responding to meeting invitations and reserving time in a calendar app. The tool is the crea
  
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• Trump Christens AI As “Super AI” In The Presence Of Arch-Technocrats

  30-09-2026 06:42 via technocracy.news
  
  Never in my career have I seen any President showcase the leadership of a single industry over and over, in this case, Artificial Intelligence. Trump has emerged as Technocrat-in-Chief, promoting the Arch-Technocrats’ agenda to spread AI throughout society, including in government and to blanket the nation with humongous data centers. None of this adds up today, but in due time we will see the end of the matter. In short, they are racing for the finish line to capture all humanity. ⁃
  
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• How toxic is your air? Charts reveal how almost 40% of the world is being exposed to dangerous levels of ozone

  30-09-2026 04:16 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service say that extreme heat and human-caused air pollution have boosted the amount of ozone at ground-level.
  
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• Trump administration gets Big Tech to sign weak, non-binding, AI regulations

  30-09-2026 04:11 via theregister.com
  
  US president Donald Trump has convinced six leading AI companies to sign up for non-binding and vague regulation called the “White House Accord on Superintelligence” that doesn’t require them to do anything but does let them set their own rules. Meta, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, and XAI signed the document, which appeared on Trump’s Truth Social account. The document, subtitled the "Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities,” opens with the observation th
  
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• Urgent warning to seek higher ground as New Mexico dam is feared to break during major storm

  30-09-2026 01:19 via dailymail.com
  
  An urgent warning has been issued as a dam in the Southwest is said to be in imminent risk of failing, causing potentially deadly flash floods.
  
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• Scientists create anti-aging holy grail drug that extends lifespan by 25% in some animals - and they say it could work in humans too

  30-09-2026 01:01 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists are one step closer a 'major biomedical breakthrough' after developing a drug that can prolong the lifespan of some animals by 25 per cent.
  
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• Earthquake rocks Seattle as thousands report shaking in region feared to be overdue for major seismic event

  30-09-2026 00:46 via dailymail.com
  
  An earthquake has rattled thousands in the Pacific Northwest, including in the major city of Seattle.
  
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• Urgent warning to seek higher ground NOW as New Mexico dam is feared to break during major storm

  29-09-2026 23:42 via dailymail.com
  
  An urgent warning has been issued as a dam in the Southwest is said to be in imminent risk of failing, causing potentially deadly flash floods.
  
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• Add one more AI worry to the nightmare scenario: self-replicating prompt injections

  29-09-2026 23:34 via theregister.com
  
  Imagine a prompt injection that keeps replicating itself like a worm. It's not just the stuff of bad dreams. “We have found instances of our GPT models being susceptible to an AI-version of a worm attack that we call ‘self-replicating prompt injection,’” OpenAI said in a Friday alignment research blog. There’s no indication that these indirect prompt-injection attacks occurred in any real-life security incident, or anywhere outside of the models’ training envi
  
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• OpenAI tries disarming AI angst with cute graphics and always-on agents

  29-09-2026 23:12 via theregister.com
  
  OpenAI, among those sounding the alarm about existential AI risk as its models run riot on third-party websites, on Tuesday introduced dots, which are cute-looking, hosted AI agents. When dots take visual form in mobile, desktop, or web applications, they look like colorful anthropomorphized shapes with accessories like glasses, hats, or bow ties. But behind the inviting graphics, dots are just persistent compute tasks that consume tokens. Speaking at the company's Dev Day in San Francisco, CEO
  
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• Giant 'wave' thousands of miles wide barrels toward US as scientists warn of 'quintuple whammy' for California

  29-09-2026 22:59 via dailymail.com
  
  A wave which is said to be on a planetary-scale is approaching the US West Coast, and experts believe it could have long-lasting impacts on storms and floods for the next year.
  
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• Excerpt: Introduction to Crucible Of Tokens

  29-09-2026 22:42 via technocracy.news
  
  Where there is no vision, the people perish. – Proverbs 29:18 (KJV)
  To all of those who have read my books, listened to me in person, on roundtables, videos, and radio: I have heard your cries of “What can we do to protect ourselves?” Here is my answer, in layman’s terms, to help you see the big picture and then take courage and take cover.
  Something is being done to you, and it is being done with your signature.
  It is not being done with a sheriff at the door, or a decre
  
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• Trump launches America.gov with AI chatbots at its core

  29-09-2026 22:14 via theregister.com
  
  If you want accurate information about life-changing government services, a potentially hallucinating chatbot might not be your first choice. However, the Trump administration is rolling out a new digital portal for access to federal government tasks that puts AI front and center, even though there are concerns that existing federal digital services may be in danger. Trump announced the launch of America.gov in an executive order on Tuesday, describing the new site as a “unified digital fr
  
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• FBI to ShinyHunters: 'We know how to find you'

  29-09-2026 21:38 via theregister.com
  
  The FBI’s cyber chief has a message for the criminals that hacked the bureau’s jobs portal last week: "We know how to find you," so turn yourself in. In a video message following the Dutch National Police’s arrest of a 24-year-old whom the FBI described as “one of the alleged leaders of ShinyHunters,” Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division, had some advice for the “remaining members” of the data theft and extortion gang. “
  
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