Sci-Tech news

• Boffins: Spooky, spinning SPACE PEANUT butters up Earth with close flyby

  02-08-2015 17:24 via go.theregister.com
  
  Odd asteroid won't come this near again for 40 years Vid  NASA scientists have captured grainy radar pics of a peculiar-shaped, dark asteroid, dubbed "Space Peanut", which buzzed past Earth last weekend.…
  
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• Look up this week! TWO meteor showers will peak on the same night - with up to 30 shooting stars every hour

  28-07-2026 14:28 via dailymail.com
  
  If you've always wanted to spot a shooting star, this week could be the perfect time to look up.
  
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• Too many AI agents can get in each other's way

  28-07-2026 14:00 via theregister.com
  
  Anthropic and OpenAI have both proposed the deployment of agent armies as a way to maximize the notional benefits of artificial intelligence systems. But the optimal agent workforce isn't necessarily the largest. Researchers affiliated with the NTT Research's Physics of Artificial Intelligence (PAI) Lab and Harvard University's Center for Brain Science (CBS) say there's a point at which enterprise AI agents get in each other's way. Back in 2024, OpenAI used the term "swarm" to describe multi-age
  
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• Hyperscale, hypersensitive: US teacher cuffed for applauding datacenter critics

  28-07-2026 13:32 via theregister.com
  
  A Kansas physics teacher discovered that in at least one corner of America's AI buildout, applause can apparently earn you a trip to jail. According to local news reports, Lux Claridge, a 37-year-old physics teacher from Emporia, was arrested after applauding a speaker opposing zoning changes for a proposed hyperscale datacenter, turning what should have been an ordinary planning meeting into national news. The meeting was called to consider zoning changes for the proposed Flint Hills Digital Ca
  
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• 'I would be ashamed to have written any part of this': Odyssey translator BLASTS Christopher Nolan's blockbuster - and complains it lacks sex scenes

  28-07-2026 13:26 via dailymail.com
  
  Professor Emily Wilson has gutted Christopher Nolan's attempt to bring the ancient Greek epic to modern audiences.
  
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• How wildfire smoke could be putting YOUR heart at risk, even if it's HUNDREDS of miles away. Damage can start within days. These are the risks you must know

  28-07-2026 13:14 via dailymail.com
  
  Catastrophic wildfires in France and Spain have forced many to leave their homes. But it's not just the immediate threat to life from the flames or smoke that is putting the health of thousands in jeopardy.
  
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• Signals are grim for Jodrell Bank Observatory after UK science funding decision

  28-07-2026 12:28 via theregister.com
  
  Jodrell Bank Observatory faces an uncertain future after UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) pulled funding. The UK's Particle Physics, Astronomy and Nuclear Physics (PPAN) science budget is decreasing by 2.7 percent over four years, which, coupled with increasing costs, means cuts seem inevitable, and the venerable Jodrell Bank could be on the chopping block. Professor Michele Dougherty, Executive Chair of the Science and Technology Facilities Council, said the situation required "some tough, but
  
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• Piecing together Pompeii's forgotten past: Archaeologists restore the ceiling of a banquet hall - revealing a fresco depicting the mythological union of Dionysus and Ariadne

  28-07-2026 11:58 via dailymail.com
  
  A stunning fresco buried beneath the ashes of Pompeii for nearly 2,000 years has been brought back to life in remarkable detail.
  
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• Earth's catastrophic cycle: Study reveals how our planet's biggest disasters strike every 27 million years - and it suggests we could be due one soon

  28-07-2026 11:52 via dailymail.com
  
  According to a new study, the most destructive events on Earth are based on a regular, hidden cycle.
  
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• Arista patches actively exploited VeloCloud bug as CISA puts admins on the clock

  28-07-2026 11:15 via theregister.com
  
  A critical flaw in Arista's VeloCloud Orchestrator has gone from zero to KEV in short order, with the networking giant confirming attackers are already exploiting it. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-16812, carries a maximum CVSS score of 10.0 and affects VeloCloud Orchestrator On-Prem, the self-hosted version of the software that enterprises use to centrally manage VeloCloud software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs) connecting branch offices, datacenters, and clouds environments. Acco
  
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• Openreach nudges another 112 exchange areas toward full fiber

  28-07-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  Openreach has disclosed another tranche of locations where providers will be barred from selling legacy copper-based services to premises that can receive full fiber as it pushes customers toward newer digital connections. The wholesale arm of BT, Britain's former state-owned telecoms monopoly, Openreach announced the latest batch of exchanges notified for "Stop Sell." There are 112 sites in this latest batch, the 25th tranche to be notified. Stop Sell is triggered once 75 percent of the premise
  
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• Antarctica's toxic time bomb: Melting ice is unleashing dangerous amounts of mercury trapped for hundreds of years, scientists warn

  28-07-2026 10:05 via dailymail.com
  
  Antarctica's melting ice is unlocking a toxic time that could poison the pristine ecosystem, scientists have warned.
  
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• The prehistoric 'mafia': 1.4 million-year-old footprints reveal our ancient relatives may have travelled in all-male gangs

  28-07-2026 09:04 via dailymail.com
  
  A set of footprints that date back more than 1.4 million years reveals our ancient relatives may have travelled in all-male gangs.
  
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• Cisco close to releasing more AI models, this time for deep networking ops

  28-07-2026 08:50 via theregister.com
  
  Cisco has developed AI models that can solve networking problems and is close to releasing the tools, plus the Cloud Control agentic ops tool that puts its models to work. Cloud Control is Cisco’s attempt to tame console sprawl, but creating a new interface to its product portfolio driven by agentic AI. The networking giant says Cloud Control will allow users to query their infrastructure to do things like find the source of a single glitchy connection. Today, figuring that out could see N
  
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• British chickens could be fuelling surge in bug linked to bowel cancer, study suggests

  28-07-2026 08:49 via dailymail.com
  
  Oxford University researchers have found a 100-fold increase in the movement of campylobacter bacteria between wild birds and commercial chickens since 1900.
  
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• How Total Surveillance Conquered The Last Sanctuary Of Human Privacy

  28-07-2026 06:23 via technocracy.news
  
  “This is the unvarnished reality of existence in 2026: privacy didn’t merely erode—it was systematically dismantled, commodified, and fed into machine learning systems that predict your behavior before you conceive the thought. Eight billion souls now exist beneath an invisible dome of perpetual observation, each breath monitored, each heartbeat catalogued, each flicker of dissent intercepted before consciousness fully forms it.”⁃ Patrick Wood, Editor.Editor’s
  
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• Warning to US swimmers as experts reveal 'dinner bell' that drives bull sharks to attack humans

  28-07-2026 03:43 via dailymail.com
  
  A shark attack survivor who lost his hand and leg has discovered the secret 'dinner bell' which call bull sharks to attack humans.
  
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• China fights back in AI spat with claim US AI companies distil Chinese models

  28-07-2026 03:01 via theregister.com
  
  China’s government has vowed to “take all necessary measures” if the US government imposes new sanctions on AI companies. That threat came on Monday at a media Q&A staged by China’s Ministry of Commerce, during which local reporters asked about allegations that Chinese AI companies have distilled leading American AI models. The source of those allegations was Donald Trump’s Assistant for Science and Technology, Michael Kratsios, whose stance was backed by US Tre
  
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• China fights back in AI spat with claim US AI companies distil Chinese models

  28-07-2026 03:01 via theregister.com
  
  China’s government has vowed to “take all necessary measures” if the US government imposes new sanctions on AI companies. That threat came on Monday at a media Q&A staged by China’s Ministry of Commerce, during which local reporters asked about allegations that Chinese AI companies have distilled leading American AI models. The source of those allegations was Donald Trump’s Assistant for Science and Technology, Michael Kratsios, whose stance was backed by US Tre
  
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• Blackout fears erupt as 17 US states are placed under power emergency

  28-07-2026 02:06 via dailymail.com
  
  Millions of Americans are facing blackouts, forcing officials to issue an emergency order to provide power to 17 states.
  
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• Leading AI models (even Grok) are all a bunch of leftist punks

  28-07-2026 00:05 via theregister.com
  
  Capitalism may be driving the AI boom, but the LLMs themselves have different economic and social views than many of the companies that built them. Leading AI models subjected to the Political Compass quiz overwhelmingly landed in the libertarian-left quadrant - even "MechaHitler," aka Grok, managed it in half its runs. A self-described “small research lab” working on AI detection tools called Unslop.run published the results of its experiment this week. The author, who explained to
  
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• Leading AI models (even Grok) are all a bunch of leftist punks

  28-07-2026 00:05 via theregister.com
  
  Capitalism may be driving the AI boom, but the LLMs themselves have different economic and social views than many of the companies that built them. Leading AI models subjected to the Political Compass quiz overwhelmingly landed in the libertarian-left quadrant - even "MechaHitler," aka Grok, managed it in half its runs. A self-described “small research lab” working on AI detection tools called Unslop.run published the results of its experiment this week. The author, who explained to
  
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• The exact number of minutes of lost sleep that leads to weight gain

  27-07-2026 23:39 via dailymail.com
  
  A few lost minutes of sleep here and there is something we all overlook. But now, scientists have revealed it could be driving weight gain - and putting you at risk of numerous health conditions.
  
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• Jensen puts his thumb on the scales against open-weights fearmongering

  27-07-2026 23:34 via theregister.com
  
  UPDATED Nvidia has made a fortune on the AI boom. But the flames of opposition to open-weights models — that is, models that anyone can download, modify, and run on their own infrastructure — could change that, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang isn’t waiting to find out. On Friday, a cadre of tech titans wrote an open letter [PDF] offering a counterpoint to the mounting anti-open-weights rhetoric from American companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. Signatories included Meta, Microsoft,
  
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• Jensen puts his thumb on the scales against open-weights fearmongering

  27-07-2026 23:34 via theregister.com
  
  Nvidia has made a fortune on the AI boom. But the flames of opposition to open-weights models — that is, models that anyone can download, modify, and run on their own infrastructure — could change that, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang isn’t waiting to find out. On Friday, a cadre of tech titans wrote an open letter [PDF] offering a counterpoint to the mounting anti-open-weights rhetoric from American companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. Signatories included Meta, Microsoft, IBM, an
  
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• Microsoft lays out a buffet of Windows goodies for JavaScript Developers

  27-07-2026 23:25 via theregister.com
  
  If you want your JavaScript app to have access to Microsoft's OS features, it's now easier than ever. Redmond is giving JavaScript and TypeScript devs first-class access to some Windows internals to make their lives easier, via new “dynamic projections,” as Microsoft calls these new language bindings. JavaScript applications have been seeping onto the Windows desktop for years. Originally designed for the Web, JavaScript — and its more formal TypeScript superset — have be
  
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• Microsoft lays out a buffet of Windows goodies for JavaScript Developers

  27-07-2026 23:25 via theregister.com
  
  If you want your JavaScript app to have access to Microsoft's OS features, it's now easier than ever. Redmond is giving JavaScript and TypeScript devs first-class access to some Windows internals to make their lives easier, via new “dynamic projections,” as Microsoft calls these new language bindings. JavaScript applications have been seeping onto the Windows desktop for years. Originally designed for the Web, JavaScript — and its more formal TypeScript superset — have be
  
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• Monster fire breaks out near Area 51 sparking theories of secret weapon testing

  27-07-2026 23:06 via dailymail.com
  
  A massive fire has erupted near Nevada's top-secret Area 51 base, fueling speculation that officials may have recently tested a classified weapon.
  
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• Hunt for world's biggest mako shark uncovers monster that tops 13 feet off California coast

  27-07-2026 22:58 via dailymail.com
  
  Experts searching for the world's largest mako came face-to-face with a colossal female believed to measure more than 13 feet.
  
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• Hunt for world's biggest mako shark uncovers monster that tops 13 feet off California coast

  27-07-2026 22:58 via dailymail.com
  
  Experts searching for the world's largest mako came face-to-face with a colossal female believed to measure more than 13 feet.
  
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