Sci-Tech news

• Cadence's AuraStack agent melds AI with HPC to speed PCB, advanced packaging design

  16-07-2026 00:30 via theregister.com
  
  How AI will change the way scientific computing is done remains an open question. One relies on ultra-precise double-precision mathematics, while the other is perfectly happy working with 4 bits. On the surface, the two are diametrically opposed, two extremes of a spectrum we call high-performance computing (HPC) — and yes, whether you like it or not, AI is HPC. However, the latest AI offering from Cadence Design Systems, one of the biggest names in industrial HPC, offers a glimpse of how
  
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• Mutant raccoon roaming the streets of Seattle strikes fear in the heart of unsuspecting residents

  17-07-2026 19:14 via dailymail.com
  
  Seattle residents have been captivated by amutant raccoon roaming neighborhoods and climbing onto porches.
  
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• Mysterious mutant beast roaming Seattle leaves residents terrified as eerie sightings spread

  17-07-2026 18:47 via dailymail.com
  
  Seattle residents have been captivated by a mysterious animal whose bizarre appearance has sparked theories ranging from a genetic mutation to an undiscovered creature.
  
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• Is Iraq’s New “Technocrat” A Rehearsal For Iran?

  17-07-2026 18:42 via technocracy.news
  
  First, there was the Technocrat-in-Chief meeting on July 14 with an up-and-coming, newly selected Technocrat Prime Minister from Iraq, Ali Falih Kadhim al-Zaidi. Secondly, the multi-billion-dollar deals flowed like the Euphrates River.
  Why does this matter? Because we have fought two bloody wars in and over Iraq, and right now we are still pounding Iran, a country that is closely allied with Iraq. Iraq and Iran share a border, a religion, and a long, tangled history. You cannot talk about one wi
  
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• Major 7.4 magnitude earthquake strikes off the coast of Mexico sparking tsunami warning

  17-07-2026 17:36 via dailymail.com
  
  A major 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck the Mexico coast on Friday, triggering a tsunami threat for around one million people.
  
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• Experts reveal what ONE day of breathing America's toxic wildfire smoke does to your body as millions in 16 states are told to stay indoors

  17-07-2026 17:08 via dailymail.com
  
  A health emergency has erupted in the northern US as multiple cities see their air quality become the worst in the world due to the Canadian wildfires raging out of control.
  
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• Cancer-linked chemicals pumped into US neighborhoods by Elon Musk's 'illegal' data center, lawsuit claims

  17-07-2026 17:02 via dailymail.com
  
  A bombshell federal lawsuit alleges Elon Musk's sprawling xAI data center is pumping cancer-linked chemicals into nearby neighborhoods.
  
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• Who will win the World Cup? Supercomputer predicts the winner of the final - as scientists say we're in for a tight game

  17-07-2026 16:41 via dailymail.com
  
  Ahead of the match, scientists from Northeastern University have analysed the data to predict the likely winner.
  
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• Cancer-linked chemicals pumped into US neighborhoods by Elon Musk's 'illegal' data center power, lawsuit claims

  17-07-2026 16:41 via dailymail.com
  
  A bombshell federal lawsuit alleges Elon Musk's sprawling xAI data center is pumping cancer-linked chemicals into nearby neighborhoods.
  
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• Torvalds challenged the haters to fork Linux. Someone said 'hold my beer'

  17-07-2026 16:02 via theregister.com
  
  Earlier this week, Linux project leader Linus Torvalds told AI haters to fork off, and invited anyone who didn't like his comments to fork the kernel. Well, here you go: linux-0.11-rs, a total reimplementation of the Linux kernel, done in langage de programmation du jour, Rust. No, this isn't really a response to the Emperor Penguin's challenge – for a start, it looks like it was done with AI – but the timing was irresistible. The new project is by an undergrad student at Beihang Uni
  
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• Deadly toxic air smothers America as millions in 16 states are told to stay indoors... and experts reveal what ONE day does to your body

  17-07-2026 15:28 via dailymail.com
  
  A health emergency has erupted in the northern US as multiple cities see their air quality become the worst in the world due to the Canadian wildfires raging out of control.
  
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• Microsoft gives admins Exchange Online breathing room

  17-07-2026 15:20 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has delayed the removal of the -Credential parameter from Exchange Online PowerShell until December 2026, giving administrators more time to update affected scripts and automation. The -Credential parameter is used when connecting to Exchange Online PowerShell. It allows an administrator to supply stored username and password credentials. These days, it is heavily discouraged, particularly when more secure authentication methods are available. Microsoft had designated the parameter for
  
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• Top EU court clips YouTube's intermediary defense over reviewed content

  17-07-2026 14:35 via theregister.com
  
  The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled that Google may not be able to claim intermediary liability protection for YouTube content it reviews as part of a commercial partnership with a creator. The case stems from a €750,000 fine imposed on Google Ireland by Italy's communications regulator in 2022 over YouTube videos promoting online gambling. Before entering the revenue-sharing agreement, under which Google placed pre-roll ads on the creator's videos, the company revie
  
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• Speeding doesn't save time! Study reveals driving too fast shaves just 54 seconds off your day on average

  17-07-2026 14:09 via dailymail.com
  
  According to researchers from the University of Minnesota, breaking the speed limit barely saves you any time.
  
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• Attackers target critical FortiSandbox flaws as CISA issues patch order

  17-07-2026 13:58 via theregister.com
  
  Fortinet admins have two more reasons to clear their calendars after CISA confirmed a pair of critical FortiSandbox bugs are being actively exploited. The two bugs, tracked as CVE-2026-39808 and CVE-2026-25089, both carry CVSS scores of 9.1 and affect FortiSandbox, FortiSandbox Cloud, and FortiSandbox PaaS. According to Fortinet, they are OS command injection flaws that allow unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary commands via specially crafted HTTP requests, requiring neither valid cred
  
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• SpaceX Starship Flight Test 13 takes issue with the 'flight' bit

  17-07-2026 13:15 via theregister.com
  
  SpaceX's 13th Starship flight test ended at the launchpad after four Raptor engines failed to start, triggering an automatic abort moments before liftoff. Elon Musk's biz ignited the booster's engines at 2245 UTC on July 16, but the automated system aborted the launch. The boss confirmed: "Some of the engines didn't start, triggering an automatic launch abort… To be confident of a good flight, two Raptors will be removed and replaced. Most probable launch timing is early next week." The n
  
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• Debunking the myth of the male warrior: Ancient Egyptian PRINCESSES were skilled hunters with bulging muscles, study finds

  17-07-2026 13:05 via dailymail.com
  
  If you were asked to picture a warrior, a vision of a muscular man might spring to mind. But a new study might have you repainting that image in your head.
  
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• Europe's chip ambitions won't break dependence on US cloud and software, says Forrester

  17-07-2026 12:45 via theregister.com
  
  Europe can build more chip fabs, subsidize domestic manufacturing, and wrap it all in the language of sovereignty, but it still won't escape its dependence on American cloud providers and software anytime soon, according to Forrester. In its first Global Sovereignty Forecast, the analyst concludes that the race for technological independence has already produced two clear winners: China and the United States. Everyone else, Europe included, is left figuring out which dependencies it can live wit
  
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• As if the heatwave wasn't bad enough! Brits are told to brace for a POLLEN bomb over the next four days

  17-07-2026 12:31 via dailymail.com
  
  The Met Office has warned that pollen levels have spiked across large parts of the UK - and are expected to remain high for the next four days.
  
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• Ransomware curdles production at Coca-Cola's Fairlife dairy biz

  17-07-2026 12:00 via theregister.com
  
  Ransomware has soured production at Coca-Cola-owned Fairlife, forcing the dairy business to temporarily halt production at its US plants. In an SEC filing on Thursday, Coca-Cola said Fairlife detected "unauthorized access by a third party to a portion of its systems, including its production-related systems," in what it described as a ransomware event. The company said it immediately activated its incident response and business continuity plans, brought in outside cybersecurity experts, and noti
  
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• Google fixing Android lock screen bug that lets Gemini send SMS without a PIN

  17-07-2026 11:15 via theregister.com
  
  Picture this. Someone gets hold of your Android phone and, despite not knowing your PIN, they can use Gemini from the lock screen to send SMS or WhatsApp messages as you. This is a real bug and Google says a fix is coming as soon as this week. Since May, The Register has received multiple reports of users bypassing device authentication on Android 16 devices that enable Gemini access from the lock screen. These are distinct from the similar Gemini-based Android lock screen bypass bugs that have
  
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• Home Office hands £28M to immigration IT incumbents after procurement challenge

  17-07-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  The UK Home Office has awarded contract extensions worth £28 million to two incumbent tech suppliers of the much-delayed Atlas immigration and asylum system after a legal challenge derailed an earlier procurement process. The Whitehall department in charge of policing, borders, and immigration awarded PA Consulting a five-month contract extension worth £13.5 million and Mastek a four-month extension worth £15 million. Both contracts were awarded without competition. The Registe
  
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• How Gartner can help turn your AI vision into business reality

  17-07-2026 10:00 via theregister.com
  
  For enterprise application, architecture, and software engineering leaders, the artificial intelligence conversation has moved past experimentation. Boards and finance committees expect pilot projects to graduate into production and to demonstrate measurable business value. A strategy deck no longer clears the bar. The expectation now is production-ready systems that deliver outcomes finance can measure: cost savings, staff redeployment to higher-value work, and a return on investment that survi
  
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• Microsoft open-sources Comic Chat, its cartoon IRC curiosity

  17-07-2026 09:00 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has open-sourced Comic Chat, its short-lived 1990s experiment in turning Internet Relay Chat (IRC) conversations into comic strips – and, for many users, their first encounter with Comic Sans. Microsoft Comic Chat was released in 1996 with Internet Explorer 3. It was conceived by David "DJ" Kurlander of the Microsoft Research Virtual Worlds Group as a new visual representation of conversation histories. Rather than displaying the scrolling sequence of text messages still familiar
  
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• Rocky 'super-Earth' 48 light-years away could be our best chance of finding life, scientists say

  17-07-2026 08:48 via dailymail.com
  
  Experts from Harvard University have discovered a 'super-Earth' 48-light years away that may have the right conditions for alien life.
  
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• Tech support chap told angry customer to think inside the box – and solved the problem

  17-07-2026 08:30 via theregister.com
  
  ON CALL Welcome to another installment of On Call, The Register's Friday column in which readers kindly share their stories of untangling tech support situations. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Steve" who started his IT career doing tech support for a supermarket's own-brand mobile service. "I started in 2006, when many phones still had removable batteries," Steve told On Call. "One day, a customer rang in ranting and raving about how she'd just bought her very first mobile, had use
  
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• NTP server that traveled back in time caused massive Aussie mobile outage

  17-07-2026 06:48 via theregister.com
  
  Australian telco Telstra has revealed the cause of the recent incident that caused widespread connectivity problems across its mobile networks, inculding outages to Australia's 000 emergency services line, plus outages to electronic payments services and transport networks. The carrier explained itself in a submission [PDF] to a Senate inquiry into outages affecting Australia’s emergency services which initially investigated an outage at Telstra's main rival, Optus. The Optus incident is l
  
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• South Korea making its own security-centric AI model

  17-07-2026 03:56 via theregister.com
  
  South Korea is developing its own security-focused AI model and hopes to bring it online by the end of the year, to ensure the nation has sovereign bug-finding capabilities. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT Bae Kyung-hoon revealed the effort to create the model yesterday, and said it’s needed so South Korea possesses a bug-finding model to rival Anthropic’s Mythos. The US government has twice blocked access to Mythos, once by requiring Anthropic to offer it only
  
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• UK heatwave approaches two-week mark

  17-07-2026 01:28 via bbc.co.uk
  
  All UK nations have experienced recent heatwave conditions but in southern England, the heatwave has now continued for 13 days. Sarah Keith-Lucas looks at how unusual this spell of heat is, and when we might see it easing.
  
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• Chinese memory ban would cut off RAMpocalypse relief

  17-07-2026 01:15 via theregister.com
  
  Two up-and-coming Chinese memory vendors, YMTC and CXMT, could offer customers relief from shortages and skyrocketing prices, but not if US Representatives John Moolenaar (R-MI) and George Whitesides (D-CA) have anything to say about it. In a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick made public on Thursday, the lawmakers urged the Trump administration to tighten restrictions on Chinese memory manufacturers, arguing that purchases of their chips by US companies would undermine Western memory m
  
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