Sci-Tech news

• Computers abort SpaceX Falcon 9 launch

  29-02-2016 14:33 via go.theregister.com
  
  Motors in dramatic shut-down on 'low thrust alarm' SpaceX yesterday failed once again to get the SES-9 satellite aloft atop a Falcon 9 rocket, after the lifter's computers shut down the engines shortly after motor ignition.…
  
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• The Milky Way is even BIGGER than we thought: Research reveals how our galaxy's gigantic spiral arms stretch 10% further than previously believed

  13-07-2026 12:58 via dailymail.com
  
  The Milky Way is even bigger than we thought, a new study has revealed.
  
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• 1976's record has been broken! Britain smashes 50-year-old milestone with 15 days over 30°C

  13-07-2026 12:06 via dailymail.com
  
  It's known as one of the most remarkable summers of British history - but 1976's 30°C record has been broken, experts revealed.
  
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• Backup and running? Not this digital sign

  13-07-2026 11:59 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft and backup are two words often uttered together, usually in the form of "Microsoft Windows has crashed again, where's my backup?" The question is: what would a backup look like for a digital sign in Derby? Spotted by eagle-eyed Register reader "nategee" on a stroll in Derby, this sign appears to have spent much of the day pleading to be backed up. This poses an interesting question. What, exactly, would constitute a backup for a sign? Microsoft would obviously like somebody to log in w
  
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• Feeling anxious? Blame it on the weatherman! Study reveals how dodgy weather forecasts can stir up emotions deep within you

  13-07-2026 11:29 via dailymail.com
  
  There's nothing more annoying than cancelling plans because rain is forecast, only to be greeted by sunshine. Now, a study reveals why inaccurate forecasts make us emotional.
  
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• Photovoltaics are still running after a year under Swiss trains

  13-07-2026 11:15 via theregister.com
  
  It is just over a year since a pilot project to install photovoltaics on a railway line kicked off. According to the CEO of Sun-Ways, the company behind the scheme, the challenge was not so much technical as regulatory. The project, a 100-meter photovoltaic installation on a railway line open to traffic, was inaugurated on April 24, 2025 in Buttes, Switzerland. It's fair to say it went well; the 48 solar panels wedged between the tracks have generated more than 19 MWh to date. According to the c
  
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• Microsoft is losing the battle to protect license lucre. It better get used to the feeling

  13-07-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  OPINION In Disney movies, if you wish really, really hard for what you want, it happens. In British courts, not so much. Prince Redmondia really, really wanted to stop the evil barons from reselling on-prem Office and Windows licenses, and made a fairy tale argument in court to make it so. Our hero did not get its wish, not then, and not now with the UK Court of Appeals. The traditional reason companies dislike reseller markets is the obvious one that they don’t get any revenue. The law, h
  
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• AI needs a home, not a hotel

  13-07-2026 10:00 via theregister.com
  
  AI discussions have moved past which model to run or which use case to tackle first. Enterprises developing their own private AI now face a more consequential question: where that AI should live. Drifting into public cloud because it feels familiar or delivers quick wins, without asking whether the environment meets AI's specific demands, tends to store up problems that compound with time. AI is not a transient workload. It is persistent, data-hungry, and deeply sensitive, drawing on proprietary
  
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• Apple accuses OpenAI of stealing its core tech secrets

  13-07-2026 09:31 via theregister.com
  
  Apple has filed a lawsuit against former employees who now work at OpenAI, and the AI upstart itself, alleging theft of intellectual property. Cupertino’s complaint [PDF] opens with an accusation that a former employee joined OpenAI after eight years at Apple, and on his way out dodged an exit interview and didn’t return his work laptop. The filing alleges that once he “exploited a rare, previously unknown authentication bug to access Apple’s shared network folders”
  
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• User crippled a network while trying to learn Nmap

  13-07-2026 08:30 via theregister.com
  
  WHO, ME? Welcome to the working week, dear reader, which as always we open with a fresh instalment of “Who, Me?” – the reader-contributed column that offers an education in how not to do things at work. This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Roger” who told us that a decade or so back he managed teams that designed electronic shop tools and associated test kit. Roger admits he had begun to find the job a little boring, and so he sometimes found himself ex
  
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• Meta admits its first ‘superintelligence’ was too stupid to survive for three days

  13-07-2026 05:44 via theregister.com
  
  Meta has withdrawn the first image generation product created by its Superintelligence Labs fewer than 72 hours after launch. The product was called “Muse Image” and Meta launched it on July 8, billing it as “the first AI image generation model from Meta Superintelligence Labs.” That lab is Zuck’s latest big bet and aims to create a “personal superintelligence that knows us deeply, understands our goals, and can help us achieve them.” In the case of Muse
  
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• Lenovo denies using banned Chinese SSDs where they're not allowed

  13-07-2026 03:14 via theregister.com
  
  ASIA IN BRIEF Lenovo has denied it sells laptops that include banned Chinese storage devices where they're not allowed. An outlet called Notebookcheck recently reported that it a ThinkBook 14 G9 IPL and found a solid-state disk made by Chinese company YMTC inside. Some observers joined the dots and decided the laptop could be a problem for Lenovo because a Biden administration decision saw the US ban the company on national security grounds. Lenovo dug into the matter and found the laptop in que
  
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• Britain's May and June heatwaves were responsible for 2,700 deaths, shocking study predicts - as scientists warn the worst is yet to come

  13-07-2026 01:01 via dailymail.com
  
  Britain's scorching May and June heatwaves are thought to have claimed more than 2,700 lives, with almost half of those deaths fuelled by climate change.
  
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• New twist in mystery of dead and missing scientists: Experts uncover chilling link that ties four unsolved cases together... as questions swirl about unknown 'mentor'

  12-07-2026 22:42 via dailymail.com
  
  As investigators look to piece together how the mysterious deaths and disappearances of roughly a dozen experts tied to secretive US research facilities occurred, a pattern has emerged.
  
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• Forgotten nuclear war survival guide reveals seven everyday items Americans need if disaster strikes

  12-07-2026 22:00 via dailymail.com
  
  As the peace deal with Iran crumbles, a forgotten nuclear manual has reemerged with key tips on surviving World War III with needing expensive gear.
  
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• The Vatican fired me after I claimed a word used 2,570 times in the Bible refers to alien beings

  12-07-2026 14:45 via dailymail.com
  
  A biblical scholar was 'fired by the Vatican' for his interpretation of Scripture has revealed what he says is the true meaning of a frequently used word in the Holy Book.
  
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• Memory makers are slaves to the boom-bust rollercoaster, and the AI boom is the wildest ride of all

  12-07-2026 13:04 via theregister.com
  
  It’s a good time to be in the memory business. As the AI datacenter business booms, SK Hynix and Micron’s revenues have tripled in the last year, and Samsung’s has roughly doubled. But while the trio have the AI revolution to thank for their good fortune, the deck is stacked for a reversal. Such is the memory business historically. Today, sky high demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), DDR5, and NAND flash memory needed for GPU servers has devoured any remaining capacity, lead
  
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• The most mysterious places on Earth where not a single human has set foot, revealed

  12-07-2026 12:35 via dailymail.com
  
  From the North Pole to the summit of Mount Everest, it might seem like intrepid explorers have already conquered every remaining frontier.
  
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• It's an AI web, and we're just rats in the walls

  12-07-2026 09:34 via theregister.com
  
  OPINION Things you might not know about me. I was the first person to write a popular article about the web. Little did I, or anyone else, know how it would change everything. Our lives were transformed when all of human knowledge became just a click away. That was then. This is now. Today, more web traffic now comes from bots than humans. We're just picking up AI's crumbs. That was not how it was meant to be. Mind you, I was never an internet idealist. I didn't think the internet would set us f
  
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• MIT scientist explains how the theory we're living in a simulation could prove Christianity right

  11-07-2026 21:49 via dailymail.com
  
  A leading computer scientist believes the simulation theory, the idea that we live in a simulated reality, could actually strengthen Christianity.
  
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• The day every affair will be exposed: Even infidelities from decades ago will be outed... experts reveal what cheaters must do immediately

  11-07-2026 19:57 via dailymail.com
  
  Cheating partners will soon have nowhere to hide. A tech expert reveal the date, within the next 12 months, when it will all be outed...
  
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• White House UFO insider: I'm finally exposing the government's high-definition satellite footage of 'alien tech'... you are only getting a fraction of the story

  11-07-2026 19:47 via dailymail.com
  
  An investigative journalist who has helped bring secret UFO footage to the public has shared what he has learned from insiders about what the government isn't sharing.
  
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• AI customers are coming around to the idea that small is beautiful

  11-07-2026 16:11 via theregister.com
  
  To cater to the broadest possible market, OpenAI and Anthropic build ever-larger models capable of making a brute-force attempt to tackle almost any task. These models are the Swiss Army Knives of the AI world. When used with sufficient force, they can do almost any job … but nobody needs a frontier class model to summarize emails, draft replies, or summarize meeting notes. It's cheaper and easier to train a small domain-specific model that can run dozens of instances of on a single accel
  
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• Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

  11-07-2026 12:00 via theregister.com
  
  Electricity used by datacenters in Ireland increased by 10 percent during 2025, despite an effective moratorium on most new datacenter grid connections in the Dublin area. The latest figures from Ireland's Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that giant server farms now account for nearly a quarter of the country's metered electricity consumption. Their share rose to 23 percent in 2025 after passing 20 percent in 2023 and 14 percent in 2021 – up from just 5 percent way back in 2015. Accord
  
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• Why your garden is a magnet for wasps: Petrified Brits say their gardens are crawling with insects - here's what's behind the invasion

  11-07-2026 10:15 via dailymail.com
  
  Nothing ruins a sunny afternoon in the garden quite like the buzz of a wasp. But if your outdoor space seems to be crawling with the insects this summer, you may not be helping.
  
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• The science of the perfect penalty: As England face Norway, scientists reveal why players should aim high and wide at the goal - just like Harry Kane

  11-07-2026 10:14 via dailymail.com
  
  Researchers analysed various popular penalty methods, and found that shots are most successful when they're high and wide.
  
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• Face it, your cat doesn't care about you! Felines can't understand human voices - and think laughter, sobs, and screams sound identical

  11-07-2026 10:14 via dailymail.com
  
  Many cat owners swear their furry friends always know exactly what they are thinking, but a new study suggests that this couldn't be further from the truth.
  
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• Meta pulls new AI image feature after days of backlash

  11-07-2026 03:45 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Meta's release this week of an AI feature that let people alter Instagram content drew swift blowback.
  
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• Is the Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake worth the 13 year wait?

  11-07-2026 02:08 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The BBC's Tom Gerken plays the much-anticipated pirate game which has been remade from the ground up.
  
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• Apple sues OpenAI, its employees claiming theft of trade secrets

  11-07-2026 00:54 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Apple said in a Friday lawsuit that OpenAI’s nascent hardware business is “rotten to its core.”
  
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