Sci-Tech news

• eBay will guarantee 3-day delivery on 20 million items 

  21-03-2017 10:40 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  In a bid to take on Amazon, eBay has promised its customers faster and more precise delivery. The firm is guaranteeing delivery in three days or less on 20 million items in the US.
  
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• The horrifying truth behind Antarctica's 'Blood Falls': Scientists discover the striking red waterfall is teeming with ancient sea creatures trapped beneath the ice

  03-08-2026 17:02 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists have uncovered the gruesome secret behind Antarctica's infamous Blood Falls - it's alive with the descendants of ancient sea creatures.
  
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• Children who join TikTok and Instagram at 11 are 'six months behind' at school by their GCSE years, study finds

  03-08-2026 17:01 via dailymail.com
  
  Teenagers who start using social media at a younger age are up to six months behind at school by their GCSE years, a new study suggests.
  
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• Chilling map reveals where America's serial killers have struck across the country... how safe is your state?

  03-08-2026 16:56 via dailymail.com
  
  America has produced more documented serial killers than anywhere else on Earth, but some states carry a far more murderous legacy than others.
  
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• Last month was the driest July on RECORD for England and Wales, Met Office confirms

  03-08-2026 16:28 via dailymail.com
  
  It's official - last month was the driest July ever recorded in England and Wales, the Met Office has confirmed.
  
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• MediaTek lines up $5B war chest for AI datacenter push

  03-08-2026 16:15 via theregister.com
  
  Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek is lining up $5 billion in financing to expand into AI datacenter silicon, targeting a slice of a market it expects to be worth up to $80 billion next year. The fabless chip producer is perhaps best known for its Arm-based smartphone and Chromebook chipsets, plus wireless silicon for Wi-Fi products. But the firm is the latest to see a "compelling growth opportunity" in the market for compute to power AI and so-called agentic AI in particular. MediaTek is targeting ap
  
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• Police National Legal Database confirms data theft after dark web leak

  03-08-2026 16:13 via theregister.com
  
  The Police National Legal Database (PNLD) is the latest UK public sector outfit to admit that cybercriminals made off with its data, including the names and work email addresses of police officers, justice staff, government partners, and customers. The legal lookup service relied upon by police forces and criminal justice agencies across the UK said it discovered the "data security incident" on July 26 and is investigating alongside specialist cybersecurity firms and the National Crime Agency. A
  
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• NASA boss balks at billion-dollar estimate for recycled Moon rover

  03-08-2026 15:47 via theregister.com
  
  NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has stated "we simply will not fly it" if claims about the costs of the repurposed Mars rover engineering model prove anywhere near accurate. Isaacman was responding to the Planetary Society's chief of space policy, Casey Dreier, who had run the numbers on his plan to send a robot to the Moon, built from parts of engineering models of the successful Mars rovers Perseverance and Curiosity. Dreier estimated that the Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Sit
  
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• Water system cyberattacks spread to Georgia, Michigan amid US-Iran conflict

  03-08-2026 15:33 via theregister.com
  
  Georgia and Michigan are the latest US states to report cyberattacks on water systems, as the FBI investigates incidents across at least seven states. Iran-backed hackers are the leading suspects, although the bureau has not publicly attributed the campaign. Officials in both states told journalists over the weekend that water facilities had detected activity consistent with the attacks on more than 30 Minnesota sites last week. Neither state reported operational disruption. Nine Michigan water
  
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• Google Earth's AI makeover survives one trip around the Sun

  03-08-2026 14:58 via theregister.com
  
  Google performed a remarkably brisk reverse ferret last week, launching AI image generation in Google Earth and yanking it the next day after certain sections of the internet did the inevitable. This is how it began: "Today we're bringing AI image generation with Nano Banana to Google Earth, letting you virtually reimagine anywhere in the real world." This is how it's going, less than 48 hours later: "Thanks for your submissions, we appreciate it – unfortunately we have seen people sharing
  
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• Scientists want Britons to attend 'heat training' in SAUNAS to adjust to the scorching temperatures

  03-08-2026 14:13 via dailymail.com
  
  Researchers say that 'heat training' in saunas could be critical in helping us adjust to the scorching summer temperatures.
  
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• No, this isn't CGI! $150,000 robot has eerily human-like facial expressions and movements - as fans claim 'we'll be able to have a robot girlfriend that's way out of our league'

  03-08-2026 14:04 via dailymail.com
  
  Dubbed 'Origin-F1', the robot is the brainchild of Chinese robotics company AheadForm.
  
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• The AI bubble is already popping; we just don't know it yet

  03-08-2026 13:53 via theregister.com
  
  KETTLE Big tech's Q2 earnings have been pouring in over the last two weeks, and it looks like stock market investors are taking a pin to the AI bubble. You can listen to the latest episode of The Kettle right here on this page, as well as on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube, where you can subscribe to get notified about the latest episode. Between eye-watering capex expenses, shrinking free cash flow, and worries about chip availability, things are starting to look tight. El Reg editor-in-chief
  
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• Scientists want Brits to attend 'heat training' in SAUNAS to adjust to the scorching temperatures

  03-08-2026 13:49 via dailymail.com
  
  Researchers say that 'heat training' in saunas could be critical in helping us adjust to the scorching summer temperatures.
  
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• UK government investment arm cops to 40-hour leak of officials' contact details

  03-08-2026 13:02 via theregister.com
  
  The UK government's corporate finance adviser has admitted that an employee left an internal file containing the names and work email addresses of dozens of officials publicly accessible for around 40 hours. The breach, first reported by The Guardian, was disclosed in UK Government Investments' (UKGI) annual report, which says it occurred during the 2025-26 financial year after a member of staff "did not follow established information security policies." The exposed document contained "high-leve
  
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• Sci-fi authors Scalzi and Stross decry AI's dystopian impact on their craft

  03-08-2026 12:27 via theregister.com
  
  Two prominent science fiction authors have decried the impact of AI on their craft. "I do not want or need a large language model to write my fiction for me. I write fiction compulsively – before I was published I wrote for many years as a hobbyist – so why on earth would I pay someone else to take my fun away?" wrote Charles Stross in a Saturday post. Stross graciously mentioned The Register in his Laundry Files novels. "I maintain that any serious author should shun LLMs like the p
  
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• Britain's heatwave could be AGEING you: Study warns extreme heat pushes the body's internal clock forward by half a year

  03-08-2026 11:56 via dailymail.com
  
  If the sweltering nights and sweaty commutes weren't bad enough, Britain's scorching summer could also be speeding up how fast your body ages, according to a new study.
  
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• Eye in the sky: Drones are being used to help catch rail line trespassers at London Waterloo

  03-08-2026 11:27 via dailymail.com
  
  They're four words all commuters dread hearing - 'trespasser on the tracks'. But the days of lengthy delays could finally be a thing of the past, thanks to a new system at London Waterloo.
  
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• Earth records its LOWEST temperature in 14 years - as research station in Antarctica hits -84.1°C

  03-08-2026 11:21 via dailymail.com
  
  A remote research station in Antarctica has recorded Earth's lowest temperature in 14 years.
  
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• As Larry Ellison bets the farm, Oracle says it loves AI-written code, just not in OpenJDK

  03-08-2026 11:15 via theregister.com
  
  Oracle has told contributors to OpenJDK – the open source Java project it stewards – not to submit code or other material generated by AI. In a post tagged "legal," Oracle said it was drafting a full policy on generative AI but had set interim ground rules. It cited risks involving review workloads, safety, security, and intellectual property. "Contributions in the OpenJDK Community must not include content generated, in part or in full, by large language models, diffusion models, or
  
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• Claude Code is revolutionizing digital archaeology. Enterprise better dig it

  03-08-2026 10:27 via theregister.com
  
  OPINION The UK's National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park (TNMoC) is a natural center of digital archaeology. It has restored, recreated, and documented landmark machines, from the wartime Colossus computer through to British mainframes of the '60s and '70s. Its collection from the dawn of the microprocessor age also attracts those who live to investigate such things. LLMs, still in their metaphorical diapers, might not sound like a good fit for the hallowed huts. But boy, are they ever. T
  
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• AI is 'both the weapon and the target' in latest wave of cyberattacks

  03-08-2026 09:01 via theregister.com
  
  AI is becoming both an attack tool and a high-value target, with attacks by AI-enabled adversaries rising 89 percent in 2025, according to CrowdStrike. The security firm's annual Threat Hunting Report details criminal gangs and nation states using AI throughout the attack chain. Attackers are also targeting organizations' AI infrastructure and poisoning popular software packages to compromise their users. "AI is both the weapon and the target," CrowdStrike counter adversary division senior VP Ad
  
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• IT boss left root session open for bring-your-kid-to-work day

  03-08-2026 08:30 via theregister.com
  
  WHO, ME? Comedian W.C. Fields is credited with the aphorism "Never work with children or animals," which The Register mentions because half of it has some relevance to this week's edition of "Who, Me?" – the reader-contributed column chronicling the ups and downs of working in tech. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Stockley" who shared a horror story that took place in the 1990s. At the time, Stockley worked for a company that ran an IBM RS/6000, one of Big Blue's brood of Unix
  
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• Microsoft says 8GB of RAM should be enough for anyone running Windows 11

  03-08-2026 06:40 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has added four new items to the to-do list it set itself to improve the quality of Windows 11. Redmond’s list landed in March 2026 in response to users’ anger at Windows 11 becoming increasingly flaky and needy. Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft’s executive VP for Windows and Devices, promised “Improved memory efficiency, lowering the baseline memory footprint for Windows, freeing up more capacity for the apps you run.” Last Friday, Davuluri reviewed Microsoft&rsq
  
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• Microsoft says 8 GB of RAM should be enough for anyone running Windows 11

  03-08-2026 06:40 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft has added four new items to the to-do list it set itself to improve the quality of Windows 11. Redmond's list landed in March 2026 in response to users' anger at Windows 11 becoming increasingly flaky and needy. Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft's executive VP for Windows and Devices, promised "improved memory efficiency, lowering the baseline memory footprint for Windows, freeing up more capacity for the apps you run." Last Friday, Davuluri reviewed Microsoft's efforts in a new post that is u
  
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• Meta straps on a ‘Kick Me’ sign by mistakenly taking down video by India’s prime minister

  03-08-2026 03:25 via theregister.com
  
  ASIA IN BRIEF Meta last week briefly took down an unremarkable video posted by India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, earning itself days of criticism and regulatory trouble. The video featured Modi announcing a new task force that will reform the exams required to secure places in many Indian universities. Those exams have become a major factor in the sudden development of a major youth protest movement in India, after the cancellation of one test amid claims that questions had leaked. As
  
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• I visited America's 'most haunted' abandoned town... and captured a chilling 'anomaly' in its cursed forest

  02-08-2026 23:29 via dailymail.com
  
  An unpaved road festooned with 'No trespassing' signs in the hills leads to America's 'most haunted' ghost town.
  
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• New York skyscraper terror erupts 1,000 feet above city: See the two luxury buildings engineers fear could fall after Midtown high-rise crumbles

  02-08-2026 22:14 via dailymail.com
  
  Two skyscrapers with major design issues could be the next to spark a panic in New York City after a Midtown high-rise was found to be on the verge of collapsing.
  
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• Life's too short! Women over 50 prioritise enjoyment over longevity, new study reveals

  02-08-2026 17:23 via dailymail.com
  
  You can't stop the clock, so you might as well enjoy the time you've got. That's the philosophy women over the age of 50 appear to share, according to a new study.
  
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• Scientists reveal the most scientifically accurate VOLCANO movies ever made - with Dante's Peak topping the list

  02-08-2026 15:59 via dailymail.com
  
  Much to volcanologists' dismay, Hollywood's enthusiasm for special effects often gets in the way of scientific accuracy when it comes to making a volcano movie.
  
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