Sci-Tech news

• Email 'most common internet activity' in Britain

  03-08-2017 14:16 via bbc.co.uk
  Social networking was only the third most popular online activity, according to the ONS.
  
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• Mystery of Hannibal's Alpine march solved? Scientists calculate how 46,000 men and 37 elephants could have made military history's greatest journey

  06-07-2026 21:08 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists may have finally solved the 2,200-year-old mystery of Hannibal's legendary Alpine crossing.
  
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• Bumblebees stick out their tongues when they enjoy a sweet treat but shake their heads in disgust at bitter tastes, scientists discover

  06-07-2026 21:07 via dailymail.com
  
  Bumblebees stick out their tongue and 'lick their lips' after tasting a sweet treat, scientists have revealed. But when they gave the bees bitter drinks, they shook their heads in disgust.
  
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• GitHub cuts short offer to burn repos on CD after mockery ensues

  06-07-2026 20:46 via theregister.com
  
  You’re too late! Monday was the last day to score your own free CD of your GitHub repository, which the Microsoft-owned subsidiary offered to mail to the first 1,000 people who asked. But as of noon eastern time, that offer has been withdrawn (if it was ever genuine) after sparking confusion and ridicule. Last Thursday, GitHub issued a short notice on X extending an offer: In light of recent developments in physical media, GitHub is proud to announce that you can now obtain your public rep
  
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• Apple quietly shelves 'most innovative product in years' amid fears it would spy on everyone

  06-07-2026 20:02 via dailymail.com
  
  Apple may have quietly put the brakes on what some tech experts had called its 'most innovative product in years.'
  
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• Ancient 'lost world' discovered off the US West coast rewrites story of first Americans who arrived 13,000 years ago

  06-07-2026 19:11 via dailymail.com
  
  An ancient island chain hidden off America's West Coast could upend everything scientists thought they knew about America's first settlers.
  
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• EU urged to act after Pegasus infects phone of spyware inquiry MEP

  06-07-2026 19:00 via theregister.com
  
  Civil liberties groups have accused the EU of dragging its feet in implementing key measures to prevent spyware infections after Citizen Lab revealed a former member of European Parliament was placed under surveillance during his time in office. Stelios Kouloglou, a former investigative journalist, served as a Greek MEP between 2014 and 2023 and was a substitute member of the inquiry into the use of Pegasus and other spyware (PEGA Committee). After Citizen Lab forensically analyzed his device, t
  
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• Samsung floats 2028 launch for seaborne datacenter

  06-07-2026 18:34 via theregister.com
  
  Samsung expects to have its first floating datacenter (FDC) operational by the second calendar quarter of 2028. The Korean conglomerate is one of several companies pursuing waterborne bit barns, as recently covered by The Register. It has now put a specific date on those plans, according to the Seoul Economic Daily, which reports Samsung is weighing multiple candidate projects to commercialize an FDC the year after next. Samsung Heavy Industries, the group's shipbuilding and offshore engineering
  
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• Microsoft says the world is changing faster than it can keep up as it guts commercial, Xbox teams

  06-07-2026 17:58 via theregister.com
  
  Hard times have come to Microsoft employees. Thousands of Microsoft team members reported to work following the US holiday weekend to learn their jobs no longer exist, with Redmond gutting its Commercial business and Xbox team, and spinning off several game studios to cut costs. Microsoft human resources boss Amy Coleman announced that the company is eliminating some 4,800 roles Monday morning in a letter to employees the company published online. Coleman explained that Microsoft is doing the la
  
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• AMD’s Ryzen AI Halo makes local AI look easy, but at $4K, easy doesn't come cheap

  06-07-2026 17:00 via theregister.com
  
  A year ago the Ryzen AI Halo, AMD's tiny new AI workstation, would have offered devs and machine learning enthusiasts an Nvidia DGX Spark-like experience at a fraction of the cost. Unfortunately for AMD, time and the ongoing memory shortage, which both AMD itself and Nvidia are partially responsible for, hasn't been kind to the consumer electronics industry. Launching at a hair under $4,000, the AI Halo is still cheaper than the Spark at its new MSRP of $4,699, but is now a much tougher sell tha
  
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• Europe's new import rules are coming for your bargains

  06-07-2026 15:49 via theregister.com
  
  Last week, a small customs fee landed in the EU that may have outsized consequences. Imports of single items from outside the EU are now hit with a new €3 duty, a rule that affects a range of people including electronics hobbyists and techies who prefer their printer toner off-brand. The seller or importer is generally responsible for declaring and paying the duty, but folks who build electronics projects, among others, are concerned that the so-called "Temu tax" might lead to a broad hike
  
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• Your brain doesn't peak in your 20s after all: Study reveals your mind is at its sharpest between 55 and 60

  06-07-2026 15:17 via dailymail.com
  
  Many people assume they've already reached their peak by the time they hit 30 - but new research suggests the opposite is true.
  
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• Even banks and hyperscalers are now sounding the alarm about the AI bubble

  06-07-2026 15:00 via theregister.com
  
  KETTLE From international banking worries to the market state of canary-in-the-coal-mine Oracle, the AI bubble is sure looking taut. The Bank for International Settlements, often referred to as "the central bank for central banks", said in a report at the end of June that it was worried the AI bubble was nigh on to popping and taking the global economy with it. Oracle, the hyperscaler with arguably the largest exposure to the AI bubble, has lost more than 40 percent of its share value in the pas
  
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• Brit supermarket giant triples down on facial recog to nab shoplifters

  06-07-2026 14:35 via theregister.com
  
  The UK's second largest supermarket is tripling the number of stores that use facial recognition to try to clamp down on shoplifters – a move privacy campaigners are branding as "shameful." Sainsbury's first trialed the tech at premises in Sydenham and Bath Oldfield Park from September last year, before deploying it to shops across London earlier in 2026. More than 55 Sainsbury's supermarkets use the technology.Facial recognition will be extended to up to 200 stores by the end of 2026, acc
  
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• Hidden for 1,600 years: Incredible lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert with ancient church, coins and homes still intact

  06-07-2026 13:19 via dailymail.com
  
  A remarkably well preserved 1,600-year-old city complete with a church, watchtowers and bustling streets has been unearthed beneath Egypt's Western Desert.
  
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• Moody Bible Institute breach leaves 2.3M accounts needing salvation, says cyber expert

  06-07-2026 12:47 via theregister.com
  
  Data on more than 2.3 million people associated with Moody Bible Institute (MBI) has been exposed online after the Christian college was targeted by ShinyHunters. The attack was first disclosed by MBI in June, and the extortion crew later leaked the stolen data. Have I Been Pwned has since added the cache to its breach notification database, putting a figure on the number of exposed accounts. MBI is one of many victims of ShinyHunters' pay-or-leak attacks in 2026, and while the organization has
  
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• Mysterious 'space balls' that washed up on an Australian beach are likely pressure vessels from a rocket, experts confirm

  06-07-2026 12:03 via dailymail.com
  
  Six mysterious metal balls that washed up on an Australian beach this weekend are from a space launch vehicle, experts have confirmed.
  
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• Sorry Flat Earthers! Study reveals conspiracy beliefs spark a 'significant breakdown' in relationships

  06-07-2026 11:40 via dailymail.com
  
  Believing in conspiracy theories can trigger a 'significant breakdown' in romantic relationships, a study suggests.
  
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• Secure Unix ancestor KSOS did type safety before Rust made it cool

  06-07-2026 11:30 via theregister.com
  
  For the first time, the source code of KSOS, backed by the US Department of Defense in the late 1970s and 1980s, is available to the public in the archives of The Unix Heritage Society (TUHS). TUHS volunteers preserve the historical source code and documentation of the original UNIX – or as much of it as is left. A few days ago, in an email to its mailing list, TUHS founder Warren Toomey announced the addition of KSOS to the collection. "KSOS was the US Department of Defense (DoD) Kerneliz
  
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• Insert token to continue, says AI. Yeah, about that...

  06-07-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  OPINION It is too early to call peak 2026, but if we allow midterms, it's hard to beat Caveman. Caveman is a Claude Code skill that strips away non-essential linguistic components of the AI's output, making it communicate in a parody of a coding Neanderthal. Yes, this is a good way to use the products of an industry expected to spend a trillion dollars on capex this year. Ug fix API. Hyperscalers issue debt. Token minimization has been a set of techniques of interest for a while, something that'
  
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• Apprentice developer defied orders – then got a job supporting her weird code

  06-07-2026 09:36 via theregister.com
  
  WHO, ME? Welcome to another installment of "Who, Me?" – The Register's Monday column that celebrates mistakes readers make at work and reveals their escape routes. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Kara" who told us that in 1999 she scored an apprenticeship with a now-bankrupt telecoms equipment manufacturer. The gig saw Kara study software engineering one day a week and spend the rest of her time at work, where she was exposed to different roles in the company so she could learn
  
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• Japan’s asteroid sample retriever rapidly buzzes remote space rock

  06-07-2026 08:31 via theregister.com
  
  Japan’s Hayabusa2 craft has just buzzed an asteroid, successfully completing the first objective of its extended mission. Hayabusa2 launched in 2014, and four years later arrived at Asteroid Ryugu. In 2019 the craft sent a pair of landers onto Ryugu’s surface and collected samples that it dropped off in the Australian outback in late 2020. Analysis of those samples suggests Ryugu is home to amino acids, and probably came from the outer solar system before somehow settling into an ell
  
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• Zombie ‘who owns Unix?’ lawsuit comes alive again

  06-07-2026 07:29 via theregister.com
  
  The ancient dispute over ownership of UNIX, and perhaps Linux too, has returned to court. Again. As The Register has explained many, many, times since this matter first went to court in 2003, the roots of the case are the 1998 alliance between IBM and a company called the Santa Cruz Operation which sold a version of UNIX for x86 CPUs. Those two companies, plus Intel and Sequent, created “Project Monterrey” – an effort to create a unified version of UNIX that could run on multip
  
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• SpudCells: Scientists Build Fully Synthetic Life Form That Can Eat And Reproduce

  06-07-2026 04:55 via technocracy.news
  
  Professor Kate Adamala is an expert in synthetic life at the University of Minnesota and is clearly pursuing alternative life forms from biochemistry. As I have written in The Evil Twins of Technocracy and Transhumanism, Technocrats and Transhumans share the same fundamental mechanistic worldview of life. If you can follow the video below, you will see how crazy ideas morph into crazy projects and then into crazy outcomes. Note that all of this so-called science is performed at public expense. &
  
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• EY sacks staff for allegedly accessing Australian Prime Minister’s bank account

  06-07-2026 03:29 via theregister.com
  
  ASIA IN BRIEF The Down Under outpost of consultancy EY has fired two staff after they allegedly accessed details about bank accounts held by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Local media report that the pair were employees of the artist formerly known as Ernst and Young, which used them to work on a contract for Australia’s Commonwealth Bank where they allegedly accessed details of the PM’s bank account. The Bank isn’t commenting on the matter, so isn’t saying h
  
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• Scientists develop diving suits for cyborg cockroach swarms - and it could enable them to explore Mars

  05-07-2026 17:02 via dailymail.com
  
  Once again proving that mad scientists aren't just a Hollywood invention, researchers have built diving suits for their cyborg cockroach swarms.
  
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• MFA-optional banks leave safe doors (and accounts) wide open for thieves to pillage

  05-07-2026 17:01 via theregister.com
  
  OPINION I write a weekly column called PWNED, about how poor security practices can lead to serious damage. Usually, there’s something funny in the malfeasance, like a CEO who kept every employee’s password in an Excel file on his desktop. However, I wasn’t laughing back in May when professional thieves invaded my 84-year-old mother’s entire financial life and managed to make off with $30,000 from her bank accounts alone. And they wouldn’t have gotten in if her fina
  
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• C programmers commit fresh crimes against readability

  05-07-2026 14:00 via theregister.com
  
  The Twenty-Ninth International Obfuscated C Code Contest – or IOCCC for short – is back again with the results of the 2025 competition. This year, one of the entrants has a unique new trick up their sleeve: a valid use case. When we reported on last year's event, it was had just been revived from a four-year hiatus, so we're happy to see it back so soon. As we write, the judging concluded some three weeks ago, but although there is a recording on YouTube, it's very nearly three hours
  
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• The incredible and wild scientific advancements the US could make in the next 25... and 250 years!

  05-07-2026 13:40 via dailymail.com
  
  As the United States turns 250, scientists and tech experts are already looking ahead to the next 250 years, with sky-high dreams that could change the human race.
  
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• Ladies, rejoice! Men can be TRAINED to pick up the slack at home, study reveals

  05-07-2026 12:04 via dailymail.com
  
  If you're tired of nagging your other half to pull his weight around the house, help could finally be at hand.
  
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