Sci-Tech news

• Hot or not? Bizarre online chatroom uses AI to score your looks

  28-04-2023 12:42 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  Hot Chat 3000 is a bizarre online chatroom that uses AI to score your looks and connect you with someone of a similar 'hotness' ranking.
  
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• Windows 11 26H2 blighted by new audio issue

  05-10-2026 19:24 via theregister.com
  
  Microsoft Windows 11 26H2 has arrived, and, unfortunately, it's already picked up a known audio issue within weeks of release. The glitch also affects Windows 11 25H2 and 24H2, which share the same code branch. It relates to decoding AC-3 (Dolby Digital) audio and can cause the application using the decoder to crash abruptly or fail to start at all. Identified after the September 22 Windows update, the issue mostly impacts older applications, according to Microsoft. "Many modern applications do
  
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• Altman-backed Volantis reveals plan to vault the memory wall by baking photonics into AI accelerators

  05-10-2026 18:32 via theregister.com
  
  Sam Altman-backed AI chip startup Volantis has a plan to break through the memory wall using light, and this time it's not just an IP play. Founded in 2022, the San Francisco-based startup is developing an AI accelerator that will use a photonic interposer to dramatically increase memory bandwidth without compromising on capacity. Volantis believes it can pack upwards of 10 TB of memory at speeds up to 240 TB/s onto a single massive package. This, it claims, should be enough to serve a 20 trilli
  
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• OpenAI to flood your eyeballs with visual ads

  05-10-2026 17:54 via theregister.com
  
  After adding text-based ads to its chatbot earlier this year, OpenAI announced on Monday that it was adding a new “visual ad format” to ChatGPT, which is precisely what it sounds like: Visual ads, like so much of the advertising content online, will now be part of the ChatGPT experience. OpenAI will initially test these ads during image generation. “Through images showing product inspiration, product usage, or the experiences they make possible, people can discover a new brand,
  
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• Debian's latest kernel security update has 1,313 reasons to patch

  05-10-2026 17:35 via theregister.com
  
  The age of LLM-assisted security vulnerability discovery is really starting to bite. Debian's latest Linux kernel security update comes with a formidable reading list of 1,313 CVE identifiers. The DSA-6528-1 Linux security advisory, published on September 29, covers kernel package version 6.12.111-1 for Debian 13, codenamed Trixie. Debian 13.7 was released on September 12, before upstream kernel 6.12.111 arrived nine days later. The Debian security tracker links to descriptions of the individual
  
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• The question you would ask HPE and NVIDIA if nobody was recording

  05-10-2026 17:00 via theregister.com
  
  There is a question about AI data sovereignty you would ask HPE or NVIDIA if nobody was recording. It is usually specific to your own workload and your own regulator, and it usually ends with whether the sovereign option on the slide survives contact with a procurement team. On Thursday 29 October you can ask it. The Register is hosting a dinner in Washington with HPE and NVIDIA, our editor-in-chief Matt Rosoff in the chair, and nothing said on the record. HPE sends Thierry Pienaar, HPE Fellow a
  
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• The dark secret of Egypt's ancient kings: 5,000-year-old skulls suggest royal servants were bludgeoned to death so they could follow their ruler into the afterlife

  05-10-2026 16:38 via dailymail.com
  
  Archaeologists examining the remains of people buried around royal tombs have discovered many had suffered devastating blows to the head.
  
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• Plaque unveiled to honour Beagle 2 mission leader

  05-10-2026 16:36 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The plaque, unveiled at the M Shed in Bristol, recognises Colin Pillinger who led the 2003 probe mission to Mars.
  
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• Musk follows Trump's lead, swaps AI for SI in SpaceX rebrand

  05-10-2026 16:29 via theregister.com
  
  Elon Musk says SpaceXAI, the company formed by merging SpaceX and xAI, will be renamed SpaceXSI after President Donald Trump ordered US federal agencies to replace "Artificial Intelligence" with "Super Intelligence" in all comms. Trump's September 29 executive order directs federal agencies to switch from AI to SI in official communications and other non-statutory documents. Musk endorsed the change, posting "No more AI. SI. It's better," and confirmed plans to rename SpaceXAI: "Yes, we will mak
  
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• Creosote found in beach pollution investigation

  05-10-2026 16:26 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Restrictions remain in place on Blyth Beach after a pollution incident was reported in August.
  
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• Games Workshop seeks IT leader to summon the legions in epic saga battling the forces of ERP

  05-10-2026 15:30 via theregister.com
  
  Games Workshop is on the hunt for a head of IT to guide the organization through its technological saga for the next two years. The UK-based tabletop games retailer and manufacturer of the globally popular Warhammer figures said that under the fixed-term contract, the heroic individual would take overall responsibility for its global IT and customer technology capability, and report to the Chief Operating Officer. “The role has a broad remit spanning our core technology estate, information
  
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• Anthropic says its IPO could herald the end of the world as we know it

  05-10-2026 14:27 via theregister.com
  
  Anthropic's IPO prospectus leaked this week, and boy was it filled with interesting details. You can listen to the latest episode of The Kettle on this page, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. You can also subscribe on those platforms to be notified when a new episode goes live For starters there's the fact a third of it is all about existential AI risks, then there's the fact that, despite some impressive revenue growth the company still has yet to turn a profit. Combine that with massive cap
  
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• Now that's what you call fast food! Watch the moment a great white shark snatches a fish from a line off Cape Cod

  05-10-2026 14:23 via dailymail.com
  
  A stunning video has captured the moment a great white shark snatches a fish from a line off the coast of Cape Cod.
  
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• Ubuntu 'Stonking Stingray' beta swims out: Deeper Rust 'oxidization' plus LLM speech-to-text

  05-10-2026 13:25 via theregister.com
  
  Ubuntu 26.10, “Stonking Stingray,” has entered beta testing, slightly later than planned – it is in fact scheduled to be released on October 15. While many people will stay with the LTS version, there’s some interesting stuff in there. There are already some release notes, but like the OS itself, they aren’t final yet, and there are still some gaps. Canonical does note that the "oxidization" process – exchanging core Unix tools written in C with new Rust repla
  
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• The secret to happiness? Cats! Countries with more felines are happier, study finds

  05-10-2026 13:09 via dailymail.com
  
  In a new study, researchers have found countries with more cats per person had higher levels of happiness.
  
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• Windows 11 market share creeps upwards as cost of staying on Windows 10 set to double

  05-10-2026 12:24 via theregister.com
  
  The first year of Windows 10 Extended Security Updates is coming to an end, and Windows 11's market share has ticked up as enterprises weigh up the cost of keeping Windows 10 running a little longer. Windows 11's market share has risen above 70 percent to 71.5 percent, while Windows 10's has dropped to 27.77 percent, according to statistics wrangler Statcounter. Microsoft does not provide official statistics on Windows 11 and 10 usage, so Statcounter's figures should be treated as estimates. The
  
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• Why are data centres such a big deal in Scotland?

  05-10-2026 12:04 via bbc.co.uk
  
  At least 23 huge data centres are planned in Scotland, causing significant concern for campaigners.
  
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• BT buys TalkTalk out of administration to keep 2.5M customers connected

  05-10-2026 11:52 via theregister.com
  
  Former state-owned telco monopoly BT Group has bought TalkTalk's consumer and wholesale businesses out of administration, rescuing services used by 2.5 million customers. BT says it acquired TalkTalk Telecommunications Limited and PlatformX Communications Limited on a debt-free basis. It expects a total cash impact of approximately £400 million in its current financial year, including the acquisition consideration and other costs. BT said it stepped in after a prolonged sale process failed
  
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• Legacy sign-on service comes back to bite school software provider Bromcom

  05-10-2026 11:30 via theregister.com
  
  UK education software provider Bromcom has notified customers of a personal data breach affecting its single sign-on (SSO) technology. In a September 24 EduGeek post, an account named Bromcom_Alastair said an unauthorized third party had accessed and retrieved email addresses and limited information associated with affected SSO registrations. The incident involved legacy SSO registration functionality in Bromcom's Communication Server environment. The company confirmed in an FAQ it found no evid
  
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• Brighter isn't better and more is less. The AI slowdown is nigh, no matter who says what

  05-10-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  There has been much chilly weather in the sunny meadowlands of AI futures. Fortunately, to use an indecently inappropriate adverb, the rest of the world isn’t really looking, being too busy chewing its nails over the very many other intimations of disaster. Sure, rebel swarms of attack agents breaking out of the labs isn’t a good look. OpenAI delaying its IPO and a new model launch likewise.All these things soak up whatever bandwidth the news media have to AI right now. Putting them
  
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• What people say about their file infrastructure once the badge comes off

  05-10-2026 10:00 via theregister.com
  
  Most senior infrastructure people could tell you what they would do with their file estate if they were starting again. Far fewer will tell you what they actually did, because the honest version tends to involve a VPN that was meant to be temporary and a NAS that has outlived two migration plans. That honest version is what The Register is after at a dinner in Soho on Tuesday 20 October. Joe Fay of The Register chairs, and Rupert Watson, VP for EMEA at LucidLink, is at the table to answer questi
  
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• Buyer missed one option and got 1% of the cable they needed

  05-10-2026 08:39 via theregister.com
  
  Every Monday morning The Register kicks off proceedings by asking the same question – “Who, Me?” – the title of the reader-contributed column in which you share your tales of the occasions on which you didn’t quite nail the brief yet somehow found career relief. This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Terry” who told us that in the 1970s he worked for a defense-related company. “I needed 100 meters of RG8 50 ohm coax cable, so ordered it
  
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• Environmental groups critical of housing levy idea

  05-10-2026 07:35 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The government wants developers to fund waterways projects in Norfolk.
  
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• Pastor who sparked doomsday panic claims the Rapture is just DAYS away

  05-10-2026 06:12 via dailymail.com
  
  The pastor who set off widespread panic for his end of the world predictions has revealed his final date for the biblical end times prophecy where millions of Christians disappear.
  
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• Elon’s “DeathStar” Starlink Service Will Beat Fiber Everywhere

  05-10-2026 00:35 via technocracy.news
  
  Musk owns space. With the launch a new class of 100,000 satellites, he is on the verge of making all fiber-optic networks on planet Earth obsolete while moving Grok AI into space. This will give him the reins over the global communications backbone and a monopoly on information flow, pricing, and access. Does Musk hold the trump card? It sure is sounding like it. ⁃ Patrick Wood, Editor.Elon’s 250 kW Starlink satellites will bring multi-gigabit satellite internet and 5G satellite
  
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• Predatory fish that walks on land spreads to new US states as officials urge locals to cut their heads off

  04-10-2026 19:13 via dailymail.com
  
  An invasive land-walking fish from Asia is spreading into new US states, leading officials to ask Americans to take matters into their own hands.
  
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• Fulcrum Echo promises AI text in the style of any writer, so I tested it

  04-10-2026 17:15 via theregister.com
  
  Fulcrum faces an identity crisis, even as it works on creating one by enabling anyone to imitate another person's writing style. The AI startup, founded in 2025 and previously operating at fulcrumresearch.ai, now uses fulcrum.inc and could easily be confused with one of the handful of other companies named Fulcrum or some variation of that. There's Fulcrum (withfulcrum.com), Fulcrum (fulcrumapp.com), Fulcrum AI (fulcrumai.us), Fulcrum Digital (fulcrumdigital.com), Fulcrum Labs (fulcrumlabs.ai),
  
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• I was an atheist until Satan appeared and tried to convince me that Christianity is a cult. Now I'm a pastor... there are signs everywhere that we are living in the final days

  04-10-2026 15:02 via dailymail.com
  
  A Christian pastor who believed there was no God and was desperately trying to stay out of jail as a teenager has described how a terrifying encounter with Satan changed his life forever.
  
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• Rare tree on Somerset clifftops being protected

  04-10-2026 14:14 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A rare tree, Fay's whitebeam, that is only found on cliffs in Somerset is being protected.
  
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• Purchase of field aims to expand 'green lung'

  04-10-2026 13:05 via bbc.co.uk
  
  It is hoped the prospective sale provides a haven for wildlife in an urban area.
  
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