Sci-Tech news

• 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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• Tropical Storm Lala erupts just miles from US as life-threatening direct hit expected in hours

  13-08-2026 18:06 via dailymail.com
  
  Tropical Storm Lala has formed and is just hours away from making landfall in a busy state with more than one million residents and tourists.
  
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• Chilling Christian prophecy says humanity entered the end times... and the signs have been hiding in plain sight

  13-08-2026 17:51 via dailymail.com
  
  A Christian ministry has identified several signs it believes are evidence that humanity is approaching the end times.
  
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• The Posse Comitatus Presidency: Trump’s Standing Army On American Streets

  13-08-2026 17:43 via technocracy.news
  The US military is supposed to be under the Constitutional authority of Congress to declare war and provide funding, with the President being the commander-in-chief. The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the deployment of military forces on U.S. soil, but Trump is increasingly using the military to condition citizens to accept martial law. In short, the military is not to be the enforcer of the President’s will.The military was used in Operation Warp Speed to deliver vaccines to every corner o
  
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• This JCB doesn't dig – it does 406 mph

  13-08-2026 17:41 via theregister.com
  
  A JCB has set a new world land speed record, passing 406 mph (653 kph) at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats. The JCB in question isn't a digger or a dumper, but a hydrogen-powered racer known as the JCB Hydromax, driven by retired Royal Air Force fighter pilot Wing Commander Andy Green. It set the record for the fastest a hydrogen-powered internal combustion car has ever travelled, averaging 406.320 mph (653.909 kph) across two runs at the salt flats this week. JCB says the Hydromax is powered by two
  
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• Chilling prophecy claims signs of Jesus's return began appearing in 1917

  13-08-2026 17:40 via dailymail.com
  
  A Christian ministry has identified several signs it believes are evidence that humanity is approaching the end times.
  
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• Mysterious 'jellyfish' spotted in NASA Mars photo sparks theories of life on the Red Planet

  13-08-2026 17:24 via dailymail.com
  
  A NASA image of Mars appears to show an eerie, jellyfish-like figure lurking in the distance.
  
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• Trump wants to grant private cyber firms a license to hack back

  13-08-2026 17:04 via theregister.com
  
  Donald Trump is allowing government agencies to contract private cybersecurity companies to carry out operations against cyber-enabled transnational criminal organizations (CE-TCOs). The US President signed a memo on Wednesday confirming a strategy hinted at earlier this year, saying participating companies can support national operations against criminals, including cyber surveillance and technical disruptions of their networks. The latter, described as "Cyber Effects Operations," covers activi
  
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• The backup Microsoft never promised you

  13-08-2026 17:00 via theregister.com
  
  Confidence in an organization's cyber recovery capabilities deserves scrutiny. If a ransomware attack disables the SaaS data tenanted in the Microsoft cloud ecosystem, the data the business depends on as its lifeblood, the pace at which operations resume rests on assumptions that often prove wrong. Anyone whose answer is "It's all good. Microsoft has my back on this one with its comprehensive native retention and recovery capabilities" is due a reality check. With agile business tools like M365
  
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• Christian prophecy makes wild claims the apocalypse began a century ago... and the signs have been hiding in plain sight

  13-08-2026 16:51 via dailymail.com
  
  A Christian ministry has identified several signs it believes are evidence that humanity is approaching the end times.
  
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• Diamonds ARE a girl's best friend: Lab-grown alternatives mean women are increasingly buying their own jewellery, Swarovski boss says

  13-08-2026 16:19 via dailymail.com
  
  Forget waiting for Prince Charming - women are increasingly buying their own jewellery thanks to the rise in lab-grown diamonds, the chief executive of Swarovski has revealed.
  
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• Mystery attacker spent a year raiding Salesforce and ServiceNow portals

  13-08-2026 15:32 via theregister.com
  
  Someone has spent more than a year rifling through Salesforce and ServiceNow portals around the world, harvesting data that organizations accidentally left open to anyone who came looking. Researchers at Reco have named the operation "City-Forum" after a domain connected to its infrastructure. The domain has pointed to the attacker's server since March 2025, although exactly when the campaign began is unclear. Reco says the activity is continuing and increasing in volume. Reco isn't naming the t
  
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• The Scottish soldier whose skull was crushed by a trebuchet: Skeleton found at Stirling castle is first confirmed victim of trebuchet attack

  13-08-2026 14:58 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists have found the remains of a soldier in Scotland's Stirling Castle who may be one of the unluckiest people in history.
  
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• Medieval missile: Skeleton found at Scottish castle is first confirmed victim of a trebuchet attack

  13-08-2026 14:45 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists have found the remains of a soldier in Scotland's Stirling Castle who may be one of the unluckiest people in history.
  
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• Ryanair adds Google to its dual-cloud flight plan

  13-08-2026 14:31 via theregister.com
  
  Ryanair has signed a five-year agreement with Google Cloud covering AI, productivity tools and multi-cloud infrastructure, just weeks after renewing its deal with rival AWS for another five years. The Irish budget airline says it will deploy Google Workspace and Google Cloud services across its 35,000-strong workforce as it pursues a target of 300 million passengers a year by 2034. We asked how much this deal is worth, but Google declined to say and Ryanair did not respond. The rollout includes
  
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• Ryanair adds Google Cloud to its dual-cloud flight plan

  13-08-2026 14:31 via theregister.com
  
  Ryanair has signed a five-year agreement with Google Cloud covering AI, productivity tools and multi-cloud infrastructure, just weeks after renewing its deal with rival AWS for another five years. The Irish budget airline says it will deploy Google Workspace and Google Cloud services across its 35,000-strong workforce as it pursues a target of 300 million passengers a year by 2034. We asked how much this deal is worth, but Google declined to say and Ryanair did not respond. The rollout includes
  
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• Your yellow lawn is NOT dead! Plant expert reveals why Britons should stop worrying about their parched grass

  13-08-2026 14:05 via dailymail.com
  
  Britons despairing over their increasingly yellow and crispy lawns can breathe a sigh of relief - the grass may not be dead at all, according to experts.
  
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• AWS key exposed in JavaScript may have lit way to Beacon's charity data

  13-08-2026 13:34 via theregister.com
  
  Beacon, a CRM provider for charities and nonprofits, says an AWS access key "potentially exposed in public JavaScript build artifacts" is the leading suspect in its July breach. The revelation came in the company's first update on the attack in more than a week. If the access key was exposed in public build artifacts, it raises questions about why Beacon's development pipeline and code review controls failed to catch it. Beacon used stronger wording about the potential data loss, confirming that
  
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• Twitch feeds your streams to Amazon's AI unless you tell it to stop

  13-08-2026 12:32 via theregister.com
  
  Twitch has given streamers a switch to stop their channel content being fed into Amazon's generative AI machinery, but naturally it is turned on by default. The Amazon-owned streaming platform has added a "Training for Generative AI" control to channel settings, allowing streamers to opt out of having their content used for future GenAI model improvements. With the setting enabled, Twitch says channel content – including livestreams, videos on demand, clips, highlights, text, images, and c
  
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• 'I feel like I'm going to go blind': Britons complain of agonising eye pain after staring DIRECTLY at the solar eclipse without glasses

  13-08-2026 11:43 via dailymail.com
  
  Last night, millions of Britons across the country watched in awe as the sun disappeared during the best solar eclipse of
  
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• Everything is better with pickles... except Windows

  13-08-2026 11:26 via theregister.com
  
  BORK!BORK!BORK! "Everything is better with pickles," trumpets a Wendy's sign. Everything is also better with a helping of bork, if the screen is to be believed. Spotted by an eagle-eyed Register reader in Vancouver, the display shows something amiss with Windows Phone Link – although why a PC encouraging customers to drop dollars on a Dill Pickle Chicken Sandwich needs the app is anyone's guess. The error itself usually comes up when something running Windows has been a bit careless with s
  
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• 'They knew something was happening': Videos show birds thrown into state of confusion during dramatic solar eclipse

  13-08-2026 11:11 via dailymail.com
  
  Birds across the country were thrown into a state of confusion as the sun disappeared behind the moon during yesterday's solar eclipse.
  
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• Passwords stored in public Google Doc then showed up in search results

  13-08-2026 09:00 via theregister.com
  
  PWNED Welcome, once again, to PWNED, the weekly column where we highlight others’ security failures. Hopefully, there’s a lesson in all this, but it could just be “stop shooting yourself in the foot.” Have a story about someone leaving a gaping hole in their network? Share it with us at [email protected]. Anonymity is available upon request. Our story today comes courtesy of Siim Kostabi, co-founder of Pageloot, a company that provides QR codes businesses can use for marke
  
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• Cisco thinks Mythos means instant death for unsupported networking kit

  13-08-2026 08:28 via theregister.com
  
  Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins says “The Mythos Effect” will see customers scour their networks for unsupported devices and replace them ASAP. Mythos is Anthropic’s bug-finding model and has proven so effective that vendors and open source projects are now finding more security flaws and pushing more patches. Speaking on Cisco’s Q4 earnings call yesterday, Robbins said customers he speaks to are aware of Mythos, and fearful that the model and others like it will mean that unsupp
  
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• Tencent says it could make instant profits on $53bn hardware splurge by renting it for AI workloads

  13-08-2026 06:45 via theregister.com
  
  Chinese tech giant Tencent has turned its back on instant profits, betting that a new business unit that creates its own AI and embeds that in its products will pay off to a greater extent than cashing in on demand for computing resources. During the company’s Q2 earnings call yesterday, Bernstein analyst Robin Zhu asked when Tencent expects to see a return on investment from the $53 billion capital expenditure it made in the quarter. Chief Strategy Officer James Mitchell said demand for c
  
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• Tencent says it could make instant profits on $53B hardware splurge by renting it for AI workloads

  13-08-2026 06:45 via theregister.com
  
  Chinese tech giant Tencent has turned its back on instant profits, betting that a new business unit that creates its own AI and embeds that in its products will pay off to a greater extent than cashing in on demand for computing resources. During the company’s Q2 earnings call yesterday, Bernstein analyst Robin Zhu asked when Tencent expects to see a return on investment from the $53 billion capital expenditure it made in the quarter. Chief Strategy Officer James Mitchell said demand for c
  
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• Chinese Loongson processors have leaky caches, researchers find

  13-08-2026 04:14 via theregister.com
  
  Researchers from Germany’s Helmholtz Center for Information Security have found processors made by China’s Loongson have leaky caches that attackers could use to seek specific data. Loongson has developed its own LoongArch instruction set architecture (ISA) that blends approaches used by MIPS and RISC-V. On a site called LoongLeakAttack.com, the researchers explain that they found the leaky cache using a fuzzer, then noticed that the LoongArch ISA manual mentions an instruction that
  
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• The eclipse snapped by YOU: Daily Mail readers show how they enjoyed Britain's dramatic eclipse

  13-08-2026 04:02 via dailymail.com
  
  From pets wearing glasses to children using homemade viewing devices to glimpse the spectacular illusion in the skies on Wednesday, our readers embraced eclipse fever in full force.
  
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• OpenAI ad service can bill customers for up to one day after they pause campaigns

  13-08-2026 02:28 via theregister.com
  
  OpenAI appears to be serving ads after buyers have halted their campaigns, and charging them for the privilege.OpenAI began testing ad sales in ChatGPT in the US back in February and has been gradually expanding the service in other regions, including the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea as of Tuesday. Given that a substantial minority of ChatGPT user base pays for the service (50 million out of 900 million weekly users as of February 2026), advertising revenue appears to b
  
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• The day Britain stood still to marvel at the heavens as once-in-a-generation eclipse stuns the country... and if you missed it, the next one isn't until 2050

  13-08-2026 01:36 via dailymail.com
  
  As Britain sweltered in the fifth heatwave of the year, an eerie yet welcome chill descended as the Moon blocked out the unrelenting 30C sunshine.
  
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