Sci-Tech news

• MIT boffins' TONTOU attack slips through Spectre defenses on Intel and AMD CPUs

  07-08-2026 16:15 via theregister.com
  
  Two MIT researchers will present a new speculative execution attack at DEF CON 34 that uses precisely timed interrupts to bypass defenses against Spectre v2. Daniël Trujillo and Mengjia Yan of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) shared their paper [PDF] with The Register ahead of publication. Their attack targets mitigations designed to neutralize potentially hostile branch predictor states before sensitive code runs. Such neutralization is an important def
  
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• Some fin isn't quite right... Panicked swimmers race to escape 'shark' at Marbella beach - but it's a tuna

  10-08-2026 13:56 via dailymail.com
  
  Panicked swimmers were seen racing to escape a shark - only to realise that they were running away from a tuna. 
  
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• PDA is good for you! Couples who kiss in public have happier relationships, study finds

  10-08-2026 13:44 via dailymail.com
  
  Does the idea of snogging your other half in public make you cringe? If the answer is yes, there's bad news - as a new study has revealed that public displays of affection (PDA) are actually good for you.
  
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• What will happen if Earth's glaciers melt? Terrifying study reveals how their demise could spark 12 INCHES of global sea-level rise - plunging entire communities underwater

  10-08-2026 13:43 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists have revealed just how much water is locked away in the world's glaciers - and the consequences if it were all released into the oceans.
  
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• Expert warns men of intimate problem caused by exercising - it can alter the appearance of genitals

  10-08-2026 13:19 via dailymail.com
  
  An expert has warned that intense exercise - such as running and heavy weightlifting - may trigger a little-known genital problem.
  
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• Watching the solar eclipse this week? DON'T use your glasses from 1999! Experts warn viewers from the last eclipse may have degraded - putting your eyes at risk of permanent damage

  10-08-2026 12:47 via dailymail.com
  
  If you've still got a pair of eclipse glasses hanging around in the back of a drawer from the last eclipse, you might be tempted to use them. However, experts have cautioned against this.
  
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• Barbie and Ken get a reality check! Study reveals how dolls are finally starting to look like real people - with 'Curvy Barbie' closely matched to today's average woman

  10-08-2026 11:35 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists from Adelaide University analysed four recent Barbie dolls, as well as the latest Ken doll. The results revealed that the dolls' proportions are finally starting to resemble those of real people.
  
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• London still dominates Britain's datacenter map, but the regions are powering up

  10-08-2026 11:15 via theregister.com
  
  A snapshot of Britain's datacenter estate puts nearly 40 percent of its facilities in London, along with about two-thirds of its estimated colocation capacity, although development is spreading beyond the capital. The analysis counts 555 UK server farms, matching Statista's latest figure. It puts their combined IT capacity at about 1.6 GW. By facility count, that would put Blighty second only to the US, although there is a considerable gap between the two. The study data was compiled by Karas Pl
  
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• Ashes from Pompeii reveal what the ancient city SMELLED like before it was destroyed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius 2,000 years ago

  10-08-2026 11:11 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists have discovered what the doomed city of Pompeii smelled like before it was buried by the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago.
  
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• Smart glasses are only smart if we train them to be good. Then they'll be fantastic

  10-08-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  The most sobering observation in tech is not how much AI is taking on the appearance of the human mind. It's how much the human mind increasingly resembles Windows – not in functionality, although we all know that person, but in the way it crufts up and loses compatibility after years without an upgrade or reboot. We start shiny and new, with everything around us equally exciting, yet end up cursing all these damn changes and godawful broccoli-haired vibe coders. AI has turned many of the
  
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• Demoralized developer's desperate hack came back to haunt him on LinkedIn

  10-08-2026 08:30 via theregister.com
  
  WHO, ME? The past may be a foreign country, but it's one The Register likes to explore each Friday in "Who, Me?" – our reader-contributed column that shares your tales of workplace mistakes and great escapes. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Walter," who once worked for one half of a duopoly competing in the intertwined markets for bad poetry celebrating memorable life moments and questionable television dramatizing the sentiments in those poems. The duopoly didn't make for a st
  
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• Linus Torvalds says AI has made 'huge' Linux kernel updates the new normal

  10-08-2026 07:56 via theregister.com
  
  Linux kernel boss Linus Torvalds thinks the project has reached a new normal of supersized updates, thanks to AI. Torvalds posts a weekly state of the kernel update, and last week’s message opened with his observation that “This rc is huge.” “Even by the ‘new normal’ standards this is a big rc, and I think it's the biggest rc6 we've had in years at least by commit count,” he wrote on August 2. Fast forward a week and the size of the release candidate rem
  
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• Advertisers are trying to influence AI bots with secret ads

  10-08-2026 05:00 via theregister.com
  
  KETTLE OpenAI's invasion of Hugging Face keeps getting worse somehow, Chinese open-weight models are nigh on to reaching parity with their closed-off American cousins, and AI crawlers are getting their own LLM-poisoning ads. Were there anything world-shaking events in AI land we missed this week? 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. Join Kettle
  
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• The ominous sign Super El Niño is strengthening: Global ocean temperatures have hit a record high - soaring to 20.96°C, data reveals

  10-08-2026 04:00 via dailymail.com
  
  Global ocean temperatures have hit a record high in a worrying sign that the Super El Niño is strengthening, new data reveals.
  
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• NEC tests parking tech that only starts charging once you exit your car

  10-08-2026 03:32 via theregister.com
  
  ASIA IN BRIEF Japan’s NEC has started tests of parking technology that will start charging once a driver leaves their car. Most car parks record the time a driver enters the facility and start charging, or depleting a free parking period, at that moment. That means drivers pay for time spent driving around looking for a spot and for the time it takes to exit a car park. NEC, in concert with another Japanese company called UrbanChain, will next month test a system that detects when a driver
  
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• Elon Musk To Build The Largest Building In The World – 100 Million Square Feet

  10-08-2026 02:29 via technocracy.news
  
  A building spanning 2,315 acres is almost 4 square miles in size. It dwarfs any building on earth and is intended to provide end-to-end chip manufacturing starting with design, fab, quality control, and packaging. And arch-Technocrat Musk says he needs all this to build his own cars, robots, data centers, and spaceships. Don’t forget that Musk’s grandfather was the head of the Technocracy movement in Canada during the 30s and 40s. ⁃ Patrick Wood, Editor.Elon Musk is about
  
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• Why your house is a magnet for flies: Horrified Britons say their homes are crawling with insects - here's what's behind the invasion

  09-08-2026 19:55 via dailymail.com
  
  If it feels like your home has suddenly become overrun with flies, you're not imagining it. Horrified Britons have complained of an 'invasion'.
  
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• I've gone from writing about SD-WAN to depending on it

  09-08-2026 15:05 via theregister.com
  
  This spring, my wife and I moved from the Denver suburbs into the Colorado Rockies. The high-altitude retreat presented a welcome reprieve from our otherwise tech-dominated lives. As remote workers, however, we faced certain challenges, and technology was the only reason our move was possible in the first place. Prior to my time at El Reg, I, among other things, breathlessly covered a subset of the networking industry, which as it happens had become big business following the COVID-19 outbreak a
  
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• You're storing your crisps wrong! Expert claims you should keep the snack in the FRIDGE

  09-08-2026 14:28 via dailymail.com
  
  Food waste expert Kate Hall claims that crisp packets are best kept in the fridge.
  
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• Earthquake warning for 159 million Americans as danger zones dramatically expand

  09-08-2026 13:52 via dailymail.com
  
  A new analysis has uncovered how earthquake danger zones have expanded in the US over the past several years, putting millions more people at risk.
  
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• Longest serving volunteer helps boost bird numbers

  09-08-2026 13:04 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Bird charity's longest serving volunteer helps achieve big success in boosting species recovery.
  
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• Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the 40-something IT manager

  09-08-2026 11:33 via theregister.com
  
  Turns out the fastest way to get a company to consider paying a ransom isn't calling the CEO – it's targeting the 46-year-old IT manager. That's according to Zscaler, whose ThreatLabz researchers tracked 351 victims across 334 organizations caught up in a single ransomware campaign over the course of a month. The data suggests today's ransomware crews have become oddly specific about their preferred victim profile: nearly two-thirds of victims held manager-level titles or above, the averag
  
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• Why your house is a magnet for flies: Horrified Brits say their homes are crawling with insects - here's what's behind the invasion

  09-08-2026 08:56 via dailymail.com
  
  If it feels like your home has suddenly become overrun with flies, you're not imagining it. Horrified Brits have complained of an 'invasion'.
  
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• Rare turtle to be sent back home in 5,000-mile 'incredibly emotional' trip

  09-08-2026 08:30 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A rare turtle is being flown home to the Caribbean Sea after being found washed up in Wales.
  
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• 1999: Solar eclipse experienced from Alderney

  09-08-2026 08:30 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Footage of people in Alderney catching the best view in the British Isles of the solar eclipse.
  
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• 'If we worry about erosion, we will never get any sleep'

  09-08-2026 07:41 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Derick Bowler says even if he won the lottery he knows he would not be able to stop nature.
  
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• Most of sun to be eclipsed across island of Ireland

  09-08-2026 07:19 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Skywatchers are set to witness two major celestial events next week, with a deep partial solar eclipse followed by the peak of the Perseid meteor shower.
  
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• Waste company owner is a 'woman in a man's world'

  09-08-2026 07:09 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A woman who runs a waste collection firm says she was warned not to get involved in the industry.
  
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• What it's like to chase solar eclipses around the world

  09-08-2026 03:31 via bbc.co.uk
  
  For many, a total solar eclipse is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But for a dedicated few, it's a deep passion.
  
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• Scientists come up with bizarre tip to keep relationships happy - stroke your partner's arms

  09-08-2026 02:22 via dailymail.com
  
  It might sound bizarre, but an experiment has concluded that gently stroking a line along the inner forearm, between the wrist and the elbow, can significantly improve mood and happiness.
  
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