Sci-Tech news

• NASA timelapse video shows northern lights appear from space

  18-04-2016 22:09 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  Nasa 4K timelapse shows the Auroras Borealis and Australis as seen from 250 miles above Earth. The lights are created when charged particles from the sun enter Earth's atmosphere.
  
  Read more

• Floating nuclear startup Bluecore lands $50M funding before setting sail

  08-09-2026 18:30 via theregister.com
  
  Startup Bluecore Energy has raised $50 million in seed funding to develop floating nuclear power plants intended to supply ports and other locations with rapidly growing energy demands. The California-based company said the Silverton Partners-led round, which includes $10 million in previously announced pre-seed funding, brought in several new investors. It plans to use the money to engineer and test its compact nuclear power system and pursue regulatory approval and maritime classification. Its
  
  Read more

• Boston Scientific left nursing its bottom line after cyberattack

  08-09-2026 17:45 via theregister.com
  
  Boston Scientific says that last month's cyberattack caused enough disruption that it is unlikely to meet its sales growth and adjusted earnings guidance for either the third quarter or the full year. The medical device giant disclosed the expected financial hit in an SEC filing published Tuesday, two weeks after an intrusion knocked systems offline and disrupted operations worldwide. Boston Scientific detected unauthorized activity on its network on August 25 and took some systems offline as it
  
  Read more

• ASML and TSMC want bigger masks for smaller chips

  08-09-2026 17:02 via theregister.com
  
  ASML and chipmaking giant TSMC have launched an industry-wide push toward 12-inch photomasks, saying the larger format could lower costs and overcome some limitations of high-NA EUV lithography. Dutch firm ASML, the only commercial supplier of EUV lithography systems, says it and TSMC have established a collaboration intended to lead the transition to larger-format photomasks for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. Intel Foundry and Samsung Electronics have also voiced their support. The init
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• How to secure hybrid meeting rooms without sacrificing user experience

  08-09-2026 17:00 via theregister.com
  
  Secure by design videoconferencing products may be vital for customer trust and operational resilience, but if they aren't usable, organizations are on a hiding to nothing. Videoconferencing security is no longer a routine item on the IT checklist. Organizations now rate security as their most important purchase criterion (31 percent) when selecting such products, ahead of price (26 percent) and quality (25 percent), according to IDC. The implication, is that security and privacy are no longer o
  
  Read more

• LG accused of 'egregious invasion of privacy' over TV data collection

  08-09-2026 16:15 via theregister.com
  
  LG is once again fending off allegations that its expensive consumer hardware gathers extensive information about users and their surroundings for the benefit of its advertising business. The latest concerns center on smart TVs that researchers claim continued capturing audio after voice recognition was activated, including while the display was in standby. The claims once again come from the folks behind the Gamers Nexus YouTube channel, which also claimed in July that LG's monitors were surrep
  
  Read more

• BigBear phishing crew nets thousands of Microsoft 365 credentials

  08-09-2026 15:26 via theregister.com
  
  A Microsoft 365 phishing operation targeting hundreds of organizations captured thousands of passwords and session cookies, including hundreds of authenticated sessions that could be hijacked to bypass MFA, according to researchers who accessed the crooks' own admin panel. Security researchers at CloudSEK say they accessed the admin panel behind BigBear 2.0, an Evilginx2-based phishing-as-a-service operation targeting Microsoft 365 users, giving them an unusually detailed look at the campaign an
  
  Read more

• Mistral bags €3B to build Europe's sovereign AI champion

  08-09-2026 14:45 via theregister.com
  
  Paris-based AI darling Mistral has raised €3 billion in Series D funding, giving it a post-money valuation of more than €21 billion. That makes it a minnow compared with OpenAI, but Mistral says it is the largest equity fundraising round ever completed by a European technology company. Mistral is pitching itself as a sovereign alternative to US giants such as OpenAI and Anthropic. The company wrote: "During the first wave of generative AI, the central question was who could build the m
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• New Low: Technocrats Making Smart Underwear To Track Your Farts

  08-09-2026 14:32 via technocracy.news
  
  The Technocrat’s mechanistic worldview demands more data on every facet of the universe. Mapping your DNA and the human brain are two biggies. But they are scraping the bottom of the battle to track farts. If this story hadn’t appeared on MSN, I would have figured it was a joke. No such luck. They are very serious about their work. ⁃ Patrick Wood, Editor.Everyone farts. But not everyone tracks their farts.
  Now, smart underwear is making a case for paying closer attention to wha
  
  Read more

• Extortion crews have their eyes on high-value AI data, Google warns

  08-09-2026 14:00 via theregister.com
  
  Data theft and extortion crews are stealing companies’ proprietary AI data and threatening to leak it if the victim organizations don’t pay a ransom, according to Google’s threat hunters. In one case that Google’s Mandiant incident response team investigated, the crooks broke into a healthcare company and exfiltrated corporate data and drug research, including AI research and a proprietary AI model. The criminals then threatened to publish the data unless the company met
  
  Read more

• Revealed: The UK cities most vulnerable to extreme heat - with Portsmouth at the top of the list

  08-09-2026 13:18 via dailymail.com
  
  As the UK reaches the end of the hottest summer on record, new research from the Ordnance Survey (OS) has revealed which cities are most vulnerable to extreme heat.
  
  Read more

• UK energy operator sticks with Palantir in £21M direct award

  08-09-2026 13:17 via theregister.com
  
  Britain's publicly owned energy system operator has awarded Palantir a £21.2 million contract without competition, extending a relationship that began under private ownership three years earlier. The National Energy System Operator (NESO) handed the US spy-tech firm the £17.7 million contract – £21.2 million including VAT – to continue licensing and supporting two "critical business processes," Connections and Skip Rates, running on its Foundry platform. NESO said i
  
  Read more

• Grindr pays £26M to settle UK privacy class action

  08-09-2026 12:27 via theregister.com
  
  Grindr has agreed to pay £26 million ($35.1 million) to settle a UK class action alleging that it shared users' personal data, including information about their HIV status, with third parties. Grindr is a location-based dating and social networking app primarily aimed at gay and bisexual men, transgender people, and the wider queer community. According to Grindr's Form 8-K filing, the company will make two £13 million installments, due by December 31, 2026, and March 31, 2027. The se
  
  Read more

• Whitehall's latest plan to get things done: Less Whitehall

  08-09-2026 11:46 via theregister.com
  
  The UK government has considered the evidence and concluded that it spends far too much time considering the evidence. In a letter sent to all ministers on Monday, Chancellor John Healey, First Secretary of State Louise Haigh, and Attorney General Ellie Reeves said "consultation culture" had become an "industry of dither and delay" and told departments that the default should be to make a decision and get on with it. The ministers argued that formal consultations too often fail to reach those wi
  
  Read more

• Melting Arctic glaciers are creating a climate 'doom loop' by flushing methane from rocks beneath the ice, study warns

  08-09-2026 11:18 via dailymail.com
  
  Melting Arctic glaciers are creating a 'doom loop' by flushing ancient methane out from the rocks beneath the ice, a study has found.
  
  Read more

• Why you should always close the lid before you flush the toilet: Disgusting study reveals how particles linger in your 'breathing zone' for at least 20 seconds

  08-09-2026 11:04 via dailymail.com
  
  Scientists from Flinders University have warned that flushing toilets can release particles into the surrounding air, at heights corresponding to adults' 'breathing zones'.
  
  Read more

• Britain reboots its space strategy with £7.8B already on the launchpad

  08-09-2026 11:00 via theregister.com
  
  The UK government has corralled £7.8 billion of cross-departmental spending into a new space strategy intended to boost growth and national security through to 2030. The package covers orbital collision warnings, low Earth orbit communications, military intelligence, launch capabilities, and space science. The strategy brings together activity across government, including the newly created Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST), the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the Dep
  
  Read more

• Arm pushes agentic AI and desktop-quality graphics in next-gen phone platform

  08-09-2026 10:35 via theregister.com
  
  Arm's latest smartphone platform is optimized for running AI agents on mobile devices and introduces neural graphics that it claims can deliver desktop-class gaming within a smartphone's power constraints. Announced at the Arm Everywhere China event in Shanghai today, Compute Subsystem (CSS) for Mobile 2 succeeds last year's Lumex CSS and reflects Arm's embrace of AI as a strategy for future growth. Arm sees itself as central to this shift, arguing that AI workloads currently run largely in the
  
  Read more

• HPE makes its “unified storage” claim real as B10000 R6 hits GA

  08-09-2026 10:00 via theregister.com
  
  Storage vendors have been calling things “unified” for years. Sometimes that means one architecture. Sometimes it means several products sharing a management screen and a marketing budget. The term has accumulated enough baggage that a little skepticism is warranted. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 Release 6, announced in May, is now generally available. It brings block and file onto the same disaggregated scale-out architecture and OS code base, with independent scaling of performance
  
  Read more

• ‘Global reckoning’ is coming for big tech, says Australian minister

  08-09-2026 07:51 via theregister.com
  
  Australia’s government will introduce legislation that tries to regulate digital services and impose a “digital duty of care.” “For too long, tech companies have been running real-time, unregulated product testing on Australians,” Minister for Communications Anika Wells said today. “In the same way that we have safety standards for cars, for food, and for appliances, Australia is getting basic safety standards for the online tools and online services,” s
  
  Read more

• Huawei proudly shows off an entirely un-American chip

  08-09-2026 04:22 via theregister.com
  
  Huawei has launched a new processor it claims is free of US technology and is using it to drive a new three-screen folding phone. The Chinese giant dubbed the new processor the Kirin 950 Pro and says its LinxiCore processor cores, GPU, and neural processing unit all feature its own designs. The SoC into which Huawei added them uses the "Tau Scaling” architecture that Huawei says arranges components closer to each other to reduce die size and improve performance without needing the kind of
  
  Read more

• Mystery beast launches string of attacks in New Hampshire as officials scramble to identify the animal at large

  07-09-2026 22:51 via dailymail.com
  
  Authorities are on the hunt for a mystery animal that has attacked at least three people in the span of just two days. One of the attacks was captured on camera.
  
  Read more

• Mysterious seven-mile 'sunken city' spotted near the Bermuda Triangle

  07-09-2026 22:26 via dailymail.com
  
  Seafloor data shows patterns resembling the sprawling ruins of a 'sunken city' beneath waters near the Bermuda Triangle.
  
  Read more

• Blind 'psychic' Baba Vanga's prophecy warns humanity is on the brink of a terrifying change

  07-09-2026 19:39 via dailymail.com
  
  A blind psychic credited by followers with foreseeing 9/11 and the Covid pandemic has a chilling prophecy about a change in humanity.
  
  Read more

• The Bayeux Tapestry's biggest remaining mysteries: The five key unanswered questions about the medieval artwork - including exactly how many penises it depicts

  07-09-2026 18:41 via dailymail.com
  
  For the first time in almost 1,000 years, the Bayeux Tapestry is back on British soil for a special exhibition at the British Museum.
  
  Read more

• Wine expert reveals the mistakes damaging your bottles - and which ones REALLY belong in the fridge

  07-09-2026 18:27 via dailymail.com
  
  A UK court ordered master tailor and wine connoisseur Tom Reimer to pay £110,000 after it found he had ruined his own £1.5million collection by turning off his fridges at his £8mllion flat in London.
  
  Read more

• Matt Clifford to leave ARIA before Anthropic role becomes a 'distraction'

  07-09-2026 18:02 via theregister.com
  
  Matt Clifford is stepping down as chair of the UK's taxpayer-funded Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), just days after saying he intended to keep the job while working for AI giant Anthropic. Clifford, one of the architects of the UK government's AI strategy, said in a LinkedIn post on Monday that he would leave ARIA, less than a week after his appointment as Anthropic's managing director of international affairs prompted warnings of a "clear conflict of interest." "Having completed
  
  Read more

• US watchdog opens probe into Tesla's Cybercab self-certification

  07-09-2026 17:53 via theregister.com
  
  Tesla's Cybercab's wheels have only just hit the asphalt for its commercial launch and the autonomous vehicle has already attracted the attention of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The body announced an investigation into Tesla's self-certification of the vehicle at the weekend. Central to the probe is the fact that the Cybercab famously lacks conventional controls. The NHTSA says there are "clear vehicle performance requirements" – stuff like brake controls
  
  Read more

• DRAM contract prices forecast to grow only 13-18% in Q3

  07-09-2026 17:20 via theregister.com
  
  The relentless rise in memory prices may finally be losing steam, as PC and smartphone buyers reach the limits of what their budgets will allow them to pay. Taiwanese market watcher Trend Force estimates that rising DRAM contract prices drove a 59.5 percent quarter-on-quarter jump in industry revenue to $154.73 billion in calendar Q2. The analyst now expects conventional DRAM contract price growth to "moderate" to 13 to 18 percent quarter-on-quarter in Q3. That reflects a shift in demand away fr
  
  Read more

• 'Godfather of AI' warns superintelligent systems could 'lead to human extinction' - as he calls for the government to ban their development

  07-09-2026 17:19 via dailymail.com
  
  The man dubbed the 'godfather of AI' has issued a warning over powerful AI systems.
  
  Read more

Follow @scitech_UK on Twitter!