Sci-Tech news

• VIDEO: Creating world's biggest manmade wave

  11-09-2015 19:39 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Scientists at the Deltares Research Institute in the Netherlands have built a machine that creates the world's largest artificial wave.
  
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• OpenAI's upcoming Jalapeño chip looks like it'll be an inference beast

  25-08-2026 16:00 via theregister.com
  
  OpenAI offered its closest look yet at its spicy new Jalapeño AI accelerator at the annual Hot Chips semiconductor development conference at Stanford on Tuesday. The chips, first teased earlier this year, were developed in collaboration with Broadcom, and are the first in a series of custom silicon from OpenAI, designed (in part) by AI, for AI. Compared to contemporary GPU systems from Nvidia, OpenAI says the parts will deliver both higher throughput and lower latency when they start tric
  
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• Windows XP was released to manufacturing a quarter of a century ago

  25-08-2026 15:27 via theregister.com
  
  It is a quarter of a century since Microsoft packed Windows XP off to manufacturing, finally drawing a line under the Windows 9x codebase (behind Windows 95, 98, and Me) and making Windows NT something for consumers. Before Windows XP, consumers and businesses lived in two different software worlds. XP was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, succeeding Windows 2000 for professionals and Windows ME (Millennium Edition) for home users. Compared to Windows ME, XP was rock solid (although,
  
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• SiFive pushes development server to take RISC-V into the datacenter

  25-08-2026 14:13 via theregister.com
  
  RISC-V chip champ SiFive has launched a development server built around its own CPUs to help port key workloads to the open compute architecture, and claims it already has hyperscalers and software customers signed up. The processor design firm biz showcasing its BigSky SF-2U870 datacenter development platform at the Hot Chips conference in Palo Alto, California, this week. At the show, it will run a variety of server workloads, and is built specifically for customers to accelerate RISC-V datace
  
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• US Air Force transport jet makes 'highly unusual' landing in Moscow sparking frenzy of theories

  25-08-2026 13:58 via dailymail.com
  
  A US Air Force transport jet made a highly unusual landing in Moscow on Tuesday, sparking a frenzy of theories about its mysterious mission.
  
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• Microsoft breaks WPF printing with .NET update

  25-08-2026 13:27 via theregister.com
  
  Having some unexpected printer problems? Microsoft's August 2026 .NET update might have broken printing on your device. According to Microsoft, "After installing the August 2026 .NET Framework cumulative update, some WPF applications may fail with a System.IO.FileFormatException when printing or generating PDF/XPS content that uses certain fonts, including Calibri." Ah yes, Calibri, the default font in some versions of that little-used application, Microsoft Word. The cumulative update for .NET
  
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• Hidden in plain sight: Stone from Henry VIII's long-lost Sandown Castle was reused in Dover Castle, study finds

  25-08-2026 13:04 via dailymail.com
  
  Part of King Henry VIII's long-lost Sandown Castle has been rediscovered hiding in plain sight.
  
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• CISA slaps its tightest three-day patching deadline on perfect-10 Oracle flaw

  25-08-2026 12:43 via theregister.com
  
  The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) just dished out another three-day deadline for patching an actively exploited vulnerability, the most urgent in its wheelhouse. The culprit: a max-severity Oracle bug affecting Windows VMs. Tracked as CVE-2026-21962 (10.0), the improper access control (CWE-284) flaw affects Oracle’s HTTP Server and WebLogic Server Proxy Plug-in. Successful attacks targeting CVE-2026-21962 can allow miscreants to create, delete, or modify access
  
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• Ukraine unveils native jet-powered drone interceptor

  25-08-2026 12:00 via theregister.com
  
  Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) says the country has brought into service its first home-grown jet-powered drone interceptor, intended to take out Russian attack drones. The weapon, known as the Alexa Spatium, is a v-tail unmanned plane developed by Ukrainian engineers to destroy small airborne and surface targets. It was designed primarily to engage Russian kamikaze drones such as the Geran-3, Geran-4, and Geran-5, plus the infamous Shahed-131. Measuring 1.5 by 1.7 meters, it is launc
  
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• When will the Super El Niño storms hit the UK? Scientists tell Brits to prepare for heavy rain and flooding from October - followed by a 'bitterly cold' winter

  25-08-2026 11:17 via dailymail.com
  
  According to scientists, Brits should prepare for 'heavy rainfall and flooding' from as early as October.
  
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• Crooks push Mac malware through fake OpenAI Codex ads

  25-08-2026 11:15 via theregister.com
  
  Cybercrims are using fake OpenAI Codex download pages to trick Mac developers into running malware disguised as installation commands. Researchers at Cato Networks uncovered the campaign after spotting sponsored Google search results targeting people looking to download Codex for macOS. The ads direct would-be users to a convincing-looking download page hosted on Google Sites, complete with the familiar OpenAI branding. There is, however, no Codex waiting at the other end. Instead of serving up
  
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• Sea level rise could be even worse than we thought: Satellite images reveal how tides can vary by almost a metre across a single bay

  25-08-2026 11:06 via dailymail.com
  
  Sea level rises could be even worse than previously thought for some unlucky coastal communities, as scientists uncover a massive difference in local tides.
  
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• HMRC dangles £500M carrot for National Insurance system revamp

  25-08-2026 10:30 via theregister.com
  
  The UK government is inviting suppliers to bid to build a new national insurance system with a price tag of up to £500 million. The tax collector, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), has issued a call to speak to suppliers about the procurement to continue to run and then update the National Insurance and PAYE System (NPS). The “change” aspect of the new contract, which could last up to seven years, is to support “strategic milestones, key business events, and legislative or
  
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• What is virtualization modernization?

  25-08-2026 10:00 via theregister.com
  
  Virtualization modernization is the process of rethinking how you manage virtual workloads across your hybrid estate. IT challenges are expanding, with organizations facing a mixture of licensing challenges and new workloads. This is prompting them to examine their virtualization portfolios. Many are trying to modernize by pricing alternative hypervisors, a rational reflex that often produces the wrong answer. The temptation is to treat virtualization as a line item, swapping out the product whi
  
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• Australia’s record industry won’t chart tunes recorded in the key of AI

  25-08-2026 09:15 via theregister.com
  
  The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) has decided it won’t list AI-generated music on its charts of best-selling music. The decision comes into effect this week and follows two interesting musical moments of note. One came when an AI-assisted cover version of Madonna’s Like a Prayer hit the top ten in Australia, stirring debate about whether using AI to make music is an off-key creative decision. The other was the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (
  
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• SpaceX claims it will put a Vera Rubin NVL72 rack-scale system into orbit next year

  25-08-2026 07:21 via theregister.com
  
  SpaceX will send at least one datacenter rack into space next year, according to Elon Musk, with more to follow in 2028. The occasional trillionaire made that claim on Monday on the user-generated content platform – a.k.a. the social network X – that he runs in part to feed the Grok models SpaceX develops with up-to-date contextual data. “SpaceX, in partnership with Nvidia, has designed a space-optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 system for launch to orbit in Q4 next year, with signific
  
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• IBM announces chip that natively executes Arm and Z instructions concurrently

  25-08-2026 03:27 via theregister.com
  
  IBM has revealed it is working on a chip with processor cores that can execute instructions for its own mainframe chips and for the Arm architecture – and for the LinuxONE architecture too for good measure. Big Blue says the unnamed chip will be built on a two-nanometer technology node, include 11 high-performance cores operating at more than 5.7 GHz, plus AI inference accelerators for in-transaction fraud detection, a dedicated on-chip data processing unit for I/O acceleration, and a larg
  
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• Microsoft AI watermarks in Paint and Photos are linked to user IDs, researcher finds

  25-08-2026 02:10 via theregister.com
  
  When Anthropic disclosed earlier this month that it would be applying a statistical word-choice watermark to its Claude text output, the company noted that at least 190 AI providers have agreed to abide by Europe's AI transparency rules. One such company is Microsoft, which has been applying its own form of watermarking to images created with the assistance of AI in its Paint and Photos applications for Windows. The EU's Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-generated Content requires tha
  
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• Hoover Dam's horror threat to 40 million Americans: As 'tipping point' is reached... expert warns residents in THREE states to brace

  25-08-2026 02:09 via dailymail.com
  
  An expert forecaster has revealed the trigger for a crisis which threatens up to 40 million Americans.
  
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• Revealed: The high street hot drinks that contain the most caffeine - including one popular beverage with the equivalent of four cans of Red Bull

  25-08-2026 01:01 via dailymail.com
  
  Experts at Which? have analysed the levels of caffeine in the hot drinks from five popular retailers - with astonishing results.
  
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• You don't want this Sleepwalker backdoor on your Windows machine

  24-08-2026 23:39 via theregister.com
  
  Like a sleeper cell awaiting activation, a never-before-seen Windows backdoor dubbed Sleepwalker waits silently in memory for one specifically crafted network packet to wake it up and deliver commands using the malware's 23-instruction language. The commands can do everything from running code directly in memory to moving data off the computer. Malware researcher Dominik Reichel discovered the passive backdoor, which also has its own command language, and detailed Sleepwalker in a technical anal
  
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• Browser fingerprint tool shows how easy you are to track using the latest sneaky tricks

  24-08-2026 23:07 via theregister.com
  
  If you're curious how easily tech companies can fingerprint your browser and device and potentially single them out from the crowd, a new utility Glassbox will show you. Aside from pinging a public geolocation API, it runs entirely in a user’s browser and doesn’t ship any info out to the web while acting just like all the various trackers, anti-fraud scripts, and other browser fingerprinting tricks one is likely to encounter online. Unlike some other available tools that do the same,
  
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• Conjure cash with old Macs by linking them to AI inference Borg

  24-08-2026 21:40 via theregister.com
  
  Eigen Labs, a five-year-old tech biz based in Seattle, Washington, estimates that owners of Apple Silicon hardware can earn $120 to $200 per month on average by selling idle compute power for AI inference. Gajesh Naik, an engineer at Eigen Labs, said on Friday that the Darkbloom project, a distributed network of Apple Silicon devices, has become a paid inference provider on OpenRouter and invited Mac owners to add their machines to the Darkbloom network. "We have fulfilled on track close at 4.5B
  
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• Blood-red moon over US sparks Armageddon fears as biblical prophecy appears to unfold

  24-08-2026 20:59 via dailymail.com
  
  A partial lunar eclipse will turn the moon a copper-red color, creating an eerie blood moon visible across all 48 lower US states.
  
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• Eerie blood-red moon rising over the US in just DAYS sparks fears of a biblical prophecy

  24-08-2026 20:09 via dailymail.com
  
  A partial lunar eclipse will turn the moon a copper-red color, creating an eerie blood moon visible across all 48 lower US states.
  
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• Windows NT 4 went on sale 30 years ago today

  24-08-2026 19:43 via theregister.com
  
  Today marks the 30th anniversary of Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 becoming available on August 24, 1996. Windows NT 4.0, codenamed “Tukwila,” went on retail sale exactly 30 years ago. This was the version that started to deliver on the promise of Microsoft’s long-running Windows NT project. NT 4 married the very solid NT operating system with a slightly modified version of the Windows Explorer desktop from Windows 95, which is why it was also internally known as the “Shell Upd
  
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• YouTuber's backyard fab ambitions expand from RAM to homebrew LEDs

  24-08-2026 19:22 via theregister.com
  
  A YouTuber on a mission to liberate semiconductor manufacturing from the grip of multinational megacorporations is back with a new round of DIY success, this time manufacturing working LEDs in his backyard fab. Dr. Semiconductor, also known as semiconductor engineer Dr. Matthew Hartensveld, per his recently launched website, first caught the internet’s attention five months ago when he built a class-100 cleanroom in a shed in his backyard. Back in April, we wrote about his successful proje
  
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• Iran-linked cyberattack shut down a UK power plant

  24-08-2026 18:59 via theregister.com
  
  A suspected Iran-linked cyberattack shut down a small UK power plant around the time that a series of digital intrusions disrupted American water utilities across 12 states. A British government spokesperson confirmed the hack to The Register on Monday and told us that the security incident affected a “small-scale energy generator.” “At no point was there a risk to the wider energy system,” the spokesperson said, adding that the UK’s energy system is “highly r
  
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• Logitech hit by sueball over tariff refunds

  24-08-2026 18:34 via theregister.com
  
  A complaint filed in a California District Court has accused peripheral maker Logitech of withholding tariff refunds from customers, and asked for the proceeds from its activities to be returned to punters. When the US administration imposed tariffs on imports, companies quickly passed them on to US customers. While we won't go into the whys, wherefores, and the what-were-you-thinking, of tariffs imposed by the US administration, the upshot was that customers often ended up paying more for the s
  
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• Users mash LinkedIn's AI slop button 1M+ times in 3 weeks

  24-08-2026 18:15 via theregister.com
  
  More than 1 million LinkedIn users have clicked the newish “Seems like AI slop” button since the social network launched it at the end of July. Hari Srinivasan, LinkedIn’s chief product officer, said that compared to the period before launching the AI slop reporting button, those who copy-paste AI-written posts are seeing around 40 percent fewer views. “Despite the progress, we know we have more to do to ensure LinkedIn remains a place where you can find real people and r
  
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