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He would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for a meddling security team's fear of USB

On Call Each Friday The Register offers a fresh installment of On Call, the reader-contributed column that celebrates the fine art of tech support.…

AleRunner writes: "China is helping Cuba race to capture renewable solar energy as the United States imposes an effective oil blockade on the Caribbean island, creating its worst energy crisis in decades," reports The Washington Post. Later in the article, it states that "China's decades-long push into clean energy technology is now helping to protect it from the soaring oil and gas crisis spurred by Trump's war against Iran," and that "Chinese exports of solar equipment to Cuba skyrocketed from about $5 million in 2023 to $117 million in 2025 and show no sign of stopping." According to researchers from Ember, solar could be responsible for as much as 10% of Cuba's electricity generation. "That would be among the fastest expansions of solar energy anywhere [...] and place Cuba ahead of most countries -- including the U.S. -- in the share of electricity generated by sun power," the report says. As the Iran war drives energy prices higher, countries around the world are working overtime to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. China sees this as a big opportunity. "Chinese authorities have made clear that they intend to replicate what they're doing in Cuba elsewhere," reports the Washington Post.

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‘Project Sunrise’ needs a network that doesn’t exist, a rocket that’s hardly flown, and FCC approval

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin has applied to launch up to 51,600 datacenter satellites.…

Enterprise tools have detected impossible logins for years. Zuck’s human mods couldn’t join the dots

Meta has revealed it’s tested using AI for content moderation chores and found it does better than humans.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: A lobbying trade body for smaller cloud providers is asking the European Commission to impose interim measures blocking Broadcom from terminating the VMware Cloud Service Provider program, calling the decision a death sentence for some tech suppliers and an illegal squeeze on customer choice. As The Reg revealed in January, Broadcom shuttered the scheme, a move sources claimed affects hundreds of CSPs across Europe and curtails options for enterprises buying VMware software and services. The Cloud Infrastructure Service Provider in Europe (CISPE) trade group, representing nearly 50 tech suppliers, filed the complaint today with the EC Directorates-General, accusing Broadcom of bully-boy tactics, and calling for authorities to halt what it terms as "ongoing abuse." Francisco Mingorance, CISPE secretary general, said of the complaint: "Businesses -- both cloud providers and their customers -- are being irreparably damaged by Broadcom's unfair actions, which we believe are illegal. "After imposing outrageous and unjustified price hikes immediately following the acquisition of VMware, Broadcom is now applying the 'coup de grace'. We need urgent intervention to force them to change. The only way to stop bullies is to stand up to them." CISPE claims that, since Broadcom completed its $69 billion takeover of VMware in October 2023, prices have risen tenfold, payment is demanded upfront, products are bundled regardless of customer need, and minimum commitments are based on potential rather than actual consumption. The VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) program officially closed in January and all transactions must be complete by March 31. After that date, only a select group of suppliers will be able to sell VMware subscriptions -- either standalone or as part of a broader service. Across Europe, we're told this equates to hundreds of businesses losing their authorization. For some, the loss of VCSP status effectively destroys their market. Those whose operations were built around VMware must now hand customers to another authorized supplier or begin the costly migration to an alternative platform. Broadcom said in a statement responding to the complaint: "Broadcom strongly disagrees with the allegations by CISPE, an organization funded by hyperscalers, which misrepresent the realities of the market. We continue to be committed to investing significantly in our European VMware Cloud Service Provider partners... helping them offer alternatives to the hyperscalers and meet the evolving needs of European businesses and organizations."

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Sees optimizing its entire cloud around homebrew silicon as the way to compete

Chinese web giant Alibaba has revealed its T-Head chipmaking business has shipped 470,000 AI chips, and admitted they are currently inferior to rival products, but believes it can build a mutually optimized stack that makes performance gaps moot.…

From LPUs and GPUs to CPUs and switches, everything you need to know about Nvidia's latest kit

GTC DEEP DIVE At Nvidia’s GTC conference this week, CEO Jensen Huang finally addressed a $20 billion question he’s dodged for months: Why spend so much to license AI chip startup Groq’s tech and hire away its engineers rather than build it themselves?…

Cloudflare's CEO predicts AI-driven bot traffic will surpass human internet traffic by 2027, as AI agents generate vastly more web requests than people. "If a human were doing a task -- let's say you were shopping for a digital camera -- and you might go to five websites. Your agent or the bot that's doing that will often go to 1,000 times the number of sites that an actual human would visit," Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said in an interview at SXSW this week. "So it might go to 5,000 sites. And that's real traffic, and that's real load, which everyone is having to deal with and take into account." TechCrunch reports: Before the generative AI era, the internet was only about 20% bot traffic, with Google's web crawler being the largest, according to Prince, whose infrastructure and security company is used by one-fifth of all websites. But beyond some other reputable crawlers, the only other bots were those used by scammers and bad actors. "With the rise of generative AI, and its just insatiable need for data, we're seeing a rise where we suspect that, in 2027, the amount of bot traffic online will exceed the amount of human traffic that's online," Prince said. The executive also noted that this change to the web would require the development of new technologies, like sandboxes for AI agents that can be spun up on the fly and then torn down when their task has finished. These could come into play when consumers ask AI agents to perform certain tasks on their behalf, like planning a vacation. "What we're trying to think about is, how do we actually build that underlying infrastructure where you can -- as easily as you open a new tab in your browser -- you can actually spin up new code, which can then run and service the agents that are out there," Prince said. He imagines there will soon be a time when millions of these "sandboxes" for agents would be created every second. "I think the thing that people don't appreciate about AI is it's a platform shift," Prince said. "AI is another platform shift ... the way that you're going to consume information is completely different."

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The UK regulator Ofcom fined 4chan nearly $700,000 (520,000 pounds) for failing to implement age checks and address illegal content risks under the Online Safety Act, but the platform mocked the penalty and signaled it won't pay. A lawyer representing the company responded with an AI-generated cartoon image of a hamster, writing in a follow-up post on X: "In the only country in which 4chan operates, the United States, it is breaking no law and indeed its conduct is expressly protected by the First Amendment." The BBC reports: The fines also include 50,000 pounds for failing to assess the risk of illegal material being published and a further 20,000 pounds for failing to set out how it protects users from criminal content. 4Chan has refused to pay all previous fines from Ofcom. "Companies -- wherever they're based -- are not allowed to sell unsafe toys to children in the UK. And society has long protected youngsters from things like alcohol, smoking and gambling. The digital world should be no different," said Ofcom's Suzanne Cater. "The UK is setting new standards for online safety. Age checks and risk assessments are cornerstones of our laws, and we'll take robust enforcement action against firms that fall short."

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Deal helps company build out its Codex team

In a move clearly designed to strengthen its position among developers, OpenAI has acquired Python tool maker Astral. The house of Altman expects the deal to strengthen the ecosystem for its Codex programming agent.…

For the second time in the past month, an AI agent went rogue at Meta -- this time giving an engineer incorrect advice that briefly exposed sensitive data. The Verge reports: A Meta engineer was using an internal AI agent, which Clayton described as "similar in nature to OpenClaw within a secure development environment," to analyze a technical question another employee posted on an internal company forum. But the agent also independently publicly replied to the question after analyzing it, without getting approval first. The reply was only meant to be shown to the employee who requested it, not posted publicly. An employee then acted on the AI's advice, which "provided inaccurate information" that led to a "SEV1" level security incident, the second-highest severity rating Meta uses. The incident temporarily allowed employees to access sensitive data they were not authorized to view, but the issue has since been resolved. According to Clayton, the AI agent involved didn't take any technical action itself, beyond posting inaccurate technical advice, something a human could have also done. A human, however, might have done further testing and made a more complete judgment call before sharing the information -- and it's not clear whether the employee who originally prompted the answer planned to post it publicly. "The employee interacting with the system was fully aware that they were communicating with an automated bot. This was indicated by a disclaimer noted in the footer and by the employee's own reply on that thread," Clayton commented to The Verge. "The agent took no action aside from providing a response to a question. Had the engineer that acted on that known better, or did other checks, this would have been avoided."

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Pair say review of studies, other evidence, proves more countries need to do like Australia and keep kids offline

There is enough evidence going back far enough that it's reasonable to conclude social media platforms are responsible for population-level mental health harms. …

Longtime Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: Rapper Afroman, born Joseph Edgar Foreman, famous for his 2000 hit "Because I Got High", has won a defamation lawsuit that seven Ohio police offers filed against him. A jury found he did not defame the officers in music videos he made about a 2022 police raid of his home. In August 2022, Adams County Sheriff's Department raided Afroman's home on suspicion of drug trafficking and kidnapping. Neither drugs nor kidnapping victims were found, and charges were never filed. However, local officials would not pay for damages occurred during the raid including a broken front door and a video surveillance camera. Afroman used his home security footage of the raid to create music rap videos criticizing the police over the incident; "Will You Help Me Repair My Door?", "Why You Disconnecting My Video Camera?", and "Lemon Pound Cake". He posted the videos on YouTube. In March 2023, seven officers filed a lawsuit against Afroman for invasion of privacy and the unauthorized use of their images from the security footage in addition to defamation claims. The officers requested an injunction for Afroman to stop speaking about them or using their photos. The officers also wanted all proceeds from the videos, song sales, performances, and merchandise claiming they had suffered "emotional distress" due to the videos. Afroman's defense included Freedom of Speech rights to criticize public officials. The ACLU filed an amicus brief supporting the rapper, arguing that the lawsuit was a SLAPP suit only meant to silence criticism. In October 2023, the court agreed and dismissed the invasion of privacy, "right of publicity", and "unauthorized use of individual's persona" claims but allowed the defamation case to proceed. Defamation claims by the officers included the allegation Afroman repeatedly had sex with the wife of Randolph L. Walters, Jr. When Afroman's lawyer asked Walters "But we all know that's not true, right?", the officer replied he did not know. Defamation from emotional damages requires that harm arise from a false statement; however, if a statement is so outrageous that no one would believe it to be true, then reputational damage cannot be a result.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google is planning big changes for Android in 2026 aimed at combating malware across the entire device ecosystem. Starting in September, Google will begin restricting application sideloading with its developer verification program, but not everyone is on board. Android Ecosystem President Sameer Samat tells Ars that the company has been listening to feedback, and the result is the newly unveiled advanced flow, which will allow power users to skip app verification. With its new limits on sideloading, Android phones will only install apps that come from verified developers. To verify, devs releasing apps outside of Google Play will have to provide identification, upload a copy of their signing keys, and pay a $25 fee. It all seems rather onerous for people who just want to make apps without Google's intervention. Apps that come from unverified developers won't be installable on Android phones -- unless you use the new advanced flow, which will be buried in the developer settings. When sideloading apps today, Android phones alert the user to the "unknown sources" toggle in the settings, and there's a flow to help you turn it on. The verification bypass is different and will not be revealed to users. You have to know where this is and proactively turn it on yourself, and it's not a quick process. [...] The actual legwork to activate this feature only takes a few seconds, but the 24-hour countdown makes it something you cannot do spur of the moment. But why 24 hours? According to Samat, this is designed to combat the rising use of high-pressure social engineering attacks, in which the scammer convinces the victim they have to install an app immediately to avoid severe consequences. "In that 24-hour period, we think it becomes much harder for attackers to persist their attack," said Samat. "In that time, you can probably find out that your loved one isn't really being held in jail or that your bank account isn't really under attack." But for people who are sure they don't want Google's verification system to get in the way of sideloading any old APK they come across, they don't have to wait until they encounter an unverified app to get started. You only have to select the "indefinitely" option once on a phone, and you can turn dev options off again afterward. "For a lot of people in the world, their phone is their only computer, and it stores some of their most private information," Samat said. "Over the years, we've evolved the platform to keep it open while also keeping it safe. And I want to emphasize, if the platform isn't safe, people aren't going to use it, and that's a lose-lose situation for everyone, including developers."

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Last time: Beijing-backed snoops and ransomware crims. Who's next?

Unknown baddies are abusing yet another critical Microsoft SharePoint bug to compromise victims' SharePoint servers, the US government warned.…

Chocolate Factory describes concession as an attempt to balance openess with safety

It turns out you won't be limited to Google-verified apps an developers on Android after all. In the face of sustained community dissatisfaction with its developer verification requirement, Google has given Android users an out.…

CISPE files antitrust complaint, demands interim measures to stop what it calls chip giant's 'ongoing abuse'

A lobbying trade body for smaller cloud providers is asking the European Commission to impose interim measures blocking Broadcom from terminating the VMware Cloud Service Provider program, calling the decision a death sentence for some tech suppliers and an illegal squeeze on customer choice.…

Meta is partially reversing its decision to drop VR support for Horizon Worlds, keeping VR access for existing Unity-based games while shifting future development to a new flatscreen-focused Horizon Engine. UploadVR reports: If you somehow missed it, on Tuesday Meta officially announced that its Horizon Worlds "metaverse" platform would drop VR support in June, meaning it would only be available as a flatscreen experience for the web and smartphones. But now, in an "ask me anything" session on his Instagram page, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth says the company has decided to "keep Horizon Worlds working in VR for existing games to support the fans who've reached out." Bosworth says this specifically applies to worlds developed with the Horizon Unity runtime, suggesting it applies to those built inside VR or with the Horizon Desktop Editor, but not those built for the new Horizon Engine with Horizon Studio. The picture painted here is of a clean technical break, with the legacy Unity version of Horizon Worlds continuing to support VR, and the new Horizon Engine focusing fully on flatscreen. This VR support will continue through the Horizon Worlds VR app, which Bosworth says will stay on Quest's store "for the foreseeable future". Specific worlds will not be recommended by the operating system, though, and nor will they be seen in the storefront. Horizon Worlds will be just another app on the store. As for the reason behind not supporting VR in Horizon Engine, Bosworth repeated the explanation he's been giving for two months now -- "because that's where most of the consumer and creator energy already was, and so we're leaning into that."

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Better than seismometers?

Fiber-optic cables could be used to detect moonquakes, offering a simpler way to gather seismic data to support future missions.…

OpenAI announced it's acquiring developer tooling startup Astral to strengthen its Codex AI coding assistant, which has over 2 million weekly users and has seen a three-fold increase in user growth since the start of the year. CNBC reports: "Through it all, though, our goal remains the same: to make programming more productive. To build tools that radically change what it feels like to build software," Astral's founder and CEO Charlie Marsh wrote in a blog post. The company's acquisition of Astral is still subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval.

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