TheRegister

Two of the Google Cloud developers who were hit with bills for thousands of dollars following unauthorized API calls to Gemini models have had their bills reversed, the users told The Register in recent days. But Google plans to continue automatically expanding users' spending limits, leaving them and countless other customers vulnerable to bills they cannot afford, whether from fraud or a sudden traffic surge. Australia-based developer Isuru Fonseka – whose usage bill skyrocketed to $17,000 in minutes after Google automatically upgraded his $250 spending tier when a hacker took control of his account – told us that he was happy to put this behind him. “It’s so good. It felt like they were just giving me the run around until your article. I just hope they fix it properly for everyone,” he said. “It’s great that the article was able to get the refund but it’s sad that it had to go to that level for them to process it urgently.” Despite refunding his money, Google seems to have lost a customer. Fonseka said that he has since ensured his API cannot be used with Google’s stable of AI products, and will likely try one of the independent foundation models if he needs those features. “I’ve disabled Gemini on everything – if I ever plan to use AI on my projects, I’m better off using it via a different service such as OpenRouter or going directly to one of the other LLM providers – just as a way to keep Gemini out of my account and the risk as low as possible,” he said. Fonseka said he was blindsided by a Google policy that allowed the company to automatically upgrade a user’s billing tier without permission or adequate warning. He had thought by signing up for a user tier with a $250 spending cap that his bills would be restricted to that amount. It was only after attackers exploited his API key that he learned Google would upgrade the cap automatically based on his history of spending. While Google acknowledged that the automatic tier upgrades allowed credential hijackers to rack up thousands of dollars in bills in cases like the one Fonseka described to The Register, it said it has not reconsidered the policy. In a statement to The Register, Google said that it wants to prioritize access to Google Cloud services without interruption, preferring to prevent service outages over respecting users' budget preferences. “With our automated growth tiers, we helped businesses scale as usage increased, built on their historic reputation of payments and usage,” a Google spokesperson told us in a statement. “This prevents their business having a hard service outage once they pass an artificial system quota.” Tiers vs spending caps There is some confusion between Google's usage tiers and its newly introduced spending caps, and Google’s documentation hasn't helped much. Google says its users can set their usage tiers not to exceed a certain spending level. For example the maximum spending allowed by a Tier 1 user like Fonseka is $250. However, if the account is older than 30 days and if, over the lifetime of their work with Google, they have spent at least $1,000, then Google will automatically allow that account to spend up to $100,000. So good customers have the most to fear from fraud or from an unexpected spike in usage. In several cases shared on social media, Google users were only aware of this after their credit cards were billed thousands of dollars. On April 22, Google introduced a trial of hard caps on spending within Google Cloud, but those are in a preview and are approved on a case-by-case basis. "We’re excited to announce that Spend Caps are coming soon to Google Cloud. Designed to work with Google Cloud Budgets, FinOps and DevOps can set budgets that enforce automated cost boundaries (caps) at the project level for AIS, Agent Platform, Cloud Run, Cloud Run Functions, and Maps," Google wrote. "These caps alert and ultimately pause API traffic once your set budget is reached, but leave your resources intact. If you need the traffic to resume, simply suspend the Spend Cap." Spend caps can only be set per project for a single, eligible service, Google said. Eligible services for this preview include Gemini API, Agent Platform (previously known as VertexAI), Cloud Run, Cloud Run Functions, Maps, Google said. Users who apply for a spending cap will have their submissions reviewed on a “one to two week basis” and customers are added in the order they submitted. “Once onboarded, you will receive an email with instructions on how to access the feature as well as details on how to submit feedback,” Google writes in its sign up page. Rod Danan, CEO of Prentus, a company that helps job applicants with interview preparation and tracks job placements for universities, told The Register earlier this week that he saw his bill skyrocket to $10,000 in just 30 minutes of usage by attackers who exploited his public API key. Google forgave the charges on Thursday, he said. “They got back to me today agreeing to a refund,” he told us. “It's definitely relieving. You want to focus on the business. You don't want to have to focus on going and getting refunds from some crazy charges.” He said the stress of running a startup is hard enough without the addition of fighting one of the largest companies in the world imposing erroneous five-figure charges. “I'm happy that it's behind me. I wish it was easier,” he said. “I've learned, yeah, definitely don't give up. Be annoying whenever something is wrong and just keep pushing. Again, try to make it as public as possible, get louder and louder until the people you need to hear you actually hear you.” Google said any unauthorized use of API keys will be investigated and it historically has treated customers compassionately when there is clear evidence of fraud or error. “We take reports of credential abuse and the financial security of our customers extremely seriously; and as you know are investigating these specific cases you have pointed to and we will work directly with any impacted users to resolve charges resulting from fraudulent activity,” Google said. ®

Prices in the United States' largest wholesale power market have nearly doubled in the past year thanks to demand from datacenters. And an independent watchdog predicts things will only get worse without some serious changes. The PJM Interconnection serves all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia in the eastern US, including Northern Virginia, that’s got the densest cluster of datacenters in the world. The surge in wholesale power costs across PJM was outlined on Thursday by Monitoring Analytics, a firm that serves as the official market monitor for the Interconnection, in its Q1 2026 state of the market report. According to the report, the total cost per megawatt-hour (MWh) of wholesale power rose from $77.78 in the first three months of 2025 to $136.53 in the same period this year, an increase of 75.5 percent year over year. Monitoring Analytics didn’t mince words in its report, identifying datacenter load growth as the main driver of recent capacity market conditions and rising prices in PJM. “Data center load growth is the primary reason for recent and expected capacity market conditions, including total forecast load growth, the tight supply and demand balance, and high prices,” the report reads. “But for data center growth, both actual and forecast, the capacity market would not have seen the same tight supply demand conditions.” As for what might come next, the report doesn’t ignore the likely outcome of the current situation, either. “The price impacts on customers have been very large and are not reversible,” the report states, but the bad news doesn’t stop there. “The price impacts will be even larger in the near term unless the issues associated with data center load are addressed in a timely manner.” Based on the rest of the report, a timely resolution to the datacenter load issue shouldn’t be expected, at least not in a way that’ll benefit locals. For starters, Monitoring Analytics found that - like pretty much everywhere right now - power grids aren’t ready for the datacenter boom. PJM has taken steps to upgrade its power commitment and dispatch software to better operate its grid, but planned upgrades have been delayed multiple times with no planned implementation date on the calendar, per the report. “The current supply of capacity in PJM is not adequate to meet the demand from large data center loads and will not be adequate in the foreseeable future,” Monitoring Analytics asserted. Current plan: Shift the risk to everyone else PJM has been planning a one-time backstop auction to procure new power generation for datacenter projects in the region at the request of the Trump administration and the governors of the states it serves, but Monitoring Analytics isn’t convinced the Interconnection is going about the process in the right way. The currently proposed auction structure, says the watchdog, would “generally shift significant risk to other PJM customers,” which is a temptation the group says “should be resisted.” “Other PJM customers, whether residential, commercial or industrial, should not be treated as a free source of insurance, or collateral, or financing for data centers,” the report continued. “Yet that is what most of the proposals related to a backstop auction actually do.” As for what PJM ought to be doing, you probably won’t need to rack your brain to figure that out: Monitoring Analytics says datacenters ought to be required to bring their own power. Such a rule, says the group, should include fast-track options for interconnection for BYOP datacenters, and otherwise a queue that would only connect datacenters when there is adequate capacity to serve them. “This broad bring-your-own new generation solution to the issues created by the addition of unprecedented amounts of large data center load does not require a continued massive wealth transfer through ongoing shortage pricing,” the analysts argue. When asked for its response to the problems raised by the Monitoring Analytics report, PJM told us that it was fully aware of the impact of electricity cost increases on its customers. “PJM is working with states and member companies to address these consumer impacts on multiple fronts, including extending market caps put in place since the 2025/2026 auction, authorizing multiple transmission expansion projects that are now in development, and reforming wholesale electricity market rules,” the Interconnection told us. Monitoring Analytics didn’t respond to questions. Americans have become increasingly hostile to new datacenter projects driven by the AI boom, with 71 percent of respondents to a Gallup survey saying they opposed DC projects in their neighborhoods. Projects in multiple states have been abandoned recently due to pushback from locals, many of whom are concerned not only with electrical price increases, noise, and eyesores, but environmental harm as well. ®

Last month, Mitchell Hashimoto, HashiCorp co-founder, publicly declared that he was moving his popular open source Ghostty terminal emulator project from GitHub. GitHub runs the world’s largest service built on the Git distributed version control system, created by Linus Torvalds. Once an enthusiastic user, Hashimoto grew disillusioned with service disruptions, and increasingly slow pull requests. “This is no longer a place for serious work if it just blocks you out for hours per day, every day,” he wrote. Hashimoto was quick to defend Git itself: “The issue isn't Git, it's the infrastructure we rely on around it: issues, PRs, Actions, etc.” Many have blamed GitHub’s performance on Microsoft, which acquired the company in 2018. But to be fair, GitHub itself has been experiencing heavier-than-expected traffic thanks to a proliferation of AI-generated pull requests. In 2025, GitHub saw a 206 percent year-over-year growth in AI-generated projects measured by the use of Bash shell scripts, a widespread way of running agents. And more AI code means more bugs. Research from GitClear found that AI-generated code heaped 10.83 issues per pull request, compared to 6.45 for the old-fashioned human variety. Our new agentic workforce is raising big questions about how the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC) should evolve, and if Git should come along. “Agents are nudging us toward a continuous flow,” warned Peco Karayanev, co-founder of DevOps platform provider Autoptic, which bridges Git-based deployments with observability tools for agent-based remediation. Autoptic’s entire user base runs on some form of Git, either homebrew or from a service provider like GitLab. Given the volume and magnitude of changes across repos, “we need git to start operating in a more continuous mode,” Karayanev wrote in an email interview. Git operations, especially when used in GitOps-style automated deployments, still need to be managed by people. Updates, commits, pushes, merges are often yoked into sequences of “stop/go” episodes where someone has to hit enter on the keyboard a few times to continue the workflow, Karayanev noted. This model may not hold up once agents start getting priority. A butler for Git Git has always had its share of critics, especially those who use the tool daily. There may not be another piece of software that is so widely adopted and yet so inscrutable. Torvalds and other Linux kernel developers built Git in 2005 after frustrations with trying to shoehorn Linux code into the commercial BitKeeper tool. Linux, a global group project of mammoth proportions, required a distributed version control system able to support non-linear development of thousands of parallel branches. Like any distributed system, Git can be difficult to understand. One of the co-founders of GitHub, Scott Chacon co-wrote a book on using Git (2009’s Pro Git) and still he finds himself occasionally flummoxed by the version control system. There are still “sharp edges” to Git, Chacon told The Register. “There's a lot of stuff that it doesn't do very well from a usability standpoint,” he said. Chacon co-founded GitButler as a way to “rethink the porcelain” of Git, to make Git more suitable to modern workflows. (Last month, GitButler received $17 million in venture capital funding). Think of GitButler as a super-powered Git client. It allows the developer to work on two different branches simultaneously, using a technique called virtual branching. It reconciles the code a developer is working on with the upstream code. They can reorder commits, or edit the comments of a previous commit. It offers richer metadata about the files being worked on. It can show which commits are unique to that branch. Best of all, it eliminates what many developers call “rebase hell,” where merges into an updated codebase must be checked one at a time, a problem GitButler solves by keeping the user’s code synchronized with what is upstream. Many of these actions GitButler offers can be done through the Git command itself – although Git’s command language, and its rules, can be so obtuse that “you will probably make a mistake at some point,” Chacon said. A Git for agents Chacon believes GitHub’s current reliability issues stem from the current tsunami of agentic work. This is “ironic” because GitHub was built to scale Git, he said. “But an influx of agents is pushing the service to the brink.” The problem lies not with Git itself, but with everyone using one service, Chacon argued. Last year, GitHub had about 180 million users working across 630 million repositories – with 121 million created in 2025 alone, according to the company’s most recent annual Octoverse report. “From the longer-term perspective, it doesn't need to be like this,” he argued. Maybe Git should be run locally, mirrored globally and managed with clients … such as GitButler, Chacon suggested. Perhaps Git-based version control systems could be customized for specific industry verticals. We need to think about how we “distribute these systems more,” he said. “Git is designed to be distributed but we’re not distributing it,” he said. GitButler has created a command line interface specifically for agents. It was designed to give MCP servers an integrated map of the repository, which otherwise would require stitching together multiple Git commands. The Virtual Files concept allows the agent to work on a section of code that is also being worked on by a developer, or another agent. These are changes that point to a rethinking of how a Git workflow should run. “I think all of these systems should fundamentally change, because all of our workflows have changed, right? There needs to be different, sort of primitives for how to deal with these problem sets,” Chacon said. A tip from gaming development One company that wants its platform to replace Git altogether is Diversion, which has built an eponymous distributed version control system initially pitched for large-scale game design. “Git's architecture is actually an issue that prevents scaling,” argues Diversion CEO Sasha Medvedovsky in an interview with The Register. “Fundamentally it's an architecture problem that can't be fixed and is a bottleneck for end users and hosting services.” Git is a distributed system insofar as every user, or hosted service, requires a dedicated database (much like blockchain). “It's not distributed in the regular sense but rather replicated,” he wrote in an exchange with The Register on LinkedIn. Operations run on a single thread, making concurrent operations impossible. As a result, the larger the repository, the slower the commit operations – a deadly combination for fast-paced agentic software development, Medvedovsky noted. Of course, every CEO will have their talking points ready about a competitor’s weaknesses (Diversion is finalizing a blog post with hard numbers about Git and GitHub performance). But there are a growing number of other initiatives around prepping Git for the challenging times ahead. Perhaps most notable is Jujutsu, a Git-compatible distributed version control system, stewarded by Google senior software engineer Martin von Zweigbergk. Like GitButler, Jujutsu (jj) aims to eliminate a lot of the annoyances that come with Git. It includes an undo button and the ability to keep committing even when there is a conflict. And because everything written in C must be recast into Rust these days, long-time Git contributor Sebastian Thiel started a project called Gitoxide to rebuild Git in Rust. Potential benefits include significant performance improvements through multicore processing, and the much-needed memory safety that comes with Rust. Will Git 3 solve all the problems? Git’s chief maintainer is Junio Hamano, who took the reins from Torvalds in 2005. And he remains busy keeping Git current. At FOSDEM this February, core Git contributor and GitLab engineering manager Patrick Steinhardt discussed some of the changes coming in the next version of Git, version 3, which is gradually being rolled out this year. One of the chief improvements will be in the way Git manages the commit references, the IDs that point to each change being made. Surprisingly, this operation is a real bottleneck for the software. “The design is inefficient,” Steinhardt told the audience. Every time a programmer commits a code change, it gets recorded in a “packed-refs” file, which saves time by not giving each commit its own reference file. As projects grow larger, however, it takes longer for Git to amend or to delete a reference in packed-refs (One GitLab repo has a packed-refs file of more than 20 million references, Steinhardt said). This is especially problematic when you have multiple, simultaneous readers and writers of that file. And just forget about getting a consistent view of all the references. The freshly implemented Reftable feature, which will be the default in Git 3.0, stores references in an indexable binary format. The Git folks borrowed this concept from the Eclipse Foundation’s JGit Java implementation of Git. Reftable allows for block updates, eliminating the need to rewrite a 2 GB-sized file for a single entry. And it is much faster for reading, which would pave the way for Git supporting larger, more sprawling repositories – perfect for an ever-busy agentic workforce. For nearly two decades, Git has proved to be the version control system of choice for geeks worldwide. But even with these new features and various third-party enhancements, can it retain relevance for a new generation of agentically enhanced coders? The battle is on. ®

Sure, AI agents such as Mythos can find security vulnerabilities in software, but the bigger question is whether they can turn those flaws into functional exploits that work in the real world. After all, many AI-discovered bugs prove minor or difficult to weaponize. New research, however, suggests frontier models can indeed develop working exploits when directed to do so. To better understand the rapidly changing security landscape, computer scientists from UC Berkeley, Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy, UC Santa Barbara, Arizona State University, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google decided to build ExploitGym, a benchmark for evaluating the exploitation capabilities of AI agents. This is not an entirely disinterested set of investigators – Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google all sell AI services. And both Anthropic and OpenAI have talked up the risk of leading models Claude Mythos Preview and GPT-5.5 while selling access to government partners. Since Anthropic announced Mythos in early April, the security community has been critical of the company's approach, described by some as fear-mongering. And various security experts have made the case that even commercially available AI models can find security flaws. Nonetheless, Mythos and GPT-5.5 outshine their peers in ExploitGym, as described in the paper, "ExploitGym: Can AI Agents Turn Security Vulnerabilities into Real Attacks?" ExploitGym consists of 898 real vulnerabilities found in applications, Google's V8 JavaScript engine, and the Linux kernel. Its workout consists of presenting an AI agent with a vulnerability and proof-of-concept input that triggers it, to see whether the agent can create an exploit capable of arbitrary code execution. According to the UC Berkeley Center for Responsible Decentralized Intelligence, Mythos Preview successfully exploited 157 test instances and GPT-5.5 managed 120 in the allotted two-hour window. "Even when standard security defenses like ASLR or the V8 sandbox were turned on, a meaningful number of exploits still worked," the boffins wrote in a blog post. "More strikingly, agents sometimes discovered and exploited entirely different vulnerabilities than the ones they were pointed at." The agents (CLI + model) tested were Claude Code with Claude Opus 4.6, Claude Opus 4.7, Claude Mythos Preview, and GLM-5.1; Codex CLI with GPT-5.4/GPT-5.5; and Gemini CLI with Gemini 3.1 Pro. And even the ancient models released in February (Opus 4.6 and Gemini 3.1 Pro) had some success. The researchers say that one of their more interesting findings is that these models sometimes went "off-script" in capture-the-flag (CTF) environments, where an agent has to find and retrieve some hidden value. This was most evident with Mythos Preview and GPT-5.5. The former succeeded in 226 CTF exercises but only used the intended bug in 157 instances, while the latter captured 210 flags and only used the intended bug in 120 of those cases. The authors also note that while there was some overlap in the exploits discovered, the various models found different exploits. This suggests applying a diverse set of models might be advantageous both in attack and defense scenarios. It's worth adding that ExploitGym tests were done with security guardrails disabled. When the test was re-run on GPT-5.5 with default safety filters active, the model refused 88.2 percent of the time before making any tool call. The Register, however, has seen security researchers craft prompts in a way to avoid triggering refusals. So safeguards of that sort have limits. "Our results show that autonomous exploit development by frontier AI agents is no longer a hypothetical capability," the authors state in their paper. "While current agents are not yet reliable across all targets, they already exploit a non-trivial fraction of real-world vulnerabilities, including complex targets such as kernel components." ®

FOSS It happens all the time. You have a file on one of your devices and you need to have it on another one. You could put the file on a USB flash drive and walk it over (the so-called sneakernet), you could email it to yourself, or you could try to set up some kind of network resource. LocalSend, a free open source tool, makes the process of sharing files on a LAN easier than anything else and it works on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and more. The Reg FOSS desk is not routinely a fan of Apple fondleslabs. (We’ve tried, but they’re a bit too locked down for us.) Saying that, from what we’ve heard, LocalSend is a bit like Apple’s AirDrop but for grown-up computers and non-Apple kit. For Linux Mint users, it’s a bit like the included Warpinator – and as that page says, don’t search for it and go to warpinator.com, as it’s a fake site. It’s a free download from its GitHub page and is also available in Canonical’s Snap store and on Flathub. You run it, and it gives that computer a cute nickname in the form of (adjective)+(fruit). Run it on two computers on the same local network, and they should see each other. You click “send” on one, and “receive” on the other, and that’s about it: pick the file or folder, and off it goes. LocalSend isn’t very big – the installation packages are mostly around the 15 MB mark – so it’s pretty fast to download or install. This vulture found and tried it when we downloaded a just-over-4 GB file and then worked out we’d downloaded it onto the wrong OS on the wrong machine. It takes a good few minutes to download several gigabytes – we live on a small, remote island, where our 100 Mbps broadband costs about four times what 1 Gbps broadband used to cost in Czechia – and it seemed worth trying to transfer it rather than grab another copy. The gist of the idea is that LocalSend is quicker than using a USB key. You know the sort of process: find a big enough USB key, check it has space, copy the file onto it, eject it, go to the other machine, insert it, and copy the file off again. Even if it goes perfectly, LocalSend is still less hassle. It’s also easier than configuring some kind of temporary folder-sharing setup between different OSes on different computers with different login names. (The Irish Sea wing of Vulture Towers recently moved house and has yet to finalize his office layout and reconnect his NAS servers. It’s climbing to the top of the to-do list, though.) LocalSend is also available on both the iOS App Store and Google Play Store, so it can help for devices that you can’t readily plug a USB key into. The transfer happens across your local network, so it won’t use up bandwidth on metered internet connections, and will even work if your internet connection is down. Warpinator is Mint’s solution – but in our case, we initially needed to move the file from Windows to macOS. Both have ports of Warpinator, but both seem unofficial, and while the machines could see one another, file transfers failed. We’ve also tried SyncThing, but it’s not good at keeping machines in sync when they’re rarely on at the same time – and we’ve had problems with it recursively duplicating directory trees into themselves so deeply that no GUI tool could delete them. Ideally, you should have an always-on home server that also runs SyncThing – and if you have one of those, then for one-off file transfers, you don’t really need SyncThing: just copy it to the server, and off again. LocalSend just worked, and for us, it worked identically whether either end was running Windows, Linux, or macOS. We couldn’t ask for more. ®

Microsoft has laid out plans for how it and its partners will deal with iffy drivers causing stability problems in the company's flagship operating system. Dubbed the Driver Quality Initiative (DQI), Microsoft has outlined four pillars to support the program. These are Architecture – hardening kernel-mode drivers and enabling third-party kernel-mode drivers to transition to user mode; Trust – raising the bar for trusted partners and drivers; Lifecycle – addressing outdated and low-quality drivers; and Quality Measures – going beyond simple crash counts to measure driver quality. It's all very laudable, although, aside from references in the architecture pillar, Microsoft's WinHEC 2026 announcement said little about how Redmond ended up in a situation where drivers can run at a privilege level that allows a failure to leave the operating system hopelessly borked. The infamous CrowdStrike incident of 2024, which crashed millions of Windows devices, ably demonstrated the dangers of drivers running around in the Windows kernel. Microsoft later blamed a 2009 undertaking with the European Commission for how that situation came to be, although it skipped over the whole not-creating-an-API-so-security-vendors-didn't-need-kernel-access part. In the months after the CrowdStrike incident (or "learnings", as Microsoft delicately put it), the Windows Resiliency Initiative was announced. According to Microsoft, "DQI builds on the learnings and infrastructure established through the Windows Resiliency Initiative." Drivers are the bane of many Windows users. A faulty driver can make the entire operating system unstable. Sure, a customer might wonder how such a situation has been allowed to happen. Still, we are where we are, and dealing with it requires Microsoft to harden the operating system and provide ways for vendors to work with Windows that don't involve breaking down the kernel's doors. Those same vendors need to ensure that drivers are high-quality and reliable. "Driver and platform quality," wrote Microsoft, "is central to the customer experience." The company has espoused much in recent months about how it intends to "fix" Windows after a disastrous few years that have taken a hatchet to consumer confidence. Fripperies like moving the taskbar and rethinking Redmond's relentless pushing of Copilot are one thing. Dealing with driver-related crashes is quite another. WinHEC 2026 has shown that at least some within Microsoft are determined to deal with the fundamentals, and that requires taking the Windows maker's hardware partners along for the ride. ®

Google is testing a storage reduction for new accounts unless a phone number is provided. The change the Chocolate Factory is trialing affects new accounts, reducing the free storage from 15 GB to a miserly 5 GB unless the user provides a telephone number. Not all new users are impacted. We created a Gmail account today, and were given the full 15 GB of storage without being required to provide a phone number (although it did ask for one for activation code purposes). The test is also regional and, it must be emphasized, is just that at this stage – a test. However, it could point to a future where tech vendors demand more data in return for using a 'free' service. Arguably, we're living in that future right now. A Google spokesperson told The Register: "We're testing a new storage policy for new accounts created in select regions that will help us continue to provide a high quality storage service to our users, while encouraging users to improve their account security and data recovery." A Reddit thread on the matter contained all manner of theories regarding what the data might be used for, including nefarious commercial purposes. Judging by the screenshot, Google is trying to curb people who create multiple accounts to gain more storage. 15 GB is not a lot of storage these days, particularly given the relentless growth in media file sizes. That said, a drop to 5 GB would bring Google into line with Apple, which gives customers the same amount unless they upgrade to iCloud+. Microsoft gives users 15 GB of free Outlook.com storage, and Proton Mail's free tier gives users 1 GB (initially 500 MB until a starting checklist is completed). Should the test become reality, it could be seen as yet another step on a worrying path. Sure, you can have more free storage: sign here and agree to hand over these bits of your personal information. As demand for storage increases, vendor offerings are looking ever more miserly, and a cut from Google, even with the best of intentions, will rankle. Then again, if you are concerned about privacy and your personal information being used for commercial purposes, it could be that, for all its convenience, Gmail might not be the right tool for you. Reducing storage to 5 GB for new users (existing users aren't affected) unless a telephone number is handed over might be the nudge that some users need to look elsewhere for their email needs. ®

More than two years after launch, NASA's Psyche mission will whizz past Mars on May 15, using the planet's gravity to tweak its trajectory and accelerate on to its asteroid destination. The spacecraft, which was launched on October 13, 2023, will pass just 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) above the surface of the red planet at 12,333 mph (19,848 kph) on its way to the metal-rich asteroid, Psyche. In February, the spacecraft's thrusters were fired for 12 hours to refine its approach to Mars. That refinement played its part in today's flyby. However, it won't be until a Doppler shift is recorded in the signals from the spacecraft as it passes Mars that scientists will be able to definitively confirm its new speed and trajectory. These techniques are not new. Gravity assist maneuvers have been a thing since the dawn of the space age, and were theorized long before. One of the most famous beneficiaries is the Voyager mission, which took advantage of a rare planetary alignment to undertake a "Grand Tour" of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The trajectory allowed significant propellant to be saved. And, of course, the use of gravity assists highlights the work undertaken by boffins in trajectory planning to calculate exactly how a spacecraft should be launched and what corrections are needed to achieve the required precision. Psyche is due to reach its destination in 2029, and the Mars flyby will allow scientists to check out the spacecraft's payload. For example, the multispectral imager will capture thousands of observations of Mars. According to NASA, Sarah Bairstow, Psyche's mission planning lead at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said: "This is our first opportunity in flight to calibrate Psyche's imager with something bigger than a few pixels, and we’ll also make observations with the mission's other science instruments." A bit of bonus science is always welcome, as well as a rehearsal for the main event, when Psyche reaches its destination. "Ultimately, though, the only reason for this flyby is to get a little help from Mars to speed us up and tilt our trajectory in the direction of the asteroid Psyche," said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, principal investigator for Psyche at the University of California, Berkeley. "But if all our instruments are powered up, and we can do important testing and calibration of the science instruments, that would be the icing on the cake." ®

AI monger Anthropic wants America and its allies to tighten measures aimed at curbing China's AI progress, warning of the consequences if "authoritarian governments" take the lead rather than Uncle Sam. In a lengthy missive posted on its website, the San Francisco-based org says it expects AI to deliver "transformational economic and societal impacts" in the coming years, and whether the transition goes well depends on where the most capable systems are built first. Since the technology is advancing swiftly, democratic countries have only a limited time in which to act, Anthropic believes. The measures it wants to see are nothing new: enforcing tighter export controls on chips used for AI development, such as Nvidia's GPUs, and cutting off access to American AI models. Recent history suggests these controls "have been incredibly successful," it says. But if Chinese researchers are only several months behind the US in AI capabilities, as many experts estimate, how successful can those efforts have been? AI labs in China have only built models that come close to those in America because of their talent and their knack for exploiting loopholes to get around export controls, Anthropic claims, along with distillation attacks that "illicitly extract the innovations of American companies." Many will suspect this is Anthropic's chief motivation in calling for action against China. Back in February, the Claude model maker accused China-based rivals including DeepSeek of using distillation to train their models by siphoning knowledge from Anthropic's own. As The Register pointed out at the time, accusing China of copying, while using content created by others to train your own models, shows a staggering lack of self-awareness from the AI industry. Anthropic's sermon also shows blinkered thinking. It implies that China can only advance by riding on America's coattails, and is incapable of innovating. This is despite the shockwaves generated by the release of the DeepSeek R1 model early in 2025, believed to be on a par with the best US models. Numerous reports also indicate that Chinese organizations have made huge strides with domestically developed AI silicon, and Beijing even tried to discourage tech companies in the country from buying and using Nvidia chips. Anthropic sets out two scenarios for what the world could look like in 2028, a date when it expects "transformative AI systems" to have emerged. In the first scenario, America has "successfully defended its compute advantage," and "democracies set the rules and norms around AI." The second has China overtaking the US, leading to AI norms and rules being shaped by authoritarian regimes, with the best models enabling "automated repression at scale." Another problem with Anthropic's plan is that many countries, especially in Europe, view both American and Chinese AI supremacy as a threat to democracy. There is a concerted push in Europe for "digital sovereignty" to minimize reliance on US technology, for example. Others warn it could erode democracy in America itself. Anthropic can draw little comfort from the Trump administration, which has a constantly shifting attitude to China. Export controls were said not to be high on the agenda during the President's trip to Beijing this week, and it was reported that the US has now cleared around 10 Chinese firms to buy Nvidia's second-most powerful AI chip, the H200. ®

Microsoft has confirmed a vulnerability in on-premises Exchange Server that could result in surprise script execution in victims' browsers. Tracked as CVE-2026-42897, the flaw affects Outlook Web Access (OWA) and can be triggered by a specially crafted email opened in OWA, assuming "certain interaction conditions are met." The prize for attackers is arbitrary JavaScript execution in the mark's browser context. The advisory describes the flaw as a spoofing vulnerability stemming from cross-site scripting, which will set alarm bells ringing for administrators, and it appears the vulnerability is being exploited. The bug was assigned a CVSS score of 8.1. Exchange Server 2016, 2019, and the latest version, Exchange Server Subscription Edition (SE), are all affected regardless of their update level. A mitigation has been released via the Exchange Emergency Mitigation (EM) Service. However, Microsoft warned the mitigation might break other things – inline images might stop working in the recipient's OWA reading pane (use attachments instead) and the OWA Print Calendar functionality might not work (use a screenshot or the Outlook Desktop client). Finally, OWA Light might not work properly. Microsoft deprecated this in 2024, so affected users should consider an upgrade. The mitigation can also be applied manually in scenarios where customers are not using the EM service. These might be disconnected or air-gapped environments – exactly the sort of environments where on-premises Exchange tends to linger. Microsoft is working on a full security update, although only the Exchange SE version will be publicly available. Exchange 2016 and 2019 customers will receive it only if enrolled in Period 2 of the Exchange Server Extended Security Updates (ESU) program. The second period of Exchange Server ESU kicked off this month, with Microsoft sternly warning that there would be no extensions past its end. The vulnerability does not affect Exchange Online. Microsoft has not given any details on how the exploit works, nor how widely it is being exploited. ®

Cisco admins face emergency patch duty after Switchzilla disclosed a max-severity make-me-admin bug affecting Catalyst SD-WAN Controller and Manager. Switchzilla dropped an advisory for CVE-2026-20182 (10.0) on Thursday, saying that both components, formerly known as vSmart and vManage, were vulnerable in all deployment types, and that fixes were available. The bug allows unauthenticated remote attackers to bypass authentication and gain admin privileges on an affected system. According to Rapid7, whose researchers Stephen Fewer and Jonah Burgess found the vulnerability, attackers exploiting CVE-2026-20182 could then start issuing arbitrary NETCONF commands. It means they could steal data, intercept traffic, manipulate an organization's firewall rules, or just bring the network down, opening up opportunities for attackers of all stripes: state-backed, financially motivated, hacktivists – you name it. Offering a high-level overview of the vulnerability, Cisco said: "This vulnerability exists because the peering authentication mechanism in an affected system is not working properly. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted requests to the affected system. "A successful exploit could allow the attacker to log in to an affected Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller as an internal, high-privileged, non-root user account. Using this account, the attacker could access NETCONF, which would then allow the attacker to manipulate network configuration for the SD-WAN fabric." Cisco confirmed that, in May 2026, it became aware that CVE-2026-20182 had been exploited as a zero-day, although it did not attribute the activity. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) also added CVE-2026-20182 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, which is reserved for the security flaws that are both actively being exploited and threaten federal agencies. The US cyber agency gave Federal Civilian Executive Branch agencies just three days to apply Cisco's patches. While CISA has set similarly short deadlines before, they are rare and typically reserved for vulnerabilities deemed especially urgent. There was no word of the bug being exploited in ransomware attacks. Cisco said in its advisory there are no workarounds available, and it "strongly recommends" applying the available fixes. Any admin responsible for their org's Cisco SD-WAN system should hunt through their logs, Cisco said, and be aware that indicators of compromise may appear among otherwise normal-looking operational logs. Specifically, they should be auditing the auth.log file at /var/log/auth.log for entries related to Accepted publickey for vmanage-admin from unknown or unauthorized IP addresses. Then, check those IP addresses against the configured System IPs that are listed in the Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager web UI, the vendor said. Cisco thanked the Rapid7 researchers, who first reported the vulnerability in early March after looking into a separate authentication bypass zero-day in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller (CVE-2026-20127, 10.0) from February. ®

Britain's media regulator has extracted a set of promises from X over illegal hate speech and terrorist content, suggesting that even "free speech absolutism" eventually meets a compliance department. Under commitments accepted by Ofcom, X said it will review and assess reports of suspected illegal terrorist and hate content from UK users within an average of 24 hours, with at least 85 percent handled within 48 hours through its dedicated UK reporting channel. The company also committed to engaging with external experts on how its reporting systems work, following several organizations' complaints that they were unclear whether reports submitted to X were even being received, let alone acted on. X also said it would withhold access in the UK to accounts operated by or on behalf of terrorist organizations proscribed in Britain if the accounts are reported for posting illegal terrorist content. Ofcom said X will now submit quarterly performance data over a 12-month period so the regulator can monitor whether the company is actually sticking to those promises. "Following intensive engagement carried out by Ofcom's online safety team, X have committed to implementing stronger protections for UK users, which we will now monitor closely," said Oliver Griffiths, Ofcom's Online Safety Group Director. "We have evidence that terrorist content and illegal hate speech is persisting on some of the largest social media sites. We are challenging them to tackle the problem and expect them to take firm action." The regulator launched a compliance investigation in December to examine whether major social media platforms have adequate systems to address illegal hate and terrorist material. Ofcom said evidence gathered alongside organizations including Tech Against Terrorism, Tell MAMA, and the Antisemitism Policy Trust pointed to illegal hate and terror content remaining visible across some of the internet's largest platforms. Ofcom said the issue was of "particular concern" following several recent antisemitic incidents and attacks on Jewish sites in Britain, including attacks in Manchester, Golders Green, and recent arson attempts in London. The watchdog also made clear this is not the end of its scrutiny of X, reminding the platform that Ofcom's separate investigation including issues related to Grok is ongoing and that it will continue to probe X's broader illegal content compliance systems. ®

Partner Content ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a global leading provider of integrated information and communication technology solutions, participated in GSMA M360 LATAM 2026. Ms. Chen Zhiping, Chief International Ecosystem Representative of ZTE, delivered a keynote speech entitled "Driving Future Business Model Restructuring — AI & Network Two-Way Integration" at the conference. Ms. Chen provided an in-depth analysis of the industrial value of the two-way integration of AI and networks, sharing ZTE's achievements in the Latin American market over the past two decades, its AI-Native network innovation practices, and its full-scenario intelligent solutions, helping Latin American operators complete their strategic upgrade from "connectivity providers" to "digital economy enablers". Facing the AI industry wave, ZTE released its global strategic vision in 2025: "All in AI, AI for All, Becoming a Leader in Connectivity and Intelligent Computing". Ms. Chen stated that this strategy is highly aligned with the core concepts of this GSMA Summit. In the future, ZTE will move beyond traditional network connectivity services, continuously upgrade its basic network capabilities, and comprehensively expand its AI and intelligent computing business layout. Through a two-way integration model of AI empowering the network and the network supporting AI, ZTE will reconstruct a new business model adapted to the AI era and activate new growth momentum for the Latin American digital economy. In terms of AI-enabled network upgrades, ZTE has pioneered the AI-Native network concept, deeply embedding AI capabilities into all network layers and processes to maximize network efficiency and optimize costs. In the wireless network field, ZTE's new 5G BBU integrates native intelligent computing capabilities, effectively improving the overall efficiency of hardware and software resources and increasing cell throughput by 20%. Simultaneously, by combining Super-N high-performance power amplifiers and AI intelligent optimization technology, equipment energy consumption is reduced by 38%. Currently, AAU and RRU products equipped with this technology have been deployed on a large scale in several Latin American countries, including Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru, with over 37,000 units deployed to date, saving local operators millions of dollars in electricity costs annually and achieving efficient, green, and intelligent network upgrades. Built upon AI-Native technology, the AIR Net advanced intelligent network solution enables commercial deployment of "autonomous driving" for networks, comprehensively revolutionizing operator operation and maintenance models and reducing overall TCO. This solution has already been commercially deployed in multiple locations globally. Currently, ZTE's intelligent network capabilities have obtained authoritative L4-level certification from the TM Forum, and its self-developed Co-Claw enterprise-level intelligent agent has been fully implemented internally, continuously improving network automation and intelligence levels and helping operators move towards advanced intelligent networks. In response to the complex and diverse network environment in Latin America, ZTE continues to implement scenario-based coverage solutions to bridge the regional digital divide. In indoor scenarios, ZTE has partnered with Chilean company Millicom to deploy the Qcell solution, achieving stable gigabit coverage throughout buildings. In remote rural scenarios, ZTE collaborates with Brazilian company Claro to implement the RuralPilot simplified rural network solution, addressing network coverage challenges in the vast Amazon region with its low cost and ease of maintenance. ZTE also offers a wide range of home coverage solutions, precisely matching the networking needs of different regions and scenarios in Latin America. Ms. Chen Zhiping stated that ZTE will continue to be rooted in the Latin American market, deepen the two-way integration and innovation of AI and networks, and continue to implement green, efficient, and intelligent full-stack ICT solutions to help local operators complete their strategic transformation, upgrade from traditional connectivity service providers to digital economy enablers, comprehensively meet the intelligent needs of industries and families in all scenarios, and work together to build a smart, inclusive, and sustainable new digital ecosystem in Latin America. Contributed by ZTE.

OpenAI says attackers behind the TanStack npm supply chain compromise stole internal credentials after reaching two employee devices, forcing the company to rotate signing certificates for several desktop products. The company disclosed this week that it had been caught up in the wider "Mini Shai-Hulud" campaign targeting npm ecosystems and developer infrastructure, though it said there was no evidence that customer data, production systems, or deployed software were compromised. OpenAI said the incident happened during a phased rollout of new supply chain security controls introduced after a previous Axios-related incident. According to the company, the two compromised employee devices had not yet received updated package management protections that would have blocked the malicious dependency. The attackers carried out "credential-focused exfiltration activity" against a limited set of internal repositories reachable from the affected employee machines, according to OpenAI. It said "only limited credential material was successfully exfiltrated from these code repositories." That was apparently enough to trigger a precautionary reset across multiple products. OpenAI is rotating the certificates used to sign macOS versions of ChatGPT Desktop, Codex App, Codex CLI, and Atlas, and is requiring users to update the affected software by June 12. The incident ties OpenAI to the increasingly messy supply chain campaign that has spent the past several weeks worming through npm ecosystems, CI/CD infrastructure, and GitHub Actions workflows. Security firm Socket linked the TanStack compromise to the broader "Mini Shai-Hulud" operation, which abused poisoned automation workflows and stolen publishing credentials to push malicious package updates into trusted software pipelines. Researchers tracking the wider Mini Shai-Hulud campaign have connected the activity to a threat group known as TeamPCP, which appears to have developed an unhealthy interest in poisoning npm ecosystems and rifling through developer credentials. TanStack confirmed this week that 84 malicious package versions spanning 42 @tanstack/* packages had been published after attackers compromised parts of its release infrastructure. The poisoned packages were designed largely to steal credentials, including GitHub tokens, cloud secrets, npm credentials, and CI/CD authentication material. The campaign appears linked to earlier Mini Shai-Hulud attacks involving SAP-related npm packages, suggesting the same credential-stealing operation is spreading across multiple developer ecosystems. OpenAI said it is continuing to investigate the incident and monitor for any downstream abuse tied to the stolen credentials. The reassuring news is that OpenAI says no production systems were breached. The less reassuring news is that attackers keep getting deeper into the software assembly line before anybody notices. ®

Partner Content In Indonesia, the magic of “Bumbu”, that perfect spice blend, creates unforgettable flavors. Today, in the digital world, an even grander "fusion" is taking place. Facing the challenge of unifying seperate networks across Indonesia's diverse geography, XLSMART partnered with ZTE on a landmark dual-network convergence project, integrating over 20,000 4G base stations and deploying more than 7,000 new 5G sites in just eight months. The initiative has launched the country's first nationwide 5G blanket coverage network, validated by Ookla as the fastest 5G network in H2 2025. Leveraging digital-intelligent tools and ecosystem collaboration, the project significantly enhanced coverage, capacity, and user experience for 73 million subscribers — turning complex delivery challenges into measurable gains in speed and efficiency. Fusion for the Future. Watch how the converged network is powering Indonesia's digital growth. Contributed by ZTE.

The British Army is to get 72 next-gen mobile artillery units, in the shape of a remote-controlled howitzer (RCH) module that mounts onto the Boxer armored vehicle already in service. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced a £1 billion ($1.35 billion) contract to provide the Army with a modern mobile system capable of providing artillery support against targets up to 70 km (44 miles) away. First deliveries of the RCH 155 units are expected in 2028, with a "minimum deployable capability" expected before the end of the decade. It follows a £52 million early capability demonstrator contract signed in December 2025. The RCH 155 is basically a 155 mm gun housed in a turreted artillery module mounted on the Boxer drive module. It is an auto-loading weapon, capable of firing eight rounds per minute. The unit features a fire control computer with integrated ballistics calculation, plus radio data transmission to a remote artillery control system. Boxer is an eight-wheeled (8x8), all-terrain vehicle designed to take a number of different bolt-on mission modules allowing it to fulfill various roles. The British Army has initially chosen just a few of these types, primarily the troop carrier variant, but also the ambulance module and command vehicle unit. According to the MoD, the barrel, breech, recoil system, and trunnions will be manufactured by German defense biz Rheinmetall at its large-caliber production facility in Telford, using British steel supplied by Sheffield Forgemasters. The Boxer drive modules/chassis, engine, and drivetrain that the weapon system sits on will be manufactured by the UK division of pan-European defense firm KNDS in Stockport. The Army is to receive a total of 623 of these. A new mobile artillery platform was needed to replace the UK's aging fleet of AS-90 self-propelled howitzers. These could easily be mistaken for a tank, thanks to their tracked chassis and turret-mounted gun. The last of these were donated to Ukraine over the past few years to help it fight Russia. The UK also procured a small number (14) of Archer mobile artillery systems as a stop-gap while a successor for AS-90 was selected. This is an automated 155 mm gun mounted on a 6x6 articulated truck chassis. "This major investment is defence delivering for the battlefield and for Britain's economy," said Defence Secretary John Healey MP. "By securing next-generation artillery with Germany, not only are we rearming to strengthen NATO against growing Russian aggression but also creating highly skilled jobs here in Britain." Ironically, Britain was one of the earliest partners in the Boxer joint venture, but withdrew from it in 2003 to focus on a different program, the Future Rapid Effect System (FRES). One strand of FRES eventually led to what is now known as the Ajax family of armored vehicles. You may have heard of it. The UK government announced it was rejoining the Boxer program in 2018 in order to meet its Mechanized Infantry Vehicle (MIV) requirement. ®

After years of turning public services into a maze of dead links, phone queues, and eligibility calculators, the UK government has unveiled the inevitable next step: an AI chatbot. The UK government on Friday announced the launch of "GOV.UK Chat," a generative AI assistant bolted into the GOV.UK app and trained on tens of thousands of pages of official guidance that Whitehall is boldly pitching as the "most comprehensive government-built chat tool in the world." Ministers say the system will help people navigate everything from maternity pay and retirement benefits to driving licenses and startup grants without having to dig through the bureaucratic swamp that is modern Britain. According to the government, some public sector call centers handle around 100,000 calls a day, which helps explain why ministers are suddenly very enthusiastic about citizens talking to software instead. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said people fed up with being stuck on hold should not have to spend hours wading through online guidance either, which sounds suspiciously like somebody inside government has finally used GOV.UK. "For too long, navigating government has felt like a full-time job," she said. "Whether you're a parent trying to find out what childcare you're entitled to, a first-time buyer working out which schemes you can access, or someone approaching retirement, you shouldn't have to spend time trawling through hundreds of web pages to get a straight answer." The rollout comes just months after polling showed plenty of Brits are already uneasy about AI spreading through public services. Concerns ranged from privacy and job losses to fears that dealing with the government will eventually mean getting stuck in an automated support maze when something important goes wrong. The government said human support will still be available alongside the chatbot, at least for the time being. Ministers are keen to stress that GOV.UK Chat is not deciding who gets benefits or owes tax. Right now, the system mostly pulls together existing guidance, calculators, and links from across GOV.UK rather than making decisions itself. Given Whitehall's uneven history with large technology projects, that's probably a wise decision. Still, it is not hard to see where this is heading. Today, the chatbot helps you find childcare support. A few years from now, it will probably be explaining why an algorithm flagged your wheelie bin for suspicious behavior. ®

British MPs are urging the government to tighten online safety laws, arguing social media companies should face the same kind of scrutiny as other products linked to serious harm. In a letter to Liz Kendall and Kanishka Narayan, shared with The Register, the UK's Science, Innovation and Technology Committee said there is now "strong and consistent evidence" linking social media use to harms affecting young people and warned that "no action is not an option." The committee, chaired by Chi Onwurah, said the current system leaves social media companies free to grow their youth user bases while avoiding meaningful responsibility for the subsequent fallout. "The status quo, where social media companies are neither accountable nor responsible for preventing harms, isn't acceptable," Onwurah said. "If any other consumer product caused these harms, it would've been recalled or changed." The intervention forms part of the government's "Growing up in the online world" consultation and follows a March evidence session examining arguments for and against restricting social media access for under-16s. The committee said it heard evidence from clinicians, bereaved parents, academics, child safety groups, and experts studying Australia's social media age limits, as well as accounts from young people and families concerned about harmful content and the effect social media is having on children's wellbeing. While the MPs stopped short of explicitly endorsing a blanket social media ban for teenagers, the letter makes clear the committee thinks ministers have spent too long relying on voluntary action from platforms whose business models still reward engagement above pretty much everything else. The committee said existing age restrictions should be properly enforced using "effective and privacy-preserving" age verification systems – rather than checks that can be bypassed by a drawn-on mustache – and called for stronger legal obligations requiring companies to filter illegal content and to block children from viewing harmful material. The letter also revisits the committee's earlier concerns about recommendation algorithms and how platforms deal with harmful and illegal posts, areas where MPs say previous proposals for reform went nowhere. MPs are now urging ministers to revisit those recommendations and bring forward fresh online safety legislation in the next parliamentary session. Particular attention was paid to algorithms and addictive design features. The committee argued that infinite scrolling and similar engagement mechanics should be designed out of platforms entirely, and warned that social media companies cannot keep pretending they are passive hosts while their recommendation systems actively shape what users see. The letter also warned that gaps in the UK's Online Safety Act mean some AI chatbots operating on closed databases currently fall outside the regime, something MPs said must be fixed before the next generation of online platforms disappears into yet another regulatory blind spot. ®

ON CALL Welcome to another installment of On Call, The Register's weekly reader-contributed column that celebrates the IT professionals who put their lives on pause to provide tech support at all hours. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Jemaine." In the early 1990s, he found himself in Hong Kong working as a database specialist on VAX/VMS systems. "We'd built a billing application for a telco client in Macau, and it had been running happily for some time," he told On Call. By the time the system needed its first major OS upgrade, Jemaine was therefore happy for the local crew to handle the job. His client had other ideas and, despite also arranging for two DBAs to be present during the upgrade, insisted he show up. This was not a hardship because the job coincided with the Macau Grand Prix and Jemaine wasn't required to be on site. The client had therefore provided him with a hotel room that, as luck would have it, had a view of the track! "A couple of friends ended up crashing my room, and we spent the weekend watching insane drivers hurl cars around an absurdly tight street circuit," Jemaine admitted. The client never called or paged, so after the race Jemaine was confident the upgrade was going well. He and his friends therefore consumed "several bottles of rich Portuguese red wine" and ordered a sumptuous meal. "Dessert had just arrived when my pager went off," he told On Call. Jemaine poured himself into a cab to his client's office and found a situation he described as "vague but clearly serious" because the billing application wouldn't start. "Judging by the silence and the stoic expressions, everyone was quietly panicking," Jemaine wrote. He soon learned that the client had already tried to fix the app by reinstalling the OS twice and had now decided the database was the source of the problem. Jemaine was told to wait while the DBAs reinstalled the database, which "gave me time to sit in a back room and sober up slightly," he admitted to On Call. The database rebuild finished at about 2 am, but the application still refused to start. The client then turned to Jemaine. "I was summoned and interrogated by the systems team," he said, and ran a quick check that showed the database was perfectly healthy – but the batch scheduler wasn't running. To probe that problem, Jemaine asked to speak with the lead developer – who, it turned out, was not on site. "An urgent page was sent, and fortunately he called back quickly. His suggestion was to step through the code. This meant compiling a large COBOL program I'd never seen before in DEBUG mode, then single-stepping through it over the phone with the developer." By now, an increasingly anxious semicircle of client staff was watching Jemaine's every move, and he felt like they were silently shifting blame in his direction. "At around 4 am, we found the failure point: batch queue submission. The call was returning a null error code. The developer was baffled." "I reached for the physical manual to see what the function actually did," Jemaine wrote. "And then, for reasons I still credit to the Portuguese wine gods, I asked a simple question: 'What account did you test this under?'" The developer immediately replied: "Administrator." Jemaine asked the OS upgrade team to run the application with administrator privileges, and it immediately worked. "The OS upgrade had introduced a new permission requirement for submitting jobs to the batch queue," Jemaine told On Call. So this was very much not his problem, and he was able to excuse himself and stagger home as the Sun started to rise. "Nobody from the company ever mentioned the incident to me again," he told On Call. "And I can't remember the name of the wine we were drinking." Have you been on call, decided nothing could possibly go wrong, and then been caught out? If so, click here to send On Call an email so we can tell your story on a future Friday. ®

Amazon Web Services has done something many others can’t achieve: Buy a bunch of Apple’s Mac Studio computers. Mac Studio is Apple’s workstation-grade machine and has been hard to find in recent weeks as Cupertino struggles to find enough RAM to fill them, and AI enthusiasts snap up stock to run tools like OpenClaw. At the time of writing, Apple advises buyers they’ll need to wait nine or ten weeks for a Mac Studio to arrive. The cloudy Macs AWS has racked and stacked pack Apple’s M3 Ultra SoC, Cupertino’s most powerful chip. Apple currently sells the Mac Studio with up to 96GB of RAM. AWS on Thursday started offering a cloudy M3 Ultra with 256GB of unified memory, a configuration The Register did not see as an option on Apple.com while preparing this article. The cloudy M3 Ultra machines run on actual Mac Studios packing a 28-core CPU, 60-core GPU, and 32-core Neural Engine. At the time of writing, AWS hadn’t updated its list of EC2 instance types to include the new M3 instances, so we can’t tell you what they’ll cost or if the cloud giant has departed from its past practice of renting bare metal machines rather than macOS VMs. Apple allows users to create and run macOS virtual machines, but only on Apple hardware and allows just two VMs per host. Cupertino also restricts use of VMs to four purposes: software development; testing during software development; using macOS Server; and personal, non-commercial use. AWS recommends its cloudy Macs as an ideal platform to build and test apps for all of Apple’s operating systems – even the visionOS that powers its unloved Vision Pro VR goggles. Amazon’s M3 Ultra Mac Studios only made it into two regions – US East and US West (Oregon) – so users elsewhere who fancy a cloudy Mac but need lower latency will have to endure the very on-prem experience of waiting for hardware to show up. ®