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Submission + - China added a Germany-sized electricity grid last year (ourworldindata.org)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: We’ll often see headlines quoting how many gigawatts of new solar farms or coal plants China is building. But it’s hard to get a meaningful sense of scale for how electricity generation in China is changing.

The chart puts it in perspective.

In 2025 alone, China’s electricity generation increased by almost 500 terawatt-hours (TWh). This is compared here to the total amount of electricity that whole countries generate each year.

Germany generates almost exactly that amount. That means China effectively added a Germany-sized grid to its electricity system in just one year.

What’s also quite staggering is that almost all of this new generation came from solar and wind. China generated 340 TWh more electricity from solar than the year before.

Submission + - WhatsApp Catches Spyware Firm NSO Defying No-Hacking Court Order (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Meta-owned communications app WhatsApp says it recently detected and disrupted a spear-phishing attempt linked to spyware company NSO Group. The attack is allegedly in defiance of a court order that bars the spyware maker from targeting WhatsApp. WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against NSO in 2019, after it came to light that a zero-day vulnerability had been exploited to deliver spyware to users.

NSO has been seeking to overturn the order blocking it from targeting WhatsApp users, arguing that the company will “suffer irreparable harm”.

Submission + - India's Cockroach Party goes viral 1

Submitted by Charlotte
Charlotte writes: On 15 May, India's Chief Justice Surya Kant compared unemployed youths to cockroaches during oral arguments in court. According to the BBC, this was in reference to young people turning to journalism and activism.

The very next day Abhijeet Dipke, a Public Relations student at Boston University, started a satirical website called the Cockroach Janta Party, a play on words on Indian Prime Minister Modi's own party, Bharatiya Janata Party.

In no time the movement gained more than 10 million followers on Instagram. Establishment reaction was quick: soon its Twitter handle was blocked by the courts, then hacked. As of now the Instagram page is still online, and such blocks are only effective inside India. Court cases are now pending to remove the blocks.

On Saturday, Dipke arrived at Delhi airport where he was greeted by sympathizers. The protesters demand the immediate resignation of the Education Minister after an exam fraud scheme came to light. Government exams lead to highly desirable and secure jobs, and students often spend years preparing for them.

Submission + - Trump pushes open source AI deeper into the US military (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: President Donald Trump has signed a new national security memorandum designed to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence across the US military and intelligence community. The directive specifically mentions adapting both commercial and open source AI technologies for mission use, while also pushing for faster deployment of advanced AI systems from multiple vendors. The administration says the move will help America maintain technological dominance and reduce dependence on any single AI company.

The memorandum replaces Biden-era AI guidance that Trump officials describe as outdated and overly restrictive. It also calls for updated rules on autonomous weapon systems and promises that military AI will not be used for censorship or unlawful domestic surveillance. From the report: âoeThe men and women who defend the United States deserve the most advanced AI in the world.â

Submission + - Astronauts return to ISS after sheltering during air leak repair attempt (bbc.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) were ordered to shelter in an attached spacecraft after the structure suddenly started leaking more air.

Five of the seven crew were directed to go into the docked SpaceX shuttle Dragon "Freedom" on Friday afternoon and were braced for a potential evacuation.

Meanwhile, two remaining personnel — a pair of Russian cosmonauts — attempted to repair a part of the Russian segment of the ISS, where the leaks had started increasing on Monday.

The repairs were paused and the crew ordered back onto the ISS by Nasa on Friday afternoon.

Submission + - Palantir wins £9M contract to run UK firearms licensing (theregister.com)

Submitted by Shakes Fist
Shakes Fist writes: "The US spy-tech biz will also handle Home Office licensing for explosives, explosive precursors, and poisons. The contract covers a replacement for the National Firearms Licensing Management System (NFLMS), which has been in use since the mid-2000s."

Palantir crawls further under the skin of the UK State.

Submission + - BSA lashes out at mandatory open-source licensing (bsa.org)

Submitted by Elektroschock
Elektroschock writes: The American Business Software Alliance (BSA) does not consider mandatory open-source licensing to be an appropriate indicator of sovereignty. This is among the "pointed messages" they sent to the French government consultation (closed) today. "What protects Europe is the ability to govern, audit, and mitigate risk, not where a company files its corporate papers," said Thomas Boué of BSA.

Submission + - A China-linked hacking group is quietly living inside Microsoft IIS servers (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: ReliaQuest says it uncovered a previously unknown China-linked hacking cluster called OP-512 that has reportedly been targeting outdated Microsoft IIS servers running unsupported .NET Framework software. According to the security company, the attackers used custom web shells, encrypted command channels, timestomping, and DNS-based âoephone homeâ techniques designed to evade traditional antivirus detection and maintain long-term access for espionage operations.

The company claims its âoeAgentic AIâ platform pieced together what initially looked like unrelated low-level security events into a single coordinated intrusion. ReliaQuest says the malware framework generates cryptographically unique deployments that make signature-based detection ineffective. The report also warns that organizations still exposing legacy IIS infrastructure to the internet remain attractive targets for increasingly sophisticated state-linked attackers.

Submission + - Companies Are Using Reddit to Manipulate ChatGPT and Google AI Search (404media.co)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: The moderators of the biohacking subreddit say that peptide and hormone replacement therapy companies have been surreptitiously spamming Reddit in an attempt to get their posts scraped by AI chatbots. The strategy is an effort to systematically manipulate the answers provided by chatbots by manipulating the underlying source material that those chatbots will scrapeâ"in this case, a popular Reddit community.

Submission + - EU working to abandon US tech (politico.eu)

Submitted by whitroth
whitroth writes: Shutting down Office for the ICC was clearly a wake-up call.
"The EU is moving to counter American dominance in technology by reaching for one of the oldest tools in its arsenal: industrial strategy.

As the European Commission unveiled a plan Wednesday to reduce Europeâ(TM)s reliance on the foreign technology providers that underpin the modern economy, it was careful to stress that it was not picking a fight with U.S. digital giants.

Instead, the tech sovereignty package â" motivated in no small part by U.S. President Donald Trumpâ(TM)s weaponization of Europeâ(TM)s dependence on American firms â" takes a longer-term view: boost the continentâ(TM)s players so they can eventually challenge their U.S. rivals."

Submission + - AI is pushing workers away from college and toward trade schools (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: A new survey from AI career transition company Pelgo suggests AI may already be reshaping how unemployed Americans think about higher education. Only 20 percent of respondents said they would choose a four-year college degree again if given the chance to start over, while growing numbers said they would instead pursue trade school, entrepreneurship, or faster entry into the workforce through two-year programs.

The findings raise an uncomfortable question for universities: what happens when white collar jobs increasingly look vulnerable to automation while skilled trades still require humans physically showing up somewhere? As AI continues creeping into office work, many workers appear to be questioning whether massive student loan debt still makes sense in 2026.

Submission + - Scientists charged with bringing deactivated mpox virus to US, lying about it (abcnews.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: Two scientists at a U.S. government lab were charged with smuggling vials of deactivated mpox virus into the country from Africa and lying about it during interviews with investigators at a Detroit airport, authorities said Tuesday.

Vincent Munster, who is chief of the virus ecology section at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, and Claude Kwe, who works with him. Both were stopped at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in January after a flight from Paris and nine days in the Republic of Congo.

Munster “adamantly denied” returning to the U.S. with biological materials or samples, the FBI said in a court filing. But tests subsequently revealed that Munster and Kwe were traveling with vials of deactivated mpox, the FBI said, yet they had failed to declare them or obtain the necessary permission.

Munster told investigators at the Detroit-area airport that any necessary documents were in his laptop, “but you don't need them. I do this all the time,” the FBI quoted him as saying.

“It is reasonable to believe that Munster's statements regarding the possession of the required documentation to (customs officers) were materially false,” the FBI said.

"Any deliberate effort to conceal and smuggle biological materials into the United States without proper authorization is a breach of the public’s trust and could have placed the public at risk,” said Marcus Sykes of the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services.

In 2022, the mpox virus was confirmed to spread via sex for the first time and triggered outbreaks in more than 70 countries that had not previously reported mpox.

Submission + - Thanks to robots, Ukraine is now talking about winning, not just surviving (defenseone.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: A small but growing number of European officials and analysts are saying what four years ago was unthinkable: Ukraine isn’t just surviving its grueling war with Russia, it is in some ways thriving and may even be on a path to victory.

This isn’t yet captured in headlines—for example, about last weekend’s barrage of Russian drones and missiles around Ukraine—but in the details, like how some 90 percent were intercepted.

Several long-term trends have shifted in Ukraine’s favor, and the core reason is its fierce focus on AI and robotics.

Submission + - AWS quietly drops 160 TB of monthly multicloud data to fend off regulators (www.thestack.technology)

Submitted by NakNak
NakNak writes: Regulators are very worried about cloud competition between the hyperscalers. AWS said it would make multicloud solutions easier to adopt, so that there would be – in theory – price competition at a service level.

Last week, it dropped what it will probably hold up as proof: a free tier on its Interconnect that let's its customers run 500 Mbps worth of workloads elsewhere. As long as the other side doesn't charge data fees, of course. So far, Oracle Cloud isn't.

Submission + - University of California Math Professors Push for Return of SAT/ACT Math Testing (kpbs.org)

Submitted by Koreantoast
Koreantoast writes: News sources are reporting that faculty members in the University of California system are calling for a return to standardized testing for applications to STEM majors. From KPBS:

Hundreds of University of California faculty members are calling on the university system to require standardized math test scores from applicants to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) majors.

Nearly 1,000 faculty members have signed the open letter. More than 200 of them are from UC San Diego.

The UC Board of Regents voted to eliminate the requirement in 2020. In their letter, the faculty call it “a temporary measure that has now become a permanent vulnerability...”

“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields,” the letter reads.

Faculty have reported that students being admitted are unprepared for even basic classes: one faculty report last year saying that the number of students placed in classes to remediate elementary and middle-school math before they could take precalculus increased to 8.5% from 0.5% between 2020 and 2025. Several universities which dropped testing requirements in 2020 have already reinstituted testing over the last several years including MIT, Dartmouth, and Yale.

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