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Forget YouTube videos—frontier physical AI models need multiple camera angles, dense annotation, and soon, brain wave readings.

ASIA IN BRIEF Taiwanese mega-manufacturer Foxconn has adopted Singaporean hyperconverged infrastructure vendor (HCI) Arcrfra for some GPU virtualization workloads and to replace VMware in some remote offices. Arcfra launched in 2024 and the next year earned a place on analyst firm Gartner’s Market Guide for Full-Stack HCI Software. Last week, Arcfra launched an update to its Neutree model-as-a-service platform, adding native GPU virtualization and model governance capabilities. The company said Foxconn has adopted Neutree “to modernize distributed factory infrastructure and improve how AI models were delivered, managed, and observed across environments.” The Taiwanese giant has also used Neutree to “accelerate model deployment, improve operational visibility, and build a scalable foundation for future AI and intelligent manufacturing workloads.” Foxconn considers AI a critical part of its plans: The Register last year heard chairman Young Liu hail generative AI’s potential to vastly improve the company’s factories. The Register asked Arcfra to detail its relationship with Foxconn and the HCI upstart pointed us to this case study that states “Foxconn's global branch companies relied on traditional VMware virtualization for their IT systems. This legacy setup was becoming increasingly difficult to manage and scale across a distributed global footprint [and] led to high construction costs and a significant increase in operations and maintenance overhead.” Foxconn apparently deployed Arcfra “across its branch factories in Mainland China, Taiwan, Vietnam, and North America” and uses the Singaporean platform for critical intranet, manufacturing management, ERP and production line management systems. Arcfra also hosts Foxconn's DevTest environments and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure workloads. “The legacy VMware virtualization + SAN storage architecture was successfully replaced, providing a modern, scalable foundation ready to accommodate future business growth and technology adoption,” Arcfra claims. The Register asked Foxconn for further information about its decision, but has not received a response at the time of publication. VMware’s owner, Broadcom, changed strategy to target large entities like Foxconn. Broadcom says the overwhelming majority of its target customers have adopted its flagship Cloud Foundation suite, but The Register has also noted many big-name dissenters, among them Tesco, Western Union, Allstate Insurance – and now Foxconn. Better news for Broadcom In better news for Broadcom, the chip design side of the business has struck a $200 billion deal with Samsung’s memory and foundry businesses. “On the memory front, Samsung and Broadcom plan to pursue a strategic collaboration for the supply of industry-leading memory solutions, including High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), supporting Broadcom’s next-generation AI accelerators,” states Samsung’s announcement of the deal. “In foundry, the companies’ collaboration focuses on Samsung’s 2-nanometer (nm) and below process technologies for Broadcom’s products, including Wireless Broadband Communications (WBC) solutions. The collaboration is expected to extend to advanced packaging technologies built on Samsung’s 2nm process, including 2.3D and 2.5D integration, to enable higher-performance and more power-efficient AI and networking silicon.” “By combining Samsung’s memory and foundry expertise with Broadcom’s AI and connectivity leadership, we aim to continue to deliver technologies that power the next generation of AI infrastructure,” said Charlie Kawwas, the president of Broadcom’s Semiconductor Solutions Group. Broadcom has a huge order book for custom accelerators and needs foundry capacity to build those products and its other offerings. Given the global shortage of fabrication capacity, and Samsung’s status as arguably the world’s second-most-sophisticated fab operator, Broadcom has every reason to be happy it has secured access to the manufacturing resources it needs. Infosys names next CEO Indian tech services giant Infosys last week named Ashiss Kumar Dash as its next CEO. Infosys says Dash is currently “global head for a business portfolio that comprises over 12 industry verticals.” He will replace current Managing Director and CEO Salil Parekh on April 1, 2027. Parekh led the company for nine years. The change is an orderly handover rather than a vote of no confidence in Parekh, although Infosys last week posted [PDF] its Q1 results which included a forecast of revenue growth of between 1.5 and 3 percent, down from previous guidance of possible 3.5 percent growth for the full financial year. The company said its previous guidance assumed an economic upswing that hasn’t happened. India orders takedown for Jack Dorsey’s Bluetooth social network Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has used the renamed platform to share an order from the government of India that requires GitHub to take down BitChat – the decentralized peer-to-peer messaging app that can use Bluetooth mesh networks for offline communication. The order Dorsey shared justifies the takedown request on grounds that Delhi has powers to compel communications services providers to cease service to prevent public disorder, riots, or terrorism, but that authorities can’t act against decentralized messaging infrastructure. At the time of writing, The Register was able to access the BitChat repo. “The government of India does not like technologies like BitChat and wants it taken down,” Dorsey wrote. China fines Trip.com operator $770m for monopoly practices China’s State Administration for Market Regulation on Saturday announced it has fined the Trip.com Group $770 million for monopolistic practices. Beijing went after Trip.com for the behavior of its Ctrip brand, which targets Chinese-speaking customers. The regulator alleged that Ctrip “forced hotel merchants to accept exclusive cooperation agreements and manipulated hotel prices through technological means, thus exacerbating the industry's ‘involutionary’ competition.” The fine may interest regulators around the world, because Trip.com and its sub-brand Skyscanner are popular outside China. ®

More than 16,000 runners took part in the 54th annual Wharf to Wharf Race on Sunday, making their way along the iconic 6-mile course from Live Oak to the Santa Cruz Harbor to Capitola under near-perfect weather.

Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics or culture. As of Sunday, the midterm elections are now 100 days away. Democrats are favored to retake the House, but how many seats can they reasonably expect to win? A lot of data is in their favor.

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A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Related | Democrats expose Trump’s bigoted plot to erase history at Smithsonian…

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ph @bastet
Capocotta

2023.07 © Valentina Cinelli
ph @bastet
Nikon EM, Fuji Velvia 100 Professional

As Apple prepares to launch its first smart glasses, the company may also be wrestling with how to address consumer privacy concerns.

If the sale moves forward, mining activities could begin in federal waters near American Samoa. The proposed site is directly adjacent to a national wildlife refuge. By Teresa Tomassoni for Inside Climate News The Trump administration is moving closer to opening up U.S. waters for deep-sea mining—a contentious and largely untested industry focused on extracting mineral-rich deposits…

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On the latest episode of Equity, we discussed why Moonshot AI's Kimi seemed to panic Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

Congressional Cowards is a weekly series highlighting the worst Donald Trump defenders on Capitol Hill, who refuse to criticize him—no matter how disgraceful or lawless his actions. There are officially only 100 days until the midterm elections, and Republicans are in trouble. The war that President Donald Trump launched in Iran is spiraling out of control, spiking gas prices…

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A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | Hegseth flames out in failed effort to defend Iran war…

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When Sen. Bill Cassidy on Thursday expressed his support for Erica Schwartz, President Trump’s pick for CDC director, he signaled that he may once again cast a critical vote for a candidate that poses a risk to US public health.

At her confirmation hearing earlier this month, Schwartz, who has a medical degree, sidestepped questions on whether she would resist pressure from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to carry out policies that she believed contradicted scientific evidence.

After this, Cassidy, a physician and chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, withheld his support of Schwartz. But on Thursday, he pivoted, telling committee members: “I’m confident that she knows what she is doing and will stand against those who do not.” The Louisiana senator said he now trusts Schwartz after they spoke privately, and after federal officials made a “good faith” change to the CDC’s website that linked vaccines and autism. The webpage still cites the retracted study that makes this vaccine-autism link, and now includes an asterisk with a note that “Scientists have not identified the root causes of autism.”

The page also still states that “studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” This idea has been disproven by decades of scientific research.

In a Sunday interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Cassidy admitted that this version of the website is not, in fact, a “good faith” attempt to stop spreading vaccine misinformation. But he added that parents probably don’t look at that CDC webpage anyway: “I’ve never met a parent who wasn’t a pediatrician who’s gone into the website to look for information about vaccines.”

BASH: When you pledged to support Dr. Schwartz, you said it's a sign of good faith the CDC agreed to modify their website. But the CDC's vaccine page still says 'the claim vaccines do not cause autism is not evidence-based.' Is that a good faith attempt to stop spreading misinfo?CASSIDY: It is not

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-07-26T13:56:56.113Z

In response, Bash noted that the CDC sets public health policy, which makes it likely parents do seek guidance from the agency.

Cassidy responded that he is continuing to discuss the CDC’s stance on vaccines with the health department, and that they have made additional concessions, but did not disclose what those were. 

Cassidy’s pivot on Schwartz echoes his actions last year, when he cast the deciding vote in favor of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for health secretary. Cassidy had initially withheld support for RFK given the Trump ally’s statements that vaccines are unsafe. But Cassidy changed his mind after receiving assurances from Kennedy that he would work within existing vaccine approval and safety systems and would collaborate with Cassidy—promises that implied Kennedy would not undermine vaccine access.

Since then, Kennedy has done the opposite, turning fringe conspiracy theories about vaccine safety into health policy—including cutting nearly $500 million in research funding for mRNA vaccines, the vaccine technology used in many COVID vaccines.

Cassidy directed the Senate health committee to delay a vote on Thursday on whether to advance Schwartz’s nomination following Republican attendance issues. They are expected to vote next week.

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Climate-themed films matter more than ever as the Trump administration weakens environmental protections. Here are some of the best and most meaningful ones. By Alex Demyanenko for Capital & Main The most honest conversations America has about climate change don’t happen in Washington. Sometimes they happen in the darkness of a movie theater or living room. A year after An…

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The Trump administration has paused its latest, 13-night bombing campaign on Iran, reportedly following concerns within the administration over the past few days about American military resources and casualties.

The dwindling amount of US air defense munitions was a key concern, administration officials told the New York Times, as well as hurting relations with allies in the Gulf and worsening economic, energy, and refugee crises. A senior US official stated that three US soldiers were killed in Jordan just over a week ago when a ballistic missile passed through US air defenses.

This pause in fighting comes after a relentless stream of suffering for Iranian civilians following US bombing. The Iranian health ministry’s spokesperson, Hossein Kermanpour, said on Friday that US strikes have killed 59 people—including six women and three people under the age of 18—over the past month. And as I wrote last week, the US military bombing has destroyed key infrastructure that Iranians need to survive, such as water and energy facilities, food silos, and bridges. 

When a reporter asked Trump on Friday whether striking civilian sites constituted a war crime, the president refused to answer—not the first time he has dismissed the suggestion that the devastation of his administration’s strikes are war crimes.

On Sunday, Mike Waltz, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, told NBC News’ Meet the Press that the pause in airstrikes gives “some space” for negotiation between the US and Iran.

Still, past precedent suggests that the administration’s Iran strike pause may not last: Since the US and Israel first struck Iran in February, the Trump administration has several times stopped fighting to negotiate, only to later escalate the war again. This may be because, as Michael Froman of the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan US foreign policy think tank, wrote on Friday, Trump is taking a middle-ground, simultaneous military and diplomacy approach to prevent extreme political fallout. He wants to avoid complete targeting of Iranian critical infrastructure and seizing oil with a military invasion or conceding to Iranian control of oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

In June, the US and Iran managed to strike an interim ceasefire deal. Just a couple of days later, Iran’s military closed the Strait of Hormuz, stating the US violated their agreement by allowing Israel to continue bombing Lebanon. Iran then began targeting ships passing through the strait, including those appearing to deviate from approved routes, prompting US airstrikes on Iran at the end of the month.

The US faces other obstacles to negotiating a lasting solution: Nate Swanson, the National Security Council’s former Iran director under Joe Biden, told me last month that the US government’s material and political support of Israel has ruined many of its relationships with countries in the Gulf region and made negotiations with Iran practically impossible.

All this means that it is unlikely this war will end soon. When Meet the Press’ Kristen Welker asked Waltz whether the war would end by the end of the year, the ambassador refused to give a timeline. Last week, Democrats called on Trump to end the war, citing the deaths of four American soldiers. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who brought a war powers resolutions aimed at forcing the president to abandon the war that failed on Thursday, wrote on X shortly before the vote, “This senseless war should never have been started and it needs to end NOW.”

How one founder house is betting work-life balance can beat burnout .

Some day, Donald Trump will no longer be president, and his hideous legacy will be nothing but a warning stamped in our history books. From mismanaging a pandemic and kinda sorta partially building a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border during his first term to unleashing an unqualified immigration goon squad to execute U.S. citizens in the streets and launching a new forever war in Iran during…

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"The first autonomous agent cyberattack is an unprecedented event. It deserves an unprecedented response!"

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, the role AI is playing in it.

I toured Mark McAfee’s Raw Farm for a story about raw milk’s foothold in America despite its health dangers. Here’s what he told me about recalls, outbreaks and his relationship with the federal government. By Annie Waldman for ProPublica I never thought I’d spend six months of my life investigating raw milk. But I did. In early June, ProPublica published a story I reported…

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