offbeat

Solar boss reckons challenges are regulatory, not technological

It is just over a year since a pilot project to install photovoltaics on a railway line kicked off. According to the CEO of Sun-Ways, the company behind the scheme, the challenge was not so much technical as regulatory.

The project, a 100-meter photovoltaic installation on a railway line open to traffic, was inaugurated on April 24, 2025 in Buttes, Switzerland. It’s fair to say it went well; the 48 solar panels wedged between the tracks have generated more than 19 MWh to date.

According to the company’s CEO, Joseph Scuderi, more than 11,000 trains have passed over the solar power plant without incident. There has been no impact on railway operations or solar generation.

It’s a novel idea – use the space between rails for solar power generation. While the angle of the panels might not be ideal, the losses would be relatively minor compared to the potential gains. In Switzerland alone, Sun-Ways reckons there is a potential 1 TWh available, enough to meet 30 percent of the country’s public transport needs.

The panels themselves use anti-reflection material to avoid distracting train drivers with glare, and are resistant to micro-cracks, which could lead to a higher risk of fires.

And then there is the installation itself, which required coming up with a rail-mounted machine to deploy the panels. According to Scuderi, the company now has a machine capable of installing up to 300 solar panels per hour, over hundreds of kilometers, rather than the 100 meters of the pilot.

However, as Scuderi told The Register, “Technology wasn’t the problem.

“After all, we’re capable of sending people to the Moon…

“The real challenge is regulation. The strictest safety requirements apply in the rail sector. It took us years to obtain authorization to test our Sun-Ways solar power plant on a line open to passenger trains.”

According to a report published in April by the European Environment Agency, renewables (including solar) accounted for 25.2 percent of final energy consumption in the European Union. In the past year, renewables have accounted for 43.3 percent of generation in the UK, according to the National Grid (the UK’s power transmission network), with 6.9 percent coming from solar.

The EU’s minimum target is 42.5 percent from renewables by 2030, so sticking solar panels on the space between the rails carries a certain appeal. Scuderi told us that agreements had been made with Italy and France’s SNCF, and that talks were underway with South Korea, Spain, and Portugal.

He said, “I envisage a market launch as early as 2028, with the deployment of small Sun-Ways power plants of 10 km (10,000 m2), then an increase in capacity to reach 1000 km installed by 2035 and 10,000 km in 2040.”

It’s an ambitious plan, and might have seemed the stuff of fiction when Sun-Ways was founded in the early 2020s. Maintaining the panels, track (and track bed), and keeping the units clean enough to generate a worthwhile amount of power were obvious concerns, but the project has shown that these technical challenges can be overcome.

Indeed, equipment capable of installing 300 panels per hour beats the rate at which canopies and station buildings could be plastered with photovoltaics. That said, panels away from the line don’t share the same concerns about impacts from rail traffic or the inconvenience of track maintenance.

Scuderi told The Register, “The financial projection we have made show a LCOE [Levelized Cost of Energy] from 0.05 €/kWh to 0.09 €/kWh, depending on the amount of sunlight (southern or northern Europe).”

“And for a customer such as a railroad company,” he added, “the LCOE corresponds to the final cost of electricity, since it is not subject to taxes or fees on the public grid, as solar energy is fed directly into the traction grid.”

It is hard not to remember the initial excitement that surrounded solar roadways a decade ago, which unraveled as realities such as the weight of traffic and maintenance requirements struck home. Solar railways, however, appear to be a success thus far, with the panels requiring little maintenance and producing the expected power. The next challenge is scaling it up. ®

What just happened? The long-running effort to introduce the click-to-cancel policy will end this October – for those living in New York City. Consumers will no longer be forced to jump through so many hoops when trying to cancel a subscription that they’re encouraged to give up, and the process will be carried out via the same method they used to sign up.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) announced that the city’s final Click-to-Cancel Rule will take effect on October 1. New York will become the first US city to impose this type of requirement at the municipal level.

“Whether it’s hidden fees that suddenly appear at checkout or subscriptions that take one click to sign up for and a dozen steps to cancel, the result is the same: working people pay more while corporations profit,” said Mayor Mamdani. “That ends now.”

The regulation covers automatic renewals and continuous-service subscriptions, including streaming platforms, gyms, subscription boxes, and free trials that turn into paid plans.

Businesses must clearly disclose the price, billing frequency, renewal terms, cancellation deadline, and available cancellation methods before asking for payment details or consent.

Companies must allow customers to cancel at any time using a process as easy as the one used to subscribe and through the same medium – so no being forced to cancel over the phone. A business that accepts sign-ups through several channels must offer cancellation through all of them. Even subscriptions started in person must have an online cancellation option.

The rule also targets those all-too-familiar retention tactics. Companies can’t hang up on customers, hide or misrepresent cancellation instructions, lie about the consequences of leaving, or unreasonably delay a request. Consumers cannot be charged to return items supplied for free without their affirmative consent.

Subscriptions with terms of at least six months will require a reminder 15 to 45 days before the cancellation deadline. Businesses must also warn users before free trials lasting more than a month become paid-for and provide notice of material changes, including price increases.

Violations can bring restitution and civil penalties starting at $525 and rising to $1,050 for a second offense and $3,500 for subsequent violations. The city estimates the rule could save residents between $21.5 million and $162.5 million annually.

We previously reported on the FTC approving a nationwide click-to-cancel rule in 2024, its decision to delay enforcement in May 2025, and an appeals court vacating it two months later because the agency skipped a required preliminary economic analysis. The FTC restarted the rulemaking process in March.

States have continued filling the federal gap. California’s expanded Automatic Renewal Law mandates simple online cancellation and renewal reminders, while Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Utah have also strengthened their automatic-renewal rules, although the details differ.

The click-to-cancel measure is final, but New York City’s companion proposal requiring businesses to display all mandatory “junk fees” in the advertised price must still go through a public-comment period and a hearing.

OFFBEAT

Nagware goes large on the mean streets of Derby

Microsoft and backup are two words often uttered together, usually in the form of “Microsoft Windows has crashed again, where’s my backup?” The question is: what would a backup look like for a digital sign in Derby?

Spotted by eagle-eyed Register reader “nategee” on a stroll in Derby, this sign appears to have spent much of the day pleading to be backed up.

This poses an interesting question. What, exactly, would constitute a backup for a sign? Microsoft would obviously like somebody to log in with a Microsoft account so the data on the computer behind the scenes can be squirted into its cloud.

However, we’d contend that a more appropriate backup for a digital sign would involve glue, paper, and a person on a ladder, wielding a brush.

Although the words “if anything gets my back up” is often muttered by Windows users faced with yet another surprise update or unexpected screen of blue, the backup suggestion usually pops up when Windows restarts after an update. Microsoft has examined the user’s device and tightly clutched its pearls upon realizing that the PC isn’t backed up.

And now would be the perfect time to back it up by signing in with a Microsoft account, at least as far as the tech giant is concerned. The owners of the billboard might disagree.

Sadly, there is nowhere obvious for a technically minded passer-by to attach a keyboard and mouse to let the sign continue the startup process, and the hard-pressed techie responsible, doubtless sitting behind a desk at the mothership, has yet to give a remote command to unbork the signage.

Digital signage might be flexible, but we doubt Microsoft is advertising backups here – or reminding everyone that Windows has a habit of nagging users into doing what Redmond thinks is best for them.

Perhaps it’s best to back up to something that doesn’t involve Microsoft’s OS, or maybe even save the power, dust off the poster poster and glue pot. No tech required. ®

South Korea will draw up record budget spending of more than 800 trillion won ($530.97bn) for fiscal 2027, supported by stronger tax revenues from the booming AI chip industry, the government said on Monday.

It is the clearest sign yet that Seoul intends to spend the semiconductor windfall rather than save it, an argument the country has been having since it floated a ‘future response fund’ built on chip tax receipts earlier this month.

Budget Minister Park Hong-keun, speaking at a national fiscal strategy meeting, said the plan would be financed through higher tax receipts and expenditure cuts. The proposal compares with this year’s 727.9 trillion won spending plan, excluding supplementary budgets.

Three “mega-projects”, covering chips, AI data centres and physical AI, will receive top fiscal priority. The government said it would secure the funding capacity through a major restructuring of existing programmes rather than relying solely on the extra tax revenue, which is a more disciplined framing than the numbers alone suggest.

Park said the restructuring would target about 50 trillion won of spending, twice last year’s level, through a review of discretionary and mandatory expenditures and cuts to underperforming programmes. That is the part of the plan that will meet resistance, because every underperforming programme has a constituency.

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President Lee Jae Myung said the government would use all available means to keep corporate investment on schedule. “Additional tax revenue coming at this time is a precious resource to be used at a golden time when global AI dominance will be determined,” he said.

The windfall is real and it is concentrated. Combined operating profits at Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are projected to exceed 600 trillion won this year, up from roughly 90 trillion won a year earlier, and semiconductors now account for a rising share of national exports.

Seoul has already committed $880bn to chips, data centres and robots over the next decade under the same mega-project framing. The 2027 budget is the first annual instalment that has to be written against actual receipts rather than pledges.

It is also a visible upgrade on the government’s own plan. Under fiscal guidelines approved by the Cabinet in March, 2027 spending was pencilled in at 764.4 trillion won, with officials saying at the time that the figure could reach around 800 trillion won only if tax revenues improved and the expansionary stance held. Both conditions, it turns out, were met by the chip cycle.

The Future Response Fund now has a defined shape, at least on paper. It will operate as a strategic investment platform, setting aside tax revenue that exceeds long-term trends and directing it into four areas: youth, growth engines, regions and talent.

What the government did not say is how large the fund will be, when it launches, or how “long-term trends” in tax revenue will be calculated. Those are the details that decide whether it is an endowment or an accounting line.

A budget written on cyclical profits is a bet that the cycle holds. Memory has crashed before, and the profits funding this plan come from two companies selling into a single wave of AI infrastructure spending.

The boom is also already distorting things closer to home, with the chip rally pressuring Korea’s bond market and record chip bonuses flagged as an inflation risk by economists. An expansionary budget on top of that is a choice, not a neutral act.

The government will publish the full 2027 budget bill later this year, when the restructuring targets stop being a headline figure and start naming programmes. That is when the 50 trillion won will get tested.

You know that one friend who always takes great photos but isn’t the best at sharing them? At my last Fourth of July party, I watched him snap a great picture of my fiancée and me, but instead of asking him to share when he had time, I pulled out Liene’s N200 Pro portable photo printer from my bag. I asked to print that photo on the spot and offered to print anything else he wanted.

Within minutes, it felt like half the party had their phones out, ready to print a photo. By the end of the night, nearly everyone went home with a physical memory of that party.

Like many children of the ’90s, I’ve seen no shortage of trends from my youth try to return with the assistance of modern technology. Capturing a moment that you can physically hold will always be more interesting to me than an Instagram shot, and over the last two years, we’ve seen photo printers get smaller, more capable and considerably less expensive.

The team at Liene, makers of photo and sticker printers with a reputation for being easy to use, created something so portable that it weighs less than a pound and is just 1.2 inches thick, making it an easy travel companion.

It doesn’t get much easier to use than this N200 printer. It charges via USB-C, which is convenient. On more than one occasion, while testing this printer, I’ve just connected it to the car charger on the way to a gathering, and that has been enough for 25 prints over more than an hour. Photo paper and ink cartridges are both easy to install and leave very little mess behind, aside from the small edge you tear off each photo as it exits the printer. As long as you have a phone, you can use this printer.

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Liene printers use thermal dye sublimation to create images, which means every print is done in layers. You’ll see the photo paper move in and out of the machine a couple of times with each print as it applies yellow, magenta and blue ink to create the image before it gets a final lamination and exits the printer. This whole process takes just under 90 seconds, and the image quality is surprisingly good for a 3×2 printed image. And because the sheets Liene sells for this printer are also stickers, you can easily peel off the backing and stick the picture to whatever you want.

If you want to quickly go from your camera roll to printing, Liene’s app makes that pretty effortless. But if you want to have some fun, you’ll find loads of personalization options. If you want to take photos through the app using old-school camera filters, it’s right on the home screen. Want a border around the photo? Too easy, there are dozens of options that update constantly to reflect current holidays and sporting events.

The only part of the app I didn’t use too often was the collage function, but only because a 3×2 image is already pretty small and making it smaller wasn’t usually what friends around me would ask for.

The $100 version of this printer includes 50 sheets of sticker paper and five ink cartridges. There’s an $89 version that comes with 10 sheets of sticker paper and one ink cartridge, but you’re immediately spending more the moment you need more paper or ink because a new box of paper and ink is $25. This also means that each print comes out to about 50 cents, which is slightly less than the 65 cents per print average from competitors like Fujifilm and Canon.

What Liene created with this printer is a fun conversation starter at a party. Tiny sticker photos aren’t the most practical thing ever, but they’re undeniably fun to make and share at a cost that will work for just about everyone.

If you’re the kind of person who enjoys a good physical picture, and you have friends to share something like this with, there’s a lot to like about this printer.

IBM’s launch of its AI coding assistant “Bob” points to a much bigger shift in enterprise modernization. Across the industry, AI tools are being positioned as a way to make legacy systems easier to understand, assess and eventually modernize. And there is real value there.

Some of these tools can read thousands of lines of legacy code, identify deprecated APIs, summarize business logic and surface technical debt in minutes. For organizations carrying decades of operational history, that kind of visibility is a big step forward – but let’s not confuse visibility with modernization.