The Register

Satya Nadella reveals attempts to merge Word, PowerPoint, Excel, which may now happen with LLMs

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has claimed about thirty percent of code in at least some of the Windows titan's repositories was written by an AI.…

Why optimize code when you can just start running sooner?

Microsoft later this month plans to begin loading Word shortly after folks' computers begin booting up – to "optimize performance" or at least improve their perception of it.…

This time criminals targeted partner’s third-party software

It's more bad news from Ascension Health which is informing some of its patients, potentially for the second time in the space of a year, that their medical data was compromised during a major cyberattack.…

Keep plugging those LLMs into your apps, folks. This neural network told me it'll be fine

Some smart cookies have found that when AI models face a conflict between telling the truth or accomplishing a specific goal, they lie more than 50 percent of the time.…

Will the personal assistant shop for groceries? Or get hijacked by a teen?

RSAC  If Amazon's Alexa+ works as intended, it could show how an AI assistant helps with everyday tasks like making dinner reservations or arranging an oven repair. Or things could go terribly wrong: it might turn on the oven and turn dinner plans into a house fire.…

Whole thing gonna be a real PITA for tech sector, says ABI Research

World War Fee  US tariffs - should they go ahead - are likely to result in price bumps for essential components and construction materials in the datacenter industry, and may even cost America its lead in the AI race as investments are paused or canceled.…

Sees economic strife as chance to sell even more stuff than its $70bn Q3 haul

Microsoft’s capital expenditure was slightly lower than forecast, in part due to “normal variability from the timing of delivery of data center leases” that the company was at pains to argue are not in any way bad news.…

New plan may remain too restrictive for some developers

Redis, the company behind the popular value-key database of the same name, has returned its main system to an open source license, although the move failed to satisfy some critics.…

Xitter sheds EU users. Musk's Grok suggests 'misinformation, hate speech, and a perceived decline in content moderation' to blame

Everything is super, over at X (the social media service formerly known as Twitter), which has shed around 10 percent of its European users in the past six months.…

McKinsey warns datacenter binge could overshoot actual demand as execs scramble to keep up with hype

A report from consultancy McKinsey & Company highlights the widespread unease over AI, pointing to the bewildering sums being invested into infrastructure to support it, while warning that forecasts of future demand are based on little more than guesswork.…

President's campaign continues against man he claims covered up evidence of electoral fraud in 2020

Chris Krebs, former CISA director and current political punching bag for the US President, says his Global Entry membership was revoked.…

Mission to a metal asteroid lacks xenon pressure

NASA is looking into propulsion problems experienced by a probe on its way to orbit the asteroid Psyche.…

No MFA? No problem – as long as you show you’ve learned your lesson

The UK's data protection overlord is not going to pursue any further investigation into the British Library's 2023 ransomware attack.…

Brad Smith commits org to facing off with US govt in court to protect them

Microsoft is responding to mounting "geopolitical and trade volatility" between the US administration and governments in Europe by pledging privacy safeguards for customers worried about using American hyperscalers, and vowing to fight the US government in court to protect Euro customers' data if needed.…

We look at the state of AI software development – it's not going away, but risks abound

Analysis  AI in software development has evolved rapidly since GitHub Copilot caught the world's attention with its June 2021 preview – and shows no sign of slowing down.…

Watchdog says transformation effort added costs instead of savings for most businesses

The UK tax authority's push to digitize services has backfired, saddling taxpayers with hundreds of millions in extra costs, according to a report by Parliament's public spending watchdog.…

Good news, everyone: 15 years on, TDE still pushes pixels

The long-running fork of KDE 3 has dropped its latest update: Trinity Desktop Environment R14.1.4, now with better distro support and a fresh coat of code. Not bad for a project still chugging along 15 years after KDE itself moved on.…

Datacenter build slowdown hurt storage sales but Korean giant sees bit barn rebound

Samsung yesterday posted results a little better than it forecast, and attributed some of its record revenue and strong profit to customers rushing to buy kit before the USA raises tariffs on imports.…

'We thought it was a really obvious way to build a processor and everybody would be doing it'

It is 40 years since the first Arm processor was powered up, and the UK's Centre for Computing History (CCH) celebrated in style, with speakers to mark the event, hardware on show, and a countdown to the anniversary.…

For now it's a potential bug-finder and friend to defenders

RSAC  Former NSA cyber-boss Rob Joyce thinks today's artificial intelligence is dangerously close to becoming a top-tier vulnerability exploit developer.…