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The £9 billion question: To Microsoft or not to Microsoft?

2 months 4 weeks ago
Are UK taxpayers getting real value from SPA24 — or just high cost convenience?

Register debate series  The UK government's five-year Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA24) with Microsoft is set to see public sector bodies spend around £1.9 billion each year—nearly £9 billion in total over half a decade. It's a vast sum for software and services, and one that deserves close scrutiny.…

Bill McCluggage

China-Plus-One Was Just China All Along

2 months 4 weeks ago
An anonymous reader shares a report: India's blueprint for displacing China as the world's electronics workshop contains a rather extraordinary feature: the entire Indian edifice requires Chinese companies to supply the technical architecture, manufacturing know-how and operational templates that would make such displacement theoretically possible. Let's start with Dixon Technologies, India's flagship domestic electronics manufacturer. The company has systematically built indigenous capability through a growing constellation of Chinese partnerships: Longcheer provides the design intelligence, Kunshan Q-Tech delivers camera module expertise, Chongqing Yuhai supplies precision-molded components and HKC brings display technology. This pattern of structured dependence has become the organizing principle of India's electronics manufacturing push. [...] The current architecture sees Chinese companies retain control of the critical knowledge while their Indian partners provide labour arbitrage and regulatory navigation. Under this arrangement, India isn't constructing an alternative to Chinese manufacturing so much as establishing Chinese manufacturing's most elaborate subsidiary operation, underwritten by Indian taxpayers and marketed as national renewal. Many countries, but most importantly India and Vietnam, have worked hard in recent years to attract businesses that decided to diversify away from China, a strategy analysts have dubbed as "China Plus One."

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msmash

Russia Restricts Calls Via WhatsApp and Telegram

2 months 4 weeks ago
Russian authorities are "partially" restricting calls in messaging apps Telegram and WhatsApp, the latest step in an effort to tighten control over the internet. From a report: In a statement, government media and internet regulator Roskomnadzor justified the measure as necessary for fighting crime, saying that "according to law enforcement agencies and numerous appeals from citizens, foreign messengers Telegram and WhatsApp have become the main voice services used to deceive and extort money, and to involve Russian citizens in sabotage and terrorist activities."

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