Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

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AI - AI + ML

Memory makers are slaves to the boom-bust rollercoaster, and the AI boom is the wildest ride of all. The RAMpocalypse may be the precursor to the AIpocalypse.

• AI + ML: AI customers are coming around to the idea that small is beautiful. OpenAI and Anthropic have built AI Swiss Army Knives, but the future may be smaller built-for-purpose tools.
• On-prem AI-driven datacenter builds drive Microsoft's emissions up a quarter in one year. Firm faces quandary of wanting to help the environment, but also wanting to force AI on everyone.
• AI and ML: OpenAI makes ChatGPT better at banter. With GPT-Live, talking, listening, and formulating answers all happen at once.
• AI and ML: The AI that spawned MechaHitler and deepfake porn puts on a suit to become legal advisor and Excel jockey. The newly renamed SpaceXAI wants you to believe little ol' Grok is all grown up.

Infosec - Security

Russians are posing as Signal support to launch phishing attacks. PLUS: US takes down Iranian propaganda sites; Marketing company asks 'Why Do We Have Your Information?' And more!

• Security: Microsoft patches failed to fix on-prem SharePoint, which is now under zero-day attack. PLUS: China upgrades smartphone surveillance tools; Ring eases anti-snooping stance; and more.
• Black Hat and DEF CON: DEF CON Franklin project enlists hackers to harden critical infrastructure. Voting village reports have been so successful, says Jeff Moss, that the whole of DEF CON will now be included.
• Security: EQT buys majority share in Swiss cybersecurity biz Acronis. Went at equivalent of $3.5B+ valuation for entire firm, though portion sold not specified.
• Malware Month: Ten years since the first corp ransomware, Mikko Hyppönen sees no end in sight. On the plus side, infosec's a good bet for a long, stable career.

FOSS

Cinnamon 6.8 will support Wayland – if you want it. Next version of Linux Mint's desktop has both kinds of display server.

• KDE Plasma users face a dire omen of change: 6.6.6 arrives. 6.7 is now current, and in 6.8 you're getting Wayland whether you like it or not.
• Collabora releases CODE 26.04 as rivalry between FOSS cloudy office suites heats up. Now with Markdown support and smarter formula error handling – plus integrated AI, though it's off by default.
• Blast from the past as GIMP 0.54 is revived in Flatpak form. Retro-computing fun for the nostalgic with first (and last) release to use Motif instead of GTK.
• Bcachefs exits experimental status in new 'performance release'. More Rust, but more trouble with AI slop, too.
• France's digital sovereignty push is struggling to escape the Microsoft gravity well. Nextcloud rollout shows locally controlled storage is one thing; getting users off Office is quite another.