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Action alleges Redmond unfairly hikes costs for businesses running Windows Server outside Azure

The team pushing a £2 billion legal claim accusing Microsoft of overcharging businesses that use its software on rival clouds has called for further participants ahead of its first hearing in December.…

IDC and Counterpoint say premium kit is driving sales in both new and used markets

Premium devices are what smartphone buyers want right now, and it seems that applies equally to the latest devices and second-hand models destined for emerging markets.…

ICO makes example of outsourcing giant over sluggish cyber response

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has issued a £14 million ($18.6 million) penalty to outsourcing giant Capita following a catastrophic 2023 cyberattack that exposed the personal data of 6.6 million people.…

Germany's northernmost state bins Outlook – and tens of thousands of Redmond licenses

Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost state of Germany, has finally concluded one element of a long-running project to eject Microsoft from its infrastructure by giving Exchange Server the boot.…

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has launched the LibrePhone Project, an initiative to create a fully free and open-source mobile operating system that eliminates proprietary firmware and binary blobs. From the FSF: "Librephone is a new initiative by the FSF with the goal of bringing full freedom to the mobile computing environment. The vast majority of software users around the world use a mobile phone as their primary computing device. After forty years of advocacy for computing freedom, the FSF will now work to bring the right to study, change, share, and modify the programs users depend on in their daily lives to mobile phones. ... Practically, Librephone aims to close the last gaps between existing distributions of the Android operating system and software freedom. The FSF has hired experienced developer Rob Savoye (DejaGNU, Gnash, OpenStreetMap, and more) to lead the technical project. He is currently investigating the state of device firmware and binary blobs in other mobile phone freedom projects, prioritizing the free software work done by the not entirely free software mobile phone operating system LineageOS." The project site can be found here.

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ESG kicked like a 'toxic political football' amid greenwashing

Canalys Forums 2025 US President Donald Trump released a wrecking ball that smashed through environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies stateside – and it's now swinging across the Atlantic, according to analysts.…

Think tank cautions that without job cuts or capital savings, the math doesn't add up

UK government's plans to save £45 billion through the application of AI in the public sector lack clarity and are based on broad-brush assumptions, Members of Parliament have heard.…

And which will crash, repeatedly, until users learn how to handle it safely

Column Steve Jobs probably didn't remember how many times he skinned his knees learning to ride a bike before describing a personal computer as a "bicycle for the mind." Jobs' point was that both tools help us to go further, faster, with just a little extra effort.…

A new study shows that common baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) can survive Mars-like conditions, including meteorite shock waves and toxic perchlorate salts found in Martian soil. Phys.org reports: Published in PNAS Nexus, Purusharth I. Rajyaguru and colleagues subjected Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is a widely used model yeast, to shock waves and perchlorates. The authors chose the yeast in part because it has already been studied in space. When stressed, yeast, humans, and many other organisms form ribonucleoprotein (RNP) condensates, structures made of RNA and proteins that protect RNA and affect the fates of mRNAs. When the stressor passes, the RNP condensates, which include subtypes known as stress granules and P-bodies, disassemble. The authors simulated Martian shock waves at the High-Intensity Shock Tube for Astrochemistry (HISTA) housed in the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, India. Yeast exposed to 5.6 Mach intensity shock waves survived with slowed growth, as did yeast subjected to 100 mM sodium salt of perchlorate (NaClO4) -- a concentration similar to that in Martian soils. Yeast cells also survived exposure to the combined stress of shock waves and perchlorate stress. In both cases, the yeast assembled RNP condensates. Shock waves induced the assembly of stress granules and P-bodies; perchlorate caused yeast to make P-bodies but not stress granules. Mutants incapable of assembling RNP condensates were poor at surviving the Martian stress condition. Transcriptome analysis identified specific RNA transcripts perturbed by Mars-like conditions.

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