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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Beijing has urged local companies to avoid using Nvidia's H20 processors, particularly for government-related purposes, complicating the chipmaker's return to China after the Trump administration reversed an effective US ban on such sales. Over the past few weeks, Chinese authorities have sent notices to a range of firms discouraging use of the less-advanced semiconductors, people familiar with the matter said. The guidance was particularly strong against the use of H20s for any government or national security-related work by state enterprises or private companies, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is sensitive. The letters didn't, however, constitute an outright ban on H20 use, according to the people. Industry analysts broadly agree that Chinese companies still covet those chips, which perform quite well in certain crucial AI applications. President Donald Trump said Monday that the processor "still has a market" in the Asian country despite also calling it "obsolete." Beijing's stance could limit Trump's ability to turn his export control about-face into a windfall for government coffers, a deal that highlighted his administration's transactional approach to national security policies long treated as nonnegotiable. Still, Chinese companies may not be ready to jump ship to local semiconductors. "Chips from domestic manufacturers are improving dramatically in quality, but they might not be as versatile for specific workloads that China's domestic AI industry hopes to focus on," said Homin Lee, a senior macro strategist at Lombard Odier in Singapore. Lee added that he anticipates "strong" demand for the chips the Trump administration is allowing Nvidia and AMD to sell. Rosenblatt Securities analyst Kevin Cassidy said he doesn't anticipate that Nvidia's processor sales to China will be affected because "Chinese companies are going to want to use the best chips available." Nvidia and AMD's chips are superior to local alternatives, he said. Beijing asked companies about that issue in some of its letters, according to one of the people, posing questions such as why they buy Nvidia H20 chips over local versions, whether that's a necessary choice given domestic options, and whether they've found any security concerns in the Nvidia hardware. The notices coincide with state media reports that cast doubt on the security and reliability of H20 processors. Chinese regulators have raised those concerns directly with Nvidia, which has repeatedly denied that its chips contain such vulnerabilities. The Financial Times reported that some Chinese companies are planning to decrease orders of Nvidia chips in response to the letters. Right now, the people said, China's most stringent chip guidance is limited to sensitive applications, a situation that bears similarities to the way Beijing restricted Tesla vehicles and Apple iPhones in certain institutions and locations over security concerns. China's government also at one point barred the use of Micron Technology Inc. chips in critical infrastructure. It's possible that Beijing may extend its heavier-handed Nvidia and AMD guidance to a wider range of settings, according to one person with direct knowledge of the deliberations, who said that those conversations are in early stages.

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Could the most popular browser change hands?

AI search biz Perplexity has offered to pay about twice as much as it is worth to acquire Chrome from Google.…

An anonymous reader shares a report: Can deleting old emails and photos help the UK tackle ongoing drought this year? That's the hope, according to recommendations for the public included in a press release today from the National Drought Group. There are far bigger steps companies and policymakers can take to conserve water of course, but drought has gotten bad enough for officials to urge the average person to consider how their habits might help or hurt the situation. And the proliferation of data centers is raising concerns about how much water it takes to power servers and keep them cool. "Simple, everyday choices -- such as turning off a tap or deleting old emails -- also really helps the collective effort to reduce demand and help preserve the health of our rivers and wildlife," Helen Wakeham, Environment Agency Director of Water, said in the press release.

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And yes, there’s the usual credit monitoring

Global staffing firm Manpower confirmed ransomware criminals broke into its Lansing, Michigan franchise's network and stole personal information belonging to 144,189 people, months after the extortionists claimed that they pilfered "all of [the company's] confidential data." …

Google, Cisco, and McKinsey have reintroduced in-person interviews to combat AI-assisted cheating in virtual technical assessments. Coda Search/Staffing reports client requests for face-to-face meetings has surged to 30% this year from 5% in 2024. A Gartner survey of 3,000 job seekers found 6% admitted to interview fraud including having someone else stand in for them, while the FBI has warned of thousands of North Korean nationals using false identities to secure remote positions at U.S. technology companies. Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed in June the company now requires at least one in-person round for certain roles to verify candidates possess genuine coding skills.

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Keep calm and clear out that inbox. Also maybe lay off the GenAI

With many parts of England grappling with a water shortage, the UK's National Drought Group (NDG), which includes both government and non-government agencies, has suggested citizens can help by... clearing out their inboxes.…

Don't need to give Uncle Sam any more reason to think kill switches are a good idea

Nvidia may have the Trump administration's blessing to resume shipments of its H20 AI accelerators to China, but in Beijing, government officials are now pressuring companies to use what they describe as less-advanced semiconductors.…

Google is rolling out a new feature called "Preferred Sources" in the U.S. and India, which allows users to select their preferred choice of news sites and blogs to be shown in the Top Stories section of Google's search results. From a report: Enabling this feature means you will see more content from the sites you like, the company says. When users search for a particular topic, they will see a "star" icon next to the Top Stories section. They can tap on that icon and start adding sources by searching for them. Once you select the sources, you can refresh the results to see more content from your selected sources. Google said that for some queries, users will also see a separate "From your sources" section below the Top Stories section.

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Last year's attempt failed, but increased concern over the state of the BIS might make the second time the charm

The US government agency in charge of keeping advanced technology out of the hands of America's enemies desperately needs an IT modernization to accomplish its mission. So a group of elected officials is trying (again) to get the funds it needs to do so. …

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft is starting to roll out lightweight taskbar apps for Microsoft 365 users on Windows 11. These taskbar apps will automatically launch at startup and provide quick access to contacts, file search, and calendar straight from the Windows taskbar. The Microsoft 365 companion apps, as Microsoft calls them, are starting to roll out to business users of Microsoft 365 this month. The People companion provides a browsable org chart, as well as the ability to look up anyone in your company. You can also quickly start a Teams message or call with a contact, or email them directly.

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Deal could give legislative and judicial agencies access to AI that hallucinated legal citations in a court filing

Anthropic has become the latest company to benefit from the US government's frenetic AI adoption pace, inking a deal to get its software into the hands of federal agencies at a deep discount.…

Microsoft has compiled a spreadsheet of Meta AI employees by name, location and position as part of an aggressive recruiting push to sustain its AI-driven march toward a $4 trillion market valuation, according to internal documents viewed by Business Insider. The company created a "critical AI talent" designation enabling top offers within 24 hours and mandated matching Meta's compensation packages, which OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says reach $100 million signing bonuses and recently hit $250 million total packages. Microsoft AI under Mustafa Suleyman and CoreAI under ex-Meta engineering boss Jay Parikh have deployed special recruiting teams making multimillion-dollar offers with multimillion-dollar on-hire bonuses, while the company maintains flat headcount after cutting thousands of employees this year.

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Enter a prompt and get back a copyright infringement

More and more US companies are using generative AI as a way to save money they might otherwise pay creative professionals. But they're not thinking about the legal bills.…

Website, emails, and phones are down for a second day

The Pennsylvania's Office of Attorney General (OAG) is blaming a digital blackout of its services on a "cyber incident."…

Australia's Federal Court ruled Tuesday that Apple and Google violated competition law through anti-competitive app store practices. Judge Jonathan Beach found both companies breached section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act by misusing market power to reduce competition. The decision covers class actions representing 15 million consumers and 150,000 developers seeking compensation for inflated prices from 2017-2022, plus separate Epic Games cases. Apple's exclusive iOS App Store and mandatory payment system, along with Google's Play Store billing requirements, were ruled anti-competitive despite security justifications. Compensation amounts will be determined at subsequent hearings, with estimates reaching hundreds of millions of dollars.

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Efforts to build easier off-ramps are … err … ramping up

Private cloud platform vendor Platform9 has a new lure for disaffected VMware users: A tool that allows migrations without requiring extra hardware.…

AI startup Perplexity on Tuesday offered to purchase Google's Chrome browser for $34.5 billion as it works to challenge the tech giant's web-search dominance. From a report: Perplexity's offer is significantly more than its own valuation, which is estimated at $18 billion. The company told The Wall Street Journal that several investors including large venture-capital funds had agreed to back the transaction in full. Estimates of Chrome's enterprise value vary widely but recent ones have ranged from $20 billion to $50 billion. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta is weighing whether to force Google to sell the browser as a means of weakening Google's stranglehold on web search. Mehta last year ruled that Google illegally monopolized the search market and is expected to rule this month on how to restore competition.

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'Hung' is out and 'Unresponsive' is in, according to the Academy Software Foundation and the Alliance for OpenUSD

A Linux Foundation project has published an Inclusive Language Guide to recommend replacements for common tech terms deemed potentially offensive to some users.…

Spirit Airlines has warned investors that it may go out of business, just months after exiting bankruptcy. From a report: In a quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, it said there was "substantial doubt" over its "ability to continue as a going concern within 12 months." The budget airline said it was harder to make money because of weak demand for domestic leisure travel and "elevated domestic capacity," meaning increased competition on such routes. Spirit reported a net loss of $245.8 million for the second quarter of 2025, up from a $192.9 million loss for the second quarter of 2024.

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US cops yank servers, domains, and crypto from the Russia-linked gang - but the crooks remain at large

In a display of bureaucratic bravado, US law enforcement agencies say they've “disrupted” the BlackSuit ransomware gang (also known as Royal), freeing millions of dollars in virtual currency from its clutches.…