The Register Kettle

Hey, did you hear about those elections in the US this past week? 

Honestly, how could you have not? The Democratic party has seized control of Congress and state governments around the country. It's easy to see this entirely as a rebuke of Trump and his policies, but blowback against AI, datacenters, and the tech industry played a role too, if the past week of chaos in markets and Silicon Valley is any indication. 

Join host Brandon Vigliarolo, El Reg EIC Matt Rosoff, and special guest, senior reporter at The Verge, Elizabeth Lopatto, to talk about what the winds of political change mean for the tech industry. 

It's official: Anthropic is going public, and boy, are our eyebrows tired from pouring over hundreds and hundreds of pages of questionable claims.

Anthropic is going to need to do a lot to make its massive IPO more than just a flash in the pan, as systems editor Tobias Mann and senior reporter Tom Claburn tell host Brandon Vigliarolo on this week's episode. 

For one, the company has nearly a trillion dollars in compute commitments to pay for, which is going to mean it'll be burning through more cash than a datacenter gas turbine turned up to 11. In addition to its massive spending for the foreseeable future, there's also the fact that much of its computing power relies on customers who are also competitors.

In short, we're skeptical, but you probably already knew that. It's El Reg, after all, and we're not just taking what the AI industry claims at face value - if it looks like a house of cards, it probably is. 

We've spent the past several decades using duct tape, string, and chewing gum to chain the world's computers together into this thing we call the internet, so there's really no good reason to be surprised that most of it is full of software containing vulnerabilities that are practically just as old. 

The world is still reeling from the PHP2Shell revelations that hit the news cycle this week, and this week on The Kettle there's no better topic for host Brandon Vigliarolo, cybersecurity editor Jessica Lyons, and FOSS reporter Liam Proven to tease apart.

Join us to discuss what exactly is going on, how AI was key to finding another issue no human likely ever would have discovered on their own, and why exposing more bad code in the backbone of the world's computers might be just what we need to rethink the whole thing for the better. 

It's been nearly half a century since the Voyager probes launched from Earth on a mission to explore the outer solar system, and they're still kicking. 

You're probably familiar with some of Voyager's iconic images, like the Pale Blue Dot and other images of our outer planets - most of which Voyager is the only spacecraft humans have ever sent to those planets. 

Those photos and observations wouldn't have been possible without Voyager's imaging team, eight members of which were selected from scientists from around the world. The UK's sole representative, Dr. Garry Hunt, joins us on this episode of The Register to talk about his role in the Voyager program, the future of the mission, and the state of science in the UK, US, and beyond. 

The FBI has announced what appears to be a third arrest in its campaign to root out the ShinyHunters after they busted into Bureau systems - but just because they're a highly-capable hacking crew it doesn't mean they won't be outdone by AI. 

A second vulnerability discovered by Anthropic's Mythos model has been exploited in the wild, and it's not one that humans probably would have discovered, begging the question just how important we are in the future of cybercrime. 

Join host Brandon Vigliarolo, cybersecurity editor Jessica Lyons, and senior reporter Tom Claburn to discuss those stories, and what they mean for the future of cybersecurity, on this week's episode.

Anthropic's IPO prospectus leaked this week, and boy was it filled with interesting details.

For starters there's the fact a third of it is all about existential AI risks, then there's the fact that, despite some impressive revenue growth the company still has yet to turn a profit. Combine that with massive capex predictions, and you have an IPO with massive valuation, yet a long, hard road toward anything resembling earnings. 

Join host Brandon Vigliarolo, El Reg editor in chief Matt Rosoff, and enterprise IT reporter Lindsay Clark on this week's episode of The Kettle where they discuss the revelations, what they mean for the state of the AI industry, and just how much distraction from its actual problems Anthropic can eke out by keeping that doomsday narrative front and center. 

As AI has reshaped the tech world, so it in turn waits for something greater to come along and reshape it, and that unstoppable force might just be TypeSafe AI's new model, Jev. 

Jev's not chatty, it doesn't want to tell you a story, and it won't really do much besides answering multiple choice, ranking, and binary yes/no questions to a degree of probability, but in lots of cases that's probably all you need from an AI. 

Jev is also dirt cheap to run and ultra fast, and has proven to have a lot of use cases in just a week on the scene. 

This week on The Kettle, join host Brandon Vigliarolo, senior reporter Tom Claburn, and contributor Joab Jackson to chat about how Jev is reshaping the AI landscape and what it might do to the future of the AI industry. 

Just when you thought concerns over datacenter power generation in the US couldn't get any worse, the Trump administration goes ahead and gets rid of emissions restrictions on power plants. 

If that wasn't bad enough, the EPA is also considering getting rid of reporting requirements on small-scale polluters (e.g., datacenters with on-site power generation), meaning all those unrestricted emissions at new bit barns might not even be mentioned to the public. 

But hey, at least Nvidia is riding to the rescue with some datacenter energy efficiency improvements, as self-serving as they may be for the company's bottom line. 

Join host Brandon Vigliarolo, Systems Editor Tobias Mann, and Reporter Dan Robinson to talk all about these developments, and why we're not so sure coal will come roaring back as a datacenter energy choice any time soon. 

Hey, did you hear? AI is going to kill us all and no one is trying to do anything to stop it. 

That's what industry insiders are saying now, anyways. Whether you believe we just have to sit back and let Skynet end civilization is another matter altogether. We at The Register's Kettle desk don't think so, and that's what we're talking over this week. 

Join host Brandon Vigliarolo, systems editor Tobias Mann, and senior reporter Tom Claburn to hear our thoughts on how we could stop the impending AI meteor hurtling toward us by, for starters, arresting the tech bros who keep letting it do bad stuff. Someone had better do something - all those industry insiders sounding the alarm are going to be exhibit A if and when we take action after it's already too late. 

AI repository Hugging Face will soon be an Nvidia property, and while everyone's promising things will remain the same we at The Register's Kettle desk aren't so sure the status quo is going to stay the status quo at the AI industry's leading open model host. 

Joining host Brandon Vigliarolo this week is reporter Dan Robinson, who broke the news of Nvidia's $12.9 billion acquisition for El Reg yesterday, weighs in on what he heard on the announcement call, while senior reporter Tom Claburn opines on what he sees coming.