There's really only one topic for the Kettle this week - DeepSeek. What began as a Chinese hedge-fund venture has blown away nearly a trillion dollars in stock market value from Nvidia, Microsoft, and Meta. But is it all it's cracked up to be? We have our doubts, as you can see below. Tim Prickett-Morgan on The Next Platform has been following this story before it broke, Tobias Mann went hands on with the LLM on Sunday and our editor Chris Williams has been testing the Chinese system extensively. As ever, your host Iain Thomson keeps things polite.

t's that time of the year again and the tech world heads to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. It's been a bit subdued this year, since Trump's tariff plans could drastically raise the cost of hardware from China and elsewhere, but the usual suspects unveiled this year's kit. Chip vendors and laptop slingers have been out in force hoping to piggyback the AI wave and this year's upgrade cycle, and there's been the usual grab bag of wacky ideas from plucky young startups. You can see the full discussion below. Chewing the fat we have our editor-in-chief Chris Williams, reporters Brandon Vigliarolo and Tobias Mann, and hosted by Iain Thomson. Nicole Hemsoth Prickett produced the episode.

It's been a rough week for the AI industry as a series of stories have showed the latest LLM technology in a less than flattering light. For example, it appears that AI makes workers less productive, mainly because they haven't been trained how to use it. Gartner, usually a tech cheerleader, has pointed out that expensive AI PCs don't appear to be selling. But there's still Microsoft's latest AI enthusiasm from Ignite - Redmond has to recoup that $10 billion investment in ChatGPT somehow. There's some spirited discussion, and not a few chuckles on this week's Kettle episode, that you can watch in full below. Chewing the fat we have our editor Chris Williams, reporters Brandon Vigliarolo and Tom Claburn.

Despite countless warnings that the US election would lead to a months-long battle, we can finally begin to look ahead to what the next four years might look like, at least from a tech industry standpoint. The new administration won't be sworn in until January, and plenty will change in that time. The rhetoric on the campaign trail doesn't necessarily translate into actions but early words are already having an impact.

In this week's Kettle it's all about AI - or rather whether the tech industry can make the technology not only work, but pay its way as well. With trillions of dollars being spent investors are starting to get twitchy about what they can see for their money and patience. Meanwhile, Nvidia and others are facing what could be their peak year for a while as the market settles down a little - for the moment at least. You can see the full discussion below. After a busy week of financial results and announcement in the field we're joined by Tom Claburn, who's done a deep dive into the returns on investment for AI spending, Tim Prickett-Morgan from our sister site The Next Platform - and he knows the market better than most - and Tobias Mann, who has been trawling through the financial figures so you don't have to. This episode was directed and produced by Nicole Hemsoth Prickett. For those who prefer just the audio, the Kettle is available via RSS and MP3, Apple, Amazon, and Spotify. So is the AI snake eating itself? Let us know in the forums.

If you're an IT administrator running a Windows network then the last day can't have been a lot of fun, with millions of systems stuck in Bluescreen bootloop hell and most requiring manual intervention to fix.

With the continuing fallout from Snowflake now hitting over 100 million AT&T customers we discuss quite what is to be done. Constant vigilance is a given, but there's always the himan factor that ensures even the best security systems can be rolled over due to a single slip up. Then there's the promise of AI, or possibly the lack of promise. Machine learning was touted as a possible savior of the security industry, but - as with so much AI hype - the reality is looking somewhat less rosy. You can see the full discussion below. On this week's show we have Tobias Mann, Brandon Vigliarolo, The Register's security editor Jessica Lyons and your host Iain Thomson.

It's been a busy week in space, with Boeing's test pilots still stuck on the International Space Station thanks to their faulty capsule, and then being forced to take shelter from space debris. The debris came from RESURS-P1, a decommissioned Russian satellite launched in 2013, which broke up this week into over 100 observable pieces, all traveling at around 17,000mph. As the debris field approached the ISS astronauts were forced to take cover in a hardened safety chamber. Not that the station has long left, as NASA awarded a contract this week to deorbit the platform in 2030. By then there may be a replacement, and there'll almost certainly be a rival in the form of China, which is building its own space station. It's also been a good week for the Middle Kingdom, with the Chang'e-6 re-entry capsule bringing back the first samples from the far side of the Moon. You can see the full discussion below.

On Thursday the US government effectively banned Kaspersky security software on US servers on national security grounds, or at least made it useless given the lack of updates come September. Then, as we were filming this week's Kettle, 12 members of Kaspersky's C-suite were sanctioned as well - although not the Russian business' eponymous CEO Eugene. So what on earth is going on? Is this overreach by the US government or is there something more sinister going on? Joining us on this week's Kettle is our security editor Jessica Lyons to give us the full story, along with Tom Claburn to add in wisdom on the software side. As ever The Register's editor Chris Williams has pithy comment and your host is Iain Thomson, with producer Nicole Hemsoth Prickett turning chat into gold.

The tech world has been gathering in Taipei for the annual extravaganza that is Computex and all the chip makers have been strutting their stuff - one in particular. Nvidia didn't even book a spot at the show and instead host its own keynote where Jensen Huang, just crowned CEO of the world's second most valuable corporation, reflected on a stellar year and told us what's coming down the line. He then, rather bizarrely, wondered off to sign a young lady's chest. Such shenanigans weren't seen from other CEO. A fired-up Pat Gelsinger touted Intel's return to form and bought a new chip along with him. AMD, Qualcomm and Arm were also showing off the fruits of their labor and what OEMs have done with them. You can see the full discussion below and the squid discussed is here - although the image may haunt your dreams. On this week's show our man on the spot Simon Sharwood is joined by Joining us this week is Chris Williams and Tobias Mann, with your host Iain Thomson.

There's no avoiding AI and LLMs this year. The technology is being stuffed into everything, from office software to phone apps. Nvidia, Qualcomm, and others are happy to push the notion that this machine learning must be performed on an accelerator, be it a GPU or an NPU. Arm this week made the case that its CPU cores, used in smartphones and more throughout the world, are ideal for running AI software. For this week's Kettle, our journalists discuss the merits of running AI workloads on CPUs, NPUs, and GPUs; the power and infrastructure needed to do so, from personal devices to massive datacenters; and how this artificial intelligence is being used – what with Palantir's AI targeting system being injected into the entire US military.

Microsoft has held its annual Build developer conference but frankly it felt like Built - as in this is what we're bringing in and suck up up peons. Chief on the reader concern list was Redmond's Total Recall feature - taking a screenshot every few seconds for the AI engine (and anyone who hacks your machine) to note. Amazingly no one at Microsoft seems to have said in the planning meetings "Er, this could really backfire." And so it has.

It's been a troubling week in China's relationships with the rest of the world and there's no sign things are getting better. The US has announced sweeping trade tariffs against Chinese technology exports, Microsoft is giving key engineering and cloud staff the opportunity to get out of the country while they still can, and the world + dog is concerned that the Chinese state may be sponsoring the largest computer espionage operation the world has yet seen. Lest we be accused of anti-Middle Kingdom bias it's almost certain the US is hacking back, and the rest of the world are no angels, but there's something disturbing about having the world's possibly upcoming superpower just rewriting the diplomatic rulebook. You can see the full conversation below

Our security Vulture did the full RSA conference, spoke up, and held folks to account

Buying $110B of your own stock is legal, but isn't a good look. It's earnings season and Apple showed less-than-stellar performance over the second quarter of 2024, but had a solution. Was it to invest in the next must-have tech gadget? Maybe build its own AI model or search engine so that it doesn't have to rely on Google's technology in those areas? No, it was to spend $110 billion on its own shares - the largest share buyback in American history and a movie that the markets loved. But - as we discuss in the Kettle you can watch below -stock buybacks (a practice that used to be illegal until the 1980s) are a bit of a red flag. When tech companies stop investing in development and start slashing the cash on buy their own shares - we're looking at you IBM, Intel, Google, Boeing etc…

The conversation discusses the rising costs of technology and the impact on customers. It highlights examples of companies increasing prices to drive profits, such as Broadcom's acquisition of VMware and Microsoft's price hikes and introduction of ads in Windows 11. The conversation also touches on the financing strategies of companies, including using their own assets as collateral for loans. The potential bubble in the AI and GPU market is explored, as well as the challenges faced by customers in managing costs and navigating vendor pricing. The conversation concludes with a discussion on the role of open source and the need for alternative solutions.

Intel is introducing Gaudi 3, its competitor to Nvidia's AI hardware. While Gaudi 3 may not look impressive on paper, Intel claims it can go toe to toe with Nvidia in most AI workloads. However, Intel will need to step up its game in the next year to stay competitive, especially with the upcoming release of Blackwell, which is expected to be much faster than Gaudi 3. Google is also entering the AI hardware market with its ARM-based CPU, joining other cloud providers in offering ARM designs. The cost of AI and the sustainability of the infrastructure are still uncertain.

It's now been a week since the accidental discovery of a fatal flaw in Fedora Linux 40; Fedora Rawhide developer distribution. Debian Unstable, and Kali Linux that would have allowed total control of operating systems that underpin the backbone of the technology industry.

We discuss the financial results of big tech companies and the role of AI in their success and highlight Google's use of AI to improve advertising campaigns for small businesses and the potential impact on its future business. The conversation shifts to the challenges faced by rival search engines in competing with Google's AI-powered advertising business. We also analyze AMD's strong performance and the significance of its AI accelerator and no convo is complete without remarking on Intel's struggles in the AI market, including manufacturing issues and competition from Qualcomm. We conclude with a discussion on the adoption and risks of AI in business processes and the need for trust and scrutiny in AI models.

In the latest episode, we stir the pot with Boeing's nosedive in the 737 Max 9 saga and their manufacturing muddles before shifting gears to Tesla's Cybertruck, which seems to be off-roading its way through software snafus. We take a turn into Failville with Microsoft Copilot, debating whether it's flying high or just coasting along in user value. We also navigate the AI labyrinth in software development, pondering over its brainy boons and risky business. Lastly, we parked at Tesla's financial fizzle, spotlighting their bottom line blues and future forecast fog.