Welcome to our latest round-up of news from the technology and hosting world. Here’s what we’ve discovered this month.
Google’s AI Mode
Google has introduced a new search option called AI Mode, which uses its Gemini AI platform to answer queries rather than providing a list of website links. Designed to respond to natural-language queries and provide answers to follow-up questions within the same session, it offers a more advanced version of the AI Overviews that now appear at the top of many traditional searches.
Although traditional search will still be available, AI Mode is expected to change how individuals find information by offering AI-generated summaries where the only outbound links are for websites cited in the answer.
With 60% of Google searches already resulting in zero clicks to websites, the addition of AI mode has led to growing concern among publishers, retailers and other businesses that depend on search traffic. By keeping users on Google’s pages, critics claim the new feature could lower advertising revenue for external sites, especially news organisations.
OpenAI-UK Deal
ChatGPT developer, OpenAI, has partnered with the UK government to investigate how AI can improve productivity in public services. The agreement will see collaboration in fields like education, defence, security and the justice system, while also seeking ways to protect public data. In addition, the partnership will explore the need for AI infrastructure investment, including the need to increase the capacity of UK data centres.
By giving OpenAI access to specific government data to improve its models, it is hoped that the government will be able to automate routine administrative tasks, freeing up its skilled workers to focus on more important projects.
The partnership follows similar agreements with Google and Anthropic, while building on existing civil service AI initiatives, like the Humphrey productivity tools. It will also see OpenAI expanding its London office.
Nuclear Disposal Robots
A new robot has been designed to safely dismantle radioactive gloveboxes, speeding up their decommission. Sellafield in Cumbria, Europe’s largest nuclear site, has around 700 of these sealed containers, some of which are over 60 years old and still contain contaminated materials like pipework and valves.
Developed through the Risk Reduction of Glovebox Operations (RrOBO) project, the robot has a mechanical arm that can be placed inside an active glovebox, enabling it to perform complex removal tasks without direct human involvement. Trials have shown that it can carry out these intricate operations safely, minimising the risks to workers and speeding up clean-up times.
The robot will be used on legacy gloveboxes at Sellafield as part of its long-term decommissioning strategy. While human operators will still be needed for some tasks, the introduction of robotics will improve overall safety, boost efficiency, and help the facility better manage the large number of gloveboxes that still need to be disposed of.
NK Targets Developers
Research from Sonatype has uncovered a significant supply chain attack, where hackers linked to North Korea target open-source developers by embedding malware in packages that resemble popular software tools.
During the first half of 2025, Sonatype blocked over 200 harmful packages found in the NPM and Python Package Index (PyPI) repositories, which were linked to the Lazarus Group. The Lazarous Group is allegedly run by the North Korean government. The packages, which have potentially affected as many as 36,000 victims, were designed to steal credentials, profile systems and create backdoors.
By impersonating established brands, including using fake websites and similar domain names and URLs, the hackers trick developers and automated build systems into downloading compromised components. Once these are installed, the malware can execute various payloads, including keyloggers, clipboard stealers, and remote shells that allow long-term intrusion. Sonatype warns that open-source projects run by small teams are particularly vulnerable to these attacks.
Dedicated Server Growth
A recent survey of over 1,000 IT professionals has shown a rise in the use of dedicated servers. Currently, 86% of organisations use dedicated servers, with the highest usage rates found in government, IT and the finance sector. Small business usage has also reached 68%. Interestingly,42% of respondents said they had moved workloads from public cloud back to dedicated infrastructure in the last year, mainly due to the demands of AI performance and compliance.
The survey showed that dedicated servers are used for a wide range of reasons, such as for databases, storage, web hosting, app development, compliance and the training or inference of AI models. The key benefits of dedicated servers compared to cloud solutions were full control, customisation, predictable costs, network performance and physical security. More than half of respondents said they would never use public cloud for regulated data, while others preferred the reliability of dedicated servers for critical workloads.
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