ToplineTesla has recalled more than 40,000 Cybertrucks over an exterior panel that may detach while driving, increasing the risk of a crash, according to a regulatory filing Thursday, the eighth notice issued for Teslas pickup truck while the company and CEO Elon Musk face growing protests and stock woes.Elon Musks automaker has recalled its trucks for issues with accelerator panels, defective driver ... [+] inverters and more.AFP via Getty ImagesKey FactsThe recall affects Cybertrucks manufactured between Nov. 13, 2023, and Feb. 27, 2025, according to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration filing.Tesla notified regulators that the Cybertrucks are equipped with cant railsa stainless-steel exterior trim panelthat can detach from the vehicle while in motion, the NHTSA said.Affected Cybertrucks have cant rails that may separate at the point where they connect to the vehicle, which may cause them to detach from the vehicle entirely, regulators said, noting drivers may be able to hear a sound or see the panel as it becomes loose.Tesla said it launched an investigation into the defect on Jan. 13 after receiving a complaint on Jan. 7, and the automaker has received 151 warranty claims that may be related to the defect as of March 14, though Tesla is not aware of any related collisions or injuries.Drivers with the affected vehicles will be notified by May 19, according to Tesla, who said they will replace the cant rail assembly for free.Get Forbes Breaking News Text Alerts: Were launching text message alerts so you'll always know the biggest stories shaping the days headlines. Text Alerts to (201) 335-0739 or sign up here.Big Number5.1 million. Thats how many vehicles Tesla recalled in the U.S. in 2024, the most of any automaker, according to NHTSA data, though most of these recalls were addressed through over-the-air software updates. Tesla was responsible for roughly 21% of the vehicles recalled in the U.S. last year, while its market share of cars sold was about 4.2% in 2023, according to industry analysts at Cox Automotive.TangentTeslas latest recall follows a wave of protests and vandalism at several Tesla dealerships in the U.S. in recent months. Graffiti was sprayed on a wall of the Loveland, Colorado, dealership, while shots were fired, Molotov cocktails were thrown and Tesla vehicles have been vandalized or damaged at dealerships in several states. Some peaceful protests have taken place and are linked to Tesla Takedown, a group that urges car owners to sell your Teslas, dump your stock, join the picket lines. Musk told Fox News he believes there are larger forces at work that are funding and coordinating the Tesla protests, after previously claiming, without evidence, that billionaires and Democratic-affiliated organizations were responsible. Attorney General Pam Bondi has said the acts of vandalism are nothing short of domestic terrorism, though there is no federal charge for domestic terrorism. Bondi has said she opened an investigation into the protests and to find anyone who may be funding them. Shares of Tesla are down more than 40% year-to-date, the worst loss of any company on the S&P 500 as of Tuesday.Key BackgroundTesla filed seven notices for its Cybertrucks in 2024, after years of delays amid production issues and battery supply restrictions that pushed back the vehicles first deliveries to late 2023. An initial recall was issued in January 2024 for warning lights with a font size that may make critical safety information difficult to read. Nearly 3,900 Cybertrucks were recalled in April 2024 over gas pedals that could get stuck, causing the vehicles to unintentionally accelerate. Two more notices were issued in June 2024, after Tesla and regulators found Cybertrucks with malfunctioning windshield wipers and improperly attached trunk bed trims. Other recalls have been issued for rearview camera issues and defective drive inverters, among others.Further ReadingSurge In Tesla Protests And Vandalism: Teslas Set On Fire In Las VegasAs Musk Baselessly Blames Larger Forces (Forbes)Tesla Issues Sixth Recall For Cybertrucks This Year (Forbes)

Proactive PatchingAssassin's Creed Shadows gets day-one patch that should limit temple and shrine vandalism, after Japanese politicians reportedly express concerns about potential real world copycatsWorries linked to large tourist numbers are seemingly at the root of what led to Japan's prime minister being asked about Shadows recently.Image credit: Ubisoft News by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on March 20, 2025 Ubisoft has confirmed that Assassin's Creed Shadows has gotten a day-one patch, which brings a feww bug fixes, in addition to some noteworthy tweaks that should stop folks from vandalising any of the temples or shrines they run across while exploring Feudal Japan.According to patch notes the publisher has shared with IGN, the patch renders tables and racks found in these locations indestructible, and also aims to reduce the chance of any "unintended blood spill in temples/shrines" by making sure that unarmed citizens won't bleed if you attack them.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. While the patch has been deployed for everyone, no matter which platform you're on or where you are in the world, it seems likely that it's Ubisoft electing to further insulate itself from any potential - that being the key word - issues when it comes to how the game handles Japan and its culture, now that it's released. As you might be aware, there's been a lot of chatter about this in regards to Shadows over the past year or so.The latest instance of this was Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba being asked a question about Shadows by another politician - member of the House of Councillors of Japan Hiroyuki Kada - on March 19. "I fear that allowing players to attack and destroy real-world locations in the game without permission could encourage similar behavior in real life," Kaba said, "Shrine officials and local residents are also worried about this. Of course, freedom of expression must be respected, but acts that demean local cultures should be avoided.""How to address this legally is something we need to discuss with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ishiba replied, "Defacing a shrine is out of the question - it is an insult to the nation itself. When the Self-Defense Forces were deployed to Samawah, Iraq, we ensured they studied Islamic customs beforehand. Respecting the culture and religion of a country is fundamental, and we must make it clear that we will not simply accept acts that disregard them."IGN notes that it seems unlikely that anything further will come of this, with IGN Japan staff suggesting that the concerns raised by the politicians here are linked to a surge in tourism Japan's experienced post-lockdown that's allegedly been linked to a rise in antisocial behaviour. Kada's concern is that Shadows players theoertically might be inspired to vandalise real life shrines during visits to the country, a similar argument to the usual 'video games cause violence' ones we've seen in the west.Alongside those two tweaks, the day-one Shadows patch also includes some of the more usual kinds of bug fixes you'd expect in a day-one patch for a game. There are some aimed at ensuring you don't get stuck or end up out of bounds when going prone or interacting with stuff after dodging, as well as some clipping you could see with Yasuke and Naoe's clothes during certain animations.Ubisoft's also packed in some lighting adjustments that sound like they probably intended to make entrances and exits more easily noticeable, and it's "improved horse navigation, reducing issues with turning and blocked paths". Less riding into trees and ending up galloping in place hopefully, not that that's something unique to Shadows - hello, all of my Witcher 3 playthroughs where I've randomly tried to take a 'shortcut' through a patch of roadless woodland.

Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo LifeRemember two, maybe three years ago when COVID-19 hit and Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out? Hah, what a fun and relatively recent time that was! It feels like only yesterd- wait, five years? New Horizons came out five years ago?? Oh my...Yep, on 20th March 2020, Nintendo finally unleashed the latest entry in the Animal Crossing series on the world. The series had, historically, put up pretty decent sales numbers both New Leaf and Wild World are in the top 10 best-selling titles for the 3DS and DS respectively but New Horizons eclipsed all of that.Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube799kWatch on YouTube A game about going outside and meeting your friends would have had a cute little hook at any time, but released at the start of a pesky little curio called a global pandemic, the interest jumped to another level. In its first six weeks, New Horizons had outsold every other entry in the series, and it has since gone on to shift a whopping 47.77 million copies beaten only by Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in the list of Switch best-sellers.You don't need us to remind you just how wild the world went (heh) for New Horizons at launch, but let's recap some of the craziest moments:Just about every famous face you can think of got involved in the island adventure, including (and we're not joking here) Brie Larson, Elijah Wood, Stephen Fry and Sting. Heck, the Biden presidential campaign even opened an island of its own in 2020! What timeline were we living in??Players around the world instantly put our humble design efforts to shame with recreations of global landmarks and every video game you can think of, from Stardew Valley to Resident Evil. And this popularity spun out into brand collaborations, with New Horizons popping up with Sanrio, Puma, Uniqlo and about a billion others.Oh, and if you still need convincing of just how tight a grip the NH gang had us all in, Nintendo started releasing health messages via its characters remember when Isabelle reminded us to stay hydrated during a heatwave? We do.Images: Zion Grassl / Nintendo LifeYou might assume that such a big footprint would result in years of post-launch support, right? Hah. Good one. After some short-lived seasonal updates and the Happy Home Paradise DLC, Nintendo's been pretty silent on the whole affair. Sure, we've had plenty of LEGO sets, merch and a handful of special edition Switch designs, but new game content? No way.Maybe it's all being saved for whatever the next entry brings. 40+ million sales don't go unnoticed and while it has been a while since most of us at Nintendo Life Towers have revisited our islands for a bit of much-needed weeding, we'd be very surprised if Switch 2 doesn't capitalise on the fame before long.If, like us, it's been a while since you last visited New Horizons, perhaps today is the perfect time for it. Shake those bedheads into shape, crush those cockroaches and set about emptying a letterbox full of rotting cakes from Mum; we've got a birthday to celebrate. The shores of BellIs Animal Crossing: New Horizons really five years old? (35 votes)Nope14%Definitely not14%It's a no from me3%No way3%It can't be9%... Can someone please explain to Jim how time works57%When did you last play Animal Crossing: New Horizons? (42 votes)In the last week or two, I'm consistent!19%Probably a few months ago14%Within the last year, definitely24%Ehh, a couple of years ago? Maybe24%... almost five years ago10%Sorry, I still haven't picked it up10%What are your top memories of Animal Crossing: New Horizons from the last five years? Let us know in the comments.Related GamesSee AlsoShare:01 Jim came to Nintendo Life in 2022 and, despite his insistence that The Minish Cap is the best Zelda game and his unwavering love for the Star Wars prequels (yes, really), he has continued to write news and features on the site ever since. Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...Related ArticlesPokmon Scarlet & Violet: Mystery Gift Codes ListAll the current Pokmon Scarlet and Violet Mystery Gift codesNintendo Museum Launches Keychains That Play Your Favourite Console JinglePortable nostalgiaSakurai Says Japanese Developers Should Avoid Trying To Appeal To Western Tastes"I think that they seek the uniqueness and fun of Japanese games"

Do it, Nintendo.Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition is out now on the Nintendo Switch, and it represents a significant upgrade over the original 2015 Wii U version.That said, what if it could be even better..? Gosh, wouldn't that be something. The thing is, modder MasaGratoR has discovered that the game features a hidden 60fps mode (thanks, wccftech) that would effectively double the performance from the 30fps currently implemented.Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Hackers are ramping up their attempts to exploit a trio of year-old ServiceNow vulnerabilities to break into unpatched company instances, security researchers warned this week.Threat intelligence startup GreyNoise said in a blog post on Tuesday that it had observed a notable resurgence of in-the-wild activity targeting the three ServiceNow vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2024-4879, CVE-2024-5178, and CVE-2024-5217.The vulnerabilities were first disclosed by researchers at Assetnote in May 2024 and patched by ServiceNow months later in July 2024.GreyNoise said that all three flaws have seen a resurgence in targeted exploitation attempts in the past week. Its not known exactly who is behind this latest wave of targeting, but GreyNoise said that 70% of the malicious activity it observed in the past week targeted systems based in Israel, with activity also seen in Germany, Japan, and Lithuania.As first noted by Assetnote last year, GreyNoise also confirms that the vulnerabilities can be chained together for full database access of affected ServiceNow instances. Organizations often use the ServiceNow platform to host sensitive data about their employees, including their personally identifiable information and HR records related to their employment.ServiceNow spokesperson Erica Faltous told TechCrunch that the company first learned of the vulnerabilities nearly a year ago, and, to date, we have not observed any customer impact from an attack campaign.Following Assetnotes disclosure of the flaws last year, U.S. security firm Resecurity warned that foreign threat actors had attempted to exploit the three ServiceNow vulnerabilities to target both private sector companies and government agencies around the world.Resecurity said it saw targeted attempts at an energy company, a data center organization, a Middle Eastern government agency, and a software developer.Cybersecurity company Imperva released another report in July 2024 warning that it had also observed exploitation attempts across 6,000 sites across various industries, with a focus on the financial services sector.

Open-source data movement company Airbyte is launching additional connectors to help enterprises better utilize their data in the age of AI without compromising data sovereignty.The San Francisco-based startup announced on Thursday that its releasing a host of new capabilities designed to enable customers to securely move corporate data without tapping SaaS applications. The new features include support for transferring unstructured data out of applications like Google Drive and SharePoint and compatibility with Apache Iceberg, an open-source format for large analytic tables.Airbyte is also launching a connector bundle for enterprise customers that includes data connector pipelines for applications such as NetSuite, SAP, ServiceNow, and Workday.Michel Tricot, the co-founder and CEO of Airbyte, said that the beauty of these new features is that they give enterprises additional ways to extract and utilize their internal data, including for AI applications on-premise. They also provide an alternative to AI services that might put customers at risk of having their data exposed to third parties, he continued.Screenshot of Airbyte. Fortune 500s like Airbyte because they can have the flexibility and the efficiency of a tool, a piece of infrastructure, but also, they have full control over where the data is moving and from what system, Tricot said. They are the only ones actually looking at the pipes. No one else can look at the pipes beside[s] them.Tricot added that because Airbyte customers have full visibility into these data pipelines, they can go in and remove sensitive knowledge, like employee compensation information, from the data before it reaches its final destination.One thing I like to say is, dont give away your first-party data for intelligence, Tricot said. That is a bad trade. I think a lot of execs and companies are aware of that. There is so much noise about, oh, I dont want this [AI model] to have access to my data when Im chatting with the [model], and it makes sense, because now people are just putting their most sensitive data into this system. So we want to make sure that its kept protected within [] their infrastructure.Tricot thinks support for Iceberg is one of the highlights of the companys new feature set. Iceberg gives companies the ability to move their data into a data lakehouse, he said, creating a single source of truth that works with numerous applications.[Iceberg is] compatible with Databricks, its compatible with Bitquery, its compatible with Snowflake, and its compatible with new AI apps, Tricot said. So its really being compatible with this portable schema.Airbyte was founded in 2020 by Tricot and Jean Lafleur, the companys COO. Airbyte has more than 7,000 enterprise customers, including Monday.com, Invesco, and Calendly, and around 250,000 installations. The startup has raised more than $181 million in venture capital from firms such as Coatue, Accel, and Benchmark, among many others.

Breakdown & ShowreelsBetter Man: Roundtable with Director Michael Gracey and the Weta FX teamBy Vincent Frei - 20/03/2025 Director Michael Gracey and the team of Weta FX, led by VFX Supervisor Luke Millar, reveal the incredible visual effects behind Better Man. Dont miss this really interesting roundtable discussion!WANT TO KNOW MORE?Weta FX: Dedicated page about Better Man on Weta FX website.Luke Millar with Dave Clayton: Heres my interview of Luke Millar (VFX Supervisor) with Dave Clayton (Animation Supervisor). Vincent Frei The Art of VFX 2025

Meow Wolf has brought one of its eccentric immersive art experiences to Houstonor rather, theyve transported Houstonians to a surreal world of sounds and colors.Meow Wolf was founded in 2008 as a small collective of Santa Fe artists who transformed trash into immersive experiences. After its first permanent installation in 2016 in Santa Fe, they expanded their locations to Las Vegas, Denver, Dallas, and as of late last year, Houston. Each location has been a hit. The next installation will be completed in 2026 in Los Angeles, and Meow Wolf made a surprise announcement at South by Southwest in Austin earlier this month that it will be expanding to New York City, opening at Pier 17 in late 2027 or early 2028. Meow Wolf has grown to a staff of more than 1,000. The team repurposes warehouses and other existing spaces into maximalist environments of colors, lights, and sounds, fostering collaboration and experimentation with in-house artists and local artists of the city and region.The narrative of Meow Wolf Houston starts off in ETNL, an unassuming local radio station in a small town in west Texas. (Courtesy Meow Wolf)Inside the Fifth PortalThis fifth portal of Meow Wolf is called Radio Tave. The experience is built in a former sheet metal factory in Houstons historic Fifth Ward. The large open space of the warehouse allowed for the creation of organic structures and forms; the exterior is decorated with vibrant murals.On a recent afternoon, I met the Meow Wolf artist liaison Mario Enrique Figueroa, Jr., the Houston-based graffiti artist GONZO247, at the venue. Radio Tave is a pocket of the Meow Wolf universe where ETNL, an unassuming local radio station in a small town in west Texas, rips a hole in the time continuum, opening up a portal that it falls into. On Halloween 2024, Meow Wolf Houstons Radio Tave debuted as the most sound-inspired of its locations. The exhibition instantly immerses visitors into the radio station with a believable broadcast playing hours and hours of original Meow Wolf content, including music and talk shows. A majority of the sound and music playing throughout the spaces is created by the Meow Wolf team. When you step out of the radio station break room into the Bailiwick, a whimsical forest of otherworldly ruins, you can hear hours of original musicand create your own through soundboards connected to chimes within the trees. Pickle Boy Records, an entity of the Meow Wolf universe plays throughout the spaces. A room dedicated to Pickle Boy features an interactive DJ booth and large spinning records.GONZO247 walked me through the maze of art-filled rooms filled and encouraged me to test the limits of my curiosity. Radio Tave challenges the dont-touch-the-art rule of museums, and brings back the endless curiosity most of us shelved after childhood. In Meow Wolf its okay to open all the doors, press all the buttons, spin all the records, and relinquish all expectations. GONZO247 told me, Ive been here through the very beginning, when this entire shell was just empty, and even now, theres still new things that I find when I look around. The team put intention into every scale of art, even into the smallest details that most people wouldnt notice.Cowboix Hevvven is an ode to the small Texas dive bar where everyone is welcome. (Arturo Olmos/Courtesy Meow Wolf)Behind the BuildAt Meow Wolf locations, the internal planning for the theme and storyline starts two years in advance. Once the sound-driven concept of Radio Tave for Houston was confirmed, the Meow Wolf team designed anchor spaces to guide their narrative along. Its Art Team Task Force (ATTF) mocks up the spaces to scale at the headquarters in Santa Fe, test fits the installations, breaks it all down, and builds it back up at the exhibition location. The ATTF has members specializing in different areas of the artistic process, so each element has had many hands on it. At the Houston location, a primary anchor space is the Theta Theater, a 400-capacity venue with a stage and DJ booth, which uses black light on the painted walls to reveal a nightscape hidden within the daylight. The strategically connected Cowboix Hevvven is an ode to the small Texas dive bar where everyone is welcome, including gender-nonconforming cowboixs, complete with funky divine characters with stories to tell and an interactive jukebox transmitting music from 30 Texas artists. Over half of the 100 artists with installed works are from Texas, including Houston talent. The Meow Wolf team looks to the local community and its creatives at each location and prioritizes collaborating with artists and experiences from underserved and underrepresented communities, including women, people of color, the LGBTQIA+ community, seniors, and people with disabilities. It also aims to lift up emerging artists and seek out artists who recycle or repurpose junk materials.The Freedom to CreateAt Meow Wolf Houston, local artists were given the freedom to follow the theme of music and sound or to pursue their own direction; if they wanted to stray from their usual mediums, they could use this space to experiment. The tangle of rooms features a range of artists, both in terms of discipline and cultural background.At the Houston location, a primary anchor space is the Theta Theater, a 400-capacity venue with a stage and DJ booth. (Arturo Olmos/Courtesy Meow Wolf)Kill Joy, a Filipino-American artist from Houstons Denver Harbor, is an avid participant in art activism. In Laughing River, her hand-painted art and graffiti in a winding hallway tells the story of a jungle that suffers at the hands of colonization.Six rooms house the longest piece by one artist in the exhibition: Obsidiodyssey by Janell Langford, a Santa Febased artist, who walks viewers through the stages of her minds creative process and hopes to create a space in which Black women and femmes can see themselves reflected. The piece starts within an art studio of vibrant colors with a tape full of messages from the artist and an interactive paint board. A hallway designed as a dark alleyway representing the artists fears and doubts leads to a funky disco house party where participants can use a DJ booth to affect the music and visuals in the room. Jasmine Zelaya, a multidisciplinary Honduran-American artist based in Houston, focuses Flower Face Room on the duality of existence being brown in a white America, to assimilate but also retain the identity of ones culture. She paints her and her sisters in Chola fashion with watery eyes, big hair, and flowers for mouths.Nods to Houston are embedded everywhere: Houston rapper Fat Tony created music for the arcade room and collaborated with the Meow Wolf team to create a trippy commercial to be broadcast in Houston. Emily Links Night Shift features a nighttime DJ bat wearing a shirt from Numbers, a classic Houston club. But H-Towns street and music culture is especially felt in the hallway painted by El Franco Lee II: Liquid Analog: Lees Congo Barre recalls a golden era in Houston, when the Rockets won consecutive NBA championships in 1994 and 1995; DJ Screw created a new music style, slowing down and remixing rap songs and other beats; and the artists own family established their legacy in Fifth Ward. The faint sound of a slab driving by bumping music followed as we walked down the hallway.Within Obsidiodyssey there is a funky, interactive DJ Booth. (Courtesy Meow Wolf)What used to be a Houston sheet metal factory now stands as a labyrinth of surreal art and sound. An app accompanies the experience as a personal tour guide with hidden elements about the spaces, information about the artists, and funky games and videos by the Meow Wolf artists and collaborators. There are plans to work with even more local artists in the future, with another mural slated for the warehouses exterior.GONZO247 told AN: A big part of the immersiveness is trying to tap into all your senses. Not only are you seeing visually, youre touching things, youre hearing things, youre putting everything together, and I think that really helps place you in this world.One could spend hours uncovering the many Easter eggs and learning everything about this universeand still not notice everything, like the tiny band playing on the tiny moon in the tiny hole of a tree. The many women of color represented were a highlight for me, expanding on very relevant themes of the immigrant experience, colonization and what it looks like now, and bringing their culture to the city where it rightfully belongs. The theme spoke to Houstons music culture, and I found myself smirking to references only a Houstonian would understand. This psychedelic platform for innovative artists fits right into the creative city.Pooja Desai is a designer and researcher at the Community Design Resource Center at the University of Houston and a writer.

Government considering redress scheme for families of Post Office scandal victims

There has now beenclose to 40bn in new datacentre investment announced in the UK since the new government came to power in July 2024, and started turning its rhetoric about wanting to support the growth of the server farm sector into reality.The governments pro-growth stance towards the datacentre sector has landed well with industry stakeholders. Still, it cannot be ignored that long before Keir Starmer took over Number 10, concerns have circulated about the UK power grid creaking under the weight of demand from server farms.Its a topic Computer Weekly has covered on multiple occasions over the past decade, and an issue thats been gradually becoming more acute and urgent as the demand for UK-based compute capacity from the hyperscale community has grown.However, that was before we had a government in play that was intent on fast-tracking new datacentre developments to grow the economy by cashing in on enterprise and consumer demand for cloud-based services and artificial intelligence (AI). And with 40bn of new datacentre investment secured within the governments first six months in power, its perhaps unsurprising that concerns about the impact all this potential development will have on the UKs energy security and supply continue.Particularly considering the pressure the government is under to decarbonise the grid by phasing out and replacing fossil fuels with renewable sources.During a session at the March 2025 Datacentre World conference in London, Michael Drury, managing director of green energy consultancy Lucid Catalyst, said its a situation putting economies all around the world under pressure, as they figure out how to address the energy gap that could potentially open up in front of them.If you ignore datacentres, you still have to think of the energy gap that weve got thats coming along, especially in countries that have existing [fossil fuel] power generation that is dropping off, and [a need to] provide the amount of energy and the demand thats needed there, he said.Figures from the International Energy Agency (IEA) show that 460 terawatt hours of power were consumed by datacentres globally in 2022, with the organisation predicting this figure could double to more than 1,000 TWh by next year.If we look at how long it took to go from [zero] to 460 terawatt hours, the energy production timeline [shows] it took about 30 years, said Drury. Additionally to that, we have the demand thats growing outside of datacentres so we have competition for that energy.And the industry is all too aware of that. A survey of 400 IT and business leaders from across the UK and US by electronics and computational design firm Cadence, released in early March 2025, revealed that 70% of respondents had concerns that national power grids were being stretched to their limits by datacentre developments.Meanwhile, 83% said they had reason to believe their own datacentre developments are competing with residential energy demand, with 34% of this group believing the impacts of this to be great.This is significant because strained grids increase the likelihood of outages for both datacentres and homes, said Cadence, in its accompanying Datacentre evolution: The innovation imperative report.This will not only have substantial financial implications for facilities, but will also increase public resistance to new datacentres and intensify pressure to make their operations more efficient.Ensuring there is enough power to go around is one thing, but another related issue is the time it takes for new developments to get connected to the grid.As detailed in the National Infrastructure Commissions (NICs) February 2025 Electricity distribution networks: Creating capacity for the future report, businesses of all kinds not just datacentres will want firm assurances that they will be able to access the power they need on a consistent and reliable basis before they invest in developments.And if a business cant connect to the network promptly, they will delay investment decisions or worse, make those investments elsewhere, undermining the governments growth mission, the NIC report continued.Figures from energy market regulator Ofgem confirm there is a 400GW pipeline of grid connection requests, which estimates suggest would take 10-15 years to clear and fulfil.This delivery timeframe is undoubtedly problematic for datacentre developers looking to rapidly build out the infrastructure needed to help the UK government achieve its AI ambitions.Particularly as the process of assigning grid connections has traditionally operated on a first-come, first-served basis, and as confirmed by Ofgem many of these applications are speculative in nature and may never come to fruition, so are simply blocking the queue for others.What datacentre operators are left working with is a system where there are question marks over the surety of supply from the gird, and how long it will take to ensure they have a connection to it.And challenging though it may be, the picture is not as bleak as it could first appear. Ofgem, for example, set out plans in November 2023 to rid the grid connection queue of zombie projects from speculative developers.This reworked system means developers must meet certain non-negotiable milestones within their connection agreements, and failing to do so will result in their projects being forced out of the queue.The system also allows for energy generation and storage projects that will contribute to boosting the UKs supply of energy to be fast-tracked.In further support of that, Ofgem announced plans in November 2024 to speed up the time it takes to connect new green energy generation projects to the grid by prioritising initiatives that can be operational within five years and meet certain location and voltage criteria requirements, in support of the governments net-zero goals.John Booth, chair of the Data Centre Alliances (DCA) Energy Efficiency Steering Group, also told Datacentre World attendees about the infrastructure investment the government is making to safeguard the supply of energy the UK also imports from other countries.In the UK, we import anywhere between five to 15% of our energy from the interconnectors, [which] go across to France, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway and Ireland, he said.Currently, the UK receives 9.8GW of power from these interconnectors, and the government has plans to increase this capacity to 18GW by 2030, said Booth.However, he also acknowledged that relying on interconnectors is a costly and potentially unsustainable way to ensure the UK has the power it needs to keep the lights on long-term. This helps us in the short term, whilst were building our own capacity out, but for every pound that we spend on energy from the interconnectors is a pound that cannot be used in the UK to increase our capacity, said Booth.Also on the panel was Louisa Cilenti, co-founder and chief legal officer of datacentre compliance company Clear Decisions, who said despite how rapidly the demand profile and UK energy mix is changing she believes the UK is positioned to comfortably meet its future energy demand.The situation really does need quite careful planning and a lot more investment, [but] I think were going to be comfortably able to meet our future energy demand, she said. And I think the reason for that optimism is that we just have to look at our abundant renewable energy sources.We are accelerating wind, solar and battery [power] at a phenomenal speed so [the question is] how much quicker can we get them onto the grid and can we get the right type of power to the right place at the right time thats affordable for the customer? said Cilenti.Read more about datacentre energy demandsThe UK government has unveiled its 50-point AI action plan, which commits to building sovereign artificial intelligence capabilities and accelerating AI datacentre developments but questions remain about the viability of the plans.IT market watcher Gartner is warning enterprises that the growing demand for generative AI workloads will have a knock-on impact on energy supply and pricing in future years.Picking up the conversation, Michael Clark, CEO of renewable energy consultancy Relode, said the UK has access to the energy it needs, but it is the underlying infrastructure and process involved with getting it to the right place at the right time that is the issue.I see [the problem here as] less of an energy gap and more of an infrastructure gap, [because] the biggest problem we have is that we are in this demand space, where we are now competing with an exceptional volume of renewable energy [for grid connections], he said.Clark name-checked the work Ofgem was doing to streamline the waiting list for grid connections for datacentres and renewable projects, but said more needs to be done.We have to really challenge that team thats taking six months to decide how to change things, [and ensure] they consider this new type of demand in parallel with the renewable connections that are already in the queue and not sequentially behind them. That, for me, is the gap, he said. Infrastructure needs to be fixed before we look at the energy.