Space datacenters proposed by Musk and Bezos will be ‘catastrophic’ for planet, experts warn

Space datacenters proposed by Musk and Bezos will be ‘catastrophic’ for planet, experts warn

The Guardian reports: Space datacenters proposed by SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and others would release staggering levels of pollution that would probably alter the Earth’s atmosphere and be “catastrophic” for the planet, space industry experts and environmental groups warn in a new petition demanding a review of their impacts. Tech companies have collectively proposed millions of “orbital datacenters” and are pressing forward with plans, which require Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval. Among other issues, pollution from satellites and rockets…

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Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ of American science starts with dismantling it, while funneling billions into AI

Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ of American science starts with dismantling it, while funneling billions into AI

The Verge reports: The Trump administration unveiled the first “Genesis Mission” grants on Thursday, directing $5 billion toward hundreds of AI-driven science projects in an effort the White House has described as “comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project.” At roughly the same time, Trump’s science adviser Michael Kratsios was on Capitol Hill selling lawmakers on an equally grandiose promise: “A New Golden Age” of American science, one that would prioritize artificial intelligence, robotics, and nuclear energy and…

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An era of ‘abundance’ will never be delivered by billionaires. Their true belief is in scarcity

An era of ‘abundance’ will never be delivered by billionaires. Their true belief is in scarcity

Gizmodo reports: Elon Musk sat down with the editor-in-chief of the Economist for a taped interview that went live Thursday. The Tesla CEO has been avoiding normal journalists recently, even cancelling a planned interview with CNBC earlier this month. And it now seems pretty obvious why. Musk has a hard time answering normal questions about his often fascist and sometimes incoherent worldview. The interview started cordially enough, with Economist editor Zanny Minton Beddoes asking Musk about his thoughts on the…

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Why Trump is facing his biggest danger from rising oil prices since the war began

Why Trump is facing his biggest danger from rising oil prices since the war began

Politico reports: The expanding conflict in the Middle East is thwarting the Trump administration’s bid to lower gasoline prices ahead of the looming midterm elections. It’s not just the Strait of Hormuz — oil tankers are now facing attacks on three major shipping routes as of this week. Global crude oil inventories are reaching critically low levels, with little hope of refilling them soon. And the temporary measures that have kept markets afloat since the war in Iran began, such…

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Its AI agent spent days hacking a company, but sources say OpenAI did not notice for a week

Its AI agent spent days hacking a company, but sources say OpenAI did not notice for a week

Reuters reports: The OpenAI agent that broke into tech firm Hugging Face went on a dayslong hacking spree that OpenAI didn’t notice until well after the threat was contained and the FBI was alerted, according ​to people familiar with the investigation. The agent – a program capable of making decisions and executing complex tasks with little or no human oversight – attempted to break out of its isolated testing environment ‌at OpenAI around July 9, according to two of the…

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Federal officials: Grants were cancelled ‘solely’ because states did not vote for Trump

Federal officials: Grants were cancelled ‘solely’ because states did not vote for Trump

The New York Times reports: When the Trump administration canceled more than $7.5 billion in Biden-era federal grants for clean energy projects in October, it framed the move as an urgent corrective to protect taxpayer funds from waste. But it wasn’t true. In little-noticed court documents, federal officials acknowledged this month that they had terminated the funding “based solely” on political criteria, targeting projects in states that were represented by Democrats and had voted for Kamala Harris, the party’s presidential…

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EU fines Google $1 billion for stifling competition

EU fines Google $1 billion for stifling competition

Wired reports: The European Commission has levied a $1 billion penalty against Google over alleged competition law violations. An EC investigation found that Google had abused its dominance in the European Union’s search and app store markets to funnel people toward its own apps and services, in violation of the EU’s Digital Markets Act. The body has ordered Google to refrain from giving preferential treatment to its own services—such as shopping, accommodations, transport, and flights—in search rankings. Google must also…

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should run for president

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should run for president

Bhaskar Sunkara writes: After Donald Trump’s victory in 2024, AOC went to dozens of her constituents who had voted for both her and Trump and asked them why. She wanted to understand them rather than lecture them. Their answers – that she and Trump both read as outsiders, that both sounded like they were on the side of working people – informed her politics in the months to come. Some of the people who once formed the base of the…

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Meet Anton Jäger, whose groundbreaking book is being devoured by the left

Meet Anton Jäger, whose groundbreaking book is being devoured by the left

Zoe Williams writes: ‘I am acutely conscious,” said Andy Burnham outside 10 Downing Street on Monday, “that I am the sixth person in the last 10 years to walk up this street.” It was good to hear him say it because, beneath all the cabinet gossip and rune-reading, there is a feeling of terror about the immediate future and also about ourselves, the electorate. Is this who we are now? Wildly enthusiastic one minute, seething the next; as passionate about…

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Data center forecasts keep climbing and so does public opposition. Something has to give

Data center forecasts keep climbing and so does public opposition. Something has to give

Dan Gearino writes: Forecasts of U.S. data center growth defy belief—and common sense. “The math isn’t mathing,” as many observers have said. Growth forecasts continue to climb, but there is little evidence that AI data center developers have profitable, sustainable business models. And nearly every major project is facing local opposition over concerns about land, power and water use. On Tuesday, BloombergNEF revised its estimate for data center electricity demand to 194 gigawatts by 2035, an 83 percent increase from…

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The real danger in OpenAI’s Hugging Face hack

The real danger in OpenAI’s Hugging Face hack

Scientific American reports: An autonomous agent powered by OpenAI models pursued a cybersecurity benchmark so aggressively that it escaped a test environment and broke into Hugging Face, an online hub for artificial intelligence models and datasets. OpenAI called the incident “unprecedented” in a public statement. Headlines described the agent as having gone “rogue”—language that suggests it rebelled or became malicious. But experts say the reality is more complicated. “Was this really running amok? No,” says Alan Woodward, a visiting professor…

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U.S. intelligence says military action unlikely to change Iran’s negotiating position

U.S. intelligence says military action unlikely to change Iran’s negotiating position

Asharq Al Awsat reports: Iran’s government is unlikely to soften its negotiating position as a result of the ongoing US military strikes, according to a new intelligence assessment described by current and former US officials. Analysts at US spy agencies have also concluded that Tehran and Washington are, for now, stuck in an indefinite limbo between peace and war, the officials told The Washington Post — an uneasy dynamic given the increasingly deadly nature of the tit-for-tat hostilities between the…

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Israeli security minister joins Jewish extremists as they storm al-Aqsa mosque compound

Israeli security minister joins Jewish extremists as they storm al-Aqsa mosque compound

The Guardian reports: Israel’s far-right minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, joined thousands of Jewish extremists who stormed Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site on Thursday. Escorted by armed police, they prayed, waved the Israeli flag and sang the national anthem in a provocative display of political power. Under a fragile, decades-old agreement known as the status quo, non-Muslim prayer is banned at the site, known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif compound and to Jews as the Temple Mount. Ben-Gvir has…

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MAGA rallies around Andrew Tate

MAGA rallies around Andrew Tate

Will Sommer writes: Prominent manosphere influencers and accused sex traffickers Andrew and Tristan Tate were arrested by U.S. marshals in Miami last weekend, as they were set to host—what else?—a bare-knuckle boxing match. Video of their arrest, which quickly went viral, showed Andrew Tate dressed in clamdigger pants and an unusual purple shirt unbuttoned down almost to his navel. But maybe the most surprising thing is that it happened on American soil at all. That’s because, despite years of accusations…

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