perstitio.us: the river

Instagram will let users endlessly swap the audio on old posts

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:15:00 GMT

There's a symbiotic - and sometimes frustrating - relationship between social media sites and the creators that depend on them. Platforms need influencers' and creators' content to keep consumers on their apps; the creators, in turn, need to be able to reach those audiences to justify creating their content in the first place. Creators want a seamless way to make and disseminate their content while being able to make money; audiences want a bottomless feed of entertaining things to look at. And platforms need to keep both parties relatively happy.

Over the last few months, Instagram has added a slew of features that are helpful for creator …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Tesla Robotaxis go to Florida

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:11:41 GMT

It must be earnings day, because Tesla is making a Robotaxi announcement.

The company said in a post on X that it was launching its Robotaxi service in Orlando and Tampa, attaching a pair of maps that show each city's service area. No word on fleet size or whether interested customers would be able to hail a vehicle right away.

The timing of the post is noteworthy, considering later today Tesla CEO Elon Musk is expected to provide an update on the progress of the company's Robotaxi service during its second quarter earnings call. Adding two new cities to the docket probably sounds like progress to some investors.

Robotaxi now in Tampa …

Read the full story at The Verge.

A Sneaky Hacking Tool Targeting AI Infrastructure Is Lurking in Victims’ Blind Spots

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:08:44 GMT

A new type of malware can worm deep into AI coding systems to steal data and logins—and can flip a “death switch” to destroy files and keep out real users.

The World's 2,400 Castles

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:05:58 GMT

Article URL: https://thecastlemap.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48994178

Points: 12

# Comments: 1

France's Anssi Will Block PQC-Free Products from Certification Starting 2027

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:02:04 GMT

Article URL: https://postquantum.com/security-pqc/anssi-pqc-certification-2027/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48994116

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

Amid nurse shortage, a university rolls out the welcome mat for men

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:01:07 GMT

Article URL: https://text.npr.org/nx-s1-5869813

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48994103

Points: 9

# Comments: 2

NPM's release cooldown is security theater

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:46:18 GMT

Article URL: https://blog.outv.im/2026/npm-cooldown-security-theater/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993885

Points: 17

# Comments: 7

Long Presumed Dead, a Thriving Coral Reef Is Discovered in West Africa

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:41:51 GMT

Article URL: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/benin-coral-reef

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993816

Points: 24

# Comments: 0

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:32:02 GMT

It would be nice to see the other side, the post you authored here that's on micro.blog.

Apple Fixes Hide My Email Vulnerability After 404 Media Coverage

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:31:41 GMT

Article URL: https://www.404media.co/apple-fixes-hide-my-email-vulnerability-after-404-media-coverage/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993637

Points: 10

# Comments: 0

Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:22:33 GMT

Article URL: https://www.ft.com/content/b37030b6-bda8-4ba9-8e08-e6b88687b8f5

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993488

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

Amid Increased Scrutiny, ICE Detention and Deportation Data Goes Dark

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:21:02 GMT

Article URL: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2026/07/15/ice-data-immigration-detention-transparency

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993465

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Samsung can’t afford to play it safe with Apple’s first foldable looming

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:20:33 GMT

Samsung’s latest foldable is expected to be shorter and wider than last year’s Z Fold 7. | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge

Tomorrow's foldable-centric Galaxy Unpacked event looks like it will be Samsung's biggest in years. The company is expected to launch new versions of its Fold and Flip phones while also introducing a brand new Fold form factor that's shorter and wider.

It would be the second upheaval to Samsung's foldable lineup in less than 12 months, after last year's Galaxy Z TriFold. For years, there was the little Flip and the big Fold, and that was enough. Not any more. With the first foldable iPhone looming on the horizon, Samsung can't get away with playing it safe.

Leaks have pointed to a wider Samsung foldable for months, almost as long as we've …

Read the full story at The Verge.

ICE to Pay Thomson Reuters $125M to Find Voter Fraud

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:19:44 GMT

Article URL: https://www.404media.co/ice-to-pay-thomson-reuters-125-million-to-find-voter-fraud/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993448

Points: 13

# Comments: 0

Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:17:16 GMT

Article URL: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/gemini-3-6-flash-3-5-flash-lite-3-5-flash-cyber/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993414

Points: 27

# Comments: 2

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:11:33 GMT

You mourn the sites where the domain expired, or the DNS is unset, or hasn't been updated in a while, and keep some around so that you can leaf through them (virtually) for nostalgia’s sake, and remove others because you can finally let go of them.

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:09:46 GMT

You periodically back up the OPML file of the feeds you subscribe to, just in case you need to switch aggregators or the service suddenly goes defunct.

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:08:00 GMT

Speaking of RSS feeds, you periodically go through all of the feeds in your aggregator and see if they are broken, right? And if they are, you update the URLs or just unsubscribe from them, I assume. And if you know what's wrong with an RSS feed (sudden absence, malformed, URL has changed), you contact the author or the publication. And if that doesn't work, you create an RSS feed out of the site using tools like Huginn or NewsBlur (one of its paid tiers has a feature to turn any website into an RSS feed). wouldn't say I've gone as far as Chris Harding, but I've done a lot of those things.

Google launches a cheaper alternative to large AI security models like Mythos

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:00:00 GMT

Google is launching an AI security model dedicated to quickly finding and patching security vulnerabilities. In a blog post on Tuesday, Google describes Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber as a "cost-efficient and highly capable alternative" to larger, more expensive AI systems, such as the one offered by Anthropic's Mythos.

The new model is built upon Gemini 3.5 Flash and will be available first to governments and trusted partners via CodeMender, Google's security-focused coding agent. As noted by Google, CodeMender can call upon 3.5 Flash Cyber "multiple times at high speed and low cost," allowing the AI agents to scan more code paths and find vulnera …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Light Flip is a minimalist flip phone with a point to prove

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:00:00 GMT

It’s a Light Phone. It’s a flip phone. | Photo: Light

A few years ago, the team at Light shipped the most smartphone-like device they'd ever created. The Light Phone III still kept to its minimalist, no-distractions ethos, but it was a phone-size rectangle with a phone-size touchscreen, a camera, and a number of other features. Some people loved having an almost-smartphone, but Kaiwei Tang, Light's cofounder, says he started getting feedback he didn't expect. Lots of users, particularly young ones, didn't want a smartphone. More than that, actually: They didn't even want something that looked like a smartphone. "We have users who tell us, 'Hey, I hate smartphones. I don't want to be seen using …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Nvidia Wants to Own Every Chip Inside AI Data Centers

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:00:00 GMT

Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform combines CPUs and GPUs into a single system, reflecting the company’s growing ambition to power every layer of AI infrastructure.

The Light Flip Is the Stylish Dumb Flip Phone of Your Dreams

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:00:00 GMT

A flip phone with 5G, USB-C, a headphone jack, and a removable battery? Say it ain’t so.

Gemini 3.6 Flash

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:56:15 GMT

Article URL: https://console.cloud.google.com/agent-platform/publishers/google/model-garden/gemini-3.6-flash

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993130

Points: 9

# Comments: 4

Claude Is Not a Compiler

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:49:18 GMT

Article URL: https://blog.exe.dev/claude-is-not-a-compiler

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993059

Points: 12

# Comments: 2

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:45:25 GMT

BOOM!

Stellantis taps Mobileye for hands-free driving assist

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:42:38 GMT

Stellantis will use technology from Intel's Mobileye to power its Level 2 hands-free driving features for its vehicle brands, the companies announced Tuesday.

Starting in 2027, Stellantis will begin using Mobileye's EyeQ system-on-a-chip and a data crowdsourcing program called the Road Experience Management, or REM, which uses real-time data from Mobileye-equipped vehicles to build out a global 3D map. The technology will enable "hands-free, eyes-on driving and intelligent lane keeping on unmarked roads in designated areas and conditions," Mobileye said. Stellantis, which is the parent company of Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge, Ram, Fiat, Peugeot, …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Sarah's Wager

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:40:52 GMT

Article URL: https://colossus.com/article/sarah-guo-conviction/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48992960

Points: 10

# Comments: 0

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:37:16 GMT

RSS.chat -- I don't have enough places to fit all the ideas these days. But we have been digging and the pieces fit together pretty well.

RSS is still RSS, picking up where we left off

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:36:49 GMT

A lot of people are confused about wtf this is.

I don't blame them. I put out there a partially implemented vision.

But the vision isn't really new -- it's a turnback to 2002, and what UserLand would have done if we had continued pushing, which we did not.

At the time we had a product named Radio UserLand that was an integrated writing and reading platform, very user friendly, and it worked, all done with RSS. It also did podcasting if you can believe that.

So here we are 24 years later. RSS is still RSS. And we still have feed readers and blogging tools, so how does this become a social network?

http://scripting.com/2026/07/21/134309.html

That's where it's at right now. This is the writing environment. I have yet to show a new reading environment, but that's okay you can use NetNewsWire! It works. I didn't even tell Brent this was coming. Why is that? Because we use standards.

I don't have enough places to fit all the ideas these days. But we have been digging and the pieces seem to fit together just right

Apple Defeats Liability for Not Scanning iCloud for CSAM

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:31:41 GMT

Article URL: https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2026/07/apple-defeats-liability-for-not-scanning-icloud-for-csam-but-the-judge-was-not-pleased-amy-v-apple.htm

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48992870

Points: 24

# Comments: 4

Over 400 Linux CVEs published in the last 24 hours alone

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:16:02 GMT

Article URL: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48992669

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:03:07 GMT

Well, well. This is exciting

A touchscreen and light make the new X4 Pro the best version of Xteink’s tiny e-readers

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:00:00 GMT

If you’ve been undecided on which Xteink device to get, the new X4 Pro is it.

The familiar story with Xteink’s tiny e-readers plays out once again with its new X4 Pro: upgraded hardware held back by frustrating software. The company’s latest tiny e-reader adds a touchscreen and lighting, so choosing it over a Kindle or a Kobo feels like less of a compromise — until you use it. The new touch controls and some welcome software updates do manage to make the X4 Pro easier to use, but frustrations still abound. There’s a happier ending to the story this time, however, as the team behind the excellent CrossPoint Reader software plan to have their alternative firmware ready for the new device at its launch. If you’ve been considering one of Xteink’s e-readers, the X4 Pro is the one to get, even if it’s the most expensive yet.

The X4 Pro is available for purchase today through Xteink’s online store for $99, making it slightly more expensive than the company’s $79 X3 and $69 X4 models. That also brings the X4 Pro closer in price to the $110 entry-level Kindle featuring Amazon’s polished e-reader experience and on-device access to a well-stocked digital bookstore. The X4 Pro lacks both of those things, but with a 4.26-inch, 800 x 480 E Ink screen, it’s another extremely pocketable device from Xteink that’s slightly smaller and thinner than the company’s first e-reader, and considerably smaller than Amazon’s 6-inch Kindle.

That thin profile means you’ll need to be prepared for a big compromise: There’s no longer an actual USB-C port. You can still benefit from USB-C functionality but will need an adapter to deal with an uncommon magnetic pogo-pin connection. The adapter is included, but I’d still opt for a slightly thicker device with an actual USB-C port.

On the back of the X4 Pro you’ll once again find embedded magnets so you can attach it to compatible smartphones like a wireless battery. The magnets feel stronger, but still not strong enough to make me confident the e-reader is going to remain stuck to my phone while jostling around in my pocket. The X4 Pro’s size also makes the tiny e-reader awkwardly extend past the bottom of my iPhone 16 Pro when attached, and at this point I think Xteink should just abandon promoting this functionality. Its e-readers are better as standalone devices.

The added touchscreen allows for a much simpler button layout on the X4 Pro, and I’m glad the company still includes dedicated page turn buttons on each side in addition to being able to tap the edges of the screen. There’s also a power/wake button and, for the first time, a touch button on the front of the e-reader below its screen for jumping back to the e-reader’s homescreen.

There’s been some debate about whether or not these tiny e-readers actually need a touchscreen, but after testing the X4 Pro for over a week I think it’s a welcome upgrade for these devices. Even after months of use, navigating the company’s other e-readers using just buttons has never felt intuitive or easy, and it’s held me back from wanting to carry them everywhere I go. Navigating the X4 Pro using screen taps (like we do with the rest of our mobile devices) finally makes it feel like I’m not fighting the e-reader to make it do what I want.

But the X4 Pro’s touchscreen doesn’t feel as sensitive or responsive as a Kindle or Kobo when tapping on the screen, and half the time it feels like I have to repeat a tap with a little more pressure for my finger to be detected. I’m hoping that’s something that can be improved through future software updates.

The added screen light is an excellent upgrade, and even though it’s a bit uneven and definitely a little brighter at the top of the display, you can adjust its intensity and color temperature using sliders that appear when you swipe down from the top of the screen. There are no automatic adjustments or scheduling available yet, but being able to finally use this e-reader in bed without having a lamp on is a game changer, and I can’t see myself going back to Xteink’s older devices that lack lighting.

Xteink has made a lot of improvements to its bundled software and UI to accommodate the X4 Pro’s touchscreen. The menus have been streamlined and are easier to navigate with touch, and accessing reading settings by tapping anywhere on the page now feels more intuitive. There’s also more flexibility with adjusting text spacing and layout, but out of the box you’re once again limited to just a single font in two different sizes unless you want to jump through hoops to install your own. But you don’t have to suffer with Xteink’s unpolished software.

Of all the X4 Pro’s improvements, the most compelling reason to get Xteink’s latest e-reader is that the easy-to-install CrossPoint Reader software will be available at launch. It’s a free firmware alternative that vastly improves the UI and reading experience of Xteink’s devices. When I tested Xteink’s last e-reader the team behind CrossPoint Reader wasn’t sure when support for the X3 would be released, but Justin Mitchell has since taken over as the core maintainer of the software and told The Verge that X4 Pro support will be available “before any customers are able to order and receive theirs in the states.” CrossPoint Reader is also now a part of Mitchell’s new Free Ink project that counts Xteink as one of its hardware partners, so the firmware should be compatible with all of the company’s future devices at launch.

If you’ve been on the fence about grabbing one of Xteink’s e-readers, even with a proprietary USB-C connector and a $99 price tag the X4 Pro is the one to get if you prioritize portability. It won’t match the Kindle or Kobo experience even after installing CrossPoint Reader, but even with its limitations it’s still the best tiny e-reader you can buy and a device I already won’t leave the house without.

Photography by Andrew Liszewski / The Verge

PCjs Machines

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:48:35 GMT

Article URL: https://www.pcjs.org/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48992323

Points: 9

# Comments: 0

Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:48:07 GMT

Article URL: https://acoup.blog/2019/11/22/collections-why-are-there-no-empires-in-age-of-empires/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48992315

Points: 8

# Comments: 1

The Great Peptide Cash Grab Has Begun

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:45:49 GMT

The FDA could decide whether to loosen rules around peptide production this week. Some telehealth players are already seeing dollar signs.

Three-part ecosystem

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:43:09 GMT

There are three parts to the rss.chat ecosystem.

Writing. Today's RSS.chat product is a group writing system, designed for a school department, a team of developers, a family, a magazine or group blog, or just as well, a single author. I don't think it would work well with 1000 users, because it doesn't implement the concept of "follow." And imho it's important that the people are colleagues, family or friends, people invested in real world relationships with each other, so they don't drop a turd in the conversation and just expect to walk away. I've found that dynamic works most of the time. But important point -- all kinds of writing tools can exist. If Bluesky wanted to be part of this, all they'd have to do is support inbound and outbound RSS, and textcasting. If I don't like Substack's writing tool, too bad, you have to use it. In this world it's small pieces loosely joined and every part replaceable. I will keep beating that drum because it's the difference between using twenty editors or one. As a writer I know that one is the best, with choice among 20 editors, because maybe somedays I feel like writing in a different editor.
Reading. This can be as simple as a current-day reader like Feedly or NetNewsWire, or more, using the new features in RSS.chat feeds.
The unknown: We're allocating in our minds (Claude and I) room for a fair number of unforeseen products created by independent software devs in the cracks between reading and writing, and in a larger world (search, navigating through structures, etc. We have really good thread support baked into the protocol. And a bit of docs about how the pieces fit together.

I'm thinking in these terms because I'm starting to work on how my reader will work. I have some ideas, not sure when I'll be ready to write about them. And to be clear there will be no requirement that you use our writing tool to use our reader and vice versa. Every part replaceable.

When your vehicle outlives its cloud: What happens next?

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:36:17 GMT

Automakers love connected vehicles, but support isn't open-ended.

Garmin’s new screen-free fitness tracker doesn’t require a subscription

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:33:27 GMT

Garmin announced a new smart band today designed to track "advanced fitness and wellness features" without a screen to eliminate distractions and push its battery life to up to 10 days between charges. Similar to competing products like the Whoop 5.0 and Google's recently-announced Fitbit Air, the Cirqa uses a combination of heart rate, blood oxygen, skin temperature, and motion sensors to monitor your health and activities around the clock, but without any subscription fees.

The Garmin Cirqa is available now through the company's online store for $99.99 and comes with an adjustable fabric strap in several different colors that can be worn …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Switch 2 is $50 off at Woot for new customers

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:27:32 GMT

Games look gorgeous on its 7.9-inch screen. | Photo: Brandt Ranj / The Verge

Woot is celebrating its 22nd anniversary by rolling out a full week of sales, and one of them stands out for gamers looking to get a deal on Nintendo’s latest console. Normally $449.99, the Nintendo Switch 2 is $22 off for Woot customers who already have an account, or $50 off for new customers, when you use coupon code GIFT26 at checkout.

Nintendo Switch 2

Where to Buy:

$449.99 $428.99 at Woot (with code GIFT26)

While a $22 discount (or even a $50 drop) may not seem that significant, discounts have been rare on the console aren’t easy to come by. If anything, it’s more money back in your pocket to buy games, a controller, a screen protector, or a case for your new console.

If you’re still on the fence even with this deal, something that might motivate you to buy now (or soon) is that the Switch 2’s price will be rising to $499.99 on September 1st, 2026. Currently, you can get a $499.99 bundle that includes a steeply discounted game with purchase, though Nintendo hasn’t shared whether it’ll continue offering it once the price increase goes into effect.

The discount at Woot is valid until July 25th, 2026 at 11:58PM CT, or until the console sells out, and the discount code can only be used once per account.

Read our Nintendo Switch 2 review.

Garzed – my garden waters itself off soil-moisture sensors

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:25:17 GMT

Article URL: https://garzed.com

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48992028

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

Apps targeted at US troops contain Chinese and Russian code

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:19:38 GMT

More than one-eighth of apps analyzed contained foreign code.

The Great Steam Deck Crash of 2026: How the New Pricing Decreased Demand by 80%

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:05:28 GMT

Article URL: https://boilingsteam.com/the-great-steam-deck-volume-crash/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48991815

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

2027 Kia Seltos first drive gives you plenty of SUV for not much $

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:00:08 GMT

It starts at just under $25,000, but the hybrid won't arrive until next year.

Nintendo keeps making shooters more friendly and approachable

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Nintendo does a lot of weird things, but Splatoon might just be one of the strangest - or at least the boldest. The series started as an attempt to muscle into the ultra-competitive online shooter space, but in a way that feels a world away from the violence and bombast of Call of Duty or Battlefield. Splatoon is essentially candy-coated paintball starring a race of skate punk squid creatures, and across three entries Nintendo has just about perfected the formula. The series introduced the idea of competitive shooters to whole new audiences, and now it's expanding: Splatoon Raiders takes it in a different direction, but with the same focus o …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The wireless headset that gets hot-swappable batteries right

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:00:00 GMT

New gaming gear is always promising to shave milliseconds off latency or response time. The improvements usually aren't obvious. But the Glorious GHS InfinitePlay wireless headset, on the other hand, could save you far more than just milliseconds: It has the fastest hot-swap battery system I've ever used, and the headset doesn't die when you swap out its battery either.

Glorious improves on the formula popularized by SteelSeries, which made swappable, rechargeable batteries a feature worth caring about in a high-end headset. Its new $229.99 headset has zero audio downtime while swapping batteries because it has a fallback battery that can …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Halliday’s latest smart glasses feature a much-improved display

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:00:00 GMT

I was not a fan of the original Halliday glasses. The Gen 2 are better. | Image: Halliday

I first slipped on Halliday's original smart glasses at CES 2025. I was not a fan. The glasses had a tiny, movable display window embedded into the frame that was incredibly finicky to see, and my 30-minute demo left me with achy eyeballs. It was an interesting concept with terrible execution, especially compared to the several other smart glasses on the show floor. So I was skeptical when a few weeks ago, Halliday reached out to say its second attempt at smart glasses was much better.

Well, having tried the Halliday Gen 2, I'm happy to report these are better glasses. That secret display window is gone, replaced by more traditional but dis …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Halliday’s New Smart Glasses Skip the Camera

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Halliday’s G2 glasses can listen to and summarize your workplace meetings—with no video involved.

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 12:42:59 GMT

Is this a reply?

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 12:42:13 GMT

Well this is interesting. Just trying to figure out how it works.

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 12:41:37 GMT

@dave I thought so, but somehow the posts don't show up in my microblog interface. I hope @manton might take a look at this.

New US homeownership measure puts people first

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 12:03:14 GMT

Article URL: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2026/new-homeownership-measure-puts-people-first

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48991139

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

8 Best Smartwatches (2026): Apple, Google, and Hybrid Watches

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 12:02:00 GMT

These WIRED-tested wearables reduce your reliance on a phone while keeping you connected.

GitHub suddenly rejected my SSH key (the fix was a .pub file?)

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:39:02 GMT

Article URL: https://thorsell.io/2026/07/21/github-ssh-keys.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48990929

Points: 14

# Comments: 1

Israeli spyware vans infiltrate American streets and your phones

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:34:00 GMT

Article URL: https://cybernews.com/privacy/us-police-israeli-spy-vans-falconet-cognyte/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48990886

Points: 16

# Comments: 1

America needs to stop getting shocked by Chinese AI

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:08:56 GMT

SHANGHAI, CHINA - JULY 20 2026: People visit the booth of Kimi, an LLM developed by the Chinese startup Moonshot, during the World AI Conference in Shanghai, China, Monday, July 20, 2026. | Image: LONG WEI/ Feature China/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Last week, two Chinese AI companies unveiled models they say can credibly compete with the best systems from OpenAI and Anthropic. The response was swift and predictable. Markets wobbled, commentators declared Silicon Valley shooketh, and policymakers reached for the familiar language of arms races and wake-up calls.

In one headline, The Associated Press said a Chinese model had taken the "US tech industry by surprise." Bloomberg described it as a "surprise breakthrough" that is "roiling markets" and sending global tech stocks tumbling over concerns it could force US firms to rethink their gargantuan spending on data centers, chips, and ot …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Best Smart Home Accessories to Boost Your Curb Appeal (2026)

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:02:00 GMT

These locks, lights, and other smart home upgrades let you add automation without messing up your home’s vibe.

Abdul El-Sayed Is an Epidemiologist Running for Senate. His State Is a Public Health Disaster

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:00:00 GMT

Michigan has been at the epicenter of the wildfire smoke and explosive diarrhea outbreaks. The progressive Democrat talks to WIRED about how he would tackle the forces behind them if he’s elected.

‘It’s a Modern-Day Draft’: Why Stanford Students Walked Out on Sundar Pichai’s Commencement Speech

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 10:30:00 GMT

Last month, more than a hundred Stanford students left their own graduation to protest Google’s military contracts and deals with ICE. Two organizers, Amanda Campos and Eva Jones, tell us why.

Who’s afraid of the big, bad GPU?

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 10:00:01 GMT

How does AI make you feel? Are you excited to “vibe-code” your smart home? Or anxious about all the added pollution and billions of gallons of water used by data centers? Dig a little deeper and you’ll start to question the actual value of the GPUs that underpin all the leaps and promises of generative AI.

Right now, GPUs, hundreds of thousands of them, are being crammed into data centers around the world to power the AI boom. These chips are also found in everything from smartphones to cars to gaming PCs. Nvidia — once a niche chipmaker that has become the world’s most valuable company — still brags about releasing what it calls “the world’s first GPU” and a “gaming breakthrough” in 1999, although some trace the origins of the GPU back to at least the ’70s with graphics hardware used in arcade games.

“There are massive hardware developments that start because of games,” says Catherine Flick, a professor of ethics and games technology at University of Staffordshire. And whether it’s a testbed for new graphics processing units or the development of virtual reality and AI, “all these sorts of things that have quite significant ethical issues, a lot of these start with games,” Flick says. So since its inception, the GPU has been at the root of some of the biggest ethical questions new technologies pose. What impact do games, and now AI chatbots, have on how we interact with the world around us?

Whether mining for raw materials or exposing workers to toxic chemicals in semiconductor factories, GPU manufacturing can leave behind a big mess. Collectively, GPUs warehoused in data centers burn through an enormous amount of water and energy, which can lead to more air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. And at the end of its life, a GPU can do even more damage in the form of e-waste.

What’s worth taking those risks? Do potential AI-driven advances in weather forecasting or wildlife conservation justify the environmental footprint of a data center? And what about the GPUs in a gaming PC or iPhone — do they deserve just as much scrutiny?

Hitting close to home

While GPUs have been around for a long time, AI has thrust them into the spotlight in a way that, quite literally, hits close to home for many Americans. The US has far more data centers than any other country and has plans to build many more. As tech companies race to expand a new generation of hyperscale data centers for AI, communities are grappling with the prospect of having these hulking warehouses full of servers as their neighbors.

“Isn’t it nice to have the environment as a scapegoat?”

As an environmental journalist, I sometimes get comments on my stories about whether these data centers or AI models are being unfairly portrayed as the menacing new bogeyman, especially when other industries — like fast fashion, for example — exacerbate climate change and pollute the environment. And as for GPUs, they’re not just found in data centers, but also in consumer electronics. So why single out AI for its sustainability issues?

Some venture capitalists have blamed AI’s slow consumer uptake on the bad press surrounding its environmental impact. To that, Flick can’t help but chuckle: “Isn’t it nice to have the environment as a scapegoat?”

A similar sentiment is bubbling up on social media. Ashley Striblet, who works in product strategy and consumer AI, recently published a video on TikTok pushing back on those VCs for “blaming consumers” for their own failures to invest in products people actually want. Many people understand that fast fashion or consumer technology can be bad for the environment, Striblet says, but they still buy these things because they feel like they’re getting value from the products.

“I think most people know that ordering clothes from Shein or Amazon is not the most environmentally conscious thing to do,” Striblet tells me. “We also know Gen Z at some point were big consumers of these brands that provide really cheap clothing.” The cost savings from buying cheap clothes turns out to be enough of a tradeoff to justify the purchase for many consumers, Flick adds.

On the other hand, many people just aren’t yet seeing the benefits to their lives that VCs and CEOs are promising with AI, Flick and Striblet each tell me. “It’s just rubbish what they’re saying that their technology can do,” Flick says. “It’d be nice if we all had personalized butlers or whatever it is. But how do you get from point A to point B? It’s not with what we’ve got.”

And while the average American has yet to see the kinds of big leaps forward that are being promised, they’re increasingly likely to see the costs of a new AI data center moving next door. For years, hubs for fast fashion or semiconductor manufacturing have been concentrated in Asia. Now, an explosion of data centers springing up in the US is making headlines for raising utility bills and creating more pollution. It’s not happening in some faraway country, but in the same places where big American tech companies are courting more affluent consumers.

To be sure, even in the US, data centers are landing in some places where low-income neighborhoods and communities of color have long had to fight against the environmental injustice of polluters setting up shop at their doorsteps. The NAACP, for example, has sued xAI (now doing business as SpaceXAI) over air pollution from gas generators the company installed on-site to power its massive data centers. (SpaceXAI didn’t respond to emails from The Verge.) The civil rights group had already warned tech companies to “be on alert” as it helps local groups across the nation mount their campaigns.

Growing globally, impacting locally

Shaolei Ren has witnessed the costs communities often pay in the name of progress. He’s a researcher who has broadened the study of data centers’ environmental impact beyond climate change to focus on air pollution and water scarcity near the facilities. Having grown up in a coal-mining region of northern China in the 1980s, Ren remembers keeping the windows shut 24/7 to keep out the black carbon accumulating on the streets outside. And with limited water infrastructure in the province, his family stored water in tanks to ration throughout the day.

More powerful GPUs are demanding ever more energy, creating air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in the process.

Ren, who is now an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), leads research into the impact data centers have on air quality and water resources for nearby communities — costs that are often invisible each time a user enters a query into a chatbot.

Sitting in his office at UCR on a rare gloomy Southern California afternoon just before a rainstorm, Ren tells me he’s optimistic about the benefits AI can ultimately bring, including aiding scientific discovery. But those gains shouldn’t be made at the expense of local communities, he says. The whiteboard behind him is covered with equations scrawled in blue marker for his research exploring how to tweak data center operations in order to use fewer resources and minimize pollution. Ren has a vision of what he calls a “community-integrated data center approach” to prevent these facilities from harming nearby residents. “It’s definitely doable,” he says.

But for now, that’s not what’s typically happening. More powerful GPUs are demanding ever more energy, creating air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in the process. Running them around the clock while keeping the hardware from overheating requires lots of water. It all adds up over the lifespan of a GPU, which might only be several years in a data center.

The energy needed to train a model as large as Meta’s Llama 3.1 can lead to as much air pollution as 10,000 round trips by car between Los Angeles and New York City, Ren and colleagues at UCR and Caltech estimated in a 2024 preprint study. (Meta declined to comment on the record and instead referred The Verge to its sustainability report and webpage on data centers.) Public health costs associated with growing adoption of AI could reach more than $20 billion by 2028 and 1,300 premature deaths annually from air pollution by 2030, the study found.

AI is quickly surpassing the energy use and climate impact of other applications for GPUs. Gaming used roughly 34 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year in the US and led to carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to about 5 million cars on the road (about 24 million tons of CO2), according to a comprehensive study published in 2019. Since then, newer consoles have become more energy-intensive, although their climate impact depends a lot on user behavior and how dirty the electricity grid is wherever they’re playing.

For a rough comparison, the energy use of GPU-accelerated AI servers in data centers grew from 2TWh in 2017 to more than 40TWh in 2023 in the US, according to a 2024 study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Now, with all the hype, AI servers’ annual power consumption could grow to between 165 and 326TWh by 2028, the study predicted. The lower estimate would be roughly equivalent to the energy more than 8.7 million homes in the US might use in a year.

In 2025, AI likely exceeded the power consumption of Bitcoin mining, accounting for nearly half of all the electricity data centers used around the world, according to a study by Alex de Vries-Gao, a PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Institute for Environmental Studies. The resulting carbon emissions likely reached between 32.6 million and 79.7 million tons annually, he estimates. For comparison, New York City’s climate pollution reaches around 50 million tons of CO2 annually.

In Southern California, where both Ren and I live and work, massive warehouses storing and sorting Americans’ e-commerce orders increasingly define the region. Goods from Asia arrive by ship in the nearby Port of Los Angeles before making their way inland to the “dry ports” made up of Amazon fulfillment centers and similar facilities buzzing with big rigs around the clock.

“When we use AI we tend to forget that this has an impact on the real world around us. This goes beyond carbon [emissions], and it’s kind of out of sight, out of mind.”

The boom in new data centers reminds me of some of the same challenges these warehouses brought. National environmental groups rally around the climate impact of fast fashion and online shopping, while residents mount campaigns over local air pollution. Retirees suddenly see their quiet neighborhoods transformed by blocks of noisy industrial complexes. The pollution and noise complaints just come from the whirring of generators and cooling systems at data centers rather than truck traffic surrounding warehouses. But data centers raise an added concern, especially in dry regions out west.

Powering AI is an incredibly thirsty business, requiring water for electricity generation and cooling systems at data centers. De Vries-Gao estimates that AI could have used between 312.5 billion and 764.6 billion liters of water in 2025, in the range of how much people consume globally in water bottles each year. It could be an even bigger jump in water demand than Ren predicted in a 2023 study, when he and his colleagues estimated that water use could climb to as high as 600 billion liters in 2027.

As eye-popping as those numbers can be, looking at an annual total can still be an incomplete picture, Ren asserts. That’s because the amount of water a facility uses is “spikey.” They tend to use the most water for cooling when temperatures rise — a demand spike that can suddenly put a ton of stress on a local water district at a time when the community might also be more prone to drought and water scarcity.

During water demand peaks, a home might use 1.5 to 2.5 times more water than it typically would. A data center, on the other hand, might use 6 to 10 times as much — with some massive new data center projects potentially needing 30 times more water, Ren says. If these trends continue, US data centers could require up to 1,451 million gallons per day of new peak water capacity through 2030, according to a recent preprint paper Ren coauthored. Meeting that demand would cost as much as $10 billion. Those are difficult costs to swallow for small community water systems that are often underfunded and may struggle to upgrade their infrastructure without additional support.

Even tech companies’ pledges to recycle water at data centers or replenish water sources nearby miss the mark, Ren argues. The public needs more transparency about water usage during peak demand so they can plan ahead. Communities should be able to work with tech companies to build up the infrastructure needed to increase capacity, he says, making sure residents aren’t left with the tab.

From the cradle

In order to better understand the environmental impact of GPUs, Sophia Falk, a PhD candidate at Bonn University, David Ekchajzer, a PhD student at the Université Paris-Saclay, and their colleagues have thrown tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of the chips into industrial blenders. They’re still hoping for more donated graphics cards to study what they’re made of and the footprint they have on the planet.

While data centers have been in the spotlight lately, they’re far from the only way GPUs can take an environmental toll. There are the metals and chemicals used to manufacture them, and pollution across the entire supply chain.

“When we use AI we tend to forget that this has an impact on the real world around us,” Falk says. “This goes beyond carbon [emissions], and it’s kind of out of sight, out of mind.”

Falk has studied the material footprint of the Nvidia A100, 90 percent of which she and her coauthors found to be composed of heavy metals — primarily copper, iron, tin, and nickel — as well as silicon. Copper, a material that conducts electricity well and is widely used in power lines and electronics, makes up the biggest chunk. All the hype around generative AI and the wave of new data centers being built is exacerbating a global shortfall in copper supply (also fueled by the electrification of homes, buildings, and transportation).

Demand for the material could grow by 24 percent over the next decade, and new mines would have to open twice as fast as they did a decade ago, Wood Mackenzie estimates. One of the biggest risks with large-scale metal mines, including copper, is acid drainage that can contaminate nearby water sources. Sulfides exposed during the mining process react with water and air to form sulfuric acid.

While a single A100 GPU might require about 1.4 kilograms of copper, the impacts multiply when used to train or run a generative AI model. Training GPT-4, for example, could have required between 1,174 and 8,800 A100 GPUs. That much hardware could ultimately mean extracting and eventually dumping up to 7 tons of toxic elements, according to a recent preprint study by Falk and other researchers.

Falk and Ekchajzer also coauthored a study along with a group of other researchers assessing the environmental costs of training GPT-4 using Nvidia’s A100 GPU. They considered 16 different environmental impacts training can have — ranging from high-profile issues like data centers’ energy use and carbon emissions to chemicals that escape into the environment from producing and discarding chips. The GPU chip itself dominated 10 categories, with manufacturing accounting for a majority of public health risks posed by toxic chemicals and nearly all of the cancer risk.

Since the very first computer chips were manufactured, they’ve left behind a toxic legacy. It’s why Santa Clara County in the heart of Silicon Valley has more Superfund sites than any other in the US. These are places so polluted by the chemicals used in manufacturing — some of which leaked out of underground storage tanks at chip factories to contaminate drinking water — that the federal government has put them on the National Priorities List for cleanup.

“Do we have enough energy to go around? My answer is no.”

Some of the chemicals used in chipmaking linked to miscarriages among workers were phased out in the US in the 1990s as the harms came to light. Around the same time, chip manufacturing was moving to Asia, where some of the same health risks showed up decades later. Now, generative AI is driving a rush to develop ever more powerful chips. New semiconductor factories are cropping up as a result, turning growing manufacturing hubs like Phoenix into the next silicon valley.

TSMC started producing Nvidia’s coveted Blackwell chips at its new factory (called a fab in industry speak) in Arizona last year. The facility rises suddenly from the desert landscape around Phoenix when I drive by in October. It’s still expanding, flanked by red cranes that loom taller over the construction site and surrounding brush than anything other than power lines that connect it to the rest of the region.

Electricity demand is climbing in the US after more than a decade of flatlining — not only because of energy-hungry data centers, but also because of a resurgence of domestic manufacturing. In places like the US where fossil fuels still dominate the electricity mix — and where President Donald Trump is on a crusade to prop up coal and gas over wind and solar — soaring electricity demand also means more air pollutants and planet-heating emissions.

Globally, the amount of electricity that AI chipmaking consumed jumped 350 percent from 2023 to 2024, according to a report de Vries-Gao coauthored with Greenpeace last year. That resulted in a fourfold rise in carbon pollution, reaching about 453,600 metric tons, more than the annual emissions from a gas-fired power plant. Most of the GPUs are still manufactured in East Asia, where power grids are similarly heavily reliant on fossil fuels.

The energy crunch was top of mind at Semicon West, the annual trade conference that was held in the new chip manufacturing hub of Phoenix last October. “Do we have enough energy to go around? My answer is no,” Ajit Manocha, president and CEO of the industry group SEMI that organized the conference, said during his keynote talk at the event. A diagram of “unprecedented obstacles” the industry faces includes two resources crucial to making semiconductors: energy, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals” linked to kidney and testicular cancer and other health risks.

The risk of forever chemicals escaping from industrial facilities sprouting up to support chip manufacturing in Arizona was a big worry for some of the residents I met there last fall. The prospect of chemicals contaminating already drought-vulnerable water sources in the region only raises the stakes.

“It’s terrifying,” Cheryl Orosco tells me in October, chunky turquoise and silver jewelry dangling from her ears and neck. She’s retired and joined neighbors in pushing developers to build a chip packaging plant farther away from homes and schools in their community. “This is our forever home,” she says, placing her hands over her heart.

To the grave

De Vries-Gao, who gained notoriety tracking the energy consumption and carbon pollution of crypto mining on the website Digiconomist, thought his work studying the environmental impact of data centers was coming to a close.

He started the website thinking, “There’s no nutrition label on digital applications,” he says. “There’s real-world impact for sure, but it’s not tangible and I think it’s really important that people are at least informed that, hold up, you know, when you’re using these applications, there is a cost.” But research by de Vries-Gao and others had already called a lot of attention to energy-hungry data farms used for crypto mining. The largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, Ethereum, had already switched to a vastly less energy-intensive way of operating — showing that it was possible to slash carbon emissions if crypto networks were willing.

Then as the hype around generative AI grew, his focus shifted. “One thing that crypto mining and AI have in common is the ‘bigger is better’ dynamic,” he says. Data centers for AI posed many similar environmental challenges to crypto mines. But housing more powerful hardware, those risks can be even greater. Whereas specialized chips used for crypto mining perform the same repetitive task — solving puzzles to validate transactions — GPUs used for AI perform far more complex computing.

One unseen consequence is even more e-waste, including larger and more complex components used in AI data centers. De Vries-Gao’s latest study, published in February, estimates that AI servers could create between 0.131 million and 0.225 million tons of e-waste each year by 2030. He says that’s comparable to all the e-waste produced by a country the size of Denmark, Norway, or Austria. It’s also a much more conservative estimate compared to a 2024 study by other researchers, which predicted that e-waste from AI could reach between 1.2 million and 5 million tons by the end of the decade.

De Vries-Gao estimates a smaller amount of waste after factoring in supply chain constrictions, and because he sees the lifespan of a server growing beyond the three years that other researchers have used as a benchmark. But the amount of e-waste he projects will build up as a result of AI is still a lot, he tells me. “The total impact is significant,” he says. “Whether you’re talking about crypto miners or whether you’re talking about the big tech companies, they don’t take responsibility.”

Only about 22 percent of the 68.3 million tons of e-waste accumulating annually worldwide is collected and recycled, according to the last comprehensive count published in 2024. That rate is higher, 30 percent, in the Americas, where there are the most data centers. The rest of that e-waste enters the shadowy “informal” sector, often in lower-income countries where waste management facilities are less likely to meet high environmental, health, and safety standards. Sometimes called “backyard recycling,” people — and potentially child laborers — manually dismantle discarded electronics with little or no personal protective equipment. They might burn or melt devices down to extract raw materials that they can resell. Servers used for large language models hold valuable materials like gold, silver, and platinum, but also toxic materials including lead and the carcinogen chromium. Burning or burying those toxic substances can release harmful pollutants into the air or allow them to seep into groundwater.

Around 58 percent of e-waste coming from AI data centers is generated in North America, where there is a higher formal collection rate. And experts tell me that data center operators often work with subcontractors to toss out old GPUs. But the US has not ratified the Basel Convention that limits the international trade of hazardous wastes, including e-waste. Investigations have found US recyclers sending e-waste abroad, where it might fall into the black hole of backyard recycling.

Gaming out the way forward

Some of the researchers I talked to for this story say they also encounter questions about the need to focus on the environmental impact of AI when data centers globally only made up 1.5 percent of global electricity consumption in 2024.

“Of course on a global scale, it’s not that much,” Falk says. But it’s important to scrutinize AI, she says, because of “the exponential growth in energy consumption of data centers,” especially in comparison to other sectors.

Ekchajzer points to the ways in which AI is also changing the environmental footprints of other industries. “For instance, if we want to electrify the transport system, now it is being jeopardized by the fact that we are using additional electricity for AI rather than for transport,” he says. The environmental consultancy Hubblo, which Ekchajzer cofounded, recently launched a new online tool that compares the environmental impacts of different graphics cards, starting with nine different Nvidia designs.

The question to ask with generative AI, as with other emerging technologies, is whether it’s providing benefits that outweigh the costs to society. “Generative AI is totally one of those classic solutions looking for a problem,” says Flick, the ethics and games technology professor. That mentality feeds the risky hype cycle of companies pushing for any way to justify and continue scaling up the investments they’ve made in the technology.

“The way we kind of pull this back a little bit is to say, ‘Okay, well, what is usable from this and how can we scope it back down again so that it’s going to be worth the [societal] cost?’” she says.

Using a GPU longer before throwing it out, dismantling and reassembling an obsolete graphics card so it can be downcycled for other uses, and similar waste-cutting measures could reduce e-waste from generative AI by up to 86 percent, according to the 2024 study.

Tech companies can also design chips and AI models to be more energy-efficient. Nvidia points out in an email to The Verge that its Blackwell Ultra is 50 times more efficient than its previous Hopper GPU architecture, and that the company has improved inference throughput per megawatt by 1,000,000x over the past six architecture generations.

“If the average fuel efficiency of a car had improved as swiftly as chips over a similar time period, one gallon of gas would suffice for a trip to the moon and back,” Nvidia head of sustainability Josh Parker says in the email.

But increased efficiency can become a double-edged sword that incentivizes companies to burn through even more resources overall. That’s where it gets important to challenge the “bigger is better” mentality within the tech industry, some of the researchers I spoke with say.

An AI model might double in size just to achieve a 2 percent gain in capability — is that worth the added environmental toll, Falk posits during our Zoom call. “I have a question of sufficiency, that we should say like, ‘OK, that’s enough, the model is good enough.’ Where do we stop?” Falk says.

Microsoft is building out a network of new AI data centers it’s calling Fairwater sites, each able to scale to “hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs.” The company declined to comment on the record for this story, instead pointing to blogs it’s published on Microsoft’s research into techniques like using superconducting materials and liquid cooling to make data centers more energy-efficient.

“Generative AI is totally one of those classic solutions looking for a problem.”

Environmental groups want more accountability. Since other companies manufacture the chips Nvidia designs, Greenpeace East Asia is pushing Nvidia to clean up its supply chain by investing in more renewable energy capacity where they operate. And it doesn’t discriminate between GPUs made for AI or gaming or any other purpose. The organization and other local groups have called attention to the health and environmental impacts semiconductor manufacturing has had in Taiwan and Korea for years.

All of the hype around AI is just bringing the issue to the forefront. “The whole AI boom accelerates and intensifies this kind of phenomenon in East Asia,” says Katrin Wu, Greenpeace East Asia’s supply chain project lead.

And even though the GPU is the “backbone” of that boom, she says, and Nvidia has a market cap of $4 trillion, the chip designer doesn’t get the same pushback that more consumer-facing companies like Microsoft or Google might have over their environmental footprint. “Somehow they can avoid the public and social scrutiny,” she says, adding, “We’re not, like, completely against AI development.” Greenpeace just wants it to happen more sustainably.

TSMC, which makes chips for Nvidia, points to investments it’s made in renewable energy, water reclamation, and waste reduction in an email to The Verge. In Arizona, for example, TSMC is building an industrial water reclamation plant at its manufacturing site “to achieve near-zero liquid discharge, substantially reducing dependence on local water sources,” according to TSMC deputy spokesperson Nina Kao.

Intel, which is also expanding its fabs in Arizona to produce powerful GPUs for AI, points to commitments the company has made to achieve zero waste to landfill, replenish more water than it uses, and match electricity use with renewable energy in an email to The Verge. “We believe that corporate responsibility and innovation go hand in hand. This belief has guided our work for decades – from setting ambitious sustainability aspirations to embedding responsible practices across our global operations, supply chain, and product design,” Madison West, head of sustainability at Intel, said in the email.

Sure, environmental concerns don’t often influence consumers’ purchases. And much of the pushback against AI stems from other moral quandaries. But consumers can play a role in advocating for more accountability from tech companies. Some game developers have already faced fierce criticism over their use of generative AI, albeit largely over the prospect of AI replacing people’s jobs and artistry. “What do we do when we make games? It’s a human story that we tell, right?” Flick says. “Games are very powerful tools for narrative and telling stories, and shaping how people think about things.”

A 2024 study in the US found that gamers were more likely to want to take collective action on climate change than people who don’t play video games. Marina Psaros, one of the authors of the study, wasn’t exactly surprised. After all, gaming isn’t a passive form of entertainment, she says.

“You’re actually directly responsible for the experience that you have with that game. Often, that’s the joy of it, is that you’re driving the narrative and you’re discovering how to do new things,” Psaros says. In that way, games — and the GPUs powering them — offer people a way to envision a different, better world.

“That’s one that I think is exciting,” she says. “[It’s] the opportunity for us to be able to use the imagination and the visualization aspect of games to think about how we want our communities to function differently.”

And when it comes to facing the issues that hold up consumer adoption of AI, “really the ideal solution for this is to actually just directly address and be empathetic to consumers’ concerns,” says Striblet. “So that you’re able to actually develop the solutions.”

This reporting was supported by a grant from the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism.

Additional reporting by Sean Hollister.

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Tue, 21 Jul 2026 03:56:03 GMT

Article URL: https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/five-us-tech-giants-hidden-debts-soar-to-1.65tn-on-opaque-ai-funding

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987863

Points: 9

# Comments: 0

Running Doom on Our Custom CPU and Going Viral

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 03:54:16 GMT

Article URL: https://www.armaangomes.com/blogs/doom/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987846

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

A Koi Pond Mosaic Made from 10 Pounds of 3D Printer Waste

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 03:52:05 GMT

Article URL: https://www.instructables.com/A-Koi-Pond-Mosaic-Made-From-10-Pounds-of-3D-Printe/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987831

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Jane Street: Incremental

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 03:50:53 GMT

Article URL: https://github.com/janestreet/incremental

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987822

Points: 6

# Comments: 1

VTubing: How a Japanese Phenomenon Is Going Worldwide

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 03:42:47 GMT

Article URL: https://www.tokyodev.com/articles/vtubing-how-a-japanese-phenomenon-is-going-worldwide

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987775

Points: 12

# Comments: 0

Is surveillance risk chilling your online speech?

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 03:17:10 GMT

Given the expansion of the fed/state/local/corporate surveillance net, do you find yourself expressing yourself less freely on the internet than you did five years ago?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987634

Points: 9

# Comments: 4

A PHP server that can handle 10x as many concurrent requests as Nginx+PHP-fpm

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 02:25:36 GMT

Article URL: https://github.com/Qbix/webserver/blob/main/README.md

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987347

Points: 13

# Comments: 1

Ramp Router

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 02:09:27 GMT

Article URL: https://ramp.com/router/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987253

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Show HN: I made email signatures less boring

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 01:06:20 GMT

Article URL: https://esigna.app

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48986912

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:33:53 GMT

Article URL: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/tracking-alpr-cameras/flock-safety-credibility-lost-as-it-repeatedly-lies-to-city-councils-police-departments-and-public-across-the-country

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48986731

Points: 19

# Comments: 0

Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 23:15:41 GMT

Article URL: https://forum.jellyfin.org/t-project-leadership-changes

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48986091

Points: 14

# Comments: 2

Opaque, Interoperable Passkey Records (and a Go API)

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 23:00:29 GMT

Article URL: https://words.filippo.io/passkey-record/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48985956

Points: 9

# Comments: 0

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 22:53:56 GMT

Very productive day. We rolled through some UI stuff that had been on the list for a while. And set up for a big job tomorrow, server side. The notes for client and server apps.

Here are the 30,000 songs Sony is suing Udio’s AI music generator over

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 22:19:12 GMT

Sony Music Entertainment has filed another lawsuit against Udio, accusing the AI music generator of infringing the copyright of more than 30,000 of its songs, ranging from Elvis Presley's Hound Dog to Beyoncé's Say My Name, and Harry Styles' As It Was. The lawsuit, filed in a New York court on Monday, claims that this list represents "only a small portion of Plaintiffs' works that Udio infringed," as reported earlier by Music Business Worldwide.

In 2024, Sony, along with Universal Music Group and Warner Records, filed a lawsuit against Udio and the AI music-maker Suno. After gaining access to Udio's training data through discovery, Sony cla …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The FCC is planning to retroactively ban disguised DJI gadgets

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 22:16:14 GMT

The Skyrover X1 vs the DJI Mini 4 Pro. | Image: AirPhotography

Last October, we told you how the FCC had given itself the power to retroactively ban gadgets that have already received its approval to be imported and sold in the United States. Now, the FCC's getting ready to wield that power for the first time, by cracking down on the "DJI front companies" suspected of sneaking the Chinese company's tech past its foreign drone ban.

Two Fridays ago, the FCC had already proposed a $25,000 fine on eight of those "front companies," including the ones behind the Skyrover drones and Xtra cameras. But now, the FCC is proposing a lot more than a slap-on-the-wrist - it's planning to ban those same companies from …

Read the full story at The Verge.

DA: Cop covered bodycam to snap nude prisoners on his iPhone—but other cams caught him

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 22:15:51 GMT

Pennsylvania cop charged with oppression and obstruction.

Firefighting drones in the works as wildfires plague US nearly year-round

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 21:55:52 GMT

California and XPRIZE competition tests whether drones can stop wildfires early.

The Odyssey turned me into an IMAX believer

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 21:47:37 GMT

After seeing Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey for the first time early last week, I came away impressed, but somewhat conflicted about two of the film's more fantastical set pieces. While those scenes were beautifully crafted and tremendously acted, there was something a little bit off about the way they hit my eye. I spent days wondering what, exactly, wasn't quite working for me during that first theatrical viewing, and I thought that might have just been splitting hairs. But it wasn't until I saw the movie again over the weekend - this time in IMAX - that the issue became crystal clear.

Though I'd heard all of the buzz about The Odyssey b …

Read the full story at The Verge.