TechCrunch
Dutch startup Morphotonics secures €40M to scale up nanoimprint lithography for smart glasses and data center optics, because apparently your AR glasses and server farms have more in common than you thought.
The Atlantic
A new analysis says the data center panic is divorced from facts - communities are forgoing billions in tax revenue over exaggerated water, power, and land fears.
Grist
Georgia's utility regulators left Atlanta for Savannah, where residents let them know exactly how they feel about power bills, data centers, and the meaning of 'public service.'
The Atlantic
Data centers are springing up like unwanted weeds, and politicians are just now realizing that locals aren't thrilled about the AI-fueled concrete invasion in their backyards.
Grist
EPA just made it easier for data centers to build their own polluting power plants, because the 1990s were clearly a different era.
TechCrunch
Nvidia's latest move: invest in the plumbing so the AI gold rush doesn't run out of juice.
BBC Business
A rock-melting tunnel-boring machine that shoots 27,000C plasma is making undergrounding critical infrastructure trendy again - because drones and weather are getting too good at ruining above-ground stuff.
ScienceDaily
Seoul researchers create a programmable chip that slows light on demand, potentially saving AI data centers from a meltdown - and giving photons their first taste of rush hour.
The Atlantic
Silicon Valley discovers that building AI data centers is less like coding and more like running a steel mill, complete with Caterpillar engines and a desperate need for plumbers.
Grist
New York puts the brakes on data centers for a year, because apparently the cloud needs to pay its share of the electric bill.
Ars Technica
AI data centers are hogging the power grid, leaving Rust Belt factories paying through the nose - and Trump's manufacturing revival plan is getting short-circuited.
Grist
A New York dairy farm is using cow manure to power crypto mining, and tech giants see it as a green fuel for AI data centers - critics call it a stinky, subsidized boondoggle.
Inside Climate News
North Carolina's Ratepayer Protection Act is a legislative two-for-one: protecting ratepayers from data center gluttony while letting Duke Energy off the fossil-fuel leash.
Inside Climate News
North Carolina's Ratepayer Protection Act tries to protect residents from data center excess while simultaneously giving Duke Energy a green light to keep burning fossil fuels, because why solve one problem when you can create another?
TechCrunch
SoftBank commits €75 billion to build French data centers, because where else would you store all those AI-generated sonnets about baguettes?
Inside Climate News
Corpus Christi is building a pipeline before it has permits to drill for emergency water, and city leaders suspect a secret data center plan is why the tiny town of Sinton is blocking the project.
Grist
Chevron wants a $227 million tax break from Texas schools to build a gas plant for Microsoft's data center, because nothing says 'good neighbor' like asking for a handout while emitting more CO2 than Jamaica.
Inside Climate News
Virginia signs bills making data centers pay more for electricity, but not as much as originally planned, while Dominion gets to bury lines at $900,000 a mile.
Ars Technica
NV Energy tells 49,000 Lake Tahoe residents to find their own power because data centers need the electricity more - proving that even ski towns can't compete with AI's insatiable hunger.
The Guardian
Utah approves a datacenter twice the size of Manhattan that needs more power than the entire state uses, and locals are not thrilled about the Great Salt Lake becoming a casualty of AI ambition.
The Good Times
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