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The dismissal marks the latest setback in swing states' efforts to prosecute fake electors who tried to keep Trump in the White House after he lost to Joe Biden in 2020.

(Image credit: John Locher)

Betting on what people say is becoming an increasingly popular category of prediction market sites. Now, federal officials have opened a probe examining whether those markets are a magnet for manipulators.

(Image credit: Erin Hooley/AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

Mild spoilers for Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 4 ahead.

Four episodes into Stuart Fails to Save the Universe on HBO Max and we've seen four surprise Big Bang Theory characters return: Raj (Kunal Nayyar), Penny (Kaley Cuoco), Bernadette (Melissa Rauch) and Amy (Mayim Bialik).

With one new face per episode, you might be wondering whether the remaining six episodes in the series will continue the trend.

Most notably, Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Leonard (Jonny Galecki) have yet to make an appearance — and considering they built the machine that Stuart (Kevin Sussman) broke that got him into this mess, it feels fitting that they should reappear. Howard (Simon Helberg) has also yet to reappear.

However, a return isn't necessarily guaranteed, especially if the creators want Stuart Fails to Save the Universe to be picked up for a second season (which they definitely do). Why give us what we want now if they can drag it out?

But after speaking to Chuck Lorre, Bill Prady and Zak Penn, it turns out the reason for the season 1 cameos is actually boringly straightforward: it all came down to who was available to film.

'It was what was necessary for the storytelling'

(Image credit: HBO Max)

"It was availability and what was necessary for the storytelling" Lorre responds when I ask him about this season's cameos. "It was wonderful to have Melissa play a demonic character, for example. That just made sense."

Penn adds "Who we had something good to write for," with Prady agreeing "I also loved finding out that Amy is married to Golden Age Flash. That made me very happy."

Perhaps we should be focusing on these Easter egg details, rather than what cameos may or may not appear. Why was Golden Age Flash such a good choice? Because he's Sheldon's favorite DC superhero, and the reason why, nearly every time we see him, he's sporting the iconic T-shirt with the Flash logo.

I don't want to brag, but I called this the moment that a Stuart Fails to Save the Universe DC crossover was revealed. But as for continued cameos, I'm not as confident.

It's probably more likely that we'd see every variant of Flash known to man before Sheldon shows up, because TBBT feels like something that's resolutely a part of Parsons' past.

However, adult Sheldon did show up for the Young Sheldon season 7 finale, so anything is possible. But if we're going there, I need George Cooper to be resurrected more than I need to see adult Sheldon again.

In fact, now that we've had Christine Baranski appear as herself, let's get Laurie Metcalf (who played Mary Cooper) back on the scene instead. HBO Max... call me.

This year’s Pixel devices all got pricier. Here’s why.

• GPT-4 predicted personality scores months before any human ever answered a question
• A Bosch oven manual was enough for GPT-4 to invent personality traits
• DSM-5 predictions hit 0.71 accuracy; astrology predictions somehow hit 0.85 accuracy

Human personality has traditionally been measured by asking people questions and comparing their answers across established psychological frameworks.

A new study published on iScience suggests GPT-4 can go further by estimating how people collectively respond to personality questions before answering begins.

Researchers Rotem Monsa, Aviv Zohar, and Shahar Arzy of the Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical School tested whether the model could infer patterns in human responses from language alone, rather than merely generating plausible questionnaire wording.

GPT-4 predicted responses before humans answered

The team used GPT-4 to create personality questionnaires from two very different textual sources.

One questionnaire drew on the DSM-5, the standard clinical manual used worldwide by psychiatrists to diagnose personality disorders with precision.

The other version pulled statements from an astrology textbook that assigns particular personality traits to each of the twelve zodiac signs.

"We wanted to choose texts that describe human personality in very rich detail but also sit on opposite ends of a spectrum in terms of scientific grounding," said Rotem Monsa, lead author of the study.

“The DSM-5 was refined through decades of clinical research and is the standard diagnostic manual in clinical psychiatry, known worldwide.”

Both questionnaires were then given to 600 participants alongside the Big Five Inventory, the most validated personality measurement tool available.

Before collecting those responses, GPT-4 estimated average scores for individual questions using a five-point Likert response scale.

This gave the researchers a way to compare predictions against subsequently collected evidence.

The model's estimates correlated strongly with actual participant averages, reaching 0.71 for DSM-derived questions and 0.85 for astrology-derived questions.

This decent internal consistency for DSM-5-based questionnaires suggests that traits that typically appear together in real life also correlated in responses.

The astrology questionnaire, by comparison, showed a noticeably weaker internal consistency across most of the personality traits it measured overall.

GPT-4 also estimated relationships between individual questions, producing correlations of 0.74 and 0.69 for DSM and astrology questionnaires, respectively.

The researchers therefore argue that GPT-4 appears capable of capturing population-level response tendencies embedded within language and questionnaire content.

However, they specifically caution that predicting average responses does not establish that the resulting questionnaire accurately measures individual personality differences.

(Image credit: iScience)Testing the limits with an oven manual

The researchers also tested whether GPT-4 would generate personality-style questions when given material containing no explicit personality information.

They supplied the model with a Bosch oven manual and a literary description of a landscape from The Lord of the Rings.

GPT-4 still produced questionnaire items resembling personality assessments, even though neither source was designed around psychological traits.

That result suggests the model has learned strong associations between language patterns, personality descriptions, and familiar questionnaire structures.

Yet the researchers found that unrelated source material could produce items that were semantically weak, narrow, or poorly connected.

This distinction matters because a convincing question does not necessarily measure the psychological characteristic that researchers intended to examine.

The study also found important differences between the questionnaires when researchers examined their underlying statistical structures.

The Big Five questionnaire most closely matched its expected organization, while the DSM and astrology questionnaires showed weaker confirmatory factor-model fits.

Astrology-derived items also failed to preserve their intended elemental structure, instead forming broader patterns resembling established personality dimensions.

The results nonetheless showed comparable predictive performance across many life outcomes, although astrology-based measures performed worse for mental-health outcomes.

For now, the evidence supports a narrower claim: GPT-4 can anticipate aggregate human response patterns from textual information with measurable accuracy.

“Given that personality traits are reflected in language, LLMs may have learned the structure of human personality as a natural byproduct of their training,” Monsa added.

“So, while they were not taught specifically psychology or personality theories, these are already embedded in the language that LLMs learn from.”

Toothless limitations aren’t a great look for Flock’s modern surveillance.

Looking for a different day?

A new Quordle puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Thursday's puzzle instead then click here: Quordle hints and answers for Thursday, August 13 (game #1662).

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,500 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today — or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

Quordle today (game #1663) — hint #1 — VowelsHow many different vowels are in Quordle today?

• The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 4*.

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).

Quordle today (game #1663) — hint #2 — repeated lettersDo any of today's Quordle answers contain repeated letters?

• The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 2.

Quordle today (game #1663) — hint #3 — uncommon lettersDo the letters Q, Z, X or J appear in Quordle today?

• Yes. One of Q, Z, X or J appears among today's Quordle answers.

Quordle today (game #1663) — hint #4 — starting letters (1)Do any of today's Quordle puzzles start with the same letter?

• The number of today's Quordle answers starting with the same letter is 2.

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #1663) — hint #5 — starting letters (2)What letters do today's Quordle answers start with?

• S

• M

• S

• G

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

Quordle today (game #1663) — the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle, game #1663, are…

• SEIZE
• MYRRH
• SANER
• GLOAT

I really messed up today’s game and lost my win streak in the process.

Instead of playing tactically and getting MYRRH sooner (I spotted too late that without vowels there was only one possibility) I persisted in trying to get a word with too many options and ran out of guesses.

Daily Sequence today (game #1663) — the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1663, are…

• EASEL
• INDEX
• ERROR
• POINT

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #1662, Thursday, 13 August: TOPAZ, PURGE, WHINE, SIGHT
• Quordle #1661, Wednesday, 12 August: HOTLY, CROWD, HEART, SWASH
• Quordle #1660, Tuesday, 11 August: ONSET, BRAWL, TEPID, SLANG
• Quordle #1659, Monday, 10 August: GAVEL, CRUSH, SPEED, ETHOS
• Quordle #1658, Sunday, 9 August: KAPPA, WIDEN, FOLIO, STEEP
• Quordle #1657, Saturday, 8 August: FUROR, BUGLE, REUSE, SCOOP
• Quordle #1656, Friday, 7 August: AMISS, SHIRK, SALSA, RABBI
• Quordle #1655, Thursday, 6 August: AMUSE, BRAND, CEDAR, BLURB
• Quordle #1654, Wednesday, 5 August: MOUND, WRONG, STOOD, WEIRD
• Quordle #1653, Tuesday, 4 August: GOOEY, TARDY, HUMAN, CHALK
• Quordle #1652, Monday, 3 August: FUNGI, MUDDY, DEBUT, MANIA
• Quordle #1651, Sunday, 2 August: BOOTH, EASEL, REACH, MAKER
• Quordle #1650, Saturday, 1 August: OMEGA, BIRCH, SMOCK, EERIE
• Quordle #1649, Friday, 31 July: MANIA, SINGE, STOOL, LOFTY
• Quordle #1648, Thursday, 30 July: MODAL, IDLER, CHUMP, LUMPY
• Quordle #1647, Wednesday, 29 July: GAWKY, ALLOY, AUDIT, LATCH
• Quordle #1646, Tuesday, 28 July: SMITE, ROACH, RUDDY, GLOBE
• Quordle #1645, Monday, 27 July: TAFFY, FIGHT, GUILD, WAGER
• Quordle #1644, Sunday, 26 July: STOMP, LIMIT, FUNKY, STEAD
• Quordle #1643, Saturday, 25 July: SALON, SHEEN, BURST, GOURD

Looking for a different day?

A new NYT Connections puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Thursday's puzzle instead then click here: NYT Connections hints and answers for Thursday, August 13 (game #1159).

Good morning! Let's play Connections, the NYT's clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need Connections hints.

What should you do once you've finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I've also got daily Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc's Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Connections today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Connections today (game #1160) - today's words

(Image credit: New York Times)

Today's NYT Connections words are…

• BUMBLEBEE
• BUBBLE
• BASS ALE
• CHARLIE BROWN
• DELTA AIRLINES
• STRAIGHTEDGE
• ECHO CHAMBER
• CITGO
• CAUTION TAPE
• GOOGLE DRIVE
• INDIA INK
• SILO
• DIP PEN
• WOLVERINE
• HIVEMIND
• BRISTOL BOARD

NYT Connections today (game #1160) - hint #1 - group hints

What are some clues for today's NYT Connections groups?

• YELLOW: Two colors in common
• GREEN: Opinion loop
• BLUE: Things a cartoonist uses
• PURPLE: The shape of the brand

Need more clues?

We're firmly in spoiler territory now, but read on if you want to know what the four theme answers are for today's NYT Connections puzzles…

NYT Connections today (game #1160) - hint #2 - group answers

What are the answers for today's NYT Connections groups?

• YELLOW: BLACK-AND-YELLOW
• GREEN: PLACES WHERE EVERYONE THINKS THE SAME WAYS
• BLUE: COMIC BOOK ARTIST'S TOOLS
• PURPLE: TRIANGLE LOGOS

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Connections today (game #1160) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Connections, game #1160, are…

• YELLOW: BLACK-AND-YELLOW: BUMBLEBEE, CAUTION TAPE, CHARLIE BROWN, WOLVERINE
• GREEN: PLACES WHERE EVERYONE THINKS THE SAME WAYS: BUBBLE, ECHO CHAMBER, HIVEMIND, SILO
• BLUE: COMIC BOOK ARTIST'S TOOLS: BRISTOL BOARD, DIP PEN, INDIA INK, STRAIGHTEDGE
• PURPLE: TRIANGLE LOGOS: BASS ALE, CITGO, DELTA AIRLINES, GOOGLE DRIVE

• My rating: Hard
• My score: Fail

This is the first game of Connections I’ve lost since March 2025 and apart from BLACK-AND-YELLOW I had no idea what any of the groups were about.

Things got off to a bad start when I guessed SILO instead of CHARLIE BROWN, but after I corrected that I was utterly in the dark; I had a couple of pairs in INDIA INK and DIP PEN, and HIVEMIND and BUBBLE, but beyond that i was clueless.

What is extra annoying is that I cannot blame my loss on cultural differences and being based in the UK — especially as the relatively obscure BASS ALE is a British brand.

Yesterday's NYT Connections answers (Thursday, August 13, 2026, game #1159)

• YELLOW: PERSEVERE: CARRY ON, CONTINUE, MAKE IT, PERSIST
• GREEN: MOVE SLOWLY (UP TO): CREEP, EASE, EDGE, INCH
• BLUE: AIRLINE STATUS PERKS: CHECKED BAGS, LOUNGE, MILES, UPGRADE
• PURPLE: "COLD" THINGS, IN IDIOMS: COMFORT, FEET, SHOULDER, TURKEY

What is NYT Connections?

NYT Connections is one of several increasingly popular word games made by the New York Times. It challenges you to find groups of four items that share something in common, and each group has a different difficulty level: green is easy, yellow a little harder, blue often quite tough and purple usually very difficult.

On the plus side, you don't technically need to solve the final one, as you'll be able to answer that one by a process of elimination. What's more, you can make up to four mistakes, which gives you a little bit of breathing room.

It's a little more involved than something like Wordle, however, and there are plenty of opportunities for the game to trip you up with tricks. For instance, watch out for homophones and other word games that could disguise the answers.

It's playable for free via the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

Looking for a different day?

A new NYT Strands puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Thursday's puzzle instead then click here: NYT Strands hints and answers for Thursday, August 13 (game #893).

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #894) - hint #1 - today's themeWhat is the theme of today's NYT Strands?

• Today's NYT Strands theme is… Discovered by accident

NYT Strands today (game #894) - hint #2 - clue words

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• VOICE
• SINK
• CRAVEN
• LINE
• COIL
• NICE

NYT Strands today (game #894) - hint #3 - spangram lettersHow many letters are in today's spangram?

• Spangram has 10 letters

NYT Strands today (game #894) - hint #4 - spangram positionWhat are two sides of the board that today's spangram touches?

• First side: top, 3rd column

• Last side: bottom, 4th column

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #894) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Strands, game #894, are…

• SLINKY
• VELCRO
• PLASTIC
• MICROWAVE
• PENICILLIN
• SPANGRAM: INVENTIONS

• My rating: Hard
• My score: 2 hints

There were so many Vs in today’s game that I convinced myself that the word “vinyl” was in the grid somewhere and that the theme was all about crate digging and finding some secret album.

I could not have been more wrong. Something I only learned after two hints gave me SLINKY and VELCRO and I realized I had wasted five minutes daydreaming about record shops.

It was not until I got the spangram — and eliminated the last of the Vs — that I finally realized what the search was about and how one of the greatest medical discoveries of history was connected to a spring that goes downstairs.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Thursday, August 13, game #893)

• FIERCE
• HEATED
• TORRID
• INTENSE
• ZEALOUS
• SPANGRAM: FIREBRAND

What is NYT Strands?

Strands is the NYT's not-so-new-any-more word game, following Wordle and Connections. It's now a fully fledged member of the NYT's games stable that has been running for a year and which can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

I've got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you're struggling to beat it each day.

• QZSS was designed specifically around Japan's difficult positioning environment and geography
• The seven-satellite constellation brings Japan closer to continuous domestic navigation coverage
• QZS-7 successfully reached orbit after QZS-5 was lost during launch

Mountainous terrain and densely packed city blocks across Japan can obstruct ordinary satellite positioning signals from reaching receivers on the ground.

Standard Global Positioning System coverage was never built with those obstacles in mind, leaving gaps in accuracy across parts of the country.

Japan has spent more than a decade building its own answer to that gap, and this week that effort reached a new milestone.

Why Japan built its own system

Japanese authorities developed the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System, a constellation designed to guarantee near-constant coverage and sharper location accuracy across the archipelago.

Japan's Cabinet Office states that the system complements GPS by ensuring a navigation satellite remains almost always somewhere above the country.

Japan's islands span latitudes between 20° and 45° North, a spread too wide for one geostationary satellite to cover alone.

The QZSS satellites therefore fly an inclined geostationary orbit that traces a figure-eight pattern when viewed from the ground.

The newest satellite in that constellation, known as Michibiki No. 7 or QZS-7, reached its intended orbit early Tuesday local time aboard an H3 rocket.

This orbit causes satellites to move more slowly while above the Northern Hemisphere, spending roughly 13 hours near the equator each cycle.

The first configuration used four satellites, and one of them appeared over Japan every eight hours during that early arrangement.

One satellite remained at an elevation of 70° or higher at all times, though not always at the exact zenith overhead.

That detail about elevation, rather than reaching the true zenith overhead, is actually what gave the constellation its distinctive quasi-zenith name.

A troubled rocket finally delivers

The H3 rocket, which carried the QZS-7, is the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) newest mid-range launcher, and Tuesday's flight was the rocket's ninth mission since its debut.

Two of those nine missions failed the rocket's short operational history so far.

The most recent failure occurred in December 2025, when a glue-related fault destroyed the navigation satellite payload it was carrying.

That lost satellite was QZS-5, an earlier orbiter meant to expand Japan's navigation constellation before its launch attempt failed.

The first experimental QZSS satellite went into space in 2010, followed by four production satellites launched between 2017 and 2021.

Japan's government later decided to expand the constellation further, growing the planned fleet from four satellites to seven satellites total.

QZS-6 launched successfully in February 2025, arriving in orbit months before the failed December attempt to launch QZS-5 occurred.

Officials say three more satellites are planned sometime during the 2030s, though no direct replacement for QZS-5 has yet been confirmed.

Tuesday's success suggests Japan now holds nearly all of the satellite navigation coverage it originally set out to build.

It also offers JAXA a measure of reassurance that the H3 rocket, despite its rocky record, can still serve as a dependable workhorse for future missions.

Via The Register

Meta’s new Scam Alert tool will flag potential scam texts in WhatsApp while your messages stay encrypted.

An outage affecting Petlibro automatic feeders left some pets hungry, customers report.

Both new watches from Google and Samsung can work with any Android phone, but they have different features and perks.

Smart screens mounted on shopping carts might change people’s behavior at grocery stores in a few interesting ways.

The computing industry was once unrecognizable from the one we see today, with the idea of discipline centered around writing code treated as some kind of fantasy. That was before industry pioneer Margaret Hamilton coined the term while leading the flight software team for NASA's Apollo space program in the 1960s.

Pioneering an industry

Hamilton was describing the process by which she coined the term "software engineering" and, by doing so, defined an entire computer science discipline, in an interview.

Quote of the day

This article is part of TechRadar Pro's QOTD project to provide an insight into the minds of the brightest and most recognized figures in the technology industry today and in years gone by. Read the full series here.

Rather than an interview for any media outlet, the transcript for this interview appeared in the first edition of the computer science textbook 'Fluency With Information Technology: Skills, Concepts, & Capabilities' by Lawrence Snyder and Ray Laura Henry.

She recalled during this conversation a particularly memorable moment in which a highly respected hardware guru explained to everyone in the meeting that the process of building software should also be considered an engineering discipline – just like hardware. That's because she and her colleagues had earned the respect of others in the room as being in an engineering field in their own right.

Teething issues

Before Hamilton coined the term and defined many of the processes and best practices that drove the software achievements at NASA during the Apollo mission, the approach to computing was in a state of disarray.

People, at the time, valued physical hardware and the components fitted underneath far more than the code that nobody could see. Programming, in a sense, wasn't seen as a real science until Hamilton came along.

During her time at NASA, she created vital on-board flight software, with a particular highlight being her error-detection-and-recovery system. Her contributions were immortalized in the 2022 short film 'To Go to the Moon', in which she was portrayed by Dominque Roberts.

This attitude led to a software crisis in the 1960s through the 1980s, with many projects running over budget and schedule and with the software that was published containing critical bugs, with costly consequences. This was the direct impact of a lack of professionalization in the field.

• In the first three months of 2026, $130 billion worth of AI data centers have been blocked or delayed across the US
• For the whole of 2025, the amount was only $156 billion
• Now AI firms are filing lawsuits to push back against the pushback

Increased strain on local power grids and water systems, noise and air pollution filling the surrounding area, and dubious economic promises are among the reasons citizens have taken a stand against AI data center development in their areas. And their side is winning time and again.

In just the first three months of 2026, local activism has resulted in $130 billion worth of projects being blocked or delayed across the US. For the whole of 2025, the publicly reported figure was only $156 billion.

As you might imagine, AI hyperscalers aren’t pleased with this.

Developers have taken to suing local authorities behind the bans and restrictions; meanwhile, there are reports that private intelligence firms are creating and selling dossiers on AI and data center critics to help companies and AI regulators tackle this growing movement.

And AI companies are already finding victory. Hill County, Texas, was one of the first counties in the state to impose a one-year ban on data center development in rural areas. However, the data center’s developer sued, and the law was rescinded.

Data centers are appearing everywhere (Image credit: Shutterstock)

The developers’ arguments predominantly stem from questioning what powers local leaders have in deciding how and where data centers are rolled out. As such, it’s unclear whether these lawsuits would hold up as well against statewide bans and moratoriums like the one announced just over a week ago by Texas Governor Greg Abbott — which has paused construction of around 1,800 data centers until audits on their impacts on local communities, water systems, and Texas’ power grid can be properly assessed.

It’s also unclear if AI true believers in the federal government will take a stand against states’ AI data center restrictions. President Donald Trump has called data centers a “tremendous thing”; though, despite the growing divide between Republican and Democrat voters, they share a bipartisan distaste for AI data centers, which could present a challenge for leaders who support them when it’s time for re-election.

Can AI data centers ever win?

Whether AI companies succeed in the courts or not, it doesn't seem like they’ll win in the court of public opinion for a little while longer, since data centers apparently have serious immediate downsides and relatively few upsides.

On the positive side, construction workers can see an uptick in revenue while the project is being built; maybe a few local workers will receive long-term employment to help manage the facility, and they can also bring in high tax revenue relative to their size.

But construction will eventually end; long-term employment on-site tends to be relatively limited, as a lot of management can be handled remotely, and tax revenues require profits.

Does anyone love data centers (apart from AI firms)? (Image credit: Nvidia)

On that front, AI data centers are generally enjoying solid financial performance. However, fears over the AI boom being somewhat bubbly continue, with concerns that the promised ongoing returns of data centers may end sooner rather than later.

In a worst-case collapse scenario, these buildings could become defunct, meaning local residents could face years of issues and never see any kind of reward.

These issues, conversely, can be very immediate and pretty major in some cases.

Meta contaminated Cheyenne’s water system with bacteria; data centers are said to have electricity bills for the general public of $23 billion, and a Michigan data center is in trouble for emitting incredible noise pollution 24/7, described by one resident: “You’ve seen movies and stuff where they have somebody in a cell torturing them with sound. And that’s basically what it is."

Many understand the enormous possible economic and scientific advantages of AI and the need for it to be supported and developed in their country — 55% of Americans don’t oppose the construction of new data centers in general, according to a June 2026 IPSOS poll. However, 59% of respondents would actively oppose a center being built within 10 miles of their home.

As AI excitement fails to die down, we’ll undoubtedly see even more data center plans pop up, and see just as many communities oppose them.

The new feature will be available on the Pixel Watch 4 as well.

Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora distributions get first dibs.

Search efforts continue though hopes are fading as teams dig for survivors from the 7.4 magnitude earthquake that killed more than 250 people.

A variety of issues could slow down the rollout of the anticipated new Apple device.