Virtual power plants let utilities remotely adjust smart thermostats, EV chargers, batteries and solar panels in homes to reduce strain during peak demand, in exchange for bill discounts or signup bonuses. More than 500 such programs already run across the US, with about 4 million smart-thermostat households enrolled as of last year, and interest is growing as companies like Google invest in the technology to support data centers.
Public records show that Alpharetta, a small Atlanta suburb with about 120 officers, has built a license-plate surveillance network through Flock Safety cameras that now exchanges data with over 2,000 outside organizations, including colleges, airports, fraud investigators and federal inspectors. In exchange, Alpharetta receives data from more than 1,300 other entities, some of which have already faced scandals over misuse of the same technology. The network has grown sharply in the past year, with outgoing data-sharing partners up 42 percent and incoming partners up 125 percent since June 2025.
Shadowserver reports over 8,300 internet-facing Gitea instances remain unpatched against CVE-2026-60004, a critical code injection bug already being exploited in the wild. The flaw lets an attacker with repository write access run arbitrary shell commands as the Gitea service account, and since Gitea allows open self-registration by default, unauthenticated users can create an account and repository to gain that access. Gitea patched the issue in version 1.27.1 on July 27, and CISA has added it to its known exploited vulnerabilities list, giving federal agencies just three days to remediate.
Samsung's Galaxy S26 FE goes on sale September 3 for $699.99, $50 more than its predecessor, with Samsung citing RAM supply pressure for the increase. The phone keeps similar battery, display and camera specs to the S25 FE but adds the Exynos 2500 chip, 8GB of RAM, and seven years of software support. Its main selling point is a suite of Galaxy AI tools ported from Samsung's pricier flagships, including Photo Assist, Audio Eraser, and updated Now Brief and Now Nudge features.
X's Global Government Affairs team says it identified roughly 200,000 accounts tied to a Chinese bot network, with about 200 of them dedicated to spreading posts critical of AI data centers. The posts claimed the facilities were raising household electricity bills and straining power grids, echoing similar findings OpenAI reported in June about ChatGPT users seeking ways to sway American opinion on data centers.
Seven U.S. states have enacted extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws that shift the cost and responsibility for packaging waste onto manufacturers, while more than a dozen other states are weighing similar measures. The policies aim to push companies toward more sustainable packaging choices, such as refillable containers or recyclable materials, rather than conventional plastics.
Wealthy donors including tech and finance figures like Elon Musk and George Soros have collectively contributed nearly $1.6 billion toward the 2026 midterm elections. This surge in spending traces back to the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which loosened restrictions on campaign finance contributions.
Politico sources report the Trump administration is drafting another round of tariffs on semiconductors, aiming to push chipmakers toward US-based production. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reportedly favors letting companies import chips duty-free up to a threshold linked to their domestic investment, though the exact terms remain unsettled. The move would layer new costs onto PCs, consoles and data centers already strained by memory shortages.
The FlowG team is preparing its 1.0 release and identified a gap: no native integrations with the logging services of AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, despite already supporting eight general-purpose forwarders. To build and test the AWS CloudWatch integration without incurring cloud costs or needing live accounts, they used floci, a local emulator launched via a single Docker command, which let them configure the AWS SDK to hit a local endpoint and verify log forwarding using standard CLI tools.
According to leaker Digital Chat Station, OPPO's upcoming Find X10 Pro Max will use 200MP sensors for its main, telephoto, and ultrawide cameras, making it the first phone with three such sensors. The same source has previously indicated a September or October launch window for the device.
Canada has hired 48 scholars away from top American universities in a coordinated recruitment push. The move brings established researchers and their expertise into Canadian institutions, bolstering the country's academic and research capacity.
Luanti's Android app was removed from the Google Play Store following a DMCA takedown notice filed by Tracer.AI on behalf of Microsoft, accusing the open-source voxel game platform of infringing Minecraft's copyright. Luanti's developers say the app contains no proprietary Minecraft code or assets, noting that Tracer.AI filed a nearly identical notice against them in 2023, which was successfully appealed, and has separately targeted another voxel-style indie game called Allumeria this year.
GoKawiil