Nvidia has released PAIR, a free open-source beta tool that connects compatible devices on a home network to pool their unused processing power for local AI inference and agentic tasks. It works with GeForce RTX 20-series and newer GPUs, RTX Pro cards, DGX Spark systems, and Apple M4 or later chips, running on Windows, Linux, and macOS.
Australia now hosts 162 data centres with 90 more planned and over A$155bn in investment lined up, driven by cheap energy, gas reserves and available land. Residents near facilities in Sydney's Lane Cove and Marsden Park report constant humming and worry about proximity to homes, while a proposed one-gigawatt facility in western Sydney could become the country's largest single energy consumer.
France's data protection authority CNIL has fined Hôpital privé de la Loire €500,000 after a 2025 breach exposed data belonging to over 727,000 people, including more than 524,000 patients and roughly 202,000 people listed as trusted contacts. Investigators found the hospital allowed external users to log in without VPNs or multi-factor authentication, gave a single compromised account access to all patient records, and had no real-time monitoring to catch the intrusion as it unfolded over several days.
Mireye, part of YC's S26 batch, has launched a system where users can describe a data field in plain language along with a location, and the platform either returns a cataloged match with a citation, offers a near-match to accept or reject, or queues a new build with a trackable request ID. Requests for data it cannot legally or technically source—such as real-time personal contact information—are explicitly rejected with a pointer to alternative sources.
John Perkins was removed from the Independence City Council after 68.05% of voters backed his recall in a special election tied to his support for roughly $6 billion in tax incentives for a Nebius data center. He is the third official connected to the March council vote to lose his seat, following losses by a fellow councilman and a mayoral candidate. Only about 11.5% of Jackson County's registered voters cast ballots in the recall.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman pushed back on claims that ChatGPT usage consumes excessive water, comparing it to a viral claim that a single query uses as much water as running a shower for six hours. Speaking on the Sources Podcast, he said 38,000 queries equate to the water needed to grow one almond in California, and argued modern data centers no longer rely on evaporative cooling, instead using water similar to an office building.
The EPA has proposed eliminating a federal rule that requires states to notify the public and accept comments before issuing air pollution permits for data centers and other industrial facilities. States would still be allowed to hold public comment periods voluntarily, but would no longer be required to do so as a condition of granting permits. The proposal comes amid growing local opposition to the rapid construction of AI-driven data centers nationwide.
New polling shows roughly 75% of Americans, including many Republican voters, oppose having data centers built near their communities, comparing the intensity of that opposition to resistance against Social Security cuts. Despite this, President Trump is intensifying his support for data center growth just before the midterm elections, and some GOP officials have dismissed the backlash as an orchestrated psyop rather than genuine grassroots concern.
The LTO Consortium, backed by HPE, IBM, and Quantum, reports that shipped capacity of LTO-compatible tape media rose 57% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2026. The surge follows a 9% dip in 2025 and comes after 2024's record 176.5 exabytes shipped, with LTO-9 tapes driving much of the latest growth. Quantum's CEO attributes the rebound to enterprises needing durable, cost-effective long-term storage as AI-driven data volumes explode.
Nvidia has released Personal AI Router (PAIR), a free open-source tool that finds compatible computers on a home network and links them together to run local AI inference tasks through apps like Ollama and LM Studio. It supports Nvidia RTX 20-series and newer GPUs, RTX Pro and DGX Spark systems, plus Apple M4 chips or later, and only taps machines when they're idle so it doesn't interfere with other use.
DJI has introduced the ROMO 2 lineup, including the ROMO P2 and ROMO A2, at IFA 2026 as successors to last year's ROMO. The new models use an upgraded drone-derived perception system for millimeter-level obstacle detection, a LiDAR-guided mopping arm, up to 36,000 Pa suction, and leg mechanisms that step over ledges up to 8.5cm tall.
Google has released WeatherNext 3, an updated AI weather forecasting model that generates hourly predictions using live satellite observations rather than relying solely on historical data. The model can resolve certain variables like temperature and moisture at up to 5-kilometer resolution, a sharp improvement over its predecessor's 25-kilometer, 6-hourly forecasts.