GoKawiil
Tech News
A newly launched smart toothbrush priced at $499 uses AI-driven sensors to guide brushing technique and claims it can reduce the need for manual flossing. The product enters a growing category of connected oral-care devices aimed at improving dental hygiene compliance through real-time feedback.
Candidates across parties are campaigning against Flock Safety's AI-powered license-plate camera network, which operates in thousands of U.S. communities and lets police search shared vehicle data. Politicians in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida have called for bans, funding cuts, warrant requirements, or campaigned directly against the surveillance system. Flock defends the technology, citing its role in solving roughly a million crimes and reuniting thousands of missing people with families.
Jacob Stokes, a former Obama national security official now at the Center for a New American Security, published a report titled 'Superpowers and AGI' urging the US to prepare drastic responses if China reaches artificial general intelligence first. His proposed options range from cyberattacks to sabotage AI systems up to kinetic military strikes on physical data centers, which he acknowledges carries the highest risk of escalation.
A Denver resident filmed a newly built AI data center running its lawn sprinklers heavily enough to create standing puddles, even as Denver Water's Stage 1 drought restrictions limit residential and commercial lawn watering to twice a week through September, with a full ban starting October 1. The footage went viral and fueled anger, though it remains unclear whether the facility violated the rules, since the timing of the video, use of recycled non-potable water, or a special variance could all justify the watering.
Major technology companies are adjusting how they plan and build data centers as opposition grows in communities affected by noise, power demand, and land use concerns tied to the AI boom. The shift reflects an effort to address local pushback that has slowed or stalled some previous projects.
xAI is offering a 50% discount on Starlink residential internet plans to residents near its Memphis and Southaven data centers, along with free hardware for its new Starlink V5 rental kit, saving up to $349 upfront. The company says roughly 2,000 people have signed up since the promotion began in late June, even as it faces criticism over unpermitted gas turbines powering its facilities.
A Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas analysis found that job postings in AI-exposed fields across Texas fell 8% by early 2025 compared to less-exposed roles, hitting recent college graduates hardest. Texas leads the nation in data center construction, yet the study suggests the buildout has coincided with weaker hiring rather than the job growth often promised by AI boosters. Governor Greg Abbott, once a vocal supporter of the data center expansion, recently froze new grid connections amid mounting public pressure.
UGreen has introduced three smart home hubs — the HomeAgent HA100, HomeAgent HA100 Pro, and MasterAgent MA100 — that handle voice commands, camera monitoring, and Matter device control entirely on-device rather than through cloud servers. Each unit combines a two-bay NAS with dedicated video storage and varying levels of onboard AI horsepower, including NVIDIA hardware in higher-end models, with the base HA100 offering 16GB of RAM and 26 TOPS of AI performance.
SpaceXAI apologized after a technical failure at its Memphis compute facility knocked Grok offline for roughly three and a half hours starting around 6:30AM PT Thursday, hitting the service on X as well as its Android and iOS apps. The company also apologized to unnamed 'compute partners,' and around the same time Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's ChatGPT reported their own error spikes, though neither company confirmed a direct link to the Memphis outage.
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.
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.