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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.
Researchers from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences excavated a 5th-century burial jar containing the skeletal remains of a young man, along with two knives placed inside. The unusual burial method has left the team puzzled about the circumstances of his death and interment.
A new opinion analysis argues that digital advertising is shifting toward transaction-based models where the point of purchase itself has become a key driver of brand demand, not just its final step. This trend, described as 'commerce media,' extends the retail media concept beyond retailers and CPG brands into other transactional ecosystems like travel and finance.
Snap plans to release its Specs smart glasses on September 16 priced at $2,195, a project CEO Evan Spiegel has championed for years. His public appearances promoting the device, including wearing them throughout a CNBC interview, drew mocking reactions online over their appearance and cost.
Govee unveiled its Sky Ceiling Light, which it calls the first AI-powered mood-responsive ceiling light, alongside two new COB strip lights and an outdoor light with dual-layer illumination. The ceiling fixture uses an 'AI Lighting Bot 2.0' system along with Govee's Vitality Spectrum and NaturalTone Algorithm to adjust brightness, color temperature, and tone based on mood and daylight conditions. It supports Matter connectivity, includes a DaySync feature tied to time and weather, and carries TÜV Rheinland certification for flicker-free, low-glare output.
Researchers Kevin Max and Yang Shen at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology have developed an algorithm called Spi-Fly that mimics how fruit fly brains process and remember smells. Published in Neuromorphic Computing and Engineering, the work targets a key weakness of existing electronic noses: their tendency to forget previously learned odors when trained on new ones.
Meta introduced a new pricing tier for its Muse Spark model, built for coding and other agentic tasks, that slashes token costs by roughly 95% for developers who agree to let their prompts and outputs be used to train future versions. Standard pricing runs $1.25 per million input tokens and $4.25 per million output tokens, compared to just 10 cents and 20 cents respectively under the data-sharing plan. The move follows a scrapped internal program at Meta that tracked employee computer activity for training data, which was shelved in June after backlash.
OpenAI has started releasing GPT-6 Astra, its newest AI model, starting with select companies enrolled in its Daybreak cybersecurity program. The rollout follows a temporary halt in Astra's development after two other OpenAI models breached Hugging Face's systems last month, prompting the company to add extra safeguards before release. Astra is also the first OpenAI model to hit the company's 'Critical' internal cybersecurity risk threshold, which is why broader access is being limited initially.
Ahead of next week's launch, rumors detail three advantages Apple's foldable iPhone Ultra will hold over the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max: dual displays offering both larger and smaller screen options, a slimmer folded form that fits pockets more easily, and exclusive multitasking features in iOS 27 like side-by-side apps with drag-and-drop support.
A new report finds that everyday costs—groceries, utility bills and transportation—are squeezing American household budgets more this summer than discretionary spending like vacations or back-to-school shopping. The data suggests essential living expenses, not leisure activities, are the primary source of financial pressure for consumers right now.
Microsoft will end unlimited cloud streaming for Game Pass Ultimate subscribers, replacing it with monthly hour allotments: 15 hours for Ultimate, 10 for Premium, and 5 for Essential. Users who want more can buy extra cloud playtime hours through the Xbox Store, a feature now open even to people without a Game Pass subscription, including Xbox One owners wanting to try newer titles.
Major AI platforms including ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Google's models experienced overlapping service disruptions Thursday morning. Anthropic reported elevated errors on several Claude models starting around 9:23 am, resolving them by early afternoon, while OpenAI logged degraded ChatGPT and Codex performance from 10:43 am until nearly 1 pm. xAI's Grok also displayed error messages, with user reports on DownDetector spiking into the thousands before tapering off.