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A Bitcoin mining data center in El Reno, Oklahoma, owned by Athlon Blockchain LLC, has been condemned after leaking roughly 3 million gallons of water, prompting closures of schools, businesses, and city and county offices. The facility had reportedly continued construction and operations despite a 2023 city Stop Work Order tied to fire and safety code violations and expired permits.
German company Isar Aerospace launched its Spectrum rocket from Andøya Space Center in Norway on Sept. 5, and about seven minutes later the vehicle reached an elliptical orbit. It was the rocket's second attempt, after a March 2025 debut flight failed less than a minute after liftoff due to a valve issue and loss of attitude control.
As AI data centers rise across the country, the trucking industry is quietly benefiting from hauling the materials needed to build them—HVAC systems, wiring, tubing and semiconductors. Industry executives say this equipment-heavy freight, especially flatbed and heavy-haul segments, has seen multiyear-high spot rates and tighter capacity even as broader freight demand remains uneven amid tariffs and record diesel prices.
A South Carolina coroner's office confirmed that a six-week-old infant's death was caused by measles, after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had disputed the CDC's inclusion of measles deaths in its official count. Kennedy directed new CDC director Erica Schwartz to remove the deaths from the agency's public data, and while she complied, internal records reportedly still list them.
While formalizing Dummit and Foote's algebra textbook in the Rocq proof assistant, a Recurse Center participant found that the book's first proof exercise—claiming a function is injective if and only if it has a left inverse—fails when the domain is empty and the codomain is not. In that case the empty function is vacuously injective but has no left inverse, since no function can map from a nonempty codomain to an empty domain. The author later confirmed the issue is already listed in the book's published errata.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Equinix, a colocation data center provider dating back to 1998, has signed a deal with Nvidia enabling customers to run AI workloads flexibly on the Together AI cloud platform. The company's shares have climbed 33% this year, outperforming major tech stocks and pushing its market capitalization to roughly $100 billion, making it the largest data center REIT ahead of Digital Realty's $68 billion valuation.
A Pew Research Center survey of nearly 10,000 US adults found that 53% believe they use their smartphones too much, while 36% say their usage is about right. Younger adults reported the highest rates of overuse, with 70% of 18-to-29-year-olds and 64% of those aged 30-49 saying they're on their devices excessively. Separately, Semrush data shows people worldwide spend over four and a half hours daily on their phones, checking them roughly 58 times a day.