The U.S. House approved H.R. 9340, the Ratepayer Protection Act, which amends the 1978 Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act to require state regulators and non-regulated utilities to consider adopting a federal standard within two years. Under the bill, data centers drawing 100 megawatts or more would have to cover the full incremental cost of generation, transmission, or distribution upgrades built to serve them, even if they later cancel their power contracts.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-18
As enterprise SaaS platforms scale, the volume of transactional data, historical case records, attachments, and audit trails is outstripping what traditional relational database models can efficiently handle. This buildup is straining system performance and driving up operational costs for providers and customers alike, pushing archival strategies from a technical afterthought to a core architectural priority.
wpcms.computer.org
· 2026-09-18
Seagate Technology's 2026 Data Infrastructure Readiness Report, based on a survey of 2,712 enterprise IT decision-makers across seven countries, found that 99% expect AI to increase storage needs over the next three years, with nearly a third anticipating growth exceeding 50%. Yet only 38% of organizations feel their infrastructure can actually keep pace with that demand.
zdnet.com
· 2026-09-18
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger issued Executive Order 22, barring executive branch officials from signing NDAs on data center projects, mandating faster noise regulations, and reviewing backup power operations. The order also launches an AI task force to study risks like job losses and privacy harms, alongside a new state framework aimed at ending automatic zoning approvals and rolling back subsidies for data center developers.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-18
Creative studio Basura teamed up with producer Alan Wilkis's project Big Data to launch 'Adopt a Data Center,' a stuffed toy called Bezzy shaped like a server rack with googly eyes and limbs. Squeezing the plushie plays an actual recording of the piercing hum captured by a neighbor near a Virginia data center, timed to release alongside a new Big Data single.
wired.com
· 2026-09-18
NATS released a preliminary report showing that the widespread flight disruption on 8 September stemmed from a software defect in a small part of its National Airspace System. The bug corrupted flight data output when a manual aircraft code request was interrupted by a higher-priority process, all within a millisecond, forcing controllers to restrict traffic nationwide as a safety precaution.
nats.aero
· 2026-09-18
Helpfeel-operated screenshot service Gyazo confirmed that attackers exploited a server flaw on September 11, 2026 to access its database and steal roughly 23.62 million user records. The company detected the intrusion the following day, patched the vulnerability, and has taken the platform offline for maintenance while investigating. Exposed data varies by account but can include names, emails, password hashes, session and device IDs, SSO tokens, billing details, and usage statistics, alongside 490 million image metadata records.
bleepingcomputer.com
· 2026-09-18
Crusoe, the AI infrastructure firm behind Oracle's giant Abilene, Texas campus, has closed a $3.9 billion funding round led by Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners and Mubadala, pushing its valuation to roughly $30.9 billion. The company is using the capital to expand into smaller, factory-built facilities called Spark, designed for AI inference rather than massive training clusters.
techspot.com
· 2026-09-18
Anthropic and OpenAI are pursuing smaller data center deals in the 20-30 megawatt range, according to sources familiar with the discussions, even as both companies have already signed massive multi-hundred-megawatt and gigawatt infrastructure agreements. Anthropic has explored such deals in the UK and Nordics, while OpenAI has looked at similar opportunities in the Nordics, with talks also reportedly underway for smaller U.S. deployments. OpenAI confirmed it is building a 'diversified compute portfolio' but declined to discuss specific commercial talks; Anthropic did not comment.
cnbc.com
· 2026-09-18
The FAA plans to launch SMART, a cloud-based AI system built by Air Space Intelligence, in the Washington, DC air corridor next week as the start of a phased nationwide rollout. The tool analyzes flight schedules, weather, and airport capacity to give airlines and controllers a shared view of traffic flow and potential conflicts, and was developed under an $875 million FAA grant.
techspot.com
· 2026-09-18
Spain's Data Protection Agency (AEPD) disclosed that an organization reported a breach in which an attacker used a mainstream language model to locate weak credentials and exploit an application flaw. The AI agent reportedly enabled the attacker to access corporate invoices and modify personal data records, though the organization and hacker remain unnamed.
darkreading.com
· 2026-09-18
Waymo has started manually driving and mapping all regions of Singapore around the clock, gathering data it needs to seek approval from the Land Transport Authority for autonomous operations by 2027. Initial runs will use human specialists behind the wheel, with the company promising public notice before shifting to autonomous-specialist and eventually fully driverless operations. Data collected will be handled under Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act and Waymo's own privacy policy.
waymo.com
· 2026-09-18
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