X's Global Government Affairs team says it uncovered a network of roughly 200,000 accounts, suspected to be linked to Chinese operators, with about 200 of them actively posting content meant to sway American discourse on AI and energy policy. The flagged accounts used American-sounding names and shared legitimate news alongside inflammatory commentary and AI-generated images claiming data centers drive up electricity bills and strain the power grid.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-08-28
Meta is testing robots from vendors including Watney Robotics, Kinova, and ABB to perform physical data center tasks such as power-cycling servers and swapping networking cables. Internal workers say one robotic arm being evaluated could eventually replace up to 80 percent of certain workers' tasks, while a simpler device already in use can remotely press power buttons to restart machines.
wired.com
· 2026-08-28
Marvell Technology's shares slid 8% in premarket trading even after the chipmaker beat second-quarter revenue expectations, posting $2.7 billion, up 37% year-over-year and $39 million above its own guidance. The company raised its fiscal 2028 revenue outlook to roughly $18 billion, about 50% growth, from a prior estimate of $16.5 billion, but offered scant detail on how it plans to get there.
cnbc.com
· 2026-08-28
Indiana Michigan Power (I&M) has proposed a major residential rate reduction plan expected to save Hoosier customers roughly $59 million in electric bills through 2027, or about $100 annually for a typical household. The utility also intends to freeze rates for three years, crediting rising demand from data centers and other large customers for boosting revenue enough to offset costs. The proposal now awaits approval from the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, with a decision anticipated by June 2027.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-08-28
Public records show that Alpharetta, a small Atlanta suburb with about 120 officers, has built a license-plate surveillance network through Flock Safety cameras that now exchanges data with over 2,000 outside organizations, including colleges, airports, fraud investigators and federal inspectors. In exchange, Alpharetta receives data from more than 1,300 other entities, some of which have already faced scandals over misuse of the same technology. The network has grown sharply in the past year, with outgoing data-sharing partners up 42 percent and incoming partners up 125 percent since June 2025.
wired.com
· 2026-08-28
X's Global Government Affairs team says it identified roughly 200,000 accounts tied to a Chinese bot network, with about 200 of them dedicated to spreading posts critical of AI data centers. The posts claimed the facilities were raising household electricity bills and straining power grids, echoing similar findings OpenAI reported in June about ChatGPT users seeking ways to sway American opinion on data centers.
techspot.com
· 2026-08-28
Hasbro has notified regulators that attackers gained unauthorized access to an employee account, exposing personal and financial details of staff. Massachusetts filings show at least 436 employees in that state had Social Security numbers, financial account data, card numbers, and driver's license information compromised. Hasbro says it disabled the compromised account, cut off unauthorized access, and added new safeguards, though it hasn't disclosed the full scope of the breach or when it was discovered.
bleepingcomputer.com
· 2026-08-28
US electricity demand climbed about 1.7% annually from 2020 to 2025, more than ten times the growth rate utilities saw in the prior fifteen years, driven by data centers, EV charging stations and reshored manufacturing. Much of the transmission network carrying that load dates to the 1950s-1980s, causing sagging lines, overheating transformers and voltage drops as usage climbs.
entrepreneur.com
· 2026-08-28
X's Safety team identified a 200,000-account network of suspected inauthentic Chinese accounts, 200 of which spread AI-generated comics and posts criticizing AI data centers' impact on electricity prices and local power grids. The company said these posts used OpenAI-generated imagery and talking points that echoed illustrations from a June OpenAI report on similar China-linked influence efforts. X has suspended violating accounts but has not disclosed the identities of those involved or detailed the remaining 199,800 accounts' activity.
engadget.com
· 2026-08-28
A DuckDuckGo Research survey found that about one-third of people disclose sensitive personal details to AI chatbots that they withhold from friends, family, and doctors, with the figure rising to 56% among self-identified AI enthusiasts. Nearly half of parents surveyed admitted to telling chatbots things they've never shared with their own children or closest confidants.
cnet.com
· 2026-08-27
Bluesky rolled out a new privacy toggle letting users exclude their posts from the app's algorithmic Discover feed, which can otherwise surface any public post on the network. The setting, found under Privacy and Security, takes up to an hour to apply and doesn't make posts private—only less discoverable to people outside a user's follower base.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-08-27
Meta's settlement with attorneys general from 29 states, which includes up to $18 billion in payments and new child safety measures, contains a clause shielding Meta from COPPA-related lawsuits over its use of children's data. The exemption applies specifically to data used to build and test an age-verification model meant to detect users under 13, and Meta must build this system within a year of the agreement taking effect. The deal explicitly bars use of under-13 data for ad targeting or algorithmic optimization, though critics note enforcement could be tricky.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-08-27
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