Richmond, Virginia police used vague Flock camera descriptions—make, model, color, approximate year—to identify Rosalyn Crump's 2012 Hyundai Elantra as connected to a shooting, despite lacking a license plate match. Officers impounded her car over her objections and despite body cam footage showing an officer doubting the match, and later identified a different vehicle as the actual suspect car. Crump wasn't told her car was released for four days, and only learned upon pickup that Seibert's Towing had torn off the front bumper during impoundment.
yro.slashdot.org
· 2026-11-02
Virginia and several other states have begun requiring GPS-based speed-limiting devices to be installed in the vehicles of drivers caught repeatedly speeding excessively. The technology monitors a car's location and restricts its ability to exceed posted speed limits.
wsj.com
· 2026-11-02
Nvidia is reportedly negotiating to back billions in debt financing for Nscale's planned Anthropic data center in West Virginia, according to The Information and corroborated by Bloomberg. Under the proposed residual value guarantee, Nvidia would cover construction costs if Nscale defaulted, temporarily take over the site, and help find a new buyer or tenant. Anthropic has already signed a $44.6 billion contract for the first building alone, per Nscale's IPO filing.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-10-31
University of Virginia professor Emily Ogden has published 'Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe,' a collection of essays blending memoir, biography and criticism. The book argues Poe's central theme is human suffering at its extreme, and traces his influence through non-American writers including Julio Cortázar, Marie Bonaparte and Charles Baudelaire.
slate.com
· 2026-10-29
Huntington Mayor Patrick Farrell urged the city council to keep or expand Flock Safety's automated license plate reader network, citing its role in solving a recent killing and a double homicide earlier this year. During a roughly seven-hour July 13 meeting, dozens of residents and people from nearby towns spoke out, largely opposing the technology over fears of surveillance and privacy violations.
theverge.com
· 2026-10-26
Amazon has dropped plans to build four data centers on a 122-acre former George Washington University campus site in Loudoun County, Virginia, opting instead to redevelop most of the land for housing and mixed-use purposes. The company will donate 25 acres to the county for an arts center and recreational facility, plus $5 million toward local housing funds. The reversal follows talks between Amazon and county officials after residents raised concerns about noise and power demands from new data center construction in the area already known as 'Data Center Alley'.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-10-23
Live Nation, long known for promoting tours and booking existing venues, is now designing and constructing its own concert venues, with projects underway in locations including Richmond, Virginia and Shakopee, Minnesota. The company describes the effort as a 'meaningful, long term investment' aimed at reshaping the live-music experience and addressing gaps in available venues.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-10-21
Anthropic is negotiating a second multibillion-dollar agreement with UK-based cloud provider Nscale to lease computing capacity, according to a source who spoke to CNBC. The deal would cover a second 460-megawatt data center at the same West Virginia site as an earlier agreement reported in August, and could be worth roughly $45 billion. Anthropic declined to comment, and Nscale has not yet responded to requests for comment.
cnbc.com
· 2026-10-20
Longreads published a 5,726-word feature by David Alm on the 90th Old Fiddler's Convention held in Galax, Virginia, a small city whose population swells roughly fourfold during the six-day event. Founded in 1935, the gathering is described as the oldest and largest fiddlers' convention in the world, having been canceled only twice before, during World War II and the 2020 pandemic. The piece recounts the festival's atmosphere, its traditions, and the competitive rules governing old-time string musicians.
longreads.com
· 2026-10-20
A grove of about 200 blight-resistant American chestnut trees in West Virginia is at risk of being cleared for Nscale's planned 'Monarch Compute Campus,' a data center project developed with Nvidia and Caterpillar. The facility is slated to eventually cover more than 2,250 acres and deliver 8 gigawatts of computing capacity for AI firms including Anthropic, backed by over $20 billion in investment.
futurism.com
· 2026-10-10
Vancouver startup Pikio has released the Si Oblik road cycling helmet, which uses a new internal safety system called Oblik. It scored 4.61 on Virginia Tech's STAR helmet-safety scale, where lower is better, beating the previous top performer, Canyon's Deflectr, which scored 6.82. Founder Daniel Abram says the design draws on 18 years of impact-protection research, including work at Simon Fraser University.
wired.com
· 2026-10-10
In an interview, Christa Acampora, dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia, discussed mounting scrutiny of liberal arts degrees as entry-level jobs shrink, tuition rises, and AI reshapes work. She addressed job prospects for liberal arts graduates and made the case for why humanities education remains significant in an AI-driven world.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-10-05
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