Voters in at least 29 jurisdictions pass data center bans or restrictions, including six Ohio towns, as the AI backlash grows - The Washington Post
Ben Thompson argues Democrats' midterm win may make politics the binding constraint on AI data centers, favoring hyperscalers over neoclouds and Nvidia - Stratechery by Ben Thompson
AI shaped 2026 midterm campaigns through chatbot voter research, $80 million in AI ads, and more than 40 local data-center ballot measures - The Wall Street Journal
Ossoff: "In sweeping and decisive victories, the American people have rebuked the depravity, corruption, and incompetence of the failed lame duck president, Donald J Trump"
Grift über alles: Trump seen to have made economic conditions worse and more focused on his own interests than the voters’. AP poll: half of U.S. voters said government corruption and the cost of living are "crucial" to their vote for Congress, much higher than the share who say that about immigration enforcement policies, the war in Iran or AI data centers.
ChatGPT reaches 1.2B weekly users, adding 200M in two months, with search volume about 20% of Google's, says Adam Fry - Big Technology
Full disclosure-ish: Anthropic’s S-1 seen insufficient, with disclosure gaps, like its relationships with cloud partners and and its tokeneconomics of the “token.” - Tech Policy Press
Cat Wu, Claude Code's head of product, leaves Anthropic weeks before its planned IPO - Business Insider
How can you Search if you don’t eat your AI? Starting next year, Google will make K-12 schools that turn off Gemini give up Search too - The New York Times
Bundle up: NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former FTC chair Lina Khan accuse Google of using its search monopoly to coerce schools - the Guardian
Google will test Guided Learning, which coaches students step by step instead of giving answers, inside student Search at select US schools this month - Search Engine Roundtable
shades of Microsoft claiming IE was an integrated part of Windows they couldn’t remove. I sort of understand if they integrated a form of AI in Search that the law appears to cover, but they should have a way of turning it off.
Google researchers say their employment contracts prevent them from discussing AI risks - The Washington Post
On Google and Mercor's new Physical-Engineering's Last Exam, the best of 14 frontier models scores 48.3%; only 41.3% of deliverables pass safety checks - Google Cloud Blog
Sounds like necessary regulation, a self-appointed cabal of corrupt crypto insiders coordinating account freezes is not very 'decentralized' or an improvement on traditional banking. Crypto is gradually inventing the existing financial system one step at a time. Maybe we should just update the existing tech to offer the perceived benefits of crypto within a system under proper democratic governance. What a racket.
SpaceX raises its 2027 data center capacity target to about 13 GW, building sites in roughly half the industry's usual time - SemiAnalysis
Facing years-long grid waits, data centers turn to converted jet engines; xAI installs eight in Mississippi, raising pollution concerns - Tom's Hardware
ActivTrak study of 9,140 knowledge workers finds AI users log up to 90 more minutes of daily digital work - Yahoo Tech
PR stunts: How an engineer at startup Tano jumped from 20 to 200+ merged pull requests a month by running three to five Claude Code agents in parallel - The Pragmatic Engineer
A UK bank's AI agents cut a 60-to-100-day campaign process toward one day, shrinking teams of up to 40 to three or four people - Business Insider
McKinsey says AI-enabled lending workflows at banks deliver 30 to 50 percent productivity gains across the credit life cycle - McKinsey & Company
OccupySaaS project uses AI to build clean-room, open-source Go replacements for Auth0, Salesforce and other subscription software - Tom's Hardware
Better call AI: Reliable Robotics software landed a Cessna Caravan in Albuquerque while a pilot supervised from 700 miles away; FAA approval expected by end of 2027 - Scientific American
Stringman, an $800 open-source robot, hangs a gripper from ceiling-anchored cables to work across an entire room - Neufangled
Shorthand and typewriters opened office work to women before later tech erased typing pools; AI-savvy executive assistants now earn up to £85,000 - Financial Times
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