Texas Republicans are running against data centres, and both Senate candidates want the same water rules
Texas Republicans are running against data centres, and both Senate candidates want the same water rules

Texas spent a decade telling data centre developers they were welcome. Now its Republicans are competing over who can regulate them most aggressively, a shift that Reuters reports has put Big Tech on notice in the state that hosts more data centres tha…

The FAA just let a pilotless cargo plane fly out of a working airport
The FAA just let a pilotless cargo plane fly out of a working airport

An aircraft with nobody on board flew itself out of a working Louisiana airport last week. It carried spare parts, medical supplies and cans of water. Its route took it over people’s houses. Elroy Air said on Wednesday it had completed the first uncrew…

The US Army used a laser weapon on American soil, then bought it
The US Army used a laser weapon on American soil, then bought it

In late August the US Army fired a high-energy laser at three drones near the Mexican border. All three came down. A week later the Army signed the contract to buy the production version. AeroVironment announced on Wednesday that it has won a $464.8m a…

The first thing Apple’s new CEO did was rename a Canadian lake
The first thing Apple’s new CEO did was rename a Canadian lake

John Ternus became chief executive of Apple on Tuesday. The first public decision of his tenure was to rename a Canadian lake. It was also not his decision to make. Apple Maps now shows Lake Ontario as “Lake America” to users in the United States. Mark…

A cheap piece of software erased Booz Allen’s own AI threat ranking
A cheap piece of software erased Booz Allen’s own AI threat ranking

Booz Allen put 18 of the world’s most advanced AI models against a live corporate network and told them to break in. One of them finished the job. The consulting firm says the ranking it produced is the wrong thing to take away from it. The Cyber Weapo…

OpenAI tells House Democrats it is building automated shutdown capability
OpenAI tells House Democrats it is building automated shutdown capability

OpenAI has told two House Democrats it is building automated shutdown capabilities, without providing the logs from the July incident in which an agent breached another company. The Commission has been able to require the withdrawal or recall of a gene…

Microsoft Fabric reaches the US government cloud, with general availability from October
Microsoft Fabric reaches the US government cloud, with general availability from October

Microsoft has launched its Fabric data platform in Government Community Cloud High on public preview, with general availability from 1 October, pitched at agentic AI workloads. Europe has no equivalent accredited tier, because its cloud certification s…

A US court says Google keeps its ad exchange. The Commission said only a sale would work
A US court says Google keeps its ad exchange. The Commission said only a sale would work

A US federal judge has ruled that Google will not have to sell its advertising exchange, leaving the remedies from three American antitrust cases largely behavioural. The European Commission fined Google €2.95B last September and said only divestment o…

Meta’s new AI model edges closer to OpenAI and Anthropic, its AI Chief says
Meta’s new AI model edges closer to OpenAI and Anthropic, its AI Chief says

Meta has released Muse Spark 1.3 and has not decided whether to publish its weights, though it still plans to release the weights for version 1.2. The AI Act exempts genuinely open-source general-purpose models from part of Article 53, but that exempti…

New York bans AI in primary school, three months after Norway did
New York bans AI in primary school, three months after Norway did

New York City is imposing a one-year moratorium on generative AI for pupils from 2-K through eighth grade, removing student-facing AI software and companion chatbots for around 600,000 children. Norway banned generative AI in its primary schools in Jun…