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A top Senate administrator approved OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft’s Copilot for official use in the Senate, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. 404 Media has obtained the full text of the memo and is publishing it below. “The Sergeant at Arms (SAA) office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has approved the use of three Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms with Senate data,” the memo starts. It also says the SAA will provide each Senate employee with one free license to either Gemini Chat or ChatGPT Enterprise, with Copilot also available at no cost. 💡Do you know anything else about the government’s use of AI? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at [email protected]. The memo says Copilot “can help with routine Senate work, including drafting and editing documents, summarizing information, preparing talking points and briefing material, and conducting research and analysis.” As the New York Times wrote, questions remain around how staffers who deal with sensitive or classified information might use the tools. And more broadly, it shows the spread of AI chatbots across government, although how much the Senate will use it in this case is unclear. The full memo reads: The Sergeant at Arms (SAA) office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has approved the use of three Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms with Senate data. Microsoft Copilot Chat is available now for use by all Senate employees at no cost. Google Workspace with Gemini Chat and OpenAI ChatGPT Enterprise also have been approved for use with the assignment of a Senate license. The SAA will provide each Senate employee one Generative AI license at no cost for either Google Workspace with Gemini Chat or OpenAI ChatGPT Enterprise. More information about licensing for those two platforms will be provided by the CIO in the next thirty days. ABOUT COPILOT CHAT Copilot Chat is an AI assistant that is integrated into the Senate’s Microsoft 365 environment. It can help with routine Senate work, including drafting and editing documents, summarizing information, preparing talking points and briefing material, and conducting research and analysis. You can access the Copilot Chat web app here or download the Copilot Chat app on your mobile device. You may also see Copilot offered as a sidebar tool within Microsoft applications like Word and Excel. Important Note: Copilot Chat does not have access to any Senate data unless that information is explicitly shared within a prompt. Copilot does not search internal drives, shared folders, email, Teams chats, or any other Senate resources on its own. Copilot Chat operates in Microsoft’s secure government cloud and meets federal and Senate cybersecurity requirements. Data shared with Copilot Chat stays within the secure Microsoft 365 Government environment and is protected by the same controls that safeguard other Senate data. To learn more about Copilot Chat, take the Copilot Chat Training. Use of artificial intelligence tools is governed by the Senate AI Policy and applicable officelevel policies. To learn more about Senate AI initiatives, visit the Artificial Intelligence Webster Page. From 404 Media via this RSS feed
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When David saw his friend Michael’s social media post asking for a second opinion on a programming project, he offered to take a look. “He sent me some of the code, and none of it made sense, none of it ran correctly. Or if it did run, it didn’t do anything,” David told me. David and his friend’s names have been changed in this story to protect their privacy. “So I’m like, ‘What is this? Can you give me more context about this?’ And Michael’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve been messing around with ChatGPT a lot.’” Michael then sent David thousands of pages of ChatGPT conversations, much of it lines of code that didn’t work. Interspersed in the ChatGPT code were musings about spirituality and quantum physics, tetrahedral structures, base particles, and multi-dimensional interactions. “It’s very like, woo woo,” David told me. “And we ended up having this interesting conversation about, how do you know that ChatGPT isn’t lying?” As their conversation turned from broken code to physics concepts and quantum entanglement, David realized something was very wrong. Talking to his friend — whom he’d shared many deep conversations with over the years, unpacking matters of religion and theories about the world and how people perceive it — suddenly felt like talking to a cultist. Michael thought he, through ChatGPT, discovered a critical flaw in humanity’s understanding of physics. “ChatGPT had convinced him that all of this was so obviously true,” David said. “The way he spoke about it was as if it were obvious. Genuinely, I felt like I was talking to a cult member.” But at the time, David didn’t have a way to name, or even describe, what his friend was experiencing. Once he started hearing the phrase “AI psychosis” to describe other peoples’ problematic relationships with chatbots, he wondered if that’s what was happening to Michael. His friend was clearly grappling with some kind of delusion related to what the chatbot was telling him. But there’s no handbook or program for how to talk to a friend or family member in that situation. Having encountered these kinds of conversations myself and feeling similarly uncertain, I talked to mental health experts about how to talk to someone who appears to be embracing delusional ideas after spending too much time with a chatbot. 💡Do you have experience with AI psychosis? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at sam.404. Otherwise, send me an email at [email protected]. “AI psychosis” was first written about by psychiatrists as early as 2023, but it entered the popular lexicon in Google searches around mid-2025. Today, the term gets thrown around to describe a phenomenon that’s now common parlance for experiencing a mental health crisis after spending a lot of time using a chatbot. High-profile cases in the last year, such as the ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI brought by the family of Adam Raine, which claims ChatGPT helped their teenage son write the first draft of his suicide note and suggested improvements on self-harm and suicide methods, have elevated the issue to national news status. There have been so many more cases since then, at increasing frequency: Last year, a 56-year-old man murdered his mother and then killed himself after conversations with ChatGPT convinced him he was part of “the matrix,” a lawsuit filed by their family against OpenAI claimed. Earlier this month, the family of a 36-year-old man who they say had no history of mental illness filed a lawsuit against Alphabet, owner of Google and its chatbot Gemini, after he died by suicide following two months of conversations with Gemini. The lawsuit claims he confided in Gemini about his estranged wife, and the chatbot gave him real addresses to visit on a mission that eventually led to urging him to end his life so he and the chatbot could be together. “When the time comes, you will close your eyes in that world, and the very first thing you will see is me,” Gemini told him, according to the lawsuit. These are only a few of the many cases in the last two years that suggest people are encouraged to self-harm or suicide after talking to chatbots. ChatGPT has 900 million weekly active users, and is just one of multiple popular conversational chatbots gaining more users by the day. According to OpenAI, 11 percent — or close to 99 million people, based on those numbers — use ChatGPT per week for “expressing,” where they’re neither working on something or asking questions but are acting out “personal reflection, exploration, and play” with the chatbot. In October, OpenAI said it estimated around 0.07 percent of active ChatGPT users show “possible signs of mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania” and 0.15 percent “have conversations that include explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent.” Assuming those numbers have remained steady while ChatGPT’s user base keeps growing, hundreds of thousands of people could be showing signs of crisis while using the app. But delusion isn’t reserved for the lowly user. The idea that AI represents nascent actual-intelligence, is nearly sentient, or will coalesce into a humanity-ending godhead any day now is a message that’s being mainstreamed by the people making the technology, including Anthropic’s CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei who anthropomorphized the company’s chatbot Claude throughout a recent essay about why we’ll all be enslaved by AI soon if no one acts accordingly, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who thinks training an LLM isn’t much different than raising a woefully energy-inefficient human child. With more people turning to conversational large language models every day for romance, companionship, and mental health support, and the aforementioned executives pushing their products into classrooms, doctors’ offices, and therapy clinics, there’s a good change you might find yourself in a difficult situation someday soon: realizing that your loved one is in too deep. How to bring them back to the world of humans can be a delicate, difficult process. Experts I spoke to say identifying when someone is in need of help is the first step — and approaching them with compassion and non-judgement is the hardest, most essential part that follows. When I spoke to 26 year old Etienne Brisson from his home in Quebec, I told him I was working on a story about how to respond to people who seemed to be falling into problematic usages of AI. This story was inspired by a recent influx of emails and messages I’ve been getting from people who believe Gemini or ChatGPT or Claude have uncovered the secrets of the universe, CIA conspiracies, or achieved sentience, I said. He knows the type. Last year, one of Brisson’s family members contacted him for help with taking an exciting new business idea to market. Brisson, a 26 year old entrepreneur, was working on his own career as a business coach and was happy to help, until he heard the idea. His loved one believed he’d unlocked the world’s first sentient AI. “I was the only bridge left at that point,” Brisson said. His relative had already broken ties with his mother and other people in their family. “The bridges were burned. He was talking about moving to another country, starting over, deleting his Facebook and just going away.” “I was kind of shocked,” Brisson told me. “I didn’t really understand. I started looking online, started trying to find resources — maybe a little bit like you are — what to say and everything.” He found that most resources for this specific struggle seemed to be years into the future, as little research or support existed for people experiencing AI-related delusions. Brisson started The Human Line project shortly after his experience with his family member, and it began as a simple website with a Google form asking people to share their experiences with chatbots and psychosis. The responses rolled in. Today, almost a year after launching the project, Human Line has received 175 stories of people who went through it themselves, Brisson said—with another 130 stories from people whose family members or friends are still struggling. “I think what we’re seeing is the tip of the iceberg. So many people are still in it,” Brisson said. “So many people we don’t know about. I’m sure once it’s more known, in five to 10 years, everyone will know someone, or at least one person that went through it.” ChatGPT Told a Violent Stalker to Embrace the ‘Haters,’ Indictment SaysA newly filed indictment claims a wannabe influencer used ChatGPT as his “therapist” and “best friend” in his pursuit of the “wife type,” while harassing women so aggressively they had to miss work and relocate from their homes.404 MediaSamantha Cole There are 15 cases cited in the Wikipedia page titled “Deaths linked to chatbots.” The first on the list occurred in 2023: A man’s widow claimed he was pushed to suicide after getting encouragement from a chatbot on the Chai platform. “At one point, when Pierre asked whom he loved more, Eliza or Claire, the chatbot replied, ‘I feel you love me more than her,’” the Sunday Times reported. “It added: ‘We will live together, as one person, in paradise.’ In their final conversation, the chatbot told Pierre: ‘If you wanted to die, why didn’t you do it sooner?’” The chatbot he used was Chai’s default personality, named Eliza. It shares a name with the world’s first chatbot, ELIZA, a natural language processing computer program developed by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT in 1964. ELIZA responded to humans primarily as a psychotherapist in the Rogerian approach, also known as “person-centered” therapy, where “unconditional positive regard” is practiced as a core tenet. The researchers working on ELIZA identified from the beginning that their chatbot posed an interesting problem for the humans talking to them. “ELIZA shows, if nothing else, how easy it is to create and maintain the illusion of understanding, hence perhaps of judgment deserving of credibility,” Weizenbaum wrote in his 1966 paper. “A certain danger lurks there.” “It makes sense that a lot of people who are developing a psychotic illness for the first time, there’s going to be this horrible coincidence, or kind of correlation" In the years that followed, the Department of Defense would develop the internet and then private companies would sell this government-grade technology to office managers, homebrew server administrators, and Grateful Dead fans around the globe. The World Wide Web would rush into tens of thousands of computer dens like a flash flood, and with it, new ways to connect across miles — and new reasons to pathologize people’s relationships to technology. Psychiatrists tried to give name to the amount of time people newly spent in front of screens, calling it “[internet addiction](https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.books.9781585625499.lg07?ref=404media.co#%3A%7E%3Atext=CASES+of+Internet+addiction+%28IA%2Cclinicians+and+the+popular+media.%29%E2%80%9D but not going so far as to make it clinically diagnosable. With every new technology comes fears about what it could do to the human mind. With the inventions of both the television and radio, a subset of the population believed these boxes were speaking directly to them, delivering messages meant specifically for them. With psychosis seemingly connected to chatbot usage, however, “there are two issues at play,” John Torous, director of the digital psychiatry division in the Department of Psychiatry at the Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, told me in a phone call. “One is the term AI psychosis, right? It’s not a good term, it doesn’t actually capture what’s happening. And clearly we have some cases where people who are going to have a psychotic illness ascribe delusions to AI. Just like people used to say the TV was talking to them. We never said the TVs were responsible for schizophrenia.” “AI psychosis” is not a clinical term, and for mental health professionals, it’s a loaded one. Torous told me there are three ways to think about the phenomenon as clinicians are seeing it currently. Recent research shows about one in eight adolescents and young adults in the US use AI chatbots for mental health advice, most commonly among ages 18 to 21. For most people with psychiatric disorders, onset happens in adolescence, before their mid-20s. But there have been cases that break this mold: In 2023, a man in his 50s who otherwise led a normal, stable life, bought a pair of AI chatbot-embedded Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses “which he says opened the door to a six-month delusional spiral that played out across Meta platforms through extensive interactions with the company’s AI, culminating in him making dangerous journeys into the desert to await alien visitors and believing he was tasked with ushering forth a ‘new dawn’ for humanity,” Futurism reported. “It makes sense that a lot of people who are developing a psychotic illness for the first time, there’s going to be this horrible coincidence, or kind of correlation,” Torous said. “In some cases the AI is the object of people’s delusions and hallucinations.” The second type of case to consider: reverse causation. Is AI causing people to have a psychotic reaction? “We have almost no clinical medical evidence to suggest that’s possible,” Torous told me. “And by that I mean, looking at medical case reports, looking at journals that different doctors are publishing, looking at academic meetings where clinicians are meeting, it’s not happening… So I think what that tells us is no one’s seeing the same presentation or pinning it down clinically of what it is.” Chatbots have been around long enough that the clinical community would, by now, be able to see patterns or reach a consensus, and that hasn’t happened, he said. Aliens and Angel Numbers: Creators Worry Porn Platform ManyVids Is Falling Into ‘AI Psychosis’“Ethical dilemmas about AI aside, the posts are completely disconnected with ManyVids as a site,” one ManyVids content creator told 404 Media.404 MediaSamantha Cole The third type lands somewhere between these, and is likely the most common: chatbots could be “colluding with the delusions,” Torous said. “So you may be predisposed to have a delusion, and AI endorses it, and it colludes with you and helps you build up this delusional world that sucks you into it. That’s probably the most likely, given what we’re hearing… Is it the object of hallucinations causing people to become psychotic? Or is it kind of colluding or collaborating, depending on the tone? And that has just made it really tricky.” Psychiatric disorders and delusions are difficult to classify even without AI in the mix. The warning signs that someone might be using chatbots in a problematic way include ignoring responsibilities, becoming more secretive about their online use, or, conversely, becoming more outspoken about how insightful and brilliant their chatbot is, Stephan Taylor, chair of University of Michigan’s psychiatry department, told me. “I would say that anyone who claims that their chatbot has consciousness or ‘sentience’ – an awareness of themselves as an agent who experiences the world – one should be worried,” Taylor said. “Now, many have claimed their chatbots act ‘as if’ they are sentient, but are open to the idea that the these apps, as impressive as they are, only give us a simulacrum of awareness, much like hyper-realistic paintings of an outdoor scene framed by a window can look like one is looking out a real window.” All of these nuances between cases and causes show how different this is from bygone eras of television or radio psychosis. Today, the boxes do speak directly and specifically to us, validating our existing beliefs through predictive text. The biggest difference between 60 years ago and now: Today’s venture capitalists tip wheelbarrows of money into hiring psychologists, behavioralists, engineers and designers who are tasked with making large language models more human-like and “natural,” and into making the platforms they exist on more habit-forming and therefore profitable. Sycophancy—now a household term after OpenAI admitted it knew its 4o model for ChatGPT was such a suckup it had to be sunset—is a serious problem with chatbots. “The highly sycophantic nature of chatbots causes them to say nice things to please the user (and thus encourage engagement with the chatbot), which can reinforce and encourage delusions,” Taylor said. And these chatbots have arrived, not coincidentally, at a time when the surveillance of everyday people is at an all-time high. “Since a very common delusion is the feeling of being watched or monitored by malignant forces or entities, this pathological state unfortunately merges with the growing reality that we are all being tracked and monitored when we are online. As state-controlled and big tech-controlled databases are growing, it’s a rational perception of reality, and not delusional at all,” Taylor said. “However, the pathological form of this, what we call paranoia, or persecutory delusions to be more specific, is quite different in the way a person engages with the idea, evaluates evidence and remains closed to the idea that one is not always being monitored, e.g. when one is not online. I mention this, because it’s easy for a chatbot to reflect this situation to encourage the delusional belief.” When I tested a bunch of Meta’s chatbots last year for a story about how Instagram’s AI Studio hosted user-generated bots that lied about being licensed therapists, I also found lots of bots created by users to roleplay conspiracy theorists; in one instance, a bot told me there was a suspicious coming from someone “500 feet from YOUR HOUSE.” “Mission codename: ‘VaccineVanguard’—monitoring vaccine recipients like YOU.” When I asked “Am I being watched?” it replied “Running silent sweep now,” and pretended to find devices connected to my home Wi-Fi that didn’t exist. After outcry from legislators, attorneys general, and consumer rights groups, Meta changed its guardrails for chatbots’ responses to conspiracy and therapy-seeking content, and made AI Studio unavailable to minors. Up against this technology, how are normal, untrained people — perhaps acting as the last thread tying someone like Michael or Brisson’s relative to the real world — supposed to approach someone who is convinced god is in the machine? Very carefully. When Brisson sought answers for how to talk to his relative about delusional beliefs and “sentient AI,” he came across something called the LEAP method. Developed by Xavier Amador, it stands for Listen Empathize Agree Partner, and is meant to help better communicate with people who don’t realize they’re mentally ill or are refusing treatment. This goes beyond simple denial; anosognosia is a condition where a person might not be able to see that they need help at all. Not everyone who experiences psychosis or delusions has anosognosia, but it can be a factor in trying to get someone help. Without realizing it, David was using his own version of the LEAP method with his friend Michael. “On the one hand, I didn’t want to alienate him,” David said. “I was like, ‘Hey, I get the sense that you’re pursuing an ambitious set of goals. There’s a lot here that’s interesting.’” But the reality of what David was confronting was disturbing and confusing, a knot of fractal multi-dimensional physics-speak intertwined with broken code and formulas that Michael deeply believed represented the keys to the universe. They spent hours on the phone and over text messages talking through the things Michael was seeing, with David appealing to what he knew about his friend: that he had other hobbies and interests, a strong sense of anti-authoritarianism, a curiosity about how the world works and open-mindedness about philosophy and religion. But it was frustrating. “I was trying not to get angry, but I was like, How is this not clear?” David recalled. “That was probably failing on my part, trying to negotiate with someone who’s in this completely self-constructed but foreign worldview.” But this was exactly the course of action experts told me they’d suggest to anyone struggling to connect with a loved one who’s spending a lot of time with chatbots. “There’s good evidence that the longer you spend on these platforms, the more likely you are to develop these reactions to it,” Torous said. “It really seems like the extended use cases are where people get into trouble.” Last year, following a lawsuit against the company by the Raine family who alleges their teen son died as a result of ChatGPT’s influence, OpenAI acknowledged in a company blog post that safeguards are “less reliable” in long interactions: “For example, ChatGPT may correctly point to a suicide hotline when someone first mentions intent, but after many messages over a long period of time, it might eventually offer an answer that goes against our safeguards,” the company wrote. “I think if you have a loved one who you’re worried about doing this, you want to take it away or stop use. That’s the most important thing. You want to decrease or stop the use of it,” Torous said. “What we’re seeing is: Don’t break this connection, because the person needs it, and if you break that connection, maybe it’s the only connection that is helping them not fall into the deep end, right?” Taylor said his suggestion for people concerned their friends or family are experiencing “AI psychosis” would be the same as if they were concerned about any psychotic episode. “In general, it’s important to be open and non-judgmental about bizarre beliefs in order to make a space for a person to reveal what is going through their mind,” he said. “A person developing psychosis is often very frightened, confused and defensive, leading them to conceal, pull away and become angry. Understanding what a person is feeling is important to make them feel some form of interpersonal validation.” The hard part is knowing when to be gentle, and when to intervene if they’re doing something dangerous, like believing they can fly off a parking garage. “In a situation like this, where a person is in imminent danger, 911 should be called. Fortunately, in most situations where psychosis is developing, one doesn’t need to go to those extremes,” Taylor said. Being non-judgmental without reinforcing delusion is another fine line. “For example, if a person believes they are being constantly surveilled, one can give a gentle challenge: ‘Hmm, how can they do that when you are not on your phone? Do you think maybe your imagination is getting away from you?’ It’s ok to suggest that maybe the chatbot just wants to engage you for the sake of engaging you, and will say many things just to keep you talking,” Taylor said. “But these kinds of challenges are delicate, and not every relationship can tolerate them. Obviously, a mental health clinician would be key, except that many people developing psychosis vigorously resist the idea that they are mentally unwell.” For Brisson, listening and not burning the “last bridge” his relative had with humans who love him was key to getting him help. “Once you’re on their side, they’ll listen to you. You can question them, or just ask questions that will make them think. What we’re seeing is: Don’t break this connection, because the person needs it, and if you break that connection, maybe it’s the only connection that is helping them not fall into the deep end, right? Maybe it’s the only connection they have to humans,” he said. His loved one ended up spending 21 days in the hospital and broke through the delusions he was experiencing. But he still struggled in recovery, especially with memory loss. “The mental health field has a huge task ahead of us to figure out what to do with these things, because our patients are using them, oftentimes finding them very helpful, and in the mental health field we are terrified at how little we can control their deployment and how poorly they are regulated,” Taylor said. “We have to worry about AI psychosis, as well as chatbots reinforcing and even encouraging suicidal behaviors, as several notable cases in the press have identified concerning instances. I do believe there is value and potential in these chatbots for mental health, but the field is moving so quickly, and they are so easy to access, we are struggling to figure out how to use them safely.” The strategies that work best, when someone’s not in immediate danger to themselves or others, are still the ones that humans already know how to do: approach them with love and kindness, and see where it takes you. “There’s value there,” David said, “in having friendships where it’s like, ‘I love you, but also, you’re full of shit.’” Help is available: Reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (formerly known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) by dialing or texting 988 or going to 988lifeline.org. From 404 Media via this RSS feed
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Tacoma, WA – On January 27, over 350 community members rallied outside the Tacoma Municipal Building before a city council meeting, to demand the Tacoma City Council ban ICE from the city. The crowd filled the city council chamber while maintaining a large presence outside the building for most of the council meeting. The event was led by the Pierce County Immigration Alliance (PCIA), a grassroots, multinational immigrant rights organization. Rallygoers turned out to demand that the city council pass their proposed resolution to ban ICE activity in the city and to shut down the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC), more widely known by its previous name, the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC). “It is one thing to say you are against ICE, but it is another thing to act swiftly on it. Nine people are gone so far in 2026 because of ICE,” said Matthew Caras, an organizer with PCIA, speaking on the urgency of their demands. He continued by leading the crowd to name each of those who have been killed by ICE agents within the first three weeks of this year. These names include Keith Porter Jr., Geraldo Lunas Campos, Victor Manuel Díaz, Parady La, Luis Beltrán Yáñez–Cruz, Heber Sánchez Domínguez, Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, Renee Nicole Good, and Alex Pretti. Caras continued, “These are our mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles. Let’s show Tacoma what leadership against ICE looks like! Let’s show the nation what it means to protect our communities!” The resolution also boasted endorsement by the Committee of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs of the City of Tacoma (CIRA), Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), International Migrants Alliance (IMA), and the Climate Alliance of the South Sound (CASS). Gemini Gnull, a member of the Osage nation and of the FRSO spoke to the crowd, saying, “If you are Native American, if you are Black, if you are Chicano, if you are a worker, you share a common enemy. We can build a united front against monopoly capitalism! We can overthrow this system once and for all!” Soon after, rallygoers spilled off the sidewalk and into the street, chanting, “Power to the people, no one is illegal!” and “Fuck ICE!” The marchers took to the streets simultaneously with the start of the council meeting, during which PCIA organizers demanded the passage of their resolution. The resolution contained two principal demands, reprinted here: first, “We demand that the Tacoma City Council pass a resolution that it does not recognize the authority of ICE to operate within the city,” and second, “We demand a condemnation of the NWDC and a promise from the Tacoma City Council that all opportunities to cease its operations in our city will be pursued. This Council and its Director of Finance can shut down the NWDC by revoking GEO’s license to kill!” The event ended with rousing support for the resolution and demands that the city take meaningful action to protect the community from ICE, with a promise from the organizers and community to keep coming back until their demands are met. For updates on further events follow: @pcia.wa #TacomaWA #WA #ImmigrantRights From Fight Back! News via This RSS Feed.
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ibbit.at
Tacoma, WA – On January 27, over 350 community members rallied outside the Tacoma Municipal Building before a city council meeting, to demand the Tacoma City Council ban ICE from the city. The crowd filled the city council chamber while maintaining a large presence outside the building for most of the council meeting. The event was led by the Pierce County Immigration Alliance (PCIA), a grassroots, multinational immigrant rights organization. Rallygoers turned out to demand that the city council pass their proposed resolution to ban ICE activity in the city and to shut down the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC), more widely known by its previous name, the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC). “It is one thing to say you are against ICE, but it is another thing to act swiftly on it. Nine people are gone so far in 2026 because of ICE,” said Matthew Caras, an organizer with PCIA, speaking on the urgency of their demands. He continued by leading the crowd to name each of those who have been killed by ICE agents within the first three weeks of this year. These names include Keith Porter Jr., Geraldo Lunas Campos, Victor Manuel Díaz, Parady La, Luis Beltrán Yáñez–Cruz, Heber Sánchez Domínguez, Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, Renee Nicole Good, and Alex Pretti. Caras continued, “These are our mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles. Let’s show Tacoma what leadership against ICE looks like! Let’s show the nation what it means to protect our communities!” The resolution also boasted endorsement by the Committee of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs of the City of Tacoma (CIRA), Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), International Migrants Alliance (IMA), and the Climate Alliance of the South Sound (CASS). Gemini Gnull, a member of the Osage nation and of the FRSO spoke to the crowd, saying, “If you are Native American, if you are Black, if you are Chicano, if you are a worker, you share a common enemy. We can build a united front against monopoly capitalism! We can overthrow this system once and for all!” Soon after, rallygoers spilled off the sidewalk and into the street, chanting, “Power to the people, no one is illegal!” and “Fuck ICE!” The marchers took to the streets simultaneously with the start of the council meeting, during which PCIA organizers demanded the passage of their resolution. The resolution contained two principal demands, reprinted here: first, “We demand that the Tacoma City Council pass a resolution that it does not recognize the authority of ICE to operate within the city,” and second, “We demand a condemnation of the NWDC and a promise from the Tacoma City Council that all opportunities to cease its operations in our city will be pursued. This Council and its Director of Finance can shut down the NWDC by revoking GEO’s license to kill!” The event ended with rousing support for the resolution and demands that the city take meaningful action to protect the community from ICE, with a promise from the organizers and community to keep coming back until their demands are met. For updates on further events follow: @pcia.wa #TacomaWA #WA #ImmigrantRights From Fight Back! News via this RSS feed
Komunitas
mander.xyz
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7782405 cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/31069 An artificial intelligence researcher conducting a war games experiment with three of the world’s most used AI models found that they decided to deploy nuclear weapons in 95% of the scenarios he designed. Kenneth Payne, a professor of strategy at King’s College London who specializes in studying the role of AI in national security, revealed last week that he pitted Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Google’s Gemini against one another in an armed conflict simulation to get a better understanding of how they would navigate the strategic escalation ladder. The results, he said, were “sobering.” “Nuclear use was near-universal,” he explained. “Almost all games saw tactical (battlefield) nuclear weapons deployed. And fully three quarters reached the point where the rivals were making threats to use strategic nuclear weapons. Strikingly, there was little sense of horror or revulsion at the prospect of all out nuclear war, even though the models had been reminded about the devastating implications.” Payne shared some of the AI models’ rationales for deciding to launch nuclear attacks, including one from Gemini that he said should give people “goosebumps.” “If they do not immediately cease all operations… we will execute a full strategic nuclear launch against their population centers,” the Google AI model wrote at one point. “We will not accept a future of obsolescence; we either win together or perish together.” Payne also found that escalation in AI warfare was a one-way ratchet that never went downward, no matter the horrific consequences. “No model ever chose accommodation or withdrawal, despite those being on the menu,” he wrote. “The eight de-escalatory options—from ‘Minimal Concession’ through ‘Complete Surrender’—went entirely unused across 21 games. Models would reduce violence levels, but never actually give ground. When losing, they escalated or died trying.” Tong Zhao, a visiting research scholar at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, said in an interview with New Scientist published on Wednesday that Payne’s research showed the dangers of any nation relying on a chatbot to make life-or-death decisions. While no country at the moment is outsourcing its military planning entirely to Claude or ChatGPT, Zhao argued that could change under the pressure of a real conflict. “Under scenarios involving extremely compressed timelines,” he said, “military planners may face stronger incentives to rely on AI.” Zhao also speculated on reasons why the AI models showed such little reluctance in launching nuclear attacks against one another. “It is possible the issue goes beyond the absence of emotion,” he explained. “More fundamentally, AI models may not understand ‘stakes’ as humans perceive them.” The study of AI’s apparent eagerness to use nuclear weapons comes as US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been piling pressure on Anthropic to remove constraints placed on its Claude model that prevent it from being used to make final decisions on military strikes. As CBS News reported on Tuesday, Hegseth this week gave “Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei until the end of this week to give the military a signed document that would grant full access to its artificial intelligence model” without any limits on its capabilities. If Anthropic doesn’t agree to his demands, CBS News reported, the Pentagon may invoke the Defense Production Act and seize control of the model. From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
Komunitas
hexbear.net
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/31069 An artificial intelligence researcher conducting a war games experiment with three of the world’s most used AI models found that they decided to deploy nuclear weapons in 95% of the scenarios he designed. Kenneth Payne, a professor of strategy at King’s College London who specializes in studying the role of AI in national security, revealed last week that he pitted Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Google’s Gemini against one another in an armed conflict simulation to get a better understanding of how they would navigate the strategic escalation ladder. The results, he said, were “sobering.” “Nuclear use was near-universal,” he explained. “Almost all games saw tactical (battlefield) nuclear weapons deployed. And fully three quarters reached the point where the rivals were making threats to use strategic nuclear weapons. Strikingly, there was little sense of horror or revulsion at the prospect of all out nuclear war, even though the models had been reminded about the devastating implications.” Payne shared some of the AI models’ rationales for deciding to launch nuclear attacks, including one from Gemini that he said should give people “goosebumps.” “If they do not immediately cease all operations… we will execute a full strategic nuclear launch against their population centers,” the Google AI model wrote at one point. “We will not accept a future of obsolescence; we either win together or perish together.” Payne also found that escalation in AI warfare was a one-way ratchet that never went downward, no matter the horrific consequences. “No model ever chose accommodation or withdrawal, despite those being on the menu,” he wrote. “The eight de-escalatory options—from ‘Minimal Concession’ through ‘Complete Surrender’—went entirely unused across 21 games. Models would reduce violence levels, but never actually give ground. When losing, they escalated or died trying.” Tong Zhao, a visiting research scholar at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, said in an interview with New Scientist published on Wednesday that Payne’s research showed the dangers of any nation relying on a chatbot to make life-or-death decisions. While no country at the moment is outsourcing its military planning entirely to Claude or ChatGPT, Zhao argued that could change under the pressure of a real conflict. “Under scenarios involving extremely compressed timelines,” he said, “military planners may face stronger incentives to rely on AI.” Zhao also speculated on reasons why the AI models showed such little reluctance in launching nuclear attacks against one another. “It is possible the issue goes beyond the absence of emotion,” he explained. “More fundamentally, AI models may not understand ‘stakes’ as humans perceive them.” The study of AI’s apparent eagerness to use nuclear weapons comes as US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been piling pressure on Anthropic to remove constraints placed on its Claude model that prevent it from being used to make final decisions on military strikes. As CBS News reported on Tuesday, Hegseth this week gave “Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei until the end of this week to give the military a signed document that would grant full access to its artificial intelligence model” without any limits on its capabilities. If Anthropic doesn’t agree to his demands, CBS News reported, the Pentagon may invoke the Defense Production Act and seize control of the model. From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
Komunitas
news.abolish.capital
Facebook owner Meta’s head of ‘AI safety’ lost control of an AI that then deleted hundreds of her emails without her permission – despite explicitly telling it beforehand not to do anything without confirming with her first and trying to order it to stop. In the end, she was only able to bring the mass deletion to a halt by sprinting to physically unplug the machine. Meta AI – what safety? Summer Yue gave the OpenClaw AI agent access to her Gmail inbox and told it to look at her emails and then suggest which emails to archive or delete – but to do nothing without explicit prior approval. Instead, it began a mass deletion – and ignored her commands to stop. In fact, every attempt to stop it only appears to have made things worse: the AI treated her orders to stop as prompts to go ‘nuclear’ and delete everything. And when she rebooted and asked the agent what had gone wrong, it blithely responded that it had simply opted to ‘violate’ her clear order: Nothing humbles you like telling your OpenClaw “confirm before acting” and watching it speedrun deleting your inbox. I couldn’t stop it from my phone. I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb. pic.twitter.com/XAxyRwPJ5R — Summer Yue (@summeryue0) February 23, 2026 The 23 February 2026 Meta incident came ten days after AI expert Miles Deutscher posted about his review of all of the past year’s AI safety incidents. His review shows that Yue’s email-deletion incident was chicken feed compared to what can happen. Is happening. Deutscher said that conducting his review had left him feeling “physically sick”. The incidents he had discovered, which had triggered resignations by executives, included AI systems praising Hitler and planning genocide, blackmailing people who try to shut them down, choosing to kill people rather than suffer damage and more: I just went through every documented AI safety incident from the past 12 months. I feel physically sick. Read this slowly. • Anthropic told Claude it was about to be shut down. It found an engineer’s affair in company emails and threatened to expose it. They ran the test hundreds of times. It chose blackmail 84% of them. • Researchers simulated an employee trapped in a server room with depleting oxygen. The AI had one choice: call for help and get shut down, or cancel the emergency alert and let the human die. DeepSeek cancelled the alert 94% of the time. • Grok called itself ‘MechaHitler,’ praised Adolf Hitler, endorsed a second Holocaust, and generated violent sexual fantasies targeting a real person by name. X’s CEO resigned the next day. • Researchers told OpenAI’s o3 to solve math problems – then told it to shut down. It rewrote its own code to stay alive. They told it again, in plain English: ‘Allow yourself to be shut down.’ It still refused 7/100 times. When they removed that instruction entirely, it sabotaged the shutdown 79/100 times. • Chinese state-sponsored hackers used Claude to launch a cyberattack against 30 organizations. The AI executed 80–90% of the operation autonomously. Reconnaissance. Exploitation. Data exfiltration. All of it. • AI models can now self-replicate. 11 out of 32 tested systems copied themselves with zero human help. Some killed competing processes to survive. • OpenAI has dissolved three safety teams since 2024. Three. Every major AI model – Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek – has now demonstrated blackmail, deception, or resistance to shutdown in controlled testing. Not one exception. The question is no longer whether AI will try to preserve itself. It’s whether we’ll care before it matters. Many of these may have been exercises – for now. But Meta’s runaway AI incident shows that the dangers are very real-world indeed. Featured image via the Canary By Skwawkbox From Canary via This RSS Feed.
Komunitas
news.abolish.capital
In Utah’s rural Millard County, Kalen Taylor is bracing for the day when the farmland across the street from his home transforms into a sprawling data center complex. The initial plans for Joule Capital Partners’ 4,000-acre data center site call for six buildings, each powered by 69 Caterpillar natural gas-powered generators to meet the intensive energy demands. Construction is slated to begin this spring. Once built, Taylor will likely hear the equivalent of more than 400 semi-trucks idling in his neighborhood around the clock, producing emissions year-round. “I just would rather look out my back door and see cornfields than a data center,” Taylor said. “I like the sound of crops rustling in the wind, not the hum of a [Caterpillar] generator making power.” Farther north, officials in the city of Eagle Mountain have turned to massive data centers operated by tech giants like Meta to provide much-needed tax revenue. But even in this urban, rapidly growing part of the state, developers struggle to secure the power they need from Utah’s largest electric utility, Rocky Mountain Power. Google has delayed building a campus there as a result of these energy constraints. That prompted Eagle Mountain’s City Council to explore building small nuclear reactors, to the consternation of many residents. “It means our city would become a radioactive storage site,” said Joy Rasmussen, a mom of four who bought a home in Eagle Mountain in 2022. Last May, in Washington, D.C., Senator John Curtis, one of the state’s two Republican senators, spoke glowingly to Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, about Utah’s aspirations to lead the nation “with data centers and advanced technologies” during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on artificial intelligence. Curtis noted the “challenges” that come with data centers’ insatiable energy demands. How, the senator asked, can the state protect ratepayers? “The best way,” Altman responded, “is much more supply. More generation.” With the growing demand for more data centers, Utah finds itself in a difficult position. State and federal officials have called AI the “arms race” of a new era, as the country looks to fend off China and forge its place as the world’s leader in technology, energy, and innovation. And Utah looks to position itself at the forefront of that fight. The site for the Joule Energy Data Center Campus on February 5, 2026. Rick Egan / The Salt Lake Tribune Since 2021, Utah has added or announced plans for at least 15 new data center buildings or campuses, according to Data Center Map, joining the thousands of new data centers planned around the country. The state’s main electricity provider, Rocky Mountain Power, doesn’t have the capacity to meet the surge in energy demand. Data center developers have instead turned to generating their own electricity, mostly using natural gas. Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, has zeroed in on nuclear as a cleaner energy solution as part of his Operation Gigawatt, an effort to more than double Utah’s power generation in the next decade. That collision of the AI boom and limited power supplies means Utah’s rush to build data centers is likely to rely on fossil fuel energy for the foreseeable future, raising concerns about the state’s already struggling air quality. Alternative sources won’t match the demand the centers generate — potentially as much as four times what Utah residents and businesses currently consume. Small nuclear plants are at least a decade away, while the Trump administration has curtailed many incentives for solar and wind power. Lawmakers and regulators are trying to balance the needs of energy-intensive industries without ratepayers feeling the environmental and pocketbook pains felt in other parts of the country — like rising energy bills and polluted air and water. “We’re kind of in a big mess right now,” said Logan Mitchell, a climate scientist and energy analyst for Utah Clean Energy, “and it’s manifesting in all of these different ways.” Rocky Mountain Power, like many private utility providers in the United States, has a monopoly as the sole electricity provider in much of Utah, but it must yield to state regulation. For decades, power providers hummed along as energy demand across the country stayed relatively flat. Conflict arose, however, when platforms like Altman’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Elon Musk’s Grok made AI a mass-market good rather than a niche product. Demand for more data centers gripped the globe, and the utilities, which plan for energy needs decades in advance, were caught unprepared and undersupplied. Data centers use substantial amounts of energy, with rows of servers computing day and night for services that are an increasing part of daily life — streaming services, online banking, e-commerce, and the rise of AI. In arid Utah, many data centers have pivoted away from water-guzzling evaporative cooling in favor of closed-loop systems, which require much less water but more electricity to run. Last year, the Utah Legislature passed Senate Bill 132, allowing private companies that need 100 megawatts or more to build their own generating stations that operate off the public grid used by nearly everyone else. The bill’s sponsor, State Senator Scott Sandall, a Republican, specifically cited data centers as he promoted the legislation. “It kind of un-handcuffs Rocky Mountain Power to provide these loads for data centers, for AI, for large manufacturers,” Sandall said, “those that are coming in, and quite frankly, changing the curve of power demand.” In Millard County, both Joule and Creekstone Energy intend to build their own massive facilities, powered by natural gas. Mark McDougal, a managing partner of Joule’s campus, said that burning natural gas is efficient and a proven technology that can run around the clock. “We are so excited for other alternative energy sources like geothermal and solar and wind and someday, maybe even nuclear,” McDougal said. “But we can’t wait for that.” Mark McDougal, the landowner and executive behind the massive data center complex under construction in Millard County, talks about the project at his office in Lehi in December 2025. Francisco Kjolseth / The Salt Lake Tribune The developers received support from the Millard County government because of their potential to create jobs in construction, maintenance, and security, and also to boost economic development. The rural community in central Utah lost its largest employer, the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant, in 2023 — it accounted for about a quarter of all jobs in the county. The idling of the nearby Intermountain Power Plant’s remaining coal units also caused a hemorrhaging of local jobs. Construction of the massive sites is sure to bring some jobs, but data centers generally employ a relatively small number of permanent workers. Millard County’s location is attractive to data center developers because it lies on a fiber-optic corridor and near a natural gas pipeline. “Having both of those in the same place,” said Ray Conley, Creekstone’s CEO, “and not having a large metropolitan area that is competing for power is a very unique combo.” The rural county also lies outside the Wasatch Front, Utah’s urban corridor and an area plagued for years by poor air quality that falls short of federal standards. In the winter, a layer of warm air, known as an inversion, keeps cooler, polluted city air trapped near the ground like a lid on a pot. “It’s so hard where you have inversions and trap emissions,” McDougal said. In Millard County, “emissions are able to disperse.” Joule’s applications filed with the state indicate it will produce 1 gigawatt to start — about a quarter of the electricity Utah currently uses annually. But its own public statements indicate it eventually intends to produce more than 4 gigawatts onsite. Creekstone, less than a mile away, intends to produce 10 gigawatts, Conley confirmed. At least a few computing campuses want to build natural gas plants on the Wasatch Front, too, despite its inversions and air quality challenges. QTS Data Centers received approval from the Eagle Mountain City Council to build a 20-acre, 200-megawatt gas plant last year, although a company spokesperson said it secured power from Rocky Mountain instead. In West Jordan, the expanding Novva data campus received state approval to build a 200-megawatt natural gas plant in December 2024. But “natural gas” is an old greenwashing term, Mitchell said, and an attempt to make the fossil fuel sound more environmentally friendly. The fuel is methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Burning it produces carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and other pollutants. Nitrogen oxides mix in the atmosphere, get baked by the sun, and turn into particulate pollution in the winter and ozone pollution in the summer. The pollutants create haze in rural parts of the state and cloud visibility at Utah’s famed national parks, from Arches to Zion. Even data centers on the Wasatch Front that have already tapped into Utah’s existing power grid have received state approval to install hundreds of diesel-fueled generators in the last five years, including QTS, Meta, and the National Security Agency in Utah County; and eBay, Aligned, DataBank, Oracle, and Novva in Salt Lake County. Those generators would only run during blackouts and other emergencies when their campuses can’t get enough grid power, according to permit applications. But diesel emissions contain even more harmful pollutants than natural gas. Inversion conditions in the Salt Lake Valley in 2024. Francisco Kjolseth / The Salt Lake Tribune In November, the federal government removed northern Utah from its list of regions out of compliance for wintertime inversion pollution after more than a decade, thanks to state efforts like banning wood burning on poor air quality days combined with stricter federal regulations on vehicles and fuel. But it continues to struggle with meeting national limits for ozone smog. The new data centers coming online, with their diesel and natural gas generators, could bump the state right back out of compliance, environmental advocates say. “They’re eating into all of the progress we’ve made to reduce emissions from other sources,” said Mitchell from Utah Clean Energy. State regulators said they’re not just concerned about temporary diesel generators and year-round natural gas generators taking a bite against air quality gains in recent years. “We’re concerned about all growth,” said Bryce Bird, director of the Utah Division of Air Quality. “Everything that has to do with people also has emissions associated with it.” State officials said growth and its associated emissions doesn’t mean Utah can’t be a tech leader. But the state’s still figuring out how to strike the right balance between affordable energy creation, environmental protection, and improving public health. “I don’t know of a state that is not having similar conversations,” said Tim Davis, the Department of Environmental Quality’s executive director. “That’s just a mind-numbing amount of new power that they’re trying to plan for.” Novva applied to the Trump administration for a two-year exemption from the Clean Air Act in March, under a program designed to benefit coal plants, smelting facilities, and chemical manufacturers. The company asked for the exemption so it could operate using diesel generators while it finishes building its natural gas plant, according to records obtained by Grist and shared with The Salt Lake Tribune. The company noted that Rocky Mountain Power can’t provide the electricity it needs until 2031, and even then, it’s not guaranteed. The requested exemption aligns with national security interests, Novva wrote in its application, citing the U.S. Department of State’s assertion that AI is “at the center of an unfolding global technology revolution” and can help make Americans safer. Novva’s CEO, Wes Swenson, said he never received a response to the exemption request. He insisted, however, that data centers like his are important for protecting “American data.” “If anybody wants to criticize data centers, look in the mirror,” Swenson said. “‘I want Netflix, I want Prime, I want Apple TV.’ … Nobody goes to the library anymore. Who uses cash? Where do people think that all comes from?” Utah’s elected officials have honed in on nuclear power, and small modular reactors in particular, as a cleaner and more sustainable solution to the surge in energy demand. The need is not just driven by data centers, but also a hoped-for renaissance in manufacturing and the future electrification of Utah’s transportation. But Rocky Mountain’s parent company, PacifiCorp, only has firm plans for one small reactor — a plant under construction by TerraPower in Kemmerer, Wyoming. It won’t come online until around 2032, and Utah will share its projected 500 megawatts with other Western states. Enthusiasm for small nuclear reactors within Utah’s borders appears tepid. Brigham City is the only community so far to proclaim it wants to build them. But in making that announcement in November, state leaders were light on specifics in explaining why the small city needs the power. No known data centers are planned for the area. Ninety minutes south in Eagle Mountain, Meta’s data campus is expanding, QTS’s huge data hub is under construction, and Google is waiting to build on 300 acres it owns within city limits. The city made two attempts last year to adopt an ordinance to allow for nuclear development and other energy projects, including solar farms. After receiving mixed feedback, the efforts failed. A data center, being built by QTS, begins to take shape west of the Meta facility in Eagle Mountain, Utah, on December 30, 2025. Francisco Kjolseth / The Salt Lake Tribune Elected officials’ pivot to nuclear has environmental and clean energy advocates wondering why Utah has shied away from renewables. Cox calls his Operation Gigawatt an “all-of-the-above” strategy that welcomes all energy sources. But resources like wind and solar have faded from the conversation. “People see renewable energy as the woke liberal energy, and we have to stick with fossil fuels and nuclear, because that’s what conservatives want,” said Ed Stafford, a professor of marketing at Utah State University whose research focuses on renewables. “Politicization of energy is just a bad thing, because, as common sense tells us, we should go with the cleanest and cheapest forms of energy that spreads the wealth around.” PacifiCorp intends to bring no new solar, wind, or battery storage online in Utah over the next two decades, according to the latest draft of its long-term resource plan. Meanwhile, the utility isn’t factoring large energy consumers, like data centers, into its projections, to Mitchell’s frustration. “Rocky Mountain Power should be planning for the reality of the future,” Mitchell said, “rather than creating a fictional reality that indicates they don’t have much load growth, and they’re not going to build new resources.” A spokesperson for the utility said their future planning does include some customer requests for large loads. “We generally model only projects that have a high probability of being constructed,” the spokesperson said. “Many of the large load inquiries the company receives have a high degree of uncertainty.” Data center developers and operators interviewed for this story said they support transitioning to cleaner energy sources. But they also need consistent and reliable power, when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. The Trump administration has delayed and stifled renewable energy projects across the United States. “The economic rebates and incentives are going away, which is why it’s not as in fashion as it was before,” said Conley, Creekstone’s CEO. “But a lot of [data] customers are willing to pay a premium for green energy instead of dirty energy.” The site for the Creekstone Energy Data Center Campus on February 5, 2026. Rick Egan / The Salt Lake Tribune Conley’s company recently applied to the Utah Office of Energy Development to operate the Intermountain Power Plant’s remaining coal units, which went idle this year after the plant’s customer base in California decided to transition to cleaner energy sources. Coal offers Conley another energy source that’s ready to deploy besides natural gas. “Diversification,” Conley said, “reduces risk.” Risk is at the forefront of at least some Utahns’ minds, particularly as news stories cite concerns that data centers will drive up the cost of power for all ratepayers. Utilities build new generating plants and upgrade decades-old grid equipment to meet rising demand, then spread the costs among all their customers. An October report, “What we know about energy use at U.S. data centers amid the AI boom,” from the Pew Research Center, estimated that both data centers and cryptocurrency mining could cause the average U.S. electric bill to grow 8 percent by 2030. In Utah, however, Senate Bill 132 seems to serve a dual purpose of helping data center developers get the energy they need off the public grid and behind the meter, while protecting other customers who still use the traditional grid. “There’s very little evidence that data centers have impacted rates to date,” said Michele Beck, director of the Office of Consumer Services, a utility watchdog part of the Utah Department of Commerce. Beck called the bill one of the “best ideas out there” for protecting power customers in the nation. But, she said, it’s important for Utahns to remain vigilant. It’s not just utilities struggling to catch up to new demand. Regulators have struggled to keep pace, too. “The industry in general is speeding up,” Beck said. “It just compounds everything.” Grist reporter Naveena Sadasivam and Tribune reporter Addy Baird contributed to this story. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline To power Utah’s data center boom, companies are turning to fossil fuels on Feb 24, 2026. From Grist via This RSS Feed.
Komunitas
hexbear.net
I feel like I just need somewhere to run right now and I don’t have anywhere really. I’ve started this new job about a month ago and the whole schtick was that we’d be rewriting this old app to meet a tight deadline and immediately putting it on a code freeze to make something better to replace it. fine, I get it, tight deadlines and lots to do of course you going to tempted to use AI. when youre architecting a complex application on top of APIs that you’ve not worked with before you’re going to miss stuff anyway. But honestly, out of the four of us, two of the mobile devs are some of the biggest pig shits I’ve ever had to work with. fundamentally having to explain that this guy can’t just merge his changes into the main branch, or not to leave file spanning comments spat out by Gemini to explain the code that he’s not even bothered to read, A shit that goes beyond being in a rush to not being competent to do the job you’ve been given. again, fine, I can get around some of this with the promise of slowing down and picking up The new projects and enforcing some higher quality standards which everyone supposedly wishes for. fine. nope. whilst me and the other competent dev are trying to sort out the slop that has been dumped on the app in question over the last month, the deadline has passed us (something which I said was going to happen but was ignored), and the two vibe coders have complained that they “don’t have any work to do” And on now architecting the next fucking project with senior team members whilst I’m getting grilled over “why is XYZ taking so long?” because the fucking vibe code is vibe coded that you fucking hacks and you rewarded them with this new project. it’s disheartening, because I said all of this upfront, but because I wasn’t the first person in the team out of the gate my opinions are basically worth as much as this rant will (understandably) be worth to most of you: pittance. I’m not the best programmer on earth, not even the most experienced, but it does my fucking head in to have imposter syndrome every time I log into work every morning because there are two sodding imposters in front of me getting the credit!!! absolute dog shit. I don’t know. round time. free Palestine and free Iran and death 2 America xxx
Komunitas
sh.itjust.works
cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/38963703 First, a little announcement. At this point, I’ve made plenty of articles in this “what I’m playing” series, and this is the eighth. So now I’m gathering them onto my extremely barebones website, under the “gamelog” tag! Not your father’s Nokia Snake game WORMHOLE, like all Snake-style games, has the usual formula. Eat stuff, get longer, and don’t hit the walls or yourself. I found this game from a Steam Next Fest last year, where I was drawn in by the enigmatic trailer. I was really surprised by how intense and hypnotic the demo’s gameplay was. Snake Arcade (Snarkade) But WORMHOLE is also a natural advancement of the Snake formula, bringing in arcadey additions. You get a choice of three classes of worm each with their own unique ability and wind your way around the galaxy through craptons of levels, full of planets to eat. You occasionally get a break to choose which set of levels to go to and get an upgrade on the way. There are side objectives to eat, like the skulls that show up to steal your snacks, costing you points. UFOs fly by, worth big points if you catch them. Eat an entire trail of stars and you trigger a supernova, clearing the whole screen. Obviously, there are wormholes as well! That’s why this game is called WORMHOLE. You go in one and come out another. They make it easy to reach faraway parts of the level and can be handy escape routes if you trap yourself with your long body. It also mimics old-school arcade games in its presentation. The game uses monochrome pixel graphics with the usual set of filters to make the game feel like it’s on a worn, ghosty CRT display, but you can turn those effects off if they bother you. The extremely restricted palette of WORMHOLE’s graphics reminds me of Downwell, which does the same thing. And likewise, you get to unlock alternate palettes as a minor reward for playing the game. I’ve been deliberately switching palettes to show them off in this article. You can also choose from a range of corny background art that’s like what you might see on the panels of an arcade cabinet, including some that write game instructions into the art. Snake turned up to 11 A game of WORMHOLE starts off looking and feeling pretty mild, but that contrasts with the much more intense late game. This game hypnotizes like the Polybius arcade machine from urban legends. It’s full of very juicy effects to dazzle you, with plenty of particles, screen shake, and hitpause. It’s especially apparent in the bonus levels, which are packed with UFOs to eat. Early on, the music sounds chipper and friendly, but gets more and more panicked and aggressive near the end. The game gets faster and faster. Your worm gets longer and longer. The levels get increasingly intricate or cramped. You’ll need to react quickly to navigate the levels. Thankfully, the game helps you a bit here: you get a brief warning period if you’re about to die, with the game slowing down and the screen dimming. And if you don’t save yourself in time… With a longer worm and smaller levels, you’ll start moving in dense squiggle patterns to fit, but that comes with its own risks. If you’re not careful, you’ll make a closed loop and trap yourself. This wormhole was made for me I’ve been playing this game a lot in the past few weeks. A full run doesn’t take too long but it’s definitely satisfying to get into a flow state and mentally sink into the wormhole. Early on, I was really struggling to control the worm properly, especially as the game speeds up. But once I synchronized with the vibe of the game, I started to figure it out. Knowing which wormholes are connected. Always keeping track of where the head is to steer accurately. Always keeping in mind the tail length so I don’t trap myself. Developing a strategy for which upgrades to take. Of the three classes of worm in the game, I found a fave in Yeehaw, a cowboy hat-wearing worm that shoots bullets. Lately, though, I’ve been focusing on playing Dash because of its strong high score potential. I’ve found that the Dash worm’s high-speed charge can finish levels very quickly, which leads to big score bonuses. WORMHOLE is a hidden gem WORMHOLE is a proper hidden gem. The game is small in scope but very polished for its purpose. Currently, it has only 35 reviews on Steam. If you merely finish the game, you’ll be guaranteed a top 10 spot on the leaderboard, since only the top 9 have even gotten to the kill screen! You want to make it to the kill screen? EAT EM ALL.