Amazon plans to spend $20 million on water conservation projects along the Colorado River, a crucial but dwindling water supply for 40 million people in the Western US. The initiative comes as Amazon and other tech companies face mounting scrutiny over how much water their data centers use. Amazon has a goal of becoming water […]
Before recent high-profile hacks raised the specter of AI possibly “killing all humans,” our energy systems were already disturbingly vulnerable to cyberattack – and the risk is growing. “We were always prey. We were just kind of surviving at the appetite of our predators,” Joshua Corman, executive in residence for public safety and resilience at […]
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger ordered the state government to take steps that could empower local communities to have a larger say in data center development and slow down approvals in a state that is already home to the data center capital of the world. Executive Order 22 bans executive branch officials from signing nondisclosure agreements […]
On the morning of June 9th, Laura Lin was working from her home in Lanesville, a rural southern Indiana town about 15 miles from the Kentucky border. She was on a Zoom call, unaware that the heavy rain outside was beginning to flood her yard. “I look over to where the barn is over there, […]
You wouldn’t know that the Apple Watch Series 12 is a big deal just by looking at it. It has the same design, buttons, sizes, and sensor types as generations of Apple Watches before it. But under the hood, the Series 12 builds in major changes that lay the groundwork for big ideas about the […]
E-waste from the AI boom has been vastly underestimated, a new report warns. By 2050, it could become enough trash to fill 23 million shipping containers – roughly enough 40-foot containers to circle the world six times if lined up in a row. It’s a significantly higher estimate of AI’s e-waste than previous studies have […]
This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they’re going to change your life. Opt in for Optimizer here. During last week’s Apple Watch announcement, I let out a distinct “Noooo!” in the Steve Jobs Theater. Along with a […]
The Environmental Protection Agency announced its plans today to kill any remaining standards on how much greenhouse gas pollution power plants are allowed to emit in the US. The move will only make electricity dirtier as AI, electric vehicles, and a revival of domestic manufacturing drive up power demand. The EPA’s proposal today is a […]
President Donald Trump is weakening environmental regulations in the name of speeding up the construction of AI data centers, raising health risks for Americans, a cadre of former EPA officials said this week in a briefing and new report. They are urging – perhaps futilely – the president to adopt a “Data Center Health Protection […]
Arizona, an epicenter for the bipartisan push to revive American chip manufacturing, is about to lose more than a quarter of the water it typically pulls each year from the Colorado River. The 1,400-mile waterway is a crucial lifeline for the region and other western states. A recent federal decision on how to manage its […]