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House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie said Wednesday he is interested in moving forward with legislation to address the impact of data centers. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been divided on whether a new federal law is needed on the issue. But Guthrie, a Kentucky Republican, joined House leaders in promising action earlier this year following a push from the White House, which has extracted a pledge from companies to pay for their own energy use.
The FCC has approved the NCTA's petition for expedited waivers on 'covered' consumer modems, gateways and routers that implement relatively minor changes. The FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology wasted little time in partially approving a petition filed by the NCTA–The Internet & Television Association that sought an expedited waiver for foreign-made consumer broadband routers that require relatively small changes, including alterations to memory modules and other types of substitute "substrate materials." The FCC order, which was filed and adopted on June 9, effectively allows NCTA cable operator members and their suppliers to make limited and permitted Class I and Class II hardware changes to consumer grade routers that currently are on the FCC's "Covered List" in the wake of the Commission's ban on new, foreign made routers that was implemented in March. Generally, Class I changes include minor modifications that don't change the RF characteristics of a device, and Class II includes more substantive modifications that may alter RF performance or device emissions.
It’s interesting once in a while to look at how the U.S. compares to the rest of the world in terms of broadband prices. The prices used in this blog come from Broadband Genie, which is a firm that compares local ISP prices in the U.K. For the worldwide price study, it gathered the average broadband prices from 214 countries. Prices were gathered in January and February of this year and are collected from public ISP websites or other trusted broadband comparison websites. This is far from being a scientific study. Just imagine the difficulty of determining the average broadband price in the U.S. However, the study calculated the average U.S. broadband price of $80, which feels a little high to me, but not by much. You can judge the other prices accordingly.
Amid public outcry over water-guzzling server farms, a Guardian analysis indicates trouble ahead. A record-shattering drought has racked much of the United States. But the artificial intelligence industry is pushing ahead regardless, with the majority of planned data centers set to be built in drought-ridden locations, a Guardian analysis has found. About two-thirds of upcoming data centers, which typically require a large amount of water to operate, are set to be built in places that have been among the driest in the country over the past year. Of 809 planned data centers, 517 are in locations that have been in drought conditions throughout the past year, according to data from Cleanview and the federal government, which grades drought across four levels of severity. A similar proportion of existing data centers are already situated in drought-affected areas.
North Korean hackers posing as remote IT workers and recruiters remain a major threat to U.S., European, and Asian companies, accounting for about half of all attacks over the past 12 months.
New York has implemented a law requiring advertisements featuring AI-generated people to clearly label them as “synthetic performers.” Any advertisements in New York that feature artificial intelligence-generated people in place of actors will now be violating state law if they don’t clearly label that they have used a “synthetic performer.” The law, signed in December by Gov. Kathy Hochul, went into effect Tuesday. Her office is calling it a “first-in-the-nation law” that will boost transparency at a time when it says AI generated performers are popping up across all forms of media, including on social platforms and in digital advertising. Synthetic performers are defined under state law as “digitally-created media that appear as a real person.” The law applies to ads in any medium. “In New York, we are setting the rules of the road instead of letting AI run the show,” Hochul, a Democrat, said in a statement. The “simple, honest disclosure” required by the law “protects consumers, respects our creative workforce and keeps New York at the forefront of responsible innovation,” she said.
Paul Bunyan Communications reports... Paul Bunyan Communications started construction in late April on expanding the all-fiber optic network, the GigaZone®, to over 600 more locations in Itasca and St. Louis County across five townships. This project includes areas south and west of the city of Cook including parts of the following townships: Alango, Carpenter, Field, Sturgeon, and an unorganized township east of Carpenter.
“Extra-terrestrial solutions are no longer science fiction,” Thiel said. Panthalassa, a U.S.-based start up betting on ocean waves to power a fleet of floating data centers, announced $140 million in funding earlier this month led by Thiel. The funding pushes Panthalassa’s valuation close to $1 billion, the Financial Times reported, citing a person familiar with the terms of the deal.
The ACLU is suing two Florida police departments over the arrest of a Fort Myers man in a child-abduction case, saying officers treated a flawed face-recognition match as a near-certain ID.
One could not invent a more diabolical conspiracy for mass mind control than the one playing out openly, daily, everywhere there is a personal computer or screen-phone and a signal connecting users to the digital matrix. The conspiracy is all-encompassing, world-girdling.
At the end of April, the FCC released a Report and Order and a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking related to its broadband mapping processes. There are no earth-shattering changes in the order and this is part of the ongoing process of finetuning the FCC broadband maps. The following are the changes that were ordered:
Argentina president Javier Milei called for the creation of "non-human corporations" run completely by AI agents. You could already make the case that corporations are faceless monoliths geared purely towards maximizing profits with only a peripheral consideration of human wellbeing. So when Argentina’s scandal–laden president Javier Milei called for the creation of “non-human corporations” run by AI in a new opinion piece for the Financial Times, you kind of have to applaud him for dispensing with the formalities and just admitting to the misanthropy at the heart of our glorious capitalist free enterprise system.
When retirees and activists in Citrus County, Florida, started to organize against a nearby data center proposal, they weren’t sure how many of their neighbors would show up. They had been trying to gin up support on Facebook and Nextdoor. They had explained the harms of data centers to confused residents. They set up a flea market booth and sent residents into neighborhoods bearing clipboards. When the date rolled around for their May town hall, the strength of their coalition became clear. About 200 people packed into a historic schoolhouse in the town of Hernando, ready to listen to hours of presentations about how they could fight back against the data center industrial park proposed in Holder, half an hour inland from Crystal River.
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AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon have formed a unified front with the cable industry when it comes to fighting copper theft and other forms of network vandalism.
The most AI-obsessed firms are spending roughly $7,500 monthly per employee on AI, per Ramp AI Index. That's not more than an engineer's salary — yet. An Nvidia executive recently said that the cost of compute is now greater than the salaries of his employees. Last week, Mercor’s CEO said the startup is spending more on tokens for internal agents than on employee headcount. As enterprises blow through their token budgets, a big question is: Are companies actually spending more on AI than on humans?
The data center build out, and the subsidies underpinning it, are becoming hot-button issues in key races. Data centers are popping up throughout the country — including in my home state of Michigan. As of December, there were at least 16 in the works, with MLive dubbing 2025 “the year of the data center” for the state. Nationwide, data centers have grown at least 150% between 2010 and 2025. But this isn’t inevitable — or happening solely because companies are pushing to build them in their race for artificial intelligence (AI) dominance. Instead, Michigan lawmakers — along with a majority of other states — are accelerating this trend, offering billions of dollars in tax breaks to incentivize technology and utility monopolies to build large data centers. These tax breaks impose significant costs on the community, and Michiganders are fighting back. According to Howell, Michigan board member Tim Boal, Michiganders backlash to data centers is something he’s “never seen before.” Will this anger change policy, or will lawmakers in the state continue to unfairly prioritize big money interests over their other constituents?
From production crews to local caterers, Hollywood's mega-merger reflects the same monopoly squeeze hitting farmers, pharmacists, and grocers. If you’re not closely tracking Paramount’s attempted takeover of Warner Brothers, it’s easy to see it as a fight between Hollywood millionaires vs. MAGA billionaires. The media has focused on A-listers’ opposition to the deal and Paramount’s corrupt efforts to push the merger through by lavishing President Donald Trump with gifts and promises — since fulfilled — to silence his critics in the media they control. As a result, too many people are still missing the economic devastation that this deal would almost certainly wreak upon small business owners and working people — not just in Los Angeles, but also in New York, Jersey City, Atlanta and any place where the companies have a substantial presence. This merger will lead to thousands of people losing their jobs and livelihoods. After all, the last time David Ellison bought a media company — all the way back in 2025 — it was Paramount. In an effort to cut $3 billion in costs, he laid off thousands of people, including 20-year veterans of the company and pregnant moms on their due dates. Now, Ellison is buying Warner Brothers Discovery for 13 times the amount he paid for Paramount, he’s loading up the combined company with almost $80 billion in debt, and he wants to cut twice the amount in “synergies” as he did when he bought Paramount.
A conversation about Longmont's NextLight network, community broadband, affordability, and what it takes to build one of the most successful ISPs in the country.
New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams – a non-voting member of the New York City Council with the right to introduce and co-sponsor legislation – released a detailed “Get Connected” report calling “for the city to deliver high-speed, low-cost citywide municipal Internet service akin to a public utility.” Now, with new Mayor Zohran Mamdani – whose entire political brand is built on making essential services affordable to the people who need them most – pursuing a popular affordability agenda that has energized his base and inspired electoral interest far outside the Big Apple, the prospect for a city-wide municipal Internet network is back on the radar. The 53-page report lays the policy groundwork for what at least has the potential to become the Mamdani administration's signature infrastructure initiative.
"EPA is not the party that is negotiating and or mediating or refereeing that deal," the EPA administrator said. The Trump administration is not going to set nationwide environmental requirements or recommendations for the rapidly growing data center industry, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said Wednesday. While there are technologies and practices that reduce air pollution and water usage, states and communities know what works best for them, Zeldin said at the POLITICO Energy Summit in Washington.
With an initial capacity of 24 megawatts, the innovative data center uses seawater as a natural cooling system. China has become the first country in the world to operate an underwater data center, or UDC, powered by wind. Located off the coast of Shanghai, the complex represents a significant advance in the country's strategy to secure energy supplies in the face of the accelerated growth of artificial intelligence, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and reduce the environmental impact of its technology infrastructure.
The first of dozens of IKE Smart City digital wayfinding kiosks planned for downtown and around Seattle was unveiled on Tuesday at the busy intersection of First Avenue and Pike Street.
If there is any place on the map that captures the depth of the global revolt over AI data centers, it might well be little Socorro County, New Mexico. Located astride the Rio Grande and almost smack dab in the center of New Mexico, at first glance, rural Socorro County seems an unlikely center for the rebellion.
KTTC reports... RadioLink Internet (RLI) notified customers in an email last week it was shutting down immediately. ... The company, which was based at Petsinger’s home in Ellendale, provided internet for residents across approximately 5,000 square miles in southern Minnesota. Petsinger said a changing political climate in some of the communities his company provided internet…
The Seattle City Council voted 9-0 to halt applications for data centers larger than 20 megavolt-amperes for one year, while the city studies their impact on the power grid, water supply, utility rates, and economy. The moratorium takes effect as soon as Mayor Katie Wilson signs it.
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