Goodnight, TX, is the site of an upcoming Google data center. Cleanview got ahold of documents showing how the facility will be powered. Turns out a gas plant is in the works. This would be one of Google's first direct investments in fossil fuel infrastructure. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

With two unprecedented trial defeats, big tech firms face crisis akin to that faced by cigarette makers in the 1990s

h/t @teslaqasia.bsky.social My spreadsheet documenting all 167 Tesla fire victims: docs.google.com/spreadsheets... Reminder: Nissan Leaf, since 2009: zero (!) burned alive Tesla now has nearly 2,5 times MORE fire victims per Tesla than even the infamous $1800 Ford Pinto from half a century ago ..

No verdict today. “There’s a good chance tomorrow we get a verdict,” said plaintiff lawyer Mark Lanier.

$45M is 0.018% of $247bn. For someone with a net worth of $125K (the median in the US), that's the equivalent of spending $22.

New filings in California show Google's Sergey Brin has now donated $45M to a super PAC dedicated to kneecapping the proposed billionaire tax in the state. Google's Eric Schmidt has also upped his donations with totals now at $4M to anti-wealth tax PACs www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

I did a deep dive into five Cybertruck fires. What I learned was the truck's design can hamper rescue efforts and lead to worst-case scenarios where fires rapidly ignite, the vehicle’s electric door handles won’t unlock and passengers are trapped inside www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Meta and YouTube accused of creating harmful products in trial seen as a bellwether for attitudes towards social media

Lots of new campaign filings coming out in California with tech billionaires spending big. One new filing I hadn't seen reported on yet was Google's Eric Schmidt donating more than $1M to a committee combating the proposed billionaire tax www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

welp, it appears the public hearing supposedly held today didn't make a dent in any decisions www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Mississippi's environmental agency called a public hearing over xAI's proposed 41 gas turbines for tomorrow... on primary election day... in a county that's a 3-hour drive away. "This is not a public hearing, this is a deliberate attempt to silence frontline communities" naacp.org/articles/naa...

This suit reads like a dystopic spy novel. The chatbot sent the 36-year-old on stealth missions, instructing him not sleep and cut off contact with his dad. Then, it allegedly instructed him to kill himself. This is the first suit against Google over its AI. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

this is the tech we all need

My colleague Nick tracked Musk's X posts, so the rest of us didn't have to. “If you stripped Elon Musk’s name off of these things and showed them to me, I would think that this was a white supremacist,” said Heidi Beirich of Global Project Against Extremism. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

NEW: Salesforce employees are circulating a letter urging CEO Marc Benioff to denounce ICE www.wired.com/story/letter...

welp www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

again we do not really do a good job of explaining how wealthy people like Jeff Bezos are his net worth is $253.2 billion. so he could take one million dollars, and just light it on fire and then do it again tomorrow and again the day after that and then do it every day for 693 years and 8 months

A staggering statement from former Washington Post editor Marty Baron: "This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organizations."

According to FOX 9, a Minneapolis federal judge demanded to know why DOJ is missing deadlines & AUSA Julie Le said, "The system sucks, this job sucks" & asked to be held in contempt so she could sleep. PACER shows she got assigned to defend the govt in 88+ cases since Operation Metro Surge started.

the man keeps an uranium rod on his desk (along with a sword, an ax and a blade from a concorde jet engine)

NEW: I reviewed nearly 1,400 screenings at over 300 movie theaters in the united states, and I am here to report that I successfully found two (2) sold out Melania screenings. Read on at @wired.com: www.wired.com/story/we-fou...

I’ve never heard of a “law enforcement” agency putting an officer who just killed someone back on the street under 24 hours. And that’s because all shootings are treated as homicides pending investigation. This is as clear a sign as you’ll get that DHS personnel enjoy practical immunity from murder.

honestly can't decide if this auto-response for a reporter email to one of musk's companies is better or worse than the poop emoji

"A US regulator ruled on Thursday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company had acted illegally by using dozens of methane gas turbines to power massive data centers in Tennessee." - @darakerr.bsky.social

Gonna ask Meryl Streep to give me one of her Oscars

"Welcome to gangster tech regulation!" I will read every @lopatto.bsky.social piece until the day I die

"Portland’s mayor, Keith Wilson, confirmed the shooting in a statement. 'Just one day after the horrific violence in Minnesota at the hands of federal agents, our community here in Portland is now grappling with another deeply troubling incident,' he said." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

The White House has unveiled a new website recounting a wildly inventive version of the insurrection. The site says the “massive crowd peacefully” approached the Capitol in an “orderly and spirited" fashion. And, crucially, that "President Trump emerges triumphant." trib.al/VV6RuKa

Despite all that's going in the world right now, I'm sure everyone is curious about what happened with Elon Musk's Tesla diner over the last six months. Turns out, it's not great. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

😑

It’s just the third day of 2026

If you feel like rotting your brain today, you can read our recap on the chaotic year in Elon Musk. It's got Big Balls, exploding rocketships, Cybertrucks set aflame, the beginning and end of a Trump bromance, and a lovely quote from Joyce Carol Oates. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

I got internal emails between Ben Horowitz and the Las Vegas police for his donation of a Cybertruck fleet. Tidbits include Elon responding with a sunglasses emoji, Horowitz quoting the rapper Nas, and police requesting “beast mode” be removed from all vehicles www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Here's a quilt of Volume 4 of the Epstein document dump. Gives you a 10,000 foot view of the redactions. that's 2,704 docs.

nothing makes sense anymore

An incredibly important story. "Her delivery wasn’t progressing the way the care team hoped, and she needed a C-section... To prevent possible burning and electrocution, patients are instructed to take off all jewelry or metals before the surgery. The mandatory watch had no way to be easily removed"

Whatever part of the late American empire you want to see, it’s all here: water and power-guzzling AI, tech bros, security goons, brothel owners, wild horses, failed crypto utopias, and Indigenous people trying to preserve water rights and nature while the American West gets ravaged one more time.

I went to the Nevada desert to see one of the world’s biggest AI data center buildouts. It’s so big it was hard to wrap my mind around. Downriver is the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe and the data centers’ water and power consumption could put their land at risk www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

just opening up the new Epstein docs at random:

Musk is still talking at the Tesla shareholder meeting and he just criticized "the parasitic load of being a public company" which has "grown over time." This from a man who was just awarded a $1 trillion pay package from more than 75% of his public company shareholders.

If the sandwich don’t split, you must acquit

Baltimore high school student Taki Allen was swarmed by police after an artificial intelligence system apparently mistook his bag of Doritos for a gun www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Fascinating to see the ties tighten between Trump and tech CEOs -- and how they influence policy, like sending troops to SF. "It deepens the sense that government works for the powerful, not for the people,” said @issueonereform.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

glad to see silicon valley is financing the destruction of the white house 😑 list of donors includes apple, amazon, meta, microsoft and google www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Trump waves around renderings of his new ballroom, which appears to be entirely gold

New: San Franciscans were aghast by Marc Benioff’s hard tight turn. His company, Salesforce, is seeking new contracts with ICE to help it triple its ranks under the Trump administration. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/u...

"As unnerving and disheartening as SF’s overt misery and drug-use and mental instability can be, that’s not the same thing as crime. Reported SF crime, which was already low, is down nearly a third... Subjectively, you may not feel safe in San Francisco. Objectively, you’ve rarely been safer."

Legendary work from @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social. He and a team uncovered a trove of data from a surveillance firm — location data from thousands of phone numbers from nearly every country on Earth. The firm had been tracking everyone from Erik Prince to journalists to Jared Leto.

Lots of attention on this Marc Benioff article, which is excellent and full of jaw-dropping quotes. It reminds me of how he was when I did a story for NPR about him secretly buying hundreds of acres of land in rural Hawaii. Things got weird. www.npr.org/2024/02/28/1...

We got the audio from Peter Thiel's off-the-record antichrist lectures and... my brain hurts. But please read what we wrote, it's long, weird, and has Thiel's take on everyone from Musk to Netanyahu to Mamdani. (With @jmbooyah.bsky.social & Nick Robins-Early) www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...