SlashdotNews for nerds, stuff that matters
Apr 24th 2026, 03:30 by BeauHD
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: New gas projects linked to just 11 data center campuses around the US have the potential to create more greenhouse gases than the country of Morocco emitted in 2024. Emissions estimates from air permit documents examined by WIRED show that these natural gas projects -- which are being built to power data centers to serve some of the US's most powerful AI companies, including OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and xAI -- have the potential to emit more than 129 million tons of greenhouse gases per year. As tech companies race to secure massive power deals to build out hundreds of data centers across the country, these projects represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential climate cost of the AI boom. The infrastructure on this list of large natural gas projects reviewed by WIRED is being developed to largely bypass the grid and provide power solely for data centers, a trend known as behind-the-meter power. As data center developers face long waits for connections to traditional utilities, and amid mounting public resistance to the possibility of higher energy bills, making their own power is becoming an increasingly popular option. These projects have either been announced or are under construction, with companies already submitting air permit application materials with state agencies. [...] The emissions projections for the xAI and Microsoft projects, and all the others on WIRED's list, were pulled directly from publicly-available air permit documents in state databases as well as public air permit materials collected by both Cleanview and Oil and Gas Watch, a database maintained by the Environmental Integrity Project, an environmental enforcement nonprofit. Actual greenhouse gas emissions from power plants are usually lower than what's on their air permits. Air permit modeling is based on the scenario of a power plant constantly running at full capacity. That's rarely the reality for grid-connected power plants, as turbines go offline for maintenance or adjust to the ebbs and flows of customer demand. "Permitted emission numbers represent a theoretical, conservative scenario, not the actual projected emissions," Alex Schott, the director of communications at Williams Companies, an oil and gas company that is building out three behind-the-meter power plants in Ohio for Meta, told WIRED in an email. Internal modeling done by the company, Schott added, shows that actual emissions could be "potentially two-thirds less than what's on paper." The projections involved, however, are still substantial. Even if the actual emissions from these power plants end up being half of the emissions numbers on the permits, they still could create more greenhouse gas emissions than the country of Norway emitted in 2024. This number is, according to the EPA, equivalent to the emissions from more than 153 average-sized natural gas plants. (WIRED's analysis does not include emissions from backup generators and turbines on the data center campuses themselves, which create smaller amounts of emissions.) Energy researcher Jon Koomey says the data center boom has created a shortage of the most efficient gas turbines, pushing some developers toward less efficient models that would need to run longer and produce more emissions. "[Data center operators'] belief is that the value being delivered by the servers is much, much more than the cost of running these inefficient power plants all the time," he said. Michael Thomas, the founder of clean energy research firm Cleanview, has been tracking gas permits for data centers across the country. He calls behind-the-meter power "a crazy acceleration of emissions." He added: "It's almost like we thought we were on the downside of the Industrial Revolution, retiring coal and gas, and now we have a new hump where we're going to rise. That terrifies me in a lot of ways."
 
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Apr 23rd 2026, 23:00 by BeauHD
Apple has fixed a bug that could cause parts of Signal notifications to remain stored on iPhones even after messages disappeared and the app was deleted. "Affected users concerned about push notifications can update their devices to stop what Apple characterized as 'notifications marked for deletion' that 'could be unexpectedly retained on the device,'" reports Ars Technica. "According to Apple, the push notifications should never have been stored, but a 'logging issue' failed to redact data." From the report: Vulnerable users hoping to evade law enforcement surveillance often use encrypted apps like Signal to communicate sensitive information. That's why users felt blindsided when 404 Media reported that Apple was unexpectedly storing push notifications displaying parts of encrypted messages for up to a month. This occurred even after the message was set to disappear and the app itself was deleted from the device. 404 Media flagged the issue after speaking to multiple people who attended a hearing where the FBI testified that it "was able to forensically extract copies of incoming Signal messages from a defendant's iPhone, even after the app was deleted, because copies of the content were saved in the device's push notification database." The shocking revelation came in a case that 404 Media noted was "the first time authorities charged people for alleged 'Antifa' activities after President Trump designated the umbrella term a terrorist organization." "We're grateful to Apple for the quick action here, and for understanding and acting on the stakes of this kind of issue," Signal's post said. "It takes an ecosystem to preserve the fundamental human right to private communication." In their post, Signal confirmed that after users update their devices, "no action is needed for this fix to protect Signal users on iOS. Once you install the patch, all inadvertently-preserved notifications will be deleted and no forthcoming notifications will be preserved for deleted applications."
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Apr 23rd 2026, 22:00 by BeauHD
Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders have approved Paramount Skydance's takeover bid, moving the massive Hollywood merger a step closer to completion. It's not a done deal quite yet, though, as it still faces regulatory scrutiny and fierce opposition from critics who warn it will further concentrate media power. The Associated Press reports: Per a preliminary vote count Thursday, Warner Bros. Discovery said the overwhelming majority of its stakeholders voted in support of selling the entire business to Skydance-owned Paramount for $31 a share. Including debt, the deal is valued at nearly $111 billion based on Warner's current outstanding shares. That means Warner-owned HBO Max, cult-favorite titles like "Harry Potter" and even CNN could soon find themselves under the same roof with Paramount's CBS, "Top Gun" and the Paramount+ streaming service. David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, said in a statement that stockholder approval marks "another key milestone toward completing this historic transaction." Paramount added that it looks forward to closing in the coming months, and "realizing the creation of a next-generation media and entertainment company." [...] Meanwhile, Warner shareholders rejected a separate measure Thursday outlining post-merger payments for company executives.
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Apr 23rd 2026, 21:00 by BeauHD
OpenAI released its new GPT-5.5 model today, which the company calls its "smartest and most intuitive to use model yet, and the next step toward a new way of getting work done on a computer." The Verge reports: OpenAI just released GPT-5.4 last month, but says that the new GPT-5.5 "excels" at tasks like writing and debugging code, doing research online, making spreadsheets and documents, and doing that work across different tools. "Instead of carefully managing every step, you can give GPT-5.5 a messy, multi-part task and trust it to plan, use tools, check its work, navigate through ambiguity, and keep going," according to OpenAI. The company also notes that GPT-5.5 will have its "strongest set of safeguards to date" and can use "significantly fewer" tokens to complete tasks in Codex. GPT-5.5 is rolling out on Thursday for Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise ChatGPT tiers and Codex, with GPT-5.5 Pro coming to Pro, Business, and Enterprise users.
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Apr 23rd 2026, 20:00 by BeauHD
Meta is reportedly cutting about 10% of its workforce, or roughly 8,000 jobs, while closing thousands of open roles it had intended to fill. "We're doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we're making," said Janelle Gale, Meta's chief people officer. The company had almost 79,000 employees at the start of the year. Quartz reports: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has poured resources into building out AI capabilities, directing spending toward model development, chatbot products, and the engineering talent to support them. Meta set its 2026 capital expenditure guidance at $115 billion to $135 billion, almost double the $72 billion it spent in 2025. Employees have been encouraged to use AI agents internally for tasks such as writing code. The early disclosure, Gale explained, was prompted by the fact that information about the cuts had already made its way into press reports before the company was ready to announce. "I know this is unwelcome news and confirming this puts everyone in an uneasy state, but we feel this is the best path forward, given the circumstances," she wrote. According to the memo, severance for affected workers in the United States will cover 18 months of COBRA health insurance premiums, along with a base pay component of 16 weeks that increases by two weeks for each year of service. Departing employees will have access to job placement assistance and, where applicable, help navigating immigration status. Packages outside the U.S. will vary by country. Meta cut between 10% and 15% of its Reality Labs workforce in January, shut down several VR game studios, and shed about 700 positions across at least five divisions in March.
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Apr 23rd 2026, 19:00 by BeauHD
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The French government agency that handles the issuing and management of citizens' identity documents, including national IDs, passports, and immigration documents, confirmed Wednesday that it experienced a data breach. In an announcement, the Agence Nationale des Titres Securises (ANTS) said the data stolen in the breach could include full names, dates and places of birth, mailing and email addresses, and phone numbers on an undisclosed number of citizens. ANTS said the investigation to determine how the breach happened and its impact is ongoing, and people whose data was affected are being notified. ANTS, which said it detected the attack on April 15, did not specify how many people were affected by the breach. But some reporting suggests millions may have had some of their personal information stolen. According to Bleeping Computer, a hacker has advertised the stolen data on a hacking forum, claiming to have a database with 19 million records. The hacker's forum post referenced the same kind of stolen information as mentioned in ANTS' announcement and was published before ANTS publicly disclosed the breach on April 20.
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Apr 23rd 2026, 18:00 by BeauHD
In a recent town hall meeting reported by Bloomberg (paywalled), Apple CEO Tim Cook named the troubled 2012 launch of Apple Maps as his "first really big mistake" in the role. "The product wasn't ready, and we thought it was because we were testing more of local kind of stuff," Cook told staff. MacRumors reports: Reflecting on the debacle, Cook said it was "valuable," noting that he expressed regret to users at the time and suggested they use competing navigation apps instead. "We apologized for it, and we said, 'Go use these other apps. They're better than ours.' And that was some humble pie," Cook said. "But it was the right thing for our users. And so it's an example of keeping the user at the center of the decisions that we made." Cook added: "Now we've got the best map app on the planet. We learned about persistence, and we did exactly the right thing having made the mistake."
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Apr 23rd 2026, 17:00 by BeauHD
Microsoft plans to offer voluntary buyouts for the first time. According to CNBC, "about 7% of U.S. employees are eligible," with the program being "available to U.S. workers at the senior director level and below whose years of employment and age add up to 70 or higher." Further details will be provided on May 7. From the report: Last year Microsoft removed some costs through multiple rounds of layoffs. As of June 2025, the company had 228,000 employees. "Our hope is that this program gives those eligible the choice to take that next step on their own terms, with generous company support," Amy Coleman, Microsoft's executive vice president and chief people officer, wrote in a memo viewed by CNBC. Additionally, Microsoft is adjusting the way it doles out stock to employees for annual rewards. The company will no longer make managers tie stock directly to cash bonuses. This way, "managers have more flexibility to meaningfully recognize high performance," Coleman wrote. The company is also simplifying the review process for managers, so they can choose from five pay options for employees instead of nine.
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