Author: Frank Salvato

Anthropic has agreed to a massive $35 billion cloud-computing deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda, securing roughly 350 megawatts of AI capacity at a new data center being developed in Nueces County, Texas. Nvidia is expected to hold the lease on the facility while Lambda supplies the computing capacity to Anthropic, giving the chipmaker an unusually broad role as investor, hardware supplier and infrastructure participant. The agreement comes as Anthropic rapidly accumulates computing resources to support Claude and Claude Code, adding to other enormous infrastructure commitments, including a recently reported $45 billion cloud-capacity agreement in West Virginia. The deal demonstrates that the…

Fairphone is bringing its Gen 6+ smartphone directly to American consumers with a decidedly different proposition from the prevailing upgrade-and-replace model: a $649.99 Android phone built to be opened, repaired, customized, and kept for years. The device features 12 user-replaceable components—including the battery, display, cameras, speaker, and USB-C port—that can be changed with a Torx T5 screwdriver, while a five-year warranty and promised software support through 2033 strengthen its long-term ownership argument. The Gen 6+ offers 12GB of RAM, 256GB of expandable storage, a Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 processor, a removable 4,415mAh battery, and up to two days of claimed…

A prominent Queens nightclub has banned smart glasses from its premises, warning that anyone who brings the devices inside—whether wearing them or simply carrying them—will be asked to leave and could face a permanent ban. The policy extends the venue’s existing prohibition on photography and video, reflecting mounting concerns that increasingly discreet wearable cameras can record unsuspecting people without meaningful consent. The move comes as smart glasses gain popularity while manufacturers confront criticism over privacy safeguards, including attempts by users to defeat recording-indicator lights. Recent software changes are intended to shut down cameras when those indicators are obstructed, but the…

A tense encounter in San Francisco’s Noe Valley has renewed concerns about how autonomous vehicles respond to vulnerable pedestrians. Ben Fisher was crossing Sanchez and Duncan streets with his 2-year-old daughter when she fell in the crosswalk as a Waymo robotaxi moved into the intersection. Fearing the vehicle had not detected her, Fisher pushed an empty stroller into its path; the vehicle stopped about 13 feet away. Waymo maintains that its system had detected both pedestrians, slowed appropriately, displayed a pedestrian-yield signal and stopped independently of Fisher’s intervention. The disagreement comes amid heightened scrutiny of autonomous-vehicle safety around children, including…

A major new study of nearly 40,000 students is raising concerns about the growing tendency of children and teenagers to use artificial-intelligence chatbots as substitutes for human emotional support. Researchers found that 21.1% of surveyed students had used generative AI for emotional help or relationship advice, and those students were nearly twice as likely to exhibit clinically significant emotional problems as peers who did not use AI for those purposes. The research does not prove that chatbots cause psychological distress—emotionally troubled young people may be more inclined to seek AI assistance in the first place—but the relationship remained significant even…

Artificial intelligence promises to remove an extraordinary amount of drudgery from human life. It can summarize books, solve equations, write computer code, research historical questions, draft reports, translate languages, and explain complicated subjects in seconds. Properly used, these capabilities could represent one of the greatest expansions of human productivity since the Industrial Revolution. But there is an uncomfortable question buried beneath all that promise: How are future generations supposed to become intelligent if artificial intelligence performs the very tasks through which intelligence is developed? Human beings are not born knowing how to reason. Intelligence may have biological foundations, but intellectual…

NASA’s $4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 30, beginning a mission expected to transform scientists’ understanding of dark energy, dark matter and planets beyond the solar system. Roman is traveling roughly one million miles to the Sun-Earth L2 region, where it will conduct extraordinarily broad infrared surveys using a field of view more than 100 times larger than Hubble’s while surveying the sky roughly 1,000 times faster. Its 300-megapixel Wide Field Instrument will map billions of galaxies and search for thousands of exoplanets,…

Google is quietly working to transform its relationship with Hollywood by seeking licensing arrangements with major studios for characters, film libraries, and other intellectual property that could strengthen its generative-AI systems. The effort comes as studios simultaneously explore AI’s cost-saving potential and fight unauthorized use of copyrighted material. Google has already deepened its entertainment ties through a $75 million investment in A24 and a partnership with Darren Aronofsky’s Primordial Soup, while its Veo and Flow technologies are increasingly aimed at professional filmmakers. The emerging contest is therefore about more than AI-generated video: it concerns who controls Hollywood’s intellectual property, how…

San Francisco’s artificial-intelligence boom is producing a familiar side effect: a rapidly tightening housing market that is putting growing pressure on longtime tenants. Eviction notices increased 44% during the most recent 12-month period tracked, reaching nearly 1,500, while negotiated tenant buyouts have also risen sharply. At the same time, median rents have climbed 26% over 12 months, with a one-bedroom apartment approaching $3,900 per month and vacancy rates falling to roughly 2%. The numbers remain below the eviction-notice peaks associated with earlier technology booms, but tenant-assistance organizations report substantially greater demand for help. The underlying problem extends beyond AI itself:…

Meta’s agreement to pay up to $17.1 billion to resolve sweeping state claims over Facebook and Instagram marks a potentially historic turning point in the government’s treatment of social media companies. The settlement follows allegations that Meta deliberately employed addictive design features, exposed children and teenagers to serious mental-health risks, improperly collected minors’ data, and misled parents and the public about platform safety. Beyond the unprecedented financial penalty, the agreement requires substantial changes to how young people use Meta’s platforms, including time limits, nighttime restrictions, school-hour notification controls, stronger age verification and parental safeguards. The settlement’s resemblance to the state-led…