The Verge
Massive new data centers are the physical foundation for tech companies’ hopes and dreams for AI. But the rush to expand warehouses full of energy-hungry servers has also kicked up fights across the world over their impact on power grids, utility bills, nearby communities, and the environment.
Summary drawn from The Verge's own description of the story.
Ars Technica
Russia tries to fix exposed digital infrastructure as data center war backfires. Russian tech companies are scrambling to harden and hide their data centers underground after Ukrainian drone strikes damaged facilities housing AI supercomputers and disrupted cloud services for millions of Russian users.
Ars Technica
A new model suggests Mars may host ice-forming physics never directly observed before. Every morning during the Martian spring and summer, a thin and extremely long cloud emerges, only to disappear again.
Wired
Servers turn most of their electricity into heat, and Germany's 2023 Energy Efficiency Act required new data centers to reuse part of it, often by feeding it into municipal heating systems. The government cut that down to a feasibility check after operators said it blocked projects, as Europe weighs AI ambitions against a pledge to cut emissions 55 percent by the end of the decade.
The Verge
Small modular reactors are factory-made nuclear plants designed to be built in repeatable units instead of one huge bespoke station. Amazon, X-energy and American Electric Power plan 12 Xe-100 reactors at a former coal site in Indiana, together rated at 960 megawatts for the grid and Amazon's data centers. The reactor design is still being licensed.