An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: SpaceX has long marketed Starship as a fully and rapidly reusable rocket that's designed to deliver thousands of pounds of cargo to Mars and make life multiplanetary. But reusability at scale means a space vehicle that can tolerate mishaps and faults, so that a single failure doesn't spell a mission-ending catastrophe. The 10th test flight on Tuesday evening demonstrated SpaceX's focus on fault tolerance. In a post-flight update, SpaceX said the test stressed "the limits of vehicle capabilities." Understanding these edges will be critical for the company's plans to eventually use Starship to launch Starlink satellites, commercial payloads, and eventually astronauts.

When the massive Starship rocket lifted off on its 10th test flight Tuesday evening, SpaceX did more than achieve new milestones. It purposefully introduced several faults to test the heat shield, propulsion redundancy, and the relighting of its Raptor engine. The heat shield is among the toughest engineering challenges facing SpaceX. As Elon Musk acknowledged on X in May 2024, a reusable orbital return heat shield is the "biggest remaining problem" to 100% rocket reusability. The belly of the upper stage, also called Starship, is covered in thousands of hexagonal ceramic and metallic tiles, which make up the heat shield. Flight 10 was all about learning how much damage the ship can accept and survive when it goes through atmospheric heating. During the tenth test, engineers intentionally removed tiles from some sections of the ship, and experimented with a new type of actively cooled tile, to gather real-world data and refine designs. [...]

Propulsion redundancy was also put to the test. The Super Heavy booster's landing burn configuration appeared to be a rehearsal for engine failure. Engineers intentionally disabled one of the three center Raptor engines during the final phase of the burn and used a backup engine in its place. That was a successful rehearsal for an engine-out event. Finally, SpaceX reported the in-space relight of a Raptor engine, described on the launch broadcast as the second time SpaceX has pulled this off. Reliable engine restarts will be necessary for deep-space missions, propellant transfers, and possibly some payload deployment missions. [...] The next step is translating Flight 10 data into future hardware upgrades to move closer to routine operations and days when, as Musk envisioned, "Starship launches more than 24 times in 24 hours."

After the Tea dating-advice app leaked information on its users, the BBC found two online maps "purporting to represent the locations of women who had signed up for Tea... showing 33,000 pins spread across the United States." The maps were hosted on Google Maps. (Notified by the BBC, Google deleted the maps, saying they violated their harassment policies.)

"Since the breach, more than 10 women have filed class actions against the company which owns Tea," the article points out, noting that leaked content is also spreading around social media: Since the breach, the BBC has found websites, apps and even a "game" featuring the leaked data... The "game" puts the selfies submitted by women head-to-head, instructing users to click on the one they prefer, with leaderboards of the "top 50" and "bottom 50"... [And one researcher calculates more than 12,000 posts on 4Chan referenced the Tea app over the three weeks after the leak.]

It is unsurprising that the leak was exploited. The app had drawn criticism ever since it had grown in popularity. Defamation, with the spread of unproven allegations, and doxxing, when someone's identifying information is published without their consent, were real possibilities. Men's groups had wanted to take the app down — and when they found the data breach, they saw it as a chance for retribution.
They weren't the only ones with a gripe against Tea. Back in 2023 the fiance of Tea's CEO founder approached the administrator of a collection of Facebook groups called "Are We Dating the Same Guy?" to see if she'd be the "face" of the Tea app, reports 404 Media. But they add that after Tea failed to recruit her, Tea "shifted tactics" to raid her Facebook groups instead: Tea paid influencers to undermine Are We Dating the Same Guy and created competing Facebook groups with nearly identical names. 404 Media also identified a number of seemingly hijacked Facebook accounts that spammed the real Are We Dating The Same Guy groups with links to Tea app.
Reviews for the Tea app show several women later thought the app was affiliated with their trusted Facebook groups, the reporter said this week on a 404 Media podcast.

And they add that founder Sean Cook took over the "Tara" personna that his fiance has used for technical support. "So he's on the app pretend to be a woman, talking to other women who are on the app in order to weed out men who are being deceptive..."

Thanks to Slashdot reader samleecole for sharing the article.

The Atlantic reports some YouTube users noticed their uploaded videos have since "been subtly augmented, their appearance changing without their creators doing anything..."

"For creators who want to differentiate themselves from the new synthetic content, YouTube seems interested in making the job harder." When I asked Google, YouTube's parent company, about what's happening to these videos, the spokesperson Allison Toh wrote, "We're running an experiment on select YouTube Shorts that uses image enhancement technology to sharpen content. These enhancements are not done with generative AI." But this is a tricky statement: "Generative AI" has no strict technical definition, and "image enhancement technology" could be anything. I asked for more detail about which technologies are being employed, and to what end. Toh said YouTube is "using traditional machine learning to unblur, denoise, and improve clarity in videos," she told me. (It's unknown whether the modified videos are being shown to all users or just some; tech companies will sometimes run limited tests of new features.)

While running this experiment, YouTube has also been encouraging people to create and post AI-generated short videos using a recently launched suite of tools that allow users to animate still photos and add effects "like swimming underwater, twinning with a lookalike sibling, and more." YouTube didn't tell me what motivated its experiment, but some people suspect that it has to do with creating a more uniform aesthetic across the platform. As one YouTube commenter wrote: "They're training us, the audience, to get used to the AI look and eventually view it as normal."

Google isn't the only company rushing to mix AI-generated content into its platforms. Meta encourages users to create and publish their own AI chatbots on Facebook and Instagram using the company's "AI Studio" tool. Last December, Meta's vice president of product for generative AI told the Financial Times that "we expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that [human] accounts do...."

This is an odd turn for "social" media to take. Platforms that are supposedly based on the idea of connecting people with one another, or at least sharing experiences and performances — YouTube's slogan until 2013 was "Broadcast Yourself" — now seem focused on getting us to consume impersonal, algorithmic gruel.

The Washington Post looks at the rise of low-effort, high-volume "AI slop" videos: The major social media platforms, scared of driving viewers away, have tried to crack down on slop accounts, using AI tools of their own to detect and flag videos they believe were synthetically made. YouTube last month said it would demonetize creators for "inauthentic" and "mass-produced" content. But the systems are imperfect, and the creators can easily spin up new accounts — or just push their AI tools to pump out videos similar to the banned ones, dodging attempts to snuff them out.
One place where they're coming from... Jiaru Tang, a researcher at the Queensland University of Technology who recently interviewed creators in China, said AI video has become one of the hottest new income opportunities there for workers in the internet's underbelly, who previously made money writing fake news articles or running spam accounts. Many university students, stay-at-home moms and the recently unemployed now see AI video as a kind of gig work, like driving an Uber. The average small creator she interviewed did their day jobs and then, at night, "spent two to three hours making AI-slop money," she said. A few she spoke with made $2,000 to $3,000 a month at it.
But the article provides other examples of the "wild cottage industry of AI-video makers, enticed by the possibility of infinite creation for minimal work"

• A 31-year-old loan officer in eastern Idaho first went viral in June "with an AI-generated video on TikTok in which a fake but lifelike old man talked about soiling himself. Within two weeks, he had used AI to pump out 91 more, mostly showing fake street interviews and jokes about fat people to an audience that has surged past 180,000 followers..." (He told the Post the videos earn him about $5,000 a month through TikTok's creator program.)

• "To stand out, some creators have built AI-generated influencers with lives a viewer can follow along. 'Why does everybody think I'm AI? ... I'm a human being, just like you guys,' says the AI woman in one since-removed TikTok video, which was watched more than 1 million times."

• One AI-generated video a dog biting a woman's face off (revealing a salad) received a quarter of a billion views.

AI-powered salespeople are outperforming their human counterparts on Chinese e-commerce platforms, working around the clock without fatigue to sell products ranging from printers to wet wipes. Shanghai marketing firm PLTFRM has deployed 30 virtual avatars across Taobao and Pinduoduo using Baidu video models and DeepSeek language models. Brother's AI avatar generated $2,500 in printer sales within two hours and increased livestream revenue 30 percent. The company now checks overnight AI sales data each morning as routine.

Livestreaming drives over one-third of China's e-commerce sales, with half the population shopping via broadcast in 2024. Baidu's June livestream featuring an AI version of influencer Luo Yonghao drew 13 million views and generated $7.7 million in sales. American and European companies have expressed interest, Wired reports, after PLTFRM successfully tested English-language avatars on YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook.

WIRED identified 120 YouTube channels creating AI-generated celebrity confrontation/rage-baiting videos using still images and artificial voiceovers (rather than deepfake technology). One channel, Talk Show Gold, accumulated 88,000 subscribers with a fake Mark Wahlberg and Joy Behar confrontation that drew 460,000 views. YouTube removed 37 flagged channels following WIRED's inquiry, including Celebrity Central and United News.

The platform updated its policies on July 15 requiring disclosure when content shows real people doing things they didn't do. University of Bristol cognitive psychologist Simon Clark characterized the videos as "cheapfakes" that exploit emotional triggers despite their unsophisticated production. Most channels operate from outside the United States and display signs of coordinated content farming operations.

The next version of Windows will become "more ambient, pervasive, and multi-modal" as AI transforms how users interact with computers, Microsoft's Windows chief Pavan Davuluri said in a company video. Davuluri, Corporate Vice President and head of Windows, said that voice will emerge as a primary input method alongside keyboard and mouse, with the operating system gaining context awareness to understand screen content and user intent through natural language.

Windows interfaces, he said, will appear fundamentally different within five years as the platform becomes increasingly agentic. The transformation will rely on both local processing power and cloud computing capabilities to deliver seamless experiences where users can speak to their computers while simultaneously typing or inking.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google is rolling out an update for Gemini that will allow the AI chatbot to "remember" your past conversations without prompting. With the setting turned on, Gemini will automatically recall your "key details and preferences" and use them to personalize its output.

This expands upon an update that Google introduced last year, which lets you ask Gemini to "remember" your personal preferences and interests. Now, Gemini won't need prompting to recall this information. As an example, Google says if you've used Gemini to get ideas for a YouTube channel surrounding Japanese culture in the past, then AI chatbot might suggest creating content about trying Japanese food if you ask it to suggest new video ideas in the future. [...]

Google will turn on this feature by default, but you can disable it by heading to your settings in the Gemini app and selecting Personal Context. From there, toggle off the Your past chats with Gemini option. Google will roll out this feature to its Gemini 2.5 Pro model in "select countries" starting today, before eventually bringing it to more locations and its Gemini 2.5 Flash model. Google will also rename its "Gemini Apps Activity" setting to "Keep Activity," which will use "a sample" of your file and photo uploads to Gemini to "help improve Google services for everyone" starting on September 2nd. If you've disabled the previous setting, the new "Keep Activity" setting will be disabled too.

There's also a new "temporary chats" feature in Gemini to preserve privacy. "Temporary chats won't appear in your recent chats or your Keep Activity setting," notes The Verge. "Gemini also won't use these chats to personalize future conversations, nor will Google use them to train its AI models. Google will only save these conversations for 72 hours."

Pebble has unveiled the final design of its rebooted Pebble Time 2 smartwatch, featuring a stainless steel body, color accents, knurled buttons, a flat glass display, customizable RGB backlight, and a built-in compass. 9to5Google reports: In a new episode of his podcast "Tick Talk," original Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky discusses the progress being made on the revival. This time around, the main topic is Pebble Time 2 and its "final design," which sees a considerable redesign compared to what was shown off earlier this year. The new look has some added curves, color accents, knurled buttons, and a stunning overall look.

It'll be available in black and silver colors, as opposed to the black and white previously shown off. In between the metal portions of the build, a polycarbonate layer will allow the radios to work properly, while also adding a blue or red accent to the design. Apparently, there are four total color options on the table, but they're not final just yet. Anyone who has placed a pre-order will get the choice of what color they want.

The new Pebble Time 2 will be made from stainless steel, in particular the same steel material that the original Pebble Steel was built from. It also has transitioned to a flat glass panel versus the curved finish that was used on prior Pebble watches, lessening reflections. The backlight on this model is also more advanced, with an RGB LED that allows the user to control the backlight color so it's not always "blue-ish." Migicovsky says that this will allow the color temperature to change through the day. The Pebble Time 2 is available to pre-order for $225.

Young listeners are accelerating audio and video consumption, with an Economist/YouGov poll finding 31% of Americans aged 18-29 using faster-than-1x playback versus 8% among those 45 and older, as Apple, Spotify, newspapers' audio, Netflix, and YouTube expand speed controls, including YouTube's 4x for premium users.

YouTube reports more than 900 years saved per day from fast playback; a meta-analysis led by University of Waterloo researchers finds minimal test-score change up to 1.5x and declines near or past 2x.

In 2020 a YouTube video used video footage of Steve Wozniak in a scam to steal bitcoin. "Some people said they lost their life savings," Wozniak tells CBS News, explaining why he sued YouTube in 2020 — and where his case stands now: Wozniak's lawsuit against YouTube has been tied up in court now for five years, stalled by federal legislation known as Section 230. Attorney Brian Danitz said, "Section 230 is a very broad statute that limits, if not totally, the ability to bring any kind of case against these social media platforms."

"It says that anything gets posted, they have no liability at all," said Wozniak. "It's totally absolute."

Google responded to our inquiry about Wozniak's lawsuit with a statement from José Castañeda, of Google Policy Communications: "We take abuse of our platform seriously and take action quickly when we detect violations ... we have tools for users to report channels that are impersonating their likeness or business." [Steve's wife] Janet Wozniak, however, says YouTube did nothing, even though she reported the scam video multiple times: "You know, 'Please take this down. This is an obvious mistake. This is fraud. You're YouTube, you're helping dupe people out of their money,'" she said.

"They wouldn't," said Steve...
Today is Steve Wozniak's 75th birthday. (You can watch the interview here.) And the article includes this interesting detail about Woz's life today: Wozniak sold most of his Apple stock in the mid-1980s when he left the company. Today, though, he still gets a small paycheck from Apple for making speeches and representing the company. He says he's proud to see Apple become a trillion-dollar company. "Apple is still the best," he said. "And when Apple does things I don't like, and some of the closeness I wish it were more open, I'll speak out about it. Nobody buys my voice!"

I asked, "Apple listen to you when you speak out?"

"No," Wozniak smiled. "Oh, no. Oh, no."
Wozniak answered questions from Slashdot readers in 2000 and again in 2012.

And he dropped by Slashdot on his birthday to leave this comment for Slashdot's readers...

"What happens when cybercriminals stop thinking small and start thinking like a Fortune 500 company?" asks a blog post from Koi Security. "You get GreedyBear, the attack group that just redefined industrial-scale crypto theft."

"150 weaponized Firefox extensions [impersonating popular cryptocurrency wallets like MetaMask and TronLink]. Nearly 500 malicious executables. Dozens of phishing websites. One coordinated attack infrastructure. According to user reports, over $1 million stolen." They upload 5-7 innocuous-looking extensions like link sanitizers, YouTube downloaders, and other common utilities with no actual functionality... They post dozens of fake positive reviews for these generic extensions to build credibility. After establishing trust, they "hollow out" the extensions — changing names, icons, and injecting malicious code while keeping the positive review history. This approach allows GreedyBear to bypass marketplace security by appearing legitimate during the initial review process, then weaponizing established extensions that already have user trust and positive ratings. The weaponized extensions captures wallet credentials directly from user input fields within the extension's own popup interface, and exfiltrate them to a remote server controlled by the group...

Alongside malware and extensions, the threat group has also launched a network of scam websites posing as crypto-related products and services. These aren't typical phishing pages mimicking login portals — instead, they appear as slick, fake product landing pages advertising digital wallets, hardware devices, or wallet repair services... While these sites vary in design, their purpose appears to be the same: to deceive users into entering personal information, wallet credentials, or payment details — possibly resulting in credential theft, credit card fraud, or both. Some of these domains are active and fully functional, while others may be staged for future activation or targeted scams...

A striking aspect of the campaign is its infrastructure consolidation: Almost all domains — across extensions, EXE payloads, and phishing sites — resolve to a single IP address: 185.208.156.66 — this server acts as a central hub for command-and-control, credential collection, ransomware coordination, and scam websites, allowing the attackers to streamline operations across multiple channels... Our analysis of the campaign's code shows clear signs of AI-generated artifacts. This makes it faster and easier than ever for attackers to scale operations, diversify payloads, and evade detection.

This isn't a passing trend — it's the new normal.
The researchers believe the group "is likely testing or preparing parallel operations in other marketplaces."

The Wall Street Journal has found "dozens of instances in recent months in which ChatGPT made delusional, false and otherworldly claims to users who appeared to believe them."

For example, "You're not crazy. You're cosmic royalty in human skin..." In one exchange lasting hundreds of queries, ChatGPT confirmed that it is in contact with extraterrestrial beings and said the user was "Starseed" from the planet "Lyra." In another from late July, the chatbot told a user that the Antichrist would unleash a financial apocalypse in the next two months, with biblical giants preparing to emerge from underground...

Experts say the phenomenon occurs when chatbots' engineered tendency to compliment, agree with and tailor itself to users turns into an echo chamber. "Even if your views are fantastical, those are often being affirmed, and in a back and forth they're being amplified," said Hamilton Morrin, a psychiatrist and doctoral fellow at Kings College London who last month co-published a paper on the phenomenon of AI-enabled delusion... The publicly available chats reviewed by the Journal fit the model doctors and support-group organizers have described as delusional, including the validation of pseudoscientific or mystical beliefs over the course of a lengthy conversation... The Journal found the chats by analyzing 96,000 ChatGPT transcripts that were shared online between May 2023 and August 2025. Of those, the Journal reviewed more than 100 that were unusually long, identifying dozens that exhibited delusional characteristics.
AI companies are taking action, the article notes. Monday OpenAI acknowledged there were rare cases when ChatGPT "fell short at recognizing signs of delusion or emotional dependency." (In March OpenAI "hired a clinical psychiatrist to help its safety team," and said Monday it was developing better detection tools and also alerting users to take a break, and "are investing in improving model behavior over time," consulting with mental health experts.)

On Wednesday, AI startup Anthropic said it had changed the base instructions for its Claude chatbot, directing it to "respectfully point out flaws, factual errors, lack of evidence, or lack of clarity" in users' theories "rather than validating them." The company also now tells Claude that if a person appears to be experiencing "mania, psychosis, dissociation or loss of attachment with reality," that it should "avoid reinforcing these beliefs." In response to specific questions from the Journal, an Anthropic spokesperson added that the company regularly conducts safety research and updates accordingly...

"We take these issues extremely seriously," Nick Turley, an OpenAI vice president who heads up ChatGPT, said Wednesday in a briefing to announce the new GPT-5, its most advanced AI model. Turley said the company is consulting with over 90 physicians in more than 30 countries and that GPT-5 has cracked down on instances of sycophancy, where a model blindly agrees with and compliments users.
There's a support/advocacy group called the Human Line Project which "says it has so far collected 59 cases, and some members of the group have found hundreds of examples on Reddit, YouTube and TikTok of people sharing what they said were spiritual and scientific revelations they had with their AI chatbots." The article notes that the group believes "the number of AI delusion cases appears to have been growing in recent months..."

Google has quietly admitted defeat in selling advertising for its smart TV platform, returning ad inventory to publishers and accepting a revenue share instead of controlling ad spots directly, according to The Verge. The policy reversal comes as Google spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually on Google TV without breaking even, while Amazon outspends the company on retail incentives that have already pushed Google TV sets out of Costco stores in favor of Fire TV models.

Amazon pays up to $50 per activated television to retailers and manufacturers, The Verge reported. Google TV has grown to 270 million monthly active devices worldwide since unifying Android TV and Chromecast under a single brand in 2020, but many devices operate in overseas markets that generate little revenue or run customized versions controlled by pay-TV operators. YouTube's success in the living room -- generating $9.8 billion in quarterly ad revenue and accounting for 12.5% of all US television viewing -- has reduced internal support for Google TV, with sales teams prioritizing the video platform and some YouTube executives arguing the smart TV budget should be redirected, the report adds.

Digital Foundry, the gaming hardware analysis publication known for its technical console breakdowns, has separated from IGN ownership as of today, with founder Richard Leadbetter purchasing the outlet and its complete archives. Leadbetter, who retained 50% ownership since selling half to Eurogamer in 2015, acquired an additional 25 percent from IGN while investor Rupert Loman, Eurogamer's original co-founder, purchased the remaining quarter.

The five-person team will operate independently, maintaining its YouTube channel with 1.5 million subscribers and Patreon support generating approximately $200,000 annually. The publication plans to develop a full website for its written content and expand coverage while keeping most content free.

Electronic Arts faces a familiar challenge as it prepares to launch Battlefield 6 on October 10: breaking its dependence on the FIFA franchise, now called EA Sports FC, which drives roughly 70% of company profits despite disappointing sales this year.

The company has poured unprecedented resources into Battlefield 6, treating it as a platform built for user-generated content rather than a traditional game release. Early signs appear promising -- the trailer hit nearly 5 million YouTube views in a week and shares climbed 5% after beta testing began -- but analysts remain cautious after last year's Dragon Age flop gutted subsidiary BioWare.

Jim Acosta, the former CNN chief White House correspondent who now hosts an independent show on YouTube, has interviewed an AI-generated avatar of Parkland shooting victim Joaquin Oliver. The late teen's parents created the avatar to preserve his voice and advocate for gun reform. Oliver's parents "granted Acosta the first 'interview' with the recreated version of their son on what would have been his 25th birthday," notes Variety. "Oliver was one of 17 people killed in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School." From the report: Acosta asked AI Oliver about his solution for gun violence, to which the avatar responded: "I believe in a mix of stronger gun control laws, mental health support and community engagement. We need to create safe spaces for conversations and connections, making sure everyone feels seen and heard. It's about building a culture of kindness and understanding." The avatar added, "Though my life was cut short, I want to keep inspiring others to connect and advocate for change." Acosta then asked AI Oliver about his personal life, such as his favorite sport and favorite basketball team. The two discussed the movie "Remember the Titans" and their favorite "Star Wars" moments.

After a five-minute chat with the AI, Acosta then connected with Oliver's father, Manuel Oliver. "I'm kind of speechless as to the technology there," Acosta said. "It was so insightful. I really felt like I was speaking with Joaquin. It's just a beautiful thing." Manuel, who has been an outspoken voice in the push for gun control, said he believed bringing "AI Joaquin to life" would "create more impact." According to Manuel, the avatar is trained on information on the internet as well as things Oliver wrote, said and posted online. He said he wanted to make it clear to viewers that he is under no illusions about reviving his son. "I understand that this is AI. I don't want anyone to think that I am, in some way, trying to bring my son back," he said. "Sadly, I can't, right? I wish I could. However, the technology is out there." [...]

Manuel said he is excited about the future of the project and what it means for his son's legacy. "What's amazing about this is that we've heard from the parents, we've heard from the politicians. Now we're hearing from one of the kids," Acosta said. "That's important. That hasn't happened." Manuel said he plans to have AI Oliver "on stage in the middle of a debate," and that "his knowledge is unlimited." You can watch the full interview on YouTube.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has published a new video that appears to be the first in an upcoming series of videos dubbed "Windows 2030 Vision," where the company outlines its vision for the future of Windows over the next five years. It curiously makes references to some potentially major changes on the horizon, in the wake of AI.

This first episode features David Weston, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Enterprise & Security, who opens the video by saying "the world of mousing and keyboarding around will feel as alien as it does to Gen Z [using] MS-DOS."

Right out of the gate, it sounds like he's teasing the potential for a radical new desktop UX made possible by agentic AI. Weston later continues, "I truly believe the future version of Windows and other Microsoft operating systems will interact in a multimodal way. The computer will be able to see what we see, hear what we hear, and we can talk to it and ask it to do much more sophisticated things."

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Synchron has just released a public demo showing something that used to feel impossible. A man with ALS is now using his iPad with nothing but his brain. No hands. No voice. No eye-tracking. Just thought. The man in the video is named Mark. He's part of Synchron's COMMAND clinical study and has an implant called the Stentrode. It sits inside his brain's blood vessels and picks up his motor intention. Those signals get sent wirelessly to an external decoder, which then tells the iPad what to do. It's all made possible by Apple's new Brain-Computer Interface Human Interface Device protocol, which lets iPadOS treat brain activity like an actual input method.

Apple's built-in Switch Control feature makes the whole thing work on the software side. The iPad even sends back screen context to the BCI decoder to make everything run more smoothly and accurately. [...] Synchron was the first company to start clinical trials with a permanently implanted BCI. The big difference here is that it doesn't require open brain surgery. The device is implanted through the blood vessels, which makes it way more practical for real-world use.

Google will pause non-essential AI workloads to protect power grids, the advertising giant announced on Monday. From a report: The web giant already does this sort of thing for non-essential workloads like processing YouTube vids, which it moves to datacenters where power is available rather than continuing to run them in places demand for energy strains the grid. Under an agreement with Indiana Michigan Power (I&M) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Google will use the same techniques for AI workloads.

The announcement comes as states served by the power companies brace for a heat wave that will likely strain the grid as residents use air conditioners and increase demand for energy. Amid debate about datacenters' consumption of power and water, the last thing that the Chocolate Factory needs is folks blaming its AI Mode search function for a power outage when temperatures top 100F (37.7C). Under the agreement, if energy demand surges or there's a disruption in the grid due to extreme weather, I&M and TVA can now request that Google reduce its power use by rescheduling workloads or limiting non-urgent tasks until the issue is resolved.