Category: Data

May 8, 2025

AI leaders in the US seek better access to energy and govt data

Microsoft and other AI market leaders will on Thursday urge US lawmakers to streamline federal permitting for artificial intelligence energy needs and open more government data sets for AI training, according to written testimony. “America’s advanced economy relies on 50-year-old infrastructure that cannot meet the increasing electricity demands driven by AI, reshoring of manufacturing, and…

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May 7, 2025

US court clash ends in $259m defeat for Israeli spyware firm

Meta Platforms won a US$168 million ($259 million) verdict against the Israeli surveillance firm NSO, the company said on Tuesday, capping a six-year arm wrestling match between America’s biggest social networking platform and the world’s best-known spyware company. Meta had already won a December ruling finding that NSO had unlawfully exploited a bug in its…

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May 6, 2025

Govt’s data sharing review revives private sector path

A review of the national public sector data sharing scheme has put the inclusion of the private sector, law enforcement and compliance activity back on the table, three years after they were locked out. The higher risk participants could be added amid slow uptake of a scheme that promised to unlock billions in value by…

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April 29, 2025

Health dept sticks with big three multi-cloud

The federal Health department will continue migrating on-premise systems to Amazon Web Services after striking a new $22 million three-year hosting deal with the US hyperscaler through its opaque single sourcing deal. The Department of Health and Aged Care’s (DHAC) new AWS contract will kick in next month, weeks before its current cloud contract with…

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April 28, 2025

Brazil to offer tax breaks to lure data centre investments

Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad will travel to the US this week with a plan to lure big tech data centres to his country by exempting the related technology investments from federal taxes. Mr Haddad’s trip to California on Friday includes a May 6 breakfast with tech executives in Palo Alto, where he will pitch…

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April 25, 2025

By Undermining Federal Data, Trump Is Following an Authoritarian Playbook

One of the defining features of Donald Trump’s second term is an aggressive drive to control the narrative, in part by burying inconvenient evidence. A key example is his regime’s multi-pronged assault on federal data infrastructure and independent institutions that safeguard public knowledge. In just its first hundred days, Trump’s regime has laid siege to federal data agencies…

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This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
April 25, 2025

“Musk Is Scamming the City of Memphis”: Meet Two Brothers Fighting Colossus, Musk’s xAI Data Center

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.
April 25, 2025

“Musk Is Scamming the City of Memphis”: Meet Two Brothers Fighting Colossus, Musk’s xAI Data Center

We speak with two brothers who are fighting Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI over its massive data center in Memphis, Tennessee, used to run its chatbot Grok. The facility is next to historically Black neighborhoods and is powered by 35 pollution-spewing methane gas turbines the company is using without legal permits. Musk says he wants to continue expanding the project.

“What’s happening in Memphis is a human rights violation,” says KeShaun Pearson, executive director of the environmental justice organization Memphis Community Against Pollution. “Elon Musk and xAI are violating our human right to clean air and a clean, healthy environment.” His brother Justin J. Pearson, a Tennessee state representative for Memphis, says Musk is “perpetuating environmental racism” by ignoring the wishes of local residents: “They are abusing our community, and they’re exploiting us.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.
April 25, 2025

“Musk Is Scamming the City of Memphis”: Meet Two Brothers Fighting Colossus, Musk’s xAI Data Center

We speak with two brothers who are fighting Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI over its massive data center in Memphis, Tennessee, used to run its chatbot Grok. The facility is next to historically Black neighborhoods and is powered by 35 pollution-spewing methane gas turbines the company is using without legal permits. Musk says he wants to continue expanding the project.

“What’s happening in Memphis is a human rights violation,” says KeShaun Pearson, executive director of the environmental justice organization Memphis Community Against Pollution. “Elon Musk and xAI are violating our human right to clean air and a clean, healthy environment.” His brother Justin J. Pearson, a Tennessee state representative for Memphis, says Musk is “perpetuating environmental racism” by ignoring the wishes of local residents: “They are abusing our community, and they’re exploiting us.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.
April 23, 2025

Google backtracks on cookies, again

Google has backflipped on a promise to allow users to easily opt out of third-party cookies in its market leading browser, announcing overnight it will not introduce the standalone prompt it flagged last year. It means the ability to opt out of third-party cookies – the tiny packets of code that track users’ activity across…

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April 15, 2025

NSW Police turn off facial recognition in suspect ID system

Facial recognition technology used within a system for identifying potential suspects for more than a decade has been deactivated by NSW Police amid concerns over its accuracy. The country’s largest police force moved to switch off the legacy PhotoTrac facial recognition capability within the Suspect Identification System, a platform used to create photographic lineups, in…

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April 14, 2025

Defence calls in the big guns for cloud migration help

Defence has contracted AWS and Microsoft to help with its migration and multi-cloud environment, inking fresh limited tender deals with the US hyperscalers worth more than $12 million. The cloud work comes after a significant shift in facilities last year when Defence migrated out of a Sydney data centre over concerns about Chinese ownership, and…

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April 14, 2025

Defence calls in the big guns for cloud migration help

Defence has contracted AWS and Microsoft to help with its migration and multi-cloud environment, inking fresh limited tender deals with the US hyperscalers worth more than $12 million. The cloud work comes after a significant shift in facilities last year when Defence migrated out of a Sydney data centre over concerns about Chinese ownership, and…

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April 14, 2025

AI and Australia’s missing data centre strategy

In the absence of meaningful activity from the Industry portfolio in coordinating and accelerating investment in AI infrastructure, Australia’s next federal government should consider moving responsibility for a national data centre strategy to Treasury. With tens of billions of dollars of inward investment at stake, together with the speed at which the global AI and…

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April 11, 2025

AI infrastructure debate needs nuance and consultation

With so much global activity, it is both logical and encouraging to see increased recognition of the role and importance of data centres as essential digital infrastructure. Australia has much to gain from taking a leading position on data centre development, not least in enabling capacity for productivity, economic growth and the renewable transition. Therefore,…

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April 9, 2025

Europeans move to supercharge AI capability, ease regulation

The European Union will spend €200 billion (A$366 billion) supercharging its AI development and deployment capabilities, investing in a new generation of AI data centres and relaxing AI regulation. The massive investment announced on Wednesday is aimed at improving Europe’s competitive position in artificial intelligence with the US, boosting the continent’s domestic AI capacity and…

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April 9, 2025

Acting IRS Chief Will Reportedly Resign Over Taxpayer Data Sharing Deal With ICE

The acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service is reportedly expected to resign over a new agreement that would allow the tax agency to give immigration authorities access to highly sensitive data to aid U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawless mass deportation campaign. Numerous outlets reported late Tuesday that Acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause and other top agency officials…

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This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
April 7, 2025

US grapples with power demands of Big Tech data centres

US electric utilities are fielding massive requests for new power capacity as Big Tech scours the country for viable locations for new data centres to keep up with the compute demands of AI. A survey of 13 major US electric utility earnings transcripts found nearly half have received inquiries from data centre companies for volumes…

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March 31, 2025

Australia’s renewables can power AI and slash energy costs

As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) reshapes everything from healthcare to productivity, it’s triggering a global scramble – not just for data and chips, but for electricity. Can Australia’s renewable energy resources provide a solution? In the US and Europe, data centre electricity demand is projected to grow by 400 terawatt-hours between 2024 and 2030 –…

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March 27, 2025

CommBank heads offshore in search of AI leadership

The Commonwealth Bank is heading offshore to get closer to the world leading technology developments – particularly in artificial intelligence – unveiling plans for a dedicated tech hub in Seattle. The Seattle Tech Hub is a combination of a centre of excellence and high-end training facility, put together to get access to expertise not available…

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March 26, 2025

‘Kind of useless’: CSIRO on Microsoft AI and the ‘productivity paradox’

A CSIRO trial of Microsoft’s artificial intelligence tool revealed it can save time by automating low level activities, but its difficulties in more complex tasks and missing domain knowledge led to a “productivity paradox” that has complicated a decision about wider deployment. Gains in summarising meetings, email drafting and information retrieval were offset by a…

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March 26, 2025

In Europe, investors say clock is ticking for AI adopters to deliver

European companies that are spending big on generative artificial intelligence need to start showing returns on their massive outlays by next year, or risk investors losing patience after they paid sky-high prices to join the market boom. AI-exposed stocks have been caught in a down-draught with broader equity markets in recent weeks as recession fears…

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March 26, 2025

Anthropic wins early round in music AI copyright case

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic convinced a California federal judge on Tuesday to reject a preliminary bid to block it from using lyrics owned by Universal Music Group and other music publishers to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude. US District Judge Eumi Lee said that the publishers’ request was too broad and that they failed to…

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March 21, 2025

Husic’s AI regulatory plans upended by freewheeling Trump

The federal government has hit pause on plans to regulate AI through the imposition of mandatory guardrails, upended by a fast moving and freewheeling Trump administration that is headed in the opposite direction. Industry and Science minister Ed Husic has been working on building regulatory frameworks for artificial intelligence since the middle of 2023. In…

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March 21, 2025

AFP uses encryption powers to order technical assistance

Australia’s encryption-busting laws were used by federal police for the first time last year to force at least one undisclosed tech company to provide assistance, in an escalation of its crackdown on encrypted messages. The Australian Federal Police issued its first two technical assistance notices (TANs) in 2023-24, the latest Telecommunication (Interception and Access) Act…

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March 20, 2025

US data centre boom poses new risk to energy grid operators

Data Centre Alley, a 30-square-mile stretch outside Washington DC and home to more than 200 data centres, consumes roughly the same electricity as Boston. So power company officials were alarmed when a big chunk of those centers – 60 of them – suddenly dropped off the grid one day last summer and switched to on-site…

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March 19, 2025

Cloud giants hold out on sovereignty as demands grow

The world’s biggest cloud providers are the main roadblock to a flourishing sovereign cloud market, leading organisations to accept “neutered” clouds without the latest innovations. That’s according to Oracle’s vice-president of sovereign regions Rand Waldron, who says that the sovereignty requirements of an organisation should not have to take the back seat to its other…

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March 16, 2025

Elon and OpenAI agree to fast track trial over for-profit shift

OpenAI and Elon Musk have agreed to fast-track a trial over OpenAI’s for-profit shift, the latest turn in a grudge match between the world’s richest person and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman playing out publicly in court. Billionaire Elon Musk and OpenAI jointly proposed a trial in December, according to a federal court filing in…

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March 12, 2025

If Europe builds data gigafactories, will an AI industry come?

The European Commission is raising US$20 billion to construct four ‘AI gigafactories’ as part of Europe’s strategy to catch up with the US and China on artificial intelligence, but some industry experts question whether it makes sense to build them. The plan for the large public access data centres, unveiled by European Commission President Ursula…

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March 11, 2025

‘Sloppy’ cops flout tech surveillance laws

Invasive surveillance powers are being used without proper justifications or record keeping, a new review shows, leading to calls to reign in authorities that are covertly accessing Australians’ private communications. The report by the Commonwealth Ombudsman found repeated instances of police forces and other authorities failing to demonstrate they had followed the laws in exercising…

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