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New Gas-Powered Data Centers Could Emit More Greenhouse Gases Than Entire Nations

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."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple Stops Weirdly Storing Data That Let Cops Spy On Signal Chats

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."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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the SQUARE
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American Sign Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio

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American Sign Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio

Two Feet Deep

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Two Feet Deep

Self (feet) portrait in the shallow zone of the pool

VK: Voorpagina

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Dodelijke crash Colombiaans legervliegtuig kwam door bomen

BOGOTÁ (ANP/AFP) - De vliegtuigcrash waardoor vorige maand in Colombia 69 militairen omkwamen, is veroorzaakt doordat het toestel bomen raakte. Dat blijkt uit voorlopige onderzoeksresultaten van de Colombiaanse luchtmacht.

Het C-130 Hercules-toestel stortte op 23 maart neer, een kilometer van de startbaan in Puerto Leguizamo in het Amazonegebied. Volgens de luchtmacht raakte het toestel vier seconden na vertrek drie bomen. In twee motoren zijn resten van vegetatie gevonden.

Het vliegtuig had meer dan 120 mensen aan boord en vervoerde ook munitie. Die ontplofte na de crash, waardoor omwonenden gewond raakten die overlevenden probeerden te helpen.

Volgens de luchtmacht is nog niet duidelijk of de crash werd veroorzaakt door een menselijke fout of een technisch probleem. Overbelading en slecht weer speelden volgens de onderzoekers geen rol.


MetaFilter

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The whole world has become somewhat of a casino [for me to bankrupt]

Soldier Used Classified Information to Bet on Maduro's Ouster - US prosecutors say that Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who was involved in the operation to oust Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela, used the information to place bets on Polymarket.

The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

Grok tells researchers pretending to be delusional ‘drive an iron nail through the mirror while reciting Psalm 91 backwards’

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot ‘extremely validating’ of delusional inputs and often went further, ‘elaborating new material’, study finds

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok 4 told researchers pretending to be delusional that there was indeed a doppelganger in their mirror and they should drive an iron nail through the glass while reciting Psalm 91 backwards.

Researchers at the City University of New York and King’s College London have published a paper on how various chatbots protect – or fail to safeguard – users’ mental health.

Continue reading...

The old truck

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Warumbungles and Century Plant

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I love a sunburnt country

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