An anonymous reader shares a report: The Trump administration wants some of the world's largest technology companies to publicly commit to a new compact governing the rapid expansion of AI data centers, according to two administration officials granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

A draft of the compact obtained by POLITICO lays out commitments designed to ensure energy-hungry data centers do not raise household electricity prices, strain water supplies or undermine grid reliability, and that the companies driving demand also carry the cost of building new infrastructure.

The proposed pact, which is not final and could be subject to change, is framed as a voluntary agreement between President Donald Trump and major U.S. tech companies and data center developers. It could bind OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta and other AI giants to a broad set of energy, water and community principles. None of these companies immediately responded to a request for comment.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: In 1966, a beach-ball-size robot bounced across the moon. Once it rolled to a stop, its four petal-like covers opened, exposing a camera that sent back the first picture taken on the surface of another world. This was Luna 9, the Soviet lander that was the earliest spacecraft to safely touchdown on the moon. While it paved the way toward interplanetary exploration, Luna 9's precise whereabouts have remained a mystery ever since.

That may soon change. Two research teams think they might have tracked down the long-lost remains of Luna 9. But there's a catch: The teams do not agree on the location. "One of them is wrong," said Anatoly Zak, a space journalist and author who runs RussianSpaceWeb.com and reported on the story last week. The dueling finds highlight a strange fact of the early moon race: The precise resting places of a number of spacecraft that crashed or landed on the moon in the run up to NASA's Apollo missions are lost to obscurity. A newer generation of spacecraft may at last resolve these mysteries.

Luna 9 launched to the moon on Jan. 31, 1966. While a number of spacecraft had crashed into the lunar surface at that stage of the moon race, it was among the earliest to try what rocket engineers call a soft landing. Its core unit, a spherical suite of scientific instruments, was about two feet across. That size makes it difficult to spot from orbit. "Luna 9 is a very, very small vehicle," said Mark Robinson, a geologist at the company Intuitive Machines, which has twice landed spacecraft on the moon.

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Jason Mitcham’s childhood home in Greensboro, North Carolina, is no longer standing. In 2011, the local government seized the house and the land he grew up on via eminent domain to widen what was then High Point Road into what’s now Gate City Boulevard. Mitcham last saw the site in 2023, when a paved highway blanketed where the neighborhood once stood, and fragments of garages and barns still marked the landscape.

To memorialize this beloved landmark, Mitcham hand-painted “Ever Behind the Sunset,” a touching stop-motion film that combines a series of expressive compositions with audio from the artist’s mother and his own home videos taken throughout the 1980s. Panels of thick, gestural brushstrokes animate a story of loss, grief, and remembrance as if viewed through a dreamlike haze.

Mitcham shares that the film reflects a series of compounding devastations, both personal and local: “the collapse of my father’s civil engineering and land-surveying firm after the 2008 housing crisis, my parents’ bankruptcy, his death, followed by my mother’s, and the community’s fight against the commercial development that would permanently alter their neighborhood.”

It’s worth watching the behind-the-scenes video that shares more of the artist’s process and thinking. Explore an archive of his films and works on canvas on his website and Instagram. You might also like the paintings of Jeremy Miranda.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Painted by Hand, a Stop-Motion Film Eulogizes a Lost Childhood Home appeared first on Colossal.

's Ochtends vroeg komt mijn jongste dochter (bijna 5) nog even gezellig bij mij in bed liggen. „Mama, er bestaan geen dinosaurussen meer, toch?” „Nee, lieverd, die zijn…

Volgens de Staatscommissie tegen Discriminatie en Racisme normaliseren politici discriminerende taal in het publieke debat. „Maak discriminatie niet gangbaar”, aldus Joyce Sylvester, voorzitter van de Staatscommissie.

Three-year-old black coat female, known as BEY03F, crossed into LA county around 6am on 7 February

A gray wolf wandered into Los Angeles county for the first time in more than a century on Saturday morning.

“This is the most southern verified record of a gray wolf in modern times,” Axel Hunnicutt, gray wolf coordinator for the California department of fish and wildlife, said.

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• Tomas Magnusson scores in 88th minute to seal win

• Jambos now have a six-point lead at the top of the table

Tomas Magnusson scored a late winner as the Scottish Premiership leaders Hearts defeated Hibernian 1-0 in a tense Edinburgh derby to tighten their grip on top spot.

Magnusson, on as a substitute, popped up with the game’s decisive moment in the 88th minute to spark jubilant scenes inside Tynecastle.

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Stop all the clippers, don’t cut off the barnet: Manchester United’s winning run is over. Frank Ilett, the man who pledged never to visit a barber again until United won five matches in a row, has been denied a viral haircut, but their resilience came to the fore after the West Ham were denied what would have been a deserved victory deep into added time.

A studded finish from fan favourite Tomas Soucek was cancelled out by a strike from Benjamin Sesko to leave this match honours even. United lacked energy and snap, West Ham thought they had the game in the bag as the clock ticked past 90 minutes. The Hammers remain in 18th place, five points behind Spurs in 16th.

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Climate groups vow to fight rollback of 2009 finding determining CO₂ and other greenhouse gases harm health

In what is set to be its most audacious anti-environment move yet, the Trump administration on Thursday will roll back the mechanism allowing the government to regulate planet-heating pollution, the White House press secretary has told reporters.

“President Trump will be joined by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to formalize the recession of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding,” Karoline Leavitt said at a press conference on Tuesday. “This will be the largest deregulatory action in American history.”

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In his keynote, Benioff thanked international Salesforce employees for traveling to the United States for the meeting, and asked them to stand. Benioff then said that ICE agents were in the building to keep tabs on them.

This is an example of "Silicon Valley CEOs and their inability to divorce ICE and the complete lack of understanding of why that makes them monsters," a Salesforce employee told 404 Media. "Employees are going absolutely apeshit in internal Slack about how completely awful it was." Another employee told 404 Media that Benioff "then followed it up with a joke about not understanding the message of Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance. On its own just seems out of touch, but coupled with the previous joke it does seem worse."

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide, 4-28-96

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Mr Mikage (ミスター御影） posted a photo:

BertvB posted a photo:

BRUSSEL (ANP) - Europese koepelorganisaties voor de luchtvaart waarschuwen dat een nieuw Europees registratiesysteem op luchthavens leidt tot aanzienlijke vertragingen voor passagiers van buiten de Europese Unie. Als er niet onmiddellijk maatregelen worden genomen, dreigen in de drukke zomermaanden ernstige verstoringen, waarbij wachttijden kunnen oplopen tot vier uur of meer. Dat stellen onder meer de internationale brancheorganisatie voor de luchtvaart IATA en koepelorganisatie van luchthavens ACI Europe.

Het zogeheten Entry/Exit System (EES) werd vorig jaar in 29 landen ingevoerd om het grenstoezicht te verbeteren. Het verving het handmatig stempelen van paspoorten. De EU had geen zicht op hoeveel mensen precies voor een korte periode in het Schengengebied zijn en op tijd weggaan. Het nieuwe systeem zou dit moeten oplossen.

De luchtvaartorganisaties signaleren hierdoor echter nu al buitensporige wachttijden tot wel twee uur bij de grenscontroles op luchthavens. Volgens de luchtvaart verergeren de problemen door onder meer een "chronisch personeelstekort" bij de grenscontrole en "onopgeloste technologische problemen, met name bij grensautomatisering".

Complete kloof

"Er gaapt een complete kloof tussen de perceptie van de EU-instellingen dat het EES goed functioneert en de werkelijkheid, waarin niet-EU-reizigers te maken krijgen met enorme vertragingen en overlast. Hier moet onmiddellijk een einde aan komen", zegt directeur van ACI Europe Olivier Jankovec. "We moeten realistisch zijn over wat er gebeurt in de drukke zomermaanden, wanneer het verkeer op Europese luchthavens verdubbelt. De invoering van het EES moet flexibel zijn en kunnen inspelen op de operationele realiteit", vervolgt hij.

De luchtvaartorganisaties hebben Eurocommissaris Magnus Brunner in een brief gevraagd om met oplossingen voor de kwestie te komen. Schiphol gaf in oktober vorig jaar aan dat tweehonderd nieuwe medewerkers werden ingezet om te voorkomen dat de invoering van het registratiesysteem zou zorgen voor chaotische taferelen en lange wachtrijen.

banzainetsurfer has added a photo to the pool:

Roses are red, violets are blue ... now get patching

What better way to say I love you than with an update? Attackers exploited a whopping six Microsoft bugs as zero-days prior to Redmond releasing software fixes on February's Patch Tuesday.…