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Amazon, meanwhile, claims its datacenters are helping ratepayers despite tons of evidence to the contrary

Concerned over continually rising energy costs linked to AI datacenter construction projects, three Democratic Senators are asking leading bit barn operators to explain why their promises of not passing grid expansion costs onto consumers are falling short. …

Nemotron 3 is a grab bag of 2025's top machine learning advancements

For many, enterprise AI adoption depends on the availability of high-quality open-weights models. Exposing sensitive customer data or hard-fought intellectual property to APIs so you can use closed models like ChatGPT is a non-starter.…

The weight of AI server racks has reached a point where legacy data centers cannot accommodate them even with significant retrofitting efforts, The Verge reports. Chris Brown, chief technical officer at Uptime Institute, said most retrofitting attempts would require "bulldozing the building and starting over from scratch." AI racks are projected to reach 5,000 pounds compared to the 400 to 600 pounds that racks weighed three decades ago. The dramatic increase stems from hundreds to 1,000 GPUs packed densely into each rack alongside memory chips and liquid cooling systems that can add substantial weight. AI workloads now consume up to 350 kilowatts per rack, 35 times the 10 kilowatts that traditional computer chip workloads averaged a decade ago. Legacy data centers with raised floors typically max out at around 1,250 pounds per square foot for static loads. Chris McLean, president of Critical Facility Group, said that rack heights have grown from 6 feet to 9 feet over nearly two decades, creating problems with doorframes and freight elevators in older buildings.

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All I want for Christmas … is all of your data

A new, modular infostealer called SantaStealer, advertised on Telegram with a basic tier priced at $175 per month, promises to make criminals' Christmas dreams come true. It boasts that it can run "fully undetected" even on systems with the "strictest AntiVirus" and those belonging to governments, financial institutions, and other prime targets.…

U.S. officials excoriated the European Union for discriminating against American technology companies and threatened to penalize European tech companies in return, in a social media post on Tuesday. From a report: The pronouncement appeared to signal a rockier period for U.S.-E.U. trade relations, as the two governments work to finalize a trade framework they announced this year. The United States has been pushing Europe to open up its tech sector to American firms. But U.S. officials have complained that the European Union has not walked back broader regulation of company business practices while also proceeding with investigations of major American tech firms like Google, X, Amazon and Meta. In a social media post, the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which has carried out the negotiations, said that the European Union and some member states had "persisted in a continuing course of discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines and directives" against American companies. The United States had raised concerns with the European Union about these issues for years "without meaningful engagement," all while allowing European companies to operate freely in the United States, it said. If the European Union continues these policies, the United States would "have no choice but to begin using every tool at its disposal to counter these unreasonable measures," the U.S.T.R. said. It named fees and restrictions on service companies among the possibilities, and said it would use the same approach against other countries that echoed Europe's strategy. The post singled out potential European service providers that could be targeted by name, listing Accenture, DHL, Mistral, SAP, Siemens and Spotify, among others.

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mprindle writes: The Texas Attorney General sued five major television manufacturers, accusing them of illegally collecting their users' data by secretly recording what they watch using Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology. The lawsuits target Sony, Samsung, LG, and China-based companies Hisense and TCL Technology Group Corporation. Attorney General Ken Paxton's office also highlighted "serious concerns" about the two Chinese companies being required to follow China's National Security Law, which could give the Chinese government access to U.S. consumers' data. According to complaints filed this Monday in Texas state courts, the TV makers can allegedly use ACR technology to capture screenshots of television displays every 500 milliseconds, monitor the users' viewing activity in real time, and send this information back to the companies' servers without the users' knowledge or consent.

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McKinsey, the consulting giant that has spent a century advising companies on how to cut costs and restructure operations, is now turning that advice inward as it plans to eliminate thousands of jobs across its non-client-facing departments over the next 18 to 24 months. The firm's leadership has discussed a roughly 10% headcount reduction in support functions, according to Bloomberg. McKinsey's revenue has hovered around $15 billion to $16 billion for the past five years after a decade of rapid expansion that saw employee count climb from 17,000 in 2012 to 45,000 by 2022. The headcount has since slid to about 40,000. The cuts come as consulting firms face cost-conscious clients, Trump administration pressure on government consulting spending, and reduced payments from Saudi Arabia, which had been paying McKinsey at least $500 million annually in the decade up to 2024. McKinsey cut about 1,400 jobs in 2023 under a plan internally labeled Project Magnolia, and axed 200 global tech positions last month. The firm still plans to hire consultants even as it shrinks support staff.

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