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Analysis, reporting, and commentary on the global AI race.
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WaterWhat the Cheyenne water contamination posts got wrong
What the Cheyenne water contamination posts got wrong
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ModelsJudge Approves Anthropic $1.5B Copyright Settlement
A US judge gave final approval on 20 July 2026 to Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement over pirated books used to train Claude.
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CompaniesCan Apple's lawsuit derail OpenAI's AI device or IPO?
Can Apple's lawsuit derail OpenAI's AI device or IPO?
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CompaniesOpenAI Proposes Giving the US Government a 5% Stake in the Company
OpenAI has discussed offering the US government a 5% equity stake, valued at around $42-43 billion, as it navigates political and regulatory pressures ahead of a potential public listing. This proposal aims to share AI's economic upside with the American public.
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ChinaThe Best Free LLMs to Run Locally Are Made in China
As of July 2026, Chinese labs like DeepSeek, Zhipu AI, and Alibaba are leading the pack for free, open-weight LLMs runnable on local hardware, outperforming Meta's Llama in overall capability across coding, reasoning, and agentic tasks. These models often come with more permissive licenses like MIT and Apache 2.0.
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ModelsMeta's AI Chief Says an Unreleased Model Matches GPT-5.5
Meta Superintelligence Labs chief Alexandr Wang claims the company's unreleased AI model, codenamed Watermelon, has achieved parity with OpenAI's GPT-5.5 on key benchmarks, using ten times the compute of its predecessor, Muse Spark. This report, originating from Business Insider, remains unconfirmed by Meta or OpenAI.
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WaterHow Much Water Do Data Centers Really Use?
U.S. data centers directly consumed 17.4 billion gallons of water in 2023 for on-site cooling, but indirect water use for electricity generation pushed the real total to approximately 228 billion gallons. This highlights a critical distinction between water withdrawal and actual consumption, a key factor often overlooked in public discourse.
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PowerIs AI Draining the Ogallala Aquifer? The Data Says No
New data from state water agencies and the U.S. Geological Survey indicates that AI data centers are not currently the primary cause of depletion for the Ogallala Aquifer, with irrigated agriculture remaining the dominant factor. While projects like Fermi America's Project Matador and Triple Oak Power's data center are emerging, their water usage has yet to significantly impact the aquifer's long-
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PowerAI Data Centers Are Showing Up on Your Power Bill
As of June 2026, PJM's grid monitor blames data centers for $9.3 billion in a single year of higher power costs, about $16 to $21 a month for some homes.
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