Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change?
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Print article Share China has released a five-year plan dedicated to addressing climate change. The 15th five-year plan for a national response to climate change is the latest in a series to outline in-depth climate and energy targets for the 2026-2030 period. These include five-year plans for “building a Beautiful China”, developing a “new-type energy […]
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Decommissioning Data Centers: Avoiding Stranded Assets
The market for artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly growing, spurring the growth of data centers across the U.S. and around the world. That’s happening despite the major social and environmental concerns that data centers pose. What happens if those data centers are no longer used, either because they reach end of life or the AI […]
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Anthropic’s Silicon Team Is Hiring for Tapeout and Production Ramp
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Anthropic’s newly confirmed custom silicon team is hiring people to do one specific thing: take a chip from a blank specification to a production ramp. A Silicon Engineer listing and a Technical Program Manager, Silicon listing on Anthropic’s careers portal describe an end-to-end program running from architecture definition through tapeout, first-silicon bring-up, and what the […]
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Microsoft Opens 26 Open Models to Startups Through Fireworks AI on Foundry
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Microsoft is pushing its newly generally available Fireworks AI integration at the startup segment, publishing a deployment blueprint on August 4, 2026 that pairs a reference architecture for running open models on Microsoft Foundry with a billing perk: members of the Microsoft for Startups program can apply their Azure credits to Fireworks model deployments, and […]
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AMD Buys Taalas to Put Hard-Wired AI Models in Its Accelerator Roadmap
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AMD has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Taalas, a Toronto-based startup whose chips are custom-built around individual AI models, the company announced on August 6, 2026. The deal folds specialized inference silicon into an accelerator lineup AMD has spent the past year expanding, and it gives the chipmaker an engineering team that has spent […]
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Claude Code Sessions Can Now Run on Infrastructure Your Team Controls
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Anthropic has opened a public beta of self-hosted environments for Claude Code, moving the coding agent’s cloud sessions off Anthropic’s infrastructure and onto servers inside the customer’s own network, the company announced on August 6, 2026. The option is available to organizations on Claude Team and Enterprise plans and is switched off by default. A […]
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SK hynix Approves Two New Fabs as AI Memory Demand Reshapes Its Buildout
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SK hynix’s board has approved a combined 54 trillion won (roughly $39 billion) for two new fabrication plants, the company announced on August 7, 2026: 35.2 trillion won for “Y2,” the second fab at its Yongin Semiconductor Cluster, and 19.1 trillion won for “M17,” a new NAND fab in Cheongju. The two projects expand production […]
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Why Are Natural Gas Prices So High?
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America’s natural gas prices are rising, sending household energy costs spiking along with them. From 2024 to 2025 alone, gas prices rose 63 percent.[1] By 2027, they could jump another 30 percent as demand grows and the United States increases exports of domestic fuel to other countries. Rising gas prices[2] are directly increasing consumer electricity […]
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Imperfect sorting of plastic types undermines mechanical recycling, explains Manchester study
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Mechanical recycling of plastics can be significantly undermined by even small amounts of cross-contamination between common packaging polymers, according to researchers at the University of Manchester, who say improved quality-control tools are needed to support a circular plastics economy When it is done well, in other words when your yogurt pots (polypropylene, PP) are sorted […]
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Campaign aims to shine a light on hidden hazards in the workplace, and boost countermeasures
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A new UK-wide campaign aiming to raise awareness of the invisible risks that affect millions of workers, and encourage more concerted action on prevention, was launched on 30 July by the British Safety Council. Clarifying the rationale behind the Hidden Hazards campaign, the group explains that, while visible workplace hazards are widely recognised, many of the […]
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Jeff Dean Leaves Google to Automate the Scientific Method With Discovery Loop
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Jeff Dean, Google’s chief scientist and one of the central figures in modern AI infrastructure, is leaving the company after nearly 27 years to co-found Discovery Loop, a startup whose stated goal is to automate the experimental loops of scientific research itself. The departure was announced on August 5, 2026 as part of a broader […]
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Anthropic Puts Inline Data Loss Prevention Inside Claude Enterprise
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Anthropic launched inference hooks on August 5, 2026, a beta feature for Claude Enterprise that routes every employee prompt through the organization’s own security server for an allow-or-deny verdict before the model ever sees it. The system, described in Anthropic’s announcement, extends the kind of inline data loss prevention that security teams already run on […]
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Wordsmith Extends Series B With $14 Million to Scale AI for In-House Legal Teams
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Wordsmith AI has secured a $14 million extension to its Series B financing as companies increasingly explore whether artificial intelligence can help their internal legal teams handle work that would traditionally be sent to outside counsel. The new investment was led by Intact Private Capital, with participation from existing backers Highland Europe and Index Ventures. […]
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SkinBit Raises $6M Pre-Seed to Improve Early Skin Cancer Detection Through Full-Body Imaging
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SkinBit has raised $6 million in pre-seed funding to expand a technology platform designed to make full-body skin imaging more accessible and give patients a consistent record of how their skin changes over time. The round includes investments from Boost VC, Cleo Capital, Manna Ventures and Profluent Capital, alongside Lyft co-founder Logan Green and nine […]
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Meta Ships Muse Code Coding Agent With Co-Trained Muse Spark 1.2 Model
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Meta has shipped Muse Code, its first coding agent, in a beta release alongside Muse Spark 1.2, a new version of its flagship model that the company says was co-trained with the agent for tighter integration. Muse Code is a terminal agent that installs with a single command and takes on complete software engineering tasks, […]
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UK company claims commercial breakthrough for MOF-based atmospheric water harvesting
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ARK Head of Engineering Demetris Stylianou (image credit: Ahbstra). A UK technology company has unveiled what it describes as the first commercially available atmospheric water harvesting system to use metal-organic framework (MOF) technology, marking what it says is the technology’s first commercial deployment of MOF-based atmospheric water harvesting. Ahbstra launched its ARK system at an […]
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Factcheck: How nuclear, gas, wind and solar power are affected during heatwaves
Print article Share Heatwaves are becoming more likely and more intense due to climate change, impacting sources of power generation around the world as they work to meet increased demand. When temperatures soared past 40C in parts of Europe in June and July 2026, nuclear reactors shuttered, gas plants’ efficiency fell, wind speeds dropped and […]
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Waymo Drops the Dallas Waitlist as Freeway and Airport Testing Looms
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Waymo opened its Dallas robotaxi service to the general public on August 4, 2026, ending the invitation-only phase that has governed ridership since the city’s commercial launch in February. Anyone in Dallas can now download the Waymo app and hail a fully autonomous ride, with no waitlist or invitation required. The company says it welcomed […]