Valve has made Team Fortress 2's full client and server code public, allowing fans to modify, extend, or rewrite the game as long as their projects remain non-commercial. Game Rant reports: Valve has made Team Fortress 2's server and client code fully public, with the studio encouraging fans to explore the game's files and make it what they want. The game's code is now available thanks to a new update to the Source SDK, which dropped earlier this week. Fans have already been creating TF2 mods for years, but what this essentially means is that fans can make brand-new games. However, there's one catch: any and all TF2 mods must be released for free. "The majority of items in the game now are thanks to the hard work of the TF2 community." Valve wrote. "To respect that, we're asking TF2 mod makers to continue to respect that connection and not to make mods that have the purpose of trying to profit off Workshop contributors' efforts."

"TF2 mods may be published on the Steam Store, and after publication will appear as new games in the Steam game list," Valve continued. The new SDK update also includes new 64-bit binary support and fixes for multiplayer Source games like Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Counter-Strike: Source, and Day of Defeat: Source. Time will only tell what fans come up with as they dig deep into the inner workings of the game, but given how passionate and talented the Team Fortress 2 community has proven to be, players can expect to see some incredible creations.

A recently patched Palo Alto Networks vulnerability (CVE-2025-0108) is being actively exploited alongside two older flaws (CVE-2024-9474 and CVE-2025-0111), allowing attackers to gain root access to unpatched firewalls. The Register reports: This story starts with CVE-2024-9474, a 6.9-rated privilege escalation vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software that allowed an OS administrator with access to the management web interface to perform actions on the firewall with root privileges. The company patched it in November 2024. Dark web intelligence services vendor Searchlight Cyber's Assetnote team investigated the patch for CVE-2024-9474 and found another authentication bypass.

Palo Alto (PAN) last week fixed that problem, CVE-2025-0108, and rated it a highest urgency patch as the 8.8/10 flaw addressed an access control issue in PAN-OS's web management interface that allowed an unauthenticated attacker with network access to the management web interface to bypass authentication "and invoke certain PHP scripts." Those scripts could "negatively impact integrity and confidentiality of PAN-OS."

The third flaw is CVE-2025-0111 a 7.1-rated mess also patched last week to stop authenticated attackers with network access to PAN-OS machines using their web interface to read files accessible to the "nobody" user. On Tuesday, US time, Palo A lot updated its advisory for CVE-2025-0108 with news that it's observed exploit attempts chaining CVE-2024-9474 and CVE-2025-0111 on unpatched and unsecured PAN-OS web management interfaces. The vendor's not explained how the three flaws are chained but we understand doing so allows an attacker to gain more powerful privileges and gain full root access to the firewall. PAN is urging users to upgrade their PAN-OS operating systems to versions 10.1, 10.2, 11.0, 11.1, and 11.2. A general hotfix is expected by Thursday or sooner, notes the Register.

In January the TIOBE Index (estimating programming language popularity) declared Python their language of the year. (Though it was already #1 in their rankings, it had showed a 9.3% increase in their ranking system, notes InfoWorld.) TIOBE CEO Paul Jansen says this reflects how easy Python is to learn, adding that "The demand for new programmers is still very high" (and that "developing applications completely in AI is not possible yet.")

In fact on February's version of the index, the top ten looks mostly static. The only languages dropping appear to be very old languages. Over the last 12 months C and PHP have both fallen on the index — C from the #2 to the #4 spot, and PHP from #10 all the way to #14. (Also dropping is Visual Basic, which fell from #9 to #10.)

But TechRepublican cites another factor that seems to be affecting the rankings: language speed. Fast programming languages are gaining popularity, TIOBE CEO Paul Jansen said in the TIOBE Programming Community Index in February. Fast programming languages he called out include C++ [#2], Go [#8], and Rust [#13 — up from #18 a year ago].

Also, according to the updated TIOBE rankings...

- C++ held onto its place at second from the top of the leaderboard.
- Mojo and Zig are following trajectories likely to bring them into the top 50, and reached #51 and #56 respectively in February.

"Now that the world needs to crunch more and more numbers per second, and hardware is not evolving fast enough, speed of programs is getting important. Having said this, it is not surprising that the fast programming languages are gaining ground in the TIOBE index," Jansen wrote. The need for speed helped Mojo [#51] and Zig [#56] rise...

Rust reached its all-time high in the proprietary points system (1.47%.), and Jansen expects Go to be a common sight in the top 10 going forward.

SFGate shares the latest data on America's office-occupancy rates: According to Placer.ai's January 2025 Office Index, office visits nationwide were 40.2% lower in January 2025 compared with pre-pandemic numbers from January 2019.

But San Francisco is dragging down the average, with a staggering 51.8% decline in office visits since January 2019 — the weakest recovery of any major metro. Kastle's 10-City Daily Analysis paints an equally grim picture. From Jan. 23, 2025, to Jan. 28, 2025, even on its busiest day (Tuesday), San Francisco's office occupancy rate was just 53.7%, significantly lower than Houston's (74.8%) and Chicago's (70.4%). And on Friday, Jan. 24, office attendance in [San Francisco] was at a meager 28.5%, the worst of any major metro tracked...

Meanwhile, other cities are seeing much stronger rebounds. New York City is leading the return-to-office trend, with visits in January down just 19% from 2019 levels, while Miami saw a 23.5% decline, per Placer.ai data.
"Placer.ai uses cellphone location data to estimate foot traffic, while Kastle Systems measures badge swipes at office buildings with its security systems..."

Connecticut's highest-ranking state legislator has proposed a bill requiring movie theaters to disclose both preview and feature film start times, setting up a clash with theater operators who say the measure threatens their advertising revenue.

Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney's proposal aims to prevent moviegoers from sitting through up to 30 minutes of advertisements and trailers before features begin. The Democrat cited complaints from constituents about lengthy pre-show delays. Theater owners are pushing back, local outlet RegisterCitizen reports, with Avon Theatre's executive director Peter Gistelinck warning the measure could undermine their financial stability.

The tech startup "purported to make smart home and business products," writes America's Justice Department — products that were "meant to stop package theft, prevent weather damage to packages, and make it easier for emergency responders and delivery services to find homes and businesses." Royce Newcomb "developed prototypes of his products and received local and national media attention for them. For example, Time Magazine included his eLiT Address Box & Security System, which used mobile networks to pinpoint home and business locations, on its Best Inventions of 2021 list."

But then he told investors he'd also received a grant by the National Science Foundation — one of "several false representations to his investors to deceive and cheat them out of their money... Newcomb used the money to pay for gambling, a Mercedes and Jaguar, and a mansion." He also used the money to pay for refunds to other investors who wanted out, and to pay for new, unrelated projects without the investors' authorization. During this period, Newcomb also received a fraudulent COVID-19 loan for more than $70,000 from the Small Business Administration and fraudulent loans for more than $190,000 from private lenders. He lied about Strategic Innovations having hundreds of thousands and even millions in revenue to get these loans.

Newcomb was previously convicted federally in 2011 for running a real estate fraud scheme in Sacramento. He was sentenced to more than five years in prison for that offense, and he was on federal supervised release for that offense when he committed the offenses charged in this case... Newcomb faces maximum statutory penalties of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the wire fraud charge, and 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the money laundering charge...

This effort is part of a California COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Strike Force operation, one of five interagency COVID-19 fraud strike force teams established by the U.S. Department of Justice.
SFGate writes that "Despite receiving significant funding, his startup, Strategic Innovations, never made a dime or released any products to market, according to legal documents." The owner of a California tech startup has pleaded guilty to stealing over $4 million from investors, private lenders and the U.S. government in order to live a luxurious lifestyle, the United States Attorney's Office announced Monday... When investors asked about product delays and when they'd be paid back, Newcomb made excuses and provided conflicting info, telling them that there were supply chain issues or software problems, according to the indictment. In reality, federal prosecutors said, he was using the money to travel and continue to make these lavish personal expenses.

A recent video from retro tech YouTuber Clint "LGR" Basinger takes a deep dive into the history of the SereneScreen Marine Aquarium, exploring how former Air Force pilot Jim Sachs transformed a lackluster Windows 95 screensaver into a 25-year digital phenomenon. PC Gamer reports: The story centers on Jim Sachs, a man with one of those "they don't make this type of guy anymore" life stories so common to '80s and '90s computing, one Sachs recounted to the website AmigaLove back in 2020. After a six-year career in the US Air Force flying C-141 Starlifters, Sachs taught himself programming and digital art and began creating games for Commodore 64 and Amiga computers. From his first game, Saucer Attack, to later efforts like Defender of the Crown or his large portfolio of promotional and commissioned pieces, Sach's pixel art remains gorgeous and impressive to this day, and he seems to be a bit of a legend among Commodore enthusiasts.

It's with this background in games and digital art that Sachs looked at Microsoft's simple aquarium-themed screensaver for Windows 95 and 98 and thought he could do better. "Microsoft had an aquarium that they gave away with Windows where it was just bitmaps of fish being dragged across the screen," Sachs told the Matt Chat podcast back in 2015. "And they had that for like, three or four years. And I thought, I've given them enough time, I'm taking them to market. I'm gonna do something which will just blow that away."

Using reference photographs of real aquariums -- Sachs thanked a specific pet shop that's still around in an early version of his website" -- Sachs created the 3D art by hand and programmed the screensaver in C++, releasing the initial version in July 2000. Even looking at it all these years later, the first iteration of the SereneScreen Marine Aquarium is pretty gorgeous, and it has the added charm of being such a distinctly Y2K, nostalgic throwback.

The standalone screensaver sold well, but then things came full circle with Microsoft licensing a version of the Marine Aquarium for the Windows XP Plus Pack and later standard releases of the OS. Since that time, the Marine Aquarium has continued to see new releases, and a section on the SereneScreen website keeps track of its various appearances in the background of movies and TV shows like Law and Order. Over on the SereneScreen website, you can purchase a real time, 3D-accelerated version of the Marine Aquarium for Mac, iOS, Android, and the original Windows. Echoing the Windows XP deal, Roku actually licensed this 3.0 version for its TVs, bringing it to a new generation of users.

Facebook has banned posts mentioning Linux-related topics, with the popular Linux news and discussion site, DistroWatch, at the center of the controversy. Tom's Hardware reports: A post on the site claims, "Facebook's internal policy makers decided that Linux is malware and labeled groups associated with Linux as being 'cybersecurity threats.' We tried to post some blurb about distrowatch.com on Facebook and can confirm that it was barred with a message citing Community Standards. DistroWatch says that the Facebook ban took effect on January 19. Readers have reported difficulty posting links to the site on this social media platform. Moreover, some have told DistroWatch that their Facebook accounts have been locked or limited after sharing posts mentioning Linux topics.

If you're wondering if there might be something specific to DistroWatch.com, something on the site that the owners/operators perhaps don't even know about, for example, then it seems pretty safe to rule out such a possibility. Reports show that "multiple groups associated with Linux and Linux discussions have either been shut down or had many of their posts removed." However, we tested a few other Facebook posts with mentions of Linux, and they didn't get blocked immediately. Copenhagen-hosted DistroWatch says it has tried to appeal against the Community Standards-triggered ban. However, they say that a Facebook representative said that Linux topics would remain on the cybersecurity filter. The DistroWatch writer subsequently got their Facebook account locked... DistroWatch points out the irony at play here: "Facebook runs much of its infrastructure on Linux and often posts job ads looking for Linux developers."

UPDATE: Facebook has admited they made a mistake and stopped blocking the posts.

2021: "Automotive Startup Canoo Debuts a Snub-Nosed Electric Pickup"
2025: Canoo "Goes Belly-Up After Moving to Texas"

"Its production volumes paled in comparison to Canoo's rate of cash burn, which was substantial, with net losses in 2023 totaling just over $300 million..." reports AutoWeek. "It was able to deliver small batches of vans to a few customers, but apparently remained distant from anything approaching volume production."

"Back in 2020, electric vehicle maker Canoo snagged a $2.4 billion valuation before it had shipped a single car," remembers SFGate. "Now, just months after yanking its headquarters from Los Angeles County to Texas, the company has gone belly-up." In its four-year span as a public company, Canoo battled investor lawsuits, Securities and Exchange Commission charges, executive departures and a mixed reception of its cars. Auto tech blogger Steven Symes recently likened Canoo's cargo-style van to an "eraser on wheels."
"Canoo is the latest EV startup to go bankrupt after merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) as a shortcut to going public," notes TechCrunch. "Electric Last Mile Solutions was the first in June 2022. But since then, Fisker, Lordstown Motors, Proterra, Lion Electric, and Arrival all filed for different levels of bankruptcy protection in their various home countries." In the years since it went public, [Canoo] made a small number of its bubbly electric vans and handed them over to partners — some paying — willing to trial the vehicles. The U.S. Postal Service, Department of Defense, and NASA all have or had Canoo vehicles.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGATE: The same morning that JetBlue Airways announced that it was the first airline partnering with Venmo to begin accepting payments for booking flights, an account on the popular payment platform was already raking in money. A Venmo user named Owen Miller paid the JetBlue Checkpoint Store for a drink on Wednesday morning, which is a typical transaction between a traveler and airline, except for the fact that JetBlue doesn't operate that account. "At this time, JetBlue does not accept Venmo payment for inflight purchases such as food and beverages," a representative for the airline told SFGATE in an email. "Unfortunately, we have seen accounts falsely representing themselves as JetBlue to deceive and defraud customers." To stay safe from scammers when booking JetBlue flights with Venmo, the airline recommends customers only use verified JetBlue channels, such as their official website or app, and follow their secure payment process using the provided QR code. JetBlue said it plans to fold Venmo payments into its mobile app later this year.

David Lynch, a four-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker known for the 1984 sci-fi epic Dune and the Showtime drama Twin Peaks, has died. "In January 2025, Lynch evacuated his Los Angeles home due to the Southern California wildfires," writes longtime Slashdot reader Z00L00K. "According to Deadline, these events preceded a terminal decline in his health, and on January 16, 2025, Lynch's family announced that he had died at the age of 78." Deadline reports: Lynch had been diagnosed with emphysema. Sources told Deadline that he was forced to relocate from his house due to the Sunset Fire and then took a turn for the worse. In an interview with Sight & Sound magazine last year, Lynch revealed that due to Covid fears and his emphysema diagnosis, he could no longer could leave the house, which meant if he directed again, it would be remote. He then followed up the interview with a post on social that he "will never retire" despite his physical challenges.

The Australian Open has introduced a project called AO Animated -- "near-live, commentated coverage of the Australian Open, free to anyone across the world via YouTube, enhanced via a stream of comments from a like-minded online community," reports The Guardian. Blending real-world data with virtual avatars, the animated coverage has garnered significant viewer interest, especially among gamers and tech enthusiasts. From the report: [I]t's no surprise a project called AO Animated has taken off at this year's grand slam tournament at Melbourne Park. The catch? The players, ball and court are all computer-generated. That hasn't dissuaded hundreds of thousands of viewers from tuning into this vision of the Australian Open, featuring video game-like avatars but using real-world data in an emerging category of sports broadcasting helping tennis reach new fans.

The loophole allows the Australian Open to show a version of live events at the tournament on its own channels, despite having sold lucrative exclusive broadcast rights to partners across the globe. The technology made its debut at the grand slam last year and audiences peaked for the men's final, the recording of which has attracted almost 800,000 views on YouTube. Interest appears to be trending up this year and the matches are attracting roughly four times as many viewers than the equivalent time in 2024.

The director of innovation at Tennis Australia, Machar Reid, said although the technology was far from polished it was developing quickly. "Limb tracking is complex, you've got 12 cameras trying to process the silhouette of the human in real time, and stitch that together across 29 points in the skeleton," he said. "It's not as seamless as it could be -- we don't have fingers -- but in time you can begin to imagine a world where that comes." The data from sensors on the court is ingested and fed into a system that can produce the graphic reproduction with a two-minute delay. The same commentary and arena noises that would otherwise be heard on the television -- as well as interstitial vision direct from the broadcast -- are synced with the virtual representation of the match.

Slashdot reader rzack writes: Since 1999, I've written a huge amount of PHP code, for dozens of applications and websites. Most of it has been continually updated, and remains active and in-production, in one form or another.

Here's the thing. It's all hand-written using vi, even to this day.

Is there any benefit to migrating this codebase to a more modern PHP framework, like Laravel? And is there an easy and minimally intrusive way this can be done en-masse, across dozens of applications and websites?

Or at this point should I just stick with vi?
Share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments.

What's the best way to transfer legacy PHP code to a modern framework?

Scientists have discovered that quarks and gluons inside protons are quantum entangled, challenging traditional views of proton structure and revealing a more complex, dynamic system influenced by strong interactions. Space.com reports: Entanglement is the aspect of quantum physics that says two affected particles can instantaneously influence each other's "state" no matter how widely separated they are -- even if they are on opposite sides of the universe. Albert Einstein founded his theories of relativity on the notion that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, however, something that should preclude the instantaneous nature of entanglement.

As a result, Einstein was so troubled by entanglement he famously described it as "spukhafte Fernwirkung" or "spooky action at a distance." Yet, despite Einstein's skepticism about entanglement, this "spooky" phenomenon has been verified over and over again. Many of those verifications have concerned testing increasing distances over which entanglement can be demonstrated. This new test took the opposite approach, investigating entanglement over a distance of just one quadrillionth of a meter, finding it actually occurs within individual protons.

The team found that the sharing of information that defines entanglement occurs across whole groups of fundamental particles called quarks and gluons within a proton. "Before we did this work, no one had looked at entanglement inside of a proton in experimental high-energy collision data," team member and Brookhaven Lab physicist Zhoudunming Tu said in a statement. "For decades, we've had a traditional view of the proton as a collection of quarks and gluons, and we've been focused on understanding so-called single-particle properties, including how quarks and gluons are distributed inside the proton. "Now, with evidence that quarks and gluons are entangled, this picture has changed. We have a much more complicated, dynamic system." The team's research, the culmination of six years of work, refines scientists' understanding of how entanglement influences the structure of protons. The team's research was published in the journal Reports on Progress in Physics.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Crypto News: Power providers in the Siberian crypto mining hotspot of Irkutsk have discovered an illegal mining "farm" operating on their own property. The Irkutsk Region Prosecutor-General's Office posted on VK, explaining that an unnamed Irkutsk-based "electric grid supply organization" was "found illegally providing a plot of land" to crypto miners.

The prosecutors explained that the state had set aside the plot to help provide "public utilities." Instead, however, the unnamed company leased the land to crypto miners, who built a "mining farm" on the property. The office said that it had fined the power provider 330 thousand rubles (over $3,120) and censured the firm. Prosecutors have also opened an administrative case against the power company. The report notes that Siberia's cheap electricity and cold winters have attracted crypto miners, causing grid instability and power outages in regions like Irkutsk. "Miners favor the low operating costs of crypto mining farms in Siberia," reports Crypto News. "They also favor the area's cheap power costs and famously low winter temperatures, which help reduce cooling fees."

Despite temporary mining bans from Moscow, illegal operations persist, prompting local crackdowns.

Thursday New York's governor signed new legislation "to hold polluters responsible for the damage done to our environment" by establishing a Climate Superfund that's paid for by big fossil-fuel companies.

The money will be used for "climate change adaptation," according to New York state senator Liz Krueger, who notes that the legislation follows "the polluter-pays model" used in America's already-existing federal and state superfund laws. Spread out over 25 years, the legislation collects an average of $3 billion each year — or $75 billion — "from the parties most responsible for causing the climate crisis — big oil and gas companies."

"The Climate Change Superfund Act is now law, and New York has fired a shot that will be heard round the world: the companies most responsible for the climate crisis will be held accountable," said Senator Krueger. "Too often over the last decade, courts have dismissed lawsuits against the oil and gas industry by saying that the issue of climate culpability should be decided by legislatures. Well, the Legislature of the State of New York — the 10th largest economy in the world — has accepted the invitation, and I hope we have made ourselves very clear: the planet's largest climate polluters bear a unique responsibility for creating the climate crisis, and they must pay their fair share to help regular New Yorkers deal with the consequences.

"And there's no question that those consequences are here, and they are serious," Krueger continued. "Repairing from and preparing for extreme weather caused by climate change will cost more than half a trillion dollars statewide by 2050. That's over $65,000 per household, and that's on top of the disruption, injury, and death that the climate crisis is causing in every corner of our state. The Climate Change Superfund Act is a critical piece of affordability legislation that will deliver billions of dollars every year to ease the burden on regular New Yorkers...."

Starting in the 1970s, scientists working for Exxon made "remarkably accurate projections of just how much burning fossil fuels would warm the planet." Yet for years, "the oil giant publicly cast doubt on climate science, and cautioned against any drastic move away from burning fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change."
"The oil giant Saudi Aramco of Saudi Arabia could be slapped with the largest annual assessment of any company — $640 million a year — for emitting 31,269 million tons of greenhouse gases from 2000 to 2020," notes the New York Post.

And "The law will also standardize the number of emissions tied to the fuel produced by companies," reports the Times Union newspaper. "[F]or every 1 million pounds of coal, for example, the program assigns over 942 metric tons of carbon dioxide. For every 1 million barrels of crude oil, an entity is considered to have produced 432,180 metric tons of carbon dioxide." Among the infrastructure programs the superfund program aims to pay for: coastal wetlands restoration, energy efficient cooling systems in buildings, including schools and new housing developments, and stormwater drainage upgrades.
New York is now the second U.S. state with a "climate Superfund" law, according to Bloomberg Law, with New York following the lead of Vermont. "Maryland, Massachusetts, and California are also considering climate Superfund laws to manage mounting infrastructure costs." The American Petroleum Institute, which represents about 600 members of the industry, condemned the law. "This type of legislation represents nothing more than a punitive new fee on American energy, and we are evaluating our options moving forward," an API spokesperson said in an emailed statement... The bills — modeled after the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, known as Superfund — would almost certainly spur swift litigation from fossil fuel companies upon enactment, legal educators say.

They provide training data to top AI companies including OpenAI and Meta, according to its web site. Founded in 2016, San Francisco-based Scale AI now has over 900 employees, eventually growing beyond "unicorn" status with over $1.35 billion in ivnestments. In May the company's valuation was over $14 billion, with investors including Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, Cisco, Intel, and AMD (as well as earlier investments from Y Combinator and $100 million from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund). SFGate calls them "a buzzy San Francisco startup with high-dollar ties across the tech industry".

But SFGate also report Scale AI "was sued Tuesday by a former worker with allegations that the company is committing wage theft and misclassifying workers." Steve McKinney filed the suit against Scale and several top executives, including 27-year-old billionaire CEO Alexandr Wang, in San Francisco Superior Court. With the filing, the former contractor aims to be a lead plaintiff for a class-action lawsuit against Scale; a judge will need to certify his proposed class of current and former contractors within California...

McKinney, whose complaint says he was paid on an hourly basis and worked on a project eventually sold to Meta, is accusing Scale of amassing its clout and cash by exploiting workers. "Scale AI is the sordid underbelly propping up the generative AI industry," the complaint says, before rattling off a list of allegations about its treatment of contractors. The document accuses Scale of bait-and-switch hiring promises; demanding off-the-clock, unpaid work; denying overtime pay; and unfairly booting contractors from projects...

The Tuesday complaint calls Scale's control over its contractors "Orwellian." The company makes contractors download a tool to track much of their computer use, including by taking periodic screenshots, the suit alleges. The lawsuit also alleges that Scale reassigns the workers to varyingly paid projects and docks pay if a task takes more than it was supposed to, plus posits that Scale is in violation of California's "ABC" test, which monitors use of the designation "independent contractor." It argues that contracted "Taskers" like McKinney should be classified as employees instead...

The complaint, along with arguing for class-action certification, seeks restitution, punitive damages and changes to Scale's worker classification model.
The article adds that "Per Fortune, Scale's armies of contractors marked up images for Cruise and Waymo to help autonomous cars understand their surroundings..."

This week a Florida-based Bitcoin-tech company named MARA Holdings announced it had bought a 114-megawatt Texas wind farm, reports Chron.com, "and will subsequently take it off the power grid and use it to energize its mining operations."

MARA's CEO tells the site they're "leveraging renewable resources that would have otherwise been curtailed" while "reducing our bitcoin production costs through vertical integration, and demonstrating MARA's commitment to environmental stewardship." The wind farms were not a part of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid, but instead they were located within the Southwest Power Pool, which manages the market for the central U.S., including but not limited to most or parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota... A 114-MW facility could power somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000 homes, depending on who you ask...

Historically, the facilities use up a lot of power and have generated backlash from neighbors who have complained about the noise of the machines inside. Texas has been a haven for cryptocurrency tech companies, primarily because of the state's space, deregulated power market and friendly business climate. Two weeks ago, the Public Utilities Commission adopted a rule requiring crypto and other virtual currency miners within the ERCOT grid to register their locations, ownership information and electricity demands, to further ensure that they could be watchful of this emerging source of energy consumption.
"Crypto mining operations currently consume around 2.3 percent of US electricity, and it requires roughly 155,000kWh to mine one Bitcoin," notes the site Data Centre Dynamics. This is the second off-grid power deal MARA has signed over the last few months. In October, it launched a 25MW micro data center operation across oil wellheads in Texas and North Dakota. The data center will be powered exclusively by excess natural gas from oilfield production that would have otherwise been flared. The operation will be distributed across wellheads in Texas and North Dakota, with operational status expected by January 2025.
Some context from Bloomberg: A few years ago Bitcoin miners took part in a global scramble for electricity to power their specialized computers... But the rise of AI, with its insatiable demand for electricity, dwarfed the needs of crypto and upended energy markets worldwide. Miners must now compete with much-larger tech firms for connections to electrical grids and power contracts. "Bitcoin miners are being forced to go look at marginal generation," said [MARA CEO Fred] Thiel. "The AI guys can afford to pay a much higher amount for energy than a Bitcoin miner"... MARA's plan to mine only when the wind is blowing makes economic sense because its mine will house last-generation computers that would otherwise have been retired, Thiel said.
"Thiel said he'd be interested to potentially buy more wind farms over time."

Some days more than half of California's available solar power goes to waste, according to research from the California Institute for Energy and Environment. "In the last 12 months, California's solar farms have curtailed production of more than 3 million megawatt hours of solar energy," according to a data analysis by the Los Angeles Times — enough to power 518,000 California homes for a year.

And it was curtailed "either on the orders of the state's grid operator or because prices had plummeted because of the glut. The waste would have been even larger if California had not paid utilities in other states to take the excess solar energy, documents from the state's grid operator show." That means green energy paid for by California electricity customers is sent away, lowering bills for residents of other states. Arizona's largest public utility reaped $69 million in savings last year by buying from the market California created to get rid of its excess solar power. The utility returned that money to its customers as a credit on their bills. Also reaping profits are electricity traders, including banks and hedge funds. The increasing oversupply of solar power has created a situation where energy traders can buy the excess at prices so low they become negative, said energy consultant Gary Ackerman, the former executive director of the Western Power Trading Forum. That means the solar plant is paying the traders to take it. "This is all being underwritten by California ratepayers," Ackerman said...

The solar glut also means higher electricity bills for Californians, since they are effectively paying to generate the power but not using it. California's electric rates are roughly twice the nation's average, with only Hawaii having higher rates. Rates at Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric increased by 51% over the last three years. "Ratepayers aren't getting the energy they've paid for," said Ron Miller, an energy industry consultant in Denver. He calculates that the retail value of the solar energy thrown away in a year would be more than $1 billion.

Gov. Gavin Newsom's advisors and those who manage the state's electric grid say they are working to reduce the curtailments, including by building more industrial-scale battery storage facilities that soak up the excess solar power during the day and then release it at night. Officials in the governor's office declined to be interviewed, but issued a statement saying the curtailments are often because of congestion on transmission lines, rather than a statewide oversupply of power. The state has been spending heavily to upgrade transmission lines to ease the congestion. "It's also important to have extra energy resources available that can help the state during periods of extreme weather and historic heatwaves when demand is particularly high, which have happened the past few years," the statement said...

The commercial solar industry contends that the expansion of storage capacity to bank solar power will eventually eliminate the glut.

Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: Past corporate-sponsored Hour of Code tutorials for the nation's schoolchildren have blurred the lines between coding lessons and product infomercials. So too is the case again with this year's newly-announced Hour of Code 2024 flagship tutorials, which include Microsoft Minecraft, Amazon Music, and Transformers One movie-themed intros to coding. The press release announcing the tutorials from tech-backed nonprofit Code.org, which organizes the Hour of Code and counts Microsoft and Amazon as $30+ million donors, boasts of its "decade of partnership with [Microsoft] Minecraft this year, reaching more than 300 million sessions of Minecraft Hour of Code since 2015!"

Interestingly, The Transformers (Paramount Pictures, which released Transformers One in the U.S., is a $25,000+ Code.org donor) is cited as one of the OG's of children's Saturday morning cartoon advertising (aka 30-minute commercials) that prompted the Children's Television Act (CTA) of 1990, an act of Congress that ordered the FCC to put in place regulations to protect children from advertising. Throughout the 1980s, Action for Children's Television (ACT) criticized children's television programs that "blur(red) the distinction between program content and commercial speech."