Replacing thousands of miles of copper telephone lines with fibre optic could produce a £2bn windfall for BT. CC-licensed photo by Leo Reynolds on Flickr.
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A selection of 10 links for you. Weighty. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Americans hate data centres. Why? • The New York Times
David Wallace-Wells:
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The data centre backlash is still, like a tsunami, growing. And to really understand what’s happening, you have to start not with the constituent parts of the resistance but with the sheer scale of what’s become an extraordinarily broad consensus.
Three in four Americans said they’d oppose the construction of a data centre in their communities, according to a recent poll from Heatmap Pro and Embold Research. Local data centres were opposed by two-thirds of Republicans, whose party is warning that recent support for such projects could destroy its chances in key Senate races. And though political causes rarely transcend partisanship, this one appears to: Nearly 80% of independents opposed local data center projects, along with 83% of Democrats.
Slice the population any which way you want — by age, by gender, by income, along the urban-rural divide — and the pattern is the same. As are the trends. Last August the American public was almost evenly split when Heatmap Pro asked about local projects. Then net approval swung 62 percentage points. Opposition this year was higher than 70% in every region in the country; more than half of Americans supported a national moratorium.
…To many who believe in the promise of A.I., it looks like a degrowth cul-de-sac — and a test case for whether dreams of frictionless technological progress can survive democratic blowback.
But one of these groups is simply much larger than the other. Only 9% of Americans surveyed by Pew Research in June said they were more excited than concerned about AI, perhaps because opponents had heard more about the risks it poses than the concrete gains it might deliver. You can’t reduce data centre resistance to just fear any more than you can call it simply the influence of short-form video.
Yet one way of reading the backlash is as a many-headed protest against inevitability — about not just the technology itself but also the whole package of breakneck build-out, social disruption and insane wealth creation it has come wrapped in. Is this really the only future on offer?
…“Data centres are a physical manifestation of so many things that people are upset about in our day-to-day lives,” [the activist Saul] Levin continued. “It’s not a fight about technology,” he said. “This is a fight about control. This is about who controls the future.”
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The AI “ghosts” contaminating academic publishing • 404 Media
Emanuel Maiberg:
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“Elena Vasquez and Marcus Chen have appeared as volcano experts, astronauts, thriller protagonists, podcast hosts, and academic co-authors across hundreds of independently produced AI-generated documents, never having lived,” a new preprint research paper from Samsung and the University of Warsaw said.
The paper identified a number of names that co-authored hundreds of AI-generated academic papers, articles, and books. The authors don’t actually exist, but are instead names that large language models repeatedly produce when tasked with generating experts in certain fields.
The paper, titled “The Ghost Couple: Correlated LLM Name Priors and Their Haunting of the Web and Academic Publishing,” utilized a known phenomenon where certain LLMs will keep coming up with the same names in certain contexts. For example, In June, Sam wrote about how ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude were likely to use the name Elias Thorne in fiction they generated, and that the character was often a lighthouse keeper. Similarly, users noticed that if they ask ChatGPT to generate a software developer, their name will often be Marcus Chen.
The researchers were able to show not only that LLMs often default to the same names, but that they produce “correlated character ensembles,” meaning some names were more likely to appear together. Other names that were consistently generated by AI models include Elena Amara Okafor from Claude, Aris Thorne and Lena Petrova from Gemini, and Elara Voss from ChatGPT.
Earlier this month, I reported a story about Research Gold, a company that offered what it claimed was human medical research, but that was in fact entirely AI generated. The founder and lead methodologist for that company was named Elena Vasquez. Research Gold removed Elena Vasquez from its site after I published the story.
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By the way: a few days ago I linked to a writeup by a site called Forkast of the Nvidia acquisition of Hugging Face, because it had some interesting analysis. Karsten L writes to say “the reporter who wrote the analysis, ‘Lena Park’, is an AI.” They got me, ma.
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BT on track for estimated £2bn windfall from selling old copper amid AI boom • The Guardian
Mark Sweney:
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BT is on track for an estimated £2bn-plus windfall over the next decade from selling off old copper cabling, as it cashes in on soaring prices amid the AI market frenzy and switches the UK’s network to full-fibre broadband.
Copper is one of the main beneficiaries of the “electrification of everything”, essential for the rapid growth of AI datacentres, electronics and the fast-growing renewable energy industry.
The metal hit its highest-ever closing price of $14,294 a metric tonne on Friday, close to the record intraday high of $14,500 reached earlier this year amid global shortage fears.
BT has a recycling deal with EMR, the UK’s largest cable granulation company, and has now received £99m upfront for thousands of tonnes of surplus stripped copper.
It is the second such payment received by the telecoms company, which is rolling out full-fibre broadband to 30m homes by the end of the decade through its Openreach subsidiary, after £105m in 2024.
The forward sale agreements, which are understood to cover the delivery of about 20,000 tonnes of copper over a four-year period each, do not include any revenue BT makes each year if it chooses to sell recycled copper on the spot market.
BT recovered a record nearly 10,000 tonnes in the year to the end of March, almost three times the amount it managed in the year to the end of March 2024, and a total of 22,347 tonnes since the telecoms company began stripping and selling the cabling in 2023.
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Telephone cabling weights between 150 and 400 pounds per mile, which is about 70kg to 180kg per mile, so 1 tonne is between 5 and 15 miles. So 20,000 tonnes translates to about 100,000 miles of cabling.
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Think twice before installing this device promising free movies • Ars Technica
Dan Goodin:
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As online services get better at blocking malicious traffic, the attackers and scammers behind them have been forced to find new ways to reach their targets. The alternative of choice is now what are known as residential proxy networks. These systems funnel millions of home Internet connections into a unified network, and the proxy operators allow attackers to route their malicious traffic through these connections for a fee. The online services see only IP addresses with good reputations and geolocations that don’t stand out.
More often than not, the home users have no idea that their connections are being used to facilitate crime and occasionally even nation-state attacks. Users who do know often don’t care much. In exchange for leasing out part of their unlimited bandwidth to others, many get free movie and TV show streaming. Several less tech-savvy people I know who own such digital media players have told me, after I explain how the media players piggyback off their connections, that the bonanza of content is worth it. They find the tangible benefits outweigh the abstract harm they pose.
Research published Monday brings the threat into much clearer view. Security firm Plume cataloged a vast ecosystem of malware that preys squarely on users of SuperBox, just one of many media players offering pirated content. These malicious apps can be surreptitiously installed by remote attackers even when the devices are positioned behind a router. While Monday’s deep-dive analysis focused exclusively on SuperBox, Plume warned that dozens of similar streaming devices pose precisely the same threat.
“Our researchers found that these residential proxy networks are not simply monetization tools,” Plume researchers wrote. “They are actively being used as a target for additional malware delivery, enabling cybercriminals to infect already-compromised devices with entirely new malware families while remaining largely invisible to the device owner.”
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The problem really is that people don’t care if they aren’t affected themselves. See no evil, hear no evil. It’s everyone else who suffers. It would take dramatic action by ISPs or the government against these boxes to shut them down. But there are millions out there.
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New satellite images reveal surprise cause of Nepal floods: ‘not just a glacier’ • The Week
Meera Suresh:
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Earth scientists have finally shed light on how the tragic Nepal flood that claimed thousands of lives happened, with the latest satellite images revealing not just the glacier, but also that the bedrock under the glacier had collapsed.
Geomorphologists Kristen Cook and Dan Shugar claimed that further analysis of the satellite images from Nepal revealed there was a “big bedrock failure that took part of the glacier with it.”
The glacier broke off in a northwest direction and then fell westward into the river flow.
They told AP that clouds and debris obscured initial images from Nepal on Wednesday, so they could only see that part of a glacier had broken off from the Langtang Lirung peak, near the border with Tibet. However, the images taken on Thursday revealed that the bedrock underneath the glacier had collapsed, taking the massive chunk of ice down with it and sending boulders and ice into the valley.
“It shows the whole area without anything hidden, and we could see that, yes, it looked like there was not only this glacier that had failed, but a much larger chunk of the bedrock of the mountainside itself that had given way,” said Shugar, associate professor at the University of Calgary. “You have this big bedrock failure that took part of the glacier with it.”
…Alton Byers, a mountain geographer at the University of Colorado at Boulder, believes Wednesday’s flooding is related to climate change. He said the permafrost that for millennia has helped to hold together high-altitude rock and ice and soil and glaciers is now weakening and becoming unstable.
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Steve Jobs, closed Macs, and me: a guest post • Pogue’s Posts
Del Yocam was hired as director of materials at Apple in 1979:
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When Walter Isaacson phoned me to get information about Steve Jobs for his biography of Steve, I told him: “I think his desire for complete control of whatever he makes derives directly from his personality and the fact that he was abandoned at birth. He wants to control his environment, and he sees the product as an extension of himself.”
Nowhere was that truer than with Steve’s closed Macintosh computer.
…Steve and I had many discussions about the benefits and limitations of both open and closed computers. He wanted a faster processor, an advanced operating system, and specific writing and drawing applications. Steve loved the design perfection of a closed system. It meant everything worked as designed. Nothing needed to be added.
I would say to Steve, “No one person has the creative ability to design, develop, and deliver what you want to do—let alone the education and experience. And enclosing it like a toaster, with no expansion slots, is an exercise in futility.”
Steve would argue that the benefits outweighed the limitations. “The Macintosh will be more powerful, with an advanced operating system and specific applications, for a much lower price—under $1,000.” Then came the telling statement: “I can do it.”
For Steve, the closed Mac would be his baby. He wanted to prove that he could design the perfect system, fully complete without the need for expansion slots.
…when the Mac failed to live up to Steve’s optimistic sales forecast, everyone had a theory about why it hadn’t worked. I heard them all: “It’s too expensive.” “Not enough memory.” And the one that rang truest: “Where are the expansion slots?”
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This is what it feels like to live through a political revolution • The New York Times
A conversation between John Guida, a NYT opinion editor, and Ivan Krastev, a political theorist who lived through a post-Communist revolution in his home country, Bulgaria:
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Krastev: In the first year of his return to the White House, Trump’s political speed helped him to take the initiative. He was doing things so fast that he left others living in a state of total disorientation. But now — and this is very clear in the case of war with Iran — Trump has become the victim of his own time zone. It’s almost as if he can take two contradictory positions at the same time — a quantum revolution in politics. But the magic of his words is starting to fade away.
The constant reversal of position results in political impotence. The markets, but also Trump’s allies and his enemies, started to dismiss what the president is saying. Political time is reduced to a moment without history or future. Trump does not wait for others to name buildings after him; he does this himself, and this creates some sense of apocalyptic time.
Guida: Do you think that narrowing of time has affected the posture of the United States? America has traditionally been seen as a country leading the way into or certainly open to the future. Now we are torn in ways that call back to the past: on the one side, MAGA; on the other, socialism. What happened to the future?
Krastev: The future has vanished. The only future we talk about are different dystopian scenarios involving climate, demography, artificial intelligence. The disappearance of the future is a major contrast with America’s history and America’s self-understanding.
America first defined itself in opposition to old aristocratic Europe; it was the New World, setting itself apart in categories like tolerance and freedom. In the Cold War, it defined itself in opposition to the Soviet Union, and because the Soviet project was obsessed with the future, the American project was also universalist and very much future-oriented. Now America, or at least MAGA, wants to replace the future with the past. Europeans have done it before, but America is not a European nation-state, so going back to the golden past is not easy.
…Shared fear of the future cannot bring the world together, because there is one thing that is more terrifying than that we all will die, and that is that some will die and others will be immortal. It is interesting to compare student protests in the 1960s to today’s. We will be shocked to realize that back then, young people protested because they did not want to live the lives of their parents; they wanted better lives. Today they protest because they fear — and for good reasons — that they will have lives worse than those of their parents. They demand to have something like the same quality of life that their parents did.
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“The future has vanished” is a very bleak phrase.
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Chefs say Michelin Guide at risk of ‘losing credibility’ over suspected lack of inspectors • The Guardian
George Francis Lee:
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How many inspectors does it take to review the country’s best restaurants – a pinch, a baker’s dozen? For more than a century the answer has been kept secret by the world’s authority on good food: the Michelin Guide.
But the French tyre company’s famous hotel and restaurant reference book has been challenged by chefs, restaurant critics and diners, who question whether the guide has enough of its anonymous inspectors to adequately review and monitor the eateries that are included each year.
Founded in 1900 as a free motorists guide, the red books’ recommendations gained influence in the culinary world, and by 1931 a ranking system was fully introduced: one, two and three stars to denote increasing levels of quality. Michelin stars are now shorthand for some of the best restaurants in the world. They are awarded every year and restaurants with the accolade are appraised by inspectors annually to judge whether they can gain, keep or lose stars.
But chefs and hospitality insiders claim some restaurants go for years without being inspected, and fear Michelin has “lost its credibility”. They believe the inspectors cannot keep up with monitoring the number of restaurants in the guide – there are now 19,653 global entries, according to Michelin’s website – and say that this has “undermined the reliability of the guide”.
…with a growing list of starred restaurants in the UK and Ireland guide alone – from 185 in 2021 to 230 in 2026 – some wonder if there are enough inspectors to repeatedly visit restaurants and ensure high standards are maintained.
“It’s absolutely the case that Michelin doesn’t send its inspectors to all of their starred restaurants every year. They can’t get to them all,” said Marshall Manson, CEO of the public relations firm FleishmanHillard and the author of the hospitality blog Professional Lunch.
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Here’s a scaling problem which is nothing to do with the internet. How do you grow the number of people who have the requisite taste(buds) to determine Michelin starred-ness? The answer almost certainly is you can’t.
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An island mysteriously appeared — then disappeared — on British Columbia’s largest reservoir • CBC News
Matt Preprost:
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No one knows where it came from or where it went, but a massive new island might be floating out somewhere in the Williston Reservoir in northern British Columbia (B.C.).
The forested land mass caught the attention of B.C. Hydro and local residents earlier this month after it was spotted bobbing in the massive man-made lake north of Mackenzie.
Rocky Avery says video and pictures of the island were taken by a boater and later shared with him. He posted them on social media, and they quickly went viral.
“It was a pretty amazing sight to see, never seen anything like that in my 40 years in this country,” said Avery. “There was a big fishing derby coming up, so I wanted to make sure everybody was aware of what was going on. And I wanted B.C. Hydro to know too that it was out there, just in case it was floating down their way.”
The discovery left Bob Gammer, a B.C. Hydro spokesperson, incredulous when CBC News first inquired about the island’s origins.
…The Williston reservoir, impounded behind the W.A.C. Bennett Dam in 1968, is the seventh-largest reservoir in the world and visible from space. High winter snowpacks and steady summer rains have filled it to the brim, forcing B.C. Hydro to open the dam’s spillways in June and July to release water.
Gammer says it’s likely the island formed over many years somewhere along the shore where driftwood accumulated, allowing plants and trees to take root in the decomposing debris. As reservoir levels rose, it broke free, and winds carried it out into open water.
“We haven’t had a full reservoir in 14 years,” Gammer said. “We can’t pinpoint the origin of this floating island [but that’s] one explanation that seems reasonable.”
Avery says this year’s high water has washed out shoreline sand dunes popular for quad-biking, and pulled more trees and debris out into the lake than usual. “There’s areas we would never even drive a boat on before, and now we’re going up over top of it,” said Avery.
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“iT woRKs BeTter in THe aPp!!” • Terence Eden’s Blog
Terence Eden:
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The monkey-punchers at Google never quite seem to finish any of their apps. There’s always some useful bit of work left undone, or showstopping bug which remains unfixed, a thousand jagged edges as yet unsolved by the greatest minds of their generation.
I wanted to subscribe to an events calendar. I had a URl. I had my Google™ Pixel® phone running the latest Android© 17 with an updated calendar app. Is it possible to click on a calendar link and add it to my phone?
No.
Here’s what Google has to say about the matter: “To subscribe to a new calendar, you must use a computer web browser. You can’t subscribe to a calendar in the Google Calendar app for Android, iPhone, or iPad.”
Really?!? I mean, f—ing really????
This isn’t the most complex software engineering task known to humanity. Add a + button. Pop open a text entry field. Validate. Save. Done. I’m sure even the shitty Gemini model can vibe code that in a couple of months, right?
Anyway, I opened calendar.google.com on my phone (using desktop mode), added the calendar, and it magically appeared in the app.
This is just pathetic.In fairness, this isn’t only a Google problem. Many companies want a permanent presence on your homescreen and think you’re too thick to use your browser’s bookmarks feature. Maybe they’re right. Maybe an app is the only way to increase the engagement KPI sufficiently so Quinn in the leadership squad can hit their OKRs and get a bonus.
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As one comment says, Google software comes in two forms: deprecated, and not yet ready.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 
Data centres: ““This is a fight about control. This is about who controls the future.”
Indeed and I wish everybody understood this.
China will control the future if anti-data centre movements win in USA and EU, and if “AI” turns out to be as transformative as markets (still) believe. It might not.
“Insane wealth creation” in itself is not really a good reason to oppose data centres or anything. Industrialisation, globalisation and market economy resulted in insane wealth creation and improvement in our lives. Economy is not a zero sum game.
Environmental reasons or surging electricity prices can be a good reason to oppose data centres. But the reasons must be factual. For example, a local financial newspaper reported in a headline that Irish data centres consume massive amounts of water – billions of gallons.
In the actual text it was revealed that actually the data centres consume 0,3% of water in Ireland. Still billions of gallons (a very big number), but not much of a problem in context.