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// Tech news at terminal velocity
cat 2026-08-09.md
$ cat TLDR.md
▸ • Amazon is building a massive private gas plant in Texas for its AI data centers, potentially becoming the US's biggest climate polluter.
▸ • OpenAI acquires presentation startup NextSlide to bring slide-building capabilities directly into ChatGPT.
▸ • SAP halts most hiring and travel to foot the bill for its soaring AI development costs.
To power its new West Texas data centers, Amazon is financing a massive 7.65-gigawatt private gas power plant. Permitted to release 33 million tons of CO2 annually, it could become the largest single source of climate pollution in the US, making that 'net-zero by 2040' pledge look a bit hazy.
OpenAI has acquired NextSlide, a year-old startup focused on turning prompts and notes into polished presentations. The team is now working on integrating visual communication and slide-building directly into ChatGPT, because writing the text for your boring meeting wasn't enough.
Elon Musk's X is killing its controversial revenue-sharing program on September 7th. In its place comes the 'Original Content Rewards' program, a desperate attempt to stop engagement farmers from getting paid for recycling memes and instead reward actual original writing, reporting, and art.
German software giant SAP has paused most global hiring and internal travel to control spending. Why? Because building and acquiring AI tools is incredibly expensive, and the company needs to free up cash to fund its artificial intelligence ambitions. Sorry, no business class flights for you.
PortSwigger researcher Gareth Heyes demonstrated at Black Hat how untrusted CSS in webmail clients can be weaponized. By breaking out of sanitization boundaries, attackers can spoof login screens, exfiltrate tokens, and steal passwords across major providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo. Time to view emails in plain text again.
A fascinating look back at a 1998 Byte article detailing the Alpha 21264, a processor that was an absolute beast for its time. It's a nostalgic deep dive into the era when RISC architectures were battling it out for Windows NT supremacy, long before x86 ate the world.
A new tool showcased on Hacker News that offers free, fast, and simple voice content creation. It's a neat utility for developers and creators looking to quickly generate audio without wrestling with complex interfaces or expensive subscriptions.
New research suggests the massive Mount Toba eruption didn't actually cause a severe volcanic winter that nearly wiped out humanity. It turns out our ancestors were a bit more resilient than the dramatic genetic bottleneck theories previously suggested.
The new color e-ink Kindle Scribe is here. While it's undeniably pretty and fun to use, reviewers note its hefty price tag makes it more of a luxury flex than a must-have for the average reader.
The beloved Texas mega-gas-station chain Buc-ee's is back at it, dodging John Oliver's recent segment to continue its aggressive legal strategy of suing small convenience stores over trademark disputes. Don't mess with the beaver.