Fou☈SidedHexagon

A data center in Georgia used 30 million gallons of water illegally, and locals only noticed when their water pressure was abnormally low. The data center claimed it was an honest mistake, but locals were told by the town to conserve water while the data center kept running.

The biggest way to improve weather forecasts now isn’t new math. It’s better data. More weather balloons. More radar coverage. More satellites. More observations feeding the models.

A woman takes part in a protest against wealth inequality in North Carolina during the 1930s.

History repeats itself

I absolutely hate that we are out the point where you can tell what tornado photos (Morton) inspired the AI creation slip reels. The only thing an AI data center is good for is being a damage indicator.

Google Chrome is quietly downloading a roughly 4 GB AI model to many users’ computers without clear upfront consent. The file, called weights.bin, is part of Google’s Gemini Nano on-device language model and lands in the browser’s user data folder under OptGuideOnDeviceModel. It powers built-in AI tools such as “Help me write,” smarter tab suggestions, on-device scam detection, and page summarization. The download triggers automatically for devices meeting minimum hardware requirements, and Chrome often replaces the files if deleted. While the model processes data locally, installation happens in the background with minimal notification. The scale is noteworthy. Hundreds of millions or billions of installations add up to thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions globally from data transfer, even though each is a one-time event. To prevent or remove it, go to chrome://flags, disable the entries for the optimization guide on-device model and Prompt API, restart the browser, and manually delete the folder.