Daily Tech News 28 April 2026

• A new AI datacenter planned for Box County, Utah, will use more than twice as much power as the rest of the state combined. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The datacenter will use 9GW of power once it is completed, and the entire rest of Utah currently uses around 4GW. Drawing that much electricity from the grid might prove impractical, so the project managers chose a site near the Ruby Pipeline, and the datacenter will be powered by on-site gas generators. A lot of them.

• Talkie is an LLM with a difference: It was trained exclusively on data from before 1931. (Talkie-LM)
  
  Which is an interesting trick, and though the direct utility is somewhat limited, the aspect of training an LLM on a carefully curated dataset rather than throwing the internet at it seems sound.
  
  Also, with examples of code provided, Talkie was able to generate new, correct Python programs. Though whether this is an inherent ability or data contamination is not easily determined.
  
  
  
• A library containing four terabytes of voice data accompanied by the government IDs of the speakers was just leaked. (Oravys)
  
  All I can say to this is Leloo Dallas multipass.
  
  
  
• The Python package elementary-data - not one I have run into before but it apparently has 1.1 million monthly downloads - was hacked to steal your information. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  It's been updated, but if you are running version 0.23.3 then I regret to inform you that you are a meat popsicle.
  
  
  
• Friendster is back from the grave. (The Register)
  
  Some of my best friends are zombies.
  
  Most of them, really.
  
  
  
• A third of new websites are AI-generated. (404 Media)
  
  Another 65% are 100% organic post-consumer waste.
  
  
  
• Notepad++ is now available for the Mac. (Nerds.xyz)
  
  Good. I think.
  
  
  
• GitHub Copilot is switching to usage-based billing. (GitHub)
  
  This may be a bigger story than it seems. We know that none of the AI companies are remotely profitable, meaning that all AI usage right now is being subsidised by investors. The question is, how much will prices go up when this is applied across the industry, and will it be enough to kill off crawling nightmares like Steve Yegge's Gas City?

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:45 AM

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