Data centers powering America's artificial intelligence boom are creating blue-collar jobs for electricians, mechanics and technicians, says Compass Datacenters CEO Chris Crosby.

The development of a huge AI datacentre hailed by the UK government has received a fresh setback after Microsoft pulled out of the project over concerns about power supplies. The development by the British company Nscale, heralded by ministers as the country's largest AI datacentre when it was announced in 2025, was planned to open at Loughton in Essex next year. Revealed: UK's multibillion AI drive is built on'phantom investments' Doubts had already emerged about the scheme after the Guardian revealed in March that the location was still an operational scaffolding yard . Now there are further concerns after Microsoft, one of its largest planned customers and expected to have been the anchor tenant, informed the company that it was pulling the plug on its agreement. It comes a month after it emerged that power supply problems meant the project would face a lengthy wait before coming online.

A fake Claude AI assistant download scam uses Google ads and Bing redirects to trick Mac users into running malicious Terminal commands that hide dangerous malware.

Many residents are concerned about the health and environmental issues a datacenter could bring to the community. Many residents are concerned about the health and environmental issues a datacenter could bring to the community. Inside the long, bitter fight over one man's quest to build the biggest AI datacenter in California Sat 17 Oct 2026 09.00 EDTLast modified on Sat 17 Oct 2026 09.01 EDT Sebastian Rucci zoomed in on a map in late 2024, looking closely at a large block of brown earth. The barren plot sandwiched between sprawling alfalfa fields and sleepy desert suburbs was exactly what he'd been searching for - the perfect place to realize his dream of building the largest artificial intelligence datacenter in California. It was in the Sonoran desert, just north of the Mexican border, where temperatures regularly rose past 100F (37.8C). Water was scarce in the once-booming agricultural area, which gets its supply from the beleaguered Colorado River.

Say More Versus Trending Now Look Up In My Bag Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable @Home Mashable Selects Top creators, ranked Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Creator Playbook AI at School All Series Foreign data center attacks raise questions about American security risks. Rebecca Ruiz is a Senior Reporter at Mashable. She frequently covers mental health, digital culture, and technology. Her areas of expertise include suicide prevention, screen use and mental health, parenting, youth well-being, and meditation and mindfulness. Rebecca's experience prior to Mashable includes working as a staff writer, reporter, and editor at NBC News Digital and as a staff writer at Forbes.

Gmail's search can be frustrating and basic, but Google is finally smartening it up for AI plan subscribers with the release of Gmail Live. Now out of beta after being announced at Google I/O last month, the AI feature allows you to search your inbox using conversational voice commands. It's similar to live voice chats with the Gemini chatbot, but customized for popular apps like Gmail, Docs and Drive, with each getting its own version of the functionality. The feature, Google says, allows you to find details in buried in emails without digging through endless threads. "Use conversational search to find information just by asking things like, 'What's my flight's gate number?' or'What's going on at my kid's school this week?' and Gmail Live will scan your inbox and give you answers quickly," Google explains.

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Figure caption, Watch: The BBC's Shaimaa Khalil is in Arizona to hear from residents about the expansion of data centres. A year ago, a longtime US senator was not thinking much about data centres. Now, according to one of his advisers, he is having regular meetings with staff to track their impact and working on new legislation aimed at curbing their rapid expansion across the country. This happens sometimes, something starts slow and then it goes fast, the senior policy adviser to the Democratic senator told the BBC.

Trending Now Say More Look Up In My Bag Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable @Home Mashable Selects Top creators, ranked Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Creator Playbook AI at School Safety Net All Series The misleading results are reportedly deliberate. Matt Binder joined Mashable's tech vertical in 2018, where he covers social media, tech policy, cybersecurity, online scams, cryptocurrency, AI, creator news, weird tech, and other related tech beats. A new report claims Google is deliberately poisoning search results pages to combat AI scrapers. Is Google purposefully serving up false data to AI scrapers? According to a new report from Nozzle, a search engine results page (SERP) monitoring firm, Google may be deliberately manipulating search results that are visible to rank-tracking tools and other automated services.

Drone Strikes Didn't Take Out a Russian Bot Farm, But We Were Primed to Believe It A viral rumor illustrates people's hunger to make sense of the division we see online. Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to journalists after meeting with the German chancellor in Kyiv on October 4. Volodymyr Tarasov/Ukrinform/Zuma Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that a Ukrainian bombing strike on Yandex's data centers, a large Russian technology company, had led to a sudden decrease in bot activity online. "When our strikes reached Yandex's data centers, it suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms," Zelenskyy declared, speaking at the opening of the Warsaw Security Forum. There was, he added, "less hate, less division, and fewer provocations because there were fewer bots. And it's pretty clear where those bots were coming from."

Did Iran capture a US submarine? Iran threatens Gulf data centres: How exposed is the region's internet? Iran's security chief, Mohsen Rezaei, has warned that cables, data centres and artificial intelligence (AI) facilities across the region could be attacked if war with the United States erupts again. The warning comes as the capture of Yemeni territory along the Red Sea coastline last month by the Iran-backed Houthis has raised concerns over the safety of internet cables linking Europe and Asia. Fierce fighting is under way between Yemen's internationally recognised government and the Houthis at several locations, including Bab al-Mandeb, through which nearly one-fifth of global internet traffic passes.