An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nowhere is the US data center boom bigger than in Texas. But less than a year after declaring Texas the "epicenter of AI development," Governor Greg Abbott has declared a moratorium on all new power grid connections for data centers -- at least until developers provide more information about their projects' potential impacts on the grid and communities. The Republican governor directed regulators in an August 3 announcement at the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the grid operators at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to perform a "comprehensive verification and audit of all data centers advancing through ERCOT's interconnection process." As an independent system operator, ERCOT oversees a power grid that operates separately from the rest of the United States and provides services to most of Texas.
Texas has aggressively courted data center development with its availability of cheap land and relatively abundant energy resources, along with offering state incentives, like tax breaks and fewer regulations. That puts the state on track to surpass Virginia in becoming the largest US data center market. But the recent AI boom and the accompanying frenzy of data center development threaten to overwhelm the Texas grid on paper, despite the state leading the country in adding new power generation. The ERCOT interconnection queue currently includes more than 1,800 projects representing over 474 gigawatts' worth of requests to connect to the Texas grid -- more than five times Texas' record peak electricity demand -- and about 90 percent of those power connection requests come from data centers.
"That unprecedented load growth could endanger the reliability and stability of the Texas electric grid," according to the statement from Abbott's office. Many of those data center projects may never materialize for various reasons. But ERCOT has still forecast that data center demand and other factors could drive statewide electricity demand to double the current demand record by 2032, according to The Texas Tribune. The review will examine each project's projected electricity consumption, reliance on the grid and state incentives, ownership, and water use. It will also assess measures intended to "reduce impacts on neighboring property owners and communities," including noise controls, lighting, traffic improvements, setbacks, and emergency planning.
Ars Technica notes that the directive does not address air pollution or greenhouse-gas emissions and does not apply to data centers generating their own power on-site.
La libertad de expresión vive un momento extraordinario. Nunca fue tan fácil decir lo que uno piensa. Lo curioso es que tampoco nunca fue tan difícil aceptar que los demás hagan exactamente lo mismo.
Existe una curiosa especie de demócrata de tiempo parcial. Defiende con entusiasmo el derecho a opinar… siempre que nadie cometa la imprudencia de opinar sobre su opinión. Para ellos, el desacuerdo no forma parte del debate; es una insolencia. La réplica no es una respuesta; es una ofensa. Y el silencio ajeno, por supuesto, siempre confirma que tenían razón.
Su lógica merece un museo.
Si respondes, te dolió.
Si no respondes, te quedaste sin argumentos.
Si preguntas, eres conflictivo.
Si explicas, eres arrogante.
Si ironizas, eres soberbio.
Y si decides seguir con tu vida… acabas de perder por abandono.
Es un reglamento admirable. Las reglas cambian cuando hace falta, pero el resultado nunca sorprende. Tiene una ventaja difícil de igualar: el árbitro, el jugador y el campeón suelen ser la misma persona.
Internet democratizó la opinión, y eso fue una gran noticia. Lo que nadie advirtió fue que también democratizaría la certeza absoluta. Hoy abundan personas que no buscan contrastar ideas; buscan confirmar que jamás tendrán que revisar las propias. Confunden el desacuerdo con la falta de respeto y la respuesta con la agresión.
Hay un personaje que nunca falta en esta historia. Es el que anuncia con solemnidad:
—No volveré a leerla.
Siempre imagino que espera una reacción dramática. Tal vez una llamada urgente preguntándole cómo sobrevivirá la literatura sin su presencia. Sin embargo, la realidad tiene bastante menos vocación de drama. El siguiente artículo se publica. El café sigue caliente. El mundo continúa con una indiferencia casi ofensiva.
Y, curiosamente, muchos regresan.
Al parecer, algunos “nunca más” duran exactamente hasta la siguiente publicación.
Existe otra teoría fascinante: si un escritor responde un comentario, está desesperado. Si no responde, fue derrotado intelectualmente. Nunca contemplan una tercera posibilidad: que simplemente tenga una vida.
Trabaja. Lee. Comparte con su familia. Sale a caminar. Escribe otro artículo. O, sencillamente, decide no invertir horas en una discusión que dejó de ser un intercambio de ideas para convertirse en un concurso de egos.
Hay personas convencidas de que un comentario suyo puede cambiarte el día, la carrera o el prestigio. Debe de ser agotador vivir creyéndose tan importante en la vida de un desconocido. La realidad suele ser mucho más discreta. Mientras algunos celebran una supuesta victoria, el destinatario del comentario ya está pensando en el próximo proyecto, en el supermercado o en qué cocinar para la cena.
Es difícil provocar un terremoto cuando apenas logras mover una notificación.
Lo verdaderamente revelador aparece cuando se terminan las razones. Entonces entra en escena el recurso favorito de quienes ya no tienen argumentos:
Los adjetivos.
Porque responder una idea exige esfuerzo. Descalificar a quien la expresa apenas requiere mal humor. Es mucho más sencillo etiquetar a una persona que desmontar un razonamiento.
Con el tiempo descubrí algo que internet rara vez enseña: no toda conversación merece convertirse en una discusión, y no toda discusión merece una respuesta. No por falta de argumentos, sino por exceso de experiencia.
Hay conversaciones que iluminan.
Otras solo consumen batería.
El tiempo también argumenta, aunque lo haga sin levantar la voz.
Escribo porque disfruto escribir. Porque ordenar ideas me resulta más interesante que coleccionar discusiones. No escribo para gustarle a todo el mundo; eso sería tan imposible como pretender que todos disfruten el mismo libro, la misma canción o el mismo café.
Quien se queda, bienvenido.
Quien se va, buen viaje.
Y quien regresa después de anunciar que jamás volvería… también encontrará la puerta abierta.
Al final entendí que escribir nunca fue un concurso de popularidad. Es un ejercicio de libertad. La libertad de pensar, de disentir y, sobre todo, de elegir qué conversaciones merecen nuestro tiempo.
Hay comentarios que buscan comprender.
Otros solo buscan tener la última palabra.
Aprender a distinguirlos también forma parte del oficio de vivir.
Porque el ego convierte cualquier desacuerdo en una ofensa; la inteligencia, en cambio, lo convierte en una pregunta.
Las opiniones cambian.
Los comentarios se olvidan.
El carácter permanece.
Y quizá la mayor victoria no consista en tener siempre la última palabra, sino en conservar la serenidad mientras otros siguen convencidos de que un comentario puede detener la vida de alguien que, hace mucho, decidió seguir caminando.
Longtime Slashdot reader neoRUR shares a report from Game Developer: EA Sports FC and Battlefield publisher EA has been taken private by an investor consortium led by Saudi Arabia's sovereign Public Investment Fund (PIF). The move means the U.S. juggernaut is no longer a publicly-traded entity and is now majority owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through its PIF investment arm. Other investors include Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, the latter of which was established by U.S. president Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The $55 billion transaction was financed via a combination of cash from PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners as well as roll-over of PIF's existing stake in EA -- constituting an equity investment of approximately $36 billion. Notably, $20 billion of debt financing was provided by JPMorgan Chase Bank. The deal cleared the necessary regulatory hurdles in July, paving the way for its completion at the close of trading on August 4, 2026. It was approved by regulators in major markets such as the European Union and the United States without incident, despite lawmakers and union leaders in the U.S. calling on the Federal Trade Commission to heavily scrutinize the leveraged buyout over geopolitical and employment concerns.
I love WordPress, it's powerful and versatile. But I think its biggest flaw is cosmetic: the dashboard overwhelms casual users because it doesn't prioritize the features people actually use.
Even recent updates have improved things under the hood without fixing the layout itself.
So for this plugin, I redesigned the layout inspired by platforms like Medium and Substack, around what I believe people use 90% of the time.
Posting-related actions are front and center; everything else is secondary. Inside the editor itself, the same logic applies: category, featured image, and content are what you see first. It's entirely cosmetic, you can switch back and forth between dashboard with a click.
I would imagine some of my choices here are controversial, and I welcome other people's take. But I believe we need to be more opinioned about what shows up where in the WordPress dashboard, and that's the main point I wanted to make here.
Here's the github link if you want to take a look, play around, or improve on it. (I had to add Promo to my post title but I am not actually promoting anything paid, just to be clear)
Apple has capped the number of open bug-bounty reports researchers can submit after being flooded with low-quality and sometimes entirely fabricated vulnerabilities generated by AI. MacRumors reports: The Financial Times learned of the limit after cybersecurity startup Bynario used ChatGPT to locate more than 50 macOS bugs in three weeks. Bynario found a privilege escalation exploit that could let an attacker get unrestricted access to a Mac, but was unable to report it because Apple limited the number of bug reports Bynario could submit. Bynario sent eight reports to Apple in 2025, and another five in 2026 before hitting a restriction.
Bynario's founder said it is a "very difficult time in the industry" because companies are being "flooded by the sheer amount of bugs." Apple has since been in contact with Bynario and is reviewing the company's submissions. While Apple now has a cap on the number of open submissions a researcher can have, researchers can request an increase to make sure Apple's security team doesn't miss a critical vulnerability.
Bending Spoons has made its first acquisition since going public last month at an $18 billion valuation, agreeing to buy spreadsheet and database startup Airtable for $1.28 billion in cash. Airtable joins a growing portfolio of notable brands owned by the Italian app developer, including Evernote, WeTransfer, EventBrite, and Vimeo. TechCrunch reports: Founded in 2013, Airtable has so far raised more than $1.4 billion over multiple funding rounds. At its peak, during the boom days of 2021, it was valued at over $11 billion, but earlier this year, its shares were said to be trading on the secondary markets at a valuation of $4 billion. With its current net cash-and-cash-equivalents balance, Airtable is now valued at about $2.25 billion, Bending Spoons said.
"Airtable is a pioneering brand reshaping how teams organize data and manage critical workflows. The value being delivered is reflected in annual recurring revenue growing over 20% YoY to approximately $480 million as of June 2026, and joining forces with Bending Spoons will accelerate innovation even further," Bending Spoons' founder Luca Ferrari said in a statement.
i started a new sales job where we are just using excel sheets. i have adhd and this system is not organized enough for me. i wish sales force and sales loft sold to individuals. any advice??
i need something easy that tells me when i am to follow up with someone. i also want to be able to see the last time i spoke with someone & the notes. i want to be able to search in my list of contacts by organization type. i want to be able to easily be able to pull a list of prospects i can call. it would be super amazing if somehow i could use a system that also creates lists for me and pull prospects in (ik prob not likely) as i am starting fresh with 0 customers.
also i go door to door sometimes so bonus points if there’s anything that can help me with tracking/ planning that
i don’t need to be able to send calls or emails or even keep track of deals. simply just need help organizing my prospects and leads
I’m in the middle of building a pretty robust CRM. We have virtually no CRM that exists right now and any one that we have tried in the past off-line or with consultants just wouldn’t meet our business needs and they didn’t know how to extend to it.
We don’t necessarily have stocked inventory of what we sell because a large portion of what we sell is used equipment. Some of it is on consignment and then some of it is owned. And the inventory is ever changing because of that.
I’ve spent about 150 hours talking with chatgpt and building it on visual code. I have no prior experience with coding outside of engineering school (and that was dated coding for mechanical type systems). However, I have a pretty well built CRM right now that meets our needs.
My only concern at this point is how to hook it into our website and all of the privacy measures I need to take for it so that it can’t be hacked. I’ve created authentication and logins, but I don’t think that meets the bill of needs. Is privacy and security something that you can create yourself or do you need to outsource for that? I really have no idea what I’m talking about on this level except my research into it.
Microsoft is introducing AI token budgets for employees, making the cheaper GPT-5.6 its default internal model and telling engineers to focus on business results rather than maximizing AI usage. 404 Media reports: "As we accelerate our use of GitHub Copilot to deliver on our goals, we all need to be aware of how we consume tokens," Jay Parikh, an executive vice president at Microsoft said in an email to Microsoft employees. GitHub is owned by Microsoft, and GitHub Copilot is an AI coding tool. "Tokenmaxxing is not what we are optimizing for. I want all of us focused on maximizing outcomes that move the needle for our customers and our business." "As such, we are updating our internal guidance and managing token spend with the same discipline we apply to every other critical resource," Parikh said in the email.
Parikh's email says that in an effort to "get greater value from our token investment" Microsoft is making OpenAI GPT-5.6, which is cheaper to use than other models, the default model for internal use. His email also links to updated internal Copilot guidelines stating that, as of July 2026, Microsoft divisions will have an "AI token budget target," and that employees can track their individual AI spending. "While there is no target spend value being shared at this time. The data shows that many engineers spend in the range of hundreds of dollars a month to a few thousand dollars in tokens," the guidelines say. They also say that some decisions may place further restrictions as they monitor spend.
[...] Parikh's email said Microsoft will keep learning and adjusting its AI policies as models and products evolve, and stressed that he doesn't want to slow down the company's progress towards becoming "AI-first." "We are not optimizing for fewer tokens," he said. "We are optimizing for more impact per token.
Trump Media has officially launched its $100,000-per-month data feed giving trading firms machine-readable access to Truth Social posts milliseconds before the public. According to Fortune, five Wall Street firms have already signed up for the service, which "would generate about $500,000 in monthly revenue, or $6 million annually."
Critics argue the service could let President Trump, who owns about 41% of the company, profit from early access to market-moving presidential communications. "I'll be blunt," Gian Luca Clementi, an economics professor at NYU Stern School of Business, told Fortune. "This is insider trading by definition."
"He's going to monetize the role of the office of the president of the United States," he said. "The undisputable fact is that somebody is going to earn some more money than before, and that's the president of the United States." From the report: Trump's media venture has struggled to build a profitable social media business despite its lofty valuation. Truth Social has reported significant operating losses since going public. According to the company's earnings report for Q1 2026, Trump Media & Technology Group netted a roughly $405 million loss and raised less than $900,000 in sales.
Not everyone agrees the arrangement meets the legal bar for insider trading. Shannon Devine, a spokeswoman for Trump Media & Technology Group, has pushed back on the characterization, telling Quartz that Truth API "offers customers the fastest way to ingest publicly available Truth Social data" and that critics "must have invented a new theory of 'insider trading' based on publicly available information."
Classic insider trading law hinges on trading on secret, material information in breach of a fiduciary duty, and Truth Social posts are, by design, meant to become public within moments -- raising real doctrinal uncertainty about whether faster access alone qualifies. But other legal experts argue the greater risk lies ahead. Richard Painter, former White House chief ethics counsel, has argued that the arrangement could violate federal law once Trump posts genuinely market-moving news -- on tariffs, military action, or other policy decisions -- before it's public, with Truth Social effectively acting as a paid "tipper" on the president's behalf. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said he plans to introduced legislation Tuesday to ban the president from selling expedited access to his statements.
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: The Federal Communications Commission, which oversees the U.S. telecom industry, is working on the measure to bar imports of new Chinese optical transceivers, which allow data to travel over fiber-optic cables at the speed of light within data centers. Officials hope to publish it this year, when it would take effect. The move, not previously reported, aims to prevent Chinese firms from stealing data, installing malware or disrupting service at U.S. data centers, which house the chips to train and run AI models.
The FCC could still modify or shelve the restriction, the sources stressed, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. [...] A U.S. ban on new models of Chinese data center devices would likely hit China's Zhongji Innolight, one of the biggest global sellers of transceivers, which was added to the Pentagon's list of alleged Chinese military-backed companies in June. The list can be a harbinger of tougher action. A ban could also raise costs for American cloud firms such as Amazon Web Services, as it may force them to transition to other producers such as U.S.-based Coherent and Lumentum.
I was starting to feel weighed down by token and cost anxiety, but everything shifted when OpenAI cut the price of GPT 5.6 Luna by 80%. This dramatic drop in cost per token completely transformed how I choose and use models for Drupal development.
As always, I went through the first 8 freshly featured plugins from WordPress.org of August. Here are my 2 cents.
Meow Mailer (4.9/5)
SMTP plugin and mail logger, does exactly what it says. I liked the background send option, failure alerts, and being able to resend an email straight from the log. The dashboard button naming is a bit confusing, and plain text emails have no line breaks in the log. Other than that, another great plugin from Meow.
DineKit (4.8/5)
Restaurant menu, online ordering, table reservations, and POS all in one plugin. Packed with many great features, nice on-boarding, and the QR code generator and menu builder left a good impression. Autosave got a little annoying for me personally, and it's 100% free with no pro version in sight, which honestly makes me a bit nervous about how long it'll get maintained.
ITBoffins Live Opening Hours Banner & Table (4.6/5)
Shows you the opening hours on the site. Simple, intuitive, and the live preview while you set it up is a nice. No styling options at all, and it could display the time of the WordPress to avoid confusion when you are dealing with different timezones All in all, simple and solid.
RobArt Text Collector (4.5/5)
Let's you collect, organize, and reuse text snippets on your site. Easy to use, and works in the front- and backend activate it, and I was surprised to see the AI co-authorship disclosure, you don't see that often. The dashboard is way too busy though, tons of over-explanation, and you can't edit folders directly from the menu in the backend. For me personally, not very useful, since I do not often reuse text, but for some people, this can be great.
FrontEdit (4.3/5)
Live frontend editor for WordPress. The edit and preview toggle is nice and the commenting function is a cool touch. The Free version's menu is basically useless since almost everything is locked behind pro. After two disappointing attempts from last month, it was nice to see, that it can be done right, although I still do not see the appeal.
ShareMyPost (4.0/5)
Adds social share buttons to your posts and pages. Just works out of the box, icons are easy to reorganize, and the developer support with filters and actions is great. Can't customize the width of the container, and contrast on some icons like Tumblr and Snapchat is really bad. You can add the icons before or after the content. I think it is nicer to have the option to place those freely with a block, therefore, I'll pass.
LC Lightbox Lite (3.6/5)
A lightweight lightbox plugin for your images. Animations are snappy and it's easy to use. A bunch of options just don't work, like gradients and text display, and it feels pretty unpolished overall.There are way better options and in its current state, it is not a good advertisement for the Gallery Plugin it suppose to promote.
Direct Invoices (3.1/5)
Invoicing and payment requests built for WordPress. Nice on-boarding and WooCommerce isn't required. Missing a city field, dates don't save properly, and it feels most likely AI generated and under tested. Good concept, but it needs more work.
Hey, I’ve been building on WordPress since 2006, professionally since 2011. 6 years running my own (profitable) theme and plugin shop, four years as a vetted contractor, and a few as as a senior engineer at an agencies in US & Europe. I’ve worked with hundreds of corporate clients over that time, mostly ecommerce, NGOs, government and SMEs, which is where I specialise. Several plugins on wp.org, around ten themes (most now outdated), and I contribute to core. 2022-2024 I had multiple contracts running at once, earning roughly what an L5 to L6 engineer at a big tech company makes. I was turning work away, with extremely happy clients. I’ve been looking for 8 months. Somewhere north of 100 applications sent, 2 responses. I’m not posting to complain and I’m aware these posts usually have an obvious answer the poster can’t see. I’d like to know if others are seeing the same thing. Three observations:
Remote mostly isn’t. I’m in Nairobi. Most postings say “Remote” and mean “remote inside the US,” and many don’t say so they just ignore you, I’ve had not more than 10 responses, mostly automated.
The mid-market thinned out. Plenty at the top and plenty of fixed-price template work at the bottom, increasingly with AI-generated listings. Agencies hiring salaried senior engineers feels much smaller than three years ago.
It isn’t only WordPress. I also work with startups using Next.js and Laravel, and it’s the same story there. So I don’t think this is a WordPress problem, or at least not only one. Something has changed in how companies hire developers generally, and I can’t tell what.
For what it’s worth, I still have hope for WordPress. It has paid my bills for over a decade, it’s still the best CMS for the clients I serve, and I’m not leaving until the last lights are off. I’d just like to know whether anyone is still hiring people to build on it properly.
Happy to hear it if I’m doing something obviously wrong.
The commercial phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) toolkit known as Greatness has become the latest crimeware solution to add support for device code phishing, a rapidly growing cyber threat that abuses the legitimate OAuth 2.0 Device Authorization Grant to bypass Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and seize control of user accounts.
"Greatness supports AiTM [adversary-in-the-middle] credential and
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