Good morning. A new Pew Research Center survey is out about smartphones in schools. It’s either completely shocking or not at all, depending on your view.
Nearly 7 in 10 U.S. adults say they support a ban on middle and high school students using cellphones during class. Only 4 in 10 support banning them for the entire school day.
And if you’re wondering if there’s a difference between liberals and conservatives on the issue…it’s negligible. One nation, under wireless spectrum, indivisible. —Andrew Nusca
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Amazon joins the nuke party
Amazon has become the third tech company in as many weeks to announce a massive nuclear investment to fuel the energy-sucking data centers that bring you generative AI.
Amazon Web Services, still the world’s largest cloud computing provider, said it will spend $500 million to fund nuclear projects in Virginia and Washington state. The news follows recent nuclear announcements from peers Google and Microsoft, the latter of which recently inked a deal to reopen a shuttered nuclear reactor at Pennsylvania’s infamous Three Mile Island.
The nuclear industry has been in decline for years because of concerns over safety in the event of a meltdown. But the gen AI boom’s massive energy needs have rekindled interest in the carbon-free energy source.
For Amazon, that includes partnering with Virginia’s Dominion Energy utility company to develop small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs. These small-scale fission facilities are a fraction of the size of a traditional nuclear plant, quicker to fire up, and less expensive to build.
Amazon has previously committed to spending $40 billion on a data center expansion in Virginia through 2040, which might partly explain the state’s warm embrace. —Jason Del Rey
The FTC makes ‘unsubscribe’ as easy as ‘subscribe’
We’ve all been there. Your 30-day free trial is almost up. It’s time to cancel that streaming subscription before automatic renewal kicks in and charges you $300 for an annual plan. You go to cancel…but instead of a simple button, you’re met with an exit survey, several pleas to reconsider, and a phone number to call to finish the job.
No more. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission finalized rules on Wednesday that require companies to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to enroll. Whether it’s a gym membership, a magazine subscription, or an app, companies will no longer be allowed to force you to use a different method to cancel their service. If you clicked to subscribe, you’ll click to cancel.
The FTC has been clamping down on some of the devious “dark pattern” tactics used to trick consumers into unwittingly paying for stuff they don’t want. One of the agency’s lawsuits against Amazon accuses the company of confusing customers into keeping Prime subscriptions with a series of screens that company insiders allegedly nicknamed “Iliad” after the 16,000-line epic poem.
The author had it right: We men are wretched things. —Jenn Brice
Beware the invisible hand of crypto
You’ve heard of Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Tech. Now make room for Big Crypto. The industry and its hired-gun political fixers have not so quietly become the biggest non-party donor to Congressional races this election cycle, spraying around $125 million and counting.
Much of that spending has gone to TV commercials for House and Senate candidates in both parties but, in a strange twist noted by Politico, none of those ads talk about, you know, crypto. Instead, they simply say what a swell guy or gal the candidate is.
Two things jump out from this unusual spending spree.
First, it seems to confirm that—the claims of Coinbase and other crypto firms notwithstanding—there is no large pool of “crypto voters” who could be primed to cast a vote based on a candidate’s track record on digital assets.
The second thing signaled by the massive ad buys is that crypto, which began as a movement to empower individuals fed up with banks and their allies in Washington D.C., is now happy to take its place in the swamp next to every other industry using money to buy political favors.
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, and all that. —Jeff John Roberts
Two charged for U.S. infrastructure cyberattacks
The U.S. government has charged two Sudanese nationals with launching tens of thousands of cyberattacks that targeted government agencies, Fortune 500 corporations, and even the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Ahmed Salah Yousif Omer, 22, and Alaa Salah Yusuuf Omer, 27, allegedly operated and controlled Anonymous Sudan, an online cybercriminal group blamed for 35,000—that’s not a typo—Distributed Denial of Service, or DDoS, attacks over the course of a year.
In the private sector, Microsoft, PayPal, X, Tumblr, and Flickr were among the organizations specifically mentioned, along with news organizations including the Associated Press, CNN, and the Washington Post. “The attacks resulted in reported network outages affecting thousands of customers,” the U.S. Dept. of Justice said—and in the hospital’s case, rerouting patients to another facility.
Why? The feds didn’t share details, but cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike did. In a word? Hacktivism. Clearly they received more attention than they bargained for. —AN
China: Intel 'constantly harmed' our national security
Intel has yet another problem to worry about.
The Cybersecurity Association of China, a China-based industry body, has loudly complained that Intel’s chips have “constantly harmed” Chinese national security, according to a Reuters report.
That raises the possibility that China’s regulators will launch a security review into Intel, which could be a disaster for the company. Just ask fellow chipmaker Micron Technology, whose products are now off-limits to key infrastructure operators in China following a similar security review.
Could this all be retaliation for the U.S. government banning U.S. companies from selling advanced AI chips in China? Officially, there’s no word—but you have to wonder.
Of course, Intel is already grappling with a floundering business after largely missing the AI boom. Losing a big chunk of its sales in China would only compound its trouble.
Meanwhile Intel—along with other semiconductor firms—took a hit earlier this week after chipmaking equipment maker ASML forecast disappointing earnings for next year. The outlook raised fears that the entire chip industry is poised for a slowdown.
Unsurprisingly, all the bad news has weighed heavily on Intel’s stock, which has tumbled nearly 55% this year. —David Meyer
More data
—Amazon’s new Kindle Scribe allows you to write directly in books. With apologies to librarians everywhere.
—Elon Musk triumphs in India. Three wealthy men battled over satellite internet spectrum; one emerged victorious.
—Kevin Rose resurfaces. Things the Digg founder would have never said in 2007: “What Reddit did…was quite smart.”
—Airbnb launches co-host marketplace. Mo’ listings, (hopefully not) mo’ problems.
—Google DeepMind operating profit rises. What happened after the Google Brain merger.
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