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New York has become the first state in the country to enact a full moratorium on large data center construction, with Governor Kathy Hochul signing a one-year ban on projects exceeding fifty megawatts. The state is also pursuing the repeal of existing tax exemptions, signaling a real shift in how communities are weighing the costs of the AI infrastructure boom.
On the security front, a jailbroken version of Google's Gemini AI was used by a Russian-speaking fraudster to run a credential and cryptocurrency theft operation, with the model spinning up a new command-and-control server in just six minutes. Researchers say the human actor handled roughly ten percent of the work, with Gemini doing the rest — a sobering demonstration of how capable these tools are in the wrong hands.
And in economic news with direct implications for the tech sector, June's Consumer Price Index fell zero point four percent, a drop that could cool pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at its late-July meeting. Lower borrowing costs tend to benefit growth-oriented tech companies, so this number will be watched closely on both Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
That's the day's biggest stories. Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
