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Australia is drawing a hard line on artificial intelligence. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that data center builders will be required to contribute more energy to the grid than they consume, and AI companies must secure agreements with local artists and media outlets before training on their content. It is a rare policy that treats creative labor and energy infrastructure as equally serious concerns.
On the security front, Microsoft has shattered its own record in spectacular fashion. Last month's Patch Tuesday addressed two hundred and six vulnerabilities, which at the time felt staggering. This month, Redmond pushed fixes for six hundred and twenty two CVEs — more than tripling that figure in a single cycle. The scope suggests either an enormous backlog being cleared, or a security landscape that is genuinely accelerating in complexity.
And from a different kind of heat, NASA's Earth Observatory is tracking a significant heat dome broiling the western United States. Satellite thermal data is painting a vivid picture of sustained high pressure trapping warmth across a wide region — a pattern climate scientists have long flagged as becoming more frequent and more intense as baseline temperatures rise.
Those are your top stories today. Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
