TORONTO – Bitfarm, a major Bitcoin mining operator with twelve cryptocurrency facilities, announced a strategic pivot from mining digital assets to providing AI data center services by 2027. The company plans to leverage its existing energy infrastructure to deploy large-scale Nvidia-powered server racks, including the GB300 NVL72 units.
CEO Ben Gagnon stated that the company’s energized capacity of 341 megawatts allows rapid scaling without long delays from local authorities or utility negotiations. The move positions Bitfarm as a competitive player in AI workloads, providing infrastructure faster than other hyperscalers constrained by power and facility limitations.
Infrastructure Advantage and Facility Upgrades
Bitfarm plans to convert its Washington facility into a GPU-as-a-service site using state-of-the-art liquid cooling, while its Panther Creek, Pennsylvania location could reach 350 megawatts. The company has converted a $300 million debt facility from Macquarie to fund these AI-focused operations.
“Despite being less than 1% of our total developable portfolio, we believe that the conversion of just our Washington site to GPU-as-a-service could potentially produce more net operating income than we have ever generated with Bitcoin mining,” said Gagnon.
This pivot allows Bitfarm to diversify beyond cryptocurrency, which has suffered from price volatility and operational instability. The company reported a $46 million third-quarter loss due in part to fluctuating Bitcoin performance and underperforming mining rigs.
Market Context and Risks
The AI infrastructure pivot comes amid controversy over cryptocurrency tax investigations, where hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of GPUs were implicated. While Bitfarm’s existing energy assets reduce entry barriers, companies investing billions in specialized AI infrastructure face potential losses if the AI market encounters a downturn.
Bitfarm’s move highlights a broader trend of cryptocurrency miners repurposing resources to meet growing demand in AI computing, where high-performance GPUs and power-intensive facilities are increasingly valuable.
Looking Ahead
Bitfarm’s AI pivot represents a significant shift in the blockchain and crypto mining industry, emphasizing adaptability and the importance of diversified operations. By leveraging existing power reserves and facility infrastructure, the company is well-positioned to capture opportunities in GPU-based AI workloads while mitigating exposure to cryptocurrency market volatility.
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PALO ALTO – Luna, a well-being app for teenage girls, and Untapped Solutions, a platform for formerly incarcerated workers, are redefining startup marketing with unconventional go-to-market strategies. Founders Jas Schembri-Stothart and Andre Peart shared their insights on the latest episode of TechCrunch’s podcast, Build Mode, highlighting how targeting niche audiences requires creativity, persistence, and hands-on engagement.
Luna: Engaging Teen Girls Beyond Social Media
Luna co-founder Jas Schembri-Stothart explained that reaching teen girls was challenging because the founders themselves were no longer in that demographic. To gather authentic feedback, Luna’s team toured U.K. schools, engaging students directly. These interactions not only provided insights for product development but also recruited a network of student brand ambassadors.
The ambassadors helped promote the app and created content for social media. Luna also activated marketing at events where teen audiences naturally congregate, including Taylor Swift concerts. These efforts allowed Luna to bypass traditional social ads while connecting meaningfully with their target market.
“We basically got grilled by students, but that feedback became the foundation for our go-to-market strategy,” Schembri-Stothart said.
Untapped Solutions: Accessing Formerly Incarcerated Workers
Untapped Solutions founder Andre Peart faced a different challenge: making the platform accessible to individuals in correctional settings. The platform acts as a “LinkedIn for the formerly incarcerated,” helping users find employment after release.
Peart focused on speaking engagements, partnerships with reentry organizations, and launching the National Reentry Coalition. These efforts ensured the platform was integrated into tablet systems used in prisons, allowing employees to access Untapped immediately upon release.
“We’re in almost every prison system. If you’re on a tablet, you already have Untapped,” Peart said.
Guerrilla Tactics and Lessons for Startups
Both Luna and Untapped Solutions demonstrate that innovative, nontraditional marketing can succeed in highly specific markets. From school tours and live events to institutional partnerships, startup founders can achieve meaningful engagement without relying solely on digital advertising.
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WASHINGTON – The US Border Patrol is operating a predictive-intelligence program that tracks millions of American drivers far from the border, according to an Associated Press investigation. Covert license-plate readers hidden in traffic cones, barrels, and roadside equipment feed data into an algorithm that flags “suspicious” routes, quick turnarounds, and travel to and from border regions. Local police are then alerted, resulting in stops for minor infractions, such as window-tint violations or marginal speeding.
AP records show drivers have been questioned, searched, and sometimes arrested, even when no contraband was found. Internal group chats obtained through public-records requests revealed Border Patrol agents and Texas deputies sharing hotel records, rental car status, home addresses, and social media information in real time while coordinating “whisper stops” to obscure federal involvement. Plate-reader sites have been identified as far as 120 miles from the Mexican border in Phoenix, with additional locations near Detroit and Chicago.
Legal experts expressed concern over the program’s scale, warning it raises new Fourth Amendment issues. A UC Law San Francisco official described the system as a “dragnet” tracking Americans’ movements, associations, and routines.
Microsoft Thwarts Record-Breaking Cloud DDoS Attack
Tech giant Microsoft said it mitigated the largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack ever recorded in a cloud environment. The attack, launched on October 24 against a single Azure endpoint in Australia, reached 15.72 Tbps with 3.64 billion packets per second. Microsoft attributed the attack to the Aisuru botnet, a network of compromised consumer devices including home routers and cameras.
The Azure DDoS Protection network successfully absorbed the traffic with no disruption to service. Researchers have noted that Aisuru is increasingly using AI-driven attacks, credential stuffing, and HTTPS floods via residential proxies.
SEC Drops Remaining Claims Against SolarWinds
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission dismissed its remaining claims against SolarWinds and its CISO, Tim Brown, ending litigation tied to the 2020 supply-chain hack allegedly carried out by Russian SVR operatives. The lawsuit, filed in 2023, had largely been dismissed in 2024. SolarWinds hailed the dismissal as vindication and said it may ease concerns among CISOs regarding future regulatory scrutiny.
FBI Spied on Immigration Activist Signal Group
Law enforcement records revealed that the FBI accessed messages from a private Signal group used by New York immigration court-watch activists. A report dated August 28, 2025, labeled the nonviolent participants as “anarchist violent extremist actors” and circulated assessments nationwide.
The documents, obtained by the transparency group Property of the People, show that activists monitored public hearings and collected information on federal personnel. Civil liberties experts warned that the surveillance mirrors prior FBI campaigns targeting lawful dissent, potentially chilling protected political activity.
Other Notable Cybersecurity News
WhatsApp Exposure: Researchers at the University of Vienna demonstrated that phone numbers can still be extracted en masse via WhatsApp’s discovery feature, exposing billions of users.
Vape Detector Surveillance: U.S. high schools are using advanced vape detectors with microphones, raising privacy concerns among non-vaping students.
Cisco Security Warning: Cisco warned that outdated networking equipment is increasingly vulnerable as AI tools simplify exploitation of unpatched systems.
Anti-Virus Monitoring at Conferences: New Zealand’s Kawaiicon conference tracked CO2 levels to improve attendee safety, creating real-time air-quality monitoring systems.
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Bitcoin Plunge Reverberates Across Stock Market
NEW YORK – Bitcoin’s price dropped sharply from $93,714 to $85,300 over the past week, sending ripples across global stock markets and reigniting debate about cryptocurrency’s growing influence on equities.
Late Thursday, market researcher Ed Yardeni cited Bitcoin’s decline as a contributing factor to a broader stock sell-off, particularly affecting TQQQ, an ETF designed to achieve three times the daily performance of the Nasdaq-100 Index.
“There has been a strong correlation between [Bitcoin] and the price of TQQQ,” Yardeni wrote. He linked the cryptocurrency’s fall to the GENIUS Act, enacted on July 18, which established a regulatory framework for stablecoins, reducing Bitcoin’s transactional role in the monetary system. “It’s possible that the rout in Bitcoin is forcing some investors to sell stocks that they own,” he added.
Leverage and Market Algorithms Amplify Volatility
Traders using leverage to speculate on cryptocurrencies may be compelled to liquidate positions in response to margin calls, compounding the market impact. Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, noted that Bitcoin has effectively become a proxy for speculation.
“As a long-time systematic trader, it tells me that algorithms are acting upon the relationship between stocks and Bitcoin,” Sosnick explained. “Traders have always sought relationships between asset classes, and there are teams of skilled quants analyzing both long- and short-term data to guide decisions.”
Sosnick emphasized that Bitcoin’s recent movements have become one of the most reliable indicators or “leads” for algorithmic trading in equities.
Link Between Crypto and AI Stocks
Tom Lee, head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, highlighted Bitcoin and Ethereum’s correlation with AI-related equities. “Investors with significant holdings in AI stocks also tend to own Bitcoin,” he said. “Crypto is in some ways a leading indicator for equities because of liquidity shifts and unwind dynamics.”
Market Reaction and Broader Context
Earlier in the week, Nvidia’s earnings report fueled a temporary market rebound, pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 700 points. However, the rally reversed, with the Dow losing 300 points later, leaving Wall Street observers speculating on the causes.
Factors cited include persistent concerns over a potential AI bubble, a mixed September jobs report showing strong payroll gains but rising unemployment, and increasingly hawkish signals from Federal Reserve policymakers.
Bitcoin’s Steep Decline
Bitcoin has now fallen more than 30% from its previous highs, marking the cryptocurrency’s most severe slump since 2022. Analysts warn that continued volatility in crypto markets may drive further stock market movements as leveraged positions unwind.
“Crypto’s role as a market lead is clear, and investors are taking note,” Yardeni said. “Understanding the interplay between digital assets and equities has never been more critical.”
GRAND JUNCTION, CO – Sunday Robotics, a robotics startup founded in April 2024, has unveiled Memo, an autonomous home robot capable of completing everyday household tasks like clearing the dinner table, loading the dishwasher, and even operating an espresso machine.
Unlike most robotics startups that rely on teleoperation or synthetic data simulations, Sunday Robotics developed a proprietary glove system to train Memo. Human operators wear gloves that mimic the robot’s Lego-like hands to perform tasks, generating real-world data for Memo to learn from.
Efficient and Cost-Effective Training
CEO Tony Zhao explained that the glove-based method provides “two orders of magnitude higher capital efficiency compared to teleoperation ($200 vs $20,000).” The approach allows for large-scale data collection without physically moving Memo, making the training process highly scalable. Currently, the startup employs more than 500 human data collectors across the United States to improve Memo’s dexterity and AI performance.
Breaking New Ground in Dexterity
Training robots to handle delicate objects has been a longstanding challenge in the robotics field. During live demonstrations, Memo successfully lifted fragile wine glasses, folded socks, and loaded the espresso machine without breaking any items. Zhao highlighted that replicating human hand capabilities, which involve thousands of touch receptors, is a major engineering feat.
“Today, we present a step-change in robotic AI,” Zhao said. “Memo demonstrates that autonomous home robots can perform complex tasks efficiently and safely.”
Alternative to Traditional Training Methods
Most robotics companies train AI through teleoperation, where humans control robots via joysticks, or by using simulated data. Sunday Robotics’ glove system bypasses these methods, providing more accurate and context-rich training data.
Michael Cheng, co-founder of Sunday Robotics, noted that “relying solely on teleoperation could take decades to gather sufficient training data for a robot like Memo.” By contrast, the glove method allows for widespread, distributed training.
Looking Ahead
The startup plans to continue refining Memo’s abilities, aiming to expand its applications in home automation. With breakthroughs in dexterity and autonomous AI learning, Sunday Robotics positions itself as a leader in the next generation of consumer robotics.
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The Pentagon Is Betting Big on a Future Where GPS Is Optional
A quiet race is unfolding across the defense world. The United States, China and Europe are all pushing toward the same goal. They want navigation that does not depend on satellites. The Pentagon now sees quantum navigation systems as the most realistic path to get there.
Traditional GPS is powerful but vulnerable. It can be jammed. It can be spoofed. It can be blinded during conflict. It can also fail in dense cities, remote regions and underground spaces. A new generation of quantum sensors could solve all of those weaknesses.
Quantum navigation systems do not rely on satellites. Instead, they measure the tiny movements of atoms inside a sealed device. Those readings create a precise picture of where the user is, even without an external signal. In simple terms, it is a navigation tool that works anywhere on Earth without talking to space.
The First Real Field Tests Are Beginning
Research groups inside the Pentagon are now testing early versions in aircraft and naval vessels. These devices are not yet small or rugged enough for widespread deployment. Most prototypes still require cooling systems or lab style power.
Still, the early data is promising. Quantum navigation systems appear to maintain accurate positioning for hours without drift. That is something current inertial systems struggle to achieve.
If these tests continue to show strong performance, the technology could be ready for limited military use before the end of the decade.
What This Means for Real Life
This is where the impact becomes very clear. If quantum navigation systems work the way researchers hope, we will feel it in everyday life.
Civilian aviation
Airplanes could navigate safely even when GPS coverage is weak or unavailable during storms or outages.
Shipping and logistics
Cargo ships could keep perfect course through remote oceans. Truck fleets could run routes in areas where GPS is unreliable.
Phones and cars
Quantum chips will eventually shrink. They could provide navigation in tunnels, dense cities or wilderness zones where GPS signals bounce or fail.
Emergency response
Firefighters and rescue teams could track their location inside burning buildings or underground structures.
National defense
Military aircraft, drones and submarines would no longer depend on satellites that adversaries can target.
In short, the world would function with a more reliable, resilient and independent navigation backbone.
Why This Race Matters
Armed forces rely heavily on GPS. So do global markets, energy systems and civilian transportation. Any country that develops working quantum navigation systems gains a strategic advantage. It becomes harder to blind their forces. It becomes harder to disrupt their economy. It becomes harder to interfere with any movement that depends on positioning technology.
That is why nations are investing heavily. This is not a science experiment. It is a strategic push that will shape global security for decades.
The Road Ahead
Quantum navigation systems are still in early development. They need to become smaller, cheaper and more resistant to real environments. They need to survive heat, cold, vibration and shocks. They need battery efficiency that moves beyond lab setups.
Experts believe the technology will get there. The only unknown is how soon.
When it does, the world will operate on a navigation layer that no one can switch off.
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Many people open an Incognito or Private Browsing window and instantly feel hidden. The darker color scheme, the reassuring icons, and the message that nothing will be saved all create the impression that the session is invisible to everyone.
Cybersecurity experts say that impression is misleading. Incognito Mode was never designed to hide you from websites, employers, or your internet provider. It only prevents local data from being stored on your device.
What Incognito actually protects
Incognito Mode keeps your browsing history, cookies, autofill data, and form entries from being stored once you close the window. This is helpful in homes where multiple people share a device or when you want to prevent someone from seeing your search queries later.
That is the full extent of the privacy it provides. The feature was designed to clean up after itself. It was not designed to mask your online identity.
What Incognito does not protect
Experts say websites can still see a significant amount of information about you, even in a private session. This includes your IP address, your device type, your browser version, and many technical details that contribute to browser fingerprinting. These fingerprints can be used to identify returning users even without cookies.
Your employer or school can still see your browsing activity on their networks. Your internet provider maintains visibility into the sites you visit. Any accounts you log into during a private session behave exactly the same as a normal window and can still tie activity directly back to you.
Incognito Mode blocks some third party cookies but this provides very limited protection and is not enough to stop common tracking methods.
Why the myth persists
Most major browsers use names like Incognito, InPrivate, or Private Browsing. These labels imply anonymity even though the feature offers none. The dark window design reinforces that impression by making the session feel like a separate layer of the internet.
Researchers say the user interface creates an expectation that the feature is doing far more than it actually is, which has led to confusion and even legal challenges over how private these modes really are.
What stronger privacy looks like
Experts recommend switching to privacy first browsers such as Brave or DuckDuckGo. These browsers block trackers aggressively and sometimes mask IP addresses by default. For deeper anonymity, a VPN can prevent sites and providers from seeing your true location and identity.
These tools come with tradeoffs. VPNs can slow down connections and some websites restrict VPN traffic entirely. Privacy oriented browsers can also break certain features on some websites.
Even with those limitations, they provide significantly more protection than Incognito Mode, which only hides your local history and nothing else.
Private windows are still useful for device cleanup and quick searches you do not want stored locally. They are not a substitute for meaningful privacy tools and should not be treated as such.
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Most people who live inside Windows rarely imagine leaving it. The routines become familiar. The habits settle in. Over time, the operating system becomes less a choice and more a background condition. That is why a simple number has captured so much attention this month.
Zorin OS 18 reached one million downloads in thirty days. Developers say seventy eight percent came directly from Windows machines. That is roughly seven hundred eighty thousand people who clicked on a Linux download link from inside a Windows desktop.
No one knows how many went on to install it. No one knows how many stayed. The curiosity alone is enough to make the moment interesting.
Zorin has spent years building an environment that feels comfortable to people who have never touched Linux before. When version eighteen launched, the message was clear. It wanted to be the landing pad for anyone feeling worn down by Windows updates or simply wondering what else might exist. The developers leaned into that idea with unusual confidence. They built layouts that feel familiar. They focused on small details that make the transition smooth rather than shocking.
A quiet shift beneath the surface
Linux has waited decades for a cultural moment that never seemed to arrive. Each year someone predicts a wave of conversions, yet the tide always retreats. But something different is happening now. People are not fleeing in anger. They are exploring.
That alone marks a change. Exploration is a sign that people feel permission to question long standing defaults. It does not announce a revolution. It simply hints that a window has opened.
Threads across Linux forums reflect the mood. Some users say they tried Zorin after years of frustration with Windows. Others say they were simply curious and wanted to see whether the myths about Linux difficulty were still true. A surprising number describe something more subtle. They say the experience made them enjoy using a computer again.
Enjoyment is a powerful metric. It is not tracked in charts or installation counts, yet it shapes decisions more than numbers ever do.
What this moment might mean
No one should expect a sudden collapse of the Windows ecosystem. It dominates for a reason. But curiosity is the starting point for every shift. When hundreds of thousands of people peek over the wall, it tells us something about the landscape on both sides.
The truth is simpler than any prediction. People are looking for operating systems that respect their attention. They are looking for tools that feel stable rather than distracting. When an alternative offers that, even briefly, it invites people to imagine that technology can feel different from what they have grown used to.
Whether those seven hundred eighty thousand downloads turn into long term migrations will not be known for months. The number itself is only a hint. What matters is the willingness to try something new. That willingness is often the first sign that something deeper has begun.
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Electricity bills across the United States are climbing and people in several states are blaming one thing. The nonstop growth of data centers that power modern artificial intelligence systems. Residents in Virginia, Illinois and Ohio saw double digit increases in utility costs this year. In each of these states there is a dense cluster of massive AI facilities running around the clock.
Energy regulators say the math is simple. A single large scale data center can draw as much power as hundreds of thousands of homes. When dozens of them appear in the same region they reshape the entire grid. When demand shoots up faster than new power plants can be approved or built, prices follow.
Virginia provides the clearest example. The state has the highest concentration of data centers anywhere in the world. Local leaders have begun openly targeting the industry. Newly elected Governor Abigail Spanberger rode a campaign focused on affordability and promised voters that tech companies would pay more of the costs created by their facilities.
A political fight that is growing louder
The energy crunch arrives at a sensitive moment. National elections sit just one year away and electricity bills have become a daily conversation. Several Democrats in Washington now argue that the relationship between President Trump and major AI companies has allowed utilities to pass data center costs to ordinary families.
Senators Bernie Sanders and Richard Blumenthal say the public should not be forced to subsidize data center bills. They are calling for stronger oversight and new rules for facilities that require massive power contracts.
Community frustration is also rising. Some residents do not want more warehouses full of servers that hum loudly and drive up neighborhood bills. In places with high density clusters, the resentment has begun to shape local elections.
A grid that is struggling to keep pace
The PJM grid operator which covers Virginia, Ohio and Illinois has faced a huge imbalance between supply and demand. Prices for capacity auctions, the mechanism used to make sure the grid can reliably meet demand, exploded this year. Bills jumped from two billion dollars to fourteen billion dollars in a single auction cycle and then climbed again to more than sixteen billion dollars.
Independent analysts say data centers account for over half of the projected demand costs in the region. That figure shows how rapidly AI related growth has transformed the energy market.
Other states offer a different picture. Texas has more than four hundred data centers yet saw only a modest increase in electricity prices. California has some of the highest electricity prices in the country, but its year over year increase barely nudged upward. Local conditions and grid structures play major roles in how data centers influence cost.
The future does not look cheaper
Most experts see little chance of electricity prices falling soon. The grid needs huge upgrades. Renewable energy projects wait years to connect. Transmission lines cost more to build than ever. Meanwhile AI companies announce new data centers almost every month.
The result is a new kind of techlash. AI has become the spark for political fights over who should pay for the infrastructure that fuels digital growth. Voters want relief. Politicians want answers. Utilities want more supply. And the tech industry wants more power to keep expanding.
No one expects the pressure to ease any time soon.
Security teams at Amazon discovered the npm token farming attack after a sudden spike in strange package activity in late October. Thousands of packages appeared with no functionality at all. No meaningful code. No purpose other than to exist. By early November the count had passed one hundred fifty thousand and continued rising.
Researchers traced the flood to a coordinated effort to collect Tea tokens through the tea dot xyz protocol. Each package contained a simple file that pointed to attacker controlled blockchain wallets. The more packages they created, the more token rewards they could claim once the network moved toward mainnet.
The problem is not that the packages contained malware. The problem is that their sheer volume created a massive load on the npm registry and gave attackers a working model for far more harmful replication in the future.
A supply chain issue that grows without spreading malware
Amazon built a new detection rule and paired it with automated analysis to flag patterns across multiple accounts. Once the signals lined up, they alerted the Open Source Security Foundation. Together they confirmed that the attack was not a traditional code poisoning event. It was an automated reward extraction scheme inside a blockchain ecosystem.
Sonatype researchers reported that a similar pattern existed in 2024 but at a much smaller scale. What began as fifteen thousand packages has expanded into a wave ten times larger. This matters because attackers now see that they can replicate packages at enormous scale without being stopped quickly. The next iteration could easily mix replication with real payloads.
The real world impact across developer teams
This incident shows how blockchain reward models can influence behavior far outside the blockchain itself. A system that awards tokens for open source activity becomes a target for people who want free rewards. That incentive feeds automation. Automation feeds volume. Volume overwhelms registries and wastes the time of developers who rely on trusted packages.
The attack also shows a shift in threat design. Instead of embedding malicious code, some attackers will now focus on overwhelming the ecosystem to earn future value. This means developers need stronger dependency checks. Registries need better filters. And blockchain incentive systems need fraud controls or they become entry points for widespread automation abuse.
Where it goes from here
The npm token farming attack will not be the last of its kind. Reward driven attacks will continue as long as people can exchange tokens for financial gain. Supply chain security teams expect more mixing of automated replication, reward abuse, and opportunistic payloads.
The lesson is simple. Volume can be as dangerous as malware. And the systems that tie blockchain incentives to open source activity need stronger protections before they scale.
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