Norma Jean Raeburn, Warren, Ohio

TechCrunch Bluesky gears up for Election Day as X goes pro-Trump As Election Day in the U.S. nears, social networking startup Bluesky, now flush with new capital, hopes to demonstrate that its platform can serve as a more trusted, fact-checked alternative to Elon Musk's X. While the latter is dominated by Musk's support for the Trump campaign, Bluesky tends to lean left, thanks to its influx of disgruntled former Twitter users who don't like the platform's new direction. Now, with the U.S. elections upon us, Bluesky is setting up for its biggest test yet: its ability to handle the potential misinformation that can mislead users during these critical national events, including any posts meant to disrupt the voting process or those using new technologies, like AI, to confuse the voting public. While X's other competitor, Meta's Threads app, has distanced itself from politics — even going so far as to no longer recommend users political content — Bluesky has capitalized on the demand for a real-time social network that prioritizes such discussions.

Regulators deliver successive blows to Amazon and Meta's nuclear power ambitions Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft have placed big bets on nuclear power to secure electricity for their data centers as AI and cloud computing have sent power use surging. A series of recent rulings from regulators dashed their hopes of finding a quick fix for their electricity needs. For now, Microsoft's plans to revive a reactor at Three Mile Island are moving ahead.

Meta says it's making its Llama models available for US national security applications To combat the perception that its "open" AI is aiding foreign adversaries, Meta today said that it's making its Llama series of AI models available to U.S. government agencies and contractors in national security. "We are pleased to confirm that we're making Llama available to U.S. government agencies, including those that are working on defense and national security applications, and private sector partners supporting their work," Meta wrote in a blog post. "We're partnering with companies including Accenture, Amazon Web Services, Anduril, Booz Allen, Databricks, Deloitte, IBM, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Oracle, Palantir, Scale AI, and Snowflake to bring Llama to government agencies."