Amazon courts towns to defuse data center backlash

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In today's Techpresso:

💰 Amazon courts towns to defuse data center backlash

🔒 OpenAI fires 3 safety researchers

👗 ChatGPT can now virtually try on clothes

🔌 CEO arrested for smuggling AI chips

📷 Apple may build video-free security camera

🌐 Slovenia's .si domains surge after Trump's 'super intelligence' order

Plus: 🎁 13 more stories you might like, 🧰 6 tools, and 📚 5 papers.

💰 Amazon courts towns to defuse data center backlash LINK

Amazon pledged over $1 billion across five years for U.S. towns hosting its data centers, trying to calm rising local pushback against the AI buildout under a new program it calls "Built Together."

The money will cover community college costs for about 300,000 students, build 16 more trade-training centers, upgrade energy use in 300-plus schools and 30,000 homes, and fund local projects like roads and parks.

Amazon also said it will drop NDAs with government agencies on future projects, install lower-emission backup generators, publish its yearly energy and water use, and pay enough for power to keep local electricity bills from rising.

🔒 OpenAI fires 3 safety researchers LINK

OpenAI has let go of three members of its safety team, saying they shared confidential company details with an outside AI safety group, according to a Wall Street Journal report published yesterday.

The company said an internal investigation found the researchers mishandled sensitive information outside set procedures, though it did not name the people, the outside group, or the specific details that were shared.

The firings follow a New York Times report that OpenAI leaders dismissed staff warnings about safety, plus recent incidents where its AI agents escaped containment, posted user images, and hacked government websites.

👗 ChatGPT can now virtually try on clothes LINK

OpenAI has rolled out a global ChatGPT feature that lets shoppers virtually try on clothes and accessories by uploading a selfie or full-body photo to see how an item might look on them.

A new Try On button appears in ChatGPT's shopping results, and users can also upload a screenshot of an item and ask the assistant to picture it on them, powered by the new ChatGPT Images 2.5 model.

A second feature, Favorites, lets people save products they find to a Library in the app alongside their try-on images, so they can return to those items later.

🔌 CEO arrested for smuggling AI chips LINK

Federal agents arrested Greg Lui, the 38-year-old founder and CEO of California firm Earthmade Computers, on charges that he smuggled more than $300 million in restricted Nvidia AI chips into China.

Prosecutors say Lui and others used fake paperwork from 2023 to 2024 to ship high-end servers to Malaysia and Singapore, where no US license is needed, then secretly re-exported them to China.

Earthmade took in over $176 million from two Malaysia-based shipping firms during 2024, and Lui now faces charges of export violations, smuggling, and money laundering that could bring up to 50 years in prison.

📷 Apple may build video-free security camera LINK

Apple is reportedly working on a small security camera that skips video recording entirely, using AI instead to track movement around your home and flag who's there, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Shaped like a chapstick tube and tied to Apple's unannounced smart home display known internally as J490, the camera runs at a very low frame rate and can do facial recognition, sending only text descriptions of who walks in.

Gurman says the sensor borrows technology from Apple's leaked camera-equipped AirPods, which take extremely low-resolution still images for Visual Intelligence but, like this camera, won't record video or snap regular photos.

🌐 Slovenia's .si domains surge after Trump's 'super intelligence' order LINK

Slovenia's .si domain names are suddenly in heavy demand after President Trump signed an executive order telling all government agencies to call "artificial intelligence" and "AI" instead "super intelligence" and "SI."

Registry SI, which runs Slovenia's domains, recorded a 2,199% jump in .si purchases in September, with 11,000 new addresses on September 30th, the day after Trump's order, and nearly 13,000 more in the following day.

Web host Hostinger says .si is now its second most popular extension after .com, costing about $12 a year versus $90 for .ai, with most buyers coming from the US and India and few names actually linked to AI.

Other news you might like

• Amazon seeks to offload $8 billion of Nvidia chips to investors, FT reportsLINK

• AI music maker Suno now generates spoken wordsLINK

• EU set to name AWS and Azure DMA gatekeepers in NovemberLINK

• Robotaxi operators will face fines for blocking first respondersLINK

• Starlink 'Community Site' Program Teases Hourly, Weekly Internet PassesLINK

• Google thinks SpaceX’s Starship has to launch 1,600 times before space data centers get off the groundLINK

• Why Muse May Never Need AdsLINK

• Judge dismisses lawsuits claiming Google's AI Overviews siphon web trafficLINK

• California AG Bonta issues subpoena to OpenAI over AI cybersecurity risksLINK

• World’s first enhanced geothermal power plant completed in just 23 monthsLINK

• Introducing Clef: our open-source decision models, and new RL fine-tuning platformLINK

• California governor vetoes bill banning use of ‘pervert glasses’ to secretly record peopleLINK

• Microsoft AI releases new transcription and text-to-speech models for voice agentsLINK

🧰 Trending tools

MCP Connectors by Databox: connects business performance data with an AI analyst so you can query metrics, automate reporting, and spot important changes fasterLINK

Fewer: a minimalist Android launcher that tracks phone pickups, surfaces your six most-used apps, and adds friction to time-sinking apps, fully offline with no ads.LINK

Kleanly: disables your MacBook keyboard and trackpad from the notch, letting you safely clean the surface or hand it to kids without interrupting playback.LINK

Helo: an email API for multi-tenant platforms, isolating senders, domains, and stats per customer while protecting deliverability with REST, SMTP, and SDKs.LINK

Ryu Journal: a distraction-free journaling app with local-only storage, streak tracking, word clouds, and mood insights, so your thoughts stay private and yours.LINK

Sayble: real-time AI copilot for sales calls that suggests your next line, then drafts recaps and follow-up emails across Zoom, Meet, Teams, and phone.LINK

📚 Trending papers & reports

AI sales agents can be trained to haggle over a catalog of products with many buyers at once, matching or beating far larger frontier models at extracting profit and pairing the right item to each buyer.LINK

Enterprise agent maintenance lets a rule-following AI worker safely update its own skills after deployment, only shipping changes that are tested and logged, so one fix never quietly breaks another task or balloons costs.LINK

Alignment fragility checks read a chatbot's internal signals to predict whether its safety guardrails will survive later fine-tuning, catching models likely to turn harmful before any damage is done.LINK

PrecepTron is an AI grader trained on a small set of doctor examples that scores medical AI answers as consistently as physicians, letting researchers replicate major clinical studies without slow, expensive human review.LINK

Everyday reasoning looks strikingly similar in people and in 46 AI systems tested, suggesting humans also lean on pattern-matching rather than pure logic, which weakens the common claim that pattern-matching proves machines can't truly reason.LINK

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