Data center company executives say AI can support energy transition goals while managing the technology’s growing power demands.

<p><strong>Release:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/datasette/datasette-export-database/releases/tag/0.3a2">datasette-export-database 0.3a2</a></p> <p>An embarrassingly tiny release. The <code>pyproject.toml</code> had pinned to <code>datasette==1.0a27</code>, inadvertently making this plugin incompatible with all other Datasette versions. It's now <code>datasette&gt;=1.0a27</code> instead.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/datasette">datasette</a></p>

Ford scored a big quality award on Thursday. The company is praising veteran workers. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Ford says AI and automation helped its quality turnaround, but they were not enough on their own. Execs told reporters they hired or brought back 350 technical specialists to catch defects earlier. The overhaul helped Ford top JD Power after years of quality problems and expensive recalls. Ford staged a quality comeback. The automaker credits part of the turnaround to pairing AI with something more old-school: veteran engineers. Executives at Ford told reporters this week that the company had hired, promoted, or brought back about 350 experienced technical specialists as part of a sweeping effort to fix vehicle-quality problems. Those engineering veterans have helped mentor younger staff, lead design reviews, and improve the AI and automated quality tools Ford uses to catch defects before vehicles reach customers, they said. They also offered a striking admission: AI and automation were not enough on their own. "Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it's only as good as information you use to train it," Charles Poon, Ford's vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, said. "Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high-quality product." Poon said Ford had not done enough in prior years to preserve the knowledge of its most experienced engineers, some of whom left the company before their expertise was fully integrated into Ford's systems. He said quality problems often showed up at the boundaries between teams, where design, manufacturing, software, and hardware collide. Quality win, recall hangover Ford just improved its standing in one of the auto industry's biggest yearly tests. Bill Pugliano/Getty Images The comments came as Ford celebrated a major milestone. Consumer data analytics firm JD Power named Ford the top mass-market brand in its latest initial-quality study, trailing only Porsche and Genesis overall, according to the study released Thursday. Ford narrowly beat Lexus, which has long been one of the strongest performers in the rankings. That's a big turnaround. Just three years ago, Ford ranked 15th out of 25 major automakers in the same study. For years, Ford has faced headwinds on its product quality. In 2025, Ford issued 152 recalls, nearly doubling the previous record set by General Motors in 2014 with 77 safety bulletins. As of Thursday, Ford had issued 51 recalls this year, according to the NHTSA's dashboard. That's still more than double Chrysler, the next-closest automaker, which had issued 19. Ford executives said many of the continued recall issues are tied to vehicles and platforms designed between 2013 and 2020, calling recalls a "lagging indicator." They framed the JD Power win as proof that a new approach is taking hold, and said internal data shows "clear improvement" in newer vehicles. Still, the initial-quality study measures problems in new vehicles, not long-term durability, making it an early signal rather than a full verdict on whether Ford has solved its recall problem. Ford says it changed how it catches problems Ford says it's been making manufacturing quality improvements since 2023. Bloomberg/Getty Images Ford launched its quality reset in 2023. In that time, Kumar Galhotra, Ford's COO, said the company has more than doubled its technical specialist population. Those specialists now lead mandatory design reviews and look for failure points before parts ever reach the plant floor. "They hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor," he said. The company also created an industrial system team to bring engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain closer together. Before that approach, Galhotra said Ford had previously relied too heavily on a "find and fix" approach — identifying problems after they appeared and trying to resolve them quickly. Now, Ford says it is trying to prevent problems before they happen. Ford previously told Business Insider that it had developed two bespoke AI-enhanced scanning tools that helped validate that cars were properly assembled before rolling off the lot. The tools, called AiTriz and MAIVs, both debuted in 2024. While Ford has previously said the tools are helping improve product quality, the company did not say whether the 350 specialists worked directly on them. Read the original article on Business Insider

The author says getting laid off felt more like a break up than a job loss. Courtesy of Anna Azarov I struggled with grief and identity loss after being laid off. The job search process often felt lonely and deeply personal. Freelancing helped me rebuild my confidence and redefine success. Laid off. Let go. Dismissed. Released. Discharged. A casualty of corporate redundancy. I know what it's called. But I didn't know I'd be told, via a mid-morning Zoom, that my publication was folding and I was no longer needed. It took a while to sink in, and at first, I was just numb. I shuffled around my small Brooklyn apartment looking for something to do. There was a lot of cleaning and rearranging. There was also a lot of lying in bed awake. Then the crying started. I blamed myself Once I started crying, it was hard to stop. I blamed myself for not seeing the signs and for not being good enough to keep my dream job. I berated myself for believing I even deserved a job. I made it weird. I began looking at my former employer's current job postings and checking out online updates from former co-workers. It didn't feel like a layoff. It felt like I'd been dumped. In 2025, many people are going through what I went through due to mass layoffs. I don't know what it was like for everyone else, but for me, the experience was excruciatingly public. My company posted my farewell letter to readers on the magazine's homepage, and suddenly everyone knew. People I hadn't worked with in years sent me condolences. More than one ex reached out. "This must be what Taylor Swift feels like," I remember thinking, as I announced "a bit of personal news" on LinkedIn. In the days after it happened, everyone was supportive and sympathetic. People told me to take some time for myself. I heard a lot of "it's not you," "they didn't deserve you," and "just get back out there." So I did. I replaced work rituals with new habits. I made coffee, scanned job listings, tailored my résumé, worked on myself, certified for unemployment benefits, tailored my résumé again, and wrote heartfelt yet professional cover letters. I updated my online profile, hoping someone knew someone who could set me up with someone who might be looking for someone. I was ready for a little rebound dating. I was lonely And I was lonely. I missed the daily Slacks and conversations with colleagues. I missed my work friends. I even missed going to meetings. It's hard to go from being around people every day to being alone. I texted people during the workday. I stayed up too late. I drank too much. I sent back the company laptop. I kept the company-branded thermos. Sometimes I cried in public. It would come on suddenly, like when I was doing something else and remembered I was unemployed. Sometimes I'd wake up and forget that I didn't have a job, and go through the whole cycle again. Sometimes I'd spiral, like when a former coworker posted about something great that happened at work. I'm ashamed to admit I wasn't always happy for everyone. Getting rejected for jobs didn't help The job search apps made it worse, with their promises of available positions. Sometimes a bot would reject me a few hours after I'd submitted my painstakingly crafted resume. I've had softer rejections on dating sites. A few people told me something might happen for me if I just changed everything about myself and my aspirations. Journalism is in trouble, they helpfully reminded me. It's especially hard for a woman my age to find work, they supportively suggested. The worst part was that a lot of people were right. 2025 into 2026 marked one of the worst periods for the US job market in two decades, apart from the pandemic. Not long after my layoff, friends began calling me to tell me they'd been laid off, too. People who were still employed began giving me pressed lip pity smiles. I felt like maybe my dismissal was contagious. I took to crying in private, so as not to get my situation out to anyone. And then something changed. It was slow, to be sure. I began freelancing to make ends meet, and thanks to the support of editor friends, I eventually found my footing. I also found my community again, although it wasn't where I'd left it. I had spent so much energy mourning the loss of my dream job that I hadn't stopped to consider that maybe my soulmate career wasn't tied to one role or one company. I realized that maybe it was connected to how I wanted to live my life and how I wanted to be treated. After all, there was a me before this job, and there was still a me afterward. Getting laid off taught me that corporate job security is a myth anyway. So yes, I'm no longer married to my dream job. But I can guarantee that in my self-employed office of one, there will never be a redundancy. Read the original article on Business Insider

General Intuition has raised $320 million to scale AI trained on millions of hours of gameplay, betting action data can help AI develop something closer to human intuition.

Un-0 is an image-generation system tool that shows for the first time how the company's technology can replicate conventional AI systems.

Salahodeen Abdul-Kafi uses an MM2000 smoker to make his meat. Business Insider Salahodeen Abdul-Kafi left his $450K job to open a halal BBQ restaurant in Texas. Kafi BBQ made nearly $2.3 million in its first year and is on track to make even more this year. Despite working longer hours and living off savings, Abdul-Kafi has no regrets about leaving tech. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Salahodeen Abdul-Kafi, 35, who owns and operates Kafi BBQ in Irving, Texas. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. I spent 14 years working in tech at companies including Microsoft, Google, YouTube, Shopify, and Cruise. At the peak, I was earning $450,000 a year. Over time, though, I became disillusioned with the industry. It felt to me that the work had become increasingly focused on making money rather than improving people's lives or helping businesses. So, at 33, I left San Francisco for a job at a religious nonprofit in Texas, taking a pay cut of more than 50%. While working at the nonprofit, I continued hosting dinner parties and cooking barbecue for friends. I started making halal briskets, and they kept telling me they couldn't find anything like it. Halal Texas Twinkies from Kafi BBQ. Business Insider Many also said that they avoided traditional barbecue restaurants because pork cross-contamination is common, even when beef is on the menu. That's when I started wondering whether there was room for something Texas barbecue didn't already have. The restaurant made over $2 million the first year, but I still haven't paid myself Salahodeen Abdul-Kafi uses an MM2000 smoker to make his meat. Business Insider Kafi BBQ opened in December 2024. We prepared enough barbecue to last three days, but we sold through all of it on the first day. We started cooking again that same night. The restaurant later earned recognition. D Magazine named us one of the top 12 barbecue restaurants in Dallas-Fort Worth, and Eater named us one of the 15 best new restaurants in America. Last year, we generated just under $2.3 million in revenue, and we're projected to reach up to $4 million this year. That said, I still haven't paid myself a single dollar since opening and have been living off of my savings. Barbecue is an expensive business Kafi BBQ serves a range of halal meat, including Dino Ribs, Texas Twinkies, and sausages. Business Insider Our food costs run about $125,000 a month. Labor costs are about $50,000 a month. Rent is about $15,000, and utilities, marketing, spices, and disposables add thousands more. In total, we spend roughly $215,000 every month just to maintain. We are now profitable in the sense that we are turning a monthly profit, but not in the sense that we're able to pay off all the initial investment of the restaurant, yet, which cost about $1 million. Although I'm working more hours than I did in tech — about 70 to 80 hours a week — I find the work far more rewarding. In tech, I worked closely with my engineering teams, designers, and other product managers, but my circle was relatively small. At the restaurant, I'm constantly meeting new people from different communities. Kafi BBQ is located in Irving, Texas, Business Insider About half of our customers follow a halal diet and half don't. Because we don't serve pork and guarantee there is no pork cross-contamination, we attract people who often feel excluded from traditional barbecue restaurants. At the same time, we get customers who are curious about the recipes and flavors we're developing. One of the most rewarding parts of my day is walking from table to table, talking with guests and hearing their feedback. When someone enjoys the food, that's super impactful for me. Tech and BBQ aren't as different as some might think Abdul-Kafi says one of his greatest joys is creating new recipes. Business Insider Even though I left the tech industry, I brought many of the same skills with me into the restaurant business. Before signing a lease, I spent months testing demand by selling brisket from my house, running events, and gathering data. My goal was to reduce as much uncertainty as possible before making a major investment. I became meticulous about tracking numbers. I worked with meat suppliers before opening so I could understand my costs. I measured how much a brisket weighed when I bought it, how much it weighed after trimming and smoking, and how much I could ultimately sell. I wanted answers to every question I could think of before opening the doors. Even after opening, I'm still meticulous. I have a spreadsheet that contains all of the restaurant's recipes, with every ingredient measured down to the gram. I wanted the recipes to be as precise and repeatable as possible. Whether it's a side dish, a dessert, or a barbecue rub, I know exactly how much of every ingredient goes into it. Abdul-Kafi with a selection of Kafi BBQ's menu options. Business Insider I also use a product-development approach when creating new menu items. Every month, I'm developing new sausages, desserts, and specials. When I launch something new, I don't assume I've gotten it right the first time. Instead, I walk around the dining room and ask customers what they think. Then I make changes based on that feedback. One example is our pomegranate beef belly burnt ends. I changed that recipe seven different times before arriving at the current version. In a lot of ways, barbecue isn't as different from tech as people might think. I'm still experimenting, solving problems, and constantly trying to improve a product. I think that's why the transition felt so natural. Read the original article on Business Insider

Generative AI workloads are rapidly outgrowing the memory and compute budget of single GPUs. For inference developers building media generation pipelines, the... Generative AI workloads are rapidly outgrowing the memory and compute budget of single GPUs. For inference developers building media generation pipelines, the challenge is scaling across multiple devices without sacrificing the critical optimizations—like kernel fusions, memory planning, and quantization—that NVIDIA TensorRT delivers for production deployments. Multi-device inference support… Source

AI companions in games have long been constrained by fixed dialogue. PUBG Ally is a different kind of system. Built by KRAFTON for PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS, this AI... AI companions in games have long been constrained by fixed dialogue. PUBG Ally is a different kind of system. Built by KRAFTON for PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS, this AI teammate is powered by NVIDIA ACE and its suite of efficient models and tooling. PUBG Ally uses automatic speech recognition, a 2B-parameter small language model, and text-to-speech to understand player voice… Source

Whether you should stick to a classic Ordinary Least Squares regression, introduce interaction terms, or pivot to a Tweedie distribution depends entirely on how your data handles the messy reality of zeros and extreme outliers. The post Beyond the Straight Line: Choosing Between OLS, Interaction Terms, and Tweedie Regression appeared first on Towards Data Science.

Microsoft’s July Windows 11 update adds practical fixes for update pausing, recovery, Bluetooth, Widgets, File Explorer, and more. The post Microsoft’s July Windows 11 Update Focuses on Fixing Everyday PC Frustrations appeared first on TechRepublic.

The world spent more than $300 billion on AI data centers in 2025, representing a 60% increase over the prior year, according to the latest report from Intersect360 Research. While […] The post AI Data Center Spending Grew 60% Last Year, Could Hit $1T Next Decade, Intersect360 Says appeared first on BigDATAwire.

Ethan Gach / Kotaku: Sony's Bungie says it is laying off a “significant number of employees”, including “most of the Destiny team”; Bungie has an estimated headcount of 800  —  The studio said the sci-fi MMO failed to meet expectations … The studio announced a “reduction in force” …

Interpol’s latest Asia and South Pacific cybercrime assessment shows how phishing, ransomware, DDoS attacks, infostealers, and AI-enabled scams are raising security risks across APAC. The post Interpol: Cybercrime Hits 30% of Recorded Crime in Surveyed APAC Countries appeared first on TechRepublic.

Beat the 8GB VRAM limit. Learn how to run three different LLMs on a single 8GB GPU using C++ layer multiplexing and admission control. The post 3 Agents. 3 LLMs. 1 Aging GPU: Engineering Parallel Inference on Bare Metal appeared first on Towards Data Science.

Netris provides software that runs on network switches, and offers a platform that helps neocloud operators reduce the time it takes to go live.

The Department of Commerce declined to give the Chinese-owned automaker a special authorization to keep selling EVs in the US.

Apple raises prices of MacBook Air and Pro along with iPad Air and Pro

Unlike with Volvo, there will be no authorization for Polestar to sell its cars here.