Technology

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — The war in Iran is exposing the world’s reliance on fragile fossil fuel routes, lending urgency to calls for hastening the shift to renewable energy.

Fighting has all but halted oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas, or LNG. The disruption has jolted energy markets, pushing up prices and straining import-dependent economies.

Asia, where most of the oil was headed, has been hit hardest, but the disruptions also are a strain for Europe, where policymakers are looking for ways to cut energy demand, and for Africa, which is bracing for rising fuel costs and inflation.

Unlike during previous oil shocks, renewable power is now competitive with fossil fuels in many places. More than 90% of new renewable power projects worldwide in 2024 were cheaper than fossil-fuel alternatives, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.

“I've been asked several times, are we still considering being in Israel? We are 100% in Israel. We are 100% behind the families there. We are 100% in the Middle East,” said Jensen Huang, as Nvidia moved to reassure employees and investors that the war in the region has not altered its long-term commitment.

Nvidia has significantly expanded its presence in Israel since its $6.9 billion acquisition of Mellanox Technologies in 2019, which established a major hub for the company in the country.

Today, Nvidia employs around 6,000 people in Israel, and the country plays a central role in the development of several of its key technologies, including advanced chips and networking systems.

The company is also planning a major new campus in Kiryat Tivon, expected to employ up to 10,000 workers. Announcing the project last year, Huang said: “Israel is home to some of the world’s most brilliant technologists and has become NVIDIA’s second home.

In retaliation for the ongoing U.S.–Israeli war, Iran responded with a novel form of counterattack. For the first time in military history, private sector data centers came under deliberate attack.

In an era when companies known for e-commerce, social networks, and search engines have also become close collaborators with militaries, is bombing their servers fair game?

Three days after the U.S. and Israel began their joint bombardment, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched kamikaze drone strikes against Amazon-owned data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain that provide an array of cloud computing services to customers throughout the Middle East. The impacts and subsequent fires “caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage,” according to Amazon, resulting in service outages across the region.

The motive behind the attack, according to Iranian state television, was not to block people from ordering groceries or posting to social media, but rather to highlight “the role of these centers in supporting the enemy’s military and intelligence activities.

As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran continues, we look at how the Pentagon is using artificial intelligence in its operations. The system, known as Project Maven, relies on technology by Palantir and also incorporates the AI model Claude built by Anthropic. Israel has used similar AI targeting programs in Iran, as well as in Gaza and Lebanon.

Craig Jones, an expert on modern warfare, says AI technology is helping militaries speed up the “kill chain,” the process of identifying, approving and striking targets. “You’re reducing a massive human workload of tens of thousands of hours into seconds and minutes. You’re reducing workflows, and you’re automating human-made targeting decisions in ways which open up all kinds of problematic legal, ethical and political questions,” says Jones.

Not sure if it’s just me, but I’ve been running into this quite a bit.

My client conversations are spread across different messaging platforms, and sometimes important or more detailed discussions just get buried or overlooked.

It’s not even about the number of messages, it’s the fragmentation that makes it hard to keep track of everything in one flow.

Anyone else dealing with this? How are you keeping track of conversations without things slipping through?

A tragic story has emerged from northern Israel that combines shocking allegations, powerful families, and claims of online censorship. Shoshana Strook, 34, daughter of Israeli National Missions Minister Orit Strook, was found dead in her home after publicly accusing her parents and brother of sexual and ritual abuse dating back to her early childhood.

The claims, including alleged trafficking and involvement in so-called paedophile ceremonies, have ignited debates online as reports and social media posts appear to vanish from Google searches.

As her story spread online, users reported that news about Shoshana was being scrubbed or buried. Social media platforms and search engines appeared to remove or downrank posts, leading to speculation about deliberate censorship. Comments across forums highlighted comparisons to high-profile abuse cases elsewhere, pointing to elite networks and abuse cover-ups.

Security researchers had publicly documented the network behind it in October 2024, and Microsoft removed the Edge version in February 2025, stating that it was "malware." Meanwhile, Google didn't remove the extension until March 2026, months after it had been running malicious code on over a million browsers.

What do you think about Ecosia? I have a habit of using Ecosia as the default search engine. And I do this because a while ago I was looking for a private and ethical alternative to Google.

In my view, Ecosia is a very ethical organization committed to its mission of acquiring money to finance natural restoration projects. I admit that I haven't looked into it in depth so far, but they have a habit of releasing transparency reports.

The problem, if you can call it that, is that Ecosia isn't very private, since it sends data to Bing to make it work. However, I think there's good reason to trust the Ecosia organization even with this. After all, in their marketing, they're concerned about creating a private search engine, or at least collecting only minimal data. So maybe it's not so private now, but and in the future?

They have already shown themselves to be committed to their mission and that is why I trust them.