Elon Musk’s xAI, now owned by SpaceX, sued Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to challenge a law that would ban so-called nudify apps in the state.

In their complaint, filed in a federal court in Minnesota on Monday, attorneys for xAI wrote that the statute “imposes an overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression in a clumsy attempt to prohibit ‘nudification.’”

The Minnesota law, which goes into effect on Saturday, targets apps and websites that give people the ability to generate non-consensual sexualized imagery, levying $500,000 fines each time a user creates explicit deepfakes.

In its proposal to the district, xAI offered support for four different schools in areas of Whitehaven and Westwood near its data centers:

• John P. Freeman Optional School
• Fairley High School
• Mitchell High School
• Westwood High School

At each school, the company has proposed upgrades to the HVAC units that heat and cool the schools, plus improvements to plumbing, lighting and windows. XAI has also offered to paint at the schools.

This map shows the location of the schools in green, with xAI’s sites in red and its power plant in Southaven, MS in yellow.

(For a sense of scale, it’s about nine miles across.)

xAI said work could start as early as the morning after the school board voted to accept the gift. Of course, that is not how anything works in the real world, and it took the school board and company until September of last year to finalize a plan to account for the fact that these schools couldn’t be torn apart during the school year.

To the company’s credit, some work has been completed; however, it is far from what was originally promised, and now SpaceXAI seems to want to rework the deal. Testino writes:

So far, donations have improved two campuses rather than four, according to MSCS. Those projects — campus beautification efforts at John P. Freeman School and a major locker room renovation at Fairley High — have made a small dent in the large list of SpaceXAI’s offerings.

They also came with a $5 million donation cap that wasn’t part of the initial proposal.

That $5 million cap can not fund the initial list of projects, even if they had been started. Neither Mitchell High nor Westwood High have seen any of the promised improvements.

More importantly, the agreement expired June 30 and has not been renewed. SpaceXAI says it is still “committed to completing critical upgrades to schools in the Memphis region,” but that doesn’t seem to be the case at this point.

I am not surprised that the company would back away from previously made promises,¹ nor am I surprised that my local leaders would be naive enough not to see this coming.

This CNBC video provides a look at what happens when a massive AI data center is built in your neighborhood.

Health in ChatGPT is launching to U.S. users. You can choose to securely connect Apple Health and supported medical records so ChatGPT can help you understand your information in context, keep track of what has changed, and have more informed, personalized conversations. The experience builds on feedback from early testers and gives you control over what you connect and when ChatGPT can use it.

Every week, more than 300 million people turn to ChatGPT with health-related questions—from understanding a lab result and preparing for an appointment to making sense of what a doctor said and building a healthier routine. But the context behind those questions is often scattered across patient portals, medical records, apps, and wearables, making it difficult to see and act on the complete picture.

Teddy Rosenbluth for The New York Times:

A Florida pastor sued OpenAI on Wednesday, claiming that its chatbot, ChatGPT, had offered him “extremely dangerous medical recommendations” that led to delayed care for a life-threatening pulmonary embolism last year.

The lawsuit claims that ChatGPT had assured Scott Winters that the early warning signs of his health crisis were “not something dangerous,” and had dissuaded him from seeking medical advice, instead telling him to trust that “God did not design your body to endlessly fail.”

The suit, filed in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco, accuses OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, of negligence and the “unauthorized practice of medicine,” pointing to moments when the chatbot offered Mr. Winters diagnoses and treatment plans and encouraged him to ignore pleas from friends and family to seek medical care.

She continues:

Drew Pusateri, a spokesman for OpenAI, said that ChatGPT’s terms of service make clear that it is not intended to be used for medical diagnosis or treatment. But he added that the company takes seriously the need to make answers to health questions as safe as possible, given that people use the chatbot for that reason.

“Treating chatbots as the whole story behind people’s medical decisions or outcomes oversimplifies a much bigger challenge, and risks getting in the way of people accessing powerful new tools that can aid them in their health journey,” he said. Mr. Pusateri added that newer models are better than the model Mr. Winters used at asking for missing context, communicating uncertainty and recognizing when professional care may be needed.

Andrew Liszewski at The Verge:

The smart band can track more than 80 different activities such as running or yoga that are selectable through the accompanying Garmin Connect app or using its single side button as a shortcut to your favorite. Through the app, you can monitor your training progress including the effectiveness of a workout and whether your body is ready for your next training session or would benefit more from a rest day.

In addition to workouts, the $199 band can track heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, sleep, and menstrual cycles via skin temperature. Notably, the Garmin Cirqa doesn’t require a subscription. Orders open on July 24.

(There are no good guys in this story.)

Myke has a new laptop, Federico has thoughts on Siri AI, and Stephen has been graded. Also: Apple vs. OpenAI and a big day for Mario fans with feet.

When the project was announced, details about power generation were sparse. Today, we know a bit more. Will Conkling and Christopher Scott at Google:

Today, alongside local leaders, community members, and our partners at Cypress Creek Energy, we broke ground on what will be the largest solar facility in the United States — Steel River Energy Center in Mississippi County, Arkansas. While this landmark facility will be the largest solar and storage project across Google’s global portfolio to date, this historic milestone belongs first and foremost to the community in Mississippi County. The Steel River Energy Center will reinvest local workforce talent and industrial innovation right back into the state’s economy, creating lasting clean energy and economic benefits.

By working closely with local leaders and residents, we are ensuring that our growth directly supports our neighbors and strengthens the grid that powers Arkansas’ industrial steel manufacturing,¹ data centers and households alike.

Ground was broken this week on the solar site, complete with blue shovels:

Steve Dent at Engadget has more:

Google has struck a deal to purchase a major solar project’s entire electrical output to offset its fossil fuel emissions, The Financial Times reports. The search giant will take 100 percent of the initial output from Steel River Energy Center in Arkansas once it comes online in 2029, amounting to 1.6 gigawatts (GW) of solar power and 2GW of battery storage — enough to power 315,000 homes. 

Google will pay a fixed cost for the electricity from the solar plant, but won’t use it directly. Instead, it will draw from the grid powered by a mix of coal, nuclear, renewables and natural gas, along with its own on-site power (typically gas turbines and engines).

Energy from the Steel River Energy Center solar project will form part of that grid mix. Once completed, the project will supply 2.45GW of solar power and 2.9GWh of battery energy storage. The first two phases (out of three) received $3.5 billion in financing and prioritized US-manufactured steel and solar panels.

The final mix of power generation isn’t known, but I am glad to see Google investing in such a large renewable energy source to help offset its footprint in the region. Hopefully, this means Google will be much less reliant on gas turbines for power than its neighbors, but time will tell.

This news comes on the same day that folks in 13 states and the District of Columbia are seeing their electricity rates increase due to data center usage, as Ivan Penn reports:

PJM, the nation’s largest electrical grid operator, on Tuesday released results of an electricity auction that would add $6.3 billion in costs to the bills of millions of households and businesses within the next three years, an increase driven by the power demands of data centers.

[…]

In a statement, PJM said data centers were increasing electricity demand throughout the region.

“These auction results show that demand for electricity continues to grow faster than electricity supply,” David Mills, president and chief executive at PJM, said in an announcement of the auction results. “We are working with government and industry leaders on multiple fronts to restore that balance by bringing on new generation as fast as possible and managing the growth of new load on the grid.”

Elon Musk has acquired Jacksonville-based APR Energy, according to a Federal Trade Commission filing that surfaced the deal weeks after it closed with no public statement from either side.

The FTC’s early termination notice, transaction number 20261350 and dated May 14, lists Elon Musk as the acquiring party and CF APR Super Holdings LLC as the acquired party, with New APR Energy, LLC listed as the acquired entity.

It also shows the transaction was granted early termination, meaning no further antitrust review was required before the deal could close.

No terms were disclosed in the FTC notice itself, but the price tag came into focus through a separate filing.

That separate filing comes from Duos Technologies Group Inc, which recently disclosed a $50 million sales price for its 5% equity stake in APR Energy.

That puts the deal at roughly $1 billion. As far as I can tell, APR Energy has not confirmed its change in ownership.

That is a bunch of money, so what is APR Energy? Let’s turn to its website, which says:

You want reliable power today – we have the assets available to meet your needs, including one of the world’s largest mobile gas turbine fleets, comprehensive and customizable balance of plant equipment, and a team of experts ready to handle your build from end to end.

From emergency power for compromised utilities to bridging-to-permanent power for data centers, we’re ready to rapidly deploy the turnkey power solution you need, when you need it, and to your specifications.

Bridging is the phase in which SpaceXAI’s data centers are currently operating. The grid can’t supply the sites with all the power they need, so these turbines are installed to keep things running. In the case of SpaceXAI’s second site in Memphis, it’s hard to see how the grid could supply enough power any time soon, if ever.

As you can see in these photos, they are built on large trailers and are therefore considered mobile.

This is the same technology at the heart of many debates — and lawsuits — concerning SpaceXAI’s presence in Memphis, as Fred Lambert sums up at Electrek:

APR doesn’t run a traditional power plant. It deploys trailer-mounted gas turbines and reciprocating diesel and natural gas engines that can reach full power in under 10 minutes and be installed in days rather than the years it takes to permit and build a fixed plant. The fuel is natural gas and diesel. This is fossil-fuel combustion, packaged to move.

It’s the same technology Musk has already been running — controversially — to keep Grok online.

At various times over the last couple of years, SpaceXAI has been accused of running more gas turbines than allowed. The company points out that they are mobile and thus temporary, claiming they are exempt from a bunch of pesky environmental regulations.

That was shot down by the EPA back in January, but the company has continued to rely on a fleet of turbines to keep its data centers¹ running.

It is unclear whether any of APR’s hardware is in use by SpaceXAI. The company is not listed on the company’s projects page, and the turbine models called out in a 2025 report by Samuel Hardiman don’t seem to line up with the GE TM2500 and Mitsubishi FT8 turbines listed on APR’s website.²

Regardless of what companies are currently on the ground, this is a clear sign that Musk and SpaceXAI continue to view gas turbines as an acceptable means of powering AI data centers.

OpenAI’s much-anticipated push into consumer devices is slated to begin with a mobile, screen-free smart speaker designed to be a new type of home computer for the AI era, according to people familiar with the matter.

The product — still under development — is meant to serve as a humanlike AI companion that lives in the home, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the project hasn’t been announced. It will help control smart-home appliances, play media, answer questions, respond to messages and tap into the range of capabilities offered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, they said.

Mark Gurman, writing on social media:

Amid Apple’s trade secret lawsuit, the iPhone maker has nothing like it on the market.

A smart speaker. Why did it have to be smart speakers?

Federico is at the beach, Myke questions his iPhone’s future, and Stephen wears watches. Then: a whole stack of Q&A items.

In macOS 28 and later, the Mac OS Extended file system format will be supported only for volumes (disks and other storage devices) that aren’t encrypted. For future macOS compatibility, either decrypt or reformat any encrypted Mac OS Extended volumes.

macOS 28 and later will continue to support unencrypted volumes that use Mac OS Extended format. Mac OS Extended is also known as HFS Plus (or HFS+).

Time goes marching on.

A distraction-free Markdown writing app for classic 68k Macintosh computers (System 6/7), built to run from a BlueSCSI device on a Mac Plus or similar compact Mac.

He has a video walking through it, including how it was built (with the help of Claude Code) and how you can move data on and off older machines:

The Apple Watch is rumored to undergo some big changes, Safari is gaining MCP support, and the Rickies may have accidentally created a black hole.

Several years ago, I ran a series of Kickstarter campaigns highlighting important dates in Apple’s history with three different wall calendars.

There were also digital versions of the calendars that folks could subscribe to in Apple Calendar, Fantastical, etc.

Today, I have some news about that part of the project:

1. Backers of the three Kickstarters are getting access to updated digital versions of the particular calendar they backed. If you’re in that crowd, be on the lookout for a Kickstarter message with details. These calendars haven’t been updated since publication, so there’s a lot of new stuff in there. This is a one-time update as a thank-you to everyone who backed the campaigns.
2. I have combined dates from all three calendars into a new Apple History Calendar that is for sale now as a one-time $10 purchase. I will be updating the calendar each month with new dates, so setting it up as a subscription in your calendar application means new dates will flow in automatically.

I am so excited to have found a way to keep the Apple History Calendar project going after all this time, and I would love for you to check it out.

As a bonus, you can also get a copy of my book Aqua & Bondi. It covers the iMac G3 and the transition to Mac OS X. If you pick up both, you’ll get 25% off your entire order.

On July 2, 1996, EveryMac.com launched.

Thirty years is a long time – and a great deal has changed since then – but what has not changed is that EveryMac.com has been there to provide you with detailed info on every Mac from the original 128k to the current line. Thank you very much for your support through the years.

There are a bunch of ways to support EveryMac, and its anniversary prompted me to chip in to help keep the lights on at a very important resource.

I am a huge fan of the site’s comparison charts, which make it easy to see how a particular model evolved over time:

The Honda Element could make a comeback, at least according to a new report by Automotive News. Honda killed the once-popular SUV in 2011 after years of sliding sales, but a resurgence in off-road-capable vehicles and a dearth of affordable models are spurring the boxy Element’s revival. 

Car and Driver reached out to Honda for comment, and a spokesperson shared this statement: The Honda Element has maintained a cult following since it was discontinued in 2011, and hopes for its possible return continue to circulate online. We sincerely appreciate the enthusiasm for the Element, but we are not going to engage in speculation about our future product plans.

We owned a 2007 Element for several years. Because it was so weird, it was a lot of fun. It was also surprisingly useful. I was a full-time consultant at the time, and would use it to haul pallets of MacBooks between the office and the K-12 schools we serviced. Here it is, in a very 2009 photo:

It was not perfect, though. We ended up trading it in when we bought our first minivan, as the suicide doors made getting kids in and out of car seats difficult in parking lots. Even though one hasn’t been in my driveway for a long time, I always take a second look when I see one in traffic.

Om Malik passed away on June 24, 2026, at Stanford Hospital after a long health journey with his heart. He was surrounded by family and friends.

I’ve read Om’s writing since before starting this site over 17 years ago. It is hard to believe he won’t be lighting up my RSS reader anymore.

Apple has increased prices across its Mac and iPad lines, the guys are all on iOS 27 Beta 2, and the Bill of Rickies is amended.

Macs

iPads

Other

Additionally, many upper-level SKUs saw increases. The Mac mini with M4 Pro got a $200 bump to $1,599, while the M5 Max MacBook Pro jumped from $3,599 to $4,099. As expected, increases really stack up when you start configuring higher-end options like larger SSDs and additional unified memory.

Apple addressed the increases to The Wall Street Journal’s Rolfe Winkler:

“We have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices,” [Apple] said in the statement. “We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly.”

Driven by surging demand from AI hyperscalers, the prices of memory chips, called DRAM, and storage chips, called NAND, have both quadrupled over the past 12 months, according to research firm TechInsights, which projects those prices to keep rising into next year.

Mark Gurman at Bloomberg:

An Apple spokesperson said that “the rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage” and that the company has “never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly.”

Apple added it has “shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products including today’s increases for iPad and Mac.” “We know this is not welcome news, and we are working tirelessly to find solutions,” it said.

Casey Newton:

Consumer electronics getting significantly more expensive due to the AI industry may accelerate the backlash even faster than the data center buildout.

Notably, Apple was able to keep the iPhone at its existing price points.¹ I suppose time will tell if Apple can hold the line there.

I won a steak dinner from my Dithering cohost Ben Thompson, betting that Apple would not raise the prices on RAM when they introduced the M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros in March, largely on the basis that Apple considers the pricing part of the product’s brand. For the same reason, I also do not think they’re going to raise the prices of existing products mid-cycle. I think Cook’s warning is about the fall, starting with the iPhones 18 Pro and the folding “Ultra” in September, and he issued the warning months early just to make the bad news “old news” by the time September gets here.

But unlike with the MacBook Pros in March, I wouldn’t bet more than a beverage on my hunch here. However out of character it would be for Apple to raise prices midway through product cycles, the global RAM shortage is unprecedented. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple pushes price increases moments after I hit “Publish” on this post. (I’m checking right now, before I hit the button, in fact.)

I agree; it would be very unusual for Apple to raise prices at the end of an iPhone cycle. Part of me thinks Apple will do it anyway to provide some cover for John Ternus’ first product keynote as CEO. Having the outgoing guy take the heat for a price increase seems wise to me, but perhaps the company thinks that a rare Tim Cook interview was enough.

Had a productive meeting with SpaceXAI President Michael Nicolls on Monday.

In the meeting they committed to resuming construction on the recycled wastewater treatment facility no later than Q1 2027.

This facility will offset water usage from both SpaceXAI and TVA. Our engagement that led to this commitment will continue until the facility is complete.

Samuel Hardiman, for The Daily Memphian:

The facility was expected to treat wastewater from the City of Memphis’ nearby TE Maxson Wastewater Treatment Plant and turn it into a suitable industrial coolant, replacing the hundreds of thousands of gallons of freshwater the company uses each day. In February, it used 840,000 gallons of water a day, according to bills obtained by Protect Our Aquifer and provided to The Daily Memphian.

The land for the water treatment plant was purchased in June 2025, with ground being broken in October of that year before work paused in April. You’d think one of the world’s most valuable companies could move more quickly.