Month: August 2024

Enlarge (credit: MikeCherim | E+)

A Kentucky man has been sentenced to nearly seven years in prison after hacking into state registries to fake his own death, in hopes of avoiding about $116,000 in child support payments.

In a press release, the US Attorney's Office wrote that Jesse Kipf, 39, was sentenced for charges including computer fraud and aggravated identity theft. On top of hacking state death registries in Arizona, Hawaii, and Vermont, Kipf also "hacked into private businesses and attempted to sell access to networks on the dark web" and stole identities of real people to open two credit accounts.

Now, Kipf has agreed to pay $195,758.65 in damages, including the child support owed to his ex-wife and nearly $80,000 to repair damage to the state death registries.

Enlarge / A Cruise robotaxi seen in San Francisco in 2023. Later that year, Cruise paused operations, resuming them in May 2024. (credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Following a successful recall, federal safety investigators have concluded an investigation that was sparked after a number of Cruise robotaxis crashed after braking inappropriately when being followed by other cars. It's a spot of good news for the autonomous driving startup, which has been under heavy scrutiny by federal and state regulators lately.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation opened a preliminary evaluation in December 2022 after reports emerged that Cruise's robotaxis could engage in "inappropriately hard braking" or become immobilized while driving, thus becoming obstacles and potentially causing a crash.

At the time, NHTSA had three reports of Cruise robotaxis braking hard in response to another vehicle or cyclist approaching quickly from behind, resulting in the robotaxi being rear-ended.

Enlarge (credit: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

Booming demand for artificial intelligence is encouraging big tech companies and their suppliers to explore converting old power stations and industrial sites into data centers.

Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are pouring billions of dollars into building data centers to power cloud computing and AI services, but it has become increasingly challenging to find suitable locations with sufficient power for the energy-hungry facilities.

Many data center markets are “heavily constrained when it comes to land availability and power,” which in turn fuelled interest in smaller markets and “more complicated sites” such as old power stations, said Adam Cookson, head of land transactions for real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield’s Emea data center advisory group.