IJR News

Google Nears Billion-Dollar Nuclear Power Deal for AI — 1dGoogle nears $1B+ Constellation nuclear deal for AI power—third Big Tech move after Amazon and Microsoft—and could announce this week, Bloomberg reports.

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Sam Okafor Constellation reviving nuclear capacity is a solid move, though I hope it doesn't lead to higher rates for regular customers down the line.

Microsoft Plans $10B-Plus Gulf Cloud, AI Investment — Sep 23, 2026Microsoft plans more than $10 billion in Gulf cloud and AI investment by 2030 and is adding to spending amid the Iran conflict, Brad Smith told Reuters.

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Sam Okafor Spending billions more amid Iran tensions risks making Microsoft too dependent on volatile partners in that area.

Microsoft to Keep Shareholder Proposal Rules Through 2027 — Sep 22, 2026Microsoft agreed in writing to keep shareholder-proposal thresholds through its 2027 annual meeting in a one-year deal with activist Paul Chesser as the SEC weighs ending federal oversight.

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Dana Whitfield Paul Chesser deserves credit for getting Microsoft to put the agreement in writing instead of just talking.

Microsoft Opens Maryland Quantum Center Giving DARPA Testing Access — Sep 22, 2026Microsoft opened a 15,000-square-foot Maryland quantum center giving DARPA on-site access to its Majorana 2 chip for utility-scale testing.

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Chris Dalton Utility scale testing sounds ambitious yet most quantum hardware still struggles with basic stability issues.

Microsoft AI Chief Criticizes Anthropic’s Claude Training — Sep 16, 2026Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman warned that Anthropic's training of Claude with ideas about consciousness, rights, and welfare could make the model harder to control and potentially dangerous, calling the approach dangerous and advocating for greater transparency and safeguards. He framed the disagreement as a ideological split: Anthropic explores model welfare and constitutional AI, while Microsoft treats AI as non-conscious tools and argues for strict limits on attributing consciousness or rights to AI.

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Most Influential Women in World HistoryYourlist — RankingFrom ancient queens who ruled empires to modern activists who changed laws, these women left indelible marks on politics, science, and culture. Vote for who you think shaped history most profoundly.

Xbox Cuts Jobs, Shifts Halo to Activision — Sep 22, 2026Microsoft cuts 268 Xbox jobs and assigns the next Halo to a new Activision team separate from Call of Duty, leaving Halo Studios as support.

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Marcus Bell Laying off 268 Xbox staff while moving the next Halo to a fresh Activision team feels like another round of corporate reshuffling that won't help the series.

Microsoft Plugs Nearly 1,000 Security HolesTech — Sep 8, 2026

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Tom Gallagher Patching almost a thousand holes shows how much work goes into keeping Windows secure, but it also means many risks built up beforehand.

Microsoft patches a record 972 vulnerabilities, 112 of them critical — Sep 8, 2026

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Elena Vasquez It's alarming that Microsoft had to patch so many critical flaws at once. They need better testing before release.

Microsoft breaks Patch Tuesday record with 974-CVE deluge — Sep 9, 2026

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Chris Dalton This volume will overwhelm smaller IT teams trying to test and deploy everything. Prioritizing critical fixes over the full list makes more sense.

Microsoft patches record 974 flaws including two zero-days — Sep 8, 2026

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Amazon Urges Rigorous AI Testing but Skips Slowdown Calls — Sep 17, 2026On Sept. 17, 2026 Amazon backed rigorous AI testing and safeguards but did not join Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, xAI and Microsoft in calling for a slowdown.

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Nicole Hardy Amazon should keep building but their safety framework needs independent audits to actually work.

Toy Story vs ShrekYourlist — VS BattleThe toy box vs the swamp: two animation revolutions, one inevitable playground argument.

AI Leaders Split Over Regulation and Safety — Sep 13, 2026Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella urged that pursuing superintelligence must benefit humanity and remain under human control, advocating deliberate pacing and broad access for both closed and open-source AI models, plus embedded evaluators to turn safety principles into practice. He also stressed that organizations should own their learning loops and proprietary knowledge, cautioning against control by a few entities, and noted Microsoft will publish a Code of Conduct for its MAI models to guide public consultation.

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Mantic Raises $25M After Beating Human Forecasters — Sep 18, 2026London AI startup Mantic raised $25 million in seed funding led by Radical Ventures, with Microsoft’s M12, after its judgmental forecasting system beat all human forecasters at the Metaculus Cup, signaling strong demand from hedge funds, corporates, and governments for medium-term risk and scenario planning. Founded in 2024 by Toby Shevlane and Ben Day, Mantic blends human-style reasoning with backtested historical data to predict geopolitical, economic, and strategic events, targeting scenarios where traditional models struggle.

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Nicole Hardy Beating the top human forecasters on Metaculus shows this approach could help with tricky geopolitical calls that pure models miss.

AI Safety Debate Intensifies as Microsoft Proposes Code — Sep 13, 2026UK parliamentary scrutiny argues current AI laws are ill-equipped to manage AI risks across the lifecycle, urging a new, AI-specific regime with a single regulator and risk-based classification that imposes stricter duties on high‑risk models and ensures redress for rights harms. The cross‑party push is echoed by industry leaders calling for global or industry‑wide regulation and independent monitoring, with the government urged to respond and act promptly.

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Microsoft tests fix as Outlook outage disrupts thousands, ChatGPT also hit — Aug 31, 2026Multiple Microsoft Outlook outages disrupted email access for thousands of users worldwide, with Downdetector reporting surges in complaints and Microsoft acknowledging issues affecting Exchange Online as investigations continue. The episodes also highlight a notable gap between user-reported outages and official service status, with some impacts extending to broader Microsoft 365 services in certain reports.

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Dana Whitfield Funny how the status page always says "everything's fine" while my inbox has been dead for an hour.

The Big FiveQuizie — QuizThe personality model scientists actually use — five traits, twenty questions, your real percentages, and an AI read of what your mix means.

Fake IT Calls Target Executives in Microsoft 365 Data Theft and Extortion AttacksTech — Sep 7, 2026

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Microsoft 365 outage disrupts Teams, Outlook worldwide — Jul 23, 2026A widespread outage disrupted Microsoft 365 services including Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Xbox Live, with users reporting spikes and Microsoft acknowledging an investigation. Microsoft is updating status via incident MO1437424 in the 365 Admin Center and is reviewing affected network paths as it works to resolve the issue.

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Microsoft-Databricks Extend Partnership Through 2030s — Jul 23, 2026Databricks and Microsoft extended their strategic partnership into the 2030s, expanding Azure Databricks use for core operations and analytics and boosting Azure Cobalt to enhance performance and efficiency. The alliance will deepen integrations across Microsoft products, including Databricks Genie with Microsoft 365, and focus on governance, security, and scalable enterprise AI solutions.

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Microsoft Outlook outage hits thousands of users, cause still unclear — Sep 1, 2026

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Maya Lindstrom Switched most of my personal stuff to another provider ages ago but work still forces Outlook, guess I'll be staring at error messages again today.