TECHNOLOGY
Water levels across the Great Lakes are falling – just as US data centers move in | Technology
The sign outside Tom Hermes’s farmyard in Perkins Township in Ohio, a short drive south of the shores of Lake Erie, proudly claims that his family have farmed the land here since 1900. Today, he raises 130 head of cattle and grows corn, wheat, grass and soybeans on 1,200 acres of land.
For his family, his animals and wider business, water is life.
So when, in May 2024, the Texas-based Aligned Data Centers broke ground on its NEO-01, four-building, 200,000 sq ft data center on a brownfield site that abuts farmland that Hermes rents, he was concerned.
“We have city water here. That’s going to reduce the pressure if they are sucking all the water,” he says of the data center.
“They’re not good, I know that.”
Two years ago, the company said it would invest about $202m on a “hyperscale” data center that would employ 18 people and dozens more in the construction process. Although the company claims it uses a closed-loop, air-cooled system for cooling its computers that can reduce the need for water, artificial intelligence, machine-learning and other high power-demand processes do rely on water as a cooling agent.
All the while, a 10-minute drive north, the shoreline of Lake Erie hasn’t been this low in years.
Water levels across all five Great Lakes have begun to drop in recent months as part of a long-term fall. Since 2019, the Great Lakes have seen water-level decreases of two to four feet. While experts say this is a natural decrease given the record highs the lakes have experienced since 2020, it’s happening at a time when a huge new consumer of water has appeared on the horizon: data centers.
The source of the largest single deposit of freshwater on the planet, the Great Lakes, in particular Lake Erie, are already struggling with the fallout of drought and warmer water temperatures that, at this time of year, fuel major lake-effect snowstorms, and greater than normal levels of evaporation due to the absence of ice cover.
With major cities such as Chicago, Toronto, Detroit and Pittsburgh all within a few hundred miles of each other, small, under-resourced communities around the Great Lakes have become hugely attractive for data-center companies.
In Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, Microsoft is building what it calls the “world’s most-powerful AI data center” that is set to open early next year and expected to use up to 8.4bn gallons of municipal water from the city of Racine every year. Racine gets its water from Lake Michigan. Similar stories are playing out in Hobart, Indiana, where AWS is planning to build a data center two miles from Lake Michigan’s shoreline, and in Port Washington, Wisconsin.
In Benton Harbor, Michigan, locals are concerned that a proposed $3bn data center would contribute to environmental pollution and traffic.
Forty miles west of Aligned’s under-construction data center in Ohio, in Woodville Township, hundreds of people showed up to a public meeting last October to voice concern about another proposed data center project in their rural community.
“The Great Lakes region, especially in states such as Illinois and Ohio, [is] among the most data-center dense states in the region. In addition to the high volumes of water used on site for cooling, our recent research found that even more water may be consumed to generate electricity to power data centers’ energy needs,” says Kirsten James, senior program director for water at Ceres, a nonprofit headquartered in Boston.
“These impacts can conflict with communities’ water-resource planning efforts.”
The Great Lakes Compact, a 2005 accord signed by the governors of eight US states and two Canadian provinces, means that Great Lakes Water must only be used within the regional basin.
Research by Purdue University found that data centers on average consume about 300,000 gallons of water a day. Water used by data centers is warmed significantly and for those that do not use a closed loop system, that heated effluent water, just 20% of the initial amount, is often discharged back into local wastewater systems or the environment, with potentially serious consequences for flora, fauna and human consumers. Even closed-loop systems that reuse the same water repeatedly need millions of gallons of water.
While many new data centers are drawing water from local municipalities that, in turn, get their water from groundwater, much of that supply comes from the Great Lakes watersheds.
Some communities are fighting back. Last month, residents of Fife Lake, Michigan, were overjoyed after hearing a plan for a data center in their town of 471 residents would be scrapped due to local opposition.
Similar stories of successful opposition have played out in Indiana and elsewhere.
But the data centers are fighting back.
Private firms representing data center companies have often successfully sued community authorities, accusing them of illegally excluding certain types of developments, making small towns powerless in the battle to keep out giant water-guzzling corporations.
In Michigan’s Saline Township, a community of about 400 people outside Ann Arbor, OpenAI and Oracle used a representative company to successfully sue the local authority to overcome opposition and build a massive facility that would use 1.4 gigawatts of electricity – roughly the equivalent of powering 1.4 million homes.
The Detroit Free Press editorial board assailed the move, calling it a “a fait accompli, hammered into this tiny Washtenaw county community over the objections of residents, the elected board that represents them, and Michigan’s attorney general, absent expert or outside testimony save a cursory public hearing held over Microsoft Teams”.
Data companies and their backers, however, say their presence is a net gain for Great Lakes communities by providing jobs and investment over the course of years.
Aligned has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Perkins Township, the local school system and a career center. In return, it gets a 15-year tax exemption from local authorities. A representative declined to respond to questions from the Guardian asking how much water it intends to use at the data center and from where it originates.
Local municipalities that support these facilities claim that the data centers will increase tax revenue and help rebuild ageing infrastructure such as water delivery systems that, in some places, are in significant need of upgrading. Calls, emails and messages left with Erie county commissioners asking if local authorities plan to supply the Perkins Township data center with water were not responded to.
Some Perkins Township residents say a number of local companies have been hired during the construction phase, bringing work to the area.
But many argue those investments are not worth the long-term price the community may pay.
Amanda Voegle, who works at a heating business now directly facing the data center, is concerned about water and many other issues.
“A couple of years ago, there was a water pollution issue at the site. I’m very concerned. Is this [water] going back into the lake?”
Two years ago, the construction site upon which the data center is being built was found to be the source of contamination of a river that flows into Lake Erie, with the remediation company responsible cited by the Ohio EPA for unauthorized discharges into state waters.
“I don’t understand why they built it so close to the street, because it’s an eyesore,” says Voegle.
She says there have been other unusual incidents at her workplace recently, including power surges.
“I don’t know if it’s related [to the data center]. It’s probably almost weekly that we lose power and have to fully reboot everything. There was a couple of things we actually had to replace because [the power surge] fried it.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese today described the deadly terrorist attack at a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach as being “motivated by Islamic State ideology.” But, this may be an understatement.
The father and son pair who carried out the attack on Sunday, killing at least 15 people and wounding 40, traveled to the Philippines last month, to an area where an Islamic State, commonly known as ISIS, affiliate is active. According to Australian media reports, the two received military training there.
That means the attack is more than just motivated by ISIS; it’s an ISIS-“directed” or at least “enabled” attack, Colin Clarke, counterterrorism analyst and executive director of the Soufan Group, told Vox. “Clearly this wasn’t just two guys sitting around reading Telegram deciding that they want to hatch a plot,” Clarke added.
The Bondi Beach massacre came a day after a gunman, believed by the Pentagon to be affiliated with ISIS, killed two US soldiers and a civilian interpreter in Syria — the first American casualties in the country since the fall of Bashar al-Assad one year ago.
The perpetrators was a member of the Syrian security forces, a grim echo of similar “green on blue” attacks in which local forces attacked the Americans they were partnered with that dominated the final years of US military operations in Afghanistan.
The two high-profile attacks in one weekend, coming at a time when western governments have largely shifted attention from jihadist violence to other threats, raise the discomfiting question: Is ISIS back?
To be sure, ISIS is not the same group it was a decade ago, when it controlled an area the size of Great Britain in Syria and Iraq and had as many as 80,000 fighters in its ranks. Now, the territorial “caliphate” has been entirely eliminated, and its numbers have probably shrunk to less than 3,000.
ISIS’s attacks and grisly beheading videos once dominated global headlines, prompting a major US military intervention in the Middle East. Now, jihadist-motivated attacks — by ISIS or other groups — are now far outnumbered by attacks by right-wing and left-wing extremists in the United States. And numbers are way down in Europe, as well.
But, the truth is that ISIS never really went away. This year began, after all, with an ISIS-inspired car attack in New Orleans that killed 15 people. Last year saw mass casualty attacks by the Afghan affiliate ISIS-K in Russia and Iran, as well as a thwarted plot targeting a Taylor Swift concert in Austria.
Most of the recent ISIS violence, however, has taken place in the countries where the group’s various affiliates are based. This includes Syria, where the number of attacks are up since Assad’s downfall and the removal of a significant number of US troops. But, the group is believed to be growing fastest in Africa, with major affiliates operating in West Africa’s Sahel region, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Somalia.
Little is known about ISIS’s current global “caliph” — Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Quraishi, who took over in 2023. According to some reports, he is based in Somalia. Even though the group is no longer a physical “state” in any sense, experts believe there’s still a high degree of centralization and coordination between its various affiliates throughout Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
Much of ISIS’s work radicalizing and recruiting new members, though, occurs online via social media. The group has taken advantage of the global anger over Israel’s war on Gaza for recruitment purposes, which is somewhat ironic given that ISIS and Hamas are longtime enemies.
Many of the recent attacks and foiled plots in Europe do, in fact, appear to be the work of “lone wolves” radicalized online, many of them teenagers. As the French terrorism analyst Wassim Nasr told me last year, would-be attackers are often given instructions and logistical support by “cyber-coaches” they meet online, a cheaper and less risky process than bringing them to another country for training.
This makes the Australia case, in which the suspects legally purchased firearms and may have traveled to an area where ISIS operates in the Philippines despite one of them having been previously investigated for links to terrorism, all the more noteworthy.
Returning to the previous war on terror
President Donald Trump’s first campaign for the White House prominently featured his pledge to “bomb the shit” out of ISIS, but he’s since pivoted to other priorities. Trump has also expressed the wish, dating back to his first term, to remove the last US troops from Syria, where they are still working in conjunction with local Kurdish forces to fight ISIS.
ISIS may hope that attacks like last weekend will accelerate that departure — just as the surge in “green on blue” attacks helped push the US toward the exit in Afghanistan — but it could also have the opposite effect. Trump has vowed “very serious retaliation” against the perpetrators of the attack.
The shift of US attention and resources away from fighting terrorism — or, at least “terrorism” as it was typically defined in the post-9/11 years — picked up under the Biden administration, during which foreign policy emphasized “great power competition” with China and Russia. That idea has continued into Trump’s second term, where the emphasis is more on combating narcotics and migration in the Western Hemisphere, as well as, judging by the recently released National Security Strategy, culture war conflicts with Europe.
The NSS, which does not mention ISIS, warns against sustained counterterrorism campaigns, stating that “terrorist activity in an otherwise less consequential area might force our urgent attention. But leaping from that necessity to sustained attention to the periphery is a mistake.”
The shift can be overstated. The US carried out significantly more airstrikes in Somalia this year — many of them targeting ISIS — than in the Caribbean, where they got far more attention. But, when this administration invokes “terrorism,” it’s more likely referring to drug cartels, leftist governments, or antifa than al-Qaida or ISIS.
But, if ISIS deadly attacks targeting US troops or on the streets of western cities become more common again, that could change quickly.
TECHNOLOGY
Pornhub hit by massive security breach with 200 million users’ data records and search history stolen
Pornhub is notifying more than 200 million premium users that their data and search history on the adult website may have been stolen in a security breach.
Hackers claimed they had infiltrated a third-party system that Pornhub uses to analyze site traffic, potentially exposing limited records of how some users interacted with the platform.
In an extortion demand sent to Pornhub, the cybercriminals alleged to have a massive data set of records that included email addresses, location, video titles, search keywords, activity types and timestamps for over 200 million entries, Bleeping Computer reported.
Premium users pay $14.99 a month to access millions of videos, along with more than 100,000 premium videos that non-paying users cannot view.
‘We recently learned that an unauthorized party gained unauthorized access to analytics data stored with Mixpanel, a third-party data analytics service provider, Pornhub said in a statement.
‘The unauthorized party was able to use this unauthorized access to extract a limited set of analytics events for some users.’
The adult content site added that this was not a breach of its own system, ensuring users that their passwords, credentials or government IDs were not compromised or exposed.
Pornhub added that it has since secured the affected account and stopped the unauthorized access.
Hackers claimed they had infiltrated a third-party system that Pornhub uses to track user activity, allowing them to access limited analytics data for some users
Pornhub revealed the issue on December 12, saying it stemmed from a November breach involving its analytics provider, Mixpanel.
However, the adult website noted that it has not worked with Mixpanel since 2023, meaning the stolen records are from that year and earlier, BleepingComputer reported.
Mixpanel CEO Jen Taylor said in a statement: ‘We took comprehensive steps to contain and eradicate unauthorized access and secure impacted user accounts.
‘We engaged external cybersecurity partners to remediate and respond to the incident.’
The company told BleepingComputer it was unable to verify that the Pornhub data being circulated came from the November incident.
The cybercrime group ShinyHunters claimed it was behind the intrusion, publicly offering what it described as Pornhub Premium analytics data while name-dropping tech giants among its alleged victims.
Pornhub has informed affected users and publicly warned them to be cautious of phishing attempts or suspicious messages.
A company statement said: ‘While our investigation is ongoing, we encourage all users to remain vigilant by monitoring their accounts for any suspicious emails or unusual activity.’
The platform has brought in cybersecurity experts, launched an internal investigation, and alerted authorities, emphasizing that passwords and payment information were not compromised in the incident.
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Pornhub hit by massive security breach with 200 million users’ data records and search history stolen
Slate Auto, the electric truck startup backed by Jeff Bezos, has now collected more than 150,000 refundable reservations for its low-cost EV due out at the end of 2026.
The company shared the figure in a new Q&A video with CEO Chris Barman, where she answers questions from those reservation holders about the company’s plans for self-driving (there are none), or whether owners will be able to affix a car seat to the optional rear seats (they will).
Reservations are a somewhat helpful metric for gauging general interest in a new car, but they are by no means a signal of sure success. Time and again over the last few years, we have seen EV companies tout reservation figures only to go bust, either because they weren’t able to get through the difficult process of standing up production, or because they weren’t ready to have cars on the road.
For Slate, it’s promising that the number has continued to climb, meaning that new reservations are coming in faster than any attrition the company might be seeing. That said, Slate crossed the 100,000 reservation mark all the way back in May, right after it came out of stealth, so it took a good seven months to grow the list by 50%. And looking forward, Slate plans to make 150,000 of these EVs per year at the factory it’s refurbishing in Warsaw, Indiana, so it will need to attract far more buyers if it plans to succeed in the market.
Any continued enthusiasm for Slate’s EV has to be a reassuring sign for the company, given the state of electric trucks overall these days. Just yesterday, Ford announced it is ending production of the all-electric F-150 Lightning, the first major battery-powered pickup truck to hit the U.S. market a few years ago. (It’s being replaced by a version with a gas generator attached.) The company said the Lightning simply wasn’t making enough money — a fact exacerbated by how Ford was never able to sell more than a few thousand per quarter. Sales of other electric trucks, like Tesla’s Cybertruck and General Motors’ Silverado EV, have also struggled to stay above that mark.
Of course, the Lightning was a sort-of Frankenstein’s monster of a vehicle, with Ford shoehorning EV technology into a design that was originally meant for gas powertrains. Slate’s truck has been designed from the ground up to be an EV, and the company is hyper-focused on selling it for a price tag in the mid-$20,000 range. The decline of offerings from Ford and others may help clear the way for Slate to find early success — that is, until Ford’s real shot at a low-cost EV hits the market in 2027.
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TECHNOLOGY
Egypt restores one of the most important landmarks of the ancient Egyptian civilization: Colossal statues show Amenhotep III in all his glory
More than 3,000 years after they were damaged by an earthquake, two of Egypt’s most breathtaking monuments have been handsomely restored.
The Colossi of Memnon are two giant alabaster statues on the other side of the Nile from Luxor, the historic city in Upper Egypt.
Each measuring nearly 50 feet in height, they represent Amenhotep III, the powerful pharaoh who ruled ancient Egypt from 1391 to 1353 BC.
On Sunday, authorities pulled back the curtain on the repaired statues, described as ‘one of the most important landmarks of the Egyptian civilization’.
They have been restored, reassembled and raised to their original place as part of a renovation project that’s lasted around two decades.
Amenhotep III ruled ancient Egypt at the height of its powers, was worshipped as a living god, and was the grandfather of Tutankhamun.
Michael Habicht, an archaeologist at Flinders University in Australia, said he ‘promoted peace and lived in a time of the greatest economic prosperity’.
‘He might well have been one of the richest men that ever lived, at least in his epoch,’ he said.
The giant alabaster statues, known as the Colossi of Memnon, were reassembled in a renovation project that lasted about two decades
Each measuring nearly 50 feet in height, they represent Amenhotep III, the powerful pharaoh who ruled ancient Egypt about 3,400 years ago
The Colossi of Memnon were originally built in 1350 BC, made from blocks of quartzite sandstone quarried near modern-day Cairo and transported 420 miles.
Both statues depict Amenhotep III seated with hands resting on his thighs, with their faces looking eastward toward the Nile and the rising sun.
They wear the striped ‘nemes’ headdress surmounted by the double crowns and the pleated royal kilt, which symbolizes the pharaoh’s divine rule.
Two other small statues on the pharaoh’s feet depict his wife, Tiye, while more than 100 inscriptions cover the Colossi in Greek and Latin.
In about 1200 BC, the colossi were damaged by a strong earthquake that also destroyed Amenhotep III’s nearby funerary temple.
The statues were fragmented and partly quarried away, with their pedestals dispersed.
Some of their blocks were reused in Luxor’s Karnak temple, but archaeologists brought them back to rebuild the colossi, according to the Antiquities Ministry.
The colossi are of great significance to Luxor, a city known for its ancient temples and other antiquities and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.
The Colossi of Memnon were originally built in 1350 BC, made from blocks of quartzite sandstone quarried near modern-day Cairo and transported 420 miles
In late 1990s, an Egyptian German mission, chaired by German Egyptologist Hourig Sourouzian, began working in the temple area, including the assembly and renovation of the colossi
Pictured, visitors take photos with the two giant reassembled alabaster statues of Pharoah Amenhotep III, in the southern city of Luxor, Egypt, Sunday, December 14, 2025
Who was Amenhotep III?
Amenhotep III is one of the most important kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty who built or rebuilt many temples in the country (Luxor, Memphis, Elkab, Armant).
At Thebes he had a vast temple constructed to his own cult on the West Bank; the colossal statues (known as the Colossi of Memmon, before the entrance) are the most monumental elements still standing.
The king issued a number of scarabs with longer inscriptions describing events of his reign.
His main wife was Tiy, who seems to have played an important part in the reign. She appears on monuments more often and more prominently than virtually any queen before her.
Source: UCL
They´re also an attempt to ‘revive how this funerary temple of king Amenhotep III looked like a long time ago’, said Mohamed Ismail, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Amenhotep III, one of the most prominent pharaohs, ruled during the 500 years of the New Kingdom, which was the most prosperous time for ancient Egypt.
The pharaoh, whose mummy is showcased at a Cairo museum, ruled between 1390-1353 BC, a peaceful period known for its prosperity, prosperity and grandeur.
‘Diplomatic letters by foreign potentates begged him to send them some gold as a present, “as gold shall be abundant in Egypt as sand”,’ Dr Habicht said.
‘It’s the usual over-exaggeration for such a letter, but nevertheless hints towards extreme wealth.’
According to the academic, the pharaoh may also have been something of a womanizer, importing hundreds of foreign women to be part of his harem.
‘He was apparently very interested in women; he imported hundreds of foreign harem ladies and collected them as other people collect postal stamps,’ he said.
Amenhotep III’s reign was also known for great construction, including his mortuary temple, where the Colossi of Memnon are located, and another temple, Soleb, in Nubia.
Amenhotep III, one of the most prominent pharaohs, ruled during the 500 years of the New Kingdom, which was the most prosperous time for ancient Egypt
Unlike other monumental sculptures of ancient Egypt, the colossi were partly compiled with pieces sculpted separately, which were fixed into each statue´s main monolithic alabaster core, the ministry said
He is thought to have died between the ages of 40 and 50, leaving his successor (son Akhenaten IV) a kingdom at the height of its power and wealth.
Amenhotep IV would rebel against the powerful Amun priesthood, installing the sun god Aten as the top Egyptian deity.
He changed his name to Akhenaten – meaning ‘beneficial to Aten’ – and even moved his capital away from Thebes – the ‘city of Amun’ – to a new city honouring the sun god, Akhetaten.
But his son, Tutankhaten, would restore the cult of Amun to prominence, changing his name to Tutankhamun – meaning ‘the living image of Amun’.
Tutankhamun would become one of history’s most famous pharaohs thanks to the discovery of his tomb in 1922, which was largely intact and contained many of its original artifacts.
WERE KING TUTANKHAMUN’S PARENTS ALSO COUSINS?
The complex family arrangements of Tutankhamun has been one of the great mysteries surrounding the young king.
While his father was known to have been Pharaoh Akhenaten, the identity of his mother has been far more elusive.
DNA testing has shown that Queen Tiye, whose mummy is pictured above, was the grandmother of the Egyptian Boy King Tutankhamun
In 2010 DNA testing confirmed a mummy found in the tomb of Amenhotep II was Queen Tiye, the chief wife of Amenhotep III, mother of Pharaoh Akhenanten, and Tutankhamun’s grandmother.
A third mummy, thought to be one of Pharaoh Akhenaten wives, was found to be a likely candidate as Tutankhamun’s mother, but DNA evidence showed it was Akhenaten’s sister.
Later analysis in 2013 suggested Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s chief wife, was Tutankhamun’s mother.
However, the work by Marc Gabolde, a French archaeologist, has suggested Nefertiti was also Akhenaten’s cousin.
This incestuous parentage may also help to explain some of the malformations that scientists have discovered afflicted Tutankhamun.
He suffered a deformed foot, a slightly cleft palate and mild curvature of the spine.
However, his claims have been disputed by other Egyptologists, including Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
His team’s research suggests that Tut’s mother was, like Akhenaten, the daughter of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye.
Hawass added that there is ‘no evidence’ in archaeology or philology to indicate that Nefertiti was the daughter of Amenhotep III.
Meta announced on Tuesday an update to its AI glasses that will allow you to better hear people talking when you’re in a noisy environment. The feature will initially become available on Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta HSTN smartglasses in the U.S. and Canada, the company says. In addition, the glasses are getting another update that lets you use Spotify to play a song that matches what’s in your current view.
For instance, if you’re looking at an album cover, the glasses could play a song by that artist. Or if you’re looking at your Christmas tree with a pile of gifts, you could play holiday music. This addition is more of a gimmick, of course, but it demonstrates how Meta is thinking about connecting what people see with actions they can take in their apps.
The conversation-focus feature, meanwhile, seems more practical. First announced at Meta’s Connect conference earlier this year, the feature uses the AI glasses’ open-ear speakers to amplify the voice of the person you’re talking to. Meta says smartglasses wearers will also be able to adjust the amplification level by swiping the right temple of their glasses, or via the device settings. This will allow them to set the level more precisely to match their current environment, whether that’s a busy restaurant or bar, club, commuter train, or anything else.
How well the feature works, of course, will still need to be tested. However, the idea of using smart accessories as tools to help with hearing isn’t limited to Meta. Apple’s AirPods already offer a Conversation Boost feature designed to help you focus on the person you’re talking to, and the Pro models more recently added support for a clinical-grade Hearing Aid feature as well.
While the conversation-focus feature is limited to the U.S. and Canada, the Spotify feature is offered in English in a larger number of markets, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, the U.K., and the U.S.
The software update (v21) will first become available to those who are enrolled in Meta’s Early Access Program, which requires first joining a waitlist and being approved. It will later roll out more broadly.
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TECHNOLOGY
Earthquake swarm strikes California for FOURTH day as officials warn of 72% chance of the ‘Big One’ hitting
California has been rattled by multiple earthquake swarms over the past four days, with the latest hitting on Tuesday.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) reported a 3.1-magnitude quake at 5.53am PT (8.53am ET) near San Ramon, the epicenter of the recent seismic activity.
This tremor followed a dozen smaller quakes ranging from 1.1 to 1.6 magnitude.
Over the past four days, San Ramon has been shaken by multiple earthquakes, including magnitudes 2.9, 2.3, and 2.2 on December 13, a 2.8-magnitude quake on December 14 and 2.4 and 2.1 on December 15, along with dozens of smaller tremors.
According to USGS data, San Ramon has recorded at least 21 earthquakes ranging from magnitude 2.9 to 4.0 over the past two months. In the last month alone, the city has been shaken by at least 90 earthquakes, most of them too small to cause damage.
The uptick in seismic activity has raised concerns among some residents, with fears that the clusters of quakes could be a warning sign of a much larger earthquake. However, experts say the small tremors do not indicate that a major event is imminent.
USGS research geophysicist Annemarie Baltay said she is not unusually concerned that the recent earthquakes signal anything larger on the horizon for San Ramon.
‘These small events, as all small events are, are not indicative of an impending large earthquake,’ Baltay told Patch.
‘However, we live in earthquake country, so we should always be prepared for a large event,’ she said. ‘There is a 72 percent chance of a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake occurring anywhere in the Bay Area between now and 2043. So we should all be aware and be prepared.’
San Ramon in the East Bay has been the epicenter of this seismic activity, which sits on top of the Calaveras Fault, an active branch of the San Andreas Fault system
The US Geological Survey (USGS) reported a 3.1-magnitude quake at 5.53am PT (8.53am ET) near San Ramon, the epicenter of the recent seismic activity
A magnitude 6.7 earthquake on the Calaveras Fault would be classified as a major seismic event capable of causing significant damage in densely populated East Bay communities.
By comparison, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, a magnitude M6.9, widely labeled ‘the Big One’ at the time, caused widespread destruction, and the USGS uses the 6.7 threshold when discussing the long-term probability of a ‘Big One’ in the Bay Area.
San Ramon lies atop the Calaveras Fault, where a network of smaller, interconnected fractures branches off the main fault line.
The Calaveras Fault is capable of producing a magnitude 6.7 earthquake, which would impact millions of people in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Scientists said movement of fluids such as water or gas through these narrow cracks can destabilize the rock, setting off clusters of minor earthquakes that strike in rapid succession.
‘It is also possible that these smaller earthquakes pop off as the result of fluid moving up through the earth’s crust, which is a normal process, but the many faults in the area may facilitate these micro-movements of fluid and smaller faults,’ Baltay told the Patch.
Records from the USGS highlighted similar swarms in 1970, 1976, 2002, 2003, 2015 and 2018.
Sarah Minson, a research geophysicist with the USGS’s Earthquake Science Center at California’s Moffett Field, told SF Gate: ‘This has happened many times before here in the past, and there were no big earthquakes that followed.
Although small quakes can sometimes whisper warnings of a looming ‘big one,’ California scientists say this swarm does not fit that script. But they noted there is a 72 percent chance of it happening from now until 2043
‘We think that this place keeps having earthquake swarms due to a lot of fluid-filled cracks, thanks to very complex fault geometry, unlike, say, the San Andreas Fault, which is this nice clean edge.’
Seismic activity in San Ramon started in early November with a 3.8 magnitude, and the tremors have not stopped since.
Scientists studying the 2015 San Ramon earthquake swarm found that the area contains several small, closely spaced faults rather than a single big one.
The quakes moved along these faults in a complex pattern, suggesting the faults interact with each other.
The study also found evidence that underground fluids may have helped trigger the tremors.
Researchers looked into other possible causes, like tidal forces, but found no clear connection.
Overall, the findings showed that the fault system under San Ramon is more complicated than previously thought, which could help explain why these earthquake swarms occur.
Roland Burgmann, a UC Berkeley seismologist who worked on that study, told SFGATE that because the first quake in November was the strongest, he believes the entire series is more than just a swarm; it’s a tense aftershock sequence, each tremor echoing the power of the one that started it all.
In September, I met the Swypt team at ETHSafari in Kenya, a week-long Ethereum conference organised by Lisk, a blockchain platform that builds and supports decentralised applications, particularly in emerging markets. The event brings together developers, startups, and investors working on blockchain infrastructure across Africa.
ETHSafari is usually loud with many product demos competing for attention from throngs of visitors. One of the booths by Swypt, a Kenyan fintech that connects merchants to stablecoin rails, was easy to miss because it did not have a lot of people around it. At the booth, co-founder and chief product officer, Stephen Gachanja, told me that Kenyan businesses were already using Swypt to sidestep shilling volatility by converting M-PESA payments into dollar-pegged stablecoins.
A few days earlier, just before we left Nairobi for Kilifi, where ETHSafari was held, I had already seen what he meant.
At Nairobi’s Westlands Mall, inside a small jewellery and fashion boutique, a customer made a payment that looked ordinary. The customer scanned an M-PESA paybill. On the phone, the transaction showed up in Kenyan shillings, but on the merchant’s end, though, the settlement arrived as USDT (Tether) in a self-custodial wallet.
That gap between what the customer sees and what the merchant receives is Swypt’s entire product.
Much of the blockchain industry tries to change user behaviour with new wallets and a promise of new rails. Swypt takes a different route because it leaves M-PESA untouched and moves the complexity underneath. Kenyans keep paying the way they already do, but stablecoins appear only after the payment clears. For now, the product spreads less through marketing and more through merchants, explaining it to each other across different towns.
The mechanics of the Swypt
Say a car rental business in Kenya, which handles local and international customers, wants to use digital assets to bypass local currency volatility. The business can convert mobile money or bank receipts into USDT, a dollar-pegged stablecoin, by routing payments through a specialised financial interface.
The car rental payment system may choose to rely on an M-PESA paybill, a central feature of Kenya’s mobile money economy.
In this context, a paybill is an M-PESA-linked business-to-business (B2B) or customer-to-business (C2B) cash collection service. Unlike a personal “send money” transaction, a paybill allows an entity to collect funds on a massive scale via a unique business number.
Swypt merchant paybill
Customers enter this business number and a specific “account number” to identify the transaction, such as a rental agreement ID or a car registration. This will then allow the business to automate reconciliation and track which customer paid for which service.
Assuming the rental business operates across three national locations, managed through a central data module (Swypt issues a free virtual POS (point of sale) terminal that allows the merchant to manage these multiple branches from a single dashboard without the need for physical card readers), the financial flow moves through four steps.
- Customers pay via M-PESA using a provided paybill, QR code, or payment link.
- The Swypt software automatically converts the shilling-denominated payment into USDT.
- Funds are pushed to a self-custodial wallet owned by the business. This ensures the service provider does not hold the merchant’s capital to cut counterparty risk.
- Staff at each respective branch receive instant transaction alerts to confirm the rental.
Once settled in digital dollars, the business can then use the liquidity for operational expenses.
Swypt supports outbound payments back into the M-PESA ecosystem, including tills (retail payment numbers) and bank accounts, to settle payroll and supplier invoices.
Customer journey from payment to reconciliation
However, the lack of a traditional chargeback mechanism shifts risk. Only a merchant can initiate a reversal, which eliminates the “friendly fraud” that plagues online retail but demands higher consumer trust.
The cheapest route for the business is “peer-to-peer” settlement with other merchants on the same network. Because the underlying assets are on-chain, the business can also settle international obligations with any supplier capable of receiving USDT, effectively removing the friction of traditional cross-border banking.
Swypt is stripping the complexity from self-custody by offering a decentralised bridge between USDT and KES without the traditional friction of blockchain. The platform is strictly non-custodial, meaning it never holds user keys or funds. Instead, it only interacts with a user’s wallet when authorised to settle a specific transaction.
To make the experience feel like a standard banking app, Swypt uses account abstraction that allows users to bypass the headache of seed phrases (the master key to your digital assets), accessing their wallets via email and 2FA across any device.
Why is bypassing the shilling so important?
For Kenyan merchants, the primary incentive is currency preservation. After two years of the shilling’s volatility against the US dollar, holding local currency has become a balance-sheet risk for anyone importing raw materials or finished goods.
Once funds arrive as stablecoins, merchants can move money quickly across multiple channels. They can pay international invoices in USDT, transfer assets to external wallets like Trust Wallet, or convert back to KES for local use.
Swypt claims to remove its own exposure to currency fluctuations by eliminating an “internal float” or the idle cash reserves traditional processors hold.
Lean operations
Swypt’s commercial model is aggressive since there are no upfront fees for accepting payments. Rather, costs are concentrated on the payout side. According to Gachanja, off-ramp fees typically sit below 1%, comfortably beating the spreads of black market FX exchanges or traditional wire fees. For high-volume enterprises, an over-the-counter desk handles liquidity via API.
“Swypt only applies fees on payouts and has no direct upfront fees for pay-ins (M-PESA to paybill charges apply). In comparison to market standards, our fees are majorly below 1% for all transactions,” Gachanja said.
In an era of renewed venture rounds, Swypt is an outlier. The 12-person team is entirely bootstrapped. Gachanja claims that the business has processed over $10 million in volume across 1,000 merchants.
The model is not without its dependencies because Swypt relies on the stability of third-party stablecoins and the continued openness of the M-PESA API (Daraja 3.0). Compliance is handled through providers like Sumsub to navigate Kenya’s shifting regulatory landscape.
Swypt’s edge is its cultural literacy. Most fintechs in Kenya recognise they cannot operate without integrating M-PESA, so Swypt takes advantage of that reality and addresses liquidity challenges without asking business owners to understand smart contracts.
Marley Alles started out in accounting.
She thought that her dream was to work at a big company. “And then once I got there, I was like ‘oh, that’s it,” she told TechCrunch.
Alles began fostering other passions and found herself curious about the world of startups. She would listen to every podcast and read each book, taking notes on topics that interested her.
She didn’t think much of it until one summer when so many of her friends got married, that she found herself spending thousands of dollars on bridesmaid dresses and bachelorette looks. One day, someone approached her and asked to borrow one of her dresses. “I was like ‘yeah, for sure, take it,’” she recalled. “And then I thought, ‘how can this be done on a larger scale?’”
Alles had all these expensive dresses just sitting in her closet. She didn’t want to sell it, but she knew she probably would never wear those gowns again. “That’s what led me, long story short, to create Rax,” she said.
Alles launched Rax earlier this year as a peer-to-peer clothing rental company. It functions right now as a marketplace (it does not own any clothing inventory), where users scroll through listings and connect with people who have clothing items they want to rent.
She’s bootstrapped the company so far, enough to fully code the app and officially launch it. The first few customers were her friends and family, and the rest came by word of mouth. Alles said she leaned into the idea of “building in public,” where she posted online about her adventures creating this product in hopes of amassing an engaged audience of potential customers. She has about 5,000 users on the app right now.
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Rex is one of the first of its kind to be launched in Toronto. It’s like Rent-the-Runway, or New York’s Pickle, or Europe’s ByRotation. The idea of renting clothes — similar to buying secondhand —has been picking up steam as it is seen as a more environmentally sustainable way to consume fashion rather than buying new items for each new season.
“It’s driving the circularity of fashion,” Alles said.
But what makes Rex different from many others is that she offers long-term rentals. “On our platform, you can rent up to six months,” she said. “On competitor platforms, it’s daily rentals. So it gets really expensive if you want to rent for a couple week vacation. Or maybe you want a winter jacket for the season.”
At TechCrunch Disrupt in October, Rex announced its first foray into the U.S. market. Alles said she had been a huge fan of TechCrunch and applied for the Battlefield competition, where she later won the top consumer pitch in the competition.
Alles said she was surprised to win. “There were so many companies that had like thousands or hundreds of thousands of users; raised [like] $20 million in my category, and one [had] the lead actors from [the show] Silicon Valley,” she said.
Still, she found the experience “awesome.” Alles went up to every startup booth to introduce herself to other founders, and also attended some sessions as well as partook in networking. Actually, that was one of the biggest lessons she’s said she’s learned as a founder — the importance of in-person interaction because it helps her connect with the community better.
Now that Disrupt has passed, Alles said the company hopes to continue its expansion across New York and start building out a rental service platform to offer fashion designers and retailers looking to offer rental clothing to consumers.
“We have the technology, we have the audience,” she said, adding that brands are also looking at ways to become more sustainable, and companies like Rex let them do it. “I think things are getting better and people are becoming more aware of their impact.”
Image credit: Techloy
Ever found yourself trying to explain a tricky process on your Mac, showing someone a clever meme, or walking a friend through a step-by-step guide on WhatsApp, only to get stuck in confusing explanations? It’s frustrating when words just don’t cut it, and screenshots aren’t enough.
The good news is that WhatsApp on Mac now lets you share your screen during calls, so your friends or colleagues can see exactly what you see in real time. No more awkward pauses, repeated instructions, or back-and-forth messages, everything happens right in the call. Here’s how to share your screen on WhatsApp for Mac in a few simple steps.
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5 steps to share your screen on a WhatsApp call on Mac
Step 1: Open WhatsApp on your Mac
Step 2: Click on the chat of the person or group you want to call, then click the video call icon to start the call.
Step 3: Once the call connects, hover over the call window. You’ll see a screen share icon (it looks like a rectangle with an arrow).
Step 4: Click the icon, then select either:
- Your Entire Screen – shares everything on your Mac.
- A Window – shares only a specific app window.
Then click Share to begin. The other person can now see your screen in real time.
Step 5: When you’re done, click the screen share icon again and select Stop Sharing to return to a regular video call.
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Conclusion
Screen sharing on WhatsApp for Mac removes all the back-and-forth guesswork and makes helping, teaching, or collaborating much smoother. Whether you’re troubleshooting with a friend or presenting something quickly to a colleague, it’s a feature that saves time and keeps communication clear. Now that you know the steps, you can switch from explaining to showing, instantly.
December 16, 2025
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