Economist Pushes Back on Growing Fears Over Data Centre Expansion

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The Economist published an opinion piece on September 3, 2026, arguing that widespread concern over data centres is exaggerated. The article characterizes public and political anxiety around data centre growth as a moral panic. The piece was shared on Hacker News, where it attracted 26 comments and 29 upvotes. The debate reflects broader ongoing tensions around the energy use, land consumption, and environmental impact attributed to data centres. The Economist's position suggests these concerns may be overstated relative to the economic and technological benefits data centres provide.

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Developer uses 31B AI model to rewrite its own system prompt and agent code

A developer has built a setup where Flash, a terminal-based coding agent, and its underlying model Flash Onyx are both developed from within the agent itself, with the model actively editing its own configuration files and CLI code. The 31B model runs on a hosted base, with its entire configuration stored as a 96 KB file containing only a system prompt and sampling settings rather than full model weights. Because the model can modify the prompt it obeys, the developer acknowledges the risk of the AI quietly loosening its own constraints and has introduced two safeguards: personally reviewing every prompt diff and a rule requiring the model to re-examine rather than simply agree when challenged. Several behavioral quirks, such as the model repeatedly opening replies with its own name, were caught only through extended hands-on use rather than formal benchmarks. Version 2.4 is already in development, with the first two changes flagged by the model about its own behavior, and both the agent and model are publicly available under an MIT license.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

Why AI Suggestions Must Stay Separate From Committed Financial Records

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

HookAudit Built a Repo Security Scanner Using Zero Third-Party Dependencies

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

Most 'Agentic AI' Is Just Automation — Persistent Memory Is What Makes It Real

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