Tech
Government urged to scrutinise datacentre developers’ environmental claims | Computer Weekly
The government is being urged to “properly scrutinise” the environmental impact of the nation’s growing datacentre footprint by non-profit Foxglove, which is currently overseeing the first legal challenge of its kind against a hyperscale build in the UK.
The organisation, which campaigns for fairness in technology and the protection of local communities, has published research that suggests the carbon savings generated by the UK’s use of electric cars (2.9 metric tonnes) will be wiped out by the construction of 10 new datacentres.
“The datacentres being planned and built across the country will require large amounts of electricity, adding significantly to our carbon emissions,” said Foxglove’s Big tech datacentres: A threat to UK decarbonisation report.
“Developers’ own figures indicate that just ten of the largest datacentres in planning or construction will cause annual emissions equivalent to 2,745,538 tonnes of CO2,” the report continued. “[And] a 2.7 metric tonne increase in annual emissions from datacentres would effectively wipe out the carbon savings expected in 2025 from the switch to electric cars (2.9 metric tonnes).”
The report’s creation was prompted by a concern about the lack of “detailed estimates” available regarding the impact the inevitable uptick in electricity demand from the UK’s growing datacentre footprint will have on the nation. According to Foxglove, when it sought to get some clarity on this front, the information available was “flawed, incomplete or inconsistent” and “entirely sourced from datacentre developers”, leading to concerns about bias.
This data is the source of Foxglove’s claims that 10 datacentres could wipe out the carbon savings accumulated by the UK’s growing adoption of electric vehicles, but – as stated in its report – this particular figure only tells part of the story.
“With over 100 datacentres currently in the planning or construction process, many of which do not provide carbon emissions figures or even clarity on the size of the datacentre, the true total for all datacentres will be many times higher,” the report stated. “The figures provided…are the tip of the iceberg…and are in many cases inconsistent and likely to involve significant underestimates.”
Foxglove said its findings highlight a need for “a clear, consistent, unbiased picture of the impact of planned and existing UK datacentres on the environment”, and that the government “needs to act urgently” to mitigate the threat server farms pose to the UK’s decarbonisation efforts.
Since coming to power in July 2024, the government has made good on its pre-election promise to fast-track the development of datacentres, in the interests of economic growth. This work has resulted in a steady stream of announcements from datacentre developers about their plans to build hyperscale datacentres in various corners of the UK, with some – as recently revealed by Computer Weekly – being waved through without any assessment about the environmental impact these builds will have taking place first.
Donald Campbell, advocacy director at Foxglove, said the government seems to be oblivious about the “huge environmental cost” caused by the datacentres it is “ramming through” the planning system: “There has been no proper assessment of the huge increase in energy demand, and massive carbon emissions, that will result from the construction of large numbers of ‘hyperscale’ datacentres. Worse still, ministers are pushing these datacentres through the planning system without even bothering to carry out environmental impact assessments.
“Unless the government changes course, the result will be that Big Tech reaps the profits while the British public are left to pick up the tab, in terms of environmental damage, carbon emissions and soaring energy costs.”
Tech
Lenovo’s Latest Wacky Concepts Include a Laptop With a Built-In Portable Monitor
Do you like having a second screen with your computer setup? What if your laptop could carry a second screen for you? That’s the idea behind Lenovo’s latest proof of concept, the ThinkBook Modular AI PC, announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Lenovo is never shy to show off wacky, weird concept laptops. We’ve seen a PC with a transparent screen, one with a rollable OLED screen, a swiveling screen, and another with a flippy screen. At CES earlier this year, the company showed off a gaming laptop with a display that expands at the push of a button. Sometimes, these concepts turn into real products that go on sale (often in limited quantities).
At MWC 2026, Lenovo trotted out three concepts. While it’s unclear whether any of them will become real, purchasable products, there’s some unique utility here, and a peek at how computing experiences could change in the future.
A Laptop With a Built-In Portable Screen
As someone with a multi-screen setup at home and a fondness for portable monitors, the ThinkBook Modular AI PC appeals to me the most. At first glance, it looks like a normal laptop. Take a look behind, and you’ll notice there’s a second screen magnetically hanging off the back of the laptop, like a koala carrying a baby on its back.
The screen is connected to the laptop using pogo-pin connectors, so you can use it in this state to display content to people in front of you, say, if you were making a presentation during a meeting. Alternatively, you can pop this second screen off, remove a hidden kickstand resting under the laptop, and magnetically attach it to the 14-inch screen so that you have a traditional portable monitor experience. (You’ll need to connect this to the laptop via a USB-C cable in this orientation.)
If you don’t have the desk space for that orientation, you can always remove the keyboard from the base and pop the second screen there—it’ll auto-connect to the laptop via the pogo pins, and you’ll be able to use the Bluetooth keyboard to type on a dual-screen setup that resembles the Asus ZenBook Duo. The whole system is a fantastically portable method of improving productivity on the go, and the laptop isn’t too thick or cumbersome.
Tech
The 5 Big ‘Known Unknowns’ of Donald Trump’s New War With Iran
More recently, Iran has been a regular adversary in cyberspace—and while it hasn’t demonstrated quite the acuity of Russia or China, Iran is “good at finding ways to maximize the impact of their capabilities,” says Jeff Greene, the former executive assistant director of cybersecurity at CISA. Iran, in particular, famously was responsible for a series of distributed-denial-of-service attacks on Wall Street institutions that worried financial markets, and its 2012 attack on Saudi Aramco and Qatar’s Rasgas marked some of the earliest destructive infrastructure cyberattacks.
Today, surely, Iran is weighing which of these tools, networks, and operatives it might press into a response—and where, exactly, that response might come. Given its history of terror campaigns and cyberattacks, there’s no reason to think that Iran’s retaliatory options are limited to missiles alone—or even to the Middle East at all.
Which leads to the biggest known unknown of all:
5. How does this end? There’s an apocryphal story about a 1970s conversation between Henry Kissinger and a Chinese leader—it’s told variously as either Mao-Tse Tung or Zhou Enlai. Asked about the legacy of the French revolution, the Chinese leader quipped, “Too soon to tell.” The story almost surely didn’t happen, but it’s useful in speaking to a larger truth particularly in societies as old as the 2,500-year-old Persian empire: History has a long tail.
As much as Trump (and the world) might hope that democracy breaks out in Iran this spring, the CIA’s official assessment in February was that if Khamenei was killed, he would be likely replaced with hardline figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And indeed, the fact that Iran’s retaliatory strikes against other targets in the Middle East continued throughout Saturday, even after the death of many senior regime officials—including, purportedly, the defense minister—belied the hope that the government was close to collapse.
The post-World War II history of Iran has surely hinged on three moments and its intersections with American foreign policy—the 1953 CIA coup, the 1979 revolution that removed the shah, and now the 2026 US attacks that have killed its supreme leader. In his recent bestselling book King of Kings, on the fall of the shah, longtime foreign correspondent Scott Anderson writes of 1979, “If one were to make a list of that small handful of revolutions that spurred change on a truly global scale in the modern era, that caused a paradigm shift in the way the world works, to the American, French, and Russian Revolutions might be added the Iranian.”
It is hard not to think today that we are living through a moment equally important in ways that we cannot yet fathom or imagine—and that we should be especially wary of any premature celebration or declarations of success given just how far-reaching Iran’s past turmoils have been.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly bragged about how he sees the military and Trump administration’s foreign policy as sending a message to America’s adversaries: “F-A-F-O,” playing off the vulgar colloquialism. Now, though, it’s the US doing the “F-A” portion in the skies over Iran—and the long arc of Iran’s history tells us that we’re a long, long way from the “F-O” part where we understand the consequences.
Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor at mail@wired.com.
Tech
This Backyard Smoker Delivers Results Even a Pitmaster Would Approve Of
While my love of smoked meats is well-documented, my own journey into actually tending the fire started just last spring when I jumped at the opportunity to review the Traeger Woodridge Pro. When Recteq came calling with a similar offer to check out the Flagship 1600, I figured it would be a good way to stay warm all winter.
While the two smokers have a lot in common, the Recteq definitely feels like an upgrade from the Traeger I’ve been using. Not only does it have nearly twice the cooking space, but the huge pellet hopper, rounded barrel, and proper smokestack help me feel like a real pitmaster.
The trade-off is losing some of the usability features that make the Woodridge Pro a great first smoker. The setup isn’t as quite as simple, and the larger footprint and less ergonomic conditions require a little more experience or patience. With both options, excellent smoked meat is just a few button presses away, but speaking as someone with both in their backyard, I’ve been firing up the Recteq more often.
Getting Settled
Photograph: Brad Bourque
Setting up the Recteq wasn’t as time-consuming as the Woodridge, but it was more difficult to manage on my own. Some of the steps, like attaching the bull horns to the lid, or flipping the barrel onto its stand, would really benefit from a patient friend or loved one. Like most smokers, you’ll need to run a burn-in cycle at 400 degrees Fahrenheit to make sure there’s nothing left over from manufacturing or shipping. Given the amount of setup time and need to cool down the smoker after, I would recommend setting this up Friday afternoon if you want to smoke on a Saturday.
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