The opinion says whether it's fair is 'for our citizenry to decide at the ballot box.'

US manufacturers in many Rust Belt cities and towns are paying significantly higher electricity costs as growing energy demand from data centers strains the largest power grid operator in the United States. The resulting squeeze on profit margins for steelmakers and brick factories could further undermine President Donald Trump’s “Made in America” plan to revive US manufacturing, and it comes as Trump has simultaneously championed the tech companies behind the AI data center boom.

Factory electricity bills are generally rising faster than those for other business customers or residential customers, according to a Reuters analysis. It highlighted the example of the Belden Brick Company, a 141-year-old brick manufacturer in Ohio, whose electricity bills have soared from $1,600 to $12,000 per month due to a higher monthly capacity charge in the 13-state region served by the grid operator PJM Interconnection.

Meanwhile, the Steel Manufacturers Association warned that US steel companies concentrated in the Rust Belt region served by PJM Interconnection are paying tens of millions of dollars in higher power costs per year. Electricity accounts for 20 to 40 percent of the total production costs of making steel.

Each electric arc furnace used in steelmaking has an operating power load between 40 and 200 megawatts, and the entire US steel industry draws up to 11 gigawatts of power at peak production across all facilities.

US steelmakers have benefited from data center construction’s requirements for an estimated 1 million tons of steel per year. But data center energy demand has also driven up operating costs for the US steel industry, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Ohio-based steelmaker Metallus described its electricity costs as having jumped by 70 percent since 2024, leading the company to pay an extra $15 million in energy costs annually.

The higher electricity costs for manufacturers coincide with the attraction of large AI data center projects with substantial electricity needs to many states in PJM territory. That data center growth has driven up PJM’s capacity prices—paid to power generators according to supply-and-demand forecasts—from $28.92 per megawatt-day in 2024 to $329.17 per megawatt-day in 2026, according to Reuters' reporting.

PJM has also forecast that electricity demand in its territory will surpass available supply by 6.6 gigawatts starting in 2027, which The Wall Street Journal describes as equivalent to more than six nuclear power plants.

No easy fixes

Some US manufacturers have raised the prices paid by customers to partially offset their own rising electricity bills, or are even considering relocation of their businesses, Reuters reported. The Wall Street Journal highlighted warnings from steel industry executives that production outages could become more likely if local power grids are overwhelmed by demand. Such results would likely undercut the competitiveness and viability of US manufacturing, which the Trump administration claims to have prioritized despite the loss of 83,000 manufacturing jobs in Trump’s first year back in office.

The White House has touted getting Big Tech companies to pay for new power generation and transmission infrastructure by signing a Ratepayer Protection Pledge, which happens to lack any meaningful enforcement mechanism. The Trump administration also joined state governors in pushing PJM to hold a one-time backstop auction for purchasing new power supply capacity.

But the United States still faces huge challenges in building enough new power generation and transmission lines to support the energy needs of AI data center demand and US manufacturers, not to mention other businesses and residential customers. The Trump administration’s efforts to stop renewable energy projects involving wind and solar power have also not helped.

In 2025 alone, the United States saw the cancellation of power projects totaling 266 gigawatts of generation capacity—equivalent to 25 percent of America’s current electricity generation capacity and more than the total electricity generation of Texas, according to Michael Thomas, CEO of the Cleanview data platform that tracks renewable energy and data center projects. Clean energy projects accounted for 93 percent of those project cancellations.

The Trump administration’s cancellations of various wind power projects certainly represented one contributing factor. But other significant patterns included local opposition to renewable energy projects in states such as Ohio and Indiana that were also courting new data center development, along with a lack of new transmission lines, leading to high interconnection costs for new clean energy projects, Thomas said. If US states and the federal government are hoping to support local manufacturing, they may need to start making different choices in addressing the rising energy costs of the data center boom.

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A cybersecurity startup dangling millions of dollars to acquire zero-day security vulnerabilities in popular software is run by a pair of far-right conspiracy theorists and convicted felons whose most recent ventures included fake intelligence companies and a now-defunct AI-based lobbying platform they operated under assumed names.

The X/Twitter account IRIS C2 (@C2IRIS) has gained more than 4,000 followers since its creation in January 2025, posting frequently about security vulnerabilities, AI and software exploits. IRIS C2 says it is a company in McLean, Va. that sells offensive cybersecurity capabilities.

“Our business model is this,” reads a pinned post on top of the IRIS C2 account on X. “Attract the very best vulnerability researchers and exploit developers in the world to join our company. This mostly revolves around junior engineers with raw talent/extremely high IQ. We don’t care if they have a college degree/industry experience.”

The website linked in that profile — irisc2[.]com — says the company is hiring for a number of open positions, and a recent post on its LinkedIn page enthuses about an overwhelming number of applications from potential employees. The website claims IRIS C2 is in the business of acquiring “zero-day exploits, individual primitives, partial chains, and full capabilities across all major platforms. Payouts range from $10,000 to $7 million depending on target, reliability, and operational value.”

The government contracting portal g2exchange.com reports that irisc2[.]com is operated by a business based in Virginia called Calvexa Group LLC. The “contact” link on the website for Calvexa Group — calvexagroup[.]com — forwards visitors to irisc2[.]com. G2Exchange shows that while Calvexa Group LLC is registered as a federal contractor, it does not appear to be working on any direct government contracts.

A search on the Arlington, Va. address listed in the incorporation records for Calvexa Group LLC finds the property is occupied by Jack Burkman, the 60-year-old founder and managing partner of the lobbying firm Burkman & Associates. When approached with questions about IRIS C2, Burkman referred further inquiries to his longtime associate, 28-year-old Jacob Wohl.

Burkman and Wohl have a storied history of creating fake intelligence companies and using them to spread false claims about and frame public figures, including fabricated sexual assault claims against then FBI director Robert Mueller, and Pete Buttigieg, then mayor of South Bend, Indiana and a Democratic candidate for the presidency. In 2019, Burkman and Wohl held press conferences falsely alleging extramarital affairs by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and then-2020 presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, Wohl and Burkman were prosecuted by multiple U.S. states for making thousands of robocalls to residents of battleground states and disseminating false claims about mail-in ballots. They were indicted in Cleveland on 15 felony counts of orchestrating a robocall scheme aimed at suppressing the black vote in Detroit, and were sentenced in late 2025 to probation after their appeals to dismiss the charges were rejected.

In 2022, Wohl and Burkman both pleaded guilty to a single felony charge of telecommunications fraud in Ohio, and sentenced to a fine, probation, and community service. In March 2023, a judge in a New York civil case ruled that Wohl and Burkman had violated federal and state civil rights laws, and the two agreed to pay a $1 million settlement.

In June 2023, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposed a $5.1 million fine against Wohl and Burkman for their robocall campaigns, at the time the largest fine ever sought by the FCC under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

By the age of 17, Wohl had started multiple investment firms, and cultivated the nickname “Wohl of Wall Street” after appearing on Fox News in 2015 to discuss his new hedge funds. In 2017, the Arizona Corporation Commission charged Wohl and his investment funds with 14 counts of securities fraud, and ordered him to pay $35,000 in restitution. In 2019, Wohl pleaded guilty in California to four felony counts of selling unregistered securities and was sentenced to two years of probation.

The market for previously unknown security vulnerabilities has always been populated by a colorful mix of researchers, academics, charlatans, clout-chasers and people actively involved cybercrime communities. But the market for selling offensive security services to the U.S. government tends to be far more circumspect. Plenty of government contractors recruit vulnerability researchers and pay for the exclusive rights to novel software exploits, yet none of them do so quite as brazenly and openly as IRIS C2.

Indeed, KrebsOnSecurity was unaware of IRIS C2 until last month, when an attendee at a regional cybersecurity conference shared that Wohl and Calvexa Group were pestering people at the conference about selling their vulnerability research.

In an interview with KrebsOnSecurity, Wohl said Mr. Burkman was not involved in the day-to-day operations of IRIS C2. Wohl shared that IRIS C2 originally began as a penetration testing company, but shifted its focus recently to selling phone-hacking services to the government. Several times throughout the interview, Mr. Wohl mentioned working on federal government contracts, but when pressed for specifics said he was not at liberty to speak publicly about them.

Mr. Wohl said he does not have any formal education or training in computer science or information security, and that most of his knowledge on the matter is self-taught.

“I know more about tech than anyone,” Wohl bragged. “My background has always been extremely technical, and I’ve always been deeply into tech. People know me as someone who is able to create spectacularly exquisite capabilities that would make your head spin.”

Wohl said security researchers bring the company unique vulnerability findings “on a regular basis,” but that in many cases those findings are preliminary and not fully fleshed-out.

“Let’s say someone finds a flaw in a media decoder on a phone,” Wohl said. “A lot of times what we receive is an exploit primitive, where the idea is there but the [execution] needs work. You need that exploit to be stable and reliable, and that’s what we do.”

Wohl claims IRIS C2 has approximately 40 employees, although he said none of them are allowed to list their employment on LinkedIn for operational security reasons. In May, the author of the IRIS C2 account on X said that his girlfriend had no idea what he did for a living. But if IRIS C2 has any other employees, they may be similarly unaware of Mr. Wohl’s history of outright fabrications — or even his real name.

In September 2024, Politico reported that Berkman and Wohl were bragging about big companies supposedly buying services from their now-defunct company LobbyMatic, which claimed to use artificial intelligence to assist in political lobbying efforts. However, Politico found the pair were running the company using pseudonyms, with Wohl reportedly adopting the name “Jay Klein” and Burkman using the moniker “Bill Sanders.” Politico reported that two of the former LobbyMatic employees resigned after learning of their true identities, while other employees only learned after they had left the company.

The FCC is set to defang rules around ISP junk fee reporting.

Americans now spend an average of 35 minutes a day socializing, down from 45 minutes two decades ago, according to American Time Use Survey data. The decline spans all age groups but is sharpest among 15- to 24-year-olds, whose daily socializing has fallen from about an hour to 35 minutes. Axios reports: Sociologists and psychologists point to several trends driving this phenomenon, which Substack writer Derek Thompson dubbed "The Anti-Social Century" in the Atlantic last year. We're all on our smartphones, often interacting through screens instead of face to face -- even though social media is no substitute for spending time together in person. Teens, in particular, spend an average of 4.8 hours a day on apps like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, according to Gallup. The shift to remote work -- and life -- during the pandemic has persisted, keeping more of us homebound. Longer-term trends are reshaping daily life in ways that make isolation easier. Homes are bigger and more comfortable, with larger TVs. Virtually every restaurant is on a food delivery app, making it easier than ever to stay in. Also contributing to the trend is the decline of gathering spaces, Axios' Avery Lotz writes. A 2025 report from CU Boulder researchers uncovered widespread closures of all kinds of hangout spots -- from libraries to coffee shops to museums -- in the last decade or so. Churches are also shuttering at unprecedented rates, Axios' Russell Contreras reports.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The CreateFile function has a flag called FILE_FLAG_DELETE_ON_CLOSE, which means that the file will be deleted when the last handle to the file is closed. But what if you pass that flag and then change your mind? Is there a way to call take-backs?

No, there are no take-backs. The FILE_FLAG_DELETE_ON_CLOSE flag is permanent.

So what do you do if you want to make a file deleted when the last handle is closed, but only based on some condition determined later?

What you can do is open the file normally, and then once you realize that you want to delete it on last close, you can turn the “delete on close” flag on.

BOOL MarkFileAsDeleteOnClose(HANDLE file)
{
    FILE_DISPOSITION_INFO info{};
    info.DeleteFile = TRUE;
    return SetFileInformationByHandle(hfile,
        FileDispositionInfo, &info, sizeof(info));

Unlike FILE_FLAG_DELETE_ON_CLOSE, you can take back the DeleteFile disposition.

BOOL MarkFileAsNoLongerDeleteOnClose(HANDLE file)
{
    FILE_DISPOSITION_INFO info{};
    info.DeleteFile = FALSE;
    return SetFileInformationByHandle(hfile,
        FileDispositionInfo, &info, sizeof(info));

The post I opened a file with <CODE>FILE_<WBR>FLAG_<WBR>DELETE_<WBR>ON_<WBR>CLOSE</CODE>, but now I changed my mind appeared first on The Old New Thing.