Permanent copy of issue 62. Today's issue is always the front page.
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Google said Wednesday it will sell Gemini 4 Argon at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, first to a vetted set of cyber defenders. The Senate blocked a bill that would have asked states to consider making data centers pay for the power lines built to serve them. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission suspended PJM's plan to buy new capacity until February 28. OpenAI said people linked to Moonshot AI tried to copy protected reasoning from its models by querying them. The model a person can use this morning is still rented from someone else's building.
Date: 2026-10-01
Updated: 2026-10-01 06:08
Status: LIVE
Broadcast
The Senate bill that failed on Wednesday would have asked state regulators to consider making data centers pay for the lines built to serve them. It would not have lowered a household electric bill this month. There is still no switch on the wall that moves that load onto a laptop.
Watch
Stories
Google said Wednesday that Gemini 4 Argon, its new frontier model, will launch at an introductory price of $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. The company said the model is rolling out first to trusted cyber defenders in its Fairwind Program, and that the price rises to $4 and $20 per million tokens after that period.
-- A person pays Google's meter. The post does not offer a file to run at home.
2026-09-30 / Google / efficiency / central / #google-prices-gemini-4-argon-at-2-a-million-toke
The Senate on Wednesday blocked the Ratepayer Protection Act on a 57-43 vote, CNN reported, with only four Democrats voting for it. The bill would have required state regulators to consider a standard making large data centers pay for grid upgrades, rather than passing those costs to households, and it does not itself cut a bill.
-- The vote leaves the household electric bill where it was. The data center still draws from the same grid.
2026-09-30 / CNN / energy / central / #senate-blocks-a-bill-on-data-center-power-bills
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said Tuesday it would accept PJM's plan to buy new power capacity but suspend it until February 28, Bloomberg reported. Chairperson Laura Swett said the commission would not accept a last-minute procurement with billion-dollar implications for consumers, and PJM still plans a one-time auction to cover a 6.8-gigawatt shortfall.
-- The order delays who pays for the power. It does not move the work onto a home computer.
2026-09-29 / Energy Connects / energy / central / #ferc-pauses-pjm-s-plan-to-buy-data-center-power
OpenAI said Wednesday it disrupted a campaign that began July 1 to extract protected reasoning from its models, and it attributed a core cluster of the activity to people associated with Moonshot AI, the maker of Kimi. The Register, quoting the company's blog, said the peak was 16,000 requests from more than 4,000 users on July 24 and 25, and that OpenAI shut the campaign down by July 28.
-- The reasoning stays on OpenAI's computers. Copying it by query does not hand a household the weights.
2026-09-30 / The Register / efficiency / central / #openai-says-moonshot-users-tried-to-copy-model-r
Axis
local [########################------] central
Score: 81
clusters still winning
up 1
Google priced Gemini 4 Argon at $2 per million input tokens and kept the model on its own computers. The Senate blocked a bill on data-center power costs. FERC suspended a PJM capacity buy until February 28. The cluster still holds the model.
Forces
| Force | Meter | Score | Pull | Note | ||
| CHIP / CAPEX |
|
92 | central | No new household chip today. Google's new model is an API on Google's computers. OpenAI's distillation note is about queries to a rented model, not a processor a person buys. | ||
| ENERGY |
|
98 | central | The Senate blocked a bill that would have asked states to consider making data centers pay for grid upgrades. FERC suspended PJM's capacity purchase until February 28. Neither order cuts a home electric bill this month. | ||
| EFFICIENCY |
|
57 | central | Google's introductory price is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, then $4 and $20. The weights are not for sale. |
Line charts (0=local 100=central 2026-09-16 to 2026-10-01)
Market overlay (2026-09-02 to 2026-10-01)
Latest: BTC $83,581 / hashrate ~992.72 EH/s / token markers avg $5.3033/M / axis 81. These lines are different units. We compare timing, not dollars-to-hashrate.
Not shown: GPU cloud $/hour, hub electricity, miner hashprice, or lab cost per token -- none of those are a clean public feed.
Power and list prices
BTC $83,581 / hashrate ~993 EH/s. List-price gap (not a subsidy %): 44.4x list gap (blended) GPT-5.6 Luna -> Claude Fable 5 ($0.45/M to $20.00/M). (mempool.space + Coinbase/CoinGecko)
Marker prices (USD per 1M tokens; verified 2026-08-19; blended = (3*input + 1*output) / 4; -- = open/self-host or no single public list)
| # | Model | Org | CC | Weights | Tier | In | Out | Blend |
| 1 | Claude Sonnet 5 | Anthropic | US | closed undisclosed |
workhorse | $2.00 | $10.00 | $4.00 |
| 2 | GPT-5.5 | OpenAI | US | closed undisclosed |
flagship | $5.00 | $30.00 | $11.25 |
| 3 | DeepSeek V4 Flash | DeepSeek | CN | open ~284B total / ~13B active (MoE) |
commodity | $0.44 | $1.32 | $0.66 |
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