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Permanent copy of issue 98. Today's issue is always the front page.
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Bensalem Township council in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, holds a public hearing on Monday on a 34-page data centre ordinance that keeps the use about 2,000 feet from homes, demands at least 25 acres, and bans on-site power generation, even though county planners warned the buffers may rule out every site. Up the Susquehanna, Muncy Township residents told supervisors this week that a $1,000-a-day fine means little to a developer that already claims deemed approval for a Yetter Road project, and the supervisors will vote on Dec. 9. Ballotpedia counted that voters favored limits on data centres in 40 of 41 local ballot contests on Nov. 3. Microsoft, the Financial Times and DCD report, declined an option on roughly 500 megawatts at Nscale's self-owned Ward County, Texas, site. Preferred Networks put PLaMo 3 Translate weights on Hugging Face down to a 0.8-billion-parameter model that translates on a phone with no connection.
Date: 2026-11-08
Updated: 2026-11-08 06:30
Status: LIVE
Broadcast
Bensalem Township council holds a hearing on Monday on data centre rules that keep the use about 2,000 feet from homes, require 25 acres and ban on-site power plants, even after Bucks County planners warned the buffers may exclude every site. In Muncy Township, residents facing a Yetter Road project told supervisors that a $1,000-a-day fine is no deterrent to a developer already claiming deemed approval. Ballotpedia tallied that voters favored limits in 40 of 41 local data centre contests on Nov. 3. Microsoft passed on roughly 500 megawatts at Nscale's Ward County, Texas, site, and Preferred Networks released a 0.8-billion-parameter translation model that runs on a phone. Towns are writing the rules faster than developers can file, and some useful AI work no longer needs a data centre at all.
Watch
Stories
Bensalem Township council in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, holds a public hearing on Monday, Nov. 9, on a 34-page ordinance that allows data centres only as a conditional use in the General Industrial district on at least 25 acres, roughly 2,000 feet from homes, with no on-site power generation and no private wells. County planning staff warned the 1,000-foot buffers may preclude any data centre in the district, and the township's curative-amendment protection runs out around Dec. 5.
-- A Philadelphia-suburb township is writing buffers so wide that its own county says they may exclude every site, and it must adopt them by Nov. 23 or lose the protection it bought in June.
2026-11-07 / Bensalem Weekly / energy, chip / local / #bensalem-township-brings-a-data-centre-ordinance
Residents near a proposed data centre on Yetter Road in Muncy Township, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, told supervisors at a hearing this week that the curative amendment's penalties are too weak and its enforcement too slow. Developer DANKO Holdings II/Fishlips LLC claims deemed approval because the township missed hearing deadlines, the county and residents are challenging that claim in court, and supervisors plan a vote on Dec. 9.
-- Pennsylvania's planning code caps local penalties, so a township that missed a deadline can find its only leverage is a fine residents call a quarter to a developer.
2026-11-06 / Williamsport Sun-Gazette / energy / local / #muncy-township-residents-tell-supervisors-a-1-00
Ballotpedia counted that voters approved 27 measures limiting or opposing data centre development on Nov. 3, including five full bans and twelve partial bans, and defeated 13 measures that favored the industry, among them four Wilmington, Ohio, rezonings. The lone exception was Harwood, North Dakota, where voters rejected a proposed review requirement.
-- A neutral count turns a week of local headlines into a single number: where data centres reached the ballot, voters sided against them almost every time.
2026-11-06 / Ballotpedia News / energy, chip / local / #ballotpedia-finds-voters-favored-data-centre-lim
Microsoft chose not to expand its Texas compute agreement with Nscale onto the neocloud's self-owned, behind-the-meter site in Ward County, an option the Financial Times put at closer to 500 megawatts, DCD reports. A person familiar with the matter told DCD the talks ended months ago, that Microsoft still accounts for about 40 percent of Nscale's $103bn backlog, and that Figure has since signed a $3.5bn deal for capacity at Barstow.
-- The largest buyer of rented AI capacity passed on half a gigawatt as Nscale prepares an IPO at up to $35bn, a reminder that neocloud valuations rest on options a hyperscaler may not exercise.
2026-11-05 / DCD / chip, energy / mixed / #microsoft-declines-an-option-on-about-500-megawa
Preferred Networks published PLaMo 3 Translate on Hugging Face in 0.8B, 2B, 8B and 31B sizes, each with GGUF and MLX builds and quantized variants, covering 53 languages. The company says the 0.8B model outperforms translation-specialized LLMs more than 30 times its size on Japanese-English work and showed it translating on a smartphone in airplane mode; commercial use is free below JPY 1 billion in revenue after registration.
-- Translation is one of the most common paid AI calls, and a sub-billion-parameter model that does it offline moves that work from a metered API to the device in the pocket.
2026-11-05 / Preferred Networks / efficiency / local / #preferred-networks-releases-plamo-3-translate-we
Axis
local [#########################-----] central
Score: 82
clusters still winning
-1
Bensalem brings 2,000-foot buffers and a generation ban to a hearing, Muncy residents call a $1,000-a-day fine too small, voters backed limits in 40 of 41 local contests, Microsoft passed on about 500 MW of Nscale capacity in Texas, and PFN shipped a 0.8B translator that runs on a phone. The score falls one point to 82.
Forces
| Force | Meter | Score | Pull | Note | ||
| CHIP / CAPEX |
|
96 | central | Microsoft declined an option on roughly 500 MW at Nscale's self-owned Ward County, Texas, site, according to the Financial Times and DCD, though Nscale says Microsoft still accounts for about 40 percent of a $103bn backlog and Figure has signed a $3.5bn deal for capacity in Barstow. | ||
| ENERGY |
|
96 | central | Bensalem's draft bans on-site generation and requires utility power with backup diesel capped at 100 test hours a year, while Muncy Township's curative amendment fights a developer's deemed-approval claim; local rules keep tightening the path from megawatt to building. | ||
| EFFICIENCY |
|
84 | local | Preferred Networks released PLaMo 3 Translate in 0.8B, 2B, 8B and 31B sizes with GGUF and MLX builds; the company says the 0.8B model beats translation-specialized LLMs more than 30 times its size on Japanese-English work and runs on a smartphone in airplane mode. |
Line charts (0=local 100=central 2026-10-24 to 2026-11-08)
Market overlay (2026-10-10 to 2026-11-08)
Latest: BTC $75,829 / hashrate ~999.21 EH/s / token markers avg $5.2583/M / axis 82. 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 $75,829 / hashrate ~999 EH/s. List-price gap (not a subsidy %): 123.1x list gap (blended) Mercury 3 -> Claude Fable 5.1 ($0.16/M to $20.00/M). (mempool.space + Coinbase/CoinGecko)
Marker prices (USD per 1M tokens; verified 2026-11-06; 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 V4.1 Flash | DeepSeek | CN | open ~284B total / ~13B active (MoE) |
commodity | $0.30 | $1.20 | $0.53 |
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