A UL 3700 compliant plug-in solar microinverter is now available in the US, a Judge approved Anthropic's record-breaking $1.5 billion settlement, and NVIDIA data center hardware is being cooled with water 'hotter than a hot tub'

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The first UL3700 compliant plug-in solar microinverter is now available in the US.
A judge approved Anthropic's record-breaking $1.5 billion settlement for its AI copyright lawsuit, and Nvidia data center hardware is being cooled with water hotter than a hot tub. It's Tuesday, July 21st, and here's a quick look at some of the news happening in the sphere of tech this morning from Engadget.
Last week, Hoymiles released its HiFlow Pro microinverter, which allows for use of solar power drawn through a typical household outlet. A few states have passed laws permitting this plug-in solar technology, and several others have proposed measures to allow it. As Electrek reported, while microinverters are not a new product category, this one from Hoymiles is notable for being the first in the US to conform to the recently enacted national safety standards. Adopted in December, UL 3700 is the inaugural North American safety standard for plug-in photovoltaic energy systems, sometimes referred to as balcony solar. One of the major issues toward adopting these small-scale solar panels is the risk that since the converters draw electricity into a socket rather than out of it, power would be drawn into the grid during outages. This would endanger any crews working to restore service, so UL 3700 standardizes the features for preventing any accidental overloads among other safety concerns. Plug-in solar is not really capable of powering a whole apartment, but it is a way of reducing reliance on the existing electric grid without needing a whole fleet of photovoltaic panels. Having a federal standard for these smaller setups expands potential consumer base for solar to renters and apartment dwellers who could not pursue full rooftop installations.
Anthropic's record-breaking $1.5 billion settlement for an AI copyright lawsuit filed by writers has been approved by a federal judge in San Francisco. The company was sued back in 2024 with the authors accusing Anthropic of using pirated copies of their work to train its clawed large language models. William Alsop, the case's original judge, ruled that Anthropic's use of the writers' work to train clawed counted as fair use. At the same time, he found that the company infringed their copyright when it stored 7 million pirated books to a central library. Alsop rejected the deal in September last year over concerns that it was shoving the terms down the throat of authors. He also said it was nowhere close to complete and left a lot of questions that needed to be addressed. Since then, Anthropic has launched an official website for the settlement, which includes a list of affected works so that authors could know for sure if they can file for a claim. The settlement covers more than 480,000 works. The US district judge who took over the case after Alsop retired has now approved the settlement terms. Authors are expected to get approximately $3,000 per affected work, while Anthropic is required to destroy the pirated copies of their books. Some of the plaintiffs, however, found the payout too low and opted out of the settlement to file separate lawsuits against Anthropic.
Well, here's a question you probably did not expect to hear today, or possibly ever.
What do AI supercomputers and hot tubs have in common? Sounds like the start of a joke, right? The truth, though, is that while a hot tub runs at around 100 to 104 degrees, Nvidia's newest AI servers push their cooling liquid even hotter, all the way up to 113 degrees. That may sound backwards, because how can running hot liquid cool down server rooms? The old approach had data centers pour tons of energy into chilling air, then pushing the cold air across every component running loud fans and chillers, just to keep chips comfortable. Now, when coolant runs hot, outdoor dry coolers can shed heat on their own without requiring chillers. Nvidia's Rubin generation of AI infrastructure is fully liquid-cooled. No fans, no cold aisles, no walking into a freezer when you're in the server room. Just liquid circulating quietly through a closed loop. This is a major update, because historically cooling has eaten up as much as 40% of a data center's electricity bill. Industry estimates indicate that raising chiller temps by just one degree cuts cooling energy costs by around 4%.