CUPERTINO, Calif. — After stumbling out of the starting gate in Big Tech’s pivotal race to capitalize on artificial intelligence, Apple tried to regain its footing Monday during an annual developers conference that focused mostly on incremental advances and cosmetic changes in its technology.

The presummer rite, which attracted thousands of developers from nearly 60 countries to Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters, was more subdued than the feverish anticipation that surrounded the event during the previous two years.

Apple highlighted plans for more AI tools designed to simplify people’s lives and make its products even more intuitive while also providing an early glimpse at the biggest redesign of its iPhone software in a decade. In doing so, Apple executives refrained from issuing bold promises of breakthroughs that punctuated recent conferences, prompting CFRA analyst Angelo Zino to deride the event as a “dud” in a research note.

In 2023, Apple unveiled a mixed-reality headset that has been little more than a niche product, and last year WWDC trumpeted its first major foray into the AI craze with an array of new features highlighted by the promise of a smarter and more versatile version of its virtual assistant, Siri — a goal that has hasn’t been achieved yet.

“This work needed more time to reach our high-quality bar,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s top software executive, said Monday at the outset of the conference. The company didn’t provide a precise timetable for the Siri’s AI upgrade to be finished but indicated it won’t happen until next year, at the earliest.

“The silence surrounding Siri was deafening,” said Forrester Research analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee said. “No amount of text corrections or cute emojis can fill the yawning void of an intuitive, interactive AI experience that we know Siri will be capable of when ready. We just don’t know when that will happen. The end of the Siri runway is coming up fast, and Apple needs to lift off.”

The showcase unfolded amid nagging questions about whether Apple has lost some of the mystique and innovative drive that turned it into a tech trendsetter during its nearly 50-year history.

Instead of making a big splash as it did with the Vision Pro headset and its AI suite, Apple took a mostly low-key approach that emphasized its effort to spruce up the look of its software with a new design called “Liquid Glass” while also unveiling a new hub for its video games and new features like a “Workout Buddy” to help manage physical fitness.

Apple executives promised to make its software more compatible with the increasingly sophisticated computer chips that have been powering its products while also making it easier to toggle between the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

“Our product experience has become even more seamless and enjoyable,” Apple CEO Tim Cook told the crowd as the 90-minute showcase wrapped up.

IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo said Apple seemed to be largely using Monday’s conference to demonstrate the company still has a blueprint for success in AI, even if it’s going to take longer to realize the vision that was presented a year ago.

“This year’s event was not about disruptive innovation, but rather careful calibration, platform refinement and developer enablement –positioning itself for future moves rather than unveiling game-changing technologies,” Jeronimo said.

Besides redesigning its software. Apple will switch to a method that automakers have used to telegraph their latest car models by linking them to the year after they first arrive at dealerships. That means the next version of the iPhone operating system due out this autumn will be known as iOS 26 instead of iOS 19 — as it would be under the previous naming approach that has been used since the device’s 2007 debut.

The iOS 26 upgrade is expected to be released in September around the same time Apple traditionally rolls out the next iPhone models.

In an early sign that AI wasn’t going to be a focal point of this year’s conference, Apple opened the proceedings with a short video clip featuring Federighi speeding around a track in a Formula 1 race car. Although it was meant to promote the June 27 release of the Apple film, “F1” starring Brad Pitt, the segment could also be viewed as an unintentional analogy to the company’s attempt to catch up to the rest of the pack in AI technology.

While some of the new AI tricks compatible with the latest iPhones began rolling out late last year as part of free software updates, the delays in a souped-up Siri became so glaring that the chastened company stopped promoting it in its marketing campaigns earlier this year.

While Apple has been struggling to make AI that meets its standards, the gap separating it from other tech powerhouses is widening. Google keeps packing more AI into its Pixel smartphone lineup while introducing more of the technology into its search engine to dramatically change the way it works. Samsung, Apple’s biggest smartphone rival, is also leaning heavily into AI. Meanwhile, ChatGPT recently struck a deal that will bring former Apple design guru Jony Ive into the fold to work on a new device expected to compete against the iPhone.

Besides grappling with innovation challenges, Apple also faces regulatory threats that could siphon away billions of dollars in revenue that help finance its research and development. A federal judge is currently weighing whether proposed countermeasures to Google’s illegal monopoly in search should include a ban on long-running deals worth $20 billion annually to Apple while another federal judge recently banned the company from collecting commissions on in-app transactions processed outside its once-exclusive payment system.

On top of all that, Apple has been caught in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, a key manufacturing hub for the Cupertino, California, company. Cook successfully persuaded Trump to exempt the iPhone from tariffs during the president’s first administration, but he has had less success during Trump’s second term, which seems more determined to prod Apple to make its products in the U.S.

The multidimensional gauntlet facing Apple is spooking investors, causing the company’s stock price to plunge by 20% so far this year — a decline that has erased about $750 billion in shareholder wealth. After beginning the year as the most valuable company in the world, Apple now ranks third behind longtime rival Microsoft, another AI leader, and AI chipmaker Nvidia.

Apple’s shares closed down by more than 1% on Monday — an early indication the company’s latest announcements didn’t inspire investors.

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Seventeen miles west, in a dusty industrial nook of northern Denver, workers on a recent day scattered across a huge pit dug into the earth to lay the foundation for that city’s newest data center.

The two construction sites offer a glimpse into what a predicted boom in Colorado’s data center industry may look like as the industry expands exponentially nationwide to meet the needs of Americans’ increasingly online lives — and to provide the computing power demanded by artificial intelligence. The potential growth — and repeated proposals for state incentives to expedite that development — are creating concerns that the centers’ required power and cooling needs could keep Colorado from meeting its climate goals and drain already-stretched water resources.

“The speed at which the demand is increasing is scary,” said Joshua Darrin, the chief operating officer of Data Canopy, which operates 16 data centers across the country, including one in Denver.

Already, an “absolute arms race” among data center developers has prompted the state’s largest electricity provider to stop offering lower rates for the facilities, according to Xcel Energy executives. If all of the data centers’ requests to the utility for power were to come to fruition, Xcel would need to double its current generating power.

When completed, the Aurora data center will be a 160 megawatt hyperscale facility that, at max capacity, could consume as much power as 176,000 homes. The northern Denver data center, once completed in the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood, could use a maximum of 805,000 gallons of water a day for cooling — the same as 16,100 Denverites’ average daily indoor water use.

Regulators, environmental advocates and data center representatives all say Colorado faces a critical moment: Can the state balance the desire from some government leaders for the economic development brought by data centers with Colorado’s climate goals and water realities? And can it do that while protecting electric customers from bearing the costs of the burgeoning industry?

“What we’re seeing in Colorado is (that) we’re really trying to be thoughtful and get ahead of this — and make sure we’re doing this in the right way,” said Rebecca White, the director of the state’s Public Utilities Commission.

Dozens of smaller data centers already operate across the Front Range. But the two new, much larger data centers under construction will require more resources, reflecting the needs of a pivoting industry that needs more power.

“If a state doesn’t enact policies to deliberately mitigate environmental impacts, you can have really serious environmental repercussions from data centers,” said Matt Gerhart, a senior attorney for the Sierra Club focused on the clean energy transition.

A bill that would have granted state tax incentives to data centers died in the statehouse after its first committee hearing this spring, but lawmakers and those watching the industry said the topic will resurface in coming years.

“I expect that we’ll see something similar next year,” said Justin Brant, the utility program director at the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, which advocates for greater energy efficiency and clean transportation across the Southwest. “If the projections are to be believed, a lot of new data centers are coming to Colorado in the next five years, and I think it’s important to think about how we intentionally bring that new electric load to the state.”

Front Range could be hot new market

In a Centennial office park last month, rows of servers sat in a nondescript, windowless building that neighbors a volleyball training facility and a pilot school. The whirring and clicking of fans dominated the clinically bright room as the building’s cooling system worked to whisk the palpable heat away from the servers.

Nine 30-ton air conditioning units were ready to go if needed, but only two were needed for Expedient’s data center that day.

The 2-megawatt facility is typical of Denver’s current industry: a relatively small center that provides cloud services and leases out space for other companies to securely store their servers.

For decades, data centers were seen simply as infrastructure or a commodity — stable, almost boring, said Brian LaComb, the company’s area vice president.

“But we’ve seen an exponential growth in the past five years,” said LaComb, who has worked in the industry for more than 15 years.

Data center servers function as the main infrastructure for the digital world. They crunch financial data, store patients’ health information, process online shopping, register sports betting and — increasingly — make possible the heavy data demands of AI.

“Our entire digital life is housed in data centers somewhere — whether it’s TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, email, Google Maps, all of AI,” said Darrin of DataCanopy. “Everything that we do in our digital lives is being stored in data centers somewhere.”

The Denver Post identified 28 companies operating 50 data centers across 38 campuses in Colorado — all located on the Front Range. Most of those data centers are relatively small facilities whose maximum power needs amount to less than 20 megawatts.

Hyperscale facilities, like the 65-acre Aurora project, are needed to meet the computing demands of AI. A February analysis by Goldman Sachs found that the global power demands by data centers will increase 55% by 2027, fueled primarily by an increase in AI workloads. The international investment bank and finance firm estimated that AI currently uses 13% of global data center power, a share that will more than double to 27% in the next two years.

QTS — a global data center company with 40 facilities across the U.S., the United Kingdom and the Netherlands — declined an interview about its Aurora hyperscale facility near the intersection of Interstate 70 and E-470 unless The Post provided interview questions ahead of time. Company spokeswoman Karen Cohen instead sent a statement that highlighted the company’s generation of millions of dollars in tax revenue, its creation of construction jobs and its commitment to environmental stewardship.

Increasingly, data center companies are looking favorably at Colorado, according to real estate companies and industry groups. A report last year by a real estate firm found that Denver and Colorado Springs had potential to see a significant increase in the number of data centers.

“The industry is chasing cheap power; they’re looking for cheap power and land,” Darrin said.

Compared to states like Virginia and Georgia, Colorado has a relatively small market and has not yet seen the large-scale developments of other states. But it has many qualities that companies are looking for, said Dan Diorio, the senior director of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, the membership association for the industry.

“Colorado has a lot of things working for it right now: the infrastructure, the workforce, access to energy and access to land,” Diorio said.

Drastic shifts in market, power demand

Colorado’s largest utility fields requests from data centers almost weekly, Xcel Energy executives have told the Public Utilities Commission.

The data center market has shifted drastically in the last two years, and after years of relatively flat growth, the industry is the main driver of increased demand, said Amanda Rome, Xcel’s executive vice president and group president for utilities. While smaller data centers remain in the mix, the utility is hearing from more potential hyperscale customers.

Xcel estimates that new requests from data centers and manufacturers  — called large-load customers — could generate the need for 1,923 megawatts of power by 2031, according to its filings with the PUC. That’s enough electricity to power 2.1 million homes and would be a 31% increase to the current power supply.

“It’s going to require all the generation we have,” Rome said.

That estimate is a small fraction of the total 6,181 megawatts of power requested by large-load customers to come online by 2031. But not all of those requests will become reality, so Xcel used a probability formula to estimate how much demand will likely materialize, a projection the utility called conservative.

If all of the 6,181 megawatts were to come to fruition, it would nearly double the utility’s current power needs.

About 70% of new large-load customers seeking power from the utility are data centers, most of which are looking to develop in Aurora and Denver, according to Xcel documents provided to the PUC.

The utility crunched those numbers in the spring of 2024. If it were to do the analysis again, the expected increased load would be closer to the high end it calculated a year ago, Rome said.

While Xcel has previously negotiated lower electricity rates with data center customers — like QTS — it is far less likely to do so now in the face of so much demand, Rome said. The AI boom sparked an “absolute arms race” between hyperscale facilities looking to get power as quickly as possible, she said.

“It’s just not where the market is today, versus where it was two (or) five years ago,” she said.

The increase in data center interest has prompted the PUC — the state’s utilities regulator — to contemplate a new, streamlined regulatory process to evaluate data centers. The commission does not have the perfect process to review new data centers’ power needs in the way it needs to, PUC director White said. The development of data centers moves quickly, she said, while the commission’s processes can take years.

“Under current law, utilities have to deliver two things: reliable and safe power for their customers, while maintaining progress toward the climate requirements and getting to the 85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions” by 2030, White said. “We’re holding them to both those standards.”

Impacts on clean-energy goals, water supplies

Colorado lawmakers have set several goals to reduce the amount of climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions in the state. By 2050, the state aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, which means reducing emissions to a point where the remaining amount can be offset by carbon removal efforts like carbon capture and tree planting.

The state is making progress, though it is projected to fall short of achieving interim benchmark goals.

Environmental advocates worry that an influx of data centers will necessitate the generation of more power through carbon-emitting plants, or require a delay in the planned retirements of coal power plants.

Sierra Club Colorado is not opposed to data centers, but it’s “skeptical and concerned” about their potential environmental impacts, said Garrett Royer, the group’s senior government affairs and political advocate.

“We know we can’t draw a line in the sand about data centers and just say they’re bad. But this needs to be done in ways that don’t harm communities,” he said.

Data centers could help the transition toward clean energy, such as by using excess wind power at night or providing investments for new green energy sources like geothermal, White said.

But in other states, increased demand from data centers has also extended the operation of coal power plants and spurred further investment in natural gas, she said.

“We need to make sure we get this right,” White said. “I generally have a lot of optimism that we’re going to get this right. We’ll figure this out and do it in a way that makes sense for Colorado.”

In addition to power, some data centers use massive amounts of water for cooling. Environmental groups say those demands must be considered in a state where water is already scarce and climate change is expected to shrink supplies.

“The water impact is really, really important, especially for Colorado,” Royer said. “We are very familiar with droughts and water usage and know that is one of our most important and valuable resources.”

The amount of water used by a data center varies widely depending on its location, its size, its computing density and the cooling technology installed, according to the Data Center Coalition. Air cooling uses less water but more power, while liquid cooling uses less power but more water.

A report compiled for the Virginia General Assembly found that “most data centers use about the same amount of water or less as an average large office building, although a few require substantially more, and some require less than a typical household.”

Records obtained by The Post through a records request to Denver Water and Aurora Water show that data centers in Denver and Aurora use a wide range of water every year. Average annual water use among the 14 facilities ranged from 1 acre-foot to 40 acre-feet per year. An acre-foot is enough water for two families’ annual water use.

One of the larger facilities under construction will be much thirstier.

CoreSite’s data center in Denver’s Elyria-Swansea could use up to 805,000 gallons of water a day, company officials have said, though the average daily use would be less. About 80% of the water that will go through the system will be lost to evaporation. What remains can be chemically treated and reused.

The QTS hyperscale facility in Aurora, however, will use “water-free” liquid cooling, according to the company.

In a 2023 interview with DataCentre Magazine, the company’s vice president of energy and sustainability, Travis Wright, said the cooling system “uses a low-pressure, pumped, refrigerant system that uses outside air economisation to deliver world-class energy efficiency metrics, as well as using minimal water.”

Demand for water for municipal and industrial uses across the state is expected to outpace supply by 2050, according to the Colorado Water Plan. In dry years, the supply gap could range from 230,000 acre-feet to 740,000 acre-feet.

Proposed data centers must be assessed through the state’s water adequacy laws and local water policies, said Katie Weeman, spokeswoman for the Colorado Water Conservation Board. State law requires that local governments deny an application for development unless the company has demonstrated that there is enough water supply.

Any future laws or state policies about data centers must further consider their water usage, said Royer, from Sierra Club Colorado.

“We live in a state that has a really fraught relationship with water, which is a resource that is absolutely something to protect,” he said.

Are tax breaks needed?

Aside from their resource needs, Colorado officials also are eyeing the positive economic impacts of data center development.

People considering the future of Colorado’s data center industry fall into two camps: Those who believe tax incentives are necessary to lure the companies here and those who believe the companies are coming, incentives or not.

“There’s no boom without an incentive structure — we’re just not competitive on the cost side as to what other states are,” said Sen. Nick Hinrichsen, a Pueblo Democrat who sponsored this session’s tax incentive bill. “Companies have been pretty clear that right now we’re not a serious option that’s being considered because of that hurdle.”

Hinrichsen’s bill, Senate Bill 280, passed out of its first committee but did not make it further. The bill would have exempted new, large-scale data centers from state sales and use taxes for 20 years if they met certain benchmarks for investment and water and energy efficiency.

Hinrichsen said he “absolutely” thinks similar legislation will come in next year’s session.

“The success of this year’s bill is that we were able to get some serious conversations going with this,” he said. “The issue’s not going to go away.”

Environmental groups, consumer protection advocates and other lawmakers questioned the need to give up tax dollars when demand seemed high and large projects like QTS’s were already underway. For the Denver project, CoreSite initially pursued local tax breaks but eventually decided to build its 40-megawatt facility without any tax incentives after facing pushback from the City Council, based on the facility’s environmental and community impacts.

If the state were to grant tax breaks, advocacy groups said, the data center companies receiving the incentives would need to be held to sustainability standards, like mandating the use of renewable energy as well as setting water and energy efficiency standards.

“We’re not opposed to data centers but want to make sure that if we’re providing incentives to locate more data centers in Colorado, they’re tied to specific environmental safeguards and guardrails,” said Brant of the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project. “In general, these are highly profitable companies and they’re coming here regardless.”

Thirty-two states have implemented tax incentives to attract more data centers to their communities. Some of them are now reconsidering.

Since 2010, Virginia has exempted large data centers from its state sales and use tax. It’s now home to the largest data center market in the world. But in 2024, the state’s General Assembly ordered a review of the program that found most of the data centers’ positive economic impact occurred during construction.

While 1,500 people may be employed to build a center, the number of jobs winnows to the double digits once construction is complete. The centers can provide a source of local tax revenue — if local governments don’t grant huge tax breaks, the report found.

In 2025, Virginia lawmakers considered 30 bills that would change the incentive program, though most failed, according to Good Jobs First, a national policy think tank that investigates corporate tax subsidies.

Georgia lawmakers passed a bill last year to pause the state’s incentive program, but the governor vetoed it. Washington’s governor in February ordered a study of that state’s tax incentive program as well as the industry’s economic and environmental impacts.

“There’s an opportunity to construct sound policy around data centers that can be nation-leading,” Parks Barroso, Western Resource Advocates’ Colorado clean energy manager, said in an email. “This is an issue impacting so many states across the U.S. that many will look to Colorado if we properly balance the load growth demands of data centers with strong guardrails to keep us on target for a net-zero future.”

Amid the discussions of economic pros and cons and electric grid capacity, there is a larger picture and moral question being ignored, said Rachael Lehman, who followed SB-280 as the legislative affairs representative for Black Parents United Foundation, a Colorado nonprofit that advocates on a variety of issues in the state, including environmental justice.

Colorado should not forfeit taxpayers’ dollars to profitable companies looking to speed the growth of AI when the country has yet to establish guardrails around the use of the society-altering technology, she said. She worried that poor and non-white communities would bear more of the costs and fewer of the benefits of AI.

“Before we have a full-on explosion of AI in our day-to-day lives, we need to reckon with that first,” she said. “We’re literally putting the cart before the horse by building the data centers to run the AIs. There just is not enough conversation.”

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Space weather forecasters issued a rare, severe solar storm alert on Sunday after the sun let out a huge burst of energy called a coronal mass ejection last week. Another one headed toward Earth on Monday could produce more aurora sightings and with it, more social media posts of the majestic spectacle.

If you plan to head outside after sunset to look for the lights, and photograph them, there are things you can do to make sure you get the best shot. First, though, try to find a quiet, dark area away from light pollution and check the weather forecast — clouds can cover up the aurora borealis.

As for equipment, ideally, you should use a DSLR camera because its manual controls give you lots of control, and a tripod to hold it steady. But many people won’t have this sort of equipment. But if you’ve only got a smartphone, you can still take great photos of the night skies.

Here are some tips on how to shoot the Northern Lights:

A good setup

Before fiddling with your phone, take a few other steps to improve your chances of getting a good shot. First, dim your screen. A bright screen can hurt your night vision and both others nearby.

Even if you don’t have a tripod, it’s best not to hold your phone with your hands while shooting at night because there’s a good chance the picture will turn out blurry. Find something to rest your device against, like a hat, a book or even just the ground.

Of course, check the forecast because auroras are best seen in clear skies. Find a dark spot, away from city lights and look north. Also, consider going horizontal instead of vertical to capture a wider image.

Tips for the iPhone

First, turn off your phone’s flash. It’s usually marked by the lightning bolt symbol in the corner of the screen.

Next, use Night Mode, which is found on iPhone 11 and newer models. It usually turns on automatically in low light. You can tell it’s on because a circular icon with a crescent moon will appear in the top left corner of the screen.

For night shots, a longer exposure is better because there’s more time for light to hit the lens. Apple says Night Mode’s exposure length is normally determined automatically, but you can still experiment with manual controls.

To get to the controls, tap the arrow at the top of the camera screen, which will bring up a row of controls at the bottom. Tap find the exposure icon, which is the same crescent moon symbol as the Night Mode icon.

A slider will come up, which you can drag left or right to choose between Auto and Max timer settings. Max will give you the longest exposure time. Whichever setting you choose, it will be remembered for the next time.

Then, tap the shutter button to take your shot. Better yet, turn on the countdown timer. The delay gives you time to move away and reduces the chance any movement from your finger will affect the shot.

If you are going handheld, and the iPhone detects movement in the frame, it will display crosshairs. Try to keep them lined up to minimize any motion that can ruin the shot.

Tips for Android devices

There are similar night and astrophotography modes available on most Android devices.

On Pixel phones, tap the Night Sight setting at the bottom of the screen. If you’re using a tripod, the astrophotography setting will come up automatically once the phone has detected that it is still and ready, according to Google’s online guide.

Now you can press the shutter, which will trigger a five-second countdown timer before the phone starts taking a long exposure of up to four minutes.

If you don’t have a tripod, you’ll have to activate the astro mode by tapping the crescent moon icon and swiping the slider.

You’ll still get a five-second timer when you hit the shutter, which Google says “allows you to place your phone down on a steady surface facing the sky.” Then the phone will play a sound to let you know it’s done.

Newer Samsung phones can access an astrophoto mode, but users will have to download the company’s free Expert Raw camera app to get it.

Use a third-party app

If you feel like you need some outside assistance for your snapshots, tourist boards and other outfits from some Nordic countries have suggestions for you. Iceland Air, for instance, has a blog entry on the best apps for taking pictures of the Northern lights, including the Northern Lights Photo Taker, which costs 99 cents to download and “does exactly what it says,” according to the post.

Inspired by Iceland lists additional apps to try, especially if your default camera lacks manual controls. These include NightCap Camera, ProCamera, and Slow Shutter for iOS. For Android, ProCam X Lite is a good choice.

Visit Norway suggests similar camera replacement apps, but notes that you should test them before you go to see what works best for you and the type of phone you have.

AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay contributed from San Francisco.

Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip.

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“Twitter was not entitled to a credit for rent due on Dec. 1, 2022, and its nonpayment of rent for December and thereafter was a breach,” Judge Nancy Salomone wrote May 23.

In 2020, Twitter agreed to lease 64,500 square feet of the 70,000-square-foot Railyards at S’PARK office building, which was then under construction at 3401 Bluff St. The lease called for the company to stay 10 years, until 2032. It lasted a little more than one year.

Twitter stopped paying rent in late 2022, was evicted and sued its former landlord for wrongful eviction, and was sued for back rent. A five-day trial was held this past March.

The triple-net lease between Twitter and S’PARK’s owners, The John Buck Co. in Chicago, provided Twitter with a tenant improvement allowance of $5.8 million. As Salomone noted in her verdict last week, “The central dispute in this litigation is whether Twitter satisfied the lease conditions precedent to accessing that tenant improvement allowance.”

The 192-page lease for 3401 Bluff St. required Twitter to build out the property and send documentation proving that it had before it could collect the allowance. Twitter did the build-out work — at a cost of $40 million, by its own estimation — but, in the period following Elon Musk’s purchase of the company, never sent evidence of that to its landlord.

Salomone was persuaded by a video deposition of Joseph Killian, a former Twitter executive, who testified that Twitter stopped paying rent in December 2022 as a “renegotiating tactic — a tactic to save money.” By comparison, the judge found trial testimony from Nicole Hollander, a top Musk aide who led Twitter’s real estate division, “not at all credible.”

“This testimony suggests to the court that Twitter’s cessation of rent payment reflected business strategy rather than a bona fide belief in its entitlement to rent credit,” Salomone wrote.

Because Twitter could not claim a rent credit in December 2022, its refusal to pay rent was a breach of its lease, the judge determined. With that, she ordered the company, which now goes by X Corp., to pay $8.3 million, plus interest and the Buck Co.’s attorney fees.

The Buck Co. had asked for $8.5 million. Twitter thought the amount should be far less, since its former landlord has not taken serious efforts to lease the space after Twitter’s eviction, holding out for one very large tenant rather than subdividing. Salomone disagreed.

“(The Buck Co.) has wagered that the likelihood of waiting for a market recovery will ultimately be more profitable than dividing the building and seeking smaller leases at lower rates,” the judge wrote in her verdict. “The court does not find that strategy unreasonable.”

The John Buck Co. was represented by a trio of attorneys — Jose Ramirez, Shawn Eady and Sarah Perkins — from the Denver office of Holland & Hart, who declined to comment.

Twitter was represented by Jonathan Hawk and Kathryn Barragan at McDermott Will & Emery, plus Damien Zumbrennen with Zumbrennen Law, who also declined to comment.

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Under the agreement approved by the City Council, the city’s police will “assist, respond, detect, detain and investigate” when people fly drones over the secured military installation in eastern Aurora. The agreement directs Aurora police, in cooperation with the FBI, to deal with any suspicious drone activity outside Buckley’s fence line that could be part of an attempt to fly over the base.

The agreement comes nearly a week after federal lawmakers in Washington, D.C., took testimony on the topic at a hearing of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Military and Foreign Affairs.

During the hearing, it was revealed that there were 350 detections of drones at 100 American military installations last year alone.

In a statement to The Denver Post last week, an unnamed Buckley spokesperson wrote that the agreement was necessary because the base has “limited or no jurisdiction to detain operators located off the installation, or to obtain pertinent information without the assistance of civilian law enforced departments.”

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The agreement, which refers to the devices as unmanned aircraft systems, comes months after a frenzy of sightings of mystery drones along the East Coast dominated media coverage for weeks.

“UAS operation over installations and in (Department of Defense) restricted airspace has continued to grow in capability and frequency and poses a threat to the installation and DoD assets,” reads a memo accompanying Monday’s council agenda.

In a statement, Buckley said the base has “limited or no jurisdiction to detain operators located off the installation, or to obtain pertinent information without the assistance of civilian law enforced departments.”

Enter the FBI and the Aurora Police Department, which operate freely on the other side of the base’s secure fence.

“This agreement will foster an effective liaison partnership and will greatly enhance the defense for Buckley Space Force Base,” the Buckley statement says.

Base officials didn’t disclose whether there have been any drone incursions over the sprawling facility in eastern Aurora. But at a hearing of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Military and Foreign Affairs last week in Washington, D.C., the message from lawmakers and military officials was one of urgency.

U.S. Rep. William Timmons, the chair of the subcommittee, called unauthorized drone flights over U.S. military bases “one of the most complex and serious threats to our national security.”

The South Carolina Republican cited a 17-day streak of unidentified drones that breached the air space over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia in December 2023, requiring that F-22 Raptor squadrons be relocated to other bases. He also cited the arrest of a Chinese national last November after detection equipment at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California tracked a drone to a public park outside the base.

The alleged drone operator was arrested at San Francisco International Airport as he tried boarding a flight to China, federal law enforcement officials said.

Overall, Timmons said there were 350 detections of drones at 100 military installations in 2024 alone.

Vikki Migoya, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Denver field office, said her agency was given the authority to “counter unmanned aircraft systems” in 2018 with the passage of the Preventing Emerging Threats Act.

“This law allows the FBI to act to mitigate the threat that unmanned aircraft pose to the safety or security of facilities or assets,” she said. “It is standard practice for entities with overlapping jurisdictions and common concerns to have an (agreement) in place to facilitate cooperation when it comes to investigation of potential criminal behavior.”

Drones last made big news in Colorado five years ago, when a band of them appeared to be flying nighttime search patterns over northeast Colorado. The drones, estimated to have 6-foot wingspans, were seen flying over Phillips and Yuma counties in December 2019.

Then-Phillips County Sheriff Thomas Elliott said the drones were doing a “grid search.”

“They fly one square and then they fly another square,” he said at the time.

The Colorado Department of Public Safety looked into the drone activity but was unable to provide any definitive information about their origins or purpose.

At last week’s subcommittee hearing, the vice director for operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Rear Admiral Paul Spedero, testified that drone technology was outpacing counter-drone technology, meaning that relatively unsophisticated drones can circumvent counter-drone and jamming technology.

All the more reason that it’s “imperative that we plan for and evolve our defenses in proactive and innovative ways to ensure the safety and security of our personnel and essential missions,” the Buckley base statement says.

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Adams County commissioners this week approved a five-year lease with Boom. The company has pledged to invest $3 million to $5 million over the next year to improve and upgrade the site on the space port’s east side where it will do its testing.

Adams County owns the Colorado Air and Space Port, formerly known as Front Range Airport.

“We’re absolute thrilled that Boom has chosen Adams County,” Lynn Baca, who chairs Adams County’s Board of Commissioners, said Thursday. “It’s really Boom’s investment in our community that puts us at the forefront of aerospace and Adams County’s commitment to advancing next-generation transportation technologies.”

Boom made news earlier this year when its XB-1 jet became the first independently developed aircraft to break the sound barrier, tearing through the air tens of thousands of feet above California’s Mojave Desert. The demonstrator aircraft, a prelude to the company’s commercial jet — dubbed the Overture — accelerated to Mach 1.05 within about 11 minutes of taking off, according to the company and a live video of the test flight.

Late January’s test flight was another step toward reviving supersonic commercial travel, which went defunct with the grounding of the Concorde jet more than two decades ago.

Boom CEO Blake Scholl has said publicly that the Overture will debut in 2029, with tickets priced from $4,000 to $5,000 for a 3½-hour flight from New York to London. The company says its plane will have a top speed of 1.7 times the speed of sound, or about 1,300 mph, and carry between 65 and 80 passengers.

The specter of revived supersonic travel across the globe convinced American Airlines in 2022 to commit to buying 20 Overtures from Boom. The year before, United Airlines committed to purchasing 15 of the aircraft, which will built in North Carolina.

A Boom spokesperson on Thursday confirmed the lease with Adams County but said the company didn’t have anything more to say about it immediately. Jeff Kloska, executive director of the Colorado Air and Space Port, also confirmed the arrangement but declined to say more.

According to a presentation shown at the commissioners’ meeting on Tuesday, Boom plans to station 10 to 15 engineers and technicians in Adams County to perfect the Overture’s engine, dubbed Symphony — a turbofan engine with a 35,000-pound thrust.

The new deal with Boom is not unfamiliar territory for the Colorado Air and Space Port. The same space Boom is moving into was previously leased to Reaction Engines, a British aerospace company that was doing similar research and development for the last seven years.

Reaction Engines shut down late last year after running into funding problems. Adams County said it ended the lease with the company last month.

“It’s a big deal,” said Morgan Alu, director of international business development and special projects with the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation and staff lead of the Colorado Space Coalition. “That capability near a runway is great for the state.”

Alu said being so close to population centers, Boom can “access engineering talent” while still roaring its test engines at high decibels without disturbing anyone near the remote space port.

According to a new report from the Colorado Space Coalition that focuses on an 11-county region along the Front Range, the aerospace industry employs 56,910 people across 2,260 companies, with an average annual wage of $147,840.

“We’re on the cutting edge,” Baca said. “To be on the horizon in that next step in space travel is an exciting adventure to be on.”

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This svelte humanoid greeted me with what seemed to be a Scandinavian accent, and I offered to shake hands. As our palms met, it said: “I have a firm grip.”

When the home’s owner, a Norwegian engineer named Bernt Børnich, asked for some bottled water, the robot turned, walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator with one hand.

Artificial intelligence is already driving cars, writing essays and writing computer code. Now humanoids, machines built to look like humans and powered by AI, are poised to move into our homes so they can help with the daily chores. Børnich is CEO and founder of a startup called 1X. Before the end of the year, his company hopes to put his robot, Neo, into more than 100 homes in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

His startup is among the dozens of companies planning to sell humanoids for homes and businesses. Investors have poured $7.2 billion into more than 50 startups since 2015, according to PitchBook, a research firm that tracks the tech industry. The humanoid frenzy reached a new peak last year, when investments topped $1.6 billion. That did not include the billions that Elon Musk and Tesla, his electric car company, are pumping into Optimus, a humanoid they began building in 2021.

Entrepreneurs like Børnich and Musk believe that humanoids will one day do much of the physical work that is now handled by people, including household chores like wiping counters and emptying dishwashers, warehouse work like sorting packages, and factory labor like building cars on an assembly line.

Simpler robots — small robotic arms and autonomous carts, for instance — have long shared the workload at warehouses and factories. Now companies are betting that machines can tackle a wider range of tasks by mimicking the ways that people walk, bend, twist, reach, grip and generally get things done.

Because homes, offices and warehouses are already built for humans, these companies argue, humanoids are better equipped to navigate the world than any other robot.

The push toward humanoid labor has been building for years, fueled by advances in both robotic hardware and AI technologies that allow robots to rapidly learn new skills. But these humanoids are still a bit of a mirage.

Internet videos have circulated for years showing the remarkable dexterity of these machines, but they are often remotely guided by humans. And simple tasks like loading the dishwasher are anything but simple for them.

“There are many videos out there that give a false impression of these robots,” said Ken Goldberg, a robotics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “Though they look like humans, they aren’t always behaving like humans.”

Neo said “Hello” with a Scandinavian accent because it was operated by a Norwegian technician in the basement of Børnich’s home. (Ultimately, the company wants to build call centers where perhaps dozens of technicians would support robots.)

The robot walked through the dining room and kitchen on its own. But the technician spoke for Neo and remotely guided its hands via a virtual reality headset and two wireless joysticks. Robots are still learning to navigate the world on their own. And they need a lot of help doing it. At least for now.

“I saw a level of hardware that I did not think was possible.”

I first visited 1X’s offices in Silicon Valley nearly a year ago. When a robot named Eve entered the room, opening and closing the door, I could not shake the feeling that this wide-eyed robot was really a person in costume.

Eve moved on wheels, not legs. Yet it still felt human. I thought of “Sleeper,” the 1973 Woody Allen sci-fi comedy filled with robotic butlers.

The company’s engineers had already built Neo, but it hadn’t learned to walk. An early version hung on the wall of the company’s lab.

In 2022, Børnich logged on to a Zoom call with an AI researcher named Eric Jang. They had never met.

Jang, now 30, worked in a robotics lab at Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters, and Børnich, now 42, ran a startup in Norway called Halodi Robotics.

A would-be investor had asked Jang to gather some information about Halodi to see if it was worth an investment. Børnich showed off Eve. It was something he had dreamed of building since he was a teenager, inspired — like many roboticists — by science fiction (his personal favorite: the 1982 movie “Blade Runner”).

Jang was entranced by the way that Eve moved. He compared the Zoom call to a scene in the sci-fi television drama “Westworld” in which a man attends a cocktail party and is shocked to learn that everyone in the room is a robot.

“I saw a level of hardware that I did not think was possible,” Jang said.

The would-be investor did not invest in Halodi. But Jang soon convinced Børnich to join forces.

Jang was part of a Google team teaching robots new skills using mathematical systems called neural networks, which allow robots to learn from data that depicts real-world tasks. After seeing Eve, Jang told Børnich that they should apply the same technique to humanoids.

The result was a cross-Atlantic company they renamed 1X. The startup, which has grown to around 200 employees, is now backed by over $125 million in funding from investors that include Tiger Global and OpenAI.

“All of this is learned behavior.”

When I returned to the company’s lab about six months after meeting Eve, I was greeted by a walking Neo. They had taught it to walk entirely in the digital world. By simulating the physics of the real world in a video-game-like environment, they could train a digital version of their robot to stand and balance and, eventually, take steps.

After months spent training this digital robot, they transferred everything it had learned to a physical humanoid.

If I stepped into Neo’s path, it would stop and move around me. If I pushed its chest, it stayed on its feet. Sometimes, it stumbled or did not quite know what to do. But it could walk around a room much like people do.

“All of this is learned behavior,” Jang said, as Neo clicked against the floor with each step. “If we put it into any environment, it should know how to do this.”

Training a robot to do household chores, however, is an entirely different prospect.

Because the physics of loading a dishwasher or folding laundry are exceedingly complex, 1X cannot teach these tasks in the virtual world. It has to gather data inside real homes.

When I visited Børnich’s home a month later, Neo started to struggle with the refrigerator’s stainless-steel door. The robot’s Wi-Fi connection had dropped. But once the hidden technician rebooted the Wi-Fi, he seamlessly guided the robot through its small task. Neo handed me a bottled water.

I also watched Neo load a washing machine, squatting gingerly to lift clothes from a laundry basket. And as Børnich and I chatted outside the kitchen, the robot started wiping the counters. All of this was done via remote control.

Even when controlled by humans, Neo might drop a cup or struggle to find the right angle as it tries to toss an empty bottle into a garbage can under a sink. Though humanoids have improved by leaps and bounds over the past decade, they are still not as nimble as humans. Neo, for instance, cannot raise its arms above its head.

Neo can also feel a little creepy, like anything else that seems partly human and partly not. Talking to it is particularly strange, given that you are really talking to a remote technician. It’s like talking to a ventriloquist’s dummy.

“What we are selling is more of a journey than a destination.”

By guiding Neo through households chores, Børnich and his team can gather data — using cameras and other sensors installed on the robot itself — that show how these tasks are done. Then 1X engineers can use this data to expand and improve Neo’s skills.

Just as ChatGPT can learn to write term papers by analyzing text culled from the internet, a robot can learn to clean windows by pinpointing patterns in hours of digital video.

Most humanoid efforts, including Musk’s Optimus and similar projects like Apptronik and Figure AI, are designing humanoids for warehouses and factories, arguing that these tightly controlled environments will be easier for robots to navigate. But through selling humanoids into homes, 1X hopes to gather enormous amounts of data that can ultimately show these robots how to handle the chaos of daily life.

First the company must find people who will welcome an early version of a strange new technology into their homes — and pay for it.

1X has not yet set a price for these machines, which it manufactures at its own factory in Norway.

Building a humanoid like Neo costs about as much as building a small car — tens of thousands of dollars.

To reach its potential, Neo must capture video of what happens inside homes. In some cases, technicians will see what happens in real time. Fundamentally, this is a robot that learns on the job.

“What we are selling is more of a journey than a destination,” Børnich said. “It is going to be a really bumpy road, but Neo will do things that are truly useful.”

“We want you to give us your data on your terms.”

When I asked Børnich how the company would handle privacy once the humanoids were inside customers’ homes, he explained that technicians, working from remote call centers, would only take control of the robot if they received approval from the owner via a smartphone app.

He also said data would not be used to train new systems until at least 24 hours after it was gathered. That would allow 1X to delete any videos that customers did not want the company to use.

“We want you to give us your data on your terms,” Børnich said.

Using this data, Børnich hopes to produce a humanoid that can do almost any household chore. That means Neo could potentially replace workers who make their living cleaning homes.

But that is still years away — at best. And because of growing shortage of workers who handle both house cleaning and care of elders and children, organizations that represent these workers welcome the rise of new technologies that do work in the home — provided that companies like 1X build robots that work well alongside human workers.

“These tools could make some of the more strenuous, taxing and dangerous work easier and allow workers to focus on things that only human workers can offer,” said Ai-jen Poo, president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which represents the country’s house cleaners, home-care workers and nannies.

Soon, Neo began cleaning the towering windows on the side of the house. Then as I turned back to Børnich, I heard a crash on the kitchen floor. After an electrical malfunction, Neo had fallen over backward — fainting dead away.

Børnich picked the robot up as if it were a small teenager, carried it into the living room and laid it down on a chair. Even passed out, Neo looked human.

Other humanoids I’ve met can be intimidating. Neo, under 5 1/2 feet tall and 66 pounds, is not. But I still wondered if it could injure a pet — or a child — with a fall like that.

Will people let this machine into their homes? How quickly will its skills improve? Can it free people from their daily chores? These questions cannot yet be answered. But Børnich is pressing forward.

“There are a lot of people like me,” he said. “They’ve dreamed of having something like this in their home since they were a kid.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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