Nvidia Touts ‘100% Reduction in Water Use’ With New Data Center Design. Yes, evaporative cooling is becoming obsolete, being replaced by dry (chilled air) cooling, dielectric (immersion) cooling and closed-loop systems. The water-propylene glycol solution mentioned in the article is part of a closed-loop system. This answers one objection. The other is energy. Here's an interesting dialog:
He's right. Fear of nuclear energy has put us back years from where we could have been today. We can solve the technologic issues to make datacenters less onerous and it could spur innovations in energy production as well, such as SMRs.
But another obstacle needs to be removed, and that is harder to fix: the power grid in the Western states. The grid needs to be updated to handle the growing demand, and electric utilities won't bother unless they get paid a lot of money. We know PNW emergy executives have the money. But until they start adding capacity, just adding power won't be the full answer.
Midjourney's Scanner has evoked a lot of discussion. Here's a blog post from Scott Alexander. Scott may be missing the point, but since he's usually a sharp thinker I'll chalk it up to his not being a radiologist. Here's another great piece from an engineer, who "sides with the doctors" about people getting overly scanned.
But we're talking about an imaging modality that does not involve X-rays or require contrast like gadolinium which can remain in your body, even with the macrocyclic agents. So there is no downside to repeated examinations (except expense). It could be just what the doctor ordered to monitor a lesion that is deep and doesn't look ominous, but you're just not sure. Or it may be useful to monitor aortic aneurysms or pancreatic cysts. This technology is still new, so studies need to be done. The technology is bound to improve as well. I'm just impressed that you can get tomographic images with ultrasound like this. We used to call it "ultrasmoke" because what you saw were just acoustic echoes. So different now, with AI image processing.
I'm not saying that people should get scanned anytime they want for kicks. But in certain cases, this may be the ideal option to have.
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ChatGPT app store falters six months after launch. I bet most people didn't even know there was a ChatGPT app store. Did you?
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Three things to watch amid Anthropic’s latest feud with the government. No doubt China is happy that Anthropic could be throttled. But yeah, we need to see what Congress does regarding American AI supremacy. I'm definitely getting nuclear energy fear vibes, and that AI technology will get unnecessarily throttled because of similar pure fear. We've already seen how scared people can be: nuclear, COVID-19, etc. Americans frighten so easily.
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How AI ate your RAM. I was reading this story in the context of the dropping stock prices of chip manufactures, especially the ones making DRAM chips. A Korean company, SK Hynix, announced that they were moving away from High Bandwith Memory chips for datacenters and making cheaper DRAM components. But companies like Micron make DRAM chips, so why is their stock taking a hit? Makes no sense to me.
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Weather Replay is a time machine for the weather. You can replay the weather from days past. Relive storms. So much time to waste.
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Why are young people getting cancer at an earlier age? This paper suggests that it could be related to their biologic age advancing faster than their chronologic age. They define biologic age looking at Levine's PhenoAge, which is defined by rather crude blood measurements: albumin, alkaline phosphatase, creatinine, C-reactive protein, glucose, mean cell volume, erythrocyte distribution width (RDW), leukocyte count and lymphocyte ratio. Nothing like gene expression, epigenetic markers, telomeric lengths or mutation frequency. So are people aging faster? What's driving it?
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Health board apologizes for phishing staff with with bogus vacation day. Well, there's a way to fix that, isn't there?
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AI and Math: State of the Art. Nice infographic on the advances made by AI in the world of advanced math.
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Could less caffeine be the smarter performance enhancer? Scientists find a surprising sweet spot. Aiming for peak physical performance, you don't have be jittery to get the most out of caffeine. Two double espressos before a run will make you run faster.
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Google’s online dominance is showing signs of cracking in AI era. I mentioned the departure of Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer and AlphaFold's John Jumper. People are noticing that Google is not what it used to be.
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Good news: FDA approved a new sunscreen ingredient after many years. Bad news: the same regulatory culture that caused the delay remains firmly in charge. It's the federal government. Things are so political there, and we still only have an acting head (Kyle Diamantas), who is not a medical person. Congress won't approve anyone that Trump wants, who will really be effective. It's always got to be some compromise.
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Portland’s cost of living is ballooning as city tax, fee increases pile up. Residents feel the pain. Well, when the affluent flee the city, someone has to pay the salaries of the City Council, and the homeless services, and the attorney fees, and the maintenance and upkeep of their lavish offices. While citizens get less law enforcement, less use of their parks, less enjoyment of the city, and more crime, graffiti and Antifa protests (although that's died down of late).
Four electric Amazon delivery vans torched at SW Portland EV shop. What about muh climate? All that smoke and toxic fumes. Can't have nice things in Portland.
Why Oregon Drivers Continue Paying More at the Pump Even as Gas Prices Fall Across America. These articles appear over and over again, and state the same factors. Just be glad we're not southern California.
Medicare AI program made them suffer in pain. Now this is something I object to, and consider it a wrong application of AI. Apparently Medicare is paying a third-party tech company called Virtix Health to handle approvals, and they get paid based on how much money they save Medicare. So what do you think they'll do? Deny as much as they can, of course. This is yet another reason why I we should NOT have Medicare for all. The government should NOT be in the healthcare insurance business. Because they do stupid stuff like this. The federal government wasn't created for this, and it's so inefficiently run.
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