Daily Tech News 23 June 2024

• AI is exhausting the power grid in its tireless search for progressively more refined bullshit. AI companies are proposing to solve this using unicorn farts. (MSN)

  A ChatGPT-powered search, according to the International Energy Agency, consumes almost 10 times the amount of electricity as a search on Google, and is, somehow, even less helpful.

  True. That 900% increase in power consumption is pumped directly into Nvidia's bank account.

  The companies also argue advancing AI now could prove more beneficial to the environment than curbing electricity consumption.

  I'm sure they do.

  "If we work together, we can unlock AI's game-changing abilities to help create the net zero, climate resilient and nature positive works that we so urgently need," Microsoft said in a statement.

  You have to admire the artistry of that statement. I have never seen so much bullshit condensed into a single sentence in my entire life.

  The tech giants say they buy enough wind, solar or geothermal power every time a big data center comes online to cancel out its emissions. But critics see a shell game with these contracts: The companies are operating off the same power grid as everyone else, while claiming for themselves much of the finite amount of green energy. Utilities are then backfilling those purchases with fossil fuel expansions, regulatory filings show.

  No shit.

  Left unmentioned are the heavily polluting fossil fuel plants that become necessary to stabilize the power grid overall because of these purchases, making sure everyone has enough electricity.

  You could have been building nuclear power for the past thirty years, but no.
  
  There is some good news here, though. Google is backing geothermal energy, OpenAI and Bill Gates are backing new nuclear reactor designs, and Microsoft is investing in fusion.
  
  Maybe this means our clean energy future will come with ads, but that will annoy the communists twice as much, so I guess I can live with it.
  
  
  

• I've switched over to the new laptop. 40GB of RAM leaves 16GB for dead for my workload, and AMD's Zen 3 likewise the Intel 12th gen chip I had before.
  
  I'm running it in "whisper mode" which is not quite silent but in a quiet house have to stop and listen for it, and the CPU is peaking at about 55C under constant load. My previous laptop ran hotter, louder, and slower.
  
  I'm not sold on the numeric keypad, but I'm hoping to adjust.
  
  
  
• Why going cashless has turned Sweden into a high-crime nation. (Forbes)
  
  Because, you absolute ninnies, if you can access your money from anywhere at any time, so can everyone else in the world.
  
  With cash, someone has to be there to beat you up and steal your wallet. With an online scam, they can be in Laos or Lichtenstein or Lesotho. It doesn't matter and you won't know; your money will just be gone.
  
  
  
• What's in it for us, ask journalists as the new companies they have murdered make desperate deals with AI giants so the executive suite can get one final payday before it all comes tumbling down. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Nothing. You get nothing. Which is more than you deserve.
  
  
  
• What is CUDIMM? (AnandTech)
  
  There are basically two types of memory modules in computers: Unbuffered modules which are used in desktops and laptops - and soldered memory is all unbuffered, and registered memory used in servers.
  
  Unbuffered modules connect the memory chips directly to the CPU. Registered modules have extra chips between the CPU and the RAM that keep the signals synchronised.
  
  CUDIMMs are clocked unbuffered DIMMs. That is, the have one extra chip that syncronises the clock signal, but the rest of the wires are left to their own devices.
  
  This makes it easier to run memory at higher clocks, and, most importantly, is invisible to the CPU and motherboard. These DIMMs should Just Work in current systems.
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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