syndication – Page 21

In bid to loosen Nvidia’s grip on AI, AMD to buy Finnish startup for $665M

AI, AMD, Biz & IT, NVIDIA, nvidia ai, syndication / DJ Henderson / July 10, 2024

AI tech stack —

The acquisition is the largest of its kind in Europe in a decade.

Michael Acton and Tim Bradshaw, Financial Times – Jul 10, 2024 5: 19 pm UTC

AMD is to buy Finnish artificial intelligence startup Silo AI for $665 million in one of the largest such takeovers in Europe as the US chipmaker seeks to expand its AI services to compete with market leader Nvidia.

California-based AMD said Silo’s 300-member team would use its software tools to build custom large language models (LLMs), the kind of AI technology that underpins chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. The all-cash acquisition is expected to close in the second half of this year, subject to regulatory approval.

“This agreement helps us both accelerate our customer engagements and deployments while also helping us accelerate our own AI tech stack,” Vamsi Boppana, senior vice president of AMD’s artificial intelligence group, told the Financial Times.

The acquisition is the largest of a privately held AI startup in Europe since Google acquired UK-based DeepMind for around 400 million pounds in 2014, according to data from Dealroom.

The deal comes at a time when buyouts by Silicon Valley companies have come under tougher scrutiny from regulators in Brussels and the UK. Europe-based AI startups, including Mistral, DeepL, and Helsing, have raised hundreds of millions of dollars this year as investors seek out a local champion to rival US-based OpenAI and Anthropic.

Helsinki-based Silo AI, which is among the largest private AI labs in Europe, offers tailored AI models and platforms to enterprise customers. The Finnish company launched an initiative last year to build LLMs in European languages, including Swedish, Icelandic, and Danish.

AMD’s AI technology competes with that of Nvidia, which has taken the lion’s share of the high-performance chip market. Nvidia’s success has propelled its valuation past $3 trillion this year as tech companies push to build the computing infrastructure needed to power the biggest AI models. AMD started to roll out its MI300 chips late last year in a direct challenge to Nvidia’s “Hopper” line of chips.

Peter Sarlin, Silo AI co-founder and chief executive, called the acquisition the “logical next step” as the Finnish group seeks to become a “flagship” AI company.

Silo AI is committed to “open source” AI models, which are available for free and can be customized by anyone. This distinguishes it from the likes of OpenAI and Google, which favor their own proprietary or “closed” models.

The startup previously described its family of open models, called “Poro,” as an important step toward “strengthening European digital sovereignty” and democratizing access to LLMs.

The concentration of the most powerful LLMs into the hands of a few US-based Big Tech companies is meanwhile attracting attention from antitrust regulators in Washington and Brussels.

The Silo deal shows AMD seeking to scale its business quickly and drive customer engagement with its own offering. AMD views Silo, which builds custom models for clients, as a link between its “foundational” AI software and the real-world applications of the technology.

Software has become a new battleground for semiconductor companies as they try to lock in customers to their hardware and generate more predictable revenues, outside the boom-and-bust chip sales cycle.

Nvidia’s success in the AI market stems from its multibillion-dollar investment in Cuda, its proprietary software that allows chips originally designed for processing computer graphics and video games to run a wider range of applications.

Since starting to develop Cuda in 2006, Nvidia has expanded its software platform to include a range of apps and services, largely aimed at corporate customers that lack the in-house resources and skills that Big Tech companies have to build on its technology.

Nvidia now offers more than 600 “pre-trained” models, meaning they are simpler for customers to deploy. The Santa Clara, California-based group last month started rolling out a “microservices” platform, called NIM, which promises to let developers build chatbots and AI “co-pilot” services quickly.

Historically, Nvidia has offered its software free of charge to buyers of its chips, but said this year that it planned to charge for products such as NIM.

AMD is among several companies contributing to the development of an OpenAI-led rival to Cuda, called Triton, which would let AI developers switch more easily between chip providers. Meta, Microsoft, and Intel have also worked on Triton.

In bid to loosen Nvidia’s grip on AI, AMD to buy Finnish startup for $665M Read More »

The president ordered a board to probe a massive Russian cyberattack. It never did.

Biz & IT, cyberattack, microsoft, russian hacking, Security, solarwinds, syndication / DJ Henderson / July 8, 2024

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

Investigating how the world’s largest software provider handles the security of its own ubiquitous products.

After Russian intelligence launched one of the most devastating cyber espionage attacks in history against US government agencies, the Biden administration set up a new board and tasked it to figure out what happened—and tell the public.

State hackers had infiltrated SolarWinds, an American software company that serves the US government and thousands of American companies. The intruders used malicious code and a flaw in a Microsoft product to steal intelligence from the National Nuclear Security Administration, National Institutes of Health, and the Treasury Department in what Microsoft President Brad Smith called “the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen.”

The president issued an executive order establishing the Cyber Safety Review Board in May 2021 and ordered it to start work by reviewing the SolarWinds attack.

But for reasons that experts say remain unclear, that never happened.

Nor did the board probe SolarWinds for its second report.

For its third, the board investigated a separate 2023 attack, in which Chinese state hackers exploited an array of Microsoft security shortcomings to access the email inboxes of top federal officials.

A full, public accounting of what happened in the Solar Winds case would have been devastating to Microsoft. ProPublica recently revealed that Microsoft had long known about—but refused to address—a flaw used in the hack. The tech company’s failure to act reflected a corporate culture that prioritized profit over security and left the US government vulnerable, a whistleblower said.

The board was created to help address the serious threat posed to the US economy and national security by sophisticated hackers who consistently penetrate government and corporate systems, making off with reams of sensitive intelligence, corporate secrets, or personal data.

For decades, the cybersecurity community has called for a cyber equivalent of the National Transportation Safety Board, the independent agency required by law to investigate and issue public reports on the causes and lessons learned from every major aviation accident, among other incidents. The NTSB is funded by Congress and staffed by experts who work outside of the industry and other government agencies. Its public hearings and reports spur industry change and action by regulators like the Federal Aviation Administration.

So far, the Cyber Safety Review Board has charted a different path.

The board is not independent—it’s housed in the Department of Homeland Security. Rob Silvers, the board chair, is a Homeland Security undersecretary. Its vice chair is a top security executive at Google. The board does not have full-time staff, subpoena power or dedicated funding.

Silvers told ProPublica that DHS decided the board didn’t need to do its own review of SolarWinds as directed by the White House because the attack had already been “closely studied” by the public and private sectors.

“We want to focus the board on reviews where there is a lot of insight left to be gleaned, a lot of lessons learned that can be drawn out through investigation,” he said.

As a result, there has been no public examination by the government of the unaddressed security issue at Microsoft that was exploited by the Russian hackers. None of the SolarWinds reports identified or interviewed the whistleblower who exposed problems inside Microsoft.

By declining to review SolarWinds, the board failed to discover the central role that Microsoft’s weak security culture played in the attack and to spur changes that could have mitigated or prevented the 2023 Chinese hack, cybersecurity experts and elected officials told ProPublica.

“It’s possible the most recent hack could have been prevented by real oversight,” Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democratic member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement. Wyden has called for the board to review SolarWinds and for the government to improve its cybersecurity defenses.

In a statement, a spokesperson for DHS rejected the idea that a SolarWinds review could have exposed Microsoft’s failings in time to stop or mitigate the Chinese state-based attack last summer. “The two incidents were quite different in that regard, and we do not believe a review of SolarWinds would have necessarily uncovered the gaps identified in the Board’s latest report,” they said.

The board’s other members declined to comment, referred inquiries to DHS or did not respond to ProPublica.

In past statements, Microsoft did not dispute the whistleblower’s account but emphasized its commitment to security. “Protecting customers is always our highest priority,” a spokesperson previously told ProPublica. “Our security response team takes all security issues seriously and gives every case due diligence with a thorough manual assessment, as well as cross-confirming with engineering and security partners.”

The board’s failure to probe SolarWinds also underscores a question critics including Wyden have raised about the board since its inception: whether a board with federal officials making up its majority can hold government agencies responsible for their role in failing to prevent cyberattacks.

“I remain deeply concerned that a key reason why the Board never looked at SolarWinds—as the President directed it to do so—was because it would have required the board to examine and document serious negligence by the US government,” Wyden said. Among his concerns is a government cyberdefense system that failed to detect the SolarWinds attack.

Silvers said while the board did not investigate SolarWinds, it has been given a pass by the independent Government Accountability Office, which said in an April study examining the implementation of the executive order that the board had fulfilled its mandate to conduct the review.

The GAO’s determination puzzled cybersecurity experts. “Rob Silvers has been declaring by fiat for a long time that the CSRB did its job regarding SolarWinds, but simply declaring something to be so doesn’t make it true,” said Tarah Wheeler, the CEO of Red Queen Dynamics, a cybersecurity firm, who co-authored a Harvard Kennedy School report outlining how a “cyber NTSB” should operate.

Silvers said the board’s first and second reports, while not probing SolarWinds, resulted in important government changes, such as new Federal Communications Commission rules related to cell phones.

“The tangible impacts of the board’s work to date speak for itself and in bearing out the wisdom of the choices of what the board has reviewed,” he said.

The president ordered a board to probe a massive Russian cyberattack. It never did. Read More »

Alaska’s top-heavy glaciers are approaching an irreversible tipping point

Alaska, glacial melt, glaciers, ice melt, Science, syndication / Mike M. / July 7, 2024

meltdown —

As the plateau of the icefield thins, ice and snow reserves at higher altitudes are lost.

Bethan Davies, The Conversation – Jul 7, 2024 11: 07 am UTC

Enlarge / Taku Glacier is one of many that begin in the Juneau Icefield.

The melting of one of North America’s largest ice fields has accelerated and could soon reach an irreversible tipping point. That’s the conclusion of new research colleagues and I have published on the Juneau Icefield, which straddles the Alaska-Canada border near the Alaskan capital of Juneau.

In the summer of 2022, I skied across the flat, smooth, and white plateau of the icefield, accompanied by other researchers, sliding in the tracks of the person in front of me under a hot sun. From that plateau, around 40 huge, interconnected glaciers descend towards the sea, with hundreds of smaller glaciers on the mountain peaks all around.

Our work, now published in Nature Communications, has shown that Juneau is an example of a climate “feedback” in action: as temperatures are rising, less and less snow is remaining through the summer (technically: the “end-of-summer snowline” is rising). This in turn leads to ice being exposed to sunshine and higher temperatures, which means more melt, less snow, and so on.

Like many Alaskan glaciers, Juneau’s are top-heavy, with lots of ice and snow at high altitudes above the end-of-summer snowline. This previously sustained the glacier tongues lower down. But when the end-of-summer snowline does creep up to the top plateau, then suddenly a large amount of a top-heavy glacier will be newly exposed to melting.

That’s what’s happening now, each summer, and the glaciers are melting much faster than before, causing the icefield to get thinner and thinner and the plateau to get lower and lower. Once a threshold is passed, these feedbacks can accelerate melt and drive a self-perpetuating loss of snow and ice which would continue even if the world were to stop warming.

Ice is melting faster than ever

Using satellites, photos and old piles of rocks, we were able to measure the ice loss across Juneau Icefield from the end of the last “Little Ice Age” (about 250 years ago) to the present day. We saw that the glaciers began shrinking after that cold period ended in about 1770. This ice loss remained constant until about 1979, when it accelerated. It accelerated again in 2010, doubling the previous rate. Glaciers there shrank five times faster between 2015 and 2019 than from 1979 to 1990.

Our data shows that as the snow decreases and the summer melt season lengthens, the icefield is darkening. Fresh, white snow is very reflective, and much of that strong solar energy that we experienced in the summer of 2022 is reflected back into space. But the end of summer snowline is rising and is now often occurring right on the plateau of the Juneau Icefield, which means that older snow and glacier ice is being exposed to the sun. These slightly darker surfaces absorb more energy, increasing snow and ice melt.

As the plateau of the icefield thins, ice and snow reserves at higher altitudes are lost, and the surface of the plateau lowers. This will make it increasingly hard for the icefield to ever stabilise or even recover. That’s because warmer air at low elevations drives further melt, leading to an irreversible tipping point.

Longer-term data like these are critical to understand how glaciers behave, and the processes and tipping points that exist within individual glaciers. These complex processes make it difficult to predict how a glacier will behave in future.

The world’s hardest jigsaw

We used satellite records to reconstruct how big the glacier was and how it behaved, but this really limits us to the past 50 years. To go back further, we need different methods. To go back 250 years, we mapped the ridges of moraines, which are large piles of debris deposited at the glacier snout, and places where glaciers have scoured and polished the bedrock.

To check and build on our mapping, we spent two weeks on the icefield itself and two weeks in the rainforest below. We camped among the moraine ridges, suspending our food high in the air to keep it safe from bears, shouting to warn off the moose and bears as we bushwhacked through the rainforest, and battling mosquitoes thirsty for our blood.

We used aerial photographs to reconstruct the icefield in the 1940s and 1970s, in the era before readily available satellite imagery. These are high-quality photos but they were taken before global positioning systems made it easy to locate exactly where they were taken.

A number also had some minor damage in the intervening years—some Sellotape, a tear, a thumbprint. As a result, the individual images had to be stitched together to make a 3D picture of the whole icefield. It was all rather like doing the world’s hardest jigsaw puzzle.

Work like this is crucial as the world’s glaciers are melting fast—all together they are currently losing more mass than the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets, and thinning rates of these glaciers worldwide has doubled over the past two decades.

Our longer time series shows just how stark this acceleration is. Understanding how and where “feedbacks” are making glaciers melt even faster is essential to make better predictions of future change in this important region

Bethan Davies, Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography, Newcastle University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Alaska’s top-heavy glaciers are approaching an irreversible tipping point Read More »

To guard against cyberattacks in space, researchers ask “what if?”

Cyberattacks, international space station, Security, Space, syndication / Kelly Newman / July 5, 2024

Enlarge / Complex space systems like the International Space Station could be vulnerable to hackers.

If space systems such as GPS were hacked and knocked offline, much of the world would instantly be returned to the communications and navigation technologies of the 1950s. Yet space cybersecurity is largely invisible to the public at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions.

Cyberattacks on satellites have occurred since the 1980s, but the global wake-up alarm went off only a couple of years ago. An hour before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, its government operatives hacked Viasat’s satellite-Internet services to cut off communications and create confusion in Ukraine.

I study ethics and emerging technologies and serve as an adviser to the US National Space Council. My colleagues and I at California Polytechnic State University’s Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group released a US National Science Foundation-funded report on June 17, 2024, to explain the problem of cyberattacks in space and help anticipate novel and surprising scenarios.

Space and you

Most people are unaware of the crucial role that space systems play in their daily lives, never mind military conflicts. For instance, GPS uses signals from satellites. GPS-enabled precision timing is essential in financial services where every detail—such as time of payment or withdrawal—needs to be faithfully captured and coordinated. Even making a mobile phone call relies on precise coordination of time in the network.

Besides navigation for airplanes, boats, cars, and people, GPS is also important for coordinating fleets of trucks that transport goods to stock local stores every day.

Earth-observation satellites are “eyes in the skies” with a unique vantage point to help forecast the weather, monitor environmental changes, track and respond to natural disasters, boost agricultural crop yields, manage land and water use, monitor troop movements, and much more. The loss of these and other space services could be fatal to people vulnerable to natural disasters and crop failure. They could also put global economics and security at serious risk.

Enlarge / Many satellites are crucial for tracking natural and human activity on Earth.

Factors in play

In our report, we identified several factors that contribute to the increasing threat of space cyberattacks. For instance, it’s important to recognize that the world is at the start of a new space race.

By all accounts, space is becoming more congested and more contested. Both nation-states and private companies, which are underregulated and now own most of the satellites in orbit, are gearing up to compete for resources and research sites.

Because space is so remote and hard to access, if someone wanted to attack a space system, they would likely need to do it through a cyberattack. Space systems are particularly attractive targets because their hardware cannot be easily upgraded once launched, and this insecurity worsens over time. As complex systems, they can have long supply chains, and more links in the chain increase the chance of vulnerabilities. Major space projects are also challenged to keep up with best practices over the decade or more needed to build them.

And the stakes are unusually high in space. Orbital trash zips around at speeds of 6 to 9 miles per second and can easily destroy a spacecraft on impact. It can also end space programs worldwide given the hypothesized Kessler syndrome in which the Earth is eventually imprisoned in a cocoon of debris. These consequences weigh in favor of space cyberattacks over physical attacks because the debris problem is also likely to affect the attacker.

Moreover, given critical space infrastructure and services, such as GPS, conflicts in space can spark or add more fuel to a conflict on Earth, even those in cyberspace. For instance, Russia warned in 2022 that hacking one of its satellites would be taken as a declaration of war, which was a dramatic escalation from previous norms around warfare.

To guard against cyberattacks in space, researchers ask “what if?” Read More »

The dangers of sneezing—from ejected bowels to torn windpipes

health, Science, sneeze, sneezing, syndication / Shannon Garcia / July 4, 2024

Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helioopthalmic Outburst (achoo) —

The benefits of a good sneeze can sometimes come with a greater risk of injury.

Adam Taylor, The Conversation – Jul 4, 2024 11: 07 am UTC

Picture shows a woman about to sneeze holding a handkerchief in her hand.

If you were to envision the kind of accident that would cause a person’s bowels to explode out of their body, you might imagine some sort of gruesome stabbing or grisly car accident. You’d probably never imagine that something as commonplace and harmless as a sneeze would cause this kind of ghastly injury—but that’s exactly what happened to a Florida man earlier this month.

The man had recently had abdominal surgery and was suffering from wound dehiscence—where his surgical scar wasn’t healing properly. While eating breakfast, the man first sneezed, then began coughing. He noticed pain and a wet sensation on his lower abdomen—only to discover several loops of his bowel had burst through his unhealed wound.

The man was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery where his bowels were returned to his abdomen.

Sneezing is normally a protective mechanism that keeps potentially harmful things—such as dust, bacteria and viruses – out of our respiratory system. The process is controlled by the so-called “sneezing center” in the brain’s medulla (which governs autonomic functions, including breathing). It’s activated by the presence of irritants in the lining of the nose and airways, which send impulses to the center.

The response is a closing of your eyes, throat and mouth while your chest muscles contract—compressing your lungs and driving air out of your respiratory system. This forces whatever triggered the response “out” of your system at an impressive speed—up to 15.9m/s (35mph) in some cases.

But despite the benefits of a good sneeze, it can sometimes come with a greater risk of injury than many might realize.

For instance, violent sneezing can cause the lung to herniate through the intercostal muscles between the ribs—usually at a point of weakness. This is typically a result of morbid obesity, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes or smoking.

There are also cases of sneezing tearing the delicate tissues of the lungs. This happens when the higher pressure air deep in the lungs escapes into the space between the chest and the lung, causing this air to compress the lung on one or both sides of the chest.

The lungs aren’t the only thing that can tear. There are reports of people tearing the delicate lining of the brain from sneezing—leading to a subarachnoid haemorrhage (a type of stroke) which can be fatal if not diagnosed and treated promptly.

Even if you don’t tear this delicate lining, a sneeze can still affect the brain—with reports of people suffering weakness on one side of the body or visual disturbances following a sneeze.

Sneezing raises blood pressure which can cause other serious injuries to the blood vessels. There are cases of aortic dissection from sneezing, where the force of the sneeze tears the layers of the aorta (the major artery that carries oxygenated blood around the body) and causes blood to burst between the layers. If not treated, it has a 50 percent mortality rate within 48 hours of happening.

While it’s pretty common to injure your back while sneezing, this isn’t the only musculoskeletal injury that can happen. There are case reports of people fracturing the bones around their eye from sneezing. This type of fracture, called a blow-out fracture, is typically caused by blunt force trauma—often from a golf, tennis or baseball to the eye.

The small bones of the ear can fracture following a sneeze, which can cause hearing loss. Dental implants have been known to dislodge themselves into other parts of the face from a forceful sneeze.

The increased pressure caused by sneezing can cause fluid to escape from the body, particularly urine from the bladder. This is typically seen in people with weak pelvic floor muscles—usually caused by pregnancy, childbirth, obesity, menopause, and physical trauma or nerve damage.

Don’t hold it in

Given all the potential injuries a sneeze can cause, you might think it’s better to hold them in.

But even that isn’t safe to do. In 2023, a Scottish man held in a sneeze by closing his mouth and holding his nose. This resulted in him tearing his windpipe. By closing off his airways, this allowed the pressure generated by the sneeze to build up inside the respiratory system—which can sometimes be up to 20 times the pressure normally seen in the respiratory system. But this energy has to go somewhere, so is typically absorbed by the tissues.

Others have fractured bones of their face holding in sneezes, damaged their larynx (voice box), and torn the tissues in their chest that protect the lungs.

Thankfully, there is one injury that would be impossible for a sneeze to cause. Ever been told that if you sneeze with your eyes open, it’ll cause them to pop out? Thankfully, that’s just a tall tale. This is because your eyes are held in place by muscles and a nerve that anchors it in place. Not to mention that the airways in our respiratory system have no connection to your eyeballs or eye sockets.

Our body is well adapted to sneeze, so you probably don’t need to worry about suffering any injuries as many of these harms only happen in very rare circumstances. Though if you’re someone like Donna Griffiths (who has the longest recorded sneezing fit, lasting a nose-clearing 976 days) or Yi Yang (who has the loudest recorded sneeze at 176 decibels, the equivalent of a rocket taking flight), you may be at greater risk of harm.

Adam Taylor, Professor and Director of the Clinical Anatomy Learning Centre, Lancaster University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The dangers of sneezing—from ejected bowels to torn windpipes Read More »

The hunt for the most efficient heat pump in the world

heat pumps, Science, syndication / Shannon Garcia / July 3, 2024

beat the heat —

A new generation of engineers has realized they can push heat pumps to the limit.

Chris Baraniuk, WIRED.com – Jul 3, 2024 5: 31 pm UTC

Thermal imaging of two heat pumps and fan units, showing red and orange areas with elevated temperatures.

Outside a 100-year-old house on the edge of the Peak District in northern England, a heat pump’s fan blades are swiftly spinning. They’re drawing outdoor air over coils of refrigerant, harvesting warmth from that air. All air-source heat pumps do this—and they can glean heat even on cold days. But this heat pump is special. It is one of the most efficient installations of its kind in the country.

“I’m number two on there,” fizzes owner Rob Ritchie, a retired chemistry teacher, referring to the system’s position on HeatPumpMonitor.org, a kind of online leaderboard for heat pumps around the UK and beyond. “I should say it isn’t important—but it is. It’s nice being there.”

At the time of writing, real-time data suggests that for every kilowatt-hour of electricity Ritchie’s heat pump consumes, it delivers 5.5 kilowatt-hours of heat—a coefficient of performance, or COP, of 5.5. Achieving a COP of 5 or above is “absolutely incredible,” says Emma-Louise Bennett, active transition support lead at Viessmann, the company that made Ritchie’s heat pump. In the UK, average heat pump COPs tend to be between 2 and 3.

For social-media-savvy plumbers and environmentally conscious home renovators who are increasingly sharing videos of their heating systems online, heat pumps are in vogue. In the race to decarbonize and curtail the devastating effects of climate change, switching home heating systems away from fossil-fuel-burning boilers and furnaces is essential. Heat pumps will be a key weapon in that fight, says the International Energy Agency. It estimates that, globally, heat pumps could reduce CO₂ emissions by 500 million metric tons—equivalent to taking every car in Europe off the road.

A new generation of heating engineers has realized that they can push heat pumps to the limit. These installers are reaching astounding levels of efficiency by taking extra care to design low-temperature heating systems that warm rooms without using excess energy.

Heat pumps can offer multiple kilowatt-hours of heat per kilowatt-hour of electricity, thanks to physics. The refrigerant sealed inside the device evaporates readily when it is warmed even slightly, say by the outdoor air, and a compressor then pressurizes the warmed gas, which has the effect of heating it further. It only takes a little electricity to power this process, which can raise the refrigerant’s temperature by many degrees Celsius.

Since moving to his detached house near Sheffield about 10 years ago, Ritchie has installed loft insulation and solar panels, but the fabric of the building is not necessarily ideal for keeping the place toasty in an efficient way. The property has thin-cavity walls without much insulation in them, and Ritchie lives at 800 feet above sea level, meaning outdoor temperatures are generally relatively low. Thanks to his heat pump and solar panels, though, he estimates he’s now saving 2,700 pounds ($3,420) on his utility bills annually. It goes to show that heat pumps can work well in older properties in challenging locations, he says.

The system was designed by local installer Damon Blakemore, who also checks HeatPumpMonitor.org regularly to see how his work stands up against that of his competitors. Ritchie’s heat pump is not quite in pole position at present, but it is noteworthy, emphasizes Blakemore, because once a year’s worth of data has accumulated this September, it could be the first air-source device on the leaderboard to achieve a 365-day seasonal COP, or SCOP, of 5. This is an average that reveals how well a heat pump has performed over an entire year. Weather changes between summer and winter, which shift demand for heating, tend to affect overall system efficiency, among other factors.

Blakemore is one of the “SCOP-chasers,” as Bennett puts it, driven to maximize the efficiency of the systems he installs. There is a small but highly visible group of such people in the UK who follow each other on Facebook and X, drop in on each other’s podcasts, and jostle for high rankings on HeatPumpMonitor.org. Among the stakeholders in this race for efficiency is Heat Geek, an organization that has trained multiple high-performing installers—including Blakemore.

“It’s not really something we particularly anticipated,” says Glyn Hudson, cofounder of Open Energy Monitor (OEM), which runs HeatPumpMonitor.org, referring to the casual competition emerging in the heating industry. “But installers are proud of their work. They do enjoy showing off photos of their installations on social media. The pipework layout is very important to them.”

The hunt for the most efficient heat pump in the world Read More »

Google’s greenhouse gas emissions jump 48% in five years

AI, data centers, Google, greenhouse gas emissions, syndication, Tech / Kelly Newman / July 2, 2024

computationally intensive means energy intensive —

Google’s 2030 “Net zero” target looks increasingly doubtful as AI use soars.

Camilla Hodgson and Stephen Morris, Financial Times – Jul 2, 2024 5: 25 pm UTC

Cooling pipes at a Google data center in Douglas County, Georgia.

Google’s greenhouse gas emissions have surged 48 percent in the past five years due to the expansion of its data centers that underpin artificial intelligence systems, leaving its commitment to get to “net zero” by 2030 in doubt.

The Silicon Valley company’s pollution amounted to 14.3 million tonnes of carbon equivalent in 2023, a 48 percent increase from its 2019 baseline and a 13 percent rise since last year, Google said in its annual environmental report on Tuesday.

Google said the jump highlighted “the challenge of reducing emissions” at the same time as it invests in the build-out of large language models and their associated applications and infrastructure, admitting that “the future environmental impact of AI” was “complex and difficult to predict.”

Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt said the company remained committed to the 2030 target but stressed the “extremely ambitious” nature of the goal.

“We do still expect our emissions to continue to rise before dropping towards our goal,” said Brandt.

She added that Google was “working very hard” on reducing its emissions, including by signing deals for clean energy. There was also a “tremendous opportunity for climate solutions that are enabled by AI,” said Brandt.

As Big Tech giants including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have outlined plans to invest tens of billions of dollars into AI, climate experts have raised concerns about the environmental impacts of the power-intensive tools and systems.

In May, Microsoft admitted that its emissions had risen by almost a third since 2020, in large part due to the construction of data centers. However, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates last week also argued that AI would help propel climate solutions.

Meanwhile, energy generation and transmission constraints are already posing a challenge for the companies seeking to build out the new technology. Analysts at Bernstein said in June that AI would “double the rate of US electricity demand growth and total consumption could outstrip current supply in the next two years.”

In Tuesday’s report, Google said its 2023 energy-related emissions—which come primarily from data center electricity consumption—rose 37 percent year on year and overall represented a quarter of its total greenhouse gas emissions.

Google’s supply chain emissions—its largest chunk, representing 75 percent of its total emissions—also rose 8 percent. Google said they would “continue to rise in the near term” as a result in part of the build-out of the infrastructure needed to run AI systems.

Google has pledged to achieve net zero across its direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and to run on carbon-free energy during every hour of every day within each grid it operates by the same date.

However, the company warned in Tuesday’s report that the “termination” of some clean energy projects during 2023 had pushed down the amount of renewables it had access to.

Meanwhile, the company’s data center electricity consumption had “outpaced” Google’s ability to bring more clean power projects online in the US and Asia-Pacific regions.

Google’s data center electricity consumption increased 17 percent in 2023, and amounted to approximately 7-10 percent of global data center electricity consumption, the company estimated. Its data centers also consumed 17 percent more water in 2023 than during the previous year, Google said.

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Why Fisker’s bankruptcy is likely to leave its EV owners without warranty

bankruptcy, Cars, EVs, Fisker, Fisker Ocean, syndication, warranty / DJ Henderson / July 1, 2024

Getting Fisked —

Build problems and unmet need for software updates have Fisker owners worried.

Aarian Marshall, wired.com – Jul 1, 2024 1: 48 pm UTC

Enlarge / Fisker CEO Henrik Fisker introduces the all-electric compact hatchback Pear during its inaugural “Product Vision Day” in Huntington Beach, California, on August 3, 2023.

It was the last week in June, and José De Bardi hadn’t gotten much sleep. The trouble had really kicked off on June 18, about a week earlier, when the electric vehicle company Fisker announced it had filed for bankruptcy protection. Now some 6,400 Fisker owners like De Bardi wondered: What will happen to their cars in the future?

The bankruptcy “lit a fire,” De Bardi says. “We had to get organized if we had any chance of representing owners’ interests.” Within days, he and a handful of other Fisker vehicle owners had established a nonprofit organization called the Fisker Owners Association, dedicated to keeping their cars running. (Hence, the lack of sleep.) By the end of the month, 1,200 owners—representing nearly a fifth of total Fisker cars sold—had registered through the group’s website, De Bardi says.

Fisker vehicle owners’ questions are mostly practical. Fisker began shipping the Ocean, its electric SUV—priced to start at $41,000 and ranging up to $70,0000—last year. Immediately, the vehicles were found to have serious build quality shortcomings and software issues, including a less-than-responsive central touchscreen. (WIRED’s reviewer declined to rate the vehicle entirely, calling it “just not ready yet.”)

Owners reported that some of the most serious issues, including a difficult-to-use brake hold and Bluetooth connectivity problems, were ironed out through software updates. But owners sometimes complained that it was tricky to get their vehicles serviced or repaired, because there weren’t enough certified Fisker repairers and technicians. Fisker initially launched with a Tesla-like “direct to consumer” model that eschewed the traditional “middleman” dealerships often seen in the US. But in January, the company began to sign dealerships to a new Fisker network, citing ballooning costs associated with the direct model.

Ownership woes

Even now, as the carcass of Fisker gets picked over, the EVs still have niggling problems—window cracks, dysfunctional key fobs, sudden connectivity blackouts—and will unquestionably need servicing and spare parts to keep them running into the future. Without Fisker, the company, to provide that, what are owners to do?

The FOA is still in the early stages of figuring it out. A small band of volunteers have worked around the clock to define the problems owners might face down the road—legal questions about their vehicle financing; issues with the car’s app; finding parts—and start solving them. These people have full-time jobs, too. De Bardi, for example, who lives in the UK and has headed up the European owners’ efforts, is also the CTO of a telecommunications firm.

Experts say Fisker owners’ situation is looking increasingly tricky. Automotive companies have a playbook to handle bankruptcies, developed during the 2008 financial crisis, which led General Motors and Chrysler to file for Chapter 11 protection, as Fisker has. Thanks in part to support from the US government, those automakers were able to honor their vehicles’ warranties as the companies restructured.

But in legal proceedings in Delaware this month, Fisker’s situation looked more dire. Lawyers for the firm’s creditors argued that Fisker should have filed for bankruptcy late last year. And Fisker plans to sell its remaining inventory, some 4,000 vehicles, to a firm that leases electric vehicles to New York City Uber and Lyft drivers, lawyers told the court.

If the company is forced to liquidate this way, owners may not be top of mind for the court and Fisker’s creditors, says John A.E. Pottow, a professor of law who studies bankruptcy at the University of Michigan Law School. The company may simply not have enough money to honor its vehicles’ warranties. “If Fisker is bankrupt, they have no obligation to update their software,” he says. And the company’s assets—its cars, their parts, and its intellectual property—may be too piddling to attract another firm to take up the mantle of service and repair. “Bankruptcy is never good,” Pottow says. “The smaller the business, the worse the issues.”

Right now, Fisker owners should make sure they have great comprehensive insurance on their cars, says Justin Simard, an associate professor of law researching commercial law at Michigan State University College of Law. Without a functioning service and repair system, “you could get totaled out with a little fender bender,” he says. The worst-case scenario might also see Ocean insurance rates increase and the cars’ resale values plummet even further, he says.

Fisker spokesperson Matthew Debord declined to comment on issues related to vehicle repair and parts manufacture, and referred WIRED to the company’s statements related to its Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Fisker initially paused production of the Ocean in February, after warning investors it might not be able to see out the year. A month later, reported investment talks between the electric vehicle maker and Nissan collapsed, and the fate of Fisker became clearer. The automaker brought in some $273 million in revenue last year but lost $940 million and owes some $850 million to bondholders.

A handful of other electric vehicle makers, including Lordstown Motors, Arrival, and Volta Trucks, have also filed for bankruptcy amid a more-challenging-than-expected climate for electric vehicles and new vehicle development. A fleet maintenance firm agreed to provide service for Lordstown’s remaining fleet customers, while the assets of Arrival sold to another EV manufacturer, Canoo. Volta Trucks emerged from restructuring earlier this year with new ownership and says it will continue to manufacture vehicles.

Despite it all, José De Bardi, the Fisker Owners Association leader, says he wants to keep his black Fisker Ocean around for as long as he possibly can. “It’s now a fantastic car,” he says, acknowledging the EV’s initial “quirks.” Despite the challenges—and hard work—the group is feeling optimistic. “We’re feeling positive that we’re going to get some kind of good outcome,” he says.

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

Why Fisker’s bankruptcy is likely to leave its EV owners without warranty Read More »

Nature interrupted: Impact of the US-Mexico border wall on wildlife

biodiversity, Border wall, Science, syndication / Kelly Newman / June 30, 2024

water scarcity —

Scientists are working to understand how the barrier is affecting the area’s biodiversity.

Iván Carrillo, Knowable Magazine – Jun 30, 2024 11: 15 am UTC

Enlarge / This aerial picture taken on December 8, 2023, shows the US-Mexico border wall in Sasabe, Arizona.

In a vast stretch of the Sonoran Desert, between the towns of San Luis Río Colorado and Sonoyta in northern Mexico, sits a modest building of cement, galvanized sheet metal, and wood—the only stop along 125 miles of inhospitable landscape dominated by thorny ocotillo shrubs and towering saguaro cactuses up to 50 feet high. It’s a fonda—a small restaurant—called La Liebre del Desierto (The Desert Hare), and for more than 20 years, owner Elsa Ortiz Ramos has welcomed and nourished weary travelers taking a break from the adjacent highway that runs through the arid Pinacate and Grand Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve.

But the dedication and care of this petite woman go beyond her simple menu. Every two weeks, she pays out of pocket for a 5,000-gallon tank of water to distribute to a network of water troughs strategically placed in the area. By doing so, she relieves the thirst of bighorn sheep, ocelots, pronghorn, coyotes, deer, and even bats that have been deprived of access to their natural water sources.

“The crows come to the house and scream to warn us that there is no more water … it’s our alarm,” says Ortiz Ramos in her distinct northern Mexico accent. Her words sound straight from an Aesop’s fable, but they take on stark realism in this spot. Covering large parts of Arizona, California, and the Mexican states of Baja California and Sonora, the Sonoran Desert—along with the Lut Desert in Iran—was cataloged in 2023 as having the hottest surface temperature on the planet, at 80.8° Celsius (177° Fahrenheit).

Through narrow steel bollards 3.5 inches apart, I observe lush vegetation surrounding the Quitobaquito spring on the other side of the border. “This vital source supplies both humans and animals over an area of more than 1 million hectares,” Federico Godínez Leal, an agronomist from the University of Guadalajara, explains to me. But now this crucial water source is restricted to the US side due to the construction of the border wall, and I have come with him here to understand the consequences. Godínez Leal and his team have been documenting the stark difference between each side: Their poignant photographs show skeletons of wild boar, deer, and bighorn sheep lying on Mexican soil.

Between 2017 and 2021, the US government installed more than 450 miles of border barriers—steel structures between 18 and 29 feet high, spaced less than 4 inches apart—in the western end of the more than 1,900 miles of border between Mexico and the United States, stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Of these 450 miles, 81 percent were replacements of existing vehicular or pedestrian barriers—but which, due to their design, allowed some passage of animals across the border. The rest were new barriers.

Before its construction, scientists on both sides of the border had warned about the impact that the wall could have on the animals of the area, and they are now working to understand the consequences. In turn, villagers in some spots on the Mexican side of the border have organized to try to alleviate the thirst of many animals that have been left without access to water.

Nature interrupted: Impact of the US-Mexico border wall on wildlife Read More »

Inside a violent gang’s ruthless crypto-stealing home invasion spree

Biz & IT, Cryptocurrency, extortion, Security, syndication / Kelly Newman / June 29, 2024

brutal extortion —

More than a dozen men threatened, assaulted, tortured, or kidnapped 11 victims.

Andy Greenberg and Matt Giles, WIRED.com – Jun 29, 2024 10: 55 am UTC

photo illustration of Cyber thieves stealing Bitcoin on laptop screen

Cryptocurrency has always made a ripe target for theft—and not just hacking, but the old-fashioned, up-close-and-personal kind, too. Given that it can be irreversibly transferred in seconds with little more than a password, it’s perhaps no surprise that thieves have occasionally sought to steal crypto in home-invasion burglaries and even kidnappings. But rarely do those thieves leave a trail of violence in their wake as disturbing as that of one recent, ruthless, and particularly prolific gang of crypto extortionists.

The United States Justice Department earlier this week announced the conviction of Remy Ra St. Felix, a 24-year-old Florida man who led a group of men behind a violent crime spree designed to compel victims to hand over access to their cryptocurrency savings. That announcement and the criminal complaint laying out charges against St. Felix focused largely on a single theft of cryptocurrency from an elderly North Carolina couple, whose home St. Felix and one of his accomplices broke into before physically assaulting the two victims—both in their seventies—and forcing them to transfer more than $150,000 in bitcoin and ether to the thieves’ crypto wallets.

In fact, that six-figure sum appears to have been the gang’s only confirmed haul from its physical crypto thefts—although the burglars and their associates made millions in total, mostly through more traditional crypto hacking as well as stealing other assets. A deeper look into court documents from the St. Felix case, however, reveals that the relatively small profit St. Felix’s gang made from its burglaries doesn’t capture the full scope of the harm they inflicted: In total, those court filings and DOJ officials describe how more than a dozen convicted and alleged members of the crypto-focused gang broke into the homes of 11 victims, carrying out a brutal spree of armed robberies, death threats, beatings, torture sessions, and even one kidnapping in a campaign that spanned four US states.

In court documents, prosecutors say the men—working in pairs or small teams—threatened to cut toes or genitalia off of one victim, kidnapped and discussed killing another, and planned to threaten another victim’s child as leverage. Prosecutors also describe disturbing torture tactics: how the men inserted sharp objects under one victim’s fingernails and burned another with a hot iron, all in an effort to coerce their targets to hand over the devices and passwords necessary to transfer their crypto holdings.

“The victims in this case suffered a horrible, painful experience that no citizen should have to endure,” Sandra Hairston, a US attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina who prosecuted St. Felix’s case, wrote in the Justice Department’s announcement of St. Felix’s conviction. “The defendant and his coconspirators acted purely out of greed and callously terrorized those they targeted.”

The serial extortion spree is almost certainly the worst of its kind ever to be prosecuted in the US, says Jameson Lopp, the cofounder and chief security officer of Casa, a cryptocurrency-focused physical security firm, who has tracked physical attacks designed to steal cryptocurrency going back as far as 2014. “As far as I’m aware, this is the first case where it was confirmed that the same group of people went around and basically carried out home invasions on a variety of different victims,” Lopp says.

Lopp notes, nonetheless, that this kind of crime spree is more than a one-off. He has learned of other similar attempts at physical theft of cryptocurrency in just the past month that have escaped public reporting—he says the victims in those cases asked him not to share details—and suggests that in-person crypto extortion may be on the rise as thieves realize the attraction of crypto as a highly valuable and instantly transportable target for theft. “Crypto, as this highly liquid bearer asset, completely changes the incentives of doing something like a home invasion,” Lopp says, “or even kidnapping and extortion and ransom.”

Inside a violent gang’s ruthless crypto-stealing home invasion spree Read More »

Brussels explores antitrust probe into Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI

AI, antitrust, brussels, European Union, microsoft, microsoft openai, openai, Policy, syndication / Kelly Newman / June 28, 2024

still asking questions —

EU executive arm drops merger review into US tech companies’ alliance.

Javier Espinoza and Tim Bradshaw, Financial Times – Jun 28, 2024 5: 03 pm UTC

Enlarge / EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said the bloc was looking into practices that could in effect lead to a company controlling a greater share of the AI market.

Brussels is preparing for an antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s $13 billion investment into OpenAI, after the European Union decided not to proceed with a merger review into the most powerful alliance in the artificial intelligence industry.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, began to explore a review under merger control rules in January, but on Friday announced that it would not proceed due to a lack of evidence that Microsoft controls OpenAI.

However, the commission said it was now exploring the possibility of a traditional antitrust investigation into whether the tie-up between the world’s most valuable listed company and the best-funded AI start-up was harming competition in the fast-growing market.

The commission has also made inquiries about Google’s deal with Samsung to install a modified version of its Gemini AI system in the South Korean manufacturer’s smartphones, it revealed on Friday.

Margrethe Vestager, the bloc’s competition chief, said in a speech on Friday: “The key question was whether Microsoft had acquired control on a lasting basis over OpenAI. After a thorough review we concluded that such was not the case. So we are closing this chapter, but the story is not over.”

She said the EU had sent a new set of questions to understand whether “certain exclusivity clauses” in the agreement between Microsoft and OpenAI “could have a negative effect on competitors.” The move is seen as a key step toward a formal antitrust probe.

The bloc had already sent questions to Microsoft and other tech companies in March to determine whether market concentration in AI could potentially block new companies from entering the market, Vestager said.

Microsoft said: “We appreciate the European Commission’s thorough review and its conclusion that Microsoft’s investment and partnership with OpenAI does not give Microsoft control over the company.”

Brussels began examining Microsoft’s relationship with the ChatGPT maker after OpenAI’s board abruptly dismissed its chief executive Sam Altman in November 2023, only to be rehired a few days later. He briefly joined Microsoft as the head of a new AI research unit, highlighting the close relationship between the two companies.

Regulators in the US and UK are also scrutinizing the alliance. Microsoft is the biggest backer of OpenAI, although its investment of up to $13 billion, which was expanded in January 2023, does not involve acquiring conventional equity due to the startup’s unusual corporate structure. Microsoft has a minority interest in OpenAI’s commercial subsidiary, which is owned by a not-for-profit organization.

Antitrust investigations tend to last years, compared with a much shorter period for merger reviews, and they focus on conduct that could be undermining rivals. Companies that are eventually found to be breaking the law, for example by bundling products or blocking competitors from access to key technology, risk hefty fines and legal obligations to change their behavior.

Vestager said the EU was looking into practices that could in effect lead to a company controlling a greater share of the AI market. She pointed to a practice called “acqui-hires,” where a company buys another one mainly to get its talent. For example, Microsoft recently struck a deal to hire most of the top team from AI start-up Inflection, in which it had previously invested. Inflection remains an independent company, however, complicating any traditional merger investigation.

The EU’s competition chief said regulators were also looking into the way big tech companies may be preventing smaller AI models from reaching users.

“This is why we are also sending requests for information to better understand the effects of Google’s arrangement with Samsung to pre-install its small model ‘Gemini nano’ on certain Samsung devices,” said Vestager.

Jonathan Kanter, the top US antitrust enforcer, told the Financial Times earlier this month that he was also examining “monopoly choke points and the competitive landscape” in AI. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority said in December that it had “decided to investigate” the Microsoft-OpenAI deal when it invited comments from customers and rivals.

Brussels explores antitrust probe into Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI Read More »

YouTube tries convincing record labels to license music for AI song generator

AI, AI music, AI music generation, music, syndication, youtube / DJ Henderson / June 26, 2024

Jukebox zeroes —

Video site needs labels’ content to legally train AI song generators.

Anna Nicolaou and Madhumita Murgia, Financial Times – Jun 26, 2024 1: 48 pm UTC

Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty

YouTube is in talks with record labels to license their songs for artificial intelligence tools that clone popular artists’ music, hoping to win over a skeptical industry with upfront payments.

The Google-owned video site needs labels’ content to legally train AI song generators, as it prepares to launch new tools this year, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The company has recently offered lump sums of cash to the major labels—Sony, Warner, and Universal—to try to convince more artists to allow their music to be used in training AI software, according to several people briefed on the talks.

However, many artists remain fiercely opposed to AI music generation, fearing it could undermine the value of their work. Any move by a label to force their stars into such a scheme would be hugely controversial.

“The industry is wrestling with this. Technically the companies have the copyrights, but we have to think through how to play it,” said an executive at a large music company. “We don’t want to be seen as a Luddite.”

YouTube last year began testing a generative AI tool that lets people create short music clips by entering a text prompt. The product, initially named “Dream Track,” was designed to imitate the sound and lyrics of well-known singers.

But only 10 artists agreed to participate in the test phase, including Charli XCX, Troye Sivan and John Legend, and Dream Track was made available to just a small group of creators.

YouTube wants to sign up “dozens” of artists to roll out a new AI song generator this year, said two of the people.

YouTube said: “We’re not looking to expand Dream Track but are in conversations with labels about other experiments.”

Licenses or lawsuits

YouTube is seeking new deals at a time when AI companies such as OpenAI are striking licensing agreements with media groups to train large language models, the systems that power AI products such as the ChatGPT chatbot. Some of those deals are worth tens of millions of dollars to media companies, insiders say.

The deals being negotiated in music would be different. They would not be blanket licenses but rather would apply to a select group of artists, according to people briefed on the discussions.

It would be up to the labels to encourage their artists to participate in the new projects. That means the final amounts YouTube might be willing to pay the labels are at this stage undetermined.

The deals would look more like the one-off payments from social media companies such as Meta or Snap to entertainment groups for access to their music, rather than the royalty-based arrangements labels have with Spotify or Apple, these people said.

YouTube’s new AI tool, which is unlikely to carry the Dream Track brand, could form part of YouTube’s Shorts platform, which competes with TikTok. Talks continue and deal terms could still change, the people said.

YouTube’s latest move comes as the leading record companies on Monday sued two AI start-ups, Suno and Udio, which they allege are illegally using copyrighted recordings to train their AI models. A music industry group is seeking “up to $150,000 per work infringed,” according to the filings.

After facing the threat of extinction following the rise of Napster in the 2000s, music companies are trying to get ahead of disruptive technology this time around. The labels are keen to get involved with licensed products that use AI to create songs using their music copyrights—and get paid for it.

Sony Music, which did not participate in the first phase of YouTube’s AI experiment, is in negotiations with the tech group to make available some of its music to the new tools, said a person familiar with the matter. Warner and Universal, whose artists participated in the test phase, are also in talks with YouTube about expanding the product, these people said.

In April, more than 200 musicians including Billie Eilish and the estate of Frank Sinatra signed an open letter.

“Unchecked, AI will set in motion a race to the bottom that will degrade the value of our work and prevent us from being fairly compensated for it,” the letter said.

YouTube added: “We are always testing new ideas and learning from our experiments; it’s an important part of our innovation process. We will continue on this path with AI and music as we build for the future.”

YouTube tries convincing record labels to license music for AI song generator Read More »