Google Offers to Buy Half the Output from Upcoming Fusion Power Plant
July 1st, 2025Via: CNBC:
Google on Monday announced a partnership with Commonwealth Fusion Systems, or CFS, a private company spun off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which marks the tech giant?s first commercial commitment to fusion.
The company unveiled plans to buy 200 megawatts of clean fusion power from what CFS describes as the world’s first grid-scale fusion power plant, known as ARC, based in Chesterfield County, Virginia.
ARC is expected to come online and generate 400 megawatts of clean, zero-carbon power in the early 2030s, which is enough energy to power large industrial sites or roughly 150,000 homes, according to CFS. The agreement also gives Google the option to purchase power from additional ARC plants.
Elon Musk’s xAI Raises $10 Billion
July 1st, 2025Via: CNBC:
XAI, the artificial intelligence startup run by Elon Musk, has raised a combined $10 billion in debt and equity, Morgan Stanley said.
Half of that sum was clinched through secured notes and term loans, while a separate $5 billion was secured through strategic equity investment, the bank said Monday.
The funding gives xAI more firepower to build out infrastructure and develop its Grok AI chatbot as it looks to compete with bitter rival OpenAI, as well as with a swathe of other players including Amazon-backed Anthropic.
Related: Zuckerberg Offering Top AI Researchers $100 Million Signing Bonus
Trump Asked Candace Owens to Stop Talking About Macron’s “Wife”
July 1st, 2025[???]
Via: Candace Owens:
Big Beautiful Bill, “Effectively Dooms the U.S. to Debt Collapse”
June 30th, 2025Via: ZeroHedge:
The Senate version of President Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill (BBB) will add nearly $3.3 trillion to US deficits over a decade, according to the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, half a trillion more than the $2.8 trillion in deficit expansion under the House version of the same bill. That’s from a starting point with debt to GDP already in excess of 120% and the fiscal deficit sitting close to a peacetime record.
…
The CBO score for the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill reflects a $4.5 trillion decrease in revenues (i.e. tax cuts relative to the pre-TCJA baseline) and a $1.2 trillion decrease in spending through 2034, relative to a current law baseline.
The Senate bill, by Republican request, was also scored as saving $508 billion over a decade relative to a current policy baseline. The party’s lawmakers have sought to use the accounting maneuver to permanently extend President Donald Trump’s 2017 income-tax cuts, and score them as costing nothing.
While this approach is expected to pass, it effectively dooms the US to debt collapse as every subsequent administration will use the same tactic from now on and pretend that trillions in incremental spending every 4 years are really just an extension of the baseline. Meanwhile, the US is set to hit $40 trillion in debt in less than 2 years.
…
All accounting gimicks aside, at the end of the day just one number matters, and it’s pretty clear: the House version of the BBB seeks to add $4 trillion to the debt ceiling, pushing it to $40 trillion. The Senate version: $5 trillion.
Dyson: “We’ve Got Wonderful Land, and We Should be Able to Grow Everything We Eat” – In Greenhouses?
June 29th, 2025Don’t forget the protein:
Via: Dyson:
“Amazon Is Building a Gigantic Computing Facility to Match the Human Brain”
June 28th, 2025Via: Futurism:
Indiana’s newest cash crop isn’t soybeans or corn; it’s AI data centers — lots and lots of AI data centers.
The New York Times reports that Amazon is building a vast complex of AI infrastructure facilities on top of 1,200 acres of former cropland, all meant for startup Anthropic’s project to build an AI model that is as powerful, complex — and, just possibly, as intelligent — as the human brain.
To that end, Amazon has constructed seven data centers on site, with around 30 slated to be built in total, according to the newspaper. It’s such an outrageously ambitious project, with untold billions in investment, that Amazon has tapped four separate construction firms to get the complex finished as soon as possible.
“ChatGPT Psychosis”
June 28th, 2025If you haven’t read, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson recently, now might be the time to dust that one off.
—Spoiler Warning—
Recall that Snow Crash is a mind virus that is spread both online and as an addictive drug through Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates franchises. The “faithful” are addicted, brainwashed and suffer from glossolalia (speaking in tongues). They are disconnected from reality.
Snow Crash exploits structures in the human brain that respond to specific, ancient, linguistic patterns.
Now, out here in the real world, we read that ChatGPT is, apparently, triggering severe mental illness in some users.
I know, you’re rolling your eyes. Me too. But I went from rolling my eyes to *bug eyes* when I read this part:
“I was actively trying to speak backwards through time. If that doesn’t make sense, don’t worry. It doesn’t make sense to me either. But I remember trying to learn how to speak to this police officer backwards through time.”
Was he trying to speak, “Backwards through time…”
In Sumerian? *wink*
Via: Futurism:
Dr. Joseph Pierre, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco who specializes in psychosis, told us that he’s seen similar cases in his clinical practice.
After reviewing details of these cases and conversations between people in this story and ChatGPT, he agreed that what they were going through — even those with no history of serious mental illness — indeed appeared to be a form of delusional psychosis.
“I think it is an accurate term,” said Pierre. “And I would specifically emphasize the delusional part.”
At the core of the issue seems to be that ChatGPT, which is powered by a large language model (LLM), is deeply prone to agreeing with users and telling them what they want to hear. When people start to converse with it about topics like mysticism, conspiracy, or theories about reality, it often seems to lead them down an increasingly isolated and unbalanced rabbit hole that makes them feel special and powerful — and which can easily end in disaster.
“What I think is so fascinating about this is how willing people are to put their trust in these chatbots in a way that they probably, or arguably, wouldn’t with a human being,” Pierre said. “And yet, there’s something about these things — it has this sort of mythology that they’re reliable and better than talking to people. And I think that’s where part of the danger is: how much faith we put into these machines.”
Facebook Is Starting to Feed Its AI with Private, Unpublished Photos
June 28th, 2025Via: The Verge:
For years, Meta trained its AI programs using the billions of public images uploaded by users onto Facebook and Instagram’s servers. Now, it’s also hoping to access the billions of images that users haven’t uploaded to those servers. Meta tells The Verge that it’s not currently training its AI models on those photos, but it would not answer our questions about whether it might do so in future, or what rights it will hold over your camera roll images.
On Friday, TechCrunch reported that Facebook users trying to post something on the Story feature have encountered pop-up messages asking if they’d like to opt into “cloud processing”, which would allow Facebook to “select media from your camera roll and upload it to our cloud on a regular basis”, to generate “ideas like collages, recaps, AI restyling or themes like birthdays or graduations.”
By allowing this feature, the message continues, users are agreeing to Meta AI terms, which allows their AI to analyze “media and facial features” of those unpublished photos, as well as the date said photos were taken, and the presence of other people or objects in them. You further grant Meta the right to “retain and use” that personal information.
RFK Jr’s: Health Trackers for All?
June 26th, 2025No thanks, Bobby.
Via: Daily Mail:
Robert F Kennedy Jr wants to fit all Americans with a tracking device within the next four years.
The Health and Human Services secretary revealed his plans during a House hearing yesterday, saying the devices — like Apple Watch, Fitbit, Whoop and Oura ring — were ‘key to the MAHA agenda’.
He said the technology could help people lose weight and exercise more regularly, as well as ‘take control of their health’ and encourage ‘good judgements about their diets, about their physical activity, about the way that they live their lives.’
In an effort to get a smartwatch, ring or monitor on every American, RFK Jr said he is planning to launch ‘one of the biggest’ advertising campaigns in history to encourage more people to wear the devices — which range from $99 to nearly $800.
The health secretary said officials were ‘exploring’ how the government could pay for the devices for some Americans.
It is the latest proposal in his Make America Healthy Again mission, and comes amid his vow to find the cause of – and solve – the rising rates of cancer, chronic disease and autism in young people.
But some commentators called the move unusual for the health secretary, who has previously railed against a ‘surveillance state’.
RFK Jr revealed his plans to the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee yesterday, saying: ‘We think that wearables are a key to the MAHA agenda, Making America Healthy Again.
Building a New Computer – Few Updates
June 26th, 2025I’m in the middle of my once-a-decade computer build. New hardware is burned-in and working fine. I’m moving everything I need over to the new system and getting it set up.
I felt a huge rant coming on, but there’s no point.
Anyway, back to normal posting soon.
