Will Supercapacitors Come to AI’s Rescue?
May 6th, 2025Musk had to use expensive Tesla Megapacks to handle the massive power fluctuations at xAI:
AI datacenters, especially during training, bring extreme power fluctuations due to the nature of neural networks (gradient descent).
xAI has the largest AI data centers. xAI is using Tesla Megapacks to handle millisecond power fluctuations.
Supermicro provided the racks and systems for the xAI 100,000 GPU data center. They installed 64 H100 GPUs in each rack.
Elon Musk has said that they are adding 50,000 H100s and 50,000 Nvidia H200 GPUs to double the compute power of the data center.
In an interview with Lex Friedman, at 14:53, Musk said, “If you suddenly see giant shifts, 10, 20 megawatts, several times a second, this is not what electrical systems are expecting to see.”
Via: IEEE Spectrum:
Because training is orchestrated simultaneously among many thousands of GPUs in massive data centers, and with each new generation of GPU consuming an ever-increasing amount of power, each step of the computation corresponds to a massive energy spike. Now, at least three companies are coming out with a solution to smooth out the load seen by the grid—add banks of huge capacitors, known as supercapacitors, to those data centers.
“When you have all of those GPU clusters, and they’re all linked together in the same workload, they’ll turn on and turn off at the same time. That’s a fundamental shift,” says Joshua Buzzell, vice president and data center chief architect at power equipment supplier Eaton.
These coordinated spikes can strain the power grid, and the issue is promising to get worse rather than better in the near future. “The problem that we’re trying to solve for are the language models that are probably 10 to 20x maybe 100x larger” than the ones that exist today, Buzzell says.
Related: Inside the small town where Elon Musk’s supercomputers have left residents struggling to breathe
Whatever James O’Keefe Is Releasing Tomorrow, Alex Jones Is His Dead Man’s Switch
May 6th, 2025Update:
WORLD EXCLUSIVE: 'Prince Andrew Was F*ing Underage Girls' — Tape of Royal Family Advisor Exposes Prince Andrew’s Sexual Relations with Minors and Deep Ties to Jeffrey Epstein pic.twitter.com/NS517Kob18
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) May 7, 2025
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Breaking Exclusive: James O’Keefe Set To Release The Most Dangerous Story of His Career Tomorrow
Alex Jones Gives A First Look At What To Expect Tomorrow pic.twitter.com/L2sUicuhRT
— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) May 7, 2025
Geoengineering Banned in Florida, New Enforcement Measures
May 6th, 2025Florida is not a testing ground for geoengineering. We already do not permit this type of activity, but we are going the next step to ensure it does not happen in this state. As soon as it reaches my desk, I will be signing the recently passed Senate Bill 56 to prohibit the… pic.twitter.com/x67fOPIEiF
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) May 6, 2025
‘Operation Sindoor’: India Launches Strikes on Pakistan
May 6th, 2025Via: AFP:
India fired missiles at Pakistani territory early Wednesday in a major escalation of tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals, as Islamabad vowed retaliation.
The Indian government said it had attacked nine sites, describing them as “precision strikes at terrorist camps” in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, days after it blamed Islamabad for a deadly attack on the Indian side of the contested region.
Pakistan’s army said three locations had been targeted, citing two in Pakistani-run Kashmir and one in Bahawalpur, a city in the country’s most populous province of Punjab, bordering India.
AFP correspondents in Pakistani-run Kashmir and Punjab heard several loud explosions.
“We will retaliate at the time of our choosing,” said Pakistani military spokesman Lieutenant-General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, calling the strikes a “heinous provocation.”
Beijing Stops Publishing “Hundreds Of Statistics” To Cover Up Economic Collapse
May 6th, 2025Via: ZeroHedge:
Regular China-watchers know very well that when it comes to local “data” reporting, China’s fabrication and goalseeking skills are second to none, and even the US Bureau of Labor Statistics is a rank amateur compared to Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics, which tramples over actual econometric reporting with the glee of a bull in a, well, China shop. It’s why nobody actually believes any of the propaganda released by Beijing, and instead independent, private (and very expensive) third-party services for data collection and analysis are used to measure accurately the current state of China’s economy.
So imagine how bad it must be when instead of simply making stuff up, China decides that the easier approach is simply to no longer report the fake data. The best example is surely the data on Chinese youth unemployment which hit a record 22% in the summer of 2023… at which China decided to simply stop reporting it altogether.
Israel Readies Plan to Seize All of Gaza
May 5th, 2025Donald’s coming to set you free
Bringing the light for all to see
No more tunnels, no more fear
Trump Gaza is finally here
Trump Gaza shining bright
Golden future, a brand new light
Feast and dance, the deal is done
Trump Gaza, number one
Trump Gaza shining bright
Golden future, a brand new light
Feast and dance, the deal is done
Trump Gaza, number one
Via: USA Today:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said an expanded offensive against Palestinian militant group Hamas would be “intensive” after his security cabinet approved plans that may include seizing the Gaza Strip and controlling aid.
However an Israeli defence official said the operation would not be launched before U.S. President Donald Trump concludes a visit next week to the Middle East.
…
Netanyahu said in a video message on May 5 the operation would be “intensive” and would see more Palestinians in Gaza moved “for their own safety.”
Brief Glimpse at Amazon’s Kuiper Broadband Satellites
May 5th, 2025Perplexity thinks Amazon’s launch cost is something like 3X higher than Starlink’s.
It’s going to be interesting to see how Bezos will try to compete with Starlink, which is already fully operational with millions of customers.
Via: Ars Technica:
Amazon requested ULA end the official live broadcast of the launch around five minutes into the flight, barely a quarter of the way through the Atlas V’s 18-minute climb into orbit. After reaching orbit, the Centaur upper stage released the Kuiper satellites three at a time from a cylindrical carrier module fastened to the forward end of the rocket.
All of these milestones occurred out of public view, a policy of secrecy similar to the launch of a clandestine military spy satellite. Of course, commercial companies like ULA have no obligation to broadcast their launches at all, and there’s no requirement for Amazon to show pictures of its satellites.
The video Amazon released Friday of the Kuiper deployments is fuzzy, and the finer details of the satellites are unseen. However, it’s clear enough to make out their basic design.
The Kuiper satellites are trapezoidal in shape. With their solar arrays folded up for launch, they look much like OneWeb’s satellites, and a lot different from Starlinks, which have a flatter design to stack one on top of another inside SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
“Hijacked Cicadas Play Music Like a Cyborg Loudspeaker”
May 5th, 2025Via: New Scientist:
Cicadas make noise with organs called timbals that have thick ribs joined by thin membranes that, when flexed, create a click. Doing this hundreds of times a second creates a continuous noise, with the pitch determined by the frequency of the flexes.
To take control of the timbals, the researchers implanted electrodes into seven large brown cicadas (Graptopsaltria nigrofuscata) and used signals from a computer passed through an amplifier to induce noises at precisely controlled pitches.
The team was eventually able to induce the cicadas to accurately play music, with the insects capable of reproducing tones over more than three octaves, from a musical note A at 27.5 hertz to a C at 261.6 hertz.
China Hit By Worker Protests Over Unpaid Wages, Factory Shutdowns Amid Trump Tariffs
May 5th, 2025Via: ZeroHedge:
President Donald Trump’s hard-hitting tariffs on China appear to be taking a toll, disrupting Chinese factories and sparking worker protests over unpaid wages.
As we noted late last month based on reporting by the Financial Times, factories across all of China have begun shutting down and furloughing workers “as the trade war unleashed by US President Donald Trump dries up orders for products ranging from jeans to home appliances.”
With most Chinese goods now facing US duties of at least 145%, or simply lacking the raw materials needed to process goods and sent them onward to the US, Chinese factory owners told the FT that American customers have cancelled or suspended orders, forcing them to cut production.
White House Eyes Deep Cuts In Non-Defense Spending, Boosts Military Budget
May 5th, 2025Mmm hmm. Why don’t they do the Pentagon?
Via: ZeroHedge:
The Trump administration has unveiled an early discretionary spending request ahead of its formal FY2026 budget submission. The proposal aims to cut discretionary funding by $140 billion – roughly 0.5% of GDP, and significantly shift the balance between defense and non-defense spending.
