– UK Column News – 4th December 2024
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The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. – Benjamin Franklin
Several weeks of mysterious drone swarms over the skies of one New Jersey county near the military research and manufacturing facility Picatinny Arsenal have sparked concerns among residents and prompted an FBI investigation.
“It’s kind of unsettling,” Mike Walsh, a Morris County resident who has spotted the drones on numerous occasions, told local media outlet PIX11 News.
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We wrote back in early November that Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told Meta workers that plans to build an AI data center powered by nuclear energy were scrapped after rare bees were discovered on the proposed site.
Now it looks like things could be back on track, according to new reporting from Axios, who writes that Meta is joining industry heavyweights like Amazon and Google in exploring nuclear energy as a zero-carbon solution.
Like Microsoft, Amazon and other giants, Meta is making a bold move to embrace nuclear energy as a cornerstone of its sustainability strategy.
The tech giant has issued a sweeping “request for proposals” (RFP) aimed at identifying developers capable of bringing nuclear reactors online by the early 2030s to support its energy-intensive data centers and surrounding communities.
Read moreMeta Becomes Latest Tech Giant To Embrace Nuclear Power With Open Arms
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The use of robotic dogs on modern battlefields in Eastern Europe and the Middle East has expanded rapidly. Over the past decade, we have thoroughly documented their growing presence and proliferation.
The latest quadruped robot designed for modern warfare is the Ghost Robotics V60. However, this is far from a typical robotic dog. A separate defense firm, Onyx Industries, has equipped the V60 with an autonomous maritime mobility system, enabling it to navigate rough terrain and traverse bodies of water—all while carrying a machine gun.
Read more‘Terminator’ Robot Dog Now Equipped With Amphibious Capabilities
It’s starting to feel like every single day the embrace of nuclear to power the future of data centers takes hold tighter. Just hours ago, it was Google inking a deal with Kairos Power for small modular reactors.
Today, it’s Amazon, putting on display why our “next AI trade” will generate obnoxious amounts of alpha in the coming years, as they commit to investing more than $500 million to develop small module reactors, according to CNBC.
Amazon Web Services is launching three projects from Virginia to Washington State. AWS has partnered with Dominion Energy to explore building a small modular reactor (SMR) near the North Anna nuclear station in Virginia. SMRs, which produce no carbon emissions, have smaller footprints and faster construction times than traditional reactors.
CNBC writes that Virginia hosts nearly half of the U.S. data centers, with Northern Virginia’s “Data Center Alley” in Loudoun County handling 70% of the world’s internet traffic daily.
Dominion Energy, meanwhile, supplies 3,500 megawatts to 452 data centers across Virginia, with most in Data Center Alley. Typical data centers require 30 megawatts or more, and Dominion is now receiving requests for 60 to 90 megawatts. It expects demand to grow by 85% in the next 15 years. AWS’s new SMRs are projected to add at least 300 megawatts of power to the region.
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Do you want to live in a society where you are required to have your face scanned wherever you go? If not, you may want to speak up now while you still can. As you will see below, the U.S. government is aggressively expanding the use of facial recognition technology for identification verification purposes. For now, the use of facial recognition technology will be optional. But as we have seen before, once a voluntary option is adopted by enough people our leaders have a way of making it mandatory. Of course it isn’t just our government that is pushing facial recognition technology. It is popping up throughout our society, and given enough time it would literally be everywhere.
Login.gov is billed as “a single sign-on solution for US government websites”, and now users of Login.gov will be given the option to use facial recognition technology to verify their identities…
Read moreThe US Government Is Dramatically Expanding The Use Of Facial Recognition Technology
You might want to pour yourself a couple of fingers of your favorite adult beverage, sit down, and brace yourself before reading the following article shared by T.S. (with our gratitude). It seems that data degradation (the shock! the surprise! the horror!) is occurring on the internet, and data is simply disappearing for what appears to be no good reason:
The crisis, when one digs a bit into the article, is in a certain sense rather predictable and mundane, and indeed, I myself have been a victim of some of the problems the following quotation outlines:
Following the news of the Three Mile Island restart plans, it looks like our assertion that ‘nuclear is back’ is correct.
That’s because this week the U.S. closed on a deal to resurrect another nuclear plant, Holtec’s Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, thanks to a $1.52 billion loan from the Biden administration, according to Reuters.
A senior Biden administration official stated that reopening the plant could take up to two years—longer than the company’s estimate.
The Reuters report said that the administration aims to triple U.S. nuclear power capacity as demand rises and climate concerns grow, which could include restarting decommissioned reactors like Three Mile Island, site of the nation’s worst nuclear accident. Restarting these plants is a complex and costly process that has never been done before in the U.S.
H/t reader Kevin A:
“New law for Half of Congress if half of Congress goes missing”?
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ASI Alliance founder Ben Goertzel says the alpha version of OpenCog Hyperon — the artificial general intelligence system he’s been developing for more than two decades — is already “self-aware” to a certain extent.
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“A Hyperon system is not just a chatbot. It’s architected as a sort of autonomous agent which has its own goals and its own self awareness and tries to know who it is and who you are, what it’s trying to accomplish in the given situation. So it’s very much an autonomous, self-aware agent rather than just a question-answering system.”
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