Inside huge £4.5m Essex mansion in 'prestigious' spot overlooking golf course
The eight-bedroom home in Essex is up for £4.5 million and has a pool, gym, bar and more.
Tech Giants' Indirect Operational Emissions Rose 50% Since 2020
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Indirect carbon emissions from the operations of four of the leading AI-focused tech companies rose on average by 150% from 2020-2023, due to the demands of power-hungry data centers, a United Nations report (PDF) said on Thursday. The use of artificial intelligence by Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta drove up their global indirect emissions because of the vast amounts of energy required to power data centers, the report by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the U.N. agency for digital technologies, said.
Indirect emissions include those generated by purchased electricity, steam, heating and cooling consumed by a company.
Amazon's operational carbon emissions grew the most at 182% in 2023 compared to three years before, followed by Microsoft at 155%, Meta at 145% and Alphabet at 138%, according to the report. The ITU tracked the greenhouse gas emissions of 200 leading digital companies between 2020 and 2023. [...] As investment in AI increases, carbon emissions from the top-emitting AI systems are predicted to reach up to 102.6 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, the report stated.
The data centres that are needed for AI development could also put pressure on existing energy infrastructure. "The rapid growth of artificial intelligence is driving a sharp rise in global electricity demand, with electricity use by data centers increasing four times faster than the overall rise in electricity consumption," the report found. It also highlighted that although a growing number of digital companies had set emissions targets, those ambitions had not yet fully translated into actual reductions of emissions. UPDATE: The headline has been revised to clarify that four leading AI-focused tech companies saw their operational emissions rise to 150% of their 2020 levels by 2023 -- a 50% increase, not a 150% one.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Tech Giants' Indirect Emissions Rose 150% In Three Years
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Indirect carbon emissions from the operations of four of the leading AI-focused tech companies rose on average by 150% from 2020-2023, due to the demands of power-hungry data centers, a United Nations report (PDF) said on Thursday. The use of artificial intelligence by Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta drove up their global indirect emissions because of the vast amounts of energy required to power data centers, the report by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the U.N. agency for digital technologies, said.
Indirect emissions include those generated by purchased electricity, steam, heating and cooling consumed by a company.
Amazon's operational carbon emissions grew the most at 182% in 2023 compared to three years before, followed by Microsoft at 155%, Meta at 145% and Alphabet at 138%, according to the report. The ITU tracked the greenhouse gas emissions of 200 leading digital companies between 2020 and 2023. [...] As investment in AI increases, carbon emissions from the top-emitting AI systems are predicted to reach up to 102.6 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, the report stated.
The data centres that are needed for AI development could also put pressure on existing energy infrastructure. "The rapid growth of artificial intelligence is driving a sharp rise in global electricity demand, with electricity use by data centers increasing four times faster than the overall rise in electricity consumption," the report found. It also highlighted that although a growing number of digital companies had set emissions targets, those ambitions had not yet fully translated into actual reductions of emissions.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
How Blake's team won the first blow against Justin Baldoni... revealed by KATIE HIND
It was the girl's dinner in New York's Meatpacking district that got Tinseltown talking...
Mozilla frets about Google's push to build AI into Chrome
AI could bring a new round of browser wars
Mozilla is concerned that Google's efforts to build Gemini into its Chrome browser will make it even more difficult for rivals to compete with the search and ads giant.…
FreeBSD 14.3 Released
Michael Larabel of Phoronix highlights the key updates in today's stable release of FreeBSD 14.3: FreeBSD 14.3 has back-ported a number of improvements from FreeBSD 15 back to the FreeBSD 14 series. Plus a number of routine package updates and other fixes. Some of the FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE highlights include:
- Updating the ZFS support against OpenZFS 2.2.7.
- Merging of the Realtek RTW88 and RTW89 WiFi drivers based on the Linux 6.14 kernel code.
- The LinuxKPI code has been improved to support crypto offload as well as the 802.11n and 802.11ac standards.
- The Intel IX Ethernet driver has added support for the x550 1000BAS-BX SFP modules.
- Thor2 PCI IDs added to the Broadcom NetXtreme "BNXT" driver along with support for 400G speed modules.
- XZ 5.8.1, OpenSSH 9.9p2, OpenSSL 3.0.16, and many other package updates.
- Syscons as the legacy system console driver is now considered deprecated. Syscons is not compatible with UEFI, lacks UTF-8 support, and is Giant-locked. You can download and learn more about FreeBSD 14.3 via FreeBSD.org.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Massive power cut hits British holiday hotspot with 'entire Spanish island left without electricity'
Spain's national grid has confirmed that power had been fully restored to the Canary Islands hotspot within three hours, after the blackout affected some 82,000 people.
Toddler, two, 'killed by his grandparents' had bleed on the brain caused by 'repeated assaults' and was 'probably going to die', court hears
Dr Jayaratnam Jayamohan said Ethan Ives-Griffiths had been 'desperately ill' when he was rushed to Alder Hey Children's Hospital, Liverpool, on August 14, 2021.
I go to Appleby Horse Fair every year and this is what it's really like and the truth behind claims of animal abuse and antisocial behaviour
Lara Houlden, 29, loves the gathering of gypsies and travellers so much that she travelled from Lincoln to Cumbria for the annual celebration.
Love Island viewers react to VERY awkward moment Shakira discusses her choice of boy with Maya Jama in recoupling: 'Why is she acting like they are friends?!'
Love Island viewers were quick to react to the very awkward moment that Shakira Khan discussed her choice of boy with Maya Jama during Tuesday night's dramatic recoupling.
British woman facing death penalty in Bali for 'smuggling cocaine in Angel Delight packets' tells court 'I was framed'
Lisa Stocker, 39, told Denpasar central court that she was stitched up when she entered the island with £300,000 worth of cocaine disguised as the powdered dessert mix.
Ryan Libbey reveals Louise Thompson could only spend five minutes a day with newborn Leo while on 'terrifying' suicide watch after 'mentally checking out'
Louise, 35, nearly died when she welcomed Leo-Hunter in 2021 after a emergency caesarean in which she lost '12 and a half litres of blood.'
QUENTIN LETTS: Ed was in his element - but would you even trust him with a milk float?
Ed Miliband was in his element, spending our money. Energy Secretary Miliband had come to the Commons to announce a £14.2billion binge on nuclear energy.
ALEX BRUMMER: If this is a fixed economy, I'd hate to see a broken one
Nearly half a century has passed since Margaret Thatcher skewered the incumbent PM James Callaghan at the 1979 election with her famous ' Labour Isn't Working' poster, which showed...
'Bitcoin Baby' Soon To Be a Teenager
"Twelve years ago, a baby was born after someone used bitcoin to pay for a frozen egg IVF," writes longtime Slashdot reader bobdevine. "I, for one, welcome..."
Blockworks tells the story of how it all came to be: In February 2012 -- almost two years after Laszlo's pizzas -- a fertility doctor named C. Terence Lee set about a personal and professional quest to onboard his patients to Bitcoin by accepting BTC for his services. He started with a "Bitcoin accepted here" sign in his window, and then a Reddit post.
"Jumping in to do my part to support the BTC economy. This may be a historic first?" Lee wrote in a post on the BitMarket subreddit, titled: "[WTS][USA] Male Fertility Evaluation." Lee was offering a 15-minute consultation to discuss fertility questions and a sperm analysis in exchange for 15 BTC, valued at $70 or so at the time. "Actual value over $100," he wrote. Within three months, he'd found a Bitcoin customer.
"The patient turned out not... so much having a burning desire to know about his fertility, but he was a Bitcoin enthusiast, and he liked the idea of participating in history, in this ritual ceremony of what could be perhaps the world's first Bitcoin medical transaction," Lee explained at a 2013 conference in San Jose. "So we chatted about Bitcoin. He taught me a lot about mining. That's how he acquired bitcoin. And we did a sperm test, and it turned out he had really good sperm ... after it was done he sent me 15 bitcoins... "
Lee changed up his strategy to only quiz his most trusted patients. There was one couple, who, on their fourth attempt at IVF, agreed to pay in bitcoin for a 50% discount, with Lee walking them through exchanging U.S. dollars for bitcoin via CryptoXChange, a now-defunct exchange operating out of Australia. The sperm stuck, leading CNN to reveal, on this day in 2013, "the world's first Bitcoin baby" -- a baby bought entirely with bitcoin. Thirty bitcoin to be exact, an amount then worth $500, or $3 million today.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The £39 Next dress in 5 prints perfect for holidays that makes shoppers 'feel summery'
'Lovely dress, great price too'
My mother killed my dad by hitting him on the head with a hammer - here's why I campaigned for her to be freed
When Mum drove me to work that Sunday morning, I thought she seemed subdued - but then she hadn't been her usual chatty self for more than a year, ever since she and Dad split up...
PROF ROBERT TOMBS: British tolerance is being stretched to its limits. Mass immigration is destabilising our country
Last weekend, my cousin's lovely daughter, not long out of medical school, married her sweetheart - a handsome young doctor from an Indian family.
Why stopping HRT has changed my life in the most radical way possible. I know it runs counter to all medical advice... but if you're taking it, hear me out: SARAH VINE
All my life I cared what people thought of me. As a teenager I cared that my feet were too big to be a ballerina and that I wasn't blonde like all the pretty girls.
Girl, nine, and her father, 38, who died in house fire are named by police
Mother Asifa was not at the family home in Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire, when the blaze took hold on Sunday morning as she was on a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia.