Birmingham City Council, the largest local authority in Europe, has declared itself in financial distress after troubled Oracle project costs ballooned from $25 million to around $125.5 million. The Register reports: Contributing to the publication of a legal Section 114 Notice, which says the $4.3 billion revenue organization is unable to balance the books, is a bill of up to $954 million to settle equal pay claims. In a statement today, councillors John Cotton and Sharon Thompson, leader and deputy leader respectively, said the authority was also hit by financial stress owing to issues with the implementation of its Oracle IT system. The council has made a request to the Local Government Association for additional strategic support, the statement said.

In May, Birmingham City Council said it was set to pay up to $125.5 million for its Oracle ERP system -- potentially a fourfold increase on initial estimated expenses -- in a project suffering from delays, cost over-runs, and a lack of controls. After grappling with the project to replace SAP for core HR and finance functions since 2018, the council reviewed the plan in 2019, 2020, and again in 2021, when the total implementation cost for the project almost doubled to $48.5 million. The project, dubbed Financial and People, was "crucial to an organisation of Birmingham City Council's size," a spokesperson said at the time. Cotton said the system had a problem with how it was "tracking our financial transactions and HR transactions issues as well. That's got to be fixed," he said.

Earlier this year, one insider told The Register that Oracle Fusion, the cloud-based ERP system the council is moving to, "is not a product that is suitable for local authorities, because it's very much geared towards a manufacturing/trading organization." They said the previous SAP system had been heavily customized to meet the council's needs and it was struggling to recreate these functions in Oracle.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: At its Cloud Next conference today, Google revealed a handful of new AI-powered features coming soon to Meet. One of the biggest new AI-enabled features is the ability for Google's Duet AI to take notes in real time: click "take notes for me," and the app will capture a summary and action items as the meeting is going on. If you're late to a meeting, Google will be able to show you a mid-meeting summary so that you can catch up on what happened. During the call, you'll be able to talk privately with a Google chatbot to go over details you might have missed. And when the meeting is over, you can save the summary to Docs and come back to it after the fact; it can even include video clips of important moments. These AI-enabled features could be a way to free up people from being dedicated meeting-note scribes and make it easier to catch up both during and after calls.

Another new Meet feature lets Duet "attend" a meeting on your behalf. On a meeting invite, you can click an "attend for me" button, and Google can auto-generate some text about what you might want to discuss. Those notes will be viewable to attendees during the meeting so that they can discuss them. This could be another handy time-saving feature. If you're double-booked or suddenly have to bail on a meeting because of something going on in your life, I can see the value in sharing some notes about what you'd planned to bring up. But I worry that people might use this feature to dodge meetings they really should attend and add an unnecessary burden to the people who actually show. (If everyone in the meeting sends their AI assistant, I'm told, Meet will figure it out and quickly end the call.) This feature is a little ways out, arriving sometime next year to Labs.

Microsoft has patented an AI-powered backpack design featuring a plethora of sensors that may include cameras, microphones, GPS, and a compass. Tom's Hardware reports: Additionally, Microsoft thinks it may be useful to add in LEDs and speakers, as well as a haptic actuator, into the straps. Some real-time processing is deemed necessary to the smart wearable. Thus, various recognition modules are proposed to provide image, text, speech, facial, and cognitive recognition. As well as real-time monitors feeding data to the built-in processing power for AI smarts, the system housed in the backpack also will boast a recording device (using on-board storage), wireless connectivity, battery power / charging and more.

With all the above sensing and processing on your person, in the backpack, it is envisioned that wearers will benefit from AI enhanced object identification and analysis, nearby device interaction, and be able to gain contextual insights. A flow chart shows how the backpack and its data feed might work alongside personal computers and cloud servers. Other illustrations show the wandering backpack wearer navigating a ski resort, and checking out supermarket prices, as well as considering booking concert tickets. Sometimes the user may interact with the backpack's on-board AI via speech, e.g. "Hey Backpack, add this poster to my calendar." Alternatively some AI actions or contextual tasks may be instigated by interacting with sensors on the straps. You can view the patent application here.

Microsoft is discontinuing Visual Studio for Mac, committing to security updates and platform update compatibility for the next 12 months. 9to5Mac reports: "With today's announcement, we're redirecting our resources and focus to enhance Visual Studio and VS Code, optimizing them for cross-platform development," the company said in the announcement. "No new framework, runtime, or language support will be added to Visual Studio for Mac." The company added: "We will also continue to provide runtime and workload updates so you can continue building and shipping applications built on .NET 6, .NET 7, and the Mono frameworks. While not officially supported, we've also enabled rudimentary support for .NET 8 in Visual Studio for Mac for building and debugging applications."

Once the wheels fall off Visual Studio for Mac, Microsoft recommends accessing its IDE through Windows in a machine virtual on the Mac or in the cloud. Otherwise, Microsoft points to cross-platform compatible developer technology that will run on macOS: "The recently announced C# Dev Kit, .NET MAUI, and Unity Extensions for VS Code are available in preview and are intended to augment VS Code's capabilities for .NET and C# developers. These extensions operate natively across all supported platforms, including macOS, and the experience using these will continue to be improved as they move from preview to GA and beyond."

ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols shares what's new in the release of Linux 6.5: The biggest news for servers -- and cloud Linux users -- is AMD Ryzen processors' P-State support. This support should mean better performance and power use across CPU cores. Intel Alder Lake CPUs have also received improved load balancing in a related development. RISC-V architecture fans will be pleased to find Linux now has Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) support. ACPI is used in Linux and other operating systems for power management. It's vital for laptops and other battery-powered systems.

For better security, people using virtual machines or sandboxes based on Usermode Linux for testing, or running multiple versions of Linux at once, now have Landlock support. Landock is a Linux Security Module that enables applications to sandbox themselves by selecting access rights to directories. It's designed to be used by unprivileged processes while following the system security policy. To make talking with the rest of the world easier, Linux 6.5 now supports USB 4v2. This new USB-C standard will support up to an eye-watering 120Gbps. And while we're still getting used to Wi-Fi 6E, the Wi-Fi Alliance is already working on bringing us Wi-Fi 7. When Wi-Fi 7 arrives, with its theoretical maximum speed of 46Gbps, Linux will be ready. As usual, the new Linux has many more built-in audio and graphics drivers. The Bcachefs filesystem didn't make it into Linux 6.5, notes Vaughan-Nichols. "While the Bcachefs filesystem looks good, there's been a lot of developers fighting about the development process. These personal arguments have led Torvalds to decide not to incorporate Bcachefs into Linux 6.5."

Linus Torvalds announced Linux 6.5's delivery in a brief post on August 27.

Google DeepMind has launched a new watermarking tool that labels whether images have been generated with AI. From a report: The tool, called SynthID, will initially be available only to users of Google's AI image generator Imagen, which is hosted on Google Cloud's machine learning platform Vertex. Users will be able to generate images using Imagen and then choose whether to add a watermark or not. The hope is that it could help people tell when AI-generated content is being passed off as real, or help protect copyright. [...] Traditionally images have been watermarked by adding a visible overlay onto them, or adding information into their metadata. But this method is "brittle" and the watermark can be lost when images are cropped, resized, or edited, says Pushmeet Kohli, vice president of research at Google DeepMind.

SynthID is created using two neural networks. One takes the original image and produces another image that looks almost identical to it, but with some pixels subtly modified. This creates an embedded pattern that is invisible to the human eye. The second neural network can spot the pattern and will tell users whether it detects a watermark, suspects the image has a watermark, or finds that it doesn't have a watermark. Kohli said SynthID is designed in a way that means the watermark can still be detected even if the image is screenshotted or edited -- for example, by rotating or resizing it.

When employees leave Google to join the artificial intelligence startup race, the search giant still has a way to benefit -- by keeping those former workers as cloud customers. From a report: More than half of venture-backed generative AI startups pay for Google's cloud computing platform, Alphabet, Google's parent company, said Tuesday. Of the startups valued at over $1 billion, 70% are Google Cloud customers, and about a third of those are helmed by former employees, including Anthropic, Character.ai and Cohere, the company said. That gives Google a way to extend its influence in the field even when it sheds talent.

Google's cloud unit, which reported a profit for the first time this year, has emerged as one of the company's best bets for growth as its core search business matures. Google still trails Amazon's AWS and Microsoft's Azure in the market. But startups in the field of generative AI -- programs that can spin up images, text and video from simple prompts -- are increasingly turning to the company, said James Lee, Google Cloud's general manager for startups and AI. "We're seeing strong momentum in our business, and we see Google Cloud as the preferred choice for startups building generative AI," Lee said in an interview. Google Cloud customers have the option to use AI models from Google itself as well as other companies, a degree of flexibility that appeals to startups, Lee said.

According to CNBC, Google is planning to license new sets of mapping data to companies building solar products, and is hoping to generate up to $100 million in its first year. From the report: The company plans to sell access to new APIs (application programming interfaces) with solar and energy information and air quality, according to materials viewed by CNBC. Among the new offerings will be a Solar API, which could be used by solar installers like SunRun and Tesla Energy and solar design companies like Aurora Solar, according to a list of example customers viewed by CNBC. Google also sees customer opportunities with real estate companies like Zillow, Redfin, hospitality companies like Marriott Bonvoy, and utilities like PG&E.

Some of the data from the Solar API will come from a consumer-focused pilot called Project Sunroof, a solar savings calculator that originally launched in 2015. The program allows users to enter their address and to receive estimated solar costs such as electric bill savings and the size of the solar installation they'll need. It also offers 3D modeling of the roofs of buildings and nearby trees based on Google Maps data. Google plans to sell API access to individual building data, as well as aggregated data for all buildings in a particular city or county, one document states. The company says it has data for over 350 million buildings, according to documents, up significantly from the 60 million buildings it cited for Project Sunroof in 2017.

One internal document estimates the company's solar APIs will generate revenue between $90 and $100 million in the first year after launch. There's also a potential to connect with Google Cloud products down the line, documents state. As part of the planned launch, the company is also planning to announce an Air Quality API that will let customers request air quality data, such as pollutants and health-based recommendations for specific locations. It'll also include digital heat maps of the data and hourly air quality information, as well as air quality history of up to 30 days.

"Amazon launches cloud service to help non-coders build apps," read the 2020 headline at CNBC — both mobile and web applications.

But long-time Slashdot reader theodp has the rest of the story: Customers have told us that the need for custom applications far outstrips the capacity of developers to create them," Amazon Web Services explained as it jumped on the low-code and no-code bandwagon in 2020...

But just three years later, Amazon posted a "Dear Valued Customer" letter announcing it's pulling the plug on Honeycode at the end of February: "To our valued customers: Thank you for participating in the Amazon Honeycode beta program... After careful consideration, we have made the decision to end the beta service, effective February 29, 2024. Starting today, we are no longer accepting new customer sign-ups to the Honeycode beta. However, as an existing customer, you will be able to use Honeycode and your Honeycode apps as normal (and add team members to your existing account) until February 29, 2024, when the service will be discontinued. After this date, you will no longer be able to use Honeycode or any of the apps you created in Honeycode."

Amazon advises the "valued customers" it's leaving stranded to use Honeycode's "Export Data" option ("a handy way to get your info organized into a CSV file(s)", although "formulas will not export"). They also warn that "We will retain your data until April 29, 2024. If you do not take any action, your data will be deleted on April 30, 2024."

Amazon adds that the spirit of Honeycode (RIP, 2020-2024) will live on in its other products: "We are incorporating lessons from the Amazon Honeycode beta into current services, and remain committed to supporting no/low code services including Amazon SageMaker Canvas (2021-?), AWS Amplify Studio (2021-?), and AWS AppFabric (2023-?).

Kitty Oppenheimer: Can you explain quantum mechanics to me?

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Well, this glass, this drink, this counter top, uhh.. our bodies, all of it. It's mostly empty space. Groupings of tiny energy waves bound together.

Kitty Oppenheimer: By what?

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Forces of attraction strong enough to convince us [that] matter is solid, to stop my body passing through yours.

— IMDB quote from Oppenheimer


Flash forward to 2023, where Mario Barbatti is a theoretical chemist and physicist researching light and molecule interactions. He's also a professor of chemistry at Aix Marseille University in France. Writing this week for Aeon, Barbatti argues that "there are no empty spaces within the atom.

"The empty atom picture is likely the most repeated mistake in popular science." It is unclear who created this myth, but it is sure that Carl Sagan, in his classic TV series Cosmos (1980), was crucial in popularising it. After wondering how small the nuclei are compared with the atom, Sagan concluded that "[M]ost of the mass of an atom is in its nucleus; the electrons are by comparison just clouds of moving fluff. Atoms are mainly empty space. Matter is composed chiefly of nothing." I still remember how deeply these words spoke to me when I heard them as a kid in the early 1980s. Today, as a professional theoretical chemist, I know that Sagan's statements failed to recognise some fundamental features of atoms and molecules...

Misconceptions feeding the idea of the empty atom can be dismantled by carefully interpreting quantum theory, which describes the physics of molecules, atoms and subatomic particles. According to quantum theory, the building blocks of matter — like electrons, nuclei and the molecules they form — can be portrayed either as waves or particles. Leave them to evolve by themselves without human interference, and they act like delocalised waves in the shape of continuous clouds. On the other hand, when we attempt to observe these systems, they appear to be localised particles, something like bullets in the classical realm. But accepting the quantum predictions that nuclei and electrons fill space as continuous clouds has a daring conceptual price: it implies that these particles do not vibrate, spin or orbit. They inhabit a motionless microcosmos where time only occasionally plays a role...

A molecule is a static object without any internal motion. The quantum clouds of all nuclei and electrons remain absolutely still for a molecule with a well-defined energy. Time is irrelevant... Time, however, comes into play when a molecule collides with another one, triggering a chemical reaction. Then, a storm strikes. The quantum steadiness bursts when the sections of the electronic cloud pour from one molecule upon another. The clouds mix, reshape, merge, and split. The nuclear clouds rearrange to accommodate themselves within the new electronic configuration, sometimes even migrating between molecules. For a fraction of a picosecond (10-12 seconds or a billionth of a millisecond), the tempest rages and reshapes the molecular landscape until stillness is restored in the newly formed compounds.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Google has worked with Cameyo to give enterprise Chromebooks another way to run Windows applications using ChromeOS Virtual App Delivery. Cameyo is an enterprise company that offers a "Virtual App Delivery" (VAD) platform that can stream Windows, Linux, internal web, and SaaS applications to other devices. This offering is now getting tight integration with ChromeOS. These Windows apps appear like other icons in a Chromebook's launcher and taskbar. Behind the scenes, they are PWAs (Progressive Web Apps) that aim to blur their streamed nature with native file system integration. This includes letting users access local files and folders from within the virtual instances. Similarly, integration with the ChromeOS Clipboard Connector allows for local copy and paste.

When a user opens a specific file type, Cameyo makes it so that the appropriate virtual app launches. These virtual apps can be streamed from the cloud or on-premises data centers. Compared to full virtual desktop apps, this approach is said to "eliminate the infrastructure and licensing complexity." On the security front: "apps and devices are isolated from network resources and segmented by default so that users only access the apps and data they need to get their jobs done, all while eliminating the need to expose firewall and server ports to the open internet." ChromeOS Virtual App Delivery with Cameyo is available today as an enterprise offering. There is no consumer equivalent.

Dropbox, a provider of online data storage, is ending its unlimited option, saying a small handful of customers were using massive amounts of resources that had the potential to degrade the cloud service for the rest of its clients. From a report: The company's highest-tier "all the space you need" storage plan will be capped at about 5 terabytes per user for new customers, the company said in a blog post.

While the plan was designed for businesses, some clients were instead using it for cryptocurrency mining, pooling storage with strangers, or re-selling the cloud service, Dropbox said. These uses "frequently consume thousands of times more storage than our genuine business customers, which risks creating an unreliable experience for all of our customers," the company said. [...] The change follows Alphabet's Google removing "as much storage as you need" product branding for its highest-tier Workspace plan in May, according to copies of its website hosted on the Wayback Machine.

A draft agreement between TikTok and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to avoid a ban would have given U.S. agencies unprecedented access to TikTok's facilities and servers. "Many of the concessions the government asked of TikTok look eerily similar to the surveillance tactics critics have accused Chinese officials of abusing," reports Gizmodo. "To allay fears the short-form video app could be used as a Chinese surveillance tool, the federal government nearly transformed it into an American one instead." The draft of the deal was obtained by Forbes. From a report: Forbes reports that the draft agreement, dated Summer 2022, would have given the US government agencies like the Department of Justice and Department of Defense far more access to TikTok's operations than that of any other social media company. The agreement would let agencies examine TikTok's US facilities, records, and servers with minimal prior notice and veto the hiring of any executive involved with leading TikTok US data security organization. It would also let US agencies block changes to the app's terms of service in the US and order the company to subject itself to various audits, all on TikTok's dime, per Forbes. In extreme cases, the agreement would allow government organizations to demand TikTok temporarily shut off functioning in the U.S..

The draft document, which Gizmodo could not independently verify, is reportedly around 100 pages long and contains comments sent between attorneys representing ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese-owned parent company, and CFIUS. The agreements, if accepted as written at the time, would open TikTok's U.S. operations up to supervision by a number of external third-party auditors and source code inspectors. ByteDance leaders, whom US lawmakers and whistleblowers have accused of maintaining close connections with The Chinese Communist Party, would be excluded from some security-related decisions involving the US version of the app.

Provisions described in the guidelines weren't always agreed on by both parties. In several instances, according to Forbes, TikTok's attorneys pushed back against terms that would let the government alter what types of user data ByteDance employees could view. Another point of disagreement emerged when the government reportedly asked for limitless veto power over TikTok's future contracts. At one point, TikTok reportedly altered language that would have allowed government officials to demand changes to the apps recommendations algorithm if it promoted content the agencies disagreed with. A TikTok spokesperson said in a statement: "As has been widely reported, we've been working with CFIUS for well over a year to implement a national security agreement and have invested significant resources in implementing a firewall to isolate U.S. user data. Today, all new protected U.S. user data is stored in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in the U.S. with tightly controlled and monitored gateways. We are doing more than any peer company to safeguard U.S. national security interests."

VMware on Tuesday said it has developed a new set of software tools in partnership with Nvidia aimed at businesses which want to develop generative artificial intelligence in their own data centers rather than the cloud. From a report: VMware, which is close to being acquired by chip firm Broadcom in a $69 billion deal, makes software that corporations use to run their privately owned data centers. For more than two decades, VMware's tools have been used by businesses to divvy up the computing power in central processor chips, which are the brains of traditional servers. On Tuesday, the company released a new set of tools help designed to manage Nvidia chips, which dominate the market for AI systems that can read and write text in human-like ways.

A decade after data analytics promised to revolutionize agriculture, most farmers still aren't using data tools or specialized software, and of those who do, many are swamped in a deluge of data. From a report: In 2013, seed and pesticide giant Monsanto acquired agriculture-data firm Climate Corporation for $1 billion, helping spur the industry's mania for data-driven farming. The hope was that by outfitting farmers with software and tools capable of ingesting and analyzing troves of data on things from weather patterns to soil conditions, they could more efficiently use their land. Many are still waiting for the technology to pay off. In the U.S., less than half of farmers surveyed by consulting firm McKinsey are using farm management software, and 25% are using remote-sensing and precision agriculture hardware. That software is a foundational technology in enabling the autonomous machinery and AI-enabled equipment of the future, analysts say, and unless farmers start using it, some will be left behind in the next decade of farm innovation. At the moment, 3% of American farmers said they plan to adopt software or precision agriculture hardware over the next two years, according to McKinsey.

Certain tools can automatically gather data from internet-connected farm equipment, but others require farmers to manually enter the information. For a specific field, for instance, that could total over a dozen crop-protection products and multiple seeds. Even those who are using the tech say they can find it difficult to draw useful conclusions from it. "We're collecting so much data that you're almost paralyzed with having to analyze it all," said David Emmert, a corn and soybean farmer in West Central Indiana who works about 4,300 acres. [...] The first generation of digital farming tools also wasn't easy for farmers to use. Software was slow, interfaces were complex and difficult to manage. "The industry does need to step up a little bit on continuing to improve the customer experience," said David Fiocco, a McKinsey partner focused on agriculture. In recent years, big tech vendors like Microsoft, Amazon and Google have begun tailoring their cloud-computing, data and artificial-intelligence services to agriculture, bringing along expertise that could help address complications that have long plagued farm data management and analytics.

Microsoft is restructuring its proposed Activision Blizzard deal to transfer cloud gaming rights for current and new Activision Blizzard games to Ubisoft. From a report: The transfer of rights is designed to appease regulators in the UK that are concerned about the impact Microsoft's proposed $68.7 billion deal will have on cloud gaming competition. The restructured deal has triggered a new regulatory investigation in the UK that could last until October 18th. "To address the concerns about the impact of the proposed acquisition on cloud game streaming raised by the UK Competition and Markets Authority, we are restructuring the transaction to acquire a narrower set of rights," says Microsoft president Brad Smith. "This includes executing an agreementâeffective at the closing of our merger that transfersâthe cloud streaming rights for all current and new Activision Blizzard PC and console games released over the next 15 years to Ubisoft Entertainment SA, a leading global game publisher. The rights will be in perpetuity." This restructured deal means that if Microsoft does close its proposed acquisition, then it will not be able to release Activision Blizzard games exclusively on Xbox Cloud Gaming.

theodp writes: On Tuesday, Microsoft announced the Public Preview of Python in Excel, which "runs securely on the Microsoft Cloud".

From the Home Office in Redmond: "Python is one of the most popular programming languages today, loved by businesses and students alike and Excel is an essential tool to organize, manipulate and analyze all kinds of data. But, until now, there hasn't been an easy way to make those two worlds work together. Today, we are excited to introduce the Public Preview of Python in Excel -- making it possible to integrate Python and Excel analytics within the same Excel grid for uninterrupted workflow. Python in Excel combines Python's powerful data analysis and visualization libraries with Excel's features you know and love. You can manipulate and explore data in Excel using Python plots and libraries, and then use Excel's formulas, charts and PivotTables to further refine your insights...We're partnering with Anaconda, a leading enterprise grade Python repository used by tens of millions of data practitioners worldwide. Python in Excel leverages Anaconda Distribution for Python running in Azure, which includes the most popular Python libraries such as pandas for data manipulation, statsmodels for advanced statistical modeling, and Matplotlib and seaborn for data visualization....While in Preview, Python in Excel will be included with your Microsoft 365 subscription. After the Preview, some functionality will be restricted without a paid license."

Python creator Guido van Rossum, now a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer, helped define the architecture for Python in Excel and had this to say: "I'm excited that this excellent, tight integration of Python and Excel is now seeing the light of day. I expect that both communities will find interesting new uses in this collaboration, amplifying each partner's abilities. When I joined Microsoft three years ago, I would not have dreamed this would be possible. The Excel team excels!"

Amazon held an all-hands meeting where Adam Selipsky, head of Amazon's cloud computing business, "wouldn't give employees any data to back up the decision to require workers to come back to the office," reports the Seattle Times.

"But he did have some stories to share, according to an Amazon Web Services employee who attended the all-hands meeting," with one anecdote highlighting "the serendipity" that can happen with a return to the office. For some Amazon employees, "serendipity" isn't enough. Workers who have asked the company to share data have been provided anecdotes and a consistent trope that innovation is more likely to happen in person. That has left some workers feeling demoralized, distracted and undervalued as they struggle to stay focused and motivated, according to interviews and internal communications shared with The Times. An Amazon manager, who is based on the East Coast and asked to speak anonymously to protect their job, said it is "dehumanizing," and feels as if leadership doesn't trust its employees to understand their reasoning. In Slack messages, employees anonymously posted that Amazon's decisions were "dystopian" and creating "just a horrible situation...."

The company declined requests from The Times to share any data points that factored into its decision to change the remote work policy. Amazon workers have been asking the company for more information since it announced the change in February. The mandate went into effect in May... Mike Hopkins, senior vice president at Prime Video and Amazon Studios, told employees at another all-hands meeting that the return to office is working, according to a copy of his remarks Amazon shared with The Times. "I don't have data to back it up, but I know it's better...." The East Coast-based manager said they've been less productive since returning to the office. Without any cubicles or assigned workspaces, there is no privacy, they said. Anyone can overhear your phone call or peek at your monitor...

Amazon contends the return has gone well, both for workers and the communities where it operates. In Seattle, Amazon's return to its South Lake Union campus has led to an 82% increase in foot traffic between May and July and an 86% increase in credit card transactions at restaurants in the neighborhood, according to data shared from Amazon.
"Some employees welcomed the return to office mandate, and told The Times they were looking forward to seeing co-workers in person, solidifying a distinction between work and home, and drumming up business for the shops and restaurants around Amazon's campus."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google and some of its Chromebook partners decided to try making "gaming Chromebooks" a thing late last year. These machines included some gaming laptop features like configurable RGB keyboards and high refresh rate screens, but because they still used integrated GPUs, they were meant mostly for use with streaming services like Nvidia's GeForce Now and Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming. But there were also apparently plans for some gaming Chromebooks with the power to play more games locally. Earlier this year, 9to5Google spotted developer comments earlier this year pointing to a Chromebook board (codenamed Hades) that would have included a dedicated GeForce RTX 4050 GPU like the one found in some Windows gaming notebooks. This board would have served as a foundation that multiple PC makers could have used to build Chromebooks. But these models apparently won't be seeing the light of day anytime soon. Developer comments spotted by About Chromebooks this week indicate that the Hades board (plus a couple of other Nvidia-equipped boards, Agah and Herobrine) has been canceled, which means that any laptops based on that board won't be happening.

Long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid shares a report from The Economist: What you notice first is how silent it is," says Kimmo Koski, the boss of the Finnish IT Centre for Science. Dr Koski is describing LUMI -- Finnish for "snow" -- the most powerful supercomputer in Europe, which sits 250km south of the Arctic Circle in the town of Kajaani in Finland. LUMI, which was inaugurated last year, is used for everything from climate modeling to searching for new drugs. It has tens of thousands of individual processors and is capable of performing up to 429 quadrillion calculations every second. That makes it the third-most-powerful supercomputer in the world. Powered by hydroelectricity, and with its waste heat used to help warm homes in Kajaani, it even boasts negative emissions of carbon dioxide. LUMI offers a glimpse of the future of high-performance computing (HPC), both on dedicated supercomputers and in the cloud infrastructure that runs much of the internet. Over the past decade the demand for HPC has boomed, driven by technologies like machine learning, genome sequencing and simulations of everything from stockmarkets and nuclear weapons to the weather. It is likely to carry on rising, for such applications will happily consume as much computing power as you can throw at them. Over the same period the amount of computing power required to train a cutting-edge AI model has been doubling every five months. All this has implications for the environment.

HPC -- and computing more generally -- is becoming a big user of energy. The International Energy Agency reckons data centers account for between 1.5% and 2% of global electricity consumption, roughly the same as the entire British economy. That is expected to rise to 4% by 2030. With its eye on government pledges to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, the computing industry is trying to find ways to do more with less and boost the efficiency of its products. The work is happening at three levels: that of individual microchips; of the computers that are built from those chips; and the data centers that, in turn, house the computers. [...] The standard measure of a data centre's efficiency is the power usage effectiveness (pue), the ratio between the data centre's overall power consumption and how much of that is used to do useful work. According to the Uptime Institute, a firm of it advisers, a typical data centre has a pue of 1.58. That means that about two-thirds of its electricity goes to running its computers while a third goes to running the data centre itself, most of which will be consumed by its cooling systems. Clever design can push that number much lower.

Most existing data centers rely on air cooling. Liquid cooling offers better heat transfer, at the cost of extra engineering effort. Several startups even offer to submerge circuit boards entirely in specially designed liquid baths. Thanks in part to its use of liquid cooling, Frontier boasts a pue of 1.03. One reason lumi was built near the Arctic Circle was to take advantage of the cool sub-Arctic air. A neighboring computer, built in the same facility, makes use of that free cooling to reach a pue rating of just 1.02. That means 98% of the electricity that comes in gets turned into useful mathematics. Even the best commercial data centers fall short of such numbers. Google's, for instance, have an average pue value of 1.1. The latest numbers from the Uptime Institute, published in June, show that, after several years of steady improvement, global data-centre efficiency has been stagnant since 2018. The report notes that the U.S., Britain and the European Union, among others, are considering new rules that "could force data centers to become more efficient." Germany has proposed the Energy Efficiency Act that would mandate a minimum pue of 1.5 by 2027, and 1.3 by 2030.