The young French star is putting up a stronger challenger to Max Verstappen compared to his previous team mates.
Longtime Slashdot reader mmarlett writes: The Atlantic has a long article on the story of missing scientists recently featured here on Slashdot. In short, it is an incoherent conspiracy theory that spreads wide and far, not paying any attention to boundaries of time, space, or area of expertise. "Which is all to say that another piece of flagrant nonsense has ascended to the highest levels of U.S. politics and media," writes the Atlantic's Daniel Engber. "To call it a conspiracy theory would be far too kind, because no comprehensive theory has been floated to explain the pattern of events. But then, even the phrase pattern of events is imprecise, because there is no pattern here at all. Given all the people who could have been roped into this narrative but weren't, any hope of finding meaning falls away. Barring any dramatic new disclosures, the mystery of the missing scientists has the dubious honor of being a sham in every way at once."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Gates Foundation opened an external review earlier this year into its engagement with the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the philanthropic group said on Tuesday. The foundation has been mired in controversy due to Chairman Bill Gates' association with Epstein. A release of emails in January by the U.S. Justice Department also showed communication between Epstein and the Gates Foundation's staff.
"Early this year, Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman commissioned an external review to assess past foundation engagement with Epstein, and our current policies for vetting and developing new philanthropic partnerships," the foundation said in a statement. "That review is underway, and we expect the board and management will receive an update this summer," it added. The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news earlier on Tuesday, said Suzman told staff in a memo, "this is a challenging time for our organization in many ways, but it also highlights the critical importance of taking the tough actions now." The WSJ also reports that the Gates Foundation will eliminate up to 500 jobs, or about 20% of its staff, by 2030. It said the foundation has a 2026 budget of about $9 billion, but plans to cap operating expenses at $1.25 billion.
Further reading: The Bill Gates-Epstein Bombshell - and What Most People Get Wrong
"Early this year, Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman commissioned an external review to assess past foundation engagement with Epstein, and our current policies for vetting and developing new philanthropic partnerships," the foundation said in a statement. "That review is underway, and we expect the board and management will receive an update this summer," it added. The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news earlier on Tuesday, said Suzman told staff in a memo, "this is a challenging time for our organization in many ways, but it also highlights the critical importance of taking the tough actions now." The WSJ also reports that the Gates Foundation will eliminate up to 500 jobs, or about 20% of its staff, by 2030. It said the foundation has a 2026 budget of about $9 billion, but plans to cap operating expenses at $1.25 billion.
Further reading: The Bill Gates-Epstein Bombshell - and What Most People Get Wrong
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google announced two new tensor processing units (TPUs) for the "agentic era," with separate processors dedicated to training and inference. "With the rise of AI agents, we determined the community would benefit from chips individually specialized to the needs of training and serving," Amin Vahdat, a Google senior vice president and chief technologist for AI and infrastructure, said in a blog post. Both chips will become available later this year. CNBC reports: After years of producing chips that can both train artificial intelligence models and handle inference work, Google is separating those tasks into distinct processors, its latest effort to take on Nvidia in AI hardware. [...] None of the tech giants are displacing Nvidia, and Google isn't even comparing the performance of its new chips with those from the AI chip leader. Google did say the training chip enables 2.8 times the performance of the seventh-generation Ironwood TPU, announced in November, for the same price, while performance is 80% better for the inference processor.
Nvidia said its upcoming Groq 3 LPU hardware will draw on large quantities of static random-access memory, or SRAM, which is used by Cerebras, an AI chipmaker that filed to go public earlier this month. Google's new inference chip, dubbed TPU 8i, also relies on SRAM. Each chip contains 384 megabytes of SRAM, triple the amount in Ironwood. The architecture is designed "to deliver the massive throughput and low latency needed to concurrently run millions of agents cost-effectively," Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent Alphabet, wrote in a blog post.
Nvidia said its upcoming Groq 3 LPU hardware will draw on large quantities of static random-access memory, or SRAM, which is used by Cerebras, an AI chipmaker that filed to go public earlier this month. Google's new inference chip, dubbed TPU 8i, also relies on SRAM. Each chip contains 384 megabytes of SRAM, triple the amount in Ironwood. The architecture is designed "to deliver the massive throughput and low latency needed to concurrently run millions of agents cost-effectively," Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent Alphabet, wrote in a blog post.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
New site set to begin manufacturing and testing HBM memory just in time for Nvidia's Rubin-Ultra GPUs in 2028
SK Hynix has reportedly broken ground on a new advanced memory packaging facility in West Lafayette, Indiana, that should boost the supply of US-made high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a key component in high-end AI accelerators from the likes of Nvidia and AMD.…
HSINCHU (ANP/BLOOMBERG) - Het Taiwanese TSMC, de grootste producent van geavanceerde chips voor AI-toepassingen ter wereld, is voorlopig niet van plan om de geavanceerdste machines van het Nederlandse ASML aan te schaffen. Het bedrijf wil hiermee wachten tot in 2029 om kosten te besparen, heeft een hoge leidinggevende bij TSMC tegen verslaggevers gezegd.
De aankondiging kan een grote tegenslag zijn voor ASML. TSMC is volgens persbureau Bloomberg een koploper in productietechnieken en de grootste klant van ASML.
Het bedrijf uit Veldhoven is de enige maker van 's werelds geavanceerdste lithografiemachines waarmee chips worden gemaakt. De leidinggevende zei dat de nieuwste high-NA EUV-lithografiemachines meer dan 350 miljoen euro per stuk kosten. "We kunnen nog steeds profiteren van de huidige EUV-technologie", verklaarde hij. De volgende generatie van deze machines is volgens hem "heel, heel duur". Hij stelde ook dat TSMC onderzoekt hoe het bedrijf zijn chips krachtiger kan maken zonder deze apparatuur.
NEW YORK (ANP) - De aandelenbeurzen op Wall Street in New York zijn woensdag met winsten de handel uitgegaan, nadat de Amerikaanse president Donald Trump aankondigde de wapenstilstand met Iran te verlengen. De brede S&P 500-index en techbeurs Nasdaq sloten op een recordstand. De Straat van Hormuz is nog altijd gesloten en de olieprijzen stegen daardoor opnieuw.
Een Iraanse toponderhandelaar eiste van de Verenigde Staten dat ze hun blokkade van de Straat van Hormuz opheffen. Volgens hem is het bestand tussen de twee landen anders "zinloos". De Amerikaanse blokkade van de zeestraat is nog intact, net als de Iraanse blokkade. Brentolie, de maatstaf voor olie uit het Midden-Oosten, werd 3 procent duurder tot 101,44 dollar per vat. Amerikaanse olie kostte 3,2 procent meer op 92,55 dollar per vat.
De brede S&P 500-index klom 1,1 procent tot 7137,90 punten. Techbeurs Nasdaq won 1,6 procent tot 24.657,57 punten. De Dow-Jonesindex sloot 0,7 procent hoger op 49.490,03 punten.
Al heel de week is het onrustig in Loosdrecht, vanwege rellen tegen de tijdelijke opvang van 110 asielzoekers. Ook woensdagavond staat de Mobiele Eenheid (ME) weer paraat.
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World champion expects Dutch rival to fight for fifth crown
‘It would be a miss for the sport’ if he acts on dissatisfaction
Lando Norris has said he believes Max Verstappen will continue to race in Formula One but that it would be “a miss” for the sport if the four-time world champion did decide to leave owing to his dissatisfaction with the way this season’s new regulations have affected how drivers race.
Verstappen has been outspoken in his dislike of the new regulations and their focus on electrical energy management that now makes up almost 50% of the car’s power output. He has intimated he might leave the sport but, with the rules having been adjusted by the FIA in an effort to address concerns of all drivers this week, Norris felt the Dutchman would remain in F1.
Continue reading...Light as a feather and bouncy as a marshmallow, cushioned shoes have gone from marathons to daily commutes
Floaty foam-based footwear has been spotted on celebrities for years, from Aubrey Plaza in Hokas and Harry Styles in New Balance to Zendaya’s ongoing deal with On running shoes.
A desire for “practical functionality” has driven technical sportswear to street pavements, says streetwear reporter Lei Takanashi from the Business of Fashion in New York.
Continue reading...
Writing for Vogue, Lisa Wong Macabasco recounts attending a performance of Lunch Dances - a musical performance performed in the New York Public Library's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. (SLVogue)
The performance involves the audience being led through the building with headphones allowing them to hear the the narrator, where performances take place in several of the public areas of the building, including in the famed Rose Reading Room.
The performance involves the audience being led through the building with headphones allowing them to hear the the narrator, where performances take place in several of the public areas of the building, including in the famed Rose Reading Room.
I had somehow missed (or forgotten) that Greta Gerwig is writing and directing an adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew, one of The Chronicles of Narnia books by C.S. Lewis. Filming has wrapped and it’s out in theaters on Nov 26.
Thomas Hawk posted a photo:
