🔗 Articles: Saturday 27.Jul.2024

Where’s the Beef? 🍔

Guardian: Sad last days of Harold Wilson revealed by Cabinet Office archives

Former politicians pay tribute after files show ‘Labour’s most successful leader’ was forced to consider selling legacy to pay for his dementia care.

pv magazine: Data center power loads threaten corporate net-zero goals

The world’s reliance on the internet, the shift to cloud computing, and the emergence of AI all fuel demand for more and more data centers. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that by 2026, data centers will consume more than 800 TWh annually, more than double their consumption in 2022. Tristan Rayner takes a look at the role that renewable generation plays in powering a digital world.

⋮

Microsoft says its CO2 emissions are now up 30% from when it set its 2030 net-zero target, in 2020, and mainly because of data centers.

“The rise in our scope 3 emissions [from third-party, supply chain companies] primarily comes from the construction of more data centers and the associated embodied carbon in building materials as well as hardware components such as semiconductors, servers, and racks,” said Microsoft, adding that the 10.5 GW renewables PPA [Power Purchase Agreement] is on top of a 19.8 GW clean power portfolio.

PBS News: Israeli strike on school sheltering people in central Gaza kills at least 30, including children

Israeli airstrikes hit a school being used by displaced Palestinians in central Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 30 people including several children, as the country’s negotiators prepared to meet international mediators to discuss a proposed cease-fire.

At least seven children and seven women were among the dead taken from the girls’ school in Deir al-Balah to Al Aqsa Hospital. Israel’s military said it targeted a Hamas command center used to direct attacks against Israeli troops and develop and store “large quantities of weapons.” Hamas in a statement called the military’s claim false.

Civil defense workers in Gaza said thousands had been sheltering in the school, which also contained a medical site.

PBS News: Philippine supply ship reaches disputed shoal without incident a week after deal with China

Philippine government personnel transported food and other supplies Saturday to a fiercely disputed shoal occupied by a Filipino navy contingent but closely guarded by Beijing’s forces in the South China Sea and no confrontations were reported, Philippine officials said.

It was the first Philippine government supply trip to the Second Thomas Shoal, which has been the scene of increasingly violent confrontations between Chinese and Philippine forces, since the Philippines and China reached a deal a week ago to prevent clashes, the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said in a statement.

Snopes: No, JD Vance Did Not Say He Had Sex with Couch Cushions

A false online rumor about former U.S. President Donald Trump’s running mate, a latex glove and couch cushions spawned a number of jokes and memes.

Wikipedia: WebP (image file format)

On 18 November 2011, Google announced a new lossless compression mode, and support for transparency (alpha channel) in both lossless and lossy modes; support was enabled by default in libwebp 0.2.0 (16 August 2012). According to Google’s measurements in November 2011, a conversion from PNG to WebP resulted in a 45% reduction in file size when starting with PNGs found on the web, and a 28% reduction compared to PNGs that are recompressed with pngcrush and PNGOUT.

⋮

In 2019, the Alliance for Open Media published the AVIF standard, intending it to be a successor to WebP. Since 2024, AVIF and WebP have similar levels of support in web browsers.

Manton has expressed an interest in this image file format. I’m not sure how broadly it is used though. My iPhone occasionally produces .AVIF format files, and they cause all kinds of problems when I send them to others, so I’m cautious.

NYT: Why Is It So Hard for Olympic Host Cities to Control Costs?

An Oxford study estimates that despite cost-cutting efforts, Paris is spending more than $1 billion above the Games’ historical median cost.

⋮

The tab for the Games in Paris, the first city to fully test cost-cutting reforms that the International Olympic Committee introduced in 2019, is at least $8.87 billion. That isn’t an eye-popping bill compared with the $17 billion that London spent in 2012, the estimated $28 billion that Tokyo spent in 2021 or the $24 billion that Rio de Janeiro spent in 2016 — the three most expensive Summer Games to date.

HockeyFeed: Shocking report leads to demand for Gary Bettman’s firing!

Walsh spoke about this issue in an interview with concussion specialist Chris Nowinski in which he berated Bettman and his denial of a connection to CTE, found after a player’s death, and after a life of severe neurological issues associated. CTE can also mimic some symptoms of Dementia, including memory loss and sporadic behavioral changes.

Johnson became another victim of CTE as public records show that “the brains of 17 of 18 NHL players studied in the U.S. and Canada have now been diagnosed with CTE, including Ralph Backstrom, Henri Richard, Stan Mikita, Bob Probert, Steve Montador, and Bob Murdoch. CTE has also been diagnosed in amateur players.” It has been proved that CTE can cause physical and physiological impairments, and many athletes found to have the disease have died from suicide. Other notable deaths of past enforcers in the NHL include Rick Rypien, Wade Belak and Derek Boogard. 


The Beaverton: Danielle Smith: The loss of Jasper is tragic, but we can all take comfort in how much money the oil industry is still making

Premier Danielle Smith fought back tears today as she announced that at least 30-50% of the town of Jasper, Alberta has been severely damaged by wildfires but she was adamant that all is not lost, because the Alberta oil industry is still going strong.

Last Updated: 27.Jul.2024 22:25 EDT

Thursday’s articles

Follow along as new links are added to today’s list