NYT: Nelson DeMille, Blockbuster Author Who Thrilled Millions, Dies at 81
Nelson DeMille, a beloved and prolific author whose propulsive thrillers featuring terrorist hijackings, Russian spy schools, gruesome murders, Mafia kingpins, wartime crimes and military malfeasance made him a publishing juggernaut, died on Tuesday in Mineola, N.Y. He was 81.
His death, in a Long Island hospital near his home in Garden City, was from complications of esophageal cancer, his son Alex said.
WashPo: Microsoft deal would reopen Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power AI
The owner of the shuttered Pennsylvania plant plans to bring it online by 2028, with the tech giant buying all the power it produces.
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Pennsylvania’s dormant Three Mile Island nuclear plant would be brought back to life to feed the voracious energy needs of Microsoft under an unprecedented deal announced Friday in which the tech giant would buy 100 percent of its power for 20 years.
The restart of Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, would mark a bold advance in the tech industry’s quest to find enough electric power to support its boom in artificial intelligence. The plant, which Pennsylvanians thought had closed for good in 2019 amid financial strain, would come back online by 2028 under the agreement, according to plant owner Constellation Energy.
If approved by regulators, Three Mile Island would provide Microsoft with the energy equivalent it takes to power 800,000 homes, or 835 megawatts. Never before has a U.S. nuclear plant come back into service after being decommissioned, and never before has all of a single commercial nuclear power plant’s output been allocated to a single customer.
Fortune: Every single member of the board just resigned from DNA tester 23andMe
Following a monthslong battle over CEO Anne Wojcicki’s plans to take 23andMe private, all seven independent members of its board resigned en masse Tuesday.
The move is almost certainly the final nail in the coffin for the embattled company known for its mail-order DNA-testing kit. Since going public via merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in 2021, 23andMe has never turned a profit. Its price on IPO day was $10; so far in 2024, it has yet to reach a $1 valuation. Following the resignation of all its independent directors Tuesday, the stock fell to its rock bottom: $0.30. (As of midday Wednesday, it’s back to $0.36.)
Daring Fireball: Qualcomm Is Trying to Acquire Intel
Lauren Thomas, Laura Cooper, and Asa Fitch, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+):
Chip giant Qualcomm made a takeover approach to rival Intel in recent days, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be one of the largest and most consequential deals in recent years. A deal for Intel, which has a market value of roughly $90 billion, would come as the chip maker has been suffering through one of the most significant crises in its five-decade history.
Discover Magazine: How We Discovered That People Who Are Colorblind Are Less Likely To Be Picky Eaters
This journey started when my students and I measured how people vary in their ability to recognize images of prepared food. Over the past 20 years, we and other researchers have learned that people vary more than originally suspected in how well they discriminate and identify objects, like birds, cars, or even faces.
It seems obvious that some people know more about birds or cars than others. Yet, interestingly, there is as much variation in face recognition ability, even though virtually every sighted person has experience seeing faces.
Experience with food is also universal. We were curious how much people would vary in their ability to recognize food items. Our tests simply ask people to match images of the same dish among similar ones or to find the oddball dish among others. People vary a great deal on these tasks, and some of this variation is explained by a general ability to recognize objects of any kind.
Last Updated: 21.Sep.2024 23:27 MDT
