Monday, August 05, 2024

Quick notes: Death by landslides | Power-hungry AI...

  • Man-made catastrophe: Man-made Church-made disaster. 62 per cent of the green cover in Wayanad district disappeared between 1950 and 2018 while plantation cover rose by around 1,800 per cent. Around 85 per cent of the total area of Wayanad was under forest cover until the 1950s.


  • Cardinal sin: Church organized agitations against restricting commercial activities in ecologically sensitive areas.


  • Over-Tourism: Wayanad received more than 1 million domestic and foreign tourists last year, nearly triple the number in 2011 when a federal govt report warned against over-development. Kerala has witnessed nearly 60% of the landslides in India between 2015 and 2022 . . . . Experts panel locates 70,582 buildings in buffer zones; most number of structures in Wayanad


  • Scientists May Have Discovered the Cause of Autism: Researchers investigated the link between polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) in umbilical cord blood samples and autism scores in 200 children. The study identified one particular compound in the umbilical cord blood acid, called diHETrE, that may have "strong implications" for ASD severity.


  • "Muscular Nationalism": India-China military tensions persist even as their trade surges. India’s exports to China stood at $16 billion last year while imports were more than $100 billion.


  • Why the Internet Is Running Out of Electricity: The massive power draw of Generative AI is overtaxing our grid.



  • “Where” will the Energy for AI come from?: Google reveals 48% increase in greenhouse gas emissions from 2019, largely driven by data center energy demands.


  • Generative AI patents: China beat the U.S. in generative AI patents by 6-to-1 for the past ten years — almost 10,000 Chinese patents filed last year alone


  • AI superpower: Chinese AI built off open-source code matches American tech in chatbot benchmark tests.


  • Google pulls Gemini AI ad from Olympics after backlash: "Why would anyone want to replace a child’s creativity and authentic expression with words written by a computer?"


  • Vidushi Sangeeta Katti Kulkarni: Enna Paliso | Kannada Devotional



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