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upstart writes:

Ireland wanted to build data centres for the AI boom. Now they fear blackouts:

Dozens of data centres humming at the outskirts of Dublin are consuming more electricity than all of the urban homes in Ireland.

And now they are starting to wear out the warm welcome that brought them here.

Ireland is a country that made itself a computing factory for Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and TikTok. It is wondering whether it was all worth it as tech giants look around the world to build even more data centres to fuel the next wave of artificial intelligence.

Fears of rolling blackouts led Ireland's grid operator to halt new data centres near Dublin until 2028. These huge buildings and their powerful computers last year consumed 21% of the nation's electricity, according to official records. No other country has reported a higher burden to the International Energy Agency.

Not only that, but Ireland is still heavily reliant on burning fossil fuels to generate electricity, despite a growing number of wind farms sprouting across the countryside. Further data centre expansion threatens Ireland's goals to sharply cut planet-warming emissions.

Ireland is a "microcosm of what many countries could be facing over the next decade, particularly with the growth of AI," said energy researcher Paul Deane of University College Cork.

Twenty-six-year-old activist Darragh Adelaide lives in a working-class Dublin suburb just across a busy motorway from Grange Castle Business Park, one of Ireland's biggest data centre clusters. It could get even bigger were Adelaide not a thorn in the side of Google's expansion plans.

"It's kind of an outrageous number of data centres," Adelaide said. "People have started to make the connection between the amount of electricity they're using and electricity prices going up."

Ireland has attracted global tech companies since the "Celtic Tiger" boom at the turn of the 21st century. Tax incentives, a highly skilled, English-speaking workforce and the country's membership in the European Union have all contributed to making the tech sector a central part of the Irish economy. The island is also a node for undersea cables that extend to the U.S., Britain, Iceland and mainland Europe.

Nearly all of the data centres sit on the edge of Dublin, where their proximity to the capital city facilitates online financial transactions and other activities that require fast connections. Data centre computers run hot, but compared to other parts of the world, Ireland's cool temperatures make it easier to keep them from overheating without drawing in as much water.

Still, buildings that for years went mostly unnoticed have attracted unwanted attention as their power demands surged while Irish householders pay some of Europe's highest electricity bills. Ireland's Environmental Protection Agency has also flagged concerns about nitrogen oxide pollution from data centres' on-site generators — typically gas or diesel turbines — affecting areas near Dublin.

A crackdown began in 2021, spurred by projections that data centres are on pace to take up one third of Ireland's electricity in this decade. Regulators declared that Dublin had hit its limits and could no longer plug more data centres into its grid. The government urged tech companies to look outside the capital and find ways to supply their own power.

"What's happening in Ireland is the politics of basically what happens when you build too many of these things," said University College Dublin researcher Patrick Brodie. "Even though people have recognized for a while that data centres are energy hogs, there hasn't really been so many of these moments where, effectively, Ireland issued a red alert."

upstart writes:

Ultra-thin diamond wafers for electronics made using sticky tape:

A new way to make ultra-thin diamond wafers using sticky tape could help produce diamond-based electronics, which might one day be a useful alternative to silicon-based designs.

Diamond has unusual electronic properties: it is both a good insulator and allows electrons with certain energies to move with little resistance. This can translate to being able to handle higher energies with greater efficiency than conventional silicon chip designs.

However, producing working diamond chips requires large and very thin wafers, similar to the thin silicon wafers used to build modern computer chips, which have proved tricky to create.

Now, Zhiqin Chu at the University of Hong Kong and his colleagues have found a way to produce extremely thin and flexible diamond wafers, using sticky tape.

Chu and his colleagues first implanted nano-sized diamonds in a small silicon wafer, then blew methane gas over it at high temperatures to form a continuous, thin diamond sheet. They then created a small crack on one side of the attached diamond sheet, before peeling off the diamond layer using regular sticky tape.

They found that this peeled diamond sheet was both extremely thin, at less than a micrometre, much thinner than a human hair, and smooth enough to allow for the kind of etching techniques used to produce silicon chips.

"It is very reminiscent of the early days of graphene when Scotch tape was used to produce the first monolayer of graphene from graphite. I just never would have imagined the concept being applied to diamond," says Julie Macpherson at the University of Warwick, UK.

The hidden semiconductor abilities of diamonds could help power grids and electric vehicles manage far greater amounts of electricity more efficiently

"This new edge-exposed exfoliation method will be an enabler for a multitude of device designs and experimental approaches," says Mete Atatüre at the University of Cambridge. One area it could be particularly useful for is offering greater control in quantum devices that use diamonds as sensors, he says.

The diamond membranes Chu and his colleagues can produce are about 5 centimetres across, which shows that the method works as a proof of principle, says Andrea Ferrari at the University of Cambridge, but it is still smaller than the larger 20-30 centimetres that is standard to many wafer processes, and it isn't clear whether the new method can be scaled up, he says.

The wafers produced also appear to be polycrystalline, which are less smooth and regular than monocrystalline diamond, and this could limit its use for some applications, says Macpherson.

Journal Reference:
Jing, Jixiang, Sun, Fuqiang, Wang, Zhongqiang, et al. Scalable production of ultraflat and ultraflexible diamond membrane, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08218-x)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Why childhood vaccines are a public health success story:

That vaccine was licensed in the US in 1955. By 1994, polio was considered eliminated in North and South America. Today, wild forms of the virus have been eradicated in all but two countries.

But the polio vaccine story is not straightforward. There are two types of polio vaccine: an injected type that includes a "dead" form of the virus, and an oral version that includes "live" virus. This virus can be shed in feces, and in places with poor sanitation, it can spread. It can also undergo genetic changes to create a form of the virus that can cause paralysis. Although this is rare, it does happen—and today there are more cases of vaccine-derived polio than wild-type polio.

It is worth noting that since 2000, more than 10 billion doses of the oral polio vaccine have been administered to almost 3 billion children. It is estimated that more than 13 million cases of polio have been prevented through these efforts. But there have been just under 760 cases of vaccine-derived polio.

We could prevent these cases by switching to the injected vaccine, which wealthy countries have already done. But that's not easy in countries with fewer resources and those trying to reach children in remote rural areas or war zones.

Even the MMR vaccine is not entirely risk-free. Some people will experience minor side effects, and severe allergic reactions, while rare, can occur. And neither vaccine offers 100% protection against disease. No vaccine does. "Even if you vaccinate 100% [of the population], I don't think we'll be able to attain herd immunity for polio," says Abbas. It's important to acknowledge these limitations.

While there are some small risks, though, they are far outweighed by the millions of lives being saved. "[People] often underestimate the risk of the disease and overestimate the risk of the vaccine," says Moss.

In some ways, vaccines have become a victim of their own success. "Most of today's parents fortunately have never seen the tragedy caused by vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles encephalitis, congenital rubella syndrome, and individuals crippled by polio," says Kimberly Thompson, president of Kid Risk, a nonprofit that conducts research on health risks to children. "With some individuals benefiting from the propagation of scary messages about vaccines and the proliferation of social media providing reinforcement, it's no surprise that fears may endure."

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://crookedtimber.org/2024/11/11/occasional-paper-four-hidden-species-of-portuguese-man-o-war/

There's been a a certain amount of negativity floating around lately. So, let's talk about a toxic, venomous freak of nature and the parasite that afflicts it.

Biology warning, this gets slightly squicky.

Let's start with the toxic, venomous freak of nature: the Portuguese man-o'-war.

Have you ever seen a Portuguese Man o'War? – If you've spent a lot of time in warm ocean waters, you've probably encountered one of these guys. They're hard to miss! They come in a variety of colors — pink, blue, purple — and they're pretty prominent, floating on the surface of the ocean like discarded party balloons. And if you've ever been stung by one, well, you probably remember that. Their stings aren't lethal to humans, but they're welt-inducing and painful.

So it's a jellyfish. Except it isn't really: it's several jellyfish, smooshed together. And here's where the "freak of nature" part kicks in.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.10.602499v2.full

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Thinking Slowly: The Paradoxical Slowness of Human Behavior

Caltech researchers have quantified the speed of human thought: a rate of 10 bits per second. However, our bodies' sensory systems gather data about our environments at a rate of a billion bits per second, which is 100 million times faster than our thought processes. This new study raises major new avenues of exploration for neuroscientists, in particular: Why can we only think one thing at a time while our sensory systems process thousands of inputs at once ?

A bit is a basic unit of information in computing. A typical Wi-Fi connection, for example, can process 50 million bits per second. In the new study, Zheng applied techniques from the field of information theory to a vast amount of scientific literature on human behaviors such as reading and writing, playing video games, and solving Rubik's Cubes, to calculate that humans think at a speed of 10 bits per second.

"This is an extremely low number," Meister says. "Every moment, we are extracting just 10 bits from the trillion that our senses are taking in and using those 10 to perceive the world around us and make decisions. This raises a paradox: What is the brain doing to filter all of this information?"

[...] The new quantification of the rate of human thought may quash some science-fiction futuristic scenarios. Within the last decade, tech moguls have suggested creating a direct interface between human brains and computers in order for humans to communicate faster than the normal pace of conversation or typing. The new study, however, suggests that our brains would communicate through a neural interface at the same speed of 10 bits per second.

Journal Reference: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s ?

Also Covered By:
    • Technology Networks
    • Scientific American
    • New Atlas

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

It also may have found the oldest rocks yet seen in the solar system

Prior to summitting Jezero Crater on Mars, the Perseverance rover explored ancient rocks near the crater rim in this area known as the Pico Turquino Hills.

“This is really one of the most exciting things that this mission is going to do, is to be looking at rocks that were formed so early in the history of the solar system,” said Caltech geochemist Kenneth Farley during a December 12 news briefing at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. “Almost the dawn of the solar system.”

For most of its mission, Perseverance has been poking around within Jezero Crater, probing and sampling rocks that are probably about 3.7 billion years old (SN: 2/17/23). The rocks at the rim, however, are probably much older, having been uplifted by the impact that created the crater.

On December 11 — following a slippery, three-month-long, 500-meter climb from the crater floor — the robotic explorer finally surmounted that crater’s rim, after weeks of studying the high area’s geology. And all that exploration appears to have paid off.

“The rocks that we are now exploring are likely older than 4 billion years,” said Farley, who is also project scientist for the Mars 2020 Mission that brought the rover to the planet. “These are amongst the oldest rocks in the solar system, and they’re older than any rocks that exist on Earth.” Part of the reason for that is that much of Earth’s ancient surface has been destroyed at subduction zones, where one tectonic plate plunges beneath another to descend into the mantle (SN: 1/13/21).

[...] Instruments aboard Perseverance cannot precisely date the rocks. Instead, researchers are basing their age estimates on their current understanding of the crater’s formation and Mars’ history. “They are our best estimates, but they are just estimates,” Farley said. “This is one of the reasons why we want to do sample return.”

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Google believes the US electricity grid can't deliver the energy needed to power datacenters that deliver AI services, so has formed an alliance to build industrial parks powered by clean energy, at which it will build "gigawatts of datacenter capacity" across the nation.

The search megalith announced its plan on Wednesday. Google president Ruth Porat wrote that the US is poised to enjoy strong economic growth thanks to AI, increased manufacturing activity, and the electrification of transport and other industries. But Porat thinks those opportunities could be missed due to the wonky electricity grid, which she wrote has "not kept pace with the country's economic growth opportunity" and is sometimes "unable to accommodate load increases."

Google's response is a deal with solar energy firm Intersect Power, and financier TPG Rise Climate, to build industrial parks next to renewable energy generation facilities that Porat wrote will be "purpose-built and right-sized for the datacenter." Google will build datacenters at those parks – meaning they have a long-term customer from day one – and believes it can build bit barns faster under this arrangement.

[...] Google and TPG are investing $800 million into Intersect to fund the deal. Intersect noted in its press release announcing the partnership that the first co-located clean energy project with Google is slated to come online in 2026.

[...] Despite Google's admission that its CO₂ emissions rose 13 percent between 2022 and 2023, Google maintains AI is not the reason for the increase as it remains a small fraction of its datacenter workloads.

[...] Google also signed a deal with Kairos Power in October to outfit future datacenters with small modular reactors (SMRs), making it just one of many tech giants turning to nuclear power to feed its facilities. As we've noted in multiple stories of late, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others are investing heavily in the power of the atom to power future datacenters.

Kairos hasn't built a working reactor molten salt SMR yet, and only has plans to get a test facility up and running by 2030. There aren't even many SMRs in the world – China, Russia, and Japan each host one functional unit, despite several groups working on other designs.

And let's not get started on the scarcity of the fuel needed to power such reactors: high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) that powers SMRs and other next-gen nuclear reactors is only produced at scale in China and Russia, and the US can only move so fast to commercialize domestic production.

While it waits, Google has poured additional cash into carbon capture technology to offset its greenhouse gas emissions – but the direct air capture provider behind it may not be able to scale up until the 2030s.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Still aiming to become a global leader in AI, the United States announced it will be moving forward on initiatives to incorporate generative AI into the inner workings of the Department of Defense (DoD)— just as AI's creators pitch their offerings to major defense contractors.

Announced today, the office will be moving ahead with a new $100 million AI Rapid Capabilities Cell "focused on accelerating DoD adoption of next-generation artificial intelligence," including generative AI. It will be led by the department's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) and Defense Innovation Unit (DIU). The announcement comes as a result of Task Force Lima, a Department of Defense generative AI task force established in 2023 to "assess, synchronize, and employ generative AI capabilities" in the DoD.

"DIU's role is bringing the very best commercial tech to bear to meet critical warfighter problems with the focus, speed, and scale required to meet the strategic imperative," said DIU Director Doug Beck. "The result will help us scale the tech faster and more reliably, and will also help change the way the Department thinks about software development and delivery tempo for the future." The department's AI applications will include "decision support, operational planning, logistics, weapons development and testing, uncrewed and autonomous systems, intelligence activities, information operations, and cyber operations," as well as administrative purposes.  

[...] While it's uncertain whether President-elect Donald Trump will uphold the Biden administration's national and international AI commitments, the soon-to-be sworn in leader has already announced his pick for a position he's calling the "White House AI Czar." As for his picks for the country's defense leaders, Trump is rumored to be eyeing Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Shankir for a top spot in the Pentagon — Shankir is a proponent of the Department of Defense's rapid adoption of commercial tech, including AI.

"The DoD has an imperative to responsibly pursue the adoption of generative AI models while identifying proper protective measures and mitigating national security risks that may result from issues such as poorly managed training data," said DoD Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer Dr. Radha Plumb. "We must also consider the extent to which our adversaries will employ this technology and seek to disrupt our own use of AI-based solutions."

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/12/watch-carnivorous-squirrels-chow-down-on-tasty-voles/

We think of squirrels as adorably harmless creatures, admiring their bushy tails and twitchy little noses and the way they cram their cheeks with nuts or seeds to bring back to their nests for later. But the rodents turn out to be a bit more bloodthirsty than we thought. According to a new paper published in the Journal of Ethology, California ground squirrels have been caught in the act—many times over—of chasing, killing, and eating voles.

Co-author Jennifer Smith, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, described the behavior as "shocking,"

[...] Squirrels mainly consume acorns, seeds, nuts, and fruits, but they have been known to supplement that diet with insects and, occasionally, by stealing eggs or young hatchlings from nests. And back in 1993, biologist J.R Callahan caused a stir by reporting that as many as 30 species of squirrel could be preying on smaller creatures: namely, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and the occasional small mammal.

[...] This past summer, the team observed 74 instances of squirrels actively hunting or consuming voles over a total of 18 days in the field. The most instances occurred during the first two weeks of July, when vole populations were also at their peak. Nearly half involved active hunting by squirrels, who usually pounced on a target vole and restrained it with its forepaws and teeth. Squirrels tended to kill the voles by biting the neck area and shaking their prey.

[...] (They didn't observe the squirrels hunting any other mammals.) It's unknown how widespread vole-hunting is among squirrels or whether this behavior can be passed down from parent to offspring. When the team returns next summer, they will study any ecological impact of the squirrels' unusual 2024 hunting behavior, particularly on the reproductive rates of the squirrel population.

Journal Reference:
Smith, Jennifer E., Ingbretson, Joey E., Miner, Mackenzie M., et al. Vole hunting: novel predatory and carnivorous behavior by California ground squirrels [open], Journal of Ethology (DOI: 10.1007/s10164-024-00832-6)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Users on X, which Musk has branded the "everything app," have been fleeing the platform. The ripple effects of the election season and Musk's support of Donald Trump have given a rise to a deluge of misinformation and toxic discourse on the platform being forced into users' feeds. As a result, X alternative Bluesky has seen a sudden surge in user signups and daily active users.

This may seem like a blip for X. It might appear like just a temporary reaction to the result of the election. However, new data points to X's woes being much bigger than a post-election backlash. 

Musk's X has been steadily losing users even preceding the election. And, based on the current trajectory, millions of X users are poised to leave over the next year as well.

Since the days of being called Twitter, X has traditionally seen a significant spike in traffic and daily active users based on big current events. Elections, specifically the U.S. Presidential elections are big traffic drivers for X. 

According to data from SimilarWeb, as reported by the Guardian, this was indeed the case in 2024 as well – at least, on election day and a day or two immediately following the election as well. 

However, in the broader leadup to the elections, X actually continuously shed daily active users. In fact, for the entire month of October, X saw a drop in anywhere from 300,000 to 2.6 million daily active users in the U.S. each day. Since early October, daily active U.S. users have fallen from 32.3 million to 29.6 million, a drop of 8.4 percent.

Mashable previously reported on X's declining user base just one month prior to the time period covered by the latest data. In September, we published data showing that X lost nearly one-fifth of its daily active user base with a similar downward trend in the UK and EU.

However, according to analysts, it appears like X will continue its decline in 2025.

According to analysts at Emarketer, from when Musk acquired X in 2022 until 2025, they expect X to have lost 7 million monthly active users in the U.S.

The declining user base pales in comparison to the decline of X's brand and value. According to a recent report from Brand Finance, X's brand is now worth 673 million. The brand was valued at $5.7 billion before Musk's takeover in 2022. When it comes to revenue, X's revenue fell by 40 percent when compared to the prior year based on internal company data from June 2024.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-12-purple-diamond-maser-day-amplify.html

UNSW engineers have developed and built a special maser system that boosts microwave signals—such as those from deep space—but does not need to be super-cooled.

They say that diamonds are a girl's best friend—but that might also soon be true for astronomers and astrophysicists following the new research. The team of quantum experts have developed a device known as a maser which uses a specially created purple diamond to amplify weak microwave signals, such as those which can come from deep space.

Most importantly, their maser works at room temperature, whereas previous such devices needed to be super-cooled, at great expense, down to about minus 269°C.

The amplified signals, originally emitted by pulsars, galaxies, or very distant spacecraft, could ultimately be crucial for expanding our understanding of the universe and fundamental physics.

The UNSW research team, led by Associate Professor Jarryd Pla, have published their findings in the journal Physical Review X, describing how a so-called spin system within the diamond can boost weak signals at room temperature.

"The microwaves enter the device and then the spins inside the diamond create copies of them, which in effect amplifies the microwave signals. Ideally, the microwave signals then come out much larger and with very little noise on top," A/Prof. Pla says.

"Currently, electronic amplifiers are being used to detect signals from very distant spacecraft like Voyager 1 which is now more than 15 billion miles away from earth, but still sending out data.

"Those amplifiers are cryogenically cooled to reduce what is known as thermal noise, which is random electrical noise generated by the motion of electrons in the amplifier's components. Otherwise, that noise would just overwhelm the signals being received.

"Our room temperature solid-state maser amplifier avoids all the complication and cost of having to cool everything down to extremely low temperatures and is also much more compact."

In the paper, the researchers show their maser system can boost signals by a factor of up to 1,000.

More information: Tom Day et al, Room-Temperature Solid-State Maser Amplifier, Physical Review X (2024). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.14.041066

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-12-south-florida-beachfront-faster.html

A team of mechanical, architectural and environmental engineers, geoscientists, and geoinformation specialists affiliated with several institutions in the U.S. and Germany has found that many of the tall, heavy buildings along the coast of South Florida are sinking into the ground much faster than was expected.

In their study published in the journal Earth and Space Science, the group compared satellite images over several years to learn more about ongoing subsidence along multiple beachfronts.

Prior research has shown that many factors can lead to subsidence, in which the altitude of a given parcel of land declines. Natural causes include water movement, earthquakes and gravity. Manmade causes include the heaviness of the built environment, including large buildings, and activities including fracking and landscaping.

In this new study, the researchers noted that the many tall buildings along many parts of the coast in South Florida appeared to be extremely heavy. They wondered if adding so much weight might be causing the ground beneath them to sink.

To find out, the researchers obtained precise satellite imagery for several of the most popular beaches in South Florida and compared 35 buildings standing on them over time. Modern satellite imagery is so precise it can detect changes in altitude of just a few centimeters. The researchers found that every one of the buildings they measured was sinking, ranging from 2 to 8 cm over the years 2016 to 2023, and that most of them were sinking faster than expected.

More information: Farzaneh Aziz Zanjani et al, InSAR Observations of Construction‐Induced Coastal Subsidence on Miami's Barrier Islands, Florida, Earth and Space Science (2024). DOI: 10.1029/2024EA003852

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

We’ve noted for decades that U.S. telecom security and privacy standards aren’t great. T-Mobile has been hacked so many times in the last five years it’s easy to lose count. AT&T not long ago had a breach impacting the data of 73 million users it initially tried to pretend hadn’t happened.

Telecoms have lobbied relentlessly to dismantle much in the way of corporate oversight, so when hacks or breaches or bad choices manifest, executives and companies alike routinely see little in the way of real, meaningful accountability. Which, of course, ensures nothing much changes.

This all came to a head recently with the Salt Typhoon hack, which involved 8 major U.S. telecom operators suffering a major intrusion by Chinese hackers. The hack, oddly getting far less attention than the TikTok moral panic did, was leveraged to help spy on U.S. political officials. It was so severe and extensive that the involved, unnamed telecoms have yet to fully remove the intruders from their networks:

This is par for the course for a country that’s literally too corrupt to pass even a baseline privacy law for the internet era, or hold telecom giants meaningfully accountable for much of anything. At best, telecoms have grown fat and comfortable with a paradigm that involves a tiny fine and wrist slap for their incompetence, assuming they get challenged over it at all.

Enter Senator Ron Wyden, who is proposing a new law that would require the FCC to take broader ownership of telecom cybersecurity.

His Secure American Communications Act would more clearly establish FCC authority to monitor telecoms for privacy and cybersecurity violations, require they conduct routine testing of their networks and systems, and contract outside independent auditors to make sure they’re doing a competent job. They’d also have to submit formal annual reviews to the FCC.

“It was inevitable that foreign hackers would burrow deep into the American communications system the moment the FCC decided to let phone companies write their own cybersecurity rules,” Wyden said. “Telecom companies and federal regulators were asleep on the job and as a result, Americans’ calls, messages, and phone records have been accessed by foreign spies intent on undermining our national security. Congress needs to step up and pass mandatory security rules to finally secure our telecom system against an infestation of hackers and spies.”

Of course the last thing AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, T-Mobile and Charter want is additional (or any) government oversight, so even if perfectly designed to minimize headaches and problems, the bill likely has zero real chance of passing a corrupt Congress.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/12/buying-a-tv-in-2025-expect-lower-prices-more-ads-and-an-os-war/

If you're looking to buy a TV in 2025, you may be disappointed by the types of advancements TV brands will be prioritizing in the new year. While there's an audience of enthusiasts interested in developments in tech like OLED, QDEL, and [Micro LED], plus other features like transparency and improved audio, that doesn't appear to be what the industry is focused on.

Today's TV selection has a serious dependency on advertisements and user tracking.

[...] One of the most impactful changes to the TV market next year will be Walmart owning Vizio. For Walmart, the deal, which closed on December 3 for approximately $2.3 billion, is about owning the data collection capabilities of Vizio's SmartCast OS.

[...] In 2025, buying a Vizio TV won't just mean buying a TV from a company that's essentially an ad business. It will mean fueling Walmart's ad business. With Walmart also owning Onn and Amazon owning Fire TVs, that means there's one less TV brand that isn't a cog in a retail giant's ever-expanding ad machine.

[...] Further, Walmart has expressed a goal of becoming one of the 10 biggest ad companies, with the ad business notably having higher margins than groceries. It could use Vizio, via more plentiful and/or intrusive ads, to fuel those goals.

And Walmart's TV market share is set to grow in the new year. Paul Gray, research director of consumer electronics and devices at Omdia, told Ars Technica he expects that "the new combined sales (Vizio plus Walmart's white label) will be bigger than the current market leader Samsung."

[...] 'Walmart has told you by buying Vizio that these large retailers need a connected television advertising platform to tie purchases to," Martin told Bloomberg. "That means Target and other large retailers have that reason to buy Roku to tie Roku's connected television ad units to their sales in their retail stores. And by the way, Roku has much higher margins than any retailer.'"

[...] TV brands have become so dependent on ads that some are selling TVs at a loss to push ads. How did we get to the point where TV brands view their hardware as a way to track and sell to viewers? Part of the reason TV OSes are pushing the limits on ads is that many viewers seem willing to accept them, especially in the name of saving money.

[...]Still, analysts agree that even among more expensive TV brands, there has been a shift toward building out ad businesses and OSes over improving hardware features like audio.

"This is a low-margin business, and even in the premium segment, the revenues from ads and data are significant. Also, the sort of consumer who buys a premium TV is likely to be especially interesting to advertisers," Gray said.

[...] In 2025, TVs will continue focusing innovation around software, which has immediate returns via ad sales compared to new hardware, which can take years to develop and catch on with shoppers. For some, this is creating a strong demand for dumb TVs, but unfortunately, there are no immediate signs of that becoming a trend.

As Horner put it, "This is an advertising/e-commerce-driven market, not a consumer-driven market. TV content is just the bait in the trap."

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Original Submission

owl writes:

https://hackaday.com/2024/12/18/why-did-early-cd-rom-drives-rely-on-awkward-plastic-caddies/

These days, very few of us use optical media on the regular. If we do, it's generally with a slot-loading console or car stereo, or an old-school tray-loader in a desktop or laptop. This has been the dominant way of using consumer optical media for some time.

Step back to the early CD-ROM era, though, and things were a little kookier. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, drives hit the market that required the use of a bulky plastic caddy to load discs. The question is—why did we apparently need caddies then, and why don't we use them any longer?

The Compact Disc, as developed by Phillips and Sony, was first released in 1982. It quickly became a popular format for music, offering far higher fidelity than existing analog formats like vinyl and cassettes. The CD-ROM followed in 1985, offering hundreds of megabytes of storage in an era when most hard drives barely broke 30 MB. The discs used lasers to read patterns of pits and lands from a reflective aluminum surface, encased in tough polycarbonate plastic. Crucially, the discs featured robust error correction techniques so that small scratches, dust, or blemishes wouldn't stop a disc from working.

Notably, the first audio CD player—the Sony CDP-101—was a simple tray-loading machine. Phillips' first effort, the CD100, was a top-loader. Neither used a caddy. Nor did the first CD-ROM drives—the Phillips CM100 was not dissimilar from the CD100, and tray loaders were readily available too, like the Amdek Laserdrive-1.

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