One of the key differences between Lenovo’s ThinkPad-branded laptops and… pretty much every other laptop on the market these days (including most Lenovo models) is that in addition to a touchpad below the keyboard, ThinkPads feature Lenovo’s TrackPoint system with a small pointing stick in the center of the keyboard. But leaked pictures of a […]

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U.S. data center power demand could nearly triple in the next three years, and consume as much as 12% of the country's electricity, as the industry undergoes an AI transformation, according to an unpublished Department of Energy-backed report seen by Reuters. The publication adds: The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report, which is expected to be released on Friday, comes as the U.S. power industry and government agencies attempt to understand how the sudden rise of Big Tech's data-center demand will affect electrical grids, power bills and the climate. By 2028, data-center annual energy use could reach between 74 and 132 gigawatts, or between 6.7% and 12% of total U.S. electricity consumption, according to the Berkeley Lab report. The industry standard-setting report included ranges that depended partly on the availability and demand for a type of AI chip known as GPUs. Currently, data centers make up a little more than 4% of the country's power load. "This really signals to us where the frontier is in terms of growing energy demand in the U.S.," said Avi Shultz, director of the DOE's Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Not everything needs to be digital and “smart.” License plates, for example:

Josep Rodriguez, a researcher at security firm IOActive, has revealed a technique to “jailbreak” digital license plates sold by Reviver, the leading vendor of those plates in the US with 65,000 plates already sold. By removing a sticker on the back of the plate and attaching a cable to its internal connectors, he’s able to rewrite a Reviver plate’s firmware in a matter of minutes. Then, with that custom firmware installed, the jailbroken license plate can receive commands via Bluetooth from a smartphone app to instantly change its display to show any characters or image.

[…]

Because the vulnerability that allowed him to rewrite the plates’ firmware exists at the hardware level­—in Reviver’s chips themselves—Rodriguez says there’s no way for Reviver to patch the issue with a mere software update. Instead, it would have to replace those chips in each display.

The whole point of a license plate is that it can’t be modified. Why in the world would anyone thing that a digital version is a good idea?

Despite promising to filter personal data out, Recall still captures it.

Taiko Audio is selling a dual Intel Xeon server paired with a custom fanless cooling solution to audiophiles around the globe for almost $30,000.

MAGA protestors tried to throw Kamala Harris off her game in La Crosse, Wisconsin today, but instead, she turned them — as well as Donald Trump — into the laughing stock of the rally.

The fun began when the Trumpers began to heckle Harris, interrupting her speech. — Read the rest

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