Hard Pass

Datacentres used 22% of country’s electricity last year, pushing up household bills, study suggests

Ireland’s growing number of datacentres last year used 22% of the country’s electricity, more than all urban homes combined, according to the Central Statistics Office. The equivalent figure in the US and UK is 6%.

The centres have “drained” €715m (£620m) from the Irish economy and increased household bills by a cumulative average of €360 between 2015 and 2023, said the report commissioned by Friends of the Earth Ireland and Beyond Fossil Fuels. It argued that Irish households have been subsidising big tech via a “hidden data centre tax” on their electricity bills.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1157779/us-says-troops-were-targeted-with-location-data-as-senator-warns-ad-industry-is-a-nation

Apparently llamas hold grudges against each other, too... Be careful out there, the Wandering Trader must be mistreating those poor things since they're so aggressive.

#rememberthellamaswelostalongtheway lol

The ~~funniest~~ "somethingist" part is I was literally out there throwing instant health at the llamas for fun and they fucking killed each other. WTF Mojang...

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi is testifying before House lawmakers investigating Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse cases, a long-awaited appearance that brings fresh scrutiny of the administration’s botched release of the Epstein case files.

Bondi was defiant in previous public testimony when she was confronted by lawmakers about the Epstein investigation. It’s unclear whether she’ll bring the same approach Friday, now that she is no longer in charge of the Justice Department. The session will be held behind closed doors.

The transcribed interview will give lawmakers a chance to dig for information on the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files and other related matters, including the prison sentence of his former girlfriend and confidant, Ghislaine Maxwell. The Justice Department moved Maxwell to a prison camp in Texas last August.

“I think she absolutely could clear up many missing pieces if she wanted to,” said Rep. Yassamin Ansari, an Arizona Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. “Now it’s a question of whether or not she is willing to be transparent.”

Lawmakers are trying to find out what decisions prosecutors have made about investigating Epstein associates, how the Justice Department handled the congressional mandate to release the Epstein case files and whether President Donald Trump was involved in the process.

Crossposted from https://lemmy.zip/post/65160131

I got a banner warning today linking to this page. It was announced a while back, but I either didn't see it or forgot.

We have made the difficult decision to limit the use of LanguageTool’s browser extension to Premium users only. The rise of generative AI has made it more challenging to sustainably monetize our offering. A majority of users use our products for free, and the relatively small percentage of Premium subscribers is all that is subsidizing our continuously increasing server costs. To improve our Premium experience and to sustain our business model, we’ll be making the LanguageTool browser extension available exclusively for paying customers.

The key bit for people who can selfhost:

Yes. If you are a developer, you can still host and run your own instance of LanguageTool’s server. The browser extension will continue to work as it currently does for users who use it with their own server.

(TikTok screencap)

(TikTok screencap)

I want to host some LLM's locally and use more advanced models. Since new hardware is out of the question, I think I should be able to pull something off buying some yesteryear equipment on ebay etc. Did anybody attempt such a project? Does it scale horizontally? (I.e. can I connext two boxes to overcome single box slowness?)