It says it's building a 1GW virtual power plant, but it's really just paying people to turn off their appliances so others can use that electricity instead. read more
Oil companies will "be held accountable" if they import any barrels of Russian diesel fuel under the deal that President Donald Trump struck with the Kremlin, House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin said in a letter to industry heads Monday.
The news from Unitree this week (via the South China Morning Post) is that it's developing an AI system that will enable its humanoid robots to effectively improve on their own ... read more
Ask LLMs for their most controversial take on humanity, and it turns out they have little nice to say about us, as one AI experiment found read more
The Ninth Circuit on Friday said President Donald Trump overstepped his authority in June of last year when he deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles as protests erupted against the unprecedented immigration crackdown in Southern California. read more
One thing to note regarding data centers is the difference between sound pressure level and sound power level.
Unfortunately, it may not be an easy thing to understand.
To that end ...
Sound Pressure and Sound Power - what's the difference?
www.parkerjonesacoustics.com
... The difference between sound pressure and sound power can be tricky to get your head around. For predicting noise levels from noise polluting sources like plant, it is very important.
As a consultant, I'm often verbally quoted noise levels by clients, i.e. this unit has a level of 60 dB'. Unfortunately, based on that alone, I can't do a great deal, without making a lot of assumptions. If you tell me it's 140 dB I know it's going to be very loud and problematic! But at 60 dB, depending on the situation, it's difficult to assess the risk.
What is a sound pressure level (SPL)?
A sound pressure is the pressure deviation from atmospheric pressure caused by a sound wave, in pascals. The sound pressure level (SPL) is a logarithmic measure of the ratio of a sound pressure over a reference sound pressure (corresponding to the hearing threshold of a young, healthy ear), quoted as a dB. If these two pressures are the same, we have an SPL of 0 dB.
A sound pressure level is what we can physically measure using a sound level meter. Most noise level parameters in a report are based upon an SPL, albeit they are mostly adjusted in some way, i.e. weighted to a single number (dB(A)), or a level difference such as a Dw.
A sound power level (SWL) is theoretical. A sound power is in Watts (W), a sound power level like above, is in dB, a logarithmic ratio of the sound power over a reference sound power. W for Watts, hence SWL (as SPL is already taken!) I'll explain more shortly.
Why do we need sound power levels (SWL)?
The sound pressure level (SPL) depends on distance, the position of the source and the environment, i.e. reflections from the ground, or if inside the surfaces of the room and therefore the reverberation time and volume of the room. So if we measure the SPL of a fan unit inside a plant room, and move this fan outside, the SPL is unlikely to be the same because of more sound energy escaping into the atmosphere. Similarly, if the unit is in the corner of a room, condensing sound radiation by the surfaces close around it, and then move this unit into the centre of the room on the floor, where it radiates more hemi spherically, the SPL will be different. Simply moving further away from a sound source, will reduce the SPL, particularly noticeable when outside.
If we take a large plant enclosure, with many different machines from different manufacturers, who all give us noise data as a sound pressure level, but all measured at varying distances, some in a lab, some outside, some in an anechoic chamber (or very often not referencing how it was measured at all which is effectively useless data as it could be measured at 1m or 10m!), we'll have a hard time predicting the sum of noise levels from our plant enclosure.
The sound power level (SWL) helps us around this. It is not dependent on distance, position or environment. This is the crucial difference. It is a theoretical value; it is not directly measurable. A noise source will have the same sound power irrespective of where it is placed. It gives us a level playing field to directly compare two sound sources. Predicting the noise levels from our plant enclosure is now much simpler, we can apply the same calculation to all of our equipment. ...
How Loud Is a Data Center? How Far Does the Noise Travel?
www.lsars.com
... Continuous noise from cooling fans and transformers reaches 60 to 80 dB at the property line. Generator load tests can be heard up to a mile away. The defining problem is the 24/7 nature of the noise, not the peak loudness. ...
@#6 ... China has left America in the dust when it comes to energy production. ...
Possibly because it has a leader who is more focusedh on long term energy goals, and not trying to elicit donations from Big Oil?
Renewable energy in China
en.wikipedia.org
... China is the world's top electricity producer from renewable energy sources. China's renewable energy capacity is growing faster than its fossil fuels and nuclear power capacity.[1] China installed over 430 GW of renewables in 2025, reaching a total installed renewable capacity of over 2.34 TW by the end of the year.[2] The country aims to achieve peak emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060;[3] emissions may have already peaked in 2024, six years ahead of the 2030 goal.[4]
Although China currently has the world's largest installed capacity of hydro, solar and wind power, its energy needs are so large that fossil fuels still provide the majority of power.[5] In 2020, as a part of the Central Committee's fourteenth five-year plan, a target of 20% total energy production from non-fossil fuel sources by 2025 was set.[6][7] As of February 2026, China's clean electricity capacity reached 52%, exceeding its fossil fuel-based electricity generation for the first time.[8] Electricity generation from renewable energy was about 35% of total electricity, while the renewable share in total energy consumption was much lower.[9] ...
OpEd: I saw Trump's tax returns. You should, too (2016)
www.chron.com
... In January, Donald Trump had this to say when he was asked about whether he would release his tax returns: "I have very big returns, as you know, and I have everything all approved and very beautiful and we'll be working that over in the next period of time."
Yet he held off on releasing his returns. And on Tuesday night, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee seemed to close the door for good on the matter. He told the Associated Press that he wouldn't release his returns prior to the November elections unless what he described as Internal Revenue Service audit of his finances was complete.
"There's nothing to learn from them," Trump said of his tax returns. ...
Oh no.
Not again!
An apparent admission that his prior visit may not have provided the needed results?
So, now, how might this new visit change things?
fwiw, a working link ...
President Trump expected to campaign again in Kansas
www.kake.com
... The Republican National Committee's push to get Republicans re-elected continues with a second visit from the president.
President Donald Trump is expected to campaign in Salina on Halloween. An RNC website with event details has doors set to open at 8:30 a.m., with the program starting at 10:30 a.m. and the president to begin speaking at noon.
A location has not yet been announced.
The announcement comes as Vice President J.D. Vance spoke in Topeka on Monday.
The president's new visit comes a week after he rallied for republicans in Park City. ...
Tickets seem to be available at the link.
Related ...
Solar energy in China - Statistics & Facts
www.statista.com
... The Chinese solar industry is at a pivotal point. Rapid solar capacity expansion overwhelms the grid, PV manufacturers compete for market shares, and then large target markets slap import tariffs on Chinese PV products, taking off their competitive edge. So there is a lot of uncertainty in the Chinese solar industry, but there are also irrefutable facts: China needs to continue to expand domestic solar capacity to reach its climate target. Similarly, global demand for PV products will not cease. And despite all the turmoil, the Chinese solar industry has the manufacturing capacity to meet the demand.
China - the solar powerhouse
China's extensive solar strategy includes decentralized panels on houses or factories, as well as large-scale solar farms. While small-scale photovoltaic has been used for decades in rural areas, the construction of large solar farms is a new development with the goal of utilizing the abundant solar resources, especially in the country's northwestern region. However, the rapid expansion overwhelmed the energy infrastructure, so authorities had to withdraw some price subsidies 2024. ...
Related ...
Big, noisy and coming to a town near you - why the data centre backlash is growing
www.bbc.com
... Until a few years ago many of us may have been blissfully unaware of what a data centre was.
These giant, warehouse-like buildings power virtually all our internet activity, from our web searches and emails to movie downloads and online banking.
They are at the heart of the AI boom, housing the advanced computer chips and servers needed to run services like ChatGPT and Claude.
But the speed at which they're growing, the enormous amount of electricity they consume and concerns about their environmental impact are fuelling a public backlash around the world.
In the US, they've become a huge issue ahead of the midterm elections on 3 November, with both Republicans and opposition Democrats coming out against their development.
It's putting opponents of data centre expansion on a collision course with US President Donald Trump, who has dismissed the pushback as a "sick conspiracy", even as public anger grows.
Here's what you need to know about the data centre boom, and why opposition is growing.
They are growing rapidly
There are about 12,250 data centres around the world, according to Data Center Map, a company that tracks both operational and pre-operational sites.
That's up sharply from 2021, when there were around 8,000 operational sites.
As the chart below shows, data centres are most densely clustered in the US which has 4,767 sites. It is followed by Europe, where the UK and Germany lead.
Data centres have typically been located near to cities where it's easier to access high voltage power lines or water resources for cooling. But as they get bigger, more are being built in rural areas. ...
[good links and maps in the article]
Then there are things like this ...
We're Detecting No Alien Civilizations Because They Were Destroyed by AI, Astrophysicist Proposes (2024)
futurism.com
... We might be heading down the same path.
If we're alone in the universe, astrophysicist Michael Garrett says it might be because aliens shared an existential problem that we're only just beginning to reckon with: powerful AI.
The advent of an artificial superintelligence (ASI), Garrett proposes in a new paper published in the journal Acta Astronautica, could be preventing the long-term survival of alien civilizations -- and perhaps impeding their evolution into space-faring, multi-planetary empires.
It's a hypothesis that might even help answer the Fermi Paradox, which asks why we still haven't detected alien civilizations when our indescribably vast universe is abundant with habitable worlds.
"Could AI be the universe's great filter' -- a threshold so hard to overcome that it prevents most life from evolving into space-faring civilizations?" Garrett, who is the Sir Bernard Lovell chair of Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, wrote in an essay for The Conversation. ...
Yazoo / Yaz - Good Times (1983)
www.youtube.com
Lyrics excerpt ...
www.azlyrics.com