Good morning. We’ve reached the end of the week, and I’m very excited for a calm weekend. Let’s get into the tech news.
1. Dell and CSIRO team up
Dell has built a high-performance computer (HPC) system for CSIRO, with the national science agency hoping to provide a significant boost to Australian scientific research.
The system is called Virga, and it’s an HPC – an amalgamation of several supercomputers into one cutting-edge machine, comprised of Dell PowerEdge XE9640 servers, with Nvidia H100 Tensor Core GPUs, each with 94GB of RAM. It’s built to cater for AI-powered workflows and is liquid-cooled. It’s based at the Centre for Disease Control’s Hume Data Centre in Canberra.
“AI is used in practically all fields of research at CSIRO, such as developing world-leading flexible printed solar panels, predicting fires, measuring wheat crops and developing vaccines, just to name a few,” CSIRO’s digital, national facilities and collections executive director Professor Elanor Huntington said.
“High-performance computing systems like Virga also play an important role in CSIRO’s robotics and sensing work and are crucial to the recently launched National Robotics Strategy to drive competitiveness, and productivity of Australian industry.”
2. Yes, 7News on YouTube was hacked
The 7News YouTube channel suffered a hack yesterday with users reporting that the broadcaster had started to display an Elon Musk-impersonating cryptocurrency scams. The channel appears to still be down, after it was rebranded as a Tesla account.
“Seven is investigating and working with YouTube to resolve the situation as soon as possible,” a spokesperson told the SMH.
3. Speaking of Elon
Remember earlier this month when Tesla shareholders voted in favour of giving CEO Elon Musk his $US56 billion payout? Well, the Tesla company has now taken that vote to court, enacting the next step of the exceptional payout. Per Reuters, Tesla makes the argument that because shareholders voted for it, then Musk is entitled to it, after a Judge rescinded the payout earlier this year.
4. Uh oh
Bloomberg reports that Microsoft has been informing customers that a Russian state-sponsored hacking group breached the company’s servers and that user emails were viewed. Back in January, Microsoft told customers that Russian state actors had been trying to breach customer communications, including government customers.
5. Zuckerberg’s on one
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has lashed out at competing AI companies with closed models, saying that such companies think that they are trying to “create God”. Per TechCrunch he said, “I get why, if you’re in some AI lab, you want to feel like what you’re doing is super important, right? It’s like, ‘We’re building the one true thing for the future.’ But I just think, like, realistically, that’s not how stuff works, right” Zuckerberg said. It’s kind of refreshing to see a tech CEO take a step back and not make such sweeping statements (eyes on you, Altman).
BONUS ITEM: Behold: your new time waster.
I made a website. it’s called “one million checkboxes dot com”. it has one million checkboxes on it.
— nolen (@itseieio) June 26, 2024
checking a box checks it for everyone.
that’s it. have fun! pic.twitter.com/KBF4UqCMJc
Have a lovely day, and a great weekend!
Image: CSIRO, Shutterstock