Vienna Scientific Cluster 4 [Photo: Alexander Gigl/EDV-Design Informationstechnologie GmbH]
The new VSC-4 system built by Lenovo checks in at #82 on the TOP500 list and is liquid cooled, leading to a debate on the future of cooling and various forms of liquid-cooling: direct contact, immersion, and phase change. Dan puts Henry and Shahin on the spot to look in the crystal ball and see if they can see it as clearly as he does. He thinks they failed.
Shifting gears, the conversation moves to cybersecurity with the news that Amazon’s home security company Ring has enlisted local police departments around the country to advertise its surveillance cameras in exchange for free Ring products and a “portal” that allows police to request footage from these cameras.
The nature of such agreements can, well, garner national attention, as we see here (and do our part). That kind of attention led to the PD cited in the news in Lakeland, FL, to clarify its relationship with Ring, saying “their agreement isn’t about fostering a particular brand of doorbell, but rather any tool that helps crime-fighting.” Several important topics come up which can easily kindle, if not ignite, passions, and they do here also. All of this is because the evidentiary benefits of actual images is not in doubt. Or is it?! An important issue in this day and age is the veracity and provenance of video feeds, which are liable to be complete fabrications. Welcome to the digital age!
After that, they do their Catch of the Week:
- Henry notes that Apple is paying Intel $1 billion for the chip maker’s smartphone-modem division in a deal driven by the upcoming transition to the next generation of wireless technology. The agreement announced Thursday comes three months after Apple AAPL, -2.12% ended a long-running dispute with one of Intel’s rivals, Qualcomm QCOM, -0.07% . That ensured Apple would have a pipeline of chips it needs for future iPhones to work on ultrafast wireless networks known as 5G. The Apple-Qualcomm truce prompted Intel INTC, -1.91% to abandon its attempts to make chips for 5G modems, effectively putting that part of its business up for grabs.
- Shahin talks about Stephen Wolfram‘s blog describing his appearance before a US Senate committee.
- Dan points us to the story about how an entire nation just got hacked. Asen Genov is pretty furious. His personal data was made public this week after records of more than 5 million Bulgarians got stolen by hackers from the country’s tax revenue office. In a country of just 7 million people, the scale of the hack means that just about every working adult has been affected.
