Dodgy EV Fire Data

Filed under "One born every minute"

Two thirds of our customers’ fraud cases start on Meta, Lloyds says

More than two thirds of fraud cases reported to Lloyds first targeted customers on Meta platforms, the bank’s head of fraud prevention has said.

Data from the banking giant shows those in their late twenties and early thirties are being reeled into scams on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which are all owned by Meta.

Common scams included ticket fraud, particularly for concerts and sporting events such as Taylor Swift’s Eras tour and Premier League football matches.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Lloyds’ fraud prevention director Liz Ziegler said 68 per cent of fraud reports from their customers started on a Meta platform.

Werner Herzog on Chickens

 

Hols

Yesterday we whizzed off down the M5 in the rain - won't rush to do that again but we're on holiday now so blogging may be even more erratic than usual. 

Not that there is much going on in the world apart from wars, division, conflict and the looming reality of totalitarian politics.

Let's have an Edith Wharton quote instead.  

In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy sorrow, one CAN remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small

Edith Wharton’s 1934 autobiography 'A Backward Glance'

Filed under "What could possibly go wrong?"

New proposals to cut bills with community batteries

• Families and businesses could benefit from cheaper energy through the use of community batteries.Families could save on bills by storing cheaper renewable able electricity and using it when demand is highest
• Call for evidence launched to explore how community batteries can be rolled out at to support working people, including renters or those living in flats, to save money
• Part of the biggest investment in community energy in UK history, giving people a stake in local clean power projects and reducing reliance on volatile fossil fuels

A call for evidence launched today (Thursday 4 June) will seek to unlock barriers so shared battery storage can be rolled out across the UK, helping communities store locally generated renewable energy and pass on the savings to households.

Pumping heat into the debate

This $1,000,000,000 AI data centre could dump 23 nuclear bombs worth of energy per day

What could be one of the world’s largest data centres – the warehouses that power AI – could dump 23 atomic bombs’ worth of energy per day.

The 40,000-acre Stratos Project Area, which would be kept ticking by a gas power plant, was approved by Box Elder County in Utah this month.

It will eventually gobble up about 9GW of power every single day – the UK generated 22.7GW of power yesterday, according to the National Grid...

If you need more analogies, it’s the equivalent of: ‘40,000 Walmart Supercenters, 2-3 New York Cities and 13 Back To The Future DeLorean time machines.’

According to... er... AI -

Location and Size

The Stratos Project Area spans approximately 40,000 acres in western Box Elder County, Utah, primarily in Hansel Valley and Locomotive Valley, divided by a small mountain range. The site is remote, about 15–20 miles from the nearest town, and includes unincorporated land, private property, and areas near Hill Air Force Base and Utah National Guard facilities

Not everyone can do monotasking

Scientists have long said we can’t multitask. A new study says we can

Researchers have long said that the human brain is not set up to multitask — but new research is challenging that understanding.

Experts previously explained that when we believe we’re multitasking, we’re actually just quickly switching between tasks. That’s because the area of the brain that manages thinking, the prefrontal cortex, can only really handle one thing at a time.

But another region of the brain involved in memory lends a helping hand over time, new research has shown. When people needed to perform image sorting tests over the course of weeks, the tests initially activated the prefrontal cortex and later activated the temporal cortex.

Over time, the brain is remodeled, Maximilian Riesenhuber, a professor of neuroscience at Georgetown University School of Medicine, explained in a statement. The prefrontal cortex passes responsibility to the temporal cortex and is free for “whatever else you want to do, increasing your capacity.”

 

Ed demonstrates monotasking