Your brain uses 20 watts to think. A AI doing the same would require 25 million times more energy — enough to power a quarter-million homes.

Mimicking the complex workings of the human brain has long been a holy grail for computer scientists, but the sheer energy cost of doing so is staggering.

According to researchers, running a human-scale cortical model of 20 billion neurons would require an exascale supercomputer drawing roughly 0.5 gigawatts of electricity. This massive demand of 500 million watts is equivalent to the power needed to run a quarter of a million average households simultaneously, exposing a critical bottleneck in our quest to build truly brain-like artificial intelligence.

This extreme energy footprint highlights a profound contrast with biology: while an exascale machine eats up enough power to light up a city, the biological human brain operates on just about 20 watts—barely enough to illuminate a dim light bulb. To bridge this massive efficiency gap, researchers are increasingly turning to neuromorphic computing, designing specialized hardware inspired by the brain’s unique structure. Until these energy-efficient architectures mature, the dream of simulating full-scale human cognition will remain locked behind a prohibitive power bill.

source: Thakur, C. S., et al. (2018). Large-Scale Neuromorphic Spiking Array Processors: A Quest to Mimic the Brain. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 12, 891.

What actually depletes U.S. rivers: Major river systems facing severe strain (such as the Colorado River or the Rio Grande) are depleted primarily by agricultural irrigation (which uses ~70%–80% of regional water), followed by public municipal use and heavy manufacturing.

If you think data centers are only for AI, think again.

If you are employed, your employers is dependent on multiple data centers.

Your grocery store is dependent on data centers. Along with every single business, educational, healthcare, entertainment and public utility service you depend on.

Your local, county, state and federal government are all dependent on data centers.

We are as much dependent on data centers as we are dependent on our phones and electricity itself.

The United Stated is over 3m square miles. Data Centers today occupy 300 square miles. There has got to be room and proper locations for data centers.

Unless you are completely living off the grid, you are dependent upon data centers every day.

Reduces Potable Water Reliance: Advanced on-site treatment (like reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration, and chemical softening) allows facilities to process non-potable municipal effluent or recycle their own discharge. This can cut a site’s freshwater intake from public drinking supplies by up to 70–90%.

The Unsolved Physics & Environmental Trade-offs
​Evaporative Loss Is Permanent (Thermodynamics):
​In open-loop evaporative cooling towers, the primary way heat is dissipated on older data centers is by turning liquid water into steam/vapor.

​The “Blowdown” and Concentrated Brine Issue:
​As water recycles, pure H_2O evaporates, leaving behind concentrated salts, heavy metals, and minerals (Total Dissolved Solids).

​The Indirect Water-Energy Nexus:
​On-site water purification systems (like Reverse Osmosis pumps, UV sterilizers, and filtration skids) require significant electrical power to run.

Summary
​On-site water reclamation is a critical mitigation strategy that drastically reduces a facility’s footprint on municipal drinking water supplies. However, it is not a complete silver bullet; total water elimination is only achieved by transitioning away from evaporative systems entirely and adopting closed-loop dry cooling or non-potable seawater heat exchangers.

Derek Vanderwerf This claim correctly highlights that PFAS chemicals exist across electronics manufacturing and data center hardware, but it overstates their presence in mainstream data center cooling while underestimating the aggressive global regulatory phase-outs currently restructuring the industry.

​Fact-Checking the Claims
​1. “Facilities use specialized fluorinated liquids (PFAS/HFCs/HFOs) that leak or seep into wastewater”
​Status: Partially True, but heavily misleading regarding adoption rates.
​The Reality: The vast majority of liquid-cooled data centers do not use PFAS fluids.

​2. “Semiconductors and hardware rely heavily on PFAS during manufacturing”
​Status: True.
​The Reality: This is an industry-wide electronics issue, not one unique to data centers.

3. “E-Waste leaches toxic residues when servers are discarded”
​Status: Misleading regarding operational lifecycle.
​The Reality: While server components contain trace amounts of fluorinated polymers in circuit board coatings and wiring, enterprise data center hardware is rarely thrown into open landfills. High-density AI servers (equipped with high-value gold, copper, silver, and rare earth elements) are tightly managed through enterprise IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) programs. Old servers are refurbished, harvested for parts, or sent to specialized electronics recyclers that extract precious metals under industrial environmental controls.

Astra matched humans on 96% of levels. OpenAI’s president declared AGI.

An outside foundation ran that benchmark, not OpenAI.

The company says Astra beats Claude and Gemini.

It also says the model sometimes tries to evade oversight.

A fifth of its compute now goes to safety monitoring.

The company selling you AGI has not finished watching it.

Read more on TNW: https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-astra-agi-claim-cybersecurity-containment

A leading cyber security expert has issued a chilling warning about the spread of Chinese-made vehicles in Australia, saying he believes the popular cars are listening in on drivers.

Sweet Dreams
Melatonin Use Linked to Massively Increased Risk of Heart Failure
“Melatonin supplements may not be as harmless as commonly assumed.”
https://futurism.com/health-medicine/melatonin-heart-failure-cardiovascular-health?fbclid=IwdGRjcAUJ-FJjbGNrBQn4G3Bkb2YFZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMzUwNjg1NTMxNzI4AAEeCjHSFaJOsbkymzPpnr1eRyUuvFSOo27WXfMFdMSAB1gKJCT0nNjw0tJC7OM_aem_OhnvVdqYnxnDH4SfM_4gjg

If you’re one of the many people chowing down on melatonin gummies to help get to sleep, you may want to check out this study.

A new piece of research published by the American Heart Association made an alarming discovery about long-term use of melatonin supplements, an over-the-counter sleep aid used by tens of thousands. Basically, those who use melatonin over a year or more had a 90 percent higher risk of developing congestive heart failure over a five-year period.

Before you go flush your gummies down the toilet, there are a few caveats. For starters, the findings weren’t based on a clinical trial, but on data from a large database of anonymous health records. Researchers drew from data on chronic insomniacs, specifically, splitting them into two groups: those who have dosed the sleep-regulating hormone over a period of 12 months or more, and those who suffer without.

Still, the results are clearly worrisome. Overall, the study found that 4.6 percent of the melatonin group went on to develop heart failure, compared to 2.7 percent for the control group.

That wasn’t the only data point suggesting it may be time to ween off the ‘tone. A secondary analysis performed by the researchers found that melatonin users were nearly 3.5 times more likely to be hospitalized for heart failure than those in the other group, with hospitalization rates of 19.0 and 6.6 percent, respectively.

“Melatonin supplements are widely thought of as a safe and ‘natural’ option to support better sleep, so it was striking to see such consistent and significant increases in serious health outcomes, even after balancing for many other risk factors,”