Month: May 2023

Enlarge / AMD's Instinct AI accelerators aren't as widely used as competing products from Nvidia. (credit: AMD)

The hardware that has enabled and driven the recent explosion of generative AI products has primarily been manufactured by Nvidia. That's thanks in part to its dominant position in the consumer and workstation graphics markets, plus the well-established CUDA libraries and its AI-accelerating Tensor cores.

Although Microsoft uses "tens of thousands" of Nvidia GPUs in its Azure data centers, Bloomberg reports that the company is also working with AMD to improve the AI capabilities of its GPUs. Although extremely light on details, the report says Microsoft is contributing "support" and "engineering resources" to AMD to improve its products' performance in AI workloads.

Bloomberg also says that AMD is working on a Microsoft-developed AI accelerator named "Athena," which The Information reported details on last month. A Microsoft spokesperson, however, flatly denied that AMD was involved in Athena's development.

Enlarge / The Prius used to be considered quite cool back when it was the first mainstream hybrid on sale. Now in its fifth generation, the new one finally looks really cool. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

"It looks fast," said my neighbor as they eyed the sleek blue car parked in the shadow of their big BMW X5. That's understandable; from time to time, there are quite fast cars parked in my spot, and this one looked the part, with a steeply canted windshield and big open-spoke alloy wheels wrapped with low-profile tires. In this case, looks are deceiving because the car in question was not a sportscar, it was the new Toyota Prius. Which, no, is not fast at all. But it is rather economical.

Design

The new Prius is a relatively small car by 2023 standards; even with the slight growth in width, it measures 181.1 inches (4,600 mm) long and 70.2 inches (1,783 mm) wide and, in Limited trim, stands 56.3 inches (1,430 mm) high. (Smaller wheels drop 0.4 inches/10 mm in the process.) In fact, that's about as tall as a Corolla or Camry, yet neither of those cars has the stage presence of this Prius.

That's because it has had a radical style upgrade for its fifth generation. It's lower and wider than before and no longer looks like two different cars crashed into each other. Instead, there's a more acute A pillar than you'd find in a Lamborghini Huracan, and the aerodynamicist's touch is clear in the scalloped sides and cut-off tail.

Enlarge / CDC Director Rochelle Walensky testifying before Congress. (credit: Drew Angerer)

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky announced that she'd be stepping down from her position at the end of June. The announcement came the same day that the World Health Organization announced that COVID no longer constituted an emergency, and Walensky's resignation letter made reference to that: “The end of the COVID-19 public health emergency marks a tremendous transition for our country, for public health, and in my tenure as CDC Director.”

Walensky took on the directorship of the CDC at a very challenging time. The agency was dealing with a number of self-inflicted wounds, such as the failure of its initial tests for SARS-CoV-2 and confused advice on the value of masks. Layered on top of that was a degree of political interference from a White House that wanted to minimize the risk and damage of the pandemic. This included the sidelining of CDC experts who gave realistically grim warnings at the start of the pandemic and the editing of public health guidance by White House political appointees. By the start of the Biden administration, the once-flagship public health organization had lost a lot of its credibility and suffered from severe morale problems.

Walensky took on the task of restoring trust and reforming the agency, starting a restructuring program meant to get CDC to focus on getting the data needed to craft public health advice rather than generate academic publications. Better communication to the public was also a major goal of the reforms.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | asadykov)

US authorities have seized another major Z-Library domain but still haven't been able to wipe the pirate book site off the Internet. Z-Library claims to offer over 13 million books, up from 11 million since US authorities launched their first major operation against Z-Library late last year.

"Unfortunately, one of our primary login domains was seized today," Z-Library wrote in a Wednesday message on its Telegram account. "Therefore, we recommend using the domain singlelogin.re to log in to your account, as well as to register. Please share this domain with others."

In November, US authorities charged Russian nationals Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova with criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud, and money laundering for allegedly operating Z-Library. The US said at the time that it seized 250 "interrelated web domains" run by Z-Library and that Napolsky and Ermakova were arrested in Argentina at the request of the US government.

Enlarge / Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel during a Bloomberg Television interview on the closing day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on May 26, 2022. (credit: Getty | Jason Alden)

Things are looking rosy for Moderna, as it reported unexpected first-quarter profits Thursday. But the company is not wavering in its plans to dramatically hike the price of its COVID-19 vaccines.

While financial analysts expected the company to post revenue of $1.18 billion and a loss of $1.77 per share in the first quarter, the company reported $1.86 billion in revenue with a small profit of 19 cents per share.

The company forecasts $5 billion in COVID vaccine sales for this year.