Graphics processing units are essential to training and deploying artificial intelligence models, but they don’t come cheap. Big Tech companies like Meta, Microsoft and xAI have spent billions, amassing hundreds of thousands or even millions of them.
For those without such deep pockets, access to this kind of computing power has gotten out of reach. Recently, the state of California launched an initiative called CalCompute to look into building its own public GPU cluster for startups and non-profit researchers to use. There are similar public compute pilots in New York state and at the federal level.
Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino tells us more.
Stanford University on the San Francisco peninsula is a rarified place, so its intriguing that even 120 years after her death, there's still a mystery surrounding the death of Jane Stanford, the university's co-founder. It's a story full of tyrants, frenemies, poisoning and cover-ups that you won't want to miss.
This story was reported by Carly Severn. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz, Gabriela Glueck and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Ana De Almeida Amaral, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED.
Earlier this month, after Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire agreement, the Israeli military said it would withdraw from parts of Gaza — allowing some Palestinians displaced to the south to try to return home to the north.
Rachelle Bonja, a producer of “The Daily,” recently spoke by phone with three Gazans who were making or contemplating the journey home. One of them, Saher Alghorra, is a photojournalist who often works with The Times; another is Nidal Kuhail, a former restaurant worker whom The Times has spoken to over the course of the war.
The third is Hussein Khaled Auda, a former bodybuilder who ran a small gym in Jabalia. Mr. Auda’s story is about his family. His four young children were killed in airstrikes during the war, and his wife was seriously injured. He has been traveling back home in large part to find and bury the remains of two of his children, who had been in the rubble of his house after one of the airstrikes. We interviewed his wife, Rawa, and other relatives, and reviewed death certificates and video footage to help understand what happened to his family.
In our reporting, The Times also learned that a cousin of Mr. Auda’s was a senior leader of Hamas in Gaza who was killed during the war last year. The Times asked Mr. Auda if he himself had any ties to Hamas. He said he was not a member of Hamas and not political, and had dozens of cousins. He said he had seen the one affiliated with Hamas just a couple of times in his life.
Like other news organizations, The Times has not yet been able to send its own staff journalists into Gaza unescorted. This episode, like many other Times pieces for more than two years, seeks to help our audience understand the experiences of Gazans during a devastating war.
Guest:
Rachelle Bonja, a New York Times audio producer for “The Daily.”
Saher Alghorra, a photojournalist for The New York Times.
Background reading:
“Everything Is Gone”: Gazans return home to find devastation and little hope.
President Trump met with China’s President Xi Jinping in South Korea, where the two leaders agree to ease trade tensions after months of tariff wars and threats. More than 65,000 children could lose access to Head Start as the government shutdown threatens to cut off funding for childcare and early learning programs. And Trump’s nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. Casey Means, faces questions today in her Senate confirmation hearing.
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Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Miguel Macias, Lauren Migaki, Diane Webber, Mohamad ElBardicy and Ally Schweitzer.
It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas
We get engineering support from Damian Herring-Nathan. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
Officials in Jamaica, Haiti, and Cuba describe dozens of fatalities in the wake of Hurricane Melissa. An Illinois deputy is convicted of murdering Sonya Massey. And educators take the stand in a civil lawsuit against an assistant principal after a 6-year-old shot a teacher.
Taxes upon taxes are just one of the reasons that both financial-industry hotshots and businesses are moving out of the Big Apple. We look at what that might cost the city. A snapshot of the drinks business reveals a subtle picture of who is drinking what, and where. And the Chinese rapper that is fast becoming a global household name.
They are four times more likely to kill themselves, three times more likely to struggle with addiction, and 12 times more likely to be incarcerated than women. If that weren’t enough, record numbers of men are not getting married, not dating, not enrolling in school or working, and struggling with serious mental health issues.
In response, a cottage industry has emerged—full of influencers and paid courses claiming to teach young men how to become “high value.”
But there seems to be a deeper intractable challenge: Young people lack meaning. Fifty-eight percent of young adults say they’ve experienced little or no sense of purpose in their lives over the past month.
Shilo Brooks has a simple idea for all of it. He’s telling young men—and really, all young people—to read. Yes, read. The idea is simple: Reading great books can make stronger and better men.
He knows he’s facing an uphill battle: Reading for pleasure among American adults has dropped 40 percent in the past 20 years. In 2022, only 28 percent of men read a fiction book, compared to 47 percent of women—a 19-point gap.
Shilo doesn’t have the stereotypical profile for a “lit boy,” as Gen Z might describe him. He’s from a small town in Texas and has a thick Southern drawl. When he was a baby, his stepfather stole his mother’s savings, leaving them with nothing. And he almost didn’t go to college because he couldn’t afford it.
But today, Shilo is president and CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center and Professor of Practice in the Department of Political Science at Southern Methodist University. He has also taught at Princeton, the University of Virginia, the University of Colorado, and Bowdoin College.
His prescription is simple. Shilo says: “Great works of literature are entertaining, but they are not mere entertainment. A great book induces self-examination and spiritual expansion. When a man is starved for love, work, purpose, money, or vitality, a novel wrestling with these themes can be metabolized as energy for the heart. When a man suffers from addiction, divorce, self-loathing, or vanity, his local bookstore can become his pharmacy.”
This is the driving vision of the new podcast he just launched with The Free Press, called Old School, where he talks to guests about the books that shaped their lives: Fareed Zakaria on The Great Gatsby, Nick Cave on The Adventures of Pinocchio, Richard Dawkins on P.G. Wodehouse novels. Then there’s Coleman Hughes, Ryan Holiday, Rob Henderson, and so much more. Think of it like a boy’s book club that anyone can enjoy.
So, here’s what you’ll hear today: a conversation between Bari and Shilo about this project, and how it fulfills the desperate needs of a lost generation.
During the First World War, most of the attention, at least in the West, was focused on the Western Front.
However, the Western Front was not the only front in the war. There were actually multiple fronts, including the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, and Italy.
However, the largest of these non-Western fronts was in the East. In a front extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The war in the East was almost as brutal as in the West, with casualties almost as high.
Learn more about the Eastern Front in World War I on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
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