The nerd in me loves this

February 11, 2025

💻 The nerd in me loves this: The world’s fastest supercomputer just went online at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The $600 million El Capitan is powered by 44,544 AMD chips. Its job is to secure the U.S. nuclear stockpile, run national security research and crunch other classified tasks. How fast is it? Its peak performance is 2.746 exaflops. That’s about 69 million times faster than a top-of-the-line MacBook.

Tags: California, online, research, security, tasks

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Severance — Official Trailer | Apple TV+

One more place to watch out for TV spoilers: A podcast about the dystopian TV series “Severance” on AppleTV+ included an ad for an episode that hadn’t aired yet. Director Ben Stiller dropped a bombshell (paywall link). Yeah, fans are peeved. “Severance” is fantastic and weird. Here’s the spoiler-free trailer if you need a new show.

$97.4 billion

What Elon Musk offered to buy OpenAI yesterday. He’s in a battle with Sam Altman, who wants OpenAI to turn a profit. Altman responded to Musk on X, writing, “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.” Ouch.

180 years old

The Jevons paradox principle, which now applies to AI. Basically, it says that as efficiency increases, so does usage. With AI models becoming more efficient and cheaper (like DeepSeek), more people will start using them every day. This is probably good news if your Nvidia stock earnings are in the toilet like mine.

16GB of RAM

No longer enough to play PC games. For open-world games that rely on visuals, the new standard is 32GB for shorter loading times, fewer stutters and smoother streaming. Here are affordable upgrade kits for DDR4 and DDR5 systems.

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Closing time at an Earlybirds Club dance party

Closing time at an Earlybirds Club dance party. It starts at 6 p.m. so folks with a job and a bedtime can still let loose. The clubs began in Chicago but are all over the U.S. now. Playlists are stacked with favorites from the ’80s, ’90s and early 2000s. Sounds fun!

10 p

10 p.m.

Less than $50

What an antique collector paid for a suspected Van Gogh painting. It was the deal of the century at a garage sale in Minnesota. Specialists are trying to prove the portrait of a fisherman, “Elimar,” is authentic. If so, it’s worth at least $15 million (paywall link). Speaking of … My Van doesn’t Gogh. It’s out of Degas. (I saw you smile right there.)

$1.39 billion

How much Americans are expected to bet on the Super Bowl. That’s an 11.2% increase from last year’s big game. If you want to play, use code KIM to get $200 in bonus bets when you bet just five bucks. Play online or download the DraftKings Sportsbook app for iPhone or Android. Fingers crossed for you!

$2.5 decillion

What Russia wanted to fine Google. That’s 33 zeros, and it’s about 237,000 times more than all the money in the world. Why? YouTube blocked some of Russia’s state-owned TV channels. A court just stepped in and blocked it. You know, in case Google was checking the couch cushions.

3,000

Fewer words spoken each day. In 2005, we said an average of 16,000 words a day. Today, that’s down to 13,000 because of texting and social media messages. Women tend to chat more than men, averaging 13,349 words a day versus 11,950. (Now, did you expect a joke here, really?)