Germany is the European country that has been most engaged in the process of mass migration that plagues the continent since 2015.
The former German leader Angela Merkel, the Godmother of these frankly suicidal policies, has left current chancellor Olaf Scholz leading a highly unpopular government, having to deal with the population’s deep dissatisfaction with the present state of German society.
In an attempt to remedy the situation – at least partially – Germany has notified the European Union’s executive branch that it will be enacting temporary border controls at its frontiers with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland.
This decision goes a step beyond a move taken last month to strengthen checks on its eastern border.
The notification will enable Germany to carry out the same systematic checks at these borders that it has conducted on its frontier with Austria since 2015.
Associated Press reported:
“The government has responded over the past week to intense pressure to address the arrival of large numbers of migrants following a pair of state elections that brought poor results for the governing parties and gains for the far-right Alternative for Germany.
It has announced draft legislation to ease deportations of unsuccessful asylum-seekers as Chancellor OIaf Scholz met Friday with the opposition leader and two leading state governors for what he called a ‘friendly and constructive exchange’ on migration issues.”
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Like in most countries in Europe, the shelters for migrants and refugees across Germany have been filling up in recent months.
Unmanageable numbers of asylum-seekers are arriving daily, adding to the more than 1 million Ukrainians who have arrived since the start of the war.
The new border checks now to be implemented will initially be carried out for 10 days, with the real possibility of an extension for up to two months.
Politico reported:
“This is the latest move amid the German government’s efforts to crack down on illegal migration and curb the growing numbers of asylum seekers entering Germany, many of whom are now crossing the borders of Poland and the Czech Republic.
Last month, Germany announced temporary checks on its eastern borders with Poland and the Czech Republic, and joint patrols with police from Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic have been carried out along the borders.
[…] Germany already has stationary border checks with Austria, which were introduced in 2015 and have been periodically renewed since. Faeser once again renewed the border controls with Austria on Monday.”
The German Police has so far (in 2023) detected 98,000 unauthorized entries into Germany, up from 92,000 in all of 2022.
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AI’S ELECTRICITY USE IS SPIKING SO FAST IT’LL SOON USE AS MUCH POWER AS AN ENTIRE COUNTRY
AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard consume an astronomical amount of electricity and water — or, more precisely, the massive data centers that power them do.
And according to the latest estimates, those energy demands are rapidly ballooning to epic proportions.
In a recent analysis published in the journal Joule, data scientist Alex de Vries at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands found that by 2027, these server farms could use anywhere between 85 to 134 terawatt hours of energy per year.
That’s roughly on par with the annual electricity use of Argentina, the Netherlands, or Sweden, as the New York Times points out, or 0.5 percent of the entire globe’s energy demands. Sound familiar? The much-lampooned crypto industry spiked past similar power consumption thresholds in recent years.
It’s a massive carbon footprint that experts say should force us to reconsider the huge investments being made in the AI space — not to mention the eye-wateringly resource-intensive way that tech giants like OpenAI and Google operate.
We Hunger
Coming to an exact figure is difficult, since AI companies like OpenAI are secretive about their energy usage. De Vries settled on estimating their consumption by examining the sales of Nvidia A100 servers, which make up an estimated 95 percent of the AI industry’s underlying infrastructure.
“Each of these Nvidia servers, they are power-hungry beasts,” de Vries told the NYT.
It’s a worrying trend that’s leading some experts to argue that we should take a step back and reevaluate the trend.
“Maybe we need to ideally slow a bit down to start applying solutions that we have,” Roberto Verdecchia, an assistant professor in the University of Florence, told the newspaper. “Let’s not make a new model to improve only its accuracy and speed. But also, let’s take a big breath and look at how much are we burning in terms of environmental resources.”
Many companies operating in California in particular may face opposition earlier than you’d think. Over the weekend, California governor Gavin Newsom signed two major climate disclosure laws, forcing companies like OpenAI and Google, among roughly 10,000 other firms, to disclose how much carbon they produce by 2026.
Even with increased scrutiny from regulators, the space is still largely governing itself, and AI companies will likely continue to burn through copious amounts of energy to keep their models going.
There is, however, a financial incentive to lower these costs through technological advances, given the current burn rate. And considering the massive environmental footprint, any breakthroughs can’t come soon enough.
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White House apologizes for glaring national security blunder after publishing photo showing faces of US Special Forces as they met Joe Biden in Israel
- Republicans slammed ‘gross incompetence’ by the White House
- The picture was on the White House Instagram page for hours
- The White House eventually deleted it and apologized
The White House has been forced to delete a photo of President Joe Biden meeting U.S. special forces in Israel – which showed their faces and could have revealed their identities.
It was already known that a small group of U.S. special forces are in Israel advising on how to potentially rescue scores of hostages, including Americans, held by terror group Hamas in Gaza.
The image of Biden shaking hands with them during his visit to Israel on Wednesday was published on the official White House Instagram page for hours and garnered thousands of likes and comments.
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