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People Are Protesting Data Centers--but Embracing the Factories That Supply Them

WIRED

As the data center backlash grows, support is growing for server factories and the hundreds of jobs they're expected to bring. Last month, Pamela Griffin and two other residents of Taylor, Texas, took to the lectern at a city council meeting to object to a data center project. But later, they sat back as council members discussed a proposed tech factory. Griffin didn't speak up against that development. A similar contrast is repeating in communities across the US.


Thirsty Fabs

Communications of the ACM

This year, Samsung is planning to open a semiconductor chip manufacturing plant in Taylor, TX, that will cost the company an estimated 17 billion. Intel is building a 20-billion facility in Columbus, OH, and industry leaders GlobalFoundries, TSMC, and Texas Instruments are building their own so-called chip fabs in the U.S. as well. This construction boom has been spurred in part by increasing demand for the smartphones, personal electronic devices, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) services that depend on chips, and the 50 billion in funding that the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act allocated to American semiconductor manufacturing has proven to be a strong incentive. Yet the boom is global, with new plants being developed all over the world. As companies plan these new chip fabs, one of the first questions they need to answer is where they are going to get their water.


Who Killed Albert Einstein? From Open Data to Murder Mystery Games

Barros, Gabriella A. B., Green, Michael Cerny, Liapis, Antonios, Togelius, Julian

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

This paper presents a framework for generating adventure games from open data. Focusing on the murder mystery type of adventure games, the generator is able to transform open data from Wikipedia articles, OpenStreetMap and images from Wikimedia Commons into WikiMysteries. Every WikiMystery game revolves around the murder of a person with a Wikipedia article and populates the game with suspects who must be arrested by the player if guilty of the murder or absolved if innocent. Starting from only one person as the victim, an extensive generative pipeline finds suspects, their alibis, and paths connecting them from open data, transforms open data into cities, buildings, non-player characters, locks and keys and dialog options. The paper describes in detail each generative step, provides a specific playthrough of one WikiMystery where Albert Einstein is murdered, and evaluates the outcomes of games generated for the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.