#AI-powered publishing solutions

[jonah-miles-smith]

Transforming STM and Educational Content Distribution with End-to-End Digital Publishing

In today’s fast-paced, technology-driven world, the need for streamlined, efficient, and innovative solutions in digital publishing is more critical than ever. For sectors like STM (Science, Technology, and Medicine) and education, digital publishing plays a pivotal role in disseminating information, fostering learning, and supporting research and knowledge sharing. End-to-end digital publishing solutions have emerged as an essential tool for organizations, providing a comprehensive approach to creating, managing, and distributing digital content effectively.

What Are End-to-End Digital Publishing Solutions?

End-to-end digital publishing solutions refer to a complete system that supports the entire lifecycle of content creation, management, and distribution. These solutions incorporate tools, platforms, and technologies that allow publishers to handle everything from content creation to the final output, whether it’s in the form of eBooks, journals, interactive content, or educational materials. These solutions are designed to cater to the specific needs of industries like STM and education, where accuracy, speed, and accessibility are paramount.

Key Components of End-to-End Digital Publishing Solutions

Content Creation The foundation of any digital publishing effort begins with content creation. For STM and educational publishers, content can range from research articles, journals, textbooks, and online courses, to multimedia-rich educational resources. Advanced tools for content creation include word processors, LaTeX integration, image editing tools, and video creation platforms. Content can be created by multiple authors across different geographical locations, with integrated cloud collaboration tools that enable real-time updates and feedback.

Content Management and Collaboration Managing a large volume of content is no easy task, especially when content is continuously being updated, reviewed, or revised. A centralized content management system (CMS) allows publishers to track and manage content, ensuring a seamless workflow between authors, editors, and production teams. Collaboration tools within a CMS are particularly useful in the STM field, where multiple experts often need to provide feedback and make revisions. Educational publishers benefit similarly, as multiple stakeholders—teachers, instructional designers, and technologists—can collaborate on the content and structure of materials.

Metadata and SEO Optimization For STM and educational publishers, metadata plays a crucial role in ensuring that digital content is easily discoverable by readers, researchers, and students. An end-to-end publishing solution incorporates metadata management, which ensures that each piece of content is properly tagged, categorized, and searchable. This is vital for STM publishers, whose content needs to be highly accurate and discoverable for research purposes. Additionally, SEO optimization ensures that educational content reaches the right audience via search engines.

Content Formatting and Conversion The next step in the digital publishing process is formatting and conversion. For STM publishers, content needs to be formatted for various platforms such as academic journals, PDFs, or eBooks. Educational content may need to be converted into e-learning modules or interactive PDFs. End-to-end solutions automate the conversion process into multiple formats while ensuring the integrity of the content remains intact. This is especially important in STEM, where visual clarity and data accuracy are critical.

Interactive and Multimedia Integration Modern digital publishing in education requires the integration of multimedia elements such as video lectures, interactive quizzes, and virtual labs. These elements engage learners and enhance the learning experience. In STM, interactive graphs, datasets, and simulations are often embedded into content to allow readers to interact with complex information. End-to-end solutions support seamless integration of these multimedia elements, providing educational content with interactivity and engagement while maintaining scientific accuracy.

Digital Distribution Once content is created, managed, and formatted, the next step is distribution. An end-to-end digital publishing solution ensures that content is accessible across various digital platforms—websites, mobile apps, learning management systems (LMS), and even e-commerce platforms. For STM publishers, digital libraries and repositories (such as PubMed and JSTOR) are essential for distributing research and scholarly work to global audiences. Educational publishers rely on distribution through e-learning platforms, school portals, and academic bookstores to reach students and instructors.

Analytics and Reporting Analytics and reporting are key components of a comprehensive publishing solution. By integrating real-time data and user analytics, STM and educational publishers can assess how their content is being consumed, identify popular articles or textbooks, and gather feedback on how educational materials are helping students learn. This data-driven approach allows publishers to refine their offerings, improve user engagement, and better serve their target audience.

Monetization and Licensing For both STM and educational publishers, monetization plays a significant role in the digital publishing process. End-to-end solutions incorporate tools for subscription management, pay-per-view access, licensing, and rights management. For STM publishers, this can involve licensing research papers, journals, or patents, while educational publishers might offer paid course content, digital textbooks, or training modules. These systems help streamline revenue generation through content while ensuring compliance with intellectual property laws.

The Benefits of End-to-End Digital Publishing Solutions for STM and Education

Improved Efficiency and Workflow By integrating all stages of the publishing process into one unified solution, publishers can automate repetitive tasks, reduce manual intervention, and speed up the time it takes to publish new content. This results in faster distribution of research findings, educational materials, and academic publications.

Scalability As both the STM and education sectors continue to expand digitally, scalability is critical. End-to-end solutions are designed to grow alongside these industries, accommodating the increasing volume of content, users, and platforms. They can easily handle a growing repository of research papers, educational materials, and multimedia content.

Enhanced Accessibility Accessibility is a core value in both education and scientific communication. End-to-end solutions ensure that content is easily accessible to users across the globe, regardless of their device, location, or internet connection. These platforms also offer features like text-to-speech, closed captioning, and language localization, making content more inclusive.

Data-Driven Insights Analytics features integrated into digital publishing solutions help publishers track content performance and make data-driven decisions to optimize their offerings. Understanding how users interact with content allows STM and educational publishers to refine their strategies, improve engagement, and enhance the quality of their resources.

Cost-Effective Solutions Traditional publishing methods often require heavy investment in printing, distribution, and physical storage. By going digital, publishers reduce these costs significantly. An end-to-end digital publishing solution streamlines the process, leading to cost-effective solutions for both content creation and distribution.

Conclusion

In the rapidly evolving world of STM and education publishing, end-to-end digital publishing solutions are essential for staying competitive and relevant. By providing a comprehensive framework for content creation, management, distribution, and monetization, these solutions offer organizations the tools they need to meet the demands of their audiences and stay ahead of the curve. Whether it’s streamlining research distribution, enhancing e-learning experiences, or driving engagement, end-to-end solutions are key to the future of digital publishing in these industries.

[trendoptimizer]

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[southernsolarpunk]

Hey what the fuck is this news story?

“ But the world’s largest economies are already there: The total fertility rate among the OECD’s 38 member countries dropped to just 1.5 children per woman in 2022 from 3.3 children in 1960. That’s well below the “replacement level” of 2.1 children per woman needed to keep populations constant.

That means the supply of workers in many countries is quickly diminishing.

In the 1960s, there were six people of working age for every retired person, according to the World Economic Forum. Today, the ratio is closer to three-to-one. By 2035, it’s expected to be two-to-one.

Top executives at publicly traded US companies mentioned labor shortages nearly 7,000 times in earnings calls over the last decade, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis last week.

“A reduction in the share of workers can lead to labor shortages, which may raise the bargaining power of employees and lift wages — all of which is ultimately inflationary,” Simona Paravani-Mellinghoff, managing director at BlackRock, wrote in an analysis last year. “

Is this seriously how normal people think? Improving the bargaining power of workers and increased wages are bad?

“ And while net immigration has helped offset demographic problems facing rich countries in the past, the shrinking population is now a global phenomenon. “This is critical because it implies advanced economies may start to struggle to ‘import’ labour from such places either via migration or sourcing goods,” wrote Paravani-Mellinghoff.

By 2100, only six countries are expected to be having enough children to keep their populations stable: Africa’s Chad, Niger and Somalia, the Pacific islands of Samoa and Tonga, and Tajikistan, according to research published by the Lancet, a medical journal.

BlackRock’s expert advises her clients to invest in inflation-linked bonds, as well as inflation-hedging commodities like energy, industrial metals and agriculture and livestock.

Import labor via migration or sourcing goods? My brother in Christ they are modern day slaves!! I feel like I’m in backwards town reading this what the fuck?!

“ Elon Musk, father of 12 children, has remarked that falling birthrates will lead to “a civilization that ends not with a bang but a whimper, in adult diapers.”

While his words are incendiary, they’re not entirely wrong

P&G and Kimberly-Clark, which together make up more than half of the US diaper market, have seen baby diaper sales decline over the past few years. But adult diapers sales, they say, are a bright spot in their portfolios. “

Oh now the guy with a breeding kink is going to lecture us. Great. /s

“ The AI solution: Some business leaders and technologists see the boom in productivity through artificial intelligence as a potential solution.

“Here are the facts. We are not having enough children, and we have not been having enough children for long enough that there is a demographic crisis, former Google CEO and executive chairman Eric Schmidt said at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London last year.

“In aggregate, all the demographics say there’s going to be shortage of humans for jobs. Literally too many jobs and not enough people for at least the next 30 years,” Schmidt said.

Oh god not the AI tech bros coming into this shit too. Wasn’t the purpose of improving tech to give people more free time? So they can relax and spend time with family more and actually enjoy life? Isn’t our economy already bloated with useless pencil-pushing number-crunching desk jobs that ultimately don’t serve a purpose?

I’m not going to post the entire article but give it a read. It’s… certainly something. Anyway degrowth is the way of the future.

[darkmaga-returns]

While Oracle co-founder, executive chairman, and CTO Larry Ellison is busy trying to position his company as just the right provider of future centralized surveillance systems powered by AI and containing massive amounts of sensitive information – Oracle’s existing solutions are suffering embarrassing data breaches.

Two reported recent incidents affecting Oracle Cloud, and Oracle Health – a subsidiary providing software for the healthcare industry – revealed not only technical shortcomings but also the giant’s puzzling lack of transparency, which reports say extremely frustrated those affected.

In fact, Oracle continued to deny that the first breach happened at all – even as customers were starting to confirm it.

A hacker calling themselves “rose87168” earlier in March offered data belonging to six million Oracle Cloud customers, only for Oracle to tell Bleeping Computer, “There has been no breach of Oracle Cloud. The published credentials are not for the Oracle Cloud. No Oracle Cloud customers experienced a breach or lost any data.”

[wordsandrobots]

A couple of years ago, I attended a (virtual) conference where one of the main topics was the impact of so-called 'AI' tools on my particular industry. I work in scholarly publishing (on the publisher side -- I know, I know; for what it's worth, I am at least at a company that's actively trying to drive reform, is anti-impact factor, tries to reinforce the value of the work over the journal name, etc) and the application of 'generative AI' to facilitate plagiarism/fake papers is an obvious risk in this sector. Such software could easily be used to overwhelm the (meagre) defences journals have against such things, especially with the pressures placed on academics to get their work into 'high impact' publications above all else. The threat of 'paper-mills' (operations paid to seek publication by fraudulent means) ramping up via the use of ChatGP was clear and present amid those heady days of the initial hype-push.

What's stuck with me from that conference is a panel participant pointing out that 'AI' hasn't created any *new* problems; it's just accelerated existing ones. That is, fraud in science and science publishing has been an issue as long as scholarly publishing has existed as an industry. You don't need a fancy tool to generate you a fake paper. It helps, no doubt, but it's not a necessary step. And yes, it makes detection harder. But the actual solution here -- the way to put a stop to fake papers, dodgy authorship claims, and all the other variations on trying to beef up an academic's publication record for career gains -- doesn't lie in some technological arms-race between plagiarism-detection and paper-fabrication. We need to change the culture. We need to put a stop to the rewards for this kind of behaviour, by assessing academics by the actual value and quality of their research, without the proxy-step provided by place of publication.

(For the uninitiated, it is a huge problem in science that certain journals -- such as the big three of Nature, Cell and Science -- are seen as *the* place where groundbreaking research is published. Not only does this expose the English-language bias within global research, it creates the idea that to 'make it', you must publish somewhere like that, rather than just, you know, doing good solid work. Journals, big name or not, also have a history of selecting for headline-making research. So on the one hand, institutions are judging their employees' careers by their citations, not their work, and on the other, you absolutely cannot trust journals not to get dollar-signs in their eyes when someone comes along claiming that e.g. a certain vaccine actually causes an unrelated health condition. To pick a deliberate, very-specific example. On top of all this, peer review is *terrible* at catching faked results because it has to be approached in good-faith. Most of the time, fraud is only caught in hindsight, once the work has had time to circulate in the community, at which point wider damage has been done.)

Now, one of the reasons I haven't blogged much about so-called 'AI' is that my hatred for it is pre-rational. What I mean is, I hate 'generative AI' with the power of a thousand burning suns. I hate it on a conceptual level. The idea of feeding real people's work, their art, into a machine and have it churn out an approximation of that same work and art is abhorrent to me. I view it as a mockery of skills I have devoted my life to. If it could produce truly breathtaking imagery and crystal-sharp prose, I would still feel the same revulsion at the thought of removing intent from an act of communication, at the idea we should be content with bathetic mirrors in place of engaging with actual human beings and what they can do.

Separate from this, I believe there is good cause to be highly doubtful about the tools that have been pushed on the public over the last few years. I haven't used them myself (see above) but everything I've seen suggests they just aren't very good. It's painfully obvious how they can be/will be/are being used to devalue people's labour, thus strengthening corporations. There's the destruction of the information ecosystem that comes from integrating software intended to reproduce tone instead of facts into major search engines. There's the impact on the actual ecosystem of pouring resources and power into this technology. There's the simple detail that a lot of the people pushing this stuff are, frankly, just the worst.

However, I am extremely, painfully aware I am the wrong person to make rational arguments against these tools because what's actually driving my objection is disgust. I'm going to assume the worst about this particular kind of automation simply on the basis that I can't stand its existence.

There may be good, productive uses for this kind of technology! I can't tell you what they might be because I'm too busy looking for the bit where my worst opinions are validated. That's where I am on this. I actively have to guard my tongue around some of my colleagues, to keep from railing at how gullible I think they're being, buying into these things.

So yeah. Not a good place for making solid arguments. But that point from two years ago -- 'AI' is not creating any new problems.

I think it's easy to lose track of that. Consider the environmental impact. In order for you to read this, some server, somewhere, needs to be powered and cooled. The device you are reading this on is likely made from relatively rare materials that have a history of being source via destructive means (both to the environment and the people involved in the extraction process). I don't say that as a guilt-trip; I'm writing this via the same means. It's simply that the current landscape of our societies is dependent on things that comes at a cost to the planet and our fellow humans. That cost is made worse by rampant capitalism, but even under ideal conditions, mitigating it will require rethinking massive amounts of infrastructure.

This is not an excuse to make things worse. I want to be very clear about that. Nor am I claiming these issues are insoluble. It's simply a good example of 'AI' being an exaggerated case of an existing problem, namely how to balance the utility of modern communication technology against the extractive activity required to build it. As with many things, the glib answer is 'don't do capitalism' and, well, err, that kind of is the answer, reorientating away from the maximisation of profit above all else and from 'endless growth' doctrine. But crucially, that answer has nothing to do with 'AI'. If the hype-train collapsed tomorrow and everyone realised they've been buying snake-oil, and somehow the tech sector didn't collectively burn to the ground about it, we'd still have a problem to solve.

Because the problem isn't new.

That 'summarisation' tool Google or Adobe have swung on you, that shortens text with no regard for the actual information contained within what it's reducing is not some novel horror; it's just an acceleration of the same approach to design that sees 'engagement' as the primary driver, detached from what is actually materially happening to cause everyone to flock to a single place. MidJourney or what-have-you, allowing X or Y group to churn out endless cloying representations of their ideal reality, is just bad Photoshop composites with less effort required on the part of the person pushing the button. People will airbrush reality whether they have to do it with a prompt or an actual airbrush. We know this! Thomas Kinkade made a whole flipping career off it! It's the heart of mass-media advertising, to cheaply reproduce visions of simpler worlds for the sake of selling you something.

The truth is, grifters are going to grift, with whatever tools they have at their disposal. As long as there is a market for snake-oil, an incentive to cheat, a reason for people to be dissatisfied with their lot, there is going to be space for someone to sell an everything-app. A quick solution. An easy fix. We don't address that by playing whack-a-mole with every single dumb vapourware 'solution' that results; we address it by collapsing the space that permits those things to find their marks.

I think it is an objectively bad thing if paper-mills can work faster and easier and flood journal submissions with more junk than ever before. But it is also objectively bad for academia to be held hostage by a for-profit system that silos and constrains their work while being treated as the bar for judging how well they are doing their jobs. And the latter is the problem that actually *needs* to be solved, if we're going to have a hope of addressing the former.

Anyway, thank you for coming to this edition of 'Words sorts through his disgust to work out if there's a sensible position obscured beneath, for the sake of not being a raging arsehole to people who like shiny toys and haven't been in a love-hate relationship with their ability to draw for thirty years'.

[intersexbookclub]

Book review: Cattywampus

Our pick for July 2024 was Cattywampus, a children’s novel featuring a main character with AIS (published 2020). The story focuses on two young witches, Katybird (intersex) and Delpha (perisex) as they come of age and develop their magic powers. Katybird being intersex is relevant to the plot as the magic system in the book has a gendered component.

Overall impressions:

Elizabeth: it was a fun little adventure that handled the AIS part very well. I was underwhelmed about it turning into a zombie story, but I still enjoyed the book and felt it advanced intersex representation.

Bnuuy: I thought it was pretty good, could imagine myself reading and liking it when young. It was a fast read and I think it would be a great book for school libraries.

Emily: I didn’t finish it, but middle grades aren’t my cup of tea. But I think I also would have liked it if I’d read it when I was that age. 

Michelle: the AIS felt a little shoehorned in terms of terminology, but lots of great casual representation. Very charming, loved the dialect and representation particularly. The class and socioeconomic issues were depicted particularly well. Great, strong characters.

Remy: I liked how much more chill this book was about AIS compared to Across the Green Grass Fields! It also has me thinking about two other stories. Demon Copperhead by Barbara kingsolver for Appalachian rep, and Muted (a webtoons comic), about magic families that magic also gets passed down matriarchally.

The intersex representation

Emily found it jarring that there was medical jargon in a book whose tone tries to be very folksy, and Michelle agreed that it stuck out. However, Elizabeth felt the language is realistic: people who are diagnosed young often understand ourselves through medicalized language at that age. 

We talked about how the book had to explain so much about intersex because of how little the general public knows, and it would be nice if not so much exposition is necessary - but we all understood the need for it.

Elizabeth liked how the book teaches people that intersex (and disabled) people do not generally want pity. The book highlights how Katybird was uncomfortable with people at school praying for her, how it was unwanted and actually hurt her. 

Bnuuy liked how the book included intersex representation in a way that mattered to the story, but it wasn’t a book specifically about being intersex. The intersex themes integrated well with the other themes (coming of age, disability, etc). 

Bnuuy pointed out out that when Katy gets control of her magic, she is identifying with poison ivy. Other books we’ve read in this book club have drawn a connection between being intersex and plants, and it was neat to see that theme emerge here!

Remy liked how Katy was more chill about having AIS than the character Regan from Across the Green Grass Fields. Cattywampus was just a whole lot more chill about AIS. Bnuuy pointed out that it was unusual how chill Katy’s family was about her having AIS, but that it’s important for children who are intersex to have this frame of reference of how they should be treated.

Elizabeth added that it’s also a good example for parents. The book mentions how Katy’s mom was described as doing her own research on AIS and speaking to people from intersex organizations at length before telling doctors: “no surgery for my child”. 

Early in the book, Katy remembers going to a “moon party” where girls were talking about their first period stories. Katy casually shared that doesn’t happen for her, not seeing anything wrong with it. And it became a negative experience because of how the others reacted with horror and pity. Elizabeth could relate - not to this specific experience but to the sort of experiential disconnect.

What else we liked

The plot is driven by a spell which goes wrong, and Remy liked that the solution to the spell problem was not “try harder” as that is a common trope in stories where magic is tied to emotions.

Bnuuy liked how Katy’s family and Delpha’s family had different approaches to deal with the social ban on doing magic in public. Katy’s family did magic in secret, whereas Delpha’s mother had a policy of “we never do magic”. Both characters felt shame about their magical abilities: Katy faces deep anxiety about her magic puberty powers awakening not happening the way it is "supposed" to, whereas Delpha feels shame for wanting to use the powers at all. While Delpha’s mother meant well, the total ban on magic created stigma for Delpha that actively contributed to her not asking for help.

Elizabeth appreciated how the book reminded zer the extent to which children do what they think adults want them to do. A reason the main characters’ problems escalated was every time they tried to ask for help from adults, the adults implied they didn’t want the kids doing magic, and so the girls each lied and told the adults what they thought the adults wanted to hear.

Bnuuy liked how the preacher’s wife was actually cool with magic/difference and a useful ally to the kids - nice to see a positive Christian representation. Bnuuy also liked how the geographic location felt connected to the spell that the preacher’s wife helped the kids with.

Bnuuy pointed out the Deaf representation was also good. We all liked seeing an example of a family putting in the effort to learn ASL for their Deaf child. (We then wound up on a tangent about Plains Indian Sign Language, the lingua franca of most of North America before European hegemony.)

What we struggled with

Elizabeth felt uneasy about how the Appalachian history was presented as “a bunch of Celtic people were here for hundreds of years” and wanted the bare minimum of acknowledgement that this is Native land and these families were not the only people in the area who had roots there. Ze didn’t feel a Native character was necessary, just that the depiction of the regional history included the relevant Nation(s) for the setting (Muscogee? Cherokee? Shawnee?). 

Remy was concerned the (audio)book presented a classist/racist depiction of Appalachian people in the audiobook. The author of the book is from Appalachia, so most of us are inclined to believe this is done with sensitivity. Most of us are not from (or live in) the USA, and most folks felt unable to assess this. Elizabeth found some of the dialectal choices to be confusing, but accepted that ze was not necessarily the audience and there is value in books featuring dialects/registers other than Standard English.

The character Delpha starts the book without a father in her life, and yearns for one. Michelle was disappointed that Delpha’s biological dad came back. Xe had hoped that the Dad character would be a father figure, and she’d build a new family. Xe felt it would be more productive to have a positive representation of healthy step-parents and/or non-nuclear families than how the book instead resolved Delpha’s desire for a father by having her biological father return.

We all agreed that it was weird that Katy’s 6-year-old Deaf brother was so comfortable with an unplanned sleep over at a new house with an adult that they seemed only vaguely acquainted with. 

Mixed reactions

Remy felt the small town attempt didn’t land: everyone knows everyone but they’re also big enough for tourists? Elizabeth has spent time in small towns that are tourist destinations so that felt plausible to zem. The actual geography of the area was confusing for a lot of us, and how long it took for various characters to arrive at different destinations. A map would have probably helped a lot.

Michelle would have liked Katy and Delpha to couple up because they had good chemistry, and would add to the queer rep. Elizabeth disagreed, and personally wants less romance and coupling in children’s literature - feels like there’s already too much cultural pressure for kids to form romantic bonds.

The maturity of the characters prompted mixed thoughts. Remy brought up a feeling that the main characters didn’t act like they were 12. We talked about how maturity in kids isn’t so much a consistent thing: development doesn’t mean somebody is always “acting 12” but might act like they’re 6 at one thing and act 14 at another. It’s a challenge for writers to pull off realistic children.

Elizabeth had mixed feelings about how neither family had done basic magic safety training, which seemed like a kind of obvious thing to have done. But the plot required that to not happen, so was resigned that it was a suspension of disbelief thing. Elizabeth was confused that the kids didn’t go to the preacher’s wife for more help after she was established as a trustworthy adult.

Delpha is revealed to be part Yow. Remy hoped that the Yow thing isn’t a male-specific thing, and was concerned this would undermine the intersex rep.

What we would want in a sequel

Bnuuy posed a fun and constructive question: what would we want to see in a sequel? 

Remy would like a character who is both Yow and Witch

Elizabeth wants to see if Delpha’s mother has had character development

Bnuuy suggested one or more Native characters

Remy suggested a third magic family that finds it odd that Katy’s family and Delpha’s family have a gendered pattern to who is magical. 

Elizabeth thinks it would be fun if it turns out all genders had magic ability and just nobody thought to train the men. Remy added: “ooh yes and they just repressed it with their feelings!”

Michelle pointed out there was already a hint of that in the text. Bnuuy pointed out the possibility that the magic maybe wasn’t genetic so much as the sharing of knowledge and training, and this aspect of how it works just got lost over the generations.

Remy would like adopted character(s) who can do magic.

Overall, this was a fun romp suitable for the middle grade (age 8-12) audience that may be enjoyable for folks of older ages. The book handles the AIS representation in a way that is productive and educational while also feeling integrated with the plot. We’d definitely recommend this one for parents reading to their kids!

[rjzimmerman]

International Energy Agency: Electricity consumption from data centers to double by 2030. (Heatmap AM)

The International Energy Agency published a big reportThursday on how the rise of artificial intelligence will affect energy demand over the next five years. The analysis finds that global electricity consumption from the data centers that power AI will more than double by 2030, and that the U.S. will be the key driver of this growth. “By the end of the decade, the country is set to consume more electricity for data centers than for the production of aluminium, steel, cement, chemicals, and all other energy-intensive goods combined,” the report said. Other key findings as they related to energy and climate: 

Renewables — and especially wind and solar — can meet half of the expected growth in electricity demand from AI, but rising natural gas and coal generation will also be major power sources. “Natural gas and coal together are expected to meet over 40% of the additional electricity demand from data centres until 2030,” the report finds. 

Carbon dioxide emissions from data centers are expected to peak by 2030 and decline slowly through 2035. 

Climate concerns around AI “appear overstated,” but so do claims that AI will solve climate change. Existing AI solutions, if widely deployed, could cut far more emissions than data centers produce. But those cuts still wouldn’t be enough to reach net zero. AI “is not a silver bullet.”

AI will hike energy demand, but could also speed up innovation in new energy technologies if it receives enough investment and policy support.

[eskwander]

Capitalism and Genocide

Mathias Clivaz and Hugues Poltier. October 15, 2024.

1. In 2007, Israeli lawyer Ram Caspi published the following in the Tel Aviv-based financial daily Globes: "Neither ground invasion nor air attack, but strangulation... [...] the Israeli government will take steps to cut Gaza off from essential resources such as fuel, water, electricity, telephone, and will prevent anyone from providing them." (quoted by G. Levy in Haaretz, 10.6.2007) The election of Hamas that year – which Israel supported in order to oust Fatah – provides a ready-made pretext for initiating a blockade of the Gaza Strip. Slowly suffocated, GDP per capita falls by 27% and unemployment rises by 49% between 2007 and 2018.

2. But the stranglehold is only just beginning. There are signs, both rhetorical and institutional, of what is coming. In 2009, B. Netanyahu becomes Prime Minister of Israel, a position he will hold for eleven years, then again from 2022; and on several occasions he aims to make the Palestinians an abject people, for example when he blames them in a speech in 2015 of having suggested the Final Solution to Hitler. But it's really with the election of D. Trump to the White House in 2017 that everything accelerates. In obviously coordinated moves, the USA recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital and transfers its embassy there in May 2018 and, two months later, the Knesset approves a constitutional law that ratifies the settlement process in the West Bank, and declares Jerusalem the "whole and unified" capital of Israel. The two-State solution is buried.

3. The next stage is to secure impunity and consolidate power. A step in this direction is taken with the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, again under the patronage of D. Trump: peace agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), followed by normalization of diplomatic relations with Morocco and Sudan. Then in 2022, Israel and the UAE sign a free-trade agreement. The stakes are clear: normalization-pacification of Israel's relations with its Arab neighbors, bypassing the Palestinian question. — European companies are not to be outdone. A study by the coalition Don't Buy Into Occupation showed that between January 2020 and August 2023, 776 European financial institutions (including BNP Paribas, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and Société Générale, to name just the top four creditors) had dealings with 51 companies actively involved in Israeli settlements, for a total investment of $164.2 billion, and a stake of $144.7 billion in shares and bonds. This despite the fact that, under international law, such investments in occupied territories are illegal. — The American tech giants are there also. In 2022, Amazon and Google signed lucrative contracts with Tel Aviv for the construction of data centersand with the army to manage their cloud operations, including maintaining surveillance data on most Palestinians living in Gaza, data that is being used by the AI models that determine who should be targeted for attacks[1].

4. A transnational network of capital has thus been set up, whose interest lies in the growth of the Israeli State and its regional supremacy. This in turn involves the arms trade: Israel, whose defense budget is the highest on the planet as a proportion of GDP, is enabling the US military-industrial complex – which supplies 69% of its weapons – to make record profits in 2023 (the conflict in Ukraine being the other major market that year). Germany is not to be outdone, since the country supplies around 30% of Israel’s weapons. The United Kingdom, Italy, France and other countries are also part of this security-capitalist alliance, to which are added all the companies that export "dual-use" and consumer goods to Israel, have industrial, commercial and educational partnerships with Israel — and buy its surveillance systems.

5. In the meantime, the hands have tightened around the victim's neck: walls have been erected between 2017 and 2021 around the entire perimeter of the Gaza Strip, now a hermetically sealed open-air prison. The strangler waits, observing the effects of asphyxiation on his victim. The victim calls for help, but no one comes. Others sound the alarm, but no one listens. So the victim screams and struggles. And Israel will conclude – and with Israel all the countries of the Global North who have a hand in the operation – that Gaza is threatening Israel.

6. On October 7, 2023, 1,139 Israelis are killed by Hamas and other Palestinian groups. These included around 800 civilians. Atrocities were committed, with Hamas guilty of war crimes. Israelis are also killed under the “friendly fire” of the Israeli army, whose military doctrine aims to prevent hostage-taking. Hamas took 252 Israeli hostages captive, with the probable aim of exchanging them for the more than 1,300 Palestinians then being held in administrative detention (imprisoned without charge or trial) in Israeli prisons. But the Israeli scriptwriters have already written the rest of the story: Israel accuses Hamas of posing an "existential threat to Israel" and invokes the right to defend itself. Never mind that Hamas has no means of destroying Israel, and that in its 2017 Charter it declared itself in favor of a two-State solution on the 1967 borders.

7. From October 7, 2023, the declarations of genocidal intent are explicit. B. Netanyahu declared on October 12: “We will fight these savage beasts with all our might, destroy them and wipe them off the face of the earth”. Israel's president, I. Herzog, on October 13: “It is a whole nation that is responsible. The rhetoric about citizens not being involved, not being aware, is absolutely false.” A. Dichter, Minister of Agriculture, on November 12: “We are now carrying out the Gaza Nakba”. And it will continue. B. Smotrich, Minister of Finance, in May 2024: “There is no job half done. Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nousseirat - total destruction.” The organization Law for Palestine has listed more than 500 instances of calls for genocide during the first months of Israel's war on Gaza[2]. Starting October 2023, there is no doubt that Israel launches a war of annihilation.

8. At the same time, Israel invests millions to circulate propaganda messages on all the channels of the global North, including the most macabre fake news (forty babies beheaded by Hamas, a pregnant woman disembowelled, etc.), picked up on a loop by Germany and the USA. On smartphone screens across the planet, the cognitive war is in full swing: between the selection of the visible by Silicon Valley algorithms and the oligarchy's stranglehold on the mainstream media; between the constant threat of accusations of anti-Semitism against individuals and the editorial offices of independent newspapers, and the more than 100 journalists killed in Gaza by the Israeli army in 6 months. In plain sight, disguising the announced massacre of the Palestinian people as a "fight against terrorism", the "world's most moral army" is strangling Gaza, strangling it with fury, strangling it with the laughter of Israeli soldiers on Tik Tok, strangling it to death.

9. In truth, it's nothing new. As historians know, this is the latest act in an ethnic cleansing that began in 1948, and whose tools are forced displacement (over 6 million Palestinians are refugees in neighboring countries), apartheid of Israel's Arab citizens (kept under 20% of the country's population), the murderous and violent colonization of the West Bank, the destruction of Palestinian land and infrastructure, and the normalization of arbitrary detentions, executions, torture and sexual abuse, including in Israeli camps where 9,700 Palestinians, most of them kidnapped, were being arbitrarily detained in July 2024. Nothing new, and that's the problem.

10. In the year following October 7, 2023, Gaza's Ministry of Health has counted 41,689 Palestinian deaths because of Israel's war, the overwhelming majority of them civilians and, according to the UN, over 15,000 children. That's without counting the number of wounded (at least 96,625) and sick, the chronically ill (around 350,000), the malnourished and starving (100% of the population), the severely mentally harmed (100% of the population), in a situation where hospitals have been systematically bombed by Israel. Schools, places of worship, universities, housing, refugee centers, water management infrastructures, heritage – nothing is spared. In August, the UN satellite agency reported a volume of debris in Gaza 14 times greater than the combined total of all the conflicts of the last 16 years. The body politic of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has been effectively annihilated. To understand the extent of the massacre and the intent behind it, we need to add up the direct and indirect victims, and multiply these figures (based on the experience of past wars and genocides) by a factor of 3 to 15[3]. that puts Palestinian deaths to date at between 150,000 and 770,000, or 9% to 30% of the Gazan population. But while the countries of the Global South and a few rare voices in the North call for an end to the genocide, the USA and Germany continue to deliver arms, unperturbed.

11. There are several conclusions to be drawn from these events, which will enable us to get to the heart of the problem facing all societies today.

12. First conclusion: the crime of genocide does not exist in a binary yes/no mode. It is a process, beginning with an aim and ending with its implementation by all kinds of means, not just State means. In this respect, when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concluded that there was a "real and imminent risk of genocide" in January 2024, it established de facto that genocide was underway. By the same reasoning, Russia's abduction of Ukrainian children and their Russification amounts to genocide (Art. II, e), as does China's treatment of the Uighur people. Second conclusion: the alliance between Israel, the USA, Germany and a few others points to the rise of white capitalism, a trans-imperial formation whose supremacism is being exercised here against the Arab populations of the Middle East. As has been demonstrated time and again, capitalist States use racism in their imperialist ventures as much as in the colonization of their own populations. Third conclusion: capitalism, now complete on a planetary scale, is experiencing an acceleration in the frequency of its crises, due to its illimitation in a world of limited resources. The capitalist response to each crisis of capital is the same: to proceed with the fascization of society, with the aim of ensuring the further concentration of capital and the continuity of existing privileges, through the militarization of States, authoritarianism and the transformation of market competition into a war of "us" against "them" (à la Huntington). Low-key fascism has become the norm in "liberal democracies". Fourth conclusion: the war between rival capitalisms (American, Chinese, Russian, Indian, Europeans) is expressed by the intensification of imperialist struggles aimed at securing a greater capacity to mobilize resources, both material and human. The instrumentalization of racism leads to the total degradation of populations of no interest to capital. Understood as waste, they are integrated by capitalism via an economy of destruction that identifies them with the material substratum of their living environment. And so, after Gaza, the bombs rain down on Lebanon. Two lessons here: the imperative of control over the world’s most important oil-producing region remains a priority for US imperialism; the ensuing demand for "regional normalization" authorizes the treatment of hostile populations living there as enemies or waste to be eliminated. The USA and its allies, in any case, are arming this annihilation. There is a clear continuity here between the Nazi holocaust of the Jews and the genocide of the Palestinians by Israel and its allies, insofar as both peoples were/are treated as "obstacles" to a supremacist project, and put to death with capitalist tools. Fifth conclusion: since capitalist rationality is built on the reification of "nature", every non-human being is assimilated to a commodity. In this context, identifying a human being with "nature" is tantamount to degrading them: the Negro slave is historically the figure of the identification of human beings with a commodified nature, transformed into pure labor or merchandise. At the other extreme, this logic implies that the supremacy of one race over another is ipso facto the domination of the "human" over "nature". Capitalism, linked to the techno-scientific project of modernity, cannot be understood outside the interweaving of genocide – the destruction of peoples as raw material – and ecocide. Indeed, it is impossible to defend human rights without also defending the rights of nature.

13. How do capitalism and genocide fit together? First, on the immediate material level, capitalism, because it is defined by growth and because growth is today unrestrained, necessarily leads to the normalization of exclusion in the mobilization of resources. In order to exclude, capitalism engages social and State forces to degrade the target populations so as to dispose of them as pure resources. This zone of organized death is a potential reality anywhere on the planet, for all living beings: whether it's a matter of grabbing a territory rich in raw materials, gentrifying a neighborhood, managing immigration, or building a factory. Capitalism’s dream is to achieve an absolute mobilization of resources, viewing life as matter to be destroyed and shaped at will at the service of profit. Second, capitalism, on the immaterial level, is indexed to the valorization of value, i.e. to the valorization of capital, through constant and unfettered growth, in profit, in size and scale. As a result, capitalism enters a crisis at the first sign of a decline in surplus value. The response to this decline is always the same: for the same quantity produced, reduce human labor by replacing it with dead labor (machines, AI, etc.); and/or increase the quantities produced to at least maintain the level of surplus value. This has a twofold effect: it increases the absolute number of excluded/wastes that can be eliminated without damaging capitalism; and it increases global environmental predation, as shown by N. Machado[4].

14. The Palestinians are the figure of a population relegated to the rank of waste in the capitalist order, since they have been and are kept outside the global logic of value. In truth, they are valued more from being massacred than from being kept alive, since they are much more integrated into the logic of value through the arms market, and later through the market of “reconstruction”. If we shift the focus to other populations kept outside the circuits of valorization and "sitting" on exploitable resources, the conclusion is similar: their extermination is required by the demand to maximize profit; or, at the very least, their forced displacement. Extraction to maintain growth has as its necessary flip side the erasure of the rights of these populations, which happens simply by the signature of business contracts.

15. This dynamic gives rise to what we call, following A. Mbembé, a necropolitics[5]. At the heart of this process is integrated capitalism's ability to play both sides of the public/private, State/entrepreneurial divide, enabling it to pre-empt the legislative capacity of political bodies and the right of populations to self-determination. We can speak with S. Sassen of predatory formations: individual decisions and actions certainly matter, "but they are part of larger assemblages of mutually reinforcing elements, conditions and dynamics" (Expulsions, 2014). On the other side, States in turn attempt to capture these polymorphous flows, giving rise to what G. Deleuze and F. Guattari have called State war machines, which "take war as their object, and form a line of destruction extendable to the limits of the universe" (A Thousand Plateaus, 1980).

16. Confronted with these realities, international institutions are unable to give force to the law of which they are the depositories. As in the case of the ICJ's judgments concerning Israel, they can only observe their powerlessness to compel established powers, whether they be States protected by their military might[6], or transnational corporations that flout borders and rules and surpass most of the world's States in power.

17. The genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza signals the fate of all living beings confronted with the "progress" of capital, which its servants believe and desire to be the ultimate sovereign. At the crossroads of other fetishisms (that of the nation, that of religion, that of technology), effectual death materializes the abstraction of value: it consecrates the supremacy of capital over all other forms of social relations (this is, strictly speaking, the fetishism of value). With no conceivable opposition to stop it, capitalist necropolitics is this power that exists only by putting its destructive capacity to the test, by casting the concrete shadow of a supreme predation.

[1] Y. Abraham, "'Order from Amazon': How tech giants are storing mass data for Israel's war", https://www.972mag.com/cloud-israeli-army-gaza-amazon-google-microsoft/.

[2] https://law4palestine.org/law-for-palestine-releases-database-with-500-instances-of-israeli-incitement-to-genocide-continuously-updated/

[3] This is the methodology of an article published by R. Khatib, M. McKee and S. Yusufin in The Lancet on July 10, 2024, Cf. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext.

[4] N. M. C. Machado, La limite écologique du capitalisme, in Jaggernaut n°4, 2022, pp. 26-27.

[5] Published in 2006, https://shs.cairn.info/revue-raisons-politiques-2006-1-page-29.

[6] It seems pointless to hope for any change in this respect until the veto power at the United Nations held by the USA, China, Russia, France and the UK has been abolished.

>> This article and the French original are available here: https://eskwander.nexus/textes/index.html#capitalismeetgenocide

[hangoversandhattricks]

HANGOVERS AND HATTRICKS: WELCOME!

Hangovers and Hattricks is the fest celebrating the ultimate sport: cawlidge hawkey. This fest was born out of the realization that college hockey is not nearly appreciated enough in the fic landscape, whether it be a good old college AU or currently-in-college players! We’re so excited to bring this to you, and we hope you have as much fun creating for this as we will!

This is a fest event. Authors will sign up with a prompt already in mind and create a fic from there. If a prompt is needed, please refer to one of the many wonderful resources for prompt creation.

ao3 | FAQ | rules | asks

Fest dates are as follows: Author/beta signups open: January 13th Author signups close: February 10th Beta signups close: February 15th (because we believe in the power of author oversight :)) Check-in: March 22nd Fics due: April 5th Fics revealed: April 10th (Frozen Four Day 1!) Authors revealed: April 12th (Frozen Four Day 2! Natty will be crowned!)

Rules:

1. At least 1,000 words.

2. Not in any way, shape, or form AI-generated. If a fic is revealed to be AI-generated, your submission will be deleted and you will be barred from participating in future fests.

3. Rather than naming specific “banned” players, we ask that you avoid creating works around any ships involving a player with a notable (i.e. published in mainstream media) accusation of or conviction for domestic violence or sexual assault. As always, if such an accusation occurs after the work is created, we will work with the author on a viable solution.

4. Fest is open to current and former NHL, PWHL, and college (NCAA and all its subdivisions: Hockey East, Big Ten, ECAC, AHA, NCHC, CCHA, etc.) players. (Please, please, please write women’s hockey for this fest! The mods are begging!)

5. Fics must be set in a college AU or feature current college teammates (EX. Owen Power/Kent Johnson, Ryan Leonard/Quinn Hughes college AU; Dylan Larkin/Zach Werenski set at Michigan is okay, but Dylan/Zach set in the NHL is not)

A full FAQ/mod intro post is in the works and will be out in the coming days!

[satoshi-mochida]

The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak II launches February 14, 2025 in the west - Gematsu

The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak II will launch for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG on February 14, 2025 in the west, publisher NIS America announced.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak II is currently available for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Switch in Japan and Asia, as well as PC via Steam in Asia.

Here is an overview of the game, via NIS America:

About

No longer threatened by the mafia organization Almata, the people of Calvard have returned to their peaceful lives. But one day, a shocking series of murders involving a mysterious crimson beast sets the wheels of fate in motion once again. Various factions spring into action – both those who abide by the law to uncover the truth and those looking to capitalize on any new developments wherever possible, no matter how sinister. With chaos once again looming on the horizon, the spriggan Van Arkride receives an unexpected visitor, prompting his own investigation. Who is behind the murders, and what is their goal? The sands of time bring old and new faces together for this thrilling second installment in the Trails through Daybreak saga.

Story

Year 1209 of the Septian Calendar. The threat posed by Almata has passed. Peace has finally returned to Calvard. And, for a time, that peace goes uninterrupted—until a CID special forces unit is slaughtered by an unknown assailant. With authorities working to contain the situation, criminal forces take the chance to make their own moves. Meanwhile, a spriggan by the name of Van Arkride begins his own investigation—after prompting from an unexpected visitor. Who could be responsible for this massacre? What was their objective? And how does it all relate to Agnes’ search for the eighth Genesis? A crimson beast’s roar. A chance meeting with a boy and girl, both embroiled in a mysterious search. These are the circumstances that lure Arkride Solutions down the trail of an inescapable fate.

System

Battle System – The game builds on the seamless transition between field battles and command battles introduced in the previous game with new mechanics that can be used in both: Cross Charge & EX Chains! Mastering the use of these two combo mechanics can provide you with overwhelming firepower to use against your opponents.

Cross Charge – If you manage to Perfect Dodge an enemy’s attack during a field battle, the Cross Charge icon will appear! Pushing the correct button while the icon is on-screen will swap in another party member, who will simultaneously execute a charge attack on your foe! As a bonus, the party member that you swap in will have enhanced attack power for a period of time.

EX Chains – EX Chains can be activated by fulfilling specific conditions during command battles. Once these conditions have been met, using a craft or normal attack against a stunned enemy will automatically activate an EX Chain! This allows party members with SCLM activated to launch a simultaneous attack that will also impact nearby enemies, dealing massive damage.

Choose Your Chapters – Van and his collaborators will not always travel together during the events of Trails through Daybreak II. At times, some of the group may split off in order to take care of tasks in different areas of Calvard concurrently. Because of this, each act contains multiple chapters you can play in any order. Progress the story in the order you choose! Each chapter features a different cast of characters as we see their side of the act’s story play out. Once you’ve completed your chosen chapter, the next one will start up automatically.

Unique Missions – Certain chapters will feature missions that utilize the unique skillsets of the characters in that chapter’s party. For example, directly controlling the holo core AI, Mare, to hack the orbal network, or using Swin to silently tail a suspicious individual.

Characters

Van Arkride – The man at the head of Arkride Solutions. A lover of sweets, saunas, and orbal cars. Due to his job as a spriggan, Van has a tendency to take on legally-questionable jobs. However, the fact that he occasionally walks on the edge of the law does not preclude him from doing good by others—as is evidenced by his numerous personal contacts. While tracking down the Oct-Geneses at Agnes’ request, Van developed the ability to transform into an armored form known as the Grendel with the help of Mare, the holo core installed within his combat orbment. It was with this new ability that he was able to fend off the mafia group known as Almata. Having once terrorized the entirety of the Republic, Almata was eventually brought to its knees by the Arkride Solutions team during the fight for the Oct-Geneses. Upon the quelling of this threat, however, they decided to temporarily go their separate ways. Now left to himself in a less-than- lively office, Van is free to return to his lone-wolf lifestyle once more.

Agnes Claudel – A first-year at the prestigious Aramis Academy who currently serves on its Student Council. Despite her polite manner of speaking and at times meek demeanor, Agnes has shown great strength and determination while employed at Arkride Solutions—especially when facing off against the seedy underbelly of society. Agnes first met Van while searching for eight prototype orbments known as the Oct-Geneses, which she inherited from her great-grandfather. As thanks for taking on her request, she began working as one of Arkride Solution’s part-time assistants. At present, Agnes has recovered seven of the eight Geneses. Unfortunately, while continuing her search for the last remaining Genesis, she’s had no choice but to also divide her time between preparing for the Aramis Academy Festival and periodically helping out around Arkride Solutions. Regarding her relationship with Van, she both respects and admires him as her employer. However, she seems to be harboring some more amorous feelings for him as well…

Elaine Auclair – An A-rank bracer affiliated with the Calvard branch of the Bracer Guild. She is occasionally referred to by the moniker “Beauty’s Blade.” Due to her dignified beauty and masterful skill with a sword, Elaine tends to catch the eye of the media more often than not. Unfortunately, this also leads to talent agencies offering her contracts for modeling and acting—she always declines. Outside of being the poster girl for the Bracer Guild, Elaine has no present interest in joining the world of entertainment. During her high school years, she enjoyed a brief and fleeting romance with Van before he suddenly vanished without so much as a word. It was only recently, after seven years, that the two were able to reunite. Although their lingering feelings for each other have left their current relationship a bit tense, their time fighting Almata together was able to strengthen their bond once more. Some time after the events involving Almata and the Oct-Geneses, Elaine received word that the Central Intelligence Department’s elite Gamma Squad had been brutally murdered by an unknown assailant, and that a ‘crimson’ monster was spotted at the scene of the crime…

World

The Republic of Calvard – A large country located in the central region of the Zemurian continent. Its current leader is President Roy Gramheart. Due to the unfortunate circumstances created by the desertification of eastern Zemuria, Calvard has a substantial history of receiving both immigrants and refugees. The resulting mixture of cultures and ethnicities has made the country into something of a melting pot. One hundred years ago, Calvard was under the heel of its monarchal rulers. It was only after Sheena Dirke and her compatriots brought about a democratic revolution that the nation was transformed into a democratic republic. Though in constant conflict with Erebonia over the control of bordering regions, Calvard has recently been on the receiving end of reparations from the empire following the Battle of Jormungandr. These reparations enabled Calvard to enter a period of rapid growth and development, leading to its eventual overtake of Erebonia as the most powerful nation on the continent. Regarding the region’s recreational interests, recent technological advancements in orbal vehicles and filmmaking have caused a boom in both the motorsports and orbal cinema industries.

Messeldam – A moderate-sized city located in the north of Calvard. Due to its long-standing role as one of the Northern Sea’s major trading ports, Messeldam was often tasked during the days of monarchal rule with the delivery of imports to the capital of Oracion—along with fresh seafood, of course. Although the port remains active to this day, developments in airship technology have greatly diminished its significance. The city itself, however, remains an important gateway to Remiferia and its surrounding nations. Unlike Langport, Messeldam possesses very few tourist destinations. That being said, the townscape’s architecture tends to be quite popular with visitors, as its design has seen little change in the past century. The city’s Eastern and Central Eastern populations are fairly meager due to its geographical location. As such, it lacks a community that values cultural traditionalism. This has, fortunately, been a boon for Messeldam, as new art movements and customs are accepted with relative ease. It was this very attitude that led to the city serving as the venue for the Orbal Film Festival for a number of years, until its relocation to Tharbad in 1208.

Watch a new trailer below.

Western Release Date Trailer

[reviewedandrated]

ChannelBuilderAI Review: The Ultimate Automated Video Creation Solution

Introduction: Revolutionizing Content Creation

In today's fast-paced digital landscape, content creators face immense pressure to produce high-quality videos consistently. ChannelBuilderAI emerges as a game-changing solution, promising to streamline the entire video production process—from scripting to publishing. After extensive testing across multiple niches, I’m convinced this platform represents a significant leap forward in AI-powered content creation.

Core Features and Capabilities

ChannelBuilderAI stands out with its comprehensive feature set, addressing every stage of video production:

Advanced Script Generation: Crafts engaging, structured narratives tailored to your niche (e.g., horror, business, or education).

Human-Like Voiceovers: 78 voice options across 12 languages with emotional inflection (excitement, suspense, authority).

Smart Visual Composition: Auto-matches visuals to scripts with 42+ art styles (photorealistic, anime, etc.).

Built-in SEO Optimization: Generates high-CTR titles, descriptions, and thumbnails.

Multi-Platform Publishing: Formats videos for YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and more.

Real-World Performance and Results

I tested ChannelBuilderAI across three channels, and the results were undeniable:

History Facts Channel:

Output increased from 2 to 14 videos/week.

CTR jumped from 3% to 9%.

Subscribers grew by 287% in 45 days.

Motivational Content Channel:

Watch time increased by 420%.

Daily views skyrocketed from 1K to 18K.

Product Review Channel:

Conversion rates improved from 1.2% to 4.7%.

Affiliate earnings 5X’d due to higher engagement.

Why ChannelBuilderAI is a Must-Have for Video Marketing

Video marketing dominates in 2024, and ChannelBuilderAI gives you the edge:

1. Skyrocket Engagement

AI-optimized videos rank higher and retain viewers longer, thanks to:

Trend-aware scripts that hook audiences.

Professional pacing that reduces drop-off rates.

2. Dominate Social Algorithms

Auto-formatted videos for each platform (YouTube, TikTok, Reels).

AI-generated hashtags & captions to boost discoverability.

3. Scale Without Sacrificing Quality

Produce a week’s worth of content in hours.

Maintain consistent branding across all videos.

4. Monetize Faster

Perfect for affiliate reviews, product demos, and ads.

Agencies can offer video services at scale without hiring editors.

ChannelBuilderAI Pricing & Offers

Here’s a breakdown of each package and who it’s best for:

1. Starter Plan ($39) – For Solo Creators

Includes: Full access to AI scripting, voiceovers, and basic editing.

Best for: Beginners or creators testing AI tools.

ROI: Pays for itself in 1-2 videos (vs. hiring freelancers).

2. Gold Upgrade ($197) – For Serious Creators

Includes: Unlimited videos, 15 client seats, and HD rendering.

Best for: Full-time YouTubers or small agencies.

ROI: One client ($500+) covers the cost.

3. Elite Upgrade ($127) – Done-for-You Channels

Includes: 15 pre-built "cash cow" channels + multilingual support.

Best for: Marketers who want plug-and-play content.

ROI: Resell one channel for $1,000+.

4. Enterprise Tier ($197/year) – For Agencies

Includes: Whitelabel rights, 100 client seats, team collaboration.

Best for: Studios selling video services.

ROI: Charge $997+/month per client.

👉 See All Offers Here: ChannelBuilderAI Official Page

Who Should Use ChannelBuilderAI?

This tool is perfect for:

Faceless YouTube/TikTok creators tired of editing.

Affiliate marketers scaling product reviews.

E-commerce brands needing demo videos.

Agencies offering video services.

Educators turning lessons into engaging content.

Limitations to Consider

Learning curve: Takes 2-3 days to master.

Human review needed: AI isn’t perfect—always check outputs.

No free trial (but 30-day money-back guarantee).

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: Can I edit AI-generated videos?

A: Yes! The drag-and-drop editor allows full customization.

Q: Is it beginner-friendly?

A: Absolutely. Tutorials walk you through everything.

Q: What if I’m not satisfied?

A: 30-day refund policy—no risk.

Q: Does it work for non-English content?

A: Yes, 12 languages are supported.

Q: How often is it updated?

A: Monthly improvements keep it cutting-edge.

Conclusion

ChannelBuilderAI is the most powerful AI video tool I’ve tested. It’s not magic—you’ll still need to guide the AI—but it cuts production time by 90% while improving quality.

For creators, marketers, and agencies, this is a profit multiplier.

🚀 Ready to transform your content? 👉 Try ChannelBuilderAI Risk-Free Today 👈 you can also read a long version review by clicking here: ChannelBuilderAi review

or listen to this podcast:

[noyonreview]

HeyBooks AI Review – Create & Sell AI-Powered eBooks in Minutes!

Are you tired of spending weeks writing eBooks, only to struggle with sales? Or maybe you’re looking for a fast, AI-powered solution to create high-quality digital books without writing a single word?

HeyBooks AI claims to be the ultimate tool for effortless eBook creation, publishing, and sales—all powered by artificial intelligence. But does it really work?

I tested HeyBooks AI for a week, and here’s my detailed, unbiased review—including pros, cons, and whether it’s worth your money.

[toppicksbynoyon]

HeyBooks AI Review – Create & Sell AI-Powered eBooks in Minutes!

Are you tired of spending weeks writing eBooks, only to struggle with sales? Or maybe you’re looking for a fast, AI-powered solution to create high-quality digital books without writing a single word?

HeyBooks AI claims to be the ultimate tool for effortless eBook creation, publishing, and sales—all powered by artificial intelligence. But does it really work?

I tested HeyBooks AI for a week, and here’s my detailed, unbiased review—including pros, cons, and whether it’s worth your money.

[jcmarchi]

Industry First: UCIe Optical Chiplet Unveiled by Ayar Labs

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/industry-first-ucie-optical-chiplet-unveiled-by-ayar-labs/

Industry First: UCIe Optical Chiplet Unveiled by Ayar Labs

Ayar Labs has unveiled the industry’s first Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) optical interconnect chiplet, designed specifically to maximize AI infrastructure performance and efficiency while reducing latency and power consumption for large-scale AI workloads.

This breakthrough will help address the increasing demands of advanced computing architectures, especially as AI systems continue to scale. By incorporating a UCIe electrical interface, the new chiplet is designed to eliminate data bottlenecks while enabling seamless integration with chips from different vendors, fostering a more accessible and cost-effective ecosystem for adopting advanced optical technologies.

The chiplet, named TeraPHY™, achieves 8 Tbps bandwidth and is powered by Ayar Labs’ 16-wavelength SuperNova™ light source. This optical interconnect technology aims to overcome the limitations of traditional copper interconnects, particularly for data-intensive AI applications.

“Optical interconnects are needed to solve power density challenges in scale-up AI fabrics,” said Mark Wade, CEO of Ayar Labs.

The integration with the UCIe standard is particularly significant as it allows chiplets from different manufacturers to work together seamlessly. This interoperability is critical for the future of chip design, which is increasingly moving toward multi-vendor, modular approaches.

The UCIe Standard: Creating an Open Chiplet Ecosystem

The UCIe Consortium, which developed the standard, aims to build “an open ecosystem of chiplets for on-package innovations.” Their Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express specification addresses industry demands for more customizable, package-level integration by combining high-performance die-to-die interconnect technology with multi-vendor interoperability.

“The advancement of the UCIe standard marks significant progress toward creating more integrated and efficient AI infrastructure thanks to an ecosystem of interoperable chiplets,” said Dr. Debendra Das Sharma, Chair of the UCIe Consortium.

The standard establishes a universal interconnect at the package level, enabling chip designers to mix and match components from different vendors to create more specialized and efficient systems. The UCIe Consortium recently announced its UCIe 2.0 Specification release, indicating the standard’s continued development and refinement.

Industry Support and Implications

The announcement has garnered strong endorsements from major players in the semiconductor and AI industries, all members of the UCIe Consortium.

Mark Papermaster from AMD emphasized the importance of open standards: “The robust, open and vendor neutral chiplet ecosystem provided by UCIe is critical to meeting the challenge of scaling networking solutions to deliver on the full potential of AI. We’re excited that Ayar Labs is one of the first deployments that leverages the UCIe platform to its full extent.”

This sentiment was echoed by Kevin Soukup from GlobalFoundries, who noted, “As the industry transitions to a chiplet-based approach to system partitioning, the UCIe interface for chiplet-to-chiplet communication is rapidly becoming a de facto standard. We are excited to see Ayar Labs demonstrating the UCIe standard over an optical interface, a pivotal technology for scale-up networks.”

Technical Advantages and Future Applications

The convergence of UCIe and optical interconnects represents a paradigm shift in computing architecture. By combining silicon photonics in a chiplet form factor with the UCIe standard, the technology allows GPUs and other accelerators to “communicate across a wide range of distances, from millimeters to kilometers, while effectively functioning as a single, giant GPU.”

The technology also facilitates Co-Packaged Optics (CPO), with multinational manufacturing company Jabil already showcasing a model featuring Ayar Labs’ light sources capable of “up to a petabit per second of bi-directional bandwidth.” This approach promises greater compute density per rack, enhanced cooling efficiency, and support for hot-swap capability.

“Co-packaged optical (CPO) chiplets are set to transform the way we address data bottlenecks in large-scale AI computing,” said Lucas Tsai from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). “The availability of UCIe optical chiplets will foster a strong ecosystem, ultimately driving both broader adoption and continued innovation across the industry.”

Transforming the Future of Computing

As AI workloads continue to grow in complexity and scale, the semiconductor industry is increasingly looking toward chiplet-based architectures as a more flexible and collaborative approach to chip design. Ayar Labs’ introduction of the first UCIe optical chiplet addresses the bandwidth and power consumption challenges that have become bottlenecks for high-performance computing and AI workloads.

The combination of the open UCIe standard with advanced optical interconnect technology promises to revolutionize system-level integration and drive the future of scalable, efficient computing infrastructure, particularly for the demanding requirements of next-generation AI systems.

The strong industry support for this development indicates the potential for a rapidly expanding ecosystem of UCIe-compatible technologies, which could accelerate innovation across the semiconductor industry while making advanced optical interconnect solutions more widely available and cost-effective.

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Distributed Acoustic Sensing Market to Experience Significant Growth

Distributed Acoustic Sensing Market to Experience Significant Growth

Straits Research has published a comprehensive report on the global Distributed Acoustic Sensing Market, projecting a significant growth rate of 11.58% from 2024 to 2032. The market size is expected to reach USD 1,617.72 million by 2032, up from USD 673.32 million in 2024.

Market Definition

Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) is a cutting-edge technology that enables real-time monitoring of acoustic signals along the entire length of a fiber optic cable. This innovative solution has far-reaching applications across various industries, including oil and gas, power and utility, transportation, security and surveillance, and environmental and infrastructure monitoring.

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Latest Trends

The Distributed Acoustic Sensing Market is driven by several key trends, including:

Increasing demand for real-time monitoring: The need for real-time monitoring and data analysis is on the rise, driven by the growing importance of predictive maintenance, asset optimization, and operational efficiency.

Advancements in fiber optic technology: Advances in fiber optic technology have enabled the development of more sensitive and accurate DAS systems, expanding their range of applications.

Growing adoption in the oil and gas industry: The oil and gas industry is increasingly adopting DAS technology for monitoring and optimizing well operations, reducing costs, and improving safety.

Emerging applications in smart cities and infrastructure monitoring: DAS technology is being explored for various smart city applications, including traffic management, public safety, and infrastructure monitoring.

Key Opportunities

The Distributed Acoustic Sensing Market presents several key opportunities for growth and innovation, including:

Integration with other sensing technologies: The integration of DAS with other sensing technologies, such as seismic and electromagnetic sensing, can enhance its capabilities and expand its range of applications.

Development of advanced data analytics and AI algorithms: The development of advanced data analytics and AI algorithms can help unlock the full potential of DAS technology, enabling more accurate and actionable insights.

Expansion into new markets and industries: The Distributed Acoustic Sensing Market has significant potential for growth in new markets and industries, including renewable energy, transportation, and smart cities.

Key Players

The Distributed Acoustic Sensing Market is characterized by the presence of several key players, including:

Halliburton Co.

Hifi Engineering Inc.

Silixa Ltd.

Schlumberger Limited

Banweaver

Omnisens SA

Future Fibre Technologies Ltd.

Baker Hughes Inc.

Qintiq Group PLC

Fotech Solutions Ltd.

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Market Segmentation

The Distributed Acoustic Sensing Market can be segmented into two main categories:

By Fiber Type: The market can be segmented into single-mode fiber and multimode fiber.

By Vertical: The market can be segmented into oil and gas, power and utility, transportation, security and surveillance, and environmental and infrastructure monitoring.

About Straits Research

Straits Research is a leading provider of business intelligence, specializing in research, analytics, and advisory services. Our team of experts provides in-depth insights and comprehensive reports to help businesses make informed decisions.