Public pushback against data centers has emphasized their water and energy consumption, and now Nvidia is highlighting its claim that the Rubin generation reference design for a fully liquid-cooled data center has “eliminated massive amounts of power usage and pretty much all water usage.” Still, it doesn’t address all of the concerns around AI data centers, including during their construction, and for the power generation requirements of the massive facilities. Also, as Gizmodo points out, Nvidia’s blog post doesn’t mention the cost of building this style of data center vs. one using less efficient air cooling, but claims that “every cloud provider and data center operator building for [Rubin] is making the transition.”

The efficiency gains are partly due to running AI servers hotter, as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius). In a recent report, Amazon similarly touted higher heat tolerances as part of making its mostly air-cooled data centers more efficient.

With Nvidia’s system, “heat is captured directly at the chip and transported through liquid loops operating at much higher temperatures, allowing outdoor dry coolers to reject heat efficiently for much of the year,” with much more flexibility when it comes to the ambient air temperature.

According to Nvidia’s head of sustainability, Josh Parker, the reference design takes water use “from roughly 2.6 million gallons per megawatt per year for conventional cooling-tower-based systems to near zero — up to a 100 percent reduction.”

Google’s DeepMind AI lab is teaming up with A24 to develop new movie production technologies that aim to help future filmmakers “expand their storytelling possibilities.” As part of this new research and development collaboration, The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is investing “around $75 million” into A24, marking the first time the search giant has taken a stake in a film studio.

“The collaboration pairs a world-leading research lab with the industry’s most filmmaker-forward studio to help artists develop new workflows and techniques,” Google said in its announcement blog. “This ensures the tools of the future are shaped by the creators who use them.”

The partnership is expected to span across “multiple projects over time” according to Google, though the announcement doesn’t mention any specific movies that Google will be involved with. WSJ reports that Google and A24 are aiming to create new tools for movie production and distribution, something that Google alluded to in its own announcement, saying the “initial focus is on bridging the gap between cutting-edge technology and next generation entertainment.”

The multiyear deal is non-exclusive, according to WSJ, and doesn’t allow Google to access A24’s film and television library data. Still, the partnership is likely to raise some eyebrows in the film industry, given that Google’s AI models are trained on publicly available internet data, and how ferociously other movie studios like Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros have fought AI companies for alleged copyright violations.

WSJ also reports that Google and A24 are hoping to include the movie studio’s existing roster of artists in the deal, such as YouTube creator and Backrooms director, Kane Parsons. In an interview with The Australian earlier this month, Parsons said that “generative AI feels less like innovation than a symptom of a broader cultural and economic rot,” and that he gets “no enjoyment” out of using the technology on any project.

According to Scott Belsky — an A24 partner who was previously Adobe’s chief strategy officer — the tools that Google and A24 are developing “won’t look anything like the prompted generation type of AI that people feel uncomfortable with.” In his statement to WSJ, Belsky said “there are better uses that preserve creative control and support risk-taking.”

Cold Court is a brother-sister duo from Philly that seems to love nothing more than shoving all of their influences together in a messy soup that at least superficially resembles the hyperpop you’ve come to expect from acts like 100 Gecs. But, where songs like “Dumbest Girl Alive” goofily wink at pop punk and emo, Cold Court are a bit more self-serious, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The opening track on the band’s debut EP (^_^) / (aka Hands Up), “Nina”, starts off sounding not unlike the dance punk bands that stormed the scene in the mid aughts like Franz Ferdinand or Test Icicles. But that all starts to change about a minute in, when the skuzzy riff gets chopped up and fed through a beat repeater. Another minute later, there’s a mellow proggy bridge that calls to mind Mars Volta. Then the whole thing ends on a barrage of glitches and digital chaos.

The record largely continues in this fashion. The songs on Hands Up clearly started life on drums and guitar. But then Mini and Jojo fed their creations to a computer, added layers, rearranged the pieces, and piled on the effects. Single “Burn” is perhaps the best example of all the parts coming together. It features big rock riffs, Daft Punk-esque synths, dubstep chops, autotuned vocals, and even a rapped bridge. Yet the whole thing feels like a cohesive, seething whole as they shout, “I just want to see it burn, give a fuck about your word.”

They’re not the deepest lyrics, but it works.

While Cold Court is clearly an exercise in maximalism, not every song goes quite as big as “Burn.” “Cola” moves more slowly, strips back some of the layers, but doesn’t turn the volume down. “Glass” almost becomes math rock as its guitars get chopped up and spit back out, and the EP’s closer “Light” is blown-out, sparkly prog.

Over the course of a full album, the relentless barrage might grow exhausting. But at just 21 minutes, Hands Up doesn’t overstay its welcome, and it will be interesting to see how the band evolves as the young duo grow.