NVIDIA Releases Open Synthetic Data Generation Pipeline for Training Large Language Models

NVIDIA today announced Nemotron-4 340B, a family of open models that developers can use to generate synthetic data for training large language models (LLMs) for commercial applications across healthcare, finance, manufacturing, retail and every other industry.

High-quality training data plays a critical role in the performance, accuracy and quality of responses from a custom LLM — but robust datasets can be prohibitively expensive and difficult to access.

Through a uniquely permissive open model license, Nemotron-4 340B gives developers a free, scalable way to generate synthetic data that can help build powerful LLMs.

The Nemotron-4 340B family includes base, instruct and reward models that form a pipeline to generate synthetic data used for training and refining LLMs. The models are optimized to work with NVIDIA NeMo, an open-source framework for end-to-end model training, including data curation, customization and evaluation. They’re also optimized for inference with the open-source NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM library.

link

Why Do Brits Hate Russians? — Israel Shamir

Britain is the world leader in anti-Russian politics. The Brits hate Putin and zealously encourage the Ukies to fight their Russian cousins to the last drop of blood. The Russians and the Ukies were ready to sign a deal in February 2022, until British PM Johnson arrived in Kiev to convince the Ukies to drop it. And so they did. Ever since then, the Brits have been the leading force pushing the Ukies to fight, and convincing NATO members to help them fight. The Brits are leading the global anti-Russian campaign. These are the facts. However, the explanation of these facts evaded me until now.

Recently a promising young reporter called Dood (or maybe Doodj), spoke to a leader of the Russian pro-Western opposition, the runaway ex-oligarch Michael Chodorkovsky [Mikhail Khodorkovsky]. Mr Ch has been relegated to the shadows and margins of history, though once upon a time he was the richest tycoon in Russia, and one of the wealthiest men in the world. Now he is worth just below one billion dollars, peanuts as oligarchs count.

He was one of the Dirty Seven [semiboyarshina] oligarchs who seized control of Russia during Yeltsin’s feeble rule. They all were more or less Jewish, and their solidarity and destructiveness could only compete with their ruthlessness and greed. Many of my friends consider Zionists to be apex predators, while Jews are cute and furry prey. They are mistaken – these seven Russian oligarchs were not Zionists, they were just Jews out to destroy everything in their way. These seven men practically destroyed millennium-old Russia. They pauperised its people, reduced its industry to ashes, they sold the factories for scrap; they stole all private bank holdings. They even ruined Russian democracy when they shelled Parliament in 1993 using Yeltsin’s tanks, and then, with the assistance of American advisors, by faking the re-election of President Yeltsin in 1996.

Like locusts attacking a tree, each Jewish oligarch took over a different branch: Mr Berezovsky went after the auto industry, and Russia stopped producing cars; Mr Gusinsky seized television, and turned it into offensive propaganda; Mr Chubais managed the world’s largest transfer of wealth since 1917. Mr Chodorkovsky took over all of Russia’s oil and gas. Everywhere they stole all they could steal, built yachts and palaces, mocking ordinary Russians by their conspicuous consumption. Their official rule ended sometime after 2005 when Mr Berezovsky convinced Yeltsin to pass his reign over to young Mr Putin, and then Mr Putin told the oligarchs to stay away from the state or else. Mr Ch laughed and said he will get rid of Putin. Putin put him into jail and nationalised the oligarch’s mammoth Lukoil oil company. Ten years later, Mr Ch was allowed to leave and so he did. Russian oil is still in the hands of the Russian state, and it still remains the basis of Russian prosperity.

Now, in a recent interview, Mr Ch revealed to a young reporter that the real owner of Lukoil was the late Lord Rothschild, who just (Feb 24) passed away at the ripe old age of 89. It was quite a surprise, to find out that the old Jew was still quick enough to pocket all of Russia’s oil as he was kicking out the godless communists. We Russians actually did hear such a rumour as it was happening, but we did not take it seriously at the time. Blaming “Rothschild” is like blaming “Lizard People”; an antisemitic trope. There is no such person in real life, I thought. But after the publication of Doodj’s video, I looked back in the Times archives and found that it was not a fiction:

So it was known even then, but I (and others) could not believe it at the time. Even now, we tend to discount antisemitic facts along with the antisemitic tropes that flood the Internet.

But this is the key to why the Brits are so keen to undermine Russia. Lord Rothschild is as British as 5 o’clock tea. The Brits can have an Indian PM, a Paki Lord Mayor of London, and Ghurkhas as their elite troops, but the Bank of England belongs to the Jews. Englishmen are just miners to keep Lord Rothschild’s global bank running tickety-boo. And Jews are famous for keeping control of whatever has passed through their clutches. Even the Royal Family became quasi-Jewish: they circumcise their boys and believe they are descendants of King David.

link

Nvidia stock split: What’s next for the stock and other AI plays

Now entering the stock split zone.

Nvidia (NVDA) is joining its mega-cap tech peers, becoming the fourth Magnificent 7 stock to split since 2022.

The chip giant’s 10-for-1 stock split, which will start trading on Monday, follows significant price growth, with shares up 212% in the past year. That massive rally pushed Nvidia into the $3 trillion club alongside Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT), becoming just the third US company ever to reach that milestone.

“A stock split is a vote of confidence from management that the stock will hold its value, as the stock [price] typically increases,” S&P Dow Jones Indices senior analyst Howard Silverblatt says.

link

At this stage, European corporations have bought more land in Western Ukraine than the Russians have taken on the East side, while Ukrainians find themselves in a debt trap

The planned annihilation of Ukraine (note the 2021 changed land sale law and the 2014 color revolution) foreshadows the planned annihilation of Europe. ABN

full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAaEh12zHP8

Why Maine Is The Only State In The US With A ‘Significant’ Elver Fishery

If you’ve ever read a story in the news about elver fishing season, you’ve probably seen some variation of this line: “Maine’s the only state in the U.S. with a significant fishery for elvers.”

Maybe you thought that’s because elvers don’t exist in large numbers outside of Maine — that would be a reasonable assumption. But the real reason is somewhat more complicated.

Let’s start at the beginning, in the Sargasso Sea. Although it sounds romantic, the Sargasso Sea is actually just an area of the North Atlantic that’s full of Sargassum, a kind of seaweed that floats in the ocean rather than existing close to land.

It’s a unique marine environment, and the Sargasso Sea provides a cozy place for many species to spawn or start out life, including baby turtles and some types of fish.

It’s also where the life cycle of the American eel both begins and ends. They’re born there, and after a few decades — eels are incredibly long-lived animals — they swim back in, spawn and die.

Outside of that, eels’ life cycle isn’t that well understood, but we know they start out there as tiny leptocephali, or larvae, which look like nothing more than a transparent willow leaf.

For the first few months of their lives, they float about with the ocean currents and are eventually carried by the Gulf Stream north along the continental shelf of the eastern U.S. Then, somehow — scientists don’t know quite how — they find their way out of the Gulf Stream and into coastal and fresh waters.

At this point, they’re about a year old and looking more eel-like, but still transparent. They’re now in the elver, or “glass eel,” stage, and as University of Maine marine biologist James McCleave puts it, they get “spit out everywhere” along the Atlantic Coast. Then they more or less stay put in estuaries, rivers and lakes near the coast for decades, getting bigger, fatter and more silvery.

link

This is a well-written article which explains why the price of Maine’s glass eels is typically over $1,000 per pound. The basic reason is Maine provides hard to get breed eels to Japan where eels are a popular dish. Be sure to read the whole story because it is interesting and much more complicated than that. ABN

Xi Shoots Down Putin’s Pipeline Plan

Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s trip to China apparently failed last week to secure a project key to the hopes of Moscow’s struggling energy sector.

Putin’s state visit produced a joint statement heralding a “new era” for Beijing and Moscow’s “no limits partnership,” while the hug shared with Chinese counterpart Xi made headlines. But the long-ruling Russian leader walked away without a contract for a pipeline between his country and its largest export market.

Russia has offset some of the business it lost over its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine by rerouting natural gas and oil to China. This relationship continues to deepen with the first Power of Siberia pipeline expected to reach full capacity this year and pipe 38 billion cubic meters (bcm) into China annually.

However, the outsized importance of the Chinese market gives Beijing more control over the terms. Gas is flowing into China at a rate of $257 per 1,000 cubic meters, compared to the $320 for its remaining European markets, and this discount is set to increase to 28 percent next year.

link

The Next Big US-China Trade War is Over AI Talent

The thing about trade wars is they really stop you from trading…

Reports have piled up about how Big Tech companies have turned on their money hoses to poach top AI talent from each other. They’ve also turned on the charm — both OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have reportedly been personally involved in courting candidates and offering lavish salaries. But a larger and more intractable talent war is brewing between the US and China.

U-S-A-I 

China has had a habit of overtaking the US in technology, like EV adoption or 5G rollout. But when it comes to the hype-beast of generative AI, the US holds the reins. That’s partly because of how the tech industry is set up — Big Tech companies are developing AI in-house, but they’re also forging partnerships with startups like OpenAI, Anthropic, and France-based Mistral AI, because the cloud and computing infrastructure needed to run AI models is dominated by Microsoft, Amazon, and to a lesser extent, Google.

Meanwhile, the US wants to box China out of AI development, arguing that it might use it for military or otherwise nefarious purposes. Its ever-escalating chip trade war is aimed at depriving China of physical infrastructure, and the US is reportedly considering banning exports of AI models (although that seems a little nonsensical). The US is even fighting by proxy: The New York Times reported in November that US officials were feverishly dissuading Dubai-based G42 to cut its AI links to Chinese businesses.

link

DC Uniparty moving in on cryptocurrency

On the issue of crypto currency, watch the DC voices very closely.

They are about to take up legislation on the topic of crypto currency, regulation and overall ramifications therein.  Keeping in mind that a dollar-based Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) cannot and will not coexist within a financial system that permits the transition (the exchange) of dollars into crypto and vice-versa.

Put simply, in the Western financial system, crypto currency cannot exist with a CBDC.  Duality of currency is possible outside the West, but not feasible, viable or possible given the political motivations behind the creation of the dollar-based CBDC.

…The five major banks, all of whom gain maximum benefit from the CBDC as transfer brokers, will join Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan) and decry crypto as the planet harming, energy intense, earth polluting system that is currently melting the ice caps. Meanwhile Greta Thunberg and Taylor Swift will assemble their perpetually depressed Gen-Z forces against BitCoin et al.

Just watch, the seeds of the nonsense are already planted.

The Yellow Zone is specifically constructed to begin using a dollar-based CBDC likely sometime after the 2024 election, with open tests in 2025 depending on the election outcome.  Even if Trump wins the ’24 U.S election, the bankers who control the rest of the yellow zone will continue implementation of the Dollar-Based Central Bank Digital Currency (DBCBDC) without direct USA participation (they will wait out Trump’s term).

link

Motorcycle industry Q1: Soft all over, with a firm adventurous middle

…Middleweight ADV bikes really are hot

Among adventure-touring bikes, it has seemed like most of the action in recent years has happened in the middleweight segment. The Aprilia Tuareg, the Yamaha Ténéré 700, and the Honda Transalp are just a few examples of excellent middleweights that have drawn new attention to the class. The stats back up that impression.

The MIC breaks down the adventure class into three displacement categories, and the 601-900 cc class is where the growth is happening, with sales up 13.1%. Meanwhile, sales were down 16.4% in the over 900 cc class and down 32.7% in the much smaller 600 cc and under class. Consumers really are migrating from the big adventure-touring motorcycles to the new middleweight entries that are lighter, less expensive, and still very versatile and capable. Sounds like a smart move to me.

U.S. motorcycle sales, which grew little in the decade between the financial crisis and COVID-19, and were then turned upside down by the disruptions of the pandemic, now appear to be returning to the stagnation and patterns we experienced before.

link

What The Media Won’t Tell You About The Energy Transition

I’ve said it before, but I’ll repeat it: the concept of the energy transition is essentially a Western conceit. The U.S. and Western European countries are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on programs like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Energiewende to fund buildouts of solar, wind, batteries, and tutti-fruity-colored hydrogen, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world will do the same. There is no evidence that China and India are going through an energy transition. Instead, the numbers show those two countries are building staggering amounts of new coal-fired capacity. That capacity is far greater than the amount of nuclear capacity they are building. This chart, which I first published last December, uses updated figures from the International Energy Agency and Global Energy Monitor.

link

See also: Bad science, false virtue, bad laws lead to deforestation in Europe

and Devastating pictures of the rape of America’s century-old hardwood forests… stripped bare to provide wood pellets for European energy plants – in a deluded bid to meet climate goals. ABN