As US energy companies continue to grapple with the challenge of supplying enough power to meet the growing demand for AI data centers, a report from Bain & Company has revealed power use could soon exceed actual supply.
The report forecasts that by 2028, utility companies will need to increase annual generation by as much as 26% in order to keep up with demand.
The concerning outlook raises questions about the true eco-credentials of the time-saving and productivity-enhancing technology, which could soon need to rely on dirtier energy sources which are more abundant.
Data centers will use more energy than we currently haveIndicative of the scale of the problem, capital expenditure at these data centers is anticipated to rise nearly 30% this year alone. A separate study (via The Register) by Rystad Energy, a research and business intelligence company, found that US data center power consumption could more than double by the end of the decade.
Typically, historical energy generation has been several hundred terawatt hours higher than historical energy consumption, however over the next four years, even the low-end demand scenario could outpace current generation, with the high-end demand scenario rising by as much as 1,000 TWh, from 4,000 to 5,000 TWh, marking a significant jump.
By 2028, Bain & Company reckons that data centers will account for more than two-fifths (44%) of all US energy consumption, with residential applications standing at around one-quarter (27%). Manufacturing (17%) and commercial (13%) are set to take smaller percentages.
Adding to the complexity, other sectors like electric vehicles and repatriated manufacturing amid geopolitical tensions are also driving up energy demand in coming years.
Subsequently, the consulting firm warns that failing to act by modernizing business operations and infrastructure could cause companies to lose out on substantial revenues, even forcing datacenter companies to generate their own energy.
And with US utility companies accustomed to flat or even shrinking demand, the fact that global data center energy demands could top $2 trillion represents a significant growth opportunity for those prepared to make the changes.
More from TechRadar ProAdobe Max 2024 has seen a raft of major new updates to the company’s software suite - and while content creators and video editors have been well-served with a raft of AI tools for Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and more, there are developments for enterprise users.
From today, Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing will be available, making it easier for marketing teams to work together on creating genAI assets, and learn from AI-enhanced insights.
“With GenStudio for Performance Marketing, brands have a single, self-service application to create paid social ads, display ads, banners, marketing emails and more by leveraging pre-approved, on-brand content,” the company said.
What is Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing?Part of Adobe Experience Cloud, GenStudio is an AI-first content marketing tool designed to create and collaborate on marketing materials. The latest addition to the space, GenStudio for Performance Marketing, lets users work on a wide range of assets and campaigns
Finding the right content has been made easier with the inclusion of a content library for pre-approved, on-brand assets, as well as the ability to edit existing content or create new, brand-appropriate, commercially safe media to help scale up content production. The application supports Firefly, of course, alongside other AI tools and third-party LLMs to speed up the production of emails and online ads.
With data the lifeblood for modern businesses, GenStudio for Performance Marketing will also let users view key performance metrics and insights - while AI can ‘read’ image and video elements to help understand and tailor future content that engages specific audiences.
Users can also expect to see future integrations with Meta, TikTok and Snap, and the Adobe Journey Optimizer, allowing teams to publish directly on platforms through the social media marketing tool.
(Image credit: Adobe)“Delivering impactful global campaigns hinges on the ability to bring marketing and creative teams closer together, with generative AI-powered workflows that eliminate cumbersome and inefficient processes," said Varun Parmar, general manager for Adobe GenStudio.
"Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing enables creatives to focus on delivering deep creative designs that amplify a brand, while empowering their marketing counterparts to create the high volume of content variations that are needed to drive customer engagement, personalization and conversion."
In addition to the new GenStudio for Performance Marketing, Adobe also recently announced major updates to Adobe Express, designed to optimize workflows for marketing teams. Highlights include add-ons for TikTok, cloud storage services including Google Drive and OneDrive, and AI-generated music and script-to-video tools. Conversely, Express add-ons will also be available in ChatGPT, HubSpot, Slack, and Box.
Users can find out more about Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing by clicking here.
More from TechRadar ProDeveloper NetEase games has unveiled Destiny: Rising, an upcoming free-to-play sci-fi shooter set in the world of the popular Destiny franchise. The game, which is coming to mobile devices, will have its first closed alpha test in November.
Destiny: Rising sounds like quite an interesting direction for the series. It’s set in an alternate version of the Destiny universe, at the end of the previously unexplored Dark Age. Humanity is just emerging from a period of collapse, brought on by an alien invasion that almost drove the species to extinction.
The game follows a new generation of Lightbearers, the heroes of Destiny and Destiny 2, who are accompanied by robotic Ghosts. It will feature both traditional first-person and new third-person play, plus controller support on top of the usual touchscreen controls.
You will be able to play as a range of unique characters, each with their own unique abilities, personalities, and backstories. Some will be recognizable to long-time Destiny fans, while others are completely new arrivals.
In addition to single player gameplay, a range of competitive and cooperative game modes will also be available. This includes some taken from existing Destiny games and others that the studio states are designed to “introduce new ways to play Destiny”.
Destiny: Rising is officially licensed by Bungie. According to Ethan Wang, senior vice prresident at NetEase, the company “is honored to partner with Bungie to deliver a Destiny-caliber experience to mobile devices.”
“Destiny is an incredible franchise with a passionate and dedicated global fanbase,” he continued. “As huge fans ourselves, we are humbled and thrilled for the opportunity to bring gamers an action-packed RPG shooter set within the Destiny Universe.”
Terry Redfield, creative lead at Bungie added that “for over a decade, we have built this universe to contain many unique and wonderful stories, and we are excited to see mobile gamers be able to experience this new take on the Destiny universe from the creative team at NetEase.”
The closed alpha test for Destiny: Rising will begin on November 1. If you want a shot at playing early, you can register for it now via the game’s official website.
You might also like...A recently published patent application by LG Display has us hoping for a revival of the company's ill-fated rollable phone project, last seen in prototype form in 2022.
The patent in question concerns a rollable display, ostensibly using the same technology as the canceled LG Rollable phone The Verge reported on in 2022, a year after LG stopped producing smartphones. The OLED display used in this concept phone started at a rather huge 6.8 inches before unfurling to a 7.4-inch mini-tablet.
LG Display is a subsidiary of LG Group that designs and manufactures displays and licenses them to other companies, including majority shareholder LG Electronics, which is legally a separate entity.
Since this rollable phone actually made it to the prototype stage – see the hands-on review by BullsLab – we can reasonably assume that this display could be manufactured again, but to what scale remains a bit of a mystery.
As MSPowerUser reports, the 21-page application includes schematics that detail how the rolling display technology can be used for smartphone-sized devices, as well as larger frames. Though published on October 8 this year, this latest patent was actually filed on October 10, 2023.
Could LG be returning to smartphones? The LG Wing had a truly unique design when it launched in 2020 (Image credit: Future)It’s not uncommon for phone makers to file speculative patents on proprietary technology simply in the interest of defending their ideas from copycats and competitors, but seeing continued research into phone design from LG is exciting given the company’s exit from the phone market in 2021.
LG made a name for itself with high-spec Android phones and, later on, futuristic and unique designs. The most memorable of these remains the LG Wing, which featured two layered displays, the topmost of which could swivel into a landscape orientation to give the phone a T-shaped profile. The company’s final phone, the LG V60, also set itself apart with a detachable second screen, providing cheaper competition to the then-nascent folding phone market.
With these later models in mind, a quirky rolling display wouldn’t feel too out of the ordinary if LG was to return to smartphones.
Mind you, there’s been no official announcement, or even suggestion, of such a return for the South Korean giant, so for now, we think it's unlikely that LG will produce any new phones itself.
However, as mentioned, this patent was filed by LG Display, which commonly licenses displays to other manufacturers, so there's a chance we could see this tech licensed and applied by another manufacturer.
Whether the outcome matches our speculation or not, it's exciting to see that this exciting product hasn't been completely forgotten yet.
For the latest updates, including any official announcements, be sure to keep up with our phones coverage – and for a blast from the past, check out our archived list of the best LG phones.
You might also likeAMD’s Ryzen 9800X3D processor may not offer the sizeable leap in gaming performance that some leaks have previously suggested, it seems according to some new material shared by German tech site HardwareLuxx (via Tom’s Hardware): namely leaked slides from an MSI presentation.
According to the headline at the top of a gaming comparison slide, the Ryzen 9800X3D (referred to as an ‘8-core Ryzen 9000X3D’ CPU) is 11% faster than its predecessor, the 7800X3D, in Far Cry 6. Gains are far more modest in the likes of Shadow of the Tomb Raider (where the 9800X3D is just 4% faster) and Black Myth: Wukong (a paltry 2%).
The Ryzen 9950X3D (referred to as a ‘16-core Ryzen 9000X3D’ CPU) sees a 13% improvement in frame rates versus its predecessor, the 7950X3D, and a similar uptick as the 9800X3D in the other two games, just 2% in both in this case. (In these benchmarks, the processors were paired with an Nvidia RTX 4090 graphics card).
Cinebench results are also shared – which we’ve seen previously leaked, in fact – that show the Ryzen 9800X3D offering a big performance uplift on the 7800X3D, being around 18% and 28% faster than its predecessor for single-core and multi-core respectively. The Ryzen 9950X3D isn’t as much of a boost over the 7950X3D, in this case, though, purportedly netting an uplift of 9% and 16% respectively (which is still very good).
Analysis: Reasons to be cautiousClearly, this has caused quite the stir, as with recent talk of beefy clock speeds for the 9800X3D and other leaks besides, PC gamers have been getting pretty excited about what this processor might be capable of. Particularly in the light of all the disappointment about the gaming performance of vanilla Ryzen 9000 CPUs, and Intel’s new Arrow Lake processors also falling flat for gen-on-gen PC gaming gains.
So, has this new leak poured a whole lot of freezing-cold water on those 9800X3D expectations? Well, yes, in a word, though many of the more realistic PC gamers out there are admonishing the folks who cared to believe the previous buzz around potentially big gaming uplifts for the 9800X3D (especially given some of the shakiness around Ryzen 9000’s launch).
However, let’s not get carried away with this particular leak either, and there are some reasons we should arm ourselves with a bit more skepticism than usual, perhaps, aside from the normal caveats: it’s just a leak, and only one set of testing.
In fact, on the latter point, only three games are run through their paces, so it’s a pretty thin batch of benchmarks. There are some odd choices here, too – like Wukong (a game that’s heavy on the GPU, so not ideal for laying bare the prowess of the processor), and Tomb Raider is seriously old by now. On top of that, the presentation slide for the gaming results has some strange errors included (the headline doesn’t match the GPUs listed with the graphs), and it all feels a bit messy... and therefore more dubious.
As the slides observe, the Ryzen 9000X3D parts are samples too, with better performance expected from the retail CPUs (that said, it probably won’t be much better, given how close to release we are theoretically).
All that said, maybe the Ryzen 9800X3D won’t offer any major gaming leap, but even a modest increase – with better all-round performance – is still worthwhile, and AMD might still adjust pricing to impress, too. While that may seem unlikely, it all depends on how much Team Red wants to recover from its stumbles with vanilla Ryzen 9000, we guess.
We shouldn’t have long to wait to find out how the Ryzen 9800X3D shapes up, as rumor has it that the CPU could be launched very soon indeed.
You might also likeThe LG C3 and LG G3 TVs are getting an upgrade to their smart TV operating system, which is rolling out now – earlier than the 2025 window it was originally scheduled for. The 'webOS 24' update brings several new features that first appeared on LG's 2024 TVs (picture above).
The new software is appearing on some C3 and G3 TVs now, but as FlatpanelsHD notes, you don't need to panic if it hasn't appeared on your TV yet – it can take a few days to appear on all TVs. If you have a different LG TV from 2023, including the LG B3, you should still expect to get this update, but it seems as though the more premium OLED TVs are the lucky first few.
LG has committed to offering 5 years of upgrades to its webOS TVs, with the upgrades arriving one year behind the next version. The stated plan was for 2023 TVs to be given the upgrades that first appeared in 2024's TVs (including the LG C4) during 2025. LG's jumped the gun on that one, but I'm not complaining to any improvement to the best OLED TVs.
2022's TVs, including the LG C2, will receive an upgrade to 2023's software during 2025, following this same rule. It's always one step back.
Here are the four key new features of this update, according to LG:
When we first tested this new version of webOS, we called out the Sports Portal and accessibility features (including the chatbot) as being among its best changes, so it's nice to see them coming to more sets.
The chatbot has felt like a work-in-progress, but the general principle of being able to just ask the TV why your picture doesn't look right and have it point you to the options that could fix it. That's instead of you being expected to know what menu to hunt through, which is clearly a good idea.
This is the first time we're seeing the fruits of LG's plans to consistently upgrades its sets, and it could definitely be something that helps put its models in our list of the best TVs, because it adds to their long-term value. Samsung has recently announced that its TVs will get seven years of updates (beating the five of LG), so LG's push to be first with this kind of promise has already helped improve things for buyers of other brands too.
You might also likeAfter the first series' wild popularity Down Under, it was inevitable that we'd see more from John Ibrahim and the often violent Sydney nightlife scene. Read on for how to watch Last King of the Cross season 2 online from anywhere with a VPN – and potentially for FREE.
Season 2 picks up 18 months after where the bloody end of the first run left off, and John Ibrahim (played by Lincoln Younes) is back in Sydney from his exile in Spain. What he finds is a very different King's Cross district to the one he departed.
That forces him to a new part of town with a new set of rules to learn if he wants to re-establish himself as the clubbing kingpin. Plus, to do so, he'll need to find away to topple he who wears the crown – Ray Kinnock played by Lost's and The Dropout's Naveen Andrews.
Below we have all the information you need on where to watch Last King of the Cross season 2 online and stream every episode from anywhere. Together with details of where you might find free streams.
Can I watch Last King of the Cross season 2 for free?Yes! New Zealanders get to watch every episode of Last King of the Cross for free thanks to the ThreeNow streaming service. Alternatively, you can claim seven days of Paramount Plus for free in Australia and Canada.
How to watch Last King of the Cross S2 online from outside your countryIf you’re traveling abroad, you’ll be unable to watch Last King of the Cross like you normally would due to annoying regional restrictions. Luckily, there’s an easy solution.
Downloading a VPN will allow you to stream online, no matter where you are. It's a simple bit of software that changes your IP address, meaning that you can access on-demand content or live TV just as if you were at home.
Use a VPN to watch Last King of the Cross from anywhere.
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Can I watch Last King of the Cross in the US?Strangely, Last King of the Cross isn't available on the Paramount Plus platform in the US. In fact, no broadcaster or streaming service has picked up the show stateside.
If you're in the US and still want to watch Last King of the Cross, the only suggestion we can make would be to download a VPN and pick up a stream from another country.
How to watch Last King of the Cross season 2 online in CanadaJust like in the show's native Australia, the Paramount Plus platform is the place to watch Last King of the Cross in Canada.
North of the border, the Paramount Plus price is $6.99 per month after the service's free 7-day trial.
How to watch Last King of the Cross season 2 in the UKWith the first series already available to stream in full, Sky TV will show episodes of Last King of the Cross season 2 on Tuesdays from Tuesday, October 15.
The eight instalments will go out at 2am and 9pm each week on its Sky Max channel. Subscribers can also stream episodes on their smartphone and online via the Sky Go app.
How to watch Last King of the Cross season 2 online in AustraliaAll episodes of Last King of the Cross season 2 are now available to stream on the Paramount Plus streaming service Down Under.
The Paramount Plus price is $10.99 per month or $97.99 if you want access for a whole year.
How to watch Last King of the Cross in New Zealand for FREEThreeNow is New Zealand's free ad-supported streaming service, and it has all episodes from season 1 and 2 of Last King of the Cross available to stream.
You do need to register to watch, but all that's required is your name and email address.
Last King of the Cross season 2 cast