Per reporter: Li Menglin Tan Yuhan Per editor: Sun Yuting
A 6.9-magnitude earthquake in Morocco has killed 632 people
Image source: CCTV News
According to Moroccan media, the number of victims of the earthquake in Morocco has risen to 632, in addition to 329 injuries.
According to the US Geological Survey Seismic Information Network, at 23:11 local time on the 8th (6:11 Beijing time on the 9th), a 6.8-magnitude earthquake occurred in southern Morocco, with an epicenter about 71 kilometers southwest of the southern Moroccan city of Marrakech, with a focal depth of 18.5 kilometers.
Local officials said the areas with the heavier casualties were in mountainous areas and were difficult to reach. The earthquake was felt in many cities, including Rabat, the capital of Morocco, and Marrakech. At least 20 buildings collapsed in Marrakech. Multiple videos showed the ruins and rubble of collapsed houses visible on the streets. People evacuated when a strong earthquake struck.
The epicenter of the powerful earthquake in Morocco was located in the Greater Atlas Mountains area. The Great Atlas Mountains are the main vein of the western part of the Atlas Mountains in North Africa, located in central Morocco. The city of Marrakech, the largest city closest to the epicenter, is the third largest city in Morocco and the economic and political center of the southern region, with a population of more than 1 million. Marrakech's Old Town is included in UNESCO's World Heritage List.
NVIDIA fake? Wall Street blew up
This week, Wall Street's "popular fried chicken" NVIDIA shares fell 8.43%, shrinking its market value by about $100 billion, surprising investors. In addition to the macro logic that rising expectations of the Fed's interest rate hike have put pressure on risky assets such as stocks, the suggestion that NVIDIA has teamed up with shell companies to fake sales revenue has been widely circulated on social media, triggering fierce debate on Wall Street.
Image source: Twitter
There are two main points to the doubts about NVIDIA. First, NVIDIA's revenue more than doubled in the second quarter, while cost of sales rose by only 7%, which is doubtful; In addition, NVIDIA invested in a little-known AI company, Coreweave, which completed a debt financing of $2.3 billion by pledging NVIDIA GPUs, which is exactly the same amount as the second-quarter revenue of NVIDIA's data center, which includes the AI chip business, exceeded market expectations.
Skeptics further point out that Corewaeve may not be a real company, but a shell institution created and supported by Nvidia's second-largest shareholder, asset management giant BlackRock, and its trading model can be compared to the crashing cryptocurrency giant FTX.
In response to the "small essay" of stock critics, many Wall Street analysts said that they were very speechless and had to come forward to clarify. Stacy Rasgon, an analyst at the brokerage Bernstein, said bluntly in his latest research this week, "Please don't believe the naïve investment arguments that appear casually on social media."
As for the skepticism that Nvidia's revenue doubled year-over-year and cost of sales increased by only 7%, Rasgon said that this was because Nvidia's second-quarter expenses included about $1.22 billion in inventory reserves, which were included in cost of sales in the second quarter of last year, and "when these expenses are excluded, the cost of sales in the second quarter actually increased by about 70% compared to a year ago, which is completely normal." ”
Regarding Coreweave, Rasgon reminded that the company mortgaged Nvidia's H100 chips in exchange for Blackstone-led debt financing, not BlackRock, Nvidia's majority shareholder. In addition, NVIDIA's products have already been allocated, and no one is needed to help do sales data, and Coreweave's debt financing was announced on August 3, and the real capital deployment has not yet started, at this time the second quarter has ended, and the statement of inflating Nvidia's second-quarter earnings is not valid.
The so-called "popular right and wrong", a chasing analysis has caused investors to be nervous, and from the side, it also reflects the market's concern about whether the hot market of AI can be sustained. Ami Joseph, a tech analyst at research firm Hedgeye, said: "I don't believe the people at Nvidia have any incentive to want to go to jail, and now that there is a shortage of GPUs, they simply don't lack buyers... Is AI the future? Absolutely. But is there a slight risk of foaming too much now? Absolutely. ”
Musk builds general artificial intelligence
Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and X AI coming together?
On Wednesday, an article by Gizmodo, a well-known American technology blog, said that Musk wants to form a large AI company.
According to a recent Time Magazine article by prominent journalist and biographer Walter Isaacson, Musk's apparent missteps on Twitter and Tesla in recent years are actually episodes of his master plan, the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"-style artificial general-purpose artificial intelligence.
In one form or another, artificial intelligence has become an important complement to its Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and other projects. Although most of these companies operate independently of each other, Musk envisions eventually bundling all of them and his recently founded startup, X AI, with the ultimate goal of creating a powerful general-purpose artificial intelligence.
Isaacson noted that Twitter's corpus of more than a trillion tweets could give Musk a chance to compete with the massive data sets already owned by rivals like OpenAI and Google. Musk admits that he only really realized the value of Twitter data for artificial intelligence after acquiring Twitter.
The combination of text data from Twitter users and real-world images captured by Tesla's fully autonomous driving system means Musk could experiment with creating Chatgpt-style AI chatbots and physical robots that can navigate the real world.
"India" to be renamed "Brahta"?
Image source: Visual China
According to CCTV News, citing a number of Indian media reports, the Modi government may propose a resolution to change India's name to "Bharat" at a special parliamentary session to be held from September 18 to 22. So far, the Modi government and the BJP have not confirmed or denied this news.
Indian President Droverpaddy Murmu has referred to India as "Bharat" instead of "India," as it is commonly known for, in his invitation to the G20 summit dinner in New Delhi, Jairam Ramesh, the leader of India's parliament said Sept. 5.
According to a report by the global network on September 7, the "Indian Defense Research" website said that the word "Brahta" is derived from Sanskrit and is deeply rooted in Indian culture and history. The term "Brahta" can refer both to the Brahmatar tribe of northern India in the 2nd century BC and as another name for the Indian subcontinent, which has a strong Hindu color. In 1950, the Indian constitution made "Bharat" an alternative name for "India of India".
This summer is the hottest summer on record!
UN Secretary-General warns: Climate collapse has begun
According to the German Handelsblatt on September 6, the United Nations Secretary-General recently issued a warning that "climate collapse has begun."
2023 is already considered a year of frequent extreme weather events. The World Meteorological Organization announced that June, July and August 2023 were the hottest months on record, June, July and August, respectively.
Meteorological data shows that from 1940 to the present, the highest average temperature month in the world, the past three months can be ranked in the top eight in history, June this year is the eighth hottest month measured so far, August is the second hottest month, July is the first hottest month. The average temperature throughout the year is likely to be higher than in previous years. To date, 2023 is the second hottest year. However, compared to the record 2016 period, the gap is only 0.01 degrees Celsius.
The news prompted U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to call this summer "the hottest summer on record." He sounded the alarm: "Climate collapse has begun. In response to the uncontrolled consumption of oil, coal and other fossil fuels, the UN Secretary-General said that humanity can still prevent the worst. Change is urgent, he said.
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