From Bugsy Siegel to Frank Rosenthal, organized crime has a special place in Las Vegas history. And, as posited by local journalist and author Lissa Townsend Rodgers, women have a special place in the history of organized crime.

Published by the locally based Huntington Press, Shameless: Women of the Underworld delves into the lives of six women who made a name for themselves in their respective circles of criminals. Most historical accounts seek to cast figures like Kathryn Kelly, Bonnie Parker, Stephanie St. Clair, Virginia Hill, Geri Rosenthal and Liz Renay as supporting acts to their male counterparts and companions. Rodgers brings their stories to center stage in the book and at a reading and book signing at the Mob Museum on March 26.

Theyre stories that defy societys roles for women. As she notes in her introduction, If the America of the early to mid-20th century was a time when women knew their place, the gender roles and rules were even more rigid in the underworld of the era.

Obviously, it was much worse back then, Rodgers tells the Weekly. As serious and as much as it was in everyday life, it was even worse in the world of the mob, where you clean things, you tidy things, youre a side piece, you keep your mouth shut.

While societys and the underworlds expectations for women were rigid, the author highlights how the crime queens broke that moldwhether it was Virginia Hill, widely known as Bugsy Siegels girlfriend, using her sexual prowess to work her way up in the mob; or Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrows other half, posing for an immortal photo with cigar in mouth, shotgun in hand and one foot perched on a car fender.

Years of extensive research not only roots the stories in factual history, but also makes readers feel as though theyre a fly on the wall. The author weaves together firsthand accounts, news reports from the time, menus, guests lists and various sources to paint vivid scenes and transport readers back in time. Take this example from Geri Rosenthals chapter:

In the early 70s, the Stardust glowed with smoke mirrors, pink neon and action. It was Vegas at its post-Rat Pack zenith, the stars and spangles of Strip signage blitzing and glimmering, everything humming from senatorial suite and steakhouse to sports book. Dancers cha-cha-ed with giant bananas onstage at the Lido show as Siegfried & Roy made another tiger disappear. Saudi Arabian arms dealers dropped a ten-grand courtesy bet at the tables, Eartha Kitt purred languidly on the rotating stage in the lounge.

And in the middle of it all, the mad queen of a crazy town was Geri, in a Halston halter and diamond-ruby necklace, blown out of her mind on Percodan and vodka rocks, ready to throw a drink, start a fight, kick down an empire.

Not only the womens surroundings, but also their inner lives take shape in the narratives Rodgers crafts. She captures their emotional states, from the highs of thrilling heists to the lows of ending up penniless and mysteriously dead.

Las Vegans may find themselves particularly drawn to the chapters about Virginia Hill, Liz Renay and Geri Rosenthal, whose plots all touched Sin City at one point or another. And for many of the crime queens featured in the book, Shameless offers history previously untold.

There are so many great stories that people dont tell, Rodgers says of the subjects of her book. For a lot of them, its the only serious record thats in one place.

SHAMELESS: WOMEN OF THE UNDERWORLDMarch 26, 7 p.m., $20-$35. Mob Museum, themobmuseum.org.

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Las Vegas author Lissa Townsend Rodgers sheds light on historic women in organized crime - Las Vegas Weekly

Meta has unveiled details about its AI training infrastructure, revealing that it currently relies on almost 50,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs to train its open source Llama 3 LLM.

The company says it will have over 350,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs in service by the end of 2024, and the computing power equivalent to nearly 600,000 H100s when combined with hardware from other sources.

The figures were revealed as Meta shared details on its 24,576-GPU data center scale clusters.

The company explained These clusters support our current and next generation AI models, including Llama 3, the successor to Llama 2, our publicly released LLM, as well as AI research and development across GenAI and other areas.

The clusters are built on Grand Teton (named after the National Park in Wyoming), an in-house-designed, open GPU hardware platform. Grand Teton integrates power, control, compute, and fabric interfaces into a single chassis for better overall performance and scalability.

The clusters also feature high-performance network fabrics, enabling them to support larger and more complex models than before. Meta says one cluster uses a remote direct memory access network fabric solution based on the Arista 7800, while the other features an NVIDIA Quantum2 InfiniBand fabric. Both solutions interconnect 400 Gbps endpoints.

"The efficiency of the high-performance network fabrics within these clusters, some of the key storage decisions, combined with the 24,576 NVIDIA Tensor Core H100 GPUs in each, allow both cluster versions to support models larger and more complex than that could be supported in the RSC and pave the way for advancements in GenAI product development and AI research," Meta said.

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Storage is another critical aspect of AI training, and Meta has developed a Linux Filesystem in Userspace backed by a version of its 'Tectonic' distributed storage solution optimized for Flash media. This solution reportedly enables thousands of GPUs to save and load checkpoints in a synchronized fashion, in addition to "providing a flexible and high-throughput exabyte scale storage required for data loading".

While the company's current AI infrastructure relies heavily on Nvidia GPUs, it's unclear how long this will continue. As Meta continues to evolve its AI capabilities, it will inevitably focus on developing and producing more of its own hardware. Meta has already announced plans to use its own AI chips, called Artemis, in servers this year, and the company previously revealed it was getting ready to manufacture custom RISC-V silicon.

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Meta sheds more light on how it is evolving Llama 3 training it relies for now on almost 50000 Nvidia H100 GPU, but ... - TechRadar

This gain quickly followed the previous days gain in the official and parallel market. A report by the Punch newspaper shows that the Naira closed at N1,410 per US dollar on the black market on Wednesday.

According to data obtained from the FMDQ Securities Exchange, the Nigerian currency ended trading on Wednesday at 1,410/dollar in the parallel market and N1,492 at the official Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market.

The currency's gain in the official market is equivalent to an appreciation of N68, or 4.5%, over the N1,560/$1 reported at NAFEM the previous day. In the parallel market, the gain is equivalent to N190, or 13.5%.

"The dollar supplied by FX market players increased to $288.47, an increase of $2 or 7.46 percent from $268.29 million recorded on Wednesday from $195.13 million at NAFEM," the Punch's report reads.

This denotes that in the past few weeks, the Naira has gained N500 against the US dollar from its record low this year at the black market.

As promised by Governor Olayemi Cardoso, the Central Bank of Nigeria announced on Wednesday that it has successfully settled all legitimate foreign exchange backlogs, settling $7 billion in inherited claims.

The Central Bank of Nigeria issued several circulars in recent weeks which have assisted in fixing loopholes that had previously been exploited by money speculators and racketeers.

Additionally, the president warned against Nigerians sabotaging the currency, calling such an act unpatriotic and deserving of burnt fingers.

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The Nigerian currency sheds off N500 against the US dollar - Business Insider Africa

How the Princess of Wales' story sheds light on the importance of cancer screening  CBC.ca

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How the Princess of Wales' story sheds light on the importance of cancer screening - CBC.ca

{KXLG -Watertown, SD} After a brief clarifying discussion, the Watertown Regional Library acquired the approval of a conditional use permit from the Board of Adjustment for storage units to put up a 12 x 24 shed on adjacent vacant property owned by the City of Watertown.

Before approval, Board member Todd Kays commented, What if this request was from a resident and Community Development Manager Brandi Hanten responded.

Resident Mike Kludt spoke up, stating the letter he received from the City wasnt very clear.

Hanten responded that the unit has to fit the residential nature of the neighborhood.

Library Director Maria Gruener explains some background.

Gruener describes it as similar to a garden shed.

Kays made a specific motion and was seconded by Board member Bonnie Oletzke.

Kays welcomed a friendly amendment from Board member Jeff Brink that it cannot be rented out for commercial use.

Once the motion was modified, it was voted on and unanimously approved.

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Library approved for storage shed thanks in-part to a $10000 donation from Friends of the Library - mykxlg.com

Wake County students build sheds to help with nationwide demand  CBS17.com

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Wake County students build sheds to help with nationwide demand - CBS17.com

Led by the University of Nottingham, in collaboration with Kings College London and Newcastle University, researchers have created a quantum tornado to see how black holes behave.

The team created a giant quantum vortex within superfluid helium that is chilled to the lowest possible temperatures.

Through the observation of minute wave dynamics on the superfluids surface, the research team has demonstrated that quantum tornadoes mimic gravitational conditions near rotating black holes.

The research was published in the journal Nature.

The team created a bespoke cryogenic system capable of containing several litres of superfluid helium at temperatures lower than -271C.

Liquid helium acquires unusual quantum properties at this temperature.

These properties act as a barrier to the formation of giant vortices in other quantum fluids like ultracold atomic gases or quantum fluids of light.

The system shows that the interface of superfluid helium acts as a stabilising force for these objects.

The papers lead author, Dr Patrik Svancara from the School of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Nottingham, said: Superfluid helium contains tiny objects called quantum vortices, which tend to spread apart from each other.

In our set-up, weve managed to confine tens of thousands of these quanta in a compact object resembling a small tornado, achieving a vortex flow with record-breaking strength in the realm of quantum fluids.

The team found interesting parallels between the vortex flow and the gravitational influence of black holes on the surrounding spacetime.

The achievement provides the opportunity for simulations of finite-temperature quantum field theories within the realm of curved spacetimes.

Professor Silke Weinfurtner, leading the work in the Black Hole Laboratory where this experiment was developed, said: When we first observed clear signatures of black hole physics in our initial analogue experiment back in 2017, it was a breakthrough moment for understanding some of the bizarre phenomena that are often challenging.

Now, with our more sophisticated experiment, we have taken this research to the next level, which could eventually lead us to predict how quantum fields behave in curved spacetimes around astrophysical black holes.

The research has received 5m in funding from the Science Technology Facilities Council.

The project has also been supported by both the UKRI Network grant on Quantum Simulators for Fundamental Physics and the Leverhulme Research Leaders Fellowship held by Professor Silke Weinfurtner.

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Quantum tornado sheds light on black holes - Innovation News Network

Trent Brown had options in free agency, but he ultimately decided to sign with the Cincinnati Bengals on a one-year deal. While discussing his decision, Brown pointed to the roster that was already in place and the opportunity to log some serious snaps as major motivating factors.

"Just the pieces that are already in place," Brown said of why he selected Cincinnati. "I feel like it's a plug and play situation, and the chance to go win."

With the Bengals, Brown feels like he'll be able to focus on football in an atmosphere that he feels comfortable in.

"I feel like I'll be worried less and be able to worry about playing football," Brown said. "I won't have to worry about any off-the-field things, and I'll be able to just enjoy coming to work on a day-to-day basis. And that was important as well when we talk about fit."

Following the departure of Jonah Williams in free agency, there was a hole in Cincinnati's offensive line, and Brown projects to fill it. He brings ample experience and versatility to the offense, as he has played both left and right tackle over the course of his career. He is projected to play on the right side with the Bengals with Orlando Brown Jr. occupying the opposite side.

Brown's addition could also potentially alter Cincinnati's draft strategy, as it might open up some options for them in the first round. Many pundits predict that the Bengals will grab an offensive lineman with their first pick, but after adding Brown perhaps they'll opt to go in a different direction.

But, Brown is 30 with nearly a decade of professional experience under his belt, and as a result he might not be a long-term answer for the Bengals on the line. So, the team would still be wise to bolster the line in the draft, even if it's not in the first round.

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Trent Brown sheds light on his decision to sign with Bengals in free agency - Stripe Hype

Revealed: documents shed light on shadowy US far-right fraternal order  The Guardian US

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Revealed: documents shed light on shadowy US far-right fraternal order - The Guardian US

TROY -- One person was hospitalized after a fire ripped through a homein Troy Wednesday afternoon.

Multiple crews spent hours battling heavy flames ata residencealong the Barker Road. The Troy Fire Department was alerted of the fire around 1:30 p.m.

"There was a fire that started in one of the wood shops and then spread to the house and the house became fully involved, somebody noticed it that was up by the animals and called 911 and we responded to the scene," said Troy Fire Chief Chris Phillips.

Chief Philips says the house was fully involved when they got to the scene but everyone were already out of the house.

He says the house was too unstable for firefighters to enter making it difficult to extinguish, resulting in a total loss.

"If it was a safe interior we probably could have gotten more done quicker but because it was an unsafe interior because it was fully involved at the town we had to complete surround it and extinguish it from that point," said Phillips.

Two sheds also destroyed were housing animals, however the chiefwas unsure if any animals were hurt.

According to Chief Phillips, the homeowner was hospitalized for smoke inhalation.

The fire department was assisted by crews from Thorndike, Dixmont, Plymouth, Detroit and Unity.

The cause of the fire is currently unknown.

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Fire destroys home and sheds in Troy | Local News | foxbangor.com - FOX Bangor/ABC 7 News and Stories