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New York Giants fans experienced more than one embarrassment in primetime Monday night.

Gallagher told Joe Bradley, "I can turn that smirk into a frown really fast," during the tense scene on the Bravo show.

Gallagher told Joe Bradley, "I can turn that smirk into a frown really fast," during the tense scene on the Bravo show.

Ohio homebrewer John Ream hopes the Supreme Court will overturn a 150-year-old federal ban that makes distilling liquor at home a felony.

The actor was furious that Weinstein had interfered in the editing of the 2000 crime drama "The Yards," starring Wahlberg.

The actor was furious that Weinstein had interfered in the editing of the 2000 crime drama "The Yards," starring Wahlberg.

“It is quite possible that she was still alive when she was placed in the suitcase" and buried.

Alibaba Unveils China's Most Powerful AI Chip In $53 Billion Gambit

Alibaba Group has unveiled the Zhenwu V900, an AI accelerator it calls China's most powerful, marking a major escalation in its effort to challenge Nvidia and build a vertically integrated artificial-intelligence stack stretching from chips and networking to models and hyperscale data centers.

Alibaba booth at the 3rd China International Supply Chain Expo at the China International Exhibition Center in Beijing, Friday, July 18, 2025 (Mahesh Kumar / AP)

Unveiled by CEO Eddie Wu at Alibaba's Apsara Conference, the new processor from the company's T-Head semiconductor division reportedly delivers three times the performance of the Zhenwu M890 introduced just four months ago. The V900 carries 216 GB of memory, 1,200 GB per second of inter-chip bandwidth and native support for low-precision formats including FP8 and FP4, allowing it to handle both model training and inference, according to Alibaba. (independent benchmarks have not yet been published).

The V900 is scheduled to enter mass production and commercial release in the first quarter of 2027 - an acceleration from Alibaba's previous roadmap which had placed its next-generation accelerator in the latter part of next year. 

The company says its upgraded supernode architecture can support clusters containing as many as 500,000 cards. 

The hardware is part of a much larger full-stack strategy for Alibaba, which also says that their Qwen 4 AI model is currently in training, while its planned Qwen 4.5 and Qwen 5 generations are projected to scale to between 5 trillion and 10 trillion parameters. Its current flagship Qwen3.8-Max contains about 2.4 trillion parameters.

A 20-Gigawatt Bet

To support their goals, Alibaba obviously needs to undergo an enormous expansion of physical infrastructure.

Wu said Alibaba Cloud intends to operate more than 20 gigawatts of global data-center capacity by 2032. The company has not disclosed its current comparable base or a detailed site-by-site construction schedule, and the 20 GW figure measures electrical data-center capacity rather than a standardized quantity of AI compute.

Either way, these plans put Alibaba squarely inside the global hyperscaler infrastructure arms race - yet can they technically pull it off? As we recently noted, many of the world's announced AI projects face constraints that have little to do with model architecture: sufficient electricity, water, chips, networking gear, permitting, construction capacity and the ability to connect everything on schedule.

Alibaba's original commitment called for more than RMB 380 billion, or roughly $53 billion, of investment in AI and cloud infrastructure over three years - with chairman Joe Tsai reiterating that commitment in June. The company said in May that spending could ultimately exceed the original RMB 380 billion plan as AI demand accelerated. They then raised another HK$80 billion, approximately $10.2 billion, in an August share placement. According to Alibaba's SEC filing, roughly 60% of the net proceeds will expand global computing infrastructure, while approximately 40% will fund hyperscale AI data centers and upgrades to storage, databases and high-performance networking.

Citigroup analysts have reportedly estimated that infrastructure on the scale envisioned by Alibaba could eventually support roughly $160 billion in external cloud revenue. 

Alibaba's own stated target is substantial enough: CEO Eddie Wu has said the company expects to surpass $100 billion in annual combined cloud and AI external revenue within five years.

The Spending Is Already Showing Up

The near-term cost, for Alibaba anyway, is huge. They spent RMB67.7 billion, or almost $10 billion, on capital expenditures during the June quarter alone, a 75% increase from a year earlier. Free cash flow swung to an outflow of RMB44.7 billion, or about $6.6 billion, which Alibaba said was mainly attributable to increased cloud-infrastructure expenditure.

Headline net income fell 75% year over year to RMB10.4 billion, or about $1.5 billion. But attributing that entire decline to the AI buildout would be misleading. Alibaba said lower operating income was compounded by smaller gains from investment disposals and mark-to-market changes in its equity portfolio. On a non-GAAP basis, net income fell a less dramatic 38%, with technology investment cited as the primary drag.

The cloud business, however, is growing quickly. Alibaba's AI Cloud and Compute Services generated $7.14 billion in June-quarter revenue, up 45% year over year. AI-related product revenue alone reached $1.824 billion for the quarter, its twelfth consecutive quarter of triple-digit year-over-year growth.

On an annualized basis, Alibaba says AI-related product revenue had reached approximately $7.3 billion and is expected to approach $10 billion in the September quarter.

Management has also argued that the economics of the infrastructure spending are more attractive than the headline capex suggests. On its August earnings call, Alibaba said that at current gross margins it expects to recoup AI-related capex in roughly three years, potentially shortening the payback period to about 2.5 years as margins rise.

The silicon business has progressed rapidly as well. T-Head had shipped more than 560,000 Zhenwu chips by the spring, with more than 400 external customers across 20 industries. Alibaba now says the Zhenwu family is serving more than 650 customers spanning automobiles, finance, large language models, embodied intelligence, energy and manufacturing.

The Real Bottleneck

The greatest uncertainty may not be whether Alibaba can design competitive accelerators, but whether China can manufacture enough advanced silicon to support its ambitions.

As we recently noted, U.S. restrictions have limited Chinese access both to Nvidia's most advanced AI processors and to foreign foundry capacity used to manufacture cutting-edge Chinese designs. Those constraints have given Alibaba, Huawei and other domestic suppliers a powerful incentive to develop replacements.

Alibaba has not publicly identified the V900's foundry or manufacturing node, so it would be premature to state that SMIC will manufacture the processor. But the broader domestic supply chain remains constrained.

As we recently noted, SMIC has been able to manufacture 7-nanometer-class chips using sophisticated multi-patterning on deep-ultraviolet lithography systems, but China's advanced semiconductor industry still depends heavily on foreign equipment. Chinese chipmakers have accumulated years of ASML machinery while Huawei and domestic equipment suppliers race to build replacements, yet critical components including projection optics and high-power light sources remain difficult bottlenecks.

That means the challenge facing Alibaba extends well below the GPU architecture itself. Frontier-scale AI requires advanced logic, high-bandwidth memory, packaging, high-speed networking, optical components, cooling systems and enormous quantities of reliable electricity. Weakness anywhere in that chain can become the limiting factor.

And this is not merely a Chinese problem. As we recently noted, the global AI buildout is increasingly colliding with shortages of power, water, chips, fiber, construction resources and regulatory approvals. Twenty gigawatts on a presentation slide and 20 gigawatts of fully energized, chip-filled, revenue-producing data centers are two very different things.

GEOPOLITICS!

The timing of Alibaba's announcement is difficult to separate from the broader U.S.-China technology rivalry.

The V900 was unveiled just days before President Donald Trump is expected to host Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington. As we recently noted, preparatory talks between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng produced plans for a new U.S.-China AI dialogue and a proposed notification mechanism for serious AI incidents. Advanced AI-chip export restrictions, however, were not part of that particular discussion.

Washington is attempting to limit China's access to the most advanced semiconductor technology while Chinese companies are simultaneously developing indigenous chips, deploying cheaper models and building increasingly large domestic compute systems.

Alibaba's V900 is therefore more than another accelerator launch. It is one component of an attempt to vertically integrate the entire AI stack: proprietary processors, networking silicon, storage controllers, massive clusters, Qwen foundation models, agent platforms and ultimately tens of gigawatts of cloud infrastructure.

China can manufacture enough advanced silicon, memory and networking equipment, secure enough power, and build enough data-center infrastructure to turn the roadmap into operating compute?

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 10:15

Lindsay Clancy's Attorney Requests Investigation Into Holdout Juror

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

Lindsay Clancy's attorney has asked the judge to conduct a "limited inquiry" into the holdout juror who wanted Clancy convicted of murdering her three children.

In a motion filed Sept. 18, lawyer Kevin Reddington asked Judge William Sullivan to review the juror's truthfulness on a questionnaire and alleged use of a cellphone during deliberations. He did not identify the juror.

Reddington also sought a court order requiring the juror's cellphone carrier to provide call and text detail records and data-session logs from Aug. 27 through Sept. 4, covering each deliberation day, and directing the juror to submit his cellphone to a neutral examiner designated by the court.

The lawyer asked the court to provide under seal juror information it obtained, details of any background checks it conducted, and whether the Plymouth County District Attorney's Office has handled any case involving the juror as a defendant or complainant.

Clancy was on trial after admitting to strangling her children - a 5-year-old, a 3-year-old, and an 8-month-old - with exercise bands in the basement of her Massachusetts home in January 2023. Her lawyers argued that Clancy was experiencing postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings and sought a not guilty by reason of insanity verdict.

On Sept. 4, Sullivan declared a mistrial in the murder trial after the jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict. Eleven of the 12 jurors favored finding Clancy not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility for the deaths of her children. The defense team asked Sullivan to remove the holdout juror, but he rejected the request.

The court has not publicly identified the holdout juror, but he later identified himself as Michael Péguy Desronvil in a Sept. 18 statement posted by his lawyer.

Desronvil, the lone black juror and one of three males on the jury, said he "didn't have any doubts" that Clancy was criminally responsible for her children's death.

"As I tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation, I kept getting cut off as if I had doubts based on the evidence presented," he said in the statement.

"Based on all the physical evidence, key witnesses, and what the prosecution presented, I thought it was enough proof that [Clancy] knew exactly what she was doing and planned."

Desronvil's extended family has been hounded by the public since the trial. His attorney, Edward Andrew Paltzik, has urged the public to respect the juror's privacy.

"Please respect his dignity, humanity, and privacy. Stay away from his home, stop calling him, and don't even think about deciphering his location," Paltzik said on X.

Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz said on Sept. 4 that his team had not yet decided whether to pursue a second trial. The next hearing is set for Sept. 29.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 10:00

Rob Bonta “caved across the board” yesterday when he settled with Paramount, sources close to the California AG are saying — and Bonta even seemed close to tears when he announced the deal.

Hundreds of flights were canceled throughout the U.S. Northeast on Monday as the outage hit every major airport in the NYC area.

"The State of Mississippi is attempting to close the chapter on Nolan Wells' death without getting to the truth," Wells' family attorney wrote.

Viral footage showed the frightening moment that a hulking humanoid seemingly cleaned an influencer's clock in the alleged inaugural man-vs-machine cage match.

Crazy for Le Creuset? Shop this lookalike for less.

It’s time for Jameis Winston to show if he’s worth that new extension.

Michael Desronvil's attorney hit back at a motion filed by the killer mom's defense team, branding it a "full-frontal attack on the US Constitution."

Saudis Signal Red Sea Oil Loadings Could Soon Resume For Asian Buyers

Bloomberg reports Saudi Aramco may restart crude loadings at Yanbu this week, raising hopes that the critical East-West pipeline route, which bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, could resume operations at half capacity after a drone attack disabled it.

While no restart timeline has been confirmed, the overnight development adds to positive signs of progress toward resolving the global energy crisis after Brent slipped below $100 a barrel on reports that Iran offered to reopen the strait in exchange for an easing of US naval pressure and the US blockade of Iranian ports.

However, Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency has denied reports from Kyodo and Reuters about reopening Hormuz, calling them "invalid and untrue."

The report also said Aramco executives told at least three Asian refiners they could soon resume picking up crude at Yanbu on the Red Sea.

Loadings at the Red Sea port have been halted since drone attacks launched from Iraq struck an East-West pipeline pumping station on September 10. The route had been carrying about 4 million barrels a day, providing Saudi Arabia with a valuable bypass around the Hormuz chokepoint.

Some Asian and European buyers have already missed their loading dates, leaving vessels near Yanbu or still heading toward the port. The Saudis have ramped up crude tanker transits from Ras Tanura through Hormuz, with cargoes available for ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman.

Despite this morning's encouraging reports, Barclays analyst Amarpreet Singh warned that Brent prices may need to climb another 50% to bring supply and demand into balance if current disruptions persist.

Inventory and consumption indicators suggest "prices have a long way to go before supply and demand converge," Singh wrote in the note.

He pointed out that net Middle Eastern supply losses have narrowed to an estimated 4.7 million barrels a day, down from 12 million to 13 million at the start of the war. But months of disruption have left the market with inadequate buffers to protect against another big supply shock.

Singh forecasts Brent at $95 a barrel in the fourth quarter of 2026, followed by $90, $85, $85 and $80 across the four quarters of 2027. The potential 50% increase represents an upside scenario if disruptions continue.

Separately, UBS analyst Joe Dickinson told clients earlier that "Trump's approval ratings hit new lows and public Republican dissatisfaction continued to build ahead of the midterm elections. Polymarket is now pricing a 65% probability of a Democratic clean sweep, adding pressure on Trump to deliver tangible progress in negotiations over the conflict in the Middle East."

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 09:25

The Duke of Sussex chatted about his and Markle's relocation with Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, at the WellChild Awards on Monday.

The Duke of Sussex chatted about his and Markle's relocation with Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, at the WellChild Awards on Monday.

The country music icon's sister previously revealed that Dolly was open to trying experimental drugs for her cancer.