Began

Zheping Huang / Bloomberg: Baidu reports Q4 revenue up 6% YoY to ~$4.9B and net income down 48% YoY to ~$366M, as chatbot Ernie, which has 100M+ users, began to augment its ads business — Baidu Inc.'s revenue rose 6% after its ChatGPT-style service began to augment advertising sales, helping the Chinese AI leader weather a severe economic downturn. Zheping Huang / Bloomberg: Baidu reports Q4 revenue up 6% YoY to ~$4.9B and net income down 48% YoY to ~$366M, as chatbot Ernie, which has 100M+ users,…

Thwaites Glacier, western Antarctica, 2019. Credit: Robert Larter Among the vast expanse of Antarctica lies the Thwaites Glacier, the world's widest glacier measuring about 80 miles on the western edge of the continent. Despite its size, the massive landform is losing about 50 billion tons of ice more than it is receiving in snowfall, which places it in a precarious position in respect to its stability.…

People often talk about timing. “Now is not your time,” we tell each other when we fail a driving test or miss out on gig tickets. “Good things come to those who wait” is another phrase easily thrown around, which is quite often anger-inducing. For us, humans, it is annoying for sure, but for our four-legged pals, timing is everything as they have a very limited time on this Earth. Good girl Ginger waited for almost a decade at the shelter, never losing hope that one day her person would walk in and utter the phrase…

On October 19th, 2017, astronomers with the Pan-STARRS survey detected an interstellar object (ISO) passing through our Solar System for the first time. The object, known as 1I/2017 U1 Oumuamua, stimulated significant scientific debate and is still controversial today.One thing that all could agree on was that the detection of this object indicated that ISOs regularly enter our Solar System. What's more, subsequent research has revealed that, on occasion, some of these objects come to Earth as meteorites and impact the…

Fifty years ago this week, Bob Dylan and the Band launched their landmark Before the Flood reunion tour with a pair of shows at Chicago Stadium. Dylan had been off the road for eight very long years at this point, and demand to see his return was so intense that promoters received 5.5 million ticket requests via a cumbersome mail-order system. To put that in perspective, that was four percent of the entire population of America. The last time that Dylan and the Band hit the road, they were met with choruses of…

Last year, Kenya Grace began documenting her music production on TikTok. Her pairing of pop songwriting with dance instrumentals, performed from her bedroom with a simple mic and Midi-controller setup, soon attracted thousands of followers, and the comment sections were inundated with requests for covers, collaborations and official releases.But some – generally male – viewers were unconvinced, littering her posts with variously sexist, patronising and mansplaining comments. “I’ve had people ask if someone else made the…

A new paper suggests that our universe may have begun with two big bangs. Scientists proposed the idea after struggling for decades to explain both the mysterious beginning of the universe as well as the birth of dark matter. The first big bang could have created ordinary matter, while the second big bang is believed to have birthed dark matter later on. The researchers who made the claim say that this particular hypothesis is testable with the current technology and that we should be able to confirm or…

Salvador Rodriguez / Wall Street Journal: In 2022, Meta quietly began letting ads say past US elections were “rigged” or “stolen”; sources say execs made the decision based on free speech considerations — Company weighed free-speech considerations in changing its policy last year Salvador Rodriguez / Wall Street Journal: In 2022, Meta quietly began letting ads say past US elections were “rigged” or “stolen”; sources say execs made the decision based…

2023 has gone from bad to worse for Earth's southern ocean.In February, climate researchers announced that Antarctica's sea ice had hit its lowest summer level since satellite records began 45 years ago.A few months later, in June, during what should be a 'winter growth phase', floating sea ice around Antarctica was still struggling to recover.A time series of sea ice in the southern ocean, put together by climate researchers at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows July's coverage is well below…

Monday was the world's hottest day on record, exceeding an average of 17 degrees Celsius (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time, according to initial measurements taken on Tuesday by US meteorologists.The average daily air temperature on the planet's surface on July 3 was logged at 17.01 °C by an organisation attached to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).This measurement surpasses the previous daily record (16.92 °C) set on July 24 last year, according to data from NOAA's National…