The epicenter of Europe’s heat wave is shifting back to fire-ravaged Greece, as temperatures are set to hit

Tribal lands have some of the best potential for solar and wind energy in the US, but it’s

India backtracked Friday on its sudden plan to curb laptop and tablet imports without a license, giving companies

By Samrhitha A (Reuters) -Verizon beat quarterly profit estimates on Tuesday on the back of lower costs and a surprise

Threads, Instagram’s new Twitter rival, has now hit 70 million sign-ups, parent company Meta has said. The app is now easily the fastest-growing app in the world, and has seen the fastest growth of any app ever. That position was originally held by ChatGPT, but it took a couple of months for that app to reach 100 million users. It also means that Threads is well on its way to the size of Twitter, its rival. That app had 229 million monthly active users in May 2022, according to a statement made before Elon Musk’s buyout latest last year. Meta revealed the latest sign-up numbers as it looked to highlight high-profile early adopters, including Selena Gomez, Khloe Kardashian and Lewis Hamilton. It did not reveal how many posts had been made on the site, though that is already likely to be in the hundreds of millions. Meta launched Threads – which uses Instagram branding and borrows accounts from the platform – late on Wednesday. Since then it has been growing quickly, with the number of users seemingly doubling every few hours. Dubbed as the “Twitter-Killer”, Threads was the top free app on Apple’s App Store in the UK and US on Thursday. Its arrival comes after Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Musk have traded barbs for months, even threatening to fight each other in a real-life mixed martial arts cage match in Las Vegas. “The cage match has started, and Zuckerberg delivered a major blow. In many ways, it’s exactly what you’d expect from Meta: Stellar execution and an easy-to-navigate user interface,” Insider Intelligence principal analyst Jasmine Enberg said. Twitter responded on Thursday by threatening to sue Meta, according to the publication Semafor, citing a letter delivered to Zuckerberg by a lawyer for Twitter. Twitter was not immediately available for comment. Reuters could not immediately verify the Semafor report. Meta said no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee. Numerous competitors to Twitter have sprung up following Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the social media platform last year, which was followed by a series of chaotic decisions that have alienated both users and advertisers. Musk’s latest move involved limiting the number of tweets users can read per day. Twitter’s stumbles make room for a well-funded competitor like Meta Platforms, analysts and experts said, particularly because of its access to Instagram users and its advertising strength. “Meta’s release of Threads came at the perfect time to give it a fighting chance to unseat Twitter,” said Niklas Myhr, professor of marketing at Chapman University, referring to the turmoil at Twitter after it limited the number of tweets users can see. “Threads will be off to a running start as it is built upon the Instagram platform with its massive user base and if users adopt Threads, advertisers will be following closely behind.” Other competitors have found limited success. Mastodon, another Twitter-like app, has 1.7 million monthly active users, according to its website, while Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey-backed Bluesky has about 265,000 users. Read More People are realising something really worrying about Threads Twitter threatens legal action against Meta over new ‘Threads’ app Meta responds to Musk’s threat as Threads becomes most rapidly downloaded app Musk, Zuckerberg and the chaotic fight to succeed Twitter Kim Kardashian, Rylan Clark and Dalai Lama among those joining new app Threads Threads is already more than three times bigger than every Twitter rival combined

What if any surface could harvest solar solar power? Ubiquitous Energy, a solar tech company

Researchers have made a breakthrough with a so-called miracle material to break the efficiency record for solar panel electricity generation. A team from the Chinese solar technology firm Longi set a new world record of 33.9 per cent for a silicon-perovskite tandem solar cell, breaking the previous record set in May this year by King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. The new efficiency record also broke the theoretical limit of 33.7 per cent for the first time of standard single junction cells, which are found in commercial solar panels. “This provides meaningful empirical data to demonstrate the advantage of crystalline silicon-perovskite tandem solar cells over crystalline silicon single junction solar cells in terms of efficiency,” the company noted in a statement. “The emergence of crystalline silicon-perovskite tandem technology has opened up a new track for the development of next-generation high-efficiency solar cell technology. This means that the same area, absorbing the same light, can emit more electricity.” The theoretical efficiency limit of silicon-perovskite tandem solar cells is 43 per cent, however this level is unlikely to ever be realised on a commercial scale. The first production of ultra-efficient perovskite solar panels could begin in China, with researchers from Nanjing University saying earlier this year that a design breakthrough has made mass production possible. According to the researchers, the next-generation panels will be 50 per cent cheaper and 50 per cent more efficient than traditional silicon cells, however the efficiency rates will still be a long way off the levels achieved in the lab. UK startup Oxford PV, which is a spin-out from the University of Oxford, is already in the process of commercialising the technology, with hopes of beginning full-scale production at a German facility later this year. “Current silicon solar panels have reached their physical limits. We’ve got a way to transform the efficiency of these solar cells with perovskite,” Chris Case, Oxford PV’s chief technology officer, told The Independent in August. “The biggest challenge by far is durability and reliability. We already have great efficiency – much greater than current silicon cells – so most of our research and development is spent enhancing reliability, not efficiency.” Perovskite has been hailed as a “miracle material” for its potential to revolutionise everything from high-speed telecommunications to renewable energy technologies. Its potential for solar panels is not limited to the efficiency gains compared to traditional silicon cells, but also new ways of using them. Recent breakthroughs include self-healing solar panels that can maintain their efficiency for tens to hundreds of years, as well as double-sided solar panels capable of generating electricity from the Sun’s energy on both sides. The material could also be used in applications ranging from building-integrated solar panels to space-based electricity generation. Read More How tech could turn our homes into renewable energy power stations Hundreds of years after it was discovered, one material is about to change the world Millions could abandon electrical grid with new solar panel advance Millions of Australians left without mobile and internet network after Optus outage Guidance urges parents not to buy smartphones for primary school children

The UK and Welsh government have banned the app from staff phones over security concerns.

MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 9, 2023--

A hospital in Idaho has been diverting ambulances to other hospitals for more than 24 hours because of a cyberattack, a hospital spokesperson confirmed to CNN on Wednesday in the latest example of a hacking incident complicating health care in the US.

HONG KONG Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed the global rise of artificial intelligence (AI) with Bill Gates and

(Reuters) -Meta Platforms has struck a deal with Tencent Holdings to sell a new, lower-priced version of its virtual-reality (VR)