New AI investments threaten the “year of efficiency” margin improvements that Meta Platforms and other tech firms have touted for much of the last year.

The White House withdrew its nominee for an Energy Department posting, ending a months-long standoff and handing a

Nasdaq Inc. said it’s halting the launch of its digital-asset custodian business in the US due to a

McDonald's workers are seemingly over TikTok's latest Grimace Shake trend taking the platform by storm after one person shared the deadly silence when they ordered five of the viral drink. For the blissfully unaware, the popular fast-food chain released a limited-edition purple milkshake to celebrate the 52nd birthday of the purple character's birthday. TikTok users went on to do their thing by turning the beverage into a bizarre trend. Like most things online, it appears to have no purpose and is rather random – but still, it didn't stop the trend from taking off. In fact, #grimaceshake has racked up a staggering 142 million views on the platform and continues to grow. It sees consumers drinking the purple shake and then pretending to be poisoned to death with a decorative crime scene surrounding them. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter @kale1ay Bro pls domt get the grimace shake #viral #meme #grimaceshake #grimaceshakemeal #grimaceshakememe #grimacememe #mcdonadlsmeme #skit A recent video has seemingly gave a glimpse into how McDonald's workers feel about the trend – and by the looks of things, they're tired. The customer was heard asking whether the drink had to be ordered as part of a meal. When he discovered they could be ordered on their own, he asked for five. In response, the worker fell silent. "The silence was so loud," the on-screen text read. "McDonalds tired of this." One fellow TikToker commented: "I tried ordering it the other day and the lady said, "It's not stocked" while there was an ad, "Now Serving the Grimace Meal!" I just was silent." Meanwhile, another added: "No, because I ordered a Grimace Shake and the girl legit sighed in annoyance." @thattiredchonker Mcdonalds tired of this ? #fyp #grimace #grimaceshake #funny #silence #mcdonalds The chain have since responded to the trend with a lighthearted tweet. "Meee pretending i don't see the grimace shake trendd," the purple character wrote on the official McDonald's account. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 17, 2023--

The Senate attached a measure to the annual defense policy bill that would subject some US investments in

Bitcoin mining requires as much water annually as all of the baths in Britain, according to a new analysis of the cryptocurrency’s environmental impact. Financial economist Alex de Vries, who runs the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, estimated that roughly 1.6 trillion litres of water each year is required to cool the computers used to support the cryptocurrency’s network. Separate research from 2018 found that 1.6 trillion litres is how much bath water the British public sends down the plughole every year – enough to fill roughly 660,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The latest analysis, which was published in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability on Wednesday, suggested that a single bitcoin transaction could use as much water as a backyard swimming pool. “Many parts of the world are experiencing droughts, and fresh water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource,” said Mr de Vries. “If we continue to use this valuable resource for making useless computations, I think that reality is really painful.” The “useless computations” refer to the complex calculations required to mint new units of the cryptocurrency and verify transactions on the network. The use of water to cool the necessary hardware could be significantly reduced if miners shifted their operations underwater, with companies like Microsoft already placing some of their data centres in the ocean in order to cool them. Earlier this month, China announced that it had begun building the world’s largest underwater data centre in order to reduce electricity and water costs. Bitcoin has previously been criticised for its electricity consumption, with Mr de Vries’s Energy Consumption Index estimating that the cryptocurrency’s network uses roughly as much electricity as the country of Poland. Bitcoin advocates have refuted accusations relating to bitcoin’s electricity consumption, claiming that miners are increasingly turning to renewable energy sources as the costs of wind and solar drop. A recently published study suggests bitcoin mining could actually help speed up the transition to renewable energy, as solar and wind energy installations could earn hundreds of millions of dollars mining bitcoin during periods of excess electricity generation. ”These rewards can act as an incentive for miners to adopt clean energy sources, which can lead to combined positive effects on climate change mitigation, improved renewable power capacity, and additional profits during pre-commercial operation of wind and solar farms,” said Apoorv Lal, a doctoral student at Cornell University who was involved in the research. Read More Bitcoin mining could supercharge transition to renewables, study claims Bitcoin mining rate hits all-time high amid record-breaking prediction for 2024 Elon Musk scam ads appear on X as key advertisers depart Scientists find planets moving around in strange ‘rhythm’ Astronomers find unprecedented ‘disc’ around distant planet Scientists have cooked ‘alien haze’ that could help find life

The Securities and Exchange Commission asked Coinbase to halt trading on all cryptocurrencies except for bitcoin before it sued the company in June, Coinbase's chief executive told the Financial Times.

Extreme heat is usually associated with drought and wildfires. But across five continents this year, it’s also unleashed

Imane ‘Pokimane’ Anys has had her say on the recent controversial changes to Twitch, which has seen the streaming platform face an online backlash. Earlier this week, Twitch changed its branded content guidelines and faced immediate pushback from content creators. The changes impacted how users could advertise sponsorships as well as banning them from multi-streaming to “Twitch-like” platforms. Just a day later, Twitch revealed that they were removing the new guidelines after receiving widespread criticism. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “Yesterday, we released new Branded Content Guidelines that impacted your ability to work with sponsors to increase your income from streaming. These guidelines are bad for you and bad for Twitch, and we are removing them immediately,” a statement read. “Sponsorships are critical to streamers’ growth and ability to earn income. We will not prevent your ability to enter into direct relationships with sponsors – you will continue to own and control your sponsorship business. “We want to work with our community to create the best experience on Twitch and to do that we need to be clear about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. We appreciate your feedback and help in making this change.” Despite the apology, users have continued to hit out at Twitch. Pokimane has now spoken about the direction streaming could take in future, and urged users to pursue new routes to get what they deserve for their content. “I feel like because content creation is becoming so saturated [and] we often have trouble relying on the platforms we use, the future is direct to consumer paid content (patreon, onlypans, consumer goods, etc),” Pokimane wrote. “Cut out the middle man and get proper compensation for what you make/do!” she added. “Social media platforms will obviously always be used, but I think people will start looking at them as tools to gain exposure instead of being the way to make money,” the streamer went on to say. It comes after the CEO of Twitch, Dan Clancy, personally apologised during a recent stream for the abandoned changes to guidelines and said the company had “messed up”. “Let me just go straight to the point. For those who don’t know, we recently released this branded content policy. I won’t go through all the details,” he said recently. “We got a lot of negative pushback and the bottom line is we messed up. It’s on us and I apologise for that.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Artificial intelligence darling Nvidia's upcoming earnings report could be a boost or a drag on a market already mired in the summer doldrums.

If the NPC streamer trend taught us anything, it's that TikTok Live is a breeding