US chip giant Nvidia, whose products play a crucial role in artificial intelligence systems, crushed expectations on Wednesday, as the AI frenzy continues...

Days after Jason Aldean went viral over a song about small town America that many commentators have interpreted as containing lyrics which amount to dog-whistle racism, the singer was mired in fresh controversy. Somewhat appropriately it was over another alleged scandal in a small town, in which a Twitter user claimed he failed to tip in a burrito restaurant in Charleston, West Virginia, having supposedly ordered 65 burritos ten minutes before the joint closed. Now, the internet wants to know if it actually happened. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter On July 20, 2023, a user posted: “Remember when @Jason_Aldean came to small town Charleston, WV, ordered 65 burritos from a local joint ten minutes before close and didn't tip anyone? Then his team reached out after the story went viral and the employees got let go? Try that in a small town." A screenshot of the tweet was widely shared on TikTok, Reddit, and other websites, three days after the Country Music Television (CMT) network pulled Aldean's new music video for his song, 'Try That in a Small Town.' Find out more about the racism scandal engulfing the song here. According to fact-checkers at Snopes, the controversy goes back to a 2017 news story by TMZ, which claimed the singer had ordered 60 burritos and a quesadilla at a restaurant called Black Sheep, which totaled around $500. “We found no concrete information on whether the order was placed for takeout and was picked up by one of Aldean's crew members, or if the entire crew sat down at the restaurant. However, the former appeared to likely have been the case, as we have so far found no photographic or video evidence of the crew eating at the restaurant,” reported the fact checkers. The tweet’s claim that the order for Aldean's crew was made "ten minutes before close" wasn’t mentioned in the original story by TMZ. Arep for Aldean said an "appropriate tip" had been left for the order back in 2017, adding: “Jason had absolutely no contact with the restaurant or any of its employees.” Meanwhile it looks like the tweet’s claim that “employees” were fired by Black Sheep because the story went viral is partially true. The original reporting from TMZ mentioned that one employee who was fired, after apparently tweeting about the order for Aldean's crew. The apparent tweets posted by the employee, which are no longer available, appeared in a second report by TMZ. One of them read: “@Jason Aldean can suck my a-- for not tipping Black Sheep, after ordering 60 burritos.” So to sum up: nobody can quite tell if the story is totally true. Aldean may not have been personally involved, but it looks like there was a big old burrito order for him and his crew, and there was definitely some controversy around the tip. We’ll have to leave the rest to your imagination. 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.

By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo supports legislation giving the Commerce Department new tools to address

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s cabinet approved Germany’s inaugural national-security strategy, which is expected to single out Russia as the

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 30, 2023--

Portuguese firefighters are on high alert after containing a blaze that threatened to cross the border into neighboring

SAVE 85%: Private Internet Access is a powerful service that can reliably unblock JioCinema. A

Google hopes that people in decades to come “shrug” at the technology it is working on, according to its chief executive. Sundar Pichai, the boss of both Google and parent company Alphabet, revealed the importance of making technology go from “extraordinary to ordinary” in a memo to staff written to celebrate the company’s 25th anniversary. Traditionally, Google celebrates its birthday on 27 September, for largely arbitrary reasons. The company undertook a number of firsts through the summer and autumn of 1998, meaning that it has a range of options to choose as its official launch date. This year, however, Google appears to be celebrating throughout the whole month. Mr Pichai’s note was intended as a way of kicking off those celebrations, according to an editor’s note attached to it. Mr Pichai said that it is a “huge privilege to reach this milestone, made possible by the people who use our products and challenge us to keep innovating, the hundreds of thousands of Googlers past and present who have given their talents to building those products, and our partners who believe in our mission as much as we do”. And he looked forward to the future technology that the company is building, which revolves largely around artificial intelligence. But it hopes that those technologies become normal, Mr Pichai said. “Ideas my dad marveled at as science fiction — taking a call from your watch, or telling your car to play your favorite song — make my children shrug,” he wrote. “Those shrugs give me great hope for the future. They set a high bar for what the next generation will build and invent... and I can’t wait to see what will make their children shrug, too. “An essential truth of innovation is that the moment you push the boundary of a technology, it soon goes from extraordinary to ordinary. That’s why Google has never taken our success for granted.” Concluding the note, he said that he hoped that the contested questions of artificial intelligence will eventually elicit the same kind of response. He noted that the technology has undergone sustained questioning and criticism in recent months, but indicated that he hopes it becomes ordinary in the same way. “As these new frontiers come into view, we have a renewed invitation to act boldly and responsibly to improve as many lives as possible, and to keep asking those big questions,” he wrote. “Our search for answers will drive extraordinary technology progress over the next 25 years. “And in 2048, if, somewhere in the world, a teenager looks at all we’ve built with AI and shrugs, we’ll know we succeeded. And then we’ll get back to work.” He also revealed the importance of lobsters to Google. The first company to use its advertising platform was a “mail-order business selling lobsters”, he said – and that platform has since gone on to contribute the vast majority of Google’s revenues. Read More Why is Elon Musk obsessed with the letter X? Elon Musk ‘borrowed $1bn from SpaceX’ at same time as Twitter acquisition Sonos releases Move 2, its chunky speaker for the outdoors Why is Elon Musk obsessed with the letter X? Elon Musk ‘borrowed $1bn from SpaceX’ at same time as Twitter acquisition Sonos releases Move 2, its chunky speaker for the outdoors

If you’re cringing at the very thought of owning a Pixel phone, I’m right there

UPDATE: Jun. 22, 2023, 3:00 p.m. EDT This story has been updated to include the

LAGOS, Nigeria & MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 20, 2023--

Ancient remnants of a long-lost part of the Earth believed to be 120 million years old have been located by experts in Borneo. New discoveries about our planet are continuously being made by experts, from finding continents that have been missing for hundreds of years to discovering vast oceans hidden beneath the Earth’s crust. Now, a new amazing discovery revealed details of the 120-million-year-old tectonic plate, now named Pontus. A prediction of the crust’s existence came when Suzanna van de Lagemaat, a graduate geologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and her supervisor, Douwe van Hinsbergen, analysed geological data from mountains in the Asia-Pacific region. While studying rock formations in northern Borneo, Van de Lagemaat came across some clearcut signs of the ancient Pontus plate, explaining: “We thought we were dealing with relicts of a lost plate that we already knew about.” She continued: “But our magnetic lab research on those rocks indicated that our finds were originally from much farther north, and had to be remnants of a different, previously unknown plate.” Researchers estimate that the Pontus plate, which formed part of the world’s crust before the break up of supercontinent Pangaea, was around a quarter of the size of the Pacific Ocean, based on reconstructions of what it would have looked like 160 million years ago. Pontus sat beneath the vast ocean that separated Eurasia and Australia at the time. As Pangaeo separated, it’s believed the plate was swallowed up by other plates that carried countries such as The Philippines and Borneo to their current day locations. Van de Lagemaat’s research focussed on a complex region of tectonic plate activity known as the Junction Region. It runs between Japan, Borneo, the Philippines, New Guinea, and down to New Zealand. Through her research, she was able to use the data to create a clip reconstructing the tectonic plate movements that have occurred from the time of the dinosaurs up to the present day. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter 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.