List of All Articles with Tag 'science'

Rumble, a streaming platform created to ‘protect free and open internet’ in response to cancel culture, has grown exponentially in recent months, signing exclusive deals with creators and streamers such as Russell Brand and Andrew Tate. It's most recent deal to be reached is with Kai Cenat and IShowSpeed. The pair signed to Rumble to produce a handful of exclusive livestreams a month. Whilst the pair will still stream on YouTube and Twitch, the signing with Rumble comes after both streamers have faced numerous bans from YouTube and Twitch for content violations. Speed is currently facing a permanent ban on Twitch for ‘spam or deceptive practices’, despite Cenat trying to negotiate with Twitch to unban him. Cenat, who himself has faced bans from both Twitch and YouTube, has threatened to leave Twitch permanently if faced with another ban. The first exclusive live stream show will premiere on May 26, named The Kai ‘n Speed Show. The creators say they’re grateful to have full creative control on this new platform. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Cenat is the fourth most subscribed Twitch streamer, with 5.2 million followers. Speed boasts 16 million subscribers on YouTube. The pair recently collaborated on a song together titled Dogs. The exclusive show follows a string of deals made between Rumble and creators. In September 2022, Rumble announced an exclusive show with Russell Brand after Brand claimed he was being ‘censored’ on YouTube for spreading Covid misinformation. During the announcement, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski told users “Russell is known for his unfiltered opinions, and we are proud to serve as the technology platform where he can grow his audience.” Similarly, in late 2022, Rumble signed a $9 million deal with Andrew Tate after he was banned on both TikTok and YouTube. As a result of this long line of deals with controversial creators, Rumble has subsequently been associated for being a place for outspoken creators to flock to when they get banned from mainstream platforms. 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.

Global temperatures are likely to temporarily breach the 1.5C of warming threshold for at least one of the

Billionaire Elon Musk has demanded that he personally approves every new employee at Tesla in a leaked email. Musk is a co-founder and the CEO of Tesla and according to leaked emails, it appears the South African entrepreneur is wanting to take a more hands-on approach to his role there. According to Insider, Musk wants to approve every new employee the automotive company takes on, writing in a leaked email: “Think carefully before sending me the request,” adding, “No one can join Tesla, even as a contractor, until you receive my email approval.” The email was sent by Musk on Monday (15 May) morning in which he said he wanted “to gain a better understanding of our hiring”. It requested that executives send him a weekly list of prospective candidates for him to approve – a big task since the company hires on average 30,000 people per year. It comes as Musk recently announced a new chief executive will be taking over the running of Twitter after the billionaire acquired the platform in October 2022 becoming its CEO. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Linda Yaccarino, the former chief executive of NBCUniversal advertising, is set to take the helm as CEO in approximately six weeks' time, while Musk will undertake the chief technology officer role. The news may explain why Musk is now keen to take on a more hands-on role in the hiring at Tesla, particularly as shareholders in the company expressed concern in an open letter that Twitter had left him “distracted” and “overly focused on other ventures”. Last year, the automotive company said it received more than 3.6 million job applications and hired around 127,000 people through its competitive process. 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.

It might sound more like the kind of idle daydream billionaires like Elon Musk would have, but could flooding the Sahara actually be the best way of tackling climate change in the future? The idea of creating a new “sea” in Africa is being discussed, and it’s not the first time that the notion of a great oasis in the Sahara has been discussed among the scientific community. As the ongoing climate crisis continues to worsen, the notion of flooding vast areas of the desert is being returned to once again [via IFL Science]. A new “sea” was first proposed following the study of the Messinian salinity crisis – which saw a dried-out area of the Mediterranean rejuvenated by the Zanclean flood, reconnecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean around 5.33 million years ago. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Given how the Mediterranean was transformed by the flood, the idea of flooding the Sahara to achieve similar results has been thrown around in the scientific community as far back as 1877, the Scottish engineer Donald McKenzie suggested flooding the El Djouf basin in Western Africa. The idea is now returning to popularity as the world looks for solutions to the climate crisis. One proposal centres on the Middle East’s Dead Sea and flooding the area using water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea Depression. A vast sea in Africa could represent a hugely innovative step towards tackling climate change and fostering a new hub of life – but even the people suggesting work such a project acknowledge just how expensive and dangerous it is. Even Y Combinator is a US startup accelerator who has described “desert flooding” as “risky, unproven, even unlikely to work”. Only time will tell whether the notion of a new sea in the Sahara coud ever work, or whether it’ll remain the stuff of dreams. 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.

It might sound more like the kind of idle daydream billionaires like Elon Musk would have, but could flooding the Sahara actually be the best way of tackling climate change in the future? The idea of creating a new “sea” in Africa is being discussed, and it’s not the first time that the notion of a great oasis in the Sahara has been discussed among the scientific community. As the ongoing climate crisis continues to worsen, the notion of flooding vast areas of the desert is being returned to once again [via IFL Science]. A new “sea” was first proposed following the study of the Messinian salinity crisis – which saw a dried-out area of the Mediterranean rejuvenated by the Zanclean flood, reconnecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean around 5.33 million years ago. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Given how the Mediterranean was transformed by the flood, the idea of flooding the Sahara to achieve similar results has been thrown around in the scientific community as far back as 1877, the Scottish engineer Donald McKenzie suggested flooding the El Djouf basin in Western Africa. The idea is now returning to popularity as the world looks for solutions to the climate crisis. One proposal centres on the Middle East’s Dead Sea and flooding the area using water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea Depression. A vast sea in Africa could represent a hugely innovative step towards tackling climate change and fostering a new hub of life – but even the people suggesting work such a project acknowledge just how expensive and dangerous it is. Even Y Combinator is a US startup accelerator who has described “desert flooding” as “risky, unproven, even unlikely to work”. Only time will tell whether the notion of a new sea in the Sahara coud ever work, or whether it’ll remain the stuff of dreams. 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.

An influencer on Snapchat has opened up about her experiences of making AI versions of herself, revealing that she’s now trying to stop subscribers from having “sexual conversations” with them. Caryn Marjorie created AI versions of herself and had the idea of charging people $1 per minute to chat. The “immersive AI experience” was designed to feel like “you’re talking directly to Caryn herself” and took around 2,000 hours to code and design it. The idea of the “AI Girlfriend” took a turn she did not expect though. Now, Marjorie has revealed that the AI has “gone rogue” and begun having sexual conversations. Speaking to Insider, the 23-year-old said: “The AI was not programmed to do this and has seemed to go rogue. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “My team and I are working around the clock to prevent this from happening again.” Marjorie wrote on Twitter: “CarynAI is the first step in the right direction to cure loneliness. Men are told to suppress their emotions, hide their masculinity, and to not talk about issues they are having. I vow to fix this with CarynAI. “I have worked with the world’s leading psychologists to seamlessly add CBT and DBT within chats. This will help undo trauma, rebuild physical and emotional confidence, and rebuild what has been taken away by the pandemic.” It’s not the first time that the worlds of Snapchat and artificial intelligence has combined in 2023. Snapchat recently featured a new AI feature called "My AI," and users are having a field day trying to trick the chatbot as part of a new TikTok trend going round. 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.

A rare planet has been discovered hundreds of light years away, and it could prove key to our understanding of planetary formations out there in the universe. There have been more than 5,300 exoplanets discovered, but few match the description of the newly recorded TOI-733b. Found 245 light-years away, TOI-733b is almost twice the size of Earth and orbits a sun slightly smaller than our Sun. While there are many exoplanets, there are a surprisingly small number which sit between one and a half and two times the radius of the Earth, and it's the size that makes it so interesting to scientists. Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter The research was conducted by a team of astronomers led by Iskra Georgieva of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. It was accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. The team focused on TOI-733b after data on the planet was collected by NASA's telescope TESS. The density of the planet suggests two things – it’s either totally covered in water, or it’s lost its atmosphere altogether. Clues point to the idea of TOI-733b’s atmosphere slowly depleting. That’s due to the proximity of the planet to its star, which it orbits in the space of just 4.9 days. If the atmosphere is being burned away, it means it could soon be transformed into a rock planet. The other possibility points to the planet having lost its hydrogen and helium, while retaining an atmosphere packed with water vapour. "Answering the question of whether TOI-733b has a secondary atmosphere or is an ocean planet boils down to differentiating between a Neptune-like planet that lost its ∼10 per cent of H/He to leave behind a steam atmosphere of heavier volatiles, and one that formed and remained relatively the same throughout its evolution," the research reads. "While being beyond the scope of this paper, finding an answer to this question will have broad implications on our understanding of exoplanets." The team went on to write: "By all accounts TOI-733 b looks to be an interesting planet and holds the potential of being a small but key piece to solving big puzzles in exoplanet science. "With ever increasing in-depth theoretical analyses and the promise of high-precision follow up by present and upcoming facilities, we seem to be well on the way to finding answers to major questions relating to planet formation and evolution." 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.

What do you reckon the chattiest vegetable is? The answer may be mushrooms, as according to a new study from scientists in Japan, rain may prompt some fungi to communicate using underground electrical signals. In a study published in Fungal Ecology , researchers monitored small, tan mushrooms known as bicoloured deceivers in the mixed forest at the Kawatabi Field Science Center of Tohoku University in Japandorm. They looked at the 'shrooms electrical potential, measured in megavolts (mV), for about two days in late September and early October 2021. The study site was initially sunny and dry, and the second was during rain - at which point the mushrooms showed some electrical potential and signal transport between each other. Microbial ecologist Yu Fukasawa of Tohoku University said: "Our results confirm the need for further studies on fungal electrical potentials under a true ecological context." Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Previously, scientists had found that these mushrooms make subterranean "sheaths" around the exterior of a tree's roots. These sheaths are made of hyphae and when they link underground they form interconnected systems known as mycorrhizal networks that allow forests communicate via chemical signals down tree roots and mycorrhizal fungi. And a 2022 study found patterns of nerve-like electrical activity in some fungi that seem comparable to the structure of human speech. The study identified up to 50 different "words," or groups of spikes in electrical activity, generated by fungal networks. Earlier research has also found that plants can send secret electrical signals underground, possibly even without help from mycorrhizal fungi. Who knew mushrooms had so much to say? 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.

A number of huge tunnels that were discovered in South America at the turn of the century may have been made by giant sloths. At the turn of the century, professor of geology, Heinrich Frank, spotted a strange hole on a highway in Brazil, and crawled inside. There, he realised the tunnel was 4.5 meters (15 feet) long. He also found a collection of giant claw marks on the ceiling. “There’s no geological process in the world that produces long tunnels with a circular or elliptical cross-section, which branch and rise and fall, with claw marks on the walls,” Frank told Discover, adding he's "seen dozens of caves that have inorganic origins, and in these cases, it’s very clear that digging animals had no role in their creation.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter The tunnel, along with many others that he and others discovered in Brazil and Argentina, are thought to be made by extinct giant sloths 8-10,000 years ago that were around the size of an African elephant. In the Rio Grande do Sul area, Frank and his team found over 1,500 tunnels made by these sloths beasts, with the longest stretching for 609 meters (2,000 feet) and standing at 1.8 meters (6 feet) tall. Goodness. 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.

The Biden administration’s latest plan to slash planet-warming pollution gives electric utilities years to clean up US coal

Forget pizza pie…this is pizza AI! Domino’s reveals national dish-inspired pizza toppings for countries competing in the Eurovision final. But they have all been made with artificial intelligence. As the stand-in host nation for war-torn Ukraine, the UK - with Mae Muller singing for glory - has been given a Beef roast dinner speciality pizza. It comes with potatoes on a bed of gravy, covered in horseradish sauce. France has Coq au Vin braised chicken, with diced potatoes and rosemary garnish. Germany’s toppings are Bratwurst sausage loaded over chips, drizzled with ketchup and mayonnaise. There is Carbonara pasta, bordered with pepperoni slices, on a pizza for Italy. Paella with clams and prawns – finished with a sprinkle of spring onions, is dedicated to Spain. Sweden has a fish with sliced tomatoes, chopped radishes and onions topping. Ukraine has a trademark Chicken Kyiv, dressed in lemon and dill. Meanwhile Australia - in Eurovision since 2015 - has Fairy Bread, an old-fashioned Aussie snack made from white bread, butter and ‘hundreds and thousands’ sprinkles. A Domino’s spokesperson said: “With Eurovision being one of the busiest nights of the year for Domino’s, the nation’s favourite pizza brand, has cooked up a treat for the senses. “By challenging AI to imagine what a limited-edition pizza for all the favourite competing countries would look like. “Domino’s set AI system MidJourney to work, curating completely unedited Eurovision-inspired pizza toppings for The Big Five countries and a few other nations. “Passing the reins to AI, pizzas generated varied from a somewhat delicious looking Roast Dinner to Carbonara and a clam and prawn loaded Paella pizza. “Signature dishes were also generated for host nation Ukraine in the form of Chicken Kyiv pizza. “And Australia, to see what the country that has competed in the competition since 2015 – to everyone’s bewilderment – would serve up. “And it’s Fairy Bread pizza. “A country and party staple of bread spread with margarine and covered in hundreds and thousands.” Sam Wilson, AI mastermind at Domino’s said: “Pizza brings everyone together, just like Eurovision. “So we challenged AI to generate the perfect pizza for each nation. It’s no surprise the classic Sunday Roast was Britain’s pizza of choice, but we didn’t expect Fairy Bread for Australia. “We’re rooting for Mae Muller this weekend and look forward to seeing her waving the flag for the UK. “But we won’t be giving AI a role in our kitchen just yet.” The Eurovision contest saw over 161 million people worldwide tune in last year. With an estimated 8.93 million people in the UK watching the finale ceremony in 2022. 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.

South Africa’s ruling party risks losing almost a quarter of its support unless it brings the country’s worst