Meltwater runs off the Brsvellbreen Glacier in the Norwegian archipelago of SvalbardSebnem Coskun/Anadolu via Getty ImagesUnprecedented levels of ocean heat, ice melt and sea level rise are among the many key measures of climate change setting alarming records in recent years, according to the World Meteorological Organizations (WMO) State of the Global Climate report for 2024.We saw record temperatures across wide areas, says John Kennedy at the WMO. Reversing some of the resulting changes would take hundreds or thousands of years, the report warns.The report sets out a grim list of unwanted records. For instance, the rate of sea level rise has doubled since satellite measurements began, increasing from 2.1 millimetres per year between 1993 and 2000 to 4.7 mm per year between 2015 and 2024.AdvertisementGlaciers are losing ice faster than ever, with the largest loss of glacier mass in a three-year period occurring in the past three years. Losses were particularly big in Norway including the northern archipelago of Svalbard as well as in Sweden and the tropical Andes.The 18 years with the lowest extent of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean were the past 18 years, and the three years with the lowest extent of sea ice around the Antarctic continent were the past three years.What happens in the poles doesnt necessarily stay in the poles, warns Kennedy, meaning changes in these areas can affect the climate around the whole planet.Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month.Sign up to newsletterA new record for ocean heat a key measure of how much additional heat the planet is accumulating has been set in every one of the past eight years. And the 10 warmest years on record were the past 10 years.The report also notes that 2024 was probably the first calendar year to be 1.5C warmer than the pre-industrial era, with an average global near-surface temperature of 1.55C above the 1850 to 1900 average, plus or minus 0.13C. This uncertainly in the measurement means there is also a chance it wasnt warmer than 1.5C.A single year above this value doesnt mean the 1.5C target set out in the Paris Agreement has been breached, says Kennedy. While not clearly defined, most climate scientists agree it refers to the average temperature over something like 20 years rather than a single year.The report also outlines three methods that are being considered for defining when we have exceeded the Paris target. According to these, the global climate is now 1.34C, 1.37C or 1.41C warmer than the 1850 to 1900 average.The error bars for these three methods, however, are all wide enough to exceed 1.5C, meaning there is a small chance we have already exceeded the 1.5C Paris target. We cant rule out 1.5 by these methods, says Kennedy.Topics:climate change

2025-03-19T02:20:53Z Read in app Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, doesn't believe in a doomsday scenario that will be caused by superintelligent AI systems. FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP via Getty Images This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? Artificial superintelligence is commonly understood as AI systems more advanced than human thinking.Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, says that people will still be the boss of AI.LeCun said he doesn't believe in a "catastrophe scenario" in which AI runs amok.Superintelligence is coming, but it won't replace humans for now, at least Meta's chief AI scientist said.Yann LeCun, Meta's top artificial intelligence exec, said on Tuesday duringNvidia's GTC conferencethat AI could replace people but challenged whether humans would allow for that to happen. He was responding to a comment made by Nvidia's chief scientist Bill Dally who said during their fireside chat, "AI is not replacing people, it's basically giving them power tools.""Well, it might at some point, but I don't think people will go for this, right," LeCun said. "I mean basically our relationship with future AI systems, including superintelligence, is that we're going to be their boss. We're gonna have a staff of superintelligent, beautiful people kind of working for us. I don't know about you, but I like working with people who are smarter than me. It's the greatest thing in the world."AI industry leaders, including OpenAI's Sam Altman and xAI's Elon Musk, often pose the advent of superintelligence an AI system smarter than humans as the event-horizon moment for humanity, where scientific innovation will prosper but also could lead to an extinction-level event.LeCun has previously thrown cold water on a doomsday scenario caused by AI.In an X post from 2024, LeCun called the idea of a superintelligence system taking over humans a"sci-fi trope/clich" and a"ridiculous scenario that flies in the face of everything we know about how things work.""The emergence of superintelligence is not going to be an event," he wrote in the post. "We don't have anything close to a blueprint for superintelligent systems today. At some point, we will come up with an architecture that can take us there."LeCun and a spokesperson for Meta did not respond to a request for comment.The chief AI scientist said during the Nvidia conference that there are dangers of misuse and unreliable AI but the solution is"better AI.""The fix for this is better AI. Systems that have common sense maybe, a capacity of reasoning and checking whether the answers are correct, and assessing the reliability of their own answers which is not quite currently the case," he said."But the catastrophe scenario, frankly, I don't believe in that."

2025-03-19T02:15:09Z Read in app A WestJet Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner airplane on the runway at Toronto Pearson Airport. Carlos Osorio/REUTERS This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? According to WestJet Airlines, Canadians choose South America over the US as travel bookings dip.A 10% drop in Canadian visits could cost the US $2.1 billion and 14,000 jobs.The trade war may be just one of many factors why Canadians are staying away from US travel.The vice chair of Canada's second-largest airline says Canadians are avoiding the US as a travel destination in favor of South American countries."There's clearly been a reaction," WestJet's Alex Cruz told CNBC's Squawk Box Europe co-host Karen Tso"Canadians are seeking to continue to travel overall, it's just they may shift from the US," he added.Avoidance of US goods and services above the northern border came after Trump repeatedly instated and paused a 25% tariff on Canadian products. Trump also, on many occasions, suggested that the northern neighbor become America's 51st state.Not only are US-made goods now being boycotted in Canada and pulled off grocery store shelves, but travel by passenger cars a common way for Canadians to reach the US in February shed roughly half a million crossings in comparison to February 2024 and hit its lowestCustoms and Border Protection.If the downward trend continues, the US tourism industry could face serious consequences. The US Travel Association told Business Insider that while they don't have a current estimate for changes in visitation from Canada if inbound visitation from the north declined by just 10%, it could mean 2 million fewer visits, $2.1 billion in lost spending, and 14,000 job losses."We're already seeing the first signs that Canadian sentiment toward the US is changing in a not-so-positive way," Amir Eylon, president and CEO of Longwoods International, a market research consultancy specializing in the travel tourism industry, recently told BI."Anecdotally, we're seeing bookings from Canada to the US down," he added.Shirley Horn, the board secretary and treasurer of the Highway 120 Chamber of Commerce near Yosemite National Park, said international visitors, including Canadians, do not seem to be choosing Yosemite this year. She said this was partly due to the uncertainty around cuts at national parks."Normally, the international visitors would reserve way ahead of time, and now we're seeing the impact of tariffs," she said, adding, "Canadians are making a statement."Some Canadians also told BI that they would remain wary of going to the US, even if the trade war eventually goes away, over issues like the ICE deportation of immigrants and the threats"Even if the tariffs issue ends or if there's another president in four years, some Canadians are saying, 'Once bitten, twice shy,'" Pearl Whamond, a Canadian mom who used to travel to the US often, said. "There have been too many threats and too much back-and-forth. It feels like bullying, it feels threatening, and as a country, we're not appreciating it."WestJet did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

By AJ Dellinger Published March 18, 2025 | Comments (0) | A sign outside the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) headquarters Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images For a brief period, maybe even just a second, it seemed as though the populism built into the Donald Trump campaign just might preserve the Lina Khan theory of Big Tech regulation at the Federal Trade Commission. Turns out, not so much. Wired first reported that more than 300 blog posts critical of companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and AI firmsmostly published during the Biden administration while Khan was the head of the agencyhave been removed from the agencys website. The blogs ranged from details regarding the FTCs privacy lawsuits against Big Tech firms, business guidance, and consumer protection information, among other content. Wired highlighted several of them, including a post that alerted consumers to allegations that Amazon used data from Ring security cameras to train its algorithms and a post highlighting how Microsoft allegedly collected data from children using Xbox without consent from their parents or guardians. A valid question in regard to this decision to remove blog posts would be: Why? Getting rid of blog posts does not change the agencys policies, nor does it erase settlements that it secured with companies for alleged violations of FTC rules. The blog posts are designed to make information that would otherwise likely be bogged down in legalese and mundane policy into digestible material for the general public. Deleting them only serves to cause confusion, which very well might be the point. Its worth noting that because these agencies change hands from administration to administration every four or eight years, this is certainly not the first time that a government website has hosted content with which the incoming administration disagrees. But usually, that doesnt just get straight-up deleted. In fact, per Wired, the Biden administration left blogs from the Trump era up for fear that deleting them might violate the lawspecifically, the Federal Records Act and the Open Government Data Act. None of that should be news to Trump or anyone in his circle, given that he took a fair amount of heat for deleting tweets that were supposed to be archived. Ultimately, no real penalty came of that whole affair, which probably has only emboldened him to continue erasing what he no longer sees as fit.Prior to taking office, Vice President JD Vance voiced support for FTC chair Lina Khan and her approach to going after Big Tech. On Tuesday, the same day the FTCs log of blogs from Khans office got sent to the shadow realm, Vance appeared at a conference hosted by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz to signal that the Trump administration wants to stay connected with the tech industry and its interests alongside issues that appeal to the populist wing of the party. Consider deleting the FTCs past criticisms of Big Tech as a possible olive branch.Daily NewsletterYou May Also Like By AJ Dellinger Published March 18, 2025 By AJ Dellinger Published March 14, 2025 By Lucas Ropek Published March 14, 2025 Ayurella Horn-Muller, Grist Published March 14, 2025 By AJ Dellinger Published March 12, 2025 By AJ Dellinger Published March 11, 2025

Strap in, Shlorpians: its time for one last ride. While Solar Opposites fans already knew a sixth season of the Hulu animated series was on the way, today comes the news that itll be the shows final offering. The show broke the news to fans with an Instagram post teasing its final mission, as well as a resplendent meal for Taco Tuesday. This fall is as good is were getting for now in terms of a premiere date; Hulus press release announcing the news also did not reveal whether or not season six will include a Solar Opposites holiday special, as has become tradition for the series. (Last year featured a second Halloween special; previous installments have celebrated Christmas and Valentines Day.) It did include a typically vague plot description, however: When the Solar Opposites family goes broke, they must learn to survive on Earth without any of their sci-fi devices or the massive amounts of video games, snacks, and luxury watches theyre used to.If youre a fan of the show, you know that sci-fi devices are just about equal value to the characters as unnecessary Earth junk, so that tracks theyd be in crisis losing both. An additional note on the season brings in the Wall, the fan-favorite subplot that injects high-stakes drama into the population of tiny people living in and around the Solar Opposites house after being blasted with an alien shrink ray: Witness the wild chaos of this unhinged alien family as they get into hilarious mischief, all while the final chapter of an epic drama unfolds for the shrunken people theyve imprisoned in their Wall. As the Solar Opposites navigate their unforgettable farewell, expect laugh-out-loud surprises at every turn.The list of guest stars suggests well be seeing more from the heavy-hitters in that tiny soap opera, including Cherie (Christina Hendricks) and Ringo, aka the Duke (Alfred Molina) back for more. Other guest stars include Tiffany Haddish (who voices the alien ships AI), newly minted Oscar winner Kieran Culkin (who plays Glen, the central figure in another of the shows subplots, the SilverCops), as well as Ken Marino, Natalie Morales, Jerry OConnell (fresh from Star Trek: Lower Decks, Solar Opposites co-creator Mike McMahans other space-themed animated series), and Beck Bennett. The main cast remains Dan Stevens as Korvo, Thomas Middleditch as Terry, Mary Mack as Jesse, and Sean Giambrone as Yumyulack. Josh Bycel and Sydney Ryan executive produce along with McMahan.Well miss this chaos-causing, boundaries-of-good-taste-pushing crew, but at least theres one more season of adventures yet to arrive. What are your thoughts on Solar Opposites coming to an end? Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, whats next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

Blender Magic: Realistic Kitchen Render!Check out this mind-blowing photorealistic kitchen scene created in Blender! Learn how to make your interiors look real with pro tips on lighting, materials, and rendering. Want more Blender tricks? Hit that subscribe button!#Blender #Shorts #3DModeling #Photorealism #KitchenRender #BlenderTips #ArchitecturalVisualization #BlenderShorts #3DArt

Check out my Marketplace Asset Full Pack - https://www.fab.com/listings/cf5e9bb4-51dc-4b20-adec-7e505fa467cd Mele https://www.fab.com/listings/f5462a75-5941-4da8-a1b5-8f85b95fea7e Ranged - https://www.fab.com/listings/b753efb2-ebdd-4308-8827-40cf33996ee2 Magic - https://www.fab.com/listings/06b4257d-dd86-401a-8573-838fa9634675 Basic -https://www.fab.com/listings/40d402ad-0b0d-42c5-ab14-fffe458f6308 Come join the Team Beard Discord If you're a game developer and looking to join a friendly game dev community which ranges from expert to professional, be sure to hop into the discord! We're always looking for more awesome people to join! https://discord.gg/6TUS5cBrkv Ways to Support The Channel Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JonBeardsell?fan_landing=true Buy Me A Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/JonBeardsell All support will go towards helping me produce YouTube content and tutorials full time.

Nature, Published online: 19 March 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00397-5The effects of a proposed green-energy facility in Chile could be devastating for some of the most powerful instruments available to astronomers.

Nature, Published online: 14 March 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00825-6First glimpse of the colour of mammals who lived alongside dinosaurs. Plus, what anti-vaccine rhetoric in the US government will mean for the countrys health and, in a world first, a man has survived with a titanium heart for 100 days.

Berserk? In 3D? Wait, good 3D Berserk? Thats what fans get thanks to magic workers with Blender skills like Maciej Drabik, an insanely talented artist who regularly lets us see the world through his eyes with his digital works.This time, he created a badass animated scene inspired by the popular manga, the stylish armor and huge sword included.This pose draws many people in, as weve seen in Ikhimazs interpretation of it:Maciej Drabiks works are not only anime-related, he has an impressive range of styles, as can be seen in his calming boat animation, cyberpunk project, pixelated rainy scene, mountain racing thrill, cozy snowy environment, the bridge scene from The Matrix, and other projects you can find on his X/Twitter.Also, join our80 Level Talent platformand ournew Discord server, follow us onInstagram,Twitter,LinkedIn,Telegram,TikTok, andThreads,where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.Source link The post Awesome Berserk 3D Animation Made with Blender appeared first on CG SHARES.