• Early Black Friday 75-inch TV deals: gorgeous TVs up to 49% off
    www.digitaltrends.com
    Update 11/8/24: Since our early Black Friday coverage began weve seen a 75-inch TV deal or two come and go, but were keeping things updated regularly here. Weve found some great replacement deals that have popped up, and well have our eye on everything that changes as the official Black Friday event gets closer.ContentsTV deals have been rampant among all of the early Black Friday deals, with early Black Friday 55-inch TV deals and early Black Friday 65-inch TV deals being some of the sizes that stand out the most. But there are also a lot of early Black Friday 75-inch TV deals to shop, and thats what were focusing on here. A 75-inch TV is perfect for a large space or a home theater with immersive aspirations. Theres lots to choose from across many of the best TV brands, so read onward for all of the best early Black Friday 75-inch TV deals. And if youre in the market for something smaller dont miss all of the early Black Friday 32-inch TV deals going on.$60025% offInsigniaThis is one of those Best Buy Black Friday deals that you have to pay attention to.Insignia, which is a Best Buy brand, is known for producing quality low-end TVs that people like. You probably arent going to find a cheaper 75-inch TV thats of this quality, especially while it is $150 off.Related$700 24% offHisense gets on the Black Friday 75-inch TV deals board here with the QD6, a QLED TV thats seeing a 24% discount right now. That will save you $170 off its regular price of $700, and bring the QD6 to Black Friday price of just $530. This is pretty good savings for a TV that was released this year. Its powered by the Google TV platform so youll get access to plenty of content, and the TVs QLED picture quality makes it a steal at this price.$600 4% offRoku / RokuIt isnt the largest discount youre going to find during Black Friday deals, but the Roku 75-inch Select Series 4K TV is a pretty good deal even at its regular price, so seeing it here with $20 in savings makes it worth considering right now. Youll get all of the great features Roku is known for packed into a 75-inch screen, and this deal also includes three free months of Apple TV+ and 30 free days of FuboTV to help you break it in.$70010% offSamsungSamsungs 2024 DU7200 gives you access to Samsungs Gaming Hub and Q-Symphony for excellent pairing with Q-series and S-series Samsung soundbars. And right now it is all just $630.$1,05024% offAmazon / AmazonNaturally, Amazon will be throwing their own products into the deals pile early, and this is their tier-2 Fire TV offering, right after the Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED, with which it shares similarities (though this isnt a QLED). Amazon considers this TV to be best for a home theater experience and, at 21% off, it comes out to be a rather affordable one.$1,35026% offTCLThe TCL QM7 is a QD-Mini LED that tends to stay pretty affordable, and especially so after deals like this that take $400 off of its price. It also has a 120Hz refresh rate for a quality gaming experience.$2,50032% offLGThis TV is technically 77-inches, but we dont think youll mind the extra all that much. Its a 2024 TV production and comes with LGs Alpha 8 AI processor, capable of specific and precision upscaling. Notably, this TV is $200 and 6% cheaper than when I first reported on it just a few days ago. Were seeing prices change in real time. Get this current-year giant TV before theres a course correction and the price is raised again.$3,00027% offSony / SonyThis 77-inch Sony TV is a premium TV that does its best to not break the bank. The key to this TVs brilliance is great colors and excellent HDR performance. Its worth noting that, in the buy page, you can pop this TV down to the 65-inch version (which isnt much smaller) and get it for as low as $1,500.$4,59924% offZeke Jones / Digital TrendsAnother LG TV that is technically 77 inches. But again, we dont think youll care about getting the extra inches as this is considered the overall best OLED TV. It uses the powerful Alpha 11 AI processor to look at the image on a pixel-by-pixel basis, which gives bright details and nice contrasts. Our LG G4 review tells us that The G4 is the finest television LG has ever made and we think youll love it, too, especially at $1,099 off.One of the hardest things about choosing a TV is figuring out what size TV to get. If youve already got that figured out (and we presume you have, since youre here) then youve got half the battle figured out.The next thing is to figure out how much quality youre going to try to squeeze out of your TV. Obviously, with a TV so large, it can be quite expensive to get a premium panel. And thats where youll really want to consider the differences between size and quality of TVs. If you dont get intensely worked up over things like OLED and QLED tech, you can actually get a decent, modern 75-inch TV for just a few hundred during Black Friday. But this all comes down to your preferences, budget, and interests.Also, consider reading out long-form reviews on the TVs mentioned above. If we have one, well always link to it.As was just mentioned, we know there are going to be people that just want a big TV and others that want a big, premium TV. Both are okay and both style are represented above. TV prices can get almost logarithmic at the ends, though, so we did pay careful attention to getting a selection at each price tier while also finding our favorite TVs. We want customers of all types to have a good selection here.Speaking of our favorite TVs, youll see plenty of mentions to our best TVs, best OLED TVs, and best QLED TVs lists, and for good reason. These highly-researched articles represent a lot of time with TVs from experts that frequently write reviews, go to trade shows, and more. Throughout them, you will see links to our hands-on reviews of the TVs, full of highlights, (a few) complaints, and all of the interesting quirks of the TVs. You can see why we like to line up many of our deals recommendations with these articles and reviews.Editors Recommendations
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  • 23andMe to Cut Workforce by 40%, Discontinues Therapeutics Pipeline
    www.wsj.com
    The clinical trials 23andMe intends to wind-down include its two main therapeutic programs. The restructuring is expected to result in expenses of up to $12 million, and savings of more than $35 million per year, 23andMe said.
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  • Google Executive Picked to Supercharge News Efforts Has Resigned
    www.wsj.com
    Shailesh Prakash departs after two years at the tech giant. Relationships between Google News and publishers remain strained.
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  • Real Clothes, Real Lives: 200 Years of What Women Wore, the Smith College Historic Clothing Collection Review:Sensible Silhouettes at the New York Historical
    www.wsj.com
    A show at the New York Historical looks beyond the runway to stitch together an overview of practical womens clothing.
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  • Scarface:Howard HawkssGloriousGangster
    www.wsj.com
    The Criterion Collections release lets viewers revisit the directors 1932 vision of ambition and violence in the Prohibition-era underworld.
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  • There are some things the Crew-8 astronauts arent ready to talk about
    arstechnica.com
    Fullness of time There are some things the Crew-8 astronauts arent ready to talk about "I did not say I was uncomfortable talking about it. I said we're not going to talk about it." Stephen Clark Nov 11, 2024 6:35 pm | 20 NASA astronaut Michael Barratt works with a spacesuit inside the Quest airlock of the International Space Station on May 31. Credit: NASA NASA astronaut Michael Barratt works with a spacesuit inside the Quest airlock of the International Space Station on May 31. Credit: NASA Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThe astronauts who came home from the International Space Station last month experienced some drama on the high frontier, and some of it accompanied them back to Earth.In orbit, the astronauts aborted two spacewalks, both under unusual circumstances. Then, on October 25, one of the astronauts was hospitalized due to what NASA called an unspecified "medical issue" after splashdown aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule that concluded the 235-day mission. After an overnight stay in a hospital in Florida, NASA said the astronaut was released "in good health" and returned to their home base in Houston to resume normal post-flight activities.The space agency did not identify the astronaut or any details about their condition, citing medical privacy concerns. The three NASA astronauts on the Dragon spacecraft included commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, and mission specialist Jeanette Epps. Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin accompanied the three NASA crew members. Russia's space agency confirmed he was not hospitalized after returning to Earth.Dominick, Barratt, and Epps answered media questions in a post-flight press conference Friday, but they did not offer more information on the medical issue or say who experienced it. NASA initially sent all four crew members to the hospital in Pensacola, Florida, for evaluation, but Grebenkin and two of the NASA astronauts were quickly released and cleared to return to Houston. One astronaut remained behind until the next day."Spaceflight is still something we don't fully understand," said Barratt, a medical doctor and flight surgeon. "We're finding things that we don't expect sometimes. This was one of those times, and we're still piecing things together on this, and so to maintain medical privacy and to let our processes go forward in an orderly manner, this is all we're going to say about that event at this time."NASA typically makes astronaut health data available to outside researchers, who regularly publish papers while withholding identifying information about crew members. NASA officials often tout gaining knowledge about the human body's response to spaceflight as one of the main purposes of the International Space Station. The agency is subject to federal laws, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, restricting the release of private medical information."I did not say I was uncomfortable talking about it," Barratt said. "I said we're not going to talk about it. I'm a medical doctor. Space medicine is my passion ... and how we adapt, how we experience human spaceflight is something that we all take very seriously."Maybe some dayBarratt said NASA will release more information about the astronaut's post-flight medical issue "in the fullness of time." This was Barratt's third trip to space and the first spaceflight for Dominick and Epps.One of the most famous incidents involving hospitalized astronauts was in 1975, before the passage of the HIPAA medical privacy law, when NASA astronauts Thomas Stafford, Deke Slayton, and Vance Brand stayed at a military hospital in Hawaii nearly two weeks after inhaling toxic propellant fumes that accidentally entered their spacecraft's internal cabin as it descended under parachutes. They were returning to Earth at the end of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, in which they docked their Apollo command module to a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in orbit.NASA's viewand perhaps the public's, tooof medical privacy has changed in the nearly 50 years since. On that occasion, NASA disclosed that the astronauts suffered from lung irritation, and officials said Brand briefly passed out from the fumes after splashdown, remaining unconscious until his crewmates fitted an oxygen mask tightly over his face. NASA and the military also made doctors available to answer media questions about their condition.The medical concern after splashdown last month was not the only part of the Crew-8 mission that remains shrouded in mystery. Dominick and NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson were supposed to go outside the International Space Station for a spacewalk June 13, but NASA called off the excursion, citing a "spacesuit discomfort issue." NASA replaced Dominick with Barratt and rescheduled the spacewalk for June 24 to retrieve a faulty electronics box and collect microbial samples from the exterior of the space station. But that excursion ended after just 31 minutes, when Dyson reported a water leak in the service and cooling umbilical unit of her spacesuit.While Barratt discussed the water leak in some detail Friday, Dominick declined to answer a question from Ars regarding the suit discomfort issue. "We're still reviewing and trying to figure all the details," he said.Aging suitsRegarding the water leak, Barratt said he and Dyson noticed her suit had a "spewing umbilical, which was quite dramatic, actually." The decision to abandon the spacewalk was a "no-brainer," he said."It was not a trivial leak, and we've got footage," Barratt said. "Anybody who was watching NASA TV at the time could see there was basically a snowstorm, a blizzard, spewing from the airlock because we already had the hatch open. So we were seeing flakes of ice in the airlock, and Tracy was seeing a lot of them on her helmet, on her gloves, and whatnot. Dramatic is the right word, to be real honest."Dyson, who came back to Earth in September on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, reconnected the leaking umbilical with her gloves and helmet covered with ice, with restricted vision. "Tracy's actions were nowhere short of heroic," Barratt said.Once the leak stabilized, the astronauts closed the hatch and began repressurizing the airlock."Getting the airlock closed was kind of me grabbing her legs and using her as an end effector to lever that thing closed, and she just made it happen," Barratt said. "So, yeah, there was this drama. Everything worked out fine. Again, normal processes and procedures saved our bacon."Barratt said the leak wasn't caused by any procedural error as the astronauts prepared their suits for the spacewalk."It was definitely a hardware issue," he said. "There was a little poppet valve on the interface that didn't quite seat, so really, the question became why didn't that seat? We solved that problem by changing out the whole umbilical."By then, NASA's attention on the space station had turned to other tasks, such as experiments, the arrival of a new cargo ship, and testing of Boeing's Starliner crew capsule docked at the complex, before it ultimately departed and left its crew behind. The spacewalk wasn't urgent, so it had to wait. NASA now plans to attempt the spacewalk again as soon as January with a different set of astronauts.Barratt thinks the spacesuits on the space station are good to go for the next spacewalk. However, the suits are decades old, and their original designs date back more than 40 years, when NASA developed the units for use on the space shuttle. Efforts to develop a replacement suit for use in low-Earth orbit have stalled. In June, Collins Aerospace dropped out of a NASA contract to build new spacesuits for servicing the International Space Station and future orbiting research outposts."None of our spacesuits are spring chickens, so we will expect to see some hardware issues with repeated use and not really upgrading," Barratt said.Stephen ClarkSpace ReporterStephen ClarkSpace Reporter Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the worlds space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet. 20 Comments Prev story
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  • FTX sues Binance for $1.76B in battle of crypto exchanges founded by convicts
    arstechnica.com
    Bankruptcy court FTX sues Binance for $1.76B in battle of crypto exchanges founded by convicts Lawsuit seeks "at least $1.76 billion that was fraudulently transferred" by SBF. Jon Brodkin Nov 11, 2024 2:14 pm | 63 Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao arrives at federal court in Seattle for sentencing on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. Credit: Getty Images | Changpeng Zhao Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao arrives at federal court in Seattle for sentencing on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. Credit: Getty Images | Changpeng Zhao Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThe bankruptcy estate of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX has sued the company's former rival Binance in an attempt to recover $1.76 billion or more. The lawsuit seeks "at least $1.76 billion that was fraudulently transferred to Binance and its executives at the FTX creditors' expense, as well as compensatory and punitive damages to be determined at trial."The complaint filed yesterday in US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware names Binance and co-founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao among the defendants. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried sold 20 percent of his crypto exchange to Binance in November 2019, but Binance exited that investment in 2021, the lawsuit said."As Zhao would later remark, he decided to exit his position in FTX because of personal grievances he had against Bankman-Fried," the lawsuit said. "In July 2021, the parties negotiated a deal whereby FTX bought back Binance's and its executives' entire stakes in both FTX Trading and [parent company] WRS. Pursuant to that deal, FTX's Alameda Research division directly funded the share repurchase with a combination of FTT (FTX's exchange token), BNB (Binance's exchange token), and BUSD (Binance's dollar-pegged stablecoin). In the aggregate, those tokens had a fair market value of at least $1.76 billion."Because FTX and Alameda were balance-sheet insolvent by early 2021, the $1.76 billion transfer "was a constructive fraudulent transfer based on a straightforward application" of bankruptcy law, and an intentional fraudulent transfer "because the transfer was made in furtherance of Bankman-Fried's scheme," the lawsuit said.Alameda could not fund the transaction because of its insolvency, the lawsuit said. "Indeed, as Bankman-Fried's second-in-command, Caroline Ellison, would later testify, she contemporaneously told Bankman-Fried 'we don't really have the money for this, we'll have to borrow from FTX to do it,'" the lawsuit said.The complaint alleges that after the 2021 divestment, Zhao "set out to destroy" FTX, and accuses Binance and Zhao of fraud, injurious falsehood, intentional misrepresentation, and unjust enrichment.Binance is far from the only entity being sued by FTX. The firm filed 23 lawsuits in the bankruptcy court on Friday "as part of a broader effort to claw back money for creditors of the bankrupt company," Bloomberg reported. Defendants in other suits include Anthony Scaramucci and his hedge fund SkyBridge Capital, Crypto.com, and the Mark Zuckerberg-founded FWD.US.Lawsuit cites SBFs false statementsEllison, who was sentenced to two years in prison, testified that Alameda funded the repurchase with about $1 billion of FTX Trading capital received from depositors, the lawsuit said. It continued:Ellison further testified that Bankman-Fried dismissed her concerns about financial resources, telling her that, notwithstanding the need to use customer deposits, the repurchase was "really important, we have to get it done." Indeed, as discussed below, one of the reasons Bankman-Fried viewed the transaction as "really important" was precisely because of his desire to conceal his companies' insolvency and send a false signal of strength to the market. In connection with the share repurchase, Bankman-Fried was asked directly by a reporter whether Alameda funded the entire repurchase using its own assets, expressing surprise that Alameda could have done so given the purchase price and what was publicly known regarding Alameda's financial resources. In response, Bankman-Fried falsely stated: "The purchase was entirely from Alameda. Yeah, it had a good last year :P" (i.e., an emoji for a tongue sticking out).The transaction contributed to FTX's downfall, according to the lawsuit. It "left the platform in an even greater imbalance, which Bankman-Fried attempted to cover up in a pervasive fraud that infected virtually all aspects of FTX's business," FTX's complaint said. Bankman-Fried is serving a 25-year prison sentence.Because FTX trading was insolvent in July 2021 when the Binance share repurchase was completed, "the FTX Trading shares acquired through the share repurchase were actually worthless based on a proper accounting of FTX Trading's assets and liabilities," the lawsuit said.Zhao allegedly set out to destroyFTX claims that once Zhao divested himself of the equity stake in FTX, "Zhao then set out to destroy his now-unaffiliated competitor" because FTX was "a clear threat to Binance's market dominance." Zhao resigned from Binance last year after agreeing to plead guilty to money laundering violations and was sentenced to four months in prison. He was released in September.FTX's lawsuit alleges that "Zhao's succeed-at-all-costs business ethos was not limited to facilitating money laundering. Beginning on November 6, 2022, Zhao sent a series of false, misleading, and fraudulent tweets that were maliciously calculated to destroy his rival FTX, with reckless disregard to the harm that FTX's customers and creditors would suffer. As set forth herein in more detail, Zhao's false tweets triggered a predictable avalanche of withdrawals at FTXthe proverbial run on the bank that Zhao knew would cause FTX to collapse."Zhao's tweet thread said Binance liquidated its remaining FTT "due to recent revelations." The lawsuit alleges that "contrary to Zhao's denial, Binance's highly publicized apparent liquidation of its FTT was indeed a 'move against a competitor' and was not, as Zhao indicated, 'due to recent revelations.'""As Ellison testified, 'if [Zhao] really wanted to sell his FTT, he wouldn't preannounce to the market that he was going to sell it. He would just sell it [] his real aim in that tweet, as I saw it, was not to sell his FTT, but to hurt FTX and Alameda,'" the lawsuit said.The lawsuit further claims that while FTX was "in freefall, Zhao sent additional false tweets calculated, in part, to prevent FTX from seeking and obtaining alternative financing to cauterize the run on the institution by customers deceived by the tweets. Collectively and individually, these false public statements destroyed value that would have otherwise been recoverable by FTX's stakeholders."Binance calls lawsuit meritlessOn November 8, 2022, Bankman-Fried and Zhao agreed to a deal in which "Binance would acquire FTX Trading and inject capital sufficient to address FTX's liquidity issues," the lawsuit said. But the next day, Binance published tweets saying it was backing out of the deal "as a result of corporate due diligence."When Zhao agreed to the deal on November 8, he had "already been made aware of the 'mishandled' customer funds during his conversation with Bankman-Fried," the lawsuit said. "This is contrary to Binance's representation in the November 9 Tweets that he learned that fact after entering into the Letter of Intent. In addition, Zhao was also aware that the Debtors were insolvent when he entered into the Letter of Intent."In the 24 hours between the November 8 agreement and the November 9 tweets, "no new material information was provided to Zhao and Binance in the diligence process that would have revealed new issues" causing Binance to exit the deal, according to the lawsuit.Binance said it will fight FTX's lawsuit. "The claims are meritless, and we will vigorously defend ourselves," a Binance spokesperson said in a statement provided to Ars.The defendants also included "Does 1-1,000," people who allegedly received fraudulent transfers in 2021 and "whose true names, identities and capacities are presently unknown to the Plaintiffs." FTX is seeking recovery of fraudulent transfers from all defendants. FTX also asked the court to award punitive damages and find that Binance and Zhao committed fraud, injurious falsehood, intentional misrepresentation, and unjust enrichment.Jon BrodkinSenior IT ReporterJon BrodkinSenior IT Reporter Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry. 63 Comments Prev story
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  • How a single gopher restored a landscape devastated by a volcano
    www.newscientist.com
    The northern pocket gopher (Thomomys talpoides) brings unexpected ecosystem benefitsAll Canada Photos/AlamyTwo years after Mount St Helens erupted in 1980, a team of researchers helicoptered in a gopher to the ash-covered landscape. Decades later, the activity of that single gopher burrowing for a single day may have helped the decimated ecosystem regrow by boosting the diversity of soil fungi.Theres something to be said about learning lessons from the gophers, says Mia Maltz at the University of Connecticut, who has used the eruption to understand how forests might recover from other stresses including wildfires and
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  • Humanity has warmed the planet by 1.5C since 1700
    www.newscientist.com
    Bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice were used to estimate past temperaturesaldiami/Andreas Alexander/AlamyHumans have already caused approximately 1.5C of warming since the start of the industrial revolution, according to new estimates based on temperature data gleaned from bubbles of air trapped in ice.Measurements of human-caused global warming generally use the period from 1850 to 1900 as the pre-industrial baseline, since this is when temperature records began. 2024 is almost certain to be the first year where average temperatures rose more than 1.5C above this baseline. This data for a single year is influenced by naturally occurring factors such as a strong El Nio event, which pushed up global temperatures. AdvertisementOnce this natural variability is removed, scientists think humanity alone has caused 1.31C of warming since the industrial revolution. But by 1850, the industrial revolution was already well under way, with fossil fuel-powered engines in use around the world.Andrew Jarvis at Lancaster University and Piers Forster at the University of Leeds, both in the UK, set out to establish a new pre-industrial baseline using data from Antarctic ice core samples. The duo analysed the composition of air bubbles trapped in ice cores to establish the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere during the period from AD 13 to 1700, before humans had any meaningful impact on atmospheric temperatures. They then used this CO2 data to establish global mean temperatures during the same period, assuming a linear relationship between CO2 and temperature increase.Using this new pre-1700 baseline, humanity had caused 1.49C of warming by 2023, meaning the 1.5C level has now in effect been reached, the team write in a paper reporting the findings. We have provided a new, scientifically defensible way of coming up with a pre-industrial baseline against which we are measuring the warming, Jarvis told reporters in a press briefing. Get a dose of climate optimism delivered straight to your inbox every month.Sign up to newsletterJarvis says the new method can also help reduce uncertainty around temperature estimates based on the current 1850-1900 baseline, which is used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Using ice core data to establish the 1850-1900 baseline, the team says humans have caused 1.31C of warming. That is in line with existing central estimates, but with a vastly reduced uncertainty range, the team points out.The problem with just looking at surface temperature observations is that the further back in time you go, they become more uncertain, says Forster. We can be far more certain than before that we are currently at about 1.3C.Jarvis and Forster hope their new method will be adopted by scientists and policy-makers as the main way of judging humanitys progress against global climate goals. I do think there is still scope for the policy community and the science community to rethink the pre-industrial baseline, said Jarvis. We know that there is warming baked into the 1850-1900 estimate, simply because that is not the beginning of the industrial revolution. We are offering a way out there, to a much more scientifically secure baseline to operate from.However, the new method may not be future-proof. The linear relationship between CO2 concentrations and global temperatures may falter as climate change advances, for example if we trigger so-called tipping points in Earth systemsthat cause a cascade of warming events.The new method also doesnt change the climate change effects being felt on the ground, says Forster. The impacts today we are experiencing of people being killed in Spain and by these hurricanes the impacts are exactly the same if you call that 1.3C above pre-industrial levels or if you call that 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. The impacts are the impacts.Richard Betts at the Met Office, the UKs weather service, says the new method provides a clear and simple way to give up-to-date estimates of the current level of human-induced global warming. That is, in part, because it is able to produce a real time estimate for human-driven warming rather than relying on a rolling 10-year average like current estimates.He says the method will be useful to provide a more up-to-date picture of the current level of warming for policy-makers, but warned that changing the baseline used in assessments could be seen as moving the goalposts for climate action. Even without changing the baseline, its clear that current warming is much closer to 1.5C than expected from using an out-of-date, 10-year average, he says.Journal referenceNature Geoscience DOI: 10.1038/s41561-024-01580-5Topics:
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  • Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz says Brian Niccol's back-to-basics plan will fix slumping sales at the coffee giant
    www.businessinsider.com
    Starbucks' ex-CEO, Howard Schultz, told Fortune he trusts successor Brian Niccol to revitalize the company.Niccol plans a back-to-basics strategy as the coffee chain faces low sales.Schultz, who served three stints as CEO, said there's no chance he'll reprise his role again. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. Brian Niccol knew when he took over in September as the new CEO of Starbucks that the company was facing slumping sales, decreased traffic, and something of an identity crisis.But the recent rollout of his new back-to-basics strategy has earned the support of one man who knows something about steering the beloved coffeehouse brand to success: Howard Schultz.Schultz, the chairman emeritus and former CEO of Starbucks, told Fortune in an interview that he has total faith in Niccol taking the helm of the international coffee chain though he's always available to offer the new CEO advice or guidance.Niccol has big shoes to fill as he steps in for Schultz, who has been described as the "Ray Kroc of his generation" for his role in the coffee giant's rapid expansion. He first became Starbucks' CEO in 1986 before leaving in 2000. He returned to the role during the 2008 financial crisis, departing again in 2017. In 2022, he came out of retirement to serve as interim CEO of the company. During his on-again, off-again tenure, Schultz grew the chain from 11 stores to 35,000 locations worldwide.Niccol's first earnings call, held October 30 for the company's Q4 results, included numbers indicating that Starbucks continues struggling to get customers in the door with traffic declining across all distribution channelsDuring the Q4 call, Niccol laid out his plan to get Starbucks "back to our core identity and consistently deliver a great experience" so "our customers will come back." He said the company will bring back its condiment bar so customers can dress their own coffees, and return to the Sharpie era where baristas hand-wrote customer names on their iconic white and green cups.Though Schultz has twice before left and then returned as CEO of Starbucks, he told Fortune there's no chance he'll reprise his role again.Representatives for Starbucks and the Schultz Family Foundation, of which Howard Schultz is a cofounder, did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
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