The British government is offering £1 billion worth of home energy efficiency upgrades in a move that comes

Applied Materials Inc., the largest US maker of chipmaking machinery, gave a bullish forecast for the current quarter,

Snapchat users have been left feeling “freaked out”, with some claiming they have deleted the app, after its AI chatbot appeared to post a short video onto its own Story. Several Snapchat users took to social media on Tuesday night to share screen recordings and screengrabs of the short clip which was posted on the Story of the My AI account in what Snapchat has described as a “temporary outage” which has since been resolved. The video, which played for a few seconds, appeared to display a beige background with a different colour at the top of the frame, leading some users to suggest that it showed the corner between a ceiling and a wall. Taking to Twitter, one user said the uploaded Story “freaked me out so I deleted the app”, while others were left fearing the AI feature had evolved or become sentient. Many users then reported that the video was deleted and the AI chat feature temporarily ceased to respond to users’ questions, instead indicating it was experiencing a technical issue in its replies. Rolled out globally earlier this year, Snapchat’s My AI chatbot is designed to respond to users’ messages like a friend, providing answers to trivia, offering advice, and giving recommendations based on location if a user shares their geolocation with the app. A spokesperson for Snapchat said: “My AI experienced a temporary outage that’s now resolved.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a sweeping bill into law Friday that will restrict education about gender identity and sexual orientation and ban books with certain sexual content from school libraries, as well as require schools to notify parents if their child asks to use a new name or pronoun.

Twitch streamer Kai Cenat embraced the NPC trend on TikTok, imitating scripted reactions of video game characters during a live stream

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In the battle of the AI chatbots, Google Bard hasn't yet caught on the way

'The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom' producer Eiji Aonuma says players can continue to "enjoy the cast world of Hyrule" but no new elements will land.

REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 29, 2023--

Narwhals are among the most elusive creatures in the ocean, with their long, spiralling tusks giving them an almost mythological quality. And whilst many people would pay good money to see these unicorns of the sea in the flesh, they are notably absent from the world’s aquariums. The reason for this is both dark and mysterious, since there have only been two attempts to keep the toothed whales in captivity. Both of these ended in tragedy and the general acceptance that narwhals simply don’t belong in our sealife centres. The legendary porpoises, which are related to belugas and orcas, are found in Arctic coastal waters and rivers. They have two teeth and, in males, the more prominent of these grows into the swordlike tusk which can be up to 10 feet long, according to National Geographic. Back in 1969, Coney Island’s New York Aquarium becoming the first-ever centre to put a narwhal on display. According to IFL Science, the aquarium became home to a young calf called Umiak, whose name referred to the canoe used to hunt the species in the High Arctic. It was captured by members of the Inuit community who said that it followed their canoe back to camp after they killed its mother for meat. Umiak was put in a tank alongside a female “white whale” (most likely a beluga), who acted as its stepmother. And although staff reportedly fed vast quantities of milk mixed with chopped clams to keep it happy, they weren’t able to keep it healthy. Less than a year after Umiak arrived at the centre, the orphaned narwhal died of pneumonia, as reported by The New York Times at the time. Still, the animal’s swift and tragic demise didn’t stop Canada’s Vancouver Aquarium from attempting the same feat in 1970. The aquarium had been gearing up to host a narwhal since 1968, when its director, Murray Newman, hoped that bringing narwhals to the city could generate interest in the species and help with its conservation, IFL Science reports. After two unsuccessful attempts to capture one of the whales themselves, Newman and his team were forced to buy a young male from a community of Inuit hunters based in Grise Fiord on Canada’s Ellesmere Island. The animal was reportedly called Keela Luguk – a phonetic spelling of the word “qilalugaq”, which means “narwhal” in some Inuktitut dialects. Within a week of Keela Luguk’s arrival at Vancouver Aquarium in August 1970, the centre had caught two female narwhals and three calves, which were then added to his tank. However, in less than a month, the three calves had died. And by November, the two females were also gone. As public outrage mounted, the mayor of Vancouver himself called for Keela Luguk to be returned to the wild. But Newman would not succumb to their pressure and, eventually, on 26 December that same year, the young whale was reported to have died too. It’s not known exactly why the narwhals fared so dismally in captivity, particularly given that the species’s closest relative, the beluga, can survive a number of years, or even decades, in aquarium facilities. However, the porpoises are known to be exceptionally sensitive animals, with studies finding that they are so affected by human-made noises that even the sound of a ship sailing near their habitat is enough to radically impact their behaviour. Fortunately, aquariums seem to have got the memo, and narwhals have largely been left to continue their lives as fabled enigmas of the sea. Sign up for 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.

Europe’s banks need to stop complaining that a new ESG rule will make them “look bad” and accept

Knowing what the best Chromebooks for kids are is important before you dive into a