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.

China-linked hackers breached the corporate account of a Microsoft Corp. engineer and are suspected of using that access

IShowSpeed said, 'I was too scared, I was more focused on not missing rather than scoring, bro, that's all we're here to see'

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 13, 2023--

Apple Photos has become more advanced over the years, but when it comes to combining

China flagged security problems with iPhones while saying it isn’t barring purchases, the government’s first comments on the

Sure, lots of folks are eagerly anticipating this Sunday’s “Succession” finale

OpenAI may have discovered “something dangerous” that caused chaos at the company, Elon Musk has said. Recent days have seen ChatGPT creator OpenAI fire and then re-hire its chief executive, Sam Altman. Many of the circumstances of that decision still remain entirely mysterious, and it is not clear why OpenAI’s board removed Mr Altman. Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI, as part of his response to concerns that artificial intelligence could prove dangerous to humanity. But he has been critical of its recent direction, including its turn towards operating for a profit and no longer open sourcing its work. During the New York Times’s Dealbook conference, Mr Musk said that he had attempted to find out what happened behind the scenes at OpenAI, but had failed to do so. He had reached out to numerous people working at the company, including Ilya Sutskever, the OpenAI chief scientist and board member who is believed to have led the rebellion against Mr Altman, but had not heard anything. But he suggested that the company had found “something dangerous” that had caused Mr Sutskever to be concerned. He said that the most likely scenario was a worrying breakthrough that had led the company to try and avoid the danger. He was asked by journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin whether he meant that he thought something dangerous had been discovered within the company. Mr Musk said that would be his guess. In the same interview, Mr Musk once again criticised OpenAI’s move away from the open source and non-profit principles that it had been founded with. He also suggested that artificial intelligence companies were lying if they claimed their artificial intelligence systems were not trained on people’s data. But he said that any lawsuits over the issue will not be settled before we have a “digital god”, and would therefore be irrelevant. Earlier, he had told advertisers that left the company over antisemitic content to “go f*** yourself”. His profanity-laced remarks followed a moment of contrition in a New York Times DealBook Summit interview, as he first said “I’m sorry” for a tweet that agreed with an anti-Jewish post on X on Nov. 15. Musk has faced a torrent of criticism since he on Nov. 15 agreed with a user who falsely claimed Jewish people were stoking hatred against white people, saying the user who referenced the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory was speaking “the actual truth.” On Wednesday Musk said he had “handed a loaded gun” to detractors, describing his post as possibly the worst he had made during a history of messages that included many “foolish” ones. The Tesla CEO bristled at the idea that he was antisemitic and said that advertisers who left X, formerly known as Twitter, should not think they could blackmail him, saying “fuck you” numerous times. At one point he added the words “Hey Bob,” an apparent reference to Robert Iger, chief executive of Walt Disney, which pulled ads on X. The “Great Replacement” theory holds that Jewish people and leftists are engineering the ethnic and cultural replacement of white populations with non-white immigrants that will lead to a “white genocide.” Musk‘s post drew condemnation from the White House for what it called an “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate.” Following the post, major U.S. companies including Walt Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and NBCUniversal parent Comcast suspended their ads on X. A report from liberal watchdog group Media Matters precipitated the advertiser exit, which said it found ads next to posts that supported Nazism. The platform filed a lawsuit last week against Media Matters for defamation. Additional reporting by Reuters Read More Elon Musk publicly tells advertisers to ‘go f*** yourselves’ Elon Musk mocked for trying to resurrect QAnon Pizzagate conspiracy Elon Musk set to meet Netanyahu and hostage families in Israel Elon Musk weighs in on Dublin riots claiming country’s PM ‘hates the Irish people’ Elon Musk’s antisemitic comments have pushed X advertisers over the edge Democrats accuse Elon Musk and X of profiting from Hamas propaganda

Hackers stole contracts from cybersecurity firm Dragos Inc. as part of an extortion attempt that included contacting the

WhatsApp might be getting ads, according to its boss. The company has categorically ruled out that it would be put advertising in the inbox. But it might come elsewhere in the app, such as WhatsApp’s “Status” feature, which works like Instagram stories. WhatsApp has long resisted introducing ads to any part of its platform. That sets it apart from other Meta platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, which heavily integrate advertising. WhatsApp has long been rumoured to be considering putting ads into its app, with rumours stretching back as long as five years ago. But it has largely resisted the temptation, in part because of worries about whether it would concern privacy-conscious users, whom WhatsApp has particularly targeted. In September, the Financial Times reported that it was looking at changing that. The company was evaluating whether it would work to show ads in the conversation list, the paper reported. Meta outright denied that it had been testing or working on that feature, or that it planned to. “We aren’t doing this,” WhatsApp head Will Cathcart said on Twitter. But in an interview with Brazilian newspaper Folha De S.Paulo, Mr Cathcart was asked whether the app would continue to be free and not show ads. And he said that some ads might come to other parts of the platform. The app will not put ads within the “messaging experience”, such as the inbox or chats themselves. Instead, it could come in other parts of the app, such as the Status feature as well as the new Channels tool that allows people to subscribe to messages from creators. The company could also introduce the option to charge people to subscribe to those channels, he said. That could also be advertised within those Channels. He did not give any firm information about when the feature would arrive, or any commitment that it would actually be introduced. Read More Political ads on Instagram and Facebook can be deepfakes, Meta says Instagram working to let people make AI ‘friends’ to talk to Big tech poses ‘existential threat’ to UK journalism, survey of editors finds

OPEC is seeking to expand its legal team as the oil producer group prepares for challenges posed by

KIYOSU, Japan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 20, 2023--