Sunday 2nd June 2024

Who Wants to Have Children in a Warming World?

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Jade S. Sasser has been studying reproductive choices in the context of climate change for a quarter century. Her 2018 book, Infertile Ground, explored how population growth in the Global South has been misguidedly framed as a crisis—a perspective that Sasser argues had its roots in long-standing racial stereotypes about sexuality and promiscuity.


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Zombie Fire Season Is Here in the Arctic

So-called zombie fires in the peatlands of Alaska, Canada, and Siberia disappear from the Earth’s surface and smolder underground during the winter before coming back to life the following spring. These fires puzzle scientists because they appear in early May, way ahead of the usual fire season in the far north, and can reignite for a number of years.

Most scientists believe that zombie fires are the remnants of fires on the surface, but we have identified an alternative cause. Our research suggests that rapid atmospheric warming aboveground can cause peat soils to suddenly heat up to smoldering temperatures underground, all without any spark or other ignition. These zombie fires may be a case of climate-change-driven spontaneous combustion.


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Android Now Lets You Edit Text Messages

That’s the kind of immediately regrettable text you’ll now be able to salvage on Android Messages. This week, Google announced a bunch of new features coming to its Android mobile platform, and perhaps most useful among them is the ability to edit messages after they’ve been sent.

The update is for Google’s default Messages app, and works pretty much the same way the edit option functions in other messaging apps like WhatsApp. Once a text is sent, tap and hold on the message, then when the menu pops up, tap Edit. There, you can fix your frightening textual faux pas and help to cultivate a world of clearer communication.


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Y-Brush DuoBrush Sonic Toothbrush Review: U-Shaped and Sonic Brush Heads

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I've long been skeptical of alternative toothbrushes, those mouthguard-like trays filled with nylon bristles that claim to brush your teeth in just 10 to 30 seconds. I've found them to be OK for days when I'm just too tired for a full brushing, but it doesn't quite get my teeth clean enough. I've never felt like I could get close to someone's face and chat after. But Y-Brush's DuoBrush also comes with a regular sonic brush head. Both click onto the same brush handle.


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3 Best Smart Displays (2024): Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa

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A smart display might be for you if you want the convenience of a smart assistant with the bonus of having something to look at. When you put Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa into a smart speaker with a tablet-size screen, you get a fun way to see the weather or album art, watch TV shows, follow video recipes, and even make video calls. We've tested most of the major displays and listed our favorites below.


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The Ticketmaster Data Breach May Be Just the Beginning

One of the biggest hacks of the year may have started to unfold. Late on Friday, embattled events business Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, confirmed it suffered a data breach after criminal hackers claimed to be selling half a billion customer records online. Banking firm Santander also confirmed it had suffered a data breach impacting millions of customers and staff after its data was advertised by the same group of hackers.

While the specific circumstances of the breaches—including exactly what information was stolen and how it was accessed—remain unclear, the incidents may be linked to attacks against company accounts with cloud hosting provider Snowflake. The US-based cloud firm has thousands of customers, including Adobe, Canva, and Mastercard, which can store and analyze vast amounts of data in its systems.


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HMD Vibe Review: OK Performance, Meh Everything Else

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HMD, the Finnish company that has been licensing the Nokia brand name to make cheapo and midrange Android phones for more than 7 years, is finally striking it out on its own. Now you'll start seeing cheapo and midrange phones with the branding “HMD,” which stands for Human Mobile Devices. (The company says it plans on continuing its relationship with Nokia.)


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How a Samsung Washing Machine Chime Triggered a YouTube Copyright Fiasco

YouTube’s Content ID system—which automatically detects content registered by rights holders—is “completely fucking broken,” a YouTuber called “Albino” declared in a rant on the social media site X that has been viewed more than 950,000 times.

Albino, who is also a popular Twitch streamer, complained that his YouTube video playing through Fallout was demonetized because a Samsung washing machine randomly chimed to signal a laundry cycle had finished while he was streaming.


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11 Best Bookshelf Speakers (2024): Active, Passive, and Hi-Fi

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For many listeners, bookshelf speakers provide the quintessential audio experience. Mixing a potent cocktail of performance, value, and convenience, these versatile little blocks play a key role in nearly every corner of the audio spectrum. Bookshelf speakers can be the remedy for all your sonic needs, from TV shows and movies to Spotify streams and vintage vinyl.


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Nitrogen-using bacteria can cut farms' greenhouse gas emissions

Fritz Haber: good guy or bad guy? He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his part in developing the Haber-Bosch process, a method for generating ammonia using the nitrogen gas in air. The technique freed agriculture from the constraint of needing to source guano or manure for nitrogen fertilizer and is widely credited for saving millions from starvation. About half of the world’s current food supply relies on fertilizers made using it, and about half of the nitrogen atoms in our bodies can be traced back to it.

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