Last year movie theaters offered $3 movie tickets for "National Cinema Day," attracting a surge of more than 8.1 million movie-goers (compared to just 1.7 million the day after). So they're doing it again...

Today more than 3,000 movie theaters in the U.S. and Canada — with approximately 30,000 screens — are offering $4 tickets for every show (including IMAX and Dolby screenings) in a special one-day event. (The U.K. will also celebrate "National Cinema Day" — but in six days, on September 2nd.)

Variety notes that last year's event brought the highest one-day attendance for all of 2022, and "All of that foot traffic in theaters usually means there will be more popcorn and concession stand sales." So the National Association of Theatre Owners's nonprofit, the Cinema Foundation — decided to do it again this year just two days after the first event had ended. CNBC reports: While last year's event was held in part because of a need to lure audiences back to theaters after two years away following pandemic shutdowns, Bryan Braunlich, executive director of the non-profit Cinema Foundation, says that the hope for this year's Cinema Day is just for audiences to enjoy being at the movies... Nationwide chains including AMC and Regal will be participating. For a full list of theaters taking part in National Cinema Day, click here...

If this year's installment proves to once again be a success, Braunlich says the hope is to make National Cinema Day an annual event. "If this continues every year, which we hope it will, the long term goal is to eventize it," he says. "Make it less about the price and more like little Comic Cons in every city where you never know what celebrity is going to hop into your theater."
This year's event includes a limited re-release of some classic films, including the original Jurassic Park.

Cryptocurrency assets have amplified rather than reduced financial risks in less developed economies, and regulators will need to treat them in the same way they oversee other assets, some of the world's most powerful central banks have warned. From a report: Novel solutions to payments challenges should not be classified as 'dangerous' simply because they are different, the Bank for International Settlements said on Tuesday. However the global central banking body added that the appeal of crypto was "illusory," in a paper published on approaches to regulation. The Consultative Group of Directors of Financial Stability, which includes representatives from central banks of the US, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile and Mexico, said crypto had been promoted as a low-cost payment solution and substitute for national currencies in countries with high inflation or high exchange rate volatility. "However, crypto assets have so far not reduced but rather amplified the financial risks in less developed economies. Therefore, they should be assessed from a risk and regulatory perspective like all other assets," it said in a 50-page report. Watchdogs including the IMF and the Bank for International Settlements have been charting the evolving financial stability risks from the cryptocurrency market as it ballooned from a nascent industry to one whose value peaked at $2.9tn in November 2021.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blasted social media giant Meta on Monday over its decision to block local news as wildfires continue to force thousands of Canadians from their homes. "Right now in an emergency situation, where up-to-date local information is more important than ever, Facebook is putting corporate profits ahead of people's safety, ahead of quality local journalism. This is not the time for that," he said during a stop at the Island Montessori Academy in Cornwall, P.E.I. on Monday morning. "It is so inconceivable that a company like Facebook is choosing to put corporate profits ahead of ensuring that local news organizations can get up-to-date information to Canadians and reach them where Canadians spend a lot of their time -- online, on social media, on Facebook."

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has blocked Canadians from viewing news from Canadian outlets in response to the Liberal government passing its Online News Act, Bill C-18, in June. Google has threatened similar action. The law forces large social media platforms to negotiate compensation for Canadian news publishers when their content is shared. As a result, content from news providers in the North -- including CBC, the local newspaper The Yellowknifer and digital broadcaster Cabin Radio -- is being blocked and people can't access or share information from news sources on Facebook and Instagram, two of the most popular social media sites. In a statement sent to CBC News last week, the company said it's sticking to its position. It also said government sites and other sources that disseminate information aren't subject to the ban. "This is Facebook's choice," said Trudeau. "We're simply saying that in a democracy, quality local journalism matters. And it matters now more than ever before, when people are worried about their homes, worried about communities, worried about the worst summer for extreme weather events we've had in a long, long time."

Meanwhile, Meta spokesperson David Troya-Alvarez said: "People in Canada are able to use Facebook and Instagram to connect to their communities and access reputable information, including content from official government agencies, emergency services and non-governmental organizations." Meta says it has activated a "Safety Check" feature that allows users to mark on their profile they're safe from the wildfires.

Microsoft took down a string of articles published by "Microsoft Travel" last week that included a bizarre recommendation for visitors to Ottawa to visit the Ottawa Food Bank and to "consider going into it on an empty stomach." From a report: The now-deleted article that included that recommendation -- "Headed to Ottawa? Here's what you shouldn't miss!" -- went viral after writer Paris Marx shared it as an example of an AI flop. The online chatter about the article, and the clearly offensive nature of the food bank recommendation, prompted Microsoft to issue a statement. The statement blamed a human.

"This article has been removed and we have identified that the issue was due to human error," a Microsoft spokesperson said. "The article was not published by an unsupervised AI. We combine the power of technology with the experience of content editors to surface stories. In this case, the content was generated through a combination of algorithmic techniques with human review, not a large language model or AI system. We are working to ensure this type of content isn't posted in future." It wasn't the AI that was the problem, it was the human. There was a "content editor" and they made a mistake. We all make mistakes, right? I might be more persuaded by that stance if that article, however egregious it was, were the only one. In fact, it was not. There were at least a handful of articles that made equally absurd if less offensive travel recommendations.

In 2022, the Financial Times reported: Wildfires have depleted almost all of the carbon credits set aside in reserve by forestry projects in the U.S. to protect against the risk of trees being damaged over 100 years, a new independent study has found.

As a result of fires, six forest projects in California's carbon trading system had released between 5.7mn and 6.8mn tonnes of carbon since 2015, the non-profit research group CarbonPlan estimated. That was at least 95 per cent of the roughly 6mn offsets set aside to insure all forest projects against the risk of fire over a century-long period.
This month Oregon Public Broadcasting remembered what happened in Oregon, where The Green Diamond timber company promised to slow logging on 570,000 acres. "In exchange, the company received millions of dollars in payments from Microsoft and other companies seeking to offset their carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels by paying to grow more wood on this land."

Then came 2021's Bootleg Fire: In burning through nearly 20% of the company's Klamath project lands, it also has helped to stoke a broader debate about the ability of the multibillion-dollar forestry offset markets to deliver the carbon savings that are supposed to happen from these deals... During the fire, Green Diamond lost live trees that stored some 3.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That is equivalent to the greenhouse gases produced through the course of a year by more than 785,000 cars driving 11,500 miles.

A small portion of Green Diamond's lost carbon went directly into the atmosphere through combustion as the fire swept through the forest. The vast majority now resides in dead trees. They will eventually release this carbon as they topple to the ground and begin the decades-long process of decay, or perhaps more quickly should another fire sweep through this land. Fires also have caused big losses in two other Pacific Northwest forest tracts that had been used to offset fossil fuel pollution. In Northeast Washington, wildfires have repeatedly buffeted a large carbon offset project on the lands of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville. In Central Oregon, the Lionshead Fire torched most of the acreage of a carbon offset project developed by the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs. That project — like Green Diamond's — is likely to be terminated.
It's not just happening in the U.S. In June Bloomberg reported that "Canada's explosive wildfire season has already pumped millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Some of that carbon is coming from vegetation burned at a carbon offset project, highlighting the fragility of a tool the world is relying on to fight catastrophic climate change." (Though an executive running one project said "About 100 hectares of our 40,000 hectare project was involved in this fire," or about 0.25 per cent of the project.)

Oregon Public Broadcasting points out that there's currently 149 forest carbon projects on 5.5 million acres in 29 U.S. states...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Canadian government on Friday demanded that Meta lift a "reckless" ban on domestic news from its platforms to allow people to share information about wildfires in the west of the country. Meta started blocking news on its Facebook and Instagram platforms for all users in Canada this month in response to a new law requiring internet giants to pay for news articles. Some people fleeing wildfires in the remote northern town of Yellowknife have complained to domestic media that the ban prevented them from sharing important data about the fires.

"Meta's reckless choice to block news ... is hurting access to vital information on Facebook and Instagram," Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said in a social media post. "We are calling on them to reinstate news sharing today for the safety of Canadians facing this emergency. We need more news right now, not less," she said. Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez earlier said the ban meant people did not have access to crucial information. Chris Bittle, a legislator for the ruling Liberal Party, complained on Thursday that "Meta's actions to block news are reckless and irresponsible." Ollie Williams, who runs Yellowknife's Cabin Radio digital radio station, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that people were posting screen shots of information on Facebook since they could not share links to news feeds. A Meta spokesperson responded by saying that the company had activated the "Safety Check" feature on Facebook that allows users to mark that they are safe in the wake of a natural disaster or a crisis.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) office responsible for protecting the public from toxic substances has changed how it defines PFAS for a second time since 2021, a move critics say they fear will exclude thousands of "forever chemicals" from regulation and largely benefit industry. From a report: Instead of using a clear definition of what constitutes a PFAS, the agency's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics plans to take a "case-by-case" approach that allows it to be more flexible in determining which chemicals should be subjected to regulations. Among other uses for the compounds, the EPA appears to be excluding some chemicals in pharmaceuticals and pesticides that are generally defined as PFAS, current and former EPA officials say, and the shift comes amid fierce industry opposition to proposed limits on the chemicals.

The approach puts the toxics office at odds with other EPA divisions, other federal agencies, the European Union, Canada and most of the scientific world. The definition is likely to generate confusion in the chemical industry and within the agency, current and former EPA officials say. [...] PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of about 15,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed "forever chemicals" because they do not naturally break down in the environment. In a statement to the Guardian, the EPA said its latest definition was more "expansive" than the previous.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Late last week, MSN.com's Microsoft Travel section posted an AI-generated article about the "cannot miss" attractions of Ottawa that includes the Ottawa Food Bank, a real charitable organization that feeds struggling families. In its recommendation text, Microsoft's AI model wrote, "Consider going into it on an empty stomach." Titled, "Headed to Ottawa? Here's what you shouldn't miss!," (archive here) the article extols the virtues of the Canadian city and recommends attending the Winterlude festival (which only takes place in February), visiting an Ottawa Senators game, and skating in "The World's Largest Naturallyfrozen Ice Rink" (sic).

As the No. 3 destination on the list, Microsoft Travel suggests visiting the Ottawa Food Bank, likely drawn from a summary found online but capped with an unfortunate turn of phrase: "The organization has been collecting, purchasing, producing, and delivering food to needy people and families in the Ottawa area since 1984. We observe how hunger impacts men, women, and children on a daily basis, and how it may be a barrier to achievement. People who come to us have jobs and families to support, as well as expenses to pay. Life is already difficult enough. Consider going into it on an empty stomach."

That last line is an example of the kind of empty platitude (or embarrassing mistaken summary) one can easily find in AI-generated writing, inserted thoughtlessly because the AI model behind the article cannot understand the context of what it is doing. The article is credited to "Microsoft Travel," and it is likely the product of a large language model (LLM), a type of AI model trained on a vast scrape of text found on the Internet.

Netflix is officially bringing its games to more devices. So far, the company's impressive library of games has only been available on iOS and Android. Now, though, Netflix is starting to use its streaming tech to publicly test its titles on TVs and computers. From a report: "Our goal has always been to have a game for everyone, and we are working hard to meet members where they are with an accessible, smooth and ubiquitous service," Mike Verdu, Netflix's vice-president of games, wrote in a blog post. "Today, we're taking the first step in making games playable on every device where our members enjoy Netflix." The test appears to be very limited for now. Just two games will be available at the outset: Oxenfree. The beta is only open to a small number of Netflix subscribers in the UK and Canada on Amazon Fire TV streaming media players, Chromecast with Google TV, LG TVs, NVIDIA Shield TV, Roku devices and TVs, Samsung smart TVs and Walmart ONN. The company will add support for more devices later.

The CBC reports that "Some parts of the Halifax harbour turned a bright shade of pink on Thursday — for science."

After researchers dumped in 500 litres of safe, water-soluble dye, "boats, drones and underwater robots were then deployed to map the movement of the dye, so researchers can understand where materials spread and how quickly they do so." The CTV calls it "part of long-term research project that could help reverse some of the world's greenhouse gas emissions" by Dalhousie University and the climate-solutions research organization Planetary Technologies: The move is the first step, says Katja Fennel, an oceanographer at Dalhousie, before researchers release alkaline material into the water this fall. That material will effectively act as an antacid for the ocean, helping to neutralize the additional acidic carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world's oceans. "The purpose is to actually induce the ocean to take up atmospheric CO2 — CO2 from the air — and help us reduce legacy carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere," Fennel told CTV News.
To track the uptake of carbon dioxide, researchers need to account for the movement of water. So "The ultimate goal here is to test an idea for a technology that would help us reduce atmospheric CO2," one oceanographer leading the research told the CBC, "and could be one tool in the toolbox for fighting climate change..."

They point out that the ocean holds 50 times as much CO2 as is in the atmosphere, and call the experiment "cutting edge...world-leading research... Ocean alkalinity enhancement has the greatest potential, actually, in terms of storing carbon permanently and safely at a scale that is relevant for global climate."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam for sharing the article.

According to Gizmodo, CNET has deleted thousands of old articles over the past few months in a bid to improve its performance in Google Search results. From the report: Archived copies of CNET's author pages show the company deleted small batches of articles prior to the second half of July, but then the pace increased. Thousands of articles disappeared in recent weeks. A CNET representative confirmed that the company was culling stories but declined to share exactly how many it has taken down. The move adds to recent controversies over CNET's editorial strategy, which has included layoffs and experiments with error-riddled articles written by AI chatbots.

"Removing content from our site is not a decision we take lightly. Our teams analyze many data points to determine whether there are pages on CNET that are not currently serving a meaningful audience. This is an industry-wide best practice for large sites like ours that are primarily driven by SEO traffic," said Taylor Canada, CNET's senior director of marketing and communications. "In an ideal world, we would leave all of our content on our site in perpetuity. Unfortunately, we are penalized by the modern internet for leaving all previously published content live on our site."

CNET shared an internal memo about the practice. Removing, redirecting, or refreshing irrelevant or unhelpful URLs "sends a signal to Google that says CNET is fresh, relevant and worthy of being placed higher than our competitors in search results," the document reads. According to the memo about the "content pruning" the company considers a number of factors before it "deprecates" an article, including SEO, the age and length of the story, traffic to the article, and how frequently Google crawls the page. The company says it weighs historical significance and other editorial factors before an article is taken down. When an article is slated for deletion, CNET says it maintains its own copy, and sends the story to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. The company also says current staffers whose articles are deprecated will be alerted at least 10 days ahead of time. What does Google have to say about this? According to the company's Public Liaison for Google Search, Danny Sullivan, Google recommends against the practice. "Are you deleting content from your site because you somehow believe Google doesn't like 'old' content? That's not a thing! Our guidance doesn't encourage this," Sullivan said in a series of tweets.

If a website has an individual page with outdated content, that page "isn't likely to rank well. Removing it might mean, if you have a massive site, that we're better able to crawl other content on the site. But it doesn't mean we go, 'Oh, now the whole site is so much better' because of what happens with an individual page." Sullivan wrote. "Just don't assume that deleting something only because it's old will improve your site's SEO magically."

Disney is raising prices on almost all of its streaming offerings as it looks to accelerate profitability for the business. CNBC reports: Commercial-free Disney+ will cost $13.99 per month, a 27% increase, beginning Oct. 12. Disney+ with ads will remain $7.99 per month. Disney will also expand its ad-tier offering to select markets in Europe and in Canada beginning Nov. 1. Disney is increasing the price of Hulu without ads to $17.99 per month, a 20% price hike. Hulu with ads will also stay the same price, at $7.99 per month. The decision to price Disney+ nearly as high as commercial-free Netflix and Max, and charge even more for Hulu, signals Disney believes its content library can compete with both of those services.

Disney is now betting consumers will pay more for its streaming services even as the Hollywood writers and actors strikes threaten its content pipeline in the coming months. For consumers who want both Disney+ and Hulu without commercials, they can pay $19.99 per month in a new "premium duo" offering -- a $12 per month savings. The Disney+ and Hulu bundle with ads will not change from its $9.99 per month price. Disney also increased the price of its bundle of Disney+ (no ads), Hulu (no ads) and ESPN+ (with ads) to $24.99 per month from $19.99 per month. The bundle of all three products with commercials will be $14.99 per month, an increase of $2 per month. Disney is also increasing the price of Hulu + Live TV with ads to $76.99 from $69.99 per month. The commercial-free Hulu + Live TV will jump to $89.99 per month from $82.99 per month.

Telecommunications giant Telus says it is trimming 6,000 jobs, citing its need to free up cash flow and remain competitive. CBC.ca reports: The cuts involve 4,000 positions at its main Telus business and 2,000 at Telus International and include offers of early retirement and voluntary departure packages, the Vancouver-based company said Friday. Financial markets data firm Refinitiv says Telus had 108,500 workers at the end of last year. The cuts were made with "a very heavy heart" and prompted by the "evolving regulatory, competitive and macroeconomic environment," said Darren Entwistle, the company's president and chief executive. "Against the backdrop of rapid transformation in our industry and the ways in which our customers want to engage with us, today we are announcing a significant investment in an extensive efficiency and effectiveness initiative across Telus," he said in a news release.

The restructuring will cost Telus $475 million in 2023 and lead to annual savings of more than $325 million, the company said. Its plans to reduce its workforce were announced at the same time as the company revealed its second-quarter net income fell almost 61 per cent from the same period last year to $196 million. The company's net income amounted to 14 cents per share for the quarter ending June 30 compared with 34 cents per share in the same quarter a year earlier. Yet Entwistle positioned the company's strategy of building out broadband networks, digitizing operations and streamlining costs as "winning." "Our resilience and ability to embrace change and continuously evolve the way we operate are cornerstones of our Telus culture and will continue to fuel our future success," he said.

Canadians will soon be able to access and apply for more federal government services online -- from passports to payments, says Canada's first minister of citizens' services. From a report: Terry Beech says he's also open to innovation and using new technologies like artificial intelligence to improve the way the government delivers services to Canadians. "I think, fundamentally, it's my job to wake up every day thinking about how we're improving the customer service experience for Canadians," Beech said in an interview with CBC News. Beech's appointment to the newly created position comes as the government has been hammered in headlines and by the opposition in recent months over problems delivering basic services to Canadians. News reports have featured images of long lineups and people camping out to apply for passports. In the House of Commons, Conservative MPs have repeatedly talked about a "broken" government, saying lineups have been getting longer, backlogs bigger and services slower.

Airbus is forming a joint venture with US start-up Voyager to compete to build a replacement for the International Space Station, an internationally funded laboratory in space that is due to be decommissioned by the end of the decade. From a report: The deal announced on Wednesday formalises the partnership unveiled in January on Voyager's Starlab project and will see Airbus replace US defence company Lockheed Martin as its main industrial partner. Starlab is one of the frontrunners in a race launched by Nasa four years ago to develop commercial alternatives to the ISS, which was launched 23 years ago and orbits some 420 kms above the earth.

The ISS is an international collaboration, funded by national space agencies from the US, EU, Canada, Japan and Russia. Since its launch it has hosted 258 astronauts and cosmonauts from 20 countries. Among the other contenders in the race trying to build a replacement is Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, which is leading a consortium offering a 30,000 sq ft "ecosystem" of different habitats and services for industry, research and tourism. Nasa has allocated $550mn to four consortiums in the first phase of the competition, which will examine the spacecraft design and the business cases of each contender. The US agency has insisted each be commercially viable.

Starting today, Facebook and Instagram users in Canada will no longer be able to view or share news links or see videos and photos published by publishers and broadcasters. Engadget reports: Meta made the decision in response to Canadian legislators passing the Online News Act. The law requires certain platforms to negotiate revenue-sharing agreements with news organizations. The aim is to address the collapse in advertising revenue that news outlets have struggled with over the last two decades amid the growth of online services.

"News links and content posted by news publishers and broadcasters in Canada will no longer be viewable by people in Canada," Meta said. "We are identifying news outlets based on legislative definitions and guidance from the Online News Act." Any content shared by international news organizations won't be visible on Facebook and Instagram in Canada either.

OpenAI has released ChatGPT for Android, months after launching the free iOS app for iPhones and iPads. You can download it in the Google Play Store. The Verge reports: According to a company tweet, it's available first in the US, India, Bangladesh, and Brazil, with other countries set to follow later, mimicking the staged rollout we saw for the iOS version. On July 27th, OpenAI announced additional availability, saying the Android ChatGPT app is now available in Argentina, Canada, France, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, the UK, and South Korea.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Axios: Over 20% of the U.S.' population — 80 million people — are expected to face an air temperature or heat index above 105 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend as a record-breaking heat wave persists over most of the South, the National Weather Service (NWS) warns...

The extreme temperatures, which have been exacerbated by human-caused climate change, will come after several days of excessive heat and will be an immediate risk to public health... Heat index is what the temperature feels like to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature, and indices 103 degreesF or above can lead to dangerous heat disorders.

"Dozens" of temperature records could break across the Southern U.S., including overnight highs, the NWS said... About 115 million people in over a dozen states from California to Florida were under heat alerts on Thursday morning... The threatening heat is forecast to continue over the Southwest through "at least" July 28 and may expand into other parts of the country...

Global temperatures are hitting unprecedented highs, too, this year amid climate change and global warming. Elevated temperatures are also contributing to Canada's worst fire season on record, in which at least 27.1 million acres have burned across the country so far.
On Wednesday the city of Phoenix, Arizona — population 1.6 million — "experienced its 20th straight day with a temperature of over 110 degreesF," the article points out. And meanwhile Austin Texas (population 960,000) "saw its 10th straight day of temperatures at or above 105 degreesF for the first time in recorded history."

The National Weather Service's advice? "Take the heat seriously and avoid extended time outdoors."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The month of June and the first few days of July were hotter than any in recorded history, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Residents in the south of the US and southern Europe have been enduring sweltering temperatures, bringing excessive heat warnings, wildfires and plummeting air quality. However, records are not just being broken on land -- but in the water. Global ocean sea surface temperatures were higher than any previous June on record, according to a report by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, with satellite readings in the North Atlantic in particular "off the charts." Last month also set a record at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the biggest difference between expected and actual sea surface temperatures. Water temperatures around Florida, in particular, have been particularly warm. Scientists have also been tracking a large ongoing marine heatwave off the west coast of the US and Canada since it formed in May.

While the heatwave has since lessened in the north-east Atlantic, according to non-profit science organization Mercator Ocean International, another in the western Mediterranean now appears to be intensifying, particularly around the Strait of Gibraltar. This week, sea surface temperatures along the coasts of Southern Spain and North Africa were 2-4C (3.6-7.2F) higher than they would normally be at this time of year, with some spots 5C (9F) above the long-term average. Extreme marine temperatures have also recently been observed around Ireland, the UK and in the Baltic Sea, as well as areas near New Zealand and Australia. More recently, scientists suspect a possible heatwave south of Greenland in the Labrador Sea. "We are having these huge marine heatwaves in different areas of the ocean unexpectedly evolve very early in the year, very strong and over large areas," says Karina von Schuckmann, an oceanographer at Mercator Ocean.

Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, says scientists expect big temperature variations in the Pacific Ocean associated with the El Nino weather pattern, a phase of planet-warming weather which is just beginning, although NOAA is monitoring a large heatwave in the Gulf of Alaska that has been sitting offshore since late 2022. But what we're currently seeing in the North Atlantic is "truly unprecedented", says Buontempo. Scientists are still trying to unravel its full causes. [...] More broadly, experts say the persistence of recent marine heatwaves is a worrying sign about how climate change is unfolding, alongside heatwaves on land, unusual melting of snow cover in the Himalayas and a loss of sea ice. Von Schuckmann notes that, even if humans stopped pumping CO2 into the air tomorrow, the oceans would continue to warm up for many years yet. "I am concerned as a climate scientist that we are further than we thought we are."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Reddit is publicly extending an olive branch to the moderator community that it largely enraged over recent weeks. In a post on Wednesday, a Reddit employee detailed outreach efforts from the company, including new weekly feedback sessions, that it hopes can help repair ties with the social media platform and over 50,000 volunteer mods that it relies on. But as you might expect, mods remain skeptical. A Reddit admin going by Go_JasonWaterfalls on the site and claiming the title of Reddit VP of community acknowledged the shattered relationship between mods -- who spend thousands of hours providing free labor and have recently engaged in variously disruptive forms of protest over API pricing on the site -- and Reddit -- which has responded to said protests by ousting some protesting moderators from their posts.

"So, we've all had a... time on Reddit lately," Go_JasonWaterfalls wrote. "And I'm here to recognize it, acknowledge that our relationship has been tested, and begin the 'now what?' conversation." Noting that Reddit's "role is facilitation" and to give mods a platform they "can rely on," including necessary tools and resources, Go_JasonWaterfalls emphasized the need for "consistent, inclusive, and direct connection" with mods before detailing outreach efforts, like Weekly Mod Feedback Sessions. The sessions will take place every Tuesday and Thursday through October and "continue into the future as valuable," the Reddit admin said. Redditors have to fill out a form of interest to participate. Reddit can easily turn away those with inactive accounts or who it views as currently being in violation of Reddit's mod or content policies. Go_JasonWaterfalls said Reddit will share notes from feedback sessions in the r/modnews subreddit. Go_JasonWaterfalls also underscored Reddit's Mod Council and Partner Communities programs, the next monthly meeting for the Accessibility Feedback Group, and upcoming in-person events in the US, Brazil, Canada, England, France, and India.

Mods, meanwhile, traumatized by a tumultuous past couple of months, have very low expectations of Reddit's efforts. Ars spoke with some who have already participated in similar efforts, like feedback sessions or the Mod Council, and claimed mixed results in regard to Reddit making actual moves in response to mod critiques and suggestions. "The Reddit Mod Council in particular has been one where they will yo-yo on whether or not they listen to moderators. Sometimes they do, most times they don't," Alyssa Videlock, a mod for numerous subreddits, including large ones like r/tumblr and r/lgbt, told Ars. Reddit is refusing to give way on virtually any of the mods' demands, which has included things like more accessible API pricing or more time to adjust to the new pricing for apps they value and broader exemption for apps used by users (including mods) with accessibility needs. Reddit's removal of troubling mods has also helped to obliterate Reddit community trust.