MaxLinear Inc., a maker of chips for broadband communications, said it terminated its attempt to acquire Silicon Motion

Meta's "year of efficiency" seems to be paying off. The Facebook-parent company on Wednesday reported revenue of some $32 billion for its quarter ending in June, marking a 11% increase compared to the same period last year and beating Wall Street's expectations.

An ad launched by Progress Action Fund launched, showing an elderly Republican congressman interrupting a couple in the bedroom, has now been banned on X, formerly known as Twitter. According to the Progress Action Fund, which aims to defeat Republicans in red states, the platform “has censored” its account as well as the ad, called “Keep Republicans Out Of Your Bedroom.” In addition, the platform has “placed a ‘Search Ban’ and a ‘Search Suggestion Ban’ on the account.” As of Wednesday afternoon, the account did not show up on the social media platform, yet the ad could still be seen on X through retweets from other accounts. The Progress Action Fund said it contacted the platform’s legal department and “appealed the decision, which was denied.” Joe Jacobson, Founder and Executive Director of Progress Action Fund, took a stab at X’s owner: “Elon Musk loves free speech, but only when it’s convenient for him and his far-right political agenda.” “Political speech is protected under law and Musk’s competitors clearly agree that our ad should not be censored,” he continued. “When releasing ads in the future, we’ll be taking them to other platforms, which many others are already doing given Elon Musk’s frantic and poor leadership at Twitter.” The Independent has reached out to X for comment. The ad features a scene in which a woman asks a man if he has a condom. He reaches for the condom in a bedside table drawer, and another suit-covered arm appears, reaching for it as well. “Sorry, you can’t use those,” says an older man, clad in a black suit and red tie, while standing beside the bed. When the woman asks who he is, he replies: “I’m your Republican congressman. Now that we’re in charge, we’re banning birth control.” The ad urges voters to “vote no” on 8 August, in reference to State Issue 1, which would require proposed amendments to Ohio’s constitution “receive the approval of at least 60 per cent of eligible voters voting on the proposed amendment,” rather than a simple majority. Since acquiring Twitter, Mr Musk, a self declared “free speech absolutist”, has touted free speech as a pillar of the platform. As part of this shift during the takeover, he reinstated Donald Trump’s account after a two-year ban, which was “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” after the January 6 Capitol riot. He also reinstated at least 11 accounts belonging to prominent far-right and anti-trans influencers. On 23 November, the platform announced it “is no longer enforcing the Covid-19 misleading information policy.” As recently as April, the platform claimed to strive to “promote and protect the public conversation. We believe Twitter users have the right to express their opinions and ideas without fear of censorship.” In May, he wrote: “I am adamant about defending free speech, even if it means losing money.” Read More Democratic PAC unveils ‘steamy and horrifying’ ad with GOP lawmaker interrupting couple in bedroom Elon Musk slammed for pushing anti-vax conspiracy in response to LeBron James’ son Bronny suffering cardiac arrest Elon Musk takes control of @X account from user who had held it for 16 years Elon Musk slammed for anti-vax rant in response to LeBron James’ son’s cardiac arrest Fox News promotes conspiracy theory linking Bronny James collapse to Covid vaccine Anti-vaxxers claim Bronny James’s cardiac arrest is suspicious. Here’s why it isn’t

Maine moved a step closer to becoming the East Coast’s first floating offshore wind location after lawmakers approved

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 26, 2023--

Why was a major candidate for the presidency just asked about a lesson set to be taught to middle school students in Florida social studies classes? Governor Ron DeSantis found himself answering yet more questions about his state’s new conservative-friendly social studies curriculum at a press event in Utah over the weekend as the Republican sees continued signs that his record on racial and social issues in the Sunshine State will be an issue in the upcoming GOP primary debates and, potentially, the 2024 general election. Mr DeSantis’s campaign held a summit with donors in Utah this past weekend where top advisers pledged a reboot to the Florida governor’s stagnating presidential bid including cutbacks to pricy expenditures including private events that have not helped his standings in the polls improve. The candidate himself held a press conference on Friday, where the question about Florida schools was directed to him. The Florida Department of Education’s social studies standards for the 2023-2024 school year, released this month, provide lesson topics for middle school teachers including a “benchmark clarification” which instructs educators to teach students that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit”. It isn’t clear what “their personal benefit” would be in this scenario. The line is included as part of a broader lesson entitled: “Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation).” Mr DeSantis has come under fire for the curriculum changes, from both Democrats and Republicans alike. Last week, Vice President Kamala Harris railed against Mr DeSantis without naming the Florida governor. “There is a national agenda afoot. Extremist so-called leaders for months have dared to ban books. … Extremists here in Florida, passing a law ‘Don’t Say Gay,’ trying to instill fear in our teachers … And now, on top of that, they want to replace history with lies.” And former New Jersey Gov Chris Christie, who is seeking the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, also called out the governor for what he claimed was a lack of leadership. While the change to the curriculum itself is subtle — a single sentence added to a much larger document — the news of its insertion played into a larger narrative of Florida’s right-wing shift under the DeSantis administration. Florida schools, in particular, are the biggest battleground for this war, where liberal groups and nonpartisan experts alike warn that students are increasingly the recipients of a whitewashed educational environment devoid of anything that conservatives find unseemly or uncomfortable, such as discussions of the sins of slavery, representation of LGBT+ persons in the classroom or teaching materials, and other narratives that brush up against conservative belief systems. The changes to Florida schools had already earned the state the condemnation of the NAACP and other civil rights groups, something that has enraged conservatives and drawn the state into an ugly national fight against any group or organisation that the governor perceives to have a liberal agenda, including the Disney corporation. Now, he is officially a candidate for president and facing the reality that his loyally conservative record in Florida has failed to allow him to make serious inroads against Donald Trump and his support base, while he remains engaged in fighting off competitive rivals like Vivek Ramaswamy and others in the crowded Republican primary contest. It remains to be seen whether his campaign reset (which continued this week with layoffs of roughly a third of his staff) will be a necessary fat-trimming measure or the sign of his campaign’s early demise; what is certain is that the issue of the quality of education in Florida’s schools is not going away, at least any time soon. Read More Four cars in Ron DeSantis motorcade crash into each other on way to Tennessee fundraisers Biden laughs off impeachment threat after McCarthy teases inquiry Trump goes on late-night Truth Social rampage against ‘loser’ and ‘lowlife’ Mitt Romney Ron DeSantis: The new Jeb Bush Why was Donald Trump impeached twice during his presidency? DeSantis campaign fires aide behind neo-Nazi meme video

Scientists have claimed to make a breakthrough that would be “one of the holy grails of modern physics” – but experts have urged caution about the results. In recent days, many commentators have become excited by two papers that claim to document the production of a new superconductor that works at room temperature and ambient pressure. Scientists in Korea said they had synthesised a new material called LK-99 that would represent one of the biggest physics breakthroughs of recent decades. Superconductors are a special kind of material where electrical resistance vanishes, and which throw out magnetic fields. They are widely useful, including in the production of powerful magnets and in reducing the amount of energy lost as it moves through circuits. They are also often impractical, since they require low temperatures and high pressure. That means that they cannot be used in most traditional circuits, for instance. Since the beginning of the last century, scientists have been working not only to understand superconductivity but also develop new materials that would allow the phenomenon to be harvested at ambient temperatures and pressures. That has not been successful, and the discovery of such a material would mark a major breakthrough in physics. The new papers, published in recent days as a preprint on the website arXiv, claims to have overcome that problem. The researchers said they had not only found a way to synthesise such a superconducting material, but also that it could be done relatively easily – leading to huge excitement on social media. One Twitter thread from Alex Kaplan, a recent Princeton graduate who is now head of coffee product at startup Cometeer, helped propel the news into the mainstream. His thread had been viewed 8.5 million times, Twitter said, and has been retweeted more than 10,000 times. “Today might have seen the biggest physics discovery of my lifetime. I don’t think people fully grasp the implications of an ambient temperature / pressure superconductor,” he wrote in a long thread that went on to explain the possible applications of the material. Mr Kaplan pointed to the fact that vast amounts of energy are lost in the transmission of electricity across the world, that the the authors claimed material could be made in just 34 hours with simple equipment, and that such a superconductor would have revolutionary uses in everything from nuclear fusion reactors to batteries and quantum computers. Scientists away from the work agreed that such a breakthrough would be hugely significant. But they urged caution, pointing to the fact that the paper has not yet gone through the peer review process, the results have not been replicated, and that there could be other explanations for the apparently astonishing behaviour described in the work. “A real, working room-temperature superconductor which works at ambient pressure would be one of the holy grails of modern physics, unlocking major new developments in energy, transportation, healthcare, and communications,” said Mohammad Yazdani-Asrami of the University of Glasgow’s James Watt School of Engineering. “As it stands, however, the paper is not yet peer-reviewed and has not yet been tested in other labs to see if other researchers can reproduce its results. These are both key to determining for sure whether the world should be getting excited about the authors’ claims, which need much more scrutiny at this early stage. If the claims of findings are approved, perhaps, this is one of the most significant achievements of last few decades in physics and material engineering.” Others voiced specific concerns about the paper. Some of the results meant that other researchers working on superconductors were not convinced by the claims made in the paper. “The recent preprint by Lee, Kim and Kwon suggesting that they have observed room temperature superconductivity in the copper doped lead phosphate system, without the need for very high applied pressures, is interesting, but not yet wholly convincing,” said Susannah Speller, Professor of Materials Science at the University of Oxford, and Chris Grovenor, Professor of Materials at the University of Oxford. Professors Speller and Grovenor pointed to the fact that the data did not show the behaviour that would be expected to happen when the material became superconducting. Features that would be expected to be evident in the results were not, they said, and “and so it is too early to say that we have been presented with compelling evidence for superconductivity in these samples”. John Durrell, professor of superconductor engineering at Cambridge University, said that it could take considerable time to see the practical benefits of the breakthrough, even if the team’s results were confirmed. “There will be understandable scepticism about this result in the community as there have been numerous reports of room temperature superconductors over the years which have not held up,” he told The Independent. “I would, therefore, personally withhold judgement on this work until it becomes clear if the result is reproducible in other laboratories. “From my engineering point of view, a practical room temperature superconductor would be potentially transformative – allowing a host of exciting applications such as cheap MRI machines, more compact and efficient motors and low loss power transmission. “However, there can be significant challenges in turning a newly discovered superconducting material into a practical material. In previous cases, this has taken one or two decades and is not always possible.” Read More Europe to cover continent in fast EV chargers under new law Elon Musk takes control of @X account from user who had held it for 16 years iPhone users urged to check their photo library amid fears they could be deleted Europe to cover continent in fast EV chargers under new law Elon Musk takes control of @X account from user who had held it for 16 years iPhone users urged to check their photo library amid fears they could be deleted

Wall Street’s main regulator is unveiling proposed restrictions for brokerages and money managers that use artificial intelligence to

The Loch Ness Monster has left people scratching their heads for years, with many claiming they spotted the beast itself. Now, it's got its own "eel hypothesis," a paper dedicated to the theory that such sightings could have been eels. Researchers looked at data from Loch Ness to understand the number of eels there and their average measurements, as per IFL Science. They discovered that the eels were on the smaller side, compared to the estimates of the Loch Ness Monster, said to be roughly 1-2 metres according to one sighting. Another suggested it could be 15-20 metres. "However, this is not quite the ‘monster postulated," the authors told the outlet."Indeed, the probability of finding a 6-meter [20-foot] eel in Loch Ness is essentially zero – too low for the software used to provide a reliable estimate." "Thus, while large eels may account for some eyewitness sightings of large, animate objects rising to the loch surface, they are unlikely to account for 'sightings' of extraordinarily large animals, which may instead be accounted for by wave phenomena, the occasional stray mammal, or other reasons." Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It comes after several sightings last year were shot down by an academic who said they were simply whale penises. Michael Sweet, a professor in molecular ecology at the University of Derby, candidly, and informatively, added: "Whales often mate in groups so while one male is busy with the female the other male just pops his d*** out of the water while swimming around waiting his turn. "Everyone’s gotta have a bit of fun, right?" 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.

Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud unit, determined to take on Microsoft and Google in the burgeoning market for generative artificial

Amazon.com’s cloud division has drawn thousands of customers to try out its service vying with Microsoft and Google

The European Union has passed a new law to cover the continent in fast charging stations in order to meet the growing demand of electric cars. The legislation calls for fast recharging stations for cars and vans every 60 kilometres (37 miles) along the EU’s main transport corridors by 2025. The same distance requirements for heavy goods vehicles will need to be met by 2030. Airports and ports will also need to provide electricity for passenger vessels and aircraft by 2025. “The new law is a milestone,” said Raquel Sánchez Jiménez, Spain’s Minister of Transport. “We are optimistic that in the near future, citizens will be able to charge their electric cars as easily as they do today in traditional petrol stations.” The new EU law forms part of the ‘Fit for 55 package’, announced by the European Commission in 2021, which aims to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 per cent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. The EU is also aiming to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. Electric car ownership in Europe and worldwide has seen huge growth in recent years, with EV car sales now representing around one fifth of all new car sales globally. Last month, the battery-electric car market in the EU surged from 10.7 per cent to 15.1 per cent year-on-year, according to figures from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), overtaking diesel vehicles for the first time. The countries with the biggest growth were the Netherlands, Germany and France, contributing to more than 700,000 units sold in the first half of the year. Read More Battery breakthroughs are about to trigger a transport revolution