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Internet outages could spread as temperatures rise

By US Desk
Fri, 11, 22

That's when people turned to Twitter to vent out their grievances, but it turns out that their social media access could have melted down along with everything else....

Internet outages could spread as temperatures rise

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Early in September, when temperatures spiked to 116 degrees Fahrenheit and broke a 100-year record in California, the people were told to stay indoors as much as possible and to stay cool. That's when people turned to Twitter to vent out their grievances, but it turns out that their social media access could have melted down along with everything else.

The extreme heat led to a shutdown of Twitter's entire data center region. The company declined to discuss specifics about the meltdown.

While the company's data centres in other regions stayed online and users continued to tweet as normal, the incident put into perspective how a changing climate threatens the very services we rely on to keep our businesses online and stay connected with friends and family. It wasn't even the first heat-related data centre shutdown this year, not after London's record-breaking July heat wave knocked out facilities run by Google and Oracle. Outages could be more prevalent as climate change results in a warmer world with harsher weather.

Changes are coming to Wordle

Internet outages could spread as temperatures rise

Wordle players better be prepared for some changes and even more challenging words. The New York Times announced that it has named Tracy Bennett as the dedicated editor of the publication’s signature puzzle game.

Previously, the puzzle game's word of the day came from a list of preselected words made by its creator, Josh Wardle. Now, the NYT plans to move away from Wardle's list and curate the word of the day itself.

The NYT is also getting rid of any plural word answers that end in 's' or 'es'.

Wordle’s gameplay will stay the same, and answers will be drawn from the same basic dictionary of answer words, with some editorial adjustments to ensure that the game stays focused on vocabulary that’s fun, accessible, lively and varied.

US declares lab-grown meat safe to eat

A company called Upside Foods just received the green light from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market their chicken cultivated in a lab using the animals’ cells. This marks the first time ‘meatless meat’ has received a federal stamp of approval from the agency.

Upside Foods production facilities still need to be inspected by the USDA, and the ‘chicken’ itself will need to be inspected by the FDA prior to entering the US market. After those steps, which will likely take less time than the pre-market process, lab-grown chicken will be made available to the public.

But the cultivated chicken will be available in restaurants before people will be able to prepare it in their homes.