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Amazon shares plummet after it fails to meet earnings predictions
Amazon has announced a lower-than-expected third quarter profit of $2.1 billion – $4.23 per share, compared to the $4.62 per share predicted by analysts (TechCrunch). The company's share price dropped 6.75 per cent to around $1,661 per share in after-hours trading once the results had been announced.
Amazon is currently spending heavily to reduce Prime delivery times from two days to one, but the usually-reliable Amazon Web Services side of the business also grew slightly more slowly than predicted.
TikTok denies US government claims of Chinese state censorship
TikTok has firmly denied US government allegations that it is censoring international content in line with Chinese law (The Verge). Although owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, TikTok highlights that its servers are based in the US and Singapore, well outside Chinese legal authority. Senators have called for the micro-video sharing platform to be investigated as a potential threat to US national security.
Iceland landscape photos reveal extent of glacier loss
Side-by-side comparisons of photographs showing Iceland's glaciers in the 1980s and modern drone imagery reveals the massive extent by which the vast ice sheets have retreated in the face of climate change (BBC News).
Dr Kieran Baxter of the University of Dundee and his team are working to create a 3D visualisation of the changes, which the Icelandic Met Office says amount to 750 square kilometres of lost glacial ice since the year 2000 alone, with glacial retreat now happening at a rate of 40 square kilometres per year.
Here's the shiny stuff China found on the Moon
Recent photos have given us new insight into the oddly shiny substance found by China's Yutu 2 rover on the far side of the Moon in July (Vice). Originally described as “gel-like” by the Chang’e-4 lander team, processing of the latest images indicates that the reflective material is likely to be either meteor-forged glass or, potentially, basaltic rock from the Moon's volcanic past.
RuPaul's Drag Race UK shows why young people don't watch the BBC
Want to understand how and why the BBC is failing to reach younger audiences? Look no further than RuPaul’s Drag Race UK (WIRED). Launched with much fanfare on October 3, the UK version of the hit US show has been confusingly dumped on BBC iPlayer in an attempt to get more young people to visit the platform. But it’s actually on BBC Three, a TV channel that the BBC closed three years ago that’s now condemned to eke out an existence as a “rail” on BBC iPlayer.
Boilers, porn and planes
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
