Earth Shattered Global Heat Record In 2023

The European climate agency Copernicus said Earth shattered global annual heat records in 2023, flirting with the world’s agreed-upon warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius. “On average, global temperatures in 2023 were 1.48 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial times,” reports the Associated Press. “If annual averages reach above 1.5 degrees Celsius, the effects of global warming could become irreversible, climate scientists say.” From the report: The record heat made life miserable and sometimes deadly in Europe, North America, China and many other places last year. But scientists say a warming climate is also to blame for more extreme weather events, like the lengthy drought that devastated the Horn of Africa, the torrential downpours that wiped out dams and killed thousands in Libya and the Canada wildfires that fouled the air from North America to Europe. In a separate Tuesday press event, international climate scientists who calculate global warming’s role in extreme weather, the group’s leader, Imperial College climate scientist Friederike Otto said “we definitely see in our analysis the strong impact of it being the hottest year.”

The World Weather Attribution team only looks at events that affect at least 1 million people or kill more than 100 people. But Otto said her team was overwhelmed with more than 160 of those in 2023, and could only conduct 14 studies, many of them on killer heat waves. “Basically every heat wave that is occurring today has been made more likely and is hotter because of human-induced climate change,” she said. [….] Antarctic sea ice hit record low levels in 2023 and broke eight monthly records for low sea ice, Copernicus reported.

Copernicus calculated that the global average temperature for 2023 was about one-sixth of a degree Celsius (0.3 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the old record set in 2016. While that seems a small amount in global record-keeping, it’s an exceptionally large margin for the new record, [Copernicus Deputy Director Samantha Burgess] said. Earth’s average temperature for 2023 was 14.98 degrees Celsius (58.96 degrees Fahrenheit), Copernicus calculated.

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Amazon’s Twitch To Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff

According to Bloomberg, Amazon’s livestreaming site Twitch is expected to cut 35% of its staff, or about 500 workers. “The cuts, which could be announced as soon as Wednesday, come amid concerns over losses at Twitch and after several top executives left the company in the span of a few months,” notes Bloomberg. Slashdot reader quonset shares the report: Running a large-scale website supporting 1.8 billion hours of live video content a month is enormously expensive, despite Twitch’s reliance on Amazon’s infrastructure, company executives have said. In December, Twitch Chief Executive Officer Dan Clancy said the company would cease operations in South Korea, where the costs are “prohibitively expensive,” according to a blog post he wrote. Twitch has increased its focus on advertising in recent years. Nine years after Amazon’s acquisition of the company, the business remains unprofitable, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information.

In the final months of 2023, several top executives announced their departures, including Twitch’s chief product officer, chief customer officer and chief content officer. Twitch also lost its chief revenue officer, who worked on Twitch from within Amazon’s Ads unit. “It’s always bittersweet when talented leaders move on to pursue new opportunities,'” a Twitch spokesperson said at the time. “We are incredibly grateful for their contributions to Twitch and our community, and wish them all the best.”

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HPE To Acquire Juniper Networks For $14 Billion

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced plans to buy data center networking hardware maker Juniper Networks for about $14 billion, or $40 per share, in an all-cash deal. The company expects to close the deal by the end of this year or in early 2025. CNBC reports: The acquisition would double HPE’s existing networking business after years of competition. If it’s completed, Juniper CEO Rami Rahim would lead the combined group and report to HPE’s CEO, Antonio Neri, according to the statement. HP got deeper into the category when it bought Aruba Networks in 2015, and months later, the technology conglomerate split in two, resulting in the formation of HPE, which sells servers and other equipment for data centers, and HP Inc., which makes PCs and printers. HPE said adding Juniper to its portfolio would bolster margins and speed up growth.

Founded in 1996, Juniper spent many years chasing Cisco in the market for networking gear. Revenue grew 12% year over year in 2022, the fastest growth since 2010. In the most recent quarter, Juniper eked out a $76 million profit on $1.4 billion in revenue, which declined 1%. HPE’s networking segment was the company’s top source of earnings before taxes, at $401 million on $1.4 billion in revenue, which was up 41%. Coming together would lead to $450 million in annual cost savings within three years of the deal’s completion, HPE said.

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