news.buyenne.com

(credit: Jeffrey)

Over 90 percent of the heat energy added to Earth’s climate system by human activities has gone into the ocean, in part because, well, it's awfully big.

That awful-bigness makes monitoring all that heat energy a real challenge. A new study led by Peter Gleckler and Paul Durack at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory compiled as much data as possible and compared it to climate model simulations. The comparison not only shows that the ocean's warming can only be explained by human impacts (surprise!) but also highlights just how quickly global warming is occurring outside of our view.

Although a large number of automated floats have been measuring temperatures in the upper 2,000 meters of the ocean for over a decade now, ship-based measurements from the past are more sparse. And the deeper the water, the fewer the available measurements. Because of this, studies analyzing the cause of ocean temperature changes have mainly stuck to the upper 700 meters. For this study, the researchers pulled together some more data—including the Challenger Expedition from the 1870s—in order to make deep ocean comparisons more worthwhile.

There are worse ways to spend a couple of days. (credit: Game Science Center Berlin)

Virtual reality headset makers are quick to claim that they have solved the widely reported problems with nausea and "VR sickness" that plagued earlier hardware. But if actions speak louder than words, one artist's 48-hour, reportedly nausea-free stint in an HTC Vive headset speaks pretty highly of the comfort and immersion of the VR device.

"I had no physical problems, no burning eyes, killing headaches or nausea," Thorsten Wiedemann, the founder and artistic director of the A MAZE Festival, told Vice after spending two straight days in a Vive headset for an art project called Disconnected earlier this month. While a panic attack in the 25th hour almost caused Wiedemann to drop out, the rest of the Wiedemann's extended time in VR went off uneventfully, as you can see from livestreamed footage archived on Game Science Center Berlin's YouTube channel.

Wiedemann didn't spend two whole days wandering around virtual reality in fuzzy pink pajamas to prove the safety and comfort of the hardware, though. As Wiedemann told Vice, the project was an early test of what he believes will be a common pastime in 2026, when it will be "normal that you jump into VR to meet your international friends in Social VR Rooms and go on crazy adventures together. But a long trip will be still special and could be understood as a controlled drug experience."

Sprint is reportedly cutting 2,500 jobs, including 2,000 in customer service, but the company told Ars that subscribers won't actually see any decline in customer service quality. "These changes will not impact the level of service we provide to our customers," a Sprint spokesperson told Ars today.

Sprint said it has already boosted "self-service and digital care tools," helping to lower its churn rate (the percentage of subscribers who leave). "In addition, we have made changes in service assurance that have now resulted in our lowest ticket levels and fastest repair times in the last three years," Sprint said.