Disney is starting the first of three waves of layoffs this week as part of its plan to cut 7,000 jobs across the company.

The development west of Disney World will open with 100 more units than previously announced, for a total of about 1,400 income-capped apartments.

"Fantasmic" show continues at Disney's Hollywood Studios despite Maleficent fire during Disneyland show.

On this episode of Theme Park Rangers, Orlando Sentinel tourism reporters Dewayne Bevil and Katie Rice discuss the fire that damaged the Maleficent dragon at Disneyland and its impact on Disney World shows.

Tom MacCubbin gives advice on gardening in Florida including care of broccoli, pindo palms, tibouchina, California poppies, azaleas, flax lilies, liriope and bromeliads

Despite losing their first game of the season, the Hurricanes still control their own destiny and can make the ACC title game and College Football Playoff.

Oregon and Ohio State are Nos. 1 and 2 this week and Penn State and Indiana are Nos. 4 and 5. Texas of the SEC sits in the middle at No. 3.

The odd part of the Hurricanes' loss to Georgia Tech was that Miami struggled in several aspects of the game that they had dominated entering Saturday's contest.

The Dolphins selected the best players available in the NFL draft on Day 2, and they're convinced they did the right thing. However, some think they should have filled their needs, especially when it comes to tight end, right tackle and left guard.

Miami Dolphins general manager Chris Grier and coach Mike McDaniel detail operating without their first-round pick and answered other offseason questions.

LG is bending the rules of physics with its first-ever stretchable display that expands with impressive elasticity and micro-LEDs. The new display is capable of expanding up to 50%, the highest rate of elongation in the industry. Companies have been pushing the boundaries of what screens can do in the last few years. From Motorola’s concept

Requirements for safety confirmation and broadcast message service for disaster relief

HSTP-NFWT - Requirements for Network Address Translator and Firewall Traversal of H.323 Multimedia Systems

HSTP-FNTP - Firewall and NAT Traversal Problems in H.323 Systems

Shares of Shopify (NYSE: SHOP) are skyrocketing in early-morning trading after the company announced its Q3 2024 results, which beat expectations. As of the time of this writing, SHOP stock is up an impressive 23% to above $110 per share. 

However, Shopify’s stock isn’t on fire only because of its good Q3. There are some other reasons why Shopify is exciting investors this morning. Here’s what to know:

Shopify’s ‘outstanding’ results

Shopify would probably disagree with the statement that the company had a good Q3. As the company’s president, Harley Finkelstein, said in a press release, the results were “outstanding.”

Why was the quarter so outstanding? A big part of it was the company’s Q3 revenue, which came in at $2.16 billion. That represents a whopping 26% year-over-year growth rate from Q3 2023.

As Reuters notes, it even surpassed many analysts’ lofty expectations of $2.11 billion in revenue, leading to the ninth time in a row that the company has beat analyst expectations on sales.

Not only did Shopify beat analyst expectations again, but its 26% revenue growth for this quarter marked “our sixth consecutive quarter of greater than 25% revenue growth excluding logistics,” Shopify CFO Jeff Hoffmeister said.

In a slide deck, Shopify also announced that as of Q3 2024, the company had facilitated $1 trillion in global sales since the platform’s inception and that it now has a 10% share of the U.S. e-commerce market.

Okay, but why did Shopify have such a good Q3?

As also noted by Reuters, Shopify attracted more merchants to its online e-commerce platform this quarter. One of the attractions for the merchants seems to be a new artificial intelligence tool Shopify started rolling out in June called Sidekick.

Sidekick is an artificial intelligence assistant currently in early access for some merchants. Shopify says the AI bot “will act as your very own advisor, guiding you with tailored, skilled advice to make your business stronger.”

It does this by shouldering some of the mundane but necessary tasks that any businessperson needs to do to manage their business. Sidekick can help easily keep track of a merchant’s inventory, generate myriad reports that reveal new insights about your business, and even suggest ways to attract more customers to a storefront.

Sidekick is in addition to another AI tool Shopify offers, this one called Shopify Magic, which helps merchants create product images for their wares, write product descriptions, and even help them generate FAQs for their stores.

These AI tools are making it easier than ever for customers to manage their storefronts, and their availability is clearly a draw for some merchants.

The future looks promising, too

But Shopify’s stock isn’t only surging because the company had a terrific Q3. If anything, investors seem most excited about what the company has predicted will happen next.

Shopify’s current quarter, Q4, is arguably the most important of the year for the company and its merchants. This is the all-important holiday shopping quarter—and Shopify has anounced it has strong hopes for the period.

The key metric that Shopify has forecast is its revenue expectations for Q4, which the company says it expects will “grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.”

That’s music to investors’ ears, as it means Shopify expects it may do even better in Q4 than its just-completed outstanding Q3. That revenue growth estimate is also more than the 22.7% revenue growth many analysts were expecting, noted Reuters.

A resurgent stock

Shopify’s stock started 2024 with prices hovering in the high seventies before dropping to the low sixties over the summer. But since the beginning of the fall, SHOP shares have been on an upswing. Today’s 23% surge means SHOP shares are actually up over 38% year-to-date.

However, despite the resurgent stock, SHOP shares are nowhere near their all-time high of above $152 per share. Those highs were achieved in mid- to late-2021 when e-commerce was enjoying a pandemic boom as more people preferred online shopping over brick-and-mortar stores.

“Everything is on fire, but everyone I love is doing beautiful things and trying to make life worth living, and I know I don’t have to believe in everything, but I believe in that.” – Nikita Gill Now we continue living a life of integrity, kindness and community, no matter the circumstances. Find the helpers. […]

New Orleans-based technology firm scores $25M funding investment  New Orleans CityBusiness

Cal Fire San Diego shows off latest technology to fight fires  CBS News 8

Cal Fire San Diego shows off latest technology to fight fires  CBS News 8

As the annual Valentia Island lecture series approaches, let's look at the how a single telegram in 1858 paved the way for a cornerstone in modern networks.

Read more: The significance of Valentia Island and the first transatlantic cable

The company will use some of the funding to advance its wildfire suppression project, which uses autonomous drones and acoustic waves.

Read more: Dryad Networks raises €6.3m to drive wildfire prevention tech

xWave, which is headquartered at NovaUCD, has also announced the launch of a crowdfunding campaign.

Read more: Health-tech firm xWave Technologies secures NHS tender

Commissioner-designate Ekaterina Zaharieva wants to push for 50pc women on all Horizon-related boards and expert groups.

Read more: EU to appoint first ever commissioner for start-ups, research and innovation

None of the most popular illegal streaming devices meet UK fire safety standards.

Read more: Warning: Illegal streaming boxes are a fire hazard

Irish tech player iKydz has revealed its own child-safe smartphone at Mobile World Congress 2018.

Read more: An Irish tech firm has developed a child-safe smartphone

Sodium-ion batteries are cheaper than lithium-ion batteries — and they're also more environmentally friendly. And "In the past few years, sodium-ion battery production has increased in the United States," reports the Washington Post, with a new factory planned to manufacture them "in the same way as lithium-ion batteries, just with different ingredients. Instead of using expensive materials like lithium, nickel and cobalt, these will be made of sodium, iron and manganese..." Last month, sodium-ion battery manufacturer Natron Energy announced it would open a "gigafactory" in North Carolina that would produce 24 gigawatt hours of batteries annually, enough energy to charge 24,000 electric vehicles. But sodium-ion batteries are still early in their development compared with lithium-ion, and they have yet to hit the market on a massive scale. "It's unlikely sodium-ion could displace lithium-ion anytime soon," said Keith Beers, polymer science and materials chemistry principal engineer at technical consultancy firm Exponent... The biggest limitation of sodium-ion batteries is their weight. Sodium weighs nearly three times as much as lithium, and it cannot store the same amount of energy. As a result, sodium-ion batteries tend to be larger. Jens Peters, an economics professor at the University of Alcalá in Madrid, said the energy density could be improved over time in sodium-ion batteries. But, he added, "what we found out so far in our assessments is that it is not a game changer." Sodium-ion batteries are touted to be the environmentally friendly alternative to their lithium-ion counterparts, thanks to their raw materials. Sodium, iron and manganese are all abundant elements on the planet, so they require less energy to extract and cost less... Sodium-ion batteries also last longer than lithium-ion ones because they can withstand more charge cycles, said Wendell Brooks, co-CEO of Natron Energy. "Our product can have millions of cycles," said Brooks, "where lithium-ion would have three to five thousand cycles and wear out a lot faster...." Sodium-ion batteries aren't the best fit for smartphones or electric vehicles, which need to store lots of energy. However, one advantage is their low cost. And they could be a good candidate in situations where the size of the battery isn't a concern, like energy storage. "When something is built out to support grid or backup storage, it doesn't need to be very dense. It's staying put," Beers said. Natron will invest nearly $1.4 billion in the factory "to meet the rapidly expanding demand for critical power, industrial and grid energy storage solutions," according to their announcement. "Natron's high-performance sodium-ion batteries outperform lithium-ion batteries in power density and recharging speed, do not require lithium, cobalt, copper, or nickel, and are non-flammable... Natron's batteries are the only UL-listed sodium-ion batteries on the market today, and will be delivered to a wide range of customer end markets in the industrial power space, including data centers, mobility, EV fast charging, microgrids, and telecom, among others."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

See how CRS, Inc. helped roofing contractors during difficult times with RC's exclusive coverage of the inaugural Carlisle Experience Award.

With a home’s roof being the single most vulnerable area for ignition in the event of a wildfire, materials such as quality metal roofing systems that carry a Class A rating for fire resistance are essential.

The National Weather Service warns that a major heatwave will hit the continental U.S., affecting over 22 million people with temperatures reaching the 90s and heat indices up to 105°F from Texas to Maine before summer officially begins.

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Breaking new ground for the video game industry, a game called Everything, animated by Irishman David OReilly, could be up for an Oscar.

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715 planetas que se añaden a la Enciclopedia de Exoplanetas son muchos de repente. Casi duplican los que descubrimientos confirmados hasta la fecha, realizados en los últimos 18 años. Lo cierto es que con los datos obtenidos por el telescopio espacial Kepler, de la NASA, estas sorpresas comienzan a mostrar el poder de la ciencia para conocer el Universo. (En El Mundo, también completa información en las páginas de ciencia: "Un botín de 700 planetas fuera del Sistema Solar")

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Los malagueños, por delante de principio a fin, acabaron con un Madrid sin energía y desacertado. Es el cuarto título para los de Ibon Navarro en año y medio, el segundo en una semana tras la Intercontinental Leer

First Dates, el espacio del enamoramiento en Cuatro, celebró anoche las 2.000 noches siendo el programa del amor. 2.000 noches en las que los daters han acudido a ellos buscando que Cupido les lancé su flecha Leer