Lyft’s Good News Overshadowed by Mega-Typo

Daily Upsider on February 23, 2024

It’s a well-known fact that typos can be embarrassing and frustrating, and as ride-sharing company Lyft recently discovered. They can also make people forget about the good news in a financial report.

Lyft’s press release announcing its fourth quarter and full-year 2023 financial results, published before the company’s call with investors, initially caused its stock to soar more than 60% after-hours, reaching a high of $19.70. However, the company’s CFO, Erin Brewer, quickly corrected a crucial typo in the earnings call, stating that the adjusted EBITDA margin expansion for 2024 was meant to be 50 basis points (0.5%) instead of 500 basis points (5%).

This correction caused the company’s stock to tumble, dropping to $14.05 by Tuesday evening and $12.13 in early morning trading on Wednesday, down 2.18% from the previous day’s close.

Despite the disastrous typo, the financial report itself was quite positive. Lyft reported that gross bookings grew to $13.8 billion, a 14% increase year-over-year, while revenue grew to $4.4 billion, an 8% increase from last year. The company also had more riders than ever in its history, with 40 million people using the service, and it expected to generate positive free cash flow in 2024 for the first time.

“We’ve entered 2024 with a lot of momentum and a clear focus on operational excellence,” said CFO Erin Brewer in the earnings call.

Unfortunately, the typo overshadowed the good news in the report, leaving many to wonder what could have been if not for the unfortunate mistake.

Beautiful Hotel that Melts Every Year

Daily Upsider on February 22, 2024

The Icehotel in Sweden that features rooms and art installations is a unique and stunning hotel, first established in 1989 by Yngve Bergqvist. It features rooms and art installations made of ice and snow, drawing artists from around the world to contribute to its construction each year. The hotel offers both temporary ice rooms that melt in the spring and year-round ice rooms that are kept cool using solar-power cooling technology.

With 18 year-round ice rooms and 36 temporary ice rooms in the winter, the Icehotel also provides 44 warm rooms and 28 warm chalets for guests who prefer more traditional accommodations. The hotel’s unique appeal lies in its impermanence and one-of-a-kind ice rooms, offering a truly unforgettable experience for visitors.

If you are in one of the ice rooms, the temperature is generally between 19.4 to 23 degrees Fahrenheit. The Icehotel offers expedition-style sleeping bags for guests staying in the ice rooms. Visitors can check into their rooms at 6 p.m. and have 24-hour access to a heated facility, where they can store their belongings, shower, and use the bathroom. This ensures that guests have a comfortable and convenient stay, despite the unique nature of the ice accommodations.

The hotel also recommends staying for multiple nights, with the first or last being in one of the ice-rooms.

The Icehotel’s success has transformed the once-desolate winter months in Jukkasjärvi into a thriving tourist season. The ice blocks used in the construction are harvested from the nearby Torne River at the end of the winter. They are then stored all summer until the next winter when they are crafted into the seasonal portion of the hotel.

The Icehotel is located in Jukkasjärvi, just outside the town of Kiruna in Swedish Lapland. This is a beautiful region in northern Sweden, where you can expect to discover a land of forests, rivers, lakes, and mountains. In winter, the region is cloaked in a blanket of sparkling snow. The hotel is only a 15-minute drive away from the Kiruna airport, making it easily accessible for travelers.

Each year, the Icehotel receives applications from artists around the world to design the suites. When the temperature drops to levels required for snow gun operations, usually in mid-November, the building process begins. The Winter portion of the hotel is open from December to April, offering guests the opportunities to go dog sledding, see the northern lights, and even try ice sculpting themselves.

The Icehotel is a unique and unforgettable experience, combining the beauty of the natural surroundings with the creativity of artists and the comfort of a well-managed hotel. Whether you’re looking to explore the untouched wilderness of Swedish Lapland or to enjoy a stay in a one-of-a-kind ice suite, the Icehotel is the perfect destination for an unforgettable winter adventure.

Clean Limitless Power

Daily Upsider on February 22, 2024

A recent in depth article at Euronews.com delves into the groundbreaking work at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in Provence, France where a colossal endeavor to mimic the sun’s energy through nuclear fusion is underway. Laban Coblentz, the head of communications, reveals the ambition behind constructing what is possibly the most intricate machine ever, aiming to prove nuclear fusion’s viability on a large scale.

The project, a collaboration among over 30 countries including the US, EU, Russia, China, India, and South Korea, focuses on the ITER tokamak – the world’s largest magnetic confinement chamber. Designed to withstand extreme temperatures and generate significant energy, the tokamak represents a pivotal step toward clean, limitless power. Jeanette Schranz, a key figure in the project, highlights the reactor’s aim to produce net energy, marking a significant leap toward sustainable power solutions.

Nuclear fusion, the process driving this massive endeavor, promises a clean and abundant source of energy by fusing two light atomic nuclei to form a heavier nucleus, releasing immense energy. Unlike nuclear fission, fusion offers a safer, waste-free alternative, potentially revolutionizing how we generate power. Despite the technological and logistical challenges, including delays and budget expansions, the ITER project is still moving forward.

The initiative offers a glimpse into the potential of fusion energy to reshape our energy landscape. As the project progresses, the hope is to lay the groundwork for a world powered by the same forces that light up the stars.

Not long ago we wrote an article about the very recent groundbreaking success in creating a nuclear fusion reaction that created more energy than it took. We also briefly explore the differences between nuclear fusion and nuclear fission (our current nuclear power).

The Cloning of Dolly the Sheep

Daily Upsider on February 21, 2024

On February 22, 1997, scientists at the Roslin Institute in Scotland announced the successful cloning of an adult sheep.

Dolly, the first cloned adult mammal, was created using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) from a 6-year-old ewe. The nucleus of an adult cell was inserted into an unfertilized egg cell with its nucleus removed, then stimulated to divide through electric shock and implanted into a surrogate.

Dolly was born on July 5, 1996, with three contributing mothers providing an egg, donated DNA, and carrying the cloned embryo. DNA tests confirmed her identical match to the donor and no relation to the surrogate.

The project team, including Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell, Roslin Institute colleagues, and biotechnology company PPL Therapeutics, initially named her “6LL3” but later changed it to Dolly, as the donor cell was taken from a mammary gland, in homage to Dolly Parton.

The announcement sparked a debate on scientists interfering with the natural order, intensified when Dolly died prematurely in 2003, possibly due to premature aging. Euthanized on February 14 due to a progressive lung disease and severe arthritis, Dolly was preserved at the National Museum of Scotland.

The success of Dolly’s cloning paved the way for replicating other mammals like horses and cattle. Some scientists see potential in using cloning to preserve endangered species and produce lab animals.

In 2009, Spanish scientists cloned a wild mountain goat, declared extinct in 2000, though the clone died shortly after birth. This marked the first cloning attempt of an extinct animal.

Impossible Discovery

Daily Upsider on February 21, 2024

Scientists from the University of Central Lancashire in the UK have reported the discovery of a massive cosmic structure that challenges current understanding of the universe. The Great Ring, as it is called, is a nearly perfect circle of galaxies and galaxy clusters that spans approximately 1.3 billion light-years in diameter, making it larger than any known structure.

The Great Ring covers about 3% of the observable universe and may be part of an even larger structure. When visible to the naked eye, it would appear to be the size of 15 full moons in the night sky.

Traditionally, superclusters of galaxies were believed to be the largest structures in the universe, with sizes exceeding hundreds of millions of light-years. They can form threads that stretch over billions of light-years and contribute to the web-like structure of the universe.

However, the Great Ring is not only larger than these structures, but larger than any other structure discovered to date. This challenges the cosmological principle, which states that the universe should appear uniform in all directions to all observers within it. While there may be random variations in the distribution of stars and galaxies, at the largest scale they should merge into a homogeneous system.

The cosmological principle sets an upper limit on the size of any structure at 1.2 billion light-years, but the Great Ring clearly exceeds this value. If it were an isolated discovery, it might be dismissed as an anomaly or a mistake, but the Great Ring is not the only “impossible” giant structure discovered.

Two years ago, fellow astronomer Alexia Lopez from the University of Central Lancashire discovered a crescent-shaped structure called the Giant Ark, which is 3.3 billion light-years long. In 2015, a gigantic ring of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) with a diameter of 5.6 billion light-years was discovered. And although the status of the Great Wall of Hercules and the Northern Crown, a galactic thread stretching over 10 billion light-years, as a single structure remains debatable, their size is still remarkable.

Even more intriguingly, the Great Ring and the Giant Ark are in the same part of the sky and about the same distance from Earth, 9.2 billion light-years away. They may be part of a single, even larger structure.

The discovery of these giant structures challenges the cosmological principle and may require scientists to consider alternative models, such as the appearance of gigantic structures due to one-dimensional defects in space and time, known as cosmic strings.

Another possibility is the model of conformal periodic cosmology, which suggests that our universe is just one link in an infinite chain of universes, with the collapse of one causing a big bang in another.

The discovery of the Great Ring and other giant cosmic structures has significant implications for our understanding of the universe and its fundamental principles. Fascinating!!