Category: Business

• Kabosu, the Shiba Inu who became the face of Dogecoin, has died at the age of 18.
• Her quizzical expression went viral in 2010 and was later used as the cryptocurrency mascot. 
• Elon Musk was one of Dogecoin's biggest fans, and Kabosu briefly became the Twitter logo in 2023.

A diminutive Japanese dog who became the face of Dogecoin has died.

Kabosu, who inspired the viral Doge meme and became the face of the satirical cryptocurrency championed by Elon Musk, passed away on Friday at the age of 18, her owner said.

The Shiba Inu had been seriously ill with liver disease and leukemia since 2022.

"To all of you who loved Kabosu — on the morning of the 24th of May, Kabosu crossed the rainbow bridge," Kabosu's owner, Atsuko Sato, wrote on Instagram.

"She went very peacefully without suffering, as if falling asleep while feeling the warmth of my hands petting her."

"Thank you all so much for loving Kabosu all these years. I am certain that Kabosu was the happiest dog in the world."

Kabosu was adopted by Sato, who works as a teacher in Japan, in 2008 after she was abandoned by a puppy mill.

The puppy, who is named after a type of Japanese citrus fruit, shot to internet fame as a popular meme in 2010, before Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer decided to use her famously quizzical expression for their satirical cryptocurrency Dogecoin.

Despite starting out as a joke, Dogecoin saw a stratospheric rise in value during the crypto boom of the early 2020s, becoming one of the top 10 digital coins by market value in 2021.

The Shiba Inu-themed digital currency attracted some famous fans, including Elon Musk. The billionaire joked about Dogecoin on "SNL" and even briefly changed the Twitter home button to an image of Kabosu after buying the site in 2022.

• Apple's WWDC will begin June 10, and fans are hungry for any news on its generative AI plans.
• Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI have all given impressive AI demonstrations in recent weeks.
• Analysts weighed in on what else Apple will have to do at WWDC to satisfy investors.

Apple has some ground to make up at its much-awaited annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

Big tech names like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google have all hosted events over the last three weeks where artificial intelligence was the main topic of discussion, as well as attention-grabbing new advances in their technologies. Not only that: they've been showcasing their products for quite some time — OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot was launched in November 2022, for example.

That's made Apple's lack of a big generative AI announcement so far particularly noticeable. In fact, analysts told Business Insider that the tech giant will have to talk about AI at WWDC if they want to keep investors happy.

WWDC, which Wedbush Securities managing director Dan Ives called Apple's "most anticipated event in a decade," kicks off on June 10 and lasts four days at Apple Park in Cupertino, California. At the 2023 WWDC, the big reveal was the Apple Vision Pro headset.

The conference comes hot on the heels of Apple's "Let Loose" event on May 7, where the company introduced new iterations of the iPad Pro, iPad Air, and compatible accessories — but didn't go into its AI plans. However, one big sign an announcement may be coming at WWDC was the unveiling of its M4 chip, which Apple described as an "outrageously powerful chip for AI."

Tim Cook was also vague about AI strategy during Apple's earnings call on May 2. The CEO spoke of "big opportunities across our products" for generative AI and promised that Apple is "well positioned" to take on the space. That's all left investors hungry for more details.

"We think investors will take any generative AI announcement positively," Morningstar tech analyst William Kerwin said. Morningstar has a two-star rating on the stock, with a fair value estimate of $170.

One option for Apple could be teaming up with another company. Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, told BI that Apple is "so far behind" that he's expecting a partnership with OpenAI to bridge the gap between it and the competition. Bloomberg reported last month that the two firms have been discussing a possible business alliance that could bring OpenAI's technology to iPhones. Apple is also in talks with Google about licensing its Gemini chatbot, Bloomberg said.

Munster also told BI that he expects big upgrades to Siri to bring about a more helpful and conversational voice assistant through the power of AI.

Although Apple may be late to announce its plans, analysts said it still has firepower in the AI arms race — if it does announce anything.

"Apple doesn't have to be first, but it can't be on the outside looking in when it comes to AI," Ives, who has an "outperform" rating on the stock with a $275 price target, told BI.

Its current lineup of products may help get consumers using Apple's offering instead of competitors', Deepwater's Munster said. He identified Apple's "seamless" continuity between devices and privacy as assets for the company in the battle to be the top player in AI.

"Apple's primary advantage is its massive installed base of devices and sticky, dedicated users," Kerwin at Morningstar told BI. We'd expect any new-gen AI announcement to see strong adoption when released."

• Quentin Latham transitioned from an accountant to a YouTube content creator in 2011.
• He struggled in accounting, got fired, and decided to follow his passion for entertainment online.
• Latham now earns over $500,000 annually from YouTube and has plans to retire in radio.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Quentin Latham, a 40-year-old accountant turned YouTuber from Miami. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I run the YouTube entertainment news channel Funky Dineva, but I started my career as an accountant after graduating in 2005 with an economics degree.

I worked my way up to a leadership role as a senior accountant and stayed until 2011. Early on, I realized that I hated it.

Now, as a YouTuber, I brought in over $500,000 last year through content creation alone. I'm never going back to accounting.

I always imagined myself as a corporate go-getter

I always thought I wanted a huge corner office, to win awards at my job, and to go to black-tie affairs.

Once I entered the workforce, the thought of doing that for the rest of my working life chipped away at my soul. I have a creative personality, and I found the routine and confinement of accounting to be painful and unbearable.

My boss could tell I was unhappy and underperforming. I was fired in February 2011.

With only unemployment benefits coming in and no major money saved, I could no longer afford my apartment, so I started scaling back my lifestyle. My fraternity brother was gracious enough to let me crash on his floor while I figured things out.

I had a YouTube channel that I decided to start taking seriously

I decided that moving forward, I would do what's authentic to me: entertainment. I was already spending hours on social media indulging in what was happening on reality TV and in the celebrity world, so I knew I could make content about it.

I launched my YouTube channel in December 2010 but didn't start treating it like a job until I was out of accounting. I created content around things like the Montgomery Riverfront brawl and Kanye West running for President. People seemed to like it, and my subscriber count grew.

Six months into focusing on YouTube, I got a call from Mona Scott Young and VH1 to appear on the first "Love & Hip Hop Atlanta" reunion. I interviewed members of the cast backstage, and the content was used as digital assets for the brand on its website. The response was incredible, and my following kept growing.

I now have 432,000 subscribers on YouTube. The bulk of my revenue comes from views on videos and live streams. I post five to nine videos and work roughly 10-15 hours a week.

I exceeded my accounting earnings within 1 year

After my first year on YouTube, my earnings exceeded $70,000, which is what I was being paid at my last accounting gig. I was able to get my own apartment and regain total self-sufficiency.

Initially, I knew nothing about financial planning for business owners or the resources available, such as business credit. I hired a CPA to help structure my business and file my tax returns. My 2017 tax returns revealed I had made $230,000, and I was shocked because I still felt relatively broke.

I realized I was spending the money as quickly as it was coming in, and I needed to regroup and start saving and investing. I got everything on track. Last year, I made $523,000.

YouTube has zero barriers to entry

It costs nothing to go through a trial-and-error period on YouTube. You don't even need a camera — I only used an iPhone or iPad for my first few years.

As a podcast or show creator, your main focus is producing good content in your niche. I suggest joining a local community-based organization that provides aid to content creators to build up your skills.

You can also hire an intern. College students always seek relevant experience to add to their résumé. Contact the mass communication and marketing departments of a college near you, or you can find someone virtually by searching on LinkedIn or Upwork.

When all else fails, Google is your friend.

One mistake I made when launching my business was only creating perishable content

I used to make videos on topics like Cardi B filing for divorce from Offset and then canceling their divorce. I was trapped in a cycle where I had to turn out content quickly and constantly versus my counterparts who were doing evergreen material. With evergreen content, the information will always be fresh to whoever is consuming it. Since then, I've learned to create both.

My immediate plans are to move into the product space. I've also recently started planning to open a content creation studio where other creators can access audio and video equipment to bring their ideas to life.

Long-term, I plan to stay current and keep my skills sharp, so I'm well suited to move in whichever way entertainment and pop culture reporting goes. My vision is to retire in radio because you can do it until you're 90 — as long as your voice isn't cracking.

• Work-from-home Fridays are becoming popular among white-collar laptop workers.
• Offices get fewer bookings on Fridays, and leisure businesses are seeing a Friday bump.
• Some workers told BI they use the day to do spa treatments and eschew on-camera meetings.

For Hannah Kristin, the last day of the workweek has a new name: Hair Mask Fridays.

Kristin, 25, started her career remotely after graduating in 2020. Now, she goes into her Chicago office Monday through Thursday — but never on Friday. It's sacred.

She often starts the day with a boutique fitness class or long morning walk, grabs coffee from a little shop near her apartment, and gets laundry started, all before the workday begins — things that would be far more difficult to do on days she needs to commute. She said she often has no video calls on Fridays, so she can put in a leave-in conditioner hair mask to rejuvenate.

"I truly love going into my office Monday through Thursday," she said. "I think at my age it's really important to be in the office. It's a great way to make friends."

But the flexibility of work-from-home Fridays is a nice counterbalance to the bustle of in-office work.

"Being able to be remote is something I value so much just for that one day," she said.

Kristin is one of many white-collar workers contributing to the growing work-from-home Friday economy. As hybrid work has cemented for a certain segment of white-collar workers, Friday has become the de facto day for staying home, according to ongoing research from the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes.

It's not great news for all businesses. Downtowns that rely on lunchtime food traffic have been forced to limit hours, cut staff, and in some cases, shutter completely. Still, interviews with owners and managers of cafés, bars, gyms, and beauty salons show that businesses are seeing an uptick in earnings during Friday work hours nationwide. Plus, workers say that the day is now "for the girls" — a time to unwind and let loose.

A break from work island

At Burly Coffee, a local coffee shop in New York City with two locations in Brooklyn, Fridays are "definitely the busiest day of the week," according to co-owner Tom Colella.

Importantly, Burly is far from the epicenter of where most New Yorkers work: Manhattan, or, as it's known to some, "work island."

"Wednesday is our slowest day. We have long hypothesized that Wednesday is the day with the most people commuting to work," Colella told BI.

He's right that office visits peak midweek and taper off on Fridays. In April, an average of 24% of total desk bookings at offices happened Tuesday through Thursday, 17% on Monday, and just 10% on Friday, per hybrid workplace management software company Kadence.

Whether they're technically working from the office or not, people seem to be out and about more on Fridays. Data shared with BI from Placer.ai, a foot traffic analytics platform, shows that many chain businesses see more foot traffic on Fridays compared to the rest of the workweek — second only to Saturdays.

Friday was the most popular day for spa and salon appointments booked on ClassPass in 2023, according to data the company provided to BI. The top time for fitness classes on Fridays in 2023 was 12 p.m. — perhaps indicating a rush of lunchtime exercisers. Meanwhile, the top time to hit the salon or spa was 5 p.m. on the dot.

Upticks in foot traffic at Starbucks, Sweetgreen, and Panera Bread, per Placer.ai, could suggest people are more frequently treating themselves to lunch or coffee out, working at coffee shops, or signing off earlier from work on Fridays.

Indeed, whether or not workers are going into the office on Friday, they're signing off at about 4 p.m. that day, compared to 5 p.m. on Mondays through Thursdays, according to an ActivTrak analysis of 75,000 workers.

That's a shift from pre-pandemic, where every day "was pretty much the same," Stanford University economist and leading WFH researcher Nicholas Bloom told BI. Sure, there were spurts of relaxed Fridays in manufacturing and Friday after-work drinking culture, but since the 1990s Fridays have been pretty much like every other day, according to Bloom.

"And then from 2021 onwards, it started to become the WFH day. As a result, Thursday night is the new Friday night — the night to go drink with colleagues," Bloom said.

Master colorist Michele Allard, the owner of Mint Bklyn Hair Studio, told BI that Fridays tend to book up more — and clients will sometimes bring their laptops with them to appointments. Otherwise, they'll usually come in during their lunch hours.

"The workload seems less on Fridays," she said.

'The world is my oyster after 2:00 PM on a Friday'

Sara Daigle, 25, works hybridly for her merchandising role in Dallas. During the pandemic, her whole firm was completely remote; now, they're three days in and two days at home.

"Personally, I don't mind it, but driving in rush hour traffic every day twice a day is just not my favorite thing," she said.

By contrast, Fridays are her favorite day, she said; she works from home and still has a special pandemic perk — year-round summer Fridays. That means she's able to log off at 2 p.m and enjoy more time for herself. Like other remote workers, that means a lot more spending for Daigle.

"Really, it's kind of like the world is my oyster after 2:00 PM on a Friday. If I were to look back at all of my credit card statements, it would be Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then nothing all week," she said.

Daigle also represents the next generation of workers, who might codify WFH Friday into a new standard. After all, she said, she's part of the generation that graduated into pandemic WFH and never had to work in-office on Fridays.

"That very rigid regime of working, I think that's getting pushed out as everyone's getting older and moving up, she said. "Now, Gen Z people have been out in the workforce for four or five, six years now. Everyone's kind of either in a management position or on their way there."That goes hand-in-hand with a permanent WFH Friday and a more flexible schedule.

"Work-from-home Fridays are for the girls. That's my closing remark," Daigle said. "It's for the girls and for the happy hours."

Are you completing side quests on WFH Fridays? Contact these reporters at jkaplan@businessinsider.com and nsheidlower@businessinsider.com.

• Google Translate supports 133 languages and can translate text, audio, or images.
• You can type or speak into the Google Translate app, or even take a picture of foreign text.
• Google Translate uses a system called Google Neural Machine Translation, which learns over time.

When you think of traveling, a number of Google services come to mind — you might use Google Maps to plan your routes and Google Flights to book your trip. But it's Google Translate that will help you communicate.

With the ability to translate dozens of languages using AI within seconds, either through text or voice, Google Translate is one of the OGs of translation apps and certainly one of the most popular. 

Google Translate was first launched in 2006. It's been widely reported that the software was born out of a disastrous translation of an email a South Korean fan had sent to Google's founders. The company was licensing a translation service at the time, which translated the message as, "The sliced raw fish shoes it wishes. Google green onion thing!" The frustrating experience compelled Sergey Brin to lead the company in creating a product that could do better.

Now, nearly two decades later, Google Translate supports a whopping 133 languages, is used by millions of people every single day, and its Android app has racked up over a billion installs from the Google Play Store. In a 2018 Google earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai said Google Translate translates some 143 billion words every single day.

Google Translate is powered by a system called Google Neural Machine Translation, which translates whole sentences at a time and contextualizes the words and phrases. GNMT is also an end-to-end learning system, which means the system learns and improves upon the process over time. 

In 2023, Google announced that Google Translate will use AI-powered features to further improve its services, such as offering context options during translations and incorporating Google Lens to translate images.

Here's everything you need to know about Google Translate and how to use it.

Is Google Translate an app? 

Google Translate is available as an app for both iOS and Android devices.

You can type, write, or speak into the Google Translate app, and it will provide translations within seconds. Additionally, the app uses Google Lens image-recognition technology to translate text from images — just point your smartphone's camera at text in a foreign language (like a menu or a sign) and get a translation instantly.

Here's how to use it: 

Translate text

1. Download the Google Translate app on your iPhone or Android.
2. At the bottom of the screen, select input and output languages.

3. Type the phrase or sentence you'd like to translate into the text field. The phrase will be translated in real time below.

Translate Images

1. After choosing the languages or selecting Detect language, tap the Camera icon in the lower-right corner.

2. Point your camera at any text you see so that it can be translated in real time.
3. Tap the Shutter icon to take a picture of the text you would like translated. 
4. To translate text from an image you've taken previously, tap the Gallery icon and select the photo from your iPhone's gallery. Google Translate will superimpose the translated words over the text in the image.

Translate with audio

1. Tap the microphone icon at the bottom of the screen and dictate your sentence or phrase into the app.
2. Wait a few moments for the app to translate your dedicated text and select the Speaker button to hear the translated audio.
3. Tap the Speaker icon to hear the translation.

1. As another option, tap the Transcribe icon and start speaking. You can then select and copy the transcription elsewhere. 

Quick tip: Offline translations are also available for many languages. Plus, you're able to save translated words and phrases for future use.

Is Google translate 100% right? 

Google Translate is not 100% accurate, nor is any other automated translation service. Google Translate has made some major mistakes, sometimes due to technology glitches and other times due to nuance or ambiguity in languages.

Google's accuracy can also vary greatly depending on the language pair. Research has indicated that Google Translate had a 94% accuracy rate when translating between English and Spanish but only a 55% accuracy rate when translating between English and Armenian. Research has also shown that Italian and German are among the hardest languages for Google to translate.

Can I use Google Translate to translate a name? 

Google Translate may help you translate a person's name — for instance, the name "George" plugged into Google Translate returns the name "Jorge" in Spanish — but use caution. Translations may not be contextually accurate, and rarer names may not be recognized.

Is ChatGPT or Google Translate better?

Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have translation capabilities already and may well overtake Google Translate in the future. 

Early research has indicated that ChatGPT translations have better terminological accuracy than translations from Google Translate, however, Google Translate tends to be better than ChatGPT at translating less-common languages. Either way, both ChatGPT and Google Translate tend to be much less accurate than actual human translators.

• The average Croatian leaves their parents' home at 33 years old — the highest age in the EU.
• It's expensive for young people to buy or rent in Croatia. BI visited Dubrovnik to investigate.
• Millennials there described feeling like teens in their 30s, despite being business owners and parents.

Lukša Malohodžić is 27 and runs a successful business — life ought to be going his way. But he still lives with his mom and dad.

He runs boat tours for wealthy tourists showing off the stunning Adriatic coast — keenly aware that he can't afford life there.

Like vast numbers of Croatian millennials, he's yet to fly the nest, and doesn't see it happening soon.

Seated at a café in Dubrovnik's Old Town in mid-April, he reflected on the situation.

"There comes a point where it starts to weigh on you," he said. "You begin to think, 'I really ought to change this,' but what can you do?"

According to Eurostat, the EU statistical office, the average Croatian leaves their parents' home at over 33 years of age, its highest figure.

For men, it's even higher — at just under 35.

In the US, almost everyone has moved out by then. US census figures say only 16% of Americans aged 25-34 live with parents.

BI visited Croatia in April, the start of Dubrovnik's tourism season, to hear firsthand how it's affecting millennials there.

They spoke of feeling stuck and infantilized: a woman of 35 whose relatives keep reading her mail, a grown man whose grandma kept track of his dating.

Based on the data, Malohodžić can expect to live under his parents' roof for another seven years, but it could be even longer.

"It's hard to buy anything or even rent," Malohodžić said. "It's just crazy."

Eurostat notes that house prices in Croatia have consistently climbed over the past decade. Last year, Croatia had the highest annual increase in the house price index among all EU member states.

Malohodžić says a "big majority" of his friends are in the same situation as he is, with only a fortunate few having inherited properties.

Property prices in Dubrovnik, a picturesque UNESCO World Heritage Site, are especially high.

According to news outlet Total Croatia, the average purchase price for an apartment or house in the city is slightly above 3,600 euros per square meter, equivalent to roughly $335 a square foot.

The US figure is roughly $230 a square foot, with much bigger salaries to buy it.

The average salary in the US is more than triple Croatia's, $59,000 or so to $18,500 in Croatia.

"You can't make the kind of money here that you need to buy properties," says Ivan Vukovic, a tour guide who has lived in Dubrovnik since he was born in 1981.

Vukovic has lived through Dubrovnik's various transformations over the years — from the bustling crowds during the Yugoslav tourism boom of the mid-1980s, to the devastation of the War of Independence and the subsequent return of cruise ships in the postwar era.

Today, he finds himself part of another tourism boom — fueled by tourists eager to see the city that served as King's Landing in HBO's "Game of Thrones."

While tourism brings economic opportunities for Vukovic and many others, he says it has also worsened the already dysfunctional housing market.

The surge in foreigners wanting a slice of Dubrovnik has driven up the demand for vacation homes, he said, and local entrepreneurs are increasingly flipping properties into Airbnbs to make money.

AirDNA, a short-term rental data analytics company, told BI that Dubrovnik, which has a population of about 41,000, has more than 5,500 properties listed on Airbnb or the Expedia-owned Vrbo during the summer months.

"Both foreigners and wealthy locals mainly use these properties as investments because the return is very good," Filip Brkan, a member of the Real Estate Business Association of the Croatian Chamber of Economy, told BI.

For renters, this can make finding a place for the whole year nearly impossible. The money that can be made from short-term rentals also drives up the price of buying vacant properties.

"What needs to be done in Croatia is to increase the housing supply," said Brkan.

But in parts of Dubrovnik, Vukovic explained, that's not feasible.

"We cannot expand," the tour guide said. "It's a small city protected by UNESCO, and the price has skyrocketed because somebody always wants to buy real estate in Dubrovnik."

For Josip Crncevic, 34, prices feel far out of reach.

"I always like to tell my guests on the tour that, right now, it will probably take two lifetimes to buy something within the walls," he said.

Even in Dubrovnik's suburbs, Crncevic said homeownership is unattainable for him.

For now, he lives in a multi-generation, three-story family house about seven miles outside the city.

His uncle's family lives on the top floor and his grandmother below, in a setup Crncevic describes as three distinct apartments, each with a private entrance and lock.

While it's not the situation he dreamt he'd been in at 34, he said there are some positives.

Crncevic enjoys helping his grandmother with daily tasks, though the proximity has posed challenges in the past, especially when it comes to dating.

"My grandmother is the best CCTV in the area," he said.

Establishing boundaries

Privacy is a recurring issue for many millennials living in similar conditions in Croatia.

Marija, a 35-year-old who asked to be referred to only by her first name in order to speak candidly about living with her in-laws, said the decision was born of necessity.

Marija and her husband moved into his parents' home in 2019 because they couldn't find affordable rent, and buying was not an option.

Although it seemed like a sound financial move, Marija said she now views it as a big mistake.

"We would like to have some kind of privacy, and not to be interrogated on a daily basis," she said.

The biggest problem is establishing boundaries "like not reading our mail and not entering the home without knocking," she added.

Sanja Cikato, a 47-year-old who lives with her husband and two teenage children above her mother, said setting those boundaries took patience and perseverance.

"It wasn't perfect in the beginning, but later, with time, we simply learned how to live together in this house," she said.

Cikato said achieving this required open and honest conversations, but that her mother still occasionally eavesdrops on the couple's quarrels.

Despite the difficulties, she said the benefits, such as help with childcare, outweigh the drawbacks.

When her children, now 12 and 14, were younger, her mother was a live-in babysitter, enabling Cikato to work longer hours during the tourist season.

Diana Marlais, another working parent, echoed this, telling BI that multi-generational living is a life-saver for working parents.

Cikato also said the setup creates a special bond between her mom and her kids, and that she wants to replicate it when her own children are adults.

"You have to understand that was something really normal before," she said.

But Malohodžić, who represents the younger cohort of Croatian millennials, sees it as being "purely economic" rather than a tradition worth upholding.

He said he wouldn't choose to live this way if finances weren't such a factor.

He wouldn't choose to be in his late 20s and to still "sometimes feel like a teenager."

• China has produced an excess of solar panels, causing overcapacity issues domestically and abroad.
• The US, EU, and China are facing challenges due to the glut of solar panels.
• China and Germany are seeing energy market distortions from excessive solar energy production.

China has made a lot of solar panels, dramatically lowering prices and helping the country's clean energy transition.

The problem is that Chinese manufacturers seem to have made too many solar panels, according to the US, European Union, and their allies. They are now calling on Beijing to rein in the overcapacity of the panels and other goods, raising prospects of a trade war.

China's facing its own overproduction problem at home following a breakneck pace of growth in solar energy — one key pillar of the country's "new three" economic drivers. China has installed so many solar panels that they are generating excess power that the country doesn't have storage or transmission capacity for, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

Such overcapacity has prompted Chinese authorities to withdraw some price support for the sector, leading to fewer solar panel installations, per Reuters.

China is still setting up solar panels at a rapid pace in the first quarter of 2024, as the installation rate jumped by more than one-third from a year ago, according to official data. However, this growth was much slower than in the 154% surge in the same quarter of 2023.

As of March this year, China — the world's largest solar energy market — has installed 660 gigawatts of capacity. The US, meanwhile, ended 2023 with 179 gigawatts, enough to power 33 million American homes.

China's solar panel overcapacity may be exported

Chinese manufacturers are producing more solar panels than people want to buy domestically, according to a Bloomberg analysis in April.

Given the oversupply at home, this development points to one possibility that will not be welcomed by the West: China continuing to dump its excess solar panels on the international market.

Chinese manufacturers are feeling the heat from solar panel overcapacity, too.

In March, Longi Green Energy Technology, the world's largest solar cell manufacturer, announced it was laying off thousands of workers amid overcapacity and low prices.

China's solar panel overcapacity is so bad that the country's China Photovoltaic Industry Association is calling for more mergers and acquisitions, as well as restrictions on domestic competition to control capacity, the association said in a post on its official WeChat account on Tuesday.

Earlier this month, US President Joe Biden announced he will double tariffs on Chinese solar cell imports from 25% to 50%.

China has pushed back against the West's claim of industrial overcapacity. Beijing says the bloc is trying to contain its economic growth.

Germany's energy prices are under pressure from too much solar energy

It's not just China getting hit by an excess of solar energy.

Germany, too, has been producing so much solar energy that energy prices have fallen into negative territory when output peaks.

But experts say these are just bumps in the world's energy transition away from fossil fuels to green energy, which, in its next phase, will focus on optimizing supply and demand.

"Every country in the world that is installing a lot of renewables and then facing the challenges that arise from all this variable intermittent generation, is searching for smart ways, intelligent AI-enabled or at least model-backed approaches to distributing this power and using it in the most efficient and effective way," David Fishman, a senior manager at the Lantau Group economic consultancy, told Reuters.

"Certainly that's where China is heading," he added to the news agency.

• A Ukrainian brigade announced the destruction of a Russian Su-25 using what appears to be video game clips.
• The 110th Mechanized Brigade posted the footage on Facebook on Thursday celebrating its win.
• The footage resembles gameplay from titles such as War Thunder, Arma 3, or Digital Combat Simulator.

Ukraine's 110th Mechanized Brigade announced on Thursday that it downed a Russian Su-25 "Frogfoot" fighter in the Donbas, posting footage from what seems to be a video game.

"We promised that the genocide of Russian 'Sukhois' would continue, we're keeping the promise!" the brigade's official Facebook account wrote in a caption for the clip.

The brigade said its announcement marked the second Su-25 downed by antiaircraft guns on Thursday, with Ukrainian outlet Kyiv Independent reporting that this was the sixth such fighter reported destroyed by Ukraine in May.

The video posted by the 110th shows two planes flying over a virtual grass field before the camera switches to a frontal view of the jet's cockpit. The aircraft sustains damage and dives nose-first into the ground.

Before impact, the clip switches to a blurry view of smoke rising above a field.

The footage resembles gameplay from titles such as Arma 3, Digital Combat Simulator, or War Thunder, all of which feature the Su-25.

Notably, footage from Arma 3 is often found in misinformation about active conflict zones, such as the war in Gaza. Recordings from the online multiplayer game have repeatedly been used to misrepresent battles in Ukraine.

But the 110th's intention behind posting the clips is unclear, as the brigade neither claimed it was a video of live combat nor addressed it as virtual footage.

On May 19, the same Facebook account announced that its forces had destroyed four Su-25s with a video of 3D-rendered jet models.

The 110th Mechanized Brigade and press teams for Ukraine's Defense Ministry and Armed Forces did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Several pro-Russia social media accounts have seized on the clip as a means to throw doubt on Ukraine's reports of casualties inflicted on Moscow's assets and troops.

"Official account of the 110th Mechanized Brigade posted another 'alleged downing' of a Su-25," wrote one milblogger.

Ukraine claimed on Thursday that it's destroyed 355 Russian fixed-wing aircraft since the war began in February, a tally that hasn't been verified by its allies. British intelligence said in April that it estimates Russia has lost at least 100 fixed-wing combat aircraft.

Russian forces have been intensifying attacks on the frontline in recent weeks, with its Defense Ministry saying on Thursday that it captured the village of Andriivka in the Donbas.

In the north, Moscow's troops pushed weakened Ukrainian lines back from the border and carried out missile strikes on the city of Kharkiv, which CNN reported killed seven people on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Kyiv has been receiving a renewed flow of military equipment from the US as part of a long-awaited tranche of $61 billion in aid, which Congress passed in April.

• Most Americans don't think that going to college is worth it these days.
• Only 1 in 4 adults think you need a degree to get a high-paying job, per the Pew Research Center.
• The US think tank said it surveyed over 5,000 US adults from November to December 2023. 

A majority of Americans don't think earning a college degree is a pre-requisite for snagging a high-paying job, according to a Pew Research Center report released on Thursday.

"Only one-in-four US adults say it's extremely or very important to have a four-year college degree in order to get a well-paying job in today's economy," the center wrote in its report, citing a survey it conducted with 5,203 US adults from November to December 2023.

Nearly half of the survey's respondents said having a four-year college degree is less important in getting a high-paying job today than it was 20 years ago.

The US think tank's findings come as an increasing number of American youths are beginning to lose interest in higher education.

Last year, BI and market research firm YouGov surveyed more than 1,800 Americans across five generations.

According to the results, 46% of Gen Z respondents said they didn't think college was worth the cost. Only 39% of those surveyed said they felt it was important for them to advance their education.

The lukewarm reception to higher education should not surprise many, considering how expensive college tuition has gotten.

The burgeoning debts racked up by college graduates have prompted government intervention. Since taking office, President Joe Biden has approved multiple rounds of debt relief to borrowers.

"After the 70-year period in which policymakers and social commentators and community leaders all saying from the hymnal that you've gotta go to college to make it in America, that headline, that kind of postulate, has been overthrown," Harvard Business School professor Joseph Fuller told BI's Ayelet Sheffey in December.

• China's social media is cracking down on influencers trying to get famous by showing off wealth.
• Some of its biggest platforms said they've removed thousands of posts of luxury flaunting.
• All of the companies announced bans on the same day, indicating an industry-wide push for reform.

Wealth-flexing for clout is now officially bad behavior in China.

China's biggest social media platforms launched a synchronized crackdown on parading wealth last week, removing thousands of posts and punishing dozens of influencers for promoting "bad values."

It's one of the Chinese internet's most pointed campaigns against "money worship" and flaunting luxury, which Beijing's central government has been ordering companies to regulate.

The platforms that announced disciplinary measures on May 15 included Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin — China's loose versions of Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.

Weibo, which has close to 600 million active users, posted the most extensive list of bannable behavior, including:

• Displaying luxury cars or expensive houses as a gimmick to market products or build one's reputation.
• Uploading pictures of large amounts of cash or people tossing banknotes.
• Showing luxury services or goods to exaggerate how one can earn "millions in a month," achieve financial independence or start a lucrative business from scratch.
• Hyping up a "second-generation household," a term that typically describes people who enjoy wealth because their parents are rich.
• Filming minors using luxury goods to "attract traffic and hype."
• Stoking discontent among poorer audiences and emphasizing class discrimination, listed by Weibo as "exaggerating and hyping the struggle of the lower classes to survive."

All three platforms have banned posts and accounts for "money worship" before, but their announcements made in tandem suggest an industry-wide push to clamp down on extravagant wealth.

Xu Qiuying, an editor for the state-owned paper Beijing News, wrote in a commentary that several influencers caught by the ban had been targeted for using displays of wealth as a marketing ploy.

"If the rich simply share their real lives, and their wealth comes from legitimate sources, and they just show off their wealth to satisfy their personal vanity, there is nothing wrong with that," Xu wrote.

Xu claimed that the barred influencers grew their fame by "showing off their wealth" and, in turn, became rich by selling products on livestreams.

"The 'rich' showed off their wealth to get rich," Xu wrote.

The account bans came as China's Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission announced a two-month campaign in April to "rectify the unscrupulous traffic-seeking on personal media."

Authorities said they were concerned by a surge in accounts creating fake personas or misrepresenting their lives to boost their numbers.

That included people who were "showing off wealth, deliberately showing a luxurious life built on money, thereby attracting fans and diverting traffic," the commission said.

All of this ties back to a precedent set by China's leader, Xi Jinping, to promote "common prosperity," or the ideal of providing wealth more equally to all Chinese citizens.

Xi's campaign initially focused on lifting China's vast rural population out of extreme poverty, benchmarked by a minimum salary determined by Beijing. The venture was generally well-received in a China that had turned jaded from widespread corruption and a growing class divide.

More recently, common prosperity has evolved into a crackdown on "excessive wealth," with the central government stepping up regulations on private industry giants and wealthy families.

Beijing seems to have toned down its rhetoric of common prosperity as its economy struggled in the post-COVID era. Still, state media continues to laud the idea as one of the country's foundations.

The campaign may have a long road ahead. In September, the income gap in 2022 between China's richest and poorest urban households was the country's widest since records began in 1985.

The average household income of the richest 20% in urban areas was 6.3 times that of the poorest 20%, per official data.