NASA images show a new side of Antarctica, an almost ice-free side. The images show a breathtaking view, and not in the sense that one would have when looking at something beautiful. I am sure it is beautiful, but for our planet, that melted ice has to go somewhere. Just a few days after we wrote about it being warmer in Antarctica than Louisiana, the highest temperatures ever recorded at Argentina’s Esperanza research station arrived: 65 degrees Fahrenheit. The gif image below tells a chilling story that is just heating up.

20% of the snow on one ice cap in Antarctica melted in the heatwave between February 4th and 13th. These images were courtesy of the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8. They show a drastic before & after visual. Eagle Island was nearly covered in snow on February 4th. By the 13th, you can see that most of the snow has melted, revealing larges amounts of the landmass. In that second photo, you also see a few light blue portions. These represent areas that are now turned into ponds due to the snowpack being saturated with water caused by the melting. The ponds soak up heat more than snow, which accelerates the melting process.

Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist at Nichols College, said, “I haven’t seen melt ponds develop this quickly in Antarctica. You see these kinds of melt events in Alaska and Greenland, but not usually in Antarctica.” This may soon change, since warm temperatures are happening more and more often in Antarctica. The National Snow and Ice Data Center shows that some parts of the area have warmed up 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the ’50s.

“And this temperature increase, people talk 2 degrees or 3 degrees — it’s important to appreciate just how sensitive the climate actually is to temperature. It’s important to look at it in terms of absolute temperature, not in degrees Celsius relative to zero. We need to say, what is the temperature change relative to absolute zero. That’s how the universe thinks about temperature. That’s how physics thinks about temperature. It’s relative to absolute zero. So, small changes result in huge effects.”

Elon then gives an example — a visual for those who don’t understand terms such as absolute zero or how it would affect our day to day life. He uses New York City as an example. “So, New York City under ice would be minus 5 degrees. New York City under water would be plus 5 degrees. But looked at as a percentage relative to absolute zero, it’s only a plus/minus 2% change. The sensitivity of the climate is extremely, extremely high. We’ve amplified this sensitivity by building our cities right on the coastline and most people live very close to the ocean.” The reality Elon was pointing out, applied to the case in Antarctica, is that 4.5 degrees of change have a huge impact on the climate.

Pelto gives us a warning of what is to come: “If you think about this one event in February, it isn’t that significant. It’s more significant that these events are coming more frequently.”

Topline: After hitting the market on February 18, Oreos designed by Supreme, the highly in-demand streetwear brand, were quickly gobbled up by fans⁠—not to eat, but to resell, with a three-pack of the crimson cookies going for over $88,000 on eBay as of Friday afternoon in the latest showing of Supreme’s commanding grip on “hype culture.”

• The Supreme Oreos went on sale Thursday at $8 per pack, with intrepid buyers snapping them up and then immediately listing the cookies on eBay.
• Supreme teamed up with Nabisco, Oreo’s maker, as part of its Spring/Summer 2020 collection, which also featured faux fur varsity jackets, a Nike sneaker, Nalgene water bottles, Ziploc bags and a rolling Mac Tools chest. 
• Other Supreme Oreo packs are listed at lower prices that are still significantly higher than the $8 retail price, ranging from $56 to the pack going for $88,400—which had 93 bids as of Friday.
• According to the listing history, the $88,000 pack is being sold from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and started bidding at $20 Thursday, with bids jumping into the tens of thousands by Friday afternoon and nearly nine days left for the auction.
• Some are not buying the hype: Daquan, an Instagram influencer with over 14 million followers, shared a meme saying “No one’s paying $250 for some Oreos.” 
• Supreme, eBay and Mondelēz International, Nabisco’s parent company, did not respond to requests for comment from Forbes. 

Big number: $1,000,000. That’s how much a Champion jacket designed by Supreme is going for on StockX, a streetwear resale site⁠—which has zero listings of the Supreme Oreo. Supreme is known for creating its own versions of everyday objects, such as baseball bats, matches, bottle openers and bike locks, along with more high-end products like an off-road Honda dirt bike.

Key background: Supreme began as a skateboarding brand in 1994, located in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood. The brand has exploded in popularity over the decades, with its hotly anticipated releases of new products, called “drops,” causing fans to wait for hours outside the brand’s flagship stores. Reportedly, the Supreme Oreo will drop in Japan on Saturday, and be available for online sales beginning February 27.

Tangent: Netflix’s Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj dedicated an episode to Supreme and its influence on “hype culture,” defined as obsession with the next big thing. 

T-Mobile US Inc. and Sprint Corp. agreed to new terms for their pending merger that take account of the slide in Sprint shares since the transaction was first agreed, putting the industry-altering deal a step closer to completion.

T-Mobile owners will get roughly 11 shares of Sprint for each of their stock, the companies said Thursday. That’s an increase from a ratio of 9.75 previously and is more favorable for T-Mobile’s German owner Deutsche Telekom AG.

The equity value of the amended deal is about $37 billion compared with the original agreement of $26.5 billion, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Erhan Gurses. The higher valuation partly reflects the 62% gain in T-Mobile shares since the all-stock transaction was announced almost two years ago, despite the deterioration in Sprint’s business.

Getting one of the biggest U.S. wireless mergers ever over the finish line would be a boon for Deutsche Telekom as it will reduce its reliance on Europe, where carriers are struggling to grow amid fierce competition. T-Mobile makes up more than half of Deutsche Telekom’s sales, up from about a third in 2014. A completed deal will also benefit Sprint owner SoftBank Group Corp. by allowing its chairman, Masayoshi Son, to better focus on his technology investments and the $100 billion Vision Fund.

The combined company, which will operate under the T-Mobile name, will have a regular monthly subscriber base of about 80 million — in the same league as AT&T Inc., which has 75 million subscribers, and Verizon Communications Inc., which has 114 million.

When the transaction closes, which could happen as soon as April 1, Deutsche Telekom is expected to keep 43% of the merged entity, while SoftBank has 24%. The rest will be held by public shareholders.

Deutsche Telekom shares fell 1.3% to trade at 16.41 euros in Frankfurt. Sprint shares were up 5% to $9.96 at 11:01 a.m. in New York, while T-Mobile was down 1.8% to $97.73.

The original accord, which united the third- and fourth-largest U.S. wireless carriers, was forged in April 2018. That pact lapsed on Nov. 1, and the companies didn’t initially renew the terms while they fought for government approval. When a federal judge rejected a state lawsuit to block the transaction earlier this month, that put the talks on the front burner.

Along the way, Sprint’s condition has worsened. That added pressure to redraw the agreement so that it was more favorable to Deutsche Telekom.

SoftBank agreed to surrender 48.8 million T-Mobile shares that it will acquire in the merger to the combined company immediately after the transaction closes. But those shares could be reissued to SoftBank by 2025 if the new company’s stock stays above $150 for a period of time.

That arrangement — having SoftBank relinquish the stock after the deal closes — was structured so that the deal wouldn’t have to go before another shareholder vote.

Sprint investors other than SoftBank will still get the original ratio of 0.10256 T-Mobile shares for each Sprint share — the equivalent of about 9.75 Sprint shares for each T-Mobile share.

Sprint’s monthly churn — a closely watched measure of how many customers leave — has risen to nearly 2%. That means roughly a quarter of its subscriber base is quitting the carrier each year. And the company isn’t making up for the decline by charging more: Average revenue per customer has fallen 5% since the deal was announced.

Analysts such as LightShed Partners’ Walt Piecyk said the merger’s exchange ratio should be closer to 12, given Sprint’s deteriorated business.

Only a small number of new antibiotics have been developed over the past few decades due to the cost and time associated with screening them. In fact, most newly approved antibiotics are simply minor variants of existing drugs. But now thanks to the power of artificial intelligence and the growing need to fend off antibiotic-resistant bacteria, that is changing.

Researchers at MIT created a machine learning model to look for chemical features that make molecules effective at killing E. coli, training it on around 1,700 FDA-approved drugs and 800 natural products. Once trained, the model was tested on the Broad Institute’s Drug Repurposing Hub which consists of around 6,000 compounds.

The model honed in on a molecule that it predicted to have strong antibacterial properties and a chemical structure that differed from existing antibiotics. A separate machine learning model indicated it might also have low toxicity to human cells.

The molecule, which they dubbed halicin after the computer “HAL” in 2001: A Space Odyssey, was tested against dozens of strains of bacteria and found to be effective in eradicating many of them including Acinetobacter baumannii, Clostridium difficile and Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

In mice infected with a particular strain of A. baumannii that is resistant to all known antibiotics, halicin completely cleared up infections within 24 hours.

Researchers believe halicin kills bacteria by rattling its ability to maintain an electrochemical connection across cell membranes. This gradient is necessary to produce ATP and without it, the cells die. What’s more, it proved effective against mutations.

Over a 30-day period, E.coli didn’t develop any resistance to halicin. In comparison, the bacteria developed resistance to the antibiotic ciprofloxacin within one to three days. By day 30, the bacteria was roughly 200 times more resistant to ciprofloxacin than it was initially.

The researchers’ model has since been used to identify 23 other candidates, two of which were particularly powerful against bacteria. They plan to conduct additional testing on halicin and work with a nonprofit or pharmaceutical company to develop it for human use.

Where there was a white ice cap, there are now brown blotches of land; melted snow and ice have created ponds of water. Those are the effects of the recent record high temperatures in Antarctica, according to NASA, which on Friday released stunning before-and-after satellite images of the northern Antarctic Peninsula.

The photos center on Eagle Island, part of the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula that stretches toward South America. Satellites took the images just nine days apart, on Feb. 4 and Feb. 13. But dramatic changes took place in that time span. Two days after the first photo was taken, the area hit 18.3 degrees Celsius (64.9 degrees Fahrenheit) — matching that day’s temperature in Los Angeles, NASA notes.

“The warm spell caused widespread melting on nearby glaciers,” the space agency says. “Such persistent warmth was not typical in Antarctica until the 21st century, but it has become more common in recent years.”

On Eagle Island, the biggest loss of ice and snow came on Feb. 6, when an inch of snowpack melted, according to NASA’s climate models. By Feb. 11, the island had lost 4 inches of snow.

“I haven’t seen melt ponds develop this quickly in Antarctica,” Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist at Nichols College in Massachusetts, said in NASA’s news release about the phenomenon.

The nearly 65-degree temperature was reported by Argentina’s research station at Esperanza Base. Experts at the World Meteorological Organization are still verifying the record. The agency calls the Antarctic Peninsula one of the fastest-warming regions on Earth, with average temperatures rising almost 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past half century.

“These warm events are occurring more frequently” in that part of the peninsula, says Alexandra Isern, head of Antarctic sciences at the National Science Foundation.

Discussing the NASA images Friday, Isern also cautions, “We have to understand that those images were taken about as far north in Antarctica as you can get. So if any place is going to have those melt ponds, that’s certainly going to be one place.”

Still, she says, it’s surprising to see such a rapid and dramatic shrinkage of snow and ice.

“You see those sort of things in Greenland and in the Arctic more often than you see them in the Antarctic,” Isern says.

Because the recent warmup lasted for more than a week, she says, researchers are left with a troubling question: “Are we starting to see these warm events also lasting longer than they did before?”

The answer to that, Isern says, could have far-ranging impacts for the area, including the possibility that new invasive species could gain a foothold in Antarctica if its climate becomes more forgiving.

Isern agrees with NASA’s assessment that a number of weather conditions combined to create the unusually high temperatures in the Antarctic’s northern point.

“Typically, the peninsula is shielded from warm air masses by the Southern Hemisphere westerlies, a band of strong winds that circle the continent,” NASA says. “However, the westerlies were in a weakened state, which allowed the extra-tropical warm air to cross the Southern Ocean and reach the ice sheet. Sea surface temperatures in the area were also higher than average by about 2-3°C.”

The task now, Isern says, is to determine whether those factors created an anomaly or whether they hint at a new pattern.

“This is a weather event,” she says of the recent warm spell. She believes scientists will now try to figure out whether the warm weather event in Antarctica’s northern peninsula is on its way to becoming a climate event.

Small investors are flocking to high-flying growth stocks after the brokerage industry made trading free.

In the months since major brokers cut fees to zero, names like Tesla and Virgin Galactic have seen double-digit moves and become fan-favorites favorites for retail traders.

Wells Fargo analyst Christopher Harvey said the “seeds” for the recent moves in Tesla and Virgin Galactic were first planted in October when online brokers started slashing fees.

“This newly-found confidence and risk appetite among retail investors does not seem like a great signal to us,” Harvey said in a note to clients Friday. “It has been somewhat of a contra-indicator and mainly tells us that the great equity run is mostly behind us not in front of us.”

In October, Charles Schwab stopped charging trading fees for U.S. stocks, exchange traded funds and options. It previously charged $4.95 per trade. Rival firms TD Ameritrade, Interactive Brokers, E-Trade and Fidelity all took the same step in slashing commissions. Start-up Robinhood, which said in December it has 10 million users, first made inroads in the brokerage world by offering free trades.

Shares of Tesla are up more than 170% in the past three months, while Virgin Galactic is up more than 390%. The S&P 500 is up 8% in the same time period.

Overall, retail activity is up significantly in the past two months. Daily active revenue trades — a metric used by the brokerage industry before trading was free — have jumped more than 30% at the major brokers and are up “significantly” since the move to zero, according to Richard Repetto, principal at Sandler O’Neill + Partners.

Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade and E-Trade have seen a more than 30% increase month over month in so-called DARTs, according to data from Piper Sandler.

Fidelity told CNBC this week that that Virgin Galactic was bought more than any other stock earlier this week — topping Apple, Tesla and others. Fintech company SoFi said this week saw “by far the largest purchase day ever for the stock” on its platform. It was also the most-traded stock on SoFi overall. “Trading activity on [Virgin Galactic is] up 7x this year compared to 2019,” SoFi told CNBC.

Firms have also been lowering the barrier for entry by offering the option to trade fractions of a share. For as little as a dollar, investors can buy names like Amazon which closed above $2,000 per share Friday. SoFi began offering fractional trading in July. Charles Schwab, Square and Robinhood have since announced the same “fractional trading” feature.

SoFi said there have been a record number of traders buying expensive stocks in fractions of a share. In February, SoFi saw the most users buying a Tesla “stock bit” of a security in the platform’s history.

The personal data of approximately 10.6 million consumers who stayed at MGM resorts appeared online this week, ranging from home addresses and contact information to driver’s licenses and passport numbers in some cases.

The data, which was obtained during a July 2019 leak, was published on a hacking forum on Monday and verified by ZDNet and Under the Breach, a soon-to-launch data breach monitoring service. The file contained personal details including full names, birthdates, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers. For about 1,300 individuals, more sensitive data such as driver’s licenses, passports or military ID cards, was found online.

It’s not surprising that a hotel company was involved in a data breach, says Emily Wilson, vice president of research at the digital risk protection provider Terbium Labs. “The hospitality industry sits on a hotbed of valuable data that meets at a critical intersection of personal details, financial information and physical safety – travel data, companions and patterns of behavior.”

This is not the first time a hotel chain has been involved in a data breach. In 2018, Marriott hotels reported a data hack involving 300 million people who stayed at Starwood hotels.

Unfortunately, there may not be a lot individuals can do to completely protect themselves in response. “Breaches like the one impacting MGM are often difficult for consumers to respond to,” Daniel Smith, head of security research at Radware, tells CNBC Make It. There’s no “easy fix,” he says.

“In the MGM event, the only information you could change would be your phone number and email address,” he says, noting victims are unlikely to sell their house because their address was exposed.

Beyond monitoring your accounts, here’s a rundown of the steps you can take in response to this latest data breach.

To freeze or not to freeze your credit?

In many data breaches, experts recommend that consumers put a freeze on their credit reports to stop anyone from taking out a credit card or loan in their name.

Yet in the case of the MGM data breach, a credit freeze may not be a comprehensive solution, since the data set contained no financial information, NBC News confirmed. 

“A credit freeze doesn’t do much for identity theft,” says cybersecurity expert Joseph Steinberg. “Everybody comes [to these breaches] with the assumption that there’s something to do, and the reality is, sometimes, there isn’t anything a consumer needs to do.”

The biggest threat is not that a criminal could open a credit card in your name and make fraudulent transactions; that could be fixed quickly since credit card companies know about the problem, Steinberg says. In fact, the Fair Credit Billing Act makes it so consumers are only liable for up to $50 in fraudulent charges. And major credit card companies, including American Express, Discover, Mastercard and Visa, offer “zero liability” policies, so you don’t have to pay for any fraud. That’s why many experts recommend that you use credit cards instead of debit cards.

“If someone got a driver’s license in your name, that’s a lot more of a serious problem for you,” Steinberg says, noting that identity theft can be difficult for victims to unwind.

That said, credit freezes are still a crucial piece of consumer safety for both financial data and personal information, Wilson says. It pays to have one in place since so many data breaches do involve financial data. “If consumers haven’t already frozen their credit in the wake of breaches like Equifax, this breach is a timely reminder that it’s the most powerful resource at their disposal,” she says.

If you want to freeze your credit reports and haven’t already done so, you need to contact the three major credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, separately. Keep in mind that you will need to unfreeze your credit if you’re applying for any credit products in the future, like a personal loan, credit card or mortgage.

Beyond freezing your credit, here are five ways that you can protect yourself if your information was involved in the MGM data breach.

1. Change your passwords

The MGM data released this week was part of a previously reported leak. The company notified customers last August after it “discovered unauthorized access to a cloud server that contained a limited amount of information for certain previous guests of MGM Resort,” according to a statement to CNBC Make It. MGM did not disclose which locations were affected.

Since the breach, MGM tells CNBC Make It that the company has “strengthened and enhanced the security of our network to prevent this from happening again.”

Go back through your emails to check to see if you’ve been affected or contact MGM. Even if you’re not sure if your information was involved, it’s a good idea to change any passwords associated with your MGM Resort bookings, as well as any bank or credit card accounts used to make reservations. In fact, you should always be changing your passwords regularly.

Almost half of Americans, 47%, use the same passwords over and over again, according to PCI Pal. This can cause problems in a data breach: Only one account may be compromised, but if you’ve used that same password in several places, you’ll need to change all of them. Look into using a password manager such as LastPass or Dashlane. These programs will automatically generate unique, secure passwords for all your accounts and remember them for you.

2. If you don’t already have it, set up credit monitoring

Consumers should check their credit report on a regular basis. Unlike a simple credit score, your entire credit report provides a comprehensive look at your credit history and activity. You can get a free copy of your report once a year from each of the three major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian and Transunion.

You can also set up a free monitoring service through sites like Credit Karma, which will send you alert emails about any recent activity on your TransUnion or Equifax credit reports.

In addition to setting up your own monitoring, you may also be eligible for free credit monitoring if you were affected by the massive Yahoo data breaches. The company has entered into $117.5 million settlement that offers this service to those affected.

Consumers should also use a service like haveibeenpwned.com to track if and when their data is leaked, says Jerry Gamblin, principal security engineer at Kenna Security. Roughly eight out of 10 emails released as part of the MGM data breach were already in the haveibeenpwned databases from other hacks.

3. Practice good cybersecurity habits

To protect your data year-round, experts recommend that consumers practice common safeguards, such as avoiding clicking on links or opening attachments in emails, especially when you don’t know the sender.

Emails are a particularly common way for fraudsters to gain access to your credit card information or identity. Hackers send what’s called a phishing email. “Email is the No. 1 way cybercrime of all forms happens. If a bad guy can get you to click on a link in an email, he can do all manner of bad things to your online life,” says Dave Baggett, co-founder and CEO of anti-phishing start-up Inky.

Consumers should use two-factor authentication to log into their accounts, which generally requires users to not only enter a password, but also confirm their identity by logging onto their phone or entering a code texted or emailed to them.

4. Keep a record of your response

Last year, there were 1,473 data breaches reported, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. That’s a 17% increase from the total number of breaches reported in 2018.

Each one of those hacks could lead to class-action lawsuits and investigations by regulators, like in the case of Equifax. While not all data breaches will result in a settlement, it’s good to be prepared. Consumers should take breach notifications seriously and document what they do in response, Charity Lacey, VP of communications at ITRC, tells CNBC Make It.

The Identity Theft Center’s ID Theft Help app has a case log manager tool that can help you track any actions you take in response to a breach.

5. Stay alert

It can’t be stressed enough: The best response is to be vigilant, Steinberg says. There are some pieces of information that don’t typically change, such as Social Security numbers and your home address. Because of their static nature, they become more valuable over time, Steinberg says.

If you’re concerned with exposure, you may want to consider creating and using different email addresses for traveling purposes, Smith says. The same applies for the phone number you provide. “Isolating your primary information from unnecessary exposure is the key takeaway,” he says.

Pay particular attention to emails and monitor your accounts closely when you travel. “Victims of the MGM hack need to be prepared to be targeted by phishing emails using the breach or their stay as a lure,” Smith says.

Sprint and T-Mobile have agreed to amend their merger deal agreement to give Deutsche Telekom a higher ownership stake in the new combined company, the companies announced Thursday.

Common shareholders won’t see a change in the exchange ratio, which is 9.75 Sprint shares for 1 T-Mobile share. SoftBank, which owns the more than 80% of Sprint, will see an exchange ratio of 11 Sprint shares for each T-Mobile share, the companies said. SoftBank agreed to surrender about 48.8 million T-Mobile shares it will gain in the merger after the transaction is complete. SoftBank and Deutsche Telekom will hold 24% and 43% of shares in the newly combined company, respectively, according to the announcement.

T-Mobile said Thursday it plans to close the merger by April 1. Sprint shares were up more than 4% after hours following the announcement. T-Mobile shares were down 1.5%.

Deutsche Telekom, the majority owner of T-Mobile, and SoftBank didn’t want to amend the common shareholder exchange ratio because a change would require a new shareholder vote which would add months to the deal’s closing, according to two people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the discussions were private. The two companies have already waited nearly two years for the transaction’s approval after state attorneys general sued to block the deal.

SoftBank agreed to give Deutsche Telekom a slightly higher ownership stake after Sprint’s financials have eroded during the long deal approval process, the people said. If the merged company’s stock hits $150 between 2022 and 2025 SoftBank can get its original percentage of shares back, according to Thursday’s announcement.

A U.S. district judge ruled in favor of the $26 billion merger between Sprint and T-Mobile last week. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who helped lead a lawsuit from a group of state attorneys general against the merger, said on Sunday she would no appeal the decision. The merger still can’t close until the California Public Utilities Commission approves the transaction.