U.S. Energy Information Administration, in a press release: A new reactor at Georgia's Vogtle nuclear power plant is now in commercial operation, according to an announcement from Georgia Power, one of the plant's owners. It is the first new nuclear reactor to start up in the United States since the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar 2 was commissioned in 2016. The new 1,114 megawatt (MW) Unit 3 reactor joins two existing reactors at Plant Vogtle, which is jointly owned by Georgia Power and three other electric utility companies. The plant's first two reactors, with a combined 2,430 MW of nameplate capacity, came online in the late 1980s.

Georgia Power expects another similar-sized fourth reactor, Vogtle Unit 4, to begin operation sometime between November 2023 and March 2024. The two new reactors will make Plant Vogtle the largest nuclear power plant in the country, surpassing the 4,210 MW Palo Verde plant in Arizona. Construction at the two new reactor sites began in 2009. Originally expected to cost $14 billion and begin commercial operation in 2016 (Vogtle 3) and 2017 (Vogtle 4), the project ran into significant construction delays and cost overruns. The total cost of the project is now estimated at more than $30 billion.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Just before the holiday break, the US Energy Information Agency released data on the country's electrical generation. Because of delays in reporting, the monthly data runs through October, so it doesn't provide a complete picture of the changes we've seen in 2023. But some of the trends now seem locked in for the year: wind and solar are likely to be in a dead heat with coal, and all carbon-emissions-free sources combined will account for roughly 40 percent of US electricity production. [...]

At this point last year, coal had produced nearly 20 percent of the electricity in the US. This year, it's down to 16.2 percent, and only accounts for 15.5 percent of October's production. Wind and solar combined are presently at 16 percent of year-to-date production, meaning they're likely to be in a dead heat with coal this year and easily surpass it next year. Year-to-date, wind is largely unchanged since 2022, accounting for about 10 percent of total generation, and it's up to over 11 percent in the October data, so that's unlikely to change much by the end of the year. Solar has seen a significant change, going from five to six percent of the total electricity production (this figure includes both utility-scale generation and the EIA's estimate of residential production). And it's largely unchanged in October alone, suggesting that new construction is offsetting some of the seasonal decline.

Hydroelectric production has dropped by about six percent since last year, causing it to slip from 6.1 percent to 5.8 percent of the total production. Depending on the next couple of months, that may allow solar to pass hydro on the list of renewables. Combined, the three major renewables account for about 22 percent of year-to-date electricity generation, up about 0.5 percent since last year. They're up by even more in the October data, placing them well ahead of both nuclear and coal. Nuclear itself is largely unchanged, allowing it to pass coal thanks to the latter's decline. Its output has been boosted by a new, 1.1 Gigawatt reactor that come online this year (a second at the same site, Vogtle in Georgia, is set to start commercial production at any moment). But that's likely to be the end of new nuclear capacity for this decade; the challenge will be keeping existing plants open despite their age and high costs. If we combine nuclear and renewables under the umbrella of carbon-free generation, then that's up by nearly 1 percent since 2022 and is likely to surpass 40 percent for the first time. "The only thing that's keeping carbon-free power from growing faster is natural gas, which is the fastest-growing source of generation at the moment, going from 40 percent of the year-to-date total in 2022 to 43.3 percent this year," notes Ars.

"Outside of natural gas, however, all the trends in US generation are good, especially considering that the rise of renewable production would have seemed like an impossibility a decade ago. Unfortunately, the pace is currently too slow for the US to have a net-zero electric grid by the end of the decade."

Following policy adjustments by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in January, more foreign-born workers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields are able to live and work permanently in the United States. "The jump comes after USCIS in January 2022 tweaked its guidance criteria relating to two visa categories available to STEM workers," reports Science Magazine. "One is the O-1A, a temporary visa for 'aliens of extraordinary ability' that often paves the way to a green card. The second, which bestows a green card on those with advanced STEM degrees, governs a subset of an EB-2 (employment-based) visa." From the report: The USCIS data, reported exclusively by ScienceInsider, show that the number of O-1A visas awarded in the first year of the revised guidance jumped by almost 30%, to 4570, and held steady in fiscal year 2023, which ended on 30 September. Similarly, the number of STEM EB-2 visas approved in 2022 after a "national interest" waiver shot up by 55% over 2021, to 70,240, and stayed at that level this year. "I'm seeing more aspiring and early-stage startup founders believe there's a way forward for them," says Silicon Valley immigration attorney Sophie Alcorn. She predicts the policy changes will result in "new technology startups that would not have otherwise been created."

President Joe Biden has long sought to make it easier for foreign-born STEM workers to remain in the country and use their talent to spur the U.S. economy. But under the terms of a 1990 law, only 140,000 employment-based green cards may be issued annually, and no more than 7% of those can go to citizens of any one country. The ceiling is well below the demand. And the country quotas have created decades-long queues for scientists and high-tech entrepreneurs born in India and China. The 2022 guidance doesn't alter those limits on employment-based green cards but clarifies the visa process for foreign-born scientists pending any significant changes to the 1990 law. The O-1A work visa, which can be renewed indefinitely, was designed to accelerate the path to a green card for foreign-born high-tech entrepreneurs.

Although there is no cap on the number of O-1A visas awarded, foreign-born scientists have largely ignored this option because it wasn't clear what metrics USCIS would use to assess their application. The 2022 guidance on O-1As removed that uncertainty by listing eight criteria -- including awards, peer-reviewed publications, and reviewing the work of other scientistsâ"and stipulating that applicants need to satisfy at least three of them. The second visa policy change affects those with advanced STEM degrees seeking the national interest waiver for an EB-2. Under the normal process of obtaining such a visa, the Department of Labor requires employers to first satisfy rules meant to protect U.S. workers from foreign competition, for example, by showing that the company has failed to find a qualified domestic worker and that the job will pay the prevailing wage. That time-consuming exercise can be waived if visa applicants can prove they are doing "exceptional" work of "substantial merit and national importance." But once again, the standard for determining whether the labor-force requirements can be waived was vague, so relatively few STEM workers chose that route. The 2022 USCIS guidance not only specifies criteria, which closely track those for the nonimmigrant, O-1A visa, but also allows scientists to sponsor themselves.

Nvidia has throttled the performance of its GeForce RTX 4090 GPU by roughly 11%, allowing it to comply with U.S. sanctions and be sold in China. The Register reports: Dubbed the RTX 4090D, the device appeared on Nvidia's Chinese-market website Thursday and boasts performance roughly 10.94 percent lower than the model Nvidia announced in late 2022. This shows up in the form of lower core count, 14,592 CUDA cores versus 16,384 on versions sold outside of China. Nvidia also told The Register today the card's tensor core count has also been been cut down by a similar margin from 512 to 456 on the 4090D variant. Beyond this the card is largely unchanged, with peak clock speeds rated at 2.52 GHz, 24 GB of GDDR6x memory, and a fat 384-bit memory bus.

As we reported at the time, the RTX 4090 was the only consumer graphics card barred from sale in the Middle Kingdom following the October publication of the Biden Administration's most restrictive set of export controls. The problem was the card narrowly exceeded the performance limits on consumer cards with a total processing performance (TPP) of more than 4,800. That number is calculated by doubling the max number of dense tera-operations per second -- floating point or integer -- and multiplying by the bit length of the operation.

The original 4090 clocked a TPP of 5,285 performance, which meant Nvidia needed a US government-issued license to sell the popular gaming card in China. Note, consumer cards aren't subject to the performance density metric that restricts the sale of much less powerful datacenter cards like the Nvidia L4. As it happens, cutting performance by 10.94 percent is enough to bring the card under the metrics that trigger the requirement for the USA's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) to consider an export license. Nvidia notes that the 4090D can be overclocked by end users, effectively allowing customers to recover some performance lost by the lower core count. "In 4K gaming with ray tracing and deep-learning super sampling (DLSS), the GeForce RTX 4090D is about five percent slower than the GeForce RTX 4090 and it operates like every other GeForce GPU, which can be overclocked by end users," an Nvidia spokesperson said in an email.

FDA, in a letter to Amazon CEO: This letter concerns your firm's distribution of products that violate the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the "FD&C Act"). The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) purchased on your website, www.amazon.com, products that are labeled as energy enhancing supplements or food, but laboratory analyses confirmed that they contained undeclared and potentially harmful active pharmaceutical ingredients. As discussed further below, your firm is responsible for introducing or delivering for introduction into interstate commerce products that are unapproved new drugs under section 505(a) of the FD&C Act, 21 U.S.C. 355(a).

Furthermore, the products are misbranded drugs under section 502 of the FD&C Act, 21 U.S.C. 352. As explained further below, introducing or delivering these products for introduction into interstate commerce is prohibited under sections 301(a), 301(d), and 505(a) of the FD&C Act, 21 U.S.C. 331(a), 331(d), and 355(a). Your firm is also responsible for introducing or delivering for introduction into interstate commerce a food that is prohibited under section 301(ll) of the FD&C Act, 21 U.S.C. 331(ll). [...]

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The United States and the state of California have reached an agreement in principle with the truck engine manufacturer Cummins on a $1.6 billion penalty to settle claims that the company violated the Clean Air Act by installing devices to defeat emissions controls on hundreds of thousands of engines, the Justice Department announced on Friday. The penalty would be the largest ever under the Clean Air Act and the second largest ever environmental penalty in the United States. Defeat devices are parts or software that bypass, defeat or render inoperative emissions controls like pollution sensors and onboard computers. They allow vehicles to pass emissions inspections while still emitting high levels of smog-causing pollutants such as nitrogen oxide, which is linked to asthma and other respiratory illnesses.

The Justice Department has accused the company of installing defeat devices on 630,000 model year 2013 to 2019 RAM 2500 and 3500 pickup truck engines. The company is also alleged to have secretly installed auxiliary emission control devices on 330,000 model year 2019 to 2023 RAM 2500 and 3500 pickup truck engines. "Violations of our environmental laws have a tangible impact. They inflict real harm on people in communities across the country," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. "This historic agreement should make clear that the Justice Department will be aggressive in its efforts to hold accountable those who seek to profit at the expense of people's health and safety."

In a statement, Cummins said that it had "seen no evidence that anyone acted in bad faith and does not admit wrongdoing." The company said it has "cooperated fully with the relevant regulators, already addressed many of the issues involved, and looks forward to obtaining certainty as it concludes this lengthy matter. Cummins conducted an extensive internal review and worked collaboratively with the regulators for more than four years." Stellantis, the company that makes the trucks, has already recalled the model year 2019 trucks and has initiated a recall of the model year 2013 to 2018 trucks. The software in those trucks will be recalibrated to ensure that they are fully compliant with federal emissions law, said Jon Mills, a spokesman for Cummins. Mr. Mills said that "next steps are unclear" on the model year 2020 through 2023, but that the company "continues to work collaboratively with regulators" to resolve the issue. The Justice Department partnered with the Environmental Protection Agency in its investigation of the case.

Joe Biden's administration last week announced a new proposal aimed at banning logging in old-growth forests, a move meant to protect millions of trees that play a key role in fighting the climate crisis. From a report: The proposal comes from an executive order signed by the president on Earth Day in 2022 that directed the US Forest Service and the land management bureau to conduct an inventory of old-growth and mature forest groves as well as to develop policies that protect them. "We think this will allow us to respond effectively and strategically to the biggest threats that face old growth," the US agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, told the Washington Post. "At the end of the day, it will protect not just the forests but also the culture and heritage connected to the forests."

The US Forest Service oversees 193m acres of forests and grasslands, 144m of which are forests. In its inventory conducted after Biden's executive order, the agency found that the vast majority of forests it oversees, about 80%, are either old-growth or mature forests. It found more than 32m acres of old-growth forests and 80m acres of mature forests on federal land. The land management bureau defines old-growth forests as those with trees that are in later stages of stand development, which typically means at least 120 years of growth, depending on species. The giant sequoias in California, for example, are old-growth trees. Mature forests, meanwhile, have trees that are in the development stage immediately before old growth.

U.S. President Joe Biden's administration on Tuesday declined to veto a government tribunal's decision to ban imports of Apple Watches based on a complaint from medical monitoring technology company Masimo. From a report: The U.S. International Trade Commission's (ITC) order will go into effect on Dec. 26, barring imports and sales of Apple Watches that use patent-infringing technology for reading blood-oxygen levels. Apple has included the pulse oximeter feature in its smart watches starting with its Series 6 model in 2020. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai decided not to reverse the ban following careful consultations, and the ITC's decision became final on Dec. 26, the Trade Representative's office said Tuesday.

Apple can appeal the ban to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The company has paused the sales of its Series 9 and Ultra 2 smartwatches in the United States since last week. The ban does not affect Apple Watch SE, a less expensive model, which will continue to be sold. Previously sold watches will not be affected by the ban. Masimo has accused Apple of hiring away its employees, stealing its pulse oximetry technology and incorporating it into the popular Apple Watch.

Occupations with the highest share of workers older than 65 have changed little, data from the past seven decades show. Bloomberg Businessweek: Americans may dream about being able to go off the clock when they reach retirement age, but a good number simply can't or won't. We compiled data on the occupations with the highest share of workers older than 65, going back seven decades. The job types held remarkably steady over the decades (farmers, tailors and clergy). A few faded out of the data with time -- blacksmiths, furriers and household washers, for instance. The data can't fully tell us why people in some professions keep at it longer than others. But we know they're largely low-paying jobs, which means workers have likely struggled to put aside money for retirement.

The number of people living in California fell below 39 million this year, according to new census estimates, the lowest count since 2015. From a report: California's population dipped by about 75,000 from 2022 to 2023, estimates released Tuesday by the Census Bureau shows, with about 38,965,000 million people in the state this year. The state's population has fallen since its 2019 peak of 39.5 million, though the annual loss has also slowed each year. Between 2021 and 2022, California lost a net of about 104,000 people, or 0.3%, higher than the dip of 0.2% between 2022 and 2023.

About 338,000 more people left California for other states than vice versa from July 2022 to July 2023, the Census Bureau data shows. That's slightly greater than the 333,000 from 2021 to 2022, and the most of any state. California historically loses more people to the rest of the country than it gains. The state partially offset its domestic loss via international migration, with a net of 151,000 people moving to California from outside the United States. That was the second-highest number of any state, behind Florida, and a 19% increase from 2021-22. And it was the highest total for California since 2015.

U.S. officials are worried about hacking and insider theft of AI secrets, which China has denied. From a report: On a July day in 2018, Xiaolang Zhang headed to the San Jose, Calif., airport to board a flight to Beijing. He had passed the checkpoint at Terminal B when his journey was abruptly cut short by federal agents. After a tipoff by Apple's security team, the former Apple employee was arrested and charged with stealing trade secrets related to the company's autonomous-driving program. It was a skirmish in a continuing shadow war between the U.S. and China for supremacy in artificial intelligence. The two rivals are seeking any advantage to jump ahead in mastering a technology with the potential to reshape economies, geopolitics and war.

Artificial intelligence has been on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's list of critical U.S. technologies to protect, just as China placed it on a list of technologies it wanted its scientists to achieve breakthroughs on by 2025. China's AI capabilities are already believed to be formidable, but U.S. intelligence authorities have lately made new warnings beyond the threat of intellectual-property theft. Instead of just stealing trade secrets, the FBI and other agencies believe China could use AI to gather and stockpile data on Americans at a scale that was never before possible. China has been linked to a number of significant thefts of personal data over the years, and artificial intelligence could be used as an "amplifier" to support further hacking operations, FBI Director Christopher Wray said, speaking at a press conference in Silicon Valley earlier this year.

The Biden administration has spent much of the last two years bracing key U.S. networks and infrastructure against crippling cyberattacks from Russia, Iran and China. But it is following a different playbook as it ramps up its efforts to thwart digital threats from North Korea: Follow the crypto -- and stop it. From a report: Convinced North Korea primarily sees hacking as a way to funnel money back to the cash-strapped Kim Jong Un regime, the White House has focused on blocking the country's ability to launder the cryptocurrency it steals through its cyberattacks. In the last year, the administration has unveiled a flurry of sanctions against North Korean hacking groups, front companies and IT workers, and blacklisted multiple cryptocurrency services they use to launder stolen funds. Earlier this month, national security adviser Jake Sullivan announced a new partnership with Japan and South Korea aimed at cracking down on Pyongyang's crypto bonanza -- thereby choking off money to its nuclear and conventional weapons programs.

"In countering North Korean cyber operations, our first priority has been focusing on their crypto heists," Anne Neuberger, the National Security Council's top cybersecurity official, said in an interview. The stepped-up effort to blunt North Korea's cyber operations is fueled by growing alarm about where the fruits of those attacks are going, Neuberger said. Hacking, she argued, has enabled North Korea to "either evade sanctions or evade the steps the international community has taken to target their weapons proliferation ... their missile regime, and the growth in the number of launches we've seen."

An anonymous reader shared this report from Fast Company: Providers of critical infrastructure in the United States are doing a sloppy job of defending against cyber intrusions, the National Security Council tells Fast Company, pointing to recent Iran-linked attacks on U.S. water utilities that exploited basic security lapses [earlier this month]. The security council tells Fast Company it's also aware of recent intrusions by hackers linked to China's military at American infrastructure entities that include water and energy utilities in multiple states.

Neither the Iran-linked or China-linked attacks affected critical systems or caused disruptions, according to reports.

"We're seeing companies and critical services facing increased cyber threats from malicious criminals and countries," Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging tech, tells Fast Company. The White House had been urging infrastructure providers to upgrade their cyber defenses before these recent hacks, but "clearly, by the most recent success of the criminal cyberattacks, more work needs to be done," she says... The attacks hit at least 11 different entities using Unitronics devices across the United States, which included six local water facilities, a pharmacy, an aquatics center, and a brewery...

Some of the compromised devices had been connected to the open internet with a default password of "1111," federal authorities say, making it easy for hackers to find them and gain access. Fixing that "doesn't cost any money," Neuberger says, "and those are the kinds of basic things that we really want companies urgently to do." But cybersecurity experts say these attacks point to a larger issue: the general vulnerability of the technology that powers physical infrastructure. Much of the hardware was developed before the internet and, though they were retrofitted with digital capabilities, still "have insufficient security controls," says Gary Perkins, chief information security officer at cybersecurity firm CISO Global. Additionally, many infrastructure facilities prioritize "operational ease of use rather than security," since many vendors often need to access the same equipment, says Andy Thompson, an offensive cybersecurity expert at CyberArk. But that can make the systems equally easy for attackers to exploit: freely available web tools allow anyone to generate lists of hardware connected to the public internet, like the Unitronics devices used by water companies.

"Not making critical infrastructure easily accessible via the internet should be standard practice," Thompson says.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The Biden administration released its highly anticipated proposal for doling out billions of dollars in tax credits to hydrogen producers Friday, in a massive effort to build out an industry that some hope can be a cleaner alternative to fossil fueled power. The U.S. credit is the most generous in the world for hydrogen production, Jesse Jenkins, a professor at Princeton University who has analyzed the U.S. climate law, said last week. The proposal -- which is part of Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act passed last year -- outlines a tiered system to determine which hydrogen producers get the most credits, with cleaner energy projects receiving more, and smaller, but still meaningful credits going to those that use fossil fuel to produce hydrogen.

Administration officials estimate the hydrogen production credits will deliver $140 billion in revenue and 700,000 jobs by 2030 -- and will help the U.S. produce 50 million metric tons of hydrogen by 2050. "That's equivalent to the amount of energy currently used by every bus, every plane, every train and every ship in the US combined," Energy Deputy Secretary David M. Turk said on a Thursday call with reporters to preview the proposal. [...] As part of the administration's proposal, firms that produce cleaner hydrogen and meet prevailing wage and registered apprenticeship requirements stand to qualify for a large incentive at $3 per kilogram of hydrogen. Firms that produce hydrogen using fossil fuels get less. The credit ranges from $.60 to $3 per kilo, depending on whole lifecycle emissions.

One contentious issue in the proposal was how to deal with the fact that clean, electrolyzer hydrogen draws tremendous amounts of electricity. Few want that to mean that more coal or natural gas-fired power plants run extra hours. The guidance addresses this by calling for producers to document their electricity usage through "energy attribute certificates" -- which will help determine the credits they qualify for. Rachel Fakhry, policy director for emerging technologies at the Natural Resources Defense Council called the proposal "a win for the climate, U.S. consumers, and the budding U.S. hydrogen industry." The Clean Air Task Force likewise called the proposal "an excellent step toward developing a credible clean hydrogen market in the United States."

During a meeting of the National Space Council, Vice President Kamala Harris said an international astronaut will land on the Moon during one of NASA's Artemis missions. "Today, in recognition of the essential role that our allies and partners play in the Artemis program, I am proud to announce that alongside American astronauts, we intend to land an international astronaut on the surface of the Moon by the end of the decade," Harris said. Ars Technica reports: Although the National Space Council is useful in aggregating disparate interests across the US government to help form more cohesive space policies, public meetings like the one Wednesday can seem perfunctory. Harris departed the stage soon after her speech, and other government officials read from prepared remarks during the rest of the event. Nevertheless, Harris' announcement highlighted the role the space program plays in elevating the soft power of the United States. It was widely assumed an international astronaut would eventually land on the Moon with NASA. Harris put a deadline on achieving this goal.

NASA has long included astronauts from its international partners on human spaceflight missions, dating back to the ninth flight of the space shuttle in 1983, when West German astronaut Ulf Merbold joined five Americans on a flight to low-Earth orbit. This was seen by US government officials as a way to foster closer relations with like-minded countries. The inclusion of foreign astronauts on US missions also repays partner nations who make financial commitments to US-led space projects with a high-profile flight opportunity for one of their citizens.

Among the international partners contributing to Artemis, it seems most likely a European astronaut would get the first slot for a landing with NASA. ESA funded the development of the service modules used on NASA's Orion spacecraft, which will ferry astronauts from Earth to the Moon and back. These modules provide power and propulsion for Orion. ESA is also developing refueling and communications infrastructure for the Gateway mini-space station to be constructed in orbit around the Moon.

A Japanese astronaut might also have a shot at getting a seat on an Artemis landing. Japan's government has committed to providing the life-support system for the Gateway's international habitation module, along with resupply services to deliver cargo to Gateway. Japan is also interested in building a pressurized rover for astronauts to drive across the lunar surface. In recognition of Japan's contributions, NASA last year committed to flying a Japanese astronaut aboard Gateway. Canada is building a robotic arm for Gateway, but a Canadian astronaut already has a seat on NASA's first crewed Artemis mission, albeit without a trip to the lunar surface.

The politics of solving climate change may, paradoxically, require producing more fossil fuels for a while. Roge Karma, writing for The Atlantic: By boosting domestic oil supply, the Biden administration seems to be contributing to the very problem it claims to want to solve. The reality is more complicated. "Pushing for reductions in U.S. oil production is like squeezing a balloon -- the production will 'pop out' somewhere else," writes Samantha Gross, an energy-and-climate expert at the Brookings Institution. The world's energy needs are growing rapidly, which means oil companies are going to supply it regardless of what the White House does. If the U.S. were to cut back tomorrow, prices would rise. In the short term, this would lead to less consumption and lower emissions. But those high prices would only entice producers in other countries to step in, as many did in the months after Russia's invasion.

For that reason, reductions in U.S. oil production could actually result in higher overall emissions. The U.S. has one of the least emissions-intensive oil industries on the planet. Shifting production to countries with looser standards would likely be worse for the climate. But the deeper explanation for the Biden administration's actions has to do with the politics of climate change. Put simply, pursuing a decarbonization agenda requires Biden to maintain political support, and there is no surer way to lose political support than by presiding over high gas prices. Biden's approval rating has tracked gas prices for most of his presidency (although he hasn't yet benefited from recent improvements), and the drop in prices in the months leading up to the 2022 midterms may have contributed to Democrats' unexpectedly strong performance in those elections. Plus, when the price of energy goes up, the price of everything else tends to rise as well, sparking further inflation.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday proposed sweeping changes to bolster the key federal rule that has protected children's privacy online, in one of the most significant attempts by the U.S. government to strengthen consumer privacy in more than a decade. The changes are intended to fortify the rules underlying the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, a law that restricts the online tracking of youngsters by services like social media apps, video game platforms, toy retailers and digital advertising networks. Regulators said the moves would "shift the burden" of online safety from parents to apps and other digital services while curbing how platforms may use and monetize children's data.

The proposed changes would require certain online services to turn off targeted advertising by default for children under 13. They would prohibit the online services from using personal details like a child's cellphone number to induce youngsters to stay on their platforms longer. That means online services would no longer be able to use personal data to bombard young children with push notifications. The proposed updates would also strengthen security requirements for online services that collect children's data as well as limit the length of time online services could keep that information. And they would limit the collection of student data by learning apps and other educational-tech providers, by allowing schools to consent to the collection of children's personal details only for educational purposes, not commercial purposes. [...]

The F.T.C. began reviewing the children's privacy rule in 2019, receiving more than 175,000 comments from tech and advertising industry trade groups, video content developers, consumer advocacy groups and members of Congress. The resulting proposal (PDF) runs more than 150 pages. Proposed changes include narrowing an exception that allows online services to collect persistent identification codes for children for certain internal operations, like product improvement, consumer personalization or fraud prevention, without parental consent. The proposed changes would prohibit online operators from employing such user-tracking codes to maximize the amount of time children spend on their platforms. That means online services would not be able to use techniques like sending mobile phone notifications "to prompt the child to engage with the site or service, without verifiable parental consent," according to the proposal. How online services would comply with the changes is not yet known. Members of the public have 60 days to comment on the proposals, after which the commission will vote.

Susan Zhuang, a Democrat who will soon represent the 43rd Council District in Brooklyn, New York, admitted to using AI when answering questions from a local news publication, according to a report by the New York Post. From a report: In a text message sent to the Post, Zhuang wrote that she uses "AI as a tool to help foster deeper understanding" because English is not her first language. The responses in question were included in an article from City & State, which asked local council member-elects to fill out a questionnaire about their personal interests and policies.

The future of water may be changing in California. The state Water Resources Control Board has signed off on regulations to turn more recycled wastewater from our homes into drinking water. From a report: The regulations were approved unanimously by the board on Tuesday and now give the go-ahead for local water agencies to plan to turn wastewater into water we can drink through a process called Direct Potable Reuse. Darrin Polhemus, the division of drinking water director with the State Water Resources Control Board, said this approval was a very big step for California. "It really will be the highest quality water delivered in the state when it's done," Polhemus said.

California's new rules would let, but not require, local water agencies to take wastewater from toilets or showers, treat it, and then put it right back into the drinking water system. "Direct potable reuse is just a really critical strategy for our state to have as we move to this new hydrology that we have, and as everyone has already said, increasing our resilience and reducing our reliance on imported water," said Laurel Firestone, board member for the State Water Resources Control Board.

A U.S. computer scientist on Wednesday lost his bid to register patents over inventions created by his artificial intelligence system in a landmark case in Britain about whether AI can own patent rights. From a report: Stephen Thaler wanted to be granted two patents in the UK for inventions he says were devised by his "creativity machine" called DABUS. His attempt to register the patents was refused by Britain's Intellectual Property Office on the grounds that the inventor must be a human or a company, rather than a machine. Thaler appealed to the UK's Supreme Court, which on Wednesday unanimously rejected his appeal as under UK patent law "an inventor must be a natural person."

"This appeal is not concerned with the broader question whether technical advances generated by machines acting autonomously and powered by AI should be patentable," Judge David Kitchin said in the court's written ruling. "Nor is it concerned with the question whether the meaning of the term 'inventor' ought to be expanded ... to include machines powered by AI which generate new and non-obvious products and processes which may be thought to offer benefits over products and processes which are already known." Thaler's lawyers said in a statement that "the judgment establishes that UK patent law is currently wholly unsuitable for protecting inventions generated autonomously by AI machines."