Sales of electric vehicles and hybrids reached 20% of new car sales in the U.S. last year, with Tesla maintaining dominance in the EV market despite a slight decline in market share. CNBC reports: Auto data firm Motor Intelligence reports more than 3.2 million "electrified" vehicles were sold last year, or 1.9 million hybrid vehicles, including plug-in models, and 1.3 million all-electric models. Traditional vehicles with gas or diesel internal combustion engines still made up the majority of sales, but declined to 79.8%, falling under 80% for the first time in modern automotive history, according to the data.

Regarding sales of pure EVs, Tesla continued to dominate, but Cox Automotive estimated its annual sales fell and its market share dropped to about 49%, down from 55% in 2023. The Tesla Model Y and Model 3 were estimated to be the bestselling EVs in 2024. Following Tesla in EV sales was Hyundai Motor, including Kia, at 9.3% of EV market share; General Motors at 8.7%; and then Ford Motor at 7.5%, according to Motor Intelligence. BMW rounded out the top five at 4.1%. The EV market in the U.S. is highly competitive: Of the 68 mainstream EV models tracked by Cox's Kelley Blue Book, 24 models posted year-over-year sales increases; 17 models were all new to the market; and 27 decreased in volume.

An anonymous reader shares a report: FBI leaders have warned that they believe hackers who broke into AT&T's system last year stole months of their agents' call and text logs, setting off a race within the bureau to protect the identities of confidential informants, a document reviewed by Bloomberg News shows.

FBI officials told agents across the country that details about their use on the telecom carrier's network were believed to be among the billions of records stolen, according to the document and interviews with a current and a former law enforcement official. They asked not to be named to discuss sensitive information. Data from all FBI devices under the bureau's AT&T service for public safety agencies were presumed taken, the document shows.

The cache of hacked AT&T records didn't reveal the substance of communications but, according to the document, could link investigators to their secret sources. The data was believed to include agents' mobile phone numbers and the numbers with which they called and texted, the document shows. Records for calls and texts that weren't on the AT&T network, such as through encrypted messaging apps, weren't part of the stolen data.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the federal law banning TikTok beginning Sunday unless it's sold by its China-based parent company, holding that the risk to national security posed by its ties to China overcomes concerns about limiting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the United States.

A sale does not appear imminent and, although experts have said the app will not disappear from existing users' phones once the law takes effect on Jan. 19, new users won't be able to download it and updates won't be available. That will eventually render the app unworkable, the Justice Department has said in court filings.

U.S. President Joe Biden has issued a comprehensive cybersecurity executive order, four days before leaving office, mandating improvements to government network monitoring, software procurement, AI usage, and foreign hacker penalties.

The 40-page directive aims to leverage AI's security benefits, implement digital identities for citizens, and address vulnerabilities that have allowed Chinese and Russian intrusions into U.S. government systems. It requires software vendors to prove secure development practices and gives the Commerce Department eight months to establish mandatory cybersecurity standards for government contractors.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy called for a statewide ban on cellphones in K-12 classrooms during his State of the State address on Tuesday, citing concerns over student distraction and mental health. The Democratic governor, in his final year in office, also proposed full salary payments for state workers using parental leave and expanded full-day pre-K programs across the state.

The cellphone initiative follows similar restrictions in seven other states, including California and Florida. A Pew Research poll showed 68% of U.S. adults support classroom phone bans, with 72% of teachers calling the devices a major distraction. "Mobile devices are fueling a rise in cyberbullying and making it incredibly difficult for our kids to learn," Murphy told state legislators.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued Deere & Co on Wednesday for allegedly monopolizing the repair market for its farm equipment by forcing farmers to use authorized dealers, driving up costs and causing service delays.

The lawsuit, joined by Illinois and Minnesota, claims Deere maintains complete control over equipment repairs by restricting access to essential software to its dealer network. The action seeks to make repair tools available to equipment owners and independent mechanics. FTC Chair Lina Khan said repair restrictions can be "devastating for farmers" who depend on timely repairs during harvest.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinTelegraph: Social media platform Meta has confirmed that its fact-checking feature on Facebook, Instagram and Threads will only be removed in the US for now, according to a Jan. 13 letter sent to Brazil's government. "Meta has already clarified that, at this time, it is terminating its independent Fact-Checking Program only in the United States, where we will test and refine the community notes [feature] before expanding to other countries," Meta told Brazil's Attorney General of the Union (AGU) in a Portuguese-translated letter.

Meta's letter followed a 72-hour deadline Brazil's AGU set for Meta to clarify to whom the removal of the third-party fact verification feature would apply. [...] Brazil has expressed dissatisfaction with Meta's removal of its fact check feature, Brazil Attorney-General Jorge Messias said on Jan. 10. "Brazil has rigorous legislation to protect children and adolescents, vulnerable populations, and the business environment, and we will not allow these networks to transform the environment into digital carnage or barbarity." Last Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced an end to fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram -- a move he described as an attempt to restore free expression on its platforms. He likened his company's fact-checking process to a George Orwell novel, saying it "something out of 1984" and let to a broad belief that Meta fact-checkers "were too biased."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: The number of deaths in the U.S. is expected to exceed the number of births by 2033, according to the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) annual 30-year projection of the U.S. population released on Monday. That estimation comes seven years earlier than what the CBO estimated in its 30-year population outlook released last year. At that time, in January 2024, the CBO projected deaths to outpace births by 2040. The CBO's 2025 report projected lower population growth over the next three decades than it did in its 2024 demographic outlook.

The CBO's population estimate for 2025 is 350 million, a slight increase from the 346 million it predicted for 2025 last year. But its projection for 2054 -- 372 million people -- has decreased since last year, when the CBO projected the population would be 383 million in 2054. The rate of growth projected over the next three decades -- 0.2 percent -- is significantly slower than the rate seen in the prior five decades, from 1975 to 2024, when the population grew at 0.9 percent. The growth rate over the next three decades is also expected to slow. From 2025 to 2035, the population is expected to grow an average of 0.4 percent a year. From 2036 to 2055, however, the growth rate is projected to be 0.1 percent. The CBO attributes this projected slow rate of growth to a variety of factors, including lower fertility, an aging population and lower immigration.

The U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday that it has deleted malware planted on more than 4,200 computers by a group of criminal hackers who were backed by the People's Republic of China. From a report: The malware, known as "PlugX," affected thousands of computers around the globe and was used to infect and steal information, the department said. Investigators said the malware was installed by a band of hackers who are known by the names "Mustang Panda" and "Twill Typhoon."

Five wildfires in Los Angeles have already burned more than 10,000 structures, threatening to upend California's fragile balance between climate risk and home insurance. The Palisades Fire has damaged or destroyed more than 5,000 buildings in an area that liability experts had previously identified as one of three particularly vulnerable regions in the state.

JPMorgan Chase estimates insured damages could reach $20 billion, positioning this as likely the costliest wildfire in U.S. history. The crisis comes as California's insurance market struggles, with seven of the 12 biggest home insurers having limited their coverage in the state over the past two years. The state-backed insurer of last resort, the California FAIR Plan, now faces exposure of up to $458 billion, while holding only $200 million in surplus cash reserves and $2.5 billion in reinsurance. Gusts of up to 100 miles per hour have fanned the flames, with more than 57,000 structures in severe danger and more than 150,000 people under evacuation.

Employee engagement in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in a decade in 2024, Gallup reported Tuesday, with only 31% of employees engaged. This matches the figure last seen in 2014. The percentage of actively disengaged employees, at 17%, also reflects 2014 levels. Gallup: The percentage of engaged employees has declined by two percentage points since 2023, highlighting a growing trend of employee detachment from organizations, particularly among workers younger than 35.

These are among the findings of Gallup's most recent annual update of U.S. employee engagement. Though engagement increased slightly midyear, it declined through the rest of 2024, finishing the year at its decade low. In Gallup's trend dating back to 2000, employee engagement peaked in 2020, at 36%, following a decade of steady growth, but it has generally trended downward since then.

Each point change in engagement represents approximately 1.6 million full- or part-time employees in the U.S. The declines since 2020 equate to about 8 million fewer engaged employees, including 3.2 million fewer compared to 2023. Among the 12 engagement elements that Gallup measures, those that saw the most significant declines in 2024 (by three points or more in "strongly agree" ratings) include:
Clarity of expectations. Just 46% of employees clearly know what is expected of them at work, down 10 points from a high of 56% in March 2020.
Feeling someone at work cares about them as a person. Currently, 39% of employees feel strongly that someone cares about them, a drop from 47% in March 2020.
Someone encouraging their development. Only 30% strongly agree that someone at work encourages their development, down from 36% in March 2020.

People of all ages come to work seeking role clarity, strong relationships and opportunities for development, but managers, combined, are progressively failing to meet these basic needs. However, managers themselves are faring no better than those they manage, with only 31% engaged.

Nvidia has hit back at the outgoing Biden administration's AI chip tech export restrictions designed to tighten America's stranglehold on supply chains and maintain market dominance. From a report: The White House today unveiled what it calls the Final Rule on Artificial Intelligence Diffusion from the Biden-Harris government, placing limits on the number of AI-focused chips that can be exported to most countries, but allowing exemptions for key allies and partners.

The intent is to work with AI companies and foreign governments to initiate critical security and trust standards as they build out their AI infrastructure, but the regulation also makes it clear that the focus of this policy is "to enhance US national security and economic strength," and "it is essential that ... the world's AI runs on American rails." Measures are intended to restrict the transfer to non-trusted countries of the weights for advanced "closed-weight" AI models, and set out security standards to protect the weights of such models. However GPU supremo Nvidia claims the proposed rules are so harmful that it has published a document strongly criticizing the decision.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, in his final interview before stepping down, warned that China poses the greatest long-term threat to U.S. national security, calling it "the defining threat of our generation." China's cyber program has stolen more American personal and corporate data than all other nations combined, Wray told CBS News. He said Chinese government hackers have infiltrated U.S. civilian infrastructure, including water treatment facilities, transportation systems and telecommunications networks, positioning themselves to potentially cause widespread disruption.

"To lie in wait on those networks to be in a position to wreak havoc and can inflict real-world harm at a time and place of their choosing," Wray said. The FBI director, who is leaving his post nearly three years early after President-elect Donald Trump indicated he would make leadership changes, said China has likely accessed communications of some U.S. government personnel. He added that Beijing's pre-positioning on American civilian critical infrastructure has not received sufficient attention.

Friday America's consumer watchdog agency "proposed a rule to give virtual video game currencies protections similar to those of real-world bank accounts..." reports the Washington Post, "so players can receive refunds or compensation for unauthorized transactions, similar to how banks are required to respond to claims of fraudulent activity." The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is seeking public input on a rule interpretation to clarify which rights are protected and available to video game consumers under the Electronic Fund Transfer Act. It would hold video game companies subject to violations of federal consumer financial law if they fail to address financial issues reported by customers. The public comment period lasts from Friday through March 31. In particular, the independent federal agency wants to hear from gamers about the types of transactions they make, any issues with in-game currencies, and stories about how companies helped or denied help.

The effort is in response to complaints to the bureau and the Federal Trade Commission about unauthorized transactions, scams, hacking attempts and account theft, outlined in an April bureau report that covered banking in video games and virtual worlds. The complaints said consumers "received limited recourse from gaming companies." Companies may ban or lock accounts or shut down a service, according to the report, but they don't generally guarantee refunds to people who lost property... The April report says the bureau and FTC received numerous complaints from players who contacted their banks regarding unauthorized charges on Roblox. "These complaints note that while they received refunds through their financial institutions, Roblox then terminated or locked their account," the report says.

As the ecological disaster continues, CNN reports the Palisades Fire near Malibu, California has burned at least 22,660 acres, left 100,000 peope under evacuation orders, left at least 11 people dead and "destroyed thousands of homes and other structures." From the last reports it was only 11% contained, and "flames are now spreading east in the Mandeville Canyon area, approaching Interstate 405, one of LA's busiest freeways."

But the Atlantic's assistant editor wrote Friday that "I have received 11 alerts. As far as I can tell, they were all sent in error." My home is not in a mandatory evacuation zone or even a warning zone. It is, or is supposed to be, safe. Yet my family's phones keep blaring with evacuation notices, as they move in and out of service....

Earlier today, Kevin McGowan, the director of Los Angeles County's emergency-management office, acknowledged at a press conference that officials knew alerts like these had gone out, acknowledged some of them were wrong, and still had no idea why, or how to keep it from happening again. The office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but shortly after this article was published, the office released a statement offering a preliminary assessment that the false alerts were sent "due to issues with telecommunications systems, likely due to the fires' impacts on cellular towers" and announcing that the county's emergency notifications would switch to being managed through California's state alert system...

The fifth, sixth, and seventh evacuation warnings came through at around 6 a.m. — on my phone.
At the same time a Los Angeles-area couple "spent two hours watching a live stream of flames closing in on their home," reports the Washington Post, and at one point "saw firefighters come through the house and extinguish flames in the backyard." At around 4:30 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, the camera feeds gave out and the updates from their security system stopped. About four hours later, [Zibby] Owens's husband got an alert on his cellphone that the indoor sprinkler system had gone off and the fire alarm had been activated. They do not know the current status of their home, Owens said on Tuesday.

Real estate agent Shana Tavangarian Soboroff said in a phone interview Thursday that one set of clients had followed their Pacific Palisades home's ordeal this week in a foreboding play-by-play of text alerts from an ADT security system. The system first detected smoke, then motion, next that doors had been opened, and finally fire alerts before the system lost communication. Their home's destruction was later confirmed when someone returned to the neighborhood and recorded video, Tavangarian Soboroff said.
Soboroff also lost her home in the fire, the article adds. Burned to the ground are "the places where people raised their kids," Zibby Owens wrote in this update posted Friday. But "even if my one home, or 'structure' as newscasters call it, happens to be mostly OK, I've still lost something I loved more than anything. We've all lost it... [M]y heart and soul are aching across the country as I sit alone in my office and try to make sense of the devastation." [I]t isn't about our house.

It's about our life.

Our feelings. Our community. Our memories. Our beloved stores, restaurants, streets, sidewalks, neighbors. It's about the homes where we sat at friends' kitchen tables and played Uno, celebrated their birthdays, and truly connected.

It's all gone... [E]very single person I know and so many I don't who live in the Palisades have lost everything. Not just one or two friends. Everyone.

And then I saw video footage of our beloved village. The yogurt shop and Beach Street? Gone. Paliskates, our kids' favorite store? Gone. Burned to the ground.

Gelson's grocery store, where we just recently picked up the New York Post and groceries for the break? Gone...

The. Whole. Town.

How? How is it possible?

How could everyone have lost everything? Schools, homes, power, cell service, cars, everything. All their belongings...

All the schools, gone. It's unthinkable....

I've worked in the local library and watched the July 4 parade from streets that are now smoldering embers...

It is an unspeakable loss.
"Everyone I know in the Palisades has lost all of their possessions," the author writes, publishing what appear to be text messages from friends.

"It's gone."
"We lost everything."
"Nothing left."
"We lost it."

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN: New intelligence has led two US intelligence agencies to conclude that it's possible a small number of mysterious health ailments colloquially termed as Havana Syndrome impacting spies, soldiers and diplomats around the world may have been caused by a "novel weapon" wielded by a foreign actor, according to intelligence officials and a new unclassified summary report released on Friday. However, the two agencies are in the minority and the broader intelligence community assessment remains that it is very unlikely that the symptoms were caused by a foreign actor, according to the unclassified report summary issued Friday — even as an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [ODNI] emphasized that analysts cannot "rule out" the possibility in some small number of cases.

The subtle, technocratic shift in the assessment over the cause of Havana Syndrome has reignited a bitter debate that has split US officials, Capitol Hill and victims over the likelihood that the bizarre injuries were caused by a weapon or a host of disparate, natural causes. Sometime in the last two years, the US received new intelligence that indicated a foreign nation's directed energy research programs had been "making progress," according to the official. That led one unnamed intelligence agency to assess that there was a "roughly even chance" that a foreign country has used some kind of novel weapon against a small group of victims, causing the symptoms that the government officially calls "anomalous health incidents" — headaches, vertigo and even, in some cases, signs of traumatic brain injury. A second intelligence agency assessed a "roughly even" chance that a foreign actor possessed such a weapon but is unlikely to have deployed it against US personnel...

But both judgments were made with low confidence, according to the ODNI official. And critically, possessing a capability is not the same as proof that it has been used.
The article notes that U.S. intelligence and administration officials "do not doubt that the injuries are real and deserving of government compensation." But one official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told CNN "The intelligence does not link a foreign actor to these events. Indeed, it points away from their involvement." And they added that all U.S. Intelligence Community components "agree that years of Intelligence Community collection, targeting and analytic efforts have not surfaced compelling intelligence reporting that ties a foreign actor to any specific event reported" as a possible anomalous health incident.

CNN adds that "the official said some evidence directly contradicts the notion that a foreign government was involved." The White House emphasized that research to determine the causes of the incidents is ongoing... On Friday, officials emphasized that the intelligence community is now supporting lab work on whether radio frequencies can cause "bioeffects" in line with what victims have reported. The latest findings from limited studies have shown mixed results, while previously most results had shown no effects, officials said. A panel of experts assembled by the intelligence community that studied a smaller set of incidents previously found that the symptoms might be explained by "pulsed electromagnetic or acoustic energy," as opposed to environmental or medical conditions. "There was unanimous judgment by the panel that the most plausible explanation for a subset of cases was exposure to directed energy," a second senior administration official said.

But complicating matters for victims and analysts is the fact that not all of those reporting Anomalous Health Incidents have the same set of symptoms — and the vast majority of cases have been explained by other causes, officials have previously said...

"What if they ban TikTok and people keep using it anyway?" asks the New York Times, saying a pending ban in America "is vague on how it would be enforced" Some experts say that even if TikTok is actually banned this month or soon, there may be so many legal and technical loopholes that millions of Americans could find ways to keep TikTok'ing. The law is "Swiss cheese with lots of holes in it," said Glenn Gerstell, a former top lawyer at the National Security Agency and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy research organization. "There are obviously ways around it...." When other countries ban apps, the government typically orders internet providers and mobile carriers to block web traffic to and from the blocked website or app. That's probably not how a ban on TikTok in the United States would work. Two lawyers who reviewed the law said the text as written doesn't appear to order internet and mobile carriers to stop people from using TikTok.

There may not be unanimity on this point. Some lawyers who spoke to Bloomberg News said internet providers would be in legal hot water if they let their customers continue to use a banned TikTok. Alan Rozenshtein, a University of Minnesota associate law professor, said he suspected internet providers aren't obligated to stop TikTok use "because Congress wanted to allow the most dedicated TikTok users to be able to access the app, so as to limit the First Amendment infringement." The law also doesn't order Americans to stop using TikTok if it's banned or to delete the app from our phones....

Odds are that if the Supreme Court declares the TikTok law constitutional and if a ban goes into effect, blacklisting the app from the Apple and Google app stores will be enough to stop most people from using TikTok... If a ban goes into effect and Apple and Google block TikTok from pushing updates to the app on your phone, it may become buggy or broken over time. But no one is quite sure how long it would take for the TikTok app to become unusable or compromised in this situation.
Users could just sideload the app after downloading it outside a phone's official app store, the article points out. (More than 10 million people sideloaded Fortnite within six weeks of its removal from Apple and Google's app stores.) And there's also the option of just using a VPN — or watching TikTok's web site.

(I've never understood why all apps haven't already been replaced with phone-optimized web sites...)

Los Angeles authorities have vowed to prosecute illegal drone operators after a civilian drone collided with a Canadian CL-415 firefighting plane combating the Palisades Fire, causing damage that grounded the aircraft and temporarily halted all aerial firefighting operations. CNN reports: The specifically designed CL-415 firefighting planes are used to scoop up more than 1,500 gallons of ocean water to drop on active fires. The plane in question, Quebec 1, "sustained wing damage and remains grounded and out of service," Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson Erik Scott said, adding that there were no reported injuries. The damaged plane will be prioritized for repair and should be back up flying by Monday, L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony C. Marrone said Friday. The collision caused the temporary grounding of all aircraft responding to the Palisades Fire, The War Zone reported, citing Cal Fire. It was one of the two such planes deployed to the site, The War Zone said. "You will be arrested, you will be prosecuted, and you will be punished to the full extent of the law," said Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman in a statement.

Marrone added that, "Our federal partners behind the scenes are going to be implementing procedures to be able to follow drones in our two large fire areas, and they will be able to identify who the operator of that drone is. "The most important thing to know is that if you fly a drone at one of these brush fires, all aerial operations will be shut down, and we certainly don't want to have that happen."

The FAA underscored late Thursday that it "has not authorized anyone unaffiliated with the Los Angeles firefighting operations to fly drones" in restricted airspace put in place over the wildfires. "The FAA treats these violations seriously and immediately considers swift enforcement action for these offenses," the agency said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Crypto Briefing: The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has been authorized to sell approximately 69,370 Bitcoin seized in connection with the Silk Road darknet marketplace, a haul currently valued at around $6.5 billion, DB News reported Wednesday. The decision is set to end a years-long legal dispute over the BTC stash's ownership. On December 30, a federal judge ruled in favor of the DOJ's request to liquidate the crypto assets, the report said. Battle Born Investments, which had asserted a claim to the Bitcoin stash through a bankruptcy estate, ultimately failed in its bid to delay the sale.

As noted, the group had pursued a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking the identity of "Individual X," who initially surrendered Bitcoin, but the effort also proved unsuccessful. Battle Born's legal counsel criticized the DOJ's handling of the case, alleging the department employed "procedural trickery" in its use of civil asset forfeiture to avoid scrutiny. The DOJ, in its arguments before the court, cited Bitcoin's price volatility as motivation for seeking a quick sale of the seized assets. A DOJ spokesperson, when contacted, stated, "The Government will proceed further consistent with the judgment in this case."

The update comes after the US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal challenging the seizure of the Bitcoin stash, which was brought by Battle Born last October. The decision likely paved the way for the US government to sell Bitcoin, which was valued at $4.4 billion at the time. The US Marshals Service is expected to manage the liquidation process, which, if confirmed, will be one of the largest sales of seized crypto in history. Further reading: Judge Rejects Man From Retrieving $750 Million of Bitcoin From Landfill

The Biden administration plans one additional round of restrictions on the export of AI chips before leaving office, "a final push in his effort to keep advanced technologies out of the hands of China and Russia," reports Bloomberg. From the report: The US wants to curb the sale of AI chips used in data centers on both a country and company basis, with the goal of concentrating AI development in friendly nations and getting businesses around the world to align with American standards, according to people familiar with the matter. The result would be an expansion of semiconductor caps to most of the world -- an attempt to control the spread of AI technology at a time of soaring demand. The regulations, which could be issued as soon as Friday, would create three tiers of chip trade restrictions, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

At the top level, a small number of US allies would maintain essentially unmitigated access to American chips. A group of adversaries, meanwhile, would be effectively blocked from importing the semiconductors. And the vast majority of the world would face limits on the total computing power that can go to one country. Countries in the last group would be able to bypass their national limits -- and get their own, significantly higher caps -- by agreeing to a set of US government security requirements and human rights standards, one of the people said. That type of designation -- called a validated end user, or VEU -- aims to create a set of trusted entities that develop and deploy AI in secure environments around the world.