Slashdot reader beforewisdom shared this report from CNN: Scientists have set out a way to suck planet-heating carbon pollution from the air, turn it into sodium bicarbonate and store it in oceans, according to a new paper. The technique could be up to three times more efficient than current carbon capture technology, say the authors of the study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances....

The team have used copper to modify the absorbent material used in direct air capture. The result is an absorbent "which can remove CO2 from the atmosphere at ultra-dilute concentration at a capacity which is two to three times greater than existing absorbents," Arup SenGupta, a professor at Lehigh University and a study author, told CNN. This material can be produced easily and cheaply and would help drive down the costs of direct air capture, he added. Once the carbon dioxide is captured, it can then be turned into sodium bicarbonate — baking soda — using seawater and released into the ocean at a small concentration.

The oceans "are infinite sinks," SenGupta said. "If you put all the CO2 from the atmosphere, emitted every day — or every year — into the ocean, the increase in concentration would be very, very minor," he said. SenGupta's idea is that direct air capture plants can be located offshore, giving them access to abundant amounts of seawater for the process.

Stuart Haszeldine, professor of carbon capture and storage at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study, told CNN that the chemistry was "novel and elegant." The process is a modification of one we already know, he said, "which is easier to understand, scale-up and develop than something totally new."

In America, the number of high school graduates going to college "was generally on the upswing," reports the Associated Press, "until the pandemic reversed decades of progress. Rates fell even as the nation's population of high school graduates grew."

Nationwide, undergraduate college enrollment dropped 8% from 2019 to 2022, with declines even after returning to in-person classes, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse. The slide in the college-going rate since 2018 is the steepest on record, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economists say the impact could be dire. At worst, it could signal a new generation with little faith in the value of a college degree.

At minimum, it appears those who passed on college during the pandemic are opting out for good. Predictions that they would enroll after a year or two haven't borne out. Fewer college graduates could worsen labor shortages in fields from health care to information technology. For those who forgo college, it usually means lower lifetime earnings — 75% less compared with those who get bachelor's degrees, according to Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce. And when the economy sours, those without degrees are more likely to lose jobs. "It's quite a dangerous proposition for the strength of our national economy," said Zack Mabel, a Georgetown researcher.

In dozens of interviews with The Associated Press, educators, researchers and students described a generation jaded by education institutions. Largely left on their own amid remote learning, many took part-time jobs. Some felt they weren't learning anything, and the idea of four more years of school, or even two, held little appeal. At the same time, the nation's student debt has soared.... If there's a bright spot, experts say, it's that more young people are pursuing education programs other than a four-year degree. Some states are seeing growing demand for apprenticeships in the trades, which usually provide certificates and other credentials.

After a dip in 2020, the number of new apprentices in the U.S. has rebounded to near pre-pandemic levels, according to the Department of Labor.
Community college is even free in Tennessee, the article notes. "Searching for answers, education officials crossed the state last year and heard that easy access to jobs, coupled with student debt worries, made college less attractive." They also found that restaurant and retail jobs pay better than they have before, with other high school graduates being recruited by manufacturing companies that have aggressively raised wages in response to labor shortages.

One 19-year-old making $24-an-hour at a new Ford plant gushed that "The type of money we're making out here, you're not going to be making that while you're trying to go to college."

Roku has $487 million of cash and cash equivalents in uninsured deposits at failed Silicon Valley Bank, the streaming media company said in an filing on Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. CNBC reports: About 26% of Roku's $1.9 billion in cash was deposited with SVB, which was placed into receivership by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. midday Friday. Roku shares fell over 4% in extended trading on the news. "At this time, the Company does not know to what extent the Company will be able to recover its cash on deposit at SVB," Roku said in a press release.

Nonetheless, Roku said it believed it would be able to meet its capital obligations for the "next twelve months and beyond" with its unaffected $1.4 billion in cash reserves at other "large financial institutions." "As stated in our 8-K, we expect that Roku's ability to operate and meet its contractual obligations will not be impacted," a Roku spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC. Important note: FDIC insurance only covers the first $250,000 in deposit accounts.

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation has acknowledged for the first time that it purchased US location data rather than obtaining a warrant. Wired reports: While the practice of buying people's location data has grown increasingly common since the US Supreme Court reined in the government's ability to warrantlessly track Americans' phones nearly five years ago, the FBI had not previously revealed ever making such purchases. The disclosure came [Wednesday] during a US Senate hearing on global threats attended by five of the nation's intelligence chiefs.

Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, put the question of the bureau's use of commercial data to its director, Christopher Wray: "Does the FBI purchase US phone-geolocation information?" Wray said his agency was not currently doing so, but he acknowledged that it had in the past. He also limited his response to data companies gathered specifically for advertising purposes. To my knowledge, we do not currently purchase commercial database information that includes location data derived from internet advertising," Wray said. "I understand that we previously -- as in the past -- purchased some such information for a specific national security pilot project. But that's not been active for some time." He added that the bureau now relies on a "court-authorized process" to obtain location data from companies."

It's not immediately clear whether Wray was referring to a warrant -- that is, an order signed by a judge who is reasonably convinced that a crime has occurred -- or another legal device. Nor did Wray indicate what motivated the FBI to end the practice. In its landmark Carpenter v. United States decision, the Supreme Court held that government agencies accessing historical location data without a warrant were violating the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches. But the ruling was narrowly construed. Privacy advocates say the decision left open a glaring loophole that allows the government to simply purchase whatever it cannot otherwise legally obtain. [...] Asked during the Senate hearing whether the FBI would pick up the practice of purchasing location data again, Wray replied: "We have no plans to change that, at the current time."

Krisztian Sandor writes via CoinDesk: U.S.-based stablecoin issuer Circle held a part of its USDC stablecoin's cash reserves at Silicon Valley Bank as of Jan. 17, according to the firm's latest attestation (PDF). USDC is the second-largest stablecoin on the market, with a $43 billion circulating supply that is fully backed by government bonds and cash-like assets. According to Circle's January reserve report, the firm held some $9.88 billion of cash deposited at regulated banks to back USDC's value. USDC's banking partners included Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the California-based bank that was taken over by regulators and shut down on Friday. The full list of banks that held cash for Circle's USDC are Bank of New York Mellon, Citizens Trust Bank, Customers Bank, New York Community Bank (a division of Flagstar Bank, N.A.), Signature Bank, Silicon Valley Bank and Silvergate Bank. Circle also keeps some part of USDC reserves in a dedicated BlackRock fund.

Circle said last week it had cut ties with Silvergate Bank, the crypto-friendly bank that halted operations and said it would "voluntarily liquidate" its assets earlier this week. Signature Bank's holding company's (SI) shares have dropped 12% on the news about SVB's shutdown. Signature said in December that it would reduce deposits tied to crypto firms by as much as $10 billion. Simon Dixon, CEO of online investment platform BnkToTheFuture, tweeted that Circle's chief executive Jeremy Allaire said the firm held "most of their cash is in BNY Melon," while sharing a screenshot from March 2. BnkToTheFuture is an investor and shareholder in Circle.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Rep. Mark Takano, who represents California's 39th district, has reintroduced his 32-hour Workweek Act to Congress, which, if passed, would officially reduce the standard definition of the workweek from 40 hours to 32 hours by amending the Fair Labor Standards Act. His proposal would mandate overtime pay for any work done after 32 hours, which would encourage business to either pay workers more for longer hours, or shorten their week and hire more people.

The bill applies to non-exempt workers, who typically work hourly jobs across leisure and hospitality, transportation, construction, manufacturing, wholesale, and retail trade. This is by design, Takano tells CNBC Make It. "The serious conversations about the reduced workweek are happening for white-collar professions. What my bill will do is spur conversation about how we democratize this norm to other sectors of the workforce so everybody benefits."

Takano says he's passionate about the 32-hour workweek to bring about "a significant change which will increase the happiness of humankind. That's a very big statement. But it was a big deal 100 years ago when we gave people the weekend by passing the Fair Labor Standards Act," which established a 40-hour workweek and created other worker protections. "These are all part of the social justice discourse," he says. Supporters say a shortened week would push businesses to hire more people, increase labor market participation, and create "healthier competition in the workplace that empowers workers to negotiate for better wages and working conditions," according to a release (PDF) from Takano's team. The report notes that Takano first introduced the legislation in 2021, but it "ultimately failed to advanced in Congress."

The world's leading carbon credit certifier -- used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big corporations for climate claims -- has said it will phase out and replace its rainforest offsets programme by mid-2025 after a Guardian investigation found it was flawed. From a report: Verra, the main guarantee of credibility for the rapidly growing $2bn voluntary offsets market, has committed to scrapping its rainforest protection programme by July 2025 and introducing new rules, which it is developing. A senior Verra figure said this week it was time to move on from the current system.

In January, a nine-month investigation by the Guardian, the German weekly Die Zeit and SourceMaterial found widespread problems with the system. Analysis of a significant proportion of Verra projects indicated more than 90% of its rainforest offset credits do not represent genuine carbon reductions. Human rights issues are a serious concern in at least one of the offsetting projects co-run by the NGO Conservation International and the Peruvian governments, with evidence people had been forced from their homes. From the band Pearl Jam to easyJet, Lavazza to the housebuilder Berkeley Group, Verra's rainforest carbon offsets have been used by internationally renowned companies. Some have labelled their products "carbon neutral," or told their consumers they can fly, buy new clothes or eat certain foods without making the climate crisis worse. In Singapore and Colombia, companies can buy the offsets instead of paying carbon taxes.

The U.S. government is not seeking to "decouple" from China, nor is it seeking "technological decoupling," but Washington "would like to see India achieve its aspirations to play a larger role in the electronics supply chain," U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Friday. From a report: On its part, the U.S. signed a memorandum of understanding with India on Friday to cooperate in the semiconductor sector. The semiconductor industries in both the nations are beginning to assess the resiliency and gaps in the supply chain network, said Raimondo, whose department is overseeing pouring of about $52 billion into the U.S. semiconductor industry. [...] But even as India and the U.S. tighten their tech ties, Washington is not looking to cut reliance on China, she insisted. "We see India as a trusted technology partner and we want to continue to deepen our technological relationship with India. But I also want to make it clear that the United States doesn't seek to decouple from China."

The House voted unanimously on Friday to declassify U.S. intelligence information about the origins of COVID-19, a sweeping show of bipartisan support near the third anniversary of the start of the deadly pandemic. From a report: The 419-0 vote was final approval of the bill, sending it to President Joe Biden's desk to be signed into law. Debate was brief and to the point: Americans have questions about how the deadly virus started and what can be done to prevent future outbreaks. "The American public deserves answers to every aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic," said Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. That includes, he said, "how this virus was created and, specifically, whether it was a natural occurrence or was the result of a lab-related event."

The Federal Trade Commission has voted to sue to block Intercontinental Exchange from completing its $11.7 billion acquisition of mortgage software provider Black Knight. From a report: The antitrust agency said the deal would lead to higher prices for software that lenders use to generate mortgages. Higher prices would be passed on to home buyers, the FTC said. The FTC's lawsuit, filed in its administrative court, is a setback for Intercontinental Exchange's efforts to become a big player in the technical infrastructure behind home loans. Best known as the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, the company has increasingly pushed to digitize the mortgage business and made a series of deals to expand its role in home-loan finance.

Intercontinental Exchange -- known as ICE for short -- said it strongly disagreed with the FTC's decision. "ICE is fully confident in our position and look forward to presenting it in court," the company said in a statement. ICE and Black Knight currently compete to offer loan-origination systems -- used by lenders to initiate mortgage loans. Earlier this week, ICE said it had agreed to divest Black Knight's loan-origination system business to address any concerns about the deal hurting competition. The divestment would reduce the price tag of ICE's acquisition of Black Knight to $11.7 billion, from the original $13.1 billion when the deal was unveiled in May of last year. The FTC said it didn't believe that selling off Black Knight's product would fix the competitive harm caused by combining the two largest mortgage-loan technology providers. The agency also claimed the deal would undermine competition for another service that ICE and Black Knight provide that helps lenders get the best interest rates for home buyers.

Bloomberg News: Silicon Valley Bank was closed Friday by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as receiver, the FDIC said in a statement. All insured depositors will have full access to their insured deposits no later than Monday morning, the FDIC said. Uninsured depositors will get a receivership certificate for the remaining amount of their uninsured funds, the FDIC said. As the agency sells off Silicon Valley Bank's assets, future dividend payments may be made to uninsured depositors, according to the statement. Until now, there had only been a dozen US bank failures since 2017. Those failures were usually due to weaknesses in credit quality with losses overwhelming balance sheets, Bloomberg Intelligence's Herman Chan told me last week. Silicon Valley Bank had 17 branches in California and Massachusetts. The company's main office and all Silicon Valley Bank branches will reopen on Monday, the FDIC said.

New submitter sonlas writes: Denmark is inaugurating Project Greensand, the first cross-border CO2 storage site, shipping CO2 from Belgium to store it into a depleted oil field under the Danish North Sea. "With the first injection taking place on Wednesday, the project aims to safely and permanently store up to eight million tons of CO2 every year by 2030, the equivalent of 40% of Denmark's emission reduction target and over 10% of the country's annual emissions," reports Euractiv. However, this is to be put in perspective with global CO2 emissions, which reached a new high of more than 36.8 billions tons in 2022.

A report by Rystad Energy shows that if investments were to quadruple, we should be able to capture 150 million of tons of CO2 per year by 2025, still a drop of water in, or under, the ocean. Furthermore, the whole process of sequestering CO2 underground emits itself ~21% of the amount of CO2 stored, as shown in a study by Australian think tank IEEFA.

A newly discovered asteroid roughly the size of an Olympic swimming pool has a "small chance" of colliding with Earth in 23 years, with a potential impact on Valentine's Day in 2046, according to NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office. From a report: The asteroid has a 1 in 625 chance of striking Earth, based on data projections from the European Space Agency, though NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Sentry system calculated the odds closer to 1 in 560. The latter tracks potential collisions with celestial objects. But the space rock -- named 2023 DW -- is the only object on NASA's risk list that ranks 1 out of 10 on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale, a metric for categorizing the projected risk of an object colliding with Earth. All other objects rank at 0 on the Torino scale.

NASA officials have warned that the odds of impact could be dramatically altered as more observations of 2023 DW are collected and additional analysis is performed. It may be a few days before new data can be collected because of the asteroid's proximity to the moon [...]. The last full moon was two days ago, and it still appears bright and large in the sky, likely obscuring 2023 DW from immediate observation.

The asteroid measures about 160 feet (about 50 meters) in diameter, according to NASA data. As 2023 DW orbits the sun, it has 10 predicted close approaches to Earth, with the nearest landing on February 14, 2046, and nine others between 2047 and 2054. The closest the asteroid is expected to travel to Earth is about 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers), NASA's Eyes on Asteroids website notes. The space rock was first spotted in our skies on February 2. It's traveling about 15.5 miles per second (25 kilometers per second) at a distance of more than 11 million miles (18 million kilometers) from Earth, completing one loop around the sun every 271 days.

Disney CEO Bob Iger Thursday said the studio may resume making films and television shows for its rivals, marking a departure from recent years, when its production resources were harnessed to launch and grow its marquee Disney+ steaming service. Reuters reports: Iger told the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in San Francisco that streaming services have traditionally relied on a volume of fresh content to attract subscribers. He said he hopes to embrace a more curated HBO-like approach of making a few high-quality shows built around its major brands, as he works to lift Disney+ to a profit.

"As we look to reduce the content that we're creating for our own platforms, there probably are opportunities to license to third parties," Iger said. "For a while, that was something we couldn't possibly do because we were so favoring our own streaming platforms. But if we get to a point where we need less content for these platforms, and we still have the capacity of producing that content, why not use it to grow revenue?" Iger also talked about the possibility of licensing content to third parties, noting that Seth MacFarlane's animated series "Family Guy" draw viewers both on Disney-owned Hulu, as well as on the Roku streaming service.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: WhatsApp would refuse to comply with requirements in the online safety bill that attempted to outlaw end-to-end encryption, the chat app's boss has said, casting the future of the service in the UK in doubt. Speaking during a UK visit in which he will meet legislators to discuss the government's flagship internet regulation, Will Cathcart, Meta's head of WhatsApp, described the bill as the most concerning piece of legislation currently being discussed in the western world.

He said: "It's a remarkable thing to think about. There isn't a way to change it in just one part of the world. Some countries have chosen to block it: that's the reality of shipping a secure product. We've recently been blocked in Iran, for example. But we've never seen a liberal democracy do that. "The reality is, our users all around the world want security," said Cathcart. "Ninety-eight per cent of our users are outside the UK. They do not want us to lower the security of the product, and just as a straightforward matter, it would be an odd choice for us to choose to lower the security of the product in a way that would affect those 98% of users."

The UK government already has the power to demand the removal of encryption thanks to the 2016 investigatory powers act, but WhatsApp has never received a legal demand to do so, Cathcart said. The online safety bill is a concerning expansion of that power, because of the "grey area" in the legislation. Under the bill, the government or Ofcom could require WhatsApp to apply content moderation policies that would be impossible to comply with without removing end-to-end encryption. If the company refused to do, it could face fines of up to 4% of its parent company Meta's annual turnover -- unless it pulled out of the UK market entirely.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Thursday called for regulation of artificial intelligence technology to ensure it does not hurt growth or become a national security risk, a departure from the business lobbying group's typical anti-regulatory stance. From a report: While there is little in terms of proposed legislation for AI, the fast-growing artificial intelligence program ChatGPT that has drawn praise for its ability to write answers quickly to a wide range of queries has raised U.S. lawmakers' concerns about its impact on national security and education.

The Chamber report argues policymakers and business leaders must quickly ramp up their efforts to establish a "risk-based regulatory framework" that will ensure AI is deployed responsibly. It added that AI is projected to add $13 trillion to global economic growth by 2030 and that it has made important contributions such as easing hospital nursing shortages and mapping wildfires to speed emergency management officials' response. The report emphasized the need to be ready for the technology's looming ubiquity and potential dangers.

U.S. President Joe Biden's proposed budget, set to be unveiled Thursday, will include a provision to close tax loss harvesting on crypto transactions. From a report: A White House official confirmed that the budget will include a tax provision intended to reduce wash sales trading by crypto investors. At present, investors can sell any cryptocurrencies at a loss, claim the loss on their taxes and then buy the same amount and type of cryptocurrencies again. According to the Wall Street Journal, the provision would be expected to raise up $24 billion.

The president's proposed budget will lay out his fiscal priorities. White House officials told the Journal the plan would lower the U.S. deficit by $3 trillion over the next 10 years. Any budget would need passage through the House of Representatives and the Senate before going to the president's desk for his signature.

schwit1 shares an excerpt from a Substack article, written by former cybersecurity reporter Catalin Cimpanu: The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the tax department of Canada, recently updated its terms and conditions to force taxpayers to agree that CRA is not liable if their personal information is stolen while using the My Account online service portal -- which, ironically, all Canadians must use when doing their taxes and/or running their business. The CRA's terms of use assert the agency is not liable because they have "taken all reasonable steps to ensure the security of this Web site."

Excerpt from the CRA terms statement: "10. The Canada Revenue Agency has taken all reasonable steps to ensure the security of this Web site. We have used sophisticated encryption technology and incorporated other procedures to protect your personal information at all times. However, the Internet is a public network and there is the remote possibility of data security violations. In the event of such occurrences, the Canada Revenue Agency is not responsible for any damages you may experience as a result."

Unfortunately, that is not true. After reviewing the HTTP responses from the CRA My Account login page, it's clear the agency has not configured even some of the most basic security features. For example, security protections for their cookies are not configured, nor are all the recommended security headers used. Not only is that not "all reasonable steps," but the CRA is missing the very basics for securing online web applications.

The terms of use also state that users are not allowed to use "any script, robot, spider, Web crawler, screen scraper, automated query program or other automated device or any manual process to monitor or copy the content contained in any online services." Looking at the HTTP response headers using web browser developer tools doesn't breach the terms of services, but the CRA must be well aware that internet users perform scans like this all the time. And it's not the legitimate My Account users who are likely to be the culprits. Unfortunately for Canadians, threat actors don't read terms of use pages. A statement like this doesn't protect anyone, except CRA, from being held responsible for failing to properly secure Canadian citizens' personal data.

China's government could use TikTok to control data on millions of American users, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a U.S. Senate hearing on Wednesday, saying the Chinese-owned video app "screams" of security concerns. Reuters reports: Wray told a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats to U.S. security that the Chinese government could also use TikTok to control software on millions of devices and drive narratives to divide Americans over Taiwan or other issues. "Yes, and I would make the point on that last one, in particular, that we're not sure that we would see many of the outward signs of it happening if it was happening," Wray said of concerns China could feed misinformation to users. "This is a tool that is ultimately within the control of the Chinese government - and it, to me, it screams out with national security concerns," Wray said. Yesterday, the White House said it backed a bill in Congress to give the Biden administration new powers to ban TikTok and other foreign technologies that could pose security threats.

Reach, the owner of the UK's Daily Mirror and Daily Express tabloids among other newspapers, has started publishing articles with the help of AI software on one of its regional websites as it scrambles to cut costs amid slipping advertising revenues. The Register reports: Three stories written with the help of machine-learning tools were published on InYourArea.co.uk, which produces feeds of nearby goings-on in Blighty. One piece, titled Seven Things to do in Newport, is a listicle pulling together information on places and activities available in the eponymous sunny Welsh resort city. Reach CEO Jim Mullen said the machine-written articles are checked and approved by human editors before they're published online.

"We produced our first AI content in the last ten days, but this is led by editorial," he said, according to The Guardian. "It was all AI-produced, but the data was obviously put together by a journalist, and whether it was good enough to publish was decided by an editor." "There are loads of ethics [issues] around AI and journalistic content," Mullen admitted. "The way I look at it, we produce lots of content based on actual data. It can be put together in a well-read [piece] that I think AI can do. We are trying to apply it to areas we already get traffic to allow journalists to focus on content that editors want written."

Mullen's comments have been questioned by journalists, however, given that Reach announced plans to slash hundreds of jobs in January. The National Union of Journalists said 102 editorial positions would be cut, putting 253 journalists at risk, whilst 180 vacancies would be withdrawn.

A YouTube star who built a sizable following with slickly produced videos flaunting his fleet of luxury and sports cars, collection of diamond-encrusted bling, and his spacious Swedesboro home will be forced to give up nearly all of it after he was sentenced Tuesday to 5 and a half years in prison for the illegal business that allowed him to amass those trappings of success. From a report: Bill Omar Carrasquillo -- better known to his more than 800,000 online followers as "Omi in a Hellcat" -- pleaded guilty last year to running one of the most brazen and successful cable TV piracy schemes ever prosecuted by the U.S. government. As part of his sentencing Tuesday, he was ordered to forfeit more than $30 million in assets, including nearly $6 million in cash; cars including Lamborghinis, Porsches, Bentleys, and McLarens; and a portfolio of more than a dozen properties he'd amassed across Philadelphia and its suburbs.

"Thirty million dollars is a lot of money [but] tangible objects aren't everything," U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III said in announcing the punishment during a hearing in federal court. "You have a large following and there may be people who think if you can get away with it, they can too." Carrasquillo, 36, apologized to his family, his employees, and the cable companies he'd cheated through his business, which illegally sold content hijacked from cable boxes to thousands of online subscribers paying fees as low as $15 a month. "I really didn't know the significance of this crime until I was picked up [by the FBI] at my home," he said. "I feel like I let everybody down." But while prosecutors described Carrasquillo's crimes -- which included counts of conspiracy, copyright infringement, fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion -- as serious, much of Tuesday's hearing focused on Carrasquillo's remarkable rags-to-riches story.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Amazon on Tuesday defeated a proposed class action lawsuit on behalf of nearly 7,000 workers in California that claimed the company should have reimbursed employees who worked remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic for home office expenses. U.S. District Judge Vincent Chhabria in San Francisco said the named plaintiff, David Williams, failed to show that Amazon had a company-wide policy of not reimbursing employees for internet, cell phone and other costs, and the judge denied his motion to certify the workers as a class.

The judge said that more than 600 of the 7,000 proposed class members were reimbursed $66.49 on average for home internet expenses, and some were reimbursed in full. Williams' motion for class certification was denied without prejudice, meaning he can file a renewed motion later on. Craig Ackermann, a lawyer for Williams, said he plans to file a new motion excluding the 619 workers who received reimbursements from the proposed class. Williams sued Amazon in 2021 individually and added class-action claims last year. He has accused Amazon of violating a California law requiring employers to reimburse workers for reasonable work-related expenses.

James Temple reports via MIT Technology Review: In late January, a geothermal power startup began conducting an experiment deep below the desert floor of northern Nevada. It pumped water thousands of feet underground and then held it there, watching for what would happen. Geothermal power plants work by circulating water through hot rock deep beneath the surface. In most modern plants, it resurfaces at a well head, where it's hot enough to convert refrigerants or other fluids into vapor that cranks a turbine, generating electricity. But Houston-based Fervo Energy is testing out a new spin on the standard approach -- and on that day, its engineers and executives were simply interested in generating data.

The readings from gauges planted throughout the company's twin wells showed that pressure quickly began to build, as water that had nowhere else to go actually flexed the rock itself. When they finally released the valve, the output of water surged and it continued pumping out at higher-than-normal levels for hours. The results from the initial experiments -- which MIT Technology Review is reporting exclusively -- suggest Fervo can create flexible geothermal power plants, capable of ramping electricity output up or down as needed. Potentially more important, the system can store up energy for hours or even days and deliver it back over similar periods, effectively acting as a giant and very long-lasting battery. That means the plants could shut down production when solar and wind farms are cranking, and provide a rich stream of clean electricity when those sources flag.

There are remaining questions about how well, affordably, and safely this will work on larger scales. But if Fervo can build commercial plants with this added functionality, it will fill a critical gap in today's grids, making it cheaper and easier to eliminate greenhouse-gas emissions from electricity systems. "We know that just generating and selling traditional geothermal is incredibly valuable to the grid," says Tim Latimer, chief executive and cofounder of Fervo. "But as time goes on, our ability to be responsive, and ramp up and down and do energy storage, is going to increase in value even more."

YouTube is relaxing some of the profanity rules it introduced late last year -- "with an update outlining a less restrictive policy that will allow the use of moderate and strong profanity to be used without risking demonetization," reports Engadget. From the report: The original policy, first introduced in November, would flag any video that used rude language in the first several seconds as ineligible for advertising, with little delineation between "strong" or "moderate" swearing. The policy also seemed to apply retroactively, with many creators claiming that videos they published before the updated policy had lost their monetization status. Now, YouTube is reversing course with a tweaked set of rules that allows some swearing.

Now, creators who use colorful language in the first seven seconds of a video are still eligible for advertising, with some conditions. If the profanity is "moderate," the video won't face any restrictions -- but strong profanity in those opening seconds could result in a video only receiving "limited ads." Under the original rules, the update notes, both of these scenarios would have caused a video to be completely demonetized. Creators will be able swear more frequently after the first seven seconds without fear of losing advertising revenue, though YouTube notes that excessive swearing will still put content at risk of being demonetized or limited. The update also clarifies that strong language in background, outro or intro music should not affect monetization status.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The White House said Tuesday it backs a bill in Congress to give the Biden administration new powers to ban Chinese-owned video app TikTok and other foreign technologies that could pose security threats. White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the bipartisan bill sponsored by a dozen senators "would strengthen our ability to address discrete risks posed by individual transactions, and systemic risks posed by certain classes of transactions involving countries of concern in sensitive technology sectors."

"We look forward to continue working with both Democrats and Republicans on this bill, and urge Congress to act quickly to send it to the President's desk," he said. The bill in question is called the "Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act."

The bill, introduced by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Sen. John Thune (R-SD), doesn't single out TikTok to be banned. "Instead, Warner avoids making his bill all about TikTok," reports Ars Technica. "His office told Reuters that the RESTRICT Act will 'comprehensively address the ongoing threat posed by technology from foreign adversaries,' citing TikTok as an example of tech that could be assessed as a threat."

"[T]he RESTRICT Act is superior to the DATA Act because it provides a legal framework for the US to review all 'foreign technology coming into America,' not just from China, but also from Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba. It's designed to give the US 'a systemic approach to make sure we can ban or prohibit' emerging technology threats 'when necessary.'"

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Associated Press: A nuclear power plant in Georgia has begun splitting atoms in one of its two new reactors, Georgia Power said Monday, a key step toward reaching commercial operation at the first new nuclear reactors built from scratch in decades in the United States. The unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co. said operators reached self-sustaining nuclear fission inside the reactor at Plant Vogtle, southeast of Augusta. That makes the intense heat that will be used to produce steam and spin turbines to generate electricity.

A third and a fourth reactor were approved for construction at Vogtle by the Georgia Public Service Commission in 2009, and the third reactor was supposed to start generating power in 2016. The company now says Unit 3 could begin commercial operation in May or June. Unit 4 is projected to begin commercial operation sometime between this November and March 2024.

The cost of the third and fourth reactors was originally supposed to be $14 billion. The reactors are now supposed to cost more than $30 billion. That doesn't include $3.68 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid to the owners after going bankrupt, which brings total spending to more than $34 billion. Georgia Power said Unit 3 would continue startup testing to show that its cooling system and steam supply system will work at the intense heat and pressure that a nuclear reactor creates. After that, operators are supposed to link the reactor to the electrical grid and gradually raise it to full power.

The AI Education Project has developed curriculum to help teachers and students understand artificial intelligence. From a report: With students taking advantage of ChatGPT for homework and term papers, there's a lot of handwringing about whether artificial-intelligence tools are appropriate for school. Alex Kotran said his group wants to make sure those tools are used even more. Kotran is the chief executive officer of the AI Education Project (aiEDU), a nonprofit backed by companies such as Microsoft, Alphabet's Google, OpenAI and AT&T, that provides free materials and teacher training to boost AI understanding in school districts. The idea is to teach kids about the technology, its limits and promise, and prepare them jobs where they'll need to use AI.

The group on Tuesday is announcing a national call for AI education with an expanded list of backers and partner schools at the South by Southwest EDU conference in Austin, Texas. So far, aiEDU has reached 100,000 students and has relationship with districts representing 1.5 million low-income and underserved kids across the country. The non-profit was founded in 2019, and Kotran thought it would take a few years before there was widespread demand from educators for these kinds of programs. "We were kind of wearing the T-shirt before the band was cool," he said. Instead the rapid increase in interest in generative AI with the popularity of programs like OpenAI's chatbot and Dall-E, its tool for digital images, has dramatically boosted demand, and the group could use more funding, he said.

President Biden's nominee to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) withdrew her name Tuesday after two years of partisan gridlock delayed her confirmation, the White House confirmed. From a report: "We appreciate Gigi Sohn's candidacy for this important role. She would have brought tremendous talent, intellect and experience, which is why the president nominated her in the first place," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a briefing. "We also appreciate her dedication to public service, her talent and her years of work as one of the nation's leading public advocates on behalf of American consumers and competition," she added.

In a statement, Sohn said she asked Biden to withdraw her nomination after discussions with her family and "careful consideration." She said the "unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks" on her character and career from cable and media lobbyists "have taken an enormous toll on me and my family. It is a sad day for our country and our democracy when dominant industries, with assistance from unlimited dark money, get to choose their regulators. And with the help of their friends in the Senate, the powerful cable and media companies have done just that."

Here's something you don't see everyday: fewer ads on YouTube. Well, fewer ad formats, at least. From a report: YouTube's latest forum post says the company will be doing away with "Overlay ads" on YouTube videos. These are the old-school banner ads that pop up over the video player, obstructing the view of whatever you were trying to watch. YouTube says the ads are going away on April 6, calling them a "legacy ad format." The ads only worked on desktop, the company said, and they "are disruptive for viewers." Now the only ads in the video player will be video ads that can play before, in the middle of, or after a video. The "view product" pop-up ad is also allowed, and there will still be banner ads in the recommended video list.

A bipartisan group of 12 U.S. senators will introduce legislation on Tuesday that would give Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo new powers to ban Chinese-owned video app TikTok and other foreign-based technologies if they pose national security threats, Senator Mark Warner said. From a report: "I think it is a national security threat," Warner said on CNBC, adding that the bill would give Raimondo "the ability to do a series of mitigation up to and including banning" TikTok and other technologies that pose national security risks. Warner said it would apply to foreign technologies from six nations -- China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. The group, led by Warner and Republican Senator John Thune, includes Democrats Tammy Baldwin, Joe Manchin, Michael Bennett, Kirsten Gillibrand and Martin Heinrich along with Republicans Deb Fischer, Jerry Moran, Dan Sullivan, Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, Warner's office said. TikTok, the ByteDance-owned app used by more than 100 million Americans, has come under increasing fire over fears user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government, undermining Western security interests. TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew is due to appear before Congress on March 23.

Nearly everyone -- 99 percent of the global population -- is exposed to unhealthy levels of tiny and harmful air pollutants, known as PM 2.5, according a new study released Monday in Lancet Planet Health. From a report: The findings underline a growing urgency for policymakers, public health officials and researchers to focus on curbing major sources of air pollution, such as emissions from power plants, industrial facilities and vehicles. "Almost no one is safe from air pollution," Yuming Guo, the lead author of the study and professor at Monash University, said in an email. "The surprising result is that almost all parts of the world have annual average PM 2.5 concentrations higher than air quality guidelines recommended by the World Health Organization." Nearly 7 million people worldwide died from air pollution in 2019, according to recent estimates. What's known as PM 2.5, small air particles that measure 2.5 microns or less in width rank as one of the most concerning toxic air pollutants for human health. The tiny pollutants -- one-thirtieth the width of a human hair -- can travel into our lungs and bloodstream. They can cause ailments including heart disease or lung cancer.

Guo and his colleagues assessed daily and annual PM 2.5 concentrations across the globe from 2000 to 2019 using a computer model, which incorporated traditional air quality observations from ground stations, chemical transport model simulations and meteorological data. Overall, the highest concentrations were located in eastern Asia, southern Asia and northern Africa. In 2019, they found 0.001 percent of the global population is exposed to levels of PM 2.5 pollution that the World Health Organization deems safe. The agency has said annual concentrations higher than 5 micrograms per cubic meter are hazardous. Additionally, the study found that across the globe, 70 percent of days in a year were above recommended PM 2.5 levels.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: More than 1,000 "super-emitter" sites gushed the potent greenhouse gas methane into the global atmosphere in 2022, the Guardian can reveal, mostly from oil and gas facilities. The worst single leak spewed the pollution at a rate equivalent to 67m running cars. Separate data also reveals 55 "methane bombs" around the world -- fossil fuel extraction sites where gas leaks alone from future production would release levels of methane equivalent to 30 years of all US greenhouse gas emissions.

Methane emissions cause 25% of global heating today and there has been a "scary" surge since 2007, according to scientists. This acceleration may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating and seriously risks triggering catastrophic climate tipping points, researchers say. The two new datasets identify the sites most critical to preventing methane-driven disaster, as tackling leaks from fossil fuel sites is the fastest and cheapest way to slash methane emissions. Some leaks are deliberate, venting the unwanted gas released from underground while drilling for oil into the air, and some are accidental, from badly maintained or poorly regulated equipment.

Fast action would dramatically slow global heating as methane is short-lived in the atmosphere. An emissions cut of 45% by 2030, which the UN says is possible, would prevent 0.3C of temperature rise. Methane emissions therefore present both a grave threat to humanity, but also a golden opportunity to decisively act on the climate crisis. [...] The methane super-emitter sites were detected by analysis of satellite data, with the US, Russia and Turkmenistan responsible for the largest number from fossil fuel facilities. The biggest event was a leak of 427 tonnes an hour in August, near Turkmenistan's Caspian coast and a major pipeline. That single leak was equivalent to the rate of emissions from 67m cars, or the hourly national emissions of France. Future methane emissions from fossil fuel sites -- the methane bombs -- are also forecast to be huge, threatening the entire global "carbon budget" limit required to keep heating below 1.5C. More than half of these fields are already in production, including the three biggest methane bombs, which are all in North America.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from InterestingEngineering: The U.S. Air Force's Global Strike Command awarded a new $75.5 million contract to New York-based firm Persistent Systems. The aim is to build a unified security system for 400 operational Minuteman III intercontinental-range nuclear missile silos secured in remote areas throughout the U.S. It will be the world's largest wireless ad-hoc network, helping secure the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal amid growing concerns over global nuclear security.

Persistent Systems will roll out its Infrastructure-based Regional Operation Network (IRON) offering across three Air Force bases as part of the Regional Operating Picture (ROP) program. According to the company, the new security network will cover an area of 25,000 square miles (64,750 sq km), making it the world's largest wireless ad-hoc network. The IRON offering is an easy-to-deploy Integrated MANET Antenna System on fixed towers and poles. It will allow the U.S. Air Force to connect 75 operation centers and more than 1,000 Security Force vehicles. The ROP program will allow constant communication to an Operations Center via the towers. Meanwhile, the personnel at that Operations Center will know the exact location of any Security Forces on a digital map. Both will be able to share critical data seamlessly.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The US can stop Twitter from releasing details about the government's demands for user information in national security investigations, a court ruled (PDF), in the same week House Republicans are to grill national security officials over surveillance. Twitter had protested the government's redactions to a 2014 "transparency report" that featured a numerical breakdown of national security-related data requests from the previous year. The US appeals court in San Francisco on Monday agreed with a lower-court judge that the Justice Department had shown a "compelling" interest in keeping that information secret. Based on classified and unclassified declarations provided by government officials, the court was "able to appreciate why Twitter's proposed disclosure would risk making our foreign adversaries aware of what is being surveilled and what is not being surveilled -- if anything at all," US Circuit Judge Daniel Bress wrote for the three-judge panel.

Although the case is almost a decade old, the ruling comes just as lawmakers and US national security agencies gear up for a bruising fight over making changes to a key surveillance program. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, described by intelligence officials as a key authority, expires on Dec. 31 unless Congress votes to renew it. US agencies use the authority to compel internet and technology companies to turn over information about suspected foreign terrorists and spies. Changes to Section 702 could include altering what companies like Twitter are required to do in response to government demands. "The case at issue in Monday's decision involved efforts by Twitter to share information about two types of federal law enforcement demands on the social media company: 'national security letters' for subscriber information, which would cover metadata but not the substance of any electronic communications, and orders under FISA, which could include content," adds Bloomberg.

Judge Daniel Bress wrote: "The government may not fend off every First Amendment challenge by invoking national security. But we must apply the First Amendment with due regard for the government's compelling interest in securing the safety of our country and its people."

Ministers must consider changing the law to allow scientists to carry out genome editing of human embryos for serious genetic conditions -- as a matter of urgency. That is the key message of a newly published report by a UK citizens' jury made up of individuals affected by genetic conditions. From a report: The report is the first in-depth study of the views of individuals who live with genetic conditions about the editing of human embryos to treat hereditary disorders and will be presented at the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing, which opens at the Crick Institute in London this week. Scientists say that in a few years, they will be ready to use genome editing techniques to alter genes and induce changes in physical traits, such as disease risk, in future generations. In the UK, around 2.4 million people live with a genetic condition. These include cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease, muscular dystrophy, various cancers, and some forms of hereditary blindness.

"Genome editing offers the prospect of preventing such conditions affecting future generations but there needs to be a full national debate on the issues," said Prof Anna Middleton of Cambridge University, the project's leader. "These discussions need to start now because genome editing is advancing so quickly. Many affected individuals want to debate the ethical issues and explore what implementation might look like." Genome editing acts like a pair of molecular scissors that can cut a strand of DNA at a specific site, allowing scientists to alter the structure of a gene, a form of manipulation that does not involve the introduction of DNA from other organisms. In the UK, as in most countries worldwide, it is illegal to perform genome editing on embryos that lead to pregnancy.

A Federal Reserve Zoom event with more than 220 people was canceled after a user hijacked proceedings and displayed pornographic content, Reuters reports. From a report: The hijack left Fed Governor Christopher Waller unable to deliver his opening remarks because graphic images from a call participant named "Dan" began to pop up on the screen. In a statement to Reuters, Brent Tjarks, executive director of the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America (MBCA), which hosted the Zoom event, said: "We were a victim of a teleconference or Zoom hijacking and we are trying to understand what we need to do going forward to prevent this from ever happening again. It is an incident we deeply regret. We have had various programs and this is something that we have never had happen to us." Tjarks adds that he suspects a security switch for the Zoom event that would have muted users and prevented them from sharing their screens was incorrectly set, though he could not confirm. The MBCA, whose roughly 100 members include banks with between $10 billion and $100 billion in assets, made the decision to cancel the event minutes after it was scheduled to commence, citing "technical difficulties."

Formerly known as LinuxBIOS, coreboot is defined by Wikipedia as "a software project aimed at replacing proprietary firmware (BIOS or UEFI) found in most computers with a lightweight firmware."

Phoronix is wondering if there's about to be a big announcement from AMD: AMD dropped a juicy tid-bit of information to be announced next month with "openSIL" [an open-source AMD x86 silicon initialization library], complete with AMD Coreboot support....

While about a decade ago AMD was big into Coreboot and at the time committed to it for future hardware platforms (2011: AMD To Support Coreboot On All Future CPUs) [and] open-source AGESA at the time did a lot of enabling around it, that work had died off. In more recent years, AMD's Coreboot contributions have largely been limited to select consumer APU/SoC platforms for Google Chromebook use. But issues around closing up the AGESA as well as concerns with the AMD Platform Security Processor (PSP) have diminished open-source firmware hopes in recent years....

For the Open Compute Project Regional Summit in Prague, there is a new entry added with a title of OSF on AMD — Enabled by openSIL (yes, folks, OSF as in "Open-Source Firmware").... [H]opefully this will prove to be a monumental shift for open-source firmware in the HPC server space.
From the talk's description: openSIL (AMD open-source x86 Silicon Initialization Library) offers the versatility, scalability, and light weight interface to allow for ease of integration with open-source and/or proprietary host boot solutions such as coreboot, UEFI and others and adds major flexibility to the overall platform design.

In other words, this library-based solution simply allows a platform integrator to scale from feature rich solutions such as UEFI to slim, lightweight, and secure solutions such as coreboot.
The description promises the talk will include demonstrations "highlighting system bring-up using openSIL integrated with coreboot and UEFI Host Firmware stacks on AMD's Genoa based platforms."

Reuters writes: Binance, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, developed a plan to avoid the threat of prosecution by U.S. authorities as it started an American entity in 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
The Wall Street Journal reports: Any lawsuit from U.S. regulators would be like "nuclear fall out" for Binance's business and its officers, a Binance executive warned colleagues in a 2019 private chat. Worried about the threat of prosecution, Binance set out on a plan to neutralize U.S. authorities, according to messages and documents from 2018 to 2020 reviewed by The Wall Street Journal as well as interviews with former employees.

The strategy centered on building a bare-bones American platform, Binance.US, that would license Binance's technology and brand but otherwise appear to be wholly independent of Binance.com. It would shield from U.S. regulators' scrutiny the larger Binance.com exchange, which would exclude U.S. users. But Binance and Binance.US have been much more intertwined than the companies have disclosed, mixing staff and finances and sharing an affiliated entity that bought and sold cryptocurrencies, according to the interviews and the messages and documents reviewed by the Journal. Binance developers in China maintained the software code supporting Binance.US users' digital wallets, potentially giving Binance access to U.S. customer data.

If U.S. regulators conclude that these links mean Binance has control over a U.S. company, they could claim the power to police Binance's entire business, which, to many investors, has been a black box since the start. This would also put Binance's billionaire founder and chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, and his finances under closer scrutiny.... Developers in Shanghai maintained key software functions at Binance.US at least through the summer of 2021, the Journal has reported. The Shanghai developers' contracts were with Binance, not with the U.S. platform, according to a person familiar with the agreements.

The auction house Sotheby's is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash in a big way, reports Forbes. Stephenson teamed with special effects and prop company Weta Workshop to create "a bespoke piece, a cultural and historical artifact, stemming from the unique mythology of his new and coming Snow Crash universe." "The sword took us a year to create and is one of the finest pieces of craftsmanship WETA has created," said Sir Richard Taylor, founder of WETA workshop. "The whole collection is then housed in a crate from a fictitious gaming company that in theory has owned this sword that has now come up for auction. It is an insane, inworld fusion of ancient craft with the digital age." Taylor adds that "the swords Tansu storage case itself is an, automated, internally driven, magnetically activated, very unique box, with hidden compartments, secret items, coded messages and other inworld special nods to the world Neal authored."

This auction will not only celebrate Stephenson's legacy and the lore of Snow Crash but could also serve as a springboard to expand the Snow Crash universe further. [Taylor adds that Stephenson is exploring "future transmedia developments".] For Taylor, they are at the cusp of creating a body of creative work that blurs the line between the physical and the digital, which we have been affectionately calling 'Masterworks for the Metaverse'.
The sword will, of course, have its own unique NFT "capturing every detail of its physical twin," and someone's already bid $60,000 for it.

Also up for auction are two original manuscripts for Snow Crash and the painting used as the original edition's cover art — but also two forgotten artifacts from the book's afterlife:

• "The only surviving materials from the original graphic novel concept for Snow Crash titled Dioxin Posse, ca. 1989"

• "The leather jacket meant to be worn by Y.T. in the original graphic novel concept for Snow Crash, featuring the 'Elmo' logo used by her group, the "Dioxin Posse," ca. 1989."

The editorial board of the Los Angeles Times writes that it doesn't take a Chinese spy balloon to threaten ocean wildlife. "Even the child-size pink plastic 'Happy Birthday' balloon can be hazardous if left in the wrong hands. Or, more precisely, left from the wrong hands." There are several recent cases of sea turtles, seals and sea lions off the California coast discovered entangled in or choked by balloon strings, or in physical distress after ingesting balloons. Among the key findings of a 2020 Oceana report on ocean plastic was that balloons were one of the most common types of plastics entangling or consumed by marine life, along with bags, recreational fishing line, sheeting and food wrappers.

The threat to sea life is one of the main reasons a handful of coastal Southern California cities have slapped restrictions on the use of balloons, ranging from prohibiting the sale or release of lighter-than-air balloons (which generally means those filled with helium) to a ban on the sale, distribution or public use of all balloons passed by Laguna Beach on Tuesday.

If this trend sounds familiar, that's because a few years back it was single-use plastic straws that were targeted by local bans. Eventually, there were so many different rules about distribution of plastic disposable straws that a statewide law, beginning in 2019, made sense. Balloons may be heading for the same fate....

California will phase out mylar balloons by 2031 because their metallic nylon foil shells have a tendency to cause blackouts and spark wildfires when they float into power lines. That's good, but now California legislators should consider placing restrictions on the use and release of latex balloons. The balloon industry markets latex rubber balloons as biodegradable, but studies have found that they don't break down in the ocean. Furthermore, the strings attached to balloons are generally plastic. This makes them single-use trash in the same way that grocery bags and straws are, and releasing them into the environment is littering.
A Laguna Beach environmentalist tells the Times people need to rethink the way they look at plastic. "When people say they throw things away — there's really no away."

Heavy rainfall "has left the Los Angeles' streets unusually clean," writes an editor at the Los Angeles Times.

"But I can't help wondering where it all went... Does it all end up in the ocean?" To answer that question, I turned to the experts at L.A. County Public Works, who oversee storm drains and waterways across the region. The good news is that there are a number of ways that trash is caught before it reaches the open sea. All manner of filters and screens and basins — and something called the Trash Interceptor 007 (I am not making this up) installed last fall at Ballona Creek — are employed to collect many thousands of tons of litter before they end up bobbing around the Pacific Ocean, releasing toxins and being mistaken for food by marine animals.
Trash Interceptor 007 is a sleek solar-powered boat from The Ocean Cleanup project. Last weekend it caught 11.6 tons of plastic, garbage and debris, and from October to January collected more than 42.5 tons of trash.

That's the good news, the Times notes... The bad news is that in storm conditions like we've just experienced, the trash busting systems get overwhelmed and some of the debris washed from the streets ends up on the beaches or in the ocean, along with the dog poop, oil and chemicals that slip through even the best filters. Ugh. All of this is to explain why the many efforts by cities, counties and the state to reduce trash, especially the nonbiodegradable plastic variety, are so important.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp shares his perspective on the 10th anniversary of Code.org: Remember this?" asks tech-backed Code.org on Twitter as it celebrates its achievements.... "It's the viral video that launched Code.org back in 2013!" Code.org also reminds its 1M Twitter followers that What Most Schools Don't Teach starred tech leaders Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Tony Hsieh, and Drew Houston.

But 10 years later, the promise of unlimited tech jobs and crazy-fun workplaces promoted in the video by these Poster Boys for K-12 Computer Science hasn't exactly aged well, and may serve as more of a cautionary tale about hubris for some rather than evoke fond memories.

"Our policy at Facebook is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find," exclaimed Zuckerberg in the video. But ten years later, Facebook's policy is firing as many employees as it can — 11,000+ and counting. Houston, who sang the praises of working in cool tech workplaces in the video ("To get the very best people we try to make the office as awesome as possible"), went on to make remote work the standard practice at Dropbox, cut 11% of his employees, and reported a $575M loss on unneeded office space. Under pressure, Gates left Microsoft, Dorsey left Twitter, and Hsieh tragically left (Amazon-owned) Zappos, and the companies they co-founded recently unveiled plans for massive layoffs and halted ambitious office expansion plans as tech employees push back on return-to-the-office edicts.

Still, there's no denying the success of what the National Science Foundation called the "amazing marketing prowess" of tech giant supported and directed Code.org when it comes to pushing coding into American classrooms. The nonprofit boasts of having 80M+ student accounts, reported it had spent $74.7M to train 113,000+ K-12 teachers to deliver its K-12 CS curriculum, and has set its sights on making CS a high school graduation requirement in every state by 2030.

Interestingly, concomitant with Code.org's 10th anniversary celebration was the release of a new academic paper — Breaking the Code: Confronting Racism in Computer Science through Community, Criticality, and Citizenship — that provocatively questions whether K-12 CS, at least in its current incarnation, is a feature or a bug. From the paper: "We are currently seeing an unprecedented push of computing into P-12 education systems across the US, with calls for compulsory computing education and changes to graduation requirements.... Although computing creep narratives are typically framed in lofty democratic terms, the 'access' narrative is ultimately a corporate play. Broadening participation in computing serves corporate interests by offering an expanded labor supply from which to choose the most productive workers. It is true that this might benefit an elite subset of BIPOC individuals, but the macroeconomics of the global labor market mean that access to computing is unlikely to ever benefit BIPOC communities at scale. [...] There are several nonprofits invested in the growth of computing, many with mission statements that do explicitly cite equity (and sometimes racial equity, in particular). Some of the larger nonprofits, though, are mainly funded by (and thus ultimately serve) corporate interests (e.g., Code. org).

The BBC reports: Journalists have been forced to temporarily take down articles critical of powerful oil lobbyists due to the exploitation of US copyright law, according to a new report.

At least five such articles have been subject to fake copyright claims, including one by the respected South African newspaper Mail & Guardian, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). The claims — which falsely assert ownership of the stories — have been made by mystery individuals under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a law meant to protect copyright holders. Just last month, three separate false copyright claims were made against Diario Rombe, an investigative news outlet that focusses on Equatorial Guinea. The articles under attack are about the president of Equatorial Guinea's son, Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima, and his close associate, Cameroonian businessman and lawyer NJ Ayuk.

The OCCRP claimed in a report published on Wednesday that the DMCA process was often abused by "unknown parties" who create backdated fake articles to target critical news reports....

Climate Home editor Megan Darby told the OCCRP: "These bogus allegations look like a devious tactic to suppress independent journalism."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the story.

Matt_Bennett (Slashdot reader #79,107) writes: Swedish power company Vattenfall released a study on the interactions of seabirds and offshore wind turbines. They used cameras and radar to record the tracks of the birds during daylight hours at Aberdeen Offshore Wind Farm over peak periods of bird activity in 2020 and 2021.

The study observed no collisions or even narrow escapes between birds and rotor blades. In 97.7% of the recordings, the birds avoided the RSZ (rotor swept zone).
The company (owned by the Swedish government) spent €3 million on the two-year study, according to Electrek, and now has ten thousand videos of birds flying...nowhere near the wind turbines. Herring gulls avoided the rotor blades by a full 90-110 meters (295-361 feet) while kittiwakes flew even further from the blades — 140-160 meters (459-525 feet).

"By way of comparison, each of these human-related sources kill millions or even billions of birds per year: fossil fuels, deforestation, pesticides, windows, and the common housecat."

"Owners of Roald Dahl ebooks are having their libraries automatically updated with the new censored versions containing hundreds of changes to language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race," reports the British newspaper the Times. Readers who bought electronic versions of the writer's books, such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, before the controversial updates have discovered their copies have now been changed.

Puffin Books, the company which publishes Dahl novels, updated the electronic novels, in which Augustus Gloop is no longer described as fat or Mrs Twit as fearfully ugly, on devices such as the Amazon Kindle. Dahl's biographer Matthew Dennison last night accused the publisher of "strong-arming readers into accepting a new orthodoxy in which Dahl himself has played no part."
Meanwhile...

• Dahl's publisher earlier announced they'd also resume publishing original versions of Dahl's novels "before the end of the year," reports the BBC.

• The Telegraph notes that when he was alive, Dahl himself "threatened to never write another word if his publishers ever changed his language, promising to send his 'Enormous Crocodile' to gobble them up if they did so."

• A New York Times opinion writer adds that "the changes to Dahl's texts first began to appear more than a year ago without attracting any significant attention until now."

• Children's book author Frank Cottrell-Boyce admits in the Guardian that "as a child I disliked Dahl intensely. I felt that his snobbery was directed at people like me and that his addiction to revenge was not good. But that was fine — I just moved along."

But Cottrell-Boyce's larger point is "The key to reading for pleasure is having a choice about what you read" — and that childhood readers faces greater threats. "The outgoing children's laureate Cressida Cowell has spent the last few years fighting for her Life-changing Libraries campaign. It's making a huge difference but it would have a been a lot easier if our media showed a fraction of the interest they showed in Roald Dahl's vocabulary in our children."

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) is investigating the potentials and dangers of solar geoengineering technologies, stating that these controversial interventions are humanity's "only option" to quickly cool the planet within years. An anonymous shares an excerpt from a Motherboard article: In a report published by UNEP in February, an independent panel describes what's currently known about so-called solar radiation modification, also called solar geoengineering, and concludes that, despite its great potential, it's not viable or even safe right now. Nonetheless, amid growing calls from governments to find an emergency brake for climate change -- and ongoing, independent efforts to develop solar geoengineering technology -- the UNEP is calling for a full-scale global review of the tech and eventual multinational framework for how it should be governed. The recommendations have some opponents fearing that this amounts to endorsement of adopting the technology -- a move that could create an even worse environmental crisis by messing with intertwined natural climate systems or pulling the focus away from mitigation measures, as well as further widening the inequalities that already exist as a result of climate change.

Solar radiation modification describes a range of technologies that aim to cool our overheated planet by reflecting incoming sunlight back out into space, or making it easier for heat coming off the earth to escape. Blocking out just two percent of sunlight could, according to some estimates, totally offset the warming that comes from doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from pre-industrial levels. It's a tantalizing prospect, but comes with a raft of issues. For one, as the report notes, the best large-scale evidence we have that it could even work is from volcanic eruptions, where the smog cooled the globe for a couple of years afterwards. Most of the actual research has involved climate modeling, theoretical analyses or cost estimates. Some groups have conducted small-scale indoor experiments of how the tech might work. No one's taken the trials outdoors yet.

Even if we knew more, it's not a be-all-end-all climate solution, said UNEP's chief scientist, Andrea Hinwood. "SRM technologies, should they be considered at some point in the future, do not solve the climate crisis because they do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions nor reverse the impacts of climate change. The world must be crystal clear on this point," she said in a UN media release. What solar geoengineering might do though, is buy the planet some time. The UNEP report highlights that even if we fully halted CO2 emissions right now, it could take at least until the end of the century to see a drop in temperature. "Make no mistake: there are no quick fixes to the climate crisis," wrote UNEP executive director Inger Andersen in the report. "Increased and urgent action to slash greenhouse gas emissions and invest in adapting to the impacts of climate change is immutable. Yet current efforts remain insufficient." Despite firm opposition from some, the message from the UNEP report seems to be to proceed with caution. "While UNEP is concerned, it is naive to think research will cease and the issues will disappear. We cannot afford to bury our heads in the sand," said chief scientist Hinwood.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: At least two companies in British Columbia, Canada, say they've received exemptions from the federal government allowing them to produce and distribute cocaine, heroin, MDMA, or magic mushrooms. But it's not clear under what circumstances the companies will be able to sell the drugs, and B.C. Premier David Eby said he was "astonished" to hear the announcement. On Thursday, Sunshine Earth Labs, a psychedelics manufacturer announced that Health Canada, a federal government agency, is allowing the company to legally produce and distribute the coca leaf and cocaine; MDMA; opium; morphine, heroin and psilocybin, the active ingredient in shrooms. The company said it plans to "bring a safer supply of drugs to the global market."

Meanwhile, cannabis extractions company Adastra announced it's now legally allowed to both produce and distribute psilocybin and cocaine. In a statement to VICE News, Health Canada said Adastra is licensed to produce the drugs for scientific and medical purposes but cannot sell products to the general public. "They are only permitted for sale to other licence holders who have cocaine listed on their licence, pharmacists, practitioners, hospitals, or the holder of a section 56(1) exemption for research purposes," the agency said.

Both companies claim they received amendments under Health Canada's Dealer's Licenses, which grant manufacturers, doctors, and researchers exemptions to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, allowing them to legally possess and make banned drugs. In a news conference, Eby said the licenses were granted without consultation from the province. "It is not part of our provincial plan," he said, noting that he would be following up with Health Canada about the announcements. Adastra said it's license allows it to "interact with up to 250 grams of cocaine and to import coca leaves to manufacture and synthesize the substance."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: The Mississippi Senate has passed a bill that will stop electric car companies from opening their own dealerships in the state [...]. The bill started as House Bill 401, which you can see on the Mississippi Legislature's website. It amends Mississippi law related to car dealerships, clarifying that EV manufacturers can't get around the state's dealership laws, an exception that has been used by some manufacturers who have never opened a licensed dealer before. This will stop EV manufacturers from opening any physical locations in Mississippi. There is an exception in the law carved out for Tesla, which currently operates a single location in Brandon, Mississippi. "Mississippi has no statewide electric vehicle purchase incentive but does impose an annual $150 tax on electric vehicles, far above the amount of taxation that a hypothetical similarly efficient gas vehicle would have to pay," notes Electrek. "This charge is approximately equivalent to the amount of gas taxes a similarly efficient gas vehicle would pay if it drove 100,000 miles in a year."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters spoke out against a European proposal to make streaming providers and other online firms pay for ISPs' network upgrades. "Some of our ISP partners have proposed taxing entertainment companies to subsidize their network infrastructure," Peters said in a speech Tuesday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (transcript). The "tax would have an adverse effect, reducing investment in content -- hurting the creative community, hurting the attractiveness of higher-priced broadband packages, and ultimately hurting consumers," he argued. [...] "ISPs claim that these taxes would only apply to Netflix. But this will inevitably change over time as broadcasters shift from linear to streaming," Peters said at MWC. Sandvine data suggests that nearly half of global Internet traffic is sent by Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, Netflix, and Microsoft. Online video accounts for 65 percent of all traffic, and Netflix recently passed YouTube as the top video-traffic generator.

Peters cited Nielsen data showing that "Netflix accounts for under 10 percent of total TV time" in the US and UK while "traditional local broadcasters account for over half of all TV time." Live sports account for much of that. "As broadcasters continue the shift away from linear to streaming, they will start to generate significant amounts of Internet traffic too -- even more than streamers today based on the current scope and scale of their audiences," Peters said. "Broadband customers, who drive this increased usage, already pay for the development of the network through their subscription fees. Requiring entertainment companies -- both streamers and broadcasters -- to pay more on top would mean ISPs effectively charging twice for the same infrastructure." Telcos that receive new payments wouldn't be expected to lower the prices charged to home Internet users, Peters said. "As the consumer group BEUC has pointed out, there is no suggestion these levies would be passed onto consumers in the form of 'lower prices or better infrastructure,'" he said.

Peters said Netflix's "operating margins are significantly lower than either British Telecom or Deutsche Telekom. So we could just as easily argue that network operators should compensate entertainment companies for the cost of our content -- exactly as happened under the old pay-TV model." While telcos claim companies like Netflix don't pay their "fair share," Peters pointed out that Netflix has spent a lot building its own network that reduces the amount of data sent over traditional telecom networks. "We've spent over $1 billion on Open Connect, our own content delivery network, which we offer for free to ISPs," he said. "This includes 18,000 servers with Netflix content distributed across 6,000 locations and 175 countries. So when our members press play, instead of the film or TV show being streamed from halfway around the world, it's streamed from around the corner -- increasing efficiency for operators while also ensuring a high-quality, no-lag experience for consumers." Peters also touted Netflix's encoding technology that cut bit rates in half between 2015 and 2020. While Internet traffic has increased about 30 percent a year, "ISPs have managed this increased consumer usage efficiently while their costs have remained stable," Peters said. "Regulators have highlighted this, too, calling out that infrastructure costs are not sensitive to traffic and that growing consumption will be offset by efficiency gains."

Global carbon dioxide emissions are still rising but may at least be reaching a plateau, research from the International Energy Agency has shown. From a report: CO2 from energy -- by far the biggest source of emissions -- increased by less than 1% in 2022. This was despite the turmoil in energy the markets caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The rise is smaller than the 6% increase in emissions from energy recorded by the IEA in 2021, a leap that came on the back of the rebound from the Covid-19 pandemic. However, a 7% reduction is needed every year to meet the goal of halving emissions this decade.

Many experts had feared the soaring price of gas could push countries back towards using coal, which has much higher carbon emissions. But renewable energy seems to have been a big beneficiary, as countries opted for solar and wind power, and encouraged the take-up of heat pumps and electric vehicles (EVs). A mild start to Europe's winter also helped to save energy across the EU. Even a small increase in greenhouse gas emissions takes the world much further away from the path to net zero , the goal needed to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Scientists have warned emissions need to fall by nearly half in this decade, if the world is to have a good chance of holding to the 1.5C limit.