An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Jackson County, Missouri, has declared a state of emergency and closed key offices indefinitely as it responds to what officials believe is a ransomware attack that has made some of its IT systems inoperable. "Jackson County has identified significant disruptions within its IT systems, potentially attributable to a ransomware attack," officials wrote Tuesday. "Early indications suggest operational inconsistencies across its digital infrastructure and certain systems have been rendered inoperative while others continue to function as normal."

The systems confirmed inoperable include tax and online property payments, issuance of marriage licenses, and inmate searches. In response, the Assessment, Collection and Recorder of Deeds offices at all county locations are closed until further notice. The closure occurred the same day that the county was holding a special election to vote on a proposed sales tax to fund a stadium for MLB's Kansas City Royals and the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs. Neither the Jackson County Board of Elections nor the Kansas City Board of Elections have been affected by the attack; both remain open.

The Jackson County website says there are 654,000 residents in the 607-square-mile county, which includes most of Kansas City, the biggest city in Missouri. The response to the attack and the investigation into it have just begun, but so far, officials said they had no evidence that data had been compromised. Jackson County Executive Frank White, Jr. has issued (PDF) an executive order declaring a state of emergency. The County has notified law enforcement and retained IT security contractors to help investigate and remediate the attack. "The potential significant budgetary impact of this incident may require appropriations from the County's emergency fund and, if these funds are found to be insufficient, the enactment of additional budgetary adjustments or cuts," White wrote. "It is directed that all county staff are to take whatever steps are necessary to protect resident data, county assets, and continue essential services, thereby mitigating the impact of this potential ransomware attack."

The UK and US have signed a landmark deal to work together on testing advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and develop "robust" safety methods for AI tools and their underlying systems. "It is the first bilateral agreement of its kind," reports the BBC. From the report: UK tech minister Michelle Donelan said it is "the defining technology challenge of our generation." "We have always been clear that ensuring the safe development of AI is a shared global issue," she said. "Only by working together can we address the technology's risks head on and harness its enormous potential to help us all live easier and healthier lives."

The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology added that the agreement builds upon commitments made at the AI Safety Summit held in Bletchley Park in November 2023. The event, attended by AI bosses including OpenAI's Sam Altman, Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis and tech billionaire Elon Musk, saw both the UK and US create AI Safety Institutes which aim to evaluate open and closed-source AI systems. [...]

Gina Raimondo, the US commerce secretary, said the agreement will give the governments a better understanding of AI systems, which will allow them to give better guidance. "It will accelerate both of our Institutes' work across the full spectrum of risks, whether to our national security or to our broader society," she said. "Our partnership makes clear that we aren't running away from these concerns - we're running at them."

An anonymous reader quotes an opinion piece from the Washington Post, published by the Editorial Board: A just-published investigation by Russian, American and German journalists has unearthed startling new information about the so-called Havana syndrome, or "Anomalous Health Incidents," as the government calls the unexplained bouts of painful disorientation that U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers have suffered in recent years. The new information suggests but does not prove that Russia's military intelligence agency is responsible. Earlier, agencies in the U.S. intelligence community had concluded that "it is very unlikely a foreign adversary is responsible." They need to look again. [...]

[T]he new investigation by the Insider, a Russian investigative news outlet, in collaboration with CBS's "60 Minutes" and Germany's Der Spiegel, paints a different picture. It identifies the possible culprit as Unit 29155, a "notorious assassination and sabotage squad" of the GRU, Moscow's military intelligence service. Senior members of the unit received "awards and political promotions for work related to the development of 'non-lethal acoustic weapons'" -- a term used in the Russian military-scientific literature to describe both sound- and radiofrequency-based directed energy devices. The investigation found documentary evidence that Unit 29155 "has been experimenting with exactly the kind of weaponized technology" experts suggest is a plausible cause. Moreover, the Insider reported, geolocation data shows that operators attached to Unit 29155, traveling undercover, were present in places where Havana syndrome struck, just before the incidents took place.

Even more concerning, the investigation found that a commonality among the Americans targeted was their work history on Russia issues. This included CIA officers who were helping Ukraine build up its intelligence capabilities in the years before Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. One veteran of the CIA Kyiv station was named the new chief of station in Vietnam and was hit there. A second veteran of the CIA in Ukraine was hit in his apartment in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Both these intelligence officers had to be medevaced and were treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The wife of a third CIA officer who had served in Kyiv was hit in London. "Of all the cases" examined by the news organizations, they said, "the most well-documented involve U.S. intelligence and diplomatic personnel with subject matter expertise in Russia or operational experience in countries such as Georgia and Ukraine," both of which were the scene of popular pro-Western uprisings in the past two decades. The news organizations point out that Russian President Vladimir Putin has often blamed these "color revolutions" on the CIA and the State Department. They conclude, "Putin would have every interest in neutralizing scores of U.S. intelligence officers he deemed responsible for his loss of the former satellites." The Editorial Board is advocating for a thorough and aggressive investigation by the U.S. intelligence community that "takes into account all aspects of the incidents."

"If the incidents are a deliberate attack, the perpetrator must be identified and held to account. Along with sending a message to those who might harm American personnel, the United States needs to show all those who might join the diplomatic and intelligence services that the government will protect them abroad and at home from foreign adversaries, no matter what."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Burnout, quiet quitting, strikes -- the news (and likely your schedule) is filled with markers that workers are overwhelmed and too much is expected of them. There's little regulation in the United States to prevent employers from forcing workers to be at their desks or on call at all hours, but that might soon change. California State Assemblyman Matt Haney has introduced AB 2751, a "right to disconnect" proposition, The San Francisco Standard reports. The bill is in its early stages but, if passed, would make every California employer lay out exactly what a person's hours are and ensure they aren't required to respond to work-related communications while off the clock. Time periods in which a salaried employee might have to work longer hours would need to be laid out in their contract. Exceptions would exist for emergencies.

The Department of Labor would monitor adherence and fine companies a minimum of $100 for wrongdoing -- whether that's forcing employees to be on Zoom, their inbox, answering texts or monitoring Slack when they're not getting paid to do so. "I do think it's fitting that California, which has created many of these technologies, is also the state that introduces how we make it sustainable and update our protections for the times we live in and the world we've created," Haney told The Standard.

The White House plans to renew a push in April to convince Congress to extend an internet subsidy program used by 23 million American households just weeks before it runs out of money, officials said. From a report: In October, the White House asked for $6 billion to extend the program through December 2024, but Congress has not funded it, potentially putting millions of households at risk of losing their internet service. Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel told lawmakers in a letter that April is the last month participants will get the full subsidy, with partial subsidies in May.

Congress previously allocated $17 billion to help lower-income families and people impacted by COVID-19 gain broadband access through a $30 per month voucher to use toward internet service. "We have come too far to allow this successful effort to promote internet access for all to end," Rosenworcel said on Tuesday. "Despite the breadth of this support and the urgent need to continue this program to ensure millions of households nationwide do not lose essential internet access, no additional funding has yet been appropriated."

"Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona..." reads the official text of House Bill #2,477. "PLUTO IS THE OFFICIAL STATE PLANET."

An anonymous reader shared this report from Capital Media Services: The governor signed legislation Friday designating Pluto as Arizona's "official state planet." It joins a list of other items the state has declared to be "official,'' ranging from turquoise as the state gemstone and copper as the state metal to the Sonorasaurus as the state dinosaur. "I am proud of Arizona's pioneering work in space discovery," governor Hobbs said.

What makes Pluto unique and ripe for claim by Arizona is that it is the only planet actually discovered in the United States, and the discovery was made in Flagstaff. Rep. Justin Wilmeth, a Phoenix Republican and self-described "history nerd,'' said that needed to be commemorated, starting with the legacy of astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. In 1930, Tombaugh was working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. "The whole story of Clyde is just amazing, just sitting there under the telescope'' looking for planets by taking photos over a period of time, said Wilmeth. "It was two different glass planes that had one little spec of light moving in a different direction,'' showing it wasn't just another star — and all by observation and not computers. "To me, that's something that's just mind boggling."
"The International Astronomical Union voted years ago to strip Pluto of its official status as a planet," the article points out, noting that its official definition specifies that planets "clear the neighboring region of other objects." (While Pluto "has such a small gravitational pull, it has not attracted and absorbed other space rocks in its orbit".)

So in 2006 Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet, according to a NASA web page. "Pluto is about 1/6 the width of Earth," and has a radius of 715 miles or 1,151 kilometers. "If Earth was the size of a nickel, Pluto would be about as big as a popcorn kernel."

Long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam called Arizona's new legislation "How to advertise you are ignorant. Scientists said something we don't like, so we'll make a law!" They can call it their "State Planet" all they want, but people who actually know about the skies will be mocking them for it. While there is nostalgia for the old classification, and the new one isn't perfect... it's certainly more meaningful when trying to divide up the objects of a planetary system for study.
Reached for a comment by Capital Media Services, Representative Wilmeth said "It might matter to some that are going to get picky or persnickety about stuff... There's several generations of Americans ... who believe that Pluto's a planet — or at least that's what we were taught. I'm never going to think differently. That's just my personal opinion." (The news site adds that "What is important, Wilmeth said, is remembering the history and promoting it.")

Five senators in Arizona's state legislatur did vote against the measure — though not all of them did so for scientific reasons, Senator Anthony Kern explained to Capital Media Services. "I did not want to discriminate against those who wanted Mars, Venus, Jupiter, or everyone's favorite, Uranus."

As a department of America's federal Health agency, the Food and Drug Administration is responsible for public health rules, including prescription medicines. And the FDA "has not changed its position that currently available clinical trial data do not demonstrate that ivermectin is effective against COVID-19," they confirmed to CNN this week. "The agency has not authorized or approved ivermectin for use in preventing or treating COVID-19."

But there was also a lawsuit. In "one of its more popular pandemic-era social media campaigns," the agency tweeted out "You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it." The post attracted nearly 106,000 likes — and over 46,000 reposts, and was followed by another post on Instagram. "Stop it with the #ivermectin. It's not authorized for treating #COVID."

Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik writes that the posts triggered a "groundless" lawsuit: It was those latter two lines that exercised three physicians who had been prescribing ivermectin for patients. They sued the FDA in 2022, asserting that its advisory illegally interfered with the practice of medicine — specifically with their ability to continue prescribing the drug. A federal judge in Texas threw out their case, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals — the source of a series of chuckleheaded antigovernment rulings in recent years — reinstated it last year, returning it to the original judge for reconsideration.

Now the FDA has settled the case by agreeing to delete the horse post and two similar posts from its accounts on the social media platforms X, LinkedIn and Facebook. The agency also agreed to retire a consumer advisory titled "Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19." In defending its decision, the FDA said it "has chosen to resolve this lawsuit rather than continuing to litigate over statements that are between two and nearly four years old."

That sounds reasonable enough, but it's a major blunder. It leaves on the books the 5th Circuit's adverse ruling, in which a panel of three judges found that the FDA's advisory crossed the line from informing consumers, which they said is all right, to recommending that consumers take some action, which they said is not all right... That's a misinterpretation of the law and the FDA's actions, according to Dorit Rubinstein Reiss of UC College of the Law in San Francisco. "The FDA will seek to make recommendations against the misuse of products in the future, and having that decision on the books will be used to litigate against it," she observed after the settlement.
"A survey by Boston University and the University of Michigan estimated that Medicare and private insurers had wasted $130 million on ivermectin prescriptions for COVID in 2021 alone."

In 2018 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the outlawing of sports betting in America.

But the Wall Street Journal reports that since then all the major professional sports bodies "now realize just how much they have to lose as the new era unfolds." "All it takes is for a reasonable fan to go, 'Am I just watching theater, or is this actually sport?' for the credibility of a sport to start crumbling,'" said Declan Hill, an expert on match fixing at the University of New Haven.

Since the prohibition on sports gambling was lifted, leagues that had once viewed betting as an existential threat to their integrity scrambled to partner with gambling companies and brought them into the tent.... The NBA itself also announced a new feature designed to mesh the betting experience with live action: Fans watching games on League Pass, the flagship streaming platform, would be able to opt in to view betting odds on the app's interface and click through to place wagers... Cleveland Cavaliers head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said that gambling had "gone too far... I personally have had my own instances with some of the sports gamblers," he added, "where they got my telephone number, were sending me crazy messages about where I live, and my kids and all that stuff."

NBA spokesman Mike Bass said that instances of reported harassment related to sports betting are investigated. Then, just days after Haliburton and Bickerstaff's complaints, the NBA found itself grappling with a new case... The league is investigating suspicious activity around [Toronto Raptors forward Jontay] Porter, after app users placed sizable wagers that his totals for points, rebounds and assists in a pair of games would all come in under the lines set by oddsmakers. When Porter's numbers fell below those marks and the bets paid out, it raised a red flag signaling possible irregularities....

The NCAA has turned to state legislatures to impose regulations that would take single players out of gamblers' crosshairs. The group is lobbying to ban player-specific proposition bets that aren't directly related to the final score of the game — the exact kind of wagers at the center of the Porter situation in the NBA
After noticing "the gambling-related negativity taking over his social-media feeds," pro basketball player Tyrese Haliburton gave the Journal his own assessment of how it's affecting the fan base.

"To half the world, I'm just helping them make money on DraftKings."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

"Today's most effective corporate lobbying no longer involves wooing members of Congress..." writes the Wall Street Journal. Instead the lobbying sector "now works in secret to influence lawmakers with the help of an unlikely ally: you." [Lobbyists] teamed up with PR gurus, social-media experts, political pollsters, data analysts and grassroots organizers to foment seemingly organic public outcries designed to pressure lawmakers and compel them to take actions that would benefit the lobbyists' corporate clients...

By the middle of 2011, an army of lobbyists working for the pillars of the corporate lobbying establishment — the major movie studios, the music industry, pharmaceutical manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — were executing a nearly $100 million campaign to win approval for the internet bill [the PROTECT IP Act, or "PIPA"]. They pressured scores of lawmakers to co-sponsor the legislation. At one point, 99 of the 100 members of the U.S. Senate appeared ready to support it — an astounding number, given that most bills have just a handful of co-sponsors before they are called up for a vote. When lobbyists for Google and its allies went to Capitol Hill, they made little headway. Against such well-financed and influential opponents, the futility of the traditional lobbying approach became clear. If tech companies were going to turn back the anti-piracy bills, they would need to find another way.

It was around this time that one of Google's Washington strategists suggested an alternative strategy. "Let's rally our users," Adam Kovacevich, then 34 and a senior member of Google's Washington office, told colleagues. Kovacevich turned Google's opposition to the anti-piracy legislation into a coast-to-coast political influence effort with all the bells and whistles of a presidential campaign. The goal: to whip up enough opposition to the legislation among ordinary Americans that Congress would be forced to abandon the effort... The campaign slogan they settled on — "Don't Kill the Internet" — exaggerated the likely impact of the bill, but it succeeded in stirring apprehension among web users.

The coup de grace came on Jan. 18, 2012, when Google and its allies pulled off the mother of all outside influence campaigns. When users logged on to the web that day, they discovered, to their great frustration, that many of the sites they'd come to rely on — Wikipedia, Reddit, Craigslist — were either blacked out or displayed text outlining the detrimental impacts of the proposed legislation. For its part, Google inserted a black censorship bar over its multicolored logo and posted a tool that enabled users to contact their elected representatives. "Tell Congress: Please don't censor the web!" a message on Google's home page read. With some 115,000 websites taking part, the protest achieved a staggering reach. Tens of millions of people visited Wikipedia's blacked-out website, 4.5 million users signed a Google petition opposing the legislation, and more than 2.4 million people took to Twitter to express their views on the bills. "We must stop [these bills] to keep the web open & free," the reality TV star Kim Kardashian wrote in a tweet to her 10 million followers...

Within two days, the legislation was dead...

Over the following decade, outside influence tactics would become the cornerstone of Washington's lobbying industry — and they remain so today.
"The 2012 effort is considered the most successful consumer mobilization in the history of internet policy," writes the Washington Post — agreeing that it's since spawned more app-based, crowdsourced lobbying campaigns. Sites like Airbnb "have also repeatedly asked their users to oppose city government restrictions on the apps." Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and other gig work companies also blitzed the apps' users with scenarios of higher prices or suspended service unless people voted for a 2020 California ballot measure on contract workers. Voters approved it."

The Wall Street Journal also details how lobbyists successfully killed higher taxes for tobacco products, the oil-and-gas industry, and even on private-equity investors — and note similar tactics were used against a bill targeting TikTok. "Some say the campaign backfired. Lawmakers complained that the effort showed how the Chinese government could co-opt internet users to do their bidding in the U.S., and the House of Representatives voted to ban the app if its owners did not agree to sell it.

"TikTok's lobbyists said they were pleased with the effort. They persuaded 65 members of the House to vote in favor of the company and are confident that the Senate will block the effort."

The Journal's article was adapted from an upcoming book titled "The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government." But the Washington Post argues the phenomenon raises two questions. "How much do you want technology companies to turn you into their lobbyists? And what's in it for you?"

This week every U.S. agency was ordered to appoint a "chief AI officer".

But that wasn't the only AI policy announced. According to CNN, "By the end of the year, travelers should be able to refuse facial recognition scans at airport security screenings without fear it could delay or jeopardize their travel plans." That's just one of the concrete safeguards governing artificial intelligence that the Biden administration says it's rolling out across the U.S. government, in a key first step toward preventing government abuse of AI. The move could also indirectly regulate the AI industry using the government's own substantial purchasing power... The mandates aim to cover situations ranging from screenings by the Transportation Security Administration to decisions by other agencies affecting Americans' health care, employment and housing. Under the requirements taking effect on December 1, agencies using AI tools will have to verify they do not endanger the rights and safety of the American people. In addition, each agency will have to publish online a complete list of the AI systems it uses and their reasons for using them, along with a risk assessment of those systems...

[B]ecause the government is such a large purchaser of commercial technology, its policies around procurement and use of AI are expected to have a powerful influence on the private sector.
CNN notes that Vice President Harris told reporters that the administration intends for the policies to serve as a global model. "Meanwhile, the European Union this month gave final approval to a first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence law, once again leapfrogging the United States on regulating a critical and disruptive technology."

CNN adds that last year, "the White House announced voluntary commitments by leading AI companies to subject their models to outside safety testing."

America's Department of Homeland Security "is expected to stop buying access to data showing the movement of phones," reports the U.S. news site NOTUS.

They call the purchasers "a controversial practice that has allowed it to warrantlessly track hundreds of millions of people for years." Since 2018, agencies within the department — including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Secret Service — have been buying access to commercially available data that revealed the movement patterns of devices, many inside the United States. Commercially available phone data can be bought and searched without judicial oversight.

Three people familiar with the matter said the Department of Homeland Security isn't expected to buy access to more of this data, nor will the agency make any additional funding available to buy access to this data. The agency "paused" this practice after a 2023 DHS watchdog report [which had recommended they draw up better privacy controls and policies]. However, the department instead appears to be winding down the use of the data...

"The information that is available commercially would kind of knock your socks off," said former top CIA official Michael Morell on a podcast last year. "If we collected it using traditional intelligence methods, it would be top-secret sensitive. And you wouldn't put it in a database, you'd keep it in a safe...." DHS' internal watchdog opened an investigation after a bipartisan outcry from lawmakers and civil society groups about warrantless tracking...
"Meanwhile, U.S. spy agencies are fighting to preserve the same capability as part of the renewal of surveillance authorities," the article adds.

"A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, led by Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden in the Senate and Republican Rep. Warren Davidson in the House, is pushing to ban U.S. government agencies from buying data on Americans."

"If you want to see what the cutting edge of next-gen clean energy innovation looks like, it'd be hard to find a place better than Texas," Bill Gates wrote recently on his blog," saying "amazing companies" are breaking ground across the state. "Each one represents a huge boon for the local economy, America's energy security, and the fight against climate change." The world is undergoing an energy transition right now, fueled by the development and deployment of new clean energy technologies. The pace of innovation at the heart of this transition is happening faster than many people (including me!) dared hope. The progress makes me optimistic about the future — and excited about the role that American communities will play, especially in places like Texas.

Breakthrough Energy and I have invested more than $130 million into Texas-based entrepreneurs, institutions, and projects. It's a big bet, but it's one I'm confident in. Why? Because of the people. Nearly half a million Texans work in the oil and gas industry, and their skills are directly transferrable to next-generation industries. This workforce will help form the backbone of the world's new clean energy economy, and it will cement Texas's energy leadership for generations to come.

Many of the companies I'm seeing on this trip already employ or plan to employ oil and gas workers. One of those companies is Infinium, which is working on next-generation clean fuels for trucks, ships, and even planes. I'm visiting their first demonstration plant in Corpus Christi, where they're turning waste CO2 and renewable energy into electrofuels — or eFuels — for trucks. They've already signed a deal with Amazon, and sometime soon, if you live in the area, you might get a delivery supported by Infinium eDiesel. The key to Infinium's approach is that their fuels can be dropped into existing engines... I'm especially excited about the work they're doing on sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF — which could reduce emissions from air travel by as much as 90 percent, according to company estimates. Infinium is in the process of converting an old gas-to-liquid plant in West Texas into a new facility that will increase the company's capacity for producing eFuels ten-fold. Breakthrough Energy's Catalyst program has invested in this first-of-its-kind plant, and I can't wait to see it when it's done.

Another company I'll see is Mars Materials. They're a Breakthrough Energy Fellows project working on a different way to reuse CO2. The company is developing a clever technique for turning captured carbon into one of the key components in carbon fiber, an ultra-light, ultra-strong material that is used in everything from clothing to car frames... The Mars Materials team relocated from California to Texas in part because of the skilled oil and gas talent that they could access in the state, and they aren't the first Breakthrough Energy company to do that. I'm going to check out their lab, where their scientists are hard at work optimizing the conversion process.
Both companies assume abundant CO2, Gates writes, but "fortunately for them, Texas is also in the process of becoming a capital for direct air capture... A recent study found that Texas has the greatest DAC deployment potential in the country and could create as many as 400,000 jobs by 2050." Already a direct air capture "hub" in Kingsville, Texas is expected to create 2,500 jobs over the next five years, while Houston has been selected as the site for one of America's seven Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs.

"If you want to catch a glimpse of our country's clean energy future," Gates writes, "you should head on down to the Lone Star State."

In November of 2021 America passed a "Bipartisan Infrastructure Law" which included $7.5 billion for up to 20,000 EV charging spots, or around 5,000 stations, notes the Washington Post (citing an analysis from the EV policy analyst group Atlas Public Policy).

And new stations are now already open in Hawaii, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, "and under construction in four other states. Twelve additional states have awarded contracts for constructing the charging stations." A White House spokesperson said America should reach its goal of 500,000 charging stations by 2026.

So why is it that right now — more than two years after the bill's passage — why does the Federal Highway System say the program has so far only delivered seven open charging stations with a total of 38 charging spots? Nick Nigro, founder of Atlas Public Policy, said that some of the delays are to be expected. "State transportation agencies are the recipients of the money," he said. "Nearly all of them had no experience deploying electric vehicle charging stations before this law was enacted." Nigro says that the process — states have to submit plans to the Biden administration for approval, solicit bids on the work, and then award funds — has taken much of the first two years since the funding was approved. "I expect it to go much faster in 2024," he added.

"We are building a national EV charging network from scratch, and we want to get it right," a spokesperson for the Federal Highway Administration said in an email. "After developing program guidance and partnering with states to guide implementation plans, we are hitting our stride as states move quickly to bring National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure stations online...."

Part of the slow rollout is that the new chargers are expected to be held to much higher standards than previous generations of fast chargers. The United States currently has close to 10,000 "fast" charging stations in the country, of which over 2,000 are Tesla Superchargers, according to the Department of Energy. Tesla Superchargers — some of which have been opened to drivers of other vehicles — are the most reliable fast-charging systems in the country. But many non-Tesla fast chargers have a reputation for poor performance and sketchy reliability. EV advocates have criticized Electrify America, the company created by Volkswagen after the company's "Dieselgate" emissions scandal, for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on chargers that don't work well. The company has said they are working to improve reliability. The data analytics company J.D. Power has estimated that only 80 percent of all charging attempts in the country are successful.

Biden administration guidance requires the new publicly funded chargers to be operational 97% of the time, provide 150kW of power at each charger, and be no more than one mile from the interstate, among many other requirements.EV policy experts say those requirements are critical to building a good nationwide charging program — but also slow down the build-out of the chargers. "This funding comes with dozens of rules and requirements," Laska said. "That is the nature of what we're trying to accomplish....

"States are just not operating with the same urgency that some of the rest of us are."
The article notes that private companies are also building charging stations — but the publicly-funded spots would increase America's car-charging capacity by around 50 percent, "a crucial step to alleviating 'range anxiety' and helping Americans shift into battery electric cars.

"States just have to build them first."

The U.S. House has set a strict ban on congressional staffers' use of Microsoft Copilot, the company's AI-based chatbot, Axios reported Friday. From the report: The House last June restricted staffers' use of ChatGPT, allowing limited use of the paid subscription version while banning the free version. The House's Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor, in guidance to congressional offices obtained by Axios, said Microsoft Copilot is "unauthorized for House use."

"The Microsoft Copilot application has been deemed by the Office of Cybersecurity to be a risk to users due to the threat of leaking House data to non-House approved cloud services," it said. The guidance added that Copilot "will be removed from and blocked on all House Windows devices."

Algorithms might help hotels illegally collude on prices, even if no humans from those businesses actually talk to each other about them, according to US antitrust enforcers. From a report: The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission jointly submitted a statement of interest in Cornish-Adebiyi v. Caesars Entertainment, a case brought before the US District Court of New Jersey. The class action case was brought by New Jersey residents who rented rooms in Atlantic City hotels and alleged that several of those hotels engaged in an illegal price-fixing conspiracy through the use of a common pricing algorithm.

The plaintiffs are trying to show that the hotels violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act, which prohibits "conspiracy in restraint of trade" and is used to prosecute illegal price-fixing. They say that the hotels allegedly used a pricing algorithm platform called Rainmaker, knowing that their competitors were also using the platform and choosing it for that reason. The agencies really care about how this issue is handled. "Judicial treatment of the use of algorithms in price fixing has tremendous practical importance," the DOJ and FTC write in their statement.

Hillary Clinton and U.S. election officials said they are concerned disinformation generated and spread by AI could threaten the 2024 presidential election [non-paywalled link]. WSJ: Clinton, a former secretary of state and 2016 presidential candidate, said she thinks foreign actors like Russian President Vladimir Putin could use AI to interfere in elections in the U.S. and elsewhere. Dozens of countries are running elections this year. "Anybody who's not worried is not paying attention," Clinton said Thursday at Columbia University, where election officials and tech executives discussed how AI could impact global elections.

She added: "It could only be a very small handful of people in St. Petersburg or Moldova or wherever they are right now who are lighting the fire, but because of the algorithms everyone gets burned." Clinton said Putin tried to undermine her before the 2016 election by spreading disinformation on Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat about "all these terrible things" she purportedly did. "I don't think any of us understood it," she said. "I did not understand it. I can tell you my campaign did not understand it. The so-called dark web was filled with these kinds of memes and stories and videos of all sorts portraying me in all kinds of less than flattering ways." Clinton added: "What they did to me was primitive and what we're talking about now is the leap in technology."

The US has seen a significant increase in student absenteeism since the pandemic closed schools four years ago, with an estimated 26% of public school students considered chronically absent in the last school year, up from 15% before the pandemic, according to data from 40 states and Washington, D.C. A report adds: The increases have occurred in districts big and small, and across income and race. For districts in wealthier areas, chronic absenteeism rates have about doubled, to 19 percent in the 2022-23 school year from 10 percent before the pandemic, a New York Times analysis of the data found. Poor communities, which started with elevated rates of student absenteeism, are facing an even bigger crisis: Around 32 percent of students in the poorest districts were chronically absent in the 2022-23 school year, up from 19 percent before the pandemic. Even districts that reopened quickly during the pandemic, in fall 2020, have seen vast increases.

The Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan has won a $1.5 billion conditional federal loan to reopen after being closed for decommissioning in 2022. Canary Media reports: If the loan is granted (subject to Holtec meeting closing conditions) and the 800-megawatt reactor located on Lake Michigan is repowered, it would be the first nuclear plant in the U.S. to reopen after being closed for decommissioning. Surprisingly, it would be just the second or third reactor to restart in the history of global civil nuclear power, according to Mycle Schneider, lead author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023, in an interview with Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Holtec purchased Palisades a month after it shut down with plans to mothball the site, but plans changed. Now the firm, which specializes in nuclear waste management and decommissioning (as opposed to rebuilding and operating nuclear plants), intends to revive the plant instead. Holtec plans to get the power plant restarted by the end of 2025, a breathtakingly aspirational target given nuclear's history of missing construction and cost targets. The Palisades plant was closed by utility Entergy in May 2022 due to financial issues after operating for more than a half-century. And while the plant had a strong operational performance record in recent years, it also has a sobering history of shutdowns due to failures of critical equipment, as well as broken fuel rods and fuel-spill incidents. The site was shut down for the final time a few days ahead of schedule due to concerns about the reliability of a key piece of equipment.

When it was operating at its peak, the plant provided more than 600 high-paying jobs, many unionized. If restarted, the plant could drive up to $363 million in regional economic impact, according to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. That's why Whitmer and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers back resurrecting the retired reactor. Local business owners and residents are "largely supportive" of the plan as well, according to local news site MLive. The state's 2024 budget devotes $150 million to the project. Still, the revival of the dormant Palisades faces its share of headwinds.

An anonymous reader shares a report: New York City announced a new permitting system for companies interested in testing autonomous vehicles on its roads, including a requirement that a human safety driver sit behind the steering wheel at all times. As cities like San Francisco continue to grapple with the problems posed by fully driverless for-hire vehicles, New York City is trying to get ahead of the problem by outlining what it calls "a rigorous permitting program" that it claims will ensure applicants are "ready to test their technology in the country's most challenging urban environment safely and proficiently."

"This technology is coming whether we like it or not," Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement to The Verge, "so we're going to make sure that we get it right." The requirements would exclude companies without previous autonomous vehicle testing experience in other cities. Applicants would need to submit information from previous tests, including details on any crashes that occurred and how often safety drivers have to take control of the vehicle (also known in California as "disengagements"). And in what is sure to be the most controversial provision, fully driverless vehicles won't be permitted to test on the city's public roads; only vehicles with safety drivers will be allowed.

Neil Irwin reports via Axios: The dearth of productivity growth over the last couple of decades has held back incomes in the U.S. and other rich countries, according to a report out Wednesday from the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the global consultancy. Productivity growth has been weak in the U.S. and Western Europe since the 2008 global financial crisis, but things looked better among many emerging markets. The McKinsey report finds that global labor productivity growth was 2.3% a year from 1997 to 2022, a rapid rate that has increased incomes and quality of life in large parts of the world. China and India account for the largest portion of that surge -- half of overall global productivity improvement, with other emerging markets accounting for another 25%, led by Central and Eastern Europe and emerging Asian economies.

In the U.S., the report finds that the decline in capital investment following the 2008 financial crisis has resulted in a $4,500 lower per-capita GDP in 2022 than it would have if pre-crisis trends had continued. Rapid advances in manufacturing technology, especially for electronics, petered out in the same time period, subtracting another $5,000 from per-capita GDP. "Digitization was much discussed as the main candidate to rev up productivity again, but its impact failed to spread beyond" the tech sector, the authors write. The authors are optimistic that a confluence of factors will make the years ahead different.

The rise in global interest rates and inflation are evidence of stronger global demand. Many countries are experiencing labor shortages that may incentivize more productivity-enhancing investment. And artificial intelligence and related technologies create big opportunities. "Inflationary pressure and rising interest rates could be signs that we are leaving behind secular stagnation and entering an era of higher demand and investment," the report finds. "In corporate boardrooms around the world right now, there's a tremendous amount of conversation associated with [generative] AI, and I think there's a broad acknowledgment that this could very much transform productivity at the company level," Olivia White, a McKinsey senior partner and co-author of the report, tells Axios. "Another thing that's happening right now is the conversation about labor. Labor markets in all advanced economies, and the U.S. is really sort of top of the heap, are very, very tight right now. So there's a lot of conversation around what do we do to make the people that we have as productive as they can be?"