An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: When Romeo Chicco tried to get auto insurance in December, seven different companies rejected him. When he eventually obtained insurance, it was nearly double the rate he was previously paying. According to a federal complaint filed this week seeking class-action status, it was because his 2021 Cadillac XT6 had been spying on him. Modern cars have been called "smartphones with wheels," because they are connected to the internet and packed with sensors and cameras. According to the complaint, an agent at Liberty Mutual told Mr. Chicco that he had been rejected because of information in his "LexisNexis report." LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a data broker, has traditionally kept tabs for insurers on drivers' moving violations, prior insurance coverage and accidents.

When Mr. Chicco requested his LexisNexis file, it contained details about 258 trips he had taken in his Cadillac over the past six months. His file included the distance he had driven, when the trips started and ended, and an accounting of any speeding and hard braking or accelerating. The data had been provided by General Motors -- the manufacturer of his Cadillac. In a complaint against General Motors and LexisNexis Risk Solutions filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Mr. Chicco accused the companies of violation of privacy and consumer protection laws. The lawsuit follows a report by The New York Times that, unknown to consumers, automakers have been sharing information on their driving behavior with the insurance industry, resulting in increased insurance rates for some drivers.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inside Climate News: Months in jail and thousands of dollars in fines and legal fees -- those are the consequences Alabamians and Arizonans could soon face for selling cell-cultured meat products that could cut into the profits of ranchers, farmers and meatpackers in each state. State legislators from Florida to Arizona are seeking to ban meat grown from animal cells in labs, citing a "war on our ranching" and a need to protect the agriculture industry from efforts to reduce the consumption of animal protein, thereby reducing the high volume of climate-warming methane emissions the sector emits. Agriculture accounts for about 11 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions, according to federal data, with livestock such as cattle making up a quarter of those emissions, predominantly from their burps, which release methane -- a potent greenhouse gas that's roughly 80 times more effective at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over 20 years. Globally, agriculture accounts for about 37 percent of methane emissions.

For years, climate activists have been calling for more scrutiny and regulation of emissions from the agricultural sector and for nations to reduce their consumption of meat and dairy products due to their climate impacts. Last year, over 150 countries pledged to voluntarily cut emissions from food and agriculture at the United Nations' annual climate summit. But the industry has avoided increased regulation and pushed back against efforts to decrease the consumption of meat, with help from local and state governments across the U.S.

Bills in Alabama, Arizona, Florida and Tennessee are just the latest legislation passed in statehouses across the U.S. that have targeted cell-cultured meat, which is produced by taking a sample of an animal's muscle cells and growing them into edible products in a lab. Sixteen states -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming -- have passed laws addressing the use of the word "meat" in such products' packaging, according to the National Agricultural Law Center at the University of Arkansas, with some prohibiting cell-cultured, plant-based or insect-based food products from being labeled as meat.

After weeks of testing, an electronic system for filing returns directly to the IRS is now available for taxpayers from 12 selected states. From a report: The new system, called Direct File, is a free online tool. Taxpayers in the selected states who have very simple W-2s and claim a standard deduction may be eligible to use it this tax season to file their federal income taxes. The program will also offer a Spanish version, which will be available starting at 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday. The Treasury Department estimates that one-third of all federal income tax returns filed could be prepared using Direct File and that 19 million taxpayers may be eligible to use the tool this tax season.

"Direct File will offer millions of Americans a free and simple way to file their taxes, with no expensive and unnecessary filing fees and no upselling, putting hundreds of dollars back in the pocket of working families each year, consistent with President Biden's pledge to lower costs," said National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard. Certain taxpayers in Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wyoming, Arizona, Massachusetts, California and New York can participate. Direct File can only be used to file federal income taxes, taxpayers from states that require filing state taxes will need to do so separately.

The openVertebrate (oVert) project is now complete, offering free online access to incredibly detailed 3D images of over 13,000 vertebrates. New Atlas reports: More than a research project, oVert was a collaboration between like-minded specialists across 25 institutions whose sole objective was to add value to museum collections by making them more widely available. Importantly, these images provide an insight that would only otherwise be obtained by destructive dissection and tissue sampling. Over the course of six years, project members took CT scans of more than half the classes, or genera, of all amphibians, reptiles, fishes, birds, and mammals, rendering models that provide an intimate look at the creatures, inside and out. [...]

For a working example of the incredible detail and information contained in oVert's images, head to Sketchfab to view a sample of interactive 3D models like the olive sea snake. Or go to MorphoSource to access the full oVert repository. [...] If you have 30 minutes to spare, check out the full video produced by the Florida Museum, which showcases a collection of diverse oVert specimens. A study presenting a summary of the oVert project was published in the journal BioScience.

CNN's national security analyst interviewed a U.S. intelligence officer who worked on the newly-released Defense report debunking UFO sightings — physicist Sean Kirkpatrick. He tells CNN "about two to five percent" of UFO reports are "truly anomalous."

But CNN adds that "he thinks explanations for that small percentage will most likely be found right here on Earth..." This is how Kirkpatrick and his team explain the Roswell incident, which plays a prominent role in UFO lore. That's because, in 1947, a U.S. military news release stated that a flying saucer had crashed near Roswell Army Air Field in New Mexico. A day later, the Army retracted the story and said the crashed object was a weather balloon. Newspapers ran the initial saucer headline, followed up with the official debunking, and interest in the case largely died down. Until 1980, that is, when a pair of UFO researchers published a book alleging that alien bodies had been recovered from the Roswell wreckage and that the U.S. government had covered up the evidence.

Kirkpatrick says his office dug deep into the Roswell incident and found that in the late 1940s and early 1950s, there were a lot of things happening near the Roswell Airfield. There was a spy program called Project Mogul, which launched long strings of oddly shaped metallic balloons. They were designed to monitor Soviet nuclear tests and were highly secret. At the same time, the U.S. military was conducting tests with other high-altitude balloons that carried human test dummies rigged with sensors and zipped into body-sized bags for protection against the elements. And there was at least one military plane crash nearby with 11 fatalities.

Echoing earlier government investigations, Kirkpatrick and his team concluded that the crashed Mogul balloons, the recovery operations to retrieve downed test dummies and glimpses of the charred aftermath of that real plane crash likely combined into a single false narrative about a crashed alien spacecraft...

Since 2020, the Pentagon has standardized, de-stigmatized and increased the volume of reporting on UFOs by the U.S. military. Kirkpatrick says that's the reason the closely covered and widely-mocked Chinese spy balloon was spotted in the first place last year. The incident shows that the U.S. government's policy of taking UFOs seriously is actually working.
The pattern keeps repeating. "Kirkpatrick says, his investigation found that most UFO sightings are of advanced technology that the U.S. government needs to keep secret, of aircraft that rival nations are using to spy on the U.S. or of benign civilian drones and balloons." ("What's more likely?" asked Kirkpatrick. "The fact that there is a state-of-the-art technology that's being commercialized down in Florida that you didn't know about, or we have extraterrestrials?")

But the greatest irony may be that "stories about these secret programs spread inside the Pentagon, got embellished and received the occasional boost from service members who'd heard rumors about or caught glimpses of seemingly sci-fi technology or aircraft. And Kirkpatrick says his investigators ultimately traced this game of top-secret telephone back to fewer than a dozen people... [F]or decades, UFO true believers have been telling us there's a U.S. government conspiracy to hide evidence of aliens. But — if you believe Kirkpatrick — the more mundane truth is that these stories are being pumped up by a group of UFO true believers in and around government."

An anonymous reader shared this story from the New York Times: Into the depleted field of journalism in America, a handful of websites have appeared in recent weeks with names suggesting a focus on news close to home: D.C. Weekly, the New York News Daily, the Chicago Chronicle and a newer sister publication, the Miami Chronicle. In fact, they are not local news organizations at all. They are Russian creations, researchers and government officials say, meant to mimic actual news organizations to push Kremlin propaganda by interspersing it among an at-times odd mix of stories about crime, politics and culture.

While Russia has long sought ways to influence public discourse in the United States, the fake news organizations — at least five, so far — represent a technological leap in its efforts to find new platforms to dupe unsuspecting American readers. The sites, the researchers and officials said, could well be the foundations of an online network primed to surface disinformation ahead of the American presidential election in November...

The Miami Chronicle's website first appeared on Feb. 26. Its tagline falsely claims to have delivered "the Florida News since 1937."

Amid some true reports, the site published a story last week about a "leaked audio recording" of Victoria Nuland, the U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs, discussing a shift in American support for Russia's beleaguered opposition after the death of the Russian dissident Aleksei A. Navalny. The recording is a crude fake, according to administration officials who would speak only anonymously to discuss intelligence matters.
From the Raw Story: The network was discovered by Clemson University's Media Forensics Hub by researchers Patrick Warren and Darren Linvill, who tell the Times that its websites are designed to lend journalistic credibility to slickly produced propaganda. "The page is just there to look realistic enough to fool a casual reader into thinking they're reading a genuine, U.S.-branded article," Linvill told the Times.

Slashdot reader ArchieBunker shared this article from NBC News: Exposure to leaded gasoline lowered the IQ of about half the population of the United States, a new study estimates. The peer-reviewed study, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses on people born before 1996 — the year the U.S. banned gas containing lead.

Overall, the researchers from Florida State University and Duke University found, childhood lead exposure cost America an estimated 824 million points, or 2.6 points per person on average. Certain cohorts were more affected than others. For people born in the 1960s and the 1970s, when leaded gas consumption was skyrocketing, the IQ loss was estimated to be up to 6 points and for some, more than 7 points. Exposure to it came primarily from inhaling auto exhaust.
"Lead is a neurotoxin, and no amount of it is safe.

Space.com describes it as "a nearly 3-ton leftover tossed overboard from the International Space Station" — which crashed back to earth today. One satellite tracker claims to have filmed it passing over the Netherlands...

"A couple minutes later reentry and it would have reached Fort Meyers" in Florida, posted astronomer Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. But instead it re-entered the earth's atmosphere "over the Gulf of Mexico between Cancun and Cuba," Friday afternoon. "This was within the previous prediction window but a little to the northeast of the 'most likely' part of the path."

From Space.com: The multi-ton Exposed Pallet 9 (EP9) was jettisoned from the space station back in March 2021. At the time, it was reported to be the most massive object ever tossed overboard from the International Space Station. Disposing of used or unnecessary equipment in such a way is common practice aboard the space station, as the objects typically burn up harmlessly in Earth's atmosphere.

Ahead of EP9's reentry, the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Relief, National Warning Center 1 in Bonn, Germany issued this information... "The object is battery packs from the International Space Station. Luminous phenomena or the perception of a sonic boom are possible...." EP9 is loaded with old Nickel-Hydrogen batteries, NASA explained at the time it was jettisoned, also explaining that EP9 has the approximate mass of a large SUV and predicting it would re-enter Earth's atmosphere in two-to-four years.
"A large space object reenters the atmosphere in a natural way approximately once per week," the European Space Agency points out, "with the majority of the associated fragments burning up before reaching the ground.

"Most spacecraft, launch vehicles and operational hardware are designed to limit the risks associated with a reentry."

A United Airlines Holdings aircraft ran off the taxiway into a grassy area after landing at Houston Friday, the third incident this week involving the airline's Boeing planes. From a report: United Flight 2477, with 160 passengers and six crew, had just landed at George Bush Intercontinental Airport about 8 a.m. local time Friday when it veered into the grass on a turn. No one was injured, and passengers left the plane on a set of stairs before being bused to the terminal, the airline said.

The incident follows the mid-air loss of a tire from a United Boeing 777-200 Thursday, just after the plane took off from San Francisco on a flight to Osaka, Japan, and an engine fire on a United flight from Houston to Fort Myers, Florida, earlier this week. The plane in the Houston-to-Florida flight had to make an emergency landing after one of its engines burst into flames 10 minutes after takeoff. The 21-year-old aircraft was also a 737 -- but an earlier version than the Max, according to FlightRadar24.

In an update on CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday, Blue Origin said it was aiming to send an uncrewed lander to the surface of the moon in the next 12 to 16 months. A crewed version is expected to follow. GeekWire reports: "We're expecting to land on the moon between 12 and 16 months from today," [said John Couluris, senior vice president for lunar permanence at Blue Origin]. "I understand I'm saying that publicly, but that's what our team is aiming towards." Couluris was referring to a pathfinder version of Blue Origin's nearly three-story-tall Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander, which is taking shape at Blue Origin's production facility in Huntsville, Ala. The Pathfinder Mission would demonstrate the MK1's capabilities -- including its hydrogen-fueled BE-7 engine, its precision landing system and its ability to deliver up to 3 tons of payload anywhere on the moon.

Blue Origin envisions building multiple cargo landers, as well as a crewed version of the Blue Moon lander that could transport NASA astronauts to and from the lunar surface. The MK1 cargo lander is designed for a single launch and delivery, but the crewed lander would be reusable. "We'll launch them to lunar orbit, and we'll leave them there," Couluris explained. "And we'll refuel them in orbit, so that multiple astronauts can use the same vehicle back and forth."

The Pathfinder Mission would be funded by Blue Origin, but NASA is providing support for other Blue Moon missions. Blue Origin's $3.4 billion contract with NASA calls for the crewed lander to be available for the Artemis 5 moon mission by 2029, with an uncrewed test flight as part of the buildup. The in-space refueling operation would make use of a cislunar transporter, built by Lockheed Martin, that could travel between low Earth orbit and lunar orbit with supplies. "We are now building with NASA the infrastructure to ensure lunar permanency," Couluris said. NASA is providing funding for the Blue Moon landing system as an alternative to SpaceX's Starship system, which is under development at SpaceX's Starbase in South Texas. The crewed Starship lunar lander is scheduled to come into play for Artemis 3, a milestone landing mission that's currently scheduled for 2026. [...]

Blue Origin plans to send the MK1 lander to the moon on its reusable New Glenn rocket, which is also under development. A couple of weeks ago, a pathfinder version of that rocket was raised on a Florida launch pad for the first time, and it's currently going through a series of cryogenic tanking tests. Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp, who was brought over to the company from Amazon last year to accelerate work on New Glenn, said in a LinkedIn post that he's "looking forward to bringing this heavy-lift capacity to our customers later this year." One of the early launches is tasked with sending a pair of NASA probes to Mars.

The US Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments Monday in two cases that could dramatically reshape social media, weighing whether states such as Texas and Florida should have the power to control what posts platforms can remove from their services. From a report: The high-stakes battle gives the nation's highest court an enormous say in how millions of Americans get their news and information, as well as whether sites such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok should be able to make their own decisions about how to moderate spam, hate speech and election misinformation. At issue are laws passed by the two states that prohibit online platforms from removing or demoting user content that expresses viewpoints -- legislation both states say is necessary to prevent censorship of conservative users.

More than a dozen Republican attorneys general have argued to the court that social media should be treated like traditional utilities such as the landline telephone network. The tech industry, meanwhile, argues that social media companies have First Amendment rights to make editorial decisions about what to show. That makes them more akin to newspapers or cable companies, opponents of the states say. The case could lead to a significant rethinking of First Amendment principles, according to legal experts. A ruling in favor of the states could weaken or reverse decades of precedent against "compelled speech," which protects private individuals from government speech mandates, and have far-reaching consequences beyond social media. A defeat for social media companies seems unlikely, but it would instantly transform their business models, according to Blair Levin, an industry analyst at the market research firm New Street Research.

Florida lawmakers passed a bill on Thursday that forces social media companies to keep most minors off their platforms. The Hill reports: The legislation, which passed the state House Thursday after earlier being approved by the Senate, now heads to Gov. Ron DeSantis's (R) desk, though he says he's not quite ready to sign on. DeSantis told reporters Friday that he thinks there needs to be a "proper balance" between government regulations and parental input on the social media issue. "We'll be wrestling with that," he said. The governor said he'll be assessing the final version of the legislation likely through the weekend. "Federal law says 13 and under can't have social media accounts. That's not really enforced," he said.

The lawmakers who championed the proposed social media ban, which would require platforms check the ages of users through a third-party source, argue it will make the online landscape safer for youths. The legislation passed 108-7 in the state House and 23-14 in the Florida Senate within a matter of hours Thursday.

Andrew Feinberg, writing for Slate: If you wanted to design a financial channel that would cause investors to underperform the stock market, you'd create CNBC, NBC's financial counterpart that runs on cable news and ostensibly tries to make viewers better investors. You'd make it sober and rational (well, there is Jim Cramer, but we'll get to him later), no need to feature anyone foaming at the mouth about stocks that could triple in six months or worried Cassandras warning that it's time to sell everything and burrow underground. And yet, you'd ensure that viewers stay engaged by keeping them on edge, worried and confused about what might happen next. Anxiety, you'd discover, is your friend, viewer hypervigilance your bread and butter.

In other words, CNBC makes viewers nervous in a very specific way. Nervous that they're about to lose money in a market downturn. Nervous that they might miss a hot trend or stock. Or uncertain that they're in the right sectors. Then an "expert" comes on and says, "Hey, you're in the wrong sectors -- it's time to leave tech for industrials, financials, and health care." In its sober, rational way, the network creates a sense of urgency. Although its tone is never like that of an infomercial, sometimes the message is similar. Act now. The problem is, hypervigilance is probably the worst quality most investors can have. "Sit on your ass," the late Charlie Munger advised investors, emphasizing that when it comes to investing, less is more. Feeling nervous leads to excessive trading. And "all the evidence shows that individual investors do worse the more they trade," says Jay Ritter, professor of finance at the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business. "Buying and selling something based on what you see on CNBC is not likely to be a successful strategy."

"It appears that Apple Pay is down — particularly for Chase customers," reports the Verge: Verge staffers have had their cards declined while trying to pay with Chase cards using Apple Pay, while using the same physical card works just fine. Several people on Threads confirmed the same issue when I asked — although people with non-Chase banks like Citi appear to be using Apple Pay just fine...

For what it's worth, the Chase customer service line is currently up to 15-minute wait times, and agents are telling people that Apple Pay is "going through maintenance" to receive "an unexpected upgrade," which is a delightful euphemism. Sadly, no one seems to know when things will be fixed.
"Maintenance in progress," says Apple's system status page — saying their maintenance started five hours ago and is "ongoing." (It adds that some users may be "affected," and that some Maryland Users "may have issues.")

But the Verge writes that "we've had reports in both New York and Los Angeles," while commenters on their article add that they've also experienced the same problem in Florida and in Colorado.

UPDATE (2/18/2024): An Apple spokesperson told the Verge Sunday this "was not an Apple Pay issue, and we saw no problems with our systems." (The Verge adds that "the not-so-subtle subtext there being that this was a Chase problem...") The spokesperson added that Apple's maintenance announcement on their system status page was unrelated.

Texas-based Intuitive Machines' inaugural moon mission began early Thursday morning, heading toward what could be the first U.S. lunar landing in more than 50 years. From a report: Intuitive Machines' Nova-C lander launched from Florida on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, beginning the IM-1 mission. "It is a profoundly humbling moment for all of us at Intuitive Machines. The opportunity to return the United States to the moon for the first time since 1972 is a feat of engineering that demands a hunger to explore," Intuitive Machines vice president of space systems Trent Martin said during a press conference.

The IM-1 lander, named "Odysseus" after the mythological Greek hero, is carrying 12 government and commercial payloads -- six of which are for NASA under an $118 million contract. NASA leadership emphasized before the launch that "IM-1 is an Intuitive Machines' mission, it's not a NASA mission." But it marks the second mission under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which aims to deliver science projects and cargo to the moon with increasing regularity in support of the agency's Artemis crew program. The agency views CLPS missions as "a learning experience," NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration in the science mission directorate, Joel Kearns, told press before the launch.
UPDATE: See their first images transmitted from space....

Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: Our goal," Amazon founder Jeff Bezos explained in a Feb. 2021 Instagram post announcing the location of a second tuition-free @BezosAcademy preschool in Tacoma, WA, "is to unlock the potential in kids to become creative leaders, original thinkers, and lifelong learners -- regardless of their zip code."

Three years later, a new Amazon SEC filing reveals how much zip codes can matter, even to Bezos, the third richest person in the world. GeekWire reports: "A new Amazon [SEC] filing, detailing Jeff Bezos' plan to sell a slice of his stake in the company, sheds fresh light on his move from Seattle to Miami -- and his ability to avoid Washington state's capital gains tax [ironically, earmarked to be funneled into early-childhood education programs and school construction] in the process. The filing reveals that the Amazon founder and executive chairman adopted a trading plan Nov. 8 to sell up to 50 million Amazon shares during a period ending in January 2025. It would be the first time he has sold Amazon stock since 2021. The plan was adopted less than a week after Bezos announced on Instagram, on Nov. 2, that he was leaving his longtime home of Seattle for sunnier skies in Miami. In his Instagram post, Bezos said he wanted to be closer to his parents and Blue Origin space venture in Florida. He did not mention taxes."

"Given Bezos' recent move out of Washington -- where he founded and built Amazon into a global behemoth -- he will also be saving around $600 million in tax expense if he ends up selling the maximum of 50 million shares under the plan, based on the company's current stock price. That's around $600 million in what would have otherwise been tax revenue for his former home state, as The Center Square reported Monday. The capital gains tax, passed in 2021, imposes a 7% tax on any gains of more than $250,000 from the sale of stocks and bonds, with some exceptions. It was challenged in court but ultimately ruled constitutional by the state Supreme Court last year. The tax brought in nearly $900 million in its first year of collection. Revenue goes toward early education and childcare programs, as well as school construction projects."

It's of course no secret that Bezos is no fan of taxes -- he explored founding Amazon on an Indian reservation near San Francisco to avoid taxes, ponied up $100,000 to defeat a proposed WA state income tax aimed at improving WA state public education (joined in the fight by Microsoft and Steve Ballmer), characterized as unconstitutional attempts to make Amazon collect and pay sales taxes, and came under fire by ProPublica for paying no income tax in some years.

NASA's nearly $1 billion PACE mission launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early this morning, successfully making it to polar orbit -- a first for NASA since 1960. "When it's up and running, PACE will make key observations of Earth's atmosphere and climate and allow scientists to assess the health of our oceans like never before," notes Space.com. From the report: PACE, by the way, is the first U.S. government mission to launch to a polar orbit from Florida since Nov. 30, 1960. On that day, a Thor Able Star rocket took off on such a trajectory but failed, raining debris down on Cuba, some of which apparently killed a cow. Rather than risk further incidents, the U.S. decided to conduct all of its subsequent polar launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base (now Vandenberg Space Force Base) in California -- until now. That said, PACE wasn't the first mission of any type to launch to polar orbit from Florida's Space Coast in six decades: SpaceX had completed 11 such commercial missions before sending PACE on its way.

PACE's handlers will now work to get the 10.5-foot-long (3.2 meters) spacecraft and its various subsystems up to speed. After this checkout period, the satellite can begin its science work. That work will be done by three instruments. One of them, a spectrometer called the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), will map out the ocean's many hues in great detail and an unprecedented range, from near-infrared wavelengths all way to the ultraviolet. These colors are determined by the interaction of sunlight with particles in seawater, such as the chlorophyll produced by photosynthetic plankton, the base of the marine food web. So OCI will reveal quite a bit about the health and status of ocean ecosystems, according to PACE team members.

"PACE's unprecedented spectral coverage will provide the first-ever global measurements designed to identify phytoplankton community composition," NASA officials wrote in a PACE mission description. "This will significantly improve our ability to understand Earth's changing marine ecosystems, manage natural resources such as fisheries and identify harmful algal blooms." The satellite's other two instruments are polarimeters. They'll measure how the oscillation of light in a plane, known as its polarization, is affected by passage through the ocean, clouds and aerosols (particles suspended in the atmosphere). "Measuring polarization states of UV-to-shortwave light at various angles provides detailed information on the atmosphere and ocean, such as particle size and composition," NASA officials wrote in the mission description.

The "technology building blocks" for space solar are already available, reports Clean Technica. "It's just a matter of scaling, systems integration, and adjustments for space-hardiness."

And several groups are looking at it — including the U.S. Space Force To help push costs down, the California Institute of Technology has proposed a sandwich-type solar module that integrates solar harvesting along with conversion to a radio frequency into one compact package, accompanied by a built-in antenna. Last month researchers at the school wrapped up a months-long, in-space test of different types of solar cells. Another approach is illustrated by the Michigan startup Virtus Solis, an industry partner of the University of Bristol. Last June the company and the school received £3.3 million in funding from the UK Net Zero Innovation program, for developing an open-source model for testing the performance of large, centralized antennas in space. "The concept depends upon the use of gigascale antenna arrays capable of delivering over 2GW of power from space onto similar gigascale antenna arrays either at sea or on the ground," the school explained.

As for how such a thing would be launched into space, that's where the U.S. Space Force comes in. Last August, the Space Force awarded a small business contract to the U.S. startup Orbital Composites. The company is tasked with the mission of developing its patented "quantum antenna" and in-space fabrication tools for secure communications in space applications, including space-to-space as well as space-to-Earth and vice versa. The basic idea is to let 3D printing doing much of the work in space. According to Orbital, in-space fabrication would save more than 100 times the cost of applying conventional fabrication methods to large-scale orbiting antennas. "By harnessing the potential of In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM), the company eyes the prospect of creating significantly larger space antennas," Orbital Composites explains. "By fabricating antennas in space, larger and more complex designs are possible that eliminate the constraints of launch and rocket fairings...."

If you're guessing that a hookup between Virtus and Orbital is in the works, that's a good guess. On February 1, at the SpaceCOM conference in Orlando, Florida, Virtus Solis let slip that it is working with Orbital Composites on a space solar pilot project. If all goes according to plan, the project will be up and running in 2027, deploying Virtus's robot-enabled fabrication system with Orbital's 3D printing. As of this writing the two companies have not posted details, but Space News picked up the thread. "The 2027 mission is designed to showcase critical power-generation technologies including in-space assembly of solar panels and transmission of more than one kilowatt to Earth," Space News explained. "The news release calls the 2027 mission "a precursor to large-scale commercial megawatt-class solar installations in space by 2030...."

To be clear, Orbital's press release about its new Space Force quantum antenna contract does not mention anything in particular about space solar. However, the pieces of the puzzle fit. Along with the Virtus and Grumman connections, in October of 2022 Orbital won a small business contract through SpaceWERX, the Space Force's innovative technologies funding arm, to explore the capabilities of ISAM systems.
"SpaceWERX comes under the umbrella of the U.S. Air Force's AFWERX innovation branch, which has developed a program called SSPIDR, short for Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research Project," the article points out. (While Virtus believes most space-based solar power systems could deliver megawatt hours of electricity at prices comparable to today's market.)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A California teenager prosecutors say is responsible for hundreds of swatting attacks around the United States was exposed after law enforcement pieced together a digital trail left on some of the internet's largest platforms, according to court records released this week. Alan Winston Filion, a 17-year-old from Lancaster, California, faces four felony charges in Florida's Seminole County related to swatting, or fake threats called into the police to provoke a forceful response, according to Florida state prosecutors. Police arrested Filion on January 18, and he was extradited to Seminole County this week.

Filion's arrest, first reported by WIRED on January 26, marks the culmination of a multi-agency manhunt for the person police claim is responsible for swatting attacks on high schools, historically black colleges and universities, mosques, and federal agents, and for threats to bomb the Pentagon, members of the United States Senate, and the US Supreme Court. Ultimately, a YouTube channel, Discord chats, and usernames related to The Lord of the Rings helped lead authorities to Filion's doorstep.

Florida prosecutors charged Filion with four felony counts, including three related to allegedly making false reports to law enforcement and one for unlawful use of a two-way radio for "facilitating or furthering an act of terrorism" that authorities say targeted people based on race, religion, or other protected classes. While prosecutors alleged that Filion "is responsible for hundreds of swatting and bomb threat incidents throughout the United States," the charges Filion faces relate to a single May 12, 2023, swatting attack against the Masjid Al Hayy Mosque in Sanford, Florida. [...] At 2 pm EST on Wednesday, Filion shuffled into a Seminole County courtroom and stood quietly as the judge read the charges against him. He is currently being held without bond.

"According to one study, homeowners are three times more likely than renters to own an electric vehicle," writes the Washington Post. But others still have options: Drivers who park on the street have found novel ways to charge their vehicles, using extension cords running over the sidewalk or even into the branches of a nearby tree... [S]ome municipalities explicitly allow over-the-sidewalk charging as part of a broader strategy to cut transportation emissions... In some areas, homeowners can also hire an electrician to run power under the sidewalk to a curbside charging port. But homeowners should check local rules and permitting requirements for curbside charging. In some highly EV-friendly cities, local governments will cover the costs. In Seattle, a pilot program is installing faster curbside charging to residents who opt in to the program...

If home charging simply isn't an option, some drivers rely on public charging — either using workplace chargers or charging occasionally on DC fast chargers, which can bring an EV battery from 0 to 80 percent in around 20 minutes. The problem is that public charging is more expensive than charging at home — although in most places, still less expensive than gas... For drivers who have access to Tesla superchargers, public charging might still be a solid option — but for non-Tesla drivers, it's still a challenge. Many fast chargers can be broken for days or weeks on end, or can be crowded with other drivers. The popular charging app PlugShare can help EV owners find available charging ports, but relying on public fast charging can quickly become a pain for drivers used to quickly filling up on gas. In those situations, a plug-in hybrid or regular hybrid car might be a better option.
And beyond that, "experts say that there are a key few steps that renters or condo owners can take to access charging," according to the article: The first is looking up local "right-to-charge" laws — regulations that require homeowners' associations or landlords to allow residents to install Level 1 or Level 2 charging. Ten states have "right-to-charge" laws on the books. In California and Colorado, for example, renters or homeowners have the right to install charging at their private parking space or, in some cases, in a public area at their apartment building. Other states, including Florida, Hawaii and New Jersey, have similar but limited laws. Residents can also reach out to landlords or property owners directly and make the case for installing charging infrastructure. All of this "puts a fair amount of onus on the driver," said Ben Prochazka, the executive director of the Electrification Coalition. But, he added, many EV advocacy groups are working on changing building codes in cities and states so that all multifamily homes with parking have to be "EV-ready."
Ingrid Malmgren, policy director at the EV advocacy group Plug In America, tells the newspaper that "communities all over the country are coming up with creative solutions. And it's just going to get easier and easier."