An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Senator Steve Padilla (D-CA) introduced a bill [dubbed SB 867] on Monday that would place a four-year ban on the sale and manufacture of toys with AI chatbot capabilities for kids under 18. The goal is to give safety regulators time to develop regulations to protect children from "dangerous AI interactions."

"Chatbots and other AI tools may become integral parts of our lives in the future, but the dangers they pose now require us to take bold action to protect our children," Senator Padilla said in a statement. "Our safety regulations around this kind of technology are in their infancy and will need to grow as exponentially as the capabilities of this technology do. Pausing the sale of these chatbot-integrated toys allows us time to craft the appropriate safety guidelines and framework for these toys to follow." [...] "Our children cannot be used as lab rats for Big Tech to experiment on," Padilla said.

The U.S. Department of Energy has greenlit four federal sites for private sector AI datacenters and nuclear-powered energy projects, aligning with Trump's directive to fast-track AI infrastructure using government land. "The four that have been finalized are the Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Reservation, Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, and Savannah River Site," reports The Register. "These will now move forward to invite companies in the private sector to build AI datacenter projects plus any necessary energy sources to power them, including nuclear generation." The Register reports: "By leveraging DoE land assets for the deployment of AI and energy infrastructure, we are taking a bold step to accelerate the next Manhattan Project -- ensuring US AI and energy leadership," Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement. Ironically -- or perhaps not -- Oak Ridge Reservation was established in the early 1940s as part of the original Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb, and is home to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) that operates the Frontier exascale supercomputer, and the Y-12 National Security Complex which supports US nuclear weapons programs.

The other sites are also involved with either nuclear research or atomic weapons in one way or another, which may hint at the administration's intentions for how the datacenters should be powered. All four locations are positioned to host new bit barns as well as power generation to bolster grid reliability, strengthen national security, and reduce energy costs, Wright claimed. [...] In light of this tight time frame, the DoE says that partners may be selected by the end of the year. Details regarding project scope, eligibility requirements, and submission guidelines for each site are expected to be released in the coming months.

It's not just Amazon's CEO predicting AI will lower their headcount. "Top executives at some of the largest American companies have a warning for their workers: Artificial intelligence is a threat to your job," reports the Washington Post — including IBM, Salesforce, and JPMorgan Chase.

But are they really just trying to impress their shareholders? Economists say there aren't yet strong signs that AI is driving widespread layoffs across industries.... CEOs are under pressure to show they are embracing new technology and getting results — incentivizing attention-grabbing predictions that can create additional uncertainty for workers. "It's a message to shareholders and board members as much as it is to employees," Molly Kinder, a Brookings Institution fellow who studies the impact of AI, said of the CEO announcements, noting that when one company makes a bold AI statement, others typically follow. "You're projecting that you're out in the future, that you're embracing and adopting this so much that the footprint [of your company] will look different."

Some CEOs fear they could be ousted from their job within two years if they don't deliver measurable AI-driven business gains, a Harris Poll survey conducted for software company Dataiku showed. Tech leaders have sounded some of the loudest warnings — in line with their interest in promoting AI's power...

IBM, which recently announced job cuts, said it replaced a couple hundred human resource workers with AI "agents" for repetitive tasks such as onboarding and scheduling interviews. In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested on Joe Rogan's podcast that the company is building AI that might be able to do what some human workers do by the end of the year.... Marianne Lake, JPMorgan's CEO of consumer and community banking, told an investor meeting last month that AI could help the bank cut headcount in operations and account services by 10 percent. The CEO of BT Group Allison Kirkby suggested that advances in AI would mean deeper cuts at the British telecom company...

Despite corporate leaders' warnings, economists don't yet see broad signs that AI is driving humans out of work. "We have little evidence of layoffs so far," said Columbia Business School professor Laura Veldkamp, whose research explores how companies' use of AI affects the economy. "What I'd look for are new entrants with an AI-intensive business model, entering and putting the existing firms out of business." Some researchers suggest there is evidence AI is playing a role in the drop in openings for some specific jobs, like computer programming, where AI tools that generate code have become standard... It is still unclear what benefits companies are reaping from employees' use of AI, said Arvind Karunakaran, a faculty member of Stanford University's Center for Work, Technology, and Organization. "Usage does not necessarily translate into value," he said. "Is it just increasing productivity in terms of people doing the same task quicker or are people now doing more high value tasks as a result?"

Lynda Gratton, a professor at London Business School, said predictions of huge productivity gains from AI remain unproven. "Right now, the technology companies are predicting there will be a 30% productivity gain. We haven't yet experienced that, and it's not clear if that gain would come from cost reduction ... or because humans are more productive."
On an earnings call, Salesforce's chief operating and financial officer said AI agents helped them reduce hiring needs — and saved $50 million, according to the article. (And Ethan Mollick, co-director of Wharton School of Business' generative AI Labs, adds that if advanced tools like AI agents can prove their reliability and automate work — that could become a larger disruptor to jobs.) "A wave of disruption is going to happen," he's quoted as saying.

But while the debate continues about whether AI will eliminate or create jobs, Mollick still hedges that "the truth is probably somewhere in between."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Bumble founder and executive chair Whitney Wolfe Herd, who stepped down as CEO at the beginning of 2024, is returning to the post in mid-March. Former Slack CEO Lidiane Jones, who succeeded Herd, has resigned for "personal reasons" and will remain in the role until Wolfe Herd takes over. "As I step into the role of CEO, I'm energized and fully committed to Bumble's success, our mission of creating meaningful, equitable relationships, and our opportunity ahead," Wolfe Herd says in a statement. "We have exciting innovation ahead for Bumble in this bold new chapter." Bumble's share price has dropped by half since the app introduced a redesign and feature in April that let men send the first message in response to prewritten questions. "Bumble gained popularity in part because it was set up for women to message their matches first," notes The Verge.

"In Bumble's most recent earnings report, it said that the number of paying users had increased from 3.8 million to 4.3 million over the last year, however, average revenue per paying user dropped from $23.42 to $21.17, and its total revenue dropped slightly."

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Kyiv Independent: The United States will partner with Ukraine to transition Ukraine's coal-fired plants to small modular nuclear reactors, and to use them to help decarbonize its steel industry, the countries announced on November 16 at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan...

The partnership will build a roadmap and provide technical support to "rebuild, modernize, and decarbonize Ukraine's steel industry with small modular reactors," according to a statement from the U.S. State Department... It will also "facilitate the transition of Ukraine's coal-fired power plants to secure and safe SMR nuclear power plants utilizing existing infrastructure and retraining the workforce," the statement read.

Another project announced at the conference, known as COP29, will build a pilot plant in Ukraine to demonstrate production of clean hydrogen and ammonia using simulated small modular reactor technology.
That clean hydrogen/ammonia project involves a multinational public-private consortium which also includes Japan and South Korea, according to the U.S. State Department. Their announcement says the three projects "will help position Ukraine to take a leadership role on secure and safe nuclear energy" (as well as industrial decarbonization).

Three years ago the U.S. State Department launched a program to help countries develop nuclear energy programs "to support clean energy goals under the highest international standards for nuclear safety, security, and nonproliferation." That program will send $30 million for these three projects...

schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: Chinese government-linked hackers have burrowed into U.S. critical infrastructure and are waiting "for just the right moment to deal a devastating blow," FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Thursday. An ongoing Chinese hacking campaign known as Volt Typhoon has successfully gained access to numerous American companies in telecommunications, energy, water and other critical sectors, with 23 pipeline operators targeted, Wray said in a speech at Vanderbilt University.

China is developing the "ability to physically wreak havoc on our critical infrastructure at a time of its choosing," Wray said at the 2024 Vanderbilt Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats. "Its plan is to land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try to induce panic." Wray said it was difficult to determine the intent of this cyber pre-positioning which was aligned with China's broader intent to deter the U.S. from defending Taiwan. [...] Wray said China's hackers operated a series of botnets - constellations of compromised personal computers and servers around the globe - to conceal their malicious cyber activities. Private sector American technology and cybersecurity companies previously attributed Volt Typhoon to China, including reports by security researchers with Microsoft and Google. China's Embassy in Washington said in a statement: "Some in the US have been using origin-tracing of cyberattacks as a tool to hit and frame China, claiming the US to be the victim while it's the other way round, and politicizing cybersecurity issues."

The iFixit team pulled apart the newest Fairphone 5 smartphone and awarded its highest score for repairability: 10 out of 10. With the exception of one or two compromises, the Fairphone 5 is just as repairable as its predecessors. The Register reports: As before, opening the phone is a simple matter of popping off the back of the case. The beefier battery -- 4200 mAh instead of the previous 3905 mAh -- remains easy to remove, although the bigger size has implications elsewhere in the device. Replacing the USB-C port remains simple thanks to a metal lip that allows it to be removed easily. Individual cameras can also be replaced, a nice upgrade from the all-in-one unit of the preceding phone.

However, rather than something along the lines of the Core Module of the previous phone, the iFixit team found a motherboard and daughterboard more akin to other Android handsets. According to Fairphone, the bigger battery made the change necessary, but it's still a little disappointing. Still, the teardown team noted clear labeling to stop cables from being accidentally plugged into the wrong places. It said: "That's what intuitive repair design is all about: it should be easy to do the right thing and complicated to do the wrong thing." According to iFixit co-founder and CEO Kyle Wiens: "Fairphone's promise of five Android version upgrades and over eight years of security updates with the Fairphone 5 is a bold statement in an industry that leans towards fleeting product life cycles. This is a significant stride towards sustainability and sets a new benchmark for smartphone lifespan."

"At iFixit, we believe in tech that lasts, and Fairphone is making that belief a reality. Fairphone's effort to attain a 10-year lifespan is not just impressive; it's unparalleled."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Coming out of the ongoing Google antitrust trial, an internal Apple presentation has surfaced (via The Verge) in which the company called Android a "massive tracking device." The presentation in question was regarding a push within Apple to start "Competing on Privacy." The slides, made in January 2013, dove into how Apple's competitors (Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft primarily) handled privacy matters and user data. A "privacy timeline" includes some 2000s and 2010s events that made headlines regarding privacy, such as Google's Street View cars recording private Wi-Fi networks and Instagram's aim to use user photos in its ads, as well as Google's privacy policy move to combining user data across services. Apple went on to compare how its products handle privacy differently from Google and others.

The presentation culminates in the full-page statement [...] where Apple says that "Android is a massive tracking device." The slideshow is partially redacted and abridged, which leaves out the context of this statement, but it's certainly a bold way to talk about a competitor. Of course, all mobile devices do a whole lot of tracking, whether it's Android or iOS.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A relatively new venture founded by Navneet Dalal, an ex-Google research scientist, Matic, formerly known as Matician, is developing robots that can navigate homes to clean "more like a human," as Dalal puts it. Matic today revealed that it has raised $29.5 million, inclusive of a $24 million Series A led by a who's who of tech luminaries, including GitHub co-founder Nat Friedman, Stripe co-founders John and Patrick Collison, Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo and Twitter co-founder and Block CEO Jack Dorsey.

Dalal co-founded Matic in 2017 with Mehul Nariyawala, previously a lead product manager at Nest, where he oversaw Nest's security camera portfolio. [...] Early on, Matic focused on building robot vacuums -- but not because Dalal, who serves as the company's CEO, saw Matic competing with the iRobots and Ecovacs of the world. Rather, floor-cleaning robots provided a convenient means to thoroughly map indoor spaces, he and Nariyawala believed. "Robot vacuums became our initial focus due to their need to cover every inch of indoor surfaces, making them ideal for mapping," Dalal said. "Moreover, the floor-cleaning robot market was ripe for innovation." [...] "Matic was inspired by busy working parents who want to live in a tidy home, but don't want to spend their limited free time cleaning," Dalal said. "It's the first fully autonomous floor cleaning robot that continuously learns and adapts to users' cleaning preferences without ever compromising their privacy."

There are a lot of bold claims in that statement. But on the subject of privacy, Matic does indeed -- or at least claims to -- ensure data doesn't leave a customer's home. All processing happens on the robot (on hardware "equivalent to an iPhone 6," Dalal says), and mapping and telemetry data is saved locally, not in the cloud, unless users opt in to sharing. Matic doesn't even require an internet connection to get up and running -- only a smartphone paired over a local Wi-Fi network. The Matic vacuum understands an array of voice commands and gestures for fine-grained control. And -- unlike some robot vacuums in the market -- it can pick up cleaning tasks where it left off in the event that it's interrupted (say, by a wayward pet). Dalal says that Matic can also prioritize areas to clean depending on factors like the time of day and nearby rooms and furniture. Dalal insists that all this navigational lifting can be accomplished with cameras alone. "In order to run all the necessary algorithms, from 3D depth to semantics to ... controls and navigation, on the robot, we had to vertically integrate and hyper-optimize the entire codebase," Dalal said, "from the modifying kernel to building a first-of-its-kind iOS app with live 3D mapping. This enables us to deliver an affordable robot to our customers that solves a real problem with full autonomy."

The robot won't be cheap. It starts at $1,795 but will be available for a limited time at a discounted price of $1,495.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Major corporations like Apple and Disney will be forced to disclose their carbon emissions under a new Californian law approved on Monday. Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill -- passed by the state legislature -- requiring companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue to report greenhouse gas emissions. Similar efforts are moving slowly at the federal level. Mr Newsom praised the law's aims, but questioned how it will be carried out.

"This important policy, once again, demonstrates California's continued leadership with bold responses to the climate crisis," Mr Newsom wrote in a signing statement. "However, the implementation deadlines in this bill are likely infeasible." He added that he is "concerned about the overall financial impact of this bill on businesses." The California Air Resources Board must put a system in place for reporting emissions by January 1, 2025, a little more than a year from now, under the law.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Burkey Belser, a graphic designer who created the ubiquitous nutrition facts label -- a stark rectangle listing calories, fat, sodium and other content information -- that adorns the packaging of nearly every digestible product in grocery stores, died Sept. 25 at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 76. The cause was bladder cancer, said his wife Donna Greenfield, with whom he founded the Washington, D.C., design firm Greenfield/Belser.

Mr. Belser's nutrition facts label -- rendered in bold and light Helvetica type -- was celebrated as a triumph of public health and graphic design when it debuted in 1994 following passage of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act. Although some products had previously included nutritional information, there was no set standard, and the information was of little public health value in helping consumers make better food choices. The new law, drafted as obesity and other diet-related illnesses were surging, required mandatory food labels with nutrients presented in the context of a healthy 2,000-calorie-a-day diet.

Writing in a journal published by the Professional Association for Design, Massimo Vignelli, the renowned Italian designer, called Mr. Belser's creation a "clean testimonial of civilization, a statement of social responsibility, and a masterpiece of graphic design." The Food and Drug Administration chose Mr. Belser to design the nutrition label following his success creating the black and yellow energy guide label for appliances. Once dubbed the "Steve Jobs of information design," Mr. Belser's fondness for exceedingly simple design perfectly suited him for a job that required stripping down nutritional facts to the bare essentials. The report proceeds to tell the tale of how Mr. Belser worked pro bono with his team to labor through three dozen iterations of the label, ultimately settling on "simplicity in itself."

"There's a harmony about it, and the presentation has no extraneous components to it," Belser told The Washington Post. "The words are left and right justified, which gave it a kind of balance. There was no grammatical punctuation like commas or periods or parentheses that would slow the reader down."

He compared the finished product -- which he later adapted to over-the-counter drugs -- to the Apple iPod. "The detail is so important that you wouldn't even notice it and if you didn't notice it's a sign that it succeeded," he said. "I don't know if anybody's heart beats faster when they see nutrition facts, but they sense a pleasure that they get the information they need."

America's Federal Trade Commission "took an a bold move on Thursday aimed at shifting the balance of power from companies to workers," reports NPR: The agency proposed a new rule that would prohibit employers from imposing noncompete agreements on their workers, a practice it called exploitative and widespread, affecting some 30 million American workers. "The freedom to change jobs is core to economic liberty and to a competitive, thriving economy," said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan in a statement. "Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand."

Noncompete agreements restrict workers from quitting their jobs and taking new jobs at rival companies or starting up similar businesses of their own within a certain time period — typically between six months and two years. They're used across a broad array of industries, including in high-paying white-collar fields such as banking and tech, but also in many low-wage sectors as well, as President Biden has pointed out.

"These aren't just high-paid executives or scientists who hold secret formulas for Coca-Cola so Pepsi can't get their hands on it," Biden said in a speech about competition in 2021. "A recent study found one in five workers without a college education is subject to non-compete agreements...." The FTC estimates that a ban on noncompete agreements could increase wages by nearly $300 billion a year by allowing workers to pursue better opportunities.

The rule does not take effect immediately. The public has 60 days to offer comment on the proposed rule, after which a final rule could be published and then enforced some months after that.
Thanks to Slashdot reader couchslug for submitting the story.

"An aviation company at the cutting edge of electrified air travel has taken a significant step forward, completing a first-of-a-kind test flight using a retrofitted seaplane," reports New Atlas: Harbour Air's De Havilland Beaver completed a short hop from the Canadian mainland to Vancouver Island using its all-electric drivetrain, demonstrating the viability of its cleaner approach to short-haul flights.

Harbour Air is the largest seaplane airline in North America and claims to transport around half a million passengers across 30,000 commercial flights each year. In 2019, it pledged to become the world's first all-electric airline, a bold vision that involves retrofitting its fleet of existing six-seater seaplanes with electric propulsion systems. These systems come via a partnership with electric motor company MagniX, which is making important advances with its high-power electric motors and has partnered with other ambitious companies in the aviation space.

In December of 2019, the modified De Havilland Beaver took off to complete the first successful flight of an all-electric commercial aircraft, a brief jaunt above the Fraser River at Harbour Air's terminal in Richmond, British Columbia. The company has since continued this testing program with an eye to certifying and approving the aircraft with the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Transport Canada.
"The historic De Havilland Beaver has been completely retrofitted in 2019 to operate using 100% electricity flew 45 miles in 24 minutes," the company said in a statement. They're calling the flight "a major milestone in the advancement of all-electric commercial flights." More data from the ePlane's web site: Our ePlane project will ultimately turn our 40+ fleet of seaplanes from carbon-neutral to carbon-zero!

We know that the electrification of our fleet is the next necessary step to truly make a difference in our environmental and economic goals. It is better for the communities we serve and it also to gives our passengers a better way to travel. It's a bold step in making a big difference for our planet.

Bill Gates, concerned about the "significant suffering" caused by global setbacks including the COVID-19 pandemic, announced Wednesday that he will donate $20 billion to his foundation so it can increase its annual spending. The Associated Press reports: The donation, combined with longtime board member Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett's $3.1 billion gift last month, brings The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's endowment to approximately $70 billion, making it one of the largest, if not the largest in the world, depending on daily stock valuations. In an essay on the foundation's website, Bill Gates said he hopes "others in positions of great wealth and privilege will step up in this moment too."

The Gates Foundation plans to raise its annual budget by 50% over pre-pandemic levels to about $9 billion by 2026. The foundation hopes the increased spending will improve education, reduce poverty and reinstate the global progress toward ending preventable disease and achieving gender equality that has been halted in recent years. "Despite huge global setbacks in the past few years, I see incredible heroism and sacrifice all over the world and I believe progress is possible," Bill Gates, the foundation's co-chair, said in a statement. "But the great crises of our time require all of us to do more... I hope by giving more, we can mitigate some of the suffering people are facing right now and help fulfill the foundation's vision to give every person the chance to live a healthy and productive life."

In his essay, Bill Gates wrote that polarization in the United States makes battling global crises tougher. "The political divide limits our political capacity for dialogue, compromise, and cooperation and thwarts the bold leadership required both domestically and internationally to tackle these threats," he wrote. "Polarization is forcing us to look backwards and fight again for basic human rights, social justice, and democratic norms." While achieving gender equality has long been one of the foundation's primary investment areas, in his essay, Bill Gates singled out the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade as "a huge setback for gender equality, for women's health, and for overall human progress." "The potential for even further regression is scary," he added. "It will put lives at risk for women, people of color, and anyone living on the margins." You can read the full essay via Gates Notes.

Faked heart studies by a once-obscure scientist duped the U.S. government and medical establishment for years. Washington is still paying for it. From a Reuters investigation: Mario Ricciardi, a young Italian molecular biologist, was thrilled when he was selected to work with one of Harvard Medical School's most successful stem cell researchers. His new boss, Dr. Piero Anversa, had become famous within the field for his bold findings in 2001 that adult stem cells had special abilities to regenerate hearts or even cure heart disease, the leading cause of U.S. deaths . Millions in U.S. government grants poured into Anversa's lab at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Top journals published his papers. And the American Heart Association (AHA) proclaimed him a "research pioneer."

"He was like a god," recalled Ricciardi, now 39, one of several scientists to speak out for the first time about their experiences in Anversa's lab. Within a year of Ricciardi's arrival in 2011, they grew suspicious, the scientists recalled. They couldn't replicate the seminal findings of their celebrated boss and became concerned that data and images of cells were being manipulated. Anversa and his deputy gruffly dismissed their questions, they said. They took their concerns to Brigham officials, telling them that Anversa's blockbuster results appeared to have been faked. "The science just wasn't there," Ricciardi said.

After an investigation lasting almost six years, Brigham and Harvard wrote in a two-paragraph statement that they had found "falsified and/or fabricated data" in 31 papers authored by Anversa and his collaborators. In April 2017, the U.S. Justice Department separately concluded in a civil settlement with Brigham that Anversa's lab relied on "the fabrication of data and images" in seeking government grants and engaged in "reckless or deliberately misleading record-keeping." Yet federal money has continued to flow to test the proposition advanced by Anversa -- that adult stem cells can regenerate or heal hearts. Over two decades, federal and private grants have streamed into research labs despite allegations of fraud and fabrication against Anversa and others in the field, Reuters found. Meanwhile, no scientist has credibly established that Anversa's regeneration hypothesis holds true in humans, according to researchers and a review of medical literature.

"Companies critical to U.S. national interests will now have to report when they're hacked or they pay ransomware, according to new rules approved by Congress," reports the Associated Press: The rules are part of a broader effort by the Biden administration and Congress to shore up the nation's cyberdefenses after a series of high-profile digital espionage campaigns and disruptive ransomware attacks. The reporting will give the federal government much greater visibility into hacking efforts that target private companies, which often have skipped going to the FBI or other agencies for help. "It's clear we must take bold action to improve our online defenses," Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat who leads the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and wrote the legislation, said in a statement on Friday.

The reporting requirement legislation was approved by the House and the Senate on Thursday and is expected to be signed into law by President Joe Biden soon. It requires any entity that's considered part of the nation's critical infrastructure, which includes the finance, transportation and energy sectors, to report any "substantial cyber incident" to the government within three days and any ransomware payment made within 24 hours....

The legislation designates the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as the lead agency to receive notices of hacks and ransomware payments.... The new rules also empower CISA to subpoena companies that fail to report hacks or ransomware payments, and those that fail to comply with a subpoena could be referred to the Justice Department for investigation.

Microsoft said it has hired a former Amazon cloud executive to run its cybersecurity operations, potentially setting in motion a legal battle between the two tech giants. From a report: Charlie Bell, who long reported to former Amazon Web Services chief Andy Jassy and oversaw the engineering teams working on AWS's main software services, will become an executive vice president reporting to Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella. "Cybersecurity is one of the most challenging issues of our time -- for every person and organization on the planet -- and it is core to our mission," Nadella wrote in an email to employees obtained by Bloomberg. Securing customers' digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds "is a bold ambition we are going after and is what attracted Charlie to Microsoft."

[...] Bell's departure to a direct rival is a major blow for Amazon, and Microsoft said it's committed to continuing "constructive discussions" with the cloud leader about Bell's role. "We're sensitive to the importance of working through these issues together, as we've done when five recent Microsoft executives moved across town to work for Amazon," Microsoft said in a statement. Amazon, which has a history of seeking to enforce non-compete agreements vigorously, didn't immediately comment on the move. Bell will officially start his role once "a resolution is reached with his former employer," Nadella wrote in the email.

"60 seconds of rocket burn, straight into space," Virgin Galactic tweeted today, sharing a video of their historic launch.

CNN reports: Virgin Galactic's rocket-powered plane, carrying two pilots, soared into the upper atmosphere on its third mission to reach space Saturday morning. The success cues up Virgin Galactic to begin launching paying customers within the next year as the company works to finish its testing campaign at its new headquarters in New Mexico.

Spaceplane VSS Unity reached an altitude of 55.45 miles, according to the company. The U.S. government recognizes the 50-mile mark as the edge of space. The company tweeted Saturday morning that the spaceflight carried technology experiments for NASA's Flight Opportunities Program...

Saturday's flight comes after Virgin Galactic's last spaceflight attempt ended abruptly when the rocket engine that powers the space plane, called VSS Unity, failed to ignite, setting the company's testing schedule back by months. Virgin Galactic, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson in 2004, has spent years pledging to take groups of customers on brief, scenic flights to suborbital space. But the company has faced a series of complications and delays, including a 2014 test flight crash that left one pilot dead.

Nonetheless, Virgin Galactic has already sold tickets for $200,000 to $250,000 to more than 600 people.
The company said it also collected data "to be used for the final two verification reports that are required as part of the current FAA commercial reusable spacecraft operator's license." Virgin Galactic's CEO called it "a major step forward for both Virgin Galactic and human spaceflight in New Mexico. Space travel is a bold and adventurous endeavor, and I am incredibly proud of our talented team for making the dream of private space travel a reality."

In fact, this was the first ever spaceflight from Spaceport America, New Mexico, making it the third U.S. state to launch humans into space. New Mexico Governor Lujan Grisham said proudly in the company's statement that "After so many years and so much hard work, New Mexico has finally reached the stars." To commemorate the moment, the flight carried New Mexico's traditional green chile seeds, and featured the Zia Sun Symbol from the state flag on the outside of the spaceship. "The crew experienced extraordinary views of the bright, blue-rimmed curvature of the earth against the blackness of space," reads the statement from Virgin Galactic, adding that New Mexico's White Sands National Park "sparkled brilliantly below."

And pilot-in-command CJ Sturckow now becomes the first person ever to have flown to space from three different states.

As the White House considers raising taxes on corporations for the first time in more than 25 years, the head of one of America's largest companies is backing such a plan. From a report: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement Tuesday that the company is "supportive of a rise in the corporate tax rate." Bezos said, "We support the Biden Administration's focus on making bold investments in American infrastructure. Both Democrats and Republicans have supported infrastructure in the past, and it's the right time to work together to make this happen. We recognize this investment will require concessions from all sides -- both on the specifics of what's included as well as how it gets paid for." The White House is laying the groundwork for lifting the corporate tax rate above its current level of 21% to help pay for an ambitious infrastructure package. Bezos' statement is a notable show of approval for the move given that many others in the business community have warned that it could threaten recovery from the pandemic.

The outgoing Amazon chief executive is, in some ways, a surprising advocate for a corporate tax hike. In 2019, the then-former Vice President Joe Biden called out Amazon for its history of using tax credits and deductions to reduce its corporate income tax bill. The company fired back, saying, "we pay every penny we owe," and that it had paid $2.6 billion in corporate taxes since 2016. And again last year, then-Presidential candidate Biden said Amazon should "start paying their taxes," as part of a broader critique of large, successful businesses. Amazon has repeatedly said that it follows all applicable tax laws. The company also recently sparred with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has advocated for raising taxes on big corporations. Last month Warren said in a tweet: "Giant corporations like Amazon report huge profits to their shareholders -- but they exploit loopholes and tax havens to pay close to nothing in taxes. That's just not right."

The Drive reports on an "unprecedent exercise" which included a Russian nuclear submarine firing a torpedo underneath Arctic ice, which it calls "a bold statement of Russia's presence and capabilities in the increasingly tense Arctic region." Three Russian ballistic missile submarines surfaced next to each other from beneath the ice near the North Pole as part of a recent major Arctic exercise. The head of the country's Navy said that event was a first for his service. It also underscores the growing geopolitical competition in this highly strategic region... A pair of MiG-31 Foxhound interceptors, supported by an Il-78 aerial refueling tanker, also flew over the North Pole and troops have been conducting maneuvers on the ground in extreme cold weather conditions as part of Umka-2021. Average temperatures in the exercise area, at present, are ranging between -13 and -22 degrees Fahrenheit, with winds gusting up to just over 70 miles per hour, according to state-run media outlet TASS....

[A]ll of this is magnified by the ever-increasing strategic significance of the Arctic and growing geopolitical competition there, as a result. Much of this has been driven by the emergence of new economic opportunities as global climate change has caused ice in the region to recede. This has made the prospect of sending commercial shipping via the Northern Sea Route more viable and offers the possibility of greater access to untapped natural resources, including oil and natural gas. Just this week, Russia's state nuclear agency Rosatom has been promoting the Northern Sea Route as an alternative to traditional routes in light of the very serious situation in the Suez Canal...

The Umka-2021 drills come as Russia and the United States, among others, are working to expand their abilities to project military power into the Arctic. Russia has been working particularly hard to build new facilities and expand existing ones, especially air bases, in the region. The U.S. military, in cooperation with Canada, just recently demonstrated its ability to conduct more routine combat aviation operations out of the strategic Thule Air Base in Greenland, as well.
The article notes that U.S. Navy also conducts Ice Exercises each year with submarines surfacing from under Arctic the ice, "though not with ballistic missile boats. However, this particular drill is, nevertheless, a significant show of force and general demonstration of the Russian Navy's strategic capabilities...."

"We're in competition... and to be competitive with Russia and China, specifically in the Arctic, you have to be on the field," said the U.S. Air Force general who heads NORAD in remarks to Congress last week. The Drive quotes him as saying "And, so it's crucial that we do that and we continue producing capabilities that will allow us to be in the Arctic." The Russian Navy sending three ballistic missile submarines punching through the Arctic ice together in a row near the North Pole provides a very clear look at this competition and more such displays are likely to come as the geopolitical friction in the region continues to increase.