Month: June 2024
Support for renewable power is plunging among Republicans
The change is most pronounced in those over 50 years old.
Enlarge (credit: tigerstrawberry)
One of the most striking things about the explosion of renewable power that’s happening in the US is that much of it is going on in states governed by politicians who don’t believe in the problem wind and solar are meant to address. Acceptance of the evidence for climate change tends to be lowest among Republicans, yet many of the states where renewable power has boomed—wind in Wyoming and Iowa, solar in Texas—are governed by Republicans.
That’s in part because, up until about 2020, there was a strong bipartisan consensus in favor of expanding wind and solar power, with support above 75 percent among both parties. Since then, however, support among Republicans has dropped dramatically, approaching 50 percent, according to polling data released this week.
Renewables enjoyed solid Republican support until recently. (credit: Pew Research)
To a certain extent, none of this should be surprising. The current leader of the Republican Party has been saying that wind turbines cause cancer and offshore wind is killing whales. And conservative-backed groups have been spreading misinformation in order to drum up opposition to solar power facilities.
Here comes the world’s smallest 5G smartphone to date: obscure Chinese vendor set to debut minuscule mobile called Jelly Max, for minute mitts — but who will end up using it?
Chinese vendor Unihertz has unveiled Jelly Max, potentially the world’s smallest 5G smartphone.
Chinese vendor Unihertz has announced the upcoming launch of Jelly Max, which it claims is the world’s smallest 5G smartphone.
The company made a post on X and followed it up with a teaser on its website, but Unihertz has a history of making unusual smartphones.
The TickTock series, for example, has a customizable 1.3-inch touchscreen built into the back. We reviewed the TickTock 5G, and you can see what we thought of the company’s previous 5G device here. Its Atom devices are small and rugged (we’ve previously reviewed both the Atom and the Atom XL) and the Tank series of rugged phones come with features like built in DLP or laser projectors, and laser rangefinders. The Titan series are like modern BlackBerrys with physical keyboards. We reviewed the Titan here.
4-5 inches?
Now there’s the Jelly series – tiny phones, aimed at people with Lilliputian hands. Probably.
The 3-inch Jelly Star, launched in 2023, features a MediaTek Helio G99 processor and 4G connectivity and was crowdfunded on Kickstarter in just five minutes. Unihertz has used Kickstarter to launch other phones, so it’s possible that the Jelly Max may be given a similar crowdfunding approach.
From the teaser photo Unihertz released, which shows the Jelly Max resting on a six-row keyboard with function keys, it seems likely that the device will have a screen size of between 4 to 5 inches. It will be bigger than the Jelly Star, hence the Max name.
We can also see from the photo that the device has a fingerprint reader built into the screen and a camera at the top left. Beyond that, and the fact it’s a 5G phone, we know nothing else at the moment.
Pricing for the other smartphones that Unihertz makes tends to be reasonable. The Jelly Star, for example, is currently priced at $209.
The 5G TANK3 Pro, which is available to preorder, is priced at $649.99, but that’s very much at the top end for a Unihertz phone and it comes with a massive battery bumping up the price. Our best guess would be around $300 for the Jelly Max, but we’ll know for sure when more details arrive in the coming weeks.
More from TechRadar Pro
These are the best rugged smartphones aroundAnd these are the best business smartphones available todayTANK3 PRO has a DLP projector, a 200-megapixel camera and a camping light
The Center for Investigative Reporting is suing OpenAI and Microsoft
Illustration: The Verge
The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), the nonprofit that produces Mother Jones and Reveal, announced on Thursday that it’s suing Microsoft and OpenAI over alleged copyright infringement, following similar actions by The New York Times and several other media outlets.
“OpenAI and Microsoft started vacuuming up our stories to make their product more powerful, but they never asked for permission or offered compensation, unlike other organizations that license our material,” Monika Bauerlein, CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting, said in a statement. “This free rider behavior is not only unfair, it is a violation of copyright. The work of journalists, at CIR and everywhere, is valuable, and OpenAI and Microsoft know it.”
CIR’s lawyers argue in the lawsuit that OpenAI and Microsoft copied its content, undermined relationships with readers and partners, and deprived it of revenue.
CIR joins many others in pursuing legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft. The New York Times has already spent $1 million on its lawsuit against the two companies. A group of eight publications owned by hedge fund Alden Global Capital, including the New York Daily News and Chicago Tribune, is also suing, along with The Intercept, Raw Story, AlterNet, and The Denver Post.
Groups of authors have also sued OpenAI, though the lawsuit brought by a group that includes comedian Sarah Silverman was partially dismissed.
Some media organizations have signed licensing deals with OpenAI, including The Associated Press, Axel Springer, the Financial Times, Dotdash Meredith, News Corp, Vox Media (The Verge’s parent company), The Atlantic, and Time.
“We are working collaboratively with the news industry and partnering with global news publishers to display their content in our products like ChatGPT, including summaries, quotes, and attribution, to drive traffic back to the original articles,” an OpenAI spokesperson said to CNBC about CIR’s lawsuit.
OpenAI and Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from The Verge.
Disclosure: Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company, has a technology and content deal with OpenAI.
Illustration: The Verge
The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), the nonprofit that produces Mother Jones and Reveal, announced on Thursday that it’s suing Microsoft and OpenAI over alleged copyright infringement, following similar actions by The New York Times and several other media outlets.
“OpenAI and Microsoft started vacuuming up our stories to make their product more powerful, but they never asked for permission or offered compensation, unlike other organizations that license our material,” Monika Bauerlein, CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting, said in a statement. “This free rider behavior is not only unfair, it is a violation of copyright. The work of journalists, at CIR and everywhere, is valuable, and OpenAI and Microsoft know it.”
CIR’s lawyers argue in the lawsuit that OpenAI and Microsoft copied its content, undermined relationships with readers and partners, and deprived it of revenue.
CIR joins many others in pursuing legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft. The New York Times has already spent $1 million on its lawsuit against the two companies. A group of eight publications owned by hedge fund Alden Global Capital, including the New York Daily News and Chicago Tribune, is also suing, along with The Intercept, Raw Story, AlterNet, and The Denver Post.
Groups of authors have also sued OpenAI, though the lawsuit brought by a group that includes comedian Sarah Silverman was partially dismissed.
Some media organizations have signed licensing deals with OpenAI, including The Associated Press, Axel Springer, the Financial Times, Dotdash Meredith, News Corp, Vox Media (The Verge’s parent company), The Atlantic, and Time.
“We are working collaboratively with the news industry and partnering with global news publishers to display their content in our products like ChatGPT, including summaries, quotes, and attribution, to drive traffic back to the original articles,” an OpenAI spokesperson said to CNBC about CIR’s lawsuit.
OpenAI and Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from The Verge.
Disclosure: Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company, has a technology and content deal with OpenAI.
Supreme Court Ruling Kneecaps Federal Regulators
The Supreme Court on Friday overturned a long-standing legal doctrine in the US, making a transformative ruling that could hamper federal agencies’ ability to regulate all kinds of industry. The Verge adds: Six Republican-appointed justices voted to overturn the doctrine, called Chevron deference, a decision that could affect everything from pollution limits to consumer protections in the US.
Chevron deference allows courts to defer to federal agencies when there are disputes over how to interpret ambiguous language in legislation passed by Congress. That’s supposed to lead to more informed decisions by leaning on expertise within those agencies. By overturning the Chevron doctrine, the conservative-dominated SCOTUS decided that judges ought to make the call instead of agency experts.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Supreme Court on Friday overturned a long-standing legal doctrine in the US, making a transformative ruling that could hamper federal agencies’ ability to regulate all kinds of industry. The Verge adds: Six Republican-appointed justices voted to overturn the doctrine, called Chevron deference, a decision that could affect everything from pollution limits to consumer protections in the US.
Chevron deference allows courts to defer to federal agencies when there are disputes over how to interpret ambiguous language in legislation passed by Congress. That’s supposed to lead to more informed decisions by leaning on expertise within those agencies. By overturning the Chevron doctrine, the conservative-dominated SCOTUS decided that judges ought to make the call instead of agency experts.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
SCOTUS kills Chevron deference, giving courts more power to block federal rules
EPA rules and FCC net neutrality order at risk: “No consumer protection is safe.”
Enlarge / Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor arrive for President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on March 7, 2024, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Win McNamee )
The US Supreme Court today overturned the 40-year-old Chevron precedent in a ruling that limits the regulatory authority of federal agencies. The 6-3 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo will make it harder for agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission and Environmental Protection Agency to issue regulations without explicit authorization from Congress.
Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the opinion of the court and was joined by Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Elena Kagan filed a dissenting opinion that was joined by Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Chevron gave agencies leeway to interpret ambiguous laws as long as the agency’s conclusion was reasonable. But the Roberts court said that a “statutory ambiguity does not necessarily reflect a congressional intent that an agency, as opposed to a court, resolve the resulting interpretive question.”
This week in Dutch tech 20/6 – 27/6
The warm weather finally arrived! But before we begin to wind things down for the summer months, let’s catch up once more with the latest developments in Dutch tech. Of course, in our mind, the best news from the week that passed was our own TNW Conference taking place in Zaandam, just outside of Amsterdam. (Next year we are back at one of our favourite locations at NDSM island, grab your 2-for-1 tickets now!) This year featured some of the best keynote speakers and panellists in our 18-year history, along with rich networking opportunities and the signature festival feel that…This story continues at The Next Web
The warm weather finally arrived! But before we begin to wind things down for the summer months, let’s catch up once more with the latest developments in Dutch tech. Of course, in our mind, the best news from the week that passed was our own TNW Conference taking place in Zaandam, just outside of Amsterdam. (Next year we are back at one of our favourite locations at NDSM island, grab your 2-for-1 tickets now!) This year featured some of the best keynote speakers and panellists in our 18-year history, along with rich networking opportunities and the signature festival feel that…
This story continues at The Next Web
Samsung Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 Images Leak Ahead of Galaxy Unpacked Event
The images apparently show multiple colors for the new Samsung Galaxy foldable phones before they’re unveiled in July.
The images apparently show multiple colors for the new Samsung Galaxy foldable phones before they’re unveiled in July.
Tesla says Model 3 that burst into flames in fatal tree crash wasn’t defective
Lawsuit alleged defects with both Tesla’s self-driving and Model 3 flammability.
Enlarge (credit: CFOTO / Contributor | Future Publishing)
Tesla has denied that “any defect in the Autopilot system caused or contributed” to the 2022 death of a Tesla employee, Hans von Ohain, whose Tesla Model 3 burst into flames after the car suddenly veered off a road and crashed into a tree.
“Von Ohain fought to regain control of the vehicle, but, to his surprise and horror, his efforts were prevented by the vehicle’s Autopilot features, leaving him helpless and unable to steer back on course,” a wrongful death lawsuit filed in May by von Ohain’s wife, Nora Bass, alleged.
In Tesla’s response to the lawsuit filed Thursday, the carmaker also denied that the 2021 vehicle had any defects, contradicting Bass’ claims that Tesla knew that the car should have been recalled but chose to “prioritize profits over consumer safety.”