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Trump FCC chair wants to revoke broadcast licenses—the 1st Amendment might stop him
Brendan Carr backs Trump’s war against media, but revoking licenses won’t be easy.
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, wants the FCC to crack down on news broadcasters that he perceives as being unfair to Trump or Republicans in general.
Carr’s stated goals would appear to mark a major shift in the FCC’s approach to broadcasters. Carr’s predecessors, including outgoing Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and Republican Ajit Pai, who served in the first Trump administration, both rejected Trump’s calls to punish news networks for alleged bias.
Carr has instead embraced Trump’s view that broadcasters should be punished for supposed anti-conservative bias. Carr has threatened to revoke licenses by wielding the FCC’s authority to ensure that broadcast stations using public airwaves operate in the public interest, despite previous chairs saying the First Amendment prevents the FCC from revoking licenses based on content.
China orbits first Guowang internet satellites, with thousands more to come
China launched the first 10 spacecraft in a planned constellation of 13,000 internet satellites.
The first batch of internet satellites for China’s Guowang megaconstellation launched Monday on the country’s heavy-lift Long March 5B rocket.
The satellites are the first of up to 13,000 spacecraft a consortium of Chinese companies plans to build and launch over the next decade. The Guowang fleet will beam low-latency, high-speed internet signals in an architecture similar to SpaceX’s Starlink network, although Chinese officials haven’t laid out any specifics, such as target markets, service specifications, or user terminals.
The Long March 5B rocket took off from Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan Island, China’s southernmost province, at 5:00 am EST (10:00 UTC) Monday. Ten liquid-fueled engines powered the rocket off the ground with 2.4 million pounds of thrust, steering the Long March 5B on a course south from Wenchang into a polar orbit.
In IT? Need cash? Cybersecurity whistleblowers are earning big payouts.
The US government now relies on whistleblowers to bring many cases.
Matthew Decker is the former chief information officer for Penn State University’s Applied Research Laboratory. As of October, he’s also $250,000 richer.
In his Penn State position, Decker was well placed to see that the university was not implementing all of the cybersecurity controls that were required by its various contracts with NASA and the Department of Defense (DoD). It did not, for instance, use an external cloud services provider that met the DoD’s security guidelines, and it fudged some of the self-submitted “scores” it made to the government about Penn State’s IT security.
So Decker sued the school under the False Claims Act, which lets private individuals bring cases against organizations on behalf of the government if they come across evidence of wrongdoing related to government contracts. In many of these cases, the government later “intervenes” to assist with the case (as it did here), but whether it does so or not, whistleblowers stand to collect a percentage of any fines if they win.
PS Placeable: The adorable mod that turns a PlayStation Portable into a console
The labor-of-love mod project sold out quickly, but more will be made.
When Sony launched the PlayStation Portable almost exactly 20 years ago, the value proposition was right there in the name: a PlayStation, but portable. But now modders have flipped that, introducing a PSP that can be played on a TV, console-style, and they’ve dubbed it the PS Placeable.
It’s a non-destructive mod to PSP-2000 and PSP-3000 systems that allows you to play PSP games on the TV off the original UMD physical media format, with a wireless controller like the PlayStation 4’s DualShock 4—all wrapped in a miniature, PlayStation 2-like enclosure.
Let’s be frank: One of the main reasons this thing gets special attention here is that its look is both clever and, well, kind of adorable. The miniaturization of the retro styling of the PlayStation 2 is a nice touch.
Hackers seek ransom after getting SSNs, banking info from state gov’t portal
Rhode Island said it’s being extorted after hack of Deloitte-run benefits system.
Hackers trying to extort the Rhode Island government infiltrated the state’s public benefits system, causing state officials to shut down online services that let residents apply for Medicaid and other assistance programs.
“As part of this investigation today, we discovered that within the Rhode Island Bridges system, a cybercriminal had installed dangerous malware that constituted an urgent threat,” Governor Dan McKee said at a Friday night press conference, according to The Providence Journal. “That is why tonight we have shut down the system. That means customers will temporarily not be able to access any customer portal related to the services on Rhode Island Bridges.”
The vendor “Deloitte confirmed that there is a high probability that a cybercriminal has obtained files with personally identifiable information from RIBridges,” McKee’s office said in a press release. Rhode Island has “proactively taken the system offline so that the State and Deloitte can work to address the threat and restore the system as quickly as possible.”
Bernie Sanders’ probe finds Amazon hid worker injuries to prioritize profits
Amazon ignores strike threats, denies claims of “uniquely dangerous warehouses.”
Just as Amazon warehouse workers are threatening to launch the “first large-scale” unfair labor practices strike at Amazon in US history, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) released a report accusing Amazon of operating “uniquely dangerous warehouses” that allegedly put profits over worker safety.
As chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Sanders started investigating Amazon in June 2023. His goal was “to uncover why Amazon’s injury rates far exceed those of its competitors and to understand what happens to Amazon workers when they are injured on the job.”
According to Sanders, Amazon “sometimes ignored” the committee’s requests and ultimately only supplied 285 documents requested. The e-commerce giant was mostly only willing to hand over “training materials given to on-site first aid staff,” Sanders noted, rather than “information on how it tracks workers, the quotas it imposes on workers, and the disciplinary actions it takes when workers cannot meet those quotas, internal studies on the connection between speed and injury rates, and the company’s treatment of injured workers.”
T-Mobile users can try Starlink-enabled phone service for free during beta
Beta registration opened today, will enable texting in dead zones in early 2025.
T-Mobile today said it opened registration for the “T-Mobile Starlink” beta service that will enable text messaging via satellites in dead zones not covered by cell towers.
T-Mobile’s announcement said the service using Starlink’s low-Earth orbit satellites will “provid[e] coverage for the 500,000 square miles of land in the United States not covered by earth-bound cell towers.” Starlink parent SpaceX has so far launched over 300 satellites with direct-to-cell capabilities, T-Mobile noted.
A registration page says, “We expect the beta to begin in early 2025, starting with texting and expanding to data and voice over time. The beta is open to all T-Mobile postpaid customers for free, but capacity is limited.”
On Trump’s chopping block: EVs, charger funding, California’s emissions
Trump’s attack on clean vehicles to be bigger than thought, says report.
The incoming Trump administration has even more plans to delay electric vehicle adoption than previously thought. According to Reuters, which has seen transition team documents, the Trump team wants to abolish EV subsidies, claw back federal funding meant for EV charging infrastructure, block EV battery imports on national security grounds, and prevent the federal government and the US military from purchasing more EVs.
During the campaign, candidate Trump made repeated references to ending a supposed EV mandate. In fact, policies put in place by current US President Joe Biden only call for 50 percent of all new vehicles to be electrified by 2032 under EPA rules meant to cut emissions by 56 percent from 2026 levels.
More pollution
Instead, the new regime will be far more friendly to gas guzzling, as it intends to roll back EPA fuel efficiency standards to those in effect in 2019. This would increase the allowable level of emissions from cars by about 25 percent relative to the current rule set. US new vehicle efficiency stalled between 2008 and 2019, and it was only once the Biden administration began in 2021 that the EPA started instituting stricter rules on allowable limits of carbon dioxide and other pollutants from vehicle tailpipes.
Researchers home in on headache-causing compounds in red wine
It’s not the tannins or sulfites after all.
Medical accounts of red wine headaches go back to Roman times, but the experience is likely as old as winemaking—something like 10,000 years. As chemists specializing in winemaking, we wanted to try to figure out the source of these headaches.
Many components of red wine have been accused of causing this misery—sulfites, biogenic amines, and tannin are the most popular. Our research suggests the most likely culprit is one you may not have considered.
The common suspects
Sulfites have been a popular scapegoat for all sorts of ailments since it became mandatory in the 1990s to label them on wines in the U.S. However, not much evidence links sulfites directly to headaches, and other foods contain comparable levels to wine without the same effects. White wines also contain the same amount of sulfites as red wines.
Bird flu jumps from birds to human in Louisiana; patient hospitalized
This is the first human case of bird flu in Louisiana.
A person in Louisiana is hospitalized with H5N1 bird flu after having contact with sick and dying birds suspected of carrying the virus, state health officials announced Friday.
It is the first human H5N1 case detected in Louisiana. For now, the case is considered a “presumptive” positive until testing is confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health officials say that the risk to the public is low but caution people to stay away from any sick or dead birds.
Although the person has been hospitalized, their condition was not immediately reported. It’s also unclear what kind of birds the person had contact with—wild, backyard, or commercial birds. Ars has reached out to Louisiana’s health department and will update this piece with any additional information.