California fires blaze across million acres of forest amid fears of further spread

California fires blaze across million acres of forest amid fears of further spread

blognet   Monday, August 24, 2020   Comment  

Firefighters on Sunday battled some of California's largest-ever fires that have forced tens of thousands from their homes and burned one million acres, with further lightning strikes and gusty winds forecast in the days ahead.

Thousands of lightning strikes have hit the state in the past week, igniting fires that left smoke blanketing the region, bringing the total area burned to "close to one million acres," or 400,000 hectares, according to CalFire public information officer Jeremy Rahn.

That is considered a stunning toll this early in California's fire season, which normally runs from August to November, and it comes as exhausted firefighters are already struggling to keep up with the far-flung blazes.

The National Weather Service said dry thunderstorms could spark additional wildfires, adding that "the western US and Great Plains are shrouded under a vast area of smoke." It issued red-flag warnings covering large swaths of northern and central California.

These conditions "could cause erratic winds, extreme fire behavior within the existing fires, and have a potential for new fires to start," the CalFire website said.

Firefighters are stretched so thin that the state has turned down some local officials' requests for help with equipment or personnel, forcing them to rely on volunteers and local agencies, the Los Angeles Times said.

About 2,600 firefighters are now tackling the two largest blazes, out of roughly 14,000 battling "nearly two dozen major fires," according to Rahn.

With California pleading for outside help, several western states, the federal government and even the governments of Canada and Australia have responded.

"Many of these firefighters have been on the lines for 72 hours, and everybody is running on fumes," Assemblyman Jim Wood of the Healdsburg district in Sonoma told the Los Angeles Times. "Our first responders are working to the ragged edge of everything they have."

The disparate force battling the many blazes now includes 2,400 fire engines, 60 of them from other states, with several hundred more requested, CalFire said.

More than 200 aircraft, including 95 fixed-wing planes, are taking part in what CalFire spokesman Daniel Berlant called "a significant air force" dropping loads of water, monitoring the spread of flames or ferrying firefighters and equipment.

Some 200 National Guardsmen have also been mobilized to help, he added.

Governor Gavin Newsom on Saturday posted a dramatic photograph of clouds of smoke rising from fires. "This is from today," he said, "and is just a small part of the nearly 600 fires we are battling this week."

He said Saturday that the White House had granted a request for a presidential disaster declaration to aid in the state's response.

He tweeted apocalyptic images of smoldering orange roadsides thick with smoke, with sparks flying as trees burned ferociously.

Wineries in the famed Napa and Sonoma regions, which are still reeling from blazes in recent years, are under threat.

The two largest blazes – the SCU Lightning Complex to the south of the San Francisco Bay area, and the LNU Lightning Complex to the north – have burned about 680,000 acres and destroyed more than 850 structures.

They are the second and third largest fires in California history, with the SCU fire only 10 percent contained and the LNU fire 17 percent contained.

Five deaths have been linked to the latest flare-ups, with four bodies recovered on Thursday, including three from a burned house in a rural area of Napa County.

But many residents have refused evacuation orders.

"At least if we're here, we know exactly what's going on," Napa resident John Newman, 68, told the San Francisco Chronicle as he sat in a lawn chair in his driveway. "Family is worried, but it's a little different if you're here firsthand."

Nature reserves were also ravaged. The Big Basin Redwoods State Park said that some of its historic buildings had been destroyed by flames.

The park, where giant redwood trees of well over 500 years old can be found, was "extensively damaged," it said.

About 119,000 people have been evacuated, with many struggling to find shelter and hesitating to go to centers set up by authorities because of coronavirus risks.

In some counties south of San Francisco, evacuees opted to sleep in trailers along the Pacific Ocean as they fled nearby fires, while tourists were urged to leave to free up accommodation.

California has already been struggling, more than most with US states with the coronavirus. The combination of that disease and the thick smoke from wildfires has caused what the San Francisco Chronicle called "a respiratory nightmare."

A doleful headline in the paper asked, "What masks can protect you from both smoke and COVID-19?"

source https://www.firstpost.com/tech/science/california-fires-blaze-in-million-acres-of-forest-amid-fears-of-further-spread-8745981.html

California Agency is Ready to Object Against Activision Blizzard’s EEOC Settlement

California Agency is Ready to Object Against Activision Blizzard’s EEOC Settlement

blognet   Thursday, October 07, 2021   Comment  

A civil rights agency in California is planning to object to Activision-Blizzard's settlement with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing has asked a federal court for permission to file a motion to intervene in the case by October 29.

in a press release we talked about previously, Activision Blizzard revealed to have settled a lawsuit with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which had been conducting an investigation into the company for three years.

Activision Blizzard agreed to set up an $18 million fund to compensate and make amends to eligible claimants. Any leftovers not claimed by anyone will be directed to charities that advance women in the video game industry or promote awareness around harassment and gender equality issues as well as company diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, as approved by the EEOC.

However, the DFEH has raised objections to the settlement after an investigation found that Activision Blizzard employees were discriminated against for becoming pregnant or sexually harassed and that the company retaliated against and even fired those who complained about such treatment.

According to the DFEH, the settlement would involve releasing Activision Blizzard from claims under California state law even though the EEOC has no standing to prosecute those violations. Regarding this, the agency had the following to say to Gamesindustry.biz:

DFEH's pending enforcement action against [Activision Blizzard] will be harmed by uninformed waivers that the proposed decree makes conditional for victims to obtain relief. The proposed consent decree also contains provisions sanctioning the effective destruction and/or tampering of evidence critical to the DFEH's case, such as personnel files and other documents referencing sexual harassment, retaliation and discrimination.

The settlement proposed by Activision Blizzard must be approved by judge Dale Fischer of the US District Court for the Central District of California. The regulators have asked the judge to schedule a settlement hearing on December 13. However, this isn't the only legal trouble that Activision Blizzard has been facing as they have been hit with an SEC investigation and another lawsuit that accused them of Union Busting and intimidation.

The post California Agency is Ready to Object Against Activision Blizzard’s EEOC Settlement by Ule Lopez appeared first on Wccftech.

source https://wccftech.com/california-agency-is-ready-to-object-against-activision-blizzards-eeoc-settlement/

Oracle is headed to Texas now, too

Oracle is headed to Texas now, too

blognet   Friday, December 11, 2020   Comment  

Austinites, watch out; another tech company is headed into town.

Just days after Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed during an interview that he has moved to Texas, and less than two weeks after HP Enterprise, a spin-out of the iconic Silicon Valley company Hewlett-Packard, announced that it is separately moving to Texas, yet another of the Bay Area’s best-known brands — Oracle —  is pulling up stakes and headed east to Texas, too.

The news was first reported by Bloomberg. Oracle confirmed the move in a statement sent to TechCrunch, saying that along with a “more flexible employee work location policy,” the company has changed its corporate headquarters from Redwood Shores, Ca., to Austin. “We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work.”

A spokeswoman declined to answer more questions related to the move, but Oracle says that “many” of its employees can choose their office location, as well as continue to work from home part time or full time.

HPE and Oracle aren’t the first major tech companies to plot such moves in recent times. Late last year, the brokerage giant Charles Schwab said it was leaving the Bay Area for Texas as it was announcing its $26 billion merger with TD Ameritrade, though it chose Dallas, about 200 miles away from Austin.

Tech giants Apple and Google have also been expanding their presence in the state. Apple announced in 2018 that it was building a $1 billion campus in Austin. Meanwhile, Google, which opened its first Austin office 13 years ago, said last year that it was beginning to lease far more space in the city.

Said Andrew Silvestri, the head of data center public policy and community development for Google’s Americas operations, to the Austin-American Statesman last year: “It’s really a testament to the skills and spirit of Austin and the state as a whole that we’ve been able to grow so rapidly and expansively. We’re incredibly fortunate to be able to call Austin home.” (Silvestri is himself based in Oklahoma City.)

Taxes, a more affordable cost of living for employees, a lower cost of doing business, and less competition for talent are among the top drivers for the companies’ moves, though there is also a growing sense that culture is a factor, as well.

While California is led by Democrats, Texas is led by Republicans, and as the divide between the two parties grows, so does the divide between their respective supporters, with even self-described centrists feeling alienated.

Oracle co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison has notably been of few top tech execs to openly support President Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, Joe Lonsdale, a cofounder of the venture firm 8VC and Palantir Technologies (which itself recently headed to Denver from Palo Alto), recently explained his own move this year to Texas from California in the WSJ, writing: “Politics in the state is in many ways closed off to different ideas. We grew weary of California’s intolerant far left, which would rather demonize opponents than discuss honest differences of opinion.”

This fall, in conversation with reporter Kara Swisher, Musk suggested he was also outside of Democratic circles, describing his political views as “socially very liberal and then economically right of center, maybe, or center? I don’t know. Obviously I’m not a communist.”

While Austin is becoming a go-to spot for many of California’s wealthiest contrarians, others are headed to Florida. Coincidentally or not, Florida is another Republican-controlled state that, like Texas, does not collect state tax.

Keith Rabois, a Founders Fund investor who recently left the Bay Area for Miami, contributed to the NeverTrump PAC in 2016 and said his first choice for U.S. president this year was Democratic contender Pete Buttigieg. But he has also worried openly about democratic socialism, of which the GOP has long accused Democrats of promoting.

Venture capitalist David Blumberg, a Trump supporter, is also headed to Miami, he announced recently. Blumberg said he had it with “poor governance at the local level in San Francisco and statewide in California.” Yet he seemed to have grown frustrated with the Bay Area some time ago.

As Blumberg told Vox last year, he believes that tech platforms are biased against conservatives. He also told the outlet that the Valley was home to many more Trump supporters than might be imagined, and that “we generally keep our heads down” because “people who go out publicly for Republicans and for Trump can get business banned or get blackballed.”

A longer-term question is whether these moves — particular for those individuals and smaller outfits that are relocating — will prove permanent. At least one tech exec, Twitter and Medium cofounder Ev Williams, has returned to the Bay Area after moving away — in his case, to New York.

Williams, who was largely “looking for a change,” made the move with his family late last year after spending 20 years in the Bay Area. Then COVID struck in March, making Manhattan seem “not ideal,” as he told TechCrunch recently.

Nobel laureate Mario Molina dies at 77, after sounding alarm for ozone layer depletion in 1974

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Nobel laureate Mario Molina dies at 77, after sounding alarm for ozone layer depletion in 1974

blognet   Wednesday, October 14, 2020   Comment  

Mario Molina, who shared a Nobel Prize for work showing the damage that chemicals used in hair spray and refrigerators wreak on the ozone layer, which led to one of the most successful international efforts to combat environmental risk, died Oct. 7 at his home in Mexico City. He was 77.

The cause was a heart attack, said Lorena Gonzalez Villarreal, a spokeswoman for the Mario Molina Center for Strategic Studies on Energy and the Environment, the environmental research and policy center he founded in Mexico City in 2004.

Molina, a United States citizen born in Mexico, was a “trailblazing pioneer of the climate movement,” former Vice President Al Gore said by email, adding that Molina’s efforts “to understand and communicate the threat to the ozone layer changed the course of history.”

Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland of the University of California, Irvine, found that chemicals known as chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, would deplete the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere. Their discovery reshaped global environmental policy.

The implications of their findings were dire: Without the protective ozone, an increase in ultraviolet radiation would put the health of many species, including humans, at risk. The two scientists pushed for a ban on CFCs, beginning for both of them a lifetime of science-based environmental advocacy through congressional testimony and interviews.

Their work was attacked by industry; the president of one company said that the criticism of his products was “orchestrated by the Ministry of Disinformation of the KGB.”

Their work led to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a landmark international environmental treaty to phase out the production of the compounds. That treaty had a unanticipated beneficial effect: It would later turn out that many of the ozone-destroying gases are also potent greenhouse gases. Without the treaty, climate change would have progressed even more rapidly than it has.

In 1995, the two men shared the Nobel Prize with Paul J. Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute in Germany. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in its announcement of the award that “the three researchers have contributed to our salvation from a global environmental problem that could have catastrophic consequences.”

In congressional testimony in 2010, Molina said that those who attack climate science focus on the areas of uncertainty as if it were a house of cards, which collapses if one card is removed. He compared it instead to a jigsaw puzzle, which reveals its image even before all the pieces are in place. With global warming, he said, “there is little doubt that the overall image is clear — namely, that climate change is a serious threat that needs to be urgently addressed.”

José Mario Molina-Pasquel y Henríquez was born March 19, 1943, in Mexico City to Roberto Molina Pasquel and Leonor Henríquez Molina. His father was a lawyer and judge who served as Mexican ambassador to Ethiopia, the Philippines and Australia. His mother was a homemaker.

He was fascinated by science from his youngest days, as he wrote in a memoir that appears on the Nobel site: “I still remember my excitement when I first glanced at paramecia and amoebae through a rather primitive toy microscope.” He converted a little-used bathroom in his home into a laboratory for his chemistry sets, guided by an aunt, Esther Molina, who was a chemist.

His family, following their tradition, sent him abroad for his education, and at 11 he was in a boarding school in Switzerland, “on the assumption that German was an important language for a prospective chemist to learn.”

He decided that of his two passions, chemistry and the violin, science was what he would devote himself to, and in 1960 he enrolled in the chemical engineering program at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. After studying in Paris and Germany, he began graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1968. He received his doctorate in physical chemistry there in 1972.

The experience of studying at Berkeley was not just important to his development as a scientist, he would recall; he arrived in the wake of the free-speech movement, and political awareness was part of everyday life. He initially worked in the young field of chemical lasers, but he found himself “dismayed” to find that some researchers at other institutions were developing high-powered lasers to use as weapons.

“That was important,” Felipe José Molina, Molina’s son and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said in an interview. Thanks to Molina’s experiences at Berkeley, his son said, he felt driven to do work “that had a benefit to society, rather than just pure research, or things that could potentially be harmful.”

1n 1973, Molina joined Rowland’s laboratory group at the University of California, Irvine, where they developed their theory of ozone depletion.

Rowland and Molina realized that, as the CFCs reached the upper atmosphere, where they could be destroyed by solar radiation, the chlorine atoms produced in the process would destroy ozone. “We were alarmed,” Molina recalled. They published their findings in the journal Nature in 1974.

He would later work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California; the University of California, San Diego; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the Molina Center in Mexico City, he focused on alleviating that city’s choking pollution.

In 2013, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

While at Berkeley, Molina met a fellow chemist, Luisa Tan. They married in 1973 and divorced in 2005. She currently heads the independent Molina Center for Strategic Studies in Energy and the Environment in San Diego.

In 2006, Molina married Guadalupe Álvarez. She and his son survive him, as do three stepsons, Joshua, Allan and Asher Ginsburg; four of his six siblings, Roberto, Martha, Luis and Lucero Molina, and two grandchildren.

Rowland died in 2012. In his New York Times obituary, Molina was quoted as saying that the two scientists had not been sure they would succeed in their efforts to ban CFCs, "but we started something that was a very important precedent: People can make decisions and solve global problems."

Gore, who shared a Nobel Prize in 2007 for his own work to warn the world about climate change, said Molina “never backed down from political pressure, always speaking truth to power, grounded in science and reason.”

“The world,” he added, “is a better place because of Mario.”

John Schwartz. c.2020 The New York Times Company

source https://www.firstpost.com/tech/science/nobel-laureate-mario-molina-dies-at-77-after-sounding-alarm-for-ozone-layer-depletion-in-1974-8912111.html

With new cash and a former Apple exec now at the helm, Connect Homes is ready to reconstruct homebuilding

With new cash and a former Apple exec now at the helm, Connect Homes is ready to reconstruct homebuilding

blognet   Tuesday, November 24, 2020   Comment  

Greg Leung had worked at Apple for years and was coming off a stint at the smart lock company Otto when he got the call to interview with Connect Homes.

The pitch — building a starter home for a much lower cost than other prefabricated houses on the market, and one that could be dropped in to locations in the urban core of most cities — was too good to pass up.

“Basically, it’s a beautiful product, but done in a way that disrupts and transforms the way homes are built,” said Leung.

The homes come in 15 standardized configurations and can scale from 460 square foot up to 3,200 square feet. What differentiates the company from its competitors, says Leung, is the speed with which Connect Homes can build a house, putting up a full house in six days.

Not only that, but the homes are able to use standard shipping networks and rail transit to bring their homes anywhere in the country. “We build modules the size of a shipping container, so we can connect to the regular intermodal shipping network,” Leung said.

Interior view of a Connect Homes pre-fabricated home. Image Credit: Connect Homes

The company’s smaller homes run around $174,000 all-in, while a 3,200-square-foot home costs around $825,000. That’s about half of the cost for a custom home today, Leung said.

“What we’re doing is providing a beautiful, modern, product for half the price of a traditional custom homebuilder,” he said.

Currently, Leung said, there are three types of new construction getting built — new tract homes, multi-family housing units and high rises. But, there’s an opportunity to infill housing. “Seventy percent of the Bay Area and LA were built in the 70s. That means there are millions of homes that are too small and out of date and energy inefficient,” Leung said. “It costs $1 million to $1.5 million to build a home… No one is addressing the urban infill market except for us.”

And Leung’s interest extended beyond the 88 projects that the company has completed for new homeowners. From its Los Angeles headquarters with a factory in San Bernardino, California, the company is also looking to change how municipalities and governments think about temporary shelters and living spaces for the unhoused.

Founded by Jared Levy and Gordon Stoddard, two architects who worked in the pre-fabricated building division of the firm Marmol Radziner, Connect Homes had raised $27 million to build out a vision of pre-fab future.

That capital includes a recent $5 million round that served to reboot the company and refocus it around its manufacturing technology that can create deployable shelters alongside its housing work. That was another draw for Leung, whose experience in Northern California made him acutely aware of the housing problem the nation faces.

The single module shelter that the company has developed can be transported and put on site in one day. Adding a generator to the 40 foot by eight foot module the company is building means that the shelter has the flexibility of a trailer, but can be ready for habitation in 24 hours.

“We designed this to sell to municipalities and third-party service providers to house people,” Leung said. 

Customers for the new product include the Thatcher School in Ojai and a project in Mountain View, California done in partnership with Life Moves.

Prices for the shelters range between $20,000 and $30,000 per-bed, or $80,000 per module. Those prices compare incredibly favorably to the $500,000 to $1 million communities pay for a bed in permanent supportive housing, said Leung.

Still, the company’s fancy replacements for tent cities don’t do anything to address the underlying housing crisis that plagues cities across the country.

“We’re trying to be the opposite of bespoke housing that we see as part of the problem. The shelters was a reaction to an urgent need. We had the ability to do something innovative to solve the problem,” said Leung. “I don’t see the amazing talent and innovation being applied to this problem. And it’s affecting the well-being and health of millions and millions of people… This is something that will last for possibly lifetimes.”

View of a Connect Homes house being installed. Image Credit: Connect Homes

The attempt to create a new fable for the reconstruction of the building industry is what drew Brick & Mortar Ventures back to the table to recapitalize the company with the new $5 million in cash the company recently secured, according to Darren Bechtel, the founder and managing director of the firm.

A scion of the Bechtel engineering and construction family, Bechtel has a deep knowledge of the industry and sees Connect Homes as one of the best bets to disrupt traditional construction.

“You cannot construct today cheaper than existing assets,” Bechtel said. But, the opportunity to rethink construction as manufacturing is creating an environment that can drive down costs more effectively, he said.

“It’s been a primitive form of manufacturing for some time,” Bechtel said of the housing industry. “The difference from traditional manufacturing and even automobiles, is that when you get to the scale of a house, you exceed the ability to transport that product efficiently from the manufacturing site to the end delivery site.”

That’s the key problem that Bechtel saw Connect Homes solving. “You have to standardize around intermodal shipping or you have to get permits. You are limited on which roads you use,” he said. “If you’re doing a true kit of parts, you’re requiring craft workers to do the finished work on site.”

Connect Homes, said Bechtel, is taking a different approach from the homebuilders that are looking to be mostly vertically integrated. He said Connect Homes was taking a more Apple-like approach where they oversee the product lifecycle and the customer experience. “That’s how you reach global scale and create the VW and Audi of housing,” he said. “A house is the most expensive purchase. The fact that this is still a bespoke product in the vast majority of scenarios doesn’t make sense.”

Bechtel also drew a distinction between the companies that are primarily targeting the accessory dwelling unit market in California and Connect Homes, which has broader aspirations.

“A lot of people who are buying and selling ADUs are getting an extra guest house. They want more space for themselves,” he said. “At a much larger scale if you can take existing housing stocks that are in medium or high density areas that are old properties with larger footprints and you can create two or three housing units in the same spot with new inventory, you’re drastically improving both the quality and the quantity of housing stock.”

That’s the ultimate goal for Connect Homes, Bechtel said. And it’s going to be returning to market just as that market could be poised to rebound, said Bechtel.

“We believe you’re going to see a massive rebound in the need for housing,” said Bechtel. “The single family housing market will return.” And when it does, Connect Homes will be working on scaling up to meet the new demand.

Construction tech startups are poised to shake up a $1.3-trillion-dollar industry

World Oceans Day 2021: Good enough might be the best long term option to protect our ocean

World Oceans Day 2021: Good enough might be the best long term option to protect our ocean

blognet   Tuesday, June 08, 2021   Comment  

The Gulf of California – a sea near the western border of the US and Mexico – is home to some of the world’s most incredible underwater landscapes. It generates 60 percent of Mexico’s fish catch, but overfishing is threatening its marine ecosystems and the people who make a living off them.

In 2012, a number of small fishing towns set up 11 small, temporary areas where fishing was banned to fight overfishing in the Gulf. When these marine reserves expired five years later, the towns nearby all voted on whether to keep or change them. One community, Agua Verde, voted to keep their nearby reserve of San Marcial and make it five times larger. None of the other towns expanded their reserves.

We are a social scientist and a marine ecologist, and together we study community-based fisheries management and conservation. We wanted to explore why one reserve was so successful while the others in the system were not. Our new paper, published on May 26, 2021 in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, shows how critical community support is to conservation efforts and how smaller reserves that are “good enough” ecologically can foster that support and lead to successful long-term conservation.

Lines on maps

In the past 15 years, marine protected areas have become the dominant tool for marine protection. Generally speaking, these protected areas restrict or ban fishing and harvesting in an area. They currently cover 7.66 percent of the ocean’s surface – about five billion football fields’ worth. Marine protected areas can increase fish number and size, rebuild nearby fisheries, build resilience against climate change and even reduce disease in marine species.

When conservationists and policymakers set out to design a new marine protected area, the old way of thinking was to find the best location for permanent protection. This focus often meant closing large areas to fishing, creating conflicts.

Historically, this tension has pitted scientists and fishers against each other – not the best when fisher compliance determines the success or failure of most marine protected areas. Often, “protection” amounts to nothing more than lines on maps in government offices while fishing continues unabated in the water. Even reserves that ecologists dub as successes can simultaneously be social failures, which ultimately threatens long-term ecological outcomes.

The 11 fishing reserves set up in the Gulf of California are an example of an alternative approach, where fishers decide what is an optimal marine reserve. Because the closures are temporary, fishers have the opportunity to test and adapt their designs over time. Instead of imposing large closures that the community might only begrudgingly accept, the idea was to go for something smaller that the community was excited about. Rather than being designed primarily by scientists and policymakers, local fishers – with assistance from the nonprofit conservation group Niparajá – led the effort themselves.

Two fishing communities, two levels of success

Marine protected areas often create a dilemma for fishers – the best areas to protect are often also the best to fish. When Niparajá approached the communities in Baja California Sur, different towns had varying levels of trust in whether the reserves would actually improve their fisheries.

In the town of Agua Verde, fishers had worked with Niparajá for years. Locals trusted the conservation group’s staff so much that they were willing to turn one of their valuable fishing areas into a reserve that prohibited all fishing. Unified by strong leaders, Agua Verde’s fishers designed San Marcial, the largest protected area in the network at two square miles (5.2 square kilometers).

Over five years there was a 30% increase in fish biomass within the reserve. In surveys, fishers reported that catch – which had been in decline for years – had stabilized. With such tangible benefits, when the time came to update the reserve, Agua Verde made it five times larger. The town also voted to create a second marine protected area nearly as big as the first one.

But total local control has a weakness – when fishers don’t trust the process, they aren’t willing to give up productive fishing grounds. We saw this with the reserve at Punta Coyote. Some fishers from the communities that designed this reserve had a history of conflict with Niparajá. Multiple towns also fished the same areas in this region so it was difficult for a single leader to coordinate the communities.

The communities around Punta Coyote ultimately designed a tiny reserve of 0.35 square miles (0.9 square kilometers) that covered a flat, sandy bottom – poor fish habitat. Not surprisingly, there was a negligible effect on fish numbers over the five-year period. When the protection expired in 2017, the fishers renewed but didn’t expand the closed area.

Compared to San Marcial, the other nine reserves were closer in size to Punta Coyote and fell in the middle in terms of ecological results. Every one was renewed but not expanded.

We discovered several mediating factors in these processes. Leadership was essential to create a unified vision. Also, fishers needed a way to see the benefits of the reserve for themselves. Four of Agua Verde’s fishers were recruited to count fish in the San Marcial reserve so they observed firsthand the ecosystem recovering.

Ultimately, we found that community-based conservation is a self-reinforcing process that works in feedback loops. In addition, a “good enough” initial design – that is, not aiming for the maximum possible ecological benefits while still making sure the reserves result in perceptible improvements – seemed to work best. It led to conservation success that in turn led to trust and pride in – and expansion of – the protected area. However, when conflict and mistrust led to poor design without clear benefits – like what happened with Punta Coyote – fishers didn’t gain trust in the process and didn’t expand the area.

Trust leads to stronger support

Our findings about San Marcial and Punta Coyote challenge the need for optimal and permanent marine protected areas. Instead, we see marine protected areas as opportunities for collective action where “good enough” might in fact be better. However, poor design or lack of leadership can lead to a downward spiral for a protected area.

These findings are particularly relevant this year as the United Nations draws up its biodiversity framework for the next decade. The published draft document calls to expand coverage from 7.66 percent to a whopping 30 percent of the global ocean. Our work suggests that in some cases, one way to achieve more numerous and more effective marine protected areas is to give real power to the people affected by protection, start small and focus on building trust and making ecological results visible. While the protected areas might start small, they can grow much larger when local communities support them.

Anastasia Quintana, Postdoctoral Research Fellow of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, University of California Santa Barbara and Alfredo Giron Nava, André Hoffmann Fellow, Stanford University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

source https://www.firstpost.com/tech/science/world-oceans-day-2021-good-enough-might-be-the-best-long-term-option-to-protect-our-ocean-9695091.html

Earth was home to billions of T-rex over lakhs of generations, suggests new study

Earth was home to billions of T-rex over lakhs of generations, suggests new study

blognet   Friday, April 16, 2021   Comment  

One Tyrannosaurus rex seems scary enough. Now picture 2.5 billion of them. That’s how many of the fierce dinosaur king probably roamed Earth over the course of a couple million years, a new study finds. Using calculations based on body size, sexual maturity and the creatures’ energy needs, a team at the University of California, Berkeley figured out just how many T rex lived over 1,27,000 generations, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science. It’s a first-of-its-kind number, but just an estimate with a margin of error that is the size of a T rex.

"That’s a lot of jaws," said study lead author Charles Marshall, director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology. "That’s a lot of teeth. That’s a lot of claws."

The species roamed North America for about 1.2 million to 3.6 million years, meaning the T rex population density was small at any one moment. There would be about two in a place the size of the Washington, DC, or 3,800 in California, the study said.

"Probably like a lot of people, I literally did a double-take to make sure that my eyes hadn’t deceived me when I first read that 2.5 billion T rexes have ever lived," said Macalester College paleobiologist Kristi Curry Rogers, who wasn’t part of the study.

Marshall said the estimate helps scientists figure the preservation rate of T rex fossils and underscores how lucky the world is to know about them at all. About 100 or so T rex fossils have been found — 32 of them with enough material to figure they are adults. If there were 2.5 million T rex instead of 2.5 billion, we would probably have never known they existed, he said.

Marshall’s team calculated the population by using a general biology rule of thumb that says the bigger the animal, the less dense its population. Then they added estimates of how much energy the carnivorous T rex needed to stay alive — somewhere between a Komodo dragon and a lion. The more energy required, the less dense the population. They also factored in that the T rex reached sexual maturity somewhere around 14 to 17 years old and lived at most 28 years.

Given uncertainties in the creatures’ generation length, range and how long they roamed, the Berkeley team said the total population could be as little as 140 million or as much as 42 billion with 2.4 billion as the middle value.

The science about the biggest land-living carnivores of all time is important, "but the truth, as I see it, is that this kind of thing is just very cool," said Purdue University geology professor James Farlow.

source https://www.firstpost.com/tech/science/earth-was-home-to-billions-of-t-rex-over-lakhs-of-generations-suggests-new-study-9535601.html

Florida teen arrested as mastermind of recent high-profile Twitter breach; to be tried as an adult

Florida teen arrested as mastermind of recent high-profile Twitter breach; to be tried as an adult

blognet   Saturday, August 01, 2020   Comment  

A Florida teen was identified Friday as the mastermind of a scheme earlier this month that commandeered Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls and scammed people around the globe out of more than $100,000 in Bitcoin. Two other men were also charged in the case.

Graham Ivan Clark, 17, was arrested Friday in Tampa, where the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office will prosecute him as an adult. He faces 30 felony charges, according to a news release.

Two men accused of benefiting from the hack — Mason Sheppard, 19, of Bognor Regis, UK, and Nima Fazeli, 22, of Orlando — were charged separately in California federal court.

In one of the most high-profile security breaches in recent years, bogus tweets were sent out on July 15 from the accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked.

The tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address. The hack alarmed security experts because of the grave potential of such an intrusion for creating geopolitical mayhem with disinformation.

Court papers in the California cases say Fazeli and Sheppard brokered the sale of Twitter accounts stolen by a hacker who identified himself as “Kirk” and said he could “reset, swap and control any Twitter account at will” in exchange for cybercurrency payments, claiming to be a Twitter employee.

The documents do not specify Kirk's real identity but say he is a teen being prosecuted in the Tampa area.

Twitter has said the hacker gained access to a company dashboard that manages accounts by using social engineering and spear-phishing smartphones to obtain credentials from “a small number” of Twitter employees "to gain access to our internal systems.” Spear-phishing uses email or other messaging to deceive people into sharing access credentials.

“There is a false belief within the criminal hacker community that attacks like the Twitter hack can be perpetrated anonymously and without consequence,” US Attorney David L. Anderson for the Northern District of California said in a news release.

The evidence suggests, however, that those responsible did a poor job indeed of covering their tracks. The court documents released Friday show how federal agents tracked down the hackers through Bitcoin transactions and by obtaining records of their online chats.

Although the case was investigated by the FBI and the US Department of Justice, Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren said his office is prosecuting Clark in state court because Florida law allows minors to be charged as adults in financial fraud cases when appropriate. He called Clark the leader of the hacking scam.

“This defendant lives here in Tampa, he committed the crime here, and he’ll be prosecuted here,” Warren said.

Security experts were not surprised that the alleged mastermind is a 17-year-old, given the relatively amateurish nature of both the operation and how participants discussed it with New York Times reporters afterward.

“This is a great case study showing how technology democratizes the ability to commit serious criminal acts,” said Jake Williams, founder of the cybersecurity firm Rendition Infosec. “There wasn’t a ton of development that went into this attack.”

Williams said the hackers were “extremely sloppy” in how they moved the Bitcoin around. It did not appear they used any services that make cryptocurrency difficult to trace by “tumbling” transactions of multiple users, a technique akin to money laundering, he said.

He also said he was conflicted about whether Clark should be charged as an adult.

“He definitely deserves to pay (for jumping on the opportunity) but potentially serving decades in prison doesn’t seem like justice in this case,” Williams said.

The hack targeted 130 accounts with tweets being sent from 45 accounts, obtained access to the direct message inboxes of 36, and downloaded Twitter data from seven. Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders has said his inbox was among those accessed.

Court papers suggest Fazeli and Sheppard got involved in the scheme after Clark dangled the possibility of obtaining so-called OG Twitter handles, short account names that due to their brevity are highly prized and considered status symbols in a certain milieu. They said Sheppard purchased @anxious and Fazeli wanted @foreign.

Internal Revenue Service investigators in Washington DC, identified two of the defendants by analyzing Bitcoin transactions on the blockchain — the universal ledger that records Bitcoin transactions — that they had sought to make anonymous, federal prosecutors said.

Marcus Hutchins, the 26-year-old British cybersecurity expert credited with helping stop the WannaCry computer virus in 2017, said the skill set involved in the actual hack was nothing special.

“I think people underestimate the level of experience needed to pull off these kinds of hacks. They may sound extremely sophisticated, but the techniques can be replicated by teens,” added Hutchins, who pleaded guilty last year to creating malware designed to steal banking information and just completed a year's supervised release.

British cybersecurity analyst Graham Cluley said his guess was that the targeted Twitter employees got a message to call what they thought was an authorized help desk and were persuaded by the hacker to provide their credentials. It’s also possible the hackers got a call from the company’s legitimate help line by spoofing the number, he said.

Fazeli’s father said Friday he hasn’t been able to talk to his son since Thursday.

"I’m 100% sure my son is innocent," Mohamad Fazeli said. "He’s a very good person, very honest, very smart and loyal."

"We are as shocked as everybody else," he said by phone. "I’m sure this is a mix up."

Attempts to reach relatives of the other two weren't immediately successful. Hillsborough County court records didn't list an attorney for Clark, and federal court records didn't list attorneys for Sheppard or Fazeli.

 

source https://www.firstpost.com/world/florida-teen-arrested-as-mastermind-of-recent-high-profile-twitter-breach-to-be-tried-as-an-adult-8663441.html

Riot Reaches New Settlement for Gender Discrimination Class Action, Will Pay $100 Million in Total

Riot Reaches New Settlement for Gender Discrimination Class Action, Will Pay $100 Million in Total

blognet   Wednesday, December 29, 2021   Comment  

Riot Games announced yesterday to have reached a settlement agreement with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE), and multiple private plaintiffs regarding the gender discrimination class action that originated back in 2018.

Under the terms of the agreement (whose final approval by the court is pending), Riot Games will pay $80 million to the class. This includes all current and former full-time employees and temporary agency contractors in California who identify as women and worked anytime from November 2014 to the present day. Riot will also take care of another $20 million in attorney fees and other miscellaneous expenses, bringing the total costs to $100 million. Additionally, the game developer has agreed to have its internal reporting and pay equity processes monitored for three years by a third party which will be jointly selected by Riot and the DFEH.

As you might recall, Riot had already settled with the plaintiffs over two years ago for a total of $10 million. Shortly after that, though, the DFEH objected to the settlement, arguing that the injured parties could be entitled to over $400 million. This new settlement seems to be a middle ground between the two propositions.

Riot Games also shared a statement to go with the news.

Three years ago, Riot was at the heart of what became a reckoning in our industry. We had to face the fact that despite our best intentions, we hadn’t always lived up to our values. As a company we stood at a crossroads; we could deny the shortcomings of our culture, or we could apologize, correct course, and build a better Riot. We chose the latter. We’re incredibly grateful to every Rioter who has worked to create a culture where inclusivity is the norm, where we’re deeply committed to fairness and equality, and where embracing diversity fuels creativity and innovation.

While we’re proud of how far we’ve come since 2018, we must also take responsibility for the past. We hope that this settlement properly acknowledges those who had negative experiences at Riot and demonstrates our desire to lead by example in bringing more accountability and equality to the games industry.

The post Riot Reaches New Settlement for Gender Discrimination Class Action, Will Pay $100 Million in Total by Alessio Palumbo appeared first on Wccftech.

Woman cured of HIV infection without medical treatment, risky bone marrow transplant, scient

Woman cured of HIV infection without medical treatment, risky bone marrow transplant, scient

blognet   Wednesday, August 26, 2020   Comment  

A woman who was infected with HIV in 1992 may be the first person cured of the virus without a risky bone marrow transplant or even medications, researchers reported Wednesday.

In an additional 63 people in their study who controlled the infection without drugs, HIV apparently was sequestered in the body in such a way that it could not reproduce, the scientists also reported. The finding suggested that these people may have achieved a “functional cure.”

The research, published in the journal Nature, outlines a new mechanism by which the body may suppress HIV, visible only now because of advances in genetics. The study also offers hope that some small number of infected people who have taken antiretroviral therapy for many years may similarly be able to suppress the virus and stop taking the drugs, which can exact a toll on the body.

“It does suggest that treatment itself can cure people, which goes against all the dogma,” said Dr. Steve Deeks, an AIDS expert at the University of California, San Francisco, and an author of the new study.

The woman is Loreen Willenberg, 66, of California, already famous among researchers because her body has suppressed the virus for decades after verified infection. Only two other people — Timothy Brown of Palm Springs, California, and Adam Castillejo of London — have been declared cured of HIV. Both men underwent grueling bone marrow transplants for cancer that left them with immune systems resistant to the virus.

Bone marrow transplants are too risky to be an option for most people infected with HIV, but the recoveries raised hopes that a cure was possible. In May, researchers in Brazil reported that a combination of HIV treatments may have led to another cure, but other experts said more tests were needed to confirm that finding.

“I think that is a novel, an important discovery,” Dr. Sharon Lewin, director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, Australia, said of the new study. “The real challenge, of course, is how you can intervene to make this relevant to the 37 million people living with HIV.”

Even among viruses, HIV is particularly wily and difficult to eradicate. It inserts itself into the human genome and tricks the cell’s machinery into making copies. HIV naturally prefers to lurk within genes, the most active targets of the cell’s copiers.

In some people, the immune system over time hunts down cells in which the virus has occupied the genome. But intensive scrutiny of the participants in this study showed that viral genes may be marooned in certain “blocked and locked” regions of the genome, where reproduction cannot occur, said Dr. Xu Yu, the study’s senior author and a researcher at the Ragon Institute in Boston.

The participants in the research were so-called elite controllers, the 1% of people with HIV who can keep the virus in check without antiretroviral drugs.

It is possible that some people who take antiretroviral therapy for years may also arrive at the same outcome, especially if given treatments that can boost the immune system, the researchers speculated.

“This unique group of individuals provided to me sort of a proof of concept that it is possible with the host immune response to achieve what is really, clinically, a cure,” Deeks said.

Elite controllers have been exhaustively studied for clues to how to control HIV. Willenberg has been enrolled in such studies for more than 15 years. With the exception of one test years ago that indicated a small amount of virus, researchers were never able to identify HIV in her tissues.

In the new study, Yu and her colleagues analyzed 1.5 billion blood cells from Willenberg and found no trace of the virus, even using sophisticated new techniques that can pinpoint the virus’s location within the genome.

Millions of cells from the gut, rectum and intestine also turned up no signs of the virus.

“She could be added to the list of what I think is a cure, through a very different path,” Lewin said.

Other researchers were more circumspect. “It’s certainly encouraging, but speculative,” said Dr. Una O’Doherty, a virologist at the University of Pennsylvania. “I need to see more before I would say, ‘Oh, she’s cured.’ ”

But O’Doherty, an expert in analyzing large volumes of cells, said she was impressed by the results overall.

Another 11 people in the study, whom the researchers referred to as exceptional controllers, have the virus only in a part of the genome so dense and remote that the cell’s machinery cannot replicate it.

Some people who suppress the virus without drugs don’t have detectable antibodies or immune cells that rapidly respond to HIV. But their immune systems carry a potent memory of the virus, the team found.

Powerful T-cells, a constituent of the immune system, eliminated cells in which the viral genes had lodged in more accessible parts of the genome. The infected cells that remained held the virus only in remote regions of the genome where it could not be copied.

“That’s really the only explanation for the findings we have,” said Dr. Bruce Walker, a researcher at the Ragon Institute who has studied elite controllers for 30 years.

About 10% of people who take antiretroviral treatments, especially those who start doing so soon after being infected, also successfully suppress the virus even after they stop taking the drugs. Perhaps something similar is at work in those people as well, experts suggested.

HIV cure studies have focused on rooting out all of the virus that’s hidden in the genome. The new study offers a more attainable solution: If the virus remains in only parts of the genome where it cannot be reproduced, the patient may still achieve a functional cure.

“The part that’s in the gene ‘deserts’ just doesn’t matter,” Walker said. “It suggests that as we’re doing these studies, we need to not just be looking at quantity of the reservoir, but we really need to look at quality.”

Since the researchers completed the study, they have analyzed samples from 40 elite controllers and have found a couple more that could qualify as cures, Yu said. “We believe there’s definitely many of them out there.”

With help from Deeks, they are contacting people with HIV who have taken antiretroviral drugs for 20 years or more and who may have managed to banish the virus to the deserts of their genomes.

Antiretroviral drugs can have harsh side effects, including heart disease and organ damage, especially when taken over many years. A functional cure, if it is borne out by further research, would transform patients’ lives, Yu said. “They can stop their treatment and can be just cured, to be healthy for the rest of their life.”

Apoorva Mandavilli. c.2020 The New York Times Company

source https://www.firstpost.com/tech/science/woman-reportedly-cured-of-hiv-infection-without-medical-treatment-risky-bone-marrow-transplant-8759791.html

Activision and Bobby Kotick Under Increased Pressure as Regulators Step Up Investigation

Activision and Bobby Kotick Under Increased Pressure as Regulators Step Up Investigation

blognet   Friday, February 18, 2022   Comment  

In recent weeks the news that Microsoft plans to acquire Activision Blizzard has largely supplanted headlines about the workplace harassment and discrimination allegations levied against the mega publisher, but it seems regulators aren’t letting the company or CEO Bobby Kotick off the hook.

According to a new report in the Wall Street Journal, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing has subpoenaed both the publisher’s board of directors and Los Angeles-area police departments for more information related to the company’s handling of workplace issues. Apparently, the DFEH is specifically looking for records on Acti-Blizz CEO Bobby Kotick with their police subpoenas. The Federal Securities and Exchange Commission has also subpoenaed Activision Blizzard.

For their part, Activision Blizzard says the police subpoenas have no “legitimate purpose” and imply they’re simply part of DFEH’s dispute with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which controversially agreed to a settlement with Acti-Blizz…

The DFEH is requesting sensitive, confidential information with no limits or relevant scope from Southern California police departments. This serves no legitimate purpose. It represents yet another questionable tactic in DFEH’s broader effort to derail AB’s settlement with the EEOC. Rather than protecting California workers, the DFEH is impeding the meaningful progress at Activision Blizzard and delaying compensation to affected employees.

As mentioned, this was all set into the motion when the Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed suit against Activision Blizzard, alleging widespread gender-based discrimination and sexual harassment at the Call of Duty publisher. You can get a lot more detail on the still-unfolding story here.

Microsoft recently agreed to acquire Activision Blizzard for approximately $69 billion, and surprisingly, embattled CEO Bobby Kotick will remain in power until the deal is done, despite personal allegations against him. That said, based on this latest news, Kotick’s remaining days in power may not be comfortable ones.

The post Activision and Bobby Kotick Under Increased Pressure as Regulators Step Up Investigation by Nathan Birch appeared first on Wccftech.

World is inching closer to the 1.5 degree limit set by Paris Agreement, may exceed it in the next decade: UN report

World is inching closer to the 1.5 degree limit set by Paris Agreement, may exceed it in the next decade: UN report

blognet   Thursday, September 10, 2020   Comment  

The world is getting closer to passing a temperature limit set by global leaders five years ago and may exceed it in the next decade or so, according to a new United Nations report.

In the next five years, the world has nearly a one-in-four chance of experiencing a year that’s hot enough to put the global temperature at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, according to a new science update released Wednesday by the UN, World Meteorological Organization and other global science groups.

That 1.5 degrees Celsius is the more stringent of two limits set in 2015 by world leaders in the Paris climate change agreement. A 2018 UN science report said a world hotter than that still survives, but chances of dangerous problems increase tremendously.

The report comes on the heels of a weekend of weather gone wild around the US: Scorching heat, record California wildfires and two more Atlantic storms that set records for earliest 16th and 17th named storms.

Earlier this year, Death Valley hit 54.4 degrees Celsius and Siberia hit 38 degrees Celsius.

The warming that has already occurred has “increased the odds of extreme events that are unprecedented in our historical experience,” Stanford University climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh said.

For example, historical global warming has increased the odds of record-setting hot extremes at more than 80 percent of the globe, and has “doubled or even tripled the odds over the region of California and the western US that has experienced record-setting heat in recent weeks,” Diffenbaugh added.

The world already has warmed nearly 1.1 degrees Celsius since the late 1800s, and the last five years are hotter than the previous five years, the report said. The speed-up could be temporary, or it might not be. There’s both man-made warming and natural warming from a strong El Nino weather pattern in the past five years, said World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

“The probability of 1.5 degrees (Celsius) is growing year by year,” Taalas told The Associated Press. “It’s very likely to happen in the next decade if we don’t change our behavior.”

That’s potentially faster than what a 2018 UN report found: that the world was likely to hit 1.5 degrees sometime between 2030 and 2052.

Breakthrough Institute climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, who wasn’t part of the new report, said the document was a good update of what scientists already know. It is “abundantly clear that rapid climate change is continuing and the world is far from on track” toward meeting the Paris climate goals, he said.

Some countries, including the US and many in Europe, are reducing emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, but Taalas said the world is on a path that will be three degrees Celsius warmer compared with the late 19th century. That would be above the Paris accord’s less stringent two-degree Celsius target.

The latest report was the UN’s annual update on “climate disruption” caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas. It highlighted more than just increasing temperatures and rising sea levels.

“Record heat, ice loss, wildfires, floods and droughts continue to worsen, affecting communities, nations and economies around the world,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wrote in a foreword.

Guterres said big polluting countries, like China, the United States and India, need to become carbon neutral, adding no heat-trapping gas to the atmosphere, by 2050.

If they don’t, “all the effort will not be enough,” Guterres said at a press conference Wednesday.

The report spotlights unprecedented wildfires in the Amazon, the Arctic and Australia. California is fighting record wildfires as the report was issued.

“Drought and heat waves substantially increased the risk of wildfires,” the report said. “The three largest economic losses on record from wildfires have all occurred in the last four years.”

Taalas said these type of climate disasters will continue at least through the 2060s because of the heat-trapping gases already in the air.

Carbon dioxide emissions will be down four to seven percent this year because of reduced travel and industrial activities during the coronavirus pandemic, but the heat-trapping gas stays in the air for a century so the levels in the atmosphere continue to go up, Taalas said. And, he said, so will the warming.

So far, this year is the second hottest on record and has a 37 percent chance of surpassing the global record set in 2016, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

source https://www.firstpost.com/tech/science/world-is-inching-closer-to-the-1-5-degree-limit-set-by-paris-agreement-may-exceed-it-in-the-next-decade-un-report-8802751.html

USA rejoins the Paris climate accord: Five scholars explain why it matters for the US, other countries

USA rejoins the Paris climate accord: Five scholars explain why it matters for the US, other countries

blognet   Sunday, February 21, 2021   Comment  

The United States is formally back in the Paris climate agreement as of February 19, 2021, nearly four years after former President Donald Trump announced it would pull out. We asked five scholars what the US rejoining the international agreement means for the nation and the rest of the world, including for food security, safety and the changing climate. Nearly every country has ratified the 2015 agreement, which aims to keep global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius. The US was the only one to withdraw.

What rejoining Paris means for America's place in the world

Morgan Bazilian, Public Policy Professor and Director of the Payne Institute, Colorado School of Mines

Amanda Gorman, the National Youth Poet Laureate, wrote in her poem for U.S. President Joe Biden's inauguration, "When day comes we step out of the shade." That's a good articulation of why the United States is now rejoining the Paris Agreement.

In the short term, the benefits are primarily diplomatic. It's no small thing to try to rebuild international standing for a country that helped bring the world into the Paris Agreement and then abruptly abandoned it. Humility, acknowledging the nation's recent abysmal record and reconsidering both the need for a U.S.-hosted climate summit and the habit of "naming and shaming" other countries could go a long way.

The Paris Agreement took years to design and develop. It allows for considerable flexibility and is inherently "bottom up" - each country sets its own goals and determines how it will live up to them. I was a negotiator in the climate talks for several years.

The agreement was never a threat. Its removal by the Trump administration was theater – or swagger. There will be temptation to hearken back to the policies and approaches of the Obama era – many of Biden's political appointees come from that shared experience. Rejoining should be primarily used as an impetus for much more robust, stable, sustainable and thoughtful national policy and regulation. That's the less glamorous stuff – the unfinished work.

Why US engagement matters for other countries

Edward Carr, Professor and Director of International Development, Community and Environment, Clark University

Just returning to the Paris Agreement as signed back in 2015 will not meet the world's climate needs, nor will it restore the United States to a position of global leadership on climate change.

To gauge the seriousness of the Biden administration, other countries will be watching two things.

First, will the US strengthen its commitments to decarbonizing the economy?

While the Trump administration worked to undermine global action on climate change, several states adopted aggressive targets, among them Washington, California and even states with Republican governors like Massachusetts. With targets that are much more ambitious than those agreed to by the United States under the 2015 Paris Agreement, these states make it clear that the U.S. can be much more aggressive in its national pledges without losing its global competitiveness.

Second, will the Biden administration invest heavily in adaptation at home and abroad?

A growing body of research shows that the worst impacts of climate change are borne by the poorest and most vulnerable people. Further, these impacts tend to exacerbate existing inequalities. The new administration has the tools. The world will have to see if its attention to justice and equality extends to the impacts of climate change.

A return to Paris is a good first step. But without additional steps, it will be seen as hollow and could further erode US credibility.

What the Paris accord means for food security

Kristie Ebi, Professor of Global Health and Environment, University of Washington

Food security will be a theme of this century, in part because of rising carbon dioxide concentrations and our changing climate.

Globally, nearly 9% of the planet's growing population is food insecure, with the numbers increasing over the past few years. About 45% of childhood deaths worldwide are attributable to insufficient calories or nutrients.

As the planet continues to warm, climate change threatens to make these situations worse.

The harm to crops as global temperatures rise isn't just about heat, floods and droughts. While carbon dioxide is necessary for plant growth, research shows that rising CO2 concentrations will reduce the nutrient density of the world's two most important crops, wheat and rice, as well as other food sources. These nutritional losses can have serious health effects, including impaired cognitive development and metabolism, obesity and diabetes.

Further, the climatic changes resulting from rising CO2 are reducing crop yields and the stability of the food supply.

The US is the second-largest CO2 emitter after China, and the largest historically. The Biden administration's recommitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris climate agreement and advance research and development for solutions can help protect the health and well-being of families and future generations.

Why the Paris accord matters for vulnerable communities

Deb Niemeier, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Maryland

In a valley once home to the Maidu tribes, local legend has it that a man stood on a ridge in the 1860s, escaping the heat of the central valley of California. Basking in the cool air, he was certain he had found paradise. For the next 50-some years, that ridge saw mining give way to timber mills and eventually the planting of fruit orchards. A small but sturdy town grew, along the way weathering many fires.

Over time, Paradise, California, became home to farmers, retired people and others just seeking a quieter life. The air was crisp and the vistas extraordinary. The Camp Fire of 2018 destroyed nearly the entire town and devastated many of its farms. I was there afterward. The culprit was both aging infrastructure and extremely dry conditions that have become more common as the planet warms.

The future of humanity has always been intertwined with that of the natural world. Today, however, people have an outsize influence that comes in part from years of burning fossil fuels and other activities that influence the climate.

Coastal communities are facing more frequent flooding as sea level rises. Western wildfire seasons are lasting longer. The National Climate Assessment has shown how extreme storms and health- and crop-harming heat waves will become more common as global temperatures rise.

Just fixing faulty power lines that can spark wildfires isn't enough anymore. The Paris Agreement motivates countries to start the hard work of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to lower the underlying risk.

Paris and the problem of a fast-warming Arctic

Walt Meier, Senior Research Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado

The importance of the Paris climate agreement is particularly evident in the Arctic, where sea ice is diminishing and permafrost is thawing. If you think about the implications for the entire planet, your imagination needs to expand threefold. That's because the Arctic is warming nearly three times as fast as the global average.

A large part of the Arctic's climate sits on a knife's edge between freezing and melting. Even a small change can have big consequences. An increase of 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the midlatitudes, say from 70 F to 72 F, is not easily noticed. But in the Arctic Ocean, a 2-degree change, from 31 F to 33 F, is the difference between ice skating and swimming.

That change from ice to ocean, and from snow to bare ground, is profound. Ice and snow are white, which means they reflect most of the sun's energy, keeping the Arctic cool. Losing the ice and snow means more sunlight is absorbed, which further warms the Earth and causes even more melting.

So, every bit of greenhouse gas emitted has triple the punch in the Arctic that it does in lower latitudes. This means that every bit of greenhouse gas that the Paris climate agreement can help countries avoid emitting saves it times three in the Arctic.

source https://www.firstpost.com/world/usa-rejoins-the-paris-climate-accord-five-scholars-explain-why-it-matters-for-the-us-other-countries-9330851.html

This Week in Apps: Apple scolds adtech, Facebook hit with antitrust suits, Twitter buys Squad

Apple

This Week in Apps: Apple scolds adtech, Facebook hit with antitrust suits, Twitter buys Squad

blognet   Saturday, December 12, 2020   Comment  

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in global consumer spend in 2019. Not including third-party Chinese app stores, iOS and Android users downloaded 130 billion apps in 2020. Consumer spend also hit a record $112 billion across iOS and Android alone. In 2019, people spent three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Due to COVID-19, time spent in apps jumped 25% year-over-year on Android.

Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.

Top Stories

Apple defends its consumer privacy moves

Image Credits: Apple

Apple SVP Craig Federighi took aim at the adtech industry in a speech to European lawmakers this week, where he downplayed and dismissed the industry backlash against the forthcoming app tracking changes as “outlandish” and even “false.” He said that online tracking is privacy’s biggest challenge and that Apple’s forthcoming App Tracking Transparency (ATT) is the front-line of defense.

“The mass centralization of data puts privacy at risk — no matter who’s collecting it and what their intentions might be,” Federighi said, reiterating that Apple aimed to have as little data on its customers as possible.

This has been the company’s line to date, and it’s not necessarily the whole truth. Apple has so far characterized its decision to allow consumers to opt-out of being tracked as one that’s solely focused on consumer privacy. It positions Apple as consumers’ savior and the only one fighting for our privacy. But the changes are also an example of Apple leveraging its platform power, potentially in an anticompetitive way, to give itself a seat at the table of a multi-billion-dollar market today dominated by its competitors Google and Facebook.

In this case, Apple is inserting itself in the world of mobile advertising by forcing a shift from IDFA to its own SKAdNetwork, which limits the individualized data advertisers can access. This is good for consumers who don’t want to be targeted and tracked just because they’re using an app. Publishers, however, have argued they won’t be able to charge as much for ads where users opted out of tracking. This could have a snowball effect of hurting ad-supported businesses beyond the tech giants like Facebook.

Meanwhile, Apple does get to collect a lot of consumer data which it uses to personalize ads. Its own App Store and Apple News apps personalize ads unless consumers opt out in their iPhone’s Settings (and not through a scary pop-up warning like third-party apps have to display). Apple says what it does in terms of personalization doesn’t count as “tracking” because it doesn’t share the data with others or follow customers around websites and apps.

But as Apple moves into its own services businesses, the amount of data that can be used to personalize its own ads grows. Today, Apple’s ad targeting system includes users in segments based on the music, books, TV shows and apps they download, as well as in-app purchases and subscriptions. It also tracks users as they search the app search with keywords and tap to read App Store stories, and tracks location if permission has been granted to Apple News or the App Store.

Apple takes aim at adtech hysteria over iOS app tracking change

In related news, Facebook-owned WhatsApp criticized Apple’s forthcoming privacy label requirements this week, saying that the labels are anti-competitive because they won’t apply to first-party apps, like iMessage, that come pre-installed on iPhones. WhatsApp also argued that they don’t allow companies to share enough details about the measures they’re taking to protect consumer data.

Apple responded by saying labels for its own apps will be on its website for those apps not distributed through the App Store.

Facebook antitrust lawsuits

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Forty-eight attorneys general across 46 states, the territory of Guam and the District of Columbia have filed an antitrust lawsuit that accuses Facebook of suppressing its competition through monopolistic business practices. The states are asking the court to restrain Facebook from making further acquisitions in excess of $10 million without notifying the plaintiffs, and is asking for additional relief, including “the divestiture or restructuring of illegally acquired companies, or current Facebook assets or business lines.”

The FTC also voted to pursue its own antitrust suit against Facebook at the federal level.

While the lawsuits are much larger than an app story alone, they do have the potential to impact the app ecosystem if the plaintiffs prevail, as they ask for the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, and maybe others, to be retroactively judged to be illegal and divested. This would allow for increased competition among the social app market, where Facebook leverages its power to maintain its dominant position. For instance, Facebook just integrated its messaging platform with Instagram’s, meaning users can now message friends across two of the largest social platforms via just one app — either Messenger or Instagram. WhatsApp could be integrated in the future, as well.

FTC seeks to break up Facebook, alleging illegal monopoly

Twitter buys Squad

Image Credits: Twitter

Twitter on Friday announced the acquisition of the screen-sharing social app Squad. The startup’s co-founders, CEO Esther Crawford and CTO Ethan Sutin, along with the rest of Squad’s team will be joining Twitter’s design, engineering and product departments. The Squad app, which had heavily relied on Snap’s Snap Kit developer tools, will shut down.

Twitter may be shuttering Periscope as well, code reveals, which leaves some wondering what Twitter’s plans are in terms of streamlining its services. The company has more recently been experimenting with its own version of Stories, aka Fleets, and an audio-based networking product for group conversations.

Twitter app code indicates that live video broadcasting app Periscope may get shut down

This Week in App News

Platforms: Apple

• Reminder: Apple’s App Store Holiday shutdown is coming. The App Store will not accept new apps and app updates from December 23-27 (Pacific Time) for its annual holiday break.
• Reminder: App privacy questions requirement starts December 8.
• The iOS 14.3 Release Candidate arrives, adding support for the new ProRAW photo format on iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max, a new Apple TV+ tab that makes it easier to find Apple’s Originals, readies the platform for Fitness+, and makes a change to bypass launching the Shortcuts app when using custom app icons, among other things.
• Apple Watch Family Setup arrives in Canada on December 14.
• Apple Fitness+ launches December 14.

Apple Fitness+ launches on December 14

Platforms: Google

Image Credits: Google

• Google is working on an ambitious project to improve GPS accuracy in apps. In dense urban areas, it’s often hard to get an accurate GPS reading — leading to issues like wrong-side-of-the-street and even wrong-city-block errors, which greatly impact ridesharing and navigation apps. Google’s new solution uses 3D mapping-aided corrections, comprised of 3D building models, raw GPS measurements and machine learning. Its Pixel Feature Drop in December adds these corrections to Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a (5G), which Google says will reduce wrong-side-of-street occurrences by approximately 75%. Other Android phones (Android 8+) have version 1 implemented in the FLP (Fused Location Provider API), which reduces those occurrences by around 50%. Version 2 will be available to the entire Android ecosystem (Android 8 or later) in early 2021.
• Google Play Pass arrives in 7 new countries, including key Latin American markets. The subscription-based apps and games service came to Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Russia and Saudi Arabia. This brings the total number of markets where the service is live to 42.
• Google’s Pixel Feature Drop adds Adaptive Sound, Hold for Me (where Google Assistant waits on hold for you), Extreme Battery Saver Mode, screen sharing on Duo calls and more.

Gaming

Image Credits: Microsoft

• Microsoft confirms its Xbox cloud gaming service will launch on iOS in 2021. However, the company will route around the App Store rules by bringing the service to the iPhone and iPad in a web browser. This cuts Apple out of any revenues the game service can generate. Amazon’s Luna and Google’s Stadia are also planning to use the web browser on iOS to avoid the App Store. 
• Google’s cloud gaming service Stadia is rolling out YouTube live streaming, allowing gamers to share their gameplay to YouTube. 
• Apple asks for Epic Games’ Fortnite lawsuit in Australia to be thrown out because Epic had promised to settle disputes and litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Xbox cloud gaming coming to iOS and PC in spring 2021

Government and policy

• The U.S. National Weather Service just saw a record year of weather-related disasters like the busiest Atlantic hurricane season on record and California’s wildfires. Now the agency says it’s running out of Internet bandwidth and will need to throttle the amount of data its clients and users can access. The move would impact weather consumers who get their weather from apps on their smartphones, as much of the forecasts and alerts they receive are based on Weather Service output and data.
• California’s CA Notify contact-tracing app for COVID-19 now reaches the full state. The app uses Apple and Google’s exposure notification API.
• Cydia files anti-competition lawsuit against Apple. Third-party App Store maker Cydia, home to jailbreak apps that often added functionality beyond what Apple permitted through its terms, is suing Apple for using anticompetitive means to destroy its rival app store. There are good examples of how denying third-party app stores a home on iOS may have been anticompetitive, but Cydia’s lawsuit may not be it. The store in its early days distributed pirated apps, not just those that fell outside Apple’s rules.

California’s CA Notify app to offer statewide exposure notification using Apple and Google’s framework

Augmented reality

Image Credits: Instagram

• Instagram partnered with museums in the U.S. and France, including the Smithsonian, Palace of Versailles and Le Grand Palais, to bring AR versions of their exhibits to its camera’s AR effects lineup.
• Snap partnered with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on a multi-year augmented reality project, “LACMA x Snapchat: Monumental Perspectives.” The initiative will pair local artists chosen by the museum to create site-specific monuments and murals that can be viewed in AR in the Snapchat app.

E-commerce & food delivery

Image Credits: Instagram

• Instagram launches shopping in Reels, its TikTok rival. The feature is now one of many ways users can shop via video, including through video in Feed, Stories, Live and IGTV. Facebook Pay powers checkout for many sellers, allowing Instagram to generate revenue through transaction fees.
• WhatsApp adds carts to make shopping easier. Facebook-owned WhatsApp added a new shopping feature that lets consumers buy multiple items from a business, and makes it easier for sellers to track orders.
• DoorDash shares popped 92% in their trading debut to reach as high as $195.50 after raising $3.37 billion during its IPO.
• E-commerce app Wish to price IPO between $22-$24 per share at up to $14 billion valuation.

Wish wants to be the Amazon for the rest of us; will retail investors buy it?

Fintech

• Robinhood is losing thousands of day traders to China-owned Webull, reports Bloomberg. Founded by Alibaba alum Wang Anquan, Webull has increased brokerage clients by 10x in 2020 to reach more than 2 million by offering free stock trades. Robinhood has 13 million, for comparison. Webull is expected to raise a round from private U.S. investors and expand into roboadvisor services.

Travel

Image credits: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for WIRED25

• Vacation rental app Airbnb began trading this week on public markets. After raising its range, the company opened at $146 per share on Thursday, more than double its $68 IPO price and valuing the company at over $100 billion. The stock closed at nearly $145.
• China’s Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced it was banning 105 mobile apps for violating Chinese regulations. The majority of the apps were made by Chinese developers but the U.S.-based travel booking and review site Tripadvisor was also on the ban list, causing its shares to drop. Tripadvisor works in partnership with Nasdaq-listed Chinese travel firm Trip.com (previously called Ctrip).

Airbnb’s first-day pop caps off a stellar week for tech IPOs

Social & Photos

Image Credits: Twitter

• Snap and Twitter worked together to make it possible for users to post their tweets to Snapchat through a native integration instead of screenshots. When Twitter users who are logged into Snapchat now share a tweet using the Snapchat icon from the share sheet in Twitter, they’ll be able to share, react or comment on the post, then send it to a Snapchat friend or post to their Story. The feature is live on iOS with Android in the works.
• Triller says it can reach 250 million users through partnerships with Samsung and others. The app, which hosted a Pay Per View boxing match between Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr. this year, is planning more events for 2021, including a concert with K-pop group Blackpink.
• A second federal judge rules against the Trump administration’s TikTok ban, saying the government “likely exceeded IEEPA’s [the International Emergency Economic Powers Act] express limitations as part of an agency action that was arbitrary and capricious.”
• Instagram partnered for the first time with lyrics site Genius on “Lyric Reels,” a sort of variation of Spotify’s “Behind the Lyrics” feature. The addition will see artists break down their songs’ lyrics and meanings. Participants include Megan Thee Stallion​, ​24kGoldn and ​Tate McRae.
• Tinder makes it easier to report bad actors who use “unmatch” to hide from victims. Rival Bumble had just done the same. But in Tinder’s implementation, it’s only making it more obvious how to access its help documentation while Bumble had included a button for reporting users who had already unmatched you.
• Google’s Photos can now sync your “Liked” images with Apple’s Photos service on iOS.

Tinder makes it easier to report bad actors using ‘unmatch’ to hide from victims

Streaming & entertainment

• Netflix’s StreamFest, a free trial weekend in India, boosted installs by 200% week-over-week, reaching approximately 3.6 million global installs, reports Sensor Tower.
• Stitcher, recently acquired by SiriusXM, revamped its app for the first time in years. The new version offers a dedicated “My Podcasts” tab, better search filters, result sorting, user-curated groups of shows and more.
• HBO Max is fastest-growing SVOD in U.S. According to Apptopia, the app hit a lifetime high for daily downloads three days after its debut, at 225,000. Since its May launch, DAUs have grown 242%.
• Spotify had to reset an undisclosed number of user passwords after a software vulnerability exposed private account information to its business partners, including things like “email address, your preferred display name, password, gender, and date of birth.”

Spotify resets passwords after a security bug exposed users’ private account information

Health & fitness

• Nike Run Club app adds home screen widgets for iOS 14+. The widgets can show your Run Level, post-run progress and make it easier to start your next run.

Productivity

• Google Drive users on iOS and Android will be able to see and re-run desktop and mobile searches; view and select intelligent selections as they type, including suggestions for people, past searches, keywords and recently accessed files. 

Funding and M&A

Image Credits: Calm

• Meditation app Calm raises $75 million more at $2 billion valuation, in a round led by prior investor Lightspeed Venture Partners.
• Twitter buys video app Squad. (see above) 
• AI financial assistant Cleo raises $44 million Series B, led by EQT Ventures. The app and chatbot aimed at Gen Z connects to bank accounts to give proactive advice and timely nudges.
• Mexican challenger banking app albo raises $45 million to expand into lending and insurance products.
• Sweden’s MTG acquires mobile racing game studio Hutch Games, based in London, for up to $375 million. The studio produces titles like Rebel Racing, F1 Manager and Top Drives.

MTG acquires mobile racing game studio Hutch Games for up to $375 million

• Seattle’s Freespira raises $10 million for its therapeutic device for panic attacks PTSD that worked with a connected app and proprietary software.
• Banking app for teens GoHenry raises $40 million to build out its business in the U.S. and U.K.
• Retail loyalty app Fetch Rewards raises $80 million Series C led by Iconiq Growth. The app offers rewards to users who scan their receipts after shopping.
• Pear Therapeutics raises $80 million in a round led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2. The company makes prescription apps aimed at treating substance use disorders, schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis. The FDA has already approved its treatments for substance abuse, opioid use and insomnia.
• Reface raises $5.5 million in seed funding led by a16z for its viral face-swapping video app.

GoHenry, a pre-paid card and finance app for 6-18 year olds, raises $40M

Downloads

Google Health Studies

Image Credits: Google

Google takes on Apple’s Research app with an alternative for Android users. The new Google Health Studies app will work in partnership with leading research institutions, which will connect with study participants through the app. The first study is timely, as it focuses on respiratory illnesses, including the flu and COVID-19. The study will use federated learning and analytics — a privacy technology that keeps a person’s data stored on the device.

Google Look to Speak

Google launched an accessibility-focused app, Look to Speak, that lets people use their eyes to choose pre-written phrases for their phone to say out loud. To use the app, people have to look left, right or up to select what they want to say from the phrase list and navigate the app. Look to Speak can also be personalized by letting users edit the words and phrases they want to say and adjust the gaze settings to their needs.

Retro Widget

Image Credits: Retro Widget 2

Gaming via a home screen widget? The fun Retro Widget 2 ($1.99) has been updated to bring the classic Snake II game from old Nokia handsets to the iPhone’s home screen. The app includes five mazes and nine levels and lets you play Snake II using the 1, 3, 7 and 9 keys.

Barter

Barter is an app designed for app developers alone. From the maker of the HomePass and HomeCam apps, Barter offers a way for app developers to view their app sales in a widget on iOS 14+ devices. The app includes no analytics or tracking beyond what Apple builds in to protect developer data. In the future, Pearce says he’ll expand the app to be able to show things like downloaded units, by product and more. The current version was an MVP to see if Apple would allow the app to pass App Review. Since it passed, it will soon be upgraded.

Introducing Barter, the best way to view your App Sales in a widget.https://t.co/SXh4G5Jeyf pic.twitter.com/iFqX0HEJSH

— Aaron Pearce (@aaron_pearce) December 7, 2020