US Senate Finally Passes Its Massive Climate Bill

Slashdot reader Charlotte Web writes: At 3:02 p.m. EST, vice president Kamala Harris began presiding over the U.S. Senate.
After a vote on the very last proposed amendment, the Senate heard these final remarks from Democrat Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer on what he called “the boldest climate package in US history.”

“It’s been a long, tough, and winding road. But at last — at last — we have arrived. I know it’s been a long day and long night, but we’ve gotten it done….”

“It’s a game changer. It’s a turning point. And it’s been a long time coming.

“To Americans who have lost faith that Congress can do big things, this bill is for you…
And to the tens of millions of young Americans who spent years marching, rallying, demanding that Congress act on climate change, this bill is for you. The time has come to pass this historic bill.”

One by one, Senators delivered their votes for the official tally, and at 3:18 PST Harris announced that “On this vote, the yeas are 50, the nays are 50.” And with the vice president casting deciding votes in an equally-divided Senate, “the bill as amended is passed.”

And the Senate broke into spontaneous applause.

The bill now goes to the U.S. House of Representatives, which is expected to vote on it Friday.

As Slashdot reported last week:

The bill helps U.S consumers buy electric vehicle chargers, rooftop solar panels, and fuel-efficient heat pumps. It extends energy-industry tax credits for wind, solar and other renewable energy sources — and for carbon capture technology. In fact, most of its impact is accomplished through tax credits, reports the New York Times, “viewed as one of the least expensive ways to reduce carbon emissions.

“The benefits are worth four times their cost, according to calculations by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.” One example is ending an eligibility cap on the $7,500 tax credit for consumers buying electric vehicles.

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San Francisco Decriminalizes Psychedelics

San Francisco lawmakers have unanimously approved a measure calling for the decriminalization of psychedelics like psilocybin and ayahuasca. DoubleBlind Mag reports: The Board of Supervisors approved the measure, sponsored by Supervisors Dean Preston (D) and Hillary Ronen (D), on Wednesday. While it doesn’t immediately enact changes to criminal justice policy in San Francisco, it urges police to deprioritize psychedelics as “amongst the lowest priority” for enforcement and requests that “City resources not be used for any investigation, detention, arrest, or prosecution arising out of alleged violations of state and federal law regarding the use of Entheogenic Plants listed on the Federally Controlled Substances Schedule 1 list.”

Decriminalize Nature San Francisco helped advance the resolution, which also implores city officials to “instruct” its state and federal lobbyists to push for psychedelics decriminalization in California and federally. The whereas section of the measure talks about emerging research that shows entheogenic substances have therapeutic potential to treat a wide range of mental health conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance misuse disorder. It further notes that the “state legislature has already started the conversation around the decriminalization of personal possession of small amounts of seven psychedelic substances,” in the form of a bill from Sen. Scott Wiener (D) that passed the Senate and several Assembly committees before being significantly scaled back in a final panel and ultimately pulled by the sponsor.

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Rolls Royce Exits Boom’s Supersonic Airliner Project

Rolls-Royce has ended its involvement in a project by Boom Supersonic to develop a faster-than-sound passenger airliner, leaving unclear the powerplant options available to Boom. FlightGlobal reports: “We are appreciative of Rolls-Royce’s work over the last few years, but it became clear that Rolls’ proposed engine design and legacy business model is not the best option for Overture’s future airline operators or passengers,” Boom said on 7 September. “Later this year, we will announce our selected engine partner and our transformational approach for reliable, cost-effective and sustainable supersonic flight.”

Earlier in the day, news broke that R-R had backed out of the Boom project. “We’ve completed our contract with Boom and delivered various engineering studies for their Overture supersonic program,” the UK engine manufacturer says. “After careful consideration, Rolls-Royce has determined that the commercial aviation supersonic market is not currently a priority for us and, therefore, will not pursue further work on the program at this time. It has been a pleasure to work with the Boom team and we wish them every success in the future.”

Boom, with offices in Denver, has been developing a supersonic aircraft called Overture that it says will carry up to 80 passengers and cruise at Mach 1.7. It initially intended for Overture to have two engines, but recently changed to a four-engined design. The company has been targeting first flight of Overture in 2026 and first delivery in 2029. “Overture remains on track to carry passengers in 2029, and we are looking forward to making our engine announcement later this year,” Boom says.

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US State of Virginia Has More Datacenter Capacity Than Europe or China

The state of Virginia has over a third of America’s hyperscale datacenter capacity, and this amounts to more than the entire capacity of China or the whole of Europe, highlighting just how much infrastructure is concentrated along the so-called Datacenter Alley. The Register reports: These figures come from Synergy Research Group, which said that the US accounts for 53 percent of global hyperscale datacenter capacity, as measured by critical IT load, at the end of the second quarter of 2022. The remainder is relatively evenly split between China, Europe, and the rest of the world. While few would be surprised at the US accounting for the lion’s share of datacenter capacity, the fact that so much is concentrated in one state could raise a few eyebrows, especially when it is centered on a small number of counties in Northern Virginia — typically Loudoun, Prince William, and Fairfax — which make up Datacenter Alley.

“Hyperscale operators take a lot of factors into account when deciding where to locate their datacenter infrastructure,” said Synergy chief analyst John Dinsdale. “This includes availability of suitable real estate, cost and availability of power supply options, proximity to customers, the risk of natural disasters, local incentives and approvals processes, the ease of doing business and internal business dynamics, and this has inevitably led to some hyperscale hot spots.” Amazon in particular locates a large amount of its datacenter infrastructure in Northern Virginia, with Microsoft, Facebook, Google, ByteDance, and others also having a major presence, according to Synergy. The big three cloud providers — Amazon, Microsoft and Google — have the broadest hyperscale bit barn footprint, with each of these having over 130 datacenters of the 800 or so around the globe. When measured in datacenter capacity, the leading companies are Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Alibaba and Tencent, according to Synergy.

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Former Disney CEO Says Company Found a ‘Substantial Portion’ of Twitter Users Were Not Real When It Evaluated Acquisition in 2016

Bob Iger, former Disney CEO, explained on Wednesday why Disney didn’t acquire Twitter in 2016. He said: “We enter the process immediately, looking at Twitter as the solution: a global distribution platform. It was viewed as sort of a social network. We were viewing it as something completely different. We could put news, sports, entertainment, [and] reach the world. And frankly, it would have been a phenomenal solution, distribution-wise. Then, after we sold the whole concept to the Disney board and the Twitter board, and we’re really ready to execute — the negotiation was just about done — I went home, contemplated it for a weekend, and thought, ‘I’m not looking at this as carefully as I need to look at it.’ Yes, it’s a great solution from a distribution perspective. But it would come with so many other challenges and complexities that as a manager of a great global brand, I was not prepared to take on a major distraction and having to manage circumstances that weren’t even close to anything that we had faced before. Interestingly enough, because I read the news these days, we did look very carefully at all of the Twitter users — I guess they’re called users? — and we at that point estimated with some of Twitter’s help that a substantial portion — not a majority — were not real. I don’t remember the number but we discounted the value heavily. But that was built into our economics. Actually, the deal that we had was pretty cheap.”

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A Text Alert May Have Saved California From Power Blackouts

A timely mobile alert may have prevented hundreds of thousands of Californians from being plunged into darkness in the middle of a heat wave Tuesday night. Bloomberg reports: Just before 5:30 p.m. local time, California’s grid operator ordered its highest level of emergency, warning that blackouts were imminent. Then, at 5:48 p.m., the state’s Office of Emergency Services sent out a text alert to people in targeted counties, asking them to conserve power if they could. Within five minutes the grid emergency was all but over. Power demand plunged by 1.2 gigawatts between 5:50 and 5:55 p.m., and would continue to drop in the hours after that, according to data from the California Independent System Operator. A gigawatt is enough to power about 750,000 Californian homes.

But while the state’s grid operator said California had avoided rolling blackouts Tuesday, some cities apparently didn’t get the message. Officials in three San Francisco Bay area cities — Alameda, Healdsburg and Palo Alto — reported on social media that power shutdowns were underway that evening, which also could have contributed to the sharp decline in demand. By 8 p.m., the grid operator canceled the highest level of emergency without calling for power cuts. More than 500,000 homes and businesses had been warned earlier in the day that they might lose service.

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Snap’s Master Plan To Turn Its Business Around

After getting “punched in the face hard” by a cratering stock price and brutal layoffs, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel told employees this week how the company plans to still grow its revenue and user base next year. The Verge reports: In an internal memo sent to employees on September 6th and obtained by The Verge, Spiegel said the company aims to grow Snapchat’s user base by 30 percent to 450 million by the end of next year, and that it aims to increase revenue to $6 billion in 2023. He said the plan is for $350 million of that revenue to come from the paid subscription Snapchat recently introduced to unlock additional features, which is already on track to hit 4 million subscribers by the end of this year. […] To achieve its user growth goal, Spiegel said Snap will focus on “increasing our penetration in at least one new large country or demographic” and onboarding more 30- to 40-year-olds. Funneling more users into the Map and Spotlight sections of Snapchat “helps to make our service more compelling for our community, harder to copy, and more resilient to competition, and increases our monetization opportunity over the longer term.”

Snap recently laid off 20 percent of its workforce, cutting whole teams and projects like its recently introduced camera drone. Even still, Spiegel said the company remains committed to augmented reality, which he thinks “represents the next major evolution in computing,” and that the next generation of its Spectacles AR glasses is in development. “Leadership in augmented reality is important to Snap because it helps us build a durable competitive advantage that comes from investing over the long term, building things that are technically difficult, and growing a platform that is increasingly hard to replicate,” Spiegel said. “It also positions us to benefit from the next major platform shift: mobile to wearables. Leading this shift will be one of our most meaningful contributions to human progress; empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.”

Here are some other highlights from the memo:
– Snap aims to grow time spent on content by 10 percent per user in 2023.
– It wants 35 percent of users interacting daily with the Map tab of Snapchat and 30 percent of users on Spotlight, its TikTok competitor, every day next year.
– The plan is to make $6 billion in revenue and at least $1 billion in free cash flow in 2023.
– Snap wants AR-based advertising to make up 10 percent of its total ad revenue next year.
– The company wants to grow the number of people who use its AR effects, called Lenses, in other apps to 1 billion monthly users next year.
– It is setting up an AR enterprise division to sell its technology to other companies.
– “We will help developers confidentially explore the possibilities that are enabled with our next-generation” of Spectacles, according to Spiegel, which suggests the next version won’t be commercially available for sale.

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Germany Sticks To Nuclear Power Deadline But Leaves Loophole

Beeftopia writes: Germany will keep two of its three reactors operational through the end of 2022, despite a pledge to shut them all down by December 31. A likely winter gas shortage prompted the change. “German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said in a statement on Monday the move did not mean Berlin was reneging on its long-standing promise to exit nuclear energy by the end of 2022,” reports Reuters. Habeck went on to say, “It remains very improbable that we will have crisis situations and extreme scenarios” requiring further use of nuclear.

“Germany is part of a European system hit by a decline in Russian gas deliveries, the French nuclear power squeeze and a drought that has curbed hydroelectric production and cooling water supplies to thermal power stations as well as hampering barge deliveries of coal,” Reuters says. A problem with the planned use case for the reactors is that nuclear plants are not designed to be variable backup energy generators, but rather continuous first-line generators.

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Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Requests a New Trial

Elizabeth Holmes — the founder of blood testing startup Theranos and the poster child for misleading investors, media, and innocent people looking for medical care through a web of deceit — wants a do-over. She is requesting a new trial, according to a document filed Tuesday in the Southern District Court of California. Gizmodo reports: The motion for a new trial, authored by Holmes’ attorneys, hinges on “newly discovered evidence,” specifically: the alleged testimony regrets of Adam Rosendorff. Rosendorff was a lab director at Theranos and later, testified as a key witness in the case against Holmes and her ex-boyfriend/partner in crime Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. His original testimony lasted multiple days and emphasized the pressure that Theranos employees were under to demonstrate the faulty diagnostic technology worked, even when it didn’t.

“I felt that it was a question on my integrity as a physician not to remain there and to continue to bolster results I essentially didn’t have faith in,” Rosendorff said while on the witness stand in 2021, according to CNBC. “I came to understand that management was not sincere in diverting resources to solve issues.” Now, Holmes and her lawyers are claiming that Rosendorff left a voicemail and then showed up at Holmes’ residence on August 8 in a desperate bid to communicate that he “felt he had done something wrong, apparently in connection with Ms. Holmes’ trial.” The motion, supposedly paraphrasing Rosendorff, says that the former Theranos employee stated, “the government made things seem worse than they were.”

In the document, Holmes’ legal team wrote, “Under any interpretation of his statements, the statements warrant a new trial under Rule 33. But, at a minimum, and to the extent the Court has any doubt about whether a new trial is required, the Court should order an evidentiary hearing and permit Ms. Holmes to subpoena Dr. Rosendorff to testify about his concerns.” Holmes was found guilty in January on four of 11 charges defrauding the company’s investors and patients. She was found not guilty on four counts.

In July, Balwani was found guilty of 12 counts of conspiracy and fraud against certain investors and patients.

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US Plans Shift To Annual COVID Vaccines Akin To Flu Shots

The United States is likely to start recommending COVID-19 vaccines annually, health officials said on Tuesday, as new boosters designed to fight currently circulating variants of the coronavirus roll out. Reuters reports: By the end of this week, 90% of Americans will live within five miles (8 km) of sites carrying updated vaccines, U.S. health secretary Xavier Becerra said at a White House briefing. Officials said people could get the new boosters this fall or winter alongside their regular annual flu shots, and said it was likely this would become a yearly ritual.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky said even with the seven-day average of COVID hospitalizations down 14% to 4,500 per day, annual shots could save thousands of lives. “Modeling projections show that an uptake of updated COVID-19 vaccine doses similar to an annual flu vaccine coverage early this fall could prevent as many as 100,000 hospitalizations and 9,000 deaths, and save billions of dollars in direct medical costs,” she said. The redesigned boosters, green-lighted by U.S. health regulators last week, aim to tackle the BA.5 and BA.4 Omicron subvariants, which account for over 88% and 11% of circulating viruses, respectively, Walensky said. The so-called bivalent vaccines also still target the original version of the virus.

Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said unless a dramatically different variant emerges, annual vaccines should offer enough protection for most people, but that some vulnerable groups might need more frequent vaccinations. “We likely are moving towards a path with a vaccination cadence similar to that of the annual influenza vaccine, with annual, updated COVID-19 shots matched to the currently circulating strains for most of the population,” he said.

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