Microsoft
to spend $3.2B on expanding cloud and AI in green energy-rich
Sweden
date: 2024-06-03, updated: 2024-06-03, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Budget to be blown on construction and 20K GPUs among other things in
the next 2 years
Just weeks after reporting a hike in carbon dioxide emissions for 2023,
Microsoft says it will invest $3.2 billion in Sweden over the next two
years, expanding its cloud and AI operations in the country.…
As you’ve likely heard by now, Claudia Sheinbaum won Mexico’s
presidential election in a landslide victory and is slated to become the
nation’s first female president. But Mexico is facing a major budget
deficit, exacerbated by spending on infrastructure and social programs.
We’ll discuss what Sheinbaum’s win means for the economy. Plus, we’ll
examine the latest in the meme stock craze after the value of GameStop
shares soared in premarket trading.
Qualcomm
CEO: Snapdragon X “coming to all PC form factors” including
desktops
date: 2024-06-03, from: Liliputing
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite processors for
Windows PCs are debuting in laptops and tablets, but Qualcomm CEO
Cristiano Amon says the company’s new chips will eventually be available
in “all PC form factors.” During Qualcomm’s Computex keynote event, Amon
showed a presentation slide teasing additional form factors including
mini PCs and […]
The spring housing season is almost over, and the results have been
mixed. Both existing and new home sales dipped in April, though prices
remain elevated. The median existing-home sales price was $407,600 in
April, and $433,500 for a new house. Those numbers have jumped due to
the pandemic-era frenzy for real estate. Four years ago, the median was
[…]
Asus
ProArt PZ13 is a Windows Copilot+ tablet with Snapdragon X and a
detachable keyboard
date: 2024-06-03, from: Liliputing
The first Windows PCs powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon X processors are
expected to hit the streets this summer. A bunch of PC makers announced
laptops with the new chip last month when Microsoft unveiled its new
Copilot+ platform. But at the time the new Microsoft Surface Pro was the
only tablet. Now Asus has introduced […]
Russia
takes gold for disinformation as Olympics approach
date: 2024-06-03, updated: 2024-06-03, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Featuring Tom Cruise deepfakes and multiple made-up terrorism threats
Still throwing toys out the pram over its relationship with
international sport, Russia is engaged in a multi-pronged disinformation
campaign against the Olympic Games and host nation France that’s
intensifying as the opening ceremony approaches.…
The fediverse is a decentralized cooperative of social networks that can
interact with each other: a user on one network can follow, reply, like,
and re-share content from a user on another network. The whole thing
depends on an open standard called ActivityPub, shared community norms,
and a cooperative culture.
Of course, my first reaction was that Cara should be compatible with the
fediverse so that its content could be more easily discoverable by users
on social networks like Threads, Flipboard, and Mastodon. Cara is
explicitly set up to be a network for human artists, with no
AI-generated content, which will be increasingly valuable as the web
becomes flooded with machine-made art. The fediverse would allow them to
publish on sites like Cara that are set up to support their needs, while
finding a broad audience across the entire web.
With the widespread use of generative AI, we decided to build a place
that filters out generative AI images so that people who want to find
authentic creatives and artwork can do so easily.
[…] We do not agree with generative AI tools in their current unethical
form, and we won’t host AI-generated portfolios unless the rampant
ethical and data privacy issues around datasets are resolved via
regulation.
I’d love to follow artists on Cara from my Mastodon or Threads accounts.
But how does Cara’s AI stance square with the fediverse? How might
artists on Cara find a broad audience for their work across the web
without risking that art being used as training data without permission?
The first thing a site can do to prevent its content from being used as
training data is to
add
exclusion rules to its robots.txt file. These theoretically prevent
crawlers owned by model vendors like OpenAI from directly accessing art
from the site. There is
nothing that legally
binds crawlers from obeying robots.txt; it’s less enforceable than a
handshake agreement. Still, most claim that they voluntarily do.
But even if robots.txt was an ironclad agreement, content published to
the fediverse doesn’t solely live on its originating server. If Cara was
connected to the fediverse, images posted there could still be found on
its servers, but they would also be syndicated to the home servers of
anyone who followed its users. If a user on Threads followed a Cara
user, the Cara user’s images would be copied to Threads; if a user on a
Mastodon instance followed that user, the images would be copied to that
Mastodon instance. The images are copied across the web as soon as they
are published; even if Cara protects its servers from being
accessed by AI crawlers, these other downstream fediverse servers are
not guaranteed to be protected.
By connecting to the fediverse, one might argue that servers implicitly
license their content to be reused across different services. This is
markedly different from RSS,
where
this is explicitly not the case: there is legal precedent that says
my RSS feed cannot be used to republish my content elsewhere
without my permission (although you can, of course, access its content
in a private feed reader; that’s the point). But on the fediverse, the
ability to reshare across platforms is core functionality.
The following things are all true:
Content published to the fediverse may be both re-copied to and served
from other peoples’ servers
Those servers may have different policies regarding content use
In the absence of a robots.txt directive, AI crawlers will scrape a
website’s data, even if they don’t have the legal right to
Some servers may themselves be owned by AI vendors and may use federated
content to train generative models even without the use of a scraper
As a result, there is no way an author can protect it from being used in
an AI training set. The owners of a fediverse site wouldn’t have the
right to make a deal with an AI vendor to sell the content it
hosted because they wouldn’t have the copyright to all of that content
in the first place. But because AI crawlers greedily scrape content
without asking for permission, unless the site explicitly opts out with
robots.txt, it doesn’t matter.
This leads me to a few conclusions:
It is a moral obligation for every fediverse site to prevent crawling of
federated content by robustly setting robots.txt directives at a minimum
Someone needs to legally prevent AI vendors from using all available
data as training fodder
A fediverse (and a web!) where Cara can safely join while adhering to
its principles is a more functional, safer network. To build it we’ll
need to support explicit licensing on the fediverse, create a stronger
standard for user protections across fediverse sites, and seek more
robust legal protections against AI crawler activity. While these are
ambitious goals, I believe they’re achievable — and necessary to support
the artists and content creators who make the web their home.
AMD
unveils Ryzen 9000 CPUs for desktop, Zen 5 takes center stage at
Computex 2024
date: 2024-06-03, from: OS News
In regards to performance, AMD is touting an average (geomean) IPC
increase in desktop workloads for Zen 5 of 16%. And with the new desktop
Ryzen chips’ turbo clockspeeds remaining largely identical to their
Ryzen 7000 predecessors, this should translate into similar performance
expectations for the new chips. The AMD Ryzen 9000 series will also
launch on the AM5 socket, which debuted with AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series and
marks AMD’s commitment to socket/platform longevity. Along with the
Ryzen 9000 series will come a pair of new high-performance chipsets: the
X870E (Extreme) and the regular X870 chipsets. The fundamental features
that vendors will integrate into their specific motherboards remain
tight-lipped. Still, we do know that USB 4.0 ports are standard on the
X870E/X870 boards, along with PCIe 5.0 for both PCIe graphics and NVMe
storage, with higher AMD EXPO memory profile support expected than
previous generations. ↫ Gavin Bonshor at AnandTech I absolutely love
that AMD maintains compatibility with its chipset and socket generations
as well as it does. I’m currently running a Ryzen 9 7900X, and I see no
reason to upgrade any time soon, but it’s good to know I’ll at least
have otions once the time comes. Compare this to Intel, which broke
compatibility pretty much intentionally almost every generation for
years now, and this is a huge win for consumers. Of course, as AMD
regains more and more of its foothold across the market, it will
eventually also resort to the kind of tactics Intel has been using while
it pretty much had the market to itself. It’s only a matter of time
before we’ll see the first new Ryzen generation that mysteriously
requires a new socket or chipset out of the blue.
MSI
Claw 8 AI+ leak points to a next-gen handheld gaming PC with Intel Lunar
Lake
date: 2024-06-03, from: Liliputing
MSI’s first handheld gaming PC arrived earlier this year to pretty lousy
reviews. That’s largely due to the MSI Claw’s processor: Intel’s Meteor
Lake processors may offer much better graphics performance than the
company’s older mobile chips, but they still can’t really compete with
AMD’s latest Ryzen processors when it comes to balancing performance and
[…]
Tock:
a secure embedded operating system for microcontrollers
date: 2024-06-03, from: OS News
Tock is an embedded operating system designed for running multiple
concurrent, mutually distrustful applications on Cortex-M and RISC-V
based embedded platforms. Tock’s design centers around protection, both
from potentially malicious applications and from device drivers. Tock
uses two mechanisms to protect different components of the operating
system. First, the kernel and device drivers are written in Rust, a
systems programming language that provides compile-time memory safety
and type safety. Tock uses Rust to protect the kernel (e.g. the
scheduler and hardware abstraction layer) from platform specific device
drivers as well as isolate device drivers from each other. Second, Tock
uses memory protection units to isolate applications from each other and
the kernel. ↫ Tock GitHub page We’ve never featured Tock on OSNews
before, as far as I can tell, which seems odd considering it’s been
around for a while. The most recent release stems from January 2023, so
a short while ago, but that’s not too surprising considering the target
audience of this embedded operating system. It’s licensed under either
Apache or MIT.
Travel
Troubleshooter: I canceled my airline tickets months ago, so where’s my
money?
date: 2024-06-03, from: San Jose Mercury News
After John Bernath cancels his flight from Amman, Jordan, to Tel
Aviv, Israel, a Booking.com representative promises him a full refund.
So, why hasn’t he received anything?
Wine
bar’s legal battle with Richmond raises questions about the future of
the waterfront
date: 2024-06-03, from: San Jose Mercury News
Nearly a decade after opening, the owners of R&B Cellars and the
Riggers Loft wine bar are now in a legal fight with the landlord — the
city of Richmond.
Google Leak
Reveals Thousands of Privacy Incidents
date: 2024-06-03, from: 404 Media Group
An internal Google database obtained by 404 Media shows Google
recording childrens’ voices, saving license plates from Street View, and
many other self-reported incidents, large and small.
It’s
make your mind up time as Atos sets deadline to pick rescue package
date: 2024-06-03, updated: 2024-06-03, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
June 5 the day to opt for Onepoint-led consortium or Daniel Křetínský’s
EPEI
HPC heavyweight Atos has given itself until June 5 – this Wednesday – to
decide between rival financial restructuring proposals to reduce the
company’s debt and put its future finances on firmer footing.…
Human Genome Meeting (HGM) is a series of annual conferences
organized by the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO). It started as a
meeting dedicated for Human Genome Mapping. Over the years, with the
completion of the Human Genome Project, HGM has evolved from a small
targeted meeting into a scientific conference for all genetic and
genomic […]
US
veterans get heroes’ welcome in France ahead of D-Day anniversary
date: 2024-06-03, from: VOA News USA
DEAUVILLE/PARIS — Crowds cheered and applauded as U.S. veterans
arrived at French airports ahead of ceremonies marking the 80th
anniversary of D-Day, when more than 150,000 Allied soldiers landed in
Normandy to drive out Nazi Germany forces.
Many of those flying in over the weekend into Monday were older than
100, pushed on wheelchairs by relatives and aides.
“It’s unreal. It’s unreal. Wow,” 107-year-old Reynolds Tomter said at
Paris Charles-de-Gaulle airport as students waved U.S. and French flags
and held up photos of the veterans.
“It feels great … and I’m so thankful that I got the opportunity to
be back out here, my son with me,” said 101-year-old Bill Wall, as his
son, Ray, pushed him through arrivals.
“I lost some great friends. All of these people who are out there on
their crosses and unmarked graves are the true heroes. It gives me a
chance to pay tribute to them which they so need. It will bring back
some memories of some great people,” he added.
After shaking hands with students, 95-year-old Dave Yoho said: “My
heart is full. My heart is full.”
In Deauville, Normandy, a specially chartered flight landed on
Monday.
Across Normandy, where beaches and fields still bear the scars of the
fighting that erupted on June 6, 1944 and the weeks that followed,
preparations were in full gear for official ceremonies. World leaders
from U.S. President Joe Biden to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will
attend.
Already, at the weekend, in Vierville-sur-Mer, a town just above
Omaha Beach - one of the sectors where U.S. soldiers landed - a
re-enactment camp was set up, giving visitors a chance to see what
equipment the soldiers were using.
People took rides in World War Two jeeps and armored vehicles.
“It’s always very intense when we meet veterans, because they always
have many stories to tell, and you still feel the emotion,” said Julie
Boisard, who lives in Normandy and took part in the re-enactment.
A handful of serving members of the Virginia National Guard 29th
Infantry Division gazed out over the beach their elders stormed 80 years
earlier.
“It’s historic, it’s memorable … and it’s very emotional as well,”
said U.S. serviceman Esaw Lee. “Those guys were so courageous and so
mythical. They were legendary.”
With war raging on Europe’s borders in 2024, this anniversary’s D-Day
ceremony will carry special resonance.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will be among the guests.
Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022,
touching off Europe’s biggest armed conflict since World War Two, was
not invited to the D-Day events.
The commemorations “remind us that we were occupied for four years
and were liberated by the Americans,” said Marie-Therese Legallois, who
was seven at the time of D-Day, and remembers it vividly.
“But I always have a bit of sadness to see that the war continues, in
Ukraine or elsewhere.”
Current conditions: At least two people have died
in ongoing flooding in southern Germany • Delhi’s deadly heat wave
continues this week • Seven-inch hail
reportedly
fell in the Texas Panhandle.
THE TOP FIVE
Mexico elects climate scientist as next president
Mexico resoundingly
elected
Claudia Sheinbaum as its next president over the weekend. Sheinbaum, 61,
is making headlines for becoming the country’s first female president,
as well as its first Jewish leader, but she is also a climate scientist,
and her landslide victory “could mark a turning point from the current
administration’s pro-fossil fuel policies,” as Climate Home News
explained.
Sheinbaum studied physics and then received her doctorate in energy
engineering. She spent four years at the
Lawrence
Berkeley Lab studying Mexico’s energy consumption, and had a brief
stint on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She
was tapped as secretary of the environment for Mexico City before being
elected as the capital’s mayor in 2018. During her tenure she was an
advocate for rooftop solar and better public transportation
infrastructure.
Manuel
Velasquez/Getty Images
On the presidential campaign trail, Sheinbaum
promised
to “accelerate the energy transition” by boosting wind and solar,
installing new transmission lines, and improving the country’s
hydropower stations. But she has also backed the “energy sovereignty”
policies of her predecessor and mentor, President Andrés Manuel López
Obrador. He built an oil refinery, funneled support into an indebted
state oil company, and failed to set a national net zero target. Under
his leadership, private investment in renewable projects has
slumped.
Energy policy may be on Sheinbaum’s to-do list when she takes office in
October, but tackling crime is likely to be top of the agenda.
House set to consider 2025 energy and environment programs
The House returns to Washington this week, with 12 bills for 2025 fiscal
spending up for debate. GOP lawmakers will seek “deep cuts for energy
and environment programs,” E&E Newsreported,
while looking to shift funding toward bills that prioritize defense and
homeland security. The proposed Agriculture spending bill, up for
subcommittee considerations on June 11, contains annual funding for the
U.S. Department of Agriculture, among other agencies. The
farm
bill got the stamp of approval from the Agriculture Committee
recently after the panel “rejected a Democratic-led effort to preserve
conservation programs’ focus on farming practices that reduce emissions
tied to the warming and erratic climate,”
according
toE&E News.
La Niña looms as Atlantic hurricane season kicks off
The Atlantic hurricane season started on Saturday, and forecasters are
getting nervous as ocean water temperatures
remain
at record highs and the La Niña weather pattern approaches. Warm
waters supercharge storms, while La Niña removes wind shear, which is
“one key barrier that can block Atlantic storms,” explained Brian
Sullivan at Bloomberg. This morning the World
Meteorological Organization (WMO)
said
there is a 60% chance of La Niña returning between July and September,
and a 70% chance that it’ll make an appearance between August and
November. “We’ve never had a La Niña combined with ocean temperatures
this warm in recorded history so that’s a little ominous,” University of
Miami tropical meteorology researcher Brian McNoldy told
PBS.
Various agencies and experts (including NOAA and Colorado State
University) estimate that the number of hurricanes this year could range
between eight and 13, compared to the annual average of seven. But for
now, the coast is clear:
NOAA
West Coast braces for early-season heat wave
A whopper early-season heat wave is headed for the West Coast, and it
could last all week – maybe longer. The heat dome will likely tip
temperatures into triple digits in Northern California, with Sacramento
Valley expecting to see 110 degrees Fahrenheit by Wednesday. The heat
could “be the death knell for the remainder of the state’s snowpack,”
wrote
Hayley Smith at the Los Angeles Times. Coastal regions will
probably be spared the worst of the heat. That said, a
wildfire
near San Francisco has burned about 14,000 acres, making it the state’s
largest fire of the season so far. It was about 50% contained as of
yesterday.
OPEC locks in more oil production cuts
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its
allies agreed over the weekend to continue to cut oil production into
2025, the Financial Times
reported.
There are several reasons: Demand growth remains slow, interest rates
remain high, and the U.S. is ramping up production. All of this means
OPEC+ isn’t keen to boost supply for fear of depressing oil prices,
which have hovered around $80 per barrel recently, down from $90 in
April, and much lower than OPEC’s desired $100 per barrel.
THE KICKER
The European Union’s wind and solar power generation has
increased
by 45% since 2019, while fossil fuel power generation has dropped by
22%.
Check
Point warns customers to patch VPN vulnerability under active
exploitation
date: 2024-06-03, updated: 2024-06-03, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Also, free pianos are the latest internet scam bait, Cooler Master gets
pwned, and some critical vulnerabilities
Infosec in brief Cybersecurity software vendor Check
Point is warning customers to update their software immediately in light
of a zero day vulnerability under active exploitation.…
Volkswagen
calls
its new EV minivan “the electric reincarnation of the iconic Microbus.”
But while the ID.Buzz may be a touchscreens-and-LEDs update on the
bare-bones icon of the Sixties, it is far from the first electrified
take on the VW bus.
On an August morning in 1968, a Volkswagen bus jammed full of Caltech
students who had hacked it to run on battery power departed their home
base in Pasadena, California. Their destination: Cambridge,
Massachusetts, home of rival MIT. At the same moment, MIT students in an
electrified Chevy
Corvair
left the East Coast bound for the West.
“I came up with the crazy idea of a cross-country electric car race
between Caltech and MIT,” said Wally Rippel, the student who owned that
electrified VW bus and challenged MIT to the 1968 race, while
reminiscing about the competition in a
lecture
at Caltech last Thursday night. [Editor’s note: Caltech is where
the author does his day job.] “There would be some interest
there, and it would stimulate interest in research at Caltech and MIT.”
The great electric car race of 1968 carried the energy of a world’s
fair, offering gawkers along its transcontinental route the chance to
see the vehicles of the future. It would be another half-century before
the EV finally went mainstream, of course. But the Caltech-MIT
competition presaged what electric car builders and drivers would need
to overcome, and their race is a reminder that the electric car wasn’t
just an idea forsaken soon after the dawn of the automotive industry and
then suddenly resurrected by Tesla. All along, engineers and scientists
imagined another way.
Climate change is the reason for the whole electric vehicle revolution
this century, but it wasn’t the animating force for the EV tinkerers of
the ’60s. Wally Rippel, who owned the Caltech VW bus, and his
compatriots were focused on solving
smog
and air pollution, the car-related environmental calamities of that era.
In his Caltech talk, Rippel compared the air quality of that smoggy era
to the fire-and-brimstone atmosphere of hell itself. “I don’t think any
of you could understand it if you didn’t live in Pasadena in the ’60s,”
he said.
Since 80% of L.A.’s smog came from automotive exhaust, Rippel came to
the
conclusion
that the internal combustion engine should be replaced. The question
was, replaced with what? Fuel cells were used during the space race of
the 1960s, but they were maddeningly expensive and could provide only
1/20th of the energy he needed to move a car. After seeing
electric-powered golf carts around campus, he thought of the electric
car.
Just like the climate activists to come, they faced their doubters when
the EV race got under way. Team member Dick Rubenstein reminisced in an
article
about the race: “I remember the service station attendant at Amboy. He
thought it was all a joke and asked: ‘What do you need an electric car
for, anyway? What air pollution?’”
The challenges of long-distance EV driving were all present in 1968.
Rippel wondered, like many people do today, how much more electricity
the nation would need to power a country full of EVs. After whipping out
his slide rule and performing a few calculations, he determined the U.S.
would need 20 to 25 percent more electricity, a reasonable goal.
Rippel and company needed charging stations, of course. The Electric
Fuel Propulsion Corporation of Michigan worked with utilities to set up
55 charging stations on the route across the country. Now, those stops
didn’t look quite like the Tesla Superchargers of today, located in
outlet mall parking lots. Rippel explained that some of their stops
amounted to nothing more than a connection to a power line tower or a
wire coming up from a manhole.
It typically took 45 to 60 minutes to recharge using the onboard 30kW
charger that Rippel put in the bus. That’s not that
far off from today’s times, even though the students ran lead-acid and
nickel-cadmium batteries rather than the lithium-ion that is today’s
state of the art. (Caltech’s VW carried a literal ton
of batteries to store 16 kWh of energy.) Still: After blowing fuses and
causing a power outage in Seligman, Arizona, the Caltech team had to
start charging at a lower speed in order to avoid overloading the
technology of the time.
Range anxiety was naturally worse, given the experimental technology and
the need to make it to the next station on the list. Both teams had
chase cars accompanying their EV and occasionally resorted to towing the
electric car when mechanical gremlins struck. Caltech towed a generator
along just in case.
The biggest enemy? Heat. Today’s EV batteries suffer under extreme
temperatures, with heat degrading battery life and cold diminishing
range. But modern EVs have sophisticated cooling mechanisms to help
protect the cells. The student EVs did not have this. They resorted to a
simpler fix: dumping ice on the batteries during charging stops.
Wrote Rubenstein: “We finally solved our battery overheating problem in
McLean, Texas. While the car was charging, I went into town to buy some
rubber tubing and a rubber syringe bulb. We got some small ice cubes and
put them on the batteries, then used the tubing to siphon the water out
of the battery enclosure. We used the syringe bulb to start the siphon.
That was our handy-dandy cooling system, for which I blushingly accept
credit.”
In other ways, their simple EV technology is startlingly familiar. The
VW bus nearly didn’t make it to the charging stop in the desert of
Needles, California, but used the downhill grade into town to put some
charge back on the battery, just as regenerative braking in today’s EVs
saves energy when the car is decelerating or rolling downhill. (Today,
Needles is home to several EV fast-charging stations, befitting its
nature as one of the rare pit stops on this lonely stretch of desert
highway.)
The article in Caltech’s Engineering & Science
magazine concludes by saying future lead-cobalt rechargeable batteries
might reach 250 miles of range — just about what lithium-ion batteries
were actually doing a half-century later, when cars
like the Tesla Model 3 arrived.
The race ended nine days later, on September 4. MIT reached the end of
the line first, by about a day and a half. But, per the agreed-upon
rules, its team was dinged with many hours’ worth of time penalties
because of how often the electric Chevy Corvair had to be towed —
including across the finish line. The EV van from Pasadena, for all its
own troubles, reached MIT under its own power and was, eventually,
declared the winner.
In retrospect, the race looks like a one-off — a moment when young
scientists with a dream tried to show the world a better way but decades
before the world was ready to see it. In fact, though, this calamitous,
makeshift Cannonball Run left threads that led to the electrification of
vehicles that’s finally happening around the world.
The next generation of idealistic auto engineers created the
Sunraycer,
a 1980s solar-powered race car that crossed the Australian Outback. Its
success led to the
GM
Impact, a 1990 concept EV meant to show the world what was
possible. And the Impact led to the fabled, doomed GM EV1.
EV1 is remembered as the electric car that wasn’t, the victim in the
case of
Who
Killed the Electric Car? But attempts like it and the
AC
Propulsion tZero in the 1990s showed that EVs were not only
possible, but could be downright cool if you did them right. The rest is
history.
This week, we’re examining the ways cities are adapting to the future of
how we live and work. Some of these changes were sped up by the
pandemic, but some are a long-time coming — like evolving tech in the
auto industry. In Detroit, an abandoned train station has been brought
back to life by the Ford Motor Company as a center for tech innovation.
Will the investment pay off? But first: automakers and deep sea mining.
CEOs
got hefty pay raises in 2023, widening the gap with the workers they
oversee
date: 2024-06-03, from: VOA News USA
New York — The typical compensation package for chief executives who
run companies in the S&P 500 jumped nearly 13% last year, easily
surpassing the gains for workers at a time when inflation was putting
considerable pressure on Americans’ budgets.
The median pay package for CEOs rose to $16.3 million, up 12.6%,
according to data analyzed for The Associated Press by Equilar.
Meanwhile, wages and benefits netted by private-sector workers rose 4.1%
through 2023. At half the companies in this year’s pay survey, it would
take the worker at the middle of the company’s pay scale almost 200
years to make what their CEO did.
CEOs got rewarded as the economy showed remarkable resilience,
underpinning strong profits and boosting stock prices. After navigating
the pandemic, companies faced challenges from persistent inflation and
higher interest rates. About two dozen CEOs in the AP’s annual survey
received a pay bump of 50% or more.
“In this post-pandemic market, the desire is for boards to reward and
retain CEOs when they feel like they have a good leader in place,” said
Kelly Malafis, founding partner of Compensation Advisory Partners in New
York. “That all combined kind of leads to increased compensation.”
But Sarah Anderson, who directs the Global Economy Project at the
progressive Institute for Policy Studies, believes the gap in earnings
between top executives and workers plays into the overall
dissatisfaction among Americans about the economy.
“Most of the focus here is on inflation, which people are really
feeling, but they’re feeling the pain of inflation more because they’re
not seeing their wages go up enough,” she said.
Many companies have heeded calls from shareholders to tie CEO
compensation more closely to performance. As a result, a large
proportion of pay packages consist of stock awards, which the CEO often
can’t cash in for years, if at all, unless the company meets certain
targets, typically a higher stock price or market value or improved
operating profits. The median stock award rose almost 11% last year
compared to a 2.7% increase in bonuses.
The AP’s CEO compensation study included pay data for 341 executives
at S&P 500 companies who have served at least two full consecutive
fiscal years at their companies, which filed proxy statements between
Jan. 1 and April 30.
Top earners
Hock Tan, the CEO of Broadcom Inc., topped the AP survey with a pay
package valued at about $162 million.
Broadcom granted Tan stock awards valued at $160.5 million on
Oct. 31, 2022, for the company’s 2023 fiscal year. Tan was given the
opportunity to earn up to 1 million shares starting in fiscal 2025,
according to a securities filing, provided that Broadcom’s stock meets
certain targets – and he remains CEO for five years.
At the time of the award, Broadcom’s stock was trading at $470. Tan
would receive portions of the stock awards if the stock hit $825 and
$950 and the the full award if the average closing price is at or above
$1,125 for 20 consecutive days between October 2025 and October 2027.
The targets seemed ambitious when set, but the stock has skyrocketed
since, and reached an all-time closing high of $1,436.17 on May 28.
Like rival Nvidia Inc., Broadcom is riding the current artificial
intelligence frenzy among tech companies. Its chips are used by
businesses and public entities ranging from major banks, retailers,
telecom operators and government bodies.
In granting the stock award, Broadcom noted that under Tan its market
value has increased from $3.8 billion in 2009 to $645 billion (as of May
23) and that its total shareholder return during that time easily
surpassed that of the S&P 500. It also said Tan will not receive
additional stock awards during the remainder of the five-year
period.
Other CEOs at the top of AP’s survey are William Lansing of Fair
Isaac Corp, ($66.3 million); Tim Cook of Apple Inc. ($63.2 million);
Hamid Moghadam of Prologis Inc. ($50.9 million); and Ted Sarandos,
co-CEO of Netflix ($49.8 million).
At Apple, Cook’s compensation represented a 36% decline from the year
prior. Cook requested a pay cut for 2023, in response to the vote at
Apple’s 2022 annual meeting, where just 64% of shareholders approved of
his pay package.
The survey’s methodology excluded CEOs such as Nikesh Arora at Palo
Alto Networks ($151.4 million) and Christopher Winfrey at Charter
Communications ($89 million).
Although securities filings show Elon Musk received no compensation
as CEO of Tesla Inc., his pay is currently front and center at the
electric car company. Musk is asking shareholders to restore a pay
package that was struck down by a judge in Delaware, who said the
approval process for the package was “deeply flawed.” The compensation,
mostly stock awards valued at $2.3 billion when granted in 2018, is now
estimated to be worth around $45 billion.
CEO pay vs workers
Workers across the country have been winning higher pay since the
pandemic, with wages and benefits for private-sector employees rising
4.1% in 2023 after a 5.1% increase in 2022, according to the Labor
Department.
Even with those gains, the gap between the person in the corner
office and everyone else keeps getting wider. Half the CEOs in this
year’s pay survey made at least 196 times what their median employee
earned. That’s up from 185 times in last year’s survey.
The gap is particularly wide at companies where employees typically
earn lower wages, such as retailers. At Ross Stores, for example, the
company says its employee at the very middle of the pay scale was a
part-time retail store associate who made $8,618. It would take 2,100
years earning that much to equal CEO Barbara Rentler’s compensation from
2023, valued at $18.1 million. A year earlier, it would have taken the
median worker 1,137 years to match the CEO’s pay.
Corporate boards often feel pressure to keep upping the pay for
well-performing CEOs out of fear that they’ll walk out the door and make
more at a rival. They focus on paying compensation that is competitive
within their industry or marketplace and not on the pay ratio, Malafis
said. The better an executive performs, the more the board is willing to
pay.
The disparity between what the chief executive makes and the workers
earn wasn’t always so wide.
After World War II and up until the 1980s, CEOs of large publicly
traded companies made about 40 to 50 times the average worker’s pay,
said Brandon Rees, deputy director of corporations and capital markets
for the AFL-CIO, which runs an Executive Paywatch website that tracks
CEO pay.
“The [current] pay ratio signals a sort of a winner take all culture,
that companies are treating their CEOs as, you know, as superstars as
opposed to, team players,” Rees said.
Say on pay
Despite the criticism, shareholders tend to give overwhelming support
to pay packages for company leaders. From 2019 to 2023, companies
typically received just under 90% of the vote for their executive
compensation plans, according to data from Equilar.
Shareholders do, however, occasionally reject a compensation plan,
although the votes are non-binding. In 2023, shareholders at 13
companies in the S&P 500 gave the executive pay packages less than
50% support.
After its investors gave another resounding thumbs down to the pay
packages for its top executives, Netflix met with many of its biggest
shareholders last year to discuss their concerns. It also talked with
major proxy-advisory firms, which are influential because they recommend
how investors should vote at companies’ annual meetings.
Following the talks, Netflix announced several changes to redesign
its pay policies. For one, it eliminated executives’ option to allocate
their compensation between cash and options. It will no longer give out
stock options, which can give executives a payday as long as the stock
price stays above a certain level. Instead, the company will give
restricted stock that executives can profit from only after a certain
amount of time or after certain performance measures are met.
The changes will take effect in 2024. For last year, co-CEO Ted
Sarandos received options valued at $28.3 million and a cash bonus of
$16.5 million. Co-CEO Greg Peters received options valued at $22.7
million and a cash bonus of $13.9 million.
Anderson, of the Institute for Policy Studies, said Say on Pay votes
are important because they “shine a spotlight on some of the most
egregious cases of executive access, and it can lead to negotiations
over pay and other issues that shareholders might want to raise with
corporate leadership.”
“But I think the impact, certainly on the overall size of CEO
packages has not had much effect in some cases,” she said.
Female CEOs
More women made the AP survey than in previous years, but their
numbers in the corner office are still minuscule compared to their male
counterparts. Of the 342 CEOs included in Equilar’s data, 25 were
women.
Lisa Su, CEO and chair of the board of chip maker Advanced Micro
Devices, was the highest paid female CEO in the AP survey for the fifth
year in a row in fiscal 2023, bringing in compensation valued at $30.3
million — flat with her compensation package in 2022. Her overall rank
rose to 21 from 25.
The other top paid female CEOs include Mary Barra of automaker
General Motors ($27.8 million); Jane Fraser of banking giant Citigroup
($25.5 million); Kathy Warden of aerospace and defense company Northrop
Grumman Corp. ($23.5 million); and Carol Tome of package deliverer UPS
Inc. ($23.4 million).
The median pay package for female CEOs rose 21% to $17.6 million.
That’s better than the men fared: Their median pay package rose 12.2% to
$16.3 million.
As
Hunter Biden’s gun case starts jury selection, president says he has
‘boundless love’ for him
date: 2024-06-03, from: VOA News USA
WILMINGTON, Del. — President Joe Biden’s son Hunter arrived at court
on Monday for jury selection in a federal gun case against him after the
collapse of a deal with prosecutors that would have avoided the
spectacle of a trial so close to the 2024 election. First lady Jill
Biden arrived shortly after, entering the courthouse in support of her
son.
Joe Biden said that as president he wouldn’t comment on the criminal
trial but as a dad he has “boundless love for my son, confidence in him,
and respect for his strength.”
“I am the President, but I am also a Dad,” he said in a statement.
“Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is
today.”
Hunter Biden, who spent the weekend with his parents, has been
charged in Delaware with three felonies stemming from a 2018 firearm
purchase when he was, according to his memoir, in the throes of a crack
addiction. He has been accused of lying to a federally licensed gun
dealer, making a false claim on the application used to screen firearms
applicants when he said he was not a drug user, and illegally having the
gun for 11 days.
He has pleaded not guilty and has argued he’s being unfairly targeted
by the Justice Department, after Republicans decried the now-defunct
deal as special treatment for the Democratic president’s son.
The trial comes just days after Donald Trump, Republicans’
presumptive 2024 presidential nominee, was convicted of 34 felonies in
New York City. A jury found the former president guilty of a scheme to
cover up a hush money payment to a porn actor to fend off damage to his
2016 presidential campaign. The two criminal cases are unrelated, but
their proximity underscores how the criminal courtroom has taken center
stage during the 2024 campaign.
Hunter Biden is also facing a separate trial in California in
September on charges of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes. Both cases
were to have been resolved through a deal with prosecutors last July,
the culmination of a yearslong investigation into his business
dealings.
But Judge Maryellen Noreika, who was nominated to the bench by Trump,
questioned some unusual aspects of the deal, which included a proposed
guilty plea to misdemeanor offenses to resolve the tax crimes and a
diversion agreement on the gun charge, which meant as long as he stayed
out of trouble for two years the case would be dismissed. The lawyers
squabbled over the agreement, could not come to a resolution, and the
deal fell apart. Attorney General Merrick Garland then appointed the top
investigator as a special counsel in August, and a month later Hunter
Biden was indicted.
This trial isn’t about Hunter Biden’s foreign business affairs —
which Republicans have seized on without evidence to try to paint the
Biden family as corrupt. But it will excavate some of Hunter Biden’s
darkest moments and put them on display.
The president’s allies are worried about the toll the trial may take
on the elder Biden, who’s long been concerned about the well-being and
sobriety of his only living son and who must now watch as those painful
past mistakes are publicly scrutinized. He’s also protective: Hunter
Biden was with his father all weekend before the case began, biking with
his dad and attending church together.
President Biden, in a last-minute switch in plans, shifted from his
Rehoboth Beach home back to his Wilmington compound on Sunday evening.
Boarding a helicopter on Sunday was the only time the president was seen
publicly without his son all weekend.
Hunter Biden arrived first at the Delaware courthouse on Monday. The
first lady, who turned 73 on Monday, followed about 15 minutes later and
walked briskly into court, flanked by U.S. Secret Service agents. Hunter
Biden’s sister Ashley Biden was also in court to support him.
Allies are also worried the trial could become a distraction as the
president tries to campaign under anemic poll numbers and as he is
preparing for an upcoming presidential debate while the proceedings play
out.
Prosecutors are hoping to show Hunter Biden was in the throes of
addiction when he bought the gun and therefore lied on the forms. They
have said they’re planning to use as evidence his published memoir, and
they may also introduce contents from a laptop that he left at a
Delaware repair shop and never retrieved. The contents made their way to
Republicans in 2020 and were publicly leaked, revealing embarrassing and
personal photos in which he’s often nude and doing drugs and messages in
which he asks dealers about scores.
The judge will ask a group of prospective jurors a series of
questions to determine whether they can serve impartially on the jury,
including whether they have donated to political campaigns or run for
political office. She will ask whether their views about the 2024
presidential campaign prevent them from being impartial.
She’s also going to ask whether prospective jurors believe Hunter
Biden is being prosecuted because his father is the president. Also,
she’ll ask about firearms purchasing and addiction issues, including:
“Do you believe someone who is addicted to drugs should not be charged
with a crime?”
The case against Hunter Biden stems from a period when, by his own
public admission, he was addicted to crack. His descent into drugs and
alcohol followed the 2015 death of his brother, Beau Biden, from cancer.
He bought and owned a gun for 11 days in October 2018 and indicated on
the gun purchase form that he was not using drugs.
Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty in both cases, and his attorneys
have suggested they may argue he didn’t see himself as an addict when
prosecutors say he checked “no” to the question on the form. They’ll
also attack the credibility of the gun store owner.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, are also planning to call as witnesses Hunter
Biden’s ex-wife and his brother’s widow, Hallie, with whom he became
romantically involved.
If he were to be convicted, he could face up to 25 years in prison,
though first-time offenders do not get anywhere near the maximum and
it’s unclear whether the judge would give him time behind bars.
Huawei
to go: China’s tech giant No1… in foldable smartphones
date: 2024-06-03, updated: 2024-06-03, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Still struggling to pull in supplies for homegrown 5G SoC, though
It seems that US sanctions are not holding back Huawei, as the Chinese
tech giant has now risen to the global top spot in smartphone shipments,
at least as far as foldable models go.…
From the BBC World Service: Mexico is set to elect its first
female president, and South Africa’s African National Congress party has
lost its majority after 30 years. So what will that look like for the
economies of both countries? Then, a BBC investigation finds evidence
about the fate of Ruja Ignatova — the woman on the FBI’s 10 most-wanted
list for her alleged participation in a fake crypto scheme worth $4.5
billion.
California
firefighters continue battling wind-driven wildfire east of San
Francisco
date: 2024-06-03, from: VOA News USA
SACRAMENTO, California — California firefighters made significant
progress Sunday to tame a wind-driven wildfire that scorched thousands
of acres 97 kilometers east of San Francisco, burned down a home and
forced residents to flee the area near the central California city of
Tracy.
The fire erupted Saturday afternoon in the grassy hills managed by
the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the country’s key
centers for nuclear weapons science and technology. The cause was under
investigation.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said the
research center was not under immediate threat from the blaze, dubbed
the Corral Fire, which had devoured some 52 square kilometers by Sunday
afternoon. The fire was 50% contained as of Sunday evening.
Thousands of people in the area, including parts of the city of Tracy
with a population of 100,000, were ordered to leave for evacuation
centers Saturday. The evacuation order was lifted to allow residents to
return home starting Sunday evening. Tracy is about 112 kilometers south
of California’s capital in Sacramento.
CalFire Battalion Chief Josh Silveira said Sunday afternoon the fire
“burned right up to the homes” in the area and destroyed one house. With
calmer winds and milder weather Sunday, Silveira said he didn’t expect
the fire to grow.
Two firefighters suffered minor to moderate burns on Saturday and
were expected to make a full recovery, Silveira said.
The wildfire presented no threat to any laboratory facilities or
operations and had moved away from the site, Lawrence Livermore
spokesperson Paul Rhien said in a statement to The Associated Press
early Sunday.
“As a precaution, we have activated our emergency operations center
to monitor the situation through the weekend,” Rhien said.
Photos showed a wall of flames moving over the parched landscape as
dark smoke billowed into the sky.
The wildfire also forced the closure of two major highways, including
an interstate that connects the San Francisco Bay Area to San Joaquin
County in central California. But they had reopened by Sunday
afternoon.
The San Joaquin County Office of Emergency Services on Saturday
issued an evacuation order for areas west of the California Aqueduct,
south of Corral Hollow Creek, west to Alameda County and south to
Stanislaus County. A temporary evacuation point was established at Larch
Clover Community Center in Tracy. The county also asked residents to
temporarily use boiled tap water or bottled water for drinking and
cooking purposes.
Sunday’s high temperature for Tracy was expected to reach 29 degrees
Celsius, with no rain in the forecast. But hotter conditions are on
their way.
The National Weather Service said “dangerously hot conditions” with
highs of 39.4 C to 42.2 C were expected later in the week for the San
Joaquin Valley, an area that encompasses Tracy. Wind gusts of up to 72
kph lashed the region Saturday night, according to meteorologist Idamis
Shoemaker of the weather service in Sacramento.
UK
may not hit goal of 95% mobile coverage, commons committee warns
date: 2024-06-03, updated: 2024-06-03, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Sitting in a not-spot in the countryside? It’s not great news
The UK’s mobile networks are unlikely to hit the government target for
95 percent coverage of the country by December 2025, because the
remaining locations will be increasingly harder and therefore costlier
to reach.…
Lea Desdandre and Thomas Dunford in Mantua … With Mantua looking
wonderful, and Lea too, and she and Thomas (it goes without saying)
musically stunning as always. Hugely enjoyable (even if you can’t follow
the German voice-over).
OpenAI playing nice, Google giving terrible advice, Microsoft’s
spyware and lots to learn from excellent books and tutorials.News and
ArticlesThe Doge meme dog died and we wonder what this does to the
crypto market.ICQ shuts down, and all the numbers in pirated Blink182
MP3s don’t make any sense any longer.OpenAI tries to play nice and
[…]
Broadcom’s
VMware strategy looks ever more shaky - and less relevant
date: 2024-06-03, updated: 2024-06-03, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Yes, It’s that darned AI again
Opinion For many, VMware by Broadcom has meant misery
by the boatload. The virtualization platform’s new owners have embarked
on price hikes for the big and forcible eviction for the little. The
dividing line isn’t clear. A 24,000 seat migration by share repository
Computershare seemingly triggered by the gouge suggests things might not
go to plan.…
I’m at the tail end of finalising the draft of my next book, with an
end-June deadline, so my reading recently has mainly been fiction, to
rest the brain. I enjoyed the international Booker winner Kairos by
Jenny Erpenbeck, and …
Continue
reading →
Screwdrivers:
is there anything they can’t do badly? Maybe not
date: 2024-06-03, updated: 2024-06-03, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
We’re starting to wonder if any of you know what those things are
actually for
Who, Me? Welcome once again, to another manic Monday,
The Reg‘s very own fun day, on which we celebrate the less
celebrated moments of our readers’ careers in a column we call Who, Me?…
While blaming inflation for rising prices, the country’s biggest food
and restaurant companies are raking in billions and showering
shareholders with payouts.
STMicro
bags €2B from Europe for Sicily car chip fab
date: 2024-06-03, updated: 2024-06-03, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Eurocrats made them an offer they couldn’t refuse
STMicro will receive €2 billion ($2.17 billion) from the EU under the
European Chips Act to build a manufacturing plant in Italy for
high-power semiconductors used in electric vehicles.…
Researchers
crash Baidu robo-cars with tinfoil and paint daubed on cardboard
date: 2024-06-03, updated: 2024-06-03, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
The fusion of Lidar, radar, and cameras can be fooled by stuff from your
kids’ craft box
A team of researchers from prominent universities – including SUNY
Buffalo, Iowa State, UNC Charlotte, and Purdue – were able to turn an
autonomous vehicle (AV) operated on the open sourced Apollo driving
platform from Chinese web giant Baidu into a deadly weapon by tricking
its multi-sensor fusion system.…
Sally
Buzbee steps down as executive editor of The Washington Post
date: 2024-06-03, from: VOA News USA
New York — The Washington Post said Sunday that its executive editor,
Sally Buzbee, has stepped down after three years at the top of one of
journalism’s most storied brands.
She will be replaced by Matt Murray, former editor in chief of The
Wall Street Journal, through this fall’s presidential election.
Following that, Robert Winnett, deputy editor of the Telegraph Media
Group, will take over as editor as the newsroom restructures its
operations.
No reason was given for Buzbee’s departure. She wasn’t quoted in the
news release announcing that she was leaving and did not immediately
return a message seeking comment.
The Post also announced that it was launching a new division in its
newsroom dedicated to reaching audiences who want to pay for and consume
news in a different way.
Buzbee, former top editor at The Associated Press, was selected as
the Post’s top editor in May 2021. She replaced a renowned predecessor,
Martin Baron, after the Post exploded in popularity during the Trump
administration.
Buzbee was the first woman to serve as executive editor of The
Washington Post. And like Jill Abramson, the first woman to be top
editor at The New York Times, her tenure was short: Abramson had her job
from 2011 to 2014.
It has been a miserable few years financially for the news industry,
including for the Post. It has bled subscribers to the point where new
publisher, Will Lewis, told employees last month that the newspaper lost
$77 million last year.
“To speak candidly, we are in a hole, and have been for some time,”
Lewis said, according to the Post.
Lewis was named late last year to replace Fred Ryan as Post
publisher. He has worked at both The Wall Street Journal and The
Telegraph in England, the places he turned to to find the new
executives.
He’s talked about creating a multi-tier subscription plan for The
Post, similar to that in place at Politico. In an email to employees
late Sunday, Lewis said the new department will focus on more video
storytelling, embrace artificial intelligence and flexible payment
methods. It will begin this fall, he said.
In an earlier meeting, “we highlighted the need to move away from the
traditional one-size-fits-all approach in the news media industry and
focus on creating news for a broader range of readers and
customers.”
It augurs a change to the traditional structure of the Post. In his
memo, Lewis mentioned “three newsrooms.” Winnett will not take on the
title of executive editor, but he will be responsible for the “core
coverage areas” of politics, investigations, business, technology,
sports and features. He has run The Telegraph’s news operations since
2013, the Post said.
Murray will take over as leader of the newly created department
starting Nov. 6, the Post said. No one will have the title of executive
editor: Murray, Winnett and David Shipley, the editorial page editor who
will lead the “opinions newsroom,” will each report directly to Lewis,
the Post said.
“By creating three strong journalism functions — core, service/social
and opinions — we are taking a definitive step away from the ‘one size
fits all’ approach and moving towards meeting our audiences where they
are,” Lewis said.
The Post won three Pulitzer Prizes last month, including one in
national reporting for a vivid series on the impact of the AR-15
rifle.
date: 2024-06-03, updated: 2024-06-03, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Arm, schmarm: new 50TOPS NPUs that talk Block FP16 really make AI sing,
says CEO Lisa Su
Computex Two weeks after Microsoft made the AI PC all
about Arm-powered processors from Qualcomm, AMD has announced a pair of
PC CPU ranges it boasts will handle AI as well or better than any rival
– plus silicon that it claimed is the fastest consumer-grade processor
ever built.…
AMD
launches Ryzen 9000 desktop chips with Zen 5 CPU cores
date: 2024-06-03, from: Liliputing
AMD’s new Ryzen 9000 “Granite Ridge” series desktop processors are among
the company’s first chips to feature Zen 5 CPU cores, which the company
says brings big improvements over Zen 4 in terms of instruction and data
bandwidth and AI performance, while support the same AM5 socket as
previous-gen processors, making the new chips compatible […]
AMD’s
next-gen mobile chips are the Ryzen AI 300 series with up to 50 TOPS of
AI performance (plus Zen 5 CPUs, RDNA 3.5 graphics)
date: 2024-06-03, from: Liliputing
When Microsoft launched its Copilot+ PC brand last month, the only
computers that qualified were those with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus or
Elite processors, because those were the only PC chips announced to date
with neural processing units capable of delivering the more than 40 TOPS
of AI performance Microsoft had set as the baseline. […]
Puerto
Rico Rep. Jesús Manuel Ortiz wins gubernatorial primary
date: 2024-06-03, from: VOA News USA
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico Rep. Jesús Manuel Ortiz defeated
Sen. Juan Zaragoza in a gubernatorial primary held Sunday by their
Popular Democratic Party, which seeks a return to power in the upcoming
general elections.
Zaragoza conceded defeat after obtaining 38% of the votes to his
rival’s 62%, even though only a little more than 60% of the votes had
been counted.
Meanwhile, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi was still locked in a battle against
Puerto Rico congresswoman Jenniffer González in a primary held by the
pro-statehood New Progressive Party. The two ran on the same ticket four
years ago, but González announced her plan to challenge Pierluisi in
early December.
All candidates face disgruntled voters on an island still struggling
with chronic power outages and awaiting completion of reconstruction
projects following Hurricane Maria, which hit as a Category 4 storm in
September 2017.
Other ongoing complaints include the difficulty of obtaining business
permits, a fractured education system and the lack of access to capital
markets after the local government emerged two years ago from the
biggest U.S. municipal bankruptcy in history after announcing in 2015
that it was unable to pay its more than $70 billion public debt
load.
The debt was accumulated by governments that overspent, overestimated
revenue and borrowed millions despite a ballooning debt.
Running alongside Pierluisi for the position of congressional
representative was Puerto Rico Sen. William Villafañe, while senior U.S.
naval military officer Elmer Román, a former secretary of state for
Puerto Rico, sought the position under González.
Meanwhile, Puerto Rico Sen. Juan Zaragoza, who was highly lauded for
his work as the island’s former treasury secretary, ran against
Rep. Jesús Manuel Ortiz to be the main candidate for the Popular
Democratic Party, which supports the island’s status quo as a U.S.
territory.
Attorney Pablo José Hernández was running unopposed to be the party’s
candidate for resident commissioner, the first person in 20 years to
seek that nomination.
Voting centers closed Sunday evening, with political pundits warning
that voter turnout appeared low and that electronic voting machines did
not properly work in some towns, although it was too early to determine
the magnitude of the problem.
All candidates faced disgruntled voters on an island still struggling
with chronic power outages and high electric bills as it awaits
completion of reconstruction projects following Hurricane Maria, which
hit as a Category 4 storm in September 2017.
Power outages were reported at more than a dozen voting centers,
including one where Ortiz arrived to cast his vote, forcing officials to
revert to a manual process. Heavy rains also pelted parts of the island,
with flood warnings issued for nearly a dozen towns and cities.
Power outages remain such a big concern that the State Commission of
Elections rented more than a dozen generators and a private power
company identified 81 alternate voting sites with guaranteed
electricity.
“It’s been years since I last voted,” said Benito López, a
66-year-old retiree wearing a T-shirt that read, “The Island of
Enchantment.” He planned to cast a vote for a candidate he would not
reveal “to see if there’s any improvement and change.”
Other voter complaints include the difficulty of obtaining business
permits, a fractured education system, and the island’s lack of access
to capital markets after the local government emerged two years ago from
the largest debt restructuring in U.S. history.
Meanwhile, more than $9 billion of debt owed by Puerto Rico’s power
company, the largest of any government agency, remains unresolved. A
federal judge overseeing a bankruptcy-like process has yet to rule on a
restructuring plan following bitter negotiations between the government
and bondholders.
“They have broken Puerto Rico,” said 79-year-old Cecilio Rodríguez of
the current and previous administrations as he waited to cast his vote.
“Economic development must be a priority.”
For other voters, stopping the exodus of doctors from Puerto Rico and
improving the U.S. territory’s crumbling health system is a
priority.
“The patients are the ones who have to stay here and endure this.
It’s not fair,” said Dr. Alfredo Rivera Freytes, an anesthesiologist who
left Puerto Rico for the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Thomas because of the
ongoing problems with the local health system.
He returned two years ago with plans to retire but found himself
working again because of the need for anesthesiologists in Puerto
Rico.
Ahead of the primaries, Pierluisi has touted record tourist numbers,
ongoing hurricane reconstruction and growing economic development among
his successes as he seeks re-election. He has pledged to prioritize
projects targeting children and the island’s growing elderly population,
among other things.
An event marking the end of his campaign held a week before the
primaries was headlined by former Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, who resigned in
August 2019 following nearly two weeks of massive protests touched off
by a leak of crude and insulting chat messages between him and his top
advisers.
His opponent, González, did not hold a campaign closer. She has
pledged to crack down on corruption, award more funds to agencies to
help victims of violence amid a surge in killings of women, and stem an
exodus of doctors and other medical workers to the U.S. mainland.
Meanwhile, Zaragoza has promised to prioritize climate change and
renewable energy, decentralize the island’s education department and
improve access to health. His opponent, Ortiz, has pledged to improve
the licensing process to retain doctors, simplify the island’s tax
system and revamp health care.
Puerto Rico’s next governor will have to work alongside a federal
control board that oversees the island’s finances and was created after
the government declared bankruptcy.
Ahead of Sunday’s primaries, more than 4,900 inmates voted in prisons
across the U.S. territory. The State Commission of Elections also has
received and counted more than 122,000 early ballots.
One of my biggest regrets is how the Known hosted service declined. The
paid subscriptions came to an end, and eventually the hosting whimpered
out. Behind the scenes, the database cluster was in need of more
maintenance than I was able to provide.
Known itself has required more maintenance than I’ve been able to
provide for quite some time. I wish I could spend more bandwidth on it,
but the state of my life right now is that it’s just not possible for me
to dedicate the coding time for something that isn’t paying my bills and
isn’t having the impact I wanted it to.
I wish we’d sent out a strong email at the end and allowed everyone to
export their data automatically. I also wish Known had import/export
that was reliable so that people could explore other platforms.
After attempting to claw the time to do it myself, I’d like to hire
someone to build the latter, and then apply it to everyone who had a
hosted account. The export function could be built into the Known UI or
as a CLI tool. If this seems like something you might be able to do, let
me know.
Overall, I have a ton of regrets about Known — something for a future
post (or series of posts), maybe. This site is still powered by it,
though, and I know other people still use it, too. So it’s not dead —
just small.
Forming
friendships: Scout’s buddy bench project at Mint Canyon Elementary
date: 2024-06-03, from: The Signal
Joseph Wickham-Vilaubi, Life Scout from Scouts BSA 303A, had difficulty
making friends during his years at Mint Canyon Elementary School when he
was growing up. As someone with autism it […]
Border
mayors heading to DC for Tuesday’s immigration announcement
date: 2024-06-03, from: VOA News USA
McALLEN, TEXAS — At least two Texas border mayors are headed to
Washington on Tuesday when President Joe Biden is expected to announce
an executive order that will mark his latest and most aggressive plan to
curtail the number of migrants allowed to seek asylum in the U.S.
Brownsville Mayor John Cowen and Edinburg Mayor Ramiro Garza both
confirmed they were invited by the White House for an immigration
announcement on Tuesday. Cowen told the Associated Press that he plans
to attend, while Garza said he would have more details on Monday about
his plans.
Notably, the Democratic mayor of Eagle Pass, the Texas-Mexico border
town where the number of migrants led to a state-federal clash over
border security, had not received an invitation as of Sunday. The mayor
from McAllen said he was invited but could not attend because of a prior
commitment.
A White House spokesman did not immediately return a request for
comment on other mayors who were invited to the announcement.
The AP reported last week that the White House was finalizing an
executive order that could shut off asylum requests and automatically
deny entrance to migrants once the number of people encountered by U.S.
border officials exceeded a new daily threshold.
The unilateral action is expected even as the number of border
crossings at the southern U.S. border has declined since December, due
in large part to Mexico’s escalated enforcement efforts. But Biden wants
to head off any potential spike in crossings that could occur later in
the year, as the fall election draws closer, when the weather cools and
numbers tend to rise.
Immigration remains a concern for voters ahead of the November
elections, with Republicans eager to punish Biden electorally over the
issue. Democrats have responded that Republicans, at the behest of
Donald Trump, killed a bipartisan border deal in Congress that would
have led to the toughest legislative restrictions on asylum in
years.
New
York City parade focuses on Israel, solidarity under shadow of Hamas
war
date: 2024-06-02, from: VOA News USA
New York — Marchers chanted for the release of hostages in Gaza on
Sunday at a New York City parade for Israel that drew thousands of
people under heightened security.
The parade was held almost eight months after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack
in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza. Hamas militants
killed around 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250.
About 100 hostages remain in Gaza, along with the bodies of around 30
more.
Dubbed “Celebrate Israel,” the annual parade’s normally exuberant
atmosphere was markedly toned down this year. People chanted “Bring them
home now!” and waved Israeli flags as they marched up Fifth Avenue in
Manhattan for what this year was called “Israel Day on Fifth.”
Crowds of spectators and hundreds of police officers lined the route,
and steel barricades were installed along the sidewalk. One sign read:
“From the river to the sea, Hamas will cease to be.”
“Especially this year, after Oct. 7, it’s especially important to
have this show of unity,” said Rena Orman, a Bronx native who took part
in the parade as part of Mothers Against College Antisemitism.
“Everybody wants [the] hostages back. Everyone wants this to end. No one
is cheering for this. Everyone wants peace.”
Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said
earlier this week that the event would focus on solidarity, strength and
resilience.
“This is not a mood of confetti and music,” Treyger said. “This is
more of a mood of unwavering, ironclad solidarity with hostages to bring
them home, and also our unwavering love and pride in our Jewish
identity.”
The parade, in its 59th year, kicked off late Sunday morning with
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and
Mayor Eric Adams among the elected officials attending.
“I think it’s important — especially with what’s going on in the
Middle East, in Israel with the war going on — to show our support and
to show that the hostages aren’t forgotten and the country itself is not
forgotten,” said participant Michael Garber of New Jersey.
New York Police Department officials employed measures typically used
for high-profile events such as New Year’s Eve and July 4. That included
drones, K-9 units, bike patrols, fencing and barriers and designated
entry points for spectators along the parade route. Backpacks, large
bags and coolers were prohibited, and spectators had to pass through
metal detectors.
Police did not report any parade-related arrests by late Sunday
afternoon. The parade represents the first large-scale Jewish event in
the city since the war started, although there have been roughly 2,800
protests in the city, with about 1,300 of them related to the conflict,
the Democrat said.
Over 36,430 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israel’s
offensive, according to the Hamas-run, Gaza Health Ministry. Its count
doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. Israel blames
Hamas for civilian deaths, accusing it of operating from dense
residential areas.
American
veterans being honored in France at 80th anniversary of D-Day
date: 2024-06-02, from: VOA News USA
Atlanta, Georgia — Hilbert Margol says he didn’t look on himself as a
hero when his U.S. Army artillery unit fought its way across Europe
during World War II. But he will be feted in France as one of 60
American veterans of that conflict traveling to Normandy to mark the
80th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
“I know my brother and I never looked at it as we were any kind of
heroes, nothing like that,” Margol said recently of himself and his twin
brother Howard, who served with him. “It was just our time. That we were
asked to serve. And we did.”
The 100-year-old Margol, who lives in suburban Atlanta, is among the
dwindling band of veterans of the conflict leaving Atlanta on Sunday on
a chartered flight for Deauville, Normandy. The veterans will take part
in parades, school visits and ceremonies — including the official June 6
commemoration of the landings by soldiers from across the United States,
Britain, Canada and other Allied nations on five beaches.
Margol didn’t land at D-Day, but the Jacksonville, Florida, native
was among those that liberated the Dachau Concentration Camp on April
29, 1945.
The trip also includes high school and college students selected to
escort the veterans and learn about their experiences.
Charter flights also took veterans from Atlanta to France in 2022 and
2023.
Andy Negra of Helen, Georgia, came ashore with the 6th Armored
Division at Utah Beach on July 18, 1944, about six weeks after D-Day.
It’s his second trip back to France after also taking part in last
year’s flight.
“Well to me, we fought for freedom, and we fought for peace, and we
fought for a good life,” Negra, a native of Avella, Pennsylvania, said
in a recent interview.
The trip is being organized by Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, the
Best Defense Foundation and the North American branch of French tire
maker Michelin.
“It is our privilege to celebrate and honor these heroes by flying
them directly to Normandy and recognizing their incredible sacrifices
and contributions to the world,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in a
statement.
This list of the New Scientist’s favorite science fiction books is
brilliant. The books I’ve read that are included here are some of my
favorites of all time; the others are on my to-read list. What’s your
favorite?
Former President Donald Trump weighed in Sunday on the possibility of
being sentenced to jail next month after his conviction for falsifying
business records. The ‘guilty’ verdict is already being used by both the
Trump and Biden campaigns to fire up their respective supporters. But
swaying undecided voters will be trickier, analysts say. Veronica
Balderas Iglesias has the details.
DARPA
awards in-orbit manufacturing contract to Momentus
date: 2024-06-02, updated: 2024-06-02, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
In the not too distant future agency wants to found factories in the sky
A space company with a troubled past has been thrown a possible lifeline
by DARPA, which has awarded it a contract to demonstrate the first steps
towards building an orbital factory. …
Apple, really stepped into it, when it made an iPad advertisement
that essentially showed all creativity (and creative effort) being
crushed and compacted into a thin piece of glass. It was a tone-deaf
move from a company, that has always relied on (and portrayed itself as
an ally of creatives. Last week, Daniel Ek, chief …
Still
flying high, WWII plane that led D-Day operation heads to Normandy
date: 2024-06-02, from: The Signal
By Allan Stein Contributing Writer OXFORD, Connecticut — High above the
muddy Hudson River, the D-Day Squadron had flown nearly 100 miles in
tight formation to reach the towering spires of […]
Deputies
investigating reports of gunshots near Jakes Way
date: 2024-06-02, from: The Signal
Deputies are investigating reports of gunshots near the intersection of
Jakes Way and Daniel Drive early Sunday morning, according to the Santa
Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station. “[The call] came in […]
Volunteering
Together: Building friendships and strengthening bonds
date: 2024-06-02, from: The Signal
Volunteering has always been a big part of Shelley Brosnan’s life,
whether she was serving in her children’s school or in their Fairfax,
Va., community. When Brosnan retired, increasing her […]
The calendar may tell us Summer doesn’t arrive until Thursday, June 20,
but everyone in the Santa Clarita Valley knows that Memorial Day Weekend
is the “unofficial, official” start of […]
MediaTek
Kompanio 838 is a chip for “premium Chromebooks”
date: 2024-06-02, from: Liliputing
Chromebooks with ARM-based processors have been around for a while, but
they’re typically positioned as low-cost alternatives to higher-priced
models with Intel Core or AMD Ryzen processors. But MediaTek says its
new Kompanion 838 processor is designed for “premium Chromebooks.” I’d
take that phrase with a grain of salt, but the new chip does seem like
[…]
Father’s Day is just around the corner and if you’ve given Dad one too
many ties in previous years, let this cool and creative gift guide
inspire you to think […]
date: 2024-06-02, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
An overwhelming majority of the teachers’ union is in favor of striking
this fall if the union and S.B. Unified School District fail to reach a
settlement this month.
By Dorsey Griffith Brandpoint In a cruel irony, one of the most
significant health challenges facing older Americans is also one of the
least diagnosed, especially in the early stages […]
Nearly
1,000 people honor a young Ukrainian journalist and volunteer combat
medic killed in action
date: 2024-06-02, from: Associated Press, World News
Nearly 1,000 people have attended a ceremony honoring the memory of
Ukrainian journalist Iryna Tsybukh, who was killed in action while
serving as a volunteer combat medic.
Next
Boeing CEO should understand past mistakes, airlines boss says
date: 2024-06-02, from: VOA News USA
DUBAI — The next CEO of Boeing BA.N should have an understanding of
what led to its current crisis and be prepared to look outside for
examples of best industrial practices, the head of the International Air
Transport Association said on Sunday.
U.S. planemaker Boeing is engulfed in a sprawling safety crisis,
exacerbated by a January mid-air panel blowout on a near new 737 MAX
plane. CEO Dave Calhoun is due to leave the company by the end of the
year as part of a broader management shake-up, but Boeing has not yet
named a replacement.
“It is not for me to say who should be running Boeing. But I think an
understanding of what went wrong in the past, that’s very important,”
IATA Director General Willie Walsh told Reuters TV at an airlines
conference in Dubai, adding that Boeing was taking the right steps.
IATA represents more than 300 airlines or around 80% of global
traffic.
“Our industry benefits from learning from mistakes, and sharing that
learning with everybody,” he said, adding that this process should
include “an acknowledgement of what went wrong, looking at best
practice, looking at what others do.”
He said it was critical that the industry has a culture “where people
feel secure in putting their hands up and saying things aren’t working
the way they should do.”
Boeing is facing investigations by U.S. regulators, possible
prosecution for past actions and slumping production of its
strongest-selling jet, the 737 MAX.
‘Right steps’
Calhoun, a Boeing board member since 2009 and former GE executive,
was brought in as CEO in 2020 to help turn the planemaker around
following two fatal crashes involving the MAX, its strongest-selling
jet.
But the planemaker has lost market share to competitor Airbus AIR.PA,
with its stock losing nearly 32% of its value this year as MAX
production plummeted this spring.
“The industry is frustrated by the problems as a result of the issues
that Boeing have encountered. But personally, I’m pleased to see that
they are taking the right steps,” Walsh said.
Delays in the delivery of new jets from both Boeing and Airbus are
part of wider problems in the aerospace supply chain and aircraft
maintenance industry complicating airline growth plans.
Walsh said supply chain problems are not easing as fast as airlines
want and could last into 2025 or 2026.
“It’s probably a positive that it’s not getting worse, but I think
it’s going to be a feature of the industry for a couple of years to
come,” he said.
Earlier this year IATA brought together a number of airlines and
manufacturers to discuss ways to ease the situation, Walsh said.
“We’re trying to ensure that there’s an open dialogue and honesty,”
between them, he said.
The act of discarding a message that does not exist must therefore do
one of two things. It may cause the message contents to also cease to
exist. Alternately, it might not affect the existence but only the
accessibility of message contents. Perhaps they continue to exist, but
discarding the message (which already did not exist) causes the copy
operation to cease being invokable on the message contents (even though
they do continue to exist). The story of existence has many mysteries. ↫
Mark J. Nelson The one question that can really break my brain in a way
that is feels like it’s physically hurting – which it can’t, because,
fun fact, there’s no pain receptors in the brain – is the question what
exists outside of the universe? Any answer you can come up with just
leads to more questions which just lead to more questions, in an
infinite loop of possible answers and questions that the human mind is
not equipped to grasp. Anyway, it turns out using Outook can lead to the
same existential crises.
Asus
ROG Ally X handheld gaming PC is available for pre-order for $800
(Bigger battery, more memory, more storage)
date: 2024-06-02, from: Liliputing
The Asus ROG Ally X is a handheld gaming PC that shares a lot of DNA
with the original ROG Ally handheld that launched in 2023. The new model
has the same 7 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel LCD display with a 120 Hz refresh
rate, the same AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor, and runs […]
Despite
differences, US and China keep dialogue going at Singapore meeting
date: 2024-06-02, from: VOA News USA
U.S. and Chinese defense officials offered competing visions for
Asia, even as they agreed to keep channels open during the three-day?
Shangri-La security summit that wrapped up Sunday in Singapore, as VOA’s
William Gallo reports from Seoul, South Korea. (Camera: William
Gallo)
“The nation, fractured by war, disease, and famine, has seen more than 6
million people die since the mid-1990s, making the conflict the
deadliest since World War II. But, in recent years, the death and
destruction have been aided by the growing number of electric vehicles
humming down American streets.”
A good reminder that our desire for batteries and power has a human
impact, no matter which path we take. Renewable energy is still a far
better choice, but we run the risk of thinking that “clean” tech is
truly clean without doing the work necessary to ensure that everyone in
the supply chain is well taken care of.
Solidarity campaigns and activism to protect peoples’ lives are good,
but it’s notable that we never really get to hear about them, and this
issue is rarely, if ever, mentioned in the tech press.
As the piece points out:
““We’re always on the menu, but we’re never at the table,” he said. “The
space of transportation planning and climate change is mostly white
people, or people of color that aren’t Black, so these discussions about
exploitation aren’t happening in those spaces — it is almost like a
second form of colonialism.”“
Unusual
mix of possible candidates line up for Chicago’s first school board
elections this fall
date: 2024-06-02, from: VOA News USA
Chicago — A Grammy-winning rapper, progressive activists and a leader
of an afterschool squash program are part of the eclectic mix of
possible candidates lining up for Chicago’s first school board elections
this fall.
America’s third-largest city has long been an outlier with a
mayor-appointed board overseeing its public schools, and it took years
of advocacy and legislative squabbles to reach this point. But the
messiest part is likely yet to come.
The historic November races are part of a multi-year transition that
is hard to explain to voters. Special interest groups are taking notice.
And questions loom about how the new 21-member board, triple the current
size, will govern.
“This is not a political race, this is a movement,” said rapper Che
“Rhymefest” Smith, who is among dozens of hopefuls who filed fundraising
paperwork. “Everyone in this city has a responsibility to the children
who are going to be served.”
Potential candidates are circulating petitions while educating voters
about the inaugural contests. Many are parents, advocates and former
educators making their first foray into politics, navigating a steep
learning curve with little name recognition or cash.
While legislators approved an elected board in 2021, the logistics,
including political maps, weren’t settled until March. The board won’t
be fully elected until 2027.
Residents, divided into 10 sprawling districts, will vote for board
members to take office next year. The mayor will then appoint 10 other
board members from smaller subdistricts along with a citywide president.
In 2026, voters will elect all 21 members, eventually for four-year
terms.
“It takes almost a flow chart to figure it out,” said Adam
Parrott-Sheffer, a former principal touting his experience to run in the
same South Side district as Smith.
Conversations with potential supporters involve more explanation on
process than issues, he says.
Parent Kate Doyle, who founded a nonprofit, hopes to represent a
North Side district. After knocking on hundreds of doors, she found one
person, a teacher, who fully understood what’s coming.
Chicago’s Board of Education — which passes a $9 billion budget,
confirms a CEO and approves policies and contracts — was created by
state legislators in 1872. After many versions, a seven-member board was
instituted in 1999. The roughly 325,000-student district, serving
largely low-income Black and Latino children, has grappled with budget
cuts and dwindling population.
Interest in elected representation gained momentum after former Mayor
Rahm Emanuel closed over 50 schools in 2013.
The Chicago Teachers Union, among the groups pushing the change,
deems it a voting rights issue.
“An elected school board brings people from those spaces that have
been neglected and disinvested to a table where they have some agency,”
said CTU President Stacy Davis Gates.
Over 90% of school boards are elected, according to the National
School Boards Association. Few school districts have recently changed
from an appointed school board to an elected one, leaving Chicago
without a roadmap.
One fellowship program through National Louis University is trying to
ease Chicago’s transition with training for potential board members.
Most of the 22 current fellows enrolled hope to get on the November
ballot. They’re learning how to engage with the public and tactics for
group decision making.
“If this program can shorten that learning curve a little bit, that
could have a really positive tremendous impact on the students in the
city,” said Bridget Lee, who oversees the program.
Candidates face numerous hurdles, including a truncated campaign
season.
The jobs, which district officials estimate require up to 30 hours of
time weekly, are unpaid, limiting who can afford to run. At least 1,000
signatures are required to get on the ballot, more than double the
number for aldermanic and some congressional candidates with paid
political operations.
Anusha Thotakura, a 25-year-old activist with the progressive Citizen
Action Illinois, collected 600 signatures in a district that includes
wealthy and low-income neighborhoods.
“This board presents a lot of hope for people about having
accountability,” she said.
Smith fanned signed petitions on the dining table at his
great-grandmother’s South Side home where he lives.
“In Chicago, this is money,” the 46-year-old joked. Still, he’s
putting $80,000 into his bid and has written a campaign song titled
“Optimistic.”
“People see a rapper and there’s a stigma to it,” said Smith, who
made an unsuccessful 2011 City Council run. “I’m here to break
stereotypes.”
Voter turnout in school elections is typically under 10%, according
to the NSBA. The presidential contest is expected to help, though
Chicago’s March primary turnout was the lowest in years at roughly
26%.
That adds weight to endorsements, including from the influential
teachers’ union. Competition to get them is fierce.
One possible candidate, Yesenia Lopez, unveiled her campaign with
Congressman Jesus “Chuy” Garcia’s backing before her campaign disclosure
paperwork was filed.
Jesus Ayala, 32, hopes to run in the same Southwest Side district. He
works at MetroSquash, a sports complex offering mentorship and other
student programs through the racquet sport.
“When you have a congressman announcing someone’s candidacy, it feels
like an elected official trying to appoint someone to the board,” he
said.
Elsewhere, outside organizations have poured money into down-ballot
school elections, making them proxy votes for controversial national
issues. During Los Angeles’ 2017 board races, unions and pro-charter
school groups spent $15 million.
In Chicago, charter schools groups are already getting involved.
Paul Vallas, a former superintendent and failed candidate for Chicago
mayor, started a political action committee that could back candidates.
Parents advocating to restore school bus service, which the district cut
amid driver shortages, hosted the first candidate forum.
“The wild card in all of this is: Will there be national issues that
are tangentially related that will bleed into the race?” asked Michael
Ford, a University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh professor.
District officials have offered few details about how the board will
operate. One thing raising eyebrows is its size.
“They are creating conditions for a lot of political infighting, more
opportunities for deal brokering, things that have been synonymous with
Chicago politics,” said Jonathan Collins, a Columbia University
political scientist.
Los Angeles has seven board members while Houston has nine. In New
York, the panel is partially appointed and recently increased from 15 to
23.
Illinois state Sen. Rob Martwick, who championed an elected board,
said more districts were created to curb the influence of outside money.
More legislative changes could follow, including campaign finance and
board pay.
“Now the responsibility of making our schools better is in your
hands, can’t blame the mayor anymore,” Martwick said. “Look in the
mirror.”
ChatGPT is utterly unreliable when it comes to reproducing even very
simple mathematical proofs. It is like a weak C-grade student, producing
scripts that look like proofs but mostly are garbled or question-begging
at crucial points. Or at least, that’s been my experience when asking
for (very elementary) category-theoretic proofs. Not at all surprising,
given […]
Most
US students are recovering from pandemic setbacks, but millions lag
date: 2024-06-02, from: VOA News USA
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — On one side of the classroom, students circled
teacher Maria Fletcher and practiced vowel sounds. In another corner,
children read together from a book. Scattered elsewhere, students sat at
laptop computers and got reading help from online tutors.
For the third graders at Mount Vernon Community School in Virginia,
it was an ordinary school day. But educators were racing to get students
learning more, faster, and to overcome setbacks that have persisted
since schools closed for the COVID-19 pandemic four years ago.
America’s schools have started to make progress toward getting
students back on track. But improvement has been slow and uneven across
geography and economic status, with millions of students — often those
from marginalized groups — making up little or no ground.
Nationally, students made up one-third of their pandemic losses in
math during the past school year and one-quarter of the losses in
reading, according to the Education Recovery Scorecard, an analysis of
state and national test scores by researchers at Harvard and
Stanford.
But in nine states, including Virginia, reading scores continued to
fall during the 2022-23 school year after previous decreases during the
pandemic.
Clouding the recovery is a looming financial crisis. States have used
some money from the historic $190 billion in federal pandemic relief to
help students catch up, but that money runs out later this year.
“The recovery is not finished, and it won’t be finished without state
action,” said Thomas Kane, a Harvard economist behind the scorecard.
“States need to start planning for what they’re going to do when the
federal money runs out in September. And I think few states have
actually started that discussion.”
Virginia lawmakers approved an extra $418 million last year to
accelerate recovery. Massachusetts officials set aside $3.2 million to
provide math tutoring for fourth and eighth grade students who are
behind grade level, along with $8 million for literacy tutoring.
But among other states with lagging progress, few said they were
changing their strategies or spending more to speed up improvement.
Virginia hired online tutoring companies and gave schools a
“playbook” showing how to build effective tutoring programs. Lisa Coons,
Virginia’s superintendent of public instruction, said last year’s state
test scores were a wake-up call.
“We weren’t recovering as fast as we needed,” Coons said in an
interview.
U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has called for states to
continue funding extra academic help for students as the federal money
expires.
“We just can’t stop now,” he said at a May 30 conference for
education journalists. “The states need to recognize these interventions
work. Funding public education does make a difference.”
In Virginia, the Alexandria district received $2.3 million in
additional state money to expand tutoring.
At Mount Vernon, where classes are taught in English and Spanish,
students are divided into groups and rotate through stations customized
to their skill level. Those who need the most help get online tutoring.
In Fletcher’s classroom, a handful of students wore headsets and worked
with tutors through Ignite Learning, one of the companies hired by the
state.
With tutors in high demand, the online option has been a big help,
Mount Vernon principal Jennifer Hamilton said.
“That’s something that we just could not provide here,” she said.
Ana Marisela Ventura Moreno said her 9-year-old daughter, Sabrina,
benefited significantly from extra reading help last year during second
grade, but she’s still catching up.
“She needs to get better. She’s not at the level she should be,” the
mother said in Spanish. She noted the school did not offer the tutoring
help this year, but she did not know why.
Alexandria education officials say students scoring below proficient
or close to that cutoff receive high-intensity tutoring help and they
have to prioritize students with the greatest needs. Alexandria trailed
the state average on math and reading exams in 2023, but it’s slowly
improving.
More worrying to officials are the gaps: Among poorer students at
Mount Vernon, just 24% scored proficient in math and 28% hit the mark in
reading. That’s far lower than the rates among wealthier students, and
the divide is growing wider.
Failing to get students back on track could have serious
consequences. The researchers at Harvard and Stanford found communities
with higher test scores have higher incomes and lower rates of arrest
and incarceration. If pandemic setbacks become permanent, it could
follow students for life.
The Education Recovery Scorecard tracks about 30 states, all of which
made at least some improvement in math from 2022 to 2023. The states
whose reading scores fell in that span, in addition to Virginia, were
Nevada, California, South Dakota, Wyoming, Indiana, Oklahoma,
Connecticut and Washington.
Only a few states have rebounded to pre-pandemic testing levels.
Alabama was the only state where math achievement increased past 2019
levels, while Illinois, Mississippi and Louisiana accomplished that in
reading.
In Chicago Public Schools, the average reading score went up by the
equivalent of 70% of a grade level from 2022 to 2023. Math gains were
less dramatic, with students still behind almost half a grade level
compared with 2019. Chicago officials credit the improvement to changes
made possible with nearly $3 billion in federal relief.
The district trained hundreds of Chicago residents to work as tutors.
Every school building got an interventionist, an educator who focuses on
helping struggling students.
The district also used federal money for home visits and expanded
arts education in an effort to reengage students.
“Academic recovery in isolation, just through ‘drill and kill,’
either tutoring or interventions, is not effective,” said Bogdana
Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer. “Students need to
feel engaged.”
At Wells Preparatory Elementary on the city’s South Side, just 3% of
students met state reading standards in 2021. Last year, 30% hit the
mark. Federal relief allowed the school to hire an interventionist for
the first time, and teachers get paid to team up on recovery outside
working hours.
In the classroom, the school put a sharper focus on collaboration.
Along with academic setbacks, students came back from school closures
with lower maturity levels, principal Vincent Izuegbu said. By building
lessons around discussion, officials found students took more interest
in learning.
“We do not let 10 minutes go by without a teacher giving students the
opportunity to engage with the subject,” Izuegbu said. “That’s very,
very important in terms of the growth that we’ve seen.”
Olorunkemi Atoyebi was an A student before the pandemic, but after
spending fifth grade learning at home, she fell behind. During remote
learning, she was nervous about stopping class to ask questions. Before
long, math lessons stopped making sense.
When she returned to school, she struggled with multiplication and
terms such as “dividend” and “divisor” confused her.
While other students worked in groups, her math teacher took her
aside for individual help. Atoyebi learned a rhyming song to help
memorize multiplication tables. Over time, it began to click.
“They made me feel more confident in everything,” said Atoyebi, now
14. “My grades started going up. My scores started going up. Everything
has felt like I understand it better.”
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Velasquez/Getty Images
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