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SUMMARY

FIVE AFFORDABLE SPORTY MIDSIZE SEDANS

ACCENTURE CLAIMS ‘NO IMPACT’ IN APPARENT RANSOMWARE ATTACK

5 TOOLS TO HELP YOUR REMOTE-WORK BUSINESS CLICK

UN EXPERTS CALL FOR MORE RULES ON COUNTRIES’ USE OF SPYWARE

PEDRO ALMODÓVAR WARNS AGAINST ALGORITHMS IN INSTAGRAM ROW

FACEBOOK’S OWNERSHIP OF GIPHY HURTS COMPETITION

NLRB PRELIMINARY FINDING REVIVES LABOR ORGANIZING AT AMAZON

TIKTOK EXECUTIVE TALKS SHOPPING AND THE FAMOUS FETA PASTA

GLUCOSE: ALL RUMORS ABOUT THE REVOLUTIONARY NEW SENSOR

WHAT THE $65B BROADBAND SERVICE PLAN WILL DO

WITHOUT ‘RIGHT TO REPAIR,’ BUSINESSES LOSE TIME AND MONEY

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HOW CRYPTOCURRENCY FITS INTO INFRASTRUCTURE BILL

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SAMSUNG SLASHES PRICES IN BID TO BOOST FOLDABLE PHONE SALES

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A WASTE COAL-BURNING, CRYPTO-MINING PIRATE SHIP SETS SAIL

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HIGHER BUT STILL SLIM ODDS OF ASTEROID BENNU SLAMMING EARTH

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WANT TO PRETEND TO LIVE ON MARS? FOR A WHOLE YEAR? APPLY NOW

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HOT DATES: 2 SPACECRAFT TO MAKE VENUS FLYBY

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IN ‘FREE GUY,’ A VIDEOGAME ‘TRUMAN SHOW’

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IN ‘THE GREEN KNIGHT,’ AN ENCHANTING ARTHURIAN DREAM

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US CONSUMER PRICES ROSE IN JULY BUT AT SLOWER PACE

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US LAWYERS APPEAL UK DECISION TO BLOCK ASSANGE EXTRADITION

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PANDEMIC PROMPTS CHANGES IN HOW FUTURE TEACHERS ARE TRAINED

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GOOGLE FOUNDER GETS NEW ZEALAND RESIDENCY, RAISING QUESTIONS

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WILL WE NEED VACCINE PASSPORTS TO DO FUN THINGS?

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5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE NEW UN REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE

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FIVE AFFORDABLE SPORTY MIDSIZE SEDANS

Although SUVs dominate automotive sales, midsize sedans are still a practical choice given their roomy seating, respectable fuel economy and value. They’re also better able to provide sporty performance than a comparably priced SUV. A handful of automakers have recently come out with new performance-tuned sedans that have upgraded engines and more responsive handling to make driving fun. Experts have selected their five favorite models under $35,000. The vehicles are sorted by manufacturer’s suggested retail price, including destination and handling fees. 09

2021 HONDA ACCORD SPORT 2.0T The Accord has long been a solid pick for a sporty sedan, and that’s true for the latestgeneration Accord as well. The Sport 2.0T is the sportiest version among the Accord’s wide array of trim levels. It gets the Accord’s optional turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine that produces 252 horsepower, a 60-horsepower increase over the standard engine. Even in standard non-sporty trims, the Accord is a joy to drive. It’s smooth and comfortable on the highway with impressive steering and handling. The Sport 2.0T doesn’t look much different from its lesser brethren, which could be a turnoff if you want your sport sedan to look the part too. But otherwise you’re getting an upscale midsize sedan that’s easy to drive day to day. MSRP: $33,125

2021 HYUNDAI SONATA N LINE With its easy-to-use infotainment interface, distinctive styling and spacious interior, the 2021 Hyundai Sonata is a great pick for a sedan in any trim level. It also comes with many standard features, including advanced driver aids, that are sometimes reserved for the options sheet among competitors. Right at the top of the Sonata lineup is the N Line. It uses a turbocharged 2.5-liter fourcylinder engine that produces a strong 290 horsepower. That’s 99 horsepower more than the Sonata’s standard 2.5-liter engine offers. The N Line also gets a quickershifting automatic transmission, sport-tuned suspension and steering, front seats with added bolstering, and unique exterior styling. This is a great pick for a sporty sedan, though it offers as comfy of a ride as some of the other cars here. MSRP: $34,305 Whatever your desired level of performance, there’s likely a sporty midsize sedan that’s right for you. The best choices for sporty midsize sedans are the ones that have satisfying performance without any loss of comfort or convenience.

different from pulling up a file on your desktop, although large files such as videos may take a little while to upload. Well-known cloud storage providers include Google, Dropbox and Box, all of which offer free basic plans for consumers as well as paid plans for businesses.

TOO MANY TOOLS? For a small-business owner, decision fatigue can be a real issue, and evaluating new software takes a lot of time and energy. If you’re looking for an easy way to keep your team connected and organized, Google and Microsoft both offer comprehensive workplace management packages that combine most of these solutions and more for $6 and $5 per user per month, respectively.

Image: Robert Galbraith

ACCENTURE CLAIMS ‘NO IMPACT’ IN APPARENT RANSOMWARE ATTACK

Cybercriminals have breached Accenture in an apparent ransomware attack but the global consulting giant says the incident was immediately contained with no impact on it or its systems. The LockBit ransomware gang announced the attack Tuesday night on its dark web leak site, setting a deadline of Thursday evening for payment. Accenture said in a statement Wednesday that it had “identified irregular activity in one of our environments” and ”immediately contained the matter and isolated the affected servers.” It did not specify when the incident occurred — or acknowledge that it was ransomware. But the description of its response was consistent with ransomware. It said it had “fully restored our affected systems from back up. There was no impact on Accenture’s operations, or on our clients’ systems.” The Dublin-based company would not say how many servers were affected or whether data was stolen and, if so, how much and what kind. The Atlanta-based cybersecurity intelligence firm Cyble shared chat images that it said were from Lockbit’s official communications channel. In them, the criminals claim they stole more than 6 terabytes of “top secret” data from Accenture, for which they said they were demanding $50 million. Accenture would not comment on what data, if any, was exfiltrated by the criminals. LockBit is a Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate that does not target former Soviet 23

PEDRO ALMODÓVAR WARNS AGAINST ALGORITHMS IN INSTAGRAM ROW

Declaring “victory” over Instagram after a controversial poster for his upcoming film was censored and then reinstated, Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar said Thursday that society must be alert to the power of algorithms in deciding what humans are permitted to see. “We have to be vigilant before the machines decide what we can and cannot do,” Almodóvar said after a poster for “Parallel Mothers” displaying a lactating nipple was removed by Instagram’s algorithm due to its ban on nudity. The social network has since apologized and backtracked after recognizing the “artistic context” of the image. Almodóvar, in an emailed statement, thanked thousands of Instagram users who kept reuploading the image after it was removed. Image: Marilla Sicilia

Image: Marilla Sicilia

5 TOOLS TO HELP YOUR REMOTE-WORK BUSINESS CLICK

Pre-pandemic, working from home was often considered a perk rather than a requirement. But once COVID-19 struck, many companies shifted to a remote-first work environment — a change that’s now permanent in some cases. Recent Gallup research data shows that, on average, 52% of all workers, including 72% of those in white-collar occupations and 14% in blue-collar occupations, performed their job remotely for all or part of the time from October 2020 to April 2021. And 83% of employers believe that going remote has been positive for their company, according to a January 2021 report by professional services firm PwC. While a remote-first structure can present some unique challenges, workplace performance experts encourage business owners to anticipate common pitfalls. 29

Facebook’s ownership of Giphy will hurt competition for animated images, U.K. regulators said Thursday, meaning the social network could ultimately be forced to unwind the deal if the provisional findings are confirmed. The Competition and Markets Authority said its investigation found the acquisition would hurt competition among social media platforms because there’s only one other big provider of GIFs, Google’s Tenor. Giphy’s library of short looping videos, or GIFs, are a popular tool for internet users sending messages or posting on social media. The deal will also reduce digital advertising competition by removing a potential rival from the market, the watchdog said. It started looking into the acquisition last year, shortly after Facebook announced its plan to acquire Giphy in a deal reportedly worth $400 million. The acquisition also faces scrutiny from regulators in Australia and Austria, underlining concerns about how such acquisitions can affect competition in local markets. Facebook said it disagreed with the preliminary findings, which it didn’t believe to be supported by the evidence. “As we have demonstrated, this merger is in the best interest of people and businesses in the U.K. - and around the world - who use GIPHY and our services,” Facebook said. “We will continue to work with the CMA to address the misconception that the deal harms competition.” Prior to the deal, Giphy had been considering expanding its paid advertising services to other countries including the U.K. That would 55

and deliver companywide announcements face to face. Virtual meetings eliminate the need for a volley of emails and instant messages back and forth, and also allow you to see everyone else’s facial expressions and body language. Zoom became a household name overnight at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when everyone from businesses to schools to families scrambled to find ways to stay connected during lockdown. Other well-known brands include GoToMeeting, Google Meet and Join.me. Zoom, GoToMeeting and Google Meet all offer free basic versions with upgrade options available, while Join.me users have to pay to host virtual meetings.

3. SCHEDULING Flexibility across schedules and time zones can be one of the biggest assets for a fully remote business. However, quickly tracking everyone’s availability can present a challenge, especially when factoring in time zones and holidays. You may already be familiar with Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook, which sync calendars for everyone throughout your organization. When you add guests to a calendar invite, the tool automatically shows you a preview of each teammate’s availability so you can find a block of time that works for everyone. If you primarily schedule meetings with individuals outside of your work organization, you may find Doodle or Calendly more useful for your needs. With Doodle, you create a poll of available meeting times, then invite your participants to choose the options that work best for their schedule. 33

if there never had been a coronavirus outbreak “I would still be a gym rat.” The pandemic has reshaped how Americans exercise and upended the fitness industry, accelerating the growth of a new era of high-tech home workout equipment and virtual classes. Thousands of small fitness centers and studios that were forced to close a year ago now are gone for good. Others are struggling to stay afloat and have redesigned their spaces, turned toward more personal workouts and added online training. The question is can the they survive the onslaught from the apps and pricey bikes and treadmills or will they go the way of arcades, video rental shops and bookstores. Interactive fitness equipment maker Peloton is betting the workout-from-home trend is here to stay. It’s breaking ground Monday on its first U.S. factory just outside Toledo, Ohio, where it plans to begin production in 2023 and employ 2,000 workers. Demand surged so much during the pandemic that some Peloton customers had to wait months for their bikes. While the company said the backlog has waned, it reported that sales have continued to soar, up 141% in the first three months of this year. Company founder and CEO John Foley thinks it’s inevitable that technology-driven home fitness will become dominant much like how streaming services have changed movie watching, calling the idea of going to a gym “a broken model of yesteryear.”

His company is planning to open a third, smaller location near Orlando, Florida, that offers a more intimate experience. Those type of boutique studios could be the wave of the future, he said. The pandemic has changed how the fitness industry evaluates itself and right now “everyone’s making decisions just to survive,” Sanders said. Roughly 9,000 health clubs — 22% of the total nationwide — have closed since the beginning of the virus outbreak and 1.5 million workers lost their jobs, according to the International Health Racquet & Sportsclub Association. The industry group is lobbying Congress to approve a $30 billion relief fund for the fitness industry because many clubs are struggling to recover from months of lost revenue and membership declines and still owe back rent. While more closings are likely this year and could number in the thousands without government help, the emergence of the workout-from-home trend won’t spell doom for the fitness centers, said Helen Durkin, the association’s executive vice president of public policy. Plenty of exercise fanatics, she said, will still do both — 40% of Peloton users have gym memberships, according to the company. There’s no doubt digital fitness is here to stay, said Michelle Segar, director of the University of Michigan’s Sport, Health and Activity Research and Policy Center. “People are integrating their lives with technology. This is where society is, and it’s just going to get more integrated,” she said. 66

Image: Robert Galbraith

The biggest positives with the virtual training sessions are that they offer more flexibility when it comes to staying with workout routines and can draw more people into fitness, including those who can’t follow a rigid schedule. “That’s why people don’t stick with it,” she said. Cindy Cicchinelli, who’s become a dedicated Peloton user after going to her gym in Pittsburgh for years, said the convenience is what has sold her. “I can roll out of bed and not worry about running to the gym,” she said. “And I don’t have to add an extra half-hour for my commute.” Fitness industry leaders say research has shown that health clubs pose no more risk of spreading the virus than other public spaces. But San Francisco gym owner Dave Karraker thinks it will be a long time before many people are comfortable going into a big, tightly packed fitness center. “They are going to be thinking about ventilation and air purifiers and how long ago was this equipment sanitized,” he said. He reconfigured MX3 Fitness’s two small studios and created personal workout spaces. It has become so popular he’s looking for a third location. He’s not surprised that people are coming back even though safety remains a concern. “They don’t want to live this solitary existence anymore,” he said. “There’s all kinds of motivations. Let’s face facts, gyms are great ways to meet new people, especially if you’re single.”

UN EXPERTS CALL FOR MORE RULES ON COUNTRIES’ USE OF SPYWARE

GENEVA (AP) — Human rights experts working with the United Nations on Thursday called on countries to pause the sale and transfer of spyware and other surveillance technology until they set rules governing its use, to ensure it won’t impinge upon human rights. The experts, speaking out in the wake of new Pegasus spyware revelations, expressed concern that “highly sophisticated intrusive tools are being used to monitor, intimidate and silence human rights defenders, journalists and political opponents” in some places, the U.N. human rights office said. “U.N. human rights experts today called on all states to impose a global moratorium on the 41

sale and transfer of surveillance technology until they have put in place robust regulations that guarantee its use in compliance with international human rights standards,” it said in a statement. Last month an investigation by a global media consortium showed further evidence that the military-grade Pegasus malware from the Israelbased NSO Group, a hacker-for-hire outfit, has been used to spy on journalists, human rights activists and political dissidents. The eight experts cited the “extraordinary audacity and contempt for human rights” shown by such surveillance and called on NSO to say whether it had assessed the human rights impact of the use of such tools and publish any findings of its internal probes into the matter. The independent experts, who focus on a number of rights issues under mandates from the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council, are in “direct communication” with NSO and the Israeli government, the statement said. The experts noted that international human rights law requires countries to ensure protections against illegal surveillance, invasion of privacy and threats to fundamental freedoms like those of expression and assembly. Pegasus infiltrates phones to vacuum up personal and location data and surreptitiously control the smartphone’s microphones and cameras. In the case of journalists, that lets hackers spy on reporters’ communications with sources. The program is designed to bypass detection and mask its activity.

PEDRO ALMODÓVAR WARNS AGAINST ALGORITHMS IN INSTAGRAM ROW

in every market the Apple Watch is sold in, the company appears to be ready to pave the way and take risks. Previously, Cook revealed he didn’t want to “put the watch through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) process. I wouldn’t mind putting something adjacent to the watch through it, but not the watch because it would hold us back from innovating too much, the cycles are too long. But you can begin to envision other things that might be adjacent to it — may be an app, maybe something else.” Since then, however, Apple has added ECG functionality, as well as Afib detection and blood oxygen saturation, though some features are only available in the United States, with countries rolling out new software updates regularly as they receive local approval from the various medical boards and governments.

A BLOOD SUGAR SENSOR Whilst it’s important to remember that Apple has yet to announce a blood sugar sensor is coming to a future Apple Watch update, it’s now all-but-confirmed, with multiple reputable sources suggesting the feature will arrive imminently. What’s more, ET News has reported that Samsung will also introduce blood sugar monitoring in its upcoming Galaxy Watch 4 which will work in a no-blood sampling capacity. Rather than requiring users to prick their skin, an advanced optical sensor will be used to detect the level of glucose in the body. so it makes sense that the Apple counterpart would follow suit sooner rather than later. According to a report from the American Diabetes Association, an eyeImage: Concept by 9to5mac

watering 10% of Americans have diabetes, and a shocking 26 million of them are undiagnosed. By adding a blood sugar sensor to the Apple Watch, users would be able to test, diagnose, and treat their condition without seeing a doctor. Apple has already secured a patent for the technology and has reportedly been focusing on testing and reliability and stability improvements for the past 12 months. Right now, we don’t know whether the existing infrared sensor on the Apple Watch will be able to act as a blood glucose detector, but considering the company is keen to shrink the chassis of the device to create something even thinner and more attractive, it could be that the sensor is upgraded to serve multiple purposes to maintain the wearable’s shape. According to a patent filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) titled “Terahertz Spectroscopy and Imaging In Dynamic Environments With Performance Enhancements using Ambient Sensors”, Apple is planning to use absorption spectroscopy to obtain noninvasive blood sugar readings. The technology could even use terahertz electromagnetic radiation instead of using light to pass through the body to detect “gas, health/quality of liquid or solid materials.” Apple identified a potential issue with the new Apple Watch technology, suggesting that it could result in the Watch losing water resistance. Experts have also suggested that the technology could mean the Apple Watch battery is drained even faster, but Apple could likely outrun this by adding in a larger battery pack or even introducing a new chip that’s more efficient and can handle multiple processes at once. 93

FACEBOOK’S OWNERSHIP OF GIPHY HURTS COMPETITION

have added a new player to the market and encouraged more innovation from social media sites and advertisers, the CMA said. But Facebook terminated Giphy’s paid advertising partnerships after the deal, it said. “Giphy’s takeover could see Facebook withdrawing GIFs from competing platforms or requiring more user data in order to access them. It also removes a potential challenger to Facebook,” which dominates the U.K.’s 5.5 billion pound ($7.6 billion) display advertising market, inquiry chair Stuart McIntosh said. “None of this would be good news for customers.” McIntosh said the watchdog would now seek feedback on the provisional findings before issuing its final report on Oct. 6. “Should we conclude that the merger is detrimental to the market and social media users, we will take the necessary actions to make sure people are protected,” he said. When it announced the deal, Facebook said about half of Giphy’s traffic came from Facebook apps, which also include Messenger and WhatsApp. It had planned to integrate Giphy into Instagram but the authority ordered the companies to keep the businesses separate during the investigation. Facebook is facing increased scrutiny over acquisitions that might have previously escaped notice amid rising concern that the digital giants are amassing greater market power. The CMA and European Union and German regulators are all looking into the company’s plan to buy Kustomer, a customer management platform.

Industry groups have also advocated for a permanent broadband benefit. Broadband companies, if they choose to participate, will gain additional customers. The program is “a plus for all ISPs,” said Evercore ISI analyst Vijay Jayant. The legislation directs the FCC to create rules intended to protect consumers from companies that could push them to sign up for more expensive services in connection with the benefit and against other “unjust and unreasonable” practices. MONEY FOR NETWORKS The bill provides about $42 billion in grants to states, who in turn will funnel it to ISPs to expand networks where people don’t have good internet service. Companies that take this money will have to offer a low-cost service option. Government regulators will approve the price of that service. The bill requires that internet projects come with minimum speeds of 100 mbps down/20 up, a big step up from current requirements. But some advocates are concerned that it’s still too slow, and argue that the federal government may have to spend big again down the line to rebuild networks that aren’t up to par for future needs. Cable companies are also happy that the funding is primarily dedicated to areas that don’t currently have broadband service. Some advocates had hoped the government would step in and fund competition to cable so that people had more choices. Others saw that as wasteful. 104

The Biden administration’s initial plan promised to promote local government networks, cooperatives and nonprofits as alternatives to for-profit phone and cable companies. Under the Senate’s plan now, such groups aren’t prioritized, but they can still get money from states for networks. The telecom industry has lobbied against municipal networks; about 20 states restrict them. Senate negotiators also left loopholes in language around an attempt to end what’s known as “digital redlining” — when telecom companies provide upgraded internet service in wealthier parts of town but leave others without good service. The bill says the FCC must create rules to stop this practice, “insofar as technically and economically feasible.” But the whole reason telecoms leave some areas with subpar service is because those neighborhoods are not as profitable, said Leventoff. How strong these requirements are will depend on what the FCC does. The agency, however, is hamstrung. The White House has not nominated a permanent chair and the FCC is missing a third Democratic commissioner that would allow it to take on controversial items. Still, industry groups and proponents of expanding internet access both say the legislation should help get more people online. “This bill will not increase choice and lower prices for everyone. But that’s not the right measure,” Wood said. “It will make real, highspeed internet far more affordable for millions of people who today cannot afford it, and it will make faster networks available to millions more. That’s a big deal.” 107

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company in North America. She works with brands directly, getting them to buy ads on the app, create TikTok videos and explain how they can use it to boost sales. In an interview, Hawkins talks about the difference between an influencer and a creator and why she ended up buying feta cheese, too. The questions and answers has been edited for length and clarity. Q: How do you create a TikTok video that goes viral? A: That’s the beautiful part about the platform — you don’t know. Any piece of content on the platform can take off. The magic of TikTok happens on the front page, the “For You” page. It starts to learn the type of content that you like and bring that type of content to you. It’s not based off of the people that you follow. Q: What is it about TikTok videos that makes people want to buy what they see? 74

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A: I think it’s the evolution of product placement. You have real people that are demonstrating product or wearing product and using it in a way that you would use it or wear it. Maybe if you’re a dancer and you see leggings that are super comfortable and somebody who’s dancing and you see that they’re not sliding down or they’re not riding up. They’re not trying to pretend that the products are doing something that they don’t. Q: You call people who make TikTok videos creators instead of influencers. Why? A: We choose to call them creators because anybody can do it and anybody can take off on the platform. There was a fashion creator who is big on TikTok and she started wearing her Gap hoodie in her videos and they started taking off. And she’s not somebody that Gap was following or sending clothing to, which would be more of that influencer side. She was somebody who wore a Gap hoodie one day as an outfit and then Gap hoodies started taking off because people liked what she was wearing. Q: People know that influencers on other social media apps are paid and can’t be trusted. How do you stop that from happening on TikTok? A: There is an authenticity to the platform. People don’t want to be fake. Based off of what I’ve seen, folks would just not talk about it rather than start endorsing things that they don’t believe in because their followers would stop following them. They would lose their credibility, which is so important.

Q: Have you bought anything you’ve seen on TikTok? A: I have made the feta pasta. I’m not a very good cook, but I do love watching recipes on TikTok. And when I saw the feta pasta recipe, I thought to myself, that is something that I could make. And so I went out for the feta cheese, which started selling out in stores. It took me a few times to actually be able to find it. Q: Users can’t buy anything directly on TikTok right now. Is that going to change? A: We’re always looking for ways to evolve our features and to make shopping on the platform better. It’s definitely something that we’re looking forward to continue to push on, consolidating that path to purchase.

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Want to find your inner Matt Damon and spend a year pretending you are isolated on Mars? NASA has a job for you. To prepare for eventually sending astronauts to Mars, NASA began taking applications for four people to live for a year in Mars Dune Alpha. That’s a 1,700-square-foot Martian habitat, created by a 3D-printer, and inside a building at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The paid volunteers will work a simulated Martian exploration mission complete with spacewalks, limited communications back home, restricted food and resources and equipment failures. NASA is planning three of these experiments with the first one starting in the fall next year. Food will all be ready-to-eat space food and at the moment there are no windows planned. Some plants will be grown, but not potatoes like in the movie “The Martian.” Damon played stranded astronaut Mark Watney, who survived on spuds. “We want to understand how humans perform in them,” said lead scientist Grace Douglas. “We are looking at Mars realistic situations.”

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The application process opened last Friday and they’re not seeking just anybody. The requirements are strict, including a master’s degree in a science, engineering or math field or pilot experience. Only American citizens or permanent U.S. residents are eligible. Applicants have to be between 30 and 55, in good physical health with no dietary issues and not prone to motion sickness. That shows NASA is looking for people who are close to astronauts, said former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. And, he said. that’s a good thing because it is a better experiment if the participants are more similar to the people who will really go to Mars. Past Russian efforts at a pretend Mars mission called Mars 500 didn’t end well partly because the people were too much like everyday people, he said. For the right person this could be great, said Hadfield, who spent five months in orbit in 2013 at the International Space Station, where he played guitar and sang a cover video of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” “Just think how much you’re going to be able to catch up on Netflix,” he said. “If they have a

Image: Aidan Monaghan

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company will go one step further with the introduction of a blood sugar sensor on the wearable device. Thanks to breakthrough technology, Series 7 could be one of the biggest upgrades to Apple Watch yet. Despite the physical and economic challenges of the coronavirus pandemic that began early 2020, Apple managed to outsell all other smartwatches in the fourth quarter of last year, and in the third quarter of 2021, the company announced record revenue of $8.8 billion as consumers began to realize the benefits of tracking their health and activity throughout the day. Data from January 2020 suggests that 21% of all Americans use a smartwatch, and as the Apple Watch becomes more prevalent in everyday lives, with regular stories coming out claiming that the device has helped to save users’ lives, the device is one of Apple’s fastest-growing categories, showing no signs of slowing. Although fitness and Apple’s new Fitness+ workout subscription service might be attractive to some consumers, it’s the overall health benefits that serve as the top-selling point. Indeed, with the first Apple Watch, the firm marketed the product as a way to respond to notifications and track your steps, but it’s become more and more apparent in recent years just how much consumers want to be able to monitor and control their health. Apple has subsequently sunk billions into improving its health and fitness features, and although Tim Cook has said that the Cupertino company would be cautious about adding medical capabilities to the Apple Watch because of the sheer cost and medical approval it requires 87

Image: 9to5mac

IN ‘FREE GUY,’ A VIDEOGAME ‘TRUMAN SHOW’

In upside-down simulations, time loops and videogames turned inside out, a growing body of movies trade on the feeling of living in a false reality — of being a glitch in the matrix. Virtual realities turn real (“Ready Player One”), television sets peel away (“The Truman Show”), dream states don’t wake (“Inception”), arcade characters break free (“Wreck-It Ralph”). But if anyone was ever living a lie, Free City resident and banker Guy (Ryan Reynolds) is. Every day he picks a blue shirt and khakis from a closet neatly ordered with them. He orders the same coffee. He even, like Truman, has a cheery goodbye: “Don’t have a good day. Have a great day.” 172

“Free Guy,” which opens in theaters Aug. 13, is a clever if increasingly familiar kind of meta movie that delights in seeing a videogame from the inside and turning a background character into a hero. It’s more balanced and better than Steven Knight’s bold but off-kilter “Serenity,” with Matthew McConaughey as a fishing boat captain who turns out to be a videogame protagonist. But “Free Guy” is also blandly predictable and fails to unlock the levels its highconcept premise might have opened. Directed by Shawn Levy from a script by Matt Lieberman (“Scoob!,” “Playing With Fire”) and Zak Penn (who co-wrote “Ready Player One”), “Free Guy” gets a significant boost from Jodie Comer, who plays both the VR architect Millie and her in-game avatar, Molotov Girl, and proves a force in either dimension. There are also gleeful, over-the-top performances by Taiki Waititi as the game’s diabolical overlord, and — is that really him? — the long-dormant Channing Tatum, a very welcome sight, flashing more extreme moves than those in “Magic Mike” as an in-game avatar. Levy, a veteran director of warm-hearted comedies (the “Night at the Museum” movies, “Cheaper by the Dozen”), has a light touch and he juggles the wildlife of the gaming world — a “Grand Theft Auto”-like metropolis — as adeptly as he did that of the Natural History Museum. He’s particularly deft at toggling from inside the game to outside it. While Guy, gobsmacked by Molotov Girl, grows beyond his coding, and begins to compete with the other “sunglasses people” (players) in the game, Millie and her former programming partner (Joe Keery) investigate whether Soonami, the giant 176

gaming company run by Antwan (Waititi), stole their AI design. But “Free Guy” doesn’t take its concept anywhere particularly interesting, settling more for videogame puns and inner-studio references while at the same time making self-references to its own originality. “Free Guy,” for sure, belongs to a rare big-budget summer-movie breed given that it’s not based on previous intellectual property. And the movie has a lot of fun with that. Antwan is readying a dumbed-down sequel (a “See-QUAL” as Waititi emphasizes) to “Free City” that he brags is simply trading on the game’s strong IP. Yet but the end of “Free Guy,” a movie made by Fox as it was being acquired by the Walt Disney Co., “Free Guy” chokes on its own pop-culture references, slipping in “Star Wars” theme music and Captain America’s shield. Maybe I’m being too hard on a mostly fun if forgettable movie. It’s become a kind of trademark of Reynolds, also a producer here, to make big studio films that don’t take themselves too seriously, that delight in an eager-to-please, fourth-wall-breaking schtick. “Free Guy” isn’t as anarchic as “Deadpool,” but it likes winking at the camera just as much. Yet for a proudly “original” movie, “Free Guy” isn’t really so original. It’s a charming concoction of cliches cribbed from other movies, from “Tron” to “Truman,” without its own coding. “Free Guy,” a Twentieth Century Fox release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for strong fantasy violence throughout, language and crude/suggestive references. Running time: 115 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four. 181

The Green Knight | Official Trailer | A24

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Apple Watch for its battery life, especially in relation to sleep tracking, a larger battery could serve as a major selling point. Some rumors also suggest that Apple could add a Touch ID scanner to the Series 7 Digital Crown, similar to the iPad Air, but considering that the Apple Watch is unlocked around once per day, it seems like this is a solution for a problem that does not exist. However, it could aid in security elsewhere and help users pay using their Apple Watch for larger purchases like hotel rooms. 2021 could also be the year when Apple finally moves over to mini-LED or micro-LED panels which are thinner and offer improved energy efficiency, which improves the battery life of the device. Paired with watchOS 8, announced at this year’s WWDC 2021, and it’s a bumper year for the Apple Watch, with a bunch of changes we can’t wait to see come September.

WHAT THE $65B BROADBAND SERVICE PLAN WILL DO

The Senate’s $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan includes a $65 billion investment in broadband that the White House says will “deliver reliable, affordable, high-speed internet to every household.” It may not actually achieve that, but it’s a major step in that direction. The broadband funding is a “great down payment” on the 98

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because house prices have soared in the past year, making them unaffordable to many. One rent gauge, which makes up one-quarter of the overall consumer price index, increased 0.3% last month and could continue rising in the coming months. A steady chorus of Fed officials have been suggesting that the Fed’s goal of making progress toward annual inflation modestly above 2% has been met and that the central bank should begin paring its $120 billion in monthly bond purchases. The purchases, which began in March 2020 when the pandemic shut down the economy, have been intended to hold down long-term loan rates to spur borrowing and spending. Eric Rosengren, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said in an interview that underlying inflation, excluding the price spikes caused by supply shortages and the economy’s reopening, has sustainably topped 2%, the Fed’s target. Some other Fed officials, though, including Powell himself and Governor Lael Brainard, have said they want to see more data before committing to any pullback of the Fed’s stimulus efforts. Some companies are still raising prices to offset higher costs for parts and labor. The burger chain Shake Shack plans to raise its prices by 3% to 3.5% in the final three months of the year, executives said on an investor conference call. Unilever, the maker of Dove soap and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, has said it will raise some prices to offset higher raw materials costs. And Yum Brands, which owns KFC and Taco Bell, said late last month that its franchisees have implemented “moderate” price increases.

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groups have made higher estimates. Phone and cable companies don’t have incentives to build internet infrastructure in rural areas, where customers are sparser and they may not make their money back. That’s traditionally where government subsidies to the industry have come into play: About $47 billion to rural internet from 2009 through 2017, and an additional $20 billion for rural broadband over the next decade and another $9 billion for high-speed wireless internet called 5G in sparsely populated regions. But there are also tens of millions of people today who have access to the internet and just don’t sign up, most often because they can’t afford it, in both cities and remote areas. The National Urban League estimates that number at 30 million households. FOCUSING ON AFFORDABILITY The Senate bill would provide about $14 billion toward a $30 monthly benefit that helps lowincome people pay for internet, extending a pandemic-era emergency program. “What makes this historic is the focus on affordability,” said Jenna Leventoff of Public Knowledge, which advocates for more funding for broadband. The bill, should it become law, is “going to help a lot of people that were otherwise unable to connect.” An existing program, known as Lifeline, aimed to help solve this affordability issue before. But it only provides $9.25 a month, which doesn’t go far for internet plans. It has also been a target of Republicans, who say it has fraud and abuse problems. 103

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WITHOUT ‘RIGHT TO REPAIR,’ BUSINESSES LOSE TIME AND MONEY

As software and other technologies get infused in more and more products, manufacturers are increasingly making those products difficult to repair, potentially costing business owners time and money. Makers of products ranging from smartphones to farm equipment can withhold repair tools and create software-based locks that prevent even simple updates, unless they’re done by a repair shop authorized by the company. That can cost independent repair shops valuable business and countless labor hours sourcing high quality parts from other vendors. Farmers can lose thousands waiting for authorized dealers to fix malfunctioning equipment. And consumers end up paying more for repairs -- or replacing items altogether that could have been fixed. 109

“If we don’t address these problems, and let manufacturers dictate terms of what they allow for repairs, we really are in danger of losing access to the repair infrastructure that exists,” said Nathan Proctor, senior director for the Right to Repair campaign at U.S. PIRG, a consumer advocacy group. While it’s difficult to put a dollar sign on how much the restrictions cost small businesses, the U.S. PIRG estimates it costs consumers $40 billion a year. That averages out to $330 per U.S. family, who end up replacing broken phones, laptops, refrigerators, and other electronic instead of having them repaired. Jessa Jones owns iPad Rehab in Honeoye Falls, New York, which specializes in microsoldering, which means repairing electronics on a microscopic level. She recalls a potential customer who drove an hour and a half to her repair shop because his home button stopped working on his iPhone 7. Jones says the iPhone had a tiny nick on the home button cable. “I have a brand new iPhone home button, I could cure the problem if I was allowed,” she said. What stymied Jones is Apple’s software that calibrates different parts of a phone like the screen and battery. While Jones herself is certified by Apple to fix phones, iPad Rehab isn’t an authorized Apple repair shop, so she couldn’t access the software or official part and repair the iPhone 7. Many independent repair shops opt not to get authorized because the terms can hamstring their business in other ways. 110

Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Forbes ranked Page as the world’s sixthwealthiest person, with a fortune of $117 billion. Forbes noted that Page stepped down as chief executive of Google’s parent company Alphabet in 2019 but remained a board member and controlling shareholder. Opposition lawmakers said the episode raised questions about why Page was approved so quickly at a time when many skilled workers or separated family members who were desperate to enter New Zealand were being turned away. “The government is sending a message that money is more important than doctors, fruit pickers and families who are separated from their children,” ACT deputy leader Brooke van Velden said in a statement. In 2017, it emerged that Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel had been able to gain New Zealand citizenship six years earlier, despite never having lived in the country. Thiel was approved after a top lawmaker decided his entrepreneurial skills and philanthropy were valuable to the nation. Thiel didn’t even have to leave California for the ceremony — he was granted citizenship during a private ceremony held at the New Zealand Consulate in Santa Monica.

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“Counterintuitively, Apple Authorization would force me to decline 90% of the jobs that we do or lose the authorization,” Jones says. The customer left without a repair, and Jones missed out on a fee for what would have been an “easy fix.” IPad Rehab’s data recovery and repair services can cost anywhere from $35 to $600. She said in the past three years, her business has been forced to pivot from half repairs and half data recovery to 90% data recovery and only 10% repairs. The Federal Trade Commission recently signaled things might be starting to change when it adopted a policy statement supporting the “right to repair” that pledges beefed-up enforcement of current antitrust and consumer protection laws and could open the way to new regulations . For its part, Apple says its restrictions are in place for quality and safety concerns. They authorize technicians who pass a software and hardware exam annually. They also started an independent repair provider program in 2019 and say the latest iPhone 12 “allows for more repairs to be performed at more repair locations than ever before.” While Apple has been the most publicly in the crosshairs about the right-to-repair issue, all smartphone makers have similar policies. The issue spans other industries too. Farmers and farm equipment repair technicians complain they can’t fix what should be fixable problems on tractors and combines due to the software installed by manufacturers. Sarah Rachor is a fourth-generation farmer, who runs a farm with 600 acres in Eastern Montana 112

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with her father that grows sugar beets, wheat, soybeans and corn. She has a tractor from 1998, mainly because it was before new technology was installed in farm equipment, along with an older 1987 combine for backup. The 1998 tractor has a manual with codes that she uses to manually reset it when something goes wrong. That’s not possible with newer machines, she said. “Anything newer than that, I’d have to call certified repair places,” she said . The wheat harvest lasts just a few weeks, and any breakdown that takes days to fix could be a disaster, she added. “A weeklong break down can easily cost thousands of dollars, on top of the repairs needed,” she said. “If I know how to do something, I shouldn’t have to wait and call a technician for something simple, or even to diagnose the problem,” she said. “I love technology, but it is making simple things harder.” John Deere says it “supports a customer’s right to safely maintain, diagnose and repair their equipment,” but “does not support the right to modify embedded software due to risks associated with the safe operation of the equipment, emissions compliance and engine performance.” Justin Maus has owned RNH Equipment in Mount Hope, Kansas, since 2019. He repairs agricultural equipment like tractors and combines. “We run into situations where a moisture meter on a combine needs to be replaced,” he said. 114

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“We can replace it in 20 minutes, but it will not operate. We have to have a dealer come out and put software on it to make it work.” The wait for the dealer can sometimes be a day or more. During harvest time, when agricultural equipment like combines are running at full throttle for several weeks, it’s common for mechanical problems to arise. In June alone, the moisture meter problem came up three or four times with customers, Maus said. One customer drove four hours to get a controller from a dealership. But he still had to wait another day for the dealer to have time in his schedule to install it. The restrictions cost not only lost revenue, but growth opportunities, he said. Without them, “not only would we be able to repair just about anything with the equipment we work on, making us more attractive to new and bigger customers, but we would also be more attractive to young new techs coming into the workforce,” he said. Kyle Wiens, CEO and co-founder of electronics repair company iFixit, in San Luis Obispo, California, which sells repair parts for electronics and gadgets online to consumers and small businesses, says without regulators stepping in, the problem will just get worse. He said the FTC’s involvement is a good start, but more is needed. In addition to the FTC, the “right to repair” movement is making progress with state legislation. There are right-to-repair bills of some form in 27 states, Wiens said. “A policy is good, but we’re going to need a rule they enforce,” he said. “We want to get back to a fair playing field.” 116

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A look at the situation: WHAT’S THE STORY WITH CRYPTOCURRENCY? The market for cryptocurrencies has ballooned to an estimated $1.8 trillion. They’re basically lines of computer code that are digitally signed each time they travel from one holder to the next. Not tied to banks or governments, they allow users to spend or receive money anonymously. That appeals to libertarians, offthe-grid types and risk-taking millennials who believe the financial system is rigged. But it’s also favored by international criminals, money launderers, drug dealers and ransomware hackers. The most widely traded cryptocurrency is Bitcoin, now worth around $45,000 each, down from a high in April of about $64,800. It’s notoriously volatile, in some instances spiking or plunging on public pronouncements by Elon Musk, the provocative Tesla Inc. CEO. Some businesses now accept Bitcoin as payment. Other well-known cryptocurrencies include Ethereum, Dogecoin, Ripple and Litecoin. All told, there are thousands. Bitcoin and others can be bought and sold on exchanges with U.S. dollars and other national currencies. WHERE DO GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS STAND? On both sides of the coin. Some lawmakers see cryptocurrency as a font of technological innovation, especially in the development of blockchain, the digital ledger that records transactions. Top U.S. regulators, on the other hand, are flashing danger signs. Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission appointed 123

by Biden, said last week that investors need more protection in the cryptocurrency market, which he called “rife with fraud, scams and abuse” and “like the Wild West.” While the SEC has won dozens of cases against crypto fraudsters, Gensler said the agency needs more authority from Congress — and more funding — to regulate the market. The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, is considering developing its own digital currency pegged to the U.S. dollar. A so-called digital dollar could enable faster payments among banks, consumers and businesses. “You’ve got federal agencies not talking on the same page,” says Suzanne Lynch, a professor at Utica College who focuses on financial crime. “It’s so grey right now.” WHAT’S THE CONNECTION WITH THE INFRASTRUCTURE BILL? The debate over cryptocurrency landed in the middle of the Senate’s work on the massive infrastructure package. An earlier plan to pay for the legislation, by bolstering IRS enforcement to crack down on tax cheating by individuals and businesses, went down as Republicans objected to expanding the agency’s reach. That would have brought in an estimated $100 billion over 10 years. Going back to the drawing board on revenue raisers, the plan was hatched for stricter tax-reporting requirements for cryptocurrency brokers. The estimated $28 billion it would generate over a decade is only about a quarter of what the IRS crackdown proposal envisaged. But it’s still the biggest revenue raiser of several in the infrastructure bill.

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It raised objections from some senators and unleashed an opposition lobbying blitz from the cryptocurrency industry as well as internet freedom advocacy groups. The provision defines brokers too broadly, opponents say, potentially stifling innovation by unfairly putting new tax-reporting obligations on software developers and crypto “miners” — users who create coins by lending computing power to verify other users’ transactions and receive coins in exchange. Those people don’t have access to cryptocurrency users’ data the IRS would be collecting, opponents say. Opponents brought forward amendments to the provision and a compromise emerged. But it failed to muster Senate approval, pushing the debate over cryptocurrency, taxes and brokers to the House. WHAT’S THE SITUATION NOW WITH CRYPTOCURRENCY AND TAXES? Some cryptocurrency brokers already report transactions to the IRS, though most don’t, experts say. Brokers place buy and sell orders for users on the cryptocurrency exchanges. The exchanges are required to collect personal identifying information from users and report their annual activity to the IRS. The IRS defines cryptocurrency as “property” similar to stocks or gold. That means you pay capital gains tax when you sell it or cash it in at a profit.

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SAMSUNG SLASHES PRICES IN BID TO BOOST FOLDABLE PHONE SALES

Samsung is hoping cheaper but more durable versions of its foldable phones will broaden the appeal of a high-concept design that’s so far fizzled with consumers. The electronics giant launched its effort to turn things around with two new products designed to function as both a phone and, when unfolded outward on a hinge, a tablet. The larger Galaxy Fold3 boasts a 7.6-inch display when unfolded and will sell for $1,800, a 10% drop from last year’s model. The other device, the Galaxy Flip3, looks more like a flip phone, but can still be opened from its clamshell position into a 6.7-inch display. It will sell for $1,000, more than 25% below the price for last year’s original model. 129

Besides the new phones, Samsung also unveiled its first smartwatches powered by software designed in tandem with Google as both companies try to catch up with Apple in that part of the wearable tech market. Since releasing its first foldable phones in 2019, Samsung has been hyping the technology as a breakthrough that will spur more consumers to splurge on new phones instead of holding on to older devices until they wear out or upgrading to new models that have most of the same features. But foldable phones have barely made a ripple in the smartphone market, with roughly 2 million of the devices shipped last year, according to the research firm International Data Corp. That’s a tiny fraction of the nearly 1.3 billion smartphones shipped worldwide last year, IDC said. “What has really been holding back the mass consumption of these foldable devices is the high price,” IDC analyst Nabila Popal said. “Most people really don’t see the need for it. At least nothing that justifies forking out an additional thousand dollars.” Popal believes Samsung’s lower prices for its latest foldable phones are still too far above what most consumers are willing to pay for phones. That’s one reason IDC projects only a modest uptick in foldable phone shipments this year, to an estimated 6 million to 7 million devices. Besides high prices, sales have been held back by doubts about whether the foldable devices can withstand the wear and tear that traditional smartphones typically endure. 130

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Those worries have shadowed Samsung’s foldable line-up since it delayed the release of first models in 2019 to fix problems with bulging screens and flickering displays. Samsung has equipped its newest foldable phones with more durable glass and water resistance to reduce the chances of the devices being damaged. It has made the foldable phones compatible with its popular S Pen stylus for the first time to woo customers accustomed to using the digital writing tool on Samsung’s traditional Note and Galaxy phones. In another sign of foldable phones’ progress, nearly 50 of the top 100 mobile apps, are now available for its unique format, said Drew Blackard, the South Korean company’s vice president of product management. Those improvements have emboldened Samsung to make the foldable phones its marquee products during the second half of the year, backed by a marketing campaign that will hail their advantages. Blackard likened the third generation of Samsung’s foldable phones to the third generation of the company’s Note phones that came out in 2013 and changed the perceptions of a product line-up that was initially mocked for introducing smartphones with five-inch screens. Within the next year, Apple released the first model of its trendsetting iPhones with bigger screens that have now become a standard feature. But Apple still hasn’t felt compelled to make an iPhone with a foldable screen yet.

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A WASTE COAL-BUR,NING, CRYPTO-MINING PIRATE SHIP SETS SAIL In March 2017, Bill Spence got suddenly, catastrophically sick. A part of his pancreas died. His gall bladder failed. When he got to the emergency room, the doctors found kidney cancer. “Let’s see if you can make it 48 hours,” his doctor told him. Just a few weeks earlier, Mr. Spence, a cheerful tower of a man whose signature ponytail had been updated to a gray man bun, had walked into the Scrubgrass waste coal plant that he had just bought and hung a black pirate flag in the office. The coal plant was a pirate ship, he announced. “We sink or profit together.” The power plant and the mountains of waste coal that it burns were now in the hands of this group, not the large corporations and hedge funds that had owned it until then. Then, all of a sudden, the captain of the ship was on death’s door. When Scrubgrass’ general manager, R.J. Shaffer, learned the news, he printed out a photo of the Venango County power plant and delivered it to Mr. Spence’s hospital bedside. The picture 135

had two pirate flags, the signatures of the crew, and was captioned: “The ‘Power’ of Healing.” “I knew it would be an inspiration for him to get better,” Mr. Shaffer said. And Mr. Spence did. The recovery left him homebound for several years, but it also left him with plenty of time to do what he does: come up with business ideas. The plant he had bought was in trouble. It was competing with cheap natural gas on the power grid and losing — endangering the 35 jobs at Scrubgrass Generating Station along with the effort to clean up millions of tons of leaching coal waste left behind by mining companies over the course of decades. The plant couldn’t just rely on the grid for revenue anymore, because the grid simply didn’t need its power all that often. Mr. Spence started to look for other customers. As Mr. Spence convalesced, Mr. Shaffer and the plant’s engineering manager, Jeff Campbell, would visit with him in his Fox Chapel home to brainstorm ideas. “Do you know what a Bitcoin is?” Mr. Spence asked them one day in late 2017.

COMPUTER ARMS RACE Bitcoin is the most widespread of the cryptocurrencies in use today. These digital currencies, which involve a huge amount of computing power, aren’t issued by a central bank but are instead “mined” by computers that perform the energy-intensive work of validating transactions and adding them to a digital ledger, called the blockchain. 136

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Just as mining coal or gold is a matter of who gets to the commodity first, so too is digital mining, where computers race against each other to be the first to validate a block of transactions and win their reward. With each new computer vying for the prize, the algorithm adjusts to make getting it more difficult. Rather like a coal company hiring more coal miners, crypto miners buy more and faster computers, creating a kind of arms race that’s driving a huge demand for power. Already, some power generators — finding they can make more money supplying electricity to Bitcoin-mining operations than selling it to the grid — are shifting focus. Energy Harbor, which owns the Beaver Valley Nuclear Plant in Beaver County, announced earlier this month that it will supply nuclear power to a Bitcoin-mining data center in Ohio. Talen Energy, owner of the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Luzerne County, is doing the same. The company said last month that it will develop a data center to mine digital currency that could use up to 300 megawatts, or 12% of the nuclear plant’s capacity. Bitcoin miners, in turn, are hyper cognizant of power prices and availability. Some are taking mobile units into the oil fields, hooking up their machines to run on natural gas, a byproduct of oil product that would otherwise be flared. Others, worried about the substantial and growing carbon footprint of all this digital mining — Bitcoin’s highest profile booster Elon Musk recently called the industry 139

to account for its contribution to climate change — are trying to find renewable sources of energy to power their machines.

THE PILES THAT REMAIN Today, Scrubgrass, an 85-megawatt blue box with a black smokestack in the hills of Scrubgrass Township, looks much like it did when it first opened in 1993 — except for the trailers filled with Bitcoin miners in the back. The operation originally came online along with a wave of such plants that were supposed to tackle Pennsylvania’s legacy of abandoned coal piles. The plants took advantage of a new technology in the 1990s — a circulating fluidized bed that made it possible to burn such low-grade material and control emissions of sulfur and nitrous oxides. Limestone is injected into the process, and the resulting ash, now alkaline, is often spread on the land where the waste coal came from to neutralize the acid. Last year, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection estimated there are about 9,000 acres filled with waste coal piles in the state remaining, after some 3,700 acres have been reclaimed over the past three decades, mostly by the piles being burned in waste coal power plants. Some piles are hundreds of feet deep. “There is clearly more work to be done,” DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell told a state legislative committee last year during a hearing on the greenhouse gas impacts of such power plants. They emit more carbon dioxide than regular coal plants per unit of energy because the quality of their fuel is much lower than pure coal. 140

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That has always been the trade-off — cleaning up the waste coal piles cleans up the water around them and remediates unsightly and dangerous land. But the CO² goes in the air. In 2019, the last year with available federal data, Scrubgrass emitted the equivalent of 371,000 tons of CO² — the greenhouse gas footprint of 80,000 cars driving for a year. In 2012, when the plant was running at full force, it emitted close to a million tons. The waste coal piles themselves also emit pollutants. “Of the piles that remain,” Mr. McDonnell said last year, “approximately 40 have ignited and continually burn, significantly impacting local air quality and releasing significant amounts of carbon dioxide and other pollutants.” Other estimates put the number of burning piles at more than 90. That’s why the DEP essentially excused waste coal plants from buying carbon credits as part of its plan to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multistate carbon cap-andtrade program.

THE PILES IN WEST DEER It was another man’s illness, his father’s, that brought Mr. Spence into the waste coal business in the first place. A mining engineer from the Mon Valley, he was living in Texas in the early 1990s when his father got sick and Mr. Spence began to take extended trips to Pittsburgh to care for him. Suddenly, the waste coal piles that he was used to seeing as a kid looked different — they looked like an opportunity. 143

In 1994, Mr. Spence bought a 5 million-ton gob — that is, garbage of bituminous — pile in West Deer and secured a contract with a brand new plant in Venango County to burn the waste coal. It took a decade to truck all of that material 60 miles north to Scrubgrass. After it was burned, the resulting ash was trucked back to West Deer and spread on the land. There it sat compacting for another decade. Stronghold Digital Mining’s initial public stock offering was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 27. Earlier this month, Mr. Spence stood on that flattened ground in northern Allegheny County, now home to a pair of soccer fields and an indoor sports complex, and talked about what’s possible when waste coal is cleaned up. Then he drove a quarter mile down the road, where a mountain range of abandoned coal waste showed how much is left to be done. The other West Deer pile that now sends 50 trucks to Scrubgrass every day represents the remnants of a coal mine that once supplied steel to build U.S. skyscrapers and produce weapons during World War II. The mine opened in 1904 and shuttered eight decades later, leaving heaps of waste coal on the ground. Every time it rains, the remnants leach an acidic brew of heavy metals into the earth, turning streams orange. But it’s not the environmental good-doing that hooked investors during two funding rounds that yielded more than $100 million over the past several months.

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The appeal was the Bitcoin operation, said Greg Beard, CEO and president of Stronghold Digital Mining, a company that he founded with Mr. Spence to turn Scrubgrass and several other waste coal plants into a crypto hub. Last week Stronghold filed documents with the Securities & Exchange Commission to become a public company.

‘IS THIS REAL?’ Jeff Campbell, the plant engineer, started researching Bitcoin as soon as he got home from Mr. Spence’s house in 2017. He watched a 40-minute YouTube video and said the idea clicked into place: “This is currency that’s underpinned by power.” On Amazon, he bought a $50 USB stick that promised to mine Bitcoin. He switched his computer to an isolated network and plugged it in. At that time, Bitcoin was still “fringe,” Mr. Campbell said, and he worried about getting a computer virus or even ending up on an FBI watchlist because of cryptocurrency’s reputation in moving funds for terrorism. The USB stick worked as advertised, and after a few weeks, Mr. Campbell invested $1,000 and bought a mining machine, a computer whose sole purpose is to run computations. It ran for a week and generated the equivalent of $6.65 in Bitcoin. Nervously, Mr. Campbell linked the machine’s digital wallet to Scrubgrass’ PNC account to transfer the spoils, then he went into the office to check if it really showed up there. “Oh, my God. I can’t believe this is really going to work,” he said 146

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“All we need to do is put 15,000 of these in,” he told Mr. Spence. According to Mr. Campbell’s calculations, at that price, mining for Bitcoin with 15,000 machines would add about 50% to the plant’s operating revenue. The earnings from the first machine funded the purchase of the second, then those two funded the third and so on. Today, there are about 3,000 cryptocurrency miners packed into retrofitted shipping containers behind the power plant, most of them owned by Stronghold and some that belong to other mining companies that buy power from the plant. Another 5,000 machines are scheduled to arrive next month. According to documents filed with the SEC, Stronghold is planning to operate 57,000 miners by the end of next year. In 2020, when the power plant seldom ran, Stronghold made more money from its Bitcoin operations than by selling Scrubgrass’s energy to the grid. During the first three months of this year, the trend reversed. It received almost $2 million from power sales and more than $1 million from its crypto datacenter. Mr. Spence talks to his kids about blockchain, the cryptography involved in storing and verifying huge swaths of data, the way people in the 1960s talked about plastics, a la the movie “The Graduate.” “I feel that blockchain is gonna change the world,” he said. For Mr. Campbell it feels like the beginning of the internet did: He knows it’s going to 149

be revolutionary and ubiquitous, but the vision is still fuzzy. “Facial recognition? Threedimensional rendering? Autonomous driving? Artificial intelligence?” he spitballs. Mr. Spence’s business partner, Mr. Beard, who used to manage energy investing at Apollo Global Management Inc., isn’t as exuberant. “I’m not sure that you need to be a believer,” he said. He plugged the numbers into an Excel spreadsheet and saw that it makes economic sense to mine. That was enough for him. Stronghold is buying another waste coal plant, Panther Creek Energy Facility in Carbon County, with plans to replicate its cryptomining data center there, and is eyeing a third.

STABILIZING THE GRID While Bitcoin is the shiny veneer of the operation, it’s actually a means to an end — giving Scrubgrass a reason to run more than the electric grid needs so it can continue to burn waste coal. For the first 20 years, the plant ran nearly constantly. It had a power purchase agreement with the local utility, which meant there was a guaranteed demand and a guaranteed price for its output. When that ended, in 2013, Scrubgrass struggled to navigate the competitive power market, where the price of power was falling in part because the Marcellus Shale was making natural gas a cheaper fuel for electricity than coal, let alone waste coal.

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Plants — especially smaller ones like Scrubgrass that find themselves on the margin — often run only at peak times when the demand on the grid raises prices enough to make it worth their while. Having a constant demand, like the attached data center, means Scrubgrass doesn’t need to shut down when prices for power fall. It also means that when the grid needs it, Scrubgrass can act like a battery — instantly switching its power to the grid. “I think 10 years from now, people are going to say, ’Bitcoin is the thing that power plants do to regulate the grid,” Mr. Campbell said. He’s already thinking of ways to route the heat produced by the miners back into the power plant. (Last winter, Mr. Campbell heated his home with Bitcoin machines). Meanwhile, the plant, although no spring chicken, feels like it’s still trying to figure out what it is — a place where people tinker and experiment. Mr. Shaffer, who spent most of his career at the plant, proudly proclaims that his colleagues aren’t “typical power plant people.” A former restaurant manager runs the data center. Mr. Spence, not a typical anything except an entrepreneur whose ventures over the years ranged from natural gas services to a health magazine, hung the framed photo of Scrubgrass just inside the front door of his home. “They should be building more plants like this, not less,” he said recently. “It’s not perfect. I acknowledge that to you. But it’s damn good.” 153

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HIGHER BUT STILL SLIM ODDS OF ASTEROID BENNU SLAMMING EARTH

The good news is that scientists have a better handle on asteroid Bennu’s whereabouts for the next 200 years. The bad news is that the space rock has a slightly greater chance of clobbering Earth than previously thought. But don’t be alarmed: Scientists reported that the odds are still quite low that Bennu will hit us in the next century. “We shouldn’t be worried about it too much,” said Davide Farnocchia, a scientist with NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who served as the study’s lead author. While the odds of a strike have risen from 1-in2,700 to 1-in-1,750 over the next century or two, scientists now have a much better idea of Bennu’s path thanks to NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft, according to Farnocchia. 155

“So I think that overall, the situation has improved,” he told reporters. The spacecraft is headed back to Earth on a long, roundabout loop after collecting samples from the large, spinning rubble pile of an asteroid, considered one of the two most hazardous known asteroids in our solar system. The samples are due here in 2023. Before Osiris-Rex arrived at Bennu in 2018, telescopes provided solid insight into the asteroid, about one-third of a mile (one-half kilometer) in diameter. The spacecraft collected enough data over 2 1/2 years to help scientists better predict the asteroid’s orbital path well into the future. Their findings — published in the journal Icarus — should also help in charting the course of other asteroids and give Earth a better fighting chance if and when another hazardous space rock heads our way. Before Osiris-Rex arrived on the scene, scientists put the odds of Bennu hitting Earth through the year 2200 at 1-in-2,700. Now it’s 1-in1,750 through the year 2300. The single most menacing day is Sept. 24, 2182. Bennu will have a close encounter with Earth in 2135 when it passes within half the distance of the moon. Earth’s gravity could tweak its future path and put it on a collision course with Earth in the 2200s — less likely now based on OsirisRex observations. If Bennu did slam into Earth, it wouldn’t wipe out life, dinosaur-style, but rather create a crater roughly 10 to 20 times the size of the asteroid, said Lindley Johnson, NASA’s planetary defense officer. 156

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The area of devastation would be much bigger: as much as 100 times the size of the crater. If an object Bennu’s size hit the Eastern Seaboard, it “would pretty much devastate things up and down the coast,” he told reporters. Scientists already are ahead of the curve with Bennu, which was discovered in 1999. Finding threatening asteroids in advance increases the chances and options for pushing them out of our way, Johnson said. “One-hundred years from now, who knows what the technology is going to be?” he said. In November, NASA plans to launch a mission to knock an asteroid off-course by hitting it. The experimental target will be the moonlet of a bigger space rock.

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WANT TO PRETEND TO LIVE ON MARS? FOR A WHOLE YEAR? APPLY NOW

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musical instrument there, you could go into there knowing nothing and come out a concert musician, if you want.” There could be “incredible freedom” in a “year away from the demands of your normal life.” Attitude is key, said Hadfield, who has a novel “The Apollo Murders” coming out in the fall. He said the participants need to be like Damon’s Watney character: “Super competent, resourceful and not relying on other people to feel comfortable.”

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HOT DATES: 2 SPACECRAFT TO MAKE VENUS FLYBY

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Two spacecraft are set to swoop past Venus within hours of each other this week, using the maneuver to do a little bit of bonus science on the way to their main missions at the center of our solar system. The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter probe, a cooperation with NASA, will swing around Venus early Monday, using the planet’s gravity to help put it on a course to observe the Sun’s poles. About 33 hours later, the European-Japanese spacecraft BepiColombo will get even closer to Venus in a maneuver designed to help it slow down sharply and safely steer into the orbit of Mercury in 2025. “Without the flyby, we would not be able to reach our target planet,” said Elsa Montagnon, the spacecraft operations manager for BepiColombo. “The energy required to enter into orbit of Mercury would be prohibitively expensive in terms of propellant.” Both probes have numerous scientific instruments on board, some of which will be used to take a closer look at Venus as they zoom past. The measurements will add to those taken by the Japanese probe Akatsuki, which is already in orbit around Earth’s hotter neighbor. NASA and the European Space Agency are planning to send three more missions to Venus toward the end of the decade.

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IN ‘FREE GUY,’ A VIDEOGAME ‘TRUMAN SHOW’

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It’s the same thing over and over. But from the start, it’s obvious something is very far from right. Every day, for example, Guy’s bank is robbed at gun point. He and his security guard friend, Buddy (Lil Rel Howery) calmly lie down on the floor each time and discuss their afterwork plans. The reveal isn’t a shocker: “Free City” is a virtual reality game and Guy is a background character — a non-playable character or NPC. In the expansive digital universe, Guy is the lowest of the low, an (8-) bit character in a violent cyber city. He’s an extra who happens to be played by an A-lister. 175

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Next Level Reynolds

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IN ‘THE GREEN KNIGHT,’ AN ENCHANTING ARTHURIAN DREAM

Why, for starters, is the Green Knight green? It’s a question that’s long vexed scholars of the 14th century chivalric romance “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” The movie, like the epic poem, is full of mysteries, most of them unspoken. But the knight’s unlikely color — Why isn’t he a more typical knightly blue? — is a question voiced by the characters of David Lowery’s adaptation, “The Green Knight.” He’s green, answers Dev Patel’s Sir Gawain, because it’s the shade of rot. The Green Knight, as seen in Lowery’s enchanting Arthurian dream, is an imposing tree of a man, with a wispy beard of twigs and a wooden mane whose movements rustle with the sound of bended, creaking branches. (He’s played by a much-costumed Ralph Ineson.) Early in “The Green Knight,” he rides on Christmas Day into King Arthur’s court, cloaked in shadow, and offers a game. Strike him wherever you want, and he will repay the same stroke a year hence at his Green Chapel. 183

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Gawain, freshly inspired by King Arthur to be ambitious after spending his days drinking and carousing, takes up the challenge and boldly chops off the knight’s head. The thrall of victory quickly turns ominous when the Green Knight stands, picks up his head and — with more menace than even an unwanted houseguest promising to return for the holidays — says he’ll see the young man next Christmas. The Green Knight is the color of nature and of death, which here are the same things. Lowery’s film, shot on misty Irish plains and dank forests, is earthy, with dirt under its nails, and blanketed in wintery fog. It’s both of the land and the ether, poised in a dreamy, mythical long ago. Gawain’s quest to visit the Green Knight a year later is a haunting journey into an inescapable abyss, a meditation on life and death made with the Green Knight’s axe looming. Lowery, the Texas filmmaker, has a propensity for lyrical legends ( “The Old Man and the Gun,” with Robert Redford ) and existential rumination ( “A Ghost Story” ). The latter is a kind of companion piece to “The Green Knight,” and both, I think, sometimes use obliqueness to mask an inner vagueness. But few American filmmakers of his generation have been quite as keen to pursue difficult philosophical questions or to stretch cinema in new, quixotic directions.

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Just making a movie out of this anonymous, alliterative poem is a wild kind of feat. A tale of chivalry and honor, it belongs to another, medieval world. Its lessons and meanings are somewhat inscrutable and much contested. Only twice before has it been turned into a movie (both by British filmmaker Stephen Weeks, once with Sean Connery as the Green Knight, neither to any acclaim). In King Arthur’s Round Table, Gawain is quite notable but he’s no Lancelot. But in Patel’s brooding, uncontrived performance, Gawain is remarkably alive as a man — like Patel’s David Copperfield — figuring himself out. Lowery opens “The Green Knight” (which a24 opens in theaters Friday) with ornate titles crediting the tale’s historic origins — this is a story about stories — but immediately situates “The Green Knight” into a more natural realm and the intimate orbit of Patel’s Gawain. Gawain has none of the experience of Camelot’s more famous knights but that’s not causing him to loose any sleep. He and Essel (a marvelous, pixie-cut Alicia Vikander) are inseparable, in bed and at Mass. Living with his mother, Morgana (Sarita Choudhury), Gawain is a little like a boy prince who doesn’t want to grow up. But after King Arthur (Sean Harris) summons him to sit alongside his throne, Gawain haphazardly throws himself into the pursuit of honor, joining the Green Knight’s game. Is he finally reaching maturity? Or is it a fool’s gambit to risk everything for Round Table infamy? “This is how silly men perish,” says Essel.

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But Gawain, grimacing at the first sight of snowfall, sets out just the same to make his Christmas appointment with the Green Knight. He traverses a deathly landscape in an episodic journey of symbolic encounters — a thief on a battlefield (Barry Keoghan); an apparition in a deserted house (Erin Kellyman); a kindly fox; a comforting castle with a lord and a mystical companion (Joel Edgerton, Vikander again). The chapters don’t cohere in a sustained rhythm, but in richly evocative imagery, “The Green Knight” makes its own vivid film language and pacing. Sometimes, Lowery’s camera turns round like a clock, advancing and reversing time. Gawain’s quest turns abstract, awakening him to his life even as he marches to his own death. “The Green Knight,” an a24 release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for violence, some sexuality and graphic nudity. Legends Never Die: An Oral History of ‘The Green Knight’ | Narrated by Ralph Ineson | A24

Running time: 125 minutes. Three stars out of four. MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

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US CONSUMER PRICES ROSE IN JULY BUT AT SLOWER PACE

Prices for U.S. consumers rose last month but at the slowest pace since February, a sign that Americans may gain some relief after four months of sharp increases that have imposed a financial burden on the nation’s households. Wednesday’s report from the Labor Department showed that consumer prices jumped 0.5% from June to July, down from the previous monthly increase of 0.9%. They have increased a substantial 5.4%, though, compared with a year earlier. Excluding volatile energy and food prices, socalled core inflation rose 4.3% in the past year, down slightly from 4.5% in June — the fastest pace since 1991. Americans continue to face higher costs, with the year-over-year inflation rate matching June’s increase as the largest annual jump since 2008. At 191

the same time, some recent drivers of the inflation surge slowed last month. The price of used cars, which had soared over the past three months, ticked up just 0.2% in July. Airline fares, which had been spiking, actually declined 0.1% in July. “We believe June marked the peak in the annual rate of inflation,” said Kathy Bostjancic, an economist at Oxford Economics. “That said, price increases stemming from the reopening of the economy and ongoing supply chain bottlenecks will keep the rate of inflation elevated.” Rising inflation has emerged as the Achilles’ heel of the economic recovery, erasing much of the benefit to workers from higher pay and heightening pressure on the Federal Reserve’s policymakers under Chair Jerome Powell, who face a mandate to maintain stable prices. Inflation is also threatening to become a political liability for President Joe Biden, whom Republicans in Congress have blamed for contributing to accelerating inflation from having pushed through a $1.9 trillion financial aid package last spring that included stimulus checks to most households and federal supplemental unemployment aid. Further trillions in spending, backed by Biden and congressional Democrats, will be considered by Congress in the coming weeks. In response, Powell and the White House have said they believe that the pickup in inflation, which well exceeds the Fed’s 2% annual target, will prove temporary because it stems mainly from supply shortages resulting from the sudden shutdown — and swift reopening — of a $20 trillion economy. Still, the Biden administration sought Wednesday to rein in oil and gas prices, which have also spiked 192

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in the past year, by calling on OPEC nations to boost oil production to help support the global economy. July’s inflation report suggested that while price increases are easing, they aren’t yet falling back as much as the White House and the Fed hope they will. The cost of auto rentals, for example, skyrocketed nearly 75% in the past year after rental companies sold off much of their fleets during the pandemic in order to raise cash. Yet last month, vehicle rental prices fell nearly 5%, a sign that the price spike may be reversing. Auto insurance prices also fell in July after have risen for six straight months. Some categories are still recording price increases, but they are likely to moderate in the coming months. Hotel room costs, for instance, jumped 6% in July and have increased nearly 22% compared with a year ago. Lodging firms have struggled to hire enough workers to keep up with a travel burst as the pandemic faded this spring. But increases that large are unlikely to continue. In other categories, recent cost increases may not fall back anytime soon. Restaurant prices jumped 0.8% in July, the largest increase since 1981, a sign that higher wages and rising food costs are being passed on to consumers. New car prices, which increased 1.7% in July, have leapt 6.4% in the past year, the largest yearover-year increase since 1982. A shortage of semiconductors has limited automakers’ output, and there is little sign that it is easing yet. Nissan said that it is closing a huge factory in Tennessee for two weeks because of the chip shortage. And rents are rising as many would-be homebuyers are forced to stay in apartments 195

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US LAWYERS APPEAL UK DECISION TO BLOCK ASSANGE EXTRADITION

Lawyers acting on behalf of the U.S. government this week challenged a British judge’s decision to block the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to face espionage charges in the United States, arguing that assessments of Assange’s mental health should be reviewed. The British judge ruled in January that Assange was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions. The U.S. government is appealing. Clair Dobbin, a British lawyer who represented U.S. authorities during a High Court preliminary hearing on Wednesday, said that District Judge 198

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Vanessa Baraitser based her decision not to extradite Assange on a “predicted risk of suicide” rather than the risk at the time the matter was before her. Dobbin said both the ruling and the evaluations of psychiatrists needed to be scrutinized given the “extraordinary lengths” Assange went to before his arrest in London to avoid legal proceedings. After skipping bail to avoid extradition to Sweden alleged sexual assault, he spent almost seven years holed up inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in the U.K. capital. The 50-year-old Australian listened in by video link from London’s high-security Belmarsh prison. He was arrested in the embassy in April 2019 after Ecuador withdrew the asylum it had granted him. U.S. prosecutors have indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks’ publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents a decade ago. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison. Outside court, Assange’s partner, Stella Moris, described him as an “innocent man accused of practicing journalism.” “For every day that this colossal injustice is allowed to continue, Julian’s situation grows increasingly desperate,” Moris, who has two young children with Assange, told his supporters and reporters. “Julian has been denied the love and affection of his family for so long. Julian and the kids will never get this time back. This shouldn’t be happening,” she added.

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A group of protesters shouted “Free Julian Assange” to the beat of a drum as police looked on. In January, Baraitser, the district judge, accepted evidence from expert witnesses that Assange had a depressive disorder and an autism spectrum disorder. She agreed that U.S. prison conditions would be oppressive, saying there was a “real risk” he would be sent to the Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, the highest security prison in the U.S.

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PANDEMIC PROMPTS CHANGES IN HOW FUTURE TEACHERS ARE TRAINED

Before last year, a one-credit technology course for students pursuing master’s degrees in education at the University of Washington wasn’t seen as the program’s most relevant. Then COVID-19 hit, schools plunged into remote learning, and suddenly material from that course was being infused into others. “It’s become so relevant, and it’s staying that way,” said Anne Beitlers, who directs Washington’s master’s program for secondary education. “And nobody’s going to question that now.” Changes to standards and curricula happen slowly, but the pandemic is already leaving its fingerprints on the education of future teachers. Many U.S. educator preparation programs 204

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are incorporating more about digital tools, online instruction and mental and emotional wellness in their courses to reflect takeaways from the pandemic. While school system leaders are hoping to offer in-person instruction as widely as possible this year, experts say the emphasis on technology will have benefits regardless of the pandemic’s course. Across the country, teaching programs are giving more emphasis on how to plan and implement quality virtual learning. “I think it’s our responsibility to train our teachers to be able to do that, and if they find themselves teaching face-to-face, nobody’s hurt by additional information about teaching online,” said Jennifer Krawec, the University of Miami’s director of teacher preparation programs. The education school at Iowa’s Drake University has introduced a course about best practices in online instruction. Others say they’ve accelerated or amplified how they integrate digital tools, videoconferencing and educational technology into their classes and how they prepare future educators to do the same. Officials at Columbia University’s Teachers College say its students will continue to get practice in skills that became increasingly important during the pandemic, such as designing digital curricula or engaging kids in virtual or hybrid learning. Southern Methodist University plans to ensure graduates from its education school now get training about using Google Classroom and evaluating educational technology. Instructors at New York University have become more 206

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intentional about explaining how and why they choose to use certain digital tools. Changes are happening not only in what aspiring educators learn, but how. Consider how colleges adapted when school closures blocked observation and teaching opportunities in K-12 classrooms. Some programs instead had their students analyze videos of top teachers in action, and say they plan to keep using those videos in addition to future classroom visits. Some colleges placed their students in virtual classrooms or had them do online tutoring, and say they may continue to explore those options. Some prep programs also adopted or expanded use of computer-simulated classrooms for training prospective teachers, said Lynn Gangone, the president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. “It allows for the mentor teacher to be there observing, and it doesn’t bring harm to any kids,” Gangone said. Students at Vanderbilt, Florida and Ball State started using software that allows them to record the lessons they were presenting to kids and review or critique that video later on their own, with classmates or with supervisors. And some field supervision of teaching candidates from the University of Cincinnati likely will continue to be done virtually because that mode has proved much more flexible, according to the director of that education school. Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College is starting to offer some of its teacher-preparation programs remotely to make 209

them more accessible to in-state residents who aren’t near campus but could still get real-world experience in classrooms in their areas. “Our experience with the good, the bad and the ugly of remote instruction has given us the confidence, and also revealed the need, to get good at being able to do what we can in teacher prep remotely,” said Paul Gediman, the college’s executive director of marketing and advancement.

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At North Carolina State University’s College of Education, instructors are trying to integrate remote learning strategies and tools that can still be used in face-to-face teaching, such as the interactive whiteboard Jamboard or the student engagement platform Seesaw, said Erin Horne, an assistant dean. Horne said they’ve also been dedicating more class time to social-emotional learning and trauma-informed care. Those topics are getting heightened attention elsewhere, too. Officials at Penn State University said more discussions about mental and emotional health have been integrated into their seminars for teacher candidates as well as methods courses. Washington University in St. Louis has started asking its teacher candidates to draft specific plans for how they can practice self-care and dodge burnout while teaching, according to its director of teacher education. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said she thinks teacher prep programs will continue to move toward preparing educators more with digital tools, social-emotional tools and trauma-based instruction. She noted that the union started a new professional development course in trauma-informed instruction, and it’s in high demand. Phillip Rogers, who leads the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification, said he believes skills in virtual instruction will eventually become a more regular part of teacher training, but there’s not yet much movement among states to require that in teacher prep programs. 213

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GOOGLE FOUNDER GETS NEW ZEALAND RESIDENCY, RAISING QUESTIONS

Google co-founder Larry Page has gained New Zealand residency, officials confirmed, stoking debate over whether extremely wealthy people can essentially buy access to the South Pacific country. Immigration New Zealand said Page first applied for residency in November under a special visa open to people with at least 10 million New Zealand dollars ($7 million) to invest. “As he was offshore at the time, his application was not able to be processed because of COVID-19 restrictions,” the agency said in a statement. “Once Mr. Page entered New Zealand, his application was able to be processed and it was approved on 4 February 2021.” 215

Gaining New Zealand residency would not necessarily affect Page’s residency status in the U.S. or any other nations. New Zealand lawmakers confirmed that Page and his son first arrived in New Zealand in January after the family filed an urgent application for the son to be evacuated from Fiji due to a medical emergency. “The day after the application was received, a New Zealand air ambulance staffed by a New Zealand ICU nurse-escort medevaced the child and an adult family member from Fiji to New Zealand,” Health Minister Andrew Little told lawmakersin Parliament. Little was responding to questions about how Page had managed to enter the country at a time when New Zealand had shut its borders to non-residents in an attempt to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Little told lawmakers the family had abided by applicable virus protocols when they arrived. Page’s residency application was approved about three weeks later. Immigration New Zealand noted that while Page had become a resident, he didn’t have permanent residency status and remained subject to certain restrictions. Still, the agency on its website touts the “Investor Plus” visa as offering a “New Zealand lifestyle,” adding that “you may be able to bring your car, boat and household items to New Zealand, free of customs charges.” Some local news organizations reported that Page had since left New Zealand. Image: Kimberly White

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WILL WE NEED VACCINE PASSPORTS TO DO FUN THINGS?

Ready to go out on the town before summer ends? In parts of the U.S., you might have to carry your COVID-19 vaccine card or a digital copy to get into restaurants, bars, nightclubs and outdoor music festivals. After resisting the divisive concept of vaccine passports through most of the pandemic, a fastgrowing number of private venues and some local officials are now requiring proof of immunization in public settings to reduce the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus — and to assuage wary customers. It’s unlikely the U.S. will adopt a national mandate like the one in France, which this week began requiring people to show a QR code proving they have a special virus pass before they can enjoy restaurants and cafes or travel across the country. Image: Helen H. Richardson

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But enough venues are starting to ask for digital passes to worry some privacy advocates, who fear the trend could habituate consumers to constant tracking.

WHO’S ASKING FOR VACCINE PASSPORTS? New York City set the tone last week when Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city will soon require proof of COVID-19 vaccination for anyone who wants to dine indoors at a restaurant, see a performance or go to the gym. But a growing number of private venues, from Broadway theaters to music clubs in Minneapolis and Milwaukee, have established their own similar rules for patrons. “I’m a firm believer in the right for people to choose whether or not they get the vaccine,” said Tami Montgomery, owner of Dru’s Bar in Memphis, Tennessee, which will start asking for paper vaccine cards along with photo identification. “But it’s my business and I have to make decisions based on what will protect my staff, business and customers.” Organizers of the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago said on its opening day in late July that more than 90% of some 100,000 attendees presented proof of a vaccination, while most of the rest showed they’d recently had a negative COVID-19 test. Hundreds of others were turned away for lack of paperwork. Only in a handful of states — Texas and Florida are the biggest — are private businesses prohibited from requiring proof of vaccination.

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HOW DO THEY WORK? In some places, venues are simply asking you to bring your vaccination card — the same piece of paper you get from health providers and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Taking a picture of that card at home and then showing the image to the bouncer at the club can also work. New York City offers a streamlined way of showing a photo through its NYC COVID Safe App, in which people can store images of their vaccine cards and then display them in the app when needed. Other places are encouraging people to register their credentials using a scannable digital pass like New York’s statewide Excelsior Pass or similar systems adopted by California, Hawaii and Louisiana and private companies like Walmart and the airport security app Clear. Some of the state-sponsored digital passes verify a person’s vaccine credentials through a state or local immunization registry. Such passes are designed for convenience and to prevent fraud. But that’s also where the biggest privacy concerns emerge, said Adam Schwartz, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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WHAT’S WRONG WITH QR CODES? The barcode known as a QR code was originally designed to help track products in a factory. These days, it’s increasingly being used to track people’s devices. “Those systems are a giant leap towards tracking people’s location,” Schwartz said. “There’s a very real risk of mission creep once there are scanners at doors and people are showing their scannable token to pass through.” But the coalition that helped create the Smart Health Card framework used by New York, California and the Canadian province of Quebec say they’ve already set privacy safeguards to guard against misuse of health data. So long as a venue is using a VCI-compliant scanner, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about, said Dr. Brian Anderson, chief digital health physician at MITRE and co-lead of the Vaccination Credential Initiative, which counts Apple, Microsoft and the Mayo Clinic among its members. “That app won’t store an individual’s data beyond the time that the QR code is scanned,” he said.

WHY NOT STICK WITH PAPER? Proponents of digital passports say they’re more convenient for already-overwhelmed restaurants and other venues because workers don’t have to peer at everyone’s vaccine cards before letting them in. Lines move faster, and the digital scan reassures those who don’t want to risk damaging or losing their paper cards.

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It’s also easy to fake a paper card or a photo of one. The startup CrowdPass, which generates QR codes so vaccinated people can attend events, said it helped get about 15,000 people swiftly admitted into the recent Newport Folk and Newport Jazz festivals in Rhode Island. The events required attendees to digitally upload proof of full vaccination or a recent negative test. Demand was slow at first, said Duncan Abdelnour, the startup’s co-founder and president. “But since the delta variant has sprung, we’ve had a huge uptick.” Among its clients are couples planning weddings and organizers of other small events. Abdelnour said the biggest spike in calls came after New York City’s announcement. It’s a crowded market that includes apps made by Clear and Walmart, many of which have now signed onto the VCI’s privacy standards and code of conduct. But for Schwartz, of the EFF, the best advice for venues that need to see proof of vaccination is to stick to asking for the CDC card or a photo of it. The process of making vaccination checks should end when the pandemic does, Schwartz said. “Some of the companies that are in this space have a track record of being in the business of monetizing data,” he added. “I’m not going to name names, but they’re the last people that should be involved in developing scanners for proof of vaccination.”

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5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE NEW UN REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE

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The U.N.-appointed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a new report Monday summarizing the latest authoritative scientific information about global warming. Here are five important takeaways.

BLAMING HUMANS The report says almost all of the warming that has occurred since pre-industrial times was caused by the release of heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. Much of that is the result of humans burning fossil fuels — coal, oil, wood and natural gas. The authors say global temperatures have already risen by 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 19th century, reaching their highest in over 100,000 years, and only a fraction of that increase can have come from natural forces.

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PARIS GOALS Almost all countries have signed up to the 2015 Paris climate accord, which aims to limit global warming to an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average by the year 2100. The agreements says that ideally the increase would be no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). But the report’s 200-plus authors looked at five scenarios and concluded that all will see the world cross the 1.5-degree threshold in the 2030s — sooner than in previous predictions. Three of those scenarios will also see temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius.

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DIRE CONSEQUENCES The 3,000-plus-page report concludes that ice melt and sea level rise are already accelerating. Wild weather events — from storms to heat waves — are also expected to worsen and become more frequent. Further warming is “locked in” due to the greenhouse gases humans have already released into the atmosphere. That means even if emissions are drastically cut, some changes will be “irreversible” for centuries, the report said.

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SOME HOPE While many of the report’s predictions paint a grim picture of humans’ impact on the planet and the consequences that will have going forward, the IPCC also found that so-called tipping points, like catastrophic ice sheet collapses and the abrupt slowdown of ocean currents, are “low likelihood,” though they cannot be ruled out.

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BIG CATCH Although temperatures are expected to overshoot the 1.5-degree-Celsius target in the next decade, the report suggests that warming could be brought back down to this level through what are known as “negative emissions.” That means sucking more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than is added, effectively cooling the planet again. The panel said that could be done starting about halfway through this century but doesn’t explain how, and many scientists are skeptical it’s possible

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