American Airlines today announced a deal with Graphyte to purchase "carbon removal credits" to help accelerate its long-term goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. According to the announcement, the airline will purchase credits equivalent to 10,000 tons of permanent carbon removal with delivery scheduled for early 2025. From the report: Graphyte uses a process called carbon casting that converts byproducts from the agriculture and timber industries such as wood bark, rice hulls and plant stalks which have captured carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. The plant material is dried to prevent decomposition and then converted into carbon dense bricks that are sealed with a polymer barrier. These bricks are stored in underground chambers and monitored with sensors to make sure the carbon does not escape, according to the company.

Plant byproducts from the agriculture and timber industries are typically burned or left to decompose, which returns carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This biomass material is equivalent to 3 billion tons of potential carbon dioxide removal annually, according to Graphyte. Graphyte says carbon casting is a cheap, scalable alternative to expensive and technologically intensive methods of carbon capture and removal. The company is backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, an investment firm founded by Bill Gates that funds clean energy technologies.

The first transatlantic flight by a commercial airliner fully powered by "sustainable" jet fuel has taken off from London Heathrow. From a report: Tuesday's Virgin Atlantic flight, partly funded by the UK government, has been hailed by the aviation industry and ministers as a demonstration of the potential to significantly cut net carbon emissions from flying, although scientists and environmental groups are extremely sceptical. Airlines have previously flown on a blend of up to 50% of alternative fuels, called sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), and flight VS100 is operating under special dispensation with no paying passengers, using fuel made mostly from tallow and other waste products.

One of those onboard, the transport secretary, Mark Harper, said: "Today's 100% SAF-powered flight shows how we can decarbonise transport both now and in the future, cutting lifecycle emissions by 70% and inspiring the next generation of solutions." Rishi Sunak said the flight was "a major milestone towards making air travel more environmentally friendly and decarbonising our skies." Virgin Atlantic said the flight to New York would show that SAF was a safe replacement for normal kerosene jet fuel. The Virgin Atlantic founder and president, Sir Richard Branson, also onboard, said: "The world will always assume something can't be done, until you do it."

Fast Company published some thoughts about porch piracy from Rohan Shah, the cofounder of the shipment-insurance platform Extend: In New York City, where as many as 90,000 packages are stolen every day, the Department of Transportation has launched a pilot program, LockerNYC, in which consumers can collect their online purchases at various storefront or sidewalk locations. Amazon Locker has 900 locations across the U.S. and recently launched Amazon Key, allowing consumers to throw privacy to the wind and give delivery persons access to their homes and cars. Amazon also has pick up kiosks at Whole Foods and Kohl's and The U.S. Postal Service has set up after-hours pick-up locations in many states.

All of that said, for consumers who simply wanted convenient, free two-day shipping, the time spent driving and waiting in line for a package doesn't seem like the best fix, nor a differentiated digital experience. AI to the rescue... This year, the fastest path to progress is simply reinventing shipping protection for the digital era and AI can do that at scale, for pennies on the dollar... My company, Extend, for example, leverages AI to process 98% of shipping claims in 90 seconds, with a replacement product shipped to the customer the same day... The new approach is a type of no-fault insurance, which the consumer purchases at checkout for around 2% of the purchase price. For a $200 pair of shoes, the cost to protect against shipping issues would be just $4.

"On a typical day 1,300 planes take off and land at Heathrow Airport, and keeping that going requires around 20 million litres of jet fuel every day," reports the BBC. "That's the equivalent of filling up your car around 400,000 times.

"But, when it comes to fuel, airports around the world are having to have a major rethink..." To be of any use to the aviation industry, hydrogen needs to be in its liquid form, which involves chilling it to minus 253C. Handling a liquid at that kind of temperature is immensely challenging. Given the chance, liquid hydrogen will "boil-off" and escape as a gas — potentially becoming a hazard. So tanks, pipes and hoses all have to be extra-insulated to keep the liquid cold.

France's Air Liquide has a lot of experience in this area. For around 50 years it has been supplying cryogenic hydrogen to the Ariane rockets of the European Space Agency (ESA)... Over the past three years, in partnership with Airbus and France's biggest airport operator, Group ADP, Air Liquide has been investigating the potential of hydrogen in the aviation business. It is also part of the H2Fly consortium which this summer successfully flew an aircraft using liquid hydrogen. For Air Liquide, it was an opportunity to test systems for fuelling a hydrogen aircraft...

However, installing the equipment needed to store and distribute hydrogen at airports will not be cheap. The consultancy Bain & Company estimates it could cost as much as a billion dollars per airport. One start-up, Universal Hydrogen, says it has a solution... The company has developed special tanks to hold liquid hydrogen (UH calls them modules), which can then be trucked to the airport. The modules are designed to slot straight into the aircraft, where they can be plugged into the propulsion system. No need for pipes, hoses and pumps.

The modules are extremely well insulated and can keep the hydrogen in its liquid form for four days. Two modules would hold 360kg of hydrogen and would be able to fly an aircraft 500 miles, plus an extra 45 minutes of flight time in reserve.

Google Maps has added "a fresh color scheme, including a different look for parks and city blocks," writes SFGate. "But it's the changes to the app's all-important road maps that are rankling online commentators..." Previously, highways and freeways were depicted in bright yellow, which stood out against a stark white grid. Now, the app shows every road in various shades of gray, with major thoroughfares like Interstate 80 and Highway 1 showing up darker and thicker than other roadways. Raynell Cooper, an employee at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, called the new look "cartographically disappointing" in a Monday post to X, formerly known as Twitter. He added, "major local roads and limited-access highways (freeways) are basically indistinguishable."
TechRadar has a side-by-side comparison of the old and new color schemes, quoting one Reddit who says the new one is a bit harder to read quickly. "The toned down look is cute but not practical." And the Evening Standard shares more negative reactions, including one user who complained the new color scheme is "shockingly bad." "Hate it hate it hate it hate it. Yellow roads were so good, and everything was bright and cheery," states another person on Reddit. "Now it's depressing and the roads are hard to see when not fairly zoomed in, they just don't pop like the yellow did.
One Reddit user offered another complaint. "I think the water is a fairly significant change, it's a much closer shade to the green of the land which makes it a little harder to differentiate at a quick glance."

And another criticism came from a post on X. "15 years ago, I helped design Google Maps..." wrote designer Elizabeth Laraki. "Last week, the team dramatically changed the map's visual design. I don't love it." It feels colder, less accurate and less human. But more importantly, they missed a key opportunity to simplify and scale... Google Maps should have cleaned up the crud overlaying the map. So much stuff has accumulated on top of the map. Currently there are ~11 different elements obscuring it.
Tech blogger John Gruber writes, "This is a very long way of saying that Google Maps's app design should be like Apple Maps."

Brian Silvestro reports via Motor1.com: New Jersey announced a new rule set on Wednesday laying out plans to transition sales of light-duty vehicles in the state to 100-percent zero-emission by 2035. According to a statement released by the office of governor Phil Murphy, the law, titled the Advanced Clean Cars II rule, will come into effect starting in 2027, where manufacturers must ensure that zero-emissions vehicles represent 42 percent of sales in the state. That percentage will climb with each year until 2035, when it reaches 100 percent. Currently, EVs represent roughly 12 percent of all new vehicle sales, according to the governor's office.

The new law will also put more stringent standards in place for traditional ICE-powered vehicles, with the goal of improving air quality in New Jersey communities and high-traffic corridors. While the announcement does not directly mention investment into charging infrastructure, the governor's office points out its continued dedication to providing adequate charging locations across the state, claiming it has helped fund the installment of 2,980 charging stations with 5,271 ports at 680 locations. New Jersey is the ninth state to enact a ban on future ICE car sales, joining California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington.

It's not your imagination: Airlines are piling on more fees and extra charges, driving up the cost of air travel. From a report: Across the industry, revenue from what's known as ancillary sales -- fees for selecting seats, checking bags, and buying food, to name a few -- will reach a record $117.9 billion in 2023. That's a 7.7% increase from pre-pandemic records, according to a recent study from airline consultancy firm IdeaWorks and B2B car rental company CarTrawler.

As plane ticket prices have become more competitive, airlines have turned to ancillary sales to boost profits. And where these fees were once largely confined to low-cost carriers, practices like charging customers for seats and checked luggage are now widespread across all airlines. As the IdeaWorks study points out, carriers like British Airways, Air France, and KLM are now even charging fliers to secure 'better' business class seats.

It's not simply the fees that are raising hackles. It's also how they're sold online. Due to the time sensitive nature of airfares, as well as the dozens of upgrades and extras offered as you click through the sales process, airline websites can be ripe environments for what's known as dark patterns. Coined in 2010 by Harry Brignull, a UX designer with a doctorate in cognitive science, dark patterns are design strategies used to trick consumers during their purchasing experience and guide them to decisions they would not make otherwise. Airlines employ a range of tactics on their websites, ranging from manipulation to deception, Bringull says. "People need to be aware of their tactics if we want to see changes in the way they operate."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Commercial air crews are reporting something "unthinkable" in the skies above the Middle East: novel "spoofing" attacks have caused navigation systems to fail in dozens of incidents since September. In late September, multiple commercial flights near Iran went astray after navigation systems went blind. The planes first received spoofed GPS signals, meaning signals designed to fool planes' systems into thinking they are flying miles away from their real location. One of the aircraft almost flew into Iranian airspace without permission. Since then, air crews discussing the problem online have said it's only gotten worse, and experts are racing to establish who is behind it.

OPSGROUP, an international group of pilots and flight technicians, sounded the alarm about the incidents in September and began to collect data to share with its members and the public. According to OPSGROUP, multiple commercial aircraft in the Middle Eastern region have lost the ability to navigate after receiving spoofed navigation signals for months. And it's not just GPS -- fallback navigation systems are also corrupted, resulting in total failure. According to OPSGROUP, the activity is centered in three regions: Baghdad, Cairo, and Tel Aviv. The group has tracked more than 50 incidents in the last five weeks, the group said in a November update, and identified three new and distinct kinds of navigation spoofing incidents, with two arising since the initial reports in September.

While GPS spoofing is not new, the specific vector of these new attacks was previously "unthinkable," according to OPSGROUP, which described them as exposing a "fundamental flaw in avionics design." The spoofing corrupts the Inertial Reference System, a piece of equipment often described as the "brain" of an aircraft that uses gyroscopes, accelerometers, and other tech to help planes navigate. One expert Motherboard spoke to said this was "highly significant." "This immediately sounds unthinkable," OPSGROUP said in its public post about the incidents. "The IRS (Inertial Reference System) should be a standalone system, unable to be spoofed. The idea that we could lose all on-board nav capability, and have to ask [air traffic control] for our position and request a heading, makes little sense at first glance" especially for state of the art aircraft with the latest avionics. However, multiple reports confirm that this has happened." [...] There is currently no solution to this problem, with its potentially disastrous effects and unclear cause. According to OPSGROUP's November update, "The industry has been slow to come to terms with the issue, leaving flight crews alone to find ways of detecting and mitigating GPS spoofing." If air crews do realize that something is amiss, Humphreys said, their only recourse is to depend on air traffic control.

There's been predictions that a transition to electric vehicles would hurt autoworkers. But this week U.S. autoworkers ended their strike after winning "significant gains in pay and benefits," reports the Associated Press: The United Auto Workers union overwhelmingly ratified new contracts with Ford and Stellantis, that along with a similar deal with General Motors will raise pay across the industry, force automakers to absorb higher costs and help reshape the auto business as it shifts away from gasoline-fueled vehicles...

The companies agreed to dramatically raise pay for top-scale assembly plant workers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into 33% wage gains. Top assembly plant workers are to receive immediate 11% raises and will earn roughly $42 an hour when the contracts expire in April of 2028. Under the agreements, the automakers also ended many of the multiple tiers of wages they had used to pay different workers.

They also agreed in principle to bring new electric-vehicle battery plants into the national union contract. This provision will give the UAW an opportunity to unionize the EV battery plants plants, which will represent a rising share of industry jobs in the years ahead.
In October the union's president criticized what had been the original trajectory of the auto industry. "The plan was to draw down engine and transmission plants, and permanently replace them with low-wage battery jobs. We had a different plan. And our plan is winning."

And this week the union's president said they had not only "raised wages dramatically for over a hundred thousand workers" — and improved their retirement security. "We took a major step towards ensuring a just transition to electric vehicles."

In Belvidere, Illinois, the union "won a commitment from Stellantis to reopen a shuttered factory and even add an EV battery plant," the Associated Press notes.

"The new contract agreements were widely seen as a victory for the UAW," their article adds — and perhaps even for other autoworkers. After the UAW's president announced plans to try unionizing other plants, three foreign automakers in the U.S. — Honda, Toyota and Hyundai — "quickly responded to the UAW contract by raising wages for their factory workers."

An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch: Kyle Vogt, the serial entrepreneur who co-founded and led Cruise from a startup in a garage through its acquisition and ownership by General Motors, has resigned, according to an email sent to employees Sunday evening...

The executive shakeup comes a less than a month after the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise's permits to operate self-driving vehicles on public roads after an October 2 incident that saw a pedestrian — who had been initially hit by a human-driven car and landed in the path of a Cruise robotaxi — run over and dragged 20 feet by the AV. A video, which TechCrunch also viewed, showed the robotaxi braking aggressively and coming to a stop over the woman. The DMV's order of suspension stated that Cruise withheld about seven seconds of video footage, which showed the robotaxi then attempting to pull over and subsequently dragging the woman 20 feet... [M]ore layoffs are expected at the company that employs about 4,000 full-time employees.
TechCrunch notes that Vogt previously co-founded Justin.tv Socialcam, Twitch, and shares this quote from an email that Vogt sent to all employees Sunday evening. "The startup I launched in my garage has given over 250,000 driverless rides across several cities, with each ride inspiring people with a small taste of the future...

"The status quo on our roads sucks, but together we've proven there is something far better around the corner."

New submitter doc1623 shares a report from Wired: Swedish workers are uniting against Tesla. [Starting Friday], cleaners will stop cleaning Tesla showrooms, electricians won't fix the company's charging points, and dockworkers will refuse to unload Tesla cargo at all Swedish ports. What started as a strike by Tesla mechanics is spreading, in something Swedish unions describe as an existential battle between Elon Musk's carmaker and the conventions they say make the country's labor market fair and efficient. The standoff in Sweden is the biggest union action the company has faced anywhere in the world. Sweden doesn't have laws that set working conditions, such as a minimum wage. Instead these rules are dictated by collective agreements, a type of contract that defines the benefits employees are entitled to, such as wages and working hours. For five years, industrial workers' union IF Metall, which represents Tesla mechanics, has been trying to persuade the company to sign a collective agreement. When Tesla refused, the mechanics decided to strike at the end of October. Then they asked fellow Swedish unions to join them.

Some unions that joined the blockade are expanding their actions in an effort to be more effective. Since November 7, union members working at four Swedish ports have been refusing to unload Tesla cargo. Tomorrow, the blockade will be extended to all ports in Sweden. "We don't want to unload any Tesla cars," says Jimmy Asberg, who is president of the dockworkers' branch of Sweden's transport union and works at Gavle port. "We are going to allow every other car [to dock], but the Tesla cars, they will stay on the ship." He hopes Tesla will understand how important this issue is for workers in the country. "Not just dockworkers but for all workers in Sweden."

The Swedish Building Maintenance Workers' Union will also join the Tesla blockade on Friday at 12 pm local time, "simply because the [IF] Metall Workers Trade Union asked us to," says ombudsman Torbjorn Jonsson, adding that the union has around 50 members who clean Tesla locations. Four showrooms and service centers will be affected -- three around Stockholm and one in the city of Umea. "Their workshops and showrooms will not be cleaned." Three days later, on November 20, the Seko union, which represents postal workers, will stop delivering letters, spare parts, and pallets to all of Tesla's addresses in Sweden. "Tesla is trying to gain competitive advantages by giving the workers worse wages and conditions than they would have with a collective agreement," said Seko's union president, Gabriella Lavecchia, in a statement. "It is of course completely unacceptable."

Speaking of things Amazon can or cannot sell on its platform, the e-commerce giant getting into the car business. From a report: The e-commerce giant along with new partner Hyundai announced Thursday at the 2023 LA Auto Show that it will start selling vehicles on its website in the second half of 2024. Hyundai vehicles will be the first vehicles sold on Amazon.com's U.S. store with other brands following later in the year. The Amazon car sales section will allow customers to shop for vehicles in their area based on a range of preferences, including model, trim, color, and features, choose their preferred car, and then check out online with their chosen payment and financing options. Customers will be able to buy a vehicle online and then pick it up or have it delivered by their local dealership, according to Amazon.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Cruise's robotaxis are front and center of the industry's trust issue after losing their California permit following an incident where a pedestrian ended up stuck underneath one of its cars. It already halted service nationwide and said it's installing new updates. Now Cruise has announced it's taking its cars off of public roads while it undergoes a full safety review. Meanwhile, Cruise board member and GM legal executive VP Craig Glidden is "expanding" his role to lead Cruise's Legal, Communications, and Finance teams: "In the coming days, we are also pausing our supervised and manual AV operations in the U.S., affecting roughly 70 vehicles. This orderly pause is a further step to rebuild public trust while we undergo a full safety review. We will continue to operate our vehicles in closed course training environments and maintain an active simulation program in order to stay focused on advancing AV technology."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: On Monday, Rivian released an incremental software update 2023.42, which bricked the infotainment system in R1Ses and R1Ts. The company is frantically working on a fix, but it might not be an OTA. [...] The vehicles are drivable, but software and displays go black. It appears that the 2023.42 software update hangs at 90% on the vehicle screen or 50% on the app screen, and then the vehicle screens black out. All systems appear to still work except for the displays. At the moment, it appears that Amazon vans are not impacted. Update: The company has acknowledged the issue with affected customers but has yet to issue a fix or plan to fix. Rivian's vice president of software engineering, Wassim Bensaid, took to Reddit to update users on the situation, writing: "Hi All, We made an error with the 2023.42 OTA update -- a fat finger where the wrong build with the wrong security certificates was sent out. We cancelled the campaign and we will restart it with the proper software that went through the different campaigns of beta testing. Service will be contacting impacted customers and will go through the resolution options. That may require physical repair in some cases. This is on us -- we messed up. Thanks for your support and your patience as we go through this.

*Update 1 (11/13, 10:45 PM PT): The issue impacts the infotainment system. In most cases, the rest of the vehicle systems are still operational. A vehicle reset or sleep cycle will not solve the issue. We are validating the best options to address the issue for the impacted vehicles. Our customer support team is prioritizing support for our customers related to this issue. Thank you."

An anonymous reader writes: Joby Aviation and Volocopter gave the public a vivid glimpse of what the future of aviation might look like this weekend, with both companies performing brief demonstration flights of their electric aircraft in New York City. The demonstration flights were conducted during a press conference on Sunday, during which New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that the city would electrify two of the three heliports located in Manhattan -- Downtown Manhattan Heliport and East 34th Street. (The third heliport is privately owned.) Beta Technologies, which is also developing an electric aircraft, showed off its interoperable aircraft charging technology at the event. You can watch a demo of the Joby Aviation flight here. Additional assets are available via Joby's press release.

"Dealers don't want to change the model. They want to be the gatekeepers." That's according to Daniel Crane, a law professor at the University of Michigan who studies the laws and economics of car dealerships. He's quoted in a Washington Post article warning that "Electric vehicles are hitting a road block: Car dealers."

Former Chevy salesman Buzz Smith tells the Post that it can take longer to sell electric cars (with multiple visits and questions about their technology and chargers) — in effect reducing what a salesman earns per hour. But more to the point, "he believes the pay structure of auto salespeople isn't a good fit for the EV era." Electric cars have narrower profit margins, he said, which cuts into the commission a dealer can get. And if a customer returns to the dealership multiple times, salespeople may have to split the commission, again cutting into their take-home pay. At the same time, car dealerships make most of their overall profits from providing service for vehicles — not selling new cars. According to an analysis from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, just 16 percent of dealers' gross profits came from new car sales, while 43 percent came from parts, labor and service. (The rest of the profits come from used car sales and financing and incentives...)

That could also discourage dealers from selling EVs. Gas cars have 100 times more moving parts than electric vehicles do, and studies show that EVs have lower maintenance costs. An average gas-powered car, for example, needs an oil change about every six months, or every 5,000 to 7,500 miles. But many electric cars don't require a major service until around 150,000 miles.

"They're all terrified of that loss of maintenance," Smith said.
The Post reports one woman's complain that after buying an electric car, her salesperson "offered her a plan for oil changes and an extended warranty for a gas-powered car."

But is there something bigger going on? Since the 1950s dozens of states passed laws protecting auto dealerships, and many of those laws prevent manufacturers from selling directly to consumers. The Post notes that now "many automakers have to sell their vehicles through one of the country's more than 16,000 franchised auto dealerships. And those salespeople often don't have extensive training on how to sell an EV or even on the technology itself." Frustrated customers told The Washington Post that dealers tried to redirect their attention toward gas cars, or gave incorrect or unclear answers to questions about charging and day-to-day electric vehicle use... Then there is the maze of federal and state tax incentives that can help drivers afford a new or used EV — but only if the dealer and the consumer can understand how they work.

Some dealers, however, don't seem to want to offer electric cars: According to a survey that the Sierra Club conducted at the end of 2022, 66 percent of dealerships did not have an EV available for sale. That was at the height of EV supply chain problems, but 45 percent of those dealers — or 30 percent of all dealers surveyed — said they wouldn't offer an EV even if they could. Amid concern over an EV slowdown, electric cars are sitting longer on dealerships' lots than gas-powered cars. According to data from Cox Automotive, dealerships started the year with a roughly 50 days' supply of gas cars and electric cars. Now the supply of gas cars is around the same, but the supply of EVs has doubled.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland shares a report from CNN Business: Cruise, General Motors' self-driving vehicle subsidiary, has recalled all 950 of its autonomous vehicles for a software update. Late last month, Cruise paused all its public testing operations while it investigated the incident that led to the recall. [...]

The update will alter the way the car responds after an impact is detected. In [that infamous San Francisco accident], the vehicle had incorrectly determined that it was struck on the side rather than hitting something in the front, according to a report (PDF) Cruise filed with NHTSA. The report did not detail exactly what the software update changes, only that it "remedies the issue described in this notice."

The cars can be returned to service once the updates are completed, Cruise said in its report to NHTSA. Cruise doesn't sell its self-driving vehicles so all the cars are owned by either Cruise or GM, which produces the heavily modified Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles. The company will perform the software updates itself.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: A federal judge on Tuesday refused to bring back a class action lawsuit alleging four auto manufacturers had violated Washington state's privacy laws by using vehicles' on-board infotainment systems to record and intercept customers' private text messages and mobile phone call logs. The Seattle-based appellate judge ruled that the practice does not meet the threshold for an illegal privacy violation under state law, handing a big win to automakers Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen and General Motors, which are defendants in five related class action suits focused on the issue. One of those cases, against Ford, had been dismissed on appeal previously.

The plaintiffs in the four live cases had appealed a prior judge's dismissal. But the appellate judge ruled Tuesday that the interception and recording of mobile phone activity did not meet the Washington Privacy Act's standard that a plaintiff must prove that "his or her business, his or her person, or his or her reputation" has been threatened. In an example of the issues at stake, plaintiffs in one of the five cases filed suit against Honda in 2021, arguing that beginning in at least 2014 infotainment systems in the company's vehicles began downloading and storing a copy of all text messages on smartphones when they were connected to the system. An Annapolis, Maryland-based company, Berla Corporation, provides the technology to some car manufacturers but does not offer it to the general public, the lawsuit said. Once messages are downloaded, Berla's software makes it impossible for vehicle owners to access their communications and call logs but does provide law enforcement with access, the lawsuit said.

Jason Koebler reports via 404 Media: Voters in Maine overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure Tuesday that enshrines the right to repair cars, a major win for consumers and a blow to auto manufacturers who have spent millions lobbying against similar legislation and fighting against it in the courts. "Question 4," which enshrines consumers' data access to car diagnostics for the purposes of repair, passed by a margin of 84.3-15.7 in Tuesday's election with 94 percent of the votes tallied. The yes/no question was simple: "Do you want to require vehicle manufacturers to standardize on-board diagnostic systems and provide remote access to those systems and mechanical data to owners and independent repair facilities?" "Maine residents have won the right to control their destiny when it comes to car repairs," Tommy Hickey, director of the Maine Automotive Right to Repair Coalition, told 404 Media. "There's a new technology in cars, they've become computers on wheels, and with this law owners in Maine will be the gatekeepers of that information."

An anonymous reader shares a report: As dawn breaks over Silicon Valley, the world is getting its first look at Pathfinder 1, a prototype electric airship that its maker LTA Research hopes will kickstart a new era in climate-friendly air travel, and accelerate the humanitarian work of its funder, Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The airship -- its snow-white steampunk profile visible from the busy 101 highway -- has taken drone technology such as fly-by-wire controls, electric motors and lidar sensing, and supersized them to something longer than three Boeing 737s, potentially able to carry tons of cargo over many hundreds of miles.

"It's been 10 years of blood, sweat and tears," LTA CEO Alan Weston told TechCrunch on the eve of the unveiling. "Now we must show that this can reliably fly in real-world conditions. And we're going to do that." A series of increasingly ambitious flight tests lie ahead, before Pathfinder 1 is moved to Akron, Ohio, where LTA Research is planning an even larger airship, the Pathfinder 3. The company eventually hopes to produce a family of airships to provide disaster relief where roads and airports are damaged, as well as zero-carbon passenger transportation.

For the next year however, the gigantic airship looks set to become a Silicon Valley landmark as its novel materials and systems are methodically put through their paces within shouting distance of companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon. "I'm excited about the potential of not building just one airship, but laying the foundation for many airships to be built," said Weston. "The innovations and the technologies that we're about to demonstrate have the potential to lay the foundation for a new industry."