An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Electrocuted, flaming bird carcasses are falling off of power lines and causing wildfires across the U.S. This surprisingly common phenomenon has been responsible for at least three Colorado wildfires so far this summer. These events are not isolated. A 2022 study found that electrocuted birds caused 44 wildfires in the contiguous United States between 2014 and 2018. That study was led by Taylor Barnes, a biologist who now works for electric utility company EDM International. In the paper, Barnes wrote that "avian-caused ignitions" happen when a bird sits on an overhead power line. For reasons that can vary from case to case, sometimes the bird receives a powerful electrical shock, setting its feathers on fire. The dead or dying bird then falls, and, on occasion, lands in some brush or other flammable material.

"Sometimes they burst into flames," Barnes told 9News, an NBC affiliate in Colorado. "Sometimes they just fall dead. Not every bird that is electrocuted will fall to the ground and start a fire." Odds are, you've seen birds perched on electrical wires countless times without witnessing spontaneous sparrow combustion. Barnes said birds just going for a sit pose no threat. Because the birds are not touching the ground, the electricity in the power line has no way to the ground and is not dangerous to them. It's only when the birds get into a part of the power infrastructure where a circuit can be completed that they end up crispy. [...]

It's not clear what happened to the birds involved in Colorado's other two recent fires, which occurred on July 31 and August 27. No people were injured or killed in the incidents. According to Barnes' 2022 study, the area of California coast known as the state's Mediterranean ecoregion has the highest density of wildfires set off by avian ignitions. In the paper, he advised authorities in the area and other fire-prone regions to look into modifying power poles to prevent these electrocutions. Given the devastating effects fires can have and how common they've become, it's surely worth the investment to keep our feathered friends in flight and not on fire.

The largest dam removal project in U.S. history has been completed with the demolition of four dams on the Klamath River, marking a significant victory for tribal nations on the Oregon-California border who have long fought to restore the river to its natural state. However, as CNN's Rachel Ramirez and the BBC's Lucy Sherriff both highlight, the restoration of salmon populations and surrounding ecosystems is "only just beginning." From the report: The removal of the four hydroelectric dams -- Iron Gate Dam, Copco Dams 1 and 2, and JC Boyle Dam -- allows the region's iconic salmon population to swim freely along the Klamath River and its tributaries, which the species have not been able to do for over a century since the dams were built. Mark Bransom, chief executive officer of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, the nonprofit group created to oversee the project, said it was a "celebratory moment," as his staff members, conservationists, government officials and tribal members gathered and cheered on the bank of the river near where the largest of the dams, Iron Gate, once stood. [...] The Yurok Tribe in Northern California are known as the "salmon people." To them, the salmon are sacred species that are central to their culture, diet and ceremonies. As the story goes, the spirit that created the salmon also created humans and without the fish, they would cease to exist. Amy Bowers-Cordalis, a member of and general counsel for the Yurok Tribe, said seeing those dams come down meant "freedom" and the start of the river's "healing process." [...]

The utility company PacifiCorps -- a subsidiary of Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Energy -- built the dams in the early to mid-1900s, without tribal consent, to generate electricity for parts of the growing West. But the dams severely disrupted the lifecycle of the salmon, blocking the fish from accessing their historic spawning grounds. Then there's the climate crisis: Warm water and drought-fueled water shortages in the Klamath River killed salmon eggs and young fish due to low oxygen and lack of food and allowed the spread of viruses. [...] As for the reason the dams were constructed in the first place -- electricity -- removing them won't hurt the power supply much, experts say. Even at full capacity, all four dams produced less than 2% of PacifiCorp's energy, according to the Klamath River Renewal Corporation. Up next is ramping up restoration work. Bransom said they plan to put down nearly 16 billion seeds of almost 100 native species across 2,200-acres of land in the Klamath River Basin. And after more than a century, the fish can now swim freely. Yurok's Bowers-Cordalis said seeing the river reconnected is a form of giving their land back, which is really the "ultimate reward."

The United States, United Kingdom and European Union have signed the first "legally binding" international AI treaty on Thursday, the Council of Europe human rights organization said. Called the AI Convention, the treaty promotes responsible innovation and addresses the risks AI may pose. Reuters reports: The AI Convention mainly focuses on the protection of human rights of people affected by AI systems and is separate from the EU AI Act, which entered into force last month. The EU's AI Act entails comprehensive regulations on the development, deployment, and use of AI systems within the EU internal market. The Council of Europe, founded in 1949, is an international organization distinct from the EU with a mandate to safeguard human rights; 46 countries are members, including all the 27 EU member states. An ad hoc committee in 2019 started examining the feasibility of an AI framework convention and a Committee on Artificial Intelligence was formed in 2022 which drafted and negotiated the text. The signatories can choose to adopt or maintain legislative, administrative or other measures to give effect to the provisions.

Francesca Fanucci, a legal expert at ECNL (European Center for Not-for-Profit Law Stichting) who contributed to the treaty's drafting process alongside other civil society groups, told Reuters the agreement had been "watered down" into a broad set of principles. "The formulation of principles and obligations in this convention is so overbroad and fraught with caveats that it raises serious questions about their legal certainty and effective enforceability," she said. Fanucci highlighted exemptions on AI systems used for national security purposes, and limited scrutiny of private companies versus the public sector, as flaws. "This double standard is disappointing," she added.

Federal investigators have indicted a North Carolina man over a scheme in which he allegedly used bot accounts and hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs to earn more than $10 million in royalty payments from the major streaming services. RollingStone: The case is a landmark development in the still-developing music streaming market, with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York calling it the first criminal case involving artificially inflated music streaming. In the indictment, the prosecutors say that for the past seven years, North Carolina musician Michael Smith had been running a complex music streaming manipulation scheme to fraudulently profit off of billions of streams from bot accounts. "At a certain point in the charged time period, Smith estimated that he could use the Bot Accounts to generate approximately 661,440 streams per day, yielding annual royalties of $1,207,128," the prosecutors said in the indictment announcement.

Smith, 52, was charged with wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy, totaling to a combined maximum of 60 years in prison if convicted. "Through his brazen fraud scheme, Smith stole millions in royalties that should have been paid to musicians, songwriters, and other rights holders whose songs were legitimately streamed," said Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. "Today, thanks to the work of the FBI and the career prosecutors of this Office, it's time for Smith to face the music."

Internet Archive's "controlled digital lending" system and removal of controls during the pandemic don't qualify as fair use, the Second Circuit affirmed Wednesday. Bloomberg Law: Four major book publishers again thwarted the online repository's defense that its one-to-one lending practices mirrored those of traditional libraries, this time at the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Copying books in their entirety isn't transformative, and lending them for free competes with the publishers own book and ebook offerings, the unanimous panel said. Internet Archive said in a statement: We are disappointed in today's opinion about the Internet Archive's digital lending of books that are available electronically elsewhere. We are reviewing the court's opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books. Further reading: Full-text of court opinion [PDF].

US job openings fell in July to the lowest since the start of 2021 and layoffs rose, consistent with other signs of slowing demand for workers. From a report: Available positions decreased to 7.67 million from a downwardly revised 7.91 million reading in the prior month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, known as JOLTS, showed Wednesday. The figure was lower than all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The decline in openings coincides with recent data that show the labor market is softening, which has raised concern among Federal Reserve officials. Job growth has been slowing, unemployment is rising and jobseekers are having greater difficulty finding work, fueling fears about a potential recession.

Policymakers have made it clear they don't want to see further cooling in the labor market and are widely expected to start lowering interest rates at their next meeting in two weeks. After July's disappointing jobs figures and a large downward revision to payrolls in the past year, Fed officials and market participants are paying close attention to the August employment data due Friday -- especially if another weak report could prompt an outsize rate cut.

The Biden-Harris administration's big bet on Intel to lead a US chipmaking renaissance is in grave trouble as a result of the company's mounting financial struggles, creating a potentially damaging setback for the country's most ambitious industrial policy in decades. From a report: Five months after the president traveled to Arizona to unveil a potential $20 billion package of incentives alongside Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger, there are growing questions around when -- or if -- Intel will get its hands on that money. Intel's woes also may jeopardize the government's ability to reach its policy goals, which include establishing a secure supply of cutting-edge chips for the Pentagon and making a fifth of the world's advanced processors by 2030.

Intel is mired in a sales slump worse than anticipated and hemorrhaging cash, forcing its board to consider increasingly drastic actions -- including possibly splitting off its manufacturing division or paring back global factory plans, Bloomberg reported last week. That threatens to further complicate its quest for government funding, at a time when Intel desperately needs the help. The Silicon Valley company is supposed to receive $8.5 billion in grants and $11 billion in loans from the 2022 Chips and Science Act, but only if the chipmaker meets key milestones -- and after significant due diligence. That process, which applies to all Chips Act winners, has been clear from the outset, and aims to ensure that companies only get taxpayer dollars once they've actually delivered on their promises. Intel, like other potential recipients, hasn't received any money yet.

schwit1 shares a report: If you are reading this and live in America, or used to live in America, or maybe just went to America one time many years ago, then you are almost certainly performing unpaid labor for the U.S. government and have been for years. How? By storing some of the billions of pennies the U.S. Mint makes every year that virtually no one uses.

Why are we still making tons (many thousands of tons) of pennies if no one uses them? That's a sensible question with a psychotic answer: We have to keep making all these pennies -- over $45 million worth last year -- because no one uses them. In fact, it could be very bad if we did.

When you insert a quarter into a soda machine, that quarter eventually finds its way back to a bank, from which it can be redistributed to a store's cash register and handed out as change -- maybe even to you, who can put it into a soda machine again and start the whole process over. That's beautiful. (Please be mindful of your soft drink consumption.)

But few of us ever spend pennies. We mostly just store them. The 1-cent coins are wherever you've left them: a glass jar, a winter purse, a RAV4 cup holder, a five-gallon water cooler dispenser, the couch. Many of them are simply on the ground. But take it from me, a former cashier: Cashiers don't have time to scrounge on the sidewalk every time they need to make change. That is where the Mint comes in. Every year it makes a few billion more pennies to replace the ones everyone is thoughtlessly, indefinitely storing and scatters them like kudzu seeds across the nation.

You -- a scientist of some kind, possibly -- might think an obvious solution now presents itself: Why not encourage people to use the pennies they have lying around instead of manufacturing new ones every year? We can't! Or, anyway, we'd better not. According to a Mint report, if even a modest share of our neglected pennies suddenly returned to circulation, the result would be a "logistically unmanageable" dilemma for Earth's wealthiest nation. As in, the penny tsunami could overwhelm government vaults.

That's not great, but at the end of the day we're talking only about pennies. How much could a penny cost to make? A penny? If only we lived in such a paradise. Unfortunately, one penny costs more than three pennies (3.07 cents at last count) to make and distribute! When I learned this, I lost my mind.

1.9 million solar panels began operating this year in California — at a Mortenson facility with 120,000 installed batteries that give it a storage capacity of 3,280 megawatts. An article in El Pais notes that this helped California pass 10,000 megawatts of photovoltaic storage in April — enough to meet 20% of demand — for the first time ever. (In 2019, the state had just 770 megawatts of storage capacity.)

Mark Rothleder, the vice president of the independent grid operator, California ISO (CAISO), said earlier this year that they will add another 1,134 megawatts in the first eight months of 2024. This is growth on top of the leap made last year. "In 2023 alone, the ISO successfully onboarded 5,660 megawatts of new power to the grid," Rothleder said at a conference in San Diego...

Renewable production was enough to supply the grid on 40 out of 48 days this spring, compared to seven days in the whole of last year. Lithium batteries appear to be undercutting the use of fossil fuels. Gas accounts for 40% of California's grid. However, its use in April registered its lowest proportion in seven years. "The data clearly shows that batteries are displacing natural gas when solar generation is ramping up and down each day in CAISO," notes an analysis by Grid Status, a firm specializing in energy issues. Natural gas was king on the grid in April 2021, 2022 and 2023. CAISO was sending between 9,000 and 10,000 megawatts produced from gas to the grid once solar ran out. Last April, however, it amounted to only 5,000 megawatts... [California's goal: run on 100% renewable energy by 2045.]

Arizona and Georgia have followed California's lead. But it is Texas, the other major U.S. giant in this industry, that is snapping at its heels. At the end of April, batteries supplied 4% of the grid's electricity, enough to power several million homes. Batteries are beginning to look like an alternative to a system heavily dependent on gas and coal.

Politico reports U.S. states have no uniform way of policing the use of overseas subcontractors in election technology, "let alone to understand which individual software components make up a piece of code."

For example, to replace New Hampshire's old voter registration database, state election officials "turned to one of the best — and only — choices on the market," Politico: "a small, Connecticut-based IT firm that was just getting into election software." But last fall, as the new company, WSD Digital, raced to complete the project, New Hampshire officials made an unsettling discovery: The firm had offshored part of the work. That meant unknown coders outside the U.S. had access to the software that would determine which New Hampshirites would be welcome at the polls this November.

The revelation prompted the state to take a precaution that is rare among election officials: It hired a forensic firm to scour the technology for signs that hackers had hidden malware deep inside the coding supply chain. The probe unearthed some unwelcome surprises: software misconfigured to connect to servers in Russia ["probably by accident," they write later] and the use of open-source code — which is freely available online — overseen by a Russian computer engineer convicted of manslaughter, according to a person familiar with the examination and granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about it... New Hampshire officials say the scan revealed another issue: A programmer had hard-coded the Ukrainian national anthem into the database, in an apparent gesture of solidarity with Kyiv.

None of the findings amounted to evidence of wrongdoing, the officials said, and the company resolved the issues before the new database came into use ahead of the presidential vote this spring. This was "a disaster averted," said the person familiar with the probe, citing the risk that hackers could have exploited the first two issues to surreptitiously edit the state's voter rolls, or use them and the presence of the Ukrainian national anthem to stoke election conspiracies. [Though WSD only maintains one other state's voter registration database — Vermont] the supply-chain scare in New Hampshire — which has not been reported before — underscores a broader vulnerability in the U.S. election system, POLITICO found during a six-month-long investigation: There is little oversight of the supply chain that produces crucial election software, leaving financially strapped state and county offices to do the best they can with scant resources and expertise.

The technology vendors who build software used on Election Day face razor-thin profit margins in a market that is unforgiving commercially and toxic politically. That provides little room for needed investments in security, POLITICO found. It also leaves states with minimal leverage over underperforming vendors, who provide them with everything from software to check in Americans at their polling stations to voting machines and election night reporting systems. Many states lack a uniform or rigorous system to verify what goes into software used on Election Day and whether it is secure.
The article also points out that many state and federal election officials "insist there has been significant progress" since 2016, with more regular state-federal communication. "The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, now the lead federal agency on election security, didn't even exist back then.

"Perhaps most importantly, more than 95% of U.S. voters now vote by hand or on machines that leave some type of paper trail, which officials can audit after Election Day."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: The Biden administration has finalized a plan to expand solar on 31 million acres of federal lands in 11 western states. The proposed updated Western Solar Plan is a roadmap for Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) governance of solar energy proposals and projects on public lands. It bumps up the acreage from the 22 million acres it recommended in January, and this plan adds five additional states -- Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming -- to the six states -- Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah -- analyzed in the original plan.

It would make the public lands available for potential solar development, putting solar farms closer to transmission lines or on previously disturbed lands and avoiding protected lands, sensitive cultural resources, and important wildlife habitats. [...] BLM surpassed its goal of permitting more than 25 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy projects on public lands earlier in 2024. It's permitted 29 GW of projects on public lands -- enough to power over 12 million homes. The Biden administration set the goal to achieve 100% clean electricity on the US grid by 2035.

For decades drugmakers have taken a more-is-more model when dosing cancer drugs in clinical trials. U.S. regulators want them to reconsider that approach. From a report: Companies with cancer drugs in clinical trials must strike a balance between doses high enough to thwart tumors, but low enough to avoid intolerable side effects. For years, Food and Drug Administration officials have expressed concern that cancer drug doses are often too high, leading to unnecessary side effects.

An FDA program launched in 2021, Project Optimus, requires companies to re-examine how they set doses of cancer treatments. This typically involves larger clinical trials to test doses to find those that optimally balance safety and efficacy. Entrepreneurs support the aim, but some fear the initiative will add time and cost to drug development, putting startups at a further disadvantage to larger competitors. [...] The FDA says it encourages drugmakers to discuss dosing plans with the agency and that new medications can still be brought to patients quickly.

U.S. Space Command chief Gen. Stephen Whiting called for greater transparency from China regarding space debris this week, citing concerns over the recent breakup of a Long March 6A rocket's upper stage. The incident, which occurred after an August 6 satellite launch, scattered over 300 pieces of debris in low-Earth orbit.

While acknowledging some improvement in U.S.-China military dialogue, Whiting stressed on the need for proactive communication about space junk, ArsTechnica reports. "I hope the next time there's a rocket like that, that leaves a lot of debris, that it's not our sensors that are the first to detect that, but we're getting communications to help us understand that," he said.

A new study of broadband reliability finds a top-two finish that you might not expect from recent surveys of ISP customer satisfaction: Charter's Spectrum and Comcast's Xfinity, the two largest cable operators in the US. From a report: Opensignal's report, published Thursday, draws on software telemetry collected from April 1 through June 29 of downtime, consistency of service, and how well a provider meets basic thresholds for speed, latency, and other core performance metrics. Spectrum comes in first with a "Reliability Experience" score of 741 out of 1,000, followed by Xfinity with 710, Verizon with 625, AT&T with 546, and T-Mobile with 525. Opensignal chose those five companies to study because each passes more than a third of US homes.

But while Comcast and Charter employ the same basic cable architecture except for a few fiber-to-the-home pockets, Verizon and AT&T have mixed networks. That includes extensive and growing fiber service but also fixed 4G and 5G wireless from Verizon and hybrid-fiber broadband from AT&T, both of which lack fiber's speed and capacity advantages, plus obsolete DSL connectivity. T-Mobile's home connectivity, meanwhile, is almost exclusively fixed wireless.

A U.S. appeals court has revived a lawsuit against TikTok over a child's death, potentially limiting tech companies' legal shield under Section 230. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law does not protect TikTok from claims that its algorithm recommended a deadly "blackout challenge" to a 10-year-old girl.

Judge Patty Shwartz wrote that Section 230 only immunizes third-party content, not recommendations made by TikTok's own algorithm. The decision marks a departure from previous rulings, citing a recent Supreme Court opinion that platform algorithms reflect "editorial judgments." This interpretation could significantly impact how courts apply Section 230 to social media companies' content curation practices.

OpenAI and Anthropic will give a U.S. government agency early access to major new model releases under agreements announced on Thursday. From a report: Governments around the world have been pushing for measures -- both legislative and otherwise -- to evaluate the risks of powerful new AI algorithms. Anthropic and OpenAI have each signed a memorandum of understanding to allow formal collaboration with the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute, a part of the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology. In addition to early access to models, the agreements pave the way for collaborative research around how to evaluate models and their safety as well as methods for mitigating risk. The U.S. AI Safety Institute was set up as part of President Biden's AI executive order.

Device manufacturers across multiple industries are lobbying against proposed legislation that would require military contractors to provide the U.S. military with easier access to repair materials and information, according to a document obtained by 404 Media.

The legislation, Section 828 of the Defense Reauthorization Act, aims to address the military's current inability to repair equipment ranging from fighter jets to Navy battleships without relying on contractors. Sen. Elizabeth Warren highlighted the issue in a May hearing, citing examples of how repair restrictions lead to increased costs and operational delays for the Department of Defense.

The lobbying effort extends beyond military contractors to include organizations representing industries such as irrigation equipment, motorcycles, tractors, plumbing, medical devices, and consumer technology. In a letter to lawmakers, these groups argue that the legislation would impose significant burdens on contractors and undermine existing technical data rights statutes.

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Ars Technica, written by John Timmer: While solar power is growing at an extremely rapid clip, in absolute terms, the use of natural gas for electricity production has continued to outpace renewables. But that looks set to change in 2024, as the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) has run the numbers on the first half of the year and found that wind, solar, and batteries were each installed at a pace that dwarfs new natural gas generators. And the gap is expected to get dramatically larger before the year is over.

According to the EIA's numbers, about 20 GW of new capacity was added in the first half of this year, and solar accounts for 60 percent of it. Over a third of the solar additions occurred in just two states, Texas and Florida. There were two projects that went live that were rated at over 600 MW of capacity, one in Texas, the other in Nevada. Next up is batteries: The US saw 4.2 additional gigawatts of battery capacity during this period, meaning over 20 percent of the total new capacity. (Batteries are treated as the equivalent of a generating source by the EIA since they can dispatch electricity to the grid on demand, even if they can't do so continuously.) Texas and California alone accounted for over 60 percent of these additions; throw in Arizona and Nevada, and you're at 93 percent of the installed capacity.

The clear pattern here is that batteries are going where the solar is, allowing the power generated during the peak of the day to be used to meet demand after the sun sets. This will help existing solar plants avoid curtailing power production during the lower-demand periods in the spring and fall. In turn, this will improve the economic case for installing additional solar in states where its production can already regularly exceed demand. Wind power, by contrast, is running at a more sedate pace, with only 2.5 GW of new capacity during the first six months of 2024. And for likely the last time this decade, additional nuclear power was placed on the grid, at the fourth 1.1 GW reactor (and second recent build) at the Vogtle site in Georgia. The only other additions came from natural gas-powered facilities, but these totaled just 400 MW, or just 2 percent of the total of new capacity.

The EIA expects a bit over 60 GW of new capacity to be installed by the end of the year, with 37 GW of that coming in the form of solar power. Battery growth continues at a torrid pace, with 15 GW expected, or roughly a quarter of the total capacity additions for the year. Wind will account for 7.1 GW of new capacity, and natural gas 2.6 GW. Throw in the contribution from nuclear, and 96 percent of the capacity additions of 2024 are expected to operate without any carbon emissions. Even if you choose to ignore the battery additions, the fraction of carbon-emitting capacity added remains extremely small, at only 6 percent."

An anonymous reader shares a report: The U.S. military is using ads to warn people across Lebanon not to attack the United States or its allies amid rising tensions across the Middle East. Some of those ads have turned up in an unlikely place: the dating app Tinder. Freelance reporter Seamus Malekafzali posted on X screenshots of the ads seen in the Tinder app, warning residents of Lebanon to "not take up arms."

The ads, written in Arabic, say that the U.S. will "protect its partners in the face of threats from the Iranian regime and its proxies," which operate across the region, referring to groups like Hezbollah located in Lebanon. The ads, which are not clandestine in nature, display the logo of U.S. Central Command and link to a tweet featuring F-16 and A10 fighter jets. These kinds of military psychological operations (or psyops), aimed at influencing the views of a target audience or population, are not new, even if their placement on a dating app is raising eyebrows in the military community, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Newspaper giant Gannett is shutting down Reviewed, its product reviews site, effective November 1st, according to sources familiar with the decision. The site offers recommendations for products ranging from shoes to home appliances and employs journalists to test and review items -- but has also been at the center of questions around whether its work is actually produced by humans.

"After careful consideration and evaluation of our Reviewed business, we have decided to close the operation. We extend our sincere gratitude to our employees who have provided consumers with trusted product reviews," Reviewed spokesperson Lark-Marie Anton told The Verge in an email. But the site more recently has been the subject of scrutiny, at times by its own unionized employees. Last October, Reviewed staff publicly accused Gannett of publishing AI-generated product reviews on the site. The articles in question were written in a strange, stilted manner, and staff found that the authors the articles were attributed to didn't seem to exist on LinkedIn and other platforms. Some questioned whether they were real at all. In response to questions, Gannett said the articles were produced by a third-party marketing company called AdVon Commerce and that the original reviews didn't include proper disclosure. But Gannett denied that AI was involved.