Companies choose Alphabet's Google as the default search engine for their browsers and smartphones because it is the best one, and not because of a lack of competition, a Google lawyer said Tuesday at the start of a high-stakes antitrust trial in Washington. From a report: Consumers use Google "because it delivers value to them, not because they have to," John Schmidtlein, a partner at Williams & Connolly LLP who is representing the company, said during his opening statements on the first day of the trial. "Users today have more search options and ways to access information online than ever before."

Schmidtlein pushed back on claims by US Justice Department antitrust enforcers that Google has used its market power -- and billions of dollars in exclusive deals with web browsers -- to illegally block rivals. Users have choices, and it's easy to switch, he said. For example, Microsoft pre-selects its own search engine, Bing, on Windows PCs, yet most PC users switch to Google because it's a better product, he said. Web browsers offered by Apple and Mozilla, which makes Firefox, have long chosen a default search engine in exchange for a revenue-share that helps pay for innovations, Schmidtlein said.

Major corporations from oil and gas companies to retail giants would have to disclose their direct greenhouse gas emissions as well as those that come from activities like employee business travel under legislation passed Monday by California lawmakers, the most sweeping mandate of its kind in the nation. From a report: The legislation would require thousands of public and private businesses that operate in California and make more than $1 billion annually to report their direct and indirect emissions. The goal is to increase transparency and nudge companies to evaluate how they can cut their emissions. "We are out of time on addressing the climate crisis," Democratic Assemblymember Chris Ward said. "This will absolutely help us take a leap forward to be able to hold ourselves accountable."

The legislation was one of the highest profile climate bills in California this year, racking support from major companies that include Patagonia and Apple, as well as Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations convention behind the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The bill would still need final approval by the state Senate before it can reach Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Lawmakers backing the bill say a large number of companies in the state already disclose some of their own emissions. But the bill is a controversial proposal that many other businesses and groups in the state oppose and say will be too burdensome.

Alphabet's Google pays more than $10 billion a year to maintain its position as the default search engine on web browsers and mobile devices, stifling competition, the US Justice Department said Tuesday at the start of a high-stakes antitrust trial in Washington. From a report: "This case is about the future of the internet and whether Google's search engine will ever face meaningful competition," Kenneth Dintzer, a government lawyer, said in his opening statement. "The evidence will show they demanded default exclusivity to block rivals." Dintzer said Google became a monopoly by at least 2010 and today controls more than 89% of the online search market.

"The company pays billions for defaults because they are uniquely powerful," he said. "For the last 12 years, Google has abused its monopoly in general search." The monopolization trial is the first pitting the federal government against a US technology company in more than two decades. The Justice Department and 52 attorneys general from states and US territories allege Google illegally maintained its monopoly by paying billions to tech rivals, smartphone makers and wireless providers in exchange for being set as the preselected option or default on mobile phones and web browsers.

Adobe, IBM, Nvidia and five other firms have signed President Joe Biden's voluntary commitments governing artificial intelligence, which requires steps such as watermarking AI-generated content, the White House said. From a report: The original commitments, which were announced in July, were aimed at ensuring that AI's considerable power was not used for destructive purposes. Google, OpenAI and OpenAI partner Microsoft signed onto the commitments in July.

Lockheed Martin may see more than $800 million in payments withheld through next June until it wins approval for the software powering its most advanced version of the F-35, according to newly disclosed delivery figures. From a report: The No. 1 US defense contractor is on tap to finish production of about 52 of the upgraded TR-3 model fighter jets by Dec. 31 and approximately 12 per month after that, or 72 more by June 30, for as many as 124 jets, according to the data released Monday by Russ Goemaere, the Pentagon's spokesman on the F-35.

The Pentagon is withholding $7 million per aircraft until the new software is validated because the aircraft are being placed in storage until then. At 124 jets, that's $868 million. Last month, the Defense Department withheld $7 million on each of the first four upgraded F-35s. The aircraft needs the delay-plagued software upgrade to function fully with new cockpit hardware before it can carry more precise weapons and gather more information on enemy aircraft and air defenses. The upgrade will increase processing power 37 times and memory 20 times over the F-35's current capabilities.

Popular Science reports that America's Department of Energy "is providing a nearly $400 million loan to a startup aimed at scaling the manufacturing and deployment of a zinc-based alternative to rechargeable lithium batteries."

If realized, Eos Energy's utility- and industrial-scale zinc-bromine battery energy storage system could provide cheaper, vastly more sustainable options for the country's burgeoning renewable power infrastructure... Unlike lithium-ion and lithium iron phosphate batteries, alternatives such as the Eos Z3 design rely on zinc-based cathodes alongside a water-based electrolyte, notes MIT Technology Review. This important distinction both increases their stability, as well as makes it incredibly difficult for them to support combustion. Zinc-bromine batteries meanwhile also boast lifespans as long as 20 years, while existing lithium options only manage between 10 and 15 years. What's more, zinc is considered the world's fourth most produced metal...

The U.S. Department of Energy also notes that "over time," Eos expects to source almost all of its materials within the U.S., thus better insulating its product against the market volatility and supply chain issues. While the Department of Energy previously issued similar loans to battery recycling and geothermal energy projects, last week's announcement marks the first funding offered to a manufacturer of lithium-battery alternatives.
MIT's article notes that Eos's semi-autonomous facility in Pennsylvania already produces around 540 megawatt-hours annually — and it isn't operating at full capacity. This new loan could boost factory toward full-power. The $398-million loan funds "up to four state-of-the-art production lines," according to the announcement from the U.S. Energy Department.

It notes that the technology is "specifically designed for long-duration grid-scale stationary battery storage that can assist in meeting the energy grids' growing demand with increasing amounts of renewable energy penetration." If finalized, the project is expected to manufacture 8 GWh of storage capacity annually by 2026. That is enough to provide electricity to over 300,000 average U.S. homes instantaneously or meet the annual electricity needs of approximately 130,000 homes if fully charged and discharged daily. The project is expected to create up to 50 union contractor construction jobs and as many as 650 new operations jobs when at full operational capacity...

Critically, Eos batteries are non-flammable and do not require active cooling to operate. The batteries can achieve 100% depth of discharge...

Late Friday a Burning Man press release claimed that "zero stuck or abandoned vehicles remain on site or on the exit road, as people have returned with friends and tow trucks to retrieve them."

But the Reno Gazette-Journal reports that as of 5 p.m. Friday, "at least a half-dozen vehicles were still scattered across miles of the Black Rock National Conservation Area, public land Burning Man leases from the Bureau of Land Management. Their drivers appeared to have made a run for the exit and got stuck in mud out on the playa. One burned-out RV that caught fire in the exit queue was still on site."

The press release from the Burning Man project claimed their entire community of attendees, sometimes called "Black Rock City," had now "disappeared, leaving no trace." But the Reno Gazette-Journal says... Entire abandoned camps were still in what had been Black Rock City, the temporary encampment that draws more than 70,000 burners each year. Tents, garbage bags, rugs, boxes, boots stuck in mud, a barbecue grill, cans of oil and even a wig were seen on Friday. Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen estimated there were still up to 10,000 people on site Thursday but a steady stream of RVS and cars continued to leave the playa... Burning Man did not return request for comment... "I am concerned about this year and the amount of stuff being left out," Allen told the Reno Gazette-Journal on Friday. "Dispatch has told me that in the last two days a lot of (car and truck) rental agencies and motor home businesses are looking for their vehicles still out there...

On Friday, the site was busy with campers who were cleaning up sites. Some abandoned camps sites had signs that said they would return. One sign said, "We will come back Thur. Fri. Sat. to clean up. Too many sick people."
The newspaper points out that event volunteers traditionally spend three weeks after the event doing a major clean-up effort. "The restoration crews they have doing that do an outstanding job," a public affairs specialist for the Bureau of Land Management told the newspaper.

Internet services has long been slow for the Winnebago Tribe in the state of Nebraska, reports the Wall Street Journal. Now the U.S. government "plans to fix that by crisscrossing the reservation with fiber-optic cable — at an average cost of $53,000 for each household and workplace connected."

While that amount exceeds the assessed value of some of the 658 homes getting hookups — at a cost of $35.2 million — "the tribe is also starting an internet company to run the network, creating jobs and competing with an existing provider known for slow customer service." While most connections will cost far less, the expense to reach some remote communities has triggered concerns over the ultimate price tag for ensuring every rural home, business, school and workplace in America has the same internet that city dwellers enjoy... The U.S. has committed more than $60 billion for what the Biden administration calls the "Internet for All" program, the latest in a series of sometimes troubled efforts to bring high-speed internet to rural areas... Providing fiber-optic cable is the industry standard, but alternative options such as satellite service are cheaper, if less reliable. Congress has left it up to state and federal officials implementing the program to decide how much is too much in hard-to-reach areas...

Defenders of the broadband programs say a simple per-location cost doesn't capture their benefits. Once built, rural fiber lines can be used to upgrade cell service or to add more connections to nearby towns...

Some of the differences can be explained by the distinct geographic areas the programs are targeting. While the FCC program included some suburbs and excluded remote locations such as Alaska, the programs run by Commerce and USDA specifically targeted far-flung regions with difficult construction conditions. "These are some of the most challenging locations that there are to reach in America," said Andy Berke, administrator of the USDA's Rural Utilities Service. He cited one project in Alaska that involves a 793-mile undersea fiber cable to reach remote villages.

"On the morning of his arrest, Grigor Sargsyan was still fixing matches. Four cellphones buzzed on his nightstand with calls and messages from around the world.... The information on his devices would provide a remarkable window into what has become the world's most manipulated sport, according to betting regulators. Thousands of texts, gambling receipts and bank transfers laid out Sargsyan's ascent in remarkable detail..."

That's part one of a two-part story in which more than 181 tennis players are involved, and from more than 30 countries, fixing more than 375 professional tennis matches. The Washington Post reveals the years-long investigation that began when Belgium's gambling commission tipped off their federal prosecutor's office to "irregular wagers on obscure tennis matches played around the world."

The breakthrough came with geolocation data on a cellphone, cross-referenced against the the names of people who'd recently flown to that country... The bets were made in small towns in the Flemish countryside. The gamblers appeared to be acting on inside information; they consistently won even when they bet against steep odds... [Nicolas Borremans, a 45-year-old police investigator based in the Flanders region of Belgium] knew little about sports. He had never watched an entire tennis match. But even a cursory description of the case was enough for him to see how a gambling operation might be used to launder money...

Within a few months, he had traced the accounts of four men who had placed suspicious bets in Belgium, all Armenian immigrants. Their wagers were mostly small — a few hundred euros each — ostensibly to avoid scrutiny. Almost all of the bets were on low-level professional tennis tournaments, where players earned barely enough to pay for their travel. Borremans secured wiretaps on the gamblers' phones, and a team of Armenian interpreters listened in. It became clear that the gamblers were working for someone. They received detailed instructions about which matches to bet on. They weren't gambling just on the outcomes, but on specific scores for sets and games... Borremans added more gamblers to his diagram. "Money mules," he called them. Eventually, he would uncover 1,671 accounts at gambling establishments across Europe. Many were registered by working-class Armenians: mechanics, a pizza deliveryman, a taxi driver.
While the tennis tour "has in recent months issued a raft of bans and suspensions," the article points out that the scale of the gambler/tennis player network "has remained a secret until now, in part because the tour is still working on active investigations related to the operation." (The professional tennis tour has its own investigation unit "formed in part because of pervasive allegations of match-fixing in the sport," which assisted the Belgian police.)

The operation's "maestro" had tried to evade investigators. (One French player received his payment in 21 separate transfers from Armenia.) The maestro also gave the tennis players anonymously-registered SIM cards for communication. But unfortunately, the article points out, every professional tennis player "signs a contract agreeing to hand their phones over to tennis investigators at any time if required." Soon investigators were reading the mastermind's text messages — and even wiretapping his phone calls to his mother.

His phone's search history would later offer a glimpse into his life and concerns. Sargsyan scoured the internet for references to himself and his players ("maestro tennis," "match fixing tennis hossam"); he did some broader research into his world ("tennis corruption," "armenian mafia"); he searched for ways to spend his new fortune ("escort geneve," "villa rent close port mallorca") But, mostly, he searched for new bookmakers ("croatia betting shop," "usa betting," "mybet Australia").
Caught in the investigation were Sebastian Rivera, the Chilean coach based in the United States, and Slovakian tennis player Dagmara Baskova (who says she was paid 10,000 euros for each thrown match). Another French player told investigators "Since 2015, I estimate that I have accepted to deliberately lose or manipulate the outcome of 20 to 30 matches for Maestro, both in singles and doubles." Some tennis players infuriated the maestro by tipping off other gamblers about their plans to throw matches.

Leaving the courtroom for his own trial, the maestro gave this response to the Post reporter asking how he felt about the courtroom proceedings. "If the prosecutor knew what I know, there would be many more people on trial." Later the maestro was sentenced to five years in prison for fraud, money laundering, and leading a criminal organization.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Thousands of Airbnbs and short-term rentals are about to be wiped off the map in New York City. Local Law 18, which came into force Tuesday, is so strict it doesn't just limit how Airbnb operates in the city -- it almost bans it entirely for many guests and hosts. From now on, all short-term rental hosts in New York must register with the city, and only those who live in the place they're renting -- and are present when someone is staying -- can qualify. And people can only have two guests.

Gone are the days of sleek downtown apartments outfitted for bachelorette parties, cozy two- and three-bedroom apartments near museums for families, and even the option for people to rent out their apartment on weekends when they're away. While Airbnb, Vrbo, and others can continue to operate in New York, the new rules are so tight that Airbnb sees it as a "de facto ban" on its business. The rules "are a blow to its tourism economy and the thousands of New Yorkers and small businesses in the outer boroughs who rely on home sharing and tourism dollars to help make ends meet," says Theo Yedinsky, global policy director for Airbnb. "The city is sending a clear message to millions of potential visitors who will now have fewer accommodation options when they visit New York City: You are not welcome."

According to Inside Airbnb, there are currently more than 40,000 Airbnbs in New York -- 22,434 of those are short-term rentals. "While the number of rentals may be small compared to New York City's population of 8 million people, Murray Cox, founder of Inside Airbnb, says some desirable neighborhoods are overly burdened by short-term rentals, which can result in housing shortages and higher rents," reports Wired. "The new law, in theory, could open these homes to local residents."

The implementation of the law shows "very clearly you can cut down on short-term rentals," says Cox, who was part of the Coalition Against Illegal Hotels, a group that advocated for the registration law. "You can make these platforms accountable."

In a deal that could be worth $200 million, Microsoft announced that it is purchasing 315,000 metric tons of carbon removal over a multi-year period from climate tech startup Heirloom Carbon. It's one of the biggest deals of its kind, reports The Wall Street Journal (paywalled). GeekWire reports: San Francisco-based Heirloom is harnessing a geologic approach to catching and holding carbon dioxide. Limestone naturally binds to carbon, but Heirloom's technology dramatically speeds up the process, cutting it from years to days. The startup operates the only U.S. facility permanently capturing carbon. Even more important than the volume of carbon to be removed is the deal's ability to unlock additional funding and investments to grow Heirloom's business and the sector more broadly.

Microsoft previously invested in Heirloom through its $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund. The new deal represents a financially empowering "bankable agreement," said Heirloom CEO Shashank Samala. "Bankable agreements of this magnitude enable Heirloom to raise project finance for our rapid scale-up, fueling exponential growth like what we've seen in the renewable energy industry," Samala said in a statement. The guaranteed cash flow can facilitate financing needed to build Heirloom's next two commercial sites. The deal is also "an example of the impact of the Biden administration's 2021 infrastructure bill," notes the report. "[T]he purchase was tied to Heirloom being selected by the U.S. Department of Energy as one of the nation's direct air capture (DAC) hubs. It will receive $600 million of matching funding thanks to the designation."

The U.S. Senate today approved a nominee to fill the vacant, fifth seat on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The Senate voted 55 to 43 to approve Anna Gomez as the fifth FCC Commissioner. Her term will be for five years from July 1, 2021, so effectively about three years. From a report: Gomez most recently has served as a senior advisor on communications policy at the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy. She was also deputy administrator at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) from 2009 to 2013. The NTIA is not only important as the advisor to the President on national spectrum policy, but the agency is also currently overseeing the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.

The Pentagon is considering the development of a vast network of AI-powered technology, drones and autonomous systems within the next two years to counter threats from China and other adversaries. WSJ: Kathleen Hicks, the deputy secretary of defense, will provide new details in a speech later Wednesday about the department's plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop an array of thousands of air-, land- and sea-based artificial-intelligence systems that are intended to be "small, smart, cheap."

The U.S. is seeking to keep pace with China's rapidly expanding military amid concerns that the Pentagon bureaucracy takes too long to develop and deploy cutting-edge systems. [...] One approach could be to build on the capabilities demonstrated by Task Force 59, the U.S. Navy's network of drones and sensors designed to monitor Iran's military activities in the Middle East.

schwit1 writes: The Justice Department has spent three years over two presidential administrations building the case that Google illegally abused its power over online search to throttle competition. To defend itself, Google has enlisted hundreds of employees and three powerful law firms and spent millions of dollars on legal fees and lobbyists. On Tuesday, a judge in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia will begin considering their arguments at a trial that cuts to the heart of a long-simmering question: Did today's tech giants become dominant by breaking the law?

The case -- U.S. et al v. Google -- is the federal government's first monopoly trial of the modern internet era, as a generation of tech companies has come to wield immense influence over commerce, information, public discourse, entertainment and labor. The trial moves the antitrust battle against those companies to a new phase, shifting from challenging their mergers and acquisitions to more deeply examining the businesses that thrust them into power. Such a consequential case over tech power has not unfolded since the Justice Department took Microsoft to court in 1998 for antitrust violations.

Julian Assange's supporters will urge the US to drop the prosecution of the Australian citizen on the basis the "very dangerous" precedent will be exploited by China and Russia. From a report: Six Australian politicians are expected to focus on freedom-of-speech arguments when they fly to Washington DC later this month to warn against extraditing the WikiLeaks founder from the UK. The MPs and senators from across the political spectrum are aiming to help build momentum for the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to raise the case in bilateral talks with Joe Biden at the White House in late October. The trip is being funded by the Assange campaign.

Assange remains in Belmarsh prison in London as he fights a US attempt to extradite him to face charges in connection with the publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars as well as diplomatic cables. Greg Barns SC, an adviser to the Assange campaign, said on Tuesday that it was "not an ordinary run-of-the-mill extradition case." He said freedom of speech was "an important theme in the US."

"You've got China chasing journalists around the world, and you've got the Russians who have recently arrested journalists," Barns told Guardian Australia. "You've now got China using the Assange case as a sort of moral equivalence argument. So the message [of the Australian delegation] is going to be: this is very dangerous for journalists around the world and a race to the bottom that's going on."

When it comes to US government employee satisfaction with IT services, one agency finds itself continually at the bottom of the heap: The rather crucial Department of Defense. From a report: Results from the General Services Administration's (GSA) Mission-Support Customer Satisfaction Survey published on Wednesday found the DoD was trailing the other 23 US federal government agencies included in the research. Of the seven technology user areas surveyed, the DoD came dead last in user satisfaction for IT support, equipment, function, and communication/collaboration.

The DoD didn't fare much better in the three areas it wasn't scraping the bottom, either. For strategic IT partnerships and development, modernizations and enhancement the Defense Department ranked twentieth (out of 24), and for operations and maintenance satisfaction it beat the US Department of Agriculture - barely - on the seven-point scale used by the GSA. Despite its abysmal ranking among its fellow federal agencies, the DoD's users were still generally okay with their IT service, with 65 percent of respondents saying they were at least somewhat satisfied with IT support, and 64.5 percent expressing some degree of satisfaction with their IT equipment. Only development, modernization and enhancement failed to net 50 percent satisfaction among DoD respondents.

As a growing number of hackers target companies, organisations and industries with debilitating attacks, more skilled cyber security workers are urgently needed to combat the threat.ÂFrom a report: ISC2, the world's largest association of cyber professionals, estimates that the cyber security workforce in 2022 stood at about 4.7mn people globally. But a further 3.4mn roles remain unfilled. "The gap is massive," says Clar Rosso, ISC2's chief executive. "This shortfall is felt more acutely in countries such as India where digitisation is rapid. But even in the US, only 69 per cent of cyber roles are filled, according to Cyberseek, a website that provides data about the cyber security job market."

Beyond a talent shortfall, existing workers are underskilled. A UK government report this year found that 50 per cent of UK businesses -- some 739,000 in total -- have a basic cyber skills gap, meaning that those in charge of cyber security lack the confidence to carry out the technical measures that protect against the most common digital attacks. Previously, it was thought that a company's IT team could take care of all cyber security concerns. But "over time, it became clear that this needed specialised attention," Rosso says, adding that, after some high-profile ransomware attacks over the past couple of years, "business executives are now paying attention."

The future of wearable technology, beyond now-standard accessories like smartwatches and fitness tracking rings, is ePANTS, according to the intelligence community. The Intercept: The federal government has shelled out at least $22 million in an effort to develop "smart" clothing that spies on the wearer and its surroundings. Similar to previous moonshot projects funded by military and intelligence agencies, the inspiration may have come from science fiction and superpowers, but the basic applications are on brand for the government: surveillance and data collection. Billed as the "largest single investment to develop Active Smart Textiles," the SMART ePANTS -- Smart Electrically Powered and Networked Textile Systems -- program aims to develop clothing capable of recording audio, video, and geolocation data, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced in an August 22 press release. Garments slated for production include shirts, pants, socks, and underwear, all of which are intended to be washable.

The project is being undertaken by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, the intelligence community's secretive counterpart to the military's better-known Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. IARPA's website says it "invests federal funding into high-risk, high reward projects to address challenges facing the intelligence community." Its tolerance for risk has led to both impressive achievements, like a Nobel Prize awarded to physicist David Wineland for his research on quantum computing funded by IARPA, as well as costly failures. "A lot of the IARPA and DARPA programs are like throwing spaghetti against the refrigerator," Annie Jacobsen, author of a book about DARPA, "The Pentagon's Brain," told The Intercept. "It may or may not stick."

"Silicon Valley billionaires behind a secretive $800 million land-buying spree in Northern California have finally released some details about their plans for a new green city," reports the Associated Press, "but they still must win over skeptical voters and local leaders." After years of ducking scrutiny, Jan Sramek, the former Goldman Sachs trader spearheading the effort, launched a website Thursday about "California Forever." The site billed the project as "a chance for a new community, good paying local jobs, solar farms, and open space" in Solano, a rural county between San Francisco and Sacramento that is now home to 450,000 people. He also began meeting with key politicians representing the area who have been trying unsuccessfully for years to find out who was behind the mysterious Flannery Associates LLC as it bought up huge swaths of land, making it the largest single landholder in the county...

[T]o build anything resembling a city on what is now farmland, the group must first convince Solano County voters to approve a ballot initiative to allow for urban uses on that land, a protection that has been in place since 1984. Local and federal officials still have questions about the group's intentions... California is in dire need of more housing, especially affordable homes for teachers, firefighters, service and hospitality workers. But cities and counties can't figure out where to build as established neighborhoods argue against new homes that they say would congest their roads and spoil their quiet way of life.

In many ways, Solano County is ideal for development. It is 60 miles northeast of San Francisco and 35 miles southwest of California's capital city of Sacramento. Solano County homes are among the most affordable in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a median sales price of $600,000 last month. But Princess Washington, mayor pro tempore of Suisun City, said residents deliberately decided to protect open space and keep the area around Travis Air Force Base free of encroachment given its significance. She's suspicious that the group's real purpose is "to create a city for the elite" under the guise of more housing.
The web site for "California Forever" acknowledges they've purchased 50,000 acres — about 78 squares miles — "strategically located" in Northern California's Solano County with access to water and low fire risk.

Speculative illustrations on the site "evoke a cityscape with a dreamy white stucco and red rooftop Mediterranean vibe that might be found in a Greek or Italian village," writes the San Francisco Chronicle. There are hillside neighborhoods stepping down to what must be the banks of the Sacramento River, kayakers tooling through lily pads and anglers fishing from the riverbank at sunrise... The website also names an investor who has not been named previously — venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, an early investor in Google, Slack and other companies...

While California Forever may have billions to invest in the project, it will face staunch opposition from some ranchers who argue that the city would disrupt the economy of a county that is 62% farmland.
The San Francisco Chronicle's urban design critic writes "OK, this is something new — an elevator pitch for a whole new city..." But the website launched Thursday by California Forever offers no real details, such as the projected population or precise location. Instead, there are renderings of cuddly townscapes and soothing talk of building "a remarkable place for Solano residents." Oh, and an earnest promise to "begin the phase of our work that matters most: our conversation with you." Let the eye-rolling commence. It's impossible to critique the vision of the investors, because what was unfurled is so innocuous as to be an insult...

The website also refers to how this will be a center of "economic opportunity" and "new employers." Great! But only two of the 12 renderings show people at work, including one where three men install solar panels while the sun sets in the west. Let's hope they're being paid overtime... The Bay Area needs housing and jobs. It also needs honest approaches to making this happen. Let's hope when California Forever 2.0 launches, there is less fluff and more facts.

An anonymous reader shares The Hill's report from earlier this month. Apparently America's tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service "cannot locate thousands of microfilm cartridges containing millions of sensitive individual and business tax account records, according to a watchdog report." The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said in a report released August 8 that the IRS cannot account for microfilm cartridges — which contain backups of tax records as required under federal law — from fiscal 2010 that were originally stored at a processing center in Fresno, California... The watchdog also found seven empty boxes, which could hold up to 168 cartridges total, at the Ogden Tax Processing Center in Utah. Ogden personnel did not know where the missing cartridges were.

More than 4,000 cartridges containing business tax account information from fiscal 2018 and 4,500 cartridges containing individual tax account information from fiscal 2019 also could not be accounted for at the Kansas City facility, according to the report.

"The personal taxpayer and tax information included on these backup cartridges is key information that can be used to commit tax refund fraud identity theft," the report noted.