European public institutions are quietly migrating away from American cloud providers and office software, driven less by policy ambitions in Brussels than by the mundane legal reality that GDPR-mandated risk assessments keep flagging the US CLOUD Act as an unacceptable threat to citizen data.

Austria's Federal Ministry for Economy, Energy and Tourism moved 1,200 employees to the open-source platform Nextcloud in four months. Germany's Schleswig-Holstein has already transitioned 24,000 of its 30,000 civil servants to LibreOffice, Nextcloud and Thunderbird. The International Criminal Court in The Hague announced in November 2025 that it would replace Microsoft office software after chief prosecutor Karim Khan was temporarily locked out of his Outlook account.

Competition economist Cristina Caffarra estimates that 90% of Europe's digital infrastructure is now controlled by non-European companies. Forrester predicts no European enterprise will fully abandon US hyperscalers in 2026, but these targeted migrations for sensitive government applications are already underway.

Uber and Lyft plan to trial robotaxis in London starting in 2026 using autonomous vehicles from Baidu, as the UK fast-tracks approvals for self-driving cars on public roads. CNBC reports: Lyft's testing of Baidu's initial fleet of dozens of vehicles will begin in 2026, pending regulatory approval, "with plans to scale to hundreds from there," Lyft CEO David Risher said in a post on social media platform X on Monday. Meanwhile, Uber said that its first pilot is expected to start in the first half of 2026. "We're excited to accelerate Britain's leadership in the future of mobility, bringing another safe and reliable travel option to Londoners next year," the company added.

The moves add to Baidu's growing global footprint, which it says includes 22 cities and more than 250,000 weekly trips, as it races against other Chinese players like WeRide and Western giants like Alphabet's Waymo. The UK, in particular, has seen a wave of interest from driverless taxi companies, following the government's announcement in June that it would accelerate its plans to allow autonomous vehicle tech on public roads. The government now aims to begin permitting robotaxis to operate in small-scale pilots starting in spring 2026, with Baidu likely aiming to be among the first. The city of London has also established a "Vision Zero" goal to eliminate all serious injuries and deaths in its transportation systems by 2041, with autonomous driving technology expected to play a large role.

Tony Isaac shares a report from NPR: The U.S. government calculates the country's official time using more than a dozen atomic clocks at a federal facility northwest of Denver. But when a destructive windstorm knocked out power to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) laboratory in Boulder on Wednesday and a backup generator subsequently failed, time ever so slightly slowed down. The lapse "resulted in NIST UTC [universal coordinated time] being 4.8 microseconds slower than it should have been," NIST spokesperson Rebecca Jacobson said in an email. [...]

Since 2007, the official time of the U.S. has been determined by the commerce secretary, who oversees NIST, along with the U.S. Navy. The national time standard is known as NIST UTC. (Somewhat confusingly, UTC itself is a separate, global time standard to which the U.S. and other countries contribute measurements.) NIST currently calculates the standard using a weighted average of the readings of 16 atomic clocks situated across the Boulder campus. Atomic clocks, including hydrogen masers and cesium beam clocks, rely on the natural resonant frequencies of atoms to tell time with extremely high accuracy.

All of the atomic clocks continued ticking through the power outage last week thanks to their battery backup systems, according to NIST supervisory research physicist Jeff Sherman. What failed was the connection between some of the clocks and NIST's measurement and distribution systems, he said. Some critical operations staff who were still on site following the severe weather were able to restore backup power by activating a diesel generator the team had kept in reserve, Sherman said.

The FCC has banned approval of new foreign-made drones and components, citing "an unacceptable risk" to national security. The move will most heavily impact DJI but it "does not affect drones or drone components that are currently sold in the United States." Reuters reports: The tech was placed on the commission's "Covered List," barring DJI and other foreign drone manufacturers from receiving the FCC's approval to sell new drone models for import or sale in the U.S. In Monday's announcement, the agency said that the move "will reduce the risk of direct [drone] attacks and disruptions, unauthorized surveillance, sensitive data exfiltration and other [drone] threats to the homeland."

FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a statement that while drones offer the potential to boost public safety and the U.S.' posture on global innovation, "criminals, terrorists and hostile foreign actors have intensified their weaponization of these technologies, creating new and serious threats to our homeland."

The ruling comes as China hawks in Congress amplify warnings about the security risks of drones made by DJI, which accounts for more than 90% of the global market share. But efforts to crack down on Capitol Hill have been met with some pushback due to the potential impacts of curbing the drone usage on U.S. businesses and law enforcement. A wide variety of sectors, including construction, energy, agriculture and mining companies, as well as local police and fire departments across the country, deploy DJI-made drones.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: With just three days to go before Christmas, a cyberattack knocked France's national postal service offline Monday, blocking and delaying package deliveries and online payments. The timing was miserable for millions of people at the height of the Christmas season, as frazzled postal workers fended off frustrated customers. No one immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicions abounded.

What the postal service La Poste called a ''major network incident'' remained unresolved by Monday evening, more than eight hours after it was first reported. For a company that delivered 2.6 billion packages last year and employs more than 200,000 people, that's a big hit. La Poste said in a statement that a distributed denial of service incident, or DDoS, "rendered its online services inaccessible." It said the incident had no impact on customer data, but disrupted package delivery. Letters, including holiday greeting cards, could still be mailed and delivered. But transactions requiring tracking or access to the postal service internal computer systems were impossible.

The cyberattack also hurt online banking. Customers of the company's banking arm, La Banque Postale, were blocked from using the application to approve payments or conduct other banking services. The bank redirected approvals to text messages instead. "Our teams are mobilized to resolve the situation quickly," the bank said in messages posted on social networks. The disruption came a week after France's government was targeted by a cyberattack that targeted the Interior Ministry, in charge of national security.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, the US Department of the Interior announced that it was pausing the leases on all five offshore wind sites currently under construction in the US. The move comes despite the fact that these projects already have installed significant hardware in the water and on land; one of them is nearly complete. In what appears to be an attempt to avoid legal scrutiny, the Interior is blaming the decisions on a classified report from the Department of Defense.

The second Trump administration announced its animosity toward offshore wind power literally on day one, issuing an executive order on inauguration day that called for a temporary halt to issuing permits for new projects pending a re-evaluation. Earlier this month, however, a judge vacated that executive order, noting that the government has shown no indication that it was even attempting to start the re-evaluation it said was needed. But a number of projects have gone through the entire permitting process, and construction has started. Before today, the administration had attempted to stop these in an erratic, halting manner. Empire Wind, an 800 MW farm being built off New York, was stopped by the Department of the Interior, which alleged that it had been rushed through permitting. That hold was lifted following lobbying and negotiations by New York and the project developer Orsted, and the Department of the Interior never revealed why it changed its mind. When the Interior Department blocked a second Orsted project, Revolution Wind offshore of southern New England, the company took the government to court and won a ruling that let it continue construction.

Today's announcement targets those and three other projects. Interior says it is pausing the permits for all five, which are the only projects currently under construction. It claims that offshore wind creates "national security risks" that were revealed in a recent analysis performed by the Department of Defense, which apparently neglected to identify these issues during the evaluations it did while the projects were first permitted. What are these risks? The Interior Department is being extremely coy. It notes that offshore wind turbines can interfere with radar sensing, but that's been known for a while. In announcing the decision, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum also noted "the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies." But the announcement says that the Defense Department analysis is classified, meaning nobody is likely to know what the actual reason is -- presuming one exists. The classification will also make it far more challenging to contest this decision in court.

Tuesday the White House faces a deadline to decide "whether Chinese drone maker DJI Technologies poses a national security threat," reports Bloomberg. But their article notes it's "a decision with the potential to ground thousands of machines deployed by police and fire departments across the US."

One person making the case against the drones is Mike Nathe, a North Dakota Republican state representative described by the Post as "at the forefront of a nationwide campaign sounding alarms about the Made-in-China aircraft." Nathe tells them that "People do not realize the security issue with these drones, the amount of information that's being funneled back to China on a daily basis." The president already signed anexecutive orderin June targeting "foreign control or exploitation" of America's drone supply chain. That came after Congress mandated a review to determine whether DJI deserves inclusion in a federal register of companies believed to endanger national security. If DJI doesn't get a clean bill of health for Christmas, it could join Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and ZTE Corp.on that Federal Communications Commission list. The designation would give the Trump administration authority to prevent new domestic sales or even impose a flight ban, affecting public agencies from New York to North Dakota to Nevada...

The fleet used by public safety agencies nationwide exceeds about 25,000 aircraft, said Chris Fink, founder of Unmanned Vehicle Technologies LLC, a Fayetteville, Arkansas-based firm that advises law-enforcement clients. The overwhelming majority of those drones — called uncrewed aerial vehicles, or UAVs, in industry parlance — comes from China, said Jon Beal, president of theLaw Enforcement Drone Association, a training and advocacy group that counts DJI and some US competitors as corporate sponsors...

Currently, at least half a dozen states havetargeted DJIand other Chinese-manufactured drones, including restrictions in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee. A Nevada law prohibiting public agencies from using Chinese drones took effect in January... Legislators also took up the cause in Connecticut, which passed a law this year preventing public offices from using Chinese drones. Supporters said they're worried about these eyes in the skies being used for spying. "We're kind of sitting ducks," said Bob Duff, the Democratic majority leader in the state senate who promoted the legislation. "They are designed to infiltrate systems even when the users don't think that they will."
One North Dakota sheriff's department complains U.S.-made drones are "at least double and triple the price out of the gate," according to the article, which adds that public safety officials "say it's difficult to find domestic alternatives that match DJI in price and performance."

And DJI "wants an extension on the security review," according to the article, "saying Tuesday is too soon to make a conclusion."

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC: The Trump administration on Monday unveiled a new initiative dubbed the "U.S. Tech Force," comprising about 1,000 engineers and other specialists who will work on artificial intelligence infrastructure and other technology projects throughout the federal government.

Participants will commit to a two-year employment program working with teams that report directly to agency leaders in "collaboration with leading technology companies," according to an official government website. ["...and work closely with senior managers from companies partnering with the Tech Force."] Those "private sector partners" include Amazon Web Services, Apple, Google Public Sector, Dell Technologies, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, Palantir, Salesforce and numerous others [including AMD, IBM, Coinbase, Robinhood, Uber, xAI, and Zoom], the website says.

The Tech Force shows the Trump administration increasing its focus on developing America's AI infrastructure as it competes with China for dominance in the rapidly growing industry... The engineering corps will be working on "high-impact technology initiatives including AI implementation, application development, data modernization, and digital service delivery across federal agencies," the site says.
"Answer the call," says the new web site at TechForce.gov.

"Upon completing the program, engineers can seek employment with the partnering private-sector companies for potential full-time roles — demonstrating the value of combining civil service with technical expertise." [And those private sector companies can also nominate employees to participate.] "Annual salaries are expected to be in the approximate range of $150,000 to $200,000."

In 2023 Slashdot covered a battery-swapping startup that promised to give EVs a full charge in about the same time it takes to fill a tank of gas.

They just filed for bankruptcy, reports Inc: Ample was founded in 2014 with a goal of "solving slow charging times and infrastructure incompatibility" for commercial EV fleets such as those in logistics, ride-hailing, and delivery, the filing states. To-date, Ample has raised more than $330 million across five rounds of funding to finance research and development and deployment. Rather than tackling fast charging, its strategy involved developing "fully autonomous modular battery swapping," capable of delivering a fully charged battery in just five minutes. The technology requires purpose-built "Ample stations" that look a little like carwashes. A car is guided into the bay and elevated on a platform. A robot then identifies the location of a car's battery module, removes it, and replaces it with a charged module, Canary Media reported.

The company also boasts partnerships with Uber, Mitsubishi, and Stellantis, and notes it has deployed its technology — or is pursuing deployment — in San Francisco, Madrid and Tokyo. Even so, it ran up against funding issues. In its filing, Ample attributed its bankruptcy to macroeconomic and industry headwinds, such as "severe supply chain disruptions," "contraction in both public and private investment in renewable energy" and the "reduction, delay, or redirection of government incentives intended to accelerate EV adoption." The filing notes that regulatory and permitting delays slowed its launch in international markets, after which access to capital foiled its scaling efforts. The company eliminated all but two full-time, non-executive employees after formerly employing about 200...

Electrek noted that Ample is the second battery swapping startup to go bankrupt after California-based Better Place in collapsed in 2013 amid financial issues related to how capital intensive it was to build infrastructure, Reuters reported. And Tesla briefly pursued the concept, building a station in California, before ditching the idea altogether.
Ample "claimed to have designed autonomous battery swapping stations that would be rapidly deployable, cheap to build, and could adapt to any EV design with a modular battery which would be easy for manufacturers to use," notes Electrek's article: Where this bankruptcy leaves Ample's technology is unclear. Another company could snap it up and try to do something with it, if they find that the technology is real and useful. Ample had gotten investments and partnerships with Shell, Mitsubishi and Stellantis, for example, so the company wasn't alone in touting its tech. Or, it could just disappear, as other EV battery swapping plans have before...

That's not to say that nobody has been successful at at implementing battery swap, though. NIO seems to be successful with its battery swapping tech in China, though the company did miss its 2025 scaling goals by a longshot. But as of yet, this is the only notable example of a successful battery swap initiative, and it was done by an automaker itself, rather than a startup claiming to work for every automaker.
Electrek's writer is "just not bullish on battery swapping as a solution in general. Currently, the fastest-charging vehicles can charge from 10-80% in about 18 minutes. While that's longer than 5 minutes, it's not really a terrible amount of time to spend during most stops."

Plus, if cars come and go in 5 minutes instead of 18 minutes, "then you're going to have more than triple the throughput at peak utilization." And Ample's prices would be about the same as normal EV quick-charging prices...

"Super PAC aims to drown out AI critics in midterms," the Washington Post reported in August, noting its intial funding over $100 million from "some of Silicon Valley's most powerful investors and executives" including OpenAI president Greg Brockman, his wife, and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. The group's goal was "to quash a philosophical debate that has divided the tech industry on the risk of artificial intelligence overpowering humanity," according to the article — and to support "pro-AI" candidates in America's next election in November of 2026 and "oppose candidates perceived as slowing down AI development."

Their first target? State assemblyman Alex Bores, now running to be a U.S. representative. While in the state legislature Bores sponsored a bill that would "require large AI companies to publish safety data on their technology," notes the Washington Post. So the attack ad charges that Bores "wants Albany bureaucrats regulating AI," excoriating him for sponsoring a bill that "hands AI to state regulators and creates a chaotic patchwork of state rules that would crush innovation, cost New York jobs, and fail to keep people safe! And he's backed by groups funded by convicted felon Sam Bankman-Fried. Is that really who should be shaping AI safety for our kids? America needs one smart national policy that sets clear stands for safe AI not Albany politicians like Alex Bores."

The Post calls it "the opening skirmish in a battle set to play out across the country" as tech moguls (and an independent effort receiving "tens of millions" from Meta) "try to use the 2026 midterms to reengineer Congress and state legislatures in favor of their ambitions for artificial intelligence" and "to wrest control of the narrative around AI, just as politicians in both parties have started warning that the industry is moving too fast." By knocking down candidates such as Bores, who favor regulations, and boosting industry sympathizers, the tech-backed groups could signal to incumbents and candidates nationwide that opposing the tech industry can jeopardize their electoral chances. "Bores just happened to be first, but he's not the last, and he's certainly not the only," said Josh Vlasto, co-head of Leading the Future, the bipartisan super PAC behind the ad.

The group plans to support and oppose candidates in congressional and state elections next year. It will also fund rapid response operations against voices in the industry pushing for more oversight... The strategy aims to replicate the success of the cryptocurrency industry, which used a super PAC to clear a path for Congress this summer to boost the sector's fortunes with the passage of the Genius Act... But signs that voters are increasingly wary of AI suggest that approach may be challenging to replicate. More than half of Americans believe AI poses a high risk to society, Pew Research Center found in a June survey. As AI usage continues to grow, more people are being warned by chief executives that AI will disrupt their jobs, seeing power-hungry data centers spring up in their towns or hearing claims that chatbots can harm mental health.
The article also notes there's at least two other groups seeking to counter this pro-AI push, raising money through a nonprofit called "Public First."

CNN calls the new pro-AI ads "a likely preview of the vast amounts of money the technology industry could spend ahead of next year's elections," noting that the ads are first targeting the candidate-choosing primary elections

The White House says it's investigating how a personal-finance YouTuber's livestream briefly appeared on the White House's official live video page. The creator says he has no idea how his video ended up there. The Associated Press reports: The livestream appeared for at least eight minutes late Thursday on whitehouse.gov/live, where the White House usually streams live video of the president speaking. It's unclear if the website was breached or the video was linked accidentally by someone in the government. The White House said in a statement that it was "aware and looking into what happened." The video that appeared on the government-run website featured some of a more than two-hour livestream from Matt Farley, who posts as @RealMattMoney, as he answered financial questions.

Farley told The Associated Press on Friday that he had no idea what happened and learned about it after the fact. He said he had not been contacted by the government and didn't have any theories about how his livestream ended up on the website. He joked that he hoped President Donald Trump and his youngest son, Barron Trump, "are watching my streams and taking advice."

"Had I known it would have been on the White House website, I probably would have had other things to talk about than personal finance," Farley said. When asked what other things he would discuss, Farley responded with a laugh and said: "What would you talk about with the world for eight minutes if you had an opportunity? I'm just some guy making YouTube videos about stocks."

The Danish government has accused Russia of being behind two "destructive and disruptive" cyberattacks in what it describes as "very clear evidence" of a hybrid war. From a report: The Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS) announced on Thursday that Moscow was behind a cyberattack on a Danish water utility in 2024 and a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Danish websites in the lead-up to the municipal and regional council elections in November.

The first, it said, was carried out by the pro-Russian group known as Z-Pentest and the second by NoName057(16), which has links to the Russian state. "The Russian state uses both groups as instruments of its hybrid war against the west," DDIS said in a statement. "The aim is to create insecurity in the targeted countries and to punish those that support Ukraine. Russia's cyber operations form part of a broader influence campaign intended to undermine western support for Ukraine." It added: "The DDIS assesses that the Danish elections were used as a platform to attract public attention -- a pattern that has been observed in several other European elections."

Tony Isaac shares a report from CNN: President Donald Trump's social media and crypto company is making a huge bet on a far different industry -- nuclear fusion, a potentially lucrative albeit commercially unproven energy technology that could help power a suddenly electricity-starved economy. Trump Media and Technology Group Thursday announced a surprise merger with TAE Technologies, in an all-stock deal valued at more than $6 billion that would create one of the first publicly traded fusion companies. News of the deal shares of Trump Media (DJT) 35% higher in early trading Thursday.

After the deal closes, shareholders of Trump Media and TAE would own about 50% of the combined entity. The combined companies plan to begin construction as soon as next year of the world's first fusion reaction that could produce electricity on utility scale, rather than just in laboratory settings. The combination with TMTG could give TAE political clout. But it could also make it more politically controversial, particularly if it looks to receive any kind of federal government support, such as grants, low-interest loans or permitting approvals.

It could also give TAE access to capital that it needs. Under terms of the deal, TMTG would provide $300 million in cash for TAE's plans. But that is likely a fraction of the cash available from some of TAE's current investors, such as Google parent company Alphabet, as well as its bevy of private equity investors. But that $300 million is only a fraction of the money that TAE needs, or expects to be able to access, once it has become a public company with this deal. Staying a private company, even with deep pocketed investors, is no longer sufficient TAE CEO Michl Binderbauer told CNN Thursday. "It's a multi-billion dollar undertaking," said Binderbauer. "The velocity you can get the capital is differentiating. If I raise $2 billion over five years I can't built the plant sufficiently fast." He said the company has raised about $1.3 billion over the course of its 25-year history.

Hackers breached approximately 120,000 IP cameras across South Korea and allegedly sold footage captured from private homes, gynecology offices, breastfeeding rooms and massage parlors to an overseas pornography website, prompting an interagency government task force to announce sweeping reforms on December 7.

Police believe one suspect alone hacked 63,000 cameras and produced 545 videos that netted him 35 million won ($24,000) in cryptocurrency; a second suspect, operating independently, compromised 70,000 devices and earned 18 million won from 648 videos. The footage accounted for 62% of all content on the website, which maintains a dedicated "Korean" category. A government survey found that only 59% of installation companies consistently carried out mandatory security measures such as changing default passwords. Lawmakers are now pursuing legislation requiring security-certified IP cameras in sensitive facilities.

Chinese scientists have built a working prototype of an extreme ultraviolet lithography machine in a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, a development that represents exactly what Washington has spent years and multiple rounds of export controls trying to prevent: China's path toward semiconductor independence and an end to the West's monopoly on the technology that powers AI, smartphones and advanced weapons systems.

The prototype, completed in early 2025 by former ASML engineers who reverse-engineered the Dutch company's machines, is operational and generating EUV light, though it has not yet produced working chips. The effort is part of a six-year secret government initiative that sources described to Reuters as China's version of the Manhattan Project.

Huawei is coordinating thousands of engineers across companies and state research institutes, and recruits are working under false identities inside secure facilities. The Chinese government is targeting 2028 for producing working chips, though sources say 2030 is more realistic -- still years earlier than the decade analysts had predicted it would take China to match the West.

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: Every other week, it seems, a new Chinese launch company pops up with a rocket design and a plan to reach orbit within a few years. For a long time, the majority of these companies revealed designs that looked a lot like SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. The first of these copy cats, the medium-lift Zhuque-3 rocket built by LandSpace, launched earlier this month. Its primary mission was nominal, but the Zhuque-3 rocket failed its landing attempt, which is understandable for a first flight. Doubtless there will be more Chinese Falcon 9-like rockets making their debut in the near future. However, over the last year, there has been a distinct change in announcements from China when it comes to new launch technology. Just as SpaceX is seeking to transition from its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket -- which has now been flying for a decade and a half -- to the fully reusable Starship design, so too are Chinese companies modifying their visions.

The trend began with the Chinese government. In November 2024 the government announced a significant shift in the design of its super-heavy lift rocket, the Long March 9. Instead of the previous design, a fully expendable rocket with three stages and solid rocket boosters strapped to the sides, the country's state-owned rocket maker revealed a vehicle that mimicked SpaceX's fully reusable Starship. Around the same time, a Chinese launch firm named Cosmoleap announced plans to develop a fully reusable "Leap" rocket within the next few years. An animated video that accompanied the funding announcement indicated that the company seeks to emulate the tower catch-with-chopsticks methodology that SpaceX has successfully employed.

But wait, there's more. In June a company called Astronstone said it too was developing a stainless steel, methane-fueled rocket that would also use a chopstick-style system for first stage recovery. Astronstone didn't even pretend to not copy SpaceX, saying it was "fully aligning its technical approach with Elon Musk's SpaceX." And then, on Friday, the state-aligned China.com reported that a company called "Beijing Leading Rocket Technology" took things a step further. It has named its vehicle "Starship-1," adding that the new rocket will have enhancements from AI and is billed as a "fully reusable AI rocket."

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Politico: The Senate on Wednesday approved Jared Isaacman for the top job at NASA -- an unprecedented comeback after President Donald Trump yanked his nomination this spring. Senators confirmed the billionaire private astronaut in a 67-30 vote. Trump renominated Isaacman for NASA administrator in November, after pulling his original nomination in May. He cited Isaacman's relationship with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, with whom Trump had just had a falling out, as the rationale for his decision. Isaacman's surprise rebound followed months of political jockeying and help from high-profile figures in Trump's orbit. [...] Isaacman garnered backing from lawmakers during his hearing by confirming his support for NASA's Artemis moon-landing mission, a key prerogative for Capitol Hill. He also committed to instilling urgency at the space agency, citing China's space ambitions.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in his Wednesday Senate testimony that the agency he governs "is not an independent agency, formally speaking." Axios: During his testimony, the word "independent" was removed from the FCC's mission statement on its website. The extraordinary statement speaks to a broader trend of regulatory agencies losing power to the executive branch during the Trump era. Last week, the Supreme Court appeared poised to allow President Trump to fire members of the Federal Trade Commission during oral arguments over the issue.

Sen. Ben Ray LujÃn (D-N.M.) began the line of questioning, citing the FCC's website, which said the agency was independent as of Wednesday morning. By Wednesday afternoon, the FCC's mission statement no longer said it was independent. Chairman Carr would not respond directly to questions about whether he believed the president was his boss. He would not answer whether it's appropriate if the president were to pressure him to go after media companies. He suggested the president has the power to fire him and other FCC commissioners.

A comprehensive database built by scientists in Switzerland and Norway has catalogued 16,000 chemicals linked to plastic materials, and the findings paint a troubling picture of what Americans are actually eating when they prepare food in their kitchens. Of those 16,000 chemicals, more than 5,400 are considered hazardous to human health by government and industry standards, while just 161 are classified as not hazardous. The remaining 10,700-plus chemicals simply don't have enough data to determine their safety.

The chemicals enter food through multiple pathways. Black plastic utensils and trays often contain brominated flame retardants because they're made from recycled electronic waste. Nonstick pans and compostable plates frequently contain PFAS. One California study found phthalates in three-quarters of tested foods, and a Consumer Reports analysis last year detected BPA or similar chemicals in 79% of foods tested. According to CDC data, more than 90% of Americans have measurable levels of these chemicals in their bodies. A 10-fold increase in maternal levels of brominated flame retardants is associated with a 3.7-point IQ drop in children.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Two of the largest food-delivery app companies have made a last-ditch effort to overturn tipping laws in New York City that go into effect in January just as its next mayor, who has been highly critical of the companies and the app industry, takes office. Tips to delivery workers have plummeted since some food-delivery apps switched to showing the tipping option only after a purchase had been completed; that change came after New York City established the country's first minimum pay-rate for the workers in 2023. The new laws will require the apps to suggest a minimum tip of 10 percent at checkout, though customers can contribute more or less, or nothing at all.

Two of the app companies, DoorDash and Uber, filed a joint federal lawsuit in the Southern District of New York late last week targeting the City Council legislation, arguing that the new rules violated the First Amendment by requiring them to "speak a government-mandated message" and exceeded the Council's authority. Although tipping will be optional under the law, the companies wrote in the suit that a "mandated pre-delivery 10 percent tip suggestion" would cause customers to use the app less because they were suffering from "tipping fatigue." "Lessened engagement would result in fewer orders," the suit said.