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SUMMARY FERRARI TO MAKE 80% HYBRID AND FULL-ELECTRIC RANGE BY 2030 06 FIRM BEHIND POPULAR US DOLLAR STABLECOIN TO LAUNCH EURO COIN 12 INTERNET, CELLPHONE OUTAGE CUTS KNOCKS RURAL ARIZONA OFFLINE 22 COURT: AMAZON CUSTOMERS CAN SUE OVER LACK OF TOXIC WARNINGS 32 THIS IS HOW A HIGHER FED RATE COULD AFFECT YOUR FINANCES 40 FLORIDA UTILITY AIMS TO ELIMINATE CARBON EMISSIONS BY 2045 54 CHAOS REIGNS IN ‘JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION’ 64 ‘SQUID GAME’ ADAPTED AS NON-FATAL REALITY SERIES FOR NETFLIX 78 M2 PROCESSOR - WWDC22: APPLE SILICON POWER GOING EVEN FURTHER 86 COINBASE GLOBAL PLANS TO CUT 1,100 JOBS, OR 18% OF STAFF 110 CYBERSECURITY COURSES RAMP UP AMID SHORTAGE OF PROFESSIONALS 114 BROADBAND EXPANSION HAS COMPANIES LOOKING TO RECRUIT 132 UPS TESTS TINY BATTERY-POWERED CYCLES IN CONGESTED CITIES 138 COMPANY TESTS HIGH-ALTITUDE AIRSHIP OVER NEW MEXICO DESERT 142 AUTOMAKERS ASK CONGRESS TO LIFT ELECTRIC VEHICLE TAX CAP 150 US REPORT: NEARLY 400 CRASHES OF AUTOMATED TECH VEHICLES 158 TESLA PROPOSES A 3-FOR-1 STOCK SPLIT; ELLISON TO LEAVE BOARD 166 SO LONG, INTERNET EXPLORER. THE BROWSER RETIRES 170 THE S&P 500 IS IN A BEAR MARKET; HERE’S WHAT THAT MEANS 176 SPACEX CLOSER TO LAUNCHING GIANT ROCKETSHIP AFTER FAA REVIEW 188 SAVINGS INCENTIVES: HOW 401(K)S GET US TO DO THE RIGHT THING 194 HOW TO AFFORD SUMMER ROAD TRIPS AMID HIGH GAS PRICES 200 QUALCOMM WINS ANTITRUST CASE AGAINST EU COMMISSION 208 CHINA’S FACTORY ACTIVITY REBOUNDS AS ANTI-VIRUS CURBS EASE 212 INTERIOR PHASING OUT PLASTIC WATER BOTTLES AT NATIONAL PARKS 216
FERRARI TO MAKE 80% HYBRID AND FULLELECTRIC RANGE BY 2030 Italian luxury sportscar maker Ferrari on Thursday outlined an electrification strategy that calls for 40% full-electric vehicles and 40% hybrid models by 2030. CEO Benedetto Vigna confirmed that the first electric car will be presented in 2025, with the first deliveries the following year. Now, just four Ferrari models, or 20% of the range, are hybrid cars. Its first hybrid model was the limited edition La Ferrari launched in 2013, capitalizing on Formula 1 technology. Image: Laurent Cipriani 06
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Vigna, a former technology entrepreneur who joined Ferrari as CEO nine months ago, said the electrification strategy is “highly relevant.” “Not only it is required by emissions regulations, but most importantly, we believe we can use the electric engine to enhance the performance of our cars, as we did already with our hybrid Ferrari,” he said at an analyst presentation. As Ferrari expands its model range, the car company based in the northern Italian city of Maranello said it would unveil the long-awaited Purosangue utility vehicle in September. Bearing the Italian name for thoroughbred, the Purosangue will represent no more than 20% of vehicles produced during its cycle. In all, Ferrari plans to launch 15 new models from 2023 to 2026, including a new highperformance supercar. 08
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FIRM BEHIND POPULAR US DOLLAR STABLECOIN TO LAUNCH EURO COIN 12
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Cryptocurrency company Circle said that it will start issuing its first euro-denominated cryptocurrency, a stablecoin known as Euro Coin, later this month. It would be the first stablecoin in euros — the world’s second-most-important reserve currency after the U.S. dollar — backed by a large player in the industry and could potentially become a major conduit for moving cryptocurrencies throughout Europe. The stablecoin, meaning it’s backed by hard assets, is launching at a time of major declines in the value of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, which has led crypto firms to fail and erase billions of dollars of digital wealth. That has led to calls for government regulation, which the European Union is getting close to approving. Circle owns and operates USD Coin, the second-most-popular stablecoin in the industry, with more than $54 billion sitting in that coin. The most popular is Tether, which has a market capitalization over $70 billion. Stablecoins have become an increasingly important part of the cryptocurrency market, acting as a bridge between traditional financial services like banks and those who want to invest or lend in bitcoin or ethereum. They are typically backed by hard assets, like cash, gold or safe government bonds and are typically priced as one coin for one unit of a particular type of currency. USDC is backed 1-for-1 by cash and short-term Treasurys. The new Euro Coin will be backed entirely by euros held in euro-denominated bank accounts, Circle said. 15
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The company is launching Euro Coin amid turmoil for cryptocurrencies. The third-largest stablecoin, Terra, collapsed in May in a matter of days. Terra was not backed by hard assets, like Tether or USDC are, and instead relied on an algorithm to keep its $1 value in check. The firm Celsius, with more than $10 billion in deposits, effectively failed this week, and customer deposits have been locked up in the company’s accounts with no timetable on when, or if, customers will get their funds back. Circle’s USDC has been a popular place for cryptocurrency investors to move their investments during the turmoil. The total number of USDC in circulation has increased from $49 billion at the beginning of May to more than $54 billion as of this week, according to Coinmarketcap.com. In the same time, Tether’s circulation has declined from $83 billion to roughly $71.5 billion. “This is actually, in some ways, it’s a great time to be launching products,”Jeremy Allaire, the CEO and co-founder of Circle, said in an interview.“The market turmoil has been a really positive catalyst for USDC. It has been the flight to safety for crypto.” Circle’s Euro Coin will be tradeable on some of major crypto exchanges, including Binance, starting on June 30. The European Union has been working on regulations for cryptocurrencies and other crypto assets like stablecoins. The bloc’s commissioner for financial services and stability, Mairead McGuinness, said that the Terra crash and Celsius’problems highlighted the need for crypto rules. 17
They’re also necessary to help enforce Western sanctions on Russia amid worries that cryptocurrencies could be used to evade them, she said. The EU rules “will be the right tool to address the concerns on consumer protection, market integrity and financial stability,” she said. The regulations include measures to tackle market manipulation and prevent money laundering, terrorist financing and other criminal activities. They also contain requirements to clearly spell out the risks and costs for consumers. EU lawmakers have drafted proposed legislation that needs agreement from the bloc’s Parliament and 27 member countries, which is expected soon. 18
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INTERNET, CELLPHONE OUTAGE CUTS KNOCKS RURAL ARIZONA OFFLINE A telecommunications outage over the weekend left swaths of rural northeastern Arizona without internet or phone connections, knocking out credit card processors and, in some cases, easy access to emergency services. The outage caused by sabotage of a Frontier Communications fiber line left local officials in Navajo and Apache counties fuming about what they called a pattern of problems that leave people out of touch and potentially vulnerable. “You go from 2022 to the 1800s,” said Lance Spivey, police chief in St. Johns, a small town near the New Mexico border that lost services. 22
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A spokeswoman for Frontier says the company worked to restore service as quickly as possible. The troubles began around 3 p.m. on Saturday (11), when someone shot a crucial fiber line in three places across 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) near Woodruff in Navajo County. The outage knocked out internet and cellphones that use Frontier’s infrastructure across much of the area. Service returned intermittently until being fully restored on Monday (13), Spivey said. The outage left many people temporarily out of touch. First responders kept their radios on at home in case they had to be called into service, Spivey said. Spivey said St. Johns and other rural communities have struggled for years with prolonged communication failures that he blames on Frontier. He has asked state regulators at the Arizona Corporation Commission to begin proceedings that could lead to sanctions against the company. The company agreed in March to take a variety of steps to improve reliability after the commission determined 911 services were out in Frontier territory for a cumulative 66 hours during the year ending in April 2021. “It’s just tragic that Frontier will put dollar signs before people’s lives and are jeopardizing police police, fire and EMS personnel, ambulance personnel, paramedics,” Spivey said. “We take an oath and we live by that oath to protect our communities, and when our partner has a key component and doesn’t keep up, we lose sleep at night.” Chrissy Murray, a spokeswoman for Frontier, said its customers lost 911 access for only 1 hour and 3 minutes on Sunday while crews were repairing the 24
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broken line. But she said other service providers, such as cellphone companies, had longer outages. “We have long been committed to providing this critical infrastructure to St. Johns,” Murray said. She said the company has “offered to discuss network redundancy” with regulators and the industry to improve reliability. The company is offering a $10,000 reward for help convicting the person who shot the lines, she said. The Navajo County Sheriff’s Office used two dedicated cellphones to field 911 and nonemergency calls, along with radio links to other 911 centers, said Chief Deputy Brian Swanty. That restricted dispatchers to one 911 call at a time and cut off services like call recording and geolocating the caller, he said. On the first day of the outage, Navajo County dispatchers fielded at least 60 calls from people seeking welfare checks when they couldn’t get ahold of their loved ones, Sheriff David Clouse said. Crews running the Coronado Generating Station struggled to reach on-call experts when the coal fire power plant experienced a “moderately common equipment failure” on Saturday, said Erica Roelfs, a spokeswoman for Salt River Project, which operates the plant. “We were able to resolve the issue relatively quickly, however the equipment repair process would have happened faster and smoother if we had ease of communication,” Roelfs said. Breonna Ellington said the lack of phone service prolonged an already stressful situation Sunday when her 5-year-old daughter was injured while playing. She drove a half-hour to the nearest 27
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hospital, where she waited four hours for staff to figure out how to get in touch with Phoenix Children’s Hospital and find out if the pediatric medical center could treat the injuries. With the internet down, gas stations were unable to accept credit card payments. Fortunately, she said, her husband had cash to buy gas for the fourhour drive to Phoenix. “It’s scary, and this shouldn’t be a problem that we have,” Ellington said. “It shouldn’t be happening. I just hope they get it fixed. I’m so glad that my little girl was OK. I hope they get it fixed so this doesn’t happen to any other parent who isn’t as lucky to have her be OK.” Rep. Tom O’Halleran, a Democrat who represents the area, asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate. The agency received the letter and is reviewing it but doesn’t disclose whether specific matters are under investigation, said Katie Gorscak, a spokeswoman. “However, the Commission under Chairwoman Rosenworcel has been especially focused on investigating and enforcing violations of our 911 and outage reporting rules,” Gorscak said. 29
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COURT: AMAZON CUSTOMERS CAN SUE OVER LACK OF TOXIC WARNINGS 33
The California Supreme Court has left intact a ruling that allows customers to sue Amazon. com for failing to warn buyers that some products it sells may contain hazardous substances such as mercury. The court in its decision Wednesday denied a request by Amazon’s lawyers to review a lower court ruling that said Amazon violated the state’s Proposition 65, which requires companies to warn consumers about products they make or sell that contain chemicals known to cause cancer, reproductive harm or birth defects. The case involved a lawsuit filed in Alameda County that said the online retail giant knowingly allowed skin-lightening creams to be sold on its website for years despite being aware of concerns about toxic mercury levels in such creams. Mercury can harm pregnant women and their fetuses. The suit alleged that some of the products produced by third parties but sold on Amazon contained mercury levels that were thousands of times the U.S. federal legal limit. Amazon said in a statement Thursday that safety is a top priority and that the products in question have long since been removed. “We require that all products comply with applicable laws and regulations, and we have proactive measures in place to prevent suspicious or non-compliant products from being listed and we monitor the products sold in our stores for product safety concerns,” the statement said. The Supreme Court’s action allows the previous court ruling to be used as precedent in state courts. 34
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However, California has such a large market share that any actions Amazon takes to comply with Proposition 65 could have a much wider impact on consumers, said Rachel Doughty, a plaintiff’s attorney in the suit. “That could look like removal of products containing carcinogens or reproductive toxins from Amazon’s site, or Amazon taking measures to ensure that a warning is provided ... so consumers can take steps to avoid exposure to such chemicals,” Doughty said in an email. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2019 by a judge who found Amazon was protected by a section of the federal Communications Decency Act that shields websites from liability for content posted by other parties. In March, however, a state appeals court said Amazon doesn’t merely act as a place for retailers to list their available merchandise but actively stores, sells and ships them. A drugstore that sold the same creams would be required to issue Proposition 65 warnings, the ruling said. 37
Simply Better Living SUPERSTEAM+ BUILT-IN WALL OVEN ™ SSC2489DS The Sharp® SuperSteam+ Built-In Wall Oven is the start of a cooking revolution. With Wi-Fi enabled IoT features, the innovations within this steam oven are a perfect match for modern cooking needs. While regular steam only reaches 212°F, the SuperSteam+ oven can create superheated steam up to 485°F. Steam this hot can roast meats and caramelize sugars so your food can be brown and crispy on the outside, tender and juicy on the inside. With the Sharp SuperSteam+ Oven, you can grill without smoke, roast without drying, and get the roasty-toasty, tasty results you desire. SEE FOR YOURSELF Get started right away with built-in recipes and download the Sharp SuperSteam+ Oven app* to enable the smart features and access custom recipes powered by SideChef. The new Sharp SuperSteam+ Built-In Wall Oven features Steam Bake for superior breads, and Water Bath for cheesecakes, custards and puddings. www.sharpusa.com | simplybetterliving.sharpusa.com *Mobile Application and Home Assistant Skill available upon commercial release. © 2020 Sharp Electronics Corporation. All rights reserved. Sharp, Supersteam™ Oven and all related trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sharp Corporation and/or its affiliated entities. Product specifications and design are subject to change without notice. Internal capacity calculated by measuring maximum width, depth and height. Actual capacity for holding food is less.
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THIS IS HOW A HIGHER FED RATE COULD AFFECT YOUR FINANCES 41
Record-low mortgages are long gone. Credit card rates will likely rise. So will the cost of an auto loan. Savers may finally see a noticeable return. The unusually large t hree-quarter point hike in its benchmark short-term rate that the Federal Reserve announced Wednesday won’t, by itself, have a huge effect on most Americans’ finances. But combined with earlier rate hikes and additional large increases to come, economists and investors foresee the fastest pace of rate increases since 1989. The result is increasingly higher borrowing costs as the Fed fights the most painfully high inflation in four decades and ends a decadeslong era of historically low rates. Chair Jerome Powell hopes that by making borrowing more expensive, the Fed will succeed in cooling demand for homes, cars and other goods and services and slow inflation. Yet the risks are high. With inflation likely to stay elevated, the Fed may have to drive borrowing costs even higher than it now expects. A series of higher rates could tip the U.S. economy into recession. That would mean higher unemployment, rising layoffs and continued pressure on stock prices. How will it affect your finances? These are some of the most common questions being asked about the impacts of the rate hike. I’M CONSIDERING BUYING A HOUSE. WILL MORTGAGE RATES KEEP GOING UP? Rates on home loans have soared in the past few months, mostly in anticipation of the Fed’s moves, and will probably keep rising. 42
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Mortgage rates don’t necessarily move up in tandem with the Fed’s rate increases. Sometimes, they even move in the opposite direction. Long-term mortgages tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which, in turn, is influenced by a variety of factors. These include investors’ expectations for future inflation and global demand for U.S. Treasurys. For now, though, faster inflation and strong U.S. economic growth are sending the 10-year Treasury rate up sharply. As a consequence, the national average for a 30-year fixed mortgage has jumped from 3% at the start of the year to well above 5% now. In part, the jump in mortgage rates reflects expectations that the Fed will keep raising its key rate. But its forthcoming hikes aren’t likely fully priced in yet. If the Fed jacks up its key rate even higher, as expected, the 10-year Treasury yield will go much higher, too, and mortgages will become more expensive. WILL IT STILL BE TOUGH TO FIND A HOUSE? If you’re looking to buy a home and are frustrated by the lack of available houses, which has triggered bidding wars and eye-watering prices, that may get a little easier soon. Economists say that higher mortgage rates will discourage some would-be purchasers. And average home prices, which have been soaring at about a 20% annual rate, could at least rise at a slower pace. Sales of existing homes have fallen for six straight months. New home sales have also 45
slumped. Those trends are modestly boosting the supply of available properties. I NEED A NEW CAR. SHOULD I BUY ONE NOW? Fed rate hikes can make auto loans more expensive. But other factors also affect these rates, including competition among car makers that can sometimes lower borrowing costs. Rates for buyers with lower credit ratings are most likely to rise as a result of the Fed’s hikes. Because used vehicle prices, on average, are rising, monthly payments will rise too. WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO MY CREDIT CARD? For users of credit cards, home equity lines of credit and other variable-interest debt, rates would rise by roughly the same amount as the Fed hike, usually within one or two billing cycles. That’s because those rates are based in part on banks’ prime rate, which moves in tandem with the Fed. Those who don’t qualify for low-rate credit cards might be stuck paying higher interest on their balances. The rates on their cards would rise as the prime rate does. The Fed’s rate increases have already sent credit card borrowing rates above 20% for the first time in at least four years, according to LendingTree, which has tracked the data since 2018. HOW WILL THIS AFFECT MY SAVINGS? You may earn a bit more, though not likely by very much. And it depends on where your savings, if you have any, are parked. 46
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Savings, certificates of deposit and money market accounts don’t typically track the Fed’s changes. Instead, banks tend to capitalize on a higher-rate environment to try to increase their profits. They do so by imposing higher rates on borrowers, without necessarily offering any juicer rates to savers. This is particularly true for large banks now. They’ve been flooded with savings as a result of government financial aid and reduced spending by many wealthier Americans during the pandemic. They won’t need to raise savings rates to attract more deposits or CD buyers. But online banks and others with high-yield savings accounts could be an exception. These accounts are known for aggressively competing for depositors. The only catch is that they typically require significant deposits. HOW WILL THE HIKE INFLUENCE CRYPTO? Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin could become a little less attractive to many investors. While bitcoin prices were mostly unchanged after the Fed’s announcement, crypto prices had declined in the days leading up to the central bank’s move. They dropped by a third in seven days. Higher interest rates mean that safe assets like bonds and Treasuries become more attractive to investors because their yields are now higher. That, in turn, makes risky assets like technology stocks and cryptocurrencies less attractive. All that said, bitcoin is suffering from its own problems that are separate from economic policy. Two major crypto firms have failed in 49
the span of a month. The shaken confidence of crypto investors is not being helped by the fact the safest place you can park money now — bonds — seems like a safer move. WILL MY STUDENT LOAN PAYMENT GO UP? Right now, payments on federal student loans are paused until August 31 as part of an emergency measure put into place during the pandemic. Inflation means loan-holders have less disposable income to make payments, but a slowed economy that reduces inflation could bring some relief by fall. The government may choose to extend the emergency measure deferring payments at the end of summer, depending on the state of the economy. President Joe Biden is also considering some form of loan forgiveness. For those taking out new private student loans, prepare to pay more. Rates vary by lender, but are expected to increase. 50
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FLORIDA UTILITY AIMS TO ELIMINATE CARBON EMISSIONS BY 2045 Florida’s largest electricity provider has announced plans to eliminate its carbon emissions by 2045 by halting its fossil fuel usage and greatly increasing its reliance on solar energy, including using it to turn water into hydrogen to power its generating plants. Florida Power & Light, which serves 5.7 million homes and businesses or about half the state, said the multibillion dollar plan will not result in any price increases beyond what would be anticipated normally. 54
Image: Phelan M. Ebenhack 55
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FPL’s parent company, NextEra Energy, said in its announcement this week that when its “Real Zero” plan is fully implemented 23 years from now, 83% of the utility’s electricity will be generated by solar, including “green hydrogen,” or come from battery storage from periods when excess power is produced. Green hydrogen is a process where solar power is used to break apart water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. That hydrogen is then used as a fuel source, eliminating the company’s use of natural gas. Most of the solar facilities will be built on converted, unused farmland in the central part of the state. The company says another 16% of FPL’s power will be generated by its two current nuclear plants and 1% from renewable natural gas, which is created from biomass such as plant waste. It has set five-year goals starting in 2025 that it says will allow environmental groups and others to audit its progress. The plan still must be approved by the state utility commission. FPL spokesman Chris McGrath said that the plan is a continuation of the company’s move since 2001 to reduce its carbon emissions. At that time, about a quarter of its electricity was generated by burning oil and coal, but that has been eliminated in Florida. A Georgia coal plant in which FPL owns a 25% stake will close by 2028. Today, about two-thirds of FPL’s power comes from natural gas, which generates carbon emissions but less than oil and coal. Another 20% comes from nuclear, 4% from solar, while the rest comes from the Georgia plant and other sellers. 57
“This is a goal that we are setting because we think the technology exists and it can be done in a cost-effective way for our customers,” McGrath said. Wind power will not be used in Florida because that would require purchasing expensive coastal property to erect turbines, a move that would also be opposed by the tourism industry. Rising levels of greenhouse gases are increasing global temperatures and fueling extreme weather, from wildfires to violent storms. The burning of coal, oil and natural gas for energy production is a major contributor and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that the public is “firmly on track toward an unlivable world,” unless emissions fall faster than countries have previously committed. Harrison G. Fell, a senior researcher at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said FPL can reach its goals by 2045, “but it won’t be without challenges and some of the interim targets may be more difficult to meet.” 58
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For example, he said, FPL’s goal to double its solar production by 2025 could run into problems finding supplies and production sites and then connecting those sites to the grid. He said the Biden administration’s policies that have lowered tariffs on imported solar equipment should help, but rising prices for raw materials could hamper FPL’s plan. Still, he said, eliminating its use of natural gas might benefit FPL as the fuel’s price is soaring and could remain high. “If that’s the case, becoming less natural gas reliant is not only a good environmental move by FPL, but may also prove to be a good longrun, low-cost energy production strategy as well,” Fell said. NextEra’s stock was selling at around $74 per share, up about $2.50 or 3.5% after the announcement. 60
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CHAOS REIGNS IN ‘JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION’ The enduring, collective love for “Jurassic Park” is immensely hard to explain. Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film implanted itself into our cultural consciousness as a kind of platonic ideal of a blockbuster. And it wasn’t just the 10-year-olds having a formative experience at the movie theater. Most everyone, it seems, including those who were adults at the time and those who wouldn’t be born for another decade or more, has a story about just how much that movie means to them. It doesn’t even matter how many times you watch it, or how much better special effects get: “Jurassic Park” never tarnishes, it just remains perfectly preserved in amber. 64
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Jurassic World Dominion - Official Trailer [HD] 67
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It’s hard to fault anyone for trying to recapture that magic — a filmmaker, a studio, or an audience looking for a fun time at the movies. Even Spielberg himself had trouble. But now, somehow, we’re six movies and three decades in and about as far as one could get from the spark that made that first one so special as we supposedly bid farewell to the “Jurassic World” era with “ Jurassic World: Dominion.” I can’t say I didn’t have some real fun with “Dominion.” There is an exceedingly well-done motorcycle chase through the streets of Taos, immense pleasure in watching Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum together again and the fun addition of a hotshot pilot played by DeWanda Wise. And there is wall-to-wall action that makes the almost two and a half hour runtime go by swiftly. But I also can’t say that I didn’t burst out laughing several times at parts that were not designed to be funny. “Jurassic World: Dominion” is a chaotic mishmash on an epic scale and, believe it or not, the dinosaurs (who look great) are almost beside the point. After the events of “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” dinosaurs are just...around. There’s even a black-market operation in Taos that is so elaborate, you’d think we were 30 years into a post-dino dystopia and not just several years after dinos escaped into the wild. But, again, “Dominion” isn’t really about the dinosaurs. It’s about locusts and tech giants. A company called Biosin is the big bad here and it’s run by a man named Lewis Dodgson (now played by Campbell Scott) who, you might recall, was the guy looking to buy the embryos in the first film. 69
Jurassic World Dominion | Trailer 2 [HD] 70
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Dodgson has morphed from a sweaty Gordon Gekko-type on vacation into a Steve Jobs-ian visionary who is still up to no good and after profits. Dern’s Ellie Sattler suspects that they’re behind a locust epidemic that’s destroying all the food that isn’t grown with Biosin seed and decides to use it as an excuse to team up with Neill’s Alan Grant again for the first time in years. Conveniently, Biosin is also where Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm is an in-house public intellectual. And they’re also looking for the clone girl, Maisie (Isabella Sermon), from the last film. She’s been in hiding with Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) for the past few years. There is a lot of elaborate wheel-spinning and globetrotting to get everyone to the Biosin headquarters in the Dolomites, a Bond villian complex that’s surrounded by a dino sanctuary. It’s a lot of people too. At some points, there are eight running from dinosaurs together. Oddly, this doesn’t have the effect of upping the stakes. It’s more like watching a tour group at an experiential amusement park exhibit, which might have something to do with the lingering problem that it may not be fun to watch the dinosaurs run amok anymore, no matter how big they’ve gotten. Colin Trevorrow is back in the director’s chair and shares a writing credit with Emily Carmichael, who adds value and wit to the proceedings, but it’s hard to say what it all adds up to. It’s fun at times and silly at others. But it doesn’t course correct enough to redeem this franchise or bring it back to Earth. “Jurassic World” started too big. There was nowhere to grow, except at the box office. 73
It was a Hail Mary to bring back the “Jurassic Park” originals. But their big meeting with the “Jurassic World” cast has the unintended effect of reminding how little we have come to care about the new cast. It’s not really their fault. Pratt and Howard have some good moments here too, but their characters got flattened somewhere along the way. And there is just no competition when the originals are there being charming. At one point, Goldbum’s chaotician Ian Malcolm quips “Jurassic World? Not a fan.” He’s talking about the failed amusement park that kickstarted the new trilogy, but it’s also so onthe-nose you have to applaud everyone behind it, from the filmmakers to the studio. They’re waving goodbye with a laugh. “Jurassic World: Dominion,” a Universal Pictures release in theaters Thursday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for, “language, intense sequences of action, some violence.” Running time: 146 minutes. Two stars out of four. MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. 74
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‘SQUID GAME’ ADAPTED AS NON-FATAL REALITY SERIES FOR NETFLIX 78
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A reality show inspired by Netflix’s hit series “Squid Game” is coming to the streaming service, but with far less dire consequences promised for contestants. In the South Korean-produced drama, players’ lives were at stake. With “Squid Game: The Challenge,” the “worst fate is going home empty-handed,” Netflix said Tuesday in announcing the reality show. The 10-episode competition will include 456 players vying for a “life-changing reward of $4.56 million,” Netflix said in a release. They’ll compete in games inspired by the drama series along with new challenges aimed at whittling down the field. “For this round, the Front Man is in search of English-language speakers from any part of the world,” the release said, a reference to the overseer of the drama’s deadly game. The game show, which will be filmed in Britain, is recruiting contestants online. A release date for the new show was not announced. The original series pitted hundreds of players with financial woes against each other in a violent contest for a potential multimillion-dollar prize. Losers were killed throughout the contest. The drama is deemed by Netflix as its most popular, with more than 1.65 billion hours viewed in the first 28 days after its September 2021 premiere. It’s been renewed for season two with series creator and director Hwang Dong-hyuk aboard, Netflix said. 82
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M2 Processor WWDC22: Apple Silicon power going even further 87
At this year’s WWDC, Apple lifted the lid on the next generation M-series chip: M2, which extends the remarkable features of M1, with industryleading power efficiency, a unified memory architecture, and custom technologies that unlock a whole host of possibilities for the Mac. 88
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INTRODUCING THE M2 CHIP Apple changed the game for the Mac when it announced the M1 chip in 2020, and since the launch of the first MacBook Pro and Mac mini, we’ve come a long way. Alongside the launch of the M1 Pro and the M1 Max, we’ve recently seen the launch of the first M1-powered iPad, and the M1 Ultra, which offers professional computing performance for the next generation of videographers, coders, and professionals. The M1 was built on the architecture of the A14 chip used for the iPad and iPhone, doubling the performance of the CPU cores, GPU cores, and memory bandwidth to make them compatible with the next-generation of Mac devices. In early benchmarks, the M1 outperformed virtually every Intel-based Mac ever made, even the Mac Pro, and Apple has used the power of the new chip to refresh its entire Mac lineup, 90
recently introducing an all-new MacBook Air, and previously an overhauled iMac desktop. In short, M1 changed the way both consumers and professionals thought about the Mac, with some technology critics suggesting that the M1 chip “saved Apple’s computing lineup.” It’s been more than a year and a half since the launch of the first M1 computer, and now it’s time for Apple to lift the lid on what’s next. It’s unlikely that we’ll see a new M-series chip every year as we do with the iPhone; instead, an 18- to 24-month M-series refresh cycle will be introduced to help Apple keep its Mac range at the top of its game. Appearing first in the new MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro is the M2 chip - if the M1 was the A14, the M2 is the A15 chip. It’s made from billion transistors, 25 percent more than M1, and though it still uses the same 5nm manufacturing process as its 91
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predecessor, it features an “enhanced” process that’s designed to increase performance. Apple says that the M2 doubles the high-performance CPU cores from the A15, for an eight-core setup of four high-performance cores and four highefficiency cores, and with a shared L2 cache increasing from 12MB to 16MB, clock speeds will likely go a little higher on the M2. The efficiency cores on the new chip have the same cache as the M1 but have been given other architectural improvements, which helps give the M2 an 18% greater CPU performance than the M1, putting the chip on par with a Ryzen 7 3800X desktop CPU, but with around 20% of its power consumption. 94
With the M2 chip, Apple has doubled the GPU cores from the A15, so it’s available with up to 10 GPU cores, though the entry-level device has only 8 GPU cores enabled. By having 25% more GPU cores, it could be argued that you’d expect 25% better performance, but the truth is that most graphics performance tasks are limited by memory bandwidth. That’s where M2 really comes into its own: Apple says its GPU performance is up to 35 percent better than M1, though power consumption has increased as a result. In its marketing material for the new chip, Apple says that the M2 is 2.3 times faster than the Intel Core i7-1255U at the same power level, and early Geekbench data would suggest that this is the case, though the i7-12700KF 95
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and i9-11900K just beat it with a single-core score of 1872 and 1878 respectively, compared to the M2’s 1869. Though the M2 can be easily compared to the A15 chip, the transition from M1 to M2 does not work in the same way as the transition from A14 to A15 when it comes to the memory subsystem. The A14 and A15 have the same main memory subsystem specs: a 64-bit wide LPDDR4x interface. The M1 doubled that to 128 bits wide and stuck with LPDDR4x, for a peak of 68.25GB/s, whereas the M2 makes jumps to LPDDR5x, which boosts memory bandwidth to 100GB/s. This gives us some idea of where Apple could be headed when it launches the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips in 2023 - they might hold 50 percent more memory bandwidth than the M1 Pro and Max, clocking in at 400GB/s and 800GB/s respectively, which could blow any other processor out of the water and make the Mac users’ first choice. The new M2 chip indeed features more CPU, GPU, and RAM than the M1 chip, but it’s all of the system-on-chip features combined that really make the new M2 special. The Neural Engine, for example, features 16 cores and can now perform up to 15.8 trillion operations per second, up from 11 trillion on the M1, 99
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whilst the media engine has been upgraded and supports H.264 and HEVC encoding and decoding up to 8K resolution and includes the ProRes video acceleration support. It’s also been reported that advanced video editing is possible on these entry-level MacBook Air models, which is truly revolutionary and makes the M2 chip a truly exceptional piece of engineering. When Apple does eventually get around to adding the M2 to its more advanced machines, like the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro, we’ll likely see some impressive rendering benchmarks that save users lots of time. Of course, the transition from Intel to M1 is much more dramatic than the transition from M1 to M2, but the features and enhancements are still useful. What will perhaps be most interesting is to see Apple’s evolution towards 102
the M2 Pro, M2 Max, and M2 Ultra chips, and where the firm could be headed beyond that. Apple’s already been teasing the launch of a new Mac Pro, likely to be released this year, alongside refreshed MacBook Pro models. THE 13-INCH MACBOOK PRO WITH M2 Although the MacBook Air was the star of the show at this year’s WWDC, complete with an all-new design, the 13-inch MacBook Pro was also handed some new features. It was an unusual move for Apple, as it’s transitioned its MacBook Pro family away from the 13-inch design and added a bunch of new features, but it’s thought that the Cupertino company wants to continue to offer an entry-level Pro model to appease professionals. There are no design changes to this iteration of the device, 103
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and MagSafe is not supported, but the machine offers a faster 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU, working with RAW images in apps like Affinity is nearly 40 percent faster than the previous generation, and up to 3.4x faster for users who are upgrading from a model without Apple silicon. Apple also says that playing games on the new 13-inch MacBook Pro should be better - playing graphics-intensive games like Baldur’s Gate 3 is also nearly 40 percent faster than the previous 13-inch MacBook Pro, the company said, whilst the device now supports up to 24GB of unified memory — along with 50 percent more memory bandwidth to make multitasking a breeze. The new model supports ProRes encode and decode in the media engine of M2, so users can play back up to 11 streams of 4K and up to two streams of 8K ProRes video, and convert their video projects to ProRes nearly 3x faster than before. The 13-inch MacBook Pro also offers phenomenal battery life with up to 20 hours of video playback, making it the ideal on-the-go machine for modern developers, videographers, photographers, and more. 105
The transition toward M2 is the next step in Apple’s Mac timeline. With its entire range of computers (bar the Mac Pro) more advanced than ever before, we can’t wait to see how M2 will further revolutionize computing, creating more powerful, capable machines for all of us. 106
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COINBASE GLOBAL PLANS TO CUT 1,100 JOBS, OR 18% OF STAFF Coinbase Global says it plans to cut about 1,100 jobs, or approximately 18% of its global workforce, as part of a restructuring in order to help manage its operating expenses in response to current market conditions. The cryptocurrency trading platform said in a regulatory filing that it expects to have about 5,000 total employees at the end of its current fiscal quarter on June 30. The company reported last month that active monthly users fell by 19% in the first quarter amid 110
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the decline in crypto values. Cryptocurrencies soared early in the pandemic as ultralow rates encouraged some investors to pile into the riskiest investments. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has tumbled and briefly fell below $21,000 in Asia this week, down from a peak of $68,990 late last year. Coinbase estimates that it will incur about $40 million to $45 million in total restructuring expenses, mostly related to employee severance and other termination benefits. The restructuring plan is anticipated to be substantially complete in the second quarter. The remote-first company was founded in 2012 and has no headquarters. It went public just over a year ago, in April 2021, by listing its stock directly and skipping the traditional process of hiring underwriters. Shares closed on the first day at around $328, the stock lost 7% to $48.40. 113
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CYBERSECURITY COURSES RAMP UP AMID SHORTAGE OF PROFESSIONALS The pressure was on. Someone, somewhere, was attacking computer systems so customers couldn’t reach certain websites. In a windowless room in Denver, Zack Privette had worked all morning with his security team to figure out what the cyber strangers were up to. “What’s happened is that we have an attacker who has been going through our different websites and they found a vulnerability into our active directory and …,” Privette explained to Richard Mac Namee, identified as chief operating officer of the company under attack. 115
“OK, I’m not technical. What does that mean?” interrupted Mac Namee, who is really the director of the new Cybersecurity Center at Metropolitan State University of Denver. And he’s actually quite technical. This was a simulation. The makeshift “Cyber Range” command center inside MSU Denver’s Cybersecurity Center had multiple TV screens showing ominous maps of live cyber threats. It’s part of a unique training ground for students, recent grads and people who don’t even attend the college but are interested in cybersecurity careers. Privette, who isn’t an MSU student, got to experience the Cyber Range program because it’s open to outsiders. The industry needs more outsiders. According to one estimate, there are 66 cybersecurity professionals for every 100 job openings nationwide. It’s tighter in Colorado, where there are 59 for every 100. And demand is growing faster than training programs like MSU can graduate. Mac Namee is behind the school’s Cybersecurity Center and getting the school designated as a National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense in March. A former commander in the United Kingdom’s Special Forces who’s worked as a specialist in counterterrorism, Mac Namee keeps it practical. During the simulation, he pretends to be an ordinary company executive. Students must figure out how to explain the cyber mayhem to non-techies — and fast! “It is a giant database that … holds their DNS server. And what a DNS server does is when you type in Google.com, it will change that to the IP 116
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address that the computer actually reads. That went down, which is why people are not able to access websites correctly,” Privette told Mac Namee. “That was down at 3:30:29. We have since brought it back up at 3:44.” “So, 14 minutes of outage,” Mac Namee said. “Fourteen minutes with our athletes and the way they’re trying to log on, that’s quite a big problem. How will we resolve this?” Privette went on to explain that there was a backup so the data is safe. But he acknowledged the attackers were still inside the system and his team was now trying to figure out if data had been stolen. His team thinks credentials were taken, but he doesn’t think the theft involved customers’ personally identifiable data, he said. Mac Namee gave him an hour to figure it out. — How it’s going Targeted training programs have been popping up nationwide for the past decade as nearly every business with a website, ecommerce offering or other internet-based operation must deal with data breaches, ransomware and other cyber threats. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, which tracks breaches and supports victims, the number of publicly reported data breaches in the U.S. more than doubled since 2015 to 1,862 last year. Regulations in Colorado and around the globe also put the onus on companies to protect customers’ personal data. Back in 1999, partly to address the lack of qualified professionals, the U.S. National Security Agency launched its National Centers of Academic Excellence program. It certifies 119
schools with a cybersecurity curriculum for cyber research, defense education and cyber operations. There are now about 380 colleges and universities in the U.S. Such designations require standardized cybersecurity curriculum, active challenges and professional development. There are 13 schools in Colorado and include state, community and private colleges. The partnership with industry and MSU Denver is credited to Mac Namee, said Steve Beaty, a professor in the school’s computer science department. While Beaty started teaching cybersecurity courses in 2004, a cybersecurity degree debuted just four years ago. The new center and partnerships with private cybersecurity companies such as Atos, a European information technology firm that is now taking up space in the facility, really took off after Mac Namee arrived. “He had the bandwidth. Some of us haven’t had the bandwidth to do a lot of this stuff. Atos is due to him,” Beaty said. “Richard is the one who put the fire under what’s going on here.” And looking at the heat map of cybersecurity job openings at CyberSeek.org, the U.S. needs it. In the past 12 months, 714,548 cybersecurity jobs were posted in the U.S. according to EMSI Burning Glass, a firm that analyzes job openings and labor data. EMSI partnered with the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) and the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education on the CyberSeek effort to document the need for more trained workers. Colorado, among the top 10 states with the most openings, had 25,761 as of April. 120
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“The field is just growing so fast that even if we churn out many graduates, which we have seen a significant uptick in, it still often doesn’t keep pace with the growth in demand,” said Will Markow, an EMSI Burning Glass cybersecurity expert. “We’ve seen about a 40%-50% increase in the number of graduates from cybersecurity programs across the country. The problem is that during the same timeframe, demand for cybersecurity workers grew about twice that rate.” — Retraining employers to rethink hiring The industry has a number of unique issues that compound the shortage, Markow said. New threats erupt all the time, so the industry is constantly scrambling. Workers need a mix of different IT skill sets plus credentials, some that require years of experience. That makes it difficult for those starting out who have no experience. “Employers are also not offering many opportunities for people who either don’t have a bachelor’s degree or who don’t have at least three to five years of prior work experience,” Markow said. “What that means is that there aren’t many entry level opportunities (and that) presents a unique challenge for building the pipeline of cybersecurity workers.” Cybersecurity jobs stay open 20% longer than other tech jobs, which are already notoriously hard to fill, he added. And because of the required degrees and certifications, the jobs pay about $15,000 more compared to other IT jobs. Government agencies are more open to hiring skilled workers without college backgrounds. That’s true with the state Governor’s Office of Information Technology. A paid apprenticeship 123
for veterans requires “some IT experience but no degree,” said Ray Yepes, Colorado’s chief information security officer. “It’s also worth noting that for the majority of OIT positions we will accept years of experience as a substitute for education,” Yates said in an email. With the growth of college programs, boot camps and other training programs, Markow said that it’s up to companies to adjust hiring requirements if they really want to fill openings and feed their own talent pipeline. “I think that really the question is whether employers are going to be receptive (and) hire those workers,” he said. “They’re learning the right skills for cybersecurity. What we need are employers to also recognize that they need to take more of a skills-based lens towards recruiting cybersecurity workers as opposed to a credential- or experience-based lens which they have done historically.” — How it went While security simulations were happening in one part of the room at MSU Denver, in another, Nathan Shelley was at work. Literally. The recent MSU graduate with a Bachelor of Science in cybersecurity was hired by Atos as an intern just before his December graduation. He became a full-time employee May 30. Atos is a massive European IT firm based in Paris. “We monitor public-sector clouds,” said Shelley, who grew up in Estes Park and was drawn to MSU Denver because of its new cybersecurity degree. “We are responsible for monitoring log traffic and determining if there are false positives or true positives.” 124
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Shelley was monitoring computer systems of actual government agencies that hire Atos to make sure what is stored in the internet cloud isn’t being compromised. Security analysts like Shelley spend hours watching the online activity and thanks to artificial intelligence and monitoring tools, they get alerts when something is awry and must determine if the issue is real. That may not seem very exciting but a cheery Shelley speaks enthusiastically about his gig, which includes plugging holes discovered only after software was released. In other words, bugs born on day zero that online mischief makers are constantly hunting for. “Probably the most active that I’ve been this week was yesterday when we were patching for a recently discovered CVE, that is a vulnerability with Follina, it’s a proliferating, zero-day exploit,” he said. “This is very widespread for the Microsoft environment. It’s an Office 365 zeroday vulnerability so that means (the software) was released with the vulnerability. It’s now flaring up in the cybersecurity realm. It allows remote code execution and that can be done through a certain domain.” Microsoft had not yet issued a fix for Follina, named after an Italian village with a postal code that was found in the exploit. The MSU Cybersecurity Center is a resource for others, too. Helping potential IT workers get hired is the mission of ActivateWork, a nonprofit IT recruiting and training organization that connects employers to the overlooked talent. “We believe the traditional hiring process leaves extremely valuable talent out. 127
We help employers solve talent gaps by finding underrepresented candidates and preparing them to excel in new careers,” said Susan Hobson, the nonprofit’s director of apprenticeships and evaluation. Its first-ever 15-week security fundamentals course culminated last week with MSU Denver’s Cyber Range simulation. Hobson said ActivateWork focuses on the workforce employers need. “We know that cybersecurity has a gap, especially here in the Denver area,” she said. “If you look at local area labor data, there were 13,000 open cybersecurity jobs as of March this year. We knew the need was there and we drive our course offerings based on local employer needs.” ActivateWork’s learners aren’t typical students. Most don’t have a college credential. Many are unemployed or are looking for a better job in IT. The recent cohort of security fundamentals graduates left with CompTIA A+ certification and over 100 hours of soft skills and life skills training including resume reviews, interview prep and financial capability training. After graduation, ActivateWork helps them find a job in the field and coaches them for 12 months as they transition into a career. The organization also has a registered apprenticeship program with the U.S. Department of Labor and works with area employers to hire graduates from their boot camps. Three of the 20 graduates start cybersecurity apprenticeships this month, and ActivateWork is always looking for more companies to partner with to build a talent pipeline in cybersecurity. 128
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“They’re struggling to hire because they’re looking for individuals with three to five years of experience,” Hobson said. “This is a way to equip talent through 12-months of on-the-job learning with the exact skills an employer needs.” Privette, who was part of the MSU Denver cybersecurity simulation, stopped the bug from wreaking more havoc. They brought back the websites and, well, he hopes he continues to keep learning more. He is very excited to start his ActivateWork cybersecurity apprenticeship as an information security analyst. “I’ve been wanting to get into this since high school and I feel like ActivateWork has really given me the opportunity to pursue it,” said Privette, an electrician until he fell from the ceiling at one client location. “I didn’t have the money to afford college. And then I didn’t really realize the path to get to it (cybersecurity). I didn’t want to be an electrician forever. Falling through the ceiling gave me the opportunity to pursue this.” 131
BROADBAND EXPANSION HAS COMPANIES LOOKING TO RECRUIT Bridging the digital divide has become a priority for Louisiana since the COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on the crucial role high-speed internet plays in the state’s education and economic systems. Using federal funds, the state launched a $180 million program last year to provide underserved areas with high-speed internet. In March the Acadiana area welcomed Vice President Kamala Harris to Ville Platte to announce another $30 million federal grant to build fiber internet across 11 rural towns in the area. Although major federal investments are aiming to bridge that gap, the funds can only go so far without an increase in the number of workers 132
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capable of building and installing high-speed internet infrastructure, The Advertiser reported. “We have so much work today that we can’t keep up. We’d almost have to double our workforce without taking on any new clients,” said Nathan Carbo, who runs internet infrastructure company System Services alongside his wife Kristin Carbo. “I need 30 people yesterday,” he added. It’s a similar story for LUS Fiber, particularly after the city-owned telecom was awarded $21 million of that $30 million federal grant earlier this year and is asking for a $19 million piece of the state’s $180 million GUMBO program to expand in other rural Acadiana communities. “It’s hard finding the workers that want to work in the house and that can do the critical thinking side of troubleshooting this technology, but also be skilled enough to do the operational side of running those cables, dressing it in and making sure it looks nice, plus have that customer experience so that they can articulate how to use the product,” LUS Fiber Director Ryan Meche said. “So, there are a lot of pieces.” But the issue is presenting an opportunity to invest in local communities and to develop a workforce that can capitalize on the need for workers who can install and repair high-speed internet infrastructure. “Why don’t we invest in our local communities and create jobs locally with all that we’re doing?,” Nathan Carbo said. To that end, both the Carbos and Meche are working with South Louisiana Community College to launch a new fiber-optic install 135
technician program this summer to meet the expanding workforce needs of the region and help residents develop skills to launch their careers. “We’ve been working with the industry now for just a little over two years to design a program that is versatile enough to produce entry level employees into each aspect of this industry,” SLCC’s Director of Transportation, Distribution, & Logistics Charlotte LeLeux said. The school’s new fiber optic technician program is expected to launch at SLCC’s Crowley campus in July, LeLeux said, with room for about 25 to 30 students to complete the 18-20 week course. It will cover how to splice fiber optic cables, how to hang cable on telephone poles, how to operate installation equipment and other skills. The goal will be to cover everything from construction to putting fiber in the home, LeLeux said, “so that when they’re hired on by these companies, their training with them would be very minimal. “That would be a win for the college, a win for the student and a definite win for our industry partners,” she said. Ideally, that collaboration is a path to building gainful employment opportunities locally, while also developing a workforce to meet the needs of increasingly connected communities in Acadiana. “We’re getting involved at the right time, so we can start building the (workforce) pipeline, start seeing what’s working, so that, in so many years, we’ll have a continuous pipeline,” Meche said. “It will be good for everybody,” he added. “I think it’ll create higher paying jobs, better quality of life. I think everyone’s gonna win from it.” 136
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UPS TESTS TINY BATTERYPOWERED CYCLES IN CONGESTED CITIES The sleek four-wheeled carts look familiar enough, but not even UPS knows precisely how to describe what could be the delivery giant’s latest way to get packages to your door. UPS unveiled a battery-powered, four-wheeled cycle to more efficiently haul cargo in some of the world’s most congested streets and to reduce its carbon footprint. The company is trying to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. The slimmed-down vehicles don the company’s gold-colored logo and accompanying stripe on a dark brown background. But the “eQuad” — as the company calls it — garnered amusement from passersby. Ian Lagowitz had never seen one and walked over to give it a look. 138
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“It’s funny looking,” he said, “but it’s probably good for the city, right?” Mohammad Islam called the vehicle “cool stuff,” and wished the program well. “Big trucks always blocking the traffic,” he said, “so if they do that kind of stuff, it’s 10 times better for everybody.” The pedal-powered vehicle was dwarfed by one of the company’s more traditional delivery trucks, which rumble through traffic and sometimes draw the ire of motorists trying to get by parked trucks on narrow streets. Delivery companies have tried all sorts of ways to deliver packages — from traditional vans to drones. The company now has a fleet of more than 1,000 electric vehicles and thousands more that aren’t powered by traditional gas engines. UPS said a trial run is focused on New York City and in several cities in Europe. “New York is a complicated city, when we look at the density,” said Nicole Pilet, the industrial engineering director for UPS. “So if we can have success here in the city, then we can see how we implement in other cities throughout the U.S.” The company had its start in Seattle more than a century ago and the first deliveries were made by foot or bicycle. As the company grew, its motorized fleet did, too. “This is right in my wheelhouse,” said Dyghton Anderson, a 22-year-old UPS delivery person and an avid cyclist who is helping pilot the program. “I ride to and from work — from all the way from the Bronx all the way to here on 43rd — so it’s pretty comfortable for me.” 141
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COMPANY TESTS HIGH-ALTITUDE AIRSHIP OVER NEW MEXICO DESERT A technology company that wants to bring broadband to more remote areas and monitor methane and other emissions from the oil and gas industry launched one of its airships from the New Mexico desert this week as part of a key test on the way to commercial operations. Sceye Inc. is developing a high-altitude platform station that company officials hope will provide an option other than satellites and airplanes for boosting internet connectivity and collecting data on everything from industrial pollution to wildfire threats. It took a couple of hours for the unmanned helium-filled station to reach the stratosphere. It will maintain its position there for 24 hours, Image: Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen 143
a milestone that will bring Sceye closer to commercial operations over the next 18 to 24 months. Founder and CEO Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsenand said his team will aim for more longevity with subsequent flights from their home base in Roswell. “Every flight is a big deal but every flight also is just another step in a process of iterative learning,” he said during a virtual interview from Sceye’s hangar where workers were busy prepping the massive airship for the flight. Vestergaard Frandsenand said it takes about eight months to build a station, which consists of a sleek reflective fabric designed to operate in the stratosphere at 65,000 feet (19.8 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface. 144
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NASA several years ago proposed a challenge that called for designs that could fly higher and longer than existing airships, with scientists at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California saying observations at that altitude could provide greater clarity. At the time, no airship could maintain an altitude in the stratosphere for more than eight hours. Capable of lifting heavy payloads, Sceye’s airship runs on solar panels and a bank of lithium-sulphur batteries. “Whether we achieve our objective with this flight or achieve something that’s short of the objective, we’re going to learn a lot,” he said. The New Mexico Economic Development Department pledged up to $5 million in funding when Sceye announced it would locate in the state. The company has operations in Roswell and Moriarty, a small community near Albuquerque. Sceye partnered last year with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and New Mexico regulators to study air pollution and climate change over the coming years. The state also has been studying accelerated formats for expanding high-speed internet, and state officials have said Sceye could play a role in that effort through a separate multimilliondollar contract. 148
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AUTOMAKERS ASK CONGRESS TO LIFT ELECTRIC VEHICLE TAX CAP Major automakers are asking Congress to lift the cap on how many people can receive tax credits for buying a hybrid or fully electric vehicle. Currently the number of tax credits allowed is capped at 200,000 per company. General Motors and Tesla have already reached the cap and Toyota is close to it. In a letter to leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives, the chief executives of Ford, Toyota, GM and Stellantis asked that tax credits be extended to anyone who seeks to buy a qualified vehicle. 150
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Automakers want the cap lifted until “the EV market is more mature,” they said, without giving a time frame. “Eliminating the cap will incentivize consumer adoption of future electrified options and provide much-needed certainty to our customers and domestic workforce,” the CEOs wrote. The request comes as Americans find themselves financially pinched from all directions by four-decade high inflation. Energy prices have been especially bad, with the average cost for a gallon of gas in the U.S. breaching $5 this weekend, according to the auto club AAA. 154
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Automakers said that the tax credit has allowed them to offer more affordable cars to people, helping accelerate the adoption of EVs. However, the companies said recent economic conditions and supply chain constraints have raised the cost of manufacturing EVs and those costs have to passed on to car buyers already paying more for almost everything. President Joe Biden has attempted to ensure the supply of materials needed to produce electric vehicles continues to flow as the nation transitions away from fossil fuels. Biden in April invoked the 1950 Defense Production Act to boost production of lithium and other minerals critical in powering electric vehicles. Toyota’s plug-in RAV4 Prime small SUV with 42 miles of electric range earns the buyer a $7,500 credit, the largest available. The Prius Prime plug-in, with 25 miles of electric range, gets $4,500. The letter was signed by GM CEO Mary Barra, Toyota CEO Ted Ogawa, Ford CEO Jim Farley and Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares. 157
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US REPORT: NEARLY 400 CRASHES OF AUTOMATED TECH VEHICLES Automakers reported nearly 400 crashes of vehicles with partially automated driverassist systems, including 273 involving Teslas, according to statistics released by U.S. safety regulators this week. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration cautioned against using the numbers to compare automakers, saying it didn’t weight them by the number of vehicles from each manufacturer that use the systems, or how many miles those vehicles traveled. Automakers reported crashes from July of last year through May 15 under an order from the agency, which is examining such crashes broadly for the first time. 159
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“As we gather more data, NHTSA will be able to better identify any emerging risks or trends and learn more about how these technologies are performing in the real world,” said Steven Cliff, the agency’s administrator. Tesla’s crashes happened while vehicles were using Autopilot, “Full Self-Driving,” Traffic Aware Cruise Control, or other driver-assist systems that have some control over speed and steering. The company has about 830,000 vehicles with the systems on the road. The next closest of a dozen automakers that reported crashes was Honda, with 90, but Honda says it has about six million vehicles on U.S. roads with such systems. Subaru was next with 10, and all other automakers reported five or fewer. In a June 2021 order, NHTSA told more than 100 automakers and automated vehicle tech companies to report serious crashes within one day of learning about them and to disclose less-serious crashes by the 15th day of the following month. The agency is assessing how the systems perform and whether new regulations may be needed. NHTSA also said that five people were killed in the crashes involving driver-assist systems, and six were seriously hurt. Tesla’s crash number also may be high because it uses telematics to monitor its vehicles and get real-time crash reports. Other automakers don’t have such capability, so their reports may come slower or crashes may not be reported at all, NHTSA said. A message was left seeking comment from Tesla. 161
Tesla’s crashes accounted for nearly 70% of the 392 reported by the dozen automakers. Although the Austin, Texas, automaker calls its systems Autopilot and “Full Self-Driving,” it says the vehicles cannot drive themselves and the drivers must be ready to intervene at all times. Manufacturers were not required to report how many vehicles they have on the road that have the systems, nor did they have to report how far those vehicles traveled, or when the systems are in use, NHTSA said. At present, those numbers aren’t quantifiable, an agency official said. However, NHTSA may seek such information later. In the meantime, the new data has enabled it to find out about crashes much faster than before. At present, it’s using the crash data to look for trends and discuss them with the companies, the agency said. Already NHTSA has used the data to seek a recall, open investigations and provide information for existing inquiries, officials said. Also, they said it’s difficult to find out how many drivers actually use the technology. “This will help our investigators quickly identify potential defect trends that can emerge,” Cliff said. “These data will also help us identify crashes that we want to investigate and provide more information about how people in other vehicles interact with the vehicles.” Honda said it has packaged the systems to sell more of them, which could influence its numbers. “The population of vehicles that theoretically could be involved in a reportable event is much greater than the population of vehicles built by automakers with a less-aggressive deployment strategy,” the company said. 162
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Also, reports to NHTSA are based on unverfied customer statements about whether automated systems were running at the time of a crash. Those crashes may not qualify for reporting to NHTSA after more data is gathered, Honda said. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents most automakers, said the data collected by NHTSA isn’t sufficient by itself to evaluate the safety of automated vehicle systems. NHTSA’s order also covered companies that are running fully autonomous vehicles, and 25 reported a total of 130 crashes. Google spinoff Waymo led with 62, followed by Transdev Alternative Services with 34 and General Motorscontrolled Cruise LLC with 23. Waymo, the autonomous vehicle unit of Alphabet Inc., said it has more than 700 autonomous vehicles in its fleet. The company is running a fully autonomous ride-hailing service in Arizona and testing one in California. The company said all the crashes happened at low speeds, with air bags inflating in only two of them. In 108 of the crashes involving fully autonomous vehicles, no injuries were reported, and there was only one serious injury. In most of the crashes, vehicles were struck from the rear. 164
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TESLA PROPOSES A 3-FOR-1 STOCK SPLIT; ELLISON TO LEAVE BOARD Tesla proposed a three-for-one split of its stock, a move that will make a single share of the electric car maker more accessible to investors but not affect the company’s overall market value. Tesla Inc. made the announcement in its annual proxy statement, which also said Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison will not be standing for re-election to the company’s board. The company said in late March that was planning to split its stock for the second time in two years. At that time the shares were trading at over $1,000 each. 167
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But Tesla’s stock has fallen about 39% since early April, shortly after its CEO Elon Musk started raising the idea of buying Twitter. Shares in the company headquartered in Austin, Texas, closed at $696.69. Share splits are used by companies when their stock price gets too high for retail investors to buy individual shares, or when a company wants more shares to exist in the marketplace to make the stock more liquid to trade. In its statement, Tesla said it was trying to accomplish both of these goals: giving its employees greater quantities of shares as well as making the stock more accessible to retail investors. Musk is planning on using his Tesla shares as collateral for buying Twitter, as well as potentially selling down his stake in the company to help with financing. Tesla shareholders will vote on the share split at the company’s annual meeting on Aug. 4. The company, meanwhile, said Ellison, a major Tesla investor and friend of Musk’s, will be stepping down from its board. Ellison was one of two independent members named to the board in late 2018 as part of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had demanded more oversight of Musk. 169
SO LONG, INTERNET EXPLORER. THE BROWSER RETIRES 170
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Internet Explorer is finally headed out to pasture. Microsoft will no longer support the oncedominant browser that legions of web surfers loved to hate — and a few still claim to adore. The 27-year-old application now joins BlackBerry phones, dial-up modems and Palm Pilots in the dustbin of tech history. IE’s demise was not a surprise. A year ago, Microsoft said that it was putting an end to Internet Explorer on June 15, 2022, pushing users to its Edge browser, which was launched in 2015. The company made clear then it was time to move on. “Not only is Microsoft Edge a faster, more secure and more modern browsing experience than Internet Explorer, but it is also able to address a key concern: compatibility for older, legacy websites and applications,” Sean Lyndersay, general manager of Microsoft Edge Enterprise, wrote in a May 2021 blog post. Users marked Explorer’s passing on Twitter, with some referring to it as a “bug-ridden, insecure POS” or the “top browser for installing other browsers.” For others it was a moment for 90´s nostalgia memes, while The Wall Street Journal quoted a 22-year-old who was sad to see IE go. Microsoft released the first version of Internet Explorer in 1995, the antediluvian era of web surfing dominated by the first widely popular browser, Netscape Navigator. Its launch signaled the beginning of the end of Navigator: Microsoft went on to tie IE and its ubiquitous Windows operating system together so tightly that many people simply used it by default instead of Navigator. 172
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The Justice Department sued Microsoft in 1997, saying it violated an earlier consent decree by requiring computer makers to use its browser as a condition of using Windows. It eventually agreed to settle the antitrust battle in 2002 over its use of its Windows monopoly to squash competitors. It also tangled with European regulators who said that tying Internet Explorer to Windows gave it an unfair advantage over rivals such as Mozilla’s Firefox, Opera and Google’s Chrome. Users, meanwhile, complained that IE was slow, prone to crashing and vulnerable to hacks. IE’s market share, which in the early 2000s was over 90%, began to fade as users found more appealing alternatives. Today, the Chrome browser dominates with roughly a 65% share of the worldwide browser market, followed by Apple’s Safari with 19%, according to internet analytics company Statcounter. IE’s heir, Edge, lags with about about 4%, just ahead of Firefox. 174
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THE S&P 500 IS IN A BEAR MARKET; HERE’S WHAT THAT MEANS 176
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Wall Street is back in the claws of a bear market as worries about inflation and higher interest rates overwhelm investors. The Federal Reserve has signaled it will aggressively raise interest rates to try to control inflation, which is the highest in decades. Throw in the war in Ukraine and a slowdown in China’s economy, and investors have been forced to reconsider what they’re willing to pay for a wide range of stocks, from high-flying tech companies to traditional automakers. Big swings have become commonplace and this week was no exception. The last bear market happened just two years ago, but this would still be a first for those investors that got their start trading on their phones during the pandemic. Thanks in large part to extraordinary actions by the Federal Reserve, stocks have for years seemed to go largely in only one direction: up. The “buy the dip” rallying cry after every market slide has grown fainter after stinging losses and severe plunges in risky assets like cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin fell below $20,100 this week. The price for Bitcoin neared $68,000 late last year. Here are some common questions asked about bear markets WHY IS IT CALLED A BEAR MARKET? A bear market is a term used by Wall Street when an index like the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or even an individual stock, has fallen 20% or more from a recent high for a sustained period of time. Why use a bear to represent a market slump? Bears hibernate, so bears represent a market 179
that’s retreating, said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA. In contrast, Wall Street’s nickname for a surging stock market is a bull market, because bulls charge, Stovall said. The S&P 500, Wall Street’s main barometer of health, slid 3.9%. The index fell 22.2% below its record set early this year and now in a bear market. The Dow industrials sank 2.8% and the techheavy Nasdaq composite, which already was in a bear market, tumbled 4.7%. The most recent bear market for the S&P 500 ran from February 19, 2020 through March 23, 2020. The index fell 34% in that one-month period, the shortest bear market ever. WHAT’S BOTHERING INVESTORS? Market enemy No. 1 is interest rates, which are rising quickly as a result of the high inflation battering the economy. Low rates act like steroids for stocks and other investments, and Wall Street is now going through withdrawal. The Federal Reserve has made an aggressive pivot away from propping up financial markets and the economy with record-low rates and is focused on fighting inflation. The central bank has already raised its key short-term interest rate from its record low near zero, which had encouraged investors to move their money into riskier assets like stocks or cryptocurrencies to get better returns. Last month, the Fed signaled additional rate increases of double the usual amount are likely in upcoming months. Consumer prices are at the highest level in four decades, and rose 8.6% in May compared with a year ago. 180
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The moves by design will slow the economy by making it more expensive to borrow. The risk is the Fed could cause a recession if it raises rates too high or too quickly. Russia’s war in Ukraine has also put upward pressure on inflation by pushing up commodities prices. And worries about China’s economy, the world’s second largest, have added to the gloom. SO, WE JUST NEED TO AVOID A RECESSION? Even if the Fed can pull off the delicate task of tamping down inflation without triggering a downturn, higher interest rates still put downward pressure on stocks. If customers are paying more to borrow money, they can’t buy as much stuff, so less revenue flows to a company’s bottom line. Stocks tend to track profits over time. Higher rates also make investors less willing to pay elevated prices for stocks, which are riskier than bonds, when bonds are suddenly paying more in interest thanks to the Fed. Critics said the overall stock market came into the year looking pricey versus history. Big technology stocks and other winners of the pandemic were seen as the most expensive, and those stocks have been the most punished as rates have risen. But the pain is spreading widely, with retailers signaling a shift in consumer behavior. The bond market is also having recession jitters. Overnight, the yield on the two-year Treasury briefly rose above the yield on the 10-year Treasury. That inversion of short- and long-term 183
yields has been a reliable indicator of recession over the years, although the downturn could follow anywhere from a few weeks to a year or two later. Stocks have declined almost 35% on average when a bear market coincides with a recession, compared with a nearly 24% drop when the economy avoids a recession, according to Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at LPL Financial. SO I SHOULD SELL EVERYTHING NOW, RIGHT? If you need the money now or want to lock in the losses, yes. Otherwise, many advisers suggest riding through the ups and downs while remembering the swings are the price of admission for the stronger returns that stocks have provided over the long term. While dumping stocks would stop the bleeding, it would also prevent any potential gains. Many of the best days for Wall Street have occurred either during a bear market or just after the end of one. That includes two separate days in the middle of the 2007-2009 bear market where the S&P 500 surged roughly 11%, as well as leaps of better than 9% during and shortly after the roughly monthlong 2020 bear market. Advisers suggest putting money into stocks only if it won’t be needed for several years. The S&P 500 has come back from every one of its prior bear markets to eventually rise to another alltime high. The down decade for the stock market following the 2000 bursting of the dot-com bubble was a notoriously brutal stretch, but stocks have often been able to regain their highs within a few years. 184
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HOW LONG DO BEAR MARKETS LAST AND HOW DEEP DO THEY GO? On average, bear markets have taken 13 months to go from peak to trough and 27 months to get back to breakeven since World War II. The S&P 500 index has fallen an average of 33% during bear markets in that time. The biggest decline since 1945 occurred in the 2007-2009 bear market when the S&P 500 fell 57%. History shows that the faster an index enters into a bear market, the shallower they tend to be. Historically, stocks have taken 251 days (8.3 months) to fall into a bear market. When the S&P 500 has fallen 20% at a faster clip, the index has averaged a loss of 28%. The longest bear market lasted 61 months and ended in March 1942. It cut the index by 60%. HOW DO WE KNOW WHEN A BEAR MARKET HAS ENDED? Generally, investors look for a 20% gain from a low point as well as sustained gains over at least a six-month period. It took less than three weeks for stocks to rise 20% from their low in March 2020. 187
SPACEX CLOSER TO LAUNCHING GIANT ROCKETSHIP AFTER FAA REVIEW SpaceX cleared a key hurdle this week for its plan to launch a gigantic, futuristic rocketship into orbit from Texas. The Federal Aviation Administration concluded an environmental review of Elon Musk’s Starship base. The agency saw no significant environmental concerns, but is requiring more than 75 actions to reduce impacts to the region. It’s no guarantee a launch license will be issued since other factors such as safety and financial responsibility requirements still must be met at the Boca Chica site, according to the FAA. 188
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After the latest news, SpaceX tweeted: “One step closer to the first orbital flight test of Starship.” At nearly 400 feet (120 meters), Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built and meant to carry people to the moon and Mars. NASA intends to use it for the space agency’s lunar landing of astronauts, planned no earlier than 2025. While SpaceX has launched Starship’s bulletshaped upper stage several miles (10 kilometers) into the air over the past year — resulting in some spectacular explosions — it’s yet to fly it atop a Super Heavy booster. Some residents had opposed Starship launches and landings, citing not only the noise and closed roads, but also wreckage raining down from failed flights. As part of the FAA report, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service insisted on additional measures, but noted operations were unlikely to jeopardize endangered species or their habitat. The site is located at the southernmost tip of Texas, about 1,000 miles west of Cape Canaveral where SpaceX launches astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station for NASA. 193
SAVINGS INCENTIVES: HOW 401(K)S GET US TO DO THE RIGHT THING More workers are following experts’ advice in saving for retirement, even when finances feel precarious. It’s happening because 401(k) plans are using a simple human trait to guide us: our inclination to do nothing. More workers are putting more money into their 401(k) accounts, and they’re more often putting it into a reasonable mix of investments. That’s according to Vanguard’s latest look at the nearly 5 million accounts of 401(k) and similar plans that it keeps records on. Even amid heavy uncertainty about the economy last year, retirement savers socked away an average of 7.3% of their pay, not including employer matches, according to Vanguard. That’s the same 194
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level as a year earlier, when the pandemic first struck and threw everything into doubt. And it’s up from 6.9% in 2012. Vanguard recommends workers save 12% to 15% of their pay, including any employer match. More than four out of five workers eligible to contribute to their 401(k) were doing so last year, at 81%. That also held steady from a year earlier, and it was up from 74% in 2012. The reason for the resiliency? In many cases it was because employers made the moves for them. Over the years, employers have become more likely to enroll workers automatically into the 401(k) plan. Employers have also been starting workers off contributing higher amounts, again automatically. And as the years roll on, plans are set to automatically increase the percentage of those contributions. Last year, a quarter of all Vanguard 401(k) accounts saw a boost in contributions because of an auto increase. Workers can opt out of such measures, but now they have to take an extra step to get out of saving for retirement rather than to get in. And in the field of study known as behavioral finance, that can lead to better outcomes. In other words, inertia wins. “I really see the value of it in these unusual years, these years that have a lot of stress and uncertainty where you might expect some reversals of a positive trend, and in fact you you don’t see it,” said David Stinnett, head of Vanguard’s strategic retirement consulting group. In part because of that, the median 401(k) balance rose to $35,345 last year. That’s up from a median of $33,472 a year before and from $27,843 in 2012. 197
To see how powerful inertia can be, consider the difference in participation rates at plans where employers automatically enroll workers into the 401(k) versus those where employees must sign up themselves. The auto-enroll programs saw 93% of eligible workers save in the 401(k) last year. The participation rate was just 66% in plans where workers had to volunteer. A challenge going forward may depend on whether the “Great Resignation” that’s taken hold across the economy continues. When workers leave their jobs either to move to a new one or to retire, they can cash out their 401(k) balances. Experts discourage this, calling it retirement “leakage.” Not only can a cash out invite taxes and penalties, it also means workers don’t benefit from the magic of compounding their savings over the years. Such cash outs often occur among lower-income workers with smaller balances, said Amber Brestowski, head of advice and client experience for Vanguard Institutional Investor Group. With millions of workers quitting their jobs every month, the potential for such leakage is increasing. Brestowski said Vanguard is working with employers in hopes of keeping cashouts low. The industry is also working on ways to move workers’ savings from their old employer’s 401(k) plan to their new one to stem leakage, again automatically. 198
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HOW TO AFFORD SUMMER ROAD TRIPS AMID HIGH GAS PRICES A summer road trip used to be a cost-effective, easy getaway. This year, soaring gas prices and expensive rental cars might make you think twice about hitting the road. According to the American Automobile Association, a federation of motor clubs throughout North America, the average gas price was $4.60 per gallon nationally before Memorial Day weekend. Some experts believe the national average might even top $5 later in the summer. Plus, rental car prices hit record highs during the pandemic, up 38.6% in February 2022 versus February 2020, according to a NerdWallet analysis of U.S. Consumer Price Index inflation data. 201
But those roadblocks don’t necessarily mean you have to put the brakes on travel completely. You might just have to shift your road trip plans. Here’s how. CONSIDER CHANGING YOUR DESTINATION If you’re open-minded about your vacation destination, consider driving through a region with below-average gas prices. On June 1, 10 states had average gas prices below $4.30 per gallon for regular grade gasoline, according to AAA data. Those states, ranked from cheapest to most expensive, were: 1. Georgia 2. Arkansas 3. Kansas 4. Mississippi 5. Oklahoma 6. Missouri 7. Louisiana 8. Nebraska 9. South Carolina 10. Texas Given how many of those states border each other, it’d be fairly easy to plan a road trip through the South or Midwest. You could start in St. Louis, and make the roughly four-hour drive on Interstate 70 across the state to Kansas City, Missouri. Make time for a pit stop in Columbia, which is a quintessential college town with the University of Missouri. Boonville is another great stop, where you can tour Warm Springs Ranch, home of the iconic Budweiser Clydesdales. (Walking tours start at $15 .) From Kansas City, 202
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it’s about three hours on to Omaha, Nebraska, where you can try the allegedly original Reuben sandwich. BE STRATEGIC ABOUT RENTAL CARS If you’re renting a car, understand that rental car prices can vary dramatically depending on the rental company, whether you’re renting from an airport location versus downtown, and how far in advance you book. Speaking of renting a car, this might be the year you rent an electric vehicle. The EV may have a more expensive rental price, but it could be cheaper than renting a gas-powered car and filling its tank. AAA has a helpful gas calculator tool that factors in the type of car and where you’re driving to help you see the trade-offs. Hotel and vacation rental companies also are making it easier to search for accommodations that offer electric vehicle charging. More hotels are promoting electric vehicle charging as a hotel perk, right alongside traditional amenities like pools and breakfast buffets. Many hotels even allow you to charge your car at no cost. If rental car prices are brutally high, consider booking with alternative rental car companies like Turo or Getaround, which can be cheaper than a major car rental company. Many of these companies are relatively new and allow you to book cars directly from the owners, functioning as an “Airbnb for cars.” For example, the cost of a weeklong car rental from San Francisco International Airport during the first week of July for a standard, gaspowered car like a Volkswagen Jetta would average about $640 . Head to peer-to-peer 205
car-sharing site Turo, and there are more than a dozen Teslas available to book in San Francisco on the same dates for less than $800. If you filled the Jetta’s roughly 13-gallon gas tank twice at $6 a gallon (which isn’t unheard of in some states like California), you’d pay more than $150 in gas. That cost plus the rental would have you paying roughly the same amount as booking the Tesla. With so many variables, it pays to shop around before you make reservations. KNOW WHERE TO FIND THE CHEAPEST GAS If driving a gas-powered car is non-negotiable, master the art of saving money on gas. Download apps like GasBuddy, which track local gas prices and can help guide you to the cheapest station near you. It also helps to drive more efficiently. Adjusting how you speed up, brake or use cruise control can have an impact on your gas usage. And if all else fails and you’re stuck with a gargantuan gas bill, at least earn rewards for your spending through a rewards credit card. The best gas credit cards can typically net at least 3% back in rewards for your gas station spending. 206
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QUALCOMM WINS ANTITRUST CASE AGAINST EU COMMISSION A European Union court on Wednesday invalidated a decision by the bloc’s executive arm to fine technology company Qualcomm more than $1 billion in an antitrust case. In overruling the European Commission, the Luxembourg-based General Court cited “a number of procedural irregularities” that affected the American company’s defense rights and rejected the commission’s “analysis of the conduct alleged against Qualcomm.” European regulators fined Qualcomm $1.23 billion in 2018 after concluding the chip and software maker bribed Apple to exclusively 208
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use its products in iPhones and iPads, thereby stifling competition. Without providing specifics, EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said at the time that Qualcomm had doled out “billions of dollars” to Apple during 2011-2016. The regulators contended Qualcomm secretly paid Apple to use its chips for connecting to highspeed cellular networks as long as Apple didn’t switch to rival products during that period. The General Court said that in addition to identifying procedural irregularities, it disagreed with the analysis of the anticompetitive effects of the payments. “While the commission concluded that the incentive payments had reduced Apple’s incentives to switch to competing suppliers to source LTE chipsets, it is apparent from the commission decision that Apple had had no technical alternative to Qualcomm’s LTE chipsets for the majority of its requirements,” the court said. 211
CHINA’S FACTORY ACTIVITY REBOUNDS AS ANTI-VIRUS CURBS EASE China’s factory output rebounded in May, adding to a recovery from the latest COVID-induced economic slump after controls that shut down Shanghai and other industrial centers eased. Industrial production rose 0.7% over a year earlier, recovering from April’s 2.9% contraction, government data showed. Consumer spending edged up compared with April but was lower than a year ago. The data suggest a “lockdown recovery got underway across most parts of the economy,” said Sheana Yue of Capital Economics in a report. 212
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China’s case numbers in its latest wave of infections are low, but the ruling Communist Party’s “zero-COVID” strategy that aims to isolate every person with the virus shut down most businesses in Shanghai starting in late March and suspended access or imposed other restrictions on other industrial cities. That fueled fears global manufacturing and trade might be disrupted. Most factories, shops and other businesses in Shanghai, Beijing and other cities have been allowed to reopen but are expected to need weeks or months to return to normal activity. Economists have cut forecasts of China’s growth this year to as low as 2%, well below the ruling Communist Party’s target of 5.5%. Some expect activity to shrink in the quarter ending in June before a gradual recovery begins. Consumer spending, depressed by jitters over the economic outlook and possible job losses, rose 0.05% in May compared with the previous month but was off 6.7% from a year ago. Investment in factories, real estate and other fixed assets rose 0.7% compared with April. Chinese leaders have promised tax rebates, free rent and other aid to help businesses recover. “Following all this weak data, we should expect the government to respond with more fiscal stimulus,” said Iris Pang of ING in a report. Export growth, reported last week, accelerated to 16.9% in May from the previous month’s 3.7%. Import growth rose to 4.1% from April’s 0.7%. 215
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INTERIOR PHASING OUT PLASTIC WATER BOTTLES AT NATIONAL PARKS 217
The Interior Department said it will phase out sales of plastic water bottles and other single-use products at national parks and on other public lands over the next decade, targeting a major source of U.S. pollution. An order issued by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland calls for the department to reduce the purchase, sale and distribution of single-use plastic products and packaging on 480 million acres of federally managed lands, with a goal of phasing out the products by 2032. The order directs the department to identify alternatives to single-use plastics, such as compostable or biodegradable materials or 100% recycled materials. “As the steward of the nation’s public lands, including national parks and national wildlife refuges, and as the agency responsible for the conservation and management of fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats,´ the Interior Department is “uniquely positioned to do better for our Earth,” Haaland said in a statement. The order essentially reverses a 2017 Trump administration policy that prevented national parks from banning plastic water bottle sales. Only a fraction of the more than 400 national parks, but some of the most popular ones like the Grand Canyon, had implemented such a ban. Environmental groups hailed the Biden administration’s announcement, which advocates and some Democratic lawmakers have been urging for years. “Our national parks, by definition, are protected areas — ones that Americans have loved for their natural beauty and history for over a century — and yet we have failed to protect them from plastic for far too long,´ said Christy Leavitt, plastics 218
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campaign director for the conservation group Oceana. Haaland’s order “will curb millions of pounds of unnecessary disposable plastic in our national parks and other public lands, where it can end up polluting these special areas,´ Leavitt said. The group urged the National Park Service and other agencies to move swiftly to carry out changes in reducing single-use plastics well before 2032. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., also urged quicker action to address what he called the plastic pollution crisis. “With everyone – from park rangers to park visitors – doing their part we can get this done before the decade has passed!” Merkley said in a statement. Merkley, who chairs a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Interior Department, is co-sponsor of a bill that would ban the sale of single-use plastic water bottles in national parks. Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., who co-sponsored the bill in the House, hailed the Interior announcement as “a huge step forward in the effort to protect our environment and its creatures from the damage of single-use plastics.´ Quigley, who is planning a visit to Yosemite National Park, said he looks forward to learning how the park will implement the new rule. Matt Seaholm, president and CEO of the Plastics Industry Association, called Interior’s announcement “disappointing ´ and counterproductive. “In most applications, plastic products are the least environmentally harmful option, as long as they are disposed of properly,´ said Seaholm, 221
whose group represents the entire plastics industry supply chain. He urged improved recycling infrastructure in parks as “a better approach to sustainability.´ Oceana said a national poll conducted by Ipsos in November 2021 found that more than 80% of American voters would support a decision by the National Park Service to stop selling and distributing single-use plastics at national parks Haaland said the plastics order was especially important because less than 10% of plastics ever produced have been recycled, and U.S. recycling rates are falling as China and other countries have stopped accepting U.S. waste. Interior-managed lands generated nearly 80,000 tons of municipal solid waste in fiscal year 2020, the department said, much of it plastics. Of the more than 300 million tons of plastic produced every year for use in a wide variety of applications, at least 14 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean every year, and plastic makes up 80% of all marine debris found from surface waters to deep-sea sediments, the department said. Many marine species ingest or are entangled by plastic debris, causing severe injuries or death, and plastic pollution threatens food safety and quality, human health, coastal tourism and contributes to climate change, the department said. 222
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