An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google closed its Fitbit acquisition in 2021. Since then, the tech behemoth has pushed numerous changes to the wearable brand, including upcoming updates announced this week. While Google reshapes its fitness tracker business, though, some long-time users are regretting their Fitbit purchases and questioning if Google's practices will force them to purchase their next fitness tracker elsewhere.

As is becoming common practice with consumer tech announcements of late, Google's latest announcements about Fitbit seemed to be trying to convince users of the wonders of generative AI and how that will change their gadgets for the better. In a blog post yesterday, Dr. Karen DeSalvo, Google's chief health officer, announced that Fitbit Premium subscribers would be able to test experimental AI features later this year (Google hasn't specified when). "You will be able to ask questions in a natural way and create charts just for you to help you understand your own data better. For example, you could dig deeper into how many active zone minutes... you get and the correlation with how restorative your sleep is," she wrote. DeSalvo's post included an example of a user asking a chatbot if there was a connection between their sleep and activity and said that the experimental AI features will only be available to "a limited number of Android users who are enrolled in the Fitbit Labs program in the Fitbit mobile app."

Fitbit is also working with the Google Research team and "health and wellness experts, doctors, and certified coaches" to develop a large language model (LLM) for upcoming Fitbit mobile app features that pull data from Fitbit and Pixel devices, DeSalvo said. In a blog post yesterday, Yossi Matias, VP of engineering and research at Google, said Google wants to use the LLM to add personalized coaching features, such as the ability to look for sleep irregularities and suggest actions "on how you might change the intensity of your workout." Google's Fitbit is building the LLM on Gemini models that are tweaked on de-identified data from unspecified "research case studies," Matias said, adding: "For example, we're testing performance using sleep medicine certification exam-like practice tests." Other recent changes to Fitbit include a name tweak from Fitbit by Google, to Google Fitbit, as spotted by 9to5Google this week. Charge 5 users are especially concerned after users noticed their devices suddenly stopped holding a charge after a December firmware update was pushed. The problem has persisted with Google offering no solution other than offer discounts or, if the device was within its warranty period, a replacement.

"This is called planned obsolescence. I'll be upgrading to a watch style tracker from a different company. I wish Fitbit hadn't sold out to Google," a forum user going by Sean77024 wrote on Fitbit's support forum yesterday. "Others, like 2MeFamilyFlyer, have also accused Fitbit of planning Charge 5 obsolescence," notes Ars. "2MeFamilyFlyer said they're seeking a Fitbit alternative."

Airbus takes no pleasure in the technical problems plaguing U.S. rival Boeing as they damage the image of the entire aerospace industry, said the CEO of the European planemaker. From a report: "I am not happy with the problems of my competitor. They are not good for the industry a whole," Guillaume Faury told the "Europe 2024" conference in Berlin, when asked about technical problems at Boeing. "We are in an industry where quality and safety is top priority," he added. Further reading: Airbus Is Pulling Ahead as Boeing's Troubles Mount.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Since the start of the year, more than 50,000 workers have been laid off from over 200 tech companies, according to tracking website Layoffs.fyi. It's a continuation of the predominant theme of 2023, when more than 260,000 workers across nearly 1,200 tech companies lost their jobs. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft have all taken part in the downsizing this year, along with eBay, Unity Software, SAP and Cisco. Wall Street has largely cheered on the cost-cutting, sending many tech stocks to record highs on optimism that spending discipline coupled with efficiency gains from artificial intelligence will lead to rising profits. PayPal announced in January that it was eliminating 9% of its workforce, or about 2,500 jobs.

For the tens of thousands of people in Croisant's [anecdote in the linked story] position, the path toward reemployment is daunting. All told, 2023 was the second-biggest year of cuts on record in the technology sector, behind only the dot-com crash in 2001, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Not since the spectacular flameouts of Pets.com, eToys and Webvan have so many tech workers lost their jobs in such a short period of time. Last month's job cut count was the highest of any February since 2009, when the financial crisis forced companies into cash preservation mode.

Major U.S. broadband internet providers must start displaying information similar to nutrition labels on food products to help consumers shop for services starting on April 10, under new rules from the Federal Communications Commission. From a report: Verizon Communications said it will begin providing the labels on Wednesday. The FCC first moved to mandate the labels in 2022. Smaller providers will be required to provide labels starting in October. The rules require broadband providers to display, at the point of sale, labels that show prices, speeds, fees and data allowances for both wireless and wired products. Verizon Chief Customer Experience Officer Brian Higgins said in an interview the labels will help consumers make "an equal comparison" between product offerings, speeds and fees.

Higgins said standardized labels across the industry "make it easier for customers to do a comparison of which provider is going to be the best fit for their needs." He said customers will still need to research various bundling offers across carriers. The labels were first unveiled as a voluntary program in 2016. Congress ordered the FCC to mandate them under the 2021 infrastructure law. "Consumers will finally get information they can use to comparison shop, avoid junk fees, and make informed choices about which high-speed internet service is the best fit for their needs and budget," FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said.

CoinDesk: The Ethereum Foundation -- the Swiss non-profit organization at the heart of the Ethereum ecosystem -- is under investigation by an unnamed "state authority," according to the group's website's GitHub repository. The scope of the investigation and its focus was unknown at press time. According to the GitHub commit dated Feb. 26, 2024, "we have received a voluntary enquiry from a state authority that included a requirement for confidentiality."

The investigation comes during a time of change for Ethereum's technology. Ethereum is the second-largest blockchain by market cap after Bitcoin, launching in 2015 following an initial coin offering for the chain's native ETH token. Earlier this month, the chain underwent a major technical upgrade, dubbed Dencun, designed to bring down transaction costs for users of Ethereum-based layer-2 platforms.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The generative AI company helmed by Sam Altman is on track to put out GPT-5 sometime mid-year, likely during summer, according to two people familiar with the company. Some enterprise customers have recently received demos of the latest model and its related enhancements to the ChatGPT tool, another person familiar with the process said. These people, whose identities Business Insider has confirmed, asked to remain anonymous so they could speak freely. "It's really good, like materially better," said one CEO who recently saw a version of GPT-5.

OpenAI demonstrated the new model with use cases and data unique to his company, the CEO said. He said the company also alluded to other as-yet-unreleased capabilities of the model, including the ability to call AI agents being developed by OpenAI to perform tasks autonomously. The company does not yet have a set release date for the new model, meaning current internal expectations for its release could change. OpenAI is still training GPT-5, one of the people familiar said. After training is complete, it will be safety tested internally and further "red teamed," a process where employees and typically a selection of outsiders challenge the tool in various ways to find issues before it's made available to the public.

"Job openings across the country are seemingly endless," writes longtime Slashdot reader smooth wombat. "Millions of jobs are listed, but are they real? Companies may post job openings with no intent to ever fill it. These are known as ghost jobs and there are more than most people realize. The BBC reports: Clarify Capital, a New York-based business loan provider, surveyed 1,000 hiring managers, and found nearly seven in 10 jobs stay open for more than 30 days, with 10% unfilled for more than half a year. Half the respondents reported they keep job listings open indefinitely because they "always open to new people." More than one in three respondents said they kept the listings active to build a pool of applicants in case of turnover -- not because a role needs to be filled in a timely manner.

The posted roles are more than just a talent vacuum sucking up resumes from applicants. They are also a tool for shaping perception inside and outside of the company. More than 40% of hiring managers said they list jobs they aren't actively trying to fill to give the impression that the company is growing. A similar share said the job listings are made to motivate employees, while 34% said the jobs are posted to placate overworked staff who may be hoping for additional help to be brought on.

"Ghost jobs are everywhere," says Geoffrey Scott, senior content manager and hiring manager at Resume Genius, a US company that helps workers design their resumes. "We discovered a massive 1.7 million potential ghost job openings on LinkedIn just in the US," says Scott. In the UK, StandOut CV, a London-based career resources company, found more than a third of job listings in 2023 were ghost jobs, defined as listings posted for more than 30 days. "Experts caution not every posting that seems like a ghost job is one," notes the report. "Still, whether these postings are ghost jobs -- or simply look and feel like them -- the result is similar. Jobseekers end up discouraged and burnt out."

According to the New York Times, Saudi Arabia's government plans to create a fund of about $40 billion to invest in artificial intelligence. Reuters reports: Representatives of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) have discussed a potential partnership with U.S. venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and other financiers in recent weeks, the newspaper reported. Andreessen Horowitz and PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan have discussed the possibility of the U.S. firm setting up an office in Riyadh, according to the report. PIF officials also discussed what role Andreessen Horowitz could play and how such a fund would work, the newspaper said, adding the plans could still change. Other venture capitalists may participate in kingdom's artificial intelligence fund, which is expected to commence in the second half of 2024, the newspaper said.

Saudi representatives have indicated to potential partners that the country is interested in supporting a variety of tech start-ups associated with artificial intelligence, including chip makers and large-scale data centers, the report added. Last month, PIF's Al-Rumayyan pitched the kingdom as a prospective hub for artificial intelligence activity outside U.S., citing its energy resources and funding capacity. Al-Rumayyan had said the kingdom had the "political will" to make artificial intelligence projects happen and ample funds it could deploy to nurture the technology's development.

Microsoft has named Mustafa Suleyman head of its consumer artificial intelligence business, hiring most of the staff from his Inflection AI startup as the software giant seeks to fend off Alphabet's Google in the fiercely contested market for AI products. From a report: Suleyman, who co-founded Google's DeepMind, will report to Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and oversee a range of projects, such as integrating an AI Copilot into Windows and adding conversational elements to the Bing search engine. His hiring will put Microsoft's consumer AI work under one leader for the first time.

Inflection, a rival of Microsoft's key AI partner OpenAI, is exiting its Pi consumer chatbot effort and shifting to selling AI software to businesses. Karen Simonyan, Inflection's co-founder, will join Microsoft as chief scientist for the new consumer AI group. In the past year, Nadella has been revamping his company's major products around artificial intelligence technology from OpenAI. Under the Copilot brand, Microsoft has blended an AI assistant into products including Windows, consumer and enterprise Office software, Bing and security tools. With Google and others trying to catch up, Nadella's multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI has given Microsoft a first-mover advantage. And yet, 13 months after unveiling an AI-enhanced Bing search, the company has made few gains in that market, which remains dominated by Google.

Joe_Dragon shares a report: Since Apple announced plans for the 0.50 euro Core Technology Fee that apps distributed using the new EU App Store business terms must pay, there have been ongoing concerns about what that fee might mean for a developer that suddenly has a free app go viral. Apple's VP of regulatory law Kyle Andeers today met with developers during a workshop on Apple's Digital Markets Act compliance. iOS developer Riley Testut, best known for Game Boy Advance emulator GBA4iOS, asked what Apple would do if a young developer unwittingly racked up millions in fees.

Testut explained that when he was younger, that exact situation happened to him. Back in 2014 as an 18-year-old high school student, he released GBA4iOS outside of the App Store using an enterprise certificate. The app was unexpectedly downloaded more than 10 million times, and under Apple's new rules with Core Technology Fee, Testut said that would have cost $5 million euros, bankrupting his family. He asked whether Apple would actually collect that fee in a similar situation, charging the high price even though it could financially ruin a family. In response, Andeers said that Apple is working on figuring out a solution, but has not done so yet. He said Apple does not want to stifle innovation and wants to figure out how to keep young app makers and their parents from feeling scared to release an app.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Reddit, the social media platform gearing up for an initial public offering this week, said Nokia has accused it of infringing some of their patents. Nokia Technologies, the company's licensing business, sent Reddit a letter on Monday with the claims, and Reddit is evaluating them, according to a filing made Tuesday. Nokia's claims come as Reddit prepares for an initial public offering in an effort to raise hundreds of millions of dollars. The company has been working toward a listing for years, and its public market debut this week is set to become a high-profile addition to the year's roster of newly and soon-to-be public companies. Reddit said in the filing: "On March 18, 2024, Nokia sent us a letter indicating they believed that Reddit infringes certain of their patents. We will evaluate their claims. As we face increasing competition and become increasingly high profile, the possibility of receiving more intellectual property claims against us grows.

In addition, various 'non-practicing entities,' and other intellectual property rights holders have asserted in the past, and may attempt to assert in the future, intellectual property claims against us and have sought, and may attempt to seek in the future, to monetize the intellectual property rights they own to extract value through licensing arrangements or other settlements."

Press2ToContinue quotes a report from the Gateway Pundit: Stephen Scherr, chief executive officer of Hertz Global Holdings Inc. and a member of its board of directors, will step down on March 31, following the car rental company's largest quarterly loss since 2020 after a risky bet on electric vehicles. According to Fox Business, Scherr is working with Gil West, former chief operating officer of Delta Airlines and General Motors' Cruise unit, to ensure a smooth transition. West will officially start his new role at Hertz on April 1.

Scherr, 59, joined Hertz two years ago as the company was emerging from bankruptcy and putting a big focus on EVs during that time. Hertz soon discovered that EVs are more expensive to maintain than they had initially thought. Scherr reportedly told investors that Hertz's profits experienced a $348 million loss, which he blamed EVs for. In January, Hertz announced its plan to offload 20,000 electric vehicles from its U.S. fleet throughout 2024, and switch back to gas cars.

In November, the Associated Press reported on a Consumer Reports survey that found EVs from the 2021 to 2023 model years are significantly less reliable than gasoline-powered vehicles. A whopping eighty percent less reliable, according to the AP, particularly with battery and charging systems, as well as fit issues with body panels and interiors. Car dealers and manufacturers are reportedly also struggling to sell EVs despite using deep discounts and promotional tactics. In 2021, Hertz announced plans to order 100,000 Tesla vehicles by the end of 2022. It later said it would buy "up to" 65,000 Polestar EVs for its rental fleet over the next five years.

Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: Last October, tech-backed nonprofit Code.org publicly called out Indiana in its 2023 State of Computer Science Education report, advising the Hoosier state it needed to heed Code.org's new policy recommendation and "adopt a graduation requirement for all high school students in computer science." Having already joined 49 other Governors who signed a Code.org-organized compact calling for increased K-12 CS education in his state after coming under pressure from hundreds of the nation's tech, business, and nonprofit leaders, Indiana Governor Eric J. Holcomb apparently didn't need much convincing. "We must prepare our students for a digitally driven world by requiring Computer Science to graduate from high school," Holcomb proclaimed in his January State of the State Address. Two months later -- following Microsoft-applauded testimony for legislation to make it so by Code.org partners College Board and Nextech (the Indiana Code.org Regional Partner which is also paid by the Indiana Dept. of Education to prepare educators to teach K-12 CS, including Code.org's curriculum) -- Holcomb on Wednesday signed House Bill 1243 into law, making CS a HS graduation requirement. The IndyStar reports students beginning with the Class of 2029 will be required to take a computer science class that must include instruction in algorithms and programming, computing systems, data and analysis, impacts of computing and networks and the internet.

The new law is not Holcomb's first foray into K-12 CS education. Back in 2017, Holcomb and Indiana struck a deal giving Infosys (a big Code.org donor) the largest state incentive package ever -- $31M to bring 2,000 tech employees to Central Indiana — that also promised to make Indiana kids more CS savvy through the Infosys Foundation USA, headed at the time by Vandana Sikka, a Code.org Board member and wife of Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka. Following the announcement of the now-stalled deal, Holcomb led a delegation to Silicon Valley where he and Indiana University (IU) President Michael McRobbie joined Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi and Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka on a Thought Leader panel at the Infosys Confluence 2017 conference to discuss Preparing America for Tomorrow. At the accompanying Infosys Crossroads 2017 CS education conference, speakers included Sikka's wife Vandana, McRobbie's wife Laurie Burns McRobbie, Nextech President and co-CEO Karen Jung, Code.org execs, and additional IU educators. Later that year, IU 'First Lady' Laurie Burns McRobbie announced that Indiana would offer the IU Bloomington campus as a venue for Infosys Foundation USA's inaugural Pathfinders Summer Institute, a national event for K-12 teacher education in CS that offered professional development from Code.org and Nextech, as well as an unusual circumvent-your-school's-approval-and-name-your-own-stipend funding arrangement for teachers via an Infosys partnership with the NSF and DonorsChoose that was unveiled at the White House.

And that, Schoolhouse Rock Fans, is one more example of how Microsoft's National Talent Strategy is becoming Code.org-celebrated K-12 CS state laws!

Cisco on Monday completed its $28 billion acquisition of Splunk, a powerhouse in data analysis, security and observability tools. The deal was first announced in September 2023. SecurityWeek reports: Cisco plans to leverage Splunk's AI, security and observability capabilities complement Cisco's solution portfolio. Cisco says the transaction is expected to be cash flow positive and non-GAAP gross margin accretive in Cisco's fiscal year 2025, and non-GAAP EPS accretive in fiscal year 2026. "We are thrilled to officially welcome Splunk to Cisco," Chuck Robbins, Chair and CEO of Cisco, said in a statement. "As one of the world's largest software companies, we will revolutionize the way our customers leverage data to connect and protect every aspect of their organization as we help power and protect the AI revolution."

Last week 50 people were injured when a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner experienced a sudden mid-air drop — raising concerns about the possibility of a new safety issue. But the Wall Street Journal offers a follow-up report.

"A flight attendant hit a switch on the pilot's seat while serving a meal, leading a motorized feature to push the pilot into the controls and push down the plane's nose, according to U.S. industry officials briefed on preliminary evidence from an investigation." The switch, on the back of the chair, is usually covered and isn't supposed to be used when a pilot is in the seat. Boeing issued a memo late Thursday to operators of 787 jets recommending that they inspect the cockpit chairs for loose covers on the switches and instructing them how to turn off power to the pilot seat motor if needed. Boeing said it is considering updates to flight crew manuals. "Closing the spring-loaded seat back switch guard onto a loose/detached rocker switch cap can potentially jam the rocker switch, resulting in unintended seat movement," according to the memo, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The memo says this was a known issue and that Boeing had issued a related service notice in 2017....

American Airlines issued a notice to 787 captains advising them of the potential hazard. It asked them to instruct the crew not to use the switch while the chair is occupied and said that its maintenance teams would check that the switches are properly secured.
Ipeco, the cockpit seat supplier, didn't respond to the Journal's request for a comment. But in a new CNN video, a pilot demonstrates the location of the button — and speculates that a seat pushing a pilot forward could abruptly override the plane's auto-pilot system.

"It would be good news for Boeing if it is cleared of any fault in the Latam flight," adds another CNN report. "The company is facing multiple investigations by both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board..."

The Journal's article includes footage from inside the plane just moments after the incident and notes that some passengers had been "pinned to the ceiling as the airplane suddenly descended."

The Guardian reports that this week "Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, introduced a bill to establish a four-day US working week." "Moving to a 32-hour workweek with no loss of pay is not a radical idea," Sanders said on Thursday. "Today, American workers are over 400% more productive than they were in the 1940s. And yet millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages than they were decades ago. "That has got to change. The financial gains from the major advancements in artificial intelligence, automation and new technology must benefit the working class, not just corporate chief executives and wealthy stockholders on Wall Street.

"It is time to reduce the stress level in our country and allow Americans to enjoy a better quality of life. It is time for a 32-hour workweek with no loss in pay."
The proposed bill "has received the endorsement of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, United Auto Workers, the Service Employees International Union, the Association of Flight Attendants" — as well as several other labor unions, reports USA Today: More than half of adults employed full time reported working more than 40 hours per week, according to a 2019 Gallup poll... More than 70 British companies started to test a four-day workweek last year, and most respondents reported there has been no loss in productivity.
A statement from Senator Sanders: Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, predicted last year that advancements in technology would lead to a three or three-and-a-half-day workweek in the coming years. Despite these predictions, Americans now work more hours than the people of most other wealthy nations, but are earning less per week than they did 50 years ago, after adjusting for inflation.
"Sanders also pointed to other countries that have reduced their workweeks, such as France, Norway and Denmark," adds NBC News.

USA Today notes that "While Sanders' role as chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee places a greater focus on shortening the workweek, it is unlikely the bill will garner enough support from Republicans to become federal law and pass in both chambers."

And political analysts who spoke to ABC News "cast doubt on the measure's chances of passage in a divided Congress where opposition from Republicans is all but certain," reports ABC News, "and even the extent of support among Democrats remains unclear."

"Dell's strict new RTO mandate excludes fully remote workers from promotion," reports Business Insider.

The site calls it "one of the most abrupt changes to remote work policies," noting that Dell "has had a hybrid working culture in place for more than a decade — long before the pandemic struck." "Dell cared about the work, not the location," a senior employee at Dell who's worked remotely for more than a decade, told Business Insider last month. "I would say 10% to 15% of every team was remote." That flexibility has enabled staff to sustain their careers in the face of major life changes, several employees told BI. It has also helped Dell to be placed on the "Best Place to Work for Disability Equality Index" since 2018. But in February Dell introduced a strict return-to-office mandate, with punitive measures for those who want to stay at home.

Under the new policy, staff were told that from May almost all will be classified as either "hybrid," or "remote." Hybrid workers will be required to come into an "approved" office at least 39 days a quarter — the equivalent of about three days a week, internal documents seen by BI show. If they want to keep working from home, staff can opt to go fully remote. But that option has a downside: fully remote workers will not be considered for promotion, or be able to change roles.
Workers have said Dell's approach might be intended to lower headcount without having to pay severance by inducing some employees to quit. But reached by Business Insider for a comment, Dell defended their approach as instead "critical to drive innovation and value differentiation."

But Professor Cary Cooper, an organizational psychologist and cofounder of the National Forum for Health and Wellbeing at work, tells the site Dell could be following a "pack mentality" among tech companies — or reacting to a sluggish world economy. "Senior execs somehow think that people in the office are more productive than at home, even though there's no evidence to back that up."

Business Insider added that Dell's approach "differs from founder and CEO Michael Dell's previous support for remote workers," who famously said "If you are counting on forced hours spent in a traditional office to create collaboration and provide a feeling of belonging within your organization, you're doing it wrong."

The Street interviewed Chad Anderson, founder/managing partner of the "space economy" investment firm Space Capital, who calls SpaceX's progress "unprecedented," and believes their next launch could carry "operational" payloads like Starlink satellites. Anderson added that Starship reaching orbital velocity and reentering the atmosphere at those speeds (roughly 16,000 miles per hour) was "a really big deal," though it's specifically important for the reusability of the vehicle, which would further cheapen the cost of launch.

"The fact that they did all those things and they can now move into operations as an investor is hugely important and significant," Anderson said. "Having an operational Starship vehicle is really important because, at the moment, they just can't launch Starlink satellites fast enough. Starship is going to be able to launch 10 times more than Falcon 9 can, and that's really important...."

The ship is so big that, according to Anderson, Starship could conceivably serve as a space station, or a hotel, or a manufacturing facility. There is also the potential of Starship actually competing with commercial airlines, flying, for example, from New York to Shanghai in 45 minutes.
Clayton Swope, senior fellow at CSIS, also believes Starship could be used for "last-mile delivery... where you could move something in less than an hour, anywhere from a point on Earth to another point on Earth, and you're just kind of using space as that transit point."

There's also defense applications. Defense One notes the U.S. Defense Department uses SpaceX to launch most of its satellites. "With a payload capacity of 100 to 150 tons, Starship could carry a bunch of satellites simultaneously and increase the Space Force's launch rate as it builds out a network of hundreds of satellites in low-Earth orbit." Once Starship is operational, it will be able to put things into higher orbits, which is key for the Pentagon's push to operate in the cislunar environment, the area between the geosynchronous orbit and the moon. "The Chinese have already begun cislunar operations and have put vehicles on the far side of the moon, which is something the U.S. doesn't really have the ability to do right now," said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

However, the advantage the U.S. will get with Starship "won't last forever," and it will take years to build satellites specifically designed to take advantage of the rocket's payload capacity, said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "At this rate, they will have Starship operational this year. We need payloads to go on that, if we're actually going to take advantage of it during this window of opportunity when it's a capability only we have. If you want those payloads available next year, you needed to start building them five years ago," Harrison said.

Starship could be used to put very large objects into space, such as fuel barges or energy stations, at a reasonable cost. "You could use this to put up an orbital bus that you can then put on and remove payloads from, so you can have a satellite on orbit that's basically a large docking station," Clark said... "[I]t could be a way to do that kind of thing where you establish essentially an unmanned, little space station that can carry various payloads."

"The environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development," argues Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and business school ethics professor, saying that since the early 2010s, "something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents."

The Atlantic recently published an excerpt from his book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.: By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data... I think the answer can be stated simply, although the underlying psychology is complex: Those were the years when adolescents in rich countries traded in their flip phones for smartphones and moved much more of their social lives online — particularly onto social-media platforms designed for virality and addiction. Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways across the board. Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity — all were affected...

There's an important backstory, beginning as long ago as the 1980s, when we started systematically depriving children and adolescents of freedom, unsupervised play, responsibility, and opportunities for risk taking, all of which promote competence, maturity, and mental health. But the change in childhood accelerated in the early 2010s, when an already independence-deprived generation was lured into a new virtual universe that seemed safe to parents but in fact is more dangerous, in many respects, than the physical world. My claim is that the new phone-based childhood that took shape roughly 12 years ago is making young people sick and blocking their progress to flourishing in adulthood. We need a dramatic cultural correction, and we need it now...

A simple way to understand the differences between Gen Z and previous generations is that people born in and after 1996 have internal thermostats that were shifted toward defend mode. This is why life on college campuses changed so suddenly when Gen Z arrived, beginning around 2014. Students began requesting "safe spaces" and trigger warnings. They were highly sensitive to "microaggressions" and sometimes claimed that words were "violence." These trends mystified those of us in older generations at the time, but in hindsight, it all makes sense. Gen Z students found words, ideas, and ambiguous social encounters more threatening than had previous generations of students because we had fundamentally altered their psychological development.
The article argues educational scores also began dropping around 2012, while citing estimates that America's average teenager spends seven to nine hours a day on screen-based activities. "Everything else in an adolescent's day must get squeezed down or eliminated entirely to make room for the vast amount of content that is consumed... The main reason why the phone-based childhood is so harmful is because it pushes aside everything else." (For example, there's "the collapse of time spent interacting with other people face-to-face.")

The article warns of fragmented attention, disrupted learning, social withdrawal, and "the decay of wisdom and the loss of meaning." ("This rerouting of enculturating content has created a generation that is largely cut off from older generations and, to some extent, from the accumulated wisdom of humankind, including knowledge about how to live a flourishing life.") Its proposed solution?

• No smartphones before high school
• No social media before 16
• Phoneâfree schools
• More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world

"We didn't know what we were doing in the early 2010s. Now we do. It's time to end the phone-based childhood."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 and sinij for sharing the article.

"Workers at an Amazon air hub in Kentucky celebrated a victory Thursday," reports the Washington Post, "after federal labor regulators found that Amazon violated labor law by trying to prevent workers there from unionizing." The employees have been demanding higher pay, more flexible schedules and safer working conditions since 2022. After a months-long investigation, the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint against Amazon last week, alleging the e-commerce behemoth illegally attempted to curtail those efforts by interrogating workers, threatening to call the police on them and demoting workers involved in union organizing.

The complaint is a victory for union organizers at a crucial air cargo hub in Kentucky who have been alleging that Amazon has been unfairly interfering with their unionization efforts there for months.... Amazon workers at various sites around the country have been trying to unionize for years, with little to show for it. Many have accused Amazon of using illegal tactics to discourage workers from supporting unions — more than 240 such charges have been filed with the labor board, workers said... Amazon employee Marcio Rodriguez said he was threatened with termination for his union-organizing activity along with 10 co-workers. For two weeks, Rodriguez said, Amazon management would "show up to where I was working out on the ramp in front of my co-workers in a truck and take me to the HR office," where they would interrogate him...

Amazon workers in Kentucky are seeking to form Amazon Labor Union, an independent but associated branch of the group that won a historic victory at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island in 2021. Lawyers for the union there are still battling Amazon, which has yet to come to the bargaining table and continues to argue that the NLRB unfairly sided with workers during that election. More recently, the company has argued in another New York case that the National Labor Relations Board itself is structured unconstitutionally, following legal arguments set forth by lawyers for SpaceX and Trader Joe's...

Amazon is scheduled to appear at a hearing before labor regulators regarding its alleged anti-union activities in Kentucky on April 22.