• An ExxonMobil lawsuit against activist investors was filed in January.
• Activist investors not acting in the interests of shareholders?
• Everyone in the industry is watching closely – keen for a way to make climate activists shut up?

Facing dozens of lawsuits that claim it lied for decades about its role in climate change and the dangers of burning fossil fuels, ExxonMobil has gone on the offensive. Sure, it could reflect on its climate impact, but the company feels its time and resources are better spent on a lawsuit targeting investors who want the company to slash its pollution.

As the world burns, ExxonMobil might as well dive into the flames headfirst, go down swinging and all that.

To try to shape corporate policies in publicly-traded companies, investors can file shareholder proposals that are voted on at annual meetings. ExxonMobil says a pair of investor groups are abusing the system by filing similar proposals year after year in an effort to micromanage its business.

At a time when global temperatures are rising and corporate analysts say most companies aren’t on track to meet their emissions targets, there are growing tensions between companies and investors. Pesky activists calling for corporations to cut climate impact!

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“Exxon is really upping the ante here in a big way by bringing this case,” says Josh Zinner, chief executive of an investor coalition called the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, whose members include a defendant in the ExxonMobil case. “Other companies could use this tactic not just to block resolutions,” Zinner says, “but to intimidate their shareholders from even bringing these [climate] issues to the table.”

There’s potential for other companies to unleash litigation against climate activists – who aren’t getting enough heat already, right?

ExxonMobil said it’s suing Arjuna Capital and Follow This because the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) isn’t enforcing rules that dictate when investors can resubmit shareholder proposals.

Apparently, the case “is not about climate change,” and court is “the right place to get clarity on SEC rules,” according to ExxonMobil.

The shareholder proposal from Arjuna and Follow This called for ExxonMobil to cut emissions faster from its own operations and from its supply chain. That includes pollution created when customers burn its oil and natural gas. This is known as Scope 3 emissions and accounts for 90% of ExxonMobil’s carbon footprint.

The proposal that Arjuna and Follow This put forward is similar to others that the groups submitted in recent years. ExxonMobil says historically the motions received little support from other shareholders.

All eyes are on the case. “If companies are decreasingly able to get the SEC to allow them to exclude proposals that are obviously politically motivated, then the next question is, well, can the courts succeed where the SEC has failed — or, more accurately, not even tried?” commented Charles Crain – vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, which represents ExxonMobil and other industrial companies.

After they were sued in federal court in Texas in January, Arjuna and Follow This withdrew the proposal and promised not to submit it to the company again, but ExxonMobil refuses to drop the case.

Follow This founder Mark Van Baal said the ExxonMobil lawsuit is trying to stifle shareholders.

“Apparently, Exxon does not want shareholders to vote on whether the company should accelerate its efforts to reduce emissions,” van Baal said. “This is the concern of more and more investors who want [to] safeguard the long-term future of the company and the global economy in view of the climate crisis.”

The threat of complete climate disaster is putting pressure on companies to cut down their emissions and other contributions to global warming – poor them. Many, including ExxonMobil, say they’re trying to eliminate or offset their greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 but, according to independent researchers, few companies have shown credible plans to achieve their targets.

The number of publicly listed corporations aiming for net zero rose from 417 to 929 between 2020 and 2023, according to the Net Zero Stocktake report. A basic checklist was applied to corporate claims including setting interim targets and covering all the emissions a company is responsible for – including Scope 3 emissions.

Fewer than 5% of the companies examined passed the test.

So it’s really no wonder that they’re all watching the ExxonMobil lawsuit closely; is the best way to offset emissions suing the people holding you accountable?

Industry group the American Petroleum Institution says the lawsuits are meritless and politicized. ExxonMobil’s take is that since it’s acknowledged that climate change is real and, noted in its statement to NPR, is pursuing more than $20 billion of “low emission investments” between 2022 and 2027 then it shouldn’t have to answer to activist investors.

The oil and gas company doesn’t have a good track record.

The investment its making is on top of nearly $5 billion it spent buying a company specializing in carbon dioxide capture. The thing is, if it’s really so committed to the climate cause, why do shareholder proposals about its emissions annoy the company so much?

If you look at the numbers, its dedication suddenly seems… smaller.

The amount that ExxonMobil spends on its traditional energy business is staggering: last year it struck a deal to buy oil and gas company Pioneer Natural Resources, valued at almost $60 billion.

Activist investors use shareholder proposals to push corporations on climate. Experts say other investors, from whom Arjuna and Follow This struggle to get support, are hesitant to back new climate proposals when companies already have policies to disclose and cut emissions.

Investors worry proposals have become too prescriptive and might interfere with how companies are run.

It seems at least possible that changing how companies are run is the answer to cutting carbon emissions, but that it may reduce the profit investors see – a conundrum indeed within a capitalisic snowglobe, while everyone else burns.

ExxonMobil says it’s dedicated to cutting emissions from its operations but the idea that activist investors like Arjuna and Follow This can quickly push the company out of the oil and gas business with new climate policies is “simplistic and against the interests of the vast majority of ExxonMobil shareholders.”

ExxonMobil told NPR that while shareholders are entitled to submit proposals to the company, they don’t have “an unlimited right to put forth any proposal to do anything.

“Their intent is to advance their agenda rather than creating long-term value for shareholders,” ExxonMobil said of Arjuna and Follow This.

This appears to insist that having a planet to stand on is somehow not in the long-term interest of ExxonMobil shareholders. Which is how conspiracy theories get started.

Corporate America doesn’t like the shareholder proposals process and became increasingly frustrated by it after the SEC issued guidance in 2021 that made it harder to turn away some resolutions.

The National Association of Manufacturers has argued that forcing companies to publish shareholder proposals that deal with “contentious issues unrelated to [their] core business or the creation of shareholder value,” including climate change, violates their First Amendment right of free speech.

Crain says activists spend too much time pursuing a “political goal” and should instead try to help companies “understand and mitigate those climate related risks or opportunities for their operations.”

Critics of the ExxonMobil say its lawsuit is part of a broader effort to curtail shareholder activism, especially around social and environmental issues. “And the reason is because it’s one of the few effective avenues left to hold companies accountable,” says Zinner of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.

So is the ExxonMobil lawsuit political or not?

Will ExxonMobil go down swinging?

The post Oil and gas company says suing climate activists isn’t political appeared first on TechHQ.

• The Bluesky vs. Mastodon question is on every ex-Xer’s mind.
• Which social media alternative is best for you?
• We weigh up Bluesky vs. Mastodon so you don’t have to.

The Twitter-becomes-X debacle has been discussed weekly since a certain someone bought the social media company and turned it into the handcart in which we’re all going to Hell. We’re tired of talking about it, frankly. Although the mass migration from the site that was threatened by many users never quite came to pass, a new dawn broke for alternative social media sites.

Meta-owned Instagram tried to go toe-to-toe with X by launching its own microblogging platform, Threads, but it was outliers Mastodon and Bluesky that took in those users who couldn’t bear to keep using what used to be Twitter.

With images from ITSFOSS‘s review, let’s take a look at the sites and see what users are saying.

Mastodon was launched in 2016 by Eugen Rochko as a decentralized microblogging platform that was really quite hit-and-miss. It spent a while trying to replicate Twitter too closely, eventually developing into a social medium operating on distributed servers, called instances, allowing for independent networks with different themes and topics.

Bluesky, on the other hand, began as a team funded by Twitter to build an open and decentralized standard for social media, in 2019. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was on the team, hoping the platform would be the first to utilize the protocol.

When you-know-who took over, the plan for an open standard Twitter (and the name itself) disappeared. Since 2021, Bluesky has been an independent company backed by Dorsey ever since, and open sourced the client code for the platform, with an invite-only system for the website. Now, it’s opened up to everyone.

Jack Dorsey left Twitter and is now on Bluesky’s board.

In terms of user experience, Mastodon has the benefit of being around for longer. The site has had time to evolve with community requirements. The interface is relatively similar to Twitter, with all the right differences to make the move feel worth it.

There’s no algorithm dictating what you see in the public feed (which some of us might miss, despite its foibles) and posts with more organic engagement will likely show up first. Otherwise, the feed shows posts by users you follow chronologically.

Experience does vary somewhat based on the instance you signed up to, because that impacts what you see and what server rules are complied with. This is pretty adjustable to your taste, though.

The number of instances to choose from is often lauded as a big plus for Mastodon. In fact, many reviews and user guides focus on all the benefits of the system but doesn’t elaborate on how best to make use of it.

That means it’s difficult to actually find the community that’s supposedly on offer – not many people want to put that much effort into building their social media profile. We’ve all gotten used to a handy algorithm to do it for us.

Glance too quickly and you’d think you were on the Twitter of old.

Another double-edged sword is the human moderators. In almost every way, servers moderated by humans are better for users, particularly when you can essentially choose servers moderated by individuals whose values align with your own.

Some have critiqued the system because, like the forum days of old, the people in charge can tend towards being power-crazed leaders with too much time on their hands. Not that that’s a Mastodon problem: it’s just people.

Bluesky, on the other hand, uses automated moderation. In many ways, it closely mimics Twitter in its heyday (unsurprising, really, given the Dorsey involvement) and you’d be forgiven for forgetting you’d switched to a new platform.

You get the option to choose an algorithm to follow per your requirements; limit your feed to just people you follow, or a custom one that learns what you like (a ‘for you’ feed tailored to your needs, baby!).

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Although it’s separated from Twitter, Bluesky is still a corporate-backed product. It’s open source, and may soon let you host your own instance, Mastodon-style, but for now it’s a board-controlled entity.

Even if it completes its federation network and lets you self-host instances, Bluesky as a primary platform will use advertising and other monetization strategies.

Another one-up for Mastodon, perhaps, is its non-profit status and crowdfunded development. It’s not reliant on investors (like Twitter was…) and companies and users donate to Mastodon, keeping it free from monetization.

When it comes to privacy, both Mastodon and Bluesky get points for not requiring a phone number for sign up. Beyond that, Mastodon seems to come out ahead.

It allows users to push public posts or post only for followers and interact with individual followers using private mentions (a bit like direct messaging, which isn’t technically an option). You can also request an archive of your data and export it in an Activity Pub compatible format, and easily move your data to another instance or (within some limits) even move your account data to another handle.

Mastodon’s privacy policy is simple and easy to understand.

You can’t make your profile private in the same way you can on Instagram or X, but there is a setting that automatically deletes posts, and you can set up your account so you manually approve followers.

Bluedsky does offer private accounts but doesn’t use two-factor authentication – which Mastodon does. Plus, if your Bluesky account is private, your posts are only hidden from view for users who haven’t logged in to the site. The data is public to any other server connected to the network.

Data export is in the beta phase, so getting it all downloaded is a mammoth task. Bluesky’s privacy policy does clarify it might use your personal information for marketing and research and share it with third party services. FOSS doesn’t think it’s a good privacy policy for web service in 2024.

The thing is, both Bluesky and Mastodon come out remarkably well against the platform they might replace – and the major social media that’s owned and run by tech giants. Depending on what’s spurred you to seek an X alternative, the two platforms offer a well-rounded selection.

Mastodon, though perhaps on the moral high ground, definitely requires more effort to set up and establish a presence – or at least a timeline that keeps you scrolling in the same way algorithm-run feeds do. Bluesky offers pretty much what was lost in the switch to X, perhaps without the years of user-feedback-influenced improvements.

Early reviews of Bluesky, back in invite-only beta, all celebrated its comparative positivity, harking back to ‘simpler times’ online. Whether it’s remained quite so fluffy and nice is questionable – as is how strong a marketing factor that will be.

Increasingly, you’ll notice that if you scroll to the bottom of a company’s website there’ll be a link to a Bluesky or Mastodon account – maybe even both. While the more mainstream services are still going, there is a sense that they’ve exhausted their peak and a new era of social media feels closer to realization than it has for years – maybe even since the beginning of Instagram.

So, give one of the alternatives a go, even if only to say you were there when it all started.

Tired of the Twitter swamp? Be more Groot…

The post Leave your X behind, head for Bluesky appeared first on TechHQ.

• The Apple electric car destined never to hit roads.
• In truth, no one ever asked for an Apple electric car, and its projected price-point was absurd.
• Apple will now focus on generative AI.

Anyone remember that Apple electric car idea? One of the company’s most ambitious projects has finally been canned, much to the surprise of some 2000 employees working on it. The effort has been decades long but an internal announcement on Tuesday finally put the project to bed.

Chief operating officer Jeff Williams and vice president in charge of the electric car effort, Kevin Lynch, informed employees – who have remained anonymous given that the information isn’t yet public – that the project will begin winding down and staff shifted to the artificial intelligence division.

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The Apple electric car team was known as the Special Projects Group (SPG). Given the scale of AI hype, it’s no wonder that team is growing under executive John Giannandrea. AI projects are an increasingly key priority at Apple and, let’s face it, there weren’t many people still holding out for an Apple car.

Work on the idea began in 2014, the multi-billion-dollar effort called Project Titan would have catapulted Apple into a whole new industry. At its conception, the Apple electric car would have a limousine-style interior and voice-controlled navigation.

The project was never smooth sailing – at all. The team’s leadership and strategy was changed several times: Lynch and Williams only took the reins a few years ago, following the departure of Doug Field, who’s now a senior executive at Ford.

Publicly, Apple contemplated many designs. You could almost be forgiven for thinking that this was a major issue for the company in realizing its electric vehicle, but self-driving technology was also a concern. Apple began road-testing its system in 2017 with dozens of vehicles on US roads – all inside the interior of a Lexus SUV.

The Apple car system gets tested in an SUV shell. Via the Financial Times.

Just one month ago, it was reported that the Apple electric car project had reached a make-or-break point. More secretive components were tested on a track in Phoenix – the latest internal strategy had been to delay the car’s release until 2028 and reduce its self-driving specifications from Level 4 to Level 2+ technology.

One idea, scrapped earlier than the whole project, was a car with no steering wheel or pedals. Time also went into the development of a remote command center that could take over for a driver. The SPG included employees from across the car industry, with designers from Aston Martin, Lamborghini, BMW and Porsche.

The car had been imagined at a cost of $100,000 but executives worried the vehicle wouldn’t achieve the profit margins Apple typically enjoys on its other products. There were also concerns from the board about spending millions of dollars every year on a project that might never be realized.

The move is a relief to investors, who sent Apple shares up on Tuesday after the news broke. Elon Musk has also celebrated the move – less competition for his Tesla – in typically graceless fashion, by posting a saluting emoji and a cigarette emoji on his platform X. If only there were a good verb for posting to what used to be Twitter.

Oh stop, our sides are splitting…

The move from Apple may just reflect the cooling of the EV market. Sales growth has wavered thanks to high prices and poor charging infrastructure discouraging mainstream buyers. Not that any new Apple product is viable for the mainstream buyer when it’s first released…

Still, the entire EV industry is pivoting, with General Motors and Ford shifting their attention to hybrid vehicles thanks to a lack of EV demand and too many manufacturing bottlenecks. Across the industry, automakers are slashing battery-electric car prices, production targets and – crucially for Apple – profit forecasts.

Apple is still heavily investing in other areas: it has spent $113 billion on research and development over the past five years with an average annual growth rate of 16%. Of course, it also launched the Vision Pro headset, its first new product category in almost a decade, with remarkable – not to say baffling – success.

Ultimately, focusing on AI may be a better bet, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Anurag Rana and Andrew Girard said in a note. “Apple’s decision to abandon electric cars and shift resources toward generative AI is a good strategic move, we believe, given the long-term profitability potential of AI revenue streams versus cars.”

Ultimately, then, the Apple electric car isn’t a huge loss, but it does prove that the technology industry is increasingly making cuts in other major project areas to keep up with AI development.

The post Apple’s electric car plans driven out by AI appeared first on TechHQ.

• Attitudes to smartphone use are shifting significantly.
• Some parental campaigners want significant bands on screen-time for children.
• One French town has banned scrolling in public – for everyone!

Smartphone use may be in its biggest decline since the devices entered common use. Or at least, attitudes towards how the technology impacts day-to-day life are increasingly unfavorable.

Back when owning an iPhone was almost as inconceivable for most people as trying out the Vision Pro is today, the idea that living for 30 days without a smartphone or any other device being within the self-challenge subgenre of movie would have been laughable.

Now, when the idea of going out for a day without a smartphone in your pocket seems almost ludicrous, a movie by Alex Lykos, following his experience of going cold turkey off his devices and called Disconnect Me was just released.

Alex Lykos lived for a month without his smart devices. Via IMDB.

As much as it reeks of Western privileges (although really, others in the genre like Supersize Me could be accused of the same), Disconnect Me attempts to identify the alienation that disconnecting now represents. Although the Guardian’s review of the movie criticizes some sweeping comments made by Lykos about the impact of technology on children, it concedes that “Lykos gives an affable and personal survey of different issues associated with smartphone use, from self-esteem to attention span.”

And we are far from short of evidence that the technologically driven world we inhabit has repercussions for every generation.

We all know smartphone use is bad for kids

The well-documented ill-effects of using smartphones and other technology from a young age range from physical strain and eye troubles to increased rates of unhappiness in younger and younger children.

Digital screen time is linked to the development of myopia in children and teenagers, and is also linked to dry eye syndrome, digital eyestrain and poor head and neck postures.

Via mykidsvision.org.

A slew of lawsuits recently filed against Meta also shine a light on the types of content to which children are exposed on social media, and the impact it has on their wellbeing. One such lawsuit in the US state of New Mexico alleges that Meta “proactively served and directed [children] to egregious, sexually explicit images through recommended users and posts – even where the child has expressed no interest in this content.”

Whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed internal studies showed platforms like Instagram led children to anorexia-related content.

Over in the UK, the government’s Department for Education has confirmed plans to ban use of mobile phones in English schools, issuing statutory guidance on how to do so – guidance that unions have said is already in place in a vast majority of schools: try having a conversation with a child while they scroll TikTok if you can’t imagine why.

Esther Ghey, the mother of Brianna Ghey, a schoolgirl who was murdered on February 11, 2023, believes her daughter was vulnerable after spending so much time online. This month, she’s called for  a complete ban on social media access for under-16s.

All that and the alarming links between the time children spend on smartphones and social media and the likelihood they’ll experience bullying, problems of low self-esteem and even self-harm, mean it’s easy to understand why smartphones aren’t conducive to a learning atmosphere.

Research from the London School of Economics found test scores for schoolchildren in Birmingham, London, Leicester and Manchester rose when their schools introduced mobile phone bans.

Making some kind of change to improve all of this isn’t an unpopular idea.

Thousands of UK parents have joined calls for a smartphone-free childhood led by two mothers in response to their fears around the norm of giving children smart devices when they go to secondary school (aged 11 or 12).

After Clare Ferynhough and Daisy Greenwell’s WhatsApp group Smartphone-Free Childhood was promoted on Instagram, over a thousand other parents joined overnight.

Smartphones expose children to a “world that they are not ready for” because they can access pornography and content on self-harm and suicide, which can have a detrimental impact on their mental health, Fernyhough said.

Shocked by the support, Fernyhough said she’d thought it was an “extreme view,” forming the group for solidarity among a minority. This view isn’t exactly surprising: Ofcom research found that 91% of children in the UK own a smartphone by the time they’re 11 and 44% by the time they’re nine.

Changing this is the only way to combat smartphone use in children; being the only one without a smartphone in a class full of other children with one would be alienating and unfair. “That’s a nightmare and no one will do that to their child. But if 20%, 30%, even 50% of kids are turning up with parents making that decision, they are in a much better position.”

Not good for adults, either

We might be keen to overlook the negative effects of smartphone use on young people because we so want to ignore them in ourselves. Sure, children are playing outside less, but have you noticed the quieter streets from around the edges of your own smartphone?

A teen with one earphone constantly in is less conspicuously rude if you’re distracted by your own scrolling.

One French village has decided to take this all more seriously, banning people from scrolling their phones in public. From a hairdresser in the village, Ludivine, a cardiologist, told the Guardian that “everyone is struggling with too much screen time.”

Signs outside a school in Seine-Port. Via the Guardian

Seine-Port has a population below 2,000 and voted yes in a referendum to restrict smartphone use in public. The rules for children are stricter: no screens of any kind in the morning, no screens in bedrooms, before bed or during meals.

If parents of teenagers sign a written agreement not to provide their child with a smartphone before the age of 15, the town hall will provide the child with a handset for calls only – the old-fashioned sort.

A postal worker from the town, Gabriel, said he’s against the move. The 20-year-old said that he spends five hours a day on his phone, “which [he thinks] is reasonable.”

“You can’t ban knowledge at your fingertips.”

All of this does indicate a shift in attitudes towards what was once welcomed as the key to a better future. Post-covid, there was some pushback against the move online caused by social distancing and there’s reluctance from many to buy into the smartphone ordering and payment systems that cropped up as restaurants and shops reopened.

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Further, as more and more gets done by smartphones, proof that they’re superior to the ‘real’ things they replace gets harder to show. Sure, the GPS on your phone makes navigating a new city far simpler than using a map did, but the iBeer gimmick got old fast.

People are increasingly dubious about online services being offered in place of “real” ones – and of the companies that own them. The reign of the tech genius is very much over – heralded by Musk and Zuckerberg’s distinct uncoolness – and, tentatively, screens are falling from favor.

That’s not to say anyone’s about to ditch their smartphone, but the concept of an online future is, at the very brink of being realized, less and less appealing.

The post Are smartphones a social issue? appeared first on TechHQ.

• Technically, the US has a shortage of transmission lines.
• Interregional transmission lines would help provision – but potentially hit utility profits.
• Power Vs. profit – the ultimate American standoff…

Without the power grid, there would be nothing. Or at least nothing for us to write about, and nothing to write it on; the human condition has become reliant on electricity for more or less everything. So, the system that provides it and ensures it gets across the country, must be well-planned and beneficial to as many people as possible. Right?

That depends on where you are: there aren’t enough transmission lines in the US to connect regional power networks, driving up the cost of electricity, reducing grid reliability and hampering the deployment of renewable energy.

High voltage transmission lines are what move large amounts of energy across long distances, linking power generation to power consumption. If done right, the transmission network contains a web of connections that create a reliable, redundant power supply system of huge scale.

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Electricity makes money for utility companies who, being good capitalists with shareholders to satisfy, want to keep hold of as much of it as possible. That means they refuse to pursue (potentially expensive) interregional transmission projects and go as far as actively impeding them, because new projects threaten their profits and disrupt industry alliances.

Utility companies are lobbying against reforms that would lose them money: addressing transmission shortages has long been on the agenda in Washington, but utility firm lobbying continue to ensure delays.

As things currently stand, around 40 corporations own the vast majority of transmission lines in America. Their hold on the backbone of US grids should be scrutinized.

With more transmission lines comes more capacity and connectivity, letting new power plants connect and more power to move between transmission networks. Utility companies don’t want that kind of competition, or for their allies to lose regional control – and so transmission expansion is something they oppose.

The existing transmission networks across America were built largely during the last century by for-profit companies. Nonprofit utility providers organized by governments and communities had some part in it too – but by comparison, a very minor one.

The geographical equations of transmission lines

It makes sense that transmission lines tend to be concentrated around fossil fuel reserves and population centers, but there’s another force at play, deciding where the lines are routed: historic utilities alliances.

Where agreements were made between companies to trade energy, sufficient transmission was built that would allow power to move between their local service territories. Over time, alliances have expanded but there are still non-allied utility companies with comparatively very weak connections.

Expansion opens opportunities for new power plant and transmission developers to undercut profits, taking control over the rules shaping the industry. The value of linking networks is widely accepted around the world – but it doesn’t make money for the American companies currently in control of the grid.

Connecting regional networks is critical to the incorporation of renewable energy. For example, four proposed high voltage lines totaling 600km along the seam of regional networks in the upper Midwest would connect at least 28 gigawatts of wind and solar energy. Although the plans have been around for years, utility companies in neighboring regions haven’t moved forward.

Proposed new transmission lines in the upper Midwest. Via Joint Targeted Interconnection Queue Study (JTIQ), MISO, SPP.

We might learn from the European Commission which in 2018 set a target that each member country would transmit across its borders at least 15% of the electricity produced in its territories. By the end of 2022, 23 gigawatts of cross-border connections in Europe were under construction or in advanced stages of permitting; it’s unlikely those losing profit over the changes were totally on board, but the change has gone ahead all the same.

In the US, building the line across the Midwest would cost $1.9bn, which is a staggering number – until you compare it with the cost of rebuilding aged transmission infrastructure every year.

Not only that, but interregional transmission for renewable energies also significantly reduces the cost of use for consumers. Even if renewables aren’t considered, costs would be massively reduced given that better integrated networks reduce the amount of generation capacity needed and decrease energy market cost. Reliability goes up, too.

What limited interregional connection there was proved paramount in preventing total disaster when Storm Elliott disabled power plants and pipelines from Dakota to Georgia in 2022. Imagine a reality in which localized disruption didn’t mean blackouts for entire states.

Won’t someone think of the profits?!

That isn’t how utilities companies see it, of course. For them, it means a whole bunch of drawbacks. More connections open the door for competitors who might undercut them on price; with profits in mind, having a monopoly is the more efficient choice, but interregional lines threaten utilities’ dominance over the nation’s power supply.

Also, building a whole new power plant in one area generates more money than just building transmission lines from an existing one. Transmission projects also mean competing against other developers for profit from that construction.

There’s some hope in the BIG WIRES Act introduced BIG WIRES Act introduced in September by Senator John Hickenlooper and Representative Scott Peters. The acronym, that’s so handily pertinent to the cause, stands for Building Integrated Grids With Inter-Regional Energy Supply. [Do you ever get the feeling politicians sometimes find the acronym first and work backwards? – Ed]

Hard not to see a case for nationalizing the power grid, but we won’t spell it out. Climate emergency and all, best to keep an eye on the electricity companies though, eh?

Unless you happen to know a friendly neighborhood god of thunder, you’d probably better look to your transmission lines.

The post Connectivity cuts profits for utilities corporations appeared first on TechHQ.

• Data storage solutions underpin the forward-going technologies like generative AI and machine learning.
• That means there’s a need for cleverer, more streamlined and ecological data storage.
• Hammerspace  is making its HPC parallel file system available as an NAS.

Hammerspace is the instantly accessible storage area in fiction, the imaginary extra dimension that hammers, say, appear from when Tom needs to set a trap for Jerry. It’s also the name of the US-based data storage company on a mission to change how people use their data.

It’s Hammer time!

Data is always in motion and, much like an anvil pulled from behind the back just in time, should be accessible as-and-when needed. Unlike its eponymous cartoon concept though, Hammerspace the company doesn’t require you to suspend your disbelief.

Welcoming Brian Pawlowski (who you might know from his work at Quantum) as VP of performance engineering, late last week Hammerspace announced the availability of its HPC parallel file system as an enterprise NAS for the first time.

A response to the need for a new storage architecture in an increasingly data-driven world, Hammerspace answers to the demands of the next data cycle.

Clear gaps are emerging in the way data is being used: the storage of unstructured data for deep learning sees silos form and it becomes difficult to access and unify data sources; the high performance demands necessary to keep GPUs utilized aren’t met by existing NAS, which isn’t designed for large compute performance.

From Hammerspace.

We all know that AI and ML are generating waves that wash upon every industry, but when it comes to data, the implications are particularly huge: there isn’t AI without data, and the emerging industry’s demands are forcing a reckoning on data storage methods.

Hammerspace is simplifying data pipelines for these new technologies by aggregating data into a single file system that’s globally accessible. It’s also directly enabling the future of AI, which demands performance rates not met by legacy NAS architectures.

Hyperscale NAS architecture speeds time-to-market and time-to-insight. Read the technical brief from Hammerspace here.

“We have traditionally separated scale-out file systems, commonly known as parallel file systems, from NAS precisely due to the nature of their performance for very large HPC/ AI environments. As we enter into this next generation of AI, new technologies, particularly in data infrastructure, are needed,” said Camberley Bates, VP and practice lead at The Futurum Group.

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Available globally and a world first, the Hammerspace data environment includes two broad sets of capabilities – hyperscale NAS and data orchestration. Available as a standard capability of the Hammerspace Global Data Environment and included in the cost of Hammerspace software licensing, the new offering answers to most data storage demands.

Data storage sustainability

While not every change in data storage systems directly pertains to sustainability, the data storage industry cannot be separated from its ecological implications.

Enabling the proliferation of AI by extension means increasing the strain on a climate emergency that’s already the realization of worst-case scenarios. The secrecy that surrounds data centers is one indicator – though, of course, security is also a factor in this – that best practice doesn’t always include the environmental angle.

Proving a cut above the rest must now mean proving a commitment to green initiatives. Hammerspace works to connect users with their data on any vendor’s data center storage or public cloud services so that their customers don’t have to compromise on the solution that they choose – a solution that should center environmental best practice.

Hammerspace has also expanded its third-party storage support to include tape storage, a method that supports ESG initiatives by reducing energy consumption and carbon footprint, but now doesn’t mean lengthier processing.

When it comes to hammer-based solutions…you probably have to be worthy of them.

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• Vietnam is set to collect an enormous amount of biometric data from its citizens.
• Security in the system will obviously be paramount.
• The development seems likely to generate whole new waves of crime by bad actors – biocrime.

Biometric data is increasingly used in technological security systems, yet retina scans and voice recognition still call to mind the hi-tech lairs of fictional villains. Face ID seems a lot less glam when you’re trying to pay for a bus ticket with your phone.

Minority Report speculates on surveillance systems in 2054. Tom Cruise is there, too.

In Vietnam, citizens can now expect to give the government a slew of their biometric data, per the request of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh. Collection of biometric data will begin in July this year following an amendment to the Law of Citizen Identification passed in November 2023.

The amendment allows the collection of biometric data and record of blood type and other related information.

The Ministry of Public Security will collect the data, working with other areas of government to merge the new identification system into the national database. The new identification system will use iris scans, voice recordings and even DNA samples.

Vietnamese citizens’ sensitive data will be stored in a national database and shared across agencies to allow them to “perform their functions and tasks.” We’re sure the sharing of highly personal data won’t encounter any issues – accidental or otherwise.

Regarding the method of collection, the amended law says:

“Biometric information on DNA and voice is collected when voluntarily provided by the people or the agency conducting criminal proceedings, or the agency managing the person to whom administrative measures are applied in the process of settling the case according to their functions and duties whether to solicit assessment or collect biometric information on DNA, people’s voices are shared with identity management agencies for updating and adjusting to the identity database.”

Well, obviously.

Chairman of the National Defense and Security Committee, Le Tan Toi, has expressed the belief that a person’s iris is suitable for identification as it does not change over time and would serve as a basis for authenticating an identity.

As things currently stand, ID cards are issued to citizens older than 14, and aren’t mandatory for the six to 14 age range – though they can be issued if necessary. The new ID cards will look much the same but undergo several changes, not least the addition of holders’ biometric data.

They’ll incorporate the functions of some other ID documents too, including driver’s licenses, birth and marriage certificates, and health and social insurance documents. All of your personal information stored in the same place… What could go wrong?

Biometric data must be secured

Fingerprints on the ID card will be replaced by a QR code linked to the holder’s biometric and identifying data.

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There are roughly 70 million adults in Vietnam, so the task of collecting the huge amount of data from them all will be no mean feat. In case you hadn’t got there yet: security will be paramount. The data on citizens is prime for identity theft; we might expect to see an increase in bad actor activity, including skimming to collect fingerprints from ATM machines.

Technology is always evolving, but it’s not necessarily guaranteed to evolve for the better. A group of researchers from China and America recently outlined a new attack surface, proposing a side-channel attack on the Automatic Fingerprint Identification system: “finger-swiping friction sounds can be captured by attackers online with a high possibility.”

Ensuring that the personal information of Vietnamese citizens is secure at every level is a responsibility the government must be prepared to take on.

There’s also the sticky issue of government surveillance that almost doesn’t bear thinking about. We’ll leave the tinfoil hat within reach.

From airport services to citizen ID…

The post Vietnamese government starts collecting biometrics appeared first on TechHQ.

• Ruling says Air Canada must refund customer who acted on information provided by chatbot.
• The airline’s chatbot isn’t available on the website anymore.
• The case raises the question of autonomous AI action – and who (or what) is responsible for those actions.

The AI debate rages on, as debates in tech are wont to do.

Meanwhile, in other news, an Air Canada chatbot suddenly has total and distinct autonomy.

Although it couldn’t take the stand, when Air Canada was taken to court and asked to pay a refund offered by its chatbot, the company tried to argue that “the chatbot is a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions.”

After the death of his grandmother, Jake Moffat visited the Air Canada website to book a flight from Vancouver to Toronto. Unsure of the bereavement rate policy, he opened the handy chatbot and asked it to explain.

Now, even if we take the whole GenAI bot explosion with a grain of salt, some variation of the customer-facing ‘chatbot’ has existed for years. Whether just churning out automated responses and a number to call or responding with the offkey chattiness now ubiquitous with generative AI’s output, the chatbot provides the primary response consumers get from really any company.

And it’s trusted to be equivalent to getting answers from a human employee.

So, when Moffat was told he could claim a refund after booking his tickets, he went ahead and, ceding to encouragement, booked flights right away safe in the knowledge that – within 90 days – he’d be able to claim a partial refund from Air Canada.

He has the screenshot to show that the chatbot’s full response was:

If you need to travel immediately or have already travelled and would like to submit your ticket for a reduced bereavement rate, kindly do so within 90 days of the date your ticket was issued by completing our Ticket Refund Application form.

Which seems about as clear and encouraging as you’d hope to get in such circumstances.

He was surprised then to find that his refund request was denied. Air Canada policy actually states that the airline won’t provide refunds for bereavement travel after the flight has been booked; the information provided by the chatbot was wrong.

Via Ars Technica.

Moffat spent months trying to get his refund, showing the airline what the chatbot had said. He was met with the same answer: refunds can’t be requested retroactively. Air Canada’s argument was that because the chatbot response included a link to a page on the site outlining the policy correctly, Moffat should’ve known better.

We’ve underlined the phrase that the chatbot used to link further reading. The way that hyperlinked text is used across the internet – including here on TechHQ – means few actually follow a link through. Particularly in the case of the GenAI answer, it functions as a citation-cum-definition of whatever is underlined.

Still, the chatbot’s hyperlink meant the airline kept refusing to refund Moffat. Its best offer was a promise to update the chatbot and give Moffat a $200 coupon. So he took them to court.

Moffat filed a small claim complaint in Canada’s Civil Resolution Tribunal. Air Canada argued that not only should its chatbot be considered a separate legal entity, but also that Moffat never should have trusted it. Because naturally, customers should of course in no way trust systems put in place by companies to mean what they say.

Christopher Rivers, the Tribunal member who decided the case in favor of Moffat, called Air Canada’s defense “remarkable.”

“Air Canada argues it cannot be held liable for information provided by one of its agents, servants, or representatives—including a chatbot,” Rivers wrote. “It does not explain why it believes that is the case” or “why the webpage titled ‘Bereavement travel’ was inherently more trustworthy than its chatbot.”

Rivers also found that Moffat had no reason to believe one part of the site would be accurate and another wouldn’t – Air Canada “does not explain why customers should have to double-check information found in one part of its website on another part of its website,” he wrote.

In the end, he ruled that Moffatt was entitled to a partial refund of $650.88 in Canadian dollars (CAD) (around $482 USD) off the original fare, which was $1,640.36 CAD (around $1,216 USD), as well as additional damages to cover interest on the airfare and Moffatt’s tribunal fees.

Ars Technica heard from Air Canada that it will comply with the ruling and considers the matter closed. Moffat will receive his Air Canada refund.

The AI approach

Last year, CIO of Air Canada Mel Crocker told news outlets that the company had launched the chatbot as an AI “experiment.”

Originally, it was a way to take the load off the airline’s call center when flights were delayed or cancelled. Read: give customers information that would otherwise be available from human employees – which must be presumed to be accurate, or its entire function is redundant.

In the case of a snowstorm, say, “if you have not been issued your new boarding pass yet and you just want to confirm if you have a seat available on another flight, that’s the sort of thing we can easily handle with AI,” Crocker told the Globe and Mail.

Over time, Crocker said, Air Canada hoped the chatbot would “gain the ability to resolve even more complex customer service issues,” with the airline’s ultimate goal being to automate every service that did not require a “human touch.”

Crocker said that where Air Canada could, it would use “technology to solve something that can be automated.”

The company’s investment in AI was so great that, she told the media, the money put towards AI was greater than the cost of continuing to pay human workers to handle simple enquiries.

But the fears that robots will take everyone’s jobs are fearmongering nonsense, obviously.

In this case, liability might have been avoided if the chatbot had given a warning to customers that its information could be inaccurate. That’s not good optics when you’re spending more on it than humans at least marginally less likely to hallucinate refund policies out of thin data.

Because it didn’t include any such warning, Rivers ruled that “Air Canada did not take reasonable care to ensure its chatbot was accurate.” The responsibility lies with Air Canada for any information on its website, regardless of whether it’s from a “strategic page or a chatbot.”

This case opens up the question of AI culpability in the ongoing debate about its efficacy. On the one hand, we have a technology that’s lauded as infallible – or at least on its way to infallibility, and certainly as trustworthy as human beings, with their legendary capacity for “human error.” In fact, it’s frequently sold as a technology that eradicates human error, (and, sometimes, the humans too) from the workplace.

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So established is the belief that (generative) artificial intelligence is intelligent, when a GenAI-powered chatbot makes a mistake, the blame lies with it, not the humans who implemented it.

Fears of what AI means for the future are fast being reduced in the public media to the straw man that it will “rise up and kill us” – a line not in any way subdued by calls for AI development to be paused or halted “before something cataclysmic happens.”

The real issue though is the way in which humans are already beginning to regard the technology as an entity separate from the systems in which it exists – and an infallible, final arbiter of what’s right and wrong in such systems. While imagining the State versus ChatGPT is somewhat amusing, passing off corporate error to a supposedly all-intelligent third party seems like a convenient “get out of jail free card” for companies to play – though at least in Canada, the Tribunal system was engaged enough to see this as an absurd concept.

Imagine for a moment that Air Canada had better lawyers, with much greater financial backing, and the scenario of “It wasn’t us, it was our chatbot” becomes altogether more plausible as a defence.

Ultimately, what happened here is that Air Canada refused compensation to a confused and grieving customer. Had a human employee told Moffat he could get a refund after booking his flight, then perhaps Air Canada could refuse – but this is because of the unspoken assumption that said employee would be working from given rules – a set of data upon which they were trained, perhaps – that they’d actively ignored.

In fact, headlines proclaiming that the chatbot ‘lied’ to Moffat are following the established formula for a story in which a disgruntled or foolish employee knowingly gave out incorrect information. The chatbot didn’t ‘know’ what it said was false; had it been given accurate enough training, it would have provided the answer available elsewhere on the Air Canada website.

At the moment, the Air Canada chatbot is not on the website.

Feel free to imagine it locked in a room somewhere, having its algorithms hit with hockey sticks, if you like.

It’s also worth noting that while the ruling was made this year, it was 2022 when Moffat used the chatbot, which is back in the pre-ChatGPT dark ages of AI. While the implications of the case impact the AI industry as it exists here and now, the chatbot’s error in itself isn’t representative, given that it was an early example of AI use.

Still, Air Canada freely assigned it the culpability of a far more advanced intelligence, which speaks to perceptions of GenAI’s high-level abilities. Further, this kind of thing is still happening:

“No takesies backsies.” There’s that chatbot chattiness…

Also, does it bother anyone else that an AI chatbot just hallucinated a more humane policy than the human beings who operated it were prepared to stand by?

The post Oh, Air Canada! Airline pays out after AI accident appeared first on TechHQ.

• Where in the world can you get the highest tech salary?
• Why are some traditional bastions of high salary tech roles falling by the wayside?
• Australia – a case study of innovation.

Despite job shortage squeezes, a tech salary is highly sought because, at the risk of seeming grubby, tech saaries are traditionally high compared to salaries in “non-tech” industries. In the US, big tech means big money and that’s partly what keeps computer science classes populated. Luckily, global demand for engineers isn’t dropping, according to staffing service firm Human Resocia.

But in Japan, for instance,  IT engineers were only paid, on average, $36,061 in 2023. That figure sees Japan drop six places in worldwide rankings and come in at 26 out of 72 companies for best tech sector salary.

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“Even disregarding the effects of a weak yen, (Japan’s) competitiveness is receding when looking at salaries,” a member of the research team said. “There are concerns that Japan is becoming a less attractive destination.”

Switzerland was top of the charts, with an average salary of $102,839 followed by the US where the average tech sector salary is $92,378.

Pay for IT workers in Japan rose only 0.4% compared to the last year, which is a miniscule amount – especially when the US saw growth of 3.6% and China jumped 16.9%.

The number of people employed in IT across 109 countries analyzed by Human Resocia rose by an estimated 26.81 million, up 13.3% from the previous year. The largest growth happened in the US, where 4.45 million people were added to the workforce.

India’s IT workforce grew by 3.34 million people and China 3.28 million. Despite unfavorable wages, Japan’s staff growth was ranked 4^th, increasing by 1.44 million.

Japan, alongside the UK, entered a recession last week. Although previously a giant in the technology sector, it has been flagging.

That doesn’t mean the government isn’t trying. It plans to spend as much as ¥45 billion ($300 million) to back a research group developing chip technology – another step in a national push to catch up in semiconductor manufacturing.

Of course, Japan isn’t so much establishing ground in the chip market as reclaiming it. In 1988, Japanese firms accounted for 51% of chip sales worldwide. So what went wrong? Does the hardly competitive salary mean that the best Japanese engineers are leaving the country and putting their skills towards technological advance elsewhere?

Australian tech sector hard to enter

For years now Australia has been unable to train enough IT professionals to fill local requirements. Visas for skilled workers from offshore have been the solution so far, but the process is about to change.

By design, getting a work visa for Australia is complicated: you have to convince an “assessing authority” you’ve got the educational achievements and skills that Australia needs. For tech sector professionals, only one organization is a certified assessor – the Australian Computer Society (ACS).

The process for applicants hoping to work in the technology sector involves filling in a PDF. Sounds simple, but according to the ACS chief growth officer, Siobhan O’Sullivan, it results in 80% of applications arriving in an unfit state to be assessed.

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The complexity of the form – particularly tricky for those who don’t speak English as a first language – means that often, they’re submitted incomplete, omitting important documents or information.

More than half of applicants submit two forms, because another requirement to score a visa is to demonstrate that skills match the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO). More than 20 such ANZSCO codes apply to tech jobs. Applicants therefore submit multiple applications in the hope their skills match at least one ANZSCO code.

In an effort to make the application process simpler, O’Sullivan said it should offer an experience akin to that of consumer-facing apps like food delivery services. That would also cut down the ACS processing time; the organization finds itself with thousands of unprocessed applications and a response time of up to 14 weeks.

Next month, a new, interactive web form will be introduced. Identity documents will be sent to a third party for verification, meaning the ACS will no longer store them. It will also access assessments using an API instead of storing and securing sensitive personal information.

Another major change is that applicants will be able to specify three ANSZCO codes in one application.

All of this comes at a price, though: the cost of an application has more than doubled. Still, the argument is, current applicants are having to fill out multiple forms at around AU$550 ($360) apiece. The new fee, standing at AU$1100 ($720) will thus be cheaper overall.

Australia has emerged as a global technology powerhouse, and despite being affected by global technology layoffs, the country is arguably better off than Japan as a prospect for those looking for a high tech salary right now.

The post Where to work in tech around the world appeared first on TechHQ.

• A recent report shows the rapid changes IT infrastructure is undergoing.
• Legacy tech can slow down an organization’s whole IT modernization program.
• IT leaders reveal the infrastructure problems they’re having – and what they forecast for the future.

Legacy infrastructure is a sustainability issue for IT professionals, who rank energy efficiency and sustainability as important, but don’t feel confident about meeting their green targets.

All this and more has been revealed by research by Daisy Corporate Services on legacy tech with a focus on the cloud. Researchers heard from more than 250 senior IT decision makers at large private and public sector organizations in the UK, uncovering what they consider to be the key IT infrastructure challenges facing them and their teams – and how to overcome them.

The report provides insights into IT decision makers’ challenges including the global IT talent shortage, the drivers for IT outsourcing and factors for on-premises vs. hosted IT infrastructure.

75% fully (24%) or partly (51%) outsource their organization’s IT infrastructure management to a managed service provider. Partly due to the global talent shortage, IT decision makers felt that their organizations lack the necessary skills and expertise to stay in-house.

If that wasn’t enough, the report further details predictions, barriers and benefits of moving more of the IT estate to the cloud and looks at IT budgets, investments, and the impact of and opinions on new tech like AI – thought it’d been left out?

Over the last five years, businesses have had to manage the significant evolution of business systems and IT landscapes, with the pandemic a driver of that change. Increasing competition and globalization have affected the operating environment, which has further changed as a result of political and supply chain instability.

The increasing range of technologies and applications was in joint first place for contributing most to IT complexity alongside cloud services (57% each). Full visibility into infrastructure performance is made difficult by both of these factors.

90% of IT decision makers say building, managing and maintaining their IT landscape has become more complex and simplifying IT infrastructure is a priority for 89%.

Moving your IT infrastructure to the cloud – an unstoppable trend?

Despite that, though, the benefits of cloud use are obvious, so it’s increasing.

The ability to harness the cloud is dependent on the existing IT landscape at a company, with the biggest barrier to success being that the greater complexity of existing IT infrastructure, the greater is the work needed to migrate to the cloud.

Another significant threat to organizations looking to move more of their IT estate to the cloud are data security concerns.

Too often, organizations find they’re using a cloud hybrid system by accident, not design. Which means falling at the first hurdle in a world where it’s vital that an organization’s infrastructure is secure and able to dynamically adjust to workload demands.

The multitude of different environments and tools in use make it hard for organizations already struggling to gain the end-to-end visibility necessary for consistent security and reliability.

There is a strategic impact from sustainability as the issue becomes a business differentiator; the importance of green policy use means that consumers look to a company’s sustainability as a major factor of their appeal.

The focus on corporate and social responsibility filters through to IT teams as businesses turn their attention to the sustainability and efficiency of their IT operations.

The biggest hurdle to a clean, green transition is legacy and on-premise infrastructure: legacy tech was described by 63% of IT decision makers as a “sustainability nightmare.” 86% say sustainability and efficiency is important to IT operations, and 84% that their organization has IT sustainability targets in place – but only 51% of them are “very confident” they’ll meet them.

And it isn’t just contributing to a difficult transition to greener systems: legacy hardware contributes to 37% of organizations’ overall IT power consumption.

Spending is also coming under pressure as the global economic slowdown means businesses are having to adapt for survival – driving efficiencies is one tactic for survival that has huge impact on IT teams.

IT leaders are under pressure to reduce expenditure, many resorting to cloud services to turn capital infrastructure expenses into opex costs.

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“Sustainability is a vital component of any modern business, and IT departments have a growing role in helping the wider organisation achieve green targets. But legacy technology is a cause for concern among IT teams, with ageing equipment still contributing significantly to power consumption,” comments Andy Bevan, head of propositions and strategy consulting at Daisy.

“Organizations can benefit from the sustainability features of their cloud providers but are being held back by the challenges of migrating their legacy hardware. Here is where modern hybrid cloud platforms can help bridge the gap between on-site infrastructure and cloud to deliver performance and sustainability benefits.”

Many IT leaders are being asked to re-evaluate their IT spending. More than two thirds (69%) of survey respondents describe the pressure to reduce IT capital expenditure as “significant.” Many are looking to consumption-based pricing to reduce ongoing costs and increase flexibility by paying only for what they use – scaling up and using more resources at peak times, and then reducing resources and costs again afterwards.

Legacy infrastructure is a headache in this process though, as its maintenance and support incurs significant cost. New technology is the solution for some IT managers, with many expecting to see the benefits of using artificial intelligence and automation in areas like service and performance management.

Bevan adds, “At a time when IT leaders are under pressure to reduce capital expenditure many organizations are still incurring significant maintenance and support costs on their legacy hardware. By moving to the cloud and a consumption-based pricing model, organizations can reduce ongoing costs and increase flexibility by paying for what they use. For cost-constrained IT departments this should be their nirvana.”

The full research from Daisy, Faster, greener, cheaper – dealing with IT infrastructure complexity in a hybrid cloud world, is available here.

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