Category: Technology

Twitter’s Brussels office is no more, according to reports, which could make it more difficult for the company to adhere to new European Union regulations regarding content moderation. The number of people employed at the office dropped from six to two after new owner Elon Musk cut the workforce in half. The remaining executives, Julia Mozer and Dario La Nasa, left Twitter last week, according to the Financial Times — just as Musk told employees to commit to his vision for a “hardcore” Twitter 2.0 or leave.

Mozer and La Nasa oversaw public policy for Twitter in Europe. They were in charge of efforts to make sure Twitter complies with the EU’s disinformation code as well as the Digital Services Act. The DSA came into force last week and will apply to companies starting in February 2024. It gives EU governments more power over how platforms moderate content and when tech companies have to take down illegal content. Platforms will need to be transparent about the reasons for content moderation decisions. Affected users will have the right to challenge moderation decisions if their content is removed or access to it is restricted.

If Twitter fails to comply with the DSA’s rules, it faces potentially heavy penalties. Regulators could fine Twitter up to six percent of its global turnover or even ban the platform. EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton has warned Musk that Twitter needs to abide by the bloc’s content regulations.

Twitter no longer has a communications department that can be asked for comment. Musk said early Thursday that the “general idea” is to limit moderation rules to “illegal content.” Minutes earlier, he asked users to reply to him with “anything that Twitter needs to address” in terms of child exploitation on the platform. Regulations about which content is legal can vary significantly by jurisdiction (Germany has fairly strict social media edicts, for instance), and having fewer staff dedicated to ensuring Twitter plays by the rules could make it more difficult for the company to do so.

“I am concerned about the news of firing such a vast amount of staff of Twitter in Europe,” Věra Jourová, an EU vice president who is in charge of the bloc’s disinformation code, told the Financial Times. “If you want to effectively detect and take action against disinformation and propaganda, this requires resources. Especially in the context of Russian disinformation warfare, I expect Twitter to fully respect the EU law and honor its commitments.”

Meanwhile, several Democratic senators have asked the Federal Trade Commission to determine whether the company has broken consumer protection laws or violated a consent decree with the agency. Among other things, the latter requires Twitter to review new features for potential privacy issues. Earlier this month, it was reported that Twitter engineers have to “self-certify” that they’re complying with FTC rules and other laws. The FTC recently said it’s “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern.”

 

Whether you live in the rapidly drying American West or are aboard the International Space Station for a six-month stint, having enough water to live on is a constant concern. As climate change continues to play havoc on the West’s aquifers, and as humanity pushes further into the solar system, the potable supply challenges we face today will only grow. In their efforts to ensure humanity has enough to drink, some of NASA’s cutting-edge in-orbit water recycling research is coming back down to Earth.

On Earth

In California, for example, the four billion gallons of wastewater generated daily from the state’s homes and businesses, storm drain and roof-connected runoff, makes its way through more than 100,000 miles of sewer lines where it — barring obstructionist fatbergs — eventually ends up at one of the state’s 900 wastewater treatment plants. How that water is processed depends on whether it’s destined for human consumption or non-potable uses like agricultural irrigation, wetland enhancement and groundwater replenishment.

The city of Los Angeles takes a multi-step approach to reclaiming its potable wastewater. Large solids are first strained from incoming fluids using mechanical screens at the treatment plant’s headworks. From there, the wastewater flows into a settling tank where most of the remaining solids are removed — sludged off to anaerobic digesters after sinking to the bottom of the pool. The water is then sent to secondary processing where it is aerated with nitrogen-fixing bacteria before being pushed into another settling, or clarifying, tank. Finally it’s filtered through a tertiary cleaning stage of cationic polymer filters where any remaining solids are removed. By 2035, LA plans to recycle all of its wastewater for potable reuse while Aurora, Colorado, and Atlanta, Georgia, have both already begun augmenting their drinking water supplies with potable reuse.

“There are additional benefits beyond a secure water supply. If you’re not relying on importing water, that means there’s more water for ecosystems in northern California or Colorado,” Stanford professor William Mitch, said in a recent Stanford Engineering post. “You’re cleaning up the wastewater, and therefore you’re not discharging wastewater and potential contaminants to California’s beaches.”

Wastewater treatment plants in California face a number of challenges, the Water Education Foundation notes, including aging infrastructure; contamination from improperly disposed pharmaceuticals and pesticide runoff; population demands combined with reduced flows due to climate change-induced drought. However their ability to deliver pristine water actually outperforms nature.

“We expected that potable reuse waters would be cleaner, in some cases, than conventional drinking water due to the fact that much more extensive treatment is conducted for them,” Mitch argued in an October study in Nature Sustainability. “But we were surprised that in some cases the quality of the reuse water, particularly the reverse-osmosis-treated waters, was comparable to groundwater, which is traditionally considered the highest quality water.”

The solids pulled from wastewater are also heavily treated during recycling. The junk from the first stage is sent to local landfills, while the biological solids strained from the second and third stages are sent to anaerobic chambers where their decomposition generates biogas that can be burned for electrical production and converted to nitrogen-rich fertilizer for agricultural use.

New York, for example, produces 22,746 tons of wastewater sludge per day from its 1,200-plus statewide wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). However, less than a tenth of plants (116 specifically) actually use that sludge to produce biogas, per a 2021 report from the Rockefeller Institute for Government, and is “mainly utilized to fuel the facilities and for the combined heat and power generation of the WWTPs.”

Non-potable water can be treated even more directly and, in some cases, on-site. Wastewater, rainwater and greywater can all be reused for non-drinking uses like water the lobby plants and flushing toilets after being captured and treated in an Onsite non-potable water reuse system (ONWS).

“Increasing pressures on water resources have led to greater water scarcity and a growing demand for alternative water sources,” the Environmental Protection Agency points out. “Onsite non-potable water reuse is one solution that can help communities reclaim, recycle, and then reuse water for non-drinking water purposes.”

In Orbit

Aboard the ISS, astronauts have even less leeway in their water use on account of the station being a closed-loop system isolated in space. Also because SpaceX charges $2,500 per pound of cargo (after the first 440 pounds, for which it charges $1.1 million) to send into orbit on one of its rockets — and liquid water is heavy.

While the ISS does get the occasional shipment of water in the form of 90-pound duffle bag-shaped Contingency Water Containers to replace what’s invariably lost to space, its inhabitants rely on the complicated web of levers and tubes you see above and below to reclaim every dram of moisture possible and process it into potability. The station’s Water Processing Assembly can produce up to 36 gallons of drinkable water every day from the crew’s sweat, breath and urine. When it was installed in 2008, the station’s water delivery needs dropped by around 1,600 gallons, weighing 15,960 pounds. It works in conjunction with the Urine Processor Assembly (UPA), Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA), Sabatier reactor (which recombines free oxygen and hydrogen split by the OGA back into water) and Regenerative Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) systems to maintain the station’s “water balance” and supply American astronauts with a minimum of 2.5 liters of water each day. Cosmonauts in the Russian segment of the ISS rely on a separate filtration system that only collects shower runoff and condensation and therefore require more regular water deliveries to keep their tanks topped off.

In 2017, NASA upgraded the WPA with a new reverse-osmosis filter in order to, “reduce the resupply mass of the WPA Multi-filtration Bed and improved catalyst for the WPA Catalytic Reactor to reduce the operational temperature and pressure,” the agency announced that year. “Though the WRS [water recovery system] has performed well since operations began in November 2008, several modifications have been identified to improve the overall system performance. These modifications aim to reduce resupply and improve overall system reliability, which is beneficial for the ongoing ISS mission as well as for future NASA manned missions.”

One such improvement is the upgraded Brine Processor Assembly (BPA) delivered in 2021, a filter that sieves more salt out of astronaut urine to produce more reclaimed water than its predecessor. But there is still a long way to go before we can securely transport crews through interplanetary space. NASA notes that the WPA that got delivered in 2008 was originally rated to recover 85 percent of the water in crew urine though its performance has since improved to 87 percent.

“To leave low-Earth orbit and enable long-duration exploration far from Earth, we need to close the water loop,” Caitlin Meyer, deputy project manager for Advanced Exploration Systems Life Support Systems at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, added. “Current urine water recovery systems utilize distillation, which produces a brine. The [BPA] will accept that water-containing effluent and extract the remaining water.”

When the post-processed urine is then mixed with reclaimed condensation and runs through the WPA again, “our overall water recovery is about 93.5 percent,” Layne Carter, International Space Station Water Subsystem Manager at Marshall, said in 2021. To safely get to Mars, NASA figures it needs a reclamation rate of 98 percent or better.

But even if the ISS’s current state-of-the-art recycling technology isn’t quite enough to get us to Mars, it’s already making an impact planetside. For example, in the early 2000’s the Argonide company developed a “NanoCeram” nanofiber water filtration system with NASA small business funding support. The filter uses positively charged microscopic alumina fibers to remove virtually all contaminants without overly restricting flow rate, eventually spawning the Oas shower from Orbital Systems.

“The shower starts with less than a gallon of water and circulates it at a rate of three to four gallons per minute, more flow than most conventional showers provide,” NASA noted last July. “The system checks water quality 20 times per second, and the most highly polluted water, such as shampoo rinse, is jettisoned and replaced. The rest goes through the NanoCeram filter and then is bombarded with ultraviolet light before being recirculated.” According to the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control, the resulting water is cleaner than tap.

 

After gradually expanding access to its so-called full self-driving (FSD) beta for the last few years, Tesla is opening it up to anyone who has paid for it, Elon Musk announced in a tweet. “Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta is now available to anyone in North America who requests it from the car screen, assuming you have bought this option,” he said. 

FSD is an extension of Tesla’s “Autopilot” driver-assist feature, expanding on the latter with automated functions like automated steering in cities, automatic parking, smart vehicle summoning and traffic light/stop sign recognition. The feature is a paid upgrade priced at $15,000 following a price hike of $3,000 in September. 

Tesla first promised to launch full self-driving features in 2018, but they only finally appeared in July 2021 to a small number of “expert and careful drivers.” It was released more widely in the version 9.0 beta, but testers were limited to an early access program. On the last FSD release, Tesla dropped the requirement for at least 100 Autopilot miles and an 80 safety score, and now anyone who wants it can have it. 

However, Tesla is rolling out FSD widely at a time when it’s under scrutiny from regulators. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently expanded its investigation into a series of Tesla crashes involving first responders to most models. In a separate probe, it’s also looking into more than 30 incidents involving Autopilot. 

Musk has promised full self-driving with no one behind the wheel for some time now. Most recently, he said he thought it could arrive this year, but backed off those claims in Tesla’s latest earnings report. Tesla’s stock has been on a steep decline of late, following Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter. 

 

Microsoft’s $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard is facing scrutiny from antitrust investigators in several countries. In the US, for instance, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) started looking into the acquisition shortly after it was announced. Now, the FTC is reportedly ready to take action and will likely file an antitrust lawsuit to block Microsoft’s massive purchase, according to Politico. Microsoft failed to convince the FTC staff reviewing the deal with its arguments, Politico’s sources said, but the agency’s commissioners have yet to vote on filing a complaint or to meet with lawyers. 

While a lawsuit is not 100 percent guaranteed yet, the commission is reportedly done with the biggest parts of the investigation, including with the depositions of the Microsoft chief Satya Nadella and Activision CEO Bobby Kotick. If the FTC ultimately decides to file a lawsuit, it could do so as soon as next month. The publication says the commission will likely file the case in its own in-house administrative court, since it doesn’t have to bring it to federal court first to seek a temporary injunction. Seeing as other regulators are also looking into the acquisition, it wouldn’t be able to go through (if it’s ultimately allowed to do so) until sometime next year. 

In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an in-depth investigation of the deal in September. And more recently, the European Commission announced that it will carry out a full-scale probe into Microsoft’s purchase. Like these two European regulators, the FTC is concerned that the acquisition will give Microsoft an unfair advantage in the gaming sector and that it may significantly reduce competition in the market. 

Sony has been one of the loudest voices opposing the deal and has expressed concerns that Microsoft might make valuable IPs like Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive. Jim Ryan, Sony PlayStation’s CEO, previously revealed that Microsoft only offered to keep Call of Duty available on PlayStation for three years after the current agreement ends. But Xbox chief Phil Spencer said more recently that the company is “not taking Call of Duty from PlayStation.” In Microsoft’s latest filing with the CMA, it argued that the acquisition won’t give it an unfair advantage: Sony has more exclusive games than the Xbox, it said, and many of them are of “better quality.”

 

More than seven years after the first Wall Street Journal story about problems with Theranos’ blood tests, its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, was sentenced to over a decade in prison for defrauding the company’s investors. She had been found guilty on four counts of fraud during a months-long trial where her lawyers argued that she was an inexperienced entrepreneur who hadn’t intended to mislead anyone.

Holmes’ story is, by now, well known. She founded Theranos as a college dropout, raising hundreds of millions of dollars from high-profile investors and courting former high-ranking government officials for her board. Since then, the rapid rise and downfall of Holmes and Theranos has taken on a life of its own, with major podcasts, books and a recent Hulu miniseries.

But Holmes herself has been almost completely silent. Her trial, where she testified in her own defense, and her sentencing are the only times she has spoken publicly about what went wrong at Theranos and how she feels all these years later. Watch the video above for the full story.

 

CD Projekt Red has finally shared a gameplay trailer for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt‘s imminent “next-gen” update, and it’s largely what you’d hope for. The overhauled action role-playing game looks better thanks to more detailed character models (with 4K textures), ray-traced lighting effects and other cosmetic upgrades. Geralt looks more grizzled than ever, while even the water reflections are prettier. It’s not surprising that the refreshed game would look at least somewhat better than the 2015 original, and it’s not necessarily a night-and-day difference. Still, the changes are welcome if you thought the title was showing its age.

The update also brings gameplay tweaks, cloud saves and new content inspired by Netflix’s The Witcher series. You can play at 60 frames per second, and a photo mode will help you take snapshots of the game’s bleak-yet-beautiful landscapes.

The next-gen (really, current-gen) update will be available December 14th on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. It’s not a full-fledged sequel or even a remake, but it could be worth a go if you’re either new to The Witcher games or just haven’t touched The Witcher 3 in years. Think of it as the start to CDPR’s revival of the franchise.

 

Add HP to the list of tech companies cutting staff. The PC maker plans to lay off as many as 6,000 employees over the next three years. The cuts are part of a broader restructuring HP announced during its Q4 earnings call on Tuesday (via Gizmodo). The company estimates its “Future Ready Transformation plan” will save it $1.4 billion by the end of fiscal 2025, in part by reducing its headcount by at least 4,000 employees.

“The company expects to reduce gross global headcount by approximately 4,000-6,000 employees,” HP said. “These actions are expected to be completed by the end of fiscal 2025.”

HP employs approximately 51,000 employees globally. The company’s most recent fiscal quarter saw revenue drop by more than 11 percent year-on-year to $14.8 billion. CEO Enrique Lores blamed the poor performance on macroeconomic conditions and “softening demand” for the company’s PCs and printers.

Following Tuesday’s announcement, Lores said HP’s restructuring plan would “enable [the company] to better serve our customers and drive long-term value creation by reducing our costs and reinvesting in key growth initiatives to position our business for the future.”

HP isn’t the only tech company to announce significant job cuts in recent weeks. Twitter completed multiple rounds of layoffs after Elon Musk took control of the company on October 27th. Meta and Amazon also announced job cuts this month. In the case of the social media giant, the 11,000 employees it let go on November 9th represented the first mass layoffs in the company’s history.

 

The European Space Agency on Wednesday selected the world’s first astronaut with a disability. John McFall, whose right leg was amputated at age 19, is the first recruit for a new program investigating accommodations for astronauts with disabilities.

The agency called for applications in March 2021, seeking people with disabilities who could pass stringent physical and psychological testing but were limited by a lack of hardware accommodations. The program will investigate the changes and costs required to send astronauts with disabilities into space. The ESA chose McFall out of 257 entrants, and describes him as the world’s first “parastronaut.” And next spring, he will enter the 12-month training program at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany.

“I’ve always been hugely interested in science generally, and space exploration has always been on my radar,” said the 41-year-old McFall on Wednesday. “But having had a motorcycle accident when I was 19, like wanting to join the armed forces, having a disability was always a contraindication to doing that.”

After McFall’s accident and amputation, he learned to run again and won a bronze medal in the 100-meter dash at the 2008 Paralympic Games. In addition, he earned several medical degrees and was a Foundation Doctor in the British National Health Service from 2014 to 2016. McFall currently works as a trauma and orthopedic specialist in South England.

“In early 2021 when the advert for an astronaut with a physical disability came out,” said McFall, “I read the person specifications and what it entailed, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is such a huge and interesting opportunity.’ And I thought that I would be a very good candidate to help ESA answer the question they were asking: ‘Can we get someone with a physical disability into space?’ And I felt compelled to apply.”

 

Tesla isn’t the only car brand asking you to pay extra to unlock your car’s existing capabilities. As The Vergeobserves, Mercedes has introduced a $1,200 per year “Acceleration Increase” subscription that improves the performance of the EQE and EQS in their standard sedan and SUV variants. Pay the annual fee and your 0-60MPH time will improve by 0.8 to 1 seconds thanks to a higher peak motor output and increased torque.

Mercedes is quick to explain that this is strictly a software change. In other words, you’re paying to get performance your car could already handle. While you’re still getting more value than BMW’s $18 per month heated seats, it’s an odd move when these cars are already expensive and have speedier models that only require a one-time outlay. Why buy an EQS 450 with the acceleration add-on when an EQS 580 will be faster and include more creature comforts in the bargain?

The German automaker isn’t the first to charge extra for added performance. Tesla has long asked customers to shell out for its most advanced driver assists. For a while, it also charged entry Model S buyers a premium to unlock battery capacity. And if you’re more inclined toward motorcycles, Zero asks nearly $1,800 to maximize the power of the 2022 SR. The difference, of course, is that those are still one-off purchases where Mercedes wants you to keep paying for the life of the car.

The business strategy is clear. As with the tech world’s general shift toward subscription services, Mercedes is hoping for a steady stream of revenue from customers who might otherwise spend little beyond the initial purchase. Acceleration Increase is decidedly more lucrative than periodic navigation updates and maintenance. Unlike those, though, there’s no recurring costs to help justify the power boost’s existence.

 

With the United States facing a historic housing shortage, researchers from the University of Maine believe they may have found a solution to the problem. Using one of the world’s largest 3D printers, the university’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center (ASCC) recently created the first 3D-printed home made entirely of bio-based materials. Finding a way to manufacture 3D-printed homes at scale is a challenge many have tried to tackle in recent years. To date, most solutions have involved the use of concrete or clay and traditional building methods like wood framing. The ASCC’s “BioHome3D” is different.

The center’s 600-square-foot prototype features 3D-printed floors, walls and a roof made of sustainably-sourced wood fibers and biological resins. The house is also fully recyclable and doesn’t require weeks- and months-worth of on-site construction time to assemble. After 3D-printing four modules, the center assembled the BioHome3D in half a day. It then took one electrician about two hours to wire the house for electricity.

The ASCC suggests that BioHome3D could help address the US housing shortage by reducing the material and labor needed to build affordable homes. In Maine alone, there’s a growing shortage of about 20,000 housing units across the state.

It’s worth noting the US housing shortage predates the pandemic and the supply chain issues that came with it. Jenny Schuetz, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, argues current housing issues can be traced back to restrictive zoning laws and land use regulations that allow residents to block attempts to build more homes in their neighborhoods. Put another way, it’s better to look at the housing crisis as a policy issue, not a technological one.

That’s not to say technology doesn’t have a role to play in improving housing. Cement, the key ingredient in concrete, has a massive carbon footprint. As of 2018, global production of the material contributed to about 8 percent of annual greenhouse emissions, or more pollution than was produced by the entire airline industry. Reducing or entirely removing the need for concrete in homebuilding could be a game-changer for the environment.