California's battery power capacity rose from 500 megawatts in 2018 to nearly 16,000 megawatts in 2025. Nearly a quarter of America's battery capacity is now in California alone, according to Bloomberg.

At their daily peak around 8pm, batteries can provide as much as 30% of the state's electricity. The batteries charge in the afternoon when solar power is cheap and release energy in the evenings when Californians get home and crank up their air conditioners. In the middle of the day, when the sun is strongest, as much as three-quarters of the state's electricity can come from solar.

California relied on regulation to achieve this scale. In 2013, the California Public Utilities Commission ordered the state's three big investor-owned utilities to procure 1,325 megawatts of energy storage by 2020 to help meet renewable targets and stabilize the grid. That goal was easily met. Mark Jacobson, an engineering professor at Stanford University, told Economist that most days this year contained periods when solar, hydropower and wind, helped by batteries, met 100% of California's demand -- even though just 54% of the state's electricity generation comes from renewables.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday that the U.S. would restrict visas for "foreign nationals who are responsible for censorship of protected expression in the United States." He called it "unacceptable for foreign officials to issue or threaten arrest warrants on U.S. citizens or U.S. residents for social media posts on American platforms while physically present on U.S. soil" and "for foreign officials to demand that American tech platforms adopt global content moderation policies or engage in censorship activity that reaches beyond their authority and into the United States."

It's not yet clear how or against whom the policy will be enforced, but seems to implicate Europe's Digital Services Act, a law that came into effect in 2023 with the goal of making online platforms safer by imposing requirements on the largest platforms around removing illegal content and providing transparency about their content moderation. Though it's not mentioned directly in the press release about the visa restrictions, the Trump administration has slammed the law on multiple occasions, including in remarks earlier this year by Vice President JD Vance.

The State Department's homepage currently links to an article on its official Substack, where senior advisor for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Samuel Samson critiques the DSA as a tool to "silence dissident voices through Orwellian content moderation." He adds, "Independent regulators now police social media companies, including prominent American platforms like X, and threaten immense fines for non-compliance with their strict speech regulations." "We will not tolerate encroachments upon American sovereignty," Rubio says in the announcement, "especially when such encroachments undermine the exercise of our fundamental right to free speech."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Without seeking approval of the San Francisco Board of Education, Superintendent of Schools Maria Su plans to unveil a new Grading for Equity plan on Tuesday that will go into effect this fall at 14 high schools and cover over 10,000 students. The school district is already negotiating with an outside consultant to train teachers in August in a system that awards a passing C grade to as low as a score of 41 on a 100-point exam.

Were it not for an intrepid school board member, the drastic change in grading with implications for college admissions and career readiness would have gone unnoticed and unexplained. It is buried in a three-word phrase on the last page of a PowerPoint presentation embedded in the school board meeting's 25-page agenda. The plan comes during the last week of the spring semester while parents are assessing the impact of over $100 million in budget reductions and deciding whether to remain in the public schools this fall. While the school district acknowledges that parent aversion to this grading approach is typically high and understands the need for "vigilant communication," outreach to parents has been minimal and may be nonexistent. The school district's Office of Equity homepage does not mention it and a page containing the SFUSD definition of equity has not been updated in almost three years.

Grading for Equity eliminates homework or weekly tests from being counted in a student's final semester grade. All that matters is how the student scores on a final examination, which can be taken multiple times. Students can be late turning in an assignment or showing up to class or not showing up at all without it affecting their academic grade. Currently, a student needs a 90 for an A and at least 61 for a D. Under the San Leandro Unified School District's grading for equity system touted by the San Francisco Unified School District and its consultant, a student with a score as low as 80 can attain an A and as low as 21 can pass with a D.

A former Minnesota waitress unknowingly helped North Korean workers steal $17.1 million in wages from over 300 American companies through an elaborate remote work scheme, federal prosecutors said this week. Christina Chapman operated a "laptop farm" from her home, managing dozens of computers that allowed North Koreans using stolen U.S. identities to work as legitimate tech employees.

The FBI estimates this broader infiltration involves thousands of North Korean workers generating hundreds of millions annually for the sanctions-hit regime. Chapman, recruited via LinkedIn in 2020 to serve as "the U.S. face" for overseas IT workers, handled logistics including receiving company laptops, installing remote access software, and processing falsified employment documents.

The North Korean workers accessed the devices daily from overseas, with some maintaining jobs for months or years at major American corporations. Chapman earned just under $177,000 before the FBI raided her Arizona operation in October 2023, seizing over 90 computers. She pleaded guilty in February to wire fraud, identity theft, and money laundering charges, facing up to nine years in prison at her July sentencing.

An anonymous reader quotes a report : Washington is joining a growing list of states trying to tear down barriers for consumers who want to repair their electronics rather than buy new ones. Gov. Bob Ferguson last week signed the state's new "Right to Repair" policy, House Bill 1483, into law. It was a yearslong effort to get the law approved. "This is a win for every person in Washington state," said the bill's prime sponsor, Rep. Mia Gregerson, D-SeaTac.

In 2021, the Federal Trade Commission reported that consumers with broken electronics don't have much choice but to replace them because repairs require specialized tools, unique parts and inaccessible proprietary software. And those restrictions, the FTC found, disproportionately burden communities of color and low-income communities. Some companies engage in a practice called "parts pairing" that can make replacing parts of a device impossible. Washington's new law would largely outlaw this tactic.

Starting Jan. 1, 2026, the law will require manufacturers to make tools, parts and documentation needed for diagnostics and maintenance available to independent repair businesses. The requirement applies to digital electronics, like computers, cellphones and appliances, sold in Washington after July 1, 2021. Manufacturers won't be able to use parts that inhibit repairs. The state attorney general's office could enforce violations of the new law under the Consumer Protection Act.

Multiple readers shared the following report about the executive departures at CISA: Virtually all of the top officials at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have departed the agency or will do so this month, according to an email obtained by Cybersecurity Dive, further widening a growing void in expertise and leadership at the government's lead cyber defense force at a time when tensions with foreign adversaries are escalating.

Five of CISA's six operational divisions and six of its 10 regional offices will have lost top leaders by the end of the month, the agency's new deputy director, Madhu Gottumukkala, informed employees in an email on Thursday. [...] The exits of these leaders could undermine the efficiency and strategic clarity of CISA's partnerships with critical infrastructure operators, private security firms, foreign allies, state governments and local emergency managers, experts say.

An anonymous reader shares a report: More than 2% of Americans are taking the blockbuster class of GLP-1 drugs for overweight or obesity, up nearly 600% over six years, according to a report from FAIR Health given to Axios first. The data from FAIR Health's repository of over 51 billion commercial healthcare claim records shows the explosion in use of the drugs specifically for weight loss -- roughly half of all users.

In all, roughly 4% of Americans were taking GLP-1 drugs in 2024 for either overweight, obesity or Type 2 diabetes (their original approved use). The data shows Novo Nordisk's Ozempic is still by far the most commonly taken GLP-1, followed by Eli Lilly's Mounjaro. The percentage of adults who were prescribed a GLP-1 drug but did not have bariatric surgery increased from 2.5% in 2019 to 11.2% in 2024 while the the percentage of adult patients who had bariatric surgery decreased 41.8%.

President Trump's threat of a 25% tariff on smartphone imports including iPhones would not provide enough economic incentive for Apple to relocate US-bound iPhone production to domestic facilities, according to a new Morgan Stanley note viewed by Slashdot. The tariff threat, announced Friday via social media, appeared to target Apple's recent shift of iPhone production from China to India through its contract manufacturing partners.

Morgan Stanley analysts estimate that establishing US iPhone production would require a minimum of two years and several billion dollars to build multiple greenfield assembly facilities, with a trained workforce exceeding 100,000 workers during peak seasons. More significantly, the firm calculates that a US-produced iPhone would cost 35% more than current China or India production, primarily due to higher labor costs and the need to import 25% of iPhone components from China under existing 30% tariffs. By contrast, Apple could offset a 25% import tariff by raising global iPhone prices just 4-6%, making domestic production economically unviable.

California's population grew 0.6% in 2024, adding nearly 250,000 residents to reach 39.43 million, according to Census Bureau estimates. The growth came entirely from a rebound in international immigration, which surged to over 300,000 people after plunging to 44,000 during the pandemic's worst year.

Without immigration, the state would have shrunk significantly as domestic migration remained negative. The H-1B visa program alone brought nearly 79,000 skilled workers to California in 2024. Since 2010, California has added 2.7 million immigrants, with half coming from Asia and slightly more than a third from Latin America. The immigration-dependent growth model puts California at particular risk from potential federal policy changes, as more than a quarter of its population is foreign-born -- the highest share nationwide.

alternative_right writes: The site looks like an ordinary Star Wars fan website from around 2010. But starwarsweb.net was actually a tool built by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to covertly communicate with its informants in other countries.

Newark Liberty International Airport has suffered six radar and radio outages in nine months, with the most recent occurring May 9th when controllers told pilots "our scopes just went black again" before handing off flights to other facilities. The outages have forced flight cancellations, diversions, and delays lasting over a week as airlines repositioned aircraft and crews.

The Federal Aviation Administration created the problem by relocating Newark's air traffic control operations from the understaffed N90 facility on Long Island to Philadelphia in 2024. Only 17 of 33 controllers accepted the move despite $100,000 relocation bonuses, leaving operations short-staffed. Rather than build new STARS servers in Philadelphia, the FAA opted to send radar data over 130 miles of commercial copper telephone lines.

The remote feeds have experienced approximately 10 minutes of downtime over 10 months -- exceeding the agency's reliability standards and occurring 200 times more frequently than the FAA's internal analysis predicted. The agency simultaneously laid off over 100 maintenance technicians and telecommunications specialists in February, further straining an air traffic control system that suffers around 700 outages weekly nationwide while managing 16.8 million annual flights with 1990s-era technology.

In early 2025, U.S. solar power production jumped 44% compared to the previous year, driven by end-of-year construction to capture tax incentives and long-term cost advantages. "The bad news is that, in contrast to China, solar's growth hasn't been enough to offset rising demand," notes Ars Technica. "Instead, the US also saw significant growth in coal use, which rose by 23 percent compared to the year prior, after years of steady decline." From the report: Short-term fluctuations in demand are normal, generally driven by weather-induced demand for heating or cooling. Despite those changes, demand for electricity in the US has been largely flat for over a decade, largely thanks to gains in efficiency. But 2024 saw demand go up by nearly 3 percent, and the first quarter of 2025 saw another rise, this time of nearly 5 percent. It's a bit too early to say that we're seeing a shift to a period of rising demand, but one has been predicted for some time due to rising data center use and the increased electrification of transportation and appliances.

Under those circumstances, the rest of the difference will be made up for with fossil fuels. Running counter to recent trends, the use of natural gas dropped during the first three months of 2025. This means that the use of coal rose nearly as quickly as demand, up by 23 percent compared to the same time period in 2024. Despite the rise in coal use, the fraction of carbon-free electricity held steady year over year, with wind/solar/hydro/nuclear accounting for 43 percent of all power put on the US grid. That occurred despite small drops in nuclear and hydro production.

President Donald Trump on Friday threatened Apple with a 25% tariff unless the company manufactures iPhones sold in America domestically rather than in India or other overseas locations. Trump posted on Truth Social that he had "long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple" about his expectation for US-based iPhone production, warning that failure to comply would trigger the substantial tariff penalty.

The ultimatum follows Trump's expressed displeasure with Cook during his recent Middle East trip over Apple's plans to build iPhones at newly constructed Indian facilities. Apple has historically maintained that domestic iPhone manufacturing remains unfeasible due to insufficient skilled engineering talent and substantially higher production costs compared to Asian facilities.

An anonymous reader writes: The US Treasury is phasing out production of the penny and will stop putting new one-cent coins into circulation. The US Treasury has made its final order of penny blanks this month, and the mint will continue to manufacture pennies as long as its supply of penny blanks exist.

President Donald Trump stated that production of pennies are wasteful, as the coins cost more to produce than their one-cent value.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) revealed in a new letter to Senate colleagues Wednesday that AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile failed to create systems for notifying senators about government surveillance on Senate-issued devices -- despite a requirement to do so. From a report: Phone service providers are contractually obligated to inform senators when a law enforcement agency requests their records, thanks to protections enacted in 2020. But in an investigation, Wyden's staff found that none of the three major carriers had created a system to send those notifications.

"My staff discovered that, alarmingly, these crucial notifications were not happening, likely in violation of the carriers' contracts with the [Senate Sergeant at Arms], leaving the Senate vulnerable to surveillance," Wyden said in the letter, obtained first by POLITICO, dated May 21. Wyden said that the companies all started providing notification after his office's investigation. But one carrier told Wyden's office it had previously turned over Senate data to law enforcement without notifying lawmakers, according to the letter.

The U.S. trade deficit persists due to fundamental macroeconomic imbalances rather than just export shortfalls, according to Federal Reserve Bank of New York economist Thomas Klitgaard. His analysis shows the deficit reflects a persistent gap between domestic saving and investment spending, with the U.S. borrowing from foreign sources to fund domestic investment when savings fall short.

This macroeconomic reality means targeting specific trade categories won't resolve the overall imbalance -- even when the petroleum deficit disappeared by 2019 due to increased domestic production, the total trade deficit grew to $441 billion, consistent with a widening saving gap.

Bureau of Economic Analysis data reveals household saving has remained below pre-pandemic levels as consumers spend down accumulated savings from 2020-21, while business saving has remained relatively stable. Reducing the deficit would require significant macroeconomic adjustments, including higher domestic saving or reduced investment spending, which studies indicate would likely cause economic pain as demonstrated during the 2008 recession.

Fortnite has returned to Apple's App Store in the United States after a nearly five-year absence, marking a significant victory for Epic Games in its protracted legal battle against Apple's App Store policies. The return follows an April 30 ruling where a federal judge determined Apple violated a court order requiring the company to allow greater competition for app downloads and payment methods, referring Apple to federal prosecutors for a criminal contempt investigation.

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney celebrated on X with a simple "We back fam" message. The game, which had 116 million users on Apple's platform before its 2020 removal, was banned after Epic challenged Apple's practice of charging up to 30% commission on in-app payments as anticompetitive.

Google today unveiled significant upgrades to its Gemini 2.5 AI models, introducing an experimental "Deep Think" reasoning mode for 2.5 Pro that allows the model to consider multiple hypotheses before responding. The new capability has achieved impressive results on complex benchmarks, scoring highly on the 2025 USA Mathematical Olympiad and leading on LiveCodeBench, a competition-level coding benchmark. Gemini 2.5 Pro also tops the WebDev Arena leaderboard with an ELO score of 1420.

"Based on Google's experience with AlphaGo, AI model responses improve when they're given more time to think," said Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind. The enhanced Gemini 2.5 Flash, Google's efficiency-focused model, has improved across reasoning, multimodality, and code benchmarks while using 20-30% fewer tokens. Both models now feature native audio capabilities with support for 24+ languages, thought summaries, and "thinking budgets" that let developers control token usage. Gemini 2.5 Flash is currently available in preview with general availability expected in early June, while Deep Think remains limited to trusted testers during safety evaluations.

America's regional state universities are experiencing steep enrollment declines, triggering economic crises in the towns that depend on them, while flagship universities continue to thrive.

At Western Illinois University in Macomb, enrollment has plummeted 47% since 2010, driving the city's population down 23% to 14,765. Empty dorms have been repurposed or demolished, while local businesses struggle to survive. "It's almost like you're watching the town die," Kalib McGruder, a 28-year veteran of the campus police department, told WSJ.

An analysis of 748 public four-year institutions reveals enrollment at prestigious state universities increased 9% between 2015 and 2023, while regional state schools saw a 2% decline. The University of Tennessee Knoxville's enrollment jumped 30% as the state's regional colleges collectively fell 3%. With high school graduate numbers expected to decline starting next year after reaching a record high in 2024, the outlook for struggling college towns appears bleak.

In 2016, an online "swarm intelligence" platform stunned horse-racing fans by making a correct prediction for the Kentucky Derby — naming all four top finishers in order. (But the next year its predictions weren't even close, with TechRepublic suggesting 2016's race just had an unusual cluster of obvious picks.)

Since then it's become almost a tradition — asking AI to predict the winning horses each year, then see how close it came. So before today's race, a horse named "Journalism" was given the best odds of winning by professional bookmakers — but could AI make a better prediction? USA Today reports: The USA TODAY Network asked Microsoft Copilot AI to simulate the order of finish for the 2025 Kentucky Derby field based on the latest, odds, predictions and race factors on Thursday, May 1. Journalism came out on top in its projection. The AI-generated response cited Journalism's favorable post position (No. 8), which has produced the second-most Kentucky Derby winners and a four-race winning streak that includes last month's Santa Anita Derby.
ChatGPT also picked the exact same horse, according to FanDuel. But in fact, the winning horse turned out to be "Sovereignty" (a horse Copilot predicted would finish second). Meanwhile Copilot's pick for first place ("Journalism") finished in second.

But after that Copilot's picks were way off...

• Copilot's pick for third place was a horse named Rodriguez — which hours later was scratched from the race altogether. (And the next day Copilot's pick for 10th place was also scratched.)

• Copilot's pick for fourth place was "Sandman" — who finished in 18th place.

• Copilot's pick for fifth place was "Burnham Square" — who finished in 11th place.

• Copilot's pick for sixth place was "Luxor Cafe" — who finished in 10th place

• Copilot's pick for seventh place was "Render Judgment" — who finished in 16th place...

An online racing publication also asked "a trained AI LLM tool" for their predictions, and received a wildly uneven prediction:

1. Burnham Square (finished 11th)
2. Journalism (finished 2nd)
3. Sandman (finished 18th)
4. Tiztastic (finished 15th)
5. Baeza (finished 3rd)