SUMMARY 08LAWSUIT SEEKS TO REVOKE FAA LICENSE FOR GEORGIA SPACEPORT 18AFTER MASS SHOOTING, NYC EXPLORES GUN DETECTORS IN SUBWAYS 44EVOLUTION - WHAT’S NEXT FOR HOMEKIT SMART-HOME TECH & ACCESSORIES 76CYBER AGENCY: VOTING SOFTWARE VULNERABLE IN SOME STATES
SHERYL SANDBERG, LONGTIME NO. 2 EXEC AT FACEBOOK, STEPS DOWN 32 SUPREME COURT BLOCKS TEXAS LAW ON SOCIAL MEDIA CENSORSHIP 38 CANCELED FLIGHTS MAR FIRST WEEKEND OF SUMMER FOR TRAVELERS 68 RECORDED FUTURE CEO ON CYBERSECURITY FIRM’S JOURNALISTIC AIM 90 FBI BLOCKED PLANNED CYBERATTACK ON CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL 98 LOW-COST CARRIER NORWEGIAN AIR BUYS 50 BOEING 737 AIRCRAFT 108 FORD CEO SEES ELECTRIC VEHICLE PRICE WAR AS EV COSTS DECLINE 114 2022 HYUNDAI IONIQ 5 VS 2022 KIA EV6 122 DON’T LET YOUR FIRST CAR BE A $30K MISTAKE 130 COCA-COLA 600 LONG, UNPREDICTABLE AND IMMENSELY ENTERTAINING 138 HARRY STYLES IS FULLY AT HOME IN ‘HARRY’S HOUSE’ 148 ‘CHIP ‘N DALE’ EVOKE ROGER RABBIT IN META REBOOT 170 CAN I TALK TO A HUMAN? SPAIN PRESENTS CUSTOMER SERVICE BILL 194 RUSSIA OFFERS FOREIGN DEBT PAYMENT SYSTEM SIMILAR TO GAS ONE 198 PLAN FOR NEVADA UTILITY TRANSMISSION LINE DRAWING COMMENTS 204 MUSIC 154 MOVIES & TV SHOWS 162 TOP 10 ALBUMS 184 TOP 10 MUSIC VIDEOS 186 TOP 10 TV SHOWS 188 TOP 10 BOOKS 190 TOP 10 SONGS 192
LAWSUIT SEEKS TO REVOKE FAA LICENSE FOR GEORGIA SPACEPORT Opponents of a proposed launchpad for commercial rockets on the Georgia coast are asking a court to throw out the project’s government license, saying the Federal Aviation Administration failed to correctly assess the risks of firing rockets over homes and a barrier island popular with tourists. Attorneys for the Southern Environmental Law Center filed suit in U.S. District Court seeking to revoke the launch site operator license the FAA granted in December to the planned Spaceport Camden. Officials in coastal Camden County have spent the past decade and more than $10 million seeking to build a spaceport for launching satellites into orbit. 08
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The proposed flight path would send rockets over Little Cumberland Island, which has about 40 private homes, and neighboring Cumberland Island, a federally protected wilderness visited by about 60,000 tourists each year. Residents and the National Park Service have said they fear explosive misfires raining fiery debris could spark wildfires near homes and people. The lawsuit filed on behalf of homeowners and conservation groups says the FAA allowed county officials to minimize potential safety risks by basing their license application on a hypothetical rocket“that does not exist”and is smaller than current commercial rockets. It says the FAA didn’t follow its own policies that call for holding such “unproven”rockets to a higher standard. “The FAA’s decision to license a site where rockets would launch over people, homes, and Cumberland Island National Seashore ... is contrary to the agency’s regulations for licensing launch sites and is unprecedented in the history of the United States’ commercial space program,” said the the lawsuit, filed May 19 in the District of Columbia. The lawsuit also claims that a top FAA official privately told opponents of Spaceport Camden in March 2019 that he doubted the project would be successful. The document says a group of Little Cumberland Island homeowners traveled to Washington to meet with FAA officials including Wayne Monteith, who was then the agency’s associate administrator for commercial space transportation. The lawsuit says Monteith told the group “that Spaceport Camden was not a 11
commercially viable launch site and that `some spaceports just want to sell hats and T-shirts.’” FAA spokesman Steve Kulm said that the agency does not comment on pending litigation. Monteith no longer works for the FAA and is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit. Reached by phone, Monteith’s wife said he was traveling. He did not immediately return a message seeking comment. “On several occasions we would ask the FAA, ‘Listen, is it worthwhile for us to continue this endeavor?‘” said John Simpson, a spokesman for the Spaceport Camden project. “No one at the FAA ever told us, `We don’t see this as a commercially viable project.’ Nor is that the FAA’s role.” In Camden County, a community of 55,000 people on the Georgia-Florida line, commissioners have long argued that a spaceport would bring economic growth not just from rocket launches, but also by attracting related industries and tourists. Opponents say the plans to build the spaceport on an industrial plot formerly used to manufacture pesticides and munitions poses potential environmental and safety hazards that outweigh any economic benefits. The FAA’s final environmental impact report on Spaceport Camden concluded county officials had submitted an“adequate and appropriate” plan for dealing with fires and other emergencies that might arise from rocket launches. However, the FAA noted when it granted the county’s license to operate a spaceport in December that a separate and more 12
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comprehensive review would be required before any rockets could be launched. The agency stressed in a letter that “no outcome is guaranteed.” In March, opponents forced a referendum on the project after gathering more than 3,500 petition signatures from registered voters saying they wanted the spaceport on the ballot. The result was a big defeat for the spaceport. The final tally showed 72% of voters sided with halting the project by overruling commissioners’ prior decision to buy land for the spaceport. County officials have given no indication that they plan to abandon the spaceport. Just days after the referendum, they voted to move ahead with buying property for the project. Meanwhile, commissioners have a legal case pending in Georgia that seeks to have the referendum declared invalid. 15
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AFTER MASS SHOOTING, NYC EXPLORES GUN DETECTORS IN SUBWAYS 19
In the aftermath of a mass shooting on a New York City subway train, the mayor floated a high-tech idea: deploy scanners that can spot someone carrying a gun into the transit system before they have a chance to use it. The technology to scan large numbers of people quickly for weapons does exist, and is used now to screen people at places like sports stadiums and theme parks. But security experts say installing such a system in the city’s sprawling, porous subway system in a way that would make a difference would be difficult, if not impossible. The problem wouldn’t necessarily be the technology — but rather the reality that scanners need to be accompanied by human operators to confront people carrying firearms illegally. “Logistically, it would be a nightmare. You’re going to have to tie up a lot of officers doing this,” said James Dooley, a retired New York Police Department captain who served in the department’s transit division. “We have hundreds of stations, and the fact of the matter is that putting someone at every entrance to every station is logistically impossible.” Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain, has acknowledged the challenges but has said the system might still be worth trying at select locations as a deterrent. “We want to be able to just pop up at a station someplace so people don’t know it’s there,” the Democrat said, “similar to what we do when we do car checkpoints.” The push for better subway security got renewed urgency in April after a gunman 20
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set off smoke bombs and sprayed a subway compartment with shots, wounding 10 people. Then, on May 22, another gunman killed a passenger in what authorities said appeared to be a random attack. A day after that killing, Adams again expressed interest in weapon-screening technology. And soon, mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, intensified the debate over how to address gun violence. In the New York City subway, the screening wouldn’t resemble airport checkpoints, an untenable solution for a system with 472 stations, all with multiple entrances. Instead, Adams referenced a technology that uses sensors to detect metal but also can determine the shape of an object, such as a gun, while people pass by uninterrupted. Evolv, a Boston-area company, uses the technology at facilities including pro sports stadiums in Atlanta and Nashville, the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta and, in a recent test, at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, though not in any mass transit systems. The screeners can scan 3,600 people per hour, according to the company. They also can produce false positives from items such as Chromebooks, though. In an email, Dana Loof, Evolv’s chief marketing officer, said false positives “are an order of magnitude lower” than traditional metal detectors, but acknowledged that transit systems would pose unique challenges. “Any technology is only one piece of the solution which includes the security professionals, the 23
operational environment, and the protocols they follow,” Loof said. Similar screening devices made by Thruvision, an England-based company, were part of a pilot program in the Los Angeles mass transit system in 2018 and currently are used when threat levels are elevated, said Los Angeles Metro spokesperson Dave Sotero. The machines project scanning waves at passersby from a distance. Identifying someone with a weapon is only half the challenge. “It’s also manpower,” said Donell Harvin, a senior policy researcher at the Rand Corp. and a former security chief for the Washington, D.C., government. Adams has not publicly discussed how much the machines, and operating them, could cost New York City, but Harvin acknowledged the price could be steep. “If you have a determined assailant, you’re not going to just have a security guard there; you’ll have to have a police officer,” Harvin said. “It’s tough. You can harden every station, but who’s going to want to pay a $10 fare? Because the cost is going to be passed on to the rider.” Still, because you can’t put cops on every car and in every station, Harvin said, “you have to invest in some technology.” “It’s very complex, but people have to get together and talk about this, because what’s being done now isn’t cutting it.” Violent attacks in New York City’s subway system remain relatively rare compared with crime above ground. And the city overall is one of the nation’s safest large cities. 24
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But the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on people’s sense of safety, as has a string of high-profile crimes, including the fatal push of a woman in front of a train by a man later ruled too mentally ill to stand trial. In response, the MTA said it would test safety barriers at some stations. The number of transit system crimes reported by the NYPD so far this year has been on par with years before the pandemic, but public perception has been that there is new unruliness underground. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has succeeded in getting 1,000 more police officers assigned to the system, but its chair, Janno Lieber, was candid last week when asked about the current climate. “This week is a terrible week,” he said, referring to the May 22 shooting. “This week I cannot say to any New York City subway rider, ‘Don’t feel afraid,’ because what happened is a terrifying nightmare.” Any workable security upgrade would probably have to encompass a combination of measures, experts said. Dooley envisioned a limited rollout of officers using handheld metal detectors at high-traffic stations but acknowledged that would cover only a fraction of the system’s vast territory and could lead to civil liberties complaints, including the potential for racial profiling. Police officers already do spot checks of people’s bags at some subway entrances, but those checks are so infrequent that most people ride for years without being subjected to a search. 27
Dorothy Moses Schulz, a retired police captain on the MTA’s MetroNorth rail system and a professor emerita at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, suggested more police in the subways and a sustained commitment to addressing homelessness could help “send a message that we’re trying to make this an orderly system, which would bring back people.” “If more people feel the system is working, they will come back, and when more come back, that makes the system safer,” she said. Lieber said last week that the agency is open to new approaches. “We are serious about exploring every one of these technologies,” he said. “I think we will get there, but it’s a question of time and technology development.” 28
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SHERYL SANDBERG, LONGTIME NO. 2 EXEC AT FACEBOOK, STEPS DOWN Sheryl Sandberg, the No. 2 executive at Facebook owner Meta, is stepping down, according to a post Wednesday on her Facebook page. Sandberg has served as chief operating officer at the social media giant for 14 years. She joined from Google in 2008, four years before Facebook went public. Meta did not immediately respond to a message for comment. “When I took this job in 2008, I hoped I would be in this role for five years. Fourteen years later, it is 32
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time for me to write the next chapter of my life,” Sandberg wrote on her Facebook page. She did not say what she planned to do. Sandberg has led Facebook — now Meta’s — advertising business and was responsible for nurturing it from its infancy into an over $100 billion-a-year powerhouse. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in his own Facebook post that he doesn’t plan to replace Sandberg in the company’s existing structure. Javier Olivan will serve as Meta’s new COO. Zuckerberg said this “this role will be different from what Sheryl has done. It will be a more traditional COO role where Javi will be focused internally and operationally, building on his strong track record of making our execution more efficient and rigorous.” While Sandberg has long been Zuckerberg’s No. 2, even sitting next to him — pre-pandemic, at least — in the company’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters, she also had a very public- facing job, meeting with lawmakers, holding focus groups and speaking out on issues such as women in the workplace and most recently, abortion. 35
Image: Alex Brandon 38
SUPREME COURT BLOCKS TEXAS LAW ON SOCIAL MEDIA CENSORSHIP A divided Supreme Court has blocked a Texas law, championed by conservatives, that aimed to keep social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter from censoring users based on their viewpoints. The court voted in an unusual 5-4 alignment Tuesday to put the Texas law on hold, while a lawsuit plays out in lower courts. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett voted to grant the emergency request from two technology industry groups that challenged the law in federal court. 39
The majority provided no explanation for its decision, as is common in emergency matters on what is informally known as the court’s “shadow docket.” Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch would have allowed the law to remain in effect. In dissent, Alito wrote,“Social media platforms have transformed the way people communicate with each other and obtain news.” It’s not clear how the high court’s past First Amendment cases, many of which predate the internet age, apply to Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and other digital platforms, Alito wrote in an opinion joined by fellow conservatives Thomas and Gorsuch but not Kagan. The order follows a ruling last week by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that found a similar Florida law likely violates the First Amendment’s free speech protections. Republican elected officials in several states have backed laws like those enacted in Florida and Texas that sought to portray social media companies as generally liberal in outlook and hostile to ideas outside of that viewpoint, especially from the political right. The Texas law was initially blocked by a district judge, but then allowed to take effect by a panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. 40
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Evolution What’s next for HomeKit smart-home tech & accessories 45
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Apple’s smart home platform, HomeKit, is designed to allow consumers to control a whole host of internet-enabled devices from the comfort of their Apple Watch or HomePod, from their thermostats to CCTV cameras. As new technologies continue to innovate in the space, Apple must also keep up and create tools and platforms that push the world further forward. 47
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HOMEKIT CHALLENGES Whilst companies like Amazon and Google have taken the lead when it comes to smart home technology, with the launch of products like Eero WiFi routers, Blink home surveillance cameras, and the Google Nest range of doorbells, fire alarms, and smart speakers, Apple has taken a slightly different approach. Though the firm now finally appears to be doubling down on the HomePod with the launch of a mini variant and rumors of more on the way, the company has created a platform where third-party manufacturers and developers can make the most of the Apple ecosystem - across iPhone, Apple Watch, HomePod, and Apple TV - and tap into the vast opportunities that await. Indeed, the best HomeKit devices aren’t manufactured by Apple - they come from brands like Wemo and its WiFi Smart Plug, Schlage and its Encode Plus HomeKit smart lock, and Nanoleaf and its cool LED Shapes. In one respect, it’s a strategy that’s paid off: today, consumers have more choices whenever when designing their smart home, but it’s also left Apple vulnerable to falling behind as it’s failed to innovate in the sector in the way that the likes of Google and Amazon have. Serving as a hub rather than a manufacturer means that Apple’s Home app still lags behind some of its competitors, and for consumers, that could mean switching to a rival platform to enjoy the very best products and services. The same can be said for Apple’s smart speaker Siri - whilst Google’s Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa are now household names and command 50
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