Buyers curious about making the switch to electric vehicles have made it clear in survey after survey after survey: Charging kind of freaks them out. In many ways, drivers report, owning an EV is the same if not better than owning a gas-powered car. But fueling an electric vehicle is …
Read More »Secrecy Concerns Mount Over Spy Powers Targeting US Data Centers
Last month, US president Joe Biden signed a surveillance bill enhancing the National Security Agency’s power to compel US businesses to wiretap communications going in and out of the country. The changes to the law have left legal experts largely in the dark as to the true limits of this …
Read More »The Affordable Connectivity Program Has a Lifeline in the Senate
There’s a new plan to revive the Affordable Connectivity Program, a pandemic-era initiative that provides low-income households in the US with discounts on high-speed internet access. At the end of April, funding for the program was set to run out, affecting millions. But a bipartisan group of senators, led by …
Read More »FCC Closes ‘Fast Lane’ Loophole in Final Net Neutrality Order
The Federal Communications Commission released its final net neutrality order on Tuesday, and it includes a few edits to the draft version ensuring that internet service providers can’t sneakily violate fast-lane bans. Speaking to WIRED on Tuesday, a senior FCC official said that the final net neutrality order has been …
Read More »Meet the Woman Who Showed President Biden ChatGPT—and Helped Set the Course for AI
One day in March 2023, Arati Prabhakar brought a laptop into the Oval Office and showed the future to Joe Biden. Six months later, the president issued a sweeping executive order that set a regulatory course for AI. This all happened because ChatGPT had stunned the world. In an instant …
Read More »Millions of Americans Might Lose Internet Access Today. Here’s What You Need to Know
Today marks the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program, a landmark piece of US government legislation that aimed to make it easier for people to afford an internet connection in their homes. The program’s end marks a big shift, with the cessation of benefits set to affect millions of Americans …
Read More »The UK’s Ex-Climate Chief on the Country’s Lost Ambitions
Not so long ago, the UK government could brag about its climate credentials. In 2019, Prime Minister Theresa May pledged the country to reach net zero by 2050—the first major economy to legally commit to eradicating its emissions. The UK’s early embrace of renewables also saw it cut emissions more …
Read More »This Is the Beginning of the End of TikTok
TikTok might not be around much longer in the US. On Tuesday, the Senate passed a massive foreign aid package that included an ultimatum for TikTok: Divest or be banned from operating within the US. The package was approved by the House of Representatives on Saturday, and President Joe Biden …
Read More »Can the First Amendment Save TikTok?
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed a law that could effectively ban TikTok if the company does not divest from ByteDance, its Chinese owner, in the next 12 months. But the law, which sped through the House and Senate, could face a significant uphill battle in US courts for potentially …
Read More »Noncompetes Are Dead—and Tech Workers Are Free to Roam
More US workers will soon be free to leave their employers to work for rivals, thanks to a new federal rule that will block the long-standing practice of locking in workers with noncompete agreements. The US Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday issued a final rule that bans most noncompetes nationwide. …
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