Power outages affected close to 90 percent of customers in the US territory today, the Associated Press reports. Local energy company Luma says it’s investigating the cause and suspects a damaged underground power line. Getting the lights back on could take 24 to 48 hours. Blackouts have been a persistent problem for Puerto Rico’s struggling electricity grid since Hurricane Maria.
With Musk cozying up to President-elect Donald Trump, more countries, including South Africa, are considering loosening requirements to allow Starlink to operate, Bloomberg reports:
Until recently, many governments had explicit bans or other policies that kept Starlink from operating legally in their markets. In some cases like South Africa, rules requiring SpaceX to share equity with local partners got in the way...
Now many of the regulators and politicians who fought Starlink’s rise are removing those obstacles, cementing the company’s dominance and further extending Musk’s global influence.
This interesting overview by The New York Times explains how incorrect or misleading results from AI models are helping scientists to track cancer, design drugs, invent medical devices, and uncover weather phenomena by “dreaming” up new concepts to test.
Amy McGovern, a federal AI institute computer scientist says:
“The public thinks it’s all bad.But it’s actually giving scientists new ideas. It’s giving them the chance to explore ideas they might not have thought about otherwise.”
[The New York Times]
“Tesla Recharged” gives customers year-end insights in the Tesla app for stats such as how often users’ homes are powered off-grid.
As Not a Tesla App reports, Tesla Energy users get trophies like “Solar Punk” if they’re in the top 25 percent generating solar energy for the year or “Team Player” for being in the top 1 percent of sending electricity back to the grid.
A British startup has miniaturized the interfaces Apollo astronauts used aboard the command and lunar modules to create the DSKY Moonwatch. In addition to basic calculator functions the watch has GPS waypoint navigation and a battery good for 24 hours of use between charges with a USB cable.
You can preorder it now for £649 (around $814) and delivery is expected sometime in Q1 of 2025.
The Montana Supreme Court upheld a district judge’s 2023 ruling that the state violated young people’s right to a clean and healthy environment.
A group of 16 youths filed suit to push the state to drop a provision in the Montana Environmental Policy Act that barred officials from considering greenhouse gas emissions and the consequences of climate change when permitting new energy projects.
Smart rings had a resurgence this year. The question is whether the renaissance will continue.
The northern giant hornet, the invasive insect formerly known as the “murder hornet,” has officially been eradicated from the US, according to the Washington State Department of Agriculture and US Department of Agriculture. After first sparking fears in Washington in 2019, the hornet hasn’t been spotted in three years.
[The New York Times]
