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Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares an article from Live Science asking a thought-provoking question: How long do most species last before going extinct? The majestic blue whale has plied the seas for about 4.5 million years, while the Neanderthals winked out of existence in a few hundred thousand years. But are those creatures representative of species overall? How long do species usually last before they go extinct? It turns out the answer we find now could be very different than it usually is. Because of habitat destruction, climate change, and a range of other factors, plants and animals are disappearing from the planet faster than all but maybe five other points in history. Some experts say we're in the sixth mass extinction event... Experts don't agree on the average amount of time that species in any category last before going extinct. The fossil record documents when a species shows up and when it disappears, but it leaves a wide margin of error because conditions must be perfect for fossils to form, and those conditions aren't always present when a species shows up and blinks out. And these longevity stats aren't that useful anyway. Stuart Pimm, a leading extinction expert and a conservation ecologist at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment, said he prefers to think about extinction in terms of how many species die out every day, or month, or year... The current extinction rate is much higher than any of these predictions about the past — about 1,000 times more than Pimm's background extinction rate estimate, he said. However, not everyone agrees on how accelerated species extinction is now, said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity in Oregon. Some experts estimate that the current extinction rate is only 100 times faster or, at the other extreme, 10,000 times faster... One thing the experts do agree on is that the modern extinction rate is far too high. "Species are adapting as fast as they can," Pimm said. "But eventually the luck runs out and they don't adapt fast enough. And they go."

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The New York Times reports: A nasal spray that blocks the absorption of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has completely protected ferrets it was tested on, according to a small study released on Thursday by an international team of scientists. The study, which was limited to animals and has not yet been peer-reviewed, was assessed by several health experts at the request of The New York Times. If the spray, which the scientists described as nontoxic and stable, is proved to work in humans, it could provide a new way of fighting the pandemic. A daily spritz up the nose would act like a vaccine. Snard (Slashdot reader #61,584) shared Columbia's announcement: The compound in the spray — a lipopeptide developed by Anne Moscona, MD, and Matteo Porotto, PhD, professors in the Department of Pediatrics and directors of the Center for Host-Pathogen Interaction — is designed to prevent the new coronavirus from entering host cells. The antiviral lipopeptide is inexpensive to produce, has a long shelf life, and does not require refrigeration. These features make it stand out from other antiviral approaches under development, including monoclonal antibodies. The new nasal lipopeptide could be ideal for halting the spread of COVID in the United States and globally; the transportable and stable compound could be especially key in rural, low-income, and hard-to-reach populations. A preprint of the study appeared in bioRxiv on November 5; a paper describing a first generation of the compound and its effect in a 3D model of the human lung first appeared in the journal mBio on October 20. In this human lung model, the compound was able to extinguish an initial infection, prevent spread of the virus within the lung, and was not at all toxic to the airway cells. Ferrets are often used in studies of respiratory diseases because the lungs of these animals and humans are similar... The antiviral is easily administered and, based on the scientists' experience with other respiratory viruses, protection would be immediate and last for at least 24 hours. The scientists hope to rapidly advance the preventative approach to human trials with the goal of containing transmission during this pandemic.

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Appearing on ABC, former Chicago Mayor and Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on Friday volunteered some suggestions for an economic recovery plan that America's next president could implement. "One of the things we've got to do to rebuild, mainly on infrastructure," he begins, before switching to additional ideas for also offering a more promising future to laid-off retail workers by trying to train them for better jobs. "There's going to be people like at JCPenney and other retail — those jobs aren't coming back. Give them the tools..." One such possible job he offered as an example? Computer programming. "Six months, you're going to become a computer coder. We'll pay for it.... we need to give them a lifeline to what's the next chapter." He believes lots of people would be interested. Although before any of that, Rahm stressed, "The first part of the stimulus is creating a floor so the economy doesn't sink any more. You can't get an economy growing if states and companies are laying people off." While computer programming was apparently meant as just one example of possible jobs training programs, this appears to have been twisted into claims that Rahm Emanuel believes millions of laid off retail workers should become computer programmers. Long-time Slashdot reader theodp does point out that Emanuel has held a long-standing faith in the potential of computer science education. ("Before leaving office, Emanuel worked to make Computer Science a high school graduation requirement beginning with the Class of 2020, although the Chicago Public Schools waived the requirement this year, citing the pandemic.") But is that also one possible solution for older generations who didn't receive computer science training in high school? What do Slashdot's readers think? Leave your own thoughts in the comments. Should retraining programs offered to laid-off retail workers Include computer programming?

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The iconic host of America's TV quiz show Jeopardy! has died at age 80, after 35 years of reminding contestants to always state their answers in the form of a question. Who was Alex Trebec? CNN calls him "the genial host with all the answers and a reassuring presence in the TV game-show landscape for five decades." Notable moments include playing host to IBM's Watson computer and a teasingly blunt appraisal of nerdcore hip hop. CNN reports: "Jeopardy! is saddened to share that Alex Trebek passed away peacefully at home early this morning, surrounded by family and friends," said a statement shared on the show's Twitter account Sunday. "Thank you, Alex." The cause of death was not immediately announced. Trebek revealed in March 2019 he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, triggering an outpouring of support and well wishes at the time. Trebek made history in 2014 by hosting his 6,829th "Jeopardy!" episode — the most by a presenter of any single TV game show... In a 2014 interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Trebek downplayed that honor, saying, "I'm just enjoying what I'm doing, I'm happy to have a job. I like the show, I like the contestants and it pays well."

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Adweek has published an article titled "What to Expect: How a Biden Administration Would Tackle Tech Policy." Some of the highlights: Industry observers have told us they don't expect a change-of-guard to upend the Google lawsuit brought by the Justice Department in concert with 11 state attorneys general over the company's search advertising hegemony. Indeed, we could see a spate of antitrust activity brought to bear on Big Tech during a Biden presidency... "Regardless of who wins the presidential election, antitrust enforcement against Big Tech will continue," said Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at liberal think tank the Open Markets Institute.... "Biden will take a...tough position on infrastructure companies like Huawei," said Alec Stapp, director of technology policy at the liberal Progressive Policy Institute, but is "less likely to come down hard on consumer apps like TikTok." He expects Biden to talk tough on China, "but with fewer unilateral tariffs and more cooperation from international allies."

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This year Let's Encrypt announced that it's issued a billion certificates, and it's been estimated they've made certs for almost 30% of web domains. But Friday they posted that "The DST Root X3 root certificate that we relied on to get us off the ground is going to expire — on September 1, 2021. Fortunately, we're ready to stand on our own, and rely solely on our own root certificate." "However, this does introduce some compatibility woes." Some software that hasn't been updated since 2016 (approximately when our root was accepted to many root programs) still doesn't trust our root certificate, ISRG Root X1. Most notably, this includes versions of Android prior to 7.1.1. That means those older versions of Android will no longer trust certificates issued by Let's Encrypt. Android has a long-standing and well known issue with operating system updates. There are lots of Android devices in the world running out-of-date operating systems. The causes are complex and hard to fix: for each phone, the core Android operating system is commonly modified by both the manufacturer and a mobile carrier before an end-user receives it. When there's an update to Android, both the manufacturer and the mobile carrier have to incorporate those changes into their customized version before sending it out. Often manufacturers decide that's not worth the effort. The result is bad for the people who buy these devices: many are stuck on operating systems that are years out of date. Currently, 66.2% of Android devices are running version 7.1 or above. The remaining 33.8% of Android devices will eventually start getting certificate errors when users visit sites that have a Let's Encrypt certificate. In our communications with large integrators, we have found that this represents around 1-5% of traffic to their sites. Hopefully these numbers will be lower by the time DST Root X3 expires next year, but the change may not be very significant. Let's Encrypt engineer Jacob Hoffman-Andrews explains that "In the time between now and September 29 we plan to start serving certificates with the 'alternate' link relation 186 to allow Automatic Certificate Management Environment (ACME) clients to programmatically select a chain they prefer." But Friday's blog post explains that won't solve everything: There will be site owners that receive complaints from users and we are empathetic to that being not ideal. We're working hard to alert site owners so you can plan and prepare. We encourage site owners to deploy a temporary fix (switching to the alternate certificate chain) to keep your site working while you evaluate what you need for a long-term solution: whether you need to run a banner asking your Android users on older OSes to install Firefox, stop supporting older Android versions, drop back to HTTP for older Android versions, or switch to a CA that is installed on those older versions. Gizmodo notes that Firefox will be unaffected "since it relies on its own certificate store that includes Let's Encrypt's root, though that wouldn't keep applications from breaking or ensure functionality beyond your browser." They describe Let's Encrypt as "the Mozilla-partnered nonprofit," and offers this succinct summary of the problem. "One of the world's top certificate authorities warns that phones running versions of Android prior to 7.1.1 Nougat will be cut off from large portions of the secure web starting in 2021."

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Thursday Tesla's web site began selling $250 bottles of Tesla-branded tequila, describing it as a "small-batch premium 100% de agave tequila anejo made from sustainably sourced highland and lowland agaves." Electrek explores the frenzy that followed: The product sold out in hours after it appears on Tesla's website and even before Elon Musk could tweet a link to the Tesla Tequila to his close to 40 million followers... Electrek's own article about the launch of Tesla Tequila was read by over half a million people within a day of posting about it. The product is not even in the hands of consumers just yet, but some people who placed reservations for it are trying to resell them already. Based on some listings on eBay, people are asking between $400 to $1,500 for a bottle of Tesla Tequilla. Some are even selling empty bottles and still asking for up to $1,000.... We don't even know if the tequila is any good. This is purely selling on the strength of Tesla's brand.

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"You can't send Hackaday a piece of gear without us taking it apart," warns an article shared by Slashdot reader beggarwoman. Hackady's verdict? The new Raspberry Pi 400 "is very, very slick." Inside, there's a flat-flex that connects the keyboard, and you see that big aluminum heat sink. It's almost the full size of the keyboard, and it's thick and heat-taped to the CPU. You know it means business. It's also right up against the aluminum bottom of the keyboard, suggesting it could get radiative help that way, and maybe keep your fingers warm in the winter. (I didn't feel any actual heat, but it's gotta go somewhere, right? There are also vents in the underside of the case.) Four PZ1 screws and a little bit of courage to unstick the pad get you underneath the heat spreader to find, surprise!, a Raspberry Pi 4. This was a little anticlimactic, as I've just spent a couple weeks looking over the schematics for my review of the new Compute Module 4, and it's just exactly what you'd expect. It's a Raspberry Pi 4, with all the ports broken out, inside a nice keyboard, with a beefy heat spreader. Ethernet magnetics sit on one side, and the wireless module sits on the other. That's it! "[C]ombine this with a small touch screen, and run it all off of a 5 V power pack, and you've got a ton of portable computing in a very small package. "If you're not mousing around all the time anyway, there's a certain streamlined simplicity here that's mighty tempting."

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"Another of Biden's promises will have particular significance during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic," reports Futurism: Back in July, he promised to reverse the incumbent Donald Trump's controversial April decision to leave the World Health Organization — the United Nations' agency that oversees and coordinates global public health efforts. "Americans are safer when America is engaged in strengthening global health," Biden said at the time. "On my first day as President, I will rejoin the WHO and restore our leadership on the world stage." The move wouldn't just be a rebuke to his predecessor. Experts called Trump's move a "dangerous gamble" and "unequivocally dangerous," and entrepreneur and philanthropist Bill Gates slammed the move as being "as dangerous as it sounds." Leaving the WHO seemed particularly reckless in the United States, where the pandemic had already spiraled out of control, surpassing the toll even in China, where it originated. COVID deaths in the US have now surged past 235,000, and daily infections are now hitting daily record highs — harbingers of what could be a brutal period of weeks or months during the waning days of the Trump administration.

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One beta tester of SpaceX's new Starlink satellite internet service is a Reddit user named "wandering-coder". This week they shared their experience online, testing the equpiment in a national forest which gets no cell service from any carrier -- and using it to upload this report: Works beautifully. I did a realtime video call and some tests. My power supply is max 300w, and the drain for the whole system while active was around 116w... It didn't work well with a heavy tree canopy / trees directly in the line of sight, as expected. I would be connected only for about 5 seconds at a time. Make sure you have as clear a view of the sky as possible! Ars Technica shares more data: As revealed last week, the Starlink beta costs $99 a month plus $499 upfront for the user terminal, mounting tripod, and router... New speed-test data collected by Ookla and published by PCMag last week found average Starlink download speeds of 79.5Mbps and average upload speeds of 13.8Mbps in October, when the service was in a more limited beta. The same data found average download speeds of 24.75Mbps for Viasat's Exede service and 19.84Mbps for HughesNet, both of which offer service from geostationary satellites. Upload speeds for Viasat and HughesNet were 3.25Mbps and 2.64Mbps, respectively. Starlink's low-Earth orbit satellites greatly outperformed the higher-orbit satellites on latency, with Starlink posting a 42ms average. Viasat and HughesNet came in at 643ms and 728ms, respectively, according to PCMag. SpaceX's invitations to new users last week told them to expect "data speeds vary[ing] from 50Mbps to 150Mbps and latency from 20ms to 40ms over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system... For latency, we expect to achieve 16ms to 19ms by summer 2021." One Montana resident posted a speed test result with a 174Mbps download speed, 33Mbps upload speed, and 39ms latency. "Way out in rural Montana where our alternative is to pay by the gig. Starlink will forever change the game," the beta tester wrote on Reddit yesterday. The Starlink Reddit community has several resources for tracking beta progress, such as a list of user speed tests and a list of states where at least some people received beta invitations. TechSpot summarizes some responses: According to some early speed tests done in different locations around the US, users are getting anywhere from 100 to 203 Mbps on downlink and around 15 to 33 Mbps on uplink. Meanwhile, the latency varies between 20 to 45 milliseconds, which is pretty much in line with SpaceX estimates. Upload speeds are still lower than the expected 50 to 150 Mbps, and one user in Idaho reported that connection drops every 2 to 3 minutes in games and video calls are common. One possible explanation for this could be that Starlink's constellation currently has around 800 satellites, which is a low number compared to the target of 12,000 that SpaceX wants to build. "Of particular interest has been performance in adverse weather," writes long-time Slashdot reader Rei: While the network is still being deployed, Pacific Northwest have been reporting rainy-weather download speeds ranging from ~95-140Mbps, upload from 9-18mbps, and ping times from 32-34ms. The upper range is surprisingly not that different from other November clear-weather data (which, while dramatically higher than September reports, is still supposed to improve over the coming year). The tolerance to adverse weather is likely due multiple satellite paths as well as phased array tuning overcoming wind buffeting. SpaceX does plan to add additional higher frequency V-band transmission to future Starlink satellites, but this should suffer more bad-weather attenuation than the current Ka/Ku-band. He also notes that SpaceX engineers have a nickname for the hardware. "Dishy McFlatface."

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Apple's search bots have been leaking Apple's internal IPs, a security researcher has discovered — and it took Apple over 9 months to fix it. Bleeping Computer reports: "Applebot is the web crawler for Apple. Products like Siri and Spotlight Suggestions use Applebot," according to Apple's knowledgebase. Last month, Security researcher and podcast creator David Coomber found out that Applebot had been using a proxy that leaked Apple's internal IP addresses. "Although I've seen a couple of bots that were misconfigured, I was surprised to see Apple's Podcast bot look for updates to my podcast (Deep House Mixes) using a proxy which leaked internal IPs and hostnames from the 'Via' & 'X-Forwarded-For' headers," Coomber continued in his blog post... When asked for comment concerning these issues, Apple did not provide one to BleepingComputer.

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"A victory by Joe Biden in the Nov. 3 election could usher in an abrupt change in the nation's telecommunications policy, restoring so-called net neutrality regulation," Bloomberg recently reported: Biden hasn't talked much about the FCC during the campaign, but his party's platform is specific. It calls for restoring net neutrality rules put in place under then-President Barack Obama when Biden served as vice president and taking a harder line on telecommunications mergers... If Biden wins, the FCC, which currently is at full five-member strength, could begin the new presidential term with a 2-to-1 Democratic majority, allowing it to move quickly. A Republican commissioner is leaving at the end of the current Congress and chairmen traditionally depart as a new administration arrives. Ajit Pai hasn't indicated what he'll do. He can stay on as a commissioner but a new president could strip him of the chairmanship and its power to control what policies advance to a vote... If Pai stays after a Biden win, "he's denuded of power to do much of anything except to block things," said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a Washington telecommunications lawyer. Bloomberg also speculates that in addition, America's FCC "may move to bar broadband providers from exempting their own entertainment or media offerings from data caps." While there had been interest in such a move four years ago, Ajit Pai "squelched an agency move toward doing so soon after taking office in 2016."

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Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes Bloomberg: Fake reviews on Amazon.com Inc. during the pandemic have reached levels typically seen during the holiday shopping season. About 42% of 720 million Amazon reviews assessed by the monitoring service Fakespot Inc. from March through September were unreliable, up from about 36% for the same period last year. The rise in fake reviews corresponded with the stampede online of millions of virus-avoiding shoppers. "We've only seen those kinds of numbers in the Black Friday or Christmas period in 2019," said Fakespot founder and Chief Executive Officer Saoud Khalifah. "In 2020, the surge of fake reviews has proliferated in a rapid manner coinciding with lockdown measures in the USA." By contrast, almost 36% of Walmart.com reviews assessed by Fakespot during the same period were fake — about the same as last year. Bogus reviews have plagued Amazon and other online marketplaces for years, despite the companies' efforts to purge them. The perpetrators, sometimes paid, either hype the virtues of a product or sabotage it to tank sales. Various automated services have emerged to help shoppers assess whether the reviews they're reading are real.

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"Security firm Kaspersky said Friday that it discovered a Linux version of the RansomEXX ransomware," reports ZDNet, "marking the first time a major Windows ransomware strain has been ported to Linux to aid in targeted intrusions." RansomEXX is a relatively new ransomware strain that was first spotted earlier this year in June. The ransomware has been used in attacks against the Texas Department of Transportation, Konica Minolta, U.S. government contractor Tyler Technologies, Montreal's public transportation system, and, most recently, against Brazil's court system (STJ)... The RansomEXX gang creating a Linux version of their Windows ransomware is in tune with how many companies operate today, with many firms running internal systems on Linux, and not always on Windows Server. A Linux version makes perfect sense from an attacker's perspective; always looking to expand and touch as much core infrastructure as possible in their quest to cripple companies and demand higher ransoms. What we see from RansomEXX may soon turn out to be an industry-defining trend, with other big ransomware groups rolling out their Linux versions in the future as well. And, this trend appears to have already begun. According to cyber-security firm Emsisoft, besides RansomEXX, the Mespinoza (Pysa) ransomware gang has also recently developed a Linux variant from their initial Windows version.

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"Mark Kelly will soon be the fourth NASA astronaut to serve in the U.S. Congress," writes People magazine. DevNull127 shares their report: In a tweet posted Wednesday, he said he was "deeply honored" to have been elected and to serve in the seat once held by the late Sen. John McCain. A retired U.S. Navy captain and astronaut, Kelly has flown in four space missions, including the final mission of Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2011. He is married to former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, was shot and nearly killed in 2011. His identical twin Scott Kelly is also a retired astronaut. The two participated in NASA's landmark "twins study," in which Scott spent a year aboard the space station while scientists collected Mark's physiological data back home for comparison... When he is sworn in, Kelly will be the only active member of Congress to have flown in space. He is preceded by three former NASA astronauts: former Sens. John Glenn and Jack Schmitt and Rep. Jack Swigert. Two other former members of Congress — Sen. Jake Garn and Rep. Bill Nelson — have flown in space as payload specialists. Apollo 13 astronaut John "Jack" Swigert was elected to the House of Representatives in 1982, but died of cancer before he could take office. Saturday Kelly tweeted, "Congratulations to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. We've got some challenges ahead of us, and I'm looking forward to working together to tackle them." And the same day his brother Scott Kelly tweeted a memory about the moment he left the International Space Station after 500 days, "looked out the window of our space capsule at the truss, and was struck with awe at how we came together & accomplished this great feat. "And that if we can do this, we can do anything if we commit ourselves and work together."

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"Uber helped wage a $200 million war in California to keep drivers as contractors," notes the Washington Post — successfully funding a ballot proposition that overrides a high-stakes 2019 law which insisted drivers be considered employees. "But now that the ballot measure has passed, the company says its work isn't done..." The ride-hailing giant's CEO said Thursday that Uber is looking to expand the model to other states, joining an executive from rival Lyft who said something similar earlier this week... "Going forward, you'll see us more loudly advocating for...laws like Prop 22," Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said, adding later: "We were the first to come forward with this [independent contractor]-plus model, the idea that drivers deserve flexibility plus benefits. We want to have a dialogue with governments [in] other states..." Uber and Lyft's stocks have rallied this week, logging percentage gains in the double digits as investors reacted to the news that they would not have to make drivers employees. The proposition promises independent contractors 120% of the minimum wage plus contributions to healthcare equivalent to what other employers currently provide (or half that amount for employees averaging less than 25 hours a week but more than 15). But the Post points out that "Unlike full employment, however, benefits are calculated based on a driver's active time, negating the potential hours per week they spend waiting for a fare while logged onto the apps..." Uber's chief financial officer told the Post that the new benefits "will result in probably a 5% increase to cover the incremental [costs]," including benefits, adding "We do believe that it'll be manageable." The Post adds that labor advocates "fiercely opposed Proposition 22, saying it was a transparent attempt to snatch newly enshrined employment rights from workers."

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While the RIAA has objected to a tool for downloading online videos, EFF senior activist Elliot Harmon responds with this question. "Who died and put them in charge of YouTube?" He asks the question in a new video "explainer" on the controversy, and argues in a new piece at EFF.org that the youtube-dl tool "doesn't infringe on any RIAA copyrights." RIAA's argument relies on a different section of the DMCA, Section 1201. DMCA 1201 says that it's illegal to bypass a digital lock in order to access or modify a copyrighted work. Copyright holders have argued that it's a violation of DMCA 1201 to bypass DRM even if you're doing it for completely lawful purposes; for example, if you're downloading a video on YouTube for the purpose of using it in a way that's protected by fair use. (And thanks to the way that copyright law has been globalized via trade agreements, similar laws exist in many other jurisdictions too.) RIAA argues that since youtube-dl could be used to download music owned by RIAA-member labels, no one should be able to use the tool, even for completely lawful purposes. This is an egregious abuse of the notice-and-takedown system, which is intended to resolve disputes over allegedly infringing material online. Again, youtube-dl doesn't use RIAA-member labels' music in any way. The makers of youtube-dl simply shared information with the public about how to perform a certain task — one with many completely lawful applications. Harmon wants to hear from people using youtube-dl for lawful purposes. And he also links to an earlier EFF piece arguing that DMCA 1201 "is incredibly broad, apparently allowing rightsholders to legally harass any 'trafficker' in code that lets users re-take control of their devices from DRM locks..." And EFF's concern over DMCA 1201 has been ongoing: DMCA 1201 has been loaded with terrible implications for innovation and free expression since the day it was passed. For many years, EFF documented these issues in our "Unintended Consequences" series; we continue to organize and lobby for temporary exemptions to its provisions for the purposes of cellphone unlocking, restoring vintage videogames and similar fair uses, as well as file and defend lawsuits in the United States to try and mitigate its damage. We look forward to the day when it is no longer part of U.S. law. But due to the WIPO Copyright Treaty, the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions infest much of the world's jurisdictions too, including the European Union via the Information Society Directive 2001/29/EC.

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"Joe Biden, the projected winner of the U.S. presidency, will move to restore dozens of environmental safeguards President Donald Trump abolished," reports the Washington Post, "and launch the boldest climate change plan of any president in history." destinyland shares their report: While some of Biden's most sweeping programs will encounter stiff resistance from Senate Republicans and conservative attorneys general, the United States is poised to make a 180-degree turn on climate change and conservation policy. Biden's team already has plans on how it will restrict oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters; ratchet up federal mileage standards for cars and SUVs; block pipelines that transport fossil fuels across the country; provide federal incentives to develop renewable power; and mobilize other nations to make deeper cuts in their own carbon emissions... Biden has vowed to eliminate carbon emissions from the electric sector by 2035 and spend $2 trillion on investments ranging from weatherizing homes to developing a nationwide network of charging stations for electric vehicles. That massive investment plan stands a chance only if his party wins two Senate runoff races in Georgia in January; otherwise, he would have to rely on a combination of executive actions and more-modest congressional deals to advance his agenda. Still, a number of factors make it easier to enact more-ambitious climate policies than even four years ago. Roughly 10% of the globe has warmed by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature rise the world has pledged to avoid. The price of solar and wind power has dropped, the coal industry has shrunk, and Americans increasingly connect the disasters they're experiencing in real time — including more-intense wildfires, hurricanes and droughts — with global warming. Biden has made the argument that curbing carbon will produce high-paying jobs while protecting the planet... Some of the new administration's rules could be challenged in federal court, which have a number of Trump appointees on the bench. But even some conservative activists said that Biden could enact enduring policies, whether by partnering with Congress or through regulation... The new administration may be able to broker compromises with key industries that have experienced regulatory whiplash in the past decade, including the auto industry and power sector, while offering tax breaks for renewable energy that remain popular with both parties. And Biden can rebuild diplomatic alliances that will spur foreign countries to pursue more-ambitious carbon reductions... Biden's advisers have said that they plan to elevate climate change as a priority in departments that have not always treated it as one, including the Transportation, State and Treasury departments. It will influence key appointments, affecting everything from overseas banking and military bases to domestic roads and farms.... Biden's pledge to achieve a carbon-free U.S. power sector within 15 years would mean the closing or revamping of nearly every coal- and gas-fired power plant around the country, and the construction of an unprecedented number of new wind turbines and solar farms. On top of that, engineers still need to devise a better way of storing energy when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing. "If I were advising Biden on energy, my first three priorities would be storage, storage and storage," said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who worked in the alternative energy businesses before running for office.

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NBC reports that social media crackdowns on disinformation have been less consistent if the content isn't in English. One example? "Facebook and YouTube have taken steps to remove QAnon content in English from their platforms, but experts warn there is still a vast amount in Spanish." The misleading, false and conspiratorial claims that are circulating in Spanish about the outcome of the election are readily viewable on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, despite policies from all three companies prohibiting or restricting the spread of conspiracy theories and election-related misinformation. According to researchers interviewed by NBC News, the policies have been implemented with more consistency for content posted in English... "Facebook and YouTube have taken steps to remove QAnon content in English from their platforms, but there is still a vast amount available in Spanish and it's easily accessible," said Flavia Colangelo, a researcher at GQR, a Democratic research firm that advises campaigns on Spanish-language disinformation... Alex Joseph, a spokesperson for YouTube, said the company has policies against misinformation about how to vote but does not prohibit content that forwards false views about the outcome of the election. "Expressing views on the outcome of a current election or process of counting votes is allowed under our policy," Joseph said. "Our policies are global, and we apply them consistently across all languages and regions."

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The night before America's election, Fast Company reported: On the internet, we're subject to hidden A/B tests all the time, but this one was also part of a political weapon: a multimillion-dollar tool kit built by a team of Facebook vets, data nerds, and computational social scientists determined to defeat Donald Trump. The goal is to use microtargeted ads, follow-up surveys, and an unparalleled data set to win over key electorates in a few critical states: the low-education voters who unexpectedly came out in droves or stayed home last time, the voters who could decide another monumental election. By this spring, the project, code named Barometer, appeared to be paying off. During a two-month period, the data scientists found that showing certain Facebook ads to certain possible Trump voters lowered their approval of the president by 3.6%... "We've been able to really understand how to communicate with folks who have lower levels of political knowledge, who tend to be ignored by the political process," says James Barnes, a data and ads expert at the all-digital progressive nonprofit Acronym, who helped build Barometer. This is familiar territory: Barnes spent years on Facebook's ads team, and in 2016 was the "embed" who helped the Trump campaign take Facebook by storm. Last year, he left Facebook and resolved to use his battle-tested tactics to take down his former client. "We have found ways to find the right news to put in front of them, and we found ways to understand what works and doesn't," Barnes says. "And if you combine all those things together, you get a really effective approach, and that's what we're doing...." By the election it promises to have spent $75 million on Facebook, Google, Instagram, Snapchat, Hulu, Roku, Viacom, Pandora, and anywhere else valuable voters might be found... Barnes had been a Republican all his life, but he did not like Trump; he says he ended up voting for Clinton. The election, and his role in it, left him unsettled, and he left Facebook's political ads team to work with the company's commercial clients... In the wake of Trump's election and its aftermath, Barnes helped Facebook develop some of its election integrity initiatives (one of Facebook's moves was to stop embedding employees like him inside campaigns) and even sat down for lengthy interviews with the Securities and Exchange Commission and with then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Last year, after some soul-searching, some of it in Peru, Barnes registered as a Democrat, left Facebook, and began working on a way to fight Trump... Acronym and a political action committee, Pacronym, were founded in 2017 by Democratic strategist Tara McGowan, in an effort to counter Trump's online spending advantage and what The New Yorker called his Facebook juggernaut... For Barnes, Acronym's aggressive approach to Facebook, and Barometer's very existence, isn't just personal, but relates to his former employer: Facebook hasn't only failed to effectively police misinformation and disinformation, but helped accelerate it... But while Barnes is using some of the weapons that helped Trump, he's at pains to emphasize that, unlike the other side, Acronym's artillery is simply "the facts." The PAC's donors include Laurene Powell Jobs, Steven Spielberg, venture capitalists Reid Hoffman and Michael Moritz, and (according to the Wall Street Journal) Facebook's former product officer, Chris Cox (who is also an informal adviser.) But in addition, the group "can access an unprecedented pool of state voter files and personal information: everything from your purchasing patterns to your social media posts to your church, layered with AI-built scores that predict your traits..."

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