New mural painted in memory of LA's famed mountain lion



Daniel Richards, a 55-year-old tour guide visits a mural by street artist Corie Mattie dedicated to the memory of one of Los Angeles' most famous residents, P-22, in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles Friday, Dec. 23, 2022. The celebrated mountain lion who lived in the city and was recently euthanized amid worsening health and injuries likely caused by a car. "He's kind of a legend," Richards said of the mountain lion. "It's a really great mural and really memorializes something that was unique here in the city of Los Angeles." 

(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Fri, December 23, 2022 at 11:19 AM MST·2 min read

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An artist has devoted a sweeping new street mural to the memory of one of Los Angeles' most famous residents.

The subject? P-22, the celebrated mountain lion who took up residence in the city and was euthanized last weekend amid worsening health and injuries likely caused by a car.

With a sweep of her brush, Corie Mattie has erected a memorial on the side of a building showing the beloved big cat wearing a crown with the words “Long Live the King.” Earlier this year, she painted a separate mural devoted to P-22, where residents left flowers after the cougar died.

“He’s still the king of the hill,” Mattie told KABC-TV. “There’s never going to be another P-22.”

P-22 became the face of a campaign to build a wildlife crossing over a Los Angeles-area freeway to give big cats, coyotes, deer and other wildlife a safe path to the nearby Santa Monica Mountains, where they have room to roam.

The cougar was regularly recorded on security cameras strolling through residential areas near his home in Griffith Park, an oasis of hiking trails and picnic areas in the middle of the city.

Long outfitted with a tracking collar, P-22 was captured for examination in a residential backyard Dec. 12, a month after killing a Chihuahua on a dogwalker’s leash.

Wildlife officials said the decision was made to euthanize after veterinarians determined P-22 had a skull fracture and chronic illnesses including a skin infection and diseases of the kidneys and liver.

Daniel Richards, a 55-year-old tour guide, said it was sad to learn of P-22's passing and he hopes the mural will stay.

“He's kind of a legend,” Richards said of the mountain lion. “It's a really great mural and really memorializes something that was unique here in the city of Los Angeles.”

HEY,HEY U$A; HOW DID HE GET AWAY

Al Qaeda releases video it claims is narrated by leader al-Zawahiri who was believed dead -SITE


Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri appears in an undated FBI Most Wanted poster

Fri, December 23, 2022 at 11:59 AM MST·1 min read


CAIRO (Reuters) -Al Qaeda has released a 35-minute recording the group claims was narrated by its leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was believed to have been killed in a U.S. raid in August 2022, SITE intelligence group said on Friday.

The recording was undated and the transcript did not clearly point towards a time frame for when it could have been made.

Zawahiri was killed in a U.S. strike in Afghanistan, the biggest blow to the militant group since its founder Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.

Zawahiri had been in hiding for years, and the operation to locate and kill him was the result of "careful, patient and persistent" work by the counterterrorism and intelligence community, a senior U.S. administration official said.

Al Qaeda has not named a successor. But Saif al-Adel, a mysterious, low-key former Egyptian special forces officer who is a high-ranking member of Al Qaeda, is seen by experts as the top contender.

The United States is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to his arrest.

(Reporting by Enas Alashray; Editing by Nadine Awadalla, Chris Reese, Michael Georgy and Jonathan Oatis)

Have a safe trip: Oregon trains magic mushroom facilitators
  

A bell hangs at the entrance to a psilocybin facilitator training venue near Damascus, Ore., on Dec. 2, 2022. People are being trained in how to accompany patients tripping on psilocybin as Oregon prepares to become the first state in America to offer controlled use of the psychedelic mushroom to the public. 

(AP Photo/Andrew Selsky)

ANDREW SELSKY
Thu, December 22, 2022

DAMASCUS, Oregon (AP) — At a woodsy retreat center in Oregon, some 30 men and women are seated or lying down, masks covering their eyes and listening to serene music.

They are among the first crop of students being trained how to accompany patients tripping on psilocybin, as Oregon prepares to become the first U.S. state to offer controlled use of the psychedelic mushroom to the public.

Expected to be available to the public in mid- or late-2023, the program is charting a potential course for other states. Oregon voters approved Ballot Measure 109 on psilocybin by an 11% margin in 2020.

In November, Colorado voters also passed a ballot measure allowing regulated use of “magic mushrooms” starting in 2024. On Dec. 16, California state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco introduced a bill to legalize psilocybin and other psychedelic substances.

“Psychedelics help people heal from trauma, depression & addiction,” Wiener tweeted. “Why are they still illegal in California?”

InnerTrek, a Portland company, is now training around 100 students, in three groups, to be licensed “facilitators” who will create a safe space for dosing sessions and be a reassuring, but nonintrusive, presence. Some classes in the six-month, $7,900 course are online but others are in-person, held near Portland in a building resembling a mountain lodge with Tibetan prayer flags flapping in the breeze nearby.

Because psilocybin use is still illegal, the only mushrooms at the training center were the shitake ones served in the miso soup at lunch.

Trainer Gina Gratza told the students that the space, or “container,” for a dosing session at a licensed center should include a couch or mats for clients to sit or lie on, an eye mask, comfort items like a blanket and stuffed animals, a sketch pad, pencils and a bucket for vomiting. A session typically lasts at least six hours.

Music is an important part of the experience and should be available, from speakers or on headphones. (Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research in Baltimore have developed a playlist that “ seeks to express the sweeping arc of the typical medium- or high-dose psilocybin session.”)

“You are here to support safe passage and hold the container that powers a release and an unfolding,” Gratza told the students. “Be mindful of how you’re speaking and what the energy of what you’re putting out may be conveying.”

Trainers emphasized that those taking psilocybin should be given the freedom to explore whatever emotions emerge during their inner journeys. They shouldn’t be consoled if they’re crying, for example. Expressing anger is fine but there should be agreement beforehand that there will be no throwing of objects or hitting.

“We’re not guiding,” Gratza said. “Let your participants’ experiences unfold. Use words sparingly. Let participants come to their own insights and conclusions.”

Tom Eckert, the architect of Ballot Measure 109, is now moving it along as InnerTrek’s program director. He said it’s not about people getting “high” for the sake of it, but to use psilocybin to improve lives.

Researchers believe psilocybin changes the way the brain organizes itself, permitting a user to adopt new attitudes more easily and help overcome depression, PTSD and other issues.

“What we’re bringing forward here in Oregon is a platform for psilocybin services,” Eckert said in an interview. "And service means a sequence of sessions in which a psilocybin experience is contextualized. So, there’s preparation beforehand and integration afterwards. It’s a therapeutic sequence.”

Oregon is pioneering the regulated use of psychedelic mushrooms in the U.S., but psilocybin, peyote and other hallucinogenic substances have been used by the native peoples of Mexico and Central America to induce altered states of consciousness in healing rituals and religious ceremonies since pre-Columbian times.

Its cultivation and use is legal in a handful of other countries, including Jamaica, where some high-end mushroom resorts have sprung up. A program run by the Heroic Hearts Project, a veteran service organization, brings military vets with PTSD and athletes who have experienced trauma to the jungles of Peru for restorative sessions with ayahuasca, a plant-based psychedelic.

In October, the Canadian province of Alberta announced the first provincial regulations for psychedelic-assisted therapy. The new regulations, which take effect in January, require a psychiatrist to oversee any treatment, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Psilocybin remains illegal in the rest of Canada, but that hasn't stopped shops in Vancouver, British Columbia, from openly selling magic mushrooms. The police aren't getting involved and are instead targeting violent criminal organizations that produce and traffic harmful opioids, the CBC reported.

A shop in Portland called the Shroom House was also allegedly selling psilocybin openly until police busted the operation on Dec. 8 and arrested the store owner and manager.

In the last election, several rural counties in Oregon opted out of allowing psilocybin services in unincorporated areas within their borders, although several towns in those counties stayed in. Heavily populated counties with the state's biggest cities — Portland, Eugene and Bend — also did not opt out, although the county containing the capital Salem did.

The Oregon Psychiatric Physicians Association and the American Psychiatric Association opposed Measure 109, saying it “is unsafe and makes misleading promises to those Oregonians who are struggling with mental illness.” You don't need to be a medical professional to get a facilitator license, they pointed out.

Eckert, though, said the status quo isn't working.

“We need a revolution in mental health care,” Eckert said. “The current way we are working with mental health simply isn’t cutting it, and we see that in the outcomes. We have something of a mental health crisis here in Oregon and beyond.

“I'm not trying to throw away the existing structure,” he added. "There’s definitely value there, but there’s something missing, clearly.” 

___

  

Huawei reaps more patent royalties than it pays out for second straight year

HOW HUAWEI GOT STARTED; 

RIPPING OFF PATENTS FROM NORTEL


Fri, December 23, 2022 
By Paresh Dave

OAKLAND, Calif. (Reuters) -Chinese technology giant Huawei will bring in more patent income than it pays to other companies for their patents for the second straight year in 2022, as it seeks to offset the impact of U.S. export curbs on sales in its hardware business, the company announced late Thursday.

Huawei, known for its telecoms equipment and smartphones, signed or renewed over 20 patent licensing deals this year, said Steven Geiszler, the company's U.S. chief intellectual property counsel. Among licensors announced Thursday were several automakers, including Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Porsche and BMW, that are seeking to add more communications technologies to their vehicles.

"By getting a return on our R&D investment, it allows us to re-invest and re-invent," Geiszler said, referring to research and development.

"Audi respects the intellectual property of third parties and is willing to take licences, if such licences are necessary and available to comply with the law," the German automaker said.

Other automakers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Huawei also said it had extended its patent deal with its Finnish rival Nokia, which began booking licensing revenue from Huawei back in 2017 when the agreement was originally signed.

Nokia booked altogether 1.5 billion euros ($1.59 billion) in revenue from patent licensing in year 2021, while Huawei generated about $1.2 billion globally from licenses over the three years ended 2021, or roughly hundreds of millions of dollars annually, Geiszler said.

Its full-year sales figures for 2022 will not be tallied until next year, and the licensing unit's profits or losses are not accounted for independently, he said.

Those figures are small relative to the billions of dollars in annual sales Huawei has lost due to U.S. curbs on Chinese technology since 2019 that have stung its ability to sell in places such as the United States and Europe.

But the company has grown more aggressive in striking deals for its patents over the past two years to at least make up some ground. In addition, in some cross-licensing agreements where money previously never exchanged hands, Huawei is now getting cash to balance out the deals since it is selling fewer devices that use the patents it had secured.

As publicly disclosed technology, the patents are not subject to the U.S. restrictions, Geiszler said.

($1 = 0.9422 euros)

(Reporting by Paresh Dave; additional reporting by Jaiveer Shekhawat in Bangalore and Anne Kauranen in Helsinki, editing by Cynthia Osterman, Louise Heavens and Mark Potter)

MERRY F...ING XMAS FROM STELLANTIS

Jeep Plant Shutdown Imperils Illinois Town and 1,350 Workers



Neal E. Boudette and Robert Chiarito
Fri, December 23, 2022 

BELVIDERE, Ill. — The Jeep Cherokee was a strong seller just a few years ago. In 2019, a plant in Belvidere produced about 190,000 of the sport utility vehicles, employing close to 5,000 people and operating three shifts a day.

Since then, sales have fallen. The factory laid off the third shift, and then the second. This year it is on track to make fewer than 20,000 vehicles.

Even so, it was a shock when the manufacturer, Stellantis, announced this month that the 57-year-old plant would shut down indefinitely at the end of February, putting 1,350 people out of work. And there is fear across the area, an hour’s drive west of Chicago, that “indefinitely” could mean forever.

Shane Mathison, a line operator who has worked at the Belvidere plant since 2006, said the news hit hard at home, especially for his wife. “She’s freaking out,” he said. “She’s scared to death. But I told her, we’ll make ends meet. If I have to wash dishes at two different places, I will. I have to do what I have to do for the family.”

The prospective shutdown is a fresh sign of upheaval in the American auto industry. Beyond threatening economic pain locally, it adds a contentious element to looming labor negotiations with the company and a hard-fought leadership race in the United Auto Workers union.

Sales of the Jeep Cherokee, a midsize sport utility vehicle, have been slowed by the shortage of computer chips that has hindered auto production around the world for the last two years. Several times Stellantis has halted Cherokee production to divert the chips it had to larger, more profitable vehicles such as the Grand Cherokee and trucks like the Ram pickup.

The Cherokee is also in a crowded, highly competitive segment, and is an aging model. It had its last major redesign in 2014. By contrast, new versions of the Chevrolet Equinox, Ford Escape and Toyota RAV4 have all been introduced in the last four years. An updated Honda CR-V arrived this summer.

At the same time, the auto industry is investing billions of dollars to transition to electric vehicles, one of the most fundamental shifts in the industry in more than 100 years. A half dozen automakers are building battery plants in Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Tennessee and Kentucky. Computer chip producers, moving in part to meet the automotive demand, plan new plants in Ohio, Michigan, New York and Arizona, with the help of subsidies under the CHIPS and Science Act, passed by Congress in July.

For now, the northwestern corner of Illinois is bracing for the effects of the idling of the plant, the largest employer in Belvidere, which has a population of 25,000. At Buchanan Street Pub, Jim Edwards, the bar manager, fretted at the notion.

“It’s been affecting us,” he said. “You don’t have that second and third shift coming by anymore. Most of the workers live here in Belvidere. It’s going to be a ghost town.”

The factory is also an important economic engine for a wider area. “There’s always a big hole left when a plant closes,” said Tom McNamara, mayor of Rockford, a city of 147,000 just west of Belvidere. “Auto assembly is a big jobs multiplier. When the plant closes, there are a lot of suppliers and other businesses that will be affected.”

Stellantis, formed two years ago through the merger of Fiat Chrysler and France’s Peugeot, is solidly profitable, having reported 8 billion euros ($8.5 billion) in net income for the first half of the year. But it is also spending heavily to catch up to Tesla, General Motors and Ford Motor in EVs. The company said this year it would invest $2.5 billion to build a battery plant of its own in Indiana.

“Our industry has been adversely affected by a multitude of factors like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the global microchip shortage, but the most impactful challenge is the increasing cost related to the electrification of the automotive market,” Stellantis said in a statement.

Kristin Dziczek, a policy adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago who focuses on the auto industry, said Stellantis was encountering a challenge other automakers will face as they ramp up production of EVs and sales of conventional models decline.

“It’s tough,” she said. Keeping plants operating at full capacity “has been hard while companies have to put out a lot of money for the shift to EVs.”

Earlier this year, it seemed the Belvidere plant might become a key part of the company’s strategy. It was in the running to produce battery-powered cars, but Stellantis chose to retool a plant in Brampton, Ontario, instead.

Stellantis said it planned to try to transfer Belvidere workers into positions at other plants that have openings.

Matt Frantzen, 48, a father of five who has worked at the plant since 1994, said he would most likely have to take a transfer to another Stellantis location because he needed to work about another year before he could retire with full benefits.

“It may be Ohio,” he said. “It may be Michigan. But wherever it is, I’m so far invested, I have to go. I’ll leave my family in Belvidere, and I’ll go do my job until retirement. Then I’ll come home and look for new work.”

Eric Fulton, a 25-year employee who works in the plant’s paint reprocess department, said many Belvidere workers had been through downsizing in the past.

“A large portion of employees are transfers already, so we are numb to having to do it again,” he said. “It is very sad, but again, this is the norm that most of us are used to.”

The UAW, which is heading into contract negotiations with Stellantis next year, will push the company to keep Belvidere open and assign new models to the plant.

“A plant can’t be permanently shuttered without the buy-in from the UAW,” Dziczek said. “So this is a really significant round of talks coming up.”

The Detroit automakers have idled plants before past contract negotiations, only to reopen them after bargaining with the union. In 2019, GM was winding down production at its Hamtramck plant in Detroit as contract talks began, and ended up agreeing to produce the first of its new generation of electric vehicles there.

In those same talks, however, GM closed its plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and resisted the union’s efforts to reopen it. While the Lordstown plant was sold, GM built a new battery plant a mile away. Workers at the battery plant this month voted overwhelmingly in favor of UAW representation.

The president of the UAW, Ray Curry, said in an interview that he had been having discussions since August with Stellantis’ chief executive, Carlos Tavares, as well as officials of the Biden administration and the Illinois governor’s office in a push to keep the Belvidere plant alive.

“The corporation is looking at scenarios for putting product in Belvidere,” he said, “and I can tell you the governor has not given up, I have not given up, and we are all advocating for the survival of that plant.”

The plant is certain to become a key topic next year when the UAW membership chooses a president. Curry finished slightly ahead of a reform candidate, Shawn Fain, in a field of five presidential candidates in a November election. Curry and Fain will face each other in a runoff early next year.

Fain said he would push Stellantis hard to assign new models to be built in Belvidere and preserve jobs. In the past, he said, UAW leaders have been too willing to accept wage, benefit and job concessions sought by Ford, GM and Stellantis.

“These companies have had near-record profits for 10 years now,” he said in an interview. “You have workers who’ve worked their butts off and have done their part.”

Even if the UAW is able to negotiate a future for the Belvidere plant, it will probably remain idle long enough to force some workers to retire, transfer or move on to new jobs.

Mathison, the union line operator at Belvidere, may be one of them. He said he planned to look into going back to school to become a certified nursing assistant because a transfer to another state would be difficult.

“I have three kids,” he said. “Both my mom and dad are up there in age. I can’t move. I’m basically going to have to start over at 47.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Stellantis in talks to buy 'substantial' stake in hydrogen mobility company Symbio


Stellantis logo on a company's building in Velizy-Villacoublay near Paris

Fri, December 23, 2022
MILAN (Reuters) - Stellantis has entered exclusive talks with France's Faurecia and Michelin to buy a "substantial" stake in their Symbio joint venture, a fuel cell system maker for hydrogen mobility, the three companies said on Friday.

Stellantis, the world third-largest carmaker, launched hydrogen-powered mid-size vans late last year and aims to expand its hydrogen offer to large vans in Europe in 2024 and in the U.S. in 2025, "while further exploring opportunities for heavy-duty trucks".

Chief Executive Carlos Tavares said Symbio's technical roadmap "perfectly" matched with Stellantis hydrogen roll-out plans in Europe and in the U.S.

"This move will foster the speed of development to bring low emission products to our customers, beyond traditional electric vehicles" he said in the statement.

Stellantis entry "will accelerate and globalize Symbio's growth," Faurecia's CEO Patrick Koller said.

Earlier this year Symbio announced its HyMotive project to accelerate its industrialization, with a plan to increase total production capacity in France to 100,000 systems per year by 2028 while generating 1,000 additional jobs.

The transaction, for which no financial details were provided, is expected to be finalised in the first half on next year, the three companies said in their statement.

(Reporting by Giulio Piovaccari, Editing by Louise Heavens)

Tech layoffs ‘uprooting entire families,’ immigration lawyer explains

Layoffs at Twitter, Meta, and other tech companies are complicating some workers' immigration status.


Akiko Fujita
·Anchor/Reporter
Fri, December 23, 2022

As layoffs in the tech industry accelerate into the year-end, some workers and their families are having to scramble to find a job and remain in the U.S.

More than 150,000 people have lost jobs in the industry so far as companies look to course correct after years of high growth and high costs. And a third of those job losses have come just within the last month, according to Layoffs, an online site that tracks tech layoffs.

While job cuts usually entail workers brushing off their résumés in search of new jobs, an increasing number of workers whose work and life status are tied directly to their visa are finding themselves in limbo.

“It’s not just one person's life at stake,” Tahmina Watson, founding attorney for Watson Immigration Law in Seattle, said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “It's their spouses. It's the children who were probably born in the United States — children who came here when they were young and they know nothing but America as their homes. It's going to be uprooting entire families. When somebody is being laid off and they're on a visa, the complication is just manyfold. And it's often invisible and too complicated for the laid-off person to explain.”

Headaches for H-1B visa holders

The hurdles surrounding the temporary H-1B work visa — a nonimmigrant visa that allows American employers to hire foreign workers for skilled jobs — have been especially pronounced. Those laid-off workers on an H-1B have just 60 days to secure a new job or risk deportation.

And with so many layoffs happening at once, Watson said workers are struggling to find that lifeline.

“When somebody is working in the United States on a visa, they have to continue to work; otherwise, they would be unlawfully in the United States,” Watson said. “So anybody who is looking at perhaps being laid off soon, they need to start thinking about it immediately. 

What will be their options?”

The program has served as a steady pipeline for tech talent for years, with roughly 70% of H-1B visa holders working in computer-related jobs, according to federal statistics. Amazon (AMZN) alone has filed more than 26,000 petitions to hire or rehire foreign workers on H-1B visas since 2009 while Microsoft (MSFT) has filed more than 18,000 petitions in the same period, according to the Seattle Times.

But the mass layoffs, particularly those timed around the holidays, have put renewed pressure on Washington to revisit the limitations of U.S. immigration policies around high-skilled labor.

Watson argued a 60-day grace period is simply too short, especially during an economic downturn when replacement jobs are harder to find. The layoffs also complicate the path for those who are already in line for a green card or legal permanent residency in the U.S. since an existing green card application becomes invalid once the job on file is eliminated.

These challenges are compounded by the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has struggled to clear a backlog of green card applications brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictive immigration policies enacted by the Trump administration.

“Those backlogs are 10, 15 years long,” Watson explained. “And so the H-1B visa allows them to stay here while they are in the backlog. So if those backlogs are not cleared, and the job goes away, the green card application also is in jeopardy.”

60-day requirement 'completely outrageous'

The frustrations have spilled out onto social media platforms, with laid-off workers openly pitching themselves for new jobs to maintain their legal visa status in the U.S.

One worker, who identified himself as a software engineer, said on LinkedIn: “Seems unfair that If you cross the border illegally, you get an indefinite time to be in the country (in most cases) and find a place for yourself, yet coming in legally is treated completely opposite. Immigration reforms are necessary, at least the time-off duration needs to increase so people have a fair shot of finding jobs when hiring resumes.”

Another worker, who identified himself as a laid-off Twitter employee, appealed to those on the site, saying he has just 60 days to find a new job. “I am looking for a Software/Machine Learning Engineer role immediately,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

At least one tech executive has heeded the call to help.

Joshua Browder, CEO of AI-based legal services startup DoNotPay, took to Twitter recently saying he was open to hiring H-1B visa holders at his company.

“I was expecting a few people to reach out, but I literally got hundreds and hundreds of some of the most talented engineers and designers reaching out,” Browder told Yahoo Finance. “I was shocked by just how many talented people were being laid off. I think a lot of these big companies are making a big mistake.”

Browder, who immigrated from the UK as a college student, said 25% of his 23 employees are in the U.S. on skilled worker visas. He has since gotten applications from former employees at Twitter and Stripe, among others, and offered jobs starting in January to two workers so far.

The sudden surge of unemployed workers has proven to be a blessing for his company, Browder said. He explained it allowed him to save “thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars” in recruitment fees to attract top talent.

“I'm sure a lot of these people would actually get jobs," Browder said. "It's just that the 60-day requirement is completely outrageous, especially in this climate. No one can make things happen that quickly, but we can. So we're aiming to do that. But most big employers don't work that quickly.”

Akiko Fujita is an anchor and reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @AkikoFujita

How Meta flunked its first year as a metaverse company

Meta finishes its first full year as a “metaverse company" in a much worse place than it started.



Karissa Bell
·Senior Editor
Tue, December 20, 2022 

A year ago, Meta was riding high on the metaverse. The company had just completed its rebranding from Facebook to Meta. Social networks, as Mark Zuckerberg explained, were no longer a singular focus for the company. “From now on, we're going to be metaverse-first, not Facebook first,” he said.

Now, as Meta finishes its first full year as a “metaverse company,” the outlook is considerably less rosy. The company has lost billions of dollars on Reality Labs, the division overseeing its metaverse work. Its stock has cratered. The company has, for the first time, shed thousands of employees in mass layoffs. Even longtime shareholders are starting to do what was once unthinkable: question Zuckerberg’s vision for the future.

At the same time, Meta still hasn’t clearly articulated what the metaverse is or effectively made the case for why the billions of people currently using its social media apps would want to be part of an “embodied internet.” Worse still, the company’s initial metaverse product has proved underwhelming, and turned the metaverse into a punchline, rather than a source of anticipation.

We still don’t know what the metaverse is for

Meta and Zuckerberg have offered various definitions over the last year. The metaverse is the “successor to the mobile internet,” and “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience.” It’s virtual reality, but also (eventually) augmented reality. It will also, somehow, tie into our existing social graphs on Facebook and Instagram. But, unlike Facebook and Instagram, it will be interoperable with other companies’ platforms. It might have something to do with NFTs and web3.

“The defining characteristic of the metaverse is that you really feel like you're present with other people or in another place,” Zuckerberg said during an interview at SXSW in February. “You might look at documents, you might look at a website but in the future you're going to be in it.”

Zuckerberg might think this is explaining the beginnings of some grand vision for a future internet, but it also just sounds a lot like plain old virtual reality. Moreover, it’s telling that one of his go-to examples is “looking at documents.” Over the last year, the company has leaned hard into Horizon Workrooms, its social VR experience geared toward office workers.

Meta's is integrating Zoom and Microsoft Teams into VR meetings with Horizon Workrooms.

When the company showed off its new high-end Quest Pro, it offered up Horizon Workrooms as one of the key experiences optimized for the new headset. You can now recreate a whole virtual workspace in VR. Soon, you’ll be able to use a slew of office and productivity software, from Zoom to Microsoft Word.

But the idea of working in VR with a headset strapped to your face is still pretty far from appealing to most people. And there are a vanishingly small number of jobs and industries where working in VR is even remotely justified.

Perhaps what’s most telling is that Meta has apparently struggled to persuade its own employees to use Workrooms. Despite making Quest 2 headsets free to all employees last year, a recent push from Zuckerberg for teams to start holding meetings in VR revealed that many either hadn’t taken advantage of the offer or hadn’t set the headset up, The New York Times reported.

Meta’s metaverse is a meme for bad graphics

Without a clear vision, it became far too easy for Meta’s critics to seize on aesthetic issues and other problems. For now, the closest thing Meta has to the “metaverse” is Horizon Worlds, its social VR playground where users are free to explore as their avatar. But the experience of actually using it is far different than the polished videos and demos Meta has shared.

This was never more apparent than when Zuckerberg earnestly posted a screenshot of his avatar in front of the Eiffel Tower and Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia to mark Horizon World’s launch in France and Spain. The screenshot was hilariously bad and quickly took on a life of its own as people mocked the “1995 level graphics.”

Mark Zuckerberg's Horizon avatar.

Zuckerberg quickly promised new and improved avatars, and showed off a more realistic likeness of himself, saying that “graphics in Horizon are capable of much more.” (A post on LinkedIn, which has since been deleted, later revealed that the “improved” Zuck avatar took about a month and “40 iterations” to complete.)

Then, at the company’s Connect event, Zuckerberg promised an even bigger advancement: legs. Soon, Horizon’s cartoonish, legless avatars would be replaced with ones resembling actual, walking humans. We watched as Zuckerberg’s “full body” avatar casually strolled around Horizon Worlds. But while it was first thought to be a turning point — adding leg tracking to VR has been a notoriously tricky problem — it turned out this particular demo was more stagecraft than actual innovation. The company later confirmed that the demo was created with motion capture and wasn’t live VR.

Meta still says that its avatars will eventually have legs, but it’s not clear when, or if the feature will even look like the demo.

The metaverse is a money pit

It’s impossible to ignore that Zuckerberg’s metaverse pivot has also coincided with the company’s worst financial performance in recent memory. Meta’s revenue has shrunk for two straight quarters for the first time ever. Its stock has lost more than 60 percent of its value this year, wiping out billions of dollars.

To be fair, the metaverse isn’t entirely to blame. Apple’s anti-tracking changes in iOS have hurt the company’s advertising business. And the entire industry is reeling from an economic downturn that’s affected even the largest tech giants.

At the same time, Meta is undeniably losing vast amounts of money on its metaverse investments. Reality Labs lost $10 billion in 2021, and 2022’s losses already amounted to $9 billion by the third quarter. Those losses are expected to “grow significantly” in 2023, according to the company’s CFO.

Mark Zuckerberg in what's likely the company's new VR headset.

It’s no surprise, then, that Meta’s investors are starting to question whether all this metaverse stuff is really worth it. The CEO of Altimeter Capital, a longtime Meta shareholder, made headlines when he wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year that called the company’s metaverse investments “super-sized and terrifying, even by Silicon Valley standards.”

In the company’s most recent earnings call, where Zuckerberg more often fields peppy questions about the company’s ad business, one analyst also raised the issue of “experimental bets versus proven bets.”

“I think everyone wants to hear why you think this pays off,” he asked. Zuckerberg, who seemed a bit flustered by the question, replied that “the metaverse work is a longer term set of efforts that we're working on, but I think that it’s going to end up working.” Patience, he said, will be rewarded.

Midflight lightning strikes ground Spirit plane en route to Cancún


Midflight lightning strikes ground Spirit plane en route to Cancún

Hannah Sampson and Andrea Sachs, (c) 2022, The Washington Post

Fri, December 23, 2022 

A Spirit Airlines flight headed to Cancún International Airport returned to Philadelphia on Friday morning after crew reported "multiple lightning strikes," the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed.

Flight-tracking site FlightAware shows that the plane, an Airbus A321, took off from Philadelphia International Airport just after 10 a.m. and landed back at the airport right after 11 a.m. According to a statement from the FAA, the flight landed safely. The agency said it will investigate.

"Our crew handled the situation perfectly and had a smooth & safe return trip to the gate," Erik Hofmeyer, Spirit's director of communications, wrote in an email to The Washington Post.

The incident unfolded as a massive winter storm moved into the area. By just after 3 p.m. Friday, more than 4,600 U.S. flights had been canceled, and more than 6,400 others were delayed, according to FlightAware.

According to the National Weather Service, commercial passenger planes are struck by lightning an average of once or twice a year.

"They are designed and built to have conducting paths through the plane to take the lightning strike and conduct the currents," the Weather Service says.

According to Boeing, airplanes are most susceptible to lightning strikes when climbing or descending. The likelihood of a plane getting an electric jolt is highest at 5,000 to 15,000 feet and lessens above 20,000 feet. In addition, 70 percent of lightning strikes occur in rainy conditions; the odds also increase in near-freezing temperatures. Thunderstorms, however, do not have to be present.

Though lightning striking planes is a fairly common and innocuous occurrence, the weather phenomenon has caused several devastating crashes over the years.

According to AeroSafety World, a publication run by the Flight Safety Foundation, one of the earliest recorded incidents involved a Ford Tri-Motor plane that was hit by lightning on Sept. 3, 1929. The transcontinental plane went down near Mt. Taylor, N.M., killing all eight members.

Two of the most high-profile cases happened less than a decade apart. In early December 1963, Pan American Flight 214 was circling over Cecil County, Md., awaiting clearance to land in Philadelphia when lightning struck. The plane exploded and crashed in a corn field near Elkton, Md. All 81 passengers and crew members died.

Eight years later, LANSA Flight 508 went down over the Peruvian Amazon jungle. Only one of 92 passengers, a 17-year-old named Juliane Koepcke, survived after a harrowing two weeks alone in the jungle.

Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit gets green light for first orbital space launch from UK — and will use a repurposed Boeing 747 for the mission

Kate Duffy
Wed, December 21, 2022

Virgin Orbit was founded by Richard Branson.

Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit gained a license for the first orbital space launch from the UK.


The mission, based at Spaceport Cornwall, will send small satellites into orbit.


A Boeing 747 named Cosmic Girl will release a rocket from underneath its wing after takeoff.

Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit has been granted its remaining licenses, setting the stage for the first orbital space launch to take off from British soil.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the UK's space regulator, announced in a statement on Wednesday that Virgin Orbit was permitted to launch from Spaceport Cornwall in southern England. The company, founded by Branson, had "taken all reasonable steps to ensure safety risks arising from launch activities are as low as reasonably practicable," the CAA said.

Issuing the final license to Virgin Orbit for the UK's first orbital satellite launch was another "major milestone," the CAA said in the statement.

Virgin Orbit's Cosmic Girl.PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

The UK's transport secretary, Mark Harper, who agreed to grant the license, said in the statement that the launch "reinforces our position as a leading space nation as we look to the future of spaceflight, which can spur growth and innovation across the sector, as well as creating thousands of jobs and apprenticeships."

The launch was scheduled to happen on December 14, but the date was pushed back because of regulatory and technical challenges, Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart told media outlets at the time. Virgin Orbit didn't respond to Insider's request for comment about the new launch date.

Virgin Orbit has named the mission "Start Me Up" after a song by The Rolling Stones.

The launch will involve a repurposed Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 aircraft, named Cosmic Girl, flying 35,000 feet into the sky. It will release Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne rocket stored under the wing. The rocket will then release a batch of satellites into orbit.

Richard Branson.Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

Virgin Orbit, which provides launch services for small satellites, is part of Branson's Virgin Group, which offers a wide range of amenities such as healthcare and airlines. Another part of the group is Virgin Galactic, a commercial-spaceflight company.

Branson was a passenger on Virgin Galactic's first crewed flight to the edge of space in July 2021. The VSS Unity, a rocket-powered plane, lifted off from Virgin Galactic's facilities at Spaceport America in New Mexico and flew more than 50 miles above the Earth.

Virgin Orbit issued licences ahead of Cornwall space launch

Wed, December 21, 2022 

Virgin Orbit's Cosmic Girl has been at Spaceport Cornwall since October

The final remaining licences required for Virgin Orbit to launch from Spaceport Cornwall have been issued by the UK space regulator.

The Civil Aviation Authority has granted the launch operator and range control licences, which have been signed off by the Transport Secretary.

The CAA said it was "another major milestone" towards the first orbital space launch from UK soil.

A launch from the spaceport at Cornwall Airport Newquay is expected in January.

Earlier in December the launch was pushed back due to technical issues.

Virgin Orbit's Cosmic Girl 747 has been at Spaceport Cornwall since October, followed a week later by their LauncherOne rocket that will carry nine satellites.

The CAA said the company had "taken all reasonable steps to ensure safety risks arising from launch activities are as low as reasonably practicable".

Tim Johnson, director for space regulation at the UK Civil Aviation Authority, said: "This is another major milestone in enabling the very first orbital space launch from UK shores and these licences will assist Virgin Orbit with their final preparations for launch."

Spaceport Cornwall was granted an operating licence by the CAA in November.

Each of the nine satellites also requires a licence, but these are understood to be imminent.

Analysis by Jon Amos, BBC Science Correspondent

It's been a complex business pulling together all the regulatory threads for this licence.

Demonstrating its rocket system is safe has been paramount of course, but Virgin has also had to pass environmental as well as fit and proper person tests.

In addition, the location of the upcoming launch, out over the Atlantic, has required the agreement and co-ordination of the Irish, Spanish and Portuguese governments.

The nod from Dublin was complicated in recent weeks by the changeover of prime minister, or Taoiseach.

The CAA has kept its promise, however, to process a rocket licence application in under 18 months.

We were expecting a launch on 14 December, but this was pushed back when Virgin Orbit discovered a technical issue on one of its Newton rocket engines during testing in California.

This demanded further inspection and assessment of the rocket already delivered to Newquay for the Cornwall launch.

Once the company is satisfied it's ready, a further notice to aircraft and mariners will be issued to warn them of the activity that's coming, expected for sometime in January.

Dan Hart, chief executive of Virgin Orbit, said the licencing decision "takes us one step closer to the first satellite launch take-off from UK soil".

He said: "This is a major milestone for the CAA and represents the successful completion of an enormous effort, which has included the construction of new regulations, new processes and new teams."

A specific date for the launch has not yet been set.

Melissa Thorpe, head of Spaceport Cornwall, said: "We are thrilled for the Virgin Orbit licenses to be in place for this historic launch.

"It has been an incredible effort by all partners to reach this milestone, and my team cannot wait to share in the excitement of the upcoming launch with everyone that has made it happen."

Speaking to BBC Radio Cornwall, Steve Double, MP for St Austell and Newquay, said he was very keen for the launch to take place.

He said: "For me this is such an exciting opportunity for Cornwall and something I'm now desperate to see happen."

Follow BBC News South West on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to spotlight@bbc.co.uk.

Forgotten Monopoly rule changes the game completely

‘This makes the game 10 times better,’ one person tweeted

Ella Kipling


Board game fans have discovered a forgotten Monopoly rule which changes the whole game.

As families and friends gather for Christmas, Monopoly boards all across the world will be dusted off for after-dinner fun.

With arguments bound to start brewing from the first roll of the dice, it is best to be prepared with a solid understanding of the rules.

Most people know that when a player lands on a property they may buy the property from the bank. However, the rules also state that if the player chooses not to buy the property, it goes to auction and can be bought by the highest bidder.

Any player can bid on the property, and bidding can start at any price.

This rule was shared by @Dtrain22 onTwitter, who also posted a picture of where it states this in the rule book.

“Just found out I’ve played monopoly wrong my whole life. If you don’t buy a property you land on it goes to auction for everyone for any bid amount. Had no idea,” they said.

Many people replied to say they had also gone for some time without realising this was one of the rules.

This is not the first time the rule has come up. In 2017, Twitter user @rubenfandueltv responded to a tweet asking for the one trivial hill on which users are willing to die. They then named the Monopoly rule and wrote: “IT. IS. IN. THE. RULES.”

One person then responded: “Omg this makes the game like 10 times better.”

Another board game connoisseur said that they finally read the rule a few years ago and now their games go “much quicker” as a result.

Meanwhile, in 2019, Uno’s official Twitter page settled an ongoing dispute that many people have been having for years when playing the card game.

When it comes to the +4 card it said “you must draw 4 and your turn is skipped”.

“You can’t put down a +2 to make the next person Draw 6. We know you’ve tried it,” Uno tweeted.

When another player asked if you can place a +4 card on another +4 card, Uno replied: “No, you can’t stack any cards!”