The world's longest-serving central bank governor, Romania's Mugur Isarescu, was the target of a deepfake video depicting the policymaker as touting fraudulent investments. From a report: The episode highlights a raft of disinformation designed to undermine the credibility of key institutions. The video echoed similar deepfakes in recent days, including one aimed at Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, seeking to back false financial investments. The National Bank of Romania issued a warning, reminding citizens that neither Isarescu nor the central bank make investment recommendations. The video uses the image and voice of the central banker -- one of the most trusted officials in Romania -- to pitch stock investments and offers viewers a link to a fraudulent platform. "We are extremely concerned about the significant rise of these types of fraud attempts and we urge people to be very careful with every transaction that they make," central bank spokesman Dan Suciu said. The videos coincide with a surge in interest for equity investments in Romania, fueled by the largest initial public offering in the country's history last year as well as above-average returns offered by the Bucharest Stock Exchange. Cyber-criminals have taken advantage of the trend in a country that ranks near the lowest in the European Union for financial mediation.

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The king has been diagnosed with cancer, Buckingham Palace has announced. The Guardian: The diagnosis was made recently while Charles underwent treatment at the London Clinic for a benign enlarged prostate. In a statement, Buckingham Palace said: "During the king's recent hospital procedure for benign prostate enlargement, a separate issue of concern was noted. Subsequent diagnostic tests have identified a form of cancer. His majesty has today commenced a schedule of regular treatments, during which time he has been advised by doctors to postpone public-facing duties. Throughout this period, his majesty will continue to undertake state business and official paperwork as usual. The king is grateful to his medical team for their swift intervention, which was made possible thanks to his recent hospital procedure. He remains wholly positive about his treatment and looks forward to returning to full public duty as soon as possible."

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Parisians have approved a steep rise in parking rates for SUVs in the French capital. The proposals were approved by 54.55% of voters, but turnout was only about 5.7%. From a report: The move triples parking rates for cars weighing 1.6 tonnes or more to $20 an hour in inner Paris. The vote was called by Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who has argued that SUVs are dangerous and bad for the environment. About 1.3m residents of central Paris were eligible to vote. However they will not be affected by the result as street-parking for local residents will remained unchanged. The move is mainly aimed at people from the suburbs who drive into the centre of the capital for the day. There are exemptions for fully electric cars, taxi drivers, tradespeople, health workers and people with disabilities. Ms Hidalgo has been in office for almost 10 years. Under her tenure as mayor, many Paris streets, including the banks of the river Seine, have been pedestrianised. An extensive network of cycle lanes has also been built, in an effort to discourage driving. Environmentalists argue that SUVs consume more fuel than other cars and that their construction and use produce more harmful emissions. Supporters of the move also note that tall vehicles are deadlier than lighter cars when they are involved in accidents.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: An underground website called OnlyFake is claiming to use "neural networks" to generate realistic looking photos of fake IDs for just $15, radically disrupting the marketplace for fake identities and cybersecurity more generally. This technology, which 404 Media has verified produces fake IDs nearly instantly, could streamline everything from bank fraud to laundering stolen funds. In our own tests, OnlyFake created a highly convincing California driver's license, complete with whatever arbitrary name, biographical information, address, expiration date, and signature we wanted. The photo even gives the appearance that the ID card is laying on a fluffy carpet, as if someone has placed it on the floor and snapped a picture, which many sites require for verification purposes. 404 Media then used another fake ID generated by this site to successfully step through the identity verification process on OKX. OKX is a cryptocurrency exchange that has recently appeared in multiple court records because of its use by criminals. Rather than painstakingly crafting a fake ID by hand -- a highly skilled criminal profession that can take years to master -- or waiting for a purchased one to arrive in the mail with the risk of interception, OnlyFake lets essentially anyone generate fake IDs in minutes that may seem real enough to bypass various online verification systems. Or at least fool some people. "The era of rendering documents using Photoshop is coming to an end," an announcement posted to OnlyFake's Telegram account reads. As well as "neural networks," the service claims to use "generators" which create up to 20,000 documents a day. The service's owner, who goes by the moniker John Wick, told 404 Media that hundreds of documents can be generated at once using data from an Excel table.

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Social media company Snap said on Monday that it would lay off 10% of its global workforce, or around 500 employees, in part to "promote in-person collaboration." From a report: The company has executed multiple rounds of layoffs since 2022, most recently in November, when it trimmed a small number of product employees. The company expects it will incur charges ranging from $55 million to $75 million, according to a regulatory filing. The company's last major round of cuts was in August 2022, when it laid off 20% of staff and restructured its business lines.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Bethesda's upcoming Indiana Jones game is also tentatively set to launch on Sony's PlayStation 5 console. We got our first glimpse of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle during Microsoft's Xbox Developer Direct event last month, where it was announced for Xbox and PC. A source familiar with Microsoft's plans tells The Verge that Bethesda is also considering bringing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to PS5. A new multi-platform approach for certain Xbox games is emerging inside Microsoft, we're told, with the company weighing up which titles will remain exclusive and others that will appear on Switch or PS5 in the future. Indiana Jones appears to be part of this new wave of multi-platform games. While Bethesda will launch its Indiana Jones game first as an Xbox console exclusive, it's currently set to have a rather short period of exclusivity we're told. A release for PS5 is being considered for some months later, with Bethesda tentatively targeting a December 2024 launch for the Xbox and PC versions.

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The pornographic deepfakes of Taylor Swift that proliferated on social media late last month originated from an online challenge to break safety mechanisms designed to block people from generating lewd images with artificial intelligence, according to social network analysis company Graphika. Bloomberg: For weeks, users of internet forum 4chan have taken part in daily competitions to find words and phrases that could help them bypass the filters on popular image-generation services, which include Microsoft Designer and OpenAI's DALL-E, the researchers found. The ultimate goal was to create sexual images of prominent female figures such as singers and politicians. "While viral pornographic pictures of Taylor Swift have brought mainstream attention to the issue of AI-generated non-consensual intimate images, she is far from the only victim," said Cristina Lopez G., a senior analyst at Graphika, in an email. "In the 4chan community where these images originated, she isn't even the most frequently targeted public figure. This shows that anyone can be targeted in this way, from global celebrities to school children."

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From mergers to AI, the EU's aggressive rule-making hampers its ability to compete with China and the U.S. Greg Ip, writing for WSJ: These are humbling times for Europe. The continent barely escaped recession late last year as the U.S. boomed. It is losing out to the U.S. on artificial intelligence, and to China on electric vehicles. There is one field where the European Union still leads the world: regulation. Having set the standard on regulating mergers, carbon emissions, data privacy, and e-commerce competition, the EU now seeks to do the same on AI. In December it unveiled a sweeping draft law that bans certain types of AI, tightly regulates others, and imposes huge fines for violators. Its executive arm, the European Commission, might investigate Microsoft's tie-up with OpenAI as potentially anticompetitive. Never before has "America innovates, China replicates, Europe regulates" so aptly captured each region's comparative advantage. The technocrats who staff the EU in Brussels aren't anti-free market. Just the opposite: they still believe in free trade, unlike the U.S. or China. Much of their regulation is aimed at protecting consumers and competition from meddling national governments. But there's a trade-off between consumer protection and the profit motive that drives investment and innovation, and the EU might be getting that trade-off wrong. For example, to preserve competition, European regulators have resisted mergers that leave just a handful of mobile phone carriers per market. As a result Europe now has 43 groups running 102 mobile operators serving a population of 474 million, while the U.S. has three major networks serving a population of 335 million, according to telecommunications consultant John Strand. China and India are even more concentrated. European mobile customers as a result pay only about a third of what Americans do. But that's why European carriers invest only half as much per customer and their networks are commensurately worse, Strand said: "Getting a 5G signal in Germany is like finding a Biden supporter at a Trump rally." Putting European networks on a par with the U.S. would cost about $300 billion, he estimated. This has knock-on effects on Europe's tech sector. Swedish telecommunications equipment manufacturer Ericsson's sales in Europe suffer in part because many carriers are too small and unprofitable to update to the latest 5G networks. "Europe has prioritized shorter-term low consumer prices at the expense of quality infrastructure," chief executive Borje Ekholm told me in Davos earlier this month. "I'm very concerned about Europe. We need to invest much more in infrastructure, in being digital."

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How does Samsung defend itself against the notion that its phone cameras are spitting out fake AI photos of not only the Moon, but most anything else you'd care to aim them at these days? For starters, the company's head of product is saying that every photo is fake. The Verge: Samsung EVP Patrick Chomet told TechRadar recently: "There was a very nice video by Marques Brownlee last year on the moon picture. Everyone was like, 'Is it fake? Is it not fake?' There was a debate around what constitutes a real picture. And actually, there is no such thing as a real picture. As soon as you have sensors to capture something, you reproduce [what you're seeing], and it doesn't mean anything. There is no real picture. You can try to define a real picture by saying, 'I took that picture,' but if you used AI to optimize the zoom, the autofocus, the scene -- is it real? Or is it all filters? There is no real picture, full stop."

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The "technology building blocks" for space solar are already available, reports Clean Technica. "It's just a matter of scaling, systems integration, and adjustments for space-hardiness." And several groups are looking at it — including the U.S. Space Force To help push costs down, the California Institute of Technology has proposed a sandwich-type solar module that integrates solar harvesting along with conversion to a radio frequency into one compact package, accompanied by a built-in antenna. Last month researchers at the school wrapped up a months-long, in-space test of different types of solar cells. Another approach is illustrated by the Michigan startup Virtus Solis, an industry partner of the University of Bristol. Last June the company and the school received £3.3 million in funding from the UK Net Zero Innovation program, for developing an open-source model for testing the performance of large, centralized antennas in space. "The concept depends upon the use of gigascale antenna arrays capable of delivering over 2GW of power from space onto similar gigascale antenna arrays either at sea or on the ground," the school explained. As for how such a thing would be launched into space, that's where the U.S. Space Force comes in. Last August, the Space Force awarded a small business contract to the U.S. startup Orbital Composites. The company is tasked with the mission of developing its patented "quantum antenna" and in-space fabrication tools for secure communications in space applications, including space-to-space as well as space-to-Earth and vice versa. The basic idea is to let 3D printing doing much of the work in space. According to Orbital, in-space fabrication would save more than 100 times the cost of applying conventional fabrication methods to large-scale orbiting antennas. "By harnessing the potential of In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM), the company eyes the prospect of creating significantly larger space antennas," Orbital Composites explains. "By fabricating antennas in space, larger and more complex designs are possible that eliminate the constraints of launch and rocket fairings...." If you're guessing that a hookup between Virtus and Orbital is in the works, that's a good guess. On February 1, at the SpaceCOM conference in Orlando, Florida, Virtus Solis let slip that it is working with Orbital Composites on a space solar pilot project. If all goes according to plan, the project will be up and running in 2027, deploying Virtus's robot-enabled fabrication system with Orbital's 3D printing. As of this writing the two companies have not posted details, but Space News picked up the thread. "The 2027 mission is designed to showcase critical power-generation technologies including in-space assembly of solar panels and transmission of more than one kilowatt to Earth," Space News explained. "The news release calls the 2027 mission "a precursor to large-scale commercial megawatt-class solar installations in space by 2030...." To be clear, Orbital's press release about its new Space Force quantum antenna contract does not mention anything in particular about space solar. However, the pieces of the puzzle fit. Along with the Virtus and Grumman connections, in October of 2022 Orbital won a small business contract through SpaceWERX, the Space Force's innovative technologies funding arm, to explore the capabilities of ISAM systems. "SpaceWERX comes under the umbrella of the U.S. Air Force's AFWERX innovation branch, which has developed a program called SSPIDR, short for Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research Project," the article points out. (While Virtus believes most space-based solar power systems could deliver megawatt hours of electricity at prices comparable to today's market.)

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"When Satya Nadella replaced Steve Ballmer as Microsoft CEO in February 2014, the software company was mired in mediocrity," writes CNBC, noting that Microsoft's market cap was just over $300 billion. "A decade later, Microsoft's valuation has swelled tenfold, to $3.06 trillion, making it the world's most valuable public company, ahead of Apple." (And it's also "firmly entrenched as a leader in key areas, such as cloud and artificial intelligence.") As Nadella marks his 10-year anniversary at the helm, he's widely praised across the tech industry for changing the narrative at Microsoft, whose stock fell 30% during Ballmer's 14 years at the top. In that era, the company was squelched by Google in web search and mobile and was completely left behind in social media. Many tech industry analysts and investors would say that, thanks largely to Nadella, Microsoft is now set up to be a powerhouse for the foreseeable future... In a 2020 interview, Pat Gelsinger, then CEO of VMware, said offering his company's software on Microsoft's Azure cloud was akin to a "Middle East peace treaty...." In the Nadella age, Microsoft has also contributed to open-source projects, released software under open-source licenses and released a version of its Teams communications app for Linux... In 2018, Nadella came to believe in the idea of buying GitHub just 20 minutes after Nat Friedman, then a Microsoft corporate vice president, started pitching him on it. Right away, Nadella suggested that Friedman become GitHub's new CEO, Friedman said. Microsoft paid $7.5 billion for the code-storage startup... While Nadella may not bring as much entertainment value, he's proven to be more effective than Ballmer when it comes to dealmaking. In addition to GitHub, Nadella has made pricey acquisitions such as LinkedIn, Minecraft parent Mojang, and Nuance Communications that have contributed to Microsoft's top line. More recently, Nadella helped Microsoft land the $75 billion acquisition of game publisher Activision Blizzard... The article also adds that Microsoft "looked at buying TikTok in the U.S. in 2020, but nothing came of those discussions."

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Drive: General Motors was one of the first to foray into plug-in hybrids, but it abandoned them amid the hype for electric vehicles. Now that automakers are running up against the current limits of EV demand though, they're looking for other ways to curb fleet emissions. In GM's case, that way is an about-face and return to PHEVs after completely dismissing their potential just a few years ago. "Our forward plans include bringing our plug-in hybrid technology to select vehicles in North America," said GM CEO Mary Barra during a Q4 earnings call transcribed by Automotive News. Barra added that GM still aimed to eliminate its light-duty vehicles' emissions by 2035, but said that hybrids will fill in the gaps where needed "from a compliance perspective." She didn't specify which segments they may occupy, but going by GM's history, they'll probably be brilliantly engineered and utterly neglected by marketing... GM's EV ambitions have been tempered by recalls and lukewarm product launches such as the GMC Hummer EV and aforementioned ">Blazer EV. Now, with EV demand potentially plateauing (at least for now), automakers are returning to the proven, less compromising option of hybrids.

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Unfortunately for Elena, the laboratory information management system (LIMS) her team used was being sunsetted by the vendor, Initech. She's a biochemist working in a pathology department, and this software is vital to tracking the tests need, the tests already run, and providing critical notifications about abnormal test results.

Since Initech was sunsetting its products, the hospital system put out an RFQ for a replacements, and after a multi-year bidding process, offered the contract for replacing the software to Initech.

And thus, IniLab went away, and was replaced by IniHeal. Gone was the classic terminal interface that everyone had learned to use, and in its place was a "user friendly" GUI- a GUI that buried functionality behind fifteen clicks, had no meaningful keyboard shortcuts, and was constantly changing as they pushed updates, making it impossible to adjust to.

Also gone was the IniLab scripting language. IniLab's scripting language was how they had assembled workflows for laboratory processes. You could have fine grained control of which scripts tied to which kinds of tests, and even build custom workflows as one-offs, if necessary. They had many thousands of lines of code that needed to be ported over into IniHeal. The problem was IniHeal's approach to scripting was… well, bad.

First, IniHeal doesn't allow you write scripts. Instead, it has a pair of "rule" files. The marketing copy calls these "declarative", and promises that they're an upgrade. In practice, these are gigantic files that contain a set of rules that are evaluated for every test and every sample.

But the worse problem in IniHeal is how it lets you handle data. In IniLab, if you wanted tho patient's age, you might reference the field by name: Patient.age. In IniLab, you need to use the PPPPLL. What is the PPPPLL?

PPPPLL stands for "position" and "length". Instead of referencing a field by name, you have to reference the field by its byte offset and length. So Patient.age might be [091001]. And no, there's no easy way to create constants or variables to hold your PPPPLLs, you just have to know that [091001] is age, and hope that the input data never changes its layout.

Now, one of the things Elena noticed while techs were on-site is that the length of the date time fields was 32 bits, and the data was seconds since the Unix epoch. So she asked one of the senior developers "Hey, is this software Year 2038 safe?"

The developer laughed. "I'll be retired by then."

The final insult to injury is that this software wasn't installed on any laboratory workstations. Instead, they had to use Remote Desktop to access it inside of a VM. While the environment was theoretically locked down so that the only program you could run was IniHeal, in practice it was trivially easy to get to a desktop inside the VM.

Curious, Elena poked around. She not only found the installation logs from her lab's deployment, but the installation logs from several other labs. These logs included various internal and private details, including account passwords. Somehow, log files from client installs had ended up in their installation media and were deployed to every client site.

Elena reported the potential data breach. The final finding was that the password in question was long defunct, which led management to decide "well, that's no problem then."

IniHeal has a slogan about equipping customers with innovative tools, but Elena proposes a new one:

"The Q in IniHeal is for Quality."

[Advertisement] ProGet’s got you covered with security and access controls on your NuGet feeds. Learn more.

Slashdot reader Press2ToContinue shared this report from WION: : The Hong Kong branch of a multinational company has lost $25.6 million after a scammer used deepfake technology to pose as the firm's chief financial officer (CFO) in a video conference call and ordered money transfers, according to the police, in what is being highlighted as first of its kind cases in the city. The transaction was ordered during a meeting where it was found that everyone present on the video call except the victim were deepfakes of real people, said the Hong Kong police, on Friday (Feb 2)... Scammers in this case used deepfake technology to turn publicly available video and other footage of staff members into convincing meeting participants.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from BleepingComputer Microsoft released the first Windows Server 2025 Insider preview build last week. However, soon after, a newer version was leaked online. As first reported by Windows Latest, the leaked version contains some new in-development features, including new settings for a Windows 'sudo' command. These settings are only available after enabling developer mode, and the sudo command does not currently work from the command line yet, showing it is early in development. However, the sudo settings provide some clues as to how the command will work, with the ability to run sudo applications 'In a new windows', 'With input disabled', and 'Inline'.... It is important to note that Microsoft commonly tests new features in preview builds that do not make it into the production builds. Obligatory XKCD.

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The Orange County Register reports: The new Pixar Place Hotel next door to Disneyland and Disney California Adventure is designed to look like you've walked onto the Pixar Animation Studios campus in Emeryville with concept drawings, character maquettes and final designs sprinkled throughout the hotel. "For those of you who are into the creative process, I think you'll be really happy. This hotel really celebrates that," Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter said during the opening ceremony for the hotel. "You get to see rough drawings, color studies and animation sketches as the animators were working. It really feels like you're walking into Pixar in a way when you step in here." The multimillion-dollar transformation of the former Paradise Pier Hotel into the new Pixar Place Hotel debuted on Tuesday, January 30 after three years in the making at the Disneyland resort in Anaheim. The front lobby of the hotel is intended to feel like a gallery of curated artwork and custom creations inspired by Pixar's famed studio in Northern California. The rear lobby takes visitors through the animated filmmaking process from hand-drawn sketches to wire-frame character designs. Red, yellow and blue bursts of primary colors serve as bold accents at the front desk in contrast to the muted colors of modern hotel designs. More details from the Los Angeles Times: The showcase piece of the lobby is a large mobile, situated above the Pixar lamp and ball, with abstracted, stained glass-like figures from "The Incredibles," "Wall-E," "Finding Nemo" and more. They are flanked by colored panels, which react to the music played in the area, an effect that is of course better seen in the evening. "Pixar is a balance of sophistication and whimsy that really is core to their values," said Kirstin Makela, an art director at Walt Disney Imagineering, the company's secretive arm devoted to theme park experiences. "They're a studio that's been at the cutting edge of what they do. They take it very seriously that their characters are represented in that high esteem that they deserve because they are works of art. "So it really is about creating a space that feels like a living art gallery that allows for the work to be elevated and feel celebrated, and allows for the work to get that dynamic pop of color and energy," Makela continued... [I]ncluded in the rooms is the hardbound "The Art of Pixar" book, and various depictions of the Pixar lamp and ball, from an actual lamp on the desk to traces of the ball and the lamp in the bedding, carpeting and decorative pillows... In a sampling of room rates throughout the year, I found nothing lower than $405 per night for a standard room, and about $100 more for high-traffic holiday months.

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Slashdot reader Unpopular Opinions requests suggestions from the Slashdot community: Lately a boom of companies decided to play their "nice guy" card, providing us with a trove of information about our own sites, DNS servers, email servers, pretty much anything about any online service you host. Which is not anything new... Companies have been doing this for decades, except as paid services you requested. Now the trend is basically anyone can do it over my systems, and they are always more than happy to sell anyone, me included, my data they collected without authorization or consent. It's data they never had the rights to collect and/or compile to begin with, including data collected thru access attempts via known default accounts (Administrator, root, admin, guest) and/or leaked credentials provided by hacked databases when a few elements seemingly match... "Just block those crawlers"? That's what some of those companies advise, but not only does the site operator have to automate it themself, not all companies offer lists of their source IP addresses or identify them. Some use multiple/different crawler domain names from their commercial product, or use cloud providers such as Google Cloud, AWS and Azure â" so one can't just block access to their company's networks without massive implications. They also change their own information with no warning, and many times, no updates to their own lists. Then, there is the indirect cost: computing cost, network cost, development cost, review cycle cost. It is a cat-and-mice game that has become very boring. With the raise of concerns and ethical questions about AI harvesting and learning from copyrighted work, how are those security companies any different from AI, and how could one legally put a stop on this? Block those crawlers? Change your Terms of Service? What's the best fix... Share your own thoughts and suggestions in the comments. How can you stop security firms from harvesting your data?

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An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this report from the San Francisco Chronicle's senior political writer: The next House member representing Silicon Valley wants to change a key piece of federal law that shields internet companies like X, Facebook and Snapchat from lawsuits over content their users post. That protection is considered the lifeblood of social media. The top eight Democratic candidates vying to succeed Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo in her very blue district agree that something has to change with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which was created in 1996, back when lawmakers shied away from doing anything that could limit the growth of the industry. Their unanimity is a sign that Eshoo's successor won't be a tool for the hometown industry. At least not on this issue. The challenge is what to do next. Whoever is elected, their actions as the voice of Silicon Valley will carry outsize weight in Congress. They can lead the charge to actually do something to clean up the bile on social media... The good news is that they will have bipartisan support to address the bile and disinformation online. The bad news is that finding the right solution will still be hard.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from Slate: Last November, the American Ornithological Society, or AOS, announced that it would change the common names of all American birds named after people. There are 152 such "eponymic" names (that is, birds that are named after a specific person, like Bicknell's Thrush) on the AOS' official checklist, and the group is planning to start with between 70 and 80 species predominantly found in the U.S. and Canada. In the coming years, birds like Cooper's Hawk, Wilson's Snipe, and Lincoln's Sparrow will be stripped of their eponyms and given new common English names. The eponymic naming issue has been heating up in the bird world for a few years now. Birds got their English names when they were "discovered" by Western scientists, or otherwise identified as a new species. This meant ornithologists had the honor of coming up with whatever moniker they wanted, and frequently named birds in honor of a benefactor, a friend, or the person who shot the first known specimen. But a growing number of ornithologists and nonscientist birders are questioning why we're stuck with names decided on a whim hundreds of years ago, especially when the names aren't very good... Rather than attempt the impossible task of reviewing the people with birds named after them one by one, the AOS said it would just scrap them all and start from scratch. But that's where the real challenge comes in — because lots of bird names are pretty bad. Not offensive bad, like named after a Confederate general, but just unsatisfactory bad. There was never any standardization for how common bird names were granted, which means those names are all over the place and provide little guidance for what renaming should look like. Birds are named after their identifying features, size, habitat, the sound they make, or where they were first discovered. So the American Ornithological Society announced it will "conduct an open, inclusive, and scientifically rigorous pilot program in 2024 to develop its new approach to English bird names in the U.S. and Canada." [T]here are few specifics yet, and no easy way to organize the public and whittle down suggestions in the lawless and nonsensical world of bird names. But the AOS has committed to change: Unlike the closed-door decisions of the past, this will be a public process. The plan is to take suggestions — from field marks, Indigenous names, colloquialisms ... from anywhere — narrow it down, somehow, to a few options, and let people decide... Our new bird names won't be ideal — none of them are — but, for the first time, they will belong to us.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from USA Today: A nationwide analysis by USA TODAY shows local governments are banning green energy faster than they're building it. At least 15% of counties in the U.S. have effectively halted new utility-scale wind, solar, or both, USA TODAY found. These limits come through outright bans, moratoriums, construction impediments and other conditions that make green energy difficult to build... In the past decade, about 180 counties got their first commercial wind-power project. But in the same period, more than twice as many blocked wind development. And while solar power has found more broad acceptance, 2023 was the first year to see almost as many individual counties block new solar projects as the ones adding their first project. The result: Some of the nation's areas with the best sources of wind and solar power have now been boxed out. Because large-scale solar and wind projects typically are built outside city limits, USA TODAY's analysis focuses on restrictions by the county-level governments that have jurisdiction. In a few cases, such as Connecticut, Tennessee and Vermont, entire states have implemented near-statewide restrictions. While 15% of America's counties might sound like a small portion, the trend has significant consequences, says Jeff Danielson, a former four-term Iowa state senator now with the Clean Grid Alliance. "It's 15% of the most highly productive areas to develop wind and solar," he said. "Our overall goals are going to be difficult to achieve if the answer is 'No' in county after county...." [T]he number of new wind projects opening annually peaked in the early 2010s, according to inventory data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and has slowed since then. Wind power is expected to grow 11% by 2025 from last year's levels. In the past 10 years, 183 counties saw their first wind project come online. However, USA TODAY's analysis found that in the same period, nearly 375 counties have essentially blocked new wind development. That's almost as many as the 508 counties — out of 3,144 total in the U.S. — currently home to an operational wind turbine.... Of the 116 counties implementing bans or impediments to utility-scale solar plants, half did so in 2023 alone. This surge in obstacles is unprecedented since green-energy technology gained broad acceptance... The article points out that counties sometimes also limit the size of solar farms — making them impractical to build. "Other jurisdictions create shadow bans of sorts. Projects might not technically be banned, but officials simply reject all green energy plans on a case-by-case basis..." "USA TODAY's findings were supported by research published in late January by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Energy developers reported one third of the wind and solar siting applications they had submitted in the past five years were canceled, while about half were delayed for six months or more. Zoning issues and community opposition were two of the top reasons." The article also quotes an Ohio farmer who complained that "You live in the country, and you want to be away from all the hustle and bustle. I kind of look at it as if they're sticking a warehouse or a factory here." Last September, his county's commissioners banned all new large-scale wind and solar projects.

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