A Technology blog focusing on portable devices.
. I have a Culture, Politic and Religion Blog @ Opinion.
I have a Jazz Blog @ Jazz. I have a Human Rights Blog @ Law.
Sign up for Your Places: Extreme Weather. Get notified about extreme weather before it happens with custom alerts for places you choose.
Pinned
Less than two weeks after the Earth recorded what scientists said were likely its hottest days in modern history, punishing heat waves are gripping much of the Northern Hemisphere.
The record-breaking temperatures are being driven by emissions of heat-trapping gases, mainly caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and by the return of El Niño, a cyclical weather pattern.
Cooling off during a heat wave in Tehran last week. An airport in Iran recorded a heat index of 152 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday.Atta Kenare/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Even regions where high heat is normal, and where those who can help it barely venture outside in the summer, have been experiencing extremes.
At Persian Gulf International Airport on Iran’s southwestern coast, the heat index— which measures how hot it really feels outside based on both temperature and humidity — hit an eye-popping high of 152 degrees Fahrenheit (66.7 Celsius) at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, according to weather data.
Hikers in Death Valley National Park last week.Ty Oneil/Associated Press
The latest punishing heat wave in the southwestern United States has weather watchers again obsessing over whether Death Valley will rewrite the record books this summer for the highest temperature recorded on the planet.
Some forecasts had projected that Death Valley — the spectacular 3,000-square-mile stretch of the Mojave Desert along the California-Nevada border — would see temperatures as high as 131 degrees Fahrenheit this past weekend, which would have surpassed the world mark of 130 degrees set in 2021 that some experts consider the reliably recorded record. But the area fell short, reaching 128 degrees on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.
In Florence, Italy, last week. Europe’s power grid has managed to handle the increased demand during the continent’s recent heat wave.Francesca Volpi for The New York Times
While it may be small consolation to people sweltering in the heat wave enveloping southern Europe, electric grids in countries in the region like Italy and Spain have so far met the added demand for power for air-conditioning without any extreme price surges.
In a sense, Europe is benefiting from actions taken last year, when soaring natural gas prices resulting from constraints on flows from Russia drove electric power prices to record levels. The European electric grid was also plagued by other problems, including mechanical issues that idled large numbers of France’s nuclear plants.
Researchers have found that extreme temperatures reduce labor productivity, damage crops, raise mortality rates, disrupt global trade and dampen investment.Camilla Ferrari for The New York Times
The economic impact of the pitilessheat wave that is scorching southern Europe, the United States and much of the Northern Hemisphere may be short-lived in most spots, with the temporary closure of tourist sites, the abandonment of outdoor dining and a rise in electricity use related to air-conditioning.
But over the longer term, the economic fallout caused by climate change is likely to be profound.
A long line for gelato near the Duomo in Milan on Monday.Camilla Ferrari for The New York Times
Travelers to Europe may have anticipated the crowded sites, full hotels and workers’ strikes as industry experts pointed to a returning tourism demand that is outpacing even prepandemic levels. But the latest extreme weather has flagged another danger for visitors: summer heat waves, which climate researchers say will become longer, more frequent and more intense in Europe.
The soaring temperatures in recent days have coincided with a popular time to visit Europe, the most popular overseas destination for American travelers this year, industry watchers say. And while extreme weather has caused travel disruptions in the past, particularly in countries not set up to withstand it, the heat can also be deadly: More than 61,000 people died in last summer’s heat waves in Europe, according to a recent study.
Thousands of people evacuated as multiple wildfires burned near Athens.Orestis Panagiotou/EPA, via Shutterstock
As firefighters in Greece scramble to put out multiple fires that have broken out amid the hot, dry conditions, dramatic television footage has shown desperate residents using water hoses to try to douse parched land in seaside resorts south of Athens as thick gray smoke billowed above.
Thousands of people fled their homes in villages south, west and north of Athens, the Greek capital, on Monday, and the authorities evacuated scores more from three children’s camps and a retirement home. Disturbing footage also showed horses being led away from burning stables as other animals shrieked in fear or pain.
A street sweeper in Ronda, Spain, on Friday. The country has adopted numerous measures in an effort to cope with extreme heat.Jorge Guerrero/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
In May, the national authorities introduced a package of measures to cope with extreme temperatures that include banning certain types of outdoor work during periods of extreme heat, essentially enshrining the siesta into law for some workers. Companies operating in sectors such as street cleaning and agriculture are now requested to get their employees indoors whenever the national weather agency issues high temperature warnings.
A man transporting water on a motorbike in Hanoi, Vietnam, during a heat wave in May.Nhac Nguyen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
For millions of people in South and Southeast Asia, the stiflingly hot and humid heat wave began long before the summer. April and May are usually the hottest months of the year in the region, as temperatures rise until the annual monsoon rains bring relief.
India’s hot season began abnormally early, recording its hottest February in history. In mid-April, New Delhi saw temperatures soar above 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius). At least 11 people died of heat stroke on a single day. Temperatures were abnormally high in May, too.
A delivery cyclist on Monday in Milan, one of many cities in Italy that are suffering under extremely high temperatures.Camilla Ferrari for The New York Times
In one of the most extreme heat waves Europe has had this summer, executives in suits rushed from cabs into Milan’s air-conditioned offices. Tourists sipped cold mimosas under clouds of vapor at the Bar at Ralph Lauren, and the lowered roller blinds behind iron balconies testified to their owners’ departure to their holiday homes.
But below, scores of delivery riders cycled under the sun to shuttle sushi and poke bowls to office buildings. Handlers drenched in sweat unloaded the tourists’ luggage from planes on the airport’s incendiary tarmac. With their safety vests sometimes worn on bare, burned chests, laborers carried buckets of concrete along the highway that connects Milan to the seaside.
July 18, 2023, 7:10 a.m. ET4 hours ago
You’re hearing a lot about record heat this week. But a lot of those measurements are preliminary. In 2021, The Times explored the process of formally certifying record temperatures, which can sometimes take months or even years. Read more here.
Temperatures in Rome hit 44 degrees Celsius (111 Fahrenheit) on Monday.Tiziana Fabi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
After days of scorching temperatures, forecasters said on Tuesday that an intense heat wave could soon break records in continental Europe.
A coal-fired power plant in Beijing that is used when electricity demand is especially high.Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times
China has been using record electricity this summer as a heat wave persists, causing the country’s power plants to burn even more coal than usual.
Southeastern China set a record for power consumption on July 11, and the region’s state-controlled China Southern Power Grid expects even higher usage later this summer, according to the official China News agency.
July 18, 2023, 6:20 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Parts of the United States have been baking for weeks under temperatures that are far higher than usual. The average high temperature in Miami from July 1-13 was 94.5 degrees — the hottest on record for that period. Here’s a recent roundup of other records across the country.
Hiding from the sun in Yokohama, Japan, on Monday.Eugene Hoshiko/Associated Press
Japan’s summers are typically sweltering, but as temperatures rose into the triple digits in the center of the country this week, ambulances rushed heat stroke victims, many of them elderly, to hospitals.
At the annual festival in the Gion district of Kyoto on Monday, attended by about 150,000 people in Japan’s former capital, nine people aged between 8 and their 80s were taken to a hospital after succumbing to temperatures of close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius).
Tuesday was the 27th day this year that the city of Beijing has recorded temperatures above 95 degrees Fahrenheit — the highest number of days in one year since records began. Jade Gao/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
In the sandstone desert of China’s far west, a local meteorological station recorded an all-time high temperature of 126 degrees. In central China, heat-induced mechanical problems trapped tourists riding on a cable car in midair.
The heat wave choking China is so intense that it even became a repeated talking point for John Kerry, President Biden’s special envoy for climate change, as he met with China’s premier on Tuesday in Beijing to discuss cooperation on slowing global warming.
On Tuesday, Phoenix was poised to break its own record for consecutive days of high temperatures of at least 110 degrees.Matt York/Associated Press
On Monday, Phoenix reached a miserable milestone: It was the first time since 1974 that it had 18 days in a row of 110-degree or more temperatures. On Tuesday, it was poised to break that 49-year-old record and hit Day 19. The forecast called for a high of 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
People in the Southwest are used to brutal summers. Phoenix has had plenty of days that soar past 100 degrees. Water misters spritz patios, and neighborhoods and playgrounds clear out in the midday sun. Monsoons usually sweep through with refreshing relief. But this stagnant summer is testing even the hardiest, and putting many more people at risk.
Xiulin Ruan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, has created the whitest paint on record with his students.John Underwood/Purdue University
Xiulin Ruan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, didn’t set out to make it into the Guinness World Records when he began trying to make a new type of paint. He had a loftier goal: to cool down buildings without torching the Earth.
In 2020, Dr. Ruan and his team unveiled their creation: a type of white paint that can act as a reflector, bouncing 95 percent of the sun’s rays away from the Earth’s surface, up through the atmosphere and into deep space. A few months later, they announced an even more potent formulation that increased sunlight reflection to 98 percent.“
Yes, AI could profoundly disrupt education. But maybe that’s not a bad thing | Rose Luckin
"Education strikes at the heart of what makes us human. It drives the intellectual capacity and prosperity of nations. It has developed the minds that took us to the moon and eradicated previously incurable diseases. And the special status of education is why generative AI tools such as ChatGPT are likely to profoundlydisrupt this sector. This isn’t a reflection of their intelligence, but of our failure to build education systems that nurture and value our unique human intelligence.
We are being duped into believing these AI tools arefar more intelligentthan they really are. Atool like ChatGPThas no understanding or knowledge. It merely collates bits of words together based on statistical probabilities to produce useful texts. It is an incredibly helpful assistant.
But it is not knowledgable, or wise. It has no concept of how any of the words it produces relate to the real world. The fact that it can pass so many forms of assessment merely reflects that those assessments were not designed to test knowledge and understanding but rather to test whether people had collected and memorised information.
AI could be a force for tremendous good within education. It could release teachers from administrative tasks, giving them more opportunities to spend time with students. However, we are woefully equipped to benefit from the AI that is flooding the market. It does not have to be like this. There is still time to prepare, but we must act quickly and wisely.
AI has been used in education for more than a decade. AI-powered systems, such asCarnegie LearningorAleks, can analyse student responses to questions and adapt learning materials to meet their individual needs. AI tools such asTeachFXandEdthenacan also enhance teacher training and support. To reap the benefits of these technologies, we must design effective ways to roll out AI across the education system, and regulate this properly.
Staying ahead of AI will mean radically rethinking what education is for, and what success means. Human intelligence is far more impressive than any AI system we see today. We possess a rich and diverse intelligence, much of which is unrecognised by our current education system.
We are capable of sophisticated, high-level thinking, yet the school curriculum, particularly in England, takes a rigid approach to learning, prioritising the memorising of facts, rather than creative thinking. Students are rewarded for rote learning rather than critical thought. Take the English syllabus, for instance, which requires students to learn quotations and the rules of grammar. This time-consuming work encourages students to marshal facts, rather than interpret texts or think critically about language.
Our education system should recognise the unique aspects of human intelligence. At school, this would mean a focus on teaching high-level thinking capabilities and designing a system to supercharge our intelligence. Literacy and numeracy remain fundamental, but now we must add AI literacy. Traditional subject areas, such as history, science and geography, should become the context through which critical thinking, increased creativity and knowledge mastery are taught. Rather than teaching students only how to collate and memorise information, we should prize their ability to interpret facts and weigh up the evidence to make an original argument.
Failure to change isn’t an option. Now these technologies are here, we need humans to excel at what AIcannotdo, so any workplace automation complements and enriches our lives and our intelligence.
This should be an amazing opportunity to use AI to become much smarter, but we must ensure that AI serves us, not the other way round. This will mean confronting the profit-driven imperatives of big tech companies and the illusionist tricks played by Silicon Valley. It will also mean carefully considering what types of tasks we’re willing to offload to AI.
Some aspects of our intellectual activity may be dispensable, but many are not. While Silicon Valley conjures up its next magic trick, we must prepare ourselves to protect what we hold dear – for ourselves and for future generations.
Rose Luckin is professor of learner-centred design at the UCL Knowledge Lab in London"
Extreme temperatures break records as scientists warn El Niño is set to get worse
A doctor checks a boy suffering from heat related ailments at the Lalitpur district hospital, in Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Saturday, 17 June 2023. Scientists have declared June 20203 as the hottest on record, and the first week of July the hottest week on record. Photograph: Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP
“The beginning of July was the hottest week on record for the planet as a whole, according to the World Meteorological Organization. This year had already seen the hottest June on record, the UN body said, driven by climate change and the early stages of an El Niño weather pattern.
It is the latest in a series of records halfway through a year that has seen a drought in Spain and fierce heatwaves in China as well as the US.
“The world just had the hottest week on record, according to preliminary data,” the WMO said in a statement, adding that temperatures were breaking records on land and in the oceans, with “potentially devastating impacts on ecosystems and the environment”.
“We are in uncharted territory and we can expect more records to fall as El Niño develops further and these impacts will extend into 2024,” said Christopher Hewitt, WMO director of climate services.
“This is worrying news for the planet.”
Global sea surface temperatures were at record highs for the time of the year both in May and June, said Hewitt. “It is not only the surface temperature, but the whole ocean is becoming warmer and absorbing energy that will remain there for hundreds of years.”
A woman wearing an electric fan, putting a cooling pad on her forehead and carrying an umbrella visits the Forbidden City on a sweltering July day in Beijing. Photograph: Andy Wong/AP
“If the oceans are warming considerably, that has a knock-on effect on the atmosphere, on sea ice and ice worldwide,” said Michael Sparrow, chief of the world climate research programme at the WMO.
But Sparrow said El Niño’s effects would probably be felt more acutely later in the year. “El Niño hasn’t really got going yet,” he said.
Europe’s climate monitoring service Copernicus told the AFP news agency that its data also showed last week was likely to be the hottest since records began in 1940.
Along the US-Mexico border, federal agents reported that extreme temperatures over the weekend contributed to 10 people dying and another 45 people being rescued.
The south-western US is bracing for another week of blistering temperatures, with forecasters on Monday extending an excessive heat warning through the weekend for Arizona’s most populated area, and alerting residents in parts of Nevada and New Mexico to stay indoors.
People cool themselves in the waters of the Rio Grande after crossing to the US from Mexico.Photograph: Eric Gay/AP
The metro Phoenix area was on track to tie or to break a record set in the summer of 1974 for the most consecutive days with the high temperature at or above 110F (43C).
Last week the Canadian ministry of natural resources said the number of wildfires in the country – more than 670 on Friday – was “off the charts” with a long and difficult summer ahead.
In the US, Texas was experiencing a prolonged “heat dome” in which warm air is trapped in the atmosphere like a convection oven, while in Europe, Spain was bracing for its second heatwave in a matter of weeks.
In southern Iraq, the fabled marshland was having its worst heatwave in the past 40 years, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said on Monday, warning of a “devastating impact” on the ecosystem as well as farmers and fisheries.
A man shows the skeleton of a fish at a dry marsh in Chibayish, Iraq’s southern Dhi Qar province, on 5 July 2023. Photograph: Asaad Niazi/AFP/Getty Images
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said “the situation we are witnessing now is the demonstration that climate change is out of control”.
Heat-related deaths
Higher than normal temperatures also cause health problems ranging from heatstroke and dehydration to cardiovascular stress.
The majority of deaths were of people over the age of 80 and about 63% of those who died due to the heat were women, according to the research published in the journal Nature Medicine.
Experts say heat exhaustion and heatstroke are likely to become more common as the impacts of climate change grow more and more extreme.
Heatstroke is the most serious heat-related illness and happens when the body loses its ability to sweat.
A firefighter lifts a migrant woman suffering from heat exhaustion on to a stretcher in the border community of Eagle Pass, Texas. Photograph: Kaylee Greenlee Beal/Reuters
Jon Femling, an emergency medicine physician and scientist at the University of New Mexico, said the body tried to compensate by pumping blood to the skin as a way to cool off. The more a person breathed, the more they lost fluids, becoming increasingly dehydrated.
“So one of the first things that happens is, your muscles start to feel tired as your body starts to shunt away,” he said. “And then you can start to have organ damage where your kidneys don’t work, your spleen, your liver.”
The stress on the body may result in the brain not getting enough blood, he said. With heat exhaustion, the body could also become cold and clammy. Older people, children and those with health conditions could face greater risks when the temperatures were high.”
Social media injunction unravels plans to protect 2024 elections
"Civil rights groups warn limits on government contacts could be a boon for election lies ahead of ‘the biggest election year the internet age has seen’
Crowd with Trump 2024 flags at the “Protect Our Elections Rally” at the Arizona Federal Theater in Phoenix. (Cassidy Araiza for The Washington Post
AJuly 4 injunctionthat places extraordinary limits on the government’s communications with tech companies undermines initiatives to harden social media companies against election interference, civil rights groups, academics and tech industry insiders say.
After companies and the federal government spent yearsexpanding effortsto combat online falsehoods in the wake of Russian interference on the platforms during the 2016 election, the ruling is just the latest sign of the pendulum swinging in the other direction. Tech companies areguttingtheircontent moderationstaffs,researchersare pulling back from studying disinformation and key government communications with Silicon Valleyare on pauseamid unprecedented political scrutiny.
With voting in the 2024 primaries just months away, tech companies also are facing new election threats as leaps in artificial intelligence give bad actorsnew toolsto create fake videos, photos and ads.
Amid that rapidly changing social media landscape, civil rights groups say U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty’s order will be a boon for election lies.
“As the U.S. gears up for the biggest election year the internet age has seen, we should be finding methods to better coordinate between governments and social media companies to increase the integrity of election news and information,” said Nora Benavidez, a senior counsel at Free Press, a digital civil rights group.
Doughty’s order marks a watershed development in the years-long,partisan battleover the rules for what people can say on social media. As Democrats warn tech companies aren’t doing enough to check the proliferation of falsehoods on their platforms, Republicanscontinue to saythe companies unfairly pick on them because of their political views, criticizing the companies for developing misinformation policies and deploying fact-checkers and contractors to enforce them.
Republicans have used their control of the House of Representatives to advance such allegations, and conservative activists have targeted academics studying online disinformation with lawsuits and open records requests. Their efforts have been aided by Elon Musk, who has used his ownership of Twitter to release a slew of internal communications about content moderation decisions that he dubbed “The Twitter Files.”
“We have watched as conservatives have weaponized this kind of false idea of conservative bias throughout Silicon Valley,” said Rashad Robinson, the president of the civil rights organization Color of Change. “And so it’s no surprise that they’ve used their soft power within corporate America to make companies afraid to actually live up to their responsibility and to be accountable.”
Meta, Google and Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Justice Department has sought a stay of the injunction because of the risks. In an appeal filed Thursday night, DOJ lawyers warned that the judge’s order could prevent the government from “working with social media companies on initiatives to prevent grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes.”
Already there are signs of how the judge’s order and other conservative moves are chilling efforts to combat election interference. A day after the ruling, the State Departmentcanceledits regular meeting with Facebook officials to discuss 2024 election preparations and hacking threats.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, whose contacts with social media companies are also limited under Doughty’s order, has played a major role in getting accurate voting information out. A private nonprofit with some government funding, the Center for Internet Security, which is mentioned in Doughty’s order, has connected local election officials with the social media companies when the local officials spot falsehoods about election mechanics. CIS is not specifically barred from contacting social media companies, but people who have worked with both organizations expect a chill in coordination.
“For several years now, CISA’s productive working relationship with election officials and social media platforms has been an essential part of tamping down false rumors that can impact the public’s participation in election processes,” said Eddie Perez, a former Twitter director of product management who led a team on civic integrity and similar issues. “This sweeping injunction has the potential to ‘green light’ bad actors’ efforts to undermine confidence and suppress the vote.”
Doughty included some exceptions that appeared to acknowledge that restricting the government’s communications with the tech industry could exacerbate national security threats. His injunction permits communications between the government and the companies to discuss illegal voter suppression or foreign interference in elections. But it’s not always immediately clear if disinformation on a site is originating from a foreign actor, and it could result in the government being extra cautious and only sharing threats with the tech industry when they’re positive they originate from people abroad, said Katie Harbath, a former public policy director at Meta.
“Does that put us back to where we were in 2016?” Harbath said.
The scrutiny from conservatives is also affecting how tech companies are talking with one another about potential disinformation threats, according to a former tech industry employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of harassment and concern about discussing confidential interactions between companies. Following the revelations of disinformation during the 2016 election, officials from Twitter, Facebook, Google and other social media companies began regular contacts to discuss election threats. Details of those communications have become public, opening up tech employees to harassment.
Now people are “wary of having those conversations,” the person said.
Academic researchers were reeling from the injunction and still sorting out how to respond to it. The order placed new restrictions on communications between key U.S. government agencies and academic institutions studying online disinformation, including the Election Integrity Partnership, an initiative led by Stanford University and University of Washington that in past elections tracked election disinformation.
“There’s no version of us being able to do our job, or other versions of the field of trust and safety, without being able to communicate with all stakeholders, including government and including industry,” said a leading researcher on extremism and foreign influence who asked not to be named due to the ongoing litigation.
The order comes as a series of conservative lawsuits and records requests are already vexing academics doing social media work. Evelyn Douek, an assistant professor at Stanford Law School, said it’s difficult to quantify the impact of the litigation and investigations on social media researchers, but that it is undoubtedly “making people think twice before working on these issues.”
“The First Amendment is supposed to protect against exactly this problem — that people will just shut up because they’re worried about bad consequences or think it’s just not worth the hassle,” she said. “It’s being flipped on its head here and being used to chill people from doing important and legitimate academic work.”
Tech companies have also cut back on content moderation initiatives in recent months. Under Musk, Twitter unwound programs intended to limit the spread of misinformation and fired many employees working on content moderation. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has also laid off significant swaths of its workforce, including employees who worked on trust and safety.
The order’s focus on the government also distracts from badly needed attention on how the companies are acting on their own, advocates say.
“While we’re covering the issue of how the government can or cannot engage with Big Tech, we’re not talking about Big Tech failing to do its job of moderating lies,” Benavidez said.
Meanwhile, companies are releasing new products that could be abused to spread disinformation. The day after the ruling, Meta launched its Twitter competitor, Threads, which attracted more than 70 million sign-ups in 48 hours. The launch underscores how quickly the social media landscape can change and why it’s so necessary for the government to be able to talk to the companies, said Leah Litman, a professor at University of Michigan Law School.
The ruling “is just going to compound the inability to adapt to new challenges that are coming,” Litman said."
