Hawaii Gets Its Last Shipment of Coal, Ever

It’s the end of a dirty era in Hawaii. The state’s last-ever coal shipment arrived in Oahu on Wednesday, bound for the last remaining coal-fired power plant, which is due to shut down in September.

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Gwyneth Paltrow Talks Nepotism With Hailey Bieber, Jokes About Sleeping With Her Dad

Stephen Baldwin probably didn’t expect this.

Valve says it will ship all current Steam Deck reservations by the end of 2022

If you’ve been patiently waiting for Valve to ship that Steam Deck you reserved months ago, you may not have to wait too much longer to get your hands on the device. The company claims it will be able to fulfill all current Steam Deck reservations by the end of the year.

Valve says that many of its supply chain issues are easing and it’s able to continue increasing production. It has moved some people’s scheduled deliveries up to the third quarter (i.e. between now and the end of September). All other outstanding reservations are now scheduled for delivery in Q4. People who lock in a reservation right now should still be able to get one in time for the holiday season. After Valve reaches its capacity for that period, it will start filling up the delivery queue for early 2023. 

The update comes a month after Valve said it was doubling the number of weekly Steam Deck shipments. This is a rare sliver of positive news for a sought-after piece of gaming hardware, given the supply chain problems that have stymied PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X production. Who knows? We might even see the Steam Deck on retail shelves before too long.

How to Download the iOS 16 Public Beta and What to Try First

Apple’s next version of iOS is now available to the public as a downloadable beta. You can enroll your iPhone into the program to try iOS 16 before everyone else. The software is still in development, so you’ll have to approach it more patiently than an average build of iOS and take some of its bugs in stride. But the…

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The Weeknd Brings Blinding Frights to Universal's Halloween Horror Nights 2022

Probably the biggest news to hit the haunt world lately is that global superstar the Weeknd has officially announced a Horror Nights House at Universal Studios Orlando and Universal Studios Hollywood for their annual haunt events.

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Facebook Approved Pro-Genocide Ads in Kenya After Claiming to Foster 'Safe and Secure' Elections

Kenya’s national cohesion watchdog threatened to suspend Facebook from the country Friday if it doesn’t mitigate hate speech ahead of the country’s general elections next month. The regulator has given the company one week to remediate the problem, which included Facebook’s approval of ads advocating for ethnic…

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Indiana AG Probe Of Doctor Who Gave 10-Year-Old Abortion ‘Riddled With Inaccuracies’

Dr. Caitlin Bernard’s lawyer said Attorney General Todd Rokita’s investigation relied on consumer complaints from people with “no first-hand knowledge.”

This Skin-Sticking Ultrasound Patch Is Like A Tricorder Band-Aid

Ultrasound scanning of a human body may soon be a far simpler affair than it’s been in the past. With a new skin-sticking patch, scanning can be done on the go.

Airstream And REI Teamed Up On A Super-Green Camper With A Cool Solar Power Roof

Airstream and REI have a new camper that aims to be as green as possible, complete with solar panels and Knoll recycled fabrics and laminates

Twitter warns of 'record highs' in account data requests

Twitter has published its 20th transparency report, and the details still aren’t reassuring to those concerned about abuses of personal info. The social network saw “record highs” in the number of account data requests during the July-December 2021 reporting period, with 47,572 legal demands on 198,931 accounts. The media in particular faced much more pressure. Government demands for data from verified news outlets and journalists surged 103 percent compared to the last report, with 349 accounts under scrutiny.

The largest slice of requests targeting the news industry came from India (114), followed by Turkey (78) and Russia (55). Governments succeeded in withholding 17 tweets.

As in the past, US demands represented a disproportionately large chunk of the overall volume. The country accounted for 20 percent of all worldwide account info requests, and those requests covered 39 percent of all specified accounts. Russia is still the second-largest requester with 18 percent of volume, even if its demands dipped 20 percent during the six-month timeframe.

The company said it was still denying or limiting access to info when possible. It denied 31 percent of US data requests, and either narrowed or shut down 60 percent of global demands. Twitter also opposed 29 civil attempts to identify anonymous US users, citing First Amendment reasons. It sued in two of those cases, and has so far had success with one of those suits. There hasn’t been much success in reporting on national security-related requests in the US, however, and Twitter is still hoping to win an appeal that would let it share more details.

Calls for data spiked starting in early 2020, and this latest transparency report indicates that they’re only continuing to climb. Twitter sees the attempts to target journalists as a mounting threat to freedom of the press. We’d add that the situation is volatile, at least in the near term. Russia cut off access to Twitter following that country’s invasion of Ukraine, and the company is suing India to resist an order to block accounts. Don’t be surprised if the next report paints a significantly different picture.