ResidentialBusiness

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Mortgage giant Rocket Companies—the parent company of Rocket Mortgage, formerly known as Quicken Loans—announced on Monday it has entered into an agreement to buy Redfin in an all-stock transaction valued at $1.75 billion equity, or $12.50 per share. If completed, the move would integrate Redfin’s real estate search platform, which attracts nearly 50 million monthly visitors, with Rocket’s mortgage services. “Redfin is known for its beautiful product but is also [a] data powerhouse in an AI-driven world—100 million properties, 50 million engaged monthly users, thousands of the amazing real estate agents and 4 petabytes of data,” Rocket Companies CEO Varun Krishna wrote on LinkedIn on Monday. “Rocket has developed a platform that spans 40 years of mortgage expertise and a digital nationwide lending platform, across 3,000 counties and parishes. Redfin and Rocket are an amazing match for each other.” According to the press release, there are four benefits Rocket Companies sees from the Redfin acquisition: First, it will introduce more consumers to the Rocket ecosystem. “Rocket Companies will benefit from Redfin’s nearly 50 million monthly visitors, 1 million active purchase and rental listings and staff of 2,200+ real estate agents across 42 states,” the company writes. Secondly, it expects that will drive growth in the purchase of its mortgages. Third, the companies 14 petabytes of combined data will help drive its AI and personalization technology. “This data will strengthen Rocket’s AI models enabling easier and more personalized and automated consumer experiences,” Rocket writes. Lastly, the company expects to achieve “more than $200 million in run-rate synergies by 2027, including approximately $140 million in cost synergies from rationalization of duplicative operations and other costs.” And it expects “more than $60 million in revenue synergies from pairing the company’s financing clients with Redfin real estate agents, and from driving clients working with Redfin agents to Rocket’s mortgage, title, and servicing offerings.” In other words, Rocket Companies appears to be making a strategic move to expand its market share by integrating Redfin’s customer funnel with its mortgage business and build a powerhouse in residential real estate, creating a one-stop shop for homebuyers. “While Rocket Mortgage increased its purchase loan market share by 8% from 2023 to 2024, it still pales in comparison to crosstown rival UWM [United Wholesale Mortgage],” Colin Robertson, the founder of The Truth About Mortgage, tells ResiClub. “Their tie-up with Redfin gives them the potential to capture 1 in 6 purchase loans going forward, which could see their market share quadruple from 4% to 16%+.” The Rocket Companies’ proposed acquisition of Redfin comes during a prolonged housing transaction downturn—marked by a sharp drop in existing home sales and refinancing—triggered by the 2022 mortgage rate shock and strained affordability. The slump has led to industry upheaval, business failures, and a wave of mergers. While both of these firms have been affected by the slump, Redfin, in particular, has taken it on the chin. At its peak during the Pandemic Housing Boom, Rocket Companies had a $55.6 billion market capitalization—compared to its $26.6 billion market capitalization at business close today. While at its peak during the Pandemic Housing Boom, Redfin had a $10 billion market capitalization—well above its $1.2 billion market capitalization today. Since mortgage rates spiked in 2022, Redfin has faced a continuous wave of layoffs, with 1,362 layoffs in 2022, 201 in 2023, 82 in 2024, and nearly 500 already announced in 2025. Back in October 2022, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman told me that shuttering their iBuyer unit amid a then correcting market out West was causing Redfin to sell at big losses. Kelman explained it like this: “We’re sitting on $350 million worth of homes for sale that we bought with our own money, or worse bought with borrowed money. And what we always told investors is that we would protect our balance sheet by acting quickly. We don’t have hope as a strategy. We immediately started marking down things… When the shiitake mushrooms hit the fan, [investors] want to get out first. The way to do that is to figure out where the lowest sale is, and be 2% below that. And if it doesn’t sell in the first weekend, move it down [again].” In November 2023, Kelman told me that things were still slumped for the business, adding that existing home sales were “mostly dead as a doornail, so it couldn’t be worse.” In August 2024, Kelman put Redfin’s situation bluntly, telling analysts that the Plan B if mortgage rates didn’t come down was to “drink our own urine or our competitors’ blood, stay in the foxhole.” Click here to view an interactive version of the chart below. “When I took a look something like 50% of Homes.com’s traffic is paid,” Amanda Orson, CEO and founder of Galleon, tells ResiClub. “And that paid demo does not count their extraordinary ad spend on TV ads. It’s just not a sticky site. Redfin on the other hand spends very little and generates an absolute truckload of organic traffic. For now. That advantage is not permanent, of course. I can’t think of another company for whom the acquisition of Redfin would get a better yield for its highest and best use than Rocket.” Big picture: If the benefits of the Redfin acquisition come to fruition, it could not only cement Rocket Companies as the top player in the mortgage space (currently No. 2 by total dollar loan volume) but also further lay the groundwork for the company to pursue its broader real estate ambitions—and perhaps even challenge Zillow, which is working to build a housing “Super App.” View the full article

In our current political and media environment the loudest voices are the ones that are farthest from the center. Tech hasn’t been spared, with some Silicon Valley leaders drifting right—not only out of ideology, but also pragmatism. Box CEO Aaron Levie sits somewhere in the middle: not a MAGA-touting accelerationist like Marc Andreessen, nor a traditional progressive like Reid Hoffman. But he is clear-eyed about one thing: Donald Trump will likely preside over some of the most pivotal years in AI and innovation. And Levie sees reason for optimism. Fast Company spoke to him about AI policy, AI and crypto “czar” David Sacks, Elon Musk’s DOGE, and AI safety concerns. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. I know you came out in support of Harris before the election, but now I’d like to find out what your assessment of Trump is so far, where technology is concerned. During the Harris campaign, I felt like there was an opportunity, and there really needed to be a very strong kind of pro-technology, progress-type of push in the Democratic party. So I was trying to ensure that they saw key policy issues around AI and deregulation and how to drive more growth. And so that was my interest in the topic during the campaign cycle. But I just want America to succeed, and I want our tech position to be as strong as possible. And I think there’s a number of topics that kind of relate to that. There’s high-skill immigration, there’s AI policy, there are regulatory issues and topics that face the tech industry, especially more of the harder tech, more manufacturing-leaning parts of tech. And I think we have an opportunity as a country to ensure that we are building for not just the next couple of years, but the next couple of decades, and there’s a lot of key things that are going to happen right now around AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles, advanced manufacturing, new forms of energy; all of these things will intersect with either federal or state and local policy, and it’s critical to make sure that we’re heading in the right direction on those topics. As it relates to Trump, I think there have been a number of things that have been signaled that I think are actually extremely positive to those topics. I think we’re really early in seeing how they will manifest. Some of them were on the campaign trail, some of them are kind of being in office, that have been signaled, and to some extent, a little bit in a wait-and-see mode on how they all manifest and evolve. And you know, my views on them are extremely clear, and I’m hoping we lean in the right direction on a large number of those topics. Let’s talk about AI first. I think you saw JD Vance give his Paris speech, and he did talk a bit about striking a balance between regulation and innovation, but he also seemed to scold Europe for what it has done with the AI Act. He accuses them of going too far. Do you agree with him on that? My rhetoric would probably be different, but I am worried that when it comes to policy conversations, in the U.S. and even globally, we have tilted more toward the precautionary views of AI as opposed to the productive and pro-progress-oriented views of AI. I thought that it was compelling that the vice president talked about how AI is going to actually create—I’m going to now probably change some of the words—but create more of an abundance environment where we can actually use it to help jobs and create jobs, and we can use it to improve healthcare, and we can use it to drive manufacturing. And if you just take a word content in the speech and compare it to maybe a speech that would have come from a U.S. politician a year or two ago, it leaned 80% more positive than negative, with the appropriate levels of calling out that there are things that we do need to pay attention to. Do you have thoughts about David Sacks and his appointment to “AI and Crypto Tsar”? I am much closer to the AI side and the AI Tsar. I don’t think about crypto that much. David’s a strong choice for that. David knows his way around Silicon Valley. He knows all the people doing all the important work at the leadership levels of AI labs and big tech. And so to have a conduit that can help marry what’s happening in Silicon Valley with the policy decisions happening in the government, I think he’s in a great position. I’m also very happy about Michael Katzios on OSTP (Trump nominated Kratsios as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy). I think he’s a very strong pick for that job. And so I think the administration has brought in sophisticated, thoughtful technologists or business leaders into the administration to help drive policy in the right direction. You were also upbeat about Elon Musk and what he’s doing with DOGE, at least around the time of the election. Do you have any thoughts about that now? At a philosophical level, I think that the thing I get more excited about in the DOGE remit is how do we modernize the approach that many of these agencies are taking to regulation? How do we ensure that we’re driving more efficiency so we can have just better productivity in the government? I think that’s a very good thing. I think there’s an ability to modernize a lot of the technology as well in the government to get more efficiency and be able to drive just overall better results. When you have better data feeds coming in, when you have better ways of collaborating, when you get better insights, we can make better policy decisions, we can run the government better. As a big-name tech CEO, do you feel an obligation to express your views and let people know where you stand on these things? For me, it’s a natural thing. But I do think we’re in an era right now where there’s almost no industry, and especially in tech, there’s no subindustry in tech that will not be impacted by policy decisions from the federal government. And so I do think we’re in an environment where you have to lean in to some extent on the policy conversation if you want any chance that it ends up going in a productive direction. I have some things that to me personally, from a business perspective, rise to higher or lower levels—like one of my biggest areas is high-skill immigration. And so that’s an area that I unequivocally and emphatically view as mission-critical to get right because it will lead to the next generation of companies for us to go build in the future—the next Apple, the next Google, the next OpenAI. You want the odds to be that that’s going to get created in America, and high-skill immigration is one of your ways of increasing those odds. AI policy raises very high because getting AI policy right or wrong could mean that either the U.S. is the home of AI or China is the home of AI. And as a U.S. company, I think it would be a disaster if we miss the window where we could have complete AI leadership. On the high-skilled labor part of this, are there specific changes to that that you are in favor of or that you think might have a chance of happening in the next four years? We do need a faster way for people to get into the country that is more of a merit-oriented approach. On the campaign trail, Trump very clearly stated that he wants to stamp a green card to every diploma for individuals that are coming from outside the country to study here. And so I think there’s been some acknowledgment that we have an inefficient system. It’s a little bit too random at times, and it’s probably not serving us in the best way possible of getting just clearly getting the best talent in the world to always come here, and that’s what we need. I will keep fighting and shouting from the rooftops that that’s a critical policy, whether it’s in the Trump administration or whatever administration comes next. I know that your business depends on AI, and you’re probably looking down the road and thinking about how Box’s product can evolve as AI progresses. Do you have concerns about the safety risks of future AI models? The labs need to operate responsibly. They need to test these models and ensure the safety and protection of how these models operate and ensure that we are in a situation where AI can’t go rogue and complete actions on their own without the right kind of guardrails being built into these systems. So, I’m in favor of everything that the market is currently doing. The part that I’m less in favor of is a situation where there would be just an incredibly extreme liability for the model providers to be able to release new AI model updates without major government involvement. Because what that will do is dramatically slow down the pace of the industry, and the pace of the industry will move at the rate at which the government can evaluate and understand how AI works. And we see in any industry where that is happening, we see less competition, we see higher prices, we see less innovation. Maybe there’s a time and a place for that to happen in AI, but we’re not there yet. AI right now is really early. And so, what we need is an environment where the AI innovation is accelerating, where the models are getting better, where they’re getting cheaper, where they’re getting more capable. And what we need is a shared industry-oriented way of establishing that we do need safe AI. These teams should be testing their models. We should have more best practices, more research, more red teaming of these technologies. But to me, I have not been compelled yet that we need the government to overwhelm the system with those reviews and those procedures. And I may get to that point where I do believe that, and I’m actually glad that there are lots of people that say we need that. I think it should be a really healthy debate and dialogue. View the full article

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Country’s two biggest mobile operators drop opposition and sign deals View the full article

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For the first time since 1984, the airline Korean Air is updating its charmingly retro look to new branding that’s better suited for the modern era. The rebrand, designed by the global creative consultancy Lippincott, includes a new wordmark, refreshed logo, and pared-down color scheme. It’s set to debut across Korean Air’s operations and on the livery of its aircraft in the coming weeks. The rebrand comes just a few months after Korean Air officially completed merger negotiations with Asiana Airlines, South Korea’s second-largest airline. The two companies will become one mega-airline. [Image: Korean Air]As Korean Air begins to integrate Asiana Airlines’ operations with its own, Asiana Airlines’s brand identity will be slowly phased out. And, as part of the merger, Korean Air is likely to add new destinations to its offerings, expanding its international profile. Korean Air’s new look is meant to differentiate this upcoming phase of it’s 55-year history as it becomes an increasingly global brand. [Image: Korean Air]Reimagining an ‘iconic’ brandKorean Air’s former branding had a distinctly ’80s aesthetic, including a stylized, chunky wordmark and vibrant color palette of sky blue, cerulean, and red. The company’s planes have reflected this branding for decades through a distinct blue livery. Dan Vasconcelos, a partner at Lippincott, says that the ’80s branding is “iconic,” adding that “it’s not every day that you get to evolve brand assets that have been untouched for over 40 years.” [Image: Korean Air]As the first step of this major undertaking, his team decided to tackle the brand’s logo. Since its 1984 refresh, Korean Air’s logo has been a red, white, and blue interpretation of the Taeguk, the symbol at the center of the South Korean flag which represents balance in nature. Vasconcelos says the team tested hundreds of potential new versions of the Taeguk symbol. Ultimately, they landed on a fluid, ribbon-like iteration, rendered in one seamless blue stroke. The design is inspired by Sangmo Nori, a traditional Korean performance art. “[Sangmo Nori] involves performers wearing sangmo, a hat with a long ribbon attached to it, which they spin and twirl in intricate patterns while dancing energetically,” Vasconcelos says. “It represents abundance, prosperity, and joy. We felt that the ribbon in the tradition carried great symbolism: it’s universally recognized for its elegance while being resonant in Korea.” [Image: Korean Air]The Taeguk’s tapered edges also reference traditional calligraphy, a reference the Lippincott team brought into the rebrand’s custom typeface as well. Type studios Dalton Maag and Sandoll designed the bespoke font, which is a modern, all-caps sans serif featuring small calligraphic flourishes. It’s designed for optimal legibility in both English and Hangul (the Korean alphabet). The font is also the basis of Korean Air’s new wordmark and all other copy across its branding. [Image: Korean Air]A simplified color palette that reads ‘premium’To give Korean Air a more luxury feel, Lippincott has simplified the brand’s color palette to a core range of blues, cutting out the former red accents. “Doubling down on the blue allowed us to be more single-minded and confident, a trait of premium brands,” Vasconcelos says. “Think of Hermes, Louis Vuitton, or Tiffany—they are bold in their use of color but do it with simplicity and flair.” [Image: Korean Air]In keeping with the brand’s tradition, Vasconcelos’s team decided to buck the white livery trend used by most national trends and stick with Korean Air’s blue fuselage. During the research process, he says, the blue livery was a particularly memorable brand asset for customers. [Image: Korean Air]Other elements of the livery have been tweaked to align with the company’s plans to expand: The word Air has been removed from the livery to project Korean Air’s standing as South Korea’s largest airline, and the brand’s Hangul name has also been removed with global audiences in mind. [Image: Korean Air]“My client Kenny Chang [SVP and CMO of Korean Air] sums it up well by saying that the vision for Korean Air is to be a global airline which happens to be based in Korea,” Vasconcelos says. “This helped inform key design decisions such as removing the airline’s Hangul name from the livery as well as designing a symbol that, while infused by national iconography, isn’t too similar to the national flag.” Korean Air’s streamlined rebrand is both elegant and logical, given the company’s growing ambitions. Still, time will tell if the brand will have the staying power of its former visual identity, which resonated strongly with the airline’s audience for more than 40 years. View the full article

As protests against the Trump administration and in favor of Palestine continue to grow across the country, the U.S. State Department is reportedly planning to use tech to try and tamp down on dissent. This month, Axios reported that Marco Rubio’s “Catch and Revoke” plan to strip foreign nationals of the visas that allow them to remain in the country could be powered by AI analysis of their social media accounts. The mooted use of AI comes as former Columbia University grad student Mahmoud Khalil has become the face of the Trump administration’s tougher line on protest, with Khalil currently detained and threatened with the revocation of his green card for his participation on on-campus protests. Using AI to try and analyze the contents of people’s social media posts for actions that the Trump administration—if notably not the law and rights set out under the country’s constitutional amendments—deems unacceptable is a risky move that runs the risk of creating huge false positives. And it worries privacy and AI experts in equal measure. “For so many years, we have heard this very bad argument that we don’t need to worry because we have democracy,” says Carissa Véliz, an AI ethicist at the University of Oxford. “Precisely the point of privacy is to keep democracy. When you don’t have privacy, the abuse of power is too tempting, and it’s just a matter of time for it to be abused.” The risk Véliz and others worry about is that digital privacy is being eroded in favor of a witch hunt driven by a technology that people often have more faith in its accuracy than is truly deserved. That’s a concern too for Joanna Bryson, professor of ethics and technology at Hertie School in Berlin, Germany. “Disappearing political enemies, or indeed just random citizens, has been a means of repression for a long time, especially in the new world,” she says. “I don’t need to point out the irony of Trump choosing a mechanism so similar to the South and Central American dictators in the countries he denigrates.” Bryson also points out that there parallels with how Israel used AI to identify tens of thousands of Hamas targets, many of whom were then targeted for physical bombing attacks in Gaza by the Israeli military. The controversial program, nicknamed Lavender, has been questioned as a military use of AI that could throw up false positives and is unvetted. “Unless the AI systems are transparent and audited, we have no way of knowing whether there’s any justification for which 35,000 people were targeted,” says Bryson. “Without appropriate regulation and enforcement of AI and digital systems—including military ones, which incidentally even the EU is not presently doing—we can’t tell whether there was any justification for the targets, or if they just chose enough people that any particular building they wanted to get rid of they’d have some justification for blowing it up.” The use of AI is also something of a smokescreen, designed to deflect responsibility for serious decisions that those having to make them can claim are guided by supposedly “impartial” algorithms. “This is the kind of thing Musk is trying to do now with DOGE, and already did with Twitter,” says Bryson. “Eliminating humans and reducing accountability. Well, obscuring accountability.” And the problem is that when looking at AI classifications of social media content, accountability is important because it’s a case of when, not if, the technology misfires. The risks of hallucination and bias are big problems within AI systems. Hallucinations occur when AI systems make up answers to questions, or invents what could be seen as damning posts for users if their social media content is being parsed through artificial intelligence. Inherent bias in systems because of the way they’re designed, and by whom they’re created, is also a big factor in many errors in AI systems. In 2018, Amazon was forced to withdraw plans to perform a first pass at job applicants’ résumés because the system was found to be automatically rejecting all female candidates because of ways in which the AI had been set up and trained. It’s bad enough for those errors to impact on whether or not someone gets invited to a job interview. But when it comes to potentially being detained and deported from the United States—and risking not being allowed back into the country in the future—it’s a much more high-stakes situation. View the full article

When the Eaton Fire burned through Altadena in January, Patricia Lopez-Gutierrez and her children had to flee from the house they’d been renting for a decade. Lopez-Gutierrez also lost work: She’s a housecleaner, and her clients lost their own homes in the fire. “I’ve been here for 18 years, and I really don’t want to leave this area,” she said through a translator. “My children and their schools are here. I’m trying to get more work so I don’t have to leave.” As she struggles to pay her bills—including at her rental house, which ended up surviving the fire but was so heavily damaged by smoke that she’s desperate to find a new place to live—she turned to St. Vincent de Paul, one of several local organizations providing direct assistance to fire victims. The nonprofit paid a utility bill for her in January, and then a car payment and dental bill this month. It was enough, for now, to make it possible for her to keep paying rent. The fire destroyed thousands of homes in Altadena, one of the more affordable corners of L.A. County. St. Vincent de Paul, working with a team of 18 volunteers, has helped around 150 families so far, prioritizing families with children and renters who lost their homes. In many cases—particularly for Hispanic residents who worked as housecleaners or gardeners—residents also lost their jobs. Others have minimum-wage jobs that make it difficult to afford to rent a new house or apartment. While St. Vincent de Paul covers bills directly (paying rent to a landlord, for example, or paying a doctor’s office), many other organizations are simply giving residents cash directly. Pasadena Community Foundation, a local foundation, has given grants through a wildfire fund to help support dozens of organizations doing that work. The Dena Care Collective, a new organization launched by End Poverty in California (EPIC) and FORWARD, has raised more than $1 million to help support families and businesses in the immediate aftermath of the fire with direct cash payments. “There is significant empirical data that highlights the efficacy of direct cash payments to families,” says Aja Brown, the former mayor of the city of Compton, who grew up in Altadena and is helping lead the Dena Care Collective along with former Stockton mayor Michael Tubbs. “There’s also a wealth of data that substantiates [the fact that] bureaucracy and governmental systems are slow to react. And quite frankly, they aren’t designed for emergency relief. Getting cash in the hands of families is the most impactful and the most efficient way to help families; they innately understand what’s best for [their] aid and the relief based on their current conditions.” Cash is a critical tool for people living in poverty in ordinary times; in Stockton, a study of a program that gave a series of no-strings-attached checks to low-income residents found that people who got the payments were more likely to go from unemployment to full-time employment and take other steps for their future, like moving to a better apartment or fixing their car. In a disaster, quick access to cash is even more important to help people stay afloat. “In a disaster like this, of course people need cash, because water bottles aren’t wealth,” says Tubbs. “Clothing isn’t cash. People need money to be able to rebuild, to be able to move, to be able to persist.” GiveDirectly, an organization founded on the premise that sending money to the world’s poorest households can help them begin to overcome poverty, has raised more than $2 million for low-income households impacted by the L.A.-area fires. While getting some money from FEMA can sometimes take a month or two, the nonprofit is able to act more quickly. (FEMA gave eligible residents $770 to help cover immediate needs after the disaster, but getting any additional support took longer—and $770 doesn’t go far in a city like L.A. Immigrants who don’t have legal status also can’t get help from FEMA.) Two weeks after the fires, the organization sent notifications to residents via a food stamp app inviting them to enroll for the cash payments, a process that takes roughly a minute. On average, the payments arrived three days later. The organization is giving transfers of $3,500, enough to cover two weeks at a lower-end Airbnb in the L.A. area, a month of food for a family of four, and a month of healthcare and transportation. Of course, the support is only a small and temporary part of the solution. As rents have steeply risen in and around L.A.—something that was happening earlier and then exacerbated by the disaster—people who were displaced are struggling to find places to live. Some renters are now doubled or tripled up with friends in tiny apartments. Homeowners who bought homes decades ago in Altadena—or inherited mortgage-free homes from parents or grandparents who paid little for them—are often now finding that their insurance won’t cover the cost of rebuilding. Others lost coverage as insurers have dropped policies in areas at risk of fires. Even those who still have housing, like Lopez-Gutierrez, are dealing with new challenges. In her case, her landlord wants to raise her rent, even though he hasn’t repaired damage from the fire (and despite the fact that price gouging is illegal). She’s trying to find a new rental, but her low credit score is making that difficult. Even if bills are covered for a month or two, many families still don’t know what will come next—especially since the rebuilding process will be slow. Before the fires, when St. Vincent de Paul helped pay unexpected bills for residents, the situation was different. “It’s the housecleaner whose son or daughter had to go to the emergency room and there was a $1,000 bill and they can’t afford rent,” says Dave de Csepel, an investor who helps lead the volunteer work at St. Vincent de Paul. “So we come in, pay that rent, and life goes on—we bridge them to get to the next month.” Now, he says, “This is a tidal wave that has hit this community. This is the beginning. It’s hard to see how all these families come out of this. We love the diversity of our community and we want to have folks stay in the area. But it’s hard to keep everyone together, and I’m afraid that there are a lot of hard times ahead for these families.” View the full article

Loan officers have said the majority of outreach from recruiters looks like impersonal "telemarketing." View the full article

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As part of the Trump administration’s continued efforts to attack renewable energy and bolster the fossil fuel industry, officials are considering using emergency powers to bring retired coal plants back online and prevent others from shutting down. But doing so would raise electricity prices for Americans, come with disastrous environmental impacts for the world, and only benefit coal companies. While at CERAWeek, an energy conference by S&P Global, U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgim told Bloomberg Television about the potential coal resurgence. “Under the national energy emergency, which President Trump has declared, we’ve got to keep every coal plant open,” he said. “And if there had been units at a coal plant that have been shut down, we need to bring those back.” Coal’s dominance has been declining in the U.S. for years. It currently supplies just 16% of the country’s power, down from just over 51% in 2000. And since 2000, about 780 U.S. coal-fired units across the country have come offline; more than 120 coal plants are expected to shutter here within the next five years. Bringing those coal plants back is “an incredibly dumb idea,” says Peter Gleick, a climate scientist with a background in energy systems and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. “It’s dangerous. It’s expensive. It’s impractical.” The logistics alone of bringing retired coal plants online would be difficult. “It’s not like turning on and off a lightbulb,” he says. Many plants have been entirely decommissioned, and some have even been repurposed into renewable energy and storage projects. Bringing back the equipment to allow them to burn coal—or updating outdated infrastructure—would be expensive and time consuming. In the last five years, most of the U.S. coal plants that closed were, on average, 50 years old; globally, coal plants have retired at an average age of 37 years, says Christine Shearer, an analyst at Global Energy Monitor. Those coal plants were also retired for economic reasons; it’s more expensive, Gleick says, for a utility company to run a coal plant than to build renewables or operate natural gas plants. A 2019 analysis found that about three-quarters of U.S. coal plants would save money by switching to wind or solar. A 2023 analysis upped that figure to 99% of coal plants. That means utilities likely wouldn’t want retired coal plants to come back online. “Any attempt to do this will raise electricity prices for everyone,” he adds. Coal producers themselves would profit from more coal, of course, and some utility companies have actually delayed coal plant retirements because of concerns around grid stability—but the cost of keeping those “zombie” coal plants open ends up falling on consumers. One Maryland coal plant set to close in 2025 will now be kept open until 2029, a move that could cost residents up to $250 million per year through higher energy bills. Then there’s the environmental and health impacts. Burning coal is linked to air pollution that contains toxins and heavy metals, and can cause asthma, brain damage, heart problems, cancer, and even premature death. Bringing back retired coal plants would have a direct environmental and health impact on the local communities around such plants. When four Kentucky coal plants were either retired or retrofitted with emissions controls, one study found, local asthma-related hospitalizations plummeted. Coal plants have also primarily been located in low-income communities, as well as communities of color. But bringing back coal would do more than just damage people in the U.S. The environmental costs would be borne by the entire globe. “Coal is by far the worst offender at releasing damaging, polluting greenhouse gasses,” Gleick says. Environmental experts say the world needs to completely phase out coal power by 2040 in order to meet the Paris Climate Agreement goals. Some places have already completely retired their coal power plants. In September 2024, the United Kingdom—the first country to build a coal power plant—became the first major economy to completely stop using coal to make electricity when its last coal power plant shut down. Even India and China, which both still burn immense amounts of coal, are trying to transition away from that energy source, because of both the economic and environmental costs. “For us to go in the other direction is just lunacy,” Gleick says. It’s not coal specifically that Americans want, he notes; it’s energy broadly, and there are far more cheaper, faster ways to produce energy—like through solar and wind. “If we are in an energy emergency then we should roll back the recent pauses on wind and solar permitting, not try to bring back old coal plants already a decade past their lifetime, on the backs of American ratepayers,” Shearer says. Solar specifically is the cheapest source of electricity, the International Energy Agency says, and also the fastest energy source to deploy. (Besides finding new sources of energy, we could also work to increase how energy efficient our systems and tools are, Gleick says, which is even less expensive to do.) No country that has reduced its dependence on coal would voluntarily go back to that energy source, Gleick adds. “The only people who want more coal to be burned are fossil fuel company executives. No one else wants this,” he says. “Bringing coal back to the U.S. is not making America great again.” View the full article

In summer 2022, when artificial intelligence-based text-to-image generation tools hit the mainstream, architects were cautiously excited. The ease of generating real-ish images of design concepts and buildings with just a few simple sentences was irresistible, and many architects began experimenting with ways of letting AI quickly do some of the sketching and ideating they’d gotten used to spending hours or days laboring over. “It’s almost like you’re speaking a building into existence,” one architect said. But now, with AI maturing and getting integrated into tools and industries far and wide, a surprisingly low number of architects are actually using AI in their work. Architects are slow to adopt AI Only 6% of architects report regularly using AI for their jobs, and only 8% of architecture firms have implemented AI solutions, according to a new report from the American Institute of Architects. Based on a survey of 541 members of the architecture profession, the report shows an industry-wide shyness around AI adoption, with many unsure what AI can do for them, and a large percentage—39%—downright uninterested in finding out. Some architects are making AI a part of the way they practice, though, and the report shows strong interest in using AI more, particularly among architects younger than 50. The report finds that while only 8% of firms are actively using AI on a day-to-day basis, 20% are currently working on implementing AI solutions. More than half of architects have at least experimented with AI tools, and three-quarters are optimistic about AI automating some tasks. “The reality is that there are a lot of industries that are still figuring this out,” says Evelyn Lee, president of the AIA. “I do think that architects, when it comes to new technology implementation, we do tend to lag a little bit.” But there’s big opportunity Lee, who has a tech background, says architects can do more with AI than just generate quick imagery. Other use cases include marketing, project management, and construction document creation. According to the report, image-based content production is still the main way architecture firms use AI, but Lee suggests that the tech may be more useful for the operational side of the business, where it could resolve simple tasks, like eliminating the need for manual time sheets, as well as more labor-intensive jobs, like maintaining and updating building material libraries. “There’s a really big opportunity there for AI to illuminate the library and the wealth of materials available right now,” she says. “So much of what we learn about new materials is from the individual manufacturer’s rep showing up and saying ‘Here is the latest ceiling tile.’” That could help architects improve the way their projects are designed, lower their costs, and even reduce their environmental footprint by finding new sustainable materials to integrate into their projects. AI tools could speed up product delivery “The biggest opportunity ultimately is on the product delivery side,” Lee says. As AI begins to be more fully integrated into the software that architects use to design their projects, it can speed up the process of turning design concepts into detailed plans and eventually into the construction documents used to get projects built. That could open the door for smaller architecture firms to be more competitive. There are more than 19,000 architecture firms in the U.S., and almost three-quarters of them have fewer than 10 employees, according to another recent AIA report. “The software will allow them to do more, quicker, better,” Lee says. “That’s a huge opportunity for AI to be leveraged to democratize the design delivery process.” View the full article

For the first two-and-a-half years of the generative AI revolution, the AI arms race has been waged between competing companies seeking to make bank from the promise and potential of the technology. But things are maturing in the AI world—and with it, there’s another frontline for AI: the military. Scale AI, the company set up by Alexandr Wang, has been awarded what CNBC reports is a multimillion-dollar deal to help develop Thunderforge, which the U.S. Department of Defense calls “an initiative designed to integrate artificial intelligence into military operational and theater-level planning, and fusing cutting-edge modeling and simulation tools.” Wang told CNBC that “our AI solutions will transform today’s military operating process and modernize American defense” and that they “will provide our nation’s military leaders with the greatest technological advantage.” The move is unsurprising—militaries are always keen on keeping at the cutting edge of technology, trying to eke out an advantage against competitive armies—but disappointing, says Margaret Mitchell, researcher and chief ethics scientist at Hugging Face, an AI company. “We already know we’re moving forward to push AI systems farther and farther out from our control,” she says. “Many in the industry and in the media are treating more and more powerful systems as if they are inevitable, and therefore making it so.” Mitchell adds that technology has always relied on military clientele to act as a crucible for, and accelerant of, new innovation. “Military use has long been a staple of technological development,” she says. “Massively destructive outcomes are fully predictable based on history and how the tech marketplace works.” (Scale AI declined to comment. The Defense Department did not respond to Fast Company‘s request for comment.) That level of destruction could be catastrophic, argues David Krueger, assistant professor at the University of Montreal, studying AI safety and risk. “I think it’s likely to lead to the end of humanity, to human extinction,” he says, speaking generally about the use of AI for military purposes, calling the military use of AI “one of the most obvious ways in which AI poses an existential risk to humanity.” Krueger says that AI is being used in many areas to hand off human control and outsource it to AI systems. “I think this is a risk in every domain, and I think in the military, it’s particularly concerning, and something which will require international collaboration to avoid getting out of hand and risking human extinction.” Scale AI has said that the Thunderforge program will operate with human oversight, and Noah Sylvia, a research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), points out that “as AI functions go, I would say it is not as controversial as a lot of other ones, because this is what you could term an enterprise function.” Scale AI is far from the only company to ink a deal with the U.S. military to leverage the power of AI to support such activities. A number of companies have also agreed terms to provide their AI technology for military purposes. “I think part of the reaction is because they started out in a very civilian-oriented company, and over the past few months, especially, we’ve seen all of these civilian companies suddenly turn towards defense more,” says Sylvia. Indeed, the press release by the Defense Innovation Unit announcing Scale AI’s deal for Thunderforge points out the same program will also include Anduril’s Lattice software platform and state of the art LLMs enabled by Microsoft. “I struggle to see a way out of it,” says Hugging Face’s Mitchell. Even if individual countries or companies were to decide to step aside from using AI for military purposes, or to decline to provide support to countries that are seeking military AI—as Hugging Face has refused to do in the past—others would likely step into the breach. “We need some ability to coordinate to prevent actors from building AI systems,” says the University of Montreal’s Krueger. “I think that should be—in fact—the number-one priority in foreign policy for every country at this point because it’s an incredibly important issue, and it’s going to be difficult to address it.” Developing cross-country guidelines for how to consider the use of AI in military environments will be vital in the future, says Mitchell. She suggests a multipoint plan that includes keeping AI systems within strict operational boundaries, making it impossible for systems to autonomously deploy weapons, introducing safety mechanisms, and advancing what’s deemed state of the art in input data analysis and output evaluation to gain a deeper understanding into what systems can and cannot do. She also has two simpler suggestions. “Do not deploy technology whose actions you cannot reasonably foresee,” she says. And secondly: “Do not fully cede human control.” View the full article

Central bank likely to miss 2% goal more often in future due to ‘exceptionally high’ uncertaintyView the full article

Leaked Slack chats show Matt Mullenweg is considering pushing WordPress releases to late 2027 The post Mullenweg Considers Delaying WordPress Releases Through 2027 appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Tune into the SEO for Paws live stream conference. Engage with industry experts and support a charity supporting pets affected by the war in Kyiv. The post SEO For Paws Free Live Stream Conference Returns For 2025 appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

“Better catch up, Dad,” my daughter said as she and her brother skated into the night. We were at the start of the Rideau Canal Skateway, part of a United Nations World Heritage Site cutting through the heart of the Canadian capital. At 7.8 kilometers, or roughly 5 miles from end to end, the skateway is the world’s largest ice rink and one whose very existence is threatened by climate change. But on our recent visit, as the wind chill dropped to 3 degrees Fahrenheit, the ice was cold and fast. More than 1 million people skated on the Rideau Canal Skateway in Ottawa, Ontario, this winter. [Photo: Phil McKenna/Inside Climate News] The free public rink has attracted millions of tourists since the city began maintaining it as a skateway in 1971. In the early years, visitors could typically count on a skating season that lasted from late December through February or early March. Recently, however, the season has been shrinking. Two years ago, in the winter of 2022-23, the skateway didn’t open at all. This year, ice on the canal bounced back, with one of its longest seasons in recent memory. “The cold that we’ve had, it’s fantastic,” said Bruce Devine, the senior manager for facilities and programs for Canada’s National Capital Commission, which oversees the skateway. “We’re back to where we were three years ago.” This year’s season, which hosted more than 1.1 million skaters from January 11 until it officially closed on March 10, may be an anomaly. Winters in the Ottawa region will be five weeks shorter by 2050 if global greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, according to a report the NCC and the City of Ottawa commissioned in 2020. Perhaps even worse for the skateway: There would be 35% fewer “very cold” days, days below minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit). Water, of course, freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, but intense cold of 14 degrees or below is needed for significant ice formation. In 2022, the NCC launched a four-year study of the canal and its ice with researchers from Carleton University in Ottawa. Their aim is to figure out how to keep the skateway “open and thriving” as winters become more unpredictable. Much of the research focuses on getting a baseline understanding of the ice and how it varies across the canal. Researchers use ice augers to drill into it, measure its thickness and collect core samples to assess its quality. They also employ ground penetrating radar that they pull across the ice on a sled, a weather station that sits on top of the ice and sensors that are either suspended in the water column or embedded into the ice to collect a wealth of data on conditions across the skateway. “We’re then able to . . . use that information to model the predictions of ice growth based on current weather patterns or historical weather patterns,” said Shawn Kenny, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carleton University. The researchers are also looking at how they can create ideal conditions for ice to grow, especially early in the season when the days are shorter and the sun is lower on the horizon. “Slush canons,” similar to the snow cannons used by ski resorts, can help in the early stages of ice formation. The canons spray semi-frozen water onto the canal to help crystallize a thick layer of ice on the surface. Once an initial ice layer has formed, NCC staff use pumps to draw water from beneath the ice and discharge it on the surface. Though not a new approach, the technique speeds ice formation by exposing the water directly to cold air rather than through a layer of ice, which acts as insulation against the cold. Kenny and colleagues are also testing “snow bots,” lightweight, 3D-printed semiautonomous robots that can clear snow from the canal when the ice is still too thin for heavier snow-removal equipment to operate safely. If left uncleared, the snow that accumulates on the ice can further insulate the water beneath the ice and inhibit its growth. The 2022-23 season, when the canal failed to open, had 160% more snow than the average winter. All that additional snow impeded ice formation, Kenny said. Still, efforts the researchers are employing to enhance ice formation have their limits. “If it’s warm, you won’t grow ice,” Kenny said. A Provocative Idea for Rideau Canal’s Ice In April 2023, on the heels of the first winter in more than half a century that the skateway failed to open, a Canadian refrigeration expert floated a provocative idea. Why not use heat pumps to pull heat from the waters of the Rideau Canal and push it into surrounding buildings, creating a thermal network that would simultaneously cool the skateway while heating surrounding homes or federal office buildings? The idea was pitched in a blog post by Wayne Borrowman, the director of research and development for CIMCO Refrigeration, a Canadian company that claims to have built more than half of the world’s ice rinks. Typically, indoor ice rinks vent large volumes of waste heat in the form of steam as they circulate refrigerants to draw heat out of the concrete pads beneath the ice. Some 20 years ago, CIMCO started installing new refrigeration systems that use heat pumps—a system of heat exchangers, pumps, and compressors—to harvest the waste heat. The company then used it to provide space heating to locker rooms, concession areas, and other parts of the building. In 2019, the company deployed the concept at an outdoor ice rink in North Vancouver. Waste heat captured from the rink heats nearby buildings, the equivalent of 43 homes in all. The nearly 5-mile-long Rideau Canal Skateway cuts through the heart of Ottawa and is part of a United Nations World Heritage Site. [Photo: Phil McKenna/Inside Climate News] Borrowman estimated the Rideau Canal Skateway is about the size of 60 ice rinks. The canal could serve as a heat source for thousands of homes without the need to burn fossil fuels and would help cool the skateway as an added benefit, he said. A project of such scale “may sound crazy to some, but I’ve spent my whole career involved with the design and installation of large cooling systems and I can assure you from an engineering perspective it is possible,” he wrote in 2023. Neither CIMCO nor Borrowman have gone further with the proposal, something he recently described as a “thought experiment” driven in part by national pride. “This is something that in our Canadian capital is a world-class event,” he said. “Where else can you skate down a canal right in the middle of a city in wintertime?” Ice skating on canals was once a national pastime in the Netherlands, but in a warming world such activities are now largely a thing of the past. Elfstedentocht, a winter skating tour and race across the northern province of Friesland that used to draw thousands of participants hasn’t happened since 1997 due to a lack of ice. Kenny, of Carleton University, said the thermal network Borrowman proposed is theoretically possible. But the cost for such a system, including the installation of hundreds of miles of refrigeration pipes running along the bottom and potentially sides of the canal, would likely be prohibitively expensive. Similar cost concerns were raised about the skateway itself for more than half a century before its opening in 1971. Kenny also noted that the canal is popular for boating in the summertime, something that could make any refrigeration pipes along the bottom of the canal prone to damage from anchor strikes. Another option may be a more limited application of heat pumps for the most difficult to freeze sections of the skateway. Stormwater pipes that empty into the northernmost portion of the Rideau Canal dump water that is up to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 10 degrees warmer than the winter temperature of water in the canal. NCC has added pipes to divert the stormwater discharge further from the start of the skateway in recent years, but the area remains one of the last sections of the canal to freeze. “You could install mechanical equipment such as plate and frame heat exchangers and use heat pumps to bring down that temperature so that at least you don’t have that issue of preventing the ice formation of that specific region,” said Connor Dacquay, president of EcoFease, a company based in Canada that distributes software for managing thermal energy networks. Dacquay said such a system would be similar to the False Creek Neighbourhood Energy Utility in Vancouver that uses waste heat captured from sewage to provide space heating and hot water to nearby buildings. Dacquay said the system could potentially tie into an existing district energy system already operating in downtown Ottawa, which provides heating and cooling to federal buildings including Canada’s Parliament and Supreme Court. The system could also run in reverse in the summertime, drawing heat out of buildings to cool them, while discharging the waste heat into the canal, Dacquay said. Cole Van De Ven, an assistant professor in environmental engineering at Carleton University, said the intermittent flow rate of the stormwater runoff into the canal could make such a heat recovery system challenging from a financial standpoint. Federal and municipal permitting issues could also pose a challenge, Van De Ven said. Installing rain gardens that slow down and reduce stormwater runoff may be a less costly solution. Such an approach would have an added benefit of removing salt, which also impedes ice formation, from the stormwater, Van De Ven added. Skating Through Ottawa Visiting Ottawa during a late February cold snap, the thought of anything being too warm was hard to imagine. Despite redundant layers of insulation, including snow pants, jackets, hats, gloves, neck warmers, and thermal underwear, we still couldn’t keep out the cold. Initially, the frigid temperatures were manageable as a healthy tailwind and our own adrenaline propelled us south along the skateway. We glided beneath bridges, around bends, and past rest stops as kilometer markers on the side of the canal seemed to fly by. The canal itself, the entirety of which stretches 125 miles from Ottawa to Kingston, Ontario, opened in 1832 to provide an alternative trade route for ships in what was then the British colony of Upper Canada. Prior to the canal’s opening, British ships used the St. Lawrence River, which bordered New York state and was vulnerable to attack. Now, as U.S. President Donald Trump prepared to place tariffs on Canadian imports and mused about Canada becoming the 51st state, Canadians were again considering alternative trade routes—in the form of new oil and gas pipelines that would bypass the United States but would also fuel further warming. Food vendors, skate rental shops, and changing rooms are stationed along the canal. [Photo: Phil McKenna/Inside Climate News] Nearing the halfway point of the skateway, we stopped at a food truck parked on the ice. It sold a mix of Asian street food and poutine, a Canadian staple of French fries and melted cheese slathered in gravy. We ate quickly inside a heated changing room, determined to continue on our way. But by the time we got back outside, our bodies had cooled. “To be totally honest, my feet are getting kind of cold,” my son said, voicing what each of us knew to be true but didn’t want to admit. It was time to turn around and head back to our hotel, content to know that at least for now, on a canal in Ottawa, winter persists. —By Phil McKenna, Inside Climate News This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission. Sign up for its newsletter here. View the full article

For regretful Tesla owners who don’t want fellow motorists to mistake the vehicle they’re driving as a show of support for CEO Elon Musk, they can always try rebadging it. While sales of anti-Musk bumper stickers with messages like “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy” have surged since President Donald Trump’s election win last November, some Tesla owners are opting for a disguise instead. Looking for a visual way to distance themselves from Trump’s biggest campaign donor—who now leads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—some owners have pulled Tesla badges off their cars and replaced them with other automakers’ branding marks. Photos on social media show cars with the distinctive, streamlined Tesla silhouette carrying badges for Mazda, Honda, Audi, and Rivian. Others have opted to take the Tesla branding off and leave their vehicle blank. “Once every symbol that they put on there is gone, the whole thing becomes more clearly, I think, a statement,” Jordan Schwartz, a man who removed Tesla badges from his Model Y and from a friend’s car in the Seattle area, told KUOW. [Image: Tesla] How to remove your Tesla badge Tesla’s own service manual says to remove its badges, position a monofilament line, which can be used for fishing, under a corner of the badge and make a sawing motion to remove it; clean off any remaining residue with isopropyl alcohol wipes. Online, Tesla owners are sharing their own tips. Many recommend using a heat gun or hairdryer to pull the badges off more easily, and one commenter on a Reddit thread claimed he used dental floss. Finding replacement badges from other car brands can be as simple as searching on Amazon and eBay. While such disguises might not fool everyone, some Tesla owners see reason to take a symbol that’s become a political target off their vehicles. Since Musk’s taken a very public role in slashing government agencies, Tesla showrooms have become protest zones, and Tesla vehicles and charging stations have been vandalized. Tesla’s stock price has also suffered, with the carmaker losing more than half its value since December. Drivers don’t always notice details about the cars around them, but keep your eyes peeled. The Mazda 3 or Honda Civic you’re sitting behind in traffic might actually be a Tesla in disguise. View the full article

Most of us want to remain in our existing homes as we grow older. The practice of “aging in place” aligns with preferences for familiar places and routines and preserves our sense of independence. These preferences, though, raise questions about what support seniors want and need in their current homes. Japan has advanced the use of robotics specifically for this purpose, with mixed results. Despite these early results, the continued development of robotics and artificial intelligence to assist those aging in place seems obvious. What’s less obvious is how seniors foresee AI and robots living alongside them and what specifically they envision these things doing. To better understand how seniors want AIs and robots to help in their homes, we asked them. We recruited seniors from the MIT AgeLab’s research cohort—each around 70 years old and in the early stages of retirement—and then engaged in wide-ranging conversations about their aspirations and fears about these technologies. This framework distinguishes between digital and physical AIs and outlines the key ways they’re meant to help people in their homes. [Image: courtesy Teague] During these conversations, we explored various forms of both digital and physical AI—everything from digital assistants to handy robots—each with different capabilities and limitations. The result: Here are four types of AIs that could operate in the future lives of seniors at home, along with what present-day seniors think of them, and the key considerations we’ll need to account for when designing them. Advisor AI A digital presence that suggests solutions to problems, surfaces opportunities, and helps its person remember to do things. Examples: The AI helps verify the veracity of unfamiliar communications like scam phone calls; identifies activities of interest and assists in planning how to participate; offers timely reminders to take medications; and prompts calls to friends and family members on their birthdays. What seniors think: Thanks to established assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, seniors say they’re already familiar with this form of AI, both inside and outside their homes, and can easily anticipate its further evolution. Moving forward, though, seniors want more from the Advisor archetype. They want the Advisor to go beyond pragmatic help with reminders about daily life and grow into helping them with their social well-being. This will mean providing actionable support with emotional concerns, especially social isolation, by surfacing and facilitating a senior’s human connections. Butler Robot AI A physical presence that attends to its person by assisting with dynamic needs, such as deliveries, health, and home monitoring. Examples: The AI robot lifts a delivery from the porch to the foyer; assists in turning off the water at the source of a leak in the kitchen; and renders assistance—and summons help, if needed—in the event of a fall. What seniors think: Due to the confluence of connected personal devices like smartwatches and earbuds with connected home devices such as smart thermostats and automated lighting, seniors believe there are increasingly complex interactions between their bodies and their homes. So they see how an AI robot helping to manage these complexities could reduce their cognitive load. They also acknowledge, though, that this form of AI in the home is far from simple in its creation and requires a lot of features and expansive capabilities. Just like a human butler, here there’s a distinct possibility of robots just for rich people, which will require breakthroughs in manufacturability and new business models to avoid. Conductor AI A digital presence that operates connected systems of modules such as wheeled porters and object lifters. Examples: The AI responds to voice commands to transport meals from the kitchen to the living room with a wheeled porter; elevates an adjustable-height table adjacent to the dryer to ease folding clothes; and summons an autonomous vacuum to address a spill. What seniors think: This is a challenging archetype for seniors to conceptualize in their homes since it exists beyond any present-day solutions. Nonetheless, they’re compelled by the prospect of an overarching, digital administrator of a set of modular, task-driven devices. Perhaps because it’s the least familiar to them in terms of having existing corollaries, seniors are less confident in speculative interactions with this archetype because an AI with a lot of control must earn a lot of trust. At the same time, they see this form of AI as capable of adapting to their changing physical needs as they age simply through the addition of new connected devices. This will mean creating sets of modules that can be added and subtracted, potentially through subscription models. Valet Robot AI A physical presence that attends to its person by helping with everyday tasks, such as cleaning, dressing, and grooming. Examples: The AI robot replaces a light bulb in high-ceiling recessed lighting; helps a person put on their socks and pants; cleans everyday surfaces such as kitchen and bath countertops; and dusts bookshelves and framed prints. What seniors think: Seniors equate the possibilities of this form of AI in the home with early home robots such as iRobot’s Roomba vacuum. While the focus of this archetype is on “everyday” tasks that include common housecleaning (versus the “dynamic” tasks of the Butler Robot AI archetype), it also includes help with everyday personal tasks like dressing and grooming. Interestingly, here seniors have some concerns about this form of AI helping in ways that bring it into physical contact with their bodies. This will require forms of this AI that are aesthetically compatible with seniors for such personal interactions. View the full article

The Trump administration has repeatedly said it wants to deport as many people as possible. What that means for the estimated 8.3 million unauthorized immigrants in the American workforce is unclear. It is also unclear whether those mass deportations will happen. The deportations recorded so far aren’t on track to meet Trump’s goal. And the economic reality is that deporting huge numbers of immigrants could cause severe labor shortages. As many as 1 in 20 U.S. workers are unauthorized immigrants. If they all were forced to leave or were too scared to show up to work, it could harm the economy. In some cases, the labor rights of unauthorized workers could be another obstacle. I am a professor who has spent more than two decades researching immigrant labor organizing. In Scaling Migrant Worker Rights, a book I coauthored with sociologist Shannon Gleeson, we explained that unauthorized workers in the U.S. have labor rights and how those workers can defend them. While challenging, in some cases, labor laws have protected some unauthorized immigrants from deportation, at least temporarily. Legal protections Federal and state laws guarantee some basic protections for all workers, regardless of their immigration status. That includes the right to have a safe workplace and to earn the prevailing minimum wage where they’re employed, as well as overtime pay. Workers can report labor violations to the government, even if they are foreign-born and lack the legal authorization to work in the U.S. It’s illegal for employers to retaliate for labor organizing at the workplace or for reporting minimum wage or overtime violations, unsafe working conditions, sexual harassment, or racial discrimination. To be sure, ensuring that these rights are respected is hard for workers who fear deportation—especially during an extremely anti-immigrant administration like the one Trump leads. And unauthorized workers don’t have all the labor rights of citizens and permanent residents. For example, if an unauthorized worker is illegally fired for trying to form a union, they aren’t entitled to back pay or reinstatement as a citizen or an immigrant who has obtained the requisite authorization to work in the U.S. would be. This limitation essentially renders the right to organize a union meaningless for unauthorized immigrants if their employers retaliate. Obstacles and intimidation Enforcing immigrants’ rights is, of course, hard to do. Many immigrants don’t speak English well. They may distrust the government. They could have trouble affording a lawyer or finding one who will represent them for free when faced with a labor law violation. Labor standards enforcement for unauthorized workers relies heavily on worker complaints, placing the burden on victims to speak out and submit a claim when faced with a violation. But they find it difficult to navigate through many layers of bureaucracy to file complaints with the proper authorities. Many undocumented workers also face intimidation from their employers, who might threaten to report them to immigration authorities if they complain to the Labor Department about unfair treatment or unsafe working conditions. This fear of deportation keeps many vulnerable workers silent about their exploitation. With only 650 investigators on staff at the Department of Labor in charge of enforcing minimum wage, overtime, and child labor laws—as of late 2024—enforcement is mostly reactive. Only 1% of all farm employers were investigated annually, even before the second Trump administration began. Those numbers could climb if the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, were to resume the large-scale enforcement raids the Biden administration halted in 2021. Previously, ICE had visited meatpacking plants and other employers from Texas to Tennessee that rely heavily on immigrant labor, in order to verify employment authorization documents. The authorities detain workers without valid papers, possibly deporting them. Their employers may face criminal fines and penalties and be ordered to stop hiring unauthorized immigrant workers. By early March 2025, the second Trump administration has not raided any large businesses. Instead, it has emphasized traffic stops and visits to small employers in communities with large numbers of unauthorized immigrants. But many big employers and communities are bracing for a wave of those operations. Wage theft and contributions to fund benefits they can’t get Working conditions for immigrants without authorization were already difficult before Trump took office for a second time. Partly due to fear that their employers will report them to federal immigration enforcement authorities if they speak up, many of them experience wage theft, meaning that they don’t get all of their pay and benefits, or their compensation falls below the minimum wage where they reside. Despite their typically low earnings, immigrants living without authorization who are employed in the U.S. pay more than $96 billion in federal, state, and local taxes per year. They also contribute to the Social Security system even though they can’t access these benefits when they retire, which the Internal Revenue Service requires of employers. Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement program Yet, over the years, many undocumented workers have come forward to defend their labor rights with the support of worker centers, labor unions, migrant-led organizations, and consulates from their countries of origin. Decades of increasingly visible grassroots advocacy for immigrant workers without authorization paid off in January 2023, when the Department of Homeland Security launched the Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement program. Known as DALE, it protects immigrant workers from exploitation and encourage reporting labor violations without fear of immigration consequences. This government program provides temporary deportation protections and work permits to eligible workers, with more than 7,700 work permits issued by October of 2024. The DALE program has encouraged many workers to come forward and report labor violations without fear of retaliation for speaking up, thus increasing minimum labor protections for all workers at thousands of workplaces. DALE’s fate, however, is unclear now with Trump back in the White House. Xóchitl Bada is a professor of Latin American and Latino studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

Scores of wildfires broke out across North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia in early March 2025 as strong winds, abnormally dry conditions and low humidity combined to kindle and spread the flames. The fires followed a year of weather whiplash in the Carolinas, from a flash drought over the summer to extreme hurricane flooding in September, and then back to drought again. Storms on March 5, 2025, helped douse many of the fires still burning, but the Southeast fire season is only beginning. Wake Forest University wildfire experts Lauren Lowman and Nick Corak put the fires and the region’s dry winter into context. Why did the Carolinas see so many wildfires? Most of North and South Carolina have been abnormally dry or in moderate drought since at least November 2024. Consistently dry conditions through the winter dried out vegetation, leaving fuel for wildfires. When the land and vegetation is this dry, all it takes is a lightning strike or a man-made fire and wind gusts to start a wildfire. Hurricanes did flood the region in late summer 2024, but before that, the Carolinas were experiencing a flash drought. Flash droughts are extreme droughts that develop rapidly due to lack of precipitation and dry conditions in the atmosphere. When the atmosphere is dry, it pulls water from the vegetation and soils, causing the surface to dry out. In August and September, Tropical Storm Debby and Hurricane Helene caused extensive flooding in the two states, but the Carolinas received little rainfall in the months that followed, leaving winter 2025 abnormally dry again. How unusual are fires like this in the region? Fires are historically fairly common in the Carolinas. They’re a natural part of the landscape, and many ecosystems have evolved to depend on them. Carnivorous plants such as Venus flytraps and pitcher plants rely on frequent fire activity to remove shrubs and other plants that would grow over them and block the light. Even some wildlife depend on fire for their habitats and for food from the mix of native plants that regrow after a fire. The expected return periods for wildfires (how often fires have historically burned in a region) range from 1 to 10 years for the Piedmont and Coastal Plains in the east and 10 to 40 years in the Appalachian Mountains. However, many unplanned fires today are put out. That means underbrush that would normally burn every decade or so can build up over time, fueling more intense fires when it does burn. To avoid that overgrowth, land managers conduct annual prescribed fires to try to mimic that natural fire activity in a controlled way. These controlled burns are critical for removing vegetation that otherwise could provide additional fuel for more intense and damaging wildfires. Is dryness like this becoming more common? Extreme weather events are becoming more common across the U.S., including in the Southeast and the Carolinas. Increasing temperatures mean the atmosphere can hold more moisture, amplifying how much water it can draw from the land surface and eventually drop in heavier storms. That can lead to more extreme storms and longer dry periods. In humid regions like the Southeast, where there is an abundance of dense vegetation, periods of warm, dry conditions that dry out that vegetation will increase the risk of wildfire. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the southeastern U.S. experienced more droughts than other regions in the country in the first two decades of the 21st century. The weather variability also makes it harder to clear out forest undergrowth. Prescribed burns require that vegetation be dry enough to burn but also that winds are calm enough to allow firefighters to manage the flames. Studies show those conditions are likely to become less common in the Southeast in a warming world. Without that tool to reduce fuel, the risk of intense wildfires rises. Lauren Lowman is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Wake Forest University. Nick Corak is a PhD candidate in physics at Wake Forest University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

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