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Summer 2023

The rise of AI has brought an avalanche of new terms and slang. Here is a glossary with definitions of some of the most important words and phrases you might encounter.

The mainstream media treated President Donald Trump’s extremely narrow win in 2024 as if it were a landslide victory. While it was surprising that so many people voted for Trump after his disastrous first term, it wasn’t like had been given a massive mandate from the public. But soon after Trump’s victory, the press—which already spent years normalizing Trump’s racist and corrupt…

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The No on Z campaign mailed fliers to Santa Cruz voters, sent people door to door and blanketed social media and TV with advertisements ahead of the Nov. 5, 2024 election. (Photo collage by Jesse Kathan)

SANTA CRUZ >> The City of Santa Cruz has prevailed in a lawsuit that challenged its voter-approved sugary beverage tax after a Sacramento Superior Court judge denied a petition from the California Grocers Association, the American Beverage Association and other industry groups.

City voters approved Measure Z in November 2024 with more than 52% of the vote, in defiance of a state law that sought to ban local authorities from implementing soda taxes. At the time of the election, city leaders said a lawsuit was all but guaranteed if voters approved the tax — and were willing to take on the fight.

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Beverage corporations including Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Red Bull poured in more than $1 million dollars to oppose Measure Z and sent campaign mailers warning voters that if it was adopted it would lead to costly litigation from city coffers.

The judge’s ruling asserted that the state law, The Keep Groceries Affordable Act of 2018, does not prevent local municipalities like Santa Cruz from adopting a soda tax because the issue is not a statewide concern, the litmus test for when state law can override local charters. 

In a press release sent to media June 30, Santa Cruz Vice Mayor Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson wrote that “the court’s ruling sends a clear message: local democracy can withstand even the deepest-pocketed opposition.”

The release stated that an appeal is expected. Once the court officially files the judge’s decision, the plaintiffs will have 60 days to file an appeal.

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The post Appeal expected after judge rules in city’s favor in soda tax lawsuit appeared first on Santa Cruz Local.

In a letter to the editor, the CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank Santa Cruz County welcomes Independence Day and notes her organization’s role in nourishing the American Dream.

The 250th birthday of the United States is upon us, and the milestone year happens to be falling in the midst of a presidential administration that has made the concept of patriotism … tattered. President Donald Trump and his underlings have carried out, implied, or outright said some things that question just how patriotic their “Make America Great Again” movement really is.

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Consider supporting my work so I can continue creating it: Substack: https://nickanderson.substack.com/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/editorialcartoons Ko-Fi: https://www.patreon.com/c/editorialcartoonsCartoon Related | Trump deflects from Reflecting Pool failure by arresting ‘vandals’…

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We’ve compiled an overview of some of the top alternative browsers available today aiming to challenge Chrome and Safari.

The $149 Dune keyboard can be a meeting controller at least and a script-executing keypad at best.

DeSantis administration still controls immigration detention center site. By Liv Caputo for Florida Phoenix A Miccosukee Tribe member wants her nation to be the new protector of the so-called ”Alligator Alcatraz” site, calling Friday on Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to give it the territory to conserve. But there’s a problem. The DeSantis administration…

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OBITUARY South African-born pioneer of the British tech industry David Potter, the man behind the iconic Psion pocket computers, passed away on 28th June, six days before his 83rd birthday. Potter was the founder of the company of the same name, a pivotal firm in the British technology industry from the 1980s to the 2000s. Psion supplied software for the early computers from Sinclair Research, the ZX80 and the ZX81, including a Flight Simulator that you can play online. In 1982, Psion supplied the bundled software with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and the later, the XChange suite for the Sinclair QL, later available for DOS under the name PC-Four – a deal The Register reported in detail for the QL’s 30th anniversary. In 2016, Potter was interviewed by the Archives of IT, which you can watch online: There’s also a corrected transcript [PDF], plus some edited highlights of the interview. A bold 1983 advertisement claimed: “The best software on earth comes from Psion.” However, Potter realized early on that the instability of the rapidly moving home computer market posed a problem for the company, as he explained in a 1991 interview in Personal Computer World: “What’s the longevity of this market, what’s the utility of these products, where’s it going to? And the more we asked these questions the fewer answers we could get. And we came to the conclusion that these products were of tremendous educational value, a lot of fun, but there was no real long-term utility and the market was not long term because of that. So we decided to diversify and put a lot of our development resources into two very new areas for us. One was applications software. The second area was quite a new, radical concept of a handheld computer”. This led it to create the first of the multiple ranges of pioneering hand-held pocket computers for which it is better remembered today. In 1984, Psion launched the Organizer range, and in 1986, its successor the Organizer II, which came with two slots for what were arguably the computer industry’s first replaceable SSDs. In 1989, Psion introduced all-solid-state MC laptops. Although unsuccessful, the MC’s hardware was miniaturized to create the pocket-sized Psion Series 3 in 1991, and Psion’s bespoke GUI OS became EPOC16. The machines sold in the millions, which in turn led to the Psion 5 and netBook. The Register’s magisterial history of the development of the Series 5, Psion: the last computer, covers this evolution in depth. For the Series 5, Psion designed and implemented EPOC32, a realtime-capable 32-bit Arm OS in C++. Later, EPOC32 was renamed Symbian and powered the first wave of smartphones, as The Reg covered in depth in 2010 in a two-part history: Symbian, The Secret History: Dark Star, followed by Symbian’s Secret History: The battle for the company’s soul. The Reg has reported on Potter too many times to link. We first quoted him in 1998, and most recently in 2017 when he invested in Planet Computers, becoming Honorary chairman of the company. Planet produced the Gemini pocket computer whose keyboard was licensed from Psion. In 2000, Potter sold £12.6 million worth of Psion shares, only to see them quadruple in value within months. In an interview with Management Today, he said he had a knack for badly timed share deals: “It’s always the case. I always joke that the best buying signal for Psion shares is when I sell. If you look back over the years there is a correlation between my selling and the price going up.” Reg readers would have already had an inkling: the year before, he had told us that he thought Amazon might flop, but that he was bullish about Psion’s future. By 2004, Psion sold its stake in Symbian to Nokia. Some shareholders were unhappy, but he told them Linux was a growing threat. (He certainly got that right.) Subsequently, Microsoft bought Nokia’s phone unit – then killed it as a tax write-off. Its outstanding and unique OS is FOSS now. Dr David Edwin Potter was born in East London on July 4, 1943 – but not the East London that Psion enthusiasts might expect: the East London in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. His father died when he was young, and as his mother had to work, he and his sister were raised by their grandmother. By the time Potter was 10, their mother remarried, and the family moved to what is now Zimbabwe. After a year (two terms) at the University of Cape Town, at 18, Potter went to Cambridge University thanks to a Beit scholarship. There he studied the Natural Sciences Tripos, followed by a PhD in Mathematical Physics at Imperial College. In 1969, he married a fellow South African, journalist Dr Elaine Goldberg [PDF]. He stayed on at Imperial, and from 1970 taught applied physics. This led him towards develop software to model non-linear phenomena on the university’s early mainframes: “I began to use these behemoths, these ludicrous machines, which didn’t remotely have the power of Psion Revo, for example. And they cost millions of pounds. I became something of an expert in them and designed substantial software systems.” This led to his interest in the then-new microprocessors: “If there are opportunities in the world you need to grasp them. I was fortunate enough to be in an area that was really going to change the world in a huge way.” In 1974, he and Elaine moved to Los Angeles, where he became an Assistant Professor at UCLA. From there, they watched the British economy go into a massive decline. He told the Archives of IT: “I saw this happening from afar, and thought, this is mad… So somebody said recently, you know, when there’s a sale on, it’s quite a good idea to buy things. So I had savings of about £3,000, and I wrote to my bank manager and I said, ‘Please invest them in the following six companies,’ which I didn’t know very much about – but I knew about Racal Electronics, about GEC, Arnie Weinstock’s great company. And anyway, four others. And, then I forgot about them, went on with my academic business. In 1975, with Elaine expecting their first child, they came back. “When I returned to Britain everything had more than doubled, and of course there was the beginning of the recovery in 1975. So, that taught me a little bit about, if you research things enough, and I was capable of research, maybe there were opportunities.” Emboldened, he moved to his next investment effort: “We had our first child in 1975. And, just to have a break I went skiing – on a packet tour down to Austria I think, and I had a very pleasant four or five days. I came back on a newish aeroplane carrying people – I used to go by train. And I looked around as we were flying back, and I thought to myself, all these Brits have been skiing, and sleeping under duvets. And so, clearly they’re going to come home, they’re going to throw away their blankets and buy duvets… So I researched whether there was a duvet supplying company in Britain, and I found one… The company was called E Fogarty.” E Forgarty & Co was a major employer in Boston, Lincolnshire, but after a hot summer, went under in 2018. “I researched it and found it had just built a new factory, and then I had the chutzpah to go and interview the chairman. I told him I was a potential investor but not how little I was planning to invest. Then I sat in the pubs outside the factory in the evening and chatted to the workers about overtime etc, and got a complete picture of what was going on. I could see the opportunity and put 40 per cent of my capital into Fogarty. The price tripled in 18 months. That was how I got my education in business and company matters, and some of the capital to start Psion.” In 1980, he bought an off-the-shelf company called Red Cheer and renamed it. He wanted to call it “Potter Scientific Instruments”, whose initials spell the Greek letter PSI (Ψ). However, the acronym was already taken, so he added “Or Nothing” to yield the name PSION. Potter was awarded [PDF] the Mountbatten Medal by the Institution of Engineering and Technology in 1994. In the 1996 New Year Honours, he was awarded a CBE – Commander of the Order of the British Empire – for “services to the manufacturing industry.” He served on the Dearing Committee for its 1997 report on Higher Education. In 2001, he became a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and that year was also a notable Labour Party donor. He also held multiple honorary doctorates. In 2009, Potter retired from the company he founded. His other efforts have included with the charity the couple started, The David and Elaine Potter Foundation. One aspect of his activities we did not know about – apart from being a duvet entrepeneur – was that he not only contributed to the openDemocracy organization, but that in 2013, he saved it from bankruptcy. OpenDemocracy published an obituary for him before any tech industry outlet: Remembering David Potter: Industrialist, physicist, philanthropist. The Register received plaudits from a number of ex-Psion people. “Psion was a company that had a tremendous and friendly culture. It was a joy to build new technology products that were at the forefront of innovation. “All Psion handhelds included their own software, apps and operating system developed in-house from the ground up. This is extremely unusual. The devices also usually included custom silicon to improve power efficiency and performance. The teams developing these products knew they were at the leading edge, and this attracted the best talent which stayed because of the highly collaborative and friendly culture.” – Ian Fogg “At the peak of his powers, David Potter was the man who kept Microsoft’s Bill Gates awake at night. “Psion started in a small office above an estate agent in Maida Vale and grew rapidly into a FTSE-100 company. “On a personal level, David was a deep thinker, a good listener, and a genius. It was a pleasure simply to be in his orbit and he inspired a generation of leaders who are still at the top of their game.” — Anthony Garvey ® Bootnote In February this year, East London was officially renamed KuGompo City.

Five years after launching an ambitious mental health program, many schools have struggled to get it up and running. Hundreds more have yet to try. By Christine Mai-Duc for KFF When Taletha Washburn and the staff at Plumas Charter School first heard that California wanted to help schools treat more kids struggling with mental health, it felt like a well-timed remedy for a rural…

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A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | JD Vance reveals baby-making secrets—and it’s as gross as it sounds…

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The Chevy Silverado EV is a solid first draft of an EV pickup truck. Here's what could make it better.

Amazon says it is preparing to roll out satellite broadband this year after the latest rocket launch brought its Leo constellation up to 396 units. The digital bazaar and cloud computing giant reports that an Atlas V rocket launch on July 2 successfully propelled 29 satellites into low Earth orbit for the Amazon Leo network, formerly known as Project Kuiper until November last. Amazon hasn't finished flinging its hardware into orbit just yet, but said it is planning to begin providing an actual service through the network sometime this year. “With hundreds of flight-ready satellites standing by at the Cape and a new, dedicated vertical integration facility ready to support Leo Vulcan 1 and subsequent missions, we have a clear path to increase launch and deployment cadence, helping us quickly expand network coverage following an initial service rollout later this year," said director of Launch Systems Melissa Wuerl. Amazon Leo was originally conceived as a broadband-from-space setup, just like its main rival, Starlink. According to the Bezos-founded biz, it will offer download speeds ranging from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps, depending on which of three antenna options customers choose. But in April this year, Amazon agreed to pay more than $11.5 billion to acquire Globalstar and its constellation of 24 satellites. Globalstar provides the satellite network used for Apple's satellite services, introduced with the iPhone 14 in 2022, which would give Amazon a foothold in direct-to-device satellite communications as well. With 396 satellites in low Earth orbit, Amazon has far fewer than Starlink, which boasts about 10,400 in operation at the moment. The firm has plans to loft more than 7,700 of its own eventually, but currently has a licence from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a cluster of 3,232. The terms of that licence required Amazon to have 50 percent of its planned constellation in orbit by July 30, 2026 – a deadline it is clearly going to miss. The company sought an extension in January, and this was granted last month, but with strings attached. Whether Amazon will be able to compete against Starlink, which has a significant head start, depends on a number of factors, such as the quality of service on offer. Its top-tier offering of 1 Gbps has a higher advertised maximum download speed than Starlink's current residential tiers, although real-world performance has yet to be established. Amazon has also yet to disclose what price tag its service will carry. Starlink's US residential plans cost up to $130 a month, with equipment charges varying by plan and location. UK telecoms regulator Ofcom granted Amazon Leo a license to beam its broadband down to Brit consumers over a year ago. ®

President Donald Trump has trundled his way—in pathetic fits and starts—through a caricature of America, one with his own extremely limited personal soundtrack. It’s filled with Lee Greenwood, Italian classics from the weird conservative guy who wrecks opera songs, and Kash Patel’s girlfriend bellowing a pitchy “Star-Spangled Banner.” But what about the real soundtrack of America?

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AdaptHealth says attackers used social engineering to breach its systems and steal sensitive patient data, including passwords associated with insurance billing. The medical equipment company disclosed the attack to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday, noting that attackers accessed internal patient management systems, document storage platforms, and external electronic health record system portals. The attack targeted an unwitting third-party contractor, through which the cybercriminals gained entry to the company's cloud environment, where they accessed business applications holding sensitive data. AdaptHealth activated its incident response protocols soon after the attacker contacted the company on June 15 and disclosed the theft. It did not specify whether an extortion demand was made, nor whether one was paid, and no cybercrime group had claimed responsibility at the time of writing. The company's response included disabling the contractor's user account, resetting credentials, and implementing additional access controls. It believes the attack is now contained. In addition to the "password file associated with insurance billing," AdaptHealth confirmed that personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information of certain patients were also stolen. Social Security numbers and payment details are not thought to be affected. On June 27, AdaptHealth determined that "due to the nature and potential volume of the data that is at risk," the attack can be considered material, requiring disclosure to the SEC. The company did not comment on the exact scale of the attack or the related data theft, but said investigations continue to determine the scope of the breach. It also said it "has since taken steps intended to mitigate the risk of dissemination of the exfiltrated data." The Register asked AdaptHealth for more information, including whether it received any extortion demands and what steps it took to reduce the risk of the stolen data being distributed or misused. Pennsylvania-based AdaptHealth provides home medical equipment and related services for patients with chronic and serious conditions. Founded in 2012, it specializes in respiratory, sleep, and diabetes therapies. According to a 2024 annual report, it serves more than 4.2 million patients across all 50 US states. ®

For our special print issue on the country’s 250th anniversary, we asked about 100 historians and other public intellectuals to make some lists for us that summarize the nation’s high and low points: our best and worst presidents; the images that most sharply define American history; the greatest works of art; and more. The results are fun, fascinating, and give a real and true sense of the sweep of our history.

Now it’s your turn! Take this reader survey and tell us what you think the right answers are—and see where yours stack up compared to our experts and to other readers. — Editor Michael Tomasky

History—in this case, through the pen of Thomas Boswell—does not record for us the context in which Samuel Johnson offered up the famous quote that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” According to samueljohnson.com, the English intellectual and polymath just blurted it out on the evening of April 7, 1775, providing no context or explanation of what was on his mind. Some biographers apparently believe he was thinking of William Pitt the Elder, and the former prime minister’s frequent invocation of the term.

We do, however, have more thoughts on the matter from Johnson that have survived. The year before, Johnson—something of a mixed bag, politically, but an ardent foe of slavery long before abolitionism became a movement in Great Britain—wrote and delivered to Parliament a speech he called “The Patriot.” It was election time, and Johnson was laying out for the assembled some of his ideas about the duties of public service, and what patriotism does, and does not, mean.

Herewith, just a few choice quotes:

“To instigate the populace with rage beyond the provocation, is to suspend publick happiness, if not to destroy it. He is no lover of his country, that unnecessarily disturbs its peace.”

“Still less does the true patriot circulate opinions which he knows to be false. No man, who loves his country, fills the nation with clamorous complaints, that the protestant religion is in danger, because ‘popery is established in the extensive province of Quebec,’ a falsehood so open and shameless, that it can need no confutation among those who know that of which it is almost impossible for the most unenlightened zealot to be ignorant.”

Finally, in his closing peroration, Johnson urged the next House of Commons to “unite in a general abhorrence of those, who, by deceiving the credulous with fictitious mischiefs, overbearing the weak by audacity of falsehood, by appealing to the judgment of ignorance, and flattering the vanity of meanness … arrogate to themselves the name of patriots.”

As we watch (or avoid watching) Donald Trump trying to turn the celebration of the United States’s 250th birthday into a celebration of Donald Trump, we would do well to remember Dr. Johnson’s thoughts. In wondering what he might think of the president’s ideas and actions this week, there is very little mystery. Let’s review a couple of those actions, as reported by Politico Playbook Friday morning:

• You saw that ridiculous video of Trump “talking” with the AI Teddy Roosevelt? Well, this was meant to be part of a “living museum recreating Theodore Roosevelt’s frontier experience,” as envisioned in a “planning document” from America250, a bipartisan, congressionally chartered, decade-old plan to launch various commemorations. “It hoped to draw 250,000 visitors for a nationally televised celebration on July 1 featuring A-list performers, immersive historical programming, a drone spectacular and, ultimately, the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library’s grand opening.” Instead, it launched with a visit from Trump.
• The Smithsonian Folklife Festival, a decades-old Washington summer fixture that always takes place on the National Mall, was given the boot this year and forced inside the Smithsonian Castle to make way for Trump’s Great American State Fair, which has been drawing fewer attendees than a lot of Little League games.
• Finally, it almost goes without saying that the Trump administration stiffed America250, according to Politico. Congress appropriated $150 million to the project, but organizers have received just $25 million to date. Democrats also alleged this week that some America250 donors were tricked into donating to Trump’s personal semiquincentennial organization, Freedom 250, which is responsible for the UFC fight at the White House and the ongoing fair. (Naturally, Freedom 250 is not subject to congressional oversight, and it can keep its donors private.)

But these, of course, are minor matters that will pass. The real hallmarks of Trump’s false patriotism are the things that make his tenure such a horrific embarrassment and civic tragedy to so many millions of Americans. The constant lies meant to glorify him and his reign. The toxic hatred of so many of the people he was elected to serve. The petty and immoral pursuit of his political enemies. The operatic and open corruption.

These are venal acts. But as July 4 approaches, it behooves us to remember specifically that they are unpatriotic. Or worse: They are aggressively anti-patriotic. Real patriotism is truthful and humble; it tolerates and even welcomes dissent, and, understanding that the people rule in a democracy, it serves supporters and detractors equally; it seeks justice rather than revenge; and it understands that to seek profit from office is abhorrent.

That’s Trump. A treacherous, know-nothing anti-patriot. The image that sticks with me, the photo that made me both roll my eyes and gasp in horror when I first saw it, was the one of Trump kissing an American flag. What a grotesque act of civil idolatry; in fact, let’s throw “idolatrous” in there too. And if you don’t understand why kissing a flag is an act of grotesque civic idolatry, then you, my friend, are part of the problem.

Let’s close with a few more thoughts on patriotism from some people who actually knew it means:

George Washington: “Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”

G.K. Chesterton: “‘My country, right or wrong’ is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’”

Albert Einstein: “Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism—how passionately I hate them!”

And maybe my favorite, from Clarence Darrow: “True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.”

There is still much to celebrate about the United States of America—its art and literature and music, its scientific achievements, its physical beauty, and of course the principles of liberty it introduced to the world 250 years ago and toward which we daily and yearly strive. The anti-patriots do have the upper hand right now, but more and more people are seeing through them. In addition, they are also making real, Johnson- and Darrow-esque patriots of millions who were once disengaged. That is something to be hopeful about, and to celebrate, this weekend.

US startup Ampera has produced what it claims is the first 3D-printed nuclear reactor module. The firm says it is working towards delivering scalable, emission-free power for datacenters, defense applications, and off-grid sites. Ampera unveiled its first nuclear reactor module during an event at the firm's innovation center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. More than 100 people attended, including local officials, business leaders and employees. Founder and CEO Brian Matthews revealed the prototype microreactor, which features a fully 3D-printed silicon carbide reactor core and pressure vessel. "This next-generation nuclear core and pressure vessel sets the foundation for factory-built, mass-produced nuclear energy," Matthews said. "The advanced technology and additive manufacturing used demonstrate a clear commercial path for new nuclear technology coming to market in an accelerated manner." His company is developing a subcritical, solid-state, factory-built thorium-based nuclear reactor. Subcritical means the fuel cannot sustain a nuclear chain reaction on its own, which prevents a runaway power excursion. Ampera uses "solid-state" to describe a design with solid rather than liquid fuel. The proposed fuel uses tristructural isotropic, or TRISO, particles, consisting of a fuel kernel containing thorium, surrounded by multiple ceramic and carbon layers. Thorium-232 is not fissile. After absorbing a neutron, it ultimately decays through thorium-233 and protactinium-233 into fissile uranium-233. This requires a separate source of neutrons, and Ampera says its design features a proprietary neutron driver to provide a stable external neutron source to start and sustain operation. In June, Ampera announced it had established an Australian subsidiary to secure thorium supplies, and said it plans to produce the fuel kernels itself. "Thorium is the future for ultra-safe, clean power production," Matthews said at the time. "By producing TRISO thorium kernels in the United States, we can ensure ample access to the needed fuel supply as we scale up and also minimize price volatility risk." Ampera also describes the heart of the reactor as as a spherical monolithic gyroid core. A gyroid, as far as we can fathom, is a complex shape that provides a massive surface area relative to its volume, making it well-suited for heat transfer. Its complexity makes it difficult to produce using conventional manufacturing methods, which is where additive manufacturing comes in. The core is 3D-printed using silicon carbide and designed to operate for up to 30 years without refueling, the firm claims. Ampera says its planned systems will provide 15 or 30 MWe, depending on the configuration, enough to supply a typical datacenter. Larger configurations are planned. Matthews said that his company expects to be the first to industrialize factory-built nuclear power with near-term deployment timelines. When The Register asked about availability, their spokesperson said: "We expect the power generation portion of the system to be available as early as 2027, with the nuclear module being available to customers about 2030 based on regulatory approval." We also asked how neutrons are generated for startup and operation of the reactor module by the Neutron Driver, but Ampera is keeping this under its hat for now. As well as datacenters, defense customers will be likely takers if Ampera can produce reliable working reactors. Earlier this year, the US Department of the Air Force (DAF) announced it was looking into microreactors for three of its sites, part of a program aimed at improving energy resilience during grid outages. ®