U.S. consulting firm Greylock McKinnon Associates (GMA) disclosed a data breach in which hackers stole as many as 341,650 Social Security numbers.
The data breach was disclosed on Friday on Maine’s government website, where the state posts data breach notifications.
In its data breach notice sent by mail to affected victims, GMA said it was hit by an unspecified cyberattack in May 2023 and “promptly took steps to mitigate the incident.”
Aruba has long been a special place for Stacy Argondizzo. For years, her family has vacationed on the tiny Caribbean Island every July. More recently it’s been more than just a place to take a break from her work as a digital archivist—becoming wholly a part of that work.
A project Argondizzo galvanized comes to full fruition this week. The Internet Archive is now home to the Aruba Collection, which hosts digitized versions of Aruba’s National Library, National Archives, and other institutions including an archaeology museum and the University of Aruba. The collection comprises 101,376 items so far—roughly one for each person who lives on the Island—including 40,000 documents, 60,000 images, and seven 3D objects.
Amid news of Tesla’s first year-over-year sales decline since 2020, the electric car company is setting the scene for a unique product launch.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on X that the company will unveil its first robotaxi on August 8. However, the unveiling date does not mean that’s when deliveries will begin — the first deliveries of another Tesla product, the Cybertruck, arrived years after its unveiling.
Tesla’s first autonomous taxi will join a market that already features offerings from competitors such as Waymo, an independent company that started as Google’s self-driving car project, and Cruise, General Motors’ company.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority says it wants the organizers of New York City’s marathon to pay $750,000 a year, citing the steep loss of bridge toll revenues for closing the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the Staten Island-Brooklyn connection that has served as the starting point for the race for decades.
“New Yorkers love Marathon Sunday, but taxpayers cannot be expected to subsidize a wealthy non-government organization like the New York Road Runners to the tune of $750,000,” MTA Bridges and Tunnels President Catherine Sheridan said in a statement. “The MTA is prepared to continue working towards a final agreement with the NYRR, provided it leads, over time, to full reimbursement for the lost revenue.”
With about 50,000 runners expected to participate in the marathon on the first Sunday in November, the $750,000 the MTA demands works out to $15 per runner. The Verrazano E-ZPass toll is $7.
The solar eclipse on April 8 will bring eerie darkness to a long swath of the United States, Canada and Mexico during totality — the few moments when the moon covers the sun’s face completely, thereby blocking its light.
Totality is a completely different experience from 99% eclipse coverage. First and foremost, totality is the only safe time to look directly at the sun without solar eclipse glasses or other certified eye protection. But viewers within the path of totality will also have the chance to view a host of unique eclipse phenomena.
Only during totality do the skies turn twilight-dark, and only during totality is the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, visible as wispy projections of light emanating from behind the moon. Being inside the path of totality is also the only way to see eclipse features such as Baily’s beads, which are the last rays of light sneaking past the mountains on the moon.
Egg prices are at near-historic highs in many parts of the world as the spring holidays approach, reflecting a market scrambled by disease, high demand, and growing costs for farmers.
It’s the second year in a row consumers have faced sticker shock ahead of Easter and Passover, both occasions in which eggs play prominent roles.
While global prices are lower than they were at this time last year, they remain elevated, said Nan-Dirk Mulder, a senior global specialist with Dutch financial firm RaboBank’s RaboResearch Food and Agribusiness division. Mulder doesn’t expect them to return to 2021 levels.
Minnesota officially just had its warmest winter on record. Some residents probably enjoyed the break from shoveling snow, but many Midwesterners found it ominous to comfortably jog outdoors in late January. It could turn out to be a fluke—just a particularly strong El Niño—or it could be a harbinger of things to come, particularly after the hottest global summer on record. Either way, a professor at MIT wants more people to start thinking about climate change in terms of how it will radically alter seasonality as we know it.
Young people are shunning plumbing as a career option. The number of plumbers retiring is outweighing the number of new plumbers. Research commissioned by bathroom fittings manufacturers, Lixil Americas, shows that the shortage of plumbers in the United States cost the economy around $33 billion in 2022. The report estimates that by 2027, the nation will be short of around 550,000 plumbers.
Enrollment at trade schools has fallen. The apprenticeship rate for young people wanting to be trained in skilled trade work like plumbing dropped by 49% in 2022 compared to 2020, according to data from the recruitment platform Handshake.
Plumbing shortages across the United States is having negative consequences on households and the economy, including driving up costs for plumbing services. Not being able to call on a professional plumber can also have negative implications on businesses, such as their ability to expand into new buildings. The shortfall of plumbers can also delay flood recovery efforts and building upgrades so that water systems are more efficient.
The US central bank has left its key interest rate unchanged again, while it looks for more evidence that inflation is coming under control.
The decision kept the target range for the Federal Reserve’s influential rate in the range of 5.25%-5.5%, the highest in more than two decades.
The Fed is debating whether higher borrowing costs have done enough to ease the pressures pushing up prices.
Officials said they still expected to cut rates by the end of the year.
But after raising borrowing costs aggressively in response to soaring prices in 2022, the bank is proceeding cautiously.
An appeals court has kept a freeze in place on a Texas immigration law, one of the toughest of its kind, in a case being closely watched across the US.
The legislation would allow officials in Texas to detain and prosecute anyone they think has entered the country illegally, superseding federal powers.
The law briefly came into force on Tuesday for a few hours during a legal back and forth between courts.
A US appeals court heard arguments in the case on Wednesday morning.
The three-judge panel appeared split on whether the law can remain in place while its constitutionality is being challenged in court.
They issued no ruling on the case on Wednesday, and it is unclear when they will do so.
Dispatches From The Front 