EPA gas car crackdown: Is Biden’s America ready for this many EVs? | Fast Company

The Environmental Protection Agency’s new car-pollution rules, proposed on Wednesday, represent one of President Biden’s most aggressive policies to tackle climate change to date. If enacted, the tailpipe standards would have the effect of making U.S. emissions standards so strict over the next decade that electric vehicle sales would climb radically—from 5.8% of vehicles sold last year, to an estimate of 64% to 67% by 2032. At a press conference Wednesday, EPA Administrator Michael Regan called the regulations “the strongest-ever federal pollution standards for cars and trucks.”

Ultimately, the Biden administration claims it could cut car exhaust in half. The proposed regulations are the latest in a yearslong push to make America’s car industry greener. Early in his presidency, Biden declared: “The future of the auto industry is electric. There’s no turning back.” The EPA’s proposed rule change is evidence that the administration is sticking with that—but transforming America into a country where there are no gas engines in two-thirds of all new cars sold will be a bumpy ride, which requires addressing several challenges of EVs.

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Intuit QuickBooks Launches Rest-of-World App Store | Small Biz Trends

Intuit QuickBooks has launched a dedicated rest-of-world app store, enabling developers to create apps that seamlessly integrate with the QuickBooks platform. The app store aims to serve accountants and small business owners globally by addressing specialized needs and pain points. Developers can now access a customer base in over 200 markets worldwide, tapping into millions of small businesses that can benefit from tailored solutions.

The app store provides resources for all skill levels, offering APIs, a sandbox for testing, and production keys for easy integration. Developers are encouraged to explore the QuickBooks platform and identify gaps or niche areas where apps could offer valuable solutions, including for specific vertical industries. All apps created and submitted to the platform will undergo technical, marketing, and security reviews before going live. This ensures the highest quality solutions for users, as well as developer compliance with the necessary standards

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Elon Musk Admits that Owning Twitter Hasn’t been easy | Digital Trends

Twitter CEO Elon Musk agreed to an interview with the BBC on Tuesday night. It took place at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco with BBC journalist James Clayton and was streamed live on Twitter Spaces, the platform’s audio chatroom feature.

The interview covered a lot of areas, from Musk’s controversial acquisition of the platform in October 2022 to the mass layoffs of staff to how the company handles misinformation. He also confirmed reports earlier in the day that legacy blue checkmarks on Twitter accounts that aren’t paying for Twitter Blue will be removed on April 20.

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Samsung to cut chip production after profits plunge 96% | BBC News

Samsung Electronics will cut memory chip production after estimating a 96% drop in its quarterly operating profit.

The chip-making giant said sales had dropped sharply due to a slow global economy and less demand after Covid.

Samsung said preliminary numbers showed operating profits fell 600 billion won (£366m) in January-March, from 14 trillion won the previous year.

The firm’s shares rose more than 4% despite the decision to slow chip-making. “We are lowering the production of memory chips by a meaningful level, especially that of products with supply secured,” the South Korean tech giant said.

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FTC orders supplement maker to pay $600K in first case involving hijacked Amazon reviews | TechCrunch

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has approved a final consent order in its first-ever enforcement action over a case involving “review hijacking,” or when a marketer steals consumer reviews of another product to boost the sales of its own. In this case, the FTC has ordered supplements retailer The Bountiful Company, the maker of Nature’s Bounty vitamins and other brands, to pay $600,000 for deceiving customers on Amazon where it used a feature to merge the reviews of different products to make some appear to have better ratings and reviews than they otherwise would have had if marketed under their own listings.

The case exposes how sellers have been exploiting an Amazon feature that allows sellers to request the creation of “variation” relationships between different products and SKUs. The feature is meant to help marketers and consumers alike as it creates a single detail page on Amazon.com that shows similar products that are different only in narrow, specific ways, the FTC explains — like items that come in a different color, size, quantity or flavor. For instance, a t-shirt may have a dozen SKUs associated with one another because the shirt comes in a wide variety of colors. For shoppers, it’s helpful to see all the options on one page so you can pick the item that best matches your needs and budget. In the case of supplements, the feature could be used to combine the same products by merging various SKUs featuring different quantities of the item in question, like bottles with 50, 100 or 200 pills, for example.

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NASA’s Artemis 2 commander Reid Wiseman isn’t perfect | Mashable

The stereotype of an astronaut is apple pie and American exceptionalism — a perfect and fearless adventurer, neatly encapsulated in a bubble helmet. That’s not Reid Wiseman.

He is not some perfect Buzz Lightyear clone. He didn’t make straight-As, he’s occasionally late, and, yes, the idea of dying in space scares him.

There’s a refreshing realness to Wiseman, the commander of the first human mission to the moon in over a half-century, the person NASA chose to lead the Artemis II crew on a test drive of the spanking-new spaceship Orion, 230,000 miles from Earth.

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CFPB Finalizes Rule Aimed to Promote Transparency in Small Business Lending | Small Biz Trends

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has finalized a rule required by Congress that will improve transparency in small business lending, as well as helping to promote economic development while combating unlawful discrimination.

CFPB Finalizes Rule Aimed to Promote Transparency in Small Business Lending

The finalized rule means lenders will need to collect and report information about the small business credit applications they process. This information includes geographic and demographic data, as well as the price of credit and the reasoning behind their lending decisions.

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Donald Trump likely to be arrested in coming days | BBC News

The case against Donald Trump stems from a nearly five-year-long investigation led by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

The probe began under then-DA Cyrus Vance Jr while Trump was still in the White House.It has since been taken over by his predecessor, Alvin Bragg, 49, who is the first person of colour elected to the office.

Bragg, who is black, claims he helped sue the Trump administration more than 100 times during its four-year term.

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Nreal Air AR glasses review: Cool and futuristic, but too many problems to justify the price | Mashable

When I was a kid, I was given a Virtual Boy — Nintendo’s very ‘90s predecessor to the VR headsets we know today — and I loved it. Since then, I’ve been obsessed with adding new technology to my gaming experience including a 3D projector for movies and gaming, saving up for my first HTC Vive headset, and even tiptoeing into the Metaverse.

When I started seeing videos of the Nreal Air glasses on YouTube, marketed as a lightweight and stylish take on augmented reality glasses, I knew I needed to see them in action. Thankfully, the technology shows just as much potential as I thought it would…but while they show a ton of promise, they also come with a lot of problems.

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Twitter will only show verified accounts on its ‘For You’ page | Mashable

Elon Musk says that Twitter will only display the tweets of verified users on its For You page, starting April 15.

This decision comes after the company announced it would be “winding down” its legacy verified program and removing legacy checkmarks by April 1. The now-controversial blue checkmark will only be available to Twitter Blue subscribers paying $8 per month.

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