That's a lot of chargers.

There's going to be a lot more of these in the U.K. soon.

The U.K. is doubling down on electric vehicle charging stations. Well, more than doubling down. The country plans to up the number of charge points to 300,000 by the end of the decade as part of its $2.1 billion strategy to bring EV infrastructure to the masses.

The latest push to add EV charging stations builds on a previously announced fund that set aside $1.25 billion for building out a network on England’s motorways by 2035. At the end of February, just over 400,000 EVs were on the roads in the U.K., while only about 29,600 charge points were available.

With extra funding, the U.K. plans to build more charger hubs and on-street chargers. Some of the new funding will help install these charging points, while a smaller portion will be used to upskill and hire staff who can maintain the growing network. The U.K.’s new objective will also help prepare it for 2030, when it’s set to ban the sale of cars with gas and diesel engines.

“No matter where you live, be that a city center or rural village, the north, south, east or west of the country, we’re powering up the switch to electric and ensuring no one gets left behind in the process,” Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said.

The Department for Transport doesn’t seem too concerned about rising EV prices. Tesla, Rivian and other EV manufacturers have needed to increase the prices of their vehicles in recent weeks as the price of nickel — a key material for producing EV batteries — soared. Tesla also said it needed to bump prices across its entire range between 5% and 10% due to inflation. Despite that, the cost of ownership of an EV works out in the long run for drivers, according to the department.

“EVs still benefit from lower fuel, running and maintenance costs than their petrol and diesel equivalents and the strategy hopes to encourage drivers across the nation to make the switch,” the department said in a statement, adding that it expects production costs to drop eventually.

The U.K. isn't alone in its EV charging network ambitions. The U.S. has set a goal of installing 500,000 charging stations by 2030. The Biden administration set aside $5 billion for every state, plus Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., earlier this year to build an EV charging network that would ensure no one was ever more than 50 miles from a station. The aim is to reduce anxiety around finding chargers and speed up EV adoption. We’ll know more about what states want to do with that money in August, when governments need to submit a plan.

Some companies are also getting into the EV charging network game. Starbucks (yes, Starbucks) is working with Volvo to create an EV charging network, and Porsche is building its own exclusive charging network. And a public charging network could be on the way soon in the U.S., complete with charging stations you may actually want to spend time at.

Sarah Roach is a news writer at Protocol (@sarahroach_) and contributes to Source Code. She is a recent graduate of George Washington University, where she studied journalism and mass communication and criminal justice. She previously worked for two years as editor in chief of her school's independent newspaper, The GW Hatchet.

Netflix is reigning in its spending in a sign that the company is grappling with slow subscriber growth. The Information reported on Friday that the company's executives recently warned employees to be mindful of spending and hiring.

The warnings first were made at Netflix management offsite event in Anaheim, Calif. last month, then discussed again at an employee town hall on Monday, three sources familiar with the talks told The Information. Netflix's headcount exploded by 59% over the past three years, ending 2021 with around 11,300 people, and the streamer invested heavily in its own content.

The warnings are a signal that Netflix is thinking more about its slowing subscriber growth. In years prior, the company saw double-digit subscriber growth for several quarters. But in the fourth quarter of 2021, Netflix's subscriber base grew just 8.9%, compared to close to 22% in the same period in 2020. The company reigned in its growth expectations for the first quarter to an 8% bump in subscribers, or 2.5 million people globally.

Netflix did not respond immediately to request for comment from Protocol. The company's stock declined slightly in after hours trading following the release of The Information's report.

As the company combats slowing growth, it has also raised its prices in the U.S. and Canada by $1 to $2 per month and has started cracking down on rampant password sharing by testing out an additional fee for extra users in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru.

Though Netflix still ranks as the top streaming service globally with close to 222 million users, rivals are quickly gaining on it: Disney+ has a total subscriber base of close to 130 million after launching in November of 2019, and HBO has a total of close to 74 million between its streaming service HBO Max and its cable channel.

Sometimes it’s easier to zero in on what needs fixing from the outside looking in. At least, that’s the basis of Pixxel’s argument for a future network of microsatellites monitoring the planet from space. The first of the company’s planned “constellation” of satellites launched on Friday, hitching a ride on SpaceX’s Transporter-4 mission.

The satellite launched on Friday has one of the highest-resolution hyperspectral commercial cameras ever flown. Pixxel co-founders Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal said in a blog post that the company has plans for a collection of six hyperspectral satellites that “will be able to cover any point on the globe every 48 hours.”

If you are scratching your head about how this technology differs from the satellites already zipping around in space, here's a small digression on what we can and can't see with our current suite of Earth-observing tech.

The Pixxel satellites will have a resolution of 10 meters per pixel. GIF: Pixxel

There are generally two broad types of imaging equipment on satellites. One delivers traditional images that rely solely on the visible light spectrum. These are, in essence, high-end cameras encircling the Earth. The second type of technology, though, delivers multispectral images that capture a handful of bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. A multispectral image, for example, could include infrared radiation or ultraviolet light but represented in fairly simplistic terms.

This minimizes their ability to show a range of environmental concerns. Take the image below, which shows a mountain range and farmland in Sinaloa, Mexico. In the traditional and multispectral images, land is largely pictured with a single color, despite the variation of mineral content.

But in hyperspectral images, Pixxel’s bread-and-butter, data is collected across 40 times more wavelengths, allowing it to detect what is essentially invisible. The company says methane emissions and agricultural disease outbreaks are just some of what could be uncovered by its technology.

Hyperspectral imagery offers a vast improvement on the other forms of Earth observations.Image: Pixxel

Existing hyperspectral satellites launched by organizations such as NASA have resolutions of 30 meters per pixel, whereas Pixxel promises 10 meters per pixel. The higher-resolution data will allow for a more granular look at the planet. The company will receive its first data from the satellite launched on Friday in a matter of weeks. It plans to launch its first commercial phase satellites in early 2023, and will begin selling its data commercially around that time.

While these images are intriguing purely from a voyeuristic standpoint — am I alone in being excited to get visuals of the soil and water health of Sinaloa? — and stunning as pieces of art, they also offer an opportunity for climate and environmental accountability.

Take methane, for instance. On-the-ground methane leak tracking is a painstaking and costly process while satellite estimates aren't always quite granular enough to pinpoint emissions. While it might sound like something out of science fiction, reliable detection from a low-orbit satellite could simplify that process. Of course, that requires those of us back here on the ground to ensure that data actually gets used to fix problems in the first place.

Employers looking to hire in Washington state will soon have to start disclosing a pay range in job descriptions, under a new law.

Gov. Jay Inslee signed Senate Bill 5761 into law on Wednesday. Once the law goes into effect on Jan. 1, companies with 15 or more employees will be required to disclose the salary range and a “general description” of the benefits and other compensation tied to a role.

Washington is not the first state to pass such a bill. Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act went into effect last year. Since then, that law has resulted in some employers (including Airbnb, according to the Denver Post) barring Colorado-based workers from applying to jobs in an apparent effort to circumvent the requirement to disclose pay ranges.

The Washington bill may be harder to circumvent, given the state’s mass of tech workers, according to Cher Scarlett, an engineer who testified in favor of Washington’s bill.

“Colorado has faced exclusion from software jobs because of this law, but good luck doing the same for coveted Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Apple engineers,” Scarlett tweeted on Friday. “California and New York, I’m looking at you to keep this going to ensure Coloradans stop losing out unfairly on jobs.”

Some Facebook accounts were apparently deleted for no apparent reason this week, and users are upset.

“Holy shit: Facebook has deactivated the accounts of *all* the admins of the International Association of Gay Square Dance Clubs FB group,” one user tweeted. “No appeal, no further explanation. Account is just…gone,” tweeted another.

Users began reporting the surge in deactivated accounts late Thursday, and more users said their accounts were deactivated on Friday. Users are told their accounts violated “community standards,” according to the New York Post, and that their removal “cannot be reversed.” It is not clear how many accounts have been removed, though the surge in reports makes it clear that something has gone wrong at the company level. Several users have had their accounts restored, also without notice.

Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the glitch on Twitter Friday morning.

“We’re aware that some users are experiencing issues accessing their Facebook accounts and we are working to resolve them as quickly as possible,” he said.

In a follow-up statement to Protocol, the company said: "Earlier today, a technical issue caused a small number of people to have trouble accessing Facebook. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

Facebook users have reported for years that the company makes it difficult to reclaim accounts after they've been hacked, and while that seems unrelated to this week's spate of deactivations, the inability to track down a real person for support with Facebook account issues seems to be persistent.

Meta has been having a rough week on the Facebook glitch front. On Thursday, The Verge reported that a bug in the platform's News Feed algorithm resulted in the accidental boost of harmful content, including misinformation, that was supposed to be down-ranked. The bug reportedly surfaced in 2019, but was was erroneously ranking content for at least six months, though it was first introduced in 2019.

This story was updated April 1 with additional comment from Meta.

House Democrats have asked Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to hand over documents about Amazon's labor practices and safety procedures in its warehouses during extreme weather events based on concerns about the collapse of an Edwardsville, Illinois, facility that killed six workers in December 2021.

Members of the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee said in a March 31 letter to Jassy that they have received reports that the company asks its workers to stay in facilities during extreme weather events like the tornado that caused the Edwardsville collapse, as well as wildfires in California in 2018 and Hurricanes Irma and Ida in 2017 and 2021, respectively. The politicians are seeking documents related to the Edwardsville deaths and plan to use the information to inform potential legislation.

"Our focus continues to be on supporting our employees and partners, the families who lost loved ones, the surrounding community, and all those affected by the tornadoes. We will respond to this letter in due course," Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement to Protocol.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration opened an investigation into the Edwardsville deaths shortly after the tornado and has not yet closed that process; it is standard for OSHA to investigate workplace deaths like these. After the warehouse collapse, some workers reported confusing instructions about safety procedures during the tornado and alleged that the company had not allowed workers to leave work in order to avoid the severe weather.

Before Edwardsville, Amazon warehouse safety had already become a popular topic of investigation for state and federal politicians after a 2020 report from a union advocacy research group revealed that Amazon's average severe injury rates were the highest among its warehouse competitors, and more than two times higher than Walmart's. Some states, including California, Washington and Minnesota, have since debated bills that would require Amazon to be more transparent about productivity expectations in hope of improving safety, and California passed one such bill at the end of 2021.

"The Committee seeks to fully understand the events that led to the tragedy at Amazon’s Edwardsville facility. We also seek information about Amazon’s workplace policies or practices that may have prevented the workers from seeking safe shelter, as well as Amazon’s actions in responding to other severe weather incidents and natural disasters," the committee members wrote in their March 31 letter.

Chernobyl was one of the first sites of intense fighting in the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February. Now, though, Russian troops have retreated from Chernobyl and are moving toward Belarus, according to a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The IAEA said Russian troops transferred control of the power plant to Ukrainian personnel, and the agency is working to send supplies to ensure safety there. Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the IAEA, is expected to hold a press conference on Friday after meeting with Russian officials on Thursday.

It's unclear exactly why Russian troops are pulling out of the defunct nuclear power plant. The IAEA is exploring whether Russian soldiers experienced radiation poisoning, but Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said the move is likely part of a "larger effort to refit and resupply."

"It's an assessment at this early stage [that] they're going to be repositioned probably into Belarus, to be refit and resupplied and used elsewhere in Ukraine," Kirby said at a press briefing on Thursday.

Whatever the reason, Russian soldiers leaving Chernobyl alleviates ongoing concerns that fighting and Russian troop movements in the region would stir up radioactive particles. Those particles are the result of a 1986 explosion at the power plant, which deposited them in the soil in the exclusion zone that rings the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. There are hot spots in the zone that, if disturbed by heavy machinery like, say, tanks, could kick up radiation. The risks were relatively low for it to spread beyond the area. But that radiation posed a risk to troops who were potentially exposed to it, hence the IAEA's concerns.

Properly monitoring radiation at Chernobyl has been a problem since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which was only exacerbated by fires that broke out in the exclusion zone late last month. Working conditions for the experts tasked with monitoring radiation also deteriorated under Russian control, with staffers being forced to work long hours that stretched the limits of safety.

Chernobyl isn't the only nuclear site to have come under fire from Russian troops. Forces attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant last month, which ignited a fire. Luckily, the fire did not unleash any radiation. "It's completely insane to subject a nuclear plant to this kind of an assault," Edwin Lyman, the director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said at the time of the attack. Which, well, it does seem like not the best idea.

Activision Blizzard is dropping its COVID-19 vaccine requirement for employees "effective immediately," Chief Administrative Officer Brian Bulatao announced in an email, which was tweeted by ABK Workers Alliance member Jessica Gonzalez.

"Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen businesses and other indoor venues across the U.S. lift vaccine requirements, and we feel it is important to align our site protocols with local guidance," Bulatao wrote in the email. Bulatao said he wants everyone returning to in-person work in the coming weeks and that employees with "personal circumstances" should contact their manager and HRBP.

"As we define what the future of work looks like, I want to remind us all of the benefits of in-person collaboration," he said. "In order to ensure we all have a safe workspace where we can gather with colleagues and innovate together, it is essential we stay committed to protecting ourselves and others."

He said that while workers don't need proof of vaccination to head back to the office, employees should still fill out their vaccination status on the management platform Workday. "Having this information readily available will allow us to act quickly — and pivot if necessary — if we see a future spike in cases," he wrote. Infectious disease experts are currently tracking the spread of BA.2, a subvariant of the omicron variant which is likely to cause another surge in cases.

Activision is among a small handful of companies that have begun dropping their vaccine mandates as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations fall. Adidas and Starbucks stopped requiring their workers to be vaccinated, while Intel put its policy to get vaccinated or leave on hold after a court ruling against Joe Biden's nationwide vaccine rule. Many large tech employers like Meta and Google still have their vaccine rules in place.

Last year, employees ranked Amazon, Meta and Apple as three of the top 15 companies with the best culture, according to the employee review site Comparably. But on the 2022 list, which published on Tuesday, they didn't even make the top 50.

Microsoft, IBM and Google topped the list this year, with Microsoft scoring an A+ for compensation, CEO and perks and benefits. IBM scored in the top tier for happiness, work culture, retention, outlook and a slew of other categories, while Google received high marks for retention, leadership, compensation and perks and benefits, among others.

Employees still rank Apple, Amazon and Meta highly across many of these categories — their overall cultures were rated A-, B+ and A+, respectively. But their ratings were apparently not high enough to make it into the top 50.

Interestingly, all three of those companies' office cultures scored poorly, in the C to C+ range. At Apple, most employees reported burnout and almost half of employees at both Apple and Amazon say they don't have a close friend at work. Burnout rates were lower at Meta than at Apple or Amazon, and 68% of Meta employees said they have a close friend at work.

It's easy to write off another company ranking, but as CNBC pointed out, Meta, Apple and Amazon were also snubbed on Glassdoor's Best Places to Work 2022 list. Both Meta and Apple have dropped more than 20 spots on Glassdoor's list since last year. Even worse, Amazon has never made Glassdoor's list in the 13 years it's been publishing. Apparently, some of the FAANGs are losing their luster.

In Twitter's latest attempt to make Twitter Blue a thing, it looks like the company is targeting TweetDeck, a separate app for using Twitter that has amassed a pretty loyal following of dedicated users.

Security researcher Jane Manchun Wong found some code yesterday that made it clear Twitter is likely going to make TweetDeck a paid feature exclusive to Twitter Blue subscribers. The code redirects users to the Twitter Blue sign-up page when they try to access TweetDeck.

Twitter Blue, for those who haven't been following closely, is Twitter's attempt at amassing a paid subscription base, so far to mixed success. The social media platform launched it in November for $2.99 a month, with features like an Undo Tweet button that users have been begging for for years. Other power-user features include folders for bookmarks and a special mode for reading long threads.

Meanwhile, TweetDeck offers a completely unique Twitter experience. The service began as a third-party app before Twitter acquired it for $40 million in 2011 and then pretty much left it alone. Last year, The Verge reported that Twitter was working on a "big overhaul" of TweetDeck. That redesign hasn't yet rolled out, but the look proved polarizing in beta testing.

Another thing about the new TweetDeck code that Manchun Wong discovered is that the app is being marketed as an "ad-free experience," which is notable since Twitter Blue up until this point hasn't been ad-free. But TweetDeck is currently ad-free, and it seems likely that Twitter realizes it would enrage long-time power users by clogging up the TweetDeck timeline with ads.

Twitter hasn't confirmed when the TweetDeck redesign will roll out, and the company told The Verge it had "nothing to share on this at the moment” as far as plans to make TweetDeck part of a premium subscription.

Amazon held a lead in the votes against unionization in Bessemer, Alabama, as vote counting concluded there today, while the company has fallen behind union organizers by more than 300 votes in a second and still ongoing vote count in Staten Island. Labor experts had expected Amazon to emerge victorious in both efforts.

The Bessemer vote is a "re-election" held after the National Labor Relations Board threw out Amazon's sweeping victory over the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union's effort to unionize warehouse workers there last year. No group of Amazon workers in the United States has ever successfully unionized. The Bessemer vote last year was the first attempt since 2014, and the election in Staten Island is the second. A third election in a second warehouse in Staten Island is scheduled to take place next month.

When the NLRB finished counting ballots Thursday afternoon in Alabama, warehouse workers had voted 993 "no" to 875 "yes" for unionization. But 416 ballots were not included in the count because union organizers or Amazon had challenged their validity, and the difference in the already counted votes is high enough that those ballots could sway the election for the union. The NLRB will need to rule on each challenged ballot about whether it can be counted, so the final election result may not be known for weeks. More than 6,000 workers were eligible to vote, and about 40% of them participated.

The RWDSU will need to win most of the challenged ballots to recover from the more than 100-vote deficit from today. If Amazon continues to prevail, the union may also file unfair labor practice charges against Amazon's conduct during the election, on top of charges it has already filed over the last few months that are awaiting NLRB judgement. Similar charges filed after last year's election successfully persuaded the NLRB to throw out the results and call the re-election. "It could continue for a while" before a result is known, Chelsea Connor, the RWDSU communications director, told Protocol before the vote.

"What we do know is this — this is just the beginning, and we will continue to fight," Stuart Appelbaum, RWDSU's president, said in a press conference following the conclusion of the vote count. "Workers here have shown what is possible. They have helped ignite a movement. Their first vote last year opened the door to further organizing at Amazon and elsewhere all over the country."

In Staten Island, the union efforts at the two warehouses there are led by an independent union called the Amazon Labor Union, not a national group like the RWDSU. When vote counting was paused Thursday afternoon and scheduled to resume Friday morning, the Amazon Labor Union held a more than 350-vote lead over Amazon.

Amazon did not immediately respond to request for comment. The company has said in the past that it believes its workers do not desire a union in either location and that it provides pay and benefits that make the company an attractive place to work. “Our employees have the choice of whether or not to join a union. They always have. As a company, we don’t think unions are the best answer for our employees,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement to Protocol before the vote.

The Biden Administration will invoke the Defense Production Act to increase the output of minerals used in batteries and electric vehicles, such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and manganese, the administration announced Thursday.

The Defense Production Act requires companies to prioritize federal contracts as a response to a national emergency. The goal of authorizing its use in this case is to reduce the country's "reliance on China and other countries for the minerals and materials that will power our clean energy future," the administration said in a fact sheet. The move comes as nickel prices have fluctuated wildly in recent months, leading to EV companies hiking their prices.

Russia's war in Ukraine precipitated those price hikes as the former is home to major nickel reserves. (It's also driven up gas prices, leading to higher demand for EVs.) China, meanwhile, has large reserves of lithium and has also aggressively pursued the minerals that will define the future in other countries as well. Now, the U.S. is playing catch-up as the Biden administration tries to get its climate agenda on track by cleaning up transportation and electricity emissions. The fact sheet notes these two sectors alone "account for more than half of our nation’s carbon emissions."

The administration said that the Department of Defense will implement this authorization using strong "environmental, labor, community and tribal" standards. While there's no denying the need to rapidly decarbonize every single aspect of the economy and the benefits of batteries in doing so, the U.S. still faces some challenges in meeting the lofty goals of environmental, labor and tribal justice outlined in the fact sheet.

The U.S. lithium mining industry is still in its nascent stages. Yet it's already run headlong into the exact problems the administration says it's trying to sidestep. Thacker Pass, Nevada, has been the site of a major proposed lithium mine that's run afoul of both tribes and environmental groups and become bogged down in lawsuits. There are also other avenues for both fixing mining regulations and ensuring a steady supply of minerals to build out a no-carbon future, though they may not jive with the DPA order.

"The government must focus its purchasing power on recycled content and building a circular minerals economy, and reform federal mining laws to ensure protections for our shared public lands and the communities that call those lands home," Lauren Pagel, policy director for nonprofit Earthworks, said in a statement.

The DPA isn't the only avenue the Biden administration is using to try to ease pain at the pump in the near term (and not blow up the climate down the road). The administration also called on Congress to make fossil fuel companies pay fees on unused oil wells on federal land, saying that they're "hoarding without producing" as prices spike.

"Companies that continue to sit on non-producing acres will have to choose whether to start producing or pay a fee for each idled well and unused acre," the administration said.

Rep. Katie Porter famously dunked all over oil CEOs and the president of their industry trade group during last year's landmark Big Oil hearing for having nearly 14 million acres of unused federal land under lease, all while pushing for more federal leasing. So the Biden administration has at least one member of Congress who's probably onboard already.

For the last six months, Facebook engineers have been seeing intermittent spikes in misinformation and other harmful content on News Feed, with posts that would usually be demoted by the company's algorithms being boosted by as much as 30% instead. The cause, according to reporting by The Verge, was a bug that one internal report described as a “massive ranking failure.”

The bug first originated in 2019, but its impact was first noticed in October 2021. The company said it was resolved March 11. “We traced the root cause to a software bug and applied needed fixes,” Meta spokesperson Joe Osborne told The Verge.

The bug caused posts that had been flagged by fact-checkers, as well as nudity, violence and Russian state media, to slip through the company's usual down-ranking filters, according to an internal report obtained by The Verge.

Meta and other tech giants have leaned on down-ranking as a more palatable approach to content moderation than removing content altogether. Scholars like Stanford's Renée DiResta have also called on tech giants to embrace this approach and realize that "free speech is not the same as free reach."

In this case, those ranking systems appear to have failed. But Osborne told The Verge the bug “has not had any meaningful, long-term impact on our metrics.”

It will be difficult for those outside of Meta to vet those metrics. Meta has blocked new users from accessing CrowdTangle, one of the core tools researchers and journalists have used to track trends in what's popular on Facebook, and has dismantled the team leading it. And while the company does release reports on the prevalence of certain kinds of policy violations in any given quarter, those reports offer little indication of what's behind those numbers. Even if the report did show an uptick in, say, violence on Facebook, it'd be impossible to know if that's due to this bug or to Russia's invasion of Ukraine or some other global atrocity.

The company in a statement to Protocol said:

"The Verge vastly overstated what this bug was because ultimately it had no meaningful, long-term impact on problematic content. Only a very small number of views of content in Feed were ever impacted because the overwhelming majority of posts in Feed are not eligible to be down-ranked in the first place. After detecting inconsistencies we found the root cause and quickly applied fixes. Even without the fixes, the multitude of other mechanisms we have to keep people from seeing harmful content — including other demotions, fact-checking labels and violating content removals — remained in place.”

But it's still unclear which posts were boosted due to the bug or how many views they received.

This story was updated on March 31 with a statement from Meta.

In another win for the right-to-repair movement, Samsung plans to enable its Galaxy users to repair their own devices. The company announced Thursday a program that will give smartphone and tablet buyers access to parts, repair tools and step-by-step guides to fixing their devices themselves — with the caveat that the program doesn't include Samsung's newest products.

Samsung is partnering with iFixit, which offers parts and advice for repairing devices, to roll out its self-repair program, the company said. The program will begin this summer and start with the company's most popular models, the Galaxy S20 and S21 family of products, and the Galaxy Tab S7+.

To start, the program will allow owners will be able to replace display assemblies, back glass and charging ports, with more devices and repairs made available in the future. Users can also return their old parts to Samsung for "responsible recycling," the company said.

The movement to allow customers to repair their devices on their own continues to put mounting pressure on device companies, sparking the introduction of right-to-repair legislation at both the state and federal levels. Tech companies are trying to get ahead of the legislation, which would force the issue. Samsung, which held 22% of the U.S. smartphone market in the fourth quarter of last year, is the latest consumer electronics giant to announce a self-service program. Apple, which has long made it difficult for users to repair devices on their own without voiding their warranties, announced a similar self-service repair program last November, but the program has yet to roll out and a launch date is still unclear. Microsoft is also working on making parts for its Surface devices available outside of its authorized repair network in partnership with iFixit.

Motorola launched its own self-service program back in 2018, but the company holds a small fraction of the U.S. market.

The Biden administration has set its sights on making homes in low-income communities more energy efficient. Its tool for doing so? The Weatherization Assistance Program, which will see a $3.2 billion influx as part of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that President Joe Biden signed into law in November.

The Department of Energy is now accepting applications for the new funding from the state and tribal governments that administer the program. The decades-old WAP designates funding to upgrade homes — insulate attics, swap out old appliances and replace leaky windows and doors — in a bid to keep them cool in the summer and warm in the winter with the least possible energy use.

The influx represents a tenfold increase for the program’s budget, meaning its funds will reach far more households. The administration estimates the new funding will allow it to help 450,000 households, compared with the 38,000 homes per year it serves today.

WAP seems to represent a no-brainer for the government to pour into given the myriad ways it benefits Americans, including financially. The DOE emphasized the program has helped households save an average of $372 per year since it was instituted in 1976. Per a DOE fact sheet, WAP is highly cost-effective, too. The program has resulted in $1.72 in generated energy benefits and $2.78 in other benefits for every dollar invested in weatherization. This comes as utility bills soar nationwide, reflecting the dividends that low-tech solutions can pay now and into the future.

The benefits for the climate aren’t so shabby either. While the program was almost eliminated under former President Donald Trump’s tenure, it is now among the most effective arrows in the Biden administration’s quiver for addressing climate change. Improving efficiency is not nearly as riveting as investing in new technologies to reduce emissions like fanciful carbon dioxide removal schemes, but it has a central role nonetheless. Commercial and residential energy use make up 13% of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

While a number of cities have implemented bans on gas hookups and numerous studies have shown that electrification is the most effective means to long-term decarbonization of buildings, weatherization and other efforts to improve efficiency could help cut carbon emissions quickly by ensuring buildings need less gas or electricity in the first place.

China is going after the growing livestreaming industry. Chinese officials are creating new rules that would limit the amount of money users can tip and cap how much livestreamers can receive from followers in a day, sources told The Wall Street Journal.

The goal of these new rules is ostensibly to fight online fraud, phone addiction and unhealthy online spending. But one source told the Journal that authorities were worried that creators would aim to become livestreaming celebrities, which runs against their values.

The livestreaming sector has grown to a roughly $30 billion industry in China, with livestreaming services taking up an audience of about 70% of China’s internet users, the Journal reported. As of March 2020, the number of livestreamers exploded to 560 million, and tipping while watching livestreams became an increasingly popular practice among young users. Those tips could take the form of both money and virtual gifts.

Chinese officials have targeted livestreaming before. Government officials released voluntary guidelines for livestreaming last year, including suggestions that platforms limit the amount of money livestreamers can earn from fans, but those were not hard and fast rules. China’s National Radio and Television Administration also told livestreamers and fans to use their real names online and restricted people younger than 18 years old from tipping or purchasing gifts.

Livestreaming has also become a place to channel state politics. Huang Wei, for example, is a prominent livestreamer in China and has been recognized multiple times for her role in philanthropy and public service.

The new rules come after a more recent crackdown in China on private tutoring and ed tech. But while those new restrictions appear to be linked to China’s focus on Big Tech, experts have said that China appears to be more concerned with educational inequality specifically, and that ed tech restrictions shouldn’t necessarily be grouped in with restrictions on large tech firms.

Recent reports of Apple cutting iPhone SE production orders would indicate that demand for the world's most popular smartphone is falling. Add TSMC Chairman Mark Liu's comments this week that the chip supplier is seeing weakened demand for consumer electronics like “smartphones, PCs, and TVs, especially in China, the biggest consumer market,” and it would appear Apple might have a big problem on its hands. But analysts argue that iPhone demand is still strong.

Liu was speaking in his capacity as head of the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association. However, he addressed TSMC’s prospects directly, also saying that the company would probably not be changing its growth targets or expenditures this year because it expects automotive and high-performing computing demand would make up for the decline in consumer products. Nikkei Asia had previously reported that an anonymous supplier said Apple planned to cut iPhone SE production orders by 20% next quarter, and AirPod orders by 10 million in 2022.

But Bank of America analysts pushed back, writing that recent articles “might lead some investors to think there is risk to demand” in a note to investors. Instead, analysts said that they “believe demand for iPhones remains strong based on our analysis of iPhone trade-in prices.” The bank upgraded AAPL to “to buy” in December, saying it saw a 20% upside.

Apple lowered the trade-in value of an iPhone 12 Pro Max from $700 to $650, indicating that the company doesn't need to convince buyers to trade in older iPhones for newer ones. The company also now offers a more attractive option for customers who have avoided trading in their phones because of the high costs of new models: the relatively inexpensive $429 iPhone SE.

These are indicators that Apple can tap a more budget-minded market, bank analysts said. Chinese customers can still trade in iPhones as old as the 2014 iPhone 6, while a survey the bank conducted in January demonstrated that a quarter of global users have an iPhone 8 or older. That's a lot of people who will soon need to buy a new iPhone, and analysts are arguing that they are now more likely to do so.

Microsoft is acquiring process-mining startup Minit for an undisclosed sum, the company announced Thursday. Microsoft views the acquisition as a way to help its existing customers improve their operations, and it isn't the first move by an ERP player to go after the nascent process-mining space.

Process mining lets companies analyze their business processes — workflows and procedures that employees follow in response to various events — in order to fix bottlenecks and make other operational improvements. A lot of that work has traditionally been done by systems integrators or consultants, who map out processes by interviewing employees and analyzing documents. Process-mining companies essentially digitize this process, automatically reviewing workflows in an ERP system, for example.

Buying a process-mining company is a logical transition for large ERP players, because they probably have all the necessary operational and process data already in their systems. By plugging in a process-mining component, these companies can provide more value to their customers by making their processes faster or less error-prone, for example.

After a company has identified its processes, the logical next step is to automate them, which is why process mining and robotic process automation services are often talked about in conjunction. It's also why the Minit acquisition is a way for Microsoft to bolster its Power Automate product.

Microsoft isn't the only cloud company to take a stab at the emerging process-mining industry. Early last year, SAP acquired Signavio for an undisclosed sum. And process-mining giant Celonis, which raised $1 billion in funding last year, acquired Process Analytics Factory on Tuesday.

Microsoft did not disclose the terms of the transaction. Minit, based in the Slovak Republic, is a small company that had raised around $11 million in funding, according to Crunchbase.

This story was updated to correct the amount of money Celonis raised last year.

Instagram is making direct messages more fun to convince users to stick around. The Meta-owned photo-sharing app announced Thursday that it's adding a host of new features to make messaging "more fun and seamless." If users are connecting with friends on Instagram, maybe they're not opening TikTok quite as often.

Instagram is now letting users share 30-second previews of songs in DMs with a new music streaming integration. Users will be able to find clips on Apple Music and Amazon Music to start, with plans to integrate Spotify "coming soon," the company said in a blog post.

"As we announced at the end of last year, we're making more investments in messaging to help you connect with your closest friends in more fun and seamless ways," the company said.

Other new features include the ability to "quietly" send messages without notifying the receiver, creating polls in DMs and group chats and a "new lo-fi chat theme to make your conversations feel more personal." Instagram is also adding features that let users reply while they're browsing their feed, DM posts to other users more quickly by tapping and holding the share button and showing who is and isn't online to chat.

Instagram will first launch the features in "select countries" starting Thursday before rolling out globally.

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri announced in an Instagram post at the end of December that the company was planning on making improvements to its messaging platform, since messaging is the "primary way people connect online," but hadn't given any details on upcoming changes. Mosseri also said in the post that the company is doubling down on video, transparency around how Instagram works and focus on creators.

"We're going to have to rethink what Instagram is, because the world is changing quickly, and we're going to have to change with it," Mosseri said in the video.

Meta’s big bet on Instagram Reels seems to be panning out so far. The short-form video tool is where Instagram users are getting the most likes, comments and shares, and Reels accounted for more than half of Facebook’s most-viewed posts in the last quarter of 2021. But there’s a catch: Some of the most popular Reels were on TikTok first. There's also no way to put this politely, but some of the other highly viewed Reels just aren’t that good.

About three-fourths of the most viewed Reels from last quarter were posted by anonymous accounts, and more than 80% came from accounts that just aggregate other people’s content, according to an analysis by the Integrity Institute that was originally provided to Recode. That includes reposts from TikTok, showing how even the viral content Meta craves to attract young people is still being created on the platform of one of its biggest competitors.

Meta wants creators to be able to make a living off Reels, and it’s pouring $1 billion into the effort. But it likely doesn't want to just give that money to spammy accounts that, while keeping people engaged, are hardly making Reels a fun place to hang out and discover new things. And if authentic creators aren't able to get the same kind of engagement as those anonymous or aggregator profiles, there's less of an incentive for them to focus on Instagram as primary platform for short-form video.

“If you’re a creator, obviously you don’t want unoriginal content on the platform because it’s people stealing your content,” Jeff Allen, a former Facebook data scientist who co-founded the Integrity Institute, told Recode.

There's even less drive to post original videos on Instagram for creators who have already found fame on TikTok. Creator Kris Collins, who has over 40 million followers on TikTok, told Protocol earlier this week that she prefers to use Instagram to post photos of her life, not Reels. She wouldn't create an original Reel, but she would repost one of her TikToks if it performed particularly well, showing how posting on — let alone natively using — Reels is still an afterthought for short-form video creators.

Perhaps in an effort to ameliorate these issues, Meta announced changes last month to entice creators to start making original Reels. The company said it will start deprioritizing videos stamped with TikTok’s logo; Meta is also starting a trial to share over half of ad revenue with creators. Maybe it just needs a bit more time to prove Reels will work. And hey, that $1 billion in cash for creators couldn't hurt.

The ability to discern credible sources of news from sketchy ones and truths from lies has become a huge problem in the U.S., so Google is adding new features to help users better fact-check information and verify sources.

The company announced Thursday new Google search features that will accompany its existing alert on rapidly evolving topics. Beneath that notice — "It looks these results are changing quickly" — Google will add information literacy tips and a link to a resource page that includes how to best check that the information you're looking at is credible. For topics that are breaking, you'll also be cautioned to come back later if enough credible information isn't available yet.

In Google News, the company is adding a label for highly cited sources, which will appear on top stories as a way to elevate the original reporting and help readers find details that are the most relevant to them. The label will appear as long as other outlets link to the original stories, press releases or sources. Google said the effort is to make it easier "for people to discover and engage with the publishers and journalists whose work brings unique value to a story." The label will roll out in the coming weeks, the company said.

"These days, it can feel like information is coming at us from every direction," Nidhi Hebbar, product manager at Google, wrote in the post announcing the new features. "The widespread availability of information – from all different kinds of sources – is great for learning new facts and perspectives from around the world. But it can also make it difficult to sort out what information is credible and what isn’t."

The features are the latest in Google's information literacy efforts. Last February, it launched a feature that allows users to learn more about where the information in search results comes from. And last June, it added its label letting users know when a topic is breaking and quickly evolving.

The announcement also comes amid mounting pressure for search engines to crack down on Russian disinformation. Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo have all made moves to limit the spread of disinformation and propaganda.

It's not all doom and gloom when it comes to climate change news: Solar and wind power are on track to limit global warming at the current growth rate, according to climate think tank Ember.

If solar and wind power grow at an average rate of 20% per year until 2030, as they are currently, the growth could limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to a report by Ember released Wednesday.

Last year, solar power generation rose 23% globally, and wind supply grew 14% in the same timeframe. Solar and wind are steadily increasing to account for more total global electricity generation, accounting for more than 10% of the total in 2021, up 1% from 2020.

More than 50 countries now generate 10% of their electricity from wind and solar. Ember said in the report that limiting climate change is now "eminently possible" due to wind and solar.

"If these trends can be replicated globally, and sustained, the power sector would be on track for 1.5 degree goal," the report said.

Though wind power and solar growth shows promising signs of limiting global warming, the renewable energy sources are also up against some limiting factors. Because clean energy wasn't deployed quickly enough, coal power saw a rise in 2021 as well: up 9% in 2021 at more than 10,000 terawatt hours in 2021, its highest growth rate since 1985. Coal power made up 36% of global electricity last year, according to the report. As energy demand boomed in countries such as China, India and Mongolia, coal production hit record highs, outweighing deployment of clean energy.

"We're getting closer to that break-even where wind and solar can cover new electricity demand, but we are still not quite there. If we maintain those growth rates we see, we will be there shortly," Ember global lead Dave Jones told Reuters.

Apple is looking to build in-house new tools for a broad range of financial tasks, including payments processing, lending and fraud analysis, as a step toward building new fintech products, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources.

The plan could be bad news for Apple’s fintech partners. In fact, shares of Green Dot, the bank infrastructure company used by Apple Pay, shed nearly 6% on Wednesday. Another Apple partner, CoreCard, saw its stock tumble more than 14%. Apple shares slipped fractionally in late trades.

The plan is reportedly part of a project called “Breakout,” to highlight Apple’s bid to strike out on its own in financial services. It underlines Apple’s growing interest in expanding into financial services beyond Apple Pay, the Apple Card and iMessage, as well as the financial transactions it handles via iTunes and the App Store.

The company reportedly is buying U.K. open-banking startup Credit Kudos, which would enhance Apple’s ability to offer critical data aggregation services like those offered by Finicity and Plaid. It could also strengthen the company’s market position in Europe.

One analyst speculated that the move could mean Apple is eyeing new financial services, such as the fast-growing “buy now, pay later” industry. Apple also recently introduced Tap to Pay, a new service that would let merchants use the iPhone to process payments with no extra hardware required.

The move is not likely to pose a serious challenge to Block, whose Square payment dongles remain dominant in the small and medium-sized business market. But Apple has partnered with a Block rival, Stripe, in the rollout.

Apple and Meta reportedly gave customer data over to hackers who claimed they were law enforcement officials, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

The companies provided customer details including addresses, phone numbers and IP addresses last year when responding to fake emergency data requests, three sources with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg. Snap also reportedly received a forged information request, but it is unclear if the company responded. It's not known how many times companies gave data in response to the requests.

In an email, Apple sent Protocol the same passage from its Law Enforcement Guidelines that it sent to Bloomberg, stating that if a law enforcement or government agent seeks an emergency data request, the company may contact their supervisor “confirm to Apple that the emergency request was legitimate.”

A Snap spokesperson said in an email that the company has safeguards built into its processes to spot fraudulent law enforcement requests, including from hacked accounts.

“We review every data request for legal sufficiency and use advanced systems and processes to validate law enforcement requests and detect abuse,” Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Meta, said in a statement. “We block known compromised accounts from making requests and work with law enforcement to respond to incidents involving suspected fraudulent requests, as we have done in this case.”

Members of a hacker group known as “Recursion Team” is behind the fake requests, according to Bloomberg. Though the group is reportedly no longer active, some members are still working under different names, including Lapsus$, which is responsible for the recent hacks of Nvidia, Okta and Samsung. Researchers also suspect that the fake requests came from minors located in the U.K. and the U.S., according to Bloomberg.

The information obtained was reportedly used for harassment campaigns, including financial fraud schemes. The forged requests reportedly began in early 2021, sent via hacked email addresses of several law enforcement agencies and made to look real.

It's not uncommon for law enforcement to request information from social media companies for investigations. Those requests are typically signed by a judge in the U.S., but emergency data requests do not need judge sign-off as they're used in cases of imminent danger.

This story was updated to include information sent by Apple.

Google may be releasing a Bluetooth tracker detection feature for Android phones, 9to5Google reports. The feature would ostensibly notify Android users when an Apple AirTag or Tile is traveling with them without their approval.

9to5Google discovered the feature by examining the APK of a new app Google recently uploaded to the Play Store. As always, unreleased code does not guarantee that a feature may be publicly released.

Ever since Apple announced its Bluetooth tracking devices at its “Spring Loaded” event last April, experts have warned that AirTags could be abused by stalkers and abusers. Once AirTags went on sale, that turned out to be true, with numerous reports of women finding AirTags in their cars or in their handbags. The reports resulted in significant nationwide backlash that pushed the company to roll out additional safety features. With its iOS 15.4 update this month, Apple added a warning for AirTag users upon setup that the devices should be used for tracking items, not people. That warning also states that AirTags are linked to a person's Apple ID, and if they are found to be using the devices to track people without their knowledge, their information will be visible to police. The company is also working on other new features to curb the use of AirTags in shady or outright criminal ways.

But those features have never worked as well with Android phones as iPhones. Both Apple and Tile have released apps for Android that users can download to receive similar notifications, but this, of course, requires users to install an app to receive alerts. If Google ships the Android feature, the notifications will be automatic when users update their phones.

However, whether Google intends to do so – or if it does, when — is unclear. Google did not respond to Protocol’s request for comment. However, the company often rolls out software features at its annual I/O event for developers, where we expect to more about the next version of Android. This year, Google I/O will be May 11-12.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has signed the Silenced No More Act into law, making Washington the second state in the nation after California to put rules in place that prevent businesses from imposing non-disclosure agreements that bar workers from discussing certain kinds of illegal harassment and discrimination.

The law, which will apply to Washington employers including Microsoft and Amazon, will take effect on June 9 of this year.

The Washington version of the bill had been pushed forward by former Apple engineer Cher Scarlett and former Google employee Chelsey Glasson. Both Scarlett and Glasson testified in support of the bill, discussing their own experiences at Apple and Google and their fears that speaking out about problems at the companies would risk violating their NDAs. Glasson settled a pregnancy discrimination suit against Google last month.

The law builds on prior legislation passed in California last year, which was inspired by the stories of Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks, two former Pinterest employees who spoke out in 2020 about discrimination and retaliation they faced at Pinterest. An earlier #MeToo-era law had made it possible for California employees to talk about gender and sexual discrimination and harassment they experienced. But the Silenced No More Act expanded that law to apply to all forms of illegal harassment and discrimination.

The Washington law takes the California legislation even further, applying to illegal harassment and discrimination, as well as retaliation, wage and hour violations and sexual assault. The bill had faced some initial opposition from business groups in the state, including the Washington Retail Association and the Association of Washington Business, which argued that the law gave workers too much power to determine what constitutes illegal activity. But supporters of the legislation ultimately prevailed. The bill passed both chambers of the legislature earlier this month, and had been awaiting Inslee's signature.