Tuesday morning news drop
The Open Secret of Google Search One of the most-used tools on the internet is not what it used to be. (The Atlantic)
Greenwashed: Electric Pickup Trucks Are Dirtier Than You Think Building an electric truck makes far more emissions than a gas one. So where’s the break-even point when they both hit the road? We decided to find out. (The Drive)
Bitcoin Is A Hideous Monstrosity Made Out Of Computers And Greed That Must Be Destroyed Before It Devours The World, Part I “The cryptocurrency murderer’s row just want your money and they will fuck you any which way they can to get it. Steal from you, manipulate you with rigged games you can’t win, dump shitcoins with a value proposition significantly lower than $0 on you at exorbitant prices so that they can cash out while you take incredible losses — these are not the side effects of their business models. These are their business models.” (Medium)
Ethereum Mining Is Going Away, and Miners Are Not Happy The shift from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake will cut power consumption sharply—and leave some expensive technology searching for new uses. (Businessweek)
When Bonds Do Not Hedge Stocks For the first time in decades, bonds haven’t protected balanced portfolios. What to do? (Morningstar)
The Biden Administration Screwed Over the Solar-Panel Industry But solar companies subsequently paused hundreds of in-development power projects, the New York Times reported in April, leading states like Indiana—facing rising energy costs because of inflation and the war in Ukraine—to kickstart coal plants that were to be phased out in favor of renewable energy. (Slate)
Sick and struggling to pay, 100 million people in the U.S. live with medical debt: 100 million people in the U.S. live with medical debt (NPR)
Far-Right Anti-Vaxxers Aren’t Just Influencing Americans In the United States, the proliferation of disinformation about COVID vaccines and treatments has been widely publicized, and most of these myths come from a few powerful influencers. Last year, the anti-extremism group Center for Countering Digital Hate found that 65 percent of vaccine disinformation on Facebook and Twitter came from just 12 people, including the activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the natural lifestyle influencer Joseph Mercola. The target audience is in bastions of American conservatism—in rural communities, among evangelical Christians, and among Trump voters. (Slate)
China’s ‘Very Dangerous Trajectory’ The Communist regime has always been brutal, but it was at least predictable and, in its own way, practical. No longer. (The Atlantic)
Leaked Audio From 80 Internal TikTok Meetings Shows That US User Data Has Been Repeatedly Accessed From China “I feel like with these tools, there’s some backdoor to access user data in almost all of them,” said an external auditor hired to help TikTok close off Chinese access to sensitive information, like Americans’ birthdays and phone numbers. (Buzzfeed News)