SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California power company PG&E Corp, which expects to soon file for bankruptcy, said on Wednesday it would cost between $75 billion and $150 billion to fully comply with a judge’s order to inspect its power grid and remove or trim trees that could fall into power lines and trigger wildfires. FILE PHOTO - PG&E crew work on power lines to repair damage caused by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S. November 21, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah NouvelagePG&E said in a filing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco that it could not on its own afford the work proposed in a Jan. 9 order by U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is overseeing conditions of the company’s probation following a 2010 gas pipeline explosion. To pay for the proposed work, PG&E said it would have to pass the bill to ratepayers who get their power from the utility company’s nearly 100,000 miles (161,000 km) of overhead lines in northern California. “PG&E would inevitably need to turn to California ratepayers for funding, resulting in a substantial increase - an estimated one-year increase of more than five times current rates in typical utility bills,” the company said. PG&E, which provides electricity and natural gas to 16 million customers in northern and central California, is facing widespread litigation, government investigations and liabilities that could top $30 billion following fatal wildfires in 2017 and 2018. On Tuesday, PG&E said it had secured $5.5 billion in financing from four banks as it prepares to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on or about Jan. 29. The utility on Wednesday estimated it would have to remove 100 million trees or more to safeguard power lines, a campaign that would face “myriad legal obstacles to reconfiguring the California landscape,” as it would require contending with state and federal agencies as well as private property owners. A proposal to restrict using power lines deemed unsafe during high winds is not feasible because lines traverse rural areas to service urban zones, while “de-energization” of lines could also affect the power grid in other states, PG&E said. State Senator Bill Dodd questioned PG&E’s filing, underscoring the frustration of many California policymakers after they approved legislation last year to let utilities recover some of the costs related to wildfires in 2017 and others starting in 2019. The legislation, which critics called a bailout, did not make provisions for fires last year and it was approved before November’s Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California’s history. “PG&E’s mismanagement and lack of credibility casts doubt over anything they put forward,” Dodd told Reuters in an email. “The company can and must do more to ensure safety, and I expect the court and regulators will make that happen.” In separate court papers citing concerns about the complexity of regulations around PG&E’s power transmission, the U.S. government recommended a court-assigned monitor review Alsup’s proposals and consult with relevant agencies to reach “workable” terms for the company. The government said the monitor is “in the best position to determine whether wildfires can be prevented by fixing gaps in the currently regulatory scheme, or by improving PG&E’s compliance with current regulations.” While PG&E questioned the judge’s proposals, the company said it has no issue with the monitor checking its efforts to mitigate wildfire risks. Alsup’s order would modify terms of PG&E’s probation. He will hold a hearing on the new terms on Jan. 30. Reporting by Jim Christie; editing by Richard PullinOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Last month, a North Carolina marketing agency formerly called Textivia was all set to announce its rebrand to 3VE when partner David Christopher received an ominous email.“Goodbye 3ve,” read part of the subject line of an automated message from Google.It wasn’t that the internet giant had anything against the 15-person agency. It was just that the name, which partner and COO Neal Maier says cost more than $150,000 to develop, including internal labor costs, turned out to also be a code name that FBI investigators and tech firms had used to refer to an alleged multimillion-dollar international fraud ring.The code name was revealed by federal prosecutors and investigators at Google and security firm White Ops in November, and it first came on the marketing agency’s radar when the email arrived heralding Google’s role in taking down a massive automated botnet tied to the alleged fraud.“Coincidentally, we were a couple of days away from notifying our clients that this [rebranding] announcement was going to come on January 3,” says Maier.To make matters worse, the alleged crimes were themselves linked to online advertising: Prosecutors say eight people indicted last month were involved in creating bogus websites to run online ads and driving malware-infected computers to those sites, where they impersonated human viewers to collect payments from advertisers.That meant online searches for 3VE, even with industry-specific keywords like “marketing” or “advertising,” would turn up coverage of the accused fraudsters. That could confuse potential clients and employees and make it hard to even find the agency’s online presence.“Pretty instantly we knew the brand was dead”“Pretty instantly we knew the brand was dead, especially being that it was in our niche,” Maier says. “There’s just no clear path to overcome it.”The marketing firm, which is now playfully calling itself The Agency Without A Name, had started on the rebranding last March. Partners felt the company had outgrown the name Textivia, which originated with a text-messaging trivia game built early in the firm’s lifetime, and which some potential customers found difficult to pronounce.The company, which has grown into broader marketing and strategy consulting, had adopted a process it calls “solve, move, evolve,” Maier says. That, along with the fact that the firm is led by three partners, inspired the name. The 3VE name was set to officially launch on January 3, and the company had already designed a website, acquired the costly 3ve.com domain, and filed legal paperwork to register the new name.Now, it’s asking the public to help come up with a new identity. The Agency Without a Name is hoping to shed that status over the next couple of months, running a contest to drum up ideas for another new moniker.“What we’re looking for is a name that’s unique and also reflects not only who we are but also what we are,” he says.While the crowdsourcing effort is likely to bring in some publicity, Maier says it will also be easier for the agency than coming up with another name in-house so soon after being burned.“When you’re heartbroken, it’s hard to paint another masterpiece,” he says.Not the first to suffer from unfortunate coincidences: ISIS, Ayds, OsamaThe agency isn’t the first organization to have to change its name after such an unfortunate coincidence: After the terrorist group ISIS began to draw headlines in the Middle East, many similarly named organizations and projects around the world changed their names. A weight loss supplement candy called Ayds saw sales plummet during the 1980s, after the similarly pronounced immune disease became prominent. And in 2009, a Chicago hair salon saw business grow after renaming from Ossama’s Hair Design to Obama’s Hair Design, honoring the newly elected president and removing associations with Osama bin Laden.“The rule of thumb for this probably is: If the negative name association is too big for you to resist it and absorb the difficulties, consider changing names,” says Chris Silver Smith, president and strategist at Dallas online marketing company Argent Media, in an email. He’s previously written about other issues with unfortunate name overlaps.“A small, new company facing a hugely visible negative news spike should move as quickly as possible to get out from under the cloud,” he suggests.The Agency Without a Name is looking to collect some ideas by the end of this month, with the hopes of having a name and logo ready by late February, says Maier.“We don’t play the victim in this–we shed a tear or two, but immediately you’ve got to pull yourselves up by your bootstraps,” Maier says.

Back in December when the shutdown began, he promised free sandwiches at any of his restaurants for all employees of the federal government, and now he's delivering on his promise. Although Andrés said Monday that he was in Puerto Rico, his nonprofitWorld Central Kitchenwill be overseeing the new effort.His team will open a kitchen and café Wednesday on Pennsylvania Avenue between the US Capitol and the White House. It will serve a rotating menu of free hot meals between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. daily to federal workers with valid ID, along with meals for workers to take home to their families."We plan to make thousands of daily meals each day, and we will remain open as long as needed," said Chloe Mata Crane, a spokeswoman for World Central Kitchen.But the project involves more than running a kitchen to feed those in need. Andrés also is calling on politicians to end the partial government shutdown,now in its 25th day. 82 (and counting) very real direct effects of the partial government shutdown"This has a double meaning. We will have food for you to eat or food for you to take home, but I also hope this will be a call to action to our senators and congressmen and specially President Trump, to make sure that we end this moment in the history of America where families are about to go hungry," Andrés said. "We should always come together as 'we the people,' as Americans, bipartisan, Republicans and Democrats -- all Americans. So World Central Kitchen will be there for all Americans." World Central Kitchenhas provided millions of hot meals to people struck by disaster across the world, including survivors of Hurricane Florence, first responders in the California wildfires, volcano victims in Guatemala, migrants in Tijuana and millions of Puerto Ricans who were left with nothing after Hurricane Maria.

Enlarge this image California utility PG&E Corp. said Monday that it plans to file for bankruptcy over what it estimates could be $30 billion in potential liability costs from recent wildfires. Here, transmission towers in a valley near Paradise, Calif., as the Camp Fire burns in November 2018. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images California utility PG&E Corp. said Monday that it plans to file for bankruptcy over what it estimates could be $30 billion in potential liability costs from recent wildfires. Here, transmission towers in a valley near Paradise, Calif., as the Camp Fire burns in November 2018. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images Updated at 4 p.m. ETPacific Gas & Electric Corp., the parent company of California's largest utility, plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid what could be billions of dollars in liability costs over the massive wildfires that have torn through California in recent years.The company made the announcement Monday. Just hours earlier, PG&E said that its CEO, Geisha Williams, would be stepping down.The state's fire agency, Cal Fire, determined in June that PG&E equipment had sparked 17 wildfires across Northern California in 2017. In 12 of those fires, the agency's findings were referred to the appropriate county District Attorney's offices for potential violations of state law.And regulators are now investigating the utility's potential culpability in November's Camp Fire, the deadliest in state history.If PG&E is found legally responsible for some or all of the costs connected to the 2017 and 2018 Northern California wildfires, its liability could exceed $30 billion, according to the company's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. And that figure does not include potential punitive damages, fines and penalties or damages related to future claims. National Devastating Wildfires Force California's Largest Utility To Plan Sale Of Gas Assets California law says utility companies can be held liable for fire damage caused by their equipment, even if they weren't negligent in maintenance."We believe a court-supervised process under Chapter 11 will best enable PG&E to resolve its potential liabilities in an orderly, fair and expeditious fashion," interim CEO John Simon, the company's general counsel, said in a statement. "We expect this process also will enable PG&E to access the capital and resources we need to continue providing our customers with safe service and investing in our systems and infrastructure."Shares of PG&E Corp. had plummeted more than 51 percent as of 3 p.m. ET on Monday. The company has lost more than two-thirds of its market value vanish since the Camp Fire, Bloomberg reports, and in November, Moody's downgraded its credit rating nearly to junk status.The company, based in San Francisco, is required by law to give 15 days' notice of bankruptcy. Electric and natural gas customers will not notice any change in service, the utility said.Between now and actually filing for Chapter 11, the state Legislature could take action to protect the company from 2018 fire liabilities. But given the raw anger directed at the utility, that might be politically impossible.Democratic state Sen. Jerry Hill, a longtime critic of PG&E who heads a key utility safety committee, said he'll work to see that any reorganization protects ratepayers and fire victims first. Hill said that if Monday's announcement is a company tactic to pressure the Legislature for a bailout, it won't work."I certainly don't want to see another bailout for the fires of 2018," he said, "PG&E shareholders and bondholders ... invested and sometimes we make bad investments. And I think we should not be helping or assisting them nor giving golden parachutes to CEOs as well."As NPR's Eric Westervelt reported earlier this month, PG&E has been exploring whether to sell off its natural gas unit this spring in order to pay its bills: "All net proceeds from the sale of PG&E's gas division would be used to set up a fund to pay billions of dollars in potential claims from wildfires, the sources said ... The company also is exploring selling key real estate assets, including its San Francisco headquarters, and moving its operations elsewhere in the Bay Area, the sources say."The company's already significant financial problems only deepened following the Camp Fire in Butte County, Calif., in which at least 86 people died and tens of thousands were displaced.The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is still investigating the fire's cause, but PG&E says it experienced issues at part of its electrical system near where the fire broke out. Cal Fire says the Camp Fire began Nov. 8 at 6:33 a.m. local time on Pulga Road in Butte County — and PG&E sent an official notice to the California Public Utilities Commission describing an outage on one of its transmission lines at Pulga Road at 6:15 a.m.This would be the company's second bankruptcy filing in two decades. The utility's 2001 reorganization following widespread blackouts in the state led to a negotiated rate increase. Back then, the company painted itself as a victim of deregulation.But since then, the company has been convicted of felonies in a deadly gas line explosion, and now faces those potentially crippling wildfire liabilities and safety lawsuits.Mindy Spatt with the consumer group The Utility Reform Network says, this time around, bankruptcy for PG&E is very different. The company's problems stem from what she called its practice of putting profits ahead of safety."The debt that PG&E is talking about is debt that arises directly from its own negligence and liability," Spatt said. "It's a longstanding principle of utility law that customers don't pay for that kind of thing.""California's existing liabilities laws weren't made for the new normal that we face going forward with these climate driven wildfires," Steve Malnight, a senior vice president at PG&E, told NPR member station KQED in August. "It's creating really significant financial risk to the utilities which will limit our ability to continue making the investments we need going forward." Business Federal Judge Proposes Restrictions On Unsafe PG&E Power Lines PG&E's decision to replace its chief executive is likely intended to satisfy state regulators rather than investors, said Paul Patterson, an analyst who follows PG&E at Glenrock Associates LLC. "Making management changes is something the state is looking for, and handing the head of the CEO might placate the state," he told The Wall Street Journal.Williams was at the helm of PG&E for less than two years, and was the first Latina CEO of a Fortune 500 company, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.According to Monday's SEC filing, the company is aware of about 50 complaints on behalf of at least 2,000 plaintiffs over its possible role in the Camp Fire, including six that seek to be class-actions. PG&E says it is also aware of approximately 700 complaints on behalf of at least 3,600 plaintiffs related to the 2017 Northern California wildfires, five of which seek class-action status.PG&E supplies electricity and gas to more than 5 million California households and has more than 20,000 employees.Last week, a federal judge proposed requiring PG&E to re-inspect its entire electric grid and "remove or trim all trees that could fall onto its power lines." During the 2019 wildfire season, the company would also be required to turn off power in parts of the grid if windy conditions make them unsafe.

Across the northern Indian states of Haryana and Rajasthan, many villages with "embarrassing" names have been pushing to get them changed for years now. BBC Punjabi's Arvind Chhabra talks to some of the people who have been leading this campaign."My village's name is Ganda [meaning dirty or ugly in Hindi]," Harpreet Kaur wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016 in an attempt to officially change its name. She added that just the name of the village was enough to prompt humiliating taunts from whomever she met. "The situation was so bad that even our relatives mock us relentlessly," she said. In 2017, Mr Modi directed authorities to change the village's name. Today, the renamed village of Ajit Nagar stands proudly in the northern Indian state of Haryana.The village council chief, Lakwinder Ram, said they had been trying for years to get the attention of the government and change the name. "When that didn't work, we thought that perhaps a young person writing directly to Mr Modi might move him," he said. "There was not a soul in the village who didn't want the name to change." Is India waging a 'war' on Islamic names? Allahabad: The name change that killed my city's soul Locals say that Ganda got its name when a flood ravaged the area decades ago. An officer who visited in the aftermath of the disaster saw all the debris that had been swept in and remarked that it was extremely dirty or "ganda". Since then, they say, the name just stuck. Mr Ram added that the name of the village also drove away potential grooms since they did not want a bride from a village that had such a humiliating name. "We are extremely relieved now," he said. But Ganda is hardly a unique case. Representatives from more than 50 villages have pestered the Indian government for a name change in the recent past. The reasons are varied - some names are seen as racist, others were just bizarre and a few more downright embarrassing for its inhabitants. "The requests of some 40 villages have been accepted and implemented," Krishan Kumar, a senior federal government official, said. Among these, is a village called Kinnar which means transgender in Hindi. That became Gaibi Nagar in 2016. And in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan, a village in Alwar district used to be called Chor Basai. But since the word chor means thief in Hindi, the village's new name is now just Basai. But the process to get the name of a village changed is not that easy. To begin with, the state government must be convinced enough to take up the issue with the Indian government, which has the final authority. But before they can grant the request, the government also has to get clearances from other official units including the railways and postal department as well as the Survey of India. This is to ensure that the new proposed name does not exist anywhere else in the country.For residents of Lula Ahir village in Haryana state - a derogatory term for a disabled person in Hindi- the process has been fraught with bureaucracy. They first wrote to the state government in 2016, unhappy with the village name."We wanted to change the name to Dev Nagar," village council chief Virender Singh said.They waited for a response for six months - only to receive a rejection letter since a village named Dev Nagar already exists somewhere else in the country.Back at the drawing board, the village council decided to try once again with another name - Krishan Nagar. "We wrote to the administration again and kept following it up with them," Mr Singh said. "But it just went from one department to another." In July, they thought their luck had changed when the state's chief minister announced that the village had a new name. Instead, they found out that the decision hadn't been formally implemented by the central government yet. Officials confirmed that the request is still "under process". "We have just been waiting and waiting ever since," Mr Singh said with a shrug.

Apple’s forte has always been its mastery of the user interface on devices from PCs to phones to smartwatches. Its engineers are now looking past the phone touchscreen toward mixed reality, where the company’s next great UX will very likely be built. A recent patent application gives some tantalizing clues as to how Apple’s people are thinking about aspects of that challenge. It describes a wearable system that senses the movements of your fingers to control digital content in a mixed reality space.For the past few years, Apple has been laying the groundwork for its mixed-reality work. In 2017 the company released its ARKit framework, which has helped developers build thousands of augmented-reality apps. But the ARKit apps of today must be experienced through the display of an iPhone or iPad, which is a bit clunky. Relatively soon, however, this view will move to a device we wear over our eyes. Apple will not want to sell a bulky headset, so it will likely wait until it’s possible to fit all the needed components into a relatively normal-looking pair of glasses.The devices and methods for controlling and navigating mixed reality are also still a little clunky, but evolving. The leading devices in the mixed reality space–like Microsoft’s Hololens and Magic Leap’s Magic Leap One Creator Edition–allow you to use hand gestures for navigation and control. But the depth cameras and sensors needed for the tracking require space, and therefore make for a bulkier headset. One way of reducing the size of the headset is to move the hand-motion sensors to some other spot on the body.Apple’s patent, called “Finger-mounted Device with Sensors and Haptics,” describes a system of small sensor-laden pieces that fit around the finger just above the fingernail or thumbnail.Apple patent application image [Source: United States Patent and Trademark Office]Each finger wearable is outfitted with a number of sensor types. Optical sensors, for one, measure the movements of the fingertips. Accelerometers help measure motion. This enables a number of touchless gestures for navigation and control, including “taps, force input, persistent touch input, air gestures, and/or other user input,” the patent says.The wearables leave the fingertips exposed, and contain sensors that detect the “press” or “roll” of the fingertip on a surface, which could be used for additional input types: “[the finger-mounted device] may allow a user to supply joystick-type input using only lateral movement of the user’s fingertips, may gather force sensor measurements (user finger press force measurements) that are used in controlling other equipment…” the patent reads.The wearable pieces can respond to the user’s touches or gestures via built-in haptic feedback units. For example: “A finger-mounted device may be used to control a virtual reality or augmented reality system [or] may provide a user with the sensation of interacting on a physical keyboard when the user is making finger taps on a table surface (e.g., a virtual keyboard surface that is being displayed in alignment with the table surface using a head-mounted display)…” says the patent.Apple isn’t the only big company tackling the challenges of mixed-reality input. Google has been working on a gesture-based control system called Project Soli for several years. The Soli sensor captures hand motions within a three-dimensional space using a miniature radar system. So far, Google has shown applications where the radar sensor resided in a device like a smartwatch or a TV to enable gesture control, but the tech could also be used to track hand gestures within a mixed reality context. It may even be possible that a wearable device like a smartwatch could house the radar sensor, which would then emit a radar beam toward the user’s hand to detect gestures, one expert told me. Or the sensor could be built into a new type of device, perhaps something more like Apple’s finger wearables, or into clothing.Apple patent application image [Source: United States Patent and Trademark Office]Google is apparently serious about the Soli technology. It recently asked the Federal Communications Commission to grant it permission to emit the radar beam at a higher power level to pick up finer hand gestures. The FCC granted the request at the end of last year.Samsung is also actively developing gesture control systems for mixed reality. The U.S. patent office published a patent application from the South Korean giant describing a virtual reality headset that uses a combination of 3D sensors and infrared sensors to detect complex movements of the user’s hands. Samsung filed another patent application where a similar technology is used to control content in an augmented reality system.At the moment, both Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore create phone-based augmented reality (like Pokémon Go) using regular 2D cameras on the backs of phones. But phone-based AR could advance an additional step before advancing to AR glasses. Smartphone makers are showing strong interest in putting 3D depth cameras on the backs of smartphones to more effectively map 3D for digital content. Bloomberg reported in December that Huawei plans to include Sony 3D cameras on the backs of several of its new phones for 2019. The report cited sources saying that the 3D cameras will be used for more than taking 3D pictures and spacial scanning, but will also be used to track hand gestures.Apple’s Memoji [Image courtesy of Apple]Apple’s iPhone “X” models use a 3D camera on the front of the devices for facial recognition, Animoji, and Memoji. But 3D cameras can do much more, especially if they’re mounted on the back of the phone. With a more accurate 3D map of the room, ARKit apps could place content in more realistic and functional ways. Such a 3D camera might also be used for tracking hand gesture control. However, Apple may decide to wait until the Apple AR glasses are a reality before supporting gesture controls in the iPhone.The technology described in Apple’s patents often never makes it to market. Sometimes it does, but in a very different form than that described. Apple’s “finger-mounted” controllers patent is most interesting for the challenges it addresses. The company is thinking hard about the next frontier in user interfaces, and how it might arrive at the right time with the right technology to dominate mixed reality like it has dominated mobile experiences.

A California town threatened by the sort of wildfires that recently wiped out a neighbouring community is appealing for an unusual type of help: a crack team of goats.Nevada City has launched a crowdfunding drive, dubbed “goat fund me”, to recruit a herd to munch through acres of wildfire-prone vegetation at the fringe of town.In an effort to cut down a 450-acre greenbelt, town officials are appealing for $30,000 to acquire the goats. According to the goat fund me page, it can cost up to $1,000 an acre for such specialist grazing, as about 200 goats are able to finish off an acre a day.The city council expects the goats to act as the first wave in an assault on the vegetation, with humans following in their hoofsteps to clear away larger foliage such as tree limbs“That’s a lot of acreage but we’re breaking it down into bite sizes and prioritizing where the risk is greatest,” wrote Reinette Senum, Nevada City’s vice-mayor, on the page.“There is little need to stress how important it is to the safety and wellbeing of Nevada City citizens and neighboring residents that we reduce the fire load in our surrounding forests and neighborhoods.”Nevada City’s concerns over wildfire have been heightened following a year of enormous blazes in California. The town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains is just 70 miles south of Paradise, which was virtually wiped off the map last year in the deadliest fire in state history.There is a sense of urgency over the deployment of the goat squadron, with winter providing the best window of time to pare back vegetation that may spread wildfires once summer arrives. While providing a cheaper grazing option than machinery, goats still require the oversight of a herdsman to ensure they don’t go rogue.A month after launching the funding drive, Nevada City is closing in on its goal, with nearly $17,000 raised so far.“I lost my house in Santa Rosa in 2017,” read a comment from Dale Albin. “I recently donated to the Paradise fire victims. I like the idea of funding goats rather than victims. Go goats!” Topics California Animals Wildfires Natural disasters and extreme weather news

(Reuters) - PG&E Corp (PCG.N), owner of the biggest U.S. power utility by customers, said on Monday it is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as soon as this month amid pressure from potentially crushing liabilities linked to California’s catastrophic wildfires in 2017 and 2018. PG&E, which provides electricity and natural gas to 16 million customers in northern and central California, faces widespread litigation, government investigations and liabilities that could potentially exceed $30 billion due to the fires, the company said. The most recent fire last November killed at least 86 people in the deadliest and most destructive blaze in California history. Its shares plunged 52 percent on Monday to $8.38, giving it a market capitalization of less than $4.5 billion. The stock is down more than 80 percent from late 2017, before wildfires devastated PG&E’s service areas. Bond prices also fell sharply on Monday. PG&E’s chief executive officer was replaced on Sunday by General Counsel John Simon on an interim basis. San Francisco-based PG&E is working on lining up roughly $5.5 billion in so-called debtor-in-possession financing to help operations during bankruptcy proceedings. The utility said the bankruptcy process would not affect electric or natural gas services for customers. Company advisers expect that it may take up to two years to emerge from bankruptcy. In theory, California politicians could avert PG&E’s bankruptcy with legislative action. Last year, the state approved a law helping utilities recoup costs from fires in 2017, but not blazes in 2018. Lawmakers and regulators may both be constrained in how much more they can help PG&E, at least by allowing it to further raise electricity rates. California’s average rate is 16 cents per kilowatt hour, while those in neighboring Oregon and in Washington state are about half as much, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration provided by energy consulting firm McCullough Research. The U.S. average is 10 cents per kilowatt hour. PG&E said in a securities filing it could potentially raise more money and avoid seeking bankruptcy protection, but argued such a move would be complex, uncertain and expensive. Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s recently cut PG&E’s credit rating into junk territory, citing concerns about wildfire liabilities. On Monday, Moody’s and S&P cut PG&E’s ratings again and Fitch downgraded the California power company and its Pacific Power & Gas Co unit to junk. FILE PHOTO: PG&E works on power lines to repair damage caused by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S. November 21, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage/File PhotoA bankruptcy filing could help the company deal with such fundamental problems as the prospect of continually being exposed to financial fallout from future wildfires, the company said. Many PG&E customers live near dry forests where rain has become increasingly rare - conditions for potential future blazes. PG&E’s regulator, the California Public Utilities Commission, began in late December to investigate whether the company should make significant structural changes, including becoming owned by the state or splitting up its businesses. The company said it was looking for new members for its board of directors with safety experience. PG&E said it could face “significant liability” in excess of its insurance coverage if its equipment was found to have caused the Camp Fire that swept through the California mountain community of Paradise last November. PG&E’s liabilities from that fire could be catastrophic if authorities determine its equipment caused the blazes. Under California law, utilities are exposed to liability from wildfires regardless of their negligence. The company decided to prepare to file for bankruptcy in part to address that issue, known as “inverse condemnation.” In a regulatory filing, it questioned whether it could continue to operate in the years ahead as a so-called investor-owned utility by being exposed to that risk. Investors might avoid the company if questions around that risk remain unanswered. A federal judge last week proposed restricting PG&E from using power lines deemed unsafe during high winds in this year’s fire season. Energy companies that supply PG&E could be hit by its bankruptcy. One of the most exposed is Kinder Morgan Inc (KMI.N), the second-largest North American pipeline operator, analysts said. Slideshow (2 Images)PG&E plans to seek court protection from creditors around Jan. 29, the company said. It alerted employees on Monday in order to comply with California law. The company’s board ousted CEO Geisha Williams and decided to undergo a restructuring at a meeting over the weekend in San Francisco, according to a source familiar with the matter. Williams had served as CEO since March 2017, before the fatal blazes. PG&E, which drew down remaining amounts on credit lines totaling $3.3 billion in November, had about $1.5 billion of liquidity as of Friday. Reporting by Liana B. Baker, Mike Spector and Jessica DiNapoli in New York; Additional reporting by Scott Disavino in New York; Gary McWilliams in Houston and Laharee Chatterjee and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Peter CooneyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

In Tim Cook’s comments on CNBC last week, he seemed to hint strongly that Apple will introduce new healthcare services or device features in the near to midterm. Here’s Cook’s quote:“On the healthcare, in particular, and sort of your well-being, this is an area that I believe, if you zoom out into the future, and you look back, and you ask the question, ‘What was Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind,’ it will be about health… And as we’ve gotten into healthcare more and more through the Watch and through other things that we’ve created with ResearchKit and CareKit and putting your medical records on the iPhone, this is a huge deal…We are democratizing it. We are taking what has been with the institution and empowering the individual to manage their health. And we’re just at the front end of this.”If Cook is teasing future news, the question is “what and when?” Naturally, he isn’t saying. But Apple has telegraphed some of its likely moves to play a more meaningful role in the healthcare system. The company is likely to pursue three areas: blood pressure management, diabetes management, and sleep science.Blood pressureApple built an impressively accurate heart rate sensor into the very first version of the Apple Watch in 2015, and has continued to add to the device’s heart monitoring capabilities. Its last major improvement was adding the electrical sensors needed to form an electrocardiogram (ECG), which measures the characteristics of the electrical signals that govern the pumping of the heart muscle. While the Watch’s ECG has already positively affected the lives of some users, it’s not exactly a mainstream feature that applies to all or even most Watch wearers. A blood pressure monitor, however, might come closer to that mark. The CDC says about 75 million American adults have high blood pressure, or one of every three adults. (I’m one of them.) That’s mainstream.Apple has left clues that it’s thinking about this type of technology. The Patent Office published an Apple patent in June 2018 describing a “low-profile blood pressure measurement system.” In one application of the technology, an inflatable blood pressure cuff could be built into the band of the Watch. The wearer would feel a squeeze around the wrist, and new sensors on the Watch itself would measure systolic and diastolic pressure.Medical device maker Omron displayed a new product at CES recently that seems to prove that such a product can be approved by the Food and Drug Administration and brought to market. Like the technology described in the Apple patent, Omron’s product–called HeartGuide–uses an inflatable cuff built into the band of a wrist-wearable device to measure blood pressure. Other wearable blood pressure monitors exist, but they rely only on sensors and can provide only estimated blood pressure readings, Omron says. The device also contains the electrical sensors needed to create an ECG. Apple may be looking for ways to add blood pressure readings to the Watch’s existing heart monitoring functions.Diabetes management“Apple has shown great interest in diabetes, and the continuous glucose monitoring concept,” says Creative Strategies president and long-time Apple analyst Tim Bajarin. Bajarin, who is diabetic, uses a system from Dexcom, which monitors blood sugar via a couple of small prongs that penetrate just beneath the wearer’s skin at the abdomen, and derives a measurement by sampling the glucose present in the interstitial fluid there. The blood sugar levels are available continuously and are transmitted wirelessly to the Apple Watch display.Apple has also worked with a company called One Drop, which makes a blood glucose monitoring kit that can send the results of a user’s blood test directly to the Apple Watch.While Dexcom and One Drop currently rely on directly sampling fluid or blood from the user’s body, Apple is said to be chasing the holy grail of a contactless means of sampling blood sugar levels. The company would like to measure blood sugar levels using a light emitting sensor that could, perhaps, shine light down into the bloodstream in a user’s wrist and identify blood sugar molecules.“It’s very difficult to do but I know they have great interest in it,” Bajarin told me. If Apple were to find a way to use such an approach to gather reliable results, it could change the lives of a great many people. The American Diabetes Association says roughly 23 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, and another 7 million have it but are undiagnosed. Worldwide, the number of people living with diabetes is well past 400 million.Sleep sciencePeople on Apple’s health and smartwatch teams have taken a keen interest in sleep science, a source tells me. But so far Apple has not built native sleep-monitoring apps into iOS or watchOS, nor has it built special sleep-detecting sensors into the Apple Watch or AirPods.Last year Apple bought the Finnish sleep science company Beddit, which makes a thin sensor pad that slips underneath the user’s mattress and can detect things like sleep time, heart rate, breathing, snoring, and bedroom temperature and humidity. It also make companion apps to display and manage data gathered from the device. In December Apple began selling the first updated version of the Beddit product since acquiring the company. It would make sense for Apple to eventually build some of the Beddit functionality into iOS or watchOS.Apple has experimented with a number of ways to help people measure and understand their sleep. The company even created a prototype of a sensor-laden “sleep mask,” the source told me.Rival wearable maker Fitbit’s work in sleep science might also provide clues as to where Apple may go. The company has added a relative SpO2 (peripheral capillary oxygen saturation) sensor to its wearables, which measures the amount of oxygen in the bloodstream. With that data Fitbit can determine interruptions in breathing during sleep, such as those caused by sleep apnea. Other Fitbit sensors detect things like sleep duration and quality of sleep. Fitbit is testing a method of rolling up a group of sleep measurements into a simple “sleep score” that the user can see after each night of sleep.At the moment, the Apple Watch could not be used in this way because its battery won’t last through a whole day’s use and then through the night. But Beddit already can create a “sleep score” from data collected by its under-mattress pad. So Apple already owns the software and the expertise it needs to monitor sleep It now needs to land on an approach to supporting that feature in its hardware.Apple’s health historyWe often associate Apple’s health endeavors with the Apple Watch, but they actually started well before that, Bajarin points out. The company began with health and wellness features for the iPhone, including things like a step counter and exercise routines. It then built in a unified platform for the collection of all kinds of personal health data in iOS’s Health app. Apps for researchers (ResearchKit) and caregivers (CareKit) followed. More recently, Apple has added a function that lets people keep a limited version of their electronic medical records on their device.Things got more serious when the Apple Watch came along in 2015. “The Watch brought health features into wearables and added precision to the measurements,” says Bajarin. The Watch was first positioned as a fitness device, but the goal has always been to build in features that more directly monitor health. Aside from the ECG reader, the Watch also now has a fall detection feature, which can alert caregivers or loved ones if the sensors in the device detect the wearer has taken a sudden fall.For a long time, Silicon Valley companies such as Apple and Google sought to avoid dealing with the Food and Drug Administration, seeking instead to offer health features that didn’t require government approval. That has changed, as tech companies realized that doing anything very meaningful for a user’s health required going through the FDA. Apple, for instance, got its first experience working with the FDA when it submitted the Watch’s new ECG function for approval. The ECG system got its de novo clearance from the FDA one day before its public announcement.Working with the FDA involves bringing the agency and its guidelines into the development process early on. And it requires a different way of thinking about product creation, as AliveCor’s Vic Gundotra explained to me. AliveCor made Kardia Band, the first FDA-approved ECG band for the Apple Watch. Seeking approval for a digital health product is an expensive and time-consuming process that often seems foreign and off-putting to Silicon Valley companies. Gundotra, an ex-Google executive who oversaw the development of Google Photos and Google+, says it took some time for he and his team to adapt to the agency’s methodical, evidence-based way of doing things.Apple is now well into that process. And it has the advantage of being able to allocate lots of engineers and clinicians to work closely with the FDA to move the approval procedure along, Bajarin points out. Apple has the funds to hire whatever healthcare professionals it needs, and it has hired many already. Many of them work in its health lab in Santa Clara, where Apple employees are often brought in to help test new health features for the iPhone and Apple Watch. We’ve probably only just begun to see the fruits of their labors.Positioned for privacyAside from the health features and functions, Apple has already done a lot to position itself to make a difference in health. Data privacy is a huge consideration for any tech company working in the health sphere, and Apple has been on a long, high-profile crusade to protect personal data, even from law enforcement. It’s also been critical of companies like Facebook that profit from the harvesting and leveraging of user data. On the technical side, Apple stores sensitive personal data (such as Apple Pay transaction data) in a secure enclave inside the device that even Apple can’t see. All this builds trust, and prepares consumers for a time when Apple devices store even more sensitive health data than they already do.The MD on your wristThe more the Apple Watch emphasizes healthcare, the more relevant it can become, says Ari Roisman, the CEO of CMRA, which makes a camera band for the Watch. “For many people, the Watch is a trustworthy companion, and what will make it essential is that it’s almost like a doctor on your wrist. It knows you,” Roisman said. “Eventually, it will have a sense of what kind of nutrients are running through your bloodstream.” Blood-pressure and blood-sugar data would also be complements to this.The Watch already touches a lot of people. It hasn’t changed the world–or Apple–as much as the iPod or iPhone did, but it still could. Analysts say Apple has sold as many as 60 million Apple Watches to date, and adoption may grow to more than 100 million by the end of next year. “When you have powerful compute coupled with sensors on-skin, there’s a lot you can do and a lot you can intuit,” says Roisman.The variety and amount of biometric and diagnostic data gathered by the Watch will likely grow quickly in the coming years. The challenge may be to limit the flow of data to caregivers to only the most meaningful and immediately actionable facts.Before the death of Steve Jobs, Tim Cook and others at Apple made a commitment to the dying CEO to start looking at ways Apple could be involved in health. “Steve was so disillusioned with what he saw during his own illness, and that began a discussion about how Apple could play a significant role in improving the healthcare system and healthcare monitoring,” says Bajarin. By the sound of Cook’s comments last week, that commitment is still fresh in Cook’s mind.

(Reuters) - PG&E Corp (PCG.N) Chief Executive Geisha Williams has stepped down, the company said on Sunday, as pressure from potentially crushing liabilities linked to catastrophic wildfires have pushed the California utility owner to the financial brink and prompted it to make bankruptcy preparations. FILE PHOTO: PG&E works on power lines to repair damage caused by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S. November 21, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage/File PhotoWilliams, who took the helm of the provider of electricity and natural gas to millions of customers in March 2017, will be replaced by General Counsel John Simon on an interim basis, the company said. She also resigned from the boards of both PG&E and its utility subsidiary, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. “While we are making progress as a company in safety and other areas, the Board recognizes the tremendous challenges PG&E continues to face. We believe John is the right interim leader for the company,” PG&E Chairman Richard Kelly said in a statement. “Our search is focused on extensive operational and safety expertise, and the board is committed to further change at PG&E.” PG&E is reeling from the November Camp fire that began in the California mountain community of Paradise and swept through the town, eventually killing at least 86 people in the deadliest and most destructive blaze in state history. The company faces widespread litigation, government investigations and liabilities that could potentially reach $30 billion, according to analyst estimates, when accounting for the carnage and damage from last year’s fire and blazes in 2017. The company is under pressure from the California Public Utilities Commission to make operational changes. The power provider announced on Jan. 3 that it was reviewing its structural options and looking for new directors with safety experience. The management shake-up comes as PG&E is in discussions with banks for a multibillion-dollar bankruptcy financing package to aid operations during bankruptcy proceedings and the company prepares to alert employees as soon as Monday to its preparations for a potential Chapter 11 court filing, people familiar with the matter said. PG&E, which carries a hefty debt load of more than $18 billion, is expected to disclose soon a large financial charge related to liabilities resulting from the November blaze. The employee-notification plans are not yet finalized and a communication could come later, the sources said. State law requires PG&E to notify employees at least 15 days before any bankruptcy filing. For PG&E, a bankruptcy filing would represent a last resort if the company is unable to get government relief that would allow it to pass on liabilities to customers, a maneuver enacted into law to help the company grapple with 2017 fires, the sources added. California lawmakers have not yet moved to pass legislation that would give PG&E similar flexibility for the 2018 blazes. California Governor Gavin Newsom said last week he was having discussions with PG&E executives, and that he wanted a healthy utility investing in environmentally friendly strategies. “That’s in an ideal world,” he said. “That’s not the case today.” PG&E said in November it could face “significant liability” in excess of its insurance coverage if its equipment was found to have caused the Camp fire in Northern California. Both Moody’s and S&P have cut PG&E’s credit rating deeper into junk territory, citing a challenging environment for the power provider related to the wildfires and the need for dramatic intervention from state officials. Companies negotiate debtor-in-possession loans, often with existing lenders, when they are seriously considering bankruptcy protection so they can continue operations while working through court proceedings. PG&E’s bankruptcy financing, should it be needed, could total between $3 billion and $5 billion, although the exact figure remains in flux and could end up being higher, said people familiar with the discussions. If it seeks bankruptcy protection, the new money could prove critical for PG&E, which spends roughly $6 billion annually. Reporting by Liana B. Baker and Mike Spector in New York; Additional reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York and Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter CooneyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Nestled in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains is the quaint Gold Rush town of Nevada City. Surrounded by unkempt brush, the old, highly flammable city is in danger: With California’s wildfires raging with unprecedented ferocity in recent years, one spark could doom Nevada City to the same fate that neighboring Paradise met in November.But not if the goats get there first. Realizing its predicament, Nevada City has launched a crowdfunding campaign to pay goats (or, more accurately, their herders) to clear brush at the edges of town. It’s called, yes, Goat Fund Me. And it’s part of an ungulate awakening: All across the state, business is booming for herders as panicked homeowners and towns reckon with the wildfire menace.There is no single explanation for why California’s wildfire problem has gotten so bad. Climate change is one—less rain in the fall means dryer brush, which in turn coincides with seasonal winds that fan massive blazes. More cities encroaching on wildlands is another.Yet a third factor—the one most pertinent to the interests of goats—is the fact that California has been really, really bad about clearing the brush that turns into tinder. For comparison, the southeastern US, an area only five times bigger than California, did prescribed burns on 5.5 million acres last year, 100 times more than the Golden State. Prescribed burns are expensive, and a huge chunk of California’s fire money goes to battling ever-larger blazes.Goats, though? A herd's work is relatively cheap, around $1,000 an acre (200 goats can tear through an acre a day). “I realized money was an issue,” says Nevada City vice mayor Reinette Senum, who launched Goat Fund Me. “We can go out and pursue grants but that takes months, and we don't have months.” The best time for the goats to do their thing is in the winter, before new growth blooms during the rains of spring. That and the ranchers already have their goats rented out for the rest of the year.The first step is to identify the most prone areas with the help of the fire chief, then reach out to residents there to tell them that there might soon be a special scent in the air. “You've got to let neighbors know: For a couple days you might get a smell,” Senum says. “Your dogs might be disturbed because they're smelling goats and may want to go after them.”To be clear, the goats don’t work alone. They have human handlers and their own muscle in the form of a big white dog. “They're fiercely protective,” says Brad Fowler, owner of vegetation management company The Goat Works, which is working with the city. “In California we've got mountain lions and coyotes and, recently, wolves. The dogs, just by their presence and their bark, discourage predators to go somewhere else.”The operation doesn’t simply amount to letting goats loose on a property. “Basically we have a mobile ranch,” Fowler says. “We're taking a ranch, essentially with all the infrastructure that's included in that, to every place we go.” The team sets up solar-powered electric fences to keep the goats penned in a particular area. If possible, they hunt down local creeks or ponds, but they may also truck in their own water.But for the most part, once they’re in place, the goats are self-starters. They’re highly efficient vegetation managers, since they convert a plant’s solar energy into protein and poop, which nourishes the ecosystem, whereas human crews have to cart off what they clear. They’ll eat most plants from the shoulder up, so dead grasses and such. (If you want to really clear grass, sheep are your best bet.) Nevada City has a particular problem with out-of-control blackberry bushes, whose thorns are no problem for the goats. “They've got really nimble lips,” says Fowler. “It's funny to watch them. They'll hold the branch with their lips and reach in and bite it off with their back teeth.”Being goats, though, they don’t necessarily abide by human notions of containment. “A bad day would be, you get a call that all your animals are two miles away from where they're supposed to be,” says Fowler. “The good news is when that happens, people don't get as upset about it as they would if, say, your bulldozer got loose and ran over a bunch of houses. As long as they stay out of traffic, I’m OK.”On their own, goats only do part of the job; they’re more of an advance party. They get in there and strip out the brush enough for human crews to come in with chainsaws to cart away the bigger branches and such. Of particular convenience is the fact that goats will happily eat poison oak. “They're cute little things, but it's only one little piece,” says Senum. “Who doesn't love a goat?Still, the firefighting ruminant business is booming in California, beyond Nevada City. “It seems like everybody kind of woke up with these big fires,” says Fowler. “And I tell you what, there's a huge opportunity. If somebody wants to get into the business, now would be a good time.”How Corning makes super-pure glass for fiber-optic cableHyundai's walking car concept reinvents the wheelGive yourself to the dark (mode) sideThe life-changing magic of peak self-optimizationWhat is XR, and how do I get it?👀 Looking for the latest gadgets? Check out our picks, gift guides, and best deals all year round📩 Get even more of our inside scoops with our weekly Backchannel newsletter

FILE PHOTO: PG&E crew work on power lines to repair damage caused by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S. November 21, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage/File PhotoNEW YORK (Reuters) - Bonds of PG&E Corp (PCG.N), owner of the biggest U.S. power utility by number of customers, plunged on Monday after the company said it is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it faces liabilities linked to wildfires in California. Nearly all of PG&E’s roughly $18 billion of bonds were trading sharply lower, sending their yields, which move in the opposite direction, to record highs. The largest drops were concentrated in shorter maturities, implying that the market continues to price in some expectation of recovery. The biggest moves were in bonds maturing in May 2021 694308GV3= and September 2021 694308GW1=, which both fell by nearly 8 points in price, and the October 2020 694308GT8= bond, which was down by 6.6 points. Their yield spreads, or the measure of the additional yield demanded by investors to hold riskier corporate bonds over safer U.S. Treasury securities, shot to 11.16, 10.04 and 12.35 percentage points, respectively. That is significantly higher than the 4.5-percentage point average spread of high-yield notes over Treasuries, according to the relevant ICE BofAML indexes. “There’s no real money selling at the long end, reflecting the expectation that there is recovery value. The short end is under a little more pressure and bonds are down about 1 point,” said an investor who asked to remain anonymous because of their active position in the bonds. “Bonds will now likely avoid hitting the high-yield market which will make the high-yield investors happy and when the company returns to market after bankruptcy, they should have access. Again, for now, a decent recovery is being priced into the bonds and we are not seeing forced selling right now.” Buying and selling at the short end, however, has been significant enough to push trading volume of the bonds in aggregate to their third-highest day in the last two years, according to data from MarketAxess. PG&E issues were the top four most-traded U.S. corporate bonds on Monday, MarketAxess data showed, of which the most actively traded was a $3-billion note coming due in March 2034 694308GE1=. The price of the 2034 bond has dropped 8.4 percent in the past week, with yields up 13.5 percent. Seven of the top 10 most traded belong to PG&E. Short positions in the company’s bonds have more than doubled from early December to $651 million today, with an increase of $250 million over the last week, when Reuters first reported that the company was mulling a bankruptcy filing, according to Samuel Pierson, analyst at IHS Markit. Reporting By Dan Burns and Kate Duguid; editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Nick ZieminskiOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

(Reuters) - PG&E Corp (PCG.N) is in discussions with investment banks about a multibillion-dollar financing package to help navigate bankruptcy proceedings, a sign that Chapter 11 filing preparations are intensifying in the wake of potentially staggering liabilities from deadly wildfires, sources said on Sunday. The California utility owner is in touch with large banks about so-called debtor-in-possession financing that could total between $3 billion and $5 billion, though the exact figure remains in flux and could end up being higher, said the sources, who are familiar with the matter. PG&E Corp declined to comment. The company may alert employees as soon as Monday about its preparations for a potential bankruptcy filing in compliance with a state law about providing notice at least 15 days before such an event, one of the people said. The plans have not been finalized and the communication could come later, the source said. Bloomberg first reported that the notice could come as soon as Monday. Companies negotiate debtor-in-possession loans, often with existing lenders, when they are seriously considering bankruptcy protection so they can continue operations while working through court proceedings. PG&E’s existing lenders include Citigroup Inc (C.N), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) and Bank of America Corp (BAC.N). A bankruptcy filing is not assured, the sources said. PG&E’s discussions with banks about financing are in the early stages and part of contingency planning if other efforts to address woes from last year’s wildfire fail, they said. A bankruptcy filing would represent a last resort if the company is unable to get government relief that would allow it to pass on liabilities to customers, a maneuver enacted into law to help the company grapple with 2017 fires, the sources added. Slideshow (3 Images)If it seeks bankruptcy protection, the new money could prove critical for PG&E, which spends roughly $6 billion annually serving millions of electric and natural gas customers in California. PG&E, which carries a hefty debt load of more than $18 billion, is expected to soon disclose a large financial charge related to liabilities resulting from catastrophic November blazes. One, the Camp Fire, swept through the mountain community of Paradise and killed at least 86 people, the deadliest and most destructive blaze in state history. PG&E faces widespread lawsuits from that fire and one in 2017. In November, the company warned it could face “significant liability” in excess of its insurance coverage it its equipment was found to have caused last year’s blazes. Reporting by Mike Spector and Liana B. Baker in New York; Additional reporting by Jessica Dinapoli; Editing by Jeffrey BenkoeOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

(Reuters) - PG&E Corp (PCG.N), owner of the biggest U.S. power utility by customers, said on Monday it is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as soon as this month amid pressure from potentially crushing liabilities linked to California’s catastrophic wildfires in 2017 and 2018. PG&E, which provides electricity and natural gas to 16 million customers in northern and central California, faces widespread litigation, government investigations and liabilities that could potentially exceed $30 billion due to the fires, the company said. The most recent fire last November killed at least 86 people in the deadliest and most destructive blaze in California history. Its shares plunged 52 percent on Monday to $8.38, giving it a market capitalization of less than $4.5 billion. The stock is down more than 80 percent from late 2017, before wildfires devastated PG&E’s service areas. Bond prices also fell sharply on Monday. PG&E’s chief executive officer was replaced on Sunday by General Counsel John Simon on an interim basis. San Francisco-based PG&E is working on lining up roughly $5.5 billion in so-called debtor-in-possession financing to help operations during bankruptcy proceedings. The utility said the bankruptcy process would not affect electric or natural gas services for customers. Company advisers expect that it may take up to two years to emerge from bankruptcy. In theory, California politicians could avert PG&E’s bankruptcy with legislative action. Last year, the state approved a law helping utilities recoup costs from fires in 2017, but not blazes in 2018. Lawmakers and regulators may both be constrained in how much more they can help PG&E, at least by allowing it to further raise electricity rates. California’s average rate is 16 cents per kilowatt hour, while those in neighboring Oregon and in Washington state are about half as much, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration provided by energy consulting firm McCullough Research. The U.S. average is 10 cents per kilowatt hour. PG&E said in a securities filing it could potentially raise more money and avoid seeking bankruptcy protection, but argued such a move would be complex, uncertain and expensive. Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s recently cut PG&E’s credit rating into junk territory, citing concerns about wildfire liabilities. On Monday, Moody’s and S&P cut PG&E’s ratings again and Fitch downgraded the California power company and its Pacific Power & Gas Co unit to junk. FILE PHOTO: PG&E works on power lines to repair damage caused by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S. November 21, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage/File PhotoA bankruptcy filing could help the company deal with such fundamental problems as the prospect of continually being exposed to financial fallout from future wildfires, the company said. Many PG&E customers live near dry forests where rain has become increasingly rare - conditions for potential future blazes. PG&E’s regulator, the California Public Utilities Commission, began in late December to investigate whether the company should make significant structural changes, including becoming owned by the state or splitting up its businesses. The company said it was looking for new members for its board of directors with safety experience. PG&E said it could face “significant liability” in excess of its insurance coverage if its equipment was found to have caused the Camp Fire that swept through the California mountain community of Paradise last November. PG&E’s liabilities from that fire could be catastrophic if authorities determine its equipment caused the blazes. Under California law, utilities are exposed to liability from wildfires regardless of their negligence. The company decided to prepare to file for bankruptcy in part to address that issue, known as “inverse condemnation.” In a regulatory filing, it questioned whether it could continue to operate in the years ahead as a so-called investor-owned utility by being exposed to that risk. Investors might avoid the company if questions around that risk remain unanswered. A federal judge last week proposed restricting PG&E from using power lines deemed unsafe during high winds in this year’s fire season. Energy companies that supply PG&E could be hit by its bankruptcy. One of the most exposed is Kinder Morgan Inc (KMI.N), the second-largest North American pipeline operator, analysts said. Slideshow (2 Images)PG&E plans to seek court protection from creditors around Jan. 29, the company said. It alerted employees on Monday in order to comply with California law. The company’s board ousted CEO Geisha Williams and decided to undergo a restructuring at a meeting over the weekend in San Francisco, according to a source familiar with the matter. Williams had served as CEO since March 2017, before the fatal blazes. PG&E, which drew down remaining amounts on credit lines totaling $3.3 billion in November, had about $1.5 billion of liquidity as of Friday. Reporting by Liana B. Baker, Mike Spector and Jessica DiNapoli in New York; Additional reporting by Scott Disavino in New York; Gary McWilliams in Houston and Laharee Chatterjee and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Peter CooneyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The utility company that services more than a third of California announced on Monday it plans to file for bankruptcy by the end of the month. Several deadly wildfires believed to have been caused by the company left it with potential liabilities of at least $30bn.The board of directors of Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has determined that the move “is ultimately the only viable option to restore PG&E’s financial stability to fund ongoing operations and provide safe service to customers”, the San Francisco-based company stated in a filing at the Security and Exchange Commission.PG&E, which provides gas and electricity to 16 million Californians, is under investigation for its role in November’s Camp fire, the deadliest wildfire in the state’s history.The company has been found responsible for several other disasters in recent years, including the 2017 North Bay fires, which killed 43 people and destroyed more than 14,700 homes, the 2015 Butte fire, which killed two people and destroyed almost 900 structures, and a a 2010 gas line explosion in San Bruno that ripped through an entire neighborhood, killing eight and injuring 58 people. PG&E was fined $1.6bn for the San Bruno explosion and a federal jury found the company guilty of six felony charges, ordering it to pay $3m in fines.With Monday’s announcement, PG&E hopes to reach a resolution for potential liabilities resulting from the Camp fire and the North Bay fires. “We believe a court-supervised process under Chapter 11 will best enable PG&E to resolve its potential liabilities in an orderly, fair and expeditious fashion,” the interim PG&E CEO, John Simon, said in a statement. “We expect this process also will enable PG&E to access the capital and resources we need to continue providing our customers with safe service and investing in our systems and infrastructure.”Monday’s moves come during a period of intense disruption for the company. S&P Global Ratings and Moody’s Investors Services cut PG&E’s credit grades to junk status, down from investment-grade level, last week. The federal judge overseeing the utility after the 2010 San Bruno explosion also moved to order the company to reinspect its grid and “remove or trim all trees” that could fall on power lines ahead of next year’s fire season. And on Sunday, PG&E’s chief executive, Geisha Williams, announced her resignation. Williams is set to receive a severance payment of about $2.5m, as well as accrued pension benefits, “the same as any employee of the company”, said Matt Nauman, a PG&E spokesman.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who was elected just days before the Camp fire ignited, said in a statement on Monday that he has been “closely monitoring the impact of PG&E’s existing and potential future liability”, but would not go into detail about any possible government intervention.“Everyone’s immediate focus is, rightfully, on ensuring Californians have continuous, reliable and safe electric and gas service,” Newsom said. “While PG&E announced its intent to file bankruptcy today, the company should continue to honor promises made to energy suppliers and to our community. Last fall, the then governor, Jerry Brown, signed into law a bill allowing utility companies whose equipment is found to have caused a wildfire to increase rates over several years in order to pay for liability costs. Consumer watchdog groups strongly opposed the law, knowing that under it, any wildfires from 2017 on could be covered in such fashion.“Basically, from our perspective, customers pay a bill every month and they pay it because they want to have safe and reliable electricity and that is where our money should be going toward,” said Mindy Spatt, a spokeswoman for the Utility Reform Network. “Customers can’t afford to keep paying for PG&E’s negligence and liabilities.”In a statement on Monday, the San Francisco city attorney, Dennis Herrera, vowed to “vigorously defend” the interests of San Francisco taxpayers and hold PG&E to its promise that “the power stays on during the company’s financial turmoil”.“We will also remain vigilant,” Herrera said. “PG&E should not be allowed to shift its failures onto the backs of hardworking residents. We are working with other policymakers to ensure that this situation results in safe, reliable, clean and affordable power for ratepayers, including the possibility of a publicly owned utility.” Topics California Energy industry Natural disasters and extreme weather Wildfires news

As reality in tech-heavy economies blends further into an unending choose-your-own adventure episode of Black Mirror, the biggest, creepiest innovation may be the big data economy built on the back of the black mirror in your hand. It’s not just Google and Facebook and Amazon and the rest of Silicon Valley sucking up our digital exhaust: A vast array of companies are increasingly capturing information about your every move for profit, and in ways that can adversely and quietly impact you.Even Sheryl Connelly, Ford’s generally optimistic futurist, is worried about what’s to come. Between surging economic inequality, a yawning digital divide, and persistent privacy violations, she says, “it’s a very 1984 moment, and you have to wonder when the other shoe will drop.”In many countries, there is little legal framework surrounding the collection and potential abuse of personal data. Last year, just a few months after Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal exploded, Europe began to grapple with new rules surrounding data collection through its new General Data Privacy Regulation, or GDPR. Shortly after that, California passed the nation’s most far-reaching data privacy law, set to go into effect in 2020.The new laws were important victories for personal privacy in a year that was otherwise marred by tech industry scandals, blunders, and all kinds of reminders of innovation’s creepy side. Here are a few recent developments worth keeping an eye on this year.Face recognition: Airports, stores, casinos, and an untold number of other places are using facial recognition, even in real time, to search for suspicious people with the help of massive and obscure databases. Australia is launching a national face scanning system, and in China, facial recognition technology is catching criminals as they sip brews at a beer festival. In December, as Amazon continued to face criticism for the sale of its Rekognition service, one of the most prominent call for regulations came from one of its AI competitors. Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, wrote, “We don’t believe that the world will be best served by a commercial race to the bottom, with tech companies forced to choose between social responsibility and market success.”A police officer uses smart glasses to recognize the face of a suspect, as seen in a 2017 simulation by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security.Affect recognition. So-called affect recognition software isn’t just being used to evaluate job candidates: Police are increasingly turning to AI-based systems to determine whether a person is a risk based on their facial gestures and their voice, in what some experts have described as a modern-day version of physiognomy.Related: The 60 dumbest moments in tech in 2018Digital fakes. As with digital people, the technology surrounding deepfakes—videos intended to trick viewers into thinking someone said or did (or danced) something they didn’t—has recently given way to new techniques, like deep video portraits and near photo-realistic simulations of physical places. While experts wage battle against advanced digital fakery, backed by agencies like DARPA, some are also raising alarms about the prospect of a much less sophisticated kind of attack: the spread of fake data and fraudulent documents.Alec Baldwin’s impersonation is replaced with the face of the real Donald Trump, using Deepfakes. [Image: Youtube user Derpfakes]Human botification. In a world of algorithmic suggestions, Google is now autocompleting our sentences. Convenient, sure, but nudging us a bit closer to what Google thinks we should write may also be nudging us humans into robot territory. “A lot of this predictive analytics is getting at the heart of whether or not we have free will,” tech ethicist David Polgar told Fast Company‘s Mark Wilson. “Do I choose my next step, or does Google? And if it can predict my next step, then what does that say about me?”Meanwhile, ride-hail drivers and other algorithmically-guided workers are confronted by a similarly crucial question, writes Alex Rosenblat, the author of Uberland: ‘Given that Uber treats its workers as “consumers” of “algorithmic technology,” and promotes them as self-employed entrepreneurs, a thorny, uncharted, and uncomfortable question must be answered: If you use an app to go to work, should society consider you a consumer, an entrepreneur, or a worker?’Workplace monitoring. Companies have been able to track employees’ locations and conversations for years, but the tracking is getting more invasive, and closer to workers’ bodies. Last year, Amazon received a patent for a wristband that uses haptic feedback to correct employees when they may be about to do something wrong. Still others are deploying sensors around offices to track movement and space utilization.Related: Get ready for the “splinternet”: The web might not be worldwide much longerGenetic abuse. Genome editing using tools like CRISPR promises incredible improvements to human health, but they also raise incredible medical and ethical questions that threaten to overshadow their potential benefits. In October, a Chinese researcher announced he had used CRISPR to create new human babies whose future offspring would be resistant to the AIDS virus. That led to widespread condemnation by the global research community—germline gene editing and the implantation of embryos into a human mother’s womb are illegal in many countries—but the research was a reminder that the tools for genetic modification are spreading, and could spread significant risks to ecosystems in the process. In 2017, we spoke with CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna about the threats that worried her most.Related: 7 digital privacy tools you need to be using nowAs the public and privacy advocates call for more control over how companies collect their data, and more legal protections develop, another glimmer of hope has emerged from the tech companies themselves: Through protests and letters, workers are increasingly holding their employers accountable for their behavior and the risks of the products they sell. Without strong rules in place, it may be the people building creepy technology who are best positioned to keep it from getting dangerous.

Summary Donald Trump preemptively took the blame for a potential government shutdown, saying “I am proud to shut down the government for border security” in an Oval Office meeting with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that that chamber would vote a criminal justice reform measure before the end of year, yielding to pressure from Trump. The CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, testified before the House Judiciary Committee. A federal judge ruled Stormy Daniels liable for nearly $300,000 in attorney’s fees in litigation with Donald Trump. The Senate just passed the farm bill by an overwhelming margin. It still has to go to the House but the $867 billion legislation which also legalizes hemp in addition to providing subsidies for farmers and funding food stamps is expected to pass easily. Sarah Sanders has defended her decision to scale back White House press briefings at an event in Washington today. ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) On scaling back WH press briefing: @presssec saying there are a lot of ways to communicate that didn't exist before, also says it's ideal to have president himself speaking to the press. December 11, 2018 Michael Avenatti is brushing off the verdict on Twitter and insisting that Stormy Daniels will inevitably come out on top. Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) Charles Harder and Trump deserve each other because they are both dishonest. If Stormy has to pay $300k to Trump in the defamation case (which will never hold up on appeal) and Trump has to pay Stormy $1,500,000 in the NDA case (net $1,200,000 to Stormy), how is this a Trump win? December 11, 2018 Trump apparently is still saying that Mexico will pay for the wall. Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) After cameras left room, Trump told Pelosi and Schumer that Mexico was actually going to pay for the wall as part of the re-negotiated NAFTA deal. Unclear how that would work. December 11, 2018 Jeff Sessions quoted Kanye West to praise Donald Trump at an event today. Jake Crandall (@jakevcrandall) Former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions quotes rapper Kanye West while talking about President @realDonaldTrump during the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce annual meeting in Montgomery, Ala. pic.twitter.com/3GrytKoEKT December 11, 2018 A federal judge has ordered Stormy Daniels to pay Donald Trump nearly $300,000 in attorney’s fees in a ruling just issued. Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) JUST IN: Federal judge orders Stormy Daniels to pay President Donald Trump $293,052.33 in attorneys' fees in her defamation case against the president, which the judge tossed out. pic.twitter.com/MIfHSijuF9 December 11, 2018 Trump’s attorney celebrated the ruling in a statement. Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) INBOX: Statement of Charles J. Harder, Esq. of HARDER LLP in Los Angeles, legal counsel to President Trump: pic.twitter.com/usdAxa0XKU December 11, 2018 Per pool, Trump said in the Oval Office at a bill signing just now. “If we have to close down the county in border security I actually like that in terms of an issue.”” Mike Pence cast his 12th tiebreaking vote in the Senate today since being elected Vice President and it was a first. Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) This is literally the first time in American history that a federal judge was confirmed to the bench on the basis of a tiebreaking vote by the Vice President. https://t.co/rnr1zmD9ra December 11, 2018 There will be a hearing next year on Paul Manafort’s alleged lies to prosecutors ahead of his sentencing. A federal judge scheduled a hearing today for January 25, 2019. Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) New hearing on the facts about Manafort's breach of plea will happen Jan 25, 2019 in DC federal court. December 11, 2018 San Diego Democrat Scott Peters is contemplating leaving Congress to run for mayor of his hometown. Peters was first elected in 2012. Pelosi also apparently used an interesting analogy today. Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) "The press is all there! Chuck is really shouting out. I was trying to be the mom. I can’t explain it to you. It was so wild. It goes to show you: 'you get into a tickle contest with a skunk, you get tinkle all over you," Pelosi to her members after, per aide in room. December 11, 2018 Nancy Pelosi is apparently taking shots at Trump to the Democratic caucus after their meeting. Rachael Bade (@rachaelmbade) .@NancyPelosi returned from the WH meeting with the president today and went STRAIGHT for the most sensitive part of Trump’s ego: his masculinity. “It’s like a manhood thing with him — as if manhood can be associated with him,” she told her colleagues just now. December 11, 2018

Sundar Pichai is a hero among many engineers in Silicon Valley, where he helped build some of Google’s most popular products and climbed the ladder to the top of the internet giant.In Washington, he’s a relative nobody.Mr. Pichai will be thrust into the political spotlight when he testifies at his first Congressional hearing on Tuesday....

In 2012, the New Orleans police department quietly partnered with the data mining company Palantir to implement a predictive policing system to help identify likely criminals and victims. For six years, neither the city council nor the courts were told that citizens’ data was being mined to generate police “target lists” and investigate individuals. Questions about the program’s propriety, legality, or value were never addressed. Ron Serpas, the city’s police chief at the time, told reporter Ali Winston last year, when he revealed the program, “It is, to me, something that certainly requires a view, requires a look.”In March, New Orleans officials said the contract with Palantir would not be renewed, but the relationship exposed a broader concern about how the government uses algorithms and data. New software is entering the public sector, helping to identify criminals, match students with schools, guide criminal sentencing, and help determine government benefits. But few citizens have any idea that the technologies exist, or how they’re being used. If the public is aware, trade secrets and non-disclosure agreements prevent any deep analysis of just how the technologies work.“These companies act out of private self-interest, but their decisions have considerable public impact,” Elizabeth Joh, a constitutional law professor at the University of California, Davis who studies the surveillance industry, wrote in 2017. “The harms of this private influence include the distortion of Fourth Amendment law, the undermining of accountability by design, and the erosion of transparency norms.”In a forthcoming paper, Sonia Katyal, co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, argues that intellectual property laws protecting government-purchased software are quietly outstripping civil rights concerns. “In the context of artificial intelligence, we see a world where, at times, intellectual property principles prevent civil rights from adequately addressing the challenges of technology, thus stagnating a new generation of civil rights altogether,” she writes.Amid the transparency void, activists, lawyers, and tech workers are turning to a growing array of tactics to bring more oversight to algorithms and other technologies, says Amanda Levendowski, a clinical teaching fellow with the Technology Law & Policy Clinic at NYU Law.“It’s impossible for the public to engage in discourse about whether an AI system is fair, accountable, transparent, or ethical if we don’t know that an AI system is being used to watch us–or if we don’t know the technology exists at all,” she says.New lawsOne significant obstacle to transparency in the U.S. is the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act, written back in 1984 to protect government agencies’ computer systems against hacking. Private-sector companies are able to avoid external audits of their systems–for bias or other flaws–by claiming auditing is a form of unauthorized access, says Shankar Narayan, Technology and Liberty Project Director at ACLU Washington. Reform of the CFAA could help pave the way for independent audits of algorithmic systems used by various government agencies.Federal legislation mandating transparency, however unlikely it may be, would be a strong bulwark against hidden data technologies. That could include a new regulatory body to oversee software and algorithms, in the spirit of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.“The FDA was established in the early 20th century in response to toxic or mislabeled food products and pharmaceuticals,” media scholar Dan Greene and data scientist Genevieve Patterson recently argued in IEEE Spectrum. “Part of the agency’s mandate is to prevent drug companies from profiting by selling the equivalent of snake oil. In that same vein, AI vendors that sell products and services that affect people’s health, safety, and liberty could be required to share their code with a new regulatory agency.”In a report published in December by AI Now, a group of researchers echoed that idea, pointing to examples like the Federal Aviation Administration and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. They also called on vendors and developers who create AI and automated decision systems for government use to waive trade secrecy or other legal claims “that inhibit full auditing and understanding of their software.”In the absence of significant state and federal laws regarding algorithms, some municipalities are implementing their own transparency rules for public sector algorithms. In 2017, the New York City Council passed an algorithmic accountability law creating a task force to provide recommendations on how city agencies should share information related to automated decision systems, and how these agencies will address instances where they harm people.During the bill’s hearing, “[sponsor James Vacca] didn’t even know every agency that’s using algorithms or how they’re using those algorithms,” says Levendowski, who has been tracking the procurement of surveillance technology for the last five years. Neither did some of the representatives of the agencies themselves. “And if those folks don’t know, it’s going to be really hard for the public to figure this out.”A number of cities in California have passed some of the strongest ordinances governing procurement of surveillance technologies. Santa Clara County passed a surveillance ordinance in 2016 that demands that each government agency create a policy that discloses “information/data that can be collected, data access, data protection, data retention, public access, third-party data sharing, training, and oversight mechanisms.”Last year, the city of Berkeley passed a law that creates a more transparent process for purchasing a fast-growing arsenal of surveillance gear, like facial recognition equipment, Stingray cell site simulators, social media analytics software, and license plate readers. Oakland followed suit. Seattle and Cambridge, Mass. are among a handful of other cities that have also passed surveillance ordinances.In Washington State, an algorithmic decision-making bill has recently been introduced in the legislature. “We’ll make a much stronger push against trade secrets and other ways to defeat transparency because we don’t think it’s constitutional for these black box algorithms to be making decisions on behalf of government agencies,” he says.A 70-year-old federal law has also given way to a surprising transparency tool, says Levendowski: the federal trademark registry. Known officially as the Trademark Electronic Search System, or TESS, the federal trademark registry is a free and easily accessible database of millions of pending, registered, canceled, expired, or abandoned trademarks. These trademark filings can be revealing, and unlike regulatory filings or disclosures in patent applications, searching them–with terms like “AI,” “defense,” or “surveillance”–requires little legal or technical expertise.Taking algorithms to courtWhen polite requests for transparency don’t succeed, lawyers and activists have successfully argued that trade secrets and NDAs violate individual rights to due process. Generally, due process allows people to defend the rights afforded to them by U.S. law and to contest actions proposed by the government.In one case, K.W. v. Armstrong, the ACLU of Idaho argued that the state’s Medicaid assessment algorithm for developmentally disabled adults violated their right to due process. The court agreed, finding that the algorithmic formula was so faulty–producing arbitrary results for a large number of people–that it was unconstitutional. The judge ordered an overhaul to the system, the ACLU wrote in a blog post, including “regular testing, regular updating, and the use of quality data.”Other legal maneuvers in the transparency toolkit include Freedom of Information Act requests and, if necessary, lawsuits to enforce compliance.In June 2016 the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law filed a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request with the NYPD “seeking records relating to the acquisition, testing, and use of predictive policing technologies.” After the NYPD resisted the FOIL request on the basis of trade secrecy and police confidentiality, the Brennan Center filed suit in September of 2017, noting that the City of New York had already spent nearly $2.5 million on predictive policing software made by Palantir.The lawsuit also revealed the department tested two other predictive policing platforms by the companies KeyStat Inc. and PredPol. NYPD documents, meanwhile, showed that the agency had no serious privacy policy governing its use of predictive policing software, and could not produce records showing it had conducted mandatory audits.In December 2017, a judge rejected the NYPD’s claims. While the court denied the Brennan Center’s request for the data used to train the predictive policing algorithms, it ordered the police department to make available the email correspondence with vendors, output data from the tests, and notes by the NYPD’s assistant commissioner of data analytics.“Citizens have the right to know about the tools, costs, and standard practices of law enforcement agencies that police their communities,” wrote Rachel Levinson-Waldman, a staff attorney at the Brennan Center. “In this case, it took a year and a half and a lawsuit to ultimately get even a portion of the information that should have been made available to the public at the outset.”Last week, the NYPD lost another battle in its fight for secrecy. A group of Black Lives Matter activists sued the police department after it refused to confirm or deny whether it had used surveilled them and interfered with their cellphones during a protest in 2014. A court refuted the NYPD’s claim that even confirming records would reveal trade secrets or hurt public safety. The ruling requires the NYPD to disclose records related to its use of Dataminr, a social media surveillance software package, as well as records about technologies used to interrupt cell phone service.“This court recognizes that respondent does not have to disclose how it conducts criminal investigations. But this is not about a criminal investigation or a counterintelligence operation,” wrote Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arlene Bluth. “It arises from reports of protestors who claim that their cellphones are suddenly unable to function while in the middle of a protest. That possibility, that respondent is interfering with protestors’ ability to communicate with each other, is a serious concern ripe for the use of FOIL.”Change from the insideKatyal, the Berkeley professor, argues that because the critical civil rights questions around new technologies lie in the domain of the private and not the public sector, “we are looking in the wrong place if we look only to the state to address issues of algorithmic accountability.”One potentially powerful force for transparency in software, she says, must come from inside the companies. Last year tech employees began to find their voices, with much of the activism focused on government contracts. In a number of employee-signed letters, workers cite concerns of algorithmic bias and the overall ethics of using algorithms, and, in some cases, ask their companies to pull out of government contracts entirely.This spring, 3,100 Google employees protested the company’s bid on Project Maven, a Pentagon project that would leverage AI to analyze drone videos. The company said it would pull out of efforts to win the contract and created a set of AI principles, which specifically state that Google, among other things, won’t create products that create or reinforce bias, make technologies that cause harm, or build systems that use information for surveillance purposes.Inspired by the Google employees, Microsoft employees called for the company to form AI principles that would bring transparency to the product development and sales processes. “How will workers, who build and maintain these services in the first place, know whether our work is being used to aid profiling, surveillance, or killing?” the employees wrote.In their recent report, the AI Now researchers highlight the emerging importance of tech workers in demanding transparency, given that many engineering employees “have considerable bargaining power and are uniquely positioned to demand change from their employers.”The report calls for tech companies to provide employee representation on boards of directors, and for companies to create external ethics advisory boards as well as independent third-party monitoring and transparency efforts. Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have announced internal ethics projects aimed at evaluating the societal impact of their software, and last year body camera and stun gun maker Axon launched an ethics board. The board is made of external advisers–including ethicists, police officials, and a lawyer who has staunchly opposed the company’s face recognition ambitions–but the board’s recommendations to the company will not be binding.Whistleblowers have also proved critical in exposing highly controversial technologies, including Google’s Dragonfly project, which sought to bring a censored version of its services into China. After employees disclosed the project to The Intercept in August, widespread employee protests and public outcry reportedly led the company to effectively suspend the project.Still, company executives have not publicly said they will cease Dragonfly’s development. On January 3, prominent Google engineer Liz Fong-Jones, a vocal critic of Dragonfly and Project Maven, said she would be resigning from the internet giant after 11 years because she was dissatisfied with its direction and “lack of accountability and oversight.”Going forward, the value of employees in ensuring transparency and accountability is likely to grow. Beyond encouraging whistleblowers to speak up, the major challenge will be how to afford these individuals whistleblower protection, whether through government laws or corporate policies, amid the tech industry’s famous culture of secrecy.“Fortunately, we are beginning to see new coalitions form between researchers, activists, lawyers, concerned technology workers, and civil society organizations to support the oversight, accountability, and ongoing monitoring of AI systems,” says the AI Now report.

If you only do one thing to better protect your online privacy in 2019, start using a VPN. A VPN, or virtual private network, is a decades-old technology that was once used mostly by big companies to give employees access to their private intranets. About a decade ago, VPN use grew as techies began embracing the technology for personal use–especially so they could get around geo-blocked services, such as streaming services that aren’t available everywhere. As privacy concerns have skyrocketed in the last few years, VPNs have begun to be adopted by everyday consumers.As with most things relating to networking, the technical aspects behind how a virtual private network works are complex. In simple terms, a VPN encrypts the network data on your computer so others–such as your ISP or someone snooping on a public Wi-Fi network you’re using–can’t read it. The VPN then routes all your encrypted internet traffic through a secure server before sending it on to the website you want to access. By doing this, it ensures that websites and other online services won’t be able to see your true IP address or know where in the world your computer is actually located; they’ll only see the location of the VPN’s server. That means your true identity, location, and what you do online is–to a large extent–concealed from prying eyes.The ability of VPNs to protect your privacy are all the more relevant considering that your ISP can now legally record your web activity and sell your history to advertisers and other organizations that want to know something about you. When you are already paying your ISP money to use their service, why also let them take your personal data and sell it? Using a VPN will prevent your ISP from knowing where you go online.VPNs also make Wi-Fi networks–like the free public ones at coffee shops, for example–much more secure. Using a VPN makes it much harder for hackers, stalkers, and other bad actors to track you and your activity around the web. That’s why a VPN is a staple privacy tool in any journalist’s arsenal–especially journalists in countries that don’t allow an open and free press. VPNs are also used by citizens in countries that restrict access to the larger internet and censor online content, such as China.VPNs have their limitsAs VPNs have risen in popularity among typical web users, they’ve gained an almost mythical status. While VPNs do provide some degree of online anonymity, it’s important to stress that they aren’t magical invisibility cloaks ala Harry Potter. A VPN alone will not magically wipe your online activity from existence.Even if you use a VPN, any websites that requires you to log in will still be able to track what you do. For example, it’s impossible to hide your browsing activity from Google if you are logged into your Google account–even over a VPN. The same goes for social media sites, shopping websites, and financial sites.And even though using a VPN will mask your real IP address from websites you don’t log in to, the VPN provider itself must know your real IP address so that its servers know where to direct the data you are requesting. The VPN provider will also probably know your name and address based on your payment information; it could, in theory, identify your online activity if it wanted to–or if it was forced to by a government agency.This is why any VPN provider worth considering will have a “no logs” policy. That means it will never store logs of your actual IP address or the websites your IP address visited through its servers. With this policy in place, a VPN provider would be unable to turn over your browsing records even if a court order mandated it to do so.Yes, VPNs are worth paying forThere’s no shortage of “free” VPN services out there–but I would highly recommend avoiding them. Ultimately, VPNs are built on trust. For instance, you’ll never have any way of verifying that a VPN service is being honest when it says it has a no-logs policy–you’ll just need to trust it.Free VPN providers don’t pay for servers and bandwidth out of the goodness of their heart. Case in point: Facebook offers a “free” VPN service called Onavo–but it’s not really free. You pay for it with your browsing history. People who use Onavo send all their web traffic through Facebook’s servers, which the company then mines for data.Considering that anyone with a little networking knowledge can set up a VPN company and offer service for free, what’s to stop data thieves or hackers from doing just that? Not all free VPNs are nefarious–but if you really want increased privacy, it’s worth paying for a VPN service from a company with a good reputation.Prices for paid VPNs vary widely depending on the plan you choose and the company you go with. They’re subscription-based services, so you’ll generally be paying a monthly fee, just like you do with Netflix. However, some VPN providers do sell annual installment plans that allow you to pay for a year’s worth of service up front–and usually save quite a bit over the standard monthly cost. In general, expect to pay anywhere from $3 to $10 a month for monthly service or between $30 and $80 a year if you go with an annual plan.Which VPN service should you use?I’ll recommend three VPN providers to give you a good place to start looking–but I would suggest you don’t sign up for any of them without researching them yourself and even contacting the companies to clarify their data-retention policies.One VPN that ranks highly among privacy experts is Private Internet Access. That’s because its promise that it’s a true “no logs” VPN has been tested twice in court. In two separate investigations, one involving a hacking case and the other a hoax bomb threat, government agencies requested information about two of Private Internet Access’s customers. But as court records showed, the company was unable to provide any records. It just doesn’t retain data on user activity.NordVPN is another highly regarded VPN service. Along with offering a strong no-logs policy, NordVPN allows customers to pay in cryptocurrencies so you can also avoid ever giving the company the standard payment-related details about yourself. Finally, StrongVPN is another highly regarded service, again thanks to a robust no-logs policy.There are other VPN services that offer no-logs policies too, of course. I encourage you to research as many as you can before making a decision. But no matter what, as hacking and surveillance only become more commonplace, paying for a VPN is the best possible kind of New Year’s resolution.