A Deeper Look at the Government Response to Hurricane Helene and Milton

Your weekly News Memo - a more human way to engage with the news.

+GetSmart: How Couples Meet Over Time Has Changed Dramatically

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Newsbites

• We, Robot event: Tesla held a highly anticipated “We, Robot” event last night at Warner Bros. Discovery Studios in Burbank, California. Elon Musk introduced a set of products including the RoboVan, an updated version of the Optimus robot, as well as the Cybercab. When explaining the Optimus robot, which walks and talks like a human, Musk said, “I think this will be the biggest product, ever, of any kind.” (see highlights)

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• Trump Rally in Butler, PA: Former President Donald Trump returned to the same place in which a bullet grazed his right ear on July 13. Trump began the rally with, “As I was saying,” to the applause of around 100,000 people gathered in the outdoor venue (video). The rally honored the life of Corey Comperatore, the firefighter who was shot and killed at the J13 rally. Elon Musk made an appearance as well, wearing a black Make America Great Again hat endorsing Trump. In his speech, Musk said, “This is a must win situation. Must win.” (video)

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• 100 raccoons surround house: A woman in Washington State, who had fed raccoons consistently for 35 years, called 911 after she returned home to around 100 raccoons demanding food and preventing her from entering her house. The sheriff's department told reporters, “somehow the word got out in raccoon land, and they all showed up at her house expecting a meal.” No one was hurt or bitten by the animals, which are known to carry rabies and roundworms. The deputy discouraged people from feeding wild animals, saying, “When wild animals have a reliable food source, they’re going to keep coming back to it.”
  
  More: Just last week, a Brooklyn family’s $1.2M home was ravished by raccoons who stormed in and filled the building with excrement.

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• Boeing strike: The employee strike at Boeing, covering more than 30,000 machinists, is nearing the one month mark as both sides remain at an impasse. This week, the plane maker withdrew its “best and final offer” that would raise wages 30% over four years, saying the union was not seriou4sly considering the offer. The union is seeking wage increases of 40% over four years, among other things. The strike has halted production of the 737 jet, and Boeing is working to conserve cash by implementing hiring freezes and temporary furloughs. Before the strike began, Boeing was burning more than $1B of cash/month.

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• 60 Minutes Interview: Bill Whitaker interviewed Kamala Harris on 60 Minutes (video) this week. 60 Minutes originally aired a clip of the interview, which sparked negative headlines for Harris’ response. When the full interview was released a few days later, the same clip was edited to change Harris’ response (comparison video). The Trump Campaign is requesting 60 Minutes to release the unedited transcript of the interview. TV interviews are edited to fit within broadcast windows, but the Trump Campaign is arguing the interview was edited to make Harris’ responses appear better.

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• The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three individuals for their work in AI and machine learning to predict and create protein structures. Two of the individuals are employees at Google’s DeepMind, including its founder, Demis Hassabis. In 2020, Hassabis and his colleague John Jumper created an AI model called AlphaFold2 that has helped predict the structure of nearly all the 200M proteins that have been identified. Predicting the 3D structure of proteins by analyzing the sequence of amino acids that compose them is a problem researchers had been working on since the 1970s. The other recipient, David Baker, has developed novel computational models to create brand new protein structures. The discoveries hold important implications for drug development and disease treatment given the central role proteins play in biological processes.

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• California bans voter ID laws: Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law that prohibits local governments (counties, municipalities) in California from implementing voter ID requirements in elections (applies to federal, state, and local elections). 

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Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) Hit by Massive Cyberattack, Data Breach

Mark Graham, the director of the Wayback Machine, said that if the Internet Archive closed and another organization didn’t immediately take its place, “then much of what is currently made available on the public web would be at risk.”

The largest digital archive of information on the internet was subject to a debilitating cyberattack and data breach this week. More than 30M users had their emails and passwords compromised. The Internet Archive’s website remained down as of this writing, as the organization worked to protect user data before restoring service.

A hacker group by the username SN_BLACKMETA claimed responsibility for the attack. In a post on X, the cybercriminals said the website was under attack “because the archive belongs to the USA, and as we all know, this horrendous and hypocritical government supports the genocide that is being carried out by the terrorist state of “Israel”.”

What is the Internet Archive?
Founded in 1996 by internet-pioneer Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive (IA) is the largest digital repository of information on the internet, having archived more than 850B web pages, more than 40M books, and over 10M videos of films and other programs. Its most well-known project is the Wayback Machine, which constantly crawls web pages and archives the information to save snapshots of content on the internet.

Mark Graham, the director of the Wayback Machine, said that if IA closed and another organization didn’t immediately take its place, “then much of what is currently made available on the public web would be at risk.”

In May 2024, Pew Research conducted a survey which found 25% of web pages that existed at some point between 2013-2023 are no longer available. However, about two-thirds of the web pages that had disappeared were still accessible on the Wayback Machine.

The Internet Archive’s Fragile Footing
Apart from the recent hack, the IA is also facing financial difficulty due to multiple lawsuits. The non-profit has been sued by book publishers and music label groups of copyright infringement claims. The current suit by music labels could cost the IA hundreds of millions of dollars if it loses.

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A Deeper Look at the Government Response to Hurricane Helene and Milton