Facebook has taken down a large group page that was being used to dox and target [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents in Chicago, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on X Tuesday.
Facebook parent Meta confirmed the move in a brief statement shared with Fast Company Tuesday.
This Group was removed for violating our policies against coordinated harm, a Meta spokesperson said.
Those policies include prohibitions against outing undercover law enforcement and supporting vandalism, among other restrictions. Meta did not immediately respond to an inquiry about which of those rules were allegedly violated.
Neither Meta nor Bondis statement identified the Facebook group in question. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that it was a group called ICE Sighting Chicagoland” with roughly 76,000 members.
Numerous Chicago Facebook groups and pages have featured reports and discussions of ICE activity in recent weeks, as state and local officials and many residents have condemned and protested the agencys aggressive operations in the area. Another Chicago Facebook page, condemned in conservative media in recent days for allegedly encouraging resistance against ICE, appeared to still be live Tuesday afternoon.
Conservatives have previously criticized Facebook parent Meta and other social media companies for bowing to what they saw as censorship demands from the left, including pressure from the Biden administration to take down certain pandemic-related posts.
I believe the government pressure was wrong and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) last year. Jordan praised Zuckerberg earlier this year as the company ended a fact-checking program and other content restrictions conservatives saw as limiting free speech.
Meta also agreed to pay $25 million to settle claims related to Facebook and Instagram suspending President Trumps accounts after the January 6, 2020, attack on the U.S. Capitol, which the president called a First Amendment violation, citing alleged government pressure on the company.
Other online platforms including Apples App Store and the Google Play Store have also reportedly recently taken down tools used for tracking ICE operations, with Apple telling Fox Business at least one ICE-tracking app was removed after a law enforcement request.
Courts have historically held that its legal under the First Amendment to film and otherwise document law enforcement activity.
The wave of violence against ICE has been driven by online apps and social media campaigns designed to put ICE officers at risk just for doing their jobs, Bondi said in her post. The Department of Justice will continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement.
The ongoing government shutdown is delaying the announcement of the annual Social Security cost-of-living adjustment for tens of millions of beneficiaries.Originally scheduled for Wednesday, the 2024 Social Security COLA announcement will now be Oct. 24. It is timed to the September Consumer Price Index, which also has not yet been released.The agency adjusts its benefits every year based on inflation. The postponement of the announcement is the most recent example of how the government shutdown, entering its third week and with little progress made toward a resolution, has made it more difficult for people to plan out their finances.Projections by Senior Citizens League and the AARP anticipate a COLA increase of roughly 2.7%. About 70.6 million people, including retirees, disabled people and children, get Social Security benefits.Social Security Administration beneficiaries have voiced concerns that next year’s increase will not be enough to counter rising costs.Sue Conard, a 75-year-old retired nurse from La Crosse, Wisconsin, and SSA recipient, recently traveled to the U.S. Capitol with other retiree members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union to lobby for meaningful progress towards gaining health care protections to end the shutdown, as well as changes to Social Security benefits.She said she wants lawmakers to change the calculation on how the COLA is determined since the standard CPI gauge, which includes a market basket of consumer goods and services, doesn’t take into account many costs typical for older Americans.“The issue of how the COLA is determined is flat-out wrong because health care is not factored into the CPI,” said Conard, speaking on the front steps of the Longworth House Office Building.Some lawmakers have proposed legislation that would make SSA use a different index, called the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E), to calculate the cost-of-living increase that measures price changes based on the spending patterns of older people on things such as health care, food and medicine.A collection of Democratic lawmakers has proposed legislation to change the CPI calculation for COLA benefits to the CPI-E. Last session, Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., proposed a law that would change the COLA calculation, but that never got a hearing in the Senate Finance committee.AARP CEO Myechia Minter-Jordan said the COLA “isn’t just a source of income it’s a lifeline of independence and dignity, for tens of millions of older Americans.” But even with an adjusted COLA, a majority of Americans still face challenges covering basic expenses, she said.Vanessa Fields, a 70-year-old former social worker and AFSCME member from Philadelphia, said she pays roughly $1,000 per month for groceries, more than in previous years. The COLA doesn’t keep up with rising costs, she said, “and we’re going to be in bad shape if lawmakers don’t act.”The agency is expected to begin notifying recipients about their new benefit amount starting in early December. A spokesperson for Social Security who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the COLA said retirement and Supplemental Security Income benefits would be adjusted beginning Jan. 1, 2026, without any delay despite the current government lapse in appropriations.The delayed COLA announcement comes as the national social insurance plan faces a severe financial shortfall in the coming years and as the agency has seen substantial workforce cuts.The annual Social Security and Medicare trustees report released in June said the program’s trust fund will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2034, instead of last year’s estimate of 2035. If the trust fund is depleted, the government will be able to pay only 81% of scheduled benefits, the report said.In addition, the agency laid off at least 7,000 people from its workforce of 60,000 earlier this year, putting pressure on the remaining workers to handle claims and answer inquiries from a rising number of recipients.
Fatima Hussein, Associated Press
The government shutdown is delaying another major economic report, leaving policymakers at the Federal Reserve with a cloudier picture even as the economy enters a challenging phase of stubbornly persistent inflation and a sharp slowdown in hiring.The Labor Department’s monthly inflation data was scheduled for release Wednesday, but late last week was postponed until Oct. 24. The department is recalling some employees to assemble the data, which was collected before the shutdown began. The figures are needed for the government to calculate the annual cost of living adjustment for tens of millions of recipients of benefit programs such as Social Security.The shutdown could make things worse for agencies like the Fed if it continues, because government agencies cannot collect the raw data that are then compiled into the monthly reports on jobs, inflation, and other economic trends. The September employment report, for example, which was due to be released Oct. 3 but was not issued because of the shutdown, was essentially completed before the government closed and could be released fairly quickly once the shutdown ends. But October data could be delayed much longer.Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday in remarks to the National Association for Business Economics that the central bank for now is looking at data from the private sector, such as payroll processor ADP, which issues its own monthly report on hiring by U.S. businesses, to gauge the economy. It is also relying on anecdotal reports from the hundreds of businesses that the regional Fed banks consult with.But while there are many firms that compile jobs-related data, there are fewer alternative sources of information to track inflation and growth, Powell added.“We’ll start to miss that data and particularly the October data,” Powell said. “If this goes on for a while, they won’t be collecting it. And it could become more challenging.”The Fed is already in a difficult spot, Powell has said, as it grapples with two policy goals that are nearly in conflict. It is tasked by Congress with seeking both maximum employment and stable prices.Right now, inflation remains above the Fed’s target of 2%, with the latest figures showing prices rose 2.9% compared with a year earlier, according to the Fed’s preferred measure. Typically, elevated inflation would lead the Fed to raise its key interest rate, or at least keep it elevated.Yet hiring has also weakened considerably, and the unemployment rate has ticked up to a still-low 4.3% in August from 4.2% in the previous month. When the Fed’s other goal of maximum employment is threatened, it usually responds with the opposite approach: Cutting rates to spur more borrowing and spending.On Tuesday, Powell noted those challenges and said, “There really isn’t a risk-free path.”
Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
Households that have bought Bens Original rice products will want to check their pantries right away.
The brand, owned by food giant Mars, has issued a voluntary recall for select rice products. At issue is the possibility of small stones mixed in the rice, which could cause intestinal and other damage if consumed.
Heres what you need to know about the Bens Original rice recall.
Whats happened?
On October 10, Bens Original announced a voluntary recall of some of its rice products. That recall notice was later published on the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations (FDA) website on October 14.
The voluntary recall was initiated after Bens Original discovered that some of its rice products may contain small stones mixed within the rice. The recall notice states that these objects are small, naturally occurring stones originating from the rice farm.
According to the recall notice, if the rice products do have small stones in them, the objects pose possible risk of oral or digestive tract injury if consumed.
What products are being recalled?
Bens Original says the recalled items only include a limited number of three select products. Whether the product is included in the recall depends on the batch codes and best by dates listed on the products packaging.
The recalled products include:
Ben’s Original Ready Rice Long Grain White Rice: batch codes 533ELGRV22 or 534ALGRV22 and Best By date of August 2026.
Ben’s Original Ready Rice Whole Grain Brown Rice: batch codes 534AMGRV22, 534BMGRV22, or 534DMGRV22 and the best buy date of August 2026.
Bens Original Ready Rice Long Grain & Wild Rice: batch codes 533BMGRV22, 533CLGRV22, or 533CMGRV22 and the best by date of August 2026.
Where were the recalled products sold?
According to the recall notice, the recalled products were sold at numerous stores across America. Depending on the specific recalled item, those stores may include:
Amazon
HEB
Piggly Wiggly
Target
United Markets
But the recalled products may have been sold at additional stores, the notice cautions.
Impacted retailers are not limited to the ones mentioned in the recall notice as additional retailers may have purchased products distributed by Associated Grocers, C&S, and Dot Foods from August through September.
Has anyone been harmed?
Thankfully, the recall notice states that no reports of injury or illness in relation to the recalled products have been reported to date.
However, as the recalled products have a long shelf life with a best by date of August 2026, it’s likely the recalled products are still sitting in many peoples cupboards.
What should I do if I have the recalled products?
The recall notice warns consumers who are in possession of the recalled products not to consume them.
Instead, consumers should contact Bens Original Consumer Care to start the return process. The number consumers should call is 1-800-548-6253. Full details of the recall can be found on the recall notice here.
There is an all-out global race for AI dominance. The largest and most powerful companies in the world are investing billions in unprecedented computing power. The most powerful countries are dedicating vast energy resources to assist them. And the race is centered on one idea: transformer-based architecture with large language models are the key to winning the AI race. What if they are wrong?
What we call intelligence evolved in biological life over hundreds of millions of years starting with simple single-celled organisms like bacteria interacting with their environment. Life gradually developed into multi-cell organisms learning to seek what they needed and to avoid what could harm them. Ultimately humans emerged with highly complex brains, billions of neurons and exponentially more neural interactions designed to respond to their needs, interactions, and associations with each other and the world. Creating an artificial form of that likely involves more than cleverly generating language with tools trained on massive repositories of largely non-curated text and marketing it as intelligence.
What if aggregating the vast collective so-called wisdom accumulated on the internet and statistically analyzing it with complex algorithms to mindlessly respond to human prompts is really just an unimaginably expensive and resource-intensive exercise in garbage-in-garbage-out? At best, it may be a clever chronicler of common wisdom. At worst, its an unprecedented and unnecessary waste of resources with potentially harmful consequences. Eerily foreshadowing a critique of current mainstream AI, Immanuel Kant famously wrote in his landmark work, A Critique of Pure Reason, “thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.” Put another way, can eons of evolved intelligence be replicated and reduced to the worlds greatest parrot or the mother-of-all autocompletes?
With all of the global power, hype, and resources behind this one approach, you may have the impression that it is the only viable way to create an artificial form of human intelligence. Fortunately, it is not.
Incrementalism
On the incrementalist end of the spectrum of AI research and development, there are approaches that seek to make more efficient use of resources such as grouping small language models (SLMs) with AI agents (https://www.fastcompany.com/91281577/autonomous-ai-agents-are-both-exciting-and-scary) to allow more focused, economical inquiries and responses. (See, Small Language Models are the Future of Agentic AI, Cornell University, https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02153). The theory is simple: employ flexible, efficient AI agents (technology that can autonomously interact with the environment and perform tasks without human supervision) to access SLMs, smaller, more targeted, and less resource-intensive sets of data.
The underlying theory is the same for SLMs and LLMsaggregating data and statistically modeling it to generate text or other data. SLMs are just a smaller and more efficient (but inherently more limited) way of doing this. This approach can incorporate additional technology to achieve greater accuracy such as retrieval augmented generation (RAG). RAG can access more targeted, verifiable, and critically, real-time information rather than simply relying on static (pretrained) data alone.
A whole greater than the sum of its parts
A more significant possible alternative to the LLM and GPT architecture that more closely simulates how we think is based on attempting to replicate evolutionary biology. One company pioneering such work is Softmax (named for a statistical function used in machine learning) led by a cofounder of Twitch, Emmett Shear, who briefly served as CEO of OpenAI. This approach is modeled on cellular biology and the idea that individual parts (cells) working (or in alignment) with each other can form a whole with greater coordinated functionality than the individual parts. A human being is made up of individual but synchronized cells that, on their own, dont function like us, but somehow cohere to allow us to think and function as human beings. In terms of building a computer model, AI agents are the equivalent of cells in this approach that in theory at least, can work together to form a greater functioning, learning entity.
If the current domination of LLMs and GPT architecture continues and other innovative approaches fall (or are pushed) by the wayside, it wouldnt be the first time in the history of computing that commercial forces overrule potentially better alternatives (see Why bad ideas linger in software, Alan Kay, 2012, address to the Congress on the Future of Engineering Software).
As Albert Einstein famously noted, if he had an hour to save the world, he would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and five minutes solving it. The massive entities pushing the current dominant approach to AI development have yet to define the problem they are trying to solve. LLMs and GPT have proven able to perform tasks that people find useful and they will likely continue to do so. The question is, what if anything, does that have to do with intelligence, human or otherwise?
Apple TV+ is dead. Long live Apple TV.
On October 13, in a press release about F1: The Movie, Apple TV+ nonchalantly slipped in a line that from here on out it will be known simply as Apple TV, with a vibrant new identity. The streaming services new name is the same as Apples connected smart TV device product and appeffectively merging all of the brands TV-centric products under one moniker.
Anyone who enjoys a bit of time winding down in front of the television knows about the plus sign. Its come to represent nearly every streaming service out there: Disney+, ESPN+, BET+, Discovery+, even NASA+. Many streamers that dont have the Plus now once did (were looking at you, Hulu). And theres a reason this convention became ubiquitous.
When streaming services first became popular in the mid-2010s, broadcast companies were tasked with creating streamer names that helped users understand the value proposition of the service. The Plus, after it was adopted by an initial few companies, quickly became a recognizable shorthand for streamer. Today, though, consumers are much more familiar with the joys (and, often, frustrations) associated with the many streaming services available to them. In casual conversation, most people arent even tacking on the Plus in these services namessimply saying that a show is available on Disney or Apple TV is enough to get the point across.
On the brand side, streaming services have become less of a side offering and more of a core product. Now some streamers are grappling with how to adjust their branding to cut out the noise and escape the categorys sea of samenessand it might just mean that the Plus is on its way out.
Fast Company asked four branding experts what they think of Apple TVs new identity. Heres what they had to say:
Weve seen streamers like HBO Max, Paramount+, and now Apple TV adjust their branding over the past few years. Why do you think these streaming companies are having such a hard time getting it right?
The offerings across these platforms are nearly identical,” says Kennedy Placek, director of partnerships and client services at the creative agency Lexicon Branding. “They each carry powerful parent brands, and with that comes hesitation to dilute the brand. Using the plus sign was a safe move for signaling more without undermining the equities of the master brand. The problem is that when everyone is using [a plus sign] and consumers are exposed to [it] in nearly every category, it loses credibility or meaning. It essentially stands for nothing.
Ben Sherwood, creative partner at the agency Design Bridge and Partners, says, Streaming companies aren’t necessarily getting it wrong, but rather navigating an incredibly volatile and saturated market. Branding these services is inherently difficult because their core productcontentis a moving target due to constant mergers, acquisitions, and licensing shifts.
Why might Apple TV have decided to lose the plus sign? Are we likely to see other streamers follow suit?
The plus sign no longer adds value or generates interest. Apple has always been known for its simplicity, and its decision to remove the + is a return to that focus,” says Placek. “Apple TV on its own is consistent with other offers like Apple Music, Apple News. Apple has and continues to be a role model for other brands, so I wouldnt be surprised if others follow suit.
Richard Swain, partner at the global brand agency Further, says, Apple dropping the plus says less to me about streaming and more about the convergence of hardware and software. When they launched the service, they needed to separate it from the physical Apple TV device and the content-aggregation platform. Today audiences understand those distinctions, so Apple can afford to simplify. Its also a signal that the plus era has probably run its course. Dropping it is a show of confidence from Apple.
Sherwood notes, We absolutely think we’re likely to see other streamers follow suit. As brands mature and seek clearer differentiation in a crowded space, shedding generic suffixes is a natural evolution.
How much of a role does branding play in a streamers success, especially in the current environment of mounting costs and subscription tiers?
It definitely matters, arguably now more than ever,” says Swain. “Amazon has had to work so much harder to earn credibility in streaming because its brand is anchored in convenience and commerce. That association can be hard to shake. Meanwhile, companies like Netflix, and until recently HBO, have built brands that make you feel something before you even press play. The ta-dum or the crackle of HBO static arent just logos or sounds, theyre Pavlovian cues that set your expectation about what experience youre about to embark on.
Matt Sia, executive creative director at brand design agency Pearlfisher, says, I think it would be in the best interest of these brandsespecially the big, iconic onesto draw less attention to what they’re doing and just continue doing good things for their audience. I heard that Apple TV called it a vibrant new identity, and I think that was a miss. I don’t think they should have said anything; they could have just dropped [the plus sign]. Sometimes drawing attention to it is almost like, Look at this brand-new identity! and it becomes a meme.
Lexicon Brandings Placek concludes, At this stage, branding matters less than the story they tell and the offer that supports their stories. It is all a big sea of sameness. Consumers have a hard time deciphering what they get in each bundle, and likely make decisions based on loyalty or simply out of fatigue. To be frank, I dont think people choose one platform over the other simply because one has a plus sign. Symbols dont drive choice. Clarity does.
When a door broke loose on a new electric bus in Des Moines, Iowa, and nearly fell off, it was one in a long list of problems for the local transit agency.
The city began using its fleet of seven electric buses, made by the startup Proterra, in 2021. The vehicles soon showed defects in the suspensions, weatherproofing, and wheelchair ramps. After only 18 months of useand unsuccessful attempts to get the manufacturer to fix the problemsthe agency had to pull them off the road.
Other cities had similar issues. In Philadelphia, Proterra buses were sidelined in 2020 after the heavy batteries started to crack the vehicle chassis. (This summer, one of those vehicles started a fire while it was in storage, destroying 16 other buses.) In Austin, 46 new Proterra buses were taken out of service last year as the agency tried to sort out glitches. In Seattle, the buses had charging issues. In Duluth, Minnesota, they struggled on hills. In Miami, dozens of the vehicles now sit unused in storage.
As the buses broke down, transit agencies often couldnt get the parts they needed for repairs. Then, in late 2023, Proterra declared bankruptcy. An EV company called Phoenix, which makes school buses but had no experience with heavy-duty transit buses, took over Proterra’s bus business, and it got even harder for cities to fix issues. Now, across the country, the buses are stranded in parking lots waiting to be auctioned off for parts. Some buses that cost as much as $1 million new are selling for $20,000.
Proterra’s collapse didn’t just leave cities stuck with expensive new technology that they couldn’t use. It slowed down efforts to cut emissions and made transit agencies more skeptical of climate tech startups trying to reinvent the buseven though most of the problems had less to do with electrification than with flawed engineering and execution. Here’s what went wrong.
A failed unicorn
Not long ago, Proterra was a rising star in the transit industry. The company, founded in 2004, had been led by a former Tesla executive, Ryan Popple, since 2014. News articles called the product the “Tesla of buses,” and Popple declared that transit buses would be the first vehicles to transition fully to electric.
In a 2016 interview, Popple argued that electric buses would quickly replace diesel. By 2025, he predicted, half of new transit bus purchases would be EVs, and diesel buses would begin to go extinct. “There is no such thing as clean tech,” he said. “Just tech. Proterra is a tech company that has a superior technology for public transit.”
Investors were enthusiastic. Popple himself became involved with the company as an investor in early funding rounds at Kleiner Perkinshis job after Teslalater stepping in as Proterra’s CEO when the startup needed a new leader.
Over time, Proterra raised nearly $700 million in venture capital from investors including Daimler, General Motors Ventures, and J.P. Morgan. In 2021, the company went public through a reverse merger with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC), raising another $640 million. By the end of that year, it had a backlog of around $450 million in orders. It invested $76 million in a sprawling new plant in South Carolina dedicated to making its batteries, in addition to factories it already had in the state and in Southern California.
At its peak, in 2022, the company had more than 1,200 employees. At its Silicon Valley headquarters, just south of San Francisco, engineering teams raced to develop proprietary batteries that could store more energy and charge faster than others on the market.
Politicians saw the company as a leader in advancing the U.S.’s global competitiveness in clean technology. Were running way behind China, but you guys are getting us in the game, President Biden said on a virtual tour of one of the company’s plants in the spring of 2021. Were going to end up owning the future, I think, if we keep doing what were doing.
For transit agencies, becoming an early adopter of Proterras vehicles was also a way to be seen as a leader, helping cities achieve goals on air quality and climate pollution. The buses cost far more than diesel equivalent. But hefty grants were available from the federal government, states, utilities, and sources like Volkswagens Dieselgate settlement money. And, in theory, the lifetime cost of owning the buses should have been lower than diesel, since electricity is cheaper than fuel. No one expected that the buses would be out of use a couple of years after they left the factory.
Reinventing the bus
Like a typical Silicon Valley startup, Proterra set out to upend the status quo. It was nice to see a new company come in and try to reinvent some things, says William Haber, the procurement lead at King County Metro, the transit agency in the Seattle area. The challenge is really how many things they tried to reinvent.
Rather than making the frame of the bus from steel, like a standard bus, the company decided to use a new composite material that included fiberglass and carbon fiber. The goal was to make the bus lighter, since the giant battery in the bus added so much weight. It didnt really reduce weight to the level that they expected or that any of us were hoping that it would, says Haber. It also created a new challenge: The body of the buses started to crack.
In Ithaca, New York, the transit agency quickly noticed that the buses were cracking where holes had been drilled through the composite material to mount the rear axle. The holes had destroyed the ability of the material to carry weight, and allowed moisture to get into the material and make it start to rot. Eventually, what happens is the rear axle just falls off a vehicle, says Matthew Rosenbloom-Jones, general manager at TCAT, the local agency.
TCAT hired a forensic engineer to analyze the vehicles, who said that it was a basic design flaw. While the cracks could be repaired, they’d quickly reappear. The agency experienced multiple other reliability issues, from the doors to air compressors. After less than two years in usemuch of which time the buses were broken downthey had to be taken completely out of service. “We never really even got through the break-in period with these buses before they fell apart,” Rosenbloom-Jones says.
Since Proterra essentially designed the bus from scratch, it also made it harder to find parts when they broke and needed to be replaced. (Asits sales grew, pandemic supply chain issues were another challenge.) Agencies discovered that the company was unprepared to provide the level of service that they needed.
“It took them some time to understand how the bus market works,” says Haber. “Once we buy a number of buses, we have to operate them for a minimum of 12 years if you’re using [federal] funding. So then there’s a requirement of support through that 12 years. It was really [about] having a reasonable amount of time to respond when we ran into an issue with the bus.”
The bankruptcy
While the company projected a glossy image, it was struggling. After leading the company for six years, Popple decided to transition back to venture capital in 2020, and was replaced by a new CEO, Jack Allen, formerly the CEO of Navistar, now called International Motors, a truck and bus manufacturer. (Popple remained with the company as an executive director, but submitted his resignation from the board in December 2021; he died a week later of undisclosed causes at the age of 44.)
As the leadership transition happened, revenue was growing, but the companywhich had never been profitablewas still burning through tens of millions a year. It had already been facing cash flow problems, and the pandemic added to the challenge with supply chain disruptions. The cost of shipping, materials, and labor rose.
To qualify for federal grants and tax incentives, the company had to use a certain percentage of American-made parts, including batteries, which also kept the cost of production high. The company struggled to keep up with production, and by 2022, had an even bigger backlog of orders. At the same time, it was facing a deluge of warranty claims from agencies across the country as the buses sometimes literally fell apart.
In August 2022, the company’s CFO told investors it had the “balance sheet to ride out potential economic turbulence, with more than $500 million in cash. But the company later announced a net loss of $81 million for the fourth quarter of the year.
In August 2023, as the financial pressures mounted, Proterra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, saying that it intended “to continue to operate in the ordinary course of business.” A few months later, Volvo bought the battery manufacturing arm of its business for $210 million.
Cowen Energy, one of Proterra’s backers, acquired the company’s charging infrastructure technology (the company did not respond to requests for comment). Phoenix, a small California-based manufacturer of electric medium-duty trucks and school buses, bought the company’s bus business for $10 million, a tiny fraction of the VC money that had been invested in it.
This year, the company’s estate agreed to a $29 million settlement in a lawsuit with investors who said that they had been misled about financial risks and production inefficiencies.
Transit agencies can’t make repairs
After Proterra’s bankruptcy, making repairs became more challenging. Agencies struggled to get help from Phoenix, which had no previous experience working with transit buses. (Phoenix did not respond to multiple request for an interview). Though Phoenix appears to be growingin June 2025, it announced that it was taking over a 1.6 million-square-foot EV manufacturing facility in China to make electric cars for international marketstransit agencies say that it’s been difficult to get the company to return calls about repairing buses.
Some specialty parts became less available. “The aftermarket suppliers fell off the map,” says Coree Cuff Lonergan, CEO of transportation for Florida’s Broward County. “So we were unable to get the supplies to fix the buses.” The county’s Proterra buses broke down as much as seven times as often as its standard diesel buses.
“The ability to get parts and service for them was made significantly more challenging by Proterras bankruptcy,” says Michael Schmieder, director of Everett Transit in Everett, Washington. “Critical components were not available. Proprietary software made servicing them ourselves difficult and at times impossible.”
Some agencies have more resources than other for repairs; King County Transit, for example, even has staff that can make repairs to battery cells. The smallest agencies have been hit hardest. In the small college town of Iowa City, Iowa, which has four Proterra buses, the entire fleet has been parked for a year and a half because the transit agency can’t get parts.
It’s critical for electric bus manufacturers to offer robust support and warranties that go well beyond what manufacturers would offer for a passenger EV, says Matthew Lichtash, an EV and clean energy consultant at PA Consulting. An electric car might offer a battery replacement if the range decreases to 70%, for examplebut a bus might need a replacement sooner. “That might be fine if you own an electric car and you’re driving around town,” he says. “But if you bought a 200-mile [range] bus and it’s now a 150-mile bus, that’s going to introduce a lot of challenges.”
It’s a clear example of the fact that vision and innovation isn’t enough for a climate tech company to succeedservice networks, supply chains, and institutional reliability also need to be firmly in place.
Are electric buses ready?
For many agencies, the biggest problem wasn’t the fact that the buses were electric, but the fact, they say, that the company didn’t seem know how to build a bus or support it. A bus driver who had driven the vehicles told me that she thought it was obvious Proterra was more a battery company than a bus maker, judging by the mistakes they’d made.
All of those basic flaws were very unusual. “We’ve rarely, if ever, experienced a situation where a bus that we purchased cannot make it to the end of its useful life,” says Erin Hockman, chief strategy officer for the Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority.
Still, some agencies had problems with the electric system, too. Many said that in cold weather, the range of the batteries dropped significantly. Others had trouble with charging, particularly in some of the company’s earlier designs. Some agencies had difficulty setting up the charging infrastructure needed to support the buses.
For some agencies, the experience pushed them to wait on electric buses in general. “We’re always open to new technology as it evolves, but in the electric space, at least in the U.S. market, we have not seen the reliability yet,” says Broward County’s Lonergan. “And given our current experience, we’re not willing to make those investments at this time.”
Several others have bought new electric buses from other companies like Gillig, a longtime bus manufacturer which began selling electric busses in 2019. In Everett, where half of the city’s fleet is now made up of electric Gillig buses, the vehicles have performed well, and any issues have been easier to address.
Proterra had touted its “clean sheet” approach to redesigning buses. “Your opportunity is to exploit the bias these large industries have to not innovate,” Popple said in one early interview. “They are fat, dumb, and happy. Focus, concentrate, and out-work them.” But legacy manufacturers had the experience to make vehicles that worked. (At the same time, battery technology keeps improving, helping make it easy for other manufacturers to electrify.)
“Gillig has been in the business a long time, and they have a robust service partnership with Cummins and others that makes getting service and support so much easier, timely, and familiar,” says Schmieder. “Transit vehicles are a complex array of systems that take a beating every day while in service. Even hybrid buses and diesel buses have issues. The issues with the eGilligs have been slightly more pronounced, but our support from Gillig and their network has been rock solid.”
Like other electric vehicles, the technology continues to improve. Heat pumps may soon be available in buses, for example, which can help dramatically improve the range in cold weather. Battery range keeps getting better. And Chinese buses are still farther ahead. Shenzhen, China, a city larger than New York, transitioned to 100% electric buses eight years ago.
In other countries that are importing Chinese electric buses nowunlike the U.S.the buses are noticeably better. Santiago, Chile now has thousands of electric buses in its fleet. “You just don’t see the type of reliability issues there that you’ve seen in North America,” says PA Consulting’s Lichtash. One of the reasons, he says, is that Chile has “relied a huge degree on Chinese suppliers. And I think there is a tension here in the U.S. between geopolitics and reliability.”
The fate of the Proterra buses
Some agencies took the Proterra buses off the road before they’d been in use for two years so that they could still qualify for a warranty; in some cases, negotiations were underway when Proterra declared bankruptcy. Now, it’s not clear whether the bankruptcy estate or Phoenix, the company that took over the business, can honor those warranties. Several agencies are in the middle of lawsuits and declined to comment on those proceedings.
Others chose not to continue trying to wrangle compensation or repairs. “We would probably spend a lot of legal fees and probably not get anything, even if we did get a judgement,” says TCAT’s Rosenbloom-Jones. “Is it really in the public interest to chase someone around? Or do we just want to wash our hands and be done?”
When we spoke, TCAT, like several other agencies, had been waiting for a federal waiver that would allow it to auction the buses. (The waiver is necessary in cases where agencies used some federal funding; some of the proceeds from the auction will go back to the government.) Since the buses aren’t functional, they’ll be sold for parts and scrap.
In the meantime, across the country, the sleek, nearly new vehicles have sat unused for months or years. In TCAT’s case, they were moved to a field after the agency determined that they were a fire risk and could cause more even more problems. “We made the decision to get them off the property and far away,” says Rosenbloom-Jones.
Schools with bell-to-bell phone bans are pushing students to bring back old-school methods to chat with friendsmuch to their teachers amusement.
Schoolkids are creating a Google Doc with their friends that they all have real-time access to, and they just type into it during class, one teacher explained in a recent TikTok video. The clip had since racked up over 4.4 million views. They basically reinvented the AOL chat room.
Other teachers have shared similar stories. Its like we are back in the nineties, one said. Thats what we did.
Rather than get mad, many teachers praised the students’ ingenuity. Kids will always find a way, but honestly, the creativity involved is a skill worth developing, one commented.
The idea of pulling up a Google Doc to communicate with friends in class is not new, as many in the comments pointed out. But it is new to Gen Alphas, many of whom have grown up with phones never far from their fingertips. Do they put BRB when they won’t be able to respond for a bit? one joked.
A growing number of statesincluding New York, Florida, Oregon, and Virginiahave limited, and in some cases outright banned, cellphone use in schools. In response, students are looking back to the early 2000s and asking, What did my parents do?
Along with the AOL chatroom, they are resurrecting Sony Discmans and iPod Shuffles as well as old-school games and puzzles, like Connect Four and Pac-Man, to keep them entertained while without access to phones.
Concerns about distractions in class, worsening mental health, and cyberbullying are behind the bans. More than 70 percent of high school teachers say student phone distraction is a major problem, according to a 2024 survey by the Pew Research Center. Recent research also found that students who were made to hand over their cellphones while in class performed better academically than those who weren’t.
That doesnt mean banning phones is a perfect solution. Parents have voiced concerns about reaching their kids in an emergency, and a recent Pew Research Center survey found that while 74 percent of U.S. adults support banning phone use during class, only 44 percent back all-day bans.
One European study also found that classroom phone bans did not noticeably improve health, well-being, and focus in lessons and, instead, needed to be coupled with bigger-picture regulations to make social media platforms safer and nonaddictive to children.
Problems like cyberbullying are also not exclusive to smartphones. As one commenter warned: Google Docs is a gateway drug to severe bullying. In 2024, Bark, a risk-monitoring service that scans students school-administered Google and Microsoft accounts, reported more than 8.5 million documented cases of school cyberbullying via Google Docs since 2019, according to The New York Times.
As any parent will know, for teens determined to chat with friends, where theres a will, theres a way. As one commenter wrote: Wait until they rediscover passing notes.
Anti-Trump rallies are scheduled for Saturday, October 18 in all 50 states at over 2,500 community events, which have been dubbed “No Kings” protests. The event’s organizer, Indivisible, is calling it “the biggest day of peaceful protest in modern U.S. history.”
The pro-democracy demonstrations are organized by Indivisible and a coalition of partners including: the ACLU, American Federation of Teachers, Common Defense, 50501, Human Rights Campaign, League of Conservation Voters, MoveOn, National Nurses United, Public Citizen, SEIU, and United We Dream.
“Together, millions will send a clear and unmistakable message: We are a nation of equals, and our country will not be ruled by fear or force,” No Kings organizers said in a statement emailed to Fast Company. “As the president escalates his authoritarian power grab, [our] nonviolent movement continues to rise stronger. We are united once again to remind the world: America has No Kings and the power belongs to the people.”
Organizers estimate million of Americans will turn out, building on the momentum of the first No Kings protests in June, which drew over 5 million people.
The October 18 day of action marks the latest chapter in a growing movement of Americans spanning all ages, across red and blue states and in both rural areas and urban centers. Protestors have said they’re concerned with the current state of the U.S. democracy.
Currently, the federal government is imposing mass layoffs and worker furloughs amid a government shutdown; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents’ raids on immigrants are growing more violent; and National Guard troops are being deployed into U.S. cities and against American citizens in the name of crime reduction. (Although judges have stalled President Donald Trumps plans to deploy the National Guard in Chicago and in Portland, Oregon, troops are now patrolling in Memphis, Tennessee.)
A complete list of locations for the No Kings events can be found at nokings.org.
When athletes arrive in Milan for the 2026 Winter Olympics, theyll find themselves living on top of what was once a bustling 19th-century rail yard. The newly revealed athletes village is located in the citys historic Scalo di Porta Romana districtand when the Games are over, itll be converted into Italys largest-ever affordable student housing development.
The Olympic Village design was led by the global architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). It includes six mass-timber residential buildings, two former train repair sheds that have been renovated into communal spaces, and 40,000 square meters of green space. After the Winter Olympics take place, the village will be transformed into 1,700 student apartments in time for the 2026-2027 school year.
[Image: courtesy SOM]
The repurposing of the 2026 athletes village follows a long history of similar past efforts, including converting former athlete housing into resorts, luxury condos, and mixed-use developmentsall of which have achieved varying degrees of success.
[Photo: Dave Burk/ SOM]
Inside the 2026 Athletes Village
Photos of Milans Scalo di Porta Romana district from the early-20th century paint a picture of an ultra-industrial zone populated by factories, smokestacks, and railway cars. Today Milans administrative body, the Comune di Milano, is in the midst of a multiyear project to convert the district into a sprawling neighborhood complete with green space and commercial and residential zones. Part of that plan includes first transforming the former rail yard into a global destination for the Olympics and, later, a student housing development.
Porta Romana is a unique neighborhood, says Colin Koop, design partner at SOM. Originally situated outside the city walls, the neighborhood developed as a unique mix of industrial buildings, factories, and farms driven by its adjacency to the gate to Rome. Our project takes direct inspiration from these practical, utilitarian buildings in the siting and composition of our six, interconnected buildings.
[Image: courtesy SOM]
The site chosen for the athletes village, located on the southwest corner of the former rail yard, included two abandoned train repair shedswhich, according to Koop, were found in various states of ruin. To preserve the historic buildings, his team embarked on an extensive reinforcement of their existing structures. To do this, they had to entirely replace both roofs to meet seismic requirements, reconstruct several supporting walls, and rework crumbling facades with careful attention to the preservation of the buildings architectural character.
The interiors are largely defined by the restored timber structure and largely left as an open hall, similar to their original spatial layout, Koop says. During the Olympics, the two buildings will serve various uses for competing athletes, including a dining hall, information and logistics center, and communal lounge.
[Photo: Dave Burk/ SOM]
Beside the renovated buildings are six new apartment complexes, each composed primarily of single-occupancy rooms with their own bathrooms. Every floor includes amenities like communal kitchens, study rooms, and lounges, making them easily convertible into future student housing, Koop says. Fitness centers, screening rooms, and laundry facilities are incorporated on the ground floor.
Where the buildings truly stand out from previous athlete housing, though, is in their pocket courtyards and climbing greenery. These green spaces are designed both to pay homage to Milans architecture and to incorporate natural daylight in every room.
[Photo: Dave Burk/ SOM]
Milan has a rich tradition of courtyard buildings with vertical gardens climbing up their facades, Koop says. We were inspired by these beautiful private terraces, which soften the city’s stone, brick, and plaster facades with rich palettes of plants and trees. We set out to extend this tradition through the creation of two grand facades of social terraces, which cover the eastern and western portions of the site.
By the time students are ready to move in, Koop adds, the buildings incorporated irrigated planters and metal cables will have allowed plants to cover the facades entirely, enveloping the student spaces in a canopy of green.
[Photo: Dave Burk/ SOM]
The challenges of repurposing Olympic housing
This is far from the first time that an athletes village site has been repurposed after the Olympics. In fact, the practice has been around for decades.
After the 1996 Atlanta Games, athlete housing was converted into student dorms that were first used by Georgia State University and later by Georgia Tech. Following the nearly $12 billion 2012 Summer Olympics in London, housing in the city’s East Village neighborhood was turned into mixed-use residential and commercial space, with some of the former flats retailing for as much as $1 million back in 2021. After the 2008 Games in Beijing, the Olympic Village site became public parkland and memorial spaces. In Sydney, following the 2000 Summer Games, the village was transformed into a residential suburb.
These transformations have sometimes proved unsuccessful, or even damaging to local communities. The 2016 Olympic Village in Rio de Janeiro was the largest in the history of the Games at the time, but after the athlete housing was converted to luxury condos, the space reportedly fell vacant, coming to serve for some as a symbol of the Games wasteful excesses.
Back in 2024when Paris was preparing to turn its athletes village into sustainable housing and office spacepolitical scientist Jules Boykoff told Fast Company that attempts to reuse Olympic infrastructure often fail.
[Photo: Dave Burk/ SOM]
Unfortunately, the Olympics have an ignominious tradition of creating white elephants, or stadiums and other venues that remain underused and expensive to maintain in the wake of the Games, he said. He added that organizers often make promises to build social housing that fall through, like in Vancouver in 2010 and London in 2012, when both projects ended up being essentially nationalized, paid for by taxpayers, and then promises around social housing mostly evaporated in the face of market exigencies.
In the case of the 2024 Olympic Village in Paris, established residents reported during construction that they were forced out of their homes to make way for the new housing. Currently, Paris is in the process of converting the Olympics infrastructure into a new district, though concerns around gentrification remain.
The Olympic Games are a limited-time event, notorious for passing through the host city in the blink of an eye. Whether the SOM team’s vision for the Milan site lasts long after 2026 remains to be seen.
