When Rivian drivers do eventually get on the road, they’ll have their pick of charging networks including a brand new one from the EV truckmaker itself. Rivian announced on Monday that the first three sites of its burgeoning “Adventure Network” of Level 3 fast DC chargers are coming online and will be accessible to nearly every other EV on the road, regardless of who makes it.
The first station opened in Salida, Colorado with four chargers capable of delivering 200 kW of power — that’s about 140 miles of range for an R1T in 20 minutes — in addition to the existing set of Level 2 chargers. Rivian will officially open the other stations in Inyokern and Bishop, California, later in the week.
You’ve probably never heard of any of these towns unless you frequent Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Forest, Mammoth Lakes or Death Valley National Park. Similar to Jeep’s efforts to install charging stations at trailheads, Rivian’s Adventure Network seeks to add fast charging capabilities along both popular cross-country routes and also near national parks and other out-of-the way locations.
“We designed Rivian charging to support electrified adventure, and these first sites demonstrate how we’re enabling drivers to responsibly reach some of the nation’s most breathtaking natural spaces,” Trent Warnke, Rivian’s Senior Director of Energy and Charging Solutions, said in a statement. “In addition to scenic or off-the-beaten-path destinations, our fast charging rollout is designed to ensure travelers have places to charge along major transportation corridors coast to coast.” To that end, the company hopes to install some 3,500 chargers at 600 sites nationwide.
A group of Democratic lawmakers led by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Rep. Elissa Slotkin is urging Google to "crack down on manipulative search results" that lead people seeking abortions to anti-abortion clinics. In a letter addressed to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, the lawmakers reference a study conducted by US nonprofit group Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The organization found that 1 in 10 Google search results for queries such as "abortion clinics near me" and "abortion pill" — specifically in states with trigger laws that would ban the procedure the moment Roe v. Wade is overturned — points to crisis pregnancy centers that oppose abortion instead.
"Directing women towards fake clinics that traffic in misinformation and don't provide comprehensive health services is dangerous to women's health and undermines the integrity of Google's search results," the lawmakers wrote. CCDH also found that 37 percent of results on Google Maps for the same search terms lead people to anti-abortion clinics. The lawmakers argue in the letter that Google should not be displaying those results for users searching for abortion and that if the company's search results must continue showing them, they should at least be properly labeled.
In addition, CCDH found that 28 percent of ads displayed at the top of Google search results are for crisis pregnancy centers. Google added a disclaimer for those ads, "albeit one that appears in small font and is easily missed," the lawmakers note, after getting flak for them a few years ago. "The prevalence of these misleading ads marks what appears to be a concerning reversal from Google’s pledge in 2014 to take down ads from crisis pregnancy centers that engage in overt deception of women seeking out abortion information online," the letter reads.
Warner, Slotkin and the letter's other signees are asking Google what it plans to do to limit the appearance of anti-abortion clinics when users are explicitly searching for abortion services. And, if Google chooses not to take action to prevent them from appearing in results, the group is asking whether Google would add user-friendly disclaimers clarifying whether the clinic is or isn't providing abortion services. You can read the whole letter below:
NEW: @RepSlotkin and I are leading a group of lawmakers to push on the Google CEO to crack down on manipulative search results that lead to scammy “crisis pregnancy centers.”
It’s time for them to limit or label results and ads that lead to fake abortion clinics. pic.twitter.com/LlkTueI2QP
— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) June 17, 2022
A Supreme Court draft obtained by Politico in May showed that SCOTUS justices have voted to reverse Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that protected the federal rights to abortion across the country. Senator Ron Wyden and 41 other Democratic lawmakers also previously asked Google to stop collecting and keeping users' location data. They said the information could be used against people who've had or are seeking abortions in states with trigger laws.
Millions of WordPress sites have received a forced patch over the past few days, Ars Technica has reported. The reason is a vulnerability in UpdraftPlus, a popular plugin that allows users to create and restore website backups. UpdraftPlus developers requested the mandatory patch, as the vulnerability would allow anyone with an account to download a website's entire database.
The bug was discovered by Jetpack security researcher Marc Montpas during a security audit of the plugin. "This bug is pretty easy to exploit, with some very bad outcomes if it does get exploited," he told Ars Technica. "It made it possible for low-privilege users to download a site's backups, which include raw database backups."
He told UpdraftPlus developers about the bug on Tuesday last week, they fixed it a day later and started force-installing the patch shortly after that. 1.7 million sites had received it as of Thursday, out of 3 million-plus users.
The main flaw was that UpdraftPlus didn't correctly implement WordPress's "hearbeat' function by properly checking to see if users had administrative privileges. Another issue was a variable used to validate admins that could be modified by untrusted users. Jetpack provided more details about how a hack could work in a blog post.
WordPress was previously breached earlier this year, but it was done indirectly via a GoDaddy hack that exposed 1.2 million accounts. If you're running WordPress with the UpdraftPlus plugin, you should definitely confirm that the plugin updated automatically to 1.22.4 or later on the free version, or 2.22.4 and up on the premium app.
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