An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A patent lawsuit filed by one of 3D printing's most established firms against a consumer-focused upstart could have a big impact on the wider 3D-printing scene. In two complaints, (1, 2, PDF) filed in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, against six entities related to Bambu Lab, Stratasys alleges that Bambu Lab infringed upon 10 patents that it owns, some through subsidiaries like Makerbot (acquired in 2013). Among the patents cited are US9421713B2, "Additive manufacturing method for printing three-dimensional parts with purge towers," and US9592660B2, "Heated build platform and system for three-dimensional printing methods."

There are not many, if any, 3D printers sold to consumers that do not have a heated bed, which prevents the first layers of a model from cooling during printing and potentially shrinking and warping the model. "Purge towers" (or "prime towers" in Bambu's parlance) allow for multicolor printing by providing a place for the filament remaining in a nozzle to be extracted and prevent bleed-over between colors. Stratasys' infringement claims also target some fundamental technologies around force detection and fused deposition modeling (FDM) that, like purge towers, are used by other 3D-printer makers that target entry-level and intermediate 3D-printing enthusiasts.

Civil servants in the UK are locked in a row with the government over plans to use AI to answer taxpayer complaints. The Telegraph: Letters and emails to the Treasury are already being read by an AI tool which summarises the contents and suggests responses for civil servants. The government is now in talks to use AI across more departments, The Telegraph understands. A government spokesman said: "We make no apology for exploring innovations which improve public services. This tool has already been in use for four months and has increased productivity by 30pc, helping us save taxpayers' money by stopping the need to use expensive contractors during busy periods.

"Staff at the Treasury will continue to write all public correspondence and make decisions on cases. This tool, which was developed by data science experts in the department, helps civil servants respond to thousands more questions quickly and on time." But the civil serrvice trade body, the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, warned that the AI tool could be developed "on the cheap," leading to correspondence being misread. Fran Heathcote, PCS general secretary, said that while the union has no objection in principle to AI, that training the tool "properly takes a long time and considerable resources." Ms Heathcote added: "Further, in anticipation of AI working well, staff numbers are cut so you get the worst of all worlds: a poorly functioning AI system with too few humans left behind to pick up the broken pieces."

In an effort to beef up protections for consumers against corporations, the Biden administration on Monday announced a handful of policies to crack down on "headaches and hassles that waste Americans' time and money." From a report: Through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the administration will ask companies to make it as easy to cancel subscriptions and memberships as it is to sign up for them, and through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new rule will require companies to let customers cut through automated customer service "doom loops" by pressing a single button to reach a real person.

"For a lot of services, it takes one or two clicks on your phone to sign up. It should take one or two clicks on your phone to end the service," White House Domestic Policy Advisor Neera Tanden said on a call with reporters to discuss the new policies. Consumers could see the new rule applied to gym memberships or subscriptions with phone and internet companies. The administration will also call on health insurance companies to allow claims to be submitted online, rather than requiring insured customers to print out and mail forms in for coverage.

St. Cloud State University announced plans to eliminate its music department and cut 42 degree programs and 50 minors, as part of a broader trend of U.S. colleges slashing offerings amid financial pressures. The Minnesota school's decision, driven by a $32 million budget shortfall over two years, reflects challenges facing higher education institutions nationwide. Similar program cuts have been announced at universities across the country, including in North Carolina, Arkansas, and New York. Some smaller institutions have closed entirely, unable to weather the financial storm, reports CBS News.

Federal COVID relief funds have dried up, operational costs are rising, and fewer high school graduates are pursuing college degrees. St. Cloud State's enrollment plummeted from 18,300 students in fall 2020 to about 10,000 in fall 2023, mirroring national trends. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reports a decline in four-year college enrollment, despite a slight rebound in community college numbers.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple recently rejected DOS emulator iDOS 3 from the App Store, but following App Store rule changes that look to have cleared the way for PC emulator apps, iDOS 3 is now available for download, developer Chaoji Li announced. In June, Li said that Apple had rejected iDOS 3 because it violated App Store guideline 4.7.

At the time, that rule was what allowed retro game console emulator apps to appear on the store, but Apple was only allowing retro game console emulators under the rule -- not PC emulators; UTM SE, another PC emulator app, had also said it was rejected for violating the rule.

But in July, Apple reversed course and approved UTM SE, and earlier this month, it added the words "PC emulator" to guideline 4.7, which is seemingly why iDOS 3 has now been allowed on the App Store.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Once upon a time, you could have yourself a nice little Saturday of stocking up at Costco (using your sister's membership card, naturally), before hitting up a museum (free admission with your 15-year-old expired student ID) or settling into a reality TV binge sesh (streaming on your college roommate's ex-boyfriend's Netflix login). You wouldn't call it stealing, per se. Mooching, perhaps. Exploiting a loophole in a system of commercialized culture you didn't create but are forced to participate in -- and what could be more capitalist than that? But thanks to the fine-tuning of the tech that Corporate America uses to police subscriptions, those freeloading days are over.

Costco and Disney this month took a page from the Netflix playbook and announced they are cracking down on account sharers. So the next time you want to restock your Kirkland chocolate covered almond stash, you'll need to have an honest-to-God membership of your own that you scan at the door. Want to put on "Frozen" for the kids so you can have two hours to do literally anything else? You're going to need a Disney+ login associated with your household. The tech that tracks your IP address and can read your face has gotten more sophisticated, and, as the Wall Street Journal reported last week, retailers and streaming services are increasingly turning to status-verification tech that make it harder for folks to claim student discounts on services like Amazon Prime or Spotify beyond graduation.

With its hardware event on Tuesday, Alphabet's Google is trying to outshine Apple's annual iPhone launch -- and is letting longtime executive Rick Osterloh take center stage. Bloomberg: Osterloh, the former president of Motorola who joined Google in 2016, will helm the first major product launch after the company this year unified under his leadership the teams developing hardware and the Android operating system. The reorganization expanded Osterloh's influence in the company and signaled that Google intends to compete in hardware for the long term.

In a sign of a more aggressive push into consumer devices, Google moved up its annual flagship Pixel smartphone launch to August from October, preempting the next Apple. iPhone debut and seizing attention during a typically quiet period for the industry. [...] By holding its hardware showcase a month ahead of the iPhone maker's largest annual event, Google is "frontrunning Apple and also making a statement that we are likely way ahead of what Apple will show for iPhone 16 at least," said Mandeep Singh, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence.

Google has at least a six-month head start on Apple, which has invested less in AI over the years than some of its Big Tech peers, he added. Google's strategy -- tying together the development of hardware, software and services -- carries echoes of Apple's successful approach to designing devices. Yet, as Osterloh seeks to capitalize on the opportunity presented by AI, he faces a perennial challenge for Google: bringing the fight to Apple without threatening key relationships with hardware giants such as Xiaomi that rely on the Android operating system.

AMD increased its market share in data center and laptop CPU segments during Q2 2024, according to a new report from Mercury Research. The company captured 24.1% of the data center CPU market, up 0.5% from the previous quarter and 5.6% year-over-year. In laptops, AMD's share rose to 20.3%, a 1% increase quarter-over-quarter and 3.8% year-over-year. The company's revenue share in laptops reached 17.7%, indicating lower average selling prices compared to Intel.

Intel maintained its overall lead, controlling 78.9% of the client PC market. In desktops, Intel gained 1% share, now holding 77% of the market. AMD's data center revenue share hit 33.7%, suggesting higher average selling prices for its EPYC processors compared to Intel's Xeon chips. AMD earned $2.8 billion from 24.1% unit share, while Intel made $3.0 billion from 75.9% unit share.

For the first time, two new all-electric passenger trains are operating in the US, which is woefully behind the rest of the world in electrifying its rolling stock. The Verge: The two new trains are operated by Caltrain. California Governor Gavin Newson and House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi were on hand to take the inaugural ride, which took place on Saturday. The trains were put into regular service the following day, running along the route between San Jose and San Francisco.

It's taken almost 20 years since the idea of electric trains was first proposed in California. But officials insisted the new trains will be quieter and faster than the diesel-powered trains in current operation while also providing a better experience for passengers. The two trains will be joined by 17 others that should be in service by mid-September.

[...] It shouldn't come as any shock that the US is lagging behind the rest of the world in introducing electric trains. India is on the cusp of electrifying 100 percent of its rail lines, while China is nearing three-quarters of its network. Over 57 percent of the rail system in the European Union is electric.

Apple has threatened to remove crowdfunding app Patreon from the App Store if creators continue to use unsupported third-party billing options or disable transactions on iOS, instead of using Apple's own in-app purchasing system. From a report: In a blog post and email to Patreon creators about upcoming changes to membership in the iOS app, the company says it's begun a 16-month-long migration process to move all creators to Apple's subscription billing by November 2025. Patreon also informed creators it will switch them over to subscription billing as of November 2024, but they will be able to decide whether to price their memberships at a higher fee to cover Apple's commission or decide if they want to absorb the fee themselves. In addition, creators can opt to delay the migration in their Patreon settings to November 2025, the company said. However, if creators choose the latter option, they won't be able to offer memberships in the iOS app until they adopt Apple's subscription billing, as Apple rules will apply as of this November.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft Paint isn't one of Windows' best photo editing apps, but in the recent past, the software giant introduced some exciting features, such as layer support, to make the app more viable for Windows users. While Microsoft was pouring the Paint app with new features, the Paint 3D app was dying a slow death. The app will finally be delisted from the Microsoft Store in November this year.

Proximity to natural gas lines could become just as desirable for datacenter operators as high-speed fiber-optic networks as they scramble to satiate AI's ever growing thirst for power. From a report: Speaking to analysts during their respective earnings call this week, executives at Energy Transfer LP and Williams Companies, both of which operate pipelines across the US, revealed they were in talks with datacenter operators to supply them with large quantities of natural gas. "We are, in four different states, in discussions with multiple datacenters of different sizes. Some of them, or many of them, want to put generation on site ... So it's an enormous opportunity for us," Mackie McCrea, co-CEO of Energy Transfer LP, told Wall Street, according to a transcript.

Energy Transfer LP's pipelines currently span 15 states in the USA, serving 185 power plants. Looking at the opportunity afforded by datacenter hookups, McCrea estimated that power demand could increase by 30 to 40 gigawatts over the next six to eight years. "We believe we are extremely well positioned to benefit from the anticipated rise in natural gas needs," Energy Transfer LP co-CEO Tom Long added. Energy Transfer LP isn't the only pipeline operator eager to take advantage of skyrocketing datacenter power demands. Speaking to analysts earlier this week, Williams Companies CEO Alan Armstrong expressed optimism about the firm's ability to capitalize on this demand.

A co-founder of transparency activism organization Distributed of Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) was a dark web drug kingpin who ran the successor to the infamous Silk Road marketplace and was later convicted of child abuse imagery crimes. From a report: The co-founder was Thomas White, who was prosecuted for administering the Silk Road 2.0 drug marketplace and for possessing images of child sexual abuse material. He decided to reveal his involvement in DDoSecrets to 404 Media after serving a five year prison sentence. "I was told, in no uncertain terms, that if I spoke out publicly against Ross Ulbricht's excessive sentence, [DDoSecrets] or anything similar, that I would spend much more time in prison," he said. "Now I can freely speak again, it is important to use it or lose it. So #FreeRoss."

The news provides more insights into the origins of DDoSecrets, which has filled the void left by Wikileaks to become the most significant site publishing massive data dumps at this time. The other co-founder is Emma Best, who for years has archived, cataloged, and distributed large amounts of hacked information online. "Emma and I have been communicating for many years, and both know the difficulty in finding and verifying leaked material. It was a shared vision to make this process easier for people better placed than ourselves, to use the data to counteract the veil of secrecy protecting many bad actors in society," White told 404 Media in an email in July.

A company called ChargerHelp provides certified technicians to service EV charging stations (for a monthly fee). And they've just issued their annual "reliability report," reports CleanTechnica: Its analysis of more than 19 million data points collected from public and private sources in 2023 — including real-time assessments of 4,800 chargers from ChargerHelp technicians in the field — finds that â"software consistently overestimates station uptime, point-in-time status, and the ability to successfully charge a vehicle...."

[W]hen ChargerHelp technicians personally inspected 4,800 charge points, they found more than 10% were reported to be online but were in fact unable to complete a test charge... These findings by ChargerHelp are backed up by many smaller scale studies and surveys over the past several years that have found that claims of 95% uptime or greater do not match real world experience. A 2022 study of 657 chargers at 181 non-Tesla public charging sites in the San Francisco Bay Area determined that only 73% were capable of delivering a charge for more than two minutes, for example.

[I]mprovements have been slow to materialize. In fact, driver satisfaction with public charging has only worsened over the past year, according to the latest J.D. Power Electric Vehicle Experience Ownership Study, released in February. As the variety, price, and range of EVs available to US drivers have become more attractive, mistrust of public charging now constitutes the most significant headwind for EV adoption, J.D. Power says.
The report also "lists the biggest infrastructure pain points," reports the Verge, "including a failure to report broken stalls, inaccurate station status messages, aging equipment, and some habitually unreliable network providers (who go unnamed in the study, unfortunately)." EV chargers can break in many ways, the study concludes. These include broken retractor systems intended to protect the cable from getting mangled by vehicle tires, broken screens, and inoperable payment systems. There is also general damage to the cabinet and, of course, broken cables and connectors.

Across the chargers recorded, ChargerHelp calculates that actual uptime is only 73.7 percent, compared to the 84.6 percent self-reported by the EV network providers.

"Battling choppy waves and high winds, three engineers pulled ashore a yellow submarine in Scotland this week," reports the BBC. "With sheets of water pouring from its body, the UK's most famous robot — Boaty McBoatface — was winched up after 55 days at sea." Boaty has completed a more-than-2,000km scientific odyssey from Iceland [the longest journey yet for its class of submarine, and major test of its engineering]... "Boaty has absolutely passed. It's a massive relief," says Rob Templeton [from Southampton's National Oceanography Centre]... It is exciting technology but the science that Boaty was doing could be part of a game-changer in how scientists understand climate change...

Cruising at 1.1metres per second and diving thousands of metres, Boaty had more than 20 sensors monitoring biological and chemical conditions like nutrients, oxygen levels, photosynthesis and temperature... "We are measuring what's been happening in the upper ocean with the phytoplankton, the plants that grow there. We are looking at the little zooplankton, the animals that eat them. And we've been measuring the fecal pellets, the poo that the animals produce," explained Dr Stephanie Henson [chief scientist on the research project "BioCarbon" run by the National Oceanography Centre, the University of Southampton and Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.] "Our climate would be significantly warmer if the carbon pump wasn't there," Stephanie said. Without it, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would be about 50% higher, she says. But current climate modelling does not get the carbon pump right, she says. "We want to know how strong it is, what changes its strength. Does it change from season to season, and year to year?" she says...

There are tentative signs from the research that the carbon pump might be slowing down, the scientists explain. The team recorded much smaller "blooms" of the tiny plants and animals that feed on them than they expected in spring. "If that trend were to continue in future years it would mean the biological (carbon) pump could be weakening which could result in more carbon dioxide being left in the atmosphere," Stephanie said.
It's really nice to see photos of the yellow submarine coming ashore after 55 days underwater, "on its way home to Southampton."

But according to the article, Dr Adrian Martin (running the BioCarbon project) "explains the research aims to better understand how the oceans are storing carbon because of a controversial field of study called geoengineering." Some scientists and entrepreneurs believe we can artificially change the ocean, for example by altering its chemistry, in the hope it would absorb more carbon. But these are still very experimental and have lots of critics. Opponents worry geoengineering will do unexpected harm or not address climate change quickly enough. "If you're going to make interventions that could be global disturbances of the ocean ecosystem, you need to understand the consequences. Without that, you are not informed to make that decision," he says.

"Zelle payments can't be reversed once they're sent," notes the Los Angeles Times — which could be why they're popular with scammers. "You can't simply stop the payment (like a check) or dispute it (like a credit card). Now, the federal regulator overseeing financial products is probing whether banks that offer Zelle to their account holders are doing enough to protect them against scams. Two major banks — JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — disclosed in their security filings in the last week that they'd been contacted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. According to the Wall Street Journal, which reported the filings Wednesday, the CFPB is exploring whether banks are moving quickly enough to shut down scammers' accounts and whether they're doing enough to identify and prevent scammers from signing up for accounts in the first place...

A J.D. Power survey this year found that 3% of the people who'd used Zelle said they had lost money to scammers, which was less than the average for peer-to-peer money transfer services such as Venmo, CashApp and PayPal. The chief executive of Early Warning Services, which runs Zelle, told a Senate subcommittee in July that only 0.1% of the transactions on Zelle involved a scam or fraud; in 2023, the company said, that percentage was 0.05%. But Zelle operates at such a large scale — 120 million users, 2.9 billion transactions and $806 billion transferred in 2023, according to Early Warning Services — that even a tiny percentage of scam and fraud problems translates into a large number of users and dollars... From 2022 to 2023, Zelle cut the rate of scams by nearly 50% even as the volume of transactions grew 28%, resulting in less money scammed in 2023 than in 2022, said Ben Chance, the chief fraud risk management officer for Zelle. The company didn't disclose the amounts involved, but if 0.05% of the $806 billion transferred in 2023 involved scam or fraud, that would translate to $403 million.

Do Zelle users get reimbursed for scams? Only in certain cases, and this is where the banks that offer Zelle have drawn the most heat. If you use Zelle to pay a scammer, banks say, that's a payment you authorized, so they're not obliged under law to refund your money... Some banks, such as Bank of America, say they will put a freeze on transfers by a suspected scammer as soon as a report comes in, then investigate and, if the report is substantiated, seize and return the money. But that works only if the scam is reported right away, before the scammer has the chance to withdraw the funds — which many will do immediately, said Iskander Sanchez-Rola, director of innovation at the cybersecurity company Gen.

The Guardian reports Sunday, Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, highlighted that Russian forces appeared to have started a fire in one of the cooling towers of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that it has occupied since the early days of the war. "Radiation levels are within norm," Zelenskiy said before accusing Russia of using its control of the site, whose six reactors are in shutdown mode, "to blackmail Ukraine, all of Europe, and the world". A Ukrainian official in Nikopol, the nearest town across the river Dnipro from the nuclear plant, added that according to "unofficial information", the fire was caused by setting fire to "a large number of automobile tyres" in a cooling tower. Video and pictures showed smoke dramatically billowing from one of the towers, although experts said they are not in use while the reactor is in shutdown mode, prompting some to question whether it was a way of trying raise the stakes over Ukraine's incursion into Russia.
From the CBC: The Russian management of the facility said emergency workers had contained the fire and that there was no threat of it spreading further. "The fire did not affect the operation of the station," it said. The six reactors at the plant located close to the front line of the war in Ukraine are not in operation but the facility relies on external power to keep its nuclear material cool and prevent a catastrophic accident. Moscow and Kyiv have routinely accused each other of endangering safety around it.

"Last year, a major meta-analysis that re-examined 107 studies over 40 years came to the conclusion that no amount of alcohol improves health," the New York Times reported this June, citing a study co-authored by Tim Stockwell, an epidemiologist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research. Dr. Stockwell (and other scientists he's collaborated with) "are overhauling decades-worth of scientific evidence — and newspaper headlines — that backed the health benefits of alcohol," writes the Telegraph, "or what is known in the scientific community as the J-curve. The J-curve is the theory that, like a capital J, the negative health consequences of drinking dip slightly into positive territory with moderate drinking — as it benefits such things as the heart — before rising sharply back into negative territory the more someone drinks."

But Stockwell's study prompted at least one scientist to accuse Stockwell of "cherry picking" evidence to suit an agenda — while a think-tank executive suggests he's a front for a worldwide temperance lobby: Dr Stockwell denies this. Speaking to The Telegraph, he in turn accused his detractors of being funded by the alcohol lobby and said his links to temperance societies were fleeting. He was the president of the Kettil Bruun Society (a think tank born out of what was the international temperance congresses) [from 2005 to 2007] and he has been reimbursed for addressing temperance movements and admits attending their meetings, but, he says, not as a member...

Former British government scientist Richard Harding, who gave evidence on safe drinking to the House of Commons select committee on science and technology in 2011, told The Telegraph that Dr Stockwell had wrongly taken a correlation to be causal. "Dr Stockwell's research is essentially epidemiology, which is the study of populations," Dr Harding said. "You record people's lifestyle and then see what diseases they get and try to correlate the disease with some aspect of their lifestyle. But it is just a correlation, it's just an association. Epidemiology can never establish causality on its own. And in this particular case, Dr Stockwell selected six studies out of 107 to focus on. You could say he cherry picked them. Really, the important thing is not the epidemiology, it's the effect that alcohol actually has on the body. We know the reasons why the curve is J-shaped; it's because of the protective effect moderate consumption has on heart disease and a number of other diseases."

Dr Stockwell rejects Dr Harding's criticism of his study, telling The Telegraph that Dr Harding "doesn't appear to have read it" and accusing him of being in the pocket of the alcohol industry. "We identified six high-quality studies out of 107 and they didn't find any J-shaped curve," Dr Stockwell said. "In fact, since our recent paper, we've now got genetic studies which are showing there's no benefits of low-level alcohol use. I personally think there might still be small benefits, but the point of our work is that, if there are benefits, they've been exaggerating them."
The article notes that Stockwell's research "has been published in The Lancet, among other esteemed organs," and that "scientists he has collaborated with on research highlighting the dangers of alcohol are in positions of power at major institutions, such as the World Health Organisation."

And honestly, the opposing viewpoint seems to be thinly-sourced. Besides Harding (the former British government scientist), the article cites:

• The head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs (which Wikipedia describes as "a right-wing, free market think tank")

• An alcohol policy specialist at Brock University in Ontario (who argues rather unconvincingly that "you can't measure when someone didn't hurt themselves because a friend invited them for a drink.")

On the basis of that, the article writes "respected peers say it is far from settled science and have cast doubt on his research". (And that "fellow academics and experts" told The Telegraph "they read the report in disbelief.") Did the Telegraph speak to others who just aren't mentioned in the story? Or are they extrapolating, in that famous British tabloid journalism sort of way?

The New York Times visits the downtown of one of America's biggest tech cities to explore San Francisco's "Vacant to Vibrant" initiative, where "city and business leaders provide free rent for up to six months" to "entrepreneurs who want to set up shop in empty spaces, many of which are on the ground floor of office buildings."

The program also offers funding for business expenses (plus technical and business permit assistance) — and it seems to be working. One cafe went on to sign a five-year lease for a space in the financial district's iconic One Embarcadero Center building — and the building's landlord says the program also resulted in another three long leases. Can the progress continue? The hope is that these pop-up operations will pay rent and sign longer leases after the free-rent period is over, and that their presence will regenerate foot traffic in the area. Some 850 entrepreneurs initially applied for a slot, and 17 businesses were chosen to occupy nine storefront spaces in the fall. Out of those businesses, seven extended their leases and now pay rent. Eleven businesses were selected in May for the program's second cohort, which started operating their storefronts this summer...

The city's office vacancy rate hit 33.7%, a record high, in the second quarter this year, according to JLL, a commercial real estate brokerage. That's one of the bleakest office markets in the nation, which has an average vacancy rate of about 22%. For the moment, however, San Francisco has a silver lining in Vacant to Vibrant. Rod Diehl, the BXP executive vice president who oversees its West Coast properties, said the pop-up strategy was good not just for local business owners to test their concepts and explore growth opportunities, but also for office leasing efforts... Beyond free rent, which is typically given for three months with a possibility for another three months, Vacant to Vibrant provides up to $12,000 to the businesses to help cover insurance and other expenses. The program also offers grants up to $5,000 for building owners to cover costs for tenant improvements in the spaces as well as for other expenses like utilities...

In addition to the Vacant to Vibrant program — which received $1 million from the city initially and is set to receive another $1 million for the current fiscal year, which began July 1 — the city is directing nearly $2 million toward a similar pop-up program. This new program would help businesses occupy larger empty spaces along Powell Street, as crime and other retail pressures have driven out several retailers, including Anthropologie, Banana Republic and Crate & Barrel, in the Union Square area.
One business owner who joined "Vacant to Vibrant" in May says they haven't decided yet whether to sign a lease. "It's not as crowded as before the pandemic." But according to the article, "she was hopeful that more businesses opening nearby would attract more people."

"In addition to filling empty storefronts, the program has the opportunity to bring in a fresher and more localized downtown shopping vibe, said Laurel Arvanitidis, director for business development at San Francisco's Office of Economic and Workplace Development." Victor Gonzalez, an entrepreneur who founded GCS Agency to stage showings for artists, is embracing the opportunity to get a foothold downtown despite the city's challenges. When he opened a storefront as part of the first Vacant to Vibrant cohort in the Financial District last year, he immediately knew that he wanted to stay there as long as possible. He has since signed a three-year lease. "San Francisco is no stranger to big booms and busts," he said. "So if we're in the midst of a bust, what's next? It's a boom. And I want to be positioned to be part of it."

The Wall Street Journal visits scientists at Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering who are researching a "sugar-to-fiber" enzyme (normally used by plants to create stalks). They're testing a version they've "encased in spherical nanoparticles — tiny mesh-like cages made of pectin that allow the enzyme to be added to food without being activated until it reaches the intestine.

"Once there, a change in pH causes the cage to expand, freeing the enzyme to float through its holes and start converting sugar to fiber." The Wyss Institute's goal for its enzyme product was to reduce the sugar absorbed from food by 30%, though it has the potential to remove even more than that, says Sam Inverso, director of business development partnerships at the Wyss Institute. The enzyme's ability to turn sugar into fiber is also key, as most Americans don't get nearly enough fiber in their diet, says Adama Sesay, a senior engineer at the Wyss Institute who worked on the project...

The Wyss Institute is now licensing the technology to a company to help bring its enzyme product to market, a process that entails additional testing and work to secure regulatory approval. Inverso says that the aim is for the product to be available to U.S. food manufacturers within the next two years, and that other encapsulated enzymes could follow: products that reduce lactose absorption after drinking milk, or cut gluten after eating bread. For now the enzyme works better in solid food than in a liquid. Producing it in large quantities and at low cost is still a ways off — currently it's 100 times more expensive than raw sugar, Inverso says.
And the Journal notes they're not the only ones working on the problem: San Francisco-based startup Biolumen recently launched a product called Monch Monch, a drink mix made of fibrous, microscopic sponges designed to soak up sugar and prevent it from reaching the bloodstream. At mealtime consumers can blend a teaspoon of Monch Monch, which has no taste, smell or color, into drinks from water to wine. Once it has reached the stomach, the sponges start to swell and sequester sugar, reducing its burden on the body, says Dr. Robert Lustig, Biolumen's co-founder and chief medical officer... One gram of Monch Monch can sequester six grams of sugar, says Lustig... The product, introduced as a dietary supplement, can also be used as a food ingredient under a Food and Drug Administration principle known as "generally recognized as safe." Packets of Monch Monch are available for purchase online, and Biolumen says it is in talks with U.S. food manufacturers it declined to name about its use in other products...

Food companies are betting on other solutions for now. Cereal startup Magic Spoon uses allulose, a natural sugar found in figs and raisins that is growing in popularity, helped by FDA guidance that allows it to be excluded from sugar or added-sugar totals on nutrition labels. Ingredient company Tate & Lyle, which makes allulose from corn kernels, says the sweetener tastes like sugar and adds bulk and caramel color, but passes through the body without being metabolized... Chicago-based Blommer Chocolate recently launched a line of reduced-sugar chocolate and confectionery products made with Incredo, a sugar that has been physically altered to taste sweeter using a mineral carrier that dissolves faster in saliva and targets the sweet-taste receptors on the tongue. Incredo's use enables manufacturers to use up to 50% less sugar, the company says.
The article even notes that "researchers still working to reduce sugar are peddling new technologies, like individual sugar crystals modified to dissolve more quickly in the mouth, making food taste sweeter."