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On days of heavy pollution in Sulphur, a southwest Louisiana town surrounded by more than 16 industrial plants, Cynthia “Cindy” Robertson once flew a red flag outside her home so her community knew they faced health hazards from high levels of soot and other pollutants.But she stopped flying the flag after Louisiana passed a law last May that threatened fines of up to $1 million for sharing information about air quality that did not meet strict standards.On Thursday, Robertson’s group Micah 6:8 Mission and other Louisiana environmental organizations sued the state in federal court over the law they say restricts their free speech and undermines their ability to promote public health in heavily industrialized communities.When neighbors asked where the flags went, “I’d tell them, ‘The state of Louisiana says we can’t tell y’all that stuff,'” Robertson said.While the state has argued the law ensures that accurate data is shared with the public, environmental groups like Micah 6:8 Mission believed it was intended to censor them with “onerous restrictions” and violates their free speech rights, according to the lawsuit.Despite having received Environmental Protection Agency funding to monitor Sulphur’s pollution using high quality air monitors for several years, Michah 6:8 Mission stopped posting data on the group’s social media after the law was signed last May, Robertson said.While federal law requires publicly disclosed monitoring of major pollutants, fence-line communities in Louisiana have long sought data on their exposure to hazardous and likely carcinogenic chemicals like chloroprene and ethylene oxide, which were not subject to these same regulations.Under the Biden administration, the EPA tightened regulations for these pollutants, though the Trump administration has committed to rolling them back.The Biden administration’s EPA also injected funding to support community-based air monitoring, especially in neighborhoods on the “fence-line” with industrial plants that emitted pollutants that they were not required to publicly monitor under federal law. Some groups say they lack confidence in the data the state does provide and embraced the chance to monitor the air themselves with federal funding.“These programs help detect pollution levels in areas of the country not well served by traditional and costly air monitoring systems,” the lawsuit stated.In response to the influx of grassroots air monitoring, Louisiana’s Legislature passed the Community Air Monitoring Reliability Act, or CAMRA, which requires that community groups that monitor pollutants “for the purpose of alleging violations or noncompliance” of federal law must follow EPA standards, including approved equipment that can costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.“You can’t talk about air quality unless you’re using the equipment that they want you to use,” said David Bookbinder, director of law and policy at the Environmental Integrity Project, which represents the plaintiffs. He added there was no need for community groups to purchase such expensive equipment when cheaper technology could provide “perfectly adequate results . . . to be able to tell your community, your family, whether or not the air they’re breathing is safe.”Community groups sharing information based on cheaper air monitoring equipment that did not meet these requirements could face penalties of $32,500 a day and up to $1 million for intentional violations, according to analysis from the Environmental Integrity Project.“We’re a small nonprofit, we couldn’t afford to pay one day’s worth of that,” Robertson said. “And the way the law is written, it’s so ambiguous, you don’t really know what you can and can’t do.”There is no known instance in which the state has pursued these penalties, but community groups say the law has a chilling effect on their work.“The purpose of this was very clear: to silence the science, preventing people from doing anything with it, sharing it in any form,” said Caitlion Hunter, director of research and policy for Rise St. James, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.“I’m not sure how regulating community air monitoring programs ‘violates their constitutional rights’,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill countered in a written statement.Industry groups are excluded from the law’s requirements, the lawsuit notes.The law presumes “that air monitoring information lacks accuracy if disseminated by community air monitoring groups, but not by industry participants or the state,” the complaint states.The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency declined to comment, citing pending litigation. Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Jack Brook, Associated Press/Report for America
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2026 may still be more than seven months away, but its already shaping up as the year of consumer AI hardware. Or at least the year of a flurry of high-stakes attempts to put generative AI at the heart of new kinds of devicesseveral of which were in the news this week. Lets review. On Tuesday, at its I/O developer conference keynote, Google demonstrated smart glasses powered by its Android XR platform and announced that eyewear makers Warby Parker and Gentle Monster would be selling products based on it. The next day, OpenAI unveiled its $6.5 billion acquisition of Jony Ives startup IO, which will put the Apple design legend at the center of the ChatGPT makers quest to build devices around its AI. And on Thursday, Bloombergs Mark Gurman reported that Apple hopes to release its own Siri-enhanced smart glasses. In theory, all these players may have products on the market by the end of next year. What I didnt get from these developments was any new degree of confidence that anyone has figured out how to produce AI gadgets that vast numbers of real people will find indispensable. When and how that could happen remains murkyin certain respects, more than ever. To be fair, none of this weeks news involved products that are ready to be judged in full. Only Google has something ready to demonstrate in public at all: Heres Janko Roettgerss report on his I/O experience with prototype Android XR glasses built by Samsung. That the company has already made a fair amount of progress is only fitting given that Android XR scratches the same itch the company has had since it unveiled its ill-fated Google Glass a dozen years ago. Its just that the available technologiesincluding Googles Gemini LLMhave come a long, long way. Unlike the weird, downright alien-looking Glass, Googles Android XR prototype resembles a slightly chunky pair of conventional glasses. It uses a conversational voice interface and a transparent mini-display that floats on your view of your surroundings. Google says that shipping products will have all-day battery life, a claim, vague though it is, that Glass could never make. But some of the usage scenarios that the company is showing off, such as real-time translation and mapping directions, are the same ones it once envisioned Glass enabling. The markets rejection of Glass was so resounding that one of the few things people remember about the product is that its fans were seen as creepy, privacy-invading glassholes. Enough has happened since thenincluding the success of Metas smart Ray-Bansthat Android XR eyewear surely has a far better shot at acceptance. But as demoed at I/O, the floating screen came off as a roadblock between the user and the real world. Worst case, it might simply be a new, frictionless form of screen addiction that further distracts us from human contact. Meanwhile, the video announcement of OpenAI and IOs merger was as polished as a Jony Ive-designed productSan Francisco has rarely looked so invitingly lustrousbut didnt even try to offer details about their work in progress. Altman and Ive smothered each other in praise and talked about reinventing computing. Absent any specifics, Altmans assessment of one of Ives prototypes (The coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen) sounded like runaway enthusiasm at best and Barnumesque puffery at worst. Reporting on an OpenAI staff meeting regarding the news, The Wall Street Journals Berber Jin provided some additional tidbits about the OpenAI device. Mostly, they involved what it isntsuch as a phone or glasses. It might not even be a wearable, at least on a full-time basis: According to Jin, the product will be able to rest in ones pocket or on ones desk and complement an iPhone and MacBook Pro without supplanting them. Whatever this thing is, Jin cites Altman predicting that it will sell 100 million units faster than any product before it. In 2007, by contrast, Apple forecast selling a more modest 10 million iPhones in the phones first full year on the marketa challenging goal at the time, though the company surpassed it. Now, discounting the possibility of something transformative emerging from OpenAI-IO would be foolish. Ive, after all, may have played a leading role in creating more landmark tech products than anyone else alive. Altman runs the company that gave us the most significant one of the past decade. But Ive rhapsodizing over their working relationship in the video isnt any more promising a sign than him rhapsodizing over the $10,000 solid gold Apple Watch was in 2015. And Altman, the biggest investor in Humanes doomed AI Pin, doesnt seem to have learned one of the most obvious lessons of that fiasco: Until you have a product in the market, its better to tamp down expectations than stoke them. You cant accuse Apple of hyping any smart glasses it might release in 2026. It hasnt publicly acknowledged their existence, and wont until their arrival is much closer. If anything, the company may be hypersensitive to the downsides of premature promotion. Almost a year ago, it began trumpeting a new AI-infused version of Sirione it clearly didnt have working at the time, and still hasnt released. After that embarrassing mishap, silencing the skeptics will require shipping stuff, not previewing what might be ahead. Even companies that arent presently trying to earn back their AI cred should take note and avoid repeating Apples mistake. I do believe AI demands that we rethink how computers work from the ground up. I also hope the smartphone doesnt turn out to be the last must-have device, because if it were, that would b awfully boring. Maybe the best metric of success is hitting Apples 10-million-units-per-year goal for the original iPhonewhich, perhaps coincidentally, is the same one set by EssilorLuxottica, the manufacturer of Metas smart Ray-Bans. If anything released next year gets there, it might be the landmark AI gizmo we havent yet seen. And if nothing does, we can safely declare that 2026 wasnt the year of consumer AI hardware after all. Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company How Google is rethinking search in an AI-filled worldGoogle execs Liz Reid and Nick Fox explain how the company is rethinking everything from search results to advertising and personalization. Read More Roku is doing more than ever, but focus is still its secret ingredientThe company that set out to make streaming simple has come a long way since 2008. Yet its current business all connects back to the original mission, says CEO Anthony Wood. Read More Gen Z is willing to sell their personal datafor just $50 a monthA new app, Verb.AI, wants to pay the generation thats most laissez-faire on digital privacy for their scrolling time. Read More Forget return-to-office. Hybrid now means human plus AIAs AI evolves, businesses should use the technology to complement, not replace, human workers. Read More It turns out TikToks viral clear phone is just plastic. Meet the MethaphoneMillions were fooled by a clip of a see-through phone. Its creator says its not techits a tool to break phone addiction. Read More 4 free Coursera courses to jump-start your AI journeySee what all the AI fuss is about without spending a dime. Read More
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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. National home prices rose 0.7% year over year between April 2024 and April 2025, according to the Zillow Home Value Indexa decelerated rate from the 4.4% year-over-year rate between April 2023 and April 2024. And more metro-area housing markets are seeing declines. For example, 31 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (10% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the January 2024 to January 2025 window. In the February 2024 to February 2025 window, 42 of them (14% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading. In the March 2024 to March 2025 window, that was up to 60 housing markets (20% of markets). And in the most recent readingthe April 2024 to April 2025 window80 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (27% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading. While 27% of the 300 largest housing markets are currently experiencing year-over-year home price declines, that share is gradually increasing as the supply-demand balance continues to shift directionally toward buyers in this affordability-constrained environment. Home prices are still climbing in many regions where active inventory remains well below pre-pandemic levels, such as pockets of the Northeast and Midwest. In contrast, some pockets in states like Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, and Texaswhere active inventory exceeds pre-pandemic 2019 levelsare seeing modest home price corrections. These year-over-year declines, using the Zillow Home Value Index, are evident in major metros such as Austin (-5.1%); Tampa, Florida (-5.0%); San Antonio (-3.2%); Dallas (-3.0%); Phoenix (-2.8%); Orlando, Florida (-2.8%); Jacksonville, Florida (-2.7%); New Orleans (-2.4); Atlanta (-2.3%); Miami (-2.3%), Denver (-1.8%), and Houston (-1.4%). !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}(); The markets seeing the most softnesswhere homebuyers have gained the most leverageare primarily located in Sun Belt regions, particularly the Gulf Coast and Mountain West. Many of these areas saw major price surges during the pandemic housing boom, with home price growth outpacing local income levels. As pandemic-driven migration slowed and mortgage rates rose, markets like Tampa and Austin faced challenges, relying on local income levels to support frothy home prices. This softening trend is further compounded by an abundance of new home supply in the Sun Belt. Builders are often willing to lower prices or offer affordability incentives to maintain sales, which also has a cooling effect on the resale market. Some buyers, who would have previously considered existing homes, are now opting for new homes with more favorable deals. Given the shift in active housing inventory and months of supply, along with the soft level of appreciation in more markets this spring, ResiClub expects the number of metro areas with year-over-year home price declines in the Zillow Home Value Index to continue ticking up in the coming months.
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