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Meta Quest 3 users will now be able to explore detailed 3D scans of sculptures, rock formations, plant life, and other interesting objects from around the world.The 3D images, which users can virtually zoom in on or walk around, are part of a new app from Pokémon Go-maker Niantic called Into the Scaniverse. Last year, the company released the latest version of a smartphone Scaniverse app letting users create detailed images of public scenes or objects within their phones, with the ability to add public images to a shared map.Already, the map includes more than 50,000 3D scenes, including renderings of Stonehenge, ancient ruins in Europe, Japanese temples, and even a shrine to Elvis Presley, all captured with the Scaniverse app or through Niantic games like Ingress and Pokémon Go. With the new Quest app, users will be able to traverse a map of the world from a virtual hot air balloon, spotting and clicking pins on the map to explore in stereo 3D vision the sights that were scanned there.Our goal is really to get a large collection of high-quality scans that folks can visit around the world, says Brian McClendon, senior vice president of engineering at Niantic. You can walk up to it and look up at it, and you get a sense of scale of these objects that sometimes photos dont do justice.[Image: Ninantic]Making the scans, created using a mathematical modeling technique called the Gaussian splat, available through virtual reality will hopefully also incentivize more users to go out and scan and share the world around them, similar to how the rise of Instagram motivated people to take and share photos, he says. The scanning process generally takes only a few minutes, and users can view their own scans on their phones or Quest headsets before deciding whether to share them to the public map.This allows you to experiment with locations and try things out, and once you have what you like, you can then choose to publish to the map or not, says McClendon. The scan library is currently growing rapidly, with more than 11,000 published since December. Users on Niantic forums and in meetups also share tips on how to capture the best scans. McClendon, who is based in Arizona, has uploaded some scans of cactus and other desert foliage that not everyone sees in person, and hes hopeful that users continue to increase their coverage of the planet. [Animation: Ninantic]Though the scans might be most impressive in virtual reality, its not necessary to have a Quest to experience them, with the 3D images also accessible in the Scaniverse iPhone and Android apps or through the web. Scans taken with Niantics software and shared publicly are also available for developers to use in Niantic Studio, the companys tool for building XR and 3D games and experiences. Users also share some of their favorite scans through social media like X, Theads, and Bluesky. But McClendon anticipates that the Quest apps map view will lead to a new wave of discovery as people explore spots near them or places theyve visited in the past.[Image: Ninantic]The app can even be used to help plan vacations, with people exploring potential sites before they travel, McClendon suggests. And ideally, when they arrive, theyll be inspired to contribute more scans to the public collection.The real goal is to motivate more people to create more scans, McClendon says.
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E-Commerce
Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos announced Wednesday that the newspaper’s Opinions section would now essentially become a mouthpiece for his own beliefs on personal and economic freedoms. In response to this shift, opinion editor David Shipley decided to step away from his role. In an announcement shared to the Post staff and online via X, Bezos wrote that the section would now publish opinion pieces in support and defense of personal liberties and free markets. The billionaire Amazon founder added that the Post will no longer publish op-eds opposing those viewpoints, saying that newspapers in the internet era need not reflect diverse opinions. There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the readers doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views, Bezos wrote. Today, the internet does that job. Reactions range from critical to baffled But journalists, including those on the Posts staff, are already expressing criticism and bewilderment over this change. Bezos reportedly offered Shipley the opportunity to lead this reimagined Opinions section, and Shipley instead chose to leave his position. Jeff Stein, a reporter for the Post, called Bezoss new direction a massive encroachment in an X post, adding that Bezos makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated. He further threatened to quit if “Bezos tries interfering with the news side.” Ostensibly responding to the news, Philip Bump, a columnist at the paper, posted on Bluesky: “what the actual fuck.” NBC news editor Ben Goggin wrote that he thinks Bezos is using the Post as a personal mouthpiece. And Matthew Chapman, a reporter with progressive news site Raw Story, wrote that it appears the paper must take sides in favor of policy that makes Jeff Bezos rich. The Post has not yet responded to Fast Companys request for comment. Heavy meddle Bezos promised editorial independence when he acquired the D.C.-based outlet in 2013. In a meeting with reporters at the time, he had said that he would defer to the editorial boards positions, saying: I dont feel the need to have an opinion on every issue. But recently, the billionaire has started to meddle with the papers output. During the 2024 election, Bezos reportedly made the decision to kill an already-written endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. He framed it as a decision to end all Washington Post presidential endorsements. The paper reportedly lost a quarter million subscribers after this announcement. And in January, cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit the Post after the paper rejected publishing her political cartoon that depicted Bezos, among other billionaires, worshiping at the feet of President Trump and holding a money bag. A correspondent for left-leaning magazine The Nation wrote online that Bezos could have made his 250-plus-word announcement about the Opinions section change much shorter: The Opinions section will now be my opinions only, but written by others because I am a shit writer. Who wants to be my new sock puppet?
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E-Commerce
Read Part I of this story here. YUKON, Pa.When government inspectors arrived at the hazardous waste landfill here in 2023, they found themselves in a barren and alien landscape carved from western Pennsylvanias green countryside. As they documented operations at Max Environmental Technologies, they climbed fields of blackened waste and photographed pits, mud, debris, stained walls, and unlabeled storage containers. Their images offer a startlingand largely hiddenjuxtaposition to the rolling hills, horse paddocks, and chicken coops around the 160-acre site. What the inspectors captured confirmed the worst fears of Yukons residents, who have blamed the landfill for serious health impacts and called on regulators to intervene for years. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found rusted open containers of waste, clogged pipes, and a containment building used to store untreated hazardous waste in pretty significant disrepair. They watched as rainwater mixed with that waste and flowed from the damaged building. Government inspectors conducted sampling at the Max Environmental landfill in October 2023. [Photo: Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection] There was a hole in the roof and it was raining during the inspection, said Jeanna Henry, chief of the air, RCRA and toxics branch in the enforcement and compliance assurance division of the EPAs Mid-Atlantic Region. RCRA is the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which regulates hazardous waste. The landfill accepts industrial waste like contaminated soils, acids, and dust, as well as waste generated by the oil and gas industry that contains heavy metals and radioactive materials. Pennsylvania is the countrys second-largest producer of natural gas, and much of the industrys solid waste ends up at landfills such as this one. After its March 2023 inspection, EPA alleged Max Environmental had failed to minimize the possibility of a release of hazardous waste at its Yukon site; failed to submit 26 required discharge monitoring reports; failed to report all sampling results of the waste the company had processed, or treated, to make it non-hazardous; failed to provide adequate training for employees; and failed to properly operate and maintain the facility in general, including leaks, damage and deterioration. The treated hazardous waste was not meeting the land disposal restriction requirements. It was actually still a hazardous waste, and samples that we took out of the landfill showed the same thing, Henry said. Thats very significant. So we have concerns that the treatment that Max is performing is not adequate. Carl Spadaro, the environmental general manager at Max Environmental, said initial testing of its treated waste showed compliance about 90% of the time, which he called consistent with historical results in a statement to Inside Climate News. Any treated waste that does not pass initial testing has always and continues to be re-treated until it meets required standards. This kind of practice is common in the hazardous waste management industry, Spadaro said. During EPAs March 2023 visit to the landfill, inspectors found that treated samples exceeded standards for cadmium, lead, and thallium, a tasteless, odorless metal that was once used as a rodenticide but was banned because of its toxicity. Thallium can come from materials released by the oil and gas industry and a few other sectors. Tall trees shroud most of the Yukon landfills operations from public view. [Photo: Scott Goldsmith/Inside Climate News] In 2024, EPA issued administrative orders under RCRA and NPDES, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, that require Max Environmental to fix problems inspectors found. The RCRA order temporarily halted disposal of hazardous waste on the sitethat work has now restartedand mandated that the company hire an approved third-party contractor to make repairs and test treated waste. In a November interview, Henry said the landfill was meeting its deadlines under the RCRA order but was not yet in compliance with its permit under the hazardous-waste law. Spadaro told Inside Climate News in late December that the company is in compliance with our permits. But on January 16, the EPA said that was not the case: Max is not currently in compliance with either RCRA or NPDES permits related to the Yukon site. We take this very seriously. There are significant violations at this facility, Henry said. Our mission is to protect human health and the environment. We do want to ensure that the residents have access to clean drinking water and their land is not being contaminated. Lauren Camarda, a spokesperson at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, said the state agency has worked collaboratively with the EPA on compliance and enforcement actions related to Max Environmental. DEP will continue to support the EPA, which is the lead environmental agency on the consent orders, and will continue to inspect the facility to ensure MAX is in or comes into compliance with applicable laws and addresses the issues identified in the consent orders, she said in a statement. Since those orders were issued in April and September 2024, residents have noticed a change in the landfills operations. They have these great big spotlights that light up the facility. I havent noticed lately that theyve been turned on, said Debbie Franzetta, a longtime Yukon resident. She said she has observed less noise, dust, and light in the last year. This is not the first time the government has cited the company and its predecessor for wrongdoing. From the late 1980s onward, the DEP noted violations at the site on more than 110 occasions, but little seemed to change. Given this history, residents are skeptical of the governments commitment. As the Trump administration lays off hundreds of EPA employees and plans to roll back environmental regulations, what will happen to the agencys orders for the Yukon landfill is a question mark. I think they should close it, Franzetta said of the site. But she worries about what would come next. One of my greatest fears is that if that happens, theyre just going to get out of Dodge, is my comical way of saying things. But its not any laughing matter, believe me. A Continuous Hive of Industry A few minutes from the tangle of off-ramps where the Pennsylvania turnpike meets I-70 about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh, Yukon emerges as a cluster of homes and farms set on sloping Appalachian hills. Big yards are filled with tractors and trampolines. This is really the heart, the fire hall back there, said Stacey Magda, the managing community organizer at the Mountain Watershed Association, a local nonprofit that works to protect the Youghiogheny River watershed and has fought for stricter enforcement of the regulations governing the Max Environmental landfill. Magda sat in the passenger seat as her coworker, Colleen ONeil, steered the MWA truck past the volunteer fire departments nondescript building where they often hold meetings and through the areas winding roads, the tree line bright with the copper foliage of October. Stacey Magda, managing community organizer at the MWA, rides along Sewickley Creek near the Yukon landfill. [Photo: Scott Goldsmith/Inside Climate News] Magda describes herself as someone with roots stretched deep in the Pennsylvania dirt. She grew up in a small town in the central part of the state and came to love the rivers and trails of the Laurel Highlands, a region of southwestern Pennsylvania that includes this county, Westmoreland. The drive through the community took her past heaps of coal spoil, where she said kids liked to ride bikes, and the ancient-looking stone ruins of the old coal company. Mining gave the town its name; one of the mines the landfill was built on top of is called Klondike. Yukon once lay at the center of a continuous hive of industry; a local history from 1906 describes a valley of hamlets in Westmoreland County where manufacturing of almost all kinds is carried out and from almost every hill, coal mines, shafts, tipples may be seen in every direction. Hundreds of coke ovens, burning coal, filled the horizon with smoke. Yukon has a long history of coal mining. [Photo: Scott Goldsmith/Inside Climate News] In the early 20th century, the valley was roiled by a mining strike that lasted for more than a year and involved 10,000 miners protesting for better wages and an eight-hour workday. The strikers, many of them Slovakian immigrants, were defeated. In the Catholic cemetery next to the landfill, you can see this heritage in generations of chiseled Eastern European names. Except for the distant rumble of truck traffic on the highways, the valley was quiet as ONeil and Magda drove, the sky a sharp blue. But that extractive past isnt truly gone; its buried in the layers of the Max Environmental landfill. From coal mining and steel manufacturing to oil and gas drilling, the story of the landfill mirrors Pennsylvanias. Theres a lot of pride in this town about being a town where industry and coal mining is a part of their heritage, Magda said, but having Max Environmental come to town has been a whole different kind of side of industry thats been really brutal on the people that live here. And its been going on for so long, over 40 years now. A home beside the cemetery has two banners hanging out front. One is crammed with red and black text. No more hazardous waste in our backyards, it says, listing the violations found at Max Environmental by the EPA and the DEP in recent inspections. No more excuses! No more chances! Shut down Max and clean it up! The second sign is more concise: Trump 2024: F Your Feelings. Conservative yard signs are displayed on a small farm in Yukon, Pa. [Photo: Scott Goldsmith/Inside Climate News] Some days the landfills outfall at Sewickley Creek, a tributary of the Youghiogheny River where treated wastewater is released, is barely dripping. But on other days, it foams and smells. When the pipe is really full and running, it has a very yellow tinge and has a very strong effluent smell, said Eric Harder, the Youghiogheny Riverkeeper at the MWA. The most noticeable change is the amount of foam that is created where the discharge dumps into Sewickley Creek. A sign opposing Max Environmental is displayed next to a Catholic cemetery by the landfill. [Photo: Scott Goldsmith/Inside Climate News] To Harder, his observations at the outfall and the monthly testing done by the MWA show that Max Environmental is still not doing enough to meet the standards outlined in its permits. EPAs testing also shows violations for four of Max Environmentals 10 total outfalls at Yukon between 2021 and 2024. As of January 2025, Outfall 001, the one at Sewickley Creek, was listed as non-compliant or in violation for more than 15 kinds of water pollution, including oil and grease, zinc, cyanide, and cadmium. If you have a polluter like Max who is handling some of the most dangerous solid waste you can create in the eastern part of the United States, they should really be on top of their wastewater treatment system, Harder said. The danger to residents and the environment isnt just from one exceedance, he added, but from the cocktail of all those exceedances mixed into one outfall. Harder said he has seen toy shovels and pails on the shoreline downstream of the pipe. Personally, I wouldnt let my kids play in the water there. [Image: Paul Horn/Inside Climate News] John Stolz, a professor of environmental microbiology at Duquesne University, echoed Harders concerns. Stolz has accompanied Harder to Sewickley Creek to sample the water. I was shocked at what the discharge was, he said. Conductivity is used as an indicator of water quality, measuring how electricity moves through liquids, and changes can indicate increases in pollution. Stolzs reading of 20,000 microsiemens was far beyond the EPAs typical range for rivers in the U.S. of 50 to 1,500. Its double the number the EPA gives for typical industrial water. After an October 2023 inspection, Spadaro emailed Sharon Svitek, program manager at DEPs Bureau of Waste Management, to ask if the visit was prompted by a request from the Mountain Watershed Association. Can you shed some light on why DEP sent a small army of people to conduct waste sampling at our Yukon facility today? he asked in an email later released through a public records request. Spadaro called the inspection unnecessarily disruptive to our operations and said the company should have been given a heads up. Spadaro also asked why DEP had given the association a copy of the EPAs July 2023 report about an earlier inspection of the landfill. We dont know why DEP would do that especially since it is an EPA document, he wrote. A view of Sewickley Creek in Yukon, Pa. [Photo: Scott Goldsmith/Inside Climate News] DEPs Svitek explained that the Mountain Watershed Association had obtained the document through an informal file review and the department was required to comply because it is a public record. The MWA later published the document on its website. Svitek clarified that the inspection was requested by DEPs central office and had been used as a training opportunity for new employees. When news of the EPAs inspection and consent orders reached the Mountain Watershed Association and Yukon residents, there were mixed feelings. Everyone was validated. It was this moment of, My gosh, every single persons instinct was right, Magda said. And that was horrifying. The Concerned Residents of the Yough The MWA is only the most recent local group to call for change at the landfill. Prior to us, residents in Yukon have been working on the issue of Max Environmental for many years, and theyve been saying the same thing over and over and over again, Magda said. In the 1980s, residents worried about the health impacts of the landfill, then known as Mill Service and under different ownership, formed a grassroots citizens group called CRY, for Concerned Residents of the Yough. Diana Steck was one of the founding members. When she moved to Yukon in 1978, she didn’t know about the landfills existence, though she noticed an orange glow in the sky near her house on some nights, and sometimes the air outside smelled terrible. Steck said she began to get frequet respiratory infections, coughs, and hives. She developed joint pain and muscle weakness. Her infant son was stricken with nosebleeds, ear infections, and asthma. Her daughter had seizures. Her husband came down with a chronic rash. Stecks childhood asthma returned. She would later be diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disease. Many residents in Yukon have signs in their yards protesting the landfill and Max Environmental. [Photo: Scott Goldsmith/Inside Climate News] It was only after reading a newspaper article about the landfill that she wondered if the health problems she and her family were experiencing could be connected to pollution. Steck was a nurse, and she set out to investigate the possible impacts of chemical exposure from the site. What she read convinced her that it was the cause of her familys problems since coming to Yukon. Later, going door to door in her neighborhood with a petition about the landfill, Steck discovered she wasn’t alone. One street, almost every home, somebody had cancer. There were so many kids that were sick with asthma, chronic rashes, the nosebleeds, frequent infections, a lot of neurological problems, Parkinsons, seizures, things like that, she said. I just couldnt believe it. Steck and the members of CRY held demonstrations and press conferences, requested state records, traveled to the state capital, fundraised, and wrote letters to regulators and politicians. They sought help from environmental and public health experts outside Pennsylvania, including Lois Gibbs, the organizer who fought to raise awareness about pollution at her home in Love Canal, where her childrens elementary school had been built on top of a toxic landfill. None of it seemed to make a difference. It was so frustrating, Steck said. I thought in my heart that if somebody elected to public office heard a mother telling them that this facility was making her kids sick, that they would shut it down, clean it up, and that would be the end of it. I was raised to think that the governments there to protect you. Well, so much for that. Steck said she was told by an EPA official in the 1980s that Yukon had been deemed as expendable. She told me, The waste has to go somewhere. Those were really hard words to hear, she said. In 1990, members of CRY filed a lawsuit against the then-owner of the landfill alleging that residents have suffered severe and substantial impairments to their health, property damage, damage to their livestock and pets. According to CRYs litigation records, housed at the University of Pittsburgh, the lawsuit was abandoned by the group in 1994 for financial reasons. Eventually, Steck said, her declining health forced her to move about 10 miles away from Yukon and resign from the group she had helped to found, but she continues to advocate for change at the landfill. I was a 30-year-old mom when I was the most active, and I fought so hard and almost died. I never, ever thought that, here I am, at age 70, Id still be in this fight. She paused. I just want to see justice done. In 2022, at a hearing related to the companys permit application to expand the landfill site, the testimony of resident Misty Springer transported Steck to when she was also a young mother trying to persuade the state government to acknowledge her familys struggles. Springer said she had suffered six miscarriages after being exposed to runoff from the landfill. She had a question for the DEP: How many people on your block have cancer? How many people in your town? Because I bet your town is bigger than mine, and I bet you my town has more people with cancer than yours. The Yukon landfill sits behind a locked gate. [Photo: Scott Goldsmith/Inside Climate News] Driving on Millbell Road, a narrow street that runs along the northern boundary of the landfill, Magda ticked off the cancers and illnesses of each homes inhabitants. At least one of the houses sat empty. The MWAs involvement has brought some residents a renewed sense of optimism. I kind of gave up on the whole deal, until these kids from the Watershed got involved, said Craig Zafaras, who has lived in Yukon for decades. I commend them for their effort. There is an easy affection between Magda, who is in her 30s, and the older residents shes come to know through her work. She looks out for them, jokes with them, walks them to their cars. But rallying the town to speak out against Max Environmental has been difficult. Distrust in any information about the landfill is high. Residents are unconvinced of the governments promises, and wary of hope. For so many of them, it has been a very long road. When Magda knocks on doors to tell residents about the next meeting or hearing, just as the women of CRY used to do, she has been laughed at by people who ask her, What are you going to do about it? Debbie Franzetta lives near the Max Environmental landfill in Yukon, Pa. [Photo: Scott Goldsmith/Inside Climate News] People have gotten older, and a lot of the community has died, and people just get discouraged, said Debbie Franzetta, the longtime Yukon resident. Its kind of like banging your head against the wall. You knock on doors to try to get people to come to meetings. You spend the time to go and write letters, and nothing really comes of it. Despite the obstacles in her path, Magda remains resolute: I can tell you, were never going to give up. ‘Our Battle Against the Dump’ Residents wonder what will happen to the site and its six decades worth of waste. In 1985, the state shut down disposal at the Yukon site because of leaks and failure to abide by new rules governing waste, but the next year, Pennsylvanias environmental protection agency approved a permit for expansion. Opened in 1988 and covering 16.5 acres, the Yukon sites Landfill 6 is the last active impoundment and is nearing capacity. In 2024, the company estimated the impoundment would be filled by 2026. Max Environmental had planned a new expansion that would add space for more than 1 million tons of waste, but in 2023 it withdrew the permit application following resistance from residents and environmental groups, saying it would resubmit the application at a later date. Spadaro said the company withdrew because it did not have enough time to respond to comments from state regulators. DEP has a very restrictive review timeline for new commercial hazardous waste treatment and disposal permits, he said. Spadaro said Max Environmental has not scheduled any other plans for expansion at this time. We are focused on addressing all items in EPAs consent orders, he said. EPA has no plans of going anywhere, said Henry, the official at the EPA. Were going to be focused on this facility for quite some time. Photographs taken by government inspectors in October 2023 reveal what the Yukon landfill looks like behind the fenceline. [Photo: Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection] She gave that interview in the waning months of the Biden administration, and it’s unclear how the EPA will approach regulating Max Environmental and sites like it under the new Trump administration. EPA funding and staff have been early targets of its efforts to dismantle federal agencies, and 388 employees were cut in mid-February amid a push for large-scale layoffs and resignations. All of that could make it more difficult for the EPA to keep its focus on Max Environmental. In a 1998 scholarly article, Dan Bolef, an academic and activist who was involved with CRY, described the torments of Melbry and Tony Bolk, whose farm lay across the road from the landfill. The Bolks saw their health deteriorate, their herd of cows strangely sicken and die, their rural world of peace and security shattered by the noxious effects of the dump, he wrote. For Bolef, who died in 2011, Yukons experience had become a horror story, an endless montage of people who tried to fight back but got sick, moved away or gave up, defeated by the intractable landfill. What, then, is one to do? How are we to react when our community suffers? he asked. There is nothing left for us to do but continue the struggle. A view from the kitchen of a home near the Max Environmental landfill in Yukon, Pa. [Photo: Scott Goldsmith/Inside Climate News] By 1998, the site had been open for more than 30 years. Bolef echoed a sentiment that would sound familiar to Yukons residents today, 27 years later. Despite the impression locals had been given that the landfill would soon run out of space, he wrote, it increased its operations, even as the number of residents dwindled around it. In our battle against the dump, he wrote, the dump usually wins. This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.
Category:
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