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Test-driving Google’s Gemini-Exp-1206 model: Competitive data analysis and sophisticated visualizations in under a minuteMorgan State hopes for end to recent skid with visit to MinnesotaElon Musk said the H1-B visa program is “broken” and suggested a potential fix just shortly after vowing to “go to war on this issue” and telling detractors to “F— yourself.” Amid a raging debate among the MAGA base over the immigration program for highly skilled foreign workers, Musk has now acknowledged some of the criticisms. ‘I’ve been very clear that the program is broken’ Responding to a thread claiming H1-B visas were being used to hire low-wage programmers and developers, Musk wrote, “Easily fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H1B, making it materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically. I’ve been very clear that the program is broken and needs major reform.” He added, “I’m confident that the changes made in the @realDonaldTrump administration will make America much stronger. A rising tide lifts all boats.” Musk, a naturalised citizen born in South Africa, came into the country on an H-1B visa. He has frequently stressed that he thinks visas are very important due to a lack of American citizens capable of doing the work tech companies require. Musk blasted critics of H1-B visas on X just recently, saying, “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B." He added, “Take a big step back and F— YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.” He also said that H1-B visas are required for companies to recruit “the top ~0.1% of engineering talent.” Many began opposing the December 22 announcement of venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan to serve as the incoming Trump administration’s senior policy adviser for artificial intelligence (AI), including Laura Loomer . Loomer particularly expressed her anger over the growing influence of the “tech bros” in Trump’s orbit who have comparatively lax views on immigration. Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy eventually stepped in to defend H1-B visas, which allow up to some 65,000 guest workers into the United States. Supporters of the visa believe the program is important to attract op-tier talent for the development of technologies such as AI in the US. However, many opposed the program, claiming that one reason for their contempt was that companies were exploiting the system for cheaper labour. Donald Trump , despite previously saying the H-1B program was “very bad for workers,” appeared to support it in a recent interview with New York Post. “I have many H-1B visas on my properties,” Trump has now said. “I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”
As I wrote a couple of days ago, one of the big and fun trends in the solar industry globally is the expansion of floating solar PV power plants. There’s just something fun about floating anything, and in this case particularly floating solar arrays. Floating solar power systems are making their way to more and more places, and they are growing larger in the places they have already had a presence. The latest example: India has just turned on its largest floating solar power plant to date. The 126-megawatt Omkareshwar Floating Solar Project was developed by Indian energy giant Tata Power Renewable Energy. It is in Madhya Pradesh in central India. The project uses 213,460 bifacial glass-to-glass solar modules. It also includes the largest Inverter Floating Platform (IFP), which spans 260 acres of water body area. It is expected to produce 204,580 MWh of electricity a year. One of the great benefits of floating solar power plants is they also prevent evaporation — along with protecting air quality, preventing CO2 emissions, and producing electricity. “To ensure stability and operational efficiency, the installation incorporates cutting-edge engineering solutions such as robust mooring systems, wave breakers, ballast anchors, and adaptive cableways,” Tata Power Renewable Energy writes . “Uniquely positioned between the Indirasagar and Omkareshwar hydroelectric reservoirs, this innovative project has navigated complex environmental and logistical challenges — such as fluctuating water levels, high winds, and limited site access — reaching successful completion within just 26 months.” “The commissioning of the Omkareshwar Floating Solar Project marks a significant milestone for NHDC Limited and our commitment to sustainable energy solutions,” Mr. Rajeev Jain, Managing Director of NHDC Limited, stated. “By partnering with Tata Power Renewable Energy Limited on this project, we have demonstrated that floating solar technology can provide clean energy while preserving vital water resources. We are excited about the potential this project holds for future renewable energy developments in India.” CleanTechnica's Comment Policy LinkedIn WhatsApp Facebook Bluesky Email RedditAP News Summary at 5:02 p.m. ESTSouth Korea's Yoon Names New Defence Minister After Botched Martial Law
By Lori Powers Henderson I’ve been living in the Near Southside since I was 2. We lived in a house that my great-great uncle Andy (W.A. Powers) owned in Fairmount, and we were right next door to him. We ended up moving to Euless when I was in high school, but I grew up on the Southside of Fort Worth. I moved away to college, graduated and lived in Dallas, because you always want to get out of your town and do bigger and better things. And it’s funny that I ended up here; I would never go back to Dallas. It’s crazy chaotic. Fort Worth is such a great town to be in. You have everything that you need. It kind of feels like a small town but also a big city. It’s so walkable and it’s hard for us to leave this neighborhood. If we’re going to dinner with the family, we can all get in the car and drive someplace and try to find a parking place. But why do that when we can walk out the door and have a choice of every kind of food? Get essential daily news for the Fort Worth area. Sign up for insightful, in-depth stories — completely free. Two Sundays a month, we have gigantic markets. The Fort Worth Community Market has live music and 50 vendors selling fresh vegetables, artisan goods like candles and soaps, and flowers and plants. And then we have the Rock ’n’ Roll Rummage Sale with local art, jewelry and vintage clothing. It has 130 vendors and live music throughout the day. A Fort Worth couple, Blake and Tiffany Parish, with Honeysuckle Rose Events , put these events together. They bring thousands of people to the neighborhood. It’s been so amazing. People come to the event and end up walking our area and then walk over to the next block and go to a different restaurant that’s not part of SOMA , our development. They’ll go over to HopFusion and have a beer and discover what a great part of Fort Worth this is. There are so many fun businesses popping up and new residential. I can’t imagine what it’ll look like in 10 years. My buildings at SOMA are restaurant and retail. We now have Morgan Mercantile , Winton and Waits , Southside Cellar , Tarantula Tiki Lounge , Panther City Tattoo , South Barbershop and Tinies Mexican as tenants, plus all of our food truck vendors. When we first moved here, there weren’t that many people or retail restaurant-type businesses. Just a few small apartment buildings and industrial warehouses. None of these big apartment complexes was here. The growth is amazing. It’s been fun watching the changes. My kids have never known any different. Walking out their back door, there’s 100 small businesses out there with their pop-ups, and they love it. They can walk out and get churros on a Thursday evening from Leo’s Churro Bar . And just the fact that we’ve been able to do Volt Cowtown , our electric surf shop, has been great. About three years ago, my kids started coaching people on how to ride an electric surfboard called Lift . It evolved, and we decided to cut a tiny little piece out of our big Daggett Avenue warehouse and make Volt our family business. We sell personal electric vehicles plus all kinds of fun clothing and accessories. The triplets created their own candle line for Volt, collaborating with a Near Southside neighbor and candle maker, Apothenne . The kids mixed the scents and even created the label design on their school computers. The kids work in the shop. They run the cash register. They handle inventory. They help me with every part of it — and they’re great at it. They’re never going to have any fear about starting up a business, because they’ve been doing it their whole life. It’d be interesting if we were to move what the kids would like better. Would they like having a backyard to run around in or would they rather have this urban backyard? The micro park has been their play space. They come out here and play soccer, and they ride their Onewheels and electric skateboards. It’s very easy from here to get onto the Trinity Trails. My husband, Tucker, and the kids will just go through downtown, hop on the trail, ride all around and then come back. They do that most weekends when the weather is nice. And we get on the TEXRail train at T&P Station across the street and go to the airport for vacations. We just walk out the back door with our rollaboards. We’ve gone to concerts, games at American Airlines Center and the State Fair on the TRE train. When Tucker and I were living in Dallas, we had heard about all this stuff happening with this group called Near Southside Inc. We never imagined it would become what it is today. I’m so glad we took the chance, sold our house and started our projects here on South Main. My dad had been here since he was 17. And he watched it evolve to this bustling little area from way way back to where all the windows were boarded up. We had bars on the windows of all our South Main properties when we took them over. He couldn’t imagine it would be what it is today, because he’d been there so long watching it kind of deteriorate. I just started talking to him and asking why don’t we start developing it. I said, “Let me do it. Sell me some of the properties, and I’ll just start doing it.” And that’s what we did. We have partners in the buildings. We have a group called SOMA District Development, which is mostly family members. My parents, Tucker’s parents, us and then a couple of friends got together to buy the buildings from my dad and uncle and get the money together to get them ready to lease. Tucker and I are the managing partners, so I’m here for the day-to-day operations. Tucker and I redid the warehouse — our home — in 2014. We designated it historic. We’re not sure when it was built. We’re thinking sometime in the early 1900s. It was used for storage, and we gutted it. We have four bedrooms, three baths, a huge living area, 6,200 square feet in total. It’s really way, way too big for us as a family. So big that when the weather is bad, the kids skateboard through the house. My triplets have grown up in our house since they were probably 11⁄2, almost 2, so this is the only home they’ve known. Fort Worth is so cool these days I’d imagine they’ll come back after college and pick up right where they left off in the family business. There is really something for everybody here. This side of downtown is more artsy, creative. You can’t walk too far without running into an artist or entrepreneur. North of downtown is just as interesting with the Stockyards, where you can hardly go without seeing somebody wearing boots or a cowboy hat. To me, Fort Worth is just a really fun, diverse town. Lori Powers Henderson, her husband, Tucker, and their 12-year-old triplets live in a warehouse in South Main Village that they bought from her father and converted into a home. Her great-great uncle W.A. Powers was a longtime business owner and property owner on South Main. Henderson has purchased those properties from her family and gradually redeveloped them with restaurant and retail tenants and urban amenities like permanently stationed food trucks and the South Main District Micro Park . Total population : 1,866 F emale : 59% | Male : 41% Age 0-9 : 10% 10-19 : 3% 20-29 : 34% 30-39 : 23% 40-49 : 7% 50-59 : 12% 60-69 : 3% 70-79 : 5% 80 and older : 2% Education No degree : 15% High school : 18% Some college : 23% Bachelor’s degree : 32% Post-graduate : 12% Race White : 49% | Hispanic: 16% | Asian : 1% | Black : 30% | Two or more : 4% Click on the link to view the schools’ Texas Education Agency ratings: Van Zandt Guinn Elementary School Young Women’s Leadership Academy Daggett Middle School Paschal High School Texans Can Academy (*) Census tract BG 2, Tract 1236 Related Fort Worth Report is certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative for adhering to standards for ethical journalism . Republish This Story Republishing is free for noncommercial entities. Commercial entities are prohibited without a licensing agreement. Contact us for details. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License . 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If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @FortWorthReport on Facebook and @FortWorthReport on Twitter. by The FWR Staff, Fort Worth Report December 28, 2024
Students who left high school without a diploma because they didn’t pass their MCAS exams will get a second chance under new state guidance issued this week. The retroactive guidance, released Dec. 11 by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, says former students “must be afforded a process” to earn their “competency determination” based on their successful completion of required classwork, not their MCAS scores. “District processes must allow former students who satisfactorily completed the relevant coursework to earn a CD,” the guidance stated. The guidance only applies to students who met all local graduation requirements but did not earn their competency determination because of the three 10th-grade MCAS tests previously required for a diploma. State education officials have said about 700 students a year don’t graduate solely because of MCAS. In November, voters passed Question 2 , which eliminated the requirement that public school students must achieve certain scores on their 10th-grade English language arts, math and science MCAS tests to achieve a diploma. MCAS tests will still be administered as usual and the state will continue to collect the same data. In the two months since the election, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has been tasked with issuing guidance for school districts moving forward. Now that voters have had their say, advocates and opponents of Question 2 want the state to create a new statewide graduation requirement so that all public school students are held to core standards no matter where they’re enrolled. Until then, districts must develop their own competency determinations. That process, DESE says, should be aligned with the new statute language created by Question 2; be approved by the governing board of the district, shared with all students, families/guardians, and district stakeholders' and be publicly available in multiple languages. Districts should certify that students have “satisfactorily completed coursework aligned with state academic standards and curriculum frameworks in English Language Arts, Mathematics, and at least one Science discipline (Biology, Introductory Physics, Chemistry, or Technology/Engineering),” the agency said. In regards to former students, that means school districts will also have to develop their own processes for determining that students previously met the “competency determination” outside of their MCAS scores. MORE ON MCASNone