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A court ruled on Thursday against implementing new rules that would have required local elections officials to redesign mail-in ballot envelopes right before the election. One reason? There’s not enough time to make the design changes that were being called for. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said in an opinion Thursday the Trump administration’s proposed rules for how the U.S. Postal Service handles mail-in ballots could “prevent millions of Americans from obtaining and returning their ballots.” The court said “it would be impossible for some states to reprint compliant envelopes” at this point, not to mention “there is no record evidence of past fraud or a likelihood of impending fraud.” Though President Donald Trump frequently votes by mail himself, he’s long attacked it, and he signed an executive order earlier this year in an attempt to restrict it. Under the rules his administration tried to implement, many local election officials would have to redesign at least one of the envelopes they use, but mail-in ballots for the midterm elections have already started to go out, and many were printed months ago. Under the administration’s proposed rules, both outbound and return federal ballot envelopes would have had to meet specific design requirements. The rules would require that they are automation compatible, and feature both the Election Mail logo and a unique postal Intelligent Mail barcode (IMb). The IMb is a barcode that can be found under the destination address on a piece of mail, and it encodes information like mail class and destination routing code. Not all mail has it, and ballot envelopes haven’t been required to include it before, though some jurisdictions do. [Image: USPS] While many mail-in ballot envelopes are already designed to be automation compliant and feature the Official Election Mail logo and an IMb, few have that barcode on return envelopes, says Whitney Quesenbery, executive director at the Center for Civic Design, and it’s too late to implement changes. Elections are run by more than 10,000 offices nationwide, and they run on timelines of years and months, not weeks. “Most envelopes were designed months ago,” Quesenbery tells Fast Company. “Some may have even been printed earlier in the year. Elections offices often order enough envelopes for an entire election cycle at once.” Since elections are handled locally, states also have their own rules written into statute for how their ballot envelopes are to be designed. In some cases, redesigning them to be automation compliant, for example, would require a special session of the state legislature, says Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer at the National Association of Election Officials. Most at risk would be small and rural jurisdictions, some of which don’t even have a full-time employee and have volunteers literally writing mail-in ballot envelopes by hand. “They are going to struggle to do any kind of barcode,” Patrick says. To implement changes of that scale and to test them in time for elections that fall on even-numbered years, they should start in odd-numbered years, she says. In addition to the mail-in ballot envelope design requirements, the new rules called for a yet-to-be-released online portal for local and federal officials to share voter lists. Last week, a whistleblower said work on the portal has been rushed without enough time to test it. If the Trump administration’s rules had been upheld, they would have threatened “chaos on multiple levels,” says Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He says he was worried over the possibility of delayed or undelivered ballots, missed deadlines, or issues with the portal and incomplete voter lists that don’t include voters who register later in the fall if they passed. With the court’s decision, local elections officials being asked to pull off an envelope redesign in a matter of weeks that typically would take months or longer can rest easy.
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Many people sleep with a night-light their whole livesthough as they grow older, small plug-in light fixtures may be replaced by the glow of laptops or phone screens. While sleeping in a low level of light may be commonplace, doing so comes with its own health hazards, including altering the shape of the human heart.A new study, published this week in the European Heart Journal, links exposure to light while sleeping to cardiac remodeling, or changes to the shape and function of the heart. Specifically, light exposure during sleep led to thickening of the wall of the left ventricle, one of the organs four chambers, reducing the space inside the heart. That weakens its ability to flex during a heartbeat, setting the stage for cardiac dysfunction. Light pollution has emerged as a new risk factor for cardiovascular disease, Dr. Lu Qi, a professor at Tulane University and an author of the study, said in a press release. Our findings, together with evidence from other studies, suggest that reduction of nighttime light exposure should be considered as one of the potential strategies for preventing heart disease by clinicians and policymakers. How much light is too much light? To determine how light exposure during sleep impacts cardiovascular health, the studys researchers analyzed the sleep habits of 11,071 participants. Subjects wore a light sensor on their wrists while sleeping for seven days. Three years later, their hearts were scanned via cardiac MRIs to assess their structure and function. Those who were exposed to more than 3 lux overnight saw significantly more cardiac remodeling compared with those who slept in near complete darkness. Lux, the International System unit for light exposure, measures how much light falls on a given surface area.Three lux, the studys benchmark for a high level of light exposure, may not seem like much light at all. Its equivalent to the brightness of deep twilight, or to the amount of light that bleeds under a door from a bright adjacent room. A phone screen, meanwhile, can top out around 80 lux, according to experts. With 58% of U.S. adults saying they use their phone within an hour of bedtime or while in bed as they fall asleep, thats more than half of Americans who may be unknowingly setting themselves up for heart problems in the future. How to sleep more safely To avoid light exposure during sleep, experts recommend using blackout curtains or sleep masks and covering small standby lights on electronics. Limiting screen time immediately before bed (and especially while falling asleep) is important, too. For the best quality sleep, ambient light should be limited to a maximum of just 1 lux, which is close to total darkness. In an article accompanying the study, cardiologist Thomas Münzel and his colleagues spoke to how its results might inform the future of medicine, including the questions doctors ask their patients during health screenings. It is time for clinicians, particularly those managing patients with heart failure or atrial fibrillation, to start asking about the sleep environment: how dark the bedroom is, whether the patient works night shifts, and how much screen use occurs after sunset, Münzel wrote. Darkness deserves recognition as a vital sign, as essential to cardiovascular health as blood pressure control and clean air.
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E-Commerce
I dont know if youve noticedhonestly, I hope you havent!but scams are starting to get scarily sophisticated. And that means theyre tougher and tougher to spot, even for the more savvy land mammals among us. Thats in large part thanks to AI and all the ways its making it easier than ever to imitate people and create convincing calls that sound like someone officialor even someone specific you know. The best way to stay safe, as always, is to stay a step ahead of the scammersand make sure youre always both aware and prepared. The tool Ive got for you today is a powerful new way to do exactly that. This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures! 5 seconds to simple safety So, first things first: Smartphones have gotten increasingly smart about scanning incoming calls for you and alerting you to anything that seems shady. This is especially true on Android and even more so with Pixel devices, specifically. But (a) even those systems arent 100% effective or anywhere close to foolproofand (b) the breadth and quality of protection available to you varies widely depending on what type of phone you have. Thats where a new free site called Scan Number Check comes into play. Regardless of what level of on-phone protection youre already packin, it adds an invaluable extra layer of assurance anytime you get a call from a number you dont know. It takes literally five seconds to use, too. Just pull up the site in any browser, on any device youre using, and type or paste over the number of the unknown call youre seeing. Scan Number Check is a simple site with a single box to fill in. In an instant, the site will spit back a simple and easy-to-read report telling you if the number is likely to be related to a scam or not. In a matter of seconds, Scan Number Check will tell you if a number is likely to be shady. The service relies on a robust database of scam attempts maintained by Malwarebytesa company that sells security software for most every platform. Its a big enough organization that it has a sprawling series of reports and records indicating when numbers are associated with questionable, scammy activity, so it can easily check whatever number you enter against its data (for almost any country!) and tell you if its known to be questionable in any way. Its still not 100% foolproof, of courseno form of security protection could possibly be, especially with the pace at which scams are constantly evolvingbut its a powerful extra form of protection to have in your pocket. And when it comes to keeping yourself safe, its all about those layers and doing everything you can to stay one step ahead. Scan Number Check is 100% web-based, with no apps or installations required. Its also 100% free to use. Youll see some Malwarebytes promos sprinkled throughout the site, as youd expect, but there are no limits involved, and you never have to sign up for any additional services. Malwarebytes says it doesnt store any searches on the site and logs data only if you actively choose to report a number. Treat yourself to all sorts of brain-boosting goodies like this with the free Cool Tools newsletterstarting with an instant introduction to an incredible audio app thatll tune up your days in truly delightful ways.
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E-Commerce
Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday announced a civil lawsuit against TikTok on August 11, 2026, filed in Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas and accusing the social media platform of violating state consumer protection laws in ways that harm youth. There are two central charges. One is deceit: for example, making false statements about how much of TikToks content contains mature themes, and about the ability of its guardrails to protect youth from that content. The second alleges that TikTok knowingly created platform features intended to cause excessive, compulsive, and addictive use, despite knowing that young people are more susceptible toand acutely harmed bythose features. Those features include infinite scrolling, autoplay, and push notifications designed to trigger the release of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that drives the brains reward system. The company rejects the charges. In a statement to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a spokesperson for TikTok said, This lawsuit relies on misleading and inaccurate claims and deliberately ignores the concrete safety measures TikTok has voluntarily implemented to support the well-being of our community. Im a public policy professor, not a lawyer, so I wont predict wholl win in court. But after nearly 40 years studying how addictive products are marketed, I agree that goods and services that lead to compulsive behaviorswhether scrolling or smokingdeserve special scrutiny. However, they do not fall neatly into binaries such as being addictive or not, or dangerous for youth but safe for adults. Lawsuits that find defendants liable or not liable risk imposing black-and-white distinctions on trade-offs that require nuanced thinking. Binary thinking doesnt work There is a long history of binary thinking about addictive goods. Drugs such as heroin were seen as dangerous and bad, so they were banned. Most everything else was good, or at least neutral. The government might tax and regulate, but traditionally it does not focus on protecting consumers from the consequences of overindulgence. The health department may regulate what goes into a doughnut, but not how many doughnuts go into you. Reality is closer to a continuum. Alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine are psychoactive chemicals that can cause varying degrees of problems, but they were never lumped together with heroin. And even when cannabis was prohibited, neither sentencing guidelines nor the public equated its dangers with crack. The public was sophisticated enough to know that some drugs cause more harm. Gambling also challenges black-and-white thinking. It triggers neural pathways similar to those activated by drug addiction, and the American Psychiatric Associations diagnostic manual recognizes that it can produce compulsive, self-destructive behavior even without a drug involved. Yet no compulsion-inducing productnot even the powerful synthetic opioid fentanylalways induces addictive or self-destructive behavior. After all, many patients have used fentanyl during surgery. Countries regulate gambling with that variation in mind. Until recent decades, the U.S. banned commercial sports betting. Japan limits casino visits to a set number per week or month. Norway permits gambling only via state monopolies aimed at preventing gambling problems and at funneling profits to nonprofits. Im not arguing that Japans or Norways gambling policies are right, or that the U.S. should follow Australia, Indonesia, and Malaysia in blocking youth social media accounts. Im only suggesting such actions merit real debate, not automatic dismissal. Binary distinctions between bad and good dont work because products and their features vary widely in how likely they are to cause regrettable, repetitive engagement. Free societies rightly presume that adults can manage their own affairs without government interferencebut children are a different matter, and even adult freedom has exceptions. Is TikTok engineered to addict? Pennsylvanias lawsuit charges that TikTok is engineered to trap users and thereby maximize the time they spend generating revenue for the company. That is reminiscent of cigarette manufacturers intentionally modifying chemical formulations, such as adding ammonia compounds, to enhance the speed and efficiency of nicotine absorption to maintain user addiction. On the other hand, keeping users continuously engagedthrough casino floor design, gym membership contracts, or automated billing for subscriptionsis a mainstream strategy across industries. Plenty of legal, respected organizations use it to maximize profit. Likewise, reputable studies also find some degree of dopamine response to video games, milkshakes, and even music. The intensity of that response is far lower than what drugs such as cocaine or heroin produce, but it illustrates that one should not leap from the mere existence of a dopamine response to a reflexive ban. Ideally, legislatures would strike a balance between freedom and protecting the minority whod misuse it. But lately, state and national legislatures have been stalled by partisan division, swayed by commercial interests, and reluctant to pass new restrictions. When courts do the regulating Given this legislative lethargy, state attorneys general sometimes step in to protect the public from companies that exploit compulsion-inducing products. Pittsburgh Public Schools made a similar case years before Sundays lawsuit: The district sued TikTok and other social media platforms in federal court, arguing the companies induced students to compulsively use their services and left the district to absorb the resulting mental health costs. That case, consolidated with similar suits from districts nationwide, ended when TikTok settled rather than go to trial this springa resolution that came just months before Pennsylvania filed its own case making a similar addictive-by-design argument. Important elements of modern tobacco control came not from Congress but from the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement. This agreement resolved lawsuits brought by state attorneys general against major cigarette manufacturers. It also eliminated cigarette billboard ads, cartoon mascots like Joe Camel, most free samples, and tobacco-brand sponsorships, and it banned cigarette marketing aimed at youth. Congress didnt give the FDA broad authority over tobacco until a decade later, in 2009. The opioid crisis provides a more recent example. Settlements of lawsuits against opioid manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacy chains imposed not only billion-dollar fines but also rules governing future conduct. Johnson & Johnson agreed to stop selling and promoting opioids for 10 years. Major drug distributors agreed to stronger systems for identifying suspicious wholesale opioid orders and sharing distribution data, while CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart agreed to systems for flagging suspicious opioid prescriptions. Litigation accomplished some of the work ordinarily associated with regulation. Regulation by litigation has drawbacks. Courts and attorneys general are no substitute for legislatures and expert regulatory agencies. But when conventional regulation fails to keep pace with powerful new products capable of inducing self-destructive, compulsive consumption, courts offer another route. The path Attorney General Sunday has now opened may prove long and contentious, but the TikTok suit could come to be seen as the beginning of an important new layer of public protection against compulsion-inducing product design. Jonathan Caulkins is a professor of public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
The unbridled rise of AI spells mammoth change for businesses, but it is not a crisis. Technology doesnt create crisespeople do, especially when we panic. The artificial intelligence explosion has left many CEOs worried. Worried over falling behind, over their token usage, over job displacement, over whether their AI investments are paying off. This response is understandable, but it is precisely in these moments, when we are faced with the unknown, that effective leaders must embrace change as an opportunity to differentiate and unlock new opportunities for their organization. This should be the goal in every boardroom, and it requires the right mindset. This mindset is something Ive honed over the past 25 years, leading five businesses as CEO through the defining economical and technological shifts of our time, from the dot-com bubble to COVID-19. Here are three intellectual checkpoints that I use to gain perspective when faced with AI-related leadership decisions, and that help me respond with clarity and conviction. 1. What are my company’s differentiators? What makes my company indispensable? This simple but profound question is the starting point of any level-headed AI strategy. If your differentiators can be automated off the shelf, it might be time to rethink your business models. If they still hold, focus on future-proofing what makes your business special by ensuring your people and processes are AI-enabled (at least) or AI-first (the ideal). 2. How do I forge my own path? Identify whether your response to AI is strategic or driven by fear. And be brutally honest with yourself. Knee-jerk reactions to change might alleviate short-term pain in times of crisis, but they can create lasting wounds that are more difficult to repair down the line. Consider the companies that rushed to replace large portions of their workforce with AI tools in recent years. Theyre realizing that technology cannot replicate the human judgment that differentiated their employees, and are desperately trying to plug a massive talent gap of their own creation. Conversely, businesses that once considered replacing their legacy software with new systems coded entirely by, or run by, AI agents have, in many cases, hit pause on their plans. Upon analysis, software coded by AI agents has been shown to run thousands of times slower and require many times more cloud infrastructure cost than software designed by a human expert. Systems run by pure AI agents can lack governance, thus leading to improperly tested agents running amok, as well as suffering from hallucination, thus making queries inaccurate and processes nondeterministic. In short, untethered large language models (LLMs) alone cannot be trusted to work autonomously. Not yet, at least. 3. How do I harness AI? Technology enables change. Leadership and people make it happen. AI algorithms and LLMs are brilliant inventions on par with the wheel. But, just like a car, AI cannot move a company closer to its goals without the right chassis, software to focus LLMs to a particular task; and the right driver, CEOs who empower employees to harness the technology and deliver measurable value. To move a company forward, LLMs need a harness, giving them purpose and providing guardrails to focus on the business task at hand. A harness ensures governance, a focus on truth, with a removal of hallucinations, and a focus on determinism of outcomecritical for regulated industries. Thats also why Im a champion of the Chief AI Officer (CAIO) role. The CAIO lights the way by shaping the technology road map, fostering an AI-first culture, and guiding teams on their own transformation journey. Empowerment is as important as leadership. Thats why we set up specialist squads across our business units to drive our key AI initiatives forward. In turn, championing AI wins and encouraging teams to share learnings between them creates a virtuous circle of success and innovation. Dont let real hype create unrealistic expectations As leaders, we value quick decisive action, but blindly following the masses is no guarantee of success. The organizations that thrive in the age of AI wont be those that consume the most tokens or deploy the most agentic agents. They will be those whose leaders combine technological ambition with clear judgment and who empower their employees without relinquishing accountability for the course they chart. The path ahead will look different for every organization, but the mindset behind our decision-making as CEOs must be rooted in the same basic principles: a grounded view on where our business stands today, a realistic vision of where we want to go tomorrow, and a clear vision for how people and technology can work together to help us get there.
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E-Commerce
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