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Inside an airplane hangar in Roswell, New Mexico, a massive blimp-like airship214 feet longis getting ready to float into the stratosphere. Built by a startup called Sceye (pronounced sky), the helium-filled aircraft is designed to gather information that satellites miss. In its next flight, in July, it will hover over New Mexico sending back real-time data about pollution from the states hundreds of oil and gas producers. It can report not only that theres a plume of methane pollution in the air, but that a particular gas tank from a particular company is leaking a specific amount of the potent greenhouse gas each hour. We can see the specific emitter and the rate of emissions in real time, says Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, Sceyes CEO. And that’s entirely new. [Photo: Sceye] How a social entrepreneur started working with NASA tech Frandsen, a Danish social entrepreneur, is known for transforming Vestergaard, his familys textile business, into a company focused on humanitarian innovation. (The company makes mosquito nets to help fight malaria, for example, and a spinoff called LifeStraw makes water purification tech.) Because of his work, Frandsen was invited to be part of an effort to discover how tech from NASA could be used to help improve life on Earth. Thats how he learned about HAPS, or high-altitude platform systems, the technology that now underlies Sceyes work. HAPS are designed to go to the edge of space, around 65,000 feet above the surface of the Earth. Youre twice as high as air traffic, youre above the jet stream, youre 95-97% through the atmosphere, Frandsen says. So you can look up with great accuracy at stars, study black holes, look at asteroids. They were promoting this as a platform for science. I was reading this and thinking, sure, but you can also look down. You can have an entirely new way of addressing ocean conservation, or human trafficking, or last-mile connectivity, or methane monitoring, or early wildfire detection. The concept for a HAPS airship wasnt new. It turned out the U.S. government had already spent billions trying to build this stratospheric airship because staying below orbital altitude was considered sort of the holy grail of aviation, he says. He started looking into why past efforts in the 1990s and early 2000s hadnt worked, and realized that some factors had changed. New materials like graphene, for example, could help significantly reduce the weight of the airship and the batteries onboard. [Photo: Sceye] A decade of R&D Sceye, which was founded in 2014 and is based in New Mexico, took an iterative approach to its R&D. I learned from studying those previous attempts that government funding often incentives you to go straight to prototype build, he says. You dont have that iterative learning that tells you if you fail, why did you fail? Or if you succeed, why did you succeed? In every case, it didnt succeed, and they didnt really get their arms around the why. So it all stranded there. In 2026, the startup tested a nine-foot version of the device. A year later, that scaled up to 70 feet. The prototypes kept growing and flying higher. By 2021, the team succeeded in reaching the stratosphere. In 2022, they started doing demonstration flights. A year ago, the company successfully showed that the airship could operate through day and night. In the day, it runs on solar power; at night, its powered by batteries. The company also raised a Series C round of funding in 2024, which Pitchbook estimates totalling $130 million. (Sceye declined to confirm fundraising numbers, but said that it was valued at $525 million before the Series C round.) This year, the company plans to use its flights to demonstrate that the tech can hover in place for extended periods of time. Eventually, the team aims to be able to keep the HAPS in position for as long as 365 days. The 2025 flights will also demonstrate some of the uses of the tech. The company plans to deploy its platform in several ways; the next flight will also test the ability to track wildfires, for example. But it’s particularly well suited for tracking methane emissions. [Photo: Sceye] A powerful tool for tracking methane Methane is potent greenhouse gas. Over the short term, its more than 80 times more powerful than CO2 at heating up the planet. Methane emissions are also surging; leaks from fossil fuel production are a major source of the pollution. New Mexico, which is part of the Permian Basin boom in oil and gas, adopted a methane waste rule in 2021 to try to tackle the problem. By the end of next year, producers will have to achieve a 98% capture rate for methane. “We are looking at how we can make sure that gas is kept in the pipe and goes to its intended market instead of being released into the atmosphere, says Michelle Miano, environmental protection division director at the New Mexico Environment Department. The state started working with Sceye in 2021, in a partnership with the EPA. Right now, much of the data about emissions comes directly from companies themselves; that obviously makes it difficult for the state to confirm accuracy. Satellite data can also help track methane emissions but not in the same granular detail. “From space, it takes a lot of time in order to crunch that data and trace it back and figure out who exactly is the emitter in a certain region,” says Miano. “With technology that’s closer to the ground, there is the ability to get closer to some of the facilities to understand more specifically where they might be coming from.” Because the Sceye airship is designed to stay in one position, it can continuously monitor emissions over hundreds of square miles in a region. Infrared sensors monitor methane emissions, while cameras take detailed photographs that can be overlaid with that data. The system means that it’s possible to spot leaks that a satellite can miss because it only passes over an area temporarily. Satellites also don’t have the same resolution. The European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5, for example, sees methane in pixels that each represent seven square kilometers; the HAPS can get as close as one meter. (Sceye says that its approach is also more cost-effective than some other methods, including sensors on the ground that are slow to install, and planes or drones that have high hourly rates and can only take snapshots.) “If we work with an oil company, we can say, ‘Hey, well number 62 has been leaking 68 kilos of methane per hour for the last 12 minutes,” Frandsen says. The company is now negotiating contracts with some fossil fuel companies, and planning to begin demonstration flights for them this year and commercial contracts next year. In a test flight over New Mexico last year, the team identified a “super emitter” in Texas that was pumping an estimated 1,000 kilograms of methane an hour into the airthe equivalent of the hourly emissions from 210,000 cars. When Sceye shared that data with the EPA last year, it’s not clear if the agency sent a warning letter to the polluter. Now, the Trump-era EPA is pulling back on enforcement. Congress also voted to stop the EPA from implementing a tax on excess methane emissions. But the New Mexico state government plans to continue doing as much as it can to fight pollution. Sceye’s data could help it work more efficiently. “We are looking at how to increase funding for our agencies so that we are able to utilize technologies technologies that are coming online up and beyond standard reporting and standard on-the-ground inspections,” Miano says. “Because we have a limited staff, there are new ways that we need to continue looking at facilities with compliance issues to make sure that we can address as much as possible.”
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This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. Googles AI Studio and Labs let you experiment for free with new AI tools. I love the way these digital sandboxeslike the one from Hugging Facelet you try out creative new uses of AI. You can dabble around then download and share what you make, without having to master a complex new platform. Read on for a few Google AI experiments to try. All are free, fast, and easy to use. 1. Transform an image Upload a photo and use Geminis AI Studio Image Generation to transform it with prompts. Iterate on your original image until you get a version you like. The model understands natural language, so you dont have to master prompt lingo. 2. Generate an AI voice conversation AI-generated voices are increasingly hard to distinguish from human ones. If youre surprised, try Generate Speech in the AI Studio or Googles NotebookLM. How to use Generate Speech in Googles AI Studio Paste in text, either for a narration or a conversation between two people Open the settings tab to pick from 30 AI voices. Each is labeled with a characteristice.g. upbeat, gravelly, or mature. Click run to generate the conversation. Optionally adjust the playback speed. Download the file if you want to keep it, or paste in different text to try again. Example: a silly 90-sec chat between two violinists I scripted with Gemini and rendered quickly with this Generate Speech tool. Use case: Make a narration track for an instructional video. ElevenLabs has a better professional model for this, but AI Studios is free, easy and quick. Alternatives Googles Gemini AI app can also now generate audio overviews from files you upload, if youre on a paid plan. Googles free NotebookLM has a new mobile app, and now lets you generate an audio conversation in any of 50 languages. Unlike Generate Speech in AI Studio, NotebookLM audio overviews summarize your material, they dont perform words as written. Why NotebookLM is so useful. Googles Illuminate lets you generate, listen to, share, and download AI conversations about research papers and famous books. Heres an audio chat about David Copperfield, for example. A bit dry to listen to, but still useful. 3. Make a gif Try Magical Gif Maker, one of 20 showcase apps in the Build section of AI Studio. Try making a moving visual featuring the name of your publication, group, or event. I experimented with kinetic text and word art. Also worth trying in the Build AI Studio: Flashcard maker, Video to Learning App & Maps Planner. Alternative: You can also make a static image with Googles Imagen 3 or the new Imagen 4. Write a short prompt and select your preferred aspect ratio. So far I still prefer Ideogram (why I like it) and ChatGPTs new image engine. 4. Generate a short video Googles Veo 2 and Flow let you generate free short video clips almost instantly with a prompt. Create a clip to add vibrancy or humor to a presentation, or a visual metaphor to help you explain something. Here are 25 other quick ideas for how you might use little AI-generated video scenes. How to create a video clip with Veo 2 Pick a length (5 to 8 seconds) and select horizontal or vertical orientation Write a prompt & optionally upload a photo to suggest a visual direction Example: Take a look at a parakeet photo I started with and the 5-second video I generated from the photo with Veo 2. Tip: Convert short video clips into gifs for free with Ezgif or Giphy. Unlike vido files, gifs are easy to share and auto-play in an email or presentation. Whats next: Remarkably lifelike clips made with Googles newer Veo 3 model went viral this week. These AI-generated visualswith soundare only available on the $250/month(!) plan for now, so try Veo 2 for free. 5. Explain things with lots of tiny cats This playful mini app creates short, step-by-step visual guides using charming cat illustrations to explain any concept, from how a violin works to the concept behind the matrix. This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here.
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In the last 12 months, Target has publicly walked back its long-held DEI commitments, faced a weeks-long boycott from customers, and become one of several corporations that diminished its annual support for NYC Pride. But when June 1 rolled around, the company still trotted out its annual collection of Pride-inspired, rainbow-adorned merchand, for a number of reasons, its not landing well with queer customers. This years collection includes a series of apparel printed with slogans like Authentically Me and Glowing with Pride, rainbow-hued cat and dog doys, and, oddly enough, a couple of Pride-themed collectible bird figurines. Since the merch debuted, customers have been quick to notice an issue: Several of the items labels are printed with lorem ipsum filler copy. Targets pathetic 2025 Pride collection has arrived, one Reddit post on the subject reads. According to a spokesperson, Target is aware of the error, which it says originated with a vendor, and is working to address the issue. But for many customers, this labeling oversight feels like both a symptom and a symbol of larger issues at Target. For years, the company has turned Pride Month into a full-on branding extravaganza, releasing entire collections in stores and showing up as a sponsor at Pride parades across the country. In a series of events starting in 2023, though, Target has capitulated to rising conservative pressure, dialing back its Pride merch, ending its DEI commitments, and, this year, retreating from Pride parade sponsorship. Taken together, these factors make Targets 2025 Pride collection feel, at best, like a desperate bid to save face, and, at worst, like an attempt to cash in on a community that its too afraid to support outside of store walls. Targets retreat from Pride Target first launched pride products in 2015, and largely continued to expand its Pride-based inventory in the years following, openly doubling down on its support for the queer community during a bout of transphobic backlash in 2017. However, starting in 2023, the brands approach to Pride has been in flux. In May of 2023, CEO Brian Cornell told Fortunes Leadership Next podcast that the companys DEI efforts had fueled much of our growth over the last nine years. Mere weeks later, though, Target removed some items from its annual Pride collection after receiving an influx of conservative pushback, and even threats to its employees, over the items. The waters have been increasingly muddy for Targets Pride efforts ever since. In 2024, the company scaled back its Pride Month sections from all stores to only select locations and online. Then, this January, as companies across the country stepped back from DEI initiatives under the Trump administration, Target announced a series of its own concessions. The brand shared it was concluding certain goals and initiatives tied to racial equity in hiring, no longer participating in external surveys from the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization the Human Rights Campaign, and renaming its supplier diversity team to supplier engagement, shifting its focus away from explicitly courting brands with diverse ownership. To many loyal customers, this announcement felt like a betrayal, especially given that Target had previously been more vocal than its corporate peers on DEI initiativesand that the company has profited annually on Pride Month. This sparked a boycott of the brand that caused foot traffic to drop and share prices to plummet. In the aftermath, the Twin Cities pride parade announced that it would no longer accept Target as a sponsor. And, according to NYC Pride spokesperson Kevin Kilbride, Target was one of several brands that either backed out, reduced its contribution, or asked for its involvement to go unpublicized in the event. Targets retreat from Pride is part of a larger trend this year of corporations choosing not to renew their sponsorshipa pattern thats left many queer consumers wondering if corporate support was always just rainbow washing, or an attempt to signal affinity with LGBTQ+ customers merely to profit off of them. The [queer] community has been completely abandoned by a number of major companies, across a lot of brand categories, Joanna Schwartz, a professor at Georgia College & State University with a specialty in LGBTQ+ marketing, told Fast Company in May. The current prevailing wind is out of a far more conservative place, and companies are trying not to make anyone mad, but the companies that were really trying to make an easy buck off of the community were the first ones to leave. ‘Now they’re trying to keep getting our money, while denying our humanity’ Now that Pride Month has officially arrived, Target is left in a sticky situation. The company is attempting to walk a tightrope between avoiding a conservative outcry for its Pride merch while also striving not to alienate LGBTQ+ customers (who, according to a 2023 study by the investment adviser LGBT Capital, hold an estimated $3.9 trillion in global purchasing power). This year, Targets Pride collection looks fairly similar to last years and is, once again, only available in some locations. In a statement to Fast Company, a spokesperson shared, weare absolutely dedicated to fostering inclusivity for everyoneour team members, our guests, our supply partners, and the more than 2,000 communities were proud to serve. As we have for many years, we will continue to mark Pride Month by offering an assortment of celebratory products, hosting internal programming to support our incredible team, and sponsoring local events in neighborhoods across the country. Regardless of its intentions, Targets Pride merch is coming off decidedly hollow for queer customers this year, given its backtracking from the community at large. Whenever its time to profit off Pride, Target rolls out the rainbows, one X user wrote. But when it comes time to actually stand with the queer community? Crickets. Your Pride merch means nothing without a spine. On Reddit, users under a post regarding the unfinished lorem ipsum tags expressed discomfort with parts of the collection. One of the items is a moving truck figurine decked out in the lesbian flag and the phrase “Move N,” a reference to the concept of U-Hauling. Per Urban Dictionary, the slang term pokes fun at the stereotype of the speedy act of moving in together after a brief courtship between lesbians. One commenter called the figurine insulting AF. Others pointed out the lack of any reference to the trans or nonbinary communities. Still others were generally frustrated with the companys unreliable support. Gay folks never asked for Target to sell cheap low quality merch with rainbows splattered all over it, one user commented. All we asked for was to be treated fairly and allowed to live our lives. They made this shit to get our business. Now they’re trying to keep getting our money, while denying our humanity.
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