Librarians are fighting a nationwide battle against high e-book prices, which so far has yielded minimal results. Despite efforts and temporary legislative victories, strict renewal and loan policies imposed by publishers keep e-book costs high, limiting the number of popular titles libraries can offer and leading to frustration among patrons. Axios reports: Publishers typically require libraries to renew the license to each e-book every two years, or after 26 loans -- policies that libraries call prohibitively expensive. This restricts the number of e-books -- particularly popular bestsellers -- that they can lend out to patrons, who are angry and baffled by the limitations. Readers love the free (to them) apps that allow them to borrow countless e-books and audiobooks: Libby (the dominant one, run by OverDrive) and hoopla. But some libraries say that the cost of renewing their contracts with OverDrive and hoopla are prohibitive, so they're dropping the apps -- hoopla in particular. The Association of American Publishers argues that it must protect the rights of copyright owners -- that is, authors -- to be fairly compensated for their work. hoopla and Libby say they're just the middlemen. "It's really not up to us, to be honest," Ann Ford, a vice president at hoopla, tells Axios. "It's the publishers that make the rules." Libraries have a "unique and determinative public mission" that should entitle them to more favorable e-book purchasing terms when using public funds, says Kyle Courtney, a lawyer and Harvard librarian who drafted model e-book legislation for states. "These are nonnegotiable contracts, and the libraries have been trying to get a deal for years. We need the coercive power of the state sitting behind us at the table saying, 'We need a special slice of the pie.'"

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An anonymous reader shares a report: One Raspberry Pi often leads to another. Soon enough, you're running out of spots in your free RealVNC account for your tiny boards and "real" computers. Even if you go the hardened route of SSH or an X connection, you have to keep track of where they all are. All of this is not the easiest thing to tackle if you're new to single-board computers or just eager to get started. Enter Raspberry Pi Connect, a new built-in way to access a Raspberry Pi from nearly anywhere you can open a browser, whether to control yourself or provide remote assistance. On a Raspberry Pi 4, 5, or Pi 400 kit, you install Pi connect with a single terminal line, reboot the Pi, and then click a new tray icon to connect the Pi to a Raspberry Pi ID (and then enable two-factor authentication, of course). From then on, visiting connect.raspberrypi.com gives you an encrypted connection to your desktop. It's a direct connection if possible, and if not, it runs through relay servers in London, encrypting it with DTLS and keeping only the metadata needed for the service to work. The Pi will show a notification in its tray that somebody has connected, and you can manage screen sharing from there.

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Steve Albini, among the most influential and respected figures in American independent music, known for producing Nirvana, The Pixies, and his bands, has died. As confirmed by the staff of his recording studio to Pitchfork, Albini died of a heart attack. He was 61.

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Stack Overflow's new deal giving OpenAI access to its API as a source of data has users who've posted their questions and answers about coding problems in conversations with other humans rankled. From a report: Users say that when they attempt to alter their posts in protest, the site is retaliating by reversing the alterations and suspending the users who carried them out. A programmer named Ben posted a screenshot yesterday of the change history for a post seeking programming advice, which they'd updated to say that they had removed the question to protest the OpenAI deal. "The move steals the labour of everyone who contributed to Stack Overflow with no way to opt-out," read the updated post. The text was reverted less than an hour later. A moderator message Ben also included says that Stack Overflow posts become "part of the collective efforts" of other contributors once made and that they should only be removed "under extraordinary circumstances." The moderation team then said it was suspending his account for a week while it reached out "to avoid any further misunderstandings."

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A post-Covid pandemic treaty was supposed to be a breakthrough. Instead, it looks like a disappointment.

The simmering fears over bird flu should leave no doubt: The health of humans and our fellow animals is inextricably linked.

Covid-19 was likely transmitted from animals to humans, and millions died as a result. The world is now anxiously watching for any sign that H5N1, i.e., the bird flu, could cause another pandemic so soon after the last one.

For years, public health experts have preached the importance of a One Health philosophy: treating the health of the environment, animals, and human beings as a single issue that requires a comprehensive approach because the health of one affects the others. On the ground, however, it remains a work in progress; the slow implementation of livestock surveillance for bird flu is only the latest example of that struggle.

The world’s nations are currently negotiating a pandemic treaty that was supposed to prevent humanity from repeating the mistakes of Covid-19. In particular, the agreement was seen as an opportunity to put those One Health principles into practice.

But we might miss our chance. As the pandemic fades into memory, self-interest appears to be winning out over global cooperation.

What the world could do — and what it seems like it’ll do instead

In December 2021, the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the World Health Organization, announced that it would “draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument … to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.” The goal was to create a binding international agreement that would compel countries around the world to take steps to prevent future pandemics and, should those efforts fail, to ensure smoother coordination in any future public health emergency.

Negotiators are supposed to largely wrap up their work by Friday, May 10. Representatives from the world’s governments will convene in Geneva on May 27 for the World Health Assembly. The plan is for the pandemic accord to be ratified before the assembly adjourns.

Even with the threat of H5N1 looming, however, it has become clear the world is downsizing its ambitions for the treaty. In place of firm commitments are vague aspirations.

On two important sections — the One Health measures and the establishment of a system to share pathogens between countries — the latest draft text would defer momentous operational decisions until at least 2026.

One Health has been one of the major points of contention: Rich countries want it because it would lead to a significant investment in disease surveillance in poorer countries, where it is easier for threatening pathogens to lurk unnoticed. But poorer countries dislike it for the same reason, arguing it amounts to a massive unfunded mandate placed on them.

“It’s a vital step to reduce future pandemic risks. But achieving this demands substantial and costly changes,” Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Centre (GHC) at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, told Geneva Solutions. “It requires changing how we raise livestock and animals.”

Comparing the text of an October 2023 draft of the treaty and the most recent draft reveals the dwindling ambition. In the earlier version, there were specific commitments that called for stronger animal surveillance, more research and more education for health workers and communities, and a “whole of government” and “whole of society” approach.

In the latest draft, much of that language has been removed. Governments are given more leeway to “promote” and “engage” One Health principles as they see fit.

The problem is — again — money.

No one wants another pandemic. But no one wants to pay up to prevent one.

Poor countries already spend significantly less money on health care than wealthy nations. Historically, long-term economic growth has been the way to increase health expenditures.

If developed nations want developing ones to make new investments now, the middle and low-income countries argue that the rich countries should be willing to help pay for it.

But at the same time they are demanding One Health investments, those rich nations are balking at a proposal that would help the world identify and fight potentially dangerous pathogens.

I wrote about this issue in late February. It’s called pathogen access and benefit sharing (PABS). The idea is that rich countries or the pharma manufacturers should pay for access to pathogens of concern that are identified in developing countries and commit to sharing the benefits derived from that access — i.e., diagnostics and vaccines that are ultimately produced — with those poorer countries. That provision has been a priority for the developing world after the pandemic, when Covid-19 vaccines were slow to reach low-income nations in Africa and the rest of the world.

But the rich countries don’t like it. They, along with the pharmaceutical companies they represent, argue such a system would be too bureaucratic and risk slowing down innovation in a future public health emergency.

Some experts have noted the irony of the US and Europe insisting on unfettered access to pathogens from low-income countries at the same time the US government is facing criticism for being slow to share data about H5N1.

“The situation with avian influenza across the United States exemplifies the inherent hypocrisy and vested economic interests around Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response,” Dr. Christian Walzer, executive director of health at the Wildlife Conservation Society, said in a statement. “While the Global North is demanding transparent and rapid access to pathogen data from the Global South … it seems unwilling to share such information with the world.”

The two issues have become entwined in last-minute horse-trading. Based on the latest reporting, developed countries are trying to force a compromise by dangling PABS in exchange for the One Health provisions.

But as of now, the most likely outcome appears to be, at best, a symbolic commitment to One Health principles and a directive to reach an agreement on more specific provisions in the next two years.

Such a disappointing resolution, even as concerns about bird flu grow, is symptomatic of the world’s struggles to apply the lessons of Covid-19. As the urgency with which the negotiations began continues to fade, self-interest and geopolitical rivalries are standing in the way of making the world safer from pandemics.

Let’s hope we don’t pay the price for that shortsightedness.

This story originally appeared in Today, Explained, Vox’s flagship daily newsletter. Sign up here for future editions.

The amount of electricity and greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants likely peaked in 2023, according to the annual global electricity review by energy think tank Ember. That means human civilization has likely passed a key turning point, according to Ember: countries will likely never generate as much electricity from fossil fuels again.

A record 30 percent of electricity globally came from renewable sources of energy last year thanks primarily to growth in solar and wind power. Starting this year, pollution from the power sector is likely to start dropping, with a 2 percent drop in the amount of fossil fuel-powered electricity projected for 2024 — a decline Ember expects to speed up in the long term.

“The decline of power sector emissions is now inevitable. 2023 was likely the pivot point – a major turning point in the history of energy,” Dave Jones, Ember’s insights director, said in an emailed statement. “But the pace ... depends on how fast the renewables revolution continues.”

It’s a transition that could be happening much faster if not for the US, which is already the world’s biggest gas producer, using record amounts of gas last year. Without the US, Ember finds, electricity generation from gas would have fallen globally in 2023. Global economies excluding the US managed to generate 62 terawatt hours less gas-powered electricity last year compared to the year prior. But the US ramped up its electricity generation from gas by nearly twice that amount in the same timeframe, an additional 115TWh from gas in 2023.

A big part of the problem is that the US is replacing a majority of aging power plants that run on coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, with gas-fired plants instead of carbon pollution-free alternatives. “The US is switching one fossil fuel for another,” Jones said. “After two decades of building such a heavy reliance on gas power, the US has a big journey ahead to get to a truly clean power system.”

The US gets just 23 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, according to Ember, falling below the global average of 30 percent.

President Joe Biden set a goal of reaching 100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035 and signed into law the nation’s largest investment in clean energy and climate to date with the Inflation Reduction Act. But the administration’s ability to mandate a transition to cleaner energy is limited after the Supreme Court decided in 2022 that the Environmental Protection Agency shouldn’t be allowed to determine how the US generates its electricity. Since then, the EPA’s long-awaited rules for greenhouse gas emissions from power plants have leaned on getting energy companies to capture carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Fortunately, renewables have become remarkably affordable, with solar now considered the cheapest source of electricity in history and the fastest-growing power source for 19 years in a row.

“Last century’s outdated technologies can no longer compete with the exponential innovations and declining cost curves in renewable energy and storage,” Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said in an emailed statement.

Ember’s report tracks closely with other predictions from the International Energy Agency (IEA), which called a transition to clean energy “unstoppable” in October. The IEA forecast a peak in global demand for coal, gas, and oil this decade (for all energy use, not just electricity). It also projected that renewables would make up nearly 50 percent of the world’s electricity mix by 2030.

Ember is a little more optimistic after more than 130 countries pledged to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 during a United Nations climate summit in December. With that progress, renewable electricity globally would reach 60 percent by the end of the decade compared to less than 20 percent in 2000.