Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology proposed a new EUV litho technology using only four reflective mirrors and a new method of illumination optics that it claims will use 1/10 the power and cost half as much as existing EUV technology from ASML.

Applied Materials may not receive expected U.S. funding to build a $4 billion research facility in Sunnyvale, CA, due to internal government disagreements over how to fund chip R&D, according to Bloomberg.

SEMI published a position paper this week cautioning the European Union against imposing additional export controls to allow companies, encouraging them to  be “as free as possible in their investment decisions to avoid losing their agility and relevance across global markets.” SEMI’s recommendations on outbound investments are in response to the European Economic Security Strategy and emphasize the need for a transparent and predictable regulatory framework.

The U.S. may restrict China’s access to HBM chips and the equipment needed to make them, reports Bloomberg. Today those chips are manufactured by two Korean-based companies, Samsung and SK hynix, but U.S.-based Micron expects to begin shipping 12-high stacks of HBM3E in 2025, and is currently working on HBM4.

Synopsys executive chair and founder Dr. Aart de Geus was named the winner of the Semiconductor Industry Association’s Robert N. Noyce Award. De Geus was selected due to his contributions to EDA technology over a career spanning more than four decades.

The top three foundries plan to implement high-NA EUV lithography as early as 2025 for the 18 angstrom generation, but the replacement of single exposure high-NA (0.55) over double patterning with standard EUV (NA = 0.33) depends on whether it provides better results at a reasonable cost per wafer.

Quick links to more news:

Global
In-Depth
Market Reports and Earnings
Education and Training
Security
Product News
Research
Events and Further Reading

Global

Belgium-based Imec released part 2 of its chiplets series, addressing testing strategies and standardization efforts, as well as guidelines and research “towards efficient ESD protection strategies for advanced 3D systems-on-chip.”

Also in Belgium, BelGan, maker of GaN chips, filed for bankruptcy according to the Brussels Times.

TSMC‘s Dresden, Germany, plant will break ground this month.

The UK will dole out more than £100 million (~US $128 million) in funding to develop five new quantum research hubs in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Oxford, and London.

MassPhoton is opening Hong Kong‘s first ultra-high vacuum GaN epitaxial wafer pilot line and will establish a GaN research center.

Infineon completed the sale of its manufacturing sites in the Philippines and South Korea to ASE.

Israel-based RAAAM Memory Technologies received a €5.25 million grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) to support the development and commercialization of its innovative memory solutions. This funding will enable RAAAM to advance its research in high-performance and energy-efficient memory technologies, accelerating their integration into various applications and markets.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing newsletter this week, featuring these top stories and video:

• Chip Security Now Depends On Widening Supply Chain
• Defining Chip Threat Models To Determining Security Risks
• Post-Quantum Computing Threatens Fundamental Transport Protocols

And:

• Where Power Savings Really Count
• Making Electronics More Efficient (video)

Market Reports and Earnings

The semiconductor equipment industry is on a positive trajectory in 2024, with moderate revenue growth observed in Q2 after a subdued Q1, according to a new report from Yole Group. Wafer Fab Equipment revenue is projected to grow by 1.3% year-on-year, despite a 12% drop in Q1. Test equipment lead times are normalizing, improving order conditions. Key areas driving growth include memory and logic capital expenditures and high-bandwidth memory demand.

Worldwide silicon wafer shipments increased by 7% in Q2 2024, according to SEMI‘s latest report. This growth is attributed to robust demand from multiple semiconductor sectors, driven by advancements in AI, 5G, and automotive technologies.

The RF GaN market is projected to grow to US $2 billion by 2029, a 10% CAGR, according to Yole Group.

Counterpoint released their Q2 smartphone top 10 report.

Renesas completed their acquisition of EDA firm Altium, best known for its EDA platform and freeware CircuitMaker package.

It’s earnings season and here are recently released financials in the chip industry:

AMD  Advantest   Amkor   Ansys  Arteris   Arm   ASE   ASM   ASML
Cadence  IBM   Intel   Lam Research   Lattice   Nordson   NXP   Onsemi 
Qualcomm   Rambus  Samsung    SK Hynix   STMicro   Teradyne    TI  
Tower  TSMC    UMC  Western Digital

Industry stock price impacts are here.

Education and Training

Rochester Institute of Technology is leading a new pilot program to prepare community college students in areas such as cleanroom operations, new materials, simulation, and testing processes, with the intent of eventual transfer into RIT’s microelectronic engineering program.

Purdue University inked a deal with three research institutions — University of Piraeus, Technical University of Crete, and King’s College London —to develop joint research programs for semiconductors, AI and other critical technology fields.

The European Chips Skills Academy formed the Educational Leaders Board to help bridge the talent gap in Europe’s microelectronics sector.  The Board includes representatives from universities, vocational training providers, educators and research institutions who collaborate on strategic initiatives to strengthen university networks and build academic expertise through ECSA training programs.

Security

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is encouraging Apple users to review and apply this week’s recent security updates.

Microsoft Azure experienced a nearly 10 hour DDoS attack this week, leading to global service disruption for many customers.  “While the initial trigger event was a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which activated our DDoS protection mechanisms, initial investigations suggest that an error in the implementation of our defenses amplified the impact of the attack rather than mitigating it,” stated Microsoft in a release.

NIST published:

• “Recommendations For Increasing U.S. Participation and Leadership in Standards Development,” a report outlining cybersecurity recommendations and mitigation strategies.
• Final guidance documents and software to help improve the “safety, security and trustworthiness of AI systems.”
• Cloud Computing Forensic Reference Architecture guide.

Delta Air Lines plans to seek damages after losing $500 million in lost revenue due to security company CrowdStrike‘s software update debacle.  And shareholders are also angry.

Recent security research:

• Physically Secure Logic Locking With Nanomagnet Logic (UT Dallas)
• WBP: Training-time Backdoor Attacks through HW-based Weight Bit Poisoning (UCF)
• S-Tune: SOT-MTJ Manufacturing Parameters Tuning for Secure Next Generation of Computing ( U. of Arizona, UCF)
• Diffie Hellman Picture Show: Key Exchange Stories from Commercial VoWiFi Deployments (CISPA, SBA Research, U. of Vienna)

Product News

Lam Research introduced a new version of its cryogenic etch technology designed to enhance the manufacturing of 3D NAND for AI applications. This technology allows for the precise etching of high aspect ratio features, crucial for creating 1,000-layer 3D NAND.

Fig.1: 3D NAND etch. Source: Lam Research

Alphawave Semi launched its Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express Die-to-Die IP. The subsystem offers 8 Tbps/mm bandwidth density and supports operation at 24 Gbps for D2D connectivity.

Infineon introduced a new MCU series for industrial and consumer motor controls, as well as power conversion system applications. The company also unveiled its new GoolGaN Drive product family of integrated single switches and half-bridges with integrated drivers.

Rambus released its DDR5 Client Clock Driver for next-gen, high-performance desktops and notebooks. The chips include Gen1 to Gen4 RCDs, power management ICs, Serial Presence Detect Hubs, and temperature sensors for leading-edge servers.

SK hynix introduced its new GDDR7 graphics DRAM. The product has an operating speed of 32Gbps, can process 1.5TB of data per second and has a 50% power efficiency improvement compared to the previous generation.

Intel launched its new Lunar Lake Ultra processors. The long awaited chips will be included in more than 80 laptop designs and has more than 40 NPU tera operations per second as well as over 60 GPU TOPS delivering more than 100 platform TOPS.

Brewer Science achieved recertification as a Certified B Corporation, reaffirming its commitment to sustainable and ethical business practices.

Panasonic adopted Siemens’ Teamcenter X cloud product lifecycle management solution, citing Teamcenter X’s Mendix low-code platform, improved operational efficiency and flexibility for its choice.

Keysight validated its 5G NR FR1 1024-QAM demodulation test cases for the first time. The 5G NR radio access technology supports eMBB and was validated on the 3GPP TS 38.521-4 test specification.

Research

In a 47-page deep-dive report, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology delved into all of the scientific breakthroughs from 1980 to present that brought EUV lithography to commercialization, including lessons learned for the next emerging technologies.

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute developed a high-performance X-ray tomography technique using burst ptychography, achieving a resolution of 4nm. This method allows for non-destructive imaging of integrated circuits, providing detailed views of nanostructures in materials like silicon and metals.

MIT signed a four-year agreement with the Novo Nordisk Foundation Quantum Computing Programme at University of Copenhagen, focused on accelerating quantum computing hardware research.

MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) developed a mechanically flexible wafer-scale integrated photonics fabrication platform. This enables the creation of flexible photonic circuits that maintain high performance while being bendable and stretchable. It offers significant potential for integrating photonic circuits into various flexible substrate applications in wearable technology, medical devices, and flexible electronics.

The Naval Research Lab identified a new class of semiconductor nanocrystals with bright ground-state excitons, emphasizing an important advancement in optoelectronics.

Researchers from National University of Singapore developed a novel method, known as tension-driven CHARM3D,  to fabricate 3D self-healing circuits, enabling the 3D printing of free-standing metallic structures without the need for support materials and external pressure.

Find more research in our Technical Papers library.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here, including topics such as quantum safe cryptography, analytics for high-volume manufacturing, and mastering EMC simulations for electronic design.

Find Semiconductor Engineering’s latest newsletters here:

Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing
Systems and Design
Low Power-High Performance
Test, Measurement and Analytics
Manufacturing, Packaging and Materials

The post Chip Industry Week in Review appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology proposed a new EUV litho technology using only four reflective mirrors and a new method of illumination optics that it claims will use 1/10 the power and cost half as much as existing EUV technology from ASML.

Applied Materials may not receive expected U.S. funding to build a $4 billion research facility in Sunnyvale, CA, due to internal government disagreements over how to fund chip R&D, according to Bloomberg.

SEMI published a position paper this week cautioning the European Union against imposing additional export controls to allow companies, encouraging them to  be “as free as possible in their investment decisions to avoid losing their agility and relevance across global markets.” SEMI’s recommendations on outbound investments are in response to the European Economic Security Strategy and emphasize the need for a transparent and predictable regulatory framework.

The U.S. may restrict China’s access to HBM chips and the equipment needed to make them, reports Bloomberg. Today those chips are manufactured by two Korean-based companies, Samsung and SK hynix, but U.S.-based Micron expects to begin shipping 12-high stacks of HBM3E in 2025, and is currently working on HBM4.

Synopsys executive chair and founder Dr. Aart de Geus was named the winner of the Semiconductor Industry Association’s Robert N. Noyce Award. De Geus was selected due to his contributions to EDA technology over a career spanning more than four decades.

The top three foundries plan to implement high-NA EUV lithography as early as 2025 for the 18 angstrom generation, but the replacement of single exposure high-NA (0.55) over double patterning with standard EUV (NA = 0.33) depends on whether it provides better results at a reasonable cost per wafer.

Quick links to more news:

Global
In-Depth
Market Reports and Earnings
Education and Training
Security
Product News
Research
Events and Further Reading

Global

Belgium-based Imec released part 2 of its chiplets series, addressing testing strategies and standardization efforts, as well as guidelines and research “towards efficient ESD protection strategies for advanced 3D systems-on-chip.”

Also in Belgium, BelGan, maker of GaN chips, filed for bankruptcy according to the Brussels Times.

TSMC‘s Dresden, Germany, plant will break ground this month.

The UK will dole out more than £100 million (~US $128 million) in funding to develop five new quantum research hubs in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Oxford, and London.

MassPhoton is opening Hong Kong‘s first ultra-high vacuum GaN epitaxial wafer pilot line and will establish a GaN research center.

Infineon completed the sale of its manufacturing sites in the Philippines and South Korea to ASE.

Israel-based RAAAM Memory Technologies received a €5.25 million grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) to support the development and commercialization of its innovative memory solutions. This funding will enable RAAAM to advance its research in high-performance and energy-efficient memory technologies, accelerating their integration into various applications and markets.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing newsletter this week, featuring these top stories and video:

• Chip Security Now Depends On Widening Supply Chain
• Defining Chip Threat Models To Determining Security Risks
• Post-Quantum Computing Threatens Fundamental Transport Protocols

And:

• Where Power Savings Really Count
• Making Electronics More Efficient (video)

Market Reports and Earnings

The semiconductor equipment industry is on a positive trajectory in 2024, with moderate revenue growth observed in Q2 after a subdued Q1, according to a new report from Yole Group. Wafer Fab Equipment revenue is projected to grow by 1.3% year-on-year, despite a 12% drop in Q1. Test equipment lead times are normalizing, improving order conditions. Key areas driving growth include memory and logic capital expenditures and high-bandwidth memory demand.

Worldwide silicon wafer shipments increased by 7% in Q2 2024, according to SEMI‘s latest report. This growth is attributed to robust demand from multiple semiconductor sectors, driven by advancements in AI, 5G, and automotive technologies.

The RF GaN market is projected to grow to US $2 billion by 2029, a 10% CAGR, according to Yole Group.

Counterpoint released their Q2 smartphone top 10 report.

Renesas completed their acquisition of EDA firm Altium, best known for its EDA platform and freeware CircuitMaker package.

It’s earnings season and here are recently released financials in the chip industry:

AMD  Advantest   Amkor   Ansys  Arteris   Arm   ASE   ASM   ASML
Cadence  IBM   Intel   Lam Research   Lattice   Nordson   NXP   Onsemi 
Qualcomm   Rambus  Samsung    SK Hynix   STMicro   Teradyne    TI  
Tower  TSMC    UMC  Western Digital

Industry stock price impacts are here.

Education and Training

Rochester Institute of Technology is leading a new pilot program to prepare community college students in areas such as cleanroom operations, new materials, simulation, and testing processes, with the intent of eventual transfer into RIT’s microelectronic engineering program.

Purdue University inked a deal with three research institutions — University of Piraeus, Technical University of Crete, and King’s College London —to develop joint research programs for semiconductors, AI and other critical technology fields.

The European Chips Skills Academy formed the Educational Leaders Board to help bridge the talent gap in Europe’s microelectronics sector.  The Board includes representatives from universities, vocational training providers, educators and research institutions who collaborate on strategic initiatives to strengthen university networks and build academic expertise through ECSA training programs.

Security

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is encouraging Apple users to review and apply this week’s recent security updates.

Microsoft Azure experienced a nearly 10 hour DDoS attack this week, leading to global service disruption for many customers.  “While the initial trigger event was a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which activated our DDoS protection mechanisms, initial investigations suggest that an error in the implementation of our defenses amplified the impact of the attack rather than mitigating it,” stated Microsoft in a release.

NIST published:

• “Recommendations For Increasing U.S. Participation and Leadership in Standards Development,” a report outlining cybersecurity recommendations and mitigation strategies.
• Final guidance documents and software to help improve the “safety, security and trustworthiness of AI systems.”
• Cloud Computing Forensic Reference Architecture guide.

Delta Air Lines plans to seek damages after losing $500 million in lost revenue due to security company CrowdStrike‘s software update debacle.  And shareholders are also angry.

Recent security research:

• Physically Secure Logic Locking With Nanomagnet Logic (UT Dallas)
• WBP: Training-time Backdoor Attacks through HW-based Weight Bit Poisoning (UCF)
• S-Tune: SOT-MTJ Manufacturing Parameters Tuning for Secure Next Generation of Computing ( U. of Arizona, UCF)
• Diffie Hellman Picture Show: Key Exchange Stories from Commercial VoWiFi Deployments (CISPA, SBA Research, U. of Vienna)

Product News

Lam Research introduced a new version of its cryogenic etch technology designed to enhance the manufacturing of 3D NAND for AI applications. This technology allows for the precise etching of high aspect ratio features, crucial for creating 1,000-layer 3D NAND.

Fig.1: 3D NAND etch. Source: Lam Research

Alphawave Semi launched its Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express Die-toDie IP. The subsystem offers 8 Tbps/mm bandwidth density and supports operation at 24 Gbps for D2D connectivity.

Infineon introduced a new MCU series for industrial and consumer motor controls, as well as power conversion system applications. The company also unveiled its new GoolGaN Drive product family of integrated single switches and half-bridges with integrated drivers.

Rambus released its DDR5 Client Clock Driver for next-gen, high-performance desktops and notebooks. The chips include Gen1 to Gen4 RCDs, power management ICs, Serial Presence Detect Hubs, and temperature sensors for leading-edge servers.

SK hynix introduced its new GDDR7 graphics DRAM. The product has an operating speed of 32Gbps, can process 1.5TB of data per second and has a 50% power efficiency improvement compared to the previous generation.

Intel launched its new Lunar Lake Ultra processors. The long awaited chips will be included in more than 80 laptop designs and has more than 40 NPU tera operations per second as well as over 60 GPU TOPS delivering more than 100 platform TOPS.

Brewer Science achieved recertification as a Certified B Corporation, reaffirming its commitment to sustainable and ethical business practices.

Panasonic adopted Siemens’ Teamcenter X cloud product lifecycle management solution, citing Teamcenter X’s Mendix low-code platform, improved operational efficiency and flexibility for its choice.

Keysight validated its 5G NR FR1 1024-QAM demodulation test cases for the first time. The 5G NR radio access technology supports eMBB and was validated on the 3GPP TS 38.521-4 test specification.

Research

In a 47-page deep-dive report, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology delved into all of the scientific breakthroughs from 1980 to present that brought EUV lithography to commercialization, including lessons learned for the next emerging technologies.

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute developed a high-performance X-ray tomography technique using burst ptychography, achieving a resolution of 4nm. This method allows for non-destructive imaging of integrated circuits, providing detailed views of nanostructures in materials like silicon and metals.

MIT signed a four-year agreement with the Novo Nordisk Foundation Quantum Computing Programme at University of Copenhagen, focused on accelerating quantum computing hardware research.

MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) developed a mechanically flexible wafer-scale integrated photonics fabrication platform. This enables the creation of flexible photonic circuits that maintain high performance while being bendable and stretchable. It offers significant potential for integrating photonic circuits into various flexible substrate applications in wearable technology, medical devices, and flexible electronics.

The Naval Research Lab identified a new class of semiconductor nanocrystals with bright ground-state excitons, emphasizing an important advancement in optoelectronics.

Researchers from National University of Singapore developed a novel method, known as tension-driven CHARM3D,  to fabricate 3D self-healing circuits, enabling the 3D printing of free-standing metallic structures without the need for support materials and external pressure.

Find more research in our Technical Papers library.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here, including topics such as quantum safe cryptography, analytics for high-volume manufacturing, and mastering EMC simulations for electronic design.

Find Semiconductor Engineering’s latest newsletters here:

Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing
Systems and Design
Low Power-High Performance
Test, Measurement and Analytics
Manufacturing, Packaging and Materials

The post Chip Industry Week in Review appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the right to a trial by jury and to due process apply to people who face a steep sentencing enhancement under federal law, in a ruling that transfers some power from the hands of judges to the public and will affect many criminal defendants' future punishments.

The procedural history of the case is a bit of a whirlwind. But at its center is Paul Erlinger, who was charged in 2017 with being a felon in possession of a firearm and sentenced to 15 years under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), which increases the punishment for that offense—felon in possession of a firearm—from a 10-year maximum to a 15-year minimum if the defendant has been convicted previously of three violent felonies or serious drug offenses on separate occasions.

At sentencing came one of the initial twists, when the judge who handed down the 15-year punishment made clear it was inappropriate. Erlinger, who pleaded guilty, had gained steady employment, started a family, and remained drug-free in the more than a decade since his previous convictions, so a five-year sentence, the judge said, would be "fair." But under the ACCA, the court's hands were tied.

Then came the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, which said shortly thereafter that two of Erlinger's offenses considered for the purposes of the ACCA did not actually qualify as violent felonies or serious drug crimes. Prosecutors, however, were undeterred. They returned to court and invoked convictions related to burglaries Erlinger committed 26 years before the felon in possession of a firearm charge, when he was 18 years old. Erlinger countered that the burglaries in question had been a part of one criminal episode—not distinct events as the ACCA requires—and that, most importantly, a jury would need to make the consequential determination about the separateness of those offenses.

The sentencing court disagreed, ruling it was the judge's decision and that the court was bound by the ACCA, thus reimposing the 15-year sentence that it once again called "unfortunate" and "excessive."

But Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the 6–3 majority opinion, explained that Erlinger did indeed have the 5th Amendment and 6th Amendment right to ask a jury whether those offenses were committed separately and if he is therefore vulnerable to the massive increase in incarceration that the sentencing court itself characterized multiple times as unjust. The outcome was at least somewhat predictable when considering yet another twist: After Erlinger appealed on the grounds that his constitutional rights had been violated, the government agreed. But the 7th Circuit still refused to reconsider his sentence, leaving Erlinger to ask the Supreme Court.

Core to Gorsuch's opinion is Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000), a Supreme Court precedent that ruled it was unconstitutional when a judge sentenced a defendant more harshly on the basis that a shooting had allegedly been motivated by racial animus, because no jury considered or made any determination beyond a reasonable doubt on that factor. A jury and a jury only, the Court ruled, may find "facts that increase the prescribed range of penalties to which a criminal defendant is exposed" when it will cause the penalty to exceed the prescribed statutory maximum.

But Gorsuch also says the Court has something else on its side today: history. "Prominent among the reasons colonists cited in the Declaration of Independence for their break with Great Britain was the fact Parliament and the Crown had 'depriv[ed] [them] in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury,'" he writes. "The Fifth and Sixth Amendments placed the jury at the heart of our criminal justice system" in order "to mitigate the risk of prosecutorial overreach and misconduct" and serve as a check on the government.

This is not a novel area for Gorsuch, who has made clear his respect for the right to a trial by jury. Last month, he rebuked the Court's demurral from hearing a case concerning Florida's use of six-person juries as opposed to the traditional, historical practice of using 12-person panels.

Though much has been made of the ideologically fractured nature of the current Court, the decision in Erlinger did not fall neatly along partisan lines. Among the dissenters were Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, the latter of whom argued that Apprendi—and, as an extension, the case law that has sprung from it—was wrongly decided. "I recognize that many criminal defendants and their advocates prefer the Apprendi regime, which provides some defendants with more procedural protections at sentencing," Jackson writes. "In my view, however, the benefit that some criminal defendants derive from the Apprendi rule in the context of their individual cases is outweighed by the negative systemic effects that Apprendi has wrought," which she says has hamstrung judges and increased sentencing disparities.

"The only thing judges may not do consistent with Apprendi is increase a defendant's exposure to punishment based on their own factfinding," counters Gorsuch. "Does Justice Jackson really think it too much to ask the government to prove its case (as it concedes it must) with reliable evidence before seeking enhanced punishments under a statute like ACCA when the 'practical realit[y]' for defendants like Mr. Erlinger is exposure to an additional decade (or more) in prison?"

The post The Supreme Court Again Strengthens the Right to a Jury Trial in Criminal Sentencing appeared first on Reason.com.

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration is once again trying to carve out broad new exemptions to the state's celebrated government transparency law. 

This time, lawyers for DeSantis are arguing that call logs from a high-ranking staffer's phone aren't public record, even though the staffer was conducting government business, because it was a private phone.

The Tampa Bay Times first reported Thursday that lawyers for the DeSantis administration argued in court this week before a Leon County judge that the governor's office shouldn't be compelled to turn over call logs from DeSantis' Chief of Staff James Uthmeier's private cellphone.

The Florida Center for Government Accountability sued the DeSantis administration in 2022 for records concerning the migrant flights to Martha's Vineyard that DeSantis organized that year using state resources. The governor's office has turned over many records so far—and disclosed that Uthmeier and other staff used personal email addresses and phones rather than their state-issued ones—but it is currently defying a court order to release Uthmeier's phone logs.

"Florida is no longer the Sunshine State when it comes to transparency," says Michael Barfield, the Center's director of public access. "The public's right to know is headed into darkness."

Public records laws are commonly interpreted at both the federal and state levels, including in Florida, to cover records created on private devices and accounts if they concern government business. For example, the 2023 edition of the Florida attorney general's Government-in-the-Sunshine Manual states that "the mere fact that an e-mail is sent from a private e-mail account using a personal computer is not the determining factor as to whether it is a public record; it is whether the e-mail was prepared or received in connection with official agency business."

The manual also notes that "a public official or employee's use of a private cell phone to conduct public business via text messaging 'can create an electronic written public record subject to disclosure' if the text message is 'prepared, owned, used, or retained…within the scope of his or her employment or agency.'"

But DeSantis' lawyers are arguing that Uthmeier's call logs are "tertiary data," the Tampa Bay Times reports:

"If you hold that these tertiary data points are somehow public records that also have to be captured by a public records custodian, that is a sweeping — sweeping — interpretation of public records," DeSantis lawyer Christopher Lunny told Leon County Circuit Judge Lee Marsh on Tuesday.

But under that argument, Marsh said, all government business could be shielded from the public.

"We ought to just put out word, 'Let's do all of our business on private, bring-your-own cellphones," Marsh said. "Then we don't need public records laws because there'll be no public records, right?"

As Reason described in a magazine feature last year on Florida's Sunshine Law, the DeSantis administration is not just chipping away at the once-powerful public records law; it's taking a sledgehammer to it. State lawmakers have made the governor's travel records secret, and the DeSantis administration has also tried to invoke executive privilege over other documents, a privilege that is found nowhere in Florida's Sunshine Law and has never been claimed by previous governors.

DeSantis' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post Ron DeSantis Won't Stop Trying To Gut Florida's Public Records Law appeared first on Reason.com.

Florida legistlators recently passed a bill prohibiting the manufacture or sale of lab-grown meat, and Governor Ron DeSantis signed it yesterday. Alabama, Arizona and Tennessee have already done likewise. The measure, which provides criminal sanctions for offenders, is to please the meat business—but was posed by DeSantis as defending America against a global conspiracy. — Read the rest

The post DeSantis signs Florida's ban on lab-grown meat appeared first on Boing Boing.

Samsung and Synopsys collaborated on the first production tapeout of a high-performance mobile SoC design, including CPUs and GPUs, using the Synopsys.ai EDA suite on Samsung Foundry’s gate-all-around (GAA) process. Samsung plans to begin mass production of 2nm process GAA chips in 2025, reports BusinessKorea.

UMC developed the first radio frequency silicon on insulator (RF-SOI)-based 3D IC process for chips used in smartphones and other 5G/6G mobile devices. The process uses wafer-to-wafer bonding technology to address radio frequency interference between stacked dies and reduces die size by 45%.

Fig. 1: UMC’s 3D IC solution for RFSOI technology. Source: UMC

The first programmable chip capable of shaping, splitting, and steering beams of light is now being produced by Skywater Technology and Lumotive. The technology is critical for advancing lidar-based systems used in robotics, automotive, and other 3D sensing applications.

Driven by demand for AI chips, SK hynix revealed it has already booked its entire production of high-bandwidth memory chips for 2024 and is nearly sold out of its production capacity for 2025, reported the Korea Times, while SEMI reported that silicon wafer shipments declined in Q1 2024, quarter over quarter, a 13% drop, attributed to continued weakness in IC fab utilization and inventory adjustments.

PCI-SIG published the CopprLink Internal and External Cable specifications to provide PCIe 5.0 and 6.0 signaling at 32 and 64 GT/s and leverage standard connector form factors for applications including storage, data centers, AI/ML, and disaggregated memory.

The U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) launched the CHIPS Women in Construction Framework to boost the participation of women and economically disadvantaged people in the workforce, aiming to support on-time and successful completion of CHIPS Act-funded projects. Intel and Micron adopted the framework.

Quick links to more news:

Market Reports
Global
In-Depth
Education and Training
Security
Product News
Quantum
Research
Events
Further Reading

Markets and Money

The SiC wafer processing equipment market is growing rapidly, reports Yole. SiC devices will exceed $10B by 2029 at a CAGR of 25%, and the SiC manufacturing tool market is projected to reach $5B by 2026.

imec.xpand launched a €300 million (~$321 million) fund that will invest in semiconductor and nanotechnology startups with the potential to push semiconductor innovation beyond traditional applications and drive next-gen technologies.

Blaize raised $106 million for its programmable graph streaming processor architecture suite and low-code/no-code software platform for edge AI.

Guerrilla RF completed the acquisition of Gallium Semiconductor‘s portfolio of GaN power amplifiers and front-end modules.

About 90% of connected cars sold in 2030 will have embedded 5G capability, reported Counterpoint. Also, about 75% of laptop PCs sold in 2027 will be AI laptop PCs with advanced generative AI, and the global high-level OS (HLOS) or advanced smartwatch market is predicted to grow 15% in 2024.

Global

Powerchip Semiconductor opened a new 300mm facility in northwestern Taiwan targeting the production of AI semiconductors. The facility is expected to produce 50,000 wafers per month at 55, 40, and 28nm nodes.

Taiwan-based KYEC Semiconductor will withdraw its China operations by the third quarter due to increasing geopolitical tensions, reports the South China Morning Post.

Japan will expand its semiconductor export restrictions to China related to four technologies: Scanning electron microscopes, CMOS, FD-SOI, and the outputs of quantum computers, according to TrendForce.

IBM will invest CAD$187 million (~US$137M in Canada’s semiconductor industry, with the bulk of the investment focused on advanced assembly, testing, and packaging operations.

Microsoft will invest US$2.2 billion over the next four years to build Malaysia’s digital infrastructure, create AI skilling opportunities, establish an AI Center of Excellence, and enhance cybersecurity.

In-Depth

New stories and tech talks published by Semiconductor Engineering this week:

• Multi-Die Design Pushes Complexity To The Max
• Design Considerations In Photonics
• Overlay Optimization In Advanced IC Substrates
• Fundamental Issues In Computer Vision Still Unresolved
• Sensor Fusion Challenges In Automotive

Security

Infineon collaborated with ETAS to integrate the ESCRYPT CycurHSM 3.x automotive security software stack into its next-gen AURIX MCUs to optimize security, performance, and functionality.

Synopsys released Polaris Assist, an AI-powered application security assistant on its Polaris Software Integrity Platform, combining LLM technology with application security knowledge and intelligence.

In security research:

• UT Dallas, Intel, NXP, and TI published a framework for early anomaly detection in AMS components of automotive SoCs.
• The University of Central Florida said that LLMs can be harnessed to automatically rectify security-relevant vulnerabilities inherent in hardware designs within the semiconductor context.
• Western University leveraged hardware security modules for enhanced intra-domain security.
• A team in India proposed a post-quantum secure PUF-based cross-domain authentication mechanism for Internet of Drones.

U.S. President Biden signed a National Security Memorandum to enhance the resilience of critical infrastructure, and the White House announced key actions taken since Biden’s AI Executive Order, including measures to mitigate risk.

CISA and partners published a fact sheet on pro-Russia hacktivists who seek to compromise industrial control systems and small-scale operational technology systems in North American and European critical infrastructure sectors. CISA issued other alerts including two Microsoft vulnerabilities.

Education and Training

The U.S. National Institute for Innovation and Technology (NIIT) and the Department of Labor (DoL) partnered to celebrate the inaugural Youth Apprenticeship Week on May 5 to 11, highlighting opportunities in critical industries such as semiconductors and advanced manufacturing.

SUNY Poly received an additional $4 million from New York State for its Semiconductor Processing to Packaging Research, Education, and Training Center.

The University of Pennsylvania launched an online Master of Science in Engineering in AI degree.

The American University of Armenia celebrated its 10-year collaboration with Siemens, which provides AUA’s Engineering Research Center with annual research grants.

Product News

Renesas and SEGGER Embedded Studio launched integrated code generator support for its 32-bit RISC-V MCU. 

Rambus introduced a family of DDR5 server Power Management ICs (PMICs), including an extreme current device for high-performance applications.

Fig. 2: Rambus’ server PMIC on DDR5 RDIMM. Source: Rambus

Keysight added capabilities to Inspector, part of the company’s recently acquired device security research and test lab Riscure, that are designed to test the robustness of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and help device and chip vendors identify and fix hardware vulnerabilities. Keysight also validated new conformance test cases for narrowband IoT non-terrestrial networks standards.

Ansys’ RedHawk-SC and Totem power integrity platforms were certified for TSMC‘s N2 nanosheet-based process technology, while its RaptorX solution for on-chip electromagnetic modeling was certified for TSMC’s N5 process.

Netherlands-based athleisure brand PREMIUM INC selected CLEVR to implement Siemens’ Mendix Digital Lifecycle Management for Fashion & Retail solution.

Micron will begin shipping high-capacity DRAM for AI data centers.

Microchip uncorked radiation-tolerant SoC FPGAs for space applications that uses a real-time Linux-capable RISC-V-based microprocessor subsystem.

Quantum

University of Chicago researchers developed a system to boost the efficiency of quantum error correction using a framework based on quantum low-density party-check (qLDPC) codes and new hardware involving reconfigurable atom arrays.

PsiQuantum will receive AUD $940 million (~$620 million) in equity, grants, and loans from the Australian and Queensland governments to deploy a utility-scale quantum computer in the regime of 1 million physical qubits in Brisbane, Australia.

Japan-based RIKEN will co-locate IBM’s Quantum System Two with its Fugaku supercomputer for integrated quantum-classical workflows in a heterogeneous quantum-HPC hybrid computing environment. Fugaku is currently one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

QuEra Computing was awarded a ¥6.5 billion (~$41 million) contract by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) to deliver a gate-based neutral-atom quantum computer alongside AIST’s ABCI-Q supercomputer as part of a quantum-classical computing platform.

Novo Holdings, the controlling stakeholder of pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, plans to boost the quantum technology startup ecosystem in Denmark with DKK 1.4 billion (~$201 million) in investments.

The University of Sydney received AUD $18.4 million (~$12 million) from the Australian government to help grow the quantum industry and ecosystem.

The European Commission plans to spend €112 million (~$120 million) to support AI and quantum research and innovation.

Research

Intel researchers developed a 300-millimeter cryogenic probing process to collect high-volume data on the performance of silicon spin qubit devices across whole wafers using CMOS manufacturing techniques.

EPFL researchers used a form of ML called deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to train a four-legged robot to avoid falls by switching between walking, trotting, and pronking.=

The University of Cambridge researchers developed tiny, flexible nerve cuff devices that can wrap around individual nerve fibers without damaging them, useful to treat a range of neurological disorders.

Argonne National Laboratory and Toyota are exploring a direct recycling approach that carefully extracts components from spent batteries. Argonne is also working with Talon Metals on a process that could increase the number of EV batteries produced from mined nickel ore.

Events

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

Further Reading

Read the latest special reports and top stories, or check out the latest newsletters:

Systems and Design
Low Power-High Performance
Test, Measurement and Analytics
Manufacturing, Packaging and Materials
Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing

The post Chip Industry Week In Review appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

On Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill banning the sale or production of lab-grown meat in the state. While a press release framed the bill as an attempt to advance Floridans' freedom by protecting them from the "World Economic Forum's goal of forcing the world to eat lab-grown meat and insects," all the legislation really does is stile competition for the state's meat producers. 

"Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite's plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals," DeSantis said in a Wednesday press release. "Our administration will continue to focus on investing in our local farmers and ranchers, and we will save our beef."

Cultivated, or "lab-grown," meat has been available in the United States on an extremely limited basis, generally limited to individual restaurants, since last year, after the Food and Drug Administration approved two different kinds of cultivated chicken for sale.

However, despite DeSantis' supposed fears about a lab-grown meat takeover, the small cultivated meat industry is struggling. The product isn't currently available anywhere in the United States, let alone in Florida.

Nonetheless, the governor signed Senate Bill 1084, which enacts a wide-ranging ban on cultivated meat, making it illegal "for any person to manufacture for sale, sell, hold or offer for sale, or distribute cultivated meat in" Florida. Violators of the law face misdemeanor penalties, and businesses caught selling the product could have their licenses suspended.

"We must protect our incredible farmers and the integrity of American agriculture," Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson said in the press release. "Lab-grown meat is a disgraceful attempt to undermine our proud traditions and prosperity, and is in direct opposition to authentic agriculture."

However, it seems DeSantis is the real authoritarian in this situation. Instead of letting Floridians decide for themselves whether they want to try lab-grown meat, DeSantis is having the state step in, all in the name of protecting Floridians from an imaginary threat to their freedom.

Florida's lab-grown meat ban is a perfect marriage of protectionism and the culture war. By framing the tiny lab-grown meat industry as a left-wing threat, DeSantis can justify giving government kickbacks to the meat industry, all while protecting meat producers from a source of future competition. Wednesday's press release goes so far as to brag about a litany of recently passed legislation that "support[s] the state's agriculture and meat industry."

Unfortunately, Florida isn't the first state to ban cultivated meat. Alabama passed a ban on lab-grown meat last month, and legislation to ban the product is pending in Arizona and Tennessee. Italy banned it last year.

The post DeSantis Signs Bill Banning Lab-Grown Meat in Florida appeared first on Reason.com.

Police and sheriff's departments across Florida spent thousands of dollars sending officers to training conferences that have been banned in nine other states after being accused of promoting unconstitutional tactics and glorifying violence.

Reason obtained invoices through public records requests showing that a dozen of Florida's largest law enforcement agencies spent $31,377 on training seminars hosted by Street Cop Training, a New Jersey-based company, between 2020 and 2023.

The company has been under intense scrutiny since the New Jersey Office of the State Comptroller issued a scathing report in December detailing a 2021 Street Cop Training conference in Atlantic City where instructors made discriminatory and unprofessional remarks. At the conference, one instructor flashed a picture of a monkey when talking about an elderly black man, and the founder of the company said that refusing to consent to a police search was justification for prolonging an investigation. Since then, New Jersey has ordered retraining for all officers who attended Street Cop conferences, and the company has declared bankruptcy.

The Florida invoices shed light on Street Cop's foothold in one of the most populous states. Despite the turbulent times for the company, it is soldiering on in the Sunshine State. As Florida Today's John Torres noted in a recent op-ed, Orlando is hosting the 2024 Street Cop Conference this week.

Not only that, but Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey is a speaker at the conference.

Torres noted with disdain that taxpayers were footing the bill to send officers to these conferences.

"Locally, at least one Melbourne officer is attending the training with the department paying for it," Torres wrote. "Palm Bay and Cocoa have none and the Brevard County Sheriff's Department did not respond to my inquiry about how many deputies were attending. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement could not tell me how many officers were attending."

It would probably not surprise Torres to learn that the Brevard County Sheriff's Office spent the most out of any agency that has so far responded to Reason's records requests. Street Cop invoices to the agency total $7,825 between 2020 and 2023.

The next biggest spender was the Osceola County Sheriff's Office with $7,085, followed by the Seminole County Sheriff's Department at $6,604.

Six Florida Highway Patrol officers attended Street Cop training seminars during that time period, according to records.

To compile this report, Reason filed 28 public records requests to the largest police departments and sheriff's offices in Florida. Nine agencies said they had no responsive records. Seven requests are still pending, including from populous jurisdictions such as Broward and Orange County.

Street Cop Training was founded in 2012 by Dennis Benigno, a former New Jersey police officer. It runs training conferences for thousands of police officers around the country, but flew under the radar until New Jersey Comptroller Kevin Walsh's December report. The report documented dozens upon dozens of lewd and discriminatory remarks by instructors and comments glorifying violence.

More concerning than the constant middle-school jokes about penis size, though, were the substance of the presentations. For example, Benigno and other instructors at the Atlantic City conference insisted that refusing to consent to a search of one's vehicle—a constitutional right under the Fourth Amendment—was suspicious and should be used as justification for prolonging a search or detention.

The comptroller investigation found that there was "an entire section of Benigno's training during the Conference dedicated to an 'I Do Not Consent Game,' during which Benigno shows a montage of people refusing consent in an attempt to illustrate that a motorist's refusal to consent is a suspicious factor that justifies further prolonging an investigative detention."

The comptroller's office found that multiple instructors told officers to use a "reasonable suspicion" checklist to decide whether to find a reason to pull someone over or extend a traffic stop. The checklist included a long list of vague and contradictory behavior, including the driver not looking at a police car when passing, looking too long at a police car when passing, wearing a hat, removing a hat when an officer approaches, looking back at their vehicle, leaning against their vehicle, smoking, stretching or yawning, and licking their lips.

"Because none of these factors are more consistent with guilt than innocence, a stop based on a combination of those factors alone—without some additional factor that suggests criminality—would be unconstitutional," the New Jersey Comptroller's Office concluded.

Benigno also mocked people who record the police during traffic stops, saying that person was about to "get pepper sprayed, fucking tased, windows broken out, motherfucker." Recording the police is a First Amendment right.

One Street Cop instructor in Louisiana livestreamed himself shooting at a fleeing vehicle and later bragged about it at the Atlantic City conference. "Run from me, somewhere along the chase becomes, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow," he said. The deputy has since been charged with illegal discharge of a firearm and obstruction of justice.

The report found that at least New Jersey spent at least $75,000 in public funds sending officers to the Atlantic City conference.

Benigno said in the wake of the report that he was tightening professional standards for the conferences and making other changes, but he denied that the company promoted unconstitutional tactics.

In a lengthy statement to Florida news outlet WESH last week, Benigno said in part: "The context of the Fourth Amendment training at the October conference and the implications that the training was unconstitutional is completely baseless. Officers in attendance have already completed police academy and understand the context in which the training is provided."

Not all of the public records identify which seminars officers attended, but at least some of them involved traffic stops and interdiction. One officer from the Tallahassee Police Department attended a 2021 Street Cop Training class titled "identifying criminal vehicles and occupants," and a Duval County Sheriff's deputy attended "interdiction mastermind."

The Volusia Sheriff's Office paid for five deputies to attend seminars that included "unmasking facial expressions" and "body language for law enforcement."

The ability to reliably detect lies or guilt by reading facial expressions and body language has never been replicated in controlled studies. It's pseudo-science, but it has nevertheless remained popular among law enforcement because it gives officers a wide-ranging and often contradictory list of cues to confirm their suspicions. (Walsh's report also notes that "some other controversial factors [on the checklist] are observing 'micro-expressions' as taught through free online videos and assessing 'blink rate.'")

The controversy over Street Cop Training has led some Florida sheriff's offices to distance themselves from the company.

A spokesperson for the Seminole County Sheriff's Office says none of its members will be presenting or attending this year. The Volusia County Sheriff also told local media that he wouldn't be sending deputies to the conference.

Meanwhile, Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey remains a staunch defender of the company.

"This is all a bunch of crap," Ivey said of Walsh's report. 

Ivey was a paid consultant at a Street Cop conference last year in Nashville.

The post Florida Police Departments Spent Thousands on Training Seminars Banned in 9 States appeared first on Reason.com.

There may not be a more apt visual metaphor for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' past few years than his opposition to a proposed marijuana legalization ballot initiative—which he announced Tuesday while literally standing behind a sign celebrating "Freedom Month."

"I don't want this state to be reeking of marijuana," DeSantis said, defaulting to one of the laziest arguments against pot freedom, but one that DeSantis has been using for years. "We're doing fine. We don't need to do that."

How's that for Freedom Month?

In fairness to DeSantis, the jarringly dissonant signage was celebrating the state's sales tax holiday during May. Even so, the gap between DeSantis' pro-freedom messaging and his actions as governor has become a recurring theme for the one-time presidential hopeful.

After all, this is the same guy who wrote a book titled The Courage To Be Free, but has made a name for himself in conservative politics by wielding state power against drag queens, student groups, and others who have had the courage to freely express their opinions. On the presidential campaign trail, DeSantis would talk up the importance of school choice and parental rights, then moments later promise stricter state control over school curriculums. He's championed Florida's status as a refuge for Americans fleeing poor government policies in other states, even as he's tried to boot out migrants who are voting with their feet by coming to America for the same reason.

Freedom, for DeSantis, seems to mean that you can do whatever you'd please—but only if he approves.

It's disappointing, but hardly surprising, that DeSantis is applying that same logic to marijuana legalization. Florida residents might get a chance to vote on legalizing recreational weed in November, but DeSantis promised Tuesday that he would be "getting involved in different ways" to combat that ballot initiative. It's unclear exactly what DeSantis means, but State Attorney General Ashley Moody and some anti-legalization groups have already sued in state court to block the initiative from getting on the ballot.

The ballot initiative, Florida Amendment 3, would change the state's constitution to allow adults aged 21 and older to possess up to three ounces of marijuana. Existing licensed medical marijuana distribution centers—Florida voters approved medical marijuana in 2016—would be the only places allowed to distribute recreational weed, although state lawmakers could pass new laws to allow for commercial distribution and home growing.

As Marijuana Moment notes, economic analyses of the ballot initiative show that legalization would be a boon for Florida and could generate between $195.6 million and $431.3 million in new sales tax revenue annually.

Greater freedom for Floridians and higher tax revenue seem to matter less to DeSantis than the possibility that some of the state's residents might dislike the smell of reefer. "You want to walk down the street here and smell it," he asked, rhetorically, on Tuesday. "Do you want to not be able to take your family out to dinner because you're worried about it?"

If that's the best argument that the opponents of legalization in Florida can muster, there might be little cause for concern. Even so, having the (admittedly quite popular) governor campaigning against legalization figures to be a factor in the election.

Voters seem to be split on the legalization issue: A poll taken last month by USA Today and Ipsos showed 49 percent of Floridians support the ballot initiative—including 38 percent of registered Republicans. That's well short of the 60 percent threshold required for the amendment to pass.

What DeSantis does as Florida's governor will continue to carry national implications, not solely because he remains one of the most well-known Republican politicians in the country. He's reportedly seeking to patch up his relationship with former President Donald Trump—the two had dinner this week, according to The Washington Post—and may have a role to play in a future Trump administration, or as a Republican presidential candidate in 2028.

By then, maybe he'll have gotten over his fear of the smell of weed.

The post DeSantis Frets About Florida 'Reeking of Marijuana,' Says He'll Oppose Legalization appeared first on Reason.com.

Retiree Jim Ficken can finally breathe easy. After six years, two lawsuits, and harrying legal wrangling over a $30,000 fine for tall grass in Dunedin, Florida, a new settlement has brought him closure.

The agreement, announced on April 22, ends the city's pursuit to recover $10,000 in attorney fees that Dunedin officials tried to characterize as "administrative expenses" after reducing Ficken's original fine by 80 percent. The reduction was only possible because of reforms the city instituted soon after Ficken filed his first lawsuit.

Initially, the city attempted to tack on $25,000 for out-of-pocket legal expenses before realizing it had miscalculated that figure. As a result of this settlement, Ficken will not have to cough up any amount for bogus fees—an important consolation following setbacks in his first lawsuit.

Ficken attempted to reason with code enforcers before going to court—explaining that his lawn had grown long while he was settling his late mother's estate in South Carolina and that the landscaper he had hired to mow his grass while he was gone had died unexpectedly. He asked for leniency, but the city refused to budge and insisted on full payment: $500 per day for nearly two months, plus interest. They even put liens on Ficken's home and authorized city attorneys to initiate proceedings to seize it.

In response, Ficken filed a federal lawsuit with representation from the Institute for Justice, asserting that the excessive fines and lack of due process violated his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. He lost in district court in 2021 and again in 2022 at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals—but he won in other ways. His case ignited a media frenzy and public calls for reform, prompting Dunedin to overhaul its code enforcement regime to prevent ruinous fines for trivial offenses.

After his legal battles, Ficken managed to get the fines reduced enough to prevent foreclosure. He thought he was safe. But then the city hit him with the bill for attorney fees, a retroactive attempt to penalize him for seeking his day in court. Left with no choice, he sued again in 2023.

The city could have avoided both lawsuits merely by treating Ficken like a neighbor instead of a cash machine.

While Ficken acknowledged his breach of a city ordinance and expected some penalty, Dunedin's aggressive tactics—aiming to extract tens of thousands of dollars and take his home—were blatantly excessive. American jurisprudence dictates that punishment must fit the crime. Municipalities must balance code enforcement with common sense and respect for property rights.

Dunedin moved in the right direction by making adjustments to its policies; however, the problem of excessive fines and fees is not confined to Dunedin—it is a national issue.

Across the country, similar stories of overzealous code enforcement abound. In Lantana, Florida, homeowner Sandy Martinez was fined more than $100,000 for parking violations on her own property. In Doraville, Georgia, Hilda Brucker was criminally prosecuted for having cracks in her driveway. And in Pagedale, Missouri, Valerie Whitner had to pay a fine for not having a screen on her back door.

Florida demographics create additional pressures. Many residents are retirees on fixed incomes living in single-family housing. People like Ficken have a right to stay, but some officials would prefer younger, more affluent taxpayers in their communities. Aggressive code enforcement is one way to target less desirable residents.

Sometimes enforcement is about preserving a certain aesthetic, as seen in Miami Shores, Florida in 2013. Officials declared vegetable gardens unsightly and threatened Hermine Ricketts and Tom Carroll with daily fines if they did not remove their front yard vegetables.

Regardless of motive, cities and towns must exercise restraint. The Constitution sets the baseline, and without it, abuses can and will grow quickly out of hand, and tall grass will be nothing in comparison.

The post Florida Man's Tall Grass Saga Comes to an End appeared first on Reason.com.

The Supreme Court is currently considering two cases in which social media firms challenge the constitutionality of Texas and Florida laws requiring them to host content the platforms would prefer to exclude. The issue before the Court is whether these laws violate the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. But, in a recent Reason article, Ethan Blevins of the Pacific Legal Foundation—one of the nation's leading public interest law firms litigating takings cases—argues they also violate the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment:

While pundits and lawyers cross swords over free speech on social media, a quieter yet critically important principle is being ignored: property rights. In addition to violating the First Amendment, the rush to force social media platforms to host content violates the Fifth Amendment as well—in particular, the Takings Clause.

The Takings Clause says that government shall not take private property "for public use, without just compensation." While many are familiar with the clause's importance when the government wants to seize land through eminent domain, courts have also applied this right as a limit on the ability to overregulate property. For example, if a beach town requires the owners of oceanfront properties to let the public walk across their yards to get to the beach, this would require compensation, because the regulation effectively takes the property owner's right to exclude, a cornerstone of ownership.

Likewise, the Takings Clause shields social media platforms from regulations requiring they host content or users they want to exclude. These platforms have as much right to eject unwelcome digital interlopers as homeowners do to stop the government from using their yard as a public right of way—unless they are given just compensation. If states intend to force social media apps to host users and content against their wishes, they will have to pay for it….

Both state and federal laws already treat online platforms as property. All states criminalize unauthorized access to computer systems, often expressly framing these crimes as trespass….

Laws that mandate online platforms to accept certain content or users effectively invade private property. And the courts have established that when the government grants third parties access to private property without the owner's consent, that requires compensation. The federal government had to pay a private marina owner in Hawaii before it could be compelled to allow public boating access. Similarly, the Supreme Court ruled just a few years ago that California had to compensate employers after it forced them to let union representatives access their property.

I very much agree, and previously made a similar argument here:

The Takings Clause bars government from taking "private property" without paying "just compensation." In its 2021 ruling in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, the Supreme Court ruled (correctly, in my view) that even a temporary government-mandated "physical occupation" or invasion of private property counts as a per se taking….

The Florida and Texas social media laws are also blatant attacks on the right to exclude. No one doubts that the Twitter site and its various features are Twitter's private property. And the whole point of the Florida and Texas laws is to force Twitter and other social media firms to grant access to users and content the firms would prefer to exclude, particularly various right-wing users. Just as the plaintiffs in Cedar Point wanted to bar union organizers from their land, so Twitter wishes to bar some content it finds abhorrent (or that might offend or annoy other users)….

To be sure, there are obvious differences between virtual property, such as a website, and more conventional physical property, like that involved in the Cedar Point case. But the Taking Clause nonetheless applies to both. If Texas decided to seize the Twitter site, bar current users, and instead fill it with content praising the state government's policies, that would pretty obviously be a taking, much like if California decided to seize the Cedar Point tree nursery's land.  In the same way, requiring Twitter to host unwanted content qualifies as an occupation of its property, no less than requiring a landowner to give access to unwanted entrants…

One could argue that forcing a website owner to host unwanted users isn't really a "physical occupation," because the property is virtual in nature. But websites, including the big social media firms, use physical server space. Other things equal, a site with more user-generated content requires more such space than one with less. Even aside from the connection to physical infrastructure, it seems to me that occupation of virtual "real estate" is analogous to occupation of land. Both are valuable forms of private property from which the owner generally has a right to exclude.

The post Laws Requiring Social Media Firms to Host Content they Prefer to Exclude Violate the Takings Clause appeared first on Reason.com.

In July 2021, Florida deputies arrested a man for shooting down their drone. Last week, a judge sentenced him to four years in federal prison, but not for destruction of property: He was sentenced merely for possession of a firearm as a felon.

According to a criminal complaint filed by an agent with the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, deputies with the Lake County Sheriff's Office responded to reports of a possible burglary at a large commercial property in Mount Dora, Florida. Upon arrival, they found a front entry gate that had been "damaged by impact," as well as "unsecured doors on some of the buildings at the facility."

Thinking there could still be intruders present on the 10-acre site, deputies flew an unmanned aerial vehicle over the property to check it out. As it flew, however, they heard two gunshots ring out and saw the drone "slowly spinning downward and emitting smoke" before it "crashed onto the metal roof of an outbuilding, became suspended on a rain gutter, and caught fire."

Deputies investigated the source of the gunshots and encountered Wendell Goney, who lived nearby. Goney first denied shooting the drone but admitted to it after learning the craft was equipped with cameras. Goney claimed this was the first time he had ever shot at a drone, but he told deputies that he had been "harassed" by people flying them over his property. He said he had bought a .22 caliber rifle to put a stop to it and hadn't known that this particular drone belonged to law enforcement.

When deputies asked, Goney admitted that he was a convicted felon and therefore ineligible to own a firearm under federal law. They arrested Goney, who gave them permission to search his house and told them exactly where to find the rifle.

The criminal complaint noted that Goney "has approximately 23 prior felony convictions. He has been sentenced to more than a year in state prison on multiple occasions, including 1997, 2007, 2009, and 2013." His offenses included forgery, burglary, and multiple instances of grand theft, including the theft of a rifle in 1995. Most recently, he was sentenced in 2013 to two years and eight months in prison on charges including simple battery, aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer, and possession of cocaine.

Goney pled guilty in October 2023. Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Presnell sentenced Goney to four years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release during which he would have to participate in both drug and mental health treatment programs. He would also be required to pay more than $29,000 in restitution to the Lake County Sheriff's Office to replace the drone.

While Goney was initially charged with both destruction of law enforcement property and possession of a firearm, prosecutors dropped the former charge in exchange for his plea. Noting in their sentencing memo that federal guidelines "call for a recommended sentencing range of between 77–96 months," prosecutors asked for "a sentence at the low end of the applicable sentencing guidelines—77 months." The memo noted that "such a sentence would be slightly more than twice the length of the longest of the prison sentences the defendant has served to date."

But is that a just sentence? Goney's previous longest sentence was two years and eight months for crimes involving assaulting other people, including police; in this case, on the other hand, Goney's only aggressive act was toward an unmanned flying drone, and his only charged offense was possessing a gun without the government's permission.

While it seems sensible to bar felons from owning guns—especially those with such unsavory records as Goney's—the act presents uncomfortable questions of both liberty and constitutionality.

For one, the federal ban on firearm ownership necessarily sweeps up people who have committed nonviolent offenses, even those not involving firearms. In 1995, Bryan Range fraudulently obtained $2,458 in welfare benefits; when caught, Range repaid the money, paid a small fine, and served three years of probation. But under federal law, Range also lost the right to own a firearm as a result of his state misdemeanor conviction. In June 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit ruled that Range's ban violated the Second Amendment's guarantee of a right to keep and bear arms.

Unlike Range, Goney's prior convictions did involve the use of violence. But who is supposed to be protected by keeping Goney from owning a firearm? At the time of his arrest, Goney had not been in trouble with the law for several years, and his only act of aggression was aimed at a drone he thought was "harassing" him.

The original criminal complaint notes that Goney is a felon and "has never had his civil rights restored by executive clemency following these felony convictions." Indeed, the only way for Goney to legally regain his Second Amendment right to own a firearm is through a pardon by the governor.

People convicted of crimes—even felonies, even those involving violence—do not cease to be citizens, or human beings, as a result of their sentences. Once their sentences have been served, they should have the ability to regain the rights they've lost—including the rights to vote, to hold public office, and to serve on juries. The right to bear arms is just as essential.

The post Florida Man Sentenced to 4 Years in Federal Prison After Shooting Down a Drone appeared first on Reason.com.

A man in Florida had been feeling "off" since October, and continued to get worse until a bleeding nose and swollen face prompted him to go to a hospital last Friday. But nobody expected what came next: the doctors pulled out 150 live bugs from his nose. — Read the rest

The post Doctors remove 150 big, fat, live bugs from a man's nose, and here's video to prove it appeared first on Boing Boing.

Next week, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice. The cases are about a pair of laws, enacted by Texas and Florida, that attempt to force large social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and X to host large amounts of speech against their will. (Think neo-Nazi rants, anti-vax conspiracies, and depictions of self-harm.) The states’ effort to co-opt social media companies’ editorial policies blatantly violates the First Amendment.

Since the laws are constitutional trainwrecks, it’s no surprise that Texas’s and Florida’s legal theories are weak. They rely heavily on the notion that what social media companies do is not really editing — and thus is not expressive. Editors, Texas says in a brief, are “reputationally responsible” for the content they reproduce. And yet, the state continues, “no reasonable observer associates” social media companies with the speech they disseminate.

This claim is absurd on its face. Everyone holds social media companies “reputationally responsible” for their content moderation. Users do, because most of them don’t like using a product full of hate speech and harassment. Advertisers do, out of a concern for their “brand safety.” Journalists do. Civil rights groups do. Even the Republican politicians who enacted this pair of bad laws do — that’s why they yell about how “Big Tech oligarchs” engage in so-called censorship.

That the Texas and Florida GOP are openly contemptuous of the First Amendment, and incompetent to boot, isn’t exactly news. So let’s turn instead to some delicious ironies. 

Consider that the right’s favorite social media addict, robber baron, and troll Elon Musk has single-handedly destroyed Texas’s and Florida’s case.

After the two states’ laws were enacted, Elon Musk conducted something of a natural experiment in content moderation—one that has wrecked those laws’ underlying premise. Musk purchased Twitter, transformed it into X, and greatly reduced content moderation on the service. As tech reporter Alex Kantrowitz remarks, the new approach “privileges” extreme content from “edgelords.”

This, in turn, forces users to work harder to find quality content, and to tolerate being exposed to noxious content. But users don’t have to put up with this — and they haven’t. “Since Musk bought Twitter in October 2022,” Kantrowitz finds, “it’s lost approximately 13 percent of its app’s daily active users.” Clearly, users “associate” social-media companies with the speech they host!

It gets better. Last November, Media Matters announced that, searching X, it had found several iconic brands’ advertisements displayed next to neo-Nazi posts. Did Musk say, “Whatever, dudes, racist content being placed next to advertisements on our site doesn’t affect X’s reputation”? No. He had X sue Media Matters.

In its complaint, X asserts that it “invests heavily” in efforts to keep “fringe content” away from advertisers’ posts. The company also alleges that Media Matters gave the world a “false impression” about what content tends to get “pair[ed]” on the platform. These statements make sense only if people care — and X cares that people care — about how X arranges content on X.

X even states that Media Matters has tried to “tarnish X’s reputation by associating [X] with racist content.” It would be hard to admit more explicitly that social-media companies are “reputationally responsible” for, because they are “associated” with, the content they disseminate.

Consider also that Texas ran to Musk’s defense. Oblivious to how Musk’s vendetta hurts Texas’s case at the Supreme Court, Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, opened a fraud investigation against Media Matters (the basic truth of whose report Musk’s lawsuit does not dispute).

Consider finally how Texas’s last-ditch defense gets mowed down by the right’s favorite Supreme Court justice. According to Texas, social-media companies can scrub the reputational harm from spreading abhorrent content simply by “disavowing” that content. But none other than Justice Clarence Thomas has blown this argument apart. If, Thomas writes, a state could force speech on an entity merely by letting that entity “disassociate” from the speech with a “disclaimer,” that “would justify any law compelling speech.”

Only the government can “censor” speech. Texas and Florida are the true censors here, as they seek to restrict the expressive editorial judgment of social-media companies. That conduct is expressive. Just ask Elon Musk. And that expressiveness is fatal to Texas’s and Florida’s laws. Just ask Clarence Thomas. Texas’s and Florida’s social-media speech codes aren’t just unconstitutional, they can’t even be defended coherently.

Corbin Barthold is internet policy counsel at TechFreedom.

Enlarge / Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo speaks during a press conference at Neo City Academy in Kissimmee, Florida. (credit: Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

A sixth student at Florida's Manatee Bay Elementary School outside of Fort Lauderdale has a confirmed case of measles, health officials announced late Tuesday. However, health officials are not telling unvaccinated students who were potentially exposed to quarantine.

The school has a low vaccination rate, suggesting that the extremely contagious virus could spark a yet larger outbreak. But in a letter sent to parents late Tuesday, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo—known for spreading anti-vaccine rhetoric and vaccine misinformation—indicated that unvaccinated students can skip the normally recommended quarantine period.

The letter, signed by Ladapo, noted that people with measles can be contagious from four days before the rash develops through four days after the rash appears. And while symptoms often develop between 8 to 14 days after exposure, the disease can take 21 days to appear. As such, the normal quarantine period for exposed and unvaccinated people, who are highly susceptible to measles, is 21 days.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Six children from the same Florida elementary school have contracted measles in an outbreak that began last week.

The first child to come down with symptoms was a 3rd grader on Friday, who had not traveled recently, followed by three other students who had confirmed cases over the weekend. — Read the rest

The post 6th child from same Florida school gets measles in outbreak that started Friday appeared first on Boing Boing.

Face of boy after three days with measles rash. (credit: CDC)

Florida health officials on Sunday announced an investigation into a cluster of measles cases at an elementary school in the Fort Lauderdale area with a low vaccination rate, a scenario health experts fear will become more and more common amid slipping vaccination rates nationwide.

On Friday, Broward County Public School reported a confirmed case of measles in a student at Manatee Bay Elementary School in the city of Weston. A local CBS affiliate reported that the case was in a third-grade student who had not recently traveled. On Saturday, the school system announced that three additional cases at the same school had been reported, bringing the current reported total to four cases.

On Sunday, the Florida Department of Health in Broward County (DOH-Broward) released a health advisory about the cases and announced it was opening an investigation to track contacts at risk of infection.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Happy Tuesday and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. Despite the ink still wet on many state-level YIMBY reforms prodding local governments to allow housing, we're already witnessing a concerted counter-revolution from the forces of local control. This week's stories include:

• Slow-growth activists in the Boston-adjacent suburb of Milton, Massachusetts, have successfully overturned state-required zoning reforms that allowed apartments near the town's train stations.
• Local governments in Florida are trying to defang a new state law allowing residential high-rises in commercial zones with lawsuits and regulatory obstructions.
• A lawsuit against Arlington, Virginia's exceedingly modest "missing middle" reforms that were passed last year trundles on.

But first, our lead item is a short take on how America's overregulated, undersupplied housing market turns good things, like economic growth, into bad things, like more evictions.

Why Evictions Go Up in a Good Economy (and Why It Doesn't Have to Be This Way)

In an article from last week, L.A. Times columnist LZ Granderson asks "If the economy is so great, why are evictions soaring?" Despite low unemployment and better-than-expected economic growth "evictions have spiked and homelessness has reached a record high," he notes.

Granderson's explanation for this incongruity is that it's all just the latest ill effects of Reaganite low taxes, slim government benefits, and underregulated corporations.

The more compelling answer is that evictions are up because the economy is so great (or at least better than it used to be).

Landlord Incentives

As Granderson notes, unemployment is low. The unemployment rate has been under four percent for the past two years. Real wages have also been growing.

For landlords, that means that there are a lot of workers with steady incomes out there who would likely make for steadily paying tenants. If their current tenant isn't paying rent or is behind on rent, a low unemployment rate boosts their confidence that they'll be able to find another one who will pay their bills on time. That makes it less risky to take on the costs of evicting a tenant and turning over a unit.

That's a counterintuitive answer. The intuitive assumption is that since evictions are a bad personal economic event, they'll happen more often when economic times are bad generally.

This was the assumption that prompted both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations, and almost every state government, to adopt eviction moratoriums during the pandemic. The fear was that sudden, mass unemployment would result in millions of delinquent renters being kicked out of their homes.

Lessons from the pandemic 

This turned out to be wrong. Even after most state moratoriums had lapsed, the federal moratorium had been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, and rental assistance programs expired, evictions stayed well below pre-pandemic averages.

Evictions did rise slowly over time, but there was never the sudden "avalanche" or "tsunami" of people getting kicked out of their homes that some housing activists predicted. Today, according to Princeton University's Eviction Lab data, evictions nationwide are slightly below pre-pandemic averages.

The fact that evictions fall during bad economic times and rise during good times might seem to validate the left-wing view that economic growth under capitalism just means more hardship for poor and marginalized renters. Therefore, the thinking goes, we need more legal restrictions on evictions, rent control, and/or direct government provision of housing to keep a roof over people's heads. That too is a mistaken view.

More homes, fewer evictions

All else being equal, economic growth and low unemployment will give landlords a greater incentive to evict a delinquent tenant. But economic growth and low unemployment should also raise the demand for housing, and therefore lead to new housing construction.

More housing supply will in turn make the housing market more competitive for suppliers. A landlord with a delinquent tenant can't be so sure they'll be able to find a replacement so easily, as the pool of potential tenants will have a lot more housing options. More housing supply will also lower housing prices, which in turn should result in fewer tenants risking eviction by falling behind on their rent in the first place.

Thanks to zoning, restrictions on mortgage financing, needless environmental reviews, and more, we're not seeing as much new supply as we would under a free market. That means we're also not seeing the eviction-suppressing effects of new supply.

The result of restricted housing supply in a time of economic growth and low unemployment is higher prices and higher evictions.

As Kevin Erdmann explained in his Substack last June, when there's not enough housing to go around, "somebody has to be displaced, and the displacement is achieved through rising housing costs, which tend to pile up the most on the poorest residents."

The good news in the short term is that in the places where evictions are going up the most (mostly booming sunbelt metros), there is a rash of new supply coming onto the market. This glut of new homes and apartments should cool price increases and evictions.

The better news in the long term is that many states are passing YIMBY zoning reforms that will make housing supply even more elastic. That is unless NIMBY forces manage to handicap these laws right out of the gate…

In Massachusetts, A Popular Rebellion Against New Housing

This past Wednesday, 54 percent of voters in Milton, Massachusetts, an inner suburb of Boston, approved a ballot initiative repealing recently passed local zoning amendments that allowed apartments near local rail stations.

In doing so, the town has made itself non-compliant with Massachusetts' signature YIMBY reform—the 2021 MBTA Communities Law—which requires towns with rail transit service to allow apartments near rail stations.

The vote sets up a crucial test for the state law: can it prod reluctant local governments to zone for infill housing in a way that actually gets units built? Or will it be another state YIMBY reform that's bested by clever NIMBY intransigence?

The backstory

Prior to Wednesday's vote, it appeared most localities were complying with the letter of the MBTA Communities Law. All twelve of the towns required by the law to pass upzoning legislation by the end of 2023 had done so.

That includes Milton. In December 2023, the town passed the state-required zoning changes. But shortly thereafter, local activists gathered enough signatures to put the zoning changes up to a popular vote.

State officials, including Gov. Maura Healey and Attorney General Andrea Campbell, had warned the town that a vote for repeal would make Milton ineligible for numerous state grants and a lawsuit from the state.

Consequences

Having voted for repeal anyway, Milton is now ineligible for three grant programs, including the state's largest capital grant program for localities. It's uncompetitive for another dozen grants.

The attorney general's office has made clear that "communities cannot avoid their obligations under the Law by foregoing this funding." Campbell said in a sharply worded, pre-vote letter to Milton that her office would bring legal action to enforce the MBTA Communities Law "without hesitation."

Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive director of Abundant Housing Massachusetts, tells Reason that there's speculation that developers could also sue non-compliant town governments should projects they propose that meet the state law standards are rejected.

The combined weight of all these potential enforcement actions is seemingly encouraging most communities to come into line. Milton is thus far the exception, and even there, the margin on its referendum was a little under 800 votes.

An uncertain road ahead

The longer-term risk is that communities will find ways to comply with the MBTA Communities Law on paper while thwarting it in practice. The zoning amendments Milton had approved, for instance, required that newly legal apartments come with parking spaces and below-market-rate units—both of which are a tax on new housing.

Kanson-Benanav suggests some towns might come into paper compliance by upzoning commercial parcels that wouldn't likely be redeveloped into housing or upzone near environmentally protected areas where development is infeasible.

"It's hard to know what's written on paper, what its impact will be in practice," he says.

In Florida, the Backlash to the Law That Allowed Too Much Housing 

Was it too good to last? That's the question that YIMBYs in Florida might be asking themselves as local governments rebel against, and state lawmakers mull reforms of, the state's year-old Live Local Act.

The law allows developers to build apartments in commercial and industrial areas, local zoning be damned, provided the new housing includes affordable units.

Because the law's affordability requirements are turning out to be pretty modest, and its density allowances are turning out to be mouth-wateringly generous, developers have made ready use of the law to build massive new high-rises that would have otherwise been prohibited by local zoning.

Now the backlash. The Tampa Bay Times reports that Pasco County threatened to sue developers trying to use the law to build apartments. Another city adopted a six-month building moratorium to block a Live Local Project.

At the state level, the Florida Senate approved a bill that weakens the Live Local Act's zoning preemptions in one respect while strengthening them in another.

S.B. 328 would allow local governments to say no to Live Local projects that are more than 150 percent taller than adjacent buildings if its near a single-family neighborhood. In applicable areas, that's a significant reduction in the law's height allowances.

On the other hand, S.B. 328 would prohibit local governments from imposing floor-area-ratio regulations on Live Local projects. That would significantly pare back localities' ability to thwart Live Local projects they don't like.

All things considered, S.B. 328 doesn't appear to be a bad trade. It's now being considered by the Florida House of Representatives.

In Virginia, Lawsuits Challenge Modest 'Missing Middle' Reform

Early last year, Arlington County, Virginia, approved a series of zoning changes that allowed up to at least four units of housing to be built in neighborhoods formerly zoned for only single-family housing.

The architects of the reforms described them as intentionally "small 'c' conservative" by only allowing a modest amount of new housing. A yearly cap on how many new duplexes, triplexes, and the like could be built made sure of that.

The cap's done nothing to mollify opponents of the missing middle reforms, who expressed heated opposition during the local legislative process and are now suing to undo the already passed reforms.

Last month, an Arlington Circuit Court Judge rejected a motion from Arlington County seeking to stop the lawsuit from going to trial later this summer. Also last month, residents in neighboring Alexandria, Virginia, sued to overturn that city's also-quite-modest ending of single-family-only zoning.

Zoning reformers might consider these lawsuits good news in a way. Middle-housing opponents lost in the democratic process, so now they have to resort to the courts.

On the other hand, local courts have recently issued some truly bizarre rulings overturning other state and city laws abolishing single-family zoning. The Arlington and Alexandria lawsuits will be an important test of whether even modest missing middle reforms can stick.

Quick Links

• California's zoomer socialist lawmaker, Assemblymember Alex Lee (D–Milpitas), has introduced a bill that would ban corporations from purchasing and renting out single-family homes. Studies suggest such bans mostly work to exclude renters from living in more expensive single-family neighborhoods where they could afford to rent but can't afford to buy.
• Earlier this year, Rent Free covered the case of Vanie Mangal, who was stuck with an abusive, non-paying tenant for close to four years because of eviction moratoriums and New York's dysfunctional housing court system. Real Deal reports that Mangal is at last rid of her tenant (who trashed the place before she left).
• A Washington bill capping annual rent increases at seven percent statewide has passed the state House of Representatives. It will now be considered by the state Senate.
• A proposed Illinois bill would lift the state's preemption on local governments adopting rent control policies.
• "The most magical place on Earth's" plan to build a 1,400-unit affordable housing project is failing to enchant neighboring residents.
• The "year of the granny flat" is picking up steam. The Rhode Island House of Representatives passed a bill last week that will allow homeowners to build accessory dwelling units within the footprint of their existing home and on large lot single-family properties. It's a pretty modest ADU reform, all things considered.
• Is exclusionary zoning unconstitutional? Yes, say George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin and University of Wisconsin Law School professor Joshua Braver in a new article.
• The Federation of American Scientists argues the federal government should require localities to liberalize their zoning codes in order to receive federal highway funds.
• The Boston Globe has a new article on the perilous politics of zoning reform in Boston.

The post Good Times, Bad Times: Eviction Edition appeared first on Reason.com.