What To Do About the Water Crisis That We Are All In

There is nothing more important in our world than water. However, our world, with us in it, is currently in a serious water crisis which has elicited all sorts of debates and discussions as to how we can better manage our water supplies and sources. Or whether we will be able to continue to sustain life as we know it without the water that we have become accustomed to. It is a topical issue and one that needs to be openly discussed to make more people aware of the situation and the possible solutions.

This article looks at the source or reasons for the water crisis and details a few ideas and insights that can be used to affect water scarcity positively.

Why we’re in a water crisis

Across the world, about 785 million people don’t have access to clean drinking water. Still, even those who do have access to clean drinking water are beginning to experience a reduction in water quality and a dwindling of available water supplies. In the USA, the number of people who don’t have easy access to clean drinking water is about 2.2 million, and about 44 million have inadequate water systems, which in the year 2023 is a disgrace. Therefore, something needs to be done, and the argument herein is that we can all do something positive to make a difference in the current crisis.

Americans face this water crisis for a number of reasons:-

Climate change:- the change in the seasons over time and the fluctuation of the usual and expected rainfall have affected the total amount of water available.

Increase in high water use in agriculture and industry:- agriculture that is water-intensive to produce out-of-season fruit and vegetables, as well as in industries that use a huge amount of water, such as data centers and cooling systems for EV battery production.

Exhaustion of ground water:- The increase in housebuilding and homes that need to be plumbed and tapped water has exhausted the available groundwater.

Poor maintenance of existing water systems:- There has been a poor level of maintenance of municipal water systems and water sources.

Know where your water comes from

Knowing where the water comes from is one of the best pieces of advice for those who want to make conscious and competent decisions about their water usage, whether business or home use. The fact that we drink it and use it for cooking or to make food products means that knowing where it comes from is in our own best interest. Knowing where your water comes from will allow you to be able to get involved in its maintenance as well as being able to diversify these sources.

The same should go for businesses, and regardless if it is not for human consumption and if it’s not treated, the use of water, where it comes from, and how it is returned to the water cycle must all be considerations that are made. It’s a means to develop your green business credentials.

Maintain local water supplies

Maintaining your local water supplies may seem like something that the municipalities and state governments will do. However, knowing what needs to be done to maintain good water or how your runoff can affect groundwater is important. Click here to learn more about how well water can be maintained and its importance.

Maintaining water at a local level is everyone’s responsibility. It will entail how grey water is dealt with as well as limiting paved areas to reduce unnatural runoff.

Watch water usage

Understanding what you use water for and then knowing how much you use is the start of a mindful way to use water going forward. Unless you know how much water you use, you won’t be able to make any adjustments or critique the usage itself and determine whether you need to make any changes.

You can easily read your water bill to see usage or keep a pad and track the numbers on top of your water meter. Then simply calculate exactly how much water you use every month. This will allow you to adjust the usage downwards and also see if our usage is with the tolerance of the amounts of water used by others. Leaks can also be more easily identified if you understand how much water you normally use.

Adjust your buying decisions

Its easy to be nonchalant about water as long as you can access yours or buy sufficient drinking water whenever you need it. However, if you want to be mindful and make the right kind of impact on our water supplies then you may need to adjust some buying decisions. Only buy fruit that is in season, no imported avocados, and avoid products that overuse water in their production or manufacture. You will have to do some further reading about the fruit and vegetables that use too much water and those that have been imported from places that use too much water. It’s a global problem, so your research needs to be detailed enough to understand where your food comes from and how much water it requires to produce it.

Takeaways

Everyoneis all in this together and face a water crisis that involves scarcity, the reduction in water quality and an overall reduction in the amount of water available to us. The first step is to understand this water crisis, and why it is happening, and then to be clear as to what it is that you can do as an individual household or a business to make a positive contribution to this situation. Lastly, you may find it strange that as an individual, you can make decisions that can affect water provision and availability for others and question your own local water providers as to what’s in the water you drink and use in your home, but you can, so follow up with more research and question your local governing bodies about it, and make your neighbors aware as well. People can make come together to make a difference and call for change.

Image credit: Gyan Shahane via Unsplash

Workers at trading card marketplace TCGplayer form eBay's first union

The workers at eBay-owned TCGplayer, a marketplace for trading card games such as Magic: The Gathering, have voted in favor of joining a union. eBay purchased the company in 2022 for a deal valued up to $295 million, but the website continues to operate independently. Now that all 272 non-supervisory workers at the company's authentication center in Syracuse, New York are represented by the Communications Workers of America, they've become the first group to form a union at eBay in the US. 

The organized workers, who are responsible for ensuring the accuracy and quality of all shipments in and out of the company, filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board back in January. They wanted to unionize in a bid to have a voice within the company, and they were also seeking pay raises to account for inflation, a fair and comprehensive sick leave and absence policy, as well as inclusive career advancement opportunities, fair and transparent hiring practices, and clearly defined job roles and expectations.

In the CWA's announcement of the union victory, it said TCGPlayer workers first tried to unionize in 2020. However, the company hired a union buster to "spread disinformation," and the workers ultimately withdrew their petition for a vote due to the pandemic. While they were successful this time around, their employer reportedly tried to get them to back down again. CWA filed an unfair labor practice charge against the company in January for illegally surveilling union activity. It filed more charges just last week, accusing the company of threatening workers for supporting unionization efforts and forcing them to attend anti-union meetings, as well. The unionized workers are still waiting for the NLRB's decision on those complaints.

Playing trading card game

Justice Department wants Sam Bankman-Fried to use a flip phone for the rest of his bail

FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried may be stuck using a dumb phone for the foreseeable future. In a letter seen by Bloomberg, prosecutors involved in his criminal case said Friday that Bankman-Fried’s lawyers had agreed to modify the terms of his bail agreement. Provided the judge overseeing the case agrees to the changes, SBF will be restricted to using a “non-smartphone” without internet connectivity. Unless a lawyer is present, he will also be forbidden from contacting current or former FTX and Alameda Research employees. Additionally, SBF won’t be able to use encrypted messaging apps, including Signal.

The proposed restrictions come after Bankman-Fried allegedly attempted to contact the general counsel of FTX’s US subsidiary over Signal at the start of the year. “I would really love to reconnect and see if there’s a way for us to have a constructive relationship, use each other as resources when possible, or at least vet things with each other,” he said in one message, according to the Justice Department.

Earlier in the week, Nishad Singh, FTX’s former director of engineering, pleaded guilty to federal fraud and conspiracy charges. Singh is the third of Bankman-Fried’s inner circle to cooperate with prosecutors in the case against him. At the end of last year, former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Zixiao "Gary" Wang pleaded guilty to fraud charges and said they would cooperate with investigators.

According to Bloomberg, District Judge Lewis Kaplan threatened to revoke Bankman-Fried’s bail and send him to jail before the start of his trial after learning that the disgraced entrepreneur may have influenced potential witnesses. Last month, Kaplan also banned Bankman-Fried from using a virtual private network (VPN) after his lawyers said he used one to watch a football game. According to Reuters, Kaplan said he did not want SBF "loose in this garden of electronic devices.”

Under the modified bail agreement, SBF would be allowed to use a laptop to surf the web, but his access would be filtered through a VPN that would limit him to two categories of websites. One category would include resources his defense team says are critical to his case. The other features a list of 23 websites SBF could use to order food, read the news and watch streaming content. No word yet if the proposed restrictions would limit him from playing League of Legends. 

Former FTX Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried, who faces fraud charges over the collapse of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, arrives to the Manhattan federal court in New York City, U.S. February 16, 2023. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz     TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Google workers in Japan have joined a labor union in response to planned layoffs

Dozens of Google Japan employees have organized under the Tokyo Managers' Union. It's the first labor union at Google Japan, according to Meiji University Assistant Professor Ken Yamazaki, who also posted a copy of the group's statements from a press conference. Apparently, the employees chose to organize out of fear that they could be abruptly laid off, especially since some of them are in Japan on work visas. 

Their concerns stemmed from the tech giant's announcement back in January that it's cutting 12,000 jobs — that's six percent of the company's overall workforce — around the world. They said their counterparts in the US were terminated with just an email sent in the middle of the night, and that the Japanese office's employees were left anxiously awaiting for the ax to fall over the past few weeks. The workers said they joined a labor union in response to that announcement and to news about the fate of the company's employees in other countries. 

For a dismissal to be legal in Japan, a company has to prove that it has reasonable grounds to terminate an employee. However, some companies terminate employees without good reason by claiming to have problems with the worker. The group is hoping that joining a union would protect them from sudden termination. In the US, one of the divisions most affected by the job cuts was the company's Area 120 in-house incubator, which works on experimental apps and products. The division used to develop 20 projects simultaneously, but that's now down to three after most people in the team lost their jobs.

When Google announced it was going to let 12,000 workers go, Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said he was "deeply sorry" and that he takes "full responsibility for the decisions that led [the company] here." He admitted that the tech giant went on a hiring spree over the last few years, but that Google "hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today." According to the company's latest earnings report, its revenue for the fourth quarter of 2022 grew one percent from the year before, but its quarterly net income was down 34 percent year-over-year. 

TOKYO, JAPAN - 2021/10/15: Google Japan Head Office in Shibuya Stream Building at night. (Photo by Stanislav Kogiku/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Tesla workers accuse Twitter of hiding their union account from search results

Tesla workers at the company's Buffalo Gigafactory have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) accusing Twitter of "shadowbanning" their newly made union account, according to Vice News. The group announced their intention to unionize on February 14th — they even posted a public statement on Twitter about "seeking a voice on the job." However, the group's tweets stopped appearing in search results by the next day, indicating that their account had been shadowbanned. 

"In February 2023, immediately following workers announcing a union campaign at the Tesla Gigafactory 2 facility, the above-named employer, through CEO Elon Musk and/or his agents and representatives, caused the Union's Twitter account (@united_tesla) to be shadow banned from the Twitter platform," The group said in an NLRB filing made by Workers United, the union backing the campaign. 

We've confirmed that when you do a search for "united_tesla" or "TeslaWorkersUnited," the results don't include any tweets posted by the account itself. Usually, searching for a user would surface their tweets, but when you use those search terms, you'll only see results tagging the group or mentioning their name. A group spokesperson told Vice News that they ran a shadowban test and found that their account "had been 'search suggestion banned' on the one platform [their] employer owns."

Tesla chief Elon Musk, who purchased Twitter for $44 billion last year, is known to be a staunch union critic. In 2018, he tweeted that there was nothing stopping Tesla workers from joining a union in response to someone asking about reports that the company had anti-union management. However, he also asked: "[W]hy pay union dues [and] give up stock options for nothing[?]" The NLRB ruled that the tweet violated labor laws, deeming it as a threat that employees would be giving up company-paid stock options if they unionize. It also asked Musk to delete his tweet, which he has yet to do, as Tesla is currently appealing the labor board's decision.

The workers behind this particular campaign are in charge of labeling data from Tesla's Autopilot technology. They previously told Bloomberg that they're asking the company not just for better pay, but also for better working conditions. The workers said Tesla monitors their keystrokes to determine how much time they spend on each task, and that they've had to skip bathroom breaks as a result. They also accused the company of illegally terminating employees "in retaliation for... and to discourage union activity."

In a blog post, Tesla said that was a "false allegation" and that the terminated Autopilot employees were low performers. It said the company conducts performance reviews every six months and that the affected workers didn't "demonstrate sufficient improvement" despite the feedback they received. Further, the company said that it identified the employees it was going to fire back on February 3rd, long before the group announced that they were seeking to unionize. The automaker also said that it only implements time monitoring "to calculate how long it takes to label an image," so "there is nothing to be gained by delaying bathroom breaks."

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 24: Tesla CEO Elon Musk leaves the Phillip Burton Federal Building on January 24, 2023 in San Francisco, California. Musk testified at a trial regarding a lawsuit that has investors suing Tesla and Musk over his August 2018 tweets saying he was taking Tesla private with funding that he had secured. The tweet was found to be false and cost shareholders billions of dollars when Tesla's stock price began to fluctuate wildly allegedly based on the tweet. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

FBI says it has 'contained' a cybersecurity incident on its network

The FBI is dealing with another attack on its digital infrastructure, although the severity isn't yet clear. The law enforcement agency tellsCNN it has "contained" a recent cybersecurity incident on its network. The bureau isn't commenting on the perpetrator, scope or damage, but says it's gathering "additional information."

Sources speaking to CNN claim the intruders targeted a system used to investigate child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The incident involved the high-profile New York Field Office, according to the insiders. Investigators are said to still be investigating the origins of the breach.

This isn't the first such incident in recent memory. In November 2021, an attacker compromised FBI email servers and sent thousands of messages falsely claiming recipients were victims of data breaches. The campaign tried to blame the imaginary attacks on dark web security firm operator Vinny Troia. The FBI never named a culprit, but did patch the flaw that allowed the intrusion.

This may not necessarily be a serious violation. Other campaigns, such as the 2020 Treasury breach and the SolarWinds hack, are known to have exposed sensitive email contacts for officials. Still, the data reportedly at risk makes the attack concerning, even if the impact may be relatively limited.

The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) logo is seen on a Redmi phone screen in this photo illustration in Warsaw, Poland on 23 August, 2022. (Photo by STR/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Federal prosecutors ask court to bar Sam Bankman-Fried from using Signal

US prosecutors have asked a federal court to tighten Sam Bankman-Fried’s bail conditions to prevent the disgraced entrepreneur from contacting his former colleagues. According to court documents seen by The New York Times, lawyers from the Department of Justice allege Bankman-Fried tried messaging the general counsel of FTX's US arm over Signal and email earlier this month. The communication was “suggestive of an effort to influence Witness-1's potential testimony,” the filing states. 

“I would really love to reconnect and see if there’s a way for us to have a constructive relationship, use each other as resources when possible, or at least vet things with each other,” says one message Bankman-Fried sent, according to the Justice Department. The DOJ has asked the judge overseeing Bankman-Fried’s criminal case to bar him from contacting current and former FTX employees, as well as using Signal or any other encrypted or ephemeral messaging app. Following the request, SBF’s legal team accused federal prosecutors of trying to paint their client in the “worst possible light.” They claim Bankman-Fried tried contacting the general counsel of FTX US and CEO John Ray to offer “assistance,” not to interfere with his criminal case. His lawyers also claim a Signal ban isn’t necessary since Bankman-Fried is not using the app’s auto-delete feature.

Prosecutors allege SBF’s use of Signal is consistent with “a history” of using the app to hide his dealings at FTX. Prior to FTX’s implosion in November, Bankman-Fried and former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison were reportedly part of a secret “Wirefraud” group chat on Signal. During his tenure at the exchange, SBF also allegedly directed employees to enable Signal’s disappearing messages feature.

Defense attorney Mark Cohen, pleads "not guilty" for his client Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and former CEO of crypto currency exchange FTX, at his plea hearing in Manhattan federal court in New York City, U.S., January 3, 2023 in this courtroom sketch.    REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg

CWA files unfair labor practice charge against eBay's trading card subsidiary

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) has filed an unfair labor practice charge against eBay-owned TCGplayer on behalf of workers at the trading card marketplace. The organization says TCGplayer supervisors and managers, including founder and CEO Chedy Hampson, illegally surveilled union activity in recent weeks.

Workers at TCGplayer are trying to unionze and this week, a supermajority filed for a union representation election. If they're successful, they'll form TCG Union/CWA, which will be the first union within eBay.

The CWA claims that TCGplayer higher-ups have walked the floors of the company's authentication center in Syracuse, New York. It says the supervisors and managers were taking note of employees who wore clothing or badges that identified them as supporters of the union drive. "This conduct constitutes unlawful surveillance of union activity and further created an impression of surveillance designed to interfere with, restrain and coerce employees in the exercise of their rights guaranteed by Section 7 of the National Relations Labor Act," the CWA said in a statement.

The workers renewed their attempts to form a union after eBay bought TCGplayer late last year in a deal worth up to $295 million. They previously tried to organize in 2020, but withdrew their union election petition a few days before the vote. The CWA says that TCGplayer thwarted those efforts by bringing in a union-busting firm and running "an intense anti-union campaign where workers were regularly ordered to attend captive audience meetings and disparaged by management in company communications."

Engadget has contacted TCGplayer and eBay for comment.

Cards of the pokemon card collection of Jens Ishoey Prehn and his brother Per Ishoy Nielsen are displayed in Niva, eastern Denmark on November 25, 2022. - Jens Ishoey Prehn and his brother are included in the Guinness Book of Records for their pokemon collection. They have almost 35000 different pokemon cards. - Denmark OUT (Photo by Ida Marie Odgaard / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP) / Denmark OUT (Photo by IDA MARIE ODGAARD/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images)