Tribune News Service

“Machine learning did not advance as rapidly as (proponents) thought it would,” said Jesse Halfon, an automotive attorney.

The public-private partnership between Beam Global and the city of San Diego could be a blueprint for climate-conscious governments as they grapple with constrained budgets amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Rollout of the county’s Administrative Technologies of Marin (ATOM) project, which encompasses aspects of finance, payroll and human resources, has taken longer than expected but may realize a savings. Full implementation of its final phase is set for Jan. 8.

The 'Merced Recycles' app from the county’s Regional Waste Management Authority, educates residents on trash pickup schedules and how to handle garbage and recyclables.

Outdated technology and a lack of flexibility are among the factors that contributed to the Employment Development Department’s historic claims backlog — which is expected to be cleared by the end of January, EDD staffers told a California state Senate committee recently.

A quick read of the 52-page Proposition 24 proves impossible. In broad strokes, the 2019 consumer privacy law gave Californians the right to know what data companies collect on them, the right to get the data deleted, and the right to tell companies not to package and sell the data to other companies.

The work, which is expected to be done by March, will give an estimated 2,000 local businesses access to Ethernet speeds of up to 10Gb/sec.

Acting on an order from Gov. Gavin Newsom, the California Independent System Operator, the California Energy Commission and the Public Utilities Commission last week released a preliminary root-cause analysis into the first rolling blackouts in California since 2001.

The Employment Development Department has paid more than $93.8 billion in unemployment benefits since March and processed more than 13.6 million claims. But the volume has overwhelmed the agency, and a report last month showed that 1.6 million people were still waiting for claims to be resolved.

The system will use technology that detects, monitors and provides real-time truck parking availability using “roadside dynamic message signs, smartphone and in-cab applications and online via websites and traveler information sites.” The system will track available truck parking at 37 public rest areas and 550 parking spaces throughout the four states that make up the I-10 Corridor Coalition.

The new tool, from Virginia cybersecurity firm ID.me, is expected to reduce the percentage of new claims being flagged for manual processing verification to 10 percent and increase the speed at which new claims are paid.

Proposition 24 on the November ballot is pitched as an expansion of California's already robust consumer data privacy law, but the technology giants seemingly square in its sights — the likes of Facebook, Amazon and Google — haven't shown up to the battlefield.

Pedestrian pathways, bike-sharing facilities, bus-only lanes, charging stations for electric buses and light rail systems would all be easier for transit agencies to construct under the law.

CAL FIRE spent $8.8 million with a California-based company for technology that more precisely anticipates where a fire is heading, which can result in fewer unnecessary evacuations and a better response in firefighting.

Sacramento County will receive $3.1 million, and the city will get a reported $950,000. The University of California Regents will receive $13.1 million and California State University will receive $2.9 million from the settlement, in which the carriers denied wrongdoing.

No more than one in 1,000 callers per day have reached someone at the number the Employment Development Department has told people to call for help with their claims, leaving callers “without a statistically significant chance of being served,” according to a new report.

The program, capitalized with $787,650 in Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act funds, is aimed at providing new job skills to 40 people impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg emphasized the impact it could have on a larger scale in the city, if expanded.

With the county’s army of manual contact tracers working in the background, L.A. leaders are betting that any additional contact tracing helps — even if that help comes from a tech company whose approach to public safety has come under fire.

San Diego’s $30 million Smart Streetlights project was initially introduced to the public in 2016 as a plan to upgrade LED lights to save money and energy. They included streetlight-mounted cameras and technologically advanced sensors with the ability to turn video images of cars and people into valuable data the city could use.

“Can we get serious about the absolute disaster that is the EDD?” said state Sen. Melissa Melendez. “Millions of Californians are waiting for their state assistance and have not received anything or even spoken to real people. These kinds of actions are unacceptable.”

“Garbage in, garbage out,” said Dr. Bela Matyas, health officer for Solano County. “I have come to cynically believe that the only people who value models are modelers and politicians. People who work with disease on the streets just know how impossible it is to model what we see.”

The move, by one of the nation’s top public library systems by population served, comes as the county is still largely under COVID-19 lockdown and is aimed at addressing residents’ technology needs.

Organizations around the state are wielding a variety of newer technologies against wildland fires — valuable updates in a time of conflagrations driven in part by climate change.

The report raises concerns about how well departments will be able to break out coronavirus spending using its troubled software program, the Financial Information System for California (Fi$Cal). The program has reportedly delayed the processing of annual financial reports for departments.

For three Northern California counties, the recent spate of wildfires have forced emergency managers to experiment with alternative alert systems when their more localized systems fail to perform properly.