Latest news with #Sipes
Forbes
01-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Mozilla Thunderbird Challenges Gmail With Its Own Email Service
Thunderbird is about to evolve into a complete productivity ecosystem. In case you missed it, Mozilla Thunderbird has been enjoying a serious revival during the last few years. The venerable desktop email software has been modernized with a fresh coat of paint and new technologies under the hood, launched a long-awaited Android mobile version, and is in the early stages of developing an iPhone app. But apparently, the team is just getting warmed up. An ambitious suite of open-source web services is in development under the 'Thunderbird Pro' banner, and one of them is especially interesting: Thundermail. While the traditional Thunderbird desktop client is a great piece of software with an extensive amount of features tailored to power users, the vast majority of the world has moved on to simpler web-based email services that are accessible from any browser or smartphone. At its core, Thundermail will be a browser-based email service that functions similarly to Gmail. Users can send and receive email on the web using new Thundermail accounts they sign up for. The service will also allow using your own custom domain (e.g. Based on conversations I've had with the developers, there's at least one important quality that will distinguish Mozilla's email service from competitors like Gmail: privacy. Thundermail isn't going to use your messages to train AI, it's not going to invade your inbox with ads, and it's not going to harvest and sell your data. Thundermail is currently being tested internally, but the team stealthily launched a beta signup site at Thunderbird stealthily launched a beta waitlist at But Thundermail is only one piece of the emerging 'Thunderbird Pro' offering. Ryan Sipes, Managing Director of Product at MZLA Technologies Corporation (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation which works on all things Thunderbird) is transparent about why these services are being built. 'Thunderbird loses users each day to rich ecosystems that are both clients and services, such as Gmail and Office365,' Sipes says. 'These ecosystems have both hard vendor lock-ins (through interoperability issues with 3rd-pary clients) and soft lock-ins (through convenience and integration between their clients and services).' The endgame, according to Sipes, is to build an alternative ecosystem that is 100% open source and available to everyone. Here's a quick look at the three additional services that will eventually be packaged into Thunderbird Pro: Thunderbird Send is a spiritual successor to Firefox Send, rebuilt to allow direct and encrypted sharing of large files. Thunderbird Appointment (which is currently accepting beta signups) is a streamlined scheduling tool aiming to remove the guesswork and admin headaches from planning an event or a meeting. And finally there's Thunderbird Assist, which is, at least for now, being cautiously labeled as 'an experiment' that will allow users to take advantage of AI features within their email. However, the goal is to be lightweight enough that the language models can be run locally on a user's PC in the interest of privacy. This service is being developed in partnership with Flower AI, which leverages Nvidia's confidential compute to provide private remote processing in the event a user's PC isn't powerful enough. Sipes emphasizes that any remote processing features attached to Thunderbird Assist will always be optional, in the interest of ensuring complete user privacy. It sounds like Thundermail – and by extension the Thunderbird Pro suite – doesn't yet have a detailed monetization model. What we know for sure is that initially, Thunderbird Pro will be a paid service. Sipes explains that once there's a strong enough user base, the team will open up free tiers for each service, albeit with some limitations (perhaps fewer email addresses for Thundermail, smaller file sizes for Thunderbird Send, etc). What's crystal clear is that Thunderbird's ever-increasing donation revenue (currently its sole source of income) is allowing for some explosive growth that's long overdue. To add some context to this, Thunderbird received $2.8 million in donation revenue during 2021. Two years later, in 2023, it received $8.6 million in donations. I'm told that total financial contributions for 2024 were even higher, though the final amount hasn't been officially released. 'It is my conviction that all of this should have been a part of the Thunderbird universe a decade ago," Sipes says. 'The absence of web services from us means that our users must make compromises that are often uncomfortable ones. This is how we correct that.' Public discussion for all things Thunderbird Pro and its associated services are available via the Thunderbird mailing lists.
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mid-States Corridor survey refusals turn into court summons
DUBOIS COUNTY, Ind. (WEHT) – A long-time battle over the proposed mid-states corridor project has now become a legal battle. The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) is suing over 100 property owners after they say they refused to allow land surveyors to do their job. Huntingburg resident, and owner of Ring Farms, Dave Ring is 1 out of 121 property owners on 70 individual properties being sued by INDOT. The department claims residents unlawfully prevented land surveyors with the proposed Mid-States Corridor to access their property. 'I mean, if they'd ask permission to get on your property, that would be a whole different thing,' says Ring, 'but they don't. They didn't.' The suit says Indiana law gives INDOT the authority to survey any property and claims residents refused to grant access after attempts to call, mail letters, and visit door to door. Attorney Russ Sipes is representing roughly half of the 70 individual properties and says if INDOT wants access to properties they have to use the legal system. INDOT suing Dubois County property owners 'We expect the surveyors to be able to get on the property,' says Sipes, 'but this way they do it with a court order.' INDOT also claims surveyors feared for their safety and requested law enforcement to visit properties to inform owners of the law, but say residents refused to comply. The filing says residents 'are not entitled' to interfere with INDOT's survey process. You can read the full lawsuit in the viewer below. Addresses of defendants listed in the suit have been blacked out for privacy. INDOT-v-LC-Bar-LLC-et-al-Veri_1742994560-1Download 'To say we don't have to ask permission or we don't, that fires people up,' says Ring. 'It changes the attitude of a lot of people.' Sipes adds, 'Right now there's just a lot of concern, a lot of anger, a lot of worry. People thinking about what they thought was going to be their life and their legacy, now thinking that it's going to be a four-lane highway that they can look at when they drive down it.' A 130-acre section of Ring's three generation farm falls right in the middle of the proposed corridor. For Ring and numerous other farmers, it's not about the family history, but the livelihood they have built. 'This field right here is my plant,' explains Ring. 'Like Jasper Engines has a plant, OFS has a plant, furniture plant. You know, if you knock those plants down, you go somewhere else and you can build it. But this plant here, you cover it with asphalt, it's gone forever.' Eyewitness News reached out to INDOT for comment. A spokesperson for the department replied, saying, 'INDOT does not comment on active or pending litigation.' Mid-States Corridor survey refusals turn into court summons New Reduced Conflict Intersection is operational Lack of maintenance to blame for Princeton siren outage Century Aluminum says tariffs will move business forward Posey County EMA Director taking proactive approach to severe weather threat Eyewitness News. Everywhere you are. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CBS News
17-03-2025
- Climate
- CBS News
It's "a miracle" no one was killed in Pittsburgh St. Patrick's Day party roof collapse, contractor says
A roof collapsed in Oakland on Friday, injuring 16 people at a St. Patrick's Day Party . According to contractors, the collapse came as no surprise when they saw the viral video of people partying on it. One of the first things a contractor told KDKA-TV was that with a roof like this, people really shouldn't be on it, let alone as many as there were on Friday. The video from the 300 block of Semple Street is scary, but unfortunately not surprising to building experts. "It's actually a miracle that nobody was killed," said Chad Sipes, the owner of Sipes and Son General Contractors. He said that type of roof is commonplace for the Pittsburgh area. "We've repaired a lot of roofs, porch roofs just like that. In Pittsburgh, you'll see that porch roof probably in every single neighborhood," Sipes said over Zoom. For students hanging either on the roof or below it Friday, they say there was little to no warning it would give way. It just collapsed and ripped off the house. "I didn't hear any cracking until it happened. It was, like, instant," said Ben Dorish, who was under the roof when it went down. "No cracks were heard. Like, I didn't feel it, like, cave in or anything. It just, like, fell," said Michael Estocin, who was on the roof. Sipes said that roof is meant to hold up against wind and snow. Even current building codes are not meant to withstand what happened Friday evening. If anyone is on it, it's first responders in an emergency or a couple of people working on a house. A group of more than a dozen partying on it shouldn't be up there, according to Sipes. "Having 20, 30 people up there jumping up and down, it is not intended for that," he said. County records show the house is from 1920. A city spokesperson says there have never been any concerns about the structure in the past.
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Prescriptions for weight loss drugs are skyrocketing, especially among young women. Experts think they know why.
Starting in 2022, Haley Sipes lost 75 pounds over 10 months with diet and exercise alone. On TikTok, where the 31-year-old mother of three chronicled her weight loss journey, commenters speculated that she was using Ozempic or another weight loss drug. 'It put a bad taste in my mouth. My ego was like, 'No, I did this without it,' Sipes tells Yahoo Life. That turned her off from the idea of using medications — until she found that maintaining her new weight was even harder than reaching it. In fact, Sipes's weight was creeping back up. After diagnosing her with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), her doctor prescribed Zepbound to help with symptoms of the condition as well as maintaining a healthy weight. Since starting the medication 15 weeks ago, Sipes has shed all the weight she'd regained. The medication 'has just given me the power back,' she says. Young women like Sipes have been fueling the popularity of treatments such as Wegovy, Ozempic and Zepbound, known collectively by the scientific name glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1s). Between 2020 and 2023, the number of prescriptions for these drugs written each month for women ages 18 to 25 spiked by more than 650%, according to research published in May 2024. GLP-1s are considered safe and unprecedentedly effective aids to weight loss and associated health risks, such as type 2 diabetes. But for young women, they also carry a particular set of unknowns: How safe are they during pregnancy? Will they have to be taken for the remaining 50-plus years of someone's life? What happens if and when someone wants to get off the medications? See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. We spoke to experts researching these very questions to better understand the trend and where it may be headed. Ozempic wasn't the first-ever GLP-1 approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But by 2020, a few years after its 2017 approval, patients and doctors noticed Ozempic's desirable side effect: weight loss. Health care providers began prescribing the drug off-label to help patients shed pounds, and patients began posting about their rapid weight loss on social media, fueling Ozempic's popularity and paving the way for a slew of similar drugs. In 2020, 8,722 monthly prescriptions for GLP-1 agonists were written for adolescents between ages 12 and 17 and young adults aged 18 to 25, according to an analysis of a database that tracks about 94% of prescriptions filled at retail pharmacies. By 2023, that figure for young adults had risen nearly seven-fold to 60,567 prescriptions per month, a May 2024 study published in JAMA found. And women made up the majority of that increase. Prescriptions for women soared from 4,886 to 37,111 that year. That means women accounted for about 75% of GLP-1 prescriptions written for adults under 26 in 2023. Young adult women are more likely to be obese than young adult men, but the margin is slim. Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) 2023 data, obesity was only about 9% more common among women than among men in all age groups. Dr. Joyce Lee, a University of Michigan pediatric endocrinologist who led the research on prescription rates, says that obesity rates simply don't explain the gap between women and men taking GLP-1s. While her study looked at medications prescribed to treat type 2 diabetes as well, 'I would speculate that [the surge of prescriptions for women] would have been because of weight loss or obesity,' says Lee. 'There is a societal bias or extra burden that women take upon themselves to maintain [a certain] weight, in excess of how male individuals would be focused on that,' Lee tells Yahoo Life. There is both societal pressure for women to be a certain weight and scrutiny of how they achieve that. Weight loss drug companies have been criticized for marketing their products to plus-size influencers. And the internet loves to speculate whether a woman who loses weight has been on GLP-1s and whether using these medications is taking 'the easy way out.' Sipes questions whether it's realistic — or fair — to expect someone on a weight loss journey to be immune to societal pressure. 'Diet culture can be super toxic, but it's okay to have a little bit of pride in your appearance,' says Sipes. 'I wish I could say I don't care about what I look like in the mirror, but I don't think there's a woman alive who doesn't care about what pants size she wears,' she adds. Men perhaps face less judgment of their use of medications that may alter their looks. But they're not immune to societal pressures either, notes Lee. She says that growth hormones are a good example of this phenomenon. These treatments are crucial for people with rare hormone deficiencies. 'But they are also approved for short stature, and I can tell you that the number of boys being evaluated and treated for short stature is two-to-one compared to girls,' Lee says. Weight-related health considerations unique to young women may also drive them to take GLP-1s. PCOS, which affects 7-10% of women between 18 and 44 in the U.S., including Sipes, is one of them. Excess body weight can be both a risk factor and a result of the condition. Since starting Zepbound, which is FDA-approved to treat PCOS, Sipes has noticed her symptoms — heavy periods, cramps and inflammation — ebb. The condition can also cause insulin resistance, raising risks for type 2 diabetes. GLP-1s can help with that, too. The medications also seem to turn down the volume of 'food noise,' or intrusive thoughts about eating, including cravings and preoccupation with trying to control portions and make healthy choices. Before Sipes started taking Zepbound, 'my brain would not shut off about what am I going to eat, when am I going to eat,' she says. 'Those food thoughts had also turned into shame until I started GLP-1s because I wasn't shaming myself all day long to stop thinking about food.' Being free from food noise has given Sipes back a sense of control and freedom in her life, she says. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that by helping control weight, GLP-1s may improve fertility. They may also improve conception chances for people with PCOS, which 'can result in someone not ovulating and dealing with infertility,' Dr. Alyssa Dominguez, an endocrinologist with the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, tells Yahoo Life. 'If they do lose weight and ovulation resumes, their fertility can come back.' Experts see no signs of the upward trend slowing. In fact, the use of drugs such as Zepbound and Wegovy 'is probably going to continue to increase,' says Lee. By September of 2024, one in every 10 prescriptions written for adults was for a GLP-1, according to health care data company, Truveta. For young women, there are also questions about fertility that remain unanswered. On the one hand, GLP-1s may improve fertility, as Dominguez notes. On the other hand, patients are advised not to take the medications while pregnant or trying to conceive because animal studies suggest the drugs may raise risks for low birth weights and birth defects. As of now, Sipes has no plans to stop taking Zepbound, and says she and her doctor will cross that bridge when they come to it. Endocrinologists have cautioned that Zepbound and similar drugs are intended to be taken indefinitely. Yet, 'one of the most common misconceptions that I see is that this is a medication that is intended to be taken until an individual reaches their goal weight and then they can stop,' says Dominguez. Data suggests Wegovy and other GLP-1s are safe and effective for up to five years — but there isn't yet data on how they perform beyond that. There also aren't yet studies about the effects of "cycling on and off of the medication,' says Dominguez. Despite the high cost of GLP-1s, it's clear they're extraordinarily popular, effective and even life-changing for women like Sipes. 'It's good that there's effective therapy that people are willing to adopt,' says Lee. Obesity rates declined for the first time in a decade in 2023, and experts think it may be thanks to GLP-1s. Still, a big question remains: 'Are you band-aiding the bigger problem of what led to the obesity epidemic in this country in the first place?' notes Lee. For now, that question — how to prevent obesity in future generations — is still being researched. In the meantime, Zepbound isn't just a quick fix to keep weight off for Sipes; It's a full reset. Before starting the medication, 'I was missing a piece of the puzzle,' even when she was exercising and eating carefully, she says. Now, 'my body finally feels like I'm functioning properly. I'm walking around thinking, 'Is this how other people feel normally?'' says Sipes. 'It's very liberating. It's freedom.'
