💬 Quoted: “This new online system is brilliant.”

Your key to traveling the real world can now be secured in the digital world. The State Department’s recent pilot program for online passport renewals has proven so successful, the agency is increasing the number of applications it accepts each day, officials told the Washington Post this week.

• Since mid-June, the agency has successfully processed 175,000 Americans’ passport applications using the online portal.
• US officials say they expect that figure to eventually reach 5+ million/year – though they haven’t revealed when the program will exit beta-testing and become a permanent feature.
• The State Department’s online renewal program takes about 15 minutes to complete – but the processing time is the same as all other US passport applications, ranging from six to eight weeks.

🌐📲 Stat of the Day: If Uncle Sam were on a family plan, he’d be the one member who causes everyone to hit their data cap three days into the month. The US used a record 100+ trillion megabytes of wireless data in 2023, representing a 26% increase over the previous year (the highest annual jump on record), according to a new industry survey.

🤔 Did You Know? The youngest person ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest was 13 years old, while the oldest person to do so was 80 years old.

📰 Worth a Read: Medieval theology has an old take on a new problem − AI responsibility → (The Conversation)