fpslem

With the Federal Emergency Management Agency reeling from major staffing and funding shortages amid the impact of Hurricane Helene, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) refused on Sunday to commit to reconvening the House before Election Day to aid recovery efforts. In response to a letter from President Biden urging congressional leaders back to replenish federal disaster loan funding, Johnson said during a Fox News Sunday interview that he’d only do so after the election—all but ensuring the funds will run out.

...

David Duke, former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, frequently posts videos on a website called Odysee. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones also streams his podcast, “The Alex Jones Show,” on the site. It works a lot like YouTube and attracts millions of views each month.

Anti-hate groups say the site is a hotbed of extremism where users from around the world — including promoters of U.S.-designated terrorist group the Nordic Resistance Movement, Holocaust deniers and Proud Boys supporters — use Odysee’s data storage and financial features to spread their views and raise money. Users also take advantage of the forum’s near complete lack of content moderation. The site’s CEO said he’s dedicated to keeping the company “censorship resistant.”

The site also comes with strong New England ties. Odysee was created by a now-defunct New Hampshire cryptocurrency company and began with seed money from a downtown Boston-based venture capital firm called Pillar VC, financed by a diverse constellation of local investors.

...

Bumbling US cops who raided a medical diagnostics center thinking it was a cannabis farm got a gun stuck to the powerful magnets of an MRI machine, a California lawsuit has alleged.

The owners of the facility are claiming damages against the Los Angeles Police Department for an operation their lawyers describe as "nothing short of a disorganized circus."

Their lawsuit details how a SWAT team swarmed Noho Diagnostic Center after the squad's leader persuaded a magistrate to issue a search warrant.

Officer Kenneth Franco drew on his "twelve hours of narcotics training" and discovered the facility was using more electricity than nearby stores, the lawsuit said.

"Officer Franco, therefore, concluded (the facility) was cultivating cannabis, disregarding the fact that it is a diagnostic facility utilizing an MRI machine, X-ray machine and other heavy medical equipment -- unlike the surrounding businesses selling flowers, chocolates and children's merchandise," the suit said.

...

TROY, Mich.—Despite US dominance in so many different areas of technology, we're sadly somewhat of a backwater when it comes to car headlamps. It's been this way for many decades, a result of restrictive federal vehicle regulations that get updated rarely. The latest lights to try to work their way through red tape and onto the road are active-matrix LED lamps, which can shape their beams to avoid blinding oncoming drivers.

From the 1960s, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards allowed for only sealed high- and low-beam headlamps, and as a result, automakers like Mercedes-Benz would sell cars with less capable lighting in North America than it offered to European customers.

A decade ago, this was still the case. In 2014, Audi tried unsuccessfully to bring its new laser high-beam technology to US roads. Developed in the racing crucible that is the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the laser lights illuminate much farther down the road than the high beams of the time, but in this case, the lighting tech had to satisfy both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Food and Drug Administration, which has regulatory oversight for any laser products.

The good news is that by 2019, laser high beams were finally an available option on US roads, albeit once the power got turned down to reduce their range.

...

It turns out that more technology in cars isn’t necessarily something customers want, and it’s not really improving their driving experience. We know my thoughts on the matter, but I’ll do my best to stay impartial on this latest survey from JD Power that shows most customers don’t appreciate technology in cars unless they can see a clear benefit to them.

JD Power’s 2024 U.S. Tech Experience Index Study evaluated over 81,000 drivers’ experience with “advanced vehicle technologies” in 2024 model year vehicles after 90 days of ownership, It turned out to be a pretty mixed bag when it came to what people liked using. There are a number of tech features that customers like using because they feels that it answers their needs, but at the same time there is a whole lot that don’t get used very often or are continually annoying, according to the survey.

...

It is a harrowing proposition: that in trying to control drug prices for 67 million Medicare patients now, we might inadvertently prevent the development of future drugs that could save lives. Implied, if not stated outright, is that we’re putting a cure for cancer or Alzheimer’s or some other intractable disease in jeopardy.

But we have good reasons to believe that the current policy won’t have such a trade-off any time soon. For one, pharma is hugely profitable, and these negotiated prices, while potentially chipping away at profit margins, should hardly entirely dampen the incentive to innovate, according to a couple of key studies of the industry. Two, if we are worried about future innovation, we should be focused on making it cheaper to develop drugs – and this is actually one area where AI is showing promise. By identifying the best candidates for possible treatments early in the research process, we could speed up development and continue to reduce costs — without losing out on tomorrow’s breakthroughs. ...

A Seattle police officer has been fired for making callous remarks about the death of a graduate student from India after she was struck last year by another officer's vehicle in a crosswalk.

Seattle interim police Chief Sue Rahr fired Officer Daniel Auderer on Wednesday for the comments he made in the hours after the January 2023 death of Jaahnavi Kandula, CBS affiliate KIRO-TV reported.

Rahr wrote in a departmentwide email sent Wednesday that it was her duty to uphold the high standards necessary to maintain public trust, and said Auderer's actions "have brought shame on the Seattle Police Department and our entire profession, making the job of every police officer more difficult."

Her decision came after Gino Betts Jr., the civilian director of the Office of Police Accountability, recommended that Auderer be terminated for unprofessional conduct and showing bias in recorded statements.

The office previously found Auderer's behavior was biased and unprofessional, KIRO-TV reported. Betts described the officer's words as "derogatory, disturbing and inhumane."

Mayor Bruce Harrell, in a statement issued Wednesday afternoon, said he supported Rahr's decision. He and the chief acknowledged it is likely to be appealed and lead to arbitration, and potentially affect the department's efforts to end more than a decade of federal oversight of officer accountability.

"This incident damaged the public trust we have been working to strengthen since Day One of my administration," Harrell said.

Auderer is the elected vice president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, which represents roughly 900 rank-and-file officers. An email sent to the guild from The Associated Press seeking comment was not immediately returned. "Cruel and callous"

In a disciplinary action report laying out the reasons for her decision, Rahr said in Auderer's presentation at the disciplinary hearing he acknowledged that his words were hurtful, was "horrified" to know what they meant to the young woman's family, and he wished he could bear their pain. He closed with a "heartfelt apology," the chief wrote.

As she considered this, however, she told him "your cruel and callous laughter" and the pain inflicted on Kandula's family could not be outweighed. Auderer has been an officer since 2009 and Rahr also said she received a number of letters of support for Auderer from his co-workers.

....

Description: Panel 1: A man sits inside a house at a table or desk, looking at his laptop screen while participating in a video conference call with 9 or more participants. There is a window in the background with the sun in the sky. The man holds up his hand and tells the other participants on the call, "Excuse me everyone, sorry to interrupt . . ." Panel 2: The man looks away from the laptop screen towards the open window and the sky outside. He tells the video conference participants "I have the sunshine on the other line." Panel 3: The man leaves his seat, apparently abruptly, as the chair is knocked over, while the screen is still on and shows the video call participants. The man walks towards an open door, where a backpack sits at the doorway. He looks outside as he says over his shoulder "I have to take this call." Panel 4: The man is wordlessly walking over a hill, with grasses and bushes in the foreground and trees in the background, wearing the backpack, following the sun and not looking back.

Comic by Jeremyville.

When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.

By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.

There are lots of reasons to want to shut off your car’s data collection. The Mozilla Foundation has called modern cars “surveillance machines on wheels” and ranked them worse than any other product category last year, with all 25 car brands they reviewed failing to offer adequate privacy protections.

With sensors, microphones, and cameras, cars collect way more data than needed to operate the vehicle. They also share and sell that information to third parties, something many Americans don’t realize they’re opting into when they buy these cars. Companies are quick to flaunt their privacy policies, but those amount to pages upon pages of legalese that leave even professionals stumped about what exactly car companies collect and where that information might go.

So what can they collect?

“Pretty much everything,” said Misha Rykov, a research associate at the Mozilla Foundation, who worked on the car-privacy report. “Sex-life data, biometric data, demographic, race, sexual orientation, gender — everything.” . . .