Police and prosecutors from across the country told smartphone manufacturers on Thursday that they must take steps to solve the “epidemic “of thefts involving mobile devices – and they need to do it right away. … Read More
Das Keyboard launches ‘Quiet’ mechanical keyboard for office use
Das Keyboard, one of the most popular mechanical keyboard manufacturers on the planet, has announced a new model that eliminates the iconic audible feedback they are most known for. The Model S Professional Quiet utilizes Cherry MX Red switches to produce near-silent operation suitable for office environments and the like. … Read More
‘Big Brother’ in your fridge: British National Grid eyes ‘forced’ electricity switch
The plan, dubbed by critics as “Big Brother technology,” has been backed by the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E). The EU-wide body of energy regulators, ENTSO-E has outlined it in a 63-page document sent for the European Commission approval, Mail Online reported on Sunday.Should the plan find approval in the European Parliament and become legislation, it would enable the energy giants to selectively cut power consumption in millions of homes, instead of having to deploy back-up generators and ask factories to temporarily shut down production.Under the current scheme, the National Grid may approach companies asking them to switch off some of their works, when the UK’s power transmission network is not coping with the demand. In return, compensation is paid.But there was no hint of compensation or benefits to the household device owners in the document drawn up by ENTSO-E. Also, there was apparently no way for consumers to decide, if they wanted to use the proposed scheme, as the ‘smart’ switches were to be automatically installed by device manufacturers.Reports of the plan have immediately sparked public outrage in the UK, with critics saying the energy giant are simply “passing down their incompetence to the customers.”“This is Big Brother technology on a grand scale… Consumers are not benefiting at all and will be left paying more when they buy the appliances, as well as having their private goods controlled by outside forces,” Viktor Sundberg, energy strategy manager at Electrolux, has said. At the same time, energy companies would benefit from consumers’ inconvenience by saving millions, he added.Meanwhile, the UK’s Big Brother Watch civil liberties group voiced its firm opposition to the proposal.“This sinister plan smacks of over-the-top intrusion into people’s houses. It should be the choice of consumers if they want to sign up to it, not slipped into our homes through fridges and freezers,” the group’s director Nick Pickles has said.Consumer groups throughout Europe have also expressed their “serious concern” with the issue in a letter to ENTSO-E.Nevertheless, the UK company pushing the idea was adamant the proposal was both rational and reasonable.“This should result in benefits to consumers as it will lead to a reduced requirement for additional back-up electricity sources,” a spokesman for National Grid said, speaking of “accumulated effect” of automatically switching off millions of temperature controlled devices.The company also claimed that the scheme would have no serious impact on consumers, and “no material impact on the operation of fridges and freezers,” as the devices will have to be put off just “for a few seconds and only occasionally.”A private company with multi-billion profits, the National Grid is said to be addressing the EU’s demand for having 20 per cent of all electricity generated from green sources, such as wind farms. Being dependent on weather factors, such sources increase a risk of large-scale blackouts, which the energy supplier is keen to avoid. … Read More
Death toll in Bangladesh factory collapse eclipses 300
SAVAR, Bangladesh (AP) — More than two days after their factory collapsed on them, at least some garment workers were still alive in the corpse-littered debris Friday, pinned beneath tons of mangled metal and concrete. Rescue crews struggled to save them, knowing they probably had just a few hours left to live, as desperate relatives clashed with police in their anger and grief.Amid the chaos, the cries for help and the smell of decaying bodies at the eight-story building where more than 300 died, what happened to 18-year-old Mussamat Anna passes as luck. Rescue workers cut off the garment worker’s mangled right hand to pull her free from the debris Thursday night.”First a machine fell over my hand and I was crushed under the debris. … Then the roof collapsed over me,” she told an Associated Press cameraman from a hospital bed Friday.The death toll topped 300 on Friday and it remained unclear what the final grim number would be. Military spokesman Shahin Islam told reporters that 304 bodies had been recovered.Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, who is overseeing rescue operations, said 2,200 people have been rescued. The garment manufacturers’ group said the factories in the building employed 3,122 workers, but it was not clear how many were inside it when it collapsed Wednesday in Savar, a suburb of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka.Continue Reading… … Read More
Microsoft strikes Android patent licensing deal with China’s ZTE
Microsoft has added ZTE to the growing list of manufacturers that have signed a licensing agreement with them over patents associated with Android and Chrome OS. The announcement comes hot on the heels of a similar deal with Foxconn last week and brings the total number of licensees to 20…. … Read More
Microsoft signs Android, Chrome OS patent deal with Foxconn
Hon Hai Precision Industry, commonly known as Foxconn, has joined a list of manufacturers to reach a licensing agreement with Microsoft over patents associated with Android and Chrome OS. Fine details about the arrangement are being kept under wraps for the sake of confidentiality, but it's said to be Microsoft's… … Read More
Andrew Cuomo Realizes He Mandated Gun Magazines That Don’t Exist
Two months ago, you may recall,
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo
won the race to enact new gun restrictions following the Sandy
Hook massacre, beating every other opportunistic, grandstanding
politician in the country by signing a bill that was passed so fast
legislators had no time to read it. One consequence of that
unseemly haste, I
noted a few days later, was that legislators forgot to exempt
current and retired police officers from the new rule for
magazines, which reduced the maximum number of rounds from 10 to
seven (because, as Cuomo
explained, “nobody needs 10 bullets to kill a deer”). The
ensuing outrage at the lack of a double standard revealed not only
that cops take their special rights for granted but also that they
do not believe the magazine limit—which they support for “regular
citizens”—will have any impact on criminals. Now Cuomo has
noticed another problem: Before imposing his arbitrary
ammunition limit, he did not bother to check on the availability of
seven-round magazines. It turns out “there is no such thing as a
seven-bullet magazine,” he said at a press conference yesterday.
“That doesn’t exist. So you really have no practical option.”
That’s a slight exaggeration. Seven-round magazines
do exist, just as three-wheeled cars exist, but they are not
standard. Last month the Rochester ;Democrat and
Chronicle
noted that “gun manufacturers have not had much reason to make
a magazine with fewer than 10 rounds, except for limited uses,
because no state required it until now.” Based on interviews with
gun dealers, the paper reported that “there are no manufacturers
planning to make special seven-round magazines to serve the New
York market.” The new magazine limit takes effect on April 15.
The governor’s solution: change the law so that people are once
again allowed to buy 10-round magazines but make it illegal to put
more than seven rounds in them. I swear I am not making that up; it
is already the rule for previously owned 10-round magazines, which
are legal as long as they contain seven or fewer rounds. Putting in
that eighth round is a violation punishable
by a $200 fine for the first offense and a Class B misdemeanor,
punishable by up to six months in jail, for a second offense if the
magazine stays in your home; if you walk outside with it, that
eighth round could cost you up to six months in jail for the first
offense and up to a year for the second.
Richard M. Aborn, president of the ;Citizens Crime
Commission of New York City, objects to Cuomo’s proposed
accommodation. “I think the governor and the Legislature got it
right the first time,” he
tells The New York Times. “We don’t want to have to
tell the mother of a young man who’s just been shot and killed that
he was killed with the ninth bullet.”
Stephen J. Aldstadt, president of ;the Shooters Committee on
Political Education, also perceives a flaw in Cuomo’s proposal,
which he calls “the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard.” ;But
Aldstadt’s objection is somewhat different from Aborn’s. “Any
person who is going to go commit a mass shooting like Columbine or
Sandy Hook is certainly not going to pay attention to a law
restricting magazines to seven rounds,” he said. “The only people
who would possibly obey that law are legal gun owners, and they’re
not your problem.”
As I
wrote in January:
It is implausible enough to suggest that a criminal—who by
definition has no compunction about breaking the law, who is not
legally permitted to possess firearms to begin with (if he has a
felony record), and who is highly motivated to obtain the tools of
his trade—would be deterred from obtaining a 10-round magazine by
the legislature’s new dictate, especially since plenty of them will
remain in circulation. ;It is beyond fanciful to suppose that,
having obtained a 10-round magazine, a criminal would think twice
about putting more than seven rounds in it because legislators said
he shouldn’t. ;
But this is the sort of magical thinking that passes for
reasoning among advocates of
sensible, common-sense gun control. … Read More
