Month: May 2018

A Trip To The ER With Your Phone May Mean Injury Lawyer Ads For Weeks | Ars Technica

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With digital traps in hospitals, there’s no need for personal injury lawyers to chase ambulances these days. Law firms are using geofencing in hospital emergency rooms to target advertisements to patients’ mobile devices as they seek medical care, according to Philadelphia public radio station WHYY. Geofencing can essentially create a digital perimeter around certain locations and target location-aware devices within the borders of those locations. Patients who unwittingly jump that digital fence may see targeted ads for more than a month, and on multiple devices, the outlet notes. While the…

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FBI Urges Everyone To Reboot All Routers Immediately | Digital Trends

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Following reports that a type of malware has infected more than 500,000 routers used in homes and small businesses in more than 50 countries, the FBI is urging all consumers to reboot their routers. The VPNFilter malware was discovered by Cisco’s security researchers and affects routers made by Linksys, Mikrotik, Netgear, QNAP, and TP-Link. The U.S. Department of Justice said the authors of the VPNFilter were part of the Sofacy group that answered directly to the Russian government, Reuters reported, and that Ukraine was the likely target of the attack. “The VPNFilter…

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Fiat Chrysler Warns 5.3M Owners In Canada And U.S.: Don’t Use The Cruise | CTV News

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DETROIT — Fiat Chrysler is recalling more than 5.3 million vehicles in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere because in rare but terrifying circumstances, drivers may not be able to turn off the cruise control. The company is warning owners not to use cruise control until the cars, SUVs and trucks can be fixed with a software update. Fiat Chrysler says the condition can occur if the cruise control accelerates at the same time an electrical short-circuit happens. But the brakes are designed to overpower the engine and the vehicles could…

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Driving An EV Means Changing The Way You Think About “Refueling” | Engadget

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You’ve finally taken the EV plunge. You’re “one of the good ones,” you think to yourself. It’s all about reducing your impact on the planet and moving further away from fossil fuels. Here’s to a cleaner, brighter tomorrow and maybe saving a few bucks on gas. Then you pull up to your first charging station and you realize that shiny future is kind of a pain in the ass. At least initially. Unlike your local gas station where you pull up, swipe your credit card and fill your tank, some…

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Electric Car Adoption Is Slowed Down By ‘Dismissive And Deceptive Car Dealerships’, Finds New Study | Electrek

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In the US, a study found that the electric vehicle shopping experience at car dealers is quite poor and a problem for EV adoption. Now, a new study finds a similar problem in Europe where “dismissive and deceptive car dealerships create barriers to electric vehicle adoption at the point of sale.” That’s the actual title of the research paper published in the Nature Energy science magazine by researchers from Aarhus University, Denmark and the University of Sussex. The study is based on “126 shopping experiences at 82 car dealerships across Denmark, Finland,…

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Utilities, Tesla Appeal Federal Rollback Of Auto Emissions Standards | Ars Technica

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A coalition of utilities and electric vehicle makers, including Tesla, filed a petition with a US Federal Appeals Court to force the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reconsider its recent work to roll back auto emissions standards. One of the first actions that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt took when he assumed office in 2017 was to start the process of rolling back passenger vehicle greenhouse gas standards for automakers. The standards had been made official late in the Obama presidency, but the Trump administration claimed that the standards were too burdensome…

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Google’s Selfish Ledger Ideas Can Be Found In Its Patent Applications – The Verge

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I trust by now we’ve all seen and been at least a little disturbed by The Selfish Ledger, the nearly 9-minute-long concept video from inside Google’s “moonshot factory” X labs. In the wake of it becoming public this week, Google quickly disavowed the video, claiming it was just a thought experiment “not related to any current or future products.” And yet, the company’s patent applications exhibit a mode of thinking that runs at least in parallel, if not on the exact same tracks, as The Selfish Ledger’s total data collection…

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Chinese School Uses Facial Recognition To Make Kids Pay Attention | Engadget

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Civilian surveillance in China has seen a boom in recent times, with facial recognition leading the charge in the technologies used to keep tabs on the population. Police are scanning travelers with facial recognition glasses, authorities are using the tech to monitor ethnic minorities — now the Orwellian technology has a new target: kids. According to government-run Chinese website Hangzhou.com, a school has installed facial recognition technology to monitor how attentive students are in class. Three cameras have been installed above a blackboard at Hangzhou Number 11 High School in…

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Energy Jobs Reports Say Solar Dominates Coal, But Wind Is The Real Winner | Ars Technica

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Two updated energy jobs reports have been released, and they paint a picture of how the last year has affected different energy sectors. The news is good for wind and natural gas. The news is less good for solar and coal. The first report, called the US Energy and Employment Report (USEER), comes from the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO), and it looks at energy jobs across the US in all sectors of the industry. The second comes from the Solar Foundation, a pro-solar association that tracks jobs with a…

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Canadians Could Pay Over $1,000 For Gas This Summer – National | Globalnews.ca

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Gas prices in Canada are approaching record highs and could remain there through much for the summer. With oil prices climbing, drivers from coast to coast are likely in for the priciest driving season in four years, according to analysts. The national average gas price is currently hovering around $1.34 a litre, up from around $1.09 a litre this time last year, said Dan McTeague, senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy. And there are few signs that the pain at the pump will ease off as the spring turns into summer. Gas prices…

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