whoever57 writes: A blind person with a guide dog was denied rides and harassed because of her guide dog. She sued Uber, which tried to blame its contractors and deny liability. However, an arbitrator has rejected that argument and found the company liable, awarding the blind passenger $1.1 million. The arbitrator found that Uber staffers coached drivers on how to deny rides to disabled passengers without it appearing to be a violation of the law. The staffers also advocated to keep problematic drivers on the platform.

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A group of scientists from MIT have equipped a robot with a wrist-mounted camera and an RF reader to help it find hidden objects. "As long an item has an RF tag on it, the robot can find it, even if it's hidden behind things like wrapping paper," reports Engadget. From the report: The team told MIT News the most challenging aspect of developing RF Grasp was integrating both sight and RF vision into its decision-making process. They compare the current system to how you might react to a sound in the distance by turning your head to pinpoint its source. RF Grasp will initially use its RF reader to find tagged objects, but the closer it gets to something, the more it depends on the information it collects through its camera to make a decision. Compared to a robot with only a visual system, RF Grasp can locate and pick up an object in about half as many total movements. It also has the unique ability to clean up and declutter its working space as it goes about its tasks. The team sees RF Grasp helping companies like Amazon further automate and streamline their warehouses. "Perception and picking are two roadblocks in the industry today," said Associate Professor Alberto Rodriguez, one of the researchers who worked on the project.

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CNN has an exclusive look at the supersonic presidential jet currently being developed by a California startup and U.S Air Force. From the report: It's a 31-passenger derivative of Exosonic's 70-passenger commercial airliner concept and is the ultimate in business jets -- luxury leather, oak and quartz fittings, private suites for work and rest, and all at cruise times twice that of existing aircraft. The functions of presidential craft varies according to need, but this plane might primarily be used as Air Force Two, which is the call sign for jets carrying the US vice president. The first of two private suites is the three-passenger meeting room, with secure video teleconferencing so distinguished visitors can work, go online, or address the press. The rotatable seats are leather with wooden shells and the video monitor is capable of being stored in a rolled position so there is space on the credenza sideboard for food platters or presentation equipment. The second eight-passenger suite has lie-flat seats and adjustable table heights and it's where senior staffers can work collaboratively and rest. Then there's the main cabin with 20 business-class seats, plus two galleys, two lavatories and plenty of stowage space. Following the trend in modern aircraft design, the seatbacks have spaces for holding personal electronic devices rather than traditional seat-back monitors. Exosonic's plane boasts a 5,000-nautical-mile range and, thanks to boom-softening techniques, it should be able to fly overland at almost twice the speed of sound without upsetting residents down below. Tie tells CNN that the company expects its supersonic plane to be flying by the mid-2030s.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: More details have emerged about the climate and energy priorities of President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan, and they include support for nuclear power and carbon capture with sequestration (CCS). In a press conference yesterday with reporters, White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy said the administration would seek to implement a clean energy standard that would encourage utilities to use greener power sources. She added that both nuclear and CCS would be included in the administration's desired portfolio. The clean energy standard adds a climate dimension to the Biden administration's recently announced infrastructure plan, seeking to put the US on a path to eliminating carbon pollution. "We think a CES is appropriate and advisable, and we think the industry itself sees it as one of the most flexible and most effective tools," McCarthy told reporters. "The CES is going to be fairly robust and it is going to be inclusive." McCarthy did not provide details about how far a CES would go in supporting nuclear power. It's possible that the policy may only cover plants that are currently operating, but it may also extend to include new plants. The former is more likely than the latter, though, given the challenges and costs involved in building new nuclear capacity. CCS is another technology mentioned, which involves capturing carbon dioxide from power plant exhaust streams and sequestering it underground. "The technology has been condemned for prolonging reliance on fossil fuels, and no commercial power plant in the US currently uses CCS," notes Ars. McCarthy added that they aren't ruling out a carbon tax or fee to get to net-zero.

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Nearly a third of people who have been in hospital suffering from Covid-19 are readmitted for further treatment within four months of being discharged, and one in eight of patients dies in the same period, doctors have found. From a report: The striking long-term impact of the disease has prompted doctors to call for ongoing tests and monitoring of former coronavirus patients to detect early signs of organ damage and other complications caused by the virus. While Covid is widely known to cause serious respiratory problems, the virus can also infect and damage other organs such as the heart, liver and kidneys. Researchers at University College London, the Office for National Statistics, and the University of Leicester, compared medical records of nearly 48,000 people who had had hospital treatment for Covid and had been discharged by 31 August 2020, with records from a matched control group of people in the general population. The records were used to track rates of readmission, of deaths, and of diagnoses for a range of respiratory, heart, kidney, liver and metabolic diseases, such as diabetes. After an average follow-up time of 140 days, nearly a third of the Covid patients who had been discharged from hospital had been readmitted and about one in eight had died, rates considerably higher than seen in the control group. "This is a concern and we need to take it seriously," said Dr Amitava Banerjee, at the Institute of Health Informatics at University College London. "We show conclusively here that this is very far from a benign illness. We need to monitor post-Covid patients so we can pick up organ impairment early on."

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French Deliveroo customers who received fake bills for hundreds of euros' worth of pizza have failed to see the funny side of the April Fools' joke. The BBC reports: On April 1, thousands of customers of the delivery platform across France got confirmation emails for orders totaling over $530. Many took to social media to express anger at the stunt. Late on Thursday Deliveroo informed its customers via Twitter and email that it had not been serious. "We confirm that it was an April Fool's joke," the clarification read. "You can enjoy the evening by ordering the pizza of your choice." But few customers were amused. One of them said he had "almost had a stroke" after receiving a 466-euro invoice for 38 pizzas that he had never ordered. Many recipients said they panicked and tried to call their banks to block any payment.

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Physicist Isamu Akasaki, a co-winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics for inventing the world's first efficient blue light-emitting diodes, has died, Meijo University said Friday. He was 92. The Japan Times reports: Akasaki, born in Kagoshima Prefecture, graduated from Kyoto University in 1952 before working at Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., now Panasonic Corp. He started working at Nagoya University as a professor in 1981 and was later given an honorary title. In 2014, he shared the Nobel Prize with physicist Hiroshi Amano, professor at the university, and Japan-born American Shuji Nakamura, professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Akasaki, when he was a professor at Nagoya University, worked with Amano to produce gallium nitride crystals, and succeeded in 1989 in creating the world's first blue LED. Akasaki was honored in 1997 by the Japanese government with the Medal with Purple Ribbon, an honor bestowed on those who have made contributions to academic and artistic developments.

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April 2nd was "World Autism Awareness Day." This prompted Salon to ask: What would a good representation of autism in the media look like? When you talk to people who are neurodiverse, one problem they consistently identify is that even well-developed characters who seem to be on the spectrum are frequently "coded" — that is, they are given personality traits associated with autism but are never directly identified as being autistic. "I have yet to seen a portrayal in the media that feels genuine," Becca Hector, an autism and neurodiversity consultant and mentor in Colorado, told Salon via Facebook. After noting the prevalence of autistic stereotyping in media, and particularly the entertainment industry, she added that "the closest they ever got, in my opinion, is Temperance Bones from the TV show 'Bones.'" Hector praised how the character "acted" autistic and the people around her responded with a mixture of laughter and exasperation, which struck her as realistic. At the same time, Bones was "absolutely coded." Jen Elcheson, a 39-year-old autistic paraeducator and published author living in western Canada, agreed with Hector about Bones in the Facebook conversation. "Honestly, I find autistic coded characters easier to relate to in entertainment than the ones they purposely make autistic," she observed. "Because when they do it deliberately, it's usually characters laden in all the stereotypes." Although Elcheson argued the alternative was also bad. "When characters are coded not only does the greater public miss out on seeing a different depiction of an autistic that isn't a stereotype, but the autistic community once again experiences erasure."

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A potential class-action lawsuit will go forward for Apple's fragile 2016 MacBook Pro display cables. Judge Edward Davila ruled that "Apple should have known that they would fail and yet kept selling them anyhow," reports The Verge. It follows a recently-certified class action lawsuit for the MacBook Pro's infamous butterfly keyboards. From the report: "The court finds that the allegations of pre-release testing in combination with the allegations of substantial customer complaints are sufficient to show that Apple had exclusive knowledge of the alleged defect," the judge wrote. [The issue is] sometimes called the "stage light" issue because of how the cable damage would produce those dark spots. Part of the flexgate controversy is around how Apple addressed the issue when it first got publicity in late 2018 -- first by silently swapping a new, slightly longer cable into newer MacBooks, and only opening up one of its typical free repair programs months after 15,000 users signed a petition and it was called out in the press. The company's been a lot more responsive with issues ever since, such as with this free battery replacement program for a small number of those 2016 and 2017 MacBook Pro laptops that won't charge anymore. Unlike the butterfly keyboard suit, the flexgate one doesn't appear to be a certified class-action lawsuit yet -- but there are now nine different plaintiffs lined up in this single case, and the judge is inviting them to submit a new amended complaint.

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The Council of the German city of Dortmund has announced that it's embracing free and open-source software, wherever possible. The Document Foundation reports: The Dortmund Council has declared digitalisation to be a political leadership task in its Memorandum 2020 to 2025. In the course of this, two central resolutions for free software were passed on February 11, 2021, for which the minutes were published on March 30: - "Use of open source software where possible." - "Software developed by the administration or commissioned for development is made available to the general public." With this resolution, city policy takes on the shaping of municipal digital sovereignty and digital participation. The resolution means a reversal of the burden of proof in favor of open source software -- and at the expense of proprietary software. In the future, the administration will have to justify why open source software cannot be used for every proprietary software application. Based on the report of the Dortmund city administration on the investigation of the potentials of free software and open standards, open source software is understood in the sense of free software.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Cable company WideOpenWest (which markets itself as WOW!) yesterday told customers that it is imposing a data cap and explained the change with a pizza analogy that would seem more appropriate for a kindergarten classroom than for an email informing Internet users of new, artificial limits on their data usage. The email said WOW is "introducing a monthly data usage plan for your Internet service on June 1, 2021" and described the system as follows: "What's a monthly data usage plan? Let us illustrate ... Imagine that the WOW! network is a pizza. Piping hot. Toppings galore. Every WOW! customer gets their own slice of pizza, but the size of their slice is dependent on their Internet service plan. While customers who subscribe to 1 Gig get the largest slices, those with Internet 500 get a slightly smaller piece, and so on. But, it's all the same delicious, high-speed pizza that you know and love. Now, say you're not full after your slice and you grab another. That extra slice is like a data overage. Don't worry -- we got extra pizza... umm, data... just in case. If you exceed your data allowance, we'll automatically apply increments of 50GB for $10 to your account for the remainder of the current calendar month. Total overage charges will not exceed $50 per billing statement no matter how much data you use. Even better -- the first time you experience a data overage, we'll proactively waive fees." The email did not mention that, unlike pizza, Internet data doesn't run out and that there is plenty for everyone as long as a network is properly constructed and provisioned. And despite paragraphs of comparing data to pizza, the email literally never says how much data customers will be allowed to use before they are charged extra. The answer is in a newly updated "network management practices" document that says the monthly cap will range from 1TB to 3TB: the 50Mbps download plan gets 1TB, plans between 100 and 300Mbps download speeds get 1.5TB, the 500 and 600Mbps plans get 2.5TB, and the gigabit plan gets 3TB. WOW has over 800,000 internet customers in parts of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, and Tennessee. In a separate document, WOW says that "[u]nlimited data plans may be added for an additional monthly charge" but doesn't say how much it will cost. It's apparently not a bad April Fools' Day joke, either. People in the DSLReports forum have reportedly confirmed the changes with a WOW representative.

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New submitter v1 writes: "Governor Ron DeSantis issued an executive order Friday forbidding local governments and businesses from requiring proof of a COVID-19 vaccine," reports WTXL-TV. In addition to local businesses and governments, this move is certain to rub the restarting cruise ship businesses the wrong way. Let the lawsuits begin! The executive order reads, in part: "No Florida government entity, or its subdivisions, agents, or assigns, shall be permitted to issue vaccine passports, vaccine passes, or other standardized documentation for the purpose of certifying an individual's COVID-19 vaccination status to a third party, or otherwise publish or share any individual's COVID-19 vaccination record or similar health information." The full executive order can be found here (PDF)

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Both monsters have grown in size over the years, and they reach new heights in Godzilla vs. Kong. But could they ever exist in real life? From a report: The last time the pair squared off, in the 1962 Japanese stop-motion release King Kong vs. Godzilla, Kong was 148 feet tall, compared to just 25ft tall in Peter Jackson's 2005 film King Kong, according to online estimates. In 2017's Kong: Skull Island, the great primate was around 104ft; almost four times smaller than the current iteration of Godzilla, who clocks in at 393ft. While the skeletons of Kong's parents in Skull Island suggest 100ft is roughly their species' genetic limit, the producers of the series have retconned the franchise by explaining that Kong is an adolescent in that film, leaving room for him to grow into a worthy opponent for Godzilla some 40 years down the movie timeline. Scaling up Kong to match Godzilla makes sense. It would be a short film if Godzilla stomped the big ape to death in the opening minutes. But how does that explain Godzilla's own growth spurt from 328ft in 2014 to 393ft today? And, crucially, is any of this based in science? There are some things the films get right. James Rosindell from the faculty of natural sciences at Imperial College London points to a theory called 'Cope's Rule' which holds that evolution will increase a species body size over time. "[Being larger] gives competitive advantages and is often naturally selected for," he explains. However, larger creatures need more food and typically reproduce at a slower rate, meaning few individuals can be supported by any one ecosystem. So Kong and Godzilla being the last of their species -- and Kong slowly maturing over 40 years -- fits the science. But that's about the only thing that holds together. It turns out that Godzilla and Kong's biggest foe may not be each other, but physics. Specifically, the laws of gravity and biomechanics. The largest animal alive today, the blue whale, is found in our oceans. "The size limit of aquatic animals is closely tied to the ability to eat enough food to sustain their chonky bodies," explains David Labonte, a researcher in the department of bioengineering, also at Imperial College. Labonte has a specific interest in the interaction between physical laws and body size. For example, why there are no climbing animals heavier than geckos that can cling upside down to smooth surfaces? When it comes to the blue whale, Labonte explains that their large mouths and a technique known as 'lunge feeding' enables them to obtain enough food to sustain their bodies. This has allowed some blue whales to grow up to 180 tonnes (Kong was around 158 tonnes in his last film). An aquatic environment bestows other advantages, namely, buoyancy. Having its weight suspended in water is one of the key reasons why the blue whale is able to grow so large. It's also the reason that when whales beach, the most common cause of death is internal damage from the weight of their own bodies. Gravity, then, is a problem our terrestrial animals are yet to overcome. It's the reason our largest land animal, the African elephant tips the scales at a relatively puny six tonnes.

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In an interview, San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly addressed Silicon Valley heavyweights like Elon Musk and others who have bemoaned California's COVID-19 restrictions and taxes and said they're taking their ball and moving to places like Miami or Brownsville, Texas, or the 140-square-foot Hawaiian island they own. Daly said: I've been working at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco since 1996 and when I arrived in 1996 there was a series of books written that said Silicon Valley was dead, it was over. People were going to move to Austin, Texas, and Portland, Oregon, and Boston and that was going to be the end of Silicon Valley. It had reached its peak and it was on the demise. Of course, it didn't happen. What happens is that absolutely tech firms move to other parts of the country, they relocate, and some of it is the business climate that they cite, some of it is that it's easier to get a workforce if you spread it around the United States than if you're all in one area. That concentration does raise housing values, and housing prices because people want to live here. All of these things are true and yet year after year, decade after decade, you see Silicon Valley robustly continuing to grow and continuing to thrive.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its domestic travel guidance for fully vaccinated people, lifting certain testing and self-quarantine requirements and recommending precautions like wearing a mask and avoiding crowds. But health officials continue to discourage nonessential travel, citing a sustained rise in cases and hospitalizations. From a report: The CDC updated its website on Friday to reflect the latest scientific evidence, writing that "people who are fully vaccinated with an FDA-authorized vaccine can travel safely within the United States." The announcement comes less than a month after the CDC first released updated guidance about gatherings for fully vaccinated people, which it described as a "first step" toward returning to everyday activities. The CDC considers someone fully vaccinated two weeks after they receive the last dose of vaccine. Those individuals will no longer need to get tested before or after travel unless their destination requires it, and do not need to self-quarantine upon return. The new guidance means, for example, that fully vaccinated grandparents can fly to visit their healthy grandkids without getting a COVID-19 test or self-quarantining as long as they follow other recommended measures while traveling, according to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.

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Waymo Chief Executive John Krafcik is leaving the company after more than five years [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], bringing an end to the former auto executive's leadership of Google parent Alphabet driverless car effort. From a report: The company said Friday that it is promoting its chief technology and operating officers, Dmitri Dolgov and Tekedra Mawakana, to lead a decade-old effort to make self-driving cars a reality. They will share the title of co-chief executive. Under Mr. Krafcik, Waymo broadened its business beyond years of mapping roads and designing software to begin running robotaxis around a segment of Phoenix. He also led Waymo's conversion into an independent subsidiary of Alphabet and raised an external investment round of $3.25 billion. In a blog post, Mr. Krafcik said he will serve as an adviser to Waymo, adding that "Dmitri and Tekedra have my full confidence and support."

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In major international tests, the physics-defying EmDrive has failed to produce the amount of thrust proponents were expecting. In fact, in one test at Germany's Dresden University, it didn't produce any thrust at all. Is this the end of the line for EmDrive? Popular Mechanics: The crux of the EmDrive is if you bounce microwaves around inside the tube, they exert more force in one direction than the other, creating a net thrust without the need for any propellant. And when NASA and a team at Xi'an in China tried this, they actually got a small-but-distinct net force. Now, however, physicists at the Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden) are saying those promising results showing thrust were all false positives that are explained by outside forces. The scientists recently presented their findings in three papers at Space Propulsion Conference 2020 +1, with titles like "High-Accuracy Thrust Measurements of the EmDrive and Elimination of False-Positive Effects." (Other two studies here and here) Using a new measuring scale and different suspension points of the same engine, the TU Dresden scientists "were able to reproduce apparent thrust forces similar to those measured by the NASA team, but also to make them disappear by means of a point suspension," researcher Martin Tajmar told the German site GreWi. The verdict: "When power flows into the EmDrive, the engine warms up. This also causes the fastening elements on the scale to warp, causing the scale to move to a new zero point. We were able to prevent that in an improved structure. Our measurements refute all EmDrive claims by at least 3 orders of magnitude."

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US chipmaker AMD advised customers last week to disable a new performance feature if they plan to use CPUs for sensitive operations, as this feature is vulnerable to Spectre-like side-channel attacks. From a report: Called Predictive Store Forwarding (PSF), this feature was added to AMD CPUs part of the company's Zen 3 core architecture, a processor series dedicated to gaming and high-performance computing, which launched in November 2020. The feature implements a technique called speculative execution, which works by running multiple alternative CPU operations in advance to make results available faster, and then discarding "predicted" data once deemed unneeded.

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A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected New York City's effort to hold five major oil companies liable to help pay the costs of addressing harm caused by global warming. schwit1 shares a report: Ruling in favor of BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions should be addressed under federal law and international treaties. It rejected the city's efforts to sue under state nuisance law for damages caused by the companies' "admittedly legal" production and sale of fossil fuels, and said the city's federal common law claims were displaced by the federal Clean Air Act. "Global warming presents a uniquely international problem of national concern," Circuit Judge Richard Sullivan wrote for a three-judge panel. "It is therefore not well-suited to the application of state law." Sullivan added that while the Clean Air Act did not address emissions from outside the country, foreign policy concerns and the risk of courts "stepping on the toes of the political branches" barred the city's lawsuit.

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The H-1B visa ban introduced by President Donald Trump last year expired on Wednesday, with President Joe Biden allowing the rules to come to an end. From a report: In an update on Thursday, the US Department of State said visa applicants who were previously refused due to Trump's freeze may reapply by submitting a new application. Visa applicants who have not yet been interviewed will have their applications prioritized and processed under the State Department's phased resumption plan. The Trump administration in June 2020 stopped the government issuing H-1B visas through an an executive order linked to the coronavirus pandemic. In October, Trump then placed new restrictions on H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers -- rules that were struck down by a federal judge in December who said the administration failed to show "good cause" for issuing the rules on an emergency basis. Bloomberg adds: Biden's decision will please business groups from Silicon Valley giants to India's IT services leaders, which had pressured the administration to lift the ban ever since the new president took office. Executives have grown frustrated that the directive was not immediately revoked, arguing it hurt U.S. companies. American tech firms, from Facebook to Google, rely on foreign talent to shore up domestic workforces. Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services traditionally dispatch Indian software engineers to work in tandem with their American clients, which include some of the largest Wall Street banks and technology corporations. It remains unclear whether Biden will ease visa restrictions in general, reversing curbs imposed by the former Trump administration.

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