Jason Koebler writes: A bill that would make it easier to fix your electronics is rapidly hurtling through the Washington state legislature. The bill’s ascent is fueled by Apple’s iPhone-throttling controversy, which has placed a renewed focus on the fact that our electronics have become increasingly difficult to repair. Starting in 2019, the bill would ban the sale of electronics that are designed “in such a way as to prevent reasonable diagnostic or repair functions by an independent repair provider. Preventing reasonable diagnostic or repair functions includes permanently affixing a battery in a manner that makes it difficult or impossible to remove.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Excerpt from:
Washington Bill Makes It Illegal To Sell Gadgets Without Replaceable Batteries
“I had the displeasure of being awoken at midnight to the sounds of civil-defense/air-raid sirens, ” writes very-long-time Slashdot reader SigIO, blaming “some schmuck with a twisted sense of humor.” The Dallas News reports: Rocky Vaz, director of Dallas’ Office of Emergency Management, said that all 156 of the city’s sirens were activated more than a dozen times… Dallas officials blame computer hacking for setting off emergency sirens throughout the city early Saturday… It took until about 1:20 a.m. to silence them for good because the emergency system had to be deactivated. The system remained shut down Saturday while crews safeguarded it from another hack. The city has figured out how the emergency system was compromised and is working to prevent it from happening again, he said… The city said the system should be restored Sunday or Monday. City officials reported 4, 400 calls to their 9-1-1 emergency phone number in the first four hours of Saturday morning, with over 800 occurring in that first 15 minutes when all 156 sirens started going off simultaneously. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
If we really want to get the dream of implantable electronics off the ground, we’ll need to figure out how to make circuit boards flexible enough to morph and move with our bodies. Thankfully, a team at The University of Texas at Dallas seems to have solved that , with thin film transistors that are flexible enough to wrap around a nerve or blood vessel. Read more…
BREAKING: Effective 5:00 PM ET, Time Warner Cable has dropped CBS in NYC, Los Angeles, Dallas and several other markets. $TWC $CBS — CNBC (@CNBC) August 2, 2013 Read more…