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Equal Rights Center Sues Uber For Denying Equal Access To People Who Use Wheelchairs

The Equal Rights Center is suing Uber, alleging that the company has chosen not to include wheelchair-accessible cars as an option in its standard UberX fleet of vehicles, and excludes people who use wheelchairs in Washington, D.C. According to the lawsuit, Uber is in violation of Title 3 of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the D.C. Human Rights Act. TechCrunch reports: After conducting its own investigation of Uber’s services for people in wheelchairs, the ERC found that passengers had to wait an average of eight times longer for an accessible car to arrive. They also had to pay twice as much in fares, according to the ERC’s study. Ultimately, the ERC wants Uber to integrate wheelchair accessible cars into its UberX fleet so that people who use wheelchairs don’t have to wait longer and pay more to use the car service. Uber said in a statement provided to TechCrunch: “We take this issue seriously and are committed to continued work with the District, our partners, and stakeholders toward expanding transportation options and freedom of movement for all residents throughout the region.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Equal Rights Center Sues Uber For Denying Equal Access To People Who Use Wheelchairs

Researchers Create New Probiotic Beer That Boosts Immunity

randomErr writes: A new patent has been filed for a innovative brewing technique that incorporates a live strain of good bacteria into the brewing process. Researchers at NUS (National University of Singapore) have created a probiotic sour beer that may boost immunity and improve gut health. The bacteria Lactobacillus paracasei L26 is capable of neutralizing toxins and viruses and regulating the immune system. Chan Mei Zhi Alcine, of the Food Science and Technology Program at NUS said, “While good bacteria are often present in food that have been fermented, there are currently no beers in the market that contain probiotics. Developing sufficient counts of live probiotics in beer is a challenging feat as beers contain hop acids that prevent the growth and survival of probiotics. As a believer of achieving a healthy diet through consuming probiotics, this is a natural choice for me when I picked a topic for my final-year project.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Researchers Create New Probiotic Beer That Boosts Immunity

Vulnerability Discovered In Latest Ubuntu Distributions, Users Advised To Update

Celarent Darii writes: There is a vulnerability in the latest ubuntu distributions due to the DNS resolver included in systemd. The inclusion of the dns resolver was lamented by many on the mailing list, not without cause. All are advised to update their distribution. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Vulnerability Discovered In Latest Ubuntu Distributions, Users Advised To Update

World’s First Floating Windfarm To Take Shape Off Coast of Scotland

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world’s first floating windfarm has taken to the seas in a sign that a technology once confined to research and development drawing boards is finally ready to unlock expanses of ocean for generating renewable power. After two turbines were floated this week, five now bob gently in the deep waters of a fjord on the western coast of Norway ready to be tugged across the North Sea to their final destination off north-east Scotland. The ~$256 million Hywind project is unusual not just because of the pioneering technology involved, which uses a 78-meter-tall underwater ballast and three mooring lines that will be attached to the seabed to keep the turbines upright. It is also notable because the developer is not a renewable energy firm but Norway’s Statoil, which is looking to diversify away from carbon-based fuels. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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World’s First Floating Windfarm To Take Shape Off Coast of Scotland

90 Cities Install A Covert Technology That Listens For Gunshots

An anonymous reader quotes Business Insider: In more than 90 cities across the US, including New York, microphones placed strategically around high-crime areas pick up the sounds of gunfire and alert police to the shooting’s location via dots on a city map… ShotSpotter also sends alerts to apps on cops’ phones. “We’ve gone to the dot and found the casings 11 feet from where the dot was, according to the GPS coordinates, ” Capt. David Salazar of the Milwaukee Police Dept. told Business Insider. “So it’s incredibly helpful. We’ve saved a lot of people’s lives.” When three microphones pick up a gunshot, ShotSpotter figures out where the sound comes from. Human analysts in the Newark, California, headquarters confirm the noise came from a gun (not a firecracker or some other source). The police can then locate the gunshot on a map and investigate the scene. The whole process happens “much faster” than dialing 911, Salazar said, though he wouldn’t disclose the exact time. The company’s CEO argues their technology deters crime by demonstrating to bad neighborhoods that police will respond quickly to gunshots. (Although last year Forbes discovered that in 30% to 70% of cases, “police found no evidence of a gunshot when they arrived.”) And in a neighborhood where ShotSpotter is installed, one 60-year-old man is already complaining, “I don’t like Big Brother being in all my business.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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90 Cities Install A Covert Technology That Listens For Gunshots

YouTube Claims 1.5 Billion Monthly Users

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google’s YouTube unit says it now reaches 1.5 billion viewers every month — and its users watch more than an hour of mobile videos per day — as it expands its video programming to sell more digital ads. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki also wrote that YouTube Red, the company’s foray into original videos, has launched 37 series that have generated “nearly a quarter billion views.” YouTube Red has 12 new projects in the works, she said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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YouTube Claims 1.5 Billion Monthly Users

Texting While Driving Now Legal In Colorado — In Some Cases

Fines for texting and driving in Colorado have jumped to $300, but according to the fine print, the increased fine only applies to drivers who are texting in “a careless or imprudent manner.” Therefore, drivers who are texting in any other manner are still within the law. FOX31 Denver reports: Before the new legislation, any texting while driving was illegal. Tim Lane of the Colorado District Attorney’s Office confirmed the softening crackdown on all texting and driving. “The simple fact is that if you are texting while driving but not being careless, it’s no longer illegal, ” he said. What constitutes “careless” driving is up to the discretion of each individual law enforcement officer. Cellphone use of any kind is still banned for drivers younger than 18. Teens caught with a phone in hand while driving will be slapped with a $50 fine. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Texting While Driving Now Legal In Colorado — In Some Cases

32TB of Windows 10 Internal Builds, Core Source Code Leak Online

According to an exclusive report via The Register, “a massive trove of Microsoft’s internal Windows operating system builds and chunks of its core source code have leaked online.” From the report: The data — some 32TB of installation images and software blueprints that compress down to 8TB — were uploaded to betaarchive.com, the latest load of files provided just earlier this week. It is believed the data has been exfiltrated from Microsoft’s in-house systems since around March. The leaked code is Microsoft’s Shared Source Kit: according to people who have seen its contents, it includes the source to the base Windows 10 hardware drivers plus Redmond’s PnP code, its USB and Wi-Fi stacks, its storage drivers, and ARM-specific OneCore kernel code. Anyone who has this information can scour it for security vulnerabilities, which could be exploited to hack Windows systems worldwide. The code runs at the heart of the operating system, at some of its most trusted levels. In addition to this, hundreds of top-secret builds of Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016, none of which have been released to the public, have been leaked along with copies of officially released versions. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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32TB of Windows 10 Internal Builds, Core Source Code Leak Online

Sci-Hub Ordered To Pay $15 Million In Piracy Damages

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Two years ago, academic publisher Elsevier filed a complaint (PDF) against Sci-Hub and several related “pirate” sites. It accused the websites of making academic papers widely available to the public, without permission. While Sci-Hub is nothing like the average pirate site, it is just as illegal according to Elsevier’s legal team, who obtained a preliminary injunction from a New York District Court last fall. The injunction ordered Sci-Hub’s founder Alexandra Elbakyan to quit offering access to any Elsevier content. However, this didn’t happen. Instead of taking Sci-Hub down, the lawsuit achieved the opposite. Sci-Hub grew bigger and bigger up to a point where its users were downloading hundreds of thousands of papers per day. Although Elbakyan sent a letter to the court earlier, she opted not engage in the U.S. lawsuit any further. The same is true for her fellow defendants, associated with Libgen. As a result, Elsevier asked the court for a default judgment and a permanent injunction which were issued this week. Following a hearing on Wednesday, the Court awarded Elsevier $15, 000, 000 in damages, the maximum statutory amount for the 100 copyrighted works that were listed in the complaint. In addition, the injunction, through which Sci-Hub and LibGen lost several domain names, was made permanent. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Sci-Hub Ordered To Pay $15 Million In Piracy Damages

Just 14 People Make 500,000 Tons of Steel a Year in Austria

An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg Businessweek feature: The Austrian village of Donawitz has been an iron-smelting center since the 1400s, when ore was dug from mines carved out of the snow-capped peaks nearby. Over the centuries, Donawitz developed into the Hapsburg Empire’s steel-production hub, and by the early 1900s it was home to Europe’s largest mill. With the opening of Voestalpine AG’s new rolling mill this year, the industry appears secure. What’s less certain are the jobs. The plant, a two-hour drive southwest of Vienna, will need just 14 employees to make 500, 000 tons of robust steel wire a year — vs. as many as 1, 000 in a mill with similar capacity built in the 1960s. Inside the facility, red-hot metal snakes its way along a 700-meter (2, 297-foot) production line. Yet the floors are spotless, the only noise is a gentle hum that wouldn’t overwhelm a quiet conversation, and most of the time the place is deserted except for three technicians who sit high above the line, monitoring output on a bank of flatscreens. “We have to forget steel as a core employer, ” says Wolfgang Eder, Voestalpine’s chief executive officer for the past 13 years. “In the long run we will lose most of the classic blue-collar workers, people doing the hot and dirty jobs in coking plants or around the blast furnaces. This will all be automated.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Just 14 People Make 500,000 Tons of Steel a Year in Austria