Assigning someone the legal power to make decisions for a vulnerable adult should always be a last resortAround the world, fans of pop star Britney Spears celebrated her father’s announcement last week that he would resign as her conservator. This deve…
The mountain town sheltering Dixie fire refugees: ‘Each year we hold our breath’
Quincy has become accustomed to hosting evacuees as wildfires worsen. Now some residents wonder if it’s time to leaveBy the time the Safeway parking lot in Quincy, California, began to fill with emergency vehicles and RVs carrying people planning to sp…
A bug in a medical startup’s website put thousands of COVID-19 test results at risk
A California-based medical startup that provides COVID-19 testing across Los Angeles has pulled down a website it used to allow customers to access their test results after a customer found a vulnerability that allowed access to other people’s personal information. Total Testing Solutions has ten COVID-19 testing sites across Los Angeles, and processes “thousands” of […]
The Nuro EC-1
Six years ago, I sat in the Google self-driving project’s Firefly vehicle — which I described, at the time, as a “little gumdrop on wheels” — and let it ferry me around a course in Mountain View.
Why regulators love Nuro’s self-driving delivery vehicles
Nuro’s autonomous vehicles (AVs) don’t have a human driver on board. There’s no room in the narrow chassis for a driver’s seat, no need for a steering wheel, accelerator or brake pedals.
Dixie fire continues its rampage across California, just 30% contained
And in Montana, Richard Spring fire leaps highway barrier and forces evacuationsThe Dixie fire raging through northern California has destroyed another 550 homes, becoming one of the most destructive in state history.The fire, which is the largest wild…
Heat, drought and fire: how climate dangers combine for a catastrophic ‘perfect storm’
The three conditions feed off each other to create a vicious cycle, demanding urgent actionNorthern California’s Dixie fire this weekend swelled to become the single largest fire incident the state has ever recorded, a mammoth that has leveled mountain…
‘I still feel it isn’t real’: Gold Rush town residents reckon with wildfire devastation
As flames approached, Kimberly Price fled her beloved California hometown of Greenville. An hour later, most of it was goneAfter weeks of fire, smoke and warnings, Kimberly Price and her beloved town had run out of time.With wind driving the Dixie fire…
Privacy-oriented search app Xayn raises $12M from Japanese backers to go into devices
Back in December 2020 we covered the launch of a new kind of smartphone app-based search engine, Xayn. “A search engine?!” I hear you say? Well, yes, because despite the convenience of modern search engines’ ability to tailor their search results to the individual, this user-tracking comes at the expense of privacy. This mass surveillance […]
Dixie fire: cool weather slows raging California blaze as attention shifts to PG&E role
Wildfire’s cause is under investigation but utility company has admitted its equipment may have been linked to the devastationAs relatively cool temperatures and higher humidity slowed the Dixie fire raging across northern California on Saturday, atten…