geosoco

Norway’s Fyllingsdalen tunnel is a showstopping piece of urban cycling infrastructure — for a city where car-centric development still dominates.

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Bergen’s most recent attraction is a unique one: In April, the city of around 270,000 opened the Fyllingsdalen tunnel, a three-kilometer bike-pedestrian pathway that was bored through a mountain. Local officials proudly declared Fyllingsdalen tunnel to be “the world’s longest purpose-built cycling tunnel.” (The Snoqualmie tunnel in Washington State is lengthier, but it used to be rail line.)

Fyllingsdalen tunnel is about as photogenic as an urban bike path can get. Inside, it offers art installations and creative lighting; at its exit, there are stunning mountain views. CNN and Smithsonian have lavished it with international attention, and visiting cycling advocates like the Netherlands-based authors Melissa and Chris Bruntlett have swooned.

Last month I hopped on a bike to traverse the tunnel for myself, and I can confirm that it is an ingenious piece of healthy, climate-friendly infrastructure; I have never seen anything remotely like it. The tunnel is also practical, providing a car-free connection between Bergen’s bustling city center and a fast-growing neighborhood on the other side of the mountain.

But — there is a big “but.” As awe-inspiring as Fyllingsdalen tunnel is, it is still only a Band-Aid fix for Bergen’s decades of car-oriented development. The tunnel reflects the city’s current efforts to shift local trips away from cars, but that goal clashes with a national government whose transportation policies still revolve around the automobile. In such an environment, even the most spectacular bike path can only do so much

What began as a routine band performance of Talkin' Out the Side of Your Neck by Cameo at an Alabama high school football game ended in a troubling confrontation when a police officer tased the marching band director for refusing to stop the music.

The altercation occurred Thursday around 9 p.m. local time after a game at Jackson-Olin High School in Birmingham, Ala.

Minor High School band director Johnny Mims, 39, and his ensemble of 145 students were about a minute away from being done with their final song when a police officer approached the podium. According to both Mims and the Birmingham Police Department, officers asked Mims to stop the performance so they could clear out the stadium. Mims responded that the song was about to end and the performance was agreed on by both schools.

"Nothing we were doing at the time was being a danger to the community, fans or the school," Mims told NPR on Monday. "Everyone was enjoying themselves. That's the part I'm having a hard time grappling with."

As the students finished their performance, officers attempted to arrest Mims for not complying. Police said the band director "refused" to place his hands behind his back and allegedly pushed an arresting officer.

The “cord cutting” trend cable execs spent a decade claiming was a fad just broke another round of new records. According to Leichtman Research, major cable TV providers lost another 1.7 million subscribers last quarter, as users flock to streaming, over the air TV, TikTok, or, you know, books. Roughly 17,700 customers cut the cord every single day during the second quarter of 2023.

Over the last year (Q2 ’22 to Q2 ’23) the traditional cable TV sector lost a whopping 5,360,000 customers, compared to 4,235,000 customer defections the year earlier. The current number of U.S. households that has a cable connection sits somewhere around 46 percent, down from 73% at the end of 2017.

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Historically, a big cable company like Comcast or Charter wasn’t too hurt by “cord cutting” because it could just jack up the cost of monopolized broadband access. And while that’s still generally true; here too cable giants are seeing increased competition from community broadband (co-ops, utilities, municipalities), 5G home wireless, and phone companies belatedly upgrading to fiber.

Interestingly though, streaming TV providers also wound up losing subscribers, albeit at a much slower rate:

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The US government may try to prosecute you for violating sites’ terms of service. But it won’t be handling its own actions the same way.

Instead, the government embraces fakery of all sorts, from fake colleges used to eject immigrants just trying to further their education to setting up fake drug stash houses to entrap people desperate to improve their personal financial situations. And then there’s the FBI’s 20 years of radicalizing people in terrorist stings where the government does all the conspiring and the “terrorists” it creates do all the jail time.

While it’s understood a certain amount of subterfuge is necessary to engage in law enforcement, social media services have made it clear not even the federal government is exempt from policies forbidding the creation of fake profiles. Not that it matters to the government. While it has considered this sort of behavior from mere citizens to be a criminal act, it treats willful violation of site policies as just another day at the office.

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Facebook has repeatedly warned government entities that their employees are subject to the same “real name” policies that apply to regular people who wish to use the service. These warnings have been constantly ignored, which is definitely the expected outcome, but one that ensures the federal government can’t pretend it didn’t know it was violating policies if it ever comes to the point where someone within the government is willing to do anything about these routine violations.

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To prevent the iPhone 12 from being banned in France, Apple is reportedly working to release a software update that is said to bring down the radiation levels to accommodate the request of French regulators. Before being officially released back in 2020, it was reported that Apple knew about this problem and instructed its employees to stay quiet about the whole thing. It does not appear that there will be any legal repercussions against the California-based giant this time.

California, the biggest state in the US when it comes to both population and the sheer volume of tech companies squeezed into its borders, has just passed the country's most extreme right to repair bill in the US (via Ars Technica). It's the third state to pass such a bill, but goes further than either Minnesota or New York in that it forces companies to support their products for longer. But while it will cover gaming PCs and laptops, games console manufacturers get a free pass.

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There are exceptions, however, and it seems like games consoles are somehow exempt from this right to repair requirement. Guess someone's been lobbying against the inclusion of consoles, eh? The bill itself talks specifically about an "electronic or appliance product" or just a "product", but stipulates that doesn't include a video game console.

"'Video game console' means a computing device, including its components and peripherals, that is primarily used by consumers for playing video games, such as a console machine, a handheld console device, or another device or system. 'Video game console' does not include a general or an all-purpose computer, which includes, but is not limited to, a desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or cell phone."

So, that means your Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch consoles are all seemingly exempt from having to offer long term support, but at least in the computing space your PC and laptop will be covered.

A fresh report into Unity's hugely-controversial decision to start charging developers when their games are downloaded has thrown fresh light on the situation.

MobileGamer sources say Unity has already offered some studios a 100% fee waiver - if they switch over to Unity's own LevelPlay ad platform.

The report quotes industry consultants that say this move is an "attempt to destroy" Unity's main competitior in this field: AppLovin.

We’ve noted a few times how the political push to ban TikTok is a dumb performance largely designed to distract people from our failure to pass even a basic internet privacy law or regulate data brokers. We’ve also noted how college bans of TikTok are a dumb extension of that dumb performance, and don’t accomplish anything of meaningful significance.

When the college bans first emerged we noted they’d be trivial to bypass, given the bans only apply to the actual college network. They obviously don’t apply to personal student use over cellular networks. And, not surprisingly, students are finding it extremely easy to bypass the bans, either by simply turning off Wi-Fi when they want to access the social network, or using a VPN:

“The student body, quietly, in unison, added Wi-Fi toggling to their daily routine. “Everyone was so nonchalant about it,” Pablo says. “They really just did not care.”

“There wasn’t a whole lot of pushback, aside from a lot of grumbling and groans,” says Ana Renfroe, a sophomore at Texas A&M. Some of her professors are still showing TikToks in class. They’ll just ask students to download the videos at home she explains, or will upload them to another platform like Instagram Reels.”

The folks who spent several years hyperventilating about how TikTok was some unique threat to the public (on an internet where countless international companies, ISPs, app makers, and data brokers over-collect and fail to secure consumer data) are, of course, nowhere to be found.

During the first two years of the pandemic, from March 2020 to March 2022, there were approximately 90,000 more deaths in the United States attributed to cardiovascular disease than were expected for that span of time.

The majority of these occurred in people 65 and older — the age group with the highest risk for cardiovascular complications. But heart-related deaths also increased dramatically in younger adults. In fact, a study found that the sharpest rise in deaths from heart attack during that period occurred in 25- to 44-year-olds.

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The potential for cardiovascular complications doesn’t go away after someone has recovered from Covid. A large 2022 study tracking medical records of 691,455 patients in the United States found that people had a significantly higher risk of developing virtually all heart-related diseases in the year after a Covid infection. According to the research, people were 1.5 times more likely to have a stroke, nearly twice as likely to have a heart attack, and had between 1.6 and 2.4 times the risk of developing different types of arrhythmias.

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Research has shown that people who are vaccinated are roughly 40 to 60 percent less likely to have a heart attack or stroke following a Covid infection than those who are unvaccinated. This may be because vaccinated people are less likely to develop severe Covid, which in turn lowers the risk of many of these heart-related issues. Or the vaccine may help protect the cardiovascular system itself — by reducing the inflammatory effects of Covid, for example.

New York City’s pension funds have sued Fox Corp., alleging the company neglected its duty to shareholders by airing false statements about the 2020 election that exposed it to defamation lawsuits.

“Fox’s board of directors has blatantly disregarded the need for journalistic standards and failed to put safeguards in place despite having a business model that invites defamation litigation,” New York City Comptroller Brad Lander said in a statement to The Hill. Lander oversees the pension funds.

“A lack of journalistic standards and a proper strategy to mitigate defamation has clearly harmed Fox’s reputation and threatens their bottom line and long-term profitability,” he continued.

The Hill has reached out to Fox for comment.

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A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on book bans took a racy turn Tuesday, as Republican senators and a witness read scenes of various sexual content into the congressional record to defend the banning of multiple titles from U.S. schools.

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The hearing on book bans was called as multiple Republican-led states have made it easier for books to be challenged in classrooms and as school board meetings have been flooded with arguments on what is appropriate for children to read.

The American Library Association said the number of book challenges in the United States doubled between 2021 and 2022.

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Republicans and Democrats found common ground in agreeing there are books that are inappropriate for some children, but Democrats said the argument that all the books under discussion are sexually explicit is a scapegoat for the issue.

“No one is advocating for sexually explicit content to be available in an elementary school library or in [the] children’s section of the library,” Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said. “That’s a distraction from the real challenge. I understand and respect that parents may choose to limit what their children read, especially at younger ages. My wife and I did. Others do, too. But no parent should have the right to tell another parent’s child what they can and cannot read in school or at home. Every student deserves access to books that reflect their experiences and help them better understand who they are.”

Huntington Beach police are searching for a motorist they believe intentionally struck bicyclists in three separate incidents that occurred in less than an hour Sunday evening. Two riders were injured, and the third was killed.

All three incidents happened in Huntington Beach in an area bordered by Heil Avenue, Edwards Street, Warner Avenue and Springdale Street.

Police are searching for the unidentified driver of a black Toyota four-door sedan that sustained front passenger-side bumper damage, according to witness reports.

“We believe that the incidents are related because the three locations are close in proximity and also based on the victims’ and witnesses’ statements,” said Jessica Cuchilla, a Huntington Beach police spokesperson. “They all described a similar vehicle.”