Hasta La Gadget!

For all the functionality and freedom that modern prosthetics provide, they still cannot give their users a sense of what they’re touching. That may soon change thanks to an innovative electrode capable of connecting a prosthetic arm’s robotic sense …

WASHINGTON — Environmental groups are suing the Obama administration over recently announced rules for transporting oil by rail, arguing they allow unsafe tankers to remain on the tracks for a decade.

Earthjustice filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court’s 9th Circuit Wednesday. It says new Department of Transportation rules fail to protect Americans from exploding trains.

The groups tied what they see as shortcomings of the new rules to Tuesday’s Amtrak passenger rail disaster in Philadelphia, which killed eight and injured more than 200. The train, traveling more than twice the 50 mph speed limit, derailed near freight tankers at Conrail’s Frankford Junction Yard that may have been carrying crude oil or other flammable liquids.

Robert L. Sumwalt, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the accident, said at a news conference Wednesday that the tankers were “very close” to the derailed train. He said he had been “told they were not full at the time of the accident.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a Conrail spokesman said he couldn’t comment on what was stored in the tankers. “Just because they’re tank cars doesn’t mean they contain crude oil,” the spokesman told the paper.

Yet Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said the proximity of the accident to potentially flammable tankers was “a cause of additional concern.” Philadelphia Magazine also looked at the derailment’s proximity to the tankers and potential for explosions.

Earthjustice argues that the crash is further reason to worry about unsafe tankers. “Even more lives would have lost and families shattered if those Amtrak cars had skidded just 50 feet further into those oil tank cars,” said Patti Goldman, an Earthjustice attorney. “That’s why these tank cars need to be taken out of commission immediately.”

Earthjustice filed the lawsuit on behalf of ForestEthics, Sierra Club, Waterkeeper Alliance, Washington Environmental Council, Friends of the Columbia Gorge, Spokane Riverkeeper, and the Center for Biological Diversity.

The Department of Transportation rules, announced May 1, call for phasing out older models of tankers that carry crude oil and other flammable liquids. But it could take up to 10 years to phase out some tankers — an “unduly long phase-out period for tank cars that are prone to puncture, spill oil, ignite, and harm communities in train accidents,” the suit argues.

The rules apply only to trains carrying a continuous row of 20 or more tank cars loaded with flammable liquids, or those carrying a total of 35 or more tank cars, which the groups say will allow unsafe tankers to stay in use.

The lawsuit contends the new rules fail to require enough notification for communities and first responders who would be called upon in the event of an accident — a criticism echoed by the largest firefighters union.

“Reports say that the train came very close to hitting potentially explosive tank cars that were stored in the service yard — so it’s sobering to think that this tragedy might have been made even worse had the cars been filled with crude, and at the very least it underscores the extreme danger of hauling explosive substances on or near a passenger route,” said Devorah Ancel, a Sierra Club staff attorney.

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Earlier this week you might have heard and seen that content regarding the upcoming Gears of War remake for the Xbox One has been leaked. No doubt the studio behind it, VMC Games, and Microsoft aren’t too happy about it and it seems that as punishment for those who leaked the videos, Microsoft will be officially bricking the Xbox One units of the perpetrators.

This is according to an email that VMC sent out to testers and obtained by the folks at Kotaku. According to a portion of the email, “This being said, as per that agreement with the testers in fault, Microsoft also permanently disabled their Xbox LIVE accounts (as well as other suspected accounts present on their Xbox One kits) and temporarily blocked all of their Xbox One privileges – meaning that for a period of time which Microsoft decides on depending on the severity of the offense, their Xbox One is entirely unusable.”

If it seems a bit harsh, it’s because it is. According to VMC, they try to justify the punishment by saying, “One screenshot, message or even conversation shared with someone else can easily snowball into a situation that goes out of control.” That being said it’s interesting to note that Microsoft actually has the power to remotely stop users from using their Xbox One units. We have to wonder if other console makers such as Sony have the power to remotely brick PlayStation 4 consoles as well.

In any case what do you guys think? We reckon leaking confidential material is a no-no, but do you think the punishment fits the crime? Or do you think that maybe it was a bit too severe?

Microsoft Bricking Xbox Ones Of Gears Of War Leakers , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

martyWe’re sure many of us have received forwarded emails, text messages, or articles that warn us about the radiation emitted by our smartphones, and how we shouldn’t sleep it with too close to our faces, how we shouldn’t use it while charging, and so on. Whether or not you believe those claims is up to you, but as far as the city of Berkeley, California is concerned, they believe customers have the “right to know”.

The city council has recently voted to pass a cellphone “right to know law” which basically makes it a requirement for cellphone retailers to put up a notice warning customers about potential radiation exposure, and that phones should be kept a certain distance away from the body which are considered safe levels.

According to the proposed warning it reads, “If you carry or use your phone in a pants or shirt pocket or tucked into a bra when the phone is ON and connected to a wireless network, you may exceed the federal guidelines for exposure to RF [radio frequency] radiation.” Retailers are expected to comply and will be prohibited from selling phones that do not have the warning, “This potential risk is greater for children. Refer to the instructions in your phone or user manual for information about how to use your phone safely.”

Unsurprisingly this proposal is met with resistance, particularly from those in the mobile industry. In a letter sent to council members from Gerard Keegan who is with the CITA, he seems to suggest that such messages could be misleading. “The forced speech is misleading and alarmist because it would cause consumers to take away the message that cell phones are dangerous and can cause breast, testicular, or other cancers.”

Berkeley Wants Cellphone Retailers To Warn Of Potential Radiation , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Brandon Bostian was obsessed with trains while growing up, talked about them constantly and wanted to be an engineer or a conductor.

“He would go on vacation and bring back subway maps,” Stefanie McGee, a friend from Tennessee, recalled Thursday. “He would go places with his family and he would talk about the trains instead of the places.” Bostian’s teenage dreams would come true. But now, at 32, the Amtrak engineer finds himself at the very center of the investigation into the nation’s deadliest train wreck in nearly six years.

He was at the controls of a train that investigators say entered a sharp bend at 106 mph, or twice the speed limit. Eight people were killed and more than 200 injured in the derailment Tuesday night in an industrial section of Philadelphia.

In yet another curious turn in the investigation, Robert Sumwalt of the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday that the train sped up in the last minute or so before the wreck, accelerating from 70 mph to over 100 mph.

He said it is not clear yet whether the speed was increased manually. So far, investigators have found no problems with the track, the signals or the locomotive, and the train was running on time, Sumwalt said.

Investigators want to know why the train was going so fast. But Bostian refused to talk to police on Wednesday, authorities said. On Thursday, Sumwalt said that Bostian had agreed to be interviewed by the NTSB and that the meeting will take place in the next few days.

Separately, the Philadelphia district attorney’s office said it is investigating and will decide whether to bring charges.

Bostian’s lawyer, Robert Goggin, told ABC News that his client suffered a concussion in the wreck, needed 15 staples in his head and has “absolutely no recollection whatsoever” of the crash. Goggin also said Bostian had not been using his cellphone, drinking or using drugs.

As the death toll climbed on Thursday with the discovery of what was believed to be the last body in one of the mangled railcars, Mayor Michael Nutter again appeared to cast blame on Bostian, questioning why the train was going so fast.

“I don’t think that any commonsense, rational person would think that it was OK to travel at that level of speed knowing that there was a pretty significant restriction on how fast you could go through that turn,” Nutter said.

Officials believe they have now accounted for all 243 passengers and crew members who were thought to have been aboard, Nutter said. Forty-three remained hospitalized Thursday, according to the mayor. Temple University Hospital said it had six patients in critical condition, all of whom were expected to pull through.

Amtrak, meanwhile, said limited train service between Philadelphia and New York should resume on Monday, with full service by Tuesday. Amtrak carries 11.6 million passengers a year along the Northeast Corridor, which runs between Washington and Boston.

Bostian graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a bachelor’s in business administration and management in 2006, the university said. He became an Amtrak engineer in 2010, four years after landing a job as a conductor, according to his LinkedIn profile. He lives in the Forest Hills section of Queens, in New York City.

Old friends and college classmates described him in glowing terms.

“I have nothing but good things to say about Brandon,” said Will Gust, who belonged to the Acacia fraternity with Bostian in college. “He is a very conscientious person, one of the most upstanding individuals that I know, just a really good quality person.”

McGee, the friend who is now city clerk in Bostian’s hometown of Bartlett, a suburb of Memphis, said he “talked about trains constantly” while growing up and always wanted to be an engineer or a conductor.

Bostian met up with college friends a few years ago in New York and told them he was working on trains.

“Oh yeah, he loved his job,” said Justin Scott, another fraternity member with Bostian.

On an online forum for train enthusiasts called trainorders.com, a user who signed at least two posts “Brandon Bostian” or simply “Brandon” commented on a wide range of industry issues, including safety. A couple of posts under the handle “bwb6df” lamented that railroads hadn’t been fast enough to adopt “positive train control,” GPS-guided technology that can prevent trains from going over the speed limit.

“They have had nearly a hundred years of opportunity to implement SOME sort of system to mitigate human error, but with a few notable exceptions have failed to do so,” the writer posted in 2011. The same user said in 2012: “It shouldn’t take an act of Congress to get industry to adopt common-sense safety systems on their own.”

It is unclear whether the author of the posts was, in fact, Bostian. In a message posted Wednesday, the site’s administrator refused to release any information, citing privacy reasons.

Amtrak has equipped most of its heavily used Northeast Corridor with positive train control, but it was not in operation along the section where the accident took place because it was still being tested, CEO Joseph Boardman said.

However, Boardman vowed on Thursday that the technology will be in operation along the entire Northeast Corridor by the end of 2015, the deadline set by Congress.

On Tuesday, the job Bostian loved so much had him operating Amtrak’s Train 188 from Washington to New York.

“He remembers coming into the curve. He remembers attempting to reduce speed and thereafter he was knocked out,” said Goggin, his attorney. But Goggin said the engineer does not recall anything out of the ordinary and does not remember applying the emergency brakes, as investigators say was done.

He said Bostian’s cellphone was off and stored in his bag before the accident, as required. Goggin said that his client “cooperated fully” with police and told them “everything that he knew,” immediately consenting to a blood test and surrendering his cellphone.

Within hours of the wreck, Bostian’s Facebook profile picture was changed to a black rectangle.

“I imagine he is holding onto this pretty heavily,” said Scott, his fraternity brother.

Friends who seemingly knew about his role in the crash before his name publicly surfaced rallied to his side online. A Facebook friend whose profile identifies him as an Amtrak engineer living in California assured Bostian “it could have been any one of us.”

___

Kunzelman reported from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Associated Press writers Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Missouri, Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, and Jennifer Peltz in New York contributed to this story.

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