#pirge

[kp777]

By Jessica Corbett

Common Dreams

June 8, 2024

"Gov. Hochul, fresh off a spineless congestion pricing reversal that scandalized New Yorkers, needs to get back to work and make this landmark legislation the law of the land," said one campaigner.

After what New Yorkers and environmental campaigners called a "betrayal" by Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier this week, the Democrat is now under pressure to sign the Climate Change Superfund Act, which state legislators finally passed early Saturday morning.

Noting that the 95-46 New York State Assembly vote happened after 3:00am and followed the Senate passing the bill, Empire State Indivisible declared Saturday that "there can be no further delay! Gov. Kathy Hochul must sign the climate superfund into law IMMEDIATELY so NYS' worst and wealthiest polluters pay for the harm they've caused our communities!"

New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) similarly celebrated the passage of the bill, which—if signed by the governor—will force establish a 25-year fund financed by fossil fuel companies, with a third of the $3 billion in annual funding reserved for disadvantaged communities disproportionately affected by the climate emergency.

"The historic legislative approval of the Climate Change Superfund Act," NYPIRG said, "is a huge step toward ensuring that Big Oil contributes to the mounting costs of climate catastrophe. Of course, the bill cannot become law without Gov. Hochul's approval, but the act helps protect taxpayers and allows revenues to be made available to contribute toward necessary—but expensive—resiliency projects."

"The sponsors and the supportive lawmakers in both the Senate and Assembly deserve credit for making sure that Big Oil adheres to the lesson that we all learned as kids, 'you make a mess, you clean it up,'" the group added.

"It's time to make polluters pay, and it's time Gov. Hochul acted as the climate leader she promised the Pope she would be."

Food & Water Watch senior New York organizer Eric Weltman also welcomed the vote, saying that "the Climate Change Superfund Act is the legislation New Yorkers need right now. We applaud the Assembly for coming to their senses in the final hours of the legislative session and passing this critical bill. Now, Gov. Hochul, fresh off a spineless congestion pricing reversal that scandalized New Yorkers, needs to get back to work and make this landmark legislation the law of the land."

As Common Dreams reported Thursday, Hochul faced intense criticism this week for reversing her support for a first-in-the-nation congestion pricing plan and halting its implementation in New York City, jeopardizing not only expected emissions cuts but also much-needed funding for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Weltman asserted that "it's time to make polluters pay, and it's time Gov. Hochul acted as the climate leader she promised the Pope she would be. Hochul desperately needs to look good—signing this legislation is the perfect opportunity to do something right for a change."

Other campaigners and New Yorkers also noted the governor's recent move. After highlighting some "huge victories for workers," ALIGN executive director Theodore A. Moore said that "at the eleventh hour, the Assembly also passed the Climate Superfund Act, joining the ever-growing chorus of New Yorkers saying enough is enough, and placing the burden of rising climate costs on Big Oil and corporate polluters, not just working families."

"But one 'environmental thing' a year won't meet the climate crisis at the speed it's racing past us, especially when long-fought wins like congestion pricing can be demolished in an instant," Moore stressed. "Without aggressively transitioning New York off of fossil fuels and creating the green jobs of the future, the Legislature calls it quits on our state's survival."

After the congestion pricing decision, author and activist Bill McKibben, who founded Third Act, wrote that "if any possible good could come from Hochul's cold-blooded betrayal, it's that she, and Albany Democrats in general, might feel the need to give environmentalists some kind of win."

The New York Home Energy Affordable Transition (NY HEAT) Act, "and the climate superfund bill, are both up for action in this final week of the legislative session," McKibben noted earlier this week. "It would be scant comfort to see them passed in the wake of this shocking schism, but it would be something."

While supporters of the Climate Change Superfund Act are now hopeful that Hochul will sign it—and make her state the second, after Vermont, to enact such legislation—they also expressed disappointment that other bills weren't passed this session, particularly Senate-approved NY HEAT Act, which aims to limit reliance on gas.

"With Gov. Hochul dropping a major bomb on climate action by delaying congestion pricing, the Assembly failed to rise to the occasion to pass the key climate policy New Yorkers need to cut energy bills and ensure the state is on track to meet our climate goal—the NY HEAT Act," said Liz Moran, New York policy advocate for Earthjustice.

"With utilities already proposing to raise already high bills rising due to our reliance upon gas infrastructure, and one year after we saw orange skies, the Assembly has turned their backs on the policy solution," she continued. "The same body that once championed our nation-leading climate law has now earned a reputation as the body holding back the policies New York needs to meet what is laid out in this law."

The Renewable Heat Now also decried the Assembly's "astonishing failure" to pass the bill. Jessica Azulay, executive director of Alliance for a Green Economy, which is part of the campaign, emphasized that "the NY HEAT Act would have been a lifeline for New Yorkers struggling with high energy costs and facing the devastating impacts of the climate emergency."

"Our leaders in Albany—the state Assembly first and foremost—have once again shown where they stand by refusing to implement the state's landmark climate law and enable a strategic and cost-effective transition away from fossil fuels in buildings," Azulay said. "Their blockage of this bill for three years in a row is a shameful abdication of their duty to serve the people they represent. We will not forget this failure as we struggle with utility shutoffs, high temperatures, and bad air this summer."

Along with also expressing support for the NY HEAT Act, which "would help save ratepayer dollars and curtail the expansion of the state's reliance on fossil fuels," NYPIRG noted that "the state's worsening solid waste disposal problem was not addressed and both the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act and the Bigger, Better, Bottle Bill are two important components toward reducing trash that is filling up the state's landfills."

"We urge action on those issues," the group said, "and we urge Gov. Hochul to approve the Climate Change Superfund Act."

[whsprings]

too stubborn to go back to treatment too stupid to recover guess i will simply keep doing this until I die

[richdadpoor]

Apple Has Finally Found a Right to Repair Bill That It Likes

This week, Apple announced its support for a California bill to allow consumers to repair or modify their devices independently. The bill, called SB 244 or the Right to Repair Act, was passed by the state senate in May with a 38-0 vote, requiring manufacturers to provide owners and repair shops with the necessary tools and manuals to fix devices. Buy Now or Wait? How to Avoid Tech Buyer’s…

[mariacallous]

A new report by environmental groups lays out a case for banning deep sea mining—and explains why the real solution to humanity’s energy crisis might just be sitting in the trash.

Deep sea mining is the pursuit of rare, valuable minerals that lie undisturbed upon the ocean floor—metals like nickel, cobalt, lithium, and rare earth elements. These so-called critical minerals are instrumental in the manufacture of everything from electric vehicle batteries and MRI machines to laptops and disposable vape cartridges—including, crucially, much of what’s needed to transition away from fossil fuels. Political leaders and the companies eager to dredge up critical minerals from the seafloor tend to focus on the feel-good, climate-friendly uses of the minerals, like EV batteries and solar panels. They’ll proclaim that the metals on the deep seafloor are an abundant resource that could help usher in a new golden age of renewable energy technology.

But deep sea mining has also been roundly criticized by environmentalists and scientists, who caution that the practice (which has not yet kicked off in earnest) could create a uniquely terrible environmental travesty and annihilate one of the most remote and least understood ecosystems on the planet.

There has been a wave of backlash from environmentalists, scientists, and even comedians like John Oliver, who devoted a recent segment of Last Week Tonight to lambasting deep sea mining. Some companies that use these materials in their products—Volvo, Volkswagen, BMW, and Rivian among them—have come out against deep sea mining and pledged not to use any metals that come from those abyssal operations. (Some prominent companies have done the exact opposite; last week, Tesla shareholders voted against a moratorium on using minerals sourced from deep sea mining.)

Even if you can wave away that ecological threat, mining the sea might simply be wholly unnecessary if the goal is to bring about a new era of global renewable energy. A new report, aptly titled “We Don’t Need Deep-Sea Mining,” aims to lay out why.

The report is a collaboration between the advocacy group US PIRG, Environment America Policy Center, and the nonprofit think tank Frontier Group. Nathan Proctor, senior director of the Campaign for the Right to Repair at PIRG and one of the authors of the new report, says the solution to sourcing these materials should be blindingly obvious. There are critical minerals all around us that don’t require diving deep into the sea. You’re probably holding some right now—they’re in nearly all our devices, including the billions of pounds of them sitting in the dump.

The secret to saving the deep sea, Proctor says, is to prioritize systems that focus on the materials we already have—establishing right to repair laws, improving recycling capabilities, and rethinking how we use tech after the end of its useful life cycle. These are all systems we have in place now that don’t require tearing up new lands thousands of feet below the ocean.

“We don't need to mine the deep sea,” Proctor reiterates. “It's about the dumbest way to get these materials. There's way better ways to address the needs for those metals like cobalt, nickel, copper, and the rest.”

Into the Abyss

Schemes for delving into the deep ocean have been on the boards for years. While the practice is not currently underway, mining companies are getting ready to dive in as soon as they can.

In January 2024, the Norwegian Parliament opened up its waters to companies looking to mine resources. The Metals Company is a Canadian mining operation that has been at the forefront of attempts to mine in the Pacific Ocean’s Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ)—an area of seabed that spans 3,100 miles between Mexico and Hawaii.

The proposed mining in the CCZ has gotten the most attention lately because the Metals Company secured rights to access key areas of the CCZ for mining in 2022, and its efforts are ramping up. The process involves gathering critical minerals from small rock-like formations called polymetallic nodules. Billions of these nodules rest along the seabed, seemingly sitting there ripe for the taking (if you can get down to them). The plan—one put forth by several mining companies, anyway—is to scrape the ocean floor with deep sea trawling systems and bring these nodules to the surface, where they can be broken down to extract the shiny special metals inside. Environmentalists say this poses a host of ecological problems for everything that lives in the vicinity.

Gerard Barron, the CEO of the Metals Company, contends that his efforts are misunderstood by activists and the media (especially, say, John Oliver).

“We're committed to circularity,” Barron says. “We have to drive towards circularity. We have to stop extracting from our planet. But the question is, how can you recycle what you don’t have?”

Both Barron and the authors of the activist report acknowledge that there aren’t perfect means of resource extraction anywhere—and there’s always going to be some environmental toll. Barron argues that it is better for this toll to play out in one of the most remote parts of the ocean.

“No matter what, you will be disrupting an ecosystem,” says Kelsey Lamp, ocean campaign director with the Environment America Research and Policy Center and an author of the report. “This is an ecosystem that evolved over millions of years without light, without human noise, and with incredibly clear water. If you disrupt it, the likelihood of it coming back is pretty low.”

For many of the life-forms down in the great deep, the nodules are the ecosystem. Removing the nodules from the seabed would remove all the life attached to them.

“This is a very disruptive process with ecosystems that may never recover,” says Tony Dutzik, associate director and senior policy analyst at the nonprofit think tank Frontier Group and another author of the report. “This is a great wilderness that is linked to the health of the ocean at large and that has wonders that we’re barely even beginning to recognize what they are.”

Barron counters that the life in the abyssal zone is less abundant than in an ecosystem like rainforests in Indonesia, where a great deal of nickel mines operate—although scientists discovered 5,000 new species in the CCZ in 2023 alone. He considers that the lesser of two evils.

“At the end of the day, it's not that easy,” You can't just say no to something. If you say no to this, you're saying yes to something else.”

The Circular Economy

Barron and others make the case that this ecosystem disruption is the only way to access the minerals needed to fuel the clean-tech revolution, and is therefore worth the cost in the long run. But Proctor and the others behind the report aren't convinced. They say that without fully investing in a circular economy that thinks more carefully about the resources we use, we will continue to burn through the minerals needed for renewable tech the same way we've burned through fossil fuels.

“I just had this initial reaction when I heard about deep sea mining,” Proctor says. “Like, ‘Oh, really? You want to strip mine the ocean floor to build electronic devices that manufacturers say we should all throw away?’”

While mining companies may wax poetic about using critical minerals for building clean tech, there's no guarantee that's where the minerals will actually wind up. They are also commonly used in much more consumer-facing devices, like phones, laptops, headphones, and those aforementioned disposable vape cartridges. Many of these devices are not designed to be long lasting, or repairable. In many cases, big companies like Apple and Microsoft have actively lobbied to make repairing their devices more difficult, all but guaranteeing more of them will end up in the landfill.

“I spend every day throwing my hands up in frustration by just how much disposable, unfixable, ridiculous electronics are being shoveled on people with active measures to prevent them from being able to reuse them,” Proctor says. “If these are really critical materials, why are they ending up in stuff that we're told is instantly trash?”

The report aims to position critical minerals in products and e-waste as an “abundant domestic resource.” The way to tap into that is to recommit to the old mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle—with a couple of additions. The report adds the concept of repairing and reimagining products to the list, calling them the five Rs. It calls for making active efforts to extend product lifetimes and invest in “second life” opportunities for tech like solar panels and battery recycling that have reached the end of their useful lifespan. (EV batteries used to be difficult to recycle, but more cutting-edge battery materials can often work just as well as new ones, if you recycle them right.)

Treasures in the Trash

The problem is thinking of these deep sea rocks in the same framework of fossil fuels. What may seem like an abundant resource now is going to feel much more finite later.

“There is a little bit of the irony, right, that we think it's easier to go out and mine and potentially destroy one of the most mysterious remote wildernesses left on this planet just to get more of the metals we're throwing in the trash every day,” Lamp says.

And in the trash is where the resources remain. Electronics manufacturing is growing five times faster than e-waste recycling, so without investment to disassemble those products for their critical bits, all the metals will go to waste. Like deep sea mining, the infrastructure needed to make this a worthwhile path forward will be tremendous, but committing to it means sourcing critical minerals from places nearby, and reducing some waste in the process.

Barron says he isn't convinced these efforts will be enough. “We need to do all of that,” Barron says, “You know, it's not one or the other. We have to do all of that, but what we have to do is slow down destroying those tropical rainforests.” He adds, “If you take a vote against ocean metals, it is a vote for something else. And that something else is what we’ve got right now.”

Proctor argues that commonsense measures, implemented broadly and forcefully across society to further the goal of creating a circular economy, including energy transition minerals, will ultimately reduce the need for all forms of extraction, including land and deep-sea mining.

“We built this system that knows how to do one thing, which is take stuff out of the earth, put it into products and sell them, and then plug our ears and forget that they exist,” Proctor says. “That’s not the reality we live in. The sooner that we can disentangle that kind of paradigm from the way we think about consumption and industrial policy the better, because we're going to kill everybody with that kind of thinking.”

Just like mining the deep sea, investing in a circular economy is not going to be an easy task. There is an allure of deep sea mining when it is presented as a one-stop shop for all the materials needed for the great energy transition. But as the authors of the report contend, the idea of exploiting a vast deposit of resources is the same relationship society has had with fossil fuels—they’re seemingly abundant resources ripe for the picking, but also they are ultimately finite.

“If we treat these things as disposable, as we have, we’re going to need to continually refill that bucket,” Dutzik says. “If we can build an economy in which we’re getting the most out of every bit of what we mine, reusing things when we can, and then recycling the material at the end of their lives, we can get off of that infinite extraction treadmill that we’ve been on for a really long time.”

[cc-cobalt-1043]

Barbecue:

One summer evening on Pabu The bad batch were heading to Shep's house, he was hosting a barbecue and had invited everyone.

The kids were practically pulling the adults along in their excitement.

"Cmon dad, we've been walking forever." Joey whined giving Cobalt an almighty tug forward.

"We've been walking for two minutes bud." Cobalt said as he was almost pulled off his feet.

"Yeah, forever, we're gonna be late at this rate." Joey said.

"Relax Joey, we won't." Cobalt said.

Just minutes later they arrived at Shep's where the man greeted them with one of his signature smiles.

"Hello friends, glad you could make it." He said.

Shep looked to the kids.

"Lyana is in the backyard if you want to see here." He added.

Shep quickly stood aside as the kids and Batcher charged through the door.

Laughing heartily the adults followed through the door and went into the garden where the kids and Lyana were already engrossed in conversation.

Soon Wrecker and Shep had gotten the barbecue started and a smoky smell had now enveloped the garden.

Daniel and James were chasing batcher around the garden, Boba, Zander and Rowan were talking with Mox, Stak and Deke about different ships they had seen and flown and Omega, Kordi, Cynthia and Lyana were sitting together having a whispered the silence interrupted by their frequent giggles.

Other guests soon arrived including Rex and several clones from the rebellion, Riyo Chuchi, Emerie, Phee and to everyone's surprise Rampart along with Jax, Sami and Eva.

"Hello Edmon, glad to see you." Shep said.

"It's a pleasure Shep." Rampart nodded before going and sitting next to Emerie while Jax, Sami and Eva went to the other kids.

Soon Shep, Wrecker and Gregor announced that dinner was ready and the kids eagerly ran over, even batcher and Lucky got a plate of food each. After the kids had been served the adults got their share of food and everyone dug in.

"Good as ever Gregor, you continue to impress." Rex said after a mouthful of fried porg.

"Oh Rex you honey dripper Gregor giggled pretending to blush.

Rampart took a bite of a pirg wing and he suddenly started gasping for breath.

"...To hot.." He gasped out.

Crosshair handed him a bottle from the cooler which Rampart took a large drink from.

"Can't handle your spices Edmon." Crosshair teased.

"Usually I can, but that was spicy even by my standards." Rampart said.

"Sorry about that, that must have been one of my fireball wings." Fireball piped up.

"What's the difference?" Rampart asked.

"They're much spicier than normal porg wings, that's how I got my name, cause I love spicy food." Fireball said.

"I see." Rampart nodded taking another drink of water.

Daniel was typing away on his tablet while chewing away at a pork chop with a healthy amount of apple suacce on it.

Nemec sat down next to him.

"Whatcha working on Danny?" He asked.

Daniel swallowed his food and wiped some sauce off his chin before awnsering.

"My own starfighter, I'm hoping to build it one day, once I'm old enough to do so anyways." Daniel said.

"Can I see?" Nemec asked curiously.

Dan nodded and passed Nemec the tablet.

Nemec whistled impressed.

"That's a nice looking fighter, I'd hate to be on the wrong end of that." Nemec said.

Daniel nodded his thanks blushing slightly with pride.

Sunset was approaching and by now the younger kids were getting tuckered out.

Sami, James, Lyana and Omega were passed out against Batcher who was curled up on the grass.

Eva had crawled onto Rampart's lap half an hour ago and was out cold, head resting against her adoptive father's chest.

Rampart was chatting with Martha along with Daniel who was fast asleep on his mother's lap similar to Eva.

Cynthia and Katie were chatting, about something funny, the two giggling on occasion.

Boba, Jax, Zander and the triplets were huddled together talking in low voices while nearby Kordi read a book with Rowan lying across her lap fast asleep.

Meanwhile Tech and Phee reatreted too the roof where the two watched the setting sun.

"It really is beautiful isn't it?" Phee asked.

"It most certainly is." Tech nodded in agreement.

The two shared a kiss together as the sun set and the others had fun.

[detective-watson]

Take action with me to ban neonicotinoids (neonics). Neonics are a pesticide that is highly toxic to insect and bird populations. Numbers of bees and birds have declined by the millions because they eat plants that have been treated by this chemical. Birds who eat the seeds of these plants or insects who have consumed this can suffer from convulsions, extreme weight loss, and death. Join me and the PIRG in urging the EPA to ban these pesticides.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in CHICAGO (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

#20yrsago EFF guide to Gmail privacy https://web.archive.org/web/20040516090804/https://blogs.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/001425.php#001425

#20yrsago Stephenson’s money-centric interview on Wired News https://web.archive.org/web/20040510183726/http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,63050,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1

#15yrsago Somali pirates versus European toxic-waste dumpers https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-are-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html

#15yrsago If you lose your Amazon account, your Kindle loses functionality https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44350&highlight=amazon+banning

#15yrsago Secretive US prisons hold “terrorists” including animal rights activists and people who gave to the wrong charity http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/communication-management-units-mcgowan/1747/

#5yrsago The #ShellPapers: crowdsourcing analysis of all correspondence between Shell and the Dutch government https://www.ftm.nl/dossier/shell-papers

#5yrsago Air tanker drops are often useless for fighting wildfires, but politicians order them because they make good TV https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-wildfires29-2008jul29-story.html

#5yrsago America today feels like the last days of the Soviet Union https://eand.co/how-american-collapse-resembles-soviet-collapse-94773b44fe17

#5yrsago EFF to Facebook: enforce your rules banning cops from creating sockpuppet accounts and be transparent when you catch cops doing it https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/facebook-must-take-these-four-steps-counter-police-sock-puppets

#5yrsago Not just Apple: Microsoft has been quietly lobbying to kill Right to Repair bills https://medium.com/u-s-pirg/microsoft-named-as-stopping-right-to-repair-in-washington-b880bf4ad052

#5yrsago Silicon Valley’s techie uprisings reveal growing support for socialism in tech https://www.salon.com/2019/04/11/silicon-valley-once-a-bastion-of-libertarianism-sees-a-budding-socialist-movement/

#5yrsago Investors controlling $3B in Facebook stock demand Zuckerberg’s ouster, and they will lose https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-investors-will-vote-to-oust-mark-zuckerberg-as-chairman-2019-4

#5yrsago Starz abuses the DMCA to remove EFF’s tweet about Starz abusing the DMCA https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/effs-tweet-about-overzealous-dmca-takedown-now-subject-overzealous-takedown

#5yrsago RIP, science fiction and fantasy Grand Master Gene Wolfe, 1931-2019 https://reactormag.com/gene-wolfe-in-memoriam-1931-2019/

#5yrsago Leaked, “highly classified” French report shows that the slaughter in Yemen depends on US support https://theintercept.com/2019/04/15/saudi-weapons-yemen-us-france/

#1yrago SVB bailouts for everyone – except affordable housing projects https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/15/socialism-for-the-rich/#rugged-individualism-for-the-poor

[pwlanier]

Among the park. 2016

Michail Pirgelis

Sprueth-Magers

[dippyface]

Researchers say DRC mining practices constitute human trafficking because hundreds of thousands of people—including tens of thousands of children—work for a few dollars a day in harrowing conditions. Workers must use basic tools such as shovels and pickaxes in fragile tunnels that lack ventilation or in open-air pits that are prone to collapsing. Mining companies have also joined forces with the local military to burn down or bulldoze villages so they can expand operations in resource-rich areas, according to a report published this fall by Amnesty International. And cobalt is highly toxic, contaminating the air, land and water around mines.

But can we really prevent harm by buying used and selling our old gadgets? According to a report from two French governmental agencies, the answer is yes: buying one used phone avoids the need to extract around 180 pounds of raw materials. If everyone in the U.S. kept their phone for an extra year on average, that would cut the manufacturing demand by more than 40 million pounds of raw materials per day.

“Anything we do that keeps devices in use longer ... reduces the amount of minerals that are needed,” says Lucas Gutterman, director of the nonprofit U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s (PIRG’s) Designed to Last campaign against e-waste and planned obsolescence.

•••••

Worldwide, only about 17 percent of electronics get properly recycled. Researchers are currently working on ways to improve this, but most current methods are nascent and could take years to make a significant impact. In the meantime refurbishing and reusing your own devices is a more effective solution. That means donating or selling the old phone, laptop or tablet you have stashed away at home, Gutterman says. “Don’t just let it sit around, because every year that it’s sitting in your junk drawer, it’s going to become less valuable,” he says. “Do pass it on.”

[brostateexam]

The Biggest Winner of the Gas Stove Fight Is Induction Ranges

Just weeks before, Richard Trumka Jr., one of the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s five members, ignited a national frenzy with his stark warning to a Bloomberg News reporter that the humble gas stove—a central feature of some 40% of US kitchens—poses a serious health risk, especially to children, and might therefore be a candidate for government regulation. “Any option is on the table,” he declared. “Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

Within hours of the interview’s publication, a new culture war was under way. Republican Representative Ronny Jackson of Texas dared someone to pry his stove from his “cold dead hands,” while fellow Republican Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio found traction with the pithier “God. Guns. Gas stoves.” Even as some liberals were laughing off the right-wing panic about jackbooted “gastapo,” others no doubt quietly fretted that their gleaming culinary flamethrower from Viking or Wolf was about to become next year’s bloated monument to conspicuous consumption.

The outrage cycle was sufficient to prompt an immediate diplomatic walk-back by the head of the CPSC and another by the White House. Over the following weeks, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis leaped into the fray, proposing a permanent tax deduction for gas appliances. (Never mind that the vast majority of Floridians don’t have access to residential gas.) And on the same day, Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia introduced a bill called the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act, which aims to bar the CPSC from implementing any rule that would so much as “substantially increase the average price” of a gas stove.

If the move to exempt a single category of home appliances from federal safety oversight seems drastic, it nonetheless carries a certain visceral appeal. “There’s this kind of understandable knee-jerk reaction, like ‘Oh, what now?’ ” concedes Matt Casale, director of environment campaigns for US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG).

[kennak]

米非営利組織 PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) が Microsoft に対し、Windows 10 のサポート延長を求める 2 万人の署名を送ったそうだ (メディアリリース、 The Register の記事、 BetaNews の記事)。 Windows 10 のサポートは 2025 年で終了するため、Microsoft では Windows 11 へのアップグレードを推奨しているが、現在 Windows 10 を実行している 10 億台の PC のうち 40% は Windows 11 の要件を満たさないとみられる。PIRG によれば、Windows 10 のサポート終了は、これまでにない大量のコンピューターを一気に陳腐化する行為だという。これは高価なデバイスが長期間使用できることを期待する消費者を裏切るだけでなく環境にも悪影響を及ぼし、Microsoft の掲げる意欲的な環境目標にも逆行するものだとして、サティア・ナデラ氏に再考を求めている。 製品の計画的な旧式化は多くのメーカーが行っているが、Apple が猛反対してきた修理する権利を支持し、Google が Chromebook に 10 年間の自動更新提供を発表するなど状況は変わりつつある。Microsoft はどうするだろうか。

米非営利組織、4億台のPCをゴミにしないようWindows 10のサポート延長を求める | スラド サイエンス

[sab-cat]

Sep 5, 2024

A coalition of consumer protection and anti-waste groups wants the Federal Trade Commission to go after “software tethering,” or the practice of tying hardware’s functionality to external software — which often renders products unusable after software updates stop.

The groups, including Consumer Reports, iFixIt, US PIRG, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Economic Justice, and Californians Against Waste, have signed onto a letter asking the FTC to “create clear guidance” on software tethering. “While the FTC has taken some limited actions with regard to this issue, a lack of clarity and enforcement has led to an ecosystem where consumers cannot reliably count on the connected products they buy to last,” the letter reads.

[isfeed]

The FTC should stop tech companies from bricking their products, consumer groups say

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge A coalition of consumer protection and anti-waste groups wants the Federal Trade Commission to go after “software tethering,” or the practice of tying hardware’s functionality to external software — which often renders products unusable after software updates stop. The groups, including Consumer Reports, iFixIt, US PIRG, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the…

[scottiestoybox]

Car companies are sneakily selling your driving data

Car companies are sneakily selling your driving data Car companies are tracking drivers’ data and selling it to third-party data brokers — leaving their customers to suffer the consequences. R.J. Cross Director, Don’t Sell My Data Campaign, PIRG A new investigation found that GM, Honda, Kia, Subaru, Hyundai and Mitsubishi are tracking drivers’ data on everything from when they drive to how…

[pc7ooo]

VR-шлем Apple Vision Pro получил 0 из 10 баллов ремонтопригодности в США

Недавний отчет американской исследовательской группы по защите общественных интересов (PIRG) выявил значительные проблемы с ремонтопригодностью устройств, подпадающих под действие закона Нью-Йорка "о праве на ремонт". Оценивался 21 гаджет, и выявлялись различия в доступности ремонта.

Подробнее на https://7ooo.ru/group/2024/07/03/645-vr-shlem-apple-vision-pro-poluchil-0-iz-10-ballov-remontoprigodnosti-v-ssha-grss-321740571.html