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Hitting the Books: High school students have spent a decade fighting Baltimore's toxic legacy
In Fighting to Breathe: Race, Toxicity, and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore, Dr. Nicole Fabricant of Towson University, chronicles the participatory action research of local students between 2011 and 2021, organizing and mobilizing their communities to fight back against a century of environmental injustice.
Amazon employees in Maryland say they were fired for organizing workers
Two Amazon workers at a Maryland warehouse say they were fired for labor organization activities.
A second Apple Store union election will take place next month
Workers at a Maryland location will vote in-person starting on June 15th.
Apple says eight states have signed up to let people store IDs in Wallet
Arizona and Georgia are first up, with six more to follow.
Maryland is already out of EV tax credits for 2019
Maryland's electric vehicle (EV) tax credits are so popular, they're already gone. According to the state's Motor Vehicle Administration, the $6 million fund meant to cover the tax credits was depleted before the fiscal year began on July 1st. The state offers a $100 credit per kilowatt-hour of battery capacity for EVs and plug-in hybrids (with a maximum $3,000 rebate), but so many drivers have applied for the credit, there's a waiting list with more than 700 applicants.
We're not getting Luke Skywalker's prosthetics any time soon
In 1937, robot hobbyist "Bill" Griffith P. Taylor of Toronto invented the world's first industrial robot. It was a crude machine, dubbed the Robot Gargantua (PDF, Pg 172) by its creator. The crane-like device was powered by a single electric motor and controlled via punched paper tape, which threw a series of switches controlling each of the machine's five axes of movement. Still, it could stack wooden blocks in preprogrammed patterns, an accomplishment that Meccano Magazine, an English monthly hobby magazine from the era, hailed as "a Wells-ian vision of 'Things to Come' in which human labor will not be necessary in building up the creations of architects and engineers."
Google Express delivery expands along the East Coast
East coast residents now have a new way to shop online. Google announced on Wednesday that it is expanding its Google Express online delivery service to a dozen states throughout the Northeast. Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont are all now within Google Express' delivery range.
New app tells you if you're too drunk to drive, helps call a cab
If you need your cellphone to decide if you've had one too many, that's probably a sign you should call a cab or car service. Nevertheless, the state of Maryland has just launched an app (funded by the federal National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), that will tell you your approximate blood alcohol content (BAC), test your reflexes and even help get you home safely. If you're a 130-pound woman who had a glass of wine, for instance, it'll show about a .04 BAC -- one drink below the limit, and already an unsafe level for the road. It'll also test your reaction time with memory games and a simulator that makes you brake for pedestrians. When the app determines you've had too many (or any, for that matter), it'll get you the number for a cab or preset designated driver. An official said the goal is to take the "brainwork" out of drinking and add some common sense to situations where none may exist. [Imaged credit: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images]
Sprint LTE spreads its wings to four more areas by Labor Day
Sprint may have played slightly fast and loose with its definition of a 15-city LTE launch this month -- some of those areas were mighty close to each other -- but it's taking that expansion a little further down the road with its next stage. Hand-in-hand with its second quarter results, the pin-drop network has outlined plans to revisit its 4G hometown in Baltimore as well Gainesville in Georgia, the Junction City-Manhattan area in Kansas and the Denison-Sherman region in Texas, giving them all LTE by Labor Day. The expansion will certainly please Georgian Galaxy S III owners; unfortunately, it still leaves many major cities fending with EV-DO 3G until later in the year, if not 2013. Maybe Sprint's Hitchcock-inspired nightmares are to blame.
Nintendo says it refuses to 'succumb to patent trolls' as it wins Maryland case
Nintendo issued a fairly terse press release earlier today, announcing that it has prevailed in a US patent lawsuit for the "third consecutive time this year." That particular case concerned Nintendo's Wii Balance Board accessory and Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus software, which a company called IA Labs said infringed on one of its patents (No. 7,121,982); a claim that was dismissed by the Maryland District Court judge in the case. IA Labs was also more or less dismissed as a company by Nintendo's senior vice president of legal and general counsel Rick Flamm, who said that "we vigorously defend patent lawsuits when we firmly believe that we have not infringed another party's patent," and that "we refuse to succumb to patent trolls." The company's full statement can be found after the break.
Sprint adds Kansas City and Baltimore to list of LTE markets
If you've been waiting to see if your 'hood would be next up for Sprint to bless with a shiny new LTE network we've got some potentially good news: by mid-2012 both Kansas City (regardless of what side of the Kansas / Missouri border you happen to be on) and Baltimore will be online. Those two cities will bring the total number of Sprint LTE markets to six, as they join the previously announced Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Atlanta. The carrier and CEO Dan Hesse refused to be any more specific about a launch date on today's earnings call, though, we can tell you the service should be launching alongside the Galaxy Nexus, LG Viper and a Sierra Wireless mobile hotspot capable of connecting via CDMA, WiMAX and LTE. Check out the PR after the break for more details.
Sid Meier: modern graphics have lowered the barriers of entry to gaming
In this interview with Game Informer, legendary developer Sid Meier says even he has succumbed to the lure of modern graphics. "I used to love to try and challenge the players' imagination," he says, "to show them a few pixels in 16 colors and try and convince them that they're ruling an empire to stand the test of time. But I think today's player is not really willing to make that investment, so we're able to bring the worlds to life in 3D."But he also believes that beefing up the graphics has brought in a much bigger audience than games could have picked up 20 years ago. "You had to kind of suspend your disbelief and be willing to step into that world," says Meier. "Today we make it a lot easier," and as a result, players who want more than a few pixels on screen can also get their fix.Meier's currently the creative director of game development at Firaxis, and though he's not participating directly on XCOM it doesn't mean he's not working. Every morning, he says, he comes out of the shower with "about 10 ideas," and is constantly iterating with his team on different prototypes. "Most of them," he says, "just go back into the trash heap." In other words, anyone who wants to make an awesome game should probably go root around in the garbage cans near Sparks Glencoe, Maryland.
M-Edge suit accuses Amazon of corporate bullying, patent infringement over Kindle cases
Case maker M-Edge filed suit with a Maryland court last week accusing Amazon of "unlawful corporate bullying" and patent infringement relating to the company's line of Kindle cases. According to M-Edge, the company signed a three-year agreement with Amazon in November 2009 for a 15-percent sales commission, only to have the retail giant demand a new contract with a 32-percent cut a mere two month later. A lawyer for M-Edge told The Wall Street Journal that Amazon punished the case maker over its refusal to play ball, after threats of burying the company's products on its site. According to the filing, M-Edge finally caved and signed a new contract in July of last year, given the fact that Amazon apparently drives nearly 90-percent of the small company's revenue. The suit also accuses Amazon of "knocking off" its reading light-packing covers with lighted jacket designs for the Kindle 3. Amazon, for its part, has refused to comment on the matter.
Verizon Wireless promos $20 plan for the data reluctant
For those of you living close to our nation's circle of political puissance, Verizon's got a promotional offer that'll help you feel like one of the data-dependent elite. Available starting today and running through September 30th, existing voice subscribers in Maryland, Washington DC and Virginia can begin their trek towards an always-connected lifestyle by tacking on 300MB of data for $20 per month. The deal's intended for cost-conscious customers who haven't yet learned "the many benefits of... a smartphone," and is open to any of the operator's 3G or 4G LTE handsets. Be sure to hit the break to find out more in the presser below, but we warn you -- internet addiction is a slippery, costly slope.
NSA wants $896.5 million to build new supercomputing complex
The federal government may be cutting corners left and right, but that hasn't stopped the NSA from requesting nearly $900 million to help beef up its supercomputing capabilities. According to budget documents released by the Department of Defense yesterday, the NSA is looking to construct a massive new High Performance Computing Center in Maryland, designed to harness plenty of supercomputing muscle within an energy efficient framework. As with many other data centers, the NSA's $896.5 million complex would feature raised floors, chilled water systems and advanced alarm mechanisms, but it would also need about 60 megawatts of power -- the same amount that powers Microsoft's gargantuan, 700,000 square-foot data center in Chicago. According to the DoD, however, the NSA would use that juice judiciously, in the hopes of conserving enough water, energy and building materials to obtain LEED Silver certification. Another chunk of the funding, not surprisingly, would go toward fortifying the facility. The NSA is hoping to pour more than $35 million into building security and perimeter control, which would include a cargo inspection facility, advanced surveillance, and systems designed to detect any radiological, nuclear, or chemical threats. If all goes to plan, construction would wrap up by December 2015.
Verizon's dropped 911 calls leave one woman trapped in burning house (video)
We're just hearing of a story that makes that 10,000 or so emergency calls that didn't go through over Verizon's network on January 26 look a little more serious. A house in Silver Spring, Maryland caught fire that evening during the snowstorm that knocked out power and landlines. A neighbor, noticing the house was ablaze, tried calling 911 on his cellphone but couldn't get through. Thankfully he was able to save the 94 year old woman who was trapped inside, but it would be about 30 minutes of repeated dialing before finally being connected to emergency services. Thank goodness for heroes, but maybe Verizon Guy has some work to do himself.
Verizon dropped 10,000 emergency calls during January snowstorm in Maryland, FCC finds it 'alarming'
Uh oh, Verizon's got itself into a bit of hot water with the old FCC. An outage during a snowstorm last month has reportedly resulted in a whopping 10,000 calls to 911 not being connected by the big red carrier. That would be bad enough in itself, but the less-than-pleased Communications Commission also notes that the emergency services that missed out on these calls were not alerted to the connectivity failure -- in fact, Maryland's Montgomery County officers were the ones to inform Verizon of the fault it was having, which was then promptly repaired within 15 minutes. The FCC is now curtly asking the network to check its entire footprint for similar vulnerabilities -- as the January events were apparently "not unique" -- and to propose remedial actions and monitoring systems to prevent it happening again.
Prison cellphone jamming gets its first test in Maryland
As we wait for the Safe Prisons Communication Act to pass the House, word comes out of Maryland that FCI Cumberland will begin testing cellphone jamming technology this week. As you well know, critics of the plan have voiced concerns that the technology could interfere with emergency response and legitimate cell phone use near prisons, but the state is determined to put those criticisms to rest -- and to keep inmates from using contraband cellphones for prank calling the warden's wife, sexting folks on the outside, ordering brutal execution-style "hits" on people, and quite frankly bedeviling the law-abiding citizens that prisons are meant to protect. We can't help but wonder how HBO's Oz would have turned out differently if this had happened ten years ago.
Leaked Sprint WiMAX roadmap names new cities for 2009 rollout
Well, what do we have here? One of our readers sent us a screenshot from Sprint's Sales Portal that included the above roadmap for its WiMAX rollout this year. A number of the yet-to-be-launched cities we've already heard about -- Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Charlotte -- but to the best of our knowledge, the rest of them are brand new entries. Additionally, Baltimore residents can look forward to some sort of coverage update in the fourth quarter. We'd be lying if we said we weren't jealous that Salem (population 3,000) and Milledgeville (population 19,000) are getting the wireless network before most of us on staff, but the service has to start somewhere, right? No indication here of 2010 plans, but last we heard that included Boston, Houston, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Update: As tipster Carlos points out, Clearwire's website already has some coverage maps for some of the cities listed in the third quarter, as well as some markets not listed here.
Verizon's FiOS TV expansions: May 2, 2009
About time for Verizon to roll out some new FiOS TV expansions, so California and Maryland are the latest to offer the service in all new areas in the last week. Still, we can't move forward without looking back, so here's Verizon's Q1 numbers, including 299,000 new subscribers for a total of 2.2 million. No new HD channels this week but the Direct Kick should bring home plenty of SD soccer while Chinese programming has a 24 hour home on Sino TV. If that's not enough there's $2.99 (presumably SD) editions of Marley and Me, Doubt and Frost/Nixon on video on-demand all month. See you next week! Read - Verizon Communications Reports Revenue, Earnings and Cash Flow Growth in 1Q 2009 Read - Soccer Fans Score With MLS 'Direct Kick' Package, Now Available on Verizon FiOS TV Read - Verizon FiOS TV Adds Leading Chinese Channel, Sino TV, to Growing Asian Content Offering Read - More Than 1 Million Households in California Now Have Access to Verizon's All-Fiber-Optic FiOS TV Service Read - More Cable Choice Comes to Maryland as Verizon Launches FiOS TV in Harford County Read - Cut Movie Ticket Expenses in Half With $2.99 Box Office Hits From Verizon FiOS TV Video-on-Demand
