California Parents Could Soon Sue For Social Media Addiction

California could soon hold social media companies responsible for harming children who have become addicted to their products, permitting parents to sue platforms like Instagram and TikTok for up to $25,000 per violation under a bill that passed the state Assembly on Monday. The Associated Press reports: The bill defines “addiction” as kids under 18 who are both harmed — either physically, mentally, emotionally, developmentally or materially — and who want to stop or reduce how much time they spend on social media but they can’t because they are preoccupied or obsessed with it. Business groups have warned that if the bill passes, social media companies would most likely cease operations for children in California rather than face the legal risk.

The proposal would only apply to social media companies that had at least $100 million in gross revenue in the past year, appearing to take aim at social media giants like Facebook and others that dominate the marketplace. It would not apply to streaming services like Netflix and Hulu or to companies that only offer email and text messaging services. […] The bill gives social media companies two paths to escape liability in the courts. If the bill becomes law, it would take effect on Jan. 1. Companies that remove features deemed addictive to children by April 1 would not be responsible for damages. Also, companies that conduct regular audits of their practices to identify and remove features that could be addictive to children would be immune from lawsuits. “Monday’s vote is a key — but not final — step for the legislation,” adds the report. “The bill now heads to the state Senate, where it will undergo weeks of hearings and negotiations among lawmakers and advocates. But Monday’s vote keeps the bill alive this year.”

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EPA Opens Applications For Its $5 Billion Clean School Bus Program

The EPA is formally accepting applications for its Clean School Bus Program, a $5 billion program to replace dirty diesel school buses with more environmentally friendly options. Ars Technica reports: Specifically, the EPA is aiming to replace older (model year 2010 or older) diesel-powered school buses, which must be scrapped in order for a clean bus to be bought to replace them. Oh, and the old bus has to be fully functionalâ”this isn’t intended as a way to make the government pay for broken junk to be replaced with shiny new buses. But the agency says it will also accept applications from schools looking for zero-emission buses that are prepared to scrap older non-diesel school buses, as well as newer internal combustion buses (which should either be sold, scrapped, or donated).

The EPA isn’t requiring the replacement buses to all be electric, however. While the program will pay for battery-electric buses — such as the Thomas C2 Jouley that was delivered to a school in Alexandria County in Virginia on Friday to mark the start of the program — it will also pay for buses powered by propane or compressed natural gas as long as they’re also model year 2021 or newer and will serve the school district for at least five years, among other requirements.

The EPA will consider applications to replace up to 25 buses at once and has set aside $250 million for zero-emission buses in 2022 and $250 million for clean school buses, with another $4.5 billion remaining for 2023-2028. Rebates range from $375,000 for a zero-emissions Class 7 or Class 8 bus down to $25,000 for smaller propane buses (classes 3-6). The application process is open until August 19, and successful applicants should be notified in October that it’s time to order some new buses.

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Lecturer Argues Cryptocurrency Should ‘Die in a Fire’, Predicts Implosion

Nicholas Weaver is a senior staff researcher at the International Computer Science Institute and lecturer in the computer science department at UC Berkeley. But he’s also a raging cryptocurrency skeptic, arguing that cryptocurrency is useless and destructive, and should “die in a fire.”

In a recent interview in Current Affairs he promulgates what he calls Weaver’s Iron Law of Blockchain. “When somebody says you can solve X with blockchain, they don’t understand X, and you can ignore them.” So for those pushing cryptocurrency for “Banking the unbanked,” Weaver points to M-Pesa, a payment system Vodafone started in Kenya in 2007 “about the same time as Bitcoin…”
It has eaten the Third World. It’s huge. Because it just basically attaches a balance to your phone account. And you can text to somebody else to transfer money that way…. So even with the most basic dumb phone you have easy-to-use electronic money. And this has taken over multiple countries and become a huge primary payment system. [Whereas] the cryptocurrency doesn’t work.”
Weaver also contends that when companies say they accept payments in Bitcoin, “They’re lying.” (They’re using a service which pays them in “actual money” after performing conversions on any Bitcoin proferred-up by a customer.) He believes cryptocurrency is only seriously used for payments for ransomware and drug deals — the things that non-decentralized currencies are legally obligated to block.

The reason I’ve gotten so sour on the cryptocurrency space is the ransomware. It’s doing tens to hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damage to the global economy. And it only exists because people can pay in Bitcoin.

Weaver also believes cryptocurrency lets venture capitalists “carry out securities fraud as a business model” when they sell one of their startup’s tokens to retail investors.
This is blatantly an unlicensed security. This is blatant securities fraud, but they didn’t commit the securities fraud. It was just the companies they invested in that did the securities fraud, and the SEC has not been proactively enforcing this. They only retroactively enforce against the initial coin offerings after they fail…. and when things fail, the only people to prosecute are the companies, not Andreessen Horowitz itself. So they’ve been able to make securities fraud a business in such a way that they are legally remote, so you will not be able to throw them in jail….
The SEC has the authority to stop those proactively rather than reactively. They choose not to…. Basically, there’s a fear among regulators — that I think started in the ’80s — of being accused of “stifling innovation.” There’s no innovation to stifle. So regulate away.

He’s also skeptical of cryptocurrency’s other supposed advantages. Weaver argues cryptocurrency incentivizes green power “the same way that a whole bunch of random shootings would incentivize bulletproof vests.” And even as an investment vehicle, Weaver sees it as “a self-created pyramid scheme.”
[Y]ou have to keep getting new suckers in. As soon as the number of suckers dries up, it collapses. And because it’s not zero-sum, but deeply negative-sum, there are actually a lot of mechanisms that can cause it to collapse suddenly to zero. We saw this just the other day with the Terra stablecoin and the Luna side token.
So when asked for the future of cryptocurrency, Weaver predicts “It will implode spectacularly.” (By which he means it will “collapse greatly.”)

The only question is when. I thought it would have actually imploded a year ago. But basically, what we saw with Terra and Luna, where it collapsed suddenly due to these downward positive feedback loops — situations where basically the system is designed to collapse utterly and quickly — those will happen to the larger cryptocurrency space….
[T]he Washington Nationals just the other day started doing a lot of tweets for their business relationship with Terra. That was $5 million for five years prepaid in advance in cash. So for the next five years, the Washington Nationals are obliged to hype a cryptocurrency that failed spectacularly already.

Thanks to Slashdot reader sdinfoserv for sharing the article…

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