Month: December 2016

Enlarge / Courtroom 1 in the René Davidson Courthouse, part of the Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland, California. (credit: Cyrus Farivar)

OAKLAND, Calif.—Most pieces of software don’t have the power to get someone arrested—but Tyler Technologies’ Odyssey Case Manager does. This is the case management software that runs on the computers of hundreds and perhaps even thousands of court clerks and judges in county courthouses nationwide. (Federal courts use an entirely different system.)

Typically, when a judge makes a ruling—for example, issuing or rescinding a warrant—those words said by a judge in court are entered into Odyssey. That information is then relied upon by law enforcement officers to coordinate arrests and releases and to issue court summons. (Most other courts, even if they don’t use Odyssey, use a similar software system from another vendor.)

But, just across the bay from San Francisco, Alameda County's deputy public defender, Jeff Chorney, says that since the county switched from a decades-old computer system to Odyssey in August, dozens of defendants have been wrongly arrested or jailed. Others have even been forced to register as sex offenders unnecessarily. “I understand that with every piece of technology, bugs have to be worked out,” he said, practically exasperated. “But we're not talking about whether people are getting their paychecks on time. We're talking about people being locked in cages, that's what jail is. It's taking a person and locking them in a cage.”

Enlarge (credit: NMC)

Donald Trump's incoming administration might be going full steam ahead in returning to fossil fuels, but the clean energy sector might have other ideas. Nikola Motor Company has just unveiled a huge class 8 truck (as big as they get) that's powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, claiming it will have an operational range of as much as 1,200 miles (1,900km) when it's released in 2020.

The Nikola One, which is designed for long-haul good transport across a large landmass, will according to its creators be able to travel between 800 and 1,200 miles on a single tank of fuel, while delivering over 1,000 horsepower and 2,000 foot-pounds of torque.

If these claims are true, it will provide nearly double the power of the current generation of diesel-powered semis/articulated lorries.

Last year we wrote about the "USB Killer"—a DIY USB stick that fried almost everything (laptops, smartphones, consoles, cars) that it was plugged into. Now the USB Killer has been mass produced—you can buy it online for about £50/$50. Now everyone can destroy just about every computer that has a USB port. Hooray.

The commercialised USB Killer looks like a fairly humdrum memory stick. You can even purchase a "Test Shield" for £15/$15, which lets you try out the kill stick—watch the spark of electricity arc between the two wires!—without actually frying the target device, though I'm not sure why you would want to spend £65 to do that. The website proudly states that the USB Killer is CE approved, meaning it has passed a number of EU electrical safety directives.