Month: January 2017

Enlarge / Don't worry, an algorithm has you covered, future NYC resident. (credit: Louise Ma / WNYC)

Anyone who's ever been stuck in stop-and-go traffic would be happy to tell you that congestion is a waste of time. But the true scale of the waste is difficult to comprehend. It's estimated that congestion costs the US one percent of its annual GDP, as people waste otherwise productive hours and fuel sitting in their vehicles. That doesn't even consider all the pollution it creates.

Despite those numbers, most people wouldn't choose to use options that cut congestion, like public transit or ridesharing. In many cases, that's because these alternatives require giving up some autonomy, as you can't necessarily go where you want whenever you want.

A paper in this week's PNAS suggests that doesn't have to be the case. Using a real-world database of fully autonomous travel—a week's worth of New York City taxi rides—the authors demonstrate an algorithm that can service travel needs in real time with minimal waits for a ride. The result would be far fewer cars on the road. Even with standard cabs, only a quarter of today's taxi fleet would be required to service all the ride requests.

Enlarge / A Texas death chamber in Huntsville, Texas. (credit: Getty | Joe Raedle )

Texas officials filed a federal lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration Tuesday following a 17-month stand-off with the agency over the legality of imported drugs the state intended to use for lethal injections.

In July of 2015, Texas imported 1,000 vials of thiopental sodium, a barbiturate anesthetic that ensures rapid loss of consciousness when given in lethal cocktails. According to the court documents (PDF), the drugs came from an unnamed “foreign distributor." (However, Buzzfeed has reported they were from a questionable source in India.) At the request of the FDA, the drugs were seized by Customs officials upon their arrival at the airport. Later, the FDA said that the drugs were not approved for use in the US and were improperly labeled. Texas appealed, arguing that because the drugs would be used by law enforcement, they met an exception to federal regulations. The FDA responded by notifying the state that it was tentatively barred from importing the drug.

In this week’s lawsuit, Texas reasserts its “law enforcement exemption” claim. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was openly frustrated with the FDA’s interference. In a press release, Paxton said:

Enlarge / The iOS version of The New York Times app. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Citing local Chinese regulations, Apple confirmed today to The New York Times that the publication's English- and Chinese-language apps had been removed from the Chinese version of the Apple app store. Apple said that "when the situation changes, the App Store will once again offer The New York Times app for download in China," but it declined to cite the specific regulations violated or who had contacted Apple about it in the first place. The apps were removed from the store on December 23.

According to the Times, the Chinese government has been taking steps to block the publication in the country since a series of articles in 2012 highlighted the hidden wealth of then-Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and his family. Legislation called "The Provisions on the Administration of Mobile Internet Application Information Services" passed in June of 2016 prohibits apps from publishing "prohibited" information among other things, and the Times suspects this is the rule that got its news apps pulled.

“The request by the Chinese authorities to remove our apps is part of their wider attempt to prevent readers in China from accessing independent news coverage by The New York Times of that country, coverage which is no different from the journalism we do about every other country in the world,” said NYT spokesperson Eileen Murphy.

Enlarge / Medium CEO Evan Williams, as seen in 2010. (credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images News)

Medium, the San Francisco-based online publishing platform founded in 2012, has laid off 50 employees, or roughly one-third of its staff. The company will also close offices in New York and Washington, DC.

Ev Williams, Medium’s CEO, wrote in a lengthy post on Wednesday that the company would be changing its business model despite ending 2016 as “our best year yet.”

He blamed the entire concept of “ad-driven media on the Internet” as the root of the company’s shortcomings. As Williams, who is also a co-founder of Twitter, wrote: