This is insane:

Legislation requiring cars and trucks, including electric vehicles, to have AM radios easily cleared a House committee Wednesday, although it could run into opposition going forward.

H.R. 979, the “AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act,” would require the Department of Transportation to enforce the mandate through a rulemaking. It passed the Energy and Commerce Committee by a 50-1 vote. Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) was the only “no.”

What’s next—mandating 8-track players in every car? Fax machines in every home? Floppy disks in every laptop? If Congress actually cared about emergency communication, it would strengthen cellular networks, not cling to obsolete technology. Congress is a den of old busybodies.

Hat tip: Nick Gillespie.

Addendum: If AM radio is so valuable for emergencies then the market will provide or you could, you know, put an AM radio in your glove box. No need for a mandate. We already have FM, broadcast TV, cable, satellite, cell, and Wireless Emergency Alerts; resilience can be met without specifying AM hardware.

The post Creative Stagnation appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

When operators see danger, innocent users are dragged down along with bad actors

Before the potential of the internet was appreciated around the world, nations that understood its importance managed to scoop outsized allocations of IPv4 addresses, actions that today mean many users in the rest of the world are more likely to find their connections throttled or blocked.…

Over the weekend, Discord revealed that its users may have had their data compromised when a third-party service provider was hacked. At the time, the platform said that a "small number" of government IDs may have been illicitly accessed. Today, however, claims circulated that the attackers had obtained more than 2 million photos that had been used for age-verification purposes. In response, the company said that about 70,000 users "may have had government-ID photos exposed." Other user data that could have been compromised includes the users’ "name, Discord username, email and other contact details if provided to Discord customer support," as well as a limited amount of billing information. 

Engadget reached out to Discord for comment, but did not receive a response. However, Discord spokesperson Nu Wexler shared a statement about the issue with The Verge and said that some of the figures being shared were "inaccurate" and came from the attackers.

"The numbers being shared are incorrect and part of an attempt to extort a payment from Discord," Wexler said. "We will not reward those responsible for their illegal actions. All affected users globally have been contacted and we continue to work closely with law enforcement, data protection authorities, and external security experts. We’ve secured the affected systems and ended work with the compromised vendor."

God, look at me. Recommending a PCIe 5.0 SSD like I’m some Newegg banner ad. 2023 James would be violently sick. Yet it is in fact 2025, and while cheaper PCIe 4.0 drives still make the most sense to most people, newer and faster 5.0 models have begun to find their place as futureproofed upgrades to high-spec PCs. And if they can be made less of a luxury, all the better, as is the case with Amazon’s current sale on the WD Black SN8100.

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2025/09: 2 Games, 0 Platinums, 0 Movies, 1 TV Seasons, 2 Books, 0 Manga

Don't tell Elon, he'd have Tesla's Robotaxis going ludicrous speed

Police in a Silicon Valley suburb were flummoxed last weekend after pulling over a self-driving Waymo robo-taxi for making an illegal turn, then finding no driver they could issue with a ticket.…