OSHA Issues Citations Following Worker Death At Amazon Warehouse

(Zach Egolf)

Following the December 2013 death of a temporary worker at an Amazon fulfillment center in New Jersey, the federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration has issued citations to five companies involved in staffing the warehouse, while also revealing that it is investigating another death at an Amazon facility in Pennsylvania.

According to OSHA, the New Jersey fatality occurred on Dec. 4, 2013, when a temp worker hired to sort items for shipping became trapped in the Avenel, NJ, warehouse’s conveyor system.

OSHA did not mention Amazon in its list of companies cited for serious violations, but did call out third-party logistics contractor Genco, which had been contracted to to direct the temporary employees from four different staffing agencies.

Genco was cited for not certifying that a hazard assessment of the facility had been conducted before assigning employees to work the conveyor system. OSHA deemed this a serious violation, saying the employer knew (or should have known) that there was a substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result from a hazard.

In addition to Genco, four temp staffing firms were also cited for failure to perform a hazard assessment of the facility.

The five companies each face a penalty of $6,000. They also each have 15 business days from receipt of their citations to comply or contest the citations.

“Temporary staffing agencies and host employers are jointly responsible for the safety and health of temporary employees,” said Patricia Jones, director of OSHA’s Avenel Area Office in a statement. “These employers must assess the work site to ensure that workers are adequately protected from potential hazards. It is essential that employers protect all workers from job hazards-both temporary and permanent workers.”

In addition to the New Jersey fatality, OSHA revealed that it is investigating a separate fatality that occurred on June 1 at an Amazon Fulfillment Center in Carlisle, PA.

Amazon has rapidly been expanding its network of fulfillment centers in order to keep up with customer demand and improve delivery times. The company has been heavily criticized for the conditions at a number of these facilities. For example, in 2011, workers at a Pennsylvania warehouse needed help from the media in order to get the e-tailer to install air-conditioning units after more than a dozen employees passed out inside the poorly ventilated building.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Pouring Acid On An ATM Will Not Get You Access To The Cash Inside

(University of Colorado police)

It must be so tempting for the criminally minded to know that there are boxes filled with money on just about every corner of the non-residential areas of this great nation. One man in Colorado had a brilliant scheme to crack open an ATM on the CU-Boulder campus. The only thing he succeeded in doing was injuring a student who later used the ATM. Oh, and destroying the machine.

The chemical, which police haven’t yet identified, ruined the machine enough to make it unusable, but didn’t ruin it enough to get the man access to its sweet, cash-filled center. Police report that he checked back on the machine twice, presumably to find out whether the acid had dissolved the machine sufficiently. It never did, but it did also bleach the concrete below the machine.

Since it’s the off-season on college campuses, no one noticed the chemical contamination for almost a week. Six days later, a student went to use the ATM and sustained a chemical burn. Fortunately, he wasn’t injured badly enough to need medical attention. However, the machine needs to be replaced. Police say that a new ATM will cost about $50,000.

Would-be thief pours acid on CU-Boulder ATM in attempt to crack open cash machine [Daily Camera]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Consumo de datos hasta 2010 #infografia #infographic #internet

Hola:

Una infografía sobre el Consumo de datos hasta 2010.

Un saludo

You will find more statistics at Statista

Archivado en: Infografía, Sociedad de la información Tagged: Infografía, internet, tic



from TICs y Formación http://ift.tt/1iuLGq9

via Alfredo Vela Posteado por www.bscformacion.com

Homeowners Forced To Burn Down Home Teetering On The Edge Of A Cliff

(WFAA.com)

Homeowners forced to move out of their cliffhanging home in Texas weeks ago had to have it burned to the ground today. Torching it was simply the best way to get rid of it before it caused an even bigger mess by falling into the lake below.

Fire crews set fire to the house today, reports NBC Dallas Fort Worth (link has video that autoplays), after the first option of hauling the home away from the edge of the cliff with a giant net was dismissed, and a third idea of allowing the home to slide naturally into the lake (debris to be collected later) was abandoned as too expensive.

The homeowners of the house — appraised at more than $700,000 — tell WFAA News that it was built in 2008 and it had passed inspection before they bought it in 2012.

But when a giant crack appeared in April, they were told it was time to move out, as the home was unsafe. Part of the cliff fell away earlier this week, with some of the house dropping into the water a short time after.

“It’s like, ’Is that really my home? Or is that something else that you’re watching on TV?’ And then you’re like, “Good grief, that is my home,’” the homeowner, who is currently in Florida, told the station of knowing his home had been reduced to ashes. “Yeah, it’s a trying time, certainly.”

To add to the likely pain of losing your home, the man and his wife will also be responsible now for paying for the cleanup and disposal of the remains.

Lake Whitney Cliff House Set on Fire, Burned to the Ground [NBC DallasFort Worth]

Dangling Lake Whitney home goes up in flames [WFAA News]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Scary Smart $199 Cup Knows That’s Not Just Orange Juice You’re Drinking

It’s thinking.

Reading nutritional labels is just such an arduous task, am I right? If you can’t handle figuring out what it is exactly that you’re drinking, there’s a $199 cup you can buy that will do all the thinking for you. And yes, it will know that’s not just juice you’ve been pouring. Ahem.

It’s called Vessyl, and is the brainchild of a biomedical computing student who started his quest to build a device that’s part of the “internet of things” seven years ago, reports The Verge.

“I wanted to put a computer into one of the most ubiquitous objects in the history of the human race,” he said, settling on a cup. He worked with the designer behind the Jawbone to build it.

Now the 13-ounce cup is a reality, and an informative one at that: It purportedly recognizes any beverage you pour into it, shows the nutritional content of that drink and syncs your drinking habits with your smartphone. It measures the sugar, protein, calories, fat and caffeine inside anything you pour, whether you bought a soda at the store or concocted your own brew, and tracks your daily hydration levels.

It can even tell the difference between strong and weak coffee, with Ellis Hamburger of The Verge noting that it recognized each of the nearly dozen drinks he tried pouring into it.

“Within 10 seconds, the device, which currently resembles more of a Thermos than a finished product, recognized Crush orange soda, Vitamin Water XXX, Tropicana orange juice, Gatorade Cool Blue, plain-old water, and a few other beverages, all by name,” he writes. “Yes, this cup knows the difference between Gatorade Cool Blue and Glacier Freeze.”

Vessyls are set for an early 2015 shipping date at a price of $199.99, but the company is taking preorders now for $99.

Right now my water glass is telling me it’s half empty. Or is it half full? It’s not answering. Stupid cup. You know nothing.

Vessyl is the smart cup that knows exactly what you’re drinking [The Verge]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

The Aaron Paul Xbox One Ad Will Mess With Your Xbox One

For months, Microsoft has been airing ads with people hollering “Xbox On” and “Xbox Do This Thing That Doesn’t Really Work The Way You Show It In The Ad” but those ads were somehow not triggering users’ Xbox Ones to respond. That is until the new ads featuring Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul started running.

In the ad, the actor is lounging on his couch and playing video games, watching TV, presumably while waiting for a batch of crystal blue persuasion to finish cooking in the meth lab he built with his DVD royalties.

So when Paul says “Xbox On,” people with Xboxes have been complaining that their Xbox Ones have started listening. There are numerous people complaining on Twitter about it, and folks mentioning on Reddit how Aaron Paul’s voice commands are working on their consoles.

We just tried it in the Consumerist Bat Cave, playing the ad on a computer in the same room as an Xbox One, and it immediately brought up the DVR controls for the TV.

All we can say is thank god Microsoft has decided that the Kinect is not an essential piece of the Xbox One, because this thing hasn’t worked properly since day one.

So at the very least, the Aaron Paul ad is a reminder to remove the Kinect and drown it in a river.

[via AVclub]

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

EEOC: Company Forced Employees To Practice Onion-Based Religion

This could just be a regular story about a company allegedly using its power over employees to force them to practice a specific religion until the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission intervened, and that would be interesting enough. However, an EEOC lawsuit alleges that the owners of a Long Island health insurance company forced employees to practice a belief system started by a relative.

That practice is called Harnessing Happiness, or Onionhead. Legally, it’s organized as a nonprofit organization, but doesn’t call itself a church.

Unlike major world religions, Onionhead admits that its central figure is a fictional character invented by the founder: an anthropomorphic onion meant to help teach the religion’s lessons about feelings to children. And YouTube surfers.

The founder explains:

We used an onion as a medium to express peeling our feelings, as a way of healing our feelings. As well, an onion has no gender, which is beneficial for children’s usage.

Okay, cool. People can practice whatever religion they like, or follow any philosophy that interests them, but what they can’t do is pressure or force their employees to do the same. That’s what the owners of this company are accused of doing.

“Employees were told [to] wear Onionhead buttons, pull Onionhead cards to place near their work stations and keep only dim lighting in the workplace,” notes the EEOC. “None of these practices was work-related.” The lawsuit alleges that workers also had to take part in group prayers, burning candles, and “discussions of spiritual texts.” Employees who weren’t interested or who protested the practice of this belief system at work were fired.

In a statement to media, the company said they are a caring, small, family-oriented business and that the allegations are false. “Given how we treat our employees, we are saddened that our government would subject our company to the expense of this meritless lawsuit,” the company said.

EEOC Sues United Health Programs of America and Parent Company for Religious Discrimination [Press Release]

Lawsuit: Syosset company fired workers who refused to pray [Newsday]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

FCC To Look Into Data Bottlenecks And Pay-For-Access Deals With ISPs

(Atwater Village Newbie)

The whole point of net neutrality is that Internet Service Providers like Comcast and Verizon shouldn’t be allowed to actively prioritize or degrade the data they help to deliver; it should all be treated equally. But as we’ve seen with Netflix speeds over the last year, ISPs can passively allow downstream data to bottleneck, effectively telling the largest content providers that they have to pay for more direct access. After omitting this latter issue in his controversial net neutrality proposal, FCC Chair Tom Wheeler announced today that it’s time for his commission to consider it.

In a statement [PDF] released Friday afternoon, Wheeler cites one of the many e-mails he’s received about this issue of interconnectivity.

“Netflix versus Verizon: Is Verizon abusing Net Neutrality and causing Netflix picture quality to be degraded by ‘throttling’ transmission speeds? Who is at fault here?” reads the e-mail from a consumer named George. “The consumer is the one suffering! What can you do?”

Technically, George is misstating what Verizon has done to Netflix’s data. Throttling would be in violation of the recently gutted neutrality rules, which the major ISPs have promised to abide by pending approval (and inevitable, eventual legal challenge) of the new ones.

What started happening last summer is that Verizon and others began allowing Netflix data to bottleneck. See, Netflix pays a lot of money to bandwidth providers to carry their streaming videos. But in order to reach the end-users, that data has to be handed off to ISPs who pipe it into your home. Until last year, when Netflix’s downstream connection started to get congested, the ISPs would open up more connection points. Think of it like the supermarket that temporarily opens up a register or two to keep the checkout lines moving.

Feeling that they weren’t getting the money they deserved for providing a service that consumers already pay good money for, ISPs simply stopped opening these extra lanes and allowed Netflix to back up. This put Netflix in the position of having to choose: Lose customers who don’t care or understand why their streaming episodes of Burn Notice look like 8-bit video games, or pay the ISPs for better access to their networks.

And in February, Netflix agreed to pay Comcast an undisclosed amount for a more direct connection to the Comcast network. Almost immediately, speeds improved. Then a few weeks back, it reached a similar deal with Verizon, though that hasn’t really shown the desired results yet.

Netflix is certainly not the first company that has paid for this sort of connection, but since it represents the largest chunk of downstream traffic in the U.S. and has a history of being brash in its feelings toward ISPs, these deals have brought these “paid-peering” agreements to the fore.

“We don’t know the answers and we are not suggesting that any company is at fault,” writes Wheeler in his response to the e-mail. “Consumers pay their ISP and they pay content providers like Hulu, Netflix or Amazon. Then when they don’t get good service they wonder what is going on. I have experienced these problems myself and know how exasperating it can be…. Consumers must get what they pay for. As the consumer’s representative we need to know what is going on.”

Wheeler says he recently directed his staff to request relevant info from both the ISPs and affected content providers regarding these issues of interconnectivity and pay-to-play access.

The commission has obtained and is looking at the deals that Netflix made with both Comcast and Verizon. It has also asked to review other peering arrangements.

“To be clear, what we are doing right now is collecting information, not regulating,” cautions Wheeler. “We are looking under the hood. Consumers want transparency. They want answers. And so do I. The bottom line is that consumers need to understand what is occurring when the Internet service they’ve paid for does not adequately deliver the content they desire, especially content they’ve also paid for.”

In a statement released to Consumerist, Comcast’s VP of Government something or other says the company welcomes Wheeler’s look under the hood.

“Internet traffic exchange on the backbone is part of ensuring that bits flow freely and efficiently and all actors across the system have a shared responsibility to preserve the smooth functioning and highly competitive backbone interconnection market,” says the statement from a company that allowed Netflix traffic to effectively grind to a halt and only changed its tune when A) Netflix agreed to pay up and B) when Comcast needed to look good before regulators in order to get them to sign off on the company’s pending acquisition of Time Warner Cable.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Grocery Groups Sue Vermont Over New GMO Food Labeling Requirement

(afagen)

Back in April, Vermont became the first state to require food companies to label their products if they contained genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Now various industry food groups are coming together to fight the rule with a lawsuit claiming the law is a “costly and misguided measure” that in the end, the groups say, won’t help consumers.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association and others are challenging the law in federal court in Vermont, and have filed suit to ask a judge to overturn the law. The suit says the rule “will set the nation on a path toward a 50-state patchwork of GMO labeling policies that do nothing to advance the health and safety of consumers,” reports the Associated Press.

“They must revise hundreds of thousands of product packages, from the small to the super-sized,” the suit said. “Then, they must establish Vermont-only distribution channels to ensure that the speech Vermont is forcing them to say, or not say, is conveyed in that state.”

In addition, the lawsuit claims that foods made with GMOs are perfectly safe and as such, the state is exceeding its authority under the U.S. Constitution.

While the the U.S. Food and Drug Administration agrees, ruling that food from modified plants isn’t materially any different from other food, critics of GMOs have called the resulting products environmentally suspect, saying there’s no way to measure the possible ill health effects that could arise in the future.

Maine and Connecticut both have GMO label laws too, but those laws don’t go into effect unless states that share their borders draw up similar rules.

The lawsuit apparently has some breathing room, as the Vermont law won’t go into effect for two more years. Those who violate it will be fined a civil penalty of $1,000 per day per product for “false certification” if the labels don’t note GMO foods or retailers don’t post signs for unpackaged GMO products.

Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell hadn’t seen the lawsuit as of yesterday, but noted that his office is prepared and “we’re ready to fight.”

Grocers sue Vermont over GMO food label law [Associated Press]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

LinkedIn Has To Face User Lawsuit Over E-Mail Privacy Violations, Judge Rules

(Vincent Verdult)

We’ve all been there: somebody you knew like eight years ago joins LinkedIn, and the site asks you to go add them as a contact. You ignore the e-mail, because hey, you don’t even remember Bob that well, but LinkedIn doesn’t let it go. It asks you again and again to go add Bob to your network. And by the third message you might well be thinking, “Bob! Stop it! I never want to hear from you again! Go away!” Well, now Bob — and all the real, actual people just like him — can sue LinkedIn about that, a court has ruled.

Reuters reports that a federal judge in California ruled today that a lawsuit against LinkedIn has the green light to go forward. The plaintiffs in the suit complain that although they consented to allow LinkedIn to send an initial e-mail to their contacts, they did not agree to the follow-up messages. That LinkedIn accessed their contacts and sent the “reminder” messages without users permission is a violation of their privacy, the argument goes.

A U.S. District Court judge agreed, and said that customers may go forward with a lawsuit claiming that LinkedIn violated their right of publicity — in other words, that their names or likenesses were used for commercial purposes without their authorization, which is against California law.

The follow-up messages create the potential for harm, the judge wote, by making the people on behalf of whom the messages are theoretically sent look… well, like big, annoying jerks.

The e-mails “could injure users’ reputations by allowing contacts to think that the users are the types of people who spam their contacts or are unable to take the hint that their contacts do not want to join their LinkedIn network,” she wrote in her decision.

She also added that LinkedIn may be actively misleading customers about the potential for being used as recruiting tools for the service. “By stating a mere three screens before the disclosure regarding the first invitation that ‘We will not … email anyone without your permission,’ LinkedIn may have actively led users astray,” she wrote.

The lawsuit hopes to gain class action status, and sues both for LinkedIn to quit their e-mail harvesting behavior, and also for cash damages.

LinkedIn must face customer lawsuit over email addresses [Reuters]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist