REASON – Free Minds & Free Markets | This, That and The Other

Somewhere in San Francisco's Mission District, they say a solar-powered phone is concealed in a box atop a pole. The phone is running Shazam—an app that identifies songs—with a microphone trained on the street below. If you visit walzr.com, you can see what music has drifted into the mic's range, hear fragments of the tracks mixed with ambient street noise, and click links to hear the full songs on Spotify or Apple Music. The man behind this is Riley Walz, a 22-year-old programmer with a history of prankish projects, such as tricking Twitter into verifying a fake congressional candidate. He calls this one Bop Spotter, after ShotSpotter, a controversial company whose sound sensors can allegedly pinpoint a gunshot's location. Outside investigators have raised serious questions about ShotSpotter's accuracy, leading many activists to demand that police departments not use it. When Walz unveiled Bop Spotter, it set off… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared the first continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) for over-the-counter sale—a major win for health freedom and common sense. "Giving more individuals valuable information about their health, regardless of their access to a doctor or health insurance, is an important step forward in advancing health equity for U.S. patients," said Jeff Shuren, director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, in a press release announcing the change. CGMs are wearable devices that continuously monitor blood sugar levels in real time. They've been invaluable for diabetics—but their potential goes much further. For instance, those with chronically elevated blood sugar levels, even if they don't meet the threshold for diabetes, could use CGMs to manage their health early and avoid a future diagnosis. Even in metabolically healthy individuals, avoiding blood sugar spikes and crashes can support weight loss, steady energy levels, and overall well-being since elevated blood… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

12/25/2009: Justice Elena Kagan "was probably at a Chinese restaurant." The post Today in Supreme Court History: December 25, 2009 appeared first on Reason.com. ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Volunteers in western North Carolina trying to help people left homeless by Hurricane Helene say local building officials are standing in their way by requiring permits for temporary shelters. "The red tape is an issue, now I can tell you, our organization, and I'm 100% okay telling you this, we have been operating on the premise of forgiveness not permission," said one volunteer. Another volunteer said that to get around the permitting process, they are building insulated buildings with no plumbing or electricity that legally qualify as sheds instead of houses. "They are something they are going to be able to keep when they're back in their homes if they opt to live in it—that's between them and the county, but we're giving them a shed," he said.The post Brickbat: Blowin' in the Wind appeared first on Reason.com. ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Last February, explaining why he thought Joe Biden could not be successfully prosecuted for mishandling classified documents, Special Counsel Robert Hur suggested that jurors would be apt to view the president as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory" and "diminished faculties." That amply supported characterization outraged Democrats, who portrayed it as a politically motivated attempt to undermine Biden's reelection. Five months later, additional evidence of Biden's "diminished faculties" forced his withdrawal from the presidential race, showing it was Democrats' refusal to admit the obvious, not Hur's willingness to note it, that kneecapped their attempt to retain the White House. The misplaced criticism of Hur was one of the year's most audacious attempts at blame shifting. Here are some more highlights. Felonious Joking. In January, a federal jury awarded Waylon Bailey $205,000 to compensate for the ordeal he suffered in March 2020, when a dozen… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.