john.bartley

A few weeks back, the air conditioning in my 12-year-old Kia Soul started acting up. Sometimes it worked great. Other times, the blower wouldn't turn on at all. There was no discernible pattern—it would work right away or not at all, or suddenly turn on while I was driving. (Unsurprisingly, this started happening right around the time New York City began getting hit with heat advisories.)

Last week, I thought I was finally cooked (figuratively, but also literally): The AC worked on Tuesday, then it never worked again. After four sweltering days and a few long sweaty holiday weekend drives, I took it to a mechanic, who checked various fuses and relays and determined I needed a new blower motor, which would cost more than $1,000, most of that for labor. (Apparently a Kia Soul is built weird and is hard to repair.)

So I went home and did what I should have done in the first place: I began frantically researching the problem to see if others were in the same boat. And it turned out a ton of folks have a problem with intermittent AC functionality—not just with the Kia Soul, but with different makes and models. And the same advice kept popping up again and again: Try giving the front center console a real good kick.

You'd think we've moved beyond the era where devices were simple enough that hitting them would make them start working, but I had nothing to lose except the cost of a $1,000 repair, so I tried it. (Well, technically I thumped it hard with my fist; I was stopped at a red light and couldn't get good leverage for a kick.) Instantly, the blower motor switched on and a blast of cold air filled the car.

The lesson here is twofold: 1) when in doubt, consult the internet for advice before shelling out big bucks for a repair, and 2) sometimes a kick, smack, or thump really will fix the problem.

Turn to the collected wisdom of the internet

I'm not suggesting the mechanic who told me I needed a new blower motor was trying to rip me off. Assuming he actually checked all the electrical issues he claimed to have checked, "motor bad" seems a logical conclusion. But being the kind of person who drives a 12-year-old car (a cheapskate), I wanted to more thoroughly exhaust my options before spending a bunch of money on someone's best guess. Because even accounting for experience and expertise, some mechanics, when faced with a problem that might take hours to properly diagnose, will just rely on intuition. And sure, maybe their fix will work—but that doesn't mean it was the cheapest option, or even necessary.

In this case, my research turned up many other Kia owners who'd experienced similar AC issues: The air would blow cold, but only sometimes. Our symptoms didn't match up with descriptions of a failing blower motor, which usually involve weird noises, smells, and gradually weakening airflow. And lots of these hot and sweaty folks noted that giving their car a really good smack would solve the problem. It turned out the collective wisdom of a bunch of frustrated folks turned out to be more useful than the opinion of a single mechanic who didn't have all day to research my issue and find the solution that would make him the least amount of money.

Typically in these situations, I'm looking for advice from a mix of experts and laypeople, and the internet is full of both. Here are some good tactics to try to find what you're looking for:

• Google your problem + Reddit, which will guide you to any established communities where people are discussing the kinds of problems you're facing.

• Look for forums aimed specifically at owners of whatever it is that's giving you a headache. In my case, that was Kia Soul Forums.

• Google your problem +YouTube for (possibly) helpful repair videos—though finding one that will actually be helpful can be a challenge.

Like turning to WebMD every time your stomach hurts can convince you you're dying when you just ate a bad taco, the repair suggestions you get on the internet won't always be the right ones—but if they're simple enough to try yourself (hitting something; replacing a cheap part), you might as well. At worst, you can take your research to a certified repair person to help them more capably diagnose the issue.

Also: Unless your repair need is dire, a second opinion, or at least a brief cooling-off period—no pun intended—is never a bad idea. (For what it's worth, a second mechanic quoted me $300 for the same repair, but I'm glad to have avoided spending even that much for now.)

Why hitting it made my car's AC work

So why did a thump to the center console fix my AC? I don't know—and no one on the internet really knows either. Those who suggested it were either working off the advice of others (one said a Kia technician at his dealership told him to try it) or are apparently just well-versed in the tried-and-true method of hitting your tech until it starts working.

Possible causes posited included a loose wire, a melted or otherwise faulty connection, a grounding issue, and, yes, a failing blower motor, all of which can be temporarily remedied with a little percussion. Short of a more in-depth diagnostic, though, it's hard to say. Many of these forum threads do provide suggestions for how to look deeper into the issue. Maybe I'll do that someday—when just hitting it stops working.

Here's an announcement from lawfirm DiCello Levitt Gutzler. This week a U.S. District court "granted preliminary approval of a $90 million settlement" with Facebook's parent company, Meta Platforms, "to resolve a long-running class action accusing Facebook of tracking its subscribers' activities on non-Facebook websites — even while signed out of their Facebook accounts." "The monetary component makes this the seventh-largest data privacy class action settlement ever to receive preliminary court approval." Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland quotes the announcement: Individuals who, between April 22, 2010, and September 25, 2011, inclusive, were Facebook users in the United States and visited non-Facebook websites that displayed the Facebook Like button, may be eligible for a payment from the settlement fund. Email notices from the claims administrator, Angeion, have started to go out, and will continue in batches through July 15, 2022. Recipients of an email notice should note an ID and confirmation code in the top left corner, which should be use in submitting their claim. However, even those who do not receive an email notice are still permitted to file a claim, and the administrator will determine whether they are eligible. The correct link to the class action lawsuit website is: fbinternettrackingsettlement.com/ The deadline to submit a claim is September 22, 2022. Komando.com adds that "While Facebook has denied any wrongdoing, it chose to settle the matter outside of court before it went to trial..." "It's impossible to tell how much you can get at this stage in the lawsuit, as the final payout will depend on the number of claims submitted and additional fees. All settlement class members will be paid in equal amounts."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Philip Su, a software engineering leader turned non-profit founder, decided to shake up his life last fall — seeking an antidote to his seasonal depression in a job with more structure and less pay than he had experienced in many years.

Su worked the peak season at Amazon’s giant flagship warehouse south of Seattle, in Kent, Wash., known by the code name BFI4 inside the company. It was a life-changing and eye-opening experience, as Su documents in his 15-episode podcast series, Peak Salvation.

A former Microsoft software engineer who was the second employee at Facebook’s Seattle engineering office, Su led the London engineering office for Facebook (now Meta), then founded and ran the global health software nonprofit Audere before adding Amazon warehouse worker to his LinkedIn profile.

I listened to entire Peak Salvation podcast last weekend; the story really hooked me as it unfolded. Su does a great job explaining and analyzing his experience. I also invited him to join me on the GeekWire Podcast this week.

Here are a few things that stood out to me in his story.

• He found peace and stability in the structure, and the ability to leave work behind and out of mind when he clocked out.
• Getting hired online took him a couple minutes; quitting was easier than canceling a Netflix subscription.
• No one learned his name during his time at the Amazon warehouse. The operation seemed anonymous out of necessity due to turnover.
• Amazon’s injury reporting system left him with a choice between receiving significantly fewer hours and pay on light duty, or sticking with the job that caused the injury to continue getting his normal pay.
• The pay structure, as he viewed it, gave many employees little incentive to do more than the bare minimum.

Those are my takeaways. Su is upbeat about many aspects of his experience, including the way it benefited his mental health, and the new and humbling perspective it gave him on the privileged nature of life in the tech industry.

A newcomer to the front lines of global fulfillment, Su readily acknowledges that there could very well be good reasons for some of the quirks that he perceived as dysfunctions. Not only that, but he was a short-term worker, with a tenure of less than two months. He’s no logistics expert.

However, he brought fresh eyes and an engineer’s mind to the e-commerce giant’s operational nerve center. So we asked Su what changes he would make, based on his experience and observations, and he came up with this list.

• Move into Boeing’s three-shift model. Less bodily wear given 8-hour days instead of 10/11.5-hour days, and the ability to add temporary folks during Peak without requiring overtime.
• Build career paths. Jeff Bezos didn’t believe these jobs would/should ever be permanent, but Amazon’s now hiring 1 of every 153 working Americans, and it’s growing. Like it or not, these jobs will increasingly become long-term jobs for people. Give the best shifts and jobs to existing employees instead of offering them first to newcomers. Give paths for the best performers to be recognized and to rise.
• Increase scheduling predictability. Announce extra shifts 48 hours in advance; don’t fire people when they can’t do extra shifts.
• Alleviate physical toll proactively. Rotate people periodically amongst tasks requiring different muscles. Establish a fast, non-predatory medical accommodation system that serves employee interests. Take physical ability into account when assigning roles.
• Increase sense of ownership. Give employees the agency to suggest and be recognized for making improvements. I spotted many improvement opportunities but was only able to convince leads to barely implement one.

Another possibility that we discussed is the idea of Amazon bringing back stock grants for warehouse workers to address some of these issues. The company’s recent 20-for-1 stock split would seem to make this more feasible.

These are especially timely issues for Amazon given the recent news that Dave Clark, Amazon’s Worldwide Consumer CEO, is leaving with no immediate successor named. Amazon says it’s on a quest to become “Earth’s Best Employer,” amid a groundswell of union activity across the company’s fulfillment network.

All of these opportunities and challenges give Amazon CEO Andy Jassy an opening, perhaps, to try some different approaches in the company’s logistics network.

Philip Su joins this episode of the GeekWire Podcast to share what he learned about the nature of work, socioeconomic status, Amazon, and himself.

Listen above, or subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

Audio produced and edited by Curt Milton.

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Considering that it comes from the mind of Seth MacFarlane, you’d expect sci-fi series The Orville to lean more into comedy than drama. But while the show, which is back on Hulu today for its third season, has had its share of hilarious moments in the past, somber season premiere “Electric Sheep” doesn’t have too many…

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Editor’s note: The story has been updated to correct its description of the study’s purpose. The study is testing the impact of the device on anxiety.

A headband that emits electrical current is being tested at the Seattle Police Department to see if has an effect on anxiety and sleep, in collaboration with researchers at Washington State University.

The study is part of a larger effort to promote wellness among department employees and to assess new ways of improving mental health.

“There is a group of people that select into law enforcement that don’t generally think twice about risking their safety for somebody else, but they often have a difficult time taking care of themselves, or accessing self-care,” Loren Atherly, director of performance analytics and research at SPD, told GeekWire.

SPD has a longstanding program to improve mental health of its employees through peer support and other traditional measures. But it also investigates new ways to provide psychological support.

Though the study is short term and is not designed to assess persistence of any effects, Atherly said that “as an effort to normalize access to self-care, this project is already a success.”

SPD is operating under stress exacerbated by low staffing in the wake of recent budget cuts and employee attrition after the protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd, said WSU researcher Lois James, principal investigator of the study and an associate professor in the college of nursing.

Supporting the mental health of officers benefits the community, said Atherly.

“Healthy employees are best equipped to serve our community. Any opportunity to remind people of the importance of health and wellness reinforces that ethos,” he said.

Old technique, ongoing research

The new study will test a device made by Fisher Wallace Laboratories, a 15 year-old New York City-based company sponsoring the study. The device uses a technology called cranial electrotherapy stimulation (CES) to deliver an electric current to the temples.

It’s an old technique: the first CES device, called the Somniatron, was invented in the Soviet Union in the early part of the 1900s.

Fisher Wallace and other companies sell thousands of such devices each year to treat conditions ranging from anxiety to insomnia and depression.

Little is known about how CES devices work. Brain imaging studies suggest they could affect neural activity, and some people think they may affect projections of the the vagus nerve, providing calming signals to the heart, gut and other body systems. And more robust studies of CES effectiveness are needed, say some researchers.

The new study aims to test the device in a large study group with a high mental health burden. Researchers will enroll 200 police department employees, including first responders.

Police officers have “very high rates of chronic fatigue, excessive daytime sleepiness, and they also have very high rates of anxiety and depression and PTSD. It’s a population that I think is desperately in need of interventions like this,” James said.

James is a research advisor for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and is also working with SPD on a study assessing the effect of short e-learning modules on sleep and fatigue.

Activate the electrodes

The department has already enrolled more than 50 people in the new study since it launched in February. People are treated with the device for four weeks, and half initially receive a sham device for two weeks, as a control. Participants’ symptoms are evaluated by a physician at telehealth appointments and by self-reporting. At four weeks participants have the option of continuing for four more.

In addition researchers will measure fatigue with a FitBit or other device. The care team is providing access to a device made by a Vancouver, B.C. company, Fatigue Science. The company’s ReadiBand, worn around the wrist, tracks movement and sleep and the accompanying software tracks fatigue and predicts mental performance and reaction times.

Researchers will also track adverse effects. One survey estimated that side effects like vertigo and headaches occur about 1% of the time.

The SPD study is limited by its short duration, so whether the device can have an effect long term will remain unknown.

The FDA has allowed the sale of Fisher Wallace and other CES devices for years but is now asking companies to submit clinical trial data to support their use. The company has submitted data to the FDA on a separate study for for anxiety that it said showed an effect, according to a spokesperson.  

The headband is currently available on the Fisher Wallace website for $499 and the company makes no other products. It pulled in $4.3 million in revenue last year and has raised in $2.5 million in venture funding and $6.3 million in “equity crowdfunding,” according to a spokesperson. People can invest in the company via a link on its website to the crowdfunding site StartEngine.

The study could also pave the way for future research at SPD.

“This is our first approach in a suite of research projects that we’re calling practical wellness research,” said Atherly, who has used the Fisher Wallace device himself. SPD has no financial interest in the company. “We’re open and receptive to other projects that might help support people’s behavior and well-being.”

Atherly was hired to focus on department analytics and data as part of the 2012 federal “consent decree” designed to reform the department. His four-member team also works with researchers studying criminology, criminal justice and psychology.

“The promise of the consent decree is to build a police department that is able to engage evidence-based decision-making on a pretty agile basis, and where we don’t have evidence for those kind of things, begin to move the science forward and discover more,” said Atherly.

Added Atherly: “Another component of this is also just normalizing accessing self-care technologies.”

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Reuters has uncovered damning evidence about the extent to which Amazon has systematically planned to rip off its third-party sellers in India—to the extent that it’s virtually impossible for the company to keep up a years-long charade.

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Science published three studies today that all demonstrate new uses for CRISPR. The gene editing technology is typically thought of for its potential use in treating diseases like HIV, ALS and Huntington's disease, but researchers are showing that ap...