The proposed bill looks to set the new minimum wage to $10 an hour, a change that would be gradually enacted over the next three years.

The bill comes from Democratic representatives, specifically Reps. John Switalksi of Warren and Rashida Tlaib of Detroit. According to them, raising the minimum wage would would give Michigan workers “a chance at a better life.”

According to the AP, past measures to raise the minimum wage in the state have seen opposition from Republicans, who currently control the legislature.

The state of Michigan’s minimum wage is currently $7.40 an hour for all employers of 2 or more employees. Michigan workers are given overtime for hours exceeding 40 in a single week.

The federal minimum wage sits at $7.25 an hour. 22 states have minimum wage laws the same as the federal wage, and 19 states have minimum wages higher than $7.25. 4 states currently have minimum wages that are less than the federal rate and 5 states currently have no minimum wage laws on the books.

Recently, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said that the minimum wage would currently sit at $22 minimum if it had kept up with worker productivity. President Obama has proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour.

Really, this includes any sort of social networking while driving like tweeting or posting photos to Instagram.

The bill, Senate bill 147, has passed committee without objection.

Louisiana already bans texting while driving, but this bill would extend the banned activities list to posting to or even viewing content on any social network.

No person shall operate any motor vehicle upon any public road or highway of this state while using a wireless telecommunications device to access, read, or post to a social networking site.

The bill goes on to define “social network” as “any web-based service that allows individuals to construct a profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and communicate with other members of the site.”

You would think that this is a unnecessary addition to current anti-texting while driving laws, which already exist in the state. But the bill’s sponsor, Senator Dale Erdey, says that police have actually cited cases where they’ve pulled someone over for texting while driver only to be told “Hey, I’m not texting…I’m Instagramming!” Or Facebooking, or tweeting, or any other social network activity.

He says the current law isn’t comprehensive enough to cover these loopholes.

Sorry, drivers. We know that bumper sticker on the truck in front of you is absolutely outrageous. But your Twitter followers can wait to see it.

This isn’t the only smartphone activity outside of texting that’s getting challenged around the country. Earlier this week, a California judge upheld the illegality of using a mapping product while driving.

[Louisiana Senate bill 147 via The Daily Dot]

But it’s another upcoming Google product that you may want to use in your car that one U.S. state is trying to ban.

H.B. 3057, introduced in the West Virginia legislature a few days ago, looks to add language to existing rules on traffic safety to include a ban on “using a wearable computer with head mounted display,” described as “a computing device which is worn on the head and projects visual information into the field of vision of the wearer.”

Sound like anything that Google is preparing to launch?

Although the bill doesn’t actually mention Google Glass by name, it’s fairly obvious what the lawmakers are referring to in their language.

Plus, one of the bill’s authors explicitly told CNET that it was a response to Google Glass. But it appears that at least one the bill’s authors, Gary Howell (R), doesn’t hate the technology – he simply sees it in the same way he sees texting.

“I actually like the idea of the product and I believe it is the future, but last legislature we worked long and hard on a no-texting-and-driving law. It is mostly the young that are the tech-savvy that try new things. They are also our most vulnerable and underskilled drivers. We heard of many crashes caused by texting and driving, most involving our youngest drivers. I see the Google Glass as an extension,” he says.

Fair point, but Google Glass’ possible applications while driving have already been tested – by Sergey Brin nonetheless. Last summer, Brin tested a new feature of Glass while driving. The feature automatically snaps a photo every 10 or so seconds, documenting your life (or more specifically, road trip) as you go. Here’s a picture from that test:

If the legislature is serious about passing this bill, they’ll have to do it sooner rather than later. Google Glass should be popping up on the market later this year. Although, if the bill’s authors are concerned about teenagers hitting the road with Google Glass strapped to their faces, they may want to reconsider their motivations. When Google Glass launches, it’s likely to cost nearly $1,500.

“I was just amazed by what I saw,” he said. “So many people are almost oblivious. They are texting and texting, totally unaware as they cross even six-lane highways.”

Not wanting to leave it to natural selection to sort everything out, Munford has proposed Assembly Bill 123, which will outlaw texting and walking pretty much everywhere in the state. That means texting while walking on urban streets, state roads, and even out in the suburbs would be met with a penalty.

That penalty would start with a warning and increase to a $250 fine by the time the violator receives their third citation.

The only exceptions to the statute would allow for people to text while walking across the road in two specific situations – either a medical emergency or the reporting of a crime.

Reporting to your friend Ashley that whatever Taylor was wearing at the club last night was a “fashion crime” will not be exempted.

Munford is following in the trailblazing footsteps of officials in Fort Lee, New Jersey. In May of 2012, that town of just over 35,000 began to ticket “distracted walkers.” Before resorting to fines, Fort Lee tried reasoning with the population by issuing pedestrian safety messages. That didn’t work, so they started giving summons to those caught texting while crossing the street.

Fines for texting while walking may seem a bit dramatic to some. Maybe we should try texting “e-lanes,” jokingly proposed by Philadelphia last year?

Or, as previously suggested, maybe just let it work itself out.

[LA Times]

A new bill proposed in the Illinois State Senate looks to completely wipe out any form of anonymity on the internet by requiring that the operators of basically any website on the entire internet take down any comment that isn’t attached to an IP, address, and real name-verified poster.

It’s called the Internet Posting Removal Act and was introduced on February 13th by Illinois General Assembly veteran Ira I. Silverstein [D].

What do you think about anonymity of the internet? What circumstances (if any) should an internet commenter be forced to divulge their real identity? Let us know in the comments.

Here’s the summary of the bill:

Creates the Internet Posting Removal Act. Provides that a web site administrator shall, upon request, remove any posted comments posted by an anonymous poster unless the anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate. Effective 90 days after becoming law.

Not wanting to leave any bases uncovered, Silverstein includes that an “Anonymous Poster” means “any individual who posts a message on a web site including social networks, blogs, forums, message boards, or any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.”

Silverstein also proposes that “all web site administrators shall have a contact number or e-mail address posted for such removal requests clearly visible in any sections where comments are posted.”

Beyond the obvious questions about self-verification of IP addresses (?) and home addresses (wow), the logistics of this thing are mind-boggling at best. Any comment on any site that has commenting? That would not just include sites like CNN.com, Mashable, WebProNews and others. This could be taken to mean any type of social media like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or large online communities like reddit and 4chan.

And what about the constitutionality angle?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that “anonymous communications have an important place in our political and social discourse,” and that this is an idea that’s been upheld by the Supreme Court. They cite a particular decision (McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 1995):

Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical minority views…Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority…It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation…at the hand of an intolerant society.

“These long-standing rights to anonymity and the protections it affords are critically important for the Internet. As the Supreme Court has recognized the Internet offers a new and powerful democratic forum in which anyone can become a “pamphleteer” or “a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox,” says the EFF.

Of course, this isn’t the first legislative attempt to limit anonymous speech on the internet. Back in 2012, a nearly identical bill was proposed in the New York State Assembly that would’ve required site admins to restrict any comments that didn’t have “IP address, legal name, and home address” attached to the post.

Like many bills that limit free and anonymous speech, this NY bill was hidden behind a hot-button issue. In its case, cyberbullying.

“It’s an effort to deal with the problem. I’m hopeful that this will be helpful in combating that,” Sponsor Thomas O’Mara explained, “or at least get a dialog going with the industry about this concern.”

But is punishing anonymity the right course of action?

When people who have no idea how the internet actually works start drafting laws, this is what happens. This isn’t the first, nor the last bill of this type that will hit state legislatures. More than likely, this bill will never make it out of committee (it’s been referred to assignments). But the simple knowledge that this kind of thing could even exist is enough to make me want a drink.

What do you think? Is a bill like this even constitutional? Are you concerned about legislative attempts to remove anonymity from the internet? Let us know in the comments.

[h/t reddit]

Of course, the note is in French, but Google has provided it in its entirety here. On the company’s European policy blog, Google’s Director of Public Policy in France, Oliver Esper, says, “The web has led to an explosion of content creation, by both professional and citizen journalists. So it’s not a secret that we think a law like the one proposed in France and Germany would be very damaging to the internet. We have said so publicly for three years.”

“In order to shed light on the reasons that lead us to believe that this law is detrimental to French users, innovation on the Internet and ultimately to the news publishers themselves, we decided to post the note in its entirety,” he says. “We have always been and remain committed to collaborate with French Publishers associations as they experiment and develop sustainable economic models on the Internet.”

Regarding Germany, we discussed the proposed law in that country and the larger ramifications of such a law here. Of course, Google has battled similar criticism and threats from publishers here in the U.S. and abroad.

AFP reports: “France’s new Socialist government, which is open to helping struggling media companies, warned Google that it should not threaten democratic governments.”

Google is also having some issues with publishers in Brazil. There, publishers have gone so far as to pull out of Google News altogether. It will be interesting to see how long that lasts.

The Knight Center for Journalism In The Americas (via PaidContent) reports that all of the 154 newspapers that belong to the National Association of Newspapers in Brazil (ANJ), accounting for a whopping 90% of Brazil’s newspaper circulation, have left Google News.

Google didn’t budge on publisher requests to be paid, so now, Google apparently has a lot less Brazilian news sources in its system. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Google users will necessarily have a hard time finding the content, as pulling out of Google News hardly keeps your content from being crawled by Google. In fact, Google’s regular web results often come from news publishers, and with Google’s increased emphasis on freshness in recent months, there’s a good chance that brand new articles will show up for news-related queries.

Publishers who don’t want to be crawled by Google at all, can keep the search engine from doing so with robots.txt, but publishers face losing a ton of traffic by doing so. Then, the question becomes, will users miss these sources enough to go directly to their sites and give them whatever compensation they may be seeking?

Browsing Google News for Brazil, it doesn’t look like there is a shortage of available content for people to read.

Last month, Google celebrated the tenth anniversary of Google News, reporting that it is now available in 72 editions and 30 languages, and that it counted 50,000 publications among its news sources. I guess the number is slightly less now.

And now, that bill has been passed an sent to the Governor’s office for his signature.

“The vast majority of vehicle accidents are due to human error,” said Senator Alex Padilla when he first introduced the bill. “Through the use of computers, sensors and other systems, an autonomous vehicle is capable of analyzing the driving environment more quickly and operating the vehicle more safely. Autonomous vehicles have the potential to significantly reduce traffic fatalities and improve safety on our roads and highways.”

Apparently, the rest of the legislature agrees. The language of the bill allows for self-driving cars to be “operated or tested” on public roads – if the safety standards are adopted, of course.

Here’s an excerpt from the bill, SB 1298:

Existing law requires the Department of the California Highway Patrol to adopt rules and regulations that are designed to promote the safe operation of specific vehicles, including, among other things, schoolbuses and commercial motor vehicles.

This bill would require the department to adopt safety standards and performance requirements to ensure the safe operation and testing of “autonomous vehicles,” as defined, on the public roads in this state. The bill would permit autonomous vehicles to be operated or tested on the public roads in this state pending the adoption of safety standards and performance requirements that would be adopted under this bill.

California isn’t the only state with driverless car legislation on the docket. Back in June of 2011, Nevada passed a bill that allowed the State Department of Transportation to begin creating rules and regulation governing the operation of driverless cars. While that’s not equivalent to full legalization, Nevada is already working on said regulations.

Earlier this month, we learned that Google’s fleet of self-driving cars had logged over 300,000 miles, and the company planned to start sending out drivers solo. Google said that the next bit of testing would help their technology be able to handle tricky situations like snow-covered roadways and pop-up construction signals.

Although Google is currently to first name associated with driverless technology, they certainly aren’t the only ones interested. Stanford University has been testing “Shelley,” their driverless Audi TTS that can zip around an advanced course at up to 120 mph.

It’ll be interesting to see how many other states jump into the fray and start passing laws to regulate autonomous vehicles. As of now, states like Arizona, Hawaii, Florida, and Oklahoma are at least considering actions on the technology. In Florida’s case, they may run into a little bit of opposition.

[via Ars Technica]

Police in Fort Lee, New Jersey, a town of just over 35,000, will soon begin to ticket distracted walkers.

Back in March, the Police Department issued a notice about pedestrian safety. Along with wanring about proper use of crosswalks and heeding light cycles, they addressed cellphone use:

Pedestrians need to resist talking on their cell phones and/or taking their headphones off while crossing a street. These distractions can be catastrophic to the pedestrian who is too distracted to notice if a car is coming in their direction.

Apparently, that didn’t really do much to alleviate the problem.

“They’re not alert and they’re not watching what they’re doing,” Police Chief Thomas Ripoli told CBS 2. “As of now, they are to give summonses to pedestrians who do not adhere to crosswalks and the lights.”

He went on to say that 2012 has seen 23 pedestrian accidents. Part of the problem, of course, is careless driving. But pedestrians themselves share the blame. We’ve seen stories from all over the world detailing the pitfalls of texting/talking while walking. Back in March, a woman walked off a pier in Michigan while texting, and just a couple of weeks ago a Chinese teen made international news when video surfaced of her talking on a cellphone just seconds before plunging into a sidewalk sinkhole.

As an April Fool’s joke, the city of Philadelphia implemented texting-only E-lanes where those who wanted to text and walk could do so without endangering the well-being of others.

Look, I almost destroyed a kid tooling around on his iPod in the middle of the street the other day. I know how distracting a mobile device can be. While I’m not sure that I agree with on-the-spot ticketing of walking texters, I think we can all agree that people just need to pay attention. If you have to text, just pause for a second or sit down on a bench. Your time is well worth sacrificing to avoid a Taurus to the kneecaps. Trust me.

This call came while LaHood was speaking at the Texas Distracted Driving Summit, via Reuters.

“Everyone has a cell phone and too many of us think it is OK to talk on our phones while we are driving,” he said. He went on to call distracted driving an “epidemic” and said that it’s necessary that police have “the opportunity to write tickets when people are foolishly thinking they can drive safely or use a cell phone and text and drive.”

“In light of two new studies, one by our own National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and one by Bridgestone, distracted driving is still a dangerous epidemic, particularly among our youngest drivers,” LaHood said in a recent blog post. “Raising awareness is a critical part of helping to curb this dangerous behavior. Passing good laws and backing them up with strong enforcement is also crucial.”

As of right now, 10 states have bans in place on the use of handheld cellphones. 37 states currently ban texting by any driver. A nationwide ban would be a whole other animal, however.

In December of 2011, the National Transportation Safety Board proposed a similar nationwide ban on cellphone use while driving. Their suggestion extended to hands-free bluetooth devices that weren’t factory installed. That suggestion didn’t receive a lot of public support.

It’s important to note that the NTSB is an independent organization, having severed ties with the Department of Transportation back in 1975. So Ray LaHood’s suggestion isn’t just a rehash of this previous NTSB statement.

Here’s the brief opinion portion of the article. I’m in no way insensitive to the victims of accidents involving distracted driving. I think that texting, Facebooking, and any other activity like that shouldn’t be a part of your daily commute. I’m just not sure about a nationwide ban on all cellphone use while driving. Limited government advocates will shout overreach, and they might have good reason. Not only that, but enforcement would be a nightmare. By and large, I’m doubtful anyone could stop people from making calls behind the wheel.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Congressmen Joe Baca from California and Frank Wolf from Virginia introduced H.R. 4204 on Monday. What does the bill have to do with video games? They want games to be slapped with a sticker that says, “Warning: Exposure to violent video games has been linked to aggressive behavior.”

According to Game Politics, the creators of the bill are pushing this forward because they feel there is an ever increasing amount of evidence that links game violence to real-world violence. Let’s hear what Congressman Baca has to say:

“The video game industry has a responsibility to parents, families and to consumers — to inform them of the potentially damaging content that is often found in their products. They have repeatedly failed to live up to this responsibility.”

You’re right, Congressman Baca, the game industry does have a responsibility to parents, families and consumers. That’s what the Entertainment Software Ratings Board is for. The ESRB rates games and puts that handy E-AO rating on the case so parents can make informed decisions about their game purchases.

The FTC does an annual review of the ESRB’s effectiveness as a ratings agency. Turns out a majority of parents (89 percent) are involved with the purchase of video games for their children with 87 percent of them aware of the rating system. That doesn’t sound like failing to “live up to this responsibility.” That sounds like a rating system that works and does its job well.

What does Congressman Wolf have to say then?

“Just as we warn smokers of the health consequences of tobacco, we should warn parents — and children — about the growing scientific evidence demonstrating a relationship between violent video games and violent behavior. As a parent and grandparent, I think it is important people know everything they can about the extremely violent nature of some of these games.”

With all due respect Congressman Wolf, don’t compare violent video games to smoking. We have years of scientific data that proves a direct link between smoking and death. There is no such proven correlation between violence in gaming and violence in the real world. In fact, violence among children and teens has decreased as video game popularity has increased.

The absolutely hilarious thing is that this bill would require all games, regardless of rating, to be slapped with this sticker. It’s like putting, “This product has been found to cause lung cancer” on a pack of candy cigarettes. It’s absolutely ridiculous and couldn’t be held up in a court of law.

Expect this bill to die alongside every other games bill that has crept up over the years. Until the ESRB stops being effective, and it wont anytime soon, these bills have no chance of passing.