Kazuhisa Hashimoto, a producer credited with implementing the fabled "Konami Code" that gave players godlike cheats in Contra, Gradius, Castlevania, and other Konami games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, died on Tuesday. He was 61. Polygon reports: Hashimoto was a programmer and producer for the home console port of Gradius, which in 1986 was the first video game to use the Konami Code. Hashimoto put it in the game as an aid for his playtesting, memorably saying that he "obviously couldn't beat it." For unclear reasons, the Konami Code was left in the shipped game, and was later used to playtest other games made by the publisher.

Contra, which launched on the NES in 1988, sold much better than Gradius and is more closely associated with the Konami Code's origins. In it, cheat-code sharers discovered video gaming's Charm of Making -- up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start! -- and were blessed with 30 lives, absolutely critical to a super-tough one-hit-kill side-scroller like Contra. Nostalgia for the Konami Code, if not gratitude for its usefulness to many difficult games of the day, led to its inclusion in numerous other works. A Wikipedia entry on the code counts more than 100 Konami games with the cheat or some version of it inside them. Another 22 games made by other publishers included the code as a tribute, often revealing an Easter egg or secret message. It has also shown up elsewhere in popular culture, most recently in Google Stadia's website (and on its controller), and as a pastime Easter egg in Fortnite in October.

The Japanese government on Tuesday urged companies to recommend telecommuting and staggered shifts for workers in a bid to curb the spread of the new coronavirus. From a report: The plan, approved at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, also urged people with symptoms of cold or fever to stay at home and asked event organizers to carefully consider whether to proceed with their plans. Japan has 159 cases of infections from the flu-like coronavirus, apart from 691 on a cruise ship docked south of Tokyo. On Tuesday, broadcaster NHK reported a fourth death among passengers. Rather than trying to contain the disease outright, authorities are seeking to slow its expansion and minimize deaths. Telecommuting, or working online or from home, would reduce the infection risk from people gathered in one place.

Markets closed out last week on an anxious note. It's not difficult to see why: the coronavirus continues to spread, and there are signs that some of the world's top economies could slide into recession as the outbreak compounds pre-existing weaknesses. From a report: Take Japan: The world's third-largest economy shrank 1.6% in the fourth quarter of 2019 as the country absorbed the effects of a sales tax hike and a powerful typhoon. It was biggest contraction compared to the previous quarter since 2014. Then there's Germany. The biggest economy in Europe ground to a halt right before the coronavirus outbreak set in, dragged down by the country's struggling factories. The closely-watched ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment in Germany decreased sharply for February, reflecting fears that the virus could hit world trade.

Bank of America economist Ethan Harris points to the number of smaller economies that are hurting, too. Hong Kong is in recession and Singapore could soon suffer a similar fate. Fourth quarter GDP data from Indonesia hit a three-year low, while Malaysia had its worst reading in a decade, he noted to clients on Friday. Meanwhile, engines of growth like China and India slowed in 2019. Fourth quarter GDP data for the latter comes out this week. All of this brings to the fore concerns about the global economy's ability to withstand a shock from the coronavirus. Harris says the weak quarter was likely a result of lingering damage from the trade war between China and the United States. The coronavirus is poised to make matters worse.

HB11 Energy, a spin-out company originating at the University of New South Wales, claims its hydrogen-boron fusion technology is already working a billion times better than expected. Along with this announcement, the company also announced a swag of patents through Japan, China and the USA protecting its unique approach to fusion energy generation. New Atlas reports: The results of decades of research by Emeritus Professor Heinrich Hora, HB11's approach to fusion does away with rare, radioactive and difficult fuels like tritium altogether -- as well as those incredibly high temperatures. Instead, it uses plentiful hydrogen and boron B-11, employing the precise application of some very special lasers to start the fusion reaction. Here's how HB11 describes its "deceptively simple" approach: the design is "a largely empty metal sphere, where a modestly sized HB11 fuel pellet is held in the center, with apertures on different sides for the two lasers. One laser establishes the magnetic containment field for the plasma and the second laser triggers the 'avalanche' fusion chain reaction. The alpha particles generated by the reaction would create an electrical flow that can be channeled almost directly into an existing power grid with no need for a heat exchanger or steam turbine generator."

HB11's Managing Director Dr. Warren McKenzie clarifies over the phone: "A lot of fusion experiments are using the lasers to heat things up to crazy temperatures -- we're not. We're using the laser to massively accelerate the hydrogen through the boron sample using non-linear forced. You could say we're using the hydrogen as a dart, and hoping to hit a boron , and if we hit one, we can start a fusion reaction. That's the essence of it. If you've got a scientific appreciation of temperature, it's essentially the speed of atoms moving around. Creating fusion using temperature is essentially randomly moving atoms around, and hoping they'll hit one another, our approach is much more precise." He continues: "The hydrogen/boron fusion creates a couple of helium atoms. They're naked heliums, they don't have electrons, so they have a positive charge. We just have to collect that charge. Essentially, the lack of electrons is a product of the reaction and it directly creates the current."

The lasers themselves rely upon cutting-edge "Chirped Pulse Amplification" technology, the development of which won its inventors the 2018 Nobel prize in Physics. Much smaller and simpler than any of the high-temperature fusion generators, HB11 says its generators would be compact, clean and safe enough to build in urban environments. There's no nuclear waste involved, no superheated steam, and no chance of a meltdown. "This is brand new," Professor Hora tells us. "10-petawatt power laser pulses. It's been shown that you can create fusion conditions without hundreds of millions of degrees. This is completely new knowledge. I've been working on how to accomplish this for more than 40 years. It's a unique result. Now we have to convince the fusion people -- it works better than the present day hundred million degree thermal equilibrium generators. We have something new at hand to make a drastic change in the whole situation. A substitute for carbon as our energy source. A radical new situation and a new hope for energy and the climate."

An anonymous reader shares a report from Agence France-Presse (AFP): France will start closing its oldest atomic power plant on Saturday after 43 years in operation, the first in a series of reactor shutdowns but hardly a signal the country will reduce its reliance on nuclear energy anytime soon. Unplugging the two reactors at Fessenheim, along the Rhine near France's eastern border with Germany and Switzerland, became a key goal of anti-nuclear campaigners after the catastrophic meltdown at Fukushima in Japan in 2011. Experts have noted that construction and safety standards at Fessenheim, brought online in 1977, fall far short of those at Fukushima, with some warning that seismic and flooding risks in the Alsace region had been underestimated. Despite a pledge by ex-president Francois Hollande just months after Fukushima to close the plant, it was not until 2018 that President Emmanuel Macron's government gave the final green light.

The first reactor will start being shut down on Saturday and the second on June 30, though it will be several months before they go cold and the used fuel can start to be removed. France will still be left with 56 pressurized water reactors at 18 nuclear power plants -- only the United States has more reactors, at 98 -- generating an unmatched 70 percent of its electricity needs. The government confirmed in January that it aims to shut down 12 more reactors nearing or exceeding their original 40-year age limit by 2035, when nuclear power should represent just 50 percent of its energy mix. But at the same time, state-owned energy giant EDF is racing to get its first next-generation reactor running at the Flamanville plant in 2022 -- 10 years behind schedule -- and more may be in the pipeline.

Sweden's Riksbank said on Wednesday it had begun testing an e-krona, taking the country a step closer to the creation of the world's first central bank digital currency (CBDC). From a report: If the e-krona eventually comes into circulation it will be used to simulate everyday banking activities, such as payments, deposits and withdrawals from a digital wallet such as a mobile phone app, the Riksbank said. "The aim of the project is to show how an e-krona could be used by the general public," the Riksbank said in a statement. In January, the central banks of Britain, the euro zone, Japan, Sweden and Switzerland joined forces to assess the case for issuing CBDCs. CBDCs are traditional money, but in digital form, issued and governed by a country's central bank. By contrast, cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are produced by solving complex maths puzzles, and governed by disparate online communities instead of a centralized body. The sharp decline in the use of cash and competition from alternative currencies, such as Facebook's Libra, has also prompted central banks around the world to consider issuing their own electronic currencies.

Gizmodo's Ed Cara explains why HIV drugs are being used to treat the new coronavirus. An anonymous reader shares the report: On Tuesday, the Japanese government announced it will begin clinical trials to test treatments for the deadly new coronavirus that's engulfed China and spread to over two dozen countries. Rather than new drugs, they'll be studying existing medications already used to treat HIV and other viral diseases. But why exactly are researchers hopeful that these drugs can be repurposed for the new coronavirus, and how likely are they to work? The new coronavirus, recently named SARS-CoV-2 due to its close genetic ties to the SARS coronavirus, is made out of RNA. Other RNA viruses include the ones that cause Ebola, hepatitis C, and yes, HIV/AIDS.

RNA viruses come in all shapes and sizes, and those that infect humans can do so in different ways. But many of the drugs that go after HIV and the hepatitis C virus broadly target weaknesses found in all sorts of viruses. The approved hepatitis C drug ribavirin, for instance, interferes with something called the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, an enzyme essential for many viruses -- including coronaviruses -- to produce more of themselves inside a cell. HIV drugs like lopinavir inhibit other enzymes that allow viruses to break down certain proteins, which cripples their ability to infect cells and replicate. Broad antiviral drugs like lopinavir should be able to work against SARS-CoV-2, scientists theorize. And there's already some circumstantial evidence they do. Some of these drugs have been successfully tested out for SARS and MERS, for instance, two other nasty coronaviruses that have emerged in recent years.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: For more than 70 years, India and Pakistan have waged sporadic and deadly skirmishes over control of the mountainous region of Kashmir. Tens of thousands have died in the conflict, including three just this month. Both sides claim the Himalayan outpost as their own, but web surfers in India could be forgiven for thinking the dispute is all but settled: The borders on Google's online maps there display Kashmir as fully under Indian control. Elsewhere, users see the region's snaking outlines as a dotted line, acknowledging the dispute. Google's corporate mission is "to organize the world's information," but it also bends it to its will. From Argentina to the U.K. to Iran, the world's borders look different depending on where you're viewing them from. That's because Google -- and other online mapmakers -- simply change them.
[...]
Unlike mapping geographical features, sketching the contours of towns or countries is ultimately a human construct. So, Google consults with local governments and other official bodies to help make a decision about where to draw its lines, according to people familiar with the matter. And it refers to historical maps, news events and atlases, these people said. But changes are also made with little fanfare and can be done immediately, while physical maps are beholden to printing schedules. When it comes to contested borders, people in different countries often see different things. Take the body of water between Japan and the Korean Peninsula. To almost all it is known as the Sea of Japan, but for Google Maps users in South Korea it's listed as the East Sea. More than 4,000 miles away, the waterway separating Iran from Saudi Arabia may be either the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Gulf, depending on who's looking online. And the line in Western Sahara marking the northern border with Morocco disappears for Moroccans seeking it out on the Web -- along with the region's name altogether. The sparsely populated northwest Africa region is disputed between Morocco, which seized it in 1975, and the indigenous Sahrawi. One of Google's contract employees said they "are often told to alter maps with no reason given and that their changes take effect almost immediately," the report says. "That typically includes relatively minor adjustments like widening a path in a park or removing mentions of landmarks like a statue or traffic circle. But, these people said, Google has a special team employees refer to as 'the disputed region team' that addresses more prickly matters..."

"The company also responds to feedback, such as once changing the name of Native American tribal land to 'nation' from 'reservation,'" notes The Washington Post. "Google's maps can also be revised by a band of enthusiasts known as Local Guides who can submit suggestions for alterations, which often are implemented automatically. [...] In some cases, local laws dictate how Google and others must represent maps to avoid censure, as is the case in China or Russia, according to people familiar with the matter."

Apollo Masters, one of two plants in the world that manufacture lacquers that are imperative to the process of making vinyl records, sustained a major fire yesterday and burned down. Loudwire reports: The Desert Sun confirmed that the fire began in the 15,000-square-foot building at 8am Feb. 6. There were multiple explosions reported, and 82 firefighters responded to the scene. The company posted a statement on their website addressing the event, as well as the uncertainty of its future: "To all our wonderful customers. It is with great sadness we report the Apollo Masters manufacturing and storage facility had a devastating fire and was completely destroyed. The best news is all of our employees are safe. We are uncertain of our future at this point and are evaluating options as we try to work through this difficult time. Thank you for all of the support over the years and the notes of encouragement and support we have received from you all."

The only other plant, MDC, is located in Japan. While there has not been an immediate impact, an eventual shortage of lacquers can lead to disruptions in the vinyl production process for companies all over.

Japan's first robot bartender has begun serving up drinks in a Tokyo pub in a test that could usher in a wave of automation in restaurants and shops struggling to hire staff in an aging society. From a report: The repurposed industrial robot serves drinks in is own corner of a Japanese pub operated by restaurant chain Yoronotaki. An attached tablet computer face smiles as it chats about the weather while preparing orders. The robot, made by the company QBIT Robotics, can pour a beer in 40 seconds and mix a cocktail in a minute. It uses four cameras to monitors customers to analyze their expressions with artificial intelligence (AI) software. "I like it because dealing with people can be a hassle. With this you can just come and get drunk," Satoshi Harada, a restaurant worker said after ordering a drink. "If they could make it a little quicker it would be even better." Finding workers, especially in Japan's service sector, is set to get even more difficult.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: On Monday, researchers from Japan's Osaka University announced the successful completion of a first-of-its-kind heart transplant. Rather than replacing their patient's entire heart with a new organ, these researchers placed degradable sheets containing heart muscle cells onto the heart's damaged areas -- and if the procedure has the desired effect, it could eventually eliminate the need for some entire heart transplants.

To grow the heart muscle cells, the team started with induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. These are stem cells that researchers create by taking an adult's cells -- often from their skin or blood -- and reprogramming them back into their embryonic-like pluripotent state. At that point, researchers can coax the iSP cells into becoming whatever kind of cell they'd like. In the case of this Japanese study, the researchers created heart muscle cells from the iSP cells before placing them on small sheets. The patient, which suffers from ischemic cardiomyopathy, will be monitored for the next year. If all goes well, the researchers hope to conduct the same procedure on nine other people suffering from the same condition within the next three years.

The iconic animated features of Japan's Studio Ghibli will be available in territories outside the U.S., Canada and Japan on Netflix starting in February. From a report: The move is a further change of position for the studio which has repeatedly resisted the idea that its beloved cartoons would be released on digital platforms. Netflix, sales agent Wild Bunch, and Studio Ghibli, which counts Hayao Miyazaki as one of its leading lights, will upload 21 Ghibli features including Academy Award-winner "Spirited Away," "Princess Mononoke," "Arrietty," "Kiki's Delivery Service," "My Neighbor Totoro," and "The Tale of The Princess Kaguya." They will be screened in their native Japanese, with sub-titles, and be available globally on Netflix except in the U.S., Canada, and Japan.

It's a tantalizing prospect for traders whose success often hinges on microseconds: a desktop PC algorithm that crunches market data faster than today's most advanced supercomputers. Japan's Toshiba says it has the technology to make such rapid-fire calculations a reality -- not quite quantum computing, but perhaps the next best thing. From a report: The claim is being met with a mix of intrigue and skepticism at financial firms in Tokyo and around the world. Toshiba's "Simulated Bifurcation Algorithm" is designed to harness the principles behind quantum computers without requiring the use of such machines, which currently have limited applications and can cost millions of dollars to build and keep near absolute zero temperature. Toshiba says its technology, which may also have uses outside finance, runs on PCs made from off-the-shelf components.

"You can just plug it into a server and run it at room temperature," Kosuke Tatsumura, a senior research scientist at Toshiba's Computer & Network Systems Laboratory, said in an interview. The Tokyo-based conglomerate, while best known for its consumer electronics and nuclear reactors, has long conducted research into advanced technologies. Toshiba has said it needs a partner to adopt the algorithm for real-world use, and financial firms have taken notice as they grapple for an edge in markets increasingly dominated by machines. Banks, brokerages and asset managers have all been experimenting with quantum computing, although viable applications are generally considered to be some time away.

Bose plans to close its entire retail store footprint in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. The company announced the decision earlier today and pointed to the fact that its headphones, speakers, and other products "are increasingly purchased through e-commerce" as the reasoning. Hundreds of employees will be laid off as a result. The Verge reports: Bose opened its first physical retail store in 1993 and currently has locations in many shopping centers and the remaining malls scattered across the US. The stores are used to showcase the company's product lineup, which has grown beyond Bose's signature noise-canceling headphones in recent years to include smart speakers and sunglasses that double as earbuds. There are often similar demo areas at retailers like Best Buy, though Bose has plenty of competition to worry about in that environment.

The Framingham, Massachusetts-based company is privately held and is not revealing exactly how many workers are being impacted by its decision to pull out of physical retail. Bose is shuttering its retail presence in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia "over the next few months." That adds up to a total of 119 stores, according to a spokesperson. "In other parts of the world, Bose stores will remain open, including approximately 130 stores located in Greater China and the United Arab Emirates; and additional stores in India, Southeast Asia, and South Korea," the company told The Verge by email. Bose says it's offering outplacement assistance and severance to employees that are being laid off.

At CES on Monday, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda said the Japanese auto giant will transform a 175-acre site of a former car factory into a "prototype city of the future" where it can test autonomous vehicles, innovative street design, smart home technology, robotics, and new mobility products on real people who would live there full-time. The Verge reports: The site, which is located at the base of Mount Fuji, will be designed by famed Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. It will house up to 2,000 people, including Toyota employees and their families, and it will be powered by the company's hydrogen fuel cell technology. [Toyoda said] that the company expects to break ground at the end of 2021.

Toyota is calling the site "Woven City," a reference to weaving together three different types of streets or pathways, each for a specific type of user. One street would be for faster vehicles only. The second would be a mix of lower-speed personal mobility vehicles, like bikes and scooters, as well as pedestrians. And the third would be a park-like promenade for pedestrians only. "These three street types weave together to form an organic grid pattern to help accelerate the testing of autonomy," the company says. "This is my personal 'Field of Dream,'" Toyoda added. "'If you build it, they will come.'" The plan is reminiscent of Sidewalk Labs' efforts to build a digital city on Toronto's Eastern waterfront. However, it's almost certainly going to face less pushback from the local government, as Toyota is a Japanese company and collects considerably less data than Sidewalk Labs' parent company Alphabet, which has been caught in a battle over information privacy.

UPDATE 1/6/20: The story has been updated with additional information.

The dogs, known as Aibos, are companion robots made by Sony -- robots that don't necessarily do much apart from providing company and comfort. From a report: Every Aibo -- Japanese for "companion" -- is manufactured identically, besides a choice between silver and white or a brown, black, and white version. They all have rounded snouts that include a camera for facial recognition capability, large, oval eyes to reveal their expressions, and a body that can turn on 22 different axis points to give them a range of motion. The owner decides the gender when they set them up, which determines the pitch of its bark and how it moves. They're cute. They know when you're smiling. And through machine learning and recognizing people with its camera, Aibos also shift their personality over time based on their interactions with people they spend time with. Soon, they become much more than a store-bought toy.

Still in the "off" position in the cafe, the Aibos' paws remained outstretched and their heads turned to one side. But one by one, as their owners kneeled down to turn them on from a switch at the scruff of their neck, each came to life. The screen of their doll-like eyes blinked open, they lifted their heads, stretched out their plastic limbs, and leaned back on their hind legs before standing on all fours. Almost like real dogs, they shook their heads as if to ward off sleep after a nap, wagged their tails, and barked.

USA Today wondered how this decade's new construction would look from space. "With the help of Maxar, a provider of advanced, space-based technology solutions, Google and NASA, we've taken many more steps back -- more than 300 miles above Earth to be exact." As Apple stormed toward becoming one of the most valuable companies on the planet, its campus in Cupertino, California, took the shape of a dial on the original iPods -- the product that marked Apple's reemergence as tech leader at the turn of the century.

Apple's 175-acre, space-age architectural marvel stands out as a monument to tech. The same might be said for tourism, trade and energy about the ostentatious structures and engineering feats that emerged from the sands of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Thirteen of the largest buildings in the world were completed in Dubai -- the most in any city -- during the past decade, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
Their article also includes before-and-after pictures of disaster sites like Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactors and the California regions devasated by 2018's Camp Fire.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Los Angeles Times: There was only one job that robots could not do when Fast Retailing, the owner of Uniqlo, replaced 90% of its workers with robots at its flagship warehouse in Tokyo last year. But now, with the help of a Japanese start-up called Mujin, the world's third-largest retailer says it has cracked the final barrier to full automation, a priority for Uniqlo as Japan's aging population creates labor shortages. The two companies have invented a robot with two arms that can pick up soft T-shirts and place them neatly in boxes to be shipped to customers.

While it sounds easy, the ability to lift soft textiles has been a challenge for clumsy robotic arms. Add to this the need to sort through constantly changing seasonal clothes, in shades that are hard to distinguish and wrapped in various forms of packaging, and humans have always come out on top. The jointly developed robot, which was made by Yaskawa Electric Corp., is already operating in Fast Retailing's main warehouse in Tokyo, but Takino admitted that the robot was not able to handle all of the facility's products, and that it needed further development. For instance, the plastic packaging of the thermal underwear in Uniqlo's Heattech line is relatively simple for the robots to pick up, but this could become more difficult as Fast Retailing aims to switch to more eco-friendly paper bags. The robots are able to pick up belts, but they typically become unbundled as they are dropped into boxes. One solution would be for Fast Retailing to ensure that belts are sold in bundled forms. "We've been putting off working with an apparel company because it's so difficult," said Issei Takino, co-founder and chief executive of Mujin. "But Fast Retailing's strength is its ability to overhaul its entire supply chain to make it fit for automation. If we're going to take on this challenge, we had to do it with Fast Retailing."

In Japan, more and more children are refusing to go to school, a phenomenon called "futoko." As the numbers keep rising, people are asking if it's a reflection of the school system, rather than a problem with the pupils themselves. From a report: Ten-year-old Yuta Ito waited until the annual Golden Week holiday last spring to tell his parents how he was feeling -- on a family day out he confessed that he no longer wanted to go to school. For months he had been attending his primary school with great reluctance, often refusing to go at all. He was being bullied and kept fighting with his classmates. His parents then had three choices: get Yuta to attend school counselling in the hope things would improve, home-school him, or send him to a free school. They chose the last option. Now Yuta spends his school days doing whatever he wants -- and he's much happier.

Yuta is one of Japan's many futoko, defined by Japan's education ministry as children who don't go to school for more than 30 days, for reasons unrelated to health or finances. The term has been variously translated as absenteeism, truancy, school phobia or school refusal. Attitudes to futoko have changed over the decades. Until 1992 school refusal -- then called tokokyoshi, meaning resistance -- was considered a type of mental illness. But in 1997 the terminology changed to the more neutral futoko, meaning non-attendance. On 17 October, the government announced that absenteeism among elementary and junior high school students had hit a record high, with 164,528 children absent for 30 days or more during 2018, up from 144,031 in 2017.

"The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously Thursday to push a plan forward that would take away several channels of airwaves from automakers and local governments that have been planning to build out a communication network for cars and surrounding smart infrastructure," writes Consumer Reports, in an article shared by McGruber.

"The 5-0 commission vote indicated how much ground the auto industry has lost in protecting the airwaves that have been reserved since 1999 as a so-called safety spectrum." The industry and some state and local governments have been counting on it to deliver vehicle-to-everything communications, or V2X, that could improve safety and also help in the development of self-driving-car technology... The FCC plan would all but kill an approach to V2X that relies on short-range radio, called DSRC, that has been deployed by local governments at some 100 test sites around the country, safety advocates say. That could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded local investments into smart traffic lights and other smart road technology would be wasted, according to state officials. The FCC plan would divide 75 MHz of the safety spectrum between WiFi and auto safety applications. The FCC proposal allocates 20 MHz for a newer V2X technology, known as C-V2X, and leaves 10 MHz for either C-V2X or DSRC.

All five FCC commissioners spoke about the vast economic potential of more airwaves dedicated to WiFi, and said not enough had happened with the V2X technology to continue to set aside so much spectrum for its exclusive use.

Republican Commissioner Michael O'Rielly said some opponents of the FCC plan might say the move puts vehicle safety in jeopardy or will lead to increased fatalities. "That is pure gibberish," O'Rielly said at the hearing. "Everyone on this dais wants our families, friends, neighbors, countrymen, and countrywomen to be safe when traveling in motor vehicles. DSRC hasn't come anywhere close to fruition." Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said other countries were dedicating less than 75 MHz to V2X applications, and the 10 MHz that could be available for DSRC in the FCC plan matches what Japan is doing.
The article concludes that the commission "will collect and analyze public comments over the next several months before any plan becomes final.

"But the comments of the commissioners and FCC staff left little doubt about the direction the agency is moving in.