All posts tagged: disabled

Disabled patients face Medicaid denials from IT errors : NPR

Disabled patients face Medicaid denials from IT errors : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Marie Noon at her home in Brighton, Mich., with her dog, Ziggy. Despite being eligible for Medicaid, Noon was denied coverage in 2025 because of an error with the state’s benefits system. It took months of pushback before the state reversed its mistake. Even as a “tech-savvy” former bank manager, Noon says, she wanted to give up several times along the way. Kate Wells for KFF Health News hide caption toggle caption Kate Wells for KFF Health News Marie Noon takes eight medications a day. One keeps her heart rate from spiking to avoid a stroke. One prevents debilitating headaches. Another ensures she doesn’t retain excess fluid. More than a decade ago, Noon said, she was diagnosed with adult-onset Still’s disease, a rare type of inflammatory arthritis that can cause rashes, debilitating pain, and fevers. The disease upended her life. She had been living a typical suburban life in Michigan, shuttling her two kids to activities like cheerleading, choir practice, and track. She was active in the PTA. She managed a bank. She went from …

Meta Used AI to Illegally Fire Pregnant and Disabled People, Lawsuit Alleges

Meta Used AI to Illegally Fire Pregnant and Disabled People, Lawsuit Alleges

Published by skeptic

Meta fired 8,000 workers in its May’s layoffs. Benjamin Fanjoy/Bloomberg/Getty Images Meta laid off thousands of employees to become an “AI-first company” in May, and some of those former employees are now alleging that Meta used AI to illegally fire them. Twenty-six former Meta employees have filed a lawsuit alleging that Meta’s termination process was heavily aided by AI and violated worker protection laws.  Meta laid off 10% of its workforce, around 8,000 workers, two months ago. The lawsuit, filed on Monday in a US District Court in Oakland, California, alleges that Meta used algorithmic and AI tools to monitor specific employee “productivity metrics,” and low performers were flagged as likely targets for layoffs.  However, many of those flagged employees had either approved accommodations or had taken legally protected leave in the past two years for pregnancy, medical reasons or bereavement, according to the lawsuit. “Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work,” the complaint alleges. “Instead, Meta used a constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems … to …

If the church doesn’t rise up for the disabled, who will? 

If the church doesn’t rise up for the disabled, who will? 

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — We are watching systems designed to care for our nation’s most vulnerable begin to shrink. On June 18, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel issued a memorandum threatening the Olmstead v. L.C. decision, the 1999 ruling protecting the right of people with disabilities to live in their communities. The slip opinion is “inconsistent with long-standing interpretations of federal disability rights law embraced by courts and administrations of both parties.” The U.S. Department of Education also announced recently that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will oversee special education and rehabilitative services, while DOJ will handle civil rights activities. Federal officials insist these changes reduce bureaucracy and ensure stronger service coordination. Perspectives on these recent federal actions vary widely within the disability community. Some disability advocates interpret the memorandum as federal officials seeking to strengthen access to care for adults with serious mental illness, while others believe the DOJ’s slip opinion signals a move toward broader institutionalization across the disability community as a whole. On the issue …

What if disabled astronauts are just better suited to space?

What if disabled astronauts are just better suited to space?

Published by skeptic

The UK Space Agency and space startup Vast just signed an agreement to send Paralympic sprinter and below-knee amputee John McFall into orbit as early as 2027. Most coverage framed it as a victory for inclusion. As a space health researcher, I think something far more interesting happened. For 70 years, spaceflight has assumed a rigid archetype: a healthy white man with a military background. The assumption was that physical uniformity minimised risk. As we prepare for Mars, the evidence increasingly suggests the opposite. Star Trek understood this decades ago: exploration rewards difference. The further you travel into uncertainty, the more kinds of human experience you need. It debuted in 1966 with a Black female communications officer, a Japanese helmsman, a Russian navigator, a biracial Vulcan, and a captain who made mistakes and felt his humanity down to the last drop. What strikes me now as a scientist is not how idealistic that vision was, but how practical. Despite decades of spaceflight, we still cannot reliably predict how one person’s health will change in space. …

I disabled my browser’s background processes and cut CPU usage in half

I disabled my browser’s background processes and cut CPU usage in half

Published by skeptic

My laptop’s fan used to kick in barely ten minutes after I sat down to work. While the sound of the blazing fast fan spinning beneath the keyboard, I used to wonder why this was happening. I wasn’t running a heavy game or doing a resource-intensive task — for my sins, I had just Google Docs and a few other tabs open. Turns out it had nothing to do with the hardware, and the real culprit was sitting quietly in my taskbar. A glance at the taskbar and systray made me realize that my browser wasn’t just running my open tabs, it was running a bunch of hidden processes I never asked for. Thankfully, there is an easy solution to fix this and finally get Chrome to give back some of the resources it likes to hog. Related Don’t Let Chrome Gobble RAM—Activate This Hidden Setting Google Chrome is wonderful, but one of its biggest issues persists. My browser kept working long after I closed it Chrome continued processing in the background for hours The …

I disabled automatic driver updates and my Wi-Fi speeds finally stopped disappearing after each Windows update

I disabled automatic driver updates and my Wi-Fi speeds finally stopped disappearing after each Windows update

Published by skeptic

Windows updates are supposed to improve a PC in the background, but mine developed a habit of leaving the Wi-Fi connection technically alive yet practically useless. The signal stayed strong, yet downloads lost momentum, video calls stuttered, and local transfers moved in unpredictable bursts. Restarting the router sometimes made the timing seem convincing, but the problem kept returning after subsequent updates, making the coincidence harder to believe. I worked through the usual things to check when Wi-Fi is slow, but something in the update process was changing how the laptop handled its wireless connection. Finding it took more than resetting the network settings, but once I traced the pattern, the slowdown made sense. Related This registry hack finally stopped Windows updates from hogging my bandwidth This clever registry hack stopped Windows Update from hogging my bandwidth for good. I traced the slowdown to a driver update My router had an alibi Device Manager was where the evidence showed up, but I didn’t get there until I’d ruled out the obvious. Router congestion, a weak signal, …

I disabled the 3 most annoying Windows 11 features and my desktop finally feels calm

I disabled the 3 most annoying Windows 11 features and my desktop finally feels calm

Published by skeptic

I’ve been spending time with Windows lately (specifically on a Lenovo Yoga laptop), and my main complaint after years of being a Mac user was just how chaotic (and frankly, annoying) all the content suggestions and Bing links are. Whether on the lock screen with Bing social media quizzes (no thanks!) or the persistent news widget in the taskbar (no thanks!) or the internet search results that would appear in the Start menu when all I wanted to do was quickly pull up an app (again, don’t want that). I needed to clean up Windows to make it feel calmer and less annoying. Here are three easy tweaks you can make right now to clean up Windows and drastically reduce the clutter and content suggestions that seem to pop up at every turn. Related Your Windows security updates are about to get a lot bigger (and that’s good news) As cyber threats evolve, Microsoft’s AI-driven approach to Windows security promises to keep your device one step ahead I cleaned up my Lock Screen No more …

Meet Bruce, the disabled kea parrot who is the boss of his flock

Meet Bruce, the disabled kea parrot who is the boss of his flock

Published by skeptic

A parrot missing half his beak has become top bird at New Zealand’s Willowbank Wildlife Reserve. Named Bruce, he wins every fight with other kea parrots. He also gets priority access to food. This observation has made scientists question their ideas about disabilities in animal social groups. Bruce showed that a physical disadvantage doesn’t have to hold an animal back. Sometimes the right moves and a little creativity can make all the difference. Researchers shared this finding April 20 in Current Biology. Willowbank’s kea live in a large aviary with trees and a stream. Visitors who stop by often fail to notice the parrots snoozing among the leaves. But when they spot Bruce, they always make the same comment, says behavioral ecologist Alex Grabham: “Look at that poor bird.” That pity is misguided, says Grabham. He’s part of a team studying kea at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. That team tracked how Bruce interacted with his flock. (A group of kea is called a circus, reflecting the birds’ playful nature.) Like other …

I disabled one Samsung setting and freed up RAM my Galaxy was wasting

I disabled one Samsung setting and freed up RAM my Galaxy was wasting

Published by skeptic

I’ve been using my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra for quite a while now. And while I know that any phone can start showing its age after months or years of use, that’s not something I’m willing to accept as inevitable — especially from a device I plan to keep for the long haul. I’ve never been the kind of person who upgrades phones at the first sign of trouble. Instead, I usually dig around for a fix, and more often than not, there is one. That approach has served me well over the years. For quite a while now, my Galaxy S24 Ultra started feeling unusually sluggish. Apps were taking longer to open, animations weren’t as smooth, and the overall experience was becoming a little frustrating. I knew something wasn’t quite right. After poking around in the settings, I discovered the culprit: too many apps running in the background, eating up resources. Thankfully, a single setting made a perceptible difference. If your Galaxy phone has been acting the same way, this quick fix might help …

Disabled ACR on your TV? I set up a router-based VPN for further protection – here’s how

Disabled ACR on your TV? I set up a router-based VPN for further protection – here’s how

Published by skeptic

Kerry Wan/ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. As a tech journalist, I am surprisingly hardline about limiting the number of smart and internet-enabled devices in my home. Mostly because I firmly believe that no one should be able to post to social media from their refrigerator, and an oven does not need to integrate Alexa for me to bake a cake. But another big reason I’m cautious is that the more smart devices you have connected to your network, the easier it is for hackers to access your data. It’s a big security risk that’s more prevalent than you’d think. Also: The best VPNs for streaming While many new smart TVs and internet-enabled appliances offer some level of data protection, whether through a dedicated chipset or integrated malware detection, these measures are at best weak and at worst outright ineffective. Thankfully, if you already subscribe to a VPN or are considering one, adding protection to your smart TV is fast and simple. Why should you use a VPN on your TV A …