Your Kickstarter Sucks said it best:
fuck you and the fantasy rearden metal alloy train you rode in on
Author: KS
Personal Handwritten Note From Me
So, this guy wants $12 to hand write a postcard translated by google translate.
Receive a handwritten note from me, in a language you choose, as long as it’s on Google Translate, which I will use for the translating
Corporate Spying On Non-Profits
In the age of innocence that was brought to an end by Edward Snowden’s revelations, we broadly knew of three kinds of surveillance: the classic kind, by countries against other countries; the industrial kind, by companies against companies; and – the most recent addition – the Google/Facebook kind, carried out by companies against their customers. Snowden made us aware that countries also carried out large-scale surveillance against huge numbers of their own citizens, the vast majority of whom had done nothing to warrant that invasion of their privacy. But there’s a fifth kind of surveillance that has largely escaped notice, even though it represents a serious danger for democracy and freedom: spying carried out by companies against non-profit organizations whose work threatens their profits in some way.
Soap free of chemicals?
What does this person think chemicals are, really?
I suggest anyone actually wondering what chemicals are, to head over to wikipedia.
Chemicals doesn’t have anything to do with synthetic substances.
Who needs chemicals?! Try hand-made soap from fresh, locally sourced ingredients like goats’ milk, honey, and herbs.
You need chemicals, in order to make it.
On How UK’s Political Elite Shoved Through A Data Retention Bill
Politicians are supposed to represent the will of the public. It rarely works that way in practice, but the strongest demonstration of that may be what’s happening in the UK with this new data retention bill. We wrote about it earlier, but MP Tom Watson has more details on how this is an “erosion of political trust,” in which leaders of multiple parties in Parliament worked together to do a deal that clearly goes against the will of the public, and then sought to shove it through with no debate at all.
Half Life 3
Valve is usually pretty benign when it comes to their fans, but I seriously doubt if they’d allow just anyone to create “Half Life 3”, with that name.
I really can’t see…
… why we should be paying for other peoples gaming computers.
Nancy would like to stream the game. Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft but her computer is unable to handle the game.
Nancy has just graduated from Boston University and now is unemployed. She is currently studying for the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) but when stressed she plays Hearthstone on her old computer. The computer runs very slow and is barely successful at running the game. She enjoys the game so much that she wishes to stream the game on twitch.tv to show her enjoyment to others. However in order to do so she is required to get a more powerful computer that is able to run the game. She is currently unemployed (still searching for a job) therefore unable to afford a new computer herself.
If the goal were to be met, Nancy will celebrate by doing a full 12 hour non-stop stream.
The Jeffrey Baldwin case
I found two articles that tell the story of DC Comics refusing to license the Superman mark to be used on a Jeffrey Baldwin statue, and the different angles used highlight how a story almost always has two sides to it:
Techdirt: DC Comics Refuses To Let Superman Logo Adorn The Headstone Of A Young Child Who Was Starved To Death
The Gutters: The Truth Amongst The Outrage
Too all the new food-based kickstarters that are popping up after “potato salad”
I truly hope this article is wrong
Like many other similar cases, this involves two teenagers sexting each other. We can all admit that this is a rather stupid thing to do, but it would be crazy not to recognize that this happens quite frequently with teens these days. It’s already a pretty big stretch to try to twist those cases into “child porn” cases, but various prosecutors have been doing exactly that for years now. In this case, the 15-year-old girlfriend sent her 17-year-old boyfriend a photo of herself, and he sent back the video. The mother of the girl complained, and prosecutors went after the boy for “two felony charges, for possession of child pornography and manufacturing child pornography.”
So far, so normal (although one could argue it shouldn’t be)
The male teen was served with petitions from juvenile court in early February, and not arrested, but when the case went to trial in juvenile court in June, Foster said prosecutors forgot to certify that the teen was a juvenile. The case was dismissed, but police immediately obtained new charges and also a search warrant for his home. Police also arrested the teen and took him to juvenile jail, where Foster said they took photos of the teen’s genitals against his will.
That’s the real wtf-ness… W.T.F.???
Edit:
It seems like Lowering The Bar also picked up on the story:
Police in Sexting Case Want to Take Photo of Teen’s … No, That Can’t Be Right
The Washington Post calls this “a unique approach to collecting evidence,” and I guess that’s one way to put it. The approach is to forcibly inject a 17-year-old boy with something that would cause an erection so they can take a picture of that to compare with the picture he allegedly texted to his girlfriend.
I’m not at a loss for words very often but just now I sat and stared at this report for a while.