During active shooter drill, four teachers at a time were taken into a room, told to crouch down and were shot execution style with some sort of projectiles – resulting in injuries to the extent that welts appeared, and blood was drawn.
Category: Ignorant or unreasonable
New Report: Germany Caved To France On Copyright In A Deal For Russian Gas | Techdirt
the German delegation had actually pushed back on the more extreme versions of Article 13 — and, in particular, had demanded that a final version have a clear carve-out for smaller companies, so as not to have them forced out of business by the onerous demands of the law. However, after some back and forth, Germany caved in to France’s demands, with many left scratching their heads as to why. However, some noted the “coincidence” in timing, that right after this, France also withdrew its objections to the pipeline which is very controversial in the EU (and the US, which is threatening sanctions).
Source: New Report: Germany Caved To France On Copyright In A Deal For Russian Gas | Techdirt
CBP Detains 9-Year-Old US Citizen For 36 Hours, Accuses Her 14-Year-Old Brother Of Sex Trafficking | Techdirt
Online ‘Reputation Management’ Company Brags About Abusing Copyright Law To Take Down Bad Reviews | Techdirt
There are three ways to effectively remove a Ripoff report:
Method 1. Take legal action and sue the offender. Then once you have won the lawsuit you go here and submit it to Google. https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_courtorder?product=websearch&vid=nullThey may or may not remove the Ripoff report within a few months. This approach is very expensive and time consuming with no guaranteed outcome. We do not use it or recommend it.
Method 2. Bury the Ripoff report from off of the top pages by using a variety of website, links, blogs etc… that go above the Ripoff report and push it off of the front pages so no one will see it.
Method 3. This involves a legal method that the US congress signed up to in 1988 and many people are unaware that this provision exists and how effective it is. It can remove a Ripoff report from the search engines permanently.
We use methods 2 and 3 together and can have your Ripoff report neutralized and removed effectively at a fraction of the cost of going to court!
After pushing addictive OxyContin, Purdue now pursuing overdose antidote | Ars Technica
Notorious OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma—which has been widely criticized for deceptively marketing its highly addictive painkiller and for its role in spurring the current nationwide epidemic of opioid abuse and overdose deaths—is moving ahead with a new, potent drug, one said to be an antidote to opioid overdoses.
Source: After pushing addictive OxyContin, Purdue now pursuing overdose antidote | Ars Technica
“Yelp, but for MAGA” turns red over security disclosure, threatens researcher | Ars Technica
Wallace had left his username, email, and a plaintext password in the code—twice.
There is no authentication for any of the application programming interface calls, so someone could spoof any user—essentially giving them administrative access to the API.
All of the APIs are clearly defined as URLs in the source code.
By using the “Get user by ID” API call, someone could retrieve the user name, email, ban status, and other details on each user account.
Passwords were not in this data, but the entire user database could be retrieved by iterating through all the possible first letters or digits of an account ID.
Any user could be blocked using an HTTP Post to the “block” API.
Source: “Yelp, but for MAGA” turns red over security disclosure, threatens researcher | Ars Technica
Auto Finance Company Sues Massachusetts City Over Its Unconstitutional Sale Of Seized Vehicles | Techdirt
The complaint makes it clear the company thinks this is some bullshit: seizing and selling a vehicle that still belongs to the company holding the lien. Until the vehicle is paid off, Honda still owns the car. But Massachusetts law enforcement doesn’t appear to care who owns the car so long as they get to profit from its sale. The narrative detailed in the lawsuit makes it clear zero effort was made to make the car’s real owner aware of the city’s plans for the seized car.
Montana legislator introduces bills to give his state its own science | Ars Technica
It’s no secret that some of our federal legislators don’t have a firm grip on scientific evidence; it only takes watching a session of the House Science Committee, where one member suggested the climate-driven rise of the oceans might instead be caused by rocks falling into the ocean.What’s often overlooked is that state legislators are even worse (though it’s not clear how much this is a product of there simply being more of them). Each year, they oversee a variety of attempts to introduce pseudoscience into the public schools of a number of states.But it recently came out that a legislator in Montana was attempting to have the state officially renounce the findings of the scientific community. And, if the federal government decides to believe the scientists and do something about emissions, he wants the Treasure State to somehow sit those efforts out.
Source: Montana legislator introduces bills to give his state its own science | Ars Technica
South Carolina Cops Love Asset Forfeiture So Much They Take Cash From Crime Victims | Techdirt
Cash is king in South Carolina. Law enforcement loves taking it. Under the pretense of dismantling drug syndicates, law enforcement officers are taking money from waitresses, businessmen, and crime victims. Cash motivates law enforcement efforts — dubious drug-focused shakedowns that are often given far too much credibility by local journalists.This is state where county sheriffs run week-long events with cool names like “Rolling Thunder” and claim they’re disrupting the flow of drugs. The reality is there’s no disruption. People are separated from their cash and other property, but arrests and convictions are almost impossible to find, despite the discovery of a few hundred pounds of illegal substances. In 2017, the Spartansburg County Sheriff’s Department pulled over more than 1,100 vehicles during an operation, searched 158 of them, recovered enough drugs to fill a table for a press conference, but only ended up with eight felony convictions. It did end up with $139,000 in cash, which was the actual focus of the “drug interdiction” activity.The cases gathered from elsewhere in the state tell the same story: cash-hungry law enforcement agencies taking money from people and calling it a victory in the War on Drugs. African-Americans make up only 13 percent of the state’s population, but 65 percent of asset forfeiture cases target African Americans. If you’re white, you’re not only targeted less frequently but you’re twice as likely to get your property returned to you.
Source: South Carolina Cops Love Asset Forfeiture So Much They Take Cash From Crime Victims | Techdirt
Calling Out Copyright Troll Mathew Higbee | Techdirt
Over the last few months, I’ve been hearing an awful lot about a copyright trolling operation that goes by the name Higbee and Associates. We had written about them years back when they (incredibly) threatened Something Awful for using a photo in a movie review (which was clear fair use). A few months back we wrote about them again when they (you guessed it) threatened Something Awful again over someone in its forums hotlinking a picture of Hitler that was actually hosted on Imgur.While that’s all we’ve written about the firm on Techdirt, Higbee’s name keeps coming up in other conversations — among copyright lawyers who have been seeing a massive increase in Higbee demand letters, and even from some friends who have received such letters (which nearly always involve clearly bogus threats). One thing that has happened over and over with Higbee claims that I’ve been privy to is that they are over unregistered images, meaning that Higbee is unlikely to actually be able to sue over those images, and even if they could, it wouldn’t be for statutory damages. And yet, the threat letters tend to allude to statutory damages are part of the scare tactic.Public Citizen’s Paul Levy has apparently seen enough of Higbee and Associates and their trolling activity that he’s done a pretty thorough investigation of Higbee’s activities and written up a long description calling out many of the sketchy practices of the firm and its principal, Mathew Higbee
Source: Calling Out Copyright Troll Mathew Higbee | Techdirt