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Category: Ignorant or unreasonable
This Startup Made Journalists Agree To Write Positive Reviews Or Pay Them $2,000
It’s time we had another talk about relationships between journalists and things they cover. Tech website The Verge recently reported on a troubling offer from a startup, JetSmarter, to “demonstrate” its services with a free flight. To accept, a reporter had to agree to publish a positive story, quickly, or be charged $2,000 by JetSmarter.
Source: This Startup Made Journalists Agree To Write Positive Reviews Or Pay Them $2,000
Smut-scamming copyright chaser ‘fesses up, will do hard time • The Register
Prenda Law’s John Steele done for fraud after courts ordered repayments of extorted funds
Source: Smut-scamming copyright chaser ‘fesses up, will do hard time • The Register
IBM gets a patent on “out-of-office” e-mail messages—in 2017 | Ars Technica UK
The US Patent Office sees no history, hears no history—unless it’s in patents.
Source: IBM gets a patent on “out-of-office” e-mail messages—in 2017 | Ars Technica UK
Soundcloud Tells Guy It Needs To Kill His Account Of 8 Years Because Someone Else Trademarked His Name | Techdirt
Bas Grasmayer is not allowed to use any version of his own damned name in a URL or Display Name. Of course, if you’re in SoundCloud’s shoes, you’re in a tough spot. They don’t want to get sued, and the intermediary liability protections around trademark are even weaker than they are for copyrights.After writing back to SoundCloud with a “hey, but that’s my name…” message, the company has told Bas if he can prove that’s his name then maybe, just maybe, the company can push back on his behalf
The Only Concrete Takeaway From Trump’s Speech: Medicaid Is Doomed
Trump has spent his life making preposterous promises and never following through, but when it comes to Medicaid he may well keep his word.Medicaid is not just healthcare for the poor. It also pays the bills for over 60 percent of nursing home residents, and 40 percent of all national long-term care costs. And the number of Americans who need nursing home care is going to rise significantly over the next several decades as the baby boom ages into their eighties and nineties. Cutting Medicaid over this period is a recipe for people literally dying in the streets (or for luckier ones, on the foldout couch in their kid’s living room).
Source: The Only Concrete Takeaway From Trump’s Speech: Medicaid Is Doomed
The value of duck sex research versus a sceptical US Congress | Ars Technica UK
Some of the things scientists do seem absurd, which creates political ammunition.
Source: The value of duck sex research versus a sceptical US Congress | Ars Technica UK
Pregnant women’s bodies are ‘hosts’, says US lawmaker | Stuff.co.nz
A US lawmaker says women’s bodies don’t belong to them while they are pregnant.
Source: Pregnant women’s bodies are ‘hosts’, says US lawmaker | Stuff.co.nz
Apple Says Nebraska Will Become A ‘Mecca For Hackers’ If Right To Repair Bill Passes | Techdirt
[T]he prospect of a Cupertino-based megacorporation losing business to local repair shops isn’t a very sympathetic argument at the Nebraska statehouse. And so Apple has tried a slew of other tactics, according to state Sen. Lydia Brasch, who was recently visited by Steve Kester, an Apple state government affairs specialist.”Apple said we would be the only state that would pass this, and that we would become the mecca for bad actors,” Brasch, who is sponsoring the bill, told me in a phone call. “They said that doing this would make it very easy for hackers to relocate to Nebraska.”
Source: Apple Says Nebraska Will Become A ‘Mecca For Hackers’ If Right To Repair Bill Passes | Techdirt
Her Father Championed Jewish Refugees. She Finances the Anti-Muslim Refugee Movement.
Facing a nation gripped by fear and bigotry and unwilling to welcome large numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing violence in Europe, the late William Rosenwald, heir to the founder of Sears, Roebuck & Company department store fortune, poured his money and energy into welcoming them, founding the National Refugee Service in 1939.Today his daughter Nina is a driving force behind another campaign: keeping Muslims fleeing violence in the Middle East from entering the Western world.Rosenwald is the founder, president, and primary benefactor of the Gatestone Institute, one of the loudest groups agitating against Muslim migration.
Source: Her Father Championed Jewish Refugees. She Finances the Anti-Muslim Refugee Movement.