I really hope this is a poor attempt at an april fools joke…
Techdirt has been following for a while Canada’s moves to stop scientists from speaking out about areas where the facts of the situation don’t sit well with the Canadian government’s dogma-based policies. Sadly, it looks like the UK is taking the same route. It concerns a new code for the country’s civil servants, which will also apply to thousands of publicly-funded scientists. As the Guardian reports:
Under the new code, scientists and engineers employed at government expense must get ministerial approval before they can talk to the media about any of their research, whether it involves GM crops, flu vaccines, the impact of pesticides on bees, or the famously obscure Higgs boson.
The fear — quite naturally — is that ministers could take days before replying to requests, by which time news outlets will probably have lost interest. As a result of this change, science organizations have sent a letter to the UK government, expressing their “deep concern” about the code. A well-known British neurobiologist, Sir Colin Blakemore, told the Guardian:
“The real losers here are the public and the government. The public lose access to what they consider to be an important source of scientific evidence, and the government loses the trust of the public,” Blakemore said.
Not only that, by following Canada’s example, the British government also makes it more likely that other countries will do the same, which will weaken science’s ability to participate in policy discussions around the world — just when we need to hear its voice most.
As part of a last ditch effort to derail the FCC’s net neutrality rules, you might recall that Senator John Thune and Representative Fred Upton earlier this year pushed an amendment to the Communications Act that they professed would codify net neutrality into law as part of a “bipartisan” proposal crafted after a painstaking public conversation. What the ISP-dictated amendment actually did was effectively gut FCC authority, pushing forth net neutrality rules significantly weaker than the already-flimsy 2010 rules Verizon sued to overturn.
Thune, Upton and the mega ISPs hoped their effort would go something like this: table some incredibly weak net neutrality rules under the pretense of consumer welfare, make a few minor concessions, then pass a still-flimsy amendment that would have killed the Title II push in the cradle. The problem is that most neutrality supporters in Congress saw this fairly-shallow ploy for what it was (or at the very least feared the wrath of a SOPA-fueled internet grassroots community). As such, Thune and Upton have had trouble getting neutrality supporters to sign off on the idea — especially without the help of fellow Senate Commerce Committee member Bill Nelson:
“On Wednesday, (Nelson) reiterated what he’s been saying for weeks: That he’s open to working with Republicans on a “truly bipartisan” bill aimed at preventing Internet providers from speeding up, slowing down or blocking Web sites. But he’ll only cooperate, he said, “provided such action fully protects consumers, does not undercut the FCC’s role and leaves the agency with flexible, forward-looking authority to respond to the changes in this dynamic broadband marketplace.”
Except that’s not happening, because that’s precisely what Thune and friends don’t want. Enter Verizon, who like AT&T and Comcast, has been desperately trying to gut FCC authority for years (and had been succeeding until recently). While Verizon did sue to overturn the 2010 rules, it wasn’t the rules themselves the telco was taking aim at (after all, it co-wrote them, and the rules had the full support of companies like AT&T and Comcast). Verizon hoped a legal win would not only gut the rules, but also FCC authority moving forward. That backfired spectacularly, given the FCC only shifted to Title II after Verizon’s lawsuits repeatedly showed you can’t regulate ISPs like common carriers — without first declaring they’re common carriers. The entire shift to title II is, quite literally, thanks to Verizon.
Fast forward to this week, and Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam fired off a letter to Thune, Upton and the other leaders of the House and Senate Commerce committees (pdf), urging Congress to take the reins and punish the FCC for standing up to wealthy broadband companies begin updating “outdated and broken” telecom law. To hear Verizon’s version of history, everything was going great until the FCC came along and decided to destroy the Internet:
“The broadband and mobile markets are America’s greatest ongoing success stories: 20 years of bipartisan light-touch policy consensus has led to more than $1.2 trillion in private investment, resulting in a transition from 128 kilobit dial-up connections and analog wireless voice networks in the late 1990’s to today’s near-ubiquitous 4G mobile data coverage and fixed broadband networks capable of streaming simultaneous HD movies. The FCC claimed it was addressing concerns about an open Internet, something that Congress could and can – address with clarity and finality in a two-page bipartisan bill. Instead, the FCC went far beyond open Internet rules, engaging in a radical and risky experiment to change the very policy that resulted in the United States leading the world in the Internet economy.”
Like Thune and Upton, McAdam continues to bandy around the word “bipartisan” when what they’re actually pushing is anything but. In short, Verizon wants the FCC’s authority gutted and all policy making moving forward under the authority of a Congress slathered in telco lobbying cash. Not only does McAdam want Congress to push flimsy net neutrality rules, Verizon is pushing hard for a total rewrite of the 1996 Telecom Act — because the Title II rules Verizon’s successfully used to build a massive wireless empire are “outdated and broken”:
“At its root, these are all symptoms of a problem: the existing legal regime and its accompanying regulatory processes are outdated and broken. Congress last established a clear policy framework almost 20 years ago, well before most of today’s technology was even developed. As a result, regulators are applying early 20th century tools to highly dynamic 21st century markets and technologies. Inefficiencies and collateral damage are inevitable. It is time for Congress to re-take responsibility for policymaking in the Internet ecosystem.”
And by “take responsibility,” Verizon actually means it’s time for Congress to take Verizon campaign contribution cash and write new laws ensuring that broadband industry regulators have the strength of babies, the freedom and authority of an asylum inmate, and the budget of a high-school prom committee.
The real irony of course is that regulators wouldn’t keep intervening in Verizon’s market if the telco didn’t consistently engage in behavior that made it necessary. Again, the FCC only shifted to Title II after Verizon sued to overturn its 2010, industry-friendly net neutrality rules. Similarly, the entire net neutrality conversation wouldn’t be happening if Verizon didn’t have a long, proud history of trying to block every technological innovation it deemed a threat. If Verizon’s honestly looking to affix blame for the regulatory policy chaos of the last few years, it doesn’t have to look very far.
Although it is surprisingly difficult to find solid news reporting out of Zambia, several different sources including AFP have reported that the country’s Director of Public Prosecutions decided recently to drop nine corruption charges pending against a highly placed official, namely himself:
Zambia’s top prosecutor … stunned a magistrate when he refused to prosecute himself on charges of abuse of office and declared himself a free man.
“I am the Director of Public Prosecution of the Republic of Zambia and I have decided to enter a nolle prosequi against all the charges,” Mutembo Nchito told the magistrate from the dock, using the Latin term for refusing to pursue a case.
He did not apologize to himself for ruining his reputation, but then he did not bring the charges in the first place. They were apparently brought by former finance minister Newton Ng’uni, and that does seem a little irregular but Ng’uni may have been concerned that Nchito would not do the right thing on his own. Or the charges may have been politically motivated, but who the hell knows.
About a month ago, we noted that a federal court had granted a temporary injunction blocking a subpoena issued by Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, demanding all sorts of information from Google. At the time, the judge only said that Google’s argument was “stronger” than Hood’s, but said a full ruling would come out in time. That full ruling is now out, and boy, does it make Jim Hood’s anti-Google vendetta look questionable — specifically saying that there is “significant evidence of bad faith” on the part of Hood to try to use his government position to unconstitutionally coerce Google into making changes to its service that it has no legal obligation to make.
If you don’t recall, Hood has a long-standing obsession with Google, despite having an astounding level of ignorance about how the search engine actually operates. In his anti-Google rants, Hood makes statements that are blatantly false and repeatedly argues that Google is to blame merely because its search engine finds websites that Hood’s office doesn’t like and doesn’t think should exist at all. And that doesn’t even touch on the now known fact that the MPAA secretly funded Hood’s investigation and wrote nearly every word of the threatening letters sent to Google.
While Hood and various MPAA supporters have insisted that he’s clearly in the right, at least federal judge Henry Wingate doesn’t see much to support that. Hood tried desperately to keep this issue out of federal court, using a variety of claims, including the so-called “Younger Abstention” which argues that federal courts should stay out of certain issues. However, as Wingate notes, that only applies in three specific cases, none of which apply to Hood’s campaign against Google — and, even if any of them did apply, there’s a further exception for “bad faith” — and Wingate is pretty convinced that Hood is acting in bad faith:
Moreover, even if the Younger elements were satisfied here, the court would not be required to abstain here because an exception to the application of the doctrine applies. Indeed, federal courts may disregard the Younger doctrine when a state court proceeding was brought in bad faith or with the purpose of harassing the federal plaintiff… Google has presented significant evidence of bad faith, allegedly showing that Attorney General Hood’s investigation and issuance of the subpoena represented an effort to coerce Google to comply with his requests regarding content removal. As previously discussed, the Attorney General made statements, on multiple occasions, which purport to show his intent to take legal action against Google for Google’s perceived violations. When Google declined to fulfill certain requests, the Attorney General issued a 79-page subpoena shortly thereafter. The court is persuaded that this conduct may evidence bad faith on the part of the Attorney General.
On Thursday, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced plans to avoid the state of Indiana for any future company events following the passage of that state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
“Today we are canceling all programs that require our customers/employees to travel to Indiana to face discrimination,” Benioff wrote on his personal Twitter account. He then emphasized his “employees’ and customers’ outrage” over the bill and said that he would “dramatically reduce” the company’s investment in Indiana as a result.
Benioff spent much of Thursday posting links to stories about the bill’s passage, most of which referred to its discriminatory aspects and its potential negative impact on Indiana’s LGBTQ community. He also urged technology CEOs to “pay attention to what is happening in Indiana and how it will impact your employees and customers.”
You ready for this one? This is an inert cube of tungsten. It’s “geometrically perfect” in the sense that, uhhh, it’s a shape that exists in geometry. Tungsten is a dense element, so the cube is heavier than it looks. That’s it. That’s their entire selling point. This thing is so unspectacular that their Kickstarter page is full of misdirection and chicanery.
Yessir, those are definitely some elemental properties of tungsten. 70% denser than lead? Only 100 parts per billion in the earth’s crust? Take my money already! Specifically, take $209 for one kilogram of Tungsten. Hey, I wonder what the actual market price of tungsten is.
Oh, it’s $33/kg and falling. Well, surely the $176 price differential is due to manufacturing costs, right?
Haha nope. A bunch of Chinese manufacturers will sell you tungsten close to the market price in whatever damn shape you want for your desk or fuck room or wherever these people want to put their idiot cubes. You can also buy the stuff on Amazon (it’s used to balance pinewood derby cars, and I guarantee that’s how this guy got his dirty mitts on one in the first place).
Israel spied on the recent US-Iran nuclear talks, alleges America. And the US knows enough about it to say it publicly because the NSA is spying on Israel, along with everyone else.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Israel handed over confidential information from the negotiations with friendly members of the US Congress in a bid to derail any deal.
Israel denies the accusations, which highlight a widening gulf between Binyamin Netanyahu’s hawkish government in Israel and the Obama administration.
I’m not a coupon person. I don’t know why I’m not, but I don’t find myself at the grocery store digging through a coupon wallet the way my mother did to ensure I get $.25 off on that discounted meat I like to buy for a little game I call “Will this kill me tonight?” When shopping online, however, it’s a completely different story. Like many others, checking out of an online store isn’t complete until I run the brand or retailer through a search engine to see if there are any online coupons I can use. One of the common sites that comes up is RetailMeNot, an aggregator of coupon codes. Sometimes the codes work, more often they don’t, but it’s all part of my buying process.
And you have to imagine that, for the most part, retailers love sites like this. Coupons, after all, are designed to get buyers to try out a store or a brand. Making those coupons more widely available should naturally result in more first-tries, more purchases when there might otherwise be less. It’s a promotional tool, if nothing else, likely a free advertising source for these stores and brands. Mary Kay Cosmetics, in its never-ending wisdom, has decided to sue RetailMeNot for fraud and trademark infringement, litigating against the hand that feeds them.
Mary Kay Cosmetics is suing affiliate site Google Ventures-backed RetailMeNot in federal court for precisely for this reason. The company doesn’t sell directly to the public — though its corporate site makes it appear otherwise — and says it doesn’t offer deals or coupons. Therefore the company says that RetailMeNot’s presentation of Mary Kay coupons misleads consumers and harms the brand and its relationship with its sales reps (independent consultants) in several ways.
Okay, a couple of things to note from that pull quote. First, Mary Kay absolutely does sell direct to customers on its website. Not its entire catalog, perhaps. For that, you probably have to deal with one of the low-on-the-pyramid “sales reps” that hasn’t figured out the Mary Kay business model yet. As for whether Mary Kay offers coupons or deals, they absolutely do that, too. You can get free gifts with certain purchase amounts or free shipping on certain amounts, for instance.
Because if you question the victim, you’re committing the crime of perpetrating “rape culture.” Well, you know, unless the story is complete bullshit. Then, I guess that “rape culture” is just a nasty way of pronouncing “the truth” or “due process.” See Erik Wemple, Charlottesville police make clear that Rolling Stone story is a complete crock.
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