New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood has concluded that seven New York hospitals illegally billed rape survivors for their rape kits, at least 200 times, for sums ranging from… Read the rest of the article: New York hospitals illegally billed rape survivors for their rape kits, then sent debt-collectors after them
Five years ago, I coined the term "peak indifference" to describe a moment when a public health problem — like climate change, tobacco use, surveillance capitalism, or monopolism — reaches… Read the rest of the article: Peak indifference has arrived: a majority of Republicans say climate change is real
Some drafts of Article 13 of the pending EU Copyright Directive no longer contain the word "filters" — because the world's leading technical, legal and human rights experts all say… Read the rest of the article: The EU took the word "filters" out of the Copyright Directive, but it's still all about filters
Back in 2007, Adam "Apelad" Koford created a marvellous, funny, weird alternate history for the then-viral phenomenon of LOLcats, running-gag memes of cats whose superimposed dialog had many odd grammatical… Read the rest of the article: One More For the Road: The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats are back!
Liz Fong-Jones is a Site Reliability Engineer for Google's cloud division; she took to Twitter after reading today's story in The Intercept in which ex-Google security engineer Yonatan Zunger and… Read the rest of the article: Google engineer calls for a walkout over China censorship and raises $200K strike fund in hours
The precincts that swung hardest for Trump in 2016 and for the GOP in 2018 also had the highest incidence of Google searches for "erectile dysfunction," "hair loss," "how to… Read the rest of the article: Correlates of Trump voting: searches for erectile dysfunction, hair loss, how to get girls, penis enlargement, penis size, steroids, testosterone and Viagra
Google's Project Dragonfly is a formerly secret project to build a surveilling, censored version of its search engine for deployment in China; it was kept secret from the company at… Read the rest of the article: Google's secret project to build a censored Chinese search engine bypassed the company's own security and privacy teams
Bypass Paywalls is a popular extension for Firefox and Chrome that does what the name implies: allows your browser to manipulate its cookies so that websites with "soft paywalls" that… Read the rest of the article: Mozilla pulls a popular paywall circumvention tool from Firefox add-ons store
Your computer ships with a collection of trusted cryptographic certificates, called its "root of trust," which are consulted to verify things like SSL connections and software updates.
New York City's "marshal" service is a throwback to the Dutch colonial days; the 35 marshals are appointed by the mayor, draw no salary, and earn their livings by skimming… Read the rest of the article: New York City's municipal debt collectors have forged an unholy alliance with sleazy subprime lenders
Remember when the Department of Defense's own internal auditor revealed that the agency had committed $6.5 trillion in accounting fraud in just one year?
In 2007, Florida multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to two felony prostitution counts in a sweetheart deal that sent him to a private wing of a minimum security prison, with… Read the rest of the article: The prosecutor who helped a rich serial child rapist escape justice is now a Trump Cabinet member
Reddit has posted a punchy, impassioned warning about the likelihood that it will no longer be able to function if the EU's plan to mandate copyright filters and limit linking… Read the rest of the article: Reddit takes a stand against the EU's plan to break the internet
We live at the confluence of two ages: the first rush of climate change, which is bringing new species and new pathogens to territories they've never been known in; and… Read the rest of the article: Google sister company is trialing a mosquito eradication plan in Fresno
Eminent science fiction scholar Lisa Yaszek (Georgia Tech Professor of Science Fiction in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication) has edited "The Future Is Female! 25 Classic Science Fiction… Read the rest of the article: The secret history of science fiction's women writers: The Future is Female!
We're just a few Congressional signatures short of triggering the Congressional Review Act on Net Neutrality (we've already got the Senate); and that will push Trump to have to publicly… Read the rest of the article: Today is the day to push Congress to act on Net Neutrality
The Proud Boys suck at redaction: as the white nationalist extremist organization struggles with a succession crisis following founder Gavin McInnes's departure (precipitated by a Freedom of Information Act request… Read the rest of the article: Redaction ineptitude reveals names of Proud Boys' self-styled new leaders
Six4three sucks at redaction: its court filing in its lawsuit against Facebook (previously) was redacted by drawing black rectangles over the text, which can still be copied and pasted to… Read the rest of the article: Redaction ineptitude reveals Facebook's 2012 plan to sell Graph API access to user data for $250,000
Toronto 2033 is a shared-world science fiction anthology edited by the incomparable and multi-talented Jim Munroe (previously), where authors like Zainab Amadahy, Madeline Ashby, Al Donato, Kristyn Dunnion, Elyse Friedman,… Read the rest of the article: Toronto 2033: science fiction writers imagine the city of the future
It's the Electronic Frontier Foundation's annual Power Up! week, when donations to the charity are matched by a group of challenge donors, making every tax-deductible dollar you give count twice!… Read the rest of the article: This week: donations up to $140,000 to EFF will be doubled with matching donations
