Writing in Scientific American (!), Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph E Stiglitz (previously) describes the US economy as an "inherited plutocracy" that's "rigged" to shift an ever-greater share of the national wealth… Read the rest of the article: Nobel-winning economist Joe Stiglitz on how the US economy became a "rigged, inherited plutocracy" and how to fix it
Update: An earlier version of this article misidentified Dick's Towing of Everett as the Dick's Towing of Seattle involved this this story. I apologize to Dick's of Everett for the… Read the rest of the article: City of Seattle's official tow partner impounded a homeless woman's stolen car and wanted $21,634 to give it back
The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation is a gnarly hairball of regulation; on the one hand, it makes it virtually impossible to collect mountains of data and buy/sell/trade/mine it… Read the rest of the article: GDPR: Good for privacy, even better for Google's dominance
SOPA has come to Australia: under Communications minister Senator Mitch Fifield's Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2018, rightsholders will be able to tell search engines which results they are allowed… Read the rest of the article: Radical expansion of Australia's national firewall will censor search results and websites
Disney is Anaheim's largest employer and the city is something of a company town, with Disney exerting massive influence on the city government and engaging in strong-arm tactics to suppress… Read the rest of the article: Anaheim's living wage ballot measure pits big corporate donors against union money
This Decorative Gourd Season, you can soothe your anxiety with a perpetual streaming video wallpaper in the form of a "Ghoul Log" (like a yule log, gettit?) from the good… Read the rest of the article: A streaming Jack-O-Lantern is your Halloween "Ghoul Log"
The "Civilian Interaction Training Program" is a project of the Texas Commission On Law Enforcement, aimed at teaching children how not to terrify heavily armed, easily-spooked Texas law enforcement officers,… Read the rest of the article: Texas high-school students can't graduate without watching a video on not triggering snowflake cops
The long fight over Do-Not-Track followed a predictable trajectory: a detailed, meaningful pro-privacy system was subverted by big business, and then published as a "standard" that offered virtually no privacy… Read the rest of the article: Why Do-Not-Track browser settings are useless and what to do about it
Facebook Portal is a camera that is supposed to follow you around your house while you videoconference; the product launch was repeatedly delayed because of the company's string of horrific… Read the rest of the article: Facebook lied: its in-home "Portal" cameras will collect your data
Sony — whose most notorious DRM foray infected millions of computers with malware — has announced an incoherent plan to use blockchain to make DRM work, somehow.
Everybody knows that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the brutal killing and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi (everybody, that is, except the Trumps, who coincidentally do a… Read the rest of the article: NYT: Saudi Arabia's Prince Charming was Mister Bone Saw all along
The Trump administration is very proud of the US's historically low unemployment figures (lowest in 50 years), but statistics are deceiving, especially labor statistics.
The FCC justified its Net Neutrality-killing order by claiming that comments it received showed strong public support for dismantling the rules that stop your ISP from deciding which parts of… Read the rest of the article: New York Attorney General expands law-enforcement investigation into the bots that killed Network Neutrality
Sarah Gailey's micro-short-story STET is a beautiful piece of innovative storytelling that perfectly blends the three ingredients for a perfect piece of science fiction: sharply observed technological speculation that reflects… Read the rest of the article: Stet, a gorgeous, intricate, tiny story of sociopathic automotive vehicles
When security researchers report on the ghastly defects in voting machines, the officials who bought these machines say dismiss their concerns by saying that the tamper-evident seals they put around… Read the rest of the article: Undetectably bypass voting machines' anti-tamper mechanism with a bit of a soda-can
Medtronic (previously) is a notoriously insecure medical implant manufacturer whose devices have been repeatedly shown to be grossly insecure — their pacemakers can be hacked before leaving the factory!
Felipe is a Portuguese game-developer who makes fun, crowdfunded minigames; he tweeted a tantalyzing video clip showing an idea for a Snake/Tetris mashup called "Snetris," and the response was so… Read the rest of the article: Snetris is "snake + tetris"
A new report from the San Francisco County Transportation Authority attributes the majority (51%-73%) of the prodigious 2010-2016 increase in San Francisco traffic congestion on Uber and Lyft; the rideshare… Read the rest of the article: Study blames Uber/Lyft for San Francisco traffic, Uber/Lyft blames Amazon, propose surge pricing
Tech-sector workers have enormous market-power: companies find it easier to raise cash than to use it to hire qualified developers.
114,659 of New York's public school students is homeless, bouncing from shelters to relatives' beds: homelessness is a predictor of poor academic performance for all the obvious reasons, including very… Read the rest of the article: One in ten of New York's public school students is homeless
