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Uber's bad PR just got worse. (more…)

Waze is a smartphone app that offers real-time smart route alternatives to help drivers avoid congested freeways. In Los Angeles, Waze often directs drivers to side streets through upscale neighborhoods, so surface streets in neighborhoods also become congested with traffic.

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When most people are tailgated, they slam on the brakes or slow down. This fellow stopped his car on the highway and stared at his tailgater.

Panama's former military dictator Manuel Noriega claims he's entitled to compensation because his image appears in Activision's "Call of Duty: Black Ops II" without his consent.

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Engineers at Stanford have designed, built, and tested an earthquake-resistant house which has stayed upright even when subjected to three times the intensity of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

This video frame grab made available by CBS 4, shows a fan at the bottom of the lectern near Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist in Davie, Fla., Wednesday Oct. 15, 2014. The fan caused a delay in the gubernatorial debate between Crist and Governor Rick Scott, after the Scott campaign considered the fan a violation of the rules prohibiting the use of electronic devices.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist insists on bringing an electric fan to campaign appearances. One GOP operative calls the fan Crist's "teddy bear."

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A Tennessee woman was sentenced to jail for neglecting her yard work.

The judge sentenced her to 5 days, but later reduced it to 6 hours.

CBS | Local 8

Video by Charles Benoist. "At the DMV and a black crow comes over and said 'fuck you."

Like many other cities, Chicago uses red-light cameras to ensure traffic safety and to generate revenue from tickets issued to people who drive through red lights.

A recent investigation revealed the city of Chicago made a small but significant change to the time a yellow light changes to red. The Federal Department of Transportation recommends yellow lights of 3 to 6 full seconds in duration. Chicago's yellow lights are 2.9 seconds in duration. Chicago's short yellow lights resulted in more than 77,000 tickets and generated nearly 8M for the city.

Three days after the Chicago Tribune questioned city officials about the short yellow lights, the city suspended the practice on Sept. 22. Weeks later, city officials said they would end the practice–but they would keep the money.

Chicago Tribune | ABA Journal

Ebola Virus at 108,000 Magnification. The Los Angeles bus passenger is not believed to have actually contained this virus within his person.

Los Angeles Sheriff's deputies spent Monday searching for a man in a surgical mask who boarded a bus and told the driver, "Don't mess with me; I have Ebola." When he got off the bus, the man took off his mask and dropped it on the floor of the bus.

The bus driver kicked everyone off the bus and drove the bus to a yard, where both the bus and the driver were sequestered for two hours. The driver was taken to a local hospital where he was examined and released. The bus remained taped off until hazmat crews and officials concluded an investigation.

LA County Metro officials are reviewing surveillance video from inside the bus to help apprehend the man, and are treating the scare as a terrorist threat.

Reuters | LA Times

Kelly Atlas, an activist with Direct Action Everywhere, delivered to diners at Bluestem in San Francisco a tearful, dramatic rant about her "little girl and her sisters."

The "little girl" is a chicken named Snow.

When a dark-skinned man sneezed on a plane then joked about having ebola, the flight crew took no chances and called a team in hazardous material suits to escort him off the plane.

The passenger had never been in Africa. He did not have Ebola.

Reuters

If you must stand in line for over 30 minutes to clear a security check for your job, is that part of your job and should you be paid for that time?

That's the basis of a case the Supreme Court agreed to hear on Monday. At the end of their shifts, workers at Amazon warehouses in Nevada had to pass through security checks as part of an anti-theft procedure. Workers said they often spent nearly 30 minutes waiting for the checks, and they should be paid for that time.

Amazon vehemently disagrees. "Security screenings are indistinguishable from many other tasks that have been found non-compensable under the FLSA, such as waiting to punch in and out on the time clock, walking from the parking lot to the work place, waiting to pick up a paycheck, or waiting to pick up protective gear before donning it for a work shift," an Amazon staffing contractor wrote in a brief to the court.

Update: An Amazon spokesperson emailed with a brief response.

We have a longstanding practice of not commenting on pending litigation, but data shows that employees walk through post shift security screening with little or no wait.

Kelly Cheeseman

Amazon Corporate Communications

A man in New Jersey was arrested after using a shotgun to shoot down his neighbor's drone. The neighbor was using the drone to take photographs of a nearby home undergoing renovations.

Police arrested the man and charged him with "possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and criminal mischief." Lawyers are trying to determine how to proceed, because without direct precedent for people shooting down flying camera robots, the future of drone laws may hinge on one annoyed New Jersey man with a shotgun.

[It's a good time to re-read Larry Niven's 1972 short story, "Cloak of Anarchy" – Mark]

An Ohio woman is suing a sperm bank after she became pregnant with sperm donated by a black man instead of a white man as she and her partner had intended.

The woman says she and her partner love their 2-year-old daughter very much and wouldn't change anything about her. But they are concerned about raising her in the predominantly white community where they live.

The woman is seeking damages and wants to ensure the sperm bank doesn't make another similar mistake.

An attorney representing several of the celebrities whose nude pictures were circulated online is threatening to sue Google for allegedly not doing enough to prevent the photos from spreading online.

On Tuesday, Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation allowing the state to forcibly open the public access road to Martins Beach if Vinod Khosla fails or refuses to voluntarily restore public access to the beach.

Last Wednesday, Khosla lost his court battle to cut off access to Martins Beach. A San Mateo County judge ruled Khosla must reopen the gate to Martins Beach, a crescent-shaped inlet five miles south of Half Moon Bay.

(Celebration idea: BB meetup at Martins Beach!)

Previously on BB:

Billionaire tech VC Vinod Khosla owns the very tides, sea, sands (or so he claims)

http://boingboing.net/2013/11/11/billionaire-blocks-access-to-p.html

The woman beaten by a CHP Officer Daniel Andrew will receive $1.5 million under a settlement, and Officer Daniel Andrew has "elected" to resign.

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Botto Bistro in Richmond, California is unconcerned about its Yelp rating. In an effort to undermine the reliability of its Yelp page, Botto Bistro is working to be the worst-rated restaurant in the Bay Area and is encouraging its customers to leave one-star Yelp reviews and offering deals for anyone who writes a bad review: 25% off any pizza and a chance to win a cooking class.
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Dan Stevenson is neither a Buddhist, nor a follower of any organized religion.

Mr. Stevenson, a resident of Oakland's Eastlake neighborhood, purchased a 2-foot Buddha and installed it on a median strip in his neighborhood, near 11th Avenue and 19th Street. Stevenson hoped his small gesture would bring tranquillity to a neighborhood marred by crime–dumping, graffiti, drug dealing, prostitution, robberies, aggravated assault and burglaries.

After he installed the statue, local residents began leaving gifts and flowers, and chanting prayers. When police checked crime statistics for the block radius around the statue, here's what they found: Since 2012, when worshipers began showing up for daily prayers, overall year-to-date crime has dropped by 82 percent. Robbery reports went from 14 to three, aggravated assaults from five to zero, burglaries from eight to four, narcotics from three to none, and prostitution from three to none.