Ali Kashani, a data-scientist, has run the numbers on Canada's electoral constituencies (called "ridings") and concluded that if the candidates from the NDP and Liberal parties in sixteen of those ridings agreed to one or the other withdrawing, the Conservative Party could not form the next government.
For most of a decade, government negotiators from around the Pacific Rim have met in utmost secrecy to negotiate a "trade deal" that was kept secret from legislatures, though executives from the world's biggest corporations were allowed in the room and even got to draft parts of the treaty.
One of my favorite toys as a kid was Creepy Crawlers. Introduced in 1964 by Mattel, it was a kit that let you make rubber insects, spiders, snakes, lizards etc. It came with a set of metal molds, squeeze bottles of liquid plastic called Plastigoop, and an electrically-powered, 390 degrees Fahrenheit open-face hot plate called the Thingmaker to cure the Plastigoop. — Read the rest
The Hollywood studios always claim to be "pro-fair-use" but when the US Trade Representative made a move to put fair use into the Trans Pacific Partnership, the MPAA sent a scathing, furious letter to the Obama administration condemning "the inclusion of fair use' in free trade agreements" as "extremely controversial and divisive."
New leaked documents published by Wikileaks show that the US spy agency conducted surveillance operations against Japan's top government officials, prioritizing finance and trade ministers, as well as the Japanese central bank and two private-sector energy companies.
ISDSes are the most controversial element of secret trade deals like TPP and TTIP: they let giant international corporations sue countries to repeal environmental, safety and labor laws that interfere with their profitability.
Enter a red-hued glitch dream where you explore your grandmother's house to find seeds, skeletons, frogs and songs by Patsy Cline.
I asked Amy Parness, the co-founder of Sparkle Labs, maker of fantastic educational electronics kits, to write a Medium post about gender and the business of being a maker business person. Her terrific essay calls out the problems with "pink girly engineering kits." — Read the rest
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is a secret EU/US trade agreement that "puts the right to profit above all other rights," in the words of one MEP.
A TV news crew was interviewing a man when something more exciting happened behind him.
Evan from Fight for the Future writes, "The folks who wrote SOPA are trying to get extremist copyright provisions into the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement — the one that Congress is trying to 'Fast Track' right now."
Congress is about to introduce a bill that will let the US Trade Representative lock America into the provisions of the secretly negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership, without substantial debate or scrutiny — including criminal sanctions — jail! — for downloading TV shows.
Michael Geist sez, "Last month, there were several Canadian media reports on how the work of Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, had entered the public domain. While this was oddly described as a 'copyright quirk', it was no quirk. — Read the rest
Here's a good rule of thumb: Any time a president says new tech laws are to protect "our kids," you know something bad is on the way.
It’s no surprise that we haven’t seen a conservative alternative to Obamacare; Obamacare was the conservative alternative. Written by Michael Goodwin of Economix Comix. Illustrations by Dan E. Burr. Lettered by Debra Freiberg.
Yesterday's WIPO General Assembly was the "worst ever," with rich and poor countries deadlocked over balanced copyright, fair use, and half a dozen other issues.
Net Neutrality in a way we can all understand it, thanks to Michael Goodwin of Economix Comix.
What could make the secretive Trans Pacific Partnership process even less legit?
Moving it at the last minute, under cover of darkness, from Vancouver to Ottawa, in order to avoid critics of the treaty and how it is being negotiated. The TPP is a secretive treaty that allows corporations to sue governments that enact environmental, health and governmental regulations that interfere with their profits. — Read the rest
America's legal prohibition on phone unlocking has inched almost imperceptibly closer to reform, as a watered-down House bill approaches some kind of Senate compromise, that might, in a couple years, decriminalize changing the configuration of a pocket-computer that you own.
When you work from home, do you produce better results in pajamas or professional attire? Do casual Fridays damage productivity? Does a jeans-and-T-shirt startup have an edge over its business-casual competitor? Researchers are just now getting to the bottom of questions like these. David McRaney of the You Are Not So Smart podcast explores the strange phenomenon known as "enclothed cognition."
